Posted by pancho from adsl-64-165-199-142.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (64.165.199.142) on Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 1:20PM :
In Reply to: Re: Creepy Site posted by Gandhi from spider-mtc-ti062.proxy.aol.com (64.12.101.177) on Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 7:11AM :
I read the Koran once. It was rough going in parts...but I have never been able to stomach the Old Testicles. While the people at the time of King James did a good job with poetry and stuff when they had half a chance...the part about burnt offerings and the antics of that madman turned me off quickly. As to the New Testicles...I can't help but admire Jesus, though all the time I don't know what he said and what he didn't etc. Still the image of a man alone, contradicting some of those elders, knowing he was asking for it...and saying some of the gentlest things ever said,,,in and around all the misanthropic and not so nice things about woman, and fun etc...is a pleasant thing to contemplate...even though not much of it was original. In spite of what Christians would have us believe...common decency and kindness and playing with children and helping old people cross the street did NOT originate with Christianity...there were a lot of kind, decent Assyrians and others around long before Christ was born.
The Koran at least didn't have rivers of blood in it. There were no Diddling parents and NO innocent animals having their throats slit and bodies chopped up to offer Allah kebobs.
Muhammad was an Arab after all, born into a certain kind of society...have to accept that. He was able to inspire people also and got them to change their ways drastically...Christ was a good Jew, he didn't ask his people to radically alter their beliefs. Muhammad had to stand up and say "no more idols...only one God" And he had to be prepared to fight off resistance.
Other than that he seems too like a gentle man...and I especially like his refusal to be a god...the fact that he worked for a woman...married an older woman...made a point of being good to women...and as a messenger of Allah, and not his son, he remained a man, having a terriby hard mission at hand...without the benefit of a God's status and powers...and without the bloody retribution of a "loving" father just itching to have him murdered.
That's the toughest part for me in the contention that the god of the New Testicles was a Loving God...a kind and compassionate god. Jesus dropped hints, like Love one another...suffer the children, NOT make them suffer...but that old fart never got it...insisted on his blood sacrifice as if his dear son...one I would have cherished, was a goat or cow.
We would think a parent deranged today who insisted his gentle son be sent into combat in such a way as to make sure he got killed.
I like the old prophets Amos and Jeremiah because they argued with God, talked back and tried to make deals...also because they fought with the kings and other people too.
Take them all three together and there isn't a whole lot to get excited over. Budhism and Zen especially seems the most civilized and humane...just live kindly and be good to Nature...for the rest, who really knows...knows enough to go killing the children?
-- pancho
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