Why Christianity?

Some macaques might be reading Forumosa.

Christ and Confucius were diametrically opposed regarding the centrality of filial piety. Whether that’s an important difference depends on your point of view.

Christ and Confucius were diametrically opposed regarding the centrality of filial piety. Whether that’s an important difference depends on your point of view.[/quote]

Among others- if any two widely respected moral leaders had different views, it was those two.

OTOH, the Church quickly filed that away with most of the rest of Christ’s moral teachings.

As the old joke goes, “Of course capital punishment works. They crucified Jesus and there hasn’t been a Christian since.”

[quote=“antarcticbeech”]Here is a little (food for) thought experiment

A prisoner is placed alone in a cell. A chain hangs…[/quote]

Hmm, ‘electrocute’ as in ‘kill’, or ‘electrocute’ as in ‘shock’?

I’m from Taitung so I don’t have much sympathy for those vicious furry bastards anyway.

It’s easy to be sanguine if you fail to take in the whole picture. What you’re missing: America isn’t what it used to be. They just don’t make Americans like they used to… The Greatest Generation is over. The old farts we have to lecture us nowadays are withered hippies with ponytails dangling beneath their bald spots. Who’s gonna get off their lawn? Ronald Reagan is dead as a community organizer’s campaign promise. Besides, he was a blip.

And Christianity? There is no Charles Martel on the scene today. You can’t beat back the bloodthirsty savages with Sunday school and Jack Chick tracts. Kierkegaard pronounced Christianity dead nearly two centuries ago. He was right. It’s a walking corpse.

I see only one hope for the resurrection of Christianity: what happened with the emperor Constantine. Christianity was a persecuted fringe of wimps with martyr complexes until the Roman Empire hit bottom and became desperate enough to put the weirdos in charge. Whether that helped or hurt things is open to debate, but it helped Christianity become a world religion.

The secular West is sinking, and the sad remnant of Christendom is but one of several pieces of flotsam handy to be grabbed on to. It’s looking rather waterlogged.

[quote=“MikeN”][quote=“antarcticbeech”]Here is a little (food for) thought experiment

A prisoner is placed alone in a cell. A chain hangs…[/quote]

Hmm, ‘electrocute’ as in ‘kill’, or ‘electrocute’ as in ‘shock’?

I’m from Taitung so I don’t have much sympathy for those vicious furry bastards anyway.[/quote]

:smiley: I hear the iron bars on the windows down there are for the monkeys, not the burglars.

I meant electrically shock, not electrocute. Cheers.

Rowland:

What do you think of Orthodoxy? They’re pretty brutal.

[quote=“Zla’od”]Rowland:

What do you think of Orthodoxy? They’re pretty brutal.[/quote]

That’s why righties love them some Putin- that manly bare chest.

[quote=“antarcticbeech”][quote=“MikeN”][quote=“antarcticbeech”]Here is a little (food for) thought experiment

A prisoner is placed alone in a cell. A chain hangs…[/quote]

Hmm, ‘electrocute’ as in ‘kill’, or ‘electrocute’ as in ‘shock’?

I’m from Taidong so I don’t have much sympathy for those vicious furry bastards anyway.[/quote]

:smiley: I hear the iron bars on the windows down there are for the monkeys, not the burglars.

I meant electrically shock, not electrocute. Cheers.[/quote]

Since I’m a deeply compassionate human being full of concern for my fellows, it sounds like a good diet plan.
“Stop whining, dammit- it’s only a few volts for a low-fat yoghurt.”

[quote=“rowland”][quote=“MikeN”]
I guess some of us don’t panic that easily.
[/quote]

It’s easy to be sanguine if you fail to take in the whole picture. What you’re missing: America isn’t what it used to be. They just don’t make Americans like they used to… The Greatest Generation is over. The old farts we have to lecture us nowadays are withered hippies with ponytails dangling beneath their bald spots. Who’s gonna get off their lawn? Ronald Reagan is dead as a community organizer’s campaign promise. Besides, he was a blip.[/quote]

The guy who cut and ran from Lebanon but made up for it by invading…Grenada? And wasn’t there a more recent guy who took on the bloodthirsty savage Mussulmen? Starts with a B…I asked some conservative friends, but they said they’d never heard of him

[quote]And Christianity? There is no Charles Martel on the scene today. You can’t beat back the bloodthirsty savages with Sunday school and Jack Chick tracts. Kierkegaard pronounced Christianity dead nearly two centuries ago. He was right. It’s a walking corpse.

I see only one hope for the resurrection of Christianity: what happened with the emperor Constantine. Christianity was a persecuted fringe of wimps with martyr complexes until the Roman Empire hit bottom and became desperate enough to put the weirdos in charge. Whether that helped or hurt things is open to debate, but it helped Christianity become a world religion.[/quote]

That does explain the above referenced right-wing mancrush on Pooty.

I have more faith in the latent ferocity of the Western world. Cheer up- we’re still the Great Race that depopulated whole continents and stole their lands; enslaved entire peoples; conquered the world and made them our serfs.

As soon as someone seriously threatens to take away our toys, they’ll find out. If ISIS takes the Saudi oilfields and Americans have to wait in gas-lines, there’ll be boots on the ground. Tell the Europeans they’re going to lose a week of vacation time in Majorca and they’ll elect National Fronts all over the continent; setting up “resettlement camps” as fast as they litter the bottom of the Med with sunken hulls.

So relax- we can be as ferocious and avaricious as we were in the past even without the teachings of Jesus Christ to guide us.

[quote=“MikeN”]
So relax- we can be as ferocious and avaricious as we were in the past even without the teachings of Jesus Christ to guide us.[/quote]

Anyone can be ferocious and avaricious when he has the advantage. It’s human nature. That’s no distinction.

What’s needed is the willingness to put one’s life at risk – to fight when it’s not easy. Here the pseudo-rational, secular West is sorely lacking. Here the fanatics have a huge advantage. ISIS is recruiting like gangbusters – not despite being batscat insane, but precisely because it’s insane.

Dubya fought the (politically) hard war and got pilloried for it. Then what had been won on the ground got thrown away by the douchebag who succeeded him. Who’s ever going to try that again?

Our current Commander-in-Cleats prefers to kill by remote control, take all the easy victory laps and let the enemy take any city he wants and rape and kill anyone he wants. That’s just not going to cut it in the long run. But what would cut it in the long run is just what the voting public hasn’t the stomach for. They prefer cheap, hollow victories – the chocolate bunnies of war. Meanwhile, Baltimore is decending into anarchy. What kind of society would let that happen? So close to the nation’s capital?

Christianity was much more relevant back in the days when it actually was fanatical and bloodthirsty.

So much for Judeo-Christian morality, lol.

[quote=“rowland”]
Christianity was much more relevant back in the days when it actually was fanatical and bloodthirsty.[/quote]

Jesus never preached fanaticism, nor bloodthirst. So how can Christians hide behind fanaticism, and bloodthirst?

Let the muslims fight each other over their own land. It’s none of our business.

Christianity is a personal choice: there are no Christian ‘governments’.

[quote=“Charlie Phillips”][quote=“rowland”]
Let the muslims fight each other over their own land. It’s none of our business.
[/quote][/quote]

They consider the entire planet their own land. Where will the rest of us live?

Out of curiosity, rowland, I take it your position on religion is like that of Plato’s “Noble Lie”; or Leo Strauss:

That is, you’re not a Christian, but you believe it is/was a necessary belief to install purpose and morality into (in this case) our society, and inspire the citizens to be willing to lay down their lives in defense of their homeland.

[quote=“rowland”][quote=“MikeN”]
So relax- we can be as ferocious and avaricious as we were in the past even without the teachings of Jesus Christ to guide us.[/quote]

Anyone can be ferocious and avaricious when he has the advantage. It’s human nature. That’s no distinction.

What’s needed is the willingness to put one’s life at risk – to fight when it’s not easy. Here the pseudo-rational, secular West is sorely lacking. Here the fanatics have a huge advantage. ISIS is recruiting like gangbusters – not despite being batscat insane, but precisely because it’s insane.

Dubya fought the (politically) hard war and got pilloried for it. Then what had been won on the ground got thrown away by the douchebag who succeeded him. Who’s ever going to try that again?

Our current Commander-in-Cleats prefers to kill by remote control, take all the easy victory laps and let the enemy take any city he wants and rape and kill anyone he wants. That’s just not going to cut it in the long run. But what would cut it in the long run is just what the voting public hasn’t the stomach for. They prefer cheap, hollow victories – the chocolate bunnies of war. Meanwhile, Baltimore is decending into anarchy. What kind of society would let that happen? So close to the nation’s capital?

Christianity was much more relevant back in the days when it actually was fanatical and bloodthirsty.[/quote]
Christianity was never doctrinally bloodthirsty like Islam has been. The official reasoning for the crusades was to retake Christian lands, including Jerusalem, that had been lost to the Muslims. This included regions in mainland Europe such as parts of Spain, Italy and what is now Turkey since Christians never got that region back. Back then the Muslims would invade places, rape and kill everyone, stuff their enemies’ corpses and put them on display for sometimes years at a time, just like ISIS does today. The Crusaders were soldiers with all that entails but there was no displaying of stuffed corpses and no invasions of lands that hadn’t originally been Christian before the Muslims appeared.

The exception to this is the fourth crusade, when the Venetian Doge Dandolo tricked the crusaders into getting stranded at Constantinople, then manipulated circumstances until the crusaders got mad and captured the city. This was probably his revenge for how the Byzantine Emperor Manuel had kidnapped a large number of Venetians back when Dandolo was a child. Incidentally, Dandolo was like 90 years old when he sacked Constantinople and still not someone you wanted to mess with but he single-handedly ruined the otherwise excellent reputation of the crusaders and cemented the east-west divide in Christianity. People who are angry with Christians and conservatives today are still profiting off of his revenge which is unfortunate since there’s no rational comparison between Crusaders and Jihadists.

Also, the Inquisition usually comes up which in Spain was an attempt to get rid of Muslims who had been resident there after the Muslim conquest of the country. This was a very necessary thing since the Muslims were a hostile and invading force.

I have never met a single critic of the crusades and inquisitions who actually had even a rudimentary understanding of the events.

[quote=“Il Ðoge”]
Christianity was never doctrinally bloodthirsty like Islam has been. [/quote]

Doctrine is an abstraction. It’s what people actually do that’s real. And that’s no noble lie, folks.

By the way, Jesus sayeth:

[quote]Matt 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.[/quote]

Was Jesus advocating domestic violence? No, merely offering a realistic appraisal. You stand up for something, things get ugly. That’s the way it is.

[quote=“rowland”][quote=“Il Ðoge”]
Christianity was never doctrinally bloodthirsty like Islam has been. [/quote]

Doctrine is an abstraction. It’s what people actually do that’s real. And that’s no noble lie, folks.
[/quote]

Put me down with rowland on this.

Christianity spread peacefully through the Roman Empire, at least till the conversion of Constantine and the suppression of paganism.

Through northern and eastern Europe it spread through a mix of conversion and conquest; after that, everywhere it spread the cross followed the sword: the Americas, Africa, Oceania, the Philippines, Siberia.

The most telling point about the spread of religions is that no religion has managed to convert a population with its own literate religion: Christianity; Buddhism, including that “Chinese” syncretic religion (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism); Hinduism; Islam.

The only exceptions I can think of are the conversion of Christian to Islam in the Near East and North Africa, which took conquest and hundreds of years (and Christianity was still fairly new at the time); and the gradual conversion of Malaysia and Indonesia from Buddhism to Islam. Since then, nothing- not even when colonial powers ruled for hundreds of years, like the Moguls or British in India, the Russians in Central Asia, or the Ottomans in the Balkans- small populations converted, but the majority didn’t.

Allow me to weigh in, for a second…

http://www.alternet.org/30-most-violent-exhortations-bible-torah-and-quran

[quote]1. Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the [holy man] who represents God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged.

  1. I decided to order a man to lead the prayer and then take a flame to burn all those, who had not left their houses for the prayer, burning them alive inside their homes.

  2. I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am God.

  3. Fight them until there is no more [disbelief or worshipping of other gods] and worship is for God alone.

  4. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

  5. Whoso fighteth in the way of God, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.

  6. Make ready to slaughter [the infidel’s] sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants.

  7. [God’s messenger]… was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The [holy man] replied, “They [women and children] are from them [unbelievers].”

  8. Then I heard God say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children.”

  9. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

  10. Keep [my holiday], for it is holy. Anyone who desecrates it must die.

  11. The punishment of those who wage war against God and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement.

  12. If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.

  13. It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he had made a great slaughter in the land…

  14. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

  15. I shall terrorize the [heathens]. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them, because they oppose God and his apostle.

  16. A [holy man’s] daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death.

  17. So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them.

  18. Everyone who would not seek God was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.

  19. And when We wish to destroy a town, We send Our commandment to the people of it who lead easy lives, but they transgress therein; thus the word proves true against it, so We destroy it with utter destruction.

  20. But if [a girl wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night] and evidence of the girl’s virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her father’s house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against God’s people by her unchasteness in her father’s house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst.

  21. The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, “O [believer]! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

  22. If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you.

  23. God’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but God.”

  24. Cursed be he who does God’s work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood.

  25. God said, “A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. [Prophet], you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But God desires killing them to manifest the religion.”

  26. Anyone who blasphemes God’s name must be stoned to death by the whole community of [believers].

  27. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) [your religion]; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them… If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them [a tax]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek God’s help and fight them.

  28. Anyone else who goes too near the [Holy Place] will be executed.

  29. Killing Unbelievers is a small matter to us.[/quote]

P.S. But then we get in to the Old vs New Testament debate, which is another can of worms.

Carry on, pundits.

Yup, that’s a big can of worms. Having read both cover to cover, I’m pretty confident that either:

  1. The God depicted in the OT is not the same God described by Jesus. Or if he is, he’d had a bit of a rethink of his policies in the interim.
  2. The actors in the OT weren’t that interested in God’s opinions and tended to fill it out with their own. A classic example (as I’ve suggested elsewhere) is the corruption by Jewish lawyers of the original Ten Commandments. The Jewish Law as constructed subsequently is, in fact, completely at odds with the Decalogue. There are also several instances where the Jews go off doing their own thing and are apparently punished for it, or at least get God mightily annoyed to the point where he says, basically, why do I even bother with you lot?

As for people who think the Bible advocates violence, the NT is surely up there with Buddhism and Jainism for obsessive non-violence. I don’t see how anyone can construe Christian philosophy as violent. Yes, the crusades, inquisition. Neither of those shameful episodes can be linked to Christian doctrine; it was a simple case of assholes using religion to cover their assholery, a fine tradition which the likes of ISIS uphold today.

Where violence is advocated in the OT, it’s quite clearly specific humans doing the advocating (again, the Jewish law is a good case in point, where the lawyers apparently thought that appending ‘God says…’ to their brainfarts makes everything OK).