* Christian God permits Genocide of non-believers
* Art versus religion -Muslim Cartoon controversy & the "Piss Christ" Christian versus art controversy
* Religious Freedom & personal freedom versus The French law banning the full veil
Question of the day so where are the moderate Christians . When some Christians defend Genocide and mass murder because it is part of God's plan why don't other more moderate or what used to be mainstream Christianity not stand up and speak out ?
Christians and Jews are always asking for instance where are the voices of moderate Muslims to question and condemn the use of violence by Islamic terrorists.
So why don't these so called moderate Muslims who make up the majority of Muslims speak out publicly to condemn such actions if these actions are seen according to mainstream Muslims as unIslamic.
So why don't these mainstream Muslims speak out when some Muslims ie Islamic Jihadists whom we are told are extremist defend the use of violence even against innocent people including various terrorist's tactics such as the 9/11 attack or the use of suicide bombers in public places .
So where are the voices of Christian moderates (if any) when Christian extremists and those who defend the Bible as being literally true from Genesis to the Book of Revelation defend Genocide committed in the name of God.
They further argue that for instance that the killing of heretics or non-Christians is permissible or even seen as necessary or as a Christian duty or a command from God.
According to Christian fundamentalists who believe in the literal truth of the Bible they not only justify the Genocide of Canaanites but also the killing of heretics or launching their murderous pogroms against the Jews or the Crusades to wipe out as many Muslims as possible.
For instance Pastor John Hagee claims that it was the Christian God who sent Hitler to teach the Jewish people of Europe a lesson for not obeying God for not retaking Palestine as the Jewish Homeland or for other sins such as not accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God and as the Messiah and so on.
If Pastor Hagee or other ministers are theologically correct to defend the pogroms, the Inquisition and the Crusades and the current American led Crusade in Palestine and the Holy Land as being part of God's plan then anyone interfering in the Holocaust/Shoah are thereby interfering with God's plan.
Accordingly they can argue that the retaking of Palestine by the Jewish people is God's will then it is wrong for anyone to interfere with Israel's righteous claim on all of Palestine that is the recreation of ancient Judea (ersatz Israel) and a return to its borders as set out in the Bible. It is therefore permissible for Israel to use whatever means it can to reestablish Israel's borders as they were in the Bible.
Israel is therefore permitted to oust all non Jews from greater Israel and that those living in this geographical area who are not Jewish have no claim to any of this land .
And further because the Jewish people are the Chosen of God they have every right to defend their land and to attack any nation or peoples who are seen as a threat to Israel's very existence or to its right to redraw its borders in accordance with the Biblical/God mandated borders.Therefore the ousting or killing of all Palestinians or non-Christian is justifiable.
That is to say that whatever Israel does it is acting according to God's plan.
Why did this story not make headlines?------------------
In a recent post on his Reasonable Faith site, famed Christian apologist and debater William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. For God, at any rate -- and for people following God's orders. Short version: When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad... and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.
No, really.
Here are some choice excerpts:
God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.
So if God permits the Israelites to commit Genocide that is to slaughter everyone in Canaan then it is either an act beyond our comprehension -God works in mysterious ways or it is an invented story and therefore an addition to the Bible . If there are stories and legends in the bible which are not literally true then the argument for Biblical inerrancy must be rejected.
So the individuals in the Bible from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Job etc. according to the literal interpretation of the Bible did exist as historical living beings living during a specific time and at a specific place.
Reasonable Faith with William Lane Craig
Dr. Craig responds:
According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1-2; 20.16-18). The destruction was to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed. The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel’s carrying out God’s command in city after city throughout Canaan.
These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to violate.
The command to kill all the Canaanite peoples is jarring precisely because it seems so at odds with the portrait of Yahweh, Israel’s God, which is painted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Contrary to the vituperative rhetoric of someone like Richard Dawkins, the God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of justice, long-suffering, and compassion.
You can’t read the Old Testament prophets without a sense of God’s profound care for the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the orphaned, and so on. God demands just laws and just rulers. He literally pleads with people to repent of their unjust ways that He might not judge them. “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33.11).
He sends a prophet even to the pagan city of Nineveh because of his pity for its inhabitants, “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jon. 4.11). The Pentateuch itself contains the Ten Commandments, one of the greatest of ancient moral codes, which has shaped Western society. Even the stricture “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was not a prescription of vengeance but a check on excessive punishment for any crime, serving to moderate violence.
God’s judgement is anything but capricious. When the Lord announces His intention to judge Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, Abraham boldly asks,
“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18.25).
Like a Middle Eastern merchant haggling for a bargain, Abraham continually lowers his price, and each time God meets it without hesitation, assuring Abraham that if there are even ten righteous persons in the city, He will not destroy it for their sake.
So then what is Yahweh doing in commanding Israel’s armies to exterminate the Canaanite peoples? It is precisely because we have come to expect Yahweh to act justly and with compassion that we find these stories so difficult to understand. How can He command soldiers to slaughter children?
Sunday Sermon Part II
Christian fanaticism versus Islamic Fanaticism
Islamophobia and the full veil in France
Islamophobia and the Catholic Christian Right in France
In France the Christian Right has physically attacked a secular work of art entitled PissChrist because they believe it is blasphemous .
This story was ignored or buried in the Mainstream Media.
But if the religious group had been Muslims such an attack on a work of art would have been the lead story in the United States and elsewhere in Christendom.
As for Western Civilization and its basic principles and values which favor religious tolerance, pluralism and multiculturalism and personal freedom well for Muslim women who wear the full veil the Burqa or Chador or Niqab Veil in France they are now treated as criminals and as having fewer rights than other non-Islamic French citizens.
This raises a lot of thorny issues to do with religious tolerance and presonal freedom.
If someone for instance were to wear some form of mask ala "V" are they too to be arrested , incarcerated or imprisoned indefinitely or just fined for their actions. In the united states if such a law were enacted the US government could use Homeland Security, the FBI etc. to round up women wearing veils and then kept in prison indefinitely because President Obama has said the US security forces are permitted to keep people in jail indefinitely and thatthe police or other security forces would be permitted to use harsh interrogation techniques on these veiled women or anyone else who is seen as a possible threat or enemy of the state.
France arrests Muslim women as full-face veil ban begins by Agence France-Presse via RawStory.com,April 11, 2011.
PARIS – Police in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim population, arrested two protesters wearing niqab veils on Monday as a ban on full-face coverings went into effect.
The women, part of a demonstration that erupted in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, were detained for taking part in an unauthorised protest rather than for wearing their veils.
But, in theory at least, French officials can now slap fines on Muslim women who refuse orders to expose their faces when in public.
"We were held for three-and-a-half hours at the police station while the prosecutors decided what to do. Three-and-a-half hours later they told us: 'It's fine, you can go'," said 32-year-old Kenza Drider.
Drider, who made regular international media appearances in her brown and cream niqab in the run-up to the ban, said she had lifted her veil only briefly and only in front of female officers for an identity check.
Separately, businessman and activist Rachid Nekkaz told AFP that he and a female friend wearing the niqab were arrested by police in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Elysee Palace.
"We wanted to be fined for wearing the niqab, but the police didn't want to issue a fine," said Nekkaz, who has promised to auction off a two-million-euro property to start a fund to pay off fines for veil-wearers.
French police fear the law will be impossible to enforce, since they have not been empowered to use force to remove head coverings, and could face resistance in already tense immigrant districts.
"The law will be infinitely difficult to enforce, and will be infinitely rarely enforced," said Manuel Roux...
So for all the talk about Muslim extremists as anti-free speech and anti-pluralism is a tactic on the part of extremist Christians and Jews to demonize and marginalize Islam as an intolerant religion which is anti-Christian and anti-Judaism .
Once Islam is no longer acceptable as a religion in the West these Christian and Jewish fundamentalists will target secularists and those liberal minded pro-plualism Christians and Jews who support the separation of Chrurch and state and who preach religious tolerance will have to be marginalized and or silenced by whatever means necessary.
Like their Islamic counterparts they believe that all other religions are not just in error but in fact by their very existence are an affront to God.
Therefore only Christianity and Judaism are to have religious freedom and all other religions including Islam and the liberal sects of Christiainity and Judaism ie Conservative and reform Judaism are to be suppressed and eventually at the very least ousted from Christendom from the Americas and Europe and Christian nations in Africa and Asia and the Holy Land.
Piss Christ art piece was created some 24 years ago and like the Islamic extremists these Christian extremist are not lovers of art or free expression .
The type of society which Christian extremists or Dominionists want to create is not that different from what Islamic extremists want to create.
In both cases books , movies , music, works of art which they find offensive in one way or another would be banned.
They would also be against having other religions depicted in any sort of sympathetic or positive manner.
So even an unbiased teacing of comparative religion or mythology would not be permitted in the schools or universities or in the Media or the arts.
U.S. artist's controversial 'Piss Christ' attacked by vandals in France Daily mail Reporter April 19, 2011
A controversial piece of art which shows a crucifix bathed in urine has been vandalised in a gallery in southern France.
Police are today searching for the vandals who targeted the piece in Avignon just hours after 800 protesters held a demonstration against it.
The work by U.S. artist Andres Serrano - called 'Piss Christ' - is supposed to make a statement about the misuse of religion.
A second piece which shows a nun with her hands in her lap was also damaged during the break-in to the Collection Lambert modern art museum.
Mr Serrano's work has previously been targeted by vandals while on display in Sweden and Australia.
Police said two people tried to enter the museum late on Sunday morning carrying a can of paint spray and a chisel in their jackets.
A guard removed the objects - just as a third person took a hammer to the piece.
The attacker struggled with a guard, but helped by an accomplice, managed to escape, police said.
The museum's doors were shut yesterday for its weekly closing but it was expected to re-open today with the damaged work on display so that the public can see what the vandals have done.
French culture minister Frederic Mitterand described the incident as an 'attack on the freedom of creation'.
Staff had closed early on Saturday because of the protest.
A worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said that they had also received death threats.
'Several people have called saying, "If you open, you're dead",' one museum worker said.
'We're nervous and we have asked for protection from the police.'
It was unclear whether the attack was linked to the earlier demonstration.
Serrano made the controversial work by placing a crucifix in urine and blood, and it has drawn criticism in the past from some Christian groups
Young far-Right Christian activists from the General Alliance Against Racism and the Respect of the French and Christian Identity are taking the Collection Lambert to court ...to try to have the crucifix photograph removed from the exhibit.
The group denounced the photograph on its website, saying it 'insults and injures Christians at the heart of their faith'.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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