(Andrew Bromage) writes:

>G’day all.

>”george spiggott” <> writes:

>>I must forward a copy to John Shelby Spong who has been trying to rid the

>>church of first century superstition throughout his career only to be

>>vilified and accused of heresy.

>Fundamentalist and more conservative Christians certainly accuse him

>of heresy. Other Christians merely accuse him of throwing out the baby

>with the bathwater.

>>Perhaps a copy to Copernicus

>Copernicus was employed by the Catholic Church for most of his

>post-medicine career. He was administrator of the diocese of

>Frauenberg, and some historians believe that he became a priest in

>his later life. There was pretty much no opposition from the church

>to his ideas during his lifetime.

But it shouldn’t be forgotten that his major work was published right at the end of his life, and the Preface to it wasn’t written by Copernicus himself.

>I think you might be referring to what happened to Galileo, seventy-

>five years later.

Very likely. And the Catholic Church has realised its error here, though it took over three centuries to make an official apology.

>>[…] the American slaves pre-Civil War whose

>>plight was largely due to “Biblical” support of slavery by most

“Christian” >>denominations.

>The Christian denominations that you refer to almost all split over

>this very issue. The last vestige of this is the Southern Baptist

>Church, which split from what is now the American Baptist Church.

And even the Southern Baptists have now made an official apology for the way they treated Negroes in the past.

>Slavery in the United States had nothing to do with religion and

>everything to do with southern states believing the federal government

>had no right to boss them around. The fact that denominations split

>over the issue should tell you that the issue was regional rather than

>religious.

One thing which most people have forgotten is that almost all the denominations split on geographical lines over the slavery issue. From quite liberal to very conservative Christians, those in the north opposed slavery just as much as those in the south supported it. And in quite a number of cases it was on economic grounds as much as opposition to the federal government. A bit like those companies a few weeks ago who said they couldn’t possibly go the way the Australian Catholic University did about maternity leave – it would simply be far too costly, and their shareholders wouldn’t like it.

>What you don’t seem to understand (or could just be ignoring for

>rhetorical effect) is that religion does not make one a tyrant. It’s

>that tyrants use religion as a justification. Indeed, if tyrants don’t

>have a religion, they tend to invent one for the purpose.

Now why did the word “Taliban” pop into my mind when I read that?

>Cheers,

>Andrew Bromage

Ken Smith — Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … `He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.’ John Calvin, in “Commentary on Genesis