To: Clive
I'm not a strong believer. Maybe I'm agnostic. I have sympathy for the views of atheists.
What I don't understand, and I know a strong atheists well, is the view that religion is bad because of all the suffering its caused throughout history. Jihad, 911, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. They never seem to think about the good, like the fact that abolition was led my Christians, for example.
If it ever dawned on them that more human suffering was caused by atheists like Hitler, Mao and Stalin, than all religionists combined, they'd rush to outlaw atheism instead.
To: SoCal Pubbie
If it ever dawned on them that more human suffering was caused by atheists like Hitler, Mao and Stalin, than all religionists combined That's merely a matter of better killing and transportation technology, and a much higher population to kill. If Mohammed had access to machines guns, artillery and tanks he would have killed far more unbelievers than he did.
To: SoCal Pubbie
They never seem to think about the good, like the fact that abolition was led my Christians, for example. Your Christians?
- 1800: The Roman Catholic church placed anti-slavery tracts on their Index of Forbidden Books in order to prevent the public from reading them.
- 1829: Congregationalists, Quakers, Mennonites, Methodists and Unitarians (You know, those 'not a Christian') organized the "underground railway" to help slaves escape northward towards Canada and southward into Spanish held territories.
- 1841 to 1844: The American Baptist Foreign Mission Board took neither a pro nor anti-slavery position. An American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 brought the issue into the open. Southern delegates to the 1841 Triennial Convention of the Board "protested the abolitionist agitation and argued that, while slavery was a calamity and a great evil, it was not a sin according to the Bible."
In a test case, the Georgia Baptist nominated a slave owner as a missionary and asked asked the Home Missions Society to approve their choice. No decision was made. Finally, a Baptist Free Mission Society was formed; "it refused 'tainted' Southern money." The Southern members withdrew and formed the Southern Baptist Convention, which eventually grew to become the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.
" - 1843: 1,200 Methodist ministers owned 1,500 slaves, and 25,000 members owned 208,000 slaves...the Methodist Church as a whole remained silent and neutral on the issue of slavery."
- 1844: The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church split into two conferences because of tensions over slavery and the power of bishops in the denomination. The two General Conferences, the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) and Methodist Episcopal church, South remained separate until a merger in 1939 created the Methodist Church. The latter became the present United Methodist Church.
- 1860: Ministers and laity of the Methodist Episcopal Church's Genesee Conference in western New York state were expelled from the church for insubordination. They left to form the Free Methodist Church of North America. They split over a variety of factors, including theological disagreements, the perceived worldliness of the original church, and slavery. Their leader "...Roberts and most of his followers were radical abolitionists in the years immediately prior to the Civil War, at a time when many within the Methodist Episcopal church were hesitant in their condemnation of the practice of slavery."
- 1861: The Presbyterians were able to remain united in spite of tensions created by the slavery issue. Shortly after the Civil War began, the Southern presbyteries of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America withdrew and organized the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States (later renamed the Presbyterian Church in the United States). The split was healed in 1983 with the merger of these two bodies and the creation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
- 1866: The Holy Office of the Vatican issued a statement in support of slavery. The document stated that "Slavery itself...is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law...The purchaser [of the slave] should carefully examine whether the slave who is put up for sale has been justly or unjustly deprived of his liberty, and that the vendor should do nothing which might endanger the life, virtue, or Catholic faith of the slave."
- 1873: Pope Pius IX was concerned about the "wreched Ethopians in Central Africa." He prayed that "Almighty God may at length remove the curse of Cham [Ham] from their hearts." God's curse on Ham was that the Canaanite people would be forever enslaved.
- 1917: The Roman Catholic church's Canon Law was expanded to declare a that "selling a human being into slavery or for any other evil purpose" is a crime.
Gotta love them solid 'anti-slavery' Christians ...
... caused by atheists like Hitler, Mao and Stalin, ...
Hitler was a Catholic.
115 posted on
12/26/2006 10:29:10 AM PST by
dread78645
(Evolution. A doomed theory since 1859.)
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