When I first read this pamphlet, I was so impressed with it I
immediately re-read it again!
I'm making it available to read here on my website in case the
site I found it from is unavailable.
20
Reasons to Abandon Christianity
by Chaz Bufe
Table of Contents
1. Christianity is based on fear
2. Christianity preys on the innocent
3. Christianity is based on dishonesty
4. Christianity is extremely egocentric
5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality
6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism
7. Christianity is cruel
8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific
9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex
10. Christianity produces sexual misery
11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of
morality
12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing
on imaginary evils
13. Christianity depreciates the natural world
14. Christianity models hierarchical, authoritarian organization
15. Christianity sanctions slavery
16. Christianity is misogynistic
17. Christianity is homophobic
18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's teachings
19. The Bible is riddled with contradictions
20. Christianity borrowed its central myths and ceremonies from
other ancient religions
This pamphlet briefly looks at many of the reasons Christianity
is undesirable from both a personal and a social point of view. All
of the matters discussed here have been dealt with elsewhere at
greater length, but that's beside the point: the purpose of 20
Reasons to Abandon Christianity is to list the most outstanding
misery-producing and socially destructive qualities of Christianity
in one place. When considered in toto, they lead to an irresistible
conclusion: Christianity must be abandoned, for the sake of both
personal happiness and social progress.
As regards the title, "abandon" -
rather than "suppress" or "do away with" - was chosen deliberately.
Attempts to coercively suppress beliefs are not only ethically
wrong, but in the long run they are often ineffective - as the
recent resurgence of religion in the former Soviet Union
demonstrates. If Christianity is ever to disappear, it will be
because individual human beings wake up, abandon their destructive,
repressive beliefs, and choose life, choose to be here now.
1.
Christianity is based on fear.
While today there are liberal
clergy who preach a gospel of love, they ignore the bulk of
Christian teachings, not to mention the bulk of Christian history.
Throughout almost its entire time on Earth, the motor driving
Christianity has been - in addition to the fear of death - fear of
the devil and fear of hell. One can only imagine how potent these
threats seemed prior to the rise of science and rational thinking,
which have largely robbed these bogeys of their power to inspire
terror. But even today, the existence of the devil and hell are
cardinal doctrinal tenets of almost all Christian creeds, and many
fundamentalist preachers still openly resort to terrorizing their
followers with lurid, sadistic portraits of the suffering of
nonbelievers after death. This is not an attempt to convince through
logic and reason; it is not an attempt to appeal to the better
nature of individuals; rather, it is an attempt to whip the flock
into line through threats, through appeals to a base part of human
nature - fear and cowardice.
2. Christianity preys on the innocent.
If Christian fear-mongering were directed solely at adults, it would
be bad enough, but Christians routinely terrorize helpless children
through grisly depictions of the endless horrors and suffering
they'll be subjected to if they don't live good Christian lives.
Christianity has darkened the early years of generation after
generation of children, who have lived in terror of dying while in
mortal sin and going to endless torment as a result. All of these
children were trusting of adults, and they did not have the ability
to analyze what they were being told; they were simply helpless
victims, who, ironically, victimized following generations in the
same manner that they themselves had been victimized. The nearly
2,000 years of Christian terrorizing of children ranks as one of its
greatest crimes. And it's one that continues to this day.
As an example of Christianity's cruel brainwashing of the innocent,
consider this quotation from an officially approved, 19th-century
Catholic children's book Tracts for Spiritual Reading, by
Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R.:
Look into this little prison.
In the middle of it there is a boy, a young man. He is silent;
despair is on him. His eyes are burning like two burning
coals. Two long flames come out of his ears. His breathing is
difficult. Sometimes he opens his mouth and breath of blazing
fire rolls out of it. But listen! There is a sound just like
that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is
boiling? No; then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is
boiling in the scalding veins of that boy. The brain is boiling
and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones.
Ask him why he is thus tormented. His answer is that when he was
alive, his blood boiled to do very wicked things.
There are many similar passages in
this book. Commenting on it, William Meagher, Vicar - General of
Dublin, states in his Approbation:
"I have carefully read over this
Little Volume for Children and have found nothing whatever in it
contrary to the doctrines of the Holy Faith; but on the
contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct and edify the youthful
classes for whose benefit it has been written."
3. Christianity is based on
dishonesty. The Christian
appeal to fear, to cowardice, is an admission the evidence
supporting Christian beliefs is far from compelling. If the evidence
were such that Christianity's truth was immediately apparent to
anyone who considered it, Christians - including those who wrote the
Gospels - would feel no need to resort to the cheap tactic of using
fear - inducing threats to inspire "belief." ("Lip service" is a
more accurate term.) That the Christian clergy have been more than
willing to accept such lip service (plus the dollars and obedience
that go with it) in place of genuine belief, is an additional
indictment of the basic dishonesty of Christianity.
How deep dishonesty runs in Christianity can be gauged by one of the
most popular Christian arguments for belief in God: Pascal's Wager.
This "wager" holds that it's safer to "believe" in God (as if belief
were volitional!) than not to believe, because God might exist, and
if it does, it will save "believers" and condemn nonbelievers to
hell after death. This is an appeal to pure cowardice. It has
absolutely nothing to do with the search for truth. Instead, it's an
appeal to abandon honesty and intellectual integrity, and to pretend
that lip service is the same thing as actual belief. If the
patriarchal God of Christianity really exists, one wonders how it
would judge the cowards and hypocrites who advance and bow to this
particularly craven "wager."
4. Christianity is extremely egocentric.
The deep egocentrism of
Christianity is intimately tied to its reliance on fear. In addition
to the fears of the devil and hell, Christianity plays on another of
humankinds most basic fears: death, the dissolution of the
individual ego. Perhaps Christianity's strongest appeal is its
promise of eternal life. While there is absolutely no evidence to
support this claim, most people are so terrified of death they
cling to this treacly promise insisting, like frightened children,
that it must be true. Nietzsche put the matter well: "salvation
of the soul - in plain words, the world revolves around me."
It's difficult to see anything spiritual in this desperate grasping
at straws - this desperate grasping at the illusion of personal
immortality.
Another manifestation of the extreme egotism of Christianity is the
belief God is intimately concerned with picayune aspects of,
and directly intervenes in, the lives of individuals. If God, the
creator and controller of the universe, is vitally concerned with
your sex life, you must be pretty damned important. Many Christians
take this particular form of egotism much further and actually
imagine God has a plan for them, or God directly talks to,
directs, or even does favors for them.(1) If one
ignored the frequent and glaring contradictions in this supposed
divine guidance, and the dead bodies sometimes left in its wake, one
could almost believe the individuals making such claims are
guided by God. But one can't ignore the contradictions in and the
oftentimes horrible results of following such "divine guidance." As
"Agent Mulder" put it (perhaps paraphrasing Thomas Szasz) in a 1998
X-Files episode, "When you talk to God it's prayer, but when God
talks to you it's schizophrenia. God may have his reasons, but he
sure seems to employ a lot of psychotics to carry out his job
orders."
In less extreme cases, the insistence one is receiving divine
guidance or special treatment from God is usually the attempt of
those who feel worthless - or helpless, adrift in an uncaring
universe - to feel important or cared for. This less sinister form
of egotism is commonly found in the expressions of disaster
survivors that "God must have had a reason for saving me" (in
contrast to their less-worthy-of-life fellow disaster victims, whom
God - who controls all things - killed). Again, it's very difficult
to see anything spiritual in such egocentricity.
5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality.
It's only natural those
who believe (or play act at believing) they have a direct line to
the Almighty would feel superior to others. This is so obvious
it needs little elaboration. A brief look at religious terminology
confirms it. Christians have often called themselves "God's people,"
"the chosen people," "the elect," "the righteous," etc., while
nonbelievers have been labeled "heathens," "infidels," and
"atheistic Communists" (as if atheism and Communism are intimately
connected). This sets up a two-tiered division of humanity, in which
"God's people" feel superior to those who are not "God's people."
That many competing religions with contradictory beliefs make the
same claim seems not to matter at all to the members of the various
sects that claim to be the only carriers of "the true faith." The
carnage that results when two competing sects of "God's people"
collide - as in Ireland and Palestine - would be quite amusing but
for the suffering it causes.
6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism.
Given that Christians claim to have the one true faith, to have a
book that is the Word of God, and (in many cases) to receive
guidance directly from God, they feel little or no compunction about
using force and coercion to enforce "God's Will" (which they, of
course, interpret and understand). Given they believe (or
pretend) they're receiving orders from the Almighty (who would
cast them into hell should they disobey), it's little wonder
they feel no reluctance, and in fact are eager, to intrude into the
most personal aspects of the lives of nonbelievers. This is most
obvious today in the area of sex, with Christians attempting to deny
women the right to abortion and to mandate near-useless
abstinence-only sex "education" in the public schools. It's also
obvious in the area of education, with Christians attempting to
force biology teachers to teach their creation myth (but not those
of Hindus, Native Americans, et al.) in place of (or as being
equally valid as) the very well established theory of evolution. But
the authoritarian tendencies of Christianity reach much further than
this.
Up until well into the 20th century in the United States and other
Christian countries (notably Ireland), Christian churches pressured
governments into passing laws forbidding the sale and distribution
of birth control devices, and they also managed to enact laws
forbidding even the description of birth control devices. This
assault on free speech was part and parcel of Christianity's
shameful history of attempting to suppress "indecent" and
"subversive" materials (and to throw their producers in jail or burn
them alive). This anti-free speech stance of Christianity dates back
centuries, with the cases of Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno (who
was burnt alive) being good illustrations of it. Perhaps the most
colorful example of this intrusive Christian tendency toward
censorship is the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books, which
dates from the 16th century and which was abandoned only in the
latter part of the 20th century - not because the church recognized
it as a crime against human freedom, but because it could no longer
be enforced (not that it was ever systematically enforced - that was
too big a job even for the Inquisition).
Christian authoritarianism extends, however, far beyond attempts to
suppress free speech; it extends even to attempts to suppress
freedom of belief. In the 15th century, under Ferdinand and Isabella
at about the time of Columbus's discovery of the New World, Spain's
Jews were ordered either to convert to Christianity or to flee the
country; about half chose exile, while those who remained, the "Conversos,"
were favorite targets of the Inquisition. A few years later, Spain's
Muslims were forced to make a similar choice.
This Christian hatred of freedom of belief - and of individual
freedom in general - extends to this day. Up until the late 19th
century in England, atheists who had the temerity to openly advocate
their beliefs were jailed. Even today in many parts of the United
States laws still exist that forbid atheists from serving on juries
or from holding public office. And it's no mystery what the driving
force is behind laws against victimless "crimes" such as nudity,
sodomy, fornication, cohabitation, and prostitution.
If your non-intrusive beliefs or actions are not in accord with
Christian "morality," you can bet Christians will feel
completely justified - not to mention righteous - in poking their
noses (often in the form of state police agencies) into your private
life.
7. Christianity is cruel.
Throughout its history, cruelty -
both to self and others - has been one of the most prominent
features of Christianity. From its very start, Christianity, with
its bleak view of life, its emphasis upon sexual sin, and its almost
impossible-to-meet demands for sexual "purity," encouraged guilt,
penance, and self-torture. Today, this self - torture is primarily
psychological, in the form of guilt arising from following (or
denying, and thus obsessing over) one's natural sexual desires. In
earlier centuries, it was often physical. W.E.H. Lecky relates:
For about two centuries, the
hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof
of excellence. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as
a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired
had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. But of all the
evidences of the loathsome excesses to which this spirit was
carried, the life of St. Simeon Stylites is probably the most
remarkable. He had bound a rope around him so that it became
embedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it. A horrible
stench, intolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from his body,
and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled
his bed. For a whole year, we are told, St. Simeon stood upon
one leg, the other being covered with hideous ulcers, while his
biographer [St. Anthony] was commissioned to stand by his side,
to pick up the worms that fell from his body, and to replace
them in the sores, the saint saying to the worms, "Eat what God
has given you." From every quarter pilgrims of every degree
thronged to do him homage. A crowd of prelates followed him to
the grave. A brilliant star is said to have shone miraculously
over his pillar; the general voice of mankind pronounced him to
be the highest model of a Christian saint; and several other
anchorites [Christian hermits] imitated or emulated his
penances.
Given that the Bible nowhere condemns
torture and sometimes prescribes shockingly cruel penalties (such as
burning alive), and that Christians so wholeheartedly approved of
self-torture, it's not surprising they thought little of
inflicting appallingly cruel treatment upon others. At the height of
Christianity's power and influence, hundreds of thousands of
"witches" were brutally tortured and burned alive under the auspices
of ecclesiastical witch finders, and the Inquisition visited
similarly cruel treatment upon those accused of heresy. Henry
Charles Lea records:
Two hundred wretches crowded the
filthy gaol and it was requisite to forbid the rest of the
Conversos [Jews intimidated into converting to Christianity]
from leaving the city [Jaen, Spain] without a license. With
Diego's assistance [Diego de Algeciras, a petty criminal and
kept perjurer] and the free use of torture, on both accused and
witnesses, it was not difficult to obtain whatever evidence was
desired. The notary of the tribunal, Antonio de Barcena, was
especially successful in this. On one occasion, he locked a
young girl of fifteen in a room, stripped her naked and scourged
her until she consented to bear testimony against her mother. A
prisoner was carried in a chair to the auto da fe with his feet
burnt to the bone; he and his wife were burnt alive. The cells
in which the unfortunates were confined in heavy chains were
narrow, dark, humid, filthy and overrun with vermin, while their
sequestrated property was squandered by the officials, so that
they nearly starved in prison while their helpless children
starved outside.
While the torture and murder of
heretics and "witches" is now largely a thing of the past,
Christians can still be remarkably cruel. One current example is
provided by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.
Its members picket the funerals of victims of AIDS and gay bashings,
brandishing signs reading, "God Hates Fags," "AIDS Cures Fags," and
"Thank God for AIDS." The pastor of this church reportedly once sent
a "condolence" card to the bereaved mother of an AIDS victim,
reading "Another Dead Fag."(2) Christians are also at the
forefront of those advocating vicious, life-destroying penalties for
those who commit victimless "crimes," as well as being at the
forefront of those who support the death penalty and those who want
to make prison conditions even more barbaric than they are now.
But this should not be surprising coming from Christians, members of
a religion that teaches eternal torture is not only justified,
but the "saved" will enjoy seeing the torture of others. As St.
Thomas Aquinas put it:
In order that the happiness of
the saints may be more delightful and that they may give to God
more copious thanks for it, they are permitted perfectly to
behold the sufferings of the damned. The saints will rejoice in
the punishment of the damned.
Thus the vision of heaven of
Christianity's greatest theologian is a vision of the sadistic
enjoyment of endless torture.
8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific.
For over a millennium Christianity arrested the development of
science and scientific thinking. In Christendom, from the time of
Augustine until the Renaissance, systematic investigation of the
natural world was restricted to theological investigation - the
interpretation of biblical passages, the gleaning of clues from the
lives of the saints, etc.; there was no direct observation and
interpretation of natural processes, because that was considered a
useless pursuit, as all knowledge resided in scripture. The results
of this are well known: scientific knowledge advanced hardly an inch
in the over 1,000 years from the rise of orthodox Christianity in
the fourth century to the 1500s, and the populace was mired in the
deepest squalor and ignorance, living in dire fear of the
supernatural - believing in paranormal explanations for the most
ordinary natural events. This ignorance had tragic results: it made
the populace more than ready to accept witchcraft as an explanation
for everything from illness to thunderstorms, and hundreds of
thousands of women paid for that ignorance with their lives. One of
the commonest charges against witches was they had raised
hailstorms or other weather disturbances to cause misfortune to
their neighbors. In an era when supernatural explanations were
readily accepted, such charges held weight - and countless innocent
people died horrible deaths as a result. Another result was the
fearful populace remained very dependent upon Christianity and its
clerical wise men for protection against the supernatural evils
which they believed surrounded and constantly menaced them. For men
and women of the Middle Ages, the walls veritably crawled with
demons and witches; and their only protection from those evils was
the church.
When scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the
Renaissance - after a 1000-year-plus hiatus - organized Christianity
did everything it could to stamp it out. The cases of Copernicus and
Galileo are particularly relevant here, because when the Catholic
Church banned the Copernican theory (that the Earth revolves around
the sun) and banned Galileo from teaching it, it did not consider
the evidence for that theory: it was enough it contradicted
scripture. Given that the Copernican theory directly contradicted
the Word of God, the Catholic hierarchy reasoned it must be
false. Protestants shared this view. John Calvin rhetorically asked,
"Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that
of the Holy Spirit?"
More lately, the Catholic Church and the more liberal Protestant
congregations have realized fighting against science is a
losing battle, and they've taken to claiming there is no
contradiction between science and religion. This is disingenuous at
best. As long as Christian sects continue to claim as fact - without
offering a shred of evidence beyond the anecdotal - that physically
impossible events occurred (or are still occurring), the conflict
between science and religion will remain. That many churchmen and
many scientists seem content to let this conflict lie doesn't mean
it doesn't exist.
Today, however, the conflict between religion and science is largely
being played out in the area of public school biology education,
with Christian fundamentalists demanding their creation myth be
taught in place of (or along with) the theory of evolution in the
public schools. Their tactics rely heavily on public
misunderstanding of science. They nitpick the fossil record for its
gaps (hardly surprising given that we inhabit a geologically and
meteorologically very active planet), while offering absurd
interpretations of their own which we're supposed to accept at face
value - such as dinosaur fossils were placed in the earth by
Satan to confuse humankind, or Noah took baby dinosaurs on the
ark.
They also attempt to take advantage of public ignorance of the
nature of scientific theories. In popular use, "theory" is employed
as a synonym for "hypothesis," "conjecture," or even "wild guess,"
that is, it signifies an idea with no special merit or backing. The
use of the term in science is quite different. There, "theory"
refers to a well-developed, logically consistent explanation of a
phenomenon, and an explanation that is consistent with observed
facts. This is very different than a wild guess. But fundamentalists
deliberately confuse the two uses of the term in an attempt to make
their religious myth appear as valid as a well-supported scientific
theory.
They also attempt to confuse the issue by claiming those
non-specialists who accept the theory of evolution have no more
reason to do so than they have in accepting their religious creation
myth, or even those who accept evolution do so on "faith."
Again, this is more than a bit dishonest.
Thanks to scientific investigation, human knowledge has advanced to
the point where no one can know more than a tiny fraction of the
whole. Even the most knowledgeable scientists often know little
beyond their specialty areas. But because of the structure of
science, they (and everyone else) can feel reasonably secure in
accepting the theories developed by scientists in other disciplines
as the best possible current explanations of the areas of nature
those disciplines cover. They (and we) can feel secure doing this
because of the structure of science, and more particularly, because
of the scientific method. That method basically consists of
gathering as much information about a phenomenon (both in nature and
in the laboratory) as possible, then developing explanations for it
(hypotheses), and then testing the hypotheses to see how well they
explain the observed facts, and whether or not any of those observed
facts are inconsistent with the hypotheses. Those hypotheses that
are inconsistent with observed facts are discarded or modified,
while those that are consistent are retained, and those that survive
repeated testing are often labeled "theories," as in "the theory of
relativity" and "the theory of evolution."
This is the reason non-specialists are justified in accepting
scientific theories outside their disciplines as the best current
explanations of observed phenomena: those who developed the theories
were following standard scientific practice and reasoning - and if
they deviate from that, other scientists will quickly call them to
task.
No matter how much fundamentalists might protest to the contrary,
there is a world of difference between 'faith' in scientific
theories (produced using the scientific method, and subject to
near-continual testing and scrutiny) and faith in the entirely
unsupported myths recorded 3,000 years ago by slave-holding goat
herders.
Nearly 500 years ago Martin Luther, in his Table Talk, stated:
"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has." The opposite is
also true.
9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex.
For centuries, Christianity
has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on sex, to the exclusion
of almost everything else (except power, money, and the infliction
of cruelty). This stems from the numerous "thou shalt nots" relating
to sex in the Bible. That the Ten Commandments contain a commandment
forbidding the coveting of one's neighbor's wife, but do not even
mention slavery, torture, or cruelty - which were abundantly common
in the time the Commandments were written - speaks volumes
about their writer's preoccupation with sex (and women as property).
Today, judging from the pronouncements of many Christian leaders,
one would think "morality" consists solely of what one does in
one's bedroom. The Catholic Church is the prime example here, with
its moral pronouncements rarely going beyond the matters of birth
control and abortion (and with its moral emphasis seemingly entirely
on those matters). Also note the official Catholic view of sex
- that it's for the purpose of procreation only - reduces human
sexual relations to those of brood animals. For more than a century
the Catholic Church has also been the driving force behind efforts
to prohibit access to birth control devices and information - to
everyone, not just Catholics.
The Catholic Church, however, is far from alone in its sick
obsession with sex. The current Christian hate campaign against
homosexuals is another prominent manifestation of this perverse
preoccupation. Even at this writing, condemnation of "sodomites"
from church pulpits is still very, very common - with Christian
clergymen wringing their hands as they piously proclaim that their
words of hate have nothing to do with gay bashings and the murder of
gays.
10. Christianity produces sexual misery.
In addition to the misery
produced by authoritarian Christian intrusions into the sex lives of
non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own
adherents through its insistence that sex (except the very narrow
variety it sanctions) is evil, against God's law. Christianity
proscribes sex between unmarried people, sex outside of marriage,
homosexual relations, bestiality(3), and even "impure" sexual
thoughts. Indulging in such things can and will, in the conventional
Christian view, lead straight to hell.
Given that human beings are by nature highly sexual beings, and
their urges very often do not fit into the only officially
sanctioned Christian form of sexuality (monogamous, heterosexual
marriage), it's inevitable those who attempt to follow
Christian "morality" in this area are often miserable, as their
strongest urges run smack dab into the wall of religious belief.
This is inevitable in Christian adolescents and unmarried young
people in that the only "pure" way for them to behave is celibately
- in the strict Christian view, even masturbation is prohibited.
Phillip Roth has well described the dilemma of the
religiously/sexually repressed young in Portnoy's Complaint as
"being torn between desires that are repugnant to my conscience and
a conscience repugnant to my desires." Thus the years of
adolescence and young adulthood for many Christians are poisoned by
"sinful" urges, unfulfilled longings, and intense guilt (after the
urges become too much to bear and are acted upon).
Even after Christian young people receive a license from church and
state to have sex, they often discover the sexual release
promised by marriage is not all it's cracked up to be. One
gathers that in marriages between those who have followed Christian
rules up until marriage - that is, no sex at all - sexual ineptitude
and lack of fulfillment are all too common. Even when Christian
married people do have good sexual relations, the problems do not
end. Sexual attractions ebb and flow, and new attractions inevitably
arise. In conventional Christian relationships, one is not allowed
to act on these new attractions. One is often not even permitted to
admit such attractions exist. As Sten Linnander puts it,
"with traditional [Christian] morality, you have to choose between
being unfaithful to yourself or to another."
The dilemma is even worse for gay teens and young people in that
Christianity never offers them release from their unrequited urges.
They are simply condemned to lifelong celibacy. If they indulge
their natural desires, they become "sodomites" subject not only to
Earthly persecution (due to Christian - inspired laws), but to being
roasted alive forever in the pit. Given the internalized homophobia
Christian teachings inspire, not to mention the very real
discrimination gay people face, it's not surprising a great
many homosexually oriented Christians choose to live a lie. In most
cases, this leads to lifelong personal torture, but it can have even
more tragic results.
A prime example is Marshall Applewhite, "John Do," the guru of the
Heaven's Gate religious cult. Applewhite grew up in the South in a
repressive Christian fundamentalist family. Horrified by his
homosexual urges, he began to think of sexuality itself as evil, and
eventually underwent castration to curb his sexual urges.(4)
Several of his followers took his anti-sexual teachings to heart and
likewise underwent castration before, at 'Do's' direction, killing
themselves.
11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of
morality. Christianity not
only reduces, for all practical purposes, the question of morality
to that of sexual behavior, but by listing its prohibitions, it
encourages an "everything not prohibited is permitted" mentality.
So, for instance, medieval inquisitors tortured their victims, while
at the same time they went to lengths to avoid spilling the blood of
those they tortured - though they thought nothing of burning them
alive. Another very relevant example is until the latter part
of the 19th century Christians engaged in the slave trade, and
Christian preachers defended it, citing biblical passages, from the
pulpit. Today, with the exception of a relatively few liberal
churchgoers, Christians ignore the very real evils plaguing our
society - poverty; homelessness; hunger; militarism; a grossly
unfair distribution of wealth and income; ecological despoliation
exacerbated by corporate greed; overpopulation; sexism; racism;
homophobia; freedom-denying, invasive drug laws; an inadequate
educational system; etc., etc. - unless they're actively working to
worsen those evils in the name of Christian morality or "family
values."
12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing
on imaginary evils.
Organized Christianity is a skillful
apologist for the status quo and all the evils that go along with
it. It diverts attention from real problems by focusing attention on
sexual issues, and when confronted with social evils such as poverty
glibly dismisses them with platitudes such as, "The poor ye have
always with you." When confronted with the problems of
militarism and war, most Christians shrug and say, "That's human
nature. It's always been that way, and it always will." One
suspects 200 years ago their forebears would have said exactly
the same thing about slavery.
This regressive, conservative tendency of Christianity has been
present from its very start. The Bible is quite explicit in its
instructions to accept the status quo: "Let every soul be subject
unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers
that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall
receive to themselves damnation." (Romans 13:1-2)
13. Christianity depreciates the natural world.
In addition to its morbid
preoccupation with sex, Christianity creates social myopia through
its emphasis on the supposed afterlife - encouraging Christians not
to be concerned with "the things of this world" (except, of course,
their neighbors' sexual practices). In the conventional Christian
view, life in this "vale of tears" is not important - what matters
is preparing for the next life. (Of course it follows from this that
the "vale of tears" itself is quite unimportant - it's merely the
backdrop to the testing of the faithful.)
The Christian belief in the unimportance of happiness and well-being
in this world is well illustrated by a statement by St. Alphonsus:
It would be a great advantage to
suffer during all our lives all the torments of the martyrs in
exchange for one moment of heaven. Sufferings in this world are
a sign that God loves us and intends to save us.
This focus on the afterlife often
leads to a distinct lack of concern for the natural world, and
sometimes to outright anti-ecological attitudes. Ronald Reagan's
fundamentalist Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, went so far as
to actively encourage the strip mining and clear cutting of the
American West, reasoning that ecological damage didn't matter
because the "rapture" was at hand.
14. Christianity models hierarchical, authoritarian organization.
Christianity is perhaps the
ultimate top-down enterprise. In its simplest form, it consists of
God on top, its "servants," the clergy, next down, and the great
unwashed masses at the bottom, with those above issuing, in turn,
thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots backed by the threat of eternal
damnation. But a great many Christian sects go far beyond this,
having several layers of management and bureaucracy. Catholicism is
perhaps the most extreme example of this with its laity, monks,
nuns, priests, monsignors, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and
popes, all giving and taking orders in an almost military manner.
This type of organization cannot but accustom those in its sway -
especially those who have been indoctrinated and attending its
ceremonies since birth - into accepting hierarchical, authoritarian
organization as the natural, if not the only, form of organization.
Those who find such organization natural will see nothing wrong with
hierarchical, authoritarian organization in other forms, be they
corporations, with their multiple layers of brown-nosing management,
or governments, with their judges, legislators, presidents, and
politburos. The indoctrination by example that Christianity provides
in the area of organization is almost surely a powerful influence
against social change toward freer, more egalitarian forms of
organization.
15. Christianity sanctions slavery.
The African slave trade was
almost entirely conducted by Christians. They transported their
victims to the New World in slave ships with names such as "Mercy"
and "Jesus," where they were bought by Christians, both Catholic and
Protestant. Organized Christianity was not silent on this horror: it
actively encouraged it and engaged in it. From the friars who
enslaved Native Americans in the Southwest and Mexico to the
Protestant preachers who defended slavery from the pulpit in
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the record of Christianity as
regards slavery is quite shameful. While many abolitionists were
Christians, they were a very small group, well hated by most of
their fellow Christians.
The Christians who supported and engaged in slavery were amply
supported by the Bible, in which slavery is accepted as a given, as
simply a part of the social landscape. There are numerous biblical
passages that implicitly or explicitly endorse slavery, such as
Exodus 21:20-21: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid
with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be
punished: for he is his money." Other passages that support
slavery include Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, Titus 2:9-10, Exodus
21:2-6, Leviticus 25:44-46, 1 Peter 2:18, and 1 Timothy 6:1.
Christian slave owners in colonial America were well acquainted with
these passages.
16. Christianity is misogynistic.
Misogyny is fundamental to the basic writings of Christianity. In
passage after passage, women are encouraged - no, commanded - to
accept an inferior role, and to be ashamed of themselves for the
simple fact they are women. Misogynistic biblical passages are
so common it's difficult to know which to cite. From the New
Testament we find "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,
as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as
Christ is the head of the church..." (Ephesians 5:22-23) and "These
[redeemed] are they which were not defiled with women; . . ."
(Revelation 14:4); and from the Old Testament we find "How then
can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born
of a woman?" (Job 25:4) Other relevant New Testament passages
include Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Corinthians 11:3, 11:9, and
14:34; and 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 5:5-6. Other Old Testament passages
include Numbers 5:20-22 and Leviticus 12:2-5 and 15:17-33.
Later Christian writers extended the misogynistic themes in the
Bible with a vengeance. Tertullian, one of the early church fathers,
wrote:
In pain shall you bring forth
children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall
rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's
sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs
down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who
first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It
was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not
the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of
God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God
had to die. Woman, you are the gate to hell.
One can find similarly misogynistic -
though sometimes less venomous - statements in the writings of many
other church fathers and theologians, including St. Ambrose, St.
Anthony, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St.
Gregory of Nazianzum, and St. Jerome.
This misogynistic bias in Christianity's basic texts has long been
translated into misogyny in practice. Throughout almost the entire
time Christianity had Europe and America in its lock grip,
women were treated as chattel - they had essentially no political
rights, and their right to own property was severely restricted.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of the status of women in the ages
when Christianity was at its most powerful is the prevalence of wife
beating. This degrading, disgusting practice was very common
throughout Christendom well up into the 19th century, and under
English Common Law husbands who beat their wives were specifically
exempted from prosecution. (While wife beating is still common in
Christian lands, at least in some countries abusers are at least
sometimes prosecuted.)
At about the same time that English Common Law (with its
wife-beating exemption) was being formulated and codified,
Christians all across Europe were engaging in a half-millennium-long
orgy of torture and murder of "witches" - at the direct behest and
under the direction of the highest church authorities. The watchword
of the time was Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live," and at the very minimum hundreds of thousands of women
were brutally murdered as a result of this divine injunction, and
the papal bulls amplifying it (e.g., Spondit Pariter, by John XXII,
and Summis Desiderantes, by Innocent VIII). Andrew Dickson White
notes:
On the 7th of December, 1484,
Pope Innocent VIII sent forth the bull Summis Desiderantes. Of
all documents ever issued from Rome, imperial or papal, this has
doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest shedding of
innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more clearly dictated
by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy
of Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers.[W]itch
- finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to scour
Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their
use [by the Dominicans Heinrich Kr�mer and Jacob Sprenger] -
"The Witch Hammer", Malleus Maleficarum. With the application of
torture to thousands of women, in accordance with the precepts
laid down in the Malleus, it was not difficult to extract masses
of proof. The poor creatures writhing on the rack, held in
horror by those who had been nearest and dearest to them,
anxious only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to
anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and
judges. Under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no
limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft.
Given this bloody, hateful history,
it's not surprising that women have always held very subservient
positions in Christian churches. In fact, there appear to have been
no female clergy in any Christian church prior to the 20th century
(with the exception of those who posed as men, such as Pope Joan),
and even today a great many Christian sects (most notably the
Catholic Church) continue to resist ordaining female clergy. While a
few liberal Protestant churches have ordained women in recent years,
it's difficult to see this as a great step forward for women; it's
easier to see it as analogous to the Ku Klux Klan's appointing a few
token blacks as Klaxons.
As for the improvements in the status of women over the last two
centuries, the Christian churches either did nothing to support them
or actively opposed them. This is most obvious as regards women's
control over their own bodies. Organized Christianity has opposed
this from the start, and as late as the 1960s the Catholic Church
was still putting its energies into the imposition of laws
prohibiting access to contraceptives. Having lost that battle,
Christianity has more recently put its energies into attempts to
outlaw the right of women to abortion.
Many of those leading the fight for women's rights have had no
illusions about the misogynistic nature of Christianity. These women
included Mary Wollstonecraft, Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Margaret Sanger (whose slogan, "No God. No master,"
remains relevant to this day).
17. Christianity is homophobic.
Christianity from its beginnings has been markedly homophobic. The
biblical basis for this homophobia lies in the story of Sodom in
Genesis, and in Leviticus. Leviticus 18:22 reads: "Thou shalt not
lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination," and
Leviticus 20:13 reads: "If a man lie with mankind as he lieth
with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall
surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
This sounds remarkably harsh, yet Leviticus proscribes a great many
other things, declares many of them "abominations," and prescribes
the death penalty for several other acts, some of which are
shockingly picayune. Leviticus 17:10-13 prohibits the eating of
blood sausage; Leviticus 11:6-7 prohibits the eating of "unclean"
hares and swine; Leviticus 11:10 declares shellfish "abominations";
Leviticus 20:9 prescribes the death penalty for cursing one's father
or mother; Leviticus 20:10 prescribes the death penalty for
adultery; Leviticus 20:14 prescribes the penalty of being burnt
alive for having a three-way with one's wife and mother-in-law; and
Leviticus 20:15 declares, "And if a man lie with a beast, he
shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast"
(which seems rather unfair to the poor beast). (One suspects
American Christians have never attempted to pass laws enforcing
Leviticus 20:15, because if passed and enforced such laws would
decimate both the rural, Bible-Belt population and the cattle
industry.)
Curiously, given the multitude of prohibitions in Leviticus, the
vast majority of present-day Christians have chosen to focus only
upon Leviticus 20:13, the verse calling for the death penalty for
homosexual acts. And at least some of them haven't been averse to
acting on it. (To be fair, some Christian "reconstructionists" are
currently calling for institution of the death penalty for adultery
and atheism as well as for "sodomy.")
Throughout history, homosexuality has been illegal in Christian
lands, and the penalties have been severe. In the Middle Ages,
strangled gay men were sometimes placed on the wood piles at the
burning of witches (hence the term "faggot"). One member of the
British royalty caught having homosexual relations suffered an even
more grisly fate: Edward II's penalty was being held down while a
red hot poker was jammed through his rectum and intestines. In more
modern times, countless gay people have been jailed for years for
the victimless "crime" of having consensual sex. It was only in 2003
the Supreme Court struck down the felony laws on the books in
many American states prescribing lengthy prison terms for consensual
"sodomy." And many Christians would love to reinstate those laws.
Thus the current wave of gay bashings and murders of gay people
should come as no surprise. Christians can find justification for
such violence in the Bible and also in the hate-filled sermons
issuing from all too many pulpits in this country. If history is any
indication, the homophobic messages in those sermons will continue
to be issued for many years to come.
18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's teachings.
Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, was written at least 30 years after
Christ's death, and the newest of them might have been written more
than 200 years after his death. These texts have been amended,
translated, and re-translated so often it's extremely difficult
to gauge the accuracy of current editions - even aside from the
matter of the accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after
the death of their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus
Seminar, a colloquium of over 200 Protestant Gospel scholars mostly
employed at religious colleges and seminaries, undertook in 1985 a
multi-year investigation into the historicity of the statements and
deeds attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded
only 18% of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus
had a high likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very
real sense fundamentalists - who claim to believe in the literal
truth of the Bible - are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they
are followers of those who, decades or centuries later, put words in
his mouth.
19. The Bible, Christianity's basic text, is riddled with
contradictions.
There are a number of glaring
contradictions in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and
including some within the same books. A few examples:
". . . God cannot be tempted with
evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James:1:13)
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham." (Genesis 22:1)
". . . for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep
anger forever." (Jeremiah 3:12)
"Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever.
Thus saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 17:4)
"If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true."
(John 5:31, J.C. speaking)
"I am one that bear witness of myself . . ." (John
8:18, J.C. speaking)
and last but not least:
"I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
(Genesis 32:30)
"No man hath seen God at any time." (John 1:18)
"And I [God] will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my
back parts . . ." (Exodus 33:23)
Christian apologists typically
attempt to explain away such contradictions by claiming the
fault lies in the translation, and there were no contradictions
in the original text. It's difficult to see how this could be so,
given how direct many biblical contradictions are; but even if these
Christian apologetics held water, it would follow that every part of
the Bible should be as suspect as the contradictory sections, thus
reinforcing the previous point: that the Bible is not a reliable
guide to Christ's words.
20. Christianity borrowed its central myths and ceremonies from
other ancient religions. The
ancient world was rife with tales of virgin births, miracle-working
saviors, tripartite gods, gods taking human form, gods arising from
the dead, heavens and hells, and days of judgment. In addition to
the myths, many of the ceremonies of ancient religions also match
those of that syncretic latecomer, Christianity. To cite but one
example (there are many others), consider Mithraism, a Persian
religion predating Christianity by centuries. Mithra, the savior of
the Mithraic religion and a god who took human form, was born of a
virgin; he belonged to the holy trinity and was a link between
heaven and Earth; and he ascended into heaven after his death. His
followers believed in heaven and hell, looked forward to a day of
judgment, and referred to Mithra as "the Light of the World." They
also practiced baptism (for purification purposes) and ritual
cannibalism - the eating of bread and the drinking of wine to
symbolize the eating and drinking of the god's body and blood. Given
all this, Mithra's birthday should come as no surprise: December
25th; this event was, of course, celebrated by Mithra's followers at
midnight.
Mithraism is but the most striking example of the appearance of
these myths and ceremonies prior to the advent of Christianity. They
appear - in more scattered form - in many other pre-Christian
religions.
A Final Word: These are but
some of the major problems attending Christianity, and they provide
overwhelming reasons for its abandonment. Even if you discount
half, two-thirds, or even three-quarters of these arguments, the
conclusion is still irresistible. For further discussion of these
issues, and for consideration of many others not even mentioned
here,
please see the following books and pamphlets.
1. A friend who read the first
draft of this manuscript notes: "My moronic sister-in-law once told
me that God found her parking spots near the front door at Wal -
mart! Years later, when she developed a brain tumor, I concluded
that God must have gotten tired of finding parking places for her
and gave her the tumor so that she could get handicapped plates." As
Nietzsche put it in The Anti-Christ: "that little hypocrites and
half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of
nature are constantly broken such an enhancement of every kind of
selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with
sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this
pitiable flattery of personal vanity."
2. The Westboro Baptist Church directly addresses the question of
its hatefulness and cruelty on its web site (www.godhatesfags.com):
"Why do you preach hate? Because the Bible preaches hate. For every
one verse about God's mercy, love, compassion, etc., there are two
verses about His vengeance, hatred, wrath, etc."
3. The repeated mention of this sin in medieval ecclesiastical
writings leads one to wonder how widespread this practice was among
the Christian faithful, including the Christian clergy. One
8th-century penitential (list of sins and punishments) quoted in A.A.
Hadden's Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents states: "If a
cleric has fornicated with a quadruped let him do penance for, if he
is a simple cleric, two years, if a deacon, three years, if a
priest, seven years, if a bishop ten years."
4. Given his religious background, and that his cult mixed
Christianity with UFO beliefs, Applewhite was quite probably aware
of the divine approbation of self-castration in Matthew 19:12:
"For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's
womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men:
and there be eunuchs , which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it."
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