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First off, how many Americans actually celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday? Most just seem to go through the motions, say it is about the Birth of Christ, but are, for the most part, very indirectly celebrating Christianity. It seems that Catholics place more emphasis on the religiosity of Christmas than Christians, from my perspective.
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Originally Posted by Nunnor
Hi,
Since Christmas is a national holiday, I wonder if you atheists/non-believers are against it, and agree with the president of American atheist group, David Silverman. On Fox News, Silverman said that Christmas should not be a federal holiday, and that it is a pure Christian religious holiday.
Why? Most Americans feel they are over-worked to begin with and so what if it is a "Christian" holiday; a day off is a day off. While you might be forced to take a day or two off, you are not being forced to celebrate.
It is annoying that some stores/businesses close, but then again, there are always the ethnic markets.
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Originally Posted by Nunnor
So you disagree with David Silver, the president of American Atheists?
I would bet good money that most atheists in America have never heard of Silver, nor have any knowledge that an American Atheists group exists. For most of us, group identity is not a part of the deal. We come from a variety of backgrounds and if this forum is of any indication, we have a hard time agreeing on many social, political, and economic issues. We are atheists because it is simply what we believe. Outside of that, there is really no group identity or group agenda outside of acceptance. But if you really think about it, everyone wants to be accepted.
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Originally Posted by KatieGal
O'Reilly is wrong on almost every turn, including that Christianity is not a religion.
I don't watch FOXNews, or O'Reilly for that matter, but the guy is the exception for the rest of the Fox crew. He is the only member who shows actual intelligence.
Anyways, saying that Christianity is philosophy DOES NOT equal saying that Christianity is not a religion. Do people even know the definition of the word philosophy?
First off, how many Americans actually celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday? Most just seem to go through the motions, say it is about the Birth of Christ, but are, for the most part, very indirectly celebrating Christianity. It seems that Catholics place more emphasis on the religiosity of Christmas than Christians, from my perspective.
Majority of Americans do celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday....
Your post is Anti-Christian, very insulting, dangerous, and totally false.
You cannot blame few individuals vs. billions of Christians, especially God and Jesus.
Every single religion, and atheists have done bad things throughout the history. Jews stoned early Christians, militant atheists who came into power murdered millions and millions of people, radical Muslims have done evil things, some Christians the same, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, etc.
Crusades occurred thousand years ago, and there are no evidence of it whatsoever anyway. All religions fought and killed each other, and that was back then.
Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Stalin were very "peaceful" atheist leaders...
Soviet Union was ruled under State Atheism, and OMG.....
You see, this is that same childish behavior I was pointing out to you before. I've asked you specifically in what will now be three separate threads to provide evidence of writings, historical documents or otherwise to suggest that Stalin, Mao, et al., murdered the people they did strictly because they were atheists. In other words, do you have documents from Stalin where he says "I woke up the other day and realized there was no god. I feel compelled to murder millions of people at this point." You've been provided with links to various crimes by various religious organizations but you scoff at them and say "Meh... Wikipedia." Admittedly, Wikipedia does have its flaws and probably shouldn't be used to write one's doctoral thesis or as a comparison operator to a newly released scientific paper undergoing peer review. Nonetheless, there are some very valuable pieces of information in there and much of the work has been cited and documented to a very finite degree of accuracy.
The fact of the matter is that one can draw many causal links between these leaders. Every single one of them had dark hair but you don't consider that to be a trait causal to their murdering of millions of people.
As I've also pointed out previously, the very thing these dictators did was install themselves as infallible godheads. They were to be worshipped by the people, loved by the people, and groveled to by the people. Any small infraction or perceived rebuke against the "God of State" would result in swift and immediate deportation to a gulag or other state-run prison camp or would result in death. The essential thing I'm pointing out is that all of these leaders installed themselves as gods to be worshipped in the same manner religion requires. The ferocious, all-seeing eyes of the state (commonly referred to as Big Brother) is really not much different than the omniscient, all-seeing, judgmental character of the god most religions worship.
I'll also point out that every time you point out these cases of crimes against humanity and blame it on atheism, it strikes me as someone saying "I know religion has murdered millions of people. But at least it's not as bad as what happened in the twentieth century!" Has religion, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam sunk so low that and become so pathetically engraved with its own failings that it has to compare itself to twentieth century despotism and totalitarianism for even the slightest reprieve?
There are hundreds of thousands of Catholic bishops and priests; just because few perverts have done something harm does not mean they represent the whole Christian sect.
The Pope have let the police arrest most of sex abuse cases, but few of them there were no evidence whatsoever of it. Do you think the police would allow them freely with evidence? No. Use common sense.
Plenty of other religious institutions, including Rabbis, have covered up their sex abuse cases, as well as other criminal cases. This happens by everyone, including all people of faith, and atheists.
Roman Catholic Church is NOT a criminal organization, and stop accusing and insulting the world's largest religious sect. The Roman Catholic Church has done amazing things to the society, everything from founding charity organizations, to orphanage, to colleges, schools, churches, and hospitals.
No. The pope has aided and abetted these perverts and may be one himself, for all we know. He certainly has a lot of sympathy for them. He has not yet released Cardinal Law, wanted in the US for crimes and coverups. As soon as our police came after him, the pope scooted him away to the Vatican. I agree, he should be on trial himself. I really pity all those decent Catholics who supported that church for so long, only to find what was going on behind their backs, that their kids were being raped. There is no other name for it.
There are hundreds of thousands of Catholic bishops and priests; just because few perverts have done something harm does not mean they represent the whole Christian sect.
The Pope have let the police arrest most of sex abuse cases, but few of them there were no evidence whatsoever of it. Do you think the police would allow them freely with evidence? No. Use common sense.
Plenty of other religious institutions, including Rabbis, have covered up their sex abuse cases, as well as other criminal cases. This happens by everyone, including all people of faith, and atheists.
Roman Catholic Church is NOT a criminal organization, and stop accusing and insulting the world's largest religious sect. The Roman Catholic Church has done amazing things to the society, everything from founding charity organizations, to orphanage, to colleges, schools, churches, and hospitals.
Oh yes it is.
The investigation into the church in Australia is making a lot of priests and those in the hierarchy very nervous.
Good.
Not reporting pedophiles and hiding criminals, moving them on to prey on children is evil and corrupt.
Priests using weapons to intimidate & scare minors, after abusing them, threatening behaviour... Criminal. All of it.
There are hundreds of thousands of Catholic bishops and priests; just because few perverts have done something harm does not mean they represent the whole Christian sect.
Certainly true
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The Pope have let the police arrest most of sex abuse cases, but few of them there were no evidence whatsoever of it. Do you think the police would allow them freely with evidence? No
"..let the police arrest..?"...What do you mean? Is it your idea that crimes committed by members of the Catholic clergy are somehow or other exempt from police action if the Pope withholds permission to prosecute them? The Pope has no civil authority anyplace outside of the Vatican, it isn't up to him to let or not let the law enforcement agencies around the world do their jobs.
And further.....when it was no longer possible to contain the scandal, then the church finally swung into action and began to do something to curb the abuses. That certainly was not its first instinct though, was it? The initial reaction by the church was to try and cover it all up and pressure via religious guilt, parents from seeking proper redress for the crimes. Priests known to the church to have been involved in molestation incidents were not turned over to the law, they were transferred to different parishes.
The church behaved exactly like any other corporation in trouble, they treated it as a public relations problem, not as a criminal problem with children as the victims. The first reaction of the church was ..."How can we make all this go away with as little damage to our institution as possible." Concern for the victims and prevention of future incidents did not appear to be a high priority. While you are correct that the criminal priests do not necessarily reflect the behavior of all priests, this remain a shameful and sorry black mark against the institution of the Catholic Church.
I don't like your status saying "arrest the Pope". What did an old man do to you? He is the head of the Catholic Church, and over 1 billion people are Catholics. Catholics are known for charity works, founding hospitals, colleges, schools, orphanage homes, etc. etc.
Let's clear something up real quickly. I respect your right to hold a belief but that doesn't mean I have to respect the belief itself. Simply because you are religious and have a belief in the asinine does not mean that I must be dragged into the fold and commanded to respect that belief. What I will respect is your right to have that belief and opinion. I will not say "You can't say that," or "You can't think that." What I may do is point out the logical fallacies in your beliefs and I may even call them ludicrous. Simply because you "don't like my status" will change nothing. I am not here to please you or to make you feel comfortable.
Now that that's cleared up, let's focus on the Pope for a second. I will ignore all previous crimes against humanity by the Catholic Church as it would simply be unfair for me to blame Ratzinger for things that happened before he was alive or before he had any sort of real power within the church (like when he was an altar boy). That being said, this does not excuse him from things that happened under his control while a member of the Catholic Church but not while being a pope. In other words, I think it's fair to say that he's responsible for things that happened under his direct power while he was a bishop, cardinal, etc... It's also fair, in my opinion, to say that any concealment of crimes at this point in time - regardless of when they happened - makes him implicit in their involvement.
I'm going to start by asking you a simple question. Look at this list real quick. Now, ignore the fact that the people on that list are/were members of a religious institution and think of them as employees for a large multi-national company. I don't care what company it is. Think of any large company sizable enough to say that each "employee" would be analogous to a single priest, bishop, etc... within the church.
Immediately, we could say that a large multinational company doesn't really have a lot of control over what its employees do. One bad employee does not constitute the whole of the company. Nor do two bad employees or three or even four. To this, I will agree that one can't cast a blanket over the entirety of the corporation based on the actions of a handful of employees.
But, then you begin to notice that this list is pretty large. Not only is it large but if there were a multinational company that had that many people accused of raping (and let's face it, torturing) children, we'd kind of wonder what was going on. I mean, this is a long time well-respected company, right? We can't just go around casting this blanket accusation that there's something more sinister going on. This company, after all, does do a lot of charitable work around the world. It's a well-grounded company, rooted in moral actions, right?
Nonetheless, you launch an investigation into this company just to make sure things are on the "up and up" and you find that not only was the company aware of the abuse for a very long time, the typical response from within was not to fire the employee, report him to the authorities and wash their hands of him, but rather to simply move him to another "district" or "region" so as to sweep things under the rug. And, yeah, even the most ardent prosecutor could perhaps look past this grievous mistake of a decision made in haste and worry if it happened only once... But, the reality is that this company swept this under the rug in NUMEROUS cases and, in fact, it seemed to be the M.O. by which it operated any time one of these cases became known.
Your investigation reveals a widespread cover-up of numerous child sex abuse cases and you go in to bring down the hammer on them. One of the directors of the company, and one of the main co-conspirators (Bernard Law), just prior to his arrest on numerous charges of "conspiracy to promote" flees the country and seeks asylum in a sovereign political state where the CEO and many of the other top figureheads of this company live.
The company kind of begins to co-operate, if not just to save face but refuses to give up some of the most notorious actors of these crimes. They allow the arrest of the lower ranks of employees and even some of the "managers" and "senior managers" but cast a safety net over anyone near the top shelf. Investigation after investigation reveals an almost systematic ring of torture and abuse directed at young children and then concealed by this company. The current CEO is even implicated in a number of cover-ups, has provided asylum to some of the worst offenders, and deserves, at the very least, to be implicated and questioned in his role.
Nunnor, if it were any other company than the Catholic Church, every member of the public would be screaming for the arrest and trial of the CEO and his henchmen from the top down. What happened at Penn State is a perfect example of that. Penn State does and did do a lot of wonderful things for the community and for the people within. But, one really rotten apple ruined the whole thing. Why did that one rotten apple ruin Penn State? Surely the people can see past the one bad guy? Because there was a cover-up and concealment of the most heinous of crimes. That's why.
My status message reads "Arrest the Pope and try him at the Hague." The Pope is technically considered a "head of state" and that's where heads of state go when they're arrested for crimes against humanity or crimes of a nature deemed serious enough. It matters not what the Catholic Church does or has done in the past in terms of schools, hospitals and the like. If they are concealing something behind all of that, it makes those things a mere facade to cover up the greater evil.
And that is just one grievous crime. We can talk about the intentional lying about the effectiveness of condom usage to parts of Africa suffering from an extraordinarily high AIDS rate. We can ask why Athanase Seromba, after committing grievous cases of mass murder in Rwanda, has yet to be apologized for by the Catholic Church. Those things all fall under the current jurisdiction the current pope but, are result of a long lineage of exorbitant power abuse from the church whose enjoyed such privilege for centuries.
It's better not to respond to anyone of you showing your bigotry and hatred towards the Catholic Church. Keep in mind that you insult billions of Catholics and Christians around the world.
You have absolutely no idea what the pope has done to the priests and bishops, and show your anger on something else. You still continue to argue and show your bigotry.
Evil things have occured throughout the history by all religions' leaders, people, including atheists. Don't come and tell me only "Christians" have done this. Why do you ignore the sources I provided by Jewish rabbis and teachers sexual abuse?
No, because they aren't Christian and you just want to bash Christianity.
Don't talk to me anymore! You are very disgusting.
Like I said, the Pope has let the police arrest most of those sexual abuse cases, and only few were let go because of no evidence whatsoever. All religious leaders wants for the most part protect other religious people.
As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials did not punish or even hold a trial within the Catholic church for a Wisconsin priest who may have molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to The New York Times.
The Times reports that despite warnings from "several" bishops to then-Cardinal Ratzinger about Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest at the St. John's School For The Deaf in St. Francis, WI, the Vatican chose not to act and ultimately allowed Murphy to go unpunished before his death in 1998. The Times reports:
Latest allegations: Pope Benedict XVI is visiting Britain next week, after a Belgian commission into alleged child sex abuse by clergy said it had testimony from hundreds of victims
Pope Benedict XVI failed to act over complaints during the 1990s about a priest in the US who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys, victims say.
As head of the Vatican office dealing with sex abuses, the then Cardinal Ratzinger allegedly did not respond to letters from an archbishop on the case.
A Church trial of the priest was halted after he wrote to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pleading ill health.
The Vatican newspaper said the claims were an "ignoble" smear attempt.
Thread is closed due to Administrators sticky about proseltyzing in this forum.
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