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estesbob
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My favorite definition of an agnostic is one who :
Swears there aint no heaven and
prays there aint no hell.
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Swears there aint no heaven and
prays there aint no hell.
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buffalo
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yankee_doodle
Guest
right (perhaps)?
Here’s the opening of a New York Times article on religious views in Scandinavia:
*Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.
It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier.
Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.”*
nytimes.com/2009/02/28/us/28beliefs.html?_r=1
actually, plenty. Like I said it was the rationalist enlightenment thinkers (many of whom were non-believers) who started speaking out against slavery.
However, there’s some nuance to all this. Religion reacted against rationalist thought; however, in an effort to win the hearts and minds of people religion began to take on the shape of the enlightenment. In other words they began to look for areas where there was harmony with enlightenment principals (and in theory there are many areas of accord). Christianity was obviously in a huge state of flux during that period. Men like John Wesley had just started a new offshoot of the Anglican denomination, the reformation had already ripped through Europe, and there were various bitter disagreements between different sorts of Christians (for instance between Calvinists and Arminian Christians, not to mention the ongoing Catholic / Protestant tension).
Meanwhile there were these enlightenment thinkers, going there own way. Some were theists, others were not. The father of the enlightenment (Immanuel Kant) couldn’t have been more atheist. However, there were great theists among these thinkers as well (notably men like John Locke).
Hmm, I must have missed that in history class. Here’s what I learned:
The 15th century Portuguese exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any “Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers” to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under Catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism. Although for a short period as in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be “a great crime”.[33] The followers of the church of England and Protestants did not use the papal bull as a justification. The position of the church was to condemn the slavery of Christians, but slavery was regarded as an old established and necessary institution which supplied Europe with the necessary workforce. In the 16th century African slaves had substituted almost all other ethnicities and religious enslaved groups in Europe.[34] Within the Portuguese territory of Brazil, and even beyond its original borders, the enslavement of native Americans was carried out by the Bandeirantes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
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josie_L
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The percentages (80% atheist/agnostic for Sweden) given by the propagandist Mr. Zuckerman are false, in fact, the numbers in said surveys differ greatly from the data he compiled. Here’s the website:
gnxp.com/blog/2009/05/atheist-societies.php
There are two reports really, one from Eurobarometer and another from World Values Survey, in the one report the amount of confirmed atheists is 23% and the other is 17.3 %.
I hardly call this a coup, as this is by no means an atheist society. I think Mr Zuckerman needs to wait it out a little bit longer before he assumes anything at this point.
They were not the first to speak out so stop saying that they did, furthermore. Christians outnumbered atheists in huge numbers (back then and well, even now) so ipso facto the anti-slavery movement needed the backing of Christians in order to gain momentum and succeed.
I’m aware of the bull (please read the article I posted from “ChristianityToday”) it’s the only one there is, which should demonstrate the weakness of the papacy at the time rather than the stance of the Church (doctrinally and morally) which consistently fought against slavery (with the exception of this one pope).
p.s. And if you look at the dates of the bulls (in the article) preceding 1452 they denounce slavery.
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gearhead
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Yes, but that momentum from Christians was needed to overcome the inertia of Christians on the other side. While the Vatican was issuing bulls every so often regarding slavery, other Christians were using Paul’s Epistles and the supposed “Curse of Ham” to justify owning people as property.
Not-so-fun fact: at the height of slavery, the Church of England was one of the largest slave owners in the Caribbean.
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yankee_doodle
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Oh come on … here’s where you guys start to lose credibility. Why would I possibly take the word of some obscure blog verses the NY Times (one of the worlds premier news organizations)?
I think Mr. Zuckerman is just fine … it’s you’re numbers I question. Moreover, even your survey shows the majority of Europeans (even outside of Scandinavia) do not believe in a personal god (one of the hallmarks of Christianity). Rather they frame it as a life force of some sort, but define it obscurely (which means they’re deists not Christians).
I’ve already provided numerous citations on this subject. There’s nothing I can do if you think all those sources are lying or are colluding in some elaborate global anti-Christian propaganda campaign (except to say I generally give little weight to conspiracy theorists).
ah nice … when it’s a bull you like I’m sure you’ll define the papacy as being at its height, when it’s one you don’t like simply say it highlights a weak papacy.
whatever …
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josie_L
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Gearhead I’m aware that some Christians were manipulating the Bible for their own purposes, namely greed, but the fact of the matter is that any movement at the time required the efforts of many good and moral Christians to gain momentum and/or succeed. Moreover, the CC did not just issue bulls, it fought diligently to uphold the rights of man (spanish theologians in the 16th century set the foundation for international law concerning the natural rights of man).
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josie_L
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My sentiments exactly . . . “whatever”.
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yankee_doodle
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no, you mean a single Spanish priest (and scholar) was the foremost innovator in international law. The CC never fought diligently on behalf of the rights of slaves (another gross exaggeration).
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josie_L
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By diligently I mean consistently, and no it was not just a single priest (although he was at the fore of it from my understanding).
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yankee_doodle
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I mean the truth of the CC involvement with slavery is sketchy and murky. To even say they consistently acted as an advocate for slaves is a gross misrepresentation. At one time they endorsed slavery (had they not endorsed the practice, arguably, it might not have ever started in the first place). Then they suddenly rediscovered their morality and issued dictates against the practice (but the CC was never involved in the abolitionist movement, the intellectual impetus originated from rationalist enlightenment thinkers; and ultimately the movement was picked up and put into action by radical protestants).
The type of Christian at the forefront of the abolitionist movement were Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, etc. They were people like Susan B. Anthony (hardly a conservative Christian by any standard). In fact one of the earliest Americans to speak out against slavery was Thomas Paine, who was himself a deist. The foundations of abolition was laid in late 18th century New York (by the Manumission Society), by men like Alexander Hamilton (deist), John Jay, and Aaron Burr; and before that men like Immanuel Kant (atheist) wrote of the injustice of slavery.
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josie_L
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I had to let him see it otherwise who knows if he would have read it.
“The Trinitarians, founded in 1198 by St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois, established hospitals for slaves at Algiers and Tunis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and from its foundation until the year 1787 it redeemed 900,000 slaves. The Order of Our Lady of Ransom (Mercedarians), founded in the thirteenth century by St. Peter Nolasco, and established more especially in France and Spain, redeemed 490,736 slaves between the years 1218 and 1632. To the three regular vows its founder had added a fourth, “To become a hostage in the hands of the infidels, if that is necessary for the deliverance of Christ’s faithful.” Many Mercedarians kept this vow even to martyrdom. Another order undertook not only to redeem captives, but also to give them spiritual and material assistance. St. Vincent of Paul had been a slave at Algiers in 1605, and had witnessed the sufferings and perils of Christian slaves. At the request of Louis XIV, he sent them, in 1642, priests of the congregation which he had founded. Many of these priests, indeed, were invested with consular functions at Tunis and at Algiers. From 1642 to 1660 they redeemed about 1200 slaves at an expense of about 1,200,000 livres. But their greatest achievements were in teaching the Catechism and converting thousands, and in preparing many of the captives to suffer the most cruel martyrdom rather than deny the Faith. As a Protestant historian has recently said, none of the expeditions sent against the Barbary States by the Powers of Europe, or even America, equalled “the moral effect produced by the ministry of consolation, and abnegation, going even to the sacrifice of liberty and life, which was exercised by the humble sons of St. John of Matha, St. Peter Nolasco, and St. Vincent of Paul” (Bonet-Maury, “France, christianisme et civilisation”, 1907, p. 142).”
“A second revival of slavery took place after the discovery of the New World by the Spaniards in 1492. To give the history of it would be to exceed the limits of this article. It will be sufficient to recall the efforts of Las Casas in behalf of the aborigines of America and the protestations of popes against the enslavement of those aborigines and the traffic in negro slaves. England, France, Portugal, and Spain, all participated in this nefarious traffic. England only made amends for its transgressions when, in 1815, it took the initiative in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that the Papacy had not its mind to condemn slavery” (Ernest Havet, “Le christianisme et ses origines”, I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be “a great crime” (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the “supreme villainy” (summum nefas) of the slave traders. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter which Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery — a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church"
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Revert_TSIEG
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Being an Atheists or Agnostic is like calling bald a hair style! HAHA 
Just something I heard a while back!
For the glory of our Lord.
Revert TSIEG
Just something I heard a while back!
For the glory of our Lord.
Revert TSIEG
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gearhead
Guest
You got it a bit wrong. It’s “calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair style.”Being an Atheists or Agnostic is like calling bald a hair style! HAHA
Just something I heard a while back!
It’s usually used by atheists when confronted by theists who tell them that their atheism is a “religion” (usually in the context of trying to imply that all the atheist’s criticism of religion can also be applied to atheism).
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Revert_TSIEG
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Ohhh… Well I thought it was kinda funny! Atheism is not a religion… it is just a basic belief and way of life, right. Although religion can be called the same thing! Well, I was trying to keep out of this one, but I just thought it was funny! HAHA
Revert TSIEG
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yankee_doodle
Guest
I’m sorry if I don’t find newadvent.org an unbiased source of information?
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yankee_doodle
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I wouldn’t say atheism demands any particular “way of life”
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josie_L
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You can’t call it biased unless you check out the facts first, it might help (there are names listed and religious orders you could look up).
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yankee_doodle
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I just gave it a quick read, and not once does it mention that the Papacy endorsed slavery (as the Wikipedia article I cited does; and provided footnotes for verification). I define that as biased (since the papacy at one point did indeed endorse slavery, notwithstanding their subsequent renunciation).
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