Believers are entitled to respect for their right to believe. They are not entitled to respect for the beliefs themselves, and Christians are no more prone to respect the beliefs of other religions (or to respect non-belief), than Myers is.
So when an atheist dictator who has purged his government of Christians decides to wage a campaign of genocide against both Muslims and Christians, this is “a state sponsored genocide of Muslims by Christians”? I guess I’ll just have to file that away under things that Dio and I disagree on. However, as I recall this started with Myers claiming that Catholics had committed mass-murder 70 years ago. I’m aware of many instances of mass-murder in that time that involved Catholics, but they were always the victims. (Bosnian War, Nazi period, various occasions in Latin America). So I’m still not sure why Myers chose to say that Catholics committed mass murder 70 years ago.
How about thirtyfive years ago? The ruling dictator of Argentina, when it was suggested that he be promoted to Generalissimo, said that he would rather be known as “El Catoliquisimo” (“The Most Catholic”, like the king of Spain during the Inquisicion.) He , supported publicly and continually by the papal Nuncio, Msgr. Pio Laghi, tortured and killed at least thirty thousand people. Msgr Laghi was seen by several priests and nuns, themselves torture victims, touring the main torture center (The Naval School of Mechanics) in company with the Comandante of the NSCM, who was his tennis partner and whose son he personally baptized. Laghi was accused in an Italian court of war crimes, but promoted to Cardinal by Wojtyla and given diplomatic immunity. When The Most Catholic General was tried for war crimes, he excused his thugs kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing the 66 year old founder of the Grandmothers of the Disappeared with a line out of GK Chesterton, modified to fit the occasion: “A terrorist is not just someone who makes bombs. A terrorist is anyone who holds an idea that is contrary to our western Christian civilization.”
Considering the fact that the Serbs slaughtered Croatian Catholics and considered any Serb who converted to Catholicism to be a Croat, that’s a fairly ridiculous statement.
You might as well call the government of Iran to be “Sunni Lite”.
Ever hear of Cullen Davis? (T. Cullen Davis - Wikipedia). Tried to murder his wife, ended up killing his 12-yeaqr-old stepdaughter and his wife´s boyfriend. Hired a hotshot lawyer, got off, thanked Jesus.
. Quote from TruTV Crime “NOTORIOUS MURDERS > NOT GUILTY?”
"Davis announced shortly after his second acquittal that he was turning his life over to Jesus. With the help of a Dallas evangelist he smashed more than a million dollars worth of jade, ivory and gold objects because they honored what he said were “false gods.”
Davis had a large collection of SEAsian religious art. I remember seeing him on TV. accompanied by a smirking beefy pompadour in a thousand dollar suit, (Billy Sol Something?) running over his collection with a car and setting the remains on fire.
When there were various threads some years back denouncing the Taliban over the Buddha statues I was going to bring up the fact that Davis’s pieces were just as artistic, and just as sacred to some people, as the Buddhas, but my computer in those days was dialup and slow so I didn’t.
Missed edit:
Or try http://www.christianaggression.org/
Quote: Lessons from Conversion by Burning Temples and Cutting the Head of Buddha Statues in Korea
Over the last decade, a large number of Buddhist temples in Korea had been destroyed or damaged by fanatically devout Christians. More recently, the Buddha statues, regarded as the devil, were attacked and beheaded in the name of Jesus.
Or:Account Suspended
Quote: The art of the Sentani captured the interest of Dutch missionaries, explorers and officials as early as 1893, and was influential on European modernists in the 1920’s through the collecting of French art dealer Jacques Viot. Unfortunately, at the same time the Protestant missionaries pressured the Sentani to destroy most of their magnificent men’s and clan chief (ondofolo) houses and the ceremonial objects they contained.
Or Jared Diamond (In Collapse) mentioning meeting a missionary in Papua who boasted happily of the number of carvings he had personally burned.
Shall I go on?
I think PZ did a good job of showing that 1)It’s still just a cracker 2)It has no magical powers 3)Consecration of a cracker is just words and not a ceremony.
I think the complaining Catholics did an even better job of admitting in a roundabout way that they are 1) Superstitious 2) Easily led and 3) Could care less about any other religion than their own.
Dawkins wrote the bible or something? I always thought he was an atheist biologist:confused:
Actually you can buy little boxes of the eucharist at religious supply houses, all it takes is one of those mail order ordinations to buy one [or at least last time I went shopping with a friend, they needed to show an ordination of any sort to start an account.]
Actually, much satanism is exactly that, essentially the theological version of a 5 year old having a tantrum. I don’t like you and I’m going to reverse all your ceremonies to show how much I hate you PPTTTBBBBBT! Many also hate that I tend to point out that if you believe in satan you believe in god too <evil grin>
At worst he frauded a single cracker man, a cracker which they willfully gave him. Chillax bro. If that’s a big religious issue your god is a neurotic.
Maybe you just need to learn to deal with the fact different kinds of people share your world and respect for your beliefs must be earned, not given as long as society is free. Though your beliefs should be reasonably accommodated as a part of that free society.
“Waall, we Christians got the Bible, them Mormans [sic]\ got their Book of Mormon, them Mooslims got their Koran, the Jee-yews got the Torah, everybody got a holy book. So for athiests [sic] it must be Dawkins.”
(Pardon me while I go bleach my brain after writing that! ;))
Actually, no you can’t. You can buy Hosts. Or you can make your own – they’re nothing but wheat flour and water, rolled out to the desired thinness, cut to shape, optionally stamped with the religious symbol of your choice, and baked. What they’re lacking is being ‘confected’ – consecrated by a validly ordained priest or bishop. And without that, they’re nothing but matzoh.
So something must somehow harm “mankind” Moving the goalposts, Dio, moving the goalposts. At least be honest in your argumentation.
The only other way it can be acquired is to break in and steal it.
Felt insulted or were insulted? I think the point is that it’s foolish to believe that there is any magic associated with these wafers along with books and other objects, and so only a fool would take so extremely personally such acts of “desecration”.
What fucking goalposts? I just asked a question. Who or what is is harmed by somebody putting a nail through a cracker? You don’t have to limit it to “mankind” since that’s apparently too narrow for you. How is any harm done to anything in the universe?
Also, what does the phrase “sacred holy essence” mean in empirical terms? How is that phrase not gibberish?
You can buy the wafers, actually. They won’t be “consecrated,” but what does that really mean anyway, but that some wizard in a dress waved his arms over it and blathered some magic words.
If you feel insulted, you are insulted. Insult is an inherently subjective thing. And, I think when Mr. Myers did it, he did it knowing that he was going to insult a bunch of Catholics, and I think that’s a large part of the reason that he did do it.
Did they? What difference does it make - they slaughtered people for not being the “right” religion, and even among peoples whose religions are near indistinguishable can be violence and murder.
Well, I’ve never fully grasped the Shia/Sunni schism, to be honest. In any case, as with Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany, the religious issues are just the excuse for the grabbing of loot and land anyway, and Catholics (including autocephalous spin-offs) have no special immunity to such temptations.
You believe that the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are “near indistinguishable”?
Theologically, yes. That’s true. There’s barely any difference except for the authority of the Pope.
Heck, I think most religions, if not all religions, are near indistinguishable, with some varieties being more indistinguishable than others. Going from one to another is just trading in one set of arbitrary myths for another, and in some cases the number of myth-trades necessary are very few, as with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox.
In any case, this is a mere digression. The claim that a Catholic nation destroyed the icons of another faith doesn’t really apply to Nazi Germany. It could apply to 1990s Serbia, or at least to a much higher degree of accuracy.
In any case, it’s fine to consider someone a jerk if they’re trying to troll you, including trying get a rise out of you by defacing a symbol important to you. I admit, stabbing a cookie means nothing to me, while somebody stomping all over a Canadian flag would get a mildly negative reaction (not really anything more than “that guy’s a jerk”).
No it could not. Serbs, by definition were not Catholic.
Serbia was no more a Catholic nation than either Israel or Iran. In fact, one could argue that calling Serbia a Catholic country makes even less sense than calling Iran or Israel Catholic countries because Israel and Saudi Arabia’s mortal enemies were not Catholics.
Furthermore, the Serbian government spent a great deal of time and effort in the 1990s attempting to ethnically cleanse not only Muslims but Catholics from their territories.