Yadda yadda could you please back up your ad hominem statements with some examples or facts. For instance why did Christian civilization techologically progress far faster than the Classical society. Even from an atheist perspective the concept of the Abhramic God represented a step from local gods of nearby trees, mountains etc. to a more distant god and thence to atheism.
Letting people die so you can spend donated money on more missions isn’t the act of a humanitarian. Shoving people onto cots and praying over them so you can show how holy you are isn’t humanitarian. Thinking that suffering brings you closer to god isn’t humanitarian.
Because they came afterward. They didn’t progress far faster for most of their history; and the real acceleration in progress has coincided with a drastic weakening in the power of religion.
Just two different flavors of poison. In general Christianity was worse, though; by its nature intolerant and aggressive. If Jesus had just shut up I think the world would have been better off.
Even in the Middle Ages when the Pope was supreme Europe had windmills that were unknow in the days of Pericles or Trajan.
Even the times when Jesus said “to turn the other cheek” or reiterated the golden rule?
And? They had things their ancestors didn’t as well.
“Turn the other cheek” is in most situations stupid and unethical behavior. And the golden rule is outright malignant when combined with the rest of Christian theology; it leads right to “Well, if I was an unbeliever of COURSE I’d prefer to be tortured into accepting Christ rather than burn forever in Hell!”
Religion is morally crippling by its nature; by promoting a religion he promoted evil regardless of his intent.
Is not.
I fear my questions of post 79 will go unanswered.
You can’t reliably make good moral decisions when you are operating on a false view of the world, with a false view of the consequences, and false priorities. Even ignoring the general ruthlessness and lack of empathy religion tends to produce in people, you can’t make reliable decisions when you are living in fantasyland.
Probably.
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And? They had things their ancestors didn’t as well.
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Civilization has progressed faster in the 18th and 19th Centuries (when most people were still Christian) than in all the Classical period.
Christianity forbids adhererants from forcing religion on someone else.
I knew it was dangerous to mention religion, as the subject brings out teh crazy around here — But no, Bryan Ekers, Christianity =/ pacifism.
Please also note that Christianity =/ religion, and religion =/ God.
Are the adherents aware of this?
Because by then they had better tools, more knowledge, the scientific method, and religion was weaker.
:rolleyes: Oh, please. Christianity got to where it is now on a sea of the blood of unbelievers. It slaughtered, it burned books and people; it tyrannized people and destroyed civilizations in order to spread itself. It is a malignant cancer of a religion, that spreads regardless of the cost to anything else.
Curtis didn’t say “pacifism”, he said “peace and order”.
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Religion was weaker? Most of the upper classes in the Classical period were borderline agnostics who considered religion more of a formality than anything else.
By Christians who ignored or misinterperted the Bible. And every ideology, cause, and nation has been used to justify bloodshed.
Would you be so kind as to point out a stern moralistic Christian nation that current western democracies should emulate?
But they were a small minority, and didn’t have the tools or knowledge to advance quickly. I was speaking of religion in the 18/19th centuries as being weaker than in the earlier Christian era.
Please. The Bible is barbaric. You don’t need to ignore or misinterpret it to justify slaughter and tyranny; it demands such things. Besides, the Christianity that matters is the one in people’s heads, not the one written down.
The one where you asked why someone could give Mother Theresa any credit because she could solve the poverty problem in India? I just assumed you weren’t serious.
Ireland (pro-life in all ways).
Than here’s the question: why did Christianity lead to secularism? Perhaps monotheism was a transitive and necessary step in history for the triumph of atheism.
Well it’s not my fault that other Christians use the Bible to justify violence.
A place with ( not coincidentally ) a history of treating women like garbage. As it does everywhere, “pro-life” really means “abuse and oppress women”. Some “morality”.
Oh, nonsense. Secularism didn’t “arise” from Christianity; it and science fought Christianity off and overwhelmed it here and there. Progress and the weakening of Christianity ( and every other religion ) go hand in hand. In order to progress; Christianity had to be shoved as or be subjugated by society.
It is if you are pushing that same evil.
No, I was asking what exactly Curtis thinks Mother Theresa actually did. It’s very easy to hold her up as a paragon of virtue because lots of people say she’s a paragon of virtue, but if one analyzes the actual effect of her actions, they aren’t all that positive. Curtis then mentioned that “conditions in India are being improved by economic and social trends”, which has nothing to do with Theresa, whose actions were arguably counter to this progress.
Essentially, he’s using Mother Theresa as an example of Christian virtue, while it’s unclear that he even knows who Mother Theresa was, or what she did.
I gather we won’t be counting the various times Irish Christians killed other Irish Christians. That was in the long-distant past, after all, the ancient prehistoric time period known as 1998.
It’s your fault if you refuse to recognize what easily can (and almost certainly will) happen in a country run along strict Christian lines. We don’t give devout communists the benefit of letting them claim that cruelties won’t happen under “real” communism, so convince us to treat you differently.
Yeah - and technology gave us gunpowder, dynamite and the atom bomb.
Get over it.
The issue isn’t the means (and religion has certainly been a means); the issue is the evil we spread via our creations.
From Scylla’s link:
Off the top of my head I can’t think of anything we (humanity) has collectively created that does not have a dark side, a Juno. Because we ourselves have that darkness.
I mentioned art, music, sports and parenthood as individual experiences that can be transformational, can give one a feeling of “touching God’s hem”. The things we can do on our own, to me, represent renewal and healing and hope.
Then we return to the company of others and try to create an architecture to sustain them, and darkness returns.
Or, as Stephen King said, “Give me one person, and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Three, and they’ll create this charming thing called society. Seven, and they’ll declare war.”