Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure that arguing the Crusades' violence resulted from two Abrahamic religions attacking each other is helping your case.

[brewer]

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Just passing through for now. Been interesting to read the responses.

Grand Nudger: "That's a great example of why I'm a militant atheist."

Ok, so any comments on this? Should I become a "Militant Christian" (presumably one who believes all Atheists are evil, which I don't), in light of it. Here it is again: "According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million. At least 106,300 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941."

Oops. That then and there should be the death-knell of Militant Atheism if Militant Atheists are willing to follow the evidence seriously wherever it leads. Militant Atheism has already been tried before, and it led to one of the Greatest Calamities the World has ever known.

Wiki: "The Soviet regime had an ostensible commitment to the complete annihilation of religious institutions and ideas. Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity, so "Lenin demanded that communist propaganda must employ militancy and irreconcilability towards all forms of idealism and religion", and that was called "militant atheism". "Militant" meant an uncompromising attitude toward religion and the effort of winning the hearts and minds of believers from a false philosophy. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders. Convinced atheists were considered to be more politically astute and virtuous individuals.

The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement."

Where do you think modern Western Militant Atheism comes from in the first place? Why, from Soviet Bolshevik Militant Atheism, of course. They too engaged in Propaganda Wars against Christendom, just like those Atheistic and Agnostic French Revolutionaries I mentioned, which even liberal Wiki acknowledges propagated fantasy rather than fact.

Thank God He raised up Good Men and Women again, most of them Devout Christians, like Pope St. John Paul II (of whom even Gorbachev said, "the fall of the Soviet Union would have been impossible without Pope John Paul II" - research the Solidarity Movement in his Native Poland also), President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa (again, linked to Solidarity) etc that brought Communism and the Evil Empire down.

Atheists who live in the West should be grateful they had Full Freedoms in Christian Countries, while Poor Christians had none in Atheistic ones.

God Bless.

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You are so deluded. Communism was a political/social movement against the prior political powers (autocracy). Religion was just a target so that they could gain political control. It really had little to do with religion.

The Catholic religion is also governed by the same autocracy.

BTW, I grew up during the cold war, born during the Sputnik days. I have little regard for communism. You, however, would have made a great commie. You have demonstrated that you love groupthink!

[Fake Messiah]

Oh great, we have a Crusade apologist here. A really morally superior guy

[Nishant Xavier]

Angrboda: Christians and even hard-core Commies can actually get along if both sides reciprocate certain expected behaviors. So much more could Christians and Muslims if the Islamic leaders of that time had been willing; but they were not. Even today, 360 MN Christians are persecuted around the world (75% of all religious persecution), and around 70% of that persecution comes from Islamic Nations persecuting Christians. One of the Arguments the Popes have been taking up in recent times is that Muslims should enjoy full freedoms in the West, but Christians likewise in Muslim Countries should enjoy the same (The Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them unto you, etc).

Real Crusade History, Continued:

Sacking of St Peter's

Naples herself had to beat off a Muslim attack in 837. But in 846 Rome was not to be so fortunate. On August 23rd 846, Arab squadrons from Africa arrived at Ostia, at the Tiber's mouth. There were 73 ships. The Saracen force numbered 11,000 warriors, with 500 horses.[6]

The most revered Christian shrines outside the Holy Land, the tombs of Sts Peter and Paul, were desecrated and their respective Basilicas were sacked, as was the Lateran Basilica along with numerous other churches and public buildings.

The very altar over the body of St Peter was smashed to pieces, and the great door of St Peter's Basilica was stripped of its silver plates. Romans were desolated and Christendom was shocked at the barbarism of the Muslim forces.

Three years later Pope Leo IV [847-855] formed an alliance with Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, and when a Saracen fleet again appeared at the mouth of the Tiber in 849, the Papal fleet joined forces with its allies and they repelled the Muslim fleet which turned, and ran into a violent wind-storm that destroyed it, like Pharaoh's army long before.

Survivors were brought to Rome and put to work helping to build the Leonine Wall around the Vatican. Twelve feet thick, nearly forty feet in height and defended by forty-four towers, most of this wall, and two of the round towers, can be seen still by visitors to the Vatican. These defensive walls were finished and blessed by Pope Leo IV in 852.

Taranto in Apulia was conquered by Arab forces in 846. They held it until 880.

In 870 Malta was captured by the Muslims. In 871 Bari, the Saracens' capital on mainland Italy, was recaptured from the Muslims by Emperor Louis II, who in 872 was to defeat a Saracen fleet off Capua.

223 years from the First Crusade

At this point in our examination of the 'peaceful coexistence,' which is made much of by Muslim apologists, we are still two-hundred and twenty-three years away from the calling of the first Crusade. Perhaps readers may better understand, now, why Emperor Louis II, grandson of Charlemagne was absolutely convinced, in the ninth century, of the need for a Crusade. 'He was quite sure that Islam must be driven right out of Europe.'[7] But still there was no call for a Crusade.

I haven't spoken of Muslim attacks against the Byzantine Empire even though these, too, played a part in setting the stage for the Crusades. The much vaunted military might and political power of the Eastern Roman Empire carried with it responsibility for protecting the West from Muslim invaders. This it generally failed to do.

Constantinople had been attacked in 673, and then for the next five years Arab armies and fleets attempted unsuccessfully to break through the Byzantine defences. 'Greek Fire,' that mysterious substance that burned on water, destroyed the Muslim fleets and won the day for the defenders.

Then, in 717, the Muslims returned to the attack, emboldened by their successes in Spain.

Fate intervened, and like Charles Martel and his Franks at Poitiers in 732, emperor Leo the Isaurian [717-740] turned back the Muslim tide. Constantinople was saved - for a time. Leo, for all his military skills, was a usurper, and an iconoclast. Despite defeating the Muslims, his policies ultimately further weakened both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.

In 870, when Bernard the Wise from Brittany wanted to visit Palestine he had to obtain a laissez-passer from Muslim authorities in Bari, on the Adriatic Coast.[8]

In 873 the Muslim forces devastated Calabria in southern Italy to the point that it was reduced to the state 'in which it had been left by the Great Flood' and the Saracens expressed their intention of destroying Rome, the city of the 'Petrulus senex,' 'the ineffective old man, Peter'.[9]

In 874 Pope John VIII did all he could to dissuade Amalfi, Naples, Benevento, Capua, Salerno, and Spoleto from forming a pragmatic alliance with the Saracens. Amalfi, Capua and Salerno alone heeded his pleas for Christian solidarity.

From the close of 876 Pope John VIII had been sending letters in all directions to obtain help against the Arab forces which were devastating southern Italy and even threatening Rome itself. He sought the aid of Duke Bosone of Milan whom Emperor Charles the Bald had appointed his legate in Northern Italy - to no avail. He wrote for cavalry horses to Alfonso III, king of Galicia in Spain; and for warships to the Byzantines, and from 876 until May 877 he sent numerous letters to the Frankish Emperor begging him to aid the Catholics in Italy.

The Emperor proved to be a frail reed, and in 879, upon his death, the Duke of Spoleto turned on the Pope. John VIII, unable to cope with both Saracens and Spoleto, at once, had to pay tribute of 25,000 mancuses annually to the Arabs. A silver mancus was worth roughly AUD$25. This situation lasted for two years.

In 881 the Muslim allies of the Neapolitans captured the fortress on the Garigliano [the ancient Liris] 14 km east of Gaeta close to Anzio, just north of Naples, and plundered the surrounding countryside with impunity for forty years.

Returning from a synod at Ravenna [February 882] Pope John VIII found, as he put it, that 'the Saracens are as much at home in Fundi [close to Rome, in Latium] and Terracina' [80 km SE of Rome] as in Africa. 'Though we were seriously unwell,' wrote the Pope, we went forth to battle with our forces, captured eighteen of the enemy's ships, and slew a great many of their men'.[10] Six hundred captives of the Saracens were liberated.

Syracuse fell to the Muslims in 878 after a nine-month siege from which few escaped alive. The Byzantine city was pillaged and destroyed. Its collapse freed-up more numerous bands of marauding Muslims to harry the Italian towns and cities.

880 saw victory over Saracen forces at Naples by Byzantine Commanders and also the arrival in waters off Rome of warships sent by the emperor Basil to give the Pope the means of defending 'the territory of St Peter'.[11]

Meanwhile, the Saracens had turned their attention again to southern France and northern Italy. They had taken Avignon in 734 and Marseilles in 838 and they were ravaging Provence and North Italy from their bases in the Alps. The most important of these bases was Fraxineto or Frejus, not far from Toulon, which they captured in 889.

They were displaced temporarily from their base in 942 by Hugh of Arles who had a Byzantine fleet harry them from the sea, while he attacked from land. Horace Mann comments[12] that it is symptomatic of the kind of pragmatic leaders who controlled the destiny of Europe at that time, that instead of wiping out this bloodthirsty band of Muslim invaders, Hugh allowed them to stay where they were on condition that they did all they could to prevent his rival as 'king of Italy,' Berengerius Marquis of Ivrea, from returning to Italy.

The latter managed to return from Germany to Italy in 945, and the Muslims were not to be expelled completely from their lair until 972 - almost one-hundred years after capturing Fraxineto - by a league of Italian and Provencal princes.

In the meantime they infested the passes of the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. In 921 a large band of Englishmen, on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, were crushed to death under rocks rolled down on them by Saracens in the passes of the Alps.[13]

174 years from the First Crusade

At this point in the alleged peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians, we are still one-hundred and seventy-four years away from the calling of the first Crusade to free the Holy Places.

Meanwhile, Muslim fleets sacked and destroyed Demetrias in Thessaly, Central Greece, in 902, and Thessalonica the second city of the Byzantine Empire fell to them in 904. Muslim armies took Hysela in Carsiana in 887, and Amasia, the metropolitan city of Pontus in Asia Minor.

... [rest later]

[The Architect Of Fate]

Again revisionism 101 and Angrboda original point stands. But nice try. 

[Deesse23]

Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity,

That is just it: Communism is an ideology and communists persecute people for disrespecting their ideology, just like Christians persecute people for disrespecting their ideology. Communism is a state religion.

Needless to say that atheism is not an ideology, nor is anyone persecuted for atheism.

So your equating atheism with communism is nothing but a Strawman.

Equating atheism with communism is also a moral panic which is one of the favorite tactics Christians use. So over the past decades Christians have proclaimed communism to be a large variety of things: abolishing racial segeregation was also deemed as communism, as was global warming, medicare, gun control, masking against covid, and so on.

Thats because he does not understand Atheism, he does not WANT to understand.....anything at all. He is here to preach, as can be read on his website. He is here to save souls, of course not for the sake of saving souls. He has no own thoughts, no motivation other than to do what he has been told, because else....

[Nishant Xavier]

Continued, and Completed: btw, check the ample footnotes and historical references in the article if you doubt the authenticity of one or more historical facts related. Also, if you think there are some factual historical errors in the article, name 2 or 3, pls. It'll be interesting to check.

King Richard the Lionheart of England, one of the Crusaders, when offered the Crown of Jerusalem, said: "I will not wear a Crown of Gold where Christ my King wore a Crown of Thorns". This man was not after power and wealth, nor driven by bloodlust, and it would be madness to think he was, any more than to think the Allies who liberated Germany from the Nazis on D-Day were. Read the history for yourself and then assess.

The bishop of Amasia named Malecenus wanted to ransom those of his people who had been captured but knew that the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI would not help; so he appealed to Pope Benedict IV in Rome.

The Pope received him kindly, and gave him an encyclical letter addressed to all bishops, abbots, counts and judges and to all orthodox professors of the Christian faith asking them to show Malacenus every consideration, and to see him safely from one city to the next.

In 905 Pope Sergius III helped Bishop Hildebrand of Silva Candida restore some of the damage done to his See by the ravaging Saracens who had devastated the Church of Silva Candida in the neighbourhood of Rome.

In 915 Pope John X successfully created a Christian League with the help of Byzantine Admiral Picingli and his fleet. Even the bickering princes of southern Italy joined forces against the Saracens, along with King Berengarius and his armies from North Italy. The enemy were holed-up in their fortresses on the Garigliano near Gaeta, north of Naples. After three months of blockade, they tried to fight their way out only to be repelled by a victorious Christian force.

In 934 the Fatimid imam al-Ka'im planned an audacious invasion of Liguria led by Ya'kub bin Ishaq. The latter attacked Genoa that year, and took it in 935.

It wasn't until 972 that Duke William of Provence succeeded in driving the Saracens finally from the fastnesses of Faxineto. In 976 the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt had sent fresh Muslim expeditions into southern Italy. Initially the German emperor Otho II , who had set up his headquarters in Rome, successfully defeated these Saracen forces, but in July 982 he was ambushed and his army was almost cut to pieces.

In 977 Sergius, Archbishop of Damascus, was expelled from his See by the Muslims. Pope Benedict VII gave him the ancient church of St Alexius on Rome's Aventine hill, and he founded a monastery there and placed it under Benedictine rule, with himself its first abbot.

The pontificate of Pope John XVIII [1003-1009] was marred by famine and plague and by marauding bands of Saracens who plundered the Italian coast from Pisa to Rome from bases on Sardinia.

By 1010 they had seized Cosenza in southern Italy. Then Sardinia fell to the Arabs in 1015, led by a certain Abu Hosein Mogehid [thus the Latin Chronicles]. I take this person to be Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah whom Arab sources credit with the invasion. The Saracen force based on Sardinia, over the next few years, torched Pisa, seized Luna in northern Tuscany, and ravaged the land. Pope Benedict VIII managed to assemble a fleet and challenged the Saracen chief who turned tail and fled to Sardinia, leaving his fleet at the mercy of the papal force which was victorious.

Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah then sent the Pope a bag of chestnuts and a message that he would arrive in the following summer with as many soldiers as there were nuts in the bag. Benedict accepted the chestnuts and sent back a bag of rice: 'If your master,' he said to the astonished messenger, 'isn't satisfied with the damage he has done to the dowry of the Apostle, let him come again and he will find an armed warrior for every grain of rice'.

The Pope did not wait for an answer but carried the war into the enemy's territory. He co-opted the combined fleets of Pisa and Genoa and they sailed for Sardinia in 1017 only to find Mujahid in the act of crucifying Christians on Sardinia. The Muslim leader fled to Africa, and Sardinia was occupied by the Pisans. Mujahid kept trying to re-take Sardinia until 1050 when he was captured by the Pisans and the island was made over to them by the Pope.

Muslims from Spain sacked Antibes in 1003. They sacked Pisa in 1005 and 1016, and Narbonne in 1020.

Sometime around 1025 Pope John XIX granted the pallium [sign of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction] to Archbishop Peter of Gerona in northeast Spain, on condition that he redeemed Christian captives of the Saracens as he had promised the Pope when he had come on his 'ad limina' visit.

The First Crusade what made it a reality

The four-hundred and sixty-three years that elapsed between Muhammad's death in 632 and the calling of a Crusade to free the Holy Places in 1095 was not a time of 'peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and European or Byzantine Christians. Nor was it, for Christians living in Muslim-occupied territories. They enjoyed 'peace' only by keeping the lowest possible profile, paying the jizya, or head-tax, and accepting nonperson status in lands that had been Christian before the Muslim invaders arrived.

The new millennium saw the situation go from bad to worse. In 1009 the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, abu-'Ali Mansur al-Hakim, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The edict of destruction was signed by his Christian secretary ibn-'Abdun. The Muslims destroyed the Tomb of Jesus, the Dome and the upper parts of the Church until their demolition was halted by the great mound of debris at their feet. For eleven years Christians were forbidden even to visit the rubble or to pray in the ruins.

Shocked by the destruction of Christendom's holiest Shrine, Pope Sergius IV appealed for help to go to Palestine to rebuild it. His appeal fell on deaf ears.

At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of 'peaceful coexistence,' there were only five left. In 1076 there were two. We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, 'Hildebrand,' wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]

Gregory VII, on his deathbed in 1085, dreamt of forming a Christian League against Islam and said, 'I would rather risk my life to deliver the Holy Places, than govern the Universe'.[16]

It seems to have been the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem in 1076 that finally swung the balance, exhausted the patience of the European Christians, and fulfilled Gregory's wish. Pilgrimage to the Holy Places had became more difficult; a poll-tax was imposed on visitors. Those who dared journey there were harassed, robbed and some even enslaved.

At the Council of Piacenza summoned by Pope Urban II and held in March 1095, Byzantine delegates emphasized the danger facing Christendom from Muslim expansion, and the hardship facing Eastern Christians until the infidel be driven back.[17] They repeated an appeal made by Emperor Alexius to Robert of Flanders asking him to return to the East with some knights to assist the Byzantines in their struggle with the Muslims.

Towards the end of that same year, Urban II, at another Council held at Claremont in France, took up the suggestion, and urged Europe's Christians to 'Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre ... let each one deny himself and take up the Cross'. The Assembly rose to its feet and shouted 'God wills it'.

Muhammad died on June 8, 632 AD. It had taken four hundred and sixty three years for Europe's Christians to combine their forces and rise up in defence of themselves and of their Faith.

[no one]

Be honest asshat, you're using some AI program that allows mentally incompetent people to post their incoherent babbling, aren't you?

[Astreja]

(Springy G bills Nishant for the weregeld owing to the Norwegian side of her family as compensation for the RCC invading her ancestral homeland and trashing the place 1000 years ago)

[The Architect Of Fate]

Catholic revisionist history is all this guy has.