From the article:

"Try making an argument for the fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity, that although both are monotheistic it is not the same god that is worshipped."

That's easy! God in the Jewish and Christain Bible says that the Jews are his chosen people. Allah, the moon god in the Qur'an says to Kill the Jews and Christians (Sura 9:29 jumps immediately to mind).

So, the assertation that it is a difficult argument to make a case as to Allah being seperate from the God of the Jews and Christians (People of the Book, in the Qur'an) is just ridiculous, to say the least.

If you need more examples, I can post at least seven more differences right off the top of my head.

Cheers,

Doctor Bulldog

The culture of western man has been totally embedded in the secular world view for over 200 years. This was the significance of Nietzshes famous "god is dead' statement. This process of secularisation began with the Renaissance and on through the so called "enlightenment" period.
What it really involved was the eclipse of BIG religion by BIG science wherein Big science became the "official" arbiter of what is True & Real.At the time Big religion was full of archaic and impenetrable mythologies which were easily refutable by the REAL knowledge about how the material universe actually works which was being "discovered" by the application of the scientific method.

What is now promoted as "religion" by the likes of Sells and Michael Casey are the remnants of religions that were created in the childhood of humankind with its parental "creator" deity. It is also entirely exoteric and therefore shares the same presumptions about what we are as human beings and the nature of the world process altogether. Human beings reduced to meat-body existence only and the "world" as a solid something completely separate from human beings. Religion providing some myths to provide consolation for the inherently terrifying condition of being identified with a vulnerable body that is going to disintegrate and die.

Meanwhile if you read the subtexts of the "news" both of the inherently TOTALITARIAN monotheistic POLITICAL religions of Islam & Christianity with their totally obnoxious only one truth/way/religion/revelation are setting the entire world up for an "endtime" final showdown which will make WW3 seem like a Sunday afternoon picnic.
The recent circuses involving the late and current Popes were effectively celebrations of western imperial power. A celebration of the power of the money changers and the associated ower elites.
Do you think "jesus" would have attended such an occasion.
Do you think "jesus" would have even been invited.
Jesus who threw the money changers out of the temple!

Doctor Bulldog,

Here's a couple from the Bible.

In Luke 19:27, Jesus orders anyone who refuses to be ruled by him to be killed.

In Deuteronomy 13:6-16, the Lord instructs Israel to kill anyone who worships a different God or who worships the Lord differently.

I can find others too, particularly concerning the manner in which God wants us to slaughter his enemies (including women, children, animals and even their trees).

The Torah also has some very interesting insights on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles regarding killing.

I think that maybe it is the same God after all.

Peter: "Try arguing with a feminist about the insistence that there should be gender balance in bodies of authority even though a great majority of women find themselves drawn towards the nurture of families."

You should try arguing with anti-feminists that there should be gendered approach to abuse of women even though a great majority of men find themselves drawn towards the protection and nurture of families.

Peter suggests that people base their foundations on myths then appeals to a secular one to support his gendered position.

Peter seems to think myth is something without a substantial foundation.

For Levi Strauss myth is, among other things, a "kind of thought" that is “half way between a precept and concepts”. Is that thought empty without God's word behind it? Or is God's word inherent in the quality of the thought itself regardless of who thinks it or what myth informs it?

Remember some people regard the Bible as myth in the sense that it is an authority's disproven attempt to explain phenomenon. For instance: cave men would have developed theories about lightning. But because it was heresy to challenge ancestral authority these remained a truth long after they were seen as myth. They remain sacred but are no longer regardes as true.

Or is myth just the traditional plot that can be transmitted. The EUREKA and ANZAC myth, for instance, are transmitted to inform our National heritage and pride. But these myths can also be hijacked by ideology. Thus we see right-wing National Action and leftist Unions transmitting/transforming the Eureka to express their very different ideals. Can hijackers imbue the Bible with ideology which is a kind of secularising of God's message?

Myth is also a way representing reality. Lugowolski said that one can have a "world view that is a form of timeless, static existence." So there is always a kind of invisible bridge or connection to our roots. A classic example is the saying: "What would Jesus do?" Here the reference point is 2000years ago. The Presence of then is now for Christians.

Nicely written article. Thanks.

Speaking of Michael Casey,his boss George Pell is a frequent visitor and participant at various talkfests put on by the Centre for "Independent" Studies and occasionally at the CIS's USA equivalents.
The Hayekian "world"-view of the CIS being totally embedded in the reductionism of scientism, with a little bit of self consoling exoteric religion thrown in.
They had their annual "religious" lecture yesterday featuring Paul Kelly of the OZ.
What would Kelly or any of the CIS participants really know about the PROCESS that is True Religion? Is he a serious religious practitioner? Is his point of view informed by any kind of esoteric understanding? By the Wisdom of the Heart? Even by the quantum understanding of Reality suggested by Einstein's famous E=MC2 eqhation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The ideas and possibilitties of which inform leading edge physics. The entire universe being a modification of LIGHT. And yet he presumes to give a speech on religion? You wont find much talk of Conscious Light at the CIS!
George is also one of the many propaganda hacks strutting the world stage promoting the superiority of western "reason". Which is rather odd because if one REALLY applied systematic and rigorous reason to any of the arguments re the "proof" of Christianity the whole entirely man made christian tower of babel falls apart. Childish psycho-babel.

I would hope that something we could all agree on is that we should protect women from being raped. It is unbelievable how difficult it is just to get people to accept this basic tenet.

And then to expand that tenet to say that force should be used against rapists.

And then expand that tenet to say that the Iraq war was the right thing to do because it closed down Saddam's rape rooms, regardless of any other reason that may have been given or imagined/fabricated by the anti-war.

And if you take that basic philosophy, of forcibly stamping out rape worldwide, starting with rapists we actually know where to find, like Saddam, then everything else falls into place.

Analyzing why the entire world failed to properly protect the Iraqi women will lead you to this:
www.mutazilah.org