Muslims promote Sharia law. Why do Christians not promote their law?

By the word law, I assume you mean the 10 commandments. Most Christians agree that it should be promoted by example, not by the heavy hand of government. And most everyone, including many within those countries, can see that it doesn't work very well. If they didn't have oil, it wouldn't work at all. Plenty of countries, including the U.S., include Christian principles, both in their foundings, and current practices. Christianity and Islam aren't really comparable. The Koran promotes violence against unbelievers as an ongoing law, the Bible does not. Old Testament history is just that, history, not promotion. Maybe "more" secular, but not completely secular. Religion is one of many worldviews, and there's no such thing as a worldview free society. Complete secularism is atheism, and that's a worldview, with laws.Christianity - it's the only one that actually promotes personal liberty. False religions, including atheism, don't.

MESSAGE 13 It's no worse than the secular version of liberty, that came from the likes of Chairman Mao, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro and the Iranian mullas. There was also a lot of help from U.S. foundings, which proclaim that unalienable rights come from God and not from men, whether those men are muslim leaders or scientific community leaders.------------------------------MESSAGE 14 Noted - Good points. Promoted for humans to perform? Billions of us, as opposed to one of him? Who among humans is authorized to determine who is on the giving end of such actions, and who is on the receiving end of them? Answer, no one. So I have to disagree with you on that one. I can't comment on Faith's thread, because I don't know where it is - you didn't link it. But there's no evidence that any Christian organization is anywhere close to establishing a Christian government to the extent that Islamist organization have in other countries, or secular science organization is in many places throughout the world, the U.S. included.________________________________MESSAGE 15 When religion is suppressed to the point where there are no morals, where scientific leaders become rulers in government bureaucracies. Not all, a lot of us don't want atheist liberals in charge of politics, with all its associated environmentalism, redistribution of wealth, and big government. Including the scientific community's worship of themselves and the earth. A small government - that's the only way it can stay neutral. Only a few, but there are a lot of them that would like their religion to offset the increasing establishment of atheism through science education, and the associated big government that goes along with it.____________________________MESSAGE 17 Sure, if your idea of personal liberty includes becoming a thief, a rapist, a murderer, etc. Not a giving up of liberty, just a realization of what is right and what is wrong. There's the howler of the thread, atheism promotes science/evolution, which often goes a long way in restricting liberty through big government, save-the-planet/ redistribute-the-wealth laws and regulations.

I'm only going to address two of these cherry picks - I don't have the time or interest in taking on an entire atheist website that you undoubtedly copy/pasted these from. 1 Corinthians 7:1 actually says this;

quote:

---

Now concerning the things wherof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (KJV) (not to marry - NIV)

---

1 Corinthians 7:4 says this;

quote:

---

The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. (KJV)

---

The NIV puts it like this; - "The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.Not the inequality that you were dishonestly trying to portray, is it? If you knew much at all about how the entire Bible addresses authority, you'd know more about how to interpret Romans 13. Isaiah 13, Revelation 13, the books of the Kings, and several Old Testament prophets are quite negative concerning "governing authorities".The United States doesn't have a King. The basic U.S. governing authority doesn't rest with any one person or any group of persons. The governing authority is the U.S. Constitution. So Romans 13: 1-2 could be understood this way;Let every person in the U.S. be subject to the U.S. Constitution. For there is no Constitution except from God, and those guidelines in it have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the Constitution resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.I'm not saying that Romans 13 is a complete approval for rebellion against appointed, or elected authority. An ungodly governing authority can also be a "minister" of God, because he serves God's purposes. In the interest of the Christian principles of peace / patience / tolerance, many Christians think Romans 13 means it should be resisted, to a point. It was resisted only to a point many times in the Bible.

It's just that they tend to drift way from their own theocracy, and fear no god (like the other atheist leaders that I referred to) as they shoot peaceful demonstrators, and rape and attack their own citizens as they do everything they can to maintain themselves in power.

Sure, just look over the history of the United States from 1789 to......oh you could pick out any number of dates in the 20th century as a cut-off point. Some would say liberty stopped in 1913 when individuals started being taxed. Others would say it was all good until the reign of FDR in the 1930's. Or the separation of church and state that happened in 1948. I personally think the governance of me and my co-religionists ended in 1963 when prayer in schools was outlawed. I can't say that this alone led to the amazing social changes in the U.S. that happened from about 63 to 73 or not, but it happened. President Johnson's "great society" seemed to coincide with a new entitlement mentality. This was combined with all the anger involving Vietnam and Watergate. The legal profession and the scientific community both gained major political footholds during this time as well. It's hard to explain just how all this caused the U.S. to take on such a different personality, but living in this country in the 50's as opposed to...the Carter administration on up to today was 180 degrees different. As one example, did you know that there was a school bus accident in Kentucky in 1958 that killed 26 school students, and no lawsuits were filed? Killing, stealing, those sorts of things. Like early U.S. history, there wouldn't be any state lotteries, public gambling, ambulance-chasing lawyers advertising on television, dishonest government greed, etc. You know, morality. Again, examples of any commands would be present in early U.S. history. I can't think of many, other than avoiding intruding on other people's liberties. The traditional U.S. system of government, practiced until...1948.

It doesn't look very modest to many people, as its leaders (and some followers) attempt to "weaken the hold of religion", and subsequently gain political power for themselves. "Non-sequitor" means "it does not follow". You wondered how atheism, a lack of supernatural belief, could not promote personal liberty, and I answered that question by showing it to be a promotion of some humanistic beliefs, so it followed perfectly. I don't trust individual humans, who may actually be tyrants, to dictate how the planet should be saved.

Actually it is, you just don't understand it, and you refuse to learn anything. The U.S. founders referred to it more than anything else as they put together the U.S. Constitution. It's atheism and science that are not manifestos for personal liberty, if you disagree, then maybe you could supply proof that they are. The anti-moving-the-goalposts fruit of atheist gangs on scientific message boards. I'm surprised there are only 3 of you - usually it's 5 or more that demand more and more detail from a single opponent, so they can overwhelm their time constraints, then mock and jeer and slap each other on the back for their scientific victory.

I can't really do that in any greater detail than I did earlier in this thread, because I don't have the mindset to make rules and give orders. I prefer to let the legislative process do that, under the small government guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. One of John Adams most famous quotes goes like this;

quote:

---

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

---

That's why I answered the opening poster's multiple choice question the way I did. I don't believe government can be small, or keep from growing out of control under secularism/atheism, and I don't think it can stay small under a false religion like Islam. The Constitution works well for a diverse society, as long as the majority have the morals and religion that John Adams was referring to. Plenty of atheists and even some middle eastern religions existed in the U.S during the 19th century. They had the same personal liberties as everyone else, but they were obliged by the traditions and standards of the majority to refrain from trying to publicly establish their unusual personal behaviors for everyone else to watch, participate in, or pay for. As those morals are largely gone in the U.S. now, so is those minorities respect for traditional morals and western religion, hence the public debt, demands for gay marriage, scientific use of public funds to "weaken the hold of religion", on and on. No. It wasn't necessary in the 19th century, and it wouldn't work now. Religion and morals should be voluntary, not enforced by big government. I believe that’s what John Adams meant. Go forward? There's no going back to the liberty and small government of the 19th century. Too much "me first" secularism has replaced morals and religion. An economic crash is coming, probably in the 2040's or 2050's. I’m 58 years old, so I'll be outta here by then.Now how about answering some of your questions from your point of view. You're a political conservative, and you know you're a tiny minority among the scientific/evolution mindset. How do you expect a completely secular government, minus the morals and religion that John Adams referred to, to promote liberty and small government?

There was no law against filing lawsuits, but in that era's morality and tradition, the jackpot mentality that's been common since the mid seventies didn't exist, and society was far better (more free) because of it. Read all about that accident here;http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyjohnso/Bus.htmInvestigations were done, but it's clear that their purpose was to simply find out what happened, to learn from it. Little question that the accident was the bus driver's mistake, yet parents of the dead children voted to share the insurance money with his family. The owner of another damaged vehicle gave his insurance money to the victims families. A thing called compassion, something practically unheard of in public accidents today. The bus maker, the bus body company, and any other utility within a quarter mile of the accident was not sued, thereby keeping the general public from having to cover all those costs for decades into the future.I referenced it to help show the contrast that I referred to earlier, in the vast differences in U.S. society from the 1950's to the 1970's, and later.

But who determines what's rational? Some people would say that all morals are irrational. Most secular, science worshipers believe anything the EPA wants to do is rational. My area had "auto emissions testing" for cars and light trucks from 2000 to 2006. During the Bush administration, but it was a time-lag thing from the Clinton administration. It took those 6 years for it to be ended by the Bush administration. An all-encompassing search, something clearly prohibited by the fourth amendment. A waste of millions of dollars, and a breach of personal liberty unlike anything done by a religious group in the U.S. Can you name any attempts by the religious to make you do anything like that? I've named something the secular environmentalists required me to do. Name yours, and we'll compare. Any and all worldviews. The first amendment isn't only about religion. Proof of that is the fact that courts have routinely ruled in atheists favor concerning discrimination. As a minority, (a conservative atheist) do you expect the majority,(liberal atheists) to give you more personal liberty than the current U.S. establishment, with some religion involved?

But they referred to it in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution followed what the Declaration said. Do you really believe that if something isn't directly referred to by a document, then that document can't possibly have a thing to do with it? Do you really believe that the U.S. founders really didn't refer to the Bible at all? It's almost as if you're...a troll. I never said I don't like being debated. I just find the "shout down" tactics of the same collegiate atheist mindset that came up with all the "logical fallacies" lists to be quite amusing. Atheists seldom show much passion for free speech, do they?

So you're trying to say that the U.S. isn't more litigious today than it was a few decades ago?None of your many examples of fundraisers are the same thing that I was referring to, the forgiveness that went on between opposing victims in an accident. Including your last one - the forgiving one knew the accident was his family's fault.

Not science fiction, it's what I see slowly happening in the U.S. right now. But secular can and does mean environmental, scientific ideologies, that can be just as dangerous as religious ones. No, I wouldn't! So you don't believe that Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg said this;

quote:

---

"Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion, should be done and may, in fact, in the end, be our greatest contribution to civilization."

---

with plenty of winks and nods from much of the scientific community. Because statistics back it up - the scientific community leans towards the Democrat party much more heavily than the general population.

An unfortunate inherited characteristic that was later corrected. The bad things going on at that time don't automatically mean that some other things going on were bad also. An exaggeration. DIDN'T ALLOW WOMEN TO VOTE!! How terrible! If some of the men of the 1800's could be brought back to life to see the jokes we currently have for Congress and the president, they just might say that enough of a percentage of women, HOWEVER SMALL, just may only vote for good lookin dudes rather than men who have enough brains to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States, and that small women percentage vote could be enough to tip the scales to produce leaders who aren't very good leaders. I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT, but those pig slave owners and brutal killers might have!

"No question" that women weren't more free in the 50's than they are today? I know some elderly ladies who were around in the 1950's who would question that. Most who long for the good old days are selective about what was good - they tend to remember the good and forget the bad, and of course there have been improvements. What clouds comparisons of different eras is increases in technology, and adjustments in costs of goods and services due to inflation. But all things considered, I'll take the 1950's any old day. In the same way, I have to presume that those with a disdain of yester-years small government and fiscal responsibility, who currently bow down to EPA mandates, also have a crabbed view of what freedom means. Free to keep more of your own money, instead of such a large percentage of it going to rich lawyers, and increased costs in products that today, often have safety features that aren't worth the cost. There has to be a balance. Today, suing a large corporation whose product happened to be involved in an accident doesn't automatically mean they were careless. If the 1958 accident would have happened today, the bus manufacturer would have been sued.