I have to disagree with that. The Holocaust, when it took place, was a racism thing. But the roots with the anti-semitarian lay in the special history of Chistianity and Judaism. The jews were seen as the murderers of the saviour. There were progroms going on on a regular basis for the second millenium. They often were the scapegoat. Bad crops? Kill a few of the usual suspects, they perform black magic with the blood of Christian newborn.

There simply was no other group that could have been blamed in the way the Jews were. If there had been no anti-semitism in the first place, Hitler probably wouldn't have happed.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't say the Christians are actually to blame for Hitler. I only want to show that monotheistic religions are prone to create a climate of intolerance. Look at the islamistic countries. They have suicide bombers, kill each other over (IMO) minor differences. The Taliban destroyed buddhistic artwork that was thousands of years old.

You did not read everything, I presume. I do not blame Christians of today of the destruction of temples in Rome 1600 years ago. I did not say they are to blame for destroying the pagan cultures around the world of the crusades.
What I did say, was that I know a lot of Christians and most are decent folk and "good people".

But if you ask them, why they believe, it's most often because of tradition basically. They were raised Christian, as were their parents and ancestors. And because "they could not have been all wrong" they also believe. But when I say those ancestors did a lot of horrible things, because of belief (maybe not the leaders, but the actual people that held the swords and torches) and also thought they were "good people" because they fought the worthless heathens, I hear "But they were all wrong". See the contradiction?

They justify their believes in history, but it is really cherry picking. The "fire and sword"-Christians also justified their deeds with their belief. Love or murder, you find a fitting quote in the bible.
If I believed in the devil I could imagine that he invented the Abrahamic religions to wreak havoc upon the world.

If you think I picking on the Christians here, I must admit, I'm not without guilt. I don't know what it's like in Finland, but even in the "atheistic" eastern Germany you just can't escape Christianity.

I'm annoyed if they call it "Christian values" (you know they wanted exactly this term in the European constitution?) as if they had a copyright on that. It's "Human values", because anything other implies that either "them" wouldn't honor that values or "them" are not worth of them. So as a non-Christian I would either be a total douchebag (no values) or I may be treated like an animal.

I'm annoyed that the churches get a special treatment from the state. The state collect taxes for them gives millions upon millions for their institutions. At the same they are as an employer excluded from certain laws, what means their employees have worse working conditions and less salary than it would be allowed for anybody else.

I'm annoyed that they (and only they) can teach their stuff in state founded schools. I have a daughter that will go to school this summer. We had to choose between two subject for her Religion or Ethics. It's enraging that the first is called "Religion" in the first place, because it's solely "Christian belief taught as a fact" as if it was the only religion in the world. I would like a subject "Religion" that deserved the name, covering all the major beliefs (and the interesting minor ones).
So we chose Ethics. The first two year of the curriculum are about friendship, family, trust and lies. I'm fine with that. The third year: Christianity and the holidays. The curriculum never states that the holidays are from much older traditions. It's only xmas: Jesus born, easter: Jesus dead and resurrected, etc pp.
The fourth year is about Islam and Judaism. And that was that. Not even the Buddhists get their turn.

Can you understand I'm annoyed? After I read the curriculum it was for the first time that ringing of the church bells (every hour all over the city) really bothered me. I feel a little claustrophobic nowadays.

That said, I was really proud of "God's own country" (that I often enough frown upon), when I read some time ago that they have priests for every major religion in their army. Even Wiccan. I would very much welcome this level of tolerance in my country, but guess who has the say over that.

Edit: Again my fingers were a little off the right keys.

sorry, kinda tired so ill just shamelessly cherry pick:

About jews - sure i agree with you they had "special history", but my point was that they simply made super-good victims for nazi. The best victims. But, if there had not been jews around, the frustration of loss of WW1 would still have been around, "shamefull" treaty of Versailles would still have been around, rise of marxism would still have been around, nationalism and facism would still have risen their heads (italy, spain..) etc..

Europe was huge powder keg at the time and among zillion of other things there was lots of bad feeling and economics in Germany after WW1.

If you take a quick peek for example at here, you get good idea what was going on around the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

Hitler and WW2 would have happened even without jews - there were too many reasons for it to happen. Too much pressure. And Hitler found one of the escape valves for the pressure in German by simply blaming the good ol jews. But it could have been just as well some other minority - or simply blame the victors of WW1.

Peoples frustration and resentment would have eventually found something to blame.

----

I studied something like ethics instead of religion in school myself and it was actually one of the more interesting subjects really. We did study in broad manner all major religions, but didnt really pay any special attention to christianity. Dont mind if my kids get the same treatment. Certainly prompted me to think with my own brains.

Anyways, about christians cherrypicking their past - thats absolutely natural. I am not saying its good things, but everyone does that. We like to remember and think about good things, not so much about the bad things. If you parent- grandparent was involved in killing someone or participating in genocide of some group or other - it would only natural for you not to want to think about it and instead remember the good time you spend with him/her.

"There must have been reason." Thats what we would probably think and we would probably be just right.

Anyways, people and world are different today than in the ancient past - morals and values have changed. It is not very fair to judge past by present values, simply because that was not the way people thought back then. Life was far more brutal and fragile back then and ofcourse it is mirrored in peoples minds.

I read Divine Comedy on wikipedia and I like to ask:

Why are historical and mythical figures from different societies and obviously non christian doing here.

The Titans of Greek myth are in here along with Helen of Troy, Cleopatra Achilles, The River Styx?

Whats going here?

Read up on Dante ;-) He was very educated, especially with the classic Roman literature which in turn references the greek myth a lot.

So you like logic. Many gods are supposed to be omnipotent and eternal. But if something is omnipotent it should be able to do anything, like end its own existance or create a being just like it. But that would mean it is not eternal. So, omnipotent eternal gods are illogical. Why do you think they could exist anyway?

Are you also agnostic about unicorns,santa clause and the easter bunny? (yes I realise this is an old one, but agnosticism is totally unnecessary)



Jippo...I agree with you, wars are mostly not caused by religion,but by greed. But it looked like you were arguing that atheism was the cause of these genocides, that is all I wanted to disprove.

I was talking about the age of industrialism, when britain, india and egypt were very similar, but Britain was the most violent so it subdued the other two. I may have played too much Imperialism 1.

The bible has plenty of stuff about killing, how about raping the women and children of defeated tribes? Not sure about the Koran. Muslims tend to be smart enough to not engange in these kinds of debates where they can only lose. I do wish there were more of the other religions here, like mormons or scientologists, that would be fun. Even the christians would chime in on bashing those.

And about taking any religion to justify whatever, I can make one up right now that could disprove your statement. I am sure there are many around already that could never be used for war.

Sorry to interrupt. The Emperor of Japan is actually a direct descendant of Amaterasu-ōmikami, the sun goddess. And since he can surely prove his lineage, we have evidence that she must have existed.
I'm pretty sure Santa and the easter "bunny" (it's a hare, actually) exist. Not sure about unicorns though. They could be fake.

What now?

But I also notice his writings has been accepted in Catholic Canon.

So I assume that if say you are a devout Catholic you even believe that these figures are real and in these hells.

Open to corrections.

I would like to have a source for that. From all I know he was an acknowledged writer and his envisionment of the Inferno inspired many after him. But I have never heard he was considered "canon". Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Well he did exist.

My sources are vague since its only from memory of watching a show on history channel called , "Seven Deadly Sins" and a Book on the history of Catholicism my mother bought years ago (which had horrifying images of hell envisioned by Catholics)

That was the impostor. Good you got him.

...you havent yet seen "Rare Exports" videos huh?

the training doesnt always kick in unfortunately.

In logic there's a rule: from false presumptions you can assume everything. And that's why I'm absolutely neutral: I can't know which presumptions are right or wrong, as such I can't take any of them as a base for educated decisions. That's why so many people on the internet applaud themselves for "solving" long known problems by their own logic, being absolutely sure that they're just so smart that nobody else (not even the brightest scientists) thought about it before.

What I can say is that some presumptions are very unlikely, others are more likely but stochastics don't make for good logical presumptions as finite possibilities will become definite answers for a given entity, but you can't know which answer applies to a given entity, only what the most likely is.

About santa claus and the easter bunny: those are trivially not right, for simple reasons: I was never made to believe them, my parents told me right up that they were buying presents.
So, as much as I appreciate your - amusing - attempt to turn this discussion into a personal attack on me, it won't work.

What are unicorns anyways? I only know that they're supposed to have one horn, what else does characterize them?

As a math and computer science student I'm just doing what is typical for those with a background in logic: I stay neutral on subjects I can't really verify by studies and/or deduction by logical means. I know, believers will say: it's logical that god exists (I know some interesting logical reasoning for it) and atheists will prove the very same by logical deduction.
The interesting thing is: both groups can make a logically correct statement but it's meaningless, without knowing about the validity of all given presumptions.

So, as much as you think you're a smart person, I cordially invite you to join one of the first semester courses in binary logic. You'll notice that many physicists are strict believers or non believers (both groups knowing that they're absolutely right) and many mathematicians being absolutely neutral, due to the underlying nature of logical deduction in our western binary logic.

So you say that most gods are illogical, but only because the presumption that gods are eternal+omnipotent may be false? So you are agnostic, because some religion's gods may only be omnipotent,but not eternal, or only eternal,but not omnipotent?

And unicorns,santa, easter bunny....way to miss the point. This also applies to Xenu,Ra and all the other ridiculous gods you were not made to believe. So are you saying that you are only agnostic towards the gods your parents taught you about and atheist towards all others?


Edit: I did actually take a binary logic course at the university, but I don't see how that complicated maths shit helps us here with our simplistic deductions.

Your problem is, that you try to turn my words. I'm saying that I can't really decide by logical means if there are god(s) or not. As such I can't answer that question.

Once again you're implying what I think or what I should've said.
How about you ONLY take what I write? Otherwise we're at "false presumptions lead to false deductions" again.

It would help you to - finally - understand that you're implying way too much what others have said in your opinion, which leads to false presumptions, which are - as stated before - not suited as ground for further deductions as wrong presumptions can lead to everything, in fact in binary logic you can deduct everything from a wrong presumption.

Did you never ask yourself why there are so many theoretical physicsts with doctor grades and even they're arguing over and over again if there are god(s) or not? My best friend is a theoretical physicist, he said that he's absolutely right that god exists, because in order to create time and space an entity out of time and space must exist.
His co worker is also a theoretical physicist and he doesn't believe in god, reasoning that the model of the universe we currently have doesn't need a god to work at all.
Which is also a claim made by other, famous physicists.

The problem is, that you're taking a very complex problem (remember, the question is not only if one or more god(s) exist but also what powers they would have. They could exist but not be omnipotent, etc... ) and by making certain presumptions you're deducting that you're right.
I know, to you those reasoning is absolutely logical and you just can't understand how others can be so stubborn and unintelligent to not be able to follow it. You're absolutely sure that those who don't agree are of lesser intelligence.

The problem is different training at school/university and social backgrounds. I've been raised to be skeptic towards everything that's not been proven (which includes religion) and in university I've learned that logic can only be useful when you've proven the used presumptions before.
Trivial example for a false presumption:
-1 = 1 raise both sides to the power of two and you've got 1 = 1 which is - as stated before - right.

But now, hold, we were making a false presumption there, as such we could logically deduct that it would be 1 = 1 but as the presumption was wrong the whole statement was wrong, despite making logical correct deductions.

Just to show you how useless logical deductions are in an environment where you don't know if your presumptions are right or not. At best you could make an educated guess or discuss by probability but you can NEVER make binary logic work there because the results are - at best - unrealiable which defeats the purpose of logic.

Edit: about math: EVERYTHING that can be proven by binary logic can be expressed as a mathematical expression. That's why math is so useful, because it provides certain strict rules to handle logic (think about De morgan).