Hiding behind a fallacy

-
It really grinds my gears when Christians try to give their religion credit for all the sociocultural progress we've made, all while blaming atheism for everything from economic woes to Stalin's genocide. It's astounding self-deception, one in which the innumerable Christians responsible for histories greatest cruelties and injustices are dismissed as not being 'true' Christians; that way, Christianity is responsible only for the pleasant things, and all the unpleasant things can be blamed on atheists or misguided believers who never would have done such things if only they'd had the correct theology.

It simply cannot be ignored that Christians were responsible for, among many other atrocities:
  • The wanton killing and displacement of Native Americans
  • Encomienda
  • The Atlantic slave trade
  • The Crusades
  • The Inquisition
  • The Nazi regime and the antisemitism that inspired the Holocaust 
  • Witch burnings
  • The KKK
  • The murder and forced conversions of Germanic peoples (the Saxon wars)
Importantly, I don't think people did these things because they were Christian, just like I don't think Stalin was a tyrant because he was an atheist. No non-believer thinks that being a Christian will by definition lead to such things. However, religious fanaticism intertwines effortlessly with imperialism and the demonization of outsiders. The important point, then, is that Christianity not only didn't stop these people, but it was often used as an inspiration and/or a justification for these atrocities. To suggest that these people were simply misguided Christians, or not 'true' Christians, is to hide behind the No True Scotsman fallacy in a transparent charade of self-deceit.

The truth is, people will do kind things and cruel things with or without religion. Human solidarity has, quite necessarily given our gregarious and interdependent nature as a species, existed as long as humanity has, and we made it for 198,000 years before Christianity came along to enlighten the lost – whether by words or, if that didn't work, by the sword. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Christianity is bullshit, part 1: The Bible is stupid

-
Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of the universe. You decided that you were going to give one -- just one -- book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you'd want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioral codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You'd want to be sure to help them regulate slavery, and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course you'd want the book to be chock full of mythology -- a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There's a point here about the Bible that, in my estimation, really canno
Read more...

How evangelical culture and porn warped my idea of male sex drive

-
Image
A lot of men my age (I'm 40) get on some kind of sex-boosting pill. Snake oil supplements promising to improve your manliness quotient by 4000% are a dime a dozen. Testosterone replacement clinics are popping up all over the place (which I actually think is a good thing, but not necessarily for sex). At my work, there are basically two types of commercials on the radio: car dealerships promising easy credit approval, and male-enhancing clinics or supplements. Here's the thing about "erectile dysfunction": it's a made-up syndrome used to sell pills. There's no medical criteria for ED; essentially, a man just goes to his doctor and says he's not getting hard when he wants or expects to, or he's not staying hard as long as he wants or expects to, or he's not ejaculating as soon as he wants or too soon or not as often or not at all. Essentially, ED means "I'm not performing the way I expect to be." But where are those expectations comin
Read more...

Randal Rauser on religious consensus

-
Image
It's been a really long time since I wrote a post on one of Randal Rauser's arguments. But as luck would have it, it's a lazy Saturday, I was perusing his blog, and I found a recent post of his in which he links to the following video: Do watch the video before continuing, because I'm not going to explain what it's about. Instead, I want to systematically address his arguments as well as discuss his response to me on his blog. Just a heads-up on my own position: I think that the lack of a consensus is a serious problem for Christianity, for several reasons. First, it stands to reason that if holding true belief is integral to one's salvation, and if God loves all his human creations and wants them to be saved, it would be woefully counterproductive for God to allow humans to stumble into a vast number of schisms that often result from disagreements over basic doctrinal beliefs. Sure, some Christians disagree about which day of the week the Sabbath is supp
Read more...