[rescue] my new sig

[dave at cca.org]

jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu writes:

>Look, I'm not trying to make much of a fuss here.  I'm just trying to
>say that telling people they are wrong and going to hell doesn't do
>much for most people.  Being there when they are in need does.  And
>this applies to all groups, not just christians.  I'm sure this is why
>there is a growing rate (sorry, numbers and sources lost) of people
>converting to muslim in jail, and again this is why muslims would have
>been so well accepted in Afhanistan (initially at least) because they
>came and rescued a people from the war lords.

Another closely related issue is that the form of a religion that
is exposed to people living in a country where that religion is a
minority is always the idealized version of the religion. American
Muslim converts don't see any of the totalitarian crap that people
in Islamic countries have to live with. Christians in communist
China don't see people like Phelps (the "God Hates Fags" guy) or
televangelists doing time for fraud. Etc. You might argue that
those cases are the only time anyone sees the "true" religion, in
the sense of what it's "supposed to be".  (Personally, I'm skeptical
of Christians who aren't cave-dwelling ascetics, but that's mostly
because I like the Essenes & Copts.)

For most people, religion is just a detail of the culture they live
in. They don't think about, or care about the philisophical implications
of what they claim to believe in. This applies to all religions.

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org -------
----- If you want god in your government, move to fucking Afghanistan. -----