Since religion seems to be a hot topic: A 23-year-old man has been arrested on hate-crime charges in New York for throwing a Quran in a toilet at Pace University, something that, had it been a Bible, might have been considered modern art (as this Glenn McCoy cartoon would suggest). Here’s one view from the right, and one from the left.
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74 Comments
It’s alright in the U.S. to ridicule Christians and white guys but not moslems because they are sensitive guys (who wear explosives).
What I like the most about this news is how commentators don’t give a flying crap about the man or the situation. But instead see it as a way to point out how superior their particular world view is to the one the feel themselves in opposition to.
One little bit of news that often gets left out was that there appears to have been a growing problem of anti-Muslim vandalism on campus, and this guy got fingered for it. Probably as an example to any others responsible. It’s lazy policing, not an assault on the freedoms of the people to hate whoever they want.
He’ll plea bargain to a lesser charge.
#2: OK, I’ll bite. The guy faces a 4-year felony rap for tossing a paperback in a toilet. I think that’s a tad excessive.
So much suffering in the world comes from political posturing and the ideologues that value such.
This is just another example of such.
As punishment, maybe the guy should be made to flush a copy of each major religion’s instruction manual.
ThewilliamG,
A guy put a book in a toilet and is being charged with a federal crime. He could go to jail for 3-5 years. And to you, this isn’t an assault on freedom?
Nobody has to respect Islam. There is no prohibition on hating a religion. If the Islamists are successful in their many attempts to prohibit criticism of their ideas, you can be sure that the Christians will follow.
This is the ultimate of slippery slopes. Religion must never be protected from criticism, hate, ridicule and outright contempt. Individual religious people have individual rights that will be respected. But their faith is fair game.
If you take this away for the sake of a the Muslims, you are handing a unacceptable gift in the form of legal precedent to the aggressive right-wing Christians.
Isn’t it odd, that the people who most demand prohibitions on free speech are typically religious? What does this tell us about their confidence in their faith? Also, Muslims seem particularly prone to this.. Does this mean that they are more insecure in their faith than are Christians/Jews etc?
#7: Better than I could’ve said it. In addition, I don’t think our founding fathers risked their lives and property in order to make political incorrectness punishable by jail time.
The idea that putting in book in water could constitute jail time would scare the living shit out of the American Founding Fathers.
It should scare the shit out of all of us.
“One little bit of news that often gets left out was that there appears to have been a growing problem of anti-Muslim vandalism on campus, and this guy got fingered for it. “
From the news reports that I’ve read, I had the distinct impression that the man’s act may have been in retaliation against anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) vandalism on campus.
Wow. I pushed “post” before I read what I wrote.
Let me try again.
The fact that putting a book in water could demand criminal charges and a prison sentence would scare the shit out of the founding fathers.
It should scare the shit out of all of us.
In 2004 James Nixon, a twelve-year-old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a T-shirt to school bearing the words “Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!” The school told him not to wear the T-shirt – and the boy’s parents sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable case if they had based it on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. But they didn’t: indeed, they couldn’t, because free speech is deemed not to include ‘hate speech’.
But hate only has to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate. So, instead of freedom of speech, the Nixons’ lawyers appealed to the constitutional right to freedom of religion. They won.
Now this: a man charged with a hate crime specifically because he attacked a religion (by way of a book).
WTF? Two perfect examples of the law bending over itself (and contradicting itself in the process) to afford special significance and protection to theism. Why? What makes religions so special that they are weilded with such impunity in so many social and public spheres?
Religion - all of them - should be seperated entirely from the state and given no protection under law. It has no basis in objectivity, fact or reason - and faith alone is no excuse for those who purvey it. Let people of “faith” indulge in their fantasies in private and leave the rest of society to function according to law and objective justice.
This is completely outrageous! I am sure the ACLU will be all over it defending the poor muslims against the bad white guys!!!
f’ing incredible that this happens in the US.
Hoju, exactly right.
If I decided that I am a Jedi and that the Star Wars screenplay was my “holy book” would it then be a hate crime to point out the serious continuity errors in the Star Wars series?
Of COURSE the above is absurd. But it is not one iota more absurd than Muslims asserting that an illiterate nomad had god’s final revelations dictated to him in Arabic in the middle of a desert.
Religious people want state protection for their ideas for the very reason that their ideas are so obviously invalid and unsupported. If they were as confident in their religion as I am in my irreligion they would, like me, not demand my ideas be free from criticism.
f muhammed and allah (is that a hate crime)??????
Maybe it is. Isn’t that sad?
Mohamad was a pedophile who married a 7 year old girl. He was also a mass murderer and an advocate of genocide. The idea that his ideas should be protected by force of law and fear of incarceration is disgusting.
The Koran is a book, nothing more and nothing less. No different in form or validity than the Cat in the Hat. Just a book. And that book was placed in water. It was also shat on, if I remember correctly.
If we are going to be honest and actually care about ideas, that book deserves much worse than a little feces.
I seriously hope that this is the work of a few guilt-ridden activists and doesn’t in any way represent the will of the American public.
This is incredible, and it shows you the dangers of sloppily defined laws getting passed - if you leave interpretation up to police or courts, eventually the stupid interpretation will come up. Anyone who expressed unease with these sorts of laws when they were in process risked smearing as a racist.
Hate Crime laws were intended to be used, and sold to the public as, additional add-on punishment against perpetrators of actual violent assaults obviously based on race. However, every govt that has passed them has quickly begun using them against “Hatespeech”, which is a dressed up word for what every govt in history desires - shut up and think the way we want you to.
I’m with tambe. And considering how fond religious people are of burning non-religious books in bonfires, they have no right to start asking us to respect their superstitions.
The Bible, the Koran, the Cat in the Hat - which is the only one of those books that does not urge readers to kill people?
Funny how there’s so much fear of an anti-Muslim backlash, yet what really seems to be happening is an anti-Jewish backlash. A Quran gets slam dunked in a toilet is big news while Muslims assault and harras Jews by the score and nobody takes notice.
Moslems should all be fervent pro-Americans since our idiotic system caters to them so much.
Au contraire.
Unless, of course, you’re counting among the “religious” those who are religiously anti-religion, or whose blind faith is in mystical, unproven (unprovable) phenomena like global warming or dogmas like abortion on demand. All of the above sorts have been extremely vocal in demanding restrictions on free speech in the US.
“It (religion) has no basis in objectivity, fact or reason”
This may be true of certain individual religions, but formulated as a sweeping generalization like this it’s absolutely false.
This type of rhetoric sheds far more light upon the prejudices of the writer than upon the topic being discussed.
#17 -
Spot on, Hugh. The danger of empowering the Thought Police is that sooner or later, they’re going to start policing one of your thoughts.
For that reason, I don’t support criminal sanctions against people who burn the Koran, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Dianetics, nor even against jackasses who desecrate the Holy Eucharist. I certainly deplore their actions (with the possible exception of burning Dianetics, but once we start criminalizing speech because of whom it offends… bad, bad precedent.
I have never seen a shred of evidence for the existence of a “god” (meaning “god” as described in the Abrahamic traditions). Evidence, not blind faith, is needed for religious ideas/claims to be elevated from mere superstition to objective fact.
Anyhow, on topic:
Religious people are free to speak their minds. They are free to congregate and tithe and rant and rave. The are free to protyltize and spread the (false) word.
They are not, however, entitled to use the legal system to silence criticism of their ideas.
You are as free as me, and I as free as you. We are equal, under the law. Being “religious” doesn’t change this. Or, at least it shouldn’t.
I have to agree with Ut Videam on #21. The politically correct crowd does more to restrict free speech than the religious crowd does. Hands down. This flap about the Koran in the toilet does not come from religious people, I’ll bet, but from hand-wringing multiculturalists. Perhaps the same ones who found the art work “Piss Christ” hilarious.
I disagree with Ut Videam on #22. Sine qua non for a religion to be a religion (as opposed to s.th. like shamanism) is belief in an afterlife. Ut videam will agree that there is no basis for this belief in facts, objectivity or reason. (Which does not in itself disprove the possibility of an afterlife, nor does it necessarily follow that facts/reason trump faith, but the point still stands.)
Crap. Forgot to close my parentheses after Dianetics in the last sentence above.
#25 -
My agreement with this statement—if any—has to be strongly qualified. I will agree that reason unaided by revelation has nothing to say about the species of afterlife, i.e., of what it might consist. A strong argument for the existence and immortality of the soul, however, can be made on purely philosophical grounds.
“The politically correct crowd does more to restrict free speech than the religious crowd does. Hands down. This flap about the Koran in the toilet does not come from religious people, I’ll bet, but from hand-wringing multiculturalists.”
Yeah, maybe you are right that the PC police do more to pull back freedoms..
But in this specific case, it was the islamists who did it 100%. CAIR was involved, as was the Muslim students association of PACE. This act happened a long time ago and the charges have been in the works for a couple months.
But yes, the PC/Multicult brigade do absolutely want to restrict freedom. They are most active on University campuses in the US/Canada.
Herod, ref. #25. Belief in an afterlife is the essence of any shamanist creed, which are likewise religions. I’m surprised the Mountain Spirit hasn’t smitten you by now for your heresy.
The kid who crapped on the Koran stole the Koran from the Pace University library. This is the root charge against him — the “hate crime” part is an enhancement to the base charge of theft and vandalism.
Next time, if you want to pinch a loaf on the Koran, this incident tells you to go buy your own at Borders or the university bookstore first.
Carr, you are right.
He ought to be disciplined by the school for jacking a couple worthless books.
Hate crime charges???
“Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said.”
http://www.newsday.com/news/lo.....2662.story
Harassment?
Total crap.
Someone needs to organize a “Toss Religion Where It Belongs Day.” They can set up rows of toilets in front of city halls nationwide, and ask people to come down and toss whatever religious paraphernalia they’d like into the shitters. Bibles, Korans, crosses, Virgin Mary and Buddha statues, and some magic underwear so the Mormons don’t feel left out.
Maybe have an accompanying Body of Christ Communion Wafer eating contest, after which all the contestants can then deposit some holy fertilizer on top of the collected items.
Freedom of speech at its finest. Chock full of vitamins and offensive goodness.
I swear on the koran/bible/catinthehat, blueballs, I will organize such an event. I promise. Pinky promise.
Every time you blaspheme like that, the Baby Jeebus garrotes an angel. But first he burns the angel with a cigarette.
So just stop it!
Now, now Michael. Theologians have exhaustively addressed the problem of Baby Jeebus’s notorious garroting and burning of angels and found these acts to have been motivated by “tough love.”
#32 -
Hey, why not? As long as it’s an equal opportunity hatefest, I wouldn’t mind introducing the secular scriptures of Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould et al. to some genuine hanwoo soddong.
It sure beats the traditional Christian response to heterodox ideas, i.e. burning down libraries.
#37-
Yup. Not to mention the traditional atheist regimes’ response to religion, i.e. burning down churches, sending the obstinate to gulags, etc.
Oh please. Irrational, excessive beliefs of any sort are the root of the problem here — from Belfast to Marx, from the Unabomber to the Middle East. If people started by being honest and admitting that they do not know what lies behind the veil, we’d all be better off.
Not sure about step 2, but it would most likely be to stop whining and playing the victim.
A book!? That’s one hellava toilet.
Can the US State Department appoint a “toilet ambassador” to rival Korea’s?
…or burning down the people who hold the heterodox ideas…
Seriously, if you can’t laugh at whatever kind of manure people throw at your most cherished beliefs, there’s something wrong with you.
“Seriously, if you can’t laugh at whatever kind of manure people throw at your most cherished beliefs, there’s something wrong with you.”
It isn’t the attack on beliefs but blasphemy against beings and desecration of objects people hold sacred. There is nothing “wrong” with people who get upset at seeing a cross dunked in urine or a Quran flushed in a toilet. There is something wrong with people who mock other people’s religious beliefs just to show there are no sacred cows. The world would be a far more peaceful place if we respected each other beliefs (atheism is itself a belief that there are no gods) and just “live and let live.”
Well, the cross in urine was not done just to mock Christians’ beliefs. Andres Serrano has a whole body of work that uses vulgar and grotesque substances to show beautiful images.
There might be nothing wrong with getting upset at someone trying to provoke you by insulting your beliefs, but there is a lot wrong with how some people react to the insult.
Did that last sentence make any sense? “…but there is a lot wrong with how some people react once they are upset.” Was trying for symmetry… think I failed.
“….the traditional Christian response to heterodox ideas, i.e. burning down libraries…”
Huh? Can you cite any actual examples of this?
I suspect you’re thinking of the final scenes of the movie “The Name of the Rose”. Based on a novel if I’m not mistaken.
If those of us who are Christians will concede that you are all brave and worldly Sean Conneries, proclaiming truth to power in the face of grotesquely grim and prune-faced Christian fanatics — will that suffice to put an end to boastful internet scatalogical fantasies?
If you simply have to postulate yourselves in hypothetical scenarioes, why not tell us what you would do as “realistic” atheistic citizens of the DPRK, faced with the dilemma of saving yourself/your family in the face of police questioning vs turning in Christian neighbors known to you to be practicing their faith in secret.
From shitting on the Bible to informing on your neighbors — would there really be that much difference?
wow! weren’t you the same people who condemned koreans for teahing little afghan children how to sing christian songs? weren’t you guys the ones who talked about how disrespectful it was to the muslim religion?
lol.
‘There is something wrong with people who mock other people’s religious beliefs just to show there are no sacred cows. The world would be a far more peaceful place if we respected each other beliefs…’ sonagi
words to live by.
you can shit on the religions of Abraham’s God by saying it teaches people to kill other people and what not, but do you know that you are in fact, practicing Abrhamic religion principles when you call for peace, social welfare, respecting human rights, etc?
Hmm?
Exactly what was the world believing in prior to this crazy religion from the middle east?
well, the old civilization of the world was centered in Greece and the Arabian peninsula, if you momentarily ignore India and China.
what did people believe in?
Polytheism for one. Sex with temple prostitutes, progressing to group sex. Sacrificing children at a fire altar. Sacrificing virigin girls. Burying servants alive with deceased kings, so they can serve him in that other world. Immoral gods who do whatever they want irresponsibly, Greek ones, Middle eastern ones. Drinking blood. Using narcotics. And these gods as well, if you would believe so, gods calling for war and getting involved in wars, off the top of my head, the Trojan War.
did these guys say anything about freeing slaves after some years, taking care of the widow and the orphan, obeying the govt rulers, etc?
“There might be nothing wrong with getting upset at someone trying to provoke you by insulting your beliefs, but there is a lot wrong with how some people react to the insult.”,/I>
Yes, I agree. There are more appropriate and less appropriate ways to respond when one feels insulted or offended.
what exactly caused man to include morals into the religion system, which he created to cast an iron grip over his servants?
Did he gradually feel bad after having abused subservients for hundreds of years?
and decide to talk about rights and morals and social welfare?
or is there more to it?
and also, suddenly this new wave of Abrhamic religion wants you to limit your range of sexual partners?
wow, that’s an interesting progression.
I think it’s kind of weird.
But, somehow it took over the world and it still grips 2/3 of the world population, whether or not this number indicates sincere believers.
“wow! weren’t you the same people who condemned koreans for teahing little afghan children how to sing christian songs? weren’t you guys the ones who talked about how disrespectful it was to the muslim religion?”
What’s the connection, Pawi? I don’t recall reading any overt praise of the man who flushed the Quran down the toilet. What commenters have complained about is the fact this man was charged with a hate crime and the legal basis for hate crimes. If that man had done that in Afghanistan and found himself facing execution, I don’t think anybody here would feel sorry for him.
#51 -
I agree there’s been no overt praise of the man who flushed the Quran down the toilet, but the usual anti-religious suspects here have strongly defended his actions and recommended them as appropriate for books and objects held sacred by all faiths. I think that’s what wjk is reacting to.
But you’re right: his response is a little off. After all, said usual suspects weren’t the ones talking about how disrespectful the missionaries were to the Muslim religion. They were talking about (as usual) how all religions are crap, and how the missionaries’ activities demonstrated the crappiness of their Christian faith. Having thus worked themselves up into a lather, they finished up with some frenzied self-congratulatory ego (?) stroking for their cool, rational, objective (and edgy! don’t forget edgy!) disbelief. Then they went to the bathroom to clean themselves off.
As I said in another thread, ipsation takes many forms.
Comment 52: s/wjk/pawikirogi
There’s a huge difference between chucking a book in the crapper in a country that prides itself on rather liberal free speech laws and traditions, and going to an active war zone to preach what is seen there as a hostile ideology. In one case, the overreaction is utterly predictable. In the other case, the overreaction is surprising, to say the least. Both actions may be silly and ill-advised, but the degree is definitely different.
For one who seems to be preaching for tolerance and ‘enlightenment’, you sure seem to enjoy mocking and demonizing your opponents. Do you really think that’s going to play well with those you’re trying to persuade?
I’ll let the Buddhists in my acquaintance know that they’re really Christians. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
People still do just about all the stuff you mentioned there, wjk… Even Christians, atheists, and Muslims.
zonath, people do still do all about what I mentioned because they live in the part of the world that was pre shaped by Abrahamic religions before they were even born.
Laws, social expectations, culture, etc.
and like I said,
If you, ignore for a moment,
India and China,
you can’t deny that Abrhamic religions basically shaped Europe, Middle East, North America and such.
Monogamy is not to be found elsewhere.
If it is to be found, it is something that’s more of the exception.
Korea was a polygamous society, too.
Even under Buddhism, native gods, ancestor worship, Taoism, etc.
If you want to uplift Buddhism, go right ahead.
Then, I must comment that you people from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East did some strange ass things in the name of religion.
if my observations are wrong Zonath, why don’t you go get married to 3 different women?
In America?
You can’t !
and why?
I think you can answer that by coming back to what I’ve been talking about.
You may not believe. But you walk that line. And why?
Uh. Huh.
Now Zonath, when did you, a non believer, ever agree that you would get stuck with one woman for the rest of your life or even agree to pay alimony or uphold prenups if and when you decide to go after a fresher, younger woman like old Korea allowed men to do?
You never did my friend !
Yet, you live by that law, and it surely isn’t because you are following some Buddhist origin law or anything remotely from China.
at the same time, of course.
and, South Carolina won’t allow a dude to buy Beer on Sundays, because of Siddartha, right?
So basically, we’ve traded polygamy for sleeping around on the side without consequences and all the premarital sex you can have. Divorce is still legal everywhere in America, meaning that while you can’t have two wives at the same time, you can have four as long as you kick them out of your life in succession. All because of Christianity, right? And I probably could get married to as many people as I wanted to, as long as I didn’t care whether or not the state would recognize the union. After all, lots of people in Utah do it. Polygamy is also rampant in plenty of other ‘cult’ religions based off of Christianity — ever hear of the Peoples’ Temple? Let’s not even start talking about exactly how permissive Islam is towards polygamy. And somehow through all of this, monogamy is somehow ‘unique’ or ‘peculiar’ to Abrahamic religions? I guess I should run off to China in order to get myself a few more wives. After all, since they’re relatively untainted by Christianity, I’m sure they’d let me be a polygamist there.
Paul H:
Muslims destroyed the work of the Faylasufs (who questioned the validity of the Koran), Hindus destroyed the work of the atheist Carvaka, and as Gibbon makes clear, Christians destroyed pagan civilization. Whether the Serapeum was done in by Christians is in doubt (though Hypatia’s murder at the hands of a Christian mob isn’t) but that numerous pagan works disappeared in the general anti-pagan frenzy is indisputable.
The modern Christian thankfully does not take his Word of God so seriously (relying on theologians to reconcile the “old-fashioned” passages with 21st century humanism) and is therefore more tolerant than the Christians of old. He is also less interested in asceticism, but that’s another story. So as I said: it’s the politically correct crowd that you have to watch out for. They’d torch thousands of books if you just gave them the chance.
but, Zonath, you’re doing it the hard way. In Old Korea, they all lived in same houseold.
In America, you have to lie about it.
i’m pretty confident that those who call themselves Christians practice monogamy because of what St. Paul said.
1 Tim 3:2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
1 Tim 3:12 Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of their children and their own households.
this is just an example.
Any discussion about sexual mores in society and religion would be incomplete, imho, without looking at the biological basis of behavior. Like Robert Wright does in THE MORAL ANIMAL.
Lifelong monogamous relationships are very good (biologically speaking) for poor men in a society full of poor men. Polygamous and high-divorce rates are better for women (again, biologically) in a resource-stratified society.
That kind of approach certainly does not explain everything, but it provides a pretty insightful foundation for looking at what morals a religion focuses on and why.
pawi: do you know that you are in fact, practicing Abrhamic religion principles when you call for peace, social welfare, respecting human rights, etc?
wjk: they live in the part of the world that was pre shaped by Abrahamic religions before they were even born
Stop attributing every moral act to the bible, or some sort of trickle down effect from it. These ideas were around long before the bible was cobbled together by vote. Just read Thucydides, a historian of ancient greece. Peace, law, order, social welfare and human rights have their roots not in theism, but in ancient classical society - and perhaps even long before that.
Instead of banging on like a pastor at a pulpit, I suggest you both go and read some history.
A few ideas to get you started:
‘Ethics’ comes from ‘ethos’, a greek word. ‘Morality’ comes from mores, which is Latin for customs.
Better you just read this: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-morality.htm
A snippet:
…the moral code of the Bible finds its roots in the civilizations and cultures that surrounded it, and can hardly be called unique, much less the basis of all morality. In fact, similarities around the world suggest that morality is a universal trait among humans, for reasons that philosophers argue.
Also, and no less importantly, Christianity has been the engine behind an untold number of attrocities over the ages.
In sum, the bible has some good advice - most borrowed from the ancient societies that surrounded it when it was created, some lifted entirely from written codes prior to its compilation. It also contains a hell of a lot of heinous garbage left out of prior moral studies. To quote Richard Dawkins:
“Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidical, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
“Lifelong monogamous relationships are very good (biologically speaking) for poor men in a society full of poor men. Polygamous and high-divorce rates are better for women (again, biologically) in a resource-stratified society. “
I read that book a long time ago. As I recall, Wright claimed that monogamy benefited poor men and rich women, who didn’t have to share their husband and his resources with another family. Wright also argued that monogamy was better for social stability. A bunch of sexually frustrated young men are a source of trouble and have been expendible fodder in wars.
hoju, read your link, but I think there could be some truths, but I can’t say for sure, since he’s written in huppi.com, for one, and 2nd, the only concrete example he gives is Plato.
Regardless of where it orginated from, Plato’s impact on the world regarding his stance on morals, wouldn’t you say it was drop in the bucket?
Versus that of St. Paul?
Now, Medieval Europe did not quote Plato as much as Paul or name cities after Plato, did they, hoju?
On origin, you may have something to argue about, but regarding impact and delivery…No contest, and it primarily serves to make the atheist happy.
regarding 65, I’m quite sure that unified China allowed Buddhist monks from India to spread the religion to promote morality and social stability, although no mention of monogamy was in the message or even intended.
I don’t think it’s really that debatable that Christianity influenced European civilization. Now, whether or not that influence was a change for the better… that’s a topic in and of itself. But since we’re already woefully off-topic on this particular thread, it might be better to save that argument for later.
quite a few people on the other thread condenmed korean missionaries for teaching christian songs to little afghan children. they also criticized the koreans for trying to spread the gospel in a muslim country. they said the koreans were being disrespectful to muslims. alright, i agree.
but if you’re going to take the koreans to task for being disrespectuful to muslims, then, how are you going to defend a cartoon depicting a religious icon as a terrorist? how are you going to point at the koreans while you defend a guy who took a shit on the koran? look, i don’t care where these things happened; disprect is disrespect.
as for your comment that folks here are only interested in the legal aspects, well, i respectfully disagree.
‘Mohamad was a pedophile who married a 7 year old girl. He was also a mass murderer and an advocate of genocide. The idea that his ideas should be protected by force of law and fear of incarceration is disgusting.’ tambe
tsk, tsk, tsk……
Actually, Mohammed married the girl when she was 6 and consummated his marriage when she was 9:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fu.....07.062.064
Michael -
And I thought Moses was a sicko.
#54 -
Plenty of mocking and demonizing of religion and religious people has gone on here lately. I’m simply responding in kind to the circle jerk of anti-religious bigotry that’s been raging here ever since those poor schleps went and got themselves kidnapped. Those comments were not calculated to persuade anyone with their derisive tone, they were merely meant to express contempt for the beliefs of others. Likewise, I’m not trying to persuade anyone; I’m simply registering my opinion that the spate of hackneyed, ignorant, offensive anti-Christian commentary posted here recently is contemptible.
Cool. Nice to know the hate-spiral of bigotry will be continuing for the foreseeable future. It makes for entertaining reading, at least.
wjk, one thing you seem to fail to understand: the bible was written by men.
Morality came first, the bible second, not the other way round.
Do you realy think the bible is the word of God? And if you do, do you really believe that before the word of god, men didn’t know what morality was? Does that include Korea? Were Koreans base, unethical, unloving, corrupt, bereft of morals, before Christianity arrived?
Think about it.