I am an atheist, and while I do not agree with everything espoused in the Christian Bible, I have always defended the religion from critics who would equate it with Islam, and I have a deep respect for what my Judeo-Christian ancestors brought to the world. One aspect of Christianity that has always struck me as highly suspect is the notion that God will cast essentially good people screaming into Hell simply for not believing in him. This always seemed to me to go against the notion of a just, loving God.
Today I stumbled upon this website: The Universalist Christians Association. One of the primary issues they cover, reading their essays, is this very issue, and they contend that in fact God would not torment sinners and heathens for all eternity. While there are no doubt problems with some of their arguments, and while they are not exactly mainstream yet, their site does reflect something that I will be touching on in a couple of weeks in my articles about Islam: that is, that now and throughout history Christians have seen the morally problematic portions of the Bible as a problem to be solved, and thus Christian interpretive traditions have changed. But in Islam this is not the case. While there is a small smattering of reformist Muslims out there, the general tenets of violence and intolerance in Islam have remained unchanged for 1,400 years. While Christianity isn't perfect by any means, it has still got a history of development which makes it far more moral than Islam ever has been, or is now.
More on this in a couple of weeks, here at Race Relations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment