Is Christianity much different from Judaism and Islam?

It sux that your life sux but my life sux too, and youre using Christianity to cope.

send them all to the moon in my opinion. Im trying to be nice and not literally hitler, we can build a nice little moon utopia for them to be sent to, but the moon is where they all need to be sent. Same as AI too, put ai to the moon.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4f9m4OYkCY[/youtube]

My life doesn’t suck, for the most part. It sucked before it most recently sucked which I expect come in random waves in life, but for the past year and a half it’s bucking a downtrend that happened because of random crappy things I didn’t predict would affect me so negatively. I’d love to go to the moon, but I’d rather stay here to learn from each other and have adequate survival resources, also wouldn’t I be missing out on quality animations like that pony garbage if I did go to the moon? Do I get to bring the so-called non-critical logically fallible religious texts with me? Is the AI life threatening like terminator or ex machina? Or is the AI more of a wall-e or sunny who just cleans up after me and helps battle any dissenters?

How much different is a burka from an Easter bonnet?

Well, radically different. An Easter Bonnet is worn during Easter, and generally no one today is forced to wear it. IOW no one got a vitamin D deficiency from an Easter bonnet because of societal control. An Easter bonnet, given it’s temporary use, is not - certainly today - a sign that whoever wears it is property, not to be trusted, less than a man.

What’s the difference between a straight jacket and a tight t-shirt?

Power, whose got it and the life you live in one as opposed to the other.

Yes very different. And yet the burqa and the Easter bonnet are both products of patriarchies which view women as subordinate to men. Where the burqa is a norm the patriarchy is in full control. Where the Easter bonnet still has any meaning, it’s meaning has so devolved and diminished that its wearer likely is not conscious of it. Women were to keep their head covered in public lest they tempt the sons of God who in the antediluvian age had fucked them and produced a hybid race of giants.

I wouldn’t be shocked that the bonnet has these origins, but I can’t find that origin. Could you link it?

Head covering is practiced by women in many orthodox or fundamentalist Christian sects today. The Easter bonnet is but one instance of this more general Christian practice. The claimant to apostleship Paul of Tarsus in his first letter to the Corinthians says that the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. The angels he refers to are the fallen ones called “the sons of God” in Genesis 6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim

Yes, but head covering has all sorts of roots, including decoration and protection from weather. And religious men wear hats also. So jumping from what some sects use hat wearing for doesn’t really work for me yet. And as far as I can find Easter hat wearing came about from both sexes dressing up on Easter. And sure, the women, being seen in a specific way by gender were prettified, hence flowers. But these women were generally not forced to wear hats all the time. And it almost has the opposite pull from the Burhka which is meant to eliminate from sight anything that another man might find attractive and any woman breaking that, in places where they are supposed to wear them, is in danger of violence by strangers and family. Women not wearing Easter hats or good ones might have, earlier in history and perhaps in some places today, found themselves socially on the outs. But so would men with the wrong car or suit or hair length.

I am not fully sure of your comment in the context of the thread since the Koran does not specifically say what apppropriate clothes women should wear just that they are appropriate. So we have Islam mixed with local cultural ideas about both women and appropriateness. Just as we have in female genital mutilation, say.

And while I do see some similar sexist roots between female genital mutilation and breast enhancement (which comes not out of Christianity but secular Western society) I’d be hard pressed to find myself asking what’s the difference.

Islam and the local cultures that are mixed with it and hard to separate out include a hatred of the self, the female, the body, ‘this life’ that is extreme, even compared to going back a few hundred years in Christianity and certainly compared with current Christianity. Islam means surrender, submission and the core ritual of prayers is a reflection of this core abnegation of the self.

In the abstract it is easy to see all the religions as more or less the same, some faults here, some positive aspects there. But the liklihood of all balancing out pretty neatly and evenly seems radically small to me. People will certainly kill from a Christian base, but to get suicide bombers with regularity you have to have a metaphysical self-hatred and hatred of the world really deeply built in. Christians have had much more power, and Christian based societies have had much more power and fire power for the last large chunk of centuries. And their body count is enormous. But the hatred of life in Islam, should it ever have power, would, I would guess make that body count pale in comparisom. But I would suggest that is not necessarily the best way to decide the degree of hatred. It is to look at what is left over in the person, the believer, once the memes have got inside them.

My position is fully supported at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_bonnet. I mentioned it only as a symbol of the fact that Christianity, Judaism and Islam all traditionally held that women are subordinate to men and while the principle of gender equality has made some inroads into traditions of male dominance to varying degrees in these religions, evidence of patriarchy is still prevalent even in the more liberal modernized versions of these institutions.

I can see that women were required to wear something in church on their heads, yes. I didn’t see the part about fucking giants, though that wouldn’t surprise me.

The second link says the bonnet comes out of the tradition of wearing new clothes at Easter, not that the hat comes from the tradition of covering women’s heads in church. IOW while women have generally been free to not wear head coverings in church, the Easter bonnet tradition has continued. It no longer means that women are somehow problematic, its dress up.

And it’s pretty optional. And it fits with secular society seeing women’s decoration as more showy then men’s.

And none of this remotely makes the Easter hat remotely like the Burkha. IOW there seems to be some unstated hey, it’s all the same, when you ask what the difference is between a burkha and an Easter hat. Many traditions may be seeds for a part of what we do now, but that doesn’t make them the same. Easter hat wearing fits with secular societies ideas about women - that they should decorate themselves more intensely and femininely. And it would be optional as is participation in the church, at least for the adult females.

Burkhas are enforced by direct power in many places, even in the West where the law would side with any woman not wanting to wear one, but likely the law might have trouble actually making the woman safe with that choice in all or most cases.

I’ll put this a different way. I think a woman could wear an Easter bonnet on Easter church attendance, which is the current tradition, and even consider herself a feminist. But a woman wearing a burkha - which is worn year round, that is the tradition - would be fooling herself to call herself a feminist.

Okay. You asked me for a link and I obliged you with three including a link to the Wikipedia article on the nephilim. I also referenced 1st Corinthians 11 where Paul lays out the practice of head covering that became the norm in the churches for centuries. It’s up to you to read these references and to get the facts straight or not. My work is done.

felix dacat wrote:

Paul writes, “And every woman who prays or prophecies with her head uncovered dishonors herself. … And if a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off. And it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off. She should cover her head.”

The Scriptures say that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, let something be established. I think this is the only place in the Scriptures where it talks about this particular issue. Paul is insisting women, who pray in the church in public prayer do so with their heads covered. Is this a tradition or something women must do today. If this was a tradition, Paul was asking women to honor that tradition out of respect.

In the Middle East some Islamic women dress similar to Biblical times. In the days of the Roman Empire, a woman would cover her head, (they covered only their hair and did not veil their faces) because it was one way to avoid being thought a prostitute, who would go around with their heads uncovered as part of their dress…and Paul here is just speaking of covering the hair.

It also states in 1 Corinthians 11 7-9

For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but rthe woman for the man. 1 Corinthians 11:7–9.)

LOL

Now that is the perfect example of calling good evil and evil good.

Not sure what your point is. The latter verse clearly implies women are subordinate to men, a belief shared by traditional Jews and Muslims.

Another New Testament book, Ephesians expands on the idea in chapter 5:

There is some evidence that goes against this trend. For example Galatians 3:28 which reads:

Paul may be quoting a baptismal formula that he learned in the diaspora churches. This suggests that egalitarianism was already being practiced in the earliest Christian gatherings when Paul joined. Or, it seems to me, at least it was the ideal they sought, as opposed to general norm of male superiority that predominated in first century Mediterranean culture.

The formula doesn’t keep perfect symmetry by saying “man or woman” since it’s a quotation from Genesis “man and woman he created them” (1:27). In other words: “There is no more man and woman as originally divided since they are now united in Christ.”

Thus, the early gatherings of Jesus followers may have been the among most egalitarian groups of their day. But, if so, there has been a concerted effort over the centuries to hide or diminish this fact in favor of patriarchy not unlike that of the other major monotheistic religions.

Yeah. Many conceptual metaphors are grounded in embodied experience. The idea that Christ is a man’s head and that man is a women’s head is an example. The Jewish practice of wearing phylacteries on the left arm facing the heart and the other on the forehead is another. Islam employs similar metaphors, doesn’t it? While there are differences between the religions, since their major sacred texts are all written from the male point of view, I suspect that it is the embodied MALE experience that is metaphorized. Don’t you?

In general I think so, though Harold Bloom is convinced much of the OT was written by a woman. I don’t know his argument. But then women can carry male thinking forward, such as in female genital mutilation where the main agents in the mutilation are women. But the idea of removing the offending clitoris and guaranteeing virginity through sewing up the opening comes from men’s fears which the women agensts for economic reasons MUST align themselves and their daughters with or suffer horrendous consequences. The mere fact that Christianity has a male deity and Jesus was male and priests are male - until fairly recently in all denominations - are signs of the male roots. The Holy Ghost is sometiems said to be female and there is Mother Mary, but the boys get most of the attention.

I am acquainted with Harold Bloom’s theory but am unpersuaded. It certainly doesn’t square with the fact that Eve is blamed for the fall of Man. In any case the preponderance of biblical texts are written from the male point of view.

Of course if you want to talk about female genital mutilation I suppose we should also discuss male circumcision. That practice probably precedes Judaism. Perhaps both practices originated from rites of passage. I read that Muslims also widely practice circumcision.

If the holy ghost aka Holy Spirit is said to be female it’s not said in the Bible nor is it part of Christian orthodoxy. Mother Mary does take on the attributes of a pagan goddess in Roman Catholicism. Once again that development is post-biblical. It occurred when Christianity move away from its Judaic roots. If there is a parallel in Islam I’d like to know.

It doesn’t not square either. Women can carry misogyny with them. I have no idea the sex the person who wrote it, however.

Yes. Well, there’s certainly a hatred of sex in general in those religions and that may be feeding the early attacks on genitals. I don’t like either attack but the one on the men is not as invasive or cruel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_the_Holy_Spirit

No, it’s not the norm.

I think it’s interesting that she is de facto deified more in Catholic countries.

I am not sure if Allah has a gender. It’s not god the father. And, given the blasphemous nature of icons in Islam we do not have images of a bearded guy in the sky.

I have posted earlier in this thread and I want to emphasize we need to focus on the critical differences rather than on on the various insignificant forms. I believe the most critical and significant difference between Christianity, Judaism and Islam are the elements of evil and violence within their doctrinal texts which could inspire believers to commit evil and violent acts.

  1. Judaism has loads of evil elements in the OT but most are descriptive.
  2. Christianity has an overriding pacifist maxim that cancel out whatever violent elements there are in the NT.
  3. Islam is loaded with evil elements in the Quran and these are prescriptive for a Muslim as a divine duty.

As evident, i.e.
thereligionofpeace.com/TROP.jpg
the ideology of Islam is a serious threat to humanity given there is natural percentile of evil prone people within any group of humans at any time.