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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (8732)	3/15/2001 7:20:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The tiny minorities of Christians and others who sheltered the Jews were sheltering them from the real world consequences of an insane ideology deeply rooted in traditional Christian belief about Jews. Anti-semitism is not a Christian belief. It is a belief held by many Christians and others but it is not a part of the basic Christian faith. The majority of people who participated in large scale atrocities in Western countries for the last 1000 years where commited by people who are at least nominally Christian because Christianity was the dominent religon in the west during this time. I sumbit that if another faith was dominent (includeing atheism as one of the possible "other faith") that it is still likely that many atrocities would have occured. On slavery and the development of attitudes against it: the legitimacy of slavery, and the slave trade, in its great Muslim and Christian branches, arose directly out of scriptural sanctions. Slavery, and the attitude that it was a legitimate practice, existed before either Chrisitanity or Islam, and after those faiths began it continued to exist in areas where they where not popular. Religion was a powerful motivator in the self-righteous genocide and enslavement of millions of native Americans in the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the New World, for example. Religon was a motivator, but the main motivator was greed. The native Americans were enslaved so they could plant or dig to create wealth for those that enslaved them, or they where pushed off so the new commers could grab land. Tim

To: E who wrote (8732)	3/16/2001 12:14:37 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

No, I wouldn't agree. Religious anti- semitism was not nearly as virulent as the pseudo- scientific racialism that supported Nazi doctrine. Scripture acknowledged slavery, and tried to make it more humane. It did not cause such a widespread human practice. Religion had almost nothing to do with the conquest of the Americas. In fact, the clergy that accompanied Cortez, for example, were appalled by the behavior of the Conquistadors, and complained to Rome. The Pope deplored mistreatment of Indians. The Conquistadors ignored him. You must distinguish between religiously motivated behavior, and conventional greed and lust for power defending itself against attack by twisting Scripture. There are no reliable statistics to determine the relative historical purity or perversity of charitable establishments, and it is not strange that some should have had problems, so I consider it not much worth speculation. I have no idea if those who sought to profit from the opium trade were devout High Anglicans. I do not even know if they strove for the appearance, but more than that, in a society where one would draw suspicion upon oneself for non- conformity, outward devotion would be a highly unreliable indicator of actual piety. All in all, an unimpressive case. Now, let me ask you something: if you knew someone who professed to be a Communist, but was eager to obtain a peerage, would you question the sincerity of his ideological commitment? Why, then, do you suppose that those who participated in the extermination of Jews, even women and children, were to be taken seriously as Christians, and should be weighed in the balance against those who hid Jews? Do you think that Mafiosi are good Catholics, and representative of the normal behavior of the pious, or bad guys seeking to get over on God? Those who make a attempt to be faithful to the tenor of a religious tradition may be used to investigate the effects of religious belief. Those who are obviously wildly aberrant are not reasonably taken as exemplary........