The Dangers of Secularism

I think the big problem with your assertion is that the two World Wars, Communisim and the Holocaust were not the result of secularism.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Actually, only as practiced in certain instances. There is nothing about communism that precludes religion. In fact, most early Christian communities operated on what could only be described as a communist philosophy.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Religion,like so many other things, is a handy tool for doing good or evil. But it's just that, a tool. It can be and often has been misused.Unfortunately though, looking at history, religion has all too often been used destructively. One good example is the vast bodies of knowledge that have been destroyed over time, particularly by Christianity.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Christians have this habit of saying that those Christians that do terrible things are not real Christians.IMHO this is silly and most dishonest.Real Christians do really really bad things for very Christian reasons. That was true in the past and is true today.We don't get a By just because they did bad things. We don't get to exempt ourselves from culpability as Christians for the EVIL that other Christians do.As Christians we must see and acknowledge both the good and bad in Christianity, and strive to eliminate the bad in the future.We need to realize that Christianity, even today, is one of the most exculsionary organizations around and filled with bigotry and hate. We need to look internally at Christianity and ask what it has done wrong and how it will do better in the future.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I did not mean to assign some Christian motive to you. But I also want to make the point that as a Christian, neither I or any other Christian can get around history by saying "so and so was not a REAL Christian". Christians do really bad things often in the name of Christianity.Actually, I was not even thinking so much about Hitler, but about Christian Schools for American Indians that forced kids to forgo their native language and heritage to save their souls and the Christianization of the South and Central American cultures where we, in the Name Of Christ, took away their language, history, religion and then burned all their written records.Compared to what was done in the Name of Christ in the Americas, the holocaust pales. Here we did what Hitler only dreamed of.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I believe Hitler was a sincere Christian and his letters and speeches seem to support that. He time and time again explained that what he was doing was the Christian God's work and that his motives were Christian.I believe we need to take him at his word and then examine Christianity to make sure what he used as justification is explained clearly so such things never happen again.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The members were pretty much Christians and justified most of their actions based on Christianity.The government was not a Theocracy and as such, would be called Secular as would almost every government down through the ages. Even the Holy Roman Empire was primarily a secular government. The movement, like just about all such movements was a mixture of components, secular, mystic, Christian, humanistic, scientific, psuedo-scientific.The justification for some of their specific actions such as genocide though were decidedly Christian and Scientific at the base. In both cases, science and religion were misused IMHO to achieve a political and philosophical objective, just as Christians today misuse religion in both relationships with homosexuals and as exclusionary factors to say some people are not among the elect.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What is an absolute in religions?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Read the SCOTUS decision Cherokee Nation vs State of Georgia sometime.The excesses of Stalinist Russia were not unique or limited only to Communist societies.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Ritch hereIt was the official decision of the SCOTUS that allowed Georgia to take some of the best property in the state from some of the best educated and wealthiest people in the state and ship their asses to Oklahoma.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

In most cases it is far less an external object then an internal practice. It is not so much praying to something as internally contemplating an idea.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sure. If you look at the early colonial history you'll find major seperations based on religious perspectives between the different colonies. Virginia was strongly Presbyterian, Pennsylvania staunchly Roman Catholic, New England a haunt of Puritanism, Maryland nominally Roman Catholic but with conditions in the Charter guaranteeing religious freedom, and pockets of some more fanatical groups like the Quakers and Menonites scattered throughout.The Framers could look around and see that finding any compromise that included religion would be impossible and so the issue had to be specifically excluded before any common document could get approved.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

We can thank our first President (who was not George Washington by the way) for much of that. He was the prime mover in effecting compromise and gets far too little credit for his efforts.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion