Old-vs.-New Testament Dichotomy Hugely Important in Shaping World Societies

I thought this was good, and I hope readers enjoy it.

The folklore of English-speaking people has no equivalent of Knecht Ruprecht (see right), a crude hooligan known to German children, who shows up at Christmastime and scolds them for their misbehavior.

On a more serious note, this “Old-vs.-New Testament” dichotomy is one of the two main reasons that fanatical Muslims tend to be more dangerous than fanatical Christians.  The New Testament of the Christian bible (the more recent of the two) plays host to the God of love, vs. the God of anger.  In the Koran, however, the order is reversed, which came to be as Mohammed’s fortunes went from good to bad during his leadership in the 7th Century CE.

The other reason, FWIW, is that the Islamic part of the world never had the so-called Age of Reason, aka the Enlightenment, that we Westerners enjoyed in the late 18th Century.  As a result, we got things like the French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, featuring, as it does, the separation of church and state, and was unable to discard its theocracy.  Even in the presence of religious zealots like Mike Pence, it will be impossible for the U.S. or any other developed Western country to make laws that derive from the word of God.