Crowsbeak posted:

Oh wow another athiest thread. Also another where all us horrible theists are deluded idiots who are no different than some ancap trad catholic who probably reads to much hhh.

Crowsbeak posted:

Mostly its you guys telling Kyrie he is wrong. Also most likely he will be posting in this one to. So you're expanding his lovely presence with this thread.

Miltank posted:

Every civilization in the history of the world has had slavery until pious Christians realized how poo poo it was.

E:^the wikipage you linked says otherwise brah

Miltank posted:

First, slavery exists. It exists for millenia. Then, zealous Christians like John Brown (PBUH) rise up against established norms and fight to abolish it.

Miltank posted:

It took ten thousand years of Civilization before Christianity came along and ended slavery.

Crowsbeak posted:

Wait you actually think a bunch of poo poo stains who cobbled together phrenology and choice quites from the bible were going to just let their meal tickets free?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmFPyDK_8

Miltank posted:

Abolitionists were anti-slavery because of Christianity. Slaveholders were pro-slavery because money.

I am truly sorry that Christians didn't abolish slavery fast enough for all the Atheists itt.

quote:

It’s abundantly clear, as recent scholarship has demonstrated that religion stood at the center of the Civil War for both sides. Both North and South looked to God for meaning, and each side believed—with equal fervor and certitude—that God was on its side. Many ministers, generals, leaders, and editors went so far as to proclaim that God had ordained the war and would determine its length, its damages, and its outcome. The victor would show, in other words, whose side God really supported. New England political and religious leaders had long proclaimed themselves God’s “chosen people.” With the start of the Civil War, southerners laid claim to the title and, through speech, print, and ritual actions, proceeded to “prove” their claim.

For the South, this “chosen” status not only presumed ultimate victory in what would turn out to be a long and bloody conflict, but also put God’s imprimatur on the Confederate national identity. In fact, the South claimed to be a uniquely Christian nation. The new Confederate Constitution, adopted on February 8, 1861, and ratified on March 11, 1861, officially declared its Christian identity, “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” Southern leaders chose as their national motto Deo Vindice (“God will avenge”). Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed that the time had come “to recognize our dependence upon God … [and] supplicate his merciful protection.” This national acknowledgment of religious dependence, as the South frequently pointed out during the war in both the religious and the secular press, stood in stark contrast to the “godless” government of the North that ignored God in its constitution and put secular concerns above the sacred duties of Christian service and the divine commission.

Miltank posted:

Using religion to justify cultural inertia is different from using religion to promote radical anti-establishment egalitarianism.

Miltank posted:

Slavery without Christianity: keeps on going forever until Christianity stops it.
Slavery with Christianity: reactionaries try and warp scripture to support chattel slavery, it doesn't work and slavery is abolished.

VitalSigns posted:

It's worth pointing out that the Pope banned slavery in 1537 and called slaveowners allies of the devil, and he was basically ignored by the Spanish who were profiting from it immensely.

Apparently this means that the slavers were the true Catholics or something?

Disinterested posted:

The Propositions:

1) X is a Christian. A1 was an act motivated by his Christianity.
2) Y is a Christian. A2 was an act not motivated by his Christianity.

Is not an example of 'no true scotsman' or any other example of a logical fallacy. Kindly stop drumming it in to your arguments inappropriately.

Miltank posted:

Slavery without Christianity: keeps on going forever until Christianity stops it.
Slavery with Christianity: reactionaries try and warp scripture to support chattel slavery, it doesn't work and slavery is abolished.

Miltank posted:

e: abolitionists aren't abolitionists without Christianity.

Crowsbeak posted:

Yeah I mean its not like they litterally thought it was a holy war or anything to extinguish something that was an abomination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I9duc8W6Q

quote:

Vindication for this new nation under God seemed to come with the South’s victory at First Manassas on July 21, 1861. In a thanksgiving sermon preached the same day in Richmond, Virginia, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, William C. Butler declared:

God has given us of the South today a fresh and golden opportunity—and so a most solemn command—to realize that form of government in which the just, constitutional rights of each and all are guaranteed to each and all. … He has placed us in the front rank of the most marked epochs of the world’s history. He has placed in our hands a commission which we can faithfully execute only by holy, individual self-consecration to all of God’s plans.
Such declarations, once rare in the South, would now become a staple of the religious press, the civilian preacher, the military chaplain—and the politician.

For the remainder of Confederate history, nearly three-quarters of all published sermons were thanksgiving, public fast or other war-related sermons, and the number of sermons actually in print represented only a fraction of the total. Not only did church-goers hear the message that their war was a holy one, but so did virtually anyone who read a newspaper, attended a public gathering or served in a military camp or on the battlefield.

It’s instructive to realize that most of those who attended local churches in the South during the war—and therefore listened week after week to their local pastor sacralizing the southern war cause—were women and children. With husbands, sons and fathers off at war, women filled the pews, and in turn, the preachers filled the women’s hearts and minds with a new sense of their place in both politics and public action. It would be the women, they understood, who would be keeping the godly “covenant” with their morality, prayers, and home-front support of the war.

Miltank posted:

Your statement or question or whatever it was is nonsense. Its like asking whether blue would still be blue if it was green.

Crowsbeak posted:

Thats horseshit, many in the enlightenment engaged in pre adamism and were quite willing to say that blacks, aboriginals, and semites were not equal to Europeans.

Crowsbeak posted:

Look I know you're an anti theist and everything that christianity or any religion has ever done is evil. But lets just look at the songs ofr abolitionists and their writings.

Crowsbeak posted:

Yes and the enlightenment for all its many goods also was certainly a major influence on the development of white supremacy.

Crowsbeak posted:

If the shoe fits....

Sinnlos posted:

Slavery argument is stupid as gently caress. Everyone kept slaves, does not matter what religion was predominant.

Bad things happen because humans are poo poo, regardless of faith or the lack thereof.

Jesus matters because he is responsible for the last two millennia of Western thought, and all the good and bad that comes with it.

Gas thread, ban OP for this worthless poo poo.

Sinnlos posted:

Jesus matters because he is responsible for the last two millennia of Western thought, and all the good and bad that comes with it.

Sinnlos posted:

Christianity, being a religion based partly upon the philosophy and teaching of Jesus, has had a significant impact on world history. Yes or no?

Sinnlos posted:

Jesus matters because he is responsible for the last two millennia of Western thought, and all the good and bad that comes with it.

Crowsbeak posted:

No, hey I could care less if you bring up the crusades, those were idiotic uses of religion that can be used because some poo poo stains think that Christians have to own Jerusalem. But to deny when Christians were the main motivator for good, because that somehow goes against you're religious people never do nay good narrative , shows that you really do have a problem with Christians.

Badger of Basra posted:

But I thought Christianity was responsible for slavery?

VitalSigns posted:

Maybe he thought that "what you do to the least among you, you're doing to god" was explicit enough since obviously no one is going to say it'd be cool to whip god in the gold mines.

Your argument seems to assume that Jesus actually was supernatural and that he knew the future and how Southern gentlemen would twist his words 1800 years later and therefore should have known to be more explicit, which is a weird thing to do. You're adding in all kinds of assumptions to avoid taking his words at face value.

There's really no way to reconcile slavery with Jesus' teachings of charity and humanity and turning the other cheek and treating everyone like your family or like God. Obviously people are going to try because slavery is profitable, but those people are demonstrably wrong.

Miltank posted:

No because any historical developments attributed to Christianity could have happened without Christianity because *farts*

Crowsbeak posted:

Yeah thats bullshit, Jesus has had the same kind of influence on history that Confucius or Buhduh had, civilizations were all changed by those men's teachings and for an athiest to deny it shows some rather poor understanding of history.

Sinnlos posted:

Hitler did and we should.

Ignoring the impact of Jesus as a figure is ignoring the impact of Christianity, as the two are entwined.

Ignoring the impact of Hitler as a figure is ignoring the impact of Facism, as the two are entwined.

I do not see how this is in any way contentious.

Crowsbeak posted:

I almost think Commie has one of those simplistic views of history where everyone is only doing what they do for material gain.

Barlow posted:

That said many southerners did quote the Bible to justify slavery. The problem seems less "Christianity" and more how you interpret Christianity.

Miltank posted:

It is extremely obvious that he is a historical materialist which is like... really not a productive method.

VitalSigns posted:

Jesus was born centuries after the Old Testament was written so when we're discussing the moral lessons that Jesus taught then no, I'd say that the Old Testament probably isn't going to contain any useful Jesus quotes about anything.

Miltank posted:

you said it terribly, congrats.

Sinnlos posted:

So Jesus does matter to the modern day through his direct and indirect influence on Western thought and history.

Miltank posted:

Christians diddo many terrible things. I reserve the right to call a Christian's faith lukewarm, but that doesn't mean they aren't "christian" in the descriptive sense.

Crowsbeak posted:

Also the people who were abolitionists had material reasons to be against slavery right? They had material reason to risk life and limb bringing men to freedom?

Disinterested posted:

You are so bad at your own ideology that you may as well join the other side to inflict maximum damage.

Badger of Basra posted:

Sinnlos posted:

The argument is that the words and teaching of Jesus do not matter in the modern world. This is demonstrably false, due the historic impact his existence and words have had.

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah, then we should probably argue that Christians who do that are misinterpreting their faith rather than agreeing with Fred Phelps and trying to convince Christians that he's right and their faith calls them to be bigots.

Crowsbeak posted:

Nope, but they certainly were not the base of the abolitionist movement, or even a significant minority.

Sinnlos posted:

I can almost see the goalposts... moving!

VitalSigns posted:

Isn't this going to be true for any philosophy? It's not like Confucius lived for 8,000 years and become the Emperor of China and the ruler of all Buddhist states and personally did every important thing that his philosophy influenced.

If that's your standard for historical impact then what would actually qualify?

Miltank posted:

You argued that abolitionists used Christianity as a means to an end which is a standard materialist reading of history. Your line of thought about historical abolitionism without Christianity also led me to believe this because it was very materialistic.

Miltank posted:

I was arguing in an underhanded way by using 'abolitionist' in its academic meaning ie the American Abolitionist Movement which was specifically Christian. I have no doubt that there were atheist who were anti-slavery, but the First Republic is about as bad of an example of this as exists, not the least because they allowed slavery to continue in San Domingo.

Exclamation Marx posted:

Jesus seems like a pretty deece guy

Crowsbeak posted:

I worry mostly about people who deny history.

Crowsbeak posted:

I do to, like when someone thinks that history can be broken down into materialist wants.

Barlow posted:

"Jesus Christ, Denton!"

OwlFancier posted:

Perhaps theists and atheists of all philosophies can unite in their belief that Richard Dawkins is an insufferable berk.

OwlFancier posted:

I think it requires more introspective and intellectual ability to forgive someone for being a smug twat than it does to simply recognise and dislike it.

Smug is smug to everyone, it's not a very good way to convince anyone of anything.

Disinterested posted:

I cannot comprehend that you of all people think that someone else's form of atheism burns bridges but yours doesn't. Your arguments are always more reductive versions of Dawkinsesque ones.

SedanChair posted:

The simple arguments are fine, more complicated ones are not needed. What isn't fine is the New Atheists' bigotry, white supremacism and misogyny that underpins literally everything they say and do.

OwlFancier posted:

Is "New Atheist" a definite term for something that I didn't get the memo for?

DarkCrawler posted:

I'm just not of the mind that religion needs to be challenged everywhere. It doesn't in itself hurt anything. It's simply not relevant in the realities of law, science, morality, anything in the physical world, and as long as it can be kept apart from those, what is the harm? Most religious people I know seem to be able to do exactly that.

DarkCrawler posted:

I've heard Atlanta's pretty cool?