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Generally, Doug, there's very little confusion as to whether or not you've written something. <br><br>If it's gratuitously mean, full of childish namecalling, poorly reasoned, bigoted, and demonstrates both an inability to grasp the nuances of any argument previously presented as well as to forward a newly-conceived one with any coherence, the discerning Vision 2020 reader will likely conclude that it was written by you.<br><br>Which strikes me as somewhat less than the testimony most people want to leave, but that's your call. I just want to assure you that the canon of your work makes it easy to identify any new additions to it.<br><br>For the record, you may well disagree with Nick Gier on any number of things. I do. But to suggest that Nick is an irrelevant but yet somehow dangerous pretender in the court of academia reveals terrifically more about you than about him, and causes most of us to shake our heads in bewilderment that your idea of "scholar" has been formed by the Future Men playing Oxford Don at Anselm House. <br><br>It's a big world out there, Doug. You might want to get out a bit more.<br><br>keely<br><br>> To: vision2020@moscow.com; nickgier@adelphia.net<br>> Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 17:26:28 -0400<br>> From: heirdoug@netscape.net<br>> Subject: [Vision2020] Christ is Our Commander-in-Chief or not!<br>> <br>> Dear Lounge Lizard,<br>> <br>> You are correct that most all of what Nick Gier writes is of no impact <br>> on the community as a whole. As a matter of fact very few people ever <br>> read his twaddle. If it weren't for Blind 2020 "Teach" wouldn't have <br>> any thing to do. But it is not what he writes but what he taught over <br>> the past 35 years that has grave consequences!<br>> <br>> What I did find out by reading the latest installment (yes I forced my <br>> self to actually look at the words that he put together) is that he <br>> left out some pretty substantial numbers of deaths from the recent <br>> world history.<br>> <br>> Maybe with the following statistics Nick can expand the pages of his <br>> new work to over 65 pages:<br>> <br>> The number of allied soldiers killed in the D-Day invasion (53,714) is <br>> the same number as were killed in the world in the past 9 hours by <br>> abortion.<br>> <br>> In the first year of the Iraq war we lost 589 brave men and women. That <br>> is the same number as were destroyed in the last 6 min.<br>> <br>> In the past 34 years, about the time that Nick Gier started his <br>> venerated career as a "Professional Philosopher", 44,388,860 living <br>> innocent babies had their lives snuffed out by abortion. Maybe some of <br>> the mothers who were deceived into believing they were doing the right <br>> thing were former students of Nick's, cheered on by his continual <br>> droning that what they were carrying was not a real person, YET! Just <br>> one fine example of his past teaching. I'm sure that can still find it <br>> at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier!<br>> <br>> Way to go teach. Please be our guest to continue the madness!<br>> <br>> Doug Farris (So there is no confusion as to who wrote this.)<br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>> -------<br>> <br>> Why is it relevant with regard to HOW MANY individuals were killed by <br>> such-and-such people of a certain faith. Isn't it the simple act of <br>> killing and the reason behind the killing that is of importance? <br>> Keeping scorecards of "number killed" by "faith/belief structure" seems <br>> a bit sophomoric if the ultimate issue is to address the REASON behind <br>> the killing. Is one faith more evil or despicable because it killed <br>> 2,000 more than another for the exact same reason?<br>> <br>> Furthermore, what does Gier's post really have to do with the stated <br>> objective of Vision 2020: "Moscow Vision 2020 is an informal, <br>> multi-partisan group of Moscow residents formed in 1993 to encourage <br>> more public information and debate about the future of Moscow and Latah <br>> County." I fail to comprehend where Gier's post, as well as many other <br>> posted here, has any connection with Moscow or Latah County. It appears <br>> that several posters use the board as a soapbox to spout off their own <br>> partisan or religious beliefs, or, in this case, to develop a thesis, <br>> without connecting how their post relates to Moscow's or Latah County's <br>> future.<br>> <br>> nickgier at adelphia.net wrote: Good Morning:<br>> <br>> I would like to thank Gary Crabtree for the inspiration for this week's <br>> KRFP radio commentary.<br>> <br>> Nick Gier<br>> <br>> CHRIST IS OUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF:<br>> RELATIVE VIOLENCE IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY<br>> <br>> I'm writing a book on the origins of religious violence and my thesis <br>> is that there has been far more religiously motivated violence in the <br>> Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—than the Asian <br>> religions. Draft chapters can be viewed at <br>> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/orv.htm.<br>> <br>> A person on our local list-serve Vision2020 had this to say about <br>> relative violence in Islam and Christianity:<br>> <br>> "Up to the eleventh century Islam had a sizable lead. From 1095 to 1291 <br>> the Church picked up the pace and nosed ahead. It was neck and neck <br>> till 1834 and the end of the Spanish Inquisition. After that Allah's <br>> chosen made it no contest."<br>> <br>> There are more than a few problems with this summary history.<br>> <br>> Islam could not possibly have had any sort of lead before the 11th <br>> Century because Christianity had a very good head start. Under <br>> Theodosius I, being a pagan was a capital crime, and even Christians <br>> were arrested if they practiced even the most minor of pagan practices.<br>> <br>> On December 25, 390, Theodosius ordered the slaughter of 7,000 pagans <br>> in Thessalonica. The British historian Hugh Trevor Roper called <br>> Theodosius "the first Spanish Inquisitor," and "the Christian monarch <br>> who introduced the world to religious totalitarianism."<br>> <br>> Bishop Ambrose, who baptized St. Augustine, made Theodosius do penance <br>> for the atrocities at Thessalonica, but he still proclaimed that <br>> "Christ was now at the head of the [Roman] legions."<br>> <br>> This reminds me of the sign outside a fundamentalist church in L.A., <br>> right after the invasion of Iraq: "Christ is our Commander-in-Chief." <br>> I'm assuming that our born-again president would have to agree with <br>> this demotion.<br>> <br>> Under Muslim rule Jews and Christians were generally asked to offer a <br>> special tax, not their heads. The slaughter of 4,000 Jews in Muslim <br>> Granada in 1066 was the exception rather than the rule, and Jews <br>> generally had much better lives in Muslim Spain than anywhere else in <br>> Christian Europe.<br>> <br>> In 1099, men, women, and children were slaughtered indiscriminately <br>> when Christian forces captured Jerusalem. An eyewitness reported that <br>> the Crusaders "rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. <br>> Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place <br>> should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had <br>> suffered so long from their blasphemies."<br>> <br>> When Saladin retook the city in 1187, Christians were only required to <br>> pay a ransom and then free to return home. Some of Saladin's officers <br>> paid for those who could not afford it, and about 7,000 others were <br>> sold into slavery.<br>> <br>> In Muslim India Buddhist and Hindus were, incredibly enough, declared <br>> "People of the Book," and the tax on non-Muslims was only sporadically <br>> enforced and even more infrequently collected.<br>> <br>> Most of the ancestors of Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh (especially <br>> here), India, Indonesia, and Malaysia freely converted to Islam. Areas <br>> in India where forced conversions were attempted are now the places <br>> where one finds the fewest Muslims per capita.<br>> <br>> Some Mughal emperors ordered the destruction of Hindu and Buddhist <br>> temples, but local resistance and intimidated Mughal functionaries <br>> meant that relatively few temples were liquidated. Early Christian <br>> emperors were much more successful in destroying pagan temples, <br>> including the one in Alexandria that housed the finest library in the <br>> ancient world.<br>> <br>> Curiously, the Vision2020 post above ended Christian atrocities in <br>> 1834, but during the Taiping Rebellion, Chinese Christian armies were <br>> responsible for killing 10-20 million people between 1852-1864. I would <br>> hazard a guess that more Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian temples were <br>> destroyed by the Taipings in 12 years than 600 years of Muslim rule in <br>> India.<br>> <br>> Some have claimed that the Taipings were not really Christians, but <br>> that is simply not the case. They took great pains to eliminate Chinese <br>> religious influences; they enforced the 10 Commandments at the point of <br>> a sword; and they followed the Bible very carefully, including the <br>> prophecies in the Book of Revelation.<br>> <br>> Short of Osama bin Laden getting several nukes and using them,<br>> militant Muslims have a long way to go to match the historical <br>> Christian kill rate.<br>> <br>> Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for <br>> 31 years. See his columns as the Palouse Pundit at www.NickGier.com.<br>> <br>> <br>> ________________________________________________________________________<br>> Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and <br>> industry-leading spam and email virus protection.<br>> =0<br>> <br>> =======================================================<br>> List services made available by First Step Internet, <br>> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994. <br>> http://www.fsr.net <br>> mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com<br>> =======================================================<br><br /><hr />Make every IM count. Download Windows Live Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. It’s free. <a href='http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGWL_June07' target='_new'>Make it count!</a></body>
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