Religion in politics

[Gulo Blue]

Who here is surprised a thread about religion has turned into an argument of why Christianity is better/more peaceful than others? Yeah, not me.

Who's making that argument?

 

[byco42]

Who's making that argument?

No one is save for the straw men some detractors are tossing in the fire.

 

[sggatecl]

Who's making that argument?

No one is save for the straw men some detractors are tossing in the fire.

Go back and look through the thread and you'll see it's heavily implied from Mack's post that randomly brings up Christianity and continues throughout.

 

[byco42]

Go back and look through the thread and you'll see it's heavily implied from Mack's post that randomly brings up Christianity and continues throughout.

I think you are swimmin.' But you are hostile to organized religion, so your bias precedes your judgement. Go in peace.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Go back and look through the thread and you'll see it's heavily implied from Mack's post that randomly brings up Christianity and continues throughout.

I don't even think any comparison is even slightly implied. The only element involving another religion in Mack's posts is to say the war on terror isn't a religious war. Certainly not a relative comparison between religions.

 

[Michchamp]

What do you think?

Have I ever said anything that would suggest I'd go that route?

unwittingly

 

[biggunsbob]

All freaking religions no matter what still do not have a great track record through out history.

 

[Gulo Blue]

All freaking religions no matter what still do not have a great track record through out history.

Impossible to say. We don't get to peek into the parallel universe where there's no organized religion and I'm not taking John Lennon's word for it.

 

[sggatecl]

I think you are swimmin.' But you are hostile to organized religion, so your bias precedes your judgement. Go in peace.

If only we were all level headed bible thumpers.

 

[sggatecl]

again, since the crusades, which "isolated atrocities" were carried out in the name of Christianity and which of those "isolated atrocities" did actual leadership of any christian religion sanction or even celebrate? It doesn't happen. Ever.

Jasenovac was the first thing to come to mind. I'm no historian but I'm sure there are others.

 

[Spartanmack]

Go back and look through the thread and you'll see it's heavily implied from Mack's post that randomly brings up Christianity and continues throughout.

you're missing the point completely. I'm saying Bob's point about "all these wars" in the name of religion is way off base - there hasn't been a major conflict in the name of religion since the crusades.

 

[Spartanmack]

aren't the wars prosecuted in the name of religion (particularly christianity) in the past enough to discredit it forever? I mean, it's not like that was a separate religion, right? you can't claim thousands of years of religious tradition, but selectively disavow any connection to the past only when it suits you.

well, you CAN, I suppose, but that hurts your credibility... and people that care about things like honesty, consistency, & integrity won't follow you.

and for the record, you can probably chalk up a large part of the persecutions, massacres, and takings from native peoples around the world, including America, over the last 250 years to religion. at least religion was one of the major reasons used to justify fucking those people over. they were "heathens" "savages" (insert slur here) and therefore their lives and rights were not valid.

so we can discredit atheism forever based on what the happened in Russia and throughout Asia. Got it.

 

[Spartanmack]

just taking issue with the argument that religion wasnt the cause of any war in the past 250 years, which is false.

who said that?

 

[Spartanmack]

Jasenovac was the first thing to come to mind. I'm no historian but I'm sure there are others.

whoa, whoa, whoa - you're the one who made this about Christianity by reading it into my post. I'm merely making the point that most of the ones listed as Christian wars aren't actually done in the name of relition - including Jasenovac. According to Wikipedia, most of the victims were ethnic serbs who were Orthodox Christians but they also interned and murdered a fair number of Jews and Gypsies. The Croats were/are Catholic but I'm not aware of them getting their orders from the Pope or claiming to have done anything in the name of religion.

 

[sggatecl]

whoa, whoa, whoa - you're the one who made this about Christianity by reading it into my post. I'm merely making the point that most of the ones listed as Christian wars aren't actually done in the name of relition - including Jasenovac. According to Wikipedia, most of the victims were ethnic serbs who were Orthodox Christians but they also interned and murdered a fair number of Jews and Gypsies. The Croats were/are Catholic but I'm not aware of them getting their orders from the Pope or claiming to have done anything in the name of religion.

I haven't read the Wikipedia, so I can't speak to the accuracy or lack thereof. I read about it in a book called "The Vatican's Holocaust". The local Croatian Catholic friars carried out much of the killing, they were part of a group called the "Ustasha". They burned many victims in kilns but weren't shy to just stab or shoot their victims as well. Most of the prominent members of this, all the way to the president/dictator (who knew the Pope on a personal level and had visited him on several occasions) were practicing Catholics. It was said their acts disgusted even the Nazi soldiers, though Hitler turned a blind eye (shocker).

Most of the victims were orthodox Christians but also a substantial amount were Jewish. To me, from the information I've taken in, the killings were done in the name of Catholicism. But if your criteria is for the Pope (or a religion's leadership) to sign off and give a thumbs up, then you're right: Catholicism, Christianity, and pretty much every religion in the world are a shining example of peace and kindness.

Also, I did take your post incorrectly. Bob had posted that list and you started going on specifically about Christanity. I took it as defending/propping up a specific religion (when they weren't even brought up initially) rather than using them as an example. That was my mistake, I'll own that.

 

[biggunsbob]

you're missing the point completely. I'm saying Bob's point about "all these wars" in the name of religion is way off base - there hasn't been a major conflict in the name of religion since the crusades.

You said major war and I said any war so I did not miss the point but give you a point for major conflicts and realigon and have said so. But that still does not give them a pass because no one should be killed in the name of religion period.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Various organized religions have been around for so long and have been so powerful at various points in history, and people think it's the religion part that's the root cause of the atrocities and not just a part of human nature...and I just don't get it. Here we are today, in a wealthy democratic republic at the peak of information technology relative to everything that came before, and yet we're about to elect Clinton or Trump. We have all these advantages as a society over those in the Middle Ages. But we were still torturing people just a few years ago and we're down to the final two in our next round of leadership and one of them wants to torture again. And with that perspective, some of us want to look down on the people that came before and blame religion? I really don't understand. If you want to lump me in as part of a group guilty of war and violence, the shortest path is via my American citizenship, not my Catholicism. I think it takes a remarkable degree of bias to see it differently. That's not to say that I don't still think the US is just about the best thing to happen to the world, I just understand that with all this power in the hands of so few people, there's going to be fuck ups we continuously need to try to remain vigilant of.

 

[Spartanmack]

I haven't read the Wikipedia, so I can't speak to the accuracy or lack thereof. I read about it in a book called "The Vatican's Holocaust". The local Croatian Catholic friars carried out much of the killing, they were part of a group called the "Ustasha". They burned many victims in kilns but weren't shy to just stab or shoot their victims as well. Most of the prominent members of this, all the way to the president/dictator (who knew the Pope on a personal level and had visited him on several occasions) were practicing Catholics. It was said their acts disgusted even the Nazi soldiers, though Hitler turned a blind eye (shocker).

Most of the victims were orthodox Christians but also a substantial amount were Jewish. To me, from the information I've taken in, the killings were done in the name of Catholicism. But if your criteria is for the Pope (or a religion's leadership) to sign off and give a thumbs up, then you're right: Catholicism, Christianity, and pretty much every religion in the world are a shining example of peace and kindness.

Also, I did take your post incorrectly. Bob had posted that list and you started going on specifically about Christanity. I took it as defending/propping up a specific religion (when they weren't even brought up initially) rather than using them as an example. That was my mistake, I'll own that.

I'm not saying Christians don't go to war or that they haven't committed atrocities - I'm just drawing a distinction between bad things done by religious people and things done in the name of religion. I'm not very familiar with your example - I just know there was no mention of religion being a primary driver in the Wikipedia, although I didn't read the whole thing - I read to the point where I thought if religion were a main driver it would have been mentioned by then. Your source could be much better and it's certainly possible you're right. However, I think my point that most wars, certainly the major conflicts in the last 2.5 centuries were not in the name of religion is valid.

 

[byco42]

If only we were all level headed bible thumpers.

That's certainly a mischaracterization of my personage.