Over 1 Billion Muslims and Growing

Why is the west freer and more technologically advanced than the Muslim world? Is it because of Christianity? No.

Its because we weakened religion. Religion is very dangerous. When one recieves thier mandates from high and mighty invisible spooks in heaven that are open to translation, then who can reason with such folks?

The west is advanced because our socieities gave up religon and silly superstition as guideposts for govornance, law, and morality, and instead, began to look more towards the human race than obscure ancient texts as models for change.

The Muslim world has not embraced a seperation of church and state, so they are backwards. Not because of the way thier religion is, but in the way it is embraced as all encompassing. They contionue to allow thier societies to be run and govornend by ridiculous holy superstition.

If the christians were still in power, like during the middle ages, wed be in the same boat. We once were. But reason, logic, and progress destroyed the political power of the Church and the whole divine right of kings. Wester society evolved, islam still holds thier own countries back.

Yes, Islam is the enemy, yes, 1 billion enemies of the west exist on the planet. because Muslims continue to support and back these superstitous religous societies, instead of demanding a non religous govornment not govorned by laws of some non existant god. Until Muslims themselves demand a religous free secular society where they can practice thier ridiculous superstitions in private, and not have thier countries govorned by them, terrorism and idiot extremism will continue to thrive.

And I beg to differ, TC, that America was built on Christian ideals. Tolerance, seperation of church and state, are NOT Christian ideals, they were Greek and Roman ideals. We were based upon the classical teachings of Grecco Roman philosphers who were the first to suggest that rulership by divine writ was silly. It was those Grecco Roman philosophers who decided gods were a figment of mans imagination, and only true progress could continue when epople stopped worring about invisible beings in the skies and worried more about thier fellow man.

1 Billon Muslims are my enemy. 800 Million Christians are also mine enemy. 30 Million Jews are mine enemy. Anyone who supports superstition as a directive for society is mine enemy.

Yup, I got a #load of enemies. Hence my seconday title: paranoid in Seattle.

Tabari IX:69 �Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah�s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in the Cause of Allah. Killing him is a small matter to us.�

This is just fantastic. Arabs are the superiors being on this planet and should kill everyone until they "submit". Now do you see why I call your Allah an intolerant, inconsistant diety? Remember that killing the unbeliever is "no small matter".

Evil elf, you have just nailed the reason that arabs are far behind the western world as far as science, arts, technology, and pure reasoning. We don't listen to our "preacher" and take them seriously. These backwards countries still take the lesson of their "clerics" to heart. It is very disturbing that they want to dominate the planet with this horsecrap religon they are blinded by.

Qur�an 2:193 �Fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief) and religion is only for Allah. But if they cease/desist, let there be no hostility except against infidel disbelievers.� --

Another grand quote from the Quran with orders to dominate the planet. Yes the Quran is poison and its followers are hostile to every other culture on this planet. It needs to be destroyed.

Ive always considered islam to be little more than a cultural virus for Arab culture. Muslims, no matter where they are, often are told to adopt Arabic dress, read the Koran in Arabic, ect.

Similar to the way the Roman Catholic church was used to spread Latin and some Roman cultural aspects.

It should also be noted they were amongst the first people to massively enslave Africans. The Spaniards, who had endured 700 years of Moorish occupation, got the idea for black slaves from the Moors themselves.

To this day, we still see Arabs in North Africa capturing black women and children and using them as slaves.

Peaceful religon my ass. Tolerant? hell no. they are quite like the medieval Christians were.

I also remeber how no Saudis and non Arabs were treated in saudi Arabia. Racist bastards. They treated fellow muslims who werent Arab, who were from Afghanistan, pakistan, the Philipines, and Africa, as subhuman trash, and convicted and executed the for crimes most Arabs were simply slapped on the wrist for.

dlbrandt,

Thanks for the reply, I read it all.

Originally posted by dlbrandt
If you didn't care about "hurting Jesus" and so you wanted to continue to sin, say stealing to provide for yourself, my first thought is, you have to ask youself if you really accepted Christ as Savior and Lord. After that I would say if you are sure of your decision for Christ, then you need to rely on Him to provide. Then each individual is diiferent, maybe instead of having a job, you stole things to get what you wanted. So the first thing God tell you to do is get a job and stop stealing. ..... If he has to face the rest of his life in prison, God put him there to learn and take responsibility for his actions. He also has him there to be an example to the others in prison and help them when called upon.

So this is how Christians generally accept how it "works." But what I really asked is:- If this Christian who really accepted Christ could just not hold a lawful life (rape murder theft for many, many years), and did not get punished on Earth but died suddenly and painlessly during his 500th crime; he was promising himself to go straight too, because he felt more and more regret. So before the Holy Spirit could fully cleanse his spirit. Would this Christian still definitely go to Heaven, or is there a Judgement on him?

You asked what sin is, there are the 10 Commandments. Also loving the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strenghth(choosing to make Him first in your life and daily decisions about everything.) Loving and praying for your enemies. And "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". That's a big one because it's proactive not reactive.

Okay, but the part about loving with your heart etc, isn't really about sin. Is there anything other than the 10 commandments actually written down in the Bible? When it says not to kill. It is a bit vague because sometimes you might have to kill to protect youself.

Then about "do unto others." There are many punishments to use on criminals in the OT, isn't there a conflict in that those punishments involve things that you wouldn't want done to yourself? Or perhaps the NT over-rules those particular punishments?

He is going to share ALL of His creation with us. That means someday we will be able to travel throughout the entire universe. Maybe He'll have us in charge of a certain quadrant of the universe. And think about this, what if there is more besides this universe that we can't even imagine or comprehend. Someday we'll get in on that too.

How do you know that he will, and that it won't be something completely different (Heaven)? I ask because that detail is not in the Bible, afaik. I mean, you say you get "feelings" from the Holy Spirit about right and wrong, do you get some about this too?

Thanks again.

A believer who continues to sin does face judgement yet from God. It's not a judgement from God deciding his salvation but it's about what he's done with his life. Believers have rewards that we will get for service to Christ. He faces loss of reward.

As far as what is sin. Yah there are times we could be forced to kill. I think, since God knows your thoughts and motives these would come into play on this. But for a christian to kill to further the advancement of christianity, this is sin. God has us further His kingdom through us getting saved and reaching out to others.

The part about what we will do in heaven is from talking with God. While heaven is a specific place, when eternity does begin and we can see God face to face and live with Him, we will have access to heaven but also all of what he has or will create.

Talking with God is a continual anytime of the day life. I have an earthly father. Lets say he wanted me to do certain things, but I never talked or listened to him. I could not know what he thought or who he is if we didn't talk(pray). This is how we become closer to God and understand His will for our life, communication. We can initiate the talking or He can. My goal is to be so close to God(Communication wise for now) that
it's as if we would be literally walking side be side and .

I hope this answers questions.

Originally posted by dlbrandt
A believer who continues to sin does face judgement yet from God. It's not a judgement from God deciding his salvation but it's about what he's done with his life. Believers have rewards that we will get for service to Christ. He faces loss of reward.

Okay, this is saying that only Christians (who are physically baptized in church?) go to Heaven (which you say has different rewards), right? I wanted to get this clear, because it's one answer that's not easy to get from many Christians, when I ask this.

I don't know why God would let an unjust murderer (who happens to be Christian, as in the hypothetical example we considered) go straight into Heaven; yet a harmless non-Christian (living a life of Christian-like qualities) that did not "accept" Jesus, would definitely go to Hell.

See my view?

The part about what we will do in heaven is from talking with God. While heaven is a specific place, when eternity does begin and we can see God face to face and live with Him, we will have access to heaven but also all of what he has or will create.

Talking with God is a continual anytime of the day life. I have an earthly father. Lets say he wanted me to do certain things, but I never talked or listened to him. I could not know what he thought or who he is if we didn't talk(pray). This is how we become closer to God and understand His will for our life, communication. We can initiate the talking or He can. My goal is to be so close to God(Communication wise for now) that
it's as if we would be literally walking side be side and .

Okay, it's just that I don't see how you can be sure of these things without physical evidence (being in the Gospel or Torah). I don't understand how you differentiate between things you imagine yourself (theories) and what you believe the Holy Spirit says to you. To emphasize this:- I would have thought that the Holy Spirit tells everyone the same thing about Heaven etc. but then why do Christians visualise it differently?

mithras

"Visualizing" the afterlife (heaven, paradise, whatever you want to call it) is as frivolous and arrogant as "visualizing" God - which you and I happen to agree on.

Anyone can say anything about the afterlife...and odds are, to an individual, when they get there they will say "Wow! I didn't even consider this!"

mithras,

I know you understand that there are many different "sects" of Christianity and that when you pick one individual you get answers from one of those sects. Just as when I get my answers from you concerning Islam, I know full well there are various sects that would argue some of the answers you give me.

Please keep that in mind when drawing your "conclusions"...lol.

[edit on 7-3-2004 by Valhall]

Originally posted by mithras

Okay, this is saying that only Christians (who are physically baptized in church?) go to Heaven (which you say has different rewards), right? I wanted to get this clear, because it's one answer that's not easy to get from many Christians, when I ask this.

I don't know why God would let an unjust murderer (who happens to be Christian, as in the hypothetical example we considered) go straight into Heaven; yet a harmless non-Christian (living a life of Christian-like qualities) that did not "accept" Jesus, would definitely go to Hell.

See my view?

Yes I see your point. As far as baptism. It is an outward sign of an inward condition. Water baptism has never saved a christian. It's something one chooses to do publicly to let everyone know that they are identifying themselves with Jesus. A baby that gets baptized at say a month old then grows up choosing to reject and not believe in Jesus is "lost" and yes at death would not enter heaven. What saves a christian is accepting the fact that I am a sinner in need of a savior. The Savior God provided is Jesus Christ. He(Jesus) took that persons sin upon Himself and took the blows of all God's wrath that God ,as a God of justice must do. He had to judge sin. God judged and punished all and every sin when it was upon Christ on the cross.

Now I accept the fact that I can't earn my salvation. I am saved by believing in the completed work of Christ as payment. I am asked to believe this by faith.

In the example we were talking about the murderer. I believe that a person who murdered say 7 times then comes to accept Christ could not continue for anther 493 murders. That person did not truly accept Christ. They may have done the actions thinking they have fooled God and made themselves feel better. But if they continued murdering it was false.

People "rate sins" I consider someone who murdered worse than me stealing a candy bar. God doesn't "rate" sins. No matter what sin a person committed, it has seperated them from God. The way back for both is Jesus Christ.



Okay, it's just that I don't see how you can be sure of these things without physical evidence (being in the Gospel or Torah). I don't understand how you differentiate between things you imagine yourself (theories) and what you believe the Holy Spirit says to you. To emphasize this:- I would have thought that the Holy Spirit tells everyone the same thing about Heaven etc. but then why do Christians visualise it differently?


I'm a dad and I have a house with rooms. I have 4 kids. We all live in the same house. I can go into any room of my house. My kids know they can too. I haven't locked a room and told them you don't ever go in that room. I may say when you go in that room make sure you don't break the antique vase. But I don't forbid entrance.

God tells us we are His children after accepting Christ. Dad's share what they have with their children. Everything my heavenly Dad(God) has made I get to see. Now do I know that God has made something beside heaven and the universe, no. It's conjecture, that's why I say "What if" He has something other than this universe and heaven.

I also want to send you a huge compliment. Even though we don't agree on certain things you have always treated me nice. That is not the case with some others. They need to learn how to state their point, leave it at that and move on without swearing or namecalling or insulting.

Originally posted by mithras
To emphasize this:- I would have thought that the Holy Spirit tells everyone the same thing about Heaven etc. but then why do Christians visualise it differently?

As I've already pointed out to you in another thread - there are also those within Islam who visualise the Divine Nature differently.

Valhall is right. Don't put all Christians in one category.

Originally posted by Valhall
mithras,

I know you understand that there are many different "sects" of Christianity and that when you pick one individual you get answers from one of those sects. Just as when I get my answers from you concerning Islam, I know full well there are various sects that would argue some of the answers you give me.

Please keep that in mind when drawing your "conclusions"...lol.

Heh, my "conclusions."

I was well aware that there are different denominations, but I'm talking of Christians from the same denomination who say different things.

Again. You have the same diversity within Islam.
There are different sects within Shia, Sunni, etc. Christianity is set up pretty much the same way.

Shia Islam is the interesting one. Ask a Shia a question in one country and you may get an entirely different answer in another.

Thanks for the quick reply,

Woo, this was tricky to sort out my reply from yours

Originally posted by dlbrandt
Yes I see your point. As far as baptism. It is an outward sign of an inward condition. Water baptism has never saved a christian.

Right, there's a definite inner acceptance, a state of mind which triggers it. So I assume you technically don't need a church or priest to be Christian, then.

I also want to send you a huge compliment. Even though we don't agree on certain things you have always treated me nice.

You've been replying with full posts, openly and clearly, which I thank you again for.

Valhall,

Originally posted by Valhall
"Visualizing" the afterlife (heaven, paradise, whatever you want to call it) is as frivolous and arrogant as "visualizing" God - which you and I happen to agree on.

Anyone can say anything about the afterlife...and odds are, to an individual, when they get there they will say "Wow! I didn't even consider this!"

Just a moment, I didn't agree with that.

Muslims cannot fully visualize the Afterlife, only that things in it will be good or bad beyond our imagination. The Sunnah and Qur'anic descriptions are mostly figurative in order to relate pain and pleasure. What is related (non-figuratively) in the Qur'an is "imaginable," but what is not is then pointless to try to imagine. Idle talk and imagination, while permitted, is not encouraged by Allah.

Allah never said anything about visualising Heaven is like being arrogant, to my knowledge at least; probably because it is something we cannot help. Certainly deciding on His own nature is seen as arrogant.

Before, you were telling me how not to discuss Jesus against what you believe and I explained that I was only answering on-topic. Then to not make any preconceptions about what you say, which as I explained I wasn't doing. You accepted my explanations? Why now do you appear to be definitely telling me that I agree on something I don't?

Are you implying that I think dlbrandt is arrogant or unreasonable to visualise Heaven (or even God)? I've already stated (in previous post) everyone naturally tries to imagine the unknown. I was merely enquiring whether he thinks the source of his visualisation of Heaven was his own self or from the Holy Ghost.

Originally posted by Leveller
As I've already pointed out to you in another thread - there are also those within Islam who visualise the Divine Nature differently.

And as I have pointed to you, I don't consider them Muslim if they don't follow the Qur'an. Muslims cannot visualise Allah, if a Muslim thinks he can then, in my opinion, he is not believing the Qur'an. We've been through this before, anyway.

You maybe misunderstood my intention in asking dlbrandt, I was not grouping anyone but trying to understand why something was so.

No, I imply that **I** feel it is frivolous to try to describe anything that is of the mysteries of God. And I also believe it to be arrogant to think one can state to another what both God and the afterlife is "like" (i.e. in a physical and/or anthropomorphic manner). I think that certain aspects - not tangible - of God can be "talked of", but not defined or described. From this I mean that His grace and mercy can be spoke of - but never defined or fully described. I tend to fall on infinite - but then God created that as well, so it still feels like I'm trying to describe something of which I only know OF in some limited degree. (and even the degree I am of aware of as witnessed in my personal life and others' lives, as well as in the gospel, is more than I could attempt to define.)

The only statement I was alluding to that I thought we did agree on was that it would be arrogant to attempt to describe God Himself, it was not in reference to the afterlife. I was not trying to put any words into your mouth, but I believe I may have misunderstood something in the various threads I have been reading today. Along with at least one statement from the link you gave me "There is nothing like Him, and it is impossible to imagine or conceive Him". So pardon my misunderstanding...keep me straight.

Originally posted by mithras
Thanks for the quick reply,

Woo, this was tricky to sort out my reply from yours

[ So I assume you technically don't need a church or priest to be Christian, then.

I know I haven't learned how to pull in a quote and then and my stuff and make it easily readable. Seems like it turns out different every time.

No you don't need a church or priest or pastor. The reason you would want to go to church is to find other christians to get to know and trust. Also if you attend a church there are opportunities to serve God there that you wouldn't have if you didn't attend. But you can and should also serve God outside of the church building.

Originally posted by mithras

I don't know why God would let an unjust murderer (who happens to be Christian, as in the hypothetical example we considered) go straight into Heaven; yet a harmless non-Christian (living a life of Christian-like qualities) that did not "accept" Jesus, would definitely go to Hell.

See my view?

Christ states that if you are to live by the law - the Mosaic law - you must live by every dot and tiddle. If you are to work toward salvation under the law, no transgression may be committed. So we need not get into exaggerated crimes such as murder, a simple lie will do. Hence, with the exception of him , all fall short of the glory of God. The law perpetuates spiritual death. That is why Christ came - not to destroy the law, but to support it with faith that brings about spiritual eternal life. Jesus did nothing to remove the law, he did everything to assist us in our shortfallings as we strive under the law.

When I state "we are all born into sin" - I mean that as we are born into a sinful nature in a sinful world. That does not mean a child is born sinning. Christ stated he wanted all of us to come to the Father as children.