Most people didn't have access to the scriptures for the longest time and most were illiterate. Things started changing when the printing press came about and people started looking at the texts themselves. That is when reform came about. Muslims don't have this obstacle today.
Reform started coming about with literacy, no doubt, but there is no evidence that it is because people could read the Bible in particular. Most Christian barbarism was led by people who *could* read it. To think that allowing people to read it would suddenly make them realize that Christianity was peaceful after all and cause them to lay down their arms is rather naive. One of the first consequences of religious literacy was, btw, the protestant reformation. Should we go in to how protestants behaved toward Catholics, Jews and others for the first couple hundred years of their existence?
Sure, you can say that bad things were done, but I would say they were in spite of Christian teachings.
Yes, we do disagree on that.
I don't really want to discuss the pros and cons of Christianity in history. All I'm saying is that there was a clear internal voice of reform from within Christianity. People, believers and non-believers, questioned the religion. This was a useful process. All I'm saying is that the kind of silliness Red Dawn types is not helpful. If you or Red Dawn had been in middle-ages telling Christians that they shouldn't be worried about corruption in the church because other religions were just as corrupt, do you think that would have been helpful?
You're mistaking the purpose of my comments. It is not to bash Christians in particular. It is to point out something important: that the barbarism is cultural, and culture can change. Scripture cannot. We demonstrated it here in the west, where our scriptures stayed the same but our culture changed. The Islamic world is on a different cultural timeline. Their barbarism is not eternal merely because their scriptures won't change. This has important implications in how to approach the problem.
They think it's evil. They try to "help" gays with therapy. Is that what Muslims fundies do?
And 200 years ago they executed them for sodomy. And women had to cover up every square inch of their bodies (but not their faces!) and were totally subservient to men, were scorned for being raped (indeed, in the laws of some states in the 19th centure there was no crime of rape if the woman did not put maximum effort into physical resistence of the act.)
Are the similarities of these things with Islam merely coincidental? Well if it's all about the scriptures, they really ought to be, but we both know they aren't.
Think it's as clear as you seem to think it is. Sure I hear them complain about wanting prayer in schools but I also hear them quote scriptures about leaving unto Caesar. There is no built-in system of government in Christianity like there is in Islam.
You and I differ on this. I think the fundies here want 100% of their religiously informed morality legislated through the apparatus of the state. They probably want to still call it a democracy and claim it is constitutional. So they have no equivalent term for "Sharia."
You think my view on scripture being important is absurd and I think your view on it being irrelevant is absurd as well. It just goes against most of my interactions with religious people. They actually refer to their scriptures. There's room for interpretation but there are also clear guiding principles and distinctions between the religions.
I think scripture is relevant, not the main determining factor. The *fact* of extreme religosity is important. The scriptures are subject to excrutianingly wide ranges of interpretation, as well as selective attention. Mother Theresa and Torquemada both acted on behalf of the same set of scriptures.
Just look at the latest Seattle plot. Where is your culture there? The terrorists were American converts, which we have seen before. Where is the commonality with the culture in the Middle-East? I don't see it. I do see a common religion though.
Addressed in another post. Among other things, I believe the bulk of Muslim American terrorists -and there aren't many as a percentage - maintain strong connections to wider Muslim culture. In fact, it's quite obvious that they do.