Since theology created antisemitism, it is appropriate that theology clean up its own mess.

You're really into revisionist history, aren't you Orrin? The Pope's claim is nonsensical, only someone ignorant of history could accept it. Was the Catholic church's long history of antisemitism evidence that it was trying to eliminate religion from the world? Hitler and the Nazis inherited antisemitism from Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. He was merely taking the implications of Christian theology on the jews to its logical extreme.

Robert:

Nazism was just Applied Darwinism, logically treating Jews as a rival race that had to be exterminated. The Holocaust is completely consistent with Darwinism.

Anti-Semitism is un-Christian, though the rivalry among the Abrahamic religions was natural enough.

Darwinism is not a moral philosophy. Saying that the Holocaust is totally consistent with Darwinism is like saying that the Holocaust is consistent with physics, or auto-mechanics. Killing Jews violates no laws of physics, or no precepts of proper automobile maintenance. Neither does it support any physical laws or precepts of automobile maintenance. There is no overlap. Science makes no moral prescriptions, and should not.

Antisemitism is a longstanding Europoean cultural tradition that had its roots in Christianity. If it is un-Christian, then many Christians were and are un-Christian. Indeed, there is nothing about Darwinism that conflicts with Christianity, and social Darwinism, that moral theory concocted out of whole cloth out of the mistaken notion that darwinian explanations of species origins had any moral implications, was quite popular with the Christians of the day.

Robert - Theology didn't create anti-semitism, unless it created Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, the Philistines and Edomites, and other Jew-haters who preceded Jesus.

The reality is that anyone who hates God, hates his Chosen People. This has been true throughout history, and by and large among the Gentiles it has been Christians who were friends to the Jews. The Nazis were an anti-Christian party and they inherited their anti-Semitism from the secular left.

Robert:

To the contrary, all Darwinism consists of is the rationalists' attempt to liberate themselves from morality.

Of course Christians fail to meet the standards of Christianity--that's a truism. But Christian anti-Semitism was quite different than the exterminationism that Darwinism requires as a matter of doctrine.

Science makes no moral prescriptions, and should not.

Sorry, Robert, but that's the dumbest thing ever said on this blog, surpassing even the immortal "all great rock songs are misogynistic." Were it not willing to make moral prescriptions, science couldn't speak a word about how we ought to prefer the scientific method to its rivals.

PJ,
The theology of the Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, the Philistines and Edomites, as well as the theologies of all early pagan religions,was a theology of a tribal war god that favored that people over other peoples and their gods. It worked both ways. The tribal god of the Israelites called for them to hate these other false gods and the people that worshipped them.

You guys can't whitewash 1500 years of Christian anti-semitism in Europe. You're scapegoating a scientific theory to cover up the fact that anti-semitism was an ingrained cultural tradition among Christians in Europe well before Darwin arrived on the scene with his theory.

Robert:

Ideological differences matter. Race doesn't.

Christianity doesn't need to be white-washed. The failure of Jews to accept Christ was a legitimate reason to marginalize them. If you don't accept the ideas around wich a society is ordered you are liable to repression--ask an American witch, communist, Nazi, homosexual, pedophile, etc.

Were it not willing to make moral prescriptions, science couldn't speak a word about how we ought to prefer the scientific method to its rivals.

What? That isn't a moral prescription, it is a methodological one. Morals are solely concerned with how people should treat each other. It is based on values, not scientific propositions.

There is a very popular saying with regards to morals. 'Is' doesn't define 'ought'. Science is a means for determining 'is'. It has no business defining 'ought'.

Yes, but Darwinism isn't science, just an ideology meant to avoid God and the morality He imposes on us.

Noone accepts that anymore, not even the Catholic Church. It has apologized for its persecution of the Jews. Are you comparing Jews to pedophiles?

The Jewish Sanhedrin began the marginalization. They feared Christianity (and their own loss of power should the sect "catch-on."). Christians were pariah for a couple of centuries afterwards.

Not that I'm overlooking how we treated the Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages and beyond, but the two ideologies were at loggerheads fairly from the very start (Judaism having the upper hand).

Yes, I'm saying that societies must repress those who won't assimilate to their values. jews assimilated eventually. That wasn't good enough for Darwinists though who had to exterminate a rival race by the force of the logic of their own ideology.

Science is a means for determining 'is'. It has no business defining 'ought'.

Jesus, Robert, grow up. Science has become as much of a mass movement and a moral crusade as the Christianity it displaced. If it weren't it would never have displaced it at all. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! --ed) But you cannot have it both ways. If science has nothing to say about how we ought to treat each other (just stated), and you yourself have no beliefs that can't be derived from science (strongly implied, in several years of commenting here and posting at the Duck), then what are you doing complaining bitterly about Christendom? (Something of a hobby of yours, if not an avocation.) Look: Christianity took over the running of the Roman empire, and eventually proved just as bloodthirsty as the Romans, even though it was founded in opposition to Rome. Similarly science has taken over the running of Christendom from Christianity, and has proved to be just as messianic as Christianity, even though it was founded (somewhat) in opposition to Christianity. (If you doubt the messianism, you haven't been paying attention to the global warming debate, to take just one example.) History's funny that way, get over it.

joe:

You're missing the point. Sciencism is for people who don't want to grow up.

you yourself have no beliefs that can't be derived from science (strongly implied, in several years of commenting here and posting at the Duck)

I have no beliefs that are inconsistent with science, not derived from science. There is a big difference. And I'm talking about morals, not a belief system. Beliefs are about speculations about unseen or unknown phenomena, moral reasoning is about practical issues within social relationships.

If you think science has taken over running Christendom from Christianity, you have a very sloppy worldview. How does science do this? Which scientists are running the show? This sounds like one of those Trilateral Commission conspiracy theories.

Robert - You're just wrong in attributing anti-semitism to the Christian religion. As you acknowledge, it predated Christianity. Even at its worst in Christendom, the Spanish Inquisition, the Church became involved in order to mitigate the violence against Jews planned by the secular authorities of Spain, who had spent 800 years at war with Muslims, saw the Jews as Muslim allies, and was intent on eradicating them. It was, by and large, secularists who led the pogroms, and Christians who tried to stop them. And it was secularists -- the Nazis -- who ended up killing them.

Of course there have been many Christians who acted in unChristian ways. But Christian theology has always been respectful of the Jews. And you can't indict Christianity for people failing to be Christian.

Indeed, science tried but lost here in the States. It did win in Europe, which is why it's dying such an ugly death.

pj:

Actually, that's the beauty of it. He can only indict people for being unChristian. That's the only standard of morality.

Don't guess at what the Nazis thought about this issue, take their word for it. Rosenberg, Goebbels,and Hitler himself were most clear about it. Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular were the real enemies, standing in the way of the drive to the East and the place in the sun.

The Nazis were caught by World War Two, having been drawn into general war ahead of schedule. Just as they had to go forward with obsolete weapons, so they had to put off their project to get los vom Rom.

Actually what Hitler hated most was the Communists, which is how he ended up in the self-destructive war.

And his hatred, like pathological hatreds are, was borne of fear. Had he veered left after the Armistice (in reaction to the decadance of the ruling class), he could have easily become a vanguard German communist.

The 911 attack was applied Newtonism. After all, if you can go from “the unfit won't survive” to “we must make sure the unfit won't survive” (without analyzing what is meant by unfit), you can go from “things fall down” to “we must make sure things fall down” (without analyzing which things fall down).

Newton's physics don't posit an existenbtial threat if things aren't forced over. Darwinism holds that every race other than your own is an existential threat to yours.

No, there's nothing in Darwinism that makes other races existential threats. Nature is filled with very similar species that co-exist (a subject on which you have made many posts recently). In fact, Darwinism strongly implies ever increasing diversity, the exact opposite of your claim.

AOG:

Yes, there's no such thing as species in reality. Darwinism though requires a belief in such and in the struggle between them. I didn't say it made sense, just that it's the logic of the ideology.