laughing dog
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Putin claims to defending Russian (i.e. orthodox Christian) values.
Ignoring the fact Christian nations fought two World Wars, and continued to maintain colonies through much of that century, I agree.pood said:
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bilby
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That's a stretch.
According to wikipedia, the top ten belligerents were:-
By total deaths:
World War 1:
Russia - Christian (Orthodox)
Ottoman Empire - Muslim
Germany - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
Persia - Muslim
Austria-Hungary - Christian (Catholic/Orthodox), Muslim
France - Christian (Catholic)
British Empire - Christian (Protestant/Catholic), numerous others
Italy - Christian (Catholic)
Serbia - Christian (Orthodox)
Romania - Christian (Orthodox)
World War 2:
Soviet Union - Atheist, Christian (Orthodox)
China - Confucianist, Buddhist
Germany - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
Poland - Christian (Catholic)
Dutch East Indies* - Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist
Japan - Shinto, Buddhist
India - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh
Yugoslavia - Christian (Catholic/Orthodox), Muslim
French Indochina - Buddhist, Confucianist, Taoist
France - Christian (Catholic)
By military casualties (arguably a better measure of who "fought" the war):
World War 1:
Germany - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
Russia - Christian (Orthodox)
France - Christian (Catholic)
Austria-Hungary - Christian (Catholic/Orthodox), Muslim
British Empire - Christian (Protestant/Catholic), numerous others
Italy - Christian (Catholic)
Ottoman Empire - Muslim
Serbia - Christian (Orthodox)
Romania - Christian (Orthodox)
USA - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
World War 2:
Soviet Union - Atheist, Christian (Orthodox)
Germany - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
China - Confucianist, Buddhist
Japan - Shinto, Buddhist
USA - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
UK - Christian (Protestant/Catholic)
Italy - Christian (Catholic)
Yugoslavia - Christian (Catholic/Orthodox), Muslim
Romania - Christian (Orthodox)
Poland - Christian (Catholic)
Certainly Christian nations were included, but it's not clear at all that they dominated the ranks of the beligerent nations, much less that "Christian nations fought two World Wars". I think you could make a case that "Christian nations fought the First World War", if you look only at military casualties, and treat the Ottoman empire as a very minor player.
* The Dutch East Indies were led by a Christian (Protestant) colonial
power
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laughing dog
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Certainly the Christian nations started WWI and WWII. And looking at your lists. the vast majority of the nations are Christian.
bilby
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I concur
No. Imperial Japan (not a Christian nation) started WWII, by invading Manchuria and China (also not Christian). Germany and Italy started the European bit, but that was a couple of years later.
Majority, sure. But not vast - and these are ranked lists, so the ones at the top should carry more weight than the ones at the bottom.
bilby
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My point being that you can present a case for the two World Wars as Christian, but it's not a strong case - it depends on a lot of assumptions, preconditions and biases, and cases equally strong (or stronger) can be made for the contrary position, simply by selecting different assumptions, preconditions and biases.
Which nations are important? (I presented two different ranked lists, but many other rankings are possible)
What makes a nation 'Christian'?
Should be consider only the agressors, or should we include their victims? What about allies (of both groups)?
Do we look at the religions of the people, or of the soldiers, or of the leaders? (the Dutch East Indies fielded a large mostly Muslim army, but the army's leaders were mostly Dutch Protestants).
Are Orthodox Christians part of the same religion as Catholics? Are Protestants?
The wide range of reasonable starting assumptions makes your simple claim weak, at best.
Which nations are important? (I presented two different ranked lists, but many other rankings are possible)
What makes a nation 'Christian'?
Should be consider only the agressors, or should we include their victims? What about allies (of both groups)?
Do we look at the religions of the people, or of the soldiers, or of the leaders? (the Dutch East Indies fielded a large mostly Muslim army, but the army's leaders were mostly Dutch Protestants).
Are Orthodox Christians part of the same religion as Catholics? Are Protestants?
The wide range of reasonable starting assumptions makes your simple claim weak, at best.
Emily Lake
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Oh do fuck off with this bullshit.
I don't need saving, and that's hardly what Bomb is doing. Pointing out horrifically bad logic, shoddy rationalization, and a complete inability to think coherently without resorting to ad hominem isn't something you should be criticizing while pretending to be a skeptic and a critical thinker.
Emily Lake
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Does your criticism apply to those who keep insisting that christianity is a greater risk to western liberal values than islam? Or are you once more being extremely selective in applying your principles?
Emily Lake
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This is a false statement, I have no love for mythical figures. Certainly no love for zombie jews.
I think that religions are myths, gods are made up. On the other hand... perhaps I'm missing something but I have a hard time thinking that buddhism or taoism could be cited as religions that compel people to commit atrocities, let alone hold those belief systems to be equally as bad as 12th century catholicism or 21st century islam. One should recognize that not all practicing catholics were hell-bent on converting the entire world by sword during the crusades, just as not all muslims are dedicated to jihad.
Seriously, I get that you want to be a good guy and all, I get that you are deeply dedicated to protecting religious freedom. That's fine. But if you can recognize the toxicity and evil of Westboro Baptist Church as being a threat and a risk... you should also be able to recognize sharia islam as being at least as big a threat and risk.
laughing dog
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I am under the impression that historians generally regarded the German invasion of Poland as the start of WW2.
Bomb#20
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That's "His Royal Highness the Prince Consort Bomb white knighting to save the princess Emily again." to you; and I'm not aware that Emily is a princess -- in any event, the only princess I ever white knight to save is the one I'm married to. I don't post to save Emily -- she's quite capable of saving herself. I post to save you faith-based posters, from the mind-viruses parasitizing your brains.
Elixir
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I had some posters like that, back in the 60s.
God bless Chet Helms and The Family Dog!
bilby
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It's (as usual) not that simple. The start is hard to pin down and depends on your preconceptions, biases, and definitions; The Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 is the beginning of the contiguous hostilities that ended with the Imperial Japanese surrender in 1945, and so is the start of the war; However for convenience of notation, historians generally don't categorise the war as a World War until the European theatre joined the South East Asian theatre to send the conflict global.
There are a number of problems with this, though:
The war is generally categorised as 'World War' until VJ day on August 14th/15th*, or September 2nd, 1945 (depending on whether you count the surrender of Japan or the formal signing of the peace as the end of the fighting). But the war in Europe had ended on May 8th, so if it wasn't a world war until the invasion of Poland, for consistency it also wasn't a world war after the German surrender.
The invasion of Poland is rather an arbitrary choice for the start of the war in Europe anyway, given the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, both of which pre-date it (and the latter of which entailed combat between German and Czechoslovak troops, albeit brief and one-sided).
And the key Pacific theatre didn't become involved until December 1941, when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into the war - if worldwide scope is our criterion, then WWII lasted from 7th December 1941 to May 8th 1945; If contiguous hostilities are the criterion, then it lasted from 7th July 1937 until August 14th (or 15th) 1945, and if we count the signing of a peace treaty as the end of a war, it lasted from 7th July 1937 until September 2nd 1945 - or perhaps it is not over yet. Japan never signed a peace with China, so by that definition WWII is still ongoing.
European historians (particularly English speaking ones) of the mid C20th tended to take a view that the invasion of Poland was the defining moment that started the war, but this view tends to whitewash the British and French aquiesence to Hitler's territorial demands and acquisitions prior to that date, and to marginalise the importance of the South East Asian theatre, both of which biases are a hangover of British imperial attitudes - the idea that British diplomatic failures were a key cause of the European war was highly distasteful to English historians of the 1950s and '60s, as was the idea that the doings of slanty-eyed yellow-skinned foreigners was of similar (much less greater) import than that of the actions of white European statesmen.
Ultimately the question of exactly when WWII started and ended is a political question, and your choice of answer says more about your biases (or those of your history teachers) than it does about the events of the 1930s and '40s.
Personally, I tend to take a very loose stance on the question, and define WWII as starting no later than the Marco Polo Bridge incident, and ending no earlier than the peace treaty of September 2nd, 1945 - but with no particular objection to extending those dates in both directions, forward in time to the present day, and backward to the beginning of the Great War, which arguably ran from 1912**-1945 and possibly beyond, with an intermission between 1919 and about 1932-'37, (depending on your view of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1930s, which is a whole other can of worms).
Interestingly, one criterion that made WWI a World War, was the involvement of Japan, who were allies of the British, French and Russians (despite Japan having given the Tsar a bloody nose less than a decade earlier; And despite her throwing in with the Axis powers in the second act). Canned worms are currently on sale at knockdown prices due to oversupply.
* The surrender was on August 15 in Japan, but due to timezone differences, occurred while it was still August 14 in the US.
**The start of WWI is generally agreed to be in 1914, but the violence between Serbia and her Balkan neighbours began in 1912, and flared again in 1913; The 1914 conflict was just another in a series of local summertime wars fought in the region - until it suddenly wasn't, and all of Europe got sucked in.
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pood
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The start of the European portion but not the start of the wider war. That’s thought to be Japan’s aggression against China.
pood
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Well, not if we want to cite the Japanese aggression against China as the start of the war. But Bilby discusses this in some detail above.
But stipulate that World War II started with the German invasion of Poland. The broader point is I see no evidence that Christian nations started or waged the war because they were Christian. And, as noted, Hitler scorned Christianity, though he did use it as a political prop, and was quoted saying that Islam would have been a more suitable are religion for Germany.
Spacetime Inhabitant
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Who said anything about the military in regard to war on Muslims? The USA is doing similar things to what India is doing, but on a lesser scale, and admittedly not so lethally (yet).
The Australian mainstream press, like that of USA, is dominated by Murdoch, just like the USA is with the USA additionally dominated by other like-minded right-wing media.
Six years, compared to the x 4 = 24 years that you went back. The NZ attack was one individual terrorist, and there have been no NZ Muslim attacks in response. The WTC attack was a very organized action backed by the same state actor that Trump has been cosying up to, meeting with their leader recently, and providing them with current USA technology, so a very different response. Also USA retaliated for the WTC attack, though not against the perpetrator but a third party.
That one hundred people a year is a silly way of looking at the situation; by that logic in a thousand years time it will be only 3 people a year.
The NY attack involved scores of people directly, and countless backup support people, so using this same crazy logic, one person killed 51 people, but the WTC terrorists killed an average of at max 150 people each to less than one victim per perpetrator.
laughing dog
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Religion is almost always used as a prop, especially for wars.
pood
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Sure, but the point stands that none of the wars you cite were fought because of Christianity. Germany’s attack on Poland was an attack by an ostensibly Christian nation on a Catholic nation. And?
laughing dog
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Nothing you have posted rebuts my observation "In the 20th century, one would be hard pressed to deny that Christian countries weren’t the most dangerous countries." That statement does not mean no other type of country is not dangerous.
laughing dog
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If I had claimed that wars were only the province of Christian countries, you'd have a relevant point.