The Petra Zone

Ron Paul retired. Being a Democrat doesn't make one bad, being bad does. Jeb Bush has proven experience as did a number of others. Carly, Donald and Ben probably should have started at the local school board and worked their way up. One good thing about Donald is he knocked Cruz out. Thanks Donald!

Isn't Ron Paul the name of that black drag queen who had a fashion show?

brent wrote:Isn't Ron Paul the name of that black drag queen who had a fashion show?

Ron Paul...RuPaul.

To-may-to...to-mah-toe.

Yeah, I meant Rand Paul.

Let's move back to the discussion about Islam. I was reminded about my discussion with Brent as I watched this youtube video with Mehdi Hassan. I agree with quite many of his points and in my opinion he stresses some of my points in a better way than I myself did. So take the time and enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy9tNyp03M0

Mehdi Hassan is a very interesting, knowledegable and inspiring person.

During the last couple of weeks I have found it striking that some of you are very reluctant to critizice or even hear anything bad about any member of Petra or anyone associated with the band, while in religious and political debates you seem to have a very different approach and rather easily generalise quite a lot on these areas.

curt wrote:During the last couple of weeks I have found it striking that some of you are very reluctant to critizice or even hear anything bad about any member of Petra or anyone associated with the band, while in religious and political debates you seem to have a very different approach and rather easily generalise quite a lot on these areas.

Okay, that is a valid point. I don't dispute the idea that there is a place to speak up about something being wrong. My issue is that I don't think the Internet is the right place to do so, particularly when you don't know the person or know all their circumstances. Someone being in a band doesn't give license to discuss or speculate about their business on the Internet, and I'm guessing most of us probably wouldn't like that if it happened to us. If they're smart, they will have a home church or at least a group of friends they can be accountable to. That is something that is beneficial to anyone in their Christian walk.

It's not our place to set ourselves up as judge, or to change them. That is God's job, and we all have issues that we need to bring to the Lord. Just my take.

Thank you, Shell. I think what you wrote makes you position clear and I agree on some of your points. I also agree with you - at least to some extent - that the internet is not always the right place for a discussion. One point I had in my discussion with Brent was that the discussions about Islam is stigmaticing to some extent - especially if you claim that all muslims think and potentially will act violently.

If you read your answer to me and exchange the formulation "Someone being in a band" with "Someone believing in Islam" you will see my point. Of course this is a grey zone to some extent, because we of course should be allowed to discuss religion. It would be a lot worse if we didn't. It's just the "every muslim" or "almost all" of even "too many" muslims are violent approach I find to be wrong. Especially when the political consequence of it is that we turn the blind eye to people in tremendeous need.

I am going to have to catch up on this thread, I haven't read all the posts. I do understand what you mean. It is too easy to get into making generalizations. It's not right to assume every Muslim is a terrorist, just as it isn't right to assume every Hispanic person is a gang member or that all whites are racist. For that matter, not all Christians are televangelists or think gays should be murdered. There will be extremes with virtually everything. I get that. There is nothing wrong with having a discussion about religion. The problem with other religions versus Christianity is that they are centered on people having to earn their salvation rather than Jesus dying to give us the gift of salvation. Things are bound to get messed up when that is the case.

It goes without saying that we should not discriminate "generally" all the time. BUT, there have been times in the Bible that God himself did discriminate. There are times he forbade the Israelites from trading or mating with Egyptians. God forbade his people from getting it on or marrying lots of people. God even wrote off generations of people, before they were even born! Seems kind of extreme to black ball ALL of them. Sounds kind of unfair and unChristian like of God? Well, maybe we are misreading what being Godly and Christian like is.

All that said, we know Egyptians were grafted in, as they believed and followed God. In this same fashion, we should protect ourselves from countries, ethnic groups, religions and political systems out to harm us and our culture. Should some of them be grafted in, as they chose to be assimilated? Yes. But the ones that don't and won't need to GIT! Germany, France and others are seeing masses of immigrants refusing FREE language classes and employment opportunities. They want to be a microcosmic inconvenience. We waited for WWII to come to us. We shouldn't be so stupid that we allow another ambush to come to us because some liberals want to be nice.

I'll just leave this here.

https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/page ... peace.aspx

Not criticizing Petra members? I've never seen a site that is so harsh on a band that they are supposed to be a fan of.

Brent, I am not sure that a war is less likely if we are not nice and if we try to justify discrimination as a christian virtue. In my opinion that might as well lead to conflicts.

Should some unthankful refugees be our excuse for not helping people in tremendeous need? Generalycing again?

Again, those that need help should be extended it and they will accept it. Those who don't need it will not accept it and need to be gone. They are the trouble makers.

Noam Chomsky offers some quite interesting perspectives on Donald Trump and some of the issues we have been discussing in this thread. To sum up his criticism is that Trump views are either unpredictable, ever changing or outwright wrong and dangerous.

Apart from Chomsky's views the program also contains interesting points on how racism apperantly was a contributing factor to the election of Donald Trump.

You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB54XxbgI0E

(And, yes, I'm aware that we are moving of topic to some degree so no need for you to point that out.)

Noam Chomsky is a political hack who's claim to fame is a theory on linguistics that was long revered but has recently come under intense scrutiny. If he's saying that Trump winning the election had anything to do with racism then I feel confident dismissing his opinion in its entirety. That is unless he's saying that it was an indictment against the vapid accusations of racism that are constantly floated by the left in an attempt to silence their political opponents, but I rather doubt that's what he's saying. Isn't it funny that Trump has spent decades in the public eye but was never accused of racism or any other "-ism" until he ran for president against Hillary?

Hey, guess what, Trump did better with minorities than the calculatedly inoffensive milquetoast Mitt Romney. Not bad for a supposed racist.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aviksaroy/2 ... 459a663b8b