Us Church To Burn Qurans On 9/11, This is disgusting... Options

A Christian minister in Florida will burn copies of the Quran with his church on 9/11 this year.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100907/ap_on_...s/quran_burning

This is absolutely disgusting.

This post has been edited by monkman418: Sep 7 2010, 03:07 PM

Crowley, advocating for cooler heads? I thought that was Regardie's role? MUHAHA! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bigwink.gif)

No problem, I wasn't expecting this disagreement, but I'll take you up on it! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I think intent underlies the difference between King's acts and this protest. King's peaceful protests, some of which turned ugly, were intended to counter a racist system of hated and oppression. This protest doesn't directly harm anyone, but it's intended as an act of hate against all Muslims. There's no freedom or victory to be won in this act, but hatred and intolerance are perpetuated by it to no useful end. And unless you disagree with the assessment of General Petraeus, I'm not sure how you expect burning Qurans to not set off a rash of violent counter-protests. It's true that Muslims should hold themselves above violent extremism, but it's pretty obvious that some of them are going to be nudged in this direction as a result of this protest.

I don't think you mean it in this way, but Christianity isn't a homogenous belief structure. The idea that any other belief is going to cause people to go to hell is one interpretation of the scripture. If that's sincerely what you believe, I understand that it's important to want to protest any other viewpoint. Still, this particular protest seems more than a bit hateful in targeting certain groups...after all, you wouldn't want to see Bible-burnings in Afghanistan, or to be told to convert to any way of life other than your own.

Let the battle continue...(I think you may have just invoked the demon-lord of forum-based arguments by posting this here...) Demon! I bind thee by the code of useful and friendly forum discussion, least thy chains be broken and thou dost exercise thy dread power of turning us all into trolls, such as are utterly dashed against the rocks by the mod-squad...

Ha yeah I know touchy subject right? By Crowley I meant quoting State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley from the article. Ha that's a funny coincidence in names though. I was more going for a strict Christian take on it. Not really politically correct but more or less accurate. Yes I agree that this probably would incite a violent outburst of rage and bloody beheadings from some extremest Muslin groups. That might be going too far but maybe it isn't. But Luther probably knew that his peaceful protest were going to cause some violent lash back too.

Well I disagree that Christianity isn't homogenous, as far as a strick (as in literal taught by Jesus written by apostles) goes.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, BUT BY ME.” — Jesus Christ (John 14:6)

The views of weaker Christians:

The dominant worldview in secular and academic circles today is called postmodernism. To the postmodernist, reality is whatever the individual imagines it to be. That means what is "true" is determined subjectively by each person, and there is no such thing as objective, authoritative truth that governs or applies to humanity universally. The postmodernist naturally believes it is pointless to argue whether opinion A is superior to opinion B. After all, if reality is merely a construct of the human mind, one person's perspective of truth is ultimately just as good as another's. "Truth" becomes nothing more than a personal opinion, usually best kept to oneself.[1]

God/Jesus clearly does not accept a lukewarm heart when it comes to faith and what God states regardless if the person interprets the scripture that way or not. I want to emphasis that point of it doesn't matter to God if the person believes one thing or another because God only allows it one way and kicks out everyone else, according to him! If Christianity is wrong then of course it won't matter for anyone, least of all the unorthodox Christians. It's a catch-22 for them. Either you're in all the way or you're not.

What is bad conduct for Christians? Not following what God says. Listen to how God says he will personally see to punishing people who break his laws:

"14“However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, 15and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands, 16I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you—wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them. 17I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!

18“And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins. 19I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as hard as bronze. 20All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit.

21“If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me, I will inflict disaster on you seven times over for your sins. 22I will send wild animals that will rob you of your children and destroy your livestock. Your numbers will dwindle, and your roads will be deserted.

23“And if you fail to learn the lesson and continue your hostility toward me, 24then I myself will be hostile toward you. I will personally strike you with calamity seven times over for your sins. 25I will send armies against you to carry out the curse of the covenant you have broken. When you run to your towns for safety, I will send a plague to destroy you there, and you will be handed over to your enemies. 26I will destroy your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake bread for their families. They will ration your food by weight, and though you have food to eat, you will not be satisfied.

27“If in spite of all this you still refuse to listen and still remain hostile toward me, 28then I will give full vent to my hostility. I myself will punish you seven times over for your sins. 29Then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. 30I will destroy your pagan shrines and knock down your places of worship. I will leave your lifeless corpses piled on top of your lifeless idols,a and I will despise you. 31I will make your cities desolate and destroy your places of pagan worship. I will take no pleasure in your offerings that should be a pleasing aroma to me. 32Yes, I myself will devastate your land, and your enemies who come to occupy it will be appalled at what they see. 33I will scatter you among the nations and bring out my sword against you. Your land will become desolate, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34Then at last the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. Then the land will finally rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed. 35As long as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest you never allowed it to take every seventh year while you lived in it.

36“And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you in the land of your enemies. You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by the wind will send you fleeing. You will run as though fleeing from a sword, and you will fall even when no one pursues you. 37Though no one is chasing you, you will stumble over each other as though fleeing from a sword. You will have no power to stand up against your enemies. 38You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies. 39Those of you who survive will waste away in your enemies’ lands because of their sins and the sins of their ancestors."

That is a pretty big threat to keep Christians in line. But Christians who don't agree with this fall into the catch-22/postmodernism category. Not something I care to be a part of. I defiantly see where you are coming from with the not wanting Bible burnings over there. It seems to me they are still stuck in the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages deal where the (corrupt) church goes about killing and burning everyone that speaks up to disagree. Still fanaticism is what God demands and I can understand that sort of religious zeal, even if I disagree with their actions. Muhammad isn't that far from Christianity, but it's far enough I don't want to be near it.

Even after all that though I see where you are coming from, and if I wasn't a fanatic I would have to agree with ya ha.

The views of weaker Christians:

The dominant worldview in secular and academic circles today is called postmodernism. To the postmodernist, reality is whatever the individual imagines it to be. That means what is "true" is determined subjectively by each person, and there is no such thing as objective, authoritative truth that governs or applies to humanity universally. The postmodernist naturally believes it is pointless to argue whether opinion A is superior to opinion B. After all, if reality is merely a construct of the human mind, one person's perspective of truth is ultimately just as good as another's. "Truth" becomes nothing more than a personal opinion, usually best kept to oneself.[1]

I think this gets at the nut of the problem, which can be summed up as a question, "who defines what is true?"

As you put it, there's only one strict or literal interpretation of the Bible. But how does this account for the various orthodox churches, some claiming literal apostolic succession from Christ himself, all claiming that they have the True interpretation of the Bible? Of course some of these groups (for instance, Roman Catholics) strongly suggest that other forms of Christianity are flawed or deeply flawed (aka, the followers are going to hell). On the other end of the spectrum are groups (some Baptist churches) that equate Catholicism to the whore of Babalon from the Book of Revelations, and they find Bible verses to do it...so obviously they have the truth, right? Going to the liberal end of the spectrum, Quakers have their own interpretation of the Bible (that they will also readily defend), which they say precludes all forms of outward conflict, in addition to religious tolerance. Also at the liberal end of the spectrum are those Christians that attended the interfaith conference that protested the burning of the Qurans, and I'm sure they're also quoting the Bible as their source of truth.

In essence, each of these groups is claiming the "truth" of the Bible, yet they are all disagreeing over what that truth is.

Looking at the problem from another angle, from the same Web page you cite is the following summary of relative truth:

...what really underlies the postmodernist belief system is an utter intolerance for every worldview that makes any universal truth-claims-particularly biblical Christianity. [1

I'm not a post-modernist, but a post-modernist wouldn't really care if someone wanted to see the world in a biblical way; according to the above site, such a person would just quip, "not my truth, but whatever." So where is intolerance coming from then? Doesn't it seem more likely that groups that want to make universal claims about the way reality "works" are actually the ones that are very threatened by the presence of other ways of living and believing? And isn't this why Muslim extremists want to wage war on America?

The Quran has lots of interpretations too, by the way. Many, many Muslims find Islamic extremism to be a perversion. Yet extremists hold these more liberal Muslims in contempt, and are happy to see them killed alongside the infidel Americans. Westernized Muslims are not real Muslims, they don't hold the Truth of the Quran (so it is said). And of course, in America we tend to lump all Muslims together in one category, just as we like to lump all Christianity into one category; and that would be a view of Islam or Christianity, another view that claims a singular truth while defining others through it.

Universal truth may exist, but it's often used as a way of putting one's own truth onto others and privileging that truth in a system of social discourse. If you define reality, and you can define someone else's reality, then you own that person. Like defining a black person as inferior to a white person, it places the truth-holder in a position of social power. Thus the truth becomes blinding to its holder while it continues to convey power through a lie.

...and that sounds a bit like Satan to me! (break out the merlot! ) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/diablo.gif)

This post has been edited by monkman418: Sep 7 2010, 09:21 PM

This is the kind of action that fosters war, hatred, destruction of life and liberty, and can potentially shatter any kind of brotherhood that is trying to develop between the peoples of these volatile religions.

I get that Tomber has chosen to personally subscribe to the Christian faith, and as such must necessarily believe that Christianity, as stated, is the one true religion, and the only right religion to boot. Jewish people believe the same thing (they predate Christianity but a few thousand years), and the younger Islam religion also believes this. It begs the question of who is correct? But, that question aside, the belief in a supreme religion is the source of all of these ages of war. Actions like this one, quantify that truth in a very modern context. This is a very violent expression of Christianity that is not universal among Christians, just as terrorist cells are not universal among Muslims. But they are the same kind of action, and that kind of religious zeal is the same. If anything, Tomber, you might consider the violent Muslim extremists to be a bit more zealous and true to their faith than most Christians. Of course, some Christians also kill abortion doctors and gays, so the Muslims don't have a totally exclusive hand on extremism.

Personally, I question the motives of this man organizing the book burning. I do not think it comes from a religious place, I believe it comes from a place of nationalist pride, racism, and bigotry. There is a difference between religious zeal and ignorant bigotry - unfortunately one can easily look like the other, depending on who is looking. Jesus also said those that live by the sword die by the sword, and that if a man strikes one cheek, you should turn the other towards him. His words made it clear that a person should be filled with spiritual fervor, but not be violent. All the talk of slaying the non-religious was in the Tanakh, not the new testament. Leviticus itself is part of the volumes of Jewish law - hint, the people that wrote that book do not consider Christianity to be the supreme religion. Plus, those verses are part of the oldest portion of the Tanakh are are intended to be read and interpreted as hieroglyphs, not taken literally in a fundamentally different cultural (that is, non-Egyptian) context. This is a practice held over from the Egyptian roots of Judaism - Egyptians ALSO taught their complex religion(s) to be the supreme way to worship deities.

Virtually every religion teaches that their way is the only/best way. Every one of them can somehow justify this internally. So, are we picking sides based on... what, historical facts? Faith? Points of some kind? Age?

The Egyptian book of the dead supposedly was dictated by oracles through whom the Gods themselves spoke. Moses got his books straight from the horses mouth as well, so it goes. The new testament is made up of letters from Jesus' buddies, and maybe not even the actual apostles. I don't even know the origins of the Quran but if I'm not entirely mistaken they are also written mostly be Muhammad and his friends.

So this man wants to hold a Quran burning, because like the Muslims, he believes other religions (particularly Islam in this case) to be inferior as a sign of religious zeal. Except he isn't burning other religions' holy books as well, now is he? So, this isn't about his religious superiority at all, it is specifically about his own view on the specific inferiority of Islam in particular - and, I'll warrant, all non-Christian middle easterners, but I won't peg that assumption on him without some kind of proof. We can only assume he indicates specifically Muslim middle easterners.

His ignorance, and that of all peoples who believe their religion is the supreme religion, or that any group of people is somehow inferior (they're the same thing, one is just more generalized), is a disease in the world. It spreads, it festers, it causes decay, it turns the Body of humanity on itself - just like an autoimmune disease making the body attack itself. Pockets of localized cancers crop up here and there, it is detrimental to all of the collective systems of the great human Body.

This seems to be in response to the suggestion of building the Islamic center over the site of the twin towers. There has been a lot of uproar about this, and not just from this one extremist. Personally I think that a center for religious communion and tolerance is a better idea - but of course, it can be difficult to keep all these different ignorance extremists from killing one another when you put them all in a room together.

Eugh.