Maybe the officially Christian nations were slightly better at killing, than the officially non-Christian nations.

Not much of an endorsement. If you kill enough of the population, they eventually become 'peacefull' - think of the Amerindians. They weren't Christian and they were eventually pacified.

Spanish Catholics were better killers than the Muslim Moors in Andalusia as well. The last of the Moors were driven out of Andalusia in 1492. This allowed the Catholics to direct their energy against non-Catholics, which gave us the inquisition. They drove out the Jews and other non-Catholics. They also managed to eliminate a lot of witches, or so I read.

The Moors had been relatively tolerant of non-Muslims. The Jews and Chrisrtians paid dhimmi (non-Muslim tax) and managed to flourish.  BTW, science did well during that time.

 

DaveN

Skeptical about the pacific nature of Christians.

 

 

 

From: Eugene Curry <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, July 27,[masked]:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] Does religion make people better -- was DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS IRRATIONALITY

David,

I'm not saying that Christian nations and atheist nations behave the same. The comparison is a little tacky, and I hesitate to make it, but given the history of the twentieth century, officially Christian nations have probably had a better track record in this respect than officially atheistic ones.

Sincerely,

Eugene

From: David <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, July 27,[masked]:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] Does religion make people better -- was DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS IRRATIONALITY

Are you saying that Christian nations and atheist nations behave the same?

My own thought is that behavior comes first, rationalizing the behavior comes second. Religion or lack of religion nudges behavior one way or the other. With exceptions such as suicide vests and hijackings, most people change their behavior very little in response to their religious beliefs.

For example: knights were sitting around with nothing to do. The Christian Pope directed this energy to the Crusades. There were even instances of Christians killing Christians. The desire to engage in battle came first.

DaveN

Sent from Samsung tablet

-------- Original message --------
From Eugene Curry <[address removed]>
Date: 2014/07/27 09:12 (GMT-06:00)
To [address removed]
Subject Re: [Provocateurs] Does religion make people better -- was DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS IRRATIONALITY

James,

Officially atheistic nations haven't exactly been peaceniks either.

-Eugene

From: James Fichter <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Sunday, July 27,[masked]:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Provocateurs] Does religion make people better -- was DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS IRRATIONALITY

A single edged sword (theistic religions) has many functions, but attaining peace is not one of them.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 27, 2014, at 5:23, reasoner <[address removed]> wrote:

Keith,
I don't necessarily assign a lot of moral weight to all of the Christian values I listed, although having grown up in a relatively liberal church i think I am still affected by those values.  I was pointing out hypocrisy for the most part. Although I don't expect anybody to live up to all those ideals completely, I should expect Christians to not be antithetical to those values rather explicitly laid out by the New Testament.  I do wish that Christians would pray quietly and not try to take over civic functions as dominant tyrants, and Matthew 6 really underlines that public prayer is not even a Christian thing to do.

  I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to give everything to the poor.  They would just have to give it back, since they would then be rich and the donors now poor.  There are many fine people who are poor, by either unfortunate circumstance or by choice.  I have been poor by choice at times in my life, but it wasn't always because I gave everything away.  It was because I was pursuing education or altruism.  It was because I decided to emphasize other pursuits rather than earning money.  At other times, the pursuit of money didn't work out so well, usually because my vocation is more dependent on the economic conditions than most.  I have never been rich, although just to be fair, I try to remember that as a citizen of the modern USA, I do enjoy things that even kings of centuries past could not imagine--like competent health and dental care, and air conditioning.

I do think it is a very good idea to have effective social programs to help people who are in need, and laws to protect the middle class, and the general welfare, which includes protecting the environment.  I do think it's justifiable to have a national defense, but I don't think it's justifiable to have hundreds of military installations around the world, and to poke our noses into every other nations' business in a hegemonic way. 

I think Libya was a prime example of causing more harm than good, and I think that if we had kept out of WWI, we might have avoided WWII.  There was never a good reason for the cold war.  It was there to protect the wealthy of this country from having it demonstrated to the rest of us that socialism could indeed work if its leaders weren't in constant fear from outside forces, forces that entered Russia even during the revolution.

Democratic Socialism is a benign and reasonable form of Christian values.  Christian values have been seriously subverted over the centuries.  Christianity evolved.  It wasn't handed down by Jesus in it's pure form, as we can see in the many gospels that have been discovered in recent decades.  If it was handed down by anybody it was handed down by a government committee, namely the Council of Nicea, appointed by the emperor Constantine to cut books out of the canon and outlaw them.. 

We still see lots of corrupt political stances from preachers and we must presume that if they didn't have the backing of congregations or donors, etc, that they wouldn't have a pulpit to preach from.  So, it's a two way street.  The preachers and their congregations have to have substantial agreement on the values preached.  It's a dialectical reality that sooner or later entities become quite different than originally designed or brought into being.  Christianity is no different. 

I am for a more intellectual approach to moral problems.  Charisma, selling dogma, has not been a reliable measure of character or reliable leadership or sustainable and practical ethics.  It doesn't work for the people, their politicians, or their preachers.          dk

On 7/21/[masked]:47 AM, Keith Miller wrote:

DaveN:

Just a short comment on your post copied below:

"I have to agree with you, Fred, in principle.  "Love your neighbor as yourself" is a pretty good idea, but I don't see much of that.  Don't see much of, "Blessed are the peace makers," especially compared to the warriors. I haven't seen any Christian politicians thank peacemakers for their service.   Don't see much of "Give all your wealth to the poor."  Don't see much fear that it's "easier for a camel to jump through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven."  I do see a lot of hypocrites praying out loud in public, "so that they may be seen of men," and obliterating the separation of Church and State as well as instruction from the book of Matthew Ch 6."

These comments indicate that you do see some level of moral truth in the above statements.  You see the words and example of Jesus as expressing a yearning for what should be -- what could be.  That people's actions fly in the face of these directives is precisely the point.  The moral world of Jesus' time is not any different than today.  Who were Jesus' and the early disciples most forceful condemnations directed toward? -- the religious community.  Your words above sound very biblical!

You are absolutely correct that the organized church (often acting a a political and a not spiritual body) has shown itself many times to act in direct opposition to these commands of Jesus.  However, many Christians, and Christian communities, have lived out these directives as powerful testimony to the possibility of fulfilling (at least imperfectly) the call to follow Jesus.  Many to the ultimate sacrifice of the lives.

Given the quite evident reality that humans are not predisposed to act in the way Jesus called us to, and the freedom we have to act as we choose, the question becomes -- if there is a personal God whose character is revealed in the life of Jesus, how could this God bring about a change in humanity?  Unless God eliminates our free choice (which I don't think any would desire), the only way is by spiritual persuasion and example which Christian's believe occurred in the person of Jesus.  God does not force anyone to act against their will.

All the best.

Keith

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