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A simple point of debate.

There's no secret that the Bible contains some pretty horrific descriptions of violence - genocide, enslavement of virgins, slaughtering of all living things etc.

Now, some Christians argue that the Old Testament descriptions of violence were abrogated by the New Testament teachings.

(However see this link for some interesting perspectives on this
http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/05/the-bu ... t-cop-out/

)

But this does raise the question about the Jewish interpretation of the Bible's teachings. By definition they don't have the NT to abrogate the verses advocating violence. They, as I understand, believe the OT to be relevant and authentic - God's words.

The OT is demonstrably more violent than the Quran (just look at the relative lists on
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
)

Does this mean that Judaism is more violent than Islam?

My view is that neither religion is inherently violent. Only when verses are taken out of context and other verses are ignored can it be argued they are violent religions.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Shafique

I see you're still dependent on dot com sites for your knowledge. I believe if someone linked to biased wikipedia rants on Islam they would be ... loons.



But hey, at least it's an improvement over Ahmadi missionary websites feeding you incorrect information.

(And then pretending you actually know enough to claim Christians are following their religion incorrectly while getting confused over the difference between an epistle and a gospel)

Atheism is the way to go

disagree ,
I have replied to similar Post, substitute Bible by Quran.. same point of view to me...

Mahmoud - I agree, both Bible and Quran can be misused in the same way.

The comparison though is simply pointing out the fact that the Bible has quantitatively and qualitatively more violence than the Quran. The question really is to those who believe that Islam is inherently violent, but don't apply the same logic to Judaism (who believe the OT is word of God and not abrogated by the NT) - or Christianity.

Whilst the other thread is amusing, it fails at the first hurdle - because the Quran does not contain the examples of violence I listed in the OP (eg. it does not say it is ok to enslave virgins after slaughtering the rest of their families, including babies - this is only the Bible).

However, turning the tables round is exactly my point - you can indeed use the same arguments against the Quran as are being used against the Bible. Both contain violent verses. Both religions have had religious nutters commit crimes - Baruch Goldstein, Crusaders, 'Jihadists' etc - all religiously motivated terrorists.

Cheers,
Shafique

Shaf, as we both have the same believes so I guess its easier to get what we mean,
I don't agree on attacking or misusing religions phrases whether its Quran, Bible, Torah.

They came through messengers from GOD and believe or not, they all in a way taste the same, with minor differences in term of rules and big different in term of Believe.

So I am sure GOD won't be happy with you u or me or anybody else if we keep in focusing and repeating that GOD's books contains violence against other humans, where apparently GOD created them as well, and u know on earth we are all equal, right?

my opinion TBH, make a point but don't attack coz u will get attacked same way...

"And do not insult those they invoke other than Allah , lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge. Thus We have made pleasing to every community their deeds. Then to their Lord is their return, and He will inform them about what they used to do." 6:108

Mahmoud - please let me clarify.

Stating that the Bible contains violent verses which talk about genocide etc is not the same as criticising Christians or Christianity, or Jews or Judaism.

I was rather posing the question to those who believe that Islam is a violent religion - and asking whether the same logic should also apply to the Bible.

I actually agree completely with this view:

The reader should not think that I believe that a certain religion or another is violent. Rather, there exist peaceful and violent interpretations of religion. I reject the view held by religious orthodoxy that the human mind is simply an empty receptacle that unthinkingly “obeys” the divine plan. Hundreds of years after their prophets have died, believers (of all faiths) are forced (by virtue of not having a divine interlocutor) to exert their own minds and ethics to give life to texts, to render 3D realities from 2D texts. Such an elastic idea–that a religion is whatever its believers make it into–is certainly anathema to orthodox adherents who simply desire a step-by-step instruction manual to produce human automatons. But the truth is that even these orthodox adherents necessarily inject into the religious texts their own backgrounds, beliefs, and biases.

One can see why I do not think that simply showing a Biblical verse here or there would prove that Judaism or Christianity are violent faiths. There is a long journey from what is on the page to what is understood and put into practice. And once this reality is comprehended, it is hoped that Jews and Christians will gain a larger perspective when they approach Muslims and their religion.

I hope this clarifies my point.

Cheers,
Shafique

Mahmoud, please let me clarify. Shafique is Christianophobic and a ranter.

I hope this clarifies things

Cheers
BM

Shaf,
"Violent teachings in Bible" isn't a proper subject header, what do u think?

well, actually BM he can't be Christianophobic ,that will be against his believe ... isn't it Shaf?

Mahmoud04 wrote:Shaf,
"Violent teachings in Bible" isn't a proper subject header, what do u think?

well, actually BM he can't be Christianophobic ,that will be against his believe ... isn't it Shaf?

Violent teachings in Bible!
I rest my case Mahmoud.
Christianophopic.

Mahmoud - the title does reflect the subject matter.

I'm arguing that it is wrong to consider Judaism (or Christianity) violent religions DESPITE the fact that the Bible contains more violent verses than the Quran.

Given I believe Jesus to be a Prophet of God and that the Bible contains the words of God - it would be hard to argue I'm Christianophobic, indeed.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:Given I believe Jesus to be a Prophet of God and that the Bible contains the words of God - it would be hard to argue I'm Christianophobic, indeed.

Good point, anti-Semites must never believe in the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Otherwise, they couldn't possibly be anti-Semitic.

Wow. I see you really think your beliefs out before saying them.

I will never learn .

I thought I would unhide your comment eh, just in case you had made a pertinent comment.

Alas, usual ramblings which have nothing to do with the thread's subject matter - viz. the violent verses of the Bible and the central argument that just like it is not right to consider Islam a violent religion, it is not right to consider Judaism/Christianity as violent religions DESPITE the fact the Bible contains more and worse violent verses than the Quran.

I guess you have no answer to that.

I'll learn to resist clicking on 'display this post' in future.

Cheers,
Shafique

I thought I would unhide your comment eh,

Mahmoud, you may wish to review this thread from a while back:

philosophy-dubai/biblical-war-crimes-t40711.html

Cheers,
Shafique

hi Shaf, all what I meant is that, subjects matters...,
there is no violence in religions i believe, but its conditioned ways of defending yourself, group, ppl, family etc..., so we can't deny we have phrases for encouraging people during war times in the Quran, coz wars are a fact as air and water, so no religion could escape it, Islam, Christianity, Jewish. and anyone argues about that is completely wasting time..

you know I am not as familiar with the forum as you guys, I didn't really post much but recently, but if someone who is new to the forum and see a subject with "Violent teachings in Bible" he will get pissed off I guess. and thats what I meant by the Quran phrase up there.

I'll give u a good example when I first started reading what EH posts I used to get upset and I remember I once said I have to smoke a cig after reading any of his posts , now its totally different, I can read it while doing a task or writing down an e-mail and continue with a smile on my face

wish you understand my point bro.. and at the end the Jesus & the Bible are as important to us as to others, right?

Well, very few people take eh seriously - so you are wise not to get upset by his posts.

I would hope that anyone new to the forum will read the posts and won't get upset by the thread title - especially after I made it clear above that quoting the violent verses from the bible does not mean I think that Judaism and Christianity are violent religions (I don't) - but that does not mean the verses don't exist and that they haven't been used to justify crimes.

I totally agree - about Islam respecting all prophets, including Jesus.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:Well, very few people take eh seriously - so you are wise not to get upset by his posts.

I would hope that anyone new to the forum will read the posts and won't get upset by the thread title - especially after I made it clear above that quoting the violent verses from the bible does not mean I think that Judaism and Christianity are violent religions (I don't) - but that does not mean the verses don't exist and that they haven't been used to justify crimes.

I totally agree - about Islam respecting all prophets, including Jesus.

Cheers,
Shafique

And you would know this how, Sir Shafique? I would have to say that you are the joker on DF. Rarely have I laughed so much as when you claim to be British! LOL

And as for the title of this topic, well, what can we expect from someone who is so obviously Christianophobic?

There is a lot of violence in the OT which is hard to reconcile with the accepted message of the NT.

The accounts of violence don't seem like teachings, but a dispassionate account of history. Like when Joshua order the destruction of Jericho, it's a lesson in history rather than morality.

if islam was all about violence than all muslims would be killing non-muslims. But do you see over billions of muslims killing all the non-muslims across the world? Nope. Why? Because its not a violent religion. Similiary do you see the jews, christians, sikhs etc etc killling humans from other religions?? Nope you dont!!!

Rudeboy, we are discussing PRESCRIPTIVE violence in the Koran and Bible.

We are also discussing jus ad bellum (the reasons for going to war).

Muslims have craftily changed the terms of debate to focus on descriptive acts of violence in the Bible or passages that regulate warfare (jus in bello).

Just out of curiousity, but do you not see a great deal of dishonesty from the Muslim apologetic side in this debate?

Why are Muslims so lousy at addressing what's actually been said by Robert Spencer, et al, by creating straw-men responses rather than addressing what is in the Koran or finding similar passages from the Bible?

I feel Muslim apologists only prove Robert Spencer's point by avoiding the terms of the debate.

What would you think if someone made a statement and the other side, in a frenzy, went off topic with wild tirades that do not address the carefully considered comments made by the opposing side?

Hopefully, you can acknowledge the intellectual shallowness of the other side.

here you are again EH, this is a much better post than the other one...
how is things dude....

Blueshift - yes, you are right - the OT does contain a lot of violence. Much of it is explicitly sanctioned by God (in the Biblical accounts) - and many of the incidents are genocides and certainly war-crimes.

For example, the God of the Bible commanded Moses and his followers:

Deuteronomy 20:17 You must utterly destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the LORD your God has commanded you.

And also
Deuteronomy 2:33 : The Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army.
2:34 At that time we took all his cities and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors.

Numbers even describes virgins being kept alive whilst everyone else is slaughtered:
31:17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
31:18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.


I totally applaud the Christians who state that these verses should not be viewed as prescriptive. Indeed, those that argue that now God has changed and wouldn't today order genocide are to be applauded too (although, it does beg the question - 'when did God chill out and become less violent')

However, the point in the original post was that there are some who do view these commandments and descriptions as the word of God and totally true. Some Jews (and some Christians) do use these verses to justify killings. Therefore, there is no difference between these Jews and Christians and those Muslims who use the Quran to justify their crimes.

Empirically, as the link in the first post shows, there are many, many, many more violent verses in the Bible than the Quran.

The difference is that Muslims won't ascribe the actions of Christian nutters to the religion of Jesus, and most ordinary people won't do the same for Islam. Islamophobes, however, will knowingly mislead people with pseudo-arguments to show that Islam is to blame for crimes by Muslim nutters.


Cheers,
Shafique

blueshift wrote:There is a lot of violence in the OT which is hard to reconcile with the accepted message of the NT.

The accounts of violence don't seem like teachings, but a dispassionate account of history. Like when Joshua order the destruction of Jericho, it's a lesson in history rather than morality.

It's curious a member above me chose to say he agreed with your post when he doesn't actually address your post's content.

It seems he only used your post as a springboard to give himself an opportunity to make another factually incorrect tirade that has been addressed time and again on the internet.

However, the issue is clear.

The Bible does not call for perpetual warfare against non-believers. The passages in the Bible pertaining to warfare that can be said to be prescriptive regulate the conduct of war.

Interestingly, these passages are no more brutal than similar ones found in the Koran, hadith and Islamic law.

More important, these passages are today a dead letter for Rabbinic Jews.

Whats not clear is EH, why your are trolling on DF in the first place ?

desertdudeshj wrote:Whats not clear is EH, why your are trolling on DF in the first place ?

Funnily enough I was just wondering the same about you Munchkin! What makes you think you have more right to be here than EH? And why is everybody you don't agree with considered a troll?

Bethsmum wrote:

desertdudeshj wrote:Whats not clear is EH, why your are trolling on DF in the first place ?

Funnily enough I was just wondering the same about you Munchkin! What makes you think you have more right to be here than EH? And why is everybody you don't agree with considered a troll?

Just let him stalk. DDS already has a history of stalking on this forum. Its probably something that gets him off or something. Who knows. Its creepy nonetheless.

Ah ! see the boot party mob has gathered again

All the trolly buddies seem to have something to say except for EH himself. Ofcourse EH will never answer that as in the past because that will expose him for as BB rightly calls him the sad critter he is.

But hey, you never know he just might

LOL.

Ok, back to the topic at hand.

Let's summarise what the undisputed facts are and list the few (weakly) disputed points.

First, the undisputed points in the OP:

1. The Bible contains many more violent verses than the Quran (links given to skeptics annotated Bible to confirm)
2. The Bible contains crimes supposedly sanctioned by God that the Quran does not - eg genocide (killing of women, children, livestock.
3. The vast majority of Jews and Christians rightly reject these verses as 'prescriptive verses'
4. Some Jews and Christians DO view these verses as prescriptive and have carried out these Biblical crimes (eg religous terrorist Baruch Goldstein and historically all the pogroms, Crusades etc done in the notion of Christian penance etc)
5. It is wrong to use the minority of nutters in 4. to conclude that Judaism and Christianity are violent religions because of the facts in 1 to 3.

Now, for the (weakly) disputed points:
6. The majority of Muslims don't consider the fewer violent verses of the Quran to mean global jihad against all non-Muslims.
7. the majority of Islamophobes think their interpretation of the Quran concerning jihad is more valid than what the majority of Muslims (scholars and believers alike) say. (What is especially funny is that so-called experts - such as Guru Bob - admit to not actually having read the whole Quran or understand Arabic.)
8. The reality is that it is equally wrong to view Islam as a violent religion because of the fewer and less violent verses in the Quran (as compared to the Biblical verses) - for the same reason in point 5.


I guess my work in this thread is done.

For more details of the demolition of the Islamophobic myth of a violent Islam - this series of articles directly addresses the myths put out by Bob Spencer and his ilk:
"Understanding Jihad Series - Is Islam more likely than other religions to encourage violence"

http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/03/the-un ... -violence/

It's actually quite interesting to bring up the skeptic's annotated Bible, since that website has found the Koran contains a higher ratio of violent/hateful passages per verse than the Bible. I believe the ratio of violent/hateful passages in the Koran is twice as high as in the Bible.

2. The Bible contains crimes supposedly sanctioned by God that the Quran does not - eg genocide (killing of women, children, livestock.

Unfortunately, the Koran DOES contain passages where entire peoples were wiped out because they rejected the messages of prophets.

3. The vast majority of Jews and Christians rightly reject these verses as 'prescriptive verses'

The passages are clear in themselves.

4. Some Jews and Christians DO view these verses as prescriptive and have carried out these Biblical crimes (eg religous terrorist Baruch Goldstein and historically all the pogroms, Crusades etc done in the notion of Christian penance etc)

Cite specific examples, or you're talking out of your rear end.

6. The majority of Muslims don't consider the fewer violent verses of the Quran to mean global jihad against all non-Muslims.

Let me know when the ulema 'abrogated' the concept of offensive Jihad.

Otherwise, see above.

7. the majority of Islamophobes think their interpretation of the Quran concerning jihad is more valid than what the majority of Muslims (scholars and believers alike) say. (What is especially funny is that so-called experts - such as Guru Bob - admit to not actually having read the whole Quran or understand Arabic.)

No need to cite Robert Spencer. I'll simply cite uncontested scholars of Muslim history:

Middle East historian Bernard Lewis argues that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists (specialists in the hadith) understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense."[40] Furthermore, Lewis maintains that for most of the recorded history of Islam, from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad onward, the word jihad was used in a primarily military sense.[41]

In reading Muslim literature -- both contemporary and classical -- one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible David Cook, Understanding Jihad, University of California Press, 2005, p.165-6

8. The reality is that it is equally wrong to view Islam as a violent religion because of the fewer and less violent verses in the Quran (as compared to the Biblical verses) - for the same reason in point 5.

And here we go back to what I brought up to rudeboy before:

Muslims have craftily changed the terms of debate to focus on descriptive acts of violence in the Bible or passages that regulate warfare (jus in bello).

Just out of curiousity, but do you not see a great deal of dishonesty from the Muslim apologetic side in this debate?

Why are Muslims so lousy at addressing what's actually been said by Robert Spencer, et al, by creating straw-men responses rather than addressing what is in the Koran or finding similar passages from the Bible?

I feel Muslim apologists only prove Robert Spencer's point by avoiding the terms of the debate.

What would you think if someone made a statement and the other side, in a frenzy, went off topic with wild tirades that do not address the carefully considered comments made by the opposing side?