It is pointless to have such debate as one side is not prepared to accept or believe in something, they simply do not believe in or if we are honest you/others probably have little interest in.
Oh, we are prepared to accept and believe in things, but you have to demonstrate their validity first - and you also need to be prepared to accept and believe in things yourself, just as we need to demonstrate their validity. That's what debate it. What you seem to have in mind is you coming into this thread and saying "I think Christianity is great because A, B, C and D", and we all reply with "Great, let's all become Christians!". That's not debating. That's you converting the masses, and doing it based on anecdotal evidence. Predictably, nobody jumped on board with your beliefs, so now you're quitting the thread. Contrary to the idea that you have established, we are not closed books, and nor are we trying to talk you out of your faith.
There is a hierarchy of values, beliefs and attitudes that you haven't taken into account. Our beliefs are the things that we hold to be fundamental truths about the world around us. They are developed over a long period of time and tend to be very stable; therefore, they are very difficult to change, and nearly impossible for someone else to do for you. Our values are the qualities or characteristics that we consider to be worthy of merit, and these tend to be more in the medium term, which means they can be changed with some time and effort. And finally, there are attitudes, our emotional reactions to pur values, which occur over the short term. The mistake that you have made is that you have entered at the top of this hierarchy and have tried to change our beliefs; what's more, you tried to change it over the short term, and you tried it with subjective, anecdotal evidence. Paradoxically, you are talking about something that is a fundamental truth to you; you acknowledge and appreciate the importance that it plays in your life, and yet you expect us to accept it on the same terms as you do, which means abandoning our own fundamental truths, and you expect us to do it in the moment. Your immediate response is to label us "non-believers" and to see what you want to see: our refusal to accept your fundamental truth as absolute proof of that idea being so true. Is it any wonder that you failed? You're not the first Christian who has tried to convert members of the forum, and I very much doubt that you will be the last. But you have made the same mistake as everyone else: you assumed that because it is important to you, it will be important to everyone, if only they can see it. The message the the "non-believers" take from it is that everything we know is wrong, but it can be made right if we immediately become just like you. That message rankles.
Take me, for example. I believe that the divine and the infernal are representations of abstract concepts that otherwise could not be quantified, and yet needed to be quantified in order for people to make sense of the world around them. I believe that most evil in the world is not the work of Satan, but rather can be traced back to core human experiences that have gotten out of control. These experiences cannot be erased because doing so would nean wiping out part of what makes us human in the first place, and hence we are left in a predicament that we call morality: how we distinguish right from wrong in a society where the rule of law is absent. In the case of ISIL, I do not think that they are evil because Islam is evil; rather, I think they are evil because they are acting on the latent need to live a "good" life and the role that need plays in shaping their identity. They are unable to accept any alternative as having any kind of merit, because if somebody else is somehow right, then they are somehow wrong, and above all else - to their minds at least - they cannot be wrong, because if they are wrong, they are no longer living a "good" life. This in turn leads them to impose their view of the world onto the world itself, and it is through that imposition that the evil manifests itself in the world. Religion has nothing to do with it.
You fail to see the pattern here and the relevance of it being Jews and how it is significant from a religious perspective including objectives Satan would have in their annihilation.
Do you even understand the origins of anti-Semitism? It's called deicide - quite literally "the killing of a god". Following the crucifixion of Jesus and the spread of Christianity to Europe, the European kingdoms believed the Jews responsible for the death of Jesus because of their refusal to accept him as their lord and saviour. Thus the Jews were shunned, unwelcome and barely tolerated in Europe; they were unable to own land, hold any sort of title or office, and not permitted to take up trades or professions. Really the only occupation available to them was usury, or money-leanding, which only furthered their persecution as they were seen as profiting off the hard work of others rather than do the work themselves; it also established the stereotype that they were greedy and hoarded their money (mostly because they had to - they often had to live without a steady source of income and could be forced out of town on a moment's notice). All of this was firmly established long before Islam emerged.
Yet has the hatred and call for their destruction faded?
Again, you miss the social, political, economic and historical contexts to Ahmadenijad's comments. To Iran, Israel has always represented the West's hypocricy.
Prior to the 1950s, Iran had been ruled by the Shahs. It was during this time that oil was found in the region. Iran had the resources, but lacked the knowledge or experience to extract and refine it. So they did a deal with the West, who had the knowledge and experience, but lacked the resources. This created the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now known as BP). Things went well at first, but the agreement was heavily in favour of the West. In the 1950s, Iran made the transition to democracy, and the newly-elected Prime Minister decided to revisit the deal with AIOC to get a better deal for Iran. When AIOC refused - even though they still would have done very well out of the new deal - Iran terminated the agreement. Faced with the loss of oil and revenue, the British and Americans staged a coup d'etat, overthrowing the government and reintroducing the Shah, who was not only pro-West, but revisited the deal with AIOC and gave them even better terms. Iran spent the next thirty years living under the Shah, who was a tyrant in his own right. The underlying message that the Iranians took from this is "you should be a democratic society (but only on our terms)". Meanwhile, Israel enjoyed a very close relationship with the West, which was poorly received by Iran.
So when Ahmadenijad called for the destruction of Israel, what was he calling for? The eradication of an entire prople based on their faith ... or the destruction of an institution that he believed represented the worst of Western ideals?
