With many jews, christians, and muslims wanting their religions mixed in with their governments to rule over them as theocracies.. it's time to investigate these various religions. Later on we can decide if a planet full of nations ruled via different religious laws is even a good idea to begin with.





I'll start off with the youngest of the Big 3, the muslim faith.

Al-hajar Al-aswad, ie The Black Stone of Mecca.
http://www.crystalinks.com/blackstone.html
Why do these people worship a meteorite?




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Anyone else please feel free to field any questions for the faithful of the various religions.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

Because they live too far from Graceland, which worships a drug addict who died on a toilet.

Your premise is valid yet limited. By "Big 3," I think your case could be even better shown by the true Big 3 in terms of known adherents. Numerous tales of theocratic abuses prove the general rule that overt religion is a harm to any nation. It sure has been for the muslim countries.

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Delivering tasty bite-sized Clues to liberals since 1965.

okay fair enough criteria... so who am I missing, the buddhist? hindu? Sure as hell ain't the followers of the the nordic gods.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

First, I support church/state separation. I oppose school prayer and would approve of the Ten Commandments on public buildings only with other documents of historical importance for a proper context. I have no problem with block grants to religious charities, but the money must be going to charity rather than proselytizing. The same would be true of an actively atheist charity (if such a group exists). Government money shouldn't go to encouraging or discouraging religion in general nor any particular religious or non-religious belief system. I do support school vouchers to both religious and secular schools to prevent poorer parents from being forced to give their children a non-religious education, but that viewpoint goes against my grain on church/state issues. I support gay marriage, oppose blasphemy laws and think that public education about carnal matters should simply teach the biological facts without a pro-abstinence or pro-contraception agenda. I've even ignored my initial instincts and decided that pornography should not be censored unless children are likely to see it.
Having stated that, I am a Christian. As for whether Christianity and other religions are myth or reality, there is no rational way of knowing. Experience is unreliable, moreover. A religious experience could be genuine or it could be a hallucination. All affirmations or denials concerning anything religious or supernatural are inherently unverifiable. In other words, all of the following statements are equally "likely" to be true:

1. There is one God.

2. There are 100 gods.

3. There is no god.

4. There is an afterlife.

5. There is no afterlife.

6. All cosmic forces are contained within a giant Brussels sprout.

In other words, all statements about religion, whether supportive of it or opposed to it, are rationally meaningless. Therefore, I readily concede that I am a Christian based solely on non-rational faith. Accordingly, I certainly have no right nor any desire to enforce the beliefs that come from my "leap of faith" onto others.

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

I think Buddhist clearly qualifies, as does Christianity. Without some fairly lengthy study, I'm not even sure Islam is #3 or even #4 or #5.

Any way you slice it, though, the bloodiest religion on this planet remains the global threat it has always been. And yes it does worship a meteorite.

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Delivering tasty bite-sized Clues to liberals since 1965.

Good post, Force.... a religion whose followers have finally moved into the 21st century and see no need for their government to get into the church+state business sounds reasonable to me.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

Thank you, and I thank raytri for removing the last vestiges of theocratic thought from my mind when I first started posting here in 2005. He showed me that the ACLU wasn't, as Christian Right sites had led me to believe, trying to suppress Christianity and had in fact defended Christian expression on numerous occasions. I also thank Soren Kierkegaard and Logical Positivists for the general philosophical ideas in my above post. This reads like an Academy Award acceptance speech.

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

Hmm.. we need charts and graphs to find out how many followers these various religions have.

Anyone have the numbers for this? (iirc estimates for the jews are 15million worldwide with the vast majority living in the USA).


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Whooa.. do you really want to rank religions according to bodycounts?

Christianity has emptied whole continents and islands in the past (conservative estimates for the death toll once the europeans landed in south america was 8million dead natives within 10 years of the arrival of the conquistadors). Add to that the various crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, genocides, etc... I'm thinking christianity would come out on top of 'bloodiest religion in history' ranking.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

My next question is for the oldest of the Big3 Ibrahimic religions... the jewish faith (or to be more precise, Israel, since they are already a jewish theocracy).


For The Choosen People™, there is a saying that goes like this:

If people hate you for 1,000 years, you can blame them.
If you are persecuted for 2,000 years, perhaps you're unlucky.
If however people still don't like you after 3,000 years, perhaps it's time to ask yourselves if you're doing something wrong.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...223357,00.html

So my question is; Who the hell choose you, and what were you choosen for?
*I'm asking because my nation of 300 million unchoosen americans has been having to subsidise your theocratic nation of 5 million Choosen People™ with $4Billion a year in aid.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

From a political perspective, I oppose all foreign aid per se. I support giving loans to foreign countries but not gifts. However, regarding Judaism, it doesn't view the nation of Israel or the Jewish people as superior to other nations or people. The Orthodox Jewish interpretation is that Jews were simply chosen to have a collective spiritual vocation. Conservative Judaism interprets chosenness a special burden rather than an entitlement to privileges. Reform Judaism states that all Jews, whether they are in the traditional land of Israel or not, are chosen, and like Conservative Judaism, it interprets chosenness as a special obligation on Jews rather than to them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as..._denominations

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)