This began as a reply to a commenter on Wizbang who uses the name Muslim Unity. MU had made the statement that George Bush (in so many words) would pay for his crimes in the afterlife. I've rewritten my response.
Just after 9-11 a couple of prominent Christian personalities told us that it was judgement on America because we tolerated homosexuality. My pastor at that time denounced those men in the strongest terms for presuming to speak for God. My thought at the time, when I considered what the future was likely to hold, was that it was just as likely a judgement on Bin Laden and his fellow religionists who seemed convinced that God was on their side. God's will can be a twisty sort of thing. Who can understand the mind of God?
So I asked and ask this question:
How do you know that Bush (and America) isn't doing the will of God?
Even if Islam is correct, doesn't God use godless nations and wars when His people refuse to shape up? Why presume to speak for God when He claims the right of judgement for Himself? We're looking at the "religion of peace" being overtaken by people who, instead of admitting their error, decide that what God really wants is for them to do more of the same except harder. Where is their humility before God?
After 9-11 when we were hearing all about how this was God's judgement on the decadent West, the Great Satan, etc., I wondered if it wasn't really the other way around. Bin Laden did not prevail. The Taliban, as "holy" as it's possible to get, enforcing Islamic morality... they didn't win either. So what's the deal? Maybe this is all God's judgment... on radical Islam.
I don't know what other explanation makes sense because 9-11 was an act of moronic idiocy. So is every other planned attack on the West. So, certainly, are promises to exceed the carnage of 9-11. The people carrying out these plans are doing it for God. If God *wanted* them to, then they would prevail, but so far the evidence of that is zip.
There is no possible way that Islamists can prevail against the West without the direct intervention of God, and so far He's not intervening. The result of 9-11 was a destroyed Taliban and the US occupation of Iraq. What will the result of another attack be? What will the result of a nuclear attack be?
9-11 woke up the West and the West is annoyed. But it's not unified. The West could do so very much more if given reason. Nothing the Islamist militants can possibly do could cripple us. The most they could do is make us very very angry.
Who is next after Afghanistan and Iraq? Syria? Iran? Probably Somalia eventually, since that was so screwed up.
A person does have to wonder. How much will it take before Islam becomes humble before God?
But God is a merciful God. Because the West, the Great Satan, is more compassionate than can be imagined, and when it conquers, rather than slaughtering a population, bashing babies against the stones like the stories of Babylon, they build schools and hospitals. Instead of oppressive dictators they help set up self-government.
The answer and the end to it is very simple. The West wants nothing more than it wants to be able to ignore the Middle East. When Muslims quit killing each other and trying to blow up aircraft or buildings and forcing false conversions at the point of a gun and gutting aid workers and all of those things that can not possibly please God... it will end.
If those things *do* please the God of Islam, then Islam will end.
Just after 9-11 a couple of prominent Christian personalities told us that it was judgement on America because we tolerated homosexuality. My pastor at that time denounced those men in the strongest terms for presuming to speak for God. My thought at the time, when I considered what the future was likely to hold, was that it was just as likely a judgement on Bin Laden and his fellow religionists who seemed convinced that God was on their side. God's will can be a twisty sort of thing. Who can understand the mind of God?
So I asked and ask this question:
How do you know that Bush (and America) isn't doing the will of God?
Even if Islam is correct, doesn't God use godless nations and wars when His people refuse to shape up? Why presume to speak for God when He claims the right of judgement for Himself? We're looking at the "religion of peace" being overtaken by people who, instead of admitting their error, decide that what God really wants is for them to do more of the same except harder. Where is their humility before God?
After 9-11 when we were hearing all about how this was God's judgement on the decadent West, the Great Satan, etc., I wondered if it wasn't really the other way around. Bin Laden did not prevail. The Taliban, as "holy" as it's possible to get, enforcing Islamic morality... they didn't win either. So what's the deal? Maybe this is all God's judgment... on radical Islam.
I don't know what other explanation makes sense because 9-11 was an act of moronic idiocy. So is every other planned attack on the West. So, certainly, are promises to exceed the carnage of 9-11. The people carrying out these plans are doing it for God. If God *wanted* them to, then they would prevail, but so far the evidence of that is zip.
There is no possible way that Islamists can prevail against the West without the direct intervention of God, and so far He's not intervening. The result of 9-11 was a destroyed Taliban and the US occupation of Iraq. What will the result of another attack be? What will the result of a nuclear attack be?
9-11 woke up the West and the West is annoyed. But it's not unified. The West could do so very much more if given reason. Nothing the Islamist militants can possibly do could cripple us. The most they could do is make us very very angry.
Who is next after Afghanistan and Iraq? Syria? Iran? Probably Somalia eventually, since that was so screwed up.
A person does have to wonder. How much will it take before Islam becomes humble before God?
But God is a merciful God. Because the West, the Great Satan, is more compassionate than can be imagined, and when it conquers, rather than slaughtering a population, bashing babies against the stones like the stories of Babylon, they build schools and hospitals. Instead of oppressive dictators they help set up self-government.
The answer and the end to it is very simple. The West wants nothing more than it wants to be able to ignore the Middle East. When Muslims quit killing each other and trying to blow up aircraft or buildings and forcing false conversions at the point of a gun and gutting aid workers and all of those things that can not possibly please God... it will end.
If those things *do* please the God of Islam, then Islam will end.
Comments
We can't bash the babies, we need them for the next generation. The terroists, however, we can get rid of quite efficiently.
I'm a Deist, so it's like, God's not a personal god to me, nor do I believe in the revealed truths.
As for fate, it does make sense that God, as you mean it Synova, is setting things up in a way for it to solve itself. But to me, that is just natural forces balancing out. Matter reacting with anti-matter. Good and Evil. Light and Darkness. These are natural forces, I don't believe in them because of revealed religions, since I believe these natural forces of balance are independent of those religions.
As for hell and heaven, that is on another level for me, because it is directly tied in with the personal nature of a GOd, that judges you for your sins and your virtues. Since I don't believe that God is like that, I cannot honestly believe in heaven and hell then.
Those who do believe in hell and heaven, they are comforted when terroists die because they believe the terroists will suffer many times more after they die. I don't believe that. Another curious aspect is that if the terroists believe that things like pig meat will make them not go to heaven, I'll use it against them. While I don't believe, it doesn't mean I disbelieve that Muslims can believe in such things on faith.
Being humble before God means being willing to change your behavior. If behavior is destructive or self-destructive, then not changing the behavior, not being humble before God, means that judgement is unavoidable.
Some people might say that this is taking God out of it, but I don't think so. God still gives us warning. It's still humility before Him that lets us avoid consequences that we may well be unaware of, or believe won't affect us.
That is the dumbest thing I've read for a day at least. We are attacking, killing, maiming, occupying and interfering with them. They are struggling to rid their land of us. And now we are talking about more invasions in countries that ARE NOT A THREAT TO US.
Why don't we just buy the friggin' oil instead of trying to steal it? Nobody is trying to occupy the west you dummies.
Why don't we buy the oil?
BECAUSE IT'S NOT ABOUT OIL.
To believe that US business and oil tycoons and whomever else promote war and interrupt oil pumping and transport and basically screw themselved financially rather than BUY the oil makes them even stupider than Dr. Evil.
The only people stupider than that are the people who believe it.
We are attacking, killing, maiming, occupying and interfering with them.
Maiming, eh? Don't think I've tried that out yet, let me write that down as a reminder.
So long as they get money for oil, they can use "privateers" called terrorists, to do all the fighting while they sit around living the HOllywood land. It's time to take the war to the rich. Mighty protective of the sources of oil, these fake liberals have become. Must not want to kill their sugar daddy or something.