Bravo, China, Well played ...

[2dimes]

For the record you can lump me in with tzor if you really need to. We both like quality beer.

I just won't take it very seriously if he starts praying to statues or deceased saints. I won't pick on him for it. I am just not in agreement.

I'll even be polite to a Roman Catholic priest but if I caught one with a young man I'm probably going to jail.

[notyou2]

For the record you can lump me in with tzor if you really need to. We both like quality beer.

I just won't take it very seriously if he starts praying to statues or deceased saints. I won't pick on him for it. I am just not in agreement.

I'll even be polite to a Roman Catholic priest but if I caught one with a young man I'm probably going to jail.

I keep typing responses in this thread. I lost one last night in response to a tzor post and another a moment ago in response to your last post. Look I know you aren't tzor, and I respect your views and opinions.

FYI, I never said "small fringe" I said vocal minority and I am specifically referring to Imams. Times change. Values change. In the west the prevailing view on homosexuality has changed drastically in a very short period of time. So has religion. In the not too distant past Christianity called for the death of infidels including Muslims. We have advanced and changed values, they will too in the third world countries but it takes time. Education is the key.

Tarring them all with the same brush does not help, it hinders. It drives them to extremism. Tzor's hatred is part of the problem, not the solution. The US government's persecution of people's outside of it's borders is part of the problem, not the solution.

I am always respectful to religious people, including priests, that I know and meet. I just am not religious myself.

[2dimes]

Do I think the Roman Catholic side went too far in crusades? I'm not certain.

The Muslim armies during the crusades were pretty decent. If the Roman Catholic Church was passive as you suggest they should have been, I suspect there might have been no Roman Catholics left at the end.

I am not sure that would be bad yet, I am not sure that would be good either.

The current Roman Catholic Church is hardly comparable to the one a few centuries ago. If things get going in Europe again we might see them wiped out yet. If you don't think that's something the "peaceful" folks moving in from the Middle East may be considering, let's just wait and see.

[Symmetry]

Ehm, since when have there been such a thing as "atheist values"? Did someone forget to pass me the memo?

Perhaps it was meant to be "Vulcan values" since Vulcans are atheists.

It's ok for Vulcans not to believe in God. God doesn't believe in Vulcans. And let's not have an M&M's and Santa Claus moment; it could destroy the universe.

Vulcan is a god in Roman mythology.

[tzor]

I just won't take it very seriously if he starts praying to statues or deceased saints. I won't pick on him for it. I am just not in agreement.

For the record, I don't ask statues to do anything. (That is the definition of "pray" ... "to ask.")

I do ask all the holy ones who have gone before us with the sign of faith to echo our requests before the throne of God. (Or just burn them like incense as described in the Book of Revelation ... just saying.)

I'll even be polite to a Roman Catholic priest but if I caught one with a young man I'm probably going to jail.

Honestly, I think you can use a "sudden passion" defense here.

[tzor]

Vulcan is a god in Roman mythology.

Vulcan is also the mythical planet between Mercury and the Sun, which is actually a side effect of general relativity.

[tzor]

In the not too distant past Christianity called for the death of infidels including Muslims.

Once again, this is a good example of sloppy generalizations. Ignoring for the moment that there was a ruling that a "crossbow" could be used on an infidel, and ignoring the question of whether or not Islam is a "Christian Heresy," the Church has never in general called for the "death" of infidels except in specific circumstances as justified by just war theory. Infidels are to be converted, through persuasion.

(And the reason for the crossbow thing was that the "crossbow" was a complete game changer in terms of the relation of armed forces and military cavalry officers (known back then as "knights") since a crossbow could easily take out the later and be easily wielded by the former. It was the equivalent of a medieval ABM treaty.)

[tzor]

Tarring them all with the same brush does not help, it hinders. It drives them to extremism. Tzor's hatred is part of the problem, not the solution. The US government's persecution of people's outside of it's borders is part of the problem, not the solution.

I have no hatred here. I just know raw evil when I see it.

And the "US" thing is pure bullshit.
I will point out that it was Islamic attacks against US interest that resulted in the creation of the US Marines.
I will also point out that it was US assistance in Saudi Arabia that pushed Osama Bin Laden to go against the "Great Satan."

[riskllama]

I will point out that it was Islamic attacks against US interest that resulted in the creation of the US Marines.

eh?

[Symmetry]

I will point out that it was Islamic attacks against US interest that resulted in the creation of the US Marines.

eh?

It's more nonsense from Tzor about Muslims.

[2dimes]

I just won't take it very seriously if he starts praying to statues or deceased saints. I won't pick on him for it. I am just not in agreement.

For the record, I don't ask statues to do anything. (That is the definition of "pray" ... "to ask.")

I do ask all the holy ones who have gone before us with the sign of faith to echo our requests before the throne of God. (Or just burn them like incense as described in the Book of Revelation ... just saying.)

I'll even be polite to a Roman Catholic priest but if I caught one with a young man I'm probably going to jail.

Honestly, I think you can use a "sudden passion" defense here.

Maybe God is protecting me from needing to. Help a heathen out here. I can't find the "burn them like incense" description anywhere.

[Dukasaur]

I will point out that it was Islamic attacks against US interest that resulted in the creation of the US Marines.

eh?

First Barbary War. Look it up.

[tzor]

The Grand Mosque seizure occurred during November and December 1979 when extremist insurgents calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud took over Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The insurgents declared that the Mahdi (the "redeemer of Islam") had arrived in the form of one of their leaders – Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani – and called on Muslims to obey him.

The seizure of Islam's holiest site, the taking of hostages from among the worshipers, and the deaths of hundreds of militants, security forces and hostages caught in crossfire in the ensuing battles for control of the site, all shocked the Islamic world. The siege ended two weeks after the takeover began and the mosque was cleared.[7] Following the attack, the Saudi state implemented a stricter enforcement of Islamic code.[8]

Thirty years on, Mecca mosque siege reverberates — PUBLISHED NOV 19, 2009 12:00AM - Dawn

By the 1990s, when bin Laden turned against the Saudi rulers, 'he started to repeat almost word for word Juhaymans repudiations of the royal family,' Trofimov wrote.

Another article on the Seige of Mecca that points to US involvement.

The government was stunned and slow in understanding what was happening. They tried to seal off news of the event to the outside world, but some Americans managed to notify the Carter administration in Washington. Washington played on fears of its enemy, Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, which was holding hostages at the U.S. embassy. An assumption was made that the rebels at the Grand Mosque were Shia spreading Khomeini's revolution. This was passed to the media, an article in the New York Times quoting an American official who described the militants in Mecca as likely to be responding to Khomeini's call for an "uprising by fundamentalist Muslims." President Carter decided that he had to act, and he ordered a battle group from Subic Bay in the Philippines including the carrier Kitty Hawk to the Persian Gulf to enhance Saudi Arabia's sense of security.

Learning that news of the Grand Mosque takeover had been leaked, the Saudis were outraged. Iran's foreign ministry was also outraged at what he saw as an accusation from Washington. A message from the Ayatollah Khomeini was broadcast over Iranian radio accusing the U.S. and Israel of being those who were orchestrating the despicable horrors in Mecca.

Trofimov writes that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen and 23 at the time of the siege at Mecca, could not help but feel sympathy for Juhayman and his cause. In the mid-1980s according to an associate, bin Laden in a private conversation said that "the men who seized the Mosque were true Muslims." Trofimov writes that after the massive deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990-91, bin Laden "started to repeat almost word for word Juhayman's repudiations of the [Saudi] royal family. Bin Laden railed against non-Muslims on Saudi soil, against banks violating Islamic prohibitions on usury, and against "the royal family's dalliance with Christian powers." And in 2004, on tape, bin Laden praised Juhayman and faulted the Saudi regime for having defiled the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.

[tzor]

eh?

First Barbary War

The First Barbary War was beneficial to the reputation of the United States' military command and war mechanism, which had been up to that time relatively untested. The First Barbary War showed that America could execute a war far from home, and that American forces had the cohesion to fight together as Americans rather than separately as Georgians or New Yorkers. The United States Navy and Marines became a permanent part of the American government and American history, and Decatur returned to the U.S. as its first post-revolutionary war hero.