Why Atheists Are NOT Wasting Their Time

By Thomas Keane

***NOTE: This article was originally published by the people at www.PathofReason.com and is reprinted here with their permission.

One of the most common criticisms Atheists are confronted with is the question of why we waste so much time discussing religion, god worship, the bible, etc.? Why do we focus so much time on something we don’t believe in? Don’t we have anything better to do with our time? The reason why these questions are always so frustrating has less to do with how often we are confronted with them and more to do with how obvious the answers should be. When your child tells you they believe there is a monster in their closet or under their bed, do you ignore them or tell them the truth? If she told you that the reason she believed there was a monster under her bed was because she had read a story that told her about these monsters, wouldn’t you be curious to read this story in order to better understand how your child came to her erroneous conclusion? Now what if your daughter is 21 and has a 3 year old daughter of her own. Her boyfriend, the father of her child, is involved with a group that believes their founder (Avalon) is the second coming of Christ and is in direct communication with God. If you discovered that your daughter had also become a follower of Avalon and was teaching/raising your 3yo granddaughter to believe in the same things, would you be wasting your time if you decided to speak up and express your belief that Avalon was a fraud and even offer proof to support your opinion?

What if your daughter refused to listen and instead ran away with her boyfriend, your granddaughter and Avalon to an isolated compound somewhere and you didn’t see them again for another fifteen years? What do you think the likelihood is, that once you are finally allowed to see your, now 18yo, granddaughter, that anything you say will convince her that what she has been raised to believe isn’t true? The odds are that your words would fall on deaf ears; however, that doesn’t make your efforts meaningless. Nor does it mean you should give up. The more you learn about this cult that swallowed up your daughter and granddaughter the greater your ability will be to address the issues you have with it. After all, even the strongest barrier of misinformation can’t withstand a constant barrage of truth.

There is a reason why the majority of god worshipers are devoted to the same god that the people who raised them worshiped. It isn’t because their god is any more legitimate than any of the other 2,000+ gods mankind has invented over the years. It is simply because once myth has been established as fact in a child’s innocent, naïve mind, it is very difficult, even as an adult, for that person to shake that belief. Faith is not a synonym for fact, it is a synonym for hope and it is the definition of foolishness to devote one’s every life decision around the hope that a thing is true.

Once upon a time, people believed that the earth was the center of the universe and everything (including the sun) revolved around it. Once upon a time people believed that tossing a virgin into a volcano or carving out their still beating hearts was the only way to appease their god(s). Once upon a time people believed Zeus’ wrath resulted in thunder and lightning and Poseidon’s resulted in tidal waves. Once upon a time people believed that you could take ‘it’ with you and as a result they built elaborate tombs and filled them with treasures and even servants so that in the afterlife they would continue to enjoy the lifestyle to which they were accustomed. Once upon a time people believed in a great many things that we now know to be erroneous.

If we discovered that there were people in the world who still believed in established myth, would we be wasting our time to confront them with evidence that reveals the fallacy of their beliefs? And when a Christian or Mormon missionary travels deep into the Amazonian jungles to tell the native people there that the gods they worship are false and that they should instead believe in this or that god, aren’t they doing the same thing that an Atheist does when they contradict Christian beliefs? The only difference here seems to be that an Atheist supports his beliefs with evidence while a believer relies only on hope, AKA - faith.

What could possibly be more admirable than knowing the truth of something and, when encountering someone who only knows the lie, taking the time to share with them what you have learned. How could this ever be considered a waste of time? How many people ‘wasted their time’ trying to talk reason with a follower of Jim Jones (900 dead, 300 of whom were children). How many people ‘wasted their time’ pleading with family and/or friends who were members of the Heaven’s Gate cult? How many of the 80+ followers of David Koresh, 21 of whom were children, who died in the Waco, Texas catastrophe might have been spared if more people had ‘wasted their time’? If an Atheist had encountered a member of any of these groups you can bet that they would have spoken up. Are we to believe that a Christian would have tucked their bible away and bit their tongue?

It is in all of our best interests that we resist the tendency to dismiss the opinion of another simply because it differs from our own. If someone is willing to take the time to challenge something you believe in, the least you can do is take the time to listen and consider. Christians like to act all mystified as to why Atheists spend so much time discussing something they don’t believe in but the fact that they never protest when an Atheist wastes his or her time playing Guitar Hero or watching an American Idol marathon reveals that what they are really expressing is anxiety, not confusion. No one likes to be confronted with the prospect that what they accept as truth could possibly be a lie. But such a revelation can only benefit us, individually and as a society.

If anything it is the religious who are wasting their time. Just consider how much further along we would be as a society, not to mention as a species, if it weren’t for religion. The endless struggle for religious supremacy has led to innumerable wars and countless lost lives. Consider the incomprehensible amount of literature that was hunted down, confiscated and/or destroyed by the church. How much knowledge have we lost because of the fears of the religious? How many of our greatest minds were persecuted and imprisoned because they dared to disagree with someone’s concept of one god or another? How many dreams, ideas and inventions were snuffed out by worshipers of gods? How many more men like Aristotle, Galileo, Voltaire and Socrates would we have if not for religion? Consider all the trials, the imprisonments, the banishments, the riots, the persecutions, the genocides, the repression, the bigotry, the sexism, the mutilation and the division, so much division. Has anything in history ever divided one man from another more than religion? But it’s the Atheist who is wasting his time? Could anything be more laughable? Just imagine where we would be now as a people if we had focused on peace, coexisting, civilization, progress and philosophy instead of saving souls and deciding whose god was better than another’s. No one has wasted more of their own time, and worse, humanity’s time than the religious.

If the human race has any hope for a bright future it certainly doesn’t rest with the religious or whatever god they may worship. Their god will not create peace on earth. Your god will not protect our children from the evils of the world. His god will not reward us with eternal life. Her god will not assure our armies of success in battle. We can only rely on ourselves and on each other. There simply is no one else. And it’s not a waste of time to say so.

Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

Please visit my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Mythological Origins of Christianity

–Part Three of Three–

By Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

Continued:

The Evangelists put so much energy into obliterating any evidence of Christianity’s Gnostic and pagan sources one has to wonder what they were so afraid of. Edward Carpenter wrote: “…they took special pains to destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty.” The Church ordered all the books of the Gnostic Basilides burned, the same for Porphyry’s thirty-six volumes. All the ancient lore that filled the Apollo library was lost when Pope Gregory VII had it burned to the ground. Understanding that they contained the doctrinal basis of the Gospels, Emperor Theodosius had 27,000 schools of the Mysteries papyrus rolls destroyed. For the very same reason, Ptolemy Philadelphus had 270,000 ancient documents destroyed. It was said that the baths of the early Christians were heated with the Ancient Wisdom.

Perhaps the greatest crime the Crusaders committed was burning every book they could find, the original Hebrew scrolls among them. In 1233 twelve thousand volumes of the Talmud were burned along with the works of Maimonides. In 1244 eighteen thousand books of various kinds were destroyed. Draper reported that Cardinal Ximenes “…delivered to the flames in the square of Granada eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts.” In the New World, the Spanish Christians destroyed the lore of the native peoples and the temples that contained it.

With the original sources now destroyed, the early Christians could freely substitute whatever they chose. They changed words and inserted verses that were nonexistent in the original texts in an attempt to substantiate their new religion. Celsus, who witnessed the alterations, said of the revisionists, “Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it.”

Gerald Massey also commented on the practice, saying: “They had almost reduced the first four centuries to silence on all matters of the most vital importance for any proper understanding of the true origins of the Christian superstition. The mythos having been at last published as a human history, everything else was suppressed or forced to support the fraud.”

In 250 A.D., Eusebius left a record of the Church that reads: “But since from our great freedom we have fallen in neglect and sloth when each had begun to envy and slander the other, when we waged intestine war against each other, wounding each other with words as with swords and spears, when leaders assailed leaders, and people assailed people, hurling epithets at each other, when fraud and hypocrisy had reached the highest heights of malice … when devoid of all sense, we gave no thought to the worship of God, but believing like certain impious men, that human affairs are controlled by no providence, we heaped crime upon crime. When our pastors despising the rule of religion, fought with each other intent on nothing but abuse, threats, jealousy, hatred and mutual enmity, each claiming for himself, a principality as a sort of tyranny.”

There was little unity among the early Christians, in fact they were divided into numerous fanatical cults, each contending for place and power. There were the Arians, Nestorians, Martionites, Marionites, Jacobites, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Collyridians, Eutychians, Sabellians, Valentinians, Gnostics, Ebionites, to name just a few. All had their own interpretations of the scriptures and the version that made it to the present was simply the one that triumphed over the others.

Bishop Hilary revealed a great wisdom when commenting on the origins of the Church’s creeds, dogmas, rites and rituals, saying: “It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us, because we make creeds arbitrarily and explain them as arbitrarily. Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries; we repent of what we have done; we defend those who repent; we anathematize those whom we defend; we condemn either the doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others; and reciprocally tearing each other to pieces, we have been the cause of each other’s ruin.”

Until the triumph of Christian fanaticism, the ancient world was progressing toward true enlightenment. In addition to those already mentioned, it had produced such men as Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and many notable others. Together these men pioneered the philosophic and scientific foundations for true civilization, until the Christian Church came and laid them to waste.

Compayre said, “Once the pagan schools were closed Christianity did not open others, and after the fourth century a profound night enveloped humanity. The labor of the Greeks and Romans was a though it had never been.”

Throughout history religion and ignorance have gone hand in hand. The seeking of knowledge was an admirable pursuit everywhere except in Catholic Europe. When even the kings of Christendom were illiterate, a Moorish king’s private library held some six hundred thousand books. At a time when nearly every Christian could neither read nor write, there were eight hundred public schools in the Moorish city of Cordova. And according to S. P. Scott in The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe: “…there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant.”

The Church discouraged people from expanding their minds as the acquiring of knowledge always seemed to be accompanied by the abandonment of faith. To the church, the only ability the Christian truly needed was the ability to pray. When Celsus criticized the Christians for doing nothing to help the pagans defend the (Roman) Empire, Origen replied, “We defend it with our prayers.” Their prayers, of course, did nothing and so Rome fell and a thousand years of darkness followed.

The Church criticized Montesquieu, a humanitarian and agnostic, because he was against slavery and the use of torture. His book The Spirit of Laws was condemned. The trade in African slaves was not just unopposed by the Church but was often blessed by it. The Spanish Government’s slave charters were signed “in the name of the Most Holy Trinity.” Captain Hawkins, the notorious slave trader, named his slave ship Jesus. And from Jesus’ deck sick slaves were regularly thrown to the sharks.

But the slave trade wasn’t the only way the church amassed it wealth. During the thirteenth century, the clergy operated many brothels that were so prosperous the financers decided to tax them. The church’s treasury was also enhanced by the constant sale of counterfeit relics. Manufactured by the thousands, they included everything the church imagined Jesus, his family, and his followers could have used, owned or come into contact with. To name just a few: there was Christ’s milk teeth, his still wet tears, barbs from his Crown of Thorns, his naval, and even his foreskin, quite a few of them in fact (one account had the number at fifteen). And let’s not forget Mary’s hair, undergarments, and even vials of her milk. There were so many nails and wood fragments supposedly from the cross of the crucifixion that one could have built a score of them. Regarding the wood of the cross, Washington Irving had this to say – “There is enough extant to build a ship of the line.” A Saxon ruler proudly proclaimed to be in possession of 17,000 relics, including a branch from Moses’s burning bush and a feather plucked from the wing of the Angel Gabriel. Historian Charles Mackay reported that Spanish churches possessed the thighbones of the Virgin Mary, seven of them in fact, and that the toenails of St. Peter were so prevalent that there were enough to fill a sack. Canterbury Cathedral exhibited what they claimed to be the clay that remained after God created Adam. Every church in Europe had their own collection of “holy relics”; amazingly three of them claimed to possess the one spear that Longinus had used to pierce Jesus’ side. Understandably this caused some serious discord among the arrogant leaders of these churches. A Sultan was the first to present the supposedly real one to the city of Rome. But the French cardinals weren’t having any of it, insisting that the real one was in Paris. And the German cardinals dismissed both, proclaiming that everyone knew that the original was in Nuremberg. How typical that it never occurred to them to question the legitimacy of all three claims. Every single church on earth seems to believe that they are the center of their god’s universe.

The Crusades turned Golconda into a battleground presumably to wrest the tomb of Christ from the “unclean” hands of the infidels, but really it was motivated by the jealousy and envy of Middle Eastern riches. In an address at Clermont, Pope Urban II said: “The wealth of our enemies will be yours, and you will despoil them of their treasures.” Several hundred thousand Jews and Mohammedans in Spain were killed or banished and their property confiscated as a result of the greed of the Church. Vacandard, a Catholic historian, wrote that “the Pope granted indulgences to all who carried on this pious work.” How many thousands of years has murder and thievery been considered pious work by the church?

But it’s not only the ‘enemies’ of the church who have had their possessions taken from them, it’s the members of the church as well. This divine pilfering of the people was called “giving unto the Lord.” Why is it that with religion it is always those who have the least who are required to give the most? Why is it that the leaders of religions regularly live in mansions while their followers so often live in squalor? How many more homes and cars and vacations do the viewers of the 700 Club have to buy Pat Robertson before they wake up? But is it really a surprise that the poor are drawn in by the empty promises the church provides so copiously.

Christians have woven their “holy scriptures” into mankind’s ignorant soul and we have all paid the price – two thousand years of ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, inquisition, massacre and war. Because of religion our people hate, our nations fight, and the idea/ideal of peace has never been farther away. Because of the Bible our world leaders can’t decipher myth from history and so act upon the lie. Religion is but a way for man to control his fellow man, to rob him of his money, and their fictitious gods are simply accessories. When man hungered for answers but had none, these myths sustained them. To the robbed and starving man a rotten apple resembles ambrosia and the ravenous age that religion helped create swallowed it without chewing or worrying at its sour taste. But as that age fades away, the feeble crutch and rotten apple need to go with it. Instead, let the hungry consume the fruit the church has always forbidden. Let them eat of the tree of knowledge.

It is time for another Emancipation Proclamation.

END

Part ONE can be found here:

http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-1-of-3/

Part TWO can be found here:

http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-2-of-3/

Please visit my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Mythological Origins of Christianity

–Part Two of Three–

By Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

Continued:

The story of Daniel, who the bible shows to be a contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar, was written in Aramaic, a language not adopted by the Jews until centuries later.

The scriptures call Belshazzar a king, but the historical Belshazzar was only regent for Nabonidus, never king. Also he was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar AND it was Nabonidus, the last of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, who became ill not Nebuchadnezzar.

And what of King David’s son, Solomon (both men completely fictional characters). According to 2 Chronicles 9:23: “… all the kings of the earth sought his (Solomon’s) presence.” Odd then, that none of them mention him. He was supposed to have lived just prior to Homer and Hesiod, but these men never mention this richest and wisest one. Herodotus who traveled throughout the entire Middle East never mentions Solomon OR even the Jews!

Solomon’s “holy temple” is exalted as one of the greatest of all buildings, yet if you judge it by its measurements it was fairly small, only about 40 by 125 feet, and the chancels built around it were comparatively insignificant. Nagkon-Wat in Cambodia is 769 by 588 by 250 feet and is covered in elaborate carvings and surrounded by great columns. The stonework depicts approximately 100,000 figures, one picture spanning 240 feet. Three different times the bible states that Solomon built the walls of Jerusalem, yet in the fourteenth century B.C. the historical Jerusalem was already a walled city. Also historically false, the suggestion that Solomon began to build the temple four hundred years after the Exodus from Egypt. And when Ezim-geber, said to be the site of Solomon’s navy yard, was excavated an article stated: “Not a vestige was found of the cradles and ways where for centuries the ships of the Jewish navy were built and launched.” Truthfully it’s very unlikely that the Jews of that time ever had a ship larger than your basic fishing boat, and it is even more unlikely that they ever had a mighty kingdom, king or temple. Ancient Israel’s military power is constantly touted in the bible, but this was likely as mythical as its naval power. In fact, whenever other nations even mentioned the Jews in their military accounts, it was only ever to record their triumph over them. The literature of the Jains of India tells a very similar story as that of Solomon. And Proverbs 22:17-23:11 is almost a word for word translation of The Wisdom of Amenemope, an Egyptian book written about 1,000 B.C.

And what about the second Jewish captivity? There is just as little proof for it as there was for the first. Around the time the scriptural “return” was happening, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Babylon, yet he makes no mention of it. And his history of ancient Egypt reveals no mention of the first captivity. In fact, Herodotus never mentioned the Jews; neither did Homer, neither did Plato; neither did Socrates. But this doesn’t bother the die hard believer.

So Elijah was supposedly taken up bodily into heaven in a fiery chariot? Romulus, the founder of Rome, was also taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Similarly Mithra of Persia. But it only really happened with Elijah, right? The other stories are clearly fictional, why not the biblical one as well?

The story of Jonah and the whale is clearly a fairy tale, but is it an original fairy tale? In the Heracleid it is said that Hercules was also swallowed by a whale, and how about this, it occurred at exactly the same place, Joppa. And how many days did he remain in the whale’s belly? You guessed it, three. The Persians say that Jamshyd, their hero, was eaten by a giant sea monster and was later vomited out safe and sound upon the shore. And in the Samadeva Bhatta, and even older mythology from India, we learn of Saktadeva who was swallowed by a giant fish but was able to step out later completely unharmed.

And then we come to the Messiah. A story that is clearly unique, right? But wasn’t Hercules also born of a virgin, Alcmene, and didn’t he also have a god for a father (Zeus)? The mother of Sosiosh, the Persian was also a virgin, as was Nana, the mother of Attis. Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were sons of the god Mars, so it was with Bacchus, Aesculapius, Zarathustra, and many others. And Sanchoniathon tells us that Saturn offered his “only begotten son” to his father Uranus.

There were many historians that lived during and around the time of Jesus and some of them were the most illustrious of all time – Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, the two Plinys, Philo and Josephus, etc. Not to mention many other men of note such as Seneca, Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, the latter living till Christ, if real, would have been twenty-two. All these men were deeply interested in the doctrines and morals of their day and were all men of great intellect. So one must ask why they didn’t record this wonder-working Savior of the race? Is it because they wrote about historical matters and not mythological ones?

Livy died before Jesus began performing his miracles, however he was alive at the time of two of the most sensational and unnatural events in human history; the Immaculate Conception and virgin birth, and yet he failed to mention them. Plutarch was alive from about 46 to 120 A.D. (A(fter) the D(elusion)) but apparently never heard of Christ. Pliny the Elder was Christ’s contemporary, yet makes no mention of him. The younger Pliny, 62-110 A.D., mentions the Christians of Pontus and Bithnia but as for Jesus, he is only referred to as the object of their worship and never as a man. And Tacitus and Pliny had nothing but contempt for this new religion. Seneca, brother of Gallio, was proconsul of Achaia when Paul is said to have preached there. Seneca documented many lesser things but nothing of Paul or the wonder-working Christ. How could Jesus’ miracles, virgin birth, etc. not have been worth mentioning? Philo, a philosopher historian, lived both before and after the time of Christ, yet never mentions him. This would trouble me if I were still a believer in Christian mythology.

When Justin Martyr was attempting to convert the Jews to Christianity, he encountered a Jew named Trypho who had this to say: “Now Christ, if he has indeed been born and exists anywhere, is unknown and does not even know himself and has no power until Elias come and make him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing.” Trypho also referred to Jesus as “that Jesus who you say was crucified…” A clear and very early Jewish denial of Christ’s existence.

Matthew 1: 22&23 — “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”

This passage was translated from the Greek text which used the word parthenos, which does mean virgin, but in the original Hebrew, from which the Greek was taken, the word used is almah, which translates simply to young woman. The error was corrected in the later Greek translation, the proper Greek equivalent neanis being substituted. But, of course, the Church chose to leave it in its “virgin” Greek, and so it remains. Just another example of how these multiple revisions are less about creating a more accurate bible and more about manipulating man into believing a lie.

Matthew 2:11 – “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”

Why do none of the other gospels mention these gifts? Could it be because the author of Matthew was clearly copying earlier mythology? When Socrates was born, 469 B.C., “Magi came from the east to offer gifts at Socrates’ birth, also bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh” (The Anacalypsis). At the birth of Krishna, 1200 B.C., “angels, shepherds and the prophets attended, gold, frankincense and myrrh were brought to him.” And when Confucius was born in 598 B.C., “Five wise men from a distance came to the house, celestial music was heard in the skies and angels attended the scene” (The Five Volumes).

Rabbi Wise, an eminent scholar of the nineteenth century, searched the records of Pontus Pilate’s court, still extant, for evidence of Jesus’ trial but could find nothing.

The cross was used by the Aztecs and they never heard of Christ until his followers came to rob, rape, and murder them. Like all Christian paraphernalia, the cross is just another appropriation of pagan mythology.

Justin Martyr thoroughly chronicled the early Christians and yet never mentioned Paul or his Epistles. The same with Tertullian, who stated that “The Epistle to the Hebrews” was written by Barnabas. And the second century writer, Marcion, said The Epistle to the Ephesians was formerly called the Epistle to the Laodiceans.

The title originally given to Jesus was Chrest but by the time the Christians got done with it, second and third century, it was Christ. In his Apology, Justin Martyr calls his coreligionists Chrestians. Massey said, “In Bockh’s Christian Inscriptions, numbering 1,287, there is not a single instance of an earlier date than the third century wherein the name is not written Chrest or Chreist.” The devotees of this somewhat obscure doctrine were called Chrestianoi. Their headquarters was located in Asia Minor, specifically Antioch, and it was here, not in Jerusalem, that they first became known as Chrestians, now written Christians. The Judean sect didn’t even call themselves Christians; they preferred Nazarenes, Galileans, and Brethren. It was only later, disdainfully, that the label Christian was applied to them.

Regarding the teachings of Jesus, almost identical principles were suggested by Hillel: “Judge not thy neighbor until thou hast been in his place.” “Do not do unto others what thou wouldst not they should do unto thee; this is the whole of the law…” And similar ideas were taught by Socrates and Plato, Buddha and Confucius. “The doctrine of our master (Confucius) consists in having an invariable correctness of heart, and in doing towards others as we would that they should do to us.”

In his History of Moral Philosophy, Staeudlin said, “In reading Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, I often believe myself hearing the sage of Nazareth. The dignity of man, the all surpassing value of virtue, the independence and fortitude of the righteous man, the superior value of spiritual qualities as compared to all worldly goods, the sacrifices of selfish enjoyments and of life for the sake of virtue and truth – all these ideals, so worthy of reverence, we find in the one as well as in the other. The striking resemblance between the Christian and the stoic doctrine … cannot escape being noticed by all.”

This is the end of Part Two.

Part Three can be found here:

 http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-3-of-3/

 Part ONE can be found here:

http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-1-of-3/

Please visit my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Mythological Origins of Christianity

–Part One of Three–

By Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

“The Hebrews merely used for their poetic imagery the characteristic beliefs of the people to whom they made direct reference.” — E. E. Goldsmith (from Ancient Pagan Symbols, p. 94)

“The religion of the Masters – the Babylonians and Assyrians – was transferred almost bodily into Christianity.” — Madame Blavatsky

Far from “the word of God”, the bible is simply a collection of stolen pagan mythology. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden were taken from the Babylonian account. The Hebrew word Eden comes from an old Babylonian name for Mesopotamia, Gan-Eden, the garden of the Middle East. Noah’s Flood is just one of around four hundred flood accounts and the equivalent of the Ark and Mt. Ararat can be found in many of them. Even the names given to Noah’s sons are not original. And the recycled mythology continues with Moses, who is clearly fashioned after the Syrian Mises, and the ‘laws’ found in Exodus are obviously influenced by Hammurabi’s code. Egyptian scriptures even supplied the biblical Messiah. Between Jesus and the Egyptian Horus there are hundreds of similarities, much like those between Christ and Krishna. One of the oldest known civilizations, the Sumerians, were one of the first to keep a written record of their beliefs. The similarities between the stories written on these surviving clay tablets and the ones contained in the bible are so striking and so numerous it would be easier simply to direct you to a few websites that thoroughly catalog the parallels. You can find them here: 1, 2.

And let’s consider the numerology that is so prevalent in the bible. The bible is Hebrew mythology and this is why so many events in Jewish history take seven days or take place on the seventh day or year and require forty days or years to occur. SEVEN appears in the bible (KJV) a total of 668 times and the number FORTY appears a total of 158 times. Seven is the word for week in Hebrew but the world/universe being created in seven days fable is by no means original as almost every ancient cosmology was based on it. The Greeks believed their gods created the world in a week of seven days, and in the Hindu Purânas, Brahma does the same. You can find the names of these seven days in Hindu manuscripts as early as 5,000 B.C. And it wasn’t the Hebrews who first made the seventh day a sacred day. Hesiod (eighth century) said, “The seventh is the sacred day.” Plato wrote: “The gods, pitying the laborious nature of men ordained for them as a rest from all their labors, the succession of religious festivals.” The first of these was every seventh day. The sun god Apollo had the seventh day of every month dedicated to him, thus Sunday. Even the word Sabbath didn’t originate with the Hebrews. Derived from the Babylonian word Sabattu, meaning day of rest, it was observed by the Babylonians long before the Hebrews adopted it.

And consider the “tree of life”. Every ancient race has had its “tree of life.” Zeus gave the Hesperides a tree that bore golden apples (Gogard). Zeus placed Ladon, a serpent, at the base of the tree to guard it; with the Norse it was Yggdrasil, the ash, at the foot of which was Nidhogg, their serpent. For the Tibetans, the “tree of life” was Zampun, and with the Persians, it was Homa. The Hindu god, Siva, sent a fig tree to woman and prompted her to tempt her husband with the fruit. She obeyed, telling the man it would grant him immortality. After the man ate, Siva cursed him. “The mundane tree of life” was symbolized by the oak tree with the Druids. Even the Chinese had their “tree of knowledge,” Sung-Ming-Shu.

Even the name Adam is not Hebrew in origin. Adam Adami can be found in Chaldean scriptures that predate those of the Hebrews. Among some ancient Babylonian clay tablets an account of creation identical with that of the bible was found. The name of the first man? Adamu. And in The Prophecies by Ramutsariar, a Hindu book predating the bible by two thousand years, the creation myth is again almost identical. And the name of the first man? Adama. Oh, and the name of the first woman? Heva. Strange how the authors of the bible thought that simply removing a single letter was enough to lay claim to another’s work. This is the reason why one shouldn’t confuse the Ethiopia of the bible for the African Ethiopia. Return the A to the front of the word and you discover it comes from the Greek Aethiopia (mythic land of darkness and mystery).

So the God of the bible put Adam to sleep and removed a rib (bone) to create woman? Nothing new there. According to the Tahitans, their god, Taaroa, “put men to sleep for long ages,” and he also took a bone (Ivi) from man, and it became a woman.

Regarding Noah’s Ark, the word ark is Egyptian. It means a chest or box for preserving something sacred. Another idea that is by no means original; the Hindus had their Argha, the Greeks, their Cista, the Argonauts, their Argo. And don’t forget Pandora’s box. And the numbers in this story are obviously symbolic. Seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven. So many sevens.

And let’s consider Noah sending forth a raven and later three doves while seeking signs of land’s return. The Babylonian Noah, Utnapishtim, sent a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven. The Babylonian ark rested on Mount Nisir, the Hindu ark on Mount Himalaya, and the Greek ark on Mount Parnassus. And the word Ararat, or Arath, is the Aramaic source of the word earth.

When Noah and his crew finally find dry land, they quickly build an altar and start making sacrifices to God. First, which animals were sacrificed? In other words, which animals were rendered extinct by this reckless and needless slaughter? The bible says God both saw and smelled these sacrifices and was pleased by their “sweet savor” and thus came the covenant with Noah to never again destroy the earth by a deluge. But to make sure he didn’t forget (!) his promise, God made a rainbow in the sky as a reminder. So, are we supposed to believe that the basic law of refraction hadn’t operated before this? So no rainbows resulted from the interaction of the sun and the rain in Adam’s day, not to mention during all those endless “begats”?

Zeus, Jupiter to the Romans, also became offended with his own creation. He also decided to drown them all, sparing only Deucalion, and Pyrrha, who had “found grace” in his eyes. He allowed them to escape in a boat which finally landed on Mt. Parnassus. The Babylonian account can be found on the tablets of Assurbanipal. Here Enlil, again, also offended by man’s wickedness, decides to destroy him with water, but Ea, the god of wisdom, learns of Enlil’s plan and tells a man, Utnapishtim, about it. Like Noah, Utnapishtim is tenth in line from the first man, and walks with Ea. Ea tells him to build a enormous boat, one that will hold he and his family and also, you guessed it, all the beasts and birds and creeping things. And as soon as it was finished it began to storm, a storm so great that even the lesser gods “trembled in fear.” It stormed for six days and nights and on the seventh it stopped. The boat floated around until it finally came to rest on Mount Nisir. It should be noted that Mt. Nisir sits between Medea and Armenia, making it practically identical with Ararat. Utnapishtim also sent out a dove, swallow, and raven when seeking land. He also built an altar upon making land and offered incense upon it. And, yes, the gods smell the “sweet savor” and gather around; and, Ishtar, “the lady of the rainbow,” hung out her multicolored necklace.

With the Persian and Hindu myths it is not physical birds and beasts that are brought into the ark but their seeds – “… (take) the seeds of sheep, oxen, men and women, dogs, and birds and every kind of tree and fruit, two of every kind, into the ark seal it up with a golden ring and make in it a door and window.” An avatar of Vishnu warns the Hindu Noah, Vaivasvata, about the flood and tells him to build a vessel for his family and bring on board plant seeds and a pair of animals. After the flood the boat comes to rest on Mount Himalaya. And the number of days the storm lasted coincides exactly with the number in the Hebrew account.

The Tepanecans of Mexico also reported a great flood that lasted exactly forty days and nights. The Society Islanders say the god Tangaloa, again angered by the wickedness of man, created such a mighty flood to punish them that only the mountaintops remained. And according to Inca mythology, the god Viracocha promised by the rainbow to never drown mankind again. And Bochica, a god of the Chibehas of Bogota, perched on a rainbow and quelled the flood. And even among the Jews there were additional Deluge myths; one depicting an angry God scalding the sinful antedilvians.

Many bible believers would try and argue that these other accounts were copied from the Hebrew account, however, it should be noted that the Chaldean, Hindu, Babylonian and Egyptian accounts predate the Hebrew versions by many centuries.

Also consider the names of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Taken from Maurice’s history of Hindustan: “It is related in Padmapooraun that Satyavrata, whose miraculous preservation from a general deluge is told at large in the Matsya, had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Jyapeti, or Lord of the Earth; the others were Charma and Sharma, which last words are in the vulgar dialects usually pronounced Cham and Sham …” In The City of God, St. Augustine uses these same forms, also Chanaan for Canaan.

Following the flood a man named Nimrod wanted to build a tower (tower of Babel) out of anger at God for drowning the race. He didn’t believe God would keep his promise (why would he) and thought there could be another mass murder. To quote Josephus verbatim: “He wanted to avenge himself on God for the destruction of his ancestors (weren’t they spared in the ark?) thus: he would build a tower so high that the waters of another flood, with which the world might be afflicted, would not be able to submerge it.” The Babylonian parallel ends similarly: “But all this they did only from fear of another deluge.” Even the name Babel (gate of God) came from the Akkadian Summerian Babili, about 3900 B.C., and means Gateway of God, one with the Greek “Gateway of the gods.”

Bible believers think the scriptural Pharaohs were three Egyptian kings. The fact that outside of the bible there is no account of these specific kings, particularly the cruel Pharaoh, doesn’t seem to bother them. There is also no record of Joseph, Moses, or even the captivity. The bible depicts Moses as practically destroying Egypt, yet if this were literally true, there should be some record of these events but there are none. And why is it that no direct reference to the Exodus can be found among any Egyptian inscription?

Speaking of Moses, this is another myth that is shared by many other mythologies. As depicted in the Orphic hymn to Bacchus, Mises was also found in a box floating upon the waters. Also, like Moses, Mises’ laws were written on … wait for it … two slabs of stone. Again like Moses he had a rod that he worked miracles with, and what could the rod turn itself into? That’s right, a serpent. Mises uses his rod to divide the rivers Orontes and Hydastus and he even strikes a rock with it to provide water for his thirsty army. The Egyptian Osiris was also put in a coffer or coffin and set adrift on the river Nile. Moses was discovered and raised by Thermuthis, which was also the name of a serpent sacred to Isis. The Greek lawgiver, Dionysius, was said to have held up two tables of stone on which the law was engraved.

Hammurabi of Babylon, a contemporary with Abraham, was given a code of laws by Shamash, the great sun god, which he delivered to his people. This code predates the Mosaic code by more than a thousand years. Regarding this similarity, I. Elliott Binns remarked: “The variety of cases provided for is much greater than in the Mosaic codes, but where they deal with the same matters there is an extraordinary similarity in their ordinances, especially in phraseology.” Was it the biblical God or this older code that was the source of the Mosaic code? The answer seems obvious.

The Egyptians, whom the Jews believed to be morally inferior, in fact had a well-developed sense of morality. You can find evidence of this in the Egyptian “Oath of Clearance,” which contains six of the ten commandments and existed thousands of years before the Jews were ever heard of.

It reads in part as follows:

I have not committed fraud and evil against men.

I have not diverted justice in the judgment hall.

I have not caused a man to do more than his day’s work.

I have not caused a slave to be ill-treated.

I have not taken milk from the mouths of children.

I have not stolen cattle.

I have not been weak.

I have not been wretched.

I have not been impious or impure…

This is the end of Part One.

Part Two can be found here:

 http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-2-of-3/

Please visit my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

According to the Christian bible, both Elijah and Jesus rose up bodily into heaven, Elijah in a chariot of fire (just like Romulus the founder of Rome, similarly Mithra of Persia) and Jesus like superman. One can’t help but wonder where exactly Christians think heaven is? Clearly the writers of the bible believed that this place of gold-paved roads was literally floating above our flat earth on a VERY sturdy cloud (which makes one wonder how important the time of liftoff was considering if either man had waited 12 hours they would have been headed in a COMPLETELY different direction) so where do Christians think heaven is? In other words, where in the hell did Elijah and Jesus think they were going? How high did they get before they were no longer able to breathe and their bodies turned to ice? Also, when these two men with their human bodies arrived in heaven, a place populated by souls, angels and a God, what then? Did they have to eat? What did they eat? How did they get all their necessary vitamins and minerals? Did they wear clothes? The same clothes? Every day? Did their hair continue to grow? Did they have to sleep? Where did they urinate and defecate? Did they have gas? Did they have B.O.? Did they get involuntary erections as all men do? Did their noses produce snot? Could their bodies be injured? Could they suffer from aging? Were the angels and souls jealous of Elijah and Jesus’ human bodies or contemptuous of them? I occasionally get criticized for asking silly or frivolous questions but I truly am curious as to what Christians think about these things. I appreciate anyone who will take the time to voice their opinion on this subject.

Thank You

DoubtingThomas

Please visit my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

  This post was originally left as a comment by Erynn on my main page (http://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) but was much too long so I cut and pasted it here as I felt it contained a great deal of interesting historical information deserving of review.

—————

 VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

“WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD’S DIVINE GLORY”

Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete):

Ancient Pagans

As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples  were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed. Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.

Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.

Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as “temple destroyer.” [DA468] Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA-468]

Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed,  because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA-469]

According to Christian chroniclers he “followed meticulously all Christian teachings…” In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights. In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA-466]

The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a  Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.[DO-19-25]

Mission

 Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO-30]

Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, wome and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW-223]

Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO-235]

15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO-30]

16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops “pacified and civilized”  Ireland, where only Gaelic “wild Irish”, “unreasonable beasts lived  without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing.” One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that “the heads of all those (of whatsoever they were) which were killed in the die, should be cut off from their bodies… and should bee laid on the ground by each side of the waie”, which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused “great terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk, and  friends on the ground”. Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH-99, 225]

Crusades (1095-1291)

 First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41] 

Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW-23] .9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then Turkish), thousands respectively. [WW-25-27]

Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (Number of slain unknown) [WW30] fter 6/3/98 Antiochia (then Turkish)  conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks incl. women & children) killed. [WW-32-35]

Here the Christians “did no other harm to the women found in [the Enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lance hrough their bellies,” according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC-60]

Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the  subsequent famine “the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians” said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW-36]

Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (Jewish, Muslim, men, women, and children). [WW3 0] In the words of one witness: “there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes”, and after that “happily and crying for joy our people Marched to our Savior’s tomb, to honor it and to pay off our debt of gratitude”). e Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: “It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished.”  [TG-79]

Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that “even the following summer in all of Palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition. One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW-41]

Battle of Askalon, /12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered “in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ”. [WW-45]

Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW-141-148]

Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy Land and Arab/Turkish areas alone).  [WW-224]

Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.

Heretics

Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO-26] 

Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was  exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]

Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.  [DO-29]

The Albigensians (cathars) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. (thousands burned alive) [NC]

Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Beziérs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbors and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]

Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]

subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were Exterminated. [WW183]

After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search  and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]. Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]

Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).

Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]

John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]. University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]

Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.

Witches

From the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand. In the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or Hanged. [WV]incomplete list of documented cases:The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times 

Religious Wars

15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]

1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]

1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]

1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]

17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, “cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals… and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left … to the gallows of Montfaulcon, ‘to be meat and carrion for maggots and Crows’.” [SH191]

17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. “In a single church fifty women were found beheaded,” reported poet Friedrich Schiller, “and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers.” [SH191]

17th century 30 years’ war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of  population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32] 

Jews

Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by  Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown. 

In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first  synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]

Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]

The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities’ Jews, who would  not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]

First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total.

Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]

Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully,

Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]

Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]

Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]

1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]

1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]

1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]

1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]

1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly brned live (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]

1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42] 

1391 Seville’s Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored “badges of shame” that all Jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.

1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]

1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain.  [DO43]

(I feel sick …) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz. (many believe Hitler was an atheist, which is debateable, but keep in mind the vast majority at his command, the ones actually commiting the autrocities, were Christians).

Native Peoples

Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.

Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, “ought to be good servants … [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion.”  [SH200]

While Columbus described the Indians as “idolaters” and “slaves, as  many as [the Crown] shall order,” his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian  nobleman, referred to the natives as “beasts” because “they eat when they are hungry,” and made love “openly whenever they feel like it.” [SH204-205]

On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, “making the  declarations that are required” - the equerimiento - to claim the  wwnership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And “nobody objected.” If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued: “I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you … and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church … and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him.” [SH66]

Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: “justifying the undertakers of the intended Plantation in New England … to carry the Gospel into those parts of the world, … and to raise a Bulwark against the kingdom of the Ante-Christ.” [SH235]

In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of “the marvelous goodness and providence of God” to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as “for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess.” [SH109,238]

On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 Dead. [SH204]

The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and Spanish raids.

As one of the culprits wrote: “So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous.” [SH69]

The Indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As “they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell.” [SH70]

What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness: “The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties … They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Savior and the twelve Apostles… then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive.”  [SH72]

Or, on another occasion: “The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts…Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs.” [SH83]

The “island’s population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus’s arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half  before the year 1496 was out.” Eventually all the island’s natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were “forced” to import slaves from other Caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus “the Caribbean’s millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century”. [SH72-73]

“In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated.” [SH75]

“And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitlán [Mexico city] was next.” [SH75]

Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other Spanish conquistadors  likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of  Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida). .”When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead.” [SH95]

Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of  America. Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the Pilgrim Fathers:

“Their Wars are far less bloody…” so that there usually was “no great slawter of nether side”. Indeed, “they might fight seven years and not kill seven men.” What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]

In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the (generally friendly and generous) natives ttractive enough to leave Jamestown - “being idle … did run away unto the Indians,” - to live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).

“Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed: ’some he  appointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon heels, others to be staked and some shot to death’.” [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow Englishmen: “This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia”

Methods were ifferent: “when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community” down. [SH105]

On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the  colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the “Peqout War”. The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from resection in their own home country England.

When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief’s pledge they attacked.

Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after,  because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and burned their villages.

The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote:

“And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their  Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished … God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven …

Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies”: men, women, children. [SH113-114]

So “the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance”. [SH111].

Because of his readers’ assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow: “Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them…” (Deut 20)

Mason’s comrade Underhill recalled how “great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers” yet reassured his readers that “sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents”. [SH114]

Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mother’s breasts, in the colonists’ own words: “blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them.” (This was inspired by Spanish methods of the time)

In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was  near. [SH107-119]

The surviving handful of Indians “were parceled out to live in servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for ‘a share’ of the captives, specifically ‘a young woman or girl and a boy if you think good’.” [SH115]

Other tribes were to follow the same path.  Comment the Christian exterminators: “God’s Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his Beauty!” “Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!” [TA]

Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. “Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians ‘grow secure upon (sic) the treatise’, advised the Council of State in Virginia, ‘we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cut down their Corn’.” [SH106]

In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]

In a single massacre in “King Philip’s War” of 1675 and 1676 some “600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Matter, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a ‘barbecue’.” [SH115]

To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The ocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had  numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118]

These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred. And the carnage was not over then.

All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun. A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 900, as an average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery. In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even today.

More Glorious events in US history:

Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England’s most esteemed religious leaders, in “1703 formally proposed to he Massachusetts governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs ‘to hunt Indians as they do bears’.” [SH241]

Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist ministers and still elder in the church (”I long to be  wading in gore”) had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs’ waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.

From an eye-witness account: “There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed …” [SH131]

More gory details: By the 1860s, “in Hawai’i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those slands’ native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to ‘the amputation of diseased > members of the body’.” [SH244]

20th Century Church Atrocities

Catholic extermination camps Surpassingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveliç, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!

In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian Serbian (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their  victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or  shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and  600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi “Sicherheitsdient der SS”, watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]

Catholic terror in Vietnam

In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the coteries assured religious freedom to all (most non-Buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns  many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican’s spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam “Soldiers of Christ”, a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which  could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]

Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.

The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:

“Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp.”

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in “detention camps.” Out of protest dozens of Buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].

To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of  American GI’s lost their life.

Christianity kills the cat

On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of  Würzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel’s grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Würzburg was notorious for it’s extensive witch burnings). This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]

Rwanda Massacres

In 1994 in the small African country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tootsie ethnic groups. For quite some time I heard only  rumors about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda  massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic Church  journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.

Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated: “Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda’s capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tootsies in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody laughter of Tootsies seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.

According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tootsies and  turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia. In connection with  these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid  prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her  monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watche