For those of you interested in a nicely detailed nonsatyrical proposal, i recommend Steve Sailor.
He has some good practical ideas, since Spencer apparently has none, except for empowering the jihaadis by insisting theirs is the only possible interpretation and by sandbagging General Petraeus, Dr. Kilcullen and our warriors in Iraq by denegrating the religion of our Iraqi allies and gloating over the supposed superiority of xianity.

Also Spencer cannot claim an understanding of the Qu’ran, Koran, Qur’an w/e…arabic is an oral tradition languange with triple consonants…spelling is various. Meaning in classical arabic is dependent on both inflection and context. that is one reason there can be conflicting interpretations.
Spencer has admitted to me that he no quranic exegesis of his own.
He is giving you regugitated jihaadi exegesis. duh, of course jihaadi islam is violent. He is NOT an islamic scholar. He is not trained….he is a homeschooler if you please.
Spencer insists on a literalist interprentation and ignores any parts that contradict him and the jihaadis, like muslims cannot kill muslims, and he who takes the life of an innocent is killing the whole world.

benson sez–The topic here was the debate between an author and a reviewer.

so….that means no one else can comment?

and!
ima grrl.
c yah.

1. The topic here was the debate between an author and a reviewer.

2. Muslims are explicitly permitted to lie when discussing their faith with non-Muslims.

Does anyone here believe that it does any good at all to try to reprove a tar baby??

*sigh*

The university system predates the Jesuit order by at least two centuries. Didn’t they teach you church history at Immaculate Conception?

And you don’t listen real good. ID means nothing to me. I don’t believe it, yet I am Christian. The last Pope didn’t believe it, yet he was Christian. Your continued statement that “ID = Christianity” is based on either the purest ignorance or the most willful blindness, and neither speaks well of your argument.

News flash, smart guy: Christianity hasn’t been one, organized entity since, oh about the 5th century, when the Coptic/Marionite/Jacobite churches broke away. Add to that the East-West Schism of the 11th century and the Prod Reformation in the 16th, and you have a multiplicity of communities, each with their own authority.

SOME of those communities are all about ID, because they’re married to a literalist interpretation of the Bible. As I said before, they represent a minority, if an attention-getting one, (for which, I blame most folk’s abysmal cultural knowledge, and the media) Damning all Christianity for the ID crowd is as stupid as hmmmm, damning all Muslims for bin Laden. I’m sure a Sufi can appreciate that analogy.

Continuing, Roger Bacon’s house arrest was brief, and the result of the Condemnations of 1277, a ban on various propositions, some of which were scientifically valid, some of which were not. He was back at work within a year.

I won’t argue that the tension between the mystical and the natural never led to problems for those concerned with pure science. Such a statement is not born out by the historical record. But neither are your arguements, which seem less based on fact and more based on the kind of easy, breezy, popular assertions that people have been making regarding science and faith since the 18th century.

The Church’s support of science and the permittal of inquiry is a matter of public record. To deny this is to further the spread of popular misconceptions that one who believes in science as loudly as you do ought to eschew.

But this is far wide of the point. You write not with a sense of undoing misconception, but with venting your offended piety. You clearly know nothing about Christianity, but in the name of settling accounts will fling any tired trope you can (suggesting that the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses were religious wars, which I pray you don’t really believe). This makes you only different in degree from he who calls for the death of anyone who draws the Prophet’s picture; you know better, but old habits die hard.

For the record, I don’t hold to the notion that Islam is incompatible with modernity. The facts on the ground do not bear such out. But it is instructive to look at Islam’s warrior theology, and the influence it has had. And it is fair, though one should do so carefully, to compare it with other faiths. To constantly shout a man down for this reveals more about you, than about him.

Finally, your writing style does not present the image you wish to impart. Bad spellings of simple English words, repetitive arguments dully worded, and the obnoxious use of “lol” scream “addled teenager” rather than “educated man.” It invites people not to take you seriously.

The Man said “Cast not your pearls before swine”, however, and I see myself losing interest in this debate, which I expect you to consider proof of your genius. Do so, and enjoy the wasteland of intellect you create.

Your writing style is the most stilted and irritating I have every run across. Ever. Anywhere. Your prose is the most mundane, annoying, off-point drivel I have ever run across. Sadly (or amusingly), you seem self-assured in your irrelevance.

Robert Spencer: Nice job. Keep up the good work.

There is no universal interpretation of the Qur’an. In Islamic culture might seems to be right as Muhammad demonstrated by his life and his most ardent followers have continued to live out.

You gnostics tend to be consistant in your hatred for faith in the Transcendent yet you espouse one preposterous a priori belief after another. Islam is as gnostic as the Manichee before and the reductionist Darwinian dweeb of the present era which you emulate so well in your pretensions to highQ.

Jayker

Spencer knows how to spell Qur’an and you don’t. He wins.

Spencer encourages his readers to learn about Islam, instead of assuming that it is “just like any other religion”, as many of us would feel more comfortable believing.

“values” is purely subjective–jews crucified Jesus, xians burned Margarete Porete, muslims crucified Ibn Hallaj. all mystics…the similiarities are intriguing.
i denounce your subjective argument.
who decides which “values” are more “humane and life-affirming”? You have aready demonstrated that you are incapable of unbiased empiricism in your promotion of jihaadi exegesis as the only valid interpretation of the Qu’ran.