Don't denie the facts...
More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ then in any other.
The Holocust
Protestants burned at the stake
Catholics burned at the stake
Natives killed

And, they have hindered scientific discovery throughout the world:
Galileo
Cornicopus

I'm not saying that the bible is crap, just that I think we should realize what has come out of taking it way too literaly. It is important that we understand the messages and morals, but we really shouldn't take the writings of some guys 1700-2500(stories of the old testament go back before jesus)years word for word.
If we don't reconize the lessons of history, we are bound to repeat them
What do you guys think on the topic?
thx

It always amazes me how people only look at the wrong doings of christianity. Why can't they do another religion, like Islam or something.

i highley agree on you with this one, one thing that makes me angry about this is that it is 'justified' killings, that aparently are correct in doing it in the name of religion, sure they can apologise, but why is it still going on

i agree with exeller, but i do think christainity has done a lot of wrong things, and whenever you ask them about it they deny it

please the islam faith has done not nearly as bad as they have, i'm not denying that they havn't done bad stuff

i fully agree, christianity has done a lot of bad, but why does everyone always focus on them? not trying to stick up for them, i mean i dont really like them, but i think its wrong to just single out one religion, when almost every other one has done bad things as well.

that's true DP, i agree with that but in reality (no offence to christians) but they too me seem to have done alot worse

My friend you have no idea what's going on around the world today do you? Christianity has settled down now. I don't see them burning witches or making wars or w/e. BUT, look at islam. Muslims are more vicious now than they have ever been.

please, those are extremeists that DON'T follow the islamic faith, and i was refering to killing in the name of religion is still going on

So are christians.

When individuals institutionalize thought, it is inevitable there will be a history of savagery and intolerance, in seeking to compel all other individuals to think within a strict set of rules or parameters, set by someone else claiming inspiration in the telling.

And given there are about 6.5 billion people on this planet, each with their own idea of what it means to be alive here, whereas some believe it's a god thing and others not, it's bound to cause a condition of conflict when any group dares tell any other that there is only one way to believe in the spirit invisible, so as to live the real life.

you have got this totally wrong my friend

one question, why do catholics condemn contraception????

Because they're catholics Catholics, BAD, Christians, GOOD.

no Catholics=bad and Christians=bad. at least thats what i think

except for stalin, mao, pol pot, am i forgetting someone? lets just throw in nationalism for good measure. and these guys only had a couple of decades.

wow and you quote me when i say something against a religion! don't sit there and say one religion is better than the other

LOL are you serious??



to me, the reason why religion is so missunderstood is becuase of our missunderstanding on the subject.

if religion is so good why have people fallen in its presnce? not just the martyrs, but the innocents

I recently posted the answer in part of a long post to what you seem to be debating right now. If you wish to read the whole thing, here's the link.

The jist of it is, Christians have their indiscretions posted everywhere for many reasons, but here are the simplest:


1. They're an ancient religion. If you're about 2000 years old, you've got skeletons in your closet.
2. They're huge. If you have that many members, you're bound to have some problematic followers.
3. Not all Christians practice what they preach.

I don't agree with Catholics, but how could you be so ignorant and general, exe11er? Frankly, your continuing spam posts and arrogance have truly disgusted me and many others.

(I have now blocked exe11er.)

you make a good point Morian

Thank you, I hope I made a good point... that thing took me over a half hour to write and find the information for. (I was multitasking)

By the way, Nasadude85, where'd you get all your sources? Your descriptions of what Christians have done are a little bit vague.

some people can be so rapped up in their religion (regardless of what it is) and do 'bad' things in the name of the religion because they see it as being the right way to spread the faith etc

Because forced pregnancy insures church population! (Even in West Africa, where god knows they need more population to die of starvation and HIV/AIDS! )

that's horendous! not to mention disgusting

I agree!
Certainly explains why the catholic population surpassed 1 Billion.

i'm a woman and i would hate to pregnant all the time grrr

My mother-in-law will tell you this story to this very day and her oldest child is in their 50's. They are catholic, and as such they had 1 child almost every year, starting with the first that arrived 9 months to the day of the marriage! There is a one year difference, however, in the baby of the family. Why? They took off a year (of sex) so as to afford a family car. (By the time the mom had finished laying egg's they had 6 kids! Can you imagine raising 5 children a year apart? Before the 1 year old is even slightly independent, there's another cradle treasure to tend to. )

A couple of other reasons Christians get a bad press. We are the decendants of a Christian culture. therefore it is not unexpected that most of our concerns and criticisms are anchored to our cultural perspective. Christianity has many sects/ groups and a lot of the criicism of elements of christianity come from within.
Western society has evolved into a perhaps surprisingly open and more secular society with a lot of freedom of expression. I am not sure about America where free speech is the most enshrined by law, but in most western countries you can say what you like about religion. Islamic countries are still to go through that transformation Try publishing an image, criticising sharia? law or writing anything considered blasphemous. You are likely to be executed (legally or otherwise) or at least forcibly punished. Thus there just isn't the same criticism of Islamic faith and practices.
Modern communication, particularly the internet is most widespread in western countries which also facilitates open communication including criticism.
Of course religion is no worse than many other forces which have swept the world. Neither the vikings nor the mongols were particularly interested in advancing their beliefs. Most of the internecine wars in Africa before european civilization had nothing to do with religion. When the celts, angles, saxons etc swept through northern Europe they weren't religiously motivated. Unfortunately the growth of great religious movements in modern times has coincided with the growth in military(and other) technology, so that when religious power was misused the consequences were extreme.While religious expansion went along with european colonisation, it was not necessarily the driving force. There were many economic, population, social and other forces which drove this expansion.

I was just thinking...

Doesn't anyone see religion as a necessary form of social control? A civilizing factor that allowed people to organize from anarchy to a more orderly state and eventually spread education (however crude at the time) until finally paving the way for rational thought and scientific understanding?

Also, I don't see how the catholic church would be any more evil than say Islam's Jihad concept, ancient china's emperor worship that caused a horrendous amount of death and suffering, or the excessive patriotism that started world war 1 & 2. Also, notably, if most catholics actually followed their tenets, they wouldn't have killed or hurt people. As I see, most of these deaths are the result of human hypocrisy.

I don't think we should compare mere numbers of deaths but rather average number of deaths caused by each system per time-period. Newer belief systems have had less time to kill people.

In any case, I noticed some comparison of "Catholics" to "Christians". Er... arent Catholics a type of christian?

yes catholics are a type of christian but the beliefs are somewhat different

guns dont kill people,people kill people.
same with the church.
You can blame the weapon of choice,or the choice of man.

Of course they will deny it...they are hardly going to say YUPPERs we know it has a bad history LOL

Weren't they branches of the same root, with is christianity?



Because people are evil crazy power hungry thieving bastards who put themsevles before others. Just like we do.



Exactly



Hey, at least one of ems gotta fess up sometime.

well yeah i know there arent gunna say that, but the at least could admit that the church has made some mistakes in the past right? but no, they say that the church is perfect, the church doesnt make mistakes. i hate them all!!!

How do you know? Do you personally go around asking each one of them?

no, but i have asked a few, and they all say the same thing. Ok exeller you caught me, maybe not every single one would say that, but the majority would

Correction: Guns by itself do nothig. People kill people...whit guns, among other weapons.
The same whit religion .The idea of religion do nothing. The idea in the practice kill people.

LOL didn't someone already point that out?

It is that Christianity was so violently active in it's suppression of what it did not like.


Heads up exeller......Catholics are Christians

I guess you're talking about the crusades?

Anyway, yeah, read my first post on this page, I already knew that.

Christianity, as with other faiths and religions are not responsible for evil men who disguise themselves in cloaks of righteousness to accomplish their own wicked desires.
Their cloaks will vanish in front of the God they claim to serve, and their evil hearts will be revealed to all that witness their judgment on that day.
Irish

Does someone wanna take the time to explain to me how the Holocaust was driven by Christianity? Or how killing natives is driven by Christianity? Just because the people who carried out those actions does not at all make them driven by Christianity, and doesn't make Christianity responsible for those events. That's like me saying that since a black guy robbed me, it was an action born solely out of his being black, and therefore, all black people are thieves.

If you look at certain quotes by Hitler, you'll see that indeed he did beleive that he was doing this for God... Of course, as you said OlDrippy, just because one person commits an atrocity in the name of God doesn't mean that christianity is to blame. But indeed if we take a look at certain elements of the beleifs... we'll see that it does promote seperation of other ethnicities...
So we need to look at the things preached in a religion to truely understand it's nature

Often I see that the word religion is singled out as the great evil and plight of mankind. Wars murder and whatever all started because of religions, is far too simple of an explanation. Remember that religion by definition is only a structured form of belief and actions that is shared and practiced by others. Bearing that in mind then politics’ and philosophy are also forms of religious/belief as well as our government structures that are the foundation of civilization. Our believes, encompass all religions, politics, philosophy and art and if you lay blame on only one part of human belief systems while ignoring the others your are simply using it as an excuse to hide your personal biases. And as such you are denying the very core of human civilization.
All the Best
Irish

Matthew 7:21 ¶Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?"
Mat 7:23 "And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

I'm pretty sure those certain quotes by Hitler would more than anything lead me to believe moreso that the man was a lunatic. It seems to me, honestly, and has for many years, that people complain about Christianity so much because it's, for lack of a better word...fashionable to do so. Much like it's "hip" and "cool" for eighth graders in Green Day shirts pretending to be political scholars because they have "Rock Against Bush" CDs. Personally I don't care one way or the other, as I'm not a Christian...but my family and most of my friends are Christians, which is really the only reason I ever defend it. Because if someone's going to try and spout that "Christians=bad" bullcrap, and tell me that my family and friends are evil or misguided because of what their religion may have done in VERY different times, then I'll get involved. It's the same way people tend to treat America..."evil," while they overlook the absolute, undeniable good both America and Christianity have done for the world. I hate it when people hate things because it's cool do so.

Consistently over millenia?

Men who are supposed to be God's chosen....

But Zandore' who gets to chose man or God

There are billions of humans and only so many Gods.....

Good point Zannie

For every wrong done in the name of the Christian God, there are at least three times as many rights done..... at least. We could look at the history of any long-standing establishment (religion,country,government) and pick out the wrongs that were/are being done along the way. So does that make them irrelevant or unnecessary? Or, is this establishment just another product of the human existence, with its fallible nature? I say the latter is correct.

I understand what you are saying Arty.....but this is supposed to be a peaceful religion following a "loving God".

If that was true then:

Why so much hate and violence from the "peaceful religion"?

Why so much hate and violence from the "loving God"?