Aziliz one sentence of qualification is all your post required. I can only go by what you write, and it was (without qualification) the sins of the Church taken out of context.

We fall too easily into taking the worst of something and presenting it as the whole.

We all lose when that happens.

Everyone has absorbed, everyone knows about the shadows of the Church it hasn’t hidden them, but publicly apologised. Do you find the priests of the high church of left wing academia doing anything similar? (They are usurpers and there is nothing worse than a usurper.)

What we haven’t absorbed is the good which is many orders of magnitude greater than the bad. (Read what a non-believer and professor of social sciences says about the Church.)

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tqm4xd5mqkk5px43d968m19qmf4w3g5y

As an example of how unhelpful your post was let me ask you.
How many of us know the true story of the Crusades apart from the ideological histories produced within the last 30 years?

How many of us believe Cortez and the Conquistors were merely bloodthirsty gold hunters who wiped out a whole people? (There were only 500, the Aztecs were the Nazi’s of Sth America subjugated surrounding nations and used their citizens for human sacrifice) It was other Indians who defeated the Aztecs. The story is about the defeat of one Indian nation by others.

Who here really knows anything more of the Church except the Inquisition, Crusades and Galileo? An honest look at all of them paints a completely different picture than the one fed to us lately.

I can present a compelling case for atheism, I can paint Christianity as Satan’s Church. I can argue for this present brand of secularism til the cows come home. I held all three positions once. (if we were living

in the 15th century I would be criticising Church corruption)

The present corruption of history to serve ideological ends, a method freely admitted by these historians as valid, (Osama bin Laden in actually recruiting academics who preach this ideology)
http://jewishworldreview.com/0106/pipes2006_01_24.php3
must give way to history that serves the truth.

What is helpful? What does help Australia, what use should the truth be put to? An evident need. What is this?

The looming catastrophe facing western civilisation with its sub replacement fertility levels. We are breeding ourselves into extinction.

What will get ppl to have more babies? What will mobilise a whole civilisation? The true facts of the culture we inherit. Its beauty, its marvels, its grand achievements - all worthy of pride, all are worth preserving. The world has produced nothing that comes close. ( we learn from the best in other cultures also)

The systematic disparaging of the legitimacy of our institutions causes ppl to refuse to bring the next generation into our world. Why would we when our culture is so shameful?

We have to face our collective moral obesity as a people also – babies are seen as a burden not as a gift. As a cost to our ‘lifestyles’ rather than a joy.

Why is it that Christians and other groups who reject the prevailing ideology are having the most babies? (Will the meek will inherit the earth again like the monastic estates of the Middle Ages?)

No more taking the worst and presenting it as the whole. We can’t afford it anymore. We have to hurry. We may not make it.

(P.s. Himmler and the SS created their own Teutonic cult and Nazism itself was quasi religious. In this respect the Church was a rival whose days were numbered after a Nazi victory)

BD, I'm struggling to find where I mentioned "Why does God Allow" and followed with a list of tyrants. Help me out here please.

I personally consider the norms of the church more indicative than the extremes. I'd take the view that the Adolph Hitlers and Mother Teresa's of the world are very unusual people (in quite different ways), what is more telling for me is how the character of God looks when viewed in the lives of ordinary christains.
- Is wrongdoing within the christain church something which appears to be widespread or is it something remarkable for it's rarity?
- Are the christains I deal with in day to day life remarkable for the integrity of their lives or are they more likely to be the ones I most have to watch out for because they will put themselves first at the expense of others?
- Are the christains posting on OLO more tolerant and respectful of others than those with different belief structures?
- Why aren't most of christains on OLO excited about having the mission field come to their place - so much easier than keeping missionaries in the field oversea's in countries where converts can really suffer for changing faith?

Those kinds of questions are more telling for me than most of the stuff christains seem to want to talk about.

Have a great weekend all.
R0bert

edi - you didn't read the links I posted. Yes, people say Hitler was an atheist or a pagan or a Christian - so which one? If you had read the links I posted then you would know how I support what I say and never have used some of your quotes because they come from a disputed source as explained.

One of Hitler's heros was Charlemagne, a Frankish (Germanic) King who ruled over most of France, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, half of Italy and Germany, and parts of Austria and Spain. He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in 800 AD. His job was to defend the faith and to convert by law, by persuasion and by the sword. The tradition of a group of Germanic Knights going on Crusade started here and was behind the crusades in the Middle East and against pagans and heretics throughout Europe. Hitler seethed against the communists precisely because they were atheists and was following a Christian tradition of persecution of minority religions. When he took over Austria he made sure the crown of Charlemagne was taken from Vienna to Nuremburg.

Martin - Himmler is a different case and I am not going to research that one - too much work. You want to for me :) Remember to double check the sources - too much nonsense out there.

edi - Dionysos, Woden and Tammuz do not postdate Christ. Earliest writings about Dionysos 1200 BC - Cretan Linear B and a major cult in Greece by 600 BC, Tammuz 2,400 BC - Sumerian Cuneiform - he is mentioned in the Bible Ezekiel 8:14 and Woden was worshipped where there was little writing prior to Christianity but artwork. You need to learn how to research. There is incorrect information out there - get original documentation where available. If not there are other methods like archaeology but don't quote hearsay and dubious sources. [quote]"The surrest barier to all truth is the uninvestigated presumption you already have it" Edwin Spencer. Dont mean to offend here. presumption kills knowledge [/quote] I agree.

Boaz_David - yes everyone needs to define what they mean by christianity and that was precisely the point of my post.

Martin - your links aren't well argued, there is an emotional bias that certain beliefs don't need explanation because they are self evident. The first one about capitalism and christianity answers in part the theories of Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. His theory is that technologically advanced societies had an advantage as they had access to the right climactic conditions, crops and animals. Diamond's book is well reasoned and interesting. From what Rodney Stark argues I doubt he read the book and only reacted to the title. For my answer about your second link I would say I am well aware of the pitfalls of reading poor sources, but Martin, in any argument you should look at all sides and origianl sources if you wish to come to a rational conclusion - and yes even if there has been violence. That doesn't mean I condone the violence done by opponents of the West - but I am aware of the violence the west has done in the Middle East over time and I don't condone that either.

Yes Pope John Paul II apoligised for the Roman Catholic Church's past violence towards others and it's repression of minorities and Cardinal Edward Cassidy particularly apologised for the persecution of the Jews and the Roma (Gypsies) 12th March,2000 - and that was a good thing. But an understanding of why the previous history of 1600 years of persecution by Christians towards minorities occurred is needed - not to single out Christianity but rather as a tendency of humanity. If the Pope is apologising, Bush, Howard and Blair are not nor their Muslim counterparts. They all think they are being guided by God.

I disagree that you cannot know what happened in the past. Most of History has an overwhelming amount of documentation available that was not 'created' in the last 30 years if you are only willing to open your eyes and read the first hand accounts from both sides.

Aziliz.

Well done on the info.

The biggest struggle i have is people infering that just simply because someone calls themselves a Christian, they are.

There is a traditional ellement, particularly within Catholosism that says if you are born a Catholic you are a Catholic (Christian). I was born Roman Catholic, but there is no way that i believed in Jesus Christ, i was certainly not a Christian and particularly not 'born again'and nor did i ever go to Chrurch.

At twenty nine years of age, after quite a personnal struggle trying to reconcile what i see all around me with the what many percieve to be Chance, I came to faith.

Dont mean to blab here, What i am trying to say is that if the persons behavior does not reflect the change that is meant to have occurred within (the birth of the spirit) only one of two things can be concluded.
1) He/She has not grown as a Christian and is therefore no different than what is seen in this world. or
2) IS NO CHRISTIAN.

As i mentioned to Pericles above, you can tell by the fruit displayed by the individual.
The fruit displayed by Hitler was directly in line with the biblical veiw of Satan rather than God.

One of my last posts speaks to this trend of growing secularism that rips at the Church from inside out.
But more importantly goes directly against the entire concept of the faith these people claim to profess.

I guess the most difficult aspect of history is the fact that, we were not there, therefore just as in the legal system, we need to discern this or that beyond resonable doubt.
There are more than enough websites and documents out there, i have found, that can give you so much information from numerous different angles regardles what you beleive.

I guess that is why we need to also trust the instinct or the heart. If the answers give you no lasting peace, chances are its the wrong answer.
I'm relating more to ourselves personally here not history.
Cheers.