Darwin, the Destroyer

[AVG-JOE]

To repeat, belief is a choice.
Proof is another thing.

The only way to know anything is by way of our perceptions.
Perceptions are one hundred percent subjective.

Good and bad are human terms and do not oblige the universe to conform.

One man's immorality is another man's lifestyle.

That's why political compromise and agreement, along with equitable enforcement of civil law, is so essential to a Sentient society.

In a land of many competing Religions, Government ROCKS!!

"One man's immorality is another man's lifestyle."

So....who are the folks who find the Ten Commandments immoral?

Immoral? That would be in the eye of the beholder...

I would imagine that the people who like to share their spouses with other swingers find those rules a little inconvenient, ass-u-me-ing they give them a thought at all.
I would also imagine that those who do give it a thought, really appreciate their 21st Century freedoms. Morality is an attitude, and attitudes are subject to change.

For that reason, civil law matching up with religious code is always a good reflection on both the Religion and the Civilization. In a society such as ours, with so many organized and unprovable religious opinions, each one backed by a full faith and measure of human animal passion, with the most popular ones openly and sometimes violently competing to be THE dominant list of rules to live by, unless a religion rises to the top through a performance of the miraculous to the satisfaction of a majority of The People in a community, Civil Law MUST take precedence. All faiths must agree on a basic set of rules, and if compromise insists that the Civil List turns out to be a fat seven out of Ten with regard to any given religion, tough titty said the kitty when the milk ran dry with regards to the other three. Church leadership can only hold THEIR followers to the full list of Ten.

If The People decide that marriage licenses should be issued without restrictions and treated like learners permits, religious opposition becomes irrelevant unless the religion is able to sway The People to make a change through the legislative process. If The People find conflict among their ranks over such an issue, freedom should take precedence over restriction during the process of working it out.

Yeah, sometimes I'm just a big ol' Libertarian.

 

[PoliticalChic]

One man's immorality is another man's lifestyle.

That's why political compromise and agreement, along with equitable enforcement of civil law, is so essential to a Sentient society.

In an land of many competing Religions, Government ROCKS!!

"One man's immorality is another man's lifestyle."

So....who are the folks who find the Ten Commandments immoral?

Not to always dig him up, but there are people who think as Hitler did. For such 'thinking', the humanity expressed in the ideas of the commandments is weak and against their 'faith'.

Can you produce and sources that indicate that he actually spoke as you suggest?

immoral [ɪˈmɒrəl]
adj
1. transgressing accepted moral rules; corrupt
2. sexually dissolute; profligate or promiscuous
3. unscrupulous or unethical immoral trading
4. tending to corrupt or resulting from corruption an immoral film immoral earnings
immorally adv

'Weak' hardly encompasses a synonym for same.
feeble - faint - thin - infirm - frail - weakly - soft....

But not 'immoral.'

 

[PoliticalChic]

What the OP seems to suggest is that science and reason, outgrowths not just of the Enlightenment, but of the Renaissance, are what destroyed the Western World, that perhaps we should simply have continued the era of despotism that defined Medieval Europe.

Yes, it is true that the Enlightenment got a bit overzealous, but like it or not, it is part of what the United States that our founders envisioned came from, and yes, Christianity. It is a dichotomy that has defined us from the beginning. So, in that too we are faced with the prospect of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, an appropriate idiom you used in a later post.

I don't have any fundamental problems with the premises offered in the OP. However, the disintegration of Christianity's hold on the Western world is far more complex than that. You have to add some other factors, such as the difficulty of reconciling the miraculous claims of the Bible with most aspects of the observed Universe, as if God deliberately created it to be confusing and contradictory. It's not Darwin's fault that YE creationists claim that the Heavens and Earth are no more than 10,000 years old, yet the observable Universe shows us objects that are far, far older than that. I think some Christians give Darwin far too much credit, as if he were Satan incarnate, complete with cloven hooves and a pointed tail.

There is also the plain fact that religion in general tends to thrive best in environments of need. Why is it that Islam is doing so well? I happen to put a good deal of stock in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is by no means absolute, but in the perspective of the Western World of individualism, where the Abrahamic religions hold sway, versus the more collective Eastern world, it is a pretty good model. And where Abrahamic religions are concerned, Christianity is by far the more "me" religion, with Judaism and Islam a bit more focused on the "we." With so much time of so many of the needs on Maslow's hierarchy fulfilled, and given the individualistic nature of the Western world, the priority of religion tends to suffer.

The OP went on to use a very appropriate idiom later in this thread, "the baby with the bathwater." The U.S. is a dichotomy with a unique identity: a nation built both on the faith of Protestant Christianity AND the spirit of the Enlightenment. Theists and atheists tend to focus on one or the other in our founders depending on their agenda, but the reality is that they were both powerful influences on what we would become. Considering how divided and polarized a nation we have become, there is a lot of trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater going on. Fuck all that. I say it's time we start getting united again. It's not as if we haven't before.

1. The recent election excepted, I don't believe anyone said 'science and reason, outgrowths not just of the Enlightenment, but of the Renaissance, are what destroyed the Western World,'...


2. "it is true that the Enlightenment got a bit overzealous, but like it or not, it is part of what the United States that our founders envisioned came from, and yes, Christianity.'


The Enlightenment's effects veered off into two distinctly different directions: The American Revolution, based on Christianity, and the French Revolution, based on expulsion of Christianity.


a. Our founding fathers were God-fearing descendants of Puritans and other colonial Christians. . The reason our revolution was so different from the violent, homicidal chaos of the French version was the dominant American culture was Anglo-Saxon and Christian. “52 of the 56 signers of the declaration and 50 to 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were orthodox Trinitarian Christians.” David Limbaugh


b. Then, there was this: the rabble, led by the Jacobins proceeded to smash every trace of the past- religion, law, the social order, even the weights and measures system, and even the calendar.
On November 2, 1789, the Assembly declared everything owned by the Catholic Church to be property of the state. Shortly after, the Assembly severed the French Catholic Church’s with the pope, dismissed 50 bishops, dissolved all clerical vows, reorganized the church so that priests were to be elected by popular vote, and required all the clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the state.



3. "However, the disintegration of Christianity's hold on the Western world is far more complex than that. You have to add some other factors,..."

I disagree with what follows....so let me add pertinent factors:

a. Marx’s dialectic materialism hadn’t ignited a worldwide revolution and WWI saw the workers of the world murdering each other en masse. Then the Soviet Union slaughtered its own citizens at record rates. So, did Marxist intellectuals change course? Not.

b. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), a Marxist intellectual whose main legacy arises through his departures from orthodox Marxism. He concurred with Marx as to class warfare, but sought the destruction of society as the precondition for the eventual victory of global Marxism. Far from being content with a mere uprising, therefore, Gramsci believed that it was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a "counter-hegemony" (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered: civil society itself, the schools, churches, media, he argued, is the great battleground in the struggle. John Fonte -- Why There Is A Culture War: Gramsci and Tocqueville in America

c. Following Gramsci, Gyorgy Lukacs promoted the idea that while Marx’s Dialectic Materialism may not have been predictive, it hinted at the real necessity: destroying the status quo would bring Marxism. This could be done through breaking down traditional Judeo-Christian morality and discrediting and undermining the established institutions from within.



4. "It's not Darwin's fault that YE creationists claim that the Heavens and Earth are no more than 10,000 years old, yet the observable Universe shows us objects that are far, far older than that."

A minor error such as above....in comparison to far greater errors that seem not to sink accepted philosophies????

"The Left says of the Right, “You fools, it is demonstrable that dinosaurs lived one hundred million years ago, I can prove it to you, how can you say the earth was created in 4000BCE?” But this supposed intransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism, the Command Economy, all of which have been proven via one hundred years of evidence shows only shortages, despotism and murder."
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."


5. " With so much time of so many of the needs on Maslow's hierarchy fulfilled, and given the individualistic nature of the Western world, the priority of religion tends to suffer."

I rather attribute the above to the success the Frankfurt School has had, combined with the huge changes brought about by the size of the post-war society and the vast wealth that followed.

a. One interesting explanation involves the numbers of individual coming of age at the time, who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches. A particularly large wave may swamp the institutions responsible for teaching traditions and standards.
“Rathenau called [this] ‘the vertical invasion of the barbarians.’” Jose Ortega y Gasset, “The Revolt of the Masses,” p. 53. The baby boomers were a generation so large that they formed their own culture.

b. The human attempt for self-gratification is usually kept in check, within bounds, by religion, morality, law, and, by the necessity to work hard based on the fear of want. Much of the former was removed by the French Revolution, and in modern America, and another restriction was removed by the rising affluence of the last century; suppressed by WWI, and then by the Depression, but released by the 9-year expansion of the 1960’s. The effect of affluence was increased, multiplied, by the fact that parents, who had known the hardships of the Depression, and WWII, were determined to give their children every comfort that they could.
Bork, "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," chapter one.

c. As a result of the ascension of the Nazis, the Frankfurt School moved to Geneva, and then to New York City. The openness, freedom and liberty of the United States is all they needed to infect this society and its cultural institutions. Too many simply ignored the onslaught…”And the most dangerous thing you can do with a driven leftist intellectual clique is ignore it!”
Breitbart, “Righteous Indignation,” p. 114.
Who could imagine that that a group could come to our nation, learn of our incredible freedom and liberty, yet wish to destroy it??? That’s exactly what the Frankfurt School wanted to do. And, conquering academia....they did.

 

[PoliticalChic]

To repeat, belief is a choice.
Proof is another thing.

The only way to know anything is by way of our perceptions.
Perceptions are one hundred percent subjective.

Good and bad are human terms and do not oblige the universe to conform.

I would modify "belief is a choice" to "belief can be a choice.

The entire god question is a pretty important one I'd say. For me, it's not something to just roll over and believe because if you truly dig deep into what allows you to believe, you will find there is no clear reason to believe as you do-- the differing paradigms out there do not make a single case that rises above the others. In other words, there is no reason to believe Christianity over Islam over Buddhism over Judaism over Hinduism.

People typically accept their theistic beliefs for many reasons, but rarely do they apply very hard standards to those reasons. They tend to be cultural (i.e., you grew up in a social environment that preferred one belief over another), or anecdotal (you believe in certain events that for you define a specific belief, like a Hindu may have examples of "reincarnation" whereas a Catholic will "see visions of Mary", etc.), or there is simply a resonance in the belief system you select. And of course, I'll even include the possibility (but not probability) that one selects a belief because they actually do hear directly from the Supreme Being.

Religious beliefs are overwhelmingly a function of family / social circumstances.

"People typically accept their theistic beliefs for many reasons, but rarely do they apply very hard standards to those reasons. They tend to be cultural (i.e., you grew up in a social environment that preferred one belief over another), or anecdotal...."


And there is the definition of 'reliable Democrat voter' as well.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

What the OP seems to suggest is that science and reason, outgrowths not just of the Enlightenment, but of the Renaissance, are what destroyed the Western World, that perhaps we should simply have continued the era of despotism that defined Medieval Europe.

Yes, it is true that the Enlightenment got a bit overzealous, but like it or not, it is part of what the United States that our founders envisioned came from, and yes, Christianity. It is a dichotomy that has defined us from the beginning. So, in that too we are faced with the prospect of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, an appropriate idiom you used in a later post.

I don't have any fundamental problems with the premises offered in the OP. However, the disintegration of Christianity's hold on the Western world is far more complex than that. You have to add some other factors, such as the difficulty of reconciling the miraculous claims of the Bible with most aspects of the observed Universe, as if God deliberately created it to be confusing and contradictory. It's not Darwin's fault that YE creationists claim that the Heavens and Earth are no more than 10,000 years old, yet the observable Universe shows us objects that are far, far older than that. I think some Christians give Darwin far too much credit, as if he were Satan incarnate, complete with cloven hooves and a pointed tail.

There is also the plain fact that religion in general tends to thrive best in environments of need. Why is it that Islam is doing so well? I happen to put a good deal of stock in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is by no means absolute, but in the perspective of the Western World of individualism, where the Abrahamic religions hold sway, versus the more collective Eastern world, it is a pretty good model. And where Abrahamic religions are concerned, Christianity is by far the more "me" religion, with Judaism and Islam a bit more focused on the "we." With so much time of so many of the needs on Maslow's hierarchy fulfilled, and given the individualistic nature of the Western world, the priority of religion tends to suffer.

The OP went on to use a very appropriate idiom later in this thread, "the baby with the bathwater." The U.S. is a dichotomy with a unique identity: a nation built both on the faith of Protestant Christianity AND the spirit of the Enlightenment. Theists and atheists tend to focus on one or the other in our founders depending on their agenda, but the reality is that they were both powerful influences on what we would become. Considering how divided and polarized a nation we have become, there is a lot of trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater going on. Fuck all that. I say it's time we start getting united again. It's not as if we haven't before.

1. The recent election excepted, I don't believe anyone said 'science and reason, outgrowths not just of the Enlightenment, but of the Renaissance, are what destroyed the Western World,'...


2. "it is true that the Enlightenment got a bit overzealous, but like it or not, it is part of what the United States that our founders envisioned came from, and yes, Christianity.'


The Enlightenment's effects veered off into two distinctly different directions: The American Revolution, based on Christianity, and the French Revolution, based on expulsion of Christianity.


a. Our founding fathers were God-fearing descendants of Puritans and other colonial Christians. . The reason our revolution was so different from the violent, homicidal chaos of the French version was the dominant American culture was Anglo-Saxon and Christian. “52 of the 56 signers of the declaration and 50 to 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were orthodox Trinitarian Christians.” David Limbaugh


b. Then, there was this: the rabble, led by the Jacobins proceeded to smash every trace of the past- religion, law, the social order, even the weights and measures system, and even the calendar.
On November 2, 1789, the Assembly declared everything owned by the Catholic Church to be property of the state. Shortly after, the Assembly severed the French Catholic Church’s with the pope, dismissed 50 bishops, dissolved all clerical vows, reorganized the church so that priests were to be elected by popular vote, and required all the clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the state.



3. "However, the disintegration of Christianity's hold on the Western world is far more complex than that. You have to add some other factors,..."

I disagree with what follows....so let me add pertinent factors:

a. Marx’s dialectic materialism hadn’t ignited a worldwide revolution and WWI saw the workers of the world murdering each other en masse. Then the Soviet Union slaughtered its own citizens at record rates. So, did Marxist intellectuals change course? Not.

b. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), a Marxist intellectual whose main legacy arises through his departures from orthodox Marxism. He concurred with Marx as to class warfare, but sought the destruction of society as the precondition for the eventual victory of global Marxism. Far from being content with a mere uprising, therefore, Gramsci believed that it was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a "counter-hegemony" (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered: civil society itself, the schools, churches, media, he argued, is the great battleground in the struggle. John Fonte -- Why There Is A Culture War: Gramsci and Tocqueville in America

c. Following Gramsci, Gyorgy Lukacs promoted the idea that while Marx’s Dialectic Materialism may not have been predictive, it hinted at the real necessity: destroying the status quo would bring Marxism. This could be done through breaking down traditional Judeo-Christian morality and discrediting and undermining the established institutions from within.



4. "It's not Darwin's fault that YE creationists claim that the Heavens and Earth are no more than 10,000 years old, yet the observable Universe shows us objects that are far, far older than that."

A minor error such as above....in comparison to far greater errors that seem not to sink accepted philosophies????

"The Left says of the Right, “You fools, it is demonstrable that dinosaurs lived one hundred million years ago, I can prove it to you, how can you say the earth was created in 4000BCE?” But this supposed intransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism, the Command Economy, all of which have been proven via one hundred years of evidence shows only shortages, despotism and murder."
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."


5. " With so much time of so many of the needs on Maslow's hierarchy fulfilled, and given the individualistic nature of the Western world, the priority of religion tends to suffer."

I rather attribute the above to the success the Frankfurt School has had, combined with the huge changes brought about by the size of the post-war society and the vast wealth that followed.

a. One interesting explanation involves the numbers of individual coming of age at the time, who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches. A particularly large wave may swamp the institutions responsible for teaching traditions and standards.
“Rathenau called [this] ‘the vertical invasion of the barbarians.’” Jose Ortega y Gasset, “The Revolt of the Masses,” p. 53. The baby boomers were a generation so large that they formed their own culture.

b. The human attempt for self-gratification is usually kept in check, within bounds, by religion, morality, law, and, by the necessity to work hard based on the fear of want. Much of the former was removed by the French Revolution, and in modern America, and another restriction was removed by the rising affluence of the last century; suppressed by WWI, and then by the Depression, but released by the 9-year expansion of the 1960’s. The effect of affluence was increased, multiplied, by the fact that parents, who had known the hardships of the Depression, and WWII, were determined to give their children every comfort that they could.
Bork, "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," chapter one.

c. As a result of the ascension of the Nazis, the Frankfurt School moved to Geneva, and then to New York City. The openness, freedom and liberty of the United States is all they needed to infect this society and its cultural institutions. Too many simply ignored the onslaught…”And the most dangerous thing you can do with a driven leftist intellectual clique is ignore it!”
Breitbart, “Righteous Indignation,” p. 114.
Who could imagine that that a group could come to our nation, learn of our incredible freedom and liberty, yet wish to destroy it??? That’s exactly what the Frankfurt School wanted to do. And, conquering academia....they did.

Well, I think I was making it pretty clear that I acknowledge the Christian aspects of our founders. To be continued. I just don't have the time right now.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

I gave "cultural Marxism" some serious consideration for a while, and then concluded it was a convenient scapegoat for most, particularly the kind of people who provided your sourced material, who clearly have an Christian right agenda. It doesn't necessarily make their assertions false, merely questionable.

I think you overplay the "dechristianization" aspect of the French Revolution. It is true that the deist principles of Enlightenment figured more prominently in Europe than they did all the way over here, but the intelligentsia of the founders was quite influenced by the same. It simply didn't flower because we were not plagued by the degree of religious authority that was in place in France. There was an environment in place here that was more religiously tolerant by default. I think the French Revolution and the American Revolution were different mostly because of the institutions and sources of power they were fighting against, that and a detachment from that power that only something like the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th Century could provide.

But people like Paine, Jefferson, Adams, these were men of action that got things done, whom people tended to listen to, and who were very much educated by the Enlightenment. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the founders had the kind of concerted effort toward a Christian nation that many on the Christian right would have us believe. There was free exercise, Americans were predominantly Protestant Christian, and so it stands to reason that Christianity would flourish. Nothing too complicated about that. If Christianity declined in Europe after the fact, then, given Christian belief, it doesn't surprise me that American Christians are going to see the U.S. as God's instrument, and from which ideas like "manifest destiny" are born.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I gave "cultural Marxism" some serious consideration for a while, and then concluded it was a convenient scapegoat for most, particularly the kind of people who provided your sourced material, who clearly have an Christian right agenda. It doesn't necessarily make their assertions false, merely questionable.

I think you overplay the "dechristianization" aspect of the French Revolution. It is true that the deist principles of Enlightenment figured more prominently in Europe than they did all the way over here, but the intelligentsia of the founders was quite influenced by the same. It simply didn't flower because we were not plagued by the degree of religious authority that was in place in France. There was an environment in place here that was more religiously tolerant by default. I think the French Revolution and the American Revolution were different mostly because of the institutions and sources of power they were fighting against, that and a detachment from that power that only something like the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th Century could provide.

But people like Paine, Jefferson, Adams, these were men of action that got things done, whom people tended to listen to, and who were very much educated by the Enlightenment. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the founders had the kind of concerted effort toward a Christian nation that many on the Christian right would have us believe. There was free exercise, Americans were predominantly Protestant Christian, and so it stands to reason that Christianity would flourish. Nothing too complicated about that. If Christianity declined in Europe after the fact, then, given Christian belief, it doesn't surprise me that American Christians are going to see the U.S. as God's instrument, and from which ideas like "manifest destiny" are born.

"I think you overplay the "dechristianization" aspect of the French Revolution."

Really, Jimmy?


1. With the Jacobins in control, the “de-Christianization” campaign kicked into high gear. Inspired by Rousseau’s idea of the religion civile, the revolution sought to completely destroy Christianity and replace it with a religion of the state.
To honor “reason” and fulfill the promise of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that “no one may be questioned about his opinions, including his religious views,” Catholic priests were forced to stand before the revolutionary clubs and take oaths to France’s new humanocentric religion, the Cult of Reason

a. Revolutionaries smashed church art and statues.





2. In Lyon, the archbishop refused to swear allegiance to the republic, and was removed, replaced by the revolutionary bishop Antoine Lamourette. But the people of Lyon responded by 'clinging to their guns and religion.' So, the Convention ordered that Lyon, the second-largest city in France, be destroyed and a monument erected on the ashes proclaiming: “Lyon waged war against liberty; Lyon is no more.”

a. Joseph Fouché, head of the de-Christianization, arranged for the “bankers, scholars, aristocrats, priests, nuns, wealthy merchants, their wives, mistresses and children” to be dragged from their homes and killed by firing squads. He then wrote that Christianity in the provinces “had been struck down once and for all.”

b. Lamourette had, originally thought that he could fuse revolutionary principles with Catholicism, much like today’s pro-life Democrats, based on a “can’t we all just get along” philosophy. Such gave rise to the idiom “the kiss of Lamourette.”

[On July 7th, 1792, the Abbé Lamourette induced the different factions of the Legislative Assembly of France to lay aside their differences; so the deputies of the Royalists, Constitutionalists, Girondists, Jacobins, and Orleanists rushed into each other's arms, and the king was sent for to see “how these Christians loved one another;”but the reconciliation was hollow and unsound. The term is now used for a reconciliation of policy without abatement of rancour.
]Lamourette's Kiss — Infoplease.com





3. In lieu of religious holidays, which were banned, the revolutionaries put on “Fetes of Reason.” The first was in November 1793, in the Notre Dame Cathedral, which had been renamed “The Temple of Reason,” with “To Philosophy” carved on the façade and the altar named the “Altar of Reason.” It was an ACLU fantasy come true!



4. France’s new leaders – fishmongers, cobblers, butchers, and lots of lawyers and journalists- set out to invent a new, nonreligious calendar. It began with “Year 1,” witch was really 1972, and had 12 30-day months based on ‘reason’ and ‘nature.’ Each month was three 10-day weeks.

a. “Has any reform been more futile? The Government’s arrogant discard of Christianity means that weeks have been extended to ten days instead of seven. The revision’s intent is to supplant the papal calendar with a uniform alternative of twelve months of thirty days each, based on the system of ancient Egypt. Bibles themselves were torn up to make paper gun cartridges in the grim days of 1793, and now the biblical week has been guillotined, each month instead divided into three decades of ten days, with the year, with the year beginning at the autumn equinox and five to six holidays added to balance idealism with our solar orbit. Not content with regimenting the calendar, the government has introduced a new metric system for weight and measure. There are even proposals for a new clock of precisely 100,000 seconds each day. Reason, reason!....The new calendar is the kind of logical idea imposed by clever people that completely ignores habit, emotion, and human nature and thus forecasts the Revolution’s doom.”
From the novel “Napoleon’s Pyramids,” by William Dietrich

b. Napoleon abolished the French Revolutionary Calendar on January 1, 1806.

Dealt with in detail in chapter seven, of "Demonic," Coulter.



5. And, perhaps this, from chapter seven of Pearcey's "Saving Leonardo,"...

We have the Enlightenment, and, concomitant, the French Revolution, to thank for the concept that ‘reason’ should be the guiding principle of life. To clarify, that means ‘reason’ to the exclusion of morality. And, early on, reason had been regarded as a powerful tool for knowing truth, goodness, and beauty. But, with the Enlightenment, and the split that emerged between facts and values, only the kind of reason associated with science was considered appropriate to understand and control the world.




6. "The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison)a was an atheistic belief system established in France and intended as a replacement for Christianity during the French Revolution."
Cult of Reason - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Overplayed?

 

[AlexWA]

Science explains, science invites curiosity, science enhances life, science helps us understand life, science can build things that shape our world, science can inspire, science is fun, science is cool. Evolution is all around us, evolution lets us know where we've been and where we can possibly go, evolution is not demonic or evil or force people to take sides, it is just there.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

I gave "cultural Marxism" some serious consideration for a while, and then concluded it was a convenient scapegoat for most, particularly the kind of people who provided your sourced material, who clearly have an Christian right agenda. It doesn't necessarily make their assertions false, merely questionable.

I think you overplay the "dechristianization" aspect of the French Revolution. It is true that the deist principles of Enlightenment figured more prominently in Europe than they did all the way over here, but the intelligentsia of the founders was quite influenced by the same. It simply didn't flower because we were not plagued by the degree of religious authority that was in place in France. There was an environment in place here that was more religiously tolerant by default. I think the French Revolution and the American Revolution were different mostly because of the institutions and sources of power they were fighting against, that and a detachment from that power that only something like the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th Century could provide.

But people like Paine, Jefferson, Adams, these were men of action that got things done, whom people tended to listen to, and who were very much educated by the Enlightenment. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the founders had the kind of concerted effort toward a Christian nation that many on the Christian right would have us believe. There was free exercise, Americans were predominantly Protestant Christian, and so it stands to reason that Christianity would flourish. Nothing too complicated about that. If Christianity declined in Europe after the fact, then, given Christian belief, it doesn't surprise me that American Christians are going to see the U.S. as God's instrument, and from which ideas like "manifest destiny" are born.

"I think you overplay the "dechristianization" aspect of the French Revolution."

Really, Jimmy?


1. With the Jacobins in control, the “de-Christianization” campaign kicked into high gear. Inspired by Rousseau’s idea of the religion civile, the revolution sought to completely destroy Christianity and replace it with a religion of the state.
To honor “reason” and fulfill the promise of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that “no one may be questioned about his opinions, including his religious views,” Catholic priests were forced to stand before the revolutionary clubs and take oaths to France’s new humanocentric religion, the Cult of Reason

a. Revolutionaries smashed church art and statues.





2. In Lyon, the archbishop refused to swear allegiance to the republic, and was removed, replaced by the revolutionary bishop Antoine Lamourette. But the people of Lyon responded by 'clinging to their guns and religion.' So, the Convention ordered that Lyon, the second-largest city in France, be destroyed and a monument erected on the ashes proclaiming: “Lyon waged war against liberty; Lyon is no more.”

a. Joseph Fouché, head of the de-Christianization, arranged for the “bankers, scholars, aristocrats, priests, nuns, wealthy merchants, their wives, mistresses and children” to be dragged from their homes and killed by firing squads. He then wrote that Christianity in the provinces “had been struck down once and for all.”

b. Lamourette had, originally thought that he could fuse revolutionary principles with Catholicism, much like today’s pro-life Democrats, based on a “can’t we all just get along” philosophy. Such gave rise to the idiom “the kiss of Lamourette.”

[On July 7th, 1792, the Abbé Lamourette induced the different factions of the Legislative Assembly of France to lay aside their differences; so the deputies of the Royalists, Constitutionalists, Girondists, Jacobins, and Orleanists rushed into each other's arms, and the king was sent for to see “how these Christians loved one another;”but the reconciliation was hollow and unsound. The term is now used for a reconciliation of policy without abatement of rancour.
]Lamourette's Kiss — Infoplease.com





3. In lieu of religious holidays, which were banned, the revolutionaries put on “Fetes of Reason.” The first was in November 1793, in the Notre Dame Cathedral, which had been renamed “The Temple of Reason,” with “To Philosophy” carved on the façade and the altar named the “Altar of Reason.” It was an ACLU fantasy come true!



4. France’s new leaders – fishmongers, cobblers, butchers, and lots of lawyers and journalists- set out to invent a new, nonreligious calendar. It began with “Year 1,” witch was really 1972, and had 12 30-day months based on ‘reason’ and ‘nature.’ Each month was three 10-day weeks.

a. “Has any reform been more futile? The Government’s arrogant discard of Christianity means that weeks have been extended to ten days instead of seven. The revision’s intent is to supplant the papal calendar with a uniform alternative of twelve months of thirty days each, based on the system of ancient Egypt. Bibles themselves were torn up to make paper gun cartridges in the grim days of 1793, and now the biblical week has been guillotined, each month instead divided into three decades of ten days, with the year, with the year beginning at the autumn equinox and five to six holidays added to balance idealism with our solar orbit. Not content with regimenting the calendar, the government has introduced a new metric system for weight and measure. There are even proposals for a new clock of precisely 100,000 seconds each day. Reason, reason!....The new calendar is the kind of logical idea imposed by clever people that completely ignores habit, emotion, and human nature and thus forecasts the Revolution’s doom.”
From the novel “Napoleon’s Pyramids,” by William Dietrich

b. Napoleon abolished the French Revolutionary Calendar on January 1, 1806.

Dealt with in detail in chapter seven, of "Demonic," Coulter.



5. And, perhaps this, from chapter seven of Pearcey's "Saving Leonardo,"...

We have the Enlightenment, and, concomitant, the French Revolution, to thank for the concept that ‘reason’ should be the guiding principle of life. To clarify, that means ‘reason’ to the exclusion of morality. And, early on, reason had been regarded as a powerful tool for knowing truth, goodness, and beauty. But, with the Enlightenment, and the split that emerged between facts and values, only the kind of reason associated with science was considered appropriate to understand and control the world.




6. "The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison)a was an atheistic belief system established in France and intended as a replacement for Christianity during the French Revolution."
Cult of Reason - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Overplayed?

Fair enough. Maybe I'm downplaying it. The primary point I'm trying to make is that, and this is my own take, the French and American Revolutions were so strikingly different, but the conditions were also strikingly different. That said, the influence of the Enlightenment was all over both. What would have happened in America had there been a similar type of religious control and authority going on here? Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine had huge issues with religion, particularly the latter, and they were instrumental in bringing about public support of the Revolution.

The French Revolution was profoundly influenced by the American Revolution. And why not? They were both influenced by similar developments in thinking.

I accept that Christianity was an important influence on the making of our nation. I just don't really understand the religious right's refusal to acknowledge the profound influence of Enlightenment thinking.

I've since edited because I wanted to add another point. Part of why I find the Christian right's denial of Enlightenment influence on our founders so strange is that the Enlightenment was ultimately a manifestation of the schism brought about by the Protestant Reformation (Bertrand Russel). I am inclined to assume that, given your general posture, that you would reject a source like Bertrand Russel, but he was widely respected historian, and I think his assessment in this case is pretty solid. I don't think it is a stretch by any means to argue that, had it not been for the Reformation, there would have been no Age of Enlightenment. Now, for a person like me who has some significant issues with religion, I have to swallow my pride when admitting to the grand influence of the Reformation, but I do my best not to let my biases influence my objectivity too much. But I do find the Christian rejection of the Enlightenment and it's influence on our founders a bit ironic.

 

[ilia25]

a. The French Revolution, the Jacobin revolution, resulted in Reason replacing the Christian God.

You say that like it's a bad thing?!?

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

 

[ilia25]

How about the aspects of science that are not testable?

Then, the reality of the scientist is the same as the reality of the theologian.

Religion attempts to answer the questions of origins and afterlife. If science and its wonderful process of proving shit by repeating it in a lab could be applied, this discussion would be over.

There is no proof in either camp. Science does not apply.

Make up your own, or pick a story off the shelf that's believable to you at this moment in your life and remember... it's o.k. to change your mind if you discover additional evidence to base a theory on. It won't mean that you're a big ol' girl.

Big Bang theory? When will it be tested in a lab?

Some things can be observed, and you can see the light from the Big Bang directly (not with a naked eye, but still).

Anyway, science is not another faith. By definition, no scientific theory can be completely proven -- it can only be completely disproved. So, technically, there is nothing about the world that an atheist can be completely sure of. The only thing we can do is to assume that some things are true. For example, we can only assume that we are not dreaming up the world around us.

But once you past that -- once you decide that the world is real -- then it would only take some observations and logic before you conclude that the humans were probably evolved from animals, rather than created by God.

 

[Nightson]

1. All too often, a trust-baby hits “21” and is blinded to life by the untold riches that flow through his fingers. In an intellectual sense, the wonders of science revealed during the Enlightenment had the same effect on many. Add the violence directed at the clergy as well as the monarchy, and one has the making of secularism.

2. So infatuated with the fall-out from the Enlightenment, the possibility that science might be able explain and/or control life, a desire was generalized, that the same physical and chemical laws could be applied to human beings!

a. The French Revolution, the Jacobin revolution, resulted in Reason replacing the Christian God.

b. “Auguste Comte argued that humanity progressed in three stages and that in the final stage mankind would throw off Christianity and replace it with a new “religion of humanity,” which married religious fervor to science and reason- even to the extent of making “saints” out of such figures as Shakespeare, Dante and Frederick the Great.” Charles Forcey, “The Crossroads of Liberalism,” p. 15

c. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.





3. It was but a short leap to a mechanized view of human beings: evolution.
Herbert Spencer was the most influential popularizer of evolution in 19th century America. Actually, it was Spencer who developed a theory of evolution before Darwin and is credited with coining the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest'. He saw the process everywhere, not only in nature…but in human society as well. Spencer embraces other materialist thinkers, such as Marx and Nietzsche.
Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinist or Libertarian Prophet?, by Peter Richards




4. This aspect of the Enlightenment is known as ‘naturalism.’ Naturalism aligns humans with the evolutionary scheme of things, i.e., the individual does not really matter, and has no intrinsic worth beyond the single task that nature assigns every organism: to reproduce so that the species will survive. Therefore, there is no higher purpose beyond sheer biological existence.






5. Consider the result of naturalism’s worldview on society:

a. LONDON (Aug. 26) - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled "Humans'' at the London Zoo.

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment'' read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, "Why are there people in there?''

London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills says that's exactly the question the zoo wants to answer.

"Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate,'' Wills said. Yahoo! Groups


b. NEW YORK (AP) — Scarlett Johansson says that while monogamy might go against instinct, she's happy in her relationship with boyfriend and recent Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett…. "I do think on some basic level we are animals, and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly," she says. Scarlett Johansson: 'I'm not promiscuous' - USATODAY.com


c. Sienna Miller tells ‘Rolling Stone,' "I don't know, monogamy is a weird thing for me," Miller, who is still seeing Law, tells Rolling Stone in its new issue. "It's an overrated virtue, because, let's face it, we're f–ing animals." Sienna Miller Says Monogamy Is 'Overrated' - Hook Ups, Kids & Family Life, Jude Law, Sienna Miller : People.com





6. So, which came first,….folks behaving like animals, or creed that instructed them to behave as such? “Obviously, Darwinian evolution is not just a scientific theory. It has worldview implications that percolate from classic literature down to Hollywood and into our living rooms.”
Nancy Pearcey, “Saving Leonardo,” p. 145.

Our species is still awakening from the religious oppression of the Dark Ages to the possibilities of societal control mechanisms bereft of obligatory fear of God and suppression of acceptance of "other" options. To elucidate, what guides our species has always been a matter of what sells best. Throughout the Dark Ages what sold best as a means to control the populaces of various feudal states was obedience to God by way of and as dictated by the clergy. God granted monarchs the divine hereditary right to head states, so long as the church said so. This commodity of power sold so well that the citizenry formed new moral concepts of right and wrong based on what the clergy handed down to them. Generation upon generation was born instilled with a product of morality the clergy had conditioned into their forefathers. And so oppression reigned and where flickers of divergent thought arose the actionable mechanism of the clergy labelled such as heresy and carried out an absolute policy of eradication.

Revolution and schism of the church served to throw off the cloak of religious oppression and opened the aphotic cieling of the Dark Ages to what some would describe as rays of sunshine and enlightenment allowing for the free expression without fear of reprisal of heretical ideas and their teaching in secular universities. Once the dissemination of "other" possibilities was condoned, perhaps subconciously or as subversive power plays in the heavens of human power, there was no going back.

Science sells today. Religion is still around, but as a product of societal control in the west, it has largely been rendered impotent.

On a personal level I do not ascribe religion with morality or vice versa. Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science, and had modern science hand in hand flourished twelve centuries ago with religion, the clergy would have used it to further the cause. I think human right and wrong are indelibly black and white on a very basic level. Some human behaviors are good, others are baleful and where we fail as societies and civilizations I think is in the debate and modification of very basic rights and wrongs. If a people could accept or decide what these rights and wrongs are without modifying or hybridizing them to suit myriad agendas religious, political or scientific, we might truly--and I regret using the word--evolve as a species into something more civilized.

Ultimately, we the citizenry have always put our hopes for a better tomorrow, or at least a less oppressive one, in the hands of our leaders. After revolutions of ideology the cycle resets and continues. Whether one bases his deepest beliefs on religion or science, the historical cycle remains unchanged.

 

[AVG-JOE]

You say that like it's a bad thing?!?

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

 

[PoliticalChic]

You say that like it's a bad thing?!?

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.



Take slavery as an example. For the slaver….rational arguments can be made re: profit, easier life, due to slavery. No moral arguments can be made for same.
You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

Murder? War? The same.

Right down to the mundane....say, cheating on tests. The cheater simply says 'well, everyone does it.....'


Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

 

[PoliticalChic]

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken,

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. All too often, a trust-baby hits “21” and is blinded to life by the untold riches that flow through his fingers. In an intellectual sense, the wonders of science revealed during the Enlightenment had the same effect on many. Add the violence directed at the clergy as well as the monarchy, and one has the making of secularism.

2. So infatuated with the fall-out from the Enlightenment, the possibility that science might be able explain and/or control life, a desire was generalized, that the same physical and chemical laws could be applied to human beings!

a. The French Revolution, the Jacobin revolution, resulted in Reason replacing the Christian God.

b. “Auguste Comte argued that humanity progressed in three stages and that in the final stage mankind would throw off Christianity and replace it with a new “religion of humanity,” which married religious fervor to science and reason- even to the extent of making “saints” out of such figures as Shakespeare, Dante and Frederick the Great.” Charles Forcey, “The Crossroads of Liberalism,” p. 15

c. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.





3. It was but a short leap to a mechanized view of human beings: evolution.
Herbert Spencer was the most influential popularizer of evolution in 19th century America. Actually, it was Spencer who developed a theory of evolution before Darwin and is credited with coining the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest'. He saw the process everywhere, not only in nature…but in human society as well. Spencer embraces other materialist thinkers, such as Marx and Nietzsche.
Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinist or Libertarian Prophet?, by Peter Richards




4. This aspect of the Enlightenment is known as ‘naturalism.’ Naturalism aligns humans with the evolutionary scheme of things, i.e., the individual does not really matter, and has no intrinsic worth beyond the single task that nature assigns every organism: to reproduce so that the species will survive. Therefore, there is no higher purpose beyond sheer biological existence.






5. Consider the result of naturalism’s worldview on society:

a. LONDON (Aug. 26) - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled "Humans'' at the London Zoo.

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment'' read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, "Why are there people in there?''

London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills says that's exactly the question the zoo wants to answer.

"Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate,'' Wills said. Yahoo! Groups


b. NEW YORK (AP) — Scarlett Johansson says that while monogamy might go against instinct, she's happy in her relationship with boyfriend and recent Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett…. "I do think on some basic level we are animals, and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly," she says. Scarlett Johansson: 'I'm not promiscuous' - USATODAY.com


c. Sienna Miller tells ‘Rolling Stone,' "I don't know, monogamy is a weird thing for me," Miller, who is still seeing Law, tells Rolling Stone in its new issue. "It's an overrated virtue, because, let's face it, we're f–ing animals." Sienna Miller Says Monogamy Is 'Overrated' - Hook Ups, Kids & Family Life, Jude Law, Sienna Miller : People.com





6. So, which came first,….folks behaving like animals, or creed that instructed them to behave as such? “Obviously, Darwinian evolution is not just a scientific theory. It has worldview implications that percolate from classic literature down to Hollywood and into our living rooms.”
Nancy Pearcey, “Saving Leonardo,” p. 145.

Our species is still awakening from the religious oppression of the Dark Ages to the possibilities of societal control mechanisms bereft of obligatory fear of God and suppression of acceptance of "other" options. To elucidate, what guides our species has always been a matter of what sells best. Throughout the Dark Ages what sold best as a means to control the populaces of various feudal states was obedience to God by way of and as dictated by the clergy. God granted monarchs the divine hereditary right to head states, so long as the church said so. This commodity of power sold so well that the citizenry formed new moral concepts of right and wrong based on what the clergy handed down to them. Generation upon generation was born instilled with a product of morality the clergy had conditioned into their forefathers. And so oppression reigned and where flickers of divergent thought arose the actionable mechanism of the clergy labelled such as heresy and carried out an absolute policy of eradication.

Revolution and schism of the church served to throw off the cloak of religious oppression and opened the aphotic cieling of the Dark Ages to what some would describe as rays of sunshine and enlightenment allowing for the free expression without fear of reprisal of heretical ideas and their teaching in secular universities. Once the dissemination of "other" possibilities was condoned, perhaps subconciously or as subversive power plays in the heavens of human power, there was no going back.

Science sells today. Religion is still around, but as a product of societal control in the west, it has largely been rendered impotent.

On a personal level I do not ascribe religion with morality or vice versa. Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science, and had modern science hand in hand flourished twelve centuries ago with religion, the clergy would have used it to further the cause. I think human right and wrong are indelibly black and white on a very basic level. Some human behaviors are good, others are baleful and where we fail as societies and civilizations I think is in the debate and modification of very basic rights and wrongs. If a people could accept or decide what these rights and wrongs are without modifying or hybridizing them to suit myriad agendas religious, political or scientific, we might truly--and I regret using the word--evolve as a species into something more civilized.

Ultimately, we the citizenry have always put our hopes for a better tomorrow, or at least a less oppressive one, in the hands of our leaders. After revolutions of ideology the cycle resets and continues. Whether one bases his deepest beliefs on religion or science, the historical cycle remains unchanged.

"Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science,..."
No clearer indication of a government school education is necessary.


First World War (1914–18): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 million
Russian Civil War (1917–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 million
Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924–53): . . . . . . . . . 20 million
Second World War (1937–45): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 million
Chinese Civil War (1945–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 million
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s
regime (1949–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 million
Tibet (1950 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000
Congo Free State (1886–1908): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 million
Mexico (1910–20): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
China (1917–28): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800,000
China, Nationalist era (1928–37): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 million
Korean War (1950–53): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 million
North Korea (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 million
Rwanda and Burundi (1959–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.35 million
Second Indochina War (1960–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 million
Ethiopia (1962–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Nigeria (1966–70): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Bangladesh (1971): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25 million
Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975–78): . . . . . . . . . . . 1.65 million
Mozambique (1975–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Afghanistan (1979–2001): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 million
Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Sudan (1983 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 million
Kinshasa, Congo (1998 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 million
Philippines Insurgency (1899–1902): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000
Brazil (1900 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Amazonia (1900–1912): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Portuguese colonies (1900–1925): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325,000
French colonies (1900–1940): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Japanese War (1904–5): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
German East Africa (1905–7): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Libya (1911–31): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125,000
Balkan Wars (1912–13): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000
Greco–Turkish War (1919–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Spanish Civil War (1936–39): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365,000
Franco Regime (1939–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100,000
Abyssinian Conquest (1935–41): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Finnish War (1939–40): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Greek Civil War (1943–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,000
Yugoslavia, Tito’s regime (1944–80): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
First Indochina War (1945–54): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Colombia (1946–58): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
India (1947): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Romania (1948–89): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Burma/Myanmar (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
Algeria (1954–62): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537,000
Sudan (1955–72): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Guatemala (1960–96): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Indonesia (1965–66): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Uganda, Idi Amin’s regime (1972–79): . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Vietnam, postwar Communist regime
(1975 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430,000
Angola (1975–2002): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550,000
East Timor, conquest by Indonesia (1975–99): . . . . . 200,000
Lebanon (1975–90): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Cambodian Civil War (1978–91): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225,000
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979–2003): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Uganda (1979–86): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Liberia (1989–97): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Iraq (1990– ): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Somalia (1991 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000


So....which religion was responsible for poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery,
pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs,
attack submarines, napalm, inter continental ballistic missiles,
military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?


Dunce.

 

[AVG-JOE]

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.



Take slavery as an example. For the slaver….rational arguments can be made re: profit, easier life, due to slavery. No moral arguments can be made for same.
You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

Murder? War? The same.

Right down to the mundane....say, cheating on tests. The cheater simply says 'well, everyone does it.....'


Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

This is simply proof that there is no God, or if there is, He impotent. Otherwise a god or a religion would have dominated the planet by force.

Morality is a personal judgement call enforced by the beholder. Slavers aren't less moral... just different from those who would disagree. This is where Civil Law and the morality ascribed to us by our fellow man comes in to play, ass-u-me-ing there are enough teeth behind the Civil Code to actually enforce it.



When has God EVER punished anyone? (Outside of the story book examples, of course. )



[SIZE="-3"]

`​

[/SIZE]

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

1. All too often, a trust-baby hits “21” and is blinded to life by the untold riches that flow through his fingers. In an intellectual sense, the wonders of science revealed during the Enlightenment had the same effect on many. Add the violence directed at the clergy as well as the monarchy, and one has the making of secularism.

2. So infatuated with the fall-out from the Enlightenment, the possibility that science might be able explain and/or control life, a desire was generalized, that the same physical and chemical laws could be applied to human beings!

a. The French Revolution, the Jacobin revolution, resulted in Reason replacing the Christian God.

b. “Auguste Comte argued that humanity progressed in three stages and that in the final stage mankind would throw off Christianity and replace it with a new “religion of humanity,” which married religious fervor to science and reason- even to the extent of making “saints” out of such figures as Shakespeare, Dante and Frederick the Great.” Charles Forcey, “The Crossroads of Liberalism,” p. 15

c. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.





3. It was but a short leap to a mechanized view of human beings: evolution.
Herbert Spencer was the most influential popularizer of evolution in 19th century America. Actually, it was Spencer who developed a theory of evolution before Darwin and is credited with coining the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest'. He saw the process everywhere, not only in nature…but in human society as well. Spencer embraces other materialist thinkers, such as Marx and Nietzsche.
Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinist or Libertarian Prophet?, by Peter Richards




4. This aspect of the Enlightenment is known as ‘naturalism.’ Naturalism aligns humans with the evolutionary scheme of things, i.e., the individual does not really matter, and has no intrinsic worth beyond the single task that nature assigns every organism: to reproduce so that the species will survive. Therefore, there is no higher purpose beyond sheer biological existence.






5. Consider the result of naturalism’s worldview on society:

a. LONDON (Aug. 26) - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled "Humans'' at the London Zoo.

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment'' read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, "Why are there people in there?''

London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills says that's exactly the question the zoo wants to answer.

"Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate,'' Wills said. Yahoo! Groups


b. NEW YORK (AP) — Scarlett Johansson says that while monogamy might go against instinct, she's happy in her relationship with boyfriend and recent Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett…. "I do think on some basic level we are animals, and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly," she says. Scarlett Johansson: 'I'm not promiscuous' - USATODAY.com


c. Sienna Miller tells ‘Rolling Stone,' "I don't know, monogamy is a weird thing for me," Miller, who is still seeing Law, tells Rolling Stone in its new issue. "It's an overrated virtue, because, let's face it, we're f–ing animals." Sienna Miller Says Monogamy Is 'Overrated' - Hook Ups, Kids & Family Life, Jude Law, Sienna Miller : People.com





6. So, which came first,….folks behaving like animals, or creed that instructed them to behave as such? “Obviously, Darwinian evolution is not just a scientific theory. It has worldview implications that percolate from classic literature down to Hollywood and into our living rooms.”
Nancy Pearcey, “Saving Leonardo,” p. 145.

Our species is still awakening from the religious oppression of the Dark Ages to the possibilities of societal control mechanisms bereft of obligatory fear of God and suppression of acceptance of "other" options. To elucidate, what guides our species has always been a matter of what sells best. Throughout the Dark Ages what sold best as a means to control the populaces of various feudal states was obedience to God by way of and as dictated by the clergy. God granted monarchs the divine hereditary right to head states, so long as the church said so. This commodity of power sold so well that the citizenry formed new moral concepts of right and wrong based on what the clergy handed down to them. Generation upon generation was born instilled with a product of morality the clergy had conditioned into their forefathers. And so oppression reigned and where flickers of divergent thought arose the actionable mechanism of the clergy labelled such as heresy and carried out an absolute policy of eradication.

Revolution and schism of the church served to throw off the cloak of religious oppression and opened the aphotic cieling of the Dark Ages to what some would describe as rays of sunshine and enlightenment allowing for the free expression without fear of reprisal of heretical ideas and their teaching in secular universities. Once the dissemination of "other" possibilities was condoned, perhaps subconciously or as subversive power plays in the heavens of human power, there was no going back.

Science sells today. Religion is still around, but as a product of societal control in the west, it has largely been rendered impotent.

On a personal level I do not ascribe religion with morality or vice versa. Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science, and had modern science hand in hand flourished twelve centuries ago with religion, the clergy would have used it to further the cause. I think human right and wrong are indelibly black and white on a very basic level. Some human behaviors are good, others are baleful and where we fail as societies and civilizations I think is in the debate and modification of very basic rights and wrongs. If a people could accept or decide what these rights and wrongs are without modifying or hybridizing them to suit myriad agendas religious, political or scientific, we might truly--and I regret using the word--evolve as a species into something more civilized.

Ultimately, we the citizenry have always put our hopes for a better tomorrow, or at least a less oppressive one, in the hands of our leaders. After revolutions of ideology the cycle resets and continues. Whether one bases his deepest beliefs on religion or science, the historical cycle remains unchanged.

"Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science,..."
No clearer indication of a government school education is necessary.


First World War (1914–18): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 million
Russian Civil War (1917–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 million
Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924–53): . . . . . . . . . 20 million
Second World War (1937–45): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 million
Chinese Civil War (1945–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 million
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s
regime (1949–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 million
Tibet (1950 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000
Congo Free State (1886–1908): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 million
Mexico (1910–20): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
China (1917–28): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800,000
China, Nationalist era (1928–37): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 million
Korean War (1950–53): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 million
North Korea (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 million
Rwanda and Burundi (1959–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.35 million
Second Indochina War (1960–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 million
Ethiopia (1962–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Nigeria (1966–70): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Bangladesh (1971): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25 million
Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975–78): . . . . . . . . . . . 1.65 million
Mozambique (1975–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Afghanistan (1979–2001): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 million
Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Sudan (1983 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 million
Kinshasa, Congo (1998 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 million
Philippines Insurgency (1899–1902): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000
Brazil (1900 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Amazonia (1900–1912): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Portuguese colonies (1900–1925): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325,000
French colonies (1900–1940): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Japanese War (1904–5): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
German East Africa (1905–7): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Libya (1911–31): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125,000
Balkan Wars (1912–13): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000
Greco–Turkish War (1919–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Spanish Civil War (1936–39): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365,000
Franco Regime (1939–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100,000
Abyssinian Conquest (1935–41): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Finnish War (1939–40): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Greek Civil War (1943–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,000
Yugoslavia, Tito’s regime (1944–80): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
First Indochina War (1945–54): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Colombia (1946–58): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
India (1947): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Romania (1948–89): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Burma/Myanmar (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
Algeria (1954–62): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537,000
Sudan (1955–72): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Guatemala (1960–96): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Indonesia (1965–66): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Uganda, Idi Amin’s regime (1972–79): . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Vietnam, postwar Communist regime
(1975 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430,000
Angola (1975–2002): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550,000
East Timor, conquest by Indonesia (1975–99): . . . . . 200,000
Lebanon (1975–90): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Cambodian Civil War (1978–91): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225,000
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979–2003): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Uganda (1979–86): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Liberia (1989–97): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Iraq (1990– ): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Somalia (1991 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000


So....which religion was responsible for poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery,
pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs,
attack submarines, napalm, inter continental ballistic missiles,
military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?


Dunce.

I am appalled. I expect better from you.

I think I get the point you're trying to make, but are you suggesting that religion was not involved in any of the examples on your list? I beg to differ. I don't know where you got, or for all I know copied and pasted, your examples from, but I assure you some of them included religious motivations. What you have provided is essentially a long list of bloody conflicts that conveniently excludes those involving Judeo-Christian concerns. Why don't you include both World Wars, the 30 Years War, The Inquisition, The French Wars of Religion, Reconquista, The Muslim Conquests and subsequent Crusades?

While we're at it we may as well include the entire Dark Ages and the targeting of Jews for their presumed deicide of Jesus. And this didn't stop with the Protestant Reformation, lest we forget it was Martin Luther who wrote On Jews and Their Lies. It's very convenient to point the finger at the Nazis, but where did they get their hatred of the Jew from? Could it be from 1000+ years of Christian hatred of them in Europe. Nah. Couldn't be.

I enjoy our debates, Political Chic, but please. I do expect better than that from you.

Edited: I see you included WWI and WWII. Please disregard that. However, if the U.S. is a Christian nation, as I must assume you believe, or at least intended to be or part of God's plan, then at least indirectly you could count U.S. involvement was at least partially based on a Judeo-Christian moral imperative.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Our species is still awakening from the religious oppression of the Dark Ages to the possibilities of societal control mechanisms bereft of obligatory fear of God and suppression of acceptance of "other" options. To elucidate, what guides our species has always been a matter of what sells best. Throughout the Dark Ages what sold best as a means to control the populaces of various feudal states was obedience to God by way of and as dictated by the clergy. God granted monarchs the divine hereditary right to head states, so long as the church said so. This commodity of power sold so well that the citizenry formed new moral concepts of right and wrong based on what the clergy handed down to them. Generation upon generation was born instilled with a product of morality the clergy had conditioned into their forefathers. And so oppression reigned and where flickers of divergent thought arose the actionable mechanism of the clergy labelled such as heresy and carried out an absolute policy of eradication.

Revolution and schism of the church served to throw off the cloak of religious oppression and opened the aphotic cieling of the Dark Ages to what some would describe as rays of sunshine and enlightenment allowing for the free expression without fear of reprisal of heretical ideas and their teaching in secular universities. Once the dissemination of "other" possibilities was condoned, perhaps subconciously or as subversive power plays in the heavens of human power, there was no going back.

Science sells today. Religion is still around, but as a product of societal control in the west, it has largely been rendered impotent.

On a personal level I do not ascribe religion with morality or vice versa. Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science, and had modern science hand in hand flourished twelve centuries ago with religion, the clergy would have used it to further the cause. I think human right and wrong are indelibly black and white on a very basic level. Some human behaviors are good, others are baleful and where we fail as societies and civilizations I think is in the debate and modification of very basic rights and wrongs. If a people could accept or decide what these rights and wrongs are without modifying or hybridizing them to suit myriad agendas religious, political or scientific, we might truly--and I regret using the word--evolve as a species into something more civilized.

Ultimately, we the citizenry have always put our hopes for a better tomorrow, or at least a less oppressive one, in the hands of our leaders. After revolutions of ideology the cycle resets and continues. Whether one bases his deepest beliefs on religion or science, the historical cycle remains unchanged.

"Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science,..."
No clearer indication of a government school education is necessary.


First World War (1914–18): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 million
Russian Civil War (1917–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 million
Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924–53): . . . . . . . . . 20 million
Second World War (1937–45): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 million
Chinese Civil War (1945–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 million
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s
regime (1949–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 million
Tibet (1950 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000
Congo Free State (1886–1908): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 million
Mexico (1910–20): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
China (1917–28): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800,000
China, Nationalist era (1928–37): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 million
Korean War (1950–53): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 million
North Korea (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 million
Rwanda and Burundi (1959–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.35 million
Second Indochina War (1960–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 million
Ethiopia (1962–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Nigeria (1966–70): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Bangladesh (1971): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25 million
Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975–78): . . . . . . . . . . . 1.65 million
Mozambique (1975–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Afghanistan (1979–2001): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 million
Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Sudan (1983 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 million
Kinshasa, Congo (1998 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 million
Philippines Insurgency (1899–1902): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000
Brazil (1900 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Amazonia (1900–1912): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Portuguese colonies (1900–1925): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325,000
French colonies (1900–1940): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Japanese War (1904–5): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
German East Africa (1905–7): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Libya (1911–31): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125,000
Balkan Wars (1912–13): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000
Greco–Turkish War (1919–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Spanish Civil War (1936–39): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365,000
Franco Regime (1939–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100,000
Abyssinian Conquest (1935–41): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Finnish War (1939–40): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Greek Civil War (1943–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,000
Yugoslavia, Tito’s regime (1944–80): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
First Indochina War (1945–54): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Colombia (1946–58): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
India (1947): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Romania (1948–89): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Burma/Myanmar (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
Algeria (1954–62): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537,000
Sudan (1955–72): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Guatemala (1960–96): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Indonesia (1965–66): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Uganda, Idi Amin’s regime (1972–79): . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Vietnam, postwar Communist regime
(1975 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430,000
Angola (1975–2002): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550,000
East Timor, conquest by Indonesia (1975–99): . . . . . 200,000
Lebanon (1975–90): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Cambodian Civil War (1978–91): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225,000
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979–2003): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Uganda (1979–86): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Liberia (1989–97): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Iraq (1990– ): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Somalia (1991 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000


So....which religion was responsible for poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery,
pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs,
attack submarines, napalm, inter continental ballistic missiles,
military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?


Dunce.

I am appalled. I expect better from you.

I think I get the point you're trying to make, but are you suggesting that religion was not involved in any of the examples on your list? I beg to differ. I don't know where you got, or for all I know copied and pasted, your examples from, but I assure you some of them included religious motivations. What you have provided is essentially a long list of bloody conflicts that conveniently excludes those involving Judeo-Christian concerns. Why don't you include both World Wars, the 30 Years War, The Inquisition, The French Wars of Religion, Reconquista, The Muslim Conquests and subsequent Crusades?

While we're at it we may as well include the entire Dark Ages and the targeting of Jews for their presumed deicide of Jesus. And this didn't stop with the Protestant Reformation, lest we forget it was Martin Luther who wrote On Jews and Their Lies. It's very convenient to point the finger at the Nazis, but where did they get their hatred of the Jew from? Could it be from 1000+ years of Christian hatred of them in Europe. Nah. Couldn't be.

I enjoy our debates, Political Chic, but please. I do expect better than that from you.

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.


The source:
David Berlinski, "The Devil's Delusion."

You might like it.


I feel no obligation to your expectations.

 

[PoliticalChic]

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.



Take slavery as an example. For the slaver….rational arguments can be made re: profit, easier life, due to slavery. No moral arguments can be made for same.
You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

Murder? War? The same.

Right down to the mundane....say, cheating on tests. The cheater simply says 'well, everyone does it.....'


Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

This is simply proof that there is no God, or if there is, He impotent. Otherwise a god or a religion would have dominated the planet by force.

Morality is a personal judgement call enforced by the beholder. Slavers aren't less moral... just different from those who would disagree. This is where Civil Law and the morality ascribed to us by our fellow man comes in to play, ass-u-me-ing there are enough teeth behind the Civil Code to actually enforce it.





When has God EVER punished anyone? (Outside of the story book examples, of course. )



[SIZE="-3"]

`​

[/SIZE]

"Slavers aren't less moral."
Absurd.

"Otherwise a god or a religion would have dominated the planet by force."
The God I worship allows men free will, and actions based on same.