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Old 02-27-2006, 07:16 PM   #25 (permalink)
The_Jazz
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First of all, to insist that National Socialism was a religious movement defies logic and any sort of understanding of the rationales behind it and the reasons for its rise. This was a purely economic creation of the Depression, much the same as the rise of Soviet Socialism 20 years earlier in the Russian Empire. The Nazis were never a religious organization, although some members of the party famously played with the occult. If anything, the Nazis were hostile to religion since they felt that it interfered with the debasement of the individual before the state.

Also, your original post limited the discussion to Christianity and Islam. If National Socialism is a "unique and dangerous religious philosophy that was half heartedly grounded in the eugenics movement", then are we opening the floor to discuss other religions? By the way, the eugenics movement was purely scientific and had little to no basis in religion. It is Darwinism at it's coldest.

As for the Islamic pilots and their cohorts, I completely agree that they all thought they were going to their promised reward but to state that that was the ONLY or even the PRIMARY reason that they did what they did is absurd beyond belief. If they were simply looking to die as martyrs, there were simpler, quicker ways to do it. I will certainly conceed that there was an overt religious element to their statement, but to insist that it was only a religious statement is naive. There is a definitely political statement contained within the horrors of 9/11, one that aims directly at US foreign policy. Do you really think that these guys weren't around during the Soviet invasion of Afganistan? Russia directly oppresses millions of Muslims, yet 9/11 was aimed at the US, not Moscow. The Indians have recently fought wars against Pakistan, Chinese outlawed Islam in several provinces and French meddled in Northern Africa on an almost daily basis, yet the US was the target. You don't see anything political there? I completely agree that these guys justified their "sacrifice" with religion, but the basic motivation was purely political.

The Salem Witch Trials had several motiviations, and I think that you've missed my point.

Quote:
The fact that they took the property of the witches and kept it is secondary to the fact they they knowingly and publically did what they did. NO ONE dared protest the decision of the court for fear that they would also be deemed a witch, or found to be in collusion with the witches.
This was the basis of my arguement and is indeed the entire basis for the phrase "witch hunt". This is McCarthyism and Stalinism at their finest. Yes, religion is the backdrop for Salem, but the exact same thing happened in the 30's in the USSR with Trotskyism as the backdrop and in the 50's in the US with anti-communism. These were ways for people to persecute their enemies and take what they wanted. The Spanish Inquisition did the same thing 150 years before Salem. Whether or not you believed in witches (a most un-Christian belief, I might point out) was beside the point. As an accuser, you used witchcraft as the tool to rid yourself of those who had something you wanted, mainly property in Salem's case. I think that you need to go back and read some of the facts. Let me know if you want me to point you in the right direction.

Finally, Israel still boils down to a real estate dispute at its very core regardless of how you look at it. Both groups find some sites very important to them and demand complete control of them. The other group doesn't like that. As time goes on there are more and more attrocities committed by each group. However, in the last 500 years, the Jews living in Palestine got along fairly well with the Muslims until the 40's. There were no attacks by one side or the other, although there were certainly minor scirmishes here and there, and those were rarely deadly. The same scenario played itself out in Northern Ireland and is still going on in Sri Lanka and the Congo. Religion may be the differences between the groups, but it isn't the reason for their conflict. Please show me where in the Koran it says to kill Jews, since that's what we're talking about. Or you can find any sort of Talmudic reference, I'll accept that too. Neither religion preaches death to nonbelievers, although you can take passages out of any text to prove just about any point, as have the more feverent adherents of pretty much any religion out there.

By the way, how are your slaves doing? Have you beaten your wife lately? When was the last time that you sacrificed an animal to please God? All those are in the Old Testament. My point is that these texts are used to justify actions that people want to take anyway.
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