Eryemil wrote:Christians haven't suffered nearly as much as the suffering they have inflicted. I am not sure if there is an accurate way to measure suffering, but what I am sure of is that religious dogma has been the most driving cause for genocide in human history.
There is no way to measure suffering and yet you're sure "we" caused most of it? Just because you sense that it is true? Did the Spanish Inquisition cause more suffering than the jihads and gulags of history? Did enslavement and imperialism in European Christendom, cause more pain than the oppression and imperialism amongst the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Goths and Huns, Mongol hordes, early Muslim conquerors, secular Nazis and communists and Maoists and Baathists?
First of all, you're lumping billions of people under this giant banner, judging the group--as if we all think and act the same. THOSE CHRISTIANS did this, THOSE CHRISTIANS did that. Why don't you judge individuals, Eryemil? Do you judge Torquemada and St. Claire on the same moral plane because they're Christians? Wouldn't you be angry if I did the same generalizing toward whatever groups you belong to? It is true that some Christians has committed atrocities and all Christians (like all people) have sinned. Sometimes Christians have used Christian beliefs to justify their sins.
Quote:What makes you theists think that without religion the world would be without morals
Did I ever say the word "morals"? Did I ever infer this at all? I never did nor do I believe it. I was talking about modern western culture. That's what I said. Your problem is that you're continually making this knee-jerk assumptions on what I believe, based on your prejudices about the Christian faith. Unconsciously you make a jump: "Marsh said that the Church created the first hospitals. All or almost all of "those theists" think that without religion the world would have no morals. Well, that's what marsh is saying!"
Quote:What makes you theists think that without religion the world would be without...the comforts that religions has brought?
Well, I do think that without religion we wouldn't have religious comforts! I also think that moden Western culture grew out of Medieval European culture, and Medieval European culture was shaped to a major extent by Christianity. Draw from that what you will.
Quote:We are completely capable of deciding for ourselves what is and isn't harmful/harmless behavior.
Don't be too sure of that. What about thieves, cheats, killers, and wife-beaters? Are they capable of deciding what is and isn't harmful behavior?
Quote:Hospitals were created by the church because there wasn't anyone else to do it.
Why weren't hospitals built by the pagan Greeks and Romans? Why did it take the monks and nuns of the early Middle Ages to begin the first hospitals in Europe?
Quote:the first hospitals were places where people went to die, since disease was considered a trial of god, the only thing they did was make people comfortable as they died, while forbidding scientific thinking. Surgeries and such were also considered mortal sin against god. And don't get me started on the dark ages, when knowledge was considered a diabolic symptom of the coming end of the world.
Absolute rubbish from beginning to end. You merely repeating common assumptions about Medieval culture. You envision it as a period devoid of intelligent thought, mainly due to the cold-hearted machinations of the wicked Church (all those theists). The Medieval period was a period in which much of the knowledge of Classical Antiquity was lost, but intellectual inquiry nonetheless flourished. Even in the early Middle Ages, which you, with Petrarch, call the "Dark Ages" (ask any Medieval scholar today what he thinks of that term).
As to medicine, it was not as advanced as it was in later periods (should it have been?), but doctors and hospitals nonetheless did what they could to heal injuries and cure sickness (though most hospital patients in the period were poverty-stricken old people who had come to die in relative comfort--like church-funded poor peoples' nursing homes) Medicinal remidies were widely used, somemore successful than others. Minor surgery was widely performed. Major surgery was performed much less, because risk of infection and death from pain (no anaesthetic) made such surgeries usually more dangerous than they were worth, up until the 19th century. Now, I'm not trying to claim that the doctrines of the Church didn't sometimes hinder developements. It's stance against human dissection (due to the the corpse being seen as sacred and not to be tampered with) did hinder medical inquiry. But the vision of the Church as this backwards stone-hearted oppressor of mankind, who willfully wants to keep us all ignorant thralls, is utterly false. And these stereotypes of the Middle Ages as an semi-barbaric wasteland were originally generated by protestants who wanted to portray the Catholic Church in as negative a light as possible.
I'm trying to convert you, Eryemil, and I certainly have no urge to "force my morals" on you. I only wish you'd try and see the other side of things with an unbiased, truly critical eye. These things are just not as simple as you seem to think they are.
