Medieval Church Atrocities

I’m part way reading through Sam Harris’ book ‘The End of Faith’. In many ways it has nothing new to say.


It follows virtually the same line of reasoning as Hitchens’ ‘God is not Great’. They both mainly take the form of what I will term ‘Whinge literature’. What I mean by this is that they have very little of substance to say, they are totally devoid of any form of argument against the existence of God. Rather these types of books merely serve as outlets for the author to release torrents of whinging.



That’s all that one reads in The End of Faith. Whinge, whinge, bloody whinge.



Now I totally get what the authors are trying to say, but they don’t tell me something that I don’t already know.

Accessed from; http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianheresy/burningalive01.jpg

What prompted this post is when Harris starting whinging about the abhorrent torturing that the medieval Church committed. Now don’t get me wrong, I find these facts of history utterly repugnant, just like Harris. But what I find almost as repugnant is Harris’ egregious attempt at blaming Christianity alone as the source of such atrocities. He paints the picture that this type of thing was original to Christianity and just didn’t happen anywhere else in the world. He is basically attributing Christianity as the sole source of such abhorrent behaviour.



Any historian will tell you that this type of behaviour was rife throughout the ancient world. Such inhumane tactics were practiced by all forms of power in almost every civilization on earth. This by no means is an excuse, but goes to prove that the Church was a product of it’s times. It was very weak in it’s ability to withstand the influences of wider society.

One only has to briefly look at the pacifist teachings of Christ to see that this type of behaviour is patently anti-Christian. One can find no such justification of this behaviour in the teachings of Christ.



This type scholarship from Harris is appalling. What he is doing is deliberately spreading false information. This is basically fraud.

The Prosaic Threat of Atheism

Accessed from  http://thesignalinthenoise.wordpress.com/category/ignominiously-defining/

I have been reading a few atheist works over the last few months in an effort to understand their position. I have read works by Dawkins, Dennett, Stenger, Mills to mention a few of the well-known ones. I have a few more to read, but already I am seeing a few general traits and tactics that they employ, ignorance being the most prominent one!


To be honest I am starting to see why Michael Ruse, a prominent atheistic philosopher, said that Dawkins makes him embarrassed to be an atheist! Their approach to critiquing religion is very poor on most levels.



One militant atheist trend is constructing a sophistic model of Christianity specifically fabricated to be invalid and indefensible which no Christian actually advocates or would defend.

They are egregious artifices, and only goes to show that an honest and accurate critique is inadequate to depreciate the legitimacy of Christianity. Thus atheists are left with the only option of the distortion and manipulation of religion and it’s Scriptures to try and discredit it.



I am getting more and more secure in my faith as a result of these books. Atheism really poses no challenge at all.

Theist vs. Atheist Atrocities

We never cease hearing from these militant atheists about the many deaths that have occurred throughout history in the name of religion.


They delude themselves with the idea that the all of the worlds problems are due to theism, and the world would be far better off without it. They base this idea on the delusion that theistic worldviews have been responsible for all the worlds atrocities.



Yet they seem to have selective amnesia when it comes to all the atrocities that have been perpetrated by the many infamous anti-theistic atheist tyrants of the last century.

The inconvenient fact that they so often try to sweep under the rug is that in only half a century these tyrants were able to engineer vast massacres which totally out-killed all the religious atrocities in ALL OF HISTORY COMBINED!



Atheists can berate theists all they want, but their atheistic worldview is responsible for far more carnage than any theistic worldview.

They have no basis what so ever for rejecting theism as being responsible for war violence and atrocities. Their worldview has far more to answer for than theism.

The following text and tables were all accessed from http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html

 

What percentage of these killings were due to religious democide? It is less than 3% of the totals. The surprising thing is that these killings occurred during a period of time when virtually all the peoples of the world were involved in some sort of religion. Here is the data for the 20th century:

Vox Day, in The Irrational Atheist, lists 22 atheistic regimes that committed 153,368,610 murders in the 20^th century alone:

What percentage of this democide was due to religious conflict? It turns out that religious democide doesn't even make the top 20 (although I am sure there is some in the "lesser murderers" category. Still, the total religious killings is less than 2%. In fact, the top two killers were specifically atheistic states (which had never existed before in human history). Should atheism be blamed for more than 50% of the atrocities committed during the 20th century? The answer of course is No! If one examines the nature of the regimes that committed these atrocities (even the religious ones), the key factor is absolute power (see Figure 1, right). According to Professor R.J. Rummel, in the 1816-2005 period there were 205 wars between non-democracies, 166 wars between non-democracies and democracies, and 0 wars between democracies. Lord Acton's warning that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" seems to be more than just a trite saying.

Authority and Truth

Obtained from http://pw0nd.com/tag/faith

It is a natural human trait that each and every one of us must have some source of authoritative truth.




A Christian will no doubt place his faith in God. He does this because the Christian God is considered omniscient, omnipotent and wholly benevolent. These traits ensure that God is capable of knowing all things, and is not going to lie to us. Thus Christians put their faith in this God that anything He says to us, such as in the form of the Bible, will be considered to be wholly truthful.



Atheists on the other hand, have no such source of truth, so they must transfer this yearning for truth and authority to some other source; science.

In fact, they will boast that their source of authority is a superior source of truth than putting ones faith in an invisible God. But is it really? Does it take any less faith to believe that science is the fountain of all truth?



The fact is that all sources of truth and authority have to be taken as such by faith, especially science. The scientific method of investigation is not some sort of holy and infallible fountain of truth. It simply can not be if it is operated by fallible and biased operators. The truth of this is demonstrated in the fact that science textbooks go out of date every few years or so. Very few texts last longer than a decade, and you can be sure of the fact that they too will be superseded at some point in the future.
You can be guaranteed that what is known to be scientific truth today will most certainly be overturned some time in the future. Is science really an appropriate source of authoritative truth? Only through faith, can so many atheists say yes.



The Christian has faith that our God is the ultimate source of truth, which is what would be expected from an omnipotent and omniscient creator deity. But atheists only have the scientific method which is constantly in revolution.



Faith in God or faith in science, take your pick.

Separation of Church and State

On issues such as opening parliament with a Christian prayer, we often hear the claim from secularists that all forms of prayer should be dropped in favour of a position of religious neutrality.




It is claimed that, to have a Christian prayer in a state institution, is exclusionary of other religious and risks offending them. So, they reason, we should adopt a neutral position of no prayer.

In fact they would have all forms of religion totally wiped from all state institutions.



On the surface this seems like a reasonable proposition. To have the State clinically scrubbed of all vestiges of religion seems like a reasonable diplomatic solution.



But the fact is that such a solution is not neutral at all. Rather than it being a position of neutrality, it is actually a staunchly anti-religious and dogmatically atheistic position.

In a country where the vast majority of people are religious, does it really makes sense to force it’s elected body to adhere to a religiously sterile and atheistically biased position? Surely not.



In a country where the vast majority of it’s population identifies itself as Christian and only a very small minority with atheism, does it really make sense to force our government to adopt a vastly marginalized position?



If a country is still vastly Christian, then it is entirely appropriate to have Christian prayer. It is a beautiful tradition that appeals to most people. So if it ain’t broke, then what’s there to fix?

Islam, Judaism and numerous other religious cultures have brought untold riches to our society, we all experience them to a certain degree, and most of us enjoy the fruits of these extremely aesthetic cultural riches.

It will be a sad day if religion is scrubbed from society in the impossible ploy to please everyone. Who seriously wants to live in the secularist’s sterile world, devoid of the rich religious traditions that our Western society was founded upon?







Surely there is a far better solution to accommodating our religiously pluralistic society in our State institutions than adopting the position of one of the smallest minorities!