dqualk Wrote:You blind youself to the facts out of your hate for Christianity. You want so badly for it to be exceptionally evil that you refuse to use your own atheist standards of judging something value relative to other things.
Now you're putting words in my mouth. I don't hate Christianity at all, nor have I said any such thing. I hold Christianity in the same disdain I hold all religions. Hating it would be a waste of my time and energy. And what atheist standard? Is there some rulebook for atheism out there that you have read and we have not? Does it detail exactly how all atheists are supposed to judge all things? Please, if I'm breaking the rules of atheism somehow you need to tell me so I can keep my street cred.
dqualk Wrote:The fact is the Church is relatively one of the best institutions of all time.
No it's not.
dqualk Wrote:Yes it has done bad things
Yes it has.
dqualk Wrote:but ultimately, relatively its good has far outwieighed the bad compared to other institutions.
I fail to see how wilfully deceiving and enforcing an outdated and archaic system of morallity on millions of people is a good thing. If the church really wanted to do something good, they'd hand pedo priests over to the police, they'd explicitly sanction condom use and they'd openly embrace homosexuallity as not inherently sinful.
dqualk Wrote:The Church invented health care, adoption agencies, the university system
By virtue of having destroyed all other means of education.
dqualk Wrote:in fact atheism is the red headed step child of Chritsianity. It was christianities tolerance and love for reason and the truth that allowed atheism to flourish. Why do you think atheism is limited to the Christian west for the most part?[/b]
No. You are wrong. It has nothing to do with the tolerance of Christianity. It has more to do with the scientific enlightenment of the renaissance (which the church hated since so many of the convictions it held onto and told people were true turned out to be false and stupid), and the emergence of free democratic states with strong civil liberties, which meant that the Church could no longer burn heretics at the stake.
"If an injury must be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared" - Niccolo Macchiavelli
