a festival during which the God of Islam demands his followers sacrifice animals. With their own hands.

Slice left to right under the throat, Satan!

Even calling Allah "Allah" would be too patronizing in my book.

I'll become atheist before I pray the same G-d as the death cultists.

Here you have one more candy-ass trying to make nice to people that are trying to kill or convert us.
This is the same sort of piss-ant that got beat-up right through highschool by a bully that could not fight his way out of a paper bag. All this piss-ant had to do was stand-up for himself and the bullying would have stopped. Instead it was societies fault for him being a victim and he still does not understand.
Make sure you sit down when you piss so you don't pee on your leg.

I think it was yesterday that somebody wrote "attention K-Mart shoppers" and linked to the sacrificial sheep article. I thought it was very funny.

Last August the Washington Post Web site posed this question to readers: "Do you think that Muslims, Christians and Jews all pray to the same God?" One Muslim respondent wrote yes, each of the three major monotheistic faiths "pray to the God of Abraham."

Christian respondents, however, were equivocal or hostile to the notion.

This is incredibly (possibly intentionally) sloppy writing.

ONE Muslim respondant wrote blah blah blah?

What the hell does that mean?

Does that mean there was only one Muslim respondant?

Or, for all I know, hundreds of Muslim respondents wrote that each of the three major monotheistic faiths DO NOT pray to the God of Abraham.

Citing one Muslim respondent tells me jack shiat. Thanks for basing the whole premise of your article on the opinion of one random guy on the internet, Mr. Kearney, and dismissing the "there is no God but Allah" rantings of thousands and thousands of Muslims. A social scientist and statistician you are not. And you're a lousy philosopher as well. Your article is nothing more than warmed-over PC bullshiat.

John Kearney is a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

I wonder if he's concurrently enrolled in their Middle Eastern Studies program, and merely running an errand for Rashid Khalidi.

The Arabic word for God is Ilah, not Allah. Allah is clearly stated in the Koran to be the name of Ilah, just as Yahweh is the name of God (Eli) in the Torah.

Before Mohammed's time, for at least 150 years, Allah was the name of one of the more famous of 360 rock idols at Mecca. Allah's daughters, godesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat figured in the well-known "Satanic Verses".

It's not Allah, it's Allan. The God of the Jews and Christians wouldn't demand animal sacrifices, at least not lately. But Allan is just a little insecure to renounce animal sacrifices. My advice is to keep your cats indoors.

There is no God named Allah, and Mohammed was a pedophile.

#1 Al,

Actually, I prefer straight through the side of the neck, and then cut out counter-clockwise. With a decent length blade (6" or so), it gets both carotids, both jugulars, and opens the trachea (no scream, plus they get to drown in their own blood! How cool is that? :-)

Would Arafish be an acceptable animal sacrifice?

Seems like US Armed forces already took care of Uday and Qesay.

#11 Flaming Sword:

"There is no God named Allah..."

Yes there is, but it's a rock.

#10-Lorenzo: Cats are safe; Muhammad liked cats. I read a story once that said Muhammad was so fond of cats that, rather than disturb one that was sleeping on his robe, he cut the sleeve off to keep the cat comfy. Dogs, however, are in serious danger since puppy spit will make you ritually unclean.

@3 Mr.Pol

So will I.

You can call me Al.

So, I'm supposed to trust my soul/life to the theological rants of a jounalist. Trust the NY Times to come up with this old 'stewpot' of theological crappola!!! Not even the islamic mullahs are dumb enough to swallow this stuff.

#6 Rayra

I will accept your trophy comment as a compliment.

But what is this Little People stuff? We have Midgets wreslin tonight on the WWE?

"Kumbay-Allah, my Lord, Kumbay-Allah"...

Can I smash a guitar over the heads of these numb-nuts?

My God is the Father of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

My God Is Your God.

It's arrogant of John Kearney to decide this issue and the notion is insulting to me. What religion does John Kearney practice?

It's to bad that there isn't a website where we could suggest the Islofacists put a truck/car bomb. right outside the New York Times...now that would wake em up! Why not just everyone call him 'Tree' or 'Rock' or 'Potato Chip'?

#20 billhedrick

My God is the Father of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2000 years ago, nobody believed a Jewish carpenter could go that far :-)

Would Arafish be an acceptable animal sacrifice?

No, too old, stinky and diseased.

Bubbaman (#19)

LOL!

So Allah is Arabic for God I can accept, but then I cannot accept that Allah gave Mohammed that particular book, which means slandering another Qu'ranic principle. Tough. That f'ing book says that the Bible is Allah's too but the Jews and Christians ruined the Bible. So they are saying, our version overrules yours. And I think that kind of God wouldn't have bothered in the first place.

If they want to observe a religion in which Roger Avery means Holy Prophet it doesn't change who he really is, and in my view people who know better are entitled to refute any other premise. It's all stuff. I have never called my God Yahweh or Jehovah or anything like it in my life, nor have I ever corrected anyone who said I worship Yahweh, and I have never insisted that Jesus or Allah be redefined in light of continuing Jewish practise, and why is John Kearney writing this?

Interestingly, on the Hudaybiyah treaty, Muhammed bin Abdallah is how the Prophet was named. This means, Muhammed, son of Abdallah and Abdallah means "slave of Allah". Now this is interesting since Muhammed's father was, by definition, a polytheistic pagan.

#24 zulubaby

Still good enough for that moon-god.

@16 Allah

Howz about callin' you nuttin'.

1. Jews have been known to make some animal sacrifices of their own. Remember the Temple? There are remnants of it today too among some orthodox Jews.

2. The word for God in Greek and Latin is derived from the word for Zeus. Something similar is probably true of God's name in Hebrew too.

Neither of these facts seem to be damning to Chrisitianity or Judaism, so why should similar things be damning to Islam.

C'mon people. Let's direct our criticism at something real. There's plenty out there.

Obviously the graduate student in Journalism hasn't taken any comparative religion courses. While the Muslims might say that the God of Abraham and Allah are the same, there's a big disconnect in how these two Dieties have spoken to their people.

After reading both the Bible and the Quran, after several years of careful studying the two religions based on the books of Moses and comparing them to Islam, I cannot accept that God (Yahweh) and Allah are the same. The best I can come up with is that somewhere around the 6th Century, a cult formed to counter the teachings of Christianity and Judaism. This cult developed a series of teachings that repudiate the foundations of the other two religions (personal faith, love of all men, God's Laws [10 commandments], personal responsibility for individual actions, and the equality of women in the family), and established rules that were beneficial to the cult: plural marriage, subjugation of women, predestination, no future prophets, etc.

As usual, the NYTimes has decided to muddy the waters, rather than seek any serious discussion. As usual, the Times gets it 180 degrees wrong, and makes a fool of itself.

#15 Allah:

"You can call me Al. "

How about if I just call you Rocky?

Before the cold beer takes me away breathless, according to the pedophile G-d did a 180 and became an entity of death instead of a G-d of light and life.
It's too bad we didn't have Sharps 59 back then, someone coulda taken the pedophile out at a distance. That would have solved a lot of problems for all of us.

If Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same "god" why are the Muslims always trying to kill us?

But Allah's other name was Satan, I thought everone knew that.

#27 dean douthat
can you give me your sources. just so i can quote them

# 10, I think according to the bible, God demanded sacrifice MANY many times, including a little boy LOL.

#12 Arafish would make a terrible sacrifice, you cant save the hide and the meat probably tastes like crap... he is better as cow feed.

BUT Lets not all get so crazy over the "Sacrificial sheep" thing. As middle eastern Christians, we do the same in our weddings, baptisms and communions. It my shock you to know that Irani, Iraqi and Syrian jews also do the same. Actually, it was a practice started by Judaism and maintained by Jews outside of Israel and thus its passing on to Christian converts in the middle east by St Thomas... (well, some of the converts were Jews so they maintained the practice). In fact, we still say the original Aramaic sayings when we sacrifice the lambs. It is supposed to bring you prosperity and health and it is also a sign of wealth (not everyone could afford a lamb back in the day). Now those of poorer origins still do it on the Christian and Jewish side (the rich ones just big limos instead), Muslims mostly do it for weddings. It has to be done by a family member and I have witnessed it three times in my life, my cousin’s wedding, my communion and one more time that I cant recall... Its not “barbaric”, it is probably more humane than most slaughter houses in the US since the sheep or the lamb is fed like crazy and treated like a god before it gets slaughtered.

But I do agree, I do not worship the same god as the Muslims, whatever F*&%ed up god spoke to Mohammad on that hill isn’t mine... and if it is, I want my damn virgins!

The ineffable divine energy or whatever you want to call it is beyond all names and description. We label it and make stories aobut it so that we can connect with it in some way. Every religion does this in different ways: they are all equivalent but they all have different flavors. The particular flavor is what allows you to access God. People convert to different religions or come back to the practice of their youth becaus they need that particular set of metaphors and rituals and images to make the connection.

But the reality is beyond all that. I find this quibbling over whether "Allah" is the "same" God as "Yahweh" really ridiculous. God is God.

Anyway Jews don't call God "Yahweh" and never did - that's an attempt to literally pronounce the tetragrammaton Y-H-V-H. Jews just say "Adonai" which means "Lord" or "HaShem" which means "The name" in Hebrew.

But another old Hebrew name for God is "Ya." As in "hallelu-ya" and names like "Eliyahu."

"Allah." "Yah." Not that different. Big deal.

Dean Douthat-

Before Mohammed's time, for at least 150 years, Allah was the name of one of the more famous of 360 rock idols at Mecca.

That sounds like a week-long VH1 countdown! "360 Hottest Mecca Rock Idols"

Allah promises the highest prize i.e. paradise filled with raisins, for heinous acts against humanity. The God who feels tickled when humans are tortured to glorify Him, is not Divine. I don't know whom the hell allah is, but he is not the God I pray to.

#35 Otaku, you don't need a source, any muslim knows that Muhammad's dad is Abdallah, and any Arabic name with the 'abd prefix means "slave-of-".

I don't know if you have seen this article
[Link: www.atimes.com...]
which really spells out the difference between Allah and the God of the Bible, courtesy of the German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig

"Remember that the Jewish God enjoys only a qualified sort of omnipotence. His sympathy with mankind, his creation, compels him to suffer along with his creatures. He cannot help but hear the cry of innocent blood, the complaint of the widow and orphan, the mistreated stranger and the oppressed slave (Professor James Kugel of Harvard makes his hoary argument in The God of Old). He is the God of the town meeting, of the popular assembly, of the democrats. With good reason, Friedrich Nietzsche labelled the Jewish deity a God of slaves. He permits the likes of Abraham and Moses to give him a hard time over such things as the destruction of Sodom, or exterminating the sinners among the Israelites.

When ancient Israel demanded that their leader, the prophet Samuel, appoint a king (I Samuel 8), God complained, "They have rejected me as their king." He tells Samuel to warn the people against kings. When the people demand a king nonetheless, God tells Samuel, "Give them a king." The Jews' God chose for his people a despised race of slaves. He humbles himself by sympathizing with the weak. The Christian God even came to earth and allowed himself to be crucified. He loves the poor and weak. Indeed, weakness ineluctably draws forth his love. Jewish and Christian theologians speak of "divine humility".

Not so Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. "For Islam, the notion that man's failings more powerfully awake God's love than man's merits is an absurd, indeed an impossible thought. Allah has pity upon human weaknesses, but the idea that he loves weakness more than strength is a form of divine humility that is foreign to the God of Mohammed," wrote the Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig...

So no, Allah isn't t5he God of the Bible, in spite of CAIR!

As I recall it one of the first gifts of the Jews to humanity was the substitution of animal and symbolic sacrifice ceremonies for human ones, but I do think that it's rather nasty, distasteful and unempathetic of large majorities of muslims to insist on personally slitting a sheep's throat. I helped hold not a few sacrificial ghanam as their throats were slit and the blood drained out of them, it's not a pleasant experience at all.

Kat,

The God who feels tickled when humans are tortured to glorify Him, is not Divine.

Sounds more like that other guy, doesn't it?

Iraqi govt. papers: Saddam bribed Chirac

Huh, Is this on anyone's radar screen?

AG in Houston, I saw that, and I followed a link from either Sullivan or Blair to a Google-translated list of all the recipients as well. I just don't see where "Saddam bribed Chirac" is an accurate headline; the WashTimes story doesn't spell it out and neither does the Google-translated list. The Google-translated list does list several French entities, I wish that someone would detail the links between these and Chirac, if any.

#44 AG in Houston

Chirac's name does not appear on the published list. However, Charles Pasqua's name is there. In 1999, the year of the 'gifts' on the list, Pasqua was not a member of Chirac's party any more. Before 1995, Pasqua was in charge of the financing of Chirac's party, though.

Anyway, the headline is bogus.

Moon worship has been practiced in Arabia since 2000 BC. The crescent moon is the most common symbol of this pagan moon worship as far back as 2000 BC, in Mecca, there was a god named Hubal who was Lord of the Kabah and this Hubal was a moon god. The idol of moon god Hubal was placed upon the roof of the Kaba about 400 years before Muhammad,This may in fact be the origin of why the crescent moon is on top of every minaret at the Kaba today and the central symbol of Islam atop of every mosque throughout the world:

Quote:
About four hundred years before the birth of Muhammad one Amr bin Lahyo ... a descendant of Qahtan and king of Hijaz, had put an idol called Hubal on the roof of the Kaba. This was one of the chief deities of the Quraish before Islam. (Muhammad The Holy Prophet, Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar (Pakistan), p 18-19, Muslim)

The moon god was also referred to as "al-ilah". This is not a proper name of a single specific god, but a generic reference meaning "the god". Each local pagan Arab tribe would refer to their own local tribal pagan god as "al-ilah". "al-ilah" was later shortened to Allah before Muhammad was born in 610 AD.

There is evidence that Hubal was referred to as "Allah".
When Muhammad came along, he dropped all references to the name "Hubal" but retained the generic "Allah".
Muhammad retained almost all the pagan rituals of the Arabs at the Kaba and redefined them in monotheistic terms.
Regardless of the specifics of the facts, it is clear that Islam is derived from paganism that once worshiped a moon-god.
Although Islam is today a monotheist religion, its roots are in paganism.

#35 Otaku & #48 evariste

Check out:

[Link: www.prophetofdoom.net...] particularly chapter 20.

Here is the Hadith:

Ishaq:504/ Tabari VIII:85

“He [Muhammed] said, ‘Write: “Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, has made peace with Suhayl.”’ Suhayl said, ‘If I testified that you were the Messenger of Allah, I wouldn’t fight you. Why not write your name and the name of your father.’ So Muhammad said, ‘Write: “Muhammad bin Abdallah has made peace with Suhayl.”

This has another interesting implication; Suhayl is a polytheist pagan of Mecca. So, why would he not fight the "Messenger of Allah"? Simple, Allah was one of Suhayl's rock gods.

#45 evariste

Here are the 11 names listed for France:

1- Adax (3 / 8 mb)
2- Traficora (Patrick Mougin) (25 mb)
3- Michel Grimard (1 / 17 mb)
4- Association d'amitié franco-arabe (15,1 mb)
5- X (47,2 mb)
6- Charles Pasqua (12 mb)
7- Elias Ferzli (14,6 mb)
8- A Lotus (Claude Caspar) (4 mb)
9- Bernard Miramé (3 mb)
10- Bernard Miramé (8 mb)
11- Di Suza (11 mb)

#5 has not been published in France. Could you check on elaph.com what is the name? I'll look for the connections.

Quibbling over the “name” of the Cosmic Otherness is a fool’s errand. Whether It is called G-d, Allah, YHVH or El is essentially meaningless to a monotheistic religion. Hell, call It Elvis if you want – don’t mean nothin’.

What does matter to monotheistic theology is the relationship of G-d to man. That relationship is the very core of religion and from it springs all dogma. Jews consider themselves G-d’s People. Christians consider themselves G-d’s Children. Moslems consider themselves G-d’s Slaves.

As a slave of G-d, Moslems have no claim to the Christian’s hope of inheriting G-d’s Kingdom. He is forever doomed to his Master’s whims and caprices.

What an ugly religion.

Doesn't this discussion make you ashamed to be an inhabitant of this little fucking blue planet in the middle of nowhere?

It does me.

The rest of the universe must certainly be laughing.

Mr Pol, sure! Checking it out right now.

Professor Augustus H. Strong makes an accurate assessment in his "Systematic Theology" when he declares that Islam "is heathenism in monotheistic form." 

Mohammad grew up in Mecca in Arabia, belonging to the Quraysh tribe, in charge of idol worship at the Kabah shrine, containing the black stone and at least 360 idols. The word for god or idol in Arabic is "ilah."

According to ancient archeological evidence, Allah was the name for the main idol worshiped in Mecca. The name was probably originally derived from the two Arabic words "al" and "ilah", meaning "the god" or "the idol." therefore, as we can see, Mohammad did not set the foundation for a 'new' religion, he simply took the chief deity within the pantheon in Arabia, and made it the only god, while keeping the original pagan practices associated with this idol worship.

Allah was also used as THE PERSONAL NAME among the Arabs for the moon god.  Its symbol was the crescent moon found on many idols from pre-Islamic Arabia and it has special significance among all of the Arab nations. The symbol is included on their national flags and official stationary even to this day. 

Every year, these early Islamist idol whorshippers made a pilgrimage to Mecca, to worship Allah at the black stone. They were taught to turn and pray towards Mecca several times a day and that for one month every year, beginning and ending with the crescent moon, that month was dedicated to fasting. All of these traditions, and religious duties were "grafted" by Mohammad into the current Islam practiced by Muslims today. 

As stated earlier, Mohammad had built upon and added to all of these already known forms of idol worship. The only thing that was new was that Mohammad declared the pagan moon deity "Allah" to be the only true god and forbade the worship of all the other idols in Mecca. The basic confession within Islam is, "Allah is greater [greater than all the other idols].  There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet." 

These teachings are of course in complete contradiction to the basic message about the one and true God found in the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament, where idol worship is strictly forbidden. Abraham was chosen to leave cult worship surrounding the moon god in Ur of the Chaldeans, to go to a different land, in order to give mankind the revelation about the 'One' God. 

To confuse the issue, Mohammad declared that Allah is the god of the Jews and the Christians. Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus were all prophets sent by Allah. Since Mohammad's beliefs did not agree with the Scriptures, Mohammad declared that the Jews and the Christians have changed and perverted the Scriptures!

Therefore Allah has rejected them and cursed them and has sent Mohammad to replace the Bible with the Koran; and to replace Judaism and Christianity with Islam. It is therefore the religious duty of Islam to subjugate and destroy the infidels, the Christians and the Jews. Ironicaly, Islam, in Judaic/Christian terms, could therefore be Satan's most powerful and successful plan to destroy the true faith in the God of the Bible.

Taranto tried this bit on for size a few weeks ago, and it was cumbersome and unconvincing to me, even though he's obviously got a great mind. It basically boiled down to everyone who believes in one God must therefore have the same one in mind. Sorry, if a co-worker tells me about his only child, his daughter Rebecca, then I meet his wife who says no, our only child is our son Fred, at least one of them's going to the funny farm. That they do have one child doesn't mean that both are right.

Muslims are entitled to their beliefs (personally, not in ordered society, as they mandate violence), but that doesn't mean they are allowed to determine mine. If a reporter wants to get cute and say "Muslims believe they worship the same God as..." well, that'd be poor taste and probably poor writing, but so be it. Just be sure to include the differences, like rejecting the Torah and that bit about killing all Jews until the end of time.

Looks like the moose is on the loose again.

Someday...you'll get a ticket for illogic.

It'll be touch and go until then.

what a bunch of garbage. we need to remove things like from taking up our intellectual considerations.

There is no god named allah.
Mohammad was a pedophile
Islam is not a religion, it is a brutal, vicious cult of death.

Wake up, people.

Mr Pol, unless I'm somehow missing it, all I see on elaph.com is a translated rehash of an AFP story, here. Unless I'm somehow missing it. The AFP story cites an Iraqi paper, Al-Mada. I can't find their site.

Hey...I know. Let's gut a couple of virgins and fling them down the pyramid.

Oh wait, it's not 1090, it's 2004.

Nevermind.

#58 evariste

I got the full list from Proche-Orient Info. They say they translated it from elaph.com?

Patrick Mougin is a trader, no public links with Chirac.

Michel Grimard is the president of a political association called Mouvement Chrétien Vème République. The goal of this association was to get Christian Democrats to vote for Chirac's party, the RPR, rather than for the UDF.

Elias Ferzly is Lebanese, a staunch defender of Syrian presence in Lebanon, vice-president of Lebanon's assembly and president of the Association for Franco-Lebanese friendship. THat he is listed in France would be strange - if we didn't know that Chirac got bribes from Lebanese billionaires.

...and I already talked about Charles Pasqua.

3 am, I'm done for now. More research tomorrow...

An interesting story on Elaph that I haven't seen in English media:

Washington removes diplomatic immunity from 16 Saudis
Washington-A US Department of State official announced Wednesday afternoon that Washington has removed the diplomatic immunities of 16 Saudi and ordered them to leave the United States because of their involvement in religious activities under the cover of the diplomatic duties that they were tasked with. The official said, "We asked the 16 Saudis' departure because it became clear to us after studying the (Saudi) diplomatic mission that they do not work in the mission but rather evangelize Islam outside of the mission." and added, "they do not deserve to hold diplomatic immunities", clarifying that they will be leaving "soon".

#58 evariste

I think al-Mada website is [Link: www.al-mada.net...]

Mr Pol-Nope, that's some kind of tech consultancy or something. Definitely not the newspaper. At any rate, MEMRI has the complete translation of al-Mada's list, which wasn't completely published by them and doesn't seem to have as many French people on it as yours either.
Maybe it scrolled off the page at Elaph? I don't know. I couldn't find it, maybe I'll try reading again, slowly-I skimmed some of the headlines because they looked unrelated.

I doubt if you will find two Christians who worship the same god.

Anyway, I guess have a good night if you've already gone to bed.

OT - Gay Days in Mecca

Interesting! If you Google "Saudis", it thinks you made a typo and asks, "Did you mean saunas?"

There is no G-d named allah.
Mohammed was a pedophile.
Where Islam goes, blood flows.

Any more questions?

#63 evariste

I checked MEMRI. It's neither the full article nor the full list. I wonder who that 'X' in France is... why Proche Orient Info didn't publish that name? With 47 million barrels, whoever that is got the biggest bribe in France.

I wonder... could it be Chirac himself?

First of all, the correct translation of god is ilaah and God is Allah. This is the Arabic language. This has nothing to do with religion.

If you want to distance Christianity from Judaism, you have to argue that Muslims' conception of God is different.

Furthermore, if Christians and Jews feel uneasy at being associated with Islam, they should be. All three religions (or any religion for that matter) are based on fundamentally anti-Western, barbaric, de-humanising elements:

(1) the belief in something supernatural, based on faith, i.e. believing something without evidence, reason or logic.

(2) accepting morality based on faith, on obeying commands, rather proving, rationally, with evidence and reason, the correctness of those morals.

(3) positing a being superior to the individual, subverting the individual's happiness to something higher.

To their credit, Judaism and Christianity are less backward than Islam in the above, and actually incorporate some Western elements (particularly some elements of individualism in the concept of redemption).

However, to defend Western values, religion, including Judaism and Christianity, are not effective and in fact destructive: when confronted by terrorists who claim that they're doing what they're doing because God told them to, what good is the response that we're doing what we're doing because God told us? That is not an argument, its fighting irrationality with irrationality.

For those on the east coast, there is a Thomas Freidman special on the Discovery channel on right now. He's "checking out" the security fence.

Geez--Canada is on that list. No wonder they opposed the war.
[Link: www.naharnet.com...]

#38 evariste:

Yep, one for each degree; so it's "Rock Around the Clock".

:-)

Boo hiss, even I can't abide that one.

Discovery Channel has a documentary on now about the apartheid fence. A guy named Friedman is narrating (is he the Friedman people talk about). he reminds me of Alan Alda for some reason.

BTW, Muslims worship HaBa'al, the same Ba'al revealed as a false god in the Old Testament/Torah. They reject the Hebrew G-d. While Christians and Jews have huge theological differences, we Christians accept the entire body of their scripture, we don't reject it as flawed/corrupted as the Muslims do.

Google up Allah, the Ka'aba (Qaaba) and HaBaal(HuBal). The Muslim god is the Arab moon god, borrowed from the people of the region that comprises modern dayv Syria.

Author of this idiotic paean to Islam:

John Keating Kearney

Student, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

kk25@columbia.edu

Yes, Abu, Sir--from now on I will pray to Frederick Nietzche, Karl Marx, and Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler--they were superior like you and did not believe in God. Forgive me, your intellectual pompous assed highness.

Mr Pol-gotcha, I wasn't reading closely enough, I thought MEMRI had a complete translation of al-Mada's partial list, rather than a partial translation of al-Mada's complete list.
I'm gonna go back to elaph.net now and see what I can dig up, it must be there and I'm curious to know who the hell X is too!

Since Israelis and Palis both live in the Mideast, the media should start referring to both of them only as "Mideasterners." (NOT!)

Unfortunately, something tells me that CNN, the NYT, Democratic candidates, etc. will take up terrorist-apologist Kearney's suggestion and start referring to "Allah" as "God". So the report of the Egypt Air flight that crashed a few years back would say the pilot kept saying "praise God" as he dove the plane into the water. No Muslim fanatics here folks! Nothing to see, move along.

#68 Pork Eating Whiskey Drinker

Glad to see my "mantra" is catching on.

71

Beat me to it.

I suspect Mr. Friedman is sympathetic to the Palis, so far. In the beginning, he mentioned the West Bank and Gaza were captured by Israel in a war against the Arabs, giving the implication the Israeli's started it. Now he is talking how badly "The Wall" inconveniences the Paleos.

OT

A plane carrying 36 Arabs prisoners took off from Jerusalem shortly before 4 a.m., while another plane left Beirut, Lebanon, carrying kidnapped businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.

People for Corpses

Is this stupid? Or is it me?

Why isn't Israel pounding the living hell out of their enemy?

They're getting corpses anyway!! Holy fuck-a-moly. How stupid are the Israelis??

Their people are dead. And they are trading live prisoners for dead flesh.

Get real! For once in your miserable stupid existence, get real!!

Screw Friedman -- Dennis Miller interviewing Rudi Guiliani!

Thomas L. Friedman Reporting:The West Bank Wall

As Israeli and Palestinian leaders struggle to follow the "road map" to peace, the cycle of terrorist violence and retaliatory attacks continues. Tom Friedman returns to Israel to examine the causes and consequences of the new wall under construction.
tv :: pg
cc :: cc

Now I have learned how happy Palestinian children who went to class with Jewish kids (Hand to Hand) can't anymore, and are now unhappy.

# 70 Abu Reason

I should have concluded my post above with:

Western values must be defended on the proper grounds:

* There is no supernatural realm or beings.

* Knowledge can only be gained by rational conclusions drawn from the evidence, not mystical revelation, superstition, or emotion.

* Morality is determined by the above as well (not by the dictates of a supernatural being), and must help the individual to achieve happiness on earth (not in some alleged afterlife), and not self-abnegation.

* The individual is sovereign, whose freedom must not be sacrificed to anything outside himself, including the state or God.

Anything less is a compromise with the dark side. And we know what compromise leads to.

Rather see them sacrifice sheep then blowing themselves and everyone around them to bits. Lke most, I hate it when some multi-cultural dweeb has to lecture us on religion when he doesn't even have faith himself.

Abu Reason

The two prime commandments given by Jesus, who we Christians believe to be G_d made Man, are

1) Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord your G-d is One! You shall love G-d with all your heart, and all your mind. This is the greatest commandment

2) You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all the laws and all the commandments.

Christians are commanded to love their neighbor, to pray for their enemies, and to forgive those that do them wrong "seven times seventy times". If everyone followed these rules, everyone would be pretty happy.

When Christians have done nasty things (ie, the Inquisition) they have been violating the laws given to them by Jesus.

The New York Times article was -- as usual -- wrong, in important points.

First, the language of Jesus wasn't Aramaic. It was Hebrew. Mishnaic Hebrew to be precise. Among the few words that Christian Scriptures attribute to Jesus are: "Eli, Eli, lama sabakhtani" -- "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me." That sentence is Mishnaic Hebrew, not Aramaic. In Hebrew, "Eli" did and does mean "my God." In Aramaic, it's not even close.

In Mishnaic Hebrew, "sabakhta-ni" meant, "you abandoned me." In Aramaic, it wasn't even close. In Hebrew then and now, "lama" meant "why."

Second, the word "God" is not "Allahah" in Aramaic. It is "Elohoh," pronounced "eh-law-haw" (where "aw" is the same sound as the "o" in "horse," not "o" as in "cot"). In Aramaic, the "l" in "Elohoh" is not doubled as it is in Arabic. That is to say, it was not pronounced doubly long, (i.e., as the double "el" in the words "Teal Lake").

Third, the two Gods are not the same: The Arabic god Allah was derived from the pre-Islamic pagan Moon God of Arabia. The Jews and Christians didn't recognize Mohammad as a prohpet in their religions, so he declared that the Jews and the Christians intentionally falsified their scriptures, and he went calling on the priests of the pagan shrine of the Moon God located at Mecca. He told the priests he was a prophet of the Moon God and, by the way, that he was sent by the Moon God to inform everyone that the Moon God is bigger than all the other gods. In essence, Mohammad said, the Jews and Christians were worshipping the wrong God all along -- the Moon God was the God of Abraham.

Whatever your point of view about any given religion, Mohammad started out worshipping the Moon God and then clothed him in the garb of the Judaeo-Christian God.

Seth

#84 Abu Reason

You say:

* There is no supernatural realm or beings.

and

* Knowledge can only be gained by rational conclusions drawn from the evidence, not mystical revelation, superstition, or emotion.

Please explain what evidence, if any, enabled you to reach the previous conclusion.

To the tune of "This land is your land":

This god is my god, this god is your god,
from the masjid in Makkah, to the dome al-aksa,
while we're slaying infidels, or just mutilating wooomen,
Allah is our moon-god yesiree

@77 evariste

When you go back to the website, and find the listing. Read that list using the source page for the site. Sometimes you'll find things hidden there.

Mr Pol, I think I found it!!! I had skipped it previously because the headline started off with "Zhirinovsky and the Church", I should have kept reading :-)
I'll report back when I find Mr X's name, shortly (I hope!).

To quote General Boykins "My God is bigger than thier God."

Apolologies if someone posted this already

#84 Abu Reason
I used to think all that stuff too - then I grew up, got married, had kids...

Friedman just tossed a huge softball: "Do you find the checkpoints humiliating?"

Gimme a frickin' break.

Fuck, it's the arabic letters a, y, k, s. X, in other words.
Assholes.

Complete listing, in Arabic, at Elaph.

#76 Kat

Yes, Abu, Sir--from now on I will pray to Frederick Nietzche, Karl Marx, and Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler--they were superior like you and did not believe in God. Forgive me, your intellectual pompous assed highness.

Those evil men superficially omitted a God, but replaced him with the State/the Race/the proletariat.

Otherwise, they are philosophically identical to any religious extremists (e.g. Islam today): belief without reason and the subjugation of the individual.

You have to understand, there are two poles in the world of ideas and principles: on one end you have (the best of) Westernism; on the other you have evil (Fascism, communism, islamism, etc.)

The better religions are somewhere in between, but you have to realise that any compromise away from Westernism is a step in the direction of evil.

OT,

Recovering Mars rover "Spirit" transmits new photo

Bravo, space geeks!

The story's from the 25th, and it wasn't the "Zhirinovsky and the Church denied..." story I spoke of earlier; I had the brainstorm of using Word to type out al-Mada in Arabic and then cut-n-pasting into their search (why didn't I think of that before? *kick*) and it came up as the second hit, it's definitely one that had scrolled off the front page by virtue of being old news...

* There is no supernatural realm or beings.

Oh-oh, somebody better tell Allah!

Thanks for posting about Thomas Friedman.

The Times would have us all be sacrificial sheep, eh?

What an Asshat rag!

"All the News That's Politically Correct"...

...now deservedly lining the foulest birdcages and wrapping the stinkiest fish.

D. Edgren

#81
Last I heard, they closed the Jerusalem airport, since it is neaer Ramallah. Arafat's goons would shoot at planes taking off and landing. Passenger planes.
Maybe they figured they wouldn't shoot at their own.

Now lets go give a state to people who try to shoot down passenger planes!

This weasel should go into a mosque in Saudi Arabia and say a prayer to the father, son, and holy spirit. He will discover that Wahabbis do not in fact worship the same god as Christians. They're pretty emphatic about it, too.

At any rate, common sense tells you that a god who is a father is a very different god from one who is childless.

#86

2) You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all the laws and all the commandments.

So let me see here.

If you have one little bag of rice. God says you must share that with your neighbor and let your wife starve.

Is that what you're saying about your neighbor?

OK dickweed, I hear you.

(It's all a bunch of bullshit folks. Happy, happy religious bullshit.)

Rationalists have an increasingly difficult time trying to come up with materialistic evidence and solutions for miracles.
Even doctors and scientists agree there are realms of situations, incidents and occurances that defy the rationalism of unbelieving men.

#47 Johnny and #53 Kat

Allah wasn't just a moon god! He was also a storm god and a vegetation god.

Draft of Chapter 3 - Allah is the Same as the God of the Bible

Well, don't forget the principles on which westernism was founded. People like you are destroying westernism not religion. It is you not I who believes in murdering unborn children, plunging knives in their skulls and draining their brains. It is not religion that caused the AIDS epidemic. All this political correctness and multicultural crap have eroded the principles of westernism and made us a land of twits afraid to speak the name of our enemy and always finding Christian equivalencies to excuse the muslim murderers. I don't need a bloody atheist preacher telling me what to believe--I don't tell you how stupid you are for not believing--afford me the same courtesy.

"Allah," "El," "Ilaah" . . .

I thought we were talking about someone else

There goes b again. Now he's called Ed Moran a d*ickweed. Way to go, b.

Simpleton f*ck.

Abu Reason, b, you should both just shut the fuck up and sit back down, and I say this as an avowed atheist. Your ridiculous posts only highlight the shallowness of your thinking and the superficiality of your understanding Judaism and Christianity. Basically, you're being offensively stupid, and wrong. I suggest you learn a lot more of the theological underpinnings of Christianity and Judaism before you come back here to go off at half-cock.

The irrational deserve no courtesy.

They deserve blunt trama, and nothing else!

logger phd, LOL! May she RIP. Now there's a goddess I can get behind! In both senses.

#106 quark2

Heh heh, "rationalists" are so delightfully incapable of discerning the subtle differences between religions that teach you to love your neighbour, and those which teach you to kill your neighbour, aren't they?

The Muslim's co-opted (stole and corrupted) the idea of G'd. They've co-opted (stole and corrupted) the narrative of the Bible, and apparently, holidays too. In other words, there is no new year but "muharram" -- a word I just discovered on my new 2004 desk calendar at the office

On the 10th of Muharram:

 In another Hadeeth, Ibne Abbas (radhiyallahu anhuma) narrates that the noble Prophet (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) came to Madeenah and found the Jews fasting on the day of Ashoora. Hence the noble Prophet (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) inquired of them, "What is (the significance of) this day on which you fast?" They replied, "This is a great day. On this day Allah saved Moosa and his people and drowned Fir'awn and his nation. Thus Moosa (alayhis salaam) fasted on this day as a token of thanksgiving, therefore we too fast on this day. The Messenger of Allah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) said, "We are more worthy of Moosa and nearer to him than you."  Thereafter, the noble Prophet (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) fasted on this day and ordered (his Companions) that a fast be kept on this day. (Muslim) 

[Link: www.jamiat.org.za...]

The 10th of muharram is also a special day to honor "martyrdom"
[Link: www.jamiat.org.za...]

1st of Muharram - February 21, 2004
10th of Muharram - March 1, 2004
[Link: www.islamicfinder.org...]

(#83) Ed Moran:Abu Yes

I flipped on the Discovery Channel after reading your post.

Tom Friedman just made me ill, in the way he chose to conduct the interview with the Israeli-Arab clerk (Mohamed Daleh) to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Oh no, and now he's interviewing Diana Buttu - a Palestinian expert on "the wall" - as he called her. She's a Pali flack. A good one, but a flack nonetheless.

#112 Stalin

Irrational people deserve physical violence? Grow up or shut up.

I am the only poster here, who dares question GWB's moronic treatment of Jews, Christians and musliswine as a fellowship. If anyone is sufficiently brain dead to disbelieve that muslims claim Satanic distortion of Abrahamic and Christian prophecy, just offer a Bible (Old or New Testament) to a muslim. They will refuse it, unless it serves strategic deceit (al-taqiyah) purpose to do so, and mumble some gibberish about Mohammed (Piss Be Upon That Pedophilic Bandit) being the "last prophet."

It is a fact that White House insider, David Frum, wrote of GWB's gathering of fellow "Abrahamist" idiots in the Oval Office, where the Clown-in-Chief told these dorks that he would still be an alcoholic, if not for their allegedly common faith. That type of denial of muslim depravity, if not celebration of the social idiocy of those pigs, is dangerous at any time. If the fiction that muslims will somehow begin to feel some fellowship with we "Shaytanites," is treated as bedrock fact, then that will drive steel into the backs of these mortal enemies of all humanity.

SINCE LAST AUGUST I HAVE BEEN ADVOCATING A STARVATION SIEGE AGAINST FALLUJAH (IRAQ) - FOOD IN EXCHANGE FOR BAGGED JIHADIS. AS I PREDICTED, FALLUJAH HAS BECOME THE CENTER OF AL-QAEDA TERROR. EXPLAIN ABRAHAMIST BS TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS WHO ARE PUT AT RISK BY THE INDULGENCE OF THESE WAHABI ANIMALS.

[Link: www.weeklystandard.com...]

#111

Give up your ghosts, you're killing everyone!

#88 Mr Pol

#84 Abu Reason

You say:

* There is no supernatural realm or beings.

and

* Knowledge can only be gained by rational conclusions drawn from the evidence, not mystical revelation, superstition, or emotion.

Please explain what evidence, if any, enabled you to reach the previous conclusion.

My second point is an inescapable fact of existence. You are asking from me proof and evidence -- which means that you have accepted the fact that they are needed (which is my point). That is good. The next step is to apply that same standard to any belief that you accept -- including where you get (how you derive) your moral values and political ideals.

As far as the first point: you want me to disprove the existence of something asserted without any proof or evidence? What about gremlins? Or angels? Or fairies?

Just because followers of a pedophile cum prophet claim Allah is the G-d of Abraham does not make it so. Judging by their behaviour, Allah is an alias of Satan. Islam has all the trappings of a satanic cult because it is one.

b = Abu Reason?

People are abandoning leftist, liberalism because it's a cult, a belief system, a worshiping of the state, ---regardless of the pile of corpses, that everyone can see.

It's a contest between the rational versus the irrational,
life versus death,
reality versus superstition.

Choose your fucking side!

You are either for human life or against human life.

Make your mind up! And then act accordingly.

Camel Prophet-

I am the only poster here, who dares question GWB's moronic treatment of Jews, Christians and musliswine as a fellowship.

durrr...really? What about me? What about, like, almost everyone on this thread?

Funny, I didn't think that "Westernism" and "The West" began with the Enlightenment, but also included Dante, Shakespeare, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Maimonides, Bach, and other "irrationalists" who preceded the "Age of Reason."

It might as well be today!

Abu Non-reason stated,

* Knowledge can only be gained by rational conclusions drawn from the evidence, not mystical revelation, superstition, or emotion.

In this case, there is no possibility of every arriving at any true knowledge, since it is not possible for one to be able to ever examine all the evidence which might possibly exist, way out in the far reaches of the universe away from our prying eyes. As such, partial knowledge is all that mankind is capable of obtaining empirically.

#122 logger phd:

b = Abu Reason?

I be not b ;)

I also disagree with b's rudeness. I think that the typical religious peole here are decent, people who belive in the good, but are being hamstrung by religion (as america and the west)

#108 Kat:

It should be pretty clear that I am anti-politaical correctness and multiculturalism.

b, shut up.

#123 b

It's a contest between the rational versus the irrational,

life versus death,

reality versus superstition.

It's also, apparently, a contest between those who can think logically and those (such as yourself) who habitually commit the fallacy of false dichotomy.

OT:

The Dean Alarm...it was only a matter of time

Trying to be nice to these morons is in and of itself moronic. They are stupid, ignorant, dangerous cultists who would chop off the hand that feeds them as soon as the hand-outs stop. Bush is indeed a fool to believe anything any Muslim says. They prove day in and day out that they are incapable of speaking the truth, demonstrating civility orsensitivity. By the way, exit polls, just released show that Muslims voted Democratic by 93%. Rememer Bush's arab outreach in 2000?

Actually, I'm starting to side with b now.

He b making sense.

Wow. I scooped LGF. I posted about this at 8:48am.

See More Questions for Christians

130 Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus:

#123 b

It's a contest between the rational versus the irrational,

life versus death,

reality versus superstition.

It's also, apparently, a contest between those who can think logically and those (such as yourself) who habitually commit the fallacy of false dichotomy.

So no good and evil? just a fuzzy shade of grey? all cultures equal?

how much moer dichotomous can you get than life or death!! And where is the middle ground between proof and voices from heaven?

aaron, why did I always miss your hilarious "blogging at you from Occupied Aztlan" tagline until now?

b, I think you've missed the point.

I have had a couple of glasses of Ste. Genevieve red wine, made from grapes grown near Ft. Stockton, TX. You know, Ft. Stockton isn't too far from Imperial, TX (on the Pecos River), where the spring water has salinity that matches sea water. Thus, almost 500 miles from the nearest sea, Texans are farming shrimp. Thus, even in the more arid and dry regions of West Texas, you can still find local wine and shrimp.

There is a lesson in there for "b", although I may have to sober up to figure it out. ("Reggie" on the previous thread triggered a round of consumption).

BTW, best I can tell, as I am only an occasional imbiber,"b" is not an occasional imbiber. At least I hope "b" is buzzing, or else he may have mental health issues.

#70 Abu Reason:

However, to defend Western values, religion, including Judaism and Christianity, are not effective and in fact destructive

You might do a little more research to see what brought about Western civilization in the first place. Don't get me wrong though, I can't wait to hear how reason leads to a morality that all objective observers can agree upon (and neither the law of the jungle nor its father, the laws of physics, are acceptable moral codes).

You are entertaining, but along the lines of "Kids Say the Darndest Things," especially when they say stuff like "widdle" instead of "little." Perhaps you'll be the first religious, Atheist or agnostic person to grace this board who claims to have all the answers (very few), who actually does (none so far).

Extra credit question: Which nation in any period that was as hostile to all religion as you are would you personally care to live in?

#83 Ed Moran:Abu Yes: You got off easier than I did, my cable listing has "Israel and Palestine"

#130

the fallacy of false dichotomy.

I haven't heard of that one. Maybe you could enlighten us on it.

False dichotomy, huh?

Pray, and pray, and pray, tell...

...but of course please tell us the difference between
poision and nutrition,
death and life,
ruin and prosperity.

There is no dichotomy between these things, it's one or the other.

And it's that time in history to choose.

So make your choice, and then shut the hell up.

Abu Reason, TQC isn't saying it's not a false dichotomy because everything is equal, he's saying it's a false dichotomy because he doesn't accept that religious belief = death and atheism = life. The metaphors that b is trying to frame his polemic in aren't apt.

I don't get it.

If a lying murderer says "There is no Lite but Miller Lite." he is still a lying murderer.

Islam died a long time ago, centuries if you want to quantify. Current Muslims are more clearly members of the child-sacrificing cult of Molech.

Muslim moderates only differ from Muslim extremists in that they are willing to wait a little before subjugating us to dhimmitude or a Daniel Pearl-like fate. According to the Koran, there is NO alternative to this.

See Do Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the ’same god’?

Six more Rantblog rants equating Muslims with Molech.

It matters not what abu non reason or b spout. When it's all said and done and we will all be dead. Then it will be revealed who was right and who was wrong. In that case as a believer nothing is lost whether it's proven or not. Because if as a believer you are right, you have saved your soul. And if you're wrong and you're just dead then you've lost nothing.
And in case either of you are aware of western culture, it's based on judeo-christian beliefs. And, if originally man had not attained belief in a supernatural being there would be no need of laws for that which is considered right and wrong. If that is so, then there is no need to rampage against the heathen muslim as they are not going to be held culpable in the afterlife.
Personally I am devoted to the fact that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose. :)

This is what I love about LGF. People engaged in high-brow philosophical discussions.

Such as Has John Kerry been using Botox?

You decide...

Surely it doesn't matter what name you call God. We who believe God exists make up the names anyway. In the Torah, when Moses asked God what his name was he just said "I will be who I will be". The real question is does He exist in the first place and if He created us then why and what is our purpose. Clearly the three religions all have different views on that.

With regard to the rational versus irrational argument, I would like to say that not everything which cannot be empirically proven is automatically false. An intelligent person realises (rationally!) that he cannot possibly understand or know everything in the universe and therefore his own logic tells him that some things are beyond his logic.

130 Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus:

Do you realize you are preaching the moral relativim and nihilism that LGF and other site have ben exposing?

Same goes for Kat:

I don't need a bloody atheist preacher telling me what to believe--I don't tell you how stupid you are for not believing--afford me the same courtesy.

more moral relativism.

#86 Ed Moran:Abu Yes

Christians are commanded to love their neighbor, to pray for their enemies, and to forgive those that do them wrong "seven times seventy times". If everyone followed these rules, everyone would be pretty happy.

this is moral relatism. this si what the UN wants the US to do.

#139 b

#130

the fallacy of false dichotomy.

I haven't heard of that one. Maybe you could enlighten us on it.

Hmmm...I suspect there are quite a number of things which you haven't heard of.

False dichotomy - attempting to build an argument on spurious premises based upon an attribution of distinction which is not logically apparent.

#135 Abu Un-Reason

See Evariste's #140 - Why engage in repetition?

how much moer dichotomous can you get than life or death!! And where is the middle ground between proof and voices from heaven?

Before we engage in a discussion of revelation, please demonstrate that empiricism can ever conclusively "prove" anything...

Contrary to common opinon "Allah" was mentioned in the Bible...Allah is Ba'al the false god...

1 Kings 17-39

17 When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, "Is this you, you troubler of Israel?"
18 He said, "I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals.
19 Now then send and gather to me all Israel at mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table."
20 So Ahab sent a message among all the sons of Israel and brought the prophets together at Mount Carmel.
21 Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people did not answer him a word.
22 Then Elijah said to the people, "I alone am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. 23 Now let them give us two oxen; and let them choose one ox for themselves and cut it up, and place it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other ox and lay it on the wood, and I will not put a fire under it.
24 Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, He is God." And all the people said, "That is a good idea."
25 So Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one ox for yourselves and prepare it first for you are many, and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it."
26 Then they took the ox which was given them and they prepared it and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, "O Baal, answer us." But there was no voice and no one answered. And they leaped about the altar which they made.
27 It came about at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, "Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened."
28 So they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out on them.
29 When midday was past, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice; but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention.
30 Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come near to me." So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down.
31 Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whome the word of the Lord had come, saying, "Israel shall be your name." 32 So with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar, large enough to hold two measures of seed. 33 Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox in pieces and laid it on the wood.
34 And he said, "Fill four pitchers with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood." And he said, "Do it a second time," and they did it a second time. And he said, "Do it a third time," and they did it a third time.
35 The water flowed around the altar and he also filled the trench with water.
36 At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said, "O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word. 37 Answer Me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord are God, and that You have turned their heart back again."
38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
39 When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, "The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God."
___

Allah is not G-d.

And no multi-culti secular humanist from the NYT, has any right to teach otherwise!

For that matter neither does Pres. Bush or those apostate interfaith Cardinals in Rome...

___

Deuteronomy 17:
2 If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant,
3: And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded;
4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard [of it], and enquired diligently, and, behold, [it be] true, [and] the thing certain, [that] such abomination is wrought in Israel:
___

Corinthians 6:9
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,"

Hey b, good stuff, but you don't need to resort to that language - your arguments stand on their own.

#146 Abu Un-Reason

Do you realize you are preaching the moral relativim and nihilism that LGF and other site have ben exposing?

Well, that may be your faith based opinion, but...

How's this strike you: Atheism such as yours is the product of an irrational, foolish mind which is incapable of understanding logic, much less of employing it in any meaningful way. As such, people of your low calibre of thinking have to resort to meaningless platitudes which they don't understand (whining about "moral relativism" while completely failing to understand their opponent's argument), useless rants about "religion", and non sequitur arguments based on hand-waving.

We used to laugh at people like you in grad school.

Now, go back and do the lab over, and do it right this time, before I flunk you.

"Knowledge can only be gained by rational conclusions drawn from the evidence, not mystical revelation, superstition, or emotion."

This statement fails its own test.

b and Abu Reason

From your posts, I assume you believe homo sapiens evolved from lower animals?

Please correct me if I misstate your position/belief.

Absolutely ridiculous that they would think the three major monotheistic religions would have the same god, much less that they fail to realize that imposing this view is itself condescending and insulting to a great many people.

For starters, I am constantly ribbed by my girlfriend and my jewish friends about Judaism being the only true monotheistic religion (I know the Holy Trinity can be confusing for my jewish friends). The Comedy Central movie the Hebrew Hammer is funny and relentless on this point.

Second, my girlfriend and I also disagree about whether its the same god because if He is, boy is He a bi-polar schizofrenic! In one testament, He's smiting and flooding the world; in the next, He's love-dovey, touchy feely, turn-thy-cheek.

I know, I know I blaspheme.

Finally, when it comes down to it, if it were the same God, why the Muslim insistence on exterminating their brothers of the book, the Jews? Hmmm...

Then again, maybe that's why the ground has never shook and the blood never frozen in the veins of the Jews and the Christian Crusaders, despite the numerous and continuing pleas for Allah to do so.

I, for one, know my God has nothing to do with the fanatic terrorists that practice Islam.

Much less obnoxious story on Discovery.

Mass Transit/Subway systems. I used to really have a thing for subways. It would have fit my sister's amateur diagnosis of Asperger's, ( but I rented a video about Asperger's and those people are just sad, I felt sorry for them, but I said, I may be a touch eccentric, but I'm not like that).

Houston has a new light rail system that runs from where people work/see baseball games to where people work/visit hospital patients/see NFL football games. If the trains ran from where people live to where they work, or from where they live to where they recreate, people might ride it. In the two months it has been running, the streetcar has wrecked 10 cars, including a Union Pacific Rail Road maintenance pickup truck that drove around crossing gates (there is irony in that)

Also OT, the Zionist Occupation Govt./Zionist World Conspiracy achieves new milestone, ZOG/ZWC weather machine keeps Kofi Annan and other America/Jew haters from making ot to the office!

Fiery Celt

I missed you!

Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus-

and non sequitur arguments based on hand-waving.

Touché.

Exerpter from an article be Serje Trifkovic:...

One of the clichés endlessly repeated by those who would conceal the dangerous potentialities inherent in Islam is that Moslems "believe in the same God" as Christians and Jews. But this is a severe distortion of the truth, for what Moslems fundamentally believe is that they know the true nature of the God that Judaism and Christianity tell lies about. Lies for which Christians and Jews will be punished in hell. The fact that Moslems share Levantine monotheism with us, makes them more, not less, antagonistic to us on a religious level. Hopes for reconciliation on the grounds of common monotheism, as opposed to a realistic "good fences make good neighbors" civilizational détente, are wishful thinking.
The widespread belief in the non-Muslim world that Islam accords respect to the Old Testament and the Gospels as steps in progression to Mohammad’s revelation is mistaken. Modern Muslim apologists try to stress the supposed underlying similarities and compatibility of the three faiths, but this is not the view of orthodox Islam. Muhammad’s insistence that there is a heavenly proto-Scripture and that previous "books" are merely distorted and tainted copies sent to previous nations or communities means that these scriptures are the "barbarous Koran" as opposed to the true, Arabic one. (Let’s leave aside for a minute the puzzling question of how any degree of "distortion" of the Koran could produce either an Old or a New Testament.) The Tradition also regards the non-canonical Gospel of Barnabas, and not the New Testament, as the one that Jesus taught. The Koran alone is the true word of God and sets aside all previous revelations.
While the influence of orthodox Christianity upon the Koran has been slight, apocryphal and heretical Christian legends are the second most important original source of Islam. In other words, Islam contains an awful lot that Christians have deliberately rejected over the years as religiously unsound. There are also influences of Sabaism, of Zoroastrianism, and of ancient Arabian paganism, including the divine sanction for the practices of polygamy and slavery. The reports in both the Koran and the Hadith (authoritative traditional sayings) concerning paradise, the houris, (virgins) the youths, the jinn (genies) and the angel of death have been directly taken from the ancient books of the Zoroastrians. Zoroastrianism also originated the story that on the Day of Judgment all people will have to cross a bridge stretched across hell leading to paradise on which the unbelievers will stumble and fall down into hell.
The denial of the Trinity is also explicit: Allah begets not, i.e. he is no Father; and was not begotten, that is, he is no Son; and no one is like him, which means he is no Holy Spirit. "They are infidels who say, Allah is the third of three." But "Isa" is not the Son of Allah, only a special prophet, and the Christians’ contrary claim shows how they are perverted. The Christians are guilty of blasphemy because of their belief in the "trinity" of Allah, Mary, and Jesus. The "real" Jesus was a righteous prophet and a good Muslim who paved the way for the final prophet, Muhammad himself.
There is a wishful myth in circulation among liberals that Islam accords respect to all "people of the book," i.e. Christians and Jews in addition to Moslems. While Islam indeed accords them a higher standing than it does to polytheists like Hindus (pace the question of whether Hinduism properly understood is truly polytheistic) or African animists, this hardly amounts to respect. Of all the "people of the book" only Muslims can attain salvation. Jews’ and Christians’ refusal to acknowledge Mohammed as the messenger of God dooms them to unbelief and eternal suffering after death. Christians are mortal sinners because of their belief in the divinity of Christ, and their condemnation is irrevocable: "God will forbid him the garden and the fire will be his abode."
Unlike the Christian faith in God revealing Himself through Christ, the Koran is not a revelation of Allah – a heretical concept in Islam – but the direct revelation of his commandments and the communication of his law. It has been said that the Koran, to a Muslim, is not the perfected Gospel, it is Christ, the Word Incarnate. This is a somewhat tenuous metaphor, however, not a valid parallel: Christian God "comes down" and seeks man because of His fatherly love. The Fall cast a shadow, the Incarnation makes reconciliation possible. Allah, by contrast, is cold, haughty, unpredictable, unknowable, capricious, distant, and so purely transcendent that no "relationship" is possible. He reveals only his will, not himself. Allah is "everywhere," and therefore nowhere relevant to us. He is uninterested in making our acquaintance, let alone in being near to us because of love. We are still utterly unable to grasp his purposes and all we can do is what we have to do, to obey his command.
The Koran claims to be the fulfillment of a religious design which was imperfectly revealed to the Jews and to the Christians. It is the crowning synthesis, the final word. But viewing the matter objectively, leaving aside for a moment the question of the actual truth of the book, it seems hard to see how the Koran is a synthesis of anything. The way in which Christianity makes sense – again, simply as a logical matter and leaving aside the truth of it – as a fulfillment of Judaism, is clear even to the unbeliever. But the Koran’s claim is singularly implausible. Non-Muslim commentators fail to see in what way the Koran is an improvement over, or advancement on, the moral teaching, language, style, or coherence of the Old and New Testament. It looks, feels, sounds like a construct entirely human in origin and intent, clear in its earthly sources of inspiration and is the fulfillment of the daily needs, personal and political, of its author.
Finally, one cannot ignore that whatever mildly friendly things the Koran may say about Judaism and Christianity in its early part, the late Surras also signify the final break with the Jews and Christians, who are fiercely denounced. The Muslims must be merciless to the unbelievers but kind to each other. "Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them." War, not friendship, is mandatory until Islam reigns everywhere. Muslims are ordered to fight the unbelievers, "and let them find harshness in you." They must kill the unbelievers "wherever you find them." The punishment for resistance is execution or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides. By the stage in his life during which these Surras were written, Muhammad was no longer trying to convert his hearers by examples, promises, and warnings; he addresses them as their master and sovereign, praising them or blaming them for their conduct, giving laws and precepts as needed. His raw dogmatism stands, finally, naked of all pretence.

I'd rather have a false dichotomy than a prefrontal lobotomy ...or was that "free bottle in front of me"?

I forget.

Ed Moran-cool, me too! I bet you'll love Transport Blog then!

evariste

The ever-improving Rantblog has lots of surprises.

Dar ul Harb-oooh!
Should I say it?
I will.
Forgive me in advance.
I'd rather have a false dichotomy than a dick falls outta me.
*ducks*

Of course Kearney's right, in a theological succession way of looking at the issue.

1. Are there any other significant monotheistic religions in the world?

2. Does the Koran accept Christians and Jews, even if they are "errant" and therefore of second class status, as opposed to polytheistic Hindus and Animists and Zorastrians, who were traditionally given the choice of conversion or death?

3. Does the Koran incorporate the Old and New Testaments, even if they are in somewhat bowdlerized forms?

[Link: www.economist.com...]

It's premium content at "al-Economist," so I would suggest finding the print version in your local public library to read about the connections between Christianity and Islam over Mary, mother of Jesus.

As a Christian, I believe that Mohammed was not a messenger of God, but rather a perverter of his message. Radical Islam is proof of what can arise out of this conflict of belief.

But then, as a Christian I also believe that Jews are in error in not accepting Christ as the Messiah. Traditional European anti-semitism is proof of what can arise out of this conflict of belief.

That doesn't mean that Christians, Jews, and Muslims don't worship the same God.

#151 Superfly

HAH HAH, good point!

#156 Evariste

Merci. Trust me, I've seen my share of handwaving too.

138 TCQ

I can't wait to hear how reason leads to a morality that all objective observers can agree upon.

This is moral relativism!! This is what we are fighting against - the leftists and multiculturalists. If you can't rationally prove your beliefs, on what grounds do you hold them? If "because God/society/the stars/my emotions told me" is the basis of your moral and political beliefs, then you are in sad, sad shape.

BTW, If you were right you wouldn't need to be condecending to bolster a weak position.

Extra credit question: Which nation in any period that was as hostile to all religion as you are would you personally care to live in?

The United States, which is the least religious country in history -- and which BTW is why the islamists hate it.

#157 Richard the Lionheart

While the influence of orthodox Christianity upon the Koran has been slight, apocryphal and heretical Christian legends are the second most important original source of Islam. In other words, Islam contains an awful lot that Christians have deliberately rejected over the years as religiously unsound.

--Good way of putting it. I have made this point on another thread before, that Islam seemed to have cherry-picked some heresies that Christianity already found to be old hat in the 7th century. The example I pointed out was Manicheism, which viewed matter as evil.

jtf.org is fighting against the destruction of Israel and the West against the moslems who pray to satan, not
G-d.

Evariste... and I'm also part of the settler movement, here.

Nothing wrong with being a settler.

Take a peek at my Watcher of Weasels Council award-winning What Makes Texas More Sacred To The US than Judea and Samaria to Israel?

The Jews predate Arabs in the Promised Land. It wasn't until after the Illiterate Pedophile Prophet, piss be upon him, had hoardes who violently expanded westward, eventually triggering the Crusades in reaction.

28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked
Him, What commandment is the foremost of all?
29 Jesus answered, The foremost is, "HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL
YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'
31 The second is this, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other
commandment greater than these.
32 The scribe said to Him, Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO
ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM;
33 AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND
WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE'S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more
than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of
God.

I still say if everyone treats their neighbor the way they wanted to be treated, the world would be a good place.

#158 Dar ul Harb:
LOL!

#161 evariste:
Lucky for you that you ducked...

#149

I like cussin some times.
I don't know why exactly,
but I do.

I'm American, and I don't need no explainin.
Or not much.

I don't know if it's Jefferson, or Twain, or Sherman.
I just can't help but undercut myself from time to time.

I'm an American, for several generations, now.

As Izzy points out, at the burning bush G-d declares I am that I am.

Popeye (the sailor man) states, I yam what I yam.

Forget Allah, YHVH, or El – G-d’s name is Popeye.

#164 Abu Reason

You remind me of Vizzini from The Princess Bride:

"Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I'm not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

#164 Abu Reason

"Extra credit question: Which nation in any period that was as hostile to all religion as you are would you personally care to live in?"

The United States, which is the least religious country in history -- and which BTW is why the islamists hate it.

--Not France, c. 1790? No gold star for you!

pitiricus #41:

That post caused some discussion here, last Fall. I would call it an essential download:

[Link: www.atimes.com...]

The Asian Times' "Spengler" column goes from great to mediocre, which tells me that it is assigned to various persons, none of whom is the notorious Che-Gonzo, Pepe Escobar:

[Link: www.globaldevelopment.org...]

There is some comment above on the "kaba stone." The stone is only 9" in circumference, and rests on the "Yemeni Corner" of the Cube. It was once stolen, and remained outside of Mecca for almost 200 years. It is certainly no different from any of the 360 "idols" which the ersatz "prophet" destroyed when he occupied Mecca. It was cracked during exile, therefore it is probably not a meteorite, which are super-dense. According to hadith comment, it was once white but acquired additional blackness with each "sinful" human touch. Some anti-muslim Hindus believe that there are hidden hadith references to the stone being: feces from "il-lah" (or "allah," "the-god"). His alleged purity would have made his crap white. (Mideast deities, like Marduk, did eat). One hadith has "the-god" using "stars" - "the-god" didn't tell his "abds" ("slaves") that the Sun is a star - to toss at "demons" ("jinn"). Not bad for a 150 foot tall entity who supposedly sits on a throne while cursing humanity, just like Baal. Could muslims be venerating god-shit? That must really stick to your shoes.

#164 Abu Un-Reading

I appreciate the input, but if you go back and read it over, you'll see that post #138 was by Model4, not me. Perhaps you would like readdress your statement and concerns to him?

While we're on the subject, however, I'm somewhat perplexed at your claim that the United States is the "least religious nation in history" (Indeed, all the atheists I've heard seem to complain about it being just the opposite). I guess the various Great Awakenings, the position of America as the greatest sender of overseas missionaries, official state religions in several of the States until the 14th amendment, religiously-based blue laws and even the 18th amendment to the Constitution don't count as religious?

Now we as christians and jews are being put into the same camp as the muslims...moral relativism.
You are fools, where do you think right and wrong originated from? From some heathenistic cave dwelling aetheist? Right and wrong, crime and lawfulness have their base in the belief of being rewarded or punished by a greater being. If there is no greater being then there is no right or wrong. Now that is relativism...amorally so.

From now on, both of you, Abu reason [really?] and b, if you cannot present your arguments towards the posters who do not hold to your virulent opinions, then keep it to yourselves.
I firmly believe from your postings if you had your way you would not only outlaw all religious beliefs you would do just as Kat pointed out, you would use force to make it so.

Pali society believes that their deity requires people to kill themselves for the deity, and that child sacrifice is especially what their deity requires. It is a throwback to the worship of Molech. Add to this the belief that their deity requires the murder of people who get their religious inspiration in a different way, and you have what can only be described as a death cult. There is a climate of opinion in Pali society that one should hate life itself, and long for death. It is surely best described as a death cult.

Here is an article, "Aspiration, not desperation", by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, that examines the motivation of the Pali Islamikazes. Pali Islamikazes are not desperate people, contrary to what the Euro elites maintain. They are doing what they have always dreamed of doing, and what Pali society glorifies.
[Link: www.jpost.com...]

They may call their deity "Allah", but their deity resembles Molech, or something far more evil -- the Devil, perhaps, might be the one that desires the massive murder and suicide of people.

Aaron-

Whey and the curdish territories

LMAO!
It's true what you say about the unhesitating answer to a question about Palestinians' ultimate goal-min alnahri ila albaHr-from the river to the sea.

Ed Moran, weather dude:

The temperature here in Winnipeg is currently -37C, and with the windchill it feels like -53C (-63F).

Tomorrow's high--let me say that again, high--is expected to be -32C (-26F), with the windchill -50C (-58F).

It's not quite record-breaking cold here, but it's fairly close. The record low for today is -42C in 1966.

#179 cba

I think if I had read that a couple of months ago i would not be moving to Winterpeg!!!

"Extra credit question: Which nation in any period that was as hostile to all religion as you are would you personally care to live in?"

The United States, which is the least religious country in history -- and which BTW is why the islamists hate it.

That's gotta be one of the most retarded things I ever read. We're one of the most religious countries in history, we just aren't officially religious, only privately.
What about France, the USSR, China?

#164 Abu Reason: You're talking to the wrong dude. And you can complain, whine, and divert all you like, so long as it's shown that you can't produce the system of morality you claim rationality alone can create. Forgive me for being underwhelmed by someone who barges in claiming everyone is wrong but him, yet stands there empty-handed when asked for his solution.

I guess I shouldn't bother pointing out that the United States has always been governed in a fashion that openly welcomes at least some faiths, but it seems you're clueless on that as well. The nation in history I asked for was one that, as a matter of policy, is as hostile to all faiths as you are. Remaining silent or admitting you couldn't come up with an answer would have been far better than answering a different question than the one that was asked.

Abu-I know I am superior because I am a child of God and you descended from apes, so I can understand your believing USA is the most unreligious country on earth. Just further reinforces my belief that you are a bloody fool. Why don't you move to North Korea or Cuba. You'd fit in wonderflly with Ping Pong or Castro. They have used rational thought to develop two of the most superior godless regimes on earth.

#180 logger phd:
Sorry to break it to ya, buddy! But at least you'll be moving in summer. That'll give you a chance to ease into it. Although there's no too ways about it--this weather SUCKS!

It's not this bad every year. It's the worst it's been for 8 or 10 years, so next year will probably be better.

BTW, are comments glacially slow, or is it just me?

b and Abu Reason

Please be so kind as to respond to my post #152.

Thank you.

Kat:

Rosenzweig made in the 20s the same point about Islam, which he calls a mockery of a religion...

#184 cba

Thanks for the advance welcome! ;-)

All in all, I'm still looking forward to the move. I would savor it more without this big dissertation thing in my way.

only slightly off-topic: Are there any mosques in Winnipeg? I want to avoid buying a house where I'd have to hear "BWAAAH-UH!" at 3:00 in the morning!

All right, it's after 11 here inside the Beltway. Time to call it a night and savor the repartee in the morning!

Oh, and the posts do seem to be creeping. Blame it on spam.

An interesting aside to the rather long Biblical excerpt about Elijah and the prophets of Baal... when it was all over, the people were quoted as shouting, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!"... ironically, the exact translation of Elijah's name is "The Lord, He is God." So really, the people might've just been chanting "Elijah! Elijah! Elijah!" LOL

OK, just messing around. It is very interesting to read through the theological debate here. This is my first time to post, but I don't think it will be my last.

Blessings,
Kris

Well, CBA, it was -1C at the big airport in Houston, and I had to use an expired ATM card to scrape the windshield.

I am heartbroken as a week ago Thursday's GFS supercomputer model said over 1" of snow the evening of the Super Bowl, and now it looks like showers ending and upper 40s ( ~9C)

It looks like Houston's 14 year snow drought continues to grow. We are going on 19 years on our Major Hurricane Drought ( cat 3 Hurricane Alicia was the last major Hurricane to directly hit HOU, although numerous minor storms, such as 1989 minimal Hurricane Jerry, Tropical Storm Frances and two different Tropical Storms called Allison. Hurricane Claudette, while a borderline Cat 2, missed Houston by 150 miles).

Houston is now in a ten year drought of Fujita scale F-4 tornadoes.

Frankly, getting dull here in HOU. Lately, all we get are floods. Floods have a lot of clean up work involved, but aren't that spectacular to watch. (After Allison in 2001 had the "fun" of pulling up carpeting at my wife's cousins house and her grandparents house. Nasty work).

A Short Summary of Islamic Beliefs and Eschatology
Collected by Lambert Dolphin

[Link: www.ldolphin.org...]

Arabic Inscriptions in The Dome of The Rock in Jerusalem
From the Muslim point of view the Islamic shrine known as the Dome of the Rock built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is an answer to, and a denial of, the attractions of Christianity and its Scriptures, providing the "faithful" of Islam with arguments to be used against Christian theology. The inscriptions are seven hundred and thirty-four feet long in all, amongst the lengthiest inscriptions in the world. There is a great amount of repetition and many quotations from the Koran.

The following extracts are relevant:

Inner Face: South Wall. "In the name of Allah the Merciful the Compassionate. There is no God but Allah alone; he has no co-partner. He is the Kingship and His the praise. He giveth life and He causeth to die, and He hath power over everything."

South-East Wall. "Verily Allah and His angels pronounce blessing upon the Prophet. O ye who have pronounced blessings upon Him and give Him the salutation of peace. O, People of the Book (i.e. the Jews and Christians, always referred to as such by the Moslems -Ed.) do not go beyond the bounds in your religion and do not say about Allah anything but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is but a messenger of Allah and His word which he cast upon Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe only in Allah and of his messenger, but do not say 'Three' (Trinity) and it will be better for you. Allah is only one God. Far be it from His glory that he should have a son."

North Wall. "The Messiah will not deign to be in the service of Allah nor will the angels who stand in his presence. O Allah; pray upon Thy messenger "the servant Jesus---(N-W Wall) the son of Mary and peace be upon him the day of his birth, the day of his death and the day of his being raised alive. That is Jesus, son of Mary---a statement concerning which YOU are in doubt. It is not for Allah to take for Himself any offspring, glory be to Him."

West Wall. "Allah bears witness that there is no God but Him, likewise the angels and the people possessed of knowledge," (S-W Wall)---Upholding justice. There is no God but He, the Almighty and All wise. Verily, the religion in Allah's sight is Islam."

Outer Face: West and North-West Walls. "In the name of Allah the Merciful and Compassionate. There is no God but Allah alone. Praise be to Allah who hath not taken to himself offspring. To Him there has never been any person in the sovereignty. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah, may God pray upon Him and accept his intercession."

"Praise be God who has not taken unto himself a son and who has no partner in sovereignty nor has He any protector on account of weakness."

If religious Jews are offended by the presence of this Islamic shrine on their holy mountain, Christians have even more reasons to take offense at these blasphemous statements about their God, and the deliberate insults to Biblical revelation that the interior inscriptions clearly intend.

1990

#176

--- well aren't you the rude little mother fucker?

I firmly believe from your postings if you had your way you would not only outlaw all religious beliefs you would do just as Kat pointed out, you would use force to make it so.

I would 'ticket' people for ill-logic, and fine them as we now do for traffic violations. It would cost you money, personal production, and it would go on your permanent record.

You can categorize this as force if you wish, and it is in a way. But the point is that I would punish you for your stupidity. And I would hound you with a permanent record that followed you throughout your miserable life, for your logical transgressions.

I would basically fuck you up, every time you strayed from logic. And the more irrational you were, the more likely you would be locked up in a prison or insane asylum you would be.

Tough shit for you, but that's the way it would be if I were king.

Welcome, Kris (Iowa Soccer Mom)!

b is obviously a teenager.

#152 Paladin

Am I to suppose from your post that you do not believe that life began with the condensation polymerisation of amino acids in the early ocean?

evariste

I'm not unreasonable. I'm for unlimited territory for the Palestinians... 6' under ground.

Ed Moran,

I lurk occasionally and post infrequently. My parents and my brother are headin' down your way this weekend.

Keep your eyes, ears and instincts my friend...because it appears as if one of our multi-lettered agencies are not taking the threats down in Texas too seriously.

Texas plant guard sticks to story; Man shot near port facility says FBI doesn't believe him

b

You'd give tickets for "thought crimes?

Then he is a raving nutbar.

@184

"The United States, which is the least religious country in history -- and which BTW is why the islamists hate it."

Have you ever studied documented American history? This country was founded on JUDE0-CHRISTIAN premises. Are you aware that Jews were among the foundation of our way of life in this country?
You are not ignorant, you are illerate!

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
And don't hate me because I'm an atheist.

As long as your religion doesn't proscribe killing or oppressing me, I don't really give a shiat what you believe.

I'm all about freedom of religion, baby, cuz it means freedom FROM religion for me.

Sorry for the interruption, we now return you to your regularly scheduled debate between Descartes and Kant.

#193

Oh, yuckety, yuck, yuck!

You are on to something.

Oh brave soul, go back and scratch your balls.

You are brave, you are mount everiste!

#194 TQC

Uh, close.

#190 Jay

Another interesting thing about the Dome of the Rock inscriptions is that they provide the first chronological evidence (c. 70 AH) for a number of key theological underpinnings of Islam. Basically, before Abd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock, there was no Islam. It was merely a non-descript Arab monotheism loosely based off of the various "Abrahamist" beliefs prevalent in Palestine and Syria for centuries before the Arab invasions. Islam developed only gradually, and wasn't really "established" in its present form until the reign of Walid I, Abd al-Malik's son (which, correspondingly, is when the first real evidence of major persecution of the Jews and Christians appears, as found in contemporary, i.e. non-Muslim, evidences).

Another interesting tidbit. There is no evidence of there being any sort of prophet Mohammed in the Arab religion until 71 AH, when we find a coin bearing the inscription "Muhammed rasul allah" dated to that year. Apparently, Muslims were completely silent about their "Holy Profit" for the first seven decades or so.

I highly recommend to all on this forum the book "Crossroads to Islam", by Yehuda Nevo and Judith Koren, both noted ANE archaeologists.

A couple of years ago I saw an item about this guy in Cairo who was keeping a ram on his apartment roof so he could slaughter it during Eid. It seems he bent over to pick something up and the ram... rammed him. He fell to his death. May be an urban legend

Lewis Can't Lose,

Sorry for the interruption, we now return you to your regularly scheduled debate between Descartes and Kant.

LOL! I was thinking, Plato vs. Aristotle, but I like yours too.
quark2-

You are not ignorant, you are illerate!

Heh :-)

If you guys are the best of what America has to offer, then America is doomed.

If you think that the answer to the Islamists' wild irrationality and subjugation of the individual to a wrathful god should be answered by ... orgainized irrationality and subjugation of the individual to a pleasant god, then America is doomed.

If you cannot defend America, the West, and your freedom on objective, scientific, rational grounds, then you intellectually are no better than the head-slashing crazies -- and America is doomed.

If that is your position, you do not deserve the freedom you cannot comprehend and the values you had you part in creating.

You have betrayed what this country stood for. You are parasites living of the dying glory that was once America.

God help America.

#187 logger phd:
My trusty Sherlock (only $12.95 at Shopper's Drug Mart!) lists two places under the Islam section of Places of Worship: the Ahmadiyya Muslim Centre in Fort Rouge, and the Manitoba Islamic Centre in St. Vital.

I suggest renting when you arrive, so you can take your time about buying.

However, I do recall fondly living on a moshav in central Galillee, a few miles from an Arab village (home to our Arabic teacher). I rather enjoyed hearing the muezzin. It was so quiet that the sound traveled very clearly. OTOH, we also heard the wedding celebrations--lots of music punctuated by gunfire.

Ed Moran--if you want snow, come visit, we've got tons. For some reason we've had huge amounts of snow this winter as well as this nasty cold snap. Between all the snow I've shovelled from my driveway and all the snow the city's plowed from the street onto my lawn, I have a major snow fort.

#202 Paladin

Oh, well, me neither. In fact, I am amused at evolutionists who will claim that their belief system is the "scientific" one, and who then make such a basic error as to suggest that amino acids would just polymerise in the ocean, even though this would contradict one of the most basic scientific principles in organic chemistry.

I would 'ticket' people for ill-logic, and fine them as we now do for traffic violations. It would cost you money, personal production, and it would go on your permanent record.

Wow. That's some funny farking shiat, motherfarker.

Welcome to LGF, Mr. Spock. Live long and prosper, dude.

200 Freedom of Religion means you are free to worship, or not worship, believe, or not believe in the divine being of your choice.

If I may also get New Testament Biblical with you, when Jesus sent out his disciples to preach, he told them if they were rejected to leave, and shake the dust off their shoes as a warning (NB, Jesus did not teach: "Fight the non-believers until they proclaim Jesus is Lord").

Even your most hardcore Bible Belt Baptist may cluck his tongue at you ( and try to keep you from opening an adult bookstore next to his/her church ), but they won't try to kill you.

#208 TQC

What you said.

#183,Kat.
Abu-I know I am superior because I am a child of God and you descended from apes,
Creationist cretin go peddle your snake oil elsewhere.

EE: The following will interest you. I downloaded this in the Fall of 2001, off Asian Times. AT's Che-gonzo, Pepe Escobar, interviews Pakistan's premier expert on muslim "jihad": Arif Jamal (Lahore)

PE: "What is the true meaning of jihad?"

AJ: "Jihad literally means 'holy struggle'. But in common
parlance, when people use the word jihad, it means jihad in the way of Allah - or 'holy war.' Prophet Muhammed stressed the concept of jihad all his life. And he fought jihad more than 20 times in his own life. The real objective of jihad in the life of Mohammed was to defeat the infidels and establish an Islamic state in Mecca, Medina and the Arabian island later on. This essential meaning of jihad emains even today. The main objective of jihad even today is to defeat the infidels and establish Islamic states all over the world.
Muslims believe that the Earth belongs to Allah and they should establish the system of Allah on Allah's earth. The infidel system must go."

PE: "What are the rewards of waging jihad?"

AJ: "Prophet Mohammed also offered a lot of incentives for those who would wage jihad in their lives. The mujahideen were assured of entering Paradise before the first drop of their blood fell to earth. The Holy Scriptures of Islam also say that houris (beautiful virgins of the Koranic Paradise) come down to Earth to take the spirit of the mujahid who is about to die before the first drop of his blood falls to earth. The martyrs are promised 72 houris in Paradise. These houris are more beautiful than all the beauties of the world combined. I have studied more than 600 wills of Pakistani mujahideen who were fighting in Kashmir. There is hardly any will that escapes this concept. All the mujahideen have mentioned the houris as an important iincentive for waging jihad. The paradise with houris is the prime objective of these mujahideen."

PE: "What is the Koranic view of 'infidels' especially Christians and Jews?"

AJ: "In the beginning Prophet Muhammed did try to evolve alliances with Jews of the Arabian island against the non-believers. But they did not prove long-lasting. And ultimately the Jews, Christians and non-believers were bracketed in the same fashion by the Prophet. Prophet Muhammed wanted to establish an Islamic state in the Arabian island. It was not possible by evolving alliances with non-Muslims in those days. They Holy Koran is very clear about Jews and Christians; it very clearly says in several places that Jews and Christians cannot be friends with Muslims. The mujahideen today are propagating this concept from every available pulpit. Prophet Muhammed also asked to throw Christians and Jews out of the Arabian island. And this is the foundation of the concept of jihad of Osama bin Laden. Osama's contention is that it is un-Islamic to have the Christians and Jewish army of the United States of America in the Arabian island. He wants them out. Many of his close associates say that if the American troops leave Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden can be convinced to appear before an Islamic court of law. This shows that his jihad is based on the saying of Prophet Muhammed. A big problem is that jihad has intensified the hatred between Muslims and Christians and Jews."

PE: "Could we say that Osama's jihad is a misinterpretation of jihad, according to Prophet Muhammed?"

AJ: "I don't think it is a misinterpretation of the Islamic
concept of jihad. It may be a narrow interpretation of the concept."

(sections by-passed)

PE: "The concept of jihad itself was elaborated in seventh century Arabia. In your opinion, what is the relevance of such a concept to the 21st century?

AJ: "Jihad as we know it now started only after the CIA and ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence of Pakistan) started jihad in Afghanistan. Before that, jihad was a dormant concept, and Muslims were waging mostly nationalistic struggles. In the last two decades, jihad has come to mean 'armed struggle.' After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European empire, jihad has been adopted by the have-nots in Muslim countries. And these have-nots are waging a sort of class struggle against the Western haves. Jihad has become a sort of thermonuclear bomb in the hand of the have-nots in Muslim states. So if Marx were alive today he would say that the new class struggle is the Islamic have-nots against the Western haves. Probably Marx would not agree with this because he was in favor of a class struggle without the involvement of religion. But this is one form of class war, yes."

PE: "Who is entitled to start and wage a jihad?

AJ: "According to the Holy Scriptures, it is the Commander of the Faithful - the Amir ul-Munimeen - who is entitled to declare jihad. But in the absence of a commander-in-chief any Muslim can wage jihad. The Holy Scriptures say that jihad will continue until the Day of Judgement. This means that the mujahideen will not revert to ordinary life. You cannot simply abandon jihad. Once you get training to wage jihad, and you wage jihad, you only change locations, but you have to continue the struggle. That is why the mujahideen from Afghanistan were directed to Kashmir."

PE: "So how do you internalize jihad?

AJ: "Apparently once you start waging jihad, your whole
world-view is subordinated to jihad. Everything else is not important. Even if you have to kill innocent people, this is subordinated to the higher purpose of jihad. When you start jihad, it starts dominating you, because it gives you power over the rest of the world. All other things become subordinated to jihad. Even the concept of Islam boils down to jihad for the mujahideen. All
other Islamic concepts - even when they are important - become subordinated to jihad. Jihad becomes the ultimate end even for the Islamic belief system...They say jihad is the summit of Islam. So if you have found the summit, you have found the whole thing. This is what they are taught. They believe ihad will bring them honor in the world, they will become powerful. The heroes of the mujahideen have always been generals. No Muslim scientist, or intellectual, or artist has ever become a hero. It is a military tradition that dominates the mujahideen."

"Some influential Muslim scholars say that the great problem with Islam is that unlike Christianity, it did not go through a Renaissance and a Reformation. Something to this effect has been said by the Italian Minister Berlusconi. Regarding your question, I think this is an influence of Christian scholars on Muslim scholars. I think the West developed only after it abandoned Christianity and adopted science. It did not develop because it had Renaissance and Reformation. They developed only after they abandoned Jewish and
Christian dogmas and adopted science as a way of life. I think this is the only solution for Muslim societies as well...

(Sections by-passed)

PE: "Is there any substantial difference between Deoband (a sub-continental sect of Islam) practiced by the Taliban, and Deoband practiced by these religious parties in Pakistan?"

AJ: "There's very little difference. In Pakistan they cannot practice their version of Islam the way the Taliban can in Afghanistan. Given freedom in Pakistan, they would behave in the same way as the Taliban do. And this is exactly what they are striving for. And their influence is of course increasing day by day."

(Part 1)

#206 "Abu Reason"

America is doomed.

(x3)

Yeah, yeah, we're all doomed. You'd better head over to France, home of the "Temple of Reason," pretty quickly, so you're not caught in the crossfire of irrationality.

#203 Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

Thanks for the input!

also,the full article site I sent [#190] is a bit old and probably in need of some updating.

Regards

#213 Part 2

PE: "What is the future direction of jihad?"

AJ: "Jihad has tremendously affected Pakistani society. With increasing poverty, most people have very little to do with their lives. In this uneducated society, they have found a solution - an irrational solution - to their problems. They don't want to labor to find better solutions. They think if they wage jihad all their problems will be solved. It is very interesting: all their problems are worldly, and the solution is spiritual. But when they join jihad, they forget about their worldly problems. The Kalashnikov in their hands gives them respect, power and raison d'etre. Somebody who has nothing in life and nothing to lose, who has been for many years idling away his time in the streets of a Pakistani village, suddenly finds a cause to live for in a jihadi camp. And this gives him not only spiritual power but also practical power over one of the biggest armies in the world. He is almost intoxicated with that power. And he will do everything to retain that power. These
guerrillas very often praise themselves for winning against the Soviet Union - a former superpower. They have turned the Indian army - a big conventional army - into a wreck. And they believe they can defeat the sole superpower today - the United States. And they believe they are the intermediaries who can establish the rule of Allah on Allah's Earth."

FIN

ANYONE FOR A JIHADI BARBECUE?

@191

Apparantly this person has very volatile buttons to be pushed. You would make an admirably efficient communist in the now defunct USSR.

Oh and by the way as I am not a lesbian, it's impossible for me to be a mother fucker.

#206 Abu Un-Reason

If you cannot defend America, the West, and your freedom on objective, scientific, rational grounds, then you intellectually are no better than the head-slashing crazies -- and America is doomed.

You have betrayed what this country stood for. You are parasites living of the dying glory that was once America.

And I quote,

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." (Declaration of Independence)

Speaking of the success of the American revolution, Madison wrote,

"It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution." (James Madison, Federalist No. 37)

Those founding fathers, what a bunch of irrational maroons with no concept of freedom!

#210 Ed

Yep. That's why I think all the LLLs who spout off about America's Religious Right being just as dangerous as Moslem Fundamentalists are on coke.

Jehovas Witnesses I can handle. I can tell them I'm busy, or mock them relentlessly as I chose.

People who bomb office buildings are a whole 'nother level of annoying.

Also, when Falwell says something idiotic, moderate Christians come out of the woodwork to denounce his words, and the newspapers rip him a new one.

When a big time Iman or Mullah or whatever issues the latest call for violence in the Mosque, I can hear the crickets chirping in the Arab world from here.

This is a bit of interesting wording from the NYTimes:

Car Bomber Kills British Peacekeeper in Kabul

The "peacekeeper" is a British soldier. Does anyone who follows the NYTimes know if they generally refer to US troops in Afghanistan as "peacekeepers"? Or are we always "soldiers"

Six American soldiers of the coalition force involved in counterterrorism have also been wounded in two incidents since Monday, a United States military spokesman said.

cba

Maybe once every other winter, as a wee lad in NY, we would get a snow fluffy enough you could sweep it with a broom.

Usually, NY metro snow, being coastal snow, would fall at or even a bit above freezing, and would be rather full of water. It packed well for snowball fights, but was heavy and difficult to shovel. Also, as NYC area temps ran close to freezing most winter days when snow was on the ground, the sun would melt a thin layer on top of the snow, which would re-freeze at night or during cold snaps, leaving a thin icy layer to fall through when walking, which served as an effective transport mechanism for placing bits of icy water inside my socks.

My one and only visit to Canada (Montreal, Quebec, 1984, driving up from Saratoga Springs, NY one Sunday afternoon while the Jets were getting blown out, and we had a four day weekend from the D1G prototype), the Canadian border guards really searched my 1976 Chrysler Cordoba, made a big deal over the fact that we had picked up a six of LaBatts in NY in honor of our Canadian road trip, and really freaked when they found my package of DexaTrim (I was dieting even then).

We got in, after they emptied my trunk. I heard a lot of "cocaine, acid" spoken in a French accent, we saw the place where the Canadiens play, we couldn't ride the subway, it was on strike, but back then the exchange rate was favorable and we could get table dances for US $5.

Mind you, I'm married now, and except for the two bachelor parties for my wife's cousins ( and my wife gave me permission provided I didn't look) I don't do topless bars anymore.

#212   Westward Ho
Monkey man go peddle your snake oil elsewhere.

b,

Oh, yuckety, yuck, yuck!

You are on to something.

Oh brave soul, go back and scratch your balls.

You are brave, you are mount everiste!

If all your reasoning was this high-quality, we could really have a conversation!
By the way, nice try, but it's spelled everest.
Abu Reason, you're trolling.

If you guys are the best of what America has to offer, then America is doomed.

Who said we were the best of what America has to offer? And who made you the American Cassandra? A red herring.

If you think that the answer to the Islamists' wild irrationality and subjugation of the individual to a wrathful god should be answered by ... orgainized irrationality and subjugation of the individual to a pleasant god, then America is doomed.

Your argument is weak. For one thing, Judaism and Christianity together are responsible for the coevolution of the very notion of the individual, the individual's personal responsibility, the individual's salvation, and the individual's personal rights. All of which are intricately woven into the Western conception of the individual. For another, if your poorly-phrased and poorly-thought-out claim was true, Christian nations would seek to either kill or convert muslim nations, not allow them to continue as muslims and try to bring them into democracy.

If you cannot defend America, the West, and your freedom on objective, scientific, rational grounds, then you intellectually are no better than the head-slashing crazies -- and America is doomed.

We can, as could and did the Founding Fathers of this country, defend freedom on rational grounds, but that's besides the point. The point is that you're claiming that Christianity and Judaism are enemies of America, the West and freedom itself; really, one of the most preposterous things I've ever read.
Again, what the fuck are you talking about with this, "America is doomed"? We're less religious today than ever before in the history of this nation, weren't we even more doomed during Puritan times? Victorian times?

If that is your position, you do not deserve the freedom you cannot comprehend and the values you had you part in creating.
You have betrayed what this country stood for. You are parasites living of the dying glory that was once America.

God help America.

Why do I get the feeling you're fantasizing about America's doom so you can say, I told you so! Religion is baaad!
Nobody's betrayed what this country once stood for because what this country stands for is standing for the freedom of its people to believe what they want to believe without interference from the government.
You're an idiot, you and b should fuck off. You're making thoughtful atheists like me look bad. Quit preaching and evangelizing! We fucking get the point! You hate religion, okay! Why does it have so much power over you that you can't shut the fuck up about it? It seems to me like you're more religious than most "religious" people, you just belong to an exotic rejectionist cult.
Goddamn, you two are annoying.

D'oh! Preview would like to be my friend.

#215 Jay

No prob, I always like to point out Islam for what it really is ;)

#211 Paladin

Basically, I'm just saying that the whole "sludge to Drudge" evolutionary theory is bunk.

@206

*LOL!

God Help America!

Are you RWC?

Allah is a clever synthesis of an old pagan moon god and Abraham's god. It ain't the same thing.

#197

This is for the 'thought crimes' guy.

I don't want to call you stupid, or be rude.

But, what you lack is an imagination, and that is an understatement.

What we have to prepare for, in an age of weapons of mass destruction, is a new science, a new physics.

When each man has at his disposal, the knowledge to split the planet into pieces, we will have to deal with this reality.

And this reality will require a standard not now conceivable. But it will happen, if normal or even sub-normal trends continue.

You can call me nuts, but this is happening, and it's there for anyone who wishes to look.

Unfortunately your God isn't going to give you any comfort or advice in this matter. So you will be forced to think, perhaps for the first time in your life.

And when you think, you will see magnificent benefits and horrible dangers in the newness.

You will be faced with a real life, dichotomy. You will have to make a decision.

And how will you do this? Will you do it by commandment from God? Or will you use another method?

You have a choice and your life will depend on it.

Well, OK. I don't know what's going to happen. But we'll all know soon enough.

Good luck to us all.

(This is our choice, reason or death. We've had this for a while now. And so far, in American tradition, we've chosen life. But it isn't guaranteed or certain that we will continue with this.)

I assume you believe homo sapiens evolved from lower animals?

Well, yeah, that's pretty much what happened. Denying the fact of evolution (not the driving force, which to some extent can be open to discussion, but the fact) is not religiousity, it's obscurantism.

Those who don't want the two to be considered one and the same, would really do themsleves a great service by leaving evolution -- and rational science in general -- alone. Y'know, "render unto ceasar..." and all that.

TQC: you are so full of shit, from your pretentious nickname to your pseudo-scientific posturing (#208) to your cynical, nihilistic bullshit:

Atheism such as yours is the product of an irrational, foolish mind which is incapable of understanding logic, much less of employing it in any meaningful way. As such, people of your low calibre of thinking have to resort to meaningless platitudes which they don't understand (whining about "moral relativism" while completely failing to understand their opponent's argument), useless rants about "religion", and non sequitur arguments based on hand-waving.

We used to laugh at people like you in grad school.

Why am I not surprised you're an academic. Well, I guess you had to get your lobotomy somewhere.

The reason they seem like non-sequitors to you is you are too dense -- and too consumed by trying to appear clever -- to make the logical connections.

Why don't you figure out what all those words mean before you use them. You'll discover that, unlike what you learned in grad scholl, that they have precise, objective meaning.

I re-state my #206 above.

227

"b", are you a Scientolgist, or are you just getting delusional after a three day meth binge?

"b"

I'd watch out, the body thetans are after you!

Alarm clock goes off in a little over six hours.

Good night, all, and "b", I think you need another electrometer reading.

Ed Moran, LOL! Good night.

#229 Abu Un-Reason

TQC: you are so full of *Dean*, from your pretentious nickname to your pseudo-scientific posturing (#208) to your cynical, nihilistic *Clinton*

Ahem. Re: post #208, are you suggesting that a condensation reaction which produces water as a product of the reaction would take place spontaneously in a big ocean full of...water?

My my, you seem to be coming a bit unhinged. But then again, I'd be cynical and nihilistic if I were to ask you if you were going to cry, now wouldn't I?

#227 b

You will be faced with a real life, dichotomy. You will have to make a decision.

Now isn't that cute? I taught him a new word. Good b, here's a peanut.

#174 Camel Prophet

Actually, the Black Stone is considerably bigger than a 9" around. See the pickies:

What's this remind you of?
Pet the kitty

Thumbnails

Could muslims be venerating god-shit? That must really stick to your shoes.

LOL

181 evariste

id have to agree with you. America is one of the most religious countries in the world - but by "religious", i mean simply that a large (majority) percentage of the populace believe in some form of god, and that this faith tends more often than not to be expressed a belief in the saving grace of the man from Nazareth. This fact that separates them from, lets say, er, Europe or Canada where there are far fewer practicing Christians (percentage wise). i will stick with america.

I think the problem is, when people try to conceive of a “religious" country, they think of nations held hostage to one specific set of stagnant beliefs and who reject all others out of hand simply for being different. Thus one can perhaps turn to contemporary Saudi Arabia (insert any Muslim theocracy here), or perhaps medieval Spain during the inquisition.

I don’t think it is a stretch to describe contemporary America as a Christian country – or at least a Western Country that truly recognizes its Judaeo-Christian heritage and is not intent on abandoning it anytime soon. But America is not a nation of zealots, feverishly attempting to enforce some form of religious orthodoxy. What the people “believed” is by no means uniform. The country was founded by individuals who represented a variety of creeds (well, different kinds of Protestants anyway) and therefore they all had to agree that there would never be a “national” church and they accepted the existence of a plurality of interpretations and beliefs. but they all remained quite devoted to thier god. Thus today’s Baptists tend not to blow themselves up over at the local Calvinist church. Each person has historically been free to choose his or her own way to worship. Seems to have worked pretty well.

It is no accident that the USA has been the safest place for the Jews of the world since the end of WWII (sadly, safer than Europe and even Israel). Throughout history, Jews tended to thrive and prosper in dynamic, free-thinking and at least somewhat religious regimes. These include at least sporadic periods under Muslim rule during the middle ages (i.e. Babylonian academies, periods under the Umayyad’s in Spain – until the fanatical AlMohades show up).

summing up,

at least a little religion tends to be good.

and for Diaspora jews:

Some religion = good. No religion = Nazis or nihilism/postmodernism/Europe. Too much religion = Spanish inquisition/almohades.

AFAIK, media is calling Allah 'Allah' because Muslims Use 'Allah' when refering to God, and Muslim papers and websites show for this, as well as English translations of Koran made by native Arabic speakers. Kearney's attempt to persuade media to use 'God' is just another exercise in sophistics that attempts to prescribe behavior to the public rather than report news about public's behavior.

Also, prescribing terminology is censorship, any way you look at it and regardless from the reasons produced.

I must say, Kat, for a Christian, you're displaying remarkable arrogance and mean-spiritedness.

What happenned to "turn the other buttock"? What would Y'shua say?

#222, Kat
My snake oil has has a small lable called scientific acceptance on it, I am not so anthropocentrically arrogant to think that my exquisite self could only have been created by an Infinite Being who then infused me with an eternal soul!! - & this is called religious humility LOL.

#230

I don't know if 'meth' is an upper or a downer, but I do know that religion is destroying our little planet.

And if anyone thinks the pilgrims were a driving force over survival itself, they are mistaken.

The original escapees to the new world of America were driven by and sustained from Reason personified.

And anyone who doubts this can try and find Virginia Dare's corpse.

America, is the result of the enlightenment, of reason, of Saint Thomas Aquinas, of Aristotle.

And you can kiss my ass if you think differently. Please kiss my big fat American man-ass.

I don't care if you believe this or not. But we're on the cusp of another dark age or a nano-technological miracle age.

And your religion can fuck it up or let it pass, to your benefit, I might add.

So, you have a choice, keep harping on your religious bullshit, or shut the fuck up.

Make your decision, and suffer the consequences.

THERE IS NO DOUBT...OUR FOUNDING FATHERS INTENDED THAT JUDEO-CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES WERE TO BE THE BASIS AND FOUNDATION OF THIS COUNTRY...

The God who gave us life gave us liberty... Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction... That these liberties are the gift of God? The bible is the cornerstone for American liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." -John Quincy Adams

"We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all our heart." -James Madison

"You can't have national morality apart from religious principle." -George Washington

"Our country was founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ." -Patrick Henry

"The longer I live the more convinced I become that God governs in the affairs of men. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance." -Benjamin Franklin

"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." -Samuel Adams

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." -John Adams

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection, aid and favors... Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these states to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country, and for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us. George Washington, 1789.

Well, goodnight all. The clock shall soon be ringing.

b: you're as much of an idiot as these other losers.

TQC: don't flatter yourself. your posts don't "unhinge" me any more than a fly walking accross my screen.

Kat and the other creationsit idiot: yeah, I once saw a good tv show against evolution ... on Saudi TV

evariste: you should know better.

The guy with the 5K biblical quotations: give it a rest.

-- Abu Reason out

#241, fiery Celts,
Most of the founding fathers were Deists i.e. they beleived that God created the world & let it run its course without interfering & the world is lucky that they were because the seperation of church & state would have never taken place without the watered down religious beleifs of the founding fathers

#243

b: you're as much of an idiot as these other losers.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Adios buddy!

#235 Tasty Beverage

I better win a Nobel Prize for this, but I know exactly what the [bigoted word]s need. A little bit of this mixed with a little of this and add a touch of this. Because for what its worth, if this looked like what I was worshipping, then I might be a little pis*ed also.
** ALERT ** I am officially warning those who are pregnant, and/or with high blood pressure or are susceptible to motion sickness DO NOT CLICK ON THE LAST LINK.

of course, that is just like the news telling you to turn away :-)

Well when you others who are neither Jewish or christian get your butts in a crack, we'll see how long you stay atheists.

There's an old WWII saying..."nobody's an atheist in a foxhole".

As I posted earlier, as a believer in Christ I have absolutely nothing to lose and all to gain.

And that's even when there is no rational reason for having galaxies with out globular clusters. :)

TO: Abu Reason
RE: Projection, Anyone?

"b: you're as much of an idiot as these other losers" -- Abu Reason

You even have b's writing style in #243. But look on the bright side, you don't seem to be on some kind of bad drug trip.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

#225 quark 2

Now that is just mean :-(

Just kidding. Nope, not me. I am glad someone else noticed that an (I am assuming atheist, I could be wrong) has stated 'God help America.'

#240 b

I don't wish to embarass you, but are you on some kind of psych medication? If not, you may consider it to your advantage to see a doctor for help...

Westward Ho;

The God who gave us life gave us liberty...

The bible is the cornerstone for American liberty...

We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all our heart."...

Our country was founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ...

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection, aid and favors...

...the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country, and for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us. George Washington, 1789.

Yep...The aforemented surely does reflect "watered down" beliefs in an "uninvolved" , 'non-interfering Deity...
/sarcasm off

But then I think good ole' Ben Franklin" said it best...The longer I live the more convinced I become that God governs in the affairs of men. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance." -

I'm coming to this thread late, so I apologize if my theory is old news...

The issue is not whether Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all referring to the same God.

When Muslims say "There is no God but God" what most are really saying, as I understand it, is that Christians and Jews are polytheists and, therefore, infidels.

This is also analogous to their claims regarding Jerusalem. Jerusalem *is* very important to Muslims. But it's not because of Mohammed's supposedly miraculous journey.

Jerusalem is important to Muslims because Jerusalem is important to Jews and Christians. Many Muslims want to see Jerusalem under Muslim control for only one reason: because it would symbolize Islam's dominance over Judaism and Christianity.

This is why people who think we should "share" sovereignty of Jerusalem with Muslims are fools. They will never be happy until they control the entire city and until they are free to destroy and/or restrict access to Jewish and Christian holy sites, because that is there ambition.

I don't agree that all Muslims think this way, but many do and those who dissent learned long ago to keep quiet.

Evening RWC! Looks like we stepped on to a deserted battlefield and the smoke has barely cleared...

I've seen some pretty ugly things in my life but what the HECK was that in your last link?

I have absolutely nothing to lose and all to gain.

Ah, Pascal's Wager.
Feh.
Just like those goofs who bang their heads on a rug five times a day have nothing to lose and all to gain.

I've got better things to do with my time.

Maybe worshipping globular clusters would be a good place to start.

It seems like each and every religion claims for itself the sole path to salvation.

What's an outsider to do to determine which one is correct? Spin a big wheel, maybe.

TO: Quark2
RE: Old Adages

"There's an old WWII saying..."nobody's an atheist in a foxhole"." -- Quark2

Actually, I think it's that...

There are no atheists under an artillary barrage.

If you've ever had a 155 projo impact only a few yards away from where you were [Note: It was a short round. Some bozo put too few bags in the shell.] you'll understand.

Never been under a directed barrage. And I pray to God I never am...

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Incoming artillary has right-of-way.]

#246 Right Wing Conspirator

LOL What I want to know is, why, in that last picture (of the "impacted" Marduk-poop), is the specimen outside? I assume that came from a human...guess when that thing came knockin', there was no refusing the call. How embarrassing.

#252, ibrodski. I think you drove that nail with one stroke. Bravo.

When Muslims say "There is no God but God" what most are really saying, as I understand it, is that Christians and Jews are polytheists and, therefore, infidels.

Okay, I get how Christians could be viewed as polytheists (what with Jesus and all), but I don't understand the basis for that charge against Jews.

Little help, anyone?

TO: Lewis Can't Lose
RE: What's a Fella To Do?

"What's an outsider to do to determine which one is correct?" -- Lewis Can't Lose

Seek and ye shall find. Ask and it shall be given unto you.

Or so I was told. So I sought. And I found. Even when I wasn't seeking, looking back on it all, He was there watching out for me...even when I came screaming in out of a black sky with a malfunctioning parachute. Three words spoken as clear as if someone was standing in the air with me, "Prepare to land." I snapped into the landing position and impacted two seconds later. Got up and walked away.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[God is alive. And airborne-ranger qualified.]

#253 John Gibbon

Evening. I know, I still smell the faint smell of gunpowder and napalm. But heck, either this thread with creationism vs. evolution and judeo christian vs. wannabe atheists or the other thread with 'Reggie.' Me thinks I shall stick here and post more pics of impacted stool.

#256 Tasty Beverage

Yep, came from a human. And there were a couple more but I have some discretion. Maybe.

*** at least now I know who the rubber-neckers are on the highway. ;-)

TO: Lewis Can't Lose
RE: Why the Jews?

"I don't understand the basis for that charge against Jews." -- Lewis Can't Lose

I think it has to do with their sibling rivalry thing. Been going on since Issac and Ishmael.

Ishmael was born first to Abraham, but Issac got the blessings and the inheritance. Been bad blood between the kids ever since.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

#261

Huh? I don't get it.
In what way does Islam infer that Judaism is polytheistic?

G'nite all.

#259 CP

Isa 30:21 And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

@249 RWC

Yeah, I know. But the screaming meemies that have been pasting vitriole all over this thread made me do it. *lol

@254 Lewis Can't Lose...didn't know it was lost

I said nothing in reference to banging my head on the ground 5 times a day with my butt bared to the wind.

I have nothing to lose in believing and all to gain. That does not mean in any fashion that this is to be forced on anyone else. You breach the line of saying for those who believe are in danger of being penalized because you don't like it.
In believing takes nothing from anyone else, it doesn't even pollute the air you breathe.
If I am wrong then all I've done is use up my mortality in the fashion I chose through my individual freedom.

Zee Bed is Calling and I've got to fight a simulated battle tomorrow. I'll have to imagine the smell of cordite as our CPUs burn hot...

G'nite

I'll remember to say my prayers to some God before I go to bed. thanks for the potential nightmares Tasty Beverage and RWC! Those images will haunt me!

TO: Lewis Can't Lose
RE: Don't Get It?

"In what way does Islam infer that Judaism is polytheistic?" -- Lewis Doesn't Understand

Polytheism is not the root of the problem. It's jealousy. A familial feud that has gone on for millenia. And logic has nothing to do with it. Polytheism has nothing to do with it.

Any excuse will do for them to kill a Jew.

Heck it was even prophesized in Genesis...

"And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." Gen 16:11-12

That's a pretty fair description of the current state of affairs with respect to Ishmael's kids.

The Arabs will call Jews "infidel" for any reason. It doesn't have to be 'polytheism'. An infidel is one who doesn't agree with them about Allah or Mohammed.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

Perhaps a little OT:

[Link: israpundit.com...]

Two articles by Louis Rene Beres

Following are two recent articles by Louis Rene Beres. The articles were e-mailed by the Freeman Center. The first article is co-authored with Dr Michael Messing.

Louis Rene Beres is Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette IN 47907, USA
E MAIL BERES@POLSCI.PURDUE.EDU

Michael Messing is from the Department of Radiology, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Highland Park Hospital, Highland Park, IL 60035, USA

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE "MERELY WOUNDED" THE RADIOLOGY OF SUICIDE BOMBING TERRORISM

27 January 2004

By Louis Rene Beres, Ph.D. and Michael L. Messing, M.D.

There are times on this endlessly bleeding planet where the survivors of terror-violence must surely envy the dead. One such time is the recurring occasion of Palestinian suicide bombing. Finding heroism and sacredness in the exploded bodies of despised "infidels," the Palestinian suicide bomber absolutely abhors any sense of humane civilizational limits.

For him or for her, "God's Will" is now easily discovered in the broken and charred corpses of "enemy" women and children.

But what, exactly, does the Palestinian suicide bomber really seek?

Consider this: He wants, above all, to transform Jewish pain into Islamic power.

For the Palestinian suicide bomber, violence and the sacred are unambiguously intertwined.

This homicidal terrorist believes without hesitation that there can be no greater glory for a Muslim than inflicting measureless pain upon all Jews.

With such a profane belief, even the most elementary standards of armed conflict are easily set aside in favor of purely sadistic violence and celebrations of mass murder.

#265 quark2

That does not mean in any fashion that this is to be forced on anyone else. You breach the line of saying for those who believe are in danger of being penalized because you don't like it.

I don't believe I ever said that, in #254 or anywhere else.

Those who believe are in danger of nothing more than a waste of their time and effort; they've certainly got nothing to fear from me.

Blah. Even though I'm convinced that jeebus ain't up there, I'm equally convinced that spirituality and prayer can have positive effects for the faithful. So, I suppose, that even in the absence of jeebus, prayer ain't necessarily a waste of time.

Who knows? Something may be out there, I just doubt it conforms to any major religion's concept of "God."

#258 Lewis

"With regard to the religion of democracy and association [of other deities with Allah, i.e. polytheism], those who worship it say 'Judge between them by that which the people wish; be wary of deviating from what they want, desire, and legislate'. This is what they say, and thus it is determined that democracy is unbelief and association [of other deities with Allah] if it is implemented.

From Contemporary Islamist Ideology Permitting Genocidal Murder

Any philosophy or method of social organization other than that which is defined by Islam is considered be a form of polytheism as it is not the way of the deity, (i.e. Allah).

#267 Chuck Pelto

Yes, I'm aware that the problems that Muslims have with Jews go far beyond the "polytheism" charge.

But that's one I've heard several times on this board. There must be a basis for it in Islamic theology, and I wondered if anyone present knew what it was.