Fundamental Christians/Jews Vs Fundamental Islamist's

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We in the west tend to look at islamist's as crazy, ignorant and barbaric. With the rise of ISIS we see what it really means to have a state living by religious law, and we are rightly horrified, atheist, agnostic and theist alike.

But are we so different. After reading some of the posts regarding the morals and ethical behavior of the Judeo Christian God I am not so sure. A few on here have defended the vicious actions of the God of the Old Testament as righteous e.g: this from AngelRho Regarding the tearing apart of teenage boys (who where teasing a "prophet") by bears at the command of god "what were teenagers doing bullying a known prophet? Did their parents not warn them about mistreating those called by God to do His work? I mean, that's just messed up. It sends a message. Or maybe their parents DID warn them". In my astonishment I had to read this a couple of times to make sure he was saying the "messed up" bit was their teasing, and not their being ripped to pieces by bears.

So my question is this. Given the power to do so, how long before the Christian and Jewish Fundamentalist's would initiate punishments as laid out in the Old Testament/Torah? or put it another way; how far removed from are "our" fundies from Islamist Fundamentalists?

In my opinion it would not take many months, as I see very little difference between these people and the ISIS crackpots burning, stoning, hanging, and beheading in the name of their version of an Abrahamic God.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 02 Mar 2015, 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Both religions arose from the same ultimate source.

We had the crusades.
We had white supremacy.
When our illusions of civility were shown the mirror, it shocked us into change.
Now it's Islam's turn to evolve.
It's happening, but social evolution only succeeds at a slow pace.

This, the war of Arabs/Kurds vs ISIS is the beginning of this change.

The crimes of ISIS is also making a lot of Muslims to question stuff, yes, most are still denying that Islam itself has violence in its context, but it's a start.

We also had the sexual revolution and we chose Gesellschaft over Gemeinschaft.

I accept that the majority in the West have changed. Although I am not so sure, we seem to justify killing on a far larger scale. Killing, via remote control it would appear, is far more tasteful than hand to hand. After all it is our messing about with Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya that has brought all this about. This adside, I am more thinking the Judeo/Christian bible literalists among us, would, even though they decry the actions of ISIS, resort to the same atrocities given opportunity + time.

You can't blame the West for religious nuttery in the Middle-east. No one is forcing them to behead people and throw gay people off of buildings. Of course people can hate the West for whatever f****d up s**t the West has done over the years but that doesn't mean you need to create a theocracy. Saudia Arabia does crazy s**t, it is their MO and the West did not egg them on to do it, it's just that they like beheading and flogging, and oppressing women.

There is a certain harshness as well as a sense of certainty that runs through fundamentalists in any category; religioius,political,social*. Fundamentalists are hardliners. Moderates are.....moderate, willing to bend rules to fit situations.

I see it as a facet of neurodiversity. Fundamentalists and moderates will never be comfortable with each other. But I think the human race has needed both to survive. During harsh times, fundamentalists keep people focused on survival. During flush times,moderates build alliances and expand knowledge and social bases. Fundamentalists fight hard to defend what they feel needs defending. Moderates go along to get along. Although fundamentalists terrify me (since I am a moderate) I concede that they could have been what kept various populations from dying out during deadly bottlenecks of the past. When the crisis was over, moderates went out and built trade alliances with other populations that also survived. The human race needs both over the long haul. **

*Social fundamentalists? Wut? What I mean is, any social group will have its fundamentalist hardliners and its moderates.For example, go to a Comicon and there will be fundamentalist hardliners who don't want anybody around who hasn't been neck deep in some piece of geek culture all their lives. And there will be moderates who say "the more, the merrier". Put those same people in a starvation situation and the fundamentalists will be ready to kill anybody who steals extra rations while the moderates argue for mercy. Loathe as I am to admit it, the fundamentalist hardliners may have saved populations by killing those who stole rations during various starvation bottlenecks the human race has endured. But I don't want to be anywhere near them.

**no citations because this is just personal opinion.

Trollcatman, have you actually read my posts? I am not for a second trying to justify or explain the behavior of Isis. Rather I am wondering how western Jewish or christian fundies would behave if they gained absolute power. I suspect we would see a return of biblical punishments, eg flogging, stoning etc.

Fundies are not that bad, except in rare, nutty cases.

I think they're a little too much into "sparing the rod and spoiling the child," though.

^ This is what I tug thought until I read some of the gilksnon here justifying the behaviour of a wrathful god. Which has me wondering would they look to Leviticus and Deuteronomy for laws and punishments. Judging by the likes of angelrho and moviefan I think they would.

You have to remember:

Punishment for crimes during "Biblical" times were draconian in the extreme.

We must think about the term "historical context" when we're talking about what occurred in the Bible.

Do not confuse Orthodox Jews with Fundamentalists. Orthodox Jew weight the Oral Tradition as heavily or even more heavily than the written scripture. The Jewish fundamentalists were the Karites who existed for a few hundred years between 900 c.e. and 1100 c.e. They regarded the written scripture, in particular the Torah as absolute bed rock truth (sound familiar?). Their view of Judaism could not be adapted to the conditions living around their time and their sect perished.

Now the Israelites of biblical times (somewhere between Joshua and David) were dreadful people. They were as bad-ass as any fulminating Islamic Jihadi nutcase. They killed men, children and women who were not virgins. In short they were no better than ISIL is now. Fortunately the Jews had the good fortune of being conquered and driven from their land into exile in Asyraia and Babylon (Persia) where they were forced to learn how to live with other people. While we Jews did not become anymore lovable in exile, we did learn how to behave ourselves. Judaism mutated and evolved under the conditions of the Dispersion and is nothing like the craziness that existed back when Joshua and his army invaded the Land of Canaan, burned 33 cities and villages to the ground, slaughtered men, women and children and busted up idols and burned down sacred groves. Ah yes, those were the days!! ! And thank G-D they are over for the Jews.

ruvey