Wait a minute - I thought there wasn't a hell in Judaism.
They're pretty vague about it. I don't really know any Jewish people who know a lot about the theology. Remember, Judaism is more a religion of laws than doctrine; you can be an atheist as long as you obey the laws. Especially if you belong to a Reform congregation.
Michael said:
When the English "discovered" the Inuit of Canada they (the English), without provocation, killed and murdered as many as they could.
The hostility of the English was, arguably, more due to the North American natives' Paleolithic, and in a few cases Neolithic, culture, i.e., Stone Age. They had no respect for people who were three or four Paradigm Shifts behind them in technology and culture, with no cities, metal, writing, etc. They felt the same way about the native Australians and New Zealanders, and the more remote Africans.
May I live to the day when people get over this "my god is way better than your god!" dreck.
Monotheism is a cancer, it's unnatural. Jung points out that the traditional polytheistic faiths were built around archetypal characters, which are instincts preprogrammed into our synapses by evolution. Each one of those 23 personalities lives inside each of us; some days you have to be the King, some days the Parent, other days the Warrior, and the rest of the time you get to be the Lover or the Healer or whichever one is slightly dominant in your own personality. When ancient tribes encountered each other the discovery that they had the same gods with different names surely made them stop and think before making war. But the monotheistic religions, each with its bizarre, man-made accretions, highlight the differences between people rather than their similarities, and more often lead us to war than peace. As Jung pointed out, "The wars among the Christian nations have been the bloodiest in human history." He forgot about Genghis Khan, who killed ten percent of the people he could reach with the transportation technology of the era, but statistically he was correct.
Main difference between Christianity and Islam is that Christianity came before it. Since the establishment was left to "fester" without profit, time apparently gave way for a new man to take hold of some beliefs. Both have been here for a while thus they fester amongst themselves, going against the roots of their greatest beliefs. Which is in themselves.
Was Christianity well established in the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Mohammed? I know it had metastasized to the northern reaches of Mesopotamia, but had the Arabs been introduced to Jesus?
. Generally the West has more freedom of expression. I dont know to who goes the credit. The secular government or the Christian forefathers.
