h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

to hear that --Feel Better Soon Mystrunner!
It has been a very bad flu year

>>that Christianity hasn't been the guiding force behind most of "civilisation" in the immediate past, and the current future? That it's guilt and hypocriy haven't permeated society in the guise of the *truth* and that all deviants are seem as "evil" (loose term)?<<
That's *exactly* what I'm saying! From conversation with my parents (born 1918, and 1919) it was apparent to me, that society has never held Christianity as its 'guiding force', or imposed 'guilt and hypocrisy' at all! Churchianity, yes, in some segments of society, where people went to church to be seen, notably the upper middle class, especially in NZ...
Mandragora and I disagree about Calvin's Geneva (I can imagine no worse place to live if you value freedom) but I still maintain that's the only place where Christianity has ever had the power to force anyone who wasn't a middle class pseud to begin with!

Mystrunner - sorry to hear you are ill!

Mystrunner - Ooh. You have my condolences! Drink lots of water!!

Della - Hmmm. Well. To be fair, you are in (what I perceive) to be a *new* country as opposed to being in somewhere like the UK. Although that's patronising, so I'll just say I think you are very wrong, and leave it at that.

Poor Mystrunner; get a big foam hammer to bash those monkeys back with; hot baths and Greek yoghurt.

This is the trouble when everyone thinks *they* are the Real Thing, and their ideas are the truth. I agree with Della in a way, in that this wasn't real Christianity as we would like to see it practiced, however the people doing it *thought* they were Christians and guided by their religion, their various Churches sanctioned it and I bet they all could find Bible references for it.
However, in this country, you do find constant references to the past glories of Christianity. An awful lot of people think it was a guiding force in the past (whether they actually lived in it, or are just whinging about some non-existant golden age) and a return to 'Christian values' i.e. enforced churchgoing, would miraculously save all our social problems. ("How many of those teenage burglars knew the Ten Commandments? could recite the Lord's Prayer?" ...probably most of them, actually. If it was forced upon them in schools as it was with me.) Guilt is certainly present; isn't Britain famously reluctant to indulge in anything more than basic luxuries? (Bill Bryson's thoughts on cake spring to mind. "Ooh, lovely!") and this facade of 'traditional' morality constantly yarked about by guardians of decency. Section 28 and those adoption reforms, for instance. Still using 'evil' and 'perverted' and 'immoral' and 'indecent', from a Christian perspective, and applying it to what should be a secular argument.
I don't hold the religion responsible for all the catastrophes done in its name- it is only as good, or bad, as the folk who represent it. That means, though, that I don't hold *it* responsible for all the good carried out when/where it was in charge.
For instance, a Gothic cathedral doesn't inspire me with the glory of God to whom it was dedicated, and represented to contemporaries; rather the brilliance and acheivement of the designers and masons who engineered it. It's a thing, it's not Christianity.
Same as the Spanish Inquisition- it wasn't religiously motivated, but due to the hothouse conditions of Spain under Philip II. (His reasons contributing to this were religiously motivated, though.) But the people who carried out those things considered themselves Christians, and to be doing 'the right thing'; so I am not going to argue with them because our standards have, thankfully, changed. It's convenient to strip them of that title but I bet their beliefs were sincere- I just don't think their actions were religious.
Convenient to call it Churchianity now, but if it were the dominant expression of belief, and the majority of those doing the believing were sincere then they by their own terms were Christians. I am not in a position to judge who is right or not, in spite of their own beliefs, I think that is unfair.
The trouble is, that's what you get when someone decides there is only one way. As I say, this applies to nothing else in life, which is why one person's Christianity is reprehensible to a follower of the same beliefs. Accept that we each have different ways of going about it and it's no one's business to grade them by merit.

However I don't see why a religion's adherents today should apologise, or be ashamed of, what their religion has done in the past. You weren't there, you are not guilty of whatever atrocities were done.
But by the same reasoning they should not take credit for past acheivements- it was nothing to do with them, they are just splashing about in the wake of it.

(I will find more out about jolly Mr. Calvin. I didn't interpret it as that harsh from my 16thC. history although we discussed Geneva quite a bit, mostly the social aspect and organisation (Elders etc.) Most of us decided the Ottomans had the best of the bunch.)

Couldn't have said it better myself. As silly as it sounds, I always have to remind people not to judge Christianity by Christians, particularly by those who have existed so long ago. That turned Ghandi away from it. Christians are human, too, and every bit as likely to be corrupted as non Christians, if not moreso.

And I'm hoping you heal quickly, Mystrunner - I've been ill with bronchitis all this past week and know how you feel.

...however, it wasn't rotten Christians that put me off the religion. It just never sat well with me.

All of you ill folk... yoghurt and baths, on the double.

If only I had a bathtub.

(student living = nothing but showers for 9 months on end )

Fill a big bucket, and sit in it. (Or one of those antique tin baths used for drowning infants.)

*wonders if she can get one of those*

Hmmm...

There appears to be one in the yard of a deserted house near Loughborough Station.

I don't know that would help, me being in the US...

Really! it's just that tales of student poverty have a distinct flavour of Blighty.

Ah, Saturnine, I will forgive your patronising me - and you are! Being in a new country doesn't mean that I know nothing about the rest of the world - aside from anything else, my father came here in 1952, very recent especially in the light of my mother's family, who arrived as far back as the 1870s, so I have reasonably up to date knowledge of the out there!

Saturnine, not to mention penfriends and e-friends in the UK, Europe and the USA. (Yes, even there!)

Just an aside - I actually *prefer* showers! Baths go cold, if one is tempted to linger, as I am, and singing in the bath is just sad, whereas singing in the shower, is right and good and normal!

Yeh. Sorry about the patronising. It was just a thought I had that you might not know firsthand experience of living in an "old" society, so to speak. I'll think that idea through first though.

*ponders*

I don't think that news vs old societies would necessarily differ that much in respect of what we were discussing. My own experience: my parents were not Christians, and the whole issue was irrelevant when I was growing up (except that I would have *liked* it to be different, because although I had no religion, I found and still find, the whole topic fascinating!) School, radio (TV came along later in our lives - it's not that I am old, it's that my parents weren't interested), and society in general laid no pressure on us at all!
Later, my parents became Christians but that was long after I had grown up and left home.

The age of the country you live in should have absolutely nothing to do with your understanding of history and all such things. It changes your perspective (my English bf marveled that we thought things from the 1860's were *ancient* when he lives in the same village as a cathedral from the Middle Ages), but that's really all.