A Deist Contrasts Islam and Christianity

I ran across a very inter­est­ing rant com­par­ing Islam and Chris­tian­i­ty by a blog­ger I’d nev­er heard of called James Lileks (I found the link on blogdex).

At one point, Mr. Lileks iden­ti­fies him­self thus­ly I am a Deist, which means EVERYONE dis­agrees with me.

Trans­la­tion: a lot of his under­ly­ing assump­tions will dif­fer from yours, but you should still read the piece. He puts some very impor­tant points in a very direct way.

Here’s his open­ing state­ment:
There are two ways for a reli­gion to approach life:

A) Every­thing is per­mit­ted except that which is for­bid­den; over time, we work out the details as the sit­u­a­tions arise.

B) Every­thing is for­bid­den except that which is per­mit­ted, and we will work out the details in advance.

After an open­ing like that, how can you not read the rest?

(there’s a sim­i­lar dia­tribe at Lit­tle Green Foot­balls, although it’s not as reflec­tive it does have the virtue of a very active com­ments sec­tion)

I added this next bit on 8/9/2002
Ever won­der what an Epis­co­palian ter­ror­ist would look like?