Reminiscent of the NAZI's gassing of Jewish children at Auschwitz, Zionist murderers bombed the UN al-Jaouni school in central Gaza’s, killing 16, mostly children.

"Videos taken at the scene of the attack on the UNRWA school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat showed twisted metal at the collapsed building. A young boy could be seen sifting through pools of blood on the ground."

Dear Critic,

«Well, if your family isn't doing anything wrong, doesn't support the government and has a healthy attitude towards peace, and lives on land you own»

This IS the case.
(but I personally don't own land in Israel, my family does)

«But lets say there was question of claim by Palestinians on your land, I don't know that there is, but say there is, well those Palestinians won't be getting it either.»

To the best of my knowledge there are no claims over my family's land, by anyone, but then they inherited it and built on it and those generations that first acquired the land are no longer with us.

On the other hand, there is an official document running in the family, showing that an ancestor purchased and owned a couple of plots in the West Bank, that is before Israel was created. Nobody in the family will ever be pursuing that land - it is an Arab land and so it should remain, that paper is only kept for curiosity.

In Australia, once one squats on a land for 12 years openly and unchallenged, then they can claim ownership over it - in the UK it is only 10 years, in America it is 5-10 years, in biblical times it used to be only 3 years, but in modern Israel it is 30 years!
My family has been there longer and nobody challenged their land-ownership.

«Let me ask what makes a Palestinians home more deserving of being destroyed than your home?»

My family does not keep weapons, ammunition or rockets anywhere in or around their homes.
No one is or was ever attacked or shot at from my family's homes.
There are no secret entrances to terrorist tunnels in my family's homes, nor any other terrorist infrastructure.
No weapons are manufactured in my family's homes.
No terrorists are hiding in my family's homes.

I honestly believe that the same can be said for all schools and kindergartens attended by the children of my family.

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Dear ttbn,

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You wrote :

« … it is a fact that democracy is firmly based on Christian principles and values. »
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I’m afraid you’re putting the cart before the horse, there, ttbn. Democracy is not based on Christian principles. Christian principles are based on democracy.

Anthropologists have identified forms of proto-democracy that date back to small bands of hunter-gatherers that predate the establishment of agrarian, sedentary societies and still exist virtually unchanged in isolated indigenous groups today. In these groups of generally 50–100 individuals, often tied closely by familial bonds, decisions are reached by consensus or majority and many times without the designation of any specific chief.

Primeval man developed animism as an explanation of natural phenomena, inventing the concept of the supernatural with its cohort of gods and spirits. Tribalism as a form of society developed democracy as a form of governance.

Hinduism is the first and oldest of our modern religions, followed by Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Christianity commenced as a breakaway sect of Judaism.

The Roman emperor Theodosius I, in the Edict of Thessalonica, imposed Nicene Christianity as the official (i.e., the only authorized) religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD.

There was nothing democratic about that !

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Armchair Critic paraphrasing- "I don't like the idea of forcing religion on anyone"

Answer-
Patrick Deneen talks about this paraphrasing- "you're either forced to do religion or you have liberalism forced upon you".

Another way "you don't have a choice whether government is authoritarian, but you can choose the type of authoritarianism, traditionalism is the authoritarianism that people have accepted over a long period of time".

Liberalist 'freedom' has become influenced by Marxist Dialectic "you need to nihilistically destroy the traditional down to a blank slate society, and rebuild it from the ashes, (but Trotsky believes that this process will be an eternal coffee grinder of 'permanent revolution') because society is a form of elitist false consciousness that enslaves the proletariat according to class warfare".

If you force the people into a particular type of 'freedom' is it really free?

One point Deneen makes is that without a positive assertion of virtue by leaders it leads to fragmentation and destruction of society. Just like the Marxist Stages Of Revolution, Liberal 'freedom' has it's own authoritarian agenda- this was demonstrated during the recent Covid response by supposed liberal 'free' governments- many of the restrictions still denying people from participating in the economic and social structures.

It seems that you can't escape authoritarianism but some regimes are better than others. The loss of traditional culture and identity will lead to many sociological pathologies. The liberal mostly progressive liberal headlong drive towards liberalism has led and will lead to misery, mistrust, and fragmented tribalism- all 'in the name of the good'. There are do gooders and those who do good

mhaze,

Thanks for the detailed reply. It still suffers from problems I mentioned earlier, however, by oversimplifying the complex socio-political, economic, and cultural factors involved. Your choice of historical figures appears carefully selected, too. You mention contributions from Luther, Newton, and Galileo, while ignoring the broader intellectual and cultural contexts and contributions from non-Christian societies that played a crucial role in the development of Western science, such as Al-Khwarizmi and Ibn al-Haytham.

Firstly, your sharp distinction between Christianity as a religion and the Church is problematic since the Church was a dominant force in shaping medieval and early modern European society. Many advancements attributed to Christian societies were made within Church-dominated environments, such as the preservation and transmission of classical knowledge by monastic scholars during the Middle Ages.

Your claim that Christianity uniquely promotes individualism overlooks similar traditions in other religions. The Sufi tradition in Islam, for example, emphasises personal spiritual experiences and a direct relationship with God. Individual freedom, as well as democracy and human rights, were not values uniformly espoused in Christianity. Medieval and early modern Christian societies, for instance, were often monarchies or theocracies, not democracies.

The abolition of slavery was influenced by several factors, including economic changes and Enlightenment ideals, and was not an exclusively Christian endeavour. The Haitian Revolution, led by enslaved Africans, played a critical role in the global movement towards abolition. Claiming that only Christian societies promoted human rights also overlooks the fact that these movements often arose in opposition to established norms and were influenced by broader humanistic and philosophical trends.

By claiming that Christianity alone facilitated the dissemination of information through the printing press, you overlook the complex dynamics of technological adoption and resistance in various societies. Resistance to the printing press in Europe was not uniformly religious but also political and economic. Europe’s relatively decentralised political landscape allowed for greater diversity in the use of the printing press. Conversely, China’s political landscape was more centralised, enabling tighter control to be exercised over their movable type printing. The presence or absence of Christian values had little to no relevance here.

John Daysh,

"... by oversimplifying the complex socio-political, economic, and cultural factors involved."

We are writing 350 word summaries - oversimplification is inevitable.

Taking a few of your points....

We were talking about the rise of Europe following the Reformation. No question that the Church and the post-Roman feudal system dominated Europe in the thousand years prior to 1500AD and suppressed any chances are advancements.

But that stranglehold broke down for a series of reasons - the Black Death, Gutenberg, Luther etc. The issue is why did that lead to a flowering of thought and learning in Europe. Why not elsewhere.

You keep trying to show that the things I raise as reasons for the rise of Europe weren't unique to Europe. Yes, other religions had some examples of allowing individual approaches to their God. But nowhere other than in Christian Europe did that become the dominant approach and nowhere else did it determine the course of that society. Equally, while it is very true that there were uprisings against slavery in places like Haiti (and for that matter Italy- 70BC - and Arabia - c880AD), no society ever decided that slavery was so abhorrent that it needed to be eliminated not just in its realm, but universally. Its interesting to ponder that when western culture ceases to dominate the planet, slavery will be one of the first things reinstituted.

"By claiming that Christianity alone facilitated the dissemination of information through the printing press,"

You see that's not at all what I'm saying. Christianity didn't ALONE do any of the things I've mentioned. But it was an integral part of the whole societal structure that allowed the Reformation, the enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.

If you're going to reject a role for Christianity you need to explain why these things happened in Europe but nowhere else. In 1500AD both China and Islamic Asia were better placed to be the location for the next great human advances. They failed and Europe didn't. Christian Europe. Why? Europe had many differences which all partially explain its rise. One of which was Christianity