On 8/5/2019 10:53 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 8/4/2019 7:36 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 11:02:53 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/4/2019 1:19 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 21:45:06 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/3/2019 8:42 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:14:16 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/3/2019 6:53 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 12:19:50 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/3/2019 11:55 AM, jbeattie wrote:
... even a sensible Democrat is clearly superior to the
insane asylum the Left has conjured up out of the fraudulent
"oppression" of tiny minorities, who together cannot account
for rolling a single log...

Agreed. And I think lots of people agree.

Murder is definitional -- and if it is licensed, it is not
murder. Whether one can murder a fetus in the US varies from
state to state. The religious and historical prohibition on
murder was to maintain social peace and order. The Fifth
Commandment did not apply to a fetus, at least not
absolutely and not according to the Jews -- whose God god
wrote the rule (although the original was lost for many
years until found by Stephen Spielberg.) Regrettably,
Catholics and conservative Christians have pushed for
prohibition as an article of faith and without regard to
what becomes of the fetus once born, and in fact Christian
conservatives bemoan the "welfare state."

I disagree with that final sentence. At least around here, there are
many church-based institutions that care for women and children, and
there are ongoing congregational charity drives for them. We
contribute.

I'm not "into" women's rights but can the death of a fetus that would
not survive if removed from the mother logically be termed "murder"?

And conversely, babies born after 24 weeks are now regularly saved. But
others are aborted after 24 weeks. Granted, it's not common - but what
should it be called?

I don't know and my thoughts were aimed at early abortion before the
fetus is capable of survival outside the mother. And those who cry
that any abortion is murder.

What should it be called? I don't know and frankly I don't care as my
attitude is that I will do as good as I can do and what you do is up
to you. The uniquely Christian concept that one should run about and
force their neighbors to conform to "their" belief is totally foreign
to me.

Wow. I'm amazed you can call that "uniquely Christian." You must have no
knowledge at all about muslims, , various pagans, etc.

Actually I do as at various times, in my military career I was
assigned to places where there wasn't much reading material so I read
various religious books and at other times I was living or working in
a country that wasn't predominately Christian and felt it useful to
know what "they" were doing.

Moslem -the Holy Koran, i.e.," The Word of God", sets forth the
parameters for "infidels" to reside in a Moslem country. There is no
mandatory conversion required but Infidels must pay a tax.

Buddhists - Nothing in the Buddhist writings, that I have read or are
aware of, requires an adherent to the religion to convert anyone. In
fact there is a early Buddhist sutra that discusses "God" in which
the Buddha says that he hasn't discussed god(s) but has given the
student 8 things to concern himself with. (The Jews had 12 :-)

Pagan - I certainly cannot discuss all "pagans" but certainly the
pagans I worked with in Irian Jaya, some of whom may well have been
cannibals, required anyone to convert to their beliefs.

Atheists - I have no idea. I never met anyone who didn't believe in
anything and tried to convert others to his belief.

Hindu - I'll throw this in for free as many Indonesians from Bali are
Hindu and it is one of the authorized religions in Indonesia and the
Hindus that I worked with never seemed to have any desire to convert
me.

Christians - Ah well, I will leave this up to you. Would you care to
comment on how many have been killed, tortured, forcibly converted,
burned or otherwise killed in the name of Christianity? Quora has it
somewhere in the region of 50 - 100 million.

In comparison, the population of England, in 1086, was estimated to
have been 1.25 - 2 million.

John, read up on the mechanism by which the muslim faith was initially
spread. They used a very different technique than, say, the Mormons.
Read up on the history of atheistic communism and its treatment of
religious people of many types. Read up on hindu treatment of buddhists.
Read up ...

Oh, you get the idea.

Well I have "read up on", to a certain extent, and for example, the
initial spread of the Moslem Faith, usually counted from the return
from Medina to Mecca did not include the massacre of all none Moslems,
or even the mistreatment of none Muslims in Mecca.

Hindu treatment of Buddhists? I'm not aware of just what you are
talking about, perhaps you meant the Hindu treatment of Moslems...

No, that's not what I meant.

You claimed that such behavior was "uniquely Christian." It's not,
absolutely not. As I hinted, there are _many_ counterexamples.

Do look up the hindu treatment of buddhists for just one counterexample.

People of all religions have always done bad things to each other, but I
thought John's original claim was that Christians were unique in trying
to force their neighbors to conform to their own beliefs. He has a bit
of a point.

I'd say a person can't have a "bit of a point" when he uses an absolute
like "unique." Something is either unique, or it's not. It's a binary
choice.


--
- Frank Krygowski