Radorth

No because a few advances are helpful. But if it doesn't make better neighbors, which it doesn't, it is not much use except in a few areas like medicine. Money spent exploring the moon five times was wasted IMO. The Native Americans were quite happy before we brought them science, you'll recall. Thankfully they took on the Protestant habit of not murdering and raping their neighbors.

Rad

atheist_in_foxhole

ROFLMAO

You're obviously quite ignorant of European history.

Sabine Grant

It appears you are asking me a question yet you pertain to reply already " I do not believe you do". It also appears that you made it your job " to try and change their behavior".

Schu... you can only inspire others by your own example. It is probably and IMO the best way to influence someone. My point is that childish comments do not engender inspiration rather defensiveness. If I want for someone to wash their hands, I will probably wash mine first.....

The comments addressed to Gemma had to do with her claiming her devotion for Christ. I see nothing there to be compared with what you call "ignorance". It is her faith and her level of devotion that were being demeaned by some comments. Respecting someone's faith is as important as respecting someone's decision to deny the existence of any divinity.

In more simple terms... are we to do onto others what we do not wish done onto us?

Do you want your thoughts and opinions when expressed sincerely to be greeted by nasty demeaning comments or are you inspired to pursue a dialogue when you feel that your persona is respected?

Because we cannot relate to someone else's choice does not give us the right to demean their choice. It is our lack of understanding and tolerance which is to be modified. Not their choice. There is a far more peaceful resolution to most issues as we try to walk in someone else's shoes for an instant.

Sabine Grant

Hello atheist in foxhole....

I am not sure the term " European history" explains it all... there is such diversity within the histories of various european countries that the term you used remains vague. I will comment more later as I have to go to work for now.

fando

You forget or ignore the significance of what the Nazi Germans did to Russia. It was far worse than what they did to the rest of Western Europe combined. You can blame Stalin as well, for he singlehandedly put Russia in the weakened state that the Germans exploited, and he also dictated the very brutal policy of revenge once the Russians started winning the eastern front. It's not because Stalin was atheist or socialist, but because he was just another complete totalitarian jerk like Hitler. When the brutal armies of Hitler are retreating from your area and the brutal armies of Stalin are approaching, which way do you run? Away from both, which incidentally put you into the arms of the Allied forces.

Rousseau_CHN

Nice, except that you too forgot one thing...the Russian commies were part of the Allied forces.

Radorth

Well I was talking about American Indians. Of fine. Let us make it "fundy American Protestant" habit then. As you know, we get along much better with Canada and Mexico than Russia gets along with China or Hungary

Rad

Radorth

Heh. No need to run away from the German soldiers. That is merely an assumption with no factual basis. You have two advancing enemy armies to choose from. Do you pick the atheist socialist or what Churchill called "Christian civilization?

As you know, some Russians raped so many women, their officers were obliged to shoot them. Facts are facts bub, but I'm sure you will torture them until they fit into your world-view.

Rad

Mageth

I don't see what the final weeks of WWII have to do with what the "Christian" settlers did to the Native Americans. Besides, you seem to be overlooking the fact that Nazi Germany (and Kaiser's Germany, if you roll the clock back a little farther) was a Christian nation.

Let me put it this way, if you were a member of a Lakota Sioux family, and the Cavalry was coming to decimate your village, would you be more likely to run to the local fort full of Christians or to the Blackfoot village down the river a bit?

Mageth

You appear to know as little about Native American cultures and the history of their tragic defeat at the hands of the Christian Europeans who justified their actions under the Bible-based "Manifest Destiny", as you appear to know about European history.

Did you know that the savage practice of scalping was introduced to the Native Americans by the English?

The Iroquois Confederacy was a nation , which BTW influenced our own constitution. From here: (emphasis mine)

Hiawatha and Deganwidah founded the League of the Iroquois sometime between A.D. 1000 and 1450 under a constitution they called the Kaianerekowa or Great Law of Peace.

[In Agrarian Justice, Thomas Paine] returned once again to the Iroquois, among whom he had learned democracy, when he wrote, "The fact is, that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began, or had been born among the Indians of North-America at the present day."

After this taste of Indian diplomacy, Franklin became a lifelong champion of the Indian political structure and advocated its use by the Americans....Speaking to the Albany Congress in 1754, Franklin called on the delegates of the various English colonies to unite and emulate the Iroquois League, a call that was not heeded until the Constitution was written three decades later.

And the Iroquois nation was not the only seat of peaceful civilization in America before the Europeans came. Your characterization of Native Americans is right out of 18th and 19th century rhetoric portraying NAs as only savages, deserving to be conquored, even destined to be conquored by White Christian civilization.

What did some of our fine, moral, outstanding Christians (or deists, at least in some cases) say about Native Americans? (sourced from the above site):

From a Washington letter of 1783: Indians have "nothing human except the shape...the gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

George Washington also wrote that Indians "...were wolves and beasts who deserved nothing from the whites but 'total ruin'"

Thomas Jefferson argued that the United States government was obliged "...to pursue [Indians] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach" .

Andrew Jackson urged United States troops "...to root out from their 'dens' and kill Indian women and their 'whelps'"

And Andrew Johnson, in a message to Congress, 1867, said "If the savage resists, civilization, with the Ten Commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate execution."

Teddy Roosevelt: "I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian. I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

"Discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects...it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession....[D]iscovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest...the Indians were fierce savages...whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest. To leave them in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness." (Supreme Court, Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 US 543, 1823, pgs. 573, 587, 590)

I love the way all those guys expressed their fine, Christian principles! It's a good thing their religion taught them not to rob, rape, steal and murder!

And from here:

In 1851 the Governor of California officially called for the extermination of the Indians in his state. [3, pg.144]

On March 24, 1863, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver ran an editorial titled, "Exterminate Them."

On April 2, 1863, the Santa Fe New Mexican advocated "extermination of the Indians."

In 1867, General William Tecumseh Sherman said:
"We must act with vindictive earnestness against the [Lakotas, known to whites as the Sioux] even to their extermination, men, women and children."

Let me ask you a question: how would you describe the moral differences between the Nazi program for the Jews and the American "program" for the Indians?