Is Christianity turning into something awful?

Next they will racially prohibit Muslims from owning weapons and burn crosses on people’s lawns.

The general public is just starting to notice how bad it is.

Back when the Internet was new and scary, Evangelicals avoided it like the fresh hell it was. Now that they’ve decided God won’t send them to hell for using Facebook and YouTube, we all get to see what’s going on in those congregations.

None of this stuff they’re saying now is new. It is the same hateful BS that they’ve preached every day and twice on Sundays since I was a bairn.

No.

Falwell is only talking about the Muslims who are bombing and shooting up things. It’s like when we talk about Christians who want laws that hamper freedom of religion of every religion, but their own. Not every Christian wants that, but we short cut it when we talk about it.

I question only one thing – your use of the verb “turning into”.

I think christianity (and catholicism in particular) has been nasty for 700–800 years.

No. That happened a long time ago.

Christianity began turning into something awful as soon as it accepted the perks accompanying the declaration by Constantine that it was a “favored religion”.

The next step was being allied with the Roman Army (one of the most brutal and punitive in history) and it’s conquest of other nations and conversion by point of sword.

That is the exact antithesis of everything which Jesus and the apostles taught and stood for. Originally it said that “they went everywhere preaching and teaching the kingdom of God” Teaching and preaching is a far cry from threatening with death in this life and hell in the next for failure to convert (and using the violence of Roman army to back it up).

And it just kept going further downhill from there.

“turning into”?

Since we are not murdering in the name if Jesus now, I’d say it’s getting better. If anything it’s just becoming commercial like our political parties. These huge mega churches they build here have their own coffee shops and services that cater to hipsters.

I’m with other people. It’s been awful pretty much forever. All organized religions are.

Our government isn’t murdering in the name of God, but there are certainly individuals who do.

I like what @Buttonstc said. Christianity was never meant to control governments. It was always supposed to be the one standing up for the disenfranchised, aligning itself with the ones society hated the most. Once it became THE power it became the oppressor. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of us Christians still trying to be the radical force standing with the underdogs against the oppressors, be they Christian or otherwise. But it’s hard to even call myself Christian in the current climate. Most times I just call myself a follower of Jesus since that seems to be something completely different from what mainstream Christianity has become.

I don’t like people with extreme intolerant views whether they consider themselves Christians or not.

@Dutchess_III It’s better, last I checked you don’t have to fear being burned at the stake for heresy.

The “something awful” is plain old tribalism, and that is a basic feature of human instinct. It surfaces in just about any situation where humans divide themselves into teams (and we do this in many different ways, religions being one of them).

It’s not easy to keep this from happening. It’s a deeply rooted urge. One problem Christianity faces is that it’s not too hard to read scripture in a way that supports this kind of tribalism. Islam has the same problem. Of course, scripture can also be read in a way that disarms tribalism, but because this cuts against the grain of human nature, this is asking people to make a bigger effort.

Ideally, it’s the role of religion to move us beyond our baser tendencies, but religion can also be coopted in service to those tendencies.

OK, so the government isn’t involved, but when you have high profile “leaders” like Jerry Falwell spouting such hateful, intolerant bulls shit, and too many “Christians” are taking it hook, line and sinker, doesn’t it seem to be light years away from where it’s supposed to be @ARE_you_kidding_me, and continuing to move further and further away from a center of tolerance and love?

I don’t think it was ever a center of tolerance and love. It’s the opiate of the people and maintains the status quo. That is apparently the purpose when you think about it. The KKK required its’ members to be Christian for example. What I see in Christianity is big business now. I don’t particularly find what he said to be that offensive..tactless, yes. All he is really saying is that if more people were armed then the campus would not be defenseless when zealots want to run around and try to kill indiscriminately. I don’t support him but I can’t find fault with that except that non-lethal defenses are probably the better alternative. A big beefy can of bear spray is my choice if something like that happened. When the swat teams eventually get there if you have a gun they probably won’t know if you are a good guy or not. Also if we can stop them and not kill them we can hopefully find out WTF is going on with them. That said, I’d rather have armed people around me than completely unarmed ones.

Yes, mainly because it is being run like big business, instead of worshiping and following God’s word.

Since this is in social, I think that it is appropriate tp post my grandson’s reply to Falwell since I think posting it on Facebook is probably what prompted @Dutchess_III to ask the question. :-). Also, Grandma likes to brag on her babies. I wish the Falwells of the world had his insight.

Talking Heads…“same as it ever was”

It’s not nearly so simple.

Despite all the headlines implying the contrary, the vast majority of Christians worldwide are decent people. Sure, they may say Jesus’ name a little too often and knock on your door trying to hand you literature, but most aren’t even that obnoxious.

Also bear in mind that while the US has a higher percentage of Christians than many other nations, we are still relatively small compared to the entire world; even if every American was a hellfire-and-brimstone Bible-thumper, that would only be about 5% of the human population.

The US has always been a bit more Protestant than Catholic; that right there means that American Christians are a mostly a coupe of steps removed from “mainstream” Christianity. If you don’t believe me, look how many are telling the Pope that he is wrong about what God/Jesus wants. It stands to reason since the Pope is Catholic and therefore is irrelevant to Protestants for the same reason Buddhists don’t really pay much heed to Rabbis.

But despite being a step or two closer to Fundamentalism than the global average Christian, there are those who think that even the average American Christian isn’t radical enough and go a bit more extreme. Case in point, Westboro Baptist Church. However, since WBC pretty much stops at pickets and PR, some regard them as weak and ineffective at best. Those people go a step further and get into radical violence.

Is the parallel there too subtle despite it being covered in fluorescent polka dots with a flashing neon arrow pointing at it, or can I trust that everyone hear knows how ISIL fits in here?

Not merely Christianity, but ALL religions.

It is not the faith that is changing, just those who practice it. Those who misapply the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the faith, though it is rather convenient for people to try to blame their failures on the system, faith, or Christ. The participants cannot turn perfection into anything less.

I worked at a psychiatric hospital while I was was in college. The head psychiatrist was quoted more than once, “that was crazy.” This is just crazy people acting crazy.
It is not Christianity but it is “crazy people acting crazy.” The individuals are on both sides, it is not religion acting crazy but it is individuals.

Or individuals using religion as an excuse to act fucking crazy.

@Tropical_Willie I worked at a psychiatric hospital where the charge nurse (and my boss) handed out religious tracts! The Administrative nurse, (her boss) told me that children in Ethiopia were dying because of the sin of Cain. The hospital I had worked in previously had been so professional that this was a culture shock for me!
I am a follower of jesus, but I really don’t trust Christians in power. It’s like the ring in the Hobbit Trilogy. Makes them crazy.

Fundamentalists in any religion are usually intolerant of other religions, so it’s not Christianity, it’s fundamentalism that is the problem.

Right. Religion is fine, as long as you don’t seriously adhere to the tenets of that religion.

Even I can’t tell if I’m being sarcastic here.

I don’t know if the problem is being a fundamentalist? As long as you do your own thing and don’t want everyone else to do the same it can be ok. As long as you aren’t causing any real harm to yourself or others. I guess it’s a blurry line what is harmful?

@ARE_you_kidding_me you said, “I don’t think it was ever a center of tolerance and love.”….but it is supposed to be. Everything that Jesus said is all about tolerance and love. Everything.

No, most Christians are not extremest and would not advocate random violence against the people of another religion, but most of them are mildly intolerant. They are against gay marriage. They want to bring religion “back” into the schools (although religion was never IN the schools to begin with, not when I was growing up, anyway,) against women’s productive rights, they want everyone to think and feel and believe the same way that they do…and that’s a breeding ground for ugly.

And yes, @Judi, your grandson’s comment was so spot on and did prompt this question. Out of the mouths of babes.

Religion is a tool. I have little problem with faith as long as it’s kept on a personal level. When a person starts trying to use religion to talk down and be condescending from their high horse I feel compelled to get on mine. Nobody wins the joust and it never takes long until everyone is just waist high in horse shit. It’s a tool and leaders use it to lead bands of ill-educated zombies if they haven’t realised the difference.

The problem is that Christianity, along with other religions, is dying in industrialized nations. Church attendance has been declining and the numbers of members of the traditional Protestant sects are going down.

There has been a large increase in the number of people who say they are religiously uncommitted. In the U.S. they are now about as numerous as Catholics and account for 30% of millennials. Those Christians who remain are disproportionately fundamentalist and they are starting to feel like cornered rats, unwilling to go down without a fight. Things will definitely be getting worse before they start improving.

Link

Well, then, they are rats who have built and suffered a trap made of their own imaginations. Victimised-religiosity is the new brand of high horseness.

I was right. Obama is singling out those on a no fly list to be banned guns.

The only way to combat the creeping menace of Satanic secularism is to wage a jihad for Jesus! ;-€

@Brian1946 Last one was in the 13th century, it was called the Crusades.

@Tropical_Willie I though that was 1990 and we called it “Desert Shield”.

@Dutchess_III I don’t disagree

@jerv “Desert Shield” was before the shit hit the fan with “Desert Storm.”

@kritiper The way I see it, the fact that names have changed over the years since then doesn’t change the fact that we went in in ‘90 and never left.

First, I have to say, they have an idiot for a President. I would’ve never sent my child to that school. I guess he wants to make rape even easier on campus. It really is the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth kind of mentality.
Second, he does not represent even an iota of Christians, as @jerv has pointed out.
Third, I can only form an opinion on what I personally know of my personal experience and knowledge of the Roman Catholic church. The Pope has not called anyone to arms and has been consistent in his message of peace, not war. So the church isn’t the problem.

Individuals with hatred who would profess to be hateful in the name of the Bible, are the same people who would read Ann Frank and say the story is fictional or that she had it coming. They would also be the same people most likely to have sex with their siblings spouses, cheat on taxes and kill someone who cut them off in traffic. My point is crazy doesn’t need a real reason to do what they wanted to do all the time. That is why their version, of the messages Jesus passed on, is soooo very different from mine.

You need to be a crack head to believe in what these type of people believe in, or at least an extremely hateful person, or an ape with anger management issues who can’t contemplate reasonable action. (Disclaimer: No offense to crackheads, or apes. I’m sure some crackheads are nice and apes probably use more sense than the people described.)

And for those saying that all faiths are the problem. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but its no better than anyone in the Christian faith singling out atheist. Painting biases with a broader brush, doesn’t make it better. The people who would use religion to fuel their hatred of the world, can easily come from anywhere.

Lets take mass shooting in the US. Not all of them where religious based, but we are quick to call their reasons as being nuts. Crazy doesn’t have a religion. But crazy people can easily pick a religion like anyone else. Crazy and hateful people, are just crazy and hateful.

There are people who can actually come from the same family and raised the same way and still come out so different. I have one brother who is so different from the rest of us. He always felt the outcast, when in reality, he always pushed everyone away. If he would’ve really paid attention, he would’ve seen he was quite liked and loved and admired buy us all. But he took a wrong turn into alcohol and became someone else. No one drove him to be that way. He was smart, good looking and charismatic. For whatever reason, he thought being a drunk and saying hateful things should be added.

My point, is that it doesn’t mean that growing up in my family encouraged him to be that way, and it didn’t mean that he was right in assuming he was though of as less. He was our big brother. He ruined his life because he was filled with jealousy and hate and thought the world owed him everything. If you ask him. He is christian and yet probably couldn’t make a single quote from the bible, or name any of the apostles. Religion doesn’t make people crazy. Crazy people just are from the start.

@jerv So now we have Desert Staycation. What’s wrong with that? Those people LOVE us! (And our money…)

@RedDeerGuy1 “I was right. Obama is singling out those on a no fly list to be banned guns.” Well, that’s a no brainer! They should be banned from buying guns, duh.

BTW:

Since it has not yet been pointed out, there is one salient fact which bears mention.

The quote which started this whole firestorm was not from Jerry Falwell; he died of a heart attack several years ago.

We are talking about Jerry Falwell, JR, HIS SON who doesn’t have even a tenth the influence that his father did so he is speaking for the students at that university and that’s pretty much it.

So, he doesn’t represent any much more of a portion of Christians as any other fundamentalist. Just because he inherited his fathers position as head of the university doesn’t mean he has anywhere near the stature that his father held. So I wouldn’t be placing a whole lot of significance upon his poor choice of wording.

Any Christian with functional brain cells does not look to Falwell, JR for leadership. Just because the press makes a big deal out of what he said doesn’t mean that, in reality, that it’s a big deal. JR is just stumbling around trying to fill shoes which are way too big for him by a long shot.

He just does not carry the type of influence which his father did. That’s the plain unvarnished truth. (but the plain unvarnished truth doesnt sell nearly as well as the sensationalism they’re using.)

People need to get a grip here. Nobody is lining up to follow the wisdom(?) of Falwell JR because he doesn’t have any. Yeah, he gets big cheers but let’s remember that the audience doing that cheering is the students at that school. The rest of the Christian world has no compunctions about ignoring JR altogether. He certainly is not speaking for them.

If the press had an ounce of common sense, they would ignore him as well.

@kritiper What’s wrong is that they keep ordering the lobster and expensive champagne and sticking us with the room service bill. If the people who want them there paid white those that don’t didn’t, then I’d be fine with it. Hell, it would solve the wealth inequality problem we have here too as the chicken-hawks would go bankrupt in under a month!

@jerv You don’t like lobster or expensive champagne? Why aren’t you there? No flights? Here’s a word of wisdom for you: “Life is a bitch and then you die.”

@Buttonstc so many Christians don’t have a functional brain. They’re trained not to. They’re trained not to ask questions AND to accept as true things that are physically impossible.

Thank you for pointing out that it was Falwell Jr. But still…it’s now out there and too many Christians will nod their heads in agreement.

People are not ok with closed borders but keeping lists is ok to them? That’s like saying I oppose abortion but am ok with the death penalty. Remeber the stasi? It’s one thing to keep an eye on someone it is another to limit what their freedoms are based on simple suspicion. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

@kritiper I did my time. FYI, the fishing off the coast of Kuwait City sucks.

@Dutchess

I don’t know what kind of Christians you’ve been hanging out with but all the ones I know of don’t buy into JR’s rhetoric.

And truth be told, he has yet to prove himself to the vast majority of fundamentalists. He is Falwell in name only. He simply does not have the influence his father held. Which is why his statement was blown up by the media the way it did. They have yet to catch on to the simple fact that JR is not the leader of much other than that university. They (the press) thinks that just the same last name implies stature and it doesn’t. He’s an idiot and even most fundies are aware of this. Nobody of any significance is following him. He can shout as loudly as he wants but it doesn’t mean they’re listening or nodding in agreement.

I’ve kept in touch with a good number of my fundy friends from back in the day and JR is largely ignored by those who backed his father. He simply has no wisdom that anyone cares to listen to

At least Falwell SR when he was alive had a certain amount of political savvy (even tho I disagreed with practically ALL of his viewpoints, I could still recognize that.) JR just does not have the influence that his father did.

This whole thing was just the press blowing it up out of proportion which is why I didn’t choose to break down what he actually said and meant (rather than what they took out of context) it’s not even a blip on the radar of significance so I didn’t deem it worth wasting time on.

He was clearly not calling for Christians to go get a gun and start blasting away at Muslims.

He was quite specific because he said “those Muslims” NOT all Muslims. There’s a big difference, even if the press refuses to acknowledge that simple distinction.

The whole thing is ridiculous.

@Buttonstc I think there are enough Christians that hear Falwell as there is basically a war against Islam going on. Falwell’s TV show gets enough viewers that it stays on TV.

When I say things like, “Christians are so much the majority that they can’t put themselves in the place of the minority,” or, someone on the PP attack Q wrote it was likely a Christian who perpetrated the attack, and some jellies were offended by the assumption. Really? Why? Because they feel we are accusing Christians of being murderers? All Christians? Anytime I use Christian to mean the Christians I am specifically talking about, jellies jump all over me saying I am calling out ALL Christians and making a sweeping statement.

On Fluther I have to write that I don’t mean all Christians, I must clarify, write some, write I am only talking about the Christians who behave that specific way, or everyone jumps all over me. Obviously, I don’t mean all, but a whole bunch won’t read or hear it that way. That’s on Fluther! Where most of us seem to be level headed and most people have known me for years. I still have to clarify.

When I lived in the Memphis area Christians (lol) were obsessed with Obama being Muslim. The news media said it was code for hating him because he was black. The media was wrong. There were Christians who specifically obsessed about him being Muslim and it really made them worried. Not all Christians, but it definitely was a thing they were talking about in their church circles.

I also saw many Christians who respected Muslim neighbors and community members, but just 20 minutes from me a new mosque and rec center under construction was set on fire! I’d bet it was Christians. I’ll also mention a Christian church opened their doors to allow those Muslims to have a place to meet for services when the heard what happened.

You should see the anti-muslim stuff some of my Christiian Facebook friends (most Facebook friends I do know in real life, not all) write or share on Facebook. It’s appalling and scary. I don’t think any of my friends would ever do anything violent, but they certainly make incredible statements, and most of them probably own guns. They hear this negative stuff over and over again. It’s like brainwashing, at minimum like advertising techniques.

Falwell should not put arming ourselves and Muslims in the same sentence, this is one reason why Hillary and Obama are right not to use the term Muslim extremists, or whatever the right is demanding. If Falwell feels strongly it’s important for people to be able to defend themselves, even with a deadly weapon, fine, but he should not call out a specific group. Too many of his followers are already worked up about Muslims. Remember, to a fundamental nervous Christian they see America slipping away from Christianity. It freaks them out. They believe God helps protect us because America is a Christian country.

@JLeslie Ironically, the states that have the most people who think that way left the US back in 1861, still think of themselves as independent of US federal law (except when it’s convenient for them, such as taking more tax dollars than they give), and just plain old have not been part of America for over 150 years. They were American when Reagan, Bush, and Bush were in, but not when Bill or Barack were/are at the helm. Go figure.

The extremist elements of the GOP and Christianity merged into something that is part political party and part militant cult. Political and social conservatism both taken to such extremes that both Pope Francis and Rience Priebus are worried. People radical enough to make Ted Cruz seem like a Centrist. And in a twist of irony, they are more theocratic than the Sharia Law that they so loudly proclaim is evil.

Sadly, there are too many sane, intelligent people that also worship Jesus and/or vote Republican to single out Christians or conservatives without getting a lot of innocent people caught in the net.

I’ll add I have one friend who is a well paid surgeon, practicing Christian, and libertarian, and he has a special room in his basement filled with canned goods, and probably some firearms. He isn’t some holy roller from a small rural town, but he worries more than normal about government control and the US falling off a cliff.

@JLeslie I worry about government control too. I fear that Republicans may win and turn us into Iraq, with all of the peace and sectarian tolerance that implies. And if the only shot I have at avoiding having a militant terrorist organization taking over America is voting Democrat and blasting Conservatives who don’t give a shit about humanity so long as they retain the right to profit from the suffering of others, c’est la vie.

I’m not as liberal as some people think, but I feel myself being forced to the left simply to balance the insanity of the right. I don’t like being force. I don’t like being threatened. And I don’t take to either any more peaceably than Trump supporters take to Muslims being allowed to be in the US. If the US falls off a cliff, your friend will be why.

It appears to be getting weirder and weirder in the U.S. I believe things began going haywire when the Republican Party realized that the fundamentalist Christian sector could be organized and exploited as a voting bloc back during the first Reagan election in 1980. Since then, the Fundies have found succor and refuge in the far right of the Party in the form of exposure and funding. I believe they are way over represented in the media than what they actually are. But as long as they are useful to the Republicans, these ugly and slanderous mutations will continue. I believe what we are witnessing is an anachronism in it’s last agonal breaths, a wounded animal screaming to be relevant and blindly lashing out in a world and ecology that is increasingly dependent on logic, engineering, critical thinking and provable science for it’s very survival. It’s not just Christianity. It’s all religions.

I read a neo-con interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount a couple of years ago that totally blew my mind. I forget the details, but the part about the meek inheriting the earth was totally turned around and Jesus was portrayed as a paragon of social Darwinistic capitalism.

Once, while working as a nurse in a homeless shelter one weekend, a protestant minister—one of these self-ordained types—offered the usual blessing, which was invariably Christian, before the evening meal for over 250 homeless people. He said a prayer of thanks, mentioned that Hanukkah had begun that day, that Hanukkah was the Celebration of Light and re-dedication of the Temple. I thought how nice that was of him to mention that. But then he went on to say that, in reality, Hanukkah was the Jewish celebration of the anti-Christ and he could prove it if anyone wanted to join him in his Bible study group after dinner. Huh? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He said it almost as an aside. But there was no reaction from his hungry, apathetic audience. They weren’t listening anyway.

I wish more people would read the Bible independently—not with a mentor, not with a priest, and not in a study group—if only so they could tell when others, certain jackboot proselytizers haven’t. As a document of Western culture, It carries a lot of weight, even among agnostics such as myself. It carries the weight of every aspect of law, culture and tradition and, for better or worse, it explains how we got where we are. And that is a good thing to know and understand. Some of the stories are excellent. And hilarious. I especially like the one about the talking ass around about Numbers 22 through 30. It’s about these guys who won’t take no for an answer, so God fucks with their heads. It is pure Mel Brooks. Just telling the story is great stand-up comedy.

Anyway, I wish more people would read the Bible. Every time some dumb redneck son of a bitch with a dog under his porch, a politician or lawmaker from Arizona, or Kentucky, or even New York State stands up and starts ranting about how Christian he is and how we need to get back to an eye for and eye, etc., I wish some other son of a bitch would stand up and ask him why he’s quoting the sentiments of the Old Testament and not the that of the New Testament—not that of tolerance and forgiveness of the New Covenant brought by the guy in who’s name they speak? Wasn’t the NT the new deal that is supposed to supersede the OT? Can you call yourself a Christian if you are willing to just blow off the NT and base your beliefs on the OT instead? I mean, wouldn’t that make you—God forbid—Jewish? It would be so easy to call these assholes out. And funny. But nobody does it.

Fundamentalism is increasingly becoming unpopular because people around the world are either realizing it’s irrelevancy as an effective way to deal with our global problems, or they are simply seeing it as the superstition of their grandfathers, or they are understanding how dangerous it can be in the hands of a fanatic. I think religious fundamentalism will be relegated to the ashcans of history in this century as an interesting fluke, an anomaly mentioned only with disbelief that anyone ever took these myths seriously to kill over them.

I just don’t see how it can survive much longer when so many other proven survival tools are now available to everyone on the net. It’s not like you have to find the money and build a library and then secretly order books from around the world. If you need a water purifier and you have a community trash pile, you no longer have to waste precious time praying to God while your children die of fever—you get the instructions on how to build one from old tubing and purex bottles on the net. All knowledge is available everywhere, even in the most censored societies. Ask any consumer or distributor of pornography in those countries and they will show you how it’s done.

Can I post some of this on Facebook @Espiritus_Corvus?

Be my guest.

Hi there.. its been a while.

Anyway, I don’t think anyone would consider me a right wing conservative Christian by a long shot. BUT I think that many liberal Americans demonize Christianity because its the dominant religion and most of the people we know likely identify as Christian. So on a daily basis, we are constantly seeing the bigotry and hypocracy and blame the religion itself.

Many American liberals idealize “exotic” religions as being unlike Christianity, and much more accepting of people outside the religion, devoted to peace and saving the planet or some such stuff like that. The two religions I’ve recently heard highly idealized for being the perfect anti-Christian religions are the Hindu and Buddhist religions. Virtually all sects of Buddhism and most sects of Hindu have very peaceful creeds. Both religions frequently require the followers to be vegetarian so not to harm the souls of animals. Both religions emphasize deep meditation, which most people think of being the ultimate source of peace and serenity.

Earlier this year in world news, there were stories about these powerful Buddhist monks in Myanmar accused and likely guilty of committing acts of genocide. These monks were considered very holy and deeply religious. But they didn’t like Muslims living in their country. So even though everything in their sacred texts forbids it, they slaughtered thousands of Muslims, trying to cleanse Myanmar.

For several years, several Hindu Extremist groups have been popping up in India. They resemble churches or temples and hold regular worship services. The members all consider themselves extremely devout Hindus. But they all want India preserved for Hindus. They want to rid the country of Christians and Muslims. Some of them just want to move out, but many groups believe in killing non-Hindus who dare live in India. Many of them just teach anti Muslim and Christian propaganda and never do anything more violent than hosting parades and shouting when they see people dressed as Muslims, demanding they leave India. But some groups commit organized hate crimes and attack non Hindus on the street. A few groups have been officially labelled as terrorist organizations and are highly dangerous.

—-

My point is, its not the religion that goes bad, it’s the people who practice who can make it bad. And I can’t think of a single historical or modern incidence of wide scale bigotry, hatred or even genocide that didn’t simply use the religion as a tool to get people who wouldn’t have cared much otherwise to stand up and fight. Its not about whose god is the real god. It’s all about power, money and land. The dominant religion of the region can easily become corrupt and use religion as a tool to get what they want.

I think most people don’t really understand what happened during the holocaust and the Jewish victims. It wasn’t about hating the Jewish religion at all. It was because for various reasons, Germany was dirt dirt poor. Hitler wanted to gain territory so Germany could become wealthy.

It was well known that Jewish Europeans were disproportionately wealthy compared to other Europeans. I won’t go to deeply into it, but the reason they were so wealthy is quite ironic, IMO. Hundreds of years earlier, several nations forbade Jews to own property, so they couldn’t become farmers or enter businesses that required land ownership. They also were frequently “cleansed” from countries and forced to flee. So their businesses had to be portable and small enough to easily carry during a long travel. This was supposed to keep Jews in poverty, but it backfired very badly. The most portable businesses turned out to be the best money making ones. Banking, gem cutting, gold and silver smithing…cash cows. Also, banking especially is one of the oldest international trades. So even though most Germans were in extreme poverty, many many Jews were still able to earn a large amount of money by trading with businesses and institutions based outside of Germany, where the financial situation was MUCH better.

Anyway. I think Hitler had some innate antisemitism, but his extermination plans weren’t just about an insane hatred of Jewish people. He just really wanted all that money to pay for the massive military force Germany was totally unable to afford.

Governments use religion to make things happen.