Posted on 11/08/2009 1:25:05 PM PST by Cardhu
A BBC Debate
Motion: That the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.
.................Before.........After...........Change
For...............678............268............-410
Against.......1102...........1876...........+774
Undecided....346..............34
A good debate and the numbers reflected a true evaluation of that debate.
Yikes!!! Hitchens cleaned the FOR side’s clock.
I wonder how the same people would vote if a certain ‘religion of peace’ were substituted.
When are they debating the same question on Islam?
It was a debating blow out but Catholic side did very well with the hand they were dealt.
I am sure it would be even worse with Islam.
Just curious what case the pro-Catholic side made. For me it would be No Catholic Church = No Western Civilization.
You wrote:
“When are they debating the same question on Islam?”
(snicker)
Hitchens also hates Islam but he would end up headless long before he got the chance to criticize it.
From an article:
As might be expected, Hitchens bombarded the audience with facts, but they were better organised than might be expected by anyone who read the ramshackle God is not Great. He castigated the Catholic church's history of violence, it's collusion with fascism, its cover-ups of child abuse and its attitude to homosexuality and AIDS. The latter point was reinforced by Stephen Fry - arguably the strongest speaker and definitely the most passionate - who implored the Catholic church to change its attitude to condom use.
The condom use thing could be a problem. The fact is, a lot of people are going to have sex outside of the defined parameters, condoms or no. That's just reality. And AIDS is a huge problem, especially in Africa.
The church may have colluded with fascism and covered up some child abuse scandals, but I have to view those things as an exception to the general ethos.
Part of his strength as a speaker was that unlike Hitchens he did not appear hostile to Christianity. His objection to Catholicism was that it bore no resemblance to Christianity or to Jesus's teachings.
That could be said, and is being said, about most of our churches.
Fascinating
ping
and its attitude to homosexuality and AIDS. The latter point was reinforced by Stephen Fry - arguably the strongest speaker and definitely the most passionate - who implored the Catholic church to change its attitude to condom use.
Yes, that bad old Catholic church, telling people that it's wrong to scr*w around, even if you use a rubber.
I mean, after all, where is that in the Bible?
Oh, wait ... hmm ...
Gamecock, if you are a Christian, these people aren't your pals. They'd hate you, too, if you were big enough to be on their radar.
"History of violence"? "Collusion with fascism"?
All of that pales against the 100 million victims of atheistic socialism in the 20th Century alone.
Catholics are bad people because people are bad, and they have been ever since that little episode in the garden. But where sin abounds, may grace abound all the more.
A lot of what Hitchens says about the Roman Catholic church is correct, i.e. its deep ties to fascism; its pederast priest sex scandals; its liberation theory social policies; the inherent tyranny in its top-down hierarchy, etc.
A debate like this seems to be set up as Christian vs. Atheist. And it's not. It's Roman Catholic against atheist. And the RCC is not equipped to debate atheism because it is synergistic and acknowledges many paths to God.
This debate between Greg Bahnsen (Christian) and Gordon Stein (atheist) is a much stronger, more successful trouncing of the atheist's nihilistic world view.
Hmmm...Ever hear of Felix Dzerzhinsky? He was a Polish Roman Catholic under Lenin who became founder and head of the Russian Cheka (Russian secret police), forerunner of the Russian NKVD and Soviet KGB, and a model for Hitler's SS.
Under him 20 million Orthodox were murdered.
Who has always loathed the Orthodox and benefited by their demise? Rome.
Hardly, Religions held back the march of civilisation until the Enlightment.
Religion flourished in the Dark Ages and was responsible for retarding the spread of knowledge.
Enlightenment
Actually, to speak of a Western European "dark ages" is to indulge in Renaissance-era propaganda.
Also, your historical causality is askew.
What was responsible for retarding the spread of knowledge at that time were things like the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west (and the resulting economic and political chaos); the invasions of various barbarian peoples followed by attacks by the "Big 3": the Hungarians, the Vikings, and the Muslims; and the continual hammering of Western european population centers by various plagues, pathogens, and endemic malaria.
Kinda hard to find the leisure time to develop science and literature when you're fighting for your life on the field of adversity.
Who has always loathed the Orthodox and benefited by their demise? Rome.
During the anti-Christian Terror in the Soviet Union, it was Bolsheviks like Lenin and Stalin who were calling the shots. Memory tells me that neither man had a RC background (in fact, both were baptized Orthodox at an early age).
There's been no love lost between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox for over a thousand years -- although the history is a bit more complex than that -- but to insinuate that Roman Catholicism was behind the Bolsheviks' murder of millions of Eastern Orthodox is both absurd and obscene.
I’m not Catholic, but this isn’t even close.
Over the centuries no institution on earth has done more good for more people than the Catholic Church.
Not even close.
Seriously, some of these posts demonstrate the utter and ludicrous illiteracy of the writers.
Here some serious reading for the uninitiated
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