Why I Hate, Hate, Hate Religion!

[OmarKhayyam]

Bull. Christ taught a beautiful path of love and tolerance.

Whatever he taught or didn't teach is irrelevant.

The logic and the PRACTICE of the "faith" is absolutist and exclusive.

 

[Storm]

We can fool ourselves and pretend that Christianity is founded on Jesus' teachings, but let's face it, Christianity revolves about the story as told in the gospels, particularly the crucifixion.

Granted, but there's a difference between forming a cult of personality around the teacher and directly defying the teachings.

 

[dogsgod]

Granted, but there's a difference between forming a cult of personality around the teacher and directly defying the teachings.

Tell that to Christians.

 

[logician]

Bull. Christ taught a beautiful path of love and tolerance.

"

The supposed Jesus seemed not to care about the institution of slavery. Is this love and tolerance?
"The Christian Scriptures and Slavery

Neither Jesus nor St. Paul, nor any other Biblical figure is recorded as saying anything in opposition to the institution of slavery. Slavery was very much a part of life in Palestine and in the rest of the Roman Empire during New Testament times. The practice continued in England, Canada and the rest of the English Empire until the early 19th century; it continued in the U.S. until later in the 19th century."

 

[Azakel]

Tell that to Christians.

Do you think all Christians think alike? I'm sure there are many out there that do understand what Storm is saying.

 

[dogsgod]

Do you think all Christians think alike? I'm sure there are many out there that do understand what Storm is saying.

I'm sure there is.

 

[Smoke]

Though I think the same thing can be said for Theist and Theism. Theism isn't a belief system. But a Theist can adopt some belief system and can kill in the name of that belief system, but not in the name of Theism.

Exactly. Therefore each religion or philosophy should stand on its own merits. Christianity, Islam, and several schools of Marxism have a lot to answer for.

 

[Smoke]

Is it a non-belief system?

No.


(useless addition because the censor won't accept a three-character answer)

 

[Smoke]

Bull. Christ taught a beautiful path of love and tolerance.

Not unreservedly so, according to the gospels.

Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

* * *

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.

Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

* * *

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

* * *

Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

* * *

But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.
​

 

[ChristineES]

Do you think all Christians think alike? I'm sure there are many out there that do understand what Storm is saying.

It doesn't matter what you say to certain people- they are never wrong. People who are never wrong come in all sizes, all faiths and non-faiths, all political parties, and so on. They believe what they believe and no one can dissuade them. And they are impossible to debate with. Both my mother and my husband are like that- Never wrong- and they know everything that is to be known in their own minds (you ought to hear them debate together, it is a riot. I usually just left the room, and they hate each other).

 

[Smoke]

oth my mother and my husband are like that- Never wrong- and they know everything that is to be known in their own minds (you ought to hear them debate together, it is a riot.

My (then) Methodist mother and my Catholic grandfather used to trade accusations of "You're not even a Christian." I found it highly amusing. My mother was his favorite person in the world, though; he didn't like people who refused to argue with him.

 

[logician]

It doesn't matter what you say to certain people- they are never wrong. People who are never wrong come in all sizes, all faiths and non-faiths, all political parties, and so on. They believe what they believe and no one can dissuade them. And they are impossible to debate with. Both my mother and my husband are like that- Never wrong- and they know everything that is to be known in their own minds (you ought to hear them debate together, it is a riot. I usually just left the room, and they hate each other).

I've found that few people will debate openly in person about religion. Most will not alllow their faith to be questioned. Stranely enough, I have had some success in debating with a few Catholic priests, who seem to be open-minded about the subject.

 

[Buttons*]

I've found that few people will debate openly in person about religion. Most will not alllow their faith to be questioned. Stranely enough, I have had some success in debating with a few Catholic priests, who seem to be open-minded about the subject.

LOL, wow, almost everyone I meet is up for a debate. But then, I haven't tried ChrisP's parents....

The few I know who were willfully ignorant on the subject were a Lutheran and non-denominational Christians

 

[Oberon]

And yet the leader of the Nazi Party was a staunch Christian.

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."




-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
​

You have heard of propaganda, right? His actions belied his words:
.

"For a variety of resons National Socialism was bound to take an anti-Christian attitude. Not only did it reject the Jewish background of Christianity and of the Old Testament, but Christian ethics - compassion, charity, mercy- milllitated against the Nazi creed no less than against Marxism. " The author goes on to describe extensively Nazi descrimination against churches and christianity. This excerpt is from the book "Leftism" by Professor Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Again- "The party member was expected as a matter of course to lead an exemplary family life, to send his children to the Hitler Youth, to sever active connections with the Church and to bring his family to the various national socialist ceremonies aimed, among others, at undermining religious allegiance by replacing its ritual" from "The Totalitarian Party: Party and People in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia" by Aryeh L. Unger, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

For information on Hitler's personal hatred against Christianity check out the two volume biography by John Toland titled "Adolf Hitler"

However, I know you like websites, so here are some Hitler quotes you can check out online:

"



[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Night of 11th-12th July, 1941[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]10th October, 1941, midday[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]14th October, 1941, midday[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Christianity <is> the liar....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]19th October, 1941, night[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]21st October, 1941, midday[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"The decisive falsification of Jesus' <who he asserts many times was never a Jew> doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea." (p 63-65)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]13th December, 1941, midnight[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... <here insults people who believe transubstantiation>....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease." (p 118-119)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]14th December, 1941, midday[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]9th April, 1942, dinner[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]27th February, 1942, midday[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."[/FONT]
  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)"[/FONT]

from Adolf Hitler, Christian, Atheist, or Neither

When it comes to understanding the beliefs of a man who used propaganda to achieve his ends, actions speak louder than words. The Nazi party discouraged church activity, and actively attempted to stamp out christianity from Germany.

 

[ChristineES]

I've found that few people will debate openly in person about religion. Most will not alllow their faith to be questioned. Stranely enough, I have had some success in debating with a few Catholic priests, who seem to be open-minded about the subject.

You will find that the weaker someone is in their faith, the less likely they are to debate. They don't want to hear someone question their faith because they are afraid they themselves will start to question it. They are worse than the "know-it-alls" sometimes

 

[RomCat]

I bet that more people have been killed by atheists than
any other group. For instance, Chairman Mao(40 million);
Josef Stalin(20 million in the Ukraine alone), Pol Pot of
Cambodia(2 million) and, of course, Adolf Hitler(50 million).

 

[Storm]

I bet that more people have been killed by atheists than
any other group.

In the last century, maybe, but not the entirety of history.

of course, Adolf Hitler(50 million).

Just as it cannot be reliably claimed that Hitler was Christian, nor can it be said he was atheist.

 

[logician]

Don't forget the millions of Chinese killed in WW2 by the Shintoists of Japan, in some ways their atrocities were worse than those committed by the Germans.

 

[ayani]

religion can definitely be a tool for incredible violence, and arrogance.

it can also be a vehicle for peace, and productivity. it can inspire acts of terrible violence and acts of great love.

it just depends. there's no blanket statement that covers all believers or all religions.

 

[Oberon]

In the last century, maybe, but not the entirety of history.

Probably true. However, just because people were killed by non-atheists, doesn't mean they were killed over religion. The majority of wars were fought for power/politics, not religion

Just as it cannot be reliably claimed that Hitler was Christian, nor can it be said he was atheist.

Rather, we can't know for certain whether or not he was atheist. He certainly wasn't christian, he promoted a form of germanic paganism for propaganda purposes, and many of his statements contradict each other.

When you look at the Nazi regime, however, there is a clear anti-religious stance. This is true for most similar regimes (russia, china, etc) where the state usurps the role of church, and political ideology the role of religious ideology.

Religion isn't the problem (and often is the solution, if adherents would only follow what their religion dictates). People are.