Many people are in line at a buffet. Every buffet item is rotten. Yet people must eat. Some choose the least rotten items, others the most. Then they battle about just how rotten their meal was. All of them are wrong because they all ate the rotten. Pass that whole buffet by people. Find something wholesome to eat even if you must grow it yourself.
I read your posts and understood them as you explained. I was responding to the latest post in which you seemed to be departing from that reasonable position. Yes, I apologize for any suggestion that you are hateful or guilty of hate speech. My initial post to Meagain was a response to the umteenth iteration of the arguments that violence by atheists is off limits and violence by Christians is fair game. As you say, it is illogical and gets old.
Violence by atheists is not off limits in this thread if you can provide evidence that atheism is a religion. That may be hard as the definition of atheism is the: This thread is about Christianity, violence and religions. Not atheism. You could argue that Judaism is more violent, or Islam, but not atheism. Why not start a new thread entitled something like, "Atheism has caused more deaths then any religion"? Or than Christianity? That would be fun. Then you can present all the arguments you want to support your claim. I would suggest you place it in the general section as it will get more views but if you use the word Christianity it could go in this section.
Far be it from me to start such a thread. I believe it would present the same problems that this one does: inherently leading to negative stereotyping of a category of diverse people. At best, it would remind atheists that it is possible for atheist controlled movements to lead to some of the most horrendous violence in recent times. But I don't believe that atheism per se leads to those results. Instead, maybe I'll start one on pacifist Christian martyrs. But that would probably draw few responders.
The only problems I see in this thread is that many people allow their emotions to control their keyboard. Intellectual conversations often lead to conflicting ideas and strong opinions, that is the way it is. When speaking of large groups of people it is to be assumed that they are generally diverse in one way or another. Homogenous and heterogeneous are merely a matter of categorization. Stereotyping has nothing to do with the historical record, unless the historical record can be shown to be bias. Conclusions based on the historical record may lead to stereotypes, but the record is just a record. As far as atheistic movements, you would have to cite specific occurrences and show how those occurrences were caused by atheistic philosophy. That would be interesting as I am wondering if any of those occurrences can be directly linked to atheism. It would be a very challenging subject to introduce, dispel, or defend. A thread on pacifist Christian martyrs may be interesting also. What would you have to say about them?
the problem with that is that you're assuming the food is rotten because it doesn't look like yours, but most seem to be eating quite happily and healthily and just trying to get along. It's a bit arrogant to think your cooking is better than anyone else's.
What about Islam? I may be wrong but I don't see fundamentalist Christians strapping bombs to themselves and walking into shopping areas or flying planes into buildings! Why is Christianity always singled out as the "bad" one?
Interestingly, Jehovah's witnesses were put into Concentration camps in Germany, where many died and many were put into prisons and some were even hanged in the US and Canada during WWII for not fighting and killing in that war.
As Okiefreak pointed out earlier, the identifying mark of Christianity is Love. Love of God and love of neighbor. Quite frankly if one does not display that, they are not Christians no matter what they might call themselves. So if one commits the acts of violence that have so far been ascribed to "Christians", they cannot be Christians because they do not have the identifying mark of Love.
I have three comments: 1. First, all the slaughter and violence was under Roman Catholic rule. Christians were always peaceful until the Romans took over, and have been peaceful after the Reformation. 2. Nobody has EVER used violence under the instruction of Jesus. Only under his name. Jesus taught people to love our enemies, not to kill them. Anyone murdering in the name of Jesus betrays his teaching and is therefore NOT representing Christianity. 3. It is downright ignorant to say Christians are more violent than Muslims. Muslims terrorise, persecute and kill Christians every day (they have killed thousands of people in 2013 alone). Christians do not retaliate with violence.
Thanks Dizz. Spot on. Still no friend of the Christian Right I do submit that Jerry Farwell never flew a plane into a building. Just curious is any religion with the exception of islam still practicing clitoral removal? Would Women's Rights Orgs be interested in such abnormal behavior? Would secular humanists descrbe this practice as being violent? Workplace violence perhaps?