From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.marrou,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Anti-religious fanatics (Was Re: School Choice )
Date: 17 Aug 92 19:33:08 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore) writes:

>In article <24712@castle.ed.ac.uk> fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:

>]>Yes... I know of the excesses of the bible beaters, and I have indeed
>]>read about the Spanish Inquisition. These are no excuse for the
>]>hostility or even hatred for anything related to Christian religion
>]>(which seems to be the main target).
>]
>]Huh? Want to run that by me again? If a set of tortures and murders in
>]the name of a cause don't qualify as a reason for disliking that cause
>]then what exactly *would* qualify?

>Sure. It was an aberration that occurred hundreds of years ago
>under vastly different conditions. To continue to treat Christian
>religion as if it stands for the inquisition is about as clever
>as assuming all liberals are communists because a few were once
>upon a time.

The thing is that christianity has shown a penchant for this sort of
thing. Apart from the inquisition I'm thinking of:

The Crusades.
The Genocide of the Incas.
The murder of complete villages in Europe who were accused of "Heresy"
(ref: Simon De Montfort, The Albigensians, The Gnostics, various others...)
The European Witch-trials (one third of the female population killed in
some areas).

So this "aberration" seems to be a regular feature of christianity.
It's a reasonable question to ask whether a penchant for mass-murder
could be expected from a creed whose god is also depicted as having
a very strong genocidal and murderous streak.


>]This is a kind interesting concept though, let's see if we can apply it
>]to anything else:
>]
>]*   So, admittedly Stalinism did lead to a few million deaths in work camps
>]    and so on, but that's no excuse for hostility to stalinism.

>Nice try, but I have no problem with you objecting to the Spanish
>Inquisition (which is the analogy to Stalinism)

Good.

>]
>]*   OK, it was probably a bad idea to have all the folks in Jamestown
>]    commit suicide, and what with them killing a senator and all. Still,
>]    that's no argument against Reverend Jones' ideas....

>Of course it is. Reverend Jones was not a representative or typical
>Christian. He was a typical cult leader (which occur in lots of religions
>and non-religions).

No, this doesn't work. Any movement could then disclaim folks who they
found politically inconvenient because of their actions. But who does
the disclaiming? The Church leadership itself was implicated in, if not
responsible for the mass-murder listed above. And as I've mentioned, the
christian god is claimed in the Bible to be responsible for several
murders, mass-murders, and genocide.

It's abundantly clear that christianity did *not* lead these folks to
become all-round Good Guys. For those of us who quite simply don't
believe any of the mythology, christianity can best be judged by its
effects on people. I'm happy to admit that in a number of individual,
and even some corporate cases, this has been good. The downside however
may simply be too large to be worth this. On balance, history could
reasonably lead someone to the conclusion that christianity has been A
Bad Thing. 

>John Moore NJ7E, 7525 Clearwater Pkwy, Scottsdale, AZ 85253  (602-951-9326)

FoFP
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