Hostility Towards Guild Specificity?

It's the Law!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

You stupidity slightly humours me.

Just because I criticize this crap president doesn't make me liberal. Bush is a crap president, and many conservatives recognize that too. Especially when there are better, more fit people out there in the Republican party (John McCain jumps to mind)

Thats why im hiding up in the "blue" area of the map for 4 more years *shudders*

Too true

Again, not true. There is in fact a lot of Christian theology in his writings and speeches, although he doesn't often label it as such. Given his origin and time period (Germany, the 30's), being Christian is more or less just assumed. He doesn't harp on it because it's just par for the course. But a lot of his statements in Mein Kampf are thoroughly Christian, from a man who obviously doesn't even consider the validity of the Christian faith to be in question, he just uses it as you would any ordinary facts about the world to justify certain statements. He's clearly both Christian and unselfconcious about it.

He actually rarely uses the name of Christianity to promote anything. The most telling statements of Christianity in his writing are made where he unselfconciously uses Christian belief to justify things without even identifying them as Christian. Like your typical early 20th century German, he just accepts Christianity as true as a matter of course, and talks as if its tenets are just commonly known facts. During his political career, he actually shows little interest in using religion to promote his ideas, and no wonder, considering what his ideas are. His faith is really not a part of his political ideology at all. But it's also clear that he does have a faith, and that he really believes it, and that it is Christianity. It just doesn't have anything to do with his politics.

Unfortunately no, and I'd agree that a lot of people who label themselves as Christian are really not and actually don't know much about what it means to be a Christian.

I am not a Christian, btw.

It sure is good to see a hot topic again. Was getting bored with all the other threads.....

Neither am I... and I have noticed that on the Forums (even others I have been to) the ratio of atheists (or whatever) to actual religious people is a lot higher than it is in real life.

Before it was perverted in this manner, Aryan meant something entirely different.

If you're interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan

Intelligence in an individual responsibility. We are as intelligent as we make ourselves. Relative to the universe, who can say?

Not from what I could see. I didn't see a whole lot of talk about loving your neighbor or even your enemies in his writings, which is a central tenant of Christianity.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think a Christian is?

An exceprt from a speech from the site you linked to earlier:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison."

Just in this brief excerpt, you find several problems with the idea that Hitler was a Christian.

First of all, his characterization that Jesus was a fighter is patently false. When the guards came to wrongfully arrest him and take him away for executition, he commanded his disciples to sheath their weapons. During his torture, he prayed for his enemies' forgiveness. If Hitler was a Christian, why does none of this Christ-like compassion come through in his speeches?

Secondly, when Jesus drove out the temple sellers, he drove them out not because they were Jewish but because they had turned the temple, a place that was sacred to the Jewish community and intended for the worhip of Yahweh, into a literal den of thieves. Jesus would have driven them out no matter their nationality. Hitler's characterization that Jesus was "[fighting] for the world against the Jewish poison" is absurd.

The point I wish to make is, Hitler clearly used a warped understanding of Christianity (warped to the point that it could hardly be called Christianity) to promote hatred of the Jews. His words and actions, however, betrayed a lack of true devotion to the faith. That Hitler used the name of Christianity to promote his hateful ideology is true. That he was a Christian is most assuredly false.

I don't think anyone needs pay attention to 1, 5, and 7.

4 and 6 are off-topic and pretty much just a flame-bait. I'd love to play Current World Event Deathmatch with you, but this isn't an appropriate venue.

As for 3, start naming wars. I'll even let you start at 0 BC so I start missing a few hundred points as a handicap. Beside each war you list, write the primary cause. I'm pretty sure that you'll find very few were not based in religion, or cultural belief (which in most cases prior to more contemporary times, was *very* closely-bound). I'm also pretty sure you'll find most of those happened within the last hundred years.

[ ]

Heh. Thanks for the "or whatever". It's amazing how many people will just assume you're an atheist just because you're not Christian.

Huh? You've got to be kidding. Let's see, the Pelloponesian War, Alexander's conquests, the war between Greece and Rome, the war between Rome and Carthage, all the various wars Rome got involved in, the Germanic invasions of the empire, the Mongol invasions, the war after war between various European powers, e.g. England and France, England and Spain, the Amerian Indian wars, etc. Sorry, I haven't been listing reasons -- most of the above were over territory and/or control of resources, as nearly all wars between nations are. I'm of course leaving out all the various civil wars, which are usually over internal power struggles, politics at the extreme.

I'm pretty sure a good historian could name 100 wars not based on religion for every one you could name that was, but I'll stick with 10. Please, name as many wars as you like that were based on religious conflict, and I'll easily and happily counter with 10 that weren't.

Wow! I'm not the only one killing time at work I'm glad to hear many of your comments and must say that I hope to see most of you in game! Would write more but the boss is coming...

I just love how we think of ourselves as intelligent civilized and non barbaric, but as soon as our social structure falls through the roof we become chaotic and barbaric. Look what happens after hurricanes, complete chaos.

In the end anything that marks your guild out from other will be in someway attacked, human nature leans towards conformity.

As for creating a 'christian' guild, I think a lot of people play games to get away from a lot of the political and religious baggage and in general bringing RL into games is unwise. If there was a guild called 'the Bush guild' it would receive as much abuse (if not more).

I personally couldn't care less what a guild's name is or what they stand for (if anything), but some people do take it as an affront or an excuse to let out their more primitive behaviour.

Certain Christians who are very aggressively intolerant of others have given ALL Christians a bad name to many, many people. I think that a guild that sounds like it is "Christian only" has very negative echoes of what is going on in real life in some people's lives and it is very painful for them. So negative responses, even unfair ones, are to be expected. You need to be aware that often people are lashing out at you because they HURT, and a religion you are associated with caused that hurt. The "Christian" thing to do is to turn the other cheek. And to realize that this is not ALWAYS unjust persecution of God's chosen people. Sometimes it is a reasonable response to a religion that can be really invasive and pushy and hurtful to people.

I have told my many Christian friends that they need to stand up and speak out against people who are hateful in the name of Christianity or else there is going to be a HUGE backlash that very nice Christian people who are NOT bad people are going to get caught up in. I do hate to see this.

I think you are experiencing a tad of that backlash.

And I think you ain't seen nothing yet.

--Nokomis

Not usually. Most people band together cooperatively after such collapses. It's frequently humanity's finest hour. We tend to be at our most barbaric when everything is working normally. It's easier to be selfish when everyone has everything they need. It's in the face of disasters that we tend to be most selfless, honorable, and civilized. This is certainly not universally true, but it's generally the case.

I have to chime in here in agreement with Nokomis. For those of us who are non-Christian, nine times out of ten, our encounters with Christians where they make any sort of issue out of their faith are negative. And it's not that most Christians are bad, most Christians you don't even know are Christian, and they're prefectly fine people, even after you do get to know them. The problem is, they're the silent and invisible majority. What we end up seeing is the all too visible and aggressive minority. They end up forming our opinions of what Christians are like, and even when we know better, because most "good" (tolerant) Christians are people we only learn are Christian long after we've met them, whereas most "bad" (intolerant, hate-filled) Christians we've ever met wear their faith on their sleeve, when we encounter someone who wears their faith on their sleeve, we roll our eyes with a "here we go again". If the first thing someone learns about you is that you're Christian, they're going to react that way, not because Christians are necessarily bad people, but because nearly every one you encounter that way is.

Oh bravo, yes, wars are caused by fear and/or greed.

It can look like religions cause wars but in those cases, if you really look at the situation, it is pretty clear that the religion is just another expression of the fear and/or greed. All religion is not TRUE religion, after all. Every single religious belief humans have ever had have had both genuine spiritual aspects and also parts that clearly are expressions of our fears about, well, being HUMAN.

Saying religions cause wars is like saying hammers build houses. No. WE cause wars and build houses.

--Karen

Nokomis, I would agree that there are some very bad representatives of the Christian faith and it is our responsibility to take a stand against those people. Which is one of my reasons for becoming a pastor!