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: 18 Aug 92 19:15:42 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:

[various stuff by me on christian pogroms deleted as well as stuff by
someone else on socialist pogroms.]

>How about saying that such atrocities are a *HUMAN* tendency.
>Human's have a tendency towards killing or destroying those who are
>outside of their own group. 

Seems fair.

>Now their own group may be defined by ideology, regionalism, classism,
>racism or just about any other *ism that you can think of.  Religion
>is unfortunately just another idea, that people are willing to kill for.

Agreed.

>Are you arguing that if only there were no religion, then the world
>would be a better place.  Less hatred, intolerance, etc.

I'd have to be a lot more optimistic than I am to claim that.

>I think not.

>I personally think that if people would truely follow the teachings of
>Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. instead of trying to kill all those who
>didn't, the world would be better off.

Ah, but I submit that the people in charge of the Crusades, The Spanish
Inquisition, the witch burnings, the murder of the incas and so on *did*
believe that they were truely following the teachings of Christ.

The problem with such teachings is that they have such ridiculous
premises that suspension of the critical faculties are necessary. After
that, you're open to be convinced of anything. Once convinced, rational
argument to the contrary is almost futile. The teachings themselves are
often inconsistent and open to almost arbitrary interpretation. Witness
the sheer number of christian creeds which developed from different
interpretations of the Bible. Almost any belief appears to be
justifiable using quotes from the Bible. Thay tried to settle all this
way back at Nicea by developing an authorised version. But even then,
they decided to simply kill off an inconvenient faction of original
christians who insisted that Jesus was not in fact Divine, just a man.
Later on, quite a few folks simply split off from the Church. Some got
wiped out, and some got away with it.

So "true teaching" is only what someone in charge of a section of the
religion says it is, and their own interpretation of it has allowed them
to order the murders of folks who disagreed. 

As for "true christian". Most folks simply mean by this "they agree with
me on this one." It's used as a tool for conveniently disowning folks
within their religion whose actions and statements they now find
embarrassing. I just can't agree that this is reasonable when it
excludes people who have *led* the christian religion for hundreds of
years.

Christianity is different from political creeds in that it claims to
somehow be involved in empowering some "divine plan" leading to "heaven
on earth". It has also claimed to somehow improve people. It's kinda
hard to believe that this is the case when historically the effects of
christianity have been to produce the exact opposite.

As for the "it's all a long time ago" idea. What does this mean exactly?
We can ignore events that happened "a long time ago" as irrelevant? That
would presumably include events which may or may not have happened in
Galilee around two thousand years ago? I somehow can't see christians
queueing up to advocate that we just ignore that story.

It's a fair question to ask though: "Well ok, do you really believe that
christians are *still* like that?"

I'd have to qualify my answer with something I mentioned earlier: I
believe christianity has had a good effect on some people. I just don't
believe that it's had a good effect on all people, and as an organised
mass movement it's proved to be one of the most successfully and long
term murderous groups in history.

As you said above "these atrcocities are a *human* tendency". So the
question amounts to "Have humans changed at all?"

I submit that there's no evidence that they have. Personally I doubt it.

The main example that comes to mind are some of the fundamentalists in
the USA who a few years ago were claiming that Armaggedon was close and
the USA was going to destroy atheist-communist Russia in a nuclear
blowout. The pollution wouldn't be a problem though because jesus was
coming back to make a New Earth anyway. Reagan himself was said to have
contacts with these people. Now I have no personal doubt that these
people do in fact believe what they say and given the historical record
of christianity, it makes me kinda worried.

On a less obvious note there's the Catholic Church opposing
contraception, and in some countries making it illegal whether someone
is christian or not. In the USA they want to make abortion illegal
whether someone is a christian or not. These folks certainly seem keen
to legislate the rest of us into following their own interpretations
whether or not we subscribe to their religion. It wasn't really so
different during the Spanish Inquisition was it? The problem there
amounted to folks that had a different and unapproved interpretation.
Now I'm not saying that it's been suggested that mothers who've had an
abortion be put on the rack until they admit that the pro-lifers were
right (although some of them do seem keen on the Death Penalty for other
crimes) but I assume that jail sentences are being considered. In other
words there are christians today who would happily jail you for not
following *their* religious principles.

No, I'm not really convinced that anything has changed.

Christianity may well be fairly safe and innocuous as a personal
religion. At least if it were personal then nobody could start up with
claims that someone else's interpretation was wrong or that they weren't
"a true christian". When christianity gets involved in a large organised
group though, it gets dangerous. To non-christians, and to christians
they decide aren't "true" christians.

Given that, and tying it back to the original point, that's why some
folks oppose them.

>--My opinions are mine and mine alone, unless someone else claims them
>first.
>-- 
>--Mark

My opinions are mine. It's harder to work 'em out than just be told what
they are by a 2000 year old book. But it's worth it.

FoFP
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