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Quite a lot of it has been in the name of statism. I don't know the exact ratio.
All religion is based on man's doctrines...
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Quite a lot of it has been in the name of statism. I don't know the exact ratio.
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I know someone who shot the proceeds of a welfare check into his arm and died. By your logic we should all be working to abolish welfare. Anything can be misused and end up hurting people. Science has certainly caused its share of harm.
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Many religious people do not believe in a literal word for word interpretation of the Bible. I was raised in Catholic schools and always taught that it is the word of God interpreted by men, using allegory and language and imagery relevant to their particular culture, and that the intelligent among us can glean its messages and themes without having to accept every word as literal fact.
We know the 4 Gospels vary from one to the other. These are stories that have been passed down, colored, and translated by men, imperfect men. "The Bible is not 100% accurate" is not something I've ever disputed, it has never and will never be considered proof to me that religion is phony.
i'm trying to think of one circumstance that wasn't based on religion vs religion...at first i was thinking Nazi Germany...but the Holocaust wasn't religious persecution...it was racial persecution...
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The ideas in science are endlessly debated and can change based on the debate. The ideas in religion should be subject to debate as well but tell me how we can get them to change? What's the amendment process?
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Your version of religion isn't the one in the Texas school board meetings saying people used to ride dinosaurs. Yours doesn't intrude on others. Yours it too rare.
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Catholics were also persecuted by Nazis...millions of Polish Catholics killed, Catholic churches destroyed and thousands of Catholic clergy imprisoned and killed.
Christians in the Roman Empire, Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, PolPot..one could argue that England's establishment of its own church and persecution of Catholics was really about statism moreso than religion...
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for some people. How do we get rid of the death penalty for apostasy in Islam? How do we get rid of Leviticus for the people on the Alabama Supreme Court? How do we get the Catholic Church to help people in Africa and let them have condoms?
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The Nazis were mostly Catholic. Hitler was. Some were Lutherans. The Church helped them. They had to later apologize for it.
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."[76]
"His [the Jewish person's] life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties—and this against their own nation."
"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 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 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."
A. Hitler
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
Hitler's public relationship to religion has been characterized as one of opportunistic pragmatism.[10] His regime did not publicly advocate for state atheism, but it did seek to reduce the influence of Christianity on society. Hitler himself was reluctant to make public attacks on the Church for political reasons, despite the urgings of Nazis like Bormann. Although he was skeptical of religion,[11][12] he did not present himself to the public as an atheist, and spoke of belief in an "almighty creator".[13][14] In private, he could be ambiguous.[15][16] Evans wrote that Hitler repeatedly stated that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science, which in the long run could not "co-exist with religion".[17] In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf (1925/6) however, he makes a number of religious allusions, claiming to be "acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator" and to have been chosen by providence.[14][18] In a 1928 speech, he said: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity ... in fact our movement is Christian."[19] Given his hostility to Christianity, Laurence Rees wrote that "The most persuasive explanation of these statements is that Hitler, as a politician, simply recognised the practical reality of the world he inhabited... Had Hitler distanced himself or his movement too much from Christianity, it is all but impossible to see how he could ever have been successful in a free election".[20]Alan Bullock wrote that even though Hitler frequently employed the language of "divine providence" in defence of his own myth, he ultimately shared with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin a materialistic outlook "based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity".[21] According to Geoffrey Blainey, when the Nazis became the main opponent of Communism in Germany, Hitler saw Christianity as a temporary ally.[22] He made various public comments against "bolshevistic" atheist movements, and in favor of so-called "positive Christianity" (a movement which sought to nazify Christianity by purging it of its Jewish elements, the Old Testament and key doctrines like the Apostles' Creed). In a 1922 speech he said,[23] In Mein Kampf, he declared himself neutral in sectarian matters and supportive of separation between church and state, and criticized political Catholicism.[24] In it, he presented a nihilistic, Social Darwinist vision, in which the universe is ordered around principles of struggle between weak and strong, rather than on conventional Christian notions.[25] While campaigning for office in the early 1930s, Hitler offered moderate public statements on Christianity, promising not to interfere with the churches if given power, and calling Christianity the foundation of German morality. Kershaw considers that use of such rhetoric served to placate potential criticism from the Church. According to Max Domarus, Hitler had fully discarded belief in the Judeo-Christian conception of God by 1937, but continued to use the word "God" in speeches.
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“We deeply regret that the character of National Socialist dictatorship had not been realized in time and distinctly enough, and the ungodly nature of [Nazi] ideology had not clearly been identified,” the statement, as translated from German, reads. The church says it also regrets “that in some of our publications ... there were found articles glorifying Adolf Hitler and agreeing with the ideology of anti-Semitism in a way that is unbelievable from today’s [perspective].”
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Like I said..
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That really is the best part of it isn't it? "The love of Jesus for me and hell for everyone who didn't have to repress themselves like I have had to for my reward"
It truly is a sickness, in whatever form it manifests...
Hypocrites. That has to be for the consumption of the average Catholic because even someone with a cursory knowledge of what went on in Europe in the centuries leading up to the rise of the Nazis knows the church(catholic and protestant) were what gave Hitlers goons the ideas they had. Hitler was just rehashing old hatreds they had fostered for him.
Christians in the Roman Empire were persecuted because they wouldn't worship the Emperor...Christianity was labelled an illegal religion...that's basically religion vs religion...
Nazi Germany persecuted the whole Jewish community...whether Jew Christian Muslim Agnostic...
Nazi Germany vs the Catholic church was basically two political foes...Nazi Germany WAS Catholic until the Catholic Church began condemning Nazi actions which began a war against them...this MAY be religious persecution...but as the Catholic church was acting as a political force...i'm not so sure...
Although i'd also argue that Hitler was similar to the Roman Emperors...and Naziism was very similar to a religion...or cult...
Lenin Stalin and Kruschev made atheism the official "religious" doctrine of Russia...not allowing any other forms of religion...but this was based on their political views i think...so i can go with this as State-ism in Russia...
No way England can be seen as State-ism in my opinion...that was pure religion vs religion...
basically...when a ruler becomes a God to his people...the lines blur between State-ism and religion vs religion to me...because at that point it seems that the "offending" religions are putting something else above him in importance...and that's what causes the persecution...even in the Russia...it was because religion caused the people to put their Gods before the State...which sounds like a very "jealous God" type of thing to say...
you're such a liberal...
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You're saying what I've been saying all along...that any ideology, religion or not can be misused by those who seek power. Ask Vis if atheism is a "religion", most atheists will swear it is not. It's the absence of religion.
England can be seen as statism because Henry VIII did not want the Catholic church to be more powerful than the monarchy.. so he created his own religion. Yes, technically it's religion vs. religion but I hardly think he was motivated by religious beliefs to do what he did. He was motivated by power and his own self-interest.
I don't think there's any question though that one reason powerful dictators have historically tried to abolish religion, is that religion endows people with a sense of individual inherent value and rights that come from a higher authority, and that cannot naturally or morally be superseded by men. There are references to this concept in our Declaration of Independence. It's disingenuous to pretend that religion or belief in a higher power has not been instrumental in developing the concepts of individual rights and liberty.
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Live and let live...except for the zealots...they all need to be killed.
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According to many, most Muslims are moderates and don;t believe in that stuff, or haven't you heard?
The Alabama Supreme Court will be overruled by our own, in our lifetime, I believe...
If people followed Catholic teaching there would be little need for condoms. You can't fault the church for the fact that some people ignore the chastity til marriage followed by monogamy rule and embrace the no condom rule. Either the church has power over people's behavior or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html
When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn't helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: "Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms."
Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him.
We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and -- along with contraception -- female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes. My comments are only about the question of condoms working to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa's generalized epidemics -- nowhere else.
In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa."
Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them). In theory, condom promotions ought to work everywhere. And intuitively, some condom use ought to be better than no use. But that's not what the research in Africa shows.
Why not?
One reason is "risk compensation." That is, when people think they're made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.
Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it's possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it's those ongoing relationships that drive Africa's worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world's highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.
These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.
So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up these multiple and concurrent sexual networks -- or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. "Closed" or faithful polygamy can work as well.
In Uganda's early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on "Sticking to One Partner" or "Zero Grazing" (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and "Loving Faithfully." These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.
Don't misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 "consensus statement" published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity. Moreover, liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.
Surely it's time to start providing more evidence-based AIDS prevention in Africa.
The writer is a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn't helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: "Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms."
Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him.
We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and -- along with contraception -- female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes. My comments are only about the question of condoms working to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa's generalized epidemics -- nowhere else.
In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa."
Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them). In theory, condom promotions ought to work everywhere. And intuitively, some condom use ought to be better than no use. But that's not what the research in Africa shows.
Why not?
One reason is "risk compensation." That is, when people think they're made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.
Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it's possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it's those ongoing relationships that drive Africa's worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world's highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.
These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.
So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up these multiple and concurrent sexual networks -- or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. "Closed" or faithful polygamy can work as well.
In Uganda's early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on "Sticking to One Partner" or "Zero Grazing" (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and "Loving Faithfully." These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.
Don't misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 "consensus statement" published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity. Moreover, liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.
Surely it's time to start providing more evidence-based AIDS prevention in Africa.
The writer is a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
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