From: jodar@girtab.usc.edu (Nicholas Jodar)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Gay teens, suicide, Christianity, and Judaism
Date: 15 Apr 1992 04:14:55 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: girtab.usc.edu
Summary: Might Don't Make Right....
Keywords: Death and Destruction

In article <1992Apr15.041833.4967@gboro.glassboro.edu> kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dust In The Wind) writes:

>> Sorry, but the quote says "anybody who claims to be a Christian or a Jew",
>
>The quote ALSO says "and cannot or will not demonstrate that he has repudiated
>the power-lusting part of his heritage" -- that's what we call a `qualifier'.

Yes, an interesting one, at that....  The assumption is that
Christians and Jews have a 'heritage' of 'power-lusting'....  I
wonder what sets the atheists (or anybody else) who lust after
power apart from the Jews and Christians...?  

>In reply to the comment that nobody has called Mr Carroll a Christian-hater,
>Mr Gross says:
>
>> No, the cases are different.  

What has this to do with calling somebody a Christian-hater?

>> The Catholic church throughout many centuries
>> was very powerful and coercive, and frequently used violence in the name 
>> of religion. (e.g. crusades, inquisition, etc.)  
>> This simply isn't true for Jews in the same period.  

Again, what's the point, here?  How does this exempt Mr. Carroll
from being a Christian-hater?  If my parents had done to me what
his did to him, I'd have good reason to want somebody to hate....

>   The Jewish State was very powerful and coercive, and frequently used
>   violence in the name of religion (eg, the genocide of the Midianites).

True.  We don't know the specifics, but it wasn't pleasant....

>The Jews didn't kill anybody in the Middle Ages, but the armed invasion of
>Caanan included atrocities that haven't been attributed to the Crusades (can
>anybody cite an instance of the RCC executing infants?).  

Sure can.  More than once, armed bands of crusaders killed
Jews, Muslims, and Christians indiscriminantly in and around 
the Holy Land.  This included elders, women, children, and even
infants.  (Not to mention animals....)  

Many of the Crusaders were quite well-behaved, though....

>I rather suspect
>that if you add up all the victims reported in Joshua, you'll get a much
>higher death toll than for the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition combined.

True, but the Christians have been killing others for hundreds of
years.  They still are.  And now the Jews are back at it, and the
Muslims are into it again,...

>Why does it matter when a religious group kills people?  If it's not hateful
>to describe recent atrocities as bloody, why is it hateful to describe ancient
>atrocities as bloody?

It's not.  Killing is killing.  Wouldn't it be nice if people
would just get tired of treating others like dirt?  What happened
to Mr. Carroll is unfortunate, and I feel for him, but he should
do whatever he can to avoid targeting the hate and pain he
received from his parents onto somebody else.  ESPECIALLY a GROUP
of people....

I'm sure he could use some therapy....

-Nick

Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc