Criticizing Christianity is a lost cause

[john.livingstone@lr]

The best thing about Christianity is that even though it attempts to explain certain events and the beginning of the world, the good book does not attempt to disprove others and their beliefs. The Christian religion is a big group of loving friends, we support God and his message and in the end we are all looking to better our lives through Christ. It makes very little sense to me as to why folks seem to get a kick out of trying to discredit Christianity. The Church is about self improvement, positive self-reflection and love of one another. And with a message this positive, why would an individual attempt to discredit the Bible on the basis of the creation or Noah's Ark or Adam and Eve. These are merely stories with the intent of explaining the progression of man and the Earth. The purpose of Christianity is to improve a person's life through God, not to explain the wonders of the world. And all of the people out there spewing hate about Christianity simply because they heard about why Christianity is unbelievable or how evolution better explains the origins of the world are simply wasting their time because Christians don't care what you have to say if the message isn't positive.

[Cephus]

What were the alleged 'lies'? Do Mormons not have the right to participate in the political process, or is it only atheists and gay activists who do?

Not when it comes to tax-free money they don't. If individual Mormons want to donate money they've paid taxes on, they're free to do so. A church, which is not taxed on their money, doesn't have the same rights.

[Cephus]

We've been over this ad nauseum, your quotes were from his time of trying to gain power. His actions and words later show he wasn't a Christian.

He wasn't what you consider to be a Christian, but in that, you're just playing the "no True Christian" card fallacy. Anyone who doesn't fit your criteria for Christianity magically becomes a non-Christian. Guess what? There are probably lots of people out there who don't agree with your particular version of Christianity too. Does that make you a non-Christian?

[East of Eden]

You're getting so defensive you aren't listening. I never said that "Christianity was the cause of the Holocaust." I said that the past (and sometimes present, as we have seen here) teachings of the Church made the Holocaust possible.

All those lies I mentioned were once formal teachings of the Church. Like the other doctrines you mentioned, Christians were obligated to listen and believe all those things too, and the only friends we had were those who defied the Church. Do you dispute those facts?

Yes. Why did Einstein say the Church was the German institution that did the most to oppose Hitler?

Yes, attempts have been made over the centuries to change those teachings (and so much for Christian doctrines being unchanging and eternal, by the way),

If I can address that little hit and run attack, the essentials of Christianity haven't changed. The creeds have been around from close to the start. Opinions of Jews isn't an essential of the faith. I believe Martin Luther is in Heaven now, despite his terrible attitudes towards Jews. Its what happens when Christians marry the spirit of the age on issues.

but it remains true that the Church taught these things for centuries till the Popes tried to correct them. Corrections wouldn't have been necessary if those teachings hadn't been in place. You yourself just referred to "reprehensible ideas about Jews that circulated among Christians of the Middle Ages." So where did these ideas come from, if not from the Church?

In part, I'm sure. There is always a tendency to stigmatize those who are different. The much greater persecution of Jews by Islam (continuing today, unfortunately) had nothing to do with the Church.

In the same way, though Innocent III and other Popes repeatedly forbade violence against Jews, those very prohibitions are proof that that violence was taking place, and continued to take place for centuries. If it hadn't, those pronouncements and bulls would not have been necessary, again and again and again.

It's also worth noting that we can't just talk about the Papacy. Local bishops and clergy were often far less tolerant of Jews, and when the Pope stepped in to halt violence (which did happen, often enough), it was very often violence instigated, and even directed and led, by the local priests and abbots. The laypeople, of course, were even less tolerant than their priests, and the efforts of the Papacy to stamp out violence against Jews, even among Christians, were remarkably ineffective.

Let's take a look at the REASONS the Popes, and in particular your Innocent III, tried to stop anti-Jewish violence among Catholics:

"The Lord made Cain a wanderer and a fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon him, making his head to shake, lest anyone finding him should slay him. Thus the Jews, against whom the blood of Christ calls out, although they ought not to be wiped out, nevertheless, as wanderers they must remain upon the earth until their faces are filled with shame and they seek the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." (Innocent III, Epistle to the Count of Nevers)

"The Jews' guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus consigned them to perpetual servitude, and, like Cain, they are to be wanderers and fugitives. The Jews will not dare to raise their necks, bowed under the yoke of perpetual slavery, against the reverence of the Christian faith." (Innocent III, bull of September 15, 1199)

"Crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection." (Innocent III: "Epistle to the Hierarchy of France," July 15, 1205, PL 215)

"Because of the Jews' intolerable sin I will be your [Jews'] Lord since imperial authority imposed everlasting servitude on the Jews from ancient times as punishment for the Christ-killing." (Innocent III, Vienna charter of 1237)

This was the doctrine of "Witness," which held that the Jews were not to be killed, but made to continue to exist in a state of perpetual slavery and degradation, as testimony to the truth of the Gospel and the curse that fell upon them for rejecting and murdering Jesus.

Not exactly a formula for encouraging kind treatment, now, is it? Further, the Popes still saw Jews as dangerous enough that they endorsed the idea of separate communities for them, the original "ghettoes." Sorry, but the de facto teachings and actions of the Church throughout the Middle Ages is still something worthy of Christians' acknowledgment and renunciation. Those are facts, not attacks (see if anyone gets that one, too), and if the Church collectively wishes to earn the respect of Jews and others, they ought to be acknowledged, owned up to, and apologized for. Defensive speeches don't change the facts, and describing centuries of brutality at the hands of Christians as "unfortunate harassment" further underlines the point; you are entirely concerned with defending the Church, the facts be damned, and you are NOT listening or trying to understand the Jewish point of view.

Of course it was wrong, but why should I apologize for behavior that went against the teachings of Christ and that neither of us had a part in?

And again, what difference does THAT make? We are TALKING about religious discrimination.

It wasn't a case of 'blaming the victim', as you pulled out of thin air. The point was being made that Jews weren't subject to the Inquisition, contrary to what someone said here.

I don't see that Hitler's approach was more or less moral than the Inquisition's. They were both transcendently evil.

Well, one was a case of genocide that killed millions, the other wasn't.

Tell you what: let's forget about "millions." That's the same approach that the Holocaust deniers take these days, you know -- "Yes, Jews died, but not millions."

Except that millions of Jews (and Christians) died in the Holocaust, and millions did not die at the hands of the church, despite the numbers causually thrown around here with no backup.

Will you take responsibility on the part of the Church for the murder and torture and oppression and exile and suffering of hundreds of thousands of Jews, then? Can we talk about Christian sins against the Jews to some degree or other, once we get the numbers straight?

Fine.

Sorry, I'm not interested in complaints about Christians being persecuted for their beliefs, which is what you're trying to change the subject to now. I'm sure that happens, but you know and I know that that's not what we're talking about. We're not even talking about present-day Christian teachings, or at least the most normative and mainstream ones, at all.

Will you admit that Christians, and early Christian teachings, are responsible for the oppression, torture, exile, and murder of a very great many Jews over the centuries?

Yes.

Would you admit that those teachings, which began with the Church, set the stage for the murder, with impunity, of millions of Jews in the Holocaust?

Absolutely not.

Would you admit that the doctrine of "Witness," which the Church has abandoned, by the way (so much, again, for unchanging Christian teachings), was a pernicious and evil teaching?

Not familiar enough with that to offer an opinion.

Do Christians, and the Christian Church, have any historic responsibility for Jew-hatred and the history of anti-Jewish discrimination, brutality, and murder? At any time in history?

Yes.

If so, why is expecting an acknowledgment and renunciation of those false teachings an attack on the Church? Shouldn't the Church confess and repent of its OWN collective sins? Is it either true, or Christian, to claim that it doesn't have any?

Look, you can find fault with the church or any individual Christian til the cows come home. Heck, my wife will be happy to tell you mine. We are 'simul justus et peccator', or' 'simultaneously righteous and sinful'. It has nothing to do with Christ or His mission.

It also doesn't invalidate my point that I believe started this argument, which was that atheists killed far more in the last century than did 2,000 year of Christianity, with no corresponding good results as Christianity has.

BTW, do atheists have to apologize for Stalin?

[East of Eden]

He wasn't what you consider to be a Christian, but in that, you're just playing the "no True Christian" card fallacy. Anyone who doesn't fit your criteria for Christianity magically becomes a non-Christian.

No, people who say things like this are not Christian:

"Goebbels notes in a diary entry in 1939: "The Fhrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race." Albert Speer reports in his memoirs of a similar statement made by Hitler: "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?"

In 1941, Hitler praised an anti-Christian tract from AD 362, neo-platonist and pagan Roman emperor Julian the Apostate's Against the Galileans, saying "I really hadn't known how clearly a man like Julian had judged Christians and Christianity, one must read this...."

Author Konrad Heiden has quoted Hitler as stating, "We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany."

[JamesWesley]

which was that atheists killed far more in the last century than did 2,000 year of Christianity, with no corresponding good results as Christianity has.

BTW, do atheists have to apologize for Stalin?

Absolute rubbish. Hitler, who despite what you may say, was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He had attended a Catholic school when he was young and he once he was older and in power, he believed that he was doing God's work by "fighting off the Jews".

Here is the quote that I'm referencing to in 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.

Besides this quote there is a numerous amount of evidence that Hitler was indeed a Christian of the Catholic brand.

Thanks to the major denominations of Christianity at the the time in Germany, anti-semticism was a very common thing. When you deny the fact that prior teachings of the Church had not set the stage for the Holocaust, you are either misinformed or ignoring the facts. You are wrong either way.


For a moment let's ignore Hitler and see what other violence Christianity has influenced or actually caused in the last 2,00 years.

• Various Religious Wars (The Middle Eastern Crusades, The Northern Crusades, etc)
  Slavery
  A great deal of amount of Anti-Semitism(Not just the Holocaust, but the Inquisition and others such as that)
  The Genocide(s) of the Native American populations
  The United States Civil War
  Murder in different forms
  etc
  etc

The violence caused by Christianity has declined slowly throughout history, but to claim that Atheism has caused more violence in the last centurary then Christianity has done in the last 2,000 years is nothing short of insane. I believe that you and Pope need a history lesson.

BTW, do Athiest have to apologize for Stalin?

Stalin is a tricky fellow. There isn't a lot of evidence for Stalin being either Christian or Atheist or anything else. He was very secretive. However, if we were to find out without a doubt that Stalin was an Atheist that does not mean that other Atheists should have to apologize for him. Atheism isn't a belief system as Christianity is. Now, with that being said I do not mean that all Christians have to apologize for Hitler. Though, wouldn't it seem that if a creed as Christianity could influence someone like Hitler and influence and sometimes directly cause the different violences as listed above it would deserve a watchful and critical eye at the very least? [/list]

[East of Eden]

What were the alleged 'lies'? Do Mormons not have the right to participate in the political process, or is it only atheists and gay activists who do?

Not when it comes to tax-free money they don't. If individual Mormons want to donate money they've paid taxes on, they're free to do so. A church, which is not taxed on their money, doesn't have the same rights.

I doubt if non-profit gay activist groups are taxes either.

[Grumpy]

East of Eden

Why did Einstein say the Church was the German institution that did the most to oppose Hitler?

Few German institutions resisted Hitler at all, Einstein profited by one of the few groups of people that did(much like Shindler, a Nazi Party member). The few do not absolve the many of their actions. Most leaders in the churches(Protestant and Catholic)went along with Hitler's actions, largely because they, too, were antisemetic, as sermons of the time indicate. Hitler was a member in good standing in the Catholic church until his actions horrified that leadership, but by then it was too late and Hitler viciously wiped out those who spoke up.

If I can address that little hit and run attack, the essentials of Christianity haven't changed. The creeds have been around from close to the start. Opinions of Jews isn't an essential of the faith. I believe Martin Luther is in Heaven now, despite his terrible attitudes towards Jews. Its what happens when Christians marry the spirit of the age on issues.

Run, run as fast as you can, but you can't get away from History. If there is a Hell, Martin Luther has the pit right next to Hitler and the Popes have an entire wing. Pat Robertson can room with Jerry Falwell when it's his turn. Luther's teachings primed the pump that Hitler drank deeply of. And hatred of others is not confined to just the Jews. Blacks, Native Americans, Gays, Atheists and many others have been the victims to religiously supported bigotry. Even the different sects within a religion have hated other sects(Protestants/Catholics, Sunna/ Shiai etc.), to the point of murder and genocide. Hatred of others is not what Jesus taught, "opinions" of the Jews(or any other group)is CENTRAL to his message. Jesus would take a scourge to all the so called Christian Churches today.

There is always a tendency to stigmatize those who are different. The much greater persecution of Jews by Islam (continuing today, unfortunately) had nothing to do with the Church.

Pointing out the splinter in other's eyes in no way removes the beam from your own.

Of course it was wrong, but why should I apologize for behavior that went against the teachings of Christ and that neither of us had a part in?

No one expects apologies, just recognition of the facts. Hitler was a Christian, his hatred was inculcated in him by the church, he felt he was following the teachings of the church(and he was). Hitler was a "good" christian just like the Imaams of the Taliban are "good" Muslims. That is the point, the teachings of the church set the stage for the rise of Hitler, just like the teachings of the church today incourages the killing of abortionists and gays.

It wasn't a case of 'blaming the victim', as you pulled out of thin air. The point was being made that Jews weren't subject to the Inquisition, contrary to what someone said here.

"Convert or die". The driving out of Jews(many of which died on the journey, just like the Bataan Death March of WW2). The confiscation of all property and livelihoods. History. It is insane to claim the Jews were not subject to the Inquisition, especially in Spain. The Inquisition was the Catholic Church's instrument to consolidate the power of the Church over EVERYONE, including the Jews.

I don't see that Hitler's approach was more or less moral than the Inquisition's. They were both transcendently evil.

Well, one was a case of genocide that killed millions, the other wasn't.

Wrong, ridiculously so.

Except that millions of Jews (and Christians) died in the Holocaust, and millions did not die at the hands of the church, despite the numbers causually thrown around here with no backup.

As I have outlined above, the church is responsible for the Holocaust and that was just the culmination of the centuries of wars and pogroms caused by it's teachings AND it's direct involvement(the funny looking guards in the Vatican are the remnants of the armies of the Popes). Most of the conflicts and wars in history are the results of religious differences.

Would you admit that those teachings, which began with the Church, set the stage for the murder, with impunity, of millions of Jews in the Holocaust?

Absolutely not.

Still in denial, I see. I don't blame you for being reluctant to deny it, but it is a lie to do so.

It also doesn't invalidate my point that I believe started this argument, which was that atheists killed far more in the last century than did 2,000 year of Christianity, with no corresponding good results as Christianity has.

BTW, do atheists have to apologize for Stalin?

No, Communism(a state religion)must bear Stalin's guilt. Atheism is not a philosophy, it is not a cause, it is not a creed. No one has ever killed in the name of Atheism. Your point has been totally invalidated.

As to good results, I call the Constitution(the result of Thomas Jefferson's pen)a good result. Hawking, Einstein, Sagan, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Bertram Russell, George Santayana, Jean-Paul Sartre, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Sigmon Freud, Steven Jay Gould, Richard Leaky, John Maynard Smith, George Soros and many others would protest the idea that they have not had a positive influence on the lives of others despite not believing in supernatural non-sense.

Grumpy

[East of Eden]

Absolute rubbish. Hitler, who despite what you may say, was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He had attended a Catholic school when he was young and he once he was older and in power, he believed that he was doing God's work by "fighting off the Jews".

"Goebbels notes in a diary entry in 1939: "The Fhrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race."

Here is the quote that I'm referencing to in 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.

Meant for public opinion when he was trying to gain power, unlike comments Goebbels noted above.

Thanks to the major denominations of Christianity at the the time in Germany, anti-semticism was a very common thing. When you deny the fact that prior teachings of the Church had not set the stage for the Holocaust, you are either misinformed or ignoring the facts. You are wrong either way.

Sorry, you are. If they were on the same side, why did Einstein say the Church was the German institution that did the most to oppose Hitler?

Your Hitler-as-Christian idea could just as easily be used on Al Capone, whe was born Catholic and is buried in a Catholic cemetary in the Chicago area, complete with a reference to Jesus on his tombstone. Were the gang wars in 1920s Chicago also the fault of Christianity?

For a moment let's ignore Hitler and see what other violence Christianity has influenced or actually caused in the last 2,00 years.

• Various Religious Wars (The Middle Eastern Crusades, The Northern Crusades, etc)

The Middle Eastern Crusades were a justified counter-offensive against Muslim aggression.

Slavery

It was around as long as man, what was unique to Christianity is that it ended it.

A great deal of amount of Anti-Semitism(Not just the Holocaust, but the Inquisition and others such as that)

Agreed, the Inquisition was bad. The atheist Stalin killed twice as many per week at one point than the entire history of the Inquisition. If I need to answer for the Inquisition, you need to answer for Stalin.

The Genocide(s) of the Native American populations

You have a sloppy understanding of this word. 'Genocide' is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as "the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political or ethnic group". You really think this was the intent of the Pilgrims in 1620? The main killers of native Americans were Old World germs to which they had never been exposed and had no resistance. The decimation of native populations by these diseases was a huge human tragedy, but in no sense did it constitute a crime.

The United States Civil War

You mean the war that ended slavery?

Murder in different forms
etc
etc

The violence caused by Christianity has declined slowly throughout history, but to claim that Atheism has caused more violence in the last centurary then Christianity has done in the last 2,000 years is nothing short of insane. I believe that you and Pope need a history lesson.

To repeat, atheistic communism killed 100,000,000, FAR more than Christianity ever did.

Stalin is a tricky fellow. There isn't a lot of evidence for Stalin being either Christian or Atheist or anything else. He was very secretive.

Wikipedia isn't quite so ambivalent:

The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. Orthodox priests and believers were variously tortured, sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, and executed.[19][20] Many Orthodox (along with people of other faiths) were also subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them give up their religious convictions.[21][22]

Thousands of churches and monasteries were taken over by the government and either destroyed or converted to secular use. It was impossible to build new churches. Practising Orthodox Christians were restricted from prominent careers and membership in communist organizations (the party, the Komsomol). Anti-religious propaganda was openly sponsored and encouraged by the government, which the Church was not given an opportunity to publicly respond to. The government youth organization, the Komsomol, encouraged its members to vandalize Orthodox Churches and harass worshippers. Seminaries were closed down, and the church was restricted from using the press.

The history of Orthodoxy (and other religions) under Communism was not limited to this story of repression and secularization. Bolshevik policies toward religious belief and practice tended to vacillate over time between, on the one hand, a utopian determination to substitute secular rationalism for what they considered to be an unmodern, "superstitious" worldview and, on the other, pragmatic acceptance of the tenaciousness of religious faith and institutions. In any case, religious beliefs and practices did persist, in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[23]

In November 1917, following the collapse of the tsarist government, a council of the Russian Orthodox church reestablished the patriarchate and elected the metropolitan Tikhon as patriarch. But the new Soviet government soon declared the separation of church and state and nationalized all church-held lands. These administrative measures were followed by brutal state-sanctioned persecutions that included the wholesale destruction of churches and the arrest and execution of many clerics.

In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[24]

The Stalin era
The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.

The sixth sector of the OGPU, led by Yevgeny Tuchkov, began aggressively arresting and executing bishops, priests, and devout worshippers, such as Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd in 1922 for refusing to accede to the demand to hand in church valuables (including sacred relics). In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death. Many thousands of victims of persecution became recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "new martyrs and confessors of Russia".

However, if we were to find out without a doubt that Stalin was an Atheist that does not mean that other Atheists should have to apologize for him. Atheism isn't a belief system as Christianity is.

Atheism 'prepared the ground' (as you claim Christianity did for Hitler) for the above crimes. There is nothing to hold back such evil if you don't believe in God, moral standards, eternal rewards and punishment, and that man has no more intrinsic value than a dog. This is why even a horrible person like Torquemada was restrained in his harm, and why it took atheists to implement truly epic, large scale mass muder. BTW, I don't think you in any way have to answer for these atheist murders or are responsible for them.

[Grumpy]

East of Eden

Your Hitler-as-Christian idea could just as easily be used on Al Capone, whe was born Catholic and is buried in a Catholic cemetary in the Chicago area, complete with a reference to Jesus on his tombstone. Were the gang wars in 1920s Chicago also the fault of Christianity?

Did they only rob Jewish banks(Hitler did)? The gang wars were a direct result of Prohibition, which the churches supported. Another example of the law of unintended consequences.

The Middle Eastern Crusades were a justified counter-offensive against Muslim aggression.

Rubbish! These wars were not fought in Europe but in the Middle East. Sounds much more like Christian aggression to me, not to mention aquisition of land and loot(you can find a lot of the later in European buildings and museums).

It was around as long as man, what was unique to Christianity is that it ended it.

"Atheism became a way of seeing things as inherently themselves without the filtering framework of a god and her plan. As I identified myself as an atheist to others I was surprised by the shocked reactions I would get. It was as if I had admitted to cannibalism. Generally the argument would be made that without god there can be no morality, no reason not to rape, steal and murder. I stop and think: if that is what they believe, I am really, really glad this person believes in god. But I don't buy it. Belief in justice, love, beauty and truth is quite possible without a belief in supreme beings. Perhaps these things are even stronger in the nonbeliever.You've probably noticed I've included a list of what we call freethinkers, certainly not a rogues gallery of murderers, thieves and rapists.All can agree the world is full of injustice. The orthodox argue that since god is just, all will be made up in the end, in the afterlife. The nonbeliever instead sees the injustice and feels a need to roll one's sleeves up and get to work. This is the reason I believe the great social movements in this country: the American Revolution, Abolition, Woman's Suffrage, Civil Rights, Arms Control, and Gay Rights were led by Unitarians, Deists and Atheists and not the orthodox."

Part of a sermon given at the Stow Acton Unitarian-Universalist Church by Paul Reisberg

http://www.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Reis ... sermon.htm

"The origin of the argument, however, lay in the eighteenth-century French Revolution, which declared the equality of all while denying the existence of gods, and even earlier in the American Declaration of Independence, which announced that all men are created equal while offering only deistic references to divinity. Although Christians were among the critics of slavery, so were many deists or Unitarians"atheists in Christian eyes"such as Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and John Adams and even slaveholders themselves such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Nineteenth-century abolitionists such as Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll likewise were considered atheists."

Episcopal clergyman Calvin Colton, "Abolition as Sedition", 1839

"God is introduced to give dignity and emphasis . . . and then He is banished, said [Thomas Smyth]. It was this very atheistic Declaration which had inspired the higher law doctrine of the radical antislavery men. If the mischievous abolitionists had only followed the Bible instead of the godless Declaration, they would have been bound to acknowledge that human bondage was divinely ordained. The mission of southerners was therefore clear; they must defend the word of God against abolitionist infidels."

November. 21, 1861, sermon, Thomas Smyth, minister of the Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston

President E.N. Elliott of Planters College, Mississippi, Cotton Is King 1860

The agitation of the abolition question had commenced in France during the horrors of the first revolution, under the auspices of the Red republicans. . . . It is here worthy of remark, that most of the early abolition propagandists, many of whom commenced as Christian ministers, have ended in downright infidelity [i.e., atheism]. Let us then hear no more of this charge, that the defenders of slavery have changed their ground; it is the abolitionists who have been compelled to appeal to a higher law, not only than the Federal Constitution, but also, than the law of God. This is the inevitable result when men undertake to be wise above what is written.

"Last of all, in this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and Religion. The Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin Clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law. . . . This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. Its banner-cry rings out already upon the air: liberty, equality, fraternity, which simply interpreted, means bondage, confiscation, and massacre. With its tricolor waving in the breeze"it waits to inaugurate its reign of terror. To the South the high position is assigned of defending, before all nations, the cause of all religions and of all truths. In this trust, we are resisting the power which wars against constitutions and laws and compacts, against Sabbaths and sanctuaries, against the family, the state, and the church, which blasphemously invades the prerogatives of God, and rebukes the Most High for the errors of his administration. . . ."

Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer, November 29, 1860

Seems History makes the above statement untrue.

Grumpy

[FinalEnigma]

Atheism 'prepared the ground' (as you claim Christianity did for Hitler) for the above crimes. There is nothing to hold back such evil if you don't believe in God, moral standards, eternal rewards and punishment, and that man has no more intrinsic value than a dog. This is why even a horrible person like Torquemada was restrained in his harm, and why it took atheists to implement truly epic, large scale mass muder. BTW, I don't think you in any way have to answer for these atheist murders or are responsible for them.

This is wrong. Blatantly and demonstrably wrong, and I will show such in a thread I created here: http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... hp?t=12863
to address it(if somebody else doesn't beat me to it).