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Sunface Jack's avatar

Great article Mark Tapson.

Guilt tripping comes to mind when children are used as pawns by the progressives as well as Marxists terrorists. They know that children are dear to most loving rational people and so they, the Marxist Progressives exploit that quality as they perceive it is a weakness.

The same goes for the ideology of Multiculturalism. It is a guilt trip used by progressive Marxists trying to make demands and telling us whom we can and cannot associate with. Of course it applies only to us the palefaces. The equality demand is a guilt trip.

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Mark Tapson's avatar

Thanks, Jack!

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Mark Tapson's avatar

Thank you, Saoirse, although I'm distressed that you've lost your faith. Keep in mind that Jesus sacrificed Himself for us at the hands of cruel men to save us; it's not the same as helpless children being put to death for the favor of the gods. Jesus won't give up on you; I hope you won't give up on Him.

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Art Eckstein's avatar

It was not the Christians who wounded child sacrifice in western Europe. It was the Romans. As their own historians said, it was one of their proudest accomplishment in dealing with the “barbarians” north of the Alps.

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Mark Tapson's avatar

It's true that child SACRIFICE wasn't common in the Roman Empire, and that the Romans exerted a "civilizing" influence on barbarian tribes, but infanticide WAS common in Rome -- until after the legalization of Christianity. It was Christianity that wrought a gradual decline in the practices of both infanticide and human sacrifice everywhere its influence spread.

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Art Eckstein's avatar

Infanticide of tbe “weak” was common at Rome, as it was in Greece – –for economic reasons—but that is simply not the same as child sacrifice to gain the favor of the Gods. Such children were highly valued, unlike the infanticides—which is exactly why those valued children were sacrificed to gain the favor of the Gods.

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Mark Tapson's avatar

Yes, I wasn't claiming they were the same except insofar as the end result for the kids. My point is that it was Christianity that gradually eradicated (well, let's say marginalized) both those practices by introducing a theological emphasis on the sanctity of life, viewing all humans as created in God’s image. Early Church fathers explicitly condemned infanticide, for example, as sinful. Christian teaching also encouraged care for the vulnerable, so by the late 4th century Christian institutions like churches and early orphanages began rescuing exposed children.

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Art Eckstein's avatar

Yes, the Church suppressed infanticide of the “weak” as a common practice, and for the theological reasons you set out. Very important. But no child sacrifice was. going on in that period any more because the Romans themselves had already suppressed THAT practice (and all human sacrifice).

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David Solway's avatar

Excellent, Mark. These people should themselves be left in their millions on every mountain top in the world to exhale their last, starting now.

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Mark Tapson's avatar

Thanks so much, David. If only the pampered First World multiculturalists could be forced to spend a week among the cultures they whitewash.

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Saoirse's avatar

I very much like this essay and agree with it, But I want to say that to me, the sacrifice of a 'kind and benevolent' God's only son (Christianity) in a barbaric and painful way strikes me as very similar and is just one reason I have lost my faith.

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