Buffman

Rad

Nice try! How unfortunate for you that most folks in these forums are better informed and insightful than just one more mentally regimented, theist, zealot who happens to be a Christian one. A zealot who must defend, by whatever means he can, his beliefs in a supernatural fairyland fantasy in order to lead an ethical and moral life.

What a terrible blow it must be to your own psyche to discover that there are hundreds-of-millions of humans who can and do lead ethical and moral lives without any Christian promises of afterlife rewards, or threats of eternal damnation, to govern and control their minds and actions.

Just as I asked you before, and to which you seem too fearful to respond, "What are the differences between Osama bin Laden's zealous religious faith belief in the supernatural god Allah(PBUH) and our founding father's, or current politician's, zealous religious faith belief in the supernatural god they call Elohim/Yahveh/ Jehovah/Jesus?" If you don't believe the the Old Testament is divinely inspired and valid, just say so. Don't attempt to claim that everything changed because of what is written in the New Testament. That would be just one more terrified, inerrant bible believer, hypocritical cop-out...and based on some of your replies, I wouldn't be surprised if you already knew that.

So, do you have the forthrightness to enlighten everyone left reading these posts what makes Christianity more ethical and moral than any other belief system...especially a comparable supernatural one? Of course like always with your posts, in order to make any kind of informed response to them, it should be done in a forum designed for the purpose. This is not the appropriate one for me to be asking you to explain another of your numerous, and all too often spurious, allegations in greater detail. (There! I have given you another escape hatch.)

Toto

Hi Rad:

Please produce the quote where you say that IMO was replaced by ellipses by a moderator.

I quoted part of your post once in order to respond, and used ellipses to show where I was just quoting part of the quote. You seemed to think there was a problem, which you could only address by sarcasm. I then lined up the short excerpt that I used and you full quote, and challenged you to show how your meaning was distorted. You did not reply then. But now you're repeating this complaint about a moderator putting ellipses into your sacred words.

But of course, you can't show that Luther was misquoted either, although your efforts to backpedal on that are quite amusing.

Radorth

You know which one it is. Searching posts using the terms "Washington Christian" (User Radorth, and others) produces nothing except one quote which is much later. It should have produced several quotes from you, me and Buffman. So either I do not know how to use it, or it doesn't work, or there is some other problem.

I know what I said about Washington, and that you had no reason at all to insert ellipses.

Rad

Radorth

Er, no. I've often said I don't see much difference, generally speaking, in behavior; that integrity is a "mixed bag" and that some atheists live "better" lives than some Christians. Not sure where you got all that.

Actually I became a Christian on the condition that I did not have to give up anything, so in my case your theory has no basis, is just specualtive mind reading, and pigeonholing. I'm surprised Christians don't behave worse, since many think they are saved anyway.

And I answered you. So did George Washington.

Er, "Christian civilization" as Churchill called it, saved the World from Stalin and Hitler?

Those whom Jefferson called the three greatest men in history were Christians? Locke, Bacon and Newton I believe? He definitely left out your St Voltaire.

Jefferson got most of his ideas from others, as he said, especially Locke and Hooker?

A Christian college graduated the first balck female?

A Christian monk was responsible for ending the Roman bloodgames.

Your turn. Then I'll give you another list.

Rad

Toto

I suggest starting a new thread in Moral Principles or General Religious Discussion if you want to get into the superiority of Christian Civilization.

But I would just note that those atheistic commie Russians were fairly important in saving Churchill from the Nazis. I suppose you're going to say they were doing God's will?

Also that Jefferson listed those 3 great men when he ordered portraits of them - it sounds like an off the cuff comment. Of course in other writings he also expressed admiration for Jesus and Socrates.

Radorth

Inadvertantly, yes. God knows what people will do better than they do, and uses them to accomplish his purposes.

"He takes the wise in their own craftiness."

As I said before, he was behind the Constitution (and helped the founders at critical times) because he knew it would help promulgate the Gospel as never before. Madison said virtually the same thing.

Oh, the irony.

Rad

Buffman

Rad

First, just as I expected! You are unable to address the specifics of my questions so you have "gobbled-off" into something entirely extraneous. However, since it offers those still interested an opportunity to acquire more historical knowledge, I have elected to see if I can provide some accurate information that may help to give a greater contextual body to your remarks rather than simplistically resorting a repetitious listing of all the horrors perpetrated on humanity by Christians since the beginning of their supernatural crusade.

Er, "Christian civilization" as Churchill called it, saved the World from Stalin and Hitler?

So you are saying that anyone that supported Hitler in WWII was not a civilized Christian. Is that correct? And then I guess you are saying that only Christians developed the Atomic/Nuclear bombs that were the primary reasons that Christian civilization, whatever that is in your mind, was "saved," whatever that means in your mind, from Stalin. However, is it possible that one Christian civilization merely attacked another Christian civilization in WWII? Is it possible that the Western "Capitalist" nations of NATO simply outspent the Eastern "Communist" nations of the WARSAW PACT...which included many Christian nations on both sides? All I see are Christians slaughtering other Christians and attempting to dominate one another and anyone else unlucky enough to get in their way. You might have made a better case if you had used Japan and mentioned the propaganda phrase of the "Yellow Peril/Menace." At least they weren't a Christian civilization.

Those whom Jefferson called the three greatest men in history were Christians? Locke, Bacon and Newton I believe? He definitely left out your St Voltaire.

Absolutely accurate. Jefferson also definitely left out your "supernatural" Jesus Christ in that letter...and emphasized that fact by saying "without any exception." So? Are you claiming that Jefferson was incapable of identifying that his three greatest men owed their greatness to Christianity? (You may wish to discover what Jefferson meant by "Moral" sciences.)

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/je...more/let72.htm

(Extract)
DEAR SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of the 5'th. inst. With respect to the busts & pictures I will put off till my return from America all of them except Bacon, Locke and Newton, whose pictures I will trouble you to have copied for me: and as I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences, I would wish to form them into a knot on the same canvas, that they may not be confounded at all with the herd of other great men. To do this I suppose we need only desire the copyist to draw the three busts in three ovals all contained in a larger oval in some such form as this each bust to be the size of life.
(End extract)

(Info Extract)
Jefferson was a deist, as were many other notables of the period leading up to and including the founding of our nation (e.g., Washington, Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin). Deists believe that God does not takes part in the daily transaction of humankind. Although Jefferson's words and writings were accomplished mainly in the late 1700s and early 1800s, his writings continue to help us to preserve a nation in which the nonconforming thinkers are at liberty to let their thoughts flow freely without direct societal repression.
(End info extract)

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Bi...hy/BiosPol.htm

(Extract)
Voltaire (1694-1778): []
Born Francois-Marie Arouet in Paris, Voltaire, a pen name he adopted early in his career, through his writings, became the "embodiment of the 18th-century enlightenment." He was against organized religion, fanaticism, intolerance and superstition; his cry: Ecrasez l'infâme! ("Crush the infamous thing!") He was a constant source of irritation to the political and religious authorities of the time. ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.") At times he found himself in prison, and, at other times, fleeing the country (he spent three years in England [1726-29], and was much taken up with the English political and scientific scene, in particular, Locke and Newton). His works and ideas helped to foster the French Revolution.
(End extract)

Info:
Bacon died in 1626
Locke died in 1704
Newton died in 1727
Voltaire died in 1778
Jefferson died in 1826

http://srjarchives.tripod.com/1998-03/beless.htm

(Just info extract)
In 1960, Brother William R. Denslow, Masonic scholar and editor of the Transactions of the Missouri Lodge of Research, concluded that Jefferson was not a Mason, saying all claims for his membership are based on association or insinuation, with no proof by records.

Thomas Jefferson was often in Masonic company. His son-in-law Governor of Virginia Thomas M. Randolph, his favorite grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, and nephews Peter and Samuel Carr were all members of Door to Virtue Lodge No. 44, Albemarle County, Virginia. Freemasons such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Lafayette, and Jean Houdon were some of his closest associates in Europe. Masons whom he admired in America included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Benjamin Rush, John Paul Jones, James Madison, James Monroe, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
(End just info extract)

Jefferson got most of his ideas from others, as he said, especially Locke and Hooker?

Please provide a reference for this allegation. Thank you.

A Christian college graduated the first balck female?

Please provide her name, the name of the college and the year of graduation. Thank you.

A Christian monk was responsible for ending the Roman bloodgames.

Please provide the name of the monk, his order and the year he ended the bloodgames all by himself . Thank you.

http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/cl...e1.htm#killing

(Extract)
Even among Christian apologists there was less concern about the killing5 that went on in the munus than would be the case today. The primary objection of both Tertullian and Augustine was the moral harm done to the spectator. Perhaps one important reason for this is that those who were killed in the munus were mostly from the dregs of society, e.g., slaves and criminals and therefore not worthy of consideration.
Despite these objections, Christian emperors tolerated gladiatorial contests, even Theodosius, whose closing of all pagan cults and sites brought to an end the long tradition of the relatively tame Olympic games. Some Christians, however, indulged in more than passive toleration. There were rich Christians who actively sponsored gladiatorial contests. A pope in the late fourth century AD (Damasus in 367 AD) even recruited gladiators to destroy his enemies. Honorius, Theodosius' son, finally decreed the end of gladiatorial contests in 399 AD.
(End extract)

Radorth

Ah so you were baiting me, and now blaming me for going off topic, after you raised the issues. I wonder if Toto noted.

Pretty much, yeah. If find no Biblical basis for Hitler's actions or world-view. (Nor Luther's, toward the Jews)

That is unfortunately typical of pigeonholing and your simplistic rhetorical questions. Our leaders did not have to kill enemies to stay in power. The best scientists came here. There were too many extraordinary and favorable coincidences to list here. We won battles we never ought to have won due to these, due to the arrogance and gaffs of the axis powers. All coincidence? Ask Ben Franklin and George Washington.

Huh? Your argument rests on this assertion?That is doubtless one reason he praised the teachings of Jesus so highly.

Heh. This atheist automaton "info" has been proven, in the case of Washington and Franklin, to be complete nonsense, hardly worthy of a response. For those who don't get out much and remain ignorant of history, Franklin and Washington saw the hand of God working everywhere, and Washington begged the nation not to forget what Providence had done for them.

I guess Buffman just likes hearing himself repeat these mantras.

Rad

Radorth

"Negro" graduates of Oberlin
YEAR NAME DEGREE
1844 George B. Vashon A.B.
1845 William Cuthbert Whitehorne A.B.
1847 William Howard Day A.B.
1849 James Monroe Jones A.B.
John Mercer Langston A.B.
1850 Mrs. Lucy Stanton Sessions
Lawrence Washburne Minor
1853 Mrs. Frances Williams Clark
1855 Ann Maria Hazle
1856 Louisa Lydia Alexander
Mrs. Sarah Woodson Early
John Craven Jones A.B.
Mrs. Sarah K. Wall Fidler
Mrs. Emma J. Gloucester White
1857 William Allen Jones
1858 John G. Mitchell A.B.
1859 Elias Toussaint Jones A.B.
1860 Mrs. Blanche Harris Jones
Mrs. Susan Reid Oliver
Benjamin Kellogg Sampson
Charles Henry Thompson (theolog)
1861 Charles Alexander Dorsey
Mrs. Maria L. Waring Williamson
1862 James Hiram Muse
Mary Jane Patterson A.B.
1864 John Hartwell Cook
Mrs. Mary McFarland Hayes
1865 Thomas Lewis Harris
Mrs. Marion Lewis Howard
Frances Josephine Norris
Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin A.B.
Thomas DeSaliere Tucker
George Green Collins
1866 James Henry Piles
1867 Chanie Ann Patterson
John Eaton Patterson

Makes Harvard look racist, doesn't it?

OH BTW, the fundy bigot Charles Finney was president during a large part of this period.

Rad

Radorth

You deny that Jefferson said the "Declaration" was a collection of other's ideas? Please refer to my previous source on Hooker's contributions at the beginning of the "Constitution" thread. I guess you missed it. Locke was widely quoted by the founders, but a "careful researcher" like you would know that already.

Rad