Muslims that are terrorists are the real muslims

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Kadaveri, when you ask for evidence and it’s presented it would help discussion if you acknowledge this.
 
OK, since you want me back, here’s another go:
birdsong said:
Of course there’s a need to identify what is real, orthodox islam, Christianity, budhism, etc. Since Contarini, thinks that there’s no need to do that, an example of a case when identifying the “validity” or the “realness” of a religion, ideology or creed is needed will be enough to refute his argument.
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No, you have to give an example where identifying the validity of a religion by an outsider is needed. Again, you are not understanding what I am saying.
Obviously, I, birdsong, as a catholic, think that the fullness of Christianity is contained within the catholic church. Likewise, I am sure Contarini considers that the fullness of Christianity is within his church.
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Only if “my church” is defined as Trinitarian Christianity in general, or perhaps churches with bishops in apostolic succession.

]QUOTE]Now, what if a muslim or an atheist or any non-Christian wants to convert or shows interest in Christianity? How is this non-Christian person going to decide what church he should attend and/or study? Would Contarini want this non-Christian to follow and/or be interested in a church that does not have the fullness of Christian revelation or that teaches error and downright heretical Christian doctrine?

This is not a parallel, because you are introducing the question of truth. The point I have been making consistently is that you can’t talk about “true Christianity” or “true Islam” if you don’t believe Christianity or Islam is true.

Obviously if someone is investigating religion I’m going to try to convince him/her that Trinitarian Christianity is true, and with somewhat less urgency that a generally sacramental, liturgical version of Christianity emphasizing historical continuity is the truest expression of Christianity. (I have absolutely no interest in persuading people to become Anglican rather than Orthodox or Catholic, and in fact I see Anglicanism as the poorest of these alternatives.)

But of course I would not try to persuade an inquirer that Trinitarianism was “true Christianity” in abstraction from the question of whether it was true in an absolute sense. That would be completely insane. You can’t have thought about this argument very carefully–or, yet again, you simply haven’t understood what I am saying.

I can’t just keep repeating this if no one wants to listen. But if you don’t want to listen, why continue the discussion? So for the last time:

I do not believe that an outsider to a religion can say that one version of that religion is a “truer” version than another,

BECAUSE

you can’t separate the question “what is true Christianity” from the question “is Christianity true?” Similarly with Islam. “True Islam” means something to a Muslim. It means nothing to me. Why should I care? It’s not a concept I have any way of evaluating. I care about what Muslims today believe and practice and what they have believed and practiced in the past–and by “Muslims” I mean those who identify themselves with the historic tradition of Islam, no matter what quirks they may introduce into that tradition.

OK, I recognize that some of you may actually think that you can prove that Catholicism is true Christianity even if Christianity is false. But that’s absurd. If Christianity were false, it would be meaningless to speak of a “real” or “true” version of Christianity.

So your argument completely fails.
As the above paragraph shows, there is a clear need to identify real, mainstream teachings of all ideologies, creeds, religions, etc.
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No, it shows nothing of the kind. Of course identifying a “mainstream” version is useful–but mainstream simply means the version that has dominated the history of that religion. If we are not talking about the true religion, then one version of the religion is more “real” than another only insofar as is more closely approximates the truth revealed in Christ. But that is obviously not what we are talking about.

Edwin
 
Montalban said:
You must read the whole post 😛
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I did, and it wasn’t clear that you were contradicting anything I have said.

You persist in arguing with something other than what I am saying. This discussion is really getting pointless, unless you are willing to engage what I say rather than some pro-Islamic straw man of your own invention.

Edwin
 
exoflare said:
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with that one!
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No, he didn’t. The statement “So-and-so is good despite his religion” is always a smokescreen for bigotry. No one is good or bad “despite” their religion, because their religion is simply the sum total of their orientation toward reality in general.

“Islam” is simply the sum of the “religions” of all the people who call themselves Muslims. Calling anything else “Islam” is, for us non-Muslims, completely meaningless. Any other construct we call “Islam” is a fantasy we have invented for our own purposes.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
I did, and it wasn’t clear that you were contradicting anything I have said.
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It’s part of my “I’ll give you evidence about Moslems and violence”
Contarini said:
You persist in arguing with something other than what I am saying. This discussion is really getting pointless, unless you are willing to engage what I say rather than some pro-Islamic straw man of your own invention.

Edwin
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It’s not my invention. You’ve offered relativist apology based on repeating your own presumptions… some illogic that only Moslems can know Islam which your only reply was “You just don’t get it”

. I’ve offered evidence. I do wonder why you re-joined this thread just to quote only part of a thread
 
Contarini’s argument in short is that although he recognises violence in Islam, one can’t say that it’s a real/central part of Islam. Why? Because only Moslems can really know Islam.

How do we know who the real Moslems are to ask them? We can’t know (extending his illogic) because we can’t judge them by what they practice - to see if they’re really practicing Islam, because we can’t judge what’s real to Islam.:o
 
Contarini said:
The point I have been making consistently is that you can’t talk about “true Christianity” or “true Islam” if you don’t believe Christianity or Islam is true.
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the type and level of “abstraction” you are asking for is practiced everyday by very average people Contarini; not necessarily in terms of religious matters, but certainly in some aspects of our daily lives and for very practical purposes. There’s nothing special or extraordinary about it. For example, people do it everyday in courtrooms when they are asked to testify whether someone else (the defendant) said something. They are just asked whether the defendant said something, NOT whether he/she, the witness, believe what the defendant said is true or not.

To strengthen my point, I am going to cite a good example that is clearly written in the gospels. if my memory serves me well, when Jesus was tried by the Pharisees, he was asked whether he had said and meant that he and the father were one and at the same “level” (so to speak), something which of course was considered blasphemy.

Did the Pharisees “believe” that Jesus said and meant that he and the father were one and at the same “level”? of course they believed he did, that’s why they accused him of blasphemy and wanted to crucify him.

Did the Pharisees “believe” that Jesus and the father were one and at the same “level” in the sense that you and I as Christians believe it means? of course not.

And before you say that the case of the Pharisees was different because they heard the “news” from Jesus himself, let me remind you that to this day, Jews, like the Pharisees who tried Jesus, still think that the core of our faith (“jesus is god, one with the father and at the same “level”) is nonsense. In other words, Jews still acknowledge that we Christians believe that Jesus meant to say he was god, one with the father and at the same level, and that we have faith that Jesus’ words are true and real. However, Jews still think/believe our Christian faith is ungrounded.

Likewise, any non-muslim can perfectly achieve the level of “abstraction” that the Pharisees attained when they tried Jesus. In our case, obviously, since muhhamad is long gone, all we have to do is to refer to the quoran, hadiths, classic muslim literature and commentators in order to know and learn what muhhamad said and meant. Once we have that information, we can then determine whether a person/organisation/group is in line and consistent with muhhamad original intentions or words. You and I as Christians don’t have to “believe” that islam is true in the way we believe Christianity is true (i.e.; true revelation from God) in order to determine what is mainstream islam and what is not. Ditto for any atheist who is interested in any religion.
 
Imagine23 said:
Hardly fatuous my friend, and your closing statement indicates you have some idea of what I’m referring to. As you know, there is a very extreme dedicated right wing group of Christians in the U.S. (whose political power arguably has declining as of late) that are committed to imposing their religiously motivated beliefs on the rest of society, for example, their ideas of what “marriage” should be, their ideas of what a “culture of life” is. They have not been as successful as the Afghan Taliban but their motivation (religiosity) and means (political power) are the same. Thus the reasoning behind the “fatuous” phrase. Did you go to Oxford?
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Imagine,

I’m not exactly sure where you live but Christians still have a right to exist and in a representative democracy we still have the right to influence public policy. Even if your version of the world were dominant in the US, which in many ways it is, we would still hold to thes views and try to influence public policy.

CDL
 
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