Posted on 11/02/2017 2:20:28 AM PDT by markomalley
One of the most important, really the only, consideration in whether a religion is any good or not is whether it’s true. After all, the first requirement of the moral law is to worship God in the manner He has appointed. Worshipping God in a manner unacceptable to Him is a pretty pointless, indeed seriously counter-productive, exercise. There is, however, plenty of material out there on whether or not Islam is true. I recommend Book 1, Chapter 6, Paragraph 4 of St Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles. Nevertheless, Jesus advises us, vis-à-vis putative prophets that “by their fruits you shall know them” so I recon it’s a legitimate exercise to flick through the pages of history to see how Mohammedanism measures up. And, to tell the truth, it’s not a straightforward story.
Islam is the basis of a great world civilization with much to admire. But, just as Cortez and his conquistadors stared in wonder at Mexico City for the first time, admiration does not necessarily imply approval. The followers of Mohammed had an advantage over Medieval Christendom when they descended upon the Roman Empire and swept half of it away in the space of a few decades. The Romans were utterly exhausted from almost thirty years of life-or-death struggle with the Persians. They collapsed so fast in the face of this unexpected eruption from Arabia that the damage the Muslims needed to inflict on southern and eastern Mediterranean culture to conquer it was not so extensive. They took over the ancient Near East with little trouble. The Germanic barbarians who conquered the West got the poorer bit of the Empire and then spent centuries fighting the Romans and each other to keep it. By the time the monks began to put the pieces back together there wasn’t much to work with.
But then that is what makes the achievement of medieval civilization so remarkable. When you show people a picture of some great Byzantine Church they often say “it looks like a mosque” but it’s really the other way around. The mosques are copied off the Byzantine churches and they are a metaphor for much of the rest of Islamic civilisation. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Muslims had spent their inherited cultural capital and were living on borrowed time. Show someone a Gothic Cathedral, on the other hand, and it looks like nothing else on earth. The monks patiently put back together the inheritance of the ancient world and then went a lot further. The self-confidence and brilliance of the century that produced Notre Dame de Paris, the Summa Theologiae, the English Parliament and the Divine Comedy is breathtaking.
What was Christendom’s secret? It understood God, so far as this is given to human reason and faith. God is one, God is reasonable and God is free. God consequently doesn’t like people being forced to worship Him, He can’t and won’t make 2+2=5, He has bestowed a single set of laws upon nature, He doesn’t like tyranny and if you want to find out what those laws are you will just have to do some experiments. God is also Three so plurality is not an unfortunate side-effect of being a creature that can be stamped out if we just have a big enough government. All the genius of Western philosophy, politics, science and art flows from the Trinity. The ancient world provided the elements but the synthesis is all the work of the Middle Ages. If you want to look at what the elements without the Triune God produce just look at Islam.
But again, one must be fair: the capricious monotheism of Mohammed may provide the religious basis for forced conversion, brutality, anti-intellectualism, dictatorship and technological stagnation. But it does represent a sustainable civilizational model compared to the cultural cringe of the ‘renaissance’ and the cultural suicide of the ‘Enlightenment’ and its fascist, communist and liberal successors. This is the West’s problem: in itself Christendom, armed with truth and right and freedom, has more than enough resources to resist and overcome any rival civilization. But the ‘renaissance’ injected into western man an absurd inferiority complex in regard to pagan antiquity and then the ‘Enlightenment’ insisted on eliminating from public policy and public law the very Christian revelation which defined and ennobled western man. The ‘Enlightenment’ is a parasite, it will not survive the death of its host. But it is strong enough to weaken the West to the point where its traditional external enemy the Islamic Ummah can strike the killer blow. Deep down the liberals know this is case, as they contracept and abort and legislate our civilisation into extinction, but in the end they don’t care. Their ultimate motive was always less the love of ‘liberty’ and more the hatred of Christ.
Brilliant
What interesting observations! Very good article.
One thought provoking passage was this: “The ‘Enlightenment’ is a parasite, it will not survive the death of its host. But it is strong enough to weaken the West to the point where its traditional external enemy the Islamic Ummah can strike the killer blow.”
The lumping of Islam with Christianity or even Judaism is obscene and repugnant. They may have some superficial aspects in common but in their totality are as different as night and day; from the perspective of Christianity, Islam isn't even a religion. One might as well liken a swimming pool to a septic tank; they may share some aspects but the result of jumping in them will be dramatically different.
Forced conversion is a tool of the devil. Albeit it has been used a few times under Christianity, the key word is a “few”. It’s common practice in Islam. It’s been used as a matter of course for 1300 years.
Bump
BfL
worthy read
The bottom line is that Christians go to Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell.
Every Muslim I know is a better person than Mohammed. And every Christian I know is a worse person than Christ.
“The bottom line is that Christians go to Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell.”
Nice to see that in print.
Jesus is our salvation.
What we Christians have is a RELATIONSHIP with GOD.
We are RECONCILED to Him.
'Religion' will entangle a person every time.
Malachi 3:6
For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
All 'religions' are constantly changing; bending and flowing with the will of their pactioners.
Excellent!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Luke 2:25-35 (NKJV)
25 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, 28 he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said:
29 “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,
According to Your word;
30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation
31 Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
32 A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of Your people Israel.”
33 And Joseph and His mother[a] marveled at those things which were spoken of Him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against 35 (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
But I do not understand this statement, that is the logic behind the conclusion
"God is also Three so plurality is not an unfortunate side-effect of being a creature that can be stamped out if we just have a big enough government. All the genius of Western philosophy, politics, science and art flows from the Trinity.
I agree that the sentence is nonsense.
Maybe it is a metaphor for plurality in ideas, or something? I just don’t know.
No religion can be judged by standards external to itself because G-d and G-d alone is the standard of what constitutes "good" and "bad." I find it absolutely astounding that chrstian conservatives seize upon the eighteenth century "enlightenment" that so hated them and apply those same anti-G-d, secular standards to religion with which they themselves disagree. Am I the only consistent "fundie" on this forum???
Religion has one and only one purpose: to be true. It does not matter if it adheres closely to or strays far from rationalist, secular standards of "morality." It does not matter if it preserves or destroys civilizations. It does not matter what sort of standard of living it produces. It doesn't matter how many or how few scientists or philosophers it spawns. And civilizational/cultural/ancestral loyalty means exactly bo diddley squat.
If chrstianity is true, then everyone (regardless of ethnicity or culture) should be chrstian. If it is false, then no one should be. If islam is true then everyone should be moslem and if not no one should be. But to pick a religion based on whether or not Locke, Voltaire, Paine, or Jefferson would have liked it? That's as ludicrous as picking a religion because it is the traditional one of one's homeland.
Were islam to be true, it wouldn't matter how many people it blows into smithereens, because its "gxd" would be the sole standard of right and wrong. Ditto chrstianity or any other religion.
I maintain that all new religions are the creations of men and are objectively forbidden. Rather G-d gave commandments to Adam and Noah that are still in force and by which we are all bound to this day. The definitive revelation is still the Revelation to Israel at Mt. Sinai. That this goes against one's family/national tradition or rationalistic prejudices means nothing whatsoever.
How many so-called "conservative chrstians" on FR actually believe that their religion is true? Because their adherence to it often seems to be based on every reason other than that.
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