(June 19, 2023 at 2:06 pm)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Just passing through for now. Been interesting to read the responses.

Grand Nudger: "That's a great example of why I'm a militant atheist."

Ok, so any comments on this? Should I become a "Militant Christian" (presumably one who believes all Atheists are evil, which I don't), in light of it. Here it is again: "According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million. At least 106,300 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941."

Oops. That then and there should be the death-knell of Militant Atheism if Militant Atheists are willing to follow the evidence seriously wherever it leads. Militant Atheism has already been tried before, and it led to one of the Greatest Calamities the World has ever known.

Wiki: "The Soviet regime had an ostensible commitment to the complete annihilation of religious institutions and ideas. Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity, so "Lenin demanded that communist propaganda must employ militancy and irreconcilability towards all forms of idealism and religion", and that was called "militant atheism". "Militant" meant an uncompromising attitude toward religion and the effort of winning the hearts and minds of believers from a false philosophy. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders. Convinced atheists were considered to be more politically astute and virtuous individuals.

The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement."

Where do you think modern Western Militant Atheism comes from in the first place? Why, from Soviet Bolshevik Militant Atheism, of course. They too engaged in Propaganda Wars against Christendom, just like those Atheistic and Agnostic French Revolutionaries I mentioned, which even liberal Wiki acknowledges propagated fantasy rather than fact.

Thank God He raised up Good Men and Women again, most of them Devout Christians, like Pope St. John Paul II (of whom even Gorbachev said, "the fall of the Soviet Union would have been impossible without Pope John Paul II" - research the Solidarity Movement in his Native Poland also), President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa (again, linked to Solidarity) etc that brought Communism and the Evil Empire down.

Atheists who live in the West should be grateful they had Full Freedoms in Christian Countries, while Poor Christians had none in Atheistic ones.

God Bless.

(June 19, 2023 at 2:36 pm)Deesse23 Wrote:

(June 19, 2023 at 2:06 pm)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Just passing through for now. Been interesting to read the responses.

---

Grand Nudger: "That's a great example of why I'm a militant atheist."

Ok, so any comments on this? Should I become a "Militant Christian" (presumably one who believes all Atheists are evil, which I don't), in light of it. Here it is again: "According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million. At least 106,300 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941."

Oops. That then and there should be the death-knell of Militant Atheism if Militant Atheists are willing to follow the evidence seriously wherever it leads. Militant Atheism has already been tried before, and it led to one of the Greatest Calamities the World has ever known.

Wiki: "The Soviet regime had an ostensible commitment to the complete annihilation of religious institutions and ideas. Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity, so "Lenin demanded that communist propaganda must employ militancy and irreconcilability towards all forms of idealism and religion", and that was called "militant atheism". "Militant" meant an uncompromising attitude toward religion and the effort of winning the hearts and minds of believers from a false philosophy. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders. Convinced atheists were considered to be more politically astute and virtuous individuals.

The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement."

Where do you think modern Western Militant Atheism comes from in the first place? Why, from Soviet Bolshevik Militant Atheism, of course. They too engaged in Propaganda Wars against Christendom, just like those Atheistic and Agnostic French Revolutionaries I mentioned, which even liberal Wiki acknowledges propagated fantasy rather than fact.

Thank God He raised up Good Men and Women again, most of them Devout Christians, like Pope St. John Paul II (of whom even Gorbachev said, "the fall of the Soviet Union would have been impossible without Pope John Paul II" - research the Solidarity Movement in his Native Poland also), President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa (again, linked to Solidarity) etc that brought Communism and the Evil Empire down.

Atheists who live in the West should be grateful they had Full Freedoms in Christian Countries, while Poor Christians had none in Atheistic ones.

God Bless.

---

Can you say "militant atheism" 10 times in a row?
And, yes, you finally got it, we are all eeeeeeevil commie sin disguise, amirite COMRADES!?

Quote:First Crusade... it was called by Western Christian Countries to help Byzantine Christians, just like the West is justly helping Ukraine today

(June 19, 2023 at 2:57 pm)Helios Wrote:

Quote:First Crusade... it was called by Western Christian Countries to help Byzantine Christians, just like the West is justly helping Ukraine today

The Byzantine Empire  was just as expansionistic and ruthless as the Turks in fact their weakened state was due to the frequent warmongering they had engaged in the previous decades. Also, the Crusaders were ironically from armies and nations that had previously ravaged Byzantine Empire. The Crusaders didn't give a damn about the Western Christian Countries they just saw another opportunity for plunder and to do the only employable skill they had...Bloodshed And the church were more than happy to help with the doctrine of indulgences which fattened their coffers. I'm not a fan of Luther but he was right calling that out.

(June 19, 2023 at 2:06 pm)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity,

Quote:"Muhammad died in Medina on June 8, 632 AD. The first of the eight Crusades to free the Holy Places in Palestine from Muslim control, and offer safe passage to the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims, was called only in 1095. At the risk of sounding pedantic, the period in question is not 'five centuries,' but four-hundred and sixty-three years; and those years, we contend, were not characterized by 'peaceful coexistence'.[3]

Islam's attack on Christianity

For the Christian states bordering the Mediterranean, it was a four-hundred and sixty-three year period of regular, disorganized [and occasionally organized] bloody incursions by Muslim mainly Arab and Berber land and sea forces. These came intent on booty - gold, silver, precious stones and slaves - on destroying churches, convents and shrines of the 'infidels,' and on the spread of politico-religious Islam throughout Europe from their bases in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.

At the time of Muhammad's death there were flourishing Christian and Jewish communities in Arabia, and throughout the major centres of the Persian Empire. The whole of the Mediterranean world on its European, Asian and African sides, was predominantly Christian.

It had taken only a few years for Muslim tribesmen from Arabia, inspired by Muhammad's revelations and example, to invade the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire whose emperors devoted more time to religious disputation than to defending their empire. In 633 Mesopotamia fell. After a few years the entire Persian Empire fell to the marauding Arab tribesmen who drove the young Persian emperor Yazdagird into the farthest reaches of his empire, to Sogdiana [Uzbekistan], where he was eventually murdered by his Tartar bodyguard in a miller's hut.

Damascus fell in 635, and Jerusalem capitulated five years after Muhammad died, in February 638.

The fall of Alexandria in 643 sounded the death knell of more than thousand years of Hellenic civilization that once enriched the whole of the Near East with its scholarship and culture. Henri Daniel-Rops claims that from the point of view of the history of civilization, Alexandria's fall was as significant as the fall of Constantinople to the Turks eight-hundred years later.[4]

Cyprus fell in 648-9 and Rhodes in 653. By 698 the whole of North Africa was lost.

Spain invaded

Less than eighty years after Muhammad's death, in 711, Muslims from Tangiers poured across the 13 km wide strait of Gibraltar into Spain. By 721 this Arab-Berber horde had overthrown the ruling Catholic Visigoths and, with the fall of Saragossa, set their sights on southern France.

By 720 Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt down by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abdullah al-Ghafiqi in early spring 732. A basilica outside the walls of Poitiers was razed, and 'Abd al-Rahman headed for Tours which held the body of St Martin [who died in 397] apostle and patron saint of the Franks.

He was to be defeated and killed by Charles Martel and his Frankish army on a Saturday in October, 732, one hundred years after Muhammad's death, on the road from Poitiers to Tours a defeat that was hailed by Gibbon and others as decisive in turning back the Muslim tide from Europe.

Attacks on France, however, continued, and in 734 Avignon was captured by an Arab force. Lyons was sacked in 743. It wasn't until 759 that the Arabs were driven out of Narbonne. Marseilles was plundered by them in 838.

Muslim incursions into Italy had been a feature of life from the early 800s. The islands of Ponza [off Gaeta] and Ischia [off Naples] had been plundered, and then, in 813 Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, whose harbour had been constructed by Trajan, was sacked by the Arabs.

In 826 the island of Crete fell to Muslim forces which retained it as their base until 961. From around 827 they then began nibbling at Sicily. They captured Messina and controlled the Strait of Messina by 842, and finally took the whole island in 859, after Enna fell to them.

In 836 the Neapolitans self-interestedly invited the Muslim forces to help them against the Lombards and set the stage for more than a century of Muslims raids along the Adriatic, involving the destruction of Ancona, and Muslim progress as far as the mouth of the Po. 'Saracen Towers'[5] south of Naples, built in the ninth century to warn locals of the approach of Arab fleets from Sicily and Africa still charm visitors to the Neapolitan coast.

Bari, now home to the relics of St Nicholas of Myra, the original 'Father Christmas,' fell to Khalfun, a Berber chieftan, by another act of treachery in 840. From 853-871 the notorious Muslim brigand al- Mufarraj bin Sallam, and his successor, another Berber named Sawdan, controlled all the coast from Bari down to Reggio Calabria, and terrorized Southern Italy. They even plundered the Abbey of St Michael on Mt Gargano ...

[And there's much more, but that will do for now. Something to ponder about, for "history buffs", as GN likes to say]

Quote:Paul Francis Lester Stenhouse OAM (9 December 1935 – 19 November 2019) was an Australian Catholic priest and editor. A member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, he was a scholar, linguist, expert on Samaritan studies, writer, historian, and editor of the longest lasting journal in Australia's history, Annals Australasia: Journal of Catholic Culture.

(June 19, 2023 at 3:53 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: The Catholic Church has the greatest number of paedophiles and paedophiles protectors in the world. The church has billions in cash, art and treasure yet there are large numbers of people living on the street. They in fact do little except feather their own nest.