Easter Greetings From People You’ll See In Hell
Today is the day when Christians all over the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ Of Nazareth. Now whether or not you believe Jesus was the Son of God, one has to admit that while he was preaching he said a lot of beautiful, intelligent things. A scribe once tried to trick him into blaspheming by asking:
“What commandment is the foremost of all?”
Jesus answered:
“The foremost is;‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
“The second is this;
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
(NAS, Mark 12:28-31)
It was the second part of that quote that he really wanted to get out – the first part was for show, at least in my book. Of course the Jews need to love God, but to treat each other the way you would was to be treated yourself? That was something new. You mean good deeds and how we treat others can account toward something positive?
I’ve always believed that good deeds and helping others are much more important than which religion you belong to. A Muslim businessman who runs a lo-cost day care center so single mothers can work jobs that actually pay a good wage, and doesn’t care about the religion of his customers has probably got himself a ticket to heaven. So does the church group that goes around a low income neighborhood twice a day giving hot lunches and dinners to any of the house bound elderly that wish to get them.
These kinds of things happen all the time, I won’t point you to the specific story because most people who give of themselves, like myself, believe in doing good things and “not getting caught” i.e. remaining as anonymous as possible. It is one of the first tenets of being a good person.
So anyways, welcome back Jesus. Sorry about the whole “Crucifixion” thing, but it wasn’t my call, buddy. I would have found a way to sneak you out of that prison, considering that everybody was saying you were the son of Big G. Well, I guess that’s all water under the bridge now – no hard feelings, right?
49 Comments »
I hope you all had a great Easter. But i have a question. Where the fuck do Easter Eggs fit in with the death of Jesus? What do they represent? Anyone know this info as im really curious. I dont remember anywhere in the bible where Jesus said upon his impending death…” dont anyone touch my fucking easter eggs…ill be back in three days for them.”
Im not trying to be a smart ass or anything, im just really curious.
Happy Easter Everyone! I think it stems from eggs symbolizing ‘new life’, but I don’t know much more than that. Someone else could probably be a bit more helpful! :p I think hot cross buns came about from a time when people weren’t able to celebrate or show faith in religion, so the cross on the buns over Easter was a subtle way of showing their faith.
Speaking of food, I’m going to toast some buns and eat some chocolate :) I love Easter!
I read a head and I see why the eggs have become part of the Easter holiday.
How does a bunny fit in???
I would think that a butterfly would fit in better –
Jesus the man – the caterpillar
Jesus in the tomb – caccon time
Jesus as the resurrected son of God = Butterfly
If Jesus had not risen, then he’d have been just another great man.
Interestingly enough, in Greek Orthodox, the eggs are painted red to symbolize the blood of christ. Never pastel. So, from what I understand, the egg symbolizes new life, and the blood which was shed by christ.
The kids also play a game where they each hold a red egg and hit the others red egg with theirs. The egg which doesnt crack or has the least damage wins.
Poptart, you are correct. And when you break the egg, you say Christo Annesi (I think I spelled it right), which is Christ has risen or something along those lines. I am half Greek and grew up with this custom. The orthodox easter is just starting.
Cool, I am also half greek. Other part russian and a few other things. I never quite understood that whole greek easter egg deal, but went through the motions every year with my greek family, one week after celebrating christian Easter with my other side. The roasting of the whole lamb and red eggs used to creep me out a bit, but as I grew older, I learned more about the religion and realized that the traditions and customs are very beautiful and rich with tradition and history.
Anyways, Happy Early Greek Easter to you and yours! You dont meet many greek people so it is cool when you come across one. :)
Wow, you never heard the profound story of the farmer and the egg? It seems that in ancient times a farmer buried a chicken egg and a great tree grew from it, extending all the way into Heaven. The farmer’s daughter climbed the tree and…oh, wait. I’m thinking of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Sorry.
Nicely written Mr. Cat, I like what your saying.
Bravo Max.
happy easter to you Max.
(i don’t celebrate really, but any chance to wish you a happy something or other, i’m all for.)
=)
Hey Amy–
Sorry, I couldn’t resist the useless trivia part of your question:
When the edict of milan was signed, lots of Christians could come out of hiding, but there wasn’t a defined set of rituals or holidays, so many continued to use the Pagan calendar, because it made sense. Ostara was initially a Dionysiac festival (read fertility: eggs, chickens, bunnies). And because Dionysiac imagery fit so well with the idea of resurrection–the changing of grapes to wine, and body to something intangible–it made sense to merge the two traditions.
Hope you all had an awesome Easter. Hope you and those of you with children all had fun searching for bunny droppi…..err, sorry Easter eggs.
Yes, eggs were a Pagan tradition- the decorating and trading of them as a symbol of the renewal of life that is. This was part of the celebration of the Spring Equinox. Even the name “Easter” comes from the Pagan traditions—reference to the Saxon goddess Eostre, and German goddess Ostara. I read somewhere at some point in time that the “hunt” began during the persecutions (not those of Christians, but the ones by Christians—Salem era I believe–maybe the term was conquests?)—pagans were hiding their eggs, so as not to be “caught” or let it be known that they were pagan. The article claimed that children were then bribed to search and find out who had eggs hidden around their house during the equinox. However, a quick google search did not find anything to support the latter part of this, and I do not remember the source of the article so whether or not there is any historical validity behind it I am not sure. The decorating of eggs as an ancient Pagan tradition is well documented, even by the Catholic church itself—I am just unsure about the hunt.
dear mr cat u r very funny and i also like what u said. I maybe wrong to say this but, the pagans seem to have fucked you time and events. Didn’t the bible say that the devil and his friends will change time and events. figure that out for yourselves. with saying that may GOD BLESS U ALL.
Jesus kicked ass! Enough said, he was a great man whether or not one believes that he was the son of god. Happy late Easter to everyone! Hope the Easter Bunny left you what you wanted.
Totally agree – the Jesus I knew growing up was a pussy and the goal was to make pussies and push overs of us all.
The real Jesus was a real person with backbone, intelligence.
Example Everyone knows the story of the 2 Fish & 5 loaves of bread… BUT the story usually ends when there are 12 baskets left over…. The real story leaves out
1. Jesus did not let any go to waste – the extra was given to the poor
2. Jesus took off afterwards – he people wanted him to be king – because he’d be the ultimate source of welfare!
The “Let He without sin cast the first stone…” story – he tells the woman that she’s forgiven and to sin NO MORE. In other words she IS forgiven, BUT forgiveness is NOT a license to repeat such behavior
Also in many cases he turns the questions back on those trying to trap him. Intellectually he turned the tables quickly, using peoples own words against them…. Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser…
Read ‘No More Christian Nice Guy”
Sometimes a good man just can not be nice…..
I’ve never been able to figure out what God and Jesus have to do with Easter.
We get up in the morning and eat our candy and play with little stuffed bunnies and have waffles and everything is great and then my wife has to ruin everything by making us go to church. She ruins Christmas by doing the same fucking thing. We’re all having a good time with our presents, celebrating the greatest day of the year and ‘BAM!!!’ – let’s ruin it by going to church – My mom used to do the same thing.
Must be a chick thing.
Over a billion people have been killed in the name of Christ. I think Jesus would say “I don’t think you understood what I was teaching.”
I’m more spiritual than religious (I hate people shoving biblical quotes up my ass) but if more people looked beyond themselves to a greater truth, we might not have as many criminals and victims in out society.
I agree with you too a point Todd – those billions were misled by a handful of me who knew how twist Christ’s words into saying things they were never meant to say. Many men have none the same thing, and the line id always the same. “God ha sent me lead you all to a new land where we will be all powerful and he has anointed me the King of this new land,. WE must fight the people that are already there and drive them out and this beautiful country will be ours,:
Sound Familiar
Although the last century 1900 – 1999 more people were killed by politics than religion.
Nazi Germany went after Jews for political reasons, but occasionally put on a religious mask. The (total misspelling coming up) Bolshivek Revolution in / about 1917 was Politics – Dafur and Sudan – politics & race. While many have been killed in the name of God, the Godless people like Hitler, Muselini, Tojo, Stalin, Hussein have killed many in a short period of time.
This is good. Thanks.
Ah Max, I love Easter Kitty. Although Kitty looks a tad upset.
Now that is just beyond cute.
Easter Kitty is waaay cute!!! And thanks everyone for all your info on the origin of Easter Eggs. We dont celebrate Easter the “traditional way.” We celebrate the passover on Nissan 14 each year.Jesus said at the last supper ( the passover) to “keep doing this in rememberance of me.”…so we do.
My kids always ask where the chocky eggs fit in and i didnt know the answer. So thanks again for the info;)
I love the picture of the kitty, Max, and the expression on his face!
I also liked the discussion. I agree that Jesus was (and is) still very cool.
I really, really doubt it’s been over a billion. I mean, one killing in Jesus’ name is one too many–that’s certain. But where do we get this billion mark? How does one establish that number? I don’t think that’s even close to factual.
Yeah, Fred’s got it right. If you want to bemoan the slaughter of countless people, you’re best bet is to not consider religion but atheism, not believers but doubters. Atheist leaders like Stalin and Hitler who used Social Darwinism as their excuse to simply “expedite the work of nature” and kill the “weak” tilt the scales BIG TIME in the scales of dead folks. The people who don’t think their actions in this life will ever be judged in the next by anyone, least of all a just God, are the individuals who, throughout all of history, have been the undefeated front-runner in the annihilation of completely innocent people who happened to have the wrong type of beliefs in their heads or blood in their veins. In fact, no one else even comes close.
The people who use God-talk laced with “the-devil-made-me-do-it’s” and “I’m just-a-sinner-saved-by-grace’s” to excuse their filthy, murderous actions, plenty of whom are told of by the articles contained on this great site, are just inane losers who somehow stayed in church long enough to catch some religious spiel and lingo that they think will score them a few points in their personal make-it-out-of-hell game. (We, thankfully, are able to vote them losers in that contest.) These people are a bit like the politicians who talk about honor and integrity and principles and then bone expensive whores or stalk small children. Funny, how no one rants and raves about how honor and integrity and principles don’t exist when the people who tout the pull of such ideals over their lives do nasty, shameful, and illegal things!
Oh well. I’m beginning to attack people who hate on religion or God for all the wrong reasons, and there were clearly none of those people in this post or in any of the responses, so I’m out.
Lighten up Nils, I was speaking metaphorically. How would I know how many people killed in Jesus’ name? But you’re right man – one is too many, and I think we can agree it was a number much bigger that 1.
Let’s see here… we need 500,000 deaths per year since Christ’s death and that seems fairly difficult… But there have been some helpful little pushes.
Thanks to a rejection of Jewish and Roman sewage disposal, the slaughter of cats and the introduction of a rat thanks in part to the Crusades, the Black plague killed off roughly 100 million people. 10% is pretty impressive for a roughly 70 year period out of 2000 years. The 30 Years war caused about 7 million deaths. The near extinction of the Native Americans, primarily by Spanish religious enthusiasts caused 20 million deaths. Given the Catholic church’s somewhat tacit approval and support of the Fascists, we can always blame the 55 million deaths of the Second World War on the followers of Christ. The whole inquisition was really only about 1 million casualties in all of its incarnations, not really something that could lead to a billion deaths all that fast, but then there is this one thing that Christians have been doing that kinda hurt mankind. They stood in the way of science. That all adds in Cholera which once killed something like 7% of the population, as well as a host of other infections that seemed to slam the faithful for choosing faith over science.
How much medicine did we lose out on before DaVinci broke the law of the church and made excellent anatomy texts available to the Western world? The colonial period was largely inspired by pseudo-christian garbage, accounting for 7 to 12 million dead in just invasion, not least of which the slave trade. Add up the witch burnings and various petty Christian killers of all time, and we’ll probably only get a few handfuls of millions, to round out a total around a 1/5th of a Billion sacrifices laid at the feet of Christ by his “loyal” yet misguided flocks. But wait, we’re talking about all religions, and Christianity is a young blood compared to some of the others. We might get to 2/5ths of a Billion if we throw it all together. We might actually get more if we delve back into the bad choices on science and medicine that continue to this day, from female circumcisions to child births unnecessarily complicated by religious mysticism… actually that last one gives us far more than a Billion deaths if we include all of the women and children slaughtered over the last 6000 years by the stupidity attached to religious arguments.
If you start to think broad scale across history and include all religions from the Aztec and Druid sacrifices, crusades, inquisition, multiple wars in the Bible through the ages, add in all the collateral damage-soldiers burning crops leading to countryside starving- you might easily come up with a billion people throughout time-very sad that we do this to each other
I love your logical reasoning-you always have interesting viewpoints-when you say people dead from religion I immediately think of war and war’s aftermath-did not think to look at the entire spectrum of how religion was responsible for deaths from outbreaks-kill all the witchy pet cats and what do you get? infected rats, holding back scientific discovery in medicine, etc but once I read it, it was– why didn’t I see that-almost feels like being back in a college lecture!
I encourage the enumeration of all of Christianity’s and other religions’ crimes upon people, and can see even the merits of numbering those deaths for which the Catholic church, or any religion based upon the Judeo-Christian concept of God, are even obliquely responsible. Study the pertinent accounts of history, count the dead bodies, determine the causes and the agents of death and–if that cause is religious–I say speak out, exploit it, let people know how much religion has done that is shameful, arrogant, and even genocidal. Shout it from the roof-tops what religion has done and perpetrated on society throughout the world.
But at the same time, I would encourage the person willing to spend all their time doing so to make sure their numbers are correct, because in this case, yours aren’t in many respects. Although I cannot speak to all of them, I can correctly and factually lift some of the ‘oomph’ several of those “pushes” Christianity has, throughout modern history, been made to appear responsible for. Each person is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own set of facts.
There are about 3 things I can speak to. The first is the amount of people killed in the Spanish Inquisition. This number has been entirely inflated throughout history by two sets of people: the political enemies of Spain like Britain (who have in turn, through their writings shaped our modern American understanding of the event) and later, the political enemies of religion themselves. An Oxford-educated British historian named Henry Kamen wrote a helpful ‘little’ book called: “The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision.” In it, he chronicles thoroughly the cause of these numbers of dead being overblown by the nations and peoples mentioned above for political gain. That’s right–they skewed the numbers (some would even say “lied about” them)–to gain political advantages over Spain and religion when it was beneficial for them to do so. It makes for good reading, but it also looks at the facts of the body count caused by the Inquisition. The facts Kamen studied revealed that the body count of these admittedly-misquided zealots was about 2,000 people. 2,000 dead people killed by the Spanish Catholic church over a period of 350 years. A million people were not killed during the Spanish Inquisition. But hey, if I was in a position to gain politically by lying about these numbers to all of posterity, I might make sure everyone thought it was a nice, not-easily-forgotten number like 1,000,000 too. But it wasn’t. According to Kamen, it was closer to 2,000. Over 350 years. Other historians estimate anywhere from 1,500 to 4,000. Not 1,000,000.
Secondly, the widely-popular myth that science for hundreds of years squelched the import and findings of science is also untrue. Responsible for these fabrications about the Catholic church and science are two separate books. A man named John William Draper wrote the first one called “History of the Conflict between Religion and Science.” The second one, but apparently just as full of non-facts as Draper’s, was called “History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom” and it was apparently written by then-president of Cornell University Andrew Dickson White in 1896. Those two books have been responsible for the false beliefs that the Catholic church ever burned heretics at the stake for reporting what science had shown them. Popular lies fomented by these two works include the favorite historical myth that the medieval church insisted the earth was flat and then reluctantly agreed when they couldn’t safely disagree anymore. Nope. The ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round, and so did the medieval Christians. They had helpful hints like the fact that their round earth was responsible for the circular shadow cast on the moon druing a lunar eclipse. Dante, the Italian poet who gave us The Divine Comedy, based his medieval cosmology on a round earth. Flat earth? Nope.
Galileo’s tale is another example of one of the lies put forth to all of posterity through one literary fabrication. Except this time a guy named Bertolt Brecht wrote a play called “The Life of Galileo” about 80 years ago that put forth the idea that Galileo was persecuted for stating scientific facts about the earth moving around the sun and not vice-versa. The proofs that he showed the Church were undeniable, the Church got mad, and threw him into the dungeon. Well, this is false on a couple of counts, but kinda true in others. First is that he pissed of the Church. That’s true. But only because his testimony to the Inquisition contained some of his ideas about the Bible only being an allegory. The Church was ready to hear his scientific findings, but not so crazy about his religious theories outside of science. Also, his proofs weren’t right, either. Yes we go around the sun, but the tides aren’t caused by the speed of the earth when we do so, as Galileo stated. So he was right in his heliocentric theory, but wrong in the details of proofs for our heliocentricity here on earth. He wasn’t thrown into the dungeon either. He wasn’t popular with the Church, but they didn’t imprison or mistreat him.
Let’s enumerate where you’re wrong.
Hitler was raised Roman Catholic. He attended Mass on multiple occasions, was baptized and additionally attended church services while in debtor’s prison, where he wrote Mein Kampf. He sought and received as did Mussolini dispensations and support from the Catholic church for their actions and governments, legitimacy the church has apologized for.
To the Inquisition, I didn’t focus specifically on the Spanish inquisition but included all of its incarnations which included even the execution of heretics, witch burnings and a host of other murders estimated at 1 million in all of its incarnations. To the paltry 2000 number, the argument there is shoddy. When Spain solidified its monarchy and then expelled the Jews and Moors the population of over 3 million Jews and Moors were driven out by force–how many casualties? Calculation or even record of their deaths is not known. The secret Jews? They numbered hundreds of thousands at one time, but diminished to less than forty thousand in less than 150 years?
To Galileo, I stressed DaVinci, who against the rule of the church, attempted to extend the knowledge of the human form and advanced the cause of human anatomy beyond the 4 humors. He was granted rare license for his work because of his accomplishment as an artist, but dissection was rare and extremely circumscribed by the church and its offices. These limitations cost mankind millions of lives, if not the billions that the limitations in the sciences to that point caused. The Church had a significant war on innovation and science. They limited the study of religious works to Latin and for decades protected Latin and Greek as religious languages in order to control access to religious texts.
To the thirty years war, the battles of the counter-reformation are simply Christian pit against Christian. While material concerns are a major aspect, the name these people were killed in was Christ’s, and your comment does not successfully refute me.
To the Crusades, at least one of the Crusades was explicitly to kill heretics of the Christian faith, by Christians. Your research into the Crusades is crude if you ignore that while politics and material wealth are key elements in every war, religion is rarely absent. In fact, I’d like very much if you could name a single war in which religion wasn’t massively involved. Even the agents of the Black Hand in Serbia killed Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie over nationalistic pride connected strongly to the Serbian attachment to the Eastern Orthodox faith. The 100 years war? Bishops on both sides were involved in king making and political land grabs while they preached the right of kings of men to serve God’s will by bringing faith and order to the faithless and misguided.
To witch burnings, my handful of millions included all other killers, from the strange religious predilections of serial killers like Dahlmer’s fascination with an alter made of human skulls to the real bloody Mary, who subscribed to the transformative power of Virgin blood thanks to the Church’s mysticism around the virgin Mary. To Salem specifically, 19 were hung, 1 man was crushed to death and 5 women died in prison awaiting trial, cause was listed as exposure. You should get your facts straight. During the 30 years war, approximately 60,000 to 100,000 “witches” were executed (The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, by Brian Levack). Other strange Christian killings included the execution of Catholics in Russia, where cuboid bullets were manufactured to the tune of forty-five thousand by Eastern Orthodox troops loyal to the Czar, in order to kill these “holy men” with something other than common bullets. Let’s not leave out Japan, where Jesuits anxious to access the silk trade hired Japanese mercenaries to assist in their invasions. To miss the religious elements is to miss the point. Need I discuss Constantin’s wars in the sign of the cross, or his religious purges to make himself the richest emperor in history?
To completely ignore the stated intentions of the zealots in war is to wash religion of the guilt it most definitely deserves. You juggle a weak argument defending religion, and miss the fundamental crux and the most massive contributor to the loss of life. Religion claimed the power to heal the sick and wounded and limited the effectiveness of medicine to suit their own ends. Women and children died more often than they needed to. Billions of them.
The fights in Palestine-Israel, the Balkans, Iraq, Northern-Ireland, and even in Indonesia between the Tamul Tigers are religious wars between people who identify with religion to organize their efforts. The ethnic struggle is a component, but religion is still responsible for the burden of the conflict.
And what of the black plague? American-Syphilis? Cholera? The basic extermination of the majority of North and South America?
A billion is a hard number to get to, but thanks to miscarriages, death in child birth and a high child and infant mortality rate, despite the fact that some basic antibiotic remedies were practiced by cultural medicine men among the Lombards, Saxons, Celts, Mayans, and many, many others, the Christian faith if not all religions have much to answer for.
This is not to say that I do not have faith. Faith is actually divorced from religion in that respect. Religion is the instrument of men who wish to harness God. Faith is the expression of a relationship with God. I’m not indicting faith, but indicting religion and supporting a refutation that it is entirely possible to lump over a billion casualties at the feet of religions, from the lightly organized to the machinery of Catholic.
Now, the church might have mistreated some scientists and burned a few others as heretics, and this is tragic and pathetic at best. But these few unlucky schmucks usually said something about the Church’s pillars of belief that the Church didn’t think any science could disprove. Again, this is tragic, but I want to put forth that the non-facts about the Church and its “warfare” with science is the result of about 3 or 4 publications throughout all of history–and those who parroted these distortions–that contain false, yet widely-popular-accounts–accounts that nearly the entirety of modern historians don’t stand with. I encourage all to look into this, namely Draper’s and Smith’s false accounts.
Thirdly, the modern (and false) ideas of the Witch-burnings are ripe for the picking when it comes to lies and misinformation about the actual, historical occurrences. It always helps to delve into the factual numbers of dead people that these produced when they occurred. The American witch-trials sent about 20 people into the group of formerly-alive people. 19 were sentenced to death, and several more died while in prison. Sad? Wrong? Yes. But much less than commonly, and wrongly, reported today. As for the European Witch Trials, the atheist author Sam Harris–drawing from Robin Briggs’ “Witches and Neighbors”–states that it was likely about 100,000. This is quite a bit, but only 1/10th of a million. Not many millions or even a few million were burned as witches by anybody, ever, anywhere.
Finally, we cannot state wrongly the motivation of people with respect to the Thirty Years War and the Crusades. The purpose of these feuds was largely over land, not religion–although it was used as a rallying war cry for each side. They might have been Christians and Muslims that fought each other, but they wanted land–not converts. Taking land involves killing people. Unfortunate and true. As for the Thirty Years War, its participants were religiously-inclined people–the Holy Roman Empire and the Protestants in Germany–but the warfare consisted of people that fought for political power and influence as emerging nation-states–not people wishing to put people in the ground for their god or their religion. For that matter, many disputes nowadays called “religious warfare” are disputes over land-ownership and political power; this includes the modern conflicts in Northern Ireland, Palestine-Israel, the Balkans, and Iraq. All ethnic or land disputes, not religious ones. No way.
As to blaming the reluctant-to-interfere Catholics for the Holocaust and the death of six millions Jews that only atheist Hitler and the Nazis were responsible for, or for atheist Stalin’s placement of countless millions into the Gulag Archipelago, that is quite a stretch and not plausible. Blaming the inaction of Catholics for the crimes of the atheist Darwinists like Hitler and others is quite a bit like all the people that respond to the stories on this site by saying that the people who geld their babies, cut off their kids’ heads, throw their children down the stairs, and rape 13-year-olds repeatedly are not to be blamed for their actions. Ludicrous and wrong. As for the religious mysticisms and ethnic “voodoos” responsible for clitorectomies and the suturing together of the vulva in Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Indonesia, I don’t deny their wrongdoings or seek to revise the portrayal of their crimes either in number or motivation. Not worth it.
I agree that people operating in the name of Christ have killed just as many people as atheists like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il, and Mao operating through the “authority” of complete materialist determinism, or Social Darwinism, BUT ONLY AFTER YOU:
(1) Exaggerate the number of people killed by the Inquisition, witch trials, Crusades, and other events commonly associated with Christian malfeasance.
(2) Change the motivation of people who kill others wholesale to reflect or fabricate a purely-religious motivation, and
(3) Somehow transfer all the responsibility from the atheist regime murderers throughout history to Christians. Amazing.
That’s it. Do that, and your point becomes irrefutable.
I saw this post before it was approved and included its points in the above piece, but now feel I can better address the points.
1) I stressed all of the inquisition, not merely the Spanish inquisition. As a special note, the numbers on the Spanish inquisition specifically 150,000 still have records of being processed. He, Ricardo García Cárcel, placed the estimate based upon the surviving records of the inquisition that only 2% were executed, even though less than 10% of the record survived and they seemed to show only 150,000 total records (87,000 as part of the official records and 63,000 as part of the restorative efforts of the Tribunals of Venice and Toledo). He made the caveat that many suffered deportation, incarceration and other fates that in all likelihood resulted in deaths. To the witch trials, they continue to this day. My above numbers are details of the Salem trials, but the estimate is 57 lynchings total for the Americas in all events, a significant number of 60-100K in the thirty years war, a host under various other epochs, but Saudi Arabia may actually have a witch execution this year, and they’ve had 12 since 1957.
2. In the great arguments of politics versus religion in this mish-mash of cause and effect, the clearest sense is that religion is the tipping point. Some people may want to steal jewelry from a window, but they’d feel guilty for it. Blame the Jews who own the store through a political program and state that God loves Germans and hates Jews for killing Christ and being usurious, and the burglary, rape and murder that follows is actually a suspension of individual conscience and a submission to religion as its substitute. Ethnic Serbs who killed, raped and destroyed Muslims in the Balkans were absolved with religious trappings. IRA bombers often received Mass, confessed their sins and took communion. Christian identity in the States preaches that Obama and other people of color are not human. Without religion, my examples would quite likely have been impossible without another salve for conscience.
3. Calling Hitler, Mussolini, and even Stalin, merely atheist is a historical white washing. Hitler and Mussolini were Roman Catholic. They were very poor Catholics, but they were supported by the Catholic church, who arguably was in captivity, but still they were supported. Stalin studied at a Seminary in his early life. He was an atheist for a time, but during World War II, Stalin reopened the churches, and before his death his position on religion softened, and he apparently attended church before his death in 1953. True it would be difficult to call his actions against the religious anything less than an Atheist agenda, but as a counterpoint, his actions were religious persecution in part inspired by the perceived and real persecutions of 1300 years of Russian history.
Glad you made my job so easy by setting the bar so low.
Interesting debate-but could you not argue that a lot of the examples are both-wars with religious and political agendas mixed and intertwined together?
Religion and politics are the tools of each other. They’re two sides of the same manipulative coin and they’ve always been intertwined.
I like Deviled Eggs.
There. Back on topic.
HAW!
Hate eggs of any type! Ha! but it has been an interesting, thought provoking debate to follow and a nice change from the usual family member defending some jerk by just yelling at us that we are idiots who don’t know the whole story, their family member is a nice person who didn’t kill their baby, it was an accident and we just didn’t know the story and shouldnt’ judge cause only god judges and we are going to hell blah blah blah!!!
The most troubling aspect of your argument is your point that Hitler and other atheist leaders were really in the camp of religiously-motivated mass-murderers. To say that someone is–or was at one time, or spent their formative years as–nominally a Roman Catholic is one thing, to say that their crimes were perpetrated for the purpose of excoriating non-believers or enacting genocide on another people in the name of their religion, Christianity, is another. It is sadly irresponsible to claim that the absolution or tacit approval that Hitler sought from the Roman Catholics is evidence of the Roman Catholic or Christian motivation in his crimes. Most people look at the body count Hitler was responsible for and dismiss him as a tyrant now burning in hell, and perhaps are made reluctant or squeamish by the number of dead Jews and others to research his motives and may be suckered into believing it was a perversion or twisting of his religious upbringing or beliefs. Hitler was definitely a complex person, and may have indeed been a nominal Catholic, so posterity sees a nominal Catholic commit these crimes (just like they see nominal Presbyterians rape their neighbor’s kids) and says, “religiously motivated.” This connection, while plausible, is rather murky, irresponsible even. There is a clear, FAT line however–a much clearer connection for those willing to see it–between Hitler’s actual motivation and godless, non-religious Darwinism and complete materialist determinism. To say that Darwin–a reluctant theist, if a theist at all–would have condoned Hitler’s acts is vastly wrong. Darwin was actually a pretty good moral dude. But Darwin’s beliefs, Darwin’s racial eugenics and account of hereditary moral traits–which have nothing to do with God or catholocism or faith–were what really motivated possibly-nominally-Catholic Hitler to do the things that he did. In other words, Hitler chose a certain people–who he thought that hereditarily inherited moral traits as a race and couldn’t be “fixed” or loosed from them–and exterminated them. I prefer this atheist, Darwinist connection–which, to me personally but perhaps not to you–is clear and undeniable, to the obscure “raised Catholic/mass-attender/nominal Catholic/thus agent of Christ-motivated genocide” connection. I’m not white-washing. I don’t have to. The truth is too obvious to me. But, agree to disagree, I suppose?
I spoke of Galileo to prove the willingness of modern atheists/anti-theists like Carl Sagan and Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens to believe the 19th-century lies and fabrications that resulted from the two books-full-of-whoppers written by Draper and White that I alluded to earlier. You said nothing about the far-reaching lies in these books, and repeated the untruth they contain about Leonardo and the church’s ignoring his work. Again, this “warfare model” of the Catholic church against science and progress came from these two publications and is now accepted as fact when, in truth, it is all a lie. Nearly all modern historians apparently accept that the “warfare” was a 19th-century concoction from these two books. Again, I encourage you to look into these books, and what historians say about them. You’ll be amazed. They have fortunately been discounted by many modern historians like Stephen Jay Gould, Colin Russell, and other names people probably won’t recognize. The crux of the argument is that the Church’s supposed antagonism of science is a total myth–the result of re-re-revisionist history put forth by people with an anti-Catholic strain, namely Draper. Lies perpetuated as myth, though the result of erudite studies, numerous attempts at telling the so-called “truth,” are still just lies. On this one though, I’ll not stick to just my own views on the warfare myth of the Church and science however; I’ll stick with the views of nearly all historians who didn’t distort fact to arrive at a stance against the Church on this myth. I’ll not believe or perpetuate the Draper-White warfare thesis and all its lies, when they’ve been uncovered for what they are.
Your response is by definition a strawman. Hitler believed himself to be a Roman Catholic, chose to use religion in his pograms, his Germany was overwhelmingly religious, he received support and strong armed support from the Catholic Church and specifically the Pope to conduct his war. “Pope Borgia” was probably an Atheist by your reasoning but he was still a Pope, the “infallible” leader of the Catholic faith “chosen by God” to be his “vicar.” You’re choosing to excommunicate Hitler after the fact, that’s the crux. To argue that the Genocide of the Jews was not motivated and even supported through religious excori?tus is to ignore that the word means to flay the skin from the body, to either self-torture, or by force remove that which is unholy. Gypsies, Communists(atheists under the Purity laws), Jews, homosexuals and political dissidents were outside of the faith of the State.
Attempting to seek innocence for religions by attacking a single man’s arguments is also a failing. Religion is by definition a alternative to conscience and personal insight for decision making. My argument stands intact, despite your “joke.” You want to argue that nothing religion does could be wrong or once conceding some deaths, that religions role has been taken to excess. As I have consistently argued whether supporting the death penalty, advocating the full interpretation of Matthew 7 or a host of other things, a case need not be made of absolutes to be damning in the extreme. In your joke example, it’s the religion that changed the metaphor of the culture of the Irish to get what they wanted by using religion. Ireland was converted first from paganism to Christianity (specifically Catholic) through these methods so there’s more than a historical support for the substitution of one murderous intention for another in Ireland’s ethnic feuds.
As to disputes around the world past and present I’ll tell a joke I think works well here (it refers to the Northern Ireland dispute):
A man is walking down the street in Belfast when a guy jumps out from an alley with a gun and says, “Protestant or Catholic?” And the man with the gun in his face smiles and says, “Neither, I’m an atheist.” To which the guy holding the gun says, “Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist?”
Basically this is the way I see it: warfare and conflict is never purely motivated by religion. It’s not lucrative or prosperous enough. To say that a conflict and killing folks are religiously motivated demands an interpretation of what religious motivation actually is and includes. I’m trying to be brief here, and this probably constitutes my “juggling a weak argument,” but I really don’t have an anti-Christian or religious agenda (and am not saying anyone here does), so I think that’s what actually showing through.
A purely religiously-motivated killing would look something like this: I am a Christian, and I go over to my Muslim neighbor’s house, who I’m in conflict with over the ownership of a tract of land in our neighborhood, and his thoughts on the trinity, or transubstantiation, or baptism etc. About them he says, “Well, I don’t believe in that; I’m Muslim, and as for my view on physics and science, I think there is no universal physical law because Allah intercedes every moment to make happen what happens.” To which I pull out my revolver and put one of the fast-moving things it contains between his eyes, return home and live my life as usual having gotten my point across at the point of gun. That is a religiously-motivated murder.
A more complex issue–and this is what has happened in the majority of popularly-stated “killings in Christ’s name” or “religion’s name” throughout history (not the Inquisition)—would be if, after killing him, I stole his wallet, drained his bank accounts, changed the deed of his house to have my name, registered to vote in his name, drove his cars, and lived my life with the addition of all that he owned in his, to mine. That is not what I would call a religiously-motivated killing or, because I happened to be a Christian, a killing “in the name of Christ.” It’s a killing because I’m a nominal Christian, but I’m also a misguided POS who is a covetous bastard that thinks himself entitled to what he can kill and steal for against non-like-minded people. In our argument here is actually not a dispute over body count but an interpretation of the causes, and what the people involved really have to gain in fighting and killing. It’s not just religion. It’s not even predominantly religion. It can’t be; it’s complex, but not un-understandable. Christ isn’t too blame, or just religion, or Muhammad, or Buddha. It’s mainly self-enrichment and widening your own borders by invading those of others. Land. Money. Power.
Perhaps here I should say what I’m really getting at, why I ever opened this can ‘o worms. If I were in a discussion about my faith with people of other’s and Joe Smith said, “Yeah, that’s all well and good. But when it comes to religion or faith or whatever, it’s just too dangerous to choose because of all the killings or deaths that have been caused in the name of Christ or Muhammad or others throughout history and even today. Your best bet is to just be an atheist and to see things materialistically and decide things in that way.”
Well, that is definitely not your best bet, and I would tell him so. Religious people may have their issues throughout history with killing folks–and this is quite sad, and I might dispute the body count or discredit the warfare myth of religion or the actual causes–but atheist materialist determinism and the people who were suckered into acting upon it like Hitler are vastly more to blame for killing numbers of people. If you look at the facts and what really motivated people–not what they were nominally or who they sought and gained approval of or where they went to mass a few times–has killed countless more people than religion-bearing people ever have or ever will. Only a skewing of the facts and heaping onto religion or Christ more blame than history actually shows it deserves will allow you to arrive at the other end of the spectrum.
Because you’re reduced to only about 3 points, I’m consolidating in single posts. That said, there’s on specific argument that deserved a direct rebuttal in this comment.
What people “really want” is not the danger of Religion. The danger of religion is it is so readily a tool to reject personal inhibition and follow a leader who claims religious power or insight into mass killings or prophesy divinely inspired mayhem. I have no problem with faith, and I possess it, but I do feel religion is rightfully indicted as the multiplier of death and the motivation of those who follow a cause not necessarily inspired by religion but married to it. It was an institutionalized effort to prevent bathing and mark those who bathed regularly as prideful that set hygiene once common in Greece and Rome back for centuries. It was blaming the burning of the Reichstag on Atheist Communists that put Hitler more securely into power. It’s not Christ himself that is indicted, but the Church used to harness his message that is indicted.
If I’m reduced to about 3 points—I’ll remind you that’s how many I started with, by the way, in my own words–it’s because I proved my point in what I had to say about the “warfare” of the Church with science and progress and Leonardo. It didn’t happen that way; to say so is non-historical. The Church’s warfare against science was a fabrication in its entirety. But I noticed you didn’t try to bring that one up again. That was a good idea.
Oh, boy. Well, I was hoping to not have to quote the man, but it looks like I’m going to have to. Behold the contents of the book, “Hitler’s Table Talk,” assembled by a close aide of Hitler himself that chronicles the conversations of Hitler with his leading advisers. Therein Hitler calls Christianity one of the great “scourges” of history, and says of the Germans, “Let’s be the only people who are immunized against this disease.” He also promises that “through the peasantry we shall be able to destroy Christianity.” He also blames the Jews for Christianity. He also condemns Christianity for opposing the theory of evolution the way it did, a scientific theory important to Hitler—as he was a National Socialist acting upon Social Darwinism. In “Mein Kampf,” one finds Hitler himself saying that his public statements lenient or indicative or religious ideas should be understood as propaganda that is not truth but designed to makes the masses follow his lead.
True, Hitler said a few things in the presence of Bavarian Catholics and the Prussian Lutherans like, “I am doing the Lord’s work.” Well, to say that this is proof of his religious motivation is to confuse personal conviction with political opportunism of getting his tyrannical work done. The Nazi’s put forth the idea of an Aryan Christ who cleanses with violence the Jews from the earth, or what Hitler called “Positive Christianity—“ but this was a radical idea and not even close to traditional Christianity at the time, and Pope Pius XI condemned it as false at the time. Furthermore, Hitler’s opposition to the Jews and the others he killed was secular, not religious. If you were in his prison camps you couldn’t get out of them by saying “I don’t practice the Jewish tradition anymore, I’m an atheist.” Or “I have converted to Christianity.” To Hitler, the people he eradicated were from inferior races. Their religion had no bearing at all on why they were to be eradicated. Nor did his “religion” because he didn’t have a religion—unless of course the “law of nature” that provided for the “elimination of the unfit” that the Nazis extolled and admired Darwin for in their own words was a religion. It wasn’t though. Again, atheism.
Hitler was averse to religion and churches, and though he may have veiled his rhetoric in religiosity, Hitler and his cronies knew that churches and their millions of members were their biggest opposition ideologically. As such, he and his administration did things right away to weaken it. Once 1937 rolled around, the Nazis didn’t celebrate Christmas anymore. The Hitler youth canted prayers of thanks to Fuhrer for the blessings he had given them, not to God. The Nazis labeled certain clergy-members as “troublemakers” and they weren’t allowed to preach, or were thrown in prison, or were simply murdered. He censored religious newspapers, began surveillance of Churches by the Gestapo, fired civil servants who practiced Christianity, and transferred ownership of church property to the state. These are hardly the acts of a man who seriously considers “himself to be a Roman Catholic.” He never considered this. He hated the ethics of Christianity like compassion and equality, as he saw them as weakness, and were averse to his atheist, social Darwinist worldview and regime. I hope this dispels the rumors that all I can do is “excommunicate Hitler after the fact.”
It sounds as if you’re doing some historical whitewashing of your own when you say that the dangers of religion is that when the masses “follow a leader who claims religious power or insight into mass killings or prophesy divinely inspired mayhem.” Well, that does describe Hitler a little bit—minus the religion part, of course. But if you’re going to hold that anybody who leads a group of people (like the Nazis) to commit atrocities is a religious maniac or religious tyrant without really hearing what they themselves had to say about the religion they’re accused of acting upon, I can do nothing with that. You just can’t claim a Christian or religious ideology for Hitler or anyone else for that matter just because they had an ideological hold over people.
But allow me to do a little bit of historical whitewashing of my own. Of course, the whitewash I choose to slather on is the whitewash of historical fact. I am speaking, of course, of the atheist, Communist regimes of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others. Can one really deny that Communism is an atheist ideology? Well, let’s see. The ideology was born of the mind of Karl Marx, a devout atheist. In fact, atheism was the central part of Marxist thought and, by extension, Communism. If we take a quick look at Communism, we see that it seeks to remove the “exploiting class” and empower the “proletariat.” It also believes in an atheist utopia, and says violence is just a really fine way to get done what you wish to. And this violence was called upon by the Communist leaders I mentioned above to achieve what they wished. Where is religion in all of these ideas and praising of violence? It’s nowhere. Unfortunately, there were quite a few people in the way of the atheist utopia they wished to achieve, so Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others resorted to violence quite a bit. Mao resorted to violence—namely killing someone—to the tune of about 70 million people…uh, 50 million or so if you’re a liberal historian. Mao, by the way, closed churches and murdered clergy and followers of Christianity systematically. As did Stalin, who resorted to the type of violence known as murder to the tune of about 20 million people to establish his atheist, Communist utopia. Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge—the Communist Party that ruled Cambodia—killed 1.5 to 2 million people to establish his atheist utopia. Let’s not forget Hitler, a herald of Nazism a lot like Communism—which instead of exalting the proletariat seeks to empower a master race—and his resorting to murdering about 10 million people, 6 million of them Jews.
As for Stalin, it is preposterous to say that the Russian Orthodox Church he may have grown up in was actually responsible for murders that were motivated by atheist Communism. And if he “softened” toward religion and eventually opened some churches and attended church near the end of his life? Big deal. Too little, too late. The damage of his atheist, Communistic political ideology was done by that time. It is just as ridiculous to say that Mao, raised as a Buddhist, would have resorted to the Buddhist religion for motivation to murder. The central doctrine of the ideology of Stalin’s Russia–when all the genocide and Gulag arrests were made–was atheism. In China, the official doctrine was—and still is today—atheism. The motivation for these crimes against humanity in their respective places was atheist Communism that seeks to create an atheist utopia where true religion or Christianity have absolutely no place at all—and this last not by popular choice or referendum, but by absolute governmental violence against religious people of all kinds.
So as for the tired, anti-religious rants that bemoan the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings as the true crimes of history, I have this to report. Historians estimate that these three combined killed about 200,000 people over half a millennium—over 500 years. That’s just dandy with me. I’ll wear that. Religion will have to wear that, too. In fact, if someone wants to exaggerate these killings to 1,000,000 people over 500 years, that’s just fine, too. Facts won’t allow it, but I will.
But I’m keeping score. And atheist Nazi or atheist Communist regimes who are pathetically or falsely aligned with religion of any kind still tip the scales enormously in their direction. Atheism, in other words, just leaves religion and Christianity in the dust in the race of murder, tyranny, and genocide. It was the driving force in the murder of about 75 to 100 million people in just 50 years. Religious people, if they wish to compete, really have their work cut out for them.
75,000,000-100,000,000 > 1,000,000
Bravo, atheism. Bravo.
You’re rambling and you continue to ignore the point and the facts. Nazi’s were anti-communist in large part due to the fear of communist’s religious positions. Fascism, as envisioned by Benito Mussolini was Roman Catholic inspired. Nazi Germany was not atheist. It accepted and actually collected church taxes to maintain churches! It doesn’t mean Christianity is horrible, it doesn’t even reflect on the teachings of Christ, it’s not an advocacy for atheism, something I do not adhere to, it is stone cold fact.
To Stalin and various other Communists, Stalin was trained by the church in theology, administrivia and the practices that helped to organize religious control of a mob. The inspiration assisted him in his campaigns and pograms just as the Church assisted the Reich. While the goals of Marx were to “free man of all of his masters,” and he considered religion to be one of these, not all communists are atheists. To equate the two so rabidly shows you have neither read the manifesto or considered the political realities. Absolute capitalists could not believe in an economic safety net, a social safety net or a host of other details, but yet a small taint of social democracy or democratic socialism does not miscegenate with a single drop into full blown communism.
60-100K dead to witch trials in the 30 years war, 20 million dead in North and South America, 100 million dead in one 70 year period of the Black Plague, these are also facts.
Organized religion killed these people with policies and dogma that weren’t scientifically sound.
As much as 70-85% of Germany was killed off during the 30 years war. Look it up. Look at the causes of the conflict, look at the papal decrees, the cause of the reformation and the actions that make this happen.
My response to this post is awaiting moderation, as is your post where you cite form Hitler’s table.
I’m out of town this weekend, so will be unable to respond in full, unless I respond to your post before it’s unmoderated.
1. It is true that as the Nazi’s stressed their power there was a transformation from Religious support (one of the changes Hitler made was to collect taxes for Church support in the beginning that later allowed him to control the churches and the vicars who preached at them) to eventually a profession that Hitler was another coming of God himself. That his word was Godlike. If allowed to continue, the goal would have been this, but to call that atheist is dishonest.
2. The suspension of Christmas was actually connected to the holiday commemorating the burning of the reichstag, which occurred shortly before Christmas and is the pivotal moment in Hitler’s assumption of power.
3. Fascism as a movement extends first from Mussolini, the father of modern fascism. His support and connections were anchored with the Catholic church, and Hitler borrowed heavily from Mussolini’s model. Again, denying this is ridiculous.
4. My point, which you continue to ignore and have never addressed was the proscriptions against anatomy and human dissection that Davinci overcame and received special license to perform only because of his celebration as an artist.
5. A continuing point is the Church’s consistent attacks on bathing practices that had allowed the Romans and Greeks to resist cholera.
6. The whole sale death of cats is a leading cause of the rapid and pervasive spread of the Black plague. The church sponsored the killing of cats.
7. It is extremely likely that Pope Borgia (Pope Alexander the IV) was an Atheist as well. It does not mean he was not the head of the Catholic Church. He was one of the causes for Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis and the Protestant reformation. It does not make the Catholic Church not a religion, if Borgia was an atheist in his heart or private, even if the church did sponsor slavery in the New World under his edicts or effect so many sins. Soviet Russia was a Christian nation during its formation and brutal, brutal transformation. Stalin’s last acts were done as an apparent Christian, and people still died under his efforts at this time.
Again, my point remains, Religion is responsible for crime through its conscience substitution capacity. It is the element used to destroy. The combined sins do calculate over a billion deaths, especially in the combating of disease, the suppression of local medicine and the destruction of Hellenistic hygiene.
Ok. I have indeed disproven your theories of the ancient or medieval or even the renaissance church’s hostility to hygeine or science or beneficial health practices apparently held by Leonardo by uncovering them as the fabrication of the two men Draper and White. You yourself have been silent on this issue, taking my original account of the falsity of Galileo’s tale as my only real disagreement to this account. You, on the other hand, have never mentioned a single thing about the two books written by Draper and White that are responsible for your belief in the myth of church culpability of millions or billions of deaths due to their denial of the efficacy of anatomical study and dissection. Blithely stating that each person that died in that era is because of this church ignorance, even if it were true, is an inaccurate assessment.
You say that you have faith. I am confused by this. You hold on to non-historical facts about the religious-motivation of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others that even predominant, vocal modern atheists don’t believe as fact, and repeat them with a vehemence that even the sternest, devoutest atheists of today like Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris don’t possess–and they would have vastly more to gain by reporting them if they were true in their best-selling books. That Hitler was actually motivated by religion, or that Stalin was actually a Christian and thereby religion is responsible, not only leaves us Mao to deal with–who still killed 70 million people–but it is not a responsible conclusion based on the facts. The culpability of a religion resembling Christianity and Catholocism within the acts of these men is a view that is held by only a fringe group of radical atheists, and these are statements that surely brilliant atheist authors today would report only at their peril of saying things that aren’t so. They don’t. The best they can do is to exaggerate the crimes of religion, as you have done, and then when it comes to Hitler and the other atheist regimes they prevaricate as to the real cause and express bewilderment at why atheism would cause anyone to act in that way. Perhaps you should contact them about this; it would really help their cause!
The arguments you put forth are not based on miscontrued facts as much as they are on misplaced emotion–emotion that religion must be the true cause of history’s most horrendous crimes in some way, whether it is factually viable or not. I suspect this anti-religious bias is the result of a widespread discomfort or disapproval that our modern culture has with Christianity because of the moral prohibitions it makes on our sexual lives, the perversion of homosexuality, and other difficult matters usually labeled as hate-speech. That’s something I can do nothing with. A great man once said, “If it weren’t for the 7th commandment, Western man could be a Christian again.”
But I’m pleased with the points that I’ve expressed, and will gladly give you the last word as this is my last response in this thread. While you may be troubled by some of the things I’ve said about your arguments and may wish to continue the debate, I really don’t have a desire to. I’ll advise you, however, that this is not my relinquishing of my beliefs on these matters. That would be a foolish conclusion on your part, if so. On the contrary, the end of civil debates usually comes when the two involved have reached a stopping-point as to what they wish to express. For me, that’s here; for you, maybe not. Thanks for incorporating on your side due civility in discussing these matters, I’ll trust you can recognize civility on my part as well. Safe travels.
I reject that my opinions and facts come from Draper and White. I never cited them, they’re your support. My numbers come from established fact and the Church’s own sources.
St Augustine’s words:
“From the body itself arise so many diseases that not even the books of doctors can contain them all . . .(and) the treatments and drugs themselves are painful. Thus, men are rescued from a penal destruction by a penal remedy.”
Pope Gregory in 604, blamed the great plague on Sin instead of the rise of ascetisim enforced almost solely on Augustine’s other off hand comments. The Roman and Greek baths either fell by the way side or were actively destroyed as sinful enjoyments of the body.
It took until 1215 for King Phillip the II to declare the first medical college separate from the Catholic church’s domination. Before 1215, the church forbade dissection of any kind! It was a micro-schism that allowed the king to protect surgeons who read translated Muslim texts for the ressurection of Aristole held beliefs in the separation of diseases of the mind, body and soul. These aren’t the works of Draper and White, these are the words of history. Facts.
The destruction of cats expanding the plague… FACTS
Witch burnings… Facts
To the second major point. I have faith, but I do not subscribe to a particular “organized religion.” I hold that there is no intercession between me and Christ, and thus I do not need religion to have faith. To that end, I think someone can have religion and have no faith. Religion is a communal acceptance of beliefs and modes of conduct, faith is a fidelity of purpose and loyalty. You conflate the two, religion and faith, into the same being. Pope Alexander the IV was a syphillitic mass murderer, who bought the papal head of the Catholic and only church in the Western world. He by definition was a part of and the leader of a religion, but I doubt his faith. Adolf Hitler used religion and even established himself the head of a state religion that attemtped to assume and absorb both Lutheran and Catholic offices as subject to his Fuherers. He may even have had faith of a kind, but it was not loyaly processed and his obeyance to religion was transformative.
I reject and indict most religion, not out of atheism in an attempt to tear down, God, Christ, his Angels and prophets, but in an attempt to disrobe and expose the churches who have attempted to insert themselves between God and man. The actions of men are easily circumspect, obviously in violation and with historical accuracy are responsible for the slow recovery of medical concepts known to the Greeks, Romans, and Jews centuries before the birth of Christ. There’s a long history of people attempting to disrobe the churches and becoming religious leaders themselves (Martin Luther comes to mind), but my rejection is for the crushing blows to science and the lives that should not have been lost.
I’m happily and monogamously married for 3 years and 3 days today.
My initial discomfort with the church comes instead from growing up in the southern United States, where some churches are used as meeting grounds for members of the Ku Klux Klan. I do reject “the perversion of homosexuality” as a religious tenet because it comes from the laws of leviticus and later from Paul, despite Christ’s forgiveness of the Adulteress. My older brother, after my religious transformations, came out and later married monogamously another man under Canadian law. He’s a successful Aerospace Engineer, his husband a successful writer and editor, and their newborn adopted daughter a joy to the world. My mother serves as a live in grandmother to help reinforce any feminie roles. The child will not lack for “faith” but will probably not lack for the absence of religion. My younger brother ascribes to different beliefs still and has sought a church to reaffirm his beliefs. I instead choose personal study as my outlet for faith.
Do you realize how many internet arguments fail to end on this same expression?
You never managed to debate. It’s a real shame actually.
Given that the only way to have a civil debate is through formalized concession, I doubt you ever had any beliefs you ever felt you could concede on. That’s an unreasonable effort to try to overcome.
There’s this passage in the bible about calling other people fools you should perhaps consider sometime when you ever get down to reading the bible cover to cover.
You saved the Ad hominem for the last two posts. I appreciate that, but you never managed to escape the straw man or respond in a way that answered the logical fallacy. I didn’t presuppose White or Draper, I called them a Straw Man, in a formal debate, you’d have had to address that and call that a false conclusion. You ignored it like you never read the words.
And to you. Sorry for any typos… These HTC phones are harder to type on than I’d choose.