Boy this guy is really the poster child for Christian tolerance, love, and acceptance, isn't he?
We keep hearing from the Far Right that the Qaran is this horrible, hateful book, just chock full of calls for murder and the mistreatment of women.
However the facts are that compared side by side the Bible is actually the more violent of the two books:
"By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane," he says. "Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide."
It is called herem, and it means total annihilation. Consider the Book of 1 Samuel, when God instructs King Saul to attack the Amalekites: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them," God says through the prophet Samuel. "But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."
In fact just in the first four books of the Bible, the cruelty and violence is sickening. And don't think the violence ends before the pages of the New Testament begin.
I am not trying to pit one Abrahamic religion against another, and I certainly do not think the Qaran is much better. I am just reminding people that these books were written a very long time ago, by people who were not nearly as evolved or as highly educated as the people living today.
We are less violent, less misogynist, and less intolerant, not BECAUSE of the teachings of Islam and Christianity, but DESPITE the teachings of Islam and Christianity.
Just in case you think I am only picking on these two religions, let me just point out that my beloved Buddhism has also done little to reduce the number of wars fought by its adherents. And in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" we see Taoism interwoven into the very fabric of the military instruction within.
Remember, man will always be man, regardless of how they worship, or to which God they send their prayers.
"God is on our side" has been a rallying cry of humans throughout time, used to pillage, murder, and conquer others. Personally, I'm starting to think that Jesus was a marketing scheme to pull in the people who actually have humanity and don't want a ravaging wrathful God. Distract the nice ones with their prayin' and cheek turnin' so we can go kick some ass without them getting in our way.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if things would change if more women were heads of states. Not a Palin or a Bachmann, who seem to need a gun to show that they are just as manly as their husbands, but someone like Liz Warren, who uses her brain for her strength. I could never order anyone killed. I could never see a child in need and not help. I could never do anything detrimental to public education. I want everyone in the world to be healthy, educated and happy. Only then can we even begin the long road to peace and understanding.
ReplyDeleteAre books "bad" because they depict violence? Should each book come with a disclaimer (like, say, on Mythbusters- "don't try this at home, kids").
ReplyDeleteImagine reading Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World as policy suggestions instead of explorations of dystopia.
Is Ellison's Invisible Man a call for a return to slavery?
How many people die violently in Shakespeare's plays?
Moving on, I'm curious, as you are a science guy (as am I) what is your evidence for the view that the (many) authors of religious books were "not nearly as evolved or as highly educated as the people living today".
Have you read Wade's "Before the Dawn" or Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel"?
I'm also curious about the scientific evidence behind the assertion that "We are less violent, less misogynist, and less intolerant" (which may or may not be true) DESPITE religion.
You might be right, but I haven't seen any supporting data such as evidence of a non-violent, tolerant culture that had no religion.
If we are less violent, why is that so?
Perhaps you mean to argue that religion is the "tonsil" of a culture- even though we all have them we don't think they are causally related to our success....interesting, but very tough to prove (as with tonsils, it was only when removal became more mainstream, thus providing a data set, that the virtuous health effects of these little lumps of flesh became evident).
Hearing so-called Christian speakers preach like that and the responses from the audience makes my stomach turn.
ReplyDeleteI grew up going to a typical New England Congregational Church and hearing that shit just disgusts me.
I find that the people who call themselves "Christians" are the most un-christ-like hippocrates.
As a Jesus Believer, if any pastor began speaking as such, I would get up and WALK OUT.
ReplyDeleteThere will be radicals in any religion and, for what it's worth, I work among Muslims and they are some of the most peaceable people I know.
I understand that the bible is the recorded history of the Jews and Christians.
ReplyDeleteBUT... I thought Christians followed Christ.
I never hear these zealots quote Christ.
They quote God and the OT.
Where is Christ in all of this?
I think that they should not call themselves christians, for there is very little 'Christ' in their actions or words.
An addendum to the assertion that man today is more evolved and educated than the species alive a few thousand years ago: Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and Aristarchus (who is credited with the first heliocentric model of the solar system) might disagree.
ReplyDeleteAs would A.N. Whitehead who argued, persuasively in my view, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Here is a website about the Bible that covers rape, murder, incest, torture, prostitution...you name it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thebricktestament.com/index.html
Well, back then, men used the Bible to justify all the atrocities they commit, just like now. If you say God made me do it, you can remove your conscience from the mix and throw the responsibility to another entity. Sometimes humans can be vile, cowardly creatures and some humans just have it in themselves to need to overpower,damage and destroy other humans, using whatever manipulations it takes.
ReplyDeleteGood one Gryph. I remember a religious ed class where the kids were to act out a Bible story. Some picked the story of Lot's wife. Having been raised a Catholic, I never paid much attention to the holy book but I decided to read the whole story. I guess whoever told me the story as a kid never got past the pillar of salt part, where Lot's daughters seduce him so they can have children. Besides the violence lots of X-rated stuff too.
ReplyDelete40 years ago, I was a member of several extremely fundamentalist churches and movements, and I have heard many sermons like this.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I remember one man, a prominent preacher who just after a Sunday service gave me a ride home. As we were driving down the street, he saw a woman walk by on the sidewalk, and he said , "Boy the women in this town sure are ugly".
If you literally take the New Testament at face value, it certainly can lead to much bigoted behavior, and much pain and suffering for those under the thumb of despots and bigots.
Just take a look at this website
and read some of the heart breaking stories of abuse and beatings:
www.nolongerquivering.com
And for the record, this hateful speaker has obviously never heard IN HIS BIBLE of a woman named Deborah, (hebrew, Dvora) who was a prominent leader and judge in ancient Israel
Judges chapters 4 & 5
Men like this are easily led into violence, war, and waving the flag as part of their conflation of religious belief and politics.
Which is exactly why $arah Paylin represents a threat to our democracy.
She is part of the 7 mountains (reconstructionist) Christian movement that seeks to change our laws to conform to the bible, and to elect only Christian extremists.
Yayup.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jamesrachels.org/bible.pdf
"Ethics and the Bible" by Ethicist James Rachels.
Couldn't have said it better. Let the Church of Gryphen say, "Amen Brotha!"
ReplyDeleteScary dude! Awful, just awful. Wonder how he feels about female politicians, like Sarah, Michele, et al?
ReplyDeleteI bet every woman in that preacher's life looked at each other and said, "We just let him think that way. It helps to make him feel more like a man."
ReplyDeleteBring me a big pile of foreskins and you can marry my daughter!
ReplyDeletehttp://boingboing.net/2011/12/28/wednesday-weird-bible-verse-1.html
Gryphen, you might like to know that in "orthodox muslim" countries, the Quran is not taught to common girls though it's taught to common boys. Guess why ?
ReplyDeleteNone of the children are traditionaly taught how to read. Boys are taught to memorize by heart the Quran, and not in its entirety. And then they are taught what it means, because although the Quran is in arabic, that brand of arabic is not understandable to the today people. Just like latin is not understood by the latin-langages speakers of today.
Everything that touches the most progressive aspects of the book is left out, for those few who'll learn how to actually read and understand it, to later find out.
Because in those countries, the somewhat limited rights that the Quran gave to women in the 8th century are too much to bear for the men of the 21st. "Tradition" wants women have no rights whatsoever - and they stick to it.
And the mighty men who know how to read, and who know what's really in the Quran, would rather die than let that knowledge spread among common men, and G-d forbid it, among common women. Nobody would have peace amongst his own home if those pesky Quranic rights were known about, right ?
Did you know that women can inherit in the Quran ? That they can divorce ? That they don't have to wear any burqa or hijab as such, but are just encouraged to "wear clothes in public for modesty" - as opposed to being naked, one might ask ? The trick is : don't teach them how to read, don't teach them the true meaning of the ancient words if they can read them, don't tell them they have rights - and they'll never try to use them.
Fundamentalists so-called "muslims" don't follow the Quran, they misread it. Just like Fundamentalist so-called "christians" don't follow the part of the Bible that deals with the Christ.
wonder if he comprehends that when the bible was put together by a group of MEN under the instruction of a MAN that they took all of the religious stories written down on scrolls and culled out what they did not want.The first order of business was to cull all books written by women.Then the MEN ordered the books written by women to be destroyed.Luckily,some did not follow these instructions and hid them in a cave where some of them survived to be found by a family looking for firewood.Some were then burned in the fire.But some were not,and were sold and found there way to researchers.They have become known as "the Gnostic Gospels".
ReplyDeleteStupid man.
If this guy hadn't found the Christian Bible to justify his hatred and desire to dominate women, he'd have found something else to justify it, or become a prosecutor.
ReplyDeleteDude
ReplyDeleteBecause a handful of men were more educated and intelligent than their brethren ,along with the leisure time to do some deep thinking .does not mean that the aggregate populace was well educated or deep thinkers.In fact,most people of the time were spending most of their waking hours trying to survive.Those you list were not forced into the army,they were not eking out survival in the fields from dawn to dusk,they did not grow up as children working alongside their parents in the dirt and mud from an early age.
On the whole,few people of that time could read and write.Yes,people are much better educated today.Those you list would find much of commonly known science of today to be magical.They had a good idea or two for the time.But today they would be lost in an 8th grade science class.
Anon @ 6:19 - The attempts to portray Lot as an innocent is something I've always found amusing. One need only ask the question, "What would his daughters have to know to conceive such a plan," and the whole picture starts to turn ugly. Sexual deviance isn't something one catches from wine, and a man too drunk to know he was having sex w/ his daughters wasn't having sex w/ anyone.
ReplyDeleteAll his quoting a reporter and the responses he apparently gave sound suspiciously sermon-like, not a real conversation, just one made up in his warped mind. The days of fire-and-brimstone sermonizing are done. God protect us from these devils in our midst.
ReplyDelete"Are books "bad" because they depict violence?"
ReplyDeleteDude, no they are not. I write books that contain violence but no one has built a belief system around them and used them to control other people like they have with the Torah, Bible or Quran.
Closet homosexual...
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:00
ReplyDeleteGryphen's point, as I understand it, is the authors of these religious texts weren't as evolved or intelligent- i.e. the "small handful" of scholars who wrote the Septuagint, New Testament and other similar texts.
Saul of Tarsus, at least in my research, was a highly educated guy. He wrote most of the New Testament.
I doubt men like Heron of Alexandria would find today's applications of technology magical.
I'll gladly grant your point about a much more widespread literacy today. Why reading gained its virtuous stance is an interesting question to ponder.
Anon 8:20
If, in the future, somebody did take your writings as rationale for violent behavior, should you, your views, or the writings be viewed as guilty as opposed to those who misunderstood them?
What a giant blowhard this "preacher" is. It takes a small, easily manipulated mind to even sit and listen to him spew out sewage from his rotten mouth. Any respectable person would have gotten up and walked away in disgust.
ReplyDeleteWho is this guy? Are there women sitting in this room?
ReplyDeleteThis guy is a psychopath.
ReplyDeleteI notice some of the guys behind him look a little nervous except for the old man who keeps nodding.
Another woman hater, to be sure.
If there is a god, he wouldn't let creeps like this guy pledge allegiance to him, would he?
P.S., Creep, get a new notebook/bible. Fixing it while you are talking shows that mental straight-jacket mumbo jumbo you spout, you could do in your sleep.
A steady stream of vitriol and resentment that is channelled into "god's work" instead of slicing open the eyes of anybody who crosses him.
I feel dirty just listening to 3 minutes of this crap.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the Palinbots like the part of the Bible where it says "and Sarah begat Trig."
ReplyDeleteJay Ken Not Stirred may have a few things to say about that! Ha!
Happy New Year, Gryphen and All! Let's make 2012 an OBAMA landslide year!
Speaking of Lot having sex with his daughters, you might be interested in this book about similar parts of the Bible.
ReplyDeleteHarlot by the Side of the Road
By Jonathan Kirsch
So do you suppose this guy has a wife? Domestic violence anyone?
ReplyDeleteDitto 7.47 am - That's why I think the more people are educated about Islam, the less fundamentalism will flourish (might seem contradictory, but when there's an extremist v. a secularist who doesn't know anything about Islam debating over policy, the secular Muslim isn't going to be able to rebut what the extremist says.)
ReplyDeleteAlso wanted to point out that you used "Qaran" twice in your post - I think you meant Quran? :)
Lastly, your comment about less violence despite religion is a little disingenuous. Would there not be warfare without religion? Would people stop fighting over land, over money, over power, or over pride if religion didn't exist? I doubt it.
For that matter, before Islam was introduced in Saudia Arabia, there was a ridiculous amount of bloodshed and violence. Islam came in and banned a lot of things: burying infants (esp. daughters) alive, killing members of opposing tribes for no reason, slaughtering women and children during warfare, keeping slaves in inhumane conditions, forcing women to marry men they didn't want to, not letting women get divorced easily if they were being mistreated (or just unhappy), and so on.
I realize your point is to knock religion first and not its (moderate) followers, but I think that leads you into making sweeping generalizations that are actually worthy of some debate before being able to make that conclusion.
I agree with you Gryphen. The stories in the bible were passed down orally from generation to generation before being written down. When I was in College, we had a class in World Theologies, the violence in the Bible pales in comparison to the books not included in the printed version, the Apocrypha.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the people were less evolved than we are, the codified laws of their day supported their way of life and though some apply today, a lot of it is no longer useful nor applicable.
Fear and Violence pervades all religious writing to one extent or another. Fear and violence are used to try to control human behavior
The preacher in the clip is one piece of work!
@ 7:02 I completely agree. Reading and knowing inside out the "Holy Books" of any religion with currently active fundamentalists is a very effective way of self-defense.
ReplyDeleteIf one has the knowledge, one can fight against whatever religious indoctrination that wants you to become obeying sheeps, obeying uteruses, or even worse, obeying meat ready to be sent to the butchery.
One should read the Quran and the Bible in a good translation, one provided not by fundamentalists but by actual scholars - if possible by non believing scholars, if not possible by multiple believing scholars, coming from each of the various currents of the religion studied. That's the only way to be sure that the translation you're reading represents accurately the book.
An atheist who's never read any part of a religious books has no business calling himself an atheist. Just like a believer who hasn't read his Holy Book by himself inside out, and I mean outside of organized Bible study or the equivalent, has no business calling himself a believer. Both are just ignorants.
Anon @8:00 Ohhh, you're so right !
ReplyDeleteGuess who could stop working and start thinking deeply about religion, because a wealthy older woman was convinced that he was a deep thinker and an honest worker, and that it was money well invested to give him enough material security to be able to concentrate on his interesting thoughts and studies ? She even married him - him being nothing but a poor orphan, and one of her employees - and left him all her money after her death, so that he could keep on thinking !
Her name was Khadija, and his name was Mohammed. And he never married anybody else all the time she was alive. I don't think he would have inherited much if he had. When she was dead though, huh, different story.
That's right, Al Quaeda and Taliban women haters, Mohammed got his big break thanks to a richer older woman ! And she was the first believer of islam. The second believer was also a woman. Only the third believer was a man.
Check out the Wikipedia page on Mohammed. They don't like it, these men, to see it written that a woman was the first believer. Look at this mess of a sentence, captured today : "she was the first personsecond person to accept Islam. Imam Ali was the first. (besides Muhammad) to convert to Islam."