In response to Brandon Gaudet's post "Desensitization: Video Games v. Religion" (January 26, 2012):
I agree with the ideas expressed in the above post - I merely wished to add to some of the points brought up in the last paragraph, particularly those involving the idea of Christians going immediately to heaven upon their deaths. Historically, Christianity has on more than one occasion endorsed warring against and killing those of differing religious views. According to the Bible, people who do not worship the Christian God go to hell, or at the very least to purgatory. Thus, a Christian killing a nonbeliever is not harmless to said nonbeliever - they are not going to a better place upon their demise, in fact they could be said to be going to a much worse place.
A Christian could safely kill another Christian in the knowledge that the person they killed would go straight to heaven. Yet despite this, Christians have warred against other Christians far less frequently than they have fought with non-Christians. Furthermore, one of the ten commandments in the Christian faith is "Thou shalt not kill" (or "Thou shalt not commit murder", according to some interpretations). Judging by the history of religious wars fought by the Christians, this commandment applies less to killing nonbelievers than it does to killing fellow members of the faith. Why? Why has God apparently declared it forbidden to kill people who are going straight to heaven anyway? It seems to me that if dead Christians go to heaven, this commandment should be totally unnecessary, at least in regards to members of the faith. I could understand refusing to kill nonbelievers to give them a chance to reconsider their religious affiliation, but that is a separate matter.
Fair point, and the Hebrew commandment really does speak of murder, not mere killing. I'm not sure, though, how you would demonstrate that "Christians have warred against other Christians far less frequently than they have fought with non-Christians." This seems improbable on its face, given the history of European warfare.
ReplyDeleteI see - I probably should have rephrased it "Christians have warred against those they agree with about Christianity far less frequently than they have fought with non-Christians or Christians who they disagreed with on some aspect of the religion." By this, I mean that in many wars in which Christians took part, they proclaimed that the enemy (regardless of their declared faith) was not correct in their interpretation of Christianity, if indeed they had one. So, if a Catholic country was at war against, say, a Protestant country, they might say that the Protestant country had it all wrong and its soldiers were going to hell. Thus, the results would be the same. Thank you for pointing this error out, by the way!
ReplyDeleteA very gutsy and interesting post. It reminds me of something that a Catholic general said during the Albigensian Crusade (a war against the 'heretical' Cathar sect of southern France), when he learned that the 'heretics' had taken refuge among Catholic villagers: "Kill them all - God will sort out his own."
ReplyDeleteThe issue of using religion as a justification for violence is an important and difficult one, and I hope we as a class will explore it further.