... answering Apostate Prophet

Why I Don't Criticize Other Religions Besides Islam (Although I'm an Atheist)
Apostate Prophet | 9.II.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbQm4G_xAkw

I

I would say Western Atheism is a belief system, based on rejecting the Christian (that is ultimately Catholic) parts of Protestantism, while keeping the anti-Catholic part (anti-miraculous bias is Protestant, like a typical historic Calvinist will go "Lourdes has to be fake, miracles don't happen between Apostles and Last Days, a Western Atheist just adds "well, Christ healing the lame must have been fake too, then"). Then they add some fairly elementary anti-Protestant observations (like Protestants claim to be non-ritual, while their Sunday worship is just a different ritual, "less classy" if you like or less Classic than Catholicism, or why not less Medieval).

To this basis have since then, from the first, been added Heliocentrism, then Evolution, allowing Deep Time to replace steady state eternal universe.

I like bashing especially two religions, both one of which I left : Western Atheism and Protestantism.

And while I claim all religions other than Catholicism are false, where they contradict it, they don't contradict it equally or on equally important concerns and therefore I don't think I need to bash all equally.

And yes, I contradict Islam too, but my blog against Islamic attacks on Christianity is not even a 1/30 against my blogs about Western Atheism (with other deniers of Resurrection, like Judaism or for that matter in a sense Muslims too) or Protestantism.

edit: I did not leave Western Atheism as such, only some of its credenda like Evolution etc. But I did have it in family background.

II

2:10 "even if I don't believe in that, I can respect that"

Hear, hear ... that would be the logical position of someone simply an Atheist.

III

• We are unsure about the origins ... well, as a Christian, no. Genesis 1:1 to 14:24 traces origins of anything from creation to known historic Egypt and Mesopotamia and the rest of the book traces a family which will become a nation and in both states is the people of God.
  
  
• We are unsure about the shape? No, perhaps the size, I used to think up to fix stars there is one light day. In each direction, along and in extension of poles and equatorial plane and between. I came to consider that might by now already look different on images taken by X-ray reception and sent from Voyager 1 to us, so perhaps it's more.
  
  
• We have no idea where we are ...
  
  Centre.
  
  ... or what the rest looks like.
  
  Visible universe has limits and most registered bodies ("outside solar system" as they say) closer to us than contemporary science supposes. Above that God has a throne room in which He is worshipped and where one day we may worship Him.

IV

3:29 I disagree about Crusades.

As you know, Christianity is born in Jerusalem.

As you also know, the Apostles were told not to use violence.

However, they were also told to convert all nations. That implies not just commoners, but also governments.

Governments do occasionally use violence to keep out invaders, and even to defend allies or expatriates on foreign countries. And governments are not made up of Apostles or of Apostolic men like bishops or monks, or even if a man governing should have such a status, he must not carry arms personally and his commanding armed men is sth other than his apostolic life, he is having two functions at once.

If you know what Islam under Omar did to Palestine nation (up to then Christians of mixed mainly Jewish, Samarian and Galilaean, but also marginally neighbouring and general Roman origin) under Omar, you will agree Islam acted as an invader.

Now, the brutality of Omar was not very good, but right then there was nothing we could do. Later, it had calmed down. Then came the Seldjuks. They worsened brutality to pilgrims as well as to Palestinian and neighbouring Christians. They were also pushing against Byzantine allies of the West (just recently there had been a schism in the Church), so going to Palestine was kind of indirectly defending Constantinople too.

I don't think all that happened during Crusades was good on the part of participating Christians.

It is partly a good job bungled by bad men on both Byzantine and Norman side (there had been a quarrel between the two on Sicily when freeing Christians there from Muslims in 1033). And when I say bungled, it was sometimes very badly bungled, I do not endorse massacres on civilians.

A Muslim theoretically could be forced to become Christian under two circumstances : he had been a Christian or he was attacking Christianity. A Muslim civilian who had not been a Christian could not be punished for anything and so not forced.

3:31 "neither do the dark ages, as we call them, historically"

Do we so call them? What's dark about them?

I think sunlight shone with equal intensity and clothing was less likely to be dark than in Victorian England.

V

5:32 No, penalties for apostasy in Roman Empire are not unchristian.

You see, while the New Testament has no ruling, it is written so it can involve a survival guide for times when Christians have no political power on our side, the Davidic kingdom would have punished someone apostasising to ... Dagon, Baal, Ishtar. Egyptian ones. In Maccabaean times, a Jew who worshipped Zeus had better flee outside Holy Land.

The completely non-military Judaism (up to Zionism, recently) is actually a decision of Rabbis after Jews got beaten by Romans. There have been exceptions, like Khazars, like certain pseudo-Messianic rebellions (Sabbatai Zevi aactually never carried out much against Turks, but he intimidated Jews rejecting him, but then came Lenin some centuries later).

6:25 So, as Jews are also now a bit remilitarised, I am not quite comfortable with singling out Jews for praise for a pragmatic decision.

And our prophecy says, some of them at least will be doing things very badly to the end.

VI

5:54 Actually, the opposition between Jewish rabbis and Muhammed is a bit misleading.

Before Mohammed, Arabia had both Jews and Christians from Ethiopia, especially in what was then Yemen (bigger than the state so called today).

Ethiopian Jews had on occasion persecuted Christians (like the Falasha Queen Judith), and the Jewish tribe which was massacred by Mohammed had 100 years earlier massacred a Christian tribe.

Are you aware that much of the brutalities of Mohammed were initiated in an attempt to end sectarian violence between Christians and Jews?

For Arabia, it succeeded. Modern Muslims who reject sectarian violence will claim this as a "miracle" of Mohammed.

VII

6:10 The decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent refers to a gradual process of dwindling .... Buddhist sources also mention violence against Buddhists by Hindu brahmins and kings. Hazra mentions that the eighth and ninth centuries saw ... (quote from the next link)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Buddhism_in_the_Indian_subcontinent

Here is a discussion whether Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism itself ended Buddhism as a mass movement in India:

https://www.quora.com/Which-religion-was-the-main-destroyer-of-Buddhism-in-ancient-and-Medieval-India-Islam-or-Hinduism

Christians and Muslims Face More Persecution by Hindu Extremists in India, Groups Say
By Colleen Curry Mar 17, 2016
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d39547/christian-and-muslims-are-facing-more-and-more-persecution-by-hindu-extremists-in-india

I would say, which religion is most violent on any given place varies, like in Birma, Muslims are on the receiving end of persecution by Buddhists.

VIII

6:43 Actually, there is no indication that Christianity initially condemned death penalties.

It condemned the unjust lynchings of Christians by Jews whom the Romans had forced to demilitarise.

It condemned how Roman powers abused the power to persecute Christianity or enforce idolatry.

But death penalty as such was not condemned.

One man sentenced to death said he deserved it, and he got the first canonisation of saints who died, when Christ said "today thou wilt be with me in Paradise". [quote from memory]

"early churches condemned the death penalty until the Romans messed up at some point"

Show me where in NT part of Bible death penalty is condemned?

Not unjust death penalty for Christianity, also not the lynchings conducted by Jews who had to hide to take up stones against one, but death penalty in general?

And show me where early Church Fathers say death penalty is a sin on the part of any government?

And what point are "Romans" (early Christians often lived in Roman Empire and often were Roman citizens, including those of Jewish or Samarian origin) supposed to have "messed it up"?

Constantine who ceased to persecute Christians?

IX

6:54 "reformed Christianity, by taking it out of the hands of such powers, and returning it to its fundaments"

Yeah, right, like Mohammed's claim to repeat what Moses and Jesus had previously said, or Muslims taking it out as "Jesus/Isa" came because Jews were all Apostates until he reminded them, or Mohammed came because Christians were Apostates if believing Holy Trinity ... or Divinity of Christ, or for that matter, they also said that these very fundamental Christian teachings are inventions of a teamwork between St Paul and Emperor Constantine.

While Catholics have suffered immensely under Muslims, this has also been the case under Protestants. And there have obviously been backlashes against both.

Sometimes governmental, like Crusades or like Spanish Armada trying to support the persecuted Catholics in England, sometimes "rebels" like the Irish Confederacy or like the klefti in Greece.

Picture says "Reformation brought more peace and spirituality."

From Reformation to c. 100 years later, schools in Sweden (my country) were in a decline, because the Catholic clergy esp. Friars who had been a mainstay of learning, had been done away with. Sometimes fasting during Lent was discouraged. Among militaries, being drunkards and lechers became the rule, and it was motivated by Luther's "simul iustus et peccator" (just[ified] and sinner at the same time) or "pecca fortiter, crede fortius" (sin bravely, believe even more bravely). Government (Gustav Eriksson Wasa, a k a Gustav I) took in most nobles into the scheme, because if someone's ancestors had donated to a monastery, he could take all donations over centuries back, except the churches the state deemed necessary.

Catholics (more particularly Carthusians) owned the one printing press in Sweden. Gustav Wasa took it from them and gave it to the Petri brothers, whose fanaticism learned in Wittenberg (but with a polite and learned façade, up to when Catholics started to win an argument) dominated all books coming out of it, except the Bible, their translation to Swedish (marginally mistranslated and miscommented in margins), and except the first book, a booklet about the Rosary by the Carthusians.

In Denmark (to which Scania belonged back then) a castle was built by stones taken from demolished churches, Malmöhus slott, it is now a museum, I enjoyed it, and in Ystad, the Franciscan monastery was emptied of Franciscans on the Danish king's orders, at first they tried to resist and one of the soldiers cut the head of the Prior in two halves, vertically, and the rest gave up.

In Sigtuna, where I went to school, there were about thirty churches, and the Reformation kept one, a big one, that of the Dominicans, but the Dominicans were chased away. That's where I was baptised by the way. The Lutherans there do or did memorise the event of the destruction of another church, where women of Sigtuna tried to make a stand around the old parish church, saying "one must obey God more than men". They failed, the old church there is a ruin.

In Calvin's Geneva, nuns were forced to leave the monastery and jeered at by the Calvinists and socially spammed by marriage proposals. Calvin claimed he was "returning to fundaments" like Genesis 1:28 (claiming the blessing of fertility is an individually obliging command, much like Muhammed did in relation to Christian monks) or like 1 Timothy 2:15, completely forgetting that St Paul had also made rules for the very first nuns, namely Church widows and Church virgins.

"where love and forgiveness were much more important than punishing people"

It so happens, in Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican territories, the acts for which you could receive eath penalty were on the increase after the Reformation.

In proportion to how Confession to a priest and voluntary penances and reparations were on a very obvious decrease.

A Protestant parish council could punish simple sinners (like cantankerous women) like the Inquisition punished repenting heretics, namely by shaming before the rest of the parish (and the shaming was more intense with the Protestant church council).

An example of increase in death penalties, under Charles IX (usurping the Swedish throne of his Catholic nephew, also king of still Catholic Poland) one introduced death penalty for cursing parents.

In England, when the fight to abolish death penalty got started, you could get hanged as a thirteen year old boy for stealing a spoon through burglary.

In all the Catholic countries of the time, you could not find one where simple stealing or private property (not hallowed objects, that's another question) was punished by death. Or earlier in the Middle Ages either.

But death penalty for a burglar stealing a spoon was not perhaps only the Reformation it also owed sth to Enlightenment.

X

7:47 "no other religion causes as many problems in the world as Islam"

Enlightenment repression through psychiatry is no problem?

Communism is no problem?

Darwinists sterilising those unfit for reproduction was not a problem in two states each of Canada and US up to as recently as seventies, as well as in Sweden and Norway?

I disagree on what is worst. Communism is worse than Islam.

The previous part of the list, you could have said "Islam and Communism" and you would have been definitely more right.

Oh, and on abortion, would you class Islam as the worst abortion liberals?

XI

8:24 "women are still treated as garbage"

Was that your motivation for insulting Defne on Twitter, that she is a woman?

8:32 "no other religion is so concerned in peoples' private lives or bedrooms"

An attack I have heard about Catholicism too.

And I recall that France has banned the burqah, which is also intrusive. Not the hijab, though.

XII

8:57 "no other religion will grow up hating another religion like Jews?"

How many Jews and Protestants grow up hating Catholicism?

Searching "worst" in Bible, like a google:

"And Juda was put to the worst before Israel, and they fled every man to their dwellings."
[4 Kings (2 Kings) 14:12]

Here "put to the worst" is an expression.

"And I will bring the worst of the nations, and they shall possess their houses: and I will make the pride of the mighty to cease, and they shall possess their sanctuary."
[Ezechiel (Ezekiel) 7:24]

Here we do have "the worst of the nations" describing a group of invaders arguably in Holy Land.

Not knowing when this prophecy was fulfilled or if it is not yet, I am not sure which nation is described as the worst one or if it means more like rabble from more than one nation. But yes, "worst" is used to describe some people.

XIII

After peroration, I am a bit reminded of Salman Rushdie.

He got a death threat. He got refuge in the West. As a professor in Oxford I think it was, he makes third rate non-Classic literature which is offensive to Christians an entrance test for university, because he came to dislike Fundies all over the place.

Hope you don't end up like he.