Cretinist

Hypothesis? It's a fact that very influential religious people and institutions have commonly opposed scientific thought. What is there to 'theorize' about?

Steven Carr

Attack the source as being non-Christian. Typical Bede tactics.

BTW. wasn't I agreeing with you that the numbers on the list came to less than one million?

Evolutionist

i've yet to see this proven by anyone. why? because members of the church have tried everything in their power (historically, and presently) to hinder the progress of science.

members of the christian church have fought bitterly throughout its history -- and is still fighting today -- to impede scientific progress. galileo, remember, was nearly put to death by the church for constructing his telescope and discovering the moons of jupiter.

the church also forbade dissection of the human cadaver, thereby stalling medical research for many, many years.

i would agree.

Gothic_J

as far as I know, he didnt tell the s.s. to stop looking for heretics, the catholics did not stop congratsing him on his birthday, and he did not remove got min uns from the belts of his troops.

Im fairly sure he remained a christian all his life.

as for the rest:

1) That there has been a historical conflict between science and religion.

never mind that astronomer guy, what was his name. . . galey something?

2) That Christians (or Moslems) burnt down the Great Library of Alexandria.

Im told moslems did, but Id love confirmation.

3) That the Church taught that the earth was flat.

why not? some muslims do it now.

4) That Hitler was a Christian.

responded above.

5) That the inquisition was unusually brutal for its time.

brutal is still bad, no? does it matter how it compares on a scale?

oh, Im going to rip off your toes today.
hey, thanx for being so much less brutal!

6) That the victims of witch hunts/crusades ran into millions.

crusades? I wouldnt be surprised. low millions I would expect, though.

7) That Christianity was responsible for the Dark Ages.

provide evidence otherwise. they certainly seemed good at keeping it around.

8) That Eusebius was a liar.

I dont know him.

9) That Christians have always taken the Bible literally.

some christians have, yes.

10) That conversions to Christianity tended to be forced.

indoctrination at a young age helps.

Abacus

It's still happening today. Just look at the Evolution/Creationism "controversy."

Postcard73

I don't know the numbers, but there were definitely tens of thousands of direct victims of the Crusades (not counting the people who lost family, property, etc). Aside from the thousands of Muslims who were killed when the Crusaders ransacked the Holy Land, thousands of xian children were killed or sold into slavery during Children's Crusade. Moreover, thousands of Eastern Orthodox xians were killed by the Crusaders as they passed through the Byzantine Empire...

I don't know if the victims numbered in the millions, but I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue that the Crusades were a happy time representing a positive moment in the history of xianity...

Bede

Just ignore me, I am sorry to be dismissive but your post seemed to me to say that my openning post was irrelevant. Your initial point was, if everything I said was true (and it is), so what? You are right to say that one can take a very positive view of religion while not believing it - I have friends who think that and get the impression that Jung, among other thinkers, thought likewise.

But this is a history forum and I am exploring (in a deliberately provocative way) some common misconceptions about history that many atheists have. If I could convince them all they were wrong I doubt I would convert them, but at least they would be slightly better informed atheists. Conversely, if they convince a creationist to be an eveolutionist, they (hopefully) would simply end up with a better informed Christian (like me ).

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Ojuice5001

Those aren't myths! They're historical propositions. First, let me play along with your incorrect definition of "myth," and see which ones I think are true.

1. There has been a conflict of science and religion. Each has encroached on each other's turf. Religion has opposed advances like evolution, while scientists have tried to argue mechanistic materialism, that is, the naturalistic philosophy that all material events can only happen in one way rather than another. Creationism is the belief that life has only a supernatural explanation, and no natural one. Determinism is the belief that the weather has only a natural explanation, and no supernatural one. No one has disproved my position that both phenomena have both a natural explanation and a supernatural one, but some people on both sides of the fence claim to have.

2. I don't see why you'd rule it out. The Muslim king Omar I said it would be a good idea, how do you know one of his people didn't decide to go for it.

3. True.

4. We don't know either way. You certainly can't trust his public statements to be honest.

5. The Inquisition may not have been especially physically cruel; but the problem people have with it is that they were spying on their own citizens to find out if they had some slightly heretical belief. It was a sin against the First and Fourth Amendments, not the Eighth.

Now if you wanted to name some overpublicized medieval scandal, you should have gone for the Crusades. They were a pretty ordinary war for their time, but people are still talking about it.

6. True.

7. Xianity caused great disturbances in both the human and the divine worlds. I think it's likely that a Jupiter-ruled pagan world might have had the practical outlook necessary to recover from the Empire's collapse better than a Yahweh-ruled Xian world.

8. Don't know who that is.

9. True. Neither fundamentalists nor liberals interpret the Bible the same way as the medieval Church did.

10. Varies greatly from place to place.

Anyway, these are not myths. Myths are stories that give an intuitive understanding of real gods. Which actually means that #7 is a myth, but the rest aren't. Now it is possible that something an atheist wrote could be a myth, but the atheist himself couldn't think of it as mythology, or gain any knowledge about gods from it.

Mr. Neutron

Bede, I was not saying your post was irrelevant, and I apologize if I gave that impression. I was merely expressing my belief that so many of the issues discussed in this forum - specifically Biblical issues - were rather irrelevant in the larger context of proving the reality of the Xian god and the validity of the Xian faith. And as I said, I understand this is a forum with a specific focus, but since this is the place where those discussions occur, I thought it appropriate to post it here.

However, in hindsight, perhaps I should have created a separate thread for this. Perhaps one of the mods could do me the favor of moving my post.

keyser_soze

Non coercive conversion?

Let's see, the vast majority of slaves were forced to convert to christianity....Then there was that little thing where someone executed 10,000 people in one morning because they refused to convert from one brand of x to another, then there were the crusades, then we have ....oh hell, it's not worth the trouble. Christianity is a freaking virus and we all know it.