Subject:
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Re: Holy crap! (was Re: The partisian trap in California)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 21 Oct 2003 16:28:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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889 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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I think from your equivocation of “Christianity” with “Christians”.
Christianity as a religion doesn’t breed violence and death. Wackos calling
themselves “Christians” might. There is a distinction there.
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I caution that the use of this type of yardstick is called the “no true
Scotsman” fallacy, or the fallacy of the receding target.
Whatever our modern sensibilities may be, the Inquisition was *the essence*
of Christianity in its day, so it’s certainly appropriate to hold
Christianity responsible for the atrocities committed at that time. And it’s
no good to say “but that was 500 years ago,” because the New Testament was
2000 years ago, and you still seem to accept that book as valid Christianity.
You can’t simply cherry-pick your Christians and omit the rest. That’s the
fallacy of selective reasoning.
Dave!
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Vietnam (and a whole bunch of other war/police actions) that America got
involved in for selfish reasons would be a similar situation--we wish to
distance ourselves from the wrongdoings of our ancestors, or even the wrongs
we’ve done ourselves--“That was then, this is now”.
That said, I can see similar problems facing the US from the Iraq
situation--It’s like, “We’ve been down this road before.” It’s obvious,
however, that we didnt’ learn from those mistakes.
For myself, I like to think that we can learn from past mistakes, whether our
own, our fellow citizens, our forefathers, or even our ancestors. Sometimes the
lessons take longer to learn, and there is usually associated with the learning
process “weeping and gnashing of teeth beyond the city gates” (meaning that
sometimes we have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point where we can
see the lesson, and then more kicking and screaming to actually learn from it).
Maybe Christians made huge transgressions against humanity. One need look no
farther than Galileo to note that the church can be dumb. But history is
replete with examples of stupidity and wrongdoings from my chosen faith.
The good news is that we, each of us, are in the same boat. Whether our
country, our race, our belief system or even our biological lineage--not one of
us can stand there and say, “Hey, no one on my team made a bad play.” We can
play the ‘degree’ card--“Well, those black people sure were mistreated at the
hands of whitey” or “the poor jewish people, boy what those nazi b**ards did was
reprehensible!”
Slavery was absolutely wrong and we should all be thankful that someone had the
moral fortitude to go to war over that particular issue, and that the holocaust
was mindboggingly.. well, words fail, and I would have been on the front lines
of the ‘Allies’ to end such tyranny. That said, does this mean that all germans
are vile because nazi’s were German? Or all Americans are bad becasuew some
were slave traders/owners? Does it mean that black people, or Jewish people are
better than others? I don’t personally think so.
We are all human, prone to the same shortcomings. It’s what we do about the
shortcomings where morality comes in to play--we either learn from the past and
work with others to overcome said failings, or we ignore the lessons and repeat
the same mistakes.
This is one of my life lessons that I try to grapple with on a daily basis.
Dave K
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