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That’s reprehensible, but also refreshingly open-minded. It shows an awareness that other religions deserve an equal footing to his own. I prefer this over the

That’s reprehensible, but also refreshingly open-minded. It shows an awareness that other religions deserve an equal footing to his own. I prefer this over the nuts who decry Sharia law while wanting to implement a Christian equivalent.

rglullis 2y ago
Any Christian fundamentalist who advocates for its religion to become law is a bad Christian who never understood the lesson behind "Render unto Caesar...". Now, contrast with Islamic teachings. Not every Muslim will advocate for Sharia, but there is a non-negligible part of them (leadership included) who think that not advocating for Sharia is a sin.
- wat10000 2y ago
  What’s the contrast? In both cases, there are good people who understand that their religion restricts them, not others, and there are bad people who think the government should enforce their religion.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    What part of Islam actively promotes separation of church and state? What country with a majority Islamic population is currently going through a secularization process?
    - wat10000 2y ago
      What part of Christianity actively promotes it? There’s that one line, which meaning is debated, in a book full of stories about religious governments. In any case, I only care about the practicalities. In terms of what they try to achieve, there’s no real difference between the Christian and Muslim dominionists.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        > There’s that one line. And centuries of liberal democracies where the church was just one institution that had no direct rule over its subjects?
        larkost 2y ago
        The word "direct" is carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence. The Catholic Church (as well as the Protestant and others) are very responsible for, or at least implicated in, many horrible things in the last few hundred years alone: - signed off on the slave trade for hundreds of years (even gave excuses about how that was God's will) - during World War II they promised to hide many Jewish children, only to subsequently steal them from their parents arguing that "they are now Christian, it would be a sin to give them to Jews" - the inquisitions - were the justification for so many wars (conversion by the sword) - have long been a tool of repressive governments, arguing that it fell under "obey your father" - in the U.S. many churches, including the Catholic Church have preached that voting for one party (Democrats) is a sin (often about abortion, but other topics have been raised) In general, the Church's political power has waned over the last 500 years or so, but there are an awful lot of calls from Republicans saying that this is where we have gone wrong. One only look to the political donations of Opes Dei (Catholic branch dedicated to getting Cristian influence over the "Lay" sphere) to see them as major power players today. The Heritage Foundation (main writers of Project 2025) are intimately bound with the organization. And Chief Justice Roberts is also associated. So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players.
        rglullis 2y ago
        > So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players. So are all the other countless media companies, tech corporations, Hollywood, labor unions, pharma companies, academia... From this list, which one do you think is more intertwined with Government affairs? The Catholic Church or Amazon? The Mormons or Blueshield? Seventh Day Adventists or Disney? The Baptists or General Motors? The Anglicans or FOX News?
  - angra_mainyu 2y ago
    Actually fairly simple. Killing someone for insulting Christianity => goes against Christian theology. Killing someone for insulting islam/moe => completely in line with Islam.
Lionga 2y ago
Did not expect to read on HN that thinking it is good to kill people for a caricature is "refreshingly open-minded"
- wat10000 2y ago
  Do I need to put “that’s reprehensible” in bigger letters or something?
  - Lionga 2y ago
    No you just need to stop there (or better find more drastic tone, but ok) and not make it sound ok, heck be a good thing afterwards.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      Dude was leader of a massive organization that claims to be a divine instrument and the only path to salvation. Acknowledging another religion as anything other than heresy is a step up.
      - Lionga 2y ago
        So if the terrorist of charlie hebdo would have just tortured the journalists there for a few hours and maybe cut of their fingers that would also be a "step up" or "refreshingly open-minded"? Dude I can not believe how it can be anything but horrible to make acts of terrorism and killing of innocent anything but the worst humans can do.
        wat10000 2y ago
        No. Using soft language about someone else's words is not the same as using soft language about torture. It's not even remotely similar. There isn't some transitive property of outrage here. If you can't tell the difference between saying "these terrorists had reasonable motivations for murdering those innocent people" and "at least that guy's awful statement has one thing going for it" then I really can't help you.
skissane 2y ago
> I prefer this over the nuts who decry Sharia law while wanting to implement a Christian equivalent. The idea of a "Christian equivalent" to Sharia law is actually very fringe. The near unanimous teaching of Christianity, from the Church Fathers through to the mainstream Reformers, is that the criminal laws in the Jewish Torah were only ever intended for Jews, and Christians are not bound by the letter of them – they could be used as a source of moral principles which might influence secular legislation, but were not meant to be directly applied in Christian societies. And Christianity always drew a distinction between ecclesiastical law, which governed the internal affairs of the Church (canon law), and temporal law (criminal and civil) which governed society at large. Temporal law was derived from secular, pre-Christian sources (especially the laws of the Roman Empire, but also the legal traditions of the Germanic tribes which invaded it); Christianity influenced aspects of it but the bulk of it was non-Christian in origin. Canon law did sometimes intrude into issues most nowadays would consider secular (such as marriage and inheritance), but the bulk of everyday legal matters were governed by the law of the State, not the law of the Church – the two were kept distinct (with separate court systems, legal professions and legal education), even if much more intertwined than most people nowadays would feel comfortable with. It was only in the 20th century that a small group of American Protestants (R. J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen and Gary North) began to spread the contrary idea, theonomy, that the criminal laws of the Torah are meant to be applied by Christians in the present day, as opposed to merely serving as a source of moral principle. But this is a very novel idea in Christian history, and it remains one which the vast majority of Protestants (even conservative Protestants) formally reject, to say nothing of the resolute Catholic and Orthodox opposition to it. Islam is very different in that, unlike Christianity, it always proposed its religious laws (Sharia) as something to be adopted by the State. The whole Church-vs-State distinction which is fundamental to most Christians never existed to anywhere near the same degree in Islam, prior to the modern period. In mediaeval Muslim-ruled states, all judges were religious officials primarily implementing religious law – with decrees of the secular ruler at best serving as a supplement to it – quite unlike the situation which prevailed in Christian-ruled states, where Church and State had two parallel court systems applying two separate legal systems. The closest the Muslim world came to that, was granting religious minorities (primarily Jews and Christians) the right to legal autonomy, to impose their own laws and courts on their own communities (primarily in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance) – but as the law of the state, Sharia applied to everybody. And among Jews, the vast majority believe that the Torah laws (with a few exceptions) were only meant to apply to Jews; and shouldn't be the law of the State of Israel prior to the coming of the Messiah. There is a minority who disagree (Kahanists, Hardal, some hardline Religious Zionists), and believe the modern State of Israel should implement Torah law today, but >95% of Jews worldwide disagree with them. Even the vast majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews disagree with them. So I really think drawing this kind of parallel between Islamic Sharia and Christianity or Judaism displays either a lack of understanding of all three religions, or else an excessive focus on very fringe minority positions. Although I also recognise that a lot of people drawing the parallel are actually complaining about attempts by conservative Christians (and to a lesser degree Jews) to legislate their own moral views on controversial social issues – but that isn't really akin to Islamic Sharia (except for the very fringe Christian reconstructionist/theonomist/Kahanist/etc minorities), since they are trying to amend secular law based on religion-influenced morality, quite unlike the Sharia approach of directly applying religious law to essentially secular issues such as murder cases or business contracts.

rglullis 2y ago

Any Christian fundamentalist who advocates for its religion to become law is a bad Christian who never understood the lesson behind "Render unto Caesar...". Now, contrast with Islamic teachings. Not every Muslim will advocate for Sharia, but there is a non-negligible part of them (leadership included) who think that not advocating for Sharia is a sin.

wat10000 2y ago
What’s the contrast? In both cases, there are good people who understand that their religion restricts them, not others, and there are bad people who think the government should enforce their religion.
- rglullis 2y ago
  What part of Islam actively promotes separation of church and state? What country with a majority Islamic population is currently going through a secularization process?
  - wat10000 2y ago
    What part of Christianity actively promotes it? There’s that one line, which meaning is debated, in a book full of stories about religious governments. In any case, I only care about the practicalities. In terms of what they try to achieve, there’s no real difference between the Christian and Muslim dominionists.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      > There’s that one line. And centuries of liberal democracies where the church was just one institution that had no direct rule over its subjects?
      - larkost 2y ago
        The word "direct" is carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence. The Catholic Church (as well as the Protestant and others) are very responsible for, or at least implicated in, many horrible things in the last few hundred years alone: - signed off on the slave trade for hundreds of years (even gave excuses about how that was God's will) - during World War II they promised to hide many Jewish children, only to subsequently steal them from their parents arguing that "they are now Christian, it would be a sin to give them to Jews" - the inquisitions - were the justification for so many wars (conversion by the sword) - have long been a tool of repressive governments, arguing that it fell under "obey your father" - in the U.S. many churches, including the Catholic Church have preached that voting for one party (Democrats) is a sin (often about abortion, but other topics have been raised) In general, the Church's political power has waned over the last 500 years or so, but there are an awful lot of calls from Republicans saying that this is where we have gone wrong. One only look to the political donations of Opes Dei (Catholic branch dedicated to getting Cristian influence over the "Lay" sphere) to see them as major power players today. The Heritage Foundation (main writers of Project 2025) are intimately bound with the organization. And Chief Justice Roberts is also associated. So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players.
        rglullis 2y ago
        > So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players. So are all the other countless media companies, tech corporations, Hollywood, labor unions, pharma companies, academia... From this list, which one do you think is more intertwined with Government affairs? The Catholic Church or Amazon? The Mormons or Blueshield? Seventh Day Adventists or Disney? The Baptists or General Motors? The Anglicans or FOX News?
- angra_mainyu 2y ago
  Actually fairly simple. Killing someone for insulting Christianity => goes against Christian theology. Killing someone for insulting islam/moe => completely in line with Islam.

Lionga 2y ago

Did not expect to read on HN that thinking it is good to kill people for a caricature is "refreshingly open-minded"

wat10000 2y ago
Do I need to put “that’s reprehensible” in bigger letters or something?
- Lionga 2y ago
  No you just need to stop there (or better find more drastic tone, but ok) and not make it sound ok, heck be a good thing afterwards.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Dude was leader of a massive organization that claims to be a divine instrument and the only path to salvation. Acknowledging another religion as anything other than heresy is a step up.
    - Lionga 2y ago
      So if the terrorist of charlie hebdo would have just tortured the journalists there for a few hours and maybe cut of their fingers that would also be a "step up" or "refreshingly open-minded"? Dude I can not believe how it can be anything but horrible to make acts of terrorism and killing of innocent anything but the worst humans can do.
      - wat10000 2y ago
        No. Using soft language about someone else's words is not the same as using soft language about torture. It's not even remotely similar. There isn't some transitive property of outrage here. If you can't tell the difference between saying "these terrorists had reasonable motivations for murdering those innocent people" and "at least that guy's awful statement has one thing going for it" then I really can't help you.

skissane 2y ago

> I prefer this over the nuts who decry Sharia law while wanting to implement a Christian equivalent. The idea of a "Christian equivalent" to Sharia law is actually very fringe. The near unanimous teaching of Christianity, from the Church Fathers through to the mainstream Reformers, is that the criminal laws in the Jewish Torah were only ever intended for Jews, and Christians are not bound by the letter of them – they could be used as a source of moral principles which might influence secular legislation, but were not meant to be directly applied in Christian societies. And Christianity always drew a distinction between ecclesiastical law, which governed the internal affairs of the Church (canon law), and temporal law (criminal and civil) which governed society at large. Temporal law was derived from secular, pre-Christian sources (especially the laws of the Roman Empire, but also the legal traditions of the Germanic tribes which invaded it); Christianity influenced aspects of it but the bulk of it was non-Christian in origin. Canon law did sometimes intrude into issues most nowadays would consider secular (such as marriage and inheritance), but the bulk of everyday legal matters were governed by the law of the State, not the law of the Church – the two were kept distinct (with separate court systems, legal professions and legal education), even if much more intertwined than most people nowadays would feel comfortable with. It was only in the 20th century that a small group of American Protestants (R. J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen and Gary North) began to spread the contrary idea, theonomy, that the criminal laws of the Torah are meant to be applied by Christians in the present day, as opposed to merely serving as a source of moral principle. But this is a very novel idea in Christian history, and it remains one which the vast majority of Protestants (even conservative Protestants) formally reject, to say nothing of the resolute Catholic and Orthodox opposition to it. Islam is very different in that, unlike Christianity, it always proposed its religious laws (Sharia) as something to be adopted by the State. The whole Church-vs-State distinction which is fundamental to most Christians never existed to anywhere near the same degree in Islam, prior to the modern period. In mediaeval Muslim-ruled states, all judges were religious officials primarily implementing religious law – with decrees of the secular ruler at best serving as a supplement to it – quite unlike the situation which prevailed in Christian-ruled states, where Church and State had two parallel court systems applying two separate legal systems. The closest the Muslim world came to that, was granting religious minorities (primarily Jews and Christians) the right to legal autonomy, to impose their own laws and courts on their own communities (primarily in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance) – but as the law of the state, Sharia applied to everybody. And among Jews, the vast majority believe that the Torah laws (with a few exceptions) were only meant to apply to Jews; and shouldn't be the law of the State of Israel prior to the coming of the Messiah. There is a minority who disagree (Kahanists, Hardal, some hardline Religious Zionists), and believe the modern State of Israel should implement Torah law today, but >95% of Jews worldwide disagree with them. Even the vast majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews disagree with them. So I really think drawing this kind of parallel between Islamic Sharia and Christianity or Judaism displays either a lack of understanding of all three religions, or else an excessive focus on very fringe minority positions. Although I also recognise that a lot of people drawing the parallel are actually complaining about attempts by conservative Christians (and to a lesser degree Jews) to legislate their own moral views on controversial social issues – but that isn't really akin to Islamic Sharia (except for the very fringe Christian reconstructionist/theonomist/Kahanist/etc minorities), since they are trying to amend secular law based on religion-influenced morality, quite unlike the Sharia approach of directly applying religious law to essentially secular issues such as murder cases or business contracts.