This page contains links and my comments additional to those in Freedom from religion page 10 (FreRel10) related to maintaining constitutional provisions for Freedom from religion, and for increasing such protections. More precisely, I further document my total objection to any form of state endorsement or subsidization of religious beliefs or sentiments of any kind. It is one of several continuations of the pages My religious beliefs (MyRel010, 020).
See also Religious terrorism page.
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The Case Against Catholicism. Mainly the work of Joseph McCabe: http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/re0_cath.htm#effects Wide range of topics, with many links.
Catholic Church opposes freedom of religion
See also Clerical Fascism and Freedom from religion.
Democracy and the Churches: http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmdemocr.htm J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia.
The suppression of ugly pages of history, which is now so common in our historical literature, although it clearly falsifies our valuation of religious institutions, does not merely relate to early Christian times and the Middle Ages. There is just as scandalous a suppression or perversion of the truth, and for the same purpose of protecting ecclesiastical claims, in the record of modern times, especially the period from about 1790 to 1860. During that period the struggle for what are now regarded as elementary rights of man-freedom of discussion, liberty of conscience, and self-government at least on a limited franchise -- was crushed with a barbarity worthy of the Middle Ages. Apart from armed revolts and civil wars, at least 400,000 unarmed men, women, and children were put to death in massacres, on the scaffold, or died in jails or exile in revolting conditions. Of these victims all but a few score perished in Catholic countries (Spain, Portugal, France, Naples, the Papal States, North Italy, and Austria), where the Church co-operated intimately and enthusiastically with the feudal monarchies. There was much brutality in England and Prussia, but there were, apart from armed encounters, few deaths; and in the Catholic countries revolt against the Church was put on the same level as resentment of political feudalism as a ground for the savage reaction. Yet these facts are now so generally suppressed in popular historical literature -- indeed, in much that professes to be academic -- that we find even liberals sometimes declaiming that the Protestant Churches are as inimical to progress as the Roman, and often entertaining with respect the assurances of recent Popes and Catholic apologists that the Church blesses the fundamental principles of the modern State, condemns coercion and exploitation, and never interferes in politics. It was in view of these historical facts that the Catholic historian Lord Acton pronounced the Papal authorities worse than the worst murderers known in history, the Assassins, and, although he did not live to edit the third part of the great work which he drafted, the Cambridge History, the most authoritative work of history in the English (if not any other) language, it tells the facts with the candour which he desired (Cambridge Modern History, Vol. V). . . .
Gov 97 Week IX: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~fannion/gov97/week9.htm Week IX: Freedom of Religion.
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?" -- James Madison, 1785
PIONEERS OF FREETHOUGHT: http://www.zetetics.com/queen/pioneers.htm Delivered when Queen was 12 years old (1923) . . .
The first priest was the first man who was too lazy to hunt his own firewood, and too cowardly to catch his own meat. Because of this, he devised a scheme to prey upon the fears and superstitions of his fellows. He capitalized their ignorance, and they fed him, clothed him in skins, and dug a hole in the ground for him to live in. Even today, when a boy is too lazy to work and not clever enough to become a professional man, his parents solve the problem of his future career by sending him to a theological school. Being good for nothing, they make a preacher out of him. The first priest undoubtedly ate the tenderest portions of the first freethinker, for the priests have always, from that time to this, lived off the people. The priests of ancient times suppressed all forms of knowledge which might tend to free the people, while on the other hand, they monopolized all the knowledge which might tend to keep them enslaved.
Men did not begin to shake off the dominion of the priesthood until knowledge began to be general among the people.
The founders of modern science are the real pioneers of free thought as far as our own times are concerned. . . .
Several hundred years before the Christian era an Egyptian king, Ptolemy Soter, founded a college and library in the city of Alexandria. Almost all of the dynasty of kings known as Ptolemies were interested in promoting scientific knowledge. They added to this library from time to time, until, shortly before it was destroyed by a mob of Christians in the year 391, it possessed seven hundred thousand volumes of manuscripts. Every student or learned man who came to Egypt was asked to set down in writing his knowledge, that they might preserve it for all time. Every foreigner who brought into Egypt a manuscript from any other country was obliged to lend it to the library, while they made a copy of it for preservation. At Alexandria were collected all the known works of all the writers and philosophers of the ancient world. Part of this library was accidentally destroyed by Julius Caesar. His successor, Antony, presented to Cleopatra the great collection of Pergamos, to take the place of the works destroyed.
In connection with this library, which was kept in two great buildings, a great university was maintained. Ten thousand students were accommodated. Anyone who felt he had a message to deliver, or who wished to teach, went to one of the great courtyards, and sat, or stood, with his students around him, as long as they cared to listen. Learning was free. Anyone might teach, and anyone might come to study. Poor students were fed at public expense. Anyone might, if he chose, sleep on the floor at night. Any subject might be taught by anyone. In other words, the Alexandrian college was a great, free open forum. . . .
In the year 391 a mob of fanatics, recently washed in the blood of Jesus, led by sanctified bandits and monks, destroyed the larger wing of the library, with more than half of the priceless manuscripts possessed by the institution. This act of vandalism was instituted by the great Christian emperor, Theodosius, and carried out under the direct supervision of Theophilus, Christian bishop of Alexandria. Theophilus said: "If these books disagree with the bible, they are heretical, and ought to be burned. If they agree with the bible, they are useless, and ought to be burned." So he burned them, anyway. He was a true Christian, carrying out god's command to Adam, "Of the tree of knowledge thou shalt not eat." But the college still remained, and possibly a third of the books which were in the other building were preserved. . . .
In those days women were kept in seclusion, and it is said that the beauty and youth of Hypatia . . .
Her lectures drew all the educated people of the city to the school, as well . . . as . . . from all over the Roman world to listen to her wisdom and eloquence. She was held in such high regard that the judges of the city took their difficult cases to her for judgment. Theophilus, holy father, saint, and bishop, hated her intensely, but he felt she was too powerful for him to attack. The Christians were not yet sufficiently powerful to force their dogmas on the government of Alexandria, for that city was the last stronghold of Science and Reason. But when his nephew Cyril became bishop, the end of freedom came. Dirty -- he never bathed -- filled with fanaticism and holy fervor, he set out to make Alexandria saintly, Christian and ignorant. It is said by some historians that he became jealous of Hypatia, because the people flocked to her lectures instead of coming to his church. He preached to monks and empty seats, while thousands attended the lectures of Hypatia. However that may be, Cyril and his crazy monks seized Hypatia as she was riding through the streets, tore the clothing from her body, dragged her at the end of a rope through the city, and brought her to Cyril's own church. They took her inside, to the foot of their Christian altar, and with hands and teeth and knives, those Christian savages tore her body to pieces. Pieces of her flesh were distributed among the mob as souvenirs. Cyril thus became supreme. Science was intimidated and destroyed. Cyril was a saint, and superstition held sway without opposition for more than a thousand years, [and still does!] as far as the Christian world was concerned. Christianity teaches that Hypatia, the woman who taught Truth for forty years, went to hell, and that Cyril, the saintly bishop who murdered her, went to heaven. . . .
In America today, we have a large minority who are intellectually free. We also have a large majority who are ignorant, superstitious and fanatical. In almost every state in America the religious, the fanatical, and the ignorant, are trying by legal force to suppress the teaching of scientific truth, to forbid the teaching of the evolutionary doctrines of science, and to enforce the teaching of religion, mythology, and fairy tales in the schools. . . .
In this country, as in Greece, and Rome, and Spain, and Egypt in the past, the fanatical, ignorant, superstitious majority are right now trying to take away from the thinkers of the nation their freedom.
Our only hope is to educate that class of people. We must bring science to the common people. We must bring philosophy to the workers. We must get the sawdust out of their heads and put some sense in its place. If we do not do this, they will forbid us to use our brains at all.
Question Box Church Infallibility and Freedom of Thought: http://www.catholic-forum.com/communion/eng/library/47.shtml Communion is a Canadian Catholic site.
Is not your doctrine of infallibility opposed to freedom of thought? Is not a Catholic hampered in his search for truth by a blind, degrading obedience to the claims of an infallible Church ?
The doctrine of infallibility is indeed opposed to the false freedom of believing error, but not to the true freedom of believing the truth. We have no right to believe what is false, any more than we have a right to do what is evil. Our Savior plainly taught us that error and sin imply not the freedom, but the slavery of the intellect and the will. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John viii. 32; v. 34).
A Catholic does not give a blind, degrading obedience to a fallible, human authority, that may ask him to believe without question the most preposterous statements, but a divine authority, that can neither deceive him nor be deceived . . .
Religious Freedom and Catholicism: http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/freedom.htm Relatively recent events in some countries of the world have given the Catholic Church the opportunity to give the appearance of being the champion of religious freedom. . . . But has this also been the case when Catholicism has been the dominant religion, in a position to exert her influence, and even persecute what they call "heretics" via the secular authorities?
This article documents the opposition by the Vatican to freedom of religion and of its expression by any religion other than Roman Catholicism. Such opposition to freedom, and its request that the state enforce it, are documented in the quotations of the following. Only short extracts from the article are shown here, mainly for copyright reasons.
1. Cum ex Officii Nostri Pope Innocent III, 1207
We decree as a perpetual law, that whatsoever heretic ... shall be found therein, shall immediately be taken and delivered to the secular court to be punished according to the law. All his goods also shall be sold ... The house, however, in which a heretic has been received shall be altogether destroyed, nor shall anyone presume to rebuild it; but let that which was a den of iniquity become a receptacle of filth.
2. Quanta Cura Encyclical of Pope Pius IX promulgated on December 8, 1864
. . . Long quotation of Pope Pius IX . . .
The assertion has just been made by two Popes [Pius IX in 1864, and Gregory XVI in 1832] that the concepts of religious liberty and freedom of speech are nothing less than "insanity", and that Catholic and civil authorities have the right to restrict and abolish all rights of anyone who is not Catholic. He also considers such principles of liberty as fatal blows to the Catholic faith, that the Catholic faith cannot survive in an atmosphere of freedom, but rather only by resorting to repression and persecution as directed by the Church.
. . . Long quotation of Pope Pius IX . . .
. . . Pius IX is actually saying:
15. No man is entitled
to freedom of religion.
16-18. Salvation is found only in the Catholic Church, and not in
any other denomination, to include Protestantism.
55. Church and State should be united as one.
First Amendment to the United States Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Who cannot see that historically the Catholic Church has diametrically opposed religious freedom as guaranteed by the United States Bill of Rights? They have openly declared themselves to be enemies of the United States Constitution and liberty. The first amendment was originally written specifically to prevent the very persecution and repression that prevailed for so many centuries in Europe under Catholicism. Freedom of religion and speech are crucial reasons why the United States has prospered for over 200 years, yet if it could have, Catholicism would have abolished them.
UK Atheist Religion, A
Set Of Testable Propositions: http://members.madasafish.com/~fist/articles/religionpropositions.htm#five UK
Atheist & Science Online E-Zine
Web Site: UK Atheist & Science E-Zine.
God is not detectable. All religions have been made by men. Prayer has no effect on third parties. All religions are based on fear and superstition. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture. . . .
Do not "oppose" in the traditional manner. This will only produce more religion, slavery, bloodshed, and the death of rational thought. Against the dangerous and seductive lies of religious belief systems, and their simultaneous insistence on the partial, if not total suspension of ones' logical faculties, there are three effective remedies. They also apply to the exaggerated and hysterical demands for respect and reverence applied by all religions.
1. Exercise of clear thinking and experimental test. Hence these five propositions. They have been deliberately framed as falsifiable, testable, experimental scientific hypotheses. Unless and until they are disproved, they must be assumed to be true, as the simplest explanation fitting the available facts.
2. Ridicule and "blasphemy". Systematic poking at the lies, mysticism and general nonsense purveyed by religions is the one thing they cannot stand. This, of course, is why the ridiculous idea of blasphemy exists in the first place. After all, an omnipotent, omnipresent god does actually need protecting from a few rude remarks by mere humans.
3. Never resort to violence, except in self-defence. To do otherwise lowers one to the level of the religious believers.
Why: http://www.locutor.net/why.htm The Congregation of Saint Athenasius The Anglican Use: Why we are Roman Catholics
When we were Episcopalians, we believed as many still do that in the true sense we were Catholics, although not in communion with Rome. . . .
Big Blue Books The Church The Enemy Of The Workers: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/big_blue_books/book_14.html The Church The Enemy Of The Workers. Rome Is The Natural Ally Of All Exploiters. Book 14 by Joseph McCabe Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius.
. . . The first letter I received told me that the land is entirely Fascist, which I knew; that all the priests belong to the Fascist party, which is also called Catholic Action and holds its meetings in the Churches, and that every boy or youth works in it. The local newspapers praise the Germans every day as well as the Italians. In the course of a recent editorial one said: "If God so wills it we must substitute the cross of the Swastika for the cross of Christ." The British and American papers which were then assuring us that "the brave little people" would resist the German pressure which was being exerted on them did not quote this. A priest, praising Hitler in a sermon said that he was "appointed by God to punish the world for its irreligion." . . .
See also: . . .
. . . Big Blue Books The Fruits Of Romanism: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/big_blue_books/book_19.html The Fruits Of Romanism The Catholic Church Does Far More Harm Than Good. Book 19.
Canadian Fascism -- Could it Become Reality: http://www.escape.ca/~dkost/canadian_fascism.htm Can Stockwell Day separate church from state? By Gordon Laird. "Standards of Education are not set by government but by God" -- Day.
Clerical Fascism: http://home.earthlink.net/~velid/cf/ This site is a production of the Clero-Fascist Studies Project, an on-going research and public information project exploring the convergence between certain strains of Christianity and fascism in the 20th century. In part, this project is a response to attempts by some of the parties responsible to cover up, erase, or cleanse their history. Our goal is the preservation, not the purification of history.
In the early years of the 20th century the Catholic church began to pursue a policy of alliance with the fascist regimes of Europe. This was an alliance based on opportunism, shared values and a common enemy. The church, increasingly frustrated with democratic pluralism, saw opportunities for advancing the interests of the faith in the clarity of dictatorship. It sought to meld Catholic and fascist doctrine into an alternative to both liberal democracy and communism. . . .
The church's experiment in clerical fascism led it to:
* Sign treaties (concordats) with Fascist Italy (1929) and Nazi Germany (1933), treaties that materially contributed to the the consolidation of the power and legitimacy of these regimes. . . .
* Enthusiastically support Mussolini's war of imperialist agression in Abyssinia.
* Give unwavering support to the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
* Lobby for a policy of appeasement towards Germany.
* Refuse to speak out against the face of Nazi persecutions of Jews before the war and during the genocide that followed.
* Support and attempt to legitimize the Vichy Regime in France.
* Contribute to the genocide in the Nazi-installed puppet state of Croatia. Here members of the clergy not only supported a policy of mass murder and the forced conversions of Orthodox Slavs to Catholicism. Many of them personally helped carry out the murders.
* Attempt to transform Hitler's war against the Soviet Union into a kind of Christian crusade.
* Promote a peace agreement in the waning years of the war that would have left much of Germany's territorial aquisitions intact.
* Oppose the Nuremberg trials and lobby for lighter sentences for some of the most notorious war criminals.
* Help fleeing war criminals, including Eichmann and Pavelic, escape justice
This is a history forgotten, covered up, denied. The materials presented here are an attempt to recover some of that lost history. . . .
The Catholic church was, of course, not alone in its flirtation with fascism and genocide. Protestant Churches enthusiastically collaborated as well. Most famous among them was of course the German Christian Movement, who advocated a more manly version of Christianity, stripped of its Jewish roots, and who adopted as their symbol a swastika inside a cross. It is worth noting too that Martin Luther himself was a rabid anti-Semite,** and was a continual inspiration for Protestants in the Nazi movement. His On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) (excerpts to be posted soon) was so notoriously vitriolic, even bloodthirsty, that Julius Streicher, the Nazi propagandist, could with some justice claim during his trial in Nuremberg that if he could be tried on such charges so could Martin Luther himself.
[** See Quotes by Luther.]
Fascism and the Papacy: http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmfascpa.htm J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia.
Religion is a threat to national security and sanity
See also Religious terrorism page.
Design for a Faith-Based Missile: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_22_1.html Design for a Faith-Based Missile by Richard Dawkins. . . . for understanding what hit New York on September 11th. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. [Contrary to what the leaders of Canada, UK, and USA babble on about!] On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East . . . To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and the author of numerous best-selling books about science and evolution. He is a regular columnist in Free Inquiry magazine. This article was also published in The Guardian (London).
Religious Correctness and the Qur'an: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_22_1.htm Religious Correctness and the Qur'an. Editorial by Paul Kurtz. The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 22, Number 1. . . . Unfortunately, the basic tenets of Islam can be interpreted to support terrorism. For example, criticism of Islam is forbidden, and is punishable by death, as in the fatwas issued against Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. Islam also condemns blasphemy. . . . Are these interpretations correct, and can they be justified on textual grounds? I think that a case can be made that they are; . . .
Many Muslims have denied that Islam is a religion of violence or compulsion. If so, then they should renounce the traditions referenced above and the fatwas against dissenters, critics, blasphemers, and unbelievers. After all, Christians and Jews reject or ignore many Biblical passages which ordain death for witches, homosexuals, bastards, adulterers, etc. Why not the same Reformation for modern-day Islam? Why not bring Islam into the modern world? . . .
Paul Kurtz is editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry and professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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