Quote:
Originally Posted by Urzu 7
We discussed Islam and violence, but all three Abrahamic religions have this problem. It is just that Judaism and Christianity have, for the most part, overcome some big hurdles in regards to these things. They haven't removed the problem of some of their members fighting and killing in the name of God, but things sure got better with all that.
Also, please don't say those westboro baptist church losers are following Christianity more closely than all other Christians. Please, don't. Those people are, in fact, going about it worse than all other types of Christians. It is very simple. Those people just do not align with Jesus Christ. Not even close. They align with the lord of evil instead.
|
In the middle ages the way europeans viewed the world was through the lens of christianity. Our ideas of laws, ethics and behaviour were entirely Christian. Today, most modern christians do not have their world view predominantly shaped by christianity, but by more modern ideologies like Liberalism or Socialism.
When I meet a modern Irishman, he may or may not believe in god, but when he views the world, he is not viewing it in the way catholicism says to view it. He freely uses contraception, laughs at jesus parodies and generally doesn't think about religion all that much. The issues that enflame his interest are not related to Christian teachings, but secular ones. Now go back 40 years, and everyone viewed things in the Catholic way, and our country was bigoted and repressive. We had an active censor constantly on the prowl for Blasphemy, and the arch-bishop of Dublin was more influential then any other public figure. Our schools were
Catholic schools, taught by priests and nuns, and they taught all manner of backwards things.
Christianity never "mellowed out", more people are just less Christian, it's very rare these days to meet people whose entire lives and views are shaped by their faiths in a western country, and when you do find such people, they are little different from the Muslims that so many criticize, be they Jewish, Christian, Communist or Fascist(I think to be a Communist requires a level of faith equal to being a Christian).
People who form their beliefs on dogma (of any kind) tend to end out taking an intolerant attitude to others, ultimately resulting in violence on a massive scale. This is not a problem unique to Islam, but common to
all dogmas. Doesn't matter if your prophet is Jesus, Mohammed, Moses or Marx.
That said, there's good elements to many of these things, taken in moderation. It's only when your thoughts are consumed by these ideas, that you begin to see the people who don't adhere to them as being first unfortunate, then dysfunctional, then evil, then out to kill you. That is the end result of extreme chauvinistic faith. If you truly believe your beliefs are the path to all that is good and righteous, then logically, those who do not practice them, or worse openly reject them, are evil.
Quote:
|
And about the Dalai Lama, Tibet, and the feudal setup: The Tibetan people want every bit of that setup back if it meant the Chinese ceasing to oppress them. They want their land back. They want their homes back. They want their rights back. They want the lives of those who were murdered to be back. They want the thousands of monasteries, many of which which were historically important or held importance within their religion, to be back (the number of destroyed monasteries is well over 6,000). They want their way of life and culture to once again take place in their homeland and no longer be in jeopardy of ceasing to be in a matter decades.
|
I'm not arguing about what the tibetans
want (obviously they want independence, and there is nothing wrong with this). I'm just saying that a lot of westerners seem to have a very flowery view of what Tibet was like under the lamas. They seem to think it was some peaceful wise Shangri-La it, which is utter nonsense. No matter which way you cut it, it was a theocracy, where most of the population were
serfs working the estates of rich Monasteries and other wealthy landowners. Not only that, but the
monks would frequently hand out punishments like floggings, hands or feet being cut off, and the gouging out of eyes, for such relatively minor crimes as stealing from the monasteries.