Attn: Christians, We've Heard Them Already

[thesummerqueen]

Riiiiight. Special pleading.

[fr0d0]

Christians perpetrated those ills. You may not like that, but they did. People who followed a facet of Christ you do not like invoked his name to heap bigotry and pain and suffering on those who would not worship the same incarnation, or even Jesus himself.

You're right, I don't like it. But I accept that it is true and think I should apologise for it. That's my ideology, and that's how it's been abused. I think we all share that guilt too, whether we associate with a group or not. These are crimes committed by humanity.

[Anomalocaris]

These are crimes committed by humanity.

Christianity is a crime committed by humanity, you continue to commit this crime in the name of this crime.

[thesummerqueen]

I think we all share that guilt too, whether we associate with a group or not. These are crimes committed by humanity.

I don't share the guilt of a suicide bomber. Fuck that.

[Esquilax]

what can we really judge the ideology for, then? The people, or the concepts they selectively follow?

You are mistaken. Simple as that. You don't understand the ideology, because there is no conflicting information. You're judging a faith by a microcosm of that faith that you take out of context. Christianity addresses those points fully. Your understanding is muddied by them.

Ahh, the rallying cry of the fraud: "You disagree with me only because you don't know as much as me!"

Your ideology has precisely one source of information, a book- or series of writings, to be accurate- that you've taken to following. Those very same writings lay out in detail what slaves to buy, how much to pay for them, and just how much beating you can get in before it becomes uncool. And yet you don't follow that part of the book anymore. Those writings treat rape as mostly a breach of ettiquette unless the woman is married already. In any other case you just get a fine and a new wife, and yet you quite rightly treat it as a crime, in direct opposition to that ruling. Your bible has a hitlist of people you're allowed to kill, including nonbelievers and gays, but instead you settle for arguing with them.

And when this is pointed out to you, you fall back on good old special pleading. "You just don't get it as well as I do."

Don't get me wrong, I'm exceedingly happy that civilization has managed to drag your religion kicking and screaming into a gentler era, but that doesn't mean you get to forget your past, or reinterpret it so that all those good things that have been forced upon your side was somehow its idea all along.

The truth is, you can only claim your religion is a religion of peace by excluding large swathes of its ruling writings. And in lieu of an actual reason why that should be so, you instead resort to theological elitism, recourse to a special knowledge that most of us just call doublethink or cognitive dissonance.

[Tonus]

I'm not saying that Christians are perfect. Quite the opposite. What you can't do is judge the ideology on actions contrary to the ideology.

I agree with that, but one thing I can remember from my time as a believer was how often we marveled at the "transformative power of religion." It seems that we give people too little credit or blame for the way their lives turn out.

[DeistPaladin]

"by Christianity", not by Christ like actions.

Christians who are like Christ are just like the Christ they're modeled after: they don't exist.

[fr0d0]

I don't share the guilt of a suicide bomber. Fuck that.

You share the world community that produced them. You murderer!!

[thesummerqueen]

No. This is all of a piece with your religion that seeks to make people unrelated to crimes and choices share in those crimes and choices through guilt. An accident of my birth does not bring down the guilt of the problems caused by my forefathers.

Now quit trying to play apologist. You heartily suck at it.

[fr0d0]

@Esq
It sounds like you're championing ignorance. Shamefully a lot of atheist argument is founded on this. Of course you really already know how it works. It's you guys having some fun.

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Christians who are like Christ are just like the Christ they're modeled after: they don't exist.

QFT

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No. This is all of a piece with your religion that seeks to make people unrelated to crimes and choices share in those crimes and choices through guilt. An accident of my birth does not bring down the guilt of the problems caused by my forefathers.

Now quit trying to play apologist. You heartily suck at it.

Not as much as your sense of humour sucks