Near the final scene of the 1993 Joel Schumacher film, Falling Down, Robert Duvall has cornered Michael Douglas, who plays a laid-off defense-contracting engineer who has gone on a murderous rampage. Douglas looks at Duvall and asks incredulously, “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?” And he really doesn’t know.
I’ve been corresponding with a Christian minister who asks a similar question. He’s genuinely puzzled as to why humanists in general or gays in particular would associate Christianity with bigotry and prejudice. A few excerpts:
Who should I hate? In the end, it seems that I must either hate them all or none of them. The word of God and the inward testimony of God both tell me that I must hate none of them – even when it is necessary for me to oppose them…
And I think you have correctly perceived that I do not hate you. And, I find that the ability – the necessity – to love my opponents and to wish always for their best good, is tied directly to having placed my ultimate hopes beyond the present reality. If I thought this was all there was or ever would be, I think I would be decidedly more capable of hate. If I thought it was all about evolution – which,it seems to me, hinges on the quest for momentary advantage – I believe I could hate – that being after all, only a chemical phenomenon that is either useful or not at the moment and virtually immune to concepts like virtue or morality…
In the meantime, I hear from folks on your side of some issues that I do hate. I am prolife and therefore, ipsofacto, I hate women. If what they mean is that if I had my complete way, I would restrict certain freedoms even though it places certain barriers and limitations before individuals and classes of people who would like to operate without that restriction, then we don’t have the same definition of hate. I could introduce you to several women who have had abortions, who either previously were or currently are pro-choice, who yet would sign any affidavit you cared to craft swearing that I love them. (Emphasis mine)
And,
Please believe, it is not a matter of hurt feelings. I don’t have any particular desire to be obnoxious to you or your compatriots. I am not afraid of spirited debate. But part of my agenda is both to understand and confront the (to me totally upsidedown seeming) notion that Christianity breeds hate, contempt, and ignorance. If I am not yet skilled enough to communicate across this great divide without fostering the impression of ignorance and hatred despite my own clear conviction that I hate none of you (whether or not I’m ignorant may be more in question), then it is probably best to keep my mouth shut a while longer. (Emphasis mine)
And,
I feel that homosexuality is a moral problem. I do not, for what it’s worth, feel the need to take that issue to law and regulation. I don’t think the moral problem of homosexuality is worse than my own moral problems. I am not – at heart – a legalist. And I’m not trying to start a new issue between us on either abortion or homosexuality. And I know that presenting a similar list of homosexual people who would sign the ‘He does not hate me’ affidavit wouldn’t make any real difference. The assertion seems to be that I hate a class of people regardless of my relationship to any particular individuals.
I suggested throwing his agenda open to the community at SEB for response and he replied:
I don’t mind if you post the paragraph. I would be interested to see what would happen. I don’t really think you misundestood this – only a product of a quick communication – but to clarify, I’m only partly worried about offending anyone. I’m more worried about the cultural divide. I have seen missionaries do harm because they were eager to impart the gospel before they understood the target culture. This is not what you would call a missionary venture, but the same principle applies.
Really, Christians are the bad guys? How did that happen? Aren’t Christians, by definition, the good guys? Can anyone explain?
He’s all yours, folks. He wants to know. Can you help him understand?
Thanks, Positive, for doing just that.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Howard Zinn wrote American history from the perspective of the victims of excess of power by the elitist government in power. You obviously have the elitist perspective in mind with such a statement. Once again showing that Christianity is nothing more than a political movement to oppress the weaker members of our society. Thank you, Terry. For a moment I thought you may really be a “True Believer”™
Peace.
Sorry for double-dipping, but I just remembered an old post, here. In ref:
Please read this post from another SEB topic: “Jesus never even mentions homosexuals (I believe). However, he does for instance state that divorce is an abomination, or some such awful thing. Sure it does say that homosexuality is a sin in the Old Testament, but you call yourselves Christians, so you apparently think what Christ said was more important. Christ didn’t care enough about homosexuality to ever mention it, but he did explicitly say that divorce went against God’s will, why don’t you all protest divorce instead of homosexuality?” Zachary Braverman on 10/05/04 at SEB on topic, “Answers in Genesis Indeed”
Actually, only Paul (Saul of Tarsus) ever mentions homosexuality in the NT, and he was also misogynistic. So, are you a Christian or a Paulian?
Peace.
Because Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh have been divorced and re-married, so Americans have no demagogue out there to remind them that divorce and getting re-married is evil. About half of the Christians in this country are divorced and re-married. I guess the gays and we atheists will have a lot of fundie Christian company in hell… as if hell wasn’t supposedly bad enough already.
As for the Zinn comment; I love the irony of a religion, Christianity, which dwells so much and mourns so greatly the persecution of Jesus and the early Church… yet many Christians could cdare less about the persecution of other groups. Bad guys?
And, by the way, of course not all Christians are bad guys, and not all bad guys are Christians. But, still, when you belong to a religion with so much of a negative history you are going to find yourself answering questions for other people’s behavior.
Positive & Leguru,
Now see, this is exactly what I’m talking about. I’ll enumerate a few points.
I did not say I could prove the existence of God in the way your question implies. I said that you will continue to insist on such proof while, upon examination, the alleged hard core of your proposed ethics melts away into vapor.
Thousands of homosexuals killed by the inquisition? Shades of buffalo extinction and slave ship mortality rates! The inquisition was not, of course, one homogenous undertaking. The Spanish version is the most famous – and the best documented. But, taking multiple historical sources, including the excellent documents from the Spanish Inquisition, it looks like the multi country/culture inquisition overall killed about 6,000 people over 500 years. At least half of those deaths occurred in the first two decades of official organization in reference to Jews/Moslems/forced conversions. The best I can figure it, somewhere between 27 and 100 of the executions were on the grounds of homosexuality. Am I justifying those executions? No. But one might ask the reasons for your casual acceptance and rather free use of the ‘thousands’ figure. I might also note that the Spanish Inquisition in particular was under the control of the monarchy and often served as a secular tool/weapon/instrument against political enemies. I might also note that in those times and places where the inquisition was most removed from the secular arm and most attached to the church, it was noted for being considerably more lenient than the secular courts.
If my citing true and relevant information concerning the life and death of Matthew Shepard belittles him or diminishes what was done to him, such is not my intent. I consider Shepard no more or less sinful than myself and I think his murderers got off easy. My point is that you have to leave out those facts in order to make Shepard into your poster boy.
The secular governance and military of the civil war: the (wise) refusal of a state church by the American founders did not make the country or its jurisprudence un-Christian. Nor is such a thing necessary to insure that non-Christians may access the benefits and safeguards of society. Your characterization of the abolition of slavery as a secular victory over religious fundamentalists is completely unwarranted. It seems to me that the battle ethos of that particular secular military effort was most pointedly embodied and best remembered in the following way.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
Chorus: Glory, glory, hallelujah (praise God)
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory halleluah
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
O be swift my soul to answer Him be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on
Let’s see, what exactly were the themes of that song from the other side? You know, the one sang by the guys who wore gray and fought for the right to secular self determination.
Both the inquisition and Christian participation in slavery are, of course, instances of Christians, and in part, Christian societies getting it wrong. The progress amounts to Christians ultimately rejecting those wrongs. Your insistence on such template builders as the thousands of homosexuals killed by the inquisition, the science/religion warfare myth, the unidimensional understanding of Matthew Shepard’s death, and (adding in DOF) the causes of high incarceration rates for American blacks, etc., is telling.
And special congratulations to Leguru who proceeded from the assumption that an ipso facto revisionist history from a victimization pov can’t be disingenuous and went on to craft the argument that when a Christian takes issue with a revisionist history propounded by an atheist anarchist, said Christian is disqualified as a true believer!
Terry
I think you are right about the thousands figure being wrong. I was probably thinking of arrests and so forth. Regardless, I am glad to see Terry not taking something on faith but using critical thinking, and I am willing to say “mea culpa” and say that I should have checked the number. Critical thinking is always best.
But with the acknowledgment that it was probably in that range of around a hundred… I rest my case. If Christians had killed two people for that reason it would still be a blot on their history. And that is only looking at the example of the Inquisition; who knows how many other cases there are.
One other note about the Inquisition; I thought it went without saying that the Inquisition was taking place in more than one place and in different forms, but yes, it of course was. Either way, it seems like quite copout to say that because secular authorities were often doing the killing that this somehow takes away from the Church’s responsibility; sounds like a Charles Manson argument. Also, as you note, the Roman Inquisition was a bit more hands on by the Church and you even had popes personally ordering certain people to be burned, though for other supposed crimes. That they were apparently a bit more lenient really doesn’t tell me anything; these people claim to be the source and the authority on morality. There is nothing moral about burning Giordano Bruno, as an example; he was not a violent threat to anyone.
But, hey, if one guy here or one guy there dying is nothing then I suppose Christians will have to stop mourning Jesus’ death or the deaths of the early martyrs. Why don’t you give the Roman authorities the benefit of the doubt? They were much more lenient than other civilizations.
The slavery issue isn’t really worthy of debating. I said it in my first post on this thread and I’ll say the same thing here several pages later; Biblical Christianity, not merely its followers or its sinners, is responsible for slavery, and not solely in its Old Testament inspiration. The New Testament certainly spends more time condoning slavery than it does condemning abortion or contraception… okay, well, it never actually does the latter two things, but you see my point. What the believers did later is almost insignificant; we see it in the core documents. I don’t claim that there were not Christians who opposed slavery, there obviously were, but they had to ignore large portions of their scriptures; they were cafeteria moderates, not fundamentalists. Whenever Christians or people of other faiths want to ignore their scriptures I’m a happy. But, again, Church officials were also supporters of slavery, such as Pope Nicholas V.
As for the Civil War; you suggested that it somehow was not the victory of secular forces. You were wrong. That they may have been Christians (some dispute that Lincoln was) in their personal lives is irrelevant to the fact that they were secular. That is what happened in America, which is a secular nation.
Let me say that I do not argue that Christianity makes a society worse than it would outherwise be, per se. But I certainly see no evidence that Christian societies are superior. Their Bible, their sacraments, their Church officials, their supposed Holy Spirit etc. do not seem to do much to improve their society. And I would say the same for Islam or Hinduism etc. I don’t think that it is reasonable to single out Christians for bad behavior. I do not say that to be ecumenical, its just the way I feel about it. But I am certainly not going to hear Christians claim that their religion is pure; historically or in the very pillars of their faith.
OK! More meat! Zinn was not a “Christian” so his history, by definition, must be “disingenuous”. HMMMM It did take 400 years for the “Church” to forgive Galileo. I guess we will have to wait another 400 years for “Christians” to forgive Howard Zinn. Pity.
Actually, I was merely pointing out that you appear to be among the elitist minority who have been manipulating the poor uneducated gentiles for centuries.
And, again, are you Christian or Paulian?
Peace.
Y’know what improves society? Bridges. Clean water. Medicine. Education. Social justice. What few criminals are left after those things are taken care of, are the legitimate subject of the police and the courts, or maybe the psychiatric hospital. But I’ll be puckered if I can figure out how believing in an invisible deity improves society. It certainly gave Europe a bloodbath.
I apologize for being absent from this discussion for so long, but I’ve been trying to figure out what the next step is. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t one. We are on a rhetorical Möbius strip. Your strongest characteristic was always tenacity, Terry. But whether it’s the “triumph over adversity” kind or the “neurotic inability to let go of cherished beliefs even long enough to perform a thought experiment” kind I leave to others.
1 Corinthians says that we see through a glass darkly; unfortunately in your case it’s Alice’s looking-glass. The bible doesn’t really support slavery, if you have a master’s degree and can read it properly. In fact, Christians have not used it for that purpose – not even the Christians of the old South. Unless they did, in which case they got it wrong. Christianity provided the fertile ground for science – except evolutionary and climate science apparently. Many Christians say the bible advocates putting gays to death, yet with extensive knowledge of the same bible, you support gay marriage. And yet somehow the bible is a solid basis for ethics. And law! The laws of the US were based on Christianity despite multiple disavowals of that idea by several founding authors of the constitution. And Lincoln, one of the most complicated men who ever lived, was a Christian.* Christians never took Native American children from their parents and put them in English schools, forbidding them to speak their native language. Heck, the Indians probably even killed off the buffalo. It was lucky that white men were here to save a few of them and put them in parks.
* (On Lincoln and Christianity, I’d go as far as; “He probably went through periods of his life where he tried very hard to believe”. He was not a happy man, and in many respects he was not even one man.)
You’re bringing up that whole buffalo thing again as a red herring; I set aside those points as not worth arguing over. An earlier issue we’d touched upon was illustrative. You once told me that you were “educable” on climate issues; but I don’t think you are, citing nonsense from Pielke that’s been thoroughly deconstructed elsewhere. So even though science is more in my interest than history, I never bothered trying to set you straight. Once you paint yourself into a corner, you’re quite happy there. It seems this characteristic is not limited to science.
My understanding of slave mortality rates and buffalo population decline were based on historians I’d read, and you read different historians (and probably more historians, being a professional scholar). But they aren’t foundational to my understanding of Christianity in society, so I let you brush them aside. Our discussion is, after all, about the present day. I only need to look at tea partiers arguing even today that slaves were “better off”, or that gays will cause civilization to fall or something. I only need to look at the subset of Christians who are spending the lion’s share of their energy and credibility on two issues that Jesus never saw fit to mention even once, while ignoring – or even disavowing! – issues on which he spent the main part of his ministry. I only need to listen to any random speeches by Sharon Angle, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich. Or any thirty seconds of Blenn Geck or Lush Rimbaugh.
It’s not enough to say; “they got it wrong” when you can’t tell us how you know it’s right. Of course, you could just admit that Christian ethics, like any other ethics, is a cultural construct plain and simple, but you can’t go there.
My point is not that Christians are bad people, but that they are people – that Christianity doesn’t seem to improve them any and that Christian ethics is pretty much whatever society molds it into. And that’s fine; so is secular ethics; I’d like something more universal, on the stability level of a mathematical law, but it doesn’t exist and neither do unicorns, so we’ll just have to manage the best we can without either of them. It’s just that I’m tired of Christians saying they have a hotline to God, when they’re just making it up. They know what God thinks about gays or tax cuts or abortion or the Second Amendment or the naked statue of Justice or whatever, but can’t tell you how they know. They just know, you know?
When I started this thread, I thought, or maybe hoped, that you’d quickly understand that it’s Christians who confuse personal and public morality who are the bad guys – and especially the subset of that group who are entirely hypocritical about it as well. And I hoped we’d find a point of agreement on Christians who appear to support the right of corporations to drain the blood out of society, exploiting the poor and concentrating the wealth behind their walled, gated communities. Another problem arises when you say; “Oh, well they got it wrong” while claiming that you have something better than socially-constructed ethics on which to draw that conclusion.
Our discussions naturally gravitated to the issue of whether there even IS a god, and you continue to confuse the putative (and in my view, illusory) benefit of that belief with evidence in its favor. If Christian morality is personal, it is all the more so if the Christian god cannot be demonstrated to exist.
The question of god’s existence is really orthogonal to culturally-constructed economic ethics. You can believe in god or not, makes no difference; what matters is that people are safe and as free as society can make them, balancing their freedom against that of others while protecting the commons. You know who bristles at that construct? The privileged. People with money, people in power, people of the favored race, people who are safe and have unlimited opportunities, and who are basically unaware of the poor except when they cause trouble.
A consensus of secular ethics has emerged about religion, too; basically you can believe and practice whatever religion or non-religion you want, as long as you let others do the same. And that means “no hijacking the government to promote your religion”. Reconstructionists have lately taken to calling this; “Anti-Christian discrimination”.
So to sum up, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Or at least, I have. And since I don’t know what to do next, I guess I’ll just sit down. Metaphorically speaking, that is, since I always type sitting down. Peace to you, friend.
RAMEN!
“My God’s better than your God!” works best in the Kindergarten sandbox. When I was a child, I believed as a child, etc. We have all been hoping that Terry would grow up, but to no avail. Pity.
Peace.
Decrepit
That was perhaps one of the best things I have ever read. Awesome.
I liked this part
Especially since it was in,I think, my first post to Terry, that he was relying on the “Argument from effects”
Positive,
I probably could have guessed that you understood the chronologically and culturally scattered nature of ‘the inquisition’ but it doesn’t go without saying. Most people don’t. And most people have believed the false claims that put the number of executions carried out by the inquisition in the millions. These false claims have been so widely circulated and so often repeated that they are taken as truth and serve as foundations for worldviews. So, when you cited the ‘thousands of homosexuals’ I took nothing else for granted.
But even now you are too quick to ‘rest your case.’ OK, 100 homosexuals (high side estimate) executed in several countries on multiple continents over the course of five centuries. Ha! A black mark on Christianity! Really? Sure! After all, one or two would be too many. That’s true as far as it goes – which isn’t very far. You rested your case without any consideration of what may have been happening to homosexuals in non-Christian Asia – including the places where all those horrible crusaders went. Were homosexuals more or less persecuted outside of Christendom? That seems like a reasonable question to answer before resting your case. You rested your case without any consideration of whether a portion of those 100 executions were for the rape of children – perhaps even pedophile priests were a little less pampered in the 15th century! Were those hundred executions evenly spaced at about one every five years or did they happen in a shorter span? Was there one country or region or maybe even one pope chiefly responsible or is the blame more general? My point is that I think your case is not quite ready to rest.
My point is that secularism has a history too – one which involves the killings of more homosexuals in almost any given year than the inquisition accomplished in five centuries. How many homosexuals were killed by Stalin? Most estimates run up to about 10,000. How many homosexuals were killed by Ho Chi Minh? Pol Pot? Mao? I believe I can draw the case that more homosexuals were killed in non-Christian countries than in Christian countries over the entire time of the inquisition, throughout the 20th century, and at present. I realize that I have to exclude Islamic treatment of homosexuals from the tenth to fifteenth centuries from the secularist tally.
Or, I could just take your line. You ask – ‘Who knows how many other cases there are?’ There’s a damning piece of evidence based critical thinking! Why shouldn’t I just ask – ‘Who knows how many other figures have been inflated to falsely vilify Christianity?’
And that’s what I was mostly on about. The myth of the purposeful extinction of the buffalo to starve the Indians into submission, horribly exaggerated statistics on slave ship mortality, numbers of homosexuals killed, the insistence that Sweden has a lower abortion rate than the United States, ……….are all cited as solid evidence for the pernicious or at least futile nature of Christianity. When I demonstrate the assertions to be false they suddenly become ‘red herrings’, ‘not worth arguing about’, etc. I admit you were quicker with a sincere mea culpa than DOF. Nevertheless, the overall tendency leads me to believe that most of you join Huxley, Nagel, Hitchens, Harris, etc. in seeking for what you want to be true. The difference is that they admit it.
I do not concede your points on the Civil War or the Biblical stance on slavery. But since you find it not worthy to debate, I will desist.
Bruno? OK, the inquisition executed one scientist. I think at least, Bruno comprises the whole list of scientists known to be executed by the inquisition. Who killed Antoine Lavoisier and why? What kind of a threat was he? How many scientists did Stalin kill?
Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that the Christian Religion, even in the single most repressive period of its long history, was more tolerant than comparable secular regimes then or even hundreds of years later in supposedly more enlightened times? You may immediately insist that’s a lopsided claim. I realize that it is in at least one sense. It’s exactly the same sense in which you routinely condemn Christianity by paralleling things like the current world understanding of homosexuality to the Christianity of the 15th century rather than wondering how Christianity in the 15th century treated homosexuals compared to the non-Christian world of the same time. I can tell you for sure that in the 19th and 20th century Christianity was easier on homosexuality than secularism outside Christendom. They weren’t worried about getting legally married in the USSR!
Additionally, if your question concerning mourning the death of Christ is addressed to me personally – I do cut the Roman authorities some slack. I know about the Pax Romana and fully realize what a horrible jam Pilate was caught in. Also, from the Christian point of view, there was a reason that particular time was chosen for the incarnation and crucifixion. Jesus forgave them for His part. How should I do less? And it is a rather silly statement to accuse Christians of simply mourning over the death of Christ anyway.
Leguru,
Yes, I got your point. If I object to Zinn’s history, I must be part of the empowered elitist minority – the opposite of a victim. My point concerns why I should not be regarded by the same logic as the opposite of an atheist – i.e., a believer: the more so as it was one of Zinn’s tenets that a historian had no need to strive for objectivity. He concluded that every history was ideologically driven and went for it.
I am a Christian.
DOF,
Ah, George – if only I would allow you to build the ideological room, designate the corner in which I should stand, and watch meekly as you paint me in with a horribly distorted diorama barely recognizable as and only loosely connected to actual history, present reality, or even what I have said, we should all be so much happier. Peace to you as well.
If the rest of you agree with DOF that it’s time to sit down, fare thee well and thanks. If not, I’ll talk to you again soon. In either case, I continue to pray that God will make Himself known to each of you.
Terry
Which God? The God of Terry Jones? The God the slaves prayed to for mercy for about 500 years or so? The God Mohammed Atta prayed to as he flew into the World Trade Towers? So many Gods, so little evidence!
Peace.
Homosexuality, before the rise of Christianity, was not a criminal offense in the general Mediterranean world. If you were the “submissive” partner you might receive quite a lot of criticism and ridicule, but you would not likely find yourself in legal trouble. Based on rumors going around at the time Julius Caesar, as an example, was subject to this ridicule; but no one ever suggested putting Caesar in prison or burning him at the stake as a result of this. Roman Emperors were openly homosexual or bisexual, such as Hadrian. We already, I think, know what the ancient Greeks often famously did in their spare time. It was the spread of Christianity, an Abrahamic religion, which made homosexuality a potentially criminal offense. I think all of this is common knowledge. This hatred of homosexuality grew over time; St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, further strengthened this anti-gay perception in his writings. Christianity is the movement mainly responsible for the western world’s view that homosexuality is evil or a sin. Christianity has spread this perception throughout the globe, in many places where this stigma did not exist, such as in the Americas or in Asia. When people persecute gays it is, more often than not, a result of this Christian influence.
Then there is the question of ancient versus modern. It is fallacious to compare the numbers that Stalin killed to those executions performed in the Middle Ages. Stalin had a modern state with modern technology and a modern police force to do his dirty work; he could kill more efficiently. The populations were also larger in Stalin’s day so that he had more people at his disposal to butcher at his whim. I do not see that he was any less of a sociopath than Ivan the Terrible (his devout Christian hero) was in his later years; but they had different tools to work with.
Tying the gay point into the modern point; there was a difference in emphasis and focus as time went on. Modern Christians in the 21st century are different from Medieval Christians. Modern conservative Christians spend less time worrying about witches and Jews and more time worrying about homosexuals; in the Middle Ages it was the opposite. The Middle Ages was an era where you were more likely to get pogroms and witch burnings, while modern Christians (pacified in large part by the benefits of an advanced modern secular state) restrict their persecution to the legal realm; so rather than going on gay burnings they merely try to pass laws to restrict homosexual practices; trying to restore homosexuality to the legal state it had when Christianity was in charge. We have efforts to ban sodomy in Texas, we have large groups of people who want to pass a ‘defense’ of marriage Amendment and we had Prop-8 in California. We recently had the revocation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and I can just imagine what the response will be from the Religious Right on that issue; I have already heard some Christian’s insist that they will not fight in a “sodomite army.” There was also that recent attempt in Nigeria, I believe, to make homosexuality a capital crime.
So it is not a question of loss of hatred, merely a difference in how modern western people’s display and express their hatred vs. how they did in the Dark Ages.
As for your attempts to minimize the Inquisition; it seems to me that numbers are not really the issue. When the Catholic Church, which claims to be the supreme moral authority of the human race, is the perpetrator of unseemly executions of this sort in any number it is indeed going to raise eyebrows. Perhaps it is harsh to single them out for killed “only” a hundred or so homosexuals, but perhaps the Church would do itself a favor by not making such high claims for itself. But to answer your question about the numbers; I think I agree that Catholicism in the Middle Ages, though it did indeed persecute gays, as well as Jews and witches, did not kill quite as many as modern people might think. Jews were put into ghettos, forced to wear badges identifying them as Jews (later Nazi policies), Jewish holy books like the Talmud were burned, etc. but while pogroms often broke out the Church itself never directly said to the flock that it should go out there and exterminate the Jews. It also seems that the supposedly modernizing Protestants (I assume that you are a Protestant, but you can correct me there) killed more witches than the Catholics did. And while they persecuted scientists like Galileo, who they put in house arrest, or restricted others like Da Vinci, who was forbidden to perform autopsies, and while I would prefer a society that listens to scientists over churchmen; it is true that they did not often kill scientists. Not exactly a great record for the Church, but we agree that the *killing* in these cases was not as widespread as some might think.
Instead, Catholicism in the Middle Ages and beyond usually directed its sword most viciously not at these groups but at other Christians. So Catholicism would wipe out around half a million Cathars (if not more), would state in their Ecumenical Councils that Christians should “punish all heretics” and should “exterminate the heretics”, they would burn people like Hus at the stake and would launch bloody holy wars against his Bohemian followers. And that was all before the Reformation, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the Thirty Years’ War that killed off perhaps 1/3 of Germany, etc. This was serious bloodletting, and all before the advent of the modern resources that people like Stalin would later have at their disposal. The narcissism of small differences is very strong in Catholicism, and Catholic authorities (Church and secular) have dedicated most of their blood shedding towards other Christians… though I would imagine that the Native Americans not a distant second.
Again, not a great record, and an example of why a secular state that allows all people and all Christians to make up their minds is superior to a state that only permits one faith or one version of Christianity. But tell that to modern Christians who seem to want to restore this kind of state-sponsored dominionism.
As for the Islamic world it seems to have a similar record. The degree of persecution of gays varied depending on time and place. I could look into it more, but that seems to be the case based on what I have read. I certainly feel sorry for any homosexuals currently residing in the Middle East. And, again, I do not consider Christianity to be any worse (or better) than Islam, and the persecution of homosexuality is something that all of the Abrahamic faiths are guilty of.
As for your critique of secular government (as if you’re ever going to pack your bags and move to the Islamic Republic of Iran or some other theocracy); I do not deny that there have been secular governments with poor records. Even the U.S. has its history of crimes, including those against the slaves and the Native Americans (despite your apparent desire to minimize those as well.) But certainly the U.S. and Britain and other secular democracies have had better records than the Communist and Fascist secular states which they opposed. I think it is important that a state be secular, but that is only the first criteria; secular states still have a lot of work to do to ensure that they are just and democratic. We are always striving to make the U.S. a more perfect Union, but I’ll be damned if anyone tries to compare us to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany on the basis that they are all “secular states.” Secularism is a great thing, but there is more to it than that.
And, while we mourn the bad behavior of some secularists in the 20th century, let us not forget that Fascist Italy and Germany had concordats with the Vatican. Catholicism was Fascist Italy and Fascist Spain’s official state religion. Most Nazis were Christians, and Hitler used Christian propaganda to his advantage. He himself was a believer in God or Providence, though it is unclear and perhaps unlikely that he was a Christian, though he never formally left the Church. Fascist Croatia cooperated with Catholic bishops and monks in exterminating Orthodox Christians and Jews and stealing their wealth; much of which apparently ended up in the Vatican. The brutal Japanese Empire considered the Emperor a god and fought savagely in his defense; I hardly consider that secular. The supposed secular Diem regime made the Catholic Church the largest landowner in South Vietnam while persecuting the Buddhist majority, making the situation in that part of the world much worse. The Israel-Palestine conflict has the wretched stench of religion all over it. Bishops and other clerics were partly responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. And it need not be said what the religious forces of Islamic Fundamentalism and to a lesser degree Christian Evangelicalism have already done to ruin and degrade the dreams that most of us had for this new millennium. Secularism is not perfect, but religion has a knack for making a situation worse.
But all of that is trivial. Few modern Christian will identify themselves with Christian dictators or murderers any more than I would identify myself with Stalin. Few American Muslims would identify themselves with the Jihadis. There is no connection there. But, some connections to the past do exist. That a small group of Catholics killed so and so a hundred years ago in a foreign country says little or nothing about a devout Catholic living today in the U.S. But when a devout Catholic living in the modern day claims that the popes are the Vicars of Christ and that their Councils are infallible, then I have the right to point out the crimes of these Catholic authorities and to criticize Catholics for their high claims for those authorities. When Christians in general claim the Bible as infallible then I have the right to point out its endorsement of murder and slavery and to criticize modern Christians for their high claims for these scriptures. When Muslims claim that Muhammad was a great and holy man, I need only point out that he was a slayer of civilians and a pedophile. And when Christians or Muslims claim that their religions make a society better, only a brief glance at history could refute this, though I need only look at the current abuse scandals in Catholicism and the pure vileness of people like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or the barbarism of al Qaeda or the Saudi government to see that this is not the case.
Christians do not mourn the crucifixion of Jesus or the death of the martyrs? Perhaps that mourning is tempered by the hope of afterlife, resurrection, etc. but that seems like an untrue statement to say that there is no mourning or dwelling on those incidents. The Passion of the Christ did not come out that long ago; though I haven’t heard any praise for Mel Gibson lately from our credulous conservative Christian fellow Americans…
Correction, it was Uganda, not Nigeria.
Terry, your response to the charge that Christianity is not the noble institution it’s purported to be, by pointing a finger at secularists that have done comparable things, does not refute the claim. It just means that the common denominator (humanity) will do what it wants, and will seek whatever justification they think fits to justify their acts.
To put it a different way:
DOF, YMO, Pos, etc.: “Dude, that’s whacked. You suck.” (gives examples)
You: “Well, other people have from time to time sucked worse…” (gives examples)
Bottom line, is history is replete with examples of secularists (defined as people operating without a religious agenda) doing both good and evil, and the religious, doing both good and evil. So the presence of religion doesn’t appear to be all that decisive a factor. Matter of fact, it appears to be the most conspicuous nonfactor ever. I simply don’t understand how an omnipotent and benevolent god would allow signs like “God hates fags” around. You’d think there’d be an unexplained lightning strike or something.
As for my stance on all of this, I think it’s best summed up thusly*:
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
— Marcus Aurelius
*-Yeah, I know ‘thusly’ isn’t actually a word. I like it anyway.
Terry
Do you have any idea how funny I find it that you think it is a good thing to compare your religion to the worst mass murderers in history.
But you forgot one – the Roman Catholic, Hitler. How many homosexuals were killed in Nazi Germany? Don’t forget to add those to the ‘theist’ total. And Islam – they’re not big on homosexuals either.
Last thing I’ll add, before Terry chimes in again, is this:
Terry, you say that the Old Testament just isn’t meant to be followed, that only the New Testament is (and I do applaud that approach, as far as it goes)? If that is so, where is that written? I mean, if it’s that important (“follow this part but don’t follow that part” certainly seems to be very important, when you’re talking about what parts of this book to base your lives around), you’d think it would be labeled:
“Part I: History: not to be actually used in daily lives.”
“Part 2: The Guide: You’re supposed to do this part.”
If, as I suspect, it’s not actually written anywhere, then you know what you’re doing when you choose which part to follow and what part not to? You are exercising your own personal judgment. And I approve that it told you that the parts that talk about selling your daughter into slavery, that it’s okay to own Canadians and Mexicans, and what not wasn’t to be followed, but if you’re going to follow your own personal judgment, then just call it that from the get-go and be good with the results. I’m pretty confident the rest would be pretty happy with that answer.
Actually, God has made himself known to me. I have read, studied, and taught the Bible, which many claim to be the “word of God.” And in the process I discovered that those words of “God” were actually written by men, not by God. Men who claim to speak for God, surely, but nevertheless men. The portrait those words paint is not pretty. The Holy Bible is, in fact, the best atheist tract ever written. Please read “Misquoting Jesus,” by Bart D. Ehrman, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If the Bible is the “word” of God, which version has the “words” that God spoke or wrote? Erasmus omitted some important parts of the New Testament that he first produced because the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts he had available did not contain those passages (the woman taken in adultery, the last twelve verses of Mark, and the Johannine Comma). Scholars now agree that those passages in fact do not belong in the Bible, as they were added by later scribes. So, if you believe in the Bible and in God, which Bible and which God? And why is your version any better or worse than any other version by any other Christian sect? So many questions, so few answers.
Peace.
NewDave
Don’t forget, in the NT, Jesus says that all the OT laws are still valid.
I do so love it when a Christian says part X of the Old Testament doesn’t apply anymore because Jesus’ arrival changed some of the rules. Because eventually you can get them to point to some passage of the OT that they DO like and claim that it’s the exception to the it-doesn’t-apply-anymore rule. If you push them on it long enough they will eventually twist themselves into knots trying to explain to you which parts are still valid and which parts aren’t and the parts are often different from Christian to Christian.
And, as YMO points out, you have to ignore the bit about Jesus saying that all the laws are still valid.
If the historical Jesus existed he probably did not intend to do away with Old Testament law. But during that era there was a movement within Judaism that viewed the law as allegorical; Paul may have been sympathetic to this view and perhaps incorporated it into early Christian thought. Paul developed the idea that salvation came through faith in Jesus and that the law was no longer needed. This was crucial, since the relaxation of Jewish regulations benefited the Christian mission to the Gentiles.
Catholics and probably most other Christians also look at the book of Acts as a guide on Jewish law. The supposed Council of Jerusalem states that Gentile converts need only abstain from unlawful marriage, consumption of blood (though, as Luther notes, Christians usually ignore this prohibition) and idolatry. So despite Jesus’ words to the contrary, most of the OT’s prohibitions became obsolete for Christians, ostensibly with these exceptions.
But the notion that Christianity is immune to Old Testament criticism is absurd. The New Testament has its foundation in the Old; if the OT contains evil or if Christians admit that it contains man made ideas then Christianity is “built in sand.” The alleged God of the New Testament would still be just as responsible for the writing of the Old; if he is morally infallible then how could he have once ordered murder and slavery? Not that it matters; the NT allows for slavery too. So, regardless of the red herrings, Christians cannot escape this critique of the Bible’s offensive passages; Old or New Testament.
Positive makes a good point. If you discard the OT, you lose all the prophesies (which are made up anyway), and you in fact lose even the reason given for Jebus to come down (abolishing original sin) and be sacrificed.
Leguru,
Slaves don’t still pray to God for mercy? They didn’t do so before AD 1300? Your view of slavery, like your view of reality, is severely confined. But hey, it allows you to maintain that slavery is the fault of Christianity! As to which God – the God of the Bible. Let me guess – the God of the Old Testament or the New? The God that drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea? The God…..
New Dave,
You are, in part, correct about the back and forth in this discussion between the sins of religion and the sins of secularism. But only in part. And I agree that the common denominator is humanity – I would add, fallen humanity – which is the point. It is not my intent to minimize the crimes committed by religious people, societies, in the name of religion, etc. It certainly seems to be the point for some in the conversation to maximize those crimes and to cite religion, not as a non-factor, but as the prime factor causing the crimes. Am I misreading this? I think accuracy is in everyone’s interest. Hundreds or thousands – it makes a difference. And if it turns out that secular regimes killed tens or hundreds of thousands where Christian societies killed hundreds or thousands, then, yes, I think that makes a difference too. If humanity is the common denominator but the level of crimes differ with the specific qualifier, isn’t that significant? If, as Positive now insists, the numbers aren’t the issue, I think you I should ask him to loan us $10,000,000.00
Marcus Aurelius’ creed was a manly one. Perhaps that’s why he derided the homosexuality of his predecessors. Or, maybe that was just political. Sorry, it’s hard for me to resist sometimes. And, I’m fine by the word/non-word ‘thusly’. At any rate, M.A. is about a half inch from Paschal and his famous wager!
God allows the misrepresentation of His own character by the likes of Fred Phelps and all the other ills of the world for reasons well defined in the Bible. It’s a longish story but I have come to believe that the presence of evil in the world is actually one of the single best arguments for the existence of God. For a treatment I have at least some sympathy with on that subject, you might check Benjamin D. Walker’s The Problem of Evil.
And lastly, as to the difference in the Old and New Covenants and the authority question: We will virtually speak different languages here because you probably do not look at either Covenant holistically – although the way you frame the question is rife with holistic assumptions. Anyhoo (one of my favorite non-words!) It is not reasonable to expect the Covenant in force at any particular time to carry the adviso ‘history: not to be actually used in daily lives.’ That idea does not come into play until the Covenant has been replaced. (In this context – the Old Covenant itself is actually a series of covenants.) Proceeding with the holistic view, read Jeremiah 31:31-34. The Old Covenant proclaims its coming replacement. Read Hebrews chapters 7-8 or Galatians 4 or Colossians 2,…to find what we already know; that the New Covenant is so called because it presumes to be the record of that prophesied replacement. Thusly, when one accepts the authority of Christ as the mediator of the New Covenant (becomes a Christian), the authority of the Old is replaced. And ‘if the Old were perfect, there would be no need for a New!’ As to Christ’s saying that the law would not be done away with – He said that such a thing should not happen ‘until all was fulfilled.’ There’s a reason He said, ‘this is my blood of the New Covenant…’
Positive,
You turned from Asia (with a dismissive wave of the hand assertion that the rise of Christianity ruined that continent’s more reasonable stance on homosexuality) to the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. Well, OK. You made one fabric of the Greek and Roman thoughts on the matter. The early Roman republic (quite pre-Christian) actually regarded homosexuality as a degraded practice of the degraded Greeks and did criminalize it. As is often the case, the ideas and practices of the Greeks had greater leverage after their defeat and permeated the fabric of Rome over time. This included a practice of homosexuality that was primarily a component of the master/slave relationship – that would be Roman masters/Greek slaves. You might research the Lex Scatinia whereby homosexual practices – including male prostitution – with any free born Roman were, in fact, criminalized. It was still OK when dealing with slaves though. I don’t think this is what you want to hold up as a shining example of how things should be. It is also contradicts your non-criminalization theory and plays havoc with your characterization of consensual relationships. It is true that when Rome turned to rule by Emperors (Only just slightly pre-Christian) that 12 of the first 14 Emperors engaged in one degree or another of homosexual behavior. It might be an interesting exercise to rate those Emperors on a scale of atrocities committed, rate them separately on the degree to which they practiced homosexuality, and set the columns side by side. I know, there are other factors to consider – interesting nonetheless. A better point is that even then, homosexuality did not go truly mainstream in Roman thought or society. It was primarily an aristocrat’s game.
The big succession of homosexual Emperors in China were in the Han Dynasty. Again, the practice was not much mainstreamed And the religions of China did not in fact smile on the practice of exclusive homosexuality. Both Confucianism and Taoism thought the practice ignored the duty to produce descendants in a family setting. It is true that dalliances were thought of somewhat more leniently but over all, neither yin/yin nor yang/yang was thought to measure up to yin/yang. Attitudes hardened in the subsequent Tang and Song dynasties – not due to Christian influences but influences coming into China from other Asian locales. Buddhism, with a general de-emphasis of sexuality, was one notable player. You might check into Genghis Kahn as well (The death penalty, I think, counts as criminalization – and totally without a New or Old Testament in his hand!) There were others. Urbanization had an effect on the attitude toward homosexuality in Asia too. For whatever it’s worth, recent studies suggest that urbanization still has a strong effect on all questions regarding homosexuality and on the frequency of the practice itself. At any rate, it wasn’t until the Ming and Qing Dynasties that Christian influence was felt. The real change there came with the introduction of the concept of ‘sin’ which spanned all behaviors, not just sexuality in general or homosexuality in specific. But if you want to look at hard core criminalizing and persecution you have to move a little farther forward in time and deal with a secularized China.
My point, again, is that you oversimplify history in order to arrive at your conclusions. And sure: modern technology – the only reason the deaths attributable to the inquisition were limited to 6,000 over half a millennia is that the poor ignorant savages couldn’t figure out any more efficient methods for their savage religiously motivated slaughter!
Your characterizations of the history of actual Christendom are just as wanting.
You need to read my comment concerning mourning over Christ’s death again.
Your Mighty Overload,
If the question concerns what might be the best regulator of human cruelty then the fact that the worst mass murderers in history are not my religious fellows but reside in some other category to which Christianity may be compared, is – kind of a point for me.
Les,
See my reply to New Dave.
Terry
Terry,
Hitler was a fairly religious fellow. It says so numerous times in his book. He banned atheist organisations and banned Darwin’s writings. He hated the Jews for killing Jesus. Unless, of course, you ignore what he actually said.
My point of course, is not even this. My point is that you seem to think it is a numbers game. It isn’t. Stalin didn’t kill those people because he attended seminary, nor because he was apparently an atheist. He killed them because he was a Stalinist, through and through.
But please, remind me again of the chain of logic which gets you from “I don’t believe in any gods” to “therefore, all members of group x must die”, explain how that is different from “I don’t believe in hobgoblins” to “therefore all members of group y must die”.
I can already tell you how to get from “I believe in YHWH” to “therefore I must commit this atrocity”.
Thanks, again, for a non-answer.
And your most often quoted texts appear to be those of Paul, so I have to assume you are actually a Paulian rather than a Christian. The latest instance above,
May I also assume that the God you have chosen to worship, as well as the “Christ” you have chosen to worship, are both creations of your own imagination? The examples you have shown so far are so unlike the God and Christ of many other Christian sects that I have seen. But, then, that is the real problem with anything taken on faith, if you had actual proof, it would not be faith, would it?
But, thank you for a well researched history of homosexual customs and the societal reactions to such customs. I am always willing to learn something new and will confirm the history, just so I am not too much influenced by one source.
You should have seen the Torture Exhibition when it was available at the San Diego Museum a few years ago. What the “Christians” lacked in numbers, they fully made up for in imagination and depravity.
Peace.
While I was indeed not aware of some of that early Roman history the reality still remains that homosexuality in that era of the late Roman Empire was not a capital crime until the Christians made it so; particularly under Theodosius who punished homosexuals by burning them to death. Obviously I agree that Pagan inclinations towards raping children and slaves was wrong, but that is hardly the only form of homosexuality that Christianity has targeted. To the contrary, you have the Catholic Church in recent decades (if not longer) practically protecting this form of behavior directed at children. It also remains true that Christianity played a large part in spreading anti-gay sentiments throughout the world, even if it was not the only factor.
Are you implying that homosexuals are perhaps more likely to commit atrocities based on the behavior of the Roman Emperors? Even if, as you admit, there are other factors? I think you might want to look at the latter a bit more than the former, and if you want to go through the list of Christian monarchs who (other factors or not) committed crimes or atrocities you would probably have to write continuously for twenty years merely listing names.
As I said earlier, your suggestion that secularism accounts for the large numbers of people killed in the 20th and 21st centuries (rather than technology, such as poison gas which greatly increased the brutal efficiency of the Holocaust, or the size of the world population, which was far larger in the last one hundred years than it was in the ancient or Medieval period) is ridiculous and is contradicted by the long list of crimes and genocides committed by the religious which I have already provided and which you have ignored.
Are your bags packed yet for the big move to Tehran? Why would you want to spend another minute under these evil secular tyrannies when you could experience the splendors of theocratic liberty and justice first hand?
And, Mahmoud admitted in the UN that you would be living under a prophet, so, just like what Christians are waiting for when Jesus returns and becomes King of the whole earth. Doesn’t that sound exciting to you???
Or, do you still fail to see how religion IS politics?
Peace.
Your Mighty Overload,
Hitler was indeed a fairly religious fellow. He yearned for a return to pre-Christian paganism. This is plain, unless you care to ignore the totality of what he said – and did. He was also a liar – probably more accurately a propagandist. He identified atheists and Jews for discrimination (a mild term in this case) because those groups were already unpopular in German society. Given this context; his use of a prejudice against the Jews as ‘Christ Killers’ is hardly a surprising move. He whacked Darwin while parroting Darwin. What do you suppose was up with that? And, while he was perfectly willing to manipulate the cafeteria Christianity Positive sees as a hopeful sign, information collected for Nuremberg makes it pretty clear; Christianity was on his list for destruction – after he got through using it.
And Stalin’s problem was that he was a Stalinist? Wow. And I mean that sincerely.
As to the chain of logic; since you reject Stalin, Mao, Pot, and others as representative, while insisting that Theodosius & Co. must stand as representative on the Christian side, (A key disagreement on this thread) you pretty much insulate yourself from such a logical application.
Leguru,
Ask a non-question….
I am a Christian. And you may assume whatever you like. But, you know what they say about assumptions.
You’re welcome.
I will spare you a history of non-Christian use of creative tortures. Humanity is fallen. I will also spare you the essay on how the creative side of the inquisition is exaggerated as severely as the numbers issue.
The search for meaning and the art of social control remain non-identical.
Positive,
Christianity did, in fact, play a large part in spreading anti-gay sentiment. That is a reasonable assertion. And, some Christians have behaved and do behave in non-Christlike ways in their treatment of homosexuality and many other issues. That also is a reasonable assertion. In fact, both those assertions are undeniable. In the big picture, Christianity joins every other cultural milieu in history in struggling with the question of homosexuality and Christian societies join all other societies in something resembling a tidal regularity in the process. In general, the following characterizations are probably fair. New and building societies have one attitude. Jaded or declining societies have another. Rural societies have one attitude. Highly urbanized societies have another. Societies in which power is widely dispersed have one attitude. Societies where power accumulates at the top have another – especially among the elite.
Was I implying that homosexuals are more likely to commit atrocities? Or was I implying that those who commit atrocities are more likely to engage in homosexuality? Is the difference between those questions affected by whether homosexuality is genetically determined or a matter of choice? Would it matter if homosexuality was discovered to be mainly the result of negative environmental factors? Or urbanization? Or any of the half dozen factors strongly suggested by recent studies?
Would it matter if lesbians
• enjoy the single richest concentration of factors for breast cancer?
• have higher rates of cervical cancer?
• are more likely to be obese?
• consume more tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs?
• experience higher rates of bacterial infection?
• experience higher rates of Hepatitis C
Would those issues at least matter in terms of insurance rates? It certainly matters to my insurers that I occasionally choose to travel to Honduras for benevolent purposes.
Would it matter if male homosexuality seemed to produce even worse health risks, including a suicide rate about 6 times higher than heterosexuals? Nevermind AIDS!
Would it matter if a miniscule fraction of one percent of the male population of the United States committed over 30% of all child molestation and that tiny group is a subset of American homosexuals?
In that respect, it is not completely unfair to say that the Catholic Church failed to protect the children (Shame! Legal punishment too!) but would have been crucified (Imagery huh?) had they, like the Boy Scouts, chosen earlier not to protect the predatory male homosexuals who entered their establishment? I’ve put in a decade and a half on the board of a church camp and I can tell you, we have to guard against this problem.
Would it make a difference if people like Andrew Sullivan, in pressing for gay marriage, openly explained that monogamy would not be the object as it just doesn’t fit in with the homosexual lifestyle? In fact, says Sullivan, heterosexual marriage could profit by learning from gays and easing up on the whole monogamy thing!
Would it make a difference if there was actually an official organization within homosexuality advocating for the virtual abolition of consent laws so that men could openly and without risk of legal consequence, practice sex with little boys?
It frequently appears to me that society is not supposed to consider such things. After all, we can’t engage in an unhealthy fascination over what people do with their naughty bits!
Now, along comes Christianity with the message that homosexuality is a sin in that it is a violation of God’s design and bound to lead to nothing good. Auses of power and the natural human tendency to overreact to fear aside, I guess in this instance, I’ll bite. I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?
Nevertheless, I recognize that I live as a Christian in the world and there is a difference between my faith and the world. I live in a society with secular governance and I am not free to impose my faith on that governance. Nor, as often stated, do I wish to deny anyone within this society the benefits of the infrastructure – except as society itself shall deem those benefits to be forfeited. This however, does not equal the brain dead conclusion that if a society governed by a secular republic also has a population the vast majority of which are adherents to one philosophical or religious system – oh, say, Christianity – that the values of that system will not be reflected in the governance. This does not automatically institute a state church with enforcement powers – an arrangement I have not and will not advocate. Hence, I will not be moving to Tehran.
Terry
Terry,
My main point is that there is a direct line from “my god / holy book commands me to kill those people” to actually killing them. There is no direct line from “I don’t believe in god” to killing anyone. It is entirely plausible that when some religious person says they are killing because of their religion, that it is so – while the bible says “thou shall not kill”, it also commands death or genocide on multiple occasions.
On the flip side, there is nothing in the atheist position to warrant killing anyone. An atheist MUST bring some other belief or rule into it to justify any atrocity – lack of belief cannot justify positive actions in such a way. So yes, I do say it is not because of their atheism that Stalin et al committed atrocities. Probably in most cases it is not their religion which causes most religious people who commit atrocities to commit them, however, the Christian holy book contains quite enough passages to justify killing a huge variety of people. Phelps and his crowd, if nothing else, know and stick to the bible.
So yes, the bible is sufficient to justify murder in the mind of a sufficiently religious believer – due to its positive claims about who should be put to death and how, but atheism is not sufficient to justify killing anyone.
I am not sure that Hitler followed Darwin at al. Selective breeding (i.e. artificial selection), which was Hitler’s goal, had been around for millenia before Darwin, and was well understood. There was nothing natural in the selection proposed by Hitler. Nothing Darwinian.
If you mean by “search for meaning” that you find homosexuality to be immoral, I agree with you. If you mean that the way many Christians have taken that idea and used it to find that homosexuals should be denied the human right to marry, I differ with you. And the latter is where we find the application of “bad guy” to some Christians.
Thank you, I do know how to spell it. The reason I am inquiring about which parts or which interpretations of the New Testament you have adopted as your own “Scriptures” is that there are so many different interpretations of what constitutes “Scripture.” If the Bible, or some parts of it, is the “Word of God,” which parts and which words and which interpretations? Are you referring to the best available Greek manuscripts or the the Latin Vulgate?
Peace.
“He identified atheists”
What? I thought Hitler was the pope of atheism?
Anyway, while he was probably not a Christian and certainly not an atheist, Hitler was also not a Pagan either, to my understanding, though many of his Nazi followers were. Either way, Hitler was a theist of one stripe or another, his large number of Pagan followers were theists, and the majority of his followers- Christians- were also theists… speaking of which…
Yes, Christianity did an excellent job of laying some of the groundwork for Hitler’s propaganda to be as successful as it was among the German population. He had a nation with a strong history of anti-Semitic Christianity, and he used it to full advantage. Thank you, Martin Luther. Whether or not Hitler was a Christian (though, again, he was clearly believer in God) most of the people who followed and died and killed for him were Christians. That is not to say that Nazism is Christianity’s fault, but it certainly helped his cause, and the adherents of Christianity in Germany were certainly the majority of his base.
On the Origin of the Species was banned in Nazi Germany. It is odd how the right wing is often very willing to adopt Social Darwinism while rejecting scientific Darwinism. That certainly seems to be the case for many Conservative Republicans in America.
At any rate, Darwinism and Social Darwinism are different things, despite the latter’s usurpation of the term “Darwinism.” Moreover, even if Darwinism were directly responsible for Eugenics and the Holocaust (which it is not, it neither advocates nor proposes either of the two) that would not make Darwinism or natural selection or evolution any less of a reality. The atomic bomb was a terrible thing, but the damage that it did hardly disproves E=MC2. Scientific facts are scientific facts; how we choose to apply this knowledge is another question. Christianity, on the other hand, remains an improvable dogma, regardless of what version it takes and whether it produces good fruit or bad.
Child rape is wrong whether it is same-sex or not. One would think that statement sufficient, but apparently not for religionists with a bone to pick. And the obvious fact that child rapists should be outlawed and banned has little to do with this issue of the rights of consenting adults and whether those consenting adults be monogamists like Andrew Sullivan (who is married) or people who get involved in numerous relationships (as you suggest Sullivan has advocated for; I’ve never heard him say that but I haven’t followed his career that closely.) Christians, and certainly Christian elites in recent decades, have done more to target the latter (consenting gay adults) than the former (pedophiles.) So, modern Christian attitudes towards homosexuality represent the worst of both worlds.
As for all of the numbers you provided, I don’t really want to ask you for sources because none of us have used them up to now (myself included) and this really is just a friendly discussion and not an academic debate. an academic debate. But if you’re going to insist that homosexuals commit child rape on a disproportionate scale then a source might be a good idea.
Here’s one: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html
But lets move on to secularism, which you have bashed repeatedly but which you now say you believe in… sort of.
So the faith will not be imposed, only the values of the faith. Great. And in Iran you do not have to be a Shi’ite Muslim, but you damned well better follow the values that the theocrats hand down.
It is a distinction with little difference; I have no interest in your values, much less in their being a part of the nation’s governance. I need not mention the problems associated with the tyranny of a majority and the rights of mionrities. All I will say is that if a Christian wants to ban embryonic stem cell research because he believes that an embryo has a soul, and has arguments other than this, then he is trying to enforce his religion on the society, and this is a violation of our rights as a secular nation. Ditto gay marriage, etc.
I’ll resist mentioning your belief in the virgin birth as response to this low blow… or did I just do that?
I had to make a typing mistake somewhere, tragic that it had to be in the first line. The full quote from Terry’s post is of course “He identified atheists and Jews for discrimination”
Also, let me fix this sentence “if a Christian wants to ban embryonic stem cell research because he believes that an embryo has a soul, and he has *no* arguments other than this…”
Sorry for another long hiatus.
Your Mighty Overload,
*You (again) confound murder and killing. This is probably not a mistake you would make in any area other than criticizing the Bible.
*Arguing the need for a second step to connect atheism to atrocity is much like arguing over whether viruses or sexual behaviors are responsible for STDs.
*“Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind…everyone does good service who aids toward this end….Man, like every animal, has advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence congruent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise, he would sink into indolence and the more gifted men would not be successful in the battle of life than the less gifted….There should be open competition for all men and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring….With savages, the weak in mind or body are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health….We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination….There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small pox. Thus, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.” Charles Darwin.
Leguru,
*Just so I have this straight – are you conceding that politics and religion are not identical?
*I’m taking New Dave’s advice (I think) and not rising to the bait on the question of textual transmission.
Positive,
Of course child rape is wrong regardless of sexual orientation. The question is whether pedophilia has a stronger connection to one orientation than another. It should be observed as I start this that I am not blaming non pedophile homosexuals for the behavior of the pedophilic subset or justifying heterosexual pedophiles. I’m saying that the discussion of the ethical implications of any sexual behaviors or orientation has to assess the risks involved. The health risks are one part of that discussion. If there is a disproportionate tendency toward pedophilia or eubophilia associated with particular behaviors and orientations, that is another. Sources?
*I don’t know how you all feel about the whole Kinsey thing, but even Alfred Kinsey said that 37% of the homosexual men in his studies admitted having sex with children.
*Ray Blanchard, Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 29, number 5, pp.463-478: 2-4% of men attracted to adults prefer males while 25-40% of men attracted to children prefer boys.
*Blanchard, Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 28, number 2, pp 111-127: “Pedophilia appears to have a greater than chance association with two other statistically infrequent phenomenon. The first of these is homosexuality…surveys estimate the prevalence of homosexuality among men attracted to adults, in the neighborhood of 2%. In contrast, the prevalence of homosexuality among pedophiles may be as high as 30-40%.”
*Kurt Freund, Journal of Sex Research, volume 26, number 1, pp. 107-117: “the proportion of sex offenders against male children is substantially larger than the proportion of sex offenders against female children among heterosexual men….the development of pedophilia is more closely linked with homosexuality than heterosexuality.”
*W.D. Erikson – Archives of Sexual Behavior – as of 1988 anyway – a study of 229 convicted child molesters found that 86% described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.
*K. Freud and R I Watson, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 1992: Homosexual males are three times more likely than heterosexual males to engage in pedophilia.
*In the Catholic Priest scandal – which covered a largish span of time, only in the crimes committed against 1-7 year old children were the assaults weighted toward females – 58.3% to 41.7. In the other age groupings the assaults were largely homosexual in nature – 8-10 year olds – 71.4%, 11-14 year olds – 85.4%, and 15-17 year olds – 85.2%. Even allowing for the claim that there are more homosexuals in the priesthood than in the general population, these men were at least 50 times more likely to commit pedophilia than heterosexual priests. Then too, I would ask why there is a concentration of homosexuals in the priesthood. I’d guess it’s for the same reason that predatory homosexual males gravitate toward other professions that put them in proximity to available victims. This is not the fault of non-predatory homosexual males but the numerical disparity stands.
I’ll acknowledge another factor. Men commit more acts of pedophilia than women (though the women are currently gaining ground) and I am not in favor of eliminating maleness. So, in part, the ethical and moral components of the issue hinge on whether or not homosexuality is primarily a matter of genetics, environment, or choice. If, as many recent studies suggest, it is most often environment and choice, and the negative consequences are real, then perhaps it’s a poor choice and environments are in need of change. At any rate, such a choice should be informed by the potential for damage.
See the quotation of Darwin above.
As to secularism and national values. So, ethics have nothing to do with consensus after all! And you probably need not mention the tyranny of the minority either. At least it isn’t your ideological best interests.
Isn’t it funny how the current state of science can so easily demythologize a detail like the virgin birth or a new human being produced from a small piece of a formerly existing human being?
Terry
So you think homosexuality could be a choice? That it is “most often” a choice and environmental? You really think that up to 10% of our population would actually CHOOSE to be part of a group that is so despised by most of the US population? (I am including LGBT in that %) Why would a 19-year-old Rutgers University student become so despondent upon being exposed as a homosexual that he would take his own life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge? At what point in time, then, did you chose to be heterosexual? If homosexuality is a choice, so must be heterosexuality. And if they are a choice, one could change from one to the other, on a whim, no? Do you believe you could change from heterosexual to homosexual? Could you be “recruited”?
Peace.
Actually, I believe I said, above, “Or, do you still fail to see how religion IS politics?”
Is Jesus’ title not, “Lord”? Does the Bible not refer to the “Kingdom” of Heaven? Does the “Second Coming of the Lord” not refer to His “reign” for one thousand years? How is religion NOT political???
Peace.
Belief in the virgin birth is the ultimate resignation of common sense. Putting aside that the legend does not first appear until at least fifty years after the death of Jesus (Paul and Mark, the earliest Christian writers, make no mention of it) and leaving aside the fact that many mythologies have had similar stories and ignoring Matthew’s poor connection of it to Isaiah; if it came directly from Mary’s own mouth you would still be a fool to believe it. Belief in the virgin birth does not make Christians “the bad guy” but it does erase any notion that Christianity is a more reasonable religion than, say, Voodoo or Greek mythology.
“it’s a poor choice and environments are in need of change.” The notion that homosexuality is a choice is unproven, and even if it were, it is not for the government (much less the church) to have the authority to dictate to people what kind of life choices they can make for themselves. I consider it a poor choice to donate money to a televangelist or to a Catholic Church (you have to figure that it is inevitably that at least some of that money must find its way towards paying off the legal debts of sex offenders and their protectors), but I would not presume to say that the government should get involved in stopping such buffoonery.
As for the issue of homosexuality and a hypothetical link to pedophilia; I think we see that it is also disputed, and we will take our own respective sides. But you do not then pass laws based on unproven theories about such a link. I will take at face value your point that we do not then ban “maleness” due to the fact that men are more likely to commit the crime. I trust that this is your policy towards gays as well
“Tyranny of the minority.” Yes, the famed oppressed majority of Christians in this nation. Bill O’Reilly can tell us all about it. Did you know that some people actually use the term “Happy Holidays”? They are clearly in need of exorcisms.
Talk to me when billionaire Christian Churches lose their tax exempt status and when the Christian religious right loses its ability to pass arbitrary laws against the civil rights of other people.
I’ll reiterate my prior point; I don’t care about Christian values and they have no place dictating the laws of this nation, whether they make up 100% of the population or 1%. Your belief in a soul or in the sinfulness of homosexuality is irrelevant to what kind of laws that should be made (divorce is considered a sin as well, but we apparently do not ban it because most adult Christians are divorced). My “ideological best interest” is freedom, and not only for myself but for other people. Looking at history it is clear why it is problematic for some religions to have a say over the behavior of other people and other religions. The Founders also saw why this is problematic. It is incredibly hypocritical for Christians to whine about minority rights, particularly when Christianity is losing ground in seemingly every western nation. We will be hearing quite a lot about minority rights from Christians in the coming decades, and when we do I will be on their side in saying that they have those rights.
1) The bible condones killing in many different forms for many different groups on many occasions. Your god tells his little band to go and wipe out numerous groups. He tells you to kill homosexuals, or people who try to convert you, or unruly children. On top of which, he not only condones it, he does it himself! First born children, entire world population (flood), inhabitants of Sodom. Not content, he apparently still tells people even today to kill their children or abortion doctors. Apparently, “thou shalt not kill” doesn’t apply to true Christians(TM)
2) You miss the point. People don’t kill others because they don’t believe in god anymore than people don’t kill each other because they don’t believe in Santa. Hitler was a theist and killed the Jews for two reasons as I see it 1) he used the anti-semitism the church had fostered for so long to make them a scapegoat that would allow him to develop his power, and 2) he blamed them for a variety of personal ills, including murdering Jebus.
3) Darwin was pretty forward thinking for his time. Even though he realised the implications of evolution, he pretty much roundly rejected them. FOr example, he was notably anti-slavery – and yet many American ‘Christians’ were pro-slavery. Admittedly, the Bible is pretty pro-slavery too, it does, after all tell you who you can enslave, for how long, how much you should pay, how much you can beat them etc.
But we’re missing the point here. Even if the bible was filled with sweetness and light, and it made everyone a whole lot better (which is clearly doesn’t), the important point is this – *is it true*. If you can’t prove the bible is true, I have no reason to accept your silly made-up stories, barbaric as they are.
Now, Terry, I have facts and books on my side, you seem to have indulged mainly in rhetoric. Let’s not play games. Prove your case.
Terry,
I didn’t notice before, you called homosexuality a choice. I am sure you know, some Emperor Penguins are gay. Does this mean they chose to be gay? If they have choice, doesn’t that imply free-will? If Emperor Penguins have choice and free-will, doesn’t that mean they must have a soul? And if they have a soul, doesn’t that imply that other animals also have a soul? And if other animals have a soul, doesn’t that that make man’s wilful neglect and exploitation of those animals some sort of a crime against your god?
If you believe homosexuality is a choice, that means heterosexuality must be too. Tell me Terry, when did you choose to be hetero?
I believe that many/most(?) Christians do in fact believe that animals have souls. They (at least the churches that I know of) believe, rather, that animals do not have immortal souls. Either way, homosexuality does exist throughout nature and is yet somehow unnatural. It seems to me that celibacy is unnatural, but apparently it is not a sin but rather a virtue for most Christians and other like minded theists. Vertiginous logic. But, as you said, if animals have reason and choice then that presents a whole set of other problems for theists to have to explain.
I do not believe that religion or Christianity was Hitler’s own personal primary reason for being anti-Semitic and for wanting to kill the Jews. But, either way, he believed God to be on his side and he used religious Christian anti-Semitism to his own propaganda benefit and most of the German population saw Hitler as the defender of the Christian/Aryan world; when Christian apologists deny this and imply that Nazism was somehow driven by Atheism (a fabricated non-sequitur which Terry, to his credit, does not seem to have said) then they expose themselves as ignorant or as liars. As you suggested, the charge that mere Atheism will lead to the murder of anyone exposes a misunderstanding of what Atheism is; luckily people are becoming more and more educated about Atheism, which is why it is growing.
You assume, here, that there exists such a thing as a “heterosexual priest.” That may be so in any religion that does not require celibacy, but I find it much more difficult to believe in the Catholic church. The figures may also be skewed because the position of priest in the Catholic church would attract an abnormal percentage of those who like to abuse authority. Absolute authority makes for absolute opportunity to abuse. Since rape and pedophilia are both mostly crimes of power abuse rather than sexual abuse, you can see where the figures you use could be pretty meaningless.
Again, since the “authority” granted such men derives from the supposed existence of a “God”, we need to see further proof that such “God” exists. If the “God” of the Catholic church does not exist, none of your figures has meaning. The only thing operative here would be abuse of power.
Peace.
Here here, Leg,
I would point out, the fact that there are just quite so many priests and “men of god” behaving in such a vile, repugnant manner pretty much puts paid to Terry’s nebulous assertions that religion makes people good. It seems the more religious you are, the more likely you seem to be to rape children. Heck, the Muslims even revere a pedophile as a central figure in their fairy tale.
When Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris or Victor Stenger or PZ Myers gets caught raping children, you let me know.
Well, I’m sure that atheists who happen to be pedophiles do exist, even if I can’t think of any. I’m even more certain, however, that religion does not cure pedophilia… to say the least. No amount of wafers and holy water and bible reading and droning over the rosary is going to cure a pervert; despite what Pope Ben seems to believe. There are no miracles to be found in religion.
Anyway, to my main point, I recently started reading a book about the pope’s role in the abuse scandal “The Case of the Pope” by Geoffrey Robertson. I would recommend it to any of you.
And yes, leguru, I’d wager that the god of Catholicism does not exist. If you establish a Church with this record then you probably aren’t god.
Leguru,
Even including LGBT won’t get you anywhere near 10% without also including transients in all categories. The fact of a large number of transients supports the idea of choice.
Are you somehow implying that people (especially young people) never make choices that have negative consequences – including a loss of favor? Why would people choose to get involved with drugs despite a prevailing knowledge of the risks? Or, are they just born risk takers and addicts in which case, they made no choice at all? How can urbanization (and other environmental factors) have such an influence if genetics is the key and why do twin studies not support the genetic theory? Why do 19 year old people (or members of other age groups) kill themselves for any number of other reasons?
If the majority of people are heterosexual – even accepting your inflated figures produces a majority of 90% – then there is at least the possibility of heterosexuality being a default in which case, choice is to depart from the default. And not all matters of choice can or should be decided on a whim. Many choices are profound and to treat them whimsically is to invite disaster. But, let’s set all that aside and take your question seriously. Could I be recruited? Never mind that you stack the question with an assumption (the difference between Could I choose to engage in homosexual behavior? Verses Could I become a homosexual by nature?) If behaviorism is correct on the neuro-physical level, the one may well lead to the other anyway. The answer is obviously – yes. I could make that choice. It is also obviously true that there are things that could be done to me that would propel me in that direction.
I remember your assertions that RELIGION IS POLITICS. That’s why I was curious when you seemed to be softening that position. Even here you soften it by asking “How is religion NOT political?” The assertions are not the same. As I have already said, any activity involving people groups will have a political aspect. It doesn’t make said activity identical with politics.
The idea that celibacy negates sexual orientation is spurious. If the attraction to authority is an operative force (it may be) it would presumably have as big a draw for members of one orientation as another. But then, you did say the figures I used could be meaningless. If your best defense against any damning statistic is that it could be meaningless, then your best defense is none too good.
Positive,
The absurdity heuristic operates on the principle that it is absurd to believe that which obviously cannot happen. Hence, it is absurd to believe that a new person may be manufactured from a part of an extant person or that a virgin can become pregnant. But we have reached the point in science where we see that such things can be done by someone with a sufficiently advanced understanding of the mechanics of life. Hence, they are no longer absurd on the face of things. The performing of such tasks requires only someone who knows at least as much as we do.
The notion that homosexuality is a choice becomes more and more likely . And it’s a little late in the game for a secularist to start saying that government doesn’t have the authority to dictate people’s choices. Still, you are correct, I am not in favor of laws criminalizing homosexuality. I am in favor of recognizing the probability that it is a choice and the certainty that it comes along with certain negative consequences and the right to conclude that it is a sin and a bad idea. There is often a difference between sin and crime. And if the majority of a culture or nation agree that something is a bad idea or a sin, there are cultural consequences to that.
The question is how those widely agreed on values affect governance. If your position is that no values should affect governance – that seems ridiculous to me. If (in a representative republic such as ours) it is your position that majority values should not affect governance, then your mechanism is going to be problematic at best. You want freedom. Fine. But government, by nature, limits freedom. That’s its job. On what basis shall the freedoms be reigned in? If the values of the majority play no role, whose values do? Who implements them? If we implement only those values on which the majority and the various minorities agree (at some point you will have to start picking minority values to exclude) then we go to the least common denominator and the smallest minority at the table exercises its own form of tyranny. But then your whole proposed system tends to elitism anyway. As things stand, my wife works with a people group that tends to have a lot of pathogens and tends to bite as well. But it is against the law for her to know which ones have which diseases or to direct any special precautions toward any specific member of the group. If she gets bit – it’s happened – she simply has to go and be tested for every possibility.
BTW, check out post secularism in Sweden. You may not be obliged to protect us as soon as you think.
Rhetoric only? Rhetoric is what you use in the attempt to dismiss my accurate quotations of Darwin, my presentation of various statistical studies, and my correction of obvious misrepresentations of history.
Your Mighty Overload,
No, you missed the point. You claimed that Hitler’s thought and practice was non-Darwinian. Unless Darwin’s thought was non-Darwinian, you were wrong. Also, Darwin drew a strong connection between selective breeding and the processes involved in evolution. The quote I presented came from The Descent of Man but he dedicated chapters to the connection in The Origin of Species.
Agreed – atheism does not lead directly to atrocity. That does not make atheistic secularism a good idea. I stand by my historical and current cultural analyses on that front.
Even the Catholic Church is making efforts to lighten up on the celibacy of the priesthood thing. The Bible isn’t a good case book for celibacy anyway. The most common Christian position is marriage – preceded by chastity and followed by fidelity. Even at that, and assuming I understood you correctly, celibacy doesn’t negate sexual orientation.
Off topic, I would be interested in your thoughts on the work of Jean Claude Perez.
“If the majority of people are heterosexual – even accepting your inflated figures produces a majority of 90% – then there is at least the possibility of heterosexuality being a default in which case, choice is to depart from the default. And not all matters of choice can or should be decided on a whim. Many choices are profound and to treat them whimsically is to invite disaster. But, let’s set all that aside and take your question seriously. Could I be recruited? Never mind that you stack the question with an assumption (the difference between Could I choose to engage in homosexual behavior? Verses Could I become a homosexual by nature?) If behaviorism is correct on the neuro-physical level, the one may well lead to the other anyway. The answer is obviously – yes. I could make that choice. It is also obviously true that there are things that could be done to me that would propel me in that direction.”
Being heterosexual is indeed the majority (you call it the default, but that’s not quite correct) orientation, but unless you are prepared to categorize any genetic deviation from the majority as anathema, your position is insupportable. Redheads, flatfeet, little people, eh, you’re all just sinners, that’s all.
Time and time again, all the people who are at least partially gay that I know, when they come to this realization, it’s not something that suddenly happened to them. They didn’t just wake up one day and be gay, it’s something they came to realize was true all along, they just weren’t aware of it as such. So, it’s not a “choice” any more than your being straight is a choice. You can’t look at a man’s hairy nether regions and just decide that’s going to be yummy from here on out. Sure, you might act that way if you chose, but an act isn’t the same thing as a preference.
I like vanilla ice cream best. My GF likes chocolate best. I will eat chocolate (especially if we get a treat for two to consume), but it’s just not my preference. Likewise, my GF will even opt for vanilla if it’s a treat for me, because she knows I prefer it. See how while our actions are influenced by our preferences, they are not driven by them alone? If I hated chocolate, I could force myself to eat it, and even act like I enjoyed it, but my enjoyment or lack thereof is not a matter of choice, no matter how much it may deviate from the norm. STILL don’t believe me? Fine, we’ll try an experiment*.
Go find a pasture patty (I’m from Texas, this is what people from other states term “cow droppings”), and tell yourself you’re going to like it, and dig in. Doesn’t happen, does it? You might fake it, but you would know the truth: you just don’t like meadow muffins…
*-No, I do not expect anyone to actually do this. Least of all Terry, who we are trying to convince of some nuances to his position he’s finding it very difficult to reconcile, and I very much appreciate his willingness to continue to discuss whilst having his viewpoints dissected so surgically and yet brutally.
I intentionally made it this absurd just so that no one would have to actually try this to see my point.
I find it difficult to imagine that you wrote this with a straight face or without a tongue in one cheek or another. Of course, to attempt to defend the virgin birth on any sort of intellectual level requires some measure of inanity and infantilism.
Perhaps, as you seem to be suggesting, God with “knowledge of the advanced mechanics of life” created Jesus via virgin birth; though the virgin birth would then seize to be a miracle but an act of higher “manufacturing.” To continue this rationalization of the virgin birth, in order to remove undue speculation about a supernatural being, we could also say that a Masonic conspiracy or a UFO created Jesus via the virgin birth through scientific means; though this would leave us with no miracles at all, and why would a good theist believe in any proposition if it included no miracles?
Perhaps, to be even more realistic, we might consider that the virgin birth of Jesus is a fictional account, like other legends of virgin births, and we might take note of the fact that this particular tale in relation to Jesus was handed down to us by books (gospels) which contradict each other in their details. But, to even consider that the virgin birth is a plain myth would require a level of intellectual honesty and seriousness which a religious apologist must be devoid of.
What a humanitarian. But so long as you also recognize that discrimination against gays is also wrong then I am unconcerned (and uninterested) in the rest of your paragraph. Christians can slander the people of the gay community with the nebulous label of “sinners” to their heart’s content; I am certain that most of the people in the gay community would join us atheists in chuckling at the fact that most Christians in this country are divorced and remarried and would never consider banning those behaviors, despite Biblical prohibitions.
As for homosexuality being a choice; well, I’m no scientist but, repeating what I said earlier, this charge seems to be both a fabrication and an irrelevance, as NewDave demonstrates. Again, even if you could hypothetically demonstrate that gays choose this persecuted lifestyle it still would not affect my thinking about it one way or the other; people (in my view) would still have the right to “choose” to be gay just as much as they now have the right to choose to be Christian bigots.
But if you insist:
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;113/6/1827#R8
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Submission%20to%20the%20Church%20of%20England.pdf
“Elitism” is a word often thrown around by Republican m/billionaires who want to ban hand holding and who want to cut taxes for Paris Hilton and Donald Trump; spare me that word. I am certain that no gay person and no minority group would label you an elitist.
At any rate, I believe in civil rights, regardless of what the polls say. If 51-100% of people believe that interracial marriage is wrong it does not make them correct nor should it give them the power to ban interracial marriage. If that is what you mean by “tyranny of the minority” then so be it; don’t complain if someone orders you to drink hemlock.
Your point about your wife and her biting patients seems a non-sequitur. I fail to see where my belief in civil rights which dictates that, for example, radical Muslims (if they made up a majority) should not have the right to stone women and children in this country (or any country, for that matter) on the basis of their “sincere” religious convictions would at the same time prevent your wife from knowing which patient who is incapable of rational decision making and who might bite her has a given disease. I didn’t write those laws that you are complaining of and I do not see where my “elitism” comes into play on this issue.
I must admit that my knowledge of Sweden falls off dramatically after the 17th century (not that I would claim to be an expert on pre-17th century Sweden) but briefly reading about Sweden now I see that Sweden’s Lutheran Church was the state religion up until only nine years ago. Sweden must have become a real hell hole since then; though when I listen to the news it is usually hyper-religious nations like Iran or Saudi Arabia causing most of the trouble, not Sweden. Either way, I stand by my brave stance of supporting the civil rights of Christians, whether they be Swedish or not.
I believe it was YMO who criticized your rhetoric. But, since you raise this point to me, tell us again, O honest one, about how the New Testament doesn’t endorse slavery; an obvious lie and canard to anyone who has read it.
Gregor Mendel was a Catholic clergyman and his theory of genetics also inspired eugenics advocates. I will not personally blame eugenics on Catholic clergy or on Christianity or on the gospels; but perhaps you would like to.
Even if Darwin had advocated killing people with green eyes or people with small ear lobes it would not then make evolution or natural selection any less of a reality, so your point is irrelevant. If Darwin and Mendel inspired Hitler they also inspired millions of scientists who have used that knowledge to work to prevent diseases and reduce hunger. Science is not religion; it does not disprove evolution that Darwin might have said something wrong. No one claims that he was infallible; when the Yahweh of the Bible endorses murder and the geocentric theory that is another story.
I knew when I was 4 1/2 years old that I liked penises. I started to play with a friend’s penis at that age. When I was 7 and 8 I played with the teen-age boy neighbors penises. Was that really a choice? REALLY? Those boys that come out in their teen years have already been homosexual for years, they just recognize it and have the courage to admit it. You are really clueless about homosexuality. Do you raise your children the way some authors tell you they raised their children? Those “Child Rearing” books have nothing to do with your children. The same is true with books about homosexuality. (Including the Bible.)If you honestly believe that a “God” made us all, then that same God made homosexuals – and bi-sexuals, and transvestites, etc. You are trying to correct something that God created? Lots of luck!
Peace
Except when the major motivating factor of said group is control. Every organized religion I have investigated has its major motivating factor of control, with the possible exceptions of certain humanistic philosophies, but then those are not really religions, just philosophies. So, yes, I again assert that religion IS politics. Especially so when it dictates human behavior, often to the detriment of some perfectly innocent groups.
Peace.
Once again, it’s black or white for you. Have you never been introduced to the “Bell Curve?” Most of nature is represented on the bell curve. Most of everything your “God” created is represented on the bell curve. Please open your eyes to the wonders of the world. Embrace our diversity.
Peace.
I recall now we had an earlier discussion several pages back on postsecularism. I noted that postsecularism apparently involves the speculation that the rise of Bush and the religious right, Pope Ben and his gang, Al Qaeda and radical Islam along with the innocuous but absurd New Age Movement have overthrown (or might overthrow) secularism. Hopefully you are not cheering for that to happen. You were claiming to be in favor of secularism just a few posts ago.
Either way, the concept that Christians can be secular and that secular society does not exclude Christians continues to escape you.
Hitler was not indulging in Natural Selection, but in Artificial Selection, the powers of which in the improvement of animals and plants had been known about long, long before Darwin. Darwin’s achievement was in understanding that you didn’t need a mind to select, and that minor changes could accumulate over time, leading to new species over long times. Hitler wasn’t doing anything like that. Hitler was simply trying to wipe out the weak so that the strong survive – using Artificial selection – which was understood long before Darwin, and thus, not Darwinian thinking.
So, we can draw a straight line from the bible to people murdering each other, while no such straight line exists for my belief system, yet your system is supposed to be superior? Your system certainly doesn’t do any better at instilling morals than does secularism – in fact, given the amount of evil committed by religious people, apparently quite the opposite. If religion was really any good at instilling morals in people, there would be no abuse scandal in the church, there would be no money laundering, there would be no hypocritical pastors preaching homophobia by day then being caught in a tryst with male prostitutes at night (and it is the hypocrisy, not the homosexuality I am attacking, to be clear), there would be no anti-gay bigotry, no abortion doctor killings, no suicide bombings, no fatwas, no genital mutilation, no Israel / Palestine issues. In fact, it seems religion on religion violence almost defines what it is to be religious.
You think that the religious tolerance of secularism is better than living in a theocracy? Really?
I have never heard of Perez. I will have to look it up, but not now – too busy organizing trips for work, and preparing next term’s teaching load.
I should have put “scare quotes” around “weak” and “strong” in my last entry. Apologies.