How to Trust a moderate Muslim?

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Lurikeen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You say "The fact of the matter is, in early days of Christianity, most OT lifestyle laws were unpalatable to Europeans and were thrown out." What are you talking about? Most of the "OT lifestyle laws were unpalatable" to the rest of the world. You seem to be thinking you're making a good point, but you're not. You're actually making my earlier point for me.

Many of the essential elements of early Christianity did not make it 500 years after Christ's death, and many more didn't make it 1000. The "laws" of Christianity that were accepted differed by each region and culture. You're saying OT laws were rejected on theological grounds, I'm saying the reasons were cultural first. That's it. People didn't immediately reject OT laws because they were intended for Hebrews, and again, some OT accounts, such as the creation mythos, persisted. Even today you have people quoting Leviticus and Genesis to justify intolerance for homosexuals, including the Catholic Church (which manages the theology of over a billion Christians), and OT thematic elements are still a huge part of Christian identities even though it's a book about a hateful genocidal maniac.

This is an important observation because it gives us insight into the way religions and denominations involve in the first place, which gets back to the original point of my input into this discussion: Christianity tends to react differently to the passage of time than Islam does.

[Lurikeen]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Many of the essential elements of early Christianity did not make it 500 years after Christ's death, and many more didn't make it 1000.

What you are claiming here shows an immense amount of ignorance on your part. In fact, "many of the essential elements of early Christianity" not only made it through the first "500 years after Christ's death" but served as the foundation for the creeds of Christianity.

Seriously, the rest of your claims are equally as misinformed. For instance you try to set up a dichotomy between theology and culture where the Israelite culture is concerned and that is a huge mistake. Theology IS culture and the culture IS theology. That is also the very same mind set for early Christianity. There is no such thing as theology apart from life. The only idea you can get of theology apart from life comes to you through the Enlightenment philosophers where we get such separations.

You then make an interesting trollish remark with, "Even today you have people quoting Leviticus and Genesis to justify intolerance for homosexuals." If you want to ask me if I think homosexuality is a wrong, just ask me. I will tell you now, I think homosexuality is a transgression against God.