Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
I'm not sure a mosque hosting homophobic and anti-semitic speakers counts as a radical environment ideal for fostering suicide bombers. That literally describes every single Christian church I've been a member of since I was 7 years old, except one.
I do think the environment facilitates extreme opinions, or at the very least places fewer obstacles in the way to developing extreme opinions, but I think there's a lot more that contributes to a person getting to the point where they'll take such extreme actions.
The society around them must play a role. Even a cult born out of Christianity knows the first thing to do to get a person deeper is to isolate them from society.
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I'm certainly not here to pick a fight with you Photon, but I'm curious about the churches that you attended.
Frankly when I was younger and up until I was a young adult, I regularly went to church, and I moved from city to city and even country to country and I can't ever recall a sermon, or Sunday school lesson that preached the type of hate or anti-homosexuality context that your talking about. I can't remember it even being discussed at church functions between parishioners or having members bringing it up during one on one discussions.
I do remember a lot of sermons on sin and forgiveness and Jesus being about love and acceptance. I remember a lot of biblical stories about homosexuals burning in a lake of fire.
Obviously there are bad priests and preachers out there, we know that just like there are bad Imam's and spiritual leaders in all religions.
I attended churches in big towns like Calgary and Edmonton etc, and small towns that are in the Canadian bible belts like Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.
I even attended super churches in Dallas.
And I can't recall any hateful messages, chances are I would have left if I did.
Just to give context, I did leave the church behind for multiple reasons
1) The child abuse scandals. I couldn't be part of something so evil that was covered up and denied like it was.
2) It just wasn't addressing my personal definition of spirituality and my definition of my relationship with god for example
3) The handling of my brothers death. The story didn't come out for a long time, however the story behind why my brother couldn't be buried in the church's graveyard where my family attended blew my mind and finalized my decision to address a lot of questions and made me leave.
4) One day I woke up from a horrible dream where the separation of the church and state in the modern world didn't exist and the Vatican was the government.
But did I leave over hateful messages, or messages about the evils of homosexuality or members of other faiths? I can't say I did because I never heard it.
I guess the message is that there are good churches and bad churches, there are good mosques and bad mosques, there are good religious leaders, and there are bad religious leaders.
I theory and to me, the teachings of God or Christ or Allah don't make a lot of sense because they're interpreted by man. And as simple as it is to say that Priests and Imam's and other "holy men" have to denounce and defend the faith, its really up to the follows to question and analyze and really listen to and not blindly follow what they hear and see and read and that's how the faith gets defended and reformed.
The whole "Wait a minute, this is bulls%%%, no way Jesus wants me to blow up a abortion clinic, or no way does Allah want me to rape and kill or blow up a bunch of kids in his name.
I guess also because I'm rambling because its late. the Church always did obviously take a pro-life stance and was vehement that abortion was murder, and it took a long time for me to get past that argument.
Anyways its late, but I wanted to put in my two cents because there are a lot of blanket statements being used in religious arguments on this board and elsewhere.
Anyways Peace Out.