Text 4222, 68 rader
Skriven 2006-07-18 11:31:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4695.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Rob Perkins to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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@MSGID: <4i4fluF24v03U1@individual.net>
@REPLY: <e9j04e$fto$5@dent.deepthot.org>
Jay Denebeim wrote:
> In article <4i35coF1u508U1@individual.net>,
> Rob Perkins  <rperkins@usa.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Let's put that in perspective, and ask, for one example, since the 
>>Catholic Church has been separated from its largest powers of government 
>>over the people, how much human suffering has it caused?
> 
> 
> You mean besides the guilt it inflicts on its practitioners?

Is feeling guilty supposed to be somehow equal to punishment by death? 
Denial of better economic circumstance? In other words, where are we 
going to draw the line at what is and is not human suffering?

Honestly as I look in from the outside at Catholicism, the things it 
requires *today* from its believers seems to be pretty light, compared 
to the full-on consecration required in centuries past (be Catholic or 
die, not to mention be damned), when the Church was the Church of an 
Empire.

> And it
> trying to force people to not be sexual causing the sexuality to come
> out in weird, twisted ways?  And quite a few more if I stop to think
> about it.

Not being a Catholic, I can't imagine. But I'll note that when the 
penalty of leaving Catholicism (or Judaism) behind has generally gone 
from death to a cross look from one's mother.

Also, I don't recall modern Catholicism requiring people to become priests.

> There's a lunatic invading countries right now who thinks that god
> talks to him and tells him to do these things.  The amount of death,
> destruction, and suffering he's cause is astronomical.

No, it really isn't. Not in comparison to twentieth century tyrannies. 
In any case, *he* might believe that his campaign is the will of God, 
but the people who follow him are not doing it for that reason.

>>It's a draw, in my opinion, historically speaking. If we wish to go back 
>>only 100 years, "science", as the grounding philosophy of communist 
>>regimes, loses in that regard.
> 
> 
> Science is a religion to them.

Right. So what are we concluding, that you and I have used the word 
"religion" in a different context?

That wouldn't surprise me at all. But if that's true then you'd have to 
accept, at least at the level of "agree to disagree", that *my* 
religion, which claims all true things as part of it regardless of 
source, (there are plenty of Mormons who don't deny Evolution and who 
treat the Bible in much the same way as they do any old archaeological 
document) is actually also science.

Rob
                                            
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