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Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
#1
Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Lord Jesus Christ, John 13:35)

"It is a shame to us [Pagans] that these "Galileans" [Christians] care not only for their Poor but for our own" ~ Julian the Apostate.

Wiki: "In modern times, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care in the world. Catholic religious have been responsible for founding and running networks of hospitals across the world where medical research continues to be advanced. In 2013, Robert Calderisi wrote that the Catholic Church has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals – with 65 per cent of them located in developing countries."

Most of the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc) believe not just in Mere Atheism but in something called Militant Atheism.

Militant Atheism is not just the claim that there is no God. Militant Atheism is the claim that Religion (esp. Christianity) is allegedly positively evil.

Like any claim, this needs to be demonstrated. 

1. Prof. Alvin Schmidt wrote a book some decades back showing that, in fact, the opposite is True. It's titled, "How Christianity changed the world" (for the better).

You can find the book on Amazon. I've read it and it's excellent and nigh irrefutable. A sample review: "I bought this book because a speaker at the college ministry I attended read a blurb from it about the early church martyrs. It was really interesting because I never realized that so many things; such as hospitals, working a daily job, and orphanages, came out of the Christian ethic!"

From Charities, Orphanages, Hospitals, the Abolition of Infanticide in the old world (which Greco-Roman Pagans were ok with, but Emperor St. Constantine the Great Abolished in the Roman Empire), Christianity's contribution to abolishing slavery (Lincoln, Wilberforce etc), then Racism (Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Dr. Martin Luther King etc), and so much more, Christianity's impact on the world has been very positive on the whole. Have Christians made some mistakes here and there? Sure, every conscientious and knowledgeable Christian acknowledges that. But Christians also corrected them. Yes, some Christians wrongly believed Racism is ok, in direct contravention of Christ's Commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself, which He clearly explained by the Good Samaritan Parable, should include every neighbor beyond racial and religious boundaries. But Christians also very effectively corrected that. Don't have to mention it again, but the historical record clearly shows Marx, Nietzche, Sanger et al were, at best, very poor and behind the times on the subject, while Christians were truly "progressive" in the best sense.

As for Religious Freedom, another thing Atheists love to talk about, again, agreed Christians made some mistakes on that. But Christians were also among the very first to correct it, for e.g. in America, at the same time when Agnostics and Atheists were persecuting Christians in France.

Wiki: "Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 – 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties. Some of those who abdicated covertly ministered to the people. By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed. Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the or deportation to French Guinea".

And that's to say nothing of Atheistic Persecution of Christians under Communism and in the Soviet Union, under Stalin etc, at a time, when all Christian Countries gave Full Freedom to everyone including Atheists. Yes, long ago, wrongs happened, but Christians corrected them first.

2. And in 2012, Prof. Thomas Woods wrote an even better book, covering but improving on some of the same historical material, "How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization". 

Book Intro "Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:
  • Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
  • How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith
  • How the Catholic Church invented the university" etc
"No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth."

Again, these are highly qualified Professors. They're not making any of this up, and you can read the historical facts in historical sources for yourself if you think they are. For e.g. Prof Woods: "I hold my master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and my bachelor's from Harvard."

3. What really happened is, after French Revolution times, Agnostics and Atheists engaged not only in Physical Persecution of Christians (which they also did), but also in a Propaganda War against Christendom, mainly Western Civilization at the time (though not any more). For that purpose, they spread all kinds of myths and lies, including absolutely false things like that Medieval Christians supposedly believed the Earth was Flat. I commend the secular scholars whose historical research refuted that Militant Atheist Myth, Wiki: "Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference"..

James Hannam wrote: "The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict."

Let's Debate.
God Bless.
Reply
#2
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
(June 19, 2023 at 3:38 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Lord Jesus Christ, John 13:35)

"It is a shame to us [Pagans] that these "Galileans" [Christians] care not only for their Poor but for our own" ~ Julian the Apostate.

Wiki: "In modern times, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care in the world. Catholic religious have been responsible for founding and running networks of hospitals across the world where medical research continues to be advanced. In 2013, Robert Calderisi wrote that the Catholic Church has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals – with 65 per cent of them located in developing countries."

Most of the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc) believe not just in Mere Atheism but in something called Militant Atheism.

Militant Atheism is not just the claim that there is no God. Militant Atheism is the claim that Religion (esp. Christianity) is allegedly positively evil.

Like any claim, this needs to be demonstrated. 

1. Prof. Alvin Schmidt wrote a book some decades back showing that, in fact, the opposite is True. It's titled, "How Christianity changed the world" (for the better).

You can find the book on Amazon. I've read it and it's excellent and nigh irrefutable. A sample review: "I bought this book because a speaker at the college ministry I attended read a blurb from it about the early church martyrs. It was really interesting because I never realized that so many things; such as hospitals, working a daily job, and orphanages, came out of the Christian ethic!"

From Charities, Orphanages, Hospitals, the Abolition of Infanticide in the old world (which Greco-Roman Pagans were ok with, but Emperor St. Constantine the Great Abolished in the Roman Empire), Christianity's contribution to abolishing slavery (Lincoln, Wilberforce etc), then Racism (Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Dr. Martin Luther King etc), and so much more, Christianity's impact on the world has been very positive on the whole. Have Christians made some mistakes here and there? Sure, every conscientious and knowledgeable Christian acknowledges that. But Christians also corrected them. Yes, some Christians wrongly believed Racism is ok, in direct contravention of Christ's Commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself, which He clearly explained by the Good Samaritan Parable, should include every neighbor beyond racial and religious boundaries. But Christians also very effectively corrected that. Don't have to mention it again, but the historical record clearly shows Marx, Nietzche, Sanger et al were, at best, very poor and behind the times on the subject, while Christians were truly "progressive" in the best sense.

As for Religious Freedom, another thing Atheists love to talk about, again, agreed Christians made some mistakes on that. But Christians were also among the very first to correct it, for e.g. in America, at the same time when Agnostics and Atheists were persecuting Christians in France.

Wiki: "Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 – 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties. Some of those who abdicated covertly ministered to the people. By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed. Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the or deportation to French Guinea".

And that's to say nothing of Atheistic Persecution of Christians under Communism and in the Soviet Union, under Stalin etc, at a time, when all Christian Countries gave Full Freedom to everyone including Atheists. Yes, long ago, wrongs happened, but Christians corrected them first.

2. And in 2012, Prof. Thomas Woods wrote an even better book, covering but improving on some of the same historical material, "How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization". 

Book Intro "Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:
  • Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
  • How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith
  • How the Catholic Church invented the university" etc
"No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth."

Again, these are highly qualified Professors. They're not making any of this up, and you can read the historical facts in historical sources for yourself if you think they are. For e.g. Prof Woods: "I hold my master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and my bachelor's from Harvard."

3. What really happened is, after French Revolution times, Agnostics and Atheists engaged not only in Physical Persecution of Christians (which they also did), but also in a Propaganda War against Christendom, mainly Western Civilization at the time (though not any more). For that purpose, they spread all kinds of myths and lies, including absolutely false things like that Medieval Christians supposedly believed the Earth was Flat. I commend the secular scholars whose historical research refuted that Militant Atheist Myth, Wiki: "Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference"..

James Hannam wrote: "The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict."

Let's Debate.
God Bless.

What is there about any of this which makes Christianity true?

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply
#3
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
The Catholic Church has the greatest number of paedophiles and paedophiles protectors in the world. The church has billions in cash, art and treasure yet there are large numbers of people living on the street. They in fact do little except feather their own nest.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us will fly to the stars.

Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud ..... after a while you realise that the pig likes it!

Reply
#4
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
Julian had alot to say about christians, almost all of it transportable to the present day. The comment you lead with, for example, is a lament in the context of how christian organization bought the disenfranchised for the price of little cakes in the pursuit of eroding and capturing the civil administration of the empire. It was his society's failure, as he saw it, to care for it's people that gave such degenerate bullshit purchase in his society and had lead to the moral and physical decline of civilization.

The world could probably use a great deal more militant atheism than it possesses.

You a history buff Nishant?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#5
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
Who spent 400 years setting fire to ‘witches’ in Europe? Certainly not secularists.

Which groups are protecting the sexual predators of children when those predators wear clerical collars? Not secularists.

Which organization spent 99% of its history declaring that the proper function of a woman was ‘a baby a year until you die’? Hint: the answer rhymes with ‘Fatholic Furch’.

Who declares that a woman who leaves the husband who beats and rapes her has committed ‘a grave offense against the natural order’? Hint: it’s not Christopher Hitchens.

Who has used scripture to justify/excuse/ignore slavery, genocide, and suffering?

Fuxxake. 

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply
#6
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
Never, ever leave a child alone with a priest
The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us will fly to the stars.

Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud ..... after a while you realise that the pig likes it!

Reply
#7
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
(June 19, 2023 at 3:38 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Like any claim, this needs to be demonstrated. 

You'd probably like a book that came out a couple of years ago called Dominion. This is by a historian named Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man actor). 

In interviews, Holland describes how his previous specialty was the Greek and Roman classical age. He wrote a number of well-received books on the period. But he said that the more he studied it, the more he realized that the values and morals of that period were repugnant to him. And when he looked to find out where the values that he had been raised with came from, he concluded that they had begun with Christianity. 

So even if the official church has fallen wildly short of the ideals that Christianity itself began, we can still honestly credit Christianity with many of the things we hold to be valuable today. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=458Bz1GPto0

As for the "conflict theory," we really should acknowledge that this is a modern invention, and that for a thousand years the greatest mathematicians and scientists saw no conflict between their religion and science.
Reply
#8
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
(June 19, 2023 at 4:40 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: Never, ever leave a child alone with a priest

‘Were I to go out for the evening, I would have no compunction at all about leaving my young children in the care of my friend Stephen Fry, a great and good man who happens to be a homosexual. However, if I were to employ a child-minder service and the babysitter who came to my door was wearing clerical garb, I’d call the police.’ - Christopher Hitchens

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply
#9
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
I feel the same way thinking about the values and morals of today. I think it's fair to say that christianity can be credited for them.

That's why it needs to go?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#10
RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
Are you done yet polluting this forum preaching?
You have given ample demonstration about your dishonesty and willful ignorance. Why would anyone engage in a conversation with you?
Cetero censeo religionem delendam esse
Reply



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