Why did Christianity spawn the most evil people in history

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naturalplastic
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03 May 2021, 7:10 pm

There is tyranny by folks who wanna exploit you.

And there is tyranny by folks who want to save you. One theory is that the latter is worse. Tyrannizing you for greed vs tryannizing you out of idealism. The folks who just wanna exploit you can feel pangs of quilt. But the ones tyrannizing you for a cause dont feel quilt. Or thats what some say.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Judaism invented the notion of using war and genocide in the same of deity (according the Book of Joshua) back in the Bronze Age.

Both of the two offspring of Judaism (Christianity and Islam) inherited aggressive evangelism from Judaism, and both took it farther.

In the late Twentieth/early 21st century Islam was more violent and intolerant than Christianity. But during the whole sweep of history Christianity is more violent of the two. But there have been some rather evil heavy weights who were not associated with either nor with any religion (like Hilter, Stalin, and Mao). North Korea's Kim dynasty of dictators deified themselves.



RetroGamer87
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04 May 2021, 5:19 am

kitesandtrainsandcats wrote:
Did Christianity spawn violent people or did violent people use Christianity as a tool for their violence?

Pretty much this. That doesn't make Christianity blameless however. Any religion that gives a class of people (the clergy) near absolute authority while also creating the myth that these people have a better moral character than ordinary people is still responsible for giving evil people greater opportunity to commit evil than they would have had otherwise.

If you create a class of people who must be obeyed without question then don't be surprised if some of them take advantage of their position.


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04 May 2021, 1:49 pm

These kind of generalised discussions on 'Christianity' very often fall foul of the same error which is to say the failure to understand what is meant by the term 'Christianity' itself. All the horrors which are generally trotted out i. e. crusades, inquisition etc were perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church which was the result of the schism in the Church in the 11th century when the Western church split from the Eastern and evolved itself into something very different from the orthodox church as manifest in the Middle east. The Eastern Church was not involved in the Crusades at all nor the Inquisition. The Crusades were entirely the result of an unholy coupling between fanatical religious leaders mostly in France and a collection of Western European kings and nobles who were motivated by political gain, expansionism and religious extremism. All of this had nothing to do with the Eastern Church which to this day shows itself to be relatively speaking much less inclined to intolerance and fanatical fervour than its western counterpart.

As to witch-burning, another supposed evil of 'Christianity' there is no evidence to suggest, contrary to popular opinion, that any Church of any kind was behind this, rather the opposite in fact as the Church actually preached against witch-burning for the very simple reason that it refused to recognise the existence of witches in the first place but this is something that people don't want to hear and most continue to hold with their unfounded beliefs regardless.



Lunella
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04 May 2021, 2:09 pm

Because religious people follow a set of rules that are easy to exploit. You can bring someone into the world but depending on their upbringing they may turn into a total psychopath but grew up going to church etc.

When a psychopath is around genuine religious people who just want peace and harmony they disrupt this and then use the religion to manipulate people.

There is even a verse in the Qur'an that talks about it, I can't remember which one it was now but I remember it saying something along the lines of people using the religions for self gain and to watch out for these people but it was referring to Christianity basically.


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cyberdad
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04 May 2021, 5:47 pm

A common theme in monotheistic religious are messianic prophets warning of apocalyptic visions of the future.

Strangely many of the most popular sci-fi and fantasy movies have similar themes...the chosen one will save us :lol:



salad
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05 May 2021, 2:20 am

Lunella wrote:
Because religious people follow a set of rules that are easy to exploit. You can bring someone into the world but depending on their upbringing they may turn into a total psychopath but grew up going to church etc.

When a psychopath is around genuine religious people who just want peace and harmony they disrupt this and then use the religion to manipulate people.

There is even a verse in the Qur'an that talks about it, I can't remember which one it was now but I remember it saying something along the lines of people using the religions for self gain and to watch out for these people but it was referring to Christianity basically.


Solid answer.

As for the verse in the Quran it was actually referring to the hypocrites in Medina who outwardly accepted Islam for social status and gain but who inwardly harbored animus towards Islam and thus were only using it for worldly gain.


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05 May 2021, 3:58 am

salad wrote:
Lunella wrote:
Because religious people follow a set of rules that are easy to exploit. You can bring someone into the world but depending on their upbringing they may turn into a total psychopath but grew up going to church etc.

When a psychopath is around genuine religious people who just want peace and harmony they disrupt this and then use the religion to manipulate people.

There is even a verse in the Qur'an that talks about it, I can't remember which one it was now but I remember it saying something along the lines of people using the religions for self gain and to watch out for these people but it was referring to Christianity basically.


Solid answer.

As for the verse in the Quran it was actually referring to the hypocrites in Medina who outwardly accepted Islam for social status and gain but who inwardly harbored animus towards Islam and thus were only using it for worldly gain.


Kind of like 99% of the oil tycoons in the middle east...talk about dumb luck



Lunella
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06 May 2021, 10:30 am

salad wrote:
Lunella wrote:
Because religious people follow a set of rules that are easy to exploit. You can bring someone into the world but depending on their upbringing they may turn into a total psychopath but grew up going to church etc.

When a psychopath is around genuine religious people who just want peace and harmony they disrupt this and then use the religion to manipulate people.

There is even a verse in the Qur'an that talks about it, I can't remember which one it was now but I remember it saying something along the lines of people using the religions for self gain and to watch out for these people but it was referring to Christianity basically.


Solid answer.

As for the verse in the Quran it was actually referring to the hypocrites in Medina who outwardly accepted Islam for social status and gain but who inwardly harbored animus towards Islam and thus were only using it for worldly gain.


Thanks :D

That was it, I think there was something referring to Christianity, something about the scriptures being manipulated by the psychopaths for their gain or whatever I can't really remember it could have even been in the Hadith.


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