Jaybees

Your contribution reminds me of how, one night, I was stranded by a flight cancellation and had to stay in a cheap motel. Somehow, I'd forgotten to carry any reading material along and, of all things, opened up the Gideon bible. It turned out to be great entertainment. Some previous occupant of the room had carefully used a yellow marker to highlight all the dirty passages. along with all the butchery. Wow! It was quite an education.

credoconsolans

I thought it was obvious, or did I misunderstand?

The whole reason Israel exists - religiously anyway - is that many people believe the area was 'given' to Hebrews/Jews by their god.

If they believe that, then it also must follow that they believe other parts of the story - i.e. the genocides the Hebrews brought onto the people who were already living on "their" promised land.

So any martyrdom we grant the survivors of the modern Holocaust of the Jews in WWII, becomes less tragic and more a case of 'shoe on the other foot'.

However, if to maintain their status as modern martyrs, the believers choose to dismiss the biblical stories of genocide, they must also dismiss their beliefs that they hold any special claim to the land.

mountainman

The Christians of the mid 4th century tortured pagans in order to force a confession from them, before they were exucuted. The first attested auto de fe (inquisition) controlled by the Christian regime appears in the history of Ammianus ... "The highways were covered with galloping bishops". It is perhaps incidental to this OP that these 4th century Christians were committing genocide on the pagans and their Greek intellectual traditions. Hector Avalos writes good stuff.

Jaybees

I consider it extremely unlikely that "a million or more people" were scrambling for lebensraum in Canaan. However, that doesn't mean that there wasn't plenty of slaughtering going on---on a much smaller scale than what the later scribes wrote. Vicious crimes are typical in even modern skirmishes, as in My Lai where Americans massacred some four or five hundred men women and children, after the usual rapes, arson and torture of course.

The quantities may be off, but the quality of the butchery is probably quite accurate.

Steven Carr

I thought Bertrand Russell was one of those good, Old Atheists - the sort of atheist praised by believers because he was not like Richard Dawkins.

I can't imagine Dawkins giving that sort of uncorroborated slur that Old Atheist Russell did....

Toto

It's a little off topic, but there is a thread on TheologyWeb started by GDon on this question.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...Indian-infants

jaecp posted:

But evidently they didn't bother to baptize the babies before hand. Does this make it better or worse?

There are 31 pages, but I am not going to read through the entire thread.

James Brown

Dawkins quoted it in The God Delusion.

sotto voce

Russell was a step up on Dawkins, in one sense. He did not, afaik, deliberately ignore theistic evolution for a decade or so, as Dawkins did. Dawkins now admits that YECism is not necessary to theism, and indeed has pronounced himself agnostic. Credit where it is due; but nobody can say that Dawkins behaved with honour in that period.

But nonetheless, Russell's position was likewise maintained only by misrepresentation of Christianity. His book is scurrilous straw man after scurrilous straw man. He admits to being 'brought up' as a Protestant (thereby demonstrating complete incompetence to deal with the subject merely by using that phrase), realising therefore that Romanism cannot be held to represent Christianity in any way, shape or form. Yet he cites RC misdemeanours as defects of Christianity. For all his accomplishments, Lord Russell was ignoble, a coward who could not face the truth in matters of morality.

His book is presumably not an exercise in self-deception. It is for sure entirely unworthy of a philosopher. It is raw propaganda, attempt to give fellow cowards a good feeling about their cowardice. So if he invented a story of baptising, murderous Catholics, it is just one more story to add to his nefarious tally.

Of course, murderous Catholics are not novelty. Catholicism is premised on murder, or its threat. But why do Romanists baptise? Not for the reason that Christians baptise, which is public demonstration of faith. One main reason is probably that the act of baptism is in practice arrogated to priests, though it is admitted that anyone can baptise. Allegedly Protestant 'pastors' are equally careful to ensure that is it only they who baptise, because they, too, want kudos. But the other chief RCC reason is their magic one; that their water baptism absolves of sin. The invented original sin, and any actual sins, are forgiven, just by getting wet, along with the supposedly trinitarian incantation— a minor reason for Catholic baptism.

So, killing persons just baptised would ensure that they went to heaven, according to this bit of primitive paganism. The idea of Romanism is to hold the believer in a state of dependency on priests, so that the greed of the people who exploit the labour of the believer, who also effectively employ the priests, is fed. So there does not seem to be any point in killing off those who are to keep one in creature comforts. The aristocratic Russell of course realised this, and a legend of this type could suit his purpose. That he gave credence to a practice that rainforest tribes untouched by modern civilisation might well reject, he expressed his belief in the truth of Christianity most eloquently.

sotto voce

So was it unreasonable for the Allies to oppose the Nazis?

Toto

I don't think that Dawkins ever claimed that YECism was necessary for general theism.

Who are you calling a coward? Lord Russell had the strength of his convictions. He was willing to go to jail for his belief in pacifism. Who would Jesus support in World War I - the Christian armies that slaughtered each other or the atheist in prison for refusing to do so?

He did not have to invent the story of murdering Catholics, now did he?

Which one of you hates Catholics more?