Radical Clerics, Christian Morals, and Homosexuality

for once tal, i think i agree with you. i watched some documentary on fundamentalist islam -- including violent extremists. i promptly thanked god for our fundamentalists. at least they're not hurting too many people.but. even though there is a vast difference, both groups are indeed radical. the only requirement for radical beliefs are ones that are against the norm or mainstream. that's not to say it's a BAD thing. jesus was a radical (and they killed him for it).but no, our radicals are nowhere near as bad as their radicals.

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אָרַח

that's why i put "don't kill too many people." i know i have a habit of sarcastic understatement, but that one was meant to accurate. there are crazy fundamentalists that DO kill people. but compared to the violence that goes on in the muslim world...

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don't count on it. look at our government's positions regarding christian fundamentalism.

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yes, but would you agree that executing them is worse?that's sort of what i'm getting at. a lesser of two evils. i'd rather have no evils, personally. but our evils don't seem to be quite as bad as theirs.

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uh, they still do. in this post, regarding selective and biased distortions of the bible, i wrote:

quote:

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If however we read it with the notion of supporting some off base idea then it doesn't really matter, as we can always find some way to justify our thoughts and actions if we want to.

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well, that's exactly the point.

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for instance, the church of jesus christ-christian justifies their particular belief system with the bible.

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religious people can seem to make the bible say anything they want. we're making god in our image, not the other way around. i think trying to understand what it's really saying -- and not some biased dogmatic interpretation and bending of the facts -- is of grave importance.

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it's called a "left-handed compliment."i wasn't specifically calling tal evil. but some fundamentalists do some pretty evil things.

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it has, and i'm by no means arguing that. just that our fundamentalists seem to be, on average, safer than islamic fundamentalists. there still are people who do some really evil stuff in the name of god -- such as killing people over belief systems. look at the violence in ireland between two different sects of christianity.but mostly, our american crazy fundies drink stricnine and dance with snakes. they're not beating themselves over the heads with swords. and they're generally not calling for violence in the same quantity that islamic fundamentalist leaders do.but it's not to say that such things don't happen in american fundamentalism -- see the related thread for details. i'm just saying that the degree and frequency is not as bad. they appear to something of an aberation here -- but not so much in the middle east. we don't get abortion clinic bombings a lot, but israel gets a few bus bombings a week. no, and that's a very good point. i just don't think that american fundamentalism comes close to equaling islam fundamentalism in the arab world.

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and if we include the crusades, that's definitally true.i'm really just speaking of the recent of phenomina, and really just the us.

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