turzovka
Gold Member
- Nov 20, 2012
- 5,195
- 1,039
Deciding that the first thing you're told isn't necessarily all there is ain't "sitting on a fence". It's called having an open mind. If you're shopping for a car, do you just buy the first one anyone offers without considering alternatives? Of course not. No reason to here either.
Ironically you're right back to the "theories" you just thought you called out. Some guy saying "the lord spoke to me in a burning bush" isn't "evidence" except perhaps of either his own power hungriness or his own insanity. Again you make no case that Theory C is any more credible than Theory B or I or J or T or any other. That's blind faith, not "evidence".
I don't know Stalin's background on that. The point is Hitler, perhaps Stalin, the Crusades, the witch-burners, the Native American genocidists, the Atlantic slave traders and countless, literally countless wars, acts of terrorism and murders (see Roeder, Rudolph et al) have been committed in the name of Christianism. That doesn't mean Christianism DID them; it means it provided a convenient pretext. So what Lennon is saying is, without that pretext it's a lot harder to go there.
The Abolitionists were largely religion-based AFAIK. And so were the slave peddlers, starting with Columbus. Both of them used the same church as a "moral" base. Once again --- a crutch.
Deciding that the first thing you're told isn't necessarily all there is ain't "sitting on a fence". It's called having an open mind. If you're shopping for a car, do you just buy the first one anyone offers without considering alternatives? Of course not. No reason to here either.
A senseless retort. Or, once again, a cheap defense. After ten years of serious thought, if one is still sitting on a fence, he is a fence sitter. Open mind, hardly. More like a mind that wants to sow wild oats without accountability. IMO
Ironically you're right back to the "theories" you just thought you called out. Some guy saying "the lord spoke to me in a burning bush" isn't "evidence" except perhaps of either his own power hungriness or his own insanity. Again you make no case that Theory C is any more credible than Theory B or I or J or T or any other. That's blind faith, not "evidence".
I should stop right here. No matter what has been presented as evidence for God in history, through empirical evidence for miracles, or through reason, you are dismissing it all without a word. To you, nothing is proof or has meaning. To you, Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are just as likely. Well than that pretty much settles it. You think you have a case and I think you really have zero interest in knowing the truth.
I don't know Stalin's background on that. The point is Hitler, perhaps Stalin
, the Crusades, the witch-burners, the Native American genocidists, the Atlantic slave traders and countless, literally countless wars, acts of terrorism and murders (see Roeder, Rudolph et al) have been committed in the name of Christianism. That doesn't mean Christianism DID them; it means it provided a convenient pretext. So what Lennon is saying is, without that pretext it's a lot harder to go there.Rather shoddy claims, IMO. Hitler demonstrated the works of the devil, not of Jesus. If he said he killed Jews because they killed Christ (I have zero idea that may have been one of his pillars?) then only a total fool or an enemy of the Catholic Church would fall for that. The Crusades were absolutely justifiable for the cause. How the soldiers and generals behaved is another matter, hardly in control of the pope or the Church. But militant, aggressive, conquering, intolerant Islam had to be stopped. The witch burnings were not what you want to believe. They were by and large the hyper imaginations of locals and villagers and devious officials. Rome did not endorse nor direct 95% or more of what really took place. Of course the numbers are exaggerated to the extreme. The Inquisition was far more honorable than the now-proven lying historians ever gave it. It was only taken upon those within the Church and not those outside the Church. It has been so maligned it would take some time to explain. Slave trading was done in the name of Christ? Oh, really? That was the pretext? This is lies and or demagoguery. The death of thousands of native Americans cannot be blamed on the Church or the clergy in the New World, by and large. Far and away it was the soldiers of the European monarchs doing the whatever you might describe. The missionaries were far better in their treatment of the natives. Again, too much to elaborate on. And what “countless wars and acts of terrorism” were done in the name of Jesus? As far as I am concerned, Christians defended the defenseless and sacrificed their own lives for good far, far, far more than ever causing the war.
