In Uganda, a Christian rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army is fighting a long war to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments.
In order to keep their military forces fresh with young recruits, the LRA kidnaps children to serve as sex slaves and fighters. A recent report details how the LRA forced one 15 year-old girl to fight in battles with her baby strapped onto her back.
Meanwhile, Richard Tallmadge, a retired police officer from Rockford, Illinois, is complaining that because people in Rockford are defying the Ten Commandments, there have been public celebrations of Halloween, and a few homosexual ministers in some churches.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide where the real crisis with the Ten Commandments lies.
Listen PW,
Clearly you do not know what is going on in the minds of the LRA. This is question of religion and therefore based on faith and/or some religious esoteric experience. Unless you share the esoteric experience of the LRA, how can you judge that they are not, in fact, doing God’s work?
BTW, thanks to Mackers, James, et al, for showing me the fallacy and folly of my former way of thinking.
Well I haven’t shared the esoteric experience of the LRA, but simple common sense tells me that what they are doing over there is definitely NOT “God’s work”. Use your head, Scott.
Carla,
You seriously didn’t catch a whif of sarcasm in my comment?
So you do you also believe I’m a dangly earlobe supremacist?
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2005/11/09/white-settlement/#comment-109273
I wasn’t sure there for a second. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Well, wait a minute. The Lord’s Resistance Army says it’s doing God’s work. Carla says they are are not.
How are we to tell the difference?
Since when did “common sense” have anything to do with doing “God’s work?”
Just wondering about God’s work. I mean, does He ever give two people the same job to do, so then they end up arguing about who’s in charge. He seems to do that with land an awful lot.
I can settle this.
It boils down to esoterica. If you sincerely believe that you have had an esoteric experience and communed with the big guy, who could possibly tell you that you’re wrong?
Aha, I hear you say. What if two people believe conflicting propositions, yet appear to believe with equal sincerity?
Not a difficult question to answer. You simply have to give each of the religious traditions an equal and fair shake. Go through the mystical conversion process of each of the faiths until you believe it sincerely, then compare the qualia of each of the esoteric experiences.
I don’t see why you’re all having difficulty with this relatively simple process.
Wait another minute. I’m doing my taxes tonight, and I’m wondering if God issued the Lord’s Resistance Army a 1099-MISC form, or if God is a tax cheat. After all, they’re doing God’s work, right?
Of course! I do the same thing with philosophy all the time.
If you have two irreconcilable truth claims, all you have to do to test them is to believe them in turn.
Darned if the truth isn’t always the first one I pick! I must be psychic.
This guy God doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to work for. No W2′s, doesn’t pay your Social Security, don’t even DREAM about dental benefits. Hardball negotiator, I’ll give him that. But geez, hire some guy to kill his own son in cold blood and the least you could give him is a couple extra days of vacation. Abraham got the shaft from this union-buster, that’s my take on the whole thing.
Don’t forget to mention the LRA also prays to the direction of Mecca on Friday, fasts during Ramadan, and has ordered the killing of all catholic clergy. Joseph Kony’s cousin made up an additional 10 commandments. The eleventh commandment seems to be “thou shalt not ride a bicycle,” and many would-be cyclists have had their buttocks slashed. I don’t think this could be mistaken for christianity.
Yeah, Alan, sure. Except for the fact that they say that they’re Christians and say their fighting their war in the name of Christianity in order to promote The Ten Commandments under the name The LORD’S Resistance Army, not Allah’s Resistance Army.
No, no, nobody could mistake these people for Christians!
There’s this really dishonest technique that Christians use anytime there’s a Christian group doing something that makes them look bad. All of a sudden, that group becomes not Christian anymore.
Sure, the LRA improvises a little bit, but so do ALL Christians – even the Catholics shake it up a bit every now and then. Many Catholic churches now sponsor Yoga classes. Does that make them not Catholic anymore? Hm? Does that make them Hindu?
So the idea that they might be Moslem becasue they pray to Mecca is just another christian conspiracy theory?
I hear the Islamic suicide bombers now ‘mix it up a little’ by receiving communion before going on suicide missions. Just in case Allah has run out of virgins. And when they go out to burn embassies the Immans give them little Torahs which they are told to place next to their hearts to stop bullets.
If you follow the money, you will find it leads straight to the ethnic-cleansing-happy Islamic fundie government of Sudan.
“There have been many observations of Kony traveling to Sudan and receiving supplies from Khartoum (currently an Islamic government). The apparent belief in two different religions may be to serve two purposes. They claim to believe in Christianity in order to gain acceptability in the conservative dedicated rural Christian community in which they operate, although it appears Christians and other non-Muslims are their primary targets, as in Sudan. It is reasoned their attempt is to be a proxy disconnecting itself in all appearance from its main backers in Sudan. It must be noted Uganda’s close proximity to the similarly troubled regions of Sudan where the Non-Muslim and black populations are killed and displaced by the Janjaweed militia.â€
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony
“CHRISTIANS AND OTHER NON-MOSLEMS ARE THEIR PRIMARY TARGETS”
I say if it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. The Moslems are collecting modern-day Jannissaries. They haven’t read their history though, because historically the governments that used kidnapped child soldiers to maintain power were all eventually overthrown by those same armies.
Could this be an example of al Taqiyah? See the reference to Sistani’s website on #28 and especially #29 American Mick’s definition of al-taqiyah as “lying to hide one’s belief in Islam and act like a Christian to deceive, infiltrate, and destroy the enemy.”
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2006/03/25/are-gays-being-summarily-executed-in-iraq-what-is-the-involvement-of-us-forces/#comments
Hey, when I play “duck.wav” my speakers quack like a duck. And here I was thinking they were electronic!
Duck calls have been around for a long while, too, no? The phrase always struck me as pretty stupid.
HT,
when it comes to believing that your speakers are ducks, you are simply not trying hard enough.
“I can’t believe that.”
-Alice
“Can’t you…Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
“Why, sometimes before breakfast I’ve believed as many as six impossible things.”
– the White Queen
Well, they do say breakfast is the most important meal of the day…
HT,
The entire expression as it is spoken here is “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.” This expression is a warning against people who try to hide the truth by putting a false label on something. For instance, the Vietnam War used to be called the Vietnam Conflict. So much nicer, don’t you think? Especially when only Congress can declare war, and LBJ sent troops without asking congress for a declaration of war. So if it looks exactly like a war, and soldiers die just like they die in war, but you CALL it a conflict, it’s not really a war, right?
So the LRA gets its money from the Islamic government of Sudan (which also finances ethnic cleansing by the Janjaweed in Darfur), issues statements calling for the killing of catholic priests, kidnaps only Christian children, prays to Mecca, abstains from pork, and fasts during Ramadan. If you then put a Christian label on the LRA, does that make it Christian?
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_petraitis/spirit_war.shtml
Hmmmm. Well, Alan, before they renamed themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army they called themselves the Uganda Peoples’ Democratic Christian Army.
Why are you so resistant to the notion that Christians are capable of mass brutality? It’s happened countless times in history before.
Name, schmame, Jim. Leaving aside the question of how a group in Deepest Africa can name itself in English, you are missing the point. The name means nothing; there is a disconnect with the actions.
Of course mainstream Christianity provides us with many historical examples of mass brutality. The conversion of Europe, the mass slaughter of Albigensians, elimination of the Cathar and Manichean heresies, and the Protestant Reformation provide us with many charming examples. Only Scandinavia seems to have escaped the general mayhem. Conversion to Christianity during the ‘period of dual faiths’ was peaceful. Even the reformation was not accompanied by the usual bloodletting found elsewhere in Europe; indeed many priests quietly became Lutheran, married, and continued ministering to their flocks. The mistake is to believe Christians have a franchise on nastiness.
Either way they’re non-pagans.
Both the Muslim and Christian religions have a bad history of being lead by people whose main interest seems to be power and control, not keeping to their religion.
Every so often I wonder if it’s something specific in the religion that causes it (e.g. the autocracy of having only one god to worship), but generally I come to the conclusion that it’s just a human thing.
What’s in a name? It’s some new group using insecurities to rally up violence.
Alan, the old circular argument comes up again.
A group calling itself Christian cannot be Christian if it does something bad. So if a group calling itself Christian does something bad, it’s not Christian, and if it’s Christian, it can’t do something bad, because it’s not Christian if it does, nicely and cleanly answering any allegation of Christian misdeeds.
Riiiiiiiiight.
I guess the Catholic Church is not Christian because of its history of forced conversions. Someone tell the Pope!
America is the pinnacle of democracy.
We can judge how democratic a country by comparing their institutions and practices to those of the USA.
This allows to observe common features od democratic nation states–>which allows us to determine a definition of democracy.
When we compare the practices and institutions of the USA to that definition, we discover America to be the pinnacle of democracy.
How are the above attempts at defining Christianity different?
America is the pinnacle of democracy, now?
It’s an argument I recall from an undergrad course in rhetoric…
Please don’t attribute it to me.
So back in the middle ages, christians did something bad, hterefore, everyone who does something bad is christian and all Christians do bad things. So if the LRA says they are christian we can trust and believe what they say even though they kidnap and mutilate christian children, pray in the direction of Mecca, and fast during ramadan, and receive their funding from the islamic government of sudan. Since they do Bad Things we know they can’t be from the Religion of Peace. whatever.
Oh, okay. Sorry, wasn’t sure.
No, Alan. Now you’re getting miffed and lashing out wildly, and it isn’t pretty.
To disagree with your circular argument is clearly NOT to say that anybody who does anything bad is a Christian. That’s obvious.
Who put YOU in the position to say that a group that refers to itself as Christian, that refers to “The Lord” and “Christian” in its titles, and swears to uphold the Ten Commandments is not Christian? Is there some regulatory board I’m unaware of on which you hold a seat?
Jim, the circular argument is yours, not mine. If you are looking for documentation, why don’t you actually read the links I posted. One of them is even from an atheist website, so that should lend it some credibility with you.
Those who are watching the LRA from a religious and not political perspective say the religion is a mixture of paganism, christianity and Islam and compare it to the Druze. Others say it is an entirely new religion in the formation stage. If you don’t believe me, either check the links I posted or google it yourself.
I am not a member of any regulatory board, in fact I am sometimes quite Irregular, but I am confident that adding more fiber to my diet would correct this.
See Jim, you need to realize that you are wrong for saying that “Christians have a franchise on nastiness.”
Never said that? Never mind. We know you’re thinking it.
What you need to understand is that Christians are never bad. If they are bad, they are not Christians. Never mind what they call themselves. (Of course, all Christians are sinners, but never mind that now.)
Misrepresentation of someone’s position in order to mislead is an example of the ‘straw man fallacy’. I’m sure no one here would try to do that. If someone wants to disagree with me I’m sure they will paste the exact statement they wish to disagree with.
Yeah, um, well, see your comment #21 for “franchise on nastiness,” which nobody said anybody believed until you did.
I kinda sorta think that’s what Greg was trying to say, kinda, yeah.
Care to revisit?
Jim says (#20),
Why are you so resistant to the notion that Christians are capable of mass brutality?
When did I say this? Sounds like one of those ‘when did you quit beating your wife’ type of questions. I’m sure someone like you wouldn’t misrepresent my position in order to mislead. There must be another explanation. Perhaps you were rushed and didn’t notice the links.
And look again at what I actually wrote in post #21:
The mistake is to believe Christians have a franchise on nastiness.
Did I say anyone here was making that mistake? No. The statement merely says that IF someone were to believe that Christians have a franchise on nastiness, it would be a mistake. I have not pointed any fingers, at least, not yet. Do YOU think anyone here thinks Christians have a franchise on nastiness? Once again, my position is being misrepresented in order to mislead. Surely no one here would be that irresponsible. There must be another explanation.
Now that you mention it, how DO you explain the reports that this group ‘follows the ten commandments’ by praying to Mecca, abstaining from pork, fasting during Ramadan, being funded by the Islamic government of Sudan that also provides the financial support for ethnic cleansing in Darfur…
In the lead sentence of this piece the LRA was characterized as “a Christian rebel group.”
A ‘Christian’ group that prays to MECCA, abstains from PORK, fasts during RAMADAN, and gets its money from the ISLAMIC government of Sudan. Maybe its kinda, um, yeah, well, sorta time to take a peek at those links and revisit that ‘christian rebel group’ characterization.
God is one
there is no any godness allah is one and allah gave to people everything and divercedthings which are good and which are bad!