If that’s the best you can do, I’ll assume that you atheists have admitted that the claim of the Catholic church supporting the Nazis if false, and that Der Trihs was lying when he made it. Hence I’ll make no further comment on it in this thread.
The second, I suppose, but that has no relevance to anything in this thread.
No, yes.
I’ve never used the socratic method. As for the fact that I’m not Socrates, that appears to be the one true thing you’ve said in this thread, seeing as he died thousands of years ago. (Your claim to know him, on the other hand, is slightly suspect.)
http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm There uis a lot of info and books written about the church and collaboration.
For the last time, that to reiterate contains no info or books about the church and collaboration. It contains pictures of Nazis standing in front of a church, getting married, etc… It does not say what you claim it says. (And anyway, I don’t exactly categorize that site as a good, objective source.)
In any case, I came to this thread to see if any of the atheists here would either retract their malicious insults directed against Christians, or provide some evidence to justify them. Since it appears that the answer is no, I believe Ill duck out.
Damn, and here was I hoping you’d retract your overly-rosy view of religion, or provide evidence to justify that. I think that quite a bit of what’s been said is wrong also - but you’re both wrong and apparently a hypocrite.
Amen.
Darn right if they had actually existed. I take comfort that the story of the conquest of Canaan was written by a weak nation who wanted to feel better about a glorious past - which had to be a bloody past by the morals of the time.
My anger isn’t about centuries of persecution, though. It is about someone whose knowledge of history is so limited, or who is so blind, as to wonder how my ancestors could have ever suffered in this perfect world.
If you anything about genetics and ancestry, it is mathematically certain that many of my ancestors were trapped in ghettos. My great grandfather fled Russia for the US, and not for the baglels.
That just makes it worse, and that is all I’m going to say about that.
Not enough, if you think you’re smarter than Satan. Lucky for you he is mythological.
The promise of eternal life is worth far more than a million dollars. If you can’t see the relevance, I’m not going to beat my head against the wall trying to explain it.
Okay, now do you believe that God ordered the slaughter of the peoples who got in the way?
Whoosh. (See 1984, I think, Vice Presidential debates.)
Hitler was not religious, he used religion like he used everything else to promote his absolute rule. He did say he was a Christian, but followed no doctrine of Christianity. In a purge he killed priests along with others he deemed enemies of the state. Saying you are something doesn’t make it so. People know who and what you believe by your deeds. Hilter was just another of the many demented fanatics using the name of religion to further his cause.
There are over two billion Christians in this world, most of them are hard-working, honest people who try to do what they believe is right. If you can’t see the good religion does in the world it is only because you are not looking. I say that from the standpoint of not being a religious person. Many Atheist countries have unsuccessfully tried to eliminate religion. It will never happen.
When we look at history to find those people who had the greatest influence on the world we find they were spiritual people who believed in God. In the list below we find seven individuals whose teachings have been honored by billions of people for over one thousand years.
That didn’t happen because these people were wrong, but because they were right. Before you start to judge them, perhaps you should check to see if you are perfect first.
Actually Hitler’s religion or lack of religion isn’t the most significant fact here. He didn’t create the environment in which the Holocaust happened, he was a product of it. Though Jews were full citizens in Germany, there was clearly a lot of hostility. Germany, like many other places, had a long history of anti-Semitism, going back to Martin Luther and before. Hitler was able to fan these flames.
At least in the Netherland, that isn’t true. Apart from the fact that our state’s social security eliminates a lot of need for charity, most other charity is done by non-religious or religiously neutral organisations, such as the Red Cross or one of the many other non-religious charities here. And the mainly atheistic population of Holland doesn’t give any less to charity then the inhabitants of other more religious countries. My point is that charity and religion needn’t have much to do with one another.
Hitler was a christian who proclaimed it clearly. He used the bible as a justification for his hatred of Jews. He felt he was doing the lords work. One example is the driving of the money lenders from the temple. That fit very well.
I’m afraid you’ve misread my posts. All I am suggesting is that ITR Champion’s view - that religion only leads to love and goodness and all that jazz - is overly rosy. Certainly there are many benefits of religion, and many lovely religious people (and nonreligious but spiritual people, like yourself). I have no problem seeing the good that’s linked with religion - it is **ITR Champion ** that seems unable to see the bad.
I would point out also that hard-working, honest people who try to do what they believe is right is a pretty good description of a lot of evil people. Fred Phelps is hard-working, honest, and tries to do what he believes is right. Doesn’t make him not an arse.
I’m unsuprised. Most people in the past were religious - or spiritual. For those to have made the most impact to be spiritual is pretty odds-on. I would point out, however, that for all of those people, the considerable majority of the human race do not honour their beliefs.
Well, that would be contradictory, since all those people you list below had pretty significantly different views of how the world works. And, as I have pointed out before, I don’t claim all religion is bad; just that some is. As you also do. Before you start to judge me, perhaps you should, I don’t know, read my posts?
Well, it’s really more complicated than this. Early on, the Catholic Church did have an accomodationist view toward Nazism, mostly because it wanted its priests to be able to operate freely in Germany and Austria. The reasoning was that if people couldn’t confess and receive absolution, their souls would be imperiled. So the Church signed the Reichskonkordat with the Nazis in 1933, a move seen by many as legitimizing the Nazi regime. But the Nazis violated the concordat enough to result in the 1937 papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, which was (indirectly, IIRC) critical of the Nazis. The Church has been criticized (rightly, IMO) for signing the original concordat, which showed a distressing willingness to make a deal with evil–“You don’t hassle us, we won’t use the moral authority of the Church against you.”
The good the church does is in self interest. They are recruiting. Religions are on recruiting collision courses.
Yes, you’re right. It’s all just to help themselves - no churches are really interested in actually helping people. :rolleyes:
Certainly churches will want to convert. But claiming all the good done is for that purpose is entirely silly.
I’m sure you can provide cites for the bolded part?
Can you get nothing right? My point was to raise the question, wasn’t it possible that Satan was pretending to be God? Is there something in you that cannot grasp a question as a question?
You now are a mind reader? Your sanctimony has how shifter to mind reading…and not acurate mind reading at that. The purpose of the OP was to ask a question about the possibility of a truly crafty devil. It is sad that you can’t grasp a question as a question. Is it some sort of paranoia?