"Christian" Dad Whips Kids Over Changed Channel

[JohnStOnge]

Baldy and St. Wronge pulling out the Webster!

Joe, what dictionary are you going to use?

I didn't realize Blady had looked it up but the bottom line is that there was a question as to whether or not it can be accurate to call atheism and humanism "religions." And the objective answer is "yes." Both, if they are practiced with ardor and faith in their systems of outlooks, meet an accepted definition of "religion."

[D1B]

Baldy and St. Wronge pulling out the Webster!

Joe, what dictionary are you going to use?

I didn't realize Blady had looked it up but the bottom line is that there was a question as to whether or not it can be accurate to call atheism and humanism "religions." And the objective answer is "yes." Both, if they are practiced with ardor and faith in their systems of outlooks, meet an accepted definition of "religion."

I understand, but the definition of religion in this discussion is not so vague and open-ended.

According to your dictionary, anything can be a religion.

Atheism is absence of belief in god, nothing more. If you want to add further qualities to this, start another thread.

Baldy, I'm still waiting.

[Baldy]

Was Georgia not under Czarist rule Baldy? It was, and there was no need to correct anything. You needed an out, and you got into further trouble.

Of course it was, Dink, but you incorrectly claimed Stalin was from Russia, he wasn't. As I said, he was from Georgia. To put it in terms you might be able to understand...that would be similar to someone born and raised in Puerto Rico or Guam claiming they lived in the United States.

Here's a fair assessment:

``THE PLACE where we are standing," Pope Benedict XVI said last week, ``is a place of memory." He was standing at Auschwitz, but what he said and did there raised questions less about remembering than forgetting. Is the new pope prepared to carry forward his predecessors' revolutionary moral reckoning with Christianity's co-responsibility for the Holocaust, or does he intend to initiate a new era of denial? Similarly, does he intend to roll back the doctrinal revolution that has taken place in the church's view of the Jewish religion, reasserting the ``replacement theology" that was the ground of the religious anti-Judaism that morphed into racial anti-Semitism?

The question about the Holocaust has a special edge because Benedict is German, and it first surfaced during his visit to Cologne last August. In addressing an audience of Jews in that city's synagogue, the pope roundly condemned the Nazi genocide campaign. But then he defined the lethal Nazi anti-Semitism that spawned the genocide as having been ``born of neo-paganism." He made no mention of anti-Semitism's other parent, the long tradition of Christian contempt for Jews and the Jewish religion, which both fed the hatred of the perpetrators and justified the inaction of the bystanders. Little was made of the pope's omission of reference to such Christian responsibility, as if to give him time to make his position clearer.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editor ... holocaust/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Nazis would never have been able to do what they did if the roots of their anti-semitic beliefs were not rooted many centuries before. In the Roman Empire, in the name of Christianity, by the Romanians, in Poland and during the Russian Empire, European Jews have a long history of being subjected to religious hatred, persecutions as well as some brief times of tolerance.

Wikibooks

In an unprecedented gesture, Pope John Paul II on Sunday publicly asked God's forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages, including wrongs inflicted on Jews, women and minorities.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/675361.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Furthermore, Nazi propagandists exploited the long tradition of religious anti-Semitism in the Lutheran and Catholic churches. Jews were considered outcasts by both religious communities because of their refusal to convert to Christianity and for the charge of deicide in killing Christ. Martin Luther became an especially popular historical reference for Nazi propagandists who liberally quoted the religious reformer's incendiary pamphlet, "The Jews and Their Lies" (1543). Luther vented his rage against the Jews by drawing on old economic stereotypes depicting Jews as greedy moneylenders with an aversion to physical labor. The negative connotation of usury and lust for money, part of both Christian traditions, remained alive and well under the Third Reich. As vital as Jews were to the emerging market economy of Europe, they were still held as parasites and criminals. The social and economic power of anti-Semitic stereotypes like these was central to William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice (1596), which portrays the rejection and suffering of Shylock, the Jewish merchant. Under the Third Reich, the new anti-Semitism, steeped in the language of race biology and yet connected to traditional hatred for Jews in the marketplace and church, provided an even more powerful ideological justification for persecution of a distinct minority.



Read more: Holocaust - world, body, life, history, cause, time, person, human, The Road to Auschwitz, The Dynamics of Nazi Mass Murder http://www.deathreference.com/Gi-Ho/Hol ... z1Iqj9aZWg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are thousands. It's common knowlege that catholic and protestant ant-semitism was necessary for the holocaust.

You do get an A for effort, but you are so far off the mark it's becoming embarrassing to watch you flail in desperation.

I don't give a fuck what a pope says or what some college professor thinks. All I want is some brief reference from Nazi doctrine or even a minute statement from Hitler (that isn't Nazi propaganda) professing Christian principles....no matter how vague.

[D1B]

Was Georgia not under Czarist rule Baldy? It was, and there was no need to correct anything. You needed an out, and you got into further trouble.

Of course it was, Dink, but you incorrectly claimed Stalin was from Russia, he wasn't. As I said, he was from Georgia. To put it in terms you might be able to understand...that would be similar to someone born and raised in Puerto Rico or Guam claiming they lived in the United States.

Here's a fair assessment:









There are thousands. It's common knowlege that catholic and protestant ant-semitism was necessary for the holocaust.

You do get an A for effort, but you are so far off the mark it's becoming embarrassing to watch you flail in desperation.

I don't give a fuck what a pope says or what some college professor thinks. All I want is some brief reference from Nazi doctrine or even a minute statement from Hitler (that isn't Nazi propaganda) professing Christian principles....no matter how vague.

You level of desperation/dickheadedness is hilarious. Georgia Oh, and Nazi propaganda wont suffice.

Anyhoo, you ever read Mein Kampf?

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Adolf Hitler

[D1B]

Georgian crickets I hear.....

[Baldy]

Georgian crickets I hear.....

No, I hear the accent. They're Puerto Rican.

Still waiting for the explanation for the Nazi war crimes against Christian churches...

[Grizalltheway]

Georgian crickets I hear.....

No, I hear the accent. They're Puerto Rican.

Still waiting for the explanation for the Nazi war crimes against Christian churches...

The Church had power in Germany. If you're trying to run totalitarian regime, you don't exactly want competition.

[YoUDeeMan]

Non-objective moral systems had their run in the 20th century and Dostoevsky was proven correct. I'm not about to give it a second chance given the catastrophic outcomes we observed.

So Joe, we can expect some more "violence in the service of truth" from you and your followers? You know, because the "objective truth" make the ends justify the means.

"Violence in the service of truth"....how Stalinistic of the Church.

[D1B]

Georgian crickets I hear.....

No, I hear the accent. They're Puerto Rican.

Still waiting for the explanation for the Nazi war crimes against Christian churches...

Who cares? This has no bearing on the discussion. The catholic and protestant churches existed during and survived the war. In the catholic case, came out of it more powerful than ever.

Toodle loo, Baldy. Hope you learned a lesson or two. I'm off to Atheist Church.

[D1B]

No, I hear the accent. They're Puerto Rican.

Still waiting for the explanation for the Nazi war crimes against Christian churches...

The Church had power in Germany. If you're trying to run totalitarian regime, you don't exactly want competition.

They protected churches too.

[YoUDeeMan]

No, I hear the accent. They're Puerto Rican.

Still waiting for the explanation for the Nazi war crimes against Christian churches...

The Church had power in Germany. If you're trying to run totalitarian regime, you don't exactly want competition.

True, but true power hungry people use other people in power to eliminate and isolate others. They can't get to the top without help. After the balance tips, its "goodbye" to the remaining source of power.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (for a time).

Hitler and Stalin used the same tactics that the Church used...the same stuff that today's political parties use. A climate of fear is needed for whack jobs or top heavy religions to florish.

[Grizalltheway]

The Church had power in Germany. If you're trying to run totalitarian regime, you don't exactly want competition.

True, but true power hungry people use other people in power to eliminate and isolate others. They can't get to the top without help. After the balance tips, its "goodbye" to the remaining source of power.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (for a time).

Hitler and Stalin used the same tactics that the Church used...the same stuff that today's political parties use. A climate of fear is needed for whack jobs or top heavy religions to florish.

Agreed.

[D1B]

The Church had power in Germany. If you're trying to run totalitarian regime, you don't exactly want competition.

True, but true power hungry people use other people in power to eliminate and isolate others. They can't get to the top without help. After the balance tips, its "goodbye" to the remaining source of power.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (for a time).

Hitler and Stalin used the same tactics that the Church used...the same stuff that today's political parties use. A climate of fear is needed for whack jobs or top heavy religions to florish.

[89Hen]

Rrrrttt... Concordat

[Bronco]

Hitler was a prick...like all socialists

[JohnStOnge]

I understand, but the definition of religion in this discussion is not so vague and open-ended.

According to your dictionary, anything can be a religion.

Atheism is absence of belief in god, nothing more. If you want to add further qualities to this, start another thread.

You know, D, it really helps one's credibility when they just go ahead and admit they were wrong on a point they are shown to be wrong on that point.

Just admit that, yes, atheism can in at least some instances be accurately described as "religion" in that it meets an accepted definition of religion. Then you can say that what you're talking about is theistic religions...religion as defined as belief in diety... and argue about that.

On atheism, by the way: Back to a dictionary. One definition of "atheism" is, "the doctrine that there is no deity."
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) Now, that does mean there is an absence of belief in god. But it is also a positive assertion (of the negative). Check out the American Atheists' web site discussion on atheism at http://www.atheists.org/atheism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

To me, that clearly infers "religion" according to the definition I previously referenced. The set of principles outlined clearly go beyond just saying, "There is no god." The authors laid out a set of principles resulting from that. And many of the principles cannot be objecitvely sustained. It is clearly a doctorine...and the thought process behind is clearly a manifestation of the definition of religion, "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith."

I suppose one could say that the atheism isn't really the religion expressed at that web site. One could argue that it's really humanism and that it's some atheists who have adopted humanism. But it is awfully difficult to separate their doctorine that there is no diety from the religious principles expressed. It's an integral component of their belief system.

[JohnStOnge]

Otherwise, I just finally at least glanced at all the posts and it looks like the crux of the debate revolves around the assertion that, if only there were no theistic religions, we wouldn't have problems like dictatorships and child abuse or that they would have been less prevalent historically.

I can't believe anybody who contemplates human nature can believe that. Sure, I can see how theistic religion can facilitate it in some specific instances. Like the Divine Right of Kings thing. That was used for a long time. But that's different than saying that, if theistic religion had never arisen, we would never have had dictatorships or would have had fewer of them because people wouldn't have been conditioned to comply by theistic religion.

I don't know whehter we would have had more or less. But I can see that social animals typically are oranized according to what are essentially either dictatorships or oligarchys. I think that human beings are like that. I think that all you need to do is remember your days as a young schoolboy and recall how dominance patterns emerged. That wasn't because you and your schoolmates were conditioned by theistic religion to comply.

And I think there have obviously been circumstances in which theistic religion played an "anti" dictatorship role. There have also been times when it has played "anti bad thing" roles with respect to other "bad things" such as child abuse, slavery, etc. It has gone both ways at times.

Bottom line is if you were to take a bunch of infants and put them in an isolated environment then let them mature with no intervention or influence in terms of socialization...just make sure their physical needs for things like food and water are satisfied...by the time they reached adulthood you'd most likely have a "society" organized as essentially either a dictatorship or an oligarchy. I think the probable outcome would be that either one dominant male would rule with the aid of a cadre of secondary dominant males or you might have a few dominant males who shared dominance. Very unlikely that you'd have anything like a democracy where every member of the "society" would have a voice, certain unalienable rights, etc.

I also think it likely that you'd have what we'd call child abuse, rape, murder, and all sorts of other things go on whether the "society" developed something we'd view as "theistic religion" or not (and it probably wouldn't...at least not in one generation).

Of course this is another one of those things we can never know because nobody's going to conduct that kind of experiment. But that's what I'd expect.

[Cap'n Cat]

Howzabout we think about the kids here, boys?

[Vidav]

Never heard Hitchens use this line Joe. Provide a quote from him please with the source text. You're resorting to lying and now namecalling again. Nice smokescreen attempt too.

Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't lift this from Hitchens? He said precisely this in The God Delusion. You mean you didn't even read that.

http://lehmann.typepad.com/in_lehmanns_ ... n-sta.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Until 1917, millions of Russians had been told for…hundreds of years that the czar is the head of the church – which he was, the Russian Orthodox Church. That the leader of the country should be something a little more than human. Not a god, but a little more. He’s not divine, but a holy father.

If you’re Josef Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you don’t know how to exploit an inheritance like that: millions of credulous, servile people.

Dawkins wrote The God Delusion.

[JoltinJoe]

Non-objective moral systems had their run in the 20th century and Dostoevsky was proven correct. I'm not about to give it a second chance given the catastrophic outcomes we observed.

So Joe, we can expect some more "violence in the service of truth" from you and your followers? You know, because the "objective truth" make the ends justify the means.

"Violence in the service of truth"....how Stalinistic of the Church.

Huh?

The ends justifies the means is Pragmatism. You're not going to find much support for that in Catholic theology.

[JoltinJoe]

Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't lift this from Hitchens? He said precisely this in The God Delusion. You mean you didn't even read that.

http://lehmann.typepad.com/in_lehmanns_ ... n-sta.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Until 1917, millions of Russians had been told for…hundreds of years that the czar is the head of the church – which he was, the Russian Orthodox Church. That the leader of the country should be something a little more than human. Not a god, but a little more. He’s not divine, but a holy father.

If you’re Josef Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you don’t know how to exploit an inheritance like that: millions of credulous, servile people.

Dawkins wrote The God Delusion.

Correct. I was referencing "God is Not Great." My mistake.

[D1B]

I understand, but the definition of religion in this discussion is not so vague and open-ended.

According to your dictionary, anything can be a religion.

Atheism is absence of belief in god, nothing more. If you want to add further qualities to this, start another thread.

You know, D, it really helps one's credibility when they just go ahead and admit they were wrong on a point they are shown to be wrong on that point.

Just admit that, yes, atheism can in at least some instances be accurately described as "religion" in that it meets an accepted definition of religion. Then you can say that what you're talking about is theistic religions...religion as defined as belief in diety... and argue about that.

On atheism, by the way: Back to a dictionary. One definition of "atheism" is, "the doctrine that there is no deity."
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) Now, that does mean there is an absence of belief in god. But it is also a positive assertion (of the negative). Check out the American Atheists' web site discussion on atheism at http://www.atheists.org/atheism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

To me, that clearly infers "religion" according to the definition I previously referenced. The set of principles outlined clearly go beyond just saying, "There is no god." The authors laid out a set of principles resulting from that. And many of the principles cannot be objecitvely sustained. It is clearly a doctorine...and the thought process behind is clearly a manifestation of the definition of religion, "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith."

I suppose one could say that the atheism isn't really the religion expressed at that web site. One could argue that it's really humanism and that it's some atheists who have adopted humanism. But it is awfully difficult to separate their doctorine that there is no diety from the religious principles expressed. It's an integral component of their belief system.

Get a life, whackjob.

[D1B]

Otherwise, I just finally at least glanced at all the posts and it looks like the crux of the debate revolves around the assertion that, if only there were no theistic religions, we wouldn't have problems like dictatorships and child abuse or that they would have been less prevalent historically.

I can't believe anybody who contemplates human nature can believe that. Sure, I can see how theistic religion can facilitate it in some specific instances. Like the Divine Right of Kings thing. That was used for a long time. But that's different than saying that, if theistic religion had never arisen, we would never have had dictatorships or would have had fewer of them because people wouldn't have been conditioned to comply by theistic religion.

I don't know whehter we would have had more or less. But I can see that social animals typically are oranized according to what are essentially either dictatorships or oligarchys. I think that human beings are like that. I think that all you need to do is remember your days as a young schoolboy and recall how dominance patterns emerged. That wasn't because you and your schoolmates were conditioned by theistic religion to comply.

And I think there have obviously been circumstances in which theistic religion played an "anti" dictatorship role. There have also been times when it has played "anti bad thing" roles with respect to other "bad things" such as child abuse, slavery, etc. It has gone both ways at times.

Bottom line is if you were to take a bunch of infants and put them in an isolated environment then let them mature with no intervention or influence in terms of socialization...just make sure their physical needs for things like food and water are satisfied...by the time they reached adulthood you'd most likely have a "society" organized as essentially either a dictatorship or an oligarchy. I think the probable outcome would be that either one dominant male would rule with the aid of a cadre of secondary dominant males or you might have a few dominant males who shared dominance. Very unlikely that you'd have anything like a democracy where every member of the "society" would have a voice, certain unalienable rights, etc.

I also think it likely that you'd have what we'd call child abuse, rape, murder, and all sorts of other things go on whether the "society" developed something we'd view as "theistic religion" or not (and it probably wouldn't...at least not in one generation).

Of course this is another one of those things we can never know because nobody's going to conduct that kind of experiment. But that's what I'd expect.

John, read Forbidden Fruit. You, like Joe, have no idea what secular humanism is. I think Joe actually does, but is afraid to admit its superiority to theistic belief systems.

[YoUDeeMan]

So Joe, we can expect some more "violence in the service of truth" from you and your followers? You know, because the "objective truth" make the ends justify the means.

"Violence in the service of truth"....how Stalinistic of the Church.

Huh?

The ends justifies the means is Pragmatism. You're not going to find much support for that in Catholic theology.

Theology, schmology. We're talking about the Church Joe, not some theory.

The term Pragmatism, as it relates to philosophy, might be new, but the Church has always, as does any large organization, taken a practical approach to things rather than wondering how Jesus would have handled things.

“Violence in the service of truth.” Are you kidding me? What kind of apology is that, Joe? The Pope is essentially saying that the errors of the past were just a bunch of people who slid from the right path and committed atrocities...but hey, they were doing it for the TRUTH, so you might understand why they were tempted to cross the line.

Hey, lady, I raped you in the service of my lust...and you know my lust is good…I just didn't express it well. I promise to buy you roses next time...but I still have my lust to pursue, and it is indeed a righteous lust.

Your belief in the Catholic Church not sliding into tyranny is no better or accurate than any other religion or absence of religion. The Church was totalitarian in many ways…and their practices killed many innocent people.

Of course, when they get caught doing something bad, they say 10 Hail Mary's, give a half-hearted apology (and that is only because they realize the masses want such a thing) and then they go about their business of making money and subjugating people by whatever means they can get away with. They have covered up or turned a blind eye to many atrocities…and continue to do so…because the ends justify the means. Find some rapists? Shuffle them around but don’t tell anyone…we might lose converts or, heavens, money. Got a whacky, murderous monarch on your hands? Hey, just slip him some divine information and he’ll take care of you and your kind.

Cripes, what a racket…all to protect what? Jesus? No, if he exists, he doesn’t need protecting. Ahhhh, but the Church needs protecting…in order to spread the word of the Big Guy through the good old boy network. Very practical.

[JohnStOnge]

John, read Forbidden Fruit. You, like Joe, have no idea what secular humanism is. I think Joe actually does, but is afraid to admit its superiority to theistic belief systems.

I don't think I have to read a book. I can just go to a web page like this one for the Council for Secular Humanism:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.ph ... ction=main" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Do you disagree with the way it's described there? Looks pretty consistent with what I thought going in.

You can go to the page at http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.ph ... sh_defined" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and see a discussion of atheism vs. Secular Humanism ("Drawing Clear Boundaries" section). Looks pretty consistent with what I was talking about. Atheism is absense of belief in diety. But then once you're there, if you want to say that there is some system of ethics...some basis for right and wrong...you have to resort to something. And I think atheists typically resort to Secular Humanism whether they realize it or not.

As for being superior: I don't see it. Secular Humanists think there can be an objective system of ethics in the absence of something higher. That's nonsense. We've been through that before. It is the rotten core upon which their entire house of cards is built. It's not a sustainable "theology."

Like on the next page of the discussion beginning at the last link I posted there is a discussion of the Secular Humanist approach to ethics. The author writes about human happiness and social justice as goals and about designing systems of ethics based on measuring results (presumably in terms of things like human happiness and social justice) of ethical choices.

But they don't contemplate the next question; which is: Why are things like human happiness and social justice important? Or we could ask why it matters if humans are not happy and there is no social justice. They can never have a real answer for that because anything they come up with can be followed by another "why" question.

They think they come off as smart; and I think that's the attractiion of it. They can say that they proceed according to reason and scienfitic inquiry as they stick their noses into the air reassured with respect to how intelligent and broad minded they are. But they apparently can't see the glaring problem with their approach. Or if they do they won't admit it.