1. Are you seriously saying you don't BELIEVE the Boston Marathon incident happened? Or the soldier hacked to death in the streets of London? Or 9/11? Or Muslim acts of terrorism too numerous to mention?
Originally Posted by: texaspackerbacker
This is *exactly* the point of the original post. To generalize from a few hundred incidents to a blanket statement about billions of people is *FUCKING SHODDY QUANTITATIVE THINKING*.
2. Whatever the total number of Muslims worldwide is - I've read 600 million and 1.5 billion, it is beyond dispute that the vast majority of them have as a matter of course, set themselves up as the enemy of America - sympathizing/empathizing with the actual perpetrators of the terrorist acts. It's simply their way of life - which is why I refer to them as barbarous and backward. Nobody said anything about billions all congregating in one place for a big hate convention hahaha.
Muslims and individual choice hahahaha - that's the stuff oxymorons are made of. You start having individualized thoughts, much less expressing them in the Muslim world and you're lucky if you just lose body parts - can you say barbarism/backward?
So you are saying that Muslims located in Texas or Iowa or New York or Seattle or a hundred thousand other places in the world have to worry about losing body parts? Good grief.
The point is, again, that when you make blanket statements like "it's their way of life", you aren't just lumping the whackos of Al-Queda, Iran, etc. together, you're lumping them with hundreds of millions of people who aren't located in any of those places.
How many Muslims live in the United States? Somewhere between 5 and 8 million. If you truly think that they all celebrate or even "sympathize" with terrorists, you are profoundly ignorant.
I'm not a fan of the Muslim religion. I'm a fundie Christian, after all. I don't think all religions are equivalent. I think some of Mohammed's teachings are whacked. Mohammed to me was just a man. Jesus to me *is* more than a man.
But the fact that Muslims follow Mohammed doesn't make them terrorists, or even whacked. People are more complex than that.
I assume the last part of your reply was basically a Jesus v. Mohammed comparison. The Bible, however - the New Testament - refers to Jesus returning and vanquishing the enemies rather violently. And "going Old Testament" is not an invalid thing either if the enemy makes it necessary.
Ah, but that's Jesus's job, not ours. We aren't the ones who are going to be on the throne doing the vanquishing. He is.
And if He thinks we think ourselves superior enough to do His job, there's a good chance He might vanquish us right along with them.
And every time we say "the enemy makes it necessary", The Enemy cheers us closer to the precipice.
Demonizing a quarter to a third of the world's population is not a recipe for solving problems. Demonizing 3-5% of the nation's population is not a recipe for social order. Demonizing that many people just makes the real bastards the winners.
Frankly, if Americans were as serious about terrorism as we claim to be, we'd stop worrying about whether that swarthy bearded fellow next to us in the airport lounge is a terrorist or not and yammering about how the TSA "protects us" and how "air travel is a privilege", and we'd take all that imperial power at our fingertips and seriously hammer the states that sponsor terrorism.
The states that hide behind their Islam and do everything they can to convince people like you that the problem is Islam when all it is barbarism.
You do a good job of trying to apply transference to the discussion, but this isn't about Christians. We aren't out there committing almost daily acts of terrorism, and more importantly, we did not set up ourselves as the enemy of another rather large group of people. Most Christians probably are like you, and in fact do turn the other cheek. Even the Crusader assholes such as myself tend to think positive toward individuals of the Muslim persuasion, at least until demonstrated otherwise. It ain't that way among Muslims, however. Among them, the percentages are essentially reversed - only a tiny tiny number of nice people like you, and a huge percentage of zealots who support the terrorists just like we support the Packers.
There are daily acts of lots of horrible things. In a world of several billion people, there are going to be. That doesn't make everyone horrible.
I thank you for again illustrating the point of my original post: when we make broad claims about "everyone" or "almost all" or whatever, we're making really big empirical claims. And we're making them based on small samples that tend to many, many principles of careful empirical thinking.
And, IMO, in so doing, we are committing some of the very idolatry -- namely, the idolatry of our own "human" powers of reason -- that Jesus warns us against again and again. We're claiming to be able to know more about our fellow human beings, and the quality of their sinfulness, than we have the ability to know.
And, after all, isn't that where bigotry comes from in the end? Our ignorance of the degree of our own ignorance?
I'm not sure what you mean by "transference" here. But how is the Christian's belief *not* about that Christian? Recall Romans 12. Which is more important for us? Asserting moral superiority over those who throw bombs? Deciding who should be our enemy? Applying judgmental labels to billions of people we have never met or had a chance to have a single internet exchange with?
Or is it something else?
Is this *fair*? I don't know. Is this holding Christians to a higher standard? Damn straight it is.
IMO, a central "fact" of my Christian belief is my personal recognition that I am far, far, closer to those I would label barbarians than I am to Jesus, and that means I should be worrying about them far less and the state of my own soul far more.
Maybe the percentage of "evil Muslims" is greater than the percentage of "evil Christians." But the reality is that man is not doomed to hell because he is evil, but because he is fallen, because in the sin of his self-idolatry he assumes he can determine what only God can determine.
And, IMO, dealing with our fallenness is far, far more important than dealing with evil. The point of turning the other cheek (which, alas, I'm pretty damn bad at) is not to assume responsibility for the blow that is about to hit it. The point of turning the other cheek is to help remember that *the other guy* is
never my biggest enemy.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)