US Gen. Petraeus Decries "Burn A Koran Day"

[General Zod]

. . . So it is a mere matter of a misunderstood "My enemy's enemy," as Kanastrous said. Thank you. I never thought that anyone would admit as much.

I'm sure it couldn't possibly be a simple matter of recognizing that minority groups deserve the same rights under the law as the group that's in power. Which, you know, happen to be Christians.

[Bakustra]

This is done because you are a pinhead.

MIght you have mixed up the pronouns? "You" is the second person. The first person is "I".

I see no discrepancy. Indeed, such schoolyard responses only serve as additional symptoms of pinheadedness.

I, not being the sort of person who wishes to make enemies wherever I go, do not expound about how I feel that most "criticism" of Christianity on this board is extraordinarily weak. "Sheer vitriol" is pretty hilarious when you go on to declare how Islam is "objectively more violent, intolerant, and retrograde" without evidence.

Funny that evidence has already been posted earlier in this same thread. Or did I miss your refuting it?

The Qu'ran, curiously enough, is not Islam. Unless you wish to argue that Christianity is genocidal because of the book of Joshua?

But let me say that most people here live in Christian-dominated societies, wherein intolerance of Muslims is common. So I don't see why atheistic, agnostic, or liberal Christian individuals must therefore contribute to said intolerance rather than acting to counteract it, especially since they face intolerance as well. I mean, it's kinda like how there's overlap between feminists, anti-racists, and gay rights people. It's almost as if they dislike oppression and inequality for philosophical reasons, rather than pure self-interest.

. . . So it is a mere matter of a misunderstood "My enemy's enemy," as Kanastrous said. Thank you. I never thought that anyone would admit as much.

I see that you are an eminently, grotesquely, horribly selfish and bigoted individual. If I were a Christian, I might be inclined to comment on how I forgive you and will pray for your betterment. Not being so, I cheerfully invite you to go jump in a lake. I'm not sure why it's "misunderstood", (or where you got that from, exactly) unless you seriously believe that Muslims are seeking to create a repressive theocracy in the west. In that case, I feel that I might as well just insult you from this point on, as if that is the case you are too disconnected from reality to really talk to.

I have a firm opinion that most dislike of Muslims is based on unconscious xenophobia, and that your "high-minded" dislike is pure rationalization.

Do feel entitled to it. In the Western world, divergence of opinion is not only tolerated, but celebrated.

An attempt at snide commentary that only reveals your bigotry. My invitation remains.

[Akhlut]

Do you have anything to back up the statement "substantially more"?

Ossus quoted statistics listed by the "Skeptic's Annotated" sites comparing the amounts of violence and intolerance in the Bible and the Koran, respectively. The numbers for the Koran, which, as noted, is a much shorter book, were substantially higher.

All right, so the Koran has more religious bullshit vis a vis hate/intolerance than the Bible per page/verse.

That's all well and good except that it does absolutely jack and shit to rebut my other, more salient point: humans are violent monsters in general and religion is not going to either moderate it or encourage it to a great degree among a large sample of humans.

[Kanastrous]

I'm not sure that extra-Quranic commentaries count. Seems it's really the contents of the Suras themselves that's at issue, yes?

[Darth Yan]

hoth, did you even read that post. you obviously have no clue about islam. and hadiths sometimes explain the quran. in fact they are routinely cited as legitimate evidence. and the surah's still back up my point.

[Darth Hoth]

*SNIP Apologetics*

And that proves what? You can cherry pick "nice" quotes from the Bible as well and ignore the killdeath ones.

In short, don't kill civillians, try to make peace if possible, and only go hardcore if they prove negotiations won't work. In every old testemant war, it was pretty much the opposite. and that's not even going into Paul's sexism, the occasional racist comment made by jesus, and the end times.

Bwahahah. Paul, who thought that men and women had equal right to divorce and prohibited polygyny and sexual abuse of female slaves, was more sexist than the Koran? As for "End times" - There is such a thing as Jahannam, as well.

Note that this is not to be read as an endorsement of Biblical morality or the Bible in general. But saying that it is worse than the Koran is not plausible.

[Master of Ossus]

Because Americans view it as a mosque and if they attempt to stop it for that reason they are sending a message. It is the American perception and action is that matters for wheter or not it sends a message of persecution.

It would be like people attacking turbaned individuals as an expression of violence against Muslims, even though Sikhs are more likely to wear turbans.

According to Wikipedia, as late as August 2010 the building's official website listed it as a "mosque." The reference was later removed only because, in the words of the the imam's wife (who herself plays a role in the planned activities and the organization) the terminology allows them to exclude some Muslims. "You can’t stop anyone who is a Muslim despite his religious ideology from entering the mosque and staying there,” said Imam Rauf’s wife and partner, Daisy Khan, who runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, from an office housed on the Upper West Side’s famed Riverside Church. “With a prayer space, we can control who gets to use it."

Thus, while the advocates of the building themselves don't describe it as a "mosque," that really has nothing to do with the intent of the space that they're trying to build. Characterizing it as a "mosque" seems pretty fair, given that position.

Arabs are also culturally more similar to each other than to other ethnic groups. Maybe there is a trend with that?

A fair analysis, but the later study that I linked to is broader based.

Or most islamic countries are poor and the ones that aren't are due to oil which massively distorts their economies. For example Norway spends alot less on research as a percentage of GDP than other Scandanavian countries:
http://www.nortrade.com/index?cmd=show_article&id=545

Norway is still spending over three times as much, as a percentage of GDP, on scientific research than any Islamic country. Moreover, Norway is producing more scientific output for what it spends, whereas that does not appear to be true in Islamic countries for which I have data on the issue (e.g., Turkey). I admit that there might be more factors than merely Islam, here, but given the very broad-based appearance of the trend, I still think it clear that there is an "Islam effect" that's influencing scientific development.

[Darth Hoth]

hoth, did you even read that post. you obviously have no clue about islam. and hadiths sometimes explain the quran. in fact they are routinely cited as legitimate evidence. and the surah's still back up my point.

Then you must also allow for the Talmud and Mishnah to explain away all the "nasty" stuff in the Old Testament. Otherwise it is a double standard.

All right, so the Koran has more religious bullshit vis a vis hate/intolerance than the Bible per page/verse.

That's all well and good except that it does absolutely jack and shit to rebut my other, more salient point: humans are violent monsters in general and religion is not going to either moderate it or encourage it to a great degree among a large sample of humans.

Was this something that I had disputed? No, it was not.

[Akhlut]

Norway is still spending over three times as much, as a percentage of GDP, on scientific research than any Islamic country. Moreover, Norway is producing more scientific output for what it spends, whereas that does not appear to be true in Islamic countries for which I have data on the issue (e.g., Turkey). I admit that there might be more factors than merely Islam, here, but given the very broad-based appearance of the trend, I still think it clear that there is an "Islam effect" that's influencing scientific development.

Norway's GDP (purchasing power parity, per CIA World factbook): $267 billion

Norway's population: 4.6 million

Turkey's GDP (purchasing power parity, per CIA World factbook): $874 billion

Turkey's population: 76.8 million

So, Turkey's GDP is just over 3.27 times larger than Norway's, but the population is over 16 times as large. I imagine that this population/GDP discrepancy is repeated all over the Muslim world, wherein the per capita cash differences are simply enormous as compared to many Western nations.

So, I imagine it isn't so much an "Islam effect" as a "poverty effect," and it just so happens that most nations where Islam is the predominant religion tend to have a shitload more poor people and where research is of less value than trying to afford infrastructure, medical care, or simple education.

[Akhlut]

All right, so the Koran has more religious bullshit vis a vis hate/intolerance than the Bible per page/verse.

That's all well and good except that it does absolutely jack and shit to rebut my other, more salient point: humans are violent monsters in general and religion is not going to either moderate it or encourage it to a great degree among a large sample of humans.

Was this something that I had disputed? No, it was not.

So will you then withdraw your complaint that Islam is more evil than [insert religion here], given that religions do not really moderate or encourage violence, seeing as people will rely on it when it seems beneficial to them and will seek other recourse when that seems more beneficial?

[Darth Hoth]

I see no discrepancy. Indeed, such schoolyard responses only serve as additional symptoms of pinheadedness.

Hilarious, that you attempt to claim high ground, when it was you who started it with the insults.

The Qu'ran, curiously enough, is not Islam. Unless you wish to argue that Christianity is genocidal because of the book of Joshua?

It is. The Bible clearly advocates genocide of Canaanites, Amorites and Amalekites, among others. Forget Joshua, this is in the Books of Moses themselves (especially Numbers). Even the Evangelical/inerrantist apologists do not deny this.

Fortunately for us, none of the nations it commanded genocide against (and to its credit, it was very specific that it was just those, and no others) exists anymore, so to a modern believer those passages are wholly irrelevant, to Christians and Jews both.

I see that you are an eminently, grotesquely, horribly selfish and bigoted individual. If I were a Christian, I might be inclined to comment on how I forgive you and will pray for your betterment. Not being so, I cheerfully invite you to go jump in a lake. I'm not sure why it's "misunderstood", (or where you got that from, exactly) unless you seriously believe that Muslims are seeking to create a repressive theocracy in the west. In that case, I feel that I might as well just insult you from this point on, as if that is the case you are too disconnected from reality to really talk to.

Hilarious! Just because I point out that Islam is a horrendously intolerant religion based on a horrendously intolerant book, I am a bigot!

Would you also call me a bigot if I said that Christianity and the Bible were intolerant? No, wait, I will do it right away:

I, Darth Hoth, hereby solemnly swear that it is my firm opinion that the Bible and Christianity are intolerant. They are less so than Islam, but saying so is damning them by faint praise.

Oh, no! I am now an anti-Islamic bigot and an anti-Christian bigot!

An attempt at snide commentary that only reveals your bigotry. My invitation remains.

I think you did not shout it out loud enough. Try ALLCAPS. Like this: "Bigot! Bigot! Darth Hoth is a BIGOT!

This is the sad approach of one who has no rational argument, but is reduced to attacking his opponent with smear words in lieu of reasoning.

[Darth Hoth]

So will you then withdraw your complaint that Islam is more evil than [insert religion here], given that religions do not really moderate or encourage violence, seeing as people will rely on it when it seems beneficial to them and will seek other recourse when that seems more beneficial?

I will not. That all religions (and secular ideologies, for that matter) can be abused to promote violence and intolerance does not mean that some are not also more inherently violent and intolerant than others. You are proposing a false dilemma between two extremes.

[Darth Yan]

this is what the new testement has to say of women

1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. Matthew

Jesus says that divorce is permissible when the wife is guilty of fornication. But what if the husband is unfaithful? Jesus doesn't seem to care about that. 5:32, 19:9
When Jesus' mother wants to see him, Jesus asks, "Who is my mother?" 12:47-49
Abandon your wife and children for Jesus and he'll give you a big reward. 19:29
"Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Why? Does God especially hate pregnant and nursing women? 24:19
Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who went to meet their bridegroom. 25:1
Mark

Jesus shows disrespect for his mother and family by asking, "Who is my mother, or my brethren?" when he is told that his family wants to speak with him. 3:31-34
Jesus will reward men who abandon their wives and families. 10:29-30
In the last days God will make things especially rough on pregnant women. 13:17
Luke

Even Mary had to be "purified" after giving birth to Jesus. Was she defiled by giving birth to the Son of God? 2:22
Males are holy to God, not females. 2:23
Peter and his partners (James and John) abandon their wives and children to follow Jesus. 5:11
Jesus, when told that his mother and brothers want to see him, ignores and insults them by saying that his mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. 8:20-21
Abandon your wife and family for Jesus and he'll give you a big reward. 18:29-30
John

Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to touch him because he hasn't yet ascended -- as if the touch of a woman would defile him and somehow prevent him from ascending into heaven. 20:17
Acts (None)

Romans

Paul explains that "the natural use" of women is to act as sexual objects for the pleasure of men. 1:27
"Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church."
The Revised Standard Version calls Phoebe a "deaconess", which would make would make her a church leader. If the RSV translation is correct, this verse contradicts the requirement that women not be permitted to teach and that they must be silent in church. (1 Cor.14:34-35, 1 Tim.2:11-12). 16:1
"Junia ... of note among the apostles"
Was there a woman apostle? That is how some interpret this verse and use it to justify a more active role for women in the church. 16:7
1 Corinthians

Paul would prefer that no one marry. but he says "to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife." 7:1-2
"Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife." 7:27
Paul says "the head of the woman is the man," meaning that the women are to be subordinate to men. 11:3
If a woman refuses to cover her head in church, then her her head must be shaved. 11:5-6
Men are made in the image of God; women in the image of men. Women were created from and for men. 11:7-9
Every women should have power on her head because of the angels. 11:10
Women are commanded by Paul to be silent in church and to be obedient to men. He further says that "if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in church." 14:34-35
2 Corinthians (None)

Galatians (None)

Ephesians

Wives must submit to their husbands "in every thing" as though they were Christ. "For the husband is the head of the wife." 5:22-24
Wives must reverence their husband. 5:33
Philippians (None)

Colossians

Wives, according to Paul, must submit themselves to their husbands. 3:18
1 Thessalonians (None)

2 Thessalonians (None)

1 Timothy

Women are to dress modestly, "with shamefacedness" -- "not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array." 2:9
"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." 2:11-12
Men are superior to women since Adam was made before, and sinned after, Eve. But even though women are inferior to men, they shouldn't be discouraged because they shall "be saved in childbearing." 2:14-15
"A bishop must be ... the husband of one wife." Apparently, it's OK for laymen to have several. 3:2
Real widows are "desolate" and pray "night and day." But those widows that experience pleasure are "dead while [they] live." 5:5-6
You should help a widow only if she 1) is over 60 years old, 2) had only one husband, 3) has raised children, 4) has lodged strangers, 5) has "washed the saints feet," 6) has relieved the afflicted, and 7) has "diligently followed very good work." Otherwise, let them starve. "But the younger widows refuse [to help]: for ... they will marry; having damnation." Besides the young widows are always idle tattlers -- "busybodies, spreading things which they ought not." He adds that "some are already turned aside after Satan." 5:9-15
2 Timothy

In the last days, "silly women" who are "ever learning" will be "led away with divers lusts." 3:6-7
Titus

A bishop should have only one wife. I guess it's OK for laymen to have several. 1:6-7
"Teach the young women to be ... obedient to their own husbands." 2:4-5
Philemon (None)

Hebrews (None)

James (None)

1 Peter

Peter orders all wives to be "in subjection" to their husbands. 3:1
Wives are to use "chaste conversation, coupled with fear." They are not to braid their hair, wear gold, or put on any "apparel." They are to do these things in imitation of the "holy" women of the Old testament who were "in subjection to their won husbands: even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord." 3:2-6
In relation to her husband, the wife is "the weaker vessel." 3:7
2 Peter

Lot, who in Gen.19:8 offers his two virgin daughters to a crowd of angel rapers and later (19:30-38) impregnates them, was a "righteous man." 2:8
1 John

John writes to the men (fathers) only. Women (mothers?) are not important enough to address. 2:13-14
2 John (None)

3 John (None)

Jude (None)

Revelation

Jezebel (whom God had thrown off a wall, trampled by horses, and eaten by dogs [2 Kg.9:33-37]) is further reviled by John, saying "that woman Jezebel" taught and seduced God's "servants to commit fornication." 2:20
Jesus will "cast her [Jezebel] into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her." 2:22
Only 144,000 celibate men will be saved. (Those who were not "defiled with women.") 14:1-4
Drinking the wine of her fornication. 14:8
The great whore has "committed fornication" with all the kings on earth. Everyone else is "drunk with the wine of her fornication." She sits on a scarlet colored beast with the usual 7 heads and 10 horns. She carries a cup full of the "filthiness of her abominations" and has a big sign on her forehead saying: "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth." You'll know her when you see her. 17:1-5
"And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs." 17:6
"All nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her." 18:3
The "great whore" corrupted the earth with her fornication. 19:2

to quote the great and mighty darth wong

Timothy 2:11-14 (NIV): A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

The subject of Bible misogyny is one upon which voluminous texts have been written, and any contribution I could make here would be a mere drop in the ocean. However, I would like to point out that the Bible's negative messages on women go beyond the obvious, such as Paul's famous "wives, submit to your husbands" line in Ephesians 5:23, or the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians 14:34 (NIV): "women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says."

1 Peter 3:5-6 (NIV): For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master.

Of course, not everyone admits that Paul was a misogynist. Some have even gone so far as to suggest the opposite: that Paul actively promoted female equality! They base this on Galatians 3:23: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus". However, they are guilty of ignoring the context in which the statement was made; he was not trying to convince anyone to change the status of women, non-Jews, or slaves. He was merely listing pairs of contrasting status (Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female), and including them all as potential Christians despite differences in status which he had no desire to change. He was speaking in a strictly non-Earthly sense, of the fact that everyone can be a Christian no matter how high or low his or her status (to quote the Borg from Star Trek, "you will all be assimilated"). It doesn't mean that he thought women should be considered the equals of men here on Earth, particularly since he explicitly and unequivocally instructed women to be subservient to men in his other writings.

As an aside, Paul's defenders demonstrate the basic problem with Biblical fundamentalism. Fundamentalists claim that the process of reading the Bible is not a subjective process, as if thoughts leap off the page into their minds. But the process of reading and interpreting language is always subjective. It is coloured by societal perceptions, and you will read what you want to read, particularly if you're willing to ignore inconvenient contradictory passages. That is why scientists and engineers use equations and numbers when they want to describe an idea in an unambiguous manner, and that is one of the reasons that Biblical fundamentalism and science will never meet. The methods of religion and theology bear no resemblance whatsoever to those of science, and they never will.
Actions speak louder than words, and are not subject to such pedantic interpretations. The actions of the Bible's holy figures are quite revealing indeed. What gender are the people in Heaven? God? Male. Jesus? Male. The angels who visited Lot? Male. And what of all the storied figures, such as Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon, Joshua, Samson, and Gideon? Hmmm ... male. Who came first? Adam, a male (Eve was created because he needed a "helper"). What about Jesus' 12 disciples? All male. The "Angel of the LORD" who runs around wreaking havoc, and who David saw poised over Jerusalem with sword in hand in 1 Chronicles 21? Male. In the Bible, females almost always hold positions of subservience; men take them at will and lord over them. From a modern perspective, we can clearly see that this is wrong, and we can rectify it. We might even argue that they simply "didn't know any better back then", and refrain from applying the values of that era to the modern era. But fundamentalists invariably hold the belief that where modern values and Biblical precedent clash, Biblical values must win, no matter how heinous they are. Therefore, fundamentalists tend to promote patriarchal models, and the Bible gives them a convenient excuse.

It would be nice if Biblical misogynism stopped at patriarchy, but unfortunately, this isn't the case. Another Biblical theme regarding women is that of property. All throughout the books of Joshua and Judges (and the rest of the Old Testament, for that matter), women are treated as property, to be traded, treated as war booty, offered up during negotiations, or sacrificed in order to protect men.

Numbers 31:14-18 (NIV): Moses was angry with the officers of the army--the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds--who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

In other words, kill all the boys, kill all the women, and rape all the little virgin girls. This is Moses talking, the man who's still held up today as a symbol of the Ten Commandments and of morality. In Judges, we saw a similar trend: women are "given" to men without their consent, or kidnapped against their will, all by the supposedly "righteous" Israelites.

Judges 21:12-22 (NIV): They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man ... So the Benjamites returned at that time and were given the women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. But there were not enough for all of them ... the elders of the assembly said, "With the women of Benjamin destroyed, how shall we provide wives for the men who are left? The Benjamite survivors must have heirs," they said," so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out ... But look, there is the annual festival of the LORD in Shiloh, to the north of Bethel, and east of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem, and to the south of Lebonah. So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, "Go and hide in the vineyards and watch. When the girls of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the girls of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, "Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war ..."

Continuing with the theme of women as property, not only was Lot willing to sacrifice his own daughters to a rape gang in order to protect two men, but in Judges, we saw a man gladly sacrificing his concubine's life in order to protect a Levite who was staying at his house.

Judges 19:24 (NIV): Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing ... the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.

Notice how he didn't even bother staying awake, or rushing to her aid immediately after her ordeal ended. He slept peacefully, kept the door locked with her outside, woke up the next morning, and wondered why she wouldn't get up! Absolutely incredible ... the Benjamites were vilified because some of them had raped and beaten her, but why wasn't her master vilified for handing her over to them like some kind of trinket, or failing to help her when she lay dying on his doorstep?

Unfortunately, the Bible's misogyny is still not complete, because we must consider the theme of temptation and betrayal. From Eve to Bath-Sheba, Job's wife, Jezebel, and Delilah, the most famous women in the Bible are regarded as either betrayers or temptresses. Eve disobeyed God, ate the forbidden fruit, and then convinced Adam to eat it too (see Timothy 2). Bath-Sheba is often blamed for tempting David by bathing naked (as if there's any other way to bathe). Job's wife tried to turn him away from God. Delilah's beauty captivated Samson, she tempted him to reveal his sole weakness, and then she betrayed him to his enemies. The notion of women being proud, having status, or gaining authority is seen as a foul, unnatural situation which is somehow a betrayal of God:

Isaiah 3:12-17 (NIV): Youths oppress my people, women rule over them. O my people, your guides lead you astray; they turn you from the path ... The LORD says, "The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles. Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion; the LORD will make their scalps bald."

When viewed from a modern perspective, the Bible's message on women is a purely regressive one, and it helps explain the common fundamentalist attitude that feminism is an "ungodly" movement. According to the Old Testament, women are temptresses and betrayers who cannot be allowed to ever have authority. According to Paul in the New Testament, women can best demonstrate their piety by being submissive to their husbands. According to the Ten Commandments, women are mere property, lumped in with a man's cattle, house, and servants. Once again, many modern Christians have eschewed that attitude. But the Bible itself continues to promote them because it has not been revised since that ancient time, and one must deliberately ignore parts of the Bible in order to produce a moral outcome.

Paul did not promote equality, and neither did the bible. if you believe that then you are truly the biggest retard on the face of the planet.

don't believe me, these are all from the sceptics anotated bible, and show paul's mysoginy

Paul explains that "the natural use" of women is to act as sexual objects for the pleasure of men. 1:27
"Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church."
The Revised Standard Version calls Phoebe a "deaconess", which would make would make her a church leader. If the RSV translation is correct, this verse contradicts the requirement that women not be permitted to teach and that they must be silent in church. (1 Cor.14:34-35, 1 Tim.2:11-12). 16:1
"Junia ... of note among the apostles"
Was there a woman apostle? That is how some interpret this verse and use it to justify a more active role for women in the church. 16:7
1 Corinthians

Paul would prefer that no one marry. but he says "to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife." 7:1-2
"Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife." 7:27
Paul says "the head of the woman is the man," meaning that the women are to be subordinate to men. 11:3
If a woman refuses to cover her head in church, then her her head must be shaved. 11:5-6
Men are made in the image of God; women in the image of men. Women were created from and for men. 11:7-9
Every women should have power on her head because of the angels. 11:10
Women are commanded by Paul to be silent in church and to be obedient to men. He further says that "if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in church." 14:34-35
2 Corinthians (None)

Galatians (None)

Ephesians

Wives must submit to their husbands "in every thing" as though they were Christ. "For the husband is the head of the wife." 5:22-24
Wives must reverence their husband. 5:33
Philippians (None)

Colossians

Wives, according to Paul, must submit themselves to their husbands. 3:18

You are an ignorant dumbass. Historically, muslims did treat non muslims better then christians (no it wasn't perfect, but life in muslim lands was better then life in christian lands.) Stop being an asshole.

[Kanastrous]

After a certain point these discussions always begin to look like an argument between a number of nuthouse residents as to which one of them is the *real* Napoleon...

[Darth Yan]

sorry, but hoth's stupidity is insulting and offensive. he obviously has no clue about islam, and tries to downplay christianity's flaws (sorry but paul was a sexist prick, and the bible was every bit as sexist to women as the quran was.) I do not like bigots, and darth hoth is a bigot.

[Master of Ossus]

No, he's saying that Islam makes you stupid. I wonder whether he's actually bothered examining the proportions of Muslims in science, medicine, engineering, and law within the US. That would seem to be an important step.

How so? I'm talking about the Islamic world's use of religious education in place of a secular education.

So what precisely is the problem, then, since it is now interfaith?

Ummm... my problem with it is that it's a mosque.

And to me, the word "moron" has your picture next to it in the dictionary. Furthermore, is a YMCA a church, then? After all, it promotes Christianity, and often has spaces for prayer.

Yes. If it has an exclusive space set aside for people of a particular religion, and is intended to promote something, then it's a religious building of that faith.

Okay. Let me ask you a question. The Engineering building on my university has a nondenominational chapel inside. Does this make it a temple, synagogue, church, mosque, et cetera, or is it a classroom and office building with a chapel inside? For the rest of your drivel, are YMCAs churches?

Was your engineering building intended to promote a particular religion? If not, then it's not a religious building. If it was, then it is.

And YMCA's are religious buildings: they are built for the express purpose of promoting the practice of a particular religion.

Ideally I would have you shut the hell up until you understood the concept of rigor. I shall have to settle for saying that it seems to me that if you can't find truly representative data, you should not pretend that your incomplete data is convincing and maybe you should withdraw a little until you can find reliable data. My first quote was mocking your definition of Muslim as "Arab" and suggesting that therefore we could generalize from Italians into all Rome-descended Christians.

I provided data indicating that, despite having 20% of the world's population and close to 9% of its GDP, Islamic countries produce less than 5% of scientific output "by any measure." How is that not reliable?

You're taking a study that asserts that Islam is inherently anti-technological and declares that, therefore, the achievements of Muslims in earlier ages were because of other factors (including Christians in their midst). You also use "acknowledges", but it is a study by a Western individual, not a resident of an Islamic nation. It also focuses on discrepancies between the Qu'ran and natural science, which are as applicable to Christians and Jews. I am not convinced, I am afraid.

You also declare that Islam makes you stupid without evidence and use median incomes, rather than examining any potential income inequality, to estimate relative poverty. In fact, Iran is not an Arabic country!

It's an Islamic country, dumbass. And many of those countries have respectable average incomes. The UAE, for instance, is very comparable to Spain in terms of median income. Kuwait is actually slightly ahead of Portugal and South Korea, IIRC, in terms of PPP. Moreover, you can't dismiss a study like this based on its source. You also haven't addressed my point that the teaching of Islam in many of these countries substitutes for a secular education that covers things like math and science--to the point where recitation of the Koran is more important in the Saudi educational system than understanding math or geography.

And I already went through various Islamic countries that have respectable median incomes. Why doesn't Saudi Arabia have better scientific output than Kuwait or Turkey?

You even misinterpret Yan's statement- which I took to be historical and which he has confirmed is historical. (P. S. Show that technology makes you better. The Amish (and Mennonites) reject specific technologies because they believe them to be disruptive to community life. That is a philosophical point of view, and there are other technologies (modern healthcare, as an example) which they are willing to use as well.)

Oh, please.

Uh oh, somebody called me out on my unthinking religious intolerance! I must dismiss it as irrelevant!

I dismiss your claims that technology doesn't lead to a better life as irrelevant. Technology has more-or-less tripled life expectancies from their natural state. What more evidence do you need? How much further are you going to shift the goalposts?

[Darth Hoth]

Blah, blah, blah,

Blah, blah, blah . . .

You know what? For all your lengthy copy-pasting you still have utterly failed to prove a single point. If I had been arguing that Paul's view on the family was nice by modern-day secular standards, you would have a point. Too bad I said no such thing. I said that his view on women was less misogynist than Muhammad's/Allah's. Which bears out.

Equal rights to divorce? Check. 1 Corinthians:

And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:

But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.

Neither wife nor husband can divorce the other.

Protection from sexual abuse? Check. Same letter:

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Christians, notably, consider any sex outside marriage "fornication."

Seems all my claims held up. Meanwhile, Muhammad allows unequal divorce, polygamy, and sexual exploitation of slaves.

[Darth Hoth]

sorry, but hoth's stupidity is insulting and offensive. he obviously has no clue about islam, and tries to downplay christianity's flaws (sorry but paul was a sexist prick, and the bible was every bit as sexist to women as the quran was.) I do not like bigots, and darth hoth is a bigot.

Paul was sexist. The Koran is more sexist. Which of these words do you not understand? Surprise, surprise, one can be opposed to both the Koran and the Bible, while still seeing that one is worse than the other.

Oh, and "bigot" again.

[Master of Ossus]

Norway's GDP (purchasing power parity, per CIA World factbook): $267 billion

Norway's population: 4.6 million

Turkey's GDP (purchasing power parity, per CIA World factbook): $874 billion

Turkey's population: 76.8 million

So, Turkey's GDP is just over 3.27 times larger than Norway's, but the population is over 16 times as large. I imagine that this population/GDP discrepancy is repeated all over the Muslim world, wherein the per capita cash differences are simply enormous as compared to many Western nations.

So, I imagine it isn't so much an "Islam effect" as a "poverty effect," and it just so happens that most nations where Islam is the predominant religion tend to have a shitload more poor people and where research is of less value than trying to afford infrastructure, medical care, or simple education.

Even in comparison with similar average income, though, Islamic scientific development lags far behind. If it were purely a function of PPP/capita, for instance, South Korea would produce fewer scientific papers than the UAE per capita (as would Spain and Portugal). The opposite is true. In fact, even the Arab statistics, which generally share a similar culture, reveal the problem with associating it with PPP, since the figures just don't play nice with each other. Jordan, for example, scores pretty highly relative to the rest of its Arab counterparts even though its PPP/capita is nothing to boast about relative to the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, etc. Indeed, the fact that the output number of papers varies so greatly with respect to GDP is powerful evidence against such a model.

[Darth Yan]

Then why does the quran allow women to have inheritence (4:7 and 4:11). why are women allowed to divorce their husband.) And if scholars have been argueing over whether or not women's testimony is legitimate since the quran was written, then is your analysis the be all and end all?

Women in the quran are allowed to break up with their husbands if there is legit reasons.

Book 38, Number 4366:
Narrated Wa'il ibn Hujr:

When a woman went out in the time of the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) for prayer, a man attacked her and overpowered (raped) her.

She shouted and he went off, and when a man came by, she said: That (man) did such and such to me. And when a company of the Emigrants came by, she said: That man did such and such to me. They went and seized the man whom they thought had had intercourse with her and brought him to her.

She said: Yes, this is he. Then they brought him to the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him).

When he (the Prophet) was about to pass sentence, the man who (actually) had assaulted her stood up and said: Apostle of Allah, I am the man who did it to her.

He (the Prophet) said to her: Go away, for Allah has forgiven you. But he told the man some good words (AbuDawud said: meaning the man who was seized), and of the man who had had intercourse with her, he said: Stone him to death.

He also said: He has repented to such an extent that if the people of Medina had repented similarly, it would have been accepted from them.

what is more, the general consens of most scholars is that women who get raped are not executed. only the rapist is.

i tried to cite the list but my compuuter ate it. the point is that islamic divorce law is a lot more complex then hoth thinks, and is not as one sided as he claims.

[Darth Hoth]

i tried to cite the list but my compuuter ate it. the point is that islamic divorce law is a lot more complex then hoth thinks, and is not as one sided as he claims.

Strawman much? What I said was that divorce law was unequal for men and women, not that it was not "complicated." Since you, for all your dense verbiage, have not taken the opportunity to deny this, I will assume that you cannot. Nor the points about polygamy and sex slavery.

And I agree with Kanastrous, by now this debate is just pathetic. Evidence has been provided that the Koran is, word for word, vastly more violent and intolerant than the Bible. Unable to disprove, or even address, this, you grasp at straws, move goalposts, nitpick details, and ignore the big picture.

Please, do not come back until you can provide a real response.

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe we should quantify the amount of scientific papers produced in the African continent, and try to correlate it with certain ethnographical features of peoples dwelling in that continent also?

Splendid idea! Then we can not-so-subtly imply that criticism of Islam is racism, thereby invalidating any and all such criticism through guilt by association!

Nah, we can just ignore complicated sociocultural, geopolitical and economic factors prevalent to certain peoples in certain places, and just chalk it all on a particular branch of Abrahamic religion so we can have an over-simplified morsel that'll be easily digestible for those people whose brains are located at the end of their gastrointestinal systems, am i rite who knew lols.

I must say, I do agree with Ossus: It is indeed perplexing how on this board, with the sheer vitriol and hatred of Christianity that is routinely expressed by reason of that religion's "intolerance," Islam, objectively a more violent, intolerant and retrograde faith in just about every quantifiable way, never lacks its defenders.

Maybe the Mohammedians get some slack and maybe some sympathy points because they're a bunch of poor downtrodden shits living in third word shitholes where they are fucked over by Western powers and some other fuck, and where certain conditions perpetuate their fucked up shit?

Whereas a lot of Christians happen to reside in uppity well to do Western nations where they are far more pretentious in having facades of civilitude and decency, while deep down they're a bunch of White Anglo Saxon Protestant Cat-licking shit-eaters who don't have the excuse of "woe is me i am from a shithole where the white mang steals all mein oils" to excuse their blandishments?

Who's defending Islam anyway? I say we nuke Mecca till it glows in the dark, shoot all the Mohammedians in the dark, and steal all their oil. We can detonate thermonuclear devices in roughly geometric distribution points so the blast waves will interact with each other, to maximize the Mohammedian megadeath murder-massacres at the various intersection points of the nuclear initiations.

[Darth Hoth]

Maybe the Mohammedians get some slack and maybe some sympathy points because they're a bunch of poor downtrodden shits living in third word shitholes where they are fucked over by Western powers and some other fuck, and where certain conditions perpetuate their fucked up shit?

Whereas a lot of Christians happen to reside in uppity well to do Western nations where they are far more pretentious in having facades of civilitude and decency, while deep down they're a bunch of White Anglo Saxon Protestant Cat-licking shit-eaters who don't have the excuse of "woe is me i am from a shithole where the white mang steals all mein oils" to excuse their blandishments?

Which is totally illogical. Their religion is still worse objectively. Saying that "Oh, but they are so poor and ignorant!" is not an excuse for them. At best, it is an explanation.

Not to mention, Muhammad was hardly poor and oppressed when he wrote his intolerant religious founding document.

[Shroom Man 777]

Who gives a shit about Mohammad? Fuck him.

Yes, it is an explanation. You can't excuse oppressive shit. But being poor and ignorant predisposes people to have stupid medieval mindsets and to follow their stupid ancient religious shit-texts to the letter. Whereas being rich and norant (the opposite of IGnorant, geddit lol) predisposes people to ignore their stupid ancient religious shit-texts.

Perhaps this explains why religiously the Islamists are a bunch of shit-heads, being poor and ignorant people predisposed to have stupid medieval mindsets to follow their stupid ancient religious shit-texts to the letter.

Why explaining why Christians are less shit-headsy, whereas being rich and norant (the opposite of IGnorant, geddit lol), predisposed these people to ignore their stupid ancient religious shit-texts.

[Master of Ossus]

Not to mention, Muhammad was hardly poor and oppressed when he wrote his intolerant religious founding document.

Oh, but Hoth, he didn't write it! It was compiled by other people from his teachings after he died. That's really a totally different thing.