How many of those Christians are promoters of human-rights violations? How many self-professed Christians went on to support leaders that used religion to justify wars?
Now tell me how many people still support Communist/Socialist revolutions, even after seeing all this historical bloodbaths that they brought. How many people still praise Che Guevara even after they are made aware of how many people he killed in the name of "justice"? How many people still would support Mao? Pol Pot?
Any of the ones who put money in a collection plate to help fund the church. Those funds helped pay to cover up human rights abuses. Catholics still support the Vatican, where the leaders live and who were the ones sweeping things under the rug.
== Now tell me how many people still support Communist/Socialist revolutions, even after seeing all this historical bloodbaths that they brought.==
Talk about moving the goalposts. People still praise early Americans for their Revolution. How many did that kill? How many native Americans were slaughtered by the people we lionize?
You know communism and socialism are not the same thing even if you write them next to each other, right? Not to mention that all 1.2 billion Catholics follow the same religion, leadership, and structure. Politics don’t cross the same number of borders.
This game can be played all day. Which is likely what you want because it changes the subject off of religion.
> Those funds helped pay to cover up human rights abuses.
Possibly true. But the people donating money were not doing it with the intent of "let's help the child molesters go unpunished". On the other hand, I've heard/read from far too many socialists that they fully support Che's actions, or that "those bastards deserved to die."
We should be aware of our mind’s ability to play this trick. Have you analyzed if you might be falling into this trap? Who is it that I agree with, exactly? I don’t remember stating. It seems you have filled in your own details of who I am and what I believe with a nice straw man that you can attack.
Ironically, I’m struggling to think of a historical figure that was more socialist than Jesus.
== or that "those bastards deserved to die."==
And I’ve heard from plenty of “Christians” that the Crusades were justified, slavery wasn’t that bad, immigrants are rats, Manifest Destiny justifies Native American slaughter, and on and on.
Don't you see a difference at all?
The absurd things that I have heard Christians say (as a Christian myself) have been disproportionately directly from leaders in the Christian community (particularly, but not exclusively, the elites of the American Christian Right, some of whom are also significant figures in one of the remaining heirarchical churches in America.)
That includes the examples specifically cited by the poster upthread.
(There are, of course, other Christian leaders that disagree.)
When you say leadership are you referring to the leadership who abused small children (local level) or the leadership who covered it up (national/global level)?
The constant “whataboutism” towards socialism doesn’t answer any of those questions. Socialists aren’t a global society like Christians. They don’t have a universal set of instructions to run on (like the Bible). Giving money to a local “socialist” running for office doesn’t trickle up to a global socialist network like the church. You see the difference, no?
See comment in sibling thread.
> Socialists aren’t a global society like Christians.
Surely you are joking?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo_Forum
- http://www.internacionalsocialista.org/viewArticle.cfm?Artic...
May I also point out that the greatest schism in Communist groups is over Leninism/Trotskyism, and how their divergences come exactly from the fact that one of them believes that Communism can only be achieved when (what you call) Socialist practices are applied universally?
> set of instructions to run on (like the Bible).
I let the silly comment about "Jesus being a Socialist" slide, but if you see the Bible as a set of instructions I'd suggest you actually go learn more about Christian Theology and Philosophy before comparing all Christians to fundies.
Certainly the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule are instructions on how to live, right?
The Stalinist/Trotskyist split is a split within Leninist-derived Communism, and it hasn't been the “greatest schism” in that community since at.least the rise of Maoism; I’m not sure there are any Trotskyists left (in the US, leading ex-Trotskyists went on to form a significant part of the core of the neoconservative movement.) AFAICT, Leninist-derived Communism is all Stalinist “socialism in one state” now.
The biggest split in Communism (at least, the Marx-derived subset) seems between developed-capitalism first Marxists and Leninist-derived vanguardists, though the former subset is also less tied to old orthodoxy and so has mixed a lot with non-Marxist socialism and is less easy to draw a firm bubble around than the Leninist vanguardists.
I did have my share of discussions with Trotskyists, especially in Europe, so I wouldn't say only stalinists are left nowadays.
Your last paragraph is certainly true. In the end, how large are those groups compared to religious ones? Catholicism, a sect of Christianity, has 1.2 billion followers alone. Scale matters.