Chaoslillith said - "It's the fact that organized religion gives humans a huge amount of ground to justify things such as the crusades, racism, the whole Middle East conflict ( pick one conflict there are so many), witch burnings, torture, extermination of races (Native Americans for one) and the list goes on."

REP: Couldn't agree more. However the current Middle East conflict with the West is more to do with Western interference in the Middle East esp. American. For example, the USA support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The USA was happy to go into Kuwait when that was occupied, but is happy to support Israel to the tune of $134,791,507,200 so far.

http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm


Chaoslillith said ? ?I am just against any form of organized religion because it is a guarantee that someone will twist it to their own purposes.?

REP: Couldn?t agree more. Organised Christian religions especially make a nonsense of the central message of Christ. Christianity is about individuals striving to deal with their selfishness, and church is a place where they meet to have fellowship and learn together, not to hatch evil plots to exert themselves on the rest of society. It is not about politics, enforcement or power. In fact, we are urged to put down power and take up servant hood.

Chaoslillith said ? ?Many times it was the heathens that were living according to what Christ taught but historically the "heathens" were destroyed because they were not Christian.?

REP: I agree with the first part ? Christianity does not have the monopoly on good living and is often shamed by non-believers. The church is full of dodgy people who are there because they especially realise their need for God. It does not surprise me, though it saddens me, that the church has so many sexual offenders esp. paedophiles. I will not defend organised religion when it has lost it and attacked heathens. When God chose to destroy a race it was usually because they were indulging in practises that were base in the extreme. Sacrificing children ?walking the fire? was a common practice amongst races that the Israelites were commanded to destroy. They were not blameless.

Chaoslillith said ? ?I take a bit of offense to you stating that only "Christians" do good works for no rewards. I know a lot of people who volunteer and help those not as fortunate and many of them have left the church because they could not stand the hypocrisy of those in it.?

REP: I understand why, and I would be a fool to say that non-believers do not do extraordinary good acts. The point was about where humanity naturally leads itself, and that seems to be towards the self indulgent lifestyle. TV attests to it, consumerism attests to it ? the amount we spend entertaining ourselves in terms of time and money is absolutely obscene when paralleled with those who exist in the two-thirds world who die from starvation. And it is also that I have seen many of my Christian friends just give up everything and sell everything to go and assist in a third world country. I just don?t personally know any non believer who has done the same (given up everything), except maybe take a gap year as a teen and volunteer somewhere and then come back to the fold ? I am not saying there aren?t any, but I have not met them. It?s just a question of percentages ? Christians are much more likely to do it. I don?t mean to offend you.

Chaoslillith said ? ?Religion can be wonderful and it can be the most destructive force in the world. By the way most of the major wars used some point in religion to justify them, even Hitler did.?

REP: I agree with both parts of your first sentence, but as for the second part ? I am sorry to be so blunt, but you demonstrate an ignorance of world history.

Hitler was driven by an atheist ideology. ?One historian has called it the reductio ad absurdum of the German tradition of nationalism, militarism, worship of success, and force, as well as the exaltation of state.?

He did not allude to religion in any way whatsoever.

And the point remains that Atheists win hands down when it comes to bloodshed. Vox Day puts it well:

?Who has not heard the Catholic Spanish Inquisition, (2,000 death sentences passed on to the Spanish Crown over 349 years) conflated with the pagan Holocaust (12 million murders in five years), and the atheist slaughters of the Great Terror, the Great Leap Forward and the Killing Fields. (4 million murders in 20 years, 30 million murders in 3 years and 2 million murders in four years, respectively.) And it is commonly asserted that religion is a major cause of war, although, as I have previously demonstrated, religion has only played a role in about 10 percent of all the wars in recorded history.?

?A more systematic review of the 489 wars listed in the Wikipedia's list of military conflicts, ranging from Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars to the 1969 Football War between Honduras and El Salvador, shows that only 53 of these wars - 10.8 percent - can reasonably be described as having a religious nature, even if one counts each of the 10 Crusades separately. If there is a god responsible for this ever-present bloodshed, it is Mars, not Jehovah or Jesus Christ.?


The myth that religion is the major cause of war is propagated by those ignorant of history.

If Christianity was ever put on trial it would be found without doubt to have propagated more good than harm. It is only those who have a shallow understanding and distorted view of it that think otherwise.


Regards,

Blacknad.