Is Christianity Evil

[nogodsforme]

Christianity is a belief system that instructs members to do certain things. We have had many discussions here with Christians who tell us that if Jehovah God does something, it is not evil, because by definition god cannot do evil. So, if god wants you to do something, it is automatically not evil.

God tells people to burn women at the stake, drown babies in bathtubs, shoot doctors, keep slaves, deny rights to gay people, harass families at funerals, make war on people of a different religion. As long as god has told you to do it, it is just fine. The people who do these things are convinced that they are doing what god wants. So they are not behaving in an evil manner. Just ask George Bush.

Atheism does not instruct anyone to do anything. It is only the lack of a belief in supernatural beings. Nobody has to take any action because they don't believe in something. So there is no way that anything someone does, whether it is considered evil or not, can be attributed to atheism. If an atheist enslaves people or denies equal rights to gays, or does some other evil act, it is because that person is a mentally disturbed criminal. Not because they lack a belief in supernatural beings.

If a person who believes in ghosts and space aliens shoots a doctor because the aliens want the doctor dead, is there any doubt that the person is insane? Would anyone vote for people who said that the space aliens in their heads told them to run for president? It is truly amazing how religious people get an automatic free insanity pass.

[JeffPT]

So damn true. Being a Christian for decades had an immeasurable effect on the level of passion I had for this life. As Christians, people are taught to have a "Godly" disdain, a hate even, for the things of the world that oftentimes helps to make life wonderful. The constant thought in the back of my head was that of "focus your mind and place your treasure on things above and love not the world for the world and everything in it is passing away and has no lasting value." 

Can you imagine how much fun and pleasure I decided not to pursue? That's not even considering the many dreams I either brushed under the rug or never dared dreaming because I fully believed this life was futile and all things in life aside from "Godliness" were utterly meaningless. My existence as a human for most of my life has been that of an enslaved mind trapped in a box developed with the help of my Christian heritage that stood in the way of me fulfilling my highest potential, chasing the impossible dream, and being a free thinker.
What I have found is that my previous God belief was a hinderance to my personal development. It made me assume certain questions shouldn't be asked because either God or "God did was the answer" and because of that, many questions and potentially wonderful discoveries that would have come about in the course of pursuing answers to those questions were never asked and acted on.
God is in fact a saviour. Just think about it. If curiosity killed the cat, then in order to save the cat just insert God belief for it is God belief that is the death of curiousity.

It's never good form to quote oneself, but on September 26, 2011, I made the following prediction for you Truth OT...   

I've never been a Christian per se, so I won't begin to tell you how to deal with a loss of faith.  I will, however, predict the future for you, Truth OT.

Within a few months, the last vestiges of your religion will fall by the wayside.  The initial pain of your deconversion will take some time to deal with, but your desire to know more about the world will increase exponentially.  You will study science stuff like crazy and that will fill the time void left by your God belief.  You will begin to read atheism books regularly, and you will find the arguments so compelling that you will wonder how you ever believed the bible held anything truthful in the first place.

For a time, you'll regret the years you wasted on religion, but strangely enough, your thirst for knowledge will make you want to know even more about it!  Soon after, you will start to see just how much God is ingrained in the vernacular of the people and places around you, and it will start to annoy you... slowly at first.  Then, you will start to see some awful Christian stories on the news, and in the papers, and on the internet and you will really get angry.  You will start to think of all Christians (when it comes to their religion) as deluded and you will find yourself shaking your head at every single argument they bring to the table.  Every.  Single.  One.

With the religious knowledge you have, and the way you express yourself, you might start debating Christians and beating them handily at their own game.  In a few years, you might write a book about your deconversion story, which will not make the best seller list, but will appear on the bookshelves in your local Barns & Noble.  At some time down the road, you'll be an old man and you will look back to see that life was better... way, way better, without your religion.

And you'll live happily ever after...     

How close are we gettin to your book?

[Jstwebbrowsing]

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

[Jstwebbrowsing]

God tells people to burn women at the stake

And please show me where God has ever said this?  I can't find it in my Bible anywhere.

[HAL]

Jstweb,

Who are you quoting? You have to embed the member name you are quoting or nobody will know. Please stop quoting without including the member name.

[Jstwebbrowsing]

It is corrected.

[Quesi]

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

I know lots of Christians who do extraordinary humanitarian work.  And most of them point to their faith as their inspiration.  I also know some Muslims who make selfless strides towards humanitarian causes.  They cite their faith.  And the Hindus claim it is their destiny to help the people they help. 

I know all of these people who do important humanitarian work, because I strive to be involved in important humanitarian efforts.  And I do it because I believe in my heart that it is the right thing to do. 

Just like them. 

[dloubet]

Jstwebbrowsing asked:

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

There are at least two reasons why not:

1. If the Christian did the good thing because of his faith, then he's just following orders, and just following orders is not a good thing. At best, it's good done for the wrong reasons.
2. If a nazi does good, and says it's because of his nazism, then is nazism good? Obviously not.

I'm sure you'll get more.

Further, I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that you're going to try to establish that we're guilty of some kind of double standard. This should be interesting.

[Omen]

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

There is no such thing as good or evil.  The biblical meaning good is defined as that which is in praise of god, which is delivered as a tautology that renders 'good' meaningless in any sense biblically since killing babies can be as good as not killing babies. ( as long as it praises god )

You also never responded to most replies in this thread to your previous question.  Why should we persist if you can't be bothered?

[Jstwebbrowsing]

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

There is no such thing as good or evil.  The biblical meaning good is defined as that which is in praise of god, which is delivered as a tautology that renders 'good' meaningless in any sense biblically since killing babies can be as good as not killing babies. ( as long as it praises god )

You also never responded to most replies in this thread to your previous question.  Why should we persist if you can't be bothered?

I am just gathering data.

[Add Homonym]

And please show me where God has ever said this?  I can't find it in my Bible anywhere.

It actually says stone, not burn, but this applies to mediums (Lev 20:27)

Exodus 22:18, in fact says : "Enchantress not let live". Although there are numerous interpretations of this, inc "poisoner", the Church of Add Homonym has just decreed that given the context; (the prior line being about girls who have been molested), "enchantress" actually means "10 year old slut, who was asking for it". Since the Church of Add Homonym really has to follow god perfectly, the Church notices that we are free to choose the method of disposing of the slut. Since god would have specified stoning, if he wanted sluts to be stoned; god in this case, is obviously implying that you should do something much worse to sluts. Lev 20:14 specifies that we should burn sluts with fire.

Pretty simple really.

[Alzael]

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

No. No more than when a Christian does evil it makes Christianity evil. Religion is not evil because assholes use it to be assholes, anymore than its good because people use it for good. Religion, especially Christianity, is evil because it is evil on its own.

[bertatberts]

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

If by good you mean a person who is morally excellent, virtuous, righteous. Who does kind, morally right and justifiable acts. Which are deemed to be right and proper. Then any person who is and does such things can be deemed good. However if a person does these things, Simply because the tenets and dogma of his religion orders it. Then this isn't a moral, virtuous, or proper reason for said "good" acts.

I must however reiterate what I stated in post #27 
 

Christianity has an exceedingly narrow view of morality. Christianity reduces morality to that of death doesn't matter. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils (Killing/murder) while focusing on imaginary BS. Life is precious, however Christians will and can kill with impunity, because they believe in an after-life, thus they have no respect for anyone’s right to live. Life is merely a testing ground for heaven/hell too them. 

Therefore Christianity by it's very nature cannot be deemed good, for any reason.

[nogodsforme]

God tells people to burn women at the stake

And please show me where God has ever said this?  I can't find it in my Bible anywhere.

Obviously, I don't really think god tells people any such thing, because there are no gods. But the people who burned hundreds of women at the stake for being witches, tortured hundreds for being heretics, or whatever, would tell you that, yes, of course god said to do that. It's all in how you interpret the translated metaphors, parse the parables, contextualize the clues and so forth. The holy spirit helps you figure this stuff out. And when in doubt, pray about it.

How would you convince such people that they were not following god's wiil? Didn't god burn entire cities full of sinners, drown the whole planet, kill all the first born kids in Egypt? What's a handful of dead witches, homosexuals, sassy children, idol worshippers or unbelievers? God wants them dead. Why would you care who killed them or how they were killed? And if he did not want them dead, well, this life is just a temporary pass-through to the real thing anyway.

You can't prove that god did not tell them to burn women at the stake, any more than you can prove that god did not tell those Muslim guys to follow the commands of Osama bin Laden on 9/11. After all, nobody would die for a lie.

[Add Homonym]

I'm still surprised that the penalty for screwing a girl and her mother is group incineration, because I know someone who's done it.

[velkyn]

I am just gathering data.

No, I don't think so.  You are attempting to throw shit at a wall and hoping that some it sticks.    You have asked the same questions before and have ignored the answers because you evidently don't like them.   You need someone to tell you that it's okay to be a theist and that you really are a good and decent person. 

You have not demonstrated that your religion is based on reality, much less that it does anything that is commonly accepted as “good” for humanity.
You started with these questions:

If a Christian does evil then is Christianity evil? If an athiest does evil then is athiesm evil?

   
this failed because you, like so many willfully ignorant theists, want to play pretend that atheism is a religion.  Atheism is a lack of belief in god/gods, and atheists have various takes on what is considered “good” and “evil”. Christianity claims to know what good and evil are and that there is some absolute magical deity that defines this.  Other variants of theism also claim this same thing, and that *their* gods are the arbiters.  NO evidence from any of them that they have a real god.

You then proceeded to ignore questions from others, that demonstrated how biased your questions were.  Then you played dumb when asked to answer them.  You also not defined what evil is, in your pathetically loaded question.  Which parts of the bible are you good with, jst?  Do you think slavery is evil? To treat women at best as second class citizens is evil? To commit genocide is evil?  To kill others for crimes not their own is evil? To kill people for being sorcerers (Exodus 22, with other people to be killed there also,  homosexual, gossips, brats, etc, is evil? Then, if you claim that the bible is from some magical source and that this magical source is always right, then you are claiming that this book and god are evil.  If not, you are a hypocrite.  I do find it pretty funny that of all NGFE’s examples you only addressed the burning people at the stake. [

And please show me where God has ever said this?  I can't find it in my Bible anywhere.

I guess the rest of the examples you are good with?

and then we get you trying to dodge the questions again by asking one more of your own, what seems to be an attempt to move the goalposts.

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.
If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

Since Christians can’t agree on what is good, what they claim as good doesn’t make it so.  To a Christian, “good” is not defined by anything but their opinion at the time.   The Roman Catholic Inquisition made it “good” to harm those who did not obey the church, be they women, Jews, Muslims or non-Catholic Christians.  Protestants did the same thing when they harmed Catholics, claiming that it was “good” in their god’s eyes.  They used burning at the stake, drowning, pressing to death, stoning, drawing and quartering, all sorts of painful deaths to destroy that which they were sure that their god approved of.

Human actions can be influenced by various things.  If an atheist does good, what does this say about religion?

I can do a beneficial thing for my fellow man because I would want to be helped and it makes me feel good to help someone and I know this is the only life anyone has.  You can do it because you are afraid of being punished and because you are greedy for heaven.  What’s more questionable, doing something for honestly personal reasons of getting and giving help or the selfish reason of getting something only for yourself?

 

[Truth OT]

Okay so now I would like to change the question around a little bit.

If a Christian does good, and says it because of his faith, then is Christianity good?

A person's faith in christianity or whatever belief system they adhere to must be separated from that belief system as the two are NOT one and the same. The argument, and a good one IMHO can be made that virtually ALL religions are in fact evil because they are based in falsehoods, lies, deception, fallucies, and myth and force the believer to buy in deeply to something that is untrue and has the power to direct the believer's life.

To me, religion much like political affiliation, nationalism, racial or ethnic identification are classifications manipulators use to cause mass movement. Manipulators love segmenting populations because it makes controlling the masses easier as the would be gods can speak to segments of folks THEY WANT to keep likeminded in order to keep and build a power base for the manipulating party.
I say all this because religion is but a tool of population manipulation. It can be used for good as well as evil depending on who's pulling the strings from the top down. Because history has shown us that religion is at times bad and at other times good, to me, it's foolish to ask whether a religion like christianity is or is not good. We have seen its fruits and we can know with virtual certainty that it does the good or evil its handlers intend and is in of of itself just a tool.

The question that needs to be addressed and harped on is whether or not it is factual and based in truth. When one realized that religion is a creation of man not based in truth, one can the free themselves and partner with other freethinkers in helping to free their communities of the mental slavery the leaders of religion use it to enforce. As individuals we need to come to a better understanding of morality than the understanding put forward by religion where morality equals doing god x's will. Coming to this understanding will enable us to bring a hault to the epidemic brought on by religion where otherwise good well intending people commit acts of evil and hate all because of their faith.

[darwin-is-christ99]

If Christians started acting like their supposed too, instead of hypocritical, ignorant, racist Pie in the sky believing yahoos, than i might consider becoming a christian. But i have truly never seen a real christian in my life, at least one that acts like jesus would. Think about it.

When was the last time you saw anybody give up their wealth and started preaching the "gospel" town to town; trying their very hardest not to sin. You just do not see it happen here.

[jeremy0]

If a Christian does evil then is Christianity evil?

If an athiest does evil then is athiesm evil?

Since both groups have done evil, I would say this is an incoherent topic of discussion..  Jst - what are your motives in starting this thread?  Are you trying to imply one group is evil?  Or are you trying to see if one group calls the other evil?  Or are you trying to confirm something you are thinking, of which you are hiding from the group - which is why I'm calling you out as to your motives..