The usual suspects

Todd: Where did I say I was an atheist? Unlike you, I'm at least OPEN to the possibility that there MIGHT be (or MAY have been) a Being that poofed everything into existence. Evidence suggests, however, that He might have left for an extended vacation since then.

SH: So Todd’s an agnostic who’s open to the possibility of deism. That makes him a functional atheist. So I’ll treat him as an honorary atheist.

Todd: Do I have an "axe to grind"? Maybe. You wrap all of your theology in this flowery prose to hide the fact that it's foul.

SH: Actually, my critics don’t ordinarily characterize my prose-style as flowery. Rather, they find it overly polemical.

Todd: What evidence do I have (Steve)? Well, for starters, these ideas were powerful to allow John Calvin to stand and watch while Servetus screamed in agony as he burned to death for having the wrong ideas about God ... it was not a slow death, since it was reported that the winds carried the flames somewhat away from his body. He ended up roasting for hours.

SH:

i) One thing I’ve noticed is that Todd likes to change the subject. He’s strayed very far from the topic of the original post.

He raises one set of objections. When those objections are refuted, he moves on to another set of objections. When those are refuted, he moves on to another set of objections.

Now, a man of honor would withdraw his objections after they’ve been refuted and reexamine his operating premise.

ii) He then proceeds to wheel out the rusty cart of old chestnuts, viz. Servetus, the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, ecclesiastical anti-Semitism, &c.

You know the joke about fruitcake. There’s only one fruitcake in the whole world. No one likes fruitcake, so everyone keeps exchanging the same fruitcake. When someone gives you a fruitcake for Christmas, you mail it off as a Christmas present to someone else the next year.

The moral objections to the Christian faith are fruitcake objections. Unbelievers keep recycling the same moldy old fruitcake.

iii) One initial question is I have is whether unbelievers want to be treated as halfway intelligent or not.

If they want to be treated with a modicum of intellectual respect, then it isn’t asking too much that they at least make the effort to raise logical objections instead of constantly resorting to selective guilt-by-association at ten degrees of separation from the source.

iv) Calvin was a man of the 16C. As such, he was, in some measure, a creature of his social conditioning. Persecuting dissenters of all stripes, whether political or religious, was standard operating procedure back then.

It was a stratified society. Every member had his place according to his social status, whether ascribed or achieved. If you chose to buck the system, you paid the price.

In fact, there are some rather backward parts of the world in which things haven’t changed very much—such as the average Ivy League university, what with its speech codes and all—or the bunker mentality of the evolutionary old guard.

v) Historically speaking, freedom of dissent is a rather novel idea. It owes a lot to the Reformation, with its belief in the right of private judgment and the priesthood of all believers.

Todd: These "great saints" like Chrysostom preached no less than seven sermons on the entire Jewish race with terms one would hesitate to use against an animal.

SH:

1.Greek Orthodoxy isn’t my bailiwick. Maybe Chrysostom was an anti-Semite and maybe he wasn’t.

Much depends on the historical context. Cf. R. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Wipf & Stock Publishers (October 2004).

2.In any event, that’s ancient history.

I’m more concerned with contemporary anti-Semitism. And where we find contemporary anti-Semitism is not in Calvinism or Christian Fundamentalism, but in Islam and the Far Left.

Just consider the way in which the Far Left takes the side of suicide-bombers over against the state of Israel.

The time is past due to put your own house in order, Todd. We’ve already done our own spring-cleaning, thank you very much.

Todd: The early American settlers set people on fire and drowned them for being suspected "witches".

1.I happen to think that one bungled witch-hunt in 150 years of colonial American history compares very favorably with the routine miscarriages of justice in we witness in a judicial system dominated by the values of the Warren court, where habitual violent offenders are regularly acquitted on legal technicalities dispensed at the whim of tyrannical judges.

2.Speaking of judicial abuse, we can also thank the highly secularized psychiatric community for all of the lives ruined by the junk science of recovered memories.

And don’t take my word for it. Here’s a source from your side of the fence:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rmt.htm

3.Not to mention the prosecution of peaceable prolife demonstrators under racketeering laws—only recently reversed.

4.Or what about all of those lovely show-trials during the halcyon days of Communism?

5.Not to mention the judical license to kill, c/o Roe v. Wade.

Todd: "In 1208 the Inquisition was established. Seven years afterward, the fourth council of the Lateran enjoined all kings and rulers to swear an oath that they would exterminate heretics from their dominions. The sword of the church was unsheathed, and the world was at the mercy of ignorant and infuriated priests, whose eyes feasted upon the agonies they inflicted. Acting, as they believed, or pretended to believe, under the command of God; stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another world -- hating heretics with every drop of their bestial blood; savage beyond description; merciless beyond conception, -- these infamous priests, in a kind of frenzied joy, leaped upon the helpless victims of their rage. They crushed their bones in iron boots; tore their quivering flesh with iron hooks and pincers; cut off their lips and eyelids; pulled out their nails, and into the bleeding quick thrust needles; tore out their tongues; extinguished their eyes; stretched them upon racks; flayed them alive; crucified them with their heads downward; exposed them to wild beasts; burned them at the stake; mocked their cries and groans; robbed their children, and then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell" - (Ingersoll)

SH: Yes, it never takes long to get around to the Inquisition, now does it?

1.Once again, that’s not my bailiwick. Catholicism is an inherently authoritarian organization because it came of age during the Roman Empire. Its ecclesiastical polity is modeled on the imperial polity of the day.

2.But I’d add, in fairness to Catholicism, that Ingersoll is not exactly a church historian. And it says something about Todd and his ilk that they feel free to quote Ingersoll as if he were some sort of authority on the history of the Inquisition.

Ingersoll was a demagogue, not a scholar.

Todd: Are all Christians like this? Of course not. If you're telling me that believing in Jesus makes men "good", I'd humbly suggest you and I have very different definitions of "good.

SH:

1.Todd is now imputing to me a claim I never made, and then taking offense at his own imputation—like a cat clawing at its own reflection in the mirror.

2.Oh, and by the way, being a Christian was never about being a good person.

The basic difference between a believer and an unbeliever is that a believer is penitent sinner while an unbeliever is an impenitent sinner.