[sassysocks]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

That's only the case if you're saying "Christians and Muslims are the same in many ways" as a way of lessening the blame on Islam / making it seem like it's OK because "one day they'll be fine". That's not my stance at all though. Rather, I think that religion itself is to blame. I lump all of them together and am perfectly comfortable doing so... And pointing out how similar other religions have been in the past is more of a justification for this action of combining, and condemning, all religion.

Do you really, honestly think that it's impossible that Christianity will ever cycle back around to violent action? What if rather than having moved past it, Christianity is simply not in a "violent phase" right now? It might well be again in a few hundred years after the inevitable downfall of Western capitalism. Christian terrorist organisations are by no means outside of the realms of realistic possibility. There are a few, albeit small, examples of such in the world already. In recent history there have been obvious examples :what were the KKK, if not white Christian terrorists?

To state that all of Christianity has now moved beyond that, and will never go back there, is nonsense.

Why is it nonsense? Because people with irrational beliefs are prone to doing irrational things. Anyone who can take a step back from religious belief and take a good look at it can appreciate that every last one of them is a "loopy cult", and that the malleable nature of religious dogma means that anyone devoutly religious - in any religion - is inherently unpredictable and dangerous.

6 million (!!!) people turned up in a park to see the Pope recently. A huge percentage of those will have been very passionate Christians. Are we expected to believe that, if the Vatican and the Pope were to suddenly demand that they take up arms against (whoever), huge numbers of those people wouldn't willingly, even happily, do so in the name of their religion (Christianity)? Of course they would. Many of those people would blindly follow the Pope into whatever jihad he could dream up. Just as dangerous as any Muslim following any mad cleric.

He hasn't done so but it's just an example of how any religion can be used for violent means. IF he wanted to, IF he suddenly snapped or IF other political forces somehow took covert control of the Vatican, that one man could turn millions of those "peaceful christians" into remorseless killers over night. I guarantee it.

Pure conjecture full of what, ifs and buts. Islam is a problem now which is what we need to focus on, not what others might do one day.