CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND JEWS … OH MY!
By LEN ANTHONY || For forty-five years I did not darken the door of a church. Why? Because when I was young it all seemed to be a case of “is to, is not” or “can to, cannot.” Two years ago, I began attending church again and it seems nothing has changed.
So, let’s start at the beginning with Abraham. Remember him? He is about the last piece of ancient history upon which Christians, Jews and Muslims all agree. Abraham had two sons. The first was Ishmael whose mother, Hagar, was a servant in Abraham’s house. Abraham’s wife, Sarah, encouraged Abraham to impregnate Hagar because it was believed Sarah was sterile and Sarah wanted Abraham to have a son. Then thirteen years later it turns out Sarah was fertile and she had a son by Abraham. His name was Isaac. Isaac is the patriarch of the Jews and Ishmael is the patriarch of the Muslims. It seems Ishmael and Isaac did not like each other so for the past 2000 years the Jews and Arabs have been fighting because one says Isaac is better and the other says “no, Ishmael is”: is to, is not.
But it gets better, the Jews and Muslims don’t believe Jesus is the son of God while Christians do. So, the Muslims and Jews are on the same side of this argument. Christians say Jesus “is to” the son of God, and the Muslims and Jews say “is not.”
But wait, we are still not done. Muslims are divided in to Sunnis and Shiites. Shiites believe descendants of Mohammad should be his successors, while the Sunnis believe his successors should be selected from those qualified for the job. Shiites say “a relative is better.” Sunnis say “is not.”
Oh, but there is more. Catholics and Protestants cannot agree. Catholics believe the road to heaven is belief in Jesus and good works. Protestants say only faith in Jesus is needed.
Protestants believe the Bible alone is the source of God’s teachings while Catholics believe the Bible is to be supplemented by sacred Roman Catholic traditions. Faith in Jesus alone is the only way: is to, is not.
But wait there is more. Protestants disagree over: the role of women in church; women’s obligation to be subservient to their husbands; whether remarriage after divorce (for reasons other than unfaithfulness) constitutes adultery; same-sex marriage; homosexuals or unchaste heterosexuals being leaders of the church; abortion; and support for Israel. Women can be leaders: can to, cannot. Homosexuals can be leaders: can to, cannot. Remarriage is ok: is to, is not.
I could go on, but you get the point.
My wife is attending a Bible study class. After her last meeting she came home and said “I think you are a humanist.” I looked in her study materials and read the chapter that addressed humanists. Let’s just say according to the study materials being a humanist is nothing to brag about. The study materials main criticism of “humanism” (which, according to a Google search, apparently has several definitions) is it involves using science and analytical thinking to understand the world instead of blind adherence to theological doctrine. It seems to me given the situation with the Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Sunnis, and Shiites, a little consideration of science and the use of critical thinking might be an improvement over “is to, is not.”
Len Anthony spent thirty years as an attorney for a public utility. He’s now semi-retired living in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. Wanna sound off on FITS? Submit your letter to the editor or opinion column HERE.
88 comments
Jesus’s message was a simple one: love one another as I have loved you. Except he said it in Aramaic. It’s man’s attempt to reinterpret that (and the power that comes along with it) that vexes organized religion.
Religion is simply a form of mass control. Don’t worry about the now, if you just give lip service to this bullshit everything will be OK when you die. That any adult with half a brain would fall for any number of these silly fantasies is truly sad.
I don’t think they fall for the stories as much as count on them. Have talked to people who simply cannot proceed without religion in their life.
Yes, they are known as the average republican voter in SC. Give jesus a little lip service and they’ll gladly let you fuck them over and over and over. There is a definite correlation between lower intelligence and religiosity.
“There is a definite correlation between lower intelligence and religiosity.”
Intelligence should not be a factor in how much you love a son or daughter. Intelligence is not and indicator of the quality of your relationship with God.
My invisible friend can beat up your invisible friend, and your sons and daughters too!
Both invisible friends are the same guy. You’re getting close though.
Both invisible friends are the same guy.
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Matthew 7:21-23King James Version (KJV)
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Mark 2 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
——————–
I am one of the sinners.
Yes, but who is to say whether your invisible friend is the same as mine?
If he really is a friend and not the enemy, then they are the same or on the same side, but I don’t know for sure.
Even the Devil can quote scripture.
Matthew 4: 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[Psalm 91:11-12]”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Good question.
2 Corinthians 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
I want to add “works iniquity” and “makes demons shudder” to the “other skills” part of my curriculum vita . . . if I only had a curriculum vita.
I believe. I shuddered just thinking about you. It’s satisfying.
But it is an indicator of how gullible you are, which I would say you are ‘very’.
Look at all the gullible intelligentsia taken in by Communism, phrenology, social Darwinism, eugenics….
No different than your simple ass. You are all the same fools.
As simple as your post.
There is a definite correlation between lower intelligence and religiosity.
Religiosity correlates with average intelligence (+/- one Standard Deviation of 100 IQ) . It tapers off noticeably at both ends of the ol’ IQ Bell Curve.
A most tragic experiments in mass control were all atheist. The Soviet Union, China’s Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia….
You left out Hitler…oh, wait a minute…
Most I said! Hitler is a bit ambiguous.
Wikipedia – Goebbels wrote in 1941 that Hitler “hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity.” Many historians have come to the conclusion that Hitler’s long term aim was the eradication of Christianity in Germany, while others maintain that there is insufficient evidence for such a plan.
Evans wrote that Hitler repeatedly stated that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science, which in the long run could not “co-exist with religion”. Alan Bullock wrote that even though Hitler frequently employed the language of “divine providence” in defence of his own myth, he ultimately shared with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, a materialist outlook, “based on the nineteenth century rationalists’ certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity”.
Have a source for this? The Swiss, Swedes…have a very high atheist pop. You really believe in Christ? Very fantastical…
http://www.ou.edu/uschina/gries/articles/IntPol/Huntington.91.Demo.3rd.pdf
Samuel P. Huntington is Eaton Professor of tile Science of Government and director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.
1991
Historically, there has been a strong correlation between Western Christianity and democracy. By the early 1970s, most of the Protestant countries in the world had already become democratic. The third wave of the 1970s and 1980s was overwhelmingly a Catholic wave. Beginning in Portugal and Spain, it swept through six South American and three Central American countries, moved on to the Philippines, doubled back to Mexico and Chile, and then burst through in the two Catholic countries of Eastern Europe, Poland and Hungary. Roughly threequarters of the countries that transited to democracy between 1974 and 1989 were predominantly Catholic.
By 1990, however, the Catholic impetus to democratization had largely exhausted itself. Most Catholic countries had already democratized or, as in the case of Mexico, liberalized. The ability of Catholicism to promote further expansion of democracy (without expanding its own ranks) is limited to Paraguay, Cuba, and a few Francophone African countries. By 1990, sub-Saharan Africa was the only region of the world where substantial numbers of Catholics and Protestants lived under authoritarian regimes in a large number of countries.
In Korea, the classical culture included elements of mobility and egalitarianism along with Confucian components uncongenial to democracy, including a tradition of authoritarianism and strongman rule. As one Korean scholar put it, “people did not think of themselves as citizens with rights to exercise and responsibilities to perform, but they tended to look up to the top for direction and for favors in order to survive. ”7 In the late 1980s, urbanization, education, the development of a substantial middle class, and the impressive spread of Christianity all weakened Confucianism as an obstacle to democracy in Korea.
Broad strokes for an arguement, BT. Here’s something more current:
From Christainity Today:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/february/13.57.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden
2013 Church members 65.9%
Hardly godless.
“8.74 Million Species on Earth evolved from one life form that spontaneously arose from non living matter. This entire process occured without the assistance of any intelligent being.”
Very fantastical…
“The Universe sprang into existence from a singularity — a term physicists use to describe regions of space that defy the laws of physics. We know very little about singularities, but we believe that others probably exist in the cores of black holes.
By definition, nothing existed prior to the beginning, but that fact creates more questions than answers. For instance, if nothing existed prior to the Big Bang, what caused the singularity to be created in the first place?”
Notice the use of the word created.
Very fantastical…
Smart phones were fantastical a hundred years ago.
Funny…8.7 million…yes, and all it took was 14 Billion years!
So who made God? Better question: Why does he need to hide, have people worship, kiss his ass to get to Heaven, or all that other bullshit bible thumpers spew?
God existed before time began. Jude 1:25 – Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen. Other verses: 1 Corinthians 2:7, Titus 1:2, Genesis 1:1, 2 Timothy 1:9
Obviously there is a contradiction in this claim. If time has not begun, how can you talk of before? Until recent discoveries about the Big Bang the statements by Paul above seemed foolish, but modern science has brought us to the same contradiction. Before Paul most believed in the beginning of the world or the beginning of the universe, not the beginning of time. Two thousand years ago Paul, without the benefit of modern technology, anticipates the discoveries of modern science.
Christianity is just the most successful experiment. Look at you, fool.
It is Christianity’s gift to the world. Secularist and agnostics are merely copycats.
You lost me w the first sentence. But I tried to read it anyway. Its excrutiating. From what I see you’re just regurgitating the trite view of the common and under educated. I hope FITS charges to post this. This is not new or in the least bit interesting.
“From what I see you’re just regurgitating the trite view of the common and under educated.”
It’s undereducated…in your case, uneducated. Better get to that edit button.
I’d love to hear your analysis?…You are articulate enough to offer it, are you not?
“You lost me at the first sentence…” SC Political Digest would kill to even get that much of a response to his blog.
Have you looked at the SCPSD Google Profile???…Dumb@$$…and that’s running a blogspot site, w/o limited commenting ability and no marketing. And I’m not even counting the additional specific Pageviews recorded in Analytics….
When you SPAM every news site in the state you’re obviously going to get hits (this is called morbid curiosity, the same reason people slow down to look at bad accidents, or watch NASCAR) . Co-opting the name of that girl from Cameron, SC is bad form though.
So you are retracting your original statement, because you were caught lying, or being stupid?
PS: morbid curiosity may get some hits early on…but to sustain it, even w/ cyber-leveled attacks, debunks your paranoid-based theory.
Morbid curiousity was the only reason I went there…haven’t been back.
It’s more of a site for the open-mined, and intelligent, who are not finding adequate content elsewhere.
In that respect you served as the type of Guinea pig I was hoping to use for market research. Thank you for your feedback.
I wasn’t refering to your blog. Lol…
GrandTango/Big T/Emily Peterkin/Gary …which is it today, fat boy?
Implode much?
Is TOO, is not. And, how can science and critical analysis only MAYBE be an improvement over blind adherence to doctrine and dogma?
…or blind adherence to English grammar? Wait a minute, there’s nothing wrong with that…
There are many things to disagree upon from the different religious bibles and writings. The more one reads the more confusing it becomes. What about historical figures who have been overlooked through the ages even though they may have had special gifts? My large extended family has been in disagreement for generations about Job’s special gift of being able to speak immediately upon his birth. The disagreement comes from this : “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth”
Bad. Bad. Bad.
Little known fact:
Jesus drove a Honda. Didn’t brag about it, though…
“For I did not speak of my own Accord,…”
Jesus drove a temple. Don’t know whether it is a Honda.
Matthew 21:12 – And Jesus entered the temple and drove…
Worse. Worse. Worser.
Len,
Thanks for boiling down a millennia of religious thought – into a self serving oversimplified world view. If you don’t want to go to church, just tell your wife “I don’t want to go to church”.
Damn funny.
Jesus said it!
The Colonel believes it!
Now everybody else?
STFU!!!
I’m sorry Jim, what doctrine am I espousing?
If I thought you were serious I’d be delighted to have a discussion of religion with you but “Man said it, you believe it- so everybody else shut up…”
Very well said. Especially about the self-serving. We found out A LOT about the writer, but not much else.
And: I have a feeling as this man nears his end, he may begin to understand that he will leave this world, with nothing material, like everyone else. When that occurs to him, God may seem like a better idea. If you believe the brief time on earth is all there is, you are soulless, and you should be sad. But it’s no wonder so many like that worship idols.
Len’s whole diatribe about mocking “religiou s” people does not apply to a “Biblical Christian” as belonging to a religion and belonging to. Jesus Christ are two different things.
Sanford may be struggling in his personal life however his speak of Jesus Christ and faith and the application of his faith in matters of policy in the arena of abortion and traditional marriage is why we elect even a flawed candidate like Mark.
Compare him to Tom Ervin who professes to be a Christian yet supports abortion on demand and gay marriage as policy.
How could a Christian vote for Ervin? They shoudn’t,in my opinion.
What an idiot you are. Keep that bigotry alive and well.
It did seem a long way to go for such a short trip.
So with …”a little consideration of science and the use of critical thinking”, your “is to, is not”, is not.
Let’s hope there isn’t a god for the sake of all those priests, cause god is gonna be pretty upset with most of them if he exists.
I find it morally repugnant to believe in a religion where someone is given unending torture after death for merely not being a member of your little club. There is no crime, nor number of crimes, that would justify such a horrid punishment as that, not even considering the worst of humanity. And yet this is the punishment for “lack of faith,” even if a person had no possible way to discover a given religion within his lifetime.
Watching Hitler burn for a few hundred years might make a lot of people fist pump, but a million? A billion? A trillion? And he’s not even halfway through? Because there is no “half way” here? And perfectly innocent people burning right beside him for the high crime of believing in a slightly different flavor of the same general religion, a different religion altogether, or *gasp* no religion at all?
Hell is the antithesis to mercy, it is the ultimate cruel and unusual punishment, an abomination to the civilized human race meted out to some of the best and worst people in the history of existence based on criteria that ultimately makes zero meaningful difference to their peers.
Mercy is not “You deserve this, but because you did that, you’re OK.” Mercy is “No one deserves this, don’t worry, everyone’s OK.”
I believe Jefferson said it better, “The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.” and with less fanfare.
.
There is tension(a gulf) in the Bible between God’s righteousness and his mercy. Jesus bridges the gulf.
Matthew 19: 24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? 26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
SEE Isaiah 55:8-9 above
Maybe, no matter what, we all end up in the same place in the afterlife.
Spending an eternity with some of the very religious people that TBG has known, would constitute Hell. Yet, to them, it would be Heaven.
Maybe, no matter what, we all end up in the same place in the afterlife.
——-
Baskin Robbins? Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom? Bob’s Porterhouse?
Science is not going to solve religious questions nor religion science questions. As for religion, you can either go with the flow, struggle to decide for yourself (potentially with God’s help), or punt. Sounds like you are going with the latter and your wife with one of the former. Also, this recurring thing about 2000 years: please note that Arabs have been around much longer, Muslims much less. Good luck.
Sounds like just another day in Lexington County…
—– It seems to me given the situation with the Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Sunnis, and Shiites, a little consideration of science and the use of critical thinking might be an improvement over “is to, is not.” —–
The Bible encourages “consideration of science and the use of critical thinking”.
Isaiah 1:18 – Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord…
Luke 12:27 – Consider the lilies how they grow..
Isaiah 43:26 – “Put Me in remembrance, let us argue our case together; State your cause, that you may be proved right.
Isaiah 55:8-9- “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Acts 17:16-18 – While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him.
Psalms 111:12 – Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.
BT – remember Matthew 6:7
Good job. Man’s search for Knowledge has existed since Eve ate from the “Tree of Knowledge”
Genesis 3:22.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge
Hosea 4:6-7 (KJV)
Jeremiah 17:9 King James Version (KJV)
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Use your head instead.
bone is thicker than blood?
I don’t know much about this stuff, but wasn’t Abraham (living in Baghdad I believe) and thus also his sons alive about 4000 years ago, and Mohammed about 1400 years ago? How the heck does anyone keep track of which of his sons you are related to through the fog of those intervening 2600 years?
Also, I applaud the resurrection of the phrase “darken the door.” It has such useful application, especially on a political board.
These ideas are not Biblical. They are merely the traditions and speculations of man.
Also, I applaud the resurrection of the phrase “darken the door.” It has such useful application, especially on a political board.
TBG has always assumed that “darkened the door” meant “cast a shadow upon”…
Did TBG not get his special *Lee Atwater Decoder ring*?
TBG has always assumed that “darkened the door” meant “cast a shadow upon”…
——-
You probably also assumed that “the fourth way” was a type of stop sign.
Cracker Jack racism, that’s a new one.
Who you calling “Cracker”, Jack?
Cracker Jack racism,…
Who you calling “Cracker”, Jack?
It can’t be easy for your wife to live with you, not because of your religious differences, but because you don’t believe she uses critical thinking.
This topic is to funny.
Len,
Is it “is to”, or is it “is too”?
That was my problem. I couldn’t get the past the title!
Dam Man-d you dont look good at all with grey hair.
So, you got through high school, college and law school without learning the difference in ‘to’ and ‘too’…hhmm.
I’m not sure on the grammar lesson here. In this context “too” is normally a substitute for “also” or “as weil.” As in, “Jack is going to the store and I am too.” Since clearly the “to” in this article does not mean “as well” or “also,” I don’t think “too” would be correct.
I think the use of “to” in this case should just be considered Leave it to Beaver era school yard slang. The grammatically correct response to “is not” would be “is.” Neither “to” nor “too” really makes sense within a response to “is not”
Using school yard slang is an effective literary device in this instance; assuming the intent is to imply the arguments are childish.
Just my two cents.