Are you for or against the separation of church and state?

[Godscreated]

Really, you must have failed U.S. History.

Did very well, thank you. But I have to wonder how you did, being that you seem to be living in complete ignorance of the fact that religion is either directly or indirectly responsible for many of history's worst attrocities.

Majored in history, and religion is responsible for many deaths that should not have happened. You however want to make this about Christianity and here you will fail.

The crusades, the inquisition, witch hunts and executions, slavery, attempts at genocide and ethnic cleansing.

You want to include all religions in these things, bet you want to leave out the secular world, well I want.

As for US history specifically?

Ever heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

How about the Salem Witch Trials?

The Mountain Meadows Massacre: committed by a rouge group of Mormons and Paiute Indians, 120 died at their hands, the Mormons are not recognized by nearly all Christian groups as Christians.

Salem Witch Trials: lasted about one year from 1692 to 1693. 200 were accused of being witches 20 were executed. Minister Cotton Mather and his father Increase Mather president of Harvard called for the spectral evidence to be eliminated from the trials. When the governors wife was to be questioned for witch craft spectral evidence was eliminated from the trials and soon after the trials came to an end. tis was as much a fear thing as a religious one.

How many slaves lost their lives while Christians justified slavery in the name of the Bible?

You need to bring proof of your allegations that Christians were completely responsible for slavery. I'm sure some Christians participated in slavery, how many of these large plantations were owned by atheist, deist, agnostics and ect. Christians were in the fore front of ending slavery, they were a great part of the underground to get slaves to Canada.

Oh, and let's not forget the worst attrocitie ever committed on what is now American soil: attempts at genocide at the entire Native American population by Christians. The casualities of which number so great that, to this day, they cannot accurately be estimated.

Again you need to bring proof of you allegations that Christians were completely responsible for the death of Native Americans. During the early part of this countries history the settlers were just trying to survive and the Indians and settlers were able to get along fine for the most part. The Native Americans were responsible for starting fights as much as the settlers were, it became a war and in war many things go badly wrong. This however does not mean the Christians were responsible, the government made these decisions, remember we have a separation of church and state. These were secular decisions being made.

As I said, religion has never brought about peace or quality of life. It's only brought about tyranny, suffering, and death.

I believe I've shown things to the contrary, you're a bigot towards Christianity, your hatred shows through in your ignorance and loathing and you think yourself better than Christians .

On more than one occasion, Hitler mentioned Jesus Christ as a justification for his attempts to exterminate the Jewish people.

Just because Hitler mentions Jesus name does not make him a Christian,he was no more than a mad man as were most of his closest officers. Why don't you go ask the Jews who were freed from those camps by Christian soldiers who were the real Christians. You are disgracing the Jewish people by making such a statement, as far as I can tell you're not worth Hitler's compassion.

Is there really any question as to the harmful effect and potential religion has on human decency and life?

You're on the wrong side of this argument, and you are not alone.

I'm on God's side and so are the millions of Christians in this world, so I'm by no means alone. God has already claimed our victory by the victory Christ won on the cross. So where is your victory sage of the unwise, where is your victory.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge murdered 20% of the citizens of Cambodia, I suppose you think he was a Christians.

Kim ll-sung, Kim sung il, Kim sung un, these leaders are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands and the imprisonment of as many or more. They have made North Koreans poor for their riches, they keep their people in poverty just so the can be the big guy on the block. Guess they are Christians too.

Stalin and his cronies are responsible for the death of so many millions it makes Hitler look like an angel. Killing the religious, the Jews and Christians, those he perceived as a threat and for many other reasons that hold no water. You must believe he was a Christian, by the way you determine things.

Bashar Assad killing tens of thousands of Syrian civilians, he must be a Christian right.

Saddam Hussein gassed, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands Iraqis was he a Christian.

The Romans marched over millions and crucifying an untold amount of people.

Then there's Alexander the Great and the hundreds of thousands his armies kill and the millions that were enslaved. Surely you do not believe he was a Christian.

[festive1]

As for the crime rate I should have looked closer, the total crime rate jumped in 1964, one year after God was pushed out of public schools. Going to summers site one can click on crimes per farther down the page. The total crime rate did not diminish until law enforcement was greatly increased and even with that the crime rate in 2008 was many times higher than 1964, all this is from the same info source. Better than jumping back and forth.

What info source? I haven't seen your info source at all… I'd like to see it, could you link it?

[SiRade]

As for the crime rate I should have looked closer, the total crime rate jumped in 1964, one year after God was pushed out of public schools. Going to summers site one can click on crimes per farther down the page. The total crime rate did not diminish until law enforcement was greatly increased and even with that the crime rate in 2008 was many times higher than 1964, all this is from the same info source. Better than jumping back and forth.

What info source? I haven't seen your info source at all… I'd like to see it, could you link it?

May I add something? I'd like to see all crimes beeing called crimes with the same CRITERIA because I'm pretty sure in 60 years laws have changed quite a bit.

[festive1]

Of course, but a good, reliable source will cite what info is being considered.

[Esquilax]

You guys want to blame today's Christians for wars that happened several hundred to over a thousand years ago, we had nothing to do with them and most we disagree with and have given valid reasons why they were not of God, but crazy zealous men who desired power over a relationship with Christ. Yet you continue to do it. I read your post after the bombing and assumed, sorry.

I'm not blaming today's christians at all, I'm merely pointing out that your contention that the removal of god from schools is causing society to decline doesn't make any sense because times of maximal chistianity aren't necessarily the most peaceful or prosperous. Of course I don't blame any current christians for those violent times, that'd be ridiculous, but by the same token you can't point to a secular society as being so much worse because it is secular.

[Godscreated]

As for the crime rate I should have looked closer, the total crime rate jumped in 1964, one year after God was pushed out of public schools. Going to summers site one can click on crimes per farther down the page. The total crime rate did not diminish until law enforcement was greatly increased and even with that the crime rate in 2008 was many times higher than 1964, all this is from the same info source. Better than jumping back and forth.

What info source? I haven't seen your info source at all… I'd like to see it, could you link it?

As I said I used summer's link.

---

You guys want to blame today's Christians for wars that happened several hundred to over a thousand years ago, we had nothing to do with them and most we disagree with and have given valid reasons why they were not of God, but crazy zealous men who desired power over a relationship with Christ. Yet you continue to do it. I read your post after the bombing and assumed, sorry.

I'm not blaming today's christians at all, I'm merely pointing out that your contention that the removal of god from schools is causing society to decline doesn't make any sense because times of maximal chistianity aren't necessarily the most peaceful or prosperous. Of course I don't blame any current christians for those violent times, that'd be ridiculous, but by the same token you can't point to a secular society as being so much worse because it is secular.

I list several in a post to smax, just above.

[smax]

Majored in history, and religion is responsible for many deaths that should not have happened. You however want to make this about Christianity and here you will fail.

Christianity is merely one of many religions that has terrorized and threatened humanity over the years.

I didn't say it was the only one.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre: committed by a rouge group of Mormons and Paiute Indians, 120 died at their hands, the Mormons are not recognized by nearly all Christian groups as Christians.

Just because you don't like their most recent addition to the fairy tale doesn't make them any less religious, and that's what we are talking about here: the need to separate government from religion.

Salem Witch Trials: lasted about one year from 1692 to 1693. 200 were accused of being witches 20 were executed. Minister Cotton Mather and his father Increase Mather president of Harvard called for the spectral evidence to be eliminated from the trials. When the governors wife was to be questioned for witch craft spectral evidence was eliminated from the trials and soon after the trials came to an end. tis was as much a fear thing as a religious one.

That last sentence says it all, although I don't think you realize that religion thrives off of fear and paranoia. Religion and fear are practically inseparable.

You need to bring proof of your allegations that Christians were completely responsible for slavery. I'm sure some Christians participated in slavery, how many of these large plantations were owned by atheist, deist, agnostics and ect. Christians were in the fore front of ending slavery, they were a great part of the underground to get slaves to Canada.

First, let's address your convenient use of the word "completely". What we are looking at is the effect of religion on government. Please try and finally get that. Whether or not other elements contributed to a particular attrocitie is irrelevant to this subject. What is relevant, is the fact that Christianity played a significant and prominent role in various attrocities.

There are literally hundreds of documentations of Christians justifying slavery through scripture. Here are couple of the official acts of Virginia, as an example:

Virginia, 1682 “Act I. It is enacted that all servants [...] which shall be imported into this country either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian [...] and all Indians, which shall be sold by our neighboring Indians, or any other trafficking with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Virginia, 1705 [1]"All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate."

Again you need to bring proof of you allegations that Christians were completely responsible for the death of Native Americans. During the early part of this countries history the settlers were just trying to survive and the Indians and settlers were able to get along fine for the most part. The Native Americans were responsible for starting fights as much as the settlers were, it became a war and in war many things go badly wrong. This however does not mean the Christians were responsible, the government made these decisions, remember we have a separation of church and state. These were secular decisions being made.

Wow, a lot to cover here. First, the settlers and the natives did not get along well. Don't be so naive. In the beginning, the settlers were vastly outnumbered by the natives, and were in need of advice and resources. However, the settlers also had superior technology, and in almost all cases, overpowered and enslaved the Natives. That is, until a sufficient amount of development had taken place, and then it became critical to either convert the natives to Christianity or simply kill them off.

"In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians

were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them."

"It may be demanded...Should not Christians have more mercy and

compassion? But...sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents.... We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."


-Puritan divine Cotton Mather

Also, war doesn't justify the attempts to exterminate the natives any more than an individual would be justified to break into your house and kill you because he considered you a threat to his newly acquired occupancy.

I believe I've shown things to the contrary, you're a bigot towards Christianity, your hatred shows through in your ignorance and loathing and you think yourself better than Christians .

I don't know that "better" is the word, but I'm definitely far more objective and inclined to care about the well being on my fellow human beings.

Christianity teaches you to care less about humanity. It's one of the reasons I had to part ways with it.

It just doesn't make sense to me to glorify the unseen and unproven while treating my very own existence, and that of other human beings, as "wretched".

Just because Hitler mentions Jesus name does not make him a Christian,he was no more than a mad man as were most of his closest officers. Why don't you go ask the Jews who were freed from those camps by Christian soldiers who were the real Christians. You are disgracing the Jewish people by making such a statement, as far as I can tell you're not worth Hitler's compassion.

You keep ignoring the most important point: regardless of your feelings about Hitler and his beliefs, the fact is that he used religion time and time again to justify his actions.

And that's the poison that religion offers. It offers justification for just about anything.

You need to remember what the subject matter is here. We aren't in church listening to some carefully selected feel good sermon here. We are dealing with reality. Try and cope with that as long as you care to discuss this matter.

I'm on God's side and so are the millions of Christians in this world, so I'm by no means alone. God has already claimed our victory by the victory Christ won on the cross. So where is your victory sage of the unwise, where is your victory.

[quote]

My victory is that I stopped believing all that crap years ago. You can ony hope to achieve the same some day.

Oh, and to address all your other points about evil dictators and their crimes against humanity, in almost every case there was either a religious motivation or justification, or even worse, an individual god complex, which is the worst kind of religion there is.

[Anomalocaris]

Fascinating, irrelevant, and arguably wrong. Did you have anything at all to say in response to what I actually wrote?

Yes, I would think the very proportion of people contributed significantly to nature science and who are without formal training in critical thinking is evidence that teaching critical thinking does in fact achieve something.

[Angrboda]

Fascinating, irrelevant, and arguably wrong. Did you have anything at all to say in response to what I actually wrote?

Yes, I would think the very proportion of people contributed significantly to nature science and who are without formal training in critical thinking is evidence that teaching critical thinking does in fact achieve something.

I'm not sure that you meant to say what you actually wrote. The fact is that historically, nearly all scientists received no specific training or education in critical thinking. Historically, university education for persons who went on to contribute to the sciences often included segments on philosophy, logic and rhetoric, but nothing that can be readily described as training in critical thinking, unless you choose to equivocate in order to make the term sufficiently broad as to be meaningless. In doing so, I'd say you're attempting to have your cake and eat it, too. Moreover, current training in the sciences typically does not include any required training in critical thinking per se, so it's probably a valid generalization to say that the bulk of scientific achievement occurred without any special education devoted to critical thinking among students of the sciences. I rather suspect that this is the opposite of what you wanted to imply. More to the point however, my question is not to the value of critical thinking so much as it is to question of the effectiveness or viability of teaching critical thinking itself, independent of domain specific knowledge, which is more broadly defined as simply "education," and whether doing so has any practical effect in terms of improving a person's ability to think critically in general, or even with respect to the individual's specialization. I think you've conflated the contributions of natural talent and intelligence, education generally, education in critical thinking specifically, and experience such that it's impossible to draw any conclusions from your example. I think you'll need a considerably finer bladed scalpel to tease apart a meaningful distinction here.

[Esquilax]

I'm not blaming today's christians at all, I'm merely pointing out that your contention that the removal of god from schools is causing society to decline doesn't make any sense because times of maximal chistianity aren't necessarily the most peaceful or prosperous. Of course I don't blame any current christians for those violent times, that'd be ridiculous, but by the same token you can't point to a secular society as being so much worse because it is secular.

I list several in a post to smax, just above.

No, you listed several secular societies that were bad. This is not the same thing as societies that were bad because they were secular.

I do love the double standard you've got going on here, though: I point out that violent and dark christian cultures exist and you immediately leap to tell me it wasn't because of christianity, but evil men. You then quickly turn around and blame nonbelief for anything bad done in secular societies. So systems of belief aren't responsible for evil actions, but only if it's the one you subscribe to? Is that really where you're going here?