This page records my dialogue about religion by e-mail with a Christian, here named Xian for convenience and anonymity.
My writings are in black. The words of Xian are set out in purple. Plagiarized text is in maroon, sometimes highlighted by me in red.
Go Home.
8 Oct 01
Dear Wayne, My name is Xian and I am a Christian. I have read the articles that you have posted on your website, and I was wondering if you were Christian or Atheist? I would like to talk more about the articles that you have written about the confrontations of Christians and Atheists. Thank you very much, Xian
9 Oct 01
Dear Xian, I would be pleased to communicate more with you.
I certainly do not believe in a god of any kind. I am somewhere between being an agnostic and an atheist. I do not mind being called either one. Strictly speaking, the only reason that I do not call myself an atheist is that doing so would mean that I believe that there is no god -- something that I cannot prove. That is somewhat different from saying, as I do, that I do not believe in anything that can even remotely be called God. Explanations for all of this are set out in the article My religious beliefs. In fact, I have just added more to the areas of religion, atheism, and quotes overnight.
Part of my motivation for going public with my beliefs is my belief, from reviewing 2000 years of barbarity on the part of religions, and the recent Sep 11 attack on the USA-- an attack which I (in a small minority) believe was motivated primarily by fundamentalist Islamic religious belief. The other reason is that my mother, a devout Protestant believer, died in May. She has known for years of my doubts about the validity and morality of Christianity and Islam, but I had not expressed them as completely and forcefully as on my site. See my Religious terrorism pages, and my following poem:
America, America, whose dagger has pierced your heart? A poem by Wayne Paulson: a tribute, in this time of sorrow, to America, the chief defender of freedoms that are allowed in only a secular democracy.
My overall motivation is to help hasten the day when all religions will become extinct. I view them as being very harmful to society and to individuals. Their irrational nature allows for the justification of any belief and atrocity. After all, if the God of Christianity commits murder, torture, genocide, and advises cannibalism (still practiced today in the Eucharist). What is so terrible about killing a few more thousand people in a god's name? The recent attack on the World Trade Center is but one example of the danger of such beliefs. The Nazi Holocaust is another -- a direct consequence of centuries of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism by Christianity -- primarily the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Hitler, a Roman Catholic Christian, finally carried it out -- in the most Christian country in the world, with the willing support of the public, and with Swastika flags flying proudly in the churches.
Latest additions
My religious beliefs (15 p, 63 s) (Updated 9 Oct 01.) Blasphemy and religious satire (22 p, 72 s) (Updated 7 Oct 01.)
The Bible and Christianity are barbaric (Added 7 Oct 01.)___ Religion (15 p, 63 s) (Updated 9 Oct 01.)
The Koran and Islam are barbaric (Added 6 Oct 01.)
Religious terrorism (29 p, 89 s) (Updated 8 Oct 01.) Why all of Islam -- not just the so-called extremist terrorists -- is a real threat to the world.
We need less prayer, not more (Added 5 Oct 01.) ___ More of my fractal images. (Added 4 Oct 01.)
Some simple questions about terrorism (Added 2 Oct 01.)
How to build a nuclear bomb at home (Added 30 Sep 01.)
World Trade Center Satellite images of: WTC, Pentagon destruction; Cannes, France. (Updated 25 Sep 01.)
War crimes by NATO, including USA and Canada, in their war of aggression against Yugoslavia. (22 p, 82 s) (Updated 25 Sep 01.)
America, America, whose dagger has pierced your heart? A poem by Wayne Paulson: a tribute, in this time of sorrow, to America, the chief defender of freedoms that are allowed in only a secular democracy. (4 p, 39 s) (Updated 22 Sep 01.)
Best wishes for now, and I hope to hear from you. Wayne
15 Oct 01
Copy to Xian of message to:
To Dr. Chadwick's Church and Ministry DR. CHADWICK'S CHURCH AND MINISTRY PAGE: http://www.webedelic.com/church/index.html Thank you for your e-mail sermons. I read them with interest, skeptical as I am! Here is a thought to ponder, from my Web site.
What If Islam Ruled America? (Added 14 Oct 01.) The threat of Islam is real. More so than communism ever was, because with Islam, Muslim activists are willing to kill and to die for the cause of spreading their religion. This is called "Jihad," a sacred duty for all Muslims to perform.
[You could kiss most freedoms -- especially religious freedom -- goodbye! I have no apologies to make to any Islamists, unless they are willing to denounce those passages (slay the idolaters) of the Koran which advise Muslims to murder innocent Kaffirs (Infidels like me!) and advises on methods of torturing them, including chopping off fingertips! It's just as cruel as what God is reported to have done to thousands of people in that other barbaric 'sacred' book, the Bible. Why do more than two billion Christians and Muslims continue to worship gods that are reported by their own sacred scriptures to be genocidal mass-murders and torturers? It is not enough to say that people are evil. Their sacred gods --as described in their own scriptures (not just my interpretation of them) -- are also evil! I challenge anyone to inform me of a god who is loving. Obviously, the gods of the Koran and the Bible (including Jesus, who threatens to murder people (See slay them before me.)) fail that criterion miserably. Let us hasten the day when it will be at least as shameful to worship such gods as it is to smoke in hospital wards! That might give peace a chance. Look around you: it is not just a few thousands of Muslims who are celebrating the terrorist attack on America -- it is millions of the devout and their Mullahs!]
There is apparently no shortage of suicidal religious terrorists. Has anyone heard of an atheist terrorist lately? They are rather scarce, it seems. They just don't have the incentive to believe that Paradise awaits them anywhere except on this earth! No, please do not cite Stalin. His atrocities had nothing to do with atheism, which is neither a religion nor a religious belief system.
There is much more on my Web site.
No, I am not the Merciful One! I'm just trying to be a peaceful one. Wayne
16 Oct 01
My name is X, I believe you have been conversing with my husband, Xian. I am deeply saddened and regretful that you feel the way you do about the only God that exists and keeps you alive. And, I also wanted to correct you. Please do not take God's Word out of context,if you will read more clearly you will see that Jesus himself did NOT say slay them before me. He was speaking a parable of another man, a nobleman. If you will start reading at verse 11 you will see what I mean. How can you believe in an existence, with no meaning? NO beginning and NO end? Please look into this and get back to me. Thank you and may God open your eyes. Thank you. X
17 Oct 01
Dear X, Thank you for pointing out that I probably was at least somewhat misleading in the way I used the words of Jesus in Luke 19:11-27. I apologize for that, and I shall clarify it on my site today.
Although, no doubt, you find my comments to be very harsh, I do not wish to offend you, or to convert you to my views. I am trying to be honest in my examination of religions. Coming from a Christian family, I am more familiar with Christianity than with Islam; however, I started to have serious misgivings about Christianity even in Sunday school (United Church) and later -- in church, attended somewhat reluctantly at the behest of my mother, primarily. (She died in May, which, along with the Sep 11 religious terrorist attack, has prompted me to be so frank of late.) See the link My religious beliefs on my site, in which I spell out more detail on this issue and the last one below.
I shall try to address each of the points that you raised (in purple below) with my comments (in black), and some quotes that illustrate some of my ideas, and links (in maroon).
My name is X, I believe you have been conversing with my husband. I am deeply saddened and regretful that you feel the way you do about the only God that exists and keeps you alive.
The last thing that I want to do is sadden you.
There seems to be a variety of gods that people believe in, even within Christianity, for example. Is the god of the United Church the same one as that of the Roman Catholic Church? Or Islam? Or the many gods of Egypt and Hinduism (several thousand)? If one believes in one of them, but not all the others, one is an atheist with respect to all gods (1,003 of them, say) but one. I just happen to be an atheist with respect to all gods. So, instead of not believing in 1,002 gods, as Christians do, I do not believe in 1,003 of them.
I do not deny that a god or gods could exist; I just do not positively believe that any of them exist, which is quite a different thing. Perhaps I could be called an agnostic or a so-called weak atheist. That just means an absence of belief. It is not a belief or a religion. In contrast, so-called strong atheists or positive atheists positively believe that no gods exist. In one sense, the positive atheists share one thing in common. They both have positive beliefs in something that is not provable, namely that and exists, and that God does not exist, respectively. By definition, such beliefs in things that are not provable or demonstrable, are irrational.
I am not sure why you should feel sorry for me, unless it is the fear that I will end up in Hell someday. In one version of Christianity, Hell is a torture chamber where Jesus' Father has arranged to have people tortured forever in an afterlife. In another, it is just a psychological state during this life. In another, Hell is a garbage dump near Gethsemane, and Heaven is a place further up a nearby hill near where Jesus was speaking. I find it highly ironic (and dishonest of the Roman Catholic Church) that, after about ten years of ecumenical negotiations with the Protestant and other Catholic churches, the RC church announced last year that, of course, there can be only one true Church -- yes, the RC one! That appears to be primarily because of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. RC Christianity is based only partly upon the Bible. The other two legs of support are Apostolic Succession, and Natural Law. The other, less valid churches, by this logic, rest 'only' upon the Bible.
I find this situation to be very ironic, if not downright dishonest. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican), for one, was very upset upon hearing this announcement. A union leader would likely call this bargaining in bad faith. Even after 2,000 years, Christianity does not seem to be sure of what it is! But, I digress.
You might worry that I might end up in Hell for failing to swear allegiance to a particular god . The idea that a loving God created Hell is not only barbaric, but a contradiction ii terms. It is a primary reason why I (and Bertrand Russell) do not believe in God. After all, if God created all things, He must also have created those torture chambers and the resident torturers who, like those who worked for dictators here on earth, were just following orders. God, as portrayed in the Bible and in the Koran, is an unbelievably cruel despot of a dictator who commits mass murder, genocide, torture, spreading of plague, killing of children, and a big flood. He then demands that we worship Him! The terrorists who hit Manhattan with their fervent belief in Allah, were in good company, although they murdered far fewer people than the Bible alleges that God did. It appears that His son Jesus was no kinder, accepting as he did, all of the barbaric Mosaic laws of the Old Testament. One such law, for example, endorsed by Jesus, is that if a child is too obnoxious to its parents, it is to be taken into the town square and stoned to death with small stones. Talk about family values! That sort of death sentence still exists today in several very religious countries under the despotism of such capital offence (in Saudi Arabia) is to be found worshipping the God of Christianity, as Islam Sharia law. One happened to two Japanese tourists about two years ago -- yes, two years ago, not two centuries! Death is usually by decapitation or firing squad. of faith! Such is the danger of religion when aligned with the power of the state. Such is Such is the fervor one reason why I want reference to a Supreme Being removed from our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A further major reason for my unbelief is a psychological one. It is explained very well in the following: The Psychosis of Religion (By Albert Ellis, Ph.D.Psychotherapy): http://www.users.bigpond.com/pmurray/Rants/doc/Psychosis.html . . . If we summarize what we have just been saying, the conclusion seems inescapable that religion is, on almost every conceivable count, directly opposed to the goals of mental health . . . since it basically consists of masochism, other-directness, intolerance, refusal to accept uncertainty, unscientific thinking, needless inhibition, and self-abasement. In the one area where religion has some advantages in terms of emotional hygiene . . . that of encouraging hearty commitment to a cause or project in which the person may be vitally absorbed . . . it even tends to sabotage this advantage in two important ways :
(a) it drives most of its adherents to commit themselves to its tenets for the wrong reasons . . . that is, to cover up instead of to face and rid themselves of their basic insecurities; and . . .
(b) it encourages a fanatical, obsessive-compulsive kind of commitment that is, in its own right, a form of mental illness . . .
The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. -- Bertrand Russell
Farewell to God: http://www.mcclelland.com/releases/farewell.html "Templeton's theological challenges will give the mature Christian something to grapple with." - Globe and Mail
FOR MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS, Charles Templeton was a major figure in the church in Canada and the United States. However, increasing doubt about the validity of the Old Testament and the teachings of the Christian church finally brought about a crisis in his faith, and in 1957 he resigned from the ministry.
In this book, Templeton speaks out about the reasons for the abandonment of his faith, and, in straightforward and often forceful language, challenges the validity of the central Christian beliefs.
I am now convinced that children should not be subjected to the frightfulness of the Christian religion . . . If the concept of a father who plots to have his own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy of society's admiration, what types of human behavior can be presented to them as reprehensible? -- Ruth Hurmence Green, Preface to The Born-Again Skeptic's Guide To The Bible.
There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages. -- Ruth Hurmence Green,.Women Without Superstition.
As for the question of What Would Jesus Do in various ethical situations, see the following: Don't Do What Jesus Would Do!, Joseph Sommer, Freethought Today Jan-Feb 2001: http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/jan_feb01/sommer.html
As a guide for choosing attitudes and behavior, many Christians encourage young persons and others to ask, "What would Jesus do?" That slogan is often abbreviated on Christian jewelry and other items as "WWJD." The idea is that if people would think and act the way Jesus did, the world would be a better place.
But is a WWJD mindset really what the modern world needs? If advocates of that philosophy would examine Jesus as depicted in the bible, they might realize that his views can cause great harm to individuals and communities. . . .
Jesus endorsed the killing of defenseless people for their political differences, when he related a parable about a nobleman who went to a far country to receive a kingdom and then returned. Jesus described the new king as ordering that "those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."[10] [10 Luke 19:11-27]
And, I also wanted to correct you. Please do not take God's Word out of context,if you will read more clearly you will see that Jesus himself did NOT say slay them before me. He was speaking a parable of another man, a nobleman. If you will start reading at verse 11 you will see what I mean.
The KJV Bible with Strong's References - Definitions for Luke 19:
http://bible.usaquality.com/strongs/luke_19.shtml
I apologize for being possibly misleading in relation to this quotation. I will amend it today on my Web site. In the parable, Jesus speaks of two actions:
(a) Investing your money for as big a profit as possible.
(b) A nobleman murdering opponents because of their beliefs, or a slavemaster contemplating how severely to punish slaves.
What message is Jesus trying to convey? If He is in favor of (a) then this contradicts another saying of his to the effect that one should not plan, or put up goods for, tomorrow. It also seems to indirectly condone slavery, in that, in the Bible, the word servants usually means slaves. There is a passage in which Jesus recommends how hard to whip slaves if they do not obey their masters.
I am running short on time, else I would try to find the exact passages.
As to (b), Jesus does not seem to object to the idea that a ruler can reasonably murder one who does not agree with him. That is not surprising, as Jesus' Father (and Moses and Gideon) murdered and tortured many people for minor offences, including freedom of belief -- something which modern secular democracy offers , but which Christianity and Islam certainly do not. The only reason that our Western democracies have advanced to a plane of ethics superior to that of Christianity and Islam is because of the retreat of religious power aligned with that of the state.
Ironically, it is not religion that offers freedom of religious belief -- it is the absence of religion (secularism) that offers freedom -- as especially pertaining in the USA, the most secular society in the world, and the one with the most religious freedom. Canada is not quite so free, in that Ontario funds separate schools (Catholic-only), in blatant contravention of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Canada's religious discrimination. Canada has been formally notified of this by the UN, but has still not rectified this injustice. The USA would not tolerate this type of funding for an instant. That is why the USA has the freedoms it does. That is one major reason why the terrorists attacked it, the Great Satan!
How can you believe in an existence, with no meaning? NO beginning and NO end? Please look into this and get back to me.
I find it absolutely incredible that about one billion people believe in this savagery.
"Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales." -- Bertrand Russell
I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence. (W.A.) -- Bertrand Russell
In view of the moral contradictions involved in the God of Christianity, see my article Proof that the god of Christianity cannot exist in the Religion section of my site. That is not proof that God does not exist -- only that the God of love, omnipotence, and omniscience is a contradiction in terms, and therefore cannot exist, even in principle -- as was proven 2,300 years ago.
Another tenet of Christianity that I find weird and morally offensive is that a grandchild can be punished for the sin of its grandfather. It appears to me that, in Christianity, sin is a sexually transmitted disease (Original sin).
If anyone is worried about my going to Hell, here is a thought to ponder. I will probably -- in the minds of some, be going to two Hells, not just one. One is the Hell of Christianity, whereas the other is the Hell of Islam, seeing as how I am such a despised Kaffir or Infidel. I suppose that Christians will fare better, in that all of them will be going to only one Hell -- that of Islam.
Thank you and may God open your eyes. Thank you. X
All the best to you, Wayne
19 Oct 01
Dear X, Thank you to you and your friends for passing along your following thoughts, shown in purple below. I shall add some comments in black., and some thoughts from a Bishop, who -- to some in the ecclesiastical world -- has become a bit of a rebel, to say the least!
18 Oct 01
I sent your previous e-mail to a few friends, and this is one of the responses I recieved, thought you might be interested. Sandy
Sandy, After reading most of this it just confirms my belief that we serve a Wonderful and true God. One God, who said I am, not 1,002 gods who said I might be, but one I AM Who I AM. In the fact that God permits us to have a Free Will, to choose him or deny him.
His grand plan for Hell was not a place for us, but a place for the devil and his angels, not his people. If people choose to deny God and his son, then we enter Hell as an intruder.
But, it appears to me that it is not just the Devil and his minions who will end up in Hell, but unbelievers like me! When Christian preachers say that people should be 'saved', what are they being saved from? Hell, or just a particular frame of mind?
Science has tried for years to come up with a grand plan of how we became who we are and how we got here, they have been working hard at this for almost 150 years maybe 200 years, when we can open a book called the bible which has been scientifically dated 2,000 years old and is more accurate than any scientific theory to date.
Science tells us what happened from one millionth of a second after the Big Bang (when the whole universe was the size of a grapefruit) to now. That sounds impressive; however, it still does not explain what happened before that! There are speculative theories involving quantum fluctuation and such. But fluctuations in what? The Bible has very little to say about science, and what little it does say is contradictory and usually false. See, for example, The Flat-Earth Bible: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm . . . Except among Biblical inerrantists, it is generally agreed that the Bible describes an immovable earth. At the 1984 National Bible-Science Conference in Cleveland, geocentrist James N. Hanson told me there are hundreds of scriptures that suggest the earth is immovable. I suspect some must be a bit vague, but here are a few obvious texts: . . .
I do not take that example of so-called 'science' in the Bible to be a criticism of Christianity. However, it is odd that the Greeks new that the earth was round hundreds of years before the New Testament was written, and many years before Jesus was born.
Even so, the Church imprisoned Galileo (under house arrest, rather than prison) for his reasoning that the earth was not 'immovable', but just as importantly, for creating a mechanistic and mathematical conception of the basis for the universe. It only apologized for its mistake and injustice about 350 years after the event! The following offers an interesting insight into this question, and clears up a popular misconception or over-simplification of the key issue and threat to the Church:
Galileo's Mistake by Wade Rowland - Chapter One, part 3:
http://www.waderowland.com/galileo/galileo-chapt1c.html Galileo's Mistake: The Archaeology of a Myth. . . .
The dispute was over two conflicting views of the nature of truth and reality and about the roles religion and science ought to play in defining the world we live in. Of far more fundamental concern to the Church than the details of the Copernican hypothesis was Galileo's belief in the reality of number, his conviction that the universe was essentially a mathematical entity, in some literal way composed of numbers.
The Church, bolstered by Plato, Aristotle and nearly two thousand years of theological thought, denied this, on grounds that it excluded the possibility that there was an ultimate goal and purpose to existence. For the Church, a mathematical, mechanistic interpretation of nature could never be more than a model, an intellectual artifact. Between theory and reality there would always be a gap that could not be bridged by human reason.
Galileo and his opponents in the Church understood the true nature of their dispute very clearly and explicitly; it is the modern myth of Galileo that loses sight of its real significance. The argument about the nature of reality and what we can truly know nevertheless remains the principal bedevilment of modern civilization, for as Rousseau said, what we think we know, but do not, harms us far more than what we do not know. . . .
The Bible is not accurate about anything to do with science, nor would I expect it to be. I do not see that as a failing of the Bible. Folk tales do not need scientific accuracy. The problem arises, though, when churches imprison people and burn them alive for casting doubts upon mistaken dogmas of the Church. For centuries, the 'love' in the church was not very evident, especially to those whom it was burning at the stake!
It is very hard to convince the carnal mind of a Great Loving God. He can't understand the parable that Jesus was speaking of because he is reading it in the flesh, in fact the parable that Jesus was referring to in Luke was about using whatever God gives us to the fullest. It is not about Money it is about the gifts that God gives us, the talents, the compassion toward others. It is about utilizing the best part of each of us to the fullest.
I agree that the main lesson of the parable was that we should use our talents, to the fullest and that it was not just about money -- that was only an example. That message is a good one. It is still puzzling to me, though, why Jesus did not seem to object to the right of the ruler to murder innocent opponents. Unfortunately, that Divine Right of Kings is still with us today, exemplified, for example, in the Queen of England, the Head of the Church of England.
That is more than just a note of historical interest. Within the past week, as a direct consequence of the Sep. 11 terrorist attack (which, ironically, politicians keep telling us, has nothing to do with religion), the British Parliament is considering strengthening the UK's laws against blasphemy. It is a travesty of justice that such laws even exist. They do not exist in the USA, the chief bastion of democracy and freedom both of and from religion. It is interesting too that in, England, it is illegal to blaspheme Christianity (and hence, indirectly, the Queen and the state), whereas it is not illegal to blaspheme Islam (or Judaism?). See the Blasphemy page on my Web site. That may change, which becomes a real worry to artists, writers, and satirists. And we criticized the Islamic fatwah against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses? Maybe the terrorists will have more than a small victory after all if they can weaken one aspect of secular democracy in this way. The problem with Britain and Canada (and Germany), though, is that we do not have full secular democracy. The USA does. As a direct consequence, freedom of religious belief and worship is at its highest in the USA. That is partly why it is the USA that is the target of these religious terrorists.
The Bible is the Final word of a Christian, you can not take everything that a Christian believes and say that is Christianity, for there are a lot of people who do not STUDY TO SHOW THY SELF APPROVED, A WORKMAN THAT NEEDTH NOT TO BE ASHAMED,BUT RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH. They just take what someone has said as the way it is instead of studying for them selves.
I can agree with that. It can be easy to misinterpret.
What is so good about being a true Christian is that the GOD of the Roman Catholics, The Church Of God, The Baptist, The Methodist, The Muslims, The Islam's, What ever, if they go through the SON Jesus Christ, it is to the I AM and that is GOD. God is a loving God, for he loved us so much that he GAVE his only son so that we could have a way of escape**.
** Escape what? Hell?
So that we do not have to live under the Law***.
*** Which Law? If by the cruel laws of the Old Testament, it appears to me and many Bible scholars, that Jesus did not refute those old laws. He sanctioned them anew, and reinforced them.
It's a simple religion and faith and it makes me a better person for it, here on the earth and in Heaven to come.
I cannot criticize you in the slightest for that, nor cast any doubt upon it -- nor would I wish to in the slightest. My mother felt the same way -- and very devoutly. I am sure that it brought her many comforts over the years, and the companionship of a community of kind and well-wishing believers -- wonderfully kind and generous people. More power to you!
I enclose a few additional thoughts for the day. . . God isn't Santa The Globe and Mail had an article recently about Bishop Spong as follows, which is very relevant to the following letter which I wrote a few weeks ago.
Consider the following letter which I sent on 25 Sep 01 to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, but which was not published, although the Citizen indicated to me that it would be:
We need less prayer, not more -- or, We need more secularism, and less prayer
Here is the article about Bishop Spong: The Globe and Mail Search: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&encoded_keywords=God+isn%27t+Santa&option=&start_row=1¤t_row=1&start_row_offset1=&num_rows=1&search_results_start=1 Listen up: God isn't Santa By MICHAEL VALPY. Oct 13, 2001 – Print Edition, Page F5.
John Shelby Spong is a retired bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, a tall, courtly southerner with intense blue eyes and the steel of absolute conviction in his voice. Almost certainly, he is his country's best-known voice of liberal Christianity.
He was reflecting this week on the tens of thousands of prayers that church leaders in the United States and elsewhere have launched heavenward to God since the Sept. 11 attacks. "It's been embarrassing," he says over breakfast at Toronto's Park Plaza Hotel.
He calls them adult letters to Santa Claus.
Billy Graham, the evangelist counselor to U.S. presidents, in particular annoys him. "Talking about the people killed having gone to heaven and not wanting to come back because they're so happy where they are. Tell that to their children and see what they say."
Which leads him to recount the story of the iron crossbeam extracted from the wreckage of the World Trade Center that looked like the Christian cross. It was promptly called a sign from God. Spong practically snorts: "A sign from God? If God was going to give a sign, he would have stopped the airplanes from hitting the building."
He likens the post-Sept. 11 praying, the search for signs and divine explanations and the comments of people such as U.S. conservative Christian Jerry Falwell to how Europeans reacted in the 14th century to bubonic plague. "They assumed it was God's punishment, and they came up with two responses: flagellation and the persecution of Jews."
What people must do, Spong says, is understand and accept that they live in a world of randomness and chance. They have got to cease their childlike dependency on the supernatural holy because "the God we used to count on -- the superparent -- is gone." This God has ceased to be.
Spong preached on this theme to a packed congregation -- "It was like Easter" -- at Harvard University's Memorial Church on Sept. 16. "Afterwards, a woman came up to me and was irate because I did not give her comfort."
He states unequivocally: God is not in heaven listening for prayers, petitions, supplications on which He will choose to act or not act -- a choice always beyond human comprehension (which explains why He lets planes fly into buildings) because no one knows God's mind.
"This is not a believable God," Spong says.
If he is right, a lot of us will feel lonely. Or maybe not.
Christian prayer -- which is what about 85 per cent of us mutter aloud or within ourselves -- rests upon two foundations: belief in the transcendent and personal nature of God (he's somewhere "out there" with human characteristics) and belief that God has a direct relationship with everything he created (not one sparrow is forgotten, the Christian New Testament says).
Spong says none of this is the case, which is the subject of his newest book, A New Christianity for a New World, based on lectures he delivered at Harvard last year as a visiting professor.
God, he says, is immanent (inside us), not transcendent (out there). God is the purifying power of love. The Second Coming is not the physical return of Jesus to the world -- more or less one of the non-negotiable tenets of Christian belief -- but rather the conscious recognition within each of us of the requirement to love.
So no more prayer because no one's listening?
Not at all, Spong says.
He says prayer is the preparation of oneself to live the loving God-life, adding that he used to spend two hours in the morning in prayer and liturgical worship, which he called his time with God.
Now, he spends the two hours meditating and opening his mind to spiritual readings -- something akin to the medieval Matins, he says -- and it is the remaining 22 hours he calls his time with God, the communal aspect of his life, the 22 hours of living in the world and trying to love and understand all Creation and its beings.
He also thinks there may be some inexplicable energy released in focused group mental exertion.*** "But I don't want to talk about that, because that gets spooky," he says, smiling.
[*** WRP: This is absolutely nonsensical! Is it the same 'force' that's used in Voodoo? In touch therapy? In out-of-touch therapy? In astrology? In reading tea leaves?]
My problem with the idea of prayer is this. Why do people pray? I can think of several reasons:
(a) They think that God is listening, and will either: (i) not be able to even hear the prayer; (ii) listen sympathetically to the prayer, but do nothing about it; or, (iii) will intervene in the world to change history at the request of a self-admitted miserable sinner who considers himself (as taught by his religion) to be worth less than dust under the Maker's feet, so that, for example, that sparrow that is falling won't break its wing after all, or that the Blue Jays will win the game tonight.
(b) Praying makes them feel good, regardless of whether they believe that: (i) God died one second after the Big Bang, about fifteen billion years ago; or, (ii) God lives (somewhere), but is either helpless, unaware, uncaring, or psychotic, as would be suggested by lack of evidence that He has ever lifted an eyebrow to help anyone for the last 2,000 years.
What if I were to suggest that you consider a new form of Christianity based upon the following Twelve Theses, reminiscent of the 95 Theses posted by Martin Luther in Wittenberg in 1517? They are not my proposals, as will be explained below. Rather, they are those of a Bishop of what is considered to be a conservative (but not fundamentalist) mainline Christian church.
Twelve Theses
[Thesis] 1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
[Thesis] 2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
[Thesis] 3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
[Thesis] 4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
[Thesis] 5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
[Thesis] 6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
[Thesis] 7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
[Thesis] 8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
[Thesis] 9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
[Thesis] 10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
[Thesis] 11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
[Thesis] 12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
Does that sound radical? Read on.
The Heresy Trial: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5029/heresy4.html The Heresy Trial of James M. Stanton v. Walter C. Righter.
The Episcopal Church in the United States was founded shortly after the Revolutionary War, with the first Book of Common Prayer ratified in 1789. The Church's first heresy trial was in 1924 against a bishop who stated publicly that communism should replace Christianity. He was deposed.
The second heresy trial in this Church is now underway, and the charge is that a bishop of the Church ordained a practicing homosexual in violation of the doctrine of the Church and in violation of his ordination vows.
The trial will be followed for many reasons, especially because it related to the issue of homosexuality, but the ecclesiastical court hearing the case will be considering the issue of what the Church's doctrine is, and, it seems to me, inescapably, how that is determined. This debate is ongoing, but now it will be presented in a quasi-legal forum, with lawyers presenting the arguments. . .
What follows are various links detailing the trial. What is of interest to me (WRP) is the following:
JOHN S. SPONG'S CALL FOR A NEW REFORMATION: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5029/heresy5.html A Call for a New Reformation by John S. Spong.
From the "Call":
Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:
What follows is the Twelve Theses listed above, with hyperlinks detailing reactions to them.
The reaction of The Bishops of West Texas to the Twelve Theses is as follows:
. . . One of us, one of us whom we chose to exercise the Office of a Bishop in the Church of God now calls for abandoning the Faith of the Church of God. Its [sic] sad. . . .
What is my reaction? You might find it surprising, but I tend to agree with the rather orthodox Bishops of West Texas. As I see it, Bishop Spong in his Twelve Theses, and in his very popular writings, diverges considerably from orthodoxy, but still wishes to maintain that the Episcopal Church is Christian. To have diverged so much from some of what I consider to be the most essential, but barbaric aspects of Christianity, and yet still wish to maintain that the church is Christian seems to me to be contradictory, if not downright heretical!. However, if there is not such a divergence made, I agree with Bishop Spong that the church is in decline -- so much so that it will become extinct within a generation or two. The half-empty pews of his churches in New Jersey will be bereft of sitters in twenty years, except for an old couple or two and a couple of homeless people from the streets, huddling together to get a bit of warmth -- physical warmth, not spiritual warmth.
The spiritual ideas of orthodox churches will become so unbelievable and manipulatively exploitive of people's feelings of guilt and punishment for imaginary 'sins', as they have been for the past twenty centuries, that they will no longer provide either warmth or comfort to anyone but those few remaining people who still like to assuage their insecurities by believing in fairy tales. For most people today, the fairy tales provided by Hollywood are much more interesting, more believable, and in some cases more meaningful and inspiring. (Yes, indeed, one must separate a little bit of wheat from a lot of terrible chaff!)
I propose, instead, that Bishop Spong should have diverged much further and given up the idea of the existence of God completely, thus converting the Episcopal Church into what one might resurrect and rename as the Episcopal Secular Society -- a community with no particular supernatural beliefs, but with some social ones -- perhaps ones of secular humanism, with debates on religion, atheism and agnosticism being welcomed, but where atheism is not very relevant, as it does not really comprise a philosophy in the sense that secular humanism does. More immediately, the churches could still continue to operate in a quasi-spiritual realm, but only if they change in the direction advocated by Bishop Spong. I quote from an essay of his as follows:
. . . I am thrilled to hear Christian voices declare the Church to be a place to go not to receive answers, but in which questions can be raised. Increasingly, the Christian life is seen as a journey toward a mystery rather than as a theological database in which the mysterious can be fully explained. The task of Christianity is not to provide security; it is to give us the courage to embrace life's insecurity without surrendering our humanity. . . .
[From: The VOICE - May 1997: http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox20597.htmlThe Bishop's Voice. Heaven's Gate and the Death of Religion by John S. Spong, Bishop of Newark. ] . . .
In 1927 Sigmund Freud published a vigorous critique of organized religion in general and Christianity in particular in a book entitled, The Future of an Illusion. There he suggested that the origins of religion had nothing to do with revelation or truth; it was born, he said, in the trauma of the emergence of a higher consciousness. Religion developed when beings emerged out of the evolutionary process who understood life's fragility, in the midst of a vast and morally neutral universe. This universe was, he argued, not organized for the benefit of human life or tribe. The ultimate end of every living thing, Freud believed, was death and decay. The inhabitants of the universe had been able to tolerate this reality for billions of years because no creature had been able to contemplate its own mortality or its own lack of ultimate value or meaning. But when Homo Sapiens arrived on the stage, they saw themselves as victims, knew they would die and even anticipated impending disasters. They also recognized that they were not capable of doing anything about their fate. Trauma was the result, and so Freud argued, religion was developed to deal with this trauma by fostering the illusion that life was controllable. . . .
The first tenet of religion was that the powers of the universe were personal and that they could thus be placated, bargained with or appeased. . . .
The professional priesthood shrouded itself in claims of magic . . .
If discerning the will of the deity was a prerequisite for avoiding the wrath of God, then one's security would be well-served by the assertion that absolute certainty accompanied the pronouncements of those who claimed to speak for God. Without this religious security, hysteria would be commonplace. So infallibility claims for religious leaders were born and inerrant claims came into being for those sacred writings judged to be the place where the will of God was spelled out. These served to keep hysteria at bay. Believers suspended their rationality and embraced these security claims. But the repressed hysteria was revealed in the rage, or banishment, meted out by religious traditions when a challenge to the accuracy of its claims was heard. This mentality was behind those dark chapters of religious history when heretics were burned at the stake, excommunication enforced religious conformity, and such critics of the religious status quo as Copernicus, Galileo and Charles Darwin were threatened or harassed.
This Freudian analysis suggested that security, not truth, was the primary goal of every religious system. Security, not truth, is well-served by controlling thought, disciplining deviation and purging critics. These tactics represent an attempt on the part of frightened people to calm their fears when confronted by a vast, impersonal and ultimately, a killing universe. They encourage religious zealots to surrender their freedom for the security of being told what to think. We live in a world where most religious systems are honored, where piety is extolled and where the criticism of anyone's religious tradition is looked upon as inappropriate; yet we still see these destructive aspects of religion at work around the world. In Ireland Catholics and Protestants have killed each other for centuries. In the Middle East, Moslem and Jew are regularly at each other's throats. In India and Pakistan, the hostility between Moslems and Hindus forced the division of the whole sub- continent. Throughout the western world a killing anti-Semitism still emanates from the heart of Christianity. This world seems to tolerate religious violence as if it is almost proper.
[WRP: And, when such religiously-motivated violence reaches extremes, as in the Sep. 11 attack on the USA, religious people and their leaders are quick to deny that such actions are motivated by religious belief. Thus, leaders lie to us, and -- 'thanks' to religious beliefs -- people lie to themselves! There is a deeply ingrained (and mistaken) irrational sense that religious beliefs cannot promote evil. It was mainly for that reason that security experts did not foresee the possibility of such suicidal air attacks. Had they never heard of the Kamikaze attacks of 55 years ago in World War 2, also motivated by religious beliefs? Indeed, religious belief can be harmful to society -- in more ways than one -- in motivating terrorism, and in blinding 'experts' as to how it might occur. I foresaw this possibility years ago (and wrote a letter to a newspaper about it, unpublished).]
From time to time that violence takes a bizarre turn which cannot be ignored. A Jonestown, Guyana, episode will occur in which hundreds of people drink poison to satisfy both their cultic needs and the illusions of grandeur that have gripped their leader. Now we are confronted with a community called Heaven's Gate that combines unchallenged religious convictions with modern technology and a story line out of Star Trek. Its members were castrated to remove sexual desire, and they died contemplating being taken to a "higher level" by a spaceship traveling in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet. It was one more startling revelation of the primitive hysteria that lurks in the heart of every religious system.
. . . The religious establishment was quick to condemn this activity as a distortion of "true religion." Few there were who would suggest that this behavior was but a slight exaggeration of those elements that are present at all times in every religious system.
When will we recognize that religion is always in the mind control business? Religion purges its critical thinkers by removing them from official positions, indexing their writings or silencing them officially until they recant. If that does not work, eternal and God- sponsored punishment is made quite vivid. Organized religion is cultic at its core, but seeks to keep this fact well concealed. It is revealed only when its authority is questioned, or when some group takes the neurotic aspects of religion to their natural conclusion. That is the final meaning of the Heaven's Gate community in San Diego.
Sigmund Freud was right in so many ways. He has described accurately, I believe, the origin of religion. Far more than most are willing to imagine, religion has been a destructive and divisive force in human history. It still tolerates such neurotic claims as papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy. Almost every religious tradition still asserts that it alone constitutes the sole channel to salvation.
Can Christianity escape the corrupting roots of its religious origin? If it cannot, then the world might well be better off without it. Yet, I am encouraged that there is no word that can translate "religion" in the Gospel tradition. Jesus did not say, "I have come that you might be religious," but rather "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." I am pleased to hear Christian theologians begin to say that the creeds do not capture truth, they only point to truth. . . .
We are moving into a post-religious world. I see humanity emerging out of its primitive origins, a humanity that does not need a heavenly parent figure in the sky to feel secure, a humanity that claims its grandeur by refusing to surrender the radically insecure quality of existence to any would-be authority. This humanity, I believe, can worship the God known biblically as "I Am" not by groveling, but by living. Religion, I suspect, will finally die, a victim of its own immaturity. But Christianity, if it can separate itself from the tentacles of religion, has a chance to be the song of the universe . . .
Such an approach has been underway for decades in some of the more liberal churches, such as, for example, the Unitarian and Unitarian-Universalist churches, which arose (mainly in New England) partly in opposition to the belief in the Trinity, and which welcome many viewpoints, and which foster a spirit of inquiry. Ottawa has such a church.
In the longer term, Bishop Spong is correct. The churches are in decline. Secular humanism has advanced the morals and ethical principles of our Western societies so much beyond the barbarisms of Christianity and Islam that people can no longer subscribe to its main tenets with a clear conscience. People are no longer willing to believe that malcontents should be stoned to death or that one should honor a child abuser (God) who watches helplessly as his son (Jesus) slowly dies nailed to an old rugged cross, His precious blood being shed -- but shed for who? In a society with so many vegetarians, who even wants to think about blood, much less drinking it? One must remember that those who wrote the scriptures never even thought of the possibility that slavery should be abolished, or that wives or children should have some rights. In the Bible, adultery is a crime -- but a crime not of the sexual violation of women, but of the violation of the chattel property of their husbands.
Let us now see how compassionately and tolerantly Bishop Spong is treated by some of his Christian colleagues.
Archbishop closes church doors on liberal US cleric - smh.com.au - Page One:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/25/pageone/pageone9.html As Archbishop Peter Hollingworth delivered a sermon yesterday in St John's Cathedral to mark the end of his 11 years as Brisbane's Anglican archbishop, American cleric Bishop John Spong was giving a talk just three blocks away.
They are from the same church, but Bishop Spong was forced to give his talk in the Uniting Church because he had been banned by Archbishop Hollingworth, who takes up his duties as Governor-General in Canberra on Friday.
The two were once on friendlier terms. . . .
Turn the other cheek Not if the next GG bans you as a blow-in - smh.com.au - National:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/22/national/national14.html . . .
Here to launch his autobiography, Here I Stand, the retired Anglican Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong, has packed out venues across Australia. On Tuesday, Melbourne's St Michael's turned away people after more than 1,300 had crammed into the church to hear his plea for a revolution in Christianity.
But the Governor-General-elect, the Archbishop of Brisbane, the Most Rev Peter Hollingworth, sent word to Mr Spong soon after his arrival that he would be banned from speaking at Anglican churches within in the Brisbane diocese. His chaplain, Canon Barry Greaves, said the church would not debate problems facing it "at the behest of a "blow-in bishop".
And in characteristic fashion, Bishop Spong has not turned the other cheek.
Yesterday, he questioned Archbishop Hollingworth's fitness to serve as Australia's head of state. . . .
Bishop Spong is known for advocating a new Christian faith, stripped bare of Biblical mythology and tales of the supernatural. His insistence that the church shed its prejudices toward homosexuals has led to 16 death threats.
"And they've all come from Bible-quoting true believers," he says. "Strangely ** enough, I've never had my life threatened by an atheist or a Buddhist."
** This should come as no surprise. The percentage of atheists that are in jail (at least in the USA) is far lower (by up to a factor of eight) than the percentage of Christians. There are sound psychological reasons why this is so. Have you heard of an atheist terrorist lately? An atheist KKK member? An atheist anti-Semite? Not likely!
Bishop John Shelby Spong Unofficial Fan Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/reuther_2000/spong.html This has a very extensive set of links to much or all of Bishop Spong's writings. Excellent!
The VOICE - November 1999: http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox31199.html Is Eternal Life Real? There are, I believe, at least four serious problems that have coalesced to destroy the believability of most of the Church's understanding of life after death.
First, the traditional view of life after death was predicated on a theistic understanding of God. The God who dispensed heaven and hell was an external, supernatural parent figure who, to listen to the preachers from this era, spent all of the divine time keeping record books on everything anyone did . . .
The second problem developed with the rise of a sociological consciousness . . .
The third problem gnawing at this once powerful religious conviction came in the psychological revolution that arrived in the first half of the 20th century, bringing the collapse of that naive individualism upon which the judgment of this theistic deity was presumably based. . . .
The fourth reason brings, in my opinion, the profoundest challenge of all. That objection comes when we recognize the radical self-centeredness of the motivation that such a belief creates. The reason for goodness is not that goodness is itself a virtue, but rather to enable one to achieve rewards or avoid punishments. This viewpoint assumes that goodness cannot be motivated on its own merits, but must be encouraged by the selfish desires of reward or the fear of being punished. Heaven and hell therefore are vestiges of this radical self-centeredness.
So under pressure from each of these four serious compromising objections, the concept of life after death has entered a theological limbo. The Church will not abandon it officially; but few theologians seek to engage this profound issue, because it makes little sense inside the box of traditional theistic thinking and no one has proposed a new context in which it can be examined. So in both conservative and liberal Christian circles, a conspiracy of silence has fallen on the subject. In a 1997 Time cover story the issue life after death was said to be ignored across the Christian spectrum. It has become nothing more than pious rhetoric employed frequently in the homes of the deceased. The word "heaven" has been transformed into an adjective and applied to an ice cream flavor known as "heavenly hash," . . .
Life after death, understood as a place of reward and punishment, must, I now believe, be jettisoned from the Christianity that hopes to live into the next millennium. It has died already. A slight breeze blowing in its direction will topple it publicly. The days when guilt can be used by the Church as a weapon of behavior control are over. . . .
A closing thought from the irrepressible Bishop Spong!
The VOICE - November 1999: http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox31199.html THE BISHOP'S VOICE Is Eternal Life Real?
. . . . There are, I believe, at least four serious problems that have coalesced to destroy the believability of most of the Church's understanding of life after death.
First, the traditional view of life after death was predicated on a theistic understanding of God. The God who dispensed heaven and hell was an external, supernatural parent figure who, to listen to the preachers from this era, spent all of the divine time keeping record books on everything anyone did that would form the basis of final judgment. . . .
The second problem developed with the rise of a sociological consciousness in the 19th century, when the medieval patterns built on class distinctions and racial differences in the human family were seriously challenged by a rising sense of democracy that took centuries to develop fully. First, the divine right of kings, the lynchpin of this social stability, was compromised by the adoption of the Magna Carta. Next, innate ability rather than God-given status began to be valued. Finally, we began to look at the radical inequality found in the variety of starting places in life . . . .
The third problem gnawing at this once powerful religious conviction came in the psychological revolution that arrived in the first half of the 20th century, bringing the collapse of that naive individualism upon which the judgment of this theistic deity was presumably based. If a psychologically abused child grows up to be a murdering adult, where does blame lie? . . . .
The fourth reason brings, in my opinion, the profoundest challenge of all. That objection comes when we recognize the radical self-centeredness of the motivation that such a belief creates. The reason for goodness is not that goodness is itself a virtue, but rather to enable one to achieve rewards or avoid punishments. This viewpoint assumes that goodness cannot be motivated on its own merits, but must be encouraged by the selfish desires of reward or the fear of being punished. Heaven and hell therefore are vestiges of this radical self-centeredness.
So under pressure from each of these four serious compromising objections, the concept of life after death has entered a theological limbo. The Church will not abandon it officially; but few theologians seek to engage this profound issue, because it makes little sense inside the box of traditional theistic thinking and no one has proposed a new context in which it can be examined. So in both conservative and liberal Christian circles, a conspiracy of silence has fallen on the subject. . . . .
Life after death, understood as a place of reward and punishment, must, I now believe, be jettisoned from the Christianity that hopes to live into the next millennium. It has died already. A slight breeze blowing in its direction will topple it publicly. The days when guilt can be used by the Church as a weapon of behavior control are over. . . . .
Best wishes to you all, Wayne
Conclusions
I find it exceedingly strange that these Christians appear to believe in the following:
1. That the Bible presents an inspired record of some kind, in spite of its contradictions, both moral and factual.
2. That they believe that the Bible is a scientific record of the creation and development of the universe, in spite of the obvious ignorance of its writers in comparison to knowledge already acquired by, for example the Greeks before the times of writing, and of the obviously mistaken so-called scientific facts of the Bible..
3. That they believe in a God who is a logical impossibility, combining the attributes of (a) a monomaniacal psychotic dictator of arbitrary and contradictory dictates -- one who is willing to have one tortured forever on the sole basis of belief -- (b) His self-agrandizing need to be worshipped, something that psychiatrists would probably classify as a severe mental aberation bordering on psychosis, and (c) a god of what Christians call 'love'. We do not ordinarily term someone who is willing to torture someone, even a mouse, as being 'loving', but Christians somehow manage to do so. Is it schizophrenia?
4. That these believers can, in spite of the above, believe that God is somehow loving and good, in spite of the fact that if God were a person in our modern secular society, He would, in light of His genocidal crimes and torture, be either locked up in jail or committed to a mental hospital.
5. That such religionists can believe that prayer can be anything more than a psychological soporific, despite the evidence that it is not even that effective, much less one that could save a wounded sparrow! If the call for prayer by President Bush for the nation to be safe is compared to the even more fervent prayers of the terrorists that their mission should succeed, who's prayers do they think were answered? How many of the prayers of the victims of the Holocaust were answered? It is a bunch of ridiculous superstition! Would four-leaf clovers work better? It would shock the founding fathers of the USA that a president would even stoop to using the word 'pray' as part of his official business; it violates their admirable concept, as specifically worded in the Constitution, of the complete separation of Church and state. See Founding fathers and early presidents were not pro-Christian, contrary to popular belief. They were mostly very anti-religion, seeing in it a real threat to democracy -- based on its babaric tenets and a disgraceful history of the abuse of human rights (continuing to this day, even in Canada).
A more informed critique of Christianity is presented by a former devoted Christian who abandoned that religion based on his diverse and detailed criticisms as set out in the following: Tough Questions for the Christian Church.
I agree with Freud, as cited above, that at least some of such believers are mentally deranged, if not mentally ill. Unfortunately, about 90% of the people of the world are in the same condition. That such people, including leading politicians, are willing to worship and admire gods of such utter moral depravity and cruelty, such as God and Jesus, goes far to explaining why such cruelties continue to be expressed in the world in the form of wars (most of which, even today, have a religious basis).
Leaders with strong religious beliefs, such as the Pope who demanded that all Jews be buried alive, Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, who asked that the synagogues of the Jews be bulldozed into ruins (just as the Israelis do today to the Palestinians), and the baptized Christian Hitler, with his genuine or feigned Christian beliefs, could only wield their influence with an audience of willing believers and enthusiastic participants. So the danger lies not only in the leaders' use of religious belief but in the credulous and equally barbaric beliefs of their followers. After all, if the God of their worship can commit genocide, as their God does in their sacred Bible, why should not humans also emulate God, and do the same? The only reason why popes were able to torture and murder 'only' one million people in the sacred Crusades and Inquisitions compared with the six million victimized in the very similar cause of Hitler, was that Hitler had more technology at his disposal. Otherwise, their beliefs and motives were equally 'sacred'. "I am doing the work of the Lord", said Hitler. Most people in Germany believed him, with devoted faith, in the honored tradition of Luther and several Popes. The Roman Catholic Church, of which Hitler was a devoted member, never did get around to excommunicating him, nor issuing many words of protest against him.
The world will never be at peace -- with justice and fairness for all under secular laws that are far more equitable than the despotic ones of religious texts written by ignorant men -- until religious belief has either died out or has been somehow eradicated from the world completely. More than one philosopher has posed the question of whether man's cruelty is incarnated in God, who is an invention of man, or whether man mimics the cruelty of an absolute tyrant of a God that he actually believes exists. Either option bodes very ill for the future of the human race.
For the benefit of mankind, and for any hope of civility, justice, mental health, world peace, and freedom from irrational mental slavery, we should kill God -- in either incarnation! More exactly, we should abandon the belief in God -- whether or not that God is a creation of man, or whether God created man. Would we call this theicide? As far as I know, the term theocide is a neologism on my part.
Go Home.
You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca