From: jacksonk@gehrig.cs.rpi.edu (Keith Jackson)
Subject: Re: Anti-religious fanatics (Was Re: School Choice )
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:41:51 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.042313.6333@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>In article <ATAYLOR.92Aug17180945@gauss.nmsu.edu> ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy) writes:
>><In article <24922@castle.ed.ac.uk> fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:

# > @   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.

# >	I note that all of those events occurred rather a while back.

# >	However, let's continue in this direction: socialism, as
# >	religion, has killed more than all previous religious
# >	crusades.

# >	* The 1920's purges of "kulaks" in the USSR
# >	* The 1930's purge of the Communist Party of the USSR
# >	* The 1930's purge of Communists by the NSDAP in Germany
# >	* The 1930's purge of the Army in the USSR

# No problem so far.

# >	* War in Europe from 1939 to 1945, instigated by Socialists,
# >	  continued by Socialists.

# Your being a bit overly broad grouping Nazi's and Marxists together, this
# would be like grouping Christians and Moslems together.

So what's your point?  Christians and Moslems share a common belief system
with the exception that Christians believe that Jesus was divine and
Moslems have the additional beliefs given by Mohammed and his successors.
Fascists and socialist believe in absolute government control, suppression
of individual rights, expansion of their ideology (translated : expansion
of their territory)  They have a few differences in terms of economics,
though the end result doesn't differ all that much.

# >	* The killing in Cambodia

# I wouldn't be surprised if the people murdered in religious wars numbers
# in atleast 10's of millions.

If you mean wars in which religion was misused as an excuse for murder and
other nasty things, sure.  If you mean wars in which the leaders and
followers did so because of what their religion told them to do (rather
than some corrupt, hypocritical religious leader) then I would disagree.
I've not heard of any major religion which in its basic text (as opposed to
any contemporary interpretation) advocates war, murder, torture, etc. with
the one exception that Mohammadism allows for a Jihad, or holy war.

# The deaths by neglect are atleast 10's of millions (maybe someone could
# explain the role of the church in the medival plagues).

Good idea, tell me how the medieval church could have done anything about a
disease which was 99.99% fatal and highly contagious.  Remember, this is
before they knew what germs were, or for that matter, that the fleas
carried the disease from rats to people.  Oh, how about the Church trained
the fleas to bite those they didn't like?

# This may climb
# to 100 million in the next 10 years since Christianity has fought all
# attempts to cure or control HIV transmission.

Well, HIV is not a war in the traditional sense; George Bush, our Bible
thumping president, has authorized spending far more money on the disease
than is spent on such things as cancer and heart disease -- so you can't
say they've fought _ALL_ attempts; and finally attributing the blame for
HIV to Christianity, or any other group for that matter, is completely
ludicrous.

# >	And so forth and so on. Now, it will be argued that
# >	"those actions weren't carried on by REAL socialists"....
# >	but that's the same argument as "the crusades weren't
# >	carried on by REAL christians".

# I would expect any Marxist to explain how they where different from
# the other Marxists before I would seriously consider supporting them.

Ahh, but you ignore the underlying problem with Marxism in that it cannot
work without being repressive.

# Likewise I have no reason to believe modern Christianity is much different,
# at the Republican convention we saw yet more attempts to shove Christianity
# down the throats of all people.

Yeah, that bothered me too, but I certainly don't see it as indicative of
the Iquisition or anything.  If you think that a religion causes people to
act in a certain way which is contradictory to its teachings, then you are
a bigot.  That's like saying that a person's race, sex, or sexual
preference causes the same thing.

# Why should Christians have the right to tell me I have to pay higher tax's
# because they think homosexuality is sinful (marriage provides a tax break)?

Well, first of all that is a state issue, rather than federal, since some
states allow same-sex marriages.  Secondly, that right is given by the
Constitution since the state legislature enacted the law in the first
place.  If you don't agree with them, vote for a representative who will
support your ideas.  Separation of church and state doesn't mean that
legislators have to ignore popular morals because they happen to mesh with
a given religion.  The same argument could be made for why murder was
illegal.
-- 
            ^  >
            O o                                                 \_O
           >=-=<        Keith Jackson == jacksonk@cs.rpi.edu      |O
             U                                                  _/ \_
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