Your opinion about Christianity and Islam?

The entire continuum of the abrahamic religions is a repulsive, disgusting system of oppression, mind control and tyranny fuelled by lies and fear.

Christianity kicks Islam’s ass.

I don’t like dogmatism and fanaticism in any religion; beyond that, I don’t evaluate one above the other. My background is Judaism so I am more comfortable with its inconsistencies but I don’t rate it any higher.

What @janbb said ^^
(...except that I was raised in a Protestant household)

Both religions are equally repugnant & totally intolerant & controlling.

@KeepYourEyesWideOpen I agree that current religions tend to fill many of the needs you listed. Yet while I am an atheist, I don’t find myself lacking in any of those areas. I disagree that religion was probably invented to fill those needs. I suspect that the first religious thoughts of humanity, now buried in the long-forgotten mud and sands of prehistoric time, were driven by fear of a often threatening world that primitive man had no way of comprehending.

As hunter gathers, they were at the mercy of the changing seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, the comings and goings of the rains, floods, lightning and the fires it sometimes sparked. They knew nothing about how or why any of those forces worked, yet they knew their very lives and quite possibly the lives of all humanity known to them depended on them working near optimally all the time.

In such a terrifying, threatening world, it is no surprise they invented totems and taboos to control forces they knew were beyond their control. It made them feel safer believing that a sky daddy was in control and would, if they made the proper sacrifices to him and obeyed “his theorized laws”, take care of those things on which they relied for their lives, but which they could not comprehend or control.

I find it amusing that so many humans, having arisen from such humble beginnings, still give their allegiance to the cruel, blood-thirsty God of the desert that primitive man invented around 4,000 BCE to comfort himself and “punish” their enemies. I find it amusing that such “believers” still don’t know that the benefits your OP listed are easily obtained without believing in things with no credible evidence to support them. I do not find it at all amusing that a tiny remnant of the Abrahamic religion’s original bloodthirsty past survives to this day. It now threatens further human progress, and still cries out for human blood to slake the sky daddy’s insatiable thirst for sacrifice.

Past that, I agree with @ragingloli, @janbb & @Linda_Owl completely.

I like Christmas music : )

And what @ETpro said.

I feel like some religions give you an opinion instead of letting you form your own, which I feel is odd because their “truths” that explain it don’t seem to be justified (even contradictory at times).

As long as those two religions do not try to force me or others to adopt their belief systems, I am content to treat them as harmless and benign. I have identified situations where both these religions try to force their beliefs down the throat of others, including myself.

Neither is a legitimate excuse to force your will upon others, nor should either be used as a foundation upon which a nation is governed. That is another reason I tend to distrust Republicans; many wish to weaken the barrier between Church and State to impose their own brand of Shari’a law.

My opinion of Christianity and Islam matters not a jot.

I don’t like religions that emphasize faith is just as important, if not more so than works. Many religions exist as man’s own interpretation of the religious documents they claim to take seriously. Many fundamentalists can’t even agree with each other on what the Bible means, then they judge others for using false teachings? Seriously?

Christianity is a good example of the above. There are Christians who believe that baptism is important, while there are others who don’t. There are Christians who believe that it is important to ‘know’ that Jesus came in the flesh, which means that Jesus was just as vulnerable to sin as we are. Usually the latter view is supported by those who place faith and works on equal grounds, and this is in opposition to most conservative Christians who claim that faith in Jesus, regardless of one’s sins is all that is required to reach heaven.

There are other examples too such as there being some Christians who believe in an immediate afterlife where you’ll either end up in heaven or suffer in hell for eternity. There is the other camp where the belief is you’ll lie in rest (unawareness) until Judgement Day. Then there is the trinitarian vs the nontrinitarian camp. This is why Pascal’s Wager does not make any sense to me, because if our ultimate fate is so reliant upon our beliefs then why doesn’t this omnipotent god do a better job (or any for that matter) on informing us of this instead of allowing the endless debate to go on? Why were all of these mystical occurences pertaining to Jesus happening at a time very long ago when they realistically could not be verified as real events?

All of the above examples were from the various conservative denominations of Christianity, and they do not even begin to cover all of the less conservative denominations. I don’t know as much about Islam, but violence around the world seems to follow that religion around as well. A religious document (Bible, Quran) may have one truthful meaning to it (or maybe not), but all religions which have their roots in these teachings in the end are manmade constructs from man’s own interpretation of them. Make sure you choose the right religion, see how easy it is :)

I don’t know any Christian who was oppressed in the year 2012 or punished for no longer wanting to be a Christian. Unlike today’s Muslims, no Christian is forced to be a Christian. In the past there was a lot of oppression in Christianity. There are remnants today like the Vatican, but every Catholic is free to walk away from Catholicism ignoring the threats about rotting in hell (US evangelicals use this tactics too). A lot of German Catholics became either Protestants or Buddhists or atheists because of the massive child abuse cases.

@mattbrowne You’ve never been to Texas :/

@mattbrowne – What about minority Christians in majority Islamic countries?

@jerv – I was once in 1989. On South Padre Island. Seemed pretty liberal at the time ;-)

@hearkat – I meant: I don’t know any Christian who was oppressed in the year 2012 by another Christian (not counting family situations). Many minority Christians in many majority Islamic countries are being oppressed, which means these Christians are the victims, not the oppressors.

The Inquistion ended centuries ago. And every Christian is free to quit (again not counting family situations).

@ragingloli‘s comment about disgusting systems of oppression, mind control and tyranny fuelled by lies and fear does not apply to today’s Christianity. This needs to be understood. Christian nutcases in Texas and other Bible Belt regions cannot oppress Christians against their will. There’s bullying, yes. There are racist nutcases as well, but from this we can’t conclude that African Americans are oppressed in America, because of the existence of these nutcases.

@mattbrowne
So you forgot about uganda already? Kony? The right wing’s assault on women’s reproductive rights and gay rights? Their agenda to sabotage education by trying to force creationism into science class?

Here’s an article referring to a preacher whose opinions on Christianity have changed, and who is now being called a heretic

@ragingloli – You are right. Kony is an exception. He’s one of the very few terrorists who commits crime in the name of an obscure Christian cult. Superstition is still widespread in my African countries. The conclusion you drew about mainstream Christianity being a widespread oppressor isn’t true. The Vatican is oppressive, but there are no serious consequences for people leaving Catholicism as preached by the Vatican.

@mattbrowne
The only reason why it is not (anymore, in the west, but they are still trying) are the secular enlightenment values that are widespread in the western world. Slavery is biblical, misogyny is biblical, homophobia is biblical, pederasty is biblical. It is modern secularism that has tempered western christianity and pulled it kicking and screaming into the realm of actual morality, and without secularism, christianity today would not be one iota different from radical islam

@ragingloli. Entirely true. The only reason Christianity isn’t just as bad as it was centuries ago is that modern Western society now frowns upon things like random murder for arbitrary reasons. The fact that most of society would rather prosecute a pedophile instead of hide them doesn’t exactly help.

@ragingloli What a profound observation. True. The myths the ancient God of the desert grew from were generated in a very brutalistic, unenlightened tribal world view.

Modern secularism and Western society are a brainchild of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a tradition that evolved over centuries. Here’s some food for thought. What @ragingloli is describing according to the Spiral Dynamics model is Christianity 2.0 (purple) and 3.0. Today large parts are 5.0 and 6.0, even 7.0 (yellow) and beyond. Here’s an article that explains the model:

http://www.ievolve.org/tag/god-9-0/

Here’s an excerpt of the article written by the German theologian Tilmann Haberer:

”‘I am spiritual, but not religious‘– many people make this distinction. They describe themselves as spiritual and maybe they mean by this that they follow a more or less intensive discipline such as Yoga, Vipassana or Zen. Or maybe they lay the Tarot. Perhaps they also believe that, for them, the existence of a higher order is self-understood. However, this higher order has little to do with the god spoken about in religion. For the established religions – in particular Christianity, Islam and Judaism in our part of the world – have gambled away our trust, which, for centuries, was taken for granted. Of course there are reasons for this. One of the most important of these must be that, historically, the churches often played a very disreputable role. Crusades, burning of witches, persecution of heretics and those with different beliefs, religious wars, the conquering of Middle and South America with fire and sword! The list is endless, as endless as the streams of blood and tears that the churches have caused over the course of the centuries. This list carries forward to the present day; the abuse scandals scream to heaven.

I became familiar with Ken Wilber’s ideas in his book‚‘Grace and Grit’ in 2004. Ken Wilber, in his early books, refers exclusively to Buddhism and Hinduism. Initially it did not occur to him to seriously consider Christianity as a spiritual giant. Since then, however, this has changed. There are also rumblings amongst the Christian grassroots. Many are on the search for a modern shape to their belief. The book Gott 9.0 – Wohin unsere Gesellschaft spirituell wachsen wird (‘God 9.0 – In which direction our society will spiritually grow’) is an expression of this search and an attempt to incorporate the development lines of the western spiritual traditions into the Integral area.

The Christian’s view of God can, of course, be developed. In the Bible there is already documentation of a development of the view of God from the archaic, power hungry god of the old testament, to the loving father of whom Jesus speaks.

In the categories of Spiral Dynamics – a system which portrays the evolution of the individual, as well as humanity as a whole, in illustrated steps represented by colours – the development can be described as follows:

Beige: The developmental level of the first Homo sapiens, who has just emerged from the apes, or the stage of the newborn. It concerns basic survival. View of God: – God is the source and the spring of life, nourishing maternal breast, no differentiation as yet from the universal Mother Nature. Picture of Jesus, naked and endangered.

Purple: Archaic-magical development level. Everything is alive, i.e. has soul (animism). There are good and evil spirits, who can, with the appropriate magical rituals, be influenced. The coherence of the tribe is of vital importance. View of God: – God of the tribe, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Picture of Jesus, the miracle worker who heals the sick, can walk on water and propagate bread.

Red: Consciousness Level of heroic sagas: – Nibelungen, Iliad and Odyssey. It is about power, conquest, raids. View of God: The God of war, who helps Israel to conquer the land and gives the order to exterminate the opposition totally. Picture of Jesus: – the exorcist who fights with Satan, but also cuts the tie to the family in order to attain a higher goal.

Blue: Consciousness level of global riches and world religions. Law, higher order, morality, conscience, sin and forgiveness, hierarchical organisations are fundamental elements. View of God: – God is the Only, the Almighty, the highest King and Lawmaker, the strict judge. Picture of Jesus: – the rabbi who does not abolish the law, but fulfills it, the liberator from sin and death. Up to this point everything is familiar. This is how we know the Christian God. And for many this is how it remains. But, of course, the development continues.

Orange: Rational consciousness level, the modern age. Ruling authorities are critically questioned. Personal success. Achievement and freedom play a central role. Science and technology flower. View of God: All that is supernatural is critically questioned, right up to the statement ‘God is dead‘. Those who do not wish, or cannot, give up god no longer seek outside of themselves, but turn inwards. First movement towards meditation and mysticism. Picture of Jesus: Jesus is seen as a good person, a revolutionary or a moral teacher, or as the ruling victor, with whom one builds up a personal relationship of reverence, emulation.

Green: Pluralistic consciousness level, post-modern. What counts now is consensus instead of competition, the outsiders and the disadvantaged are included. Equality becomes an important subject. Environmental consciousness develops, the dominance of science and technology are questioned. Psychology and psychotherapy experience a boom. View of God: – the charitable, motherly god/goddess, all religions worship the same god, though it may be in different ways. Picture of Jesus: the friend of women and children, the gentle Jesus, the inter-religious bringer of peace.

Yellow: Integrative consciousness. Complex synopsis of different consciousness contents. Paradoxes are not only tolerated, but loved. Yellow is the first of all the consciousness levels to develop an understanding of the distinctiveness and the irreplaceable value of all the previous levels. View of god: – new understanding of the paradoxical statements concerning god, such as the Trinity (God is three in one). Picture of Jesus: – Jesus Christ the godly being, (the cosmic Christ), amalgamates in a paradoxical way with the human.

Turquoise: Holistic consciousness. Everything is inseparably linked to each other. Every part contains the whole. Multi-perspective, fractal. World ethos, intercontinentally connected, virtual communities.”

It’s worth reading the entire article.

God Himself and clearly mentioned in the final scripture which He revealed to man. In the final revelation, called the Qur’an in Arabic, Allah states the following:
“This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and I have chosen for you Islam as you religion.” (Qur’an 5:3)
If we investigate the legislations and divine books of heavenly religions, we see that Islam is the purest and the most perfect amongst them all in all aspects and fields religions mentioned.
1— It has the purest faith because it assured the pure monotheism and it keeps God away from all human features and from residing in man or immanentism or uniting with any creature or lack of ability to behave and attributes to Him every perfection that is suitable for His divine essence such as glorification, highness, ability, majesty and others.
2— Islam described all prophets that they are chosen and perfect people and they have great amount of intelligence, cleverness, eloquence, fluency, honesty and intuition, despite all of this they are still people, their highest degree is as God says: “Say: I am but a man like yourselves, (but) the inspiration has come to me” Surat Al-Kahf, Verse 110.
3— Islam is the only one amongst heavenly religions that set perfect balanced legislations that organize working in this life and also good deeds that lead to happiness in the hereafter. A Muslim is a moderate man, he works for his life to dwell it as if he is living forever, and he also prepares good deeds for the hereafter as if he is going to die tomorrow.
4— Islam doesn’t order Muslims by monasticism or to abandon working in this life or to become engrossed totally in this life and forget death and the hereafter but it asks them to be moderate in all the works of this life and the hereafter, God says: “Thus, have We made of you an Ummat (nation) justly balanced” Surat All-Bakara, Verse 143.
5— The divine book of Muslims which is the noble Koran is the only book that is protected from any changes or distortions, God says: “We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption)” Surat Al-Hijr, Verse 9. But the other books of other heavenly religions was changed and perverted by their people, so now we see the four bibles authorized by the church were chosen from four hundred different bibles.
6— Islam made a Muslim directly connected to his Lord, he doesn’t need an intercessor like clergymen or monks or bishops. A Muslim can also worship his God at any place and any time, the prophet (Blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “The ground has been made a mosque and pure for me.” Good deeds and acts of worship not only done at hermitages or temples or monasteries or churches as in other religions.
7— If a Muslim did a sin or something wrong and he wants to repent, he goes directly to his Lord and no human can decide to accept his repentance or not.
8— Islam is the only legislation that brings what man needs all over his life in personal status, in inheritance, in dealings, in international politics even the simplest things he needs, everything is mentioned in details.
For all those reasons and others we see that Islam has more general principles, more inclusive legislations and more perfect acts of worship than all other religions so we chose it.