Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Huh. An Australian MP apparently said in parliament... about a week ago, I guess... that the Bible is bloodier than the Koran:

"Those who refer to Muslim fundamentalists may choose to quote from the Holy Koran and there are passages that might be taken to show a vengeful God," Ms Irwin told federal parliament.

"But when it comes to good old-fashioned violence, the Judaeo-Christian God is hard to beat.

"If I was to take those verses as written, I could easily associate any Christian fundamentalist with a dangerous and extreme mindset. But we are more likely to associate the term Christian fundamentalist with psalm singers and happy clappers."

Quoting from the Old Testament in the Bible, she drew attention to passages from referring to murders, massacres and God ordering Moses to "loot from their houses all their silver and clothing".

"And if that is not enough, the story continues as Moses ... is urged to hack women and children to death, rip unborn babies from their mother's womb and level the cities," she told parliament. "The virgins are taken at God's command for the pleasure of his holy warriors."


Which lead someone to do a very rough quantitative comparison of violence in each. And in that vein is the Whose God is More Vicious? quiz.

Which is basically what I've been saying all along. I mean, the Qu'ran is rather contradictory, naturally, but all I've read leads me to believe it's far more tolerant of other religions (at least Christianity and Judaism) than either of the other two major Abrahamic religions. Even if you believe the Qu'ran commands you to kill all non-believers, that's hardly worse than this: if there's a town in which people worship another religion, you have to kill not only them, but everyone in the town and all their cattle, then gather up all their belongings, set it on fire, and abandon the land forever.

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