Throughout its existence, it is Christianity's proposal
that all men are equal before God that has in fact
spurred the social reaction against slavery.

On The Slavery Slander Against Christianity.

Every once in a while one sees attacks on Christianity
such as this one. And they all share the same
character: they are completely wrong, because they
come from persons who have not stopped to consider the
matter carefully or are just plain totally ignorant of
history.

Christianity came into a world where the largest
percentage of the people then living were either
slaves or in perpetual service. It is not only
probably that Jesus's audience included many slaves,
but the early Roman Christians were mostly from her
slave population (with some few freedman joining
these).

Throughout its existence, it is Christianity's proposal
that all men are equal before God that has in fact
spurred the social reaction against slavery.

In fact, Christianity has all too often been attacked
as the religion of slaves by proponents of slavery.
And churches everywhere have always been at the
forefront of the abolitionist battles.

When Spain conquered the new world her secular
governors intended to enslave the native Americans and
were in the process of doing so when father Bartolomeo
de las Casas brought before the Pope his moral/legal
challenge to this outrage. The Catholic Church ruled
in favor of las Casas, and the Spanish government was
forced to cease the practice of enslaving native
Americans.

The abolitionist movement (for ending the enslavement
of Africans), on the other hand, an uphill struggle in
a world where African slave labor was of crucial
economic importance to entire countries, was won in
England by a moral stand of English churchmen and in
America by Christian abolitionists who believed it was
their Christian duty to end slavery... and who in many
instances risked life and prison for their beliefs
(the "railroad" of persons who were engaged in helping
slaves escape to the north was primarily manned by
proactive churchmembers/ministers).

You can't turn around now and try to claim that
Christianity was accomplice/abettor of slavery when
the historical record clearly shows that Christianity
was the principal moral/legal/practical force against
it.

I, personally, am against all forms of superstition.
But facts are facts, and the truth is that, all things
being equal, the West has been blessed with "the
Christian superstition."

And if you still have any doubts, just consider that
today there are still MILLIONS of human slaves in the
Muslim countries---yes, not thousands but millions.
And even in Saudi Arabia, just recently we read of
hundreds of children bought or abducted by rich Saudis
in order to be used/abused as jockeys in camel races!

So let's try to keep a sane perspective on this.

S D Rodrian
http://poems.sdrodrian.com
http://physics.sdrodrian.com
http://music.sdrodrian.com
http://mp3.sdrodrian.com

RE:

Sammybaby wrote:

Christianity has supported dictatoriships and still does. It has
supported slavery and even Jesus said nothing about slavery being wrong
while the OT and Peter and Paul approved of it. Slavery and democracy
do not go together. Christianity places women second and makes fathers
the rulers in the home and only fighting the spirit of Christinity can
one give women suffrage. Christianity teaches dullness and mindless
following of authoritiy males and so Christians in vastly larger %ages
believe the lies of secular governments, do not think for themselves,
call for wars and toe the line. Having the right to vote but not the
mind to really question what is going on in the world, because they are
taught not to notice the contradictions in the Bible and how it is
applied, becasue they are taught to do as they are told and follow
authorities.

Christianity is anti-democratic to the core. Who cares if in a contest
Islam is as bad or worse?

Yeah, like Jesus would have been pro-nuke.

sdrodrian@sdrodrian.com wrote:

M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:

sdr wrote:

Although Mohammed committed genocide against
Jews and Christians, he was also quite willing to
spare some of them provided their communities
paid blood money

Which ones did he spare and what proportion
of their income were they
paying Mohammed as "protection money"?

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/jizyah.htm

Please do your own searches. But:

Obviously, if they were not spared
then they could not have paid their tax !

... As for Muhammad himself, he was talked out of
slaughtering the Jewish children at his Medina genocide
provided they did not yet have pubic hair (although these
unfortunate children were 'probably' not raised in their
Jewish tradition). [sarcasm] see:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/b_quraiza.htm

Well, perhaps I should have said "the Muslims"
rather than Muhammad himself "spared Jews and
Christians" in order to tax them to death... since
Muhammad himself on his deathbed gave an order
that no non-Muslim be left alive in Arabia. (Which
proves, with all those foreigners in Arabia that it is
indeed al-Qaeda and NOT the Saudis who follow the
practices/teaching of Muhammad more faithfully
no matter what the apologists of Islam may tell you.
And which warn you that ANY & EVERY Muslim in ANY
& EVERY community may suddenly turn into a terrorist
and all he has to do is to go back to the REAL roots
of Islam... and but become a more pious Muslim):

Now aren't you happy the West let all those Muslim
communities take ROOT here, in your neighborhood!

S D Rodrian
http://poems.sdrodrian.com
http://physics.sdrodrian.com
http://music.sdrodrian.com
http://mp3.sdrodrian.com

re:

in the form of a suffocating
tax specifically designed to promoting in these
communities the "wisdom" of conversion to Islam
... if only to avoid the deadly tax.

sdr wrote:

Why Islam Is Anti-Democratic While Christianity Isn't.

One has to understand the origins of both religions:

Mohammed started his "religion" in order to assure
himself of blindingly loyal military cadres to aid him
in his obnoxious personal aim of military conquest. So
the most important principle in Islam was & remains
military discipline (just as its principal duty was &
remains waging war against all non-Muslims... albeit,
critically, NOT for the mere degenerate purpose of
killing them, but for the more "advantageous"
proposition that they must be killed ONLY if they
refuse to be recruited into the ranks of Islam,
thereby forever guaranteeing the growth of a depraved
unnatural cult with natural appeal only to criminals
and the mentally unstable/diseased).

Although Mohammed committed genocide against
Jews and Christians, he was also quite willing to
spare some of them provided their communities
paid blood money in the form of a suffocating
tax specifically designed to promoting in these
communities the "wisdom" of conversion to Islam
... if only to avoid the deadly tax.

As such, the Muslim "soldiers" were expected to suffer
the "rigors" of the military training camp in their
daily lives--including mandatory prayer exercises five
times daily and strict abstention from alcohol and
anything else which might distract them from their
purpose (duty), including even music.

Muslims in most communities, however, like people
everywhere, are far too busy with the concerns of
daily life to actually practice Islam as their
religion expects them to (in fact, I would wager
that most Muslims, exactly like most Christians,
are unlikely to have ever even so much as read any
portion of their scriptures). The problem, of
course, is that when they do (unlike Christians,
who when they become pious and begin to study their
scripture, tend to love more peace, humility, and
forgiveness), Muslims who delve more piously into
their holy books tend to love more the terrorizing
and murder of non-Muslims [invariably astonishing
their less pious parents, who themselves might
never have even suspected or admitted to themselves
the very politically incorrect fact that it is the
followers of al-Qaida, rather than the Muslim
secularists, who really follow faithfully the
principles of Islam]. So you find the one universal
description of every terrorist to be that "he was
really a pious guy, recently turned to Islam..."

Therefore, it is not at all unusual to find many
"prohibited practices," including strong traditions of
rather lewd music in many Muslim societies which have
become "less pious" over the years.

As everyone who has ever been through the severities
of a military training camp knows... such severities &
self-deprivations are, of course, unsustainable
without at least the promise of some cathartic binge
at the conclusion of the training camp regime--which
"training camp regime" in the case of "the Muslim
soldier" was essentially designed to last his entire
lifetime--Therefore the promise of the Mohammedan
"rewards" [binge, essentially AFTER death] in paradise
are not the same as those for Christians... who might
not be expected to live such ascetic lives here on
earth (and might therefore be content to but "bask in
the light of God" for eternity, or some such quiet
practice). And so the promises of the Muslim Paradise
are more like those for every group of soldiers that
has ever graduated from the strict discipline of their
training camp [or, debauchery and every carnal
indulgence imaginable, and no matter how perverse...
and Islamic scripture is indeed very sanguine about
all the "perverse pleasures" which are not only
allowed but actually going to be available in the
Islamic Paradise--most especially of all, of course,
to those "soldiers" who kill the greatest numbers of
enemies here on earth's eternal jihad on non-Muslims].

Islam, of course, also provides a plan for Muslims
after they have vanquished all the enemies of Islam
in the form of Sharia, a social compact which in
many ways is even more primitive (and certainly
more barbaric) than the ancient laws of Hamurabi.

On the other hand, the Jewish Rabbis (the disciples of
Jesus) who went forth into the world to spread the
practice of Judaism in the form of Christianity to the
pagan Greco-Roman world... were taking with them
fundamental social/political traditions Hebrew society
had come to value/respect over the many centuries of
its historical development... from the (universal for
the Middle East) political respect of every tribe to
be independent of the other tribes, to the religious
idea that God's relationship with man was primarily a
personal one (God's prophets are the ones "despised by
the people")... or, that every man was responsible for
his own salvation. [Unlike Islam's forced conversions
at the point of a sword, conversion to Judaism was
something the convert had to pursue with unrelenting
intent... without guarantee of success even then.]

The Bible is also filled with puzzling accounts of
persons "beloved of God" who do not on the
surface appear to merit such personal love being
bestowed upon them by the Almighty (David perhaps
being the most obvious example).

However, in spite of the many corrupting influences
which the pagans who were converted to the Christian
form of Judaism brought with them into their new
religion (including their continuing the worship of a
living god, now in the person of Jesus, in spite of
the First Commandment's explicit prohibition against
this, and some episodes of forced conversions)... one
thing remained pretty much intact, and that was the
old Hebrew notion that it was up to each man to labor
for the salvation of his soul (rather than it being
the responsibility of society to do this for him).

Christianity remains all about giving each human
being the choice as to whether he is going to be
good or evil. Islam is all about forcing the choice
upon him.

Crucially, in Islam there is no such choice, in fact
--either the Muslim (or, any/every person) makes "the
right choice" or he is killed. The "choice" is that
stark (as we saw recently from the case of the Afghan
Muslim who converted to Christianity, and who not even
the "pro-Western" president of Afghanistan dared save
from a sentence of death): Just as no soldier may
choose to go AWOL without risking being shot for
treason, no Muslim may abandon Islam without being
condemned to death as a traitor (and the Muslim
scriptures are very specific about this, commanding
every parent to kill his every child on the spot who
abandons Islam and every child to kill his parent,
grandparent, sibling, or whomever on the spot who
abandons Islam). To a Muslim, talk of a compassionate,
forgiving/loving God is utter/complete nonsense.

There is no such requirement in Christianity, and
Christians who might have murdered heretics and
apostates throughout the ages have historically
been very soundly condemned by most Christians.

As with the followers of al-Qaida, who adhere to the
strict tenants of Islam, and the Muslim secularists,
who only pay lip service to them... a Muslim may
indeed abandon Islam and yet escape a sentence of
death from the governments of Egypt or Indonesia
(provided he "slips through the cracks" and does so
surreptitiously). But this fact says nothing whatever
about the homicidal duties Islam expects of Muslims.

This is why you can not have democracy in an
Islamic country:

Whether it is secular democracy or Christian democracy
there is no conflict between believers and unbelievers
in a Christian country over the idea that every human
being ought to have the freedom to choose his/her
destiny, for good or ill (in effect, that the people
ought to forever have the ultimate say about their own
individual lives & control of their collective destiny).

Whereas in a Muslim country either the seculars win
and you have a military dictatorship to hold down the
Islamists, or the Islamists win and establish the
dictatorship which Islam demands in either case... in
a more strictly religious form. (It is in fact one of
the simplest ways to see the Sunni/Shiite divide that
the Sunnis believe the secular lords are the heirs to
Mohammed's temporal powers, while the Shiites believe
the clerical lords are the natural heirs to Mohammed's
secular powers.)

But either way there will not be true democracy in a
Muslim country because it must immediately lead to
one form of dictatorship or the other.

Unlike other societies, Islamic societies must wait
until "superstition itself passes away from men"
before they can expect to experience true secular
democracy (that is, free from religious interference).

S D Rodrian
http://poems.sdrodrian.com
http://physics.sdrodrian.com
http://music.sdrodrian.com
http://mp3.sdrodrian.com

.

Throughout its existence, it is Christianity's proposal
that all men are equal before God that has in fact
spurred the social reaction against slavery.

You can't turn around now and try to claim that
Christianity was accomplice/abettor of slavery when
the historical record clearly shows that Christianity
was the principal moral/legal/practical force against
it.

Sammybaby wrote:

Christianity has supported dictatoriships and still does. It has
supported slavery and even Jesus said nothing about slavery being wrong
while the OT and Peter and Paul approved of it. Slavery and democracy
do not go together.

On The Slavery Slander Against Christianity.

Every once in a while one sees attacks on Christianity
such as this one. And they all share the same
character: they are completely wrong, because they
come from persons who have not stopped to consider the
matter carefully or are just plain totally ignorant of
history.

The abolitionist movement (for ending the enslavement
of Africans), on the other hand, an uphill struggle in
a world where African slave labor was of crucial
economic importance to entire countries, was won in
England by a moral stand of English churchmen and in
America by Christian abolitionists who believed it was
their Christian duty to end slavery... and who in many
instances risked life and prison for their beliefs
(the "railroad" of persons who were engaged in helping
slaves escape to the north was primarily manned by
proactive churchmembers/ministers).

In fact, Christianity has all too often been attacked
as the religion of slaves by people who know its history.

On The Slavery Slander Against Christianity.

Every once in a while one sees attacks on Christianity
such as this one. And they all share the same
character: they are completely wrong, because they
come from persons who have not stopped to consider the
matter carefully or are just plain totally ignorant of
history.

Christianity came into a world where the largest
percentage of the people then living were either
slaves or in perpetual service. It is not only
probably that Jesus's audience included many slaves,
but the early Roman Christians were mostly from her
slave population (with some few freedman joining
these).

Throughout its existence, it is Christianity's proposal
that all men are equal before God that has in fact
spurred the social reaction against slavery.

In fact, Christianity has all too often been attacked
as the religion of slaves by proponents of slavery.
And churches everywhere have always been at the
forefront of the abolitionist battles.

When Spain conquered the new world her secular
governors intended to enslave the native Americans and
were in the process of doing so when father Bartolomeo
de las Casas brought before the Pope his moral/legal
challenge to this outrage. The Catholic Church ruled
in favor of las Casas, and the Spanish government was
forced to cease the practice of enslaving native
Americans.

The abolitionist movement (for ending the enslavement
of Africans), on the other hand, an uphill struggle in
a world where African slave labor was of crucial
economic importance to entire countries, was won in
England by a moral stand of English churchmen and in
America by Christian abolitionists who believed it was
their Christian duty to end slavery... and who in many
instances risked life and prison for their beliefs
(the "railroad" of persons who were engaged in helping
slaves escape to the north was primarily manned by
proactive churchmembers/ministers).

You can't turn around now and try to claim that
Christianity was accomplice/abettor of slavery when
the historical record clearly shows that Christianity
was the principal moral/legal/practical force against
it.

I, personally, am against all forms of superstition.
But facts are facts, and the truth is that, all things
being equal, the West has been blessed with "the
Christian superstition."

And if you still have any doubts, just consider that
today there are still MILLIONS of human slaves in the
Muslim countries---yes, not thousands but millions.
And even in Saudi Arabia, just recently we read of
hundreds of children bought or abducted by rich Saudis
in order to be used/abused as jockeys in camel races!

So let's try to keep a sane perspective on this.

S D Rodrian
http://poems.sdrodrian.com
http://physics.sdrodrian.com
http://music.sdrodrian.com
http://mp3.sdrodrian.com

RE:

Sammybaby wrote:

Christianity has supported dictatoriships and still does. It has
supported slavery and even Jesus said nothing about slavery being wrong
while the OT and Peter and Paul approved of it. Slavery and democracy
do not go together. Christianity places women second and makes fathers
the rulers in the home and only fighting the spirit of Christinity can
one give women suffrage. Christianity teaches dullness and mindless
following of authoritiy males and so Christians in vastly larger %ages
believe the lies of secular governments, do not think for themselves,
call for wars and toe the line. Having the right to vote but not the
mind to really question what is going on in the world, because they are
taught not to notice the contradictions in the Bible and how it is
applied, becasue they are taught to do as they are told and follow
authorities.

Christianity is anti-democratic to the core. Who cares if in a contest
Islam is as bad or worse?

Yeah, like Jesus would have been pro-nuke.

sdrodrian@sdrodrian.com wrote:

M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:

sdr wrote:

Although Mohammed committed genocide against
Jews and Christians, he was also quite willing to
spare some of them provided their communities
paid blood money

Which ones did he spare and what proportion
of their income were they
paying Mohammed as "protection money"?

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/jizyah.htm

Please do your own searches. But:

Obviously, if they were not spared
then they could not have paid their tax !

... As for Muhammad himself, he was talked out of
slaughtering the Jewish children at his Medina genocide
provided they did not yet have pubic hair (although these
unfortunate children were 'probably' not raised in their
Jewish tradition). [sarcasm] see:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/b_quraiza.htm

Well, perhaps I should have said "the Muslims"
rather than Muhammad himself "spared Jews and
Christians" in order to tax them to death... since
Muhammad himself on his deathbed gave an order
that no non-Muslim be left alive in Arabia. (Which
proves, with all those foreigners in Arabia that it is
indeed al-Qaeda and NOT the Saudis who follow the
practices/teaching of Muhammad more faithfully
no matter what the apologists of Islam may tell you.
And which warn you that ANY & EVERY Muslim in ANY
& EVERY community may suddenly turn into a terrorist
and all he has to do is to go back to the REAL roots
of Islam... and but become a more pious Muslim):

Now aren't you happy the West let all those Muslim
communities take ROOT here, in your neighborhood!

S D Rodrian
http://poems.sdrodrian.com
http://physics.sdrodrian.com
http://music.sdrodrian.com
http://mp3.sdrodrian.com

re:

in the form of a suffocating
tax specifically designed to promoting in these
communities the "wisdom" of conversion to Islam
... if only to avoid the deadly tax.

sdr wrote:

Why Islam Is Anti-Democratic While Christianity Isn't.

One has to understand the origins of both religions:

Mohammed started his "religion" in order to assure
himself of blindingly loyal military cadres to aid him
in his obnoxious personal aim of military conquest. So
the most important principle in Islam was & remains
military discipline (just as its principal duty was &
remains waging war against all non-Muslims... albeit,
critically, NOT for the mere degenerate purpose of
killing them, but for the more "advantageous"
proposition that they must be killed ONLY if they
refuse to be recruited into the ranks of Islam,
thereby forever guaranteeing the growth of a depraved
unnatural cult with natural appeal only to criminals
and the mentally unstable/diseased).

Although Mohammed committed genocide against
Jews and Christians, he was also quite willing to
spare some of them provided their communities
paid blood money in the form of a suffocating
tax specifically designed to promoting in these
communities the "wisdom" of conversion to Islam
... if only to avoid the deadly tax.

As such, the Muslim "soldiers" were expected to suffer
the "rigors" of the military training camp in their
daily lives--including mandatory prayer exercises five
times daily and strict abstention from alcohol and
anything else which might distract them from their
purpose (duty), including even music.

Muslims in most communities, however, like people
everywhere, are far too busy with the concerns of
daily life to actually practice Islam as their
religion expects them to (in fact, I would wager
that most Muslims, exactly like most Christians,
are unlikely to have ever even so much as read any
portion of their scriptures). The problem, of
course, is that when they do (unlike Christians,
who when they become pious and begin to study their
scripture, tend to love more peace, humility, and
forgiveness), Muslims who delve more piously into
their holy books tend to love more the terrorizing
and murder of non-Muslims [invariably astonishing
their less pious parents, who themselves might
never have even suspected or admitted to themselves
the very politically incorrect fact that it is the
followers of al-Qaida, rather than the Muslim
secularists, who really follow faithfully the
principles of Islam]. So you find the one universal
description of every terrorist to be that "he was
really a pious guy, recently turned to Islam..."

Therefore, it is not at all unusual to find many
"prohibited practices," including strong traditions of
rather lewd music in many Muslim societies which have
become "less pious" over the years.

As everyone who has ever been through the severities
of a military training camp knows... such severities &
self-deprivations are, of course, unsustainable
without at least the promise of some cathartic binge
at the conclusion of the training camp regime--which
"training camp regime" in the case of "the Muslim
soldier" was essentially designed to last his entire
lifetime--Therefore the promise of the Mohammedan
"rewards" [binge, essentially AFTER death] in paradise
are not the same as those for Christians... who might
not be expected to live such ascetic lives here on
earth (and might therefore be content to but "bask in
the light of God" for eternity, or some such quiet
practice). And so the promises of the Muslim Paradise
are more like those for every group of soldiers that
has ever graduated from the strict discipline of their
training camp [