Challenge: Name an institution that has donated more humantarian aid for the sick and poor than the

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jul 16 2007, 05:57 PM) [snapback]479940[/snapback]</div>

!. The link requires a login. I can't read it. I assume it's the news story from this morning about the LA Archdiocese settling a bunch of molestation lawsuits.

2. I was actually just allowing Kow his original premise - without any other judgment as to whether religion is good, bad, or indifferent. I actually think that the Catholic church is getting TOO much flak on this one. There are a LOT of dedicated priests out there being tarred with the brush of a few bad apples. Obviously, <strike>a few</strike> hard knocks are in order for trying to cover it up, but I think that the church really is trying to deal with the problem, at least in the US. Though it does provoke thought about the idea of celibate priests.

 

Drop it like it's hot. Science please.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Subversive @ May 2 2006, 07:21 AM) [snapback]248497[/snapback]</div>

How about atheistic Communism? The Crusades, for example are said to have cost 133,000 lives while the death toll mounted by Stalin is said to reach 20 million.

Humans start wars. We're greedy, power hungry and violent: it's what we do. We've even started wars over Soccer!

http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/articl...er_war_of_1969_

The heart of conflict isn't really as simple as we sometimes make it, though. For example, the conflict between Ireland and England is often framed as a battle between Catholics and Protestants, but at the heart of the issue you find the Irish were mistreated by the imperialist British to the point of being starved to death during famines in the name of profitability from food exports. It just so happened that the Irish were largely Catholic while the British were largely Protestant. In this case and others, religion isn't so much the catalyst for conflict as it is an excuse and rallying cry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_potato_famine

In abscence of religion, we'd just find a new reason to fight and kill (like atheistic Communists did).

Ideally, a person's faith helps counteract such evil by inspiring practicioners to better themselves and the world around them for God (though it sadly doesn't turn out that way much of the time).





<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jul 16 2007, 06:57 PM) [snapback]479940[/snapback]</div>

The Catholics' race with the public school system is probably pretty close.

http://sadlynormal.wordpress.com/2007/01/0...tation-charges/

 

Would communism and socialism be considered "an institution"?
Just in the free health care alone they would beat the hell out of christianity for helping the poor.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Boulder Bum @ Jul 16 2007, 11:19 PM) [snapback]480054[/snapback]</div>

The Soviet Union was as much an Atheist country as it was a Marxist definition of Communist country; that is, in name only. The reason Stalin didn't want The People worshiping God was he didn't want the competition! I'm not being sarcastic there.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mojo @ Jul 16 2007, 11:06 PM) [snapback]480071[/snapback]</div>

I'm of the opinion that Christians should support socialized medicine exactly for the reason it helps the poor (and everyone else, really).

Fairly early in our country's history, the Christian church was actually pretty good at opening hospitals to care for people (though the hospitals are mostly run by corporations now). Around these parts, half of the hospital names start with "Saint" and most of the rest are named "Lutheran" or "Adventist".

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Jul 16 2007, 11:47 PM) [snapback]480086[/snapback]</div>

Nevertheless, you have a good example of a group committing mass attrocities with no God to blame for inspiration. Wasn't Stalin the guy who memorized a book of the Bible to argue its irrelevance?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Boulder Bum @ Jul 17 2007, 11:04 AM) [snapback]480256[/snapback]</div>

As per the book of Revelation in the Bible, there will be quite a house cleaning that can fall clearly under the heading Christianity. I'd say this will be the biggest event of the sort.

Is it too early to get a head start? :lol:

 

Show me a pie chart of the world's "wealth" broken down by religion, and put it next to the pie chart of who makes humanitarian donations. Otherwise the original post's assumptions are completely meaningless.
Also "humanitarian donation" would have to be properly defined. As in, Proselytizing is not a donation, but a marketing expense (and is part of the money you "donate" at your weekly service). Funding suicide bombers, or madrasses would also not fall under "humanitarian".

 

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(San Diego Steve @ May 11 2006, 06:57 PM) [snapback]253855[/snapback]</div>

Your understanding is in error. Establishment of the New Testament canon does not equal the writings themselves; they all existed prior to the canon's formation. The Pauline epistles, forming the majority of Christian doctrine, date from the 60's and 70's. There is some debate about the age of various books, but I think the scholarship has advanced to the point where most can be dated reliably to the hundred years subsequent to the time that Christ walked the earth.

The Hebrew Scriptures (which some call the "Old Testament") have existed far longer, and many discoveries keep pushing the dates back for those writings.

None of which addresses if the writings are divinely inspired. Islam's holy book seems to be authentically written by the Prophet, but the authenticity of his authorship does not give it any more weight as to being inspired or "God Breathed" than any other writing. It does remove the need to debate, consider, compromise and come to terms in a process that some sociologists believe gave birth to western standards of logic and science.

But Jews and Christians accept the validity of their holy writ voluntarily on the basis of faith, so the age of the documents, original authorship, differing fragments, etc. are subject to consideration by them, but hardly the stuff that is ever effective for ill-informed atheists to crow about (well informed atheists notwithstanding).

Finally, do some number crunching on the whole "religion kills more" theme. Here are some rough numbers from memory, so they may be off a bit. But the overall impact is the same: The Inquisition killed about 3,000 people over 200 years. Some cite numbers as high as 150,000 others who were victims of starvation due to the policies of the church. The "witch burnings" in Europe killed far more ... about 300,000 people.

Estimates of the crusades run as high as 2 - 3 million. You might get to 6 million killed over 2000 years by adding all the excesses up. If you believe every number, including starvation and other "non-traditional" means, that is.

Compare that to atheistic regimes in the 20th century. Stalin is though to have killed from 3 to 60 million over his reign, but let's take that low number for now, and not count the deaths due to famine, or the Germans he killed, etc. Already, one atheist government has killed more than all the Christian churches in power over 1900 years.

Let's look at another atheist, Mao, and start with his admitted killing of 700,000 in the land reform purges in the early 50's. Most scholars estimate the deaths to that first initiative at 2 - 5 million. Adding in the numbers that are routinely added in for the Church, you might want to add another 20 million from starvation for his program "Great Leap Forward", but let's be fair to the Chairman and just say he was a moderate mass murderer and only killed 3.5 million.

Still counting? We have 3 million for Stalin, and 3.5 for Mao, but wait, the atheist hit parade isn't over yet. More recently, Pol Pot has killed 2 million.

We haven't even started counting the non-atheist but also non-Christian mass murderers like Hitler (who appears to have been a pagan), but perhaps you get the point.

Following your logic, I could conclude that the worst mass murderers of the last century were atheists, and therefore atheism is bankrupt because it leads to mass murder. Start believing in God right now! But that ignores all the other factors that impel those in power to consolidate that power and suppress those that threaten them.