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Pakistani Lawyer Wants Mark Zuckerberg Executed
Earthquake Retrofit sends along a piece from The Register reporting on a nightmare scenario of legal jurisdiction on the Internet: a Pakistani lawyer has filed blasphemy charges, carrying the death penalty, against Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives (and the pseudonomous user who initiated the "Draw Muhammad" contest last month). Pakistani police have apparently opened an investigation, according to this Google translation of a BBC Urdu report."
n/t
If Pakistan were to actually uphold this absurd attempt, it wouldn't hurt Mark Zuckerberg (I'm pretty sure he's not planning on going to Pakistan anytime soon and no civilized country is even going to consider extradition). But it WOULD certainly hurt Pakistan (which already has a pretty bad rep to begin with). It's the equivalent of holding up a big sign to the world that reads "We're a backwards shithole, filled with intolerant Koran-thumping hicks. Don't even think about coming here or doing business here." It would be a valuable lesson on what religious fanaticism can do to your country, I suppose--especially for countries that don't have oil (the only reason any businessman from the civilized world would even be caught dead in Saudi Arabia).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Islam - a religion of peace. Are you serious?
And on a more serious note... what does the people who want the UK Hacker extradited and tried in the USA think of this?... after all the crime was commited in Pakistan (showing drawings of Teh Propeth) no?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Exaggerate much? This is up there with the summary from a few years ago about how the squid's beak will revolutionize engineering .
I'm disabling ads until because I choose not to reward redesigns that are less usable than "view source".
I don't think the pages for "Draw Muhammad Day" is that big a deal. FarmTown, now THAT is a reason for execution.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
No, people are assholes pretty much anywhere.
What do you really expect for a religion literally meaning "submission" and where the very founder spread it at the point of a sword. As a society, we all want to have a very PC belief that all religions are created equal, have good intentions, at their core are always good messages and what not and it's only the bad people that pervert them.... but I think that's naive and I'm saying this as an agnostic. Treating unsubstantiated beliefs as sacred and taboo will always be a bad thing because you can't challenge a good or bad interpretation with logic and clearly any and all belief systems set up by man for various agendas will have downsides - some more than others.
Yet another example showing that the Islamic world is still in the Dark Ages that most of the rest of the world emerged from sometime in the 13th century.
...fuck a whole bunch of you superstitious savages.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I guess this is a development that no one really foresaw in the early stages of the Internet: instead of creating a global village with a global set of social mores, the Internet is creating a global court room where every jurisdiction can claim tort against anybody who does something over the Internet. Furthermore, it was always implicitly assumed (especially in the US) that the Internet users would adopt, or at least move to American moral standards. Instead, we're discovering that there are plenty of communities out there who are happy to apply their local standards to the world, and that these communities have enough power to at least make life uncomfortable for everyone.
There is a lesson here. Actually, there are two lessons here. One, Americans aren't the only ones willing to export their values, and they will have a difficult time arguing that others shouldn't. Two, we can lay to rest the notion that the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it: nations have enough power, and those in power have enough incentive, to use the other code base to control the Internet - the code of law.
I have a sneaking suspicion I know which one is going to win, and it's going to give geeks heartburn all over the world.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani police. He doesn't live there, he isn't a citizen of Pakistan, he didn't even commit this infraction himself.
Of course, I am not a Pakistani lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice, Mark.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
And yet people get so upset and claim that the US "made" the terrorists. I guess they did. Just like Mark Z. did. It does not take much for a western to anger someone. In fact, most people on slashdot would be likely candidates for execution; most of them deny that Allah exists.
But what we really need to do is talk about this with them and come to an understanding...
And by the way, Israel is bad. Israel shouldn't have a blockade, Hamas isn't really a big threat. They just want to "execute" Israel...
Hm.
Hmmm, pretty much sounds like Christianity as well.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
See, hacking government computers is illegal everywhere, recognized by a crime by two allies who have an extradition treaty with each other. "Blasphemy" isn't a crime in America, or most of the non-Muslim world. Pakistan is basically the world's Arkansas and no one takes them seriously. There is no moral or legal equivalent.
Even if you look at it from their perspective, that Mark Zuckerberg is somehow guilty because he's "enabling" these "offensive" actions on his website, doesn't that make their entire religion guilty because they're enabling the grisly murders of people like Daniel Pearl, or hell, all of 9/11?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Well, Facebook has customers in Pakistan, and that is probably enough, for FB to be considered a fugitive.
However, it should probably be noted that Zuckerberg is NOT facebook.
Can you imagine what would happen if CEOs for companies were actually personally criminally responsible for any illegal action anyone at their company committed, or that their company enabled any customer to commit?
If that were true we might have companies actually following the law....
Ya I don't understand these blasphemy charges. If someone says something they disagree with, then should just ignore him and move on. I'm not religious so I guess the equivalent for me would be someone claiming that coconuts are fruits. I'll think he's an idiot but that's it, I won't want him executed.
Founder spreading it by the sword is different than the followers/descendants distorting its message to spread it by the sword. So no, not insightful. Similar yes, but when the ACTUAL original roots of a belief system involve violence, that's a lot different.
Of course, Christianity has its roots in Judaism, which while not exactly "spread" by the point of the sword, it was advanced by the point of the sword.
Judaism's history was a very violent one, though they were/are not particularly interested in spreading the religion, because it is a racial religion.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
and? Is that supposed to make it OK somehow?
Just earlier this month I WANTED to strangle Zuckerberg. How is it possible for these assholes to suck the fun out of everything?
Treating unsubstantiated beliefs as sacred and taboo will always be a bad thing because you can't challenge a good or bad interpretation with logic and clearly any and all belief systems set up by man for various agendas will have downsides - some more than others.
Not to mention, any time that a death penalty is suggested for anything less than homicide, there's something terribly wrong with the picture.
/* No Comment */
In most western countries extradition treaties are only in force when there is sufficient similarity in the law and the potential punishment. So Mark is safe in the U.S., but in other countries like Egypt or Turkey he might be in some danger.
Of course it does. In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians who were well known for their extreme religious tolerance but got the ire of the church for their unorthodox views like that the God of the old Testament was evil and writing the Gospel of Judas. Not too mention everything since then. It sounds the same because it's inherently the same type of social structure with the same basic aims.
Of course, Christianity has splintered since then just like Islam has. Splintering doesn't mean automatically being more progressive -- the Puritans and countless other Christian sects were even more strict and worse than the Catholic Church in many ways and as oppressive against women and other things as bad as the most radical Islamic groups.
In fact, the basic attitudes between the groups are the same, which is why embracing religion will never work out. The only two ways to overcome that is to teach a different interpration of the religion or to forgo all pretense and drop it completely in order to change majority's attitudes about religion -- and that usually means converting them young and waiting for the next generation to come into power. (It's said that controversial scientific theories were often the same way, there were adherents that you would never convert despite all the evidence in the world, you just wait for them to die off).
As a point of contrast, many Christians believe that their primary responsibility is to not themselves sin. Secondarily is to encourage their fellow Christian to avoid sinning; this includes (at the worst) kicking people out of the church when they're chronically unwilling to shape up. But But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
Tell that to teh gehys.
I mean, are Muslims really such pussies they can't take a fucking joke about their Prophet?
A large number of Americans think people should go to prison for burning a frikkin' flag.
There are intolerant assholes everywhere.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That is referring to his followers being persecuted and rejected by their own family members.
Which, I might add, is an exact description of what happens when a Muslim converts to Christianity. If the family doesn’t outright execute him or her, they at the very least are completely disowned.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
What are you talking about? The inquisition was still going on when this country was formed a little over 200 years ago...
Fuck Mohammed and the camel he rode in on!
But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
There are plenty of concrete examples, the laws on sex toys in some of the predominantly Christian US states being the first that spring to mind, of Christian sensibilities being forced on the population at large. Same goes for the occasional Christian nutjob who kills an abortion clinic worker. In a slightly more broad context, evangelism is directly intended to change the behaviour of non-Christians, although I suppose that you could argue that by making them become Christians they are no longer part of their original group.
Both religions are following the same template, but the reaction in Islamic countries appears more extreme. It seems that the difference in the reaction owes more to how developed the country is than to the predominant religion, though. It just happens to be the case that many less-developed middle eastern countries are predominantly Muslim while much of the west is Christian. Look at the brutality carried out in the name of Christianity in some African nations for further evidence of this.
Could someone explain why some Muslims believe that their rules need to apply to non-Muslims?
As a point of contrast, many Christians believe that their primary responsibility is to not themselves sin. Secondarily is to encourage their fellow Christian to avoid sinning; this includes (at the worst) kicking people out of the church when they're chronically unwilling to shape up. But But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
And yet it's trivially easy to find Christians right here in the enlightened USofA who do exactly that.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Muslims consider the Christian and Jewish G-d to be Allah and Jesus to be a prophet. They are unlikely to make fun of them. Islam's crime is rather the denigration of all non-Muslims into non-humans.
>Well, at least they are bothering to pursue
>the execution through legal channels this time.
Good point. Some countries would just launch drones.
What I really expect is for people to be able to tell the difference between an entire religion, and one asshat who claims to follow that religion. You can claim that the behavior of the asshat characterizes the entire religion, but that doesn't make it so.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I know I may have fallen for a troll trap here, but I am not letting this one go: Hitler atheism is in doubt. The evidence point more toward him being a catholic. Beside wasn't the soldiers who committed these crimes?, are you telling me that Germany's army during ww2 was an atheist army ??None of these soldiers was a catholic one ? Stalin was dogmatic in his views about social composition, he was so dogmatic about these things, it was as religion. Same goes for Pol Pot. It was religion that started the Crusades, it was religion who started the inquisition, it was religion who brought down the Towers. What about slavery in US ? who were the south quoting on the right for slaves? Get you fact right! "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion." -- Steven Weinberg
Actually, I'd be more likely to agree that all religions are, at the core, about power and influence. Frequently they're tools whereby a tiny elite try to influence and control a large flock of sheep.
Art only becomes idolatry when one feels that it has some special representation. Pledging to kill the creator of an image is in fact proof of worshiping it.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Two, we can lay to rest the notion that the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it: nations have enough power, and those in power have enough incentive, to use the other code base to control the Internet - the code of law.
Wrong. When Pakistan starts behaving like lunatics, the rest of the Internet will just bypass them. They might be able to exert some control within their borders, but that will at worst, cause the rest of the Internet to stop at the edge of their borders/routers. They are damaged, we will ignore them and route around them.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I don't think that's right. I think about the only people who think all religions are equal are:
As a fellow agnostic, what I want is just for people to give me enough space to figure this stuff out, without threatening to kill me if I don't buy into their religion.
The Reformation gets very little credit for the relative moderation(or at least contemporary impotence) of Christianity, outside of some real shitholes. Calvin's Geneva was a Protestant theocracy, and there were numerous examples at least as unpleasant.
Also, while Islam didn't have a "reformation", it also has the "two-substantially-dissimilar-and-mutually-displeased-with-one-another-sects-operating-under-one-heading" thing going, with the Sunni and Shia branches(plus some smaller oddball variants), and that hasn't exactly exposed its warm and fuzzy side.
Most of the credit for the West not being a ghastly theocratic hellhole, torn by endless wars between the terrorized papistical minions of Rome and the terrorized heretical minions of various protestant factions, with the occasional witch burning or crusade to bring people together, is due to the Enlightenment.
"Mankind will never be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last Priest"(and the last advertising shill is buried alive alongside them)...
So just because some of our remote ancestors behaved like giant douchebags it's okay to let people repeat it, especially if it's in the name of religion.
What happened to learning from history to avoid repeating its mistake? Or did i miss some clause detailing exceptions to this?
Jesus certainly wouldn't be allowed in "Church", they'd probably stone him if he went up before them preaching some of the things the Bible says he preached.
Like what?
"Love one another as I have loved you" :(
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
So what is it about some Muslim theologies that leads them to try to, for example, feel justified and/or compelled to try to kill Dutch cartoonists and Facebook executives?
It's the same thing that compels born again christians to travel to Utah and tell them how wrong they are for their beliefs. It's the same thing that compels radical christian groups to lobby the United States Congress to pass an amendment declaring marriage being between one man and one woman. It's the same thing that compels extremists to gun down Abortion doctors and harass those who work at Abortion clinics.
This is not something that Muslims have a monopoly on.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians
I'm not aware that non-Gnostic Christians acted violently against Gnostic Christians. They basically sidelined them by establishing the canon (New Testament) as the source of spiritual authority, over and against the Gnostic emphasis on personal experience.
In medieval times some European Christian rulers did convert their subjects or neighbors at swordpoint, and the Crusades were religiously induced violence, and later the heretical sects such as Albigenses and Bogomils were exterminated. And there was that wonderful Thirty Years War thing.
Of course, you can rarely distangle religion and politics in these things. People have an uncanny knack for concluding that God wants just what they want, and wants them to be the instrument of His will. I suspect religion is often more of an excuse than the actual cause.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm curious, which 21st century Christian figures are calling for and filing motions for government-sponsored murder?
Wrong question.
The interesting question is what countries enable you to file a religion-based motion for government-sponsored murder.
You have nutters all over the place, of every colour and (proclaimed) stripe/culture/religion - the problems is having those nutters in powers. Screw the reformation - the seperation of church and state, constitutions and bills of right are what makes a difference!
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
There was a man traveling through the land, casting out demons. When the apostles saw it, they told him to stop because he was not one of them. When they told Jesus what they'd done, Jesus told them that they shouldn't have made him stop because whoever is not against us is with us. What then, do you suppose he would say about your claim that "Its meaningless to say you are a Christian or a member of a particular church unless you share its essential beliefs." I'll tell, you, he wouldn't have cared about your precious "essential beliefs".
Yes. Have you read it? It says that.
That you should give away all your money. That you should accept and love all people. That you should hate your father and your mother. That you should not abide in laws and rules, but rather focus on love. That you shouldn't lord over each other. Pretty much the whole of the gospel message has been thoroughly rejected and rationalized away by the "church".
It's worse than that, too. Not only do they tear down religions, the make blatantly racist and sexist episodes as well. South Park is still easily my favorite show on television, but it's easily one of the most offensive as well. The show doesn't pull punches, and it equally offends any culture, religion, race, or creed. Truly, the offending episodes featuring the prophet Mohawk weren't even all that offensive, not compared to some of the other things they've done anyway.
"It's far easier to learn programming, and read physics textbooks, and read Dawkins/Hitchens, and other men bloviating about the evils of religion, when they don't even have any real expertise in theology to begin with (Dawkins is a BIOLOGIST)."
OK, it is a deal if the religious people tear the "how mankind got there" chapter out of their story book. After all, they are not biologists.
Would demanding that the theological experts stop talking about religion until they have a shred of evidence for the existence of (their!) deity be taking it too far? If they're the experts... . I know Dawkins does provide evidence every time he discusses evolution.
Bert
Who somehow still thinks that Dawkins knows more about religion than a creationist about biology.
I agree, but what that means is subject to interpretation.
If you have a "christian" who says he has accepted Jesus as his savior (and perhaps understands that intellectually), but runs a large corporation that makes money by exploiting the poor, is Jesus his Lord?
Likewise, if you have a "humanist" who doesn't believe in the power of God (intellectually) but knows Jesus' teachings and gives away his wealth to the poor and takes in orphans to care for them, is Jesus his Lord?
Your belief is only worth the part of it that carries through into your actions.
Oh like Islam is any better.
Child brides, pederasty, repression of women, homosexuality as a crime with the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan, and Yemen.
I'd bet that more young males are molested in countries like Morocco a year due to the repressed sexuality Islam imposes than have been molested by all the Catholic priests in the last thirty years.
The son of one of Hamas's founders admits that the social restrictions on dating and sex in Islam and the Middle Eastern tribal society is one of the leading causes of militarism in Islam.
Being disowned in a Muslim culture is a bit more serious than being disowned in the US. In the Muslim culture, your identity – the fact that you are a person, and have civil rights – is based on your Muslim heritage. If your parents retract it, you’re George Bailey. You weren’t born. You don’t exist.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Treating unsubstantiated beliefs as sacred and taboo will always be a bad thing because you can't challenge a good or bad interpretation with logic and clearly any and all belief systems set up by man for various agendas will have downsides - some more than others.
Not to mention, any time that a death penalty is suggested for anything less than homicide, there's something terribly wrong with the picture.
Anytime the death penalty is suggested at all, there's something terribly wrong with the picture. Nobody can logically explain why it's okay to kill someone when it isn't okay to kill someone.
Strictly speaking, Jesus never command you to do any of those things (nor to believe anything). He did command a couple things (love God, love one and other, make disciples of all nations) and he was pretty clear that doing those things was of paramount importance. He never (as far as I'm noticed in all my readings) placed any emphasis in belief, though some people misread faith as belief.
Here's my beef with belief. People will say they believe something, and intellectually that may be true, but if they don't practice it they don't believe it in their heart. That is worthless
But it is not just one guy. I don't care what people want to say Islam is supposed to be, you have to take what it in. In particular, look at the countries that are Islamic countries. They are almost to a one fundamentalist dictatorships of one form or another. You have Iran that has sham elections but is run by a "Supreme Leader" that is a cleric and an "Assembly of Experts" also clerics. You have Saudi Arabia, a long standing monarchy where they don't use lawyers but clerics in court and so on. The actual implementation of Islam is stuck back in the crusades and no amount of explaining away can change that. I don't care if that's not what it is "supposed" to be, that's what it is. I'm not going to say that Christian behavior in the actual crusades was ok because it was "Actually Christian". Sorry, it was what the vast majority of the follower of that faith did at the time. Doesn't matter if the book said they shouldn't, they did and justified it with their faith.
This is the same kind of crap from the people who cry that every single communist state "Isn't a real communism," and therefore communism is still a fine idea. Well strictly speaking that may be the case but practically speaking when communism is implemented, you get the USSR or Vietnam or Cuba and so on.
It's all the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. Oh those guys aren't TRUE Muslims. Yes, they are. They identify as Muslim, they follow the basics, they are Muslim. They may not be what you think a Muslim should be, but they still are.
Right, but what I'm saying is that the business man has not made the choice (even though he claims he believes) and the humanist has made the choice (even though he claims he does not believe). The choice is following Jesus, not "believing" in the intellectual sense. I'm not saying that people don't screw up, but the Lord knows your heart. People who do not believe enough to act likely don't believe at all.
Easy solution: store entrails of the last king/priest (whichever comes first) in liquid nitrogen and thaw them before use.
It was probably a mistake for me to claim Christian theology as a point of contrast.
No, you were correct. Olddave is confusing theology with action. Non-Christians are "the world", and while teaching and proselytizing are things Christians are enjoined to do for "the world", laying a smack-down for sins isn't part of the religion. Of course, the legal system, with business permits etc. is another issue entirely. I'm sure plenty of non-Christians oppose things that might affect their communities too.
This is a firm but fair response to everything that is Facebook. I don't think anyone could have a problem with this.
:D
Proceed!
From a practical point of view, it's a terrible idea. The justice system is not able to correctly mete out these punishments. People who commit these crimes go free. People who are innocent are convicted of them. Also, the threat of a death penalty causes mismatch in threatened penalties compared with the evidence against them, so they plead guilty to a lesser charge rather than lose their life for a crime they did not commit. The police lie under oath and fake evidence, with the truth coming out years or decades later. Witnesses are horribly unreliable, and they can be pressured to perjure themselves.
Add up the expenses and hoops involved in death penalty cases and it's a cheaper proposition to put someone in prison for the rest of their lives.
So, yes, I agree with you that they _ought_ to die, but don't think that we should be doing it.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
If you kill someone...you have no place in a civilized society.
So, executioners and military have no place in civilized society. I can agree with that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Homosexuality is a religion now? And where do you get "prosecuted" for speaking out against homosexuality? I call that bullshit.
Oh, and by the way, people don't mock Christianity because of the bible, usually - people don't care if you don't bother them. They do it as a reaction to the Church's action through the centuries and to this day.
Voltaire
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So just because some of our remote ancestors behaved like giant douchebags it's okay to let people repeat it, especially if it's in the name of religion.
What happened to learning from history to avoid repeating its mistake? Or did i miss some clause detailing exceptions to this?
That is precisely why it is okay. Consider science: repeatable results makes for good theories. These so-called "mistakes" have resulted in repeated success of the victors. It's probably more important to understand who benefits rather than looking at the methods.
There are a lot of groups out there who have done just fine with war, conquest and oppression as their means. Although certainly the dead and oppressed people out there didn't like it, we need to understand that this stuff happens because it makes your state/sect/corporation more successful. If history is really a teacher, we may realize that wars, oppression and things like that are only mistakes if you don't like war and oppression. If your major concerns are more power, spreading your ideology/religion, getting rich and having a higher standard of living for yourself, then it would be a "mistake" to make peace and to cease being militarily powerful and allowing more people to have a say in things.
For you to have any hope of ending these negative aspect for good, you need to change cultures and thought processes to put emphasis on different things. And that isn't going to happen by attacking the symptoms, as nice as it sounds to attack military spending, oil companies and intolerant religions. If you want to stop those abuses for good, you need the people to start thinking in a different way about their existence and goals as a species.
I think Rule 34 may be the reason they prefer Muhammad be blacked out.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It think the problem with saudi arabia is that the money is coming from top to the bottom. This allows for a very dangerous situation where wealthy patrons can finance/coerce those with less money to do their will. Without an independent source of supporting themselves, the young turn to the ones who say they are from God and offering them and their families money and protection. It was only really when the masses were able to provide for themselves that they were able to make more responsible decisions for themselves and their families.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Screw the reformation - the separation of church and state, constitutions and bills of right are what makes a difference!
And every one of those are entirely useless unless everyone actually wants to believe in them and work to live inside those rules. Have you seen the constitutions of various totalitarian states like the old Soviet Union? Some of them make the US Constitution look positively lackluster in its protections. They had rights to health care, work, freedom of speech and everything.
Of course, it doesn't matter because in those countries, their constitutions are a sham or fatally flawed by insertion of certain provisions. More importantly, they were shams because everyone knew who was really in charge and those pieces of paper were meaningless.
Constitution alone? Worthless.
Bill of Rights alone? A bad joke.
Separation of Church and State? What is the point when your leader is the focal point of a cult of personality? Same shit, different century.
The only thing that matters is the attitude of the people. If you think that the US Constitution had any hope of working without the support of the most powerful segments of the people behind it, you missed the entire Civil War in your history class.
Of course, Christianity has its roots in Judaism, which while not exactly "spread" by the point of the sword, it was advanced by the point of the sword.
Judaism's history was a very violent one, though they were/are not particularly interested in spreading the religion, because it is a racial religion.
First of all, the Israelites were not particularly violent by ancient standards. Remember what Rome did to Carthage, say, or what the Assyrians did to everyone they conquered. Conquering as many cities as possible and enslaving everyone was pretty standard. (This point applies equally to Islam, of course.)
Second of all, don't conflate ancient Israel with Judaism. For much of Israel's history, most of its inhabitants were idolaters, as recorded both by archeological evidence and the Bible. Today's Jews are treated as the exclusive descendants of the Israelites only because all the other Israelites assimilated and intermarried, so we no longer know who their descendants are. By the time Israelites were all Jews as we'd recognize them today, they were already in exile and in no position to commit much violence against anyone.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
I guess you've never studied Buddhism. I'm no expert, but I've gathered that Buddhism teaches a great respect for life and to exist in harmony with the world. It also is supportive of the advancement of science, even if it contradicts the Buddhist belief set.
Christianity is not about forcing a world view, religion, beliefs, or anything on anyone else. It's about spreading the good news of the Gospel to everyone so they have the choice to be saved or not.
The teachings of Jesus may have been about that. But you only need to read as far as the Apocalypse to realize that the spirit of his teachings was being gang-raped before his body was cold (or arrived in heaven, if you prefer to believe that).
Christianity is the second most aggressively expanding major religion of all times, exceeded only by Islam. The people of Africa and South America didn't exactly hear about this interesting new religion on the radio and decided to investigate.
I know, you'll now offer the usual excuse that all that are just perversions of the real christianity. To which I will offer my usual reply: If we strip away all the allegedly perverted stuff, there isn't a whole lot remaining. Hundreds of years of history have never happened. Millions of people were killed. All "just perversions"? Yeah, right. If something causes that much evil and suffering, anyone who defends it is insane and refuses to see what is in plain view.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What??? How was this modded informative?
You must be new around here. Anti-Christian posts are always modded up Informative or Insightful. The more outlandishly silly, the more so. They are the slashdot equivalent of trash-talk on the basketball court. And don't imagine that most modders take the moderation rules seriously. Modding is an expression of solidarity with the trash-talkers.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The books as a whole are mythology. Even the Greek myths incorporated bits of historical elements into the narratives. The fact that there may be kernels of historical truth don't make the whole anything other than myth. A bad, morally disturbing myth.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
While you can point all you want to them having beliefs in addition to the bible, their traditions are just as old, if not older than the bible itself. So, where is your justification to dismiss it?
It's an issue of dogma. Protestants beliefe in sola scriptura, so if something cannot be shown to derive from the Scripture, then it's not sacred. Catholics (and Orthodox), on the other hand, believe in the "sacred tradition", which goes alongside the scripture - with scripture prevailing if there is a conflict, but tradition still valid and applicable otherwise.
Athiests - who think all religions are crap, and just hope people won't be jerks about their religions.
I disagree. They're all annoying when people use religious teachings as the basis of their argument, which is quite often even when they aren't jerks. To the rest of us, it's like arguing that cutting down the forest will kill the unicorns, it's a position that can't be reasoned with because it has no basis in reason. That's minor however compared to what really differentiates the religions.
Let's take adultery as an example. Huge breach of Christian and Muslim belief, in the ten commandments and lust is one of the seven deadly sins. What happens to you in most of the Christian world? Nothing - at least legally. Maybe God will send you downstairs for it, but that's for Him when the time comes. How is it to be a non-Christian in a Christian country? No problem. Now, in large parts of the Muslim world that'll get you death by stoning. Does it help if you're not a Muslim? Does it help if you renounce your religion and so is no longer bound by its rules? No.
That is what makes it scary, there's no real freedom of religion if you'll be punished by a different religion's law, including the freedom not to believe. That is what makes Islam a real threat, not religion in general. And to get back to where I started, you can't reason about Sharia because no secular argument will ever compare to the claim that it's dictated by Allah himself. It's not the spirituality in itself that is scary but it's the idea of religious law, judge, jury and executioner that frightens me. If Muslims let Allah do the judging, I wouldn't worry at all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga