Christianity Is the Most Violent Religion

Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao together killed almost 100,000,000 people. Yet, nobody says it was because they were Atheist. Are you familiar with the story of Jesus? He was kinda antiviolence according to the Bible. He also treated people of other religions very well. He never walked up to people of other religions and said, "Oooo you're going to hell". That's why I don't understand why so many modern Christians do that sort of thing.

 

Christianity took a turn for the worse when the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced it--crediting it for a victory against his enemies. The Prince of Peace thereafter became General Jesus.

 

There is no such thing as Christianity. You cannot get two people to agree on toppings for a pizza, let alone something airy fairie like religion passes through a million mental colorations. I find it really funny when people blame actions on Gods and religions. It's only people. Just people. Confused sheeple.

 

It's always people, I agree. I do not always find it so funny in reality since most of this blaming originates from fear which as we all have learned leads to anger, leads to the dark side :sifone:

 

But the various violent offenses are from people. There is no God in religion, just people. Doesn't matter which religion.

 

The 'Old Testament' is the book of the Jews, true Christians study the words and actions of Christ tempered by walking hand in hand with the Holy Spirit dayly.

 

What a lame copout. Atheists feel free to complain about centuries past violence by certain people following an interpretation of religion which is diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus--and attribute it to Christians, when Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc., have no plausible connection to violence. But when anyone brings up the very recent, much larger scale atrocities committed by atheists, we're told: well, atheism isn't a religion; they weren't acting "in the name of" atheism; and most atheists aren't Communists. But: the atrocities were committed "in the name of dialectical materialism, which is inherently atheist. Dialectical materialism purports to be a "scientific" interpretation of history based on the operation of strictly material forces--excluding spiritual or religious explanations. And Marxism-Leninism is explicitly atheist and hostile to religion. Admit it; atheism is a really violent non-religion. The Nazi phenomenon owes at least as much to Teutonic mysticism as it does to Christianity, and no reputable historian attaches much importance to either as an explanation of National Socialism. Your obsession with centuries old violence reminds me of the diehard southerners who can't forgive those Yankees for the atrocities of Lincoln and Sherman.

 

Thanks for the compliment. You may change your mind after I voice some qualifications of what you say about Hinduism and Buddhism.

On the issue of child molestation by religious leaders, I don't think that's part of the religion, nor confined to it. Christians, notably the Catholic Church, have had their problems with pedophile priests. I wonder if the abuses you refer to have to do with the incidents in Texas by Swami G.(aka, Prakishnand Saraswati). This was an appalling case of a self-styled guru abusing his alleged authority to molest children. Before that, we had abuses by the Rashnishees in the seventies. These were Hindu counterparts of self-styled "Christian" cult leaders like Jim Jones and David Koresh. But it isn't a part of Hindu beliefs. As for horse sacrifice (condemned by the Buddha), I don't think there's been one of those in India since the eighteenth century. Of course, animal sacrifice was central to the worship of Yahweh in Judaism before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Leviticus goes on at great length about how the sacrifices were to be conducted. During the Axial Age, Hinduism underwent a transformation from polytheism to the more complex religion of the Upanishads, recognizing a single underlying godhead (Brahman) with three main aspects (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva)--the Trimurti--not unlike the Trinity.

As was pointed out, the historical existence of the Buddha is not particularly important. The basic ideas attributed to him are. Especially because Buddhism has no belief about God, it seems compatible with Christianity--especially in warning against worldly attachments.

 

No disrespect Meagain, but I didn't say Atheism was a religion. Or all Atheists are communists. But, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao were all communists AND atheists. I was pointing out the foolishness in the argument. People with all sorts of ideologies do all sorts of wicked things globally. Have forever. It doesn't mean said ideology is responsible for those actions.

I don't get the disdain for the words of Jesus. Never have. The disdain for certain elements of Christianity? Absolutely. Furthermore, I probably have more disdain for a lot of Christian types more than Atheists do.

But, to say the philosophy that originated from Christ causes murder...It just doesn't make sense and holds no weight. Its false logic. A lot of Christians have killed people, so Christians are the most violent people. Its as bad as when Christians call all Muslims terrorists. Which to me is deplorable.

 

You keep saying this, in this and other threads, and I keep pointing out that the einsatzgruppen were formed from volunteers who were mostly (perhaps completely) Christians, and that the writings of German troops marching through Russia as well as the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn demonstrate decisively that most Russians were religious people (again largely Christian) and that it is absurd to claim that they stopped being religious when their state declared itself to be an atheist state, and therefor that the atrocities carried out by Russians were most likely carried out by people who believed in God (even if they were ordered by an atheist). Yet you continue repeating your claim that they should be considered atheist atrocities without ever addressing my posts. If you can refute my points please do, I have no problem abandoning a position in the light of new evidence and interpretations.

This is the most irrational thing I have ever read in your posts. Seeing as though not being a theist makes one an atheist it is hard to see how this could be so. Also if believing in God does not prevent people from joining the einsatzgruppen, then why would not believing in one cause people to join? Or if believing in God does not prevent people from joining the einsatzgruppen, then why would we worry about people who don't believe, what greater atrocity can an individual commit than willingly participating in a genocide?

 

And you keep missing the point. You say that the einsatzgruppen were formed from volunteers who were mostly (perhaps completely) Christians. What does that mean? Did they turn the other cheek? Did they believe with Jesus that hey ahould practice universal love? And where, by the way., does that statistic come from? If they thought they were Christians, they were deluded. Virtually all members of the KKK consider themselves to be Christians. In fact just this morning I watched a news documentary about a white supremacy group in Kentucky that's supposed to be more virulent than the Klan. And they were interviewing a member who tried to show that segregation is "in the Bible". They are deluding themselves. Jesus did not preach violence or racial hatred. Just the opposite. Am I saying that even though they think they're Christians, they aren't, and that I'm right and they're wrong? Exactly! They and their Nazi predecessors were deluded imposters. If you look at the SS and the beliefs of Himmler, they were guided by pagan Teutonic mysticism. The whole Nazi movement was grounded in romantic nationalism that was fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. You seem to recognize the unfairness of trying to tarnish most Christians by linking them to a minority of violent extremists mobilized by the extraordinary circumstances leading up to World War II. But by continuing to dredge up the Nazi example, you can't avoid the suggestion that "Christians" are responsible.

As you know, the people running the Soviet Union at the time were Marxist-Leninists. The Communist Party ran the show, and in order to be a member, one had to be (or at least claim to be) and atheist. More importantly, the secret police was 100% atheist and extended terror to every sector of society. The Politburo, controlled by Stalin, made the decisions, and non-members had the choice of carrying them out or going to the gulags. Like the pagan Romans before them, the Soviets were unable to stamp out Christian belief among the majority of the population. It is in this sense that President Ford made his famous gaffe "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe (because although the Soviets occupied, governed and controlled government apparatus, it could not "dominate" the inner spirit of the people). Yet the decisions to persecute and commit atrocities were made and controlled by the Communist Party, and under Stalin this was a notoriously totalitarian apparatus more ruthless than any previously known. Are you familiar with the literature on totalitarianism? This went far beyond mere autocracy to attempt systematically to control all aspects of human life--and backed by terror. (See, e.g., Fainsod's Terror and Progress in the Soviet Union). If Christians were forced to participate in carrying out these orders, it was in the sense that slaves have carried out the orders of their slave masters in lieu of facing death or torture. And of course, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kims didn't rule over predominantly Christian populations. I don't believe that "atheism" was responsible for any of this. I brought it up because atheists on this forum so frequently apply similar illogic to disparage "Christianity". I'm sure you don't intend to engage in hate speech, but that's the effect of the repeated rehashing of these claims.

Yes, I agree. I was just applying the same illogic that I see being repeatedly used in these anti-Christian diatribes. I'm glad you noticed. The refrain has been that people who were Christians did awful things. Therefore, "Christians" are violent. This is unfair to the vast majority of Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus, including pacifists like the Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses, as will as Methodists, Presbyterians and so many others who are guided by peace, love, and understanding. The response I got was that atheist violence is off limits, since the thread is about Christian violence, and that centuries old violence is fair game because those are the rules.

I think your indignation that I should suggest that atheists like you share in the guilt of atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot simply because you're atheists is appropriate, because obviously you don't. Imagine how ordinary Christians might feel when analogous arguments are made over and over again about them. Are you really saying that no atheists willingly participated in genocides under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Kim? If you are, you're obviously whitewashing history. Hate kills.

I'm satisfied with the latest post by Meagain, and actually agree with most of it. The dark days in Christian history, including the Crusades, the witch hunts, the Inquisition and the religious wars, illustrate how good beliefs can be perverted. Much of the violence resulted from two variants of Christianity: fundamentalism, or biblical inerrancy, which is required to justify the genocide, sexism, and homophobia mentioned in the Old Testament; and Catholicism, which relies on an "infallible" Pope and authoritarian hierarchy (which is currently pacifist) to determine God's will. There are certainly dangerous groups today who twist the teachings of Jesus into doctrines of hatred. Resist these, but don't attribute them to all Christians.

 

Not "separated, but put in perspective. I agree that the fundamentalists who consider the whole Bible to be "inerrant" end up defending the Old Testament. However, not even the Jews had this view of the Old Testament, many Protestants regard it as replaced by the New Covenant of Jesus, and Catholics and mainline Protestants don't take it literally. At the time of Jesus, Philo, a great Jewish philosopher, developed an elaborate system for interpreting the Bible as metaphor and allegory, and one of the first Christian theologians, Origen did the same. The notion that it's the literal "Word of God" is a rather recent form of American gothi

 

It seemed that you were genuinely trying to argue that the atrocities of Stalin should be blamed on atheism, especially because of the number of times you repeated it. If I missed your point it is because you did not make it clear enough.

It is a myth that the SS were responsible for all of these atrocities, the einsatzgruppen were largely composed of regular Wehrmacht soldiers, and many atrocities were ordered by Army Group commanders. Not really relevant in this thread but an important historical fact.

You can't possibly have read my posts in this thread and arrived at that conclusion. Go back and read my posts again. You will see, firstly, that I brought up the example of the action groups exactly for the purpose of criticizing those in this thread that think that they have proved that Christianity is a violent religion by pointing out acts of violence carried out by Christians (or alleged, or deluded Christians). You will also see that I specifically said (more than once) that the atrocities carried out by the action groups were absolutely not motivated by Christianity (I referred to that position as ludicrous).

You attack me for referring to people who claimed to be Christian as Christians, and then you go on to say that people who claim to be atheists are atheists?

If you would read my posts you would see that I am not guilty of that and that I have, throughout this entire thread, attempted to force those guilty of that to see that that is exactly what they are guilty of. I think I leveled the charge even more clearly and strongly than you have (and against people who are actually guilty of it). I actually challenged them to provide an argument linking violent acts carried out by Christians to Christianity itself, and none of them did.

In light of what I actually said that charge is absolutely baseless, and I feel that you owe me an apology for accusing me falsely of something so heinous.

Exactly what I have been arguing through this entire thread. Not only unfair but a piss poor argument. You would fail a philosophy class for that kind of argument, and I pointed that out earlier.
Perhaps you have been confusing another person's posts with mine.

I thought that was a weak response as well, and I never argued for it in any way.

Probably one reason why I have been arguing against that position.

I never said that, please stop accusing me of holding positions that I have never argued for. I don't think I've ever done that to you.

Anyone who reads my posts will know immediately that I don't.