Via Pharyngula:
Just another demonstration of how Christians use their Bible to justify violence and intolerance. As I’ve said many times before, violence is at the CORE of Christianity. It’s built into the very fabric of their scriptures. That’s why the history of Christianity is replete almost 1700 years of bloodshed and intolerance.
The final lines of Joshua 1 (from the OT) says it all:
Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey your words, whatever you may command them, will be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!
Getting back to the White House under GWB, I agree with Pharyngula’s final comment:
We lived under the rule of monsters for eight years. We can’t just pretend it didn’t happen, we need to fight back in the courts to condemn these people and their actions.
Cameron,
I think you are mistaking Christianity with the Old Testament of the Bible. Joshua is from the Old Testament, Christianity from the New Testament which is the Jesus part. The Old Testament is the Jewish & Moslem Bible. They are all descendents of Abraham of the Bible. Jesus was a Jew & therefore was subject to Jewish Law which was also their religion. To the Jews, Law & Religion were one & the same. Jesus actually preached against a lot of the Old Testament laws such as “an eye for an eye” etc. He propounded “turning the other cheek”….”if someone steals your coat, give him your shirt as well”. He preached love & peace & before you start quoting the “coming with a sword” try to differentiate between statements of punishment & justice spiritually & how we should live in society on earth. Whether he actually existed or not, I don’t really know & won’t get into.
The Old Testament is just as much a part of Christianity as the NT, mum. It’s part of their bible. It’s the same god they worship. And while I’ll accept that there are a handful of nice soundbites in the NT about loving your neighbour, it also has him saying “So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:49). The ‘wicked’, in this case, being the non-believers. So don’t give me this love & peace bullshit. Sentencing people who disagree with you to eternity of torture isn’t love & peace. It’s just as much about vengeance as the OT.
And, let me point out, that the quote in the original blog post is an OT quote being used BY CHRISTIANS to justify their war – Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush weren’t Jews. It’s a case of Christians using the OT to justify their violence.
I erred in the previous comment. What I should have said was not “moslem” but Arabic peoples. I know that Church Christians use the Old Testament, but as far as I am concerned that is anti-Christian, that is why I am anti religion. I believe Christianity started out with the right attitudes, but once it got made into Religion it got totally screwed up by power hungry people.
Well if we take the beginning of Christianity as when Paul started evangelizing (around 40CE) and the power hungry downfall after Pope Miltiades did a deal with Constantine in 313 (and subsequently named Donatus a heretic), that leaves… 250 years of “good” Christianity.
the only other people i would avoid besides self-righteous evangelical christians on fire are ex-atheists turned christians on fire. they retain their feelings of intellectual superiority. add that to their newly founded feelings of moral superiority and there you have something truly incredible. check it out: http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/05/forgiven-murderer-or-mahatma-gandhi.html
I see in today’s news that the Pentagon says it no longer includes Bible quotation on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was the practise during the Bush administration.
a step in the right direction, Gran Jan. maybe now we’ll have that wall of separation between church and state
You can find plenty of narrow minded fanatical passages in the new testament too. It didn’t take 250 years after Christ for his work to come undone. His disciples managed it in a lot less, with threats of death and worse to those who didn’t share the same views…. so much for martyrdom!
“If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8)
“If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” (2 John 10-11)
Jerome, in the next century, exhibits a still more execrable spirit than Tertullian, exhorting the Christians to direct their bigotry against their dearest relations:
“If thy father lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes the bosom which suckled thee, trample on thy father’s lifeless body, trample on thy mother’s bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly to the Lord, who calleth thee.” [4:7]
Today the idea of a monarchy and kings being divine is absurd and offensive to us, yet millions of Catholics the world over are expected to accept the authority of the pope as divine and infallible.