- Sep 4, 2005
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How cynical some of our atheist friends are, for not all religion is the same. I had a Anthropology textbook this past year, and it was very critical of religion.
I'm an atheist, and if you read several of my more recent posts, it's a point that I've been trying to make a for a while.
Mainstream Atheists like Sam Harris are starting to make that very same point as well.
People can try to compare Christianity to Islam all day long...People can make their arguments that compare abortion clinic bombings to Jihad (even though the magnitude and frequency of these 2 things aren't on the same playing field)....people can make arguments that "the Old Testament has texts that are just as violent"...
However, the one thing that can't be denied are the vast differences between the men they hold reverence for.
Muhammad and Jesus...
Even if could match violent texts between the two holy books 1 for 1, you still can't deny that Muhammad and Jesus are two very different people according to how their books describe them.
According to the books, Muhammad had personally ordered the deaths of people for various offenses such as being a spy, opposing him with poetry, interrupting his prayer, being affiliated with his opposition, being the sibling of someone who has opposed him, slander, adultery, ...and also claiming to be a prophet. All said an done, there were around 50 instances on record.
I'm unaware of any hits ordered by Jesus...
The argument by many is that "the violence just comes from a few radicals, everyone else is moderates"...I think that's a point that needs to be discussed in more depth...but if that's the approach that we want to take, then we at least have to acknowledge, then, that it would mean that of that minority of radicals the two religions create, Islam creates worse radicals than Christianity in modern day society.
This idea of even-handedness is a self-imposed constraint that many progressives have imposed upon themselves. If you're not allowed to criticize the bad ideas of one ideology out of fear of being considered a bigot, you have to do the next best thing which is attempt to make it look like all of the other competing ideologies are just as bad...that way you're viewed as "fair".
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