And on this point, I normally like to defer to my mentor on religious matters, the ever-eloquent Cal from Discharge:
Well you arse crawling
bastard you can suck my arse
Religion, Jesus Christ
It's all a fuckin' farce
A stray bullet kills an innocent child
Nothing's gained and nothing's solved
Religion instigates this hate and war
As another victim dies
Life escapes with gunshot wounds
A stray bullet kills an innocent child
Nothing's gained and nothing's solved
Frank something like 80-90% of the Native Americans in the Americas got wiped out by European disease not actual fighting or enslavement by the Spaniards. It wasn't Christianity that was responsible but germs.
germs brought over by teh christians, sometimes spread on purpose. There's no way to deny that the Catholic Church played a pretty big role in the rape and plunder of two entire continents during the course of a few of centuries.
Everyone carries germs but because the Spanish were Catholics these are special religious germs.
Whoever said that religion leads to ignorance I'm beginning to agree with them.
I'm completely confused. When did Motown becaome so reactionary? Did you have a child, or come into an inheritance or change tax brackets or something?
And was the conquering of the Americas driven by religion or greed and the desire for empire?
you think religion and greed are mutually exclusive? Wasn't their religion used to justify their greed and desire for empire? And didn't the Catholic Church benefit immensely from this greed and desire for empire?
I'm completely confused. When did Motown becaome so reactionary? Did you have a child, or come into an inheritance or change tax brackets or something?
I hate reductionist thinking and silly arguments and that's what's mostly going on in this thread.
Everyone carries germs but because the Spanish were Catholics these are special religious germs.
Whoever said that religion leads to ignorance I'm beginning to agree with them.
yes you're right, it was the germs that did it. The germs that built boats, sailed across oceans, slaughtered villages and took whatever gold they could find. Those germs then set up colonies, enslaved the local population and forced them to work in mines. Those germs also took all those people's writings and burned them. And once those people grew tired of being slaves, the germs enslaved a whole other continent and brought them over to keep working on mines and plantations. Religion had absolutely nothing to do with this. The Catholic Church has never taken money from anyone or fund any of these things, and it never condoned anything that happened during this time. How could I be so ignorant as to think the Catholic Church was somehow involved in any of this?
Everyone carries germs but because the Spanish were Catholics these are special religious germs.
Whoever said that religion leads to ignorance I'm beginning to agree with them.
yes you're right, it was the germs that did it. The germs that built boats, sailed across oceans, slaughtered villages and took whatever gold they could find. Those germs then set up colonies, enslaved the local population and forced them to work in mines. Those germs also took all those people's writings and burned them. And once those people grew tired of being slaves, the germs enslaved a whole other continent and brought them over to keep working on mines and plantations. Religion had absolutely nothing to do with this. The Catholic Church has never taken money from anyone or fund any of these things, and it never condoned anything that happened during this time. How could I be so ignorant as to think the Catholic Church was somehow involved in any of this?
Last time I checked the Spanish crown was responsible for the gold and silver trade in the Americas. Also a lot of that money ended up going to India and China in the spice and silk trade. Maybe it wasn't religion that killed and enslaved the America's but rather the Asians!
Again 80-90% of Indians in the America's died from disease not enslavement please explain again how that was due to Christianity
are you using the Bon Vivant "you didn't answer my question" tactic of dismissing anything else I write because you can't connect the dots yourself?
I don't want to spend too much time explaining to you the history of the conquest of the Americas, but I think anyone with a basic understanding of history knows that Europeans didn't just show up on the continent without reason or aim. The Catholic Church not only funded a lot of the expeditions but also gave them a religious justification. It is impossible to separate the Spanish or Portuguese Crown from the Catholic Church in the conquest of the Americas because they walked hand in hand the whole time. The initial slaughter of the native population was done with the blessing of the Catholic Church, and the destruction of their culture was carried out by Catholic priests. Disease came later, after the destruction carried out by them had created the conditions under which disease spreads, often diseases brought over by the Europeans. Not to mention that disease was also used by Europeans to wipe out some populations that got in their way. So perhaps one could argue that the Catholic Church was deeply involved in creating the conditions under which disease killed a significant part of the native population. Or you could just assume the Catholic Church only had good intentions for the Americas and disease was just a fluke accident that wiped out almost an entire continent. But that still wouldn't explain the part where the priests destroyed all the cultural artifacts that didn't contain gold.
and just to note: your whole "they died of disease therefore religion had nothing to do with it" argument is the kind of reductionist thinking you claim to hate. It's like saying "most Africans who died during the slave trade died of disease on the boats crossing the ocean, therefore slavery had nothing to do with it."
Again 80-90% of Indians in the America's died from disease not enslavement please explain again how that was due to Christianity
are you using the Bon Vivant "you didn't answer my question" tactic of dismissing anything else I write because you can't connect the dots yourself?
I don't want to spend too much time explaining to you the history of the conquest of the Americas, but I think anyone with a basic understanding of history knows that Europeans didn't just show up on the continent without reason or aim. The Catholic Church not only funded a lot of the expeditions but also gave them a religious justification. It is impossible to separate the Spanish or Portuguese Crown from the Catholic Church in the conquest of the Americas because they walked hand in hand the whole time. The initial slaughter of the native population was done with the blessing of the Catholic Church, and the destruction of their culture was carried out by Catholic priests. Disease came later, after the destruction carried out by them had created the conditions under which disease spreads, often diseases brought over by the Europeans. Not to mention that disease was also used by Europeans to wipe out some populations that got in their way. So perhaps one could argue that the Catholic Church was deeply involved in creating the conditions under which disease killed a significant part of the native population. Or you could just assume the Catholic Church only had good intentions for the Americas and disease was just a fluke accident that wiped out almost an entire continent. But that still wouldn't explain the part where the priests destroyed all the cultural artifacts that didn't contain gold.
and just to note: your whole "they died of disease therefore religion had nothing to do with it" argument is the kind of reductionist thinking you claim to hate. It's like saying "most Africans who died during the slave trade died of disease on the boats crossing the ocean, therefore slavery had nothing to do with it."
Weren't these societites dying anyway, what with disease, depravity, slavery, warfare, starvation, etc.?
Sorry the conquistadors were mostly soldiers on contract with the Spanish or Portuguese crown. They could give a fuck less about spreading religion. They're main concern was money the Catholic Church mostly came later after the conquest and again was subsidiary to the soldiers and colonial government under the monarchies. The silver mines that came later were run by the monarchy to generate money not because of Christianity or spreading religion.
Again 80-90% of Indians in the America's died from disease not enslavement please explain again how that was due to Christianity
Did you learn that in one of those greatest of all schools that has "Saint" as the first word of its name?
In any case, you should repeat it more often because that makes it more true and after all, the mindless repetition of nonsense and lies is the integral part of all world religions.
And regarding your random statement that Christianity had no part in the Rwanda genocide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Rwanda#cite_ref-5
"Timothy Longman has provided the most detailed discussion of the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide in Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, published in 2010. Longman argues that both Catholic and Protestant churches helped to make the genocide possible by giving moral sanction to the killing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/29/pope-catholics-rwanda-genocide-church
"tens of thousands of Catholics were hacked to death inside churches. Sometimes priests and nuns led the slaughter. Sometimes they did nothing while it progressed. The incidents were not isolated. Nyamata, Ntarama, Nyarubuye, Cyahinda, Nyange, and Saint Famille were just a few of the churches that were sites of massacres."
Egypt is a beautiful country. Abu Simbel is facemelting, Cairo is....Cairo. See that Rameses mummified corpse. History right there.
Luxor, Katnak, Memphis are places I definitely would go back to, were it not for unfortunate honeymoon associations with a failed marriage::
Frank did the church start the genocide or did it only sanction what the Hutu leadership had already decided upon? I think in that case you can say that the church made the situation worse but was not the cause.
Skel are you a white male? If you are you are responsible for slavery sexism racism genocide and every war fought by Europe and America. That's the kind or argument being made here against religion. Religion is one of many identities that can bring people together or break them apart. To condemn it outright and to say its the worst thing in the world is stupid to me.
Skel are you a white male? If you are you are responsible for slavery sexism racism genocide and every war fought by Europe and America. That's the kind or argument being made here against religion. Religion is one of many identities that can bring people together or break them apart. To condemn it outright and to say its the worst thing in the world is stupid to me.
I see your argument. It doesn't change the fact that religion is a crutch used by those who cannot face their own mortality like grown-ups and are unable to create and adhere to a code of ethics of their own devising without external incentives and penalties. To the point where they would rather invest heavily in a set of concepts that has absolutely no grounding in reality.
I just see religion as a way to keep the poor compliant - your reward is after you die. Word to Jake Burns.
It has no place in 2013.
Your (very zealous) defence of it marks you as someone with vested interest.
If so, you should state it.
I almost feel bad bodying religion like that, but it is what it is. I wouldn't be mad at it if it just minded its own business like say, gay marriage. But instead, it's regularly trying to get up in my shit, and I don't appreciate it.
The Spanish in Mexico believed that California was either a new way to Asia and its spice and silk trade or had riches itself like Mexico and Peru did. As a result the colonial govt in Mexico sent a number of expeditions up and down the California coast by boat. They laid claim to California but found nothing of interest and left it alone for around 275 years. When the Russians started coming down from Alaska to Northern California the administration in Mexico became concerned that this might threaten their empire. They sent a new set of expeditions up the California coast to establish forts and missions as a bulwark against the Russiand and later British and Americans to protect Mexico. California remained of little interest to the Spanish govt and was completely neglected as a result. Supplies were not sent and hardly anyone was paid. The Spanish in California were forced to become self sufficient. Because the missions had the most land and Indian convert labor they became the center of power and economics in California making it one of the few parts of the Spanish empire in the Americas where the church was in the lead and not the governors or soldiers. The church's main concern was survival and converting Indians which basically led them to become serfs in the missions like much of the European peasantry.
That history shows that the church and religions were far from the main concerns of the Spanish colonial administration in the Americas. If spreading religion was the main concern why did it take them 275 years to take California and why did it neglect the church and its missions there afterward?
muthafuckaz are acting like douchebags wouldn't have find something else to point at to pull bullshit if jesus/allah/whatever didn't tell them to
come the fuck on
Thousands of the most imporant schools, universities, hospitals and charities all have names that start with the same word. Can you guess what that word is?
sabadabada said:
Weren't these societites dying anyway, what with disease, depravity, slavery, warfare, starvation, etc.?
Are you seriously advancing these infantile arguments as justification for the Catholic church's history of oppression, greed and violence? Like, *really* really? Or are you trolling? I'm genuinely curious. Given your posting history, I could see you going either way here (both idiotic).
Frank did the church start the genocide or did it only sanction what the Hutu leadership had already decided upon? I think in that case you can say that the church made the situation worse but was not the cause.
Yes, of course the churches (I would assume that not only protestant and catholic churches played a roll but that also pentecostal, charismatic etc were involved) did not start the conflict but they made the situation worse and enabled the genocide to reach such absurd proportions. Religion or ethnicity is always instrumentalized in (not only) African conflicts. Remember how Charles Taylor at the height of his madness declared Jesus Christ president of Liberia (Liberian history, also and especially post civil war, a dizzying prime example on the fucked-up-ness of mankind).
To me, people just ain't no good and religion only makes them worse. Religion itself is never the root of the problem, how could it be? Religion has no substance in itself, it can, quickly or with time be turned into a more moderate or more extreme form, it can be turned into whatever is needed by any group at any given time. Religion is a human invention, a ridiculously useless one that only ever makes shit worse and never anything better. In the best case scenario it's just useless and embarrassing. Some sort of learned mental disorder invented by and for weak people who are afraid of dying and nothing happening except that the lights to go out.
Huh... I never should have said anything. All that I meant to say with my first "shitty place towards the top of a list of shitty places" statement was that to me it's just baffling how there can be a country where religious extremists are voted into power and gang-raping mobs are ruling the streets and anybody could have anything else on their mind but to get the fuck out of there. A freed people elects a crazed, radical government, then there's a military coup, how could anybody think anything good is going to come out of such a situation?
Thousands of the most imporant schools, universities, hospitals and charities all have names that start with the same word. Can you guess what that word is?
sabadabada said:
Weren't these societites dying anyway, what with disease, depravity, slavery, warfare, starvation, etc.?
Are you seriously advancing these infantile arguments as justification for the Catholic church's history of oppression, greed and violence? Like, *really* really? Or are you trolling? I'm genuinely curious. Given your posting history, I could see you going either way here (both idiotic).
I'm just pointing out that the Catholic Church can be an institution that does good. It has always, had to survive alongside the governments in Europe and so it hasn't always been an institution that does good. Thats why the Eastern Orthodox Church hasn't been such a political animal.
Regardlesss of whether you think the Church is responsibile for spreading small pox in the America's or whether you think that they were part of a warring conquering culture, I'm just asking if its not true that the cultures that they made war upon werent just as bad. Even though those cultures weren't Catholic, so maybe Catholicism isnt the deciding factor.
Skel are you a white male? If you are you are responsible for slavery sexism racism genocide and every war fought by Europe and America. That's the kind or argument being made here against religion. Religion is one of many identities that can bring people together or break them apart. To condemn it outright and to say its the worst thing in the world is stupid to me.
sorry to hurt your white man pride, dude.
For the record, I've nothing against religion in the spiritual sense even though I'm also atheist. My beef is with organized religion.
I don't understand why you're trying to argue so vehemently against the notion that organized religion has been responsible for some real atrocities, or that an institution like the Catholic Church hasn't benefited from the exploitation of a lot of people. I'd love to hear your explanation for the wealth of the Catholic Church, btw.
As for your previous points, very early in the conquest there were disputes in Spain over the justification for it. Priests argued that the Americas had to be conquered in order to save the souls of its savage people, while bankers argued there was lots of gold to be had. In the end it became a marriage of convenience, with the gold being plundered while Catholic priests claimed to be saving souls, although the priests were also cool with people just being killed since they figured the ones who resisted were going to hell anyway.
You'll always find exceptions within the church, although your California example doesn't really prove anything. If you want a real example, you should read up on the concept of liberation theology and the Catholic Church in Latin America during the 50s and 60s. Problem is the Catholic Church itself didn't like the idea of priests advocating for things like human rights and democracy, claiming it was marxist and whatnot, and went back to supporting dictatorships throughout the continent. So even the exceptions can end up proving the general rule that Catholic Church is a cancer on humanity.
Thousands of the most imporant schools, universities, hospitals and charities all have names that start with the same word. Can you guess what that word is?
sabadabada said:
Weren't these societites dying anyway, what with disease, depravity, slavery, warfare, starvation, etc.?
Are you seriously advancing these infantile arguments as justification for the Catholic church's history of oppression, greed and violence? Like, *really* really? Or are you trolling? I'm genuinely curious. Given your posting history, I could see you going either way here (both idiotic).
I'm just pointing out that the Catholic Church can be an institution that does good. It has always, had to survive alongside the governments in Europe and so it hasn't always been an institution that does good. Thats why the Eastern Orthodox Church hasn't been such a political animal.
Regardlesss of whether you think the Church is responsibile for spreading small pox in the America's or whether you think that they were part of a warring conquering culture, I'm just asking if its not true that the cultures that they made war upon werent just as bad. Even though those cultures weren't Catholic, so maybe Catholicism isnt the deciding factor.
Comments
Well you arse crawling
bastard you can suck my arse
Religion, Jesus Christ
It's all a fuckin' farce
A stray bullet kills an innocent child
Nothing's gained and nothing's solved
Religion instigates this hate and war
As another victim dies
Life escapes with gunshot wounds
A stray bullet kills an innocent child
Nothing's gained and nothing's solved
And that, friends, is that.
Everyone carries germs but because the Spanish were Catholics these are special religious germs.
Whoever said that religion leads to ignorance I'm beginning to agree with them.
you think religion and greed are mutually exclusive? Wasn't their religion used to justify their greed and desire for empire? And didn't the Catholic Church benefit immensely from this greed and desire for empire?
I hate reductionist thinking and silly arguments and that's what's mostly going on in this thread.
yes you're right, it was the germs that did it. The germs that built boats, sailed across oceans, slaughtered villages and took whatever gold they could find. Those germs then set up colonies, enslaved the local population and forced them to work in mines. Those germs also took all those people's writings and burned them. And once those people grew tired of being slaves, the germs enslaved a whole other continent and brought them over to keep working on mines and plantations. Religion had absolutely nothing to do with this. The Catholic Church has never taken money from anyone or fund any of these things, and it never condoned anything that happened during this time. How could I be so ignorant as to think the Catholic Church was somehow involved in any of this?
Yes.
I think that is the point.
Religion is used as a justification for greed, desire, war, genocide.
Religion does not cause these things.
Last time I checked the Spanish crown was responsible for the gold and silver trade in the Americas. Also a lot of that money ended up going to India and China in the spice and silk trade. Maybe it wasn't religion that killed and enslaved the America's but rather the Asians!
I wanted to make this point about the Egyptian military, but didn't want to do the research.
The military is run by business men who own 40% of the Egyptian economy. Their goal is to keep the money going.
Money, not religion, is the root of evil.
are you using the Bon Vivant "you didn't answer my question" tactic of dismissing anything else I write because you can't connect the dots yourself?
I don't want to spend too much time explaining to you the history of the conquest of the Americas, but I think anyone with a basic understanding of history knows that Europeans didn't just show up on the continent without reason or aim. The Catholic Church not only funded a lot of the expeditions but also gave them a religious justification. It is impossible to separate the Spanish or Portuguese Crown from the Catholic Church in the conquest of the Americas because they walked hand in hand the whole time. The initial slaughter of the native population was done with the blessing of the Catholic Church, and the destruction of their culture was carried out by Catholic priests. Disease came later, after the destruction carried out by them had created the conditions under which disease spreads, often diseases brought over by the Europeans. Not to mention that disease was also used by Europeans to wipe out some populations that got in their way. So perhaps one could argue that the Catholic Church was deeply involved in creating the conditions under which disease killed a significant part of the native population. Or you could just assume the Catholic Church only had good intentions for the Americas and disease was just a fluke accident that wiped out almost an entire continent. But that still wouldn't explain the part where the priests destroyed all the cultural artifacts that didn't contain gold.
and just to note: your whole "they died of disease therefore religion had nothing to do with it" argument is the kind of reductionist thinking you claim to hate. It's like saying "most Africans who died during the slave trade died of disease on the boats crossing the ocean, therefore slavery had nothing to do with it."
Currently reading this.
Recommended.
I don't the book will change anyone's view, but it will add lots of context.
His other book, 1491 is also recommended.
Weren't these societites dying anyway, what with disease, depravity, slavery, warfare, starvation, etc.?
Did you learn that in one of those greatest of all schools that has "Saint" as the first word of its name?
In any case, you should repeat it more often because that makes it more true and after all, the mindless repetition of nonsense and lies is the integral part of all world religions.
And regarding your random statement that Christianity had no part in the Rwanda genocide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Rwanda#cite_ref-5
"Timothy Longman has provided the most detailed discussion of the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide in Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, published in 2010. Longman argues that both Catholic and Protestant churches helped to make the genocide possible by giving moral sanction to the killing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/29/pope-catholics-rwanda-genocide-church
"tens of thousands of Catholics were hacked to death inside churches. Sometimes priests and nuns led the slaughter. Sometimes they did nothing while it progressed. The incidents were not isolated. Nyamata, Ntarama, Nyarubuye, Cyahinda, Nyange, and Saint Famille were just a few of the churches that were sites of massacres."
B/w
Egypt is a beautiful country. Abu Simbel is facemelting, Cairo is....Cairo. See that Rameses mummified corpse. History right there.
Luxor, Katnak, Memphis are places I definitely would go back to, were it not for unfortunate honeymoon associations with a failed marriage:
Skel are you a white male? If you are you are responsible for slavery sexism racism genocide and every war fought by Europe and America. That's the kind or argument being made here against religion. Religion is one of many identities that can bring people together or break them apart. To condemn it outright and to say its the worst thing in the world is stupid to me.
I see your argument. It doesn't change the fact that religion is a crutch used by those who cannot face their own mortality like grown-ups and are unable to create and adhere to a code of ethics of their own devising without external incentives and penalties. To the point where they would rather invest heavily in a set of concepts that has absolutely no grounding in reality.
But I digress. Please continue.
It has no place in 2013.
Your (very zealous) defence of it marks you as someone with vested interest.
If so, you should state it.
I almost feel bad bodying religion like that, but it is what it is. I wouldn't be mad at it if it just minded its own business like say, gay marriage. But instead, it's regularly trying to get up in my shit, and I don't appreciate it.
That history shows that the church and religions were far from the main concerns of the Spanish colonial administration in the Americas. If spreading religion was the main concern why did it take them 275 years to take California and why did it neglect the church and its missions there afterward?
Respect.
come the fuck on
Are you seriously advancing these infantile arguments as justification for the Catholic church's history of oppression, greed and violence? Like, *really* really? Or are you trolling? I'm genuinely curious. Given your posting history, I could see you going either way here (both idiotic).
Yes, of course the churches (I would assume that not only protestant and catholic churches played a roll but that also pentecostal, charismatic etc were involved) did not start the conflict but they made the situation worse and enabled the genocide to reach such absurd proportions. Religion or ethnicity is always instrumentalized in (not only) African conflicts. Remember how Charles Taylor at the height of his madness declared Jesus Christ president of Liberia (Liberian history, also and especially post civil war, a dizzying prime example on the fucked-up-ness of mankind).
To me, people just ain't no good and religion only makes them worse. Religion itself is never the root of the problem, how could it be? Religion has no substance in itself, it can, quickly or with time be turned into a more moderate or more extreme form, it can be turned into whatever is needed by any group at any given time. Religion is a human invention, a ridiculously useless one that only ever makes shit worse and never anything better. In the best case scenario it's just useless and embarrassing. Some sort of learned mental disorder invented by and for weak people who are afraid of dying and nothing happening except that the lights to go out.
Huh... I never should have said anything. All that I meant to say with my first "shitty place towards the top of a list of shitty places" statement was that to me it's just baffling how there can be a country where religious extremists are voted into power and gang-raping mobs are ruling the streets and anybody could have anything else on their mind but to get the fuck out of there. A freed people elects a crazed, radical government, then there's a military coup, how could anybody think anything good is going to come out of such a situation?
I'm just pointing out that the Catholic Church can be an institution that does good. It has always, had to survive alongside the governments in Europe and so it hasn't always been an institution that does good. Thats why the Eastern Orthodox Church hasn't been such a political animal.
Regardlesss of whether you think the Church is responsibile for spreading small pox in the America's or whether you think that they were part of a warring conquering culture, I'm just asking if its not true that the cultures that they made war upon werent just as bad. Even though those cultures weren't Catholic, so maybe Catholicism isnt the deciding factor.
sorry to hurt your white man pride, dude.
For the record, I've nothing against religion in the spiritual sense even though I'm also atheist. My beef is with organized religion.
I don't understand why you're trying to argue so vehemently against the notion that organized religion has been responsible for some real atrocities, or that an institution like the Catholic Church hasn't benefited from the exploitation of a lot of people. I'd love to hear your explanation for the wealth of the Catholic Church, btw.
As for your previous points, very early in the conquest there were disputes in Spain over the justification for it. Priests argued that the Americas had to be conquered in order to save the souls of its savage people, while bankers argued there was lots of gold to be had. In the end it became a marriage of convenience, with the gold being plundered while Catholic priests claimed to be saving souls, although the priests were also cool with people just being killed since they figured the ones who resisted were going to hell anyway.
You'll always find exceptions within the church, although your California example doesn't really prove anything. If you want a real example, you should read up on the concept of liberation theology and the Catholic Church in Latin America during the 50s and 60s. Problem is the Catholic Church itself didn't like the idea of priests advocating for things like human rights and democracy, claiming it was marxist and whatnot, and went back to supporting dictatorships throughout the continent. So even the exceptions can end up proving the general rule that Catholic Church is a cancer on humanity.
so weak.