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

[Votto]

I can't control your fantasies.

I've had enough of phoney Christians, amply represented here.

All right then, back to your safe Biden/Trump safe space where you feel most at home.

Seems like I hit a nerve.

It's back to defending the DNC cult as "superior" to everyone else.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

That is why we have scientists like Dawkins writing books like the God Delusion that theologians laugh at, because he has no expertise on what he is talking about, and why you have theologians creating such things as the Creation museum that says the earth was made in 7 literal days, as scientists like Dawkins laugh at them.

Just understand that much. The only interest Dawkins had in religion or the theologian had in science was to tear the other down.

Writers Are My Enemies. I Read Them Just to Spy on Them.

Dawkins propped up religion as his only opponent, making it a strawman. It's easy to dismiss ancient myths, so it gave him free rein to preach Liberalism as the scientific truth. Taking God as a metaphor, Man is created in god's image. Ironically, it is the supreme powers, both secular and religious, that turn man into a begging worm.

All modern philosophies and ideologies are bait-and-switch. Paratroop over them and see what is going on behind the lines, which are just a facade.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Catholics do not hold funerals for miscarriages.

Just As "Pro-Life" Has to Be Pro-Death and Not Save the Life of the "Mother"

To be consistent with their dogma, they logically have to. Also, wakes, hearses, and funerals for the contents of used condoms, which Protestants have only recently dismissed as unviable tissue mass.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Litany of Laissez-Faire

What I posted. Behind the lines, he's promoting unbridled, loot-and-scoot klepto-Capitalism, not realizing that would be its terminal stage.

 

[Votto]

Writers Are My Enemies. I Read Them Just to Spy on Them.

Dawkins propped up religion as his only opponent, making it a strawman. It's easy to dismiss ancient myths, so it gave him free rein to preach Liberalism as the scientific truth. Taking God as a metaphor, Man is created in god's image. Ironically, it is the supreme powers, both secular and religious, that turn man into a begging worm.

All modern philosophies and ideologies are bait-and-switch. Paratroop over them and see what is going on behind the lines, which are just a facade.

Ancient myths?

Is this what you view the Bible as?

Biblical Archeologists would be out of a job if that were the case.

Trying to dismiss miracles will only get you so far, like how life began and where the material universe came from.

Miracles are all around you, like a life being born that escaped the abortion mills of Planned Parenthood at taxpayer expense during Bidenommics where no one can afford to have children.

 

[alang1216]

See, readers, I give citations and refer to authorities , this mindless idiot does nothing but wheeze like he's trying to impress his fat girlfiend

Since I am a fan of St Theresa , one of those Conversos, let's show the stupidity of this poster.

Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain Norman Roth Norman Roth argues here with detailed documentation that, contrary to popular myth, the conversos were sincere converts who hated (and were hated by) the remaining Jewish community. Roth examines in depth the reasons for the Inquisition against the conversos, and the eventual expulsion of all Jews from Spain. ANd wrong on at least 4 counts about the INquisition HEre is the BBC documentary 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 gave 5 examples of problems in Catholic Spain and you focus of a part of one and ignore the rest. And your defense is that, sure they were bad but others were worse.

 

[forkup]

You may have an interest in something, but largely have no respect for it and thus no real knowledge about it.

That is why we have scientists like Dawkins writing books like the God Delusion that theologians laugh at, because he has no expertise on what he is talking about, and why you have theologians creating such things as the Creation museum that says the earth was made in 7 literal days, as scientists like Dawkins laugh at them. Both are commenting on things they have no expertise in and have no real respect for.

Just understand that much. The only interest Dawkins had in religion or the theologian had in science was to tear the other down.

I will assume here for a second your only interest is not to tear down theology.

So, tell us what you know of Biblical slavery.

Was it the same as the slavery in America, for example?

You don't need to respect something to have knowledge of it. As I said, I'm interested in history. Theirs thousands of events in history that I have knowledge off but find utterly reprehensible.



You're right though. I don't respect the Bible. If you have respect for a book that says I can stone somebody to death for working on a Sabbath that's a you problem. If you have respect for a book that says that the moral thing to do when a guest in your house is threatened with violence is offering up your 2 virgin daughters for gang rape that is again, a you problem.

The only way a can have respect for the bible is by deciding to ignore whole swaths of it. But that of course poses the question. What parts should you ignore, and with what justification?

 

[Votto]

You don't need to respect something to have knowledge of it. As I said, I'm interested in history. Theirs thousands of events in history that I have knowledge off but find utterly reprehensible.



You're right though. I don't respect the Bible. If you have respect for a book that says I can stone somebody to death for working on a Sabbath that's a you problem. If you have respect for a book that says that the moral thing to do when a guest in your house is threatened with violence is offering up your 2 virgin daughters for gang rape that is again, a you problem.

The only way a can have respect for the bible is by deciding to ignore whole swaths of it. But that of course poses the question. What parts should you ignore, and with what justification?

Morality aside, the Bible should be looked at as a historical gem as most of ancient history is lost to us. The gauntlet of first having someone to observe and then write down history is hard enough in itself because the vast number of people at that time could not read or write or have the means to write it down, but to also have those writings survive the ravages of time is perhaps even more daunting. For example, the existence of the Philistines is recorded nowhere else but in the Bible. Biblical Archeologists simply read where they were supposed to be, dug there, and found them, etc. Also, if it were not for the dedication of Catholic Monks to preserve and write down, not just the Bible, but other ancient parts of history, perhaps all history would be gone, especially after the great fire in the library of Alexandria. So, give those of faith their due for preserving the history you claim to love.

As for morality, you mentioned the Sabbath. Put into context, what is the Sabbath? The vast majority of those on earth at that time were slaves to the state or fought in an army for their despotic king as a slave. People worked 24/7 as the Jewish people were all slaves themselves in Egypt for 400 plus years. You might even say slavery was and is the human condition as there are more slaves today than at any other time in human history. But then enters Moses, a man God sent alone into Egypt to free the slaves. Not only that, once freed the society made sure that everyone had one day of rest every 7 days, something unheard of at that time. And even though they still had some form of slavery within their camp, those slaves still observed the Sabbath and enjoyed a day of rest along with everyone else. Again, something unheard of till that time.. The slavery they had in Israel was only for those who were down and out with not much or any support from a particular tribe of people. They were allowed to be a slave to get back on their feet again, but then had to be released after 7 years, again. In fact, without the Sabbath I doubt seriously we would even have a weekend today. So, the next time you have a day off, thank Moses and the people you morally despise.

From our vantage point today, stoning someone from violating the Sabbath seems insane and immoral, but what if these measures had to be put in place for people and they fell back into the previous system? Keep in mind that their religions back then were also dedicated to child sacrifice as well as slavery Had the people been allowed to fall back into slavery and child sacrifice of pagan religions all around them, would that not be the one morally repugnant outcome to avoid above all others? Naturally, those of faith today, whether in Judaism or Christianity follow the directive to stone as laid down in the Mosaic law, but they still revere the Bible and respect it.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Biblical Archeologists would be out of a job if that were the case.

Crackpots Digging Up Cracked Pots

That shows you how dishonest and illogical those archeologists are. They discover some place previously thought to be mythical, and preach that the fact that it really existed proves that everything the Bible says happened there is true.

Well, the same thing happened when Troy was discovered in the 19th Century, but nobody claimed that it was proof that all the supernatural events in The Iliad were true, or even that the epic characters ever existed.

 

[Libby von H]

I gave 5 examples of problems in Catholic Spain and you focus of a part of one and ignore the rest. And your defense is that, sure they were bad but others were worse.

Dear Hillary Clinton Clone, you put your finger on why you are so wrong. Yes,There is x and not-x and that is all there is, not X and 'perfection' That is exactly what I am saying, there is this bad thing and there is this mega-horrible alternative and that is all there is.

 

[surada]

Ancient myths?

Is this what you view the Bible as?

Biblical Archeologists would be out of a job if that were the case.

Trying to dismiss miracles will only get you so far, like how life began and where the material universe came from.

Miracles are all around you, like a life being born that escaped the abortion mills of Planned Parenthood at taxpayer expense during Bidenommics where no one can afford to have children.

Bible archaeology is obsolete. Their objective was to prove scripture. Modern archaeology is about facts..

 

[alang1216]

Dear Hillary Clinton Clone, you put your finger on why you are so wrong. Yes,There is x and not-x and that is all there is, not X and 'perfection' That is exactly what I am saying, there is this bad thing and there is this mega-horrible alternative and that is all there is.

I hope you're not a defense attorney. "Your Honor, my client deserves to be found not guilty. Sure he murdered in cold-blood but, unlike Jeffery Dahmer, he didn't eat them."

 

[surada]

For instance Solomon's Pillars turned out to be Egyptian.

An Archaeological Dig Reignites the Debate Over the Old Testament's Historical Accuracy

Beneath a desert in Israel, a scholar and his team are unearthing astonishing new evidence of an advanced society in the time of the biblical Solomon

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

[surada]

Ancient myths?

Is this what you view the Bible as?

Biblical Archeologists would be out of a job if that were the case.

Trying to dismiss miracles will only get you so far, like how life began and where the material universe came from.

Miracles are all around you, like a life being born that escaped the abortion mills of Planned Parenthood at taxpayer expense during Bidenommics where no one can afford to have children.

The government doesn't pay for abortion see the Hyde Act.

The Hyde Amendment and Coverage for Abortion Services Under Medicaid in the Post-Roe Era | KFF

This brief details the federal programs that are affected by the Hyde Amendment and laws and regulations that have a similar goal, provides estimates on the share of women insured by Medicaid affected by the law, reviews the impact of the law on their access to abortion services, and discusses...

www.kff.org

 

[Libby von H]

Bible archaeology is obsolete. Their objective was to prove scripture. Modern archaeology is about facts..

Modern archaeology came about BECAUSE of the biblical archaeologists.
William F Albirght being a prime example

Yechezkel Kaufmann, Moshe Greenberg

And of course Roland de Vaux,OP who got me interested in archaeology by showing the essentially religious nature of the whole ANE -- through archaeology !!!

To see in black and white why you are wrong read Kenneth A. Kitchen
Here is the start

The Old Testament in Light of the Archaeological Evidence | Denver Journal

A review of Kenneth Kitchen's, "On the Reliability of the Old Testament," by Dr. Richard Hess.

denverjournal.denverseminary.edu

 

[surada]

Modern archaeology came about BECAUSE of the biblical archaeologists.
William F Albirght being a prime example

Yechezkel Kaufmann, Moshe Greenberg

And of course Roland de Vaux,OP who got me interested in archaeology by showing the essentially religious nature of the whole ANE -- through archaeology !!!

To see in black and white why you are wrong read Kenneth A. Kitchen
Here is the start

The Old Testament in Light of the Archaeological Evidence | Denver Journal

A review of Kenneth Kitchen's, "On the Reliability of the Old Testament," by Dr. Richard Hess.

denverjournal.denverseminary.edu

That's true but archaeology has moved on.. They aren't trying to prove myths.

The Hyde Amendment and Coverage for Abortion Services Under Medicaid in the Post-Roe Era | KFF

This brief details the federal programs that are affected by the Hyde Amendment and laws and regulations that have a similar goal, provides estimates on the share of women insured by Medicaid affected by the law, reviews the impact of the law on their access to abortion services, and discusses...

www.kff.org

 

[Smokin' OP]

this is an "old wives tale." without basis in fact.

but think it through, IF "government, is my religion," i have a constitutional right to believe so and there is nothing , legal that you can do about it.

Actually it's a Reagan tale.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Ronald Reagan.

Republicans, then teabaggers have hated the government ever since.
Except when they need catastrophic assistance and tax cuts.

How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality​

Center for Public Integrity
https://publicintegrity.org › taxes › unequal-burden › h...
Nov 29, 2022 — But by the end of the eight-year Reagan presidency, revenues were an unprecedented $1.3 trillion short of federal spending. That was more than ...

Trump tells Mar-a-Lago guests: 'You all just got a lot richer'​

New York Post
https://nypost.com › 2017/12/24 › trump-tells-mar-a-la...
Dec 24, 2017 — President Trump told members of his exclusive Florida resort “You all just got a lot richer,” just hours after signing a sweeping $1.5 ...

 

[Libby von H]

That's true but archaeology has moved on.. They aren't trying to prove myths.

The Hyde Amendment and Coverage for Abortion Services Under Medicaid in the Post-Roe Era | KFF

This brief details the federal programs that are affected by the Hyde Amendment and laws and regulations that have a similar goal, provides estimates on the share of women insured by Medicaid affected by the law, reviews the impact of the law on their access to abortion services, and discusses...

www.kff.org

I am glad you posted because that is the stupid reply I wanted someone to make.
It shows almost total misunderstanding of archaeology

1)A myth has to have a literary form so when you seem to admit that Archaeology often deals with pre-history (that is pre-writing) there can be no conflict !!!
2) Though there are rare literary finds (which even a moron like you must admit) most of it is 'material culture' and cannot be self-interpreting !!! I remember a MAD magazine cartoon aimed at clods like you. It showed an archaeologist holding up two toilet seats and talking about a very tall huge race that used these earrings to make themselves attractive.

Don't jump off a bridge but do start to act adult, okay.

 

[Dadoalex]

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.

Across history religion has been the primary supporters of totalarianistic governments.

Be it the declaration of the Pharaohs as gods, "divine right of kings," the Church at the headof the genocide in the Americas, Vatican support of Mussolini, to the Eastern Orthodox support of Putin and the Mullahs in Iran, religion has been the core supporter of the worst of the worst.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
You should go relearn history.

 

[Libby von H]

Across history religion has been the primary supporters of totalarianistic governments.

Be it the declaration of the Pharaohs as gods, "divine right of kings," the Church at the headof the genocide in the Americas, Vatican support of Mussolini, to the Eastern Orthodox support of Putin and the Mullahs in Iran, religion has been the core supporter of the worst of the worst.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
You should go relearn history.

Yeah , you shoot your mouth on here, never a citation or reference.
Now, several scholars have made this their study, chief among them Michael Burleigh and he calls 3 of your premises downright stupid

IN his book Earthly Powers about the worst tyrannies
"The most violent and repressive of these systems mimicked many of the functions of religion. "
[ Earthly Powers is a magisterial history that sheds new light on the momentous struggles between church and state, from the French Revolution to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. ]

From his history of the Nazis
"how the carefully crafted Nazi propaganda replaced religion in Germany to become the one-party regime of those convoluted 1920-30."
From this perspective, the German people, defeated in WWI and impoverished by reparations and Depression, emerge, not as unwitting dupes, but as desperate believers in a new state religion propounded by Hitler
This idea, of Nazism as a religion, gives the book a helpful focus and a unifying theme around which to organize the enormous amount of information which Mr. Burleigh has assimilated and lays out here. In addition, where the prior treatment Hitler and Nazism as a historical exception may have acted as a balm to our liberal sensibilities, Burleigh's treatment of them helps us both to understand their similarity to the Soviet Union and Communism, and to understand how such movements could rise again.

From his Sacred Causes
" Nazism and Communism were classic examples of political religions; they were messianic movements that offered redemption in an earthly manner. Both movements attempted to displace religion. In the interwar period religion became a symbol of a discredited past. People looked to science and militant nationalism to deliver them from the depths of the economic depression. In this atmosphere of seige the church was forced to make accommodations to the secular powers, at least in Germany. In the Soviet Union, the property of the church was confiscated by the state altogether."

TYPICAL BOTTOM LINE
" "Although they were subjected to relentless assault from state-sponsored atheism, the Christian Churches remained the only licensed sanctuaries from the prevailing world of brutality and lies" (p 344). Solidarity, Pope John Paul, and Poland brought down communism."

I don't think Burleigh is Catholic (though he might have converted by now) but he said this long ago and I never forgot it

Michael Burleigh’s interview with Inside The Vatican, in which he takes note of the present crisis (“religious extremism and terrorism in all its monstrous forms, weapons of mass destruction; the culture of death, beginning with unrestricted abortion-on-demand and ending in easy euthanasia; continuing war, genocide, disease, famine, persecution…horror is all around us”) and asserts the Church’s unique capacity to respond:

The Church’s teaching about the dignity of human life, at every stage of its existence; its insistence on objective truth and the four last things–death, judgment, heaven and hell; its opposition to militarism yet rejection of outright pacifism in a dangerous world; its belief in the compatibility of faith and reason-all of these facts, said Burleigh, place the Roman Catholic Church in a unique and pivotal position to make a real difference. Despite the recent scandals in the Church, and what he calls a “pathological anti-Catholicism” attempting to exploit them, the time is right for the Church of Rome to act: “No other religious body has the strength, the respect and the authority to influence the world for the better.”