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There were certainly wars during that time, but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? I'd

by yters 8y ago

There were certainly wars during that time, but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? I'd like to see proof of this.

krapp 8y ago
> but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? Surely, mass murder is mass murder, regardless of the label you apply to it. You're dismissing things like the Crusades and the Church's attempts to convert the New World by force. One could possibly claim that modern "atheist" regimes were capable of mass murder at a greater scale than the Church due to the effect of industrialization ... certainly the Holocaust might not have been as effective as it was had the Nazis been limited to pen and paper, horseback and swords. But, I don't see evidence for the implication that non-theocratic governments or societies are inherently more violent than theocratic ones, rather I see a lot of evidence to the contrary, that unchecked religion permits unchecked violence, because you can argue with a secular authority, but if you believe in God, you can't argue with God. I mean, you can, but if your government claims authority by divine right, then doing so is a threat to the state and it probably won't end well for you. But my point was that, whatever concerns the Church might have had about the effect of heretical ideas, the possibility of violence was not one of them.
- yters 8y ago
  They of course did not foresee the French Terror, Communist revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the Holocaust. But, they did realize the implications of believing man was only matter and that there was no moral order. Christianity was formed in the midst of societies that had very little regard for human life, and stood out for protesting the oppression of their day.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

by yters 8y ago

There were certainly wars during that time, but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? I'd like to see proof of this.

krapp 8y ago

> but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? Surely, mass murder is mass murder, regardless of the label you apply to it. You're dismissing things like the Crusades and the Church's attempts to convert the New World by force. One could possibly claim that modern "atheist" regimes were capable of mass murder at a greater scale than the Church due to the effect of industrialization ... certainly the Holocaust might not have been as effective as it was had the Nazis been limited to pen and paper, horseback and swords. But, I don't see evidence for the implication that non-theocratic governments or societies are inherently more violent than theocratic ones, rather I see a lot of evidence to the contrary, that unchecked religion permits unchecked violence, because you can argue with a secular authority, but if you believe in God, you can't argue with God. I mean, you can, but if your government claims authority by divine right, then doing so is a threat to the state and it probably won't end well for you. But my point was that, whatever concerns the Church might have had about the effect of heretical ideas, the possibility of violence was not one of them.

yters 8y ago
They of course did not foresee the French Terror, Communist revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the Holocaust. But, they did realize the implications of believing man was only matter and that there was no moral order. Christianity was formed in the midst of societies that had very little regard for human life, and stood out for protesting the oppression of their day.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]