That explains why Europe has been so peaceful for the last 2,000 years, and why they never went to conquer other places like, say, Africa.
I lived a while in Israel in the early 90s. Itās not a lack of fear of death that makes them fight. Itās a knowledge that the world stood by when they asked for help in the 30s and it resulted in 6 million deaths. They all fight because if they lose one war they lose for ever. They visit the Holocaust museum every year, because never forget.
I honestly do not even know where the concept of heaven or hell came from in Christianity, as the Bible didnāt really talk about it all that much. Yes in Revelations it talks about the lake of fire but throughout the New Testament it talks about the Kingdom of God but not a whole lot about heaven or hell.
I read somewhere the concept of āhellā really comes from Danteās Inferno, and thatās not scripture.
I think much of this concept is really recent, and not necessarily from Christianity.
how people interpret religious texts or give justifications itās up to them ? werenāt europeans using the bible as justification for slavery or bringing ācivilizationā to other lands ? how many women were burned at the stake ? how homosexuality became unacceptable when before it was ? Iām just saying in overall yeah religion can cause people to make absurd decisions. so donāt try rationalize but understand why
Iām sorry, just checking, but are you saying European colonialism is responsible for things like slavery, patriarchy, and homophobia?
edit: thank you for answering that you were not
No iām giving a counterpoint that religion has been used to justify other heinous acts too. since post I replied to, was saying how come europe had plenty of wars etc in the last 2000 years. if Africans are afraid to die because of religion ?
In short iām saying donāt be rational but understand that people make decisions based on well different factors etc. @TT
Anyways donāt wanna derail the thread.
letās just say who wins in a war is usually the person who has nothing to lose. Taiwanās attitude at the moment is unlike the Israelis.
and PRC will be fighting an ideological war
Exactly what Iām saying. Christianity didnāt do much to tame the Europeans, nor has it seemed to stop the Catholic Hutu massacring Catholic Tutsis and vice versa.
Even Buddhists in Myanmar massacred Muslims; the causal factor isnāt Christianity, it is humanity (I am agnostic for the record). But, coming back to the thread, the difference is an absence of religion, since there is no religious reason to fight (as opposed to Israel).
Iraq and Afghanistan had home field advantage.
Taiwan has home field advantage.
Some say it came from Zoroastrian influence on Judaism during the exile.
No idea, but even New Testament donāt talk that much about heaven and hell. But Christians like to talk about all these concepts that donāt really come from scripture. Stuff like āif you do so and so you will go to hellā.
If you think a war against the Taleban or Iraq is on a par with China then I guess we have to disagree.
The Taiwanese military will be found out entirely in the event of a war.
Do you really think the PLA today is anything like the Iraqi and Afgan āmilitariesā?
We donāt have to take over China.
Both of them had the advantage of warfighting experience, which the PLA does not, and in the case of the Afghanis they didnāt win any major battles but arguably won the war. The PLA is in a better position to win conventional battles than either of them was, but arguably the US military is in a better position still, only facing the short term challenge of repositioning from an insurgency land-based focus to a great power air-sea focus.
Spirituality is a fundamental human need. All human cultures develop spiritual beliefs/religion. Even atheists believe in something (money, nature, possessions, a complete lack of possessions, basketballā¦) But not all religions believe in killing everyone. And a lot of āpeacefulā religions have been so warped by the leaderās desires they donāt begin to teach peace. Do you think Jesus would want to hang out with the most vocal Christians in the US today? Siddhartha would want to have anything to do with most people who call themselves āBuddhistā? No, of course not, because overtime āleadersā who needed to get something out of their sheeple have warped the religion into what they wanted of it.
Generally, religion exists solely to persuade people to act a certain way. āGod shall smite theeā is a good way to convince people to behave. A religious community that promotes contraception and birth control isnāt going to spread very quickly or sustain itself for very long compared to one that says that āitās against our beliefs to use condoms and also you better be having sex all the time so God may āblessā you with childrenā.
Vikings believed that dying in battle was the greatest thing to happen to them. If you died in battle, you might be chosen by Oden to go to Valhalla (where the gods reside). If not, youād go to Folkvangr, which was a giant battlefield, sorta the lower heaven. Heaven = a battlefield. If you didnāt die in battle, youād go to something of a limbo that you canāt get out of. Thatās called propaganda. Itās really easy to convince someone to go to war when their spiritual beliefs dictate that dying in battle is the only way to go to heaven.
So all you need is two generations to brainwash the population into religiously believing they should go to war to defend their country. Oh wait, thatās EXACTLY what the CCP has been doing!
So, you agree that Taiwanese could be expected to fight more fervently if they had more religion, yes?
Taiwanese do have religion ā sleeping, staring at phones, buying expensive cars, burning chemically-laden paper in order to get more money, fondling jade things that hang from their rearview mirror as they drive drunk at 4x the speed limit, burning incense for whatever reasonā¦
What they would need is a religion that convinces them that they should risk their lives to protect the above.
I donāt imagine the CCP will take away their right to sleep or stare at phones, quite the opposite, so here again there is no reason to fight because the religions are not strongly opposed (like, say, Judaism and Islam, who each consider themselves the chosen of God)