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Naut
I have finally started catching up. Will let you know when I've finished. I figure one "old" post a day until I'm done.
posted by
Maerchenzaehler
on May 7, 2007 at 4:21 PM
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Naut
This is a very good read, and I'm understanding much better your POV. 'spiritual vacuum' is certainly an interesting expression! --Mary
posted by
FoliageGold
on April 28, 2007 at 8:14 AM
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Naut
Im still reading this..
btw. Corbins comment about who can explain the Koran's verses... is a problem in Christianity as well IMHO... perhaps not with the obvious repercussions of todays Koran reader you are describing
posted by
Blue_feathers
on April 1, 2007 at 2:17 PM
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Corbin
you're absolutely right, and that's part of the problem...
posted by
Nautikos
on March 29, 2007 at 5:13 PM
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How many could civilly discuss or explain what the verses of the poetry in the Koran mean?
.000000001%???? The rest have just memorized the lines.....and take them literally.
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on March 29, 2007 at 9:47 AM
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Justi
well, if they take over the world, they will have won
here,
which is good enough, or I should say,
bad enough for me...
posted by
Nautikos
on March 28, 2007 at 7:35 PM
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Nautikos
All this is clearly laid out in the Holy Bible. We expect this to happen. The Muslims will take over the world. That does no mean they will win.
posted by
Justi
on March 28, 2007 at 4:59 PM
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Nautikos
I know that. I have no problem with their choices. There are far fewer than that. If there are 8 members of a household the 8 are Islamic and indoctrinated. Does that make them a Muslim, only because that is all they are allowed to know. If one comes to a religion by choice it is another thing. Many Muslims come by choice. But China, South America and the Island Nations are growing in choosing Christianity. Many are being forced into Muslim religion.
posted by
Justi
on March 28, 2007 at 4:57 PM
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JUSTI
The problem is that there are about 1.2 billion people in this world who
do think Islam is an authentic religion.
posted by
Nautikos
on March 28, 2007 at 4:50 PM
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Wiley
deal!
posted by
Nautikos
on March 28, 2007 at 4:43 PM
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Corbin
Thanks for the extensive comment. I think there are at least three issues here.
1) The waning of Christianity in Europe. There can be no doubt about that one.
2) The growth of Islam. Right now there are about 1.2 billion Muslims, as opposed to 2.1 billion Christians. I am not sure how ‘viable’ Islam is, but according to some stattistics it is growing at the rate of 2.9 % annually, compared to a growth in the world’s population of about 2.3%. It is definitely growing faster than Christianity.
3) The current strength and potential growth of Islamo-fascism, as opposed to that of ‘ordinary’ Islam. Very difficult to assess, but I suspect we will see substantial growth. The reasons for that growth I shall attempt to address in the next post(s). And I agree with you that there are social-psychological factors involved. This is in part an exercise in social psychology, lol.
I just want to add that I see Islamo-fascism as being more serious than the secular forms of Fascism we witnessed in the 20th century.
posted by
Nautikos
on March 28, 2007 at 4:40 PM
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Nautikos
I saw your comment on Corbin Dallas' post about our Southern border. Wish you would do a post or series of posts on that. The country has lost it's mind for sure.
posted by
Justi
on March 28, 2007 at 3:33 PM
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Nautikos
I have to go with Corbin Dallas. I have read all of these. I as a, born again, Christian cannot accept any credence in Islam. I see the earmarks all through the Old Testament of the prophesy of this sort of thing. I also know my Bible well enough to know the vivid ear-marks of copy. We also know the ways of Satan well enough to know the is the copy king of anything God is or has been doing with a twist. Islam is no more an authentic religion than is a box of cracker jacks. And many of the numbers are wrong. People who are Islamic are often so because they are born into the family. A christian is not born a Christian but is re-born into Christianity. Christianity has grown by a far greater margin than you are calling it but that is not a point with me. I do not care what choices anyone makes about their personlal religion. If they want to worship worms and they are alright with it okay. But if they have just become Christians and do not know the Word well enough and takes any other information as true that is not, the Bible says their blood is upon the hands of the teacher.
posted by
Justi
on March 28, 2007 at 12:45 AM
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Nautikos
Cool response hoss, I can deal with that.C'mon, sit on my porch and my statue of Thomas a Kempis will straighten all of this out. lol
posted by
WileyJohn
on March 27, 2007 at 8:55 PM
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Naut.......
For me you are giving too much credence to Islam being an actual, viable religion.....it has all of the trappings, but was created as a tool for enslavement.......
History is full of examples of people going berserk............falling victim to some frenzied hysteria...........this one has just replaced the kool-aid with strap on bombs.
The worst are frenzies of criminal insanity, like the Gulag Communism of the Soviet Union, the National Socialism of Hitler's Germany, or the barbaric imperialism of Tojo's Japan.
An entire people like the Germans or Japanese can go criminally, murderously nuts. Such a mass criminal insanity has today taken over the minds of a substantial segment of the world's Moslems.
Islamofascism is not a social or religious structure..........it is a psychological structure. It is not located in any physical or geographical space, but in certain people's minds. It is not a political or social or economic event, it is a mental event. A frenzy no different from the Brown shirts, or kamikaze pilots....
It's not replacing Christianty.....through a religious conversion process.....it's a population replacement process....with enough patience and time...there will be more of them than non-believers........
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on March 27, 2007 at 7:21 PM
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Wiley
Phew, man, talk about comments, I don't know where to start, so let me start at the beginning, which is always good, lol.
First of all, I wasn't entirely serious about the number of readers dropping on this blog these days, I know there are several others aside from TAPS and Pat, and I know you're one of them.
Now, about this business about God.
This is not about whether or not God exists. I am not in the business of proving whether God exists or does not exist. To me, that is really a non-issue, since it makes no sense posing unanswerable questions.
Also, I have no problem with people who believe in God and want to explain the events in this world with reference to God. I think they're wrong because there are better explanations, which comes with my training, but so be it. Faith is faith! And I will never consciously and with malice aforethought attempt to destroy anyone's faith. (Which is one reason, by the way, why I will rarely discuss matters of faith with a believer, because I know that people find strength and solace in their faith.)
But even that is not what this is about! Rather, it is about the FACT that vast numbers, indeed, increasing numbers of people in Europe no longer believe in the God of the Bible. When I say that Europe's churches are empty, that's a way of saying that those people who once believed, now would say that God is either gone, or 'dead', or non-existent in the first place. And many of them just don't give a damn one way or the other. And that is not just a recent development.
Now, that's what I am trying to understand, as do many others, by the way, and I have some notions, but nothing that I would advance as an article of 'faith'. And I also want to understand the ascendance of Islam, and again, I have some ideas...
What you and I need to do is sit on your porch, and you'll have some nice juice, and I'll have something nice too! And that'll probably happen this summer... 
posted by
Nautikos
on March 27, 2007 at 6:56 PM
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Offy
hon, of course I haven't forgotten you - how would I?
I guess after my earlier
faux pas I now need to publish a list of all the people who are reading this thing, before everybody gets pissed off...
posted by
Nautikos
on March 27, 2007 at 6:36 PM
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Hey
Don't forget me...I am reading this too ya know~
posted by
Offy
on March 27, 2007 at 5:21 PM
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Nautikos
No, TAPS and Pat aren't the only ones willing to read this boring stuff, but never mind, I shall handle the slight and pay it no more mind.-;)
I think you rather assume the outcome of some things without actually being 'physically' involved yourself. I am not finding fault here my friend, I am trying to make an observation that makes sense to me.
For instance, as horrible as the Holocaust was, God hadn't disappeared, and while lives were being lost in the most horrible way, babies were still being born. The cycle of life and death hadn't changed, and God was still letting man 'propose', and in time He 'disposed' of the evil of that time.
Is it perhaps that your belief of 'atheism' or 'agnosticism' takes focus more on the empty churches of Europe and America, rather than on positive change or shift of Christianity/religion to a more individual expression. Can we not carry the 'church' within us much as you carry your church of 'atheism' within you and still be strong in our faith?
Evils like Fascism will come up again and again, and they have, and we have survived with our belief's and will continue to do so. I think Islam will sort out it's wheat from the chaff, the same as Christianity has had to do a few times.
I refuse to entertain only one sided hypothesis which only sees the end of things, rather than focussing on the green branches, still with sprouts of green on them.
posted by
WileyJohn
on March 27, 2007 at 11:11 AM
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TAPS
I'm happy to hear that you found yourself and are not going away being mad at me. You and Pat seem to be the only people left willing to read this boring stuff, and I would hate to lose 50% of my current readership...
posted by
Nautikos
on March 27, 2007 at 10:26 AM
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I know all that, Nautikos
I just got lost for a bit in a forest of my own making. You are doing a great job of what you set out to do.
posted by
TAPS.
on March 26, 2007 at 6:26 PM
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Pat B
thanks Pat. I never say no to a beer!
posted by
Nautikos
on March 26, 2007 at 4:10 PM
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Dear TAPS
You are mistaken in one thing:
I would no more try to disprove the existence of God than I would attempt to prove it. Either attempt is doomed to fail! Only matters of knowledge are subject to proof and disproof, and God’s existence is a matter of faith, not of knowledge. If people mistake one for the other, it’s their fault, not mine. There is a distinction between the two, which I once tried to outline very briefly and inadequately in two posts. Here they are: http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Nautikos/381308 http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/Nautikos/382080 All I am trying to do here is sketch, in very broad strokes, the conditions of Christianity’s ascendance, and the circumstances of its decline, because it is in decline.
And, I might add, I deeply regret that, because with it much of what I hold dear is disappearing, to be replaced by something that is alien and distasteful to me.
posted by
Nautikos
on March 26, 2007 at 4:07 PM
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Nautikos -- Next time you're in Quiet Town I'd like to buy you a cup of
coffee. Or a beer. Just to say thanks for this well-reasoned and researched report. You've made many sound arguments and it all seems very logical. Good job! :)pat
posted by
Pat_B
on March 26, 2007 at 1:48 PM
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Nautikos
You know what does surprise me (though I don't know why) is the fact that an intelligent scholar and writer can bring something as interesting and current as this to the attention of readers with the apparent intention of suggesting that there is no god or that God is dead. From what I could tell, all of your information was right in line with the teachings of the Bible such as that there will be "a falling away" (...
shrink in numbers...), "perilous times", "scoffers", "wars and rumors of wars", and people will look for teachers who will please them by telling them only what they are itching to hear. It has always been interesting to me how two people can take the same information to prove their own points in a debate. It is also interesting to me how a person can actually win a debate while taking the side that he does not even really believe in.
posted by
TAPS.
on March 26, 2007 at 1:40 PM
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