And I really don't care if he's reading this ;-)
I've been reading my workmate's newspaper whilst been at work (on breaks of course). I pinch sections A and B (News and World) from him at lunch, mainly for the letters in A. Recently, a man by the name of Bill Shepard has been criticized for his comments regarding Islam and Christianity. After reading these letters, I feel I must add my blurb, going back to a report on Campbell Live...
John Campbell gave a 10-minute slot on "Is there a link between Islam and Terrorism?" To aid his investigation, he had the aforementioned person, who is former Religious Studies Dean/Lecturer at Massey University. What went from the title of the news story turned quickly into a "Christianity's wrong, everyone else is right" gripe. Here's some comments from Shepard as quoted (paraphrase) on Campbell Live, along with my rebuttals. Read on!
The Bible and the Koran were written in the same time period: Not true! The Koran came to being in 600A.D., whereas the Bible existed 2000 years previous! The Old Testament scriptures alone have a thousand years on the Koran.
The Bible and Koran were written in the same culture settings: Not true also. This echoes my previous answer; vastly different time frames equate also for different culture backgrounds to emerge. Considering well before Christ (much less the Koran), civilizations rose and fell, along with their cultures.
The Old Testament stories are similar to the war verses in the Koran: This is where my doubts about Shepard's scholarship entered. Granted, there are a lot of gross stories in the Old Testament, but Shepard has grossly misinterpreted the Old Testament here. Any scholar worth their salt would know that the O.T. atrocities are in fact acts of judgment, brought out by a righteous God on a vastly sinful people. Westerners won't think of it that way, but if you go through the O.T., all of the 'wars' are centered around God judging a grossly sinful people, using Israel as His tool of judgment. Also, read Deuteronomy chapter 20 for the Rules of War handed to the Israelites from God - it calls into question who really got killed in the wars anyway (not women and children, that's for sure).
In the end, I felt that this news report lacked any credible research by both Campbell and Shepard. Sorry guys - you did poorly! I would have expected a lecturer of Religious Studies to have done his or her homework, but I guess I expected too much.
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1 comment:
Its a sad indictment on society when a religeous studies 'expert' doesn't portray balance to his opinion. I realise that due to the london bombings and 9/11 we will see alot more of these people saying these things. I just wish that they had a single clue what they are talking about.
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