Are there theistic communist groups? I was under the impression that communists are atheistic by politics and practice. At least that is how it is in India.
Christianity is a Hate Group
- Thread starter Thoreau
- Start date
Are there theistic communist groups? I was under the impression that communists are atheistic by politics and practice. At least that is how it is in India.
Wasn't there the Tudeh in Iran? I'm not sure if they're religious, though. Can't think of any other concrete examples.
Notes Around
I think it depends on the individual communist.
Whatever your mean spirit says.
Sectarian bigotry?
Obviously.
I just don't see why you're so upset that I think Christians who side with Jesus over Paul or the Old Testament are the better representatives of the faith. I don't see why you're so upset that I consider Christians who show respect to their neighbors and demonstrate their faith through their daily behavior are the better representatives than evangelicals like Pam Stenzel, Ted Haggard, or Pat Robertson (who allegedly prefers the Wall Street Journal to the Bible°)?
Really, I don't see why that idea is so troubling. It would be nice if you could actually address that issue instead of just being rude.
S.A.M. said:
I think it depends on the individual communist.
• • •
John99 said:
Whatever your mean spirit says.
Sectarian bigotry?
Obviously.
I just don't see why you're so upset that I think Christians who side with Jesus over Paul or the Old Testament are the better representatives of the faith. I don't see why you're so upset that I consider Christians who show respect to their neighbors and demonstrate their faith through their daily behavior are the better representatives than evangelicals like Pam Stenzel, Ted Haggard, or Pat Robertson (who allegedly prefers the Wall Street Journal to the Bible°)?
Really, I don't see why that idea is so troubling. It would be nice if you could actually address that issue instead of just being rude.
Thbpbpbpbpbt!
You're a disingenuous troll whose posts intend more to whine and spit than actually make a useful point.
Your definition of hatred is meaningless right now. One way you could give it meaning is to answer the issue I've repeatedly put before you.
Except we're aware that, as a troll, you have no intention of answering that issue:
Who says it's about playing the victim? Oh, right. You do. Whatever.
Come on. Show us you're more than a bigoted troll. I mean, it's a simple question: Why are you upset that I consider the honest, compassionate, trustworthy people who happen to be Christians the better representatives of the faith?
If you didn't want this fight, why did you pick it?
John99 said:
You're a disingenuous troll whose posts intend more to whine and spit than actually make a useful point.
Your definition of hatred is meaningless right now. One way you could give it meaning is to answer the issue I've repeatedly put before you.
Except we're aware that, as a troll, you have no intention of answering that issue:
• I find it absolutely hilarious that you should be so upset that I consider the honest, compassionate, trustworthy people who happen to be Christians the better sort than the Christian voice of public discourse.
• ... are you really asserting that those who would wield the Bible as a weapon against their neighbors are unjustly maligned because I reject supremacist bigotry?
• I just don't see why you're so upset that I think Christians who side with Jesus over Paul or the Old Testament are the better representatives of the faith. I don't see why you're so upset that I consider Christians who show respect to their neighbors and demonstrate their faith through their daily behavior are the better representatives than evangelicals like Pam Stenzel, Ted Haggard, or Pat Robertson (who allegedly prefers the Wall Street Journal to the Bible)?
• ... are you really asserting that those who would wield the Bible as a weapon against their neighbors are unjustly maligned because I reject supremacist bigotry?
• I just don't see why you're so upset that I think Christians who side with Jesus over Paul or the Old Testament are the better representatives of the faith. I don't see why you're so upset that I consider Christians who show respect to their neighbors and demonstrate their faith through their daily behavior are the better representatives than evangelicals like Pam Stenzel, Ted Haggard, or Pat Robertson (who allegedly prefers the Wall Street Journal to the Bible)?
Who says it's about playing the victim? Oh, right. You do. Whatever.
Come on. Show us you're more than a bigoted troll. I mean, it's a simple question: Why are you upset that I consider the honest, compassionate, trustworthy people who happen to be Christians the better representatives of the faith?
If you didn't want this fight, why did you pick it?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I'm getting a little tired of hearing this fashionable apologist argument. We've got a community with one thing in common: their religion. They attack people with one thing in common: they don't belong to that religion. Their screeds are couched in religious rhetoric with specific references to scripture: they call us "infidels," "Great Satan," etc. Their attacks focus on the differences in our culture that violate their religion such as immodesty, intoxication, equality of women and celebration of sexuality. Sure, there is obviously a political component to their antagonism, but the root of that politics is religion.
There are abundant citations, including a number of them right here on SciForums, of specific examples of Muslim fundies behaving more intolerantly of Christians and Christianity than of any other belief system, religion or community, including Jews and atheists.
To their credit, the religions at least recognize the problem as an instinctive behavior that was a survival trait in the early stone age when we lived in small clans, but works against us now that we've invented civilization and have to live in harmony with total strangers. To their discredit they don't recognize that they're part of the problem since religion itself is one of those atavistic instincts that needs to be overcome.
This is all part of the pack-social instinct that we've been struggling for ten thousand years to override with reasoned and learned behavior. We've come a long way toward converting to a herd-social species. People in small cities of ten or twenty thousand people feel a genuine sense of kinship, almost a three-orders-of-magnitude improvement over the hunter-gatherer packs of the Mesolithic Era. But the Abrahamic religions stall us at the tribal level so we cannot move forward and combine our tribes into larger harmonious, cooperative communities.
Their reliance on faith in the supernatural is largely to blame. You can't motivate people in a modern society by telling them they're going to go to hell, when only a minority of them still believe in hell. (Yes, most of them believe in heaven but nobody said cognitive dissonance was out of fashion.
) You have to motivate them by teaching them that when everyone follows the rules of civilization everyone prospers. That's why our distant ancestors were willing to move into villages in the first place. Economy of scale and division of labor increase the quantity and diversity of production, so life became less harsh. Today the payoff of transcending tribalism will be the disappearance of large-scale violence, the fear and grief that comes with it, and the huge drain that the military sector takes out of the global economy. That just has to be more appealing to a 21st century human than a threat that he's going to hell.
Come on dude, you made the decision to participate in the Religion subforum. Most of the rules are waived here. People can say damn near anything they please. I think racism and personally insulting another member are about the only things you can say here that will get you in trouble. Trolling isn't even on the radar. After all, most religious arguments violate the scientific method (by insisting that the natural universe is not a closed system) and therefore by definition constitute trolling on a science website!
I think in America Unitarian has become essentially synonymous with Unitarian Universalist, which is not Christian.
Duh? Hitler was raised as a Christian and continued to espouse (primarily Protestant) Christian beliefs throughout his life. I don't think you can find a respected biographer who will say that he was an atheist. His atrocities were the culmination of more than a thousand years of antisemitism in Europe's Christian community, and they were actively supported or at best knowingly excused by Christians, who constituted a huge majority of the German population. The Pope himself refused to condemn Hitler.
You seem to be unaware of the fact that the obliteration of the Aztec and Inca Empires, with the slaughter of millions of "heathens," was effectively the extension of the Inquisition into the New World. To be sure, European Christians made war on other Christians, but they did not treat them like animals, burn their libraries, melt down their art objects, and attempt to stamp out their histories and cultures. This was with the blessing of Pope Urban.
It has been argued--persuasively IMO--that communism is an artifact of Christian culture. It has spread to other communities, as has Christianity itself, but no other religious culture could have invented it. Can you imagine a Hindu or a Confucian coming up with the preposterous notion that civilization could survive if what a man takes from it need not be correlated with what he contributes to it?
Thank you! You are not alone!
Christianity and especially Catholicism fairly flourished under the communist regimes of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as did Islam in Albania. At times it was officially repressed and attendance of religious services fell off, but the attrition rate of belief was very slow. The Bulgarians were so politically docile that I didn't observe much repression of any sort when I was there 35 years ago. Orthodox Churches and even synagogues were well attended, although having been occupied by the Ottomans for centuries they weren't very charitable toward Islam.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
While I'm no apologist for Islam, Christianity, or any form of crime, whether it be from terrorist groups or the US government, I will point out that this form of hatred is politically based...not religious.
I live in a community where there are muslims everywhere you look. Ive worked with them, shopped in their stores, eaten in their restaurants, had numerous chats on all subjects, and I can say that Ive never heard a single comment against Christianity from any of them.
They dont even hate all americans...many of them want to live there as we all know. Nor do they even hate all US governments. Their favourite US politicians are Carter and Clinton.
What they do hate are Zionists and the US administrations who support Zionists...simple as that. Naturally there is also a keen hatred among some Saudis towards the US military presence in their country...why wouldnt there be?
There was even a pic in the newspaper a while back of Iran's president embracing the leader of 'Jews against Zionism'!
The muslim restaurant I dine in every week has Christmas decorations up at the moment, because Jesus happens to be one of the most revered figures in the Koran.
We cannot say the same for Mohammed's place in Christian literature.
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Ganymede
Valued Senior Member
You've got to be kidding me. Religous groups are notorious for molesting little boys, arranging marriges between 14 year old girls and 50 year old men. Religon preaches submsssion, and control, that's why there's a plethora of cases, where the priest told the victom, that having sex with them was the only way to salvation. Future generations will down upon us for believing in such rubbish. Just like we down on the people who worshiped Zues.
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since all those things you indicate as abominable can be established as inappropriate by scripture, its not clear how you are arguing strongly against my case
Not quite so preposterous
Likewise, it has also been argued—and, again, persuasively—that capitalism as we know it is a product of Christian theology and philosophy (e.g., Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).
I think the only point I would quibble with is that "from each/to each" is not as preposterous as you might imagine. In the particular Mark Steel episode I referred to, he makes a point about how, when he was young, people talked about how we would all work only an hour a day, wear tinfoil suits, and fly around everywhere. I was born thirteen years after Steel, and I recall hearing the same sort of futuristic projections when I was a kid. It's an interesting contrast to prior conditions when technology could not support the kind of surplus we enjoy today. There are certain conditions under which I would agree the proposition is preposterous, but more capitalistic endeavors have presented questions about the sustainability of the capitalistic system. In either case, the realization of the full benefit of either system depends on the populace being educated enough that individuals understand their role within and relationship to society. It is well enough to point out the success of someone like Bill Gates, but his accomplishments have occurred within a socioeconomic structure akin to a pyramid scheme. Without a tremendous poverty class, American socioeconomic luxury would be impossible. This particular question may well come to a head in the relatively near future. While Americans are afraid of a declining standard of living, the question of how long the rest of the world will play along with our exploitative methods necessarily gains urgency.
A working, sustainable structure will reflect a greater number of Marxist components than most Americans, for instance, realize or are willing to admit. To wit, once upon a time it was argued that communism was bad because the government should not have so much say in your education, healthcare, and retirement. While the government, should the People choose to exercise their will, is bound by social contract to work toward the best interests of its citizens, corporations are not. Yet at present many are willing to let their corporate employers set the terms of their healthcare, retirement, and further education.
The Revolution, as such, has already begun. The "proper" Revolution, in the end, is merely a form of social evolution. Where communists have run afoul of their own aims in history has been when they attempted to force the Revolution. It's why the Russian Revolution failed. Hugo Chavez is failing today not only because he is trying to force the Revolution, but also because he is trying to force it from the top down.
Fraggle Rocker said:
Likewise, it has also been argued—and, again, persuasively—that capitalism as we know it is a product of Christian theology and philosophy (e.g., Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).
I think the only point I would quibble with is that "from each/to each" is not as preposterous as you might imagine. In the particular Mark Steel episode I referred to, he makes a point about how, when he was young, people talked about how we would all work only an hour a day, wear tinfoil suits, and fly around everywhere. I was born thirteen years after Steel, and I recall hearing the same sort of futuristic projections when I was a kid. It's an interesting contrast to prior conditions when technology could not support the kind of surplus we enjoy today. There are certain conditions under which I would agree the proposition is preposterous, but more capitalistic endeavors have presented questions about the sustainability of the capitalistic system. In either case, the realization of the full benefit of either system depends on the populace being educated enough that individuals understand their role within and relationship to society. It is well enough to point out the success of someone like Bill Gates, but his accomplishments have occurred within a socioeconomic structure akin to a pyramid scheme. Without a tremendous poverty class, American socioeconomic luxury would be impossible. This particular question may well come to a head in the relatively near future. While Americans are afraid of a declining standard of living, the question of how long the rest of the world will play along with our exploitative methods necessarily gains urgency.
A working, sustainable structure will reflect a greater number of Marxist components than most Americans, for instance, realize or are willing to admit. To wit, once upon a time it was argued that communism was bad because the government should not have so much say in your education, healthcare, and retirement. While the government, should the People choose to exercise their will, is bound by social contract to work toward the best interests of its citizens, corporations are not. Yet at present many are willing to let their corporate employers set the terms of their healthcare, retirement, and further education.
The Revolution, as such, has already begun. The "proper" Revolution, in the end, is merely a form of social evolution. Where communists have run afoul of their own aims in history has been when they attempted to force the Revolution. It's why the Russian Revolution failed. Hugo Chavez is failing today not only because he is trying to force the Revolution, but also because he is trying to force it from the top down.
sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
Violence between Muslims is vastly more common - even if you just focus on political violence - then violence against non-Muslims. So the one thing in common argument above seems very weak to me.
Its becoming pointless to argue these sermons, one thing i would ask FR in relation to his diatribe would be:
Would those things have happened regardless of religious belief? The second thing i would point out is that the Church is insignificant when it comes to anything beyond superficial regarding governing regardless of the country, the assumptions made about WW2 are comical. But it is as true today also, unless you believe in Santa.
Would those things have happened regardless of religious belief? The second thing i would point out is that the Church is insignificant when it comes to anything beyond superficial regarding governing regardless of the country, the assumptions made about WW2 are comical. But it is as true today also, unless you believe in Santa.
Lets pretend there is no religion, then everyone will be good little boys and girls. Is that what you are saying? You want to have your cake and eat it too.
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No, that's not what is being said. Some theists try to argue that Stalin etc committed atrocities in the name of atheism - which is cearly ludicrous. It's like saying that I killed in the name of tennis when I slaughtered my wife for having an affair all because I happen to be a member of the local tennis club.
People will still kill each other etc without religion much like hamsters eat their own young without religion, but only a fool would try and claim that those murders were committed because of and in the name of atheism - which is what many theists try to argue.
scholarscorner.com is one such example which states: "What people do in the name of religion is no worse than what people do in the name of atheism."
The statement is nonsense and yet it is what revolvr among others have tried to argue here many times.
Well then you are contradicting yourself and so is everyone else here who said their piece and attempted to justify their bias.
We can even extrapolate the everyone who voted\votes YES is part of a hate group, only they done realize it.
Edit: Well maybe hate, for some but not all, is too strong of a word. Lets use the term bias.
We can even extrapolate the everyone who voted\votes YES is part of a hate group, only they done realize it.
Edit: Well maybe hate, for some but not all, is too strong of a word. Lets use the term bias.
I voted no. Even at their worst, Christians feel they are doing good. I think most Christians are sincere and not hateful. Part of the problem is in separating the world into good and evil, saved and unsaved. The world is too complex to have such a simplistic view, and problems naturally result.
What are you smoking? Denmark and Finland, most crime ridden? Here are some statistics I didn't make up.
