Original Sin?

Quote: Evenbob

That was the Buddha's message, trying not
to have an ego centered you. It's the point
of zen meditation, it's called becoming
'enlightened'. Zen masters are known to have
two personalities, one that deals with everyday
life, that likes oatmeal for breakfast, driving
a fast car, seeing old Westerns on TV, maybe. The
other side of them is for the zendo,

This doesn't sound like a healthy thing. Shouldn't we rather integrate our ego with our desires to be enlightened? Why not enlighten our ego and not make our happiness contingent on worldly things like oatmeal, fast cars, and westerns? I know you aren't a Buddhists, but saying all our desires are the cause of our unhappiness seems a little extreme. Why not just subject our desires to reason and enjoy them without allowing them to control us or dictate our happiness to us.

Quote: FrGamble

Probably when he was killing priests, bishops, and persecuting the Catholic Church he also kind of renounced it. Also you are simply wrong about the Vatican or Christianity teaching that Jews,

He did all that and never once renounced
his membership in the Church. I am not
WRONG about the Church's teaching about
the Jews in the early 20th century and I'll
be DAMNED if I'll look it up AGAIN just so
you can conveniently forget it next time
this comes up. I'm not playing that game
with you anymore, you and your convenient
bad memory. You've sucked me in too
many times.

Quote: FrGamble

SL, I simply can't allow you to extol the freedom of Western Europe based on the foundational influence of Christianity

Of course you can't because Christianity is not what the freedoms of Western civilization are based on. Long story short, the idea began to spread in the Enlightenment, after the Renaissance, by philosophers who were at best weakly Christian, but all were secular in outlook.

Quote:

and at the same time allude to the idea that Soviet Communism was not a disaster,

It was a huge disaster.

But there is one things to keep in mind: Communism is more a cult than a political ideology (as is Nazism).

Quote: Nareed

Of course you can't because Christianity is not what the freedoms of Western civilization are based on. Long story short, the idea began to spread in the Enlightenment, after the Renaissance, by philosophers who were at best weakly Christian, but all were secular in outlook.

Oh okay, so it was the Enlightenment that had Christianity as its foundation. Actually, what I am really getting at is the idea that every human person is equal and of infinite worth to God comes unto the human scene through the teachings of Christ.

Quote:

It was a huge disaster.

But there is one things to keep in mind: Communism is more a cult than a political ideology (as is Nazism).

I do think that once you unseat God we often fill His spot with worship of a state or dictator or ourselves.

Quote: Evenbob

He did all that and never once renounced
his membership in the Church. I am not
WRONG about the Church's teaching about
the Jews in the early 20th century and I'll
be DAMNED if I'll look it up AGAIN just so
you can conveniently forget it next time
this comes up.

You'll apparently be damned if you learn from that previous discussion that the Church's teaching was somehow to blame for Hitler's hatred for the Jews. Please remember that during this same time a young man named Karol Woytijia was running around underground as a seminarian hiding from the Nazis. Apparently the Church did not teach him to hate Jews.

Quote: FrGamble

You'll apparently be damned if you learn from that previous discussion that the Church's teaching was somehow to blame for Hitler's hatred for the Jews.

It wasn't ME that came to that conclusion,
it's biographers of Hitler. Do you really think
he just woke up one day hating Jews? It
was drilled into his head in the Catholic
school he went to. His mother was a Church
zealot, she was a rabid Catholic. Can you
imagine being brought up by a Jew hating
Catholic mother? That would kind of skew
your world view. The Church has a lonnnng
history of Jew hating, you know that.

Quote: Evenbob

It wasn't ME that came to that conclusion,
it's biographers of Hitler. Do you really think
he just woke up one day hating Jews? It
was drilled into his head in the Catholic
school he went to. His mother was a Church
zealot, she was a rabid Catholic. Can you
imagine being brought up by a Jew hating
Catholic mother? That would kind of skew
your world view. The Church has a lonnnng
history of Jew hating, you know that.

Don't extrapolate from a mother who may have taught her son some twisted and evil teachings that the Church taught anything close. Be careful and if what you mean to say is that Hitler had a bad mother who was Catholic just say that.

Quote: FrGamble

Oh okay, so it was the Enlightenment that had Christianity as its foundation.

No, the Enlightenment had Greco-Roman philosophy as its foundation.

Quote:

I do think that once you unseat God we often fill His spot with worship of a state or dictator or ourselves.

You know that Soviet apparatchiks often requested information from the KGB and GRU in terms of Marxist theory, and were frustrated when there was none?

Quote: buzzardknot

" " You can't point out any "disastrous" official atheist government or society. " I just pointed, you go off on a tangent. You are never WRONG !

If anything, that was the exception that proves the rule. My essential point is that being atheistic or not has nothing to do with a government being a disaster. But please, give me a link to a source that shows that the Khmer Rouge's butchery was due to their atheistic worldview!

Besides, you weren't trying to make any kind of legitimate point; you were just attacking me. I pretty much discount everything you say by, oh, 90% or so because of that.

Quote: FrGamble

SL, I simply can't allow you to extol the freedom of Western Europe based on the foundational influence of Christianity and at the same time allude to the idea that Soviet Communism was not a disaster, when no matter how strong it was or for however long it lasted, it was built upon repression and the mass murder of its citizens.

And how you gonna stop me? :)

The current climate of freedom in (most of) Europe is due to their having RENOUNCED Christianity for the most part. Religion resulted in the slaughter of hundred of millions of people over the last several centuries. Now, at least, you don't have people picking up pikes or maces or swords or flintlocks or machine guns and going to kill those folks over there because they say that Jesus came from God's asshole while you know the TROOOTH--that Jesus was hatched from a holy walnut. Cue the mass murder and destruction.

I agree that Communism was no fun and ultimately failed, but the centuries of rule of the various Czars were no picnic for Russia, either. The Communist government DID, in fact, raise the standard of living of the average Russian citizen, and while it did so with at times extreme brutality, it can't be denied that some aspects of Communism DID work. People used to routinely starve to death in Imperial Russia.

At any rate, you can't ascribe the failures of Soviet Communism to its atheist stance. A Christian Communist government would have been the same mess. disaster, however you want to phrase it. And as far as mass atrocities throughout history are concerned--the vast majority of those were committed by Christian countries and leaders. Toss in a few Mongols (who were also religious people) for spice.