🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 7 Oct 1997 20:55:59 -0700, Tracy Hornschuch
<browntr@engr.orst.edu> wrote:

>:}No Karl, read your history books... it was a bunch of *good* Christians
>:}who believed that.  It was Christians who caused and supported slavery.
>:}It was Christians who labeled people as savages.  Isn't it funny that many
>:}of those people that they called savages ended up teaching those *good*
>:}Christians descent medical pratices, good environmental skills, etc. etc.
>:}etc.  Let's not get on this argument... history speaks for itself.  How
>:}many people died in the hands of a so-called *good* Germany Christian
>:}named Hitler?  And why?  Because they were not Christian...
*	*	*	*	*

sarsok@ibm.net (Gary Paul Sarsok) wrote:

Hitler was not a Christian, he embraced nordic paganism. When Cortez
first came to Mexico and witnessed Aztec religious practices, such as
plunging a knife into the chest and then eating the heart while it was
still beating, he decided to conquer this pagan nation, much as
America had to conquer Germany, because of her retreat into savagery
and paganism. If you knew anything about history Tracy, you would
recognize that organizations such as NOW, who embrace infanticide and
other pagan practices, plunge the world into anarchy. It is the
Christians who attempt to bring the world back from the brink of the
Dark Ages. It was fellow Negro's that sold their own into slavery,
that does not make it right, but it does show duplicity. 

*        	*	*	*	*

You are correct on several counts. Actually one of the main thrusts
behind abolition was Christian individuals and groups such as Quakers.
It was these individuals and groups that actively aided and
abetted the Underground Railroad and other facets of the struggle
against slavery.

After the Civil War, it was Christian missionary societies that
went down south to provide badly needed education for ex-slaves.
It was Christian groups that pressured the British government to
send the Anti-Slavery squadron to African waters to *suppress*
the slave trade- a trade that African and Arab polities (Zanzibar)
refused to stop. 

As for the "savages" teaching the good Christians "descent medical
pratices, good environmental skills," it appears that Hornschuch
is the one that needs to brush up on his/her history. In fact,
it was Christian individuals and missions that introduced modern
education, advanced technical skills and more advanced hygiene
practices in many areas, particularly Africa. The great Kenyan
leader Jomo Kenyatta for example was educated in one such
mission school. 

It was Christian individuals and groups that lobbied hard against
such "advanced" non-Christian practices as head-hunting and
cannibalism, and also the sutee in India, a quaint custom requiring
that widows should be burnt alive after their husbands died. 

As for labeling people as "savages" this hardly originated with
Christianity. Hornsusuch should check the arrogant ethnocentrism
of histrorical China which divided the peoples of the world into 
advanced Chinese and backward barbarians- a culture pround and 
boastful enought to conceive of their land as the Middle Kingdom- 
the center of the earth. Then there are the those other
non-Christians- the Japanese- who take no back seat in
arrogance. Just check the hiistory of WWII.

As for Hitler he despised Christianity as a "Jewish Fable" and
thought it for weaklings. The fact that he was born a Roman Catholic
has little relevance for the point at hand. Using this approach
we could say that any crime you comit is because of your religion of
birth. Great logic that.... Chairman Mao grew up under the Buddhist
faith as did mass murderer Pol Pot of Cambodia. Using Hornsuch's
logic, the mass crimes they committed "is all due" to Buddhism.
But then again, since they werre both atheists, we can conclude
that all atheists are mass murders. Great logic....

To repeat a phrase "history speaks for itself.."