Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
And here I thought you were serious about debating.
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Lies and Phony Caricatures of Christianity
- Thread starter usfan
- Start date
And here I thought you were serious about debating.
I would strongly recommend you actually research which sources those authors depended on for their editions of the Greek text. They basically all boil down to a few major codices of the complete NT, like the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which date from the 4th and 5th centuries
Again, you do not know this as we do not have the originals for comparison.
You're using a lot of black and white language ("nothing," "everything," "never") which has already gotten you in trouble. It would make the conversation more productive if you tried not to exaggerate.
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shmogie
Well-Known Member
It is what they say, right in this forum. Over the years I have encountered virtually every one.
Apparently you don't notice those posts.
shmogie
Well-Known Member
He is serious, apparently you are not.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Don't need to discuss this, as I don't think much of anyone's saying this.
Using the word "all" forces this into falsehood.
Is there anyone who actually claims that Islam is more peaceful than Christianity? Dubious.
I've literally never heard or read anything like this.
I would say that some certainly seem to. Though they are probably also the ones who wouldn't know what the word "theocracy" even meant in the first place.
I'm starting to think this is a list of caricatures of anti-Christian views. Starting to look a little like pots and kettles in here.
I am pretty sure no one says this. Again, the absolute nature of using a word like "all" makes this statement laughable.
Again here, using the word "force" makes this more a caricature of actual opinions, like that Christians would very much like that everyone attend church and be Christian. See how much harder that becomes to deny?
Again a caricature. I've only ever heard mention of the fact that Christians would have to believe those others to be wrong by default.
This is again close, but off the mark, and leaning toward a caricature of actual, more truthful/supported statements. The type of caricature that might be made by a butt-hurt religious fanatic who thinks people are out to get them.
Isn't this pretty much prescribed behavior for Christians? To get out and "spread the word" and gain converts is literally manipulation of the world/people at large. I don't know about "control," (though one could probably argue that side considering that Christianity comes along with a prescribed set of behaviors and moral edicts) but manipulating is certainly on the table.
Again, the statement is a bit too absolute. People aren't saying this with such finality and all-inclusive scope.
I wouldn't say "full" (again, a little over-the-top here), but it certainly has its share of errors, and I'm sure you're familiar with many of them.
And you're here to claim it hasn't? Or is your claim that all the changes were "divinely inspired?"
I've only EVER seen something like this pulled out as a response to Christians claiming that Hitler was an atheist, or making some idiotic claim that Hitler acted under "atheistic Darwinist principles" or some such garbage. I've never seen this be a go-to starting argument by any atheist.
Eh... people are free to express themselves as they wish under no umbrella of religion, so I am sure putting yourself in a religious "box" most certainly limits your options. Overall (in my experience anyway), modern Christians tend to express themselves a little more amateurishly than others in accordant industries. Their music tends to be a bit cheaper, entertainment a bit less polished, books (besides The Bible) a bit more goofy and uninteresting, moral lessons within any of that a lot less applicable to the times, etc. But it wasn't always so, obviously. To me it just seems more like Christianity lost a bit of its "mojo" getting here into modern times.
Riders
Well-Known Member
13 through 16 are true or close to true you have not presented any evidence to the contrary.
As far as 8 Christian's can't be friends with forcing their religion on someone my best friend is a liberal Roman Catholic. We've never had any issues.
The Reverend Bob
Fart Machine and Beastmaster
So I suppose the OP's take is "No true Scotsman"?
KelseyR
The eternal optimist!
I'm unfamiliar with almost all of the things you've listed, and this isn't due to my age, nationality, belief or education. Are these complaints real, or are they only what Christians imagine others must think of them- as in a persecution complex emulating the trials of Jesus?
shmogie
Well-Known Member
Christians should hate science ? why ? Some of the greatest scientists of all time were Christians.
Free will is the foundation stone of Christianity, the right to choose.
Unlike the religion of peace, our, foundation documents prescribe no coercion by violence or any other means to convert.
Christ said if someone doesn't want to hear the Gospel, just leave them and move on down the road.
Paul said that we should as far as possible be at peace with all people. The possible is about exercising our faith, we will do it regardless of what others want. Of course this simply means that we will not change our principles, it isn't about others it is about us.
shmogie
Well-Known Member
They are real. Not all non Christians exercise all of them, some do not exercise any of them.
It is real.
I am thrilled that you love evolution by natural selection and the scientific fact that you share a common ancestor with carrots. Sorry, if I was skeptical about that. I might have underestimated the will of Christian to learn and accept modern science.
When did you choose that blue fairies do not exist. Was it hard?
I suggest you read K.H. Deschner’s “ the Criminal History of Christianity” before claiming moral superiority. I believe there are english translations today.
The question is what hearing the Gospel really brings. Prima facie, it seems useless, even assuming that Christianity is true.
Good, but please keep it for you, in your private, and you will have peace. Because the moment you try to enforce public policy (e.g. abortion, science education, euthanasia, gay rights, etc.) because of your belief in the bigotry of an imaginary being, be ready to feel the heat.
Ciao
- viole
KelseyR
The eternal optimist!
Must be rare and hardly worth mentioning. I'd like to see valid complaints about Christianity listed.
1 many do
2 i wouldnt say christianity but religion
3 nothing like islam other than having similar first parts of their holy books and the same god. As for violence, it is true the bible is more violent than the quran and its historically accurate but most christians have now settled down in to civilisation.
4 again true that historically christianity has been hateful towards muslims.
5 perhaps a few do
6 perhaps a few do
7 nope but quite a lot
8 so it seems to a non christian. But i am sure its not all of them that go around press ganging unsuspecting heathens into church servitude.
9 again, many do. Most certainly i am often verbally abused (and have been physically abused) because i think christianity us a typically a hypocritical crock
10 wrong, most westerners at that time were christian. Though the founding fathers took pains to ensure christianity was not the only option.
11 yup
12 many are, these pages are evidence of that
13 yup, i would give you a list but RF posts wont hold enough characters. I can give you links to documentated errors if you want.
14 absolutely true, there are currently over 200 english language versions alone (who knows how many i other languages). As far as i know the vulgate is closest to the original (no original exists to check)
15 yes he was, he was catholic, evidence is abundant.
16 pretty much any religion can be guilty of that.
17 what, no 17?
Phoney? Actually no but pretty accurate.
The thing is shmogie, geocentrists are real. KJV-onlyists are real. People who believe you should carry around venomous snakes in church and you wont be hurt are real.
Should I spend a lot of my time, as a non-Christian, debunking what those Christians have to say? Personally I don't think so. I think there are versions of Christianity that are more serious and reasonable than those. So I'd rather spend my time considering what those people have to say.
So let's say for sake of argument someone, somewhere has uttered each of these things usfan listed some time in the last 2,000 years. So what? Wouldn't you rather interact with the strongest, most robust criticisms of Christianity than the weakest?
RedDragon94
Love everyone, meditate often
Not necessarily, Christians I think twist the findings of science, but they don't hate it really.
Maybe not all, but some. Definitely a majority of oppression in the world throughout history was caused by Christians.
I think there are less radical Christians than there are radical Muslims. But they are still out there.
Ha, that's a biased statement.
Some do. Theonomy - Wikipedia
They would have no problem burning books that have different spiritual theses than the Bible. (Acts 19:19)
Umm, again, not all but some.
Matthew 28:19-20 is a passage that says that is the Christian mission.
No, that's false.
Umm, that's not completely true. Religion of the Founding Fathers of America
Okay now, based on my experience that is true.
Not necessarily. Aquinas' arguments for God are fascinating.
It's 2,000+ years old. It has errors.
Everybody made copies of the Bible when it was written and those people potentially made mistakes here and there, and Christians like to argue which copies are the best because the originals are gone.
Hitler was primarily evil, but he could have been some form of Catholic I think. Which is kind of a joke considering that his right hand man was basically a Satanist. (Heinrich Himmler - Wikipedia)
Does the Bible demand that Christians act a certain way?
Certain types of Christians consider science a threat and work actively to try to undermine that which contradicts their faith-based beliefs.
No, it is not.
Christianity isn't much different than Islam on paper. The main difference between the two is that Christianity has had the benefit of several centuries of humanist input. Here in the West, we've more or less stopped killing heretics, imprisoning atheists and blasphemers, throwing acid into people's faces, cutting off their hands, pushing them off towers, and burning them alive in cages.
Christians also no longer execute people for homosexuality, adultery, witchcraft, fornication, apostasy, impiety, blasphemy, and other crimes against Yahweh, whereas Muslims are still free to kill such people.
It wasn't until modernity and the rise of the secular state that Christianity began transforming into the more civilized religion we find today. The fact that Christians are not free to indulge those values in the West is due to the secular humanist influence in the West.
Below is a list of similarities. Ask yourself why these religions look so different today.
If you extract Christianity and Islam from their surrounding cultures in which they are rendered, and look instead at their religions on paper, they appear very similar.
Christians and Muslims each revere a Semitic desert god, Yahweh and Allah, that is an angry, petty, vengeful, jealous, judgmental, capricious, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadistic, and prudish, and requires worship and submission.
Believers of both attend temples (Mosques or churches) and obey paternalistic, misogynisitic clergy.
Both religions embrace magical thinking, mythology, dogma, the supernatural, and ritual.
Each feature demons angels, prayer, an afterlife, a judgment, and a system of reward and punishment after death.
Each has its now centuries old holy book of internal contradictions, failed prophecies, and errors of history and science. I'm not as sure about the Qur'an, but it likely also contain vengeance, hatred, tribalism, violence, and failed morals that endorse slavery, rape, infanticide, and incest.
They each think they have the right to determine what sex is acceptable, who should be able to marry whom, and what women must do regarding their bodies.
Both are patriarchal, authoritarian, misogynistic, sexually repressive, anhedonisitic, atheophobic, homophobic, antiscientiific, use psychological terrorism on their children, have violent histories featuring torture, genocide and terrorism, and demand obedience and submission.
Each consider faith a virtue and reason a problem.
Each has a history of opposing human rights and science.
Each advocates theocracy over democracy.
Christians and Muslims each revere a Semitic desert god, Yahweh and Allah, that is an angry, petty, vengeful, jealous, judgmental, capricious, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadistic, and prudish, and requires worship and submission.
Believers of both attend temples (Mosques or churches) and obey paternalistic, misogynisitic clergy.
Both religions embrace magical thinking, mythology, dogma, the supernatural, and ritual.
Each feature demons angels, prayer, an afterlife, a judgment, and a system of reward and punishment after death.
Each has its now centuries old holy book of internal contradictions, failed prophecies, and errors of history and science. I'm not as sure about the Qur'an, but it likely also contain vengeance, hatred, tribalism, violence, and failed morals that endorse slavery, rape, infanticide, and incest.
They each think they have the right to determine what sex is acceptable, who should be able to marry whom, and what women must do regarding their bodies.
Both are patriarchal, authoritarian, misogynistic, sexually repressive, anhedonisitic, atheophobic, homophobic, antiscientiific, use psychological terrorism on their children, have violent histories featuring torture, genocide and terrorism, and demand obedience and submission.
Each consider faith a virtue and reason a problem.
Each has a history of opposing human rights and science.
Each advocates theocracy over democracy.
There's some merit to this. Muslims and Christians typically don't respect one another. But the warring is not just about being Christian. Oil interests have played a role.
Some do. What do you think that these prominent and influential Christians see or saw for America?
* "We need to do more than win an election or win the House or win the presidency, my friends: we need to make this beloved country of ours God's country once again." - Pat Buchanan at the Christian Coalition 1995 Road to Victory Conference, as reported in the October 1995 issue of Church and State.
* "There is a value in spiritual violence, and it is time that you considered the role that you are playing or not playing and whether or not it's time for you to become more aggressive in your beliefs" - Matthew Hagee
* "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . . . our goal is a Christian nation. We have the biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism" - Randall Terry, Director of Operation Rescue
* "The long term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to his Church's public marks of the covenant-baptism and holy communion-must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." - Christian Dominionist Gary North
* "I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be." - Jerry Falwell
* "There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world." - Pat Robertson
* "Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies." - Randall Terry
* "There is a value in spiritual violence, and it is time that you considered the role that you are playing or not playing and whether or not it's time for you to become more aggressive in your beliefs" - Matthew Hagee
* "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . . . our goal is a Christian nation. We have the biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism" - Randall Terry, Director of Operation Rescue
* "The long term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to his Church's public marks of the covenant-baptism and holy communion-must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." - Christian Dominionist Gary North
* "I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be." - Jerry Falwell
* "There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world." - Pat Robertson
* "Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies." - Randall Terry
Perhaps a handful do, and many would like to ban many books, but this does not characterize Christianity.
I haven't heard that one. Perhaps you're exaggerating. The American church is responsible for most of the hatred of atheists, gays, and transgendered people in that country (Isn't that enough?), but much of the hatred in the world is unrelated to Christianity.
Christians would like to convert the world and get us all into church. Would some Christians use force to make that happen if it were possible? I think so. You saw the quotes above from American clergy. Do you think that those people would compel you to submit to their religion if they could?
Christian atheophobia is well established. If you like, I can show you the scriptures that define atheists as lying, corrupt, vile, decadent, debauched, abominable, wicked, godless vessels in the service of darkness and evil, not one of which does any good, and fit to be burned alive forever as the moral equivalent of murderers and whoremongers, and the declared enemy of a good god.
As a result, atheists have been demonized and marginalized as immoral and despised by God. As a result, it wasn't until recently that atheists were considered morally fit to adopt, teach, coach, give expert testimony in court, or serve on a jury, and atheists still can't get elected in America.
And today? Atheists remain most disliked religious minority in the U.S.
And what is the basis of this bigotry? That we don't believe what the Christians believe, just as you suggested.
So I'd say that atheists have a legitimate gripe, and that anti-theism is justified. The church is not a friend, and hasn't been a good neighbor. You can still sense the residual hostility for atheists in these threads when the theists hit their wall and begin decompensating because the atheists aren't buying their claims and arguments. It's a three-phase process. It begins politely enough, but then devolves into insincere laughter, and finally overt anger.
America was not founded over religion or religious freedom. Some of the colonies were, but almost two centuries later when war broke out, it was about independence from an unpopular king.
The founders did, however, understand that the church would meddle in the lives of citizens unless prevented from doing so as it still labors to do today
Some do. You know, if there is a strain of some unpopular sentiment running through some aspects of Christianity but not others, you don't make it go away by exaggerating the claim and then striking down that straw man. Several of the elements on your list have some truth to them, but not in the extreme language you chose to depict them.
Again, this is true for some, especially fundamentalists and creationists, but not all. We have at least two Christians posting here that work as scientists, and they think pretty well - at least as well as the atheist scientists posting here.
But it falls off quickly from there.
That is correct. The Bible is full of errors in science and history, internal contradictions, unkept promises, failed prophecies, and both moral and intellectual errors attributed to a good and perfect god.
It's been retranslated many times. It gets reinterpreted with every advance in science and moral theory. And there are different Bibles containing different books.
That's not important either way. What is important is that Hitler claimed to be Christian and was apparently believed despite his atrocities, he was accepted as Christian by much of the German clergy and many if not most of the German people, who were predominantly Catholic and Lutheran, and who were easily manipulated by Hitler's frequent references to Christianity.
How do you think a nation of secular humanists would have reacted to Hitler as he attempted to rise to power?
The opiate metaphor is apt albeit a bit hyperbolic as well. Perhaps sedative or comforter is a better word.
And as I've indicated, I believe that the church would be as dictatorial and authoritarian as it is allowed to be.
You reap as you sow. Rude Christians will be dealt with accordingly. Behave civilly and you will be treated in kind. You want to cast unbelievers as angry and ready to attack courteous believers, but this comment from you was a little hostile and unprovoked.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I've noticed them, but from a vocal minority. "Christianity is the same as Islam?" Most atheists are very aware there are irreconcilable and fundamental differences between the two.
If you substitute fundamentalist or literalist in for Christian, some of these are correct. By the way, errors have been identified in the Bible. I believe Hitler was raised a Christian.
Some of these look made up. There are several that I have never heard anyone claim.
You do realize that the Bible has changed over time. Once, it was just the Old Testament.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Nah, his entire OP is just a massive strawman as evidenced by his language.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
They certainly don't pertain to ALL Christians, though most definitely pertain to MANY Christians.