big, you know I respect you immensely, but I take exception with some of your logic here.
All the bad things done in the name of Christianity do not make all the good things done in its name bad. A good deed is a good deed - plain and simple.
I don't think anyone was asserting that a good deed is bad if it is done in the name of any religion. I think the point was that "Christian charity" is really just "charity" and people are just as likely to be charitable if they are Animist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Shinto, Taoist, Zoroastrian, or atheist. So, yes, a good deed is a good deed, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. Conversely, a bad deed is a bad deed and has nothing to do with religion whatsoever.
Crusades and religious wars? How do they automatically disprove the teachings and beliefs of the religion? Man is evil by nature, and thus will always try to manipulate it to fit his ideas and world views.
I'm sorry that your religion teaches you to look for evil in your fellow man. I choose to see that man (and woman, for that matter) is both evil and good, at all points and during all actions, for the entirety of his/her life. Homo sapiens, as the only known religious being on earth, is the originator of religion. If man is evil by nature, and man created religion, how then could not the evilness of man corrupt the sacredness of religion? And how, then, do we distinguish between good and evil? The easiest solution is to remove the cloak religion from the deeds of man, and judge those deeds based on their ability to hinder or help mankind.
I would agree that seeing religion without the "dust" of mankind often takes maturity. At the same time, it is important to say that most religions are actually "cults", and so only a very few do I recognize as "sound".
You contradict yourself in this paragraph. You say that one must remove mankind from religion to see it properly, and then in the next breath denounce some religions (presumably not your own) as "cults." You dust the mantle of mankind over religion while simultaneously saying that one must remove said dust in order to properly view religion. That's grossly unfair, and more than moderately hypocritical. Either all religion is exempt from the flaws of mankind, or none of it is. Any assertion in-between is, by necessity, biased in favor of him doing the asserting. This is ESPECIALLY true if one accepts your prior assertion that man is evil by nature.
Hitler was Austrian, but he represented the German people.
Hitler represented the Nazi party. He spoke for himself, and the Nazis, and some of the German people agreed with him, and some of them did not. The same can be said for any world figurehead. As an example, while I agree with many of the positions of President Obama, I do not be any means view him as representative of me. I do, however, view him as being representative of the Democratic party, a grouping I do not belong to.
(no longer in response to the esteemed Mr. bull)
For the record, I have nothing against religion. I do have something against the way some people choose to practice their religion. I find it offensive when people assert that good deeds can only be accomplished through the influence of one's religion, or that evil deeds are perpetrated only through the corruption of one's religion. That, to me, removes one of the central tenets of every religion I have thus encountered: free will.
I do not dispute that the man in this video is committing heinous crimes against children. I do not dispute that he hides these crimes behind his religion. I do not accept, however, that his is the true face of Baptists as a sect, or Christians as a religious people. I firmly believe, all insistence from them to the contrary, that every Christian has a deeply held a personal understanding of God, and that no book ever written can ever completely capture the true essence of that understanding.
If it sounds like I'm saying that one's religious affiliation is irrelevant, that's because I am.