[ExI] Mary Magdelene?/was Re: Iran's plan for their gay population

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/6/7 painlord2k at libero.it <painlord2k at libero.it>:

>> Does the burning of Christian heretics count?
>
> This was done by the secular hand (the government) after the Church
> found the guilty of heresy. This because the government (Kings) found
> that heresy was a threat to their power.
> People, usually, preferred to be tried by the Inquisition than the
> secular tribunals for the same crimes.

So the Church identified the heretics, asked the king to forgive them,
but the king had them burned anyway because they constituted a threat
to his power?

>> The fundamentalist Islamic states are similar to mediaeval Christian
>> states. It is *secularism*, not the content of religious dogma, that
>> has got rid of these practices.
>
> Unfortunately, we are speaking about now, not then.
> Secular communism and Nazism used these practices a few decades ago.
> So secularism or atheism can kill as much as religious fanatics.

Yes, but the evil perpetrated by religion of whatever sort has been
inversely proportional to the degree of secularisation in the society
in which the religion operates.

>>> We all know that critics of Christianity are routinely harassed,
>>> attacked, killed and silenced. Surely that the writer of the "da
>>> Vinci Code" is in hiding, because his life is threatened by
>>> Christians fundamentalists, his editors are killed, his Japan
>>> translator was knifed down and his Italian translator too (but he
>>> was saved just in time).
>
>> In an earlier era, he would have been burned at the stake.
>
> But we live here and now. Not there.
> Then, probably, he would be burned down by the King's tribunal order not
> the Church one.

You may as well say that adulterers in Saudi Arabia are executed at
the order of the state, not at the order of the religious authorities.

>> When your country is invaded and you are killed if you resist the
>> invasion or get in the way, who is the aggressor?
>
> Last time it happened, Italy was the aggressor.
>
> Italy was invaded by the Allies, cities bombed, civilians killed at
> scores, women raped (search for "Marocchinate"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marocchinate
> or see the movie "Two Women" with Sophia Loren).
>
>> The mayor of Esperia (a comune in the Province of Frosinone),
>> reported that in his town, 700 women out of 2,500 inhabitants were
>> raped and that some had died as a result. According to Italian
>> sources, more than 7,000 Italian civilians, including women, children
>> and some men, were raped by Goumiers.[3]
>
> Well, the French had the gut to try and sentence many of these for the rapes
> and the killings they did. By the way, from the name you can guess the
> religion of these soldiers.
>
> The other mass rapes I remember in WW2 were the rapes done by the Soviet
> soldiers as they entered in Germany. Not exactly Christians ones.
> But probably the Axis soldiers did as much rapes as them, if not more.
>
> But this don't change the fact that Italy (and Germany) were the aggressors
> and deserve to have their government toppled and more friendlier and humane
> governments installed.

Italy and Germany were in the same position as America is now in invading Iraq.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou