re how to pray, etc.

[thomas kyhn rovsing hjoernet]

On 02/04/03 22:57, "David Morris" <fqmorris at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> --- thomas kyhn rovsing hjoernet <tkrh at worldonline.dk> wrote:
>> "David Morris" <fqmorris at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> --- thomas kyhn rovsing hjoernet <tkrh at worldonline.dk> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> With all respect, I think you are twisting the point here; that soldiers
> practice their religion on the battlefield as they would have at home is not
> problematic, but their being baptized on the battlefield points to the
> situation they're in, fighting moslems, and so suggests a religious aspect of
> this war.
>>> 
>>> With all respect I think this statement is absurd.
>> 
>> Could you clarify this?
> 
> It is absurd to state that there is a "religious aspect of this war" (whatever
> THAT is supposed to mean) because a US soldier is practicing his own religion.
> If he were trying to convert a muslin, that would be different.

If you read the text very carefully you will notice that I wrote 'suggests a
religious aspect', I did not state positively, etc.

Furthermore, the causality you're lining up here differs from what I wrote:
I did not write that a religious aspect is introduced into the war because a
soldier practices his religion. To expand on what I did write: the fact that
soldiers are baptized in the battlefield indicates, at least, that they are
eager to be baptized (not to mention that they haven't been baptized before
when, by all probability, such a procedure could be undergone under far more
convenient circumstances), and that they, very likely, only recently got
this religion (and so are not just practicing their own religion, as if that
included being baptized regularly); that soldiers are eager to be baptized
could have a connection not only to the presence of death on the
battlefield, but also to (possible) religious undercurrents in the war, as
for instance oppositional relations between moslems and christians.

Another thing, if you do not know what 'a religious aspect of this war'
means, how would you know with such certainty that what I'm writing is
absurd?

>>> You seem to me to be grasping for yet another reason to object to this war.
>> 
>> I'm not grasping for anything.
>> 
>>> I think this is dishonest.
>> 
>> What is?
> 
> Grasping is dishonest.

Like in grasping the meaning of something, for example?

> If you're not grasping, you're just being absurd.

Either or?