Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix showing how the various religious groups feel about each other (net positive/negative). Some takeaways:
* Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others
* Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews
* Evangelicals are negative on everyone else
If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too
> Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix ..
You're reading it flipped. The columns define who they asked (hence it has a "Gen pop sample" entry), and the rows are their opinion of different religions. So Jews and Hindus are the only groups that all the others think positively of, not the other way around.
So Jewish people consider Catholicism negative (-15%), Protestantism positive (10%), and Evangelical Christianity strongly negative (-45%). Meanwhile Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelical Christians all consider Judaism positively (13%, 26%, and 35%, respectively).
In other words, the group that considers Judaism most positively (Evangelical Christians, at 35%), is considered the most negative by Jews (-46%, tied for the lowest score in the matrix).
> If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too
The gulf between jewish view of evangelicals (+35) to evangelicals view of jews (-45) is interesting, but there are other situations similar like protestants like evangelicals (+55) while evangelicals are a little cooler to protestants (-10).
edit: it seems someone is saying the columns and rows are reversed from how I read it. I don't see where that's indicated, although that makes sense if you look at the evangelical row and how most groups dislike them, which was a reported result. Poorly labelled table.
Jews for Jesus was started in the 70s and maintains a $25M a year tax-free income through donations from Baptist and Evangelical sources. They make their rounds through the various churches every few years asking for money, and so Evangelicals have frowned upon the idea that the Jews have their own covenant with God. The Vatican, on the other hand, has stated in the past that Judaism and Christianity have incompatible beliefs and thus Catholics should not try to convert Jews.
If anyone is curious, I think this is referring to dispensationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism), which is indeed a relatively new phenomenon compared to covenant theology. It's interesting how much it's caught on in baptist and non-denominational communities in particular. Most reformed (calvinist) evangelicals are still very covenantal in their theology, but even they seem to be less strict on it than they used to be. Mainline protestants are pretty uniformly covenant theology as well.
As a Canadian who spends a considerable amount of time travelling to the US, the difference is fairly striking.
Religion enters almost every conversation I have in the US in some way. Whereas in Canada, religion almost never comes up. If it does, it's generally a discussion on the merits where I'm talking more about history and culture. It's fascinating how two places, so geographically close can be so culturally different in this one topic.
I lived many years in the US and almost nobody ever asked me about my religion or initiated a conversation about it.. I shared an apartment with a Canadian who used to ask me constantly about religion and how I prayed and when I prayed.. It was almost annoying!
Yep! Now, I've primarily been travelling to Texas, Kentucky and Ohio. But things like most people mention bible study, it's assumed you're going to church on Sunday, more religious aphorisms and sayings.
Primarily, most of my interactions with clients are on a blue collar level, although an affluent blue collar level. Not sure if that changes the circle a number of HN readers might be in?
I also might notice it more because I specifically try to avoid religion in any conversation, it's a topic that really has no upside to talk about with clients.
I mean -- you've been in three of the most religious states in the U.S., and you're interacting w blue collar workers. There is a fairly tremendous sampling bias.
But I agree that very religious Americans do manage to work their religion into conversations in which you just wouldn't think it would come up.
I mean, 30-35% of the country is still evangelical and evangelicals love talking about religion. You could randomly choose a state and the GP's experience is probably true. Texas, Kentucky, and Ohio... but in my experience Arkansas and parts of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia are actually more religious than those three. Admittedly, a lot of my travel has been through rural areas -- but still, 30-35%!
In Boston I could go half a decade without a stranger bringing up religion unprompted. But in Arkansas, nearly every conversation was loosely tied to religion. And it was in my best interest to pretend I was still Pentecostal to get by.
>you've been in three of the most religious states in the U.S., and you're interacting w blue collar workers.
you're saying that like they went to Arrakis and interacted with the Fremen lol. Blue collar red state workers are what a lot of the US looks like. Two thirds of Americans do not have a university degree.
Your inclusion of “without a university degree” is doing a LOT of work in that sentence to make it seem like rural (and let’s admit it: white) evangelicals are anything close to a majoritarian bloc in the United States.
You don't need to be an evangelical, and certainly not a white evangelical, for religion to pop up in your conversations. Big cities are quite secular, but that's pretty much it... This is also one of those figures where the area-versus-population thing in the US matters a lot. In the vast majority of the land in the US, I'd agree that religion pops up in a huge share of conversations, but this does not imply that it appears in the vast majority of conversations in the US.
All I'm gleaning here is that trying to generalize the experiences and preferences of 400+ million people between the U.S. and Canada isn't a particularly useful exercise. Beyond what country / state / county you're in, I have to imagine that age, race, socioeconomic status, general social preferences, and probably a whole other slew of factors play a significant role in how often people experience religion being thrust upon them in.
Not to say that this is necessarily a useless conversation, but it feels odd to me considering many dang people there are.
I feel like you might be reversing the causality a bit and bringing religion into things because of that perception.
I can't remember the last time I discussed religion with anybody in public as an American. Admittedly I live in a bubble that means that I'm not interacting with any fundamentalists or evangelicals but if you are coming from Canada you are probably in that some bubble.
I'm with you. I don't recognize the OP's description of US culture at all in the community where I live. Granted, I'm in Vermont, which is not at all typical, but it is also right next to Canada. I lived in Buffalo, also right next to Canada, and any public conversation about religion was scarce there as well. Perhaps the OP flies regularly to Arkansas?
Red state/blue state difference applies to religion. So much so that religion drives the politics of red states more so that money or even "them". Although they somehow bend religion to separate Christians into good ones and bad ones just fine.
Also from Buffalo, same experience- someone bringing up religion in conversation would be odd. Would be really weird if they start talking about their relationship with God, praying, etc. Not that there's any problem with this stuff, but for me (and how I was raised), it's a private matter.
I've been away from Buffalo for maybe 15 years now and everywhere I've been outside of the north east, people will somehow work church and God into conversations. And for them, there's nothing odd about it... they just kind of assume I'm on board and it's not weird at all. I'm used to it at this point, but it used to be uncomfortable.
My anecdotal conclusion is that the "religion is a private matter" mentality might just be local to the northeast US.
I don't get it either. Half of my family is Canadian. I've crossed the border my whole life... The only thing I can figure, is maybe they come to the US and don't get away from the border cities? They tend to be small and quite rural. I feel like those kinds of towns tend to be a bit more religious.
It has to be somehow ultimately the result of one of our main origin stories about the first settlers arriving here to escape religious persecution.
That image of poor harmless persecuted victims huddling in their homes with no candles lit so that no one knows they are having a prayer meeting or else they'll be killed for the crime of praying is taught to everyone in gradeschool, in the public, government run, non-elective schools to everyone, and so freedom of religion ends up getting way over-reaction enshrined.
Like freedom of religion is itself a religion in the sense that you mindlessly quote the scripture but don't actually think about what it means or do what it says, but do bend it to serve whatever want.
And the tendency of the more intellectual to forgive and tolerate stupidity in the name of freedom and freedom of speech just amplifies that.
Yep. Well they did in the 80s but since then I think there are a growing but still tiny number of exceptions. And the money still has a god on it, and courts use a bible in the ceremony for giving testimony in trials, and laws about limiting vices (alcohol) on Sundays are almost universal...
I have come to view religions as organisms in an eco-system. The behavior is very analogous. The goal for both is survival and propagation. As within an eco-system, organisms evolve and adopt survival strategies. Religions do the same too. Organisms evolve due to genetic aberration, Religions evolve due to social aberration. In any eco-system, the young organisms are known to adopt harsher survival strategies, in religions you find the younger religions (Abrahamic, at this point of time in history), adopt strategies of violence and coercion. The more tougher to get out of a religion is directly proportional to how young it is. The principles are hard wired for survival, hence more emphasis on mandatory daily/weekly rituals for all in the religion, unlike in older ones where rituals in general are more often than not a domain of the priests. The older religions on the other hand are less virulent and more susceptible to younger challengers. Some organisms in nature beat this challenger possibility by adopting a more distributed structure, there by surviving in spite of assault from challengers. Young religions on the other hand prefer a centralized control structure which helps in keeping the line discipline. As within an eco-system, strategies of some organisms might be damaging to the eco-system as a whole. When it comes to religion, the ecological balance can be obtained only when damaging survival strategies are identified and discarded by the said organism, in other words it just needs to grow up...
It is funny to observe that even a religion is itself the product of, and subject to, and actively conducting evolution exactly the same as biology.
All evelotion is is the axiom or truism "That which works, works."
That statement can't be denied or escaped, and regardless what your mystical feelings are about how unbelievable it is that an eyeball just evolved by itself because that would be magic and magic is impossible but gods are magic that is possible or maybe gods aren't magic...I'm so confused...anyway no matter what you think about all that, there is no way around such a basic statement. You can't not-believe it.
And everything else ultimately flows from that. You can avoid considering it and imagine that there is some unknown other stuff between that and evolution and eyeballs, but you can't actually produce that unknown other stuff if you are ever forced to consider it.
And so it is with any self-oganizing self-modifying system, including organized religions and religious ideas.
You are right that they evolve strategies to perpetuate themselves. That which works, works. If someone had a religious idea to only accept seekers but keep themselves secret and never advertise, not even to their own offspring, that religion would cease to exist within a generation. Anyone still in it after that would have to be in some new religion resulting from a mutation that it's ok to bring in at least some new people by some means or other.
tl;dr: two thirds of Canadians report believing in a higher power in some way. If you slice the data in enough ways you'll find a few that will make headlines like this.
I was about to snark that this was done by a polling firm who works for political parties whose main opposition are also faith based, but as a finding to say 2/3 of people can be appealed to based on their faith in something, that's an important and valuable number.
The people who believe nothing are indeed in a minority, and they are also in power, so the tone of the article was likely to make believers of any faith feel isolated instead of reminding them that they are a majority.
Wasn't my intent to suggest your comment had. Re-reading, I may have unfairly levered it into something more partisan than it seemed as well. Harder to maintain charity in Canada lately.
Please consider belief in $GOD as different from $RELIGION. Consider one the theory and the other the implementation, and the latter seems to cause way more difficulties, particularly with respect to the hardware.
To me, the former is a personal spiritual bond while the latter is an imposed social bond. And the further that social bond moves away from the individual experience, the more dimly I tend to view both the religion and its followers.
The theory of $GOD is based on a whim, feeling, and the use of psychedelics by self-appointed (or self-anointed) clerics who recognize a shared human condition of wanting a purpose
The openness to an explanation occupies a register in the brain, in a first come first serve basis, and stays there.
$GOD is both an environmental variable, set upon system initialization and the value contained in the $GOD environmental variable. It is the Alpha and Omega, set first upon startup and cleared last upon shutdown. Unfortunately, it's up to the user's shell to interpret it.
That's what i thought too, before visiting a majority Buddhist country and i was shocked at the lavish temples, the amount of temples, full sized and miniature versions everywhere, the amount of clerics, the indoctrination of children ( they start the journey to be a monk at a very young age, iirc 8), how much it seemed to matter to the locals ( stuff like people stopping to pray at a mini-temple before a journey, buses being lavishly decorated with religious symbols, etc), including their donations "for good luck" while the country was on the verge of bankruptcy and going through an economic decline. Funnily, in a majority Christian city in the same country everything was the same, just directed at a different diety.
That's something you'd get from Buddhism for Dummies if you just assumed Reincarnation and Karma were simplistic concepts with only one definition. The reality is that these are metaphysical concepts and Buddhism is often conveyed via metaphor or analogy.
Your interpretation is a rather naive one, and "deserve" is a loaded word.
The differences between those 'last few prophets' are major. You could say the same thing about Mormonism. Further, Jews, Muslims, and Christians are not monoliths in and of themselves. There are vast divides within those groups. I do wish we would all get along better though. Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.
we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.
I would describe the values of the altruistic modern atheism of people I know, which has a lot in common with Christianity and Judaism at the big picture level, as "be good, do good." One needn't believe in God or gods to believe in good.
Values concerning sexual purity, obscenity, drug use, the transcendence of the almighty God, the material and immaterial parts of mankind, and the complementary roles of men and women are inherent in Biblical teaching. Some of these can be present among atheists, and they may be regarded as good. The difference is these values (and more) are present and regarded as good in varying degrees in every Abrahamic religion.
Sure there are atheists who are altruistic. But fundamentally there is little common ground, because an atheist does not believe in a divine being who is the source of all morality.
The question I would ask an atheist is: what is good and who defines it?
This gets into old, old discussions we had at school in the 70's. There are ethics, which are fundamental properties of humans, and morals, which are constructs built on top of ethics. Ethics are shared amongst humans - don't kill, try to help, raise the next generation, preserve the last generation. These are the default conditions picked by the evolutionary pressure that got us here.
Morals, on the other hand, are constructs. Given by $GOD, constructed to understand why ethics exist, why there are certain trends that are shared - these were cited forming govts, etc.
Not saying these are grounded in the definitions of language or sociology, merely that these kinds of discussions were everpresent when people get together with time to think. In this case, it was uni. In Ancient Greece, it was the marketplace. To try again, consider ethics things which are done and morality is an attempt to explain WHY they are done. Fear of consequence, desire to gain, justification, ...
This is the lie we are all told to preserve the walls between "us" and "them," to divide and conquer our society. We are told to focus on the superficial differences between groups.
We are told to flip our shared humanity on its head and treat the superficial as fundamental, and the fundamental as irrelevant, to the point where we react viscerally to even the suggestion that someone who doesn't share tribal value X can still be a good person. But there is a lot of common ground between all human groups, if only we would focus on what we share instead of what we don't.
What defines good is our shared picture of empathy, consent, maximizing joy, minimizing suffering, reciprocity, etc. Basic golden rule stuff that's built into most of us and within reach of all of us.
I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and making a coherent and thoughtful reply.
> to the point where we react viscerally to even the suggestion that someone who doesn't share tribal value X can still be a good person.
I'm not arguing that anyone is a good person. The New Testament teaches that there are exactly zero good people apart from Jesus. It's not that I or other religious people are 'good'. However, Abrahamic faiths have enough in common that a shared government where the religious privileges of each group are protected is theoretically possible. I don't see that as a possibility with atheists, agnostics, or polytheistic. Most first world nations are operating under the idea that we can all get along but the reality is that we cannot because our worldviews are diametrically opposed in several areas.
> What defines good is our shared picture of empathy, consent, maximizing joy, minimizing suffering, reciprocity, etc. Basic golden rule stuff that's built into most of us and within reach of all of us.
First, I do not agree that this is built into most of us. That's one of the core tenets of Christianity (Orthodox Judaism as well...but I'm not as well versed there) and I think this is obvious. It seems you and I disagree here, but I think the evidence, especially looking back at various civilizations proves that mankind does not generally follow 'the golden rule'.
Second, most of the values you've listed are not our shared values but are simple utilitarianism.
I certainly do not regard 'consent' as a shared value. Consent is the framework that replaced the marital framework after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Certainly, the idea of consent existed before that, but using it as a legal framework is a relatively modern development.
I also don't place value of minimizing suffering. People occasionally need to suffer. Using suffering reduction as a framework for moral action would lead to the destruction of the rich so that their wealth can be liquidated and redistributed in the form of food and housing. This is a 'for the greater good' type of thinking, and while I can see why someone might choose to subscribe to such an ideal, it certainly isn't part of how I define morality or good.
In summary: Abrahamic faiths have more in common with each other, despite their disagreements than they do with any primarily materialist position including atheism and utilitarianism.
Positing the existence of a deity doesn't get you anywhere. Why is it moral to do what that deity says to? Absolute morality does not exist.
Now, you can quite easily construct a practical morality system: I think murder is bad because I don't want to be murdered. I want stealing outlawed because I don't want things stolen from me. It's really that simple.
This is natural behavior that has proven evolutionarily advantageous for our species, but religion strangely came along after the fact and tried to take credit for it.
If the only thing keeping you from being a bad person (TM) is the threat of eternal damnation and suffering through some divine almighty being - how are you then not a bad person?
> Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.
The space of values within the Abrahamic faiths (which are more than Jews, Muslims, and Christians, though those are the largest groups), or even within any one of those three large Abrahamic faiths, is not significantly narrower than the space of values within all of humanity.
Personally, I find that many of the people farthest from me in values are not only within the big Abrahamic tent with me, but also within the smaller tent of Western Christianity with me.
(And I find that us vs. them appeals with “us” being Christianity, “Judeo-Christianity“, or Abrahamic religion [almost always intended to exclusively refer to the big 3], is a pretty good sign that someone is on that other side.)
It held itself up as the "true" alternative to Christian religion in particular. No need for a God - we can do it all ourselves. Perhaps because it saw Christians who were loyal first to God and then to the state as a threat to its plans for totalitarianism.
In the case of Mao and Stalin? That would be the idol of Ideological purity. It is presented as the one true ideal variant of humanistic utilitarianism, and conveniently because they are the glorious leader through whom it is to be enacted, they are basically the prophet of this god. It is an impersonal god, a "force" or natural economic/social principle whose pseudo-personhood emerges from collective humanity. It uses its adherents to oppress outsiders for resisting. It holds itself together by using its adherents to watch and keep each other in line. It callously punishes insiders to demonstrate that this god doesn't need any of the individual humans it supposedly serves, since they are so much like animals in the first place.
Materialist don't get to make a smug escape from the stigma of "killing in the name of god". Anything you place at the top of your value hierarchy is, for all intents and purposes, your god.
It's a little on the cheesy side but I think this clip from They Live illustrates simply the idolatrous place capital can take in our day-to-day lives.
That's it? That's all your god has to offer? That's all your god is? An ideology? Bureaucrats and formalism? I feel betrayed! To you, god is indistinguishable for from this? How? Now, I am not a religion-apologist, but it seems to me you're selling god short, no?
What about all the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? Here's Oxford: 1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. 2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
Wow! Yeah! Thats's a god! But you're arguing that god is equivalent to formalism and bureaucracy?! Wow, what a disappointment!
See, and that's where you're a dishonest hypocrite (ah, you got me there!) while moving your goalposts by miles. The religious people are all innocent, because those who aren't, aren't true believers and pharisees; but wow does that threshold drop when it comes to atheists (or 'smug materialists'), because now everything is their true god, and they just haven't realized that they really are religious, and are "just as bad as the religious people" (TM) because nothing can exist outside of religion, hallelujah.
You claim you were an atheist once, for a decade? Maybe you mistook being an atheist for being 'edgy' and smug. All it means is that I don't believe in you sky daddy. Never in my life have I talked about atheism except in response to religious people bringing up their religion and trying to explain to me how really I am religious. I just want to be left alone from your superstition, freedom from religion is the only religious freedom.
What you call "moving the goalposts" here was just OP's starting assumption that everyone is religious in some way (Bob Dylan's "gotta serve somebody" comes to mind) -- an assumption which you disagree with.
It would make for better discussion to call out this assumption and offer arguments against it than to resort to personal attacks.
The personal attacks aren't a resort for people like this. It's the thing they advance into these threads to do in the first place.
This is the person who said "Freedom from religion is the only religious freedom", which is something I would expect to hear from a guard at a prison camp whose job is to systematically destroy an inmate's hope, community and individuality outside of basic material desires.
Freedom of religion is freedom to believe or not to believe in any religion or philosophy a person may choose. It is the freedom to express that privately or together, to speak about or practice it openly. It is the freedom to seek meaning, in spite of how you may be looked upon for the journey or its outcome. Without this definition of freedom of religion in place, there can only be the state religion/philosophy and any of the people belonging to systems of belief that the state's adherents subjugate, subvert, or chooses to tolerate for the time being.
Furthermore, it's not a freedom that can just be taken away, even if someone writes a mean comment about it or codifies a law that criminalizes beliefs. It is a freedom embedded in base reality.
I am grateful that I grew up in a world where so many people around me valued this definition of freedom of religion so much. I am grateful for the meanings, symbolism and relationships I have been able to discover on this path. Being a former atheist allows me to cherish them all the more, because I remember what life was like without them.
May God have mercy on everyone in this thread, we are all going to need it. I resolutely believe we are in these sad political times because we have forgotten about God.
I wouldn't immediately assume it's insecurity. I used to be an atheist for a good decade and a bit. I remember making fun of Christians in high school. You get to be edgy and the Christians start to feel real bad because you're making fun of what is their "silly sky daddy" to you. But the extra fun part is they're conditioned to be nice in response so it's like you get to sit on a tall branch and drop things on their head and you don't have to take so much flak from them. And if they do act out, you can call them a hypocrite and insult their faith because it clearly doesn't work. It feels like a fun game you can't lose, until one day things get too real and you discover in horror what you'd been doing.
I don't even understand how one could, even theoretically, be insecure about atheism. It would be great to believe in the 'big sky daddy', as someone else calls them here, it would make lives much easier if you don't have to think and worry for yourself. Alas, I wasn't indoctrinated form an early age.
What pisses me off in this discussion here is that you guys aren't able to have this discussion without either lying or goalpost moving. It is completely incomprehensible to you that something outside of your tiny believe bubble exists. Smug remarks about the 'smug materialists' show how insecure you guys are, then proving that atheists really only also are religious, but still need to be enlightened from you guys. Salvation!
What discussion? Canada doesn't like freedom of thought, and likes to police thoughts? That's not newsworthy, it is an irrelevant backwater country with no substance of it's own.
What's even a Canadian? a deeply religious Hutterite in Alberta? An Inuit with their own tribal/folk religion? An atheist in coastal British Columbia or metropolitan Ontario? Catholic Quebecker? A somewhat religious Hindu immigrant? religious for appearances only Middle Eastern immigrant? a Scottish Druid?
Canada is just a hotel, with really bad weather.
As for "discussions", at the very core, belief is freedom of thought.
If one can no longer have whatever wacky beliefs anything from cargo cults to ufo religions, anything really - now we are getting into thought policing. However, Canadians appears to think policing thought is not damaging to society, who would've expected a hotel of a country with no culture of its own and history of mere 300-400 years to have any other opinion? It is profoundly important to have freedom of belief, conscience and thought. As long as others doesn't infringe on my freedoms, they can believe whatever nonsense.
To think that institutions that supported humanity for thousands of years, helped us survive until today, through all sorts of disasters, difficulties and strife, are all of a sudden damaging to society? Only a lunatic could believe this.
P.S.
I'm not sure why you assume everyone you are talking to online is Christian? Religions vary wildly, and all have very different values. Some don't even have concepts of "salvation" or enlightenment. in others, even some similar concepts might exist - even your personal existence and well being is actually of little to no concern in some creeds, as they are inward oriented.
I think even without believing in an afterlife in your religion, you can believe some idea or value transcends your own death. For example a person could say "I am okay with dying young in an atrocious urban conflict if it means that in the future we can start a socialist regime where everyone has food, health care and shelter provided by the state as it should have been for my family."
It's not a promise of an afterlife, but it is a promise for something good existing after your life because of your willingness to take on death. And in that way, an ideology can inhabit tons of the psychological territory that religion often does.
>Conversely, where in atheism does it say to love your neighbor as yourself or anything similar?
Nowhere. Why would it? We must have different definitions of atheism. It's merely the absence of belief in the existence of deities. It's not some kind of complete life philosophy.
> Perhaps if they followed their purported beliefs rather than their tribal nature?
The Old Testament is extremely tribal, and commanded the Chosen to exterminate several competing tribes. I'd rather it not be followed too closely:
1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Numbers 21:3 The Lord gave the Canaanites over to Israel, who "completely destroyed them and their towns."
Numbers 31:17-18 God commanded Moses to kill all of the male Midianite children and "kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
Not being Muslim, I can't state the relationship between the Koran and the Old Testament, but any contradiction in the former would be taken in preference I assume. I thought the New Testament was a replacement for the Old - certainly the teachings disagree with what you include. Although between "them" and worshipping money it's hard to find people who actually follow New Testament dogma. Hard for people to "turn the other cheek" and "treat others...", and that negative stuff about rich men and needles.
Context? Different Christian religions and people have varying ways of reconciling the two. I (raised Catholic) was taught essentially that with Jesus's death, the old rules went out the window; all that goofy shit God used to command the Israelites to do didn't need to happen anymore because Jesus's death made up for it. So the Old Testament isn't super relevant outside of providing the context for the New Testament.
Pointing out a diversity of viewpoints among Catholics is a poor way of refuting the existence of a diversity of viewpoints on the same point within the wider space of Christianity.
like the other response pointed out, that's not my interpretation- there's a diversity of viewpoints, and that's the interpretation that I was taught by the Church I went to and by my parents.
I commented to expand on what looked like a really simplistic dismissal of an honest question... and you tell me there's disagreement (ie multiple viewpoints)... which was the entire point of my post.
"oh your life sucks today because of circumstances beyond your control? oh well, you must've deserved it in your previous life by being a total dickhead,you scumbag!"
People of the book whose resulting cultures are fairly different.
I'm not sure people of the book means anything.
The jews think the christians stole their book to make up a new religion and pretend it came from judaism. The christians think islam stole their book to make a new religion and pretend it came from judaism and christianity. Islam believes that the bahai...
"people of the book" isn't a unifying feature when you realize everyone is actually territorial about their books.
What are you talking about. In Islam the Quran is considered the final revelation of God that is to remain preserved until the day of judgement. The previous prophets like Moses and Jesus (Peace be upon them) came with revelation too but they were corrupted by man who ascribed things to Allah by adding stuff up to the books.
Look how many version of the bibles there is. However, there is only one Quran. 114 chapters. It always start with surat Al-Fatiha and ends with surat Al-Anas.
The Quran is memorized by millions of muslims word by word. There is even a quran in a museum in the UK, Birmigham where it was carbon dated around the time of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). This demonstrate that the quran is preserved.
Moses and Jesus and all the previous prophets are muslims. In the sense that muslims means someone who submits his will to the one creator. However, as throught history it always devolved into polytheism. Look at christianity with the concept of the trinity. Islam is so simple and make so much more sense just worship one creator. He is not a man, not a woman doesn't have children, He is above all of this.
I would suggest looking at this video : What is the difference between the Quran & the Bible? | Great Explanation | Sh. Uthman Ibn Farooq : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0WSzqnJzRo
Nope. Although the Quran is very well preserved for such an old document, there are multiple variants. Muslims often claim it's perfectly preserved, but it's just not. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYwwX5lc_ww (start 8 minutes in).
The variants you're referring to are just changes in pronounciation not meaning. (It's called a qiraat and there are 10) It's like if someone from the UK and someone from San diego pronounce the same sentence. It will sound different because of their accent but it's the same thing. So I stand by what I say the quran is perfectly preserved.
If you want to dive in further here is a video that address the issue of what you linked : https://youtu.be/eTz96M1AkVo?t=400 There are many such online.
At the end of the day there is only one Quran with 114 chapters it's start with surat Al-Fatiha and ends with the last surat An-Nas.
Finally, I want to invite you to become a muslim. Meaning, I invite you to submit your will to the one and only creator the same one who sent Moses, Jesus and Mohammed (Peace be upon them all) so that you may attain eternal paradise and avoid hell. In the end you make your choice and I'm only here as a conveyor of the message.
> You are mistaken that there are different versions of the bible. There are different translations.
There are different versions of the sources, as well as different trabslations; most recent versions of the Bible are based on some scholarship which incorporates and makes some effort to reconcile the differences, rather than simply choosing one set as authoritative, but the differences in the sources contribute to difference between translations.
> In fact, many Christians and Jews were murdered or enslaved at his command because they refused to follow him.
That is false. The prophet Muhammad never killed Jews or Christians for not following Islam. The Jews he fought with and killed were due to political reasons. In most cases, treachery. One group he had a treaty with tried to assassinate him, for example.
Having a divine revelation that the dhimmis are plotting to murder you (and therefore should be forced pay you a 50% tax in perpetuity under threat of expulsion or death, of course) can hardly be considered a purely political, non-religious reason. Or a trope.
> Is there a distinction between government and religion in Islam?
No more or less than there is in Christianity.
There are Muslims who distinguish the role of each, just as there are Christians who do.
> In the west, there is this distinction
Not largely from within institutional Christianity, where both theocracy (wherein government is viewed as subordinated to religious institutions, rather than the two being separate) and caesaropapism (wherein religious institutions are subordinated to government rather than the two being separate) have been common institutional power and legitimate government power is frequently portrayed as having a divine religious origin.
Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix showing how the various religious groups feel about each other (net positive/negative). Some takeaways: * Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others * Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews * Evangelicals are negative on everyone else
If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too