> Xtianity is such a hodge podge of nonsense from different sources it
> suffers from this problem more than most. There are conflicting
> directives about how to deal with perceived transgressions so it is
> impossible to remain true to the directives themselves. There are also
> many vague passages that can be understood to mean a variety of
> different things to different people.
Very true, but this is only a problem for folks, such as literal-minded Christians, who suppose that their sacred writings were all dictated by one source (i.e., God). Once one recognizes that religions are human creations, and that the major ones were created over centuries by very large numbers of individuals, it is no longer hard to understand why they are hodge-podges.
> In the west most xtians have learned to simply ignore the most
> egregious conflicts but the ability and willingness to do so varies
> from person to person and group to group. Islam suffers a similar
> problem since it has less of the xtian equivalent of "love thy
> neighbor as thyself" in the Quran and Sunnah or even the hadith to
> counter the numerous edicts to extract vengeance. This means a
> moderate muslim is quite different from a moderate xtian.
I would be cautious about contrasting Islam and Christianity in this way. I don't have the sense that the majority of Muslims today around the world go around extracting vengeance and carrying out the most violent injunctions in their sacred texts, any more than the average Christian or Jew makes a practice of stoning adultresses, etc. In general, I don't think that we non-Muslims really have a very good grasp of how to understand the world of Islam; we need to do a lot more work on that. Even leftists tend to fall all too easily into the assumption that Islam is somehow inherently a more violent religion that Western ones.
> I don't know that trying to convert others has much to do with
> projecting the evangelicals problems onto others. Religious adherents
> fear other religions will lead their offspring and friends and perhaps
> even themselves down the "wrong" path so the other religions must be
> minimized or destroyed.
I wouldn't say that about "religious adherents" in general, even Christians in general. And most other religions are a lot less zealous about conversion than Christianity.
> Ultimately it is all superstitious nonsense and belongs shelved at the
> library in the mythology section with stories of Hercules but that
> isn't going to happen any time soon.
"Superstitious nonsense" is one way of interpreting religions, but another approach is to consider them as mixtures of psychological theories, recommendations for how to live or what moralities to follow, and attempts to describe the nature of the world and relate this nature to the other components. As such, one can find some value in the psychological theories, toss out most of the attempts to describe the nature of the world as having been superseded by science, and evaluate the suggested moralities according to whatever moral ideas one subscribes to oneself.
That is, religions are highly complex constructions, and need to be analyzed into their components before one evaluates them.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt. -- Cyril Connoll (The Unquiet Grave)