It is interesting that you were eager to count the non church attending Founding Fathers as fellow believers, but reject the prisoners. WWJD?
I don’t think so at all. I don’t think that believers are any more or less lilely to be criminals than nonbelievers. I only cited those statistics because you were arguing that criminals must be atheists.
Are you being moronic purposely? Look at the World Populations in the third table below:
Such as . . . ?
I disagree. There are many books written that discuss the various Inquisitions. One of the first things you’ll notice is how few deaths actually were at the hands, directly, or indirectly, of the Church. The vast majority were caused by the various governments, that usurped their power. In fact, most people accused of some crime or other, asked to be tried by representatives of the Church rather than the town mayors, or governors.
Not true. The Pope did not support the Third Reich. Secretively, he directly did much to help build several escapes lines to get Jews out of Nazi Germany. Remember, there were Catholics in Germany, too. To be too apparent in defiance of Hitler could easily have meant the demise of German Catholics, not to mention, the demise of Italy and Rome. Hitler and his armies were seen, at that time, as the most powerful and destructive force on the planet.
C’mon! That’s complete silliness. You have a good brain. Use it.
More silliness. No doubt that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but, it has always been the Church that has, as best it could, mediated and moderated politics and the politics of death. Not the other way around.
You don’t see the huge jump there in population? Less than 1 billion to 2.5 billion? That’s 250%.
Hmm… you appear to be correct regarding the church and Germany according to this article, but as it says, religion was not exactly black and white there. Anyway, thank you for setting me straight there.
The church trying to mediate and moderate power is a bit of a love/hate relationship. There was a reason for the protestant revolution you know.
You are welcome and thank you for the gutsy admission.
Yes, he did consider himself as divine, but, that does not mean that the rest of the Japanese came close to agreeing with him, or, for that matter, worshiping him. Hirohito had way too big a head. Too bad - thousands had to die for that.
And why did the original half-dozen, or so, Protestants “revolt”? Each and every one of them had, in his mind, that he were smarter, more astute, more insightful, and a clearer thinker than anyone in Rome! If Rome would not conform to their thinking, they were simply going to have to get ugly.
While I’d like to argue some of that further, I feel like I’ve been offtopic now and that we’re just debating history. My intention was not actually to condemn religion for not being moral, but to point out that non-morality has been done by both those claiming to be atheists and theists alike. I will say I found your quote ironic though… I don’t see turning family against one another as very moral. I suppose that is just one of the big differences between our views on morality though.
You’re correct, I researched this a bit from one of JD’s replies and already posted a concession. It seems that HItler was atheist but used religion only when he needed it for political gain… at least from the articles I read.
No doubt that it is “ironic.” It points out that each of us is a distinct and separate person, capable of making one’s own decisions. In fact, more than that, it points out that we do make our own decisions and that, often, the decisions we make are dead wrong.
As I remember, it is between 500 and 1,500 total, at the hands of church officials of some sort or other, although I could be slightly off. In fact, the Protestants killed and burned more during the witch trials in New England, than real Catholics did throughout the entire Inquisition. Not that that matters that much as they were still “Christians”. Nevertheless, the total numbers pale in comparison to just the 6,000,000,000 killed by the Japanese, in the 20th century.
Leela:
You do see that typo right?
This quote demonstartes my point. Rummel characterizes the communists as those who “could not be wrong.” They were convinced of infallible leaders and dogmas such as materialism and the dialectical process of society. These were not people who were too desirous of evidence. They were too religious in their devotion to ideology and cults of personality.
