Garbage. Christianity has been an engine of slaughter and brutality for most of its existence. Entire cultures have been systematically destroyed to aid its spread. It’s the opposite of peaceful; it got to its present position by wading through its collective hips in blood.
And they didn’t care if you worshiped other things as well. As opposed to Christianity, which has historically used torture and murder to force entire populations to worship it, and killed those who worshipped anything else. The Romans were more, not less religiously tolerant.
Ah, I see. When it comes to claims about peace and progress, then Christianity gets the credit. But all those people running around slaughtering and enslaving other people for God don’t count.
Okay. If a bunch of Americans started slaughtering immigrants based on a recently unearthed speech of Martin Luther King’s in which he called for the slaughter of all immigrants, would you blame MLK for their actions?
I challenge you to provide cites to back up these claims. Of course, you never provide cites to back up any of your claims, but who knows? Maybe we’ll witness a historic first.
You apparently need a history lesson. For as long was Rome was Pagan, it ruthlessly exterminated and enslaved entire nations. That lasted until Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, took over and declared religious tolerance to be the law. Those are the facts, much as you may dislike them.
Der Trihs and ITR Champion, if you two ever shook hands, the resulting explosion would probably destroy the earth. Neither of you admits to the slightest nuance in your worldview; neither of you makes the least allowance for the imperfection of your claim. Both of your views would put most fundamentalists to shame in their zealotry.
This is utterly illogical. We know perfectly well that people who believe in no God and no afterlife are willing to commit crimes against humanity on a much more enormous scale than any religious group has ever considered. The Jacobins, the Soviets, the Nazis, the Chinese communists, and numerous other groups of atheists have proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Hence to say that teaching people about an afterlife will inevitably lead to mass murder is not just illogical, but also factually false.
I am perfectly willing to accept that my claims may be imperfect. All I ask is that if you want me to change my beliefs, provide evidence from an outside source, because I don’t accept ‘proof by endless repetition’ as a valid proof technique. For some reason Der Trihs and those like him are never able to find any outside sources that back up their claims.
In answer to the OP, I’d say that a non-divine Christ would be responsible for the crimes of Christians in a domino or butterfly effect kind of way, but not in the sense we’d usually think of a person being guilty for a crime. Even if his philosophies may be used as justification for evil, it’s not like he was spectacularly evil for his time; he was just an impoverished street preacher preaching hope. Perhaps a little differently than the other preachers did at the time, but still he was hardly bearing the most atrocious philosophy floating around at the time.
So, presuming he was an ordinary human street preacher, you can’t really fault him for the fact that his philosophy managed to bounce around and get enough boosts over and over again to rise to be a prominent (if extremely mutated) religion. That stuff all happened after he was dead. So, sure, he was the ultimate cause, but it’s tough to actually blame him. He would have had no idea what his preaching would engender.
Of course, if he actually was divine, then all bets are off - the guy who lines up the dominos can’t plead innocence about how they eventually fall.
In addition to the earlier quotes, there’s this doozy I want to respond to:
This is a bizarre quote. First, you’re suggesting that we compare the deaths from the Inquisition in a year to the deaths in the US in 100 years? How is that a reasonable comparison? Second, the last 100 years of the US operated in two world wars using deadly modern technology, including a single atom bomb; how is it fair to compare deaths committed with iron and fire to deaths committed with steel and uranium and airplanes? Third, there are a helluva lot more Americans than there are members of the Inquisition; a more reasonable comparison would be per-capita killings.
The Roman requirements were civil in nature, it was like paying your taxes. You didn’t have to believe in or worship their gods, but were required as a citizen to make a nominal appearance occasionally.
Thanks for saving me the time to look that information up. Christianity didn’t spread after Constatine person to person, it spread by conversion of rulers and then forced conversion of their people, with nasty penalties if you were caught worshiping the ancient gods.
BTW Jews were exempt from the requirement of Emperor worship. It certainly makes sense that the Romans figured out that if a member of a polytheistic religion decided not to worship the Emperor once in a while, it was more of a political statement than a religious one.
That’s the crux of the matter exactly. The early Christians were in all likelihood making a political rather than religious statement. They were refusing to accept the dominion of the emperor and in effect stating that “No one but god can judge me”. The Romans understood the Jews and wrote their laws accordingly, they still had to pay or make a face value sacrifice like everyone else though. The Jews were smart enough to realize how to play the game. Christians however were a new upstart religion and were subject to Roman law, not being grandfathered like the Jews.
I think that Der Trihs has forgotten that the original question was about blaming the Christ for what the Christians have done.
Der Trihs takes a line about a sword from a book he doesn’t believe in anyway and on that one line he makes the Christ into some sort of demon because of the horrors that some Christians have done.
What gives you the idea that this is his basic philosophy?
What gives you the idea that this was his basic worldview?
If you want to get an idea of his basics, you might look at what he called the First Great Commandment and the Second Commandment. Those are the two principles that seem to be most important to him. It’s like when your dad says, “In this house, there are two things you’ve got to remember. You have to obey Mom and me and we all have to take care of each other.” You know that those are the basics.
Then someone who doesn’t even know your dad comes along and says, “The basic thing about your dad is that he has a dumb kid who always screws up.”
Well, Zoe, let me set aside any question of misunderstood symbolic meaning, or whether the quote in its context is really benign or at least much tamer.
Why do you think it’s a point that Der Tris does not believe in the book in question? Would you have to be Muslim to criticize their sacred text? Hmmmmmm?
Maybe. (Although Rome was still pretty damned ruthless, maybe it wasn’t religiously motivated then)
But once Justinian came on the scene, then people were persecuted for not being Christian. So it started up again, just with a different religion. You can’t change human nature.
I wouldn’t say Christ is inherently responsible for the actions of Christians because I’m not convinced a person by the name or title of Jesus Christ actually existed.
Saul of Tarsus, on the other hand, has a lot to answer for.
My position: people are responsible for the foreseeable outcomes of their choices. If Jesus really existed, and if he really said the things attributed to him (the second being the much bigger assumption by far), then possibly he could be held responsible for later crimes committed in his name–but he could similarly be held responsible for the mercy granted in his name, and for the kindness shown in his name. Everyone who saw caring for the sick as their divine calling is his responsibility as well, by that standard.
But I’m not sure all those folks’ actions are foreseeable outcomes of Jesus’s choices.
In my opinion, he is responsible, but cannot be held responsible for the unforseeable and unintended consequences of his actions. The second is a judgement of accountability, but the first is simply a statement of the chain of causality.