We can get to all that later. Certainly Christians have done and been evil. However, I want to start with the source of the major religions (excluding Shintoism), as best as possible. Would you tolerate these individuals all the same?
I've already addressed this about a year ago here. It has to do with the printing press and the Reformation. The same type of reformation isn't possible in Islam, because literacy isn't the issue here. Many Islamic extremists understand and read Arabic quite well. The Catholic Church took advantage of having a monopoly of who can read and understand the Bible and used it for their political whims. Once printed editions of the Bible were able to be mass produced in different languages, the common man was able to read the message for themselves and understand that Jesus wanted no part in this political Christianity that the Catholic Church pushed. The difference with Islam, is that the founder, Muhammad explicitly desired a political Islam and wanted world wide government ruled by religious law. Jesus didn't want that.
Pretty sure most mainstream Christian teaching says you can still go to heaven despite the sin of pride. More generally, I agree with you that Westerners do believe they are empowered to make choices about who should live and who should die. I don't really see the connection to our Abrahamic roots. I don't really believe the assertion that Buddhists don't have the same conceit.
Well, I am rather familiar with Buddhist texts. Maybe you can find some examples of Buddhism that endorse killing. . . . The connection with our Abrahamic roots is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all believe that you can know God's word. If God says "kill," you kill. God in the Bible is a ruthless killer. Same in the Torah. Again, I'll leave the "murderous Islam" to the reader. . . .
You just finished telling me Jesus did not endorse murder and it was the sin of pride that makes Christians think they can know who should live and who should die. That tell me it's not the divine word, at least in relation to Christianity, but the evil in people's own hearts. So, I don't need to find endorsement of killing in Buddhist texts. I just need to find examples of Buddhists killing people. Doesn't sound too hard. If Allah was the one true God and Muhammad his prophet and I really truly believed that, then yeah I'd probably kill if he told me to kill. And, likewise if Vishnu told me to kill. Or Zeus. Or Quetzalcoatl. Or Jesus. But of course, Jesus wouldn't tell me to kill, just as Buddha wouldn't. But Christians and Buddhists and everyone else kill anyway. Which brings me full circle to my original complaint -- that the premise of this whole thread is ill-founded. Would violence go down one jot if all the Muslims in the world stopped being Muslim, or if the entire world converted to Buddhism? I highly, highly doubt it. I don't believe that 'all religions are bad.' All people are bad, and religion is just a thing we do.
Depending on whether or not you believe the Kurukshetra War and Krishna's role in it as per the Mahabharata to be a historical fact (same for the other stories, like him cutting off his cousin's head for one too many insults). I don't know what most Hindus believe. I'd like to think most view such stories as allegory/mythology.
We're talking about the religious texts here in terms of how they affect their followers. Whether it is historical fact or mythos is irrelevant - the OP is arguing none of these religions had a figure that espoused murder. He mentioned Krishna as an example. Krishna himself is not proven to have ever existed.
Yeah, well don't ask me to explain the sameness/difference of Jesus and God, coz it's a mystery to me. Although Jesus is love, the God of the Bible specifically instructs people to kill and kill a lot. Here is a quote from God, in the Bible. So you do need to look and see if other gods are this murderous. Sounds almost like terrorists killing all the non-believers in a city, doesn't it?
today vast majority of religious folks are good people, even if their religion is/was/has been 'bad' at some period of time; in this perspective, religions are not bad if you really want to talk about religious teaching (original, not original, whatever), that's a different story, but like anything, whatever written down can be re-written/re-translated/re-interpreted; case in point - just look at how the extreme left and right view the exact same set of information and come to polar opposite views; it's more important to understand the current interpretations, mainstream and extreme, then the possible interpretations but if you do do an analysis of the original text, you probably end up somewhere like... abrahamic religions are crazy violent vs the eastern religions and that in general monotheistic religion aren't tolerate toward others... and so, followers of these religions, extreme or even mainstream aren't tolerate of others at some point in time... so if you judge that as 'bad', then they are bad... for me, it's how people practice and live then what the books of a million years ago said.
Buddha was probably the only scientist/psychologist in that group, after being psycho himself earlier in life
You have proven to be completely ignorant as to what it takes to get to Heaven if one is in fact an actual Christian and why Jesus HAD to die in the first place..
Great? Round 2? Huh? Are you saying that after reformation that Christians became less violent because hold on...... I'd say the Protestants did too, albeit in a different way..... how many different denomination of Protestants are there now......? Ain't y'all reading from the same book.....? Literacy is helpful but words can clearly be twisted. Jesus may not have wanted that, but the bible does say to spread the good word. what does evangelize mean? Let's see..... Catholics conquered Latin America and parts of SE Asia and the Protestants conquered Africa, North America, and parts of SE Asia. Christianity was used to justify, among other things, the slave trade and imperialism from the 16th onward. Almost everywhere Christianity has touched outside of the Western World has been marked with instability and strife since the first Christians came over in there ships. So again.... it didn't matter what Jesus preached when the outcome is clear and history is clear.
Why? Just be honest with your angle here? Again, it's pretty clear that despite Jesus, Christianity has committed a lot of sin across the world. The history of the world is differing ideas/ideology/beliefs coming and going with power. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and the "Far East" have all taken turns being the best and worst. Explain to me the relevance of this question and your angle then I'll oblige. I sincerely don't get the relevance when just several decades ago your average American didn't know a Shiite from a bowel movement.[/QUOTE]
We can speak of the faults and misgivings of religious bureaucracies later on. Let's stay on track for now. I'm attempting to establish where within the world's major religions the "all religions are bad" argument stems from. Does it stem from the patriarchal leaders of these religions? Hopefully you will now feel obliged to answer.
Uh huh..... From their history and continually trying to police morality....... I have answered. Clearly Jesus's teaching of peace and forgiveness didn't stop many atrocities despite Mohammad being a pedophilic, warlord on the Islamic side. The answer is pretty clear..... all religions are bad despite the founders intentions.
All. What we know of Abraham, Krishna, Buddha (who the Christian made a Saint, ftw), and Jesus is myth. People are people. I would tolerate them all. I suspect that the myths associated with these religious founders were more cultural than historical, in a dated context. Ancient cultural contexts do not play well in a modern world. For example, getting your old testament "an eye for an eye" on would likely land your ass in jail. Muhammad having 11 wives (some of which were children) probably is not going to fly today. All in all, this is a poorly formed questioned. I don't know exactly what OP is fishing for.
Krishna is not the founder of Hinduism. He is one of many gods and I don't know if Krishna was a real person.
Obviously it does not stem from the leaders. This question is dead. Jesus did not write down his teachings. Buddha did not write down his teachings. Mohammad did not write down his teachings. None of the ones mentioned did! So, at best, you can blame whoever wrote the teachings down. But you can't blame the individuals.
I'm not a Christian and I'm not interested in defending what it says in the Bible. I do think it's a bit of the tail wagging the dog to grade religions by how much violence they cause. I suppose that's a rational approach for an atheist that thinks it's all bs but recognizes they have to make some concessions to religious nutjobs. But if a religion is true, it's true. It doesn't matter how violent it is. It's not even evil to be violent if God endorses it. And if a religion is false, it's false. Maybe it's less troublesome to the atheist if it is peaceful, but it's still false. You're holding up violence as the measuring stick for religions, and it's a false idol. Truth should be your measuring stick. I'm an atheist. So to me, if all religions are 'bad' it's only because they are false, not because they excuse people killing each other. @Cohete Rojo wants us to conclude that Islam is less 'tolerable' because of the violence of its teachings, like we've got God in the dock and deciding whether He has a right to exist or not. If Allah is really God, I'd do more than tolerate Him.
Well I basically agree with you. Cohete Rojo, ATW and some others have this years-long campaign to prove Islam is bad. I don't know what the point is. Wanna kill all the Muslims or what? Oh! The Muslim ban--on 6 countries LOL. Nah, really it's to justify the enormous amount of killing the United States does, and we all kinda know about that killing, and we all kinda know we're complicit in that killing, and we all kinda know that the USA's killing activity is basically out of our hands at this point, and that is the scariest thing of all. It is absurd that people pull lines from the Quran to try to prove anything. Here is another nugget from the obviously-superior-to-the-Quran Bible:
