What do you call a person killed for holding beliefs that you agree with? Martyr.

What do you call a person killed for beliefs you do not share?

What do you call a person killed for beliefs that nobody else shares?

Why do you value martyrs? In the most part these are people who shared the beliefs of a large number of people they mixed with. They had the beliefs of their community or sub-culture. Basically they had no special moral strength, they absorbed the views of those around them and placed those ideas above their own safety. They defend the beliefs they have absorbed with violence, the violence of dying at people. Martyrs often aim their deaths. Martyrdom is a violent act. If a person has not taken on board the beliefs of a society or sub-culture before their violent death they are not considered as martyrs, they are merely deranged.

People who die for causes you do not share are misguided and dangerous people, psychopaths or dupes of evil forces. Palestinian bus-bombers get little sympathy in the Christian world. But how do they differ from the misguided heroes of western wars? The media is always talking about people giving up their lives for their country, making the ultimate sacrifice. Did they really do that? Can you not make just as strong a case for these people being dupes of evil forces too? Saints and martyrs are just deranged people with good public relations machinery on their side.

Martin

Author of Shoot the Nuns First

What do you call a person killed for holding beliefs that you agree with? Martyr. Only if they died *in defence of that faith*

So, according to this logic the *victim* of an assault of guilty of a "violent act". You seriously need to rethink your position. If somebody stabs you, *you* are not the one guilty of committing violence. When the early Christians were repeatedly dragged in chains to Rome to be executed, one has to desperately twist logic in order to come to the conclusion that they committed a "violent act". You are reversing cause and effect, as it were. Are victims of a burglary guilty of theft? Is a raped women guilty of rape?

So suicide bombing a school bus is now comparable to running across a field with Nazi tanks and guns firing at you? You seem unable to identify the difference between battlefield courage during warfare and cowardly terrorism.

Was Joseph Goebbels a 'martyr' for Nazism? Did he die for a higher moral purpose? Nazis might think so. I have to disagree.

The Lieutenant of Angband

Only if they died *in defence of that faith*. Interesting point. It makes sense. I will come back to it.

I had noticed that I had laid myself open to attack on this point. [victim of violence not to blame for the violence] But as the point of the piece was to provoke a reaction it hardly seemed sensible to correct it. Besides, I am a freethinker, I am not an academic or a priest. I do not, like an academic, have to defend every dot and comma of what I wrote a decade before, or like a priest defend the writings of somebody from a different country, a totally different social and economic framework and seventy generations distant in time. I can change my mind, develop my argument, make mistakes and improve as a result.

You are right, not every martyrdom is directly violent. But I think it is reasonable to say that there is a huge element of self inflicted violence involved in many of them. Not every torture victim can avoid their torture but many can, those that refuse to say what the inquisitor demands cannot claim to be wholly innocent, they are a party to the torture. Protestants and Catholics tortured each other and martyrs were created on both sides, most of those martyrs are responsible, in some part, for their own deaths.

If somebody stabs me I am not guilty of any violence. But if that stabbing is a result of a mugging, hand over your wallet or I stab you, the non-violent approach is to hand over the wallet not to thrust out your chest and tell him to do his worst. Do you see the distinction?

You said yourself that a martyr is only a martyr if he dies defending his beliefs. I would go further and say that a martyr is a person who chooses to die defending his beliefs and ignoring another viable option of retreat. If your 'plane is burning up and you crash it at the enemy or aim it away from innocent people it is a courageous act, it is different if you chose not to eject safely when you have that option. Murder victims who die with the name of their God on their lips are not martyrs, they only become martyrs if they chose their death or the situation that makes it likely.

Many of the Christians thrown to the lions in Rome were not martyrs any more than most of the victims of the Nazis were martyrs. They were victims. Proclaiming either of them as martyrs, or the victims of terrorist bombs as martyrs, is to debase the currency of martyrdom. The Nazis made a few hundred Jewish Martyrs, and millions of victims.

John F Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were not martyrs, they were victims of assassins, although there is a slight question mark over the status of Martin Luther King's death, had he taken reasonable steps to ensure his safety or was he willing it to happen? I would not like to make the final judgement on that one.

Cowardly terrorism? Battlefield courage? How warped. The scum in the IRA and the Palestinian bus bombers are thoroughly disreputable people but in the main they are volunteers. They are misguided and dangerous but they are committed and they have chosen their commitment. Many of the troops, airman and sailors who died in the wars of the twentieth century were merely following orders. They were not martyrs, just victims of circumstance. Most were brave but only the kind of bravery that we admire in the handicapped, they did not chose the situation of their bravery. To say that the victims of Church approved wars were brave martyrs and volunteers in other conflicts are all brazen cowards is a warped idea. Typically Catholic but then so is buggering altar boys.

There were some Nazi martyrs, especially those who were not German and chose their own destiny. Calling somebody a martyr is simply seeing the reality of the situation, not the justice of the cause.

Martin

Author of Shoot the Nuns First

"Martin Willett" wrote: (snipped)

> I had noticed that I had laid myself open to attack on this point. But as the point of the piece was to provoke a reaction it hardly seemed sensible to correct it.

You've defined yourself as a troll with that bit.

(snipped enormously)

>Typically Catholic but then so is buggering altar boys.

And with that you've proven it.

There's a difference between reasoned debate and trolling, and it's obvious which side of that fence you're on.

Thank you. It is nice to be appreciated as a fine debater. Even by somebody who can't do it themselves, or chooses not to. But then again, the Pope talks about sex all the time too...

There's no need for me to debate this- you yourself have admitted that you were only out to provoke a reaction. And that's hardly debate.

I am getting a bit sick of this. If you will not react to what I am posting how can there be a debate? Of course I want a reaction, I want my posts read and reacted to, that demands a reaction, so I aim to provoke one. What can be wrong in that?

What are we supposed to do? Agree with everything? What would be the point in posting anything if you wanted to avoid provoking a reaction? Somebody here has got a profound problem with the idea of debate. A debate requires a reaction, trying to avoid provoking a reaction makes posting anything almost pointless.

If you just want unspoken assent to the consensus just sit in church.

I could not help but notice this frank admission of trolling. Hey, at least you are an honest troll.

A little defensive are we? I did not expect you to "defend" what you wrote "a decade" before. I expected you to defend what you wrote yesterday.

There are different definitions of 'martyr'. The first one in my dictionary is 'one who chooses to die rather than renounce religious principles'. This is the definition the Catholic Church uses when it speaks of Catholic martyrs. I am not denying that there have been lots of martyrs of other faiths and creeds in world history. However, unless they were Catholic, they cannot be sainted.

Violence - n., Physical force employed so as to violate, damage, or abuse.

Refusing to hand over the wallet does not fit this definition, and thus is not a 'violent' approach. The approach you are describing is the correct *Christian* approach.

> You said yourself that a martyr is only a martyr if he dies defending his beliefs. I would go further and say that a martyr is a person who chooses to die defending his beliefs and ignoring another viable option of retreat.

Obviously. But the 'retreat' you say is an 'option' usually involves the renouncing of one's beliefs. No true Christian will submit to apostasy under any threat of violence, except under more pain of duress than they can handle. But then, in that case they haven't given up their beliefs internally, but only said what others wanted to hear. Not everyone is capable of martyrdom, but one does not need to be a martyr to get to Heaven.

[ Roman martyrs] This is a bad sense of history. The Roman authorities actively persecuted Christians. If someone converted to Christianiy, and continued to live in the area they were born in, they were hardly seeking the "situation" that makes martyrdom more "likely". They did not ask to be martyrs, they did not seek it.

I never said all battlefield soldiers were 'martyrs'. However, you downgraded their courage (which may or may not have been wise) to the cowardly bombings of terrorists (IRA, Palestinian, or otherwsie).

That last comment [buggering altar boys] is simply disgraceful. Why must you resort to such insults?

From my point of view, there are good martyrs and there are bad martyrs.

The Lieutenant of Angband

> A little defensive are we? I did not expect you to "defend" what you wrote "a decade" before. I expected you to defend what you wrote yesterday.

Touche.

> There are different definitions of 'martyr'. The first one in my dictionary is 'one who chooses to die rather than renounce religious principles'. This is the definition the Catholic Church uses when it speaks of Catholic martyrs. I am not denying that there have been lots of martyrs of other faiths and creeds in world history. However, unless they were Catholic, they cannot be sainted.

I bet the witches are cut up about that.

Refusing to hand over the wallet is going to cause the threat of violence to become real violence. I can't help thinking that the really Christian approach is to hand it over and apologize that it does not contain enough money to give the thief a happy life, and that such happiness would be better achieved by not asking for it, and seeking forgiveness instead. But what do I know? To me Jesus was just a man attributed with many good ideas, I don't think of him as a living tripartite deity.

Who has made this rule? [ No true Christian will submit to apostasy under any threat of violence, except under more pain of duress than they can handle.] Apostasy is a strange word. Who made apostasy a sin? The whole idea that breaking a man physically can make him change his mind and kill the ideas he holds is nonsense, whether the violence comes from a pagan Roman Emperor, an Inquisitor or a modern day torturer. If somebody threatened to torture me unless I renounced my atheism I would kiss the Pope's ring (or ringpiece if required) as fast as you could say a Hail Mary. And I would not feel belittled or defeated. There would still be no God just as Galileo knew the Earth still moved. Ideas are not soluble in blood.

Eppur si muove.

But it does move.

Galileo Galilei

Attributed to Galileo after his recantation, that the Earth moves around the Sun, in 1632.

Absolutely. [Roman victims of persecution did not choose their deaths] They were not martyrs, merely victims of persecution, just like the millions of people who were persecuted by the Catholic Church and their Kings.

Martyrs of the truest sense are rare.

>I never said all battlefield soldiers were 'martyrs'. However, you downgraded their courage (which may or may not have been wise) to the cowardly bombings of terrorists (IRA, Palestinian, or otherwise).

I did not downgrade their courage, just took away a layer of pretence. Soldiers mostly fight because they have to, for a multitude of reasons. They fight for their survival, for the respect of their comrades and officers. They fight for their friends and loved ones. Very few fight only for democracy or a better future or whatever the surviving Generals say over their graves.

> That last comment is simply disgraceful. Why must you resort to such insults?

To get a reaction. Did I say something inaccurate? Is not buggering an altar boy and then asking the bishop for forgiveness a relatively common thing in the Catholic Church? I think you would be hard pressed to find evidence that showed the Catholic priesthood was under-represented among those charged with sexual offences against children.

> From my point of view, there are good martyrs and there are bad martyrs.

I think that true martyrs, those that put themselves at very high risk of death because of their beliefs and have a viable alternative and choose not to take it, are all rather dangerous people. We should avoid making too much of martyrs, it encourages more people, including those with opposite views, along the same dangerous path.

Martin

The witches?

Someone who resists a mugger by not handing over the wallet is hardly causing the "threat of violence" (initiated by the mugger, not the victim) to become real violence, for nothing is forcing the mugger to become violent. Even handing over the wallet may not defuse the situation, for the mugger may not like what he finds (no matter how much money is there) and become violent anyway.

Who made apostasy a sin?

We are called to be public witnesses of Jesus. That is why the perfect path is to never renounce that belief, even under the most extreme of tortures. Perhaps apostasy (the renunciantion of one's Christian beliefs) is a little strong, as the victim may still believe internally, but I do not know what other word to use for it.

[Ideas are not soluble in blood] I grant that, but it is a failing as far as being a public witness to Jesus. Jesus said, however, that the "spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". Not all can. As long as they seek forgiveness and repent of their weakness, they are still saved. But we must never lose sight of the fact that the persecutor is guiltier of the greater crime. As to Galileo, I'll refer you to:

[dead link]

I don't see how a martyr has to be seeking his martyrdom. According to the definition I used, the persecutors can come to you. Whether you go to them or they come to you, if you die on account of your religious principles and never renounce them, you are a martyr.

If there was a "pretence", it was not coming from me. And you are lumping all soldiers together. Did the volunteers of World War II fight because they 'had to'? The situation is more complex than that. Some were drafted and ran away. Others volunteered and charged enemy fortifications. In any war there are those who are courageous. But you tried to imply that a volunteer terrorist is on the same level as a volunteer soldier. That was the impression I gained, anyway.

> > That last comment is simply disgraceful. Why must you resort to such insults?

> To get a reaction.

And you wonder why you are labeled a 'troller'?

How is someone like St. Paul, who was executed for trying to convert others to his religion, "dangerous"? What do you mean by "dangerous"?

You could probably sum up my view this way: Any religion, philosophy, or ideology can be died for, but that does not mean it is worth dying for.

Kapisch? [sp?]

The Lieutenant of Angband

> You know, all those herbalists and midwives the good Christian folk of Europe and the American colonies burned or drowned. Did they not die for their beliefs? Is martyr so inappropriate a label for them? Am I right to conclude from your apparent irony by-pass that you are American?

I am, but that does not mean I was unaware of what you were talking about. I was wondering if you meant a specific episode of witch-hunting or witch-hunting in general. I would be leary of defining the executed witches as any sort of martyr. They were generally falsely accused, and so were not dying for beliefs they held. They were victims, certainly, but they did not die in defense of the beliefs they were accused of.

Like I said, one can be martyred for a bad or "nutty" cause. Simply being a martyr is not a reason to be celebrated per se.

You are covering a lot of ground. For instance, I specifically posited the example of a soldier charging an enemy fortification, not an Air Force plane involved in indiscriminate 'pattern bombing'. The firebombing of Hamburg, for instance, was totally unnecessary, and could be equated as an 'act of terror' in its own right. We must avoid the generalization, however, that a soldier is ipso facto on the same level of a terrorist. There have been soldiers who fought on behalf of a good cause, and who were martyred for their cause. The obverse is true as well, but that must not be taken to extremes.

Also, I am confused as to how you can say I am failing to differentiate the "causes they fight for", when I clearly state that one can be martyred for a lot of things, but that does mean that what one is martyred for is worth being killed for.

> I abhor violence. That is why I do not venerate martyrs. We have too many already.

Again, you are switching cause and effect. The one who kills the martyr is guilty of violence, not the other way around.

You are eschewing any responsibility for what you say. If you deliberately insult someone, they are not 'guilty' of 'being offended'. That is the only purpose of an insult, the hallmark of a troller. It does not deserve a winking smily.

I am reminded of a child calling others 'assholes', then declaiming any responsibility when the others point out that this is insulting. And if you are so interested in "debate", what sort of image do you think trolling imparts to you? It undercuts your credibility, and drives away those who would be your best debators.

> A dangerous man is one who puts his own safety as less important than his ideas. If any idea is worth dying for it is probably worth killing for, cheating for, stealing for and lying for. The Catholic Church is constantly using lies and justifying them in the name of some greater good.

No, your logic is all wrong. There is no logical connection between saying an idea is "worth dying for" and then concluding that it is worth killing for as well. Plenty of religions have been used as a pretext for violence, even though those religions specifically condemn this. This is not the fault of the religions themselves (the Catholic Church included), but of its practitioners.

That's really inspiring. 'This is what I believe with all my heart, but I'm not willing to die for it'.

Someone who is willing to die but not to kill can hardly be considered "dangerous". How is such a person dangerous?

>Just because people feel strongly enough to die for a cause does not mean their cause is right, or just, or improved by their death. And by venerating martyrs you are building up on that false premise and making more deaths likely.

Rubbish. It is true that just because someone dies for a cause does not mean ipso facto that the cause is worth dying for - but neither does it mean that the cause is not worth dying for. You have traded one illogical extreme for the other.

[John Lennon] The murderer was not the martyr here!

Do you understand the difference between one who brings violence to others and those who have violence brought upon them?

The Lieutenant of Angband

I notice several differences between Saint Martyrs and other "Martyrs".

First of all, a martyr has a value system that he holds as more valuable then life itself. Second, He attempts to persuade others to his values. Third, Others impose death on the Martyr for his beliefs and or values. Fourth, a martyr does not try to bring death to others. The Palestinian you mention is a killer, he is trying to kill others. Yes he is willing to die in the attempt, but he is clearly attempting to do violence unto others. He is attempting to impose his terms on others. You can also argue that Martyrs are vindicated in time, as their values become the accepted values because of intrinsic worth. The Palestinian is not trying to impose values of intrinsic worth, but his or his groups own authority upon others. The comparison to a soldier also ignores many differences. It is true that bomber pilots killed many civilians. However that was not the objective, but was collateral casualties. The Palestinian aims at the civilian, and attempts to avoid military or police. The Martyr does not try to hide behind an innocent facade until he is positioned to harm others, the Palestinian and the Terrorist try's to hide his identity. There are many differences.

As to What I call an UnVindicated Martyr; that depends on a few things. The example you had used, a terrorist or thug, however, if he was killed for his beliefs, then, I guess I might see him as a martyr or as misguided. Martyrs do not bring harm to themselves, they are harmed for their beliefs and or values. These beliefs and or values threaten the society at large simply because they what is righteous and true and hold society to account for their morality and actions. In fact, one could argue that a martyr is trying to prevent harm to those who persecute him.

Cassius Dio said "Of course Commodious isn't a god, but its rude and foolish to say so to his face."

People killed for their beliefs are called murder victims regardless of what I think of those beliefs. If they could avoid it they are also called ass holes. The second does not in any way diminish the first nor the first the second. The nature of the beliefs they died for changes nothing. This does not cover people killed for committing violent criminal acts in accordance with their beliefs. If you kill because god told you to and are hanged for it you are hanged for murder not piety.

The earliest historical person clearly recognizable as an atheist was Anaxagorus. When he heard he would be tried for atheism he ran away, found a better job elsewhere. The Athenian court held the trial anyway, convicted him and sent a messenger to inform him of the fact. Anaxagorus replied "Tell the Athenian court that nature has condemned them and me to death long ago."

We have no tradition of sacred martyrdom. Imagine what Christianity might be like had Jesus fled to Parthia, taken up teaching and died an old man full of years. Given Jewish teachings on suicide this is not illogical.

There is no difference in the truest sense between say Hitler and Joan of Arc. They both believed in what they were doing and so did a lot of other people. One could argue that Hitler at the time had more followers than Joan!