LOL

MoreJustice

The decision to provide cover for the rogue factions of eastern Libya was a decision that goes beyond party politics. You could say it was to put pressure on Iran and/or to install a new submissive central bank but it sure as he!! wasn't about promoting 'democracy'.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42308613/Libyan_Rebels_Form_Their_Own_Central_Bank

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/withdraw-currency-libya-idUSL6E8CD43320120113

Months away from being given control by NATO they had time to form a new central bank; a year later they're changing currency. If you don't know what happens next....

Those poor people don't know how good they had it.

You don't need free speech or religion to be a Democracy. Just not one like ours. Democracy in its simplest terms is government by the people. That could be as simple as majority rules and if the majority says no freedom of religion, so be it. In fact there are people in this country who think we are a majority rules Democracy. We aren't. Our Democracy takes the form of a Constitutional Republic. Our Constitution defines freedoms and it also defines things that are nor subject to majority rules.

Libya has a long way to go in defining its new government, but it is unlikely that it won't have theocratic underpinnings. The country is virtually 100% Muslim. Besides being a religion, Islam is very much a type of government, much as Christianity was many years ago in Europe. Anybody who thinks that any predominantly Muslim country is going to adopt an American form of Democracy is simply dreaming. However, just taking the step toward elected civil authority is a quantum leap forward.

Had it not been for the diversity of the original American colonies, who knows how we would have turned out. America was made up of immigrants from a variety of countries, many who came to flee some form of religious persecution in their homelands. That unique diversity turned out to be an advantage. But in most of these Muslim dominated countries, diversity consists or men and women, and women don't count. If these countries get to where they see religious freedom as a freedom to have equality amongst the flavors of Islam, that would be a giant step.

If indeed these people arrested were Christian missionaries, I can't believe they expected to be welcomed with open arms. There are centuries of a fundamentally homogeneous culture to overcome before Libya or many of these similar countries look anything like an American style Democracy with a similar Constitution. To expect anything else is being naive.

But, but, but, Hillary said they "just want democracy", and "he's killing his own people." Hillary uses the same war cry over & over in different countries, but gets the same results. Is anyone surprised? Wow, maybe she should run for President in 2016 with Obama as her vice president then they can continue their successes.

Can you imagine...arresting those of different religions in the U.S. of A.! Astonishing how some countries are still at the age of cavemen days. I certainly hope the "interrogation" is just that, not torture or worse for these Christianity promoters. Sad indeed.

Democacy doesn't work..not even in the United States. What has the United States gotten accomplish in the last eight years besides individual states legalizing Gay marriages and the use of Marijuana?

I always find it interesting how Christians want to convert Muslims to Christianity just so that they can commit the same types of sins Christians committed in the United States or are unable to prevent from occurring. It would make more since to stay home and fix the problems they are having.

Ambassador Stevens dies for something THAT HE believed in. If you did not know that he believed in turning Libya into a modern democracy, then you should not be using his name for your argument. He did not think the job was done yet, but that is why he was still there.

MoreJustice, stop being a meddler in others' affairs. It makes you look like Hitler.

Take your own advice smithe. Everything is my affair.

Arabs have always been haters ....I have had the pleasure of working with these people in the mid-east for years....it in there DNA.....never believe what they say...never!

Obama and his administration supported these people? We supported Egypt, Libya, Syria and on it goes only to end up with same or worse than it was. One has to question the intelligence of lack thereof of these clowns in charge. Maybe we should have stayed out of this whole mess in the middle east and invested all that money in our own oil but wait the liberals did not want to hurt the environment at least not our own.

Allahu Akba!

Imagine a group of Muslim evangelicals - in full Mideastern regalia - proselytizing the crowd at, say, an American airport. Does anyone in this forum believe that they wouldn't have been detained and questioned, or at least ordered to desist? It would surprise me to learn that punishment for the 'offense' of the Christians in this story consisted of anything more harsh than expulsion. No torture, no prison, no beheading, just get the he!! out of our country.

Would that be so different from a southern sheriff saying, "Git, boy, we don't like your kind around heah!"? It would be unrealistic for us to expect the newly constituted civil authorities in a country as homogeneous as Libya to treat 'ferners' any better than we do, despite our 230+ year head start on 'democracy'.

jolly joker ..... If only I could slap somebody from my computer keyboard......

David Noah

If you don't have free speech and Religious freedom how can you have a Democracy?

I ask the same thing here in the United States. If we can't have freedom from christians who want to force their beliefs into our secular laws, how can we have a republic?

LynyrdSky

Maybe we should have stayed out of this whole mess in the middle east and invested all that money in our own oil but wait the liberals did not want to hurt the environment at least not our own.

Yeah, go down to the gulf cost and ask those americans how the OIL SPILL from BP changed their lives. Also, oil production in this country is at its HIGHEST in recorded US history under the OBAMA administration.

Hey, if the people were trying to convert others to a non-Abrahamic religion like Wicca or Druidry would y'all be so upset at the arrests? Or is it only because we're tlaking about Christianity? If it's only Christianity then y'all are HYPOCRITES.

"Proselytizing is forbidden in Libya."

So Christians are commanded by Christ to make disciples (Matthew 28:19), but that's against the law in most Muslim nations.

So do they obey God or the secular authorities? (Acts 5:29)

Hmmmmmmmm.

Christ said to obey the laws of men ("Render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's") and if people would not listen to the message to depart peacefully and shake the dust from your sandals. Therefore, if Christians are forbidden by law to proselytize, they must obey that law PEACEFULLY.

last time I heard of "christians trying to bring the word to people in a Muslim country" was in Afghanistan. They were brought to trial and pronounced guilty and condemned to death. Until the good old USA rescued them and started a was there.

in any Muslim country it is their way or the highway; it is punishable by death in several mid-eastern country's to preach any religion but Islam; for some strange reason we do not understand the Muslim culture, we still believe they are just like everyone else in the civilized world; they are not, their religion is their way of life, everything else is non existence to them; we are in for a very rude awaking, the strife will start here in the U.S. very soon they demand we adapt to their beliefs , they do not belong in the melting pot.

Even though Iraq has its problems it still fairs better than Libya.

You don't hear these type of stories coming out of Iraq. Sadly, you do hear stories coming out of Libya and Egypt. Even worse, Obama continues to send more US taxpayer money to Libya & Egypt. So in reality the money from US taxpayers who happen to be Christian, Jew, Hindu, etc. are being sent to Libya to build up a country who demands that it remain 100% muslim.

The US mainstream media will not touch this. They do not want to open the eyes of the American people. They want to continue to make fun of Rubio taking a drink of water during a speech.

If these people only knew they're going to jail over something that only exist in their imagination!!!

@ Cat "Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men." Acts 5:29

If the message is rejected..if the message of loving thy neighbor is rejected , THEN move on.

The self serving nature of Islam is so painfully obvious. The do have deomcracy because the majority bullies the minorities. It simply isn't a rights based democracy. There is "Mob Rules" democracy, and there is "Constitutional Based" democracy.

Imagine it the West reciprocated and made it illegal to practice or spread Islam.

The greatest form of contempt is to outlaw a practice. That is, to make it a criminal act. I see that the Muslims in my own country, many of whom are my neighbors, never speak out unless they feel their own rights are in jeopardy.

I asked a Muslim about the death penalty for apostates. He said it is viewed as a form of treason to abandon your Islamic faith. I asked him if we say converting to Islam should be considered a form of treason for Non-Muslims. He replied that, since Islam is the final word of Allah, we should not consider it as treason, but as a celebration.

One way tolerance is cultural suicide. Just ask the Buddhists of Afghanistan.

Secular, rights based democracy is best form of government. These emerging Islamic democracies are nothing more than repulsive Islamic mob rule.

I will not support criminalization of Islamic proselytizing. They are my neighbors and their children attend the same schools as mine. But I will fight to my last breath to protect my right to speak out in criticism of it's barbaric, narcissistic, cruel, controlling, antiquated hypocritical bellicose doctrines. And I grow less and less respectful of the warlord misogynistic, pedophile that they all blindly emulate.

I am certain that those who are attacking Libya over this are the same ones who protested the Muslim Center in lower Manhattan. Call them rag heads, etc.

Shame on you and your hypocrisy.

THis is what occurs when you mix government and religion as many on the far right want to do in this country. It is wrong here and it is wrong there.

A fellow Swede was in the group - I thought we all became agnostic or atheist once the Viking days ended.

China does the same thing - where is the outrage? Some peoples entire day goes right in the crapper when they hear certain hot-topic buttons. As an early post states - we got people jumping in droves to live unbalanced lives - the rules of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, are beyond their grasp.

There are people in America that want a Christian nation. There would be the same kind of arrests here in the US if they got their way. The only difference would be that it would be other religions that would be outlawed...

This is the problem with any kind of Theocracy, be it Muslim, Christian, Wicca, whatever... It is imposing a set of beliefs on other people just because you live in a certain place. It is wrong and stupid.

Remember that when you want to make America a Christian Nation....

Cat-1200657

Christ said to obey the laws of men ("Render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's") and if people would not listen to the message to depart peacefully and shake the dust from your sandals. Therefore, if Christians are forbidden by law to proselytize, they must obey that law PEACEFULLY

Now the TRUTH, read Acts, when the followers were brought before the jewish leaders and told to STOP preaching about Jesus, they replied, shoudl be opey men or God, they chose God rather than men. Spreading the Good News ALWAYS bring persecution, just look at the negative comments here today, the Bible records the Son of God meaning: you are either with me of against me, there is no middle ground. You complainers remember, for a lie did the Diciples die 200 years ago? That makes NO sense at all, would you suffer and die if you knew Jesus really didn't rise from the dead? Those men were no different than us today. We all want to live. Remember, ther are no atheistsin heaven case they didn't believe, non in hell either, cause now they do.

They need to arrest anybody trying to spread any type of religion.

.

It is amazing to me that primative thinking still survives 400 years after the enlightenment. Sam - just writing the word truth in capitals does not mean it is the truth. Your hateful statement about no atheists in heaven reflects the only primative logic that you have - you want to believe that you are special and others are going to be punished for not being as special as you. But you have no more wisdom than the Muslim who says the same thing; you have no more TRUTH than the Muslim who says the same thing; you have no more right to heaven than the Muslim who says the same thing; you have no more evidence than the Muslim who says the same thing.

If you want to belive in God, then learn about Him from the things that are definitively made by God - the fossil record, DNA, and the light from the heavens that tells us of an ancient expanding universe. What is really ironic and stupid to me are fundamentalists who claim to believe in the TRUTH of God, and then work hard their entire lives to ignore and disbelieve the truth of God as God wrote in stone, our bodies, and the heavens. That is, anyone who thinks the world is 6000 years old, evolution is a myth, and the Book of Revelations or Noah's flood are true is insulting God by calling Him a liar for giving us all this incontrovertible evidence.

You cannot claim to believe in God while actively avoiding in believing in God's works.

They've gone far in accepting democracy in their governance.

But their country -- like many in that part of the world -- still has to evolve to the point they become more tolerant, and grant freedoms to women and minorities that are unlike their male-authority-driven, semi-xenophobic values that still exists in their homogenous cultures.

Give them a couple more generations of time as their younger people that become their next leaders get more exposure to the outside world, and it will happen. They will eventually learn to internally benefit from the fruits of inevitable diversity.

And if they want to raise much of their people out from poverty they will have no choice at some point but to do this, engage in the expansion of their trade, commerce and grant educational opportunities to expose their people with their neighbors and the rest of the world.

Islam, christianity, different flavor of the same @!$%#.

WRONG!

Christianity says that if you don't follow Christ (the only way) you will not go to heaven.

In Radial Islam, if you don't do things the way we want, we will arrest you. If you don't capitulate to what we want we will eliminate you.

Big difference!

Now if we could just stop the spread of all religions that are governed by man written laws and rules there would be no persecution because of faith, no more holy wars or some blessed over others.

Religion was created by those who feared all that they could not understand about the natural world, created by those who felt the need to pay homage and make sacrifices to appease the gods in order to gain favor as was common between Kings and their subjects of the times.

There is but one God, but one holy text, the conscience, and no soul is more or less valuable than another

DB Akron,

You really need to realize your 'Christianity says' rings hollow to those not of your faith, it is no more persuasive than Islam, or any other religious text 'says'.............The Christian Bible like all other religious texts are but a series of short, unending stories based purely upon 'hear-say'.......Can you tell us why all the short stories in the Bible always end with "and it came to pass"?

Jo Ann-You don't hear these type of stories coming out of Iraq.

True,the headline from Iraq today was:

Car bombs rip through Baghdad shops, restaurants, killing 26.

Ellis:

I'm not religious but at least christianity gives those of other faiths the opportunity to practice theirs. Why are the islamists so affraid to provide the same freedom?

Acts by definition details events after the Crucifixion. It's the "Acts of the Apostles". Therefore it is NOT what Christ said or did, it is what his FOLLOWERS said and did. When you want to talk about what Christ said and did you can not include anything after the first four which purport to be the Gospels of the Disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. EVERYTHING after that is after Christ died and contains no teachings of CHRIST but instead teachings of other people. Greater than HALF the New Testament purports to be letters written by a man who persecuted the Apostles and NEVER MET CHRIST. Christianity is supposed to be following the teachings of CHRIST - not Paul, not Peter, not Matthew, not Andrew, not Thomas ... it is not "Apostlanity" it is CHRISTianity. Therefore, the idea of how to spread it should be found in what CHRIST taught and not what people bastardized later.

And for a non-Christian to teach you about what the names of the books and who supposedly wrote them and what period of time they are supposed to cover and where in the formation of The Way (which is what CHRIST wanted to call it) they fall is really sad. If you didn't know that the full title of the book Acts is The Acts of the Apostles then how good of a Christian are you?

The Christian Bible like all other religious texts are but a series of short, unending stories based purely upon 'hear-say'

Ellis......., some books in the New testament were written by those who actually witnessed the events described. There is little dispute among historians that Jesus Christ was was a real person. Now if you want to argue who Jesus was, and if he really performed miricles during his time, that is an issue you can argue. That said, because something is "hear-say", doesn't automatically make it false. The Viking culture has no written record of their journeys to North America. All were passed on from generation to generation in the "sagas", or word of mouth or hear-say if you will. As it turns out these sagas are consistent with archaeological artifacts recovered from Iceland, Greenland, and the North American mainland. It is irrefutable fact that the Vikings were in America centuries before Columbus.

Democracy in Libya my a**.

A book written by someone describing what they saw and heard is not hearsay. If I write a book describing what someone told me they saw and heard , that is hearsay. Hearsay is not necessarily inaccurate. If the writer accurately describes what the witness saw and heard and accurately reported to the writer , then it is as valid and true as non-hearsay. The issue is the further away you get from the actual witness of the event the greater chance for errors in transmission.

I'm just dying to hear from the Godophobe bigots out there, so I have a question for you and be honest...

We all know that the VAST majority of you are good little socialist liberals who think you are so much smarter than those ignorant bastards, but ......

How do you reconcile in your heart your slavish worship of Obama when he's a professed Christian???

Obviously you believe that 75 to 80 percent of Americans are suffering from a mass paranoid delusion, and that includes Barack AND Michelle Obama. How were you able to vote for a man who is obviously insane for believing and obviously must be really stupid??

And those of you who want all the Christians thrown in jail, or to lions, or whatever, Are you gonna start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue??

Somehow I doubt it......

Cat-1200657 "Christ said to obey the laws of men ("Render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's") and if people would not listen to the message to depart peacefully and shake the dust from your sandals. Therefore, if Christians are forbidden by law to proselytize, they must obey that law PEACEFULLY."

Not entirely true - The Jewish religious leaders threw Peter and other Apostles in prison for preaching about Jesus and commanded them to stop, and when brought again before the Jewish leaders who demanded to know why they didn't stop proselytizing, Peter's response was "We ought to obey God as ruler rather than men" (Acts of the Apostles 5:25-29).

If secular laws conflict with commands from God (Go, and make disciples - Matthew 28:19), Christians are obliged to obey God, not men.

"The Christian Bible like all other religious texts are but a series of short, unending stories based purely upon 'hear-say'"

Using that narrow definition, all of our written history is 'hearsay'.

If you believe this story, YOU, sir, are a moron.

More like, 'Four People Arrested Under Suspicion of Espionage - U.S. Government Disavows'

Gary,

I do not question whether Jesus was a real man, but whether Jesus was anymore a son of God than you and I. To explain virgin Mary's pregnancy the Bible puts forth a story of an angel coming to Joseph in his sleep, telling him, "fear not, it is the son of God". The question I have is, how in the world could anyone verify an angel spoke to Joseph in his sleep. In those times, in that culture, a woman who became pregnant out of wedlock was considered a whore, unworthy of marriage. But what if Joseph and Mary really loved one another and happened to jump the gun a little before getting married? How could they explain Mary's pregnancy and get the blessings of the community..That may be where the angel comes in.

My point was, testimony that is uncorroborated and unverifiable, is hear-say evidence. And since the Bible has been edited several times in varying forms and denominations, how can we accept any of it's proclamations as truth.........If but one word or sentence in the Bible, or any religious text is untrue or inaccurate, how can one accept any of it as gospel truth not knowing which word or sentence is untrue or inaccurate ?.......All were man interpreted, edited and written

Ellis ===== Not so. You are confused about what constitutes hearsay. If I see you run out of a bank with a gun in one hand and a bag of money in the other and then I testify to this, my testimony is not hearsay.

This is so even though no one corroborates my statement because no one else saw you and it can't be verified because all in the bank were killed.

You can question the validity and accuracy of various observations and statements in the Bible but if they are made by those who saw or heard the events or statements , hearsay is not a valid basis upon which to call them into question.

The problem, gary, is that the actual authorship of the "gospels" has long been questioned. At that point, it becomes hearsay since the stories are passed down from community to community before they were written down. There's even been speculation that the "Gospels" were "inspired by" specific Apostles. Also, half of the letters purportedly from Saul/Paul do not have the same literary/linguistic style so not all of the letters were authored by the same person. EVERY person who has been through Seminary or similar college designed to lead to a ministry has been educated on the fact that the Gospels don't even AGREE with each other if you ready them side by side. Therefore their factual accuracy is in question.

Cat ======= My point , in response to Ellis , was to disabuse him of his false definition of hearsay. Testimony that is " uncorroborated and unverifiable " is not hearsay as he asserted. See my response at #1.63.

Once again , I will say , hearsay is not ipso facto false. Hearsay can be just as accurate and true as non-hearsay evidence.

If you have a child in school who tells you that his friend , Bob , heard another student , John , say he was going to bring a gun to school , I hope you won't tell your child not to worry , that what he is telling you is simply hearsay and therefore false. It may very well be true that Bob accurately heard John's threat and even though when your child repeats it to you it is hearsay it is true.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Christians are constantly complaining that they can't do as they please when it comes to practicing as they want and how they see fit; but many (not saying all) are willing to let others live as they see fit. There's no middle ground with many Christian groups and they become hostile and violent when they're denied what they feel is their right to spread the word of God. But they don't take into consideration that maybe not everyone wants to live as they do and that is an affront to them. So they claim persecution at not being able to convert. Many of those who are unwilling to convert become hostile and vocal about not wanting to convert.

Really, it just boils down to nobody having respect for one another. I figure if people can live without killing one another and not harm another for their religion then people should be able to do as they please.

When any religion obtains enough power to run the government, then freedom of speech or religion goes out the door. When one religion can dominate, it has the power to brainwash most of the citizens and their politicians. It seems to work very well in America in the rural South of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and so forth.

Throw them to the lions!

Ah yes, the fools who so quickly jumped to call it "the Muslim Spring."

The Islamic world remains in a cold, dark winter. The metaphor refers to sooooo many things. The Arab culture and society of centuries ago is long dead.

Nothing worse then bible thumpers going door to door or country to country, spreading fairy tales about invisible gods. That's why I hate Jehovah witnesses knocking on my door.

BP ====== No , there is something much worse than someone coming to your door and asking to speak to you about their beliefs.

That's someone coming to your door and demanding that you adopt theirs or they will behead you. Or someone throwing acid on your little girl because she wants to go to school and become literate. Or someone raping your daughter or wife but you can't do anything about it because she doesn't have 4 make witnesses to testify to the crime , so they receive no punishment. Or someone strapping on a bomb and waltzing into the wedding of one of your relatives and detonating it , murdering 40 or 50 of the guests.

Yeah, there is something worse than someone asking to speak to you.

This gives France and Denmark an example to follow while exterminating the Muslim plague. France has already outlawed Hijabs and Burkas as terrorist symbols. It will be interesting to see their reaction to this as a Christian countries working on outlawing Islam. Ooh man you just stepped in dog Shiite......

Seriously, why cant the USA mind its own business? I'm not saying what they are doing is right but I'm saying the USA needs to think about their own people who are looking for work. BTW not all Muslims do stuff like that, Gary. I know because there are a lot of Muslims in my neighborhood who are really nice people with well-behaved children. They even send us their traditional food during one of their holidays such as Eid, so you shouldn't stereo-type just because some of them do bad things!

(Sorry if I spelled Eid wrong)

That is why we should support only communist based dictatorships.

If anyone thinks getting rid of a dictator was the reason they should do a little more reading and a lot less MSM. A Central bank is what all these invasions are about. First Afghanistan then Iraq and Libya. Soon Iran and Syria will be attacked. All of these countries have their own currencies and use gold to back it. The banksters hate that they cannot control their money and will do everything to make that happen. It's all about power and money the useless eaters mean nothing to them.

Bombing them would help them. They are the scourge of the planet. Dirty filthy animals.

"Dirty filthy animals"

And you wonder why they don't trust us. And what would God think of what you just posted?

Frankly -

"Dirty filthy animals"

a true teabagger would not have posted that.

Well for you that would be twice a year.

Francle, do you believe your wife really goes to JC Penny for 5 hours?, LOL

IXLR8 do you really believe that latex sex doll you ordered over the Internet is real.

freeloader, I was not aware they were made of latex, enjoy your Miss Trogan.......

Any bible thumper that stupid doesn't deserve to live...

Your hearing is pretty selective.

If the USA began arresting muslims for the same reason the world would explode in protests. These muslims are so scared of Christianity that they feel they must prosecute anyone who is not a muslim. So called freedom of religion does not exist in much of the world esp in so called muslim nations. They are so far into the Stone Age they cant see beyond their nose. Are they really so scared that if their people actually heard a Christian cleric they would see theirs is not the "true religion". It after all came after Christianity and is partially derived from Christianity.

Gee Bill Black you must have been a huge fan of Moammar Quadaffi....I men nobody would ever accuse him of being a terrorist.

Curious- And, christianity came from Judaism, which was "first", alongside Hinduism. And, all those came from Goddess Earth based spiritualities, which are still the only peaceful spiritualities, still in existence and are not "man-made" (which is where all the trouble comes from, anyway- "man" made).

You are aware there is more then one country in the middle east right? Seems you are having trouble telling them apart.

They do all act the same, treat their women like a possession, throw stones at people... Nothing but hate driven savages quick to judge and punish based on stupid religious beliefs of some lame prophet of Allah. More like Satan because what they do Satan loves. Religion has been used as a wedge to divide people for centuries, spirituality bonds people together, learn the difference and know your leaders of religion by their deeds. The pedophile protecting Pope is included in on this comment too.

Yeah, guys in the U.S. NEVER treat women like possessions. <grins> Otherwise, I'm with you on organized religions.

I could not have said it better. So, they don't want you there, will kill you, and you go anyway. More power to you.

The people in this country voted for a theocracy. They want this. Why any stupid Christian would deliberately go there to try to convert them is suicide. Indeed, they think we in the US are immoral - we treat (sometimes) women as equals, "let" them dress immodestly (omigod, did you see that chick's ankles!!), speak in public, drive. We will never understand such a culture. I say leave them alone and let them implode - and put anyone from or who's been to such a country on a watch list.

Sounds like you could describe the 1st century christian cults the same way.

@captain

Yeah, the same people that called them cults called the Europeans that they massacred barbarians. Guess who did that? The Romans.

Quit advertising!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Muslins= Southern Baptist

Not sure if trolling... Or just really hateful towards freedom.

He's trolling; no one is that ignorant.

Good, everyone anywhere should be arrested for trying to spread religion. People seeking religion can easily find it.

If you live in the United States, don't worry... The religious nuts are destroying themselves day by day. Just the other day, I had some stupid pamphlet placed on my car. I was tempted to call the cops, because whoever placed the pamphlet interfered with my property. Every pamphlet placed, every so-called law that is created with religion in mind, and every other thing where religion is interjected into people's personal lives just further erodes organized religion. Keep it up!

I will never understand why people just can't keep their religion personal and to themselves. Sigh.

and by posting your anti-religion views here

people will never understand why you just can't keep that to yourself... sigh.

Or as Jonathan Swift once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

MJ1986-wish I could vote you up twice!

mtsr perhaps if the so called religious right would stop their hatred of other groups you would have a point.

Most people who go around screaming their religion and touting their 'Christianity' are nothing like what god intended. They use it as a weapon of attack.

well Frank, in America we have the 1rst amendment for many good documented reasons.

Now there is a process for changing that in our constitutional republic, knock yourself out.

No society has adapted not the religions. We still have Christians insisting this is a Christian nation and trying to make their beliefs into law.

Sounds more like Christians are so insecure that they need to recruit the unwilling and uninterested.

"... the only "religion" on the face of the earth with an attitude." -Fedex

Speak for yourself, Pharisee!

Keep the matches (for the faggot piles) away from this GOOBER, eh? -joe

But we can sure as hell go after Jews and Christians in this country

Whine much? How are people 'coming after' you? Protests at your place of worship? People wearing crosses attacked or arrested? No. Not even close. All you've gotta do is hear someone not believe, or make fun of, your ridiculous, unproven beliefs and you're 'under attack.' Christians are the whiniest bunch of crybabies on the planet.

if the so called "Christians' in this country are not threatening anybody then why do they work so hard to take the right of others away from them or prevent them from having hem in the first place.

I feel very threatened by that.

True, shrekk. If these people used tried and true Christian conversion techniques, how could we tell them from Islam.

Exaggerating a bit there.

publishing house where they were printing thousands of books that called for conversion to Christianity

That is not just wearing a cross, or carrying your religious book with you. Not really something someone should be jailed for but over the top exaggerations do nothing for an argument.

It isn't a crime in those places to be a follower of another religion. The crime occurs when you try to convert people to your religion. If they find a bible in your luggage at customs inspection, that isn't a problem. If they find 20 bibles and bundles of recruiting pamphlets, you're in trouble.

Robert, I'm not sure about the specific laws of Libya, but in many predominately Muslim countries, it is, in fact, a crime to convert. If you are born into a Muslim family, you must remain a Muslim, regardless of what your conscience tells you.

Furthermore, why should it be a crime to have 20 bibles and "recruiting" pamphlets? Handing out bibles and literature is not equal to forcing someone to convert. It's not even equal to forcing them to educate themselves and decide for themselves. It's just giving people an opportunity to decide for themselves. As far as I know, there are no Christian organizations out there kidnapping people off the streets and forcing them to read bibles.

FAITH! Otherwise known as ..... GULLIBILITY. -joe

Faith! Otherwise known as Conscious Avoidance or Willful Ignorance...a mechanism that actually protects the brain from becoming unable to function in situations that it just can’t handle.

“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”
-- Isaac Asimov

Belief is perfect for a lazy mind - religion has all the answers. Science doesn't - and the fact that science constantly evolves and learns is lost on the religious.

Atheism! Otherwise known as Conscious Avoidance or Willful Ignorance...a mechanism that actually cripples the brain from becoming open-minded enough to recognize the clues for God's existence all around us.

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man…In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.” (Albert Einstein)

“The more I study science the more I believe in God.” (Albert Einstein)

“A little bit of science averts people from God, a lot of it takes us back to Him.” (Louis Pasteur)

Kathy:

YOU WROTE: "Belief is perfect for a lazy mind - religion has all the answers. Science doesn't - and the fact that science constantly evolves and learns is lost on the religious."

MY RESPONSE: Well then, what about this partial list of history’s leading scientists who happen to be Christian?: Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Lemaitre, and Mendel.

A good number of these scientists were clergymen; Gassendi and Mersenne were priests. So was Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian astronomer who first proposed the “Big Bang” theory for the origin of the universe. Gregor Mendel, who discovered the principles of heredity, spent his entire adult life as a monk in an Augustinian monastery. Where would modern science be without the wisdom of these historical icons? Some were Protestant and some were Catholic, but all saw their scientific vocation in distinctly Christian terms.

Your comment contains nothing of substance and makes no sense. But I guess that's your preferred style of debate.

culheath,

A very wise man once proclaimed, " Truth and knowledge are sometimes fleeting, solutions and answers are sometimes bizarre, but only through open minds can truth and knowledge flow, closed minds most often serve as harbor to fear and ignorance."

Rhonda Lucky,

I'm not defending Kathy specifically, but in her context of religion being generally intolerant to new ideas compared to science, she does have a point.

As for your list of scientists, it's in the framework of the religion they were raised up in at the time and in that era of their political environment that shaped their future perceptions of their place in the universe as they grew up.

But they were fortunate that these great figures in science ended up in a position in their life as thinking, independent adults, to afford some degree of insulation from the Church authorities of their religion, so it would not interfere with their scientific explorations. Unfortunately, some of them weren't so lucky and still had to contend with the tyranny of their country's religious authorities imposing upon them to conform to the Church's view of the world and the universe.

For example, your partial list of scientists. The earlier back you go in history with their names, the more of them had religious conformity to doctrine and the imposition of theological laws that they had to deal with. It follows with the amount of religious freedom their governments granted their citizens at the time, during their nations' evolution from the Era of the Rule of the Royals and the Church, into the more enlightened Renaissance, then into the Reformation and into the Colonial Industrial Era. Let's just say it was safer to frame a few of their scientific views in spiritual terms when publishing or sharing their discoveries with their students and audience, than to run the risk of being arrested, tried and jailed -- or worse, tortured and executed by the Church authorities and the Royal Houses that made and broke the laws of the land to suit their agendas in the earlier centuries.

This doesn't mean that some of them didn't feel some connection to "the divine," and were just making it up to appease their Church's critics in power. Some had to, and others didn't. Most scientists though, were not raised up in their culture or born into families with a higher public status to press their children to become ministers or priests like a few of them. As we get closer into the timelines of the Modern Age that has more democracy in national governance than compared to the the previous, overarching rule of the Church, religious scientists becomes more of the historical exception, rather than the rule.

Plus, science isn't just based on Christian culture. Every major religion in other parts of the world had philosophers, free thinkers and scientists in their own right that all other great figures in science, medicine and technology built their discoveries upon what their predecessors had found, not just in their geographical region, but from others as well.

For example (and since this news article is about an Islamic country in the Middle East):

The roots of Islamic science drew primarily upon Arab, Persian, Indian and Greek learning. The extent of Islamic scientific achievement is not as yet fully understood, but it is extremely vast.

These achievements encompass a wide range of subject areas; most notably

• Mathematics
• Astronomy
• Medicine

Other notable areas, and specialized subjects, of scientific inquiry include

• Physics
• Alchemy and chemistry
• Cosmology
• Ophthalmology
• Geography and cartography
• Sociology
• Psychology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world

And let up not forget the contributions of philosophy, physics, and science coming from ancient, non-Christian Empires like the Mayans, the Chinese Dynasties, the Greeks and so on, in other parts of the world. For example, who invented the mathematical zero as a placeholder? Who invented the compass? Where did the study of the anatomy of the human body originate from? Who figured out the size of the Earth? I'll give a hint: It's wasn't Christians.

But not to detract any further: the subject being discussed here is Libya government's current intolerance to other religions being proselytized in their midst.

Shall we stick to discussing that?

rradiko:

YOU WROTE: "...the subject being discussed here is Libya government's current intolerance to other religions being proselytized in their midst. Shall we stick to discussing that?"

MY RESPONSE: If I remember correctly (and you can double-check me on this), I was NOT the first author to switch the discussion away from the topic of this thread. But when I read the numerous hate-laced and bigoted comments that were utterly foolish and lacked an iota of substance, I felt that someone had to respond to the nonsense. So I did.

Also, I never claimed that ONLY Christians or religious believers made bench-mark contributions to science. You erroneously assumed that's what I meant. Also, I have enough admiration for the historical icons of science, who happen to be religious believers, to presume that they were intelligent and courageous enough in their adult lives to disavow any religious beliefs if they so desired. After all, they were fervent scientists/free thinkers. Considering all the scientific knowledge that they accrued, and still believed in God, Wow! That's quite a testamonial to their conclusion that God really exists.

Boy that is a great idea make them rely 100% on Iran, I'm sure that will help the situation.

Considering how much Christians don't like gay people, you sure are a bunch of drama queens. news says "4 people arrested for preaching Christianity" your cry " OMG they are going to kill everyone for being Christian" Society tells you "you can't treat gay people like second class citizens" you say "OMG they are forcing me to be gay"

Picture this:

In Tennessee a Muslin group is handing out tracts promoting Islamic ideas to students as they enter and leave school.

Or better yet have them try to have a bunch of Muslim law
put up in the main hall of a public school.

Picture this CULHEATH this Muslim group in Tennessee would not be arrested handing out leaflets !

J PENCILLE,

No? Tell us what you think would most likely happen then.

"Killed the man who "we could work with" who "voluntarily" gave up his nuclear ambitions." rusty-Jarhead

RJH, guess we know what planet your "head" has been up (on) to make it "rusty"! -Uranus. -joe

You cannot change what is ingrained.

Muslims are born into religion and violence.

Christianity, while more stable has done it's share (of violence and killing).

Catholics are simply people who try to go against nature.

Mormons believe in gold tablets that never existed and think they are the only ones to be saved by God.

The God I know in my heart does not know or recognize any religion.

He probably abhors the man made crap as much as I do.

I have studied religions all over the world.

They are a man made abomination.

Christianity doesn't share the violence and killing?

forgive me, but what do you call everyone in history who has been murdered because they simply didn't live by the bible? There is no other group in the world whos kill count is higher than the groups following the bible. Catholics and Christians ( separately ) trump the Nazi parties body count, but you are right, they don;t share the violent thinking, they just bomb abortion clinics out of love.

tjsherant:

YOU WROTE: "There is no other group in the world whos kill count is higher than the groups following the bible. Catholics and Christians ( separately ) trump the Nazi parties body count..."

MY RESPONSE: Where's your documentation? Or do you just make up such reckless claims hoping that casual readers will accept them as FACTS? I've frequently heard/read that same false hysteria spewed by many individuals, who ALWAYS fail to include supporting documentation. And when I ask for their sources of information, they never seem able to cite any. So, either put up or shut up!

In any case, I've got a news flash for you: the greatest evils in history usually resulted from the denial of God, not the pursuit of Him. In the last century alone, more innocent people were murdered, tortured, and enslaved by secular ideologies – Nazism and Communism – than by all religions in recorded history. And I have the documentation to backup that statement.

Grab a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records and turn to the category "Judicial," sub-heading "Crimes: Mass killings." You'll find that carnage of unimaginable proportions resulted not from religion, but from institutionalized atheism. Guinness reports, "The greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against another is the 26.3 million Chinese killed during the regime of Mao Zedong between 1949 and May 1965 (total of 16 years)."

The Walker report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 went one step further. It placed "…the total death toll in China since 1949 (total of 22 years) between 32.25 and 61.7 million." For our purposes, I think it's reasonable to accept the figure of 47 million killed in China as a compromise average for the 22-year span mentioned in the Walker report.

In addition, Adolf Hitler murdered six million Jews during the holocaust, which was performed for ethnic cleansing and false economics. Hitler was a social Darwinist, slaughtering people who didn't fit his concept of an Aryan master race. That's why he also sent an untold number of gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally impaired, and other "undesirables" to the gas chambers.

In the USSR, Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimated that state repression and terrorism took over 60 million lives from 1917 to 1959 under Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev. However, the worst known per-capita genocide of all time happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot. According to Guinness, "More than one third of the eight million Khmers were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979."

Let me add to that mix some other recent atheist rulers who slaughtered vast numbers of people: Kim Il-Sung of North Korea dispatched approximately 1,600,000 people; Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia killed an estimated 1,072,000 people; and Nicolae Ceausescue of Romania put to death 60,000 folks.

In contrast, a recent comprehensive compilation of the history of ALL HUMAN WARFARE IN RECORDED HISTORY, "Encyclopedia of Wars" (a three-volume set by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod), documented 1,763 wars, of which only 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what the anti-religion bigots, such as yourself, consider to be "most" really amounts to LESS THAN 7% OF ALL WARS in history involve religion. Most wars are fought for power, territory, and resources, according to historians.

Furthermore, here's a comparative tally pertinent to our discussion: the total number of deaths estimated to lie at the feet of Christianity throughout recorded history is approximately 17 million. This number can be derived from totals presented in the "Encyclopedia of Wars" along with various websites, and includes ancient wars, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, various European wars during the Middle Ages, and even witchcraft trials. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the other two predominant religions (Judaism and Islam) are responsible for an equal number of deaths because there is no known documentation for those estimates. That brings us to 51 million deaths attributable to the three predominant religions throughout recorded history. Even if you add to that total the deaths attributable to obscure religions, you'd still be hard pressed to match the 120+ million death toll achieved by atheist leaders during only the last century.

Therefore 17 million deaths attributable to Christianity throughout all of recorded history (or 51 million estimated deaths attributable to all three main religions) pales in comparison to the 120+ million deaths attributable to atheist leaders during just the 20th Century alone!

The obvious conclusion here is that atheist leaders are far more brutal, sadistic, and savage on a far larger scale than religious folks have ever been. The FACTS speak for themselves...you just have to examine them with an open mind. Otherwise, ignorance and anti-religion bigotry will continue to cloud your thinking.

You might want to ponder the words of Will Rogers, who once said, "It's not the things we don't know
that gets us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't true."

Oh, by the way, I'm not Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I'm a Deist who doesn't belong to any particular organized religion. I'm just trying to combat the ignorance (like yours) supporting anti-religion bigotry on this website.

forgive me, but what do you call everyone in history who has been murdered because they simply didn't live by the bible? There is no other group in the world whos kill count is higher than the groups following the bible. Catholics and Christians ( separately ) trump the Nazi parties body count, but you are right, they don;t share the violent thinking, they just bomb abortion clinics out of love.

Actually a lot of muslims kill other muslims for not being jihadists. As many as 10 million people are not accounted for. Furthermore, no one takes into acount their honor killings( even if it is done in the name of religion).

I for one am surprised that MSN would report something like this. Too many christians are killed in muslim countries and are just ignored.

For example:

I'm sorry, but how can you be a Deist and defend religion? The rejection of religion is at the core of deist ideology. From Wiki ;

The concept of deism covers a wide variety of positions on a wide variety of religious issues. Following Sir Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, most commentators agree that two features constituted the core of deism:

Critical elements of deist thought included:

• Rejection of all religions based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God.
• Rejection of all religious dogma and demagogy.
• Rejection of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious "mysteries".

Constructive elements of deist thought included:

• God exists, created and governs the universe.
• God gave humans the ability to reason.

JustinB:

YOU WROTE: "I'm sorry, but how can you be a Deist and defend religion? The rejection of religion is at the core of deist ideology."

MY RESPONSE: My primary intent was to expose the anti-religion bigotry on this thread by presenting facts that dispute/negate the hysteria of the bigots. If you claim that I am JUST defending religion, then that's your opinion, which you are perfectly entitled to.

I believe in a Supreme Being (God or whatever name you choose), so that's one element I share with religious believers. However, my belief in God is based upon science, logic, philsophy, and common sense, without any input from the Bible, Koran, Torah, or other scriptural sources.

In a nutshell, even though the existence of God cannot be proven scientifically in a laboratory, there are enough clues to conclude that God exists beyond a reasonable doubt. For example, the existence of God is clearly indicated by an honest examination of the Argument from Design, two Laws of Thermodynamics, the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Biogenesis, clues from the Fossil Record, the Existence of Conscience, and the Wisdom of the Ages. These arguments collectively provide enough of a starting point for me to rightly conclude that a Higher Being of some kind exists.

I won't explain the above clues on this thread because that would require too much space, and I would have to deviate quite a bit from the thread topic.

For example, the existence of God is clearly indicated by an honest examination of the Argument from Design, two Laws of Thermodynamics, the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Biogenesis, clues from the Fossil Record, the Existence of Conscience, and the Wisdom of the Ages. These arguments collectively provide enough of a starting point for me to rightly conclude that a Higher Being of some kind exists.

None of those premises hold true at a quantum level. Your faith that your "creative" conclusions drawn from the sources you delineated represent a universal reality or proof of necessity for a "creator" is just that, faith. You are projecting metaphysical interpretations where none is needed. It is called teleological argument.

A teleological or design argument is an a posteriori argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe. The argument is based on an interpretation of teleology wherein purpose and design appear to exist in nature beyond the scope of any such human activities. The teleological argument suggests that, given this premise, the existence of a designer can be assumed, typically presented as God.

Thank you, MJ and RevO, for reminding the forum of these two basic facts that most of your fellow posters, because of their vitriolic hatred of Islamic religion and culture, conveniently forget.

And FYI, we do not put these people in power; their democratically elected governments do. Should we on the one hand encourage democracy and at the same time insist that the results of their elections conform to our geopolitical ambitions?

Exactly. I have a question for the people going nuts over these arrests; if someone from another country came here and KNOWINGLY broke our laws, would you defend that person simply because the laws of his/her country are different? We can not judge other countries and their laws - especially regarding religion - based on OUR laws. To do so is the height of arrogance.

This is a young democracy/representative Republic. They have a RIGHT to make their own laws, including not allowing any other religion besides Islam. It is THEIR country. How many people who are up in arms about these arrests would be similarly up in arms if the people were trying to convert the Muslims to Wicca, or Druidry, or Buddhism, or ANY other religion than Christianity/Judaism? I would bet SAFE money that those same people who are so upset over these arrests would say that the arrests are either good or would say it's Libya's prerogative to make those arrests. But because we're talking about Christianity they think that it's a bad thing.

I support freedom of religion - but a visit to a Native American reservation and conversations with residents about the previous and current state of Christian influence was enlightening. Whole families were torn apart because of cruel Catholic boarding school policies (lasting to the mid-fifties, I believe) that banned home visits except for summer. I can't see the benefit of spreading The Word there, because unemployment, alcoholism, drug use, high cancer stats, low birth survival rates, and an overall life span of 48 years has plagued reservation communities. I don't think Christianity's good intentions had much of an effect.

At one level, Christian proselytizing in Muslim countries announces the prevailing religion isn't good enough and we, the wonderful arrogant Christians, are going to bring the True Word. Islam has contributed a great deal to our early knowledge, and (excluding extremists) is a valid religion.

I am not surprised they are wary of Christians coming there to convert them...

Seems there was this little parade of invasions and was called the Crusades where they tried to do that

"Believe in God," -viewer unready

?? WHICH ONE DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO ?? One of those in the wholey babble? -joe

The one you might see when your lights go out, and suddenly come back on.

I hope for you it's the soft white light.

And not the glow of a fire.

where do you get your facts? your statements are false and foolish.

Viewer_Ready:

YOU WROTE: "Religion kills more than anything else on Earth."

MY RESPONSE: Can you back up your claim with some credible documentation, or do you just spew such hysteria and nonsense hoping that some gullible readers or those half-asleep will believe you?