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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Again, Christians have been just as appalling as any other religion.

They've killed, enslaved, done their best to eliminate cultures, railed against miscegenation, etc.

Not sure why you're working so hard to pretend o/wise.

Its been the most anti-slavery religion and was the main motivation for the abolition of slavery. There is no Christian objection to 'miscegenation' and its a weird concept only taken up in America and a few other places like South Africa during apartheid, and it owes more to race science than Christianity.

> Its been the most anti-slavery religion and was the main motivation for the abolition of slavery.

Which branch of Christianity though? There was a huge disparity in approaches in new england colonies (ie rhode island thought the indigenous should have rights, Massachusetts couldn't give a shit about anyone other than the elected.)

A lot of the english abolitionists were radicals, well outside the mainstream. The Quakers, Methodists, shakers were all deeply scary to the establishment

There was always Christian opposition to slavery much of it from the mainstream as well as radicals. St Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, several Popes and . Several Christian kingdoms (including England) abolished slavery and/or slave trading in medieval times.

The US has tended towards justifying slavery, and its arguments included the ¨curse of Ham" borrowed from Muslim slave traders. British colonies in the Caribbean produced censored version of the Bible for slaves.

Yet Christians had no problems taking, owning an selling slaves on an industrial scale for 100s of years. Their book even includes an ownership guide. And then you want a gold star for stopping what you created? The theocratic mind is laughable.

> Their book even includes an ownership guide.

You mean the books of the Bible containing rules explicitly rejected by Christians from the start? The rules that Jesus is recorded as saying was a moral compromise? You are also conveniently skipping over the declarations of equality (with regard to slavery, race and sex) in the New Testament.

That's the thing, there's something about just about everything that can be interpreted in either direction. But christians are just humans, we do these things. The problem I have is when christians pretend they are better and always were because their new interpretation of some text. American slavery being a great example of this as the bible was just to both justify and in abolishment. And as usual, its all about what parts we currently like while ignoring the others.

Like the rest of the world. Since there are many non-Western countries that still have slaves there is no original sin.

> Again, Christians have been just as appalling as any other religion

that is an opinion devoid of good arguments. humans under christianity have fared much better than any other kind of religion

And they've been enslaved, killed, and had their cultures erased, in the name of Christianity and by Christians (many citations).

Why pretend not?

Nobody is, well at least I'm not, denying the good that has been done by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindu's, etc.

To be fair in addition to the uncountable horrible things it did or took part in the Catholic church did build the foundations that allowed the concepts of modern scientific thought to develop. No other religion did that.

And they burned quite people for defending the science that went against their beliefs. They only stopped when they thought it would be good for their economic profits. Exactly the same when they stopped protecting slavery, when they thought it would be good as they would get a lot of new followers and all the money and influence that would come with them.And all the fights that gave birth to the other Christian churches always for the same reasons power and money.

> nd they burned quite people for defending the science that went against their beliefs

much less than the alternatives. muslims killed anyone who did not convert in case you did not know

Oh playing the old game of "you more" , we're not debating which belief is more savage than the other, all of them are, we're pointing out that the followers of the supposedly all loving version of a god killed,should we say assassinated, lots of people just because their discoveries did not fit in their stories books.

That varied wildly. Generally more of an exception that the rule but in the worst cases like under the Almohad’s you did have Jewish or even less extremist Muslim refugees fleeing to the more tolerant (at the time) Christian kingdoms.

Well yes it’s relative. However the Church in the 1400s to 1600s or so was generally very permissive of scientific debate and not strictly dogmatic. See Galileo’s story, the issue is that when they rejected something (based on a reasonably valid scientific process albeit based on flawed evidence available at the time) that was kind of it and continued to challenging the consensus got you into some deep trouble (with a few exceptions).

One interesting thing is that in the 1400s open debate and heterodoxy was generally tolerated or even accepted IF you did it in Latin and only inside the “international scholar network” that existed at the time and didn’t go around preaching your ideas to peasants and such.

I’m certainly not implying that it was in any way good or let alone perfect in absolute terms, just that it.

> same reasons power and money.

That’s highly reductive

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