Atheists behind the greatest cruelty, says Pope – Telegraph, By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a powerful attack on atheism, saying that it was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history.
In the second encyclical of his papacy, the Pope urged Christians to put their hope for the future in God and not in technology, wealth or political ideologies.
His 76-page document, Spe Salvi, comes in the context of rising secularism in Europe and a spate of books attacking belief in God, including the “The God Delusion” by the Oxford academic Richard Dawkins.
In the document, the highest form of papal writing addressed to the whole Church, Benedict XVI said that many people rejected religious faith because they no longer found the prospect of an eternal after-life attractive.
Instead, they had put their faith in human reason and freedom in the hope that the “kingdom of man” would emerge.
In a scholarly analysis, he said that these ideas had originated during two periods of political upheaval, the French and Communist revolutions.
He said that Karl Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution could be seen by some as a “type of moralism” responding to the injustices of the time.
Atheists argued that “a world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God,” the Pope wrote.
Whether the error is the headline writer’s or the pope’s, the quarrel is with Marxist Communism or the biggest practitioners thereof. People are capable of astonishing cruelty, whether they are believers in god or not.
Please notice, though I despise this particular line of “reasoning” and have no use for a pope whatsoever, I do not call for his death, as so many devote believers in god would seek for those they disagree with. I don’t claim to be a better person because I’m an atheist. My point is there are good atheists and evil worshippers. We are all human beings and need each other more than god. peace, mjh
Might as well let history speak for itself. From the Writer’s Almanac, Tuesday, November 27, 2007:
It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture
Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed
that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought
that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how
Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.
About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor
to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking
cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they
killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the
hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews
in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.
Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But
the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem,
but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.
Hello,
Here’s something you might find interesting:
In Deaf culture, many Deaf people view cures
and fixes (cochlear implants, hearing aids, faith healings, etc.) are acts of audism (hearing people expressing superiority over Deaf
people).
Jesus healed a deaf man hear and made a mute speak, which by definition, means Jesus is an audist. Since Jesus was busy
“curing” a deaf man, he is apparently on par with Hitler, who sought to “cure” the human race of undesirables.
Hope you like the
article, Jesus Hates Deaf People
:o)
Paotie
Oops ..
“Jesus healed a deaf man and made a mute speak ..”
Sorry.
:o)
Paotie