Furthermore

As it just happens, the proof of what I said yesterday is in the gospel for the day before Christmas, read in Catholic churches today

Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.
When someone strikes you on your right cheek,
turn the other one as well.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand over your cloak as well.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go for two miles. 
Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.

“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Show me how someone can enslave or kill or otherwise oppress someone and still live up to these teachings?   It was always a concession to the rich and powerful that church authorities came up with excuses to allow those things, they did it to make peace with temporal powers and authorities.  That they bought peace for the church establishment through betraying the central teachings of Jesus has always been a scandal.

In Latin America, from which North Americans such as me still have so much to learn, it was when priests and bishops, but even more so nuns and lay Catholics started taking these teachings seriously that the temporal power started killing them for their attempts to put them into practice.  With the aid and resources of the American government, especially under Ronald Reagan to help with the terror and murder.   I will never, ever forget Jeane Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to the United Nations and Alexander M. Haig, Reagan’s Secretary of State trashing the memory of the four American church women who were raped and murdered by El Salvadorian military thugs trained at The School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia, as were thousands and thousands of others in Central America.  

I have become convinced that it isn't the refusal of fundamentalists to accept evolution that is the major force behind the campaign to trash Christianity among America's trendy intelligentsia, such as that is*.   I think that it is the desire of them to be free of the burden of morality that these and similar teachings impose.  That is what it's all about.  That the alleged left, as found in the fashionable anti-religious, actually anti-Christian side of things, are targeting these teachings that were so inconvenient and unpopular with the Reagan administration is more than just a clue that their "leftist" identity is inappropriate and, in fact, misconceived.  I'm not part of that "left" I'm part of the one that believes those things are true and that I am required to do something about them being true.  I once heard an old Quaker say that she didn't believe the Gospel was true because Jesus said it, she believed Jesus said it because it was true.   I guess I agree with her.

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If Christians, or even a significant number of Christians tried to follow those teachings as closely as possible, I suspect Christians would be among the most popular people in the history of the Earth.  To the extent that they have not followed them, to that extent they've discredited the name and given their enemies material to use against them.  Of course they can't do much about the constant campaign to make stuff up against them, something that has been being done since Nero spread the rumor that they set Rome on fire.   I guess we can assume Seneca didn't convince the brat that it was a sin to bear false witness.

The extent to which Christianity can recover its name is dependent on following the teachings of a man Christians are supposed to believe speaks with the authority of God, even when that leads to conflict with civil authorities, even when it leads to them killing you for doing it.  As it inevitably will.  Jesus was killed just for that reason, after all.

Unlike the Gospel of Jesus, atheism is entirely compatible with an imperial, military despotism, it has proven that over and over again in the 20th century in fascist, Nazi and also "Marxist" governments.  It was compatible with the Reign of Terror and the Calles dictatorship in Mexico.  Atheism is entirely compatible with racism, sexism, hatred of LGBT folk, and, especially the poor and oppressed.  The Gospel of Jesus is compatible with none of those, though it has been pretended that it can be  made compatible with them by cowardly church authorities and others for worldly advantage.  Jesus said that his authority was not of this world, atheism certainly is of this world and it denies the existence of any other.   Atheism has a lot of the same stuff to answer for as the organized, established Churches, even in the same period as some of those organized Churches started to take what Jesus said more seriously.   Americans, Brits... don't learn about that in school, often from teachers who despise religion as is de rigueur among the intellectual coxcombs and even many of those those who have turned over a few leaves in books, such as get on late night chat shows and posted on Salon and Alternet.   Like I was saying yesterday.

*  One of the things I've found, to my astonishment, is how little most of the sci-ranger, atheists actually know or understand about science.   For the majority of them, even many with graduate degrees, even some within science, it attains an intellectual status more like sports fandom than of understanding.  "Sci rules, faithheads drool," could easily substitute for at least 80% of it.