Zombie Apocalypse vs Westboro Baptist - Page 3 - OG Myth-Weavers

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Zombie Apocalypse vs Westboro Baptist

 
He's not making an assumption, he is stating that that is the implication of your post. Technically he is wrong, it sin't an implication, it is n outright logical conclusion of your post- you state that you wish them gone because they can be used in that way as a response to statements that they are inadvertantly doing good by being a common enemy. If you wish them gone for reason A and they should be allowed to exist for reason b the logical conclusion is that you consider benefit A (the elimination of a possible argument against christianity) to be greater than cost B (the loss of a common enemy which unites divided partisan politics). The fact that benefit A is based on what is generally understood to be a paranoid delusion of fundamentalist christians does not help the analysis...

So really, at this point there's nothing I can say that you won't find fault in (using terrible logic, at that). Don't you have anything better to do?

Why do people care about having a common enemy anyway? If all that unites us is a shared hatred of an "other" we have some big issues on our hands. We've
gone to war for less.

I also don't hope they stay around. They are an example of the elements I find most misguided among my coreligionists. I wish the zombies would help them to laugh at themselves and stimulate them to reassess how their work relates to God's message. Probably won't happen, but I can hope . . .

I think we had better be very careful if we are trying to claim that the "Nazis were generally Christian in nature." Nazi ideology was actually quite contemptuous of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, especially in the early days of the Nazi movement. They borrowed much more from Nietzsche's atheistic philosophy than from the teachings of Luther or the Pope. There was a point in time where they toned down their anti-religious rhetoric to achieve greater electoral success--it was useful not to completely scare voters with strong Christian sympathies. Then there was a point where they were in position to crush all opposition, which forced the major religious denominations of Germany to choose between being persecuted and coming to an accommodation. Church authorities (both Catholic and Lutheran) chose the latter, and it turned out to be a disastrous moral compromise, deligitimizing the Church in the postwar period. (It is easy for us, sitting in a place where we aren't at risk of being imprisoned or killed and having an institution we cherish persecuted, to blame the Church authorities, and in retrospect, we might say they were wrong, but in reality few of us would have been brave enough to openly oppose the Nazis once they began using violence to cement their hold on power). Some individual believers, though, did not go along with the Church authorities, acting on their beliefs by joining resistance movements, covertly aiding Jews and other Nazi victims, or sticking their necks out for their beliefs and becoming martyrs.

Antisemitism is unfortunately, part of the Christian heritage, and the Nazis used antisemitism in their propaganda because it resonated with non-Jewish Germans at the time. It was a longstanding part of German culture (just like anti-African racism is in ours), and Luther, like most Germans of his era, was very antisemitic. That doesn't mean the Nazis thought of themselves as Christians, though--they were just manipulating common attitudes that were shared across a broad spectrum of German society, including ordinary Christians, to gain their political ends. You won't find very many Christians today who subscribe to antisemitism, at least not in the sense of a racial hatred of Jews, though it is fair to say that different elements of the Christian community have very complex and not always positive attitudes toward Judaism as a religion.

I'm going to avoid engaging in a longer apologetic for Christianity by noting that most big identity groupings that are coupled with institutional power--nations, religions, races, and so forth--have black marks on their historical records. Our pasts affect us, but we are not our pasts. Americans today are still affected by the historical consequences of slavery and "manifest destiny," but that doesn't make today's America or Americans evil. We continue to struggle as a nation with our mistakes, try to rectify them, and move forward. And there is much good mixed in with the bad--democracy, religious tolerance, a drive for equality for people of all kinds. The same should be said of Christianity--if you're going to bring up the inquisition, you also had better bring up pacifism; if you are going to complain about Pope Benedict's background or the Catholic Church's reprehensible cover-ups of child molesters in the priesthood, you should also remember Father Damian's selfless service to the lepers of Hawaii and Albert Schweitzer's work in Lambarene and his joining forces with Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to oppose nuclear testing and nuclear weapons. Christians are human, just as Americans or Muslims or Chinese or atheists or Brazilians are, and they do good and bad things as a group and as individuals, just as those other groups do. The ideals aren't necessarily flawed, just the institutions (and the understandings of the people) that carry them out.

As early as Mein Kamph hitler was quoting scripture, as shown http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm. I am not going to get into teh history of good christians versus bad christians for multiple reasons, including it being too far off topic for this thread and the fact that as already noted my issues is more with the deity than the religionists when it comes to christianity. I do tend to be sensitive to the whole responsibility denial thing with the holocaust, in part because what history is denied tends to be repeated and in part because most people who deny the christian element of th nazi movement tend to try and find someone else to scapegoat for the mess, and scapegoating was where the problem started.
You might check out teh Hitler myths at the bottom of the page I sited however- it clearly debunks most of the claims you made about the Nazis not being christian.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Powderhorn View Post
Why do people care about having a common enemy anyway? If all that unites us is a shared hatred of an "other" we have some big issues on our hands. We've
gone to war for less.
We (Or I, since I can't really speak for anyone else) already know we have big issues. That's exactly why a common enemy would be useful.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dire Lint View Post
We (Well, I anyway) already know we have big issues. That's exactly why a common enemy would be useful.
Things need to calm down, not heat up. I haven't exactly seen the WBC as a stabilizing influence; the counter-demonstrations are, at best, negating the damage the WBC does.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Solaris View Post
Things need to calm down, not heat up. I haven't exactly seen the WBC as a stabilizing influence; the counter-demonstrations are, at best, negating the damage the WBC does.
I think we're kind of at an impasse here. There isn't much for us to discuss. See, I don't care about the damage you think WBC does to Christianity's PR, because I have no personal stake in Christianity's PR and also because they're just another example of a much bigger problem with modern religion in general that won't go away if they do. Although if you're talking about the damage they do to the emotional state of people attending the funerals of their loved ones' only to have a bunch of fanatical idiots start screaming at them that their relative deserved to die because America doesn't hate gay people enough, then that's something else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dire Lint View Post
Although if you're talking about the damage they do to the emotional state of people attending the funerals of their loved ones' only to have a bunch of fanatical idiots start screaming at them that their relative deserved to die because America doesn't hate gay people enough, then that's something else.
Well, now that you mention it, that is one of their more
sarcasm alert
endearing behaviors. I was not amused to hear the Supreme Court rule that servicecritters belong to Uncle Sam even after they die, and we're not allowed decent funerals.

I'm also talking about the idea of having a group everybody hates, when an over-abundance of hatred seems to be the principal problem in America these days. Strikes me that throwing more gasoline on the fire isn't going to put it out.




 

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