From: jacksonk@gehrig.cs.rpi.edu (Keith Jackson)
Subject: Re: Anti-religious fanatics
Organization: Ranltoleis Pecesecrhyn Inttusite, Troy, NY
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:47:32 GMT

In article <Bt8E8E.84x@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>In article <gnfy0q_@rpi.edu> jacksonk@gehrig.cs.rpi.edu (Keith Jackson) writes:
>> [discussion of blaming Christians in general for some general tendencies
>>  towards attrocities such as the Spanish Inquisition]

>  Certainly everything they did they said they did in the name of Christ;
>  they certainly wrapped themselves in Christian symbols.  The ball is 
>  in Mr. Jackson's court if he thinks the claim that they believed 
>  they being good Christians is wrong.    I think it is Mr. Jackson 
>  who is "incredibly naive".

Not!  I can wrap myself in any symbol.  I can proclaim my  actions  to
be  in  the  name of anything.  Doing so does not automatically tie my
actions to whatever.  Now for certain things like fascism, we can make
these types of claims because they directly relate to the use of  pol-
itical  power,  while religion generally doesn't (one exception I know
of is Mohammadism, which prescribes some politicial ideas.)  I can say
that because of some obscure quote in some religious book, we ought to
do some attrocity, but that doesn't mean that the rational  individual
will come to the same conclusion.

Now, as to whether the persons committing  historical  attrocities  in
the  name  of Christianity believed they were being good Christians --
if they did they were either mentally ill, misinformed as to the  con-
tents of the Bible, or impossibly agile logicians.  If a person under-
stands the most basic tenants of  Christianity  (love  your  neighbor,
turn  the  other  cheek,  etc.) that person cannot honestly and sanely
justify murder, torture, and other nasty stuff.

What you don't seem to understand is the complete paradox between what
persons  in power say and what they do/believe.  If you can't see that
in modern day politicians, you're blind!  This also holds true for the
average  person,  just that the average perosn usually doesn't have as
much power over other people as politicians do.

>>OK, so if someone says they're a Christian but  advocates  unjustified
>>murder,  then by your logic the Christian religion is permanently tied
>>to this individual.

>  No, if he is a Christian leader, theologian, or clergyman and he says
>  he's doing it in the name of Christianity or Christ then the act is 
>  associated with Christianity.

Wrong!  Number one, there are scads of different  Christian  denomina-
tions  today,  and  the only time when there was a single organization
was when the Romans  adopted  Christianity  and  formed  the  Catholic
church.   Even  then,  they didn't originate the ideas themselves, and
thus could not be equated to Christianity itself.  If you wish to  at-
tack  Catholicism,  that's  much  more  justified  -- just don't start
branding anyone who happens to be a Catholic as  a  potential  abbera-
tion.

All of the actions you complain about are directly due to human nature
and  the politics of power (i.e. the historical political power of the
Catholic Church.)  You certainly don't expect us to believe  that  be-
cause  someone had a book which says "love thy neighbor" and "turn the
other cheek" that this caused the person to do bad.

>  We're talking about things like the 
>  Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades; not just some random acts of
>  violence that just happen to be committed by Christians.

I know precisely what we're talking about.  You don't seem  to  under-
stand  that  the  vast majority of Christians never committed any sub-
stantial wrongs (murder, torture, etc.)  Given the total sum of  human
actions  in  the  past  2000  years,  the  Spanish Inquisition and the
Crusades are insignificant.  Thus, not only can you not relate bad ac-
tions  to  a  set  of  ideas because of the general principle, your so
called evidence is far to small to substantiate  anything  worth  men-
tioning.

>  If some 
>  New York securities dealers who happen to be Jewish get caught with
>  their hands in the cookie jar and go to jail, we don't say that
>  securities fraud is a "Jewish" practice;  if some national association
>  of rabbis came out with a proclamation that it's bad to steal money
>  from Jewish investors but OK to steal money from goyish investors
>  then we would.

I certainly wouldn't.  I would fault the leaders of the rabbinical as-
sociation  for  abusing their influence.  Now if this were accepted in
the Jewish community as a permanent fixture of  their  religion,  that
would be another story, but these abberations tend to fade away as the
abusive leaders die off and people come to their senses.
-- 
            ^  >
            O o                                                 \_O
           >=-=<        Keith Jackson == jacksonk@cs.rpi.edu      |O
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