Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!
Thomas Paine: born at the wrong time.
I'm always reminded of this video anytime someone brings up Paine. (He's one of my favorites on youtube, recently he had a "debate" with this little racist **** that he utterly destroyed)
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xj-p-rNh8y4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Unfortunately it took decades to get the Bible into peoples hands (the printing press) and for it to resonate into society. But once it did, the impact has been unrivaled by any other movement:
You're kidding right? Try centuries and that was just to get it into something they could understand (not latin or greek). It had resonated just fine before then with the church being one of the few institutions not raped and pillaged during the political upheavals the kicked Europe's *** up from the fall of Rome through the dark ages. Then you have the crusades where they got to spread their message through sword point.
Maybe you should look up some quotes by Martin Luther and his thoughts on reason and intellect.
Helped end Child Labor Laws
Nope that was the great depression when we couldn't have those kids working jobs that adults could. And there were attempts before then because the conditions were so horrible.
Helped set societal standards to destroy Slavery
The bible
condones slavery and Jesus told slaves to be good to their masters, doubly so if they are xtian. (Wiki link because it does a decent job of summarizing) Slave owners often quoted book and verse when justifying their right to keep slaves.
Directed society towards Womens Sufferage
There would have been no need for this if the bible and the church in specific didn't place women as inferior to men. In fact it's still being used to do so.
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Primary impetus for the Salvation Army and a driver of health care in general
First part true, second part not so much. When large sections of your population can be decimated by diarrhea you tend to move towards learning why. Unfortunately because of their religion xtians viewed disease as demons. It was moving away from religion that health care developed. Much like how everything the US was founded on came out of the enlightenment and not bowing to the religious groups. Who wanted and still do for this to be a xtian nation. (Treaty of Tripoli *****es)
U.S. Religious Donations at $8.8 Billion for Developing World
U.S. religious donations to poor countries for relief and development hit $8.8 billion in 2006,
according to the first nationwide survey of U.S. religious giving to developing countries.
The amount of $8.8 billion is equivalent to 37 percent of all U.S. government aid, pointed out the
Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity (CGP) in its 2008 Index of Global Philanthropy.
Now you run into the problem of are they donating because they are religious or because they are just good people? Also does that figure include people saying they are giving to charity when they drop a 20 in the collection plate on sunday? There was a study recently that said religious were more giving to charity but that was an accepted criteria for it. As if even a minority of that money went to charity. And that was the single category that put religious people over the top.
Let's look at this another way. So is Islam totally 'bad'? There are terrorists, right?
Maybe...just maybe...its due to extremist segments who are attracted to the religion. Maybe...just maybe...its the same with Christianity. People who listen to extremists and paint entire movements by those extremists...always misunderstand those movements.
Or maybe it's the ambiguous use of words and elements of the story that explicitly promote various extremist ideas.
And pirate I'd say the reason that's expanded to include those performing the rituals is that they can't really shove it under the rug with the invention of communication devices.
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