Forced to be Christian

[nmhunate]

Statement of fact. Though of course that is only on one side of the family. On the other side I can trace my origins to the Goddess Venus at about the time of the fall of Troy.

[mpjh]

Don't you mean Helene, and she wasn't a goddess?

To what statement of fact are you referring?

[nmhunate]

No, you see Aeneas was the Son of Venus, his son Iulius went on to found the Latin race. Since I come from this Latin Race (not Latino, mind you) I count in my ancestors Venus. I wonder what my DNA test will show... What Godly virtues or vices have I inherited.

[brooksieb]

No, no, good point. I often look at my childhood as a period of forced religiosity. It was an intricate system of punishment and reward from a very early age, enforced by the loving hand of my mom, until, well, I will tell you a story, one day I was standing quietly in the hall inline with other students getting ready to go onstage as the choir for the xmas play. I was daydreaming as usual. My mom was sitting in the audience, but could see down the hall and was watching me standing in line. Suddenly Sister Tarsisus ran down the hall and knocked me on my ass with a slap to the face. This had happened before, but I could get no adult to deal with it. My mom, however, saw it this time. I was removed from the catholic school, and for the first time allowed to challenge the church authority and win. That allowed me to explore other possible ways to life.

If everyone thought like you the world would be in denial, many people are born into religion whether they like it or not, including me, just think yourself lucky you was not born into the Hindu untouchable class, they're the ones who are unlucky.

[Snorri1234]

It was a political thing disguised as religion.. also known as catholicism
very beatiful and decieving and extremely far from Jesus message of love and tolerance.

Yes, some of your ancestors probably had to at least pretend that they were catholics..but it was as much about politics and economy as it was about actual faith from those "forcing" the conversion
They did it so that they could confiscate everything the same way the nazis did.
..and then later the spanish inquisition was of course a strong inspiration for nazis and fascists - the exact opposite of what a christian should be.

Wow. According to this, OnlyAmbrose, Napoleon Ier, and I (to name a few) should be modern day Nazis.

To be fair, Napoleon Ier probably is.

[snufkin]

Wow. According to this, OnlyAmbrose, Napoleon Ier, and I (to name a few) should be modern day Nazis.

I´m pretty sure you are not being serious ..
but If you really think it´s ok to kill people because of their religious beliefs then yes!

[mpjh]

No, you see Aeneas was the Son of Venus, his son Iulius went on to found the Latin race. Since I come from this Latin Race (not Latino, mind you) I count in my ancestors Venus. I wonder what my DNA test will show... What Godly virtues or vices have I inherited.

a
Arrogance, maybe, certainly a lack of understanding of science.

[muy_thaiguy]

Wow. According to this, OnlyAmbrose, Napoleon Ier, and I (to name a few) should be modern day Nazis.

I´m pretty sure you are not being serious ..
but If you really think it´s ok to kill people because of their religious beliefs then yes!

Question is, were YOU the one being serious about your Catholics=Nazis statement? Then you'll have your answer.

It was a political thing disguised as religion.. also known as catholicism
very beatiful and decieving and extremely far from Jesus message of love and tolerance.

Yes, some of your ancestors probably had to at least pretend that they were catholics..but it was as much about politics and economy as it was about actual faith from those "forcing" the conversion
They did it so that they could confiscate everything the same way the nazis did.
..and then later the spanish inquisition was of course a strong inspiration for nazis and fascists - the exact opposite of what a christian should be.

Wow. According to this, OnlyAmbrose, Napoleon Ier, and I (to name a few) should be modern day Nazis.

To be fair, Napoleon Ier probably is.

In the US, Napoleon Ier would be considered more Libertarian then anything.

[mpjh]

Libertarians are not racist.

[PLAYER57832]

Libertarians are not racist.

usually....

[mpjh]

Well, no more than the ordinary person. At least racism is not a tenet of their principles.

[PLAYER57832]

No, no, good point. I often look at my childhood as a period of forced religiosity. It was an intricate system of punishment and reward from a very early age, enforced by the loving hand of my mom, until, well, I will tell you a story, one day I was standing quietly in the hall inline with other students getting ready to go onstage as the choir for the xmas play. I was daydreaming as usual. My mom was sitting in the audience, but could see down the hall and was watching me standing in line. Suddenly Sister Tarsisus ran down the hall and knocked me on my ass with a slap to the face. This had happened before, but I could get no adult to deal with it. My mom, however, saw it this time. I was removed from the catholic school, and for the first time allowed to challenge the church authority and win. That allowed me to explore other possible ways to life.

Saw this earlier, but did not respond.

Yes, you can say that parents "force" their kids to follow a religion. But, what is the alternative ...to not teach your children? A good parent give guidance, but also allows freedom. How much depends on many things that have a lot to do with how they themselves were brought up.

The kids I really feel sorry for are the one's who's parents are too busy or just cannot be bothered to pay them attention and, yes, to offer limits. Ironically, a kid can survive a certain amount of outright abuse (within limits) better than they can no discipline. I certainly don't advocate abuse, but I see far more kids from families that I would definitely call overly strict who yet turned out to be decent human beings than I do parents who let their kids do whatever they wish. (but you can have freedom of thought and still have limits... letting your kid choose their clothes is one thing ... letting them decide if they want to brush their teeth, or eat spinache, quite another!).

[PLAYER57832]

Well, no more than the ordinary person. At least racism is not a tenet of their principles.

True. Though I have sadly found more than a few who are attracted to Liberaterianism because they feel it will allow them to better pursue their racist agendas. I think they are still a minority, but growing.

Then again, a fair number of racists also claim Christianity as their backing ... so .. it bespeaks of them, not the label.

[mpjh]

Yes, racist tend to be opportunists. Because it is generally not accepted to be openly racist, they use other issues to pursue their agenda, witness the furor over the border with Mexico. Not one of the terrorist attacks on US soil was perpetrated by a terrorist crossing our southern border, yet we are spending millions on a useless fence and ICE raids of tax-paying, hard-working people. Racism, pure and simple.

[PLAYER57832]

Yes, racist tend to be opportunists. Because it is generally not accepted to be openly racist, they use other issues to pursue their agenda, witness the furor over the border with Mexico. Not one of the terrorist attacks on US soil was perpetrated by a terrorist crossing our southern border, yet we are spending millions on a useless fence and ICE raids of tax-paying, hard-working people. Racism, pure and simple.

partly racism, but also plain flat-out economic protectionism. I think greed ooutwins racism most time ..

[mpjh]

Actually, in this case, greed works against the closing of the border. Businesses in the US just love low wage illegals. That is why we will never stop illegal immigration, unless we start leaving the immigrants alone and shut down the businesses -- I mean shut them down. My motto would be that, "If you can't run a business without illegals, you don't belong in business."

[CrazyAnglican]

Actually, keeping religion out of our civil life is exactly what our constitution does. It doesn't bar religion, it simply keeps it out of government, and government out of it

Which proves my point. Our government, under the U.S. Constitution that "bars religion" as you put it, took the liberty of masses of Japanese-Americans based on nothing more than their national heritage. Removing religion from civil life apparently does nothing to guarantee that no atrocities will occur.

Ofcourse not. But possibly it lessens atrocities. Religion is a very powerfull idea that can be used to do things. People are far less willing to die or commit certain acts for philosophers they like.

It does nothing of the sort. How many people died as a result of the ponderings of Marx, Engles, Nietzche, etc? They were responsible for the intellectual/ philosophical underpinnings of Communism and Fascism. The problem here is that without looking into it one might be tempted to take what you’re saying as fact, but the numbers for the last century (probably the bloodiest in history, so far) show that no particular type of person, culture, religion, philosophy, etc can claim innocence in the bloodbath.

In a way, it's rather disheartening to realize that we can't smugly blame the brutality of the century on the Communists, or the imperialists, or the Moslem fundamentalists, or the godless. Every major category of human has done it's share to boost the body count, so replacing, say, Moslem rulers with Christian rulers, or white rulers with black rulers, is not going to change it at all.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

The atrocities of the 20th Century are well documented and hardly the fault of any one group. That coupled with the statistics that show Americans are more likely to die of dog bites than religious hatred. It hardly shows religion up to be any more dangerous than philosophy.

[mpjh]

Basic solution to stopping the atrocities of the past is to have the powerless take power and maintain power with true democracy. When you combine power with the autocratic approach of "god told me to do it," you have atrocities.

[Kotaro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OodeK_zpWw

Great Christian event.

[CrazyAnglican]

....When you combine power with the autocratic approach of "god told me to do it," you have atrocities.

You're suggesting that the Soviet communists killed people by the millions on two separate occasions because "God told them so"? You didn't look at the data did you?


The Chinese Communists after WWII were acting on God's orders, perhaps?

The numbers just do not support your supposition.

[mpjh]

No I am saying that true democratic power to the powerless is the solution to prevent atrocities. I also said that a combination of power with the "god told me to do it" syndrome leads to atrocities. Nothing more, nothing less.

[CrazyAnglican]

Give an example from the 20th century, then. I've already cited a fantastic resource that contains other links as well. Where is this "God told us so" that has Christians marching off. George Bush's thoughts on the subject notwithstanding, The Iraqi conflicts aren't even a drop in the bucket compared to the bloodbath caused by philosophies gone awry. Not that religion gone awry is no cause for concern, but that it does not stand out as any moreso than philosophy, as Snorri claimed. Do you agree with snorri or with the actual data?

[mpjh]

Example of what from the 20th century?

[CrazyAnglican]

Data that refutes my position restated below:

Actually, keeping religion out of our civil life is exactly what our constitution does. It doesn't bar religion, it simply keeps it out of government, and government out of it

Which proves my point. Our government, under the U.S. Constitution that "bars religion" as you put it, took the liberty of masses of Japanese-Americans based on nothing more than their national heritage. Removing religion from civil life apparently does nothing to guarantee that no atrocities will occur.

Ofcourse not. But possibly it lessens atrocities. Religion is a very powerfull idea that can be used to do things. People are far less willing to die or commit certain acts for philosophers they like.

It does nothing of the sort. How many people died as a result of the ponderings of Marx, Engles, Nietzche, etc? They were responsible for the intellectual/ philosophical underpinnings of Communism and Fascism. The problem here is that without looking into it one might be tempted to take what you’re saying as fact, but the numbers for the last century (probably the bloodiest in history, so far) show that no particular type of person, culture, religion, philosophy, etc can claim innocence in the bloodbath.

In a way, it's rather disheartening to realize that we can't smugly blame the brutality of the century on the Communists, or the imperialists, or the Moslem fundamentalists, or the godless. Every major category of human has done it's share to boost the body count, so replacing, say, Moslem rulers with Christian rulers, or white rulers with black rulers, is not going to change it at all.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

The atrocities of the 20th Century are well documented and hardly the fault of any one group. That coupled with the statistics that show Americans are more likely to die of dog bites than religious hatred. It hardly shows religion up to be any more dangerous than philosophy.

[CrazyAnglican]

No I am saying that true democratic power to the powerless is the solution to prevent atrocities....

I agree that democracy and liberation to the powerless is a good stance. One that is supported by the Roman Catholic Church.

This was stated as the precursor movement to liberation theology. It's the “Theology of development” which was endorsed by the Second Vatican Council and supported by the Roman Catholic Church among many other Christian Churches which was/is centered around helping the poor.


In terms of liberation theology as a movement, it has enjoyed support from the Roman Catholic Church and other churches.

As far back as 1971, the final document "Justice in the World," the topic of the second ordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops, already showed traces of liberation theology. Its echoes had become much stronger by 1974, at the third assembly of the Synod, on "Evangelization of the Modern World." The following year, Paul VI devoted fifteen paragraphs of his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi to the relationship between evangelization and liberation (nos. 25-39). This discussion forms the central core of the document, and without attempting to summarize the Pope's position, we can just say that it is one of the most profound, balanced, and theological expositions yet made of the longing of the oppressed for liberation.

http://www.landreform.org/boff2.htm

And

The magisterium of the church in Latin America has expressed itself primarily through the documents of two conferences. The second general conference of the episcopate of Latin America, held at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, spoke of the church "listening to the cry of the poor and becoming the interpreter of their anguish"; this was the first flowering of the theme of liberation, which began to be worked out systematically only after Medellin. The third general conference, held at Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, shows the theme of liberation running right through its final document. The liberation dimension is seen a an "integral put" (§§355, 1254, 1283) of the mission of the church, "indispensable" (§§562, 1270), "essential" (§1302). A large put of the document (§§470-506) is devoted to evangelization, liberation, and human promotion, and a whole chapter (§§1134-56) to the "preferential option for the poor," a central axis of liberation theology.

http://www.landreform.org/boff2.htm

In bringing up liberation theology in the other thread, you’ve shown to what an intense degree the Christian churches are committed to helping the poor and powerless throughout the world. They are doing exactly what you suggest, liberating the powerless and attempting to help the establishment of just governments. Rather than continually attempting to cast religions in such a terrible light, it is only fair that we also look at the good done by their adherents and organizations as well.