Atheism

No, i'm not being hysterical. It is not just the Catholics who have slaughtered people out of hand for religious reasons, and as i have said, your information is incorrect.

As i said, i suspect that you hold your beliefs largely unexamined, which is why i said that i am not calling you a bigot, because you might not recognize the bigotry of what you wrote.

But if you want to consider what i said "unforgivable," you help yourself. I can get along easily in life without your forgiveness.

What greater restraint? That's nonsense--Charlemagne and the Franks marching out to slaughter the Saxons every spring for 40 years? "Conversions" at the point of a sword? The slaughter of the Cathars, of the Waldensians, the murder of Jan Hus, and the attempt to extirpate the Hussites? The hunting down of "pagan" Slavs by the Knights of the Teutonic Order? The burning of "witches" by Protestants? The slaughter of Anabaptists by just about everyone? I could literally provide hundreds pages of evidence of "Christian charity."

And what the hell is this "nominal" crap supposed to mean? Is that the typical grossly dishonest Christian dodge of "Oh well, when they act that way, they're not really Christians, so that doesn't count?"

Really, O'George, you shamelessly peddle the most egregious horseshit.

I've examined my "beliefs" for about 30 years, and I am not a Protestant.

Well, you are certainly peddling bigoted bullshit about the Catholics, so you shouldn't be surprised to have someone suspect that you are.

Oh, this is something new. You are defending the Catholics of the 12th century.

I am not talking about today's Catholics. I wanted the truth about The Church, I found it, and am now free of religion. The Protestants and Catholics teach, basically, the same things.

Peace to you

I'll leave alone the hilarious contention that Protestants and Catholics teach the same thing. Apparently, you are unaware that Protestants and Catholics do not make up the whole of Christianity, but i'll leave that aside, too. I'm not defending the Catholics of the 12th or of any other century, i'm just deploring bigotry.

This is what you wrote which started this entire passage of arms:



Anyone who says the first Christians were all killed (stupid on the face of it--if that were true, how did the cult prosper and pass on its teachings?) and then uses the Cathars as an example obvious is not in possession of any significant truth. Additionally, the notion that there were any specific, monolithic "teachings" of ancient Greeks is as absurd as it is to refer to "the first Christian," and then to fly off on a tangent about the Cathars, who showed up more than a thousand years after the first Christians.

I suspect that you are in possession of very little truth, if any, about the history of religion.

Pardon, I should have said the manner in which the Greeks taught religion - in their homes, and not have people gather into buildings built and called churches. The Cathars taught in their homes, also.

The Cathars did not call themselves "Christians" but were referred to as such much later as people would say that they should not have been killed by the Catholics because they also were Christians. They were destroyed primarily for their treasure, however.

The last book I read about the Cathars was The Great Medieval Heretics by Oxford Historian Michael Frassetto. I don't intend to read anything else on this subject. I found what I was searching for, the true and (as complete as anyone has found) beliefs of the Cathars.

You could cease calling people names

I didn't call you any names, and in fact made it clear that i was pointing out that i didn't consider you a bigot, but rather that you were peddling a bigoted story. You continue to demonstrate your ignorance, however. The Cathars certainly did consider themselves Christians, and that you did not understand what you read is not evidence that they didn't.

You also seem to c0ntinue to see the Greeks as some monolithic society--in fact, they were made up of literally dozens of city states with a variety of practices geographically, and over the course of centuries, a variety of practices. Public displays of piety were very much a part of their religious practice, and there were some times when public piety was enforced in some place, but by no means at all times and in all places. They routinely gathered in public places, called temples, to display their piety, and to rehearse the legends basic to their theology. In particular, Pythagoras and his followers espoused religious beliefs (principally, the transmigration of souls) which were not common throughout the Greek world, or the classical era (which lasted four centuries, at the least), and insisted upon a public piety not enforced in parts of the Greek world of their day.

Pointing out that you are peddling a bigoted picture of the Catholics by your insistence upon one example of cynically, politically motivated crime is not the same as calling people names. But if you want to get your back up and take offense, help yourself.

You still have not addressed the incredible stupidity of saying that the first Christians were all killed, and then dragging in the Cathars when challenged on the claim.

You have also contributed nothing to a discussion of the experience of being an atheist--about which i suspect you know as little as you do about history.

Perhaps. But all the expensive literature you imply that you have read doesn't seem to make you less obtuse when bantering with Thomas.

(aside) ob1's snotty remark deserves a snotty rejoinder. "An eye for an eye" say my bible-thumping friends.


This much is true, but I'm always willing to learn.



I have no earthly idea what you refer to.



What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. It cuts both ways george.

I really do thinks it's a shame that we couldn't have had this discussion without the religionists running in here to rant at us.

The penny-a-peep cast of mind is alien to excellence.

Setanta's penny-peep at the Cathars is fatuity beyond the bounds: running amok.

He knows nothing about the Cathars. They are just for "name-dropping".

He has obviously never read a word of Arnaud Daniel or of Denis de Rougemont's 1956 analysis of the Cathar heresy in L'Amour et L'Occident.

Setanta's is tabloid peeping from which his readers can learn nothing except his need to use the Cathars, and any other entity that comes to hand, to bash the Church and Christianity.

And he doesn't wish to know anything significant about them.

He has the Cathars brutally exterminated, or almost so, by the Church but without knowing why. Pretending it was mindless bigotry.

And the why is the very reason for his very presence on this earth. And, indeed, the presence of all of us, for better or for worse. It is pitiful to see an evolutionist going on about the "worse" . As if liberals and atheists being virtuous is the constant subliminal message. Conservatives being against evolution teaching is never once considered to be because they understand its implications which are undiscussable.

The Cathar heresy rejected sex. It rejected the propagation of mankind in favour of the love for the unattainable "dompna" which is the langue d'oc word for the Latin "domina".

The Gates of Rome and Vienna to be undefended in other words, scientific words, and Spain to become Moorish. And then France. And thus no European science. No America even.

The suppression of the Cathars was a survival strategy and, in the tone of the times, of most pre and early Christian times, the brutality was justified and it pales beside some horrors I won't mention. It was anti-life.

It involved the love passion as a mystical grace centred upon the unconsummated worship of the unattainable, even unknowing, female who symbolised acceptance and initiation into the higher grade, the Consolamentum, of the Cathar movement.

The troubadours sang it and what they sang, eventually misinterpreted by literal readings, went into the Courts of Love, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, and many others, and lit the fuse of the Romantic Movement. Greta Garbo even.

Could atheism have checked it? The Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicurians would not have lifted a finger. They were cultureless men. Without a care beyond themselves. The future can take care of itself.

Anyone who thinks that "cheating", even the word gives them away, on their spouse is something "bad", to be intellectually consistent, ought to be a supporter of the suppression of the Cathars. The brutality was the normal method of proceeding in those days. Setanta often tries to lay 21st century sensibilities onto 12th century Provence, or on any other society that comes in useful. His knowledge of history is confined to foreground incidents and knows nothing of the currents which bring them up to view.

No doubt, as a proponent of evolution, he rejects the concept of the "ordeal" in the interest of "ease-of-the-bone" and bites the hand that removed the institution. A Valentine card ($2.99) and a candlelit dinner suffices. And some persuasion that there is something wrong with girls who don't put-out readily in response.

And he is not a male chauvinist pig. (Oh yeah).

And the heresy is on the rise again.

littlek

Got my big foam pointy finger. Stenciled baseball cap. Check. Check. Got my program. Check. Big foamy cup of cool beer. Yep. Atheists rules. Which way to the barbecue sammiches?

Cripes--that's a bit tame for an atheist get-together.

Unless barbecue sammiches are the same as a car wash of course.

Bar-b-Q sammiches ? ! ? ! ?

Pulled pork, honest to Dog, southern style Bar-b-Q sammiches?

Mmmmmmmmmmm . . . Bar-b-Q sammiches . . .

Are Jews allowed to eat BBQ sammiches?

As far as i'm concerned . . .

Course, so long as they leave some for me . . .

The reason I mentioned it was because I caused a furor at the local temple where our bridge club meets.
I thoughtlessly brought a ham sandwich to snack on and one of the players started screaming at me.

I had to go and apologize to the rabbi.
Another benefit of being an atheist that we haven't touched on. We can eat anything we damn well please any day of the year.

In which case why are you apologising to the Rabbi?