religion, christianity, islam, hitlerPeople talk about Hitler as being one of the most evil characters in history. Christianity from its inception has killed way more then Hitler has. In the black death periods there were burning 100s of thousand of people, jews, women etc because they were thought to be “witches” or what ever and there are so many documented examples of these 2 religions committing serious crimes way worst then Hitler. How the hell do they get away with it, and no one ever talks about it?
Crimes are committed by people, not “by religion”. Everybody can claim that they committed an act “in the name of X”. Heck, even George Bush Jr. called the Afghanistan war a Holy War. And conversely, most muslims are highly offended by the fact that the suicide bombings are sold as “jihad”.
Furthermore, if crimes explicitly committed by “the church” were not stopped – ask yourself: who should have stopped them? At those times, there was no power to match that of the church even approximately.
People do talk about it. But people also tend to deny what’s uncomfortable. And they won’t willingly identify with these crimes.
Christians today don’t enjoy being reminded of the Crusades. So they say “Oh, that was over a thousand years ago. Back then, Christians were different. We’re not like that.”
Muslims who are not terrorists don’t enjoy being reminded of the terrorists who are or were Muslim. So they say “Oh, they’re extremists. They’re terrorists. They’re different. We’re not like that.”
Dan Savage calls these people NALTs, for Not All Like Thats — for example, when some fundamentalist nutjob calls for Iowa to overthrow the legalization of gay marriage, some Christians who support marriage equality insist that the nutjob doesn’t speak for them, or for all Christians, because Christians are Not All Like That.
Until the Not All Like That theists get together and root the Yeah, Just Like That folks out of their ranks, we will continue to have crazy theists of every stripe committing various atrocities.
For most people, religion is one of the fundamental way they define who they are. That means that criticism of religion is tantamount to an attack on people’s most basic identity. It should surprise no one that in reaction, believers are willing to defend religion far beyond what they would tolerate of any other ideological construct.
So due to this shield, religion has been able to inspire the worst excesses in human beings. It’s simply not possible for religion to be widely seen as the culprit until such time as people stop considering religion as what defines them.
In Europe, up until around 1400 or so at least, they got away with it because people were profoundly ignorant. Literacy rates were around 1%. Just the idea that someone could think about something, collect some evidence to support their idea, then write a book about it, didn’t really exist. The smartest people had no idea how big the universe was or why a few of the stars wondered around in the sky and the rest were all fixed. Medicine consisted of a few comforting measures and the rest was wild speculation and blood letting. Serious thinking people discussed creatures with human bodies and heads of dogs, as if they really existed.
Churches had managed to maintain some sense of civility after the Fall of Rome and acquire a lot of land. They were the social services. They also provided “spiritual comfort”, something we don’t really need today, but when you are living in dirt, it was comforting that there was some sort of purpose for your life. A thousand or more years of cultures discovering each other and attempting to conquer left a lot of soldiers around who wanted something to do, and an attack on your comforting story was an obvious enemy.
Then as now, looking around at the ruins of earlier civilizations and seeing that your civilization was building castles and churches on the highest hill in every city and that you were beginning to map the entire world, it was easy to believe that your people were the pinnacle of civilization and that your way was about to conquer that world.
So, up until then, if you can get yourself into the point of view of a bronze age or medieval citizen, you can see how easy it would be to accept some inconsistency from the authorities. After Luther nailed his 95 theses to Wittenburg, it gets harder to understand. It is a long road from 1% literacy to where we are today, and frustrating that we have moved so slow.
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