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If I beat you at chess, I’m a better chess player than you. And if I beat you at heaven bingo, I’m a better christian than you. Heavenly rewards are tied to the moral value of the person.
That’s not the point. I’m not inclined to give credit to an ideology for the valuable lesson it taught through the great slaughter it caused.
Of course that includes famine and disease. The Red Horseman who takes peace from the Earth seldom rides alone.
In the “it means what it says it means” sense. Don’t persecute people for what they believe, that’s all. Like the OP was suggesting, like you probably think ‘lesser than’ believers should be persecuted at some point, like zunger thinks those who harbour misogynistic and racist thoughts should be persecuted. I don’t want to delve into the free speech issue, but I obviously oppose hate speech, slander, sedition etc laws. Freedom should go belief > speech > actions, and 99.9% of societal repression should land on the latter category.
Christian actions are not tolerated because of freedom of belief. The reason christians are allowed to act on their current beliefs is because trial and error, as well as secular enlightenment-type thinking and discussions, have sheared off and polished the religious acts that contradicted peaceful and prosperous living.
You and Hlynka are left with a beautiful and shiny religious nub that fits snugly into, and matches, the structure of modern society; and you wonder why you ever needed the structure at all, you were seemingly right all along, look at those outcomes. In reality, without it you’d have nothing but a rusty piece of junk. Christian values gradually converged towards Enlightenment values.
Take the aztec religion (chrisitanity was never as bad, but bear with me). The enlightened version would take an allegorical view of ‘sacrifice hundreds of enemies on the altar every month’, as an altruistic self sacrifice to perform good deeds in the shadow of the Teocalli. The original interpretation can be believed, but it can never be allowed to be performed, that is not covered by freedom of conscience.
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