The U.S. was founded on ethnic cleansing of the American Indians and on slavery.

Ok fine, the USA fought the Indians and brought in black slaves, and its part of our history....no arguments from me.   By the way, let me know if you can read this post....I hope I have not been banned for some reason.   Thanks.

post is visible, I read it.

I believe the indains were mistreated but not ethnic cleansing,  If we didn't expand where would be today.  If my member serves on history I beleive it was dutch who brought the slaves to new world not the new world (america) not going after slaves.

I have seen Dances with Wolves and all those types of movies...and yes, we treated the Native Americans horribly. But look what the Catholics have done over the centuries. The Crusades. The Salem Witch Trials. The Spanish Inquisition. Somehow, I think we as Americans are the lesser of evils.

But look what the Catholics have done over the centuries. The Crusades. The Salem Witch Trials. The Spanish Inquisition.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Salem Witch Trials were not brought on by the Catholics, it was the Puritans. Many different religions have done things in the past and present that are not exactly very good, not just the Catholics.

I think it is somewhat of a logical fallacy to lay the sin of slavery at the doorstep, exclusively, of the Catholics or the Puritans, or the Jews, or the Muslims, or any religion for that matter. That fallacy has been phrased in a recent newspaper article as “correlation doesn't imply causation” and as a Latin phrase that means “next to therefore because of”.

 

Virtually all societies have at one time or another engaged in and supported slavery, whether it was the Greeks of Plato’s time, or the Romans of Caesar’s time, or the Assyrians of Hammurabi’s time or even the North American Indians of prehistory: all of which took place long before Christianity in particular became a player on the stage of history.

 

What is really problematic about the connection between slavery and religion, as marvelously and awesomely and depressingly described in the recent book “In Defense of Atheism: The Case against Christianity, Judaism and Islam” (Michel Onfray, Penguin, 2005), is that the holy books of those three monotheisms basically tell the faithful that God (and how can you argue with him, her or it or their self-appointed representatives on earth?) says that it’s ok to enslave the Others as they’re basically subhuman in any case. Bad combination of faith and barbarism in anyone’s book.

 

As powerfully phrased by Gretta Vosper “author of With or Without God (Harper Collins), a passionately argued case for a post-Christian church”, “’Those who recognize the Bible’s claim to be the word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby’ are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater” [MacLean’s, March 31, 2008].     

Thank you, it was the Puritans not Catholics.  Religion is not infallible, The Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican speaks for itself. The archives, the art work, the knowledge there is amazing, not to mention the feeling one gets just being there. If you haven't been there you will have no concept of what I am saying.  Again religion can only be as infallible as the humans who lord over it, since no human is infallible, ergo neither can religion be.  A paradox no? So, the Bible teaches us not to judge, if Atheists choose not to believe, that is their choice.  Devil worshipers too.  However, evil does exisist, therefore Heaven must also be real.  So tell me, what do atheists worship anyway? Money? Each other? In the event there exists even a slim possibility God is real and heaven is real, as an intelligent man, I am sorry, but I gotta go with religion and my Roman Catholic beliefs, this life has often times been hell, to spend an eternity in a place remotely like this would truly be hell!!  Are there any intelligent life forms out there who agree?

I like the way you think, it is true about slavery throughout the ages, it appears the only people who overcome the crutch are those who strive for self enlightenment and success.  Those of you who actually believe the "white" man owes you are probably low income morons looking for one more hand out because they are too lazy to make it on their own.  I am Italian, my family wasn't here  in the states until recently, so my white Latin heritage has nothing to do with your absurd plight of fancy (only three original Latin countries in  the world, Italy, Spain and France, I speak English but I am hardly English, Puerto Ricans speak Spanish, but they are hardly  Spanish nor Latin, Spain hasn't been there in 500 years, so what are they? Can they admit the truth? Probably not, they are black, indigenous Indian and white, i.e. mulatto), so, tell me all you racists out there, who suffered during the Civil War?  Northern white soldiers fought to abolish slavery, hundreds of thousands lost their lives fighting for you black people, and what do you have for their families huh?  Go suck on eggs you black racist morons who cry about slavery, wake up and join the world and stop crying about things that don't concern you today, stop using lame excuses because you are just simply too lazy to join society, or just too much of a racist!!!!