Re:U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afgha...
by oh_sigh on Friday September 20, 2019 @06:59AM
(#21025240)
Doesn't Western culture look back on Roman and especially Greek times as their founding myth?
Re:U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afgha...
by TeMPOraL on Friday September 20, 2019 @07:48AM
(#21025565)
It does, that's why I said "half of" not "everything". The Western culture is built as much on Roman and Greek legacy as it is on Christianity in Europe. So e.g. while a lot of classical literature is Greek/Roman, classical art and music is mostly from Christianity (and usually religious or semi-religious in nature).
This is how religion is used to get people to do things. You can read anything you like from a religious book; you'll find justification for anything if you comb for quotes enough. This makes religion a glue, or an amplifier, not a prescriber of behavior.
Consider Christianity - the religion that gave us half of what's nice about the Western culture. That same religion using that same, unchanging book, set half of Europe aflame multiple times, for ostensibly religious reasons. When you look at it from outside it looks ridiculous, and when you study history you discover obvious political goals behind the crusades and other European wars - but then, a lot of people fighting and directing forces believed they do it because "God commands it".
It's no different with Islam. Jihad is just an excuse to get people to fight and die for political causes. If the political reasons disappear, they'll soon find an excuse to not fight, and Jihad will again become "the internal struggle".