Christianity is violent and oppressive

Good evening everyone, I would like to apologize to HChilders and those interested in this debate. Life got in the way for a moment but I intend to respond more quickly in the coming rounds. I will take the position that Christianity is not a violent and oppressive religion. For this first round I will offer my opening counter arguments which I hope to expand upon in the second round. To hold this viewpoint that Christianity is violent and oppressive, one must erroneously regard the religion as a monolith unaffected by the human element. But Christianity is not a static thing. As new sects emerge and ideas surrounding the meaning of passages in the Bible change it becomes more and more complex as a whole, its complexity largely aided by the fact that there is no single authority within Christianity. 1) "The Bible, just like the Quran is littered with violent and oppressive quotes in its pages." I agree with you, the bible absolutely is littered with violent and oppressive quotes within its pages. However the character of a given quote and what it means to the religion as a whole are two completely different things. Just like any other literary work, the meaning of the stories in the bible require context and are ultimately colored by perspectives of the individuals reading them. Some Christians believe that the New Testament has more relevance than the Old Testament. Some choose to follow only the word of Christ using the rest of the bible to give context to the times. Some Christians try to make sense of the entire book. Some Christians are prone to cherry picking. All of these things affect exactly what each individual will take away from the religion and how they ultimately practice it. We can tell just by the different sects of Christianity that exist and our understanding of the role subjectivity plays in literature that simply pulling a terrible quote from the bible will offer the reader nothing in terms of understanding the religion as a whole. Millions of Christians have been devoted followers for decades and even most of them will admit they still don't understand everything and that's after having read the bible and pondering the meaning of the stories within for decades. We can find many quotes in the bible that either are outright ignored by Christians or are at least seen as irrelevant to how they practice their religion. 2) "It fueled most of the world's most atrocious acts of genocide and gave brutal dictators a way to seize power." There is no doubt that Christianity has been used as a tool to manipulate large groups of people but blaming the object used to manipulate rather than blind obedience to authority figures with dangerous, self-serving agendas is no better than following those same people. When one blames religion, they take those with dangerous agendas at face value rather than realizing that these people are attempting to gain something politically, economically and socially. It takes the focus of the root cause and placing it on to something that has no more meaning than what people give it. It's common for most people that oppose Christianity to argue about how it is responsible for so many atrocities over time but it is simply not the case. When Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod compiled an Encyclopedia of War analyzing 1763 wars were found to have a religious cause which accounted for 7% of all wars. [1] For something that is responsible for so much suffering throughout history there simply isn't much evidence to support it beyond a few major events that stick out in the collective consciousness of those looking to argue how terrible Christianity is. 3) "Today, it has slowed progress in our ever evolving world and continues to breed a regressive attitude." Christianity hasn't slowed the progress of mankind by any means. It's been proven that generally people have a preference against change and against newer things and this has been proven without regard for anyone's religious affiliation [2][3][4]. To not recognize this is to overlook a quality that we all share to some degree. Most people are resistant to change in many areas of their life. There is truth in the phrase that we are creatures of habit and these habits have been proven to be difficult to break as we, in many ways, favor tradition and stability in various areas of our lives, often without realizing it. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com...