Oxymandias wrote:I highly doubt that Christians feverantly defended the Bible just because they were expensive and you are also aware of this. We both know that even saying something bad about Christianity would gander a similar response.
Like yourself perhaps I don't have any evidence that Christians in the 6th century would, as you imagine, apply extra-judicial death penalties to someone who defaced a 6th century bible but in the absence of any evidence either way I supplied a very real difference between a 6th century bible in its context and a 21st century bible or quran which clearly illustrates that defacing a 6th century bible is not even remotely a comparable act to a defacing a modern bible.
Early Christians experienced a fair amount of persecution at the hands of pagan Romans, other pagans and also a little later Muslims. I expect as rare and valuable as early bibles were a good number of instances occurred where they were wilfully destroyed along with the people carrying them.
Oxymandias wrote:And your evidence of this is? Bible bashing would've had the same exact response after the printing press was made because destroying the bible is a symbolic action, not a practical one. It represents a political belief, not some necessity. Burning a bible for example represents, to Christians, an attack on Christianity. This is exactly the thought process of the Muslims here. I'm not saying that it's the right reaction but it certainly is the expected reaction.
Not all religions or practitioners are the same, and symbolic attacks don't necessarily warrant the same degree of reaction as actual attacks. It is noteworthy that Christians are somewhat noted for weathering actual attacks with grace, I would wonder if they couldn't tolerate virtual attacks with comparable grace.
It wasn't necessary for muslims to dynamite the golden buddhas of Afghanistan, to a buddhist that may be sacrilege, so far I have yet to see a reprisal.
Oxymandias wrote:Furthermore, don't Protestants believe that the Bible is the highest authority of not just the church but of God's revelation? I find that it would be quite ridiculous for Protestants to both place the Bible on such a high pedestal yet also be completely passive when a person disrespects the Bible by burning it or putting their foot on it. Don't you too find it ridiculous and contradictory?
The protestants may believe the
information in the book is the "highest authority" but they are not sentimental about the paper and binding. Catholics were in the eyes of protestants guilty of this kind of sentimentalism, so in the course of reformation a good deal of Catholic bric-a-brac was defaced and destroyed. It was a shame in a way as Catholic churches were rather colourful, rich perhaps overipe with religious art, but protestants whitewashed over all that art when they took over the buildings.
Oxymandias wrote:I also find it odd SolarCross that you are an atheist and have expressed several times before that you dislike most religions and prefer paganism but are now attempting to defend Christianity during the Middle Ages (which is probably the most stupid thing anyone can do honestly) and usually you seem to defend Christianity often. Do you have a soft spot for Christianity SolarCross? Has it been significant in your life?
In the interests of full disclosure I am not an atheist. I was as a teenager I guess, but have since seen reason to doubt the surety of the atheist position and moreover I learned not to overestimate my ability to understand anything objectively particularly in the invariably inevitable circumstances where I do not possess all the facts. Thus my baseline is agnosticism. On top of that I
enjoy but don't necessarily believe the polytheistic religions of Europe and I have learned how to do the Buddhist method of meditation, the same method that when practised diligently leads surely to enlightenment though I am not a diligent meditator, sadly.
I have very little experience of Christianity in the practice of it though I am increasingly interested in it. I will say that I believe Adolf Hitler's disparaging estimation of Christianity as "meek and flabby" is both wrong and right at the same time; right because Christianity
is "meek and flabby" but wrong because this meekness and flabbiness is exactly what is great about Christianity. Human beings are the most dangerous animals on earth, we are the apex of apex predators, and we are at least as dangerous to each other as anything else, and with nukes we have the destructive powers of gods, consequently we need no help from religion in becoming
more nasty! Indeed what humans need from religion are persuasions to be nice... Christianity for whatever faults it may have and however imperfectly that message is acted on by its adherents does have sincere persuasions towards niceness. Sadly Islam seems to be the opposite, it encourages nastiness especially towards non-muslims.