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What's your prescription to make us truly safe Dr Whaley?Reader comment on item: Q&A: Remaking a Religion Submitted by Lactantius Jr (United Kingdom), Dec 31, 2010 at 15:40 To Dr Whaley First off, I deny your confident assertion that religion is belief in the absence of evidence, it is nothing of the sort, and I assert that Christianity is very much evidence-based, asking if you have ever examined the evidence yourself? if not, why not? The evidence being readily available on the internet for scrutiny and careful consideration, using the mind you have, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, emphatically indicating the importance of using the mind, by replying as follows, when He was asked by an expert in the Jewish Law, which was the most important commandment in the Law. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind" Matthew 22:37 with Simon Peter, one of Jesus' first followers saying, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Being always ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." 1 Peter 3:15 and by the grace of God, I will, so please Dr Whaley, do use your mind to examine the evidence for the truth and reality of Christianity, and typing "evidence for Christianity" into Google's search box, will I believe, produce intellectually satisfying evidence that will challenge you to rethink your world-view, and now, moving on, I readily agree that. Christian "Religion" has done many shameful things, and has much to be deeply ashamed of, but it can't claim authority from the Lord Jesus Christ for doing any of these shameful things, Jesus Christ indeed being the Prince of Peace, His job-description being "to give life in all its fullness," not to bring "religion," and the religious leaders of His day hated Him so much they had Him hideously killed by crucifixion, but you can't keep a good man down, He didn't stay dead, He "did death to death" by rising to eternal life, and He's available to bring peace and life, wherever, and to whoever will commit themselves to Him, and not to "religion." Christians are now the most persecuted people on earth, and during the 20th.century, more Christians were killed for their commitment to Jesus Christ, than had been killed during the previous 19 centuries added together, and during the 20th.century, the number of deaths caused by human beings, not by "religion," exceeded 270 millions, this being the total number of deaths caused by WW1, WW2, Stalin and the Soviet Union, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot, and the grisly inventory of deaths since 1950 exceeds 85 millions, again, human beings and not "religion" are responsible. Armenian genocide The word genocide was invented to describe the systematic murder of Armenians by the Turks, and the Armenian Genocide and was carried out by the "Young Turk" government of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916 (with subsidiaries to 1922-23). One and a half million Armenians were killed, out of a total of two and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish government today denies that there was an Armenian genocide and the Republic of Turkey must be the only major country in the world to deny the Armenian Genocide. The word genocide was invented to describe the systematic murder of Armenians by the Turks, and I now quote Rick Moran extensively, from his work. Who holds the title of 'Greatest Mass Murderer in History?' http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/who_holds_the_title_of_greates.html Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday. Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said that when Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known". Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years, and for comparison, the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million. Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said. His book, Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge. What is truly remarkable about this revelation is that most anti-Communists who had studied Chinese history believed that the real bloodletting occurred during the so-called "Cultural Revolution" which was just another name for a gigantic purge of people with suspect ideology and dedication to Mao's idea of a socialist state. Some estimates ranged as high as 20 million dead during that period, although more recent estimates placed the number of those executed, tortured, or starved to death around 1 million. Note also that it was during a similar period of collectivization that saw the horrendous body count in Stalin's Russia. Millions of Kulaks died resisting the seizure of their property, either through state sponsored murder or deliberate starvation. What is it about Communism that leaves so many dead in its wake? Anything can be justified - including mass murder - to achieve the goals of the state. Mao's record, as bad as it is, can be placed in the context of all communist states who murder their own citizens "for the good of all." Mankind's total depravity is self-evident, our sinfulness being empirically verifiable, what's your prescription to set us free and cure mankind's sickness Dr Whaley? With kind regards and best wishes Lactantius Jr
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