On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:34:38 AM UTC-7, Stormin Mormon wrote:
An eye for an eye.... or so the Old Testament says.

That shows how much YOU know about the Hebrew Bible! If you get around to studying some day, you will see that MONETARY compensation was the norm for such crimes.

Most, if not all, of the apparently bloodthirsty injunctions in the Hebrew Bible were never actually carried out. Ex: One of the 10 commandments is translated into English as "You shall not kill". Inaccurate. The original Hebrew says "You shall not MURDER". An inadvertent or accidental killing is treated quite differently. If the perp is able to reach one of the "cities of refuge", he must be taken in and protected.

Even for the death penalty, the ancient Israelites leaned over backwards not to take a life. To prove a serious crime, the religious courts (there were no other kinds) required the "prosecution" to prove that at least two adults not only witnessed the crime, but warned the perp in advance of the consequences.

Supposing a bunch of Jews got together, and all on the

same day burned down and exploded Mosques. It would be

interesting, if terrifying, to see the response from the

Religion of Peace.



I'd have to spend the next couple years cowering under

the bed with a flashlight and a fire extinguisher.

We don't go in for that kind of thing; we are far too busy just trying to stay alive: to survive pogroms, being locked into our houses of worship and burned alive, mass extermination by one of Europe's most "civilized" countries, torture and burning alive by the Church's Inquisition, rape and murder by Crusaders en route to the "Holy Land", and sundry other inconveniences.




On 8/20/2013 9:15 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:

On 8/20/2013 4:20 PM, Larry W wrote:

I have no sympathy for Islamic extremists, however I suggest that in the

interest of fairness, his group also burn several million copies of the

new testament.


Hell, the fracking Islamic extremists burned whole Christian churches!

That's really fair, perhaps mosques should be burned? There are plenty

of them. O_o

That crazy publicity-hound "pastor"!!! with his earlier Koran-burning caper,
accomplished NOTHING except to alienate the American Muslims who are (or were) mostly secular or only ritualistically Muslim. They just went to work and raised their families like any other American.

Until 9/11 and consequences they just did their thing as peacefully -- or sometimes more so -- than American Christians, Jews, and other belief systems (religions).

I may think their religion is weird, but I think the same of most religions..

SOME Americans taking out their fury on fellow-American Muslims got a counter-productive result: Alienating/radicalizing peaceful citizens. Fortunately other American sheltered and protected their terrified neighbors.

The same with the untrained, poorly-supervised soldiers at Gitmo who wiped their a$$es on the prisoners' Korans and otherwise mistreated the religious symbols of people who had no recourse. Again, result: Burning anger and hate, provoked by ignorant extremists. The guards did not have to insult the inmates; their job was to keep them confined. Blame resides way up in the chain of command.

Same with the crimes committed in Iraq/Afghanistan by American "cowboy" military. And when Bradley Manning and others tried to report up the line, the CO's just blew them off. No wonder he had to go public.

We are supposed to be BETTER than our enemies. So when we lower ourselves to their level or worse, we lose our moral superiority (such as it is),

HB