(July 2, 2024 at 5:51 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Ha, this reminded me a few years ago I got into some conversation online with a Catholic who claimed that atheists are hypocrites who don't want to admit they believe in god because if they didn’t, they would be killing and raping people.
Well, killing, raping, killing babies, throwing babies onto rocks, genocide, slavery and such is in the Bible. The jews did that sort of thing because Jesus wanted it that way.
Even when Jesus came in human form according to the NT, he never said anything against those actions that were in the tanakh, so we have to assume that such behavior is moral.
(July 2, 2024 at 5:51 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Ha, this reminded me a few years ago I got into some conversation online with a Catholic who claimed that atheists are hypocrites who don't want to admit they believe in god because if they didn’t, they would be killing and raping people.
But let's talk about this supposed wonderful Christian sexual morality before the so called "new atheism", and even before the dreaded "sexual revolution" that destroyed the morality of the western society.
Let's go to the 17th century in England, London. The status of poorer women was so low that the only business they could have was usually as a house maid. They would work in a household were they were nothing more than property, and were subjected to daily abuses, and sexual exploitation. One such example was Elizabeth Balleans who, in 1609, left her parents home to work in such household, and in the same year she got impregnated by the master of the house. And, following the established convention, she was fired and turned out to the streets.
Such women were not only an inconvenience, but potentially a source of great scandal; henceforth she was shamed as a "bastard bearer", and a "whore". Women such as Elizabeth were despised creatures who existed outside the accepted models of womanhood: not a maid, a married mother nor a widow.
So they had to beg for money or were forced to rely upon the charity of the local parish, but such aid came at a high price. There was a law which decreed that all mothers of bastard children supported by the parish were to be imprisoned in the house of correction for one year. Other punishments for unmarried pregnant women and mothers included ritual acts of public humiliation and corporal punishment. They were dressed in white sheets and made to stand in church before the whole congregation, holding a candle or other sign proclaiming their sin.
Elizabeth remained became known because she gave birth to a dead child, and when she wanted to get it baptized, she was accused of infant murder.
And this is the wonderful and functional Christian world of "morality" before the New Atheism and before the sexual revolution. Despicable.
I find that kind of behavior strange. Aren't the people suppose to find out who got her pregnant and dish out some punishment?
Maybe they view the woman as an enabler of immorality and not as a victim.
Maybe the people from the past lacked imagination? They lacked empathy? Maybe they could not sense pain unless if it happened to them? They did not have the notion of walking a mile in someone else's shoes?
There is the spanish inquisition, hanging people, burning people for being a witch, cutting people's heads off.
Christianity didn't improve anything for europeans.
I think europeans got lucky. They had the various bits of technology to make glassware, to make chemicals. As science developed (~17xx), they started to put more importance on logic, discovery, philosophy and along with that, there was social change.
Or maybe it is the renaissance period that put europeans on that path.
I'm not exactly sure how europeans got out of the theocratic mess. It was only 100 y ago, in 1925, in Tennessee that the Scopes Monkey trial took place. John Scopes mentioned Evolution theory in a high school biology class. He was in deep trouble. I'm surprised they didn't burn him alive.