With Merkel's Foes in Disarray, Germany Defies the Trump Trend

[Dill]

(04-29-2017, 01:54 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I would counter that much of the extremism of christianity was based on the words of the old testament, both historically and today.  You know exactly what kind of christian you are dealing with the moment you hear, "in Leviticus".  Jesus doesn't get off lightly for me, as he introduced one of the most vile concepts of all time IMO, that of eternal damnation for failure to follow his edicts.  However, in so doing I think he, perhaps inadvertently, advanced the idea that punishing someone in this life (the only life we get by my thinking) is both pointless and meaningless in the face of the punishment they face upon their death.  So a vile idea actually spares violence in the real world and, like I said, inadvertently made this world better to live in.  Regardless, one thing you cannot, ever, claim about Jesus is that he was a conquering warlord who routinely engaged in violence.  

1. I agree that most Christian extremism is grounded in the Old Testament. But I think Leviticus is not the primary problem. Rather it is Exodus 20:3--"Thou shalt have no other gods before thee." This is the singular ground of intolerance in all three religions of the book, which had made all three more intolerant than other major religions like Buddhism or Hinduism.

2. Jesus may not be like Joshua, a conquering warlord who routinely engaged in violence, but that way was not easily open to a carpenter's son.  And it not prevented some of his followers from becoming conquering warlords, etc. Another reason to pause before we suppose that religious behavior tracks invariably back to religious texts. We don't really know "Jesus." What we have are texts and a textual tradition stitched together hundreds of years after his existence. There are texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, which show a rather mean and vicious Jesus who uses his super powers to kill trees and birds and the like. But they were closed out of the canon most read today. Christians generally pick and choose what they want to believe from the Bible. At least the Gospels present people with programs like the Sermon on the Mount and lend them cultural authority. This I do regard as a positive. But it does little to explain the historical behavior of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.