No True Scotsman

[Lek]

It's common for non-believers to condemn christianity for atrocities committed or perceived to be committed in the name of christianity. They use this to assert that christianity is an evil force in the world. A christian is defined as one who follows Christ. Therefore I ask if a nation or individual is truly following the teachings of Jesus Christ would they have committed those atrocities?

What teachings exactly?

First of all, I'd venture to say that most Christians don't even know what the Bible says about anything apart from certain choice passages they've been quoted routinely. I'm sure you've heard the joke about how Christians treat Jesus like a software package: scroll down without reading and click "I agree" at the end. It's no small irony that if you want to know what the Bible says, you're best bet is to speak with an atheist.

Second, those Christians who have read the Bible can still come to radically different conclusions about what Jesus, or other figures in the Bible, taught. The fact that Michael Moore and Fred Phelps can/could both consider themselves to be followers of Jesus only underscores this point. Now you may take issue with their interpretations of scripture but that's the point. It means what you think it means. People who follow Jesus look in a mirror and see him as a glorified self-reflection. Jesus was a capitalist, a communist, a rebel, an authoritarian, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, black, white, etc.

Third, the belief in Hell and the Christian faith-based scheme of salvation makes a lot of Jesus' more gentile sayings rather moot. In fact, I argue it is this very central doctrine of Christian thinking that makes it so dangerous.

If you really do believe that Hell is a real place where you really do go if you have not been saved by Jesus, the stakes are as high as they can be. If you do a little killing and a little torture to save more souls for all eternity, isn't that a small price to pay? What if murdering some unrepentant nonbeliever helps save your child from eternal Hell, how about now?

The bi-polar universe of Christianity doesn't help. There is no "Bob, the Neutral Christ". If you are not a follower of Jesus, then doesn't that narrow it down who you are serving or at best being duped by? This is why Christian fundamentalists see Satan's influence in all things outside their narrow definition of what Christianity means to them, sometimes even with things that are contradictory, such as science and New Age woo or Islam and homosexuality.

So since you can literally demonize your neighbors and the stakes of Hell are so urgent, you have the perfect recipe for sectarian atrocities, regardless of what Jesus said.

As an aside, if you can read the Gospels with a critical eye, it becomes apparent that Jesus' moral teachings are highly over-rated but that's a lengthier discussion for another thread.

What you're saying here can be applied to any system of beliefs. A person's interpretation of what he's been taught from family and society can be interpreted and twisted the same way. But that doesn't invalidate the true teachings that he received. Spend some time in a courtroom and see how many misinterpretations of the law there are. That doesn't make our laws a bad thing. If you're interpreting Jesus' teachings as saying to go out and commit atrocities, you are not following Jesus because he never said that.