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I am not a Christian. I will always think of this most wonderful nation as THE one with Christian values. I give Christianity the credit for its moral successes. Christians are not the ONLY moral people, but they are a cohesive group within America, and they resists k*****g innocents. We, here cannot control our own government, let alone a foreign one. We cannot help what is done elsewhere. I never give a thought to thousands of years ago. The past is the past, as the political left so frequently tells me. I am not to think of the 1950's because we are not living in the 1950's. So, there is no reason to constantly carp and harp at the Christians in an effort to insist on moral equivalency. There IS NOT MORAL equivalency between murderous 21st century religions and Christianity that exists in America. Christians saw their folly and cleaned it up, for the most part. Extremist Muslims DO NOT CHANGE. I don't even know what you are arguing about , but it puts you outside mainstream America when you must search to find ways to belittle our country......AND the religion that helped keep us on the right track for so many years.

I find it d********g that Christians are urged to constantly defend something so peaceful and wonderful and important to them. If you were the enemy, I would think differently, but you are supposedly an American, and if Americans must fight Americans who are doing nothing but good, we have lost the fight before it begins. PS. People who try to force Christianity on others ARE NOT CHRISTIANS. Bear in mind that I COULD call myself a Christian, and wish I could, and you would know no different, but it would be a lie.

Beside, it's easy to attach religion as a reason for one's actions. We cannot go to the source and ask " did you tell them to do that?". Mostly, I believe it is the desire to do violence that motivates people, merely using religion as an excuse, as though that were adequate justification.

Many of the battles mentioned in the Bible were motivated by human avarice. Note that the Jews were rarely victorious in those battles. It was not until they returned to God that victories were achieved. Simply stating that " my God told me to do that " is no kind of sound reasoning. It is a deluded excuse to do what YOU want to do.

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Why is it that your not mentioning the religious atrocities committed by the Christians? Your telling only half of the story dosen't tell the whole t***h. The Christians, around the times of the crusades, weren't the saints we were led to believe they were by our history books.

The First Crusade was launched in 1095 with the battle cry "Deus Vult" (God wills it), a mandate to destroy infidels in the Holy Land. Gathering crusaders in Germany first fell upon "the infidel among us," Jews in the Rhine valley, thousands of whom were d**gged from their homes or hiding places and hacked to death or burned alive. Then the religious legions plundered their way 2,000 miles to Jerusalem, where they k**led virtually every inhabitant, "purifying" the symbolic city. Cleric Raymond of Aguilers wrote: "In the temple of Solomon, one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses' bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God."

In the Third Crusade, after Richard the Lion-Hearted captured Acre, a Palestinian coastal city, in 1191, he ordered 3,000 Muslim, Jewish and local Christian captives -- many of them women and children -- taken outside the city and slaughtered. Some were disemboweled in a search for swallowed gems. Bishops intoned blessings. Infidel lives were of no consequence. As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux declared in launching the Second Crusade: "The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified."

Throughout Europe, beginning in the 1100s, tales spread that Jews were abducting Christian children, sacrificing them, and using their blood in rituals. Hundreds of massacres stemmed from this "blood libel." Some of the supposed sacrifice victims -- Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, the holy child of LaGuardia, Simon of Trent -- were beatified or commemorated with shrines that became sites of pilgrimages and miracles.

In 1209, Pope Innocent III launched an armed crusade against Albigenses Christians in southern France. When the besieged city of Beziers fell, soldiers reportedly asked their papal adviser how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel among the captives. He commanded: "K**l them all. God will know his own." Nearly 20,000 were slaughtered -- many first blinded, mutilated, d**gged behind horses, or used for target practice.

The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 proclaimed the doctrine of t***substantiation: that the host wafer miraculously turns into the body of Jesus during the mass. Soon rumors spread that Jews were stealing the sacred wafers and stabbing or driving nails through them to crucify Jesus again. Reports said that the pierced host bled, cried out, or emitted spirits. On this charge, Jews were burned at the stake in 1243 in Belitz, Germany -- the first of many k*****gs that continued into the 1800s. To avenge the tortured host, the German knight Rindfliesch led a brigade in 1298 that exterminated 146 defenseless Jewish communities in six months.

Also during the 1200s, the hunt for Albigensian heretics led to establishment of the Inquisition, which spread over Europe. Pope Innocent IV authorized torture. Under interrogation by Dominican priests, screaming victims were stretched, burned, pierced and broken on fiendish pain machines to make them confess to disbelief and to identify fellow t***sgressors. Inquisitor Robert le Bourge sent 183 people to the stake in a single week.

In Spain, where many Jews and Moors had converted to escape persecution, inquisitors sought those harboring their old faith. At least 2,000 Spanish backsliders were burned. Executions in other countries included the burning of scientists such as mathematician-philosopher Giordano Bruno, who espoused Copernicus's theory that the planets orbit the sun.

Nowadays, it's really popular to find fault with anything or anyone non-Christian. Seems to me, Christians have as much, if not more blood on their hands, in the name of Christ, than the people you're shaking your fist at.

How's what the Christians did and do, any different over the last 1400 years, than what the Muslims have done?

I'm not condoning any acts of violence by any religious group by another religious group. But, without the full story, it's hard not to gain a misunderstanding of why the groups behave as they do toward each other.

BTW- This info came from class notes I took while taking a class on Middle Eastern History, Prehistoric Times thru the Middle Ages, while in college 40 years ago. As such, I can't give you any web sites to go to. But, I'm sure, the same info is out there if you're willing to look for it.

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I think your mistake is in lumping all the Muslims together and believing only in the negative aspect. The majority are, like Christians, peace-loving individuals. Those negative-thinking who hide behind the veil of religion are NOT religious - they are negatively brainwashed. After all war and k*****g are more acceptable to journalists. They bring in more readers.

About the only site I have discovered in a long time is God Vine which, although I am not religious, gives me a pleasant break from all the negativity in this world. I also enjoy Dr. Becker's videos on Nature. :roll: :wink: :wink:

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Please allow me to get in on this................I love all of you. I think you are the shoulders the rest of us ride on. I don't always agree with you either, and I sometimes agree with the foe, but a good argument is almost as good as a really fine wine, wouldn't you say? We learn so much from each other, friend and foe. Wouldn't it be miraculous if all of us came to love each other - and NO I am not of the flower=child era. I was already hard at work when that foolishness hit the scene.