I don’t reject God. I reject people’s claim of God. This wording is important. Since the idea of God is imbued with perfection, some religious people try to make atheism’s rejecting God instead of people’s claim of God somewhat akin to rejecting love, world peace, etc. I do not reject God. I reject people’s claim of God.
So what are you looking for? What kind of a God do you think there is or could be? The God I know is love.
Where is your evidence for it being mostly a Protestant phenomenon? Roman Catholics were hunting witches over a century before the Reformation. There were several Papal Bulls ordering witch inquisitions spanning centuries, and other documents from leading clergy warning of the danger posed by witches. There is evidence that the schism of the Reformation sent both sides hunting witches more than anywhere else in the fuzzy boundaries between Catholic and non Catholic lands.
Ok, you weren’t specific in your last post, when one refers to the witch hunts of Europe, we speak of the actual persecution of those thought to be witches (not the same as the inquisitions which focused on heretics), concentrated mainly after the reformation in mostly protestant countries (I am not saying that Catholics didn’t do this just to a lesser degree). However, if you speak of the inquisitions (more specifically the Spanish inquisition), then we are refering to a time period that lasted for more than 350 years, with the death toll somewhere between 3500 to 5000 people. This however, was not an inquistion brought upon by the Church (although the Church at first issued a bull consenting to allow this) but the temperal powers of Spain for the reasons of extracting the enemies of Spain disguised as Christians (Morranos were Jews and Muslims who falsely converted to Christianity to infiltrate the political/governmental hierarchy in Spain).
You have to remember that Spain had just reconquered the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. And although there were other inquisitions like the Roman inquisition, these trials were for the purpose of rooting out heretics (just like the army would root out a treasonous soldier). It isn’t right per se, but it wasn’t as sinister as it was once perceived. There are probably more people who die/d of the death penalty in the U.S. (since its inception) then did from the inquistion.
In other words, there was no requirement for loss of religious belief or moral relativism to lead to such events.
Yes, because the atrocities committed under the banner of religiosity is in direct conflict with Christianity whereas the atrocities committed under Nazism and Communism there is/was no such conflict. These were ideologies that made their own moral code, that tried to create their own godless utopia. They had no higher power in order to set the standard for them, they were the standard, i.e, loss of religious belief and/or moral relativism does lead to such events.
It doesn’t seem like anyone wants the Nazi’s or the Communists on their team. They’re passed around like a hot potato. It’s more subtle than that, but it’s pointless to bicker about whose team they were on. Personally, I just see it as a shift in people’s casus belli. In previous centuries, if you were a power hungry brute, the best way to remain safe while others killed and died for you was to whip up religious xenophobia. Tell them that their enemy was evil in the eyes of God, maybe even throw in a promise of heaven to those who died in combat and you could start one of many crusades.
The Church had a valid reason to start the Crusades (it was only later in the 2nd or 3rd crusade that things got to be more about booty than protecting Christians and/or Christian land) has there was an invasion by the turks in the Holy land. In fact throughout the centuries thereafter Christian Europe was constantly threatened by Muslim hoardes trying to conquer (the battle of Lepanto and other such battles) in the name of “Allah”. What you describe above fits the image of Mohammed and his followers more than it does the CC and Catholics. Do you think if Mohammed’s followers weren’t trying to conquer the whole world we would have even had a crusade? We were not the aggressors in initiating such an event.
When Europeans got smart to that trick and were not so willing to kill or die for it, political ideology took its place. People killed and died in the name of fascism, communism, and democracy. Decades later after some victor’s justice and victor’s history, we’re ready to fight war after war to protect freedom and democracy. Exactly how we protect freedom and democracy with what we’re doing I don’t fathom.
