Reply To: Is theism evil?
Evil implies malicious intent. I’m afraid that most of the Christians I grew up with had good intentions, not malicious ones. So, no, Christianity while not inherently good, for sure, is equally assuredly not evil. What nefarious purpose might they have in mind in building the many hospitals across the country? Perhaps as many as half of our hospitals have the name of a Catholic saint or the word Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, or Adventist in their very name.
While we may disagree with the evangelism which is built into Christianity, the requirement to spread the faith, they often do better the lives of those they seek to evangelize in obvious and measurable ways. While espousing their faith, they often dig wells, build schools, and bring vaccination and basic medicine to communities which had never known them before.
While the education they bring may include their religious catechisms, they are also teaching arithmetic and reading skills, giving their “victims” the germs of the basic skills needed to think freely.
No. While individual Christians may be evil, Christianity is not .
One more thing: Evilness is a property of a mind. Christianity is a doctrine, not a mind. It is subject to wildly different interpretations as between, say, Episcopalians or Unitarians vs. Baptists or strip mall storefront evangelists.
