History shows Religion is the only force against totalitarian state domination of your entire being

[Libby von H]

Unless of course, that religion also gets secular powers and becomes a theocracy, e.g., Iran today or Medieval Spain.

I think you are suggesting that that was how it happened in Christian cases of abuse of power but it isn't

"None of these persecutions could have been carried out without the permission and cooperation of secular governments. In only a few small regions, like the Papal States and various Prince-Bishoprics in Germany, were religious and temporal government leaders one and the same. But in all the rest of Western Europe, secular princes ultimately decided whether or not witches were hunted"

As to INquisition, even less so

• Inquisitors were not fanatical priests as they are often portrayed. In fact, many of them were not priests at all but legal experts trained in Spanish schools.
• Contrary to popular belief, torture was rarely used. It was used less by the Inquisition than it was in the tribunals of other countries throughout Europe at the time.
• Stories about cruel torture methods used by the Inquisitors and the terrible conditions in which prisoners were kept were completely falsified. The Inquisition actually had the best jails in Spain.
• Prisoners of secular courts would actually blaspheme so that they could be transferred to Inquisition prisons and escape the maltreatment of the secular prisons.
• Persecuting witchcraft was a craze in Europe at the time, and secular courts were not tolerant of these kinds of offenses. The accused were often burned at the stake. The Inquisition, on the other hand, declared witchcraft a delusion. No one could be tried for it or burned at the stake.
• The Inquisition was virtually powerless in rural areas.
• In the entire sixteenth century, the Inquisition in Spain executed only about 50 people, which is contrary to the “Black Legend,” which numbers the executions in the hundreds of thousands.
• Of all the Inquisitions together throughout Europe, scholars estimate that the number of people executed ranged somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. That averages, at most, about fourteen people per year throughout the entire continent over a period of 350 years.

I am not excusing how the tares acts amidst the wheat but it isn't pefect vs non-perfect

128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERING ATHEISTS​

4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime

 

[Mack Brazile]

 

[whitehall]

The term "religion" is such a broad term that it could mean anything from authorizing murder of infidels to worshiping a rock to worshiping the devil. The most notorious example of religious intolerance is a state sponsored religion. Early American colonists fled Europe to escape state religions and the Founding Fathers created the Bill of Rights that allowed freedom to engage in religion or not.

 

[rampart]

View attachment 926059

to "subdue your enemy without fighting" may require a sounder ideology and more logical arguments.

a trump/biden debate probably will not happen, but i would like to know which of america's vital defenses, from ukraine to public health, trump will claim "i am not responsible4" for next,

or how trump intends to solve your hyped up "border crisis" without adding the agents, hudges, and rentanyl detectors that trump killed in the conservativw3 bill?

or how he intends to end the war in ukraine in one day without surrendering as he did for the afghans. good thing the free world has leaders ;like zelansky, macron, or trudeau.

or where in his ass he pulls those numbers from?

 

[Votto]

View attachment 926077

Jim Jones is a good example of what I'm talking about

The church was not left wing enough for him as he was a Marxist.

 

[Votto]

I think you are suggesting that that was how it happened in Christian cases of abuse of power but it isn't

"None of these persecutions could have been carried out without the permission and cooperation of secular governments. In only a few small regions, like the Papal States and various Prince-Bishoprics in Germany, were religious and temporal government leaders one and the same. But in all the rest of Western Europe, secular princes ultimately decided whether or not witches were hunted"

As to INquisition, even less so

• Inquisitors were not fanatical priests as they are often portrayed. In fact, many of them were not priests at all but legal experts trained in Spanish schools.
• Contrary to popular belief, torture was rarely used. It was used less by the Inquisition than it was in the tribunals of other countries throughout Europe at the time.
• Stories about cruel torture methods used by the Inquisitors and the terrible conditions in which prisoners were kept were completely falsified. The Inquisition actually had the best jails in Spain.
• Prisoners of secular courts would actually blaspheme so that they could be transferred to Inquisition prisons and escape the maltreatment of the secular prisons.
• Persecuting witchcraft was a craze in Europe at the time, and secular courts were not tolerant of these kinds of offenses. The accused were often burned at the stake. The Inquisition, on the other hand, declared witchcraft a delusion. No one could be tried for it or burned at the stake.
• The Inquisition was virtually powerless in rural areas.
• In the entire sixteenth century, the Inquisition in Spain executed only about 50 people, which is contrary to the “Black Legend,” which numbers the executions in the hundreds of thousands.
• Of all the Inquisitions together throughout Europe, scholars estimate that the number of people executed ranged somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. That averages, at most, about fourteen people per year throughout the entire continent over a period of 350 years.

I am not excusing how the tares acts amidst the wheat but it isn't pefect vs non-perfect

128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERING ATHEISTS​

Jesus was crucified by the religions leaders of his day in Israel.

Food for thought.

World politics is the death of us all.

 

[alang1216]

I think you are suggesting that that was how it happened in Christian cases of abuse of power but it isn't

"None of these persecutions could have been carried out without the permission and cooperation of secular governments. In only a few small regions, like the Papal States and various Prince-Bishoprics in Germany, were religious and temporal government leaders one and the same. But in all the rest of Western Europe, secular princes ultimately decided whether or not witches were hunted"

As to INquisition, even less so

• Inquisitors were not fanatical priests as they are often portrayed. In fact, many of them were not priests at all but legal experts trained in Spanish schools.
• Contrary to popular belief, torture was rarely used. It was used less by the Inquisition than it was in the tribunals of other countries throughout Europe at the time.
• Stories about cruel torture methods used by the Inquisitors and the terrible conditions in which prisoners were kept were completely falsified. The Inquisition actually had the best jails in Spain.
• Prisoners of secular courts would actually blaspheme so that they could be transferred to Inquisition prisons and escape the maltreatment of the secular prisons.
• Persecuting witchcraft was a craze in Europe at the time, and secular courts were not tolerant of these kinds of offenses. The accused were often burned at the stake. The Inquisition, on the other hand, declared witchcraft a delusion. No one could be tried for it or burned at the stake.
• The Inquisition was virtually powerless in rural areas.
• In the entire sixteenth century, the Inquisition in Spain executed only about 50 people, which is contrary to the “Black Legend,” which numbers the executions in the hundreds of thousands.
• Of all the Inquisitions together throughout Europe, scholars estimate that the number of people executed ranged somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. That averages, at most, about fourteen people per year throughout the entire continent over a period of 350 years.

I am not excusing how the tares acts amidst the wheat but it isn't pefect vs non-perfect

128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERING ATHEISTS​

This would be more convincing if the Catholic church didn't consider itself above those secular governments and didn't threaten excommunication if they d
idn't submit.

 

[Zincwarrior]

Unless of course, that religion also gets secular powers and becomes a theocracy, e.g., Iran today or Medieval Spain.

Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran.

 

[Zincwarrior]

View attachment 926059

"I'd mess that Sun guy up."
-Genghis Khan

 

[Hum Dinger]

No. Leftism is a religion, Nazism is a religion, communism is a religion, etc.

The Left, or any other political cult out there, has no problem with a religion so long as that religion bows its knee to their cult. Case in point is Joe Biden. So long as Jesus bows his knee to the Left and is Ok with abortion on demand and other vices the Bible takes issue with that conflict with the Leftist ideology, Joe Biden is just fine.

However, once that religion disagrees with their cult in any way whatsoever, they become Nazi Taliban insurrectionists from hell that is trying to take over government and end democracy.

In fact, Hitler even said he was a Christian, but I guarantee if you had asked Hitler if Nazism conflicted with Christianity he would given an overwhelming NO!! reply. The same is with Joe Biden.

Try again.

Your inability to differentiate between religions and political philosophies, proves one thing:

STUPIDITY is your religion!

 

[Votto]

Your inability to differentiate between religions and political philosophies, proves one thing:

STUPIDITY is your religion!

Really, what separates the two?

Both deal with one problem, human free will.

How do you maximize free will while stopping people from hurting others or themselves?

In short, how should people live their lives to maintain a civil society?

Adding or subtracting God from the equation does nothing to change that.

We have the Constitution and the Bible as our guide for both, yet both are ignored with impunity.

 

[Dragonlady]

So, several on here objected with objections that the world scholar on this topic has dealt with Michael Burleigh, so to him I turn

Historically, of course, as has been pointed out by such thinkers as Marcel Gauchet and George Weigel Christianity had much to do with the notion of the autonomous, sacrosanct individual, with the preservation of a sphere beyond the state that anticipated civil society, with the notion of elected leadership, and with holding rulers accountable to higher powers.


On the eve of the Bolshevik coup d'état, the Orthodox Church claimed a hundred million adherents, two hundred thousand priests and monks, seventy-five thousand churches and chapels, over eleven hundred monasteries, thirty-seven thousand primary schools, fifty-seven seminaries and four university-level academies, not to speak of thousands of hospitals, old people’s homes and orphanages. Within a few years, the intuitional structures were swept away, the churches were desolated, vandalized or put to secular use. Many of the clergy were imprisoned or shot; appropriately enough the first concentration camp of the gulag was opened in a monastery in Artic regions.

The Austrian Catholic newspaper Volkswohl even parodied life in a future Nazi state in a manner that seems extraordinarily prescient. Every newborn baby’s hereditary history would be checked by a Racial-Hygienic Institute; the unfit or sickly would be sterilised or killed; dedicated ‘Aryan’ Catholics would be persecuted: ‘The demonic cries out from this movement; masses of the tempted go to their doom under the Satan’s sun. If we Catholics want to save ourselves, then I can never be in a pact with these forces.’

Christianity regarded all earthly existence as transient, while the Nazi thought in terms of rendering life eternal through a sort of biological Great Chain of Being. The individual was nothing, but the racial collective would endure through the aeons

The Enabling Law permitted the government to pass budgets and promulgate laws, including those altering the constitution, for four years without parliamentary approval. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; here they were easier than changing the traffic regulations. None of the guarantees Hitler extended to the Churches or the judiciary in his address to the Reichstag amounted to a hill of beans.

Is there a point to this unsupported rant?

 

[Hum Dinger]

So, several on here objected with objections that the world scholar on this topic has dealt with Michael Burleigh, so to him I turn

Historically, of course, as has been pointed out by such thinkers as Marcel Gauchet and George Weigel Christianity had much to do with the notion of the autonomous, sacrosanct individual, with the preservation of a sphere beyond the state that anticipated civil society, with the notion of elected leadership, and with holding rulers accountable to higher powers.


On the eve of the Bolshevik coup d'état, the Orthodox Church claimed a hundred million adherents, two hundred thousand priests and monks, seventy-five thousand churches and chapels, over eleven hundred monasteries, thirty-seven thousand primary schools, fifty-seven seminaries and four university-level academies, not to speak of thousands of hospitals, old people’s homes and orphanages. Within a few years, the intuitional structures were swept away, the churches were desolated, vandalized or put to secular use. Many of the clergy were imprisoned or shot; appropriately enough the first concentration camp of the gulag was opened in a monastery in Artic regions.

The Austrian Catholic newspaper Volkswohl even parodied life in a future Nazi state in a manner that seems extraordinarily prescient. Every newborn baby’s hereditary history would be checked by a Racial-Hygienic Institute; the unfit or sickly would be sterilised or killed; dedicated ‘Aryan’ Catholics would be persecuted: ‘The demonic cries out from this movement; masses of the tempted go to their doom under the Satan’s sun. If we Catholics want to save ourselves, then I can never be in a pact with these forces.’

Christianity regarded all earthly existence as transient, while the Nazi thought in terms of rendering life eternal through a sort of biological Great Chain of Being. The individual was nothing, but the racial collective would endure through the aeons

The Enabling Law permitted the government to pass budgets and promulgate laws, including those altering the constitution, for four years without parliamentary approval. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; here they were easier than changing the traffic regulations. None of the guarantees Hitler extended to the Churches or the judiciary in his address to the Reichstag amounted to a hill of beans.

I'm sure many of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy were persecuted during and after the Russian Civil war, but that was becuase they strongly supported White Army.

My wife grew up in the Soviet Union. She & her family practiced their religion freely - more than before the Communist Revolution because her family is Russian 'Old Rite' which was persecuted by the Russian Orthodox church and the Czarist government.

Additionally, my wife knew many Catholics including Catholic Priests. The were allowed to practice their religion as well.

The only restriction on religion was that religious people were not welcome in the Communist Party. However, many Religious people held government offices since the party on election ballot was always 'The union of Communists and independents'. 'Independents' did have to get the approval of the Communist party to be on the ballot.

 

[Hum Dinger]

Really, what separates the two?

Both deal with one problem, human free will.

How do you maximize free will while stopping people from hurting others or themselves?

In short, how should people live their lives to maintain a civil society?

Adding or subtracting God from the equation does nothing to change that.

We have the Constitution and the Bible as our guide for both, yet both are ignored with impunity.

So, you think that because Religion and political philosophy have a few similarities they are the same thing?

It's easy to believe that a MAGA cultist like you thinks so.

Apparently you worship your orange god trumpolini!

 

[Votto]

I'm sure many of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy were persecuted during and after the Russian Civil war, but that was becuase they strongly supported White Army.

My wife grew up in the Soviet Union. She & her family practiced their religion freely - more than before the Communist Revolution because her family is Russian 'Old Rite' which was persecuted by the Russian Orthodox church and the Czarist government.

Additionally, my wife knew many Catholics including Catholic Priests. The were allowed to practice their religion as well.

The only restriction on religion was that religious people were not welcome in the Communist Party. However, many Religious people held government offices since the party on election ballot was always 'The union of Communists and independents'. 'Independents' did have to get the approval of the Communist party to be on the ballot.

No, if you owned a Bible you were arrested and the end result was not that good.

Try again.

 

[Soupnazi630]

No, just the opposite, unschooled bigot

As of about a year ago we know have the religious views in their own words of all 118 FOunders and they are almost to a man opposed to your view.
3 volumes , 8 years research , 2000 pages , every Founder

Judge Mark T. Boonstra​

Mark Boonstra – In Their Own Words

In Their Own Words

foundersownwords.com

No thy absolutely supported my view. Quote after quote which you provideed shows that they support the idea of seperating religion from state.

Clearly you posted quotes without reading them but you defeated yourself.

By The Way you are a liar and coward. I said nothing bigoted.

 

[Votto]

So, you think that because Religion and political philosophy have a few similarities they are the same thing?

It's easy to believe that a MAGA cultist like you thinks so.

Apparently you worship your orange god trumpolini!

And you seem to think that even though they have similarities that they are mutually exclusive.

That is asinine.

What is a cult? A cult to me is anything or anyone you live your life for aside from God.

For you, it is anyone or anything that lives their life for whom they think is God or is MAGA.

Everyone else it seems is exempt, especially you cuz you are so damned enlightened and right about everything.

To follow God means following wisdom and expertise

But for those who do not believe in a God, they must find experts to follow in whatever cult the experts drag you into.

Problem is, as we saw with Covid, the human experts are clowns who dragged people into the vaccine cult, or the climate cult, or whatever it may be.

 

[Libby von H]

The term "religion" is such a broad term that it could mean anything from authorizing murder of infidels to worshiping a rock to worshiping the devil. The most notorious example of religious intolerance is a state sponsored religion. Early American colonists fled Europe to escape state religions and the Founding Fathers created the Bill of Rights that allowed freedom to engage in religion or not.

False on 3 counts... Suppose you said 'Food' is a broad term that could include 'poison' well you wouldn't put that in unless it did not normally include poison!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So that is just dishonest. You know exactly what I mean

Secondly you are wrong about the Founders. The wanted ONLY to escape the forceful belonging to a certain denomination. They loved christianity and Judaism and wanted its influence spread near and far.
In his Farewell Address of September 1796, Washington called religion, as the source of morality, "a necessary spring of popular government," while Adams claimed that statesmen "may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand."
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

John Adams

Worst of all you are hypocrtical. I could say the term 'irreligion' is so broad it could just include a member of X who repudiates Y !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is wrong with you--- and I am sure most on here would agree -- is that no one belongs to 'religion' but to a particular religion so your constatnt attempts to lay the blame of bad people's religious views on the doorstep of the good just shows you to be an ill-conscienced nasty little twerp

 

[mikegriffith1]

Many nazis considered national socialism to be a religion and treated it as such although they did not have to killed religious leaders because many of them including the pope cooperated with the fascists.

The Nazis considered Christianity one of their main enemies and biggest threats.

The Pope "cooperated with the fascists"??? The Nazis didn't see it that way. They quickly came to realize that the Pope was ardently anti-Nazi and was doing all he could to thwart the Holocaust.

The Romans certianly understood the importance of religion in controlling people throughout the empire. The roman legions were expensive and they wanted to avoid using the army to occupy conquered lands as much as possible. Which is why they probably created christianity to control the unruly people of palestine.

This is surreal, bizarre fiction. The Romans did not create Christianity. The Romans murdered thousands of early Christians. A Roman governor sentenced Christ to death by crucifixion.

Even ancient tribal warllords had some witch doctor gving the stamp of approval from one god or another to the actions of the warlord.

Surely you understand that Libby is talking about genuine religion, Judeo-Christian religion, not ancient superstitions such as witch doctors, etc.

Religion is a tool of oppression and the only thing preventing totalitarianism is the mind of free persons.

Then it is quite strange that the Communists and the Nazis did all they dared to suppress Christianity and Judaism. Judeo-Christian religion is a tool of liberation and salvation, not oppression.

 

[Libby von H]

I'm sure many of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy were persecuted during and after the Russian Civil war, but that was becuase they strongly supported White Army.

My wife grew up in the Soviet Union. She & her family practiced their religion freely - more than before the Communist Revolution because her family is Russian 'Old Rite' which was persecuted by the Russian Orthodox church and the Czarist government.

Additionally, my wife knew many Catholics including Catholic Priests. The were allowed to practice their religion as well.

The only restriction on religion was that religious people were not welcome in the Communist Party. However, many Religious people held government offices since the party on election ballot was always 'The union of Communists and independents'. 'Independents' did have to get the approval of the Communist party to be on the ballot.

Soooo, you are saying ( in childish prose ) there was no true freedom of religion in theory but there was in practice --- and that is good ???????????????? Yikes, you are low on oil