Talya wrote:
Wrong. I'd say "millions" is a pretty conservative estimate. He's not just talking about the crusades. He's talking about every single person executed or killed in the name of the church from the council at Nicea and onward, whether for heresy or witchcraft or anything at all. And I think you're being far too kind in a rather pathetic attempt to justify the crusades even in what you do post.
No, you're wrong. "Millions" is not a conservative estimate at all; it's ahideously overblown estimate. Of course, if you include every land grab, ethnic conflict, and other war that just happened to have Christians in some way involved, sure, the number is a lot higher. The number of people killed by inquisitions and witch hunts is much smaller than commonly imagined, even including the Spnish Inquisition, which was really the King of Spain going off on his own and using the Church to do it.
As for being too kind, what's pathetic is the desperate need of nonbelievers to gloss over the more complex aspects of the Crusades in order to make into "ZOMG CHRISTIAN HOLY WAR!!" No one is saying it's excusable in modern terms; the problem is the oversimplification and distortion.
The other rather pathetic thing is failing to mention that he misrepresented "everything from Nicea on" as "the early Church".
Quote:
"All" is probably hyperbole. They certainly did their best to slow scientific advancement though. Galileo wasn't a one-off isolated event. He was neither the first nor the last who's research received such treatment.
Which was not an attempt to, nor did it really, slow scientific progress. Galileo was explicitly told that the Church was perfectly willing to listen to his ideas
if he could resolve problems with them, such as his theories predicitng only one tidal cycle per day rather than two. Furthermore, they saw no reason to abandon ptolemy as accurate in view of such flaws when his theories, although wrong, did appear right since they predicted heavenly bodies' movements accurately. Then there was the fact that after agreeing to keep silent until the problems were resolved, Galileo not only went ahead and published it, but did so in a format that made fun of the Pope, who wa actually sympathetic to him.
I've posted all this before. None of this is hard information to come by. Most of the "the Church hates science!" is various forms of Protestant propaganda.
Quote:
Not for lack of trying. The church held varying degrees of influence throughout history. It should be noted that the Church of England exists as an entity separated from papal authority because King Henry wanted his marriage annulled and couldn't get it done. This both proves Xequecal's point and yours. The church weilded incredible power, to the point of kingdoms needing to go to extraordinary ends (such as creating a new church) to retain any level of autonomy. Nevertheless, some did go to those ends, such as Henry (with Wycliff's support) to achieve that autonomy. That wouldn't be the last time the catholic church tried to interfere in England's affairs, though.
That's pretty absurd, and no, it does not prove Xeq's point at all. If the Church did have any real power, Henry could not have just blown them off, made his own Church, and gone ahead with his annulment. This was about the same period that the Church was failing to deal with a certain German monk in its own supposed Empire because a Prince, not even the Emperor, was shielding him.
The Church weilded some power, especially over the common folk, but it hardly weilded incredible power over kingdoms in general. The Pope's power was that of persuasion.
Quote:
Don't forget the Jews were every bit as victimized by Christians in the crusades as Muslims were.
The Muslims weren't exactly "victimized" by the Crusades; it was a war and both sides fought to win. Islam got to the areas targeted by the Crusades by the sword in the first place. As for the Jews, "every bit as victimized" isn't a very substantive statement.
Quote:
Over a period of about 400 years, various crusades also attacked: Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Occitania, Syria, Russia (against the Russian Orthodox in the Northern Crusades), the Stedingers of Germany/Netherlands, Estonia, Prussia, Poland, the Balkans, Finland and Bohemia. Not all the targets were muslim (although many were.)
Spain and Portugal were Christian areas which muslims had conquered and sacked numerous churches and shrines in, and that attacks on the Orthodox by Catholics can't be attributed as either "the early Church" or be attributed to Christianity in general (only to the RC church).
Occitania was attacked primarily by French kings, and while there were some "crusades" in that general region as well, calling a land grab by a king a "crusade" is quite a stretch just because they happen to be Catholic.
Quote:
But from the 13th to the 17th centuries, the French kings gradually conquered Occitania, sometimes by war and slaughtering the population, sometimes by annexation with subtle political intrigue. From the end of the 15th century, the nobility and bourgeoisie started learning French while the people stuck to Occitan (this process began from the 13th century in two northernmost regions, northern Limousin and Bourbonnais). In 1539, Francis I issued the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts that imposed the use of French in administration.
The Stedingerswere attacked for failing to pay tithes, not for any actual religious reason; had the bishp been a regular lord and attacked them for not paying regular taxes the situation would have been no different.
Quote:
The Stedingers were not heretics, but rebels against lawful ecclesiastical and secular authority.
You and I may disagree with how lawful authority worked at the time, but the bottom line is that this was no crusade.
As for the others, it appears you've simply used a small "C" crusade to describe any and all wars in Europe involving Christians, and relied on the "Crusades = bad Christians, mmmkay" level of thinking by others from there.
Quote:
Furthermore, apart from the crusades the church(es) was(were) involved at a foundational level in just about every major European war between the time periods of Nicea right up to (and including) World War 2.
Except that they weren't. Certain wars, like the Thirty Years War they were heavily involved in, but not in most others. The fact that religious people were involved in wars, even against people of other beliefs, does not somehow lay the fault of the war at the Church's feet. This is simply "guilt by association.
Quote:
And not every conquest was an actual war...the "Word about the Christ" typically did not spread through nice voluntary evangelism and acceptance of the local populace. The vast majority of christian expansion involved forced conversions and the violent eradication of old customs and beliefs.
No, the vast majority involved secular people with missionaries amongst them who were interested in authentic conversion, while the secular leaders were the ones primarily doing the killing. Sure, there were some times when forced conversion was attempted, or violent eradication, but primarily that was about secular authorities using religios justification to claim a moral reason for various conquests.
It's possible to paint the entire Spanish conquest of the New World as some religious crusade with enough distortion, but the fact of the matter is that the religion just hitched a ride while the King of Spain filled his coffers. Trying to claim that Christianity, the church, or the "early church" that mysteriously became the entire first 3/4 of Christian history in Xeq's post, was the primary cause, the instigator, or the reason for every single act of aggression from 325 until 1945 is absurd.
To paraphrase Khross: we get it. You don't like Christianity. However, hardly a thread on some religious topic passes without Xeq or you making a snide potshot at it. An objective look at history hardly exonerates the Chruch of wrongdoing, but pretending it was one endless holy war against muslims, heretics, and whoever else who did nothing whatsoever to provoke anyone is sheer nonsense.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
