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HC seems to care more about "friendly interaction" rather than a good argument or quality of reasoning, seeing as all the garbage that is allowed to be written but the moment you try to write down tits it gets cencored.

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Why? This is a community to say whatever you want to say about a topic, even if you are quoting someone.

Sometimes quoting something in an article helps others understand where they are coming from.

Who are we to tell someone to not quote ON TOPIC articles?
It is not against the COC or any rules I know of?

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I do not agree on your proposals, because you are forcing people to go against how they type.

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Quoting articles, or pointing to them is NOT a valid refutal, because a article is pointlessy long, and it can be used to correctly hide "lies" which you want to present.
Ask any economist, or anybody who refuses to explain why you are wrong. Same principel.

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Quoting articles, or pointing to them is NOT a valid refutal, because a article is pointlessy long, and it can be used to correctly hide "lies" which you want to present.
Ask any economist, or anybody who refuses to explain why you are wrong. Same principel.

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The people hiding lies are the ones who constantly throw out numerous attacks against religion and never provide a source. When someone makes attack after attack on religion by throwing out all sorts of statements and requests are made for the sources of the claims and no the attacker REFUSES to provide any source to back up his claim there is certainly something suspect about his INTENTIONS AND his CLAIMS.

I provide sources when I refute the lies that are constantly told about religion by people who hate religion. You seem to want to limit my ability to refute the false statements for obvious reasons.

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Early Church and Christological Councils

Chapel of Saint Ananias, Damascus, Syria, an early example of a Christian house of worship; built in the 1st century AD

An early circular ichthys symbol, created by combining the Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ into a wheel. Ephesus, Asia Minor.

11th century Icon of Jesus from Greece.

Kadisha Valley, Lebanon, home to some of earliest Christian monasteries in the world.
Main articles: Early Christianity and First seven Ecumenical Councils

Christianity began as a Jewish sect in the eastern Mediterranean in the mid-1st century.[3][7][8] Its earliest development took place under the leadership of the Twelve Apostles, particularly Saint Peter and Paul the Apostle, followed by the early bishops, whom Christians considered the successors of the Apostles.

According to the scriptures, Christians were from the beginning subject to persecution by some Jewish religious authorities, who disagreed with the apostles' teachings (See Split of early Christianity and Judaism). This involved punishments, including death, for Christians such as Stephen[Acts 7:59] and James, son of Zebedee.[Acts 12:2] Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the authorities of the Roman Empire, first in the year 64, when Emperor Nero blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome. According to Church tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that early Church leaders Peter and Paul of Tarsus were each martyred in Rome. Further widespread persecutions of the Church occurred under nine subsequent Roman emperors, most intensely under Decius and Diocletian. From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and study of them is called Patristics. Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.

State persecution ceased in the 4th century, when Constantine I issued an edict of toleration in 313. On 27 February 380, Emperor Theodosius I enacted a law establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.[116] From at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization.[117]

Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches.[36] Nicaea was the first of a series of Ecumenical (worldwide) Councils which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church, notably concerning Christology.[118] The Assyrian Church of the East did not accept the third and following Ecumenical Councils, and are still separate today. In 395, the most Christianized regions of the world were Crete, Cyprus, Anatolia, Armenia, the Nile delta, and Numidia (present-day Tunisia and Algeria).[119]

The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt, and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity includes Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving only the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa. The History of Christianity in Africa began in the 1st century when Mark the Evangelist started the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD.[120][121][122]
Early Middle Ages

With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals.[123] The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. Whilst arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see Massacre of Verden as example), Catholicism also spread among the Germanic peoples,[123] the Celtic and Slavic peoples, the Hungarians, and the Baltic peoples.

Around 500, St. Benedict set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries.[123] Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe,[123] and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.

From the 7th century onwards, Islam conquered the Christian lands of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain,[124] resulting in oppression of Christianity and numerous military struggles, including the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and wars against the Turks.

The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration.[125] In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons.[126] In the early 10th century, western monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny.[127]
High and Late Middle Ages

Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, where he preached the First Crusade.

In the west, from the 11th century onward, older cathedral schools developed into universities (see University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna.) Originally teaching only theology, these steadily added subjects including medicine, philosophy and law, becoming the direct ancestors of modern western institutions of learning.[128]

Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Western Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans[129] and the Dominicans[130] founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order were the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in the orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals.[131]

From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched.[132] These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.[133]

Over a period stretching from the 7th to the 13th century, the Christian Church underwent gradual alienation, resulting in a schism dividing it into a so-called Latin or Western branch, the Roman Catholic Church,[134] and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch, the Orthodox Church. These two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and doctrinal issues, most notably papal primacy of jurisdiction.[135][136] The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.

Beginning around 1184, following the crusade against the Cathar heresy,[137] various institutions, broadly referred to as the Inquisition, were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution.[138]
Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Opening of Luther's 95 Theses
Main articles: Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation

The 15th-century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning. Another major schism, the Reformation, resulted in the splintering of the Western Christendom into several Christian denominations.[139] Martin Luther in 1517 protested against the sale of indulgences and soon moved on to deny several key points of Roman Catholic doctrine. Others like Zwingli and Calvin further criticized Roman Catholic teaching and worship. These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism, which repudiated the primacy of the pope, the role of tradition, the seven sacraments, and other doctrines and practices.[140] The Reformation in England began in 1534, when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England. Beginning in 1536, the monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved.[141]

Two priests demand a heretic to repent as he is tortured

Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform.[142] The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Roman Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.[143]

Meanwhile, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity. Partly from missionary zeal, but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Throughout Europe, the divides caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Western Europe: Lutheranism in parts of Germany and in Scandinavia and Anglicanism in England in 1534. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.[144]

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Like I said, research and citing sources should be encouraged. Launching attacks on a religion or other group without ANY evidence to back up your attacks should be discouraged.

People who hate religion and don't mind lying about it want to limit the ability of others to prove that what they are saying is untrue for obvious reasons.

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Does anybody actually read those ENORMOUS quotes?
Isn't providing a link to the website enough?

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Would it be reasonable to ask here for some kind of forced hiatus on the words "lies", "liar", "lying" and similar when used in a hostile context?

When thrown from member to member, they don't really add much to the discussions.

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The other side of the debate has said, "Are you completely out of your mind now, Elodin?" I'm trying to avoid personal insults.

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Learn to ignore long posts & just read the next post. Or just read the first sentence.

This is just a personal opinion.

It is not in the COC & it should not be in real life events.

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