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Felch
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Germantown, Maryland
Sep 2001
time: 00:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Giancarlo
The world in my opinion would be better without Christianity. My country (Spain) has a horrible record such as the Inquistion, and that is why the government is secular now. The world overall would better without Christianity. I don't even like talking about the inquistion because it was the lowest point in my country's history, it was disgraceful. |
People seem to love bashing the Inquisition, and while I will admit it doesn't conform to the Christian ideal, it certainly wasn't out of the ordinary for its time. Virtually everybody was using torture, and to a certain degree the Inquisition was almost generous. For example, the use of torture was never widespread, it could be avoided by simply admitting to whatever sins were being investigated, safeguards were in place to prevent fraudulent testimony, and in the Roman Inquisitions the defendents were given free legal advice if they couldn't afford it on their own.
Granted it was bad, but a lot of the evils associated with it come from the Anglo-centric history that most of us are familiar with. The English used many of the same demonizing tactics on the Spanish that the Arabs are using today on Israel; they take a kernel of actual criminal activity and then embellish it with wild extravagances. The reality wasn't good, but it certainly wasn't the darkest black mark on Christianity's history. The Crusades would be more reasonable for that.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Adalbertus
This is a heritage of Judaism. The new point of Christianity is the (often forgotten) love for the enemies. Where Christianity has failed more often than complied to. But still it is to my knowledge the only religion who has put forward this great idea, and thus still is way ahead of everything else. |
Which of the founders of the Red Cross was Jewish? Are you talking about temple charities? Since the boundaries between church and state were pretty hazy in ancient Israel and Judea I'm not sure that would count as "non-governmental.
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Tom201
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Amsterdam
Dec 2001
time: 05:18
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dp
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Dr Strangelove
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Look at it this way, without Christianity the predominant religion of the west would have been either Roman emporer worship or German Wotanism. Islam would not have existed since Mohammed appears to have been inspired by itinerate Christians.
How would you like to be forced to worship George W. Bush?
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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:18
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"Also, more to the point, Anti-Semitism isn't part of church doctrine. Therefore this is something that is entirely up to individuals who actually did bad things."
Correct. In fact, The Medieval Church took actions to protect Jews. Several Cardinals hid jews, and a Medieval pope banned forced conversion.
"Other other religions? Not doctrinal, blame it on individuals. Or the middle-Catholic Church mostly, but probably not the modern one either. But look at early American colonial writing, and you'll see a lot of the first seeds for tolerance, even among the Puritans whom you wouldn't think of at first."
Often times the worst were Christians not tolerating each other, such as with Cromwell in Ireland. But the Medieval Church never really presided over non-Christian lands/
"Pope Urban II. And a lot of annoying nobles. Be a good communist, che, and don't blame the poor serfs who got to support the war and were "good" Christians and didn't have much of a choice."
This is perhaps the most misunderstood war in history. First, the Church had recieved reports from the midddle east. Next, the holy war was actually started by the Moslems who were jihading against the Byzantines- the Byzantine Empire appealed to the west for help to defend them against the Moslems. All of the land that the Christians set out to conquer were lands the Moslems had already captured in Jihad. The Church in fact gave orders to leave the existing Eastern Churches in place, instead it's adherents were massacred in Jerusalem. The plan was also to convert the Arabs, not to massacre them. Sadly, the nobles did not go about conquering these lands in a Christian faction and acted the teachings and orders of the Church in Rome. The Conduct of the Crusades was abonimable, but the original plan was hardly a crime.
"The Inquisition in Spain was much more a political tool than a religious one"
The same for the French. King Louis XIV was perhaps the most pomopous, most egotistical ******* of all time. He had to have his away, and because of his personality he could not maintain Henry IV's Edict of Nantes. His supression was part of his program of absolutism, in trying to ensure absolute obedience to him in all ways.
"The destruction of the Mayan Codices"
Spanish Imperial policy.
"The Thirty Years War"
This was based on a Habsburg play for dominance.
"Allow me to make a conjecture. First of all, as you know, many of the abolitionist movement were fanatical Christians as well. Many of them also happened to be well-off. I say they did it for moral reasons. The Christians who supported slavery, dare I say it, did so more for economic reasons, and then later came up with a vaugely moral one by supporting it from a really shaky interpretation of the Old Testament."
Correct, also mention how the Catholic Church banned this early on and the role of Bartolomew de La Casas in improving the treateatment of the natives.
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Logical Realist
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California
Jan 2002
time: 21:18
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Notice how all the nay sayers on this poll are always making unfounded accusations that are nothing more than rationalizations.
"It wasn't real Christians that did it, it was renagades, or the church",
or "people"
or
"politics"
In fact the only things they seem to agree on is that it wasn't "True Christians" aka using the no true scotsman fallacy.
What they fail to realize is that while all these motives are possible, they can easily be made up. In light of that, it is best to accept the event and motives for it at face value. Unless compelling evidece says otherwise. For every possible alternative motive, it could just be religious ferver. The only reason they seem to reject that explanation is that they evaluate the whole thing on the a priori bias that "religion cannot possibly be it" using that premise, they will grasp for any other possible explanation for what motivated these people. And of course they will find one. As such explanations are easy to invent and human nature is multifaceted. (religion is rarely the sole culprit).
The alternative argument popular here is the one of two wrongs making a right. "If my belief system causes people to do bad things then so does yours, so its best if we say neither can".
Such an argument, even taken at face value is very poor. Condemnation of both sides does not exempt either side. An objective observer would just have to say both were bad.
I think that thus, both Marxism and Christianity are responsible for some major crimes.
Atheism howver is not. Because depite how many people want to believe it is, atheism is only a negative position. Christianity and Marxism are positive doctrines that prescribe a code of behavior and can motivate. Atheism cannot do this because atheism prescribes nothing, it merely denotes the absence of belief in God.
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sparkplug
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I voted 'other'. The greatest crime of the Church was ignoring the teachings on which it was founded on. Jesus never said 'kill non-believers and burn their books'. In fact, alot of early scientific reaserch was done by people trying to discover more about the nature of God.
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Natan
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New York State
Sep 2000
time: 00:18
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quote:
Originally posted by Logical Realist
Notice how all the nay sayers on this poll are always making unfounded accusations that are nothing more than rationalizations.
"It wasn't real Christians that did it, it was renagades, or the church",
or "people"
or
"politics"
In fact the only things they seem to agree on is that it wasn't "True Christians" aka using the no true scotsman fallacy. |
If you don't acknowledge any space between the idea and its adherents, I suppose we can discuss the great crimes of the civil rights movement, such as anti-Semitism, delusions of racial supremacy, terrorism, and the contortion of Islam?
quote:
What they fail to realize is that while all these motives are possible, they can easily be made up. In light of that, it is best to accept the event and motives for it at face value. Unless compelling evidece says otherwise. For every possible alternative motive, it could just be religious ferver. The only reason they seem to reject that explanation is that they evaluate the whole thing on the a priori bias that "religion cannot possibly be it" using that premise, they will grasp for any other possible explanation for what motivated these people. And of course they will find one. As such explanations are easy to invent and human nature is multifaceted. (religion is rarely the sole culprit).
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The problem is that "Christianity" is an unbelievably broad category, so broad as to be useless for these purposes. Now if we talked about breaking Christianity down into meaningful groups and ideas, there just might be the tiniest basis for a rational discussion, but as is, there's room only for bigoted generalizations.
quote:
The alternative argument popular here is the one of two wrongs making a right. "If my belief system causes people to do bad things then so does yours, so its best if we say neither can". |
If adherents of both systems are engaged in the "bad things," perhaps the reason is a shared trait, i.e., not their different systems?
quote:
I think that thus, both Marxism and Christianity are responsible for some major crimes. |
Amazingly enough, both blue and brown eyed humans are also responsible for major crimes. I guess they're both bad.  You have to establish some actual connection between the ostensible ideology and the action.
quote:
Atheism howver is not. Because depite how many people want to believe it is, atheism is only a negative position. Christianity and Marxism are positive doctrines that prescribe a code of behavior and can motivate. Atheism cannot do this because atheism prescribes nothing, it merely denotes the absence of belief in God. |
So I guess that racism isn't responsible for evil, because the belief that the lives of blacks/slavs/whoever have no moral value is a negative belief? Maybe totalitarianism too, since it extends that too all people?
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Logical Realist
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California
Jan 2002
time: 21:18
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Try this experiment, for every crime obviously motivated by racism, see if you can invent another possible motivation, even religion. For example
1) The KKK was not supported by racism as much as it was motivated by an insecurity due to the drastic econimic change which occured in the South after slavery was ended. For more on this, look at how the clan seemed to grow in power during times of economic insecurity. For example in the thirties clan membership was at an all time high. And in the twenties, when the stock market economy and a world war drastically changed the american economy, clan membership was at an all time high.
2) Race based slavery was obviously economical, it provided an easy way to earn a profit. Any brutality towards slaves was thus, never due out of racism as much as it was done to increase productivity by scaring slaves.
3) Racism towards foreign immigrants really stemmed from religious differences.(Many priests found it profitable to stop other religions from spreading their religion by stererotyping an entire ethnic group) And it helped productivity by providing a cheap labor force.(the Chinese for example) Again not racism at fault but economics and a bit of religion.
4) The concentration camps and Nazi movement were obviously not primarily motivated by racism. High ranking Nazi member Albert Spear even said the anti-semitist idea played little part in Nazi discussions. Hence it was more likely to be really motivated by a need to socialize the economy(Jews were often in charge of banks) and get rid of alien religions which had moved into Europe during the Crusades and had slowly been building up hostility. Notice how the Nazis also punished other alien religious groups like the Jehovah Witnesses and alien ideologies like Marxists-communist. To prove this look at how the Nazis were willing to ally with the fascist japanese and italians. As for the camps themselves, the Nazis only planned on moving the Jews until economic hardship faced during the war caused them to take more drastic action to be rid of political prisoners....the prisoners also made a cheap labor force in the camps.
5) South Africa, at first, looks like an obvious case of racist motivated bigotry. But keep in mind that most native to Africa were not Christian and practiced customs European christians found to be offensive. This offense continued via inertia of religious bias. Blacks at this time also made a cheap labor force, this showed the true motivation behind "racist bogotry": economics. To prove this: look at how the rich and more "Western" japanese were treated as honorary whites.
Economics, religion, politics and human nature can all be easily made to sound like what were "really" responsible for obvious racist acts.
And these points can likewise be made:
1) Most racists are good people. They don't beat people up. They pay taxes, raise kids, promote education, live and let live. Even those who support segragation laws say "Separate but equal".
2) Racist groups have done some nice things. Nazis for example helped many of their poor. Many people who worked in charities were racist. Even many great scientists were racist. The racists who thus get violent can be seen as renegades. Racism does not necessarily prmote violence, that comes from other things. After which people try to use racismto legitamatize their stances.
3) Non-racists have done things just as bad as racists. Hence, since it appears bad things will continue whether there is racism or not, getting rid of racism is not the answer.
Many examples of outright racism can now be easily explained away and many poor arguments like the three above now utilized. Try it, its not as hard as it sounds. All you have to do is be willing to substitute what is the cause at face value for what is the cause given unwarranted speculation, and take advantage of the fact that no racist commits a racist crime for purely racist reasons. Apply such reasoning and you should be able to explain away any example proving that racism is bad.
You can also say that by racism you do not mean that all racists are literally different, but that the idea reflects a difference in the person's soul. Something compatible with modern biology.
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Guynemer
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More than a little disappointed in Che right now...
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09-04-2002 02:36
What else can be said?
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