So are you really trying to seperate purely theological matters with the actions that logically follow from holding those positions? So it's cool if I worship Aphrodite, but it's unrelated and non-religious if I later punch you in the face for insulting Her?

It doesn't matters if others support him or encouraged him to take the stance he has, what matters are the ideologies that lead him to make the decision in the first place. Obviously we can only guess what those would be based on his comments.



I don't agree that saying he is motivated by his religion means that Christians in general are more likely to want to ban books. Certain Christian paths or groups might, but there are liberal, moderate and conservative believers across all groups and it's difficult to lump them all under one banner.

On your point of book banning generally and authoritarian views; we have to ask where these ideas come from. I agree that we can't blame Christianity or any one religion for these and other ideas but I do believe they have a part to play and, for some people, religion plays a stronger formative role than other factors.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that a well designed poll is a reliable research technique and is used by many disciplines. For example, asking whether you go to church often is not useful unless you qualify what is meant by 'often', which any social researcher worth their salt will do.

EDIT2: I know Wikipedia isn't the best source of reliable information, but this article on book burning has a long list of well known incidents if anyone is interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning.

I'll just say that I'm a new Christian of about one year, I'm not in a Christian home or atmosphere or even culture, and I'm not a Bible scholar or student. To add to that, my church is working on its followup, so much of the Bible has yet been explained to me by my pastors. All those were just to say that my views are of a Christian which are not distorted by others, and are mostly mine. Therefore, I believe that someone can, simply by reading the Bible and without 'intepretation', gather what Christianity is truly about.


I do acknowledge that people have managed to read the Bible in a such a way, and have misintepreted certain passages to either further their own goals, or have been simply misguided. Below are some phrases that I think well suits them.



Thus, the Bible warns us of such people, rather than tell us to follow their teachings.


Now, I happen to disagree with the people who are pushing for the banning of Harry Potter. Those people are either people who have not read Harry Potter, are extremists, or are like the blind people I mentioned above.

What I do agree with is this. Advice the people in the church to not read this book. I was not a Christian when Harry Potter was first published, so I'll use Da Vinci Code as an example. My church made a statement that if you want to watch the movie, you can, but it is frowned upon (Just that. No punishments or anything of that sort to deter). We were given a small booklet on the mistakes made in the movie, why it is not good etc. We signed a petition with other churches in Singapore for the Censorship Board to include a disclaimer that it is fiction and not the truth as it claims. (Which, sadly, they did not do.)

This is why I agree. What was done was to advice people who willingly want to remain strong in their faith to not watch it. We were given explanations why not to. There was no push to ban the movie, but simply for a disclaimer to appear. In no way is there any attempt to destroy this piece of work, unless you consider calling it fiction when the author calls it history despite numerous secular articles on how it is not true as destruction.

And as for your point about the Taliban destroying the Buddha statues, the men in the passage are performing a symbolic act, much like how one burns flags (Which is not a good example, but a close one). They are proclaiming to the public that they acknowledge they have sinned, and are willing to repent and cleanse themselves. They are ridding themselves of their own private collections of magic scrolls and idols of other gods. They are not going off to a non-believer's house and smashing idols, seizing scrolls or anything of that sort. It is a message to not attempt to hide your sins, but to rid yourselves of any thing which might tempt you. A more modern example would be this. Sexual immorality is a sin. Should you want to repent, you would throw out any pornographic magazines that you have. And wouldn't you say that throwing things that will eventually be buried or incinerated or recylcled the equilivant of burning them?


So basically, what you disagree with is that God teaches intolerance of other religion, am I right? I can understand your point of view. What you want is for Christians to adopt the Taoist view that there is one destination, but there are many paths. Now, this is a faith issue, as you'll have to see Him as the God, and not as a god. Basically, all other religions are false (to a Christian), and simply lead you away from the path of Christianity.

As for the part about God's power growing due to this, there are some counters to it.

One, is that if you look at the passages I posted, out of five of them, two of them place verse 20 as a second paragraph and does not mention the previous book burning, and thus it means that God's power is growing in general, rather then because of this event specifically.

Secondly, even if it does refer to the event, as I've said above, the previous act as a symbolic act, much like the burning of flags. When you burn a flag or effigy, most of the time, your cause is spread and more people know about it. This is what it means by God's power growing. Also, it indicated that his followers are faithful enough to rid themselves of the scrolls despite the monetary cost.


No, what your example should be is this. You worship Aphrodite, and you later punch someone for insulting her, and then other people claim that because of what you did, Aphrodite teaches violence and revenge.

Now, you hit someone, and you use religion as your excuse. Aphrodite doesn't preach violent revenge (from what I know of her), but you, a loud minority, uses religion as something to hide behind. In other words, you are escaping from having to give a valid reason, by giving a scapegoat. The people who now have to give a reason for your actions are the Aphroditians (right term?) who were not taught revenge. In some more other words, you are a selfish person who place your own wants above the religion that you supposedly are a part of.

Replace you with that guy in the video, Aphrodite with Christ and hitting/revenge with book bannings.

As much as I disagree with your conclusions, I have to commend your patience and willingness to both debate and critically examine your beliefs, Caerulo. It speaks so highly of your character.

You are correct in where my prime disapproval rests, in the intolerance of other beliefs and their derivative works. The buddha statues are a good example, for this god commands
"Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place." - Deuteronomy 12:2-3

If you do not follow this ideal, then I am extremely glad, and I wouldn't class you anywhere near the fundamentalists.

To be fair, isn't Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, the rules of which Jesus declared moot? That's what Christians tell me when I complain about the Old Testament.

Of course, for the larger segment of Christianity, the above 'ideal' is entirely superceded by the command to 'love thy neighbour as thyself', and the various examples given by the new testament. What I find extraordinary about fundamentalists is their ability to somehow reconcile 'turning the other cheek' with extraordinary campaigns of hatred and stupidity.. for which they cite precedents and justifications from the old testament - take www.godhatesfags.com as an example. Personally, I don't believe that the lunatic fringe of christianity should even be regarded as christian - they may know their bible backwards, but that's no help to them if they can't appreciate its message.

Edit: half ninja-ed by quidgy

Thank you so much Avaer, as you can tell, I'm enjoying this debate immensely. And as Aiakon has said, I believe in the Great Commandment given by Jesus.



What makes this even more amazing is that both Great Commandments are found in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18), which proves to me that God is not inconsistent in the sense that He means one thing in the Old Testament and another in the New Testament.

And Aiakon, whenever people tell me that godhatesfags.com, I point to them that godhatesshrimp.com too.

I didn't mean my example as a parallel to the book burning, really. I'm just trying to show that actions motivated by religion are going to follow from being a member of that religion. Daganev seems to be trying to say that you can believe something, but if you performs actions that may logically follow from such beliefs, you're not acting because of your religion.

I've never really understood the Old Testament being superceded by the New. Why include it if you don't follow it? Why do some people quote from it if it's worthless to do so? Is there a difference of opinion on the matter between different denominations, or are some people just misguided?

Because it's still extremely important - you should just read it in the context of the new.

Which teaching of Aphrodite tells you to punch people? Or perhaps is there some other community you belong to where you are taught to let our your anger against people by punching them?

There are generally 5 institutions which are said to affect behavior. Friends, Family, Government, Religion, and Education. My argument is that Friends, Family, Government, and Education all have a much greater affect on a person than if they belong to a religion and which religion they belong to. That is why most "exteremist" groups try to build isolated communities.

Also you should note that the Taliban were the ones who destroyed Buddah Statues. You know the same ones who were fine with the blowing up of People. The same people who could care less about the followers of the same religion as them, and care deeply about the followers of themselves. As has been proven time and time again, you don't need a religion to become a totalitarian dictator, all you need is to misuse a philosophy that makes people feel good about themselves.

Jewish theological writing is full of this phenomenon. You can tell which part of the world any particular famous Jewish writer came from just from the general assumptions they have which existed in those cultures. Writers from Wester Europe had very different fundamental views of people than did writers from the Eastern Europe which were different than the ones from the Middle East, and those people had different views that writers from Africa. Going further back in time, there are large fundamental differences between the Talmud written in Babylon and the Talmud written in Israel.

I am pretty sure that every philosophy has something to say along the lines of be careful who your friends are.

After the state of the Union speach last night, some caller ranted on how the "Religious right" shouldn't be allowed to be part of government, because they don't know how to negotiate since they think they are doing the work of their deity"... Thankfully, all the members on the panel had long responses explaining about the concept of convictions from any perspective, and the importance of allowing any person in the nation to become a member of congress. The worse part however is that I don't think too many people realize how bigoted of a comment that is, and how much ignorance comments like that display.

For most theists, religion, family, friends and often even education are all passing on the messages of their religion, which is often the same. Most theists are never given a choice of religion, and are effectively indoctrinated with whatever religion they have from all sides. You're downplaying the effect of religion immensely; the reason those extremist groups try to build isolated communities is because they're fringe groups without enough followers to effectively indoctrinate someone like that. In a Christian community where you go to a Christian church, all your friends are Christian, your family is Christian, and government officials are Christians often passing Christian-oriented legislation, religion permeates the fabric of society to a point where it's everywhere, not just in church, and taking that theology and turning it into something warped is easy, and very socially acceptable, to the point that people like that guy can be taken seriously by the school.
That's the thing. You'd think religion, being a good and sublime thing it is, would be useless as a tool for evil, but it isn't. We're constantly seeing dictators and tyrants using fanaticism as an excuse. And it's almost always either religion or ethnicity. You don't see anyone rallying people into a suicide frenzy to kill for their love of pineapple pie.

Not defending the caller (Since saying someone shouldn't be allowed to run for congress is bizarre and wrong) the religious right is unable to argue and act rationally. They're acting under the bizarre notion that they're on a mission from god, and it's impossible to reason with nutjobs like that. Plenty of ridiculous legislation has been passed for purely religious reasons, like giving 'intelligent design' 'equal time' in school science classes (Including teaching arguments which are purely bad, terrible science that has been debunked over and over and over again as truth) sanctions on gay marriage that have no real social justification, 'faith-based initiatives', and so on. If you don't think religion has a fundamental, changing, powerful effect on society today, then you're deluding yourself.

Verithrax makes a good point about the pervasiveness of religion and how difficult it can be to separate one from another. Consider the case of a thoughtful convert from Islam to Christianity. (I say thoughtful to explicitly discard conversion by a wishy-washy adherent for the sake of marriage convenience.) Heck, let's make this convert female and have some fun. By strict scriptural readings, the rules regarding women in Christianity and Islam are not so different. Obedience to husbands, no place in worship services except as cloth-smothered decoration, ritually unclean, and so on.

The culture that these religions carry has a huge impact on how these women will conduct their lives. A Christian woman does not generally feel any pressure to wear a veil in public. An American Muslim may have absolute freedom to choose not to wear the veil and not face overt censure, but it's possible that she would be regarded as more devout if she did make that choice. The Christian woman would be looked at strangely or be a nun (and still be looked at strangely, but hey). Women in Christian services are not silent adornments. Women in Christian families have a very real potential to be heads of households. The convert, who still retains friends and family and government and education, will reflect these changes.

EDIT: Removed irrelevant info.

The surrounding culture tends to affect the religion more than the religion affects the surrounding culture. Just look at Christmas.

You may not see it from the outside, but I don't think Christmas in America annoys anyone more than Catholics. It's a holiday swallowed up by secular America, kinda like it was a pagan holiday swallowed up by Christians.

As for the culture issue, that's why I chose converts. Family may, but probably won't, change slightly, friends may change to varying degrees depending on where you met your friends, but government and education are already set.

I have seen enough specials about "the true origins of Christmas" to know how much it annoys Catholics. I have also seen enough about how each individual custom mostly arose from the culture of the people already doing things they liked, and then they added that activity to the new religious holiday. The American Santa clause was created and propagated by American culture (i.e. Coca Cola), not American religion (some Puritan/Protestant concept of Saint Nicholas)

"converts" whether they change religion, or country, or political affiliation, tend to pick up the cultural customs of their new community fairly quickly.

I won't dispute this. What I'm disputing is your assertion that religion is the weakest factor in a person's development and worldview and using converts, the closest to a control group that informal sociology allows, to demonstrate the point. I would argue that government is the weakest, and I would use immigrants as my focal point.

If I understood what I read correctly, by government they mostly mean police force/economic policy and the like, not the more petty laws. The systems that if they were to break, would destroy the society. Like in Iraq. Nothing about the religion changed, only the form of government changed.

Except in Iraq, they kill people based on nationality and religion, largely ignoring the police force, democratically elected government, and foreign troops who may or may not ask you what you're doing before they use the copper-coated lead slugs mandated by the Geneva Convention to poke holes in you.

Religion does have a large effect. There are a number of customs which are exclusive to one religion and then get pushed or shoved down the throats of a wider culture. Like sanctions on gay marriage, 'Intelligent Design Theory', the Catholic Church trying to stop Africans from using condoms, etc.