The Holy Quran Experiment.

Look at the exploits of the Catholic Church in the conquest of the new world and the wealth of the Vatican to this day

What exploits would those be then? Those of the Spanish, Portuguese, and French crowns?

The Catholic Church gained its riches by various means (not all of them especially felicitous), but national imperialism had little to do with it.

Why isn’t all the gold and whatnot sold off to do good deeds for the poor and needy anyway?

Because even if ‘all the gold and whatnot’ was sold off and raised a few billion pounds, those pounds would then be gone, the poor in one country or another would have some extra mosquito netting, and nothing more could be done.

That said, whether their efforts are always successful or not, and whether or not you agree with them and their motives, the Church remains pretty active worldwide in seeking to alleviate suffering in many guises.

Do you think that chaps in far off countries enjoyed being beaten,raped, starved tortured, put into camps and enlsaved to make england a better place.

Me thinks one needs to take a closer look at history beside the bits you were taught in school

Disclosure, I’ve not seen the video yet as I’m eating.

It’s just silly to say that fundamentalist Muslims or Christians aren’t Muslim or Christian and have nothing to do with Islam or Christianity when they’re all about those religions.

As regular readers will know I’m a fairly vocal atheist, and I’m not convinced I agree with this.

The likes of Westboro do what they do “in the name of” Christianity, but really they’re just a bunch of hate-filled bigots who have found a handy way of justifying their actions. Ie, without the Bible they’d probably have found another reason to behave the way they do. “God hates fags” (as a random example) is just a convenient excuse so that they don’t have to say “we hate…”

The problem here isn’t that their religion tells them what to do per sé, but rather that the Bible is so vague, self-contradictory, re-written and generally open to interpretation that pretty much any viewpoint (good or bad, right or wrong) can probably be held up to justify it if you dig deep enough. It’s not a reason but an excuse.

Which, thinking about it, probably makes it a perfect analogy for IS or whatever they’re called this week acting in the name of Islam.

What was the role of christian missionaries?

Spreading the good word about the Position?

Cougar

As regular readers will know I’m a fairly vocal atheist, and I’m not convinced I agree with this.

The likes of Westboro do what they do “in the name of” Christianity, but really they’re just a bunch of hate-filled bigots who have found a handy way of justifying their actions. Ie, without the Bible they’d probably have found another reason to behave the way they do. “God hates fags” (as a random example) is just a convenient excuse so that they don’t have to say “we hate…”

The problem here isn’t that their religion tells them what to do per sé, but rather that the Bible is so vague, self-contradictory, re-written and generally open to interpretation that pretty much any viewpoint (good or bad, right or wrong) can probably be held up to justify it if you dig deep enough. It’s not a reason but an excuse.

Which, thinking about it, probably makes it a perfect analogy for IS or whatever they’re called this week acting in the name of Islam.

I don’t disagree with your views on Westboro Baptist Church Cougar but I think they are 100% Christian. In their own minds anyway. Who are we to say they are not. I think we can see them as freaks because they are outliers, but if we look back through history at any number of attrocities carried out in the name of religion we don’t doubt the conviction or the religiousness of the group in question.

The Crusaders did carry out atrocities, not least when they massacred European Jews, but we don’t think of them as not Christian.

I’m not convinced that we can hold up actions of the past as direct proof of the present either, but you may be right.

Like I said, I’m not sure either way. Just thinking out loud really.

I’m not sure either and I think to claim 100% would be foolish. I mean, consider that Wesboro have abjured from any normal Christian church. No Pope or Archbishop has authority over them. All the major religions are so splintered and fractious that any law or divinely appointed leader is instantly rendered moot if you renounce said leader.

ISIS might be abhorrent to many moderate middle class western muslims, but they’d probably be quite comfortable living in Saudi.

Because even if ‘all the gold and whatnot’ was sold off and raised a few billion pounds, those pounds would then be gone, the poor in one country or another would have some extra mosquito netting, and nothing more could be done.

Yep, far better to invest in drugs and arms:

Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank’s failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi and his membership in the illegal Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). Vatican Bank was Banco Ambrosiano’s main shareholder, and the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 is rumored to be linked to the Ambrosiano scandal. Vatican Bank was also accused of funneling covert United States funds to Solidarity and the Contras through Banco Ambrosiano.

Did God’s Banker Roberto Calvi learn the hard way?

On 10 June 1982, Calvi went missing from his Rome apartment, having fled the country on a false passport in the name of Gian Roberto Calvini. He shaved off his moustache and fled initially to Venice. From there, he apparently hired a private plane to London via Zurich. At 7:30 am on Friday, 18 June 1982, a postal clerk was crossing Blackfriars Bridge and noticed his body hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the edge of the financial district of London. Calvi’s clothing was stuffed with bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 worth of cash in three different currencies

His death in London in June 1982 is a source of enduring controversy and was ruled a murder after two coroner’s inquests and an independent investigation.

You know jivehoneyjive, when you make everything into a conspiracy, or you refer to everything in conspiratorial terms you undermine any conspiracy that might have any substance to it. There’s actually a conspiracy theory that “they” spread conspiracy theories so that there’s such a sea of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, so much white noise, that it covers up the ACTUAL conspiracies. Just saying.

My bad… Wikipedia is pretty ‘out there’

What are your thoughts on Roberto Calvi, Banco Ambrosiano, Propaganda Due and the Vatican?

(we’ll leave Iran Contra, Pablo Escobar and Mena Airport out of it for now to avoid complicating matters)

You’re right though, we have to be aware of disinfomation, but this is all solidly researched.

Do you think that chaps in far off countries enjoyed being beaten,raped, starved tortured, put into camps and enlsaved to make england a better place.

Me thinks one needs to take a closer look at history beside the bits you were taught in school

Uh huh. 🙄

Apologies for the loaded question @Saxonrider – do you think the crusades were good or bad for Christian / Muslim relations?

And a slightly more serious question, do you think Muslim world would be further forward than it is today had it not been for the crusades and the mongols?

But I don’t see passages from the Old Testament being used to justify…executing thousands of prisoners or those who believe in a slightly different version of the religion, taking sex slaves, shooting school children

Jesus, have you people never heard of the Bosnian genocide? Mass murder, sexual slavery, ethnic cleansing – all done against Muslims by Christian zealots who framed it in explicitly religious terms. They killed 8,000 Muslims in one event!

do you think the crusades were good or bad for Christian / Muslim relations?

Apologies for interupting, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the Crusades and Knight’s Templar are deeply linked to the basis of modern Freemasonry.

So not only do we have the holy land being of major importance to 3 of the world’s most prominent religions, but also to the world’s most prominent secret society.

Temple Mount is the place to be…

Apologies for the loaded question @Saxonrider – do you think the crusades were good or bad for Christian / Muslim relations?

Perfectly good question. I think any war is tragic, and don’t think that fighting over the holy sites helped two civilisations get on any better. They did, however, bear a huge amount of intellectual fruit that both sides would do well to acknowledge. The oft-commented-on re-introduction of Aristotle into Western philosophical discourse is a case in point, but so is the development of mathematics and medicine. In other words, I think in terms of the Crusades that no little good was born of what could have been an unmitigated tragedy.

As for the Muslim world, a more serious look at its intellectual decline is warranted than I can afford to put forward here, but I am not convinced that the Crusades did much to diminish it. I think the Mongols probably had a more substantial effect, but I think there were likely factors not dissimilar to the sort we have seen in the last hundred years – for example, of political intrigue among the Caliphates – that served to undermine the Muslim world from within.

Jesus, have you people never heard of the Bosnian genocide? Mass murder, sexual slavery, ethnic cleansing – all done against Muslims by Christian zealots who framed it in explicitly religious terms. They killed 8,000 Muslims in one event!

That this appalling, wicked thing happened cannot be denied. Nor can its religious dimension. All I will say to qualify it, is that it was not based on anything Orthodox Serbs read in the Bible, but rather in the fact that Bosnian Muslims are seen by them as inheritors of the Turks, who undertook their own form of oppression centuries earlier.

To be clear: I am NOT positing this as an excuse; it is just a more thorough cause than saying the Bosnian conflict was a result of the way Christian zealots read the Bible.

No, that’s not true. It wasn’t a war of difference that happened to be determined by religion, it was explicitly a religious war in which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches incited, facilitated and justified genocide. http://instituteforgenocide.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/the-role-of-Serbian-Orthodox-Church-in-facilitating-genocidal-ethnic-cleansing-campaign..pdf

Also – describing life under the ottomans as “oppression” is not a value free statement either

people wrote these Bronze age ‘us vs them’ manuals.

people are capable of acts of good, and acts of staggering violence

why shouldn’t the interpretations of the world and society writtenby people reflect this?

They were NOT comprised of Christians overwhelming the Holy Land and indiscriminately slaughtering Muslim men, women, and children in the most horrific possible ways, and then turning even on their own to do likewise.

Balls!

Although conquerors committing atrocities against the inhabitants of cities taken by storm after a siege was the norm in Medieval warfare, the massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem likely exceeded even these standards

n this temple 10,000 were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(1099)#Massacre

Its all the same shit, religion is a great way to justify doing and manipulate people to do horrific things, once you’ve taken that leap of ‘faith’ into the fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death and miracles surely holy war isn’t such a stretch

No, that’s not true. It wasn’t a war of difference that happened to be determined by religion, it was explicitly a religious war in which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches incited, facilitated and justified genocide.

Thank you for posting that paper. But did you read the whole thing? I did not say that the religious element could be excused or ignored; I only pointed out that the Bosnian situation grew out of an Ottoman past, and so that the sickening ethnic cleansing that unfolded was made up of causes that extended beyond religion.

The author of the paper doesn’t say anything different.

For some reason, I can’t copy and paste quotes from the paper, or else I would cite it directly here, but the author fairly clearly sets the Serbian Orthodox Church alongside the Serbian government as an instrument in the ‘scapegoating’ that took place.

Why is that important? Because, just like in the current Russia vs. Ukraine situation, Church hierarchy can be identified as aligning itself with a government, but that does not make the Church to blame. It merely reveals that the Church, made up of human beings, is as given to corruption as the system within which it operates.

It merely reveals that the Church, made up of human beings, is as given to corruption as the system within which it operates.

That’s a tricky one, as most religions comprise of righteous principles within their belief system, however, most Churches are money making machines, as the grandiose architecture of their places of worship dating back centuries testify, as do their links to the powerful and corrupt around the world.

Its all the same shit, religion is a great way to justify doing and manipulate people to do horrific things, once you’ve taken that leap of ‘faith’ into the fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death and miracles surely holy war isn’t such a stretch

As much as you’d like it to, kimbers, your conclusion does not follow.

First of all, ANY system that draws people together can become ‘a great way to justify doing and manipulate people [sic] to do horrific things’.

Secondly, ‘faith’, which you derisively put in inverted commas, is a real human phenomenon, that can be distinguished – both psychologically and philosophically – from belief in a ‘fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death, and miracles’.

Thirdly, you don’t prove your assertion that belief in such things easily leads to holy war.

Most certainly, there are instances in which faith has been used to start war, although statistically, this is small (123/1763 wars listed and evaluated in ‘Enyclopedia of Wars’ by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, accounting for 7% of all wars, and 2% of all people killed in war), I take issue with your suggestion that there is a direct correlation between faith and violence.

SiFi take on misinterpretation of a religious text

Thatbook says that WW2 was not a religious war. My question is this – if religion didn’t exist would Hitler have persecuted the same people?

Good question. When you consider all the factors that led to his rise, I suspect he would have turned his hateful rhetoric on someone else though. Don’t forget, for example, that the Slavs were expendable because they were an inferior race.

When a scapegoat is needed, a scapegoat can be found.

Secondly, ‘faith’, which you derisively put in inverted commas, is a real human phenomenon, that can be distinguished – both psychologically and philosophically – from belief in a ‘fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death, and miracles’.

Genuine request, would you be able to elaborate a bit more on that?

That book says that WW2 was not a religious war. My question is this – if religion didn’t exist would Hitler have persecuted the same people?

Also… if religion didn’t exist, would the Nazis have received the funding necessary to make WW2 possible via Prescott Bush and Allen Dulles, who were both Vatican Knights of Malta.

Buried among the typewritten pages of the Bank of England’s history is a name of whom few have ever heard, a man for whom, like Montagu Norman, the primacy of international finance reigned over mere national considerations.

Thomas McKittrick, an American banker, was president of the BIS. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, McKittrick’s position, the history notes, “became difficult”. But McKittrick managed to keep the bank in business, thanks in part to his friend Allen Dulles, the US spymaster based in Berne. McKittrick was an asset of Dulles, known as Codename 644, and frequently passed him information that he had garnered from Emil Puhl, who was a frequent visitor to Basel and often met McKittrick.

Declassified documents in the American intelligence archives reveal an even more disturbing story. Under an intelligence operation known as the “Harvard Plan”, McKittrick was in contact with Nazi industrialists, working towards what the US documents, dated February 1945, describe as a “close cooperation between the Allied and German business world”.

Thus while Allied soldiers were fighting through Europe, McKittrick was cutting deals to keep the Germany economy strong. This was happening with what the US documents describe as “the full assistance” of the State Department.

Obviously, without religion, the Vatican wouldn’t have existed to aid the escape of many Nazis via Ratlines[/url]

The role of Pope Pius XII during World War II, his relationship with Nazism and his efforts (or lack of them) to save Jews from the gas chambers are hotly disputed. Even within the Jewish community there are strong opinions on both sides of the debate.

But the latest Eichmann revelations suggest that Pope Pius XII’s moral stature – and qualification for sainthood – should be judged on its conduct in the aftermath of Nazism’s defeat. Once the evil of the Holocaust was revealed for all to see, the Holy See should have been at the forefront of the campaign to bring the war criminals to trial.

In fact history’s most savage mass murderers – Adolf Eichmann, Dr Josef Mengele, better known as Auschwitz’s ‘Angel of Death’, Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp – escaped justice down the ‘ratline’ that ran straight through the Vatican state in Rome.

Senior members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy – marinaded in virulent Judeophobia and obsessed by Bolshevism – organised the escape of thousands of the most debauched, cruel monsters to a peaceful, prosperous retirement in Catholic South America.

Cougar – Moderator

Secondly, ‘faith’, which you derisively put in inverted commas, is a real human phenomenon, that can be distinguished – both psychologically and philosophically – from belief in a ‘fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death, and miracles’.

Genuine request, would you be able to elaborate a bit more on that? [/quote]

At a guess, he might be referring to studies using brain scans which have shown certain activities in the brain when the faithful are in a state of religious rapture. These have been identified in people of multiple denominations, but also in atheists in meditative states.

wanmankylung

Thatbook says that WW2 was not a religious war. My question is this – if religion didn’t exist would Hitler have persecuted the same people?

I think Hitler was an inventive chap and knew how to motivate people (in a negative way). Fear of the other is always a big driving factor for people and I don’t doubt that Hitler would have found other “others” to discriminate against.

SaxonRider – Member

Apologies for the loaded question @Saxonrider – do you think the crusades were good or bad for Christian / Muslim relations?

Perfectly good question. I think any war is tragic, and don’t think that fighting over the holy sites helped two civilisations get on any better. They did, however, bear a huge amount of intellectual fruit that both sides would do well to acknowledge. The oft-commented-on re-introduction of Aristotle into Western philosophical discourse is a case in point, but so is the development of mathematics and medicine. In other words, I think in terms of the Crusades that no little good was born of what could have been an unmitigated tragedy.

As for the Muslim world, a more serious look at its intellectual decline is warranted than I can afford to put forward here, but I am not convinced that the Crusades did much to diminish it. I think the Mongols probably had a more substantial effect, but I think there were likely factors not dissimilar to the sort we have seen in the last hundred years – for example, of political intrigue among the Caliphates – that served to undermine the Muslim world from within.

I can’t help but think that the cross pollination of ideas and the spread of technology was one way traffic. The muslims were the intellectual world leaders at the time. Maths, science, medicine…they were hugely advanced. As their society was trampled into the dust learning flourished in Europe. I can’t see what benefit the muslim got from the crusades other than being weakened militarily to the point where they couldn’t defend themselves from the mongols who finished the job the crusaders started.

Secondly, ‘faith’, which you derisively put in inverted commas, is a real human phenomenon, that can be distinguished – both psychologically and philosophically – from belief in a ‘fantastical land of omnipotent supernatural beings, life after death, and miracles’.

Genuine request, would you be able to elaborate a bit more on that?

In spite of Dawkins’ insistence that faith in God and belief in the ‘flying spaghetti monster’ are tantamount to the same thing, it is not a serious philosophical or psychological premise.

The concept of God – not a specific God described by religion, but the idea, thought worthy of discussion in philosophy since the dawn of the discipline to the present – is rational. By that, I mean simply that legitimate, rational arguments can be made both for, and against, the existence of such a concept.

In spite of the apparently easy way in which all rational arguments for the existence of God are swept away in the God Delusion, if it really was as easy as all that, there would be no further debate. The fact is, however, that if the ‘God debate’ proves anything, it is that the very human positions of accepting the existence of God or of rejecting it, are pretty much equally reasonable.

Importantly, though, this premise is linked to the accepted philosophical definition for God, and NOT to a mythical creation whose attributes are different to those posited by philosophy.

In other words, if, on this forum, we think that somehow, we will resolve whether or not God exists based entirely on the rational arguments, we are kidding ourselves. It is simply not possible. Fun, but not possible.

So if the philosophical conception of God is at least as reasonable as the arguments against it, then those whose faith attracts them to accept its reality are not anti-rational. Faith itself represents a different epistemic category to knowledge that some can find it hard to accept, but it is at least consistent with reason.

This is different than someone walking into your kitchen and proclaiming that s/he can transform into a werewolf (or whatever).

One of the ideas that many religions have adhered to over the centuries is that faith must be consistent with reason. This is something the much-loathed Pope Benedict said many times. But so has Islam and Judaism.

Faith as an epistemic reality is accepted as a legitimate dimension of the human person. But faith is NOT to be confused with irrational belief.

Finally, by saying so, I do not think for one minute that this means the object of faith is somehow proven. That is a very different discussion.

I simply stress that faith itself is not the irrational thing it is caricatured as by kimbers, above, and [sometimes] others.

OP suggesting we go back to the Crusades to find an example of “Christian tryanny” sort of makes my point, ancient history with very little real relevance today. Somethinng far more relevant to today is the Bibles position on homosexuality, notwothstanding that we have gay marriage today even in countires like Ireland which are staunchly Catholic.

BTW of course I watched the video, all of it.

The Empire had pretty much zero to do with Christianity, it was about commerical power and control. Whilst you had minssionaries trying to spread the word counties like India and Malaysia for example retained their Hindu/Sheik and Muslim traditions.

The quotes used, I believe, came from the Old Testament. I think I am correct in saying that Christian teaching in our lifetimes and before is most heavily focused on Jesus and the New Testament. There will be very many Christians who have never seen or heard those passages. There are many passages in the New Testament which would contradict the passges chosen and for Christians the New Testament would take preference.

jambalaya

OP suggesting we go back to the Crusades to find an example of “Christian tryanny” sort of makes my point, ancient history with very little real relevance today.

And I gave you an example from ten years ago. There’s no need to fudge the issue, the video satirises the idea that Islam alone is a radical doctrine full of violence and hate, and people who want to spread that idea for whatever reason are quick to ignore that Christianity and Judaism contain many of the same ideas.

@jimjam – Old Testament is part of both Judaism and Christiantity and indeed contains some extreme amd you could say barbaric passages but my view is that those passages are not used today to justify widespread violence.

Follwoing your post above I checked back and yes re Ireland I can well imagine priests on both sodes sought to absolve killers of their sin by referemce to the Bible but its my view the conflcit there was far more about Nationality than religion. The IRA where not killing Protestants for religious reasons or attempting to justify their actions as such

@kimbers yes indeed Bosnian massages where genocide, I have to say I have never considered them religiously morivated either but could be wrong about that. We in the (Christian) West tried to resolve that conflict, we tried to protect people. We may have failed but we tried.

They were NOT comprised of Christians overwhelming the Holy Land and indiscriminately slaughtering Muslim men, women, and children in the most horrific possible ways,

That statement is just taking the p*ss.

But I can certainly agree that the majority of Wars/Crusades/Jihads etc are about money and power and control. Unfortunately these are not generally the elements that are remembered when it comes to the middle east. Shame really, its the only reason we are there now.

OP suggesting we go back to the Crusades to find an example of “Christian tryanny” sort of makes my point, ancient history with very little real relevance today.

I’m sure Tancred wasn’t thinking too far into the future when his merry band rocked up onto the Mount in 1099 and slaughtered everyone, this still reverberates today.

First of all, ANY system that draws people together can become ‘a great way to justify doing and manipulate people [sic] to do horrific things’.

System justification. The “west” suffers from this greatly. The black and white world of Jambalaya is a classic example of this.

OP suggesting we go back to the Crusades to find an example of “Christian tryanny” sort of makes my point, ancient history with very little real relevance today.

It gets tricky when you factor in that both Tony Blair and George W Bush said that God factored in their decision to go to war in Iraq…

Especially when you consider that the consensus seems to be that the rise of ISIS is intrinsically linked to the invasion of Iraq, just as the rise of Saddam Hussein and his supply of weapons was intrinsically linked to the UK and US Governments, whose leaders are Christian.

In fact, Tony Blair is a Vatican Knight of Malta, just as all US Presidents between 1981 and 2009 have been, including Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, who aided Saddam Hussein’s rise with Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Rupert Murdoch is also a Vatican Knight of Malta and his role in drumming up support for war using his media empire should be clear to the intelligent folk on here.

To my knowledge, Obama is not yet a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta…

Clicking the link, you will note the Sovereign Military Order of Malta dates back to the Crusades…

jambalaya

Follwoing your post above I checked back and yes re Ireland I can well imagine priests on both sodes sought to absolve killers of their sin by referemce to the Bible but its my view the conflcit there was far more about Nationality than religion. The IRA where not killing Protestants for religious reasons or attempting to justify their actions as such

I didn’t say anything about the IRA, my point was about Calvinist pastors justifying the sectarian murder of Catholics by referencing the old testament, apologizing for the killers, and emboldening those might chose to do the same. So when you say

Old Testament is part of both Judaism and Christiantity and indeed contains some extreme amd you could say barbaric passages but my view is that those passages are not used today to justify widespread violence.

…well I just gave you an example. A perfect example. My point isn’t to prove that Calvinists are bad, or that muslims are good, rather that Iron age self help guides which are morally ambiguous can be twisted to any agenda by those who wish to do so. It just needs the right set of circumstances.

In fact, Tony Blair is a Vatican Knight of Malta, just as all US Presidents between 1981 and 2009 have been, including Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, who aided Saddam Hussein’s rise with Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Rupert Murdoch is also a Vatican Knight of Malta and his role in drumming up support for war using his media empire should be clear to the intelligent folk on here.

What is a ‘Vatican Knight of Malta’? Do you mean a member of the Sovereign Order of Malta? Because if so, your statement above is incorrect, as one has to be a Catholic in order to be a member, and not all US presidents have been. As for the others, aside from Blair, I have no idea if they are Catholic or not.

In fact, Tony Blair is a Vatican Knight of Malta, just as all US Presidents between 1981 and 2009 have been

i.e.:

Ronald Reagan
George HW Bush
Bill Clinton
George W Bush

All Knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, ordained by the Vatican

Worth noting the Bush Family have a long history with the order (Prescott Bush already mentioned above for his role in funding the Nazis) and Jeb Bush is already ordained as a SMOM Knight.

Further ambiguity arises as there are also other Knights of Malta, including High Ranking Freemasons of the York Rite (Christian faith)

jimjam – Member
my point was about Calvinist pastors justifying the sectarian murder of Catholics by referencing the old testament, apologizing for the killers, and emboldening those might chose to do the same.

That’s just a sympton of the partition of ireland, where the real motive of keeping the industrial north in british hands suited having the loonballs of orangism be dominant. So utimatley not a conflict that is based on religion at all, but on control of resources. Put it this way, no industrial north and the northern protestants would have been living in a 32C republic a long time ago.

Like I say religion is just a tool to get the idiots doing your bidding.

I’d like sources. The Sovereign Order of Malta is for Catholics. Full Stop. Jeb Bush is Catholic afaik, but the rest of the Bush family is NOT. Nor was Bill Clinton. So I ask again: what are you talking about?

seosamh77

That’s just a sympton of the partition of ireland, where the real motive of keeping the industrial north in british hands suited having the loonballs of orangism be dominant. So utimatley not a conflict that is based on religion at all, but on control of resources. Put it this way, no industrial north and the northern protestants would have been living in a 32C republic a long time ago.

Well thanks for that patronising oversimplification there. I hadn’t stop to think, at any point in my life that there might be a reason for the troubles. I just thought catholics and protestants really didn’t like each other 🙄

Like I say religion is just a tool to get the idiots doing your bidding.

And you can say that about any religiously motivated conflict or killing. Virtually any of them. Including the current war in the middle east.

I don’t disagree with you that religion can be a tool to inspire allegiance but it needn’t apply only to stupid people. People want to be together, they want to be part of a group or a community and one of the best ways of galvanizing that community is to give them an adversary.

I’d like sources. The Sovereign Order of Malta is for Catholics. Full Stop. Jeb Bush is Catholic afaik, but the rest of the Bush family is NOT. Nor was Bill Clinton. So I ask again: what are you talking about?

Tell you what, how about you provide sources, since:

As for the others, aside from Blair, I have no idea if they are Catholic or not.