<p>I am assuming that you believe you are one of the select few 144,000; select few in that billions of people have lived on this earth.</p>
<p>qwilde wrote: “If Nazism was imposed upon children, scrupulous people would form a lobbying opposition. Nazi and Religious indoctrination are no different, in that they teach children to adhere to their cause no matter what: to follow blindly. This peturbs me, as does the case study that I mentioned earlier.”</p>
<p>How dare you virtually equate nazi indoctrination with religious faith?! Further more, while little nazi pukes may be following blindly, good religious teaching does not demand blind faith but, rather, faith guided by the light of love for one’s fellow beings.</p>
<p>I DEMAND that you apologize for such an outrageous statement!!</p>
<p>With apologies to all the minds great and small throughout the ages who have attempted to make sense of god – to make god understandable in human terms through theology, dogma, establishing churches, whatever – all of whom can and have been ridiculed and worse for their efforts by the scientific “community” (I use that term charitably), it just may be that we are no closer to understanding now than we were at the beginning. Is it so suprising? But, to dismiss the very idea that god exists simply because we have been unable to nail god down – though it was tried with Christ (pardon the sick joke) – says much more about us and our self-inflated opinion of man’s powers, than it does about the true nature of god, which, I repeat, remains elusive.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What of those of us who were never inclined to believe that Jesus was the Christ?</p>
<p>I am not quite sure how Darwin figures into all of this. He denied throughout his lifetime that he was an atheist. He remained a member of his church until his death (though took long walks rather than attending Sunday services - Epicurus would have said that is a mistake, for whether God exists or not, worship of the gods may for some form the basis of morality.)</p>
<p>Darwin, like those before him and those after, wrestled with the Epicurean riddle:</p>
<pre><code>“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
</code></pre>
<p>The post-Holocaust answer, offered by Jewish and some Christian theologians, is that God removed Herself from human affairs. It’s not very satisfying, but at least they are intellectually honest in their wrestling.</p>
<p>My favorite atheists are in India. Of course, Tamil Nadu had the first elected avowedly atheist government in the world, in 1948. But a little north of there are my friends at the Atheist Center in Vijayawada - <a href=“http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/lavintro.htm[/url]”>http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/lavintro.htm</a>
I met them in 1977 when they were distributing aid for Oxfam to the victims of a cyclone on the Andhra coast. I think the website gives a pretty good sense of them, so I won’t repeat it, though I have more stories.</p>
<p>My favorite one is that, upon leaving, they had this 23-year-old guy accompany me to the train station. We had about 75 minutes before my train, and so he decided to tell me his life story. (He knew I wasn’t an atheist.) </p>
<p>“Before,” he said (I’m summing up), “I use to lie and cheat. I used to steal, from people like you. I drank and used drugs. I use to run after loose women. I raped several. (I don’t know how much of this he said for effect, but he had many details.) I was involved in robberies.”</p>
<p>“And then,” he said, his eyes lighting up, “I discovered atheism, and my whole world was changed!”</p>
<p>He was part of a team that used to follow around Hindu priests who would walk across hot coals, chanting. He would follow them, right over the hot coals, shouting, “There is no god! There is no god!”</p>
<p>I never did get to inspect the bottom of his feet.</p>
<p>I will never apologize, you can’t make me nah-nah nah-nah 
</p>
<p>Religious faith is blind. There is no evidence to support the existence of your purported god and yet you still believe: that is blind faith. Is it really so far a leap to compare Nazism to the Christian Religion?</p>
<p>What about Aaron (Exodus 32:1); what about the Midianites (Numbers 31: 18); what about Leviticus 20; what about (Exodus 34:13-17); what about the Levite priest (Judges 19:23-24)? Do these incidences not insight blind faith?</p>
<p>This is what blind faith has led to:</p>
<p>"Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities’ Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
1391 Seville’s Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored “badges of shame” that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]</p>
<p>15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, “cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals… and then dumped him into the river […but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [… and] dragged what was left … to the gallows of Montfaulcon, ‘to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows’.” [SH191]
17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. “In a single church fifty women were found beheaded,” reported poet Friedrich Schiller, “and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers.” [SH191]
17th century 30 years’ war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32] </p>
<p>Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600. </p>
<p>First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians “did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy’s] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies,” according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine “the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians” said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). <a href=“In%20the%20words%20of%20one%20witness:” title=“there [in front of Solomon’s temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes”, and after that “happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour’s tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude”>WW37-40</a>
The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: “It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished.” [TG79]
Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that “even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition”. One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered “in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ”. [WW45]
Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224] </p>
<p>Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops “pacified and civilized” Ireland, where only Gaelic “wild Irish”, “unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing.” One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that “the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies… and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie”, which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused “greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde”.
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225] </p>
<p>As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as “temple destroyer.” [DA468]
Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he “followed meticulously all Christian teachings…”
In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
[DO19-25] </p>
<p>Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, “ought to be good servants … [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion.” [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as “idolators” and “slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order,” his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as “beasts” because “they eat when they are hungry,” and made love “openly whenever they feel like it.” [SH204-205]
On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, “making the declarations that are required” - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And “nobody objected.” If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:
I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you … and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church … and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66] </p>
<p>Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: “justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England … to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, … and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ.” [SH235]
In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of “the marvelous goodness and providence of God” to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as “for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess.” [SH109,238]
On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204]
The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and spanish raids.
As one of the culprits wrote: “So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous.” [SH69]
The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As “they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell.” [SH70]
What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
“The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties … They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles… then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive.” [SH72]
Or, on another occasion:
“The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts…Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs.” [SH83]
The “island’s population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus’s arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out.” Eventually all the island’s natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were “forced” to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus “the Caribbean’s millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century”. [SH72-73] “In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated.” [SH75]
“And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitln [Mexico city] was next.” [SH75]
Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
“When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead.” [SH95] </p>
<p>Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi “Sicherheitsdient der SS”, watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV] "</p>
<p>Fred Phelps</p>
<p>“I am not quite sure how Darwin figures into all of this. He denied throughout his lifetime that he was an atheist. He remained a member of his church until his death”</p>
<p>The latter half of his life he was an agnostic and denied the divine revelation of the bible. As we all know “Lady Hope” was a shamble.</p>
<p>Fred Phelps…an original whack job if there ever was one.</p>
<p>I doubt that most religious people would like him as their spokesperson.</p>
<p>Just a hunch…</p>
<p>“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”</p>
<p>I have long argued this and to that effect:</p>
<p>“If the evil in the world is intended by god he is not good. If it violates his intentions he is not almighty. God can’t be both almighty and good. There are many objections to this, but none that holds since god is ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. Besides, if only god can create he must have created evil. If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that god, and not Satan created the universe?”</p>
<p>You can also logically disprove god and most fallacies of the bible.</p>
<p>God for instance must be all-knowing and all powerful. God must be able to see everything that ever has and ever will be. Ultimately if god is omniscient then god is chained by fate and de facto is not all powerful. Can god create a rock that he cannot lift? If not god is not all powerful. If god can than god is not all powerful? Can God create a fence that god cannot jump over? You know how it goes. </p>
<p>Also, god is not an explanation, but merely a non-explanation. Justifying the unknown by using god answers how and not why. It raises more questions than it answers. If god created this unbelievably intricate universe, than god it must be even more intricate. Ultimately, god can be removed from the equation with Occam’s Razor.</p>
<p>If god created the universe, who created god? If god just is, why can’t the universe just be?</p>
<p>Prayer is pointless because god is all knowing. God can see everything that ever has and ever will happen. Subsequently, god would have foreseen what you prayed for and changed the universe accordingly before creating it.</p>
<p>FS…didn’t this article sound a little hollow coming from one of the most religiously observant countries in the world? Europe might have something to worry about–but the US? Worry about atheists? Before or after they all go to church on Sunday? Sounds like another trumped-up Limbaugh-esque false fright fest. Not level alert Orange for me–but I bet my 76 year old dad has it on his false anxiety radar. Sigh.</p>
<p>K, after nearly a century, it is possible to dissect Communism on the basis of the major practical implementations. I suspect that many boomers in the West have no patience for discussing Communism as an ideology. Been there. Done that–then watched history unfold. It’s a failed ideology because of the massive social tragedies it engendered. </p>
<p>q…interesting thought about the weakening of Christian authority leading to increasing manipulation by politicians–in the US. The old power vacuum can send a country to hell in a hand basket. I suppose I always held the church’s power at arm’s length. Separation of church and state and all. I never thought of it as an actual power vacuum. Interesting…I wonder if the church could have played thngs differently–not implemented Vatican II for example–or was it a case of being swept away with the materialism and propserity of the times?</p>
<p>That cannot be much of an issue in anti-religious Europe though, can it? Where is the right getting it’s population power in Germany and Austria?</p>
<p>“good religious teaching does not demand blind faith but, rather, faith guided by the light of love for one’s fellow beings.”</p>
<p>Who decides which religious teachings are “good” when it comes to populations of children? You? Are you suggesting that no religions demand faith at any price?</p>
<p>qwilde,</p>
<p>First, god is not MY god, god is everybody’s god.</p>
<p>Second, very impressive littany you posted of atrocities committed in the name of religion. What? Isn’t there more?! Oh well, there will be, rest assured that where ever man puts his hand there will be unspeakable misdeeds – even in such worthwhile causes as religion! How could you think otherwise? Are you that much of an idealist? And, those ideals are placed where? – in man?! – please!!! – just too amusing. </p>
<p>READ MY LIPS: God does not attain credibility through man, rather, man gains it through god.</p>
<p>“The latter half of his life he was an agnostic and denied the divine revelation of the bible. As we all know “Lady Hope” was a shamble.”</p>
<p>Since there were at least two Popes in the 15th Century who were atheists, it seems a little odd to go after the agnostics who belong to churches. </p>
<p>There are plenty of Christians who deny a “special” divine revelation of the Bible, deny the Trinity, don’t attribute any special powers to the death and resurrection, and make no claims about the Bible greater than what the book makes for itself. Jefferson, post-1802, is an excellent example. (1785 or so until 1802, I doubt he would have ever have described himself as a Christian.) So is Elias Hicks.</p>
<p>“Oh well, there will be, rest assured that where ever man puts his hand there will be unspeakable misdeeds…”</p>
<p>Whom have you slaughtered lately? 
What purpose, earthly or divine, could ever be forwarded by such a belief?</p>
<p>Hanna - No, not ones that are worhy of being true religions</p>
<p>ANYWAY - Why is everbody jumping on me?! I am just the bidet buff with a grammar slant.</p>
<p>“I doubt that most religious people would like him as their spokesperson.”</p>
<p>You would hope so wouldn’t you, but it is unfortunately not the case. He has actually organized 22,000 anti-homosexual demonstrations since 1991 (one in every four days). Did you know that he protested at Correta King’s funeral stating “God Hates Fags & ■■■-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Coretta Scott King and is now tormenting her with fire and brimstone where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched, and the smoke of her torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.”?</p>
<p>His most famous slogan is “THANK GOD FOR AIDS”.</p>
<p>“worthy” (that is)</p>
<p>Yes, Qwilde. I didn’t have a sarcasm icon. </p>
<p>I have had experience with old Freddy Phelps, and his ilk, up close and personal. They are very nasty people.</p>
<p>“post after post attacking the op all the while presenting the evidence of its main–and now proven–assertion: the atheists of our day are a dumb stand-in for their erudite and intellectually gifted predecessors”</p>
<p>FS, 90 posts into the thread you pop up with a self important post declaring how everyone else is attacking each other. You then go on with ad hominem attacks to an extent not demonstrated until now on the thread. Yes, how ironic. </p>
<p>Your posts also demonstrate very well the intolerance for and fear of atheism/ists that has been referred to in earlier posts. If you have such a firm grip on The One Truth, why so defensive? And what kind of a conservative are you if you don’t believe in freedom of personal belief and expression?</p>
<p>“Since there were at least two Popes in the 15th Century who were atheists, it seems a little odd to go after the agnostics who belong to churches.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t. Darwin is my idol. I have read every single piece he has written (at least every piece that has been published). It seemed that you were insinuating that he was a believer though, which he was as a young adult, but not in the latter half of his life.</p>
<p>No. He was an agnostic who belonged to a church. Pretty much where George Washington ended up.</p>
<p>"And what kind of a conservative are you if you don’t believe in freedom of personal belief and expression? </p>
<p>One educated at Dartmouth. ;)</p>