beyelzu

bede,


actually, if you have read my posts in pd or even some in grd, you would realize i dont pick on easy targets, and i appreciate your charge of cowardice. Yes, I am just some craven atheist, who lives in a xian society and constantly proclaims my atheism. Hell, I dont see how an "outof the closet" atheist can be a coward in the southern united states.

btw, you failed to answer me about those "hate filled myths?"


does that mean there is no answer?

Bede

I was not sure I understood your question.

Why did McCabe so hate the Catholic Church that he was willing to write volumes of polemic and diatribe against it? Dunno. But the fact his writings are largely fictional suggests that the problem was with him rather than the the church. If the real church was bad enough to warrent his hatred he could have stuck to the truth. If your point is that Christians have hate filled myths so atheists are damn well going to have them too, well maybe. But that excuses neither side.

BTW, I have never claimed Hitler was an atheist, never claimed atheists are not moral and only drawn the comparison with atheistic systems when headbangers are playing the Christianity is Evil card.

I do not know your posts elsewhere. But picking on a Christian on the Sec Web boards is being part of the herd not freethinking. And that is all I have seen you doing. That the Christian is me is also not likely to improve my opinion of your efforts to go out on a limb. And if you really do think Dr Rick deserves no censure for his behavior then we have nothing much to discuss.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

beyelzu

bede, you do have quite the persecution syndrome going on. If say ten people say you are fool of crap, maybe they think you are fool of crap and they have each arrived at that opinion individually. However, I am curious as to what was factually inaccurate in the McCabe quote. That is all. Please point it out. I dont care if you speak to me or not. Because it seems that if I disagree with you, you will just paint me as following the herd. So, either make a case against the Dr. Rick post of dont.

Yellum Notnef

Hmm....lets see......
Distorts facts.
Has a warped view of the world.
Won`t accept facts that conflict with their personal mythology.
Not worth any intelligent person bothering with.

This description of "headbanger" sounds a lot more like Bede than these so called "atheist fundamentalists".
It`s also rather amusing coming from someone who`s idea of "facts" include the existence of witches and the physical resurrection of Jesus.

Bede,please don`t take my name off your ignore list.

Bede

1) The massive exaggeration of hundreds of thousands.

2) The idea that that the papacy was driving secular authorities to be more severe:

"A good deal of inquisitorial history has been written as if the papal inquisitors were the only ardent pursuers of alleged wrong doers in 13th century Europe. In fact they were always less numerous and often less ardent than the judicial servants of secular powers." Peters p 57

3) Innocent III as 'drenched in blood':

"What Inncoent wanted most of all was reform - of clergy and laity - and certainly not persecution and condemnation and certainly not the devastating consequences of the Albigensian crusade" Peters p 51

4) That there was money in hunting heretics. We have the accounts of some tribunals and they were often barely able to pay their staff.

A balanced history would show that inquisitors were, as I have said before, a product of their times. There were abuses and these were recognised and dealt with. As I have repeatedly said, I am not defending them but I am more interested in facts than the polemic of anti-Catholics who twist the historical record to protray the inquisition as worse than it was and worse than other jurisdictions of its time. McCabe is trying to say that the secular authorites were pushed into attacking heretics by the church. This is untrue and if you were accused of heresy you were much better off before an inquisitor. It was wrong to hunt heretics but it was not the church institigated mass murder that McCabe wants you to believe. For even the severesty of eccelesiastical writers "freely admitted that the administration of strict justice must be tempered with mercy where ever possible" (Peters p56).

I have said this many times now, backed by sources and stated reasonably. I am afraid even a hundred headbangers saying it is crap will not change the facts. If you are a reasonable person you might try and put aside the polemic and question the motives of people who are not interested in the historical record.

As for my persecution complex, I am human. Cut me and I bleed. There are a good few knives out here.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Fr.Andrew

So now we have "Peters" against "McCabe". Is there anything to recommend the historical accuracy of one over the other?

Amos

What I find interesting is that atheist, rather, those atheists who left religious fundamantalism behind with the help and assistence of extensive recovery programs that are known to deal with such recoveries ONLY, still do not recognize that they once were bewitched.

Oh, and Brighid, you were never one of those.

Dr Rick

The Albigensian Crusade began in the late 12th century. In 1207 Pope Innocent III enjoined on the French king to annihilate the heretics. When Beziers, a city of between twenty thousand and forty thousand inhabitants was taken and the general asked what to do with the inhabitants of the captured city, the papal legate answered, “Kill them all! God will know his own.” In this manner town after town was taken, pillaged, and burnt; of the inhabitants, the orthodox were chained together, and sent to the slave-markets, while the heretics were massacred and burnt. Nothing was left but a smoking waste.

Innocent III also preached the Fourth Crusade, which gathered-up some twenty-thousand mauraders that conquered Constantinople but never made it to the Holy Land, much to his dismay. He called for another crusade and was answered by children: Beginning in France thousands of children, boys and girls, made off for the Holy Land inspired by a boy's vision that an army of children would retake it. None made it; they all died by hunger, disease, or drowning, or were sold into slavery.

Before he died in 1216, Innocent expressed revulsion and regret at the carnage that he had set in motion.

The orders of the Pope against heretics were approved at the twelfth general synod (1215). They were, in substance, that all rulers should tolerate no heretics in their domains: if a ruler refused to clear his land of heretics at the demand of the Church, and should persist in his refusal, he should be deprived of his authority, and even ejected from it by force: to every one who joined in the expeditions against heretics, like favors should be granted as were granted to crusaders.

The claim that "...the papal inquisitors...were always less numerous and often less ardent than the judicial servants of secular powers" makes a false distinction; the secular officers, rulers, soldiers and Crusaders all were acting upon the orders and at the behest of Rome. The Inquisitions were instigated by the Church, and they were, in many cases, plain mass-murder.

Rick

Bede

Dr Rick,

Nice to see you can be reasonable and address facts. Your latest post is by far you most nuanced and objective to date. I hope you keep it up.

The famous quote is seriously doubted by modern historians and you are aware that all cities that were taken by storm were subject to pillage for three days. This was the case regardless of the religious circumstances of the war or the inhabitants. This is not to excuse such behavior but to point there was nothing special about what happened at Beziers.

That Innocent III, who had not tried to recruit child crusaders but admitted to be impressed by their piety, unleashing powers he plainly could not control and bitterly regretted shows that the papacy did not have the kind of power over secular authorities you assume. Innocent was about as powerful a pope as there ever was and even he had to constantly battle to maintain influence and try and keep some sort of control over princes and kings. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. What is clear is that the papacy could only really push on open doors. Secular powers did things they wanted to do anyway with much more gusto than the chuirch intended (fight wars, hunt heretics and witches) but not what they didn't (stop fighting each other, accept the legal jurisdiction to the church). As Philip the Fair of France said to the Pope "Your power is a matter of words, ours is a matter of facts and deeds". Clearly Philip regarded the church as a bit of a talking shop.

Hence while the church enjoined that heretics be hunted, secular powers were all to happy to agree - they had been doing it for years already. At the risk of simplifying, you could say that while the church wanted to wipe out heresy, the secular powers wanted to wipe out heretics. The same was later true of witchcraft.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

NightWatchman

Its all symbolic, like all scriptures, but when taken literally was responsible for 1000s of beautiful women to be killed by religion, who doesnt have any idea how to read ancient scriptures. Besides they wanted the withes land and money, so used the bible verse as open invitation to kill them.


do not suffer a witch to live really means

a with is a symbol of your lower nature, as it tries to keep you from obtaining a higher consciousness, by her magical and wise ways. So to kill the witch, simply means to overcome your lower nature, and rise up to the higher. its all mind stuff. lower vs higher thoughts. the bible always uses women and first borns and such as symbols of the lower nature.


the night watchman