How Peaceful Is Christianity?

[Pete]

God can allow something without endorsing something.

It seems to me that if someone has the power to prevent an occurence and knowingly chooses not to do so, then they are implicitly endorsing that occurence.

Consider the parable of the good Samaritan.

 

[SetiAlpha6]

Your logic breaks down when you derive that God causes evil. When God only allows evil. God can allow something without endorsing something.

So yes the evil powers that be in this world are allowed to be by God. But the evil powers of this world are a snare for power hungry and evil men. They are allowed to follow their evil desires on the path that leads to their own eternal destruction. Just as other men are allowed to reject the powers that be in this world and their evil games to follow the path to eternal life.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

Hi Adstar. I hope you are doing well!

I did not intend to say that God "causes" evil. I was trying to say that God is sovereign and as such He is ultimately in "control" of all evil. I am saying that with ultimate control comes the ultimate responsibility for all that He controls both good and evil. We are completely willing for God to receive all of the glory for all of the good that occurs in this world on this basis, even when the good is brought about by the freewill decisions of men. Why is He not also ultimately responsible for all evil, even the evil that is brought about by the freewill decisions of men? I am saying that whatever exists, good or bad, is His will. It is indeed His will that Satan deceives the vast majority of the children of men, is it not?

Are you saying that all evil is somehow outside of His control or that He is not sovereign in some way?

Thanks!

 

[SetiAlpha6]

Consider the parable of the good Samaritan.

WOW! That is a really profound insight!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Christianity is not the sum of the people who claim to Be Christian. Christianity is the sum of the Message that the founder of Christianity taught. Christianity is the Word of Jesus. The code is known by God and all who claim to be Christians will be measured by it.

That's a nice facile definition that gets you off the hook. If it makes you feel good then go with it. Or bless you, as I suppose you would say.

But I don't see the usefulness of an abstract definition of an abstract thing like a religion. What matters is the impact it has had on civilization.

I'm so happy for the citizens of those little countries who were able to find something in Christianity that made them better people. But they are tiny exceptions over the two-millennium history of the faith. It did not inspire the Spaniards to avoid obliterating two entire civilizations. That single pair of atrocities is enough to damn the entire religion forever because it's the greatest loss the human race has ever experienced and it can never be undone. (Or at least it ties with Islam for obliterating the civilization of Egypt, which does not exactly put it in the best of company.)

One can be charitable and say that many of the atrocities committed by so-called Christian people were not inspired by Christianity, which is the reason I did not use the Holocaust as an example. But the razing of the Aztec and Inca civilizations was religiously inspired. The Christians found everything about them to be an affront to Jesus, to the extent that they actually burned their historical records and melted down their artworks in an attempt to erase them from time and not just from space.

This is not forgivable, my friend, not ever. There's nothing Christians can ever do to make up for this cosmic loss to the people of earth. I realize that this is not what Jesus foresaw or recommended--and I'm gnashing my teeth here to go along with the barely supportable myth that he was a real person. But there is only one yardstick by which to judge a leader, and that is the accomplishments of his followers. Jesus may have been a great man but he did not have the ability to instill that greatness in those who followed him, so he was in reality--to use the term loosely--merely a very nice man who failed.

The evil perpetrated by the followers of Jesus will haunt us until the day that the sun explodes and nothing we did matters any more. And of course if on that day humans have not managed to colonize another solar system and take our history and our civilization with them, I'm sure that Christians will have had a lot to do with the ignorance and intolerance that made it not happen. Real Christians motivated by their faith, not the faux Christians from whom you distance yourself without a pang of responsibility.

If you want to talk about a religious figure whose followers have so far acquitted themselves honorably enough that he has a chance of being elected to the Galactic Hall of Fame, try Buddha. Jesus is a big loser.

 

[Adstar]

It seems to me that if someone has the power to prevent an occurence and knowingly chooses not to do so, then they are implicitly endorsing that occurence.

God is responsible for allowing evil to exist, But it will be seen in eternity why this had to be. God will be justified.

Consider the parable of the good Samaritan.

In what way?


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[Adstar]

Hi Adstar. I hope you are doing well!

I did not intend to say that God "causes" evil. I was trying to say that God is sovereign and as such He is ultimately in "control" of all evil. I am saying that with ultimate control comes the ultimate responsibility for all that He controls both good and evil. We are completely willing for God to receive all of the glory for all of the good that occurs in this world on this basis, even when the good is brought about by the freewill decisions of men. Why is He not also ultimately responsible for all evil, even the evil that is brought about by the freewill decisions of men? I am saying that whatever exists, good or bad, is His will. It is indeed His will that Satan deceives the vast majority of the children of men, is it not?

God would have all saved. But God knows not all will accept His Love. So those who reject His love are given over to the deceiver. Yes the vast majority are deceived because the vast majority hate the Love of The Truth.

Are you saying that all evil is somehow outside of His control or that He is not sovereign in some way?

Thanks!

Evil springs forth from sources other than God, but God allows that evil to spring forth. It is an unavoidable consequence of free will. People have the freedom to choose God and His will or they can chose something else. That something else is evil, not matter how many different wrappers it comes in.

If one wants to give people the opportunity to embrace the truth they must also have the opportunity to embrace a lie. There has to be a choice.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[Adstar]

Fraggle Rocker

This is not forgivable, my friend, not ever. There's nothing Christians can ever do to make up for this cosmic loss to the people of earth. I realize that this is not what Jesus foresaw or recommended-- and I'm gnashing my teeth here to go along with the barely supportable myth that he was a real person. But there is only one yardstick by which to judge a leader, and that is the accomplishments of his followers. Jesus may have been a great man but he did not have the ability to instill that greatness in those who followed him, so he was in reality--to use the term loosely--merely a very nice man who failed.

Thank you Fraggle Rocker. Even in your disbelief in Jesus as Messiah you can still understand that those who comitted the atrocities in Jesus name where not acting in the way Jesus taught ( "recommended-- " ).

This is the exact point i was making. To be a Follower of Jesus one must follow the teachings of Jesus otherwise what value is there in saying Jesus is my Lord when one does not follow His teachings. To say such a thing is to be a liar.

But the razing of the Aztec and Inca civilizations was religiously inspired. The Christians found everything about them to be an affront to Jesus, to the extent that they actually burned their historical records and melted down their artworks in an attempt to erase them from time and not just from space.

You right it was "religiously" inspired. But was it inspired by Jesus or the catholic religion? Of cource both the aztec and inca civilizations where evil, as is the catholic civilization that destroyed them. So too is the islamic civilization that destroyed other evil civilizations. But non of these civilizations where or are following the teachings of Jesus. So therefore if one evil civilization tears another evil civilization apart what has it to do with Jesus?

Just like today as we are nearing the clash of the evil humanist atheist western civilization against the evil islamic civilization. What will that have to do with Jesus? Of course some will do their best to weave Jesus into the plot somewhere. That’s what the evil powers have always done. But the truth of the matter is that Jesus has nothing to do with those who claim to be His and in fact are liars.

Matthew 7
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

"I realize that this is not what Jesus foresaw or recommended"

This is the exact point i was making. To be a Follower of Jesus one must follow the teachings of Jesus otherwise what value is there in saying Jesus is my Lord when one does not follow His teachings. To say such a thing is to be a liar.

Again, this may absolve Jesus and you from responsibility for these atrocities in your own mind. But for the rest of us there is a blatant cause-and-effect relationship between the teachings attributed to Jesus and the cult that sprang up in his name and engulfed much of humanity. The most evil of the people who call themselves Christians are often the ones who believe most strongly that they in fact are doing his bidding, and can cite chapter and verse just as convincingly as you do to make their point. If one of them dares to show up here he will present us with exactly the same sort of argument you do to explain why he is the true Christian and you are a lost sheep who needs to be born again. To an outsider with no ties to either side, there is absolutely no difference between the two of you except the obvious one that you are a nicer person. To attribute your niceness to the inspiration of Jesus is no more valid than to so attribute your opponenent's meanness. You're both selling yourself short. This stuff is inside you and you don't need to give someone else credit.

You're right [the razing of the Aztec and Inca civilizations] was "religiously" inspired. But was it inspired by Jesus or the Catholic religion?

This is angels dancing on a pinhead. Again, it's a facile way for you to duck any responsibility for promoting a faith with a long list of evil accomplishments to say, "No no, those other guys got it all wrong, they should listen to me because I truly understand what Jesus meant." But this subtle and almost semantic distinction makes no difference to the billions of people who have for two thousand years suffered the horrifying consequences of the existence of Christianity.

Of cource both the Aztec and Inca civilizations where evil, as is the Catholic civilization that destroyed them. So too is the islamic civilization that destroyed other evil civilizations.

I think if I look up "facile" in the dictionary your picture will be there. No civilization is evil. Civilizations arise and evolve over millennia. They grow and change and mature and backslide and falter and recover just like individuals do. They do good things, they do bad things, but they inexorably move in the direction of harmony. Homo sapiens is a social species by instinct and all social animals are preprogrammed to live in relative peace with their packmates because they have to or the species won't survive. All civilizations are born with a superiority complex for the obvious reason that they look around them and see only uncivilized people. They think it's their mission to enlighten them. This builds up to such a sense of hubris that by the time their boundary reaches that of the next civilization down the road, they've been taught for generations that only they understand the path to enlightenment so those other guys must be stamped out.

Yet somehow the civilizations with polytheistic religions--those that provide a richer and more useful model of the human spirit than Abrahamism with its absurd and pathetic binary good-versus-evil model that looks like it was created by a computer programmer--managed to coexist with each other. Sumeria, Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome... they conquered each other over and over again but they never set out to painstakingly destroy all evidence of each other's existence, and in fact routinely assimilated those principles, technologies, artifacts and cultural motifs that they found useful or interesting.

It wasn't until the monotheistic religions of Abraham engulfed the civilizations of the Middle East and Europe that they began to regard other civilizations as "blasphemous" and to believe that God wanted them not only conquered but wiped from the face of the earth.

This is the enduring legacy of Abraham and his successors, Jesus and Mohammed. (I give Moses a cautious exemption because since Roman times Judaism has neither evangelized itself nor inspired draconian treatment for non-Jewish blasphemers.) It does not matter one whit what these guys actually said or what they actually hoped would be done in their names. The cold hard evidence provided by history is that the communities that sprang up to carry forth their teachings have overwhelmingly selected leaders whose interpretation of those teachings is intolerant and angry and whips their flocks into recurring frenzies of violence of unprecedented scope and nearly unprecedented thoroughness.

But none of these civilizations were or are following the teachings of Jesus. So therefore if one evil civilization tears another evil civilization apart what has it to do with Jesus?

I appreciate your ability to intepret the teachings of Jesus to endorse peace, love and tolerance. I really do; you are clearly a good person. The problem I have with Christianity is that over the centuries the majority of people who claim with equal authority to call themselves Christians do not agree with you when it matters, which is when times get tough and there are difficult decisions to make.

Look at the world this very day. The Pope, the beloved and trusted leader of most of the world's Christians, made a totally intolerant and inappropriate remark about Islam that will surely not help us find the path to peace. The leaders of many, if not most, American Christian churches believe that war in the Middle East is the only way to protect the god-fearing folk of America against the god-fearing folk over there. To say that these people are not following the teachings of Jesus once again leads me back to your picture next to the word "facile." You don't speak for all the people in the world who claim to be Christians. They believe they are following his teachings and can "prove" it by quoting the bible. Who am I to believe? Somehow his teachings have been misinterpreted, arguably in good faith by people who were doing the best they could.

The only major Christian community on earth that has its wits during these troubled times and is trying to avert WWIII is Europe, which has been compulsively secularizing for so long that it might as well relabel itself Unitarian.

One of the two or three most important essences of Christianity (and Islam) is evangelism. The belief that only Jesus's teachings, of all possible philosophies the human race will ever think up, has the answer to the universe's questions, and that it is a holy duty to bring every single human being into it. Considering that the words attributed to Jesus were not even written down until long after the traditional date of his death, Christianity was founded on the principle of evangelism by the existing Christian community rather than on some direct link to the prophet himself. You cannot duck the issue of the evil done in Jesus's name by his followers by saying that's not what Jesus meant because the very mechanism for the spread of this faith has always been interpretation of what Jesus meant by the ordinary people who came after him.

Jesus set something in motion that has gripped a good portion of the world in evil for the better part of two thousand years. To grant the faint possibility that he was real for the sake of the argument, I admit that this is most certainly not what he wanted, and he would probably have kept his mouth shut and become a yogi if he could have foreseen it. So I forgive him in an outpouring of charitable feelings that many of his followers today will not extend to me reciprocally. And I even forgive you for your idealistic view that Jesus can somehow still be a force for good even though he has overwhelmingly been used as a force for evil whenever it mattered; the world needs idealists like you and Jesus.

But this does not excuse the movement that he started. Jesus was a failure and he unwittingly brought down centuries of abject grief on this poor planet.

 

[nova900]

Yet somehow the civilizations with polytheistic religions--those that provide a richer and more useful model of the human spirit than Abrahamism with its absurd and pathetic binary good-versus-evil model that looks like it was created by a computer programmer--managed to coexist with each other. Sumeria, Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome... they conquered each other over and over again but they never set out to painstakingly destroy all evidence of each other's existence, and in fact routinely assimilated those principles, technologies, artifacts and cultural motifs that they found useful or interesting.

It wasn't until the monotheistic religions of Abraham engulfed the civilizations of the Middle East and Europe that they began to regard other civilizations as "blasphemous" and to believe that God wanted them not only conquered but wiped from the face of the earth.

Excellent post Fraggle!
It's because of all this you mention that I left behind the harshness and cruelties of the Abrahamic faiths.
I still maintain a belief in God but without all the man-written nonsense and personifications of God that were created in these religions.
I'll be the first to admit I admire and respect many of the nobler teachings of peace and love that they all contain but it is the dark side that exists in them all that drove me away from their nutty visions of God.

 

[scorpius]

Let's discuss how peacefull is christianity? shall we

sure, lets see what their guide book says
www.evilbible.com
you say you dont follow that book to the letter? how can you be a True xian then?

and since you'll all no doubt start knocking the atheists pov lets see what their perspective on life is
www.atheists.org

 

[Adstar]

Again, this may absolve Jesus and you from responsibility for these atrocities in your own mind. But for the rest of us there is a blatant cause-and-effect relationship between the teachings attributed to Jesus and the cult that sprang up in his name and engulfed much of humanity.

Yes is does absolve Jesus of all these atrocities., And those who did these things in His name will face a far more terrible ending then that which they did upon their fellow man. You’re right a "cult" did spring up and it did attribute many things to Jesus that are not supported by the Words of Jesus at all.

The most evil of the people who call themselves Christians are often the ones who believe most strongly that they in fact are doing his bidding, and can cite chapter and verse just as convincingly as you do to make their point. If one of them dares to show up here he will present us with exactly the same sort of argument you do to explain why he is the true Christian and you are a lost sheep who needs to be born again.

God knows His own and He also knows the liars. You say they are just as convincing as me? Well if that is the case then you are deceived and just like them. Many people who have rejected the Love of The Truth desperately want the arguments of the false Christians to be true because they think it justifies their rejection of God. But sadly it never has nor will it ever justify them.

To an outsider with no ties to either side, there is absolutely no difference between the two of you except the obvious one that you are a nicer person.

I never said i was nice. I can be as big of an S.O.B as the next guy. But i know when i am wrong that i am wrong. I don't seek to justify my wrong as being right.

To attribute your niceness to the inspiration of Jesus is no more valid than to so attribute your opponenent's meanness. You're both selling yourself short.

You don't get it. I do not turn my cheek and love my enemies because i am a nice guy. I do so out of obedience and trust in the guidance of Jesus. That's something that a lot of people just cannot do. They use the Word of Jesus as a smorgasbord of teachings that they can pick and chose from depending on how that teaching aligns with what they think is right. They can call themselves Christian after they pick their selection, but they are only deceiving themselves. All the Words of Jesus are Spirit. All the Words of Jesus are Life.

This stuff is inside you and you don't need to give someone else credit.This is angels dancing on a pinhead. Again, it's a facile way for you to duck any responsibility for promoting a faith with a long list of evil accomplishments to say, "No no, those other guys got it all wrong, they should listen to me because I truly understand what Jesus meant." But this subtle and almost semantic distinction makes no difference to the billions of people who have for two thousand years suffered the horrifying consequences of the existence of Christianity.

It makes a Hell (pardon the pun) of a difference to their eternal destination. Yes billions have suffered from false Christianity. But as far as God is concerned these false doctrines have as much to do with His will as Hinduism does. A miss is as good as a mile as far as God is concerned. God demonstrated that fact with the Jews. Once again there distinction is Not Facile at all but is definite and of absolute importance.

I think if I look up "facile" in the dictionary your picture will be there.

I don't think so.

No civilization is evil. Civilizations arise and evolve over millennia. They grow and change and mature and backslide and falter and recover just like individuals do. They do good things, they do bad things, but they inexorably move in the direction of harmony. Homo sapiens is a social species by instinct and all social animals are preprogrammed to live in relative peace with their packmates because they have to or the species won't survive. All civilizations are born with a superiority complex for the obvious reason that they look around them and see only uncivilized people. They think it's their mission to enlighten them. This builds up to such a sense of hubris that by the time their boundary reaches that of the next civilization down the road, they've been taught for generations that only they understand the path to enlightenment so those other guys must be stamped out.

All civilizations are not perfect . So in being not perfect they are evil. There is no human path to "enlightenment" only paths to deceptions wrapped in different suits.

Yet somehow the civilizations with polytheistic religions--those that provide a richer and more useful model of the human spirit than Abrahamism with its absurd and pathetic binary good-versus-evil model that looks like it was created by a computer programmer--managed to coexist with each other. Sumeria, Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome... they conquered each other over and over again but they never set out to painstakingly destroy all evidence of each other's existence, and in fact routinely assimilated those principles, technologies, artifacts and cultural motifs that they found useful or interesting.

Rome did go out to eliminate totally all traces of the civilization of Carthage. You view on history is faulty and has been affected by your bias.

This is the enduring legacy of Abraham and his successors, Jesus and Mohammed. (I give Moses a cautious exemption because since Roman times Judaism has neither evangelized itself nor inspired draconian treatment for non-Jewish blasphemers.) It does not matter one whit what these guys actually said or what they actually hoped would be done in their names. The cold hard evidence provided by history is that the communities that sprang up to carry forth their teachings have overwhelmingly selected leaders whose interpretation of those teachings is intolerant and angry and whips their flocks into recurring frenzies of violence of unprecedented scope and nearly unprecedented thoroughness.

Do not mix the teaching of muhammed with Jesus they are diametrically opposed.

I appreciate your ability to intepret the teachings of Jesus to endorse peace, love and tolerance. I really do; you are clearly a good person.

I am not a good person. Only the proud think of themselves as good. I endorse peace and love but under no circumstance do i endorse tolerance. Jesus never endorsed tolerance. I will never accept false teachings or false religions. Wether that be catholicism, islam, hinduism or buddhism.

The problem I have with Christianity is that over the centuries the majority of people who claim with equal authority to call themselves Christians do not agree with you when it matters, which is when times get tough and there are difficult decisions to make.

The only Problem you could justifiably have is with Jesus Himself. If you cannot bring forward a teaching that Jesus Himself gave then your problems with "christianity" is not a problem with Christianity but a problem with a false man made faith, a bastardisation of what Jesus taught.

Look at the world this very day. The Pope, the beloved and trusted leader of most of the world's Christians, made a totally intolerant and inappropriate remark about Islam that will surely not help us find the path to peace. The leaders of many, if not most, American Christian churches believe that war in the Middle East is the only way to protect the god-fearing folk of America against the god-fearing folk over there. To say that these people are not following the teachings of Jesus once again leads me back to your picture next to the word "facile." You don't speak for all the people in the world who claim to be Christians.

It should be obvious that i do not claim to speak for all the people in the world who claim to be Christians i doubt i speak for more that .05% of them. But that is irrelevant. If i speak for Jesus and for God then the only .05% of people who claim to be Christians are in fact Christians.

They believe they are following his teachings and can "prove" it by quoting the bible. Who am I to believe? Somehow his teachings have been misinterpreted, arguably in good faith by people who were doing the best they could.

They might be able to deceive a lot of people into thinking that they are true Christians but they will never deceive God into thinking that they are His children. As I said before on the subject we are talking about in this thread the teachings of Jesus are very clear. People can bring forward an army of theologians to argue against the Words of Jesus but all their efforts are self defeating and are vain.

One of the two or three most important essences of Christianity (and Islam) is evangelism. The belief that only Jesus's teachings, of all possible philosophies the human race will ever think up, has the answer to the universe's questions, and that it is a holy duty to bring every single human being into it.

Not exactly right. Firstly it is Not our duty to bring every single human being into the faith of the Messiah Jesus. It is our duty to bring the message of the Messiah Jesus to all men so that they can have the opportunity to accept the Message of Jesus and be saved. So we do not fail in our duty if people reject the Message. Also once again do not mix up islam with Christianity. Islam promotes the teachings of the false prophet muhammed, and his teachings are opposed to the teachings of Jesus.

Considering that the words attributed to Jesus were not even written down until long after the traditional date of his death, Christianity was founded on the principle of evangelism by the existing Christian community rather than on some direct link to the prophet himself.

Wrong.Jesus call upon His followers to go our into the Word and preach to all men the gospel message. It matters not a jot when this order what finally written down.

You cannot duck the issue of the evil done in Jesus's name by his followers by saying that's not what Jesus meant because the very mechanism for the spread of this faith has always been interpretation of what Jesus meant by the ordinary people who came after him.

I can duck the issue of evil done in Jesus name, because the evil done in Jesus name was done in rebellion to the orders given by Jesus. It’s that simple. Their interpretation was false therefore they where not following the will of the one they claimed to follow, therefore they where not true followers of Jesus.

Jesus set something in motion that has gripped a good portion of the world in evil for the better part of two thousand years.

False. Jesus set something in motion that would save many people in the world. False preachers set in motion evil teachings in an effort to undermine the message of Jesus.

To grant the faint possibility that he was real for the sake of the argument, I admit that this is most certainly not what he wanted, and he would probably have kept his mouth shut and become a yogi if he could have foreseen it.

So you admit Jesus would not approve of the evil done in His name. Thank you. Jesus knew there would be false prophets that would twist His message, But He also knew that people would see through the deceivers and the true message of Jesus would survive in the minds of men until His return. It matters not if only .05% have that Mssage and 99.95% do not. Eternity has never been a numbers game and the kingdom of heaven is not a democracy.

So I forgive him in an outpouring of charitable feelings that many of his followers today will not extend to me reciprocally.

Jesus has done nothing that needs your forgiveness. It is you that need His forgiveness to have eternal life with God.

And I even forgive you for your idealistic view that Jesus can somehow still be a force for good even though he has overwhelmingly been used as a force for evil whenever it mattered; the world needs idealists like you and Jesus.

I do not need not do I seek your forgiveness. As in relation to my views on Jesus.

But this does not excuse the movement that he started. Jesus was a failure and he unwittingly brought down centuries of abject grief on this poor planet.

Jesus did not start that evil movement you talk of. That was a deviant human creation. May you seek the Messiah Jesus and may you be forgiven for your false accusations against Him.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[Clockwood]

Christianity does not exist. Under that umbrella title sit dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller facet religions. Each must be classified individually.

 

[nova900]

The link below is a letter addressed to the reverend Billy Graham concerning the validity of the so called authority of the bible.
Not to get off the topic here but since some are posting that the only way to God is thru Christianity or more specifically Jesus, I thought it would be of interest.
Whether you agree with the author of the letters' other views on the afterlife is not the issue here but rather his challenge that the bible has supreme God given authority.

Personally, I agree with him.
Anyways, have a look if you like.

http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/billygraham.html

 

[Gordon]

This thread now seems to have developed into many different areas.

My contribution to a few as follows:

Evil

Evil does not exist in its own right. It is the absence of good just as dearkness is the absence of light. God is goodness and love and therefore not evil at all. Everyone that falls short of that (i.e. every human who has ever existed) has a lesser degree of goodness and therefore a degree of 'evil'. Just as we describe 'cold and hot' to refer to a very small range of temperatures well above absolute zero (no heat) but also far away from for instance the temperatures inside stars, so our comparison of people as 'good' or 'evil' is a measurement along a similarly small scale within the overall band. I doubt that there is any human who is or was totally evil (not even Adolf Hitler who managed to love dogs and some people). But conversely we are nowhere near the goodness of God. We should humbly recognise this when considering our own actions and not believe that we are so much better than any of the others that we might to choose to think of - we are not!


Free Will

God had two choices when he created mankind. He could produce automata who had to do what He required of them and thus never did anything that was not good or he could give mankind free will and the risk that they would choose that which was not good.

Is there anyone on this forum who would not want free will?

If you give free will but say that God could always intervene, that is in a sense true but where would He stop?

Would He have ensured Mrs. Hitler did not give birth to Adolf?
Would He have allowed him in to the Vienna Art School?
Would he have prevented the election of George Bush?
Would he have stopped all road accidents like a version of 'Superman' rescuing Lois Lane from her own stupidity?!
Just where would you place the line?

In fact there is no sensible place to draw the line. You either have the concept of free will or not and to blame God because He does not save you from the consequences of your own free-will actions is simply not logical. It is a convenient form of escapism, a not so subtle shifting of the blame on to someone or something else at which this post-modern western society is so good.


Choosing Good or not Good (Evil) and 'Going to Hell'

But of course giving a choice of free will must imply the (very high) risk of choosing that which is not good (or evil). This does not make God responsible for people choosing to do wrong. Nor does God 'send people to hell'. The availability of everlasting life is to everyone. You have to make the choice. If you choose not to take it, the responsibility is yours not that of He who made the offer available (If it was a free product in a supermarket, would it be the supermarket's fault if you chose not to accept the free product).


Destruction of 'civilizations'

As someone with Mexican friends I do not wish to be an apologist for the appalling things done by Spanish colonists but the destruction of civilisations has gone on continually throughout history. The civilization that built the pyramids at Teotihuacan was destroyed by the Aztecs (apart from the huge structures such as the pyramids themselves). Even if you believed in religious freedom (and certainly no marks here for the Spanish conquistadors and the RC church of the time) what would you have done about people who practised human sacrifice? If an atheist humanist government had taken over a land where this went on, what would they have done (or indeed do now)? All artefacts were of course not destroyed as many hours visiting the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City will prove. Nor were all indigenous peoples (including Aztecs) killed although they tended to be pushed in the mountainous areas. Their descendants can still be found today (often discriminated against) but still nonetheless in existence in their ethnic groups.


Summary

Is christianity meant to be peaceful? Yes it is.

Are (were) there those who falsely claim to be adherents but who are (were)not really christians, are (were) not peaceful and give christianity a bad name? Yes there are (were)?

Are (were) there those who are (were) truly adherents but sometimes get (got) it badly wrong and are (were) not as peaceful as Jesus meant them to be? Yes there are (were).

The great difference in regard to christianity is that it sets an absolute standard of 'peace' to aim for, 'Love your neighbour as yourself'. This is not a standard ever set by any other mainstream religion

Atheism of course allows moral standards to be set by people in accordance with their own human thoughts (there being no belief in any external arbiter). We have seen the end results of that throughout the 20th. century where various excuses were dreamt up by totalitarian regimes to excuse the greatest persecutions and mass murders in history.

Even today atheist North Korea is the worst persecutor of christians on the globe (worse than all muslim countries). According to the 'Open Doors' ( a christian charity), 'It is believed that tens of thousands of Christians are currently suffering in North Korean prison camps, and are having to endure extreme abuse and violence. Though no exact figures can be given, Open Doors estimates that hundreds of Christians were killed by North Korea’s ‘Hermit Regime’ in 2005'.

I should suspect that many non-christians are also being persecuted there too.


regards,



Gordon.

 

[Gordon]

It seems to me that if someone has the power to prevent an occurence and knowingly chooses not to do so, then they are implicitly endorsing that occurence.

Consider the parable of the good Samaritan.

You do not seem to understand the significance of the parable correctly.

Jesus at no time implied that the Levite or the priest were responsible for what had happened to the man who was robbed.

He was making the point that they did not live up to their words. They only 'talked the talk' about helping people, they did not walk it!

The point was that the Samaritan went out of his way to help to do something for the man and thus did God's work to improve a situation brought about by those who had done an evil deed.

There was never any question that those responsible for the man's condition were the muggers.


regards,



Gordon.

 

[charles cure]

Christianity is not the sum of the people who claim to Be Christian. Christianity is the sum of the Message that the founder of Christianity taught. Christianity is the Word of Jesus.

actually, christianity is the sum of the actions taken in good faith based on the garbled, filtered, mistranslated, and edited quasi-fictional statements and deeds attributed to jesus and written down in a book by people who lived hundreds of years after the events and conversations actually took place. christianity is not the word of jesus, it is at best jesus's word distorted by men. considering that no one on earth can actually detemine with any degree of certainty what it was that jesus said or did, one would think that this makes actions taken in his name somewhat disingenuous.

The code is known by God and all who claim to be Christians will be measured by it.

i bet. i love it when you tack on this kind of thoughtless hyperbole to what you consider to be a legitimate argument.

 

[Pete]

You do not seem to understand the significance of the parable correctly.

Jesus at no time implied that the Levite or the priest were responsible for what had happened to the man who was robbed.

Of course. But he did imply that by not helping the man, they were doing the wrong thing. They were implicitly endorsing his desperate condition.

He was making the point that they did not live up to their words. They only 'talked the talk' about helping people, they did not walk it!

That's precisely why we're having this conversation.
Bad things happen to people. God does not appear to intervene, when it is accepted that he is capable of doing so.
Why does God not "walk the walk" of helping people in desperate situations?
Why do people starve, freeze, or live in suffering?

The point was that the Samaritan went out of his way to help to do something for the man and thus did God's work to improve a situation brought about by those who had done an evil deed.

Yes, the Samaritan did God's work.
Why did God not do God's work? Why does God always outsource?

There was never any question that those responsible for the man's condition were the muggers.

My point is not that God is responsible for bad things, but that by failing to correct them, He implicitly endorses them.

Pete

 

[Markx]

A Quick question for Gordon, how many of the people killed in the last 100 years were christians and killed by other christians? I am focusing on all the wars started by the christians or so called chrisitans, majority counts right? In all those wars, world war, US-Korea war, vietnam war, majority were christians, even in Iraq twice Allies have murdered hundred of thousands of innocent civilians and military people and the last war was totally un provoked. Now, there will be another Iran war, right?

So again, how many of those 100 million or so people who have died by the hands of Christians in last century were killed by muslims? or the followers of Islam?

Even if for a moment I take your side and believe that wars were started by Athiests, but then majority of fighters were christians, decesion makers were christians, don't tell me that when US president ordered to Bomb the $h1t out of Japanese people, he wasn't a christian? Or didn't GW Bush said that God came to him and Asked him to Invade Iraq?


All I am asking, who is more violent? people who have killed 100 million people in last 100 years or the muslims, who are the bad guys these days, since the world is running out of bad guys.

Any thoughts?

 

[Markx]

Since you mentioned that Hitler wasn't a christian, however the history speaks something else. Enjoy the following link.



http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm




My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922



Looks pretty christian to me.

In the life of nations, what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God.... Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.

-Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich, 13 April 1923



Doesn't look like an Athiest to me or does he?

Please read the rest of the details. So, If I take him as a christian then Christianity at this point is leading all the genocides in the world, all the killings in our history, single handedly one man is leading in horrible killings. I don't think that Islam or Muslims can even catch his dust. So, again I wonder who is more violent?


Interesting article:


Hitler's Christianity

Some people say Adolf Hitler was an atheist. They blame atheism for Hitler's philosophy. But the historical record shows that Hitler believed in God and was convinced he was carrying out God's will.

Hitler served as an altar boy in the Catholic Church. Growing up in this environment, he surely learned something of the centuries of discrimination and persecution the Church had supported against Jews in Europe.

Former Jesuit theologian Peter de Rosa describes the groundwork Catholic theology laid for Hitler and the Nazis: "[Catholicism’s] disastrous theology had prepared the way for Hitler and his ‘final solution.’ [The Church published] over a hundred anti-Semitic documents. Not one conciliar decree, not one papal encyclical, bull, or pastoral directive suggest that Jesus’ command, ‘love your neighbor as yourself,' applied to Jews."

Not surprisingly, then, Hitler wrote in his book, Mein Kampf: ". . . I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." He made essentially the same claim in a speech before the Reichstag in 1938.

Hitler considered himself a Catholic until the day he died. In 1941 he told Gerhard Engel, one of his generals: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." In fact, Hitler was never excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and Mein Kampf was not placed on the Church's Index of Forbidden Books.

Hitler's biographer John Toland explains Catholicism's influence on the Holocaust. He says of Hitler: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god. . .."

Even after World War II, Catholic assistance to the Nazis continued. The Vatican aided the escape of more Nazis than any other governmental or private organization.

The Protestant influence on Nazi Germany was no better, because Hitler is said to have admired the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, more than any other German. Among Luther's many denunciations of the Jews, there are such religious sentiments as: "The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows seven times higher than ordinary thieves," and "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."

When Hitler was asked in 1933 what he planned to do about the Jews, he said he would do what Christians had been preaching for centuries. And the Nazis carried out their first large-scale pogrom of Jews in honor of Luther's birthday.

Christians constituted a wellspring of support for Hitler. Steve Allen notes that in the 1930s, Nazi Germany "was the most church-affiliated nation in Europe. The German people were almost entirely Catholic and Lutheran. Despite such factors they launched the Holocaust and World War II." Charles Kimball likewise says the Holocaust "would not have happened without the active participation of, sympathetic support of, and relative indifference exhibited by large numbers of Christians."

Also in pre-World War II Germany, corporal punishment was used in the schools and schoolchildren were required to start their days with prayer. Today's advocates of spanking and school prayer should consider that those practices, although supported by religion, proved ineffective in promoting high ethical standards and good behavior among German youth.

Further, Nazi Germany's soldiers wore belt buckles inscribed "Gott mit uns" ("God is with us"). This slogan sounds eerily similar to Ohio's present motto, "With God, all things are possible."

Like many tyrants both past and present, Hitler used the mantle of religion to justify and further his selfish, hateful, and destructive philosophy. By conditioning people to blindly accept the pronouncements of authorities, instead of teaching them to think for themselves, religions often make it easy for such evil dictators and demagogues to succeed.




Seemed prettly much like OBL or GWB.

 

[Adstar]

Hiter was deeply anti-christian. But he was a politician working one a population that was vaugly influenced by Christian ideas so he had to be careful in His public utterances. Of cource He like so many others twisted the Words of God to try and use it to conform to His onjectives.

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

Jesus was not a fighter nor did he call upon His followers to kill the jews. what a diabolical lie.

Hitler’s private statements were more suspect. There are negative statements about Christianity reported by Hitler’s intimates, Goebbels, Speer, and Bormann.. Joseph Goebbels, for example, notes in a diary entry in 1939: “The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay.” Albert Speer reports a similar statement: “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

Hitler was no Christian. He was just a cunning politician playing games with people's minds. Nothing has changed, politicians still play the same game.

All Praise The Ancient Of Days