"Christian politicians have undoubtedly done the same thing, without making a fuss about it." Well, they have made a fuss of it, here's examples;

United Christian Party, Australian Family Movement, Christian Democratic Party, One Australia Movement, Family First Party, Australian Christians Party. And who can forget the DLP with its Catholic connection.

Many evangelicals see Israel-Hamas war as part of a prophecy
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2023/11/03/world/evangelicals-israel-hamas-war/
'The belief in the Second Coming of Christ is being linked by some to the unfolding Middle East bloodshed'

"For most Americans, events in Israel elicit a familiar set of emotions: sadness at the loss of life, particularly innocent civilians; anger, even fury, at one side or another; and fear that the conflict may ultimately engulf the larger region. It’s hard to find a silver lining on the cloud that now hangs over the Middle East.

Unless, of course, you believe that bloodshed in Israel will pave the way for the Second Coming of Christ. Secular voters may find it baffling, but it’s a worldview of a significant number of evangelical Christians and, by extension, a critical portion of the Republican Party."
- Politicians in the US on both sides are bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby.
It's not democracy, it's more like 'rule by the highest bidder'.
Politicians are loyal to their donors not their constituents.

So...
"Let's celebrate the slaughter of innocent Palestinians
- It's God's will, thy kingdom Come, praise Jesus!"

Christians sell themselves as good wholesome people
Pull back the covers and the pictures not so rosy.

I've always liked to expose the stupidity the hypocrisy and the incompetence.
I'm still playing by the same rules I always have.
- And I told you 'other people were watching'.

I conclude by repeating

No-one has done more to harm the Christian cause over the last 9 months than the Christians themselves.

AC

I presume that you are reacting to mhaze's reference to your deranged attitude to Christianity.

I'm sorry to say that your latest effort has proved him right.

. Christians 4 genocide
. Clubbing Palestinian children to death
. Israel can murder all 7+ million of the Palestinians.
. October 7 was a prison

You are bonkers, sport. You need help.

Dear Critic,

«For that reason it really is the one single place of land on the planet that we should drop a dirty nuclear bomb on, so that no-one lives there, no one fights over it, and the land is no longer forever drenched in the blood of innocents for eternity.»

So in order for the land to no longer be drenched in the blood of innocents, you would like to kill my family there (most of whom support a Palestinian state and hate Netanyahu and his Nazi gang even more than they hate Sinwar), including the 4-year old twins, born into COVID and now into war.

- How very Christian of you...

John Daysh, (re your Friday post).

It’s not a case of saying that Christianity was responsible for this or that advance made by western civilisation but more a case of Christianity being integral in creating and supporting a society where the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution could occur and flourish.

In the book I mentioned earlier, Lewis says that any outsider looking at the world in the mid-15th century would have assumed that the next great world advances would come from China or the Islamic world. Europe was a moribund backwater cut off from the rest of civilisation by the fall of Constantinople. Yet two centuries later Europe was flourishing in thought, learning and intellectual and material breakthroughs, and leaving the rest of the world in its wake. What allowed that to happen?

Remember that Christianity isn't really a middle-eastern religion. The Israel of Jesus had already been part of the Hellenistic world for 3 centuries before Christ was born. Christianity is an amalgam of mystic Judaism and long-established Greek (western) thought.

The key difference between Christianity and the other great world religions (particularly Islam) is its individualism. Whereas a Mohammadian can only approach Allah via his Iman, Christ specifically encourages his followers to approach their God individually without the need for a priestly interpreter. ("For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20). To be sure, the Catholic Church worked assiduously to try to circumvent this and insert themselves between God and Man, but the option was always there for the Christian. And when the opportunity arose to break from the Church, many leapt at it.

Gutenberg was important here in that it allowed the dissemination of information and new ideas. The Church opposed this, but the religion allowed it and then encouraged it. (Note I always draw a distinction between the Church and the religion in the case of Christianity. Not so other religions.)

/cont

/cont

Christianity allowed and encouraged the new ideas. Martin Luther was always only possible in a Christian society. Newton also. Galileo was opposed by the Church but nonetheless won the battle of ideas. Again, that could only happen in a Christian society or if you like, only DID happen in a Christian society.

Christianity (not the Church) allowed for individual thought. It encouraged the search for God through the search of nature and the natural world. It encouraged learning from the past and indeed the veneration of the non-Christian past, again, uniquely. Pure learning (eg Newton) led to more practical learning (eg the spinning jenny, the steam piston etc).

The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, human rights. Even up to the present time. The world wide web we use today is a western invention and could only happen in the west. Just like the printing press was suppressed everywhere other than Europe, so the WWW, had it been invented outside the west, would have become an instrument of government control, not individual liberty.

Those who oppose the notion of Christianity being an integral part of the western miracle, need to explain why all the things that make the modern world what it occurred or started in Christian societies. Why was slavery outlawed by only Christian societies? Why were human rights invented and pushed by Christian societies? Women’s rights, democracy, individual freedom, freedom of the press, etc etc

If Christianity didn’t play a part, why did they all originate only in Christian societies? Over to you.