I believe in God, he says... he wears a cross around his neck and prays... an oh yes, I ki...

There is this case where the parents believe in god and wears crosses that refused to take their dying child to the hospital and would rather pray over them for a miraculous cure. There are priests in Africa that condemns children of being a witch or unholy just so they could gain fame despite knowing that the parent would literally kill their own child by forcing them to drink acid just because a holy man, a messenger of the almighty god, has accused their child of something ludicrous. There are priests and pastors that believe in god, prays, and wear crosses around their neck that abuse and molest children. The holy Pope Benedict XVI, a person who believes in god, wears a cross around their neck most definitely prays, and definitely knows zilch about religion, turned a blind eye to the horrific crimes committed by the pedophilic church officials.
So what's your point?
Are you saying that all the people that truly conforms to your religion never commit any kind of--ok you know what forget it . Sorry I'm just so tired of seeing religious hypocrites that I even made this comment. Sorry, but please just stop being a self righteous faggot.
Here, chew on this : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OLpeX4RRo28

People who pretend they're christians and at the same time commit horrible crimes, we know all about that! That doesn't mean chistianity is bad, it just means people are bad. People misuse religions to justify their crimes all the time and always have. People do that with all sorts of religions, philosophies and whatever. And we all know about that.
But a mangaka who creates a character has to do his homework. Since Japanese in general are not very religous and don't really link any moral standards with religion to begin with, often make the mistake to think other people are the same. They create a priest and make him do things even a very perverted and awfully mean priest wouldn't do: a real priest, wanting to kill somebody, would find some hypocritical justification for it, the way those so-called christian fundamentalists who lurk in the bushes around birth control-clinics in the States, killing gynecologists who enter or leave, will pretend that by killing these sinners, they are "the instruments of God's divine punishment", like I heard one answer a reporter who asked one of them howcome he could call himself a christian and not think of the commandment "thy shalt not kill". The slave owners in 19th century Southern US also waved their Bible and pretended slavery was justified by God and it said so in the Bible. The muslim terrorists we all are so scared of now also are convinced God wants them to kill as many people as possible and they will be rewarded for it by Him when they die.
But still, that has nothing to do with Christianity, neither catholic nor protestant, nor Isam. It has to do with how bad people can get.
If a mangaka makes a natural link between catholic christianity and crime, however, that means he doesn't know about christianity, since the crimes christians commit are being committed IN SPITE of their christianity, not BECAUSE of it. This mangaka makes it look like the killing is part of the religious ritual! That doesn't mean christians can't commit crimes, it just means Japanese mangaka don't know what christianity is all about.
You get what I mean? And Oh: btw, Pope Benedict knew perfectly well about what paedophilic priests had done. Only, everything he did isn't necessarily known to us. Besides, most of the crimes of that sort he had to deal with were committed in the past, and most of the culprits had already died. The fact that we didn't hear he threw tons of priests in jail (he isn't a judge, he can't throw people in jail!) doesn't mean he turned a blind eye. And he's been replaced by an other Pope anyway by now, he was Pope for only a short time, while most of those things happened during the time of his predecessor. Popes aren't presidents, they can't judge things.
All I'm saying is when you're a comic drawer, you have to know what your'e talking about, and do research about the subject before you start telling your story.

Damn right

Hi, fellow Belgian :-P
Glad to see someone agrees. I've had my fill of debates on line over all sorts of subjects. Seems like everyone wants to argue all the time, lately, instead of just chat about stuff!
You Flemish or Wallonian? Nederlands or Français?
just curious...

Tell me about it. People connect religion to crime way too much these days.
I'm from West-Flanders btw :)
How about you?

Hey, me too, Ypres! Oeist, joenk? :-P
I hate it how so many people keep calling all Catholic priests peadophiles. As if there aren't any peodophiles in the world except Catholic priests! It's so unfair. I have known so many great and wonderful, generous priests in my life (I'm old!), it's as if they never existed. Same thing with all those good and faithful muslims who never hurt a fly but who keep being called terrorists anyway.
Still, compared to YouTube this site is very peaceful... Japanese good manners are contageous, I guess! Or maybe because 99% of manga fans are girls and women? That must be it. I sometimes think I'm the only guy here...

I'm from Roeselare :p
Though I know no priests myself, the priests I met in my life were all kind men, dedicating their life to God, trying to help the world by spreading his words.. But I'm not very Catholic so well... (￣∇￣")
Though I know no guys personally here, I did talk with some guys on this site in the past. So you're not alone, don't despair ;)

Yeah? Roeselare, I've lived there for a while, didn't like it at all. I went to school in Bruges, and if you're used to living in places like Ypres and Bruges, nearly all other cities in Belgium look ugly, but I guess Ypres and Bruges spoil a person. So I went back to my roots in Ypres.
I noticed that people from Roeselare are very chauvinistic about their town, by the way; if you'd dare to say it's ugly, they'd get very angry!
It feels quite weird to speak English to someone who lives about 26 km away... doesn't it?

I use English all the time, because I'm studying a course given entirely in English, so I don't think it's weird at all. :p
Hm.. I'm studying in Gent right now so I get what you mean about my city but I don't think of Roeselare as ugly, I would describe it as boring instead. Especially when you try living somewhere else. Also, defending the city you like to live in is normal, isn't it? Roeselare did it's best to make itself pretty by using so many different styles to build their houses, after all.
Why do you think Roeselare is ugly, exactly?

Merely because it's not like Ypres or Bruges, basically, I mean like an authenthic medieval city, you know? A belfry, step gables, gothic cathedrals etcetera.
Belgians usually find their architecture ugly in general, compared to countries like Italy or Portugal, where the past still lives on in every city. In Belgium, Gent, Antwerp and Brussels have some of it left, and Leuven, Liège... but not much. Ypres and Bruges are the only cities that still look exactly like they did in the, say, 17th century at least. Whith gates and ramparts and the lot. I have a map of my town from 1646, and I can point on that map the exact location where my house could be and say: "look, that's where I live!".
If you're that demanding, historic accuracy and authenticity speaking, not many cities in Belgium can meet the requirements, do they... not entirely, I mean. Just Bruges and Ypres. Do you know of an other one? That's what I mean. Brussels has this amazing Grand Place, Antwerp has one too and several huge 16th century guild houses, ... Leuven has that fabulous gothic City Hall... but none of them are completely like they were 500 years ago, the way Bruges or Ypres. In fact, they couldn't, since we've been bombed flat and ran over by enemies and conquererors so many times it's a miracle anything has been able tu survive unharmed until now. Matter of fact, Ypres was totally bombed to smithereens during world war 1, but since it already was a completely "classified" city back then, it was restaured the way it had to be, so now you can't see at all it was once shot to crumbles.
Of course, cities aren't just beautiful if they're historically authentic; and they don't have to be beautiful at all, technically, as long as they're fun to live in. Right? And if i't the place you were born, spent your childhood in, have nice memories of, you'll love it anyway, no matter how ugly it is to an outsider who has different requirements. It's not like you've found a job somewhere and arrive in a town from somewhere else, and say to yourself: My! this is ugly!! :-{ , because then you're comparing to where you come from, and if you liked that place better, even if it's just as ugly, you'll hate the new place regardless of what it looks like. Imagine what'll happen if you arrive in any old place after having spent your childhood in places like Bruges and Ypres!
That saying, some people consider the looks of the architecture of a city to be totally unimportant to begin with. Beautiful isn't all a city has to be.
You're writing excellent English. That course is doing you good!
Actually, Roeselare was even more boring when I lived there, during the 1980's...
If you want to answer back in larger boxes, you can go to [email protected] I'm a comic drawer, in case you're interested how it's done. I'm an old grampa, so there's no risk (≧∀≦)

It's not religion that causes the worst crimes in history, it's people...
The problem with the Japanese mangaka we were talking about was not that they depict Christianity in a bad way, but that they depict it in a undocumented way, that they don't try to find out what the religion is all about before they start to use it as a subject in their stories. They just don't do their homework properly. That's all.
Crimes are committed by people, not religions; the people who want do commit them, often use religions as an excuse to justify their crimes, but they can use something else to do that just as well: political philosophies, like communism and capitalism, racism, separatism, pattriottism, whatever, and if there is nothing to justify it, they will make up something new. Religions were never invented by their founders to allow horrors to be justified, but to make the world better. But whoever wants an excuse to commit genocide or so, needs a pretext to make people go along with it; it has to be something that feeds on basic instincts such as fear, anger, jealousy. If you can convince the people that some other group is dangerous, a threat to them, or that they are stealing from them, or that they are despiccable for some other reason, calling them "untermenschen" like Hitler did, or "infidel" like Osama Bin Laden did, the people who will believe you will become aggressive and go along with you in your actions the way the nazis did to try and exterminate 80 million people, or the way the followers of Chizuo Matsumoto did when they were told to blow deadly sarin gas into the Tokyo subway. This lunatic used the most pacific religion you can find, Bouddhism, to make them do so. What better proof is there to show that any old excuse will do to make people commit awful things?
So, again, it's not the religions, it's the people! If it was just religions, it would be too easy...

1st It would be a mortal sin for a Catholic to let a child die instead of taking them to the hospital. I believe your accusation should be directed at Christian Science, not Catholicism. 2nd No priest would accuse someone of witchcraft and dictate that they be killed. It's not a Catholic Priest you're thinking of so don't say "priest" when accusing the clergy of using their influence over parents to make their children drink acid. That's a disgustingly ridiculous charge. 3rd The abuse of children is against the law. The Catholic Church supports the law. Tell me what the pope is supposed to do about priests who break the law? I don't think the justice system of any country would welcome intervention by the Church in such things as child abuse. Should the pope jump in and make a citizen's arrest? What you're saying is ridiculous. Finally, no, I'm not a practicing Catholic because I refuse to be a hypocrite, but I was raised a Catholic, and I know what I'm talking about.

Wearing a cross doesn't link the mangaka's story to Christianity. The cross is an ancient symbol and not the sole province of Christianity. If the mangakas had their characters wearing a crucifix, that would directly link them to Christianity, but wearing a cross doesn't. I do hear what you're saying about people doing the wrongs and not religion. I will point out that the mangakas who author yaoi are writing their stories in an alternative universe. The story made me wonder which god their characters believe in because there's a lot of them. heh.

Mangaka (no s, even in plural) don't only use Christian parafernalia in manga set in alternative worlds, but in realistic stories as well. Not just crosses but churches and altars and crucifixes, saints and the lot, just because they thing it look good; that's also the reason why they seem to prefer Catholic religion to Protestant versions: catholicism looks better in every way. But being a Christian isn't just wearing crosses and going to church and doing rituals, it's a moral way of living.
Aside from that, in this particular manga it's not just a guy who wears a cross because he thinks it looks good, but who actually IS a priest. And he does all sorts of things and says all sorts of things a catholic priest (even a bad one) would never say nor do, simply because mangaka don't know what catholicism or christianity is about. Lack of research, nothing more.
Japan always had a basic polytheistic animist-type belief, called Shinto. It's a lot like the faith of their ethnic relatives the Inuit and Native Americans: every part of Nature being "animated" by some divine energy. That's why you find so many manga and stories about temples where there's a "god of the rivers" or a "god of the mountain" or of anything else being worshipped. This is a non-exclusive belief, that you can honor besides buddhism, which is basically a variety of Hinduistic reincarnation faith, except for the principle of One God Brahma representing himself in all sorts of Avatars. Buddha didn't use that in his philosophy, but he was Indian, and so he was raised into the principle of reincarnation. He merely made up a way to get to Nirvana without having to be reincarnated a zillion times and suffer and die all those times, but actually do things that made you get there earlier. He also never forbade his followers to believe in any other god; so the Chinese took over Buddhism and honored it along with their Shamanism and their Worshipping of the Ancestors, and the Japanese took Buddhism to honor it along with their Shinto. And if they wanted to be Christians, that would be allright too, as far as the Japanese way would... except, our faiths, Christianity (all the types), Islam and Judaism, all are totally exclusive and intolerant towards other faiths: it says in the Old Testament you should destroy all heathen "idols" because "our God" wants us to do so. That's what made it such an excellent excuse to justify crimes... Just call a group "heathens", "heretics", "infidel", "pagans", whatever, was often enough to justify genocide.
Japan never had that sort of mentality: their religions weren't "moral dictatorships" the way ours are. So it's hard for a Japanese to imagine that otherwise religious people can be like that... But if you're a mangaka, and you want to make a story about some facet of some civilisation other than yours, you have to try and find out how these people think and behave, and not make them behave and think like you would in the same circumstances.

Now for this particular story: if this mangaka had had the slightest knowledge of what Catholic priests do and don't, the first thing this priest, however much he hates the father of the child, even if he would have to kill it, would be to baptize it, so it would go to Heaven. Cahtolic Church emphasizes more on the words of Jesus rather than those of Moses: not so much an Eye for an Eye, but Judge not lest judgement will be passed upon you. Jesus didn't like religious rules for the sake of the rules alone, if they infringed on the more important rule, namely Love thy neighbour like thyself. So even if he would have had to kill the child, before it would become evil, he would have baptized it first, to take away the Original Sin, with which every human is born according to the Bible. Protestant churches don't baptize children at birth: they leave it up to the adult himself, to decide whether he wants to be baptized. Since Protestants listen more to Moses than to Jesus, they are much more cruel and unforgiving, which gives way for all sorts of sects like those who refuse inoculations or hospitalizing or blood transfusion or even taking medicine, even if it causes their child's death: Catholics would never do that, because it's against the Love-rule, which is All-Important.
I can imagine mangaka are often too busy to try and learn all the different aspects of foreign religions, but since I'm a comic drawer myself, and we have to do our research most meticulously else we don't get published in Europe, I allow myself this criticism, even if I understand why it doesn't come up naturally in a Japanese head to check wheter people in other cultures don't hold up such loose and tolerant standards on morality and faith like they do!

Atheists really love to blame religion for everything bad that happens in this world. It is like they cannot compute in their mind that human is faulty. "Just blame everything on religion." Rubbish

I noticed that too. And to think that atheism, technically, is a religion too: they WANT you to believe that God does not believe, and that anybody who does believe in God has to be despised, ridiculized, hated, converted or faught against, just like the most agressive of religions. So, it is a religion. And everybody who doesn't agree with them is a heathen! So, it has everything in common with the most oppressive of religions.
So annoying...

Atheists simply don't believe in god. Atheism is not a religion. You might call it a philosophy, a way of thinking, existentialism, but in no way is it a religion. In general, the atheists I've known are some of the most morally responsible people I've ever met. The bad behavior you're describing is not as much about atheism as it is about spiritually immature people.

I'm not really talking about the principles of atheism, and what makes a faith into a religion or not, but about the way it stands towards believers of "other" religions: an atheist considers them all to be wrong. And he's the only one who's right. THAT's what makes it a faith on its own. Get what I mean?
I don't doubt one second there's plenty of okay people who're atheists, just as there are plenty of okay christians, jews, muslims, buddhists etcetera.
The only way to not believe in any deity or absolute Truth is to be an agnostic.
I made a typo in my former post, I notice that now, but it's too late to edit it... "they want you to believe that God doesn't exist", it should have been. One can only edit in the private notices.

I do see your point, but what I notice is that everyone involved in the whole religion thing thinks theirs is right, and everyone else is going to hell. When I think of the violence and evil one must allow into their mind in order to embrace the belief in hell, it makes me ashamed to be a member of the human race. So Just being a self-righteous badly behaved atheist does seem obnoxious, it doesn't seem as obnoxious as an equivalent religious freak.

Well, I know a few obnoxious atheists, as bad as the baddest of the religious ones; but as I told you: as long as you consider everybody who's a non-atheist WRONG, and atheism the only real absolute Truth, there's really no difference between you and any religious fanatic. That's what atheism has in common with all faiths, and in fact makes it to be a faith itself.
As I said: the only ones who never ever inflict some absolute Truth on anybody are agnostics, because to be an agnostic means you accept the fact that no human, yourself included, is able to actually know for real whether there is a god or not. An agnostic doesn't exclude anything, and therefor there's a distinct difference between agnostics and atheïsts. Agnostic comes from "γνώση" which means knowledge, and the "a" in front makes it into "no knowledge". And since an agnostic doesn't pretend to know better than anybody, he never tells you you're wrong or he's right...
In fact, I believe many people who call themselves atheists, are in fact agnostics, but haven't heard of the word and it's meaning yet. It's not so well-known as the word "atheism"
As for the crimes committed by people justifying their deeds by a faith, that is not the responsibility of said faith, but of the person committing the crime, as I said before. You can abuse any religion or philisophy; you can even make up something new and do it whit that. "Use, not abuse" is the term here. It doesn't mean the religions or philosophies are bad. It's the people...