All Comments (18)

what are you guys talking about?

MARY CUNNINGHAM & JACOB, Furthermore, you guys didn*t even read what I wrote. I prayed to the *ultimate divinity* to *save me from the horrors of Christianity*. This makes me an atheist? Get a dictionary!

MARY CUNNINGHAM, You*re really very presumptuous, and, to use an old fashioned word, impertinent, to call me an atheist, which I*m not. Your bad manners and your mixed-up history mark you down in my book as most probably a *Christian.*

Boy, ALL FIVE of America's atheists are out in force in this forum. Same people who say the same nasty things on all panels. In fact, some are copying and pasting. Seeing that NO ONE is shutting you guys up, I don't think you guys are being oppressed -- just depressed about not being the majority. Maybe all five of you should move to Canada. I believe the other five already have. Did Congo EVEN HAVE 10 million people in the days of King Leopold II of Belgium? Amazing!

Mary Cunningham

Well, you failed to contradict any of the points raised by Norrie. Spain's dictator Franco was, by your own numbers, pretty bloodthirsty. And he didn't "outwit the fascists" he was a fascist, as were the clerically supported Axis allies in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Was Stalin bad? Yes, downright evil, every bit as bad as Hitler, who maintained his Catholicism to the end. But so were Christians like King Leopold II of Belgium (responsible for the death of at least 10 million in the Congo) and the other European colonial empires, responsible for millions more. Funny how their contributions tend to be forgotten when people start playing this little game of "Body Count".

Point is, Christian power structures have no claim to moral superiority, their history is no cleaner than the Communists.

The crimes in question, whether Fascistic, Communistic, Imperialistic or Ecclesiastical are the result of slavish devotion to dogma; to the substitution of ideology for reason.

And I thought Prof Dawkins said atheists were smart! Man, oh man...I'll start (and end) with Norrie C.

Italy: No deportation of Jews until Germans invaded the north. Vatican hides 4,000 of its Jews after a surprise Gestapo raid. Record of Ethiopians bad.
Religion: RC (Roman Catholic)

Other Christian states of the early 20th c. Salazar's Portugal:
Number of wars started--none, Portugal stays neutral
Citizens imprisoned and executed for political crimes--none
Other countries invaded--none
Religion: RC

DeValera's Ireland:
Number of wars started--none, Ireland stays neutral
Own citizens imprisoned and executed for
political crimes--none
Other countries invaded--none
Religion: RC

Franco's Spain:
Number of wars started--none.
Own citizens imprisoned and executed for political crimes: after defeating the Communists, executes about 100,000 Republicans and imprisons 100,000 more. Outwits fascists by staying resoluting neutral during WWII awa aiding Jewish refugees.
Other countries invaded--none
Religion: RC

Churchill's Britain:
Number of wars started--one. Declares war on Germany after Germans invade Poland.
Other countries invaded: at least four: Norway, Greece, northern Africa, France. During war Britain would mount several invasions of Nazi held territory.
Own citizens imprisoned and executed: about 40,000 (?) suspected of Nazi sympathies interned, none executed until after the war.
Religion: Church of England

Now let's try that shining example of secular atheism:

Stalin's Soviet Union.

Number of wars started: At least 3 invasions:invades Poland shortly after Bolsheviks come to power, Poles beat them back. Invades Poland again in 1939 as part of pact with Nazi. Invades Finland in 1940--Finns beat them back. One major war, WWII, but only AFTER Nazis invade Russia.

Own citizens arrested and imprisoned and executed for political crimes:

NOW you're talking good numbers.

Stalin was the champ! (Although Lenin and Trotsky were no slouches either). The 1936 Soviet census revealed--rather embarassingly--some nine million missing citizens. Some died in Stalin's war against the Ukraine (about five million?), others in the Gulag, others in internal ethnic cleansing, others just shot.

Shall we say at least 10 million OF ITS OWN CITIZENS?

A shining example of secular atheism, eh? Makes you proud to be an atheist, doesn't it Norrie? Just like Uncle Joe!

Oh! I almost forgot.

Relgion: Secular Atheism and/or Communist Atheism. They closed almost ALL the churches and imprisoned most of the clerics. Ah! Those were the days.

Jim Tenzos,

Please use you spell check :o).

E.B.

"Free elections do not a democracy make."

I so agree. We do not have by definition a full democracy here. We have a Republic. We vote on legislators, they then propose laws & vote on those laws in our place.

I wish the system were redesigned so the people of this country had to vote on laws directly. We need to appoint legislators to propose laws, but they should not be the ones to vote those proposals into law. We should. How many times, despite what the polls say the people want, has Congress voted themselves pay raises? And not raised the lowest wage in the land?

A true democracy puts the power in the hands of the majority of the citizens. An educated citizenry.

If we had a true democracy, small groups like the religious fundamentalist sects would not have much power.

Democracy - government of, for and by the governed. The governed shall have equal rigthts under the law including the right to make the law. The laws made shall not diminish the rights of the governed. Unfortunately, the last statement is now being challenged. Here at this blog? One of the rights is the right to diminish the rights formerly enjoyed by the governed.

Kingdom - government of subjects, for and by the king, with a little help from God. In the absence of God, God's representatives will fill in for God. They, God's vicars, attorney's in fact will decide what God wants and the king shall make that the law of the land, to a point. Now take the case of Henry the eighth.

There can be no democracy in the presence of God's representatives for they demand and shall receive the right to decide the law of the land.

Free elections do not a democracy make for the electorate can vote away their rights. Have they already done that in the USA? If this is a "Christian nation" then they have voted their rights away, turned the country over to the king of kings, Jesus.

How's things going with democracy in Iraq? They did have free elections didn't they? Free elections do not a democracy make. It's the right to wave one's fist in God's face, in public. So God is nowhere to be found and the fist will have to be waved in the face of God's representatives. This is not advised for the representatives of the one true God, Allah. They have malitias to enforce God's laws.

Come now Norrie Hoyt. You're using statistics, history even to make a point, maybe. Everyone knows anything can be proved by statistics. Now take the silly idea that smoking causes cancer.

Why not try your statistics in reverse. Let's list all the ideal societies that Christianity has brought about. There's,, ah,, forget it.

Religion is the GREAT ENEMY of democracy, by it's very nature. When the game is played out to it's limit the people have nothing to say about either who will lead them or the law of the land for religion installs God as the dictatorial ruler. God's law prevails in all forinstances when the nation is any religion.

There is an exception, atheism. Atheism is FAITH in no God at all. In the absence of God men must rule themselves. Democracy is a given in that case for there is no AUTHORITY scum bags can use to usurp the AUTHORITY OF THE PEOPLE.

Ya gotta have faith!!! Why? Because there is a God and God's will must be done. But God is nowhere to be found yet atheists can't PROVE there is no God. So that leaves us with God's representative, vicars - God attorneys with the authority to sign God's name. It is them that will rule while we await the return of God's son, Jesus to establish the kingdom of God. They will install God's law as the law of the land.

RELIGION IS THE GREAT ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY.

Religion DEMANDS the KINGDOM and they want it now. They? But of course, religion is an abstraction and can demand nothing. It's those who operate religion, preachers, popes, Rabbis, Ayatollahs that will run the wold. And you had better look out for you will be devoured by a monster demon when God returns or you stand before God, whichever comes first.

This is always a confusing subject. I suggest a distinction has to be drawn between the idea of "nation" (a collection of people, a demographic) and "government" or "state" (as defined by the U.S. Constitution). Technically the U.S. is a "christian nation" in that the majority of its citizens say they are "christian" when polled.

Of course the Constitution intentionally and clearly draws a distinction between any and all religions and the government, separates the two entities and, by law, prohibits the recognition of any religion above any other religion by the state.

So, while most Americans say they are Christian, The United States of America is not a christian state.

Yes, we want people to be free to "believe", they also have to defend those "beliefs" when they express them publicly. Believers give up the right to private articles of faith when they force the rest of us to listen to them. Free speech means I get to ask you to prove your assertions. If you can't, then they have no currency in the marketplace of ideas.

I must say, your column is almost incomprehensible. You might consider a career change.

Enjoy a warm and safe winter holiday season!

Joe R wrote, "The fundamentalist movement in the Christian church is no different than the fundamentalist movement in Islam."

I agree, but I would like to add to the above by saying that fundamentalists of all organized religions are the cause of much of the evil perpetrated in the name of their respective God(s) and the divisiveness which their interpretations of their faiths provoke.

The politicians are also quick to exploit all such divisions in order to maintain their power over people. We saw that happen during the last six years, in our own country, the US of A! Thank God, that nightmare seems to be nearly over!!!

The fundamentalist movement in the Christian church is no different than the fundamentalist movement in Islam. It is a movement against modern life and intellectual freedom. It is a beginning of a new dark age. It is going to be a disaster. The whole world is going nuts by choosing myth over reason. This isn't the first time this has happened in history and the results will be the same. A lot of death and misery for a lot of innocent people.

Professor Stevens-Arroyo's article is idealistic. The Christian nations in modern times that quickly come to mind are:

Franco's Spain;

Vichy France - transit point for the Holocaust;

The Papal States - with its executioner and anti-Jewish laws and kidnappings of unbaptized Jewish children;

Vatican City - aider and abetter of the Nazis;

Croatia - home of concentration camps worse than Hitler's;

Serbia - Genocide of Catholics, Muslims, Jews;

Greece - pogroms of Turks;

Mussolini's Italy - Jewish pogroms - Vatican Concordat - extermination of Ethiopians;

I won't even get into Latin America. All these undoubtedly Christian lands were, as they will tell you, faithfully carrying out Christian Precepts.

If you go back further in time you'll see that the same Christian horrors have existed for over a thousand years. Recall the extermination of the Cathars, the Crusades, the Inquistion, the religious wars.

Professor Stevens-Arroyo will say that these regimes were not truly Christian, but they are widely regarded as such by themselves and by the world. If he is saying that there are no Christian nations by his definition, I agree with him.

But we have to live with the Christian nations we have, not the ones we would like to have.

May the ultimate divinity save me from the horrors of Christianity and keep me far from any "Christian country." Amen.

“Christian nation” is supposed by some to mean “a country where the law of land does not contradict Christian precepts.”

Unfortunately, most issues arise when "laws of the land" are created in order to coherce the population into abiding by Christian principles.

The long history of Christian influence on this nation, coupled with the phoemonea of "unintended consequences" has us now looking to outlaw behaviors and actions that are culturally (as opposed to "golden rule" or metaphysically) immoral (think homosexuality). Tearing down the past is most likely not an option; therefore finding workarounds to allow people to keep their individuality and to have equal (or equivalent) rights as others is necessary.

Unfortunately, those in charge feel a need to use politics as a vehicle by which to "Save" those who , by Christian standards, need saving. And, in reality, politics and law is a much more effective weapon compared to gun, but it is no less lethal.

I will srew you and all the atheists and fanatics that create problems around the world.
You believe what is good for you and the same is true for me!
I do not need your advise or comments,
by the way have a MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Aloha

Richard Dawkins was on Stephen Colbert the other night talking about the New Atheism. There's also a cover article on the New Atheism for Wired this November. With all the religious fascists in the US and around the world maybe it's right to try and establish a religion of reason. If we could end ignorance and superstition and establish a world based on the universal declaration of human rights; that is a worthwhile goal.

"Summing up, a Christian nation is a tolerant society dedicated to helping the most neglected and achieving equality of station for all – including unbelievers and sinners."

Indeed!

Did Christ not speak about doing unto,"...the least of these?"

Any politicians that talk about America being a "Christian nation" are blowing smoke to get support from the religious right, because we're still neglecting the poor in this country and people without health insurance.