The blame game

[scorpia]

This topic somewhat involves a bit of an argument I already had with a bunch of more fundamentalist Christians, arguing about how there have been some Christians in the past who have behaved badly (eg. Crusades, the Inquisition etc).
(Although there are probably still some other instances that I have missed that may not necessarily be caused by the Catholics eg. Witch hunts. History is not my forte )
Considering such, I argued that you don't want to generalise others if you don't want to be generalised yourself with something bad.

One of the responses I got for this was "That's mostly the Catholics who did that. And we aren't Catholics. We don't associate with Catholics" Or something like that.

One of the arguments against Christianity I have most often heard was "But the Christians have done bad things that makes the whole of Christianity bad." But with the response I got above, I could say "That's all the Catholics fault. Not all of Christianity is bad, just the Catholics" But it still lacks resposibility, And it would be better to just accept that there have been some Christians who have done wrong rather than "wash my hands" of those who did.

Besides, no matter what your denomination, there are still some people who still aren't tolerant and abuses others and the like.

Anyway, I have also gone into another argument, this time with some non-theist, after splitting hairs about the same subject. I mentioned communism, and as far as I can remember, the response I got was something like "Communism isn't the same."

Very well then. But then, isn't it wrong if I do the same and say "Catholics aren't the same?"

My apologies to any Catholics who may be offended by this thread.

[ST88]

Very well then. But then, isn't it wrong if I do the same and say "Catholics aren't the same?"

I think you've hit upon the correct neutralizing aspect of this sort of debate. Bad things have been done by bad people throughout history for all sorts of reasons. Religious, non-religious, or what have you. My take is that this sort of broad brush is not quite fair to modern-day people whose general world views happen to roughly coincide with those of bad people in the past.

On the other hand, for Christians to claim a sort of legitimacy because of the longevity of the belief (2000 years or so, for example) is disingenuous because of this. The fact that the underpinnings of the religion have survived is largely due to the psychological and physical terror inflicted by its leaders in what we might call the "middle part" of European history, or the Dark and Middle Ages. Once we reach the Enlightenment, we might be able to say that Christianity had begun "maturing" into a truly benign force to at least try and make life better for people. What ticks me off is when people say that Christianity has been around for centuries so there must be something to it. Many American Protestant denominations have been around for less than 200 years, so I don't quite understand the claim. Every single one of them can trace their lineage back to the original Church of Rome, so does this mean that they accept only those atrocities committed before they split off from it? I doubt it. If they think they're right about their version of Christianity, fine, but they can't claim "history" as a concept of Christian legitimacy without facing what Christianity has done in the past.

By the same token, there have been communists who have done bad things, and there have been communists who have been involved in good things. To use the word, atheism does not claim its legitimacy through historical progress, it is instead a philosophical position that can be relevant regardless of historical circumstance. So to say that there have been bad people who have been atheists is not quite the same thing as saying that there have been bad Popes, e.g. This, in addition to the fact that doing bad things "in the name of atheism" doesn't really make any sense the way doing things "in the name of God" makes sense. Atheism does not require actions to justify or sanctify it.

Either side can play the same game, which is a part of the reason why I dislike this part of the argument. It's a rhetorical trap.