Then wouldn't you want as many Christians as possible to die then? To speed up conversion and save souls?
>>24741590No, the mistake you're making is applying a mechanistic worldview to something that is very definitely anything but.
>>24741590>Then wouldn't you want as many Christians as possible to die then?Yes, no matter the premise.
>>24741590Diminishing marginal returns.
>>24741606Drop the jargon and just give the actual answer. No, you don't want to see a bunch of Christians massacred, not just because it's the deaths of many people but because it reduces the number of Christians instead of increases it. Repression and ostracization reduces the number of people willing to convert to an outlawed movement, it doesn't increase it. People adopt a new religion when it’s easy, especially when not adopting it is hard to do in one’s community.Saying their deaths are the seed of the church is simply a taunt, a bluff. For every boast about converting the Roman empire and overcoming a half-assed, stop/start persecution over the course of three centuries, there’s a counter-example of the Japanese successfully crushing the spread of Christianity in their islands. Islam repressed Christianity in Northern Africa until it vanished, Catholic France defeated Catharism by annihilating it, Protestant Scandinavia rid itself of Catholicism by expelling the clergy and executing those who refused to leave, France stayed Catholic by massacring the Huguenots, the Inquisition prevented Protestantism from making any serious inroads into Iberia and Italy, Islam diminished Zoroastrianism by mass-killing dogs, etc. Tertullian wants you to believe persecution is hopeless since he knows that it’s extremely effective and he doesn’t want to see it employed. If it were ineffective, he wouldn’t care; if it were self-destructive for the enemy, he’d support it. Even a lazy persecution is undesirable since it can set a movement back decades, and an organized campaign of annihilation can set a movement back centuries if it doesn’t eliminate the movement entirely. Even after a persecution ends, the survivors divide up and turn against each other over whether they capitulated or not (e.g. Donatists.) Making your opp think they’re doomed to lose so they might as well just stop attacking you and join your side is the goal. They’re not actually doomed (in fact, if the persecution escalates your side is probably doomed,) but to get them to stop you need them to think they’re the ones doomed.
>>24741590It was a death cult till the Empire took it and remade it to serve their purposes. They need slaves and servants, and only people willing to die for their state leaders. Which is why they're supposed to be god's chosen and all that.Later various kings would rewrite it over again in their language. KJV swapping out "forgive them their debts" for "forgive them their trespasses" etc.
>>24741590Your country was probably founded and later defended at the cost of the blood of your men, which as admirable and heroic as it may be still doesn't mean you should aspire to have more wars for more people to die in and become heroes for the sake of national cohesion.Martyrdom is the ultimate testimony of faith, but the search for peace and fraternity are still central Christian values. It made more sense in times when life was cheaper and you could be killed for preaching a religion different from the state's, as that was the reality of the world. But I cannot think of a way in which we could produce more martyrs in the modern time that wouldn't represent a step back towards barbarism and away from the universal fraternity Jesus taught about.
>>24741590If God grants me the crown of martyrdom, of which I said I would willingly accept assuming my killer is converted, then I'd rejoice.>>24741677>there’s a counter-example of the Japanese successfully crushing the spread of Christianity in their islands.>Kakure Kirishitan are the Catholic communities in Japan which hid themselves during the ban and persecution of Christianity by Japan in the 1600s.[3][4] During this time, many believers modified their religious practices to resemble Buddhist ones on a surface level, but which held hidden Christian meaning in reality. For instance, depictions of the Virgin Mary modeled on the Buddhist deity Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), goddess of mercy, became common among Kakure Kirishitan, and were known as "Maria Kannon".[5] The prayers were adapted to sound like Buddhist chant, yet retained many untranslated words from Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Bible and other parts of the liturgy were passed down orally, because printed works could be confiscated by authorities.[1]Kakure Kirishitan were recognized by Bernard Petitjean, a Catholic priest, when Ōura Church was built in Nagasaki in 1865. Approximately 30,000 secret Christians, some of whom had adopted these new ways of practicing Christianity, came out of hiding when religious freedom was re-established in 1873 after the Meiji Restoration.You can slow a river but it will always end up in the ocean. FWIW, you seem genuinely intellectually honest and curious, I HIGHLY recommend an Autobiography of a Hunted Priest. England had more priest hunters than Catholic priests for decades and literally three Jesuits had them absolutely cracked the whole time. It's an incredible tale of what early Christianity must have been like.
>>24741590“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it…and then it’s gone. But to surrender who you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying – even more terrible than dying young.”St. Joan d'Arc
>>24741590I think the most telling thing about Atheists is that, like Leftists, a significant portion of all of their attempts at argumentation is to just pretend to be too stupid to understand basic ideas, and then act incredulous and exasperated that nobody can answer insane, stupid hypotheticals based off of their own feigned (or real!?) stupidity.You would think given that you live in Christian societies where EVERY aspect of your morality that isn't some obviously corrupt progressive suicide-cult shit like murdering your own unborn children or pretending that guys who rub shit on each others' cocks are "married" or offering men suicide as a way to escape depression is just Christian morality with the numbers filed off, the Atheist would be able to grasp Christianity's actual meaning on basically every issue. You should have a very easy time actually presenting meaningful critiques of it. But this is obviously--evidently--MANIFESTLY not the case.You have to invent cartoon Thanos logic to come up with a theoretical omnicidal position, and then say "well Christians OUGHT to hold this position I made up because I don't understand their religion" to try and paint it as irrational.The Christian intelligensia by contrast regularly illustrates a total understanding of Pagan and Secular morality and offers actual argumentation based on those morals as they are, even though Pagans don't fucking exist and Secularists are apparently too stupid to have understood a book they all claim to have read critically and rejected.
>>24741590No because people don’t control reality.
>>24741590No you'd want as many to be born as possible. Death is contingent on birth not the other way around. Religions are not death cults they're fertility cults. Just another standard survival mechanism.
>>24741590If Christianity were true, the best thing that could possibly happen to you would be to die immediately after baptism.
