A Fair Point

You're right. Though I'm no expert on Karl Marx's original political/economic theory, I think it can be safely said that in his mind he did not envision it resulting in the slaughter of tens of millions. That was a case of the original message being corrupted for another use.

That would be the common defense of religion or Christianity -- harm done in the name of the religion is a corruption of the original message.

Okay, fair enough. Allow me to withdraw my original complaint about Marxism and ask the question not as a negative, but as a positive:

Compare the positive things accomplished due to Marxism and the positive things accomplished due to Christianity.

The list of positive things accomplished due to Christianity is impressive: vast quantities of art; the energy behind the abolition of slavery in the 1800's; the Red Cross; the Salvation Army; countless charities, etc., etc.

Marxism?

Some might argue that "true Marxism" has never been properly tested ... that it is not proper to ask for examples of success since what Marx had in mind has been corrupted in every instance of its application. To that I would respond: what does that say about Marxism itself?

I stand by my original point, which is: any poll that returns Karl Marx as the #1 philosopher of all time is simply absurd. It's a sure sign that a bunch of lefty moon-bats hit the site and voted for Marx based on some dreamy notion of some political-economic nirvana right around the corner.

It would be akin to a poll that listed C. S. Lewis as the #1 author of literature in the second millenium. If that were the result, one would naturally expect the poll to have been hammered by a bunch of Christian right-wingers.

Note: but not really ... true Christian right-wingers hate C. S. Lewis. They consider him the anti-Christ. Honestly ... do a Google search of C. S. Lewis and some negative word like "objections" or "apostasy" or something like that. The really off-the-scale right-wingers think Lewis was a thinly-veiled Catholic bordering on paganism. ;-)

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As for Jesus and the human/divine issue: nope, sorry ... I won't go there. Too mysterious. In theological terms that's referred to as the hypostatic union. Jesus was simultaneous all-man and all-God, not man at one point and God at another, not half-man and half-God, but at any given time fully man and fully divine. Or so it is believed. This issue was forced on the early church in -- I think -- the 3rd century.

For my part, I simply accept that Jesus was both man and God in some mysterious way. Then I think to myself: "Bagwell, you're struggling to obey at the most basic level ... what makes you think pondering this deep mystery is anything other than an act of procrastination?" :-)