Christianity, Democracy, And Human Rights

Great articles:

THE MEDIEVAL ORIGINS OF THE WESTERN NATURAL RIGHTS TRADITION

Thomas Aquinas, the First Whig: What Our Liberties Owe to a Neapolitan Mendicant

 

It certainly relates back to Habermas's work, but, unfortunately we still have both too much of a representational culture and the economics have so overwhelmed the public sphere both from the top and the bottom. that society is moving backwards, not forwards, at least in the US. I have greater hope for some of the smaller European countries though.

 

My passion for history makes me prefer a historical approach to similar discussions:

as for I can note, in the present world, a large part of the existing democracies have got a Christian past, that is to say they were Christian societies.

There are well evident examples of democracies without a Christian background [Israel, India ...], anyway I would underline that it seems [history says this] that Christian societies, sooner or later, develop lay democracies.

This should mean something, after all ...

 

Took them long enough, as Christianity was in charge of most of Europe (also called "Christendom") from Late Roman times on.

 

In comparison with Christianity Islam is still "young" and not that "mature" ... [about 6 centuries younger, to make it simple]. Are you suggesting that also Islam will evolve into democratic systems in some centuries?

 

Yes, but sooner than centuries. The forces of modernity are afoot in the Islamic world, particularly the Middle East. People see it too much as Islam v. Christianity or Islam v. The West. There is an intellectual civil war going on within Islam, and while the bloodshed will not decide the outcome, the desire for peace will. The middle east will not be able to provide for itself in a matter of a century (or two at the most) unless they embrace modernity and international civility. You simply cannot feed and provide for masses in that climate for long without money, and once their oil becomes irrelevant, so will they unless they have something better to offer the global community.

 

A Christian society would be better able to avoid this kind of ugliness: The Nasty, Brutish World of Richard Dawkins

 

I come back to this thread and, under the light of what ISIS is causing in that region of the planet, this post looks a bit out of time.

Personally, I do know Muslims with a well opened mind and ready for a secularization of their countries to build lay societies, anyway religion is still too near to politics in those lands and risk of extremism are well visible [when not already real].

 

Then why are some of the least Christian societies (Japan, Holland, Sweden, Norway) some of the healthiest, with lower homicide rates, suicide rates, infant mortality rates, STD rates, abortion rate, teen pregnancy rates, and a higher life expectancy?

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf

 

There is also a long list of acts of tyranny committed by Christians reflecting that anecdotal cases don't really mean diddly-squat.

We can also note that "democracy" can also be very tyrannical and violate human rights.

Inherently neither Christianity or Democracy really has anything to do with protecting human rights.

It is all dependent upon the "Christian" or the "Democracy" in question. Some are good, some are bad, and most fall somewhere in between.

 

Sure it seems out of time if you are living in the past. Judging all Middle Eastern Countries and Muslims on the actions of the ISIS, would be about the intellectual equivalent of judging America and all Americans based off a sampling of death row inmates.

 

The problem is political and connected with the establishments of those countries. After the end of Saddam the Sunni establishment had all the possibilities to accept a less preeminent condition and find a way to cooperate with the Kurd and the Shiaa leaderships. They didn't ...

This is the point, I wonder why. It was evident since the first times after the fall of the dictator that they had no hope to rebuild their system of power. Or they had some possibilities? You see, the events of the last months are telling us that may be they had a hope to come back, they stayed less or more in the shadow waiting for the occasion, recruiting fanatics from all over the world [London included, it seems]. And now they are acting.

In this context, it's extremely difficult to see the population rebelling against such a way to take over power and control the territory [simply because in their mind sets Sunnis have to be governed by Sunnis, good or bad Sunnis is not that great problem for them].

So, where is the moderate Islam in those lands? Why are we not seeing strikes against ISIS? Muslims refusing to give them "taxes"? [It seems they collect a kind of taxes].

 

The only nasty and brutish thing in the article is the way in which Dawkins is attacked. What did your alleged Messiah say, Judge not lest you be judged. And yet here we have a Christian who makes it clear right at the start of the article he is judging Dawkins for what he did not say!

Note what Dr. Dawkins isn’t saying. He didn’t say (as he later claims, when clumsily and misleadingly trying to clean up his mess) that he was merely recommending that the woman abort the child. Nor did he say it’s a morally complicated decision that should evoke sympathy. Or that it’s an agonizing matter she should, say, pray over.

What I find crazy is that any women seeking advice about aborting a child would seek advice in a tweet from Dawkins? What on earth was she thinking! Maybe if she thought Dawkins could give her the advice she needed a letter or e-mail, but what kind of moron seeks advice in a tweet? 122 characters to express a complicated moral dilemma!

The writer of the article criticizes Dawkins for not telling the women she should pray! Ignoring the fact no atheist is ever going to advise prayer, what good would that do? Pray to a non existent god, I really cannot think of worse advise except maybe read a few thousand year old book and seek advice from an ancient society!

So often it is the religious who are spiteful, narrow minded and hypocritical just like the writer of the article. Personal attacks on anyone who dares to criticise their religion. Attacking a Tweet, how pathetic can you get!

As for the idea that Christianity has fought tyranny in the western world, Christianity has been the greatest tyranny in the western world for at least 1500 years only in the past hundred years has its terrible grip on society been reduced.

 

People need to simply understand that Christianity (or more generally religion) and Democracy (or any other form of government) is not inherently good or bad. People are good and bad regardless of any religious beliefs or any form of government.

It can easily be argued, for example, that a secular humanist dictator could be the greatest champion and protector of human rights. It would all depend upon the person that was the dictator.

 

These wealthy secular countries are only better at telling everyone how wonderful they are. You're overlooking the misery these rich countries export around the world!

1) Rich countries exploit laborers in poor countries - exporting poorly paid, dangerous, dirty jobs.

2) Rich countries are the arms profiteers.

The Arms Trade is Big Business

3) Rich countries are the imperialists - invading Libya, Afghanistan, Gaza, etc.

French imperialism out of Mali!

4) Prancing decadents in the rich countries caused AIDS to explode into an epidemic. AIDS spread to the poor countries, producing much suffering.

5) Upper class racists are desperate to push abortion on poor people. Rich people suffer from a limp, sagging birthrate and yearn to kill off as many poor folk as possible.

And suicide rates for wealthy, secular countries are generally higher than suicide rates for poorer, religious societies.

List of countries by suicide rate

 

Secular elites in the rich countries offer so much:

1) Gay activists often fought common sense health measures.

HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND RADICALISM HAVE LED TO AIDS-RELATED DEATHS

2) quote: In the mid-1980s, HIV and AIDS were virtually unheard of in southern Africa—it is now the worst-affected region in the world.

LINK

3) By this time AIDS had exploded in certain urban areas in the wealthy countries.

4) Undoubtedly some of these AIDS infected men traveled to southern Africa and helped spread the virus.

So gay activists demand no restrictions on their selfish antics and help spread the disease to Africa.



Gay activists have even threatened to starve African children if African countries don't submit to the activists' demands.

 

Secular elites try to dispose of (often religious) working folk.

79% of Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinics Target Blacks, Hispanics

 

Let's look at the result:

The Black Book of Communism

160 Million and Counting

Time to Face the Truth About World War II

 

The Black Book of Communism is a one sided view, even the article you provide as a link to states the problems associated with this text. And of course it does not look at the state of countries before communism. Do you think that China would of become communist if the people had not had a pretty bad time of it. Of course in China's case being invaded by Japan (a deeply religious society who committed some of the very worse atrocities of the 20th century) certainly did not help.

160 million and counting is a typical example of how religion confuses the symptom(abortion) with the cause(very patriarchal society). Why is a male child considered so much more valued than a female child? Simple, religion is so often misogynistic.I suggest you educate yourself about Hinduism and in particular Suti, I challenge you to provide one atheist woman who would burn herself to death because her husband has died. And how many women died because of backstreet abortions? Or female children left to die in India and China before abortion and while they were religious.

The truth about WW2 is that it was fought largely by Christians! (in the west)Stalin turned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1941 to bolster nationalism and put some fighting spirit into the troops. So whilst Stalin himself might have been an Atheist the actual people doing the killing, fighting and dying were good ole Christian boys! Hitler was not an atheist, whether he was still a Catholic is very doubtful but he certainly believed in some form of "higher power". As for his troops, they were most certainly religious as were the people of Germany, some German churches celebrated Hitlers birthday! Hitler was told that if he ever took control of the Vatican there would be a civil war in Germany. As I have said before if you want to look for the most murderous group in WW2 look no further than the Ustasze add antisemitism with devout Catholicism and you get people so vicious even the SS were shocked by them! I see no mention of the Spanish Civil war when the democratic government was overthrown by the alliance of Fascists and the Catholic church, leaving Spain with the longest lasting Fascist government in Europe.

Now look at Europe in the past 50 years, the only wars have been religious ones, whilst the secular EU has meant relative peace on the continent. No as the Darkness of Religion becomes ever less relevant in a modern secular Europe, when people realize only man is to blame for his ills and only man can solve those problems we may just begin to look towards a brighter future. Only the threat of the current religious revival amongst fanatics can stop this. Both Muslim, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism threaten the world and the middle east shows exactly what happens when religion still infests societies.

 

RiaRaeb I enjoyed your rabid fact-free rant detailing your hate of all the world's religions/cultures. Now please wipe the foam off your mouth and let's look at the facts.

It received great reviews even in left of center publications.

Japan is currently one of the most atheist-prone nations on earth. Can you provide evidence Japan was less atheist-prone in the 1930s and 1940s? Let's add Buddhism and Shinto to the list of religions you don't like.

So you see how the abortion industry abets sexists. Please note that some of these countries engaging in the mass extermination of girls are Communist/atheist countries.

China Abortion Survivor: “I Feel Like a Walking Corpse.”

Okay so you don't like Hinduism either.

The anti-girl, anti-natalist policy instituted by secularists like Nehru was demanded by western liberal elites!

Planned Parenthood Strategy Responsible for India’s Sex-Selection Abortions

You will find atheists doing this:

U.N. exposes North Korea’s rampant forced abortions, sterilizations, infanticide, and persecution of the disabled

So you are telling me the elites who ordered mass murder were atheists, while the people who suffered and died were often Christians.

Please don't ignore tens of thousands of atrocities committed by the Communists in Spain.

These European countries have invaded quite a few poor nations. And engaged in arms profiteering in poor countries as well.

I'm surprised you don't like Milosevic, since he was an atheist who wanted to kill religious folk.

Milosevic buried in quiet ceremony in his hometown

Wow you don't like anybody. Do atheists ever engage in wrongdoing?

You know the Israeli oppressors are one of the most secular societies on earth.

 

Anansi the Spider;1064206741

Well that's a nice start, a little attack on the unbeliever! Well its the first time a religious person ever lectured me about facts.All the links you provide are opinion, can you prove 160 million are missing, no. Can you prove Stalin intended to invade Europe, No. It is opinion not fact. Now perhaps you can put your piety away and we can discuss our difference of opinion!

But is it true and fair. The link you provided cast some doubt on the opinions. Just because it received good reviews does not make it correct.

Yes, in the period leading up to WW2, Shinto was the state religion. MacArthur went so far as to ban it as the state religion. Do you think that would of happened if he didnt see it as a cause of the Japanese war?
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/macarthur-orders-end-of-shinto-as-japanese-state-religion

You do not tackle my suggestion that most religions are misogynistic, instead you just state that the abortion industry abets sexists! And your solution is to tell women what to do with their bodies, I doubt you can see the irony in that. Education and birth control is the answer to abortion not banning it. All evidence shows that prohibition seldom works.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/alcohol-prohibition-was-failure
It has not worked with Drink or drugs and it wont work with abortion.

Not anti girl, but if by Anti-Natalist you mean population control then yes to a degree, the best way to alleviate grinding poverty is by education and birth control(that is personal acceptance not state control)

True, I was remiss with my explanation. What I should of said was that only religion would force a woman to do this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

I will not defend anything North Korea does, just because it is an atheist state does not mean it is right! (there, you can say I do not like atheists either!)

In principle yes, my solution is to educate the Christians so they are not so easily duped. Anybody be it atheist or theist who tells you to "go fight in the name of (what ever deity)" is using religion for their own aims. The fact is that whilst I do not see religion as intrinsicly wrong, the way it is manipulated is.
http://english.pravda.ru/history/13-09-2006/84417-hitler-0/

I do not, my point was that an alliance of Fascists and the catholic church over threw a democratically elected government.
http://www.iiipublishing.com/franco.htm

Yes, it is not perfect, my own country was dragged into a Crusade by the now Catholic Tony Blair, who hid his religious beliefs until after he had started an illegal war! I never said that atheists have all the answers, after all its only been a few hundred years since we would of been burnt at the stake, just for suggesting God did not exist!

Well that is because you are accusing me of attitudes I do not have, nowhere do I say one religious person should die for their faith. Still lets not let FACT get in the way of your insults!

No I like most people of any faith, although I must admit I have rarely met a member of any "clergy" I could stomach. Atheists commit lots of wrongs but at least they cannot use a celestial body as an excuse!

I realise it but most do not. Which is why when you strip away the religious nonsense you can see it as the cheap and nasty land grab it is. In fact here is a perfect example of how religion is used to confuse an issue.

Many people believe that Israel was given Palestine because of the Jewish Religious belief that it was there home. So why should a bunch of atheists pick Palestine as the place for their racist state? Simple, they could play on the religious beliefs of millions of Christians. If they had asked for Texas or Cornwall to create a homeland they would of been laughed at. Throw in the Bible and its historical inaccuracies and all of a sudden the Zionists have a cause célèbre!

 

Not much to respond to RiaRaeb, just a pile of clichés.

No.

Studies: Birth Control, Contraception Don’t Cut Abortions

Pro-Life Politicians Have Made a Difference, Pro-Life Laws Work

If you want to reduce the number of abortions support more restrictions on the abortion industry.

Do you think heroin and cocaine should be legal?

Overpopulation is a myth

If you understand that atheists are capable of great evil you shouldn't rant only against religion. If you are intellectually honest.

In the U.S., it was mostly the Israel lobby pushing the U.S. into war. These neocons are not religious.

And it has been only a few minutes since Christians were tortured, imprisoned, and killed by atheists in China and North Korea.

According to one estimate over 25 million Christians died from secular antireligious violence in the 20th century.

LINK

You're not very open-minded.

Atheism serves tyranny. If there is no God then we are just sacks of chemicals, the random product of an indifferent universe. If we are just sacks of chemicals why do we possess dignity or merit rights?

The Zionist leadership has been strongly anti-religious. Yeshayahu Leibowitz said Ben-Gurion "hated Judaism more than any other man he had met".

It was the location of the most powerful Jewish state.

Many Christians oppose Zionism, as do many religious Jews. Atheist Stalin provided the weapons that enabled the Zionists to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians!

 

Christianity has almost no responsibility for human rights or democracy other than for causing a full scale war and genocide that caused human rights to be created in the first place. Also I know that there is absolutely no connection between the mainstream religion of a region and their respect for the rights of the individual and democratic institutions. However there has been evidence that religion was used as a tool by people within authoritarian governments before the renaissance to control the leaders, but that required an extreme lack of information being available to both the ruling and working parties, something that cannot happen today, and the people that enforced the religious feces on the government was less motivated by the morals of their religion and instead motivated by a simple factor to religion: worship. If the government of the time had its way, the workers would starve, and therefore they would not be able to provide offerings and service to the church, and therefore the priests starve and the religion would get weaker, which would cause the aristocracy to care less about what they are doing to the workers, which makes the workers starve, and so on.

During the renaissance, people were thankfully able to get more information, enlighten themselves, free themselves from aristocratic dystopia, cause the authoritarian system to fall apart, make wars based around what the majority, not the elite, thinks is right, enlighten themselves more on how to govern themselves and thus contribute to the world's social sciences, and get to where we are today, with a fully functional list of rights and freedoms of the individual to go with our democratic system and several years of instruction on how to choose what is right for our country without devolving into communism and fascism through this system. Religion played absolutely no part in that process other than playing the villain. And therefore you are losing this argument.

Also, to put a further nail in the coffin, I advocate direct democracy. Fundamentally that is similar to anarchism due to the fact that the term literally means "no leader" (in both direct democracy and anarchism) and I can only guess how much you like situations where you have no leader, which, coming from your obsessive desires to have your deity be branded responsible for democracy, almost close to committing genocide, but I do realize one problem to direct democracy:



Direct democracy is EXTREMELY expensive. If anyone knows how expensive it is to host one referendum or one single presidential election, I think that you can figure out how much money it would cost to host an election every single time we have to pass a law.

So, without further ado, I would have to conclude my time here around your religious bigotry with a big (insert swear word for reproductive intercourse) you and a way to say just how (insert word describing a lack of intelligence) your beliefs are around your (insert kind word for self delusion) and democracy. Religion has not been a positive contribution to the democratic system other than being a big (insert word for unpleasant person) to other religions and making democracy realize that there has to be some ground rules to its domain. Those "ground rules" are now what we call the rights of the individual. So, to end all this I would just have to say one thing: realize that your ways done more damage to my world than anything atheism could do. Also realize that atheism doesn't mean a complete lack of morality. It just means that the person under such a belief feels that relying on a deity in any way, shape or form is an unnecessary waste of time, and the morality that it is supposed to teach can be just as easily found with what they feel about a situation and their own knowledge, and religion can also force them to do things that they would find disgusting, such as genocide, sexism, and criminal activity. I am also an atheist. I am extremely insulted by your behavior around how your religion is, in your mind, responsible for the upbringing of democracy. Human rights also have your opinions turned on its head in this respect. In your fantasy, you are right. In reality, I see a different story with you as a politician and you as an individual. Now if you would excuse me, but I have to make demotivational pictures of Jesus committing genocide, advocating slavery, and making a bunch of (insert male private part here) jokes, or in other words: arson, murder, and jaywalking.

 

Your half-witted post requires little response. I'll only point out that the Renaissance was profoundly Christian.

Virgin of the Rocks by da Vinci:

 

I had to put up with similar problem people like you on the SEGA forums.

How much impact does this post have on you? Do you think the information here would be credible?!
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Originally posted by Space Colony Bark:
Already described quite a lot, SEGA already developed an entire series based on 'the concept'.
'Sonic and Amy' are even in it too... It is called "Kanipan".
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRCpSCm2wQl-zVFevy8KW6IKxdNgszs5PQNJSZzabd9Usl58Ep3A
http://i1.pixiv.net/img97/img/runo-0207/mobile/25616049_240mw.jpg

Including him having a relationship with... Well, 'you know who'...
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTKfM81z1W-Xy3yrv_yiDT8mi51RM6AGXWLX01QDly1pAm024Fdrw
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zXu-McCCUhc/mqdefault.jpg
http://i1.pixiv.net/img37/img/9-712/mobile/16249217_240mw.jpg <- "My cousin is not this cute."

Chris is basically a young version of Eggman, that kind of implied to be Maria's grandson.
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSk0W44UNknyCPpds8ccXlp1BOdOvYJ2Yn-m_0uVUloQATDX5l5
Note that originally Chris' mother was supposed to be a 'Maria-ish blond person'.
No, really. Just check one of the early pre-production model sheets for Sonic.

While X from 2014's Puyo Puyo Tetris is either Eggman or Chris having a daughter.
http://i2.pixiv.net/img70/img/negino0819/mobile/41687602_240mw_p0.jpg
While his daughter is cute, she has a sharp tongue (enough to even enraged the cheerful Amitie).
Probably for leaving her alone with his robot creation / surrogate father,
in order for him to become a guardian at the frontiers of worlds.

That and it is probably due her character design lineage is toward a particular _itch...
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ9IomGAXckXcYUBX-myTMPnxdZHYUvtIeN-wTrwEPfIDfxl3IM

Spoiler

Same voice actress actually...

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The amount of impact that your post had here is the same amount as the impact that Space Colony Bark's post has on you. Just to make you mad some more, I am going to spam anarchy symbolism all over this post.





Another thing: While you may see a few "Christian" things in the renaissance, it still was responsible for demoting the church, demoting the rulers and government of the time, and making religion have less of an impact on the people of the age that it occurred in. That was the largest impact of the renaissance that has even touched religion. The middle ages was all about religious fecal matter being slung around by people who follow your likeness. Thank our ancestors (that's right, I am subverting your reckless belief that there are gods now because you just can't take it that I am dismantling your face on the internet!) that we went out of that stinking dungpile. (Also known as a $#&%#@&%.)

Now if your excuse me, but I am going to spout ecoanarchist material about destroying China's dictatorship and the Al Qaeda, then depict the ISIS as homosexual just to (*)(*)(*)(*) off the zealots in question. I would continue to counter your feces until you learn to just accept that no religion is superior to another.

This was a flame war anyways, so I don't think I am going to change much.