Slashdot Mirror

Here is the text of the speach that Winston Churchill gave at Fultun. The phrases you show as being attrributed to Churchill don't appear there, nor do they appear to be Churchill's words, nor do they fit with history. That doesn't seem to be a genuine quote.

The second attribution also seems highly unlikely.

Last I checked, Christians and Jews weren't the ones sending their children off with BOMBS strapped to their chest.

That might only be because at that time bombs weren't available.

[...]Even you said it, that even the craziest "Christians", the WBC, is considered less nuts than radical islam and muslims.[...]

WBC are hardly the craziest "Christians".

Let's start our tour with an inquisitor, then move on to The Troubles, then back way up to the Crusades. This Crusade is a particularly fine example. Jumping ahead, we have Jim Jones et al, and of course, as others have pointed out, a whole list of violent crazies on Wikipedia. (Darn it, I tried to avoid Wikipedia links.)

WBC are just a relatively mild set of nutjobs in the long view. Christianity can offer hundreds of years of worse.

With that said, pick any other large group, and I'll be able to find similar levels of crazy within it. It's a human thing, not particular to any one religious or ethnic grouping. One of the fallacies humanity will hopefully eventually overcome is the crazy idea that one group of people is inherently "better" or "worse" than any other group of people. As far as I can tell, you can only really judge on an individual level, and that can be pretty messy and ambiguous in most cases.

Also:

I'm not saying Islam is going to disappear tomorrow due to terrorists, but recruitment is probably down since the 90s.

I haven't found a good comparison of Muslim growth in the ten years before and the ten years after 2000, but it seems like they have a pretty solid growth rate currently.

Stop sending your women and children to war ;) Might help.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_were_women_first_legally_allowed_to_join_the_military

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/children.html

Democracy redefined

Quote: "The citizens of any given polis were an elite group of people — slaves, peasants, women and resident aliens were not part of the body of citizens."

Any attempt of 'change' would indeed disturb the process of finding the roots again.

CC.

from what I've read of him, he seems more like a lazy and bitter malcontent than a real revolutionary

Though I didn't say it in that post Paine was more than a lazy malcontent. He wrote the line "These are the times that try men's souls" as well as various tracts in support of democracy while serving under General George Washington during the revolution.

I myself do not like the French Revolution

I support the French Revolution, that is I would have back then. What I would not support is the measures used, the ends do not justify the means. The Terror or Reign of Terror was stupid. Actually Paine was one of the victims of The terror. He spent almost a year in a Luxembourg prison when an "American minister, James Monroe, secured his release."

Falcon

Straight from Orwell Orwell's vision of repression and the even stronger image of Big Brother was clear in Orwell's mind as early as 1944. After all, the great purge trials of the 1930s were now part of history, a history Orwell knew quite well as a journalist. "Out in the street," he wrote, "the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every point." Image all those huge paintings of Stalin and Hitler that seemed to adorn every street corner of Germany and the Soviet Union, and you'll know where Orwell obtained his imagery

It's always funny to me when people defend "capitalism" without even realising that the term was invented as a perjorative by its greatest enemy. (Surely this is the definition of being a reactionary...)

Marx distinguishes capitalism from straight commerce by pointing out that, in capitalism, workers neither own the means of production, nor do they own the fruits of their labour. Thus, companies that have stakeholding and share-vesting programs are less "capitalist" than those in which workers receive a direct wage.

It's certainly true that Google treats its employees better, but I don't know if it's less capitalist than MS. Depends if they dole out shares, I suppose. As for the idea that companies have to crush the competition, no this isn't really capitalism, though I would imagine it's a fairly natural consequence of the Milton Friedman/Chicago school of free market competition.

Floppy nothing. In my day we etched our data into pottery. Talk about your long term enterprise data storage. Some of those buggers made it thousands of years!

Way offtopic here, but I've got Slashdot Karma to burn.

In the strictest sense, Catholics are Christians. They believe:

"...in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead..."

This, from the Apostles Creed, recited by Catholics. This is actually from the "modern" version - I remember actually reciting the Traditional version when I was a Catholic.

All Christians would agree with those phrases from the Creed.

The problem that other Christians have is that some Catholic beliefs contradict the Bible, which most Cristians believe is without flaw (including Catholics).

Problems include:
"Intercessory prayer", in which one prays to Mary, or one of the other Saints to "intercede" for them, rather than praying directly to God. The Bible does not mention this behavior, and commands us to pray only to the one, true God (the holy trinity of the Fater, Son, and Holy Spirit, which are as one). In addition, the Catholics believe that one is addmitted into heaven on the basis of good works, rather than faith alone. The Bible does not agree. Catholics believe that sins are forgiven though a priest in confession (again in a sort of intercession to God). The Bible says that only God has the power to forgive all sins. At least a few other major problems exist, but I won't go into an exhaustive list here.

Many of these beliefs did not exist in the early Christian church. The process of "indulgences" in which one bought "get out of jail free cards" from Catholic priests, so that they could freely sin did not emerge until the middle ages. In fact, it is indulgences primarly (along with other corruptions in the Catholic church) that caused the great schism (or the Protestant Reformation, depending on who you're talking to). Luther posted the 95 theses as a formal protest against the ways of the Catholic church. This made public the growing protest of many priests against the ways of the Catholic church.

Some of the things which Luther protested against, such as the reciting of Mass in Latin, which was not understood in his native Germany (or to almost anyone outside the priesthood), and especially indulgences, have since been revised by the Catholic church. Others have not.

In closing, to say that the "Catholic Church is genetically "more christian"" may be true, but is useless. The Catholic church is an institution. Institutions can and will become corrupted by men, especially those who believe themselves infallible (Catholics believe the Pope is infallible - other Christians do not).

So I say your logic is flawed, for it does not account for corruption.

Many Christians think of the Catholics as not being truly Christian, because their beliefs contradict the Bible.

Gee, Mr. Marx, your mind is as open as ever. Two hundred twentyone years in the grave didn't change you a bit. Your thoughts still stink.

He just invented the first practical printing press with movable metal type. 'Block printing' with metal plates of an entire page was already being done, and with wood plates had been done for over 200 years (the chinese method). More info here

Ahhhh, yes...I seem to recall it had something to do with dragging your sorry asses out of a war that we didn't start and didn't want. Seems the .uk folks couldn't fight their way out of it and had to call on the Americans. Hurt your national pride a little did it?

If you still don't know the answer, visit this site

It was only after Greco-Roman thought was re-introduced via Islam that Western European civilization started its upswing.

This statement is plain wrong. Christianity is a synthesis of Hebrew and classical Greek philosophy. If Christianity did anything, it preserved the thought of classical antiquity. Classical authors were widely cited by early Christian thinkers. The idea of theology -- a rational inquiry into the nature of God -- is a Christian invention based on Greek thought.

The Arabs contributed to medieval thought by making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. However, their sources for Aristotle were Christian sources in Constantinope.

The Church has been in conflict with science thoughout its existence but it is probably no accident that the founders of modern science (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton) were all believing Christians.

Incidentally, you might be interested to know that the closest thing to total-free-market libertarianism that has occurred so far in western society (UK, 18th century) resulted in MASS poverty, and the price of bread rising above levels the vast majority of the population could afford.

Under totally free markets, people 'compete' until there is no time/money left over after production to inject back into the economy or use to enjoy said fruits of the system.