The Pope and his comments

[John83]

Everyone is biased towards their own opinion. To deny this is to deny you have an opinion.
Bias being a preference that inhibits impartial judgment, I think that you're talking nonsense. But then I'm biased. :p

[BohsPartisan]

Lets not go ahead and get intellectually dishonest shall we?

It is impossible to deny, whatever your biased political persuasion that the Islamic religion had expanded immeasurably more than the Christian one within 110 years of its existence. Christianity was largely a non violent sect until Constantine and Romans killed it in the 4th century and replaced it was something disgusting and which has been used to justify several wars right up until this day.



Having been p'd off at your cookie cutter characterisation of me, I overlooked your other point. This is irrelevant as the Christianity that Benedict represents is not the "non violent sect" (though there is evidence to contradict this characterisation of the early Christians - some of the gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library suggest that they used justifiable revolutionary force) but the post 4th century murderous fanaticism as represented by "official" christendom.

[ken foree]

the pope is a head of state and 'leader' of a billion people on earth and the speech is simply a political one. the fact that he dug up an obscure text with this 'inflamatory' quote to have a pop at islam speaks volumes. as another poster(s) previously pointed out, there are other examples he could have cited to make a similar point.

everything the man says is vetted, countless times. there was nothing accidental in either the content or timing of this speech. the church in the middle east is in danger, the number of disillusioned and lapsed catholics around the world is growing, and he is simply taking hardline stance at appealing to that base of catholic support. the fact that he used a quote allows benedict to claim plausable deniability - notice he hasn't apologized.

the muslim reaction was expected. of course he saw the furor over the danish cartoons, the man didn't rise through the (political) vatican ranks by accident. we are naive to think that this is anything other than calculated.