Forums | MacLife

Hank Rearden wrote:

I was getting at the fact that states have done a heck of a lot more damage, in recent times, then has religion.  all those mentioned are part of the despicable pantheon of thugs that ran various 20th century statist killing machines.  In none of the cases was any religion a particularly important driving factor of their totalitarian and murderous ideologies.

THAT was my initial point, and I shouldn't have been sucked into debating whether or not Hitler and Mother Theresa were cut from the same cloth (which is basically what that argument boiled down to), because, aside from being ridiculous, it does not bear in anyway on the fact that each of the worst examples of 20th century mass murder was driven by ideology that had no particular religious underpinnings... and that includes Germany of the 30s and 40s.

Hitler specifically targeted the Jewish people for extinction. How can this possibly coincide with an ideology with no religious underpinnings?

Hank Rearden wrote:

That's not to say that religion CAN'T be used to underpin reprehensible ideologies, just that it really hasn't been used that way recently (unless you count the "moral" majority, etc.... but I don't think that they can be compared to mao, hitler, stalin...)

And, in any case, thuggish ideologies will use and twist whatever is convenient to help to bolster their thuggery.  The ideas of cooperative endeavors and workers' rights are great... until the Soviets twisted it into the  Gulag.

Hey, I've already come down on the "Banning religion is bad" side.

I just don't like to see Hitler lumped in with atheists when a thorough examination of the data can—at the most—say he wasn't a good Christian. No conclusions can be made that he did not believe in any god or gods. Unless you want to go to his public and preserved private statements, which suggest his Christianity.

I pick up this point because it's is either incredibly naïve or incredibly dishonest to lump Hitler in with atheists or pagans. He's dead and we cannot possibly know his thoughts, but we have lots of public statements. And whether he was honest or not, he certainly tapped into a latent Christian hatred of the Jewish people.

I really dont see the comparison of religious atrocities to nation atrocities as being valid.

Namely, because of technology. Its hard to compare the 20th century to any other simply because of technology. Atrocities commited by nation states are larger in magnitude because  in the 20th century it became much easier to kill people, and there were also many more people, concentrated more in cities.

How bloody would the crusades have been with long range bombers? Imagine the Spanish Inquisition, but with modern survielance techniques. All those smaller religious wars with machine guns and artillery and so on.

Of course nation states have done more damage. But they've only done so because nation states were the major powers when this technology came about. They did more damage because they had the means, not because they were necessarly more evil.

gas huffer wrote:

StaticAge wrote:

Mao was the product of a Christian society? Hmm. Are all athiests products of Christianity? Is there anything bad that Christianity didnt help create?

What "created" human nature?

Not trying to be cute here, but that really depends what you mean by "created" and what you mean by "human nature."

My own personal ideas and beliefs concerning "human nature" are complex. I believe in materiality and dont believe in spiritual essence forming a duality so that if someone dies they dont really die but live on in a metaphysical eternity, but I definitely dont think strict reductionist material accounts tell the whole story, and I still believe that man was made in God's image, but is imperfect. So what is the nature of man? Physical machine? Transcendent self? Godlike being? Wicked sinner? What if I think its all the above?

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Jaligard wrote:

Hitler specifically targeted the Jewish people for extinction. How can this possibly coincide with an ideology with no religious underpinnings?

bigotry and the master race

Where did the bigotry come from? Not just in terms of people as individuals, but societies as a whole. Even us enlightened North Americans turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees before the war. Toronto was once a thoroughly Protestant city -- and an incredibly anti-Semitic one.

It's easy to forget how huge a role religion once played in Western society. By our standards today we'd call 19th Century Europe downright fundamentalist. And like I said before, those societies produced guys like Hitler and Stalin. In fact Stalin once studied to enter the priesthood.

The dirty little secret of Christianity is that for most of its history it was virulently anti-Semitic.

To me (and I could be wrong) I see anti-Semitism much the same as hatred of blacks or asians.
More about the natural tendency of people to distrust and hate groups that are different than about religion.
We're probably all really talking about a ven diagram here though, a lot of overlap and indistinct boundaries.

When was it that the Catholic Church officially stop propagating Blood Libel? I think it was fairly recent.

It is not religion or lack of religion that is the root of the cause…….

It is fanaticism…..Coupled with the misguided thought that not only are the “unbelievers” wrong they must also be punished or eradicated for daring to not believe.

Fanaticism will exist with or without religion or science.........

Global Warming and PETA and environmentalism in general are good examples where religion is not involved

Abortion and the Terrorism and well the Middle East in general are good examples where religion is involved

Both arguments are very polarized and myopic with large communities on all sides unwilling to compromise aka Fanaticism

One side is right (either logically or morally) and cannot possibly be wrong and any other view must be derived by either ignoring or misinterpreting the facts or sin or being fooled by some mean ole horned goat person or because they are infidels……


Oh yeah and capitalism………

StaticAge wrote:

gas huffer wrote:

StaticAge wrote:

Mao was the product of a Christian society? Hmm. Are all athiests products of Christianity? Is there anything bad that Christianity didnt help create?

What "created" human nature?

Not trying to be cute here, but that really depends what you mean by "created" and what you mean by "human nature."

My own personal ideas and beliefs concerning "human nature" are complex. I believe in materiality and dont believe in spiritual essence forming a duality so that if someone dies they dont really die but live on in a metaphysical eternity, but I definitely dont think strict reductionist material accounts tell the whole story, and I still believe that man was made in God's image, but is imperfect. So what is the nature of man? Physical machine? Transcendent self? Godlike being? Wicked sinner? What if I think its all the above?

So how can you remove the influence of the wicked from the faith and still "organize" it?

StaticAge wrote:

gas huffer wrote:

So how can you remove the influence of the wicked from the faith and still "organize" it?

What, like a "perfect" religion? I never would assert something like that is possible.

Mine involves naked women and fun rituals.
If you'd like to come to a service sometime...

nah, that snake doesn't rattle.

Gr@sshopper wrote:

nah, that snake doesn't rattle.

Shame on you, Gr@sshopper

Last edited by Ra (2006-11-18 1:24 am)

resedit wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Jaligard wrote:

Hitler specifically targeted the Jewish people for extinction. How can this possibly coincide with an ideology with no religious underpinnings?

bigotry and the master race

It wasn't just Jews he wanted to exterminate.
He went after several other groups - including Gypsies - as well.

Jews are the group he did the most damage against.

And just for the record, any Christian who hates Jews is a Christian in name only, and does not follow the true religion - where is no greek or jew, slave or free, etc. Christians who are bigots and claim religious justification for their bigotry are abusing the name of Christ. They are liars of the worst kind, and Christ does not dwell within them.

At least in the US, Christians support israel the most.

Macintosh Sauce wrote:

resedit wrote:

btw - I find it very scary that people who claim to love freedom of thought want to ban religion.
That tells me you don't give a rats ass about freedom, you want to impose YOUR thoughts upon others, and are lying through the skin of your teeth when you talk about freedom of thought.

That is the liberal-left for you... The liberal-left wants to have total control of you socially and the conservative-right wants to take away all your freedoms/rights enshrined in the Constitution.

I have had it with the Democrats and the Republicans - time for a political change in this country! Join the Libertarian Party if you are sick and tired of the sickening status quo.

You're spamming MacAddict forums with Libertarian Party propaganda?

http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/1313512#p1313512