Terms I'm tired of hearing

Oy.

I know how you feel. Some of my best friends in school are atheists or at least agnostic. They're also on the opposite pole politically. It's great fun and obviously educational to hear another pov now and then, but some of the generalizations make me a little warm.

Your "crusades" comment reminded me: a local Christian school here calls their sports teams the crusaders. I think it's ill-concieved. Am I being overly sensitive to political correctness? I understand that a crusade can be a positive thing. I'm sure the kids chose the name for good reasons, but they also chose it because it sounded somewhat violent or agressive. Sports, you know? I'd like to pen them a short note explaining why I find the name inappropriate. Would that be appropriate? Or should I just shut up and let the community bite their heads off?

My biggest pet peeve is:

• More people have died in the name of religion than any other reason.

Patently false, especially in the 20th century. Few of the deaths on this link had anything to do with religion.

Religion and slaughter

Roger J Carlson said:

My biggest pet peeve is:

• More people have died in the name of religion than any other reason.

Patently false, especially in the 20th century. Few of the deaths on this link had anything to do with religion.

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I don't think any major institutions emerged from the 20th century with much credit. The sciences at least provided some comedy (such as the Bikini Bomb tests). Bathing suit design may have been the only area in which man showed much humanity in the 20th century.
Of course it was the state that provided for most of the slaughter in the 20th century, but much of that was religiously orchestrated: the Nazis had their cults of Sport, the Italians rebuilt the Ara Pacis (ironically enough), the Russians had a religious cult of Stalin. In the US, Father Conklin agitated on the radio like any good fascist and the Papacy went along with having specialized clergymen help run genocidal campaigns. In India, millions of people were killed at partition in religiously motivated violence.
So compared to other institutions, religion was proportionately pretty low as a direct cause of slaughter, but very high in terms of providing a social world in which the de-humanization of anyone who could somehow be defined as an outsider was a religious routine...In that area, religion was vital in preparing people to inflict slaughter.
But, proportionately, the 20th century was not a bad one for religion in terms of not directly overseeing a lot of slaughter.
On the other hand, if we look at Aztec religion in around 1500...religion looks very bad. First of all, all human sacrifice is by definition a religious event. Second, the Aztecs made human sacrifice the center-peice of an Imperial religion and the results were spectacularly bad. If you are very fond of religion, the Aztecs ought to make you think. The only place were religious slaughter came close to that of the Aztec Empire is the Roman Empire where essentially the "circuses" were funeral games gone wild and involved the religiously-based slaughter of thousands of people.

Anyway...religion can be very nasty indeed. Fortunately, not quite so much in the 20th century.

At least

III said:

Y'know, I started thinking about my original post last night and thinking about Jesus saying "blessed are you when men persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you for my name's sake". Then I started thinking about all the unfair and untrue accusations Jesus and the disciples suffered. I think I just let a few things get to me yesterday and didn't even realize the blessings associated with the trials. It's an undeserved honor to even be associated with the man I idolize and adore - Jesus the Christ.

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It's true. When you think you could be an Aztec Sun Priest with your long hair full of years of accumulated human blood...Jesus seems quite nice.

Good Question

III said:

Hmmm, are you saying this Aztec god could grant me long hair? I'm intrigued .... go on ....

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I wonder what happened if an Aztec Sun Priest lost his hair? It can't have been pretty.

As for the god. I'll have to look him up. I can't remember his name.

Wikipedia says:
The Aztecs believed that they were living in the fifth and last creation of their world. To this end, the Aztec Sun Stone is dedicated to the sun god Tonatiuh, who was believed to have been the fifth sun god, as a means to prevent further catastrophe and end of the world by performing regular human sacrifices in his honor.

But there seems to have been at least one other god associated with the sun.

I get tired of people saying they are "good people" as if that's all you have to do in the way of faith. My own family (who are good people, by the way) believe that taking care of the elderly in the family will get them to Heaven, and they just don't get what I try to tell them.

Roger J Carlson said:

My biggest pet peeve is:

• More people have died in the name of religion than any other reason.

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This one's on my top 5 list too! Along with: Christians are just uneducated people.

And: If there was a God, there wouldn't be cancer and war.

How about, "It all depends upon your interpretation."?

I'm tired of hearing the items on your list over and over, as well. How about:

* Survey X shows those with higher IQs are less likely to be religious than those with lower IQs (or those with higher education compared to lower education).
* All Christians reject the theory of evolution, or want religion forced into public school curriculums.
* Hitler was religious, supported by religion, and/or symbolizes religion.

Add to that list the pre-empting of rebuttal against the "religion leads all war, persecution, etc." argument by re-casting state actions, even those founded on atheist ideology, as religious in some creative new way. This is a new one to me, but recently I've seen it repeated enough to irritate me big time.

For example, Hitler's obsession with occultism and myth could at least be construed as quasi-religious, even though the Nazi problem had no real religious motivation. If someone claims Hitler was religious, the easy counterpoint to make, of course, is that the only one worse that Hitler was Stalin, slaughtering even more millions under the flag of a state founded on an unambiguously professed atheistic ideology. You'd think the anti-church position of the USSR and its founders couldn't have been more clear. It cracks me up when totalitarian states such as these are suddenly called religious (usually through some loose comparison or using loaded words like "cult") by those who need to hold up the argument that religion itself backs all the madmen in the world.

I think the smart agnostics and atheists already grasp that the worst evils are committed by the believers and unbelievers alike, but being human, I do find the exceptions most annoying.

It would be just as easy for religious pundits to insist that all atrocities committed specifically as religious actions were actually atheistic by some new definition they offer for atheism. I imagine it would be easy to sustain that argument simply on the basis of a religious group denying God, taking on an unprofessed atheism as it were, by pursuing evil ends while falsely claiming a faith their actions contradict.

In a narrow sense that might be a truthful argument, but wouldn't it be out of line to then blatantly claim the torture chambers of the Spanish Inquisition were expressions of atheism? Such a general mixup of terms would only be sneaky and misleading. While no modern, sane Christian condones torture, we must admit that some factions of the Church really condoned it on some level and that the whole thing was inextricably mixed up with the human failings of religion.

So don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting anyone re-cast all misguided religion as atheistic or even generalize atheism as evil. I'm just throwing it in as an opposite example of why these "all religion is wrong and all wrong is somehow religious" type arguments are likewise not productive for intelligent and honest people to consider.

MidnightMuse said:

And: If there was a God, there wouldn't be cancer and war.

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HA! Like God made us sin.

Actually, it should read, "If there weren't Humans, there wouldn't be cancer and war."

MidnightMuse said:

This one's on my top 5 list too! Along with: Christians are just uneducated people.

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Yeah, I'd like to hear C.S. Lewis, Ravi Sacharias, Francis Schaeffer and Jonathan Edwards respond to that one. That would be a good debate!

lady_esther said:

HA! Like God made us sin.

Actually, it should read, "If there weren't Humans, there wouldn't be cancer and war."

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Agreed, Lady. It's interesting that God is described as a "crutch" for weak people. And yet the same people making that brilliant deduction are the same ones who grasp for a crutch to blame Him for all the wrongs in the world.

Problems for Religion

AzBobby said:

Add to that list the pre-empting of rebuttal against the "religion leads all war, persecution, etc." argument by re-casting state actions, even those founded on atheist ideology, as religious in some creative new way. This is a new one to me, but recently I've seen it repeated enough to irritate me big time.

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The problem that religious people (such as me sort of even, partly because of what this sentence outside this parenthesis means) have when dealing with the horrors of recent history is that religion has been deeply embedded in human society for thousands of years. This is both good and bad for any currently active religion, such as the recent spate of new Christianities (which have only a vague, barely even historical relation to whatever Christianities there were in say the 9th century). It is good in a sense because the social embedding of religions in societies mean that religions always have a certain air of plausibility. They don't exactly seem to have been invented out of thin air and we know that some sort of religious function and society go together. Hence, for example, the need of atheistic or even seemingly Christian societies to invent other cults -- the cults of Stalin or Mao or or Dr. Salizar or Franco or the Virgin Queen. Again, sometimes this is bad and sometimes it is good, but -- much as it may want to -- religion cannot completely refuse all responsibility for the nature of societies in which it exists. I would say that Christianity as practiced in the US has been socially constructive -- look at the Civil Rights movement, look at how Virginia is named for the cult of a Virgin Queen. On the other hand, many religious impacts on society have been quite nasty -- for example massive human sacrifice in the Aztec Empire.
So, as I've said, the record of religion in the 20th century was about average. Its impact in the West was probably much more positive in the previous few hundred years than it was in the 20th century.
In the East, the impact of religion would probably get a C+ for the 19th century if it were not for the Tiaping Rebellion, a Christian movement which killed an astouding 15 to 20 million people and came close to destroying China as a potential modern state. So Religion gets an F for the 19th century in the East.

lady_esther said:

HA! Like God made us sin.

Actually, it should read, "If there weren't Humans, there wouldn't be cancer and war."

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Technically, there would still be cancer as it can also appear in non-human species. And cancer is not a sin, last time I checked.

And lastly I used to use some/all of these phrases you guys are complaing about and now I feel bad about it.

What about the Salem witch trials?

Just thought I'd toss out a different one.

III said:

Y'know, I started thinking about my original post last night and thinking about Jesus saying "blessed are you when men persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you for my name's sake". Then I started thinking about all the unfair and untrue accusations Jesus and the disciples suffered. I think I just let a few things get to me yesterday and didn't even realize the blessings associated with the trials. It's an undeserved honor to even be associated with the man I idolize and adore - Jesus the Christ.

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If you breach the subject of Christianity in a location where there are people of different faiths and those of no faith you can expect that all responses will not be positive. It isn't persecution for someone to give their opinion or respond out of their experience. If someone is abusive or ugly to you because you are a Christian alone that is persecution.

Small Witch Potatos

RumpleTumbler said:

What about the Salem witch trials?

Just thought I'd toss out a different one.

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Not much of a witchcraze. In the peak period of witch-burning in Southern Germany in the 1620s and 1630s, some towns burned up to 20% of their entire populations. And that would be after the town next door had just finished burning 10% of its population. Eventually it dawned on people that people will produce any testimony you want them to under torture. Usually the witchcraze would stop when the town council started arresting and torturing itself. After the first few town councilors were burned the witchcraze would burn itself out pretty fast and the specialist torturers would take their equipement and go to the next town.

Sokal said:

Not much of a witchcraze. In the peak period of witch-burning in Southern Germany in the 1620s and 1630s, some towns burned up to 20% of their entire populations. And that would be after the town next door had just finished burning 10% of its population.

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I'm glad I am unfamiliar with that history. I wonder if there is a chart somewhere showing murders per cause? I'm sure murder in the name of God would top the list but it would be interesting to see how much it dwarfed the other listings.

Ritual Slaughter can be tracked

RumpleTumbler said:

I'm glad I am unfamiliar with that history. I wonder if there is a chart somewhere showing murders per cause? I'm sure murder in the name of God would top the list but it would be interesting to see how much it dwarfed the other listings.

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Murder as a private crime is as hard to track and quantify in the past as most other things. In Western Europe once you go back beyond say 1800, the local archives start getting spotty and by about 1085 (Doomesday Book) they are pretty much gone.

On the other hand, massive ritual slaughter in the name of some cult or other can be tracked clear back to the very dawn of writing and civilization around 4500 years ago. The Early State as a social innovation is even more violent and religiously-oriented than the Modern States we have now...which seems impossible, but there you have it.

BruceJ said:

Agreed, Lady. It's interesting that God is described as a "crutch" for weak people. And yet the same people making that brilliant deduction are the same ones who grasp for a crutch to blame Him for all the wrongs in the world.

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What I find annoying are arguments that complain about overbroad generalisations and then seek to solidify their credibility by using exactly the same kind of overbroad generalisations about a class of people. Not least because such a rhetorical flourish actually weakens, not strengthens, their argument.

Well said.

RumpleTumbler said:

If you breach the subject of Christianity in a location where there are people of different faiths and those of no faith you can expect that all responses will not be positive. It isn't persecution for someone to give their opinion or respond out of their experience. If someone is abusive or ugly to you because you are a Christian alone that is persecution.

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I don't think the large majority of Christians within the United States really understand the idea of persecution. That last sentence in your post, RumpleTumbler, is probably the most simple version of what persecution really is -- at least where Christianity is concerned -- that could ever be put to paper.

One thing I must point out here, though, is the idea that few Western Christians really are persecuted in the first place for their faith. By Biblical standards, being called names and otherwise insulted, is not persecution. Being tortured or murdered for your faith is what the Bible refers to, for the most part, when it talks about persecution.


To keep this post on-topic though, I think part of the reason a lot of people use sayings like those listed, is partially due to being badgered by Christians to the point they don't want to hear it. And frankly, I think part of the reason so many people don't want to hear it, is simply that a lot of Christians are not the examples they should be of the religion they preach. I mean, Jesus believed in righteousness, not just faith. When asked by other Jews how to enter the kingdom of Heaven, his response was universally, "Keep the commandments" or some variation of that sentiment. In my own studies of the New Testament Gospel accounts, I find very little mention, by Jesus himself, of "Believe I'm G-d and I'll take you to Heaven". I find a tiny bit of that in a couple places, but the majority of what he taught alluded to keeping the Torah (the 'law' in the KJV New Testament) as a means to salvation.

Yet I find very little in the way of such keeping of G-d's laws on the part of a great many Christians. This lack of righteousness is not conducive to many people wanting to hear more about Christianity. The feeling many people have, is like what James said:

Yea, a man may say, Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

So as far as the sweeping generalizations go, I think many of them are founded in some truth. People were burned at the stake for the sake of Jesus, and people were murdered for his sake in the Crusades. This kind of spreading the Gospel, per se, is directly contradictory to what Jesus preached and taught. If Christianity is going to thrive, it must follow its leader's commandments. If it does not, it is not real Christianity, because it is not 'Like Christ'.

McDuff said:

What I find annoying are arguments that complain about overbroad generalisations and then seek to solidify their credibility by using exactly the same kind of overbroad generalisations about a class of people. Not least because such a rhetorical flourish actually weakens, not strengthens, their argument.

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Touche', McDuff. The two-way street accommodates more than one kind of vehicle. The intent was to show these generalizations in their shallowness of their content, rhetoric notwithstanding, and the futility of engaging in 'sound-bite debate' in the first place. I could have done a much better job of elaborating. Thanks for the highlight.