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Re: Catholic adoption agencies and homosexuality [message #422814 is a reply to message #422804] Fri, 19 March 2010 21:46 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
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Altzan wrote on Fri, 19 March 2010 20:37

But I still want to know why it's Christianity's fault for most of these - take a look at what happened, what these people did, and I'll see if there's anyplace in the Bible where they were commanded to do them. And I'm talking New Testament here, not the fools who think the Old Testament is still in power and sacrifices are still demanded and whatnot.

firstly, the old testament is no longer in effect, is it? well, jesus said that every jot and tittle of the old laws must be carried out. the closest i can think of to a repudiation of old testament law is he without sin cast the first stone, which essentially means the law's still there but you can't enforce it.

secondly, i suppose i do have to justify the examples i cited, to explain how christianity played a credible role in causing such appalling behaviour.

here's the list.
- two thousand years of horrific anti-semitism and anti-gay people
well, the worst anti-semitism throughout history has always come directly from christianity. in modern times, islam is catching up fast, but christianity still takes the gold. christianity's sole basis for anti-semitism is one line in one of the gospels which says that, at the trial, the jewish religious authorities actually called for the blood of christ to be on their heads and on the heads of all successive generations.
any atheist will regard this as immoral bullshit. even if the whole story is true, it's a stupid thing to say. i could claim responsibility for a crime, whether i was guilty of it or not. what i can't do is say "and my children, who haven't been born yet, are guilty of it too, as will be their children, and their children..."
and yet this one line is the root cause of unbelievable anti-semitism throughout the ages in every society where christianity has ever had power. killing jesus seems like quite a big crime for a christian, and according to the bible, all jews have that guilt, not just the ones who were involved in the trial and crucifixion.

you probably weren't taught in schools how dangerous it used to be to be jewish around easter time most years, including in america. like i said, you never get taught the bad side of religion. when you do, you're told that it was somehow a corruption of religion, of an unscrupulous person deciding that he wanted to do something evil and tried to find a religious passage to help him get away with it...

- violently standing in the way of scientific progress
well, if you take the christian view that you must believe the right things about god and jesus otherwise you'll go to hell, and if you really, really believe in hell, you'll do a great deal to stamp out anything that might make people question the religion.

imagine it. imagine you have a child. someone like me who speaks critically of religion, or someone involved in scientific research on the origins of the earth and of the human species... what they say could make your child turn away from christianity. they can make your child liable to suffer the most horrific punishment ever imagined! would this not make us the very worst of criminals, even worse than someone who tried to murder the child, or tried to rape them? would you not do anything to stamp this out? if not, then you probably don't really believe in hell.

- the crusades
see the particular old testament law i cited earlier, about if a city contains people who worship a different god, you must put the entire city and everyone in it to slaughter. keeping that in mind, the bloodshed of the crusades looks rather tame. it must be pointed out that the christians were not the original aggressors - islam had conquered about half the christian world by the time the crusades finally started - but that's hardly a problem for my side of the argument.

- the inquisition
see my above commentary on scientific research.

if believing the wrong thing sends you to hell, then a little torture to set people straight is basically doing them a favour. if you really, really buy the concept of hell, this is the sort of thing you'll do to protect people from it. blasphemy laws are only the beginning.

- willing tool of imperialism and of a huge list of dictators throughout the ages
whenever you read about the great historical european empires, you'll find them to be christian monarchies, or successors to them, in every single case. again, if you really believe in heaven and hell, then taking over some foreign country and converting them to christianity, by force if necessary, would be the kindest thing you could do to them.

- enthusiastic ally of fascism in europe
in every single fascist country in europe leading up to the second world war, and there were a hell of a lot more than just germany and italy, in every single case the fascist powers were either set up directly in collusion with the vatican or the vatican became enthusiastic collaborators with them after they'd taken power. fascism was essentially an exact synonym for "catholic right wing". the very first major treaty hitler signed upon taking power was with the vatican, giving the catholic church all sorts of powers in germany, and that was one of the few treaties hitler didn't break. mussolini did the same in italy, croatia was a catholic puppet state of hitler, salazar was in holy orders, etc etc etc. the last time the catholic church supported a "just war" was when hitler and mussolini helped franco overthrow the spanish republic. the catholic church's relationship with every single fascist country was far stronger than its ties with any non-fascist country. the church even ordered hitler's birthday to be celebrated in churches all over, right up until the very end of nazi germany. even after germany was defeated, the vatican helped numerous nazi war criminals escape to south america.

what about hitler himself? well, when he was rising to power, he said over and over and over again that the reason he hated jews so much was because he was a christian. the bible readily accommodates this, as i've outlined above. he said he was doing god's work in combating the jew, and that resonated with a huge number of christians in germany. hitler didn't just flick a switch and made everyone in germany suddenly hate jews... anti-semitism had been bubbling away under the surface for two thousand years, thanks to europe's christian history.

- the enormous death toll it's helped to rack up by assisting the spread of AIDS by absurd rules on condoms, especially in africa
well, i'd really love to know the christian justification for spreading lies about the effectiveness of condoms, when millions of africans die of aids every year. in other words, you tell me. i can't figure it out, it doesn't make sense to an atheist, especially since christians generally call themselves pro-life.

Altzan wrote on Fri, 19 March 2010 20:37

The religion isn't bound to pure blind faith. The problem is that our faith is founded on several factors you consider to be theories. (And honestly, theories probably is a good word for them because I can't provide explicit certain proof that, say, the Bible was written by the will of God.)

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Quick answer? The Bible we follow was paved with examples, demonstrations. From Old Testament to Christ. The final version of the Bible that we follow today was finalized shortly after Jesus' death, If I recall correctly. And all up to that point, there were involvements by God and Jesus, and mmiracles by the apostles.

Mohammed offered nothing like that at all.

But the problem - I didn't see God's message to Mohammed. I also didn't see Jesus himself or the apostles. Our faith, essentially, is built on our ancestor's experiences.

So it's not faith at all, then, is it? It's just you're considering things to be evidence when they're either dubious or outright untrue.

For starters, the bible you have today was by no means finalised shortly after Jesus' death. the gospels themselves were written decades after the crucifixion is supposed to have happened, and i'd like you to tell me exactly who by, please, and how they knew what to write, and why they contradict each other so often.
and they aren't even all the gospels. quite a lot more than just the new testament four existed... it was a council of men, politicians, who decided which bits went into the bible, and this was centuries after the time jesus was supposed to have lived.

Spoony wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 23:57

They weren't wiped out by God purely for nonbelief. They weren;t wiped out by God just because they worshipped false gods, either. They were doing far worse things, such as sacrificing their children to their gods.

Firstly how do you know? All you have is an account supposedly written by their slaughterers.

Secondly, do you quarrel with the idea of sacrificing a child to your god? The bible appears to be in favour of that. Or is it only if it's the right god?

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As for the children dying - they didn't go to hell. Since they weren't old enough to understand, they went to heaven. If they had lived, though, it would be far worse - they'd have a warped view of what happened that day, and probably rebelled against those people by instinct.

Firstly, we're still talking about the old testament here, and there is no mention of hell in the old testament. Either god hadn't made it yet, or he hadn't thought it worth telling anybody about it - which seems implausible, given his general enthusiasm for extravagant punishments in the old testament, and his quickness in threatening them.

Secondly, I just want to quote the fact that you just attempted to justify the slaughter of innocent children. A rebuttal isn't really necessary - simply quoting the statement for all to see will probably do.

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Only other option is to let all the people live, and continue their false worship and human sacrifice. Good idea.

There's no small print about human sacrifice in the instructions for genocide on religious grounds. So that just leaves: "the only other option is to let all the people live and continue their false worship, and we can't have that". Oh dear. Bit of a departure from your position on the previous page.

Spoony wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 23:57

Okay, but still, why shouldn't he act the way he has promised he will? Are you saying the punishment should be less severe?

I'm saying that there should not be a punishment at all. Disagreeing with him or his rules, or having doubts in his existence, or having doubts that the books which claim to reflect his mind or that the people who claim to speak for him actually do so, is not a crime at all by any sane definition.

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How is it incompetent?

For starters, it took place in bronze-age Palestine. Not in China, where people could read and write. That was by far the greatest civilisation in the world at the time, and yet it took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years for the message of Christianity to reach China, at which point the Chinese asked the pretty good question of what took you so long.

To continue, the fact it's so garbled and inconsistent, and to cut a long story short, ridiculous. A huge number of people are not trying not to believe it, as you've put it, but simply find it too stupid to believe. Furthermore, many people think it would be quite horrible if it was true... the greatest dictatorship ever imagined.

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Spoony wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 23:57

Thirdly, what kind of moral system is this? You said religions depend on faith (and you probably didn't realise what a deathblow you dealt when you said that). Here's an extraordinary claim, we aren't going to show you any evidence, you've got to decide it's true and you'll be horribly punished if you've got your doubts? What the fuck?


re: not just faith alone.

ah, yes. faith based on evidence. well, any time the evidence wants to present itself, there's no rush. it's only been two thousand years.

but the important part of that statement was the second half.
"Here's an extraordinary claim, we aren't going to show you any evidence, you've got to decide it's true and you'll be horribly punished if you've got your doubts"

Quote:

Spoony wrote on Thu, 18 March 2010 23:57

Yeah, but my question was how are you going to say that these other people are doing anything wrong if they did try that?


Sorry, you lost me...

it's simple.

we were talking about whether christians should impose their rules on non-believers. you said that many christians don't. well, can you find any fault with the christians that do?

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EDIT: Can I get your opinion on this passage I found?

k.

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Our pre-suppositions can be self-destructive! One is at risk of having built a house on sand. When the rains of existence come down, the house may not stand.

sure, that's a rather poetic way of describing the decline of religion, though i don't think that's what the author is talking about. still, it's a nice image... "the rains of existence", we're learning more and more about the world and the universe and ourselves, and "the house" of religion is crumbling more and more by the day.

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We argue that you may have claimed the right to judge the rationality and morality of things. But consider that apart from God you cannot make any of your claims stick beyond your own subjective state.

Why apart from God?

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This is so because you cannot explain rationality itself. Why do the laws of logic seem to work? Who says so?

We're doing our best to understand them. It doesn't help that faith gets in the way.

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Why do we all have moral ideas about right and wrong and the desire to impose them?

Because most of us care about ourselves, our families, and humanity in general.

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Why do we expect nature to act uniformly?

Who expects that?

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The skeptic cannot provide a satisfactory explanation for the "why" of the most basic "laws," the very criteria he wants to impose.

Uh? Science is basically the attempt to find out why things happen. As for "wants to impose", he really has lost me there.

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He has to admit that either he made them up or that he accepts them on the authority of other finite creatures.

Made what up, sorry? As for accepting on authority of people who have no sensible claim to knowledge, well, that's religion in a nutshell.

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