The Most Prolific Purveyor of Human Misery in History: The Insidious Evil of Christianity

Kind of you to take on this challenge. It has always been the practice of the religious to blame bad behavior on the people involved ... never on the tenets of the religion. Understandable, of course. I apologise in advance, for words will offend but are unavoidable, being central to the argument. I am not attacking you personally, but in practical terms, it's a distinction without a difference.Presumably we can stipulate to a few tenets of the faith. If not I will include the appropriate scriptures next round. The majority of Christians/Catholics in the US believe you either serve God or you serve Satan, and if so you are possessed and/or controlled by evil spirits. Demons. [1] And by definition an enemy of God and Christians.They also believe they are God's chosen, and have been granted domain over all living things 'not' Christian. Some Christians count Muslims and Jews among the chosen. All that exists is God's Creation to do with as He sees fit, and until He returns Christians (again, not all) believe they have a duty to carry out God's wishes.It is worth noting that atheists are particularly despised by a significant (41) percentage of Christians in America. [2] It is also worth noting that at least some self-described atheists are not atheists. Fully 8% of atheists are certain God exists, and 13% are less certain. [3] Perhaps they think atheism is an obscure Christian sect. Should Christian animosity matter to atheists and other non Christians? Yes. I took an informal poll yesterday of those who self-identify as Christian/Catholic. Anyone can repeat this, although it's a little tedious. Not surprisingly, the numbers matched very well with national polls. [4] Very disturbing numbers coming from members of DDO. Only 28% of Catholics reject torture. Mainstream Christians were even worse. 19%. Yes, I checked and was particularly disheartened to discover only 46% of the Atheists rejected torture. Looking at other criteria though, it is clear to me that at least a few were pseudo-atheists. I polled 100 Christians in a row and 50 each Catholic and Atheist, if you are curious. How could so many Christians be willing to do this? They are the enemy. Evil. The Bible says so. They deserve no pity, no compassion. Their very existence is an affront to their God. How could they have ever come to believe this? The answer is the insidious evil. I will get to it. The real Atheists? There could be many causes, but it's safe to assume many used to identify as Christian, and for those I have a reasonable explanation which I will cover later. Further, there is a critical difference. By definition, they do not perceive Christians as being possessed by evil spirits. They don't perceive them as being less than human. They don't believe a god granted them special ruling status over the Christians. And they are not under a mandate to rid the earth of them. I have claimed no single institution has caused as much misery as Christianity. Misery comes in many forms, of course. But let's deal the obvious first: The body count. Christians insist theirs is the religion of love. Nothing that has been done in the name of the Christian God compares to horrors inflicted upon humanity by Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and others. According to them, they have always been opposed to torture, and capitol punishment. On the Inquisitions ... In short, no blame attaches to the Church for her behavior towards heresy in those rude days. Among all the bishops of the period, so far as can be ascertained, Theodwin of Liège, successor of the aforesaid Wazo and predecessor of Adalbero II, alone appealed to the civil power for the punishment ofheretics, and even he did not call for the death penalty, which was rejected by all. who were more highly respected in the twelfth century than Peter Canter, the most learned man of his time, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux? The former says ("Verbum abbreviatum", c. lxxviii, in P.L., CCV, 231): Most of the punishments that were properly speaking inquisitional were not inhuman, either by their nature or by the manner of their infliction. Most frequently certain good works were ordered, e.g. the building of a church, the visitation of a church, a pilgrimage more or less distant, the offering of acandle or a chalice, participation in a crusade, and the like. Other works partook more of the character of real and to some extent degrading punishments, e.g. fines, whose proceeds were devoted to such public purposes as church-building, road-making, and the like; whipping with rods during religious service; the pillory; the wearing of coloured crosses, and so on. The hardest penalties were imprisonment in its various degrees, exclusion from the communion of the Church, and the usually consequent surrender to the civil power. "Cum ecclesia" ran the regular expression, "ultra non habeat quod faciat pro suis demeritis contra ipsum, idcirco, eundum reliquimus brachio et iudicio saeculari" — i.e. since the Church can no farther punish his misdeeds, she leaves him to the civil authority. On the whole, the Inquisition was humanely conducted. Thus we read that a son obtained his father's release by merely asking for it, without putting forward any special reasons. Licence to leave risen for three weeks, three months, or an unlimited period — say until the recovery or decease of sick parents— was not infrequent. Rome itself censured inquisitioners or deposed them because they were too harsh, but never because they mere too merciful. [5] I do not expect you to accept an atheist's research on this matter, and I couldn't find a Catholic, but perhaps we can compromise with a Christian from a very prestigious university who seems to value his reputation. ESTIMATES OF THE NUMBER KILLED BY THE PAPACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND LATER [6] David A. Plaisted One can excuse a few thousand cases as exceptional, but millions and millions of victims can only be the result of a systematic policy, thereby showing the harmful results of church-state unions. In this study I have attempted, with some success, to penetrate the veil of obscurity that surrounds the Middle Ages in order to determine the true history of this period. In order to consider this subject, it is necessary to recall many unpleasant events. The dreadful totals, computations, and examples that follow, one after another, are not for the faint hearted. These atrocities should convince us not so much of the evils of a particular religious system as of the depravity of the sinful human heart, and lead us to turn to Christ for repentance and salvation that we might have new hearts and be cleansed from sin. Is the Church credible? Let's look at another comparison. Excerpts from the church's version of the Cathari ... [7] About 1110 some heretics, probably Cathari, and among them two priests, appeared at Trier, but do not seem to have been subjected to any penalty. Some years later (c. 1143)Cathari were discovered at Cologne. During the trial they were, against the will of the judges, carried off by the people and burned. In 1163 the Rhenish city witnessed another execution, and a similar scene was almost simultaneously enacted at Bonn. Other districts, Bavaria, Suabia, andSwitzerland, were infected, but the heresy did not gain a firm foothold. It disappeared almost completely in the thirteenth century. The Cathari, 40,000 in number, left Bosnia and passed into Herzegovina (1446). The heresy disappeared only after the conquest of these provinces.The Catharist system was a simultaneous attack on the CatholicChurch and the then existing State. The Church was directly assailed in its doctrine and hierarchy. But the worst danger was that the triumph of the heretical principles meant the extinction of the human race.From Wiki ...Arnaud-Amaury, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His reply, recalled by Caesar of Heisterbach "—"Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly, 7,000 people died there. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. (He) wrote to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex."The permanent population of Béziers at that time was then probably no more than 5,000, but local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls could conceivably have increased the number to 20,000. [8]From New World Encyclopedia ... The Albigensian Crusade, or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229), was a twenty year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the heresy of theCathars of Languedoc. An estimated one million people died during the crusade. [9]To answer the question, no. According to them, the Christians were perfectly justified in their actions, but really it was the secular authorities that were to blame for the vast majority of deaths. But there really weren't all that many. As the Church says ... They are blameless.Just in the time frame of Dr. Plaisted's book, not even looking at ongoing violence in places like Ireland, North America, and numerous other places, the death toll alone could easily be in excess of 150 million. 1. http://www.patheos.com... 2. http://www.pewforum.org...3. http://religions.pewforum.org...4. http://religiondispatches.org...5. http://www.newadvent.org... 6. www.cs.unc.edu/.../estimates..7. http://www.newadvent.org...8.http://en.wikipedia.org...9. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org...