Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.
I happened upon your website and was reading some of your articles. I will need to read more to get you perspective, but for now I would like to reaspond to something that was posted in your religion section. Christian Apology I will post the article points with my responces and own personal feelings following. Perhaps we can have a bit of a frinedly debate. Keep this in mind though. When talking about what Christians have done, lets distinguish between what the Apostoles and Jesus taught, as opossed to what later people claiming to be Christians thought.
I have few quarrels with Jesus, just with his followers.
(Article speaking) I apologise for promoting a superstition/speculation as if it were a manifest truth. I had my doubts about it, but I closed my mind to reason. I thought I was doing the right thing. I refused to look at the harm it had caused and continues to cause. Please forgive my religion:
Just as long as it is articulated that this is the Pope’s apology on behalf of the Catholic Christians, which only represents one view of the Christian faith, that he happens to lead. I personaly don’t view Catholocism as correct Christianaty and wish people would quit lumping it like it represent mainstream Christianaty. I myself am a born again Christian and have no assosiation with the Catholic Church and do not want to be held accountable for what other people claiming to be Christians have done.
Your religion has a pedigree going back to the reformation and back before that to the Catholic church. You bear some historical responsibility to right the evils done by your church in the past.
(article) 1. For burning gay people at the stake and continuing the condemnation that we knew perfectly well would lead to events like the Matthew Shepard crucifixion on the fence.
I think that was a tragedy, but in no way represents true Christianaty/. there are plenty of examples of gay people I could give who have done horable things, does that mean that the gay beleif is corrupt? However, if you feel that way about Christians. Then can we see a public apology from athiests for their philosophey’s that have killed millions of people? Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao See Dung (if I spelled that right) come to mind. Hitler got alot of his idea’s about inferior races and ethnic groups from Darwin and Neitzche mind you.
This is not the same thing as saying some Christians were spiteful to gays. It is part of the belief of many churches that it is virtuous to be spiteful to gays. I doubt Jesus would agree, having treated even a prostitute with respect. This perverse teaching has inspired even people outside the faith to acts of evil.
(article) 2. For justifying slavery by salving the consciences of the slave owners, feeding them twaddle that somehow the myth of activities of Noah’s sons justified it. By our inaction, the attitudes of slave owners live on today as racism.
That view is only held be certain sects of Christianaty. I personaly reject it myself. Luke recorded Paul in the book of acts as saying that all people and nations are descended from one blood. The Bible supports interracial marriage for another example. So yeas, some people feed that jargen, but not the people who wrote the Bible. Darwin taught that certain speices within a given race (including human) were supirior to others. The title of his book reads something like Origin of the species by means of natural selection, the struggle for preservation of the favored races. Why dont we talk about the contrabution on athiest’s part to kill the Americian Indiana, the Australian Aborigine, or African Pigmey by promotion of the evolution philosophey?
However, historically your faith helped hold slavery in place. You owe those affected a formal apology. You should do this because you believe slavery is wrong, not because you side with the degenerate views of your ancestors.
(article) 3. For oppressing the poor of the earth encouraging them to endure oppression from political and financial tyrants.
Like athiests, polythiests, or agnostics don’t do the same things? What about what Christians have done to benafit mankind, such as establishing hospitials, creating faith based charities and founding schools? Again to remind you, are you talking about what Jesus taught or what other people taught?
I am asking for a simple apology. When you step on someone’s foot do you dance around like this making up silly excuses like "other people stepped on your foot too so why should I apologise? Hitler did far worse things that step on a foot, so why should I apologise for something so minor?" The only issue is did you or did you not step on someone’s foot? What anyone else did is completely irrelevant.
(article) 4. For torturing so many millions, Jew, Muslim, Wicca… just because they fell for a different myth than we did.
Yah and athiest dictators can be linked to 10 times more deaths from wars and such in the past 100 years then Christians are in the past 2000 years. I do not support what happened during the Crusades or Inquasitions. To note, the Pope said things like "people can attain salvation through the sword." Which was never taught by Jesus. On another note, the Muslim went on crusades to drive Christians and Jews out of Palastine about 300 years before Christians went on their crusades to get the Holy Land back. The Muslim Crudade being the more violent, to put it into context.
(article) 5. For interfering in so many ways with birth control. We feel infinitely ashamed of way this attempt to increase the number of the faithful has turned the earth into a tree stripped bare by caterpillars.
Would like you to respond to issues of 12 year old girls going to get abortions without their parents consent or knowladge. Personaly I don’t oppose birth control by means of Condoms for married couples in certain cases. I do oppose birth control pills and abortion. I also believe that the problem is not over population, but population distrubution and behavour.
(article) 6. For suppressing observable scientific truth when it conflicted with the Bible. Instead of God/Truth, we worshiped the Bible, which we knew full well was the work of men. Clearly this was idolatry. Further, we used all manner of deceit in this suppression.
In our age of scientific enlightenment, I am supprised that some people still reject intelligent design as a credable theory. Issac Newton, probably the greatest scientist who ever lived, wrote more books on the Bible and religion then on science. Or do athiests supprese this type of knowladge from people to try and make religious people look unscientific?
Where is your evidence of suppression? Newton went mad near the end of his life and consumed himself with religious trivia. Science does not ban books; the Church does and meddling Kristians like Ashcroft do.
(article) 7. For making people feel guilty for having perfectly normal sexual urges, heterosexual and homosexual.
Can you provehomosexualaty is natural? Again, Jesus taught the Old Testement as valid and commisioned Paul to teach the Christian religion. So are you calling Jesus and God a homophobe if the God of the Bible does in fact exsist? A question for your point of view. Do you consider beastealaty, poligamy and pedafilea natural too? Or do you opress people’s rights to have sex with animals and children?
Because it occurs naturally in one in ten people, more frequently than left handedness. It requires no artifice. It occurs in many other species. It occurs in nature, therefore it is natural. I assure that forcing myself to have sex with females feels totally unnatural, at least as unnatural as it would be for you to be anally penetrated by a dog. How dare you tell me what is natural. How the hell could you possibly know what it is like to be be. This is the arrogance I so detest in Kristians.
(Article) 8. For lying to people that the money we collected was for God. We knew that God did not approve of opulence. That was to satisfy our vanity.
Again, you are asking people who did not represent Jesus’ view to apolagize for his (the Christian) religion. You might as well say that all muslims must apolagize for their religion because of 2001-09-11. Which is just plan stupid.
(article) 9. For misleading so many people into concern for appearances and petty rules that don’t really matter, such as Sunday shopping and eating fish on Friday. The flock followed the minutae and in the process forgot the big rule, love everyone.
If this flock you are referring to is Christians, then aren’t you saying that it was stupid for Christians to practice Christian tarditions? Again, you are asking the Pope to apollogize on behalf of all Christians, when stuuf like this was only commited by some people.
(article) 10. For telling people that God would clean up after us, that we could use the oceans as a toilet if we chose because we were God’s chosen animal. We mislead people into treating every other species with utter contempt, even those nobler than he.
Pretty much would respond the same way I did above.
well, you have my permision to post this article if you want.
Sorry, I’m prejudiced by your atrocious spelling. I don’t have the energy to take your arguments seriously. I have other more pressing issues on my mind just now. Perhaps later I will come back and properly refute you.
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