Dear NNS,

We have wound up in different places with different ideas of right and wrong. I am pleased that you want to continue.

You wrote: “In school and in life everything is a race.”

It doesn’t have to be a race. We live in a competitive society. Part of the sickness of that society I believe is due to Christianity with its built sense of failure – its lugubrious lament – “We are all sinners.” Christianity sets Jesus as an example that a person should be like. As I pointed in my previous post about Reb Zosya, be what you can be. If you succeed in that, that should be enough. You have succeeded in getting a woman to love you. You have the love of your family. Be satisfied with who you are.

If life is a race I am not a winner since I am not on top. In a race there is only one winner. You are articulate. You can express yourself. If you weren’t articulate I wouldn’t be carrying on a dialogue with you.

I don’t relate to the concept of being broken since I don’t think it is reasonable to regard the world as broken if it isn’t perfect. It is what it is. However, I accept that the world being broken is part of your philosophy. I don’t share that philosophy.

Religion is not just a belief system. Shared rituals and customs of religion unite family and community. It may feel so good that a missionary wants to bring these blessings to others.

The person approached by the missionary may have a religion which bonds him or her with family and community. Would the missionary want his or her own bonds broken? Yet if he or she is successful in causing a person to convert that may be the result to the convert. The missionary may be alienating the person from that person’s community.

If you came to agree that Christianity is a silly superstition it would be best if you kept quiet about it to not alienate family and friends.

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It may be to the convert’s advantage to convert. East Indians converted to the English religion could rise in the English civil service. I regard Mahatma Gandhi who remained a Hindu and helped to liberate India from England as a finer person than any of the Indians who took on English religion.

I certainly don’t see you like Hitler. I think you are a person who wants to be a good person and wants to do for others. There is a saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The years of Christian hostility to Jews built up an atmosphere where the Nazi hostility to Jews was accepted by most Christians and their churches.
Colin Barnes, a Christian missionary to the Jews, wrote the following book:

https://www.bokus.com/bok/9780956200624/they-conspire-against-your-people/

They Conspire Against Your People

This book explores the extent to which the European churches and their theology contributed to a mindset that permitted the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Were the Catholic and Protestant churches of Europe rescuers, bystanders or facilitators? What emerges in this historical study is a commonality of word and deed, with the evidence indicating that Christianity in its various forms across Europe was surprisingly united in its view of the Jewish people. The Holocaust was a progression of increasingly lethal measures: vilification, boycotts, deportation, ghettoization, and finally, mass murder. With the exception of the latter, these stages repeated the pattern of the European churches' own Jewish policy in the centuries and years leading up to the Holocaust.This pre-existing pattern, based on the theological view of punitive supersessionism (that God had punished the Jews and replaced them with Christianity as his new people), proved decisive in determining the European churches' responses to the unfolding Nazi programme. Especially important is this study's treatment of Protestant perceptions of the Jewish people, often largely un-researched in the current historical literature. The cumulative effect of support for all earlier Nazi Jewish policies left the European churches morally incapable of opposing genocide. They opted for a guilty, deliberate silence while their presence and theology aided the Holocaust.

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I see missionaries as good people who are generally harmful. They may think that society would be better if we all believed in the same things and thought the same way. If we want to live in peace with our neighbour we have to accept that our neighbour is different from us. It is better to accept difference rather than try to make others like us.

Christians have as much right to express their views as anybody else. Most Christians don’t know much about their history. How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the world? At one time the Roman Empire was the dominant force in the western world. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and Christians brutally imposed their religion on others. Not only did Theodosius persecute non-Christians, but he also persecuted Christians who did not follow his particular version of Christianity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I

“The Christian persecution of Roman religion under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on some practices of Roman religion, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, decreed magistrates who did not enforce laws against polytheism were subject to criminal prosecution, broke up some pagan associations and tolerated attacks on Roman temples. Between 389–392 he promulgated the Theodosian decrees (instituting a major change in his religious policies), which removed non-Nicene Christians from church office and abolished the last remaining expressions of Roman religion by making its holidays into workdays, banning blood sacrifices, closing Roman temples, confiscating Temple endowments and disbanding the Vestal Virgins. The practices of taking auspices and witchcraft were punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by non-Christian senators.
In 392 he became sole emperor. From this moment till the end of his reign in 395, while non-Christians continued to request toleration, he ordered, authorized, or at least failed to punish, the closure or destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the empire.”

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“In 393 he issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any public non-Christian religious customs, and was particularly oppressive to Manicheans. He is likely to have discontinued the ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration was in 393, though archeological evidence indicates that some games were still held after this date.”

The pattern of Christian oppression and intolerance has continued through much of Christian history. Only with the rise of the secular state has Christianity been forced to behave reasonably.

I no longer believe in Judaism or in any religion, but I share the Jewish hostility to missionaries. During my life I have had many contacts with Christians who talk about their religion. If I say that I’m not a Christian they may say, “I hope you will become one.” Previously I would never tell a Christian that I hoped he would abandon his religion. I have changed on that and have told you that.

I used to believe that Judaism made people better people. The State of Israel has helped to eliminate that idea. Jews have lived in many countries where they have been second-class citizens. Now Jews have a state other people can be second-class citizens. People have to get permission of clergy to marry. I think there should be civil marriage as there is in Australia, and people should be able to marry who they like. I think there should be a public school system where people of differing beliefs and ethnicities learn together, grow up together and live together. One Jewish sect, the Orthodox, is in control. In a democratic country no religious or ethnic group should be top dogs.

If Judaism instead of Christianity had risen to be dominant I don’t think matters would be much different.

Most religion whether it be Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or Judaism if it is in power will be oppressive. Religions will support religious freedom when out of power.

Dear NNS,

The following finds abortion a human right

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/women/abortion.html

"Abortion is a highly emotional subject and one that excites deeply held opinions. However, equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right. Where abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually.

Women’s organizations across the world have fought for the right to access safe and legal abortion for decades, and increasingly international human rights law supports their claims. In fact, international human rights legal instruments and authoritative interpretations of those instruments compel the conclusion that women have a right to decide independently in all matters related to reproduction, including the issue of abortion."

Abortion is the killing of a human being, unborn though it is.

Can it be justified?

Certainly, particularly retrospective abortion in some cases.