Posted on 06/04/2002 1:18:47 PM PDT by thatcher
Hear, hear! I second that motion.
LOL! Sounds like a re-vamped social security promise and just as empty.
Islam needs a Martin Luther(reformer) and Jesus(Truth) too!Nearly all the really bloodthirsty stuff in the Bible is in the Old Testament, something conveniently ignored by apologists for the bloodthirsty and otherwise retrograde aspects of Islam. Not always smoothly, the West has managed to progress with Christian religion and an overall tolerance of other religions.
So the proof of the pudding is in the eating: Christian religious nuts are a small minority, and Christianity is hardly ever blamed for social or political problems in the West, while Islamic radicals are such a large minority, perhaps even a majority of Moslems in some nations, that, ipso facto, Islam is a problem just by the way it is practised by its followers.
I have pointed out in various forums that Islam was constructed in deliberate opposition to Christianity just at the point when the Church was working out (as a result of the Christological controversies which only us Eastern Orthodox really seem to understand anymore) the modern notion of person. The conception of person which all of Christendom, including its secularist post-Enlightenment Western decay, accepts, and on which modern democracy (as opposed to the Athenian all land-owning men are created equal version) depends is explicitly rejected by Islam.
The Islamic dicta "Allah has no image" and "Allah has no son" set Islam in direct opposition to the "high anthropology" of Christendom, which sees each human being as created in God's image, and worthy of God sending His Son on a rescue mission in which He passed through death to destroy death. Islam is thus also in direct opposition to the diminished version of Christian anthropology (I use the word in the theological sense) held by the American Founders, "All men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..."
Plainly Christianity is not necessary to a functioning modern democracy: Hindu India, and (once humbled by American military might) Shinto/Buddhist Japan do very well. However, Hinduism, Shinto and Buddhism are merely non-Christian religions, not, like Islam anti-Christian religions.
On the other hand, the author argues that Islam "negates free-will" because it has a strict moral code. This is a silly position. He might also note that although Islam lowered the status of women in the Christian lands it conquered, it did (despite having a rapist for a "prophet") represent an improvement in the status of women over what was found among the heathen Arabs which it initially attracted. (Let us be just in our criticism of our enemies.)
Exactly, the point of the OT is to show that mankind cannot achieve salvation, paradise on earth or any other such thing by his own means. It will soon fall to heresy or ruthless oppression.
that Martin Luther in the post Christ(AD) world...is the most important individual--career!
Especially for America--Americans.
"Similar to Calvin, Luther believed that God had ordained both church and state as separate, but legitimate, spheres. Luther thought of these two basic institutions as each wielding its own sword: the church, the sword of church discipline; the state, the sword of civil force. As long as each tended its respective business, all would work well. Luther's construction, however, does not resolve many of the modern issues stemming from entanglement and confusion between the spheres. Luther... did not believe---that the church had a right to impose its belief on unbelievers or the state. He is purported to have quipped that he would rather have a "competent turk rule than an incompetent Christian."
We do legislate personal morality, as drug laws, civil rights laws, and the Sunday closing laws, dry counties, age of consent statutes, anti-smoking regulations, and sodomy laws found in some jurisdictions indicate. To be sure, we try to have reasons that are more easily defended against libertarian arguments, but our parents and grandparents weren't so scrupulous about evading libertarian censure. A recognition that legislated morality is part of our heritage too would have made for a more balanced article. Our ancestors had more in common with Muslims than we would like to think, and we ourselves confronted with some new abomination would be likely to ban it first and ask questions later.
LOL! I never count on mass-murdering lunatics expressing themselves felicitously.
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