Frightening news

[Sciguy]

The sad thing is if you read the Khoran, Mohammoud actually declares suicide a mortal sin (not in so many words but, its there) which, any good catholic and/or anglican will tell you, is the only sin you cannot go to confession for, there your riding the one way handbasket.

Granted, I have also yet to find the part about getting the women and children you kill to serve you in paradise.....

I spoke with a imam once about that. For a fundamentalist, he was rather patient with me. And the explanation he offered was this: If I put a gun to my head out of despair, that's suicide. If I die while on a volunteer mission for the military, that's NOT suicide. The difference? God did not want me to take my own life... unless HE'S the one ordering me to. In short, or so the imam put it, the human race are not the children of Allah, we're the slaves and servants of Allah. Property. And property doesn't destroy itself, it waits for the master to give orders to destroy it. When you take your own life, you're defying Allah's wishes, and his intentions for you - his plans to use you in the future, so to speak. Whereas a suicide bomber isn't defying Allah's wishes, he's carrying them out.

In short, if Allah tells you to blow yourself up, it's not suicide by ALLAH's standards, only a obedient slave doing as he's told.

Sounds rather like the Three Laws of Robotics to me.. the Third law, in particular. A robot must protect its own existance (it is, after all, an expensive piece of machinery!), EXCEPT when doing so would conflict with the First or Second laws of Robotics.

And there we have a big difference between Christianity and Islam, any pastor, padre or reverend you talk to will say that no matter what, suicide is wrong. The one lone exception is when you knowingly forfit your life to save another. Forefitting your life to kill another is definately a nono.

Lossing your life while saving someone else is baslicly something like this:

Saving someone's life= A great deed in the eyes of God.

Lossing your life in the process= Collateral damage


I see suicide bombings like this:

Breaking one of the ten commandments that make up the basic laws of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslum faiths on a lagre scale= Ticket to hell.

Lossing your life in the process= Taking the express bullet train rather then the layover in a penal system.



I'm a big beleaver in THOU SHALT NOT KILL!
Still, I support the troops because they're out there to stem the death toll and raise the qualaty of life.

[StrangeWulf13]

Got it in one, Sciguy. Killing to preserve life I'll forgive, even if it's technically a sin (I'm not sure there's any gray area in the Ten Commandments). To stop an evil or wicked man, sometimes you must use lethal force. Some are far too committed to their cause or beliefs to listen to reason, and if you can't capture or arrest them, killing is the next best option.

Because if a rabid fox gets into the henhouse, you don't let it run loose if you can't catch it with a net. However, buckshot has been known to catch foxes very quickly...

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.



Clarification: The original Hebrew reads "Thou shall not MURDER".








Sorta gives it a different light, don't you think?



¡Zacatepóngolas!

Until next time, remember:

I

AM

THE

J.A.M. (a.k.a. Numbuh i: "Just because I'm imaginary doesn't mean I don't exist")

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]

[UncleMonty]

Technically, that's a translation blip.

You see, there used to be specific words for different kinds of ending-of-life. Slay, slaughter, kill, murder... All had different meanings. If you were a butcher killing an animal, that was an entirely different word than that of a soldier killing another in battle, or any person killing another in self-defense.
So, back to the King James Bible...
The verse should read "Thou shalt not commit murder" in modern english. None of the above examples constitute murder, and therefore are not sins. I'd say in some cases it might be a sin to refrain from killing a human being. Say, if you had a suicide bomber in your sights and did not pull the trigger...
However, strapping a bomb onto yourself and willingly detonating it with no other intent than to kill and main as many non-combatants as possible... That is murder and suicide combined.

Oops! it looks like the J.A.M beat me to it. I spend too much time being wordy!!!

[Chaser617]

Soldiers are not, by the definition, sinners because of their occupation. Several times in the bible, there are battles, and the Lord God does not punish those soldiers. The Lord God is a God of Order, and Justice and He knows that a soldier in battle, unless of coarse, he/she is a complete raving lunatic and sadist, is not a murderer.

Funny thing about soldiers though, they are usually they are the least in favor of war, thats because they alone know its horrors. A soldier will go, but he will prefer the peaceful solution if it is possible, but he also knows that there are those that peace is only something for the week to dream of as they are trampled.

[EdBecerra]

Technically, that's a translation blip.

Quite a few of those in the KJV - one rabbi I spoke to once told me that the line "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." was also a mistranslation, and that the original meaning was closer to "You shall not let someone who kills with poison to live."

Given the non-existant level of criminal science at the time, and the near-impossibility of detecting who'd administered a poison to a victim, it strikes me that once a poisoner was caught in the act, it was only common sense to get rid of the scum permanantly. Even today, someone caught poisoning a well is still, in most parts of the world, lynched on the spot while the judges look the other way. Only in the "first world", where criminal science is advanced, and prisons have a fair chance of holding a person, are the civil rights of a poisoner respected - if they have any.

Quite a bit of the old testament reads like that. If you look it over in the light of an instruction manual for a desert tribe, a manual intended to take them from being desert wanderers to civilized settled people, you begin to notice things. Pigs, for example, tend to have trichinosis unless strong hygenic measures are taken. It's simpler to just ban the eating of pork to eliminate the problem.

In fact, most (though not all) of the dietary laws sound a lot like a father and/or king trying to teach an innocent/ignorant people how NOT to kill themselves off with food poisoning or food contamination while trying to become civilized.

But that's just my take on the matter.

[Calbeck]

In a nutshell, if your religion gives a human being the authority of God, you need a new religion.

Bingo.

I therefore proffer the new religion of Neo Protestantism. Its tenets are no more than this: "Don't Be An A**hole". That's it. Period. No arguing. No "interpretations". Just don't be an a**hole.

Anyone who has to ask "what comprises being an a**hole?" is in the process of being one.

[EdBecerra]

Funny thing about soldiers though, they are usually they are the least in favor of war, thats because they alone know its horrors. A soldier will go, but he will prefer the peaceful solution if it is possible, but he also knows that there are those that peace is only something for the week to dream of as they are trampled.

I was a soldier for eleven years, Chaser, until my body gave out on me. And I think I can honestly say that I despise those who enjoy the exercize of power over those without it.

Christopher Stasheff, a christian sci-fi author, commenting on this through one of his characters, said that even if you gave such people all the wealth and comfort in the world, they'd be unhappy without someone to bully, as the act of forcing others to submit was what gave their lives meaning.

"...but your poorest beggar lives like a medieval king!"

"What made a king royal was being able to command other people -- and there's no coin that'll buy that!"

As for myself, all I've ever wanted out of life was a tiny piece of land, and the one person I loved to share it with. But to protect that bit of land, I have to protect the town of Haxtun. In order to protect that, I must protect Phillips county. And in turn, that means I must protect Colorado and the United States of America.

Simple, really.

And it all comes from wanting to share a tiny piece of land with the woman I loved.

Strange, how such a large thing can come from such a small beginning.

[Tbolt]

I drive really slow in the ultra-fast lane,

While people hehind me are goin' insane!

I'm an ....



More seriously:

My sister and I were just discussing the whole "thou shall not kill" issue Saturday night and I noticed a couple things in the New Testament:
(references taken from the NIV translation)


Romans 13:4 - For he (the king / local ruler) is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

This to me looks like the authority to mete capital punishment rests within the boundaries of the state. I think this may also be extrapolated to the waging of a defensive war.

Secondly;

Luke 22:35-36 - Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing"they answered.

He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword sell your cloak and buy one."

Could this possibly be a mandate for self defence? Elsewhere, Jesus does not really mandate the killing of anyone in the New Testament. And there still is :

Matthew 26:52 - "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

The impression I get is there is a time and a place for the use of lethal force, but the threat of death is not a legitimate evangelical tool.

[LoneWolf23k]

And in the news today, the Grand Mufti (the main interpreter of Islamic Law for a region, capable of issuing Fataawa) of Russia has proclaimed that Homosexuality is a crime against Allah and that homosexuals must be beaten in the streets, and has in fact called a Fatwa to that effect.


...It's like they're not even trying to act civilized in front of the West anymore...

[Sciguy]

Civilization is nothing. There is no such thing. It exists in perception and is subject to interpatation.

The only real defantion I can find for Civilization is it is what a group find acceptable, while uncivilized is the state of what a group finds unacceptable.

For example:

Helping people live as they want, without fear of oppression = Found to be acceptable therefore it is generaly viewed by certain groups as civilized behavior.

Blowing the s#!* out of iniccent bystanders = unacceptable behavior, therefore, it is uncivilized.


Thus another example of how perception can shape our own worldviews.


How a bunch of terriorists qualafy as civilized is beyond me. Ask a liberal to explane it, take two asprin, and curse me in the morning.

[Gengar003]

Do I have to put the lime in the coconut, too?