Some cultures are better than others ? True, False, Impossible to answer conclusively

[Beanz]

it seems the Quran allows and even encourages wife beating in its passages. I don't feel high and mighty enough to claim culture superiority over any other cultures... but this is a definite no-no... at least in our eyes. It's eye-opening to see, however, that a majority of Islamic women agree with wife beating if she's caught cheating. It's ok for them, even if it's not ok for us.

Tito, The Koran may well say that, but don't forget the stuff that the Christian Bible says too:

- explicit support for slavery, plus rules saying it's OK to beat them hard enough they are incapacitated for two days.

- blatant sexism. Saying men own women, they should all be virgins until they marry (but men don't). They should be put to death for adultery and premarital sex. If a woman makes a noise while being rated, it proves she agreed to it and should be put to death.

- demanding murder. There are whole lists of people who it is OK to kill. Indeed Christians are told who they should murder.

- saying that handicapped people should be killed early on. If you find an older one, it's a good thing to kill them straight away.

- ethnic cleansing is a good thing because if you murder a whole tribe or race, you can have their land and God will be pleased.

- that animal sacrifice is pleasing to God. That animals have no rights and Man is put on earth to command them all.

- killing and torture of all non-believers is an explicit command from God.

All those things are in the Bible, in great detail. Just like the Koran, the Bible is a book of its time. Christians surely can't ridicule the Koran having things in it that we find outrageous.

The problem is the people who do take these books literally - and let's not forget that there are many Christians who do this as well. Granted, they didn't seem to be blowing people up and beheading them ..... but they certainly did worse in the past.


Also, the majority of Muslim women I know most certainly don't agree with wife beating. They are not crazy! Where do you get the data that says the majority of them agree with it?

If I was. Mod on this site, I too would demand human and animal sacrifices, as I would find them pleasing to me.

Easy to answer and with one word for Islam and Christianity


ABROGATION

The Quran like the Bible has 2 halves. In the Bible we go from the very strict and judgmental God to the peace, grace, and sacrifice of Jesus. In the Quran on the other hand we go from Muhammad imploring people to submit to Islam (the Mecca sura) to threatening people to submit to Islam by the sword (the Medina sura) and due to the belief of Abrogation the Medina sura is considered more powerful/meaningful since it came later.


But hey, what can ya do?

What you could do is start by using your own standards to examine your own culture. You are correct in pointing out the ridiculousness of abrogation but this is the fatal flaw with most religions. Even your own reading of the Bible shows how deeply ingrained it is in your culture. So for you the Old Testament is that of an strict and Judgmental God and the New Testament is one of peace and grace. This is largely because most Christians have no idea of what they call the Old Testament even means, and the translations they are reading are incredibly inaccurate and clumsy works by people with a vested interest in obscuring the truth. You don't get much more Judgemental than Paul and the Pauline version of Christianity either, so the 'New' Testament itself is not so forgiving as you would have us believe. In fact the flawed, arrogant and incredibly patronising Christian idea of Jesus coming to fulfill the commandments of Gd perfectly and therefore negate the Old Testament, the need for sacrifice, the covenant between Gd and the Jews etc is a classic example of abrogation not being merely and Islamic Idea.

Even on a micro level the ordination of women, the acceptance of Homosexuality, etc shows how Christians are constantly picking and choosing what to update with their faith. This is the fatal flaw. How can a perfect omnipotent Gd gets things wrong? why do humans need to constantly revise what is relevant and not among words supposedly directly coming from him? This to me seems to be incredibly convenient for humans in power to use as a way of controlling other people.


So if like you we are going to judge a culture based upon extremists or people inflicting extreme behavior on to others and using that culture as an excuse we should look at Christianity in the same way as you are looking at Islam ?



400 years of Trans Atlantic Slave Trade that maimed, raped, killed, kidnapped, and enslaved 20 million Africans "heathens" to bring them to Christ
—Genocide of Native Americans under the name of Christ as Manifest Destiny
—Genocide of Australian Aborigines that killed 90% of their population in less than a century, again by Christian Europeans
—Salem Witch Trials
—Spanish Inquisition
—Crusades


ooh no you say...those are in the past


—The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda that has maimed, raped, & killed up to 100,000 people according to the UN, during the past 15 years, which is far more destructive than ISIS, and they've done so to establish Biblical Law as a self-described Christian organization
—In Central Africa Republic Christian Militias have destroyed every single mosque and the UN reports that Muslims are facing ethnic cleansing, withreports that Christians are cannibalizing Muslims, literally
—In America white supremacists who are self-described Christian are the single largest terror threat to American security, that's according to the FBI and 392 police agencies in a study published last year
—George Bush, a devout Christian, said God told him to invade Iraq, where by some estimates 1 million civilians were killed due to this unjust war