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Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

What surprises me the most about the headline is that humane treatment of prisoners is considered radical to the American public. I find this especially disconcerting given the large numbers of conservative Christians in the U.S. and their apparent desire for vengeance. It's almost as if Hebrews 13:3 and Mathew 25:35-46 are unknown to them. Someday the U.S. may see the light but I'm doubtful it will happen in my lifetime.

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Can anyone provide any cross-cultural comparisons of vengeance? It's probably fair to say that Scandinavian countries are less vengeful than USA, but how do countries in the rest of the Anglosphere, Slavic countries, Mediterranean countries, East Asian countries etc. compare? Is Christian background (which IMO places the most emphasis on mercy and forgiveness of all the world religious traditions) actually predictive of being less vengeful?

I'm more interested in how the public feels about punishment for the sake of inflicting suffering on the criminal/accused than actual government policies, though presumably the two would be closely related.

History gets to show that Christian beliefs gare entirely compatible with appalling behaviour, eg slavery, looting or plain old genocide. Nothing new under the sun.

There are lots of people Christian in name only, not just in the US.

"Thanks for being christ-like and not christian" - Bill Maher

That's a bit of a No true Scotsman.

In a manner of speech, yes.

This all started when the person of Christ was co-opted to become the (conveniently deceased) figurehead to a bunch of institutions, his name on the one hand and his followers adopting his name but not really paying overly much attention to the principles (assuming history as recounted is accurate, likely it is not) is the root cause of that.

Imagine that your 'personal brand' of good intentions is stolen from you and re-purposed as a fig-leaf to cover anything from warrior popes to insane riches and abortion clinic attackers. In light of your comment of course 'no true Christian' would ever do anything like that.

I suspect Christ would not be pleased about a large chunk of those that lay claim to being Christian.

If you are having difficulty imagining that, just read _Small Gods_, by Terry Pratchett. Maybe also read it if you are not having difficulty.

The premise of that story, exploring the difference between followers and believers can be mapped directly to... well, quite a lot of religions, I'd think.

Yes and no. It's pretty clear from the Bible what good treatment of others is - there's a long historical record of people recognizing this and advocating for it. There's also a long historical record of people not doing so.

So the difference is that a True Christian would, e.g., explicitly focus on pursuing the Golden Rule[1], whereas a No True Christian would conveniently ignore or bend it at their convenience.

[1] "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Famously spoken by Jesus, quoting Hillel.

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