You Christians And Your Crusades.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

This finally, finally needs to be addressed.

  Firstly, the history, which honestly is a minor niggle.  If when you say "You Christians and Your Crusades", you mean to say "That time the Christians went around massacring all those innocent people because they didn't agree with them", then what you meant to say was "You Christians and your Inquisition".  Why is this important? Well, it's [i]not[/i], really. But as long as a person is pretending to be referencing actual history, and not just expressing hatred for Christians, it would behoove them to make a tiny bit of effort to be authentic.  But, we all know "You Christians and Your Crusades" isn't about history. 
 When do we see these statements? Certainly not when Christians are declaring a Holy War on Muslims. First, this hasn't happened since the real Crusades, and second, the most appropriate times to reference this (Iraq), references are strangely absent.  No. When we hear these statements is when a Christian wants to pass a law, speak his voice, protest something immoral, or yes, even discuss theology. In short, when we want the Christian to shut up. 
 Let me make this clear, let me split hairs. "You Christians and your Crusades" isn't about history.  This is shown first by the fact that most people who say it mean to say 'The Inquisition', but they don't care about the facts. They are after the emotion behind it.  Second, the Crusades were a [i]war[/i], fought over territory against an army that could very much defend itself (demonstrated by the fact that the Christians actually [i]failed[/i] in almost every Crusade, the Muslims being more powerful than they). It's not even close to an example of a Christian pogram or oppression. So all that matters here is the emotional intent. From this point on, the Crusades will be interchangable with "The Inquisition", "The Witch Trials" and so on, since they are brought up with the same goal in mind. I only distinguished them briefly to make the point that the people who bring this up don't care about history half as much as they let on. 
What is the emotional connection between modern Christians and the 'Crusades'? It must be known that almost no Christian in an English-speaking country shares the relevant attitudes to Christians living in the Middle or Dark ages. We don't want to burn witches, or slay Moors (that haven't tried to slay us first, you understand), so on and so forth. In the United States, most of us aren't even Catholic.  This is not an insignificant fact- when someone cries "You and Your Crusades" to a Protestant, you are crying it to someone who's religious founders were persecuted in pretty much the same way (though to a milder, and less publicized extent, it must be granted) you're trying to make them feel guilty for.  That's right, saying "You and Your Crusades" to a Protestant is similar to saying it to a witch.

So, there is no historical connection between the ‘Crusades’ and the imagery intended to be evoked. There is no cultural connection between ‘Crusaders’, and the majority of people this thing is said to.

What do we call something that is said to a broad class of people, with no historical, cultural or other sorts of truth in it, that is not intended to further a debate or make a salient point, but instead serves to insult, inflame, or otherwise badger the member of that group into silence, based purely on their (often incorrectly) percieved membership to said group?  I'll leave that to the reader, I have a feeling most of you didn't get this far before clicking 'reply' and starting to give me what-for anyhow. :slight_smile:
2

Eyes get cut out for heresy

Wait a minute, you helped me see the truth clearly. :laughing:

God bless.

3

jesusneverexisted.com/1000years.htm

“honestly”?

“minor niggle”?

4

Well Dan~, neither of your replies seem all that serious, or give evidence that you read more than three lines or so of what I wrote. I really don’t have anything further to add, but thanks for the attention, anyways!

5

Didn’t you click my link, and/or know what the old churches did to humanity in general?

6

I’ve seen it all before, Dan~. Which really, that fact that I’ve seen it all before (in the most unlikely of circumstances, brought up when it had nothing to do with the conversation at hand) IS my point. That the self-same article goes from the horrors of war to being pro-life in the blink of an eye, as though the intended audience is supposed to equate them, also makes my point that “You and Your Crusades” is a rhetorical tool that must not be intended to be taken seriously, because it would be the height of foolishness if it was.
Simply put, putting being pro-life in an article labeled “Carnage and Brutality in the name of Christ” IS my point. That somehow being against gay-marriage can be paradoxically twinned with the catapaulting of heads in the 16th Century IS my point. Obviously it’s not, obviously they can’t. But people still say it, as you’ve brought into evidence for me. Why? Because it’s a great rhetorical tool. It doesn’t further an argument, it doesn’t relate to hardly anything currently discussed (unless it IS a discussion of history, in fact), so what it is? It’s a tool to stir up hatred for Christians, and self-loathing among Christians, and nothing more. Since these are real events where people really did suffer, that’s a shame.

7

I’d agree that most people who use the lines “You Christians and your crusades” or whatever are ignorant of the actual historical circumstances in which those events took place.
However, though I can’t speak for other people, I would think that the point of such statements is to remind the religious majority in the U.S. that atrocities carried out in the name of religion are not limited to certain religions.

8

The incredible corruption of the chruch, in history, meant that its entire system was basically a means to exploit and controll the masses. It may have toned down in later times, but it’s still quite similar to its original root-protocol.

Even if we completely forget about the holywars, who remembers the economic exploitation? And the suppression of arts and sciences?

Uccisore is a professional sophist. There’s no way he’s going to admit how much damage and mind-control Christendom has done and will continue to do to humanity.

9

I’ve been hesitant about posting in this thread for several reasons, Uccisore. One, it’s usually not a good idea to butt in when someone’s ranting, especially when he is acknowledging that he’s randing so there’s no need to point that out. Two, it must be acknowledged that the majority of Christians, historically and not just at present, are fundamentally decent people who have no inclination to torture others for religious reasons, burn them at the stake, or subject infidel towns to rape and pillage, any more than most Muslims fly airplanes into buildings. In almost all cases where religion has led to vile behavior, the vileness was committed by only a small fraction of the adherents.

But . . .

There will always, in any population, be that small fraction of nut jobs that are inclined to burn people at the stake or fly airplanes into buildings. And the real question before the board is: does the religion encourage them to do it? Does it, in fact, put them into positions of power and authority, selecting them over more humane and reasonable people for the job, so that they are entitled to indulge their sadism and even feel proud of it?

It’s been a long time since the last Christian religious war, which, unless I’m forgetting some, was the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648. It’s been almost that long since the last people were officially executed for religious reasons by Christian authorities. But the reason for this relatively benign and peaceful manifestation of the faith in modern times, compared with its cruel and bloody past, is, I believe, the fact that Christianity is everywhere today denied political power. No church starts wars or tortures or executes people nowadays, because no church can.

There are a number of things about Christian belief and doctrine that encourage the violent and sadistic minority, leading in the past to fricaseed heretics and pillaged villages. These include:

  1. A belief in a historical destiny associated with Christianity.

  2. A belief in having been chosen by God as His elect.

  3. A belief that all unbelievers and heretics will, after death, suffer unimaginable tortures for all of time unending, rendering any cruelties inflicted by mere mortals trivial by comparison.

  4. A surrender of the human right and duty to make moral judgments into the hands of other people.

  5. A belief that it is the duty of Christians to convert unbelievers to Christianity.

Do any of these beliefs necessarily lead to violence? Of course not. Each is amenable to a completely peaceful interpretation, and will be given a peaceful interpretation by any Christians who are inclined to peace. Which, as noted above, is most of them.

But for the minority that are not so inclined, these beliefs provide justification for indulging their sadism.

As I said, the reason we don’t see horrible cruelty and violence coming out of churches any longer is because they have been stripped of all political power and so cannot commit the kinds of acts they did hundreds of years ago. Not only does this prevent the abuses themselves, it also changes the selection process for who becomes a religious authority. Those ambitious for political power no longer, as a rule, seek to rise in the Church. Instead, they become politicians. And so the typical profile of a religious authority within Christian churches has changed, very much for the better.

If we want to continue seeing this nice modern nonviolent Christianity, though, we will keep a careful eye on any attempt to re-mix this religion with politics. Because the fundamentals of human nature have not changed, and many Christian denominations have not abandoned the beliefs listed above, and so if we allow it to do so, it could happen again.

10

Again Dan, you’re just making my point for me. That you see it so terribly important that I “admit” something, as though I’m on trial by virtue of being a Christian. What is it you want? An apology? Perhaps attached to my signature, or reissued in print every time I try to make a point about everything? “Don’t forget, my opinions don’t matter, because 600 years ago the group I belong to did this!”. What is it you’re after? What could you possibly be after, that involves a rational approach to a philosophical question?

Navigator

Yes, there have always been such nut job, and they will always be there, as you say, in any population.  As to weather or not religion encourages them, I think religion is heirarchal, and any heirarchy gives people access to power that can be potentially abused. I think that for some reason, crazy-evil people have a knack for rising through the ranks of heirarchies easier than your average do-the-right-thing guy, and I also think that certain types of evil present themselves as options only when a person is in power. 
 I don't see anything unique to religion in all of this, though. 

These tenets definitely have the potential to lead to abuse, undeniable both because we have seen it happen, and because we can imagine how a diseased mind could read them to bring it about again. But of course we have to acknowledge that there are many more Christian tenets that temper or counter these violent implications, yes?

These are both very good points, especially the last, that the sadistic problem-people probably aren't going to seek out the Church as the place to work their evil like they used to, and that if the Church gets power again, they will seek them out again. That is a very real risk. But the 'problem' with this is that 99% of what we've said can be applied not just to any religion, but to any institution.  Christianity isn't a dangerous beast, barely shackeled, or even a ticking time-bomb. It's just a collection of human beings, with [i]all [/i]that entails.  Secular institutions are subject to the same problems.  I don't think the Church (or other religious organizations, I hasten to add) are unique in the fact that they have to be monitored very carefully as they rise in political power.  To see if I'm correct in that, what we'd want to do is pick whatever time frame we want to criticize Christianity for (say, the Middle Ages, or the 1600's), and see what other equally-powerful, unrelated organizations were doing with/to the people under their influence in that time. If The Christian Empire wasn't markedly different than most of the other empires in it's cruelties (and I say 'if', because I'm no historian) then this violence is a human problem and not a Christian problem. Of course, if the Christian Empire was quite a bit less cruel than it's neighbors (I'm looking at you, Mongolia) at the time, then that ought to be pointed out too. I think there's a good chance that the Christian atrocities stand out so much because on a societal level, we are still used to seeing them as 'us' to some degree, no matter our faith, and because they contradict what we all percieve that Christianity is supposed to be. 
  Lastly, even if the worst possible scenario is acknowledged, that Christians were uniquely cruel when put into power, and have the potential to be that way again through unique aspects of their own dogmas that bring out the worst in human nature, I think my point still stands that most people who bring up "You Christians and Your Crusades" in most situations aren't doing it for any salient point, they're doing as a way to badger the opposition into a shamed submission.
11

Those beliefs don’t, but tons of others advertised in the Bible and Quran do. Violence can find tons of justification in “holy books.”

12

Cite it.

13

The Cathedrals of Europe in which people worship in now were built by slaves, it was ok for them to toil away in a state of abject poverty and misery for the benefit of a King and Clergy that were too lazy to work because after all they would get into heaven if they did what they were told (read William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’). You liberal Christians would still worship in such a building that is the very symbol of oppression.

14

Secularists were no better off. You look at two things - the time in which churches were built, and the economic situation of those building them, and assume a connection where there is none, again to excuse ‘bashing’ Christianity.

By this measure, the people who built every single skyscraper on earth were much poorer than the people for whom the buildings were built, but it’s okay, because of the ‘free market’.

You secularists are perfectly happy for people to suffer, as long as you can blame religion for it, and where you can’t blame religion for it, you overlook it as irrelevant.

15

This seems a very apt description of christian proselitization. Consider the ‘crusades’ against abortion, homosexuality, “immorality”, etc engaged in by christian fanatics.

Christians and their crusades indeed.

16

That definition also fits the actions of many atheists. Ho hum.

17

That definition seems to fit anybody who’s ever given a crap about anything, enough to do something about it. :slight_smile:

18

Why do you assume I’m a capitalist, I’m more of a socialist, capitalism and religion have worked alonside eachother in being the causes of social inequality, capitalism was helped by religion as religion gave the generally ignorant and cowardly masses a reason to work for the benefit of the priveleged few. Nowadays capitalism works alongside materialsm and the self-destructive festering strive for wealth, which is destroying society. I never said the blame should be focused totally on religion, the blame should be focused on the selfish cowards.