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Hell a possible bue print for genocide?
I was thinking that. possibly. people killed in certain genocides that are the racial and ethnic groups, political groups, sexual orientation groups, and religious groups that the dominant majority committing the genocide within a society believe will go to hell in cultures that have that concept.
In Germany, they had deep seated racism against Gypsies and Jews and saw them as Christ killers, witches, and kid nappers, etc. The stereotype was that Jews were the only group of people in humanity ever guilty of being greedy and selfish (which really can account for the whole human race). Basically, Germans, along with other European groups, for a very long time, were raised to believe Jews were going to hell.
They saw the communists and anarchists as being disloyal to Germany, too cosmopolitan, too loyal to the cause of internationalism, too far to one political extreme, un-meritocratic, un-darwinistic, etc etc. Basically, the churches believed they were going to hell because of their non-religious or even anti-religious stances.
The Jehovah's witnesses have very strong beliefs for being such a small minority against nationalism and have alternative beliefs to the life of Jesus from most main line Christians. It only makes sense why they would have been a target of the established church, as well as the Nazi government.
As for homosexuals, much of the world is just barely getting out of the dark ages from centuries of culturally ingrained homophobia. They've often been a consistent target group of genocides and hateful sermons.
I remember when I was still going to church, they had some play I went to for Halloween during my Freshman year of high school. They showed us Muslims praying to TV screens with footage of the twin towers collapsing, showed us some chick getting an abortion, and showed us guy laying in a casket who died from aids. They had this guy painted in white makeup and dressed in a black robe speaking in a spooky, deep voice, telling us how "he was taught he was born that way, that it was natural, but now he's dead and he's going to hell. Hahahahahahahaha!" ....or something like that. Whatever it was, it was really corny.
Anyway, I think the people pushed into ovens in the concentration camps were really just the same people that church's in those regions preached were going to hell for centuries, and I think you can predict who will be the target groups of genocides based on who the church's popularly say are going to hell in any culture that has the concept of hell.
In Germany, they had deep seated racism against Gypsies and Jews and saw them as Christ killers, witches, and kid nappers, etc. The stereotype was that Jews were the only group of people in humanity ever guilty of being greedy and selfish (which really can account for the whole human race). Basically, Germans, along with other European groups, for a very long time, were raised to believe Jews were going to hell.
They saw the communists and anarchists as being disloyal to Germany, too cosmopolitan, too loyal to the cause of internationalism, too far to one political extreme, un-meritocratic, un-darwinistic, etc etc. Basically, the churches believed they were going to hell because of their non-religious or even anti-religious stances.
The Jehovah's witnesses have very strong beliefs for being such a small minority against nationalism and have alternative beliefs to the life of Jesus from most main line Christians. It only makes sense why they would have been a target of the established church, as well as the Nazi government.
As for homosexuals, much of the world is just barely getting out of the dark ages from centuries of culturally ingrained homophobia. They've often been a consistent target group of genocides and hateful sermons.
I remember when I was still going to church, they had some play I went to for Halloween during my Freshman year of high school. They showed us Muslims praying to TV screens with footage of the twin towers collapsing, showed us some chick getting an abortion, and showed us guy laying in a casket who died from aids. They had this guy painted in white makeup and dressed in a black robe speaking in a spooky, deep voice, telling us how "he was taught he was born that way, that it was natural, but now he's dead and he's going to hell. Hahahahahahahaha!" ....or something like that. Whatever it was, it was really corny.
Anyway, I think the people pushed into ovens in the concentration camps were really just the same people that church's in those regions preached were going to hell for centuries, and I think you can predict who will be the target groups of genocides based on who the church's popularly say are going to hell in any culture that has the concept of hell.
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Those that committed the Armenian genocide in Turkey held cultural prejudices that had existed simultaneously with religiously endorsed prejudice for hundreds of years prior to the regime that it was carried out under. I'm talking specifically about cultures that have been indoctrinated in the concept of hell that commit genocide, and I'm not saying that cultures that believe in hell are the only ones that commit genocide. I'm saying it can be a predictive factor, but I didn't mean to say that its the only factor.
The Holdolomor is disputed as a genocide. Its likely that it was primarily a mass starvation caused from too much central planning and government negligence. Genocides are usually intentional and conscious efforts to wipe out population groups. The same applies to the cultural revolution. Much of the death was lack of social responsibility and incompetence on the part of Mao. I'm not saying there weren't genocidal aspects though. The military effort to kill off land lords during collectivization in Russia was a genocide imo. Although, the UN doesn't include politicide within its legal definition of genocide, because Stalin pulled strings to keep it out. There's other things too, like the suppression of religious groups.
Anyway, I meant to delete this, and thought I did delete the text because I realized after posting that this is meant for light discussion and this is anything but.
I edited it all, wrote, "please delete post" as the title, and wiped out the text. Maybe the changes just didn't upload.
I see how this wording is confusing, so I changed it.
I think its less of an issue about religion, as a principle, and more about popular bigotry within any culture. I just think religious dogma formalizes it though. If you can convince people that the entire universe is against someone so much that it has a special place of fire and brimstone prepared for them where they'll burn forever and ever, that has a major psychological impact in codifying hateful beliefs. Its no longer just your patriotic and political duty to kill the heathens. Its your heaven mandated duty. You can do it with dialectic materialism too. Its the same thing. Its not just your patriotic duty. You're fulfilling the role of all of history by killing off political adversaries to your party. Manifest Destiny in America was very similar to this too.
Like I said, though, I thought I deleted this post. I didn't mean for it to go up in this section.
Look at how much rancour can be evoked even by the Theravada vs. Mahayana threads on a polite board like this. It's all just smugness and stupidity, whatever the "me" is and whatever the "you" is. In the spirit of ecumenism, watch this wonderful message from an Ecuadorian archbishop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD4NZpCr9LA
All the best,
Karma Dorje