[Serious] Over the top

[Belacqua]

A recent post from this forum:


Is this over the top? Does everyone here (except me) agree that the existence of Christianity demands "sickening misanthropy"?

Many forms of Christianity do.

For some it’s like an abusive relationship.

“He does all these things to me but he loves me really.  He beats me but it’s my own fault.  I shouldn’t disagree with him!”

OK, that's fair. 

"Many forms include it" is different from "all forms must include it as an essential element; it could not exist without it." 

So your statement seems reasonable to me, while the one I quoted seems over the top.

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It does and you know that Christians generally hate gays and Jews. Even St. Thomas Aquinas who you venerate and find inspirational concluded that heretics should be outright killed.
Oh, but maybe you want now to switch to St. Augustine? Too bad. He called for heretics to be tortured.
And what about Martin Luther and John Calvin? They advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

Teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for centuries.

OK, so you think the statement is reasonable.

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Sickening is a judgment word but the misanthropy bit is line with the whole part about human nature being sinful and how even our good deeds are like filthy rags to God.

Well, let's look at some people who self-identified as believing in the Christian God, who didn't agree that human nature is sinful, or that "even our good deeds are like filthy rages to God." 

Just some of my usual suspects: Blake, Weil, many others. Even Dante thought that human nature is good, though corrupted by misguided love. He makes it clear that once we're able to see things more clearly, our nature is entirely good. 

As for our deeds being like filthy rags -- I don't know that quote, but anyone who thinks of God as the Platonic Good will say that our good deeds, although wonderful and entirely to be admired, necessarily can't live up to the Good itself. (I'm not arguing that this is true, only that this would be a typical way for Neoplatonic Christians to see things.) 

I think that if we can point to people who are Christian, and whose beliefs are demonstrably not misanthropic, then we have disproved the over-the-top claim. Some Christians may deserve that criticism, but it is not impossible to have Christianity without hating people.