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hot4ablackchick
07-31-2010, 03:09 AM
It's things like that where I question it all. I question why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good person. I am a good person, always donating time/money to every cause, always there to help, etc. Yet right now I am in a terrible turmoil, because I have been unemployed a long time and the guy I love is being a jerk by not calling or visiting me. I am a good person and this is all happening. Meanwhile my parents have ex friends where nothing bad happens in their life. Their son barely graduated college but got a job in his field and is now a manager at the company. His wife is also a manager. They are all people where they think they are the best people and very judgemental. I've been told that I'm suffering now so that I'll have a terrific afterlife, but I want a good life now! It's very unfair that my life sucks though theirs doesn't. That's just one example, but we've all known people with bad lives who were good and evil people who had a terrific life.

Sorry to hear that you have been having such a tough time. It really does suck when terrible things happen to good people, and complete dick heads seem to get everything handed to them. But luck is just that. It doesn't discriminate, and some people just have it 'better' than others, even when the person with less needs it more. I once went through a tough time with an abusive ex and being homeless. Totally sucks. All I can really hope for is that you pull through and someday live a happy life. I also find it very misleading and cruel for someone to tell you that you will have an awesome afterlife because of your suffering on earth. One of the few problems I have with religion. You should and deserve to have a happy, meaningful life here on earth, with or without any superstitous afterlife. Also the fact that "bad," people also get entrance into heaven simply for declaring christ as a personal savior, leaves "heaven" more than a bit unsatisfying to me. I really do help things turn around for you, as I've felt those same feelings when I was religous and going through rough times (Even now, I still feel slighted when some undeserving turd gets ahead through lucky breaks). I just hope you can try to stay positive, enjoy your life to the best of your ability now, and once things turn around, remember your struggle and not take anything for granted. Good luck!

Kellydancer
07-31-2010, 12:21 PM
Sorry to hear that you have been having such a tough time. It really does suck when terrible things happen to good people, and complete dick heads seem to get everything handed to them. But luck is just that. It doesn't discriminate, and some people just have it 'better' than others, even when the person with less needs it more. I once went through a tough time with an abusive ex and being homeless. Totally sucks. All I can really hope for is that you pull through and someday live a happy life. I also find it very misleading and cruel for someone to tell you that you will have an awesome afterlife because of your suffering on earth. One of the few problems I have with religion. You should and deserve to have a happy, meaningful life here on earth, with or without any superstitous afterlife. Also the fact that "bad," people also get entrance into heaven simply for declaring christ as a personal savior, leaves "heaven" more than a bit unsatisfying to me. I really do help things turn around for you, as I've felt those same feelings when I was religous and going through rough times (Even now, I still feel slighted when some undeserving turd gets ahead through lucky breaks). I just hope you can try to stay positive, enjoy your life to the best of your ability now, and once things turn around, remember your struggle and not take anything for granted. Good luck!

Thanks, I'm sure things will get better, but it seems bad now. I know it could be worse, but then I see those with perfect lives and wonder why did they get it so good? Then again I keep thinking it's a way for me to appreciate things more once I have them again. Nothing is over, the guy I love didn't dump me, nor did the jobs I want reject me yet, so there's hope. I know I get upset when people say that people who are religious go to heaven, because many of these "religious" people are nasty people and use religion as a guise.

jack0177057
08-02-2010, 12:05 PM
It's things like that where I question it all. I question why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good person.

I'm sorry to hear about your frustrations and disappointment.

I'm sure atheists have disappointments, too. They don't believe in a God - but, they believe (I think) in things like justice, democracy, science, love, loyalty, etc... and all these things can disappoint and cause a "crisis of faith" even if you have no faith in God.

If an 20-year-old atheist works out for 2 hours every day, eats only healthy organic food products, and evangelizes to everyone about the virtue of working out and eating right... but, is diagnosed with terminal aggressive cancer and 3 months to live, the fact that she does not have a God to curse at, is no consolation. She will feel "cheated", even though there is no "almighty one" that did the cheating.

To people of faith - bad things are due to the struggle between good and evil human and superhuman forces.

To an atheist - bad things are due (I think) to (1) the struggle between good and evil human forces and (2) the struggle between chaos and order.

What is the source of the "order" element? -- Math?... Physics?... Biology? Is it a constant or does "order" have a life of its own?

Andygirl
08-11-2010, 12:32 AM
I'm really fine with people believing whatever crazy thing they want. I don't think it's anyone's business what I believe (or don't believe), and if Xtians weren't constantly trying to impose their "morality" on everyone else it would be a non-issue. Unfortunately, you can't drive down the street or turn on the television without hearing about them trying to pass laws and dictate social policy based on their beliefs---with no regard at all for anyone who disagrees. That is my biggest issue with Xtianity. And frankly, their intolerance for any other viewpoint makes me sick.

I'd love it if people would mind their own business and keep their dogma out of schools, government, and everything else. But I won't hold my breath. I couldn't care less who is "right" (as if that could ever be ascertained), and I don't see the point in arguing about it or trying to convince anyone else that my way of thinking is better than theirs. It's so completely subjective, and people rarely change their minds when they are being beaten over the head with someone else's opinion.

IMO, this is why so many people are really hostile when the topic comes up. It's very threatening to think about someone else's religious beliefs dictating the laws and policies of the country.

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 11:11 AM
I'm really fine with people believing whatever crazy thing they want. I don't think it's anyone's business what I believe (or don't believe), and if Xtians weren't constantly trying to impose their "morality" on everyone else it would be a non-issue. Unfortunately, you can't drive down the street or turn on the television without hearing about them trying to pass laws and dictate social policy based on their beliefs---with no regard at all for anyone who disagrees. That is my biggest issue with Xtianity. And frankly, their intolerance for any other viewpoint makes me sick.

I'd love it if people would mind their own business and keep their dogma out of schools, government, and everything else. But I won't hold my breath. I couldn't care less who is "right" (as if that could ever be ascertained), and I don't see the point in arguing about it or trying to convince anyone else that my way of thinking is better than theirs. It's so completely subjective, and people rarely change their minds when they are being beaten over the head with someone else's opinion.

IMO, this is why so many people are really hostile when the topic comes up. It's very threatening to think about someone else's religious beliefs dictating the laws and policies of the country.

While there are many Christians who do push their agenda (the Christian Coalition comes to mind) there are other groups who aren't Christian who push agendas. For instance there is an atheist group here that's always protesting Christmas decorations, Christmas parties at schools, etc. To me these atheists are just as dangerous as Christians. Also, many people are tired of the decaying of morals in this society due to secular groups. An example would be the "acceptance" of unwed parenthood. I was once kicked out of a group because I would never date an unwed father. I wouldn't date a dad anyway, but a guy who had a child without having wed the mother is someone with different morals. That's not to say I judge people who had kids out of wedlock. I know many who did, (many friends have done this) but guys like this are offensive to me yet when I state this I am called intolerant and I must respect their views. What about my views that it's wrong most of the time? Does this mean I want there to be laws passed pushing my beliefs? Not at all, just don't allow anyone's belief to be a law or for them to say someone is judgemental because they don't believe something is right.

Harleigh HellKat
08-12-2010, 11:18 AM
Extremism is dangerous in any form.

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 11:31 AM
Extremism is dangerous in any form.

Very true. I don't like the extreme Christians nor do I like extreme atheists, or for that matter extreme any group. By extreme, I'd expand that to include non religious groups that push agendas like feminist groups. Yes, I am a feminist but the radical feminists (the man haters) bother me too.

Trem
08-12-2010, 11:33 AM
While there are many Christians who do push their agenda (the Christian Coalition comes to mind) there are other groups who aren't Christian who push agendas. For instance there is an atheist group here that's always protesting Christmas decorations, Christmas parties at schools, etc.

What exactly is dangerous about keeping christian stuff out of schools? Pushing the agenda of keep your god damn religion away from my god damn children is always a good thing. I'm sure you'd be perfectly fine with your kids being forced to participate in Ramadan activities while in school?

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 11:42 AM
What exactly is dangerous about keeping christian stuff out of schools? Pushing the agenda of keep your god damn religion away from my god damn children is always a good thing. I'm sure you'd be perfectly fine with your kids being forced to participate in Ramadan activities while in school?

Actually, I'd be perfectly fine with my kids learning other religions. After all my great grandfather was Jewish and I want my kids to know about Hanukkah. However, it's wrong to always cut down Christmas in school because most people are Christians or at least believe in Christmas. I have no problem with these programs singing secular Christmas songs, such as Santa. What I do have a problem with is schools completely eliminating these programs because atheists (and it's usually them around here) complaining. If they have a problem with Christmas programs, let them create their own programs, not take away from my kids.

Trem
08-12-2010, 12:41 PM
Actually, I'd be perfectly fine with my kids learning other religions. After all my great grandfather was Jewish and I want my kids to know about Hanukkah. However, it's wrong to always cut down Christmas in school because most people are Christians or at least believe in Christmas. I have no problem with these programs singing secular Christmas songs, such as Santa. What I do have a problem with is schools completely eliminating these programs because atheists (and it's usually them around here) complaining. If they have a problem with Christmas programs, let them create their own programs, not take away from my kids.

There is a huge difference between LEARNING and FORCED TO PARTICIPATE.

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 12:57 PM
I don't think a kid should be forced to participate in a Christmas program, but don't take it away from other kids either. I am fine with kids telling the teacher that they can't participate.

Trem
08-12-2010, 01:27 PM
I don't think a kid should be forced to participate in a Christmas program, but don't take it away from other kids either. I am fine with kids telling the teacher that they can't participate.

I'm not going into anybodies house and taking down their christmas trees and decorations. Taking religious ceremonies out of schools isn't taking anything from anybody, they are all free to celebrate anything they want outside of government sanctioned and funded institutions. Wanting to celebrate christmas in school is nothing but more of the same bullshit christians try to pull to demostrate their religion is the only "true" one.

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 01:29 PM
But when atheists protest kids singing songs about Santa and Christmas parties, then yes they are enforcing their views and are no different than the Christians they hate. Btw, Christmas trees were originally Pagan.

Trem
08-12-2010, 01:37 PM
But when atheists protest kids singing songs about Santa and Christmas parties, then yes they are enforcing their views and are no different than the Christians they hate. Btw, Christmas trees were originally Pagan.

Except that their views are "there needs to be a separation between government institutions and religious ceremonies" which is a perfectly fine view to want to enforce. I know christmas trees are originally pagan, the whole celebration is a pagan holliday of winter solstice. I have nothing against christmas, i celebrate it with my family every year and would with my kids when i have some. It just has absolutely no place in school.

Kellydancer
08-12-2010, 01:48 PM
But taking it away means the atheists win and that I disapprove of. Why punish the kids because the parents have nothing better to do than complain? The atheists have already won in many aspects (ie children out of wedlock) so why should we remove Christmas trees to appease them? Screw it, I'll have a tree at my next job and it's my right. It's also my right to have a cross on the wall if I choose.

Trem
08-12-2010, 02:07 PM
But taking it away means the atheists win and that I disapprove of.

The atheists win because they are legally and morally right.


Why punish the kids because the parents have nothing better to do than complain?

Nobody is punishing any kids, they are free to celebrate at home with their families anything they want.


The atheists have already won in many aspects (ie children out of wedlock) so why should we remove Christmas trees to appease them? Screw it, I'll have a tree at my next job and it's my right. It's also my right to have a cross on the wall if I choose.

What the fuck does atheism have to do with having kids out of wedlock? and as far as i know your job is not at a school so i don't know what the fuck that has to do with this discussion either.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 12:58 AM
I'm really fine with people believing whatever crazy thing they want. I don't think it's anyone's business what I believe (or don't believe), and if Xtians weren't constantly trying to impose their "morality" on everyone else it would be a non-issue. Unfortunately, you can't drive down the street or turn on the television without hearing about them trying to pass laws and dictate social policy based on their beliefs---with no regard at all for anyone who disagrees. That is my biggest issue with Xtianity. And frankly, their intolerance for any other viewpoint makes me sick.

I'd love it if people would mind their own business and keep their dogma out of schools, government, and everything else. But I won't hold my breath. I couldn't care less who is "right" (as if that could ever be ascertained), and I don't see the point in arguing about it or trying to convince anyone else that my way of thinking is better than theirs. It's so completely subjective, and people rarely change their minds when they are being beaten over the head with someone else's opinion.

IMO, this is why so many people are really hostile when the topic comes up. It's very threatening to think about someone else's religious beliefs dictating the laws and policies of the country.

Most of the laws which have actually been passed, and those being pushed to be passed, are due to non-Christian pressure groups pushing social policies based on non-Christian beleifs. With no regard for anyone who disagrees. There is a lot of dogma taught in schools, but not Christian dogma.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:13 AM
You misquote me here. I said that baptised Catholics may not believe all the doctrine of the Church and still identify as Catholic.

However, someone who rejects god and Jesus entirely would usually identify as atheist, not Catholic. Someone who, for instance, disagrees with the Pope's stances on matters like birth control and homosexuality but still accepts Christ is probably still a Catholic, unless they have converted to
Protestantism.

Does it seem to you like Hitler believed in most of the important tenets of Catholicism? Seems to me like the only thing he might agree with is it's treatment Jews at many points in history. But as I have pointed out, Stalin, who definitely was an atheist (he became one in seminary), also wanted to destroy the Jews. In fact, the reason Stalin wanted to destroy them is that he was an atheist and Judaism is a religion.


It seemed to me that you were saying that atheism itself was responsible for the oppression you spoke of. Not only is that fallacious, it removes responsibility from the real perpetrators.

Atheism does lead to totalitarian ideology. Look at Marx. Most leading soclialists are atheists. But the reason I mentioned atheist dictators was merely that somebody else here blamed religion for oppression. Yes the responsibility is with the perpetrator but how did that person come to be the perpetrator? He was born oppressive? No, he adopted a personal belief system which justified it.

Both theist or atheist belief systems have been employed for this but the question then is: Does the person's belief system genuinely logically follow from his theism or atheism - is it truly consistent with either of them or has it been perverted?

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:14 AM
No, because you are obnoxious and anti woman. I don't agree with their views on gay marriage at all, but part of it is because the Catholic Church is big on tradition.

So your excuse for the Catholic church opposing homosexuals is that it is part of their tradition? Or you are willing to overlook it because of other traditions you do like?

I am not anti-woman, I am anti-feminist - not the same thing. You agree with feminism, I don't.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:16 AM
Again, you are distorting atheism. Atheism is a non belief in any god(s). That is all. Nobody ever said that atheists are not capable of evil. Evil people will be evil. Atheism has nothing to do with murder, unlike the bible.

Without a belief in God, there is no basis for moral absolutes. It is replaced by whatever is expedient for the individual, or such notions as "the greater good". Just because there is no holy book to explicitly command them to do evil , or as you say of the Bible, give them mixed messages, doesn't mean they can't come up with their own nutty ideologies. That's all you think the Bible is - something some nut wrote to justify evil acts. So really you think the Bible was written by atheists - to fool other people into believing in theism.


Of course not every theist believes in the god of the bible, allah, or any other "common" god. But to say that the bible isn't capable of giving someone a mixed message is a bit ignorant. After all the biggest and the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy and non belief, according to the bible. The fact that a book like the bible is valued by many christians as a good book, word of god, all about love and forgiveness, and so on is troubling. Saying that something was "in the old testament," is a weak argument. Believing in a god that ordered the genocide of others and believing that god spoke directly to these people to commit these acts, is dangerous. The fact that a lot christians cannot recognize the violent and hateful nature of their own religion, yet can clearly see the "wrong" in the islamic religion, is just ignorant.

I don't see an actual mixed message in the Bible. All I can see is that someone might ignorantly take parts of it as justification or even commands for certain acts, such as genocide. But as I said before, the Bible does not anywhere explicitly command Christians to kill non-believers. Even in the OT Jews were not commaned to go out and kill whole nations of non-believers as a general policy. They did have death penalties and other harsh penalties for many acts related to their religion.

The genocide God commanded was bad only if there was no good reason for it. God commanded the Isrealites to kill nations He considered degenerate or evil. The injustice of this perhaps was that whole nations of individuals were killed indiscriminately. But today we recognise that nations cuase their own demise by their own destructive behaviour.

Consider though that we have harsh penalties for many of our own laws in secular society. If you don't pay your taxes, you can have your house taken from you. Or have your gas, electricity, bank account, credit,telephone and employment terminated. These are things we require to live. This applies to many other laws and regulations.

The difference between the Bible and the Koran is that the Koran does contain commands to kill non-believers in general, or people who merely speak against Islam.

I don't know what the Bible says the "biggest sin" is but it doesn't explicitly give it's followers the right to punish others for sins.


Theres a quote that goes, "Good people will do good things. Evil people will do evil things. But when good people do evil things? Now that takes religion." I can't say I wholeheartily agree with that, but theres some truth to it. There usually takes some sort of brainwashing or delusion for someone to go against what they know is right.

Marxist communism, which is atheist, also motivates good people to do evil things. Marxist theory is designed specifically to do that - to give people humanitarian reasons to commit brutal acts. The Nazis also used non-religious justifications for ruthless policies. Before they began killing Jews, they were killing Germans in euthanasia programs to rid German society of "useless eaters" - the aged, the mentally or physically defective, the chronically ill, even political dissenters.

Just because God commanded violent acts does not mean the whole religion is violent or hateful. Violence is necessary in some instances. I don't know why God thought certain people or nations had to be destroyed because I'm not God and I wasn't there. But we all commonly recognise that societies and individuals often bring about their own destruction in some way and God is in a position to judge when that should come as much as, say, blind economic forces or the environment, or dangerous driving, alcoholism or syphilis. There could have been very good reasons for God to kill off an entire nation. Their continued existence could have been more of a threat to life (their own lives or the lives of others) than their sudden destruction.What else is God going to do, try to talk them out of it? You just can't talk to some people.

Okay, so somebody could justify doing something by believing or pretending God told him to do it, just like in the Bible. But people would think of that even if there were no Bible. even without belief in God people think up similar justifications, like they have been chosen by history or destiny or because they are the smartest or the strongest, or because they have the "truth" and others don't.

Marxists (who are atheists) believe that historical forces select a "vanguard" of indviduals with awareness of the forces at work, or of what needs to be done, to bring about revolutions. The Nazis believed that they were "men of destiny" chosen to usher in the reign of the supermen. The Columbine shooters (going by the computer journals the kept) acted on a ruthless evolutionary philosophy that might makes right and they are permitted to cull the weak.

If somebody is looking for an excuse, they don't need a Bible. It is just human nature to want to decide for others.


Sure religion has probably scared some people to "be good," and not rape or murder, but its not that great of a deterent because its widely accepted that all you have to do is believe, and your sins are forgiven. Even if this is not true, I noticed plenty of xians seem to think that its okay to sin over and over, and its okay because jesus "died for them" and knows they are sinners.

Yes it's true that some Christians go on sinning because the are "saved" no matter what they do. I have met some who even use it as a reason to allow themselves to go on sinning. I wonder if those people really are Christians. But sensible Christians don't do that, they just know that it is impossible never to sin and if they do they are still saved. A real Christian believes in being obedient to God and therefore does not want to sin if they can help it. Why would they bother believing in Christianity at all if they actually wanted to keep sinning?


The bible really isn't the great manual its held out to be, and I have NEVER met a christian who felt that anything in the bible was wrong.

That's because if they thought the Bible was wrong they wouldn't be Christians.


If someone is capable of swallowing the bullshit of the bible, then what other kind of bullshit is this person capable of swallowing. That is the reason why some atheists view xian/islamic beliefs as problematic.

Your opinion. Muslims don't follow the Bible - the Koran is a different story.

It sounds more to me like you are the one who doesn't wish to understand religion. Your intolerance and lack of understanding is just as dangerous as anything in the Bible. It logically extends to any other POV, religious or otherwise, which you could not be bothered to try to understand properly.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:18 AM
I don't read that case as standing for what you said it stood for. It upholds religious freedom, but in no way defines what a religion is or states that atheism is one.

The case is not over whether atheism is a religion, but it the judge decided during the course of the case that it should be defined as on.


Also, where did you pull that theory from? Atheism isn't tax exempt because it isn't a religion. If it was, you can bet that atheist organisations would be lining up to get out of taxes. The fact that it is not a religion seems to me to be self-evident. It is not organised the way a religion is, there is no central set of tenets and there is no belief in any sort of supernatural being. There is no ceremony to convert to atheism the way there is to convert in to a religion. It is, in fact, a rejection of religion.

You asked me why, if if I think atheism is a religion, atheist organisations don't seek tax exemptions. I gave you some reasons. Atheism is an organised movement, it's just that not all atheists are active in the movement. Not all theists are church-goers. There is no central set of tenets for most religions either - they vary between sects and denominations and also individuals, even the basic tenets. But organised atheism does have central tenets - which also vary between particular factions. Not all theists are converted at a ceremony - most are not.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:18 AM
So it's okay to commit genocide so long as you can find a basis in scripture? The Muslims can find a basis in scripture. Would it be okay for the Muslim world to drop nuclear weapons on Christian America tomorrow? After all, Allah commands it. What if Amalek was a interpreted to be a nation still around today, say Africans. Should Christians and Jews drop a nuclear bomb on Africa then? And if that's all fine, what is it that makes religious people any better than, say, Stalin, as you have tried to argue that they are?

Those instances where God commanded the Hebrews to kill other nations are not a basis for either Jews or Christians to kill anyone. They were specific commands from God to kill those particular nations at that particular time. That is not a basis for anyone to kill some other nation now. Who would interpret the Amalekites of the Old Testament to be Africans in the present? The Bible would not be responsible for anyone making such a maniac claim.


Big government and socialism are very different things from slavery. To state that the two are the same is like saying that conservatism and fascism are one and the same.

Slavery is when one person is forced to work for another person without recompense. The government takes part of my wage in taxes and imposes regulations on many of the activities - practically all of them. So part of the time I am effectively working for the government and all of the time the government is telling me what to do and how to do it.

Socialism is a totalitarian system. Big government is socialism - all political commentators recognise that the U.S.'s big government is based on socialist policies. The more government you have, the closer you are to "total" government. The U.S. is pretty close - has been for a long time.

What are the similarities between U.S. conservatism and fascism? The U.S. tradition is libertarian, fascism is totalitarian. Fascism is a form of socialism - "national" socialism. Conservatism and fascism couldn't be further apart or more different. However, some U.S. conservatives are socialistic and in that case conservative is a misnomer, a false association created in the public mind for political purposes.


Marriage of three-year-old girls is supported by the Old Testament. Rebecca married Isaac at three, for a start. I'm less familiar with the New Testament, but do know that Paul was quite the sexist. However, The Old Testament forms part of Christianity as well. The antipathy Christians have towards homosexuality comes straight from Leviticus.

So at age three Rebecca was drawing water at the local spring for her household? That's what she was doing when Abraham's servant spotted her. It doesn't say anywhere in that chapter that she was three years old.

Paul was a sexist? That doesn't sound hard by your standards. What you probably mean is that Paul wasn't a feminist.

A lot of Christian ideas do come from the OT. Their disapproval of homosexuality comes from both the OT and the NT. It also comes from the disapproval of homosexuality that has existed in most societies throughout history and all over the world.


My own view is that all religions were originally founded with ulterior motives in mind, not just Islam. That doesn't mean I'd like to stamp out religious freedom, but I think that they were all built on lies, Islam no more so than the others. Christianity, too, has a history of conquest, though it has been some years since the Church has killed infidels.

That is a common view. It is only valid if a basis can be found in fact and the religious claims of any given religion can be proven to be lies. The fact that people conquered in the name of a religion does not alone make it a religion of conquest. For that, the religion must command conquest in it's name. Islam does that, Christianity does not.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:19 AM
Hopper, I could claim that there are invisible fairies at the bottom of my garden, and that if you do not believe in their existence, you are being illogical, because you can't prove that there aren't any fairies. Your argument is much the same. It is for the person asserting the existence of something to prove it, not for the doubting party.

I don't know that there are no fairies in your garden - I would not state for certain that there are not. But I do believe it is unlikely and I wouldn't just take your word for it. However, if there were some kind of evidence I would reconsider.


If there is a design in the universe, in some ways it's a fairly crappy one. Why, for instance, does the appendix exist?

Many of the so-called useless features of the body have been found with time to serve a purpose. It just took a while to discover these purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix#Possible_secondary_functions

Of course, instead of trying to find out the purpose, an evolutionist would seize it as evidence of evolution instead. This is a case of science being perverted by ideological bias or wrong assumptions.


We know from experience that it is likely that a person left behind a watch on the beach and that humans built the pyramids because we see humans erect buildings on a regular basis, and we see that people wear watches. The analogy is flawed because we have never seen god create anything. Babies are, for example, born via their mothers. We certainly don't see them get created by an invisible hand.

We know from experience that something which has features indicating a design indicates that somebody designed them. I am not saying design in the universe is absolute proof of a creator - after all, it may just be that there are an infinite number of universes and our improbably, perfectly designed universe is a freak occurrence among them.

I was merely saying that design is evidence of a designer. However, there is so much design in the universe, far more complex and fine-tuned than the pyramids or a watch, that it is effectively proof of a designer. But then, there is the ad hoc multiverse hypothesis, so who knows...

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:20 AM
The article you linked to states that Hitler held Christian views.

I don't see it.


For a public institution to endorse a religion is akin to the government making a law respecting the establishment of one. In fact, the case you pointed me to (at: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&Vol=367&invol=488#F11) endorses this view, citing with approval another decision of the same court, Everson v Board of Education:

"The `establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor [367 U.S. 488, 493] the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect `a wall of separation between church and State.'"


The establishment clause refers to a particular denomination of Christianity, not Christianity itself. This is the interpretation of Thomas Jefferson, who was there when it was written. The purpose of it is to stop the federal government from favoring any one Christian denomination or church over other denominations and force people to adopt that denomination, as had been done in European countries, such as England (Church of England) and Roman Catholic countries and also in some of the American colonies which became states of the U.S. It does not mean that the government may not obseerve the Christian religion in it's duties. From the founding of the U.S. onward, the government did observe Christian religion. The writers of the Constitution said that it was based on Christianity.

Everson misinterpreted what Jefferson meant by "seperation of church and state". "Seperation of church and state" is not mentionned anywhere in the Constitution. It was coined by Jefferson in a letter to a concerned pastor, assuring him that the Constitution restricts the federal government from imposing any one Christian denomination on all citizens. The pastor's concern was that, as had happened in the seperate colonies, the new federal govenment may impose one denomination. That is the context in which Jefferson coined "seperation of church and state". Everson expanded it and the clause on religion in the Constitution to mean more than it was intended to by those who wrote it.

Note that the Constitution applies only to the federal government. It makes no restrictions on what laws individual state governments can make. Nothing in it forbids state governments from making laws about religion.


Making a public educational institution a religious one is to aid and endorse the religion in question, as well as indirectly levying a tax to support it, since public schools are taxpayer funded.

Public schools are provided by state governments, not federal governments. They are merely partly funded and regulated by the federal government, which is not a desirable situation in view of independence of states from federal control.


Churches and other religious bodies are free to, and often do, establish private educational institutions that teach their particular brand of theology in addition to secular subjects. What they do not have is the right to take over the public sphere as well.

The U.S. as always been a nominally Christian nation. It was founded on Christian ideas. It does not legally impose the observance Christianity on individuals, but it can rightly incorporate Christianity into it's duties and activities. Non-Christians can like it or leave it. Nobody is forcing them to be one whether they do stay or leave. The whole idea of the U.S. is that government's role should be limited as far as possible. Therefore ideally there would be no government schools, which (being educators of our children) makes them liable to enormous government abuse. And most Christians probably would not like a government school to teach religion since, as with anything the government does, it could not be relied upon to do a good job of it and because not all Christians agree on doctrine.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:20 AM
The constitution, as you are no doubt aware, is higher law. It is supposed to be timeless and hence interpretation may change over time. Hence the broad framing of the text in all constitutions. The text, not the context, is what a court will look at. Indeed, it can be dangerous to look at context, because some things were debated that were not placed in the final document, and these can end up having unwarranted influence.

No law is "timeless". The U.S. Constitution was merely intended to leave the matter of law open. It's primary purpose was to restrict the powers of the federal government, not to impose laws on the people. It was based on the concept that rights come from God (which is why they are "inalienable') and therefore the role of government is not to either give men rights or take them away. Instead, the people restrict the government's rights.

Whatever was debated that didn't end up being included in the Constitution would therefore be of no relevance to interpreting the Constitution.


The fact is, the government does not limit itself to criminal law and never has. Such a system would be untenable. Contracts, for instance, could never be enforced, and there would be no civil duty of care. Even if the government were to limit its powers to criminal law, why should the vote lie only with white men, if it's all the same? Why not limit votes to, say, non-white women? White men shouldn't mind, since everyone's interests ought to be the same.By criminal laws I meant laws which protect liberty and property. Contract laws and duty of care would come under that.

I did not say that only white males should vote. I was merely explaining that the issue of sufferage is not important in a free society, since the U.S. government's powers, and therefore it's effects on any particular group or class, are are supposed to be restricted. Today of course they are not, and all manner of group and class are fighting each other for government intervention on their behalf and not on others.


Except that even in criminal law, everyone's interests are not the same. women, for instance, are generally the victims of sex offences, while men are usually the perpetrators. It is in the male interest, then, to decriminalise rape.Sex offenders are usually male, but only a majority of men are sex offenders. For centuries women did not have the vote and rape was a punishable crime. And all men do not want to be raped by women (or other men), no matter often women do it. I certainly don't wish to be held down and raped by an ugly, obese woman, even if it's just once in my life. Women are all some man's daughter, sister, wife, niece, employee or good friend - and men don't want those women to be raped. Even in the absence of these reasons, to say that it is in the interests of men to decriminalise rape is to imply that men don't care about women in general.


I don't blame the religion for what Hitler did, though you do not appear to extend the same logic to lack of belief. I think that Hitler himself is responsible for his actions, as are the people who allowed it to happen. In arguing that Hitler was Catholic, my intent was to expose your argument that atheism caused the Holocaust as the fallacy it is. Religion or the lack thereof did not cause the Holocaust. Evil people did.Yes, evil people did. But belief plays a part in how evil somebody is. We all base our actions upon what logically follows from our beliefs. Atheism won't make a person evil, at least not as evil as Hitler, but there is not ratonal basis in atheism for a definite morality. In fact, many leading atheists have logically argued against it, on the basis of central atheist assumptions.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:21 AM
All you're doing is making things up and repeating the anti-semitic lie that Jews control everything. The Jews did not hold control of the banks when Hitler came to power. The German government took over the major banks in 1931 as a result of the economic crisis. The Jews were not outsiders in Germany. Many Jewish families had been living in Germany for hundreds of years. Many Jews served in the German Army during World War I.

However powerful Jews were in Germany, German's were led to believe that Jews controlled their country's institutions and held all the wealth. Jack's original point was that the excuses (real or fabricated) that the Nazi's used to persecute Jews were not religious ones.

It's not anti-semitic to claim Jews held a lot of influence in Germany, it is only anti-semitic to hate them for it undeservedly.

BTW the Nazi propaganda about the privileged Jewish class and the German oppressed class in Germany is a parallel with today's left-wing ideology of white males being a priveleged class and women, blacks etc. being oppressed classes. The left characterise white males in such a way as to justify vilifying them in the same manner that the Nazi's characterised Jews.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:22 AM
You said atheists have a preference for certain moral systems. How do you know this?

We can't generalise about what moral system atheism will lead to for all individuals but it is obvious that most atheists and non-theists have a different set of morals to most theists.



Here's a good definition of the principle of natural selection:

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/lenski.html

"The principle of natural selection was discovered by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and it is the process by which organisms become adapted to their environments. Selection occurs when some individual organisms have genes that encode physical or behavioral features that allow them to better harvest resources, avoid predators, and such relative to other individuals that do not carry the same genes. The individuals that have these useful features will tend to leave more offspring than other individuals, so the responsible genes will become more common over time, leading the population as a whole to become better adapted."

Natural selection is not evolution. Natural selection is merely the process by which Darwin thought evolution happens. Natural selection based on genetic variations does not lead to new and more complex species, it merely selects from the existing genetic information in the population. Study of genes (Mendel's discoveries were not publicised until after Darwin's death) has revealed that natural selection reduces genetic variety within the population and that resulting individual organisms have less genetic information, not more, than their ancestors. Natural selection filters genetic information. It does not create genetically more complex organisms.

This is why evolutionists base their idea of natural selection on genetic mutations and not normal genetic variation. However most mutations are not beneficial and tend to be selected out. Mutations which are beneficial in some way also are less beneficial in other ways - they are not beneficial overall, even though particular conditions may select them for survival.

An example is sickle-cell trait in Negroes. This gives them resistance to malaria but also often results in sickle-cell anemia. However, some studies have shown that the anemia is due to a deficiency in the diet of Negroes who migrated out of Africa and adopted western diets and also to places in Africa where the local foods were deficient in those nutrients.

Darwin did not discover natural selection - that quote is wrong. The idea of natural selection had been around for centuries, since ancient times, and the notion that it occurs due to environmental pressures was first put forward by zoologist Edward Blythe 25 years before the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species". Blythe was a creationist.


There is nothing in the Theory of Evolution that states that species must evolve. There are many species that have existed millions of years while going through little or no change.

Maybe not but it is a flaw in the theory that (by the evolutionist scenario) many organisms have not changed over millions of years while others have evolved through many different species. A number of times species have been found living which evolutionists previously stated had been supplanted very early in the evolutionary time scale.

An example of this is the coelecanth fish, which was previously found only in fossil record and later discovered living in some regions. Evolutionists had previously said that the coelacanth was a "missing link" between fish and tetrapods and that their fins were used to walk on the ocean floor. They are not.

{quote]Social darwinism basically means society shouldn't help the sick and poor, and they should be left to fend for themselves. This will ensure that only the fittest in society will survive and reproduce. Darwin called this evil:

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."[/quote]

If he really did think that, he was in the minority - his followers did not. Racist ideas based on evolution were common among evolutionists from Darwin's time on.


Do you know anything at all about the Crusades and Inquisition? They were entirely about religion.

It is true that it was a war between the Christian and Muslim worlds. The Muslims twice almost overran Europe and the Middle-Eastern and other lands the Muslims had previously occupied through conquest were previously Christian, as a result of evangelisation from Christ's time througout the Roman Empire, which led to Christianity being made the state relition of the empire under Emperor Constantine. Christians (along with Jews and people of other faiths) were persecuted in Muslim lands. For all of these reasons the Christian countries of Europe felt justified in taking this territory back. It was apparent that Christian countries could not co-exist with Islam. That is not anything to do with the Christian religion, it was due to the militant nature of Islam.


You are twisting what I said. I never said Hitler "attempted to annihilate the Jews because of the murder of Jesus 1960 years ago". My point was that the Christian Church had been teaching that Jews were evil for more than a thousand years before Hitler lived. Hitler didn't just wake up one day and decide Jews were evil. He lived in an environment where that view was common, which is where he picked up that idea.

It's true that anti-semintism had been around in Europe for centuries, But that does not mean that if someone is anti-semitic he is a Christian. Many of the motives for antisemitism were not to do with religion and most of those which Hitler used were not. Many atheists have been antisemitic.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:22 AM
To claim atheists have a preference for certain moral systems, yes he would.

We can't generalise and say all atheists have one particular set of morals, but it's obvious that atheists do generally have different morals to most theists.


You're repeating typical creationists lies and misinformation to try and discredit evolution. From:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/darwin_nazism.htm

Darwin's View of Race

In contrast to the existing views on race, Darwin showed that:

* People cannot be classified as different species
* All races are related and have a common ancestry
* All people come from "savage" origins
* The different races have much more in common than was widely believed
* The mental capabilities of all races are virtually the same and there is greater variation within races than between races
* Different races of people can interbreed and there is no concern for ill effects
* Culture, not biology, accounted for the greatest differences between the races
* Races are not distinct, but rather they blend together


None of the above points actually preclude racism - depending on exactly how they are to be interpreted. Darwin of course knew that all races had savage origins but he believed that only whites had developed to the degree where they were able to progress and other races were persisting relics of the previous stage.


One issue that is commonly misunderstood about Darwin is the full title of his most famous book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. It is important to note here that "race" was a term that was more often used to discuss plants and animals at this point in history than it was to describe people. In fact, Darwin avoided much discussion of people in The Origin of Species and only used the word "race" a few times, in each of these cases referring to plants or animals, as in the example below.

Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil (in which case, however, some effect would have to be attributed to the direct action of the poor soil), that they would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal stock.
- The Origin of Species; Charles Darwin, 1858

Yet race was also used to classify humans. Note that he does distinguish between "wild aboriginal stock" or "ancestral forms", to which more progressive stock would regress over many generations. This is not saying that advanced stock and "aboriginal" stock have the same traits, it is saying that advanced stock would regress back to aboriginal stock through a regressive evolutionary response to environment.

Ironically the school text which was the subject of the Scopes trial had an explicitly racist passage in it, stating the main racial categories and saying that the white race is the most highly evolved. I also have an artistic anatomy book published in 1920 which describes the white race as more highly evolved. It was a common belief in those days, and somehow - somehow - it came from Darwinism. It would be very strange if Darwin were an exception. The fruit never falls far from the tree.


It is often pointed out that Darwin frequently used the term "savages" when discussing the tribal people whom he wrote about. In his use of the term savages, however, Darwin was simply using the standard lexicon of his time; it was a term that everyone, from Popes to Presidents, used. It must also be remembered, of course, that the differences between different groups of people were really very extraordinary until basically the past 75 to 50 years. Many of the groups that Europeans came into contact with practiced cannibalism, self-mutilation, human sacrifice, infanticide, had no writing, and/or were very hostile towards people outside of their own family or tribe. Most also had no technology beyond stone tools. These are real substantial differences that were being encountered by many Europeans for the first time. They were seeking explanations for why this was the case.

True; and at first Darwin did have hopes that the Feugians could be civilised, but after one of the Feugians who had lived in England for a number of years regressed to his native customs on returning to his own people, Darwin changed his mind.


Darwin traveled around the world on the HMS Beagle to some of the most remote and uncivilized places on the planet. Unlike his other European contemporaries, however, he lived among the tribal people that he came into contact with as an equal and observed their customs, instead of seeking to be treated like a superior.

Darwin's most extensive discussion of human race was put forward in his 1871 book The Descent of Man. This book has been greatly misused by opponents of Darwin because in The Descent of Man Darwin assesses all of the various ideas about race that existed at the time, presenting many ideas of other people, which he later goes on to refute. In The Descent of Man Darwin takes questions such as "Are people composed of different species?" and he puts forwards all of the arguments for each position. He puts forward the evidence and claims of those who argued in favor of the position that humans are in fact separate species, and then he puts forward his own position, which is that humans are all one species. It is quite easy, however, to takes quotes from The Descent of Man out of context and make it appear that Darwin held positions which were in fact the exact opposite of his beliefs, and this is what many opponents of Darwin have done.

I don't know how competent I am to interpret Darwin's writings faithfully, but evolutionist biographers say that he certainly did have racist ideas, which had become common amongst intellectuals by the time Descent was published.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:23 AM
Ding Ding! Good point! The "You can't prove god does NOT exist, so therefore he does and I win," argument is probably the silliest one of all. That and the "It takes more 'faith' to be an atheist than a theist," Gotta love those!! I am an atheist and is not hard for me dismiss god, just as christians dismiss allah or zeus. Nobody can "prove" leprechauns and and freddy krueger don't exist, so is that a good basis for believing?? The burden of "proof" is not on an atheist, it would be on the theist. Just as the burden of proof would be on me if I claimed spaghetti monsters were real. I don't "win" the argument because you can't disprove my spaghetti monster and its not my fault you can't "see" his works or "feel" his presence. The "Nuh uh, you can't prove it atheist so therefore you have faith too," argument always gets on my damn nerves. Nobody says you have to faith to dismiss unicorns, or not believing in unicorns is a religion. Atheism and religion are two entirely different things.

I would probably not believe you if you told me fairies lived in your garden, but neither would I believe that there are not. I would certainly not label myself an "a-fairy-ist" just because someone else claimed fairies do exist. But then, I have not yet heard any good arguments or evidence for why fairies do exist. As far as I know they are agreed by most people to be entirely fictional, the subjects of stories for children. Except for some hippy new-age types and dizzy arts chicks, but they are never serious about anything.

Point is, I wouldn't adopt a stance or style my beliefs based on an imagining in somebody else's head. I would simply say I don't have any reason to believe fairies exists and carry on with my life as if they don't, rather than be looking for fairies in my own garden. I'm not going to try to tell them fairies definitely don't exist because I don't know really whether they do or not. Some people believe in extraterrestrials - there's a whole NASA department devoted to looking for them, there have been thousands of books claiming they exist. So why not fairies?

This is why I single out atheism as properly being a positive belief that there is no God. If a person simply doesn't know or care if there is a God, they have no business labeling themselves with any kind of stance or criticising people who do have an opinion and do care. If they don't care, they should not argue as if they do care. If they don't know, they should not argue as if they do know. If they do think they know for sure, then they should give positive evidence and reasons. But if they just want to class God with fairies and unicorns, they should STFU, get on with things which actually matter and leave theists to their own private "delusion". If some theists come at you to try to convert you, just say you don't believe in it and they will probably go away.


Also, Hopper seemed to point out that atheists just don't accept certain 'evidence' of a god, that we clearly all have been shown. What is this evidence I wonder?? The fact that there are beautiful things in nature is not evidence. The fact that miracles happen is not evidence. The fact that some things are unknown is not evidence. There were plenty of things we didn't know a hundred years ago, that we understand now. There are things we once thought were true, that we know are not fact now. I didn't say beauty is the evidence of a creator, but design. Not the same. Nor was I talking about things which are merely unexplained - they are areas for scientific investigation.


You can argue we were designed, but really fucked up things happen in design too. You can be born without skin, and there are hosts of other rare diseases that people are born with that are disfiguring and extremely painful. The design doesn't always work out. When it doesn't, the excuse of it just being "meant to be," is thrown out. The design idea only works out when the design is okay or "slightly flawed." Perhaps god hit the snooze button too many times when a baby is born without skin. Because fucked up shit does happen is not the core basis of my disbelief, just as good things that happen is not the core basis of a theist belief. True, there are faults in nature. The Bible says that this was not originally so - there was a "fall" of man and nature after Adam and Eve disobeyed. Originally nature was created "very good". You don't have to believe it but the point is the Bible says the universe originally was a perfect design. If you had read the Bible, you would know that - it's in the first two chapters. If you haven't read it, you shouldn't be criticising it.

Whatever went wrong, the fact remains that there is design in nature despite its faults. Just because a car is poorly designed and built or in poor repair, does not mean it has no design at all.


Perhaps we atheists are just suppossed to believe in delusions, I mean the stories of those who spoke directly or saw god, therefore he exists. I don't 'worship' science. I don't know very much about big bang or evolution, other than its basic principles. I reject theism because it doesn't make sense, it sounds insane, and the core belief of every xian and islamic faith is cruel, and promotes an "I'm better than you," entitlement. I just use my own 'common sense' to come to the conclusion that god isn't real. I don't need anyone or anything to 'worship' to reach this conclusion.Atheists are not expected to believe in the existence of God just because other people reported that they spoke to Him. Theologians have made good arguments from observations of nature, philosophy and archaeology that the Bible is correct. Of course, atheists have made arguments that it is not. To find out who is right, it is important to give both a hearing. More often we are fed the atheist arguments in the media and arguments from theists are not reported )probably on the assumption that God is a delusion). You hear about every Richard Dawkins book when it is released but I don't recall the last time the mass media reported the release of a theist book dealing with the same topic.

You don't remember the first two chapters of Genesis, but you are sure the Bible contains lots of cruelty? Of course every belief encourages followers of it to think they are "better" than others, in the sense that they have the truth and others don't. Clearly you believe you have that entitlement, despite how politely you say it or how tolerant you are. Anyway, even if the Bible were cruel, it would not make it wrong. Many things we know from experience are real are also cruel.

Common sense tells us the earth is flat and the sun goes around the earth.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:24 AM
No, people have known about breeding, which improves a species, for thousands of years before Darwin.

Breeding improves a species, but breeding is not natural selection. Breeders of animals and plants know that it is very difficult, due to all of the various and often conflicting factors and aims, and at some point they hit a wall beyond which no improvements can be made. Breeders, even over centuries, have certainly not produced new species. Dogs have always been dogs, cows have always been cows, horses have always bee horses, wheat has always been wheat. It is also now well known that attempts to breed better animals actually produces animals prone to crippling and fatal diseases.

Sorry, no supermen.


By Darwin's theory, I meant the Theory of Evolution. By the time Hitler came to power, it was widely accepted in the scientific community that traits were passed through genes, not blood.


I don't know where you got the idea that Nazis believed that evolution occurred through blood rather than genes. In any case. Darwin did not know about genes and evolutionists found that evolution does not occur through normal genetic variation, which is what eugenics is based on. Evolutionists have for a long time believed that evolution occurs via genetic mutations, which are genetic mis-copies, mistakes, not normal genetic heredity.

The important fact is that the Nazis based their ideas on evolution, not on sensible ideas of heredity or any other notion.


Here's a quote from one of Hitlers' speeches:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

This was a public speech. It's already been pointed out here that Hitler said in public whatever was expedient. Much of Germany was Christian, so he had to couch his anti-semitism in Christian-sounding language to make it more acceptable. For all I know, that speech was made in a church. To judge Hitler's religion from scraps of speeches like this is to ignore the motherload of private writings and conversations we know of today where he stated his opposition to Christianity.

It's like using Jimmy Carter's speeches to find out what he actually believed or intended to do. He was making one set of promises to one interest group and opposite promises to another interest group later in the same day. Jimmy said whatever it took to get elected. That's what all politicians do to some extent, and that is what Hitler was - a politician. It's stupid - stupid - stupid to judge a politician just from his speeches.


Calling people "sons of the devil" isn't judging them?

You know Jesus wasn't supposed to be a normal man, right? The Bible says He was God. God is perfect, so He is allowed to judge. It is men God told not to judge, because of their limited knowledge, intellect, judgement and integrity. Jesus was making a statement of fact - man is born with an evil nature.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:26 AM
I don't think anyone was trying to bash catholics, but from what I've read you don't even like catholics. You disagree with a lot of the core principals and disagree with other things taken directly from the bible. You disagree about women not being able to speak out in church, abortion, and other things. You have simply made up your own religion based on some catholic principles. I mean it clearly says in the bible that women are not to be in control and never speak out in church yet you disagree. Just doesn't make any sense to me and why you identify yourself as catholic is a bit baffling. Like someone else said, you sound like the vegetarian who only eats chicken.

She could easily be a Christian independently of the Catholic Church if it was just some of their traditions she didn't agree with. (The ones she is disagreeing with are not core beliefs.) She could join a different church or none at all if she didn't agree with any of them. It seems she just wants the big Catholic wedding.

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:31 AM
Can you please stop repeating these anti-semitic lies? Jews were not doing very nicely after Word War I. Many German Jews suffered just like everyone else after World War I. Not all Jews were rich and powerful. Many weren't. There were plenty of rich and powerful Christians in Germany. Why weren't they targeted? Jews are not a different race or ethnicity.

"That in Germany it was the Jew who became the enemy till his place was taken by the "plutocracies" was no less a result of the anti-capitalist resentment on which the whole movement was based than the selection of the Kulaks in Russia. In Germany and Austria the Jew had come to be regarded as the representativee of capitalism because a traditional dislike of large classes of the population for commercial pursuits had left these more readily accessible to a group that was practically excluded from the more highly esteemed occupations. It is the old story of the alien race being admitted only to the less respected trades and then being hated still more for practising them. The fact that German anti-semitism and anti-capitalism spring from the same root is of great importance for the understanding of what has happened there, but this is rarely grasped by foreign obeservers."

F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom. 1944.

Hayek's book is a criticism of socialism, specifically including Nazism (national socialism) and fascism.



Again, I never said the Germans killed Jews to punish them for killing Jesus. Why do you continue to argue against this?

Then why else do you think a Catholic would hate Jews?

Hopper
08-13-2010, 02:31 AM
No they don't. Jellyfish have existed for hundreds of millions of years and have gone through little change. There are fossils of Jellyfish that existed 500 million years ago, and they were basically the same as they are today.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/071030-oldest-jellyfish.html

So their environment stayed the same for that long, while other organisms evolved through many changes?


Darwin was doing nothing more than explaining how different species came into being. He was not advocating social policies. Because certain things happen in nature doesn't make it right for humans to behave that way.



Why must you twist and distort everything I say? The Crusades were Christians and Muslims fighting over who controlled the Holy Land. How is that not about religion? The Inquisition was about forcing people to follow the Catholic Religion. How is that not about religion?

The Crusades were about the fact that Islam was bent on conquering, looting, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, kidnapping and oppressing the people of Christian Europe. That's not just about religion. The Inquisition was also politically motivated - it wasn't just over the private religion of individuals, it was also over their land, which became available after they were killed.


I never said Christianity is the only cause of anti-semitism, only that the Christian Church inspired hatred towards Jews. That is a fact. Here's what Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism had to say about Jews:

He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it.

But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)

Are you going to deny these statements are anti-semitic?

It is true that those quotes could inspire hatred toward Jews. But they were religious differences, not to do with race. Converted Jews were probably okay with Luther. So yes they were religiously motivated, but that means they were not about race. More correctly Luther was anti-Judaism, not anti-semitic. Hitler's anti-semitism was about race, not religion.

flickad
08-13-2010, 05:31 AM
Does it seem to you like Hitler believed in most of the important tenets of Catholicism? Seems to me like the only thing he might agree with is it's treatment Jews at many points in history. But as I have pointed out, Stalin, who definitely was an atheist (he became one in seminary), also wanted to destroy the Jews. In fact, the reason Stalin wanted to destroy them is that he was an atheist and Judaism is a religion.



Atheism does lead to totalitarian ideology. Look at Marx. Most leading soclialists are atheists. But the reason I mentioned atheist dictators was merely that somebody else here blamed religion for oppression. Yes the responsibility is with the perpetrator but how did that person come to be the perpetrator? He was born oppressive? No, he adopted a personal belief system which justified it.

Both theist or atheist belief systems have been employed for this but the question then is: Does the person's belief system genuinely logically follow from his theism or atheism - is it truly consistent with either of them or has it been perverted?


There are more atheists who do not commit genocide then there are those who do. Likewise with believers. Atheism is simply lack of belief in a deity and does not lead to totalitarian ideology. Not all totalitarians were atheists and not all atheists are totalitarians. In fact, the majority are not.

Hitler professed to have Christian beliefs. Whether he behaved in a Christian manner or not, he was not an atheist by his own admission.

As for the rest of what you've said, to be honest, I have better things to do than deal with two pages of your arguments. So I'm going to skip going into the nitty gritty. But I will say that I think your logic is flawed for a number of reasons. Perhaps others will decide to deal with it, perhaps not. Personally, I'd rather read a novel.

I'll add that you don't appear to realise that freedom not to believe is a valid exercise of one's freedom of religion. Theists seem to demand respect for their own beliefs but not extend it to those who think differently. I don't think I've ever told a theist that their views are illogical (despite thinking that they are) or that they are precursors to genocide. To get respect, learn to give it.

Kellydancer
08-13-2010, 10:54 AM
She could easily be a Christian independently of the Catholic Church if it was just some of their traditions she didn't agree with. (The ones she is disagreeing with are not core beliefs.) She could join a different church or none at all if she didn't agree with any of them. It seems she just wants the big Catholic wedding.

Not true at all. Yes I want the wedding, but I support many beliefs. For instance in the Catholic Church a big part is they believe in healthcare and education for all. That I support. I support Lent and the praying to saints. I believe the Pope is the head of the church, though I don't especially like this pope (Liked John Paul II better). I believe in how the church is against divorce and how they feel marriages are forever (I do too).

Trem
08-13-2010, 11:06 AM
This is just freaking insanity, at least with Kelly i can argue semi-rationally.

jack0177057
08-13-2010, 11:17 AM
There is a huge difference between LEARNING and FORCED TO PARTICIPATE.

Concerning public schools - There is also a huge difference between being FORCED TO PARTICIPATE and PROHIBITING ALL RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION - which violates the freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association protected by our Constitution.

In September of 1995, the The Joint Statement of Current Law was sent to all public school districts in the United States. It was a collaborative document undersigned by over 30 religious and civil rights groups that outlined the religious rights of students in the public schools and this document formed the basis of President Clinton's guidelines for religious expression in the public schools:

Religion In The Public Schools: A Joint Statement Of Current Law

The Constitution permits much private religious activity in and about the public schools. Unfortunately, this aspect of constitutional law is not as well known as it should be. Some say that the Supreme Court has declared the public chools "religion-free zones" or that the law is so murky that school officials cannot know what is legally permissible. The former claim is simply wrong. And as to the latter, while there are some difficult issues, much has been settled. It is also unfortunately true that public school officials, due to their busy schedules, may not be as fully aware of this body of law as they could be. As a result, in some school districts some of these rights are not being observed.

The organizations whose names appear below span the ideological, religious and political spectrum. They nevertheless share a commitment both to the freedom of religious practice and to the separation of church and state such freedom requires. In that spirit, we offer this statement of consensus on current law as an aid to parents, educators and students.

Many of the organizations listed below are actively involved in litigation about religion in the schools. On some of the issues
discussed in this summary, some of the organizations have urged the courts to reach positions different than they did. Though there are signatories on both sides which have and will press for different constitutional treatments of some of the topics discussed below, they all agree that the following is an accurate statement of what the law currently is.

Student Prayers

1. Students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers so long as they are not disruptive. Because the Establishment Clause does not apply to purely private speech, students enjoy the right to read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, pray before tests, and discuss religion with other willing student listeners. In the classroom students have the right to pray quietly except when required to be actively engaged in school activities (e.g., students may not decide to pray just as a teacher calls on them). In informal settings, such as the cafeteria or in the halls, students may pray either audibly or silently, subject to the same rules of order as apply to other speech in these locations. However, the right to engage in voluntary prayer does not include, for example, the right to have a captive audience listen or to compel other students to participate.

Graduation Prayer and Baccalaureates

2. School officials may not mandate or organize prayer at graduation, nor may they organize a religious baccalaureate
ceremony. If the school generally rents out its facilities to private groups, it must rent them out on the same terms, and on a first-come first-served basis, to organizers of privately sponsored religious baccalaureate services, provided that the school does not extend preferential treatment to the baccalaureate ceremony and the school disclaims official endorsement of the program.

3. The courts have reached conflicting conclusions under the federal Constitution on student-initiated prayer at graduation.
Until the issue is authoritatively resolved, schools should ask their lawyers what rules apply in their area.

Official Participation or Encouragement of Religious Activity

4. Teachers and school administrators, when acting in those capacities, are representatives of the state, and, in those
capacities, are themselves prohibited from encouraging or soliciting student religious or anti-religious activity. Similarly,
when acting in their official capacities, teachers may not engage in religious activities with their students. However, teachers may engage in private religious activity in faculty lounges.

Teaching About Religion

5. Students may be taught about religion, but public schools may not teach religion. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said, "[i]t might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion, or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization." It would be difficult to teach art, music, literature and most social studies without considering religious influences.

The history of religion, comparative religion, the Bible (or other scripture)-as-literature (either as a separate course or within some other existing course), are all permissible public school subjects. It is both permissible and desirable to teach objectively about the role of religion in the history of the United States and other countries. One can teach that the Pilgrims came to this country with a particular religious vision, that Catholics and
others have been subject to persecution or that many of those participating in the abolitionist, women's suffrage and civil rights movements had religious motivations.

6. These same rules apply to the recurring controversy surrounding theories of evolution. Schools may teach about explanations of life on earth, including religious ones (such as "creationism"), in comparative religion or social studies classes. In science class, however, they may present only genuinely scientific critiques of, or evidence for, any explanation of life on earth, but not religious critiques (beliefs unverifiable by scientific methodology). Schools may not refuse to teach evolutionary theory in order to avoid giving offense to religion nor may they circumvent these rules by labeling as science an article of religious faith. Public schools must not teach as scientific fact or theory any religious doctrine, including "creationism," although any genuinely scientific evidence for or against any explanation of life may be taught.
Just as they may neither advance nor inhibit any religious doctrine, teachers should not ridicule, for example, a student's
religious explanation for life on earth.

Student Assignments and Religion

7. Students may express their religious beliefs in the form of reports, homework and artwork, and such expressions are constitutionally protected. Teachers may not reject or correct such submissions simply because they include a religious symbol or address religious themes. Likewise, teachers may not require students to modify, include or excise religious views in their assignments, if germane. These assignments should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance, relevance, appearance and grammar.

8. Somewhat more problematic from a legal point of view are other public expressions of religious views in the classroom.
Unfortunately for school officials, there are traps on either side of this issue, and it is possible that litigation will result no matter what course is taken. It is easier to describe the settled cases than to state clear rules of law. Schools must carefully steer between the claims of student speakers who assert a right to express themselves on religious subjects and the asserted rights of student listeners to be free of unwelcome religious persuasion in a public school classroom.

a. Religious or anti-religious remarks made in the ordinary course of classroom discussion or student presentations are permissible and constitute a protected right. If in a sex education class a student remarks that abortion
should be illegal because God has prohibited it, a teacher should not silence the remark, ridicule it, rule it out of
bounds or endorse it, any more than a teacher may silence a student's religiously-based comment in favor of
choice.

b. If a class assignment calls for an oral presentation on a subject of the student's choosing, and, for example, the
student responds by conducting a religious service, the school has the right -- as well as the duty -- to prevent
itself from being used as a church. Other students are not voluntarily in attendance and cannot be forced to become
an unwilling congregation.

c. Teachers may rule out-of-order religious remarks that are irrelevant to the subject at hand. In a discussion of
Hamlet's sanity, for example, a student may not interject views on creationism.

Distribution of Religious Literature

9. Students have the right to distribute religious literature to their schoolmates, subject to those reasonable time, place, and manner or other constitutionally-acceptable restrictions imposed on the distribution of all non-school literature. Thus, a school may confine distribution of all literature to a particular table at particular times. It may not single out religious literature for burdensome regulation.

10. Outsiders may not be given access to the classroom to distribute religious or anti-religious literature. No court has yet considered whether, if all other community groups are permitted to distribute literature in common areas of public schools, religious groups must be allowed to do so on equal terms subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions.

"See You at the Pole"

11. Student participation in before- or after-school events, such as "see you at the pole," is permissible. School officials, acting in an official capacity, may neither discourage nor encourage participation in such an event.

Religious Persuasion Versus Religious Harassment

12. Students have the right to speak to, and attempt to persuade, their peers about religious topics just as they do with regard to political topics. But school officials should intercede to stop student religious speech if it turns into religious harassment aimed at a student or a small group of students. While it is constitutionally permissible for a student to approach another and issue an invitation to attend church, repeated invitations in the face of a request to stop constitute harassment. Where this line is to be drawn in particular cases will depend on the age of the students and other circumstances.

Equal Access Act

13. Student religious clubs in secondary schools must be permitted to meet and to have equal access to campus media to announce their meetings, if a school receives federal funds and permits any student noncurricular club to meet during non-instructional time. This is the command of the Equal Access Act. A non-curricular club is any club not related directly to a subject taught or soon-to-be taught in the school. Although schools have the right to ban all non-curriculum clubs, they may not dodge the law's requirement by the expedient of declaring all clubs curriculum-related. On the other hand, teachers may not actively participate in club activities and "non-school persons" may not control or regularly attend club meeting.

The Act's constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court, rejecting claims that the Act violates the Establishment
Clause. The Act's requirements are described in more detail in The Equal Access Act and the Public Schools: Questions and
Answers on the Equal Access Act*, a pamphlet published by a broad spectrum of religious and civil liberties groups.

Religious Holidays

14. Generally, public schools may teach about religious holidays, and may celebrate the secular aspects of the holiday and objectively teach about their religious aspects. They may not observe the holidays as religious events. Schools should generally excuse students who do not wish to participate in holiday events. Those interested in further details should see Religious Holidays in the Public Schools: Questions and Answers*, a pamphlet published by a broad spectrum of religious and civil liberties groups.

Excusal From Religiously-Objectionable Lessons

15. Schools enjoy substantial discretion to excuse individual students from lessons which are objectionable to that student or to his or her parent on the basis of religion. Schools can exercise that authority in ways which would defuse many conflicts over curriculum content. If it is proved that particular lessons substantially burden a student's free exercise of religion and if
the school cannot prove a compelling interest in requiring attendance the school would be legally required to excuse the
student.

Teaching Values

16. Schools may teach civic virtues, including honesty, good citizenship, sportsmanship, courage, respect for the rights and
freedoms of others, respect for persons and their property, civility, the dual virtues of moral conviction and tolerance and
hard work. Subject to whatever rights of excusal exist (see #15 above) under the federal Constitution and state law, schools may teach sexual abstinence and contraception; whether and how schools teach these sensitive subjects is a matter of educational policy. However, these may not be taught as religious tenets. The mere fact that most, if not all, religions also teach these values does not make it unlawful to teach them.

Student Garb

17. Religious messages on T-shirts and the like may not be singled out for suppression. Students may wear religious attire, such as yarmulkes and head scarves, and they may not be forced to wear gym clothes that they regard, on religious grounds, as immodest.

Released Time

18. Schools have the discretion to dismiss students to off-premises religious instruction, provided that schools do not encourage or discourage participation or penalize those who do not attend.=20 Schools may not allow religious instruction by outsiders on premises during the school day.

Greel
08-13-2010, 11:22 AM
[quote=Hopper;1970441]Without a belief in God, there is no basis for moral absolutes.



All that is needed to form a moral code is a sense of how one wants the to world to be. With that (ever developing awareness), one does what one can to live his or her part toward making it real.

I recognize a need to have answers regarding the big questions in life. But why do we accept that any god is full of love when it is so miserably insecure that it demands that its followers constantly prove their "love" of the god. Most, if not all, of us have experienced personal relationships with a person who had security issues. The person just could not feel that the partner loved him or her and made life together impossible. If you experienced this sort of person, didn’t you just want to kick the other person and be done with him or her?

So, why do people flock to gods that forever need proof? I will, for the moment, forget that a god (being omnipotent omnipresent, omniscient) really ought to just know.

I really think that people create the gods that they need to feel ok about how they interact with the rest of the world.

Dirty Ernie
08-13-2010, 03:55 PM
This is just freaking insanity, at least with Kelly i can argue semi-rationally.

Hopper hasn't just drank the Kool-Aid, he's swimming in it (more like dog-paddling-swimming is a skill).

"...We can't generalise and say all atheists have one particular set of morals, but it's obvious that atheists do generally have different morals to most theists..."

This is true. My morals are nothing like those of the God-fearing theistic jihadists and abortion clinic bombers. Or Warren Jeffs, or Branch Davidians, or Tom Cruise for that matter.

eagle2
08-13-2010, 07:48 PM
Breeding improves a species, but breeding is not natural selection. Breeders of animals and plants know that it is very difficult, due to all of the various and often conflicting factors and aims, and at some point they hit a wall beyond which no improvements can be made. Breeders, even over centuries, have certainly not produced new species. Dogs have always been dogs, cows have always been cows, horses have always bee horses, wheat has always been wheat. It is also now well known that attempts to breed better animals actually produces animals prone to crippling and fatal diseases.

Sorry, no supermen.



You are distorting what I said. I never said breeding is natural selection or that breeders produced new species.




I don't know where you got the idea that Nazis believed that evolution occurred through blood rather than genes. In any case. Darwin did not know about genes and evolutionists found that evolution does not occur through normal genetic variation, which is what eugenics is based on. Evolutionists have for a long time believed that evolution occurs via genetic mutations, which are genetic mis-copies, mistakes, not normal genetic heredity.


Again you are twisting and distorting what I said. I said that the Nazis believed traits were passed through blood, not evolution. I got my idea from Hitler's writings. Here's what Hitler said in Mein Kampf:

"It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture."




The important fact is that the Nazis based their ideas on evolution, not on sensible ideas of heredity or any other notion.


No they didn't. Please show me where Hitler ever mentioned evolution or Darwin.




You know Jesus wasn't supposed to be a normal man, right? The Bible says He was God. God is perfect, so He is allowed to judge. It is men God told not to judge, because of their limited knowledge, intellect, judgement and integrity. Jesus was making a statement of fact - man is born with an evil nature.

There's no proof that Jesus was anything other than a normal man, assuming he actually existed, whose followers invented stories attributing miracles to him.

eagle2
08-13-2010, 07:55 PM
We can't generalise and say all atheists have one particular set of morals, but it's obvious that atheists do generally have different morals to most theists.

No they don't. There are plenty of theists whose views are more similar to most atheists than other theists. There are plenty of theists who don't think there is anything wrong with contraception, homosexuality, sex before marriage. There are also plenty of theists who accept the facts of evolution rather than the fairy tales in the Bible.



None of the above points actually preclude racism - depending on exactly how they are to be interpreted. Darwin of course knew that all races had savage origins but he believed that only whites had developed to the degree where they were able to progress and other races were persisting relics of the previous stage.



Yet race was also used to classify humans. Note that he does distinguish between "wild aboriginal stock" or "ancestral forms", to which more progressive stock would regress over many generations. This is not saying that advanced stock and "aboriginal" stock have the same traits, it is saying that advanced stock would regress back to aboriginal stock through a regressive evolutionary response to environment.

Ironically the school text which was the subject of the Scopes trial had an explicitly racist passage in it, stating the main racial categories and saying that the white race is the most highly evolved. I also have an artistic anatomy book published in 1920 which describes the white race as more highly evolved. It was a common belief in those days, and somehow - somehow - it came from Darwinism. It would be very strange if Darwin were an exception. The fruit never falls far from the tree.



True; and at first Darwin did have hopes that the Feugians could be civilised, but after one of the Feugians who had lived in England for a number of years regressed to his native customs on returning to his own people, Darwin changed his mind.



I don't know how competent I am to interpret Darwin's writings faithfully, but evolutionist biographers say that he certainly did have racist ideas, which had become common amongst intellectuals by the time Descent was published.

Compared to most men of his time, and the views that were common back then, Darwin was far from racist. Even if he was a racist, it would have no relevance to the validity of his findings.

eagle2
08-13-2010, 08:04 PM
So their environment stayed the same for that long, while other organisms evolved through many changes?

Yes. Jellyfish have always been well suited to their environment. No predator has evolved that has threatened their existence and there has always been an adequate amount of prey to sustain the species.



The Crusades were about the fact that Islam was bent on conquering, looting, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, kidnapping and oppressing the people of Christian Europe. That's not just about religion. The Inquisition was also politically motivated - it wasn't just over the private religion of individuals, it was also over their land, which became available after they were killed.


No they weren't. The Crusades were about Muslim occupation of the Holy Land. Why would the Crusaders go to the Holy Land to fight the Muslims if it was about what they were doing in Europe.



It is true that those quotes could inspire hatred toward Jews. But they were religious differences, not to do with race. Converted Jews were probably okay with Luther. So yes they were religiously motivated, but that means they were not about race. More correctly Luther was anti-Judaism, not anti-semitic. Hitler's anti-semitism was about race, not religion.

No it wasn't. Jews are NOT a separate race. There are white Jews, black Jews, and Asian Jews. If all Jews had converted to Christianity, nobody would have even paid attention to them.

Elvia
08-13-2010, 08:33 PM
^^^ I think what Hopper's saying is that from the Nazi's point of view it was about race. It doesn't matter whether Jews are actually separate race/ethnicity or not. The point is that that was what the Nazis thought. And it didn't matter in Nazi Germany if you were a practicing Jew or not. Even people who just had a Jewish grandparent and no other connection to Judaism were considered Jews.

eagle2
08-13-2010, 09:08 PM
but the hatred of the Jews stemmed from their religious beliefs. For over a thousand years, the Christian Church had been portraying the Jews as evil and demonic.

jack0177057
08-13-2010, 09:59 PM
^ That's just plain silly... Yes, there has been bigotry and racial, religious and cultural discrimination (not just with Jews, but with all "different" people), but to say "the Christian Church had been portraying the Jews as evil and demonic" is absurd. Jesus was a Jew. Mary was a Jew. Joseph was a Jew. The first disciples and apostles were all Jews.... In fact, for many years after the death of Christ only Jews could become Christians.

Again, you need to learn more about the Jewish culture and anti-semitism in general. The Jews were persecuted and mistreated long before the birth of Christ... ever heard of how Moses freed them from slavery in Egypt? They are a people with a very long history of persecution and suffering and didn't have a "home" until the State of Israel was created after WWII. But, on the positive side, their suffering gave them solidarity. Jews learned to be indepedent and watch each other's back. They help each other out (you can call it cronyism or you can call it solidarity) and they are very academic, intelligent, intellectually-oriented and industrious. Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, George Gershwin, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Golda Meir and Gertrude Stein were all prominent Jews.

They developed powerful banking systems, and we know that bankers get blamed for high interest rates, foreclosures, etc. They also excelled in art and culture and held powerful and influential positions in artistic institutions. Their politics is usually very liberal and this offends right wing conservatives. Simply put, their wealth, power and success generated a lot of envy in Germany and their culture and politics was "different". They were made the scapegoats for the financial problems and cultural decay of the working class poor. I have presented a compilation of anti-semitic texts to support this, but you still insist that religion was the main motivator for German anti-semitism, without any support.

eagle2
08-14-2010, 12:56 PM
Jack,

Are you completely ignorant of history? Again, I will post what Martin Luther, the founder of Christian Protestantism, had to say about the Jews:

He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments...

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)



However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it.

But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath.

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)

eagle2
08-14-2010, 12:59 PM
Jack,

Do you have the slightest bit of knowledge about what went on during the Crusades? Here's one link that explains:

http://www.jewishmag.com/70mag/tishabav/tishabav.htm

"On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II urged a crusade to liberate the Holy Land and Jerusalem from Muslim rule. The first group of crusaders gathered in France under the leadership of Godfrey of Boullion, who urged violence against the Jews as "revenge" for the Crucifixion. By January 1096, crusaders began attacking Jewish communities outside of the land of Israel, wreaking devastation and threatening death to those who would not submit to baptism. As the crusaders made their way into Germany, the Jews there faced the same horrors. Jewish communities along the Rhine River, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, were savagely attacked. Unleashing their hatred and fury against the Jews, the crusaders committed atrocities whose horrors are etched upon the annuls of martyrdom in Jewish history. Of the thousands of Jews offered the choice of baptism or death, the vast majority - over 10,000 - chose to die as martyrs. It was the crusader mission towards Jerusalem to fight the Moslems, which lead to these horrors. "

From the same link:

"At noon of that same day, with the sound of trumpets and shouts of encouragement, the crusaders forced their way into Jerusalem from the north, entering the city Jewish Quarter. As they streamed into the city, its panic stricken defenders and residents fled through the narrow streets. A massacre of the city's residents ensued. Tens of thousands of Muslims and Jews were slaughtered. Many of Jerusalem's Jews were burnt alive as they were forced into their synagogues, which were set aflame. Others desperately attempted to hide, but were hunted down and slaughtered. The few who survived were sold into slavery. "

Elvia
08-14-2010, 02:06 PM
but the hatred of the Jews stemmed from their religious beliefs. For over a thousand years, the Christian Church had been portraying the Jews as evil and demonic.

I don't know if that was the root of the issue. While I would say that's a big part of it and certainly fueled the fire, the way Jews have been treated is typical of displaced people. I think it had more to do with them being seen as foreigners.

eagle2
08-14-2010, 03:30 PM
But Jews had been living in Germany for over 1,000 years. There was little difference between non-religious Jews and other Germans. Perhaps I can see some of the very religious Jews that live in their own community and had their own customs as being foreign, but not the non-religious Jews that were very assimilated.

Elvia
08-14-2010, 03:37 PM
^^^ Yes but it's not like things were rosy for the Jews through out history in Europe before WWII. Yes, things had very much improved shortly before, but there was still a long history of mistreatment. It didn't just come out of nowhere, it was revived.