24th November 2009
“In the absence of a secular authority, would Christians revert to burning astronomers, executing heretics and persecuting their own members?”
Anon.
“In the absence of a secular authority, would Christians revert to burning astronomers, executing heretics and persecuting their own members?”
Anon.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:11
Regardless of the religion, the evidence of our history so far gives the answer as a resounding yes to that one.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:55
Is there any money in it? Any control or power over the masses? Then hell yes!
November 24th, 2009 at 4:13
Of course they would. Have you watched the Teabaggers?
November 24th, 2009 at 5:50
Some of them will do it (or at least encourage it) in the PRESENCE of secular authority. But then, secular authorities have done a bit of killing etc… themselves. Either way, no excuse is possible – certainly not the “God excuse.” Sigh . . .
November 24th, 2009 at 16:03
Yeah, but with a little re-write this becomes a great response to those never-ending emails that claim the US as a christian nation…
To wit: In the absence of a secular authority, wouldn’t you xians revert to burning astronomers, executing heretics and persecuting your own members?
This will be fun. No original thoughts in my head, but I will be having a great time plagiarizing.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:38
Far from being a Christian nation, the U.S. is the first example of a nation that includes explicit religious neutrality in its founding document. I’ve heard it persuasively argued that one effect of this has been to actually promote religiosity by allowing new forms to rise and fall in the marketplace of ideas leading the United States to be an outlier when compared to other western nations. It also doesn’t help that religiosity correlates inversely with education, which, sad to say, has fallen on hard times here.