bahman wrote:I see your point but those people believed that murdering is wrong (they were Christian (they should even love their enemy)). War is nothing than murdering for a reason, X, Y, whatever...
Oh, I see. You don't understand the difference between Christianity and some other religions. Got it. Would you mind if I explained?
Christianity is a
belief, a
faith, not an ethnic identity. You can't be "born a Christian" the way you can be, say, born Jewish. It's not even like being "Islamic," where you're born into a particular location, and are thereby forced to become one. For Christianity, if you don't personally believe it, you aren't one. Period.
You can see this in practice in Western democracies. Many people have many different religions in them, and are allowed to do so. This is because in Christianity you literally
must not compel anyone to believe -- you can (and should) persuade, discuss, proselytize, educate, and so on...but to
force someone to say they believe is totally counterproductive to Christianity. Anyone who did it would not understand Christianity at all, and would actually be doing something profoundly anti-Christian. Without faith, there is no Christianity.
You can see the truth of this easily. Ask yourself why in, say, the US, people are not forced to believe anything. Ask yourself why debates about religion are so public, vociferous and unapologetic. Ask why the political process and the educational systems are secular. Ask why nobody is compelled to go to religious service, and why it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion. If the US were "Christian," and "Christian" meant "enforcing belief," there's no way this would be the way it was.
If I go to Saudi Arabia and draw a cartoon of Mohammed, guess what happens to me? If I go to India and harm a cow, guess what follows? But if I am an Atheist artist in the US, and I immerse a crucifix in urine and present it as "art," nothing happens to me at all, save perhaps a protest. Now, why would that be?
Or take South Korea, which is the most per-capita Christian nation on the planet. If you go there, will you be forcibly converted to Christianity? If you're born there, are you automatically a Christian? Are their no Buddhists or animists left in South Korea? And if the Koreans will not force me to convert, ask yourself why not.
The cause of WW 1 and 2 was nothing Christian. No one was converted by force, no new state churches were set up, nobody was deprived of their private convictions as a result of the war. In fact, to my knowledge no historian has ever advanced a credible theory that WW1 or 2 were religious, let alone "Christian." No such thing is being done in scholarly literature, anyway.
But perhaps you're mistaking the word "Western" for "Christian." Maybe this clears that up.
