On Dec 31, 3:09*pm, Bill Ghrist wrote:
On 12/30/2010 12:11 PM, wrote:

On Dec 30, 6:39 am, Ben *wrote:
snip

Aha! Thank you. *The decades of fighting with Pakistan over Kashmir led
me to the false conclusion that Muslims were a smaller minority. *Why
can't we all get along? *... Ben

Hi Ben...I not sure how serious you are about an answer to your
question of why can't we all get along. *This is so far off topic, but
I wondered that myself, so I some research a few years back. The three
Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are strong
monotheistic religions and being so makes them think that their view
of the Ultimate One is only true view even though the three religions
evolved from the descendants of the same source--Abraham. *However,
compared to Judaism, Christianity and Islam are new religions, with
Christianity being an offshoot of Judaism beginning around the 1st
century.

Ironically prior the 3rd century (Islam came much later about the 7th
or 8th Century), there were many flavors of monotheism, most notably
the Christian Gnostics who believed that mainstream Christians
worshiped a minor god and the Gnostics themselves worships the one
true God. *The Christian Gnostics claimed to have a secret knowledge
of the one true God. * To confuse things even more, two early Church
fathers, Clement and Origen were Platonists with a strong mystical
orientation. Origen works were later condemn as heresy and his works
burned by the early Church in the 5th century.

Prior to the rise of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries,
mainstream religions in the Roman empire got along without fighting
one another. *After the emergence of orthodox Christianity in the 4th
and 5th centuries, people began to lose their lives over the issue of
religions.

When Islam was found around the 8th century things even got more
heated. *There is some idea that Muhammad was actually a Christian
monk before he had a revelation from God that led to Islam.

There is so much that has gotten lost in history.

Sorry for the off topic!

Larry

One of the biggest problems was the merging of religion with secular
authority, which for Christianity started in the early fourth century,
and for Islam was present pretty much from the start. *The unholy
alliances between religion and the state were welcomed by political
leaders as another source of power and by religious leaders as a means
of promulgating the faith (often by military adventures). *This greatly
expanded the scope and influence of the religious institutions, but at
the cost of great damage to their spiritual integrity. *For many
centuries the Roman Church, for example, was little distinguishable from
other secular states. *In my opinion the damage caused by religious
conflict has been due mainly to the misuse of religion by authorities
(secular and religious) for personal and political aggrandizement rather
than by the core values of the religions themselves.

Bill Ghrist

Again off topic, but I would agree with what you say. While Emperor
Constantine legalized the Christian religion about 312, Emperor
Theodosius's decree in the 390s, that Christianity was to be, to the
exclusion of all other religions, the only religion of the Empire led
to Christian dominance. I agree, it is difficult to say who co-opted
whom as both the Emperor (secular authority) and the early Church
equally benefited. Although I think Constantine had no idea what a
beehive he inherited due to the split of many in the early Church over
Christological issues. Some of them are hot button religious issues to
this day.

From what I understand, Theodosius's decree virtually gave
Christianity a monopoly on religion in the Empire and early Church
officials authority to use military force to destroy non-Christian
temples and compel the populace to convert to the new religion. Of
course most of the non-Christian religions went underground.

Maybe this heated disagreement over early Christological issues and
the early Church's use of force are the initial sources of many
religious issues we are facing even today. Military adventures such
as the Crusades only further inflamed issues between East and West.

All that, along with what you pointed out are plausible answers to
Ben's original question, "Why can't we all get along?"

Larry