rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Pesmard Flurrmn) (01/23/85)
Sorry, Paul. The article you responded to that came from Chuq was actually written by me. (While I was out in funny Calisornia, I abused Chuq's login to post it.) Here is my response. > Why don't you read my article again. I took pains to make the point that > such associations are misguided from BOTH sides. [DUBUC] Apparently you are impervious to the pains you took to make this point, because you didn't make it at all. I quote from your own article: >>>We are talking about history, Rich. Do I have to spell it out to you? >>>Stalin's Purge. The Gulag. The invasions of Cambodia and Afganistan. >>>No freedom of the press, speech or religion (I know, you don't care about >>>religion). No USENET! :-) Hardly sounds like you believe that your associations are misguided. >>>Are you comfortable with these? Are these humanistic? I learned a long >>>time ago that I should not judge atheism by actions like these ... [DUBUC] >>No, you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it now. [ROSEN] I stand by this statement. > If my description of Salem as "isolated" > was arbitrary your sentence is more so ... to the point of being > ridiculous. So, the atocities of atheists are to be blamed on the religious > views held by their predicessors in power? Is that what your are saying? If we use the "atrocities of religionists" (for lack of a better word) as such, you complain that we are mislabelling religious believers and attributing atrocities to them wrongfully. When you use the phrase "atrocities of atheists", you are doing the same thing, the thing you CLAIM you are preaching against. Moreover, I reiterate the point I WAS making: the religious mindset that holds to the belief of the rightness of one's own group, the wrongness of all others, and the RIGHT of the RIGHT group to offer their RIGHTNESS to others by its very nature leads to such an "offering" of "rightness" in a most forcible way. It is this tenet of autocratic religionism, the belief that one's own religious beliefs, as unfounded as they may be, hold the key to truth and bestow the right of the believers to enforce their viewpoint onto others (for their own "good"), that INEVITABLY results in religious tyranny. The only difference between religious tyranny and non-religious tyranny is that the latter has no place for worship of god (it is replaced with the state and/or leader) or clergy (they are replaced with their own "clergy"). It is simply another form of the same thing (religious tyranny) with a different cast of players. >>>I don't see any justification for the Inquisition in the ethics of Christ >>>as taught in the Bible. >>Others did. And some still do. > Who? I made the point that before the reformation most people were biblically > illiterate. The Church strongly resisted any efforts to translate the Bible > into common language. If the Bible justified the Church's actions, what did > they have to fear? I maintain that the Church was that authority during the > Inquisition, not the Bible. There's a difference. Another example of "blame the Catholic church, not us good Protestants". (Didn't Ken Nichols offer this viewpoint many times before?) The "church" of today, with its arms and legs imbedded into the fabric of American politic, seems to keep the level of biblical illiteracy to the maximum level possible. (Remember Scott Collins who couldn't spell Satan, perhaps because reading the Bible wasn't prerequisite to joining his particular "cult"?) What Paul cites above consists of nothing but poor excuses: the early Catholics limited the masses' right to know the truth, but we Protestants (with the little rubber thingies on our John Thomases :-) do NOT". This is hardly the case. Else why would they fight an endless battle to keep dreaded "humanism" and "evolutionism" out of the schools? If they have nothing to fear from open dialogue and discourse and rational inquisition (not the Spanish kind), then what is their reason for attempting to limit these things? Because they would show the holes in their thinking? (NAAAH!) >>>Even Luther's own bigoted admonishments against the Jews resulted >>>in little persecution of them in his time. It is horrible that the Nazis >>>were able to stir up those sentiments a few centuries later. >> Yeah, real horrible. Just goes to show what such beliefs about >> superiority/inferiority of one's own/other people's beliefs/lives/etc. >> lead to. (I guess such things didn't happen in *his* time because it >> took some amount of time for his admonishments to be "interpreted" in the >> more "correct" way.) > Keep guessing. It seems to serve your purpose. I suppose you would > claim that the Nazis only persecuted the Jews in their zeal to follow > Luther's teaching (sola scriptura)? Good Bible believing Christians > all those Nazis were, right. Funny how they managed to use the common beliefs about Jews and about the Bible to their advantage. The fact that you don't want to believe that such superiority/inferiority lines of thinking have a lot to do with your religion don't make those lines of thinking go away. One can always claim that THOSE particular Christians were warped in their vision of the meaning of the Bible. But, of course, that couldn't POSSIBLY apply to today's MODERN, THINKING Christians. Or could it? >>>That still leaves isolated horrors like Salem. But they were isolated. >>>Salem can easily be viewed as a miniature of the situation that existed >>>over most of Europe prior to the Reformation. >> How can "a miniature of the situation that existed over most of Europe" >> be referred to as "isolated"? > Physically isolated, without much communication with the outside. That's > how. So? As you said yourself, it was a miniature of the situation that existed over most of Europe: ghettos and pogroms for Jews, burnings for anyone else who didn't adhere, enslavement and imperial missionary colonialism for the rest of the world (as our good Christians explored the continents). It's humorous that you try to justify after the fact by saying you meant "physically isolated". It hardly matters. In the world at large, throughout the centuries, it hardly qualifies as "isolated" in the least. And these non- isolated incidents were clearly carried out IN THE NAME of Christianity. You might argue that they were misguided, that today that would never be done, but the attitude that promoted them remains a strong part of the Christian mindset. Look at those like Bickford, who proudly proclaim things like "I cannot accept your personal freedom, it is at odds with my view of god, I would be wrong in denying my abhorrence of it." (A paraphrase, not a quote.) You ask who justifies an Inquisition in the name of Christ. I say "give it time". Unless such thinking vanishes. >>>These, along with the >>>atheistic communist atrocies I mentioned are more of a lesson against >>>the dangers seemingly inherent in absolute authority whether those in >>>authority adhere to a particular religious belief or not. >>Absolutely. > Yet you still agree that the atrocities like the Inquisition are inherent > in the religious beliefs (and not their political position) of their > perpetrators? Yes. As I've said, when the religious beliefs promulgate the superiority/ inferiority beliefs, when they base themselves on subjective and presumptive notions and STILL expect to use them as the basis for controlling the behavior of others, the inherency is obvious. > Your complete focus is on the negative. I am arguing for a balanced > view. Does anyone study the social effect of the revivals of John > Wesley in Great Briton ... or the part Charles Finney played in getting > slavery abolished in the U.S.? No. The positive contributions of > religious people don't make intersting history, especially in a public > education system that has been dominated by secularist ideals. Funny. YOUR focus has been entirely on the negative side of NON-religious people's effects on history. The fact remains: the atrocities of non-religious regimes have little to do with what you would call humanist ideals, and your tarnishing non-religion with the brushstrokes of Hitler and Stalin is nothing but sheer unadulterated manipulative rhetoric. I hope you are being honest about your desire to refrain from this and to show a balanced picture, but you have shown no evidence other than to proclaim that you simply ARE trying to present a balanced picture. Another fact remains: the atrocities of religious regimes and people are indeed closely allied with the very principles of superiority and elitism inherent in the beliefs. > What I am saying (and I think you must know it full well) is either give > up the implications of religion being inherently evil or accept the same > (much greater) implications for nonreligion. How did it become "much greater" in your "balanced picture"? Sorry, it appears that you haven't been honest in your desire to present such a picture. I reiterate: the "much greater" negative implications would be on the side of religion, which promotes particular unwarranted unsubstantiated beliefs about a particular "right" path that exclude those who don't follow sets of bogus arbitrary rules from full privileges as human beings. Read your own bible. See what it says about those who do not adhere. And tell us again how atrocities as we've described do not emanate directly from religious belief. >> Paul clearly equates non-religion >> with anti-religion, in the sense that "anti" implies some form of >> suppression. It ain't necessarily so. If you work so that it doesn't >> become so. > I don't see any nonreligious people working "so it doesn't become so"? No. You only see Stalin and Hitler. You'd see more if you worked in tandem with non-religious people, if humanism weren't a dirty word to you, if you bucked your assumptions that non-religious means evil for just once. I don't expect that to happen, given your view of what a "balanced picture" would be. (i.e., show the evils of Hitler next to the good of Mother Teresa) > If you remember, > it is the inferrence (from historical example) that there is nothing > good whatever about religion that prompted my remarks. You and Rich > Rosen have fallen in to defend that perspective, as I see it. I can't > believe that your attitudes express any tolerance for religious belief > or appreciation of the many many positive contributions of religiously > motivated people. Apparently your view of history conveniently excludes > such a perspective. (I guess you thought Chuqui was just beginning to sound like me there.) Just rewrite the last sentences (prefacing each word that begins with 'relig-' with the prefix 'non-') and you have my final comments to you. Moreover, if you REALLY want examples of how the Christian mindset is imbued with the notions I ascribe to it, try watching the 700 Club, or some other such evangelist program, and substitute for the words "God", "Jesus", "Christ", and "Christian" (etc.) the words "Ubizmo" and "Ubizmatist" where appropriate. Would YOU feel in a world where THAT was the status quo? (Better yet, if you REALLY want to feel humble, every time they do a piece on Jews and their great love for them as a people, in addition to the above substitution, substitute the word "Christians" for the word "Jews". You'll know what the word patronizing really means...) -- Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (01/23/85)
Rich, when you get around to accepting my argument as inteded instead of spitefully twisting it to suit your own purposes, maybe we'll get somewhere. Until then I'm not even going waste my time trying. Yours is the last word, Rich. That's all you want, I think. Disgusted, -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd