Anonymous wrote:

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Not at all. To call the impact of Mao's little red book a tragedy is even a gross understatement, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an atheist who wrote, "An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book." The truth is that it was written by a communist about an ideology called "communism," and had nothing to do with atheism, except for the fact that they saw religion as a competitor for the hearts and minds of the people they were trying to control. Trying to blame that on atheism is a red herring, at best.

However, the communists in China did treat Mao's book as something close to scripture, so let's look at what is supposed to be a real holy book.

My point was that while a great deal of harm was done by Mao's followers, the Chinese abandoned Mao's book as a guiding principle pretty quickly. Despite that, the human rights record in China continues to be atrocious, but if Christians are arguing that at least they're better than the Chinese that's a pretty low bar to get over.

What should we call a thousand years of use of the Bible to justify all kinds of war, massacre, atrocity, suffering, hatred, slavery, etc. that still goes on today? How often does a so-called Christian leader in this country go on TV waving the Bible to explain how some atrocity or tragedy is God's punishment for something? Given everything that book has and continues to be used to justify, is it really that much better?

As Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Can you really not see the parallel here? I think you can, or you wouldn't have needed to dive deep into the semantics (communists are atheists, but this isn't atheism per se) of the thing.

If you want to keep drawing parallels between Christianity/the Bible and Communism/Mao's Little Red Book, by all means feel free. I think some of your fellow Christians might join me in disagreeing with you.

I guess the real question here is what point are you trying to make as it relates to the parallel you're drawing?

OK, let's try again with decent formatting and no typos.

The point is that both comparisons are equally silly and irrelevant to how the vast majority of Christians or Chinese today actually think and act. Someone seeing Jesus in the clouds is as irrelevant to most peoples' faith as the Little Red Book is irrelevant to the Chinese today.

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Not at all. To call the impact of Mao's little red book a tragedy is even a gross understatement, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an atheist who wrote, "An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book." The truth is that it was written by a communist about an ideology called "communism," and had nothing to do with atheism, except for the fact that they saw religion as a competitor for the hearts and minds of the people they were trying to control. Trying to blame that on atheism is a red herring, at best.

However, the communists in China did treat Mao's book as something close to scripture, so let's look at what is supposed to be a real holy book.

My point was that while a great deal of harm was done by Mao's followers, the Chinese abandoned Mao's book as a guiding principle pretty quickly. Despite that, the human rights record in China continues to be atrocious, but if Christians are arguing that at least they're better than the Chinese that's a pretty low bar to get over.

What should we call a thousand years of use of the Bible to justify all kinds of war, massacre, atrocity, suffering, hatred, slavery, etc. that still goes on today? How often does a so-called Christian leader in this country go on TV waving the Bible to explain how some atrocity or tragedy is God's punishment for something? Given everything that book has and continues to be used to justify, is it really that much better?

As Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Can you really not see the parallel here? I think you can, or you wouldn't have needed to dive deep into the semantics (communists are atheists, but this isn't atheism per se) of the thing.

If you want to keep drawing parallels between Christianity/the Bible and Communism/Mao's Little Red Book, by all means feel free. I think some of your fellow Christians might join me in disagreeing with you.

I guess the real question here is what point are you trying to make as it relates to the parallel you're drawing?

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Not at all. To call the impact of Mao's little red book a tragedy is even a gross understatement, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an atheist who wrote, "An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book." The truth is that it was written by a communist about an ideology called "communism," and had nothing to do with atheism, except for the fact that they saw religion as a competitor for the hearts and minds of the people they were trying to control. Trying to blame that on atheism is a red herring, at best.

However, the communists in China did treat Mao's book as something close to scripture, so let's look at what is supposed to be a real holy book.

My point was that while a great deal of harm was done by Mao's followers, the Chinese abandoned Mao's book as a guiding principle pretty quickly. Despite that, the human rights record in China continues to be atrocious, but if Christians are arguing that at least they're better than the Chinese that's a pretty low bar to get over.

What should we call a thousand years of use of the Bible to justify all kinds of war, massacre, atrocity, suffering, hatred, slavery, etc. that still goes on today? How often does a so-called Christian leader in this country go on TV waving the Bible to explain how some atrocity or tragedy is God's punishment for something? Given everything that book has and continues to be used to justify, is it really that much better?

As Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Can you really not see the parallel here? I think you can, or you wouldn't have needed to dive deep into the semantics (communists are atheists, but this isn't atheism per se) of the thing.

If you want to keep drawing parallels between Christianity/the Bible and Communism/Mao's Little Red Book, by all means feel free. I think some of your fellow Christians might join me in disagreeing with you.

I guess the real question here is what point are you trying to make as it relates to the parallel you're drawing?

The point is that both comparisons are equally sill and irrelevant to how Christians or Chinese today think and act. Someone seeing Jesus in the clouds is as irrelevant to most peoples' faith as the Little Red Book is irrelevant to the Chinese today.

Anonymous wrote:

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Not at all. To call the impact of Mao's little red book a tragedy is even a gross understatement, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an atheist who wrote, "An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book." The truth is that it was written by a communist about an ideology called "communism," and had nothing to do with atheism, except for the fact that they saw religion as a competitor for the hearts and minds of the people they were trying to control. Trying to blame that on atheism is a red herring, at best.

However, the communists in China did treat Mao's book as something close to scripture, so let's look at what is supposed to be a real holy book.

My point was that while a great deal of harm was done by Mao's followers, the Chinese abandoned Mao's book as a guiding principle pretty quickly. Despite that, the human rights record in China continues to be atrocious, but if Christians are arguing that at least they're better than the Chinese that's a pretty low bar to get over.

What should we call a thousand years of use of the Bible to justify all kinds of war, massacre, atrocity, suffering, hatred, slavery, etc. that still goes on today? How often does a so-called Christian leader in this country go on TV waving the Bible to explain how some atrocity or tragedy is God's punishment for something? Given everything that book has and continues to be used to justify, is it really that much better?

As Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Can you really not see the parallel here? I think you can, or you wouldn't have needed to dive deep into the semantics (communists are atheists, but this isn't atheism per se) of the thing.

FruminousBandersnatch wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Not at all. To call the impact of Mao's little red book a tragedy is even a gross understatement, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an atheist who wrote, "An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book." The truth is that it was written by a communist about an ideology called "communism," and had nothing to do with atheism, except for the fact that they saw religion as a competitor for the hearts and minds of the people they were trying to control. Trying to blame that on atheism is a red herring, at best.

However, the communists in China did treat Mao's book as something close to scripture, so let's look at what is supposed to be a real holy book.

My point was that while a great deal of harm was done by Mao's followers, the Chinese abandoned Mao's book as a guiding principle pretty quickly. Despite that, the human rights record in China continues to be atrocious, but if Christians are arguing that at least they're better than the Chinese that's a pretty low bar to get over.

What should we call a thousand years of use of the Bible to justify all kinds of war, massacre, atrocity, suffering, hatred, slavery, etc. that still goes on today? How often does a so-called Christian leader in this country go on TV waving the Bible to explain how some atrocity or tragedy is God's punishment for something? Given everything that book has and continues to be used to justify, is it really that much better?

As Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

By all means, let's minimize millions of deaths and displacements, so long as it involves atheists

Anonymous wrote:saw jesus at mcdonald at midnight...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.

They got over it pretty quickly and were responsible for less death and suffering than the adherents of the book about Jesus.

Anonymous wrote:An atheist wrote a Little Red Book that other atheists used to treat like a holy book.