*sigh* You know, there’s a reason I don’t go on many forums. That reason is sad, ironic, and disheartening. By stating I am a Christian, I am instantly attacked as homophobic, a jerk, intolerant, close-minded, and I receive many explicative-filled PMs. (I will say the PM problem hasn’t been a problem on Paizo /yet/, so good job guys.)
If you are going to get on your high horse and accuse me, or other Christians, of being exactly what our holy text tells us not to be, at least give me a chance to explain myself. Just know, that if any of you start this by flinging mud, you have only proven me right. So, prove me wrong.
As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith, one of love and tolerance (I will say, in your defense, most Western Christians seem to forget this often). Total tally is 70 million since Christianity’s inception. Compare to the 11 million Hindus, 9 million Jews, 4 million Buddhists, among others. Of Christians, the worst offender is the Soviet government of Soviet Russia, with the blood of 15 million Christ-followers on their hands.
My religions states to achieve Heaven, one must simply accept Jesus as a divinity that died with the intent of wiping humanity’s slate clean, that he resurrected three days later, and that he ascended into heaven thirty days later. Compare to the following script from the Qur’an:
“ Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!”
Hmmmm. Interesting. Yet we don’t accuse Muslims of hatred or bigotry.
Funny thing is, my religion specifically states, “Yeah, people will hate you. They will kill you. They will reject you and spit in your face.” Do you realize you are fulfilling this, and thus making it that much more reliable? If you truly wanted to prove it wrong, you would just say “cool story bro” and move on, not verbally attacking.
This is a dare. To no one in particular, but to the message boards in general. Show me you are better than I. I can promise you I’m not better than you.
What say thee, Paizo messageboards? Can you show me your superiority over the other forums I have left?
(The references to other religions is not intended to be an attack on them specifically, just examples.)
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The issue is that the Christianity many of us are exposed to regularly is not the Christianity of tolerance and love. It is not the Christianity of care for the meek. It is not the Christianity of selflessness and understanding. It is not the Christianity of forgiveness.
It is the Christianity of greed, of bigotry, of hate, of condemnation, of pompousness, of over-inflated self-righteousness, and of willful, arrogant ignorance. That is what we see.
And I'm saying all of this as a Christian myself. That's what I see.
Instead of chiding others for having a negative view of Christianity, we need to look at why they view us this way. It's because we share association with those Christians I highlight above - the intolerant, the antithetical to Christ's message. We need to clean house. We need to distance ourselves from those who would use the label of "Christian" to oppress. We need to object, in the strongest terms and actions possible, to unconscionable behavior, even and especially when it comes from those who purport to share our faith.
When we see people degrading those of our faith, we should not challenge them to treat us with respect - a respect our faith has, in their eyes, betrayed. When we see people degrading our faith, it is our responsibility to apologize, sincerely, for the misguided actions of those who share our label, to try to understand both why those Christians behave as they do, and why non-Christians see us as they do. And, above all, to give our word that we will treat others as our religion prescribes, rather than using religion as an ad-hoc justification for treating others the way some of us want to treat them.
We are taught to remove the plank from our own eye first, and we collectively have one monster of a plank buried way down deep that we need to dig out before we even think about criticizing others who do not share our faith.
As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith
Could you provide some support for that figure? I just googled it and all that came up was what amounted to a fundraising document which, in addition to being deeply suspect from the get-go, did not deign to tell the reader how it arrived at that number.
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I just want to add that its funny to me when "certain groups" get defensive and act like they're *they're* the victims when they're the ones with all the power.
You aren't being oppressed. The fact of the matter is, you're still the majority, and you're still in charge of us. The only thing that's changed is that for the most part, we with dissenting voices aren't being murdered in public anymore for disagreeing with you.
Edit:
There's also no war of Christmas.
The only "war" Christmas was ever involved in, was when you stole it from the pagans a long time ago.
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That said, you can look to the Bible to find any number of verses which encourage love and tolerance, but you can also find any number of verses which encourage hate and violence (amongst other things).
The fact remains that you're not actually deriving your morality from the Bible. If you were you'd be a murderous psychopath. You look to the Bible to affirm the morality you've already got. Whether inborn or learned, you're a moral person for reasons other than your religion.
The compassionate side of Christianity which you advocate is, as Scott has said, not the only side apparent to the rest of us. There are plenty of Christians that are religiously inspired to be hateful bigots. Look no further than the Westboro Baptist Church. They're perfectly justified saying the sort of things that they are because they can back it up with scripture.
Unless you actively distance yourself from the radicals, you're going to be viewed with suspicion. That's why you've been met with such hostility, I'm sure. I'm not condoning such treatment, as it sounds largely unjustified and rooted in prejudice, but nonetheless, you should understand why that prejudice exists.
~DM
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Say it again without throwing stones at muslims and russia and you'd be closer to where you need to be. I know sometimes it's hard to resist, but you basically countered the point you were trying make.
Show me you are better than I. I can promise you I’m not better than you.
Speaking as a mathematician, we're nearly there. :p
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Starting a thread claiming "everybody is picking on me!" is just looking for a fight.
And before you try it, being critical of someone's faith isn't hate. Stuff comes up on messageboards, especially Paizo OT, and if you aren't able to rationally defend a position or belief you're going to get shredded.
I to am also a Christian. Not sure what it has to do with pathfinder however. You can play with a group that is or isn't and really it has very little to do with roll playing. I have not posted much on these boards, but very little is anti Christian (I don't know if I can actually remember anything that is). Your title says it all however. My advice to you is to look at your own preconceived ideas of everyone else, before asking them to do the same.
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(Also worth noting: Islam is no better than Christianity. It's just as guilty of promoting intolerance and bigotry as Christianity.)
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As a note to the OP, it's best not to cherry pick verses from the Qur’an, lest someone do the same for the Bible. There are a lot of terrible verses in the Bible, and not just in the Old Testament. Although you can simply google it or search r/atheist and find them.
And whether you meant to attack Islam or not, you still put down a religion just to make yours look better. That's something I dislike about anyone. Actions will always speak louder than thoughts and your intents.
I'm Jewish and I know the Bible has lots of things people don't agree with.
And really, I'm far more disappointed with some people on these boards who go claiming others have psychological problems like anger management issues when someone points out that they are being dishonest and elitist when discussing D&D/PF-related topics. I mean, I can understand that religion can cause heated debates, but really? I'm psychotic because I don't agree with your insane view on how to play with a group?
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As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith, one of love and tolerance (I will say, in your defense, most Western Christians seem to forget this often). Total tally is 70 million since Christianity’s inception. Compare to the 11 million Hindus, 9 million Jews, 4 million Buddhists, among others. Of Christians, the worst offender is the Soviet government of Soviet Russia, with the blood of 15 million Christ-followers on their hands.
I call BS on these numbers too. Especially the 70 million throughout history compared with conveniently lower numbers for other major religions. First off, any number trying to count ocver the course of 2000 years is pulled out of your ass. Second, I wonder what percentage of those 70 million were other christians branded as "heretics" by the sect which had overall power in a particular time or place. I bet that an uncomfortable number of those persecutions came from internecine sectarian violence so it is compeltely disingenuous to stack that up against religions like hinduism and buddhism that don't have, you know, inquisitions, with the implication that an equal percent of the persecution of each reiligion was from outsiders and not ones' co-coreligionists.
So yea, you lose any sympathy that I might have had for your position when you went off on islam and the russians as well. This post also has far too much of a martyr complex about it to be completely in good faith in any case.
I just want to add that its funny to me when "certain groups" get defensive and act like they're *they're* the victims when they're the ones with all the power.
You aren't being oppressed. The fact of the matter is, you're still the majority, and you're still in charge of us. The only thing that's changed is that for the most part, we with dissenting voices aren't being murdered in public anymore for disagreeing with you.
Edit:
There's also no war of Christmas.
The only "war" Christmas was ever involved in, was when you stole it from the pagans a long time ago.
As a note (geeze I'm saying that a lot) while in America, Christians aren't exactly getting persecuted, there are other areas in the world where they do suffer needless violence. I'm trying to find a source from the OP's number (which is looking either made up or biased), but I can say for a fact that it does happen. Personally, I don't like senseless violence between groups, religious or not.
Also, before we all keep on posting, my flame-bait senses are tingling. Methinks the OP is trolling for attention. But I kinda assume that about most people on the internet.
From what I know about the Middle East, the Christian Arabs aren't exactly looked upon too well by Muslim Arabs.
Then again, it seems like nobody is getting along there anyway. No, we should not shift this into a Middle East debate either!
Its true, I should have specified America in my snarky comment instead of implying it.
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Welcome to the internet. Occasionally, someone will say something about one of the many and horrible things that a member of your species, gender, political philosophy, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality and / or faith has done.
Unless you yourself have owned slaves or molested altar boys or kept women down or overthrown a democratically-elected government to install a dictator whose 'easier to work with' for your own economic agenda, then those sorts of statements don't really apply to you, and it's just a little bit prideful and self-important to take offense over them.
Try not to take it personally.
I live in the US (things may be different for others, obviously), a nation that is drastically *over* represented by Christians in seats of power and influence (while other faiths and philosophies are equally underrepresented, and, in some cases, actually *are* being treated oppressively). Living in the 'secular liberal' Northeast, I've seen literally *zero* 'oppression' of Christians up here, and yet, it's almost impossible for an atheist (or, heaven forfend) a Moslem, to get elected to a position in local government.
I like Jesus, and his teachings, and the idea that a depressingly small percentage of people who call themselves Christians are inspired by his words and want to live as Christ-like a life of peace, acceptance and non-judgment as they possibly can (and are easily recognized by how they don't start threads like this, being accepting even of slings and arrows, having been taught to love their enemies and turn the other cheek and something-something about wrestling with pigs), but I don't think I'd have any business crawling up on a cross and calling myself a martyr because some nameless yob on the internet might have said something immoderate about people who aren't me.
I choose instead to be thankful that I live in a nation that is, for the most part, respectful of people's rights, both their rights to practice a faith, or not to practice a faith, and their right to speak openly about their faith, or, equally, to say things that a person of faith might find hurtful.
Freedom cuts both ways. People free to say things that warm my heart are also free to say things that chill my blood. But their right to say such things doesn't 'oppress' me. Were I to try to take away that freedom, I'd be oppressing them.
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This is a dare. To no one in particular, but to the message boards in general. Show me you are better than I. I can promise you I’m not better than you.
While I have a hefty dislike for organized religion, for those who keep it to themselves I really don't care. It's the people who try to convert or convince me of their truth I can't stand.
If you want to believe something, get together a couple of times a week with other people who believe the same thing, talk and sing about it together, etc... I don't care.
But tell me that it is a reason that I have to do something a certain way, then I'm going to object.
As for being on the defensive: 99.9% of all federal politicians have been Christian in our countries history. The entire history of the Supreme Court has been nothing but Christians. Of all the governors in the history of the US, 3 of them have been non-Christians. None of them are currently in office.
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I'm Jewish and I know the Bible has lots of things people don't agree with.
Ha. That's an understatement. I'm a jew living in Israel and as such had no choice but to go through 12 years of public education, where somewhere in the vicinity of 5 hours each week are devoted to reading and learning about the bible (old testiment). While the book might have been a prime example of advanced, sophisticated thinking when it was written, today it's not much more than a guidebook on how to be a terrible person. Even the god who's worship is edvocated is really quite immoral and terrible. Seriously, the word "terrible" in Hebrew is used multiple times to describe God in the old trstiment.
Detect Magic said it perfectly, and I must echo his sentiment here - the old and the new testiments (and the Qur’an) are NOT the source of morality as it is percived in their respective religeons. Rather, as times change, new interprataion to the texts emerge, that use select parts of it to justify whatever it is the people of the time feel is right in the first place. No one can possibly live by the literal letter of his holy book, because those books are packed full of contradictions.
You want to be religeous AND be a good person? I salute you, and I'll not even try to convince you to see things as I see them (that your morality does not hail from following the teachings of your religeons, rather you interpret those teachings to coincide with your natural incalnations). I only ask that you'd be awere that a LOT of terribel things are being done on a daily basis by people claiming to be serving the same God, which is why those of us outside of the belief are usualy not very happy about it's existance.
If the OP wanted to incite more respect to Christianity, well, he just achieved the completely opposite effect.
Waving the "My religion > others" banner is pretty much the most self-defeating thing you can do if you're asking for more respect for your religion.
To be fair, I don't think that was his intent. Then again, I won't speak for him. He seems to have logged off, but I'm sure he'll be back to defend his position.
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Brother Cobalt,
Simply to confirm my POV, I am also a Christ follower.
I don't believe we have any ground to stand on and say we expect people to treat us better, with more respect or love because WE are a Christian. That sounds like the prayer of a Pharisee.
Instead, it should expect that WE TREAT ALL OTHERS better, and with more respect and with more love because we are a Christian.
The only time WE can hold people accountable for their behaviour is when they profess to be Christians with their mouths but not their lives. Read through James again.
Also, as you stated, in scripture we are told we will be persecuted for our faith. It also says to consider ourselves blessed when this happens. I'm sceptical that our Lord who was beaten and crucified on the cross was talking about getting hurtful emails...but maybe I'm wrong.
It's about how we show Christ's love to others, not how we expect them to respect us -- especially considering how many "christians" have given the world good reason to doubt, fear and hate people who use that title.
It is also worth asking ourselves if WE HAVE BEEN Christ-like in our service and love of others - including friends and enemies. I can admit I have not always been good at this, and that's why there is the promise of forgiveness from God--but forgiveness from the ones we hurt must be sought from them.
If you haven't already, I would also suggest re-reading Matthew 5, especially (but NOT exclusively) verses 43-48.
Grace and peace,
~Gord
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Cobolt.
One point here to make and one only. Why do you feel the need to point out on a forum board about the pathfinder rpg that you are christian or for that matter ANY religous/political/sexual orientation at all?
In all the post I have read on this forum not one do I see any need at all to bring it up. It's just asking for trouble if you do. Not everybody is of the same religous bent as you im afraid (me being one of them though I respect ANY religion).
So my point here is carry on going on as many forums as you like but just bear in mind the moment you say something like I'm a Christian you will instantly get some kind of backlash whether you like it or not, you may be proud of it but not everyone shares the same views I'm afraid.
My advice. Just don't mention it at all, there really is no need to and just enjoy this forum as it is
:))
First... sigh. Second, I gladly admit I try to follow Christ, and gladly admit, i suck at it. The problem is how the media can sell it, ie: Westboro, "Islamic" terrorists, and the like cause everyone to be viewed in that light.
Secondly, be careful of Pride. There are many ways to show your faith, without putting yourself out there as a target (which appears is what you've done.) or ramming it down someone's throat, which has been done in the past.
I also believe in a concept similar to Yin and Yang, where there is a little good and a little evil in everything. Very few things in the world are so black and white.
I'm what you might call a lapsed Anglican Christian. I don't go to church, I don't evangelise, I don't define myself by my faith, but I certainly believe in God, Christ and forgiveness of sins.
To me, it boils down to this: you cannot control what other people do, think, believe and say. The only person you control is you. If you behave in accordance with Christ's teachings, you are beloved of Christ. He (and God) doesn't care about how others have affected you. He cares about how you choose to live your life, he wants you to be a good person.
Yes, drawing others into the faith is important, but not by words, certainly not by force, but by the way you demonstrate with deeds that you are a better person for your faith and belief.
Yes, Christians are guilty of some truly heinous crimes in the name of Christ, but you are not defined by them. You are defined by how you, personally, choose to convey your faith to others.
The "hate" for Christians is not hate for Christ, but hate for how some people have chosen to act against the teachings of Christ, but to do so in Christ's name. That is not your problem. Do not defend the indefensible, do not praise the cruel and wicked, but be strong and proud and able to say "they were wrong. I do not believe they were true followers of Christ's teachings. I don't wish to debate why, but observe and I will show you".
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The issue is that the Christianity many of us are exposed to regularly is not the Christianity of tolerance and love. It is not the Christianity of care for the meek. It is not the Christianity of selflessness and understanding. It is not the Christianity of forgiveness.
It is the Christianity of greed, of bigotry, of hate, of condemnation, of pompousness, of over-inflated self-righteousness, and of willful, arrogant ignorance. That is what we see.
And I'm saying all of this as a Christian myself. That's what I see...
I believe you have the word Christian confused with capitalism.
I believe you have the word Christian confused with capitalism.The issue is that the Christianity many of us are exposed to regularly is not the Christianity of tolerance and love. It is not the Christianity of care for the meek. It is not the Christianity of selflessness and understanding. It is not the Christianity of forgiveness.
It is the Christianity of greed, of bigotry, of hate, of condemnation, of pompousness, of over-inflated self-righteousness, and of willful, arrogant ignorance. That is what we see.
And I'm saying all of this as a Christian myself. That's what I see...
They both start with a C.
I'd say it's close enough, myself.
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Ugh.
As long as Christians use their faith as a reason to persecute others, then the world will continue to have a bad taste in their mouth abou them.
I am a Christian. I'm no more deserving of civil liberty than anyone else. I certainly will not dictate who deserves civil liberty, because I believe Jesus would frown heavily on that, and therefore I will not support legislation that does it either.
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I'm really not sure what the OP's intent is other than to possibly troll for inflammatory responses.
Are you trying to bring attention to a problem on the boards? If so, notify a moderator.
I've never seen or read any disparaging remarks about someone's personal religion on these boards (until I read this post and it's references to other beliefs). And if I did, I would notify the moderators myself.
I don't come here to discuss (real world) religion. It really has no place in my game. Paizo does a pretty good job of covering all the pertinent faiths.
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The first post reminded me of an interesting fact.
In France, some people rebel against the status quo by rejecting Christianity in favor of Buddhism. They state that they find in Buddhism the purity of faith and the positive values of belief that they could not find in Christianity which is, after all, the religion of the establishment and the status quo, synonymous with social obligations rather than true spiritual growth.
My Japanese girlfriend when I lived in Japan rejected Buddhism in favor of Christianity FOR THE EXACT SAME REASONS.
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Come to think of the matter for a bit, the OP has a very solid point. I mean, the faith of Zon-Kuthon is much worse than Christianity, and yet when someone opens a thread asking for advice on how to perfect his oracle of Zon Kuthon build, you don't see anyone giving him a hard time, right? I'd say us gamers have an unreasonably strong bies against a religeon which did nothing worse than instigating witch hunts, crusades, homophobia and some trivial kinds of social injustices such as a debasing view of women and taking away the right of people to not have thier entire life be determined by one wild night of unprotected sex.
If you feel someone is making bigoted remarks against you, flag it as offensive and/or report it and your concerns to webmaster@paizo.com
And if someone is baiting you into an argument about your personal beliefs, whatever they may be or for whatever reason, don't take the bait.
Personally, as a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Protestant group, I have mentioned my religion many times and no one has said anything hateful to me about it (that I know of); some have asked questions which I am happy to answer of course, and some have agreed to disagree with me on certain principles, which is fine--the beauty of humanity is its diversity after all. Maybe I am lucky that I have not experienced mistreatment in this respect here, I don't know. But again, if people are being truly hateful toward you for no reason other than your mentioning your religion, then flag it and/or discuss it with the staff.
Likewise, if I think anyone is being hateful--including hiding behind their religion or their atheism or any ideology as an excuse to say hateful things--I will flag that post.
Could you provide some support for that figure? I just googled it and all that came up was what amounted to a fundraising document which, in addition to being deeply suspect from the get-go, did not deign to tell the reader how it arrived at that number.
As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith
During the 2011 Conference of Interreligious Dialog in Hungary, italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, speaking as representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe, indicated that their studies showed that 105,000 Christians were killed each year, or 1 every 5 minutes. This number represented stricly martyrs, that's it, people killed specifically for being Christians.
It is not a particularly surprising number, in any case. Christians suffer a lot of persecution and killing in the Middle East and Africa.
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Could you provide some support for that figure? I just googled it and all that came up was what amounted to a fundraising document which, in addition to being deeply suspect from the get-go, did not deign to tell the reader how it arrived at that number.
As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faithDuring the 2011 Conference of Interreligious Dialog in Hungary, italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, speaking as representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe, indicated that their studies showed that 105,000 Christians were killed each year, or 1 every 5 minutes. This number represented stricly martyrs, that's it, people killed specifically for being Christians.
It is not a particularly surprising number, in any case. Christians suffer a lot of persecution and killing in the Middle East and Africa.
Thos deaths are more about two monotheistic religeons clashing violently than it is about rabid Atheists executing Christians, though. That kind of strengthens the point many on this thread are making - while being religeos does not make one a terrible person, the three monotheistic religeons existing today have some nasty sides to them. For example, the deaths of a hundred thousand people each year on account of thinking Jesus should be taken more seriously than Muhammad.
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Thos deaths are more about two monotheistic religeons clashing violently than it is about rabid Atheists executing Christians, though.
You should check how may people were killed because they were Christians in Soviet Russia or Revolutionary France. Not to mention those killed for similar reasons in China, Cambodge and other Communist countries.
Atheism too can be used as a driving force and excuse to kill people.
And polytheistic religions are definitely not exempt from being used in such a way either (as shown by the persecution of Christians in Rome or the slaughter of Christians in feudal Japan).
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During the 2011 Conference of Interreligious Dialog in Hungary, italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, speaking as representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe, indicated that their studies showed that 105,000 Christians were killed each year, or 1 every 5 minutes. This number represented stricly martyrs, that's it, people killed specifically for being Christians.Could you provide some support for that figure? I just googled it and all that came up was what amounted to a fundraising document which, in addition to being deeply suspect from the get-go, did not deign to tell the reader how it arrived at that number.
As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith
Note that they did not even need to be believers for this. They just needed to be targeted as part of the Christian community :-(
In other words, you can be an atheist and still end up a martyr for the christian faith.
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Thos deaths are more about two monotheistic religeons clashing violently than it is about rabid Atheists executing Christians, though.You should check how may people were killed because they were Christians in Soviet Russia or Revolutionary France. Not to mention those killed for similar reasons in China, Cambodge and other Communist countries.
Atheism too can be used as a driving force and excuse to kill people.
And polytheistic religions are definitely not exempt from being used in such a way either (as shown by the persecution of Christians in Rome or the slaughter of Christians in feudal Japan).
Stalin wasn't an atheist. He wanted people to worship him as a god essentially.
China isn't anti-religion. They're anti-anything that takes away power and influence from the party. Christianity is regularly used as an organizing force in politics all over the world, so Christians get targeted just like all other political opponents in China. They're not being targeted because of their Christianity specifically, they're being targeted for not toeing the party line. In fact, the Chinese government has an approved church for people to join, those who refuse and join citizen organized house churches are the ones who are targeted. Which sounds an awful lot like everything in China.
I believe you have the word Christian confused with capitalism.The issue is that the Christianity many of us are exposed to regularly is not the Christianity of tolerance and love. It is not the Christianity of care for the meek. It is not the Christianity of selflessness and understanding. It is not the Christianity of forgiveness.
It is the Christianity of greed, of bigotry, of hate, of condemnation, of pompousness, of over-inflated self-righteousness, and of willful, arrogant ignorance. That is what we see.
And I'm saying all of this as a Christian myself. That's what I see...
It's true, the latter form of "Christianity" probably deserved the scare quote treatment.
Isn't this thread pretty far off-topic now? No one on the Paizo forums is nailing Christians to a cross or feeding them to lions or gunning them down in automatic weapon fire.
If people of certain Christian denominations and beliefs don't want others to make critical, blunt, and unflattering observations about those religious beliefs, then they shouldn't use those beliefs intolerantly as cudgel toward others. Or at the very least, not on message boards. As Agent J said, "Don't start nothing, won't BE nothing!"
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Thos deaths are more about two monotheistic religeons clashing violently than it is about rabid Atheists executing Christians, though.You should check how may people were killed because they were Christians in Soviet Russia or Revolutionary France. Not to mention those killed for similar reasons in China, Cambodge and other Communist countries.
Atheism too can be used as a driving force and excuse to kill people.
And polytheistic religions are definitely not exempt from being used in such a way either (as shown by the persecution of Christians in Rome or the slaughter of Christians in feudal Japan).
Stalin wasn't an atheist. He wanted people to worship him as a god essentially.
China isn't anti-religion. They're anti-anything that takes away power and influence from the party. Christianity is regularly used as an organizing force in politics all over the world, so Christians get targeted just like all other political opponents in China. They're not being targeted because of their Christianity specifically, they're being targeted for not toeing the party line. In fact, the Chinese government has an approved church for people to join, those who refuse and join citizen organized house churches are the ones who are targeted. Which sounds an awful lot like everything in China.
That sums it up quite well. PRC will go after anything that seeks to build organized structures that are not under control of the Party.
Thos deaths are more about two monotheistic religeons clashing violently than it is about rabid Atheists executing Christians, though. That kind of strengthens the point many on this thread are making - while being religeos does not make one a terrible person, the three monotheistic religeons existing today have some nasty sides to them. For example, the deaths of a hundred thousand people each year on account of thinking Jesus should be taken more seriously than Muhammad.
I wasn't saying or implying that they were being killed by Atheists. Most of the killings have political motivations rather than religious, however. Religion is sometimes used as the pretext, but it's usually about suppressing Christian groups due to their tendency to form into alternate political groups.
Atheism, just like any other ideology, can be used as a pretext to kill people. Religions account for more because, well, they have a far bigger representation, both now and throughout history. But give anyone a desire to kill someone else, and they'll use whatever ideal is at hand to do so.
The anticlerical killings during the Spanish Civil War always bring to my head the way these things happen when Atheism is the ideal being used, with thousands of priests and nuns being raped and murdered simply because they were religious figures. Just as nasty and ugly as when a religion is used to the same end.
"They disagree with us, so we must hate them and kill them" doesn't really have a colour of its own and is amazingly flexible to accommodate just about any concept we can think of.
I was christian as a child. then i read the bible and ran
Yeah I know that feeling. I read the entirety of the Bible and decided that I didn't want to be a part of them. It's why I wonder if people who say reading the Bible changed their life ACTUALLY read the Bible. Still, I don't fault anyone believing in whatever they want, as long as they don't actively harm others.