TRUTHNOW78 the year is 2009 not 1978, Religion will always be around, some people simply can't cope with reality. However more and more people are joining the ranks of the enlightened (brights if you will), your kids included.
Kids today get their fill of fantasy from Computer games, they want reality-based government. It’s all down hill for religion no matter what the flavour.

You miss the point Kenny, if non-religious females don't have atleast three kids, then everything that the atheists stand for will die out (gay rights, The ABC, feminism, etc). And the Catholics and Muslims will simply keep reproducing.

As for the enlightenment - Christians believe it has helped us understand our faith better. I.e. quantum physics shows the limitations of science and the need for belief.

Irfan: Thanks for interesting and conciliatory article. There'd be no hint of "clash of civilizations" if we all took such a tolerant view. I agree with you in deploring Arab cultural imperialism within Islam - the view that Arabs "own" Islam just as you suggest that the West thinks it owns Christianity. Arabist Islam is the real cause of your "stigmatisation and marginalisation" in Australian society.

Ed Husain, in The Islamist: why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw inside and why I left (Penguin 2007), in his chapter "The Road to Damascus", writes of his own experience of a more tolerant and inclusive Islam in Syria:

p 222-3: "The term kafir is used in the Koran in the context of the brutal persecution of early Muslims at the hands of pagan idolaters. To reinvent that terminology and use it to refer to a population that is mainly Christian, or at least theistic, is an abject failure to understand the Koran. Worse, it indicates a serious sense of superiority, arrogance, and separation. In Syria, the Muslims referred to Christians and others not as kuffar but as masihiyyeen: people of the Messiah. Where did we go wrong in Britain? Why had we opted for such harsh language? … Christians and Jews in the Koran, believers in God, are not referred to as kafir but as ‘people of the book’ and thus deserving of reverence."

While you yourself are doing a stirling job, it is hard for people like me to accept the good faith of "moderate" Muslims who are disproportionately represented in interfaith talkfests. Why? Unlike the highly moral stance in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, emphasizing truthfulness, forbearance and compassion, Islam has two teachings specifically justifying hiding the truth about its beliefs to non-believers and lying as a tactic to gain advantage.

The first is Kithman, "hiding the truth" (doctrine from the sixth Imam of Shia Islam, Jafar Sadiq), and the second is Taqiya, "deception" (Koran 16:106), a doctrine that allows all Muslims to deny any aspect of their faith in order to protect themselves from harm.

We see plenty of evidence of both in the "moderate and reasonable" statements made by Muslim spokesmen in interfaith dialogues. Evangelism (Dawah) in Islam is more than just "sharing the good news", it is war. Mohammed said "War is deception".

By contrast, Jesus said "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

I heard Tony Abbott on Q&A describe the Koran as “the Old Testament on steroids”. Seriously - how can a Christian not agree?

Today, nearly all Jews read the Torah relativistically, as a reflection of the culture and perceptions of the times: Leviticus, with its Bronze-Age brutal punishments, is not taken as literally applicable now. Early in Christianity, Paul pronounced: "We are not (now) under Law, but under Grace." Both Paul and Peter taught that many of the Jewish requirements, including dietary ones, were abrogated.

Islam's own (quite different) abrogation concept is nowhere near as clear, given the disagreement among scholars about chronological order of the surahs. Given Islam's abrogation theology, the Koran's "There is no compulsion in religion", cited by Imran Khan, is surely a demonstration of Kithman and Taqiya!

There will be hope for civilized Christian-Muslim relations only when a non-literalist reading of the Koran, a move away from regarding is as "the WORDS of God", enters the mainstream. Until then, should not we Christians take at its word, the clear incitements to violence and murder which the Koran and hadiths are full of?

Sorry but you're all mad. With the voices in your head and your talking to imaginary friends you are all destined for the nuthouse. Muslim, jew and christian alike.

TRUTHNOW78.

Could you please explain what you mean by "quantum physics shows the limitations of science and the need for belief"

Thanks