| Oct 27 @ 7:53 AM |
The Beatles were evil
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LanceVarden7
Posts: 1,093
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One thing that comes up now and then is the idea that Christianity is bad because so many people have done evil things in the name of Christianity. I will concede that that has happened. Even on this board we have had people proclaiming others as "false Christian" via some divine right of judgement granted to them by God.
Here is the thing. ANY message can be perverted and twisted for personal use.
Charles Manson thought that eh Beatles were senitnels of God communicating to him through their music. The Beatles song "Helter Skelter" was some a divine plan for a holy race war. Manson
You could extrapolate that and say that, since the Beatles music was used by Manson as a justification for killing people, the Beatles and thier music must be evil.
Of course that is ridiculous. The Beatles had nothing to do with the Manson killings and their music as not the cause of the slayings, just a handy excuse for Manson to use. If they had not been available, he would have used something else.
I offer the same explanation about people doing bad things in the name of Christianity. That is not part of the message. These people are doing it because it is in their nature and Christianity is a handy excuse. If that had not been available, he would have used something else.
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| Oct 27 @ 11:06 AM |
The Beatles were evil |
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Thor1960303
Posts: 3,345
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You're using a good analogy and making some good points. However, one can make a logical belief to cause connection between what someone believes and violent actions. Let's look at some of the history. During the Middle Ages, the church had complete domination. Now one can say that because of the absolute power the church had, it became corrupt, and like you say, religion was the excuse. Looking back, though on earlier forms of government, many of whom were just as despotic and corrupt, one does not see the state run torture programs like the Inquisition. Did mass witch burnings occur under the Roman, Greek,Egyptian, Babylonian or Sumerian Empires? How many other belief systems besides Christianity and Islam have sponsored military campaigns who's sole purpose was to make people convert or die? I know many Christians like to hold the Marxist regimes up as an example of radical atheism , but they're simply wrong about the motivations. Stalin's great purge had nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with maintianing sole power. I doubt very seriously that the Christians who hold up communist regimes as examples of atheistic extremism have ever read Marx or Engels. While Marx himself was an atheist and hated religion, he did acknowledge the neccessity of it in a given population. Religion may be the opiate of the people, but sometimes a shot of morphine is needed .. I know it definitely came in handy when I endured two sessions of back surgery.
That said, I think I can now draw a conclusion as to what place religion should play in a given society. Separation of church and state is essential. To operate a government under the auspices of any religion would be, in my opinion, akin to operating a government under the influence of a heavy drug.
The philosopher Voltaire once said, "When people believe absurdities, the commit atrocities". This is indeed true of the Manson family as well as the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11 or the nutcake Christians who bomb abortion clinics. No matter how much you may want to defend Christianity, there is a cause link from belief to actions that can be clearly seen, and as Iam is quick to point out, studies have shown that religious activity such as prayer or meditation can actually have an effect on the neural pathways in the brain. I've actually seen this in action being raised up in the fundy Christian entertainment business. Some of the effects of religion on some people were good, others neutral and I've seen many more go off the deep end becoming fanatics who were difficult to be around.
I never saw any bad influence from the music and TV program my parents did, but then much of what they sang about was more about life and moral teaching( actually about 70% of their songs were old hymns and spirituals and the remainder were very clean, old classic secular country and folk songs like "Silver Haired Daddy" and "Give Me My Flowers While I'm Living") than religious dogma. I did see plenty of loons in the auduences and among the churches they performed in.
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| Nov 1 @ 1:18 AM |
The Beatles were evil
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pastordon
Posts: 624
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This is indeed true of the Manson family as well as the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11 or the nutcake Christians who bomb abortion clinics. No matter how much you may want to defend Christianity, there is a cause link from belief to actions that can be clearly seen,
Thor, the radical (or, I'd say "classical") Muslim terrorists work their atrocities BECAUSE of the Koran, while these "nutcake Christians" who bomb abortion clinics do so IN SPITE OF the Bible. Mohammed himself with his military campaigns of destruction set the pace for military conquest (jihad) as the MO of their "evangelism." By contrast, Jesus Christ, using nothing more than gentle, yet urgent, persuasion with the gospel, set the pace for evangelism using the same approach. So, Muslim terrorists are simply being faithful to their master as they terrorize "infidels." But these "nutcake Christians" are doing exactly what their Master told them NOT to do (e.g., in the parable of the tares).
Certainly there is "a cause link from belief to actions," but just because someone says he is doing something "in the name of the Lord," does not at all mean he actually is. He might very well be doing exactly what the Lord said not to do. So, it's neither fair nor accurate to say that inquisitions or abortion clinic bombings are to be laid at the feet of biblical Christianity.
I think you would acknowledge this, if Sam Harris, instead of Jesus Christ, were on the receiving end. If, after reading Harris' book, vigilantes went about torturing terrorists right and left--and doing it "in the name of Sam Harris" because of what he taught in his book on torturing--I seriously doubt you would be condemning Harris, as you have condemned Jesus, would you?
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| Nov 1 @ 4:15 AM |
The Beatles were evil |
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southernlass
Posts: 2,240
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Thor says: How many other belief systems besides Christianity and Islam have sponsored military campaigns who's sole purpose was to make people convert or die?
Let's google "atheist state" in Wikipedia for our answer, and after we learn the truth about that, let's look at the following:
Dawkins conveniently leaves out of the discussion the fact that atheists (who are not religious) have killed far more people than all "religious" conflicts combined. Joseph Stalin killed 20 million Soviet citizens between 1929 and 1939. Mao Tse-tung killed 34 to 62 million Chinese during the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Marxist regime in Cambodia, Kampuchea, in the 1970's killed 1.7 million of his own people. In fact, the Pol Pot regime specifically preached atheism and sought to exterminate all religious expression in Cambodia. And, since atheist-led states were largely unheard of before the 20th century, atheists have just begun to get in on the killing rampage.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_god_delusion1.html#tW7KADinu97s
Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Blindly blaming religion for conflict
Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of ... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.
Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
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| Nov 1 @ 4:15 AM |
The Beatles were evil
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southernlass
Posts: 2,240
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Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.
It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
http://tinyurl.com/yecqul
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| Nov 1 @ 5:12 AM |
The Beatles were evil |
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CPUfan
Posts: 7,983
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Medieval Christianity only allowed a Pope, so the analogy with Hitler isn't really practical. Still, to the protestants, heretics and Jews of the time, torture and burning weren't much of an improvement on death camps - just not as well organised. Since religion took on a monopoly of spiritual and temporal rule until the Enlightenment, it wasn't really possible for anyone to do anything atheistic. Which incidentally was the term used for anyone who didn't support the Pope.
Personally I think human values and behaviour in general have sucked, both Marxist / Communist / Socialist / fascist / Nazi and religious. Atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of all of these. Fascism orientated towards Papism / Catholicism and Nazism orientated towards Lutheranism / protestantism and Catholicism. In return, Catholicism and Lutheranism were supportive of fascism and Nazism.
English Liberals and Conservatives - Catholic, Anglican and Puritan - owned slave plantations and shares in slavery in the New World. Their American heirs in the South were little better... And the United States did the same things as the British in conquering North America from natives and other Europeans, like the Mexicans and Spanish.
So nobody goes without guilt or responsibility - religious or non-religious.
But generally, I would say that the US and UK and their state creations developed more liberal forms of government through liberal Christianity. They abolished slavery, provided all adults with a vote and secured the rights of individuals. Something that did not happen spontaneously in other religious cultures.
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