because the first thing they do is define things in their own framework, then seek to understand the behavior of others as reasonable within that framework. Seldom, though, do you see them so proudly flaunt their mistake, telling people right up front that they're really quite egocentric and utterly clueless.
It's like starting off by assuming Jesus is God, Son of the Father, who created all things and came to Earth to die for humanity's sins, show how to keep the Law in spirit and not just according to the letter, and to reveal the Father. Nicene-creed sort of stuff, 1500 years old. Well-established, I'd say.
Now, Muslims are religious, and worship God, but how does their behavior make any sense whatsoever? If they worship God, then they worship Jesus and keep the Sabbath. I struggle to understand how Muslims can claim to worship God. How can Muslims claim to worship God? They can't. They must be lying or brutally deceived.
Of course, the mistake is my own, the deception is mine. The word "God" is a symbol. If I mistake the symbol by defining it to suit myself and then insist that everybody else can and must only have my definition, I've already answered my question. I've set up the entire problem in a way that ultimately leads to my preferred and desired conclusion. It's inescapable--I'm less impeccable than I am in peccibus. My logic is less foolproof than it is foolish.
That many Muslims and Xians in echoing them make the puerile error, partly for purposes of proselytizing, partly because they've inherited this error, of saying that the Xian God = Muslim God (except that Xians intentionally warped their revelation) doesn't matter. We've a hundred years of understanding well how symbols work. We've made far better use of the last hundred years of quantum physics, which is a difficult thing to understand, than we have of symbols. Then again, any idiot can assume he understands symbols. Only special idiots delve into QM.
We proselytize and convince ourselves that when "they" see "our" true meaning of the symbol and change their minds, they're really coming to the truth. All we're doing is redefining the word for them, insistent that we have the One True Faith.
In this, many are fundies of a most conservative and intolerant, unyielding and uncomprehending, stripe.
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