Goodbye Christianity Recently, I looked a bit closer into Islam and Christianity. It was easy for me to dismiss Islam because of the overwhelming amount of encouragement of mass killing, rape, and intolerance in the Quran (quotes will be provided upon request).
I did not dismiss Christianity nearly as easily because I have many great friends who are very kind hearted who are Christian. Although I know that there were also many quotes that promoted killing, rape, and slavery, I needed to have those clarified.
Of the handful of people I asked, there was only ONE person who provided me with very intelligent explanations of the quotes. Most others made a pathetic attempt to steer the conversation away to distract while others simply said they needed a pastor for better knowledge. This person, whom I wont name, has obviously thought about the issues I brought up before. He/She was also quite an intelligent person to begin with.
I now understand the core values of Christianity. These values are 1) to be a Christian is to accept Jesus as your saviour and believe that he died for our sins. 2) God is all powerful and plans everything. 3) God gives us freedom. 4) God's compassion and love are endless
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I have serious issues with all 4 core values.
1) To be a Christian is to accept Jesus as your saviour and believe that he died for our sins.
I shoudl also say that one cannot go to heaven without believing in Jesus. The issue is that the millions of people who didnt realize Jesus existed (almost everyone from Asia and North and South America from 0AD all the way to the 1500s AD when they were introduced to Christinaity) are going to hell. One person told me that they were made aware; from a star that passed by. Without proper context, any neutral person seeing such a star would have 0 chance of knowing it was Jesus who was born. Perhaps more of an issue is that Ghandi will also go to hell since he didnt believe in Jesus. Same with Buddha. A person who has almost unlimited patience, forgiveness, generosity, and compassion will go to hell simply because he/she didnt believe in Jesus. From that premise, it tells me that Christianity is not mainly about being 'good', but about whether or not you believe in Jesus.
Perhaps one very obvious flaw here is that everyone would have gone to hell before 0AD, as Jesus was not even present on earth yet. The bible does not say: 'there is no door to my father except through me, after you have known me' .... no...it says 'there is no door to my father exept through me' PERIOD. People make mistakes like this, but God or jesus, who are supposed to be all pwoerful, should not amke such simple language errors that a lawyer can even do better. And if this had a slight 'oversight' in meaning, then it means the bible is not 100% correct, making the statemnt that God knows and plans EVERYTHING and that he makes no mistakes to be flawed in itself.
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2) God is powerful and plans everything.
Immediately, I know from that premise that God killed my mom, or did nothing to prevent my mom from dying. From that, I also realize that God allowed the holocaust to occur. Allowed millions of africans to die from bloody massacres. Allowed former yugoslovian civilians to be killed in genocide by the hundreds of thousdands. He also allowed every one of your relatives to die, and allowed every rape, theft, accident, any misfortune that took place and will take place.
All Christians tell me that God has a plan and that we shoudl not try to fathom that plan. But if we are to believe in this faith so strongly and let it literally control our lives and how we think, we very much should try to fathom it.
In the Old testament bible, God quite often commands people to commit mass killings and he himeslf has slain the entire world save Noah's Ark via the world wide flood. This is a result of people being 'bad'. Many Christians explained that because god created, God can take away. Several told me that the victims deserved it. But in the quote such as:
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are all more powerful than you. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, and don't let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters. They will lead your young people away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and he will destroy you. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4 NLT)
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So God is all powerful and plamned everything, and from this quote we easily see that God actively commanded mass killing and plunder. He did so to prevent them from joining other religions. There are 2 issues here.
First, is that God encourages mass killings. It doesnt matter even if 'most' of the people from those 7 nations were 'bad', but 'completey destroying them' is not something I, or probbaly you, find acceptable. If 9/10 people are bad, we are still killing 1 innocent person. That is injustice, no matter what angle you look at it. There is no 'perhaps they WERE all evil'. It depends what eivl is. If they ALL chose not to believe in God and that consitutes evil, sure, they very well could have been. Although id stil find it hard to believe that an infant male (who must be destroyed) was capable of making an informed decision to reject God. Either way..
Second, this defeats what Christians say about how God allows freedom (which I wodner if it is stated in the bible anyway).
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3) God gives us freedom.
Apparently he does not, based on how he commanded his children to completely destroy nations that might lead them to worship other gods. That is not freedom.
Many Christians say that God allows Satan to exist, so we can choose. Again, the problem here is that those who never had a chance to know God and Jesus is gong to hell. The bible says there is no reincarnation, so these poor souls are doomed in hell wihtout even a chance. There was no 'choice' there. But when I look at this premise more carefully, I realise that God is really saying: 'believe in me and Jesus, or else I will allow Satan to claim you'. That is technically a choice, but it is not a very democratic one. "Beleive in me or else." We call that a threat and constitutes coercion.
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4) God's compassion and love are endless.
God is very well aware what happens to people in hell. It is eternal fire. Being burned by a lighter for 20 seconds will send any normal person screaming and howling in torment.
Sending anyone to hell (or alliwing them to go there, either way, as God technically has the power to bring ANYONE to heaven) for whatever reason, punishment, or not, is not well characterized by compassion and love. A society that advocates torture, like in the less deveoped countries, is not where we would go to find a loving and compassionate wway of living. God's ultimate penalty is hell, and that is a more painful torture than any human torture chamber can devise (being able to keep a poor soul sensing pain and keep torturing him/her for eternity would be the sickest form of punishment known so far).
I dont care if it is sending them there or allowing them to go there. If God's love is endless, and if it is even more powerful than a mother's love for her offspring, will that mother send her own children to a a place of such immense torment and call herself 'loving and compassionate'? No. No matter what the child has done.
It doesnt matetr what the reason is, doent matter when, why, how...read these for yourself and say to me, true from your heart, that you sense 'unlimited love and compassion' here:
You must destroy all the nations the LORD your God hands over to you. Show them no mercy and do not worship their gods. If you do, they will trap you. Perhaps you will think to yourselves, 'How can we ever conquer these nations that are so much more powerful than we are?' But don't be afraid of them! Just remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt. Remember the great terrors the LORD your God sent against them. You saw it all with your own eyes! And remember the miraculous signs and wonders, and the amazing power he used when he brought you out of Egypt. The LORD your God will use this same power against the people you fear. And then the LORD your God will send hornets to drive out the few survivors still hiding from you! "No, do not be afraid of those nations, for the LORD your God is among you, and he is a great and awesome God. The LORD your God will drive those nations out ahead of you little by little. You will not clear them away all at once, for if you did, the wild animals would multiply too quickly for you. But the LORD your God will hand them over to you. He will throw them into complete confusion until they are destroyed. He will put their kings in your power, and you will erase their names from the face of the earth. No one will be able to stand against you, and you will destroy them all. (Deuteronomy 7:16-24 NLT)
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I cannot fathom how female Christians find this acceptable:
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)
Thus says the Lord: 'I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.'
Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan answered David: "The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die." (2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB)
Think of this. I am a dad. I have a daughter who is hanging out with friends that I dont like. They come from broken families, smoke, do drugs, and even steal and beat people up. I tell my son: 'take this shot gun and kill ALL of your sister's friends because they might corrupt her. Once you've killed them all, you can take their sisters and pets for slaves as plunder'. Last week, I threw a grenade into a home where a gay couple were having anal sex and killed them (Sodom). And last year, I dropped 100 atom bombs on Canada and killed 30 million people there (world wide flood) because I thought Canadians were getting too corrupt. Do you think I am a good person? Would you willingly pledge yourslef to me and say I have unlimited love and compassion?
I am aware that most of the morally questionable quotes come from the Old Testatment. Many Christians told me that what was said back then is not applicable to now. Again, there are issues with that statement. First, for a being that has 'unlimited compassionand love' such encouragments of mass killing and rape should never have occured, past or present. These are universal moral values. Second, if these quotes are not applicable because it was in the Old Testatment, then Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the 7 day creation, 10 commandements, should also be unapplicable as they were around the same time. One cannot decide what in the bible is relevant or not, unless that person was God him/herself.
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My conclusion
There is simply no other way I can think of any other conclusion besides that Christianity is a dictatorship. It doesnt matter how good you are, it is mostly about believing in Jesus, specifically. The ruler, God, is an all powerful being that, if you defy him, he will send you (or allow you) to go to hell, which is a hideous torture chamber that tortures you for eternity. This being created all of us and since he created us, can take us away. He also allows every misfortune in the world to happen to us.
I dont know what else to call that besides a dictatorship.
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Christians and the Christian Church
I love the Christians I am curently friends with. Their religious views do not affect what I think of them in the slightest way (unless they tried to impose their beliefes on me, which has no happened with my generation of Christians so far). They are people, like me, however...
I did notice that many Christians have a very hard time coming to grips with the same issues I listed above. Should believing in a religion be this hard? How is this any different from a cult that encourages us to kill people? Moreover, if Buddha or Ghandi teaches us to forgive and forget and to love and NEVER tells us to kill ANYONE, why does the Christian church continue to say they are evil?
These are issues that I will not be able to get past. I am too old to accept things without question and my brain thinks too critically to allow myself to willingly serve under an authoritarian rule. All I know is, I will not join any religion that teaches violence.
Moreover, I know that if I took up this religion, it will bring out the absolute worst in me. If I did to people what God does to those that displease him, I will find myself behind bars in no time flat. It would do the world a great service if I did not join Christianity.
I do not believe that they are fully informed of their decision to join Christianity. I can safely say that all were introduced in 1 of 3 ways: 1) baptized and raised as one 2) someone introduced them 3) they discovered it on their own and actively sought out the religion. Either way, I dont believe they have seen the entirety of the bible before joining, and thus, the decision to join was not informed. Thsoe who introduced it would certainly not reveal those barbaric quotes. That explains the discrepancy of behaviour between the Christian members and what the bible actually teaches.
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To illustrate, take this quote:
"Six days may work be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, Holy unto the Lord: Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, He shall surely be put to Death, (Exodus 31:15). -- It does not say 'put to death in ___ circumstance. It simply says put to death. To prove my point even more, many Christians believe Sabbath day is Sunday, and that is the reason many people dont work on Sunday. However, the Sabbath day is Saturday.
Once a person believes in a religion, especially Christianity, who tend to have very devoted members, they will not exit, even faced with overwhelming flaws in logic...even if they realized their god commits mass killings. Instead they will either ignore it and/or get offended by me, leave it to God or a pastor, or justify it. I find this to be very intriguing, as the human psyche never fails to amaze me. I believe that such a strong attachment to Christianity stems from humans' primal need for love, belonging, and safety (God as the protector). People also fear what they do not understand, and God offers the perfect solution for the universe's unanswered questions (God created it all and everything is his doing). In contrast to Buddhism, which emphasizes that you are reposnsible for your own actions, and any unfair misfortunes you endured are the result of your past life (karma). Understandably, the Buddhist concept is not as attractive as there is no 1 being that can control everything. No 1 being that has the power to free you from all sins no matter what you did (well, as long as you dont convert).
The good side is that an individual will feel very safe and loved, like a sheep in its flock. However, I believe it is dangerous to society as a whole. Without the ability to question, critically think, and analyze (God does not want us to question him; does not want us to explore other religions), technology and liberal ideas will not develop. Essentially, if the Christian church had its way, Newton, Galileo, Cornelius, etc would have been silenced. In fact, the church DID try to silence them. Even to this day, the church tries to hinder scientific development by trying to introduce the 7 day creation and trying to stop schools from teaching the concept of evolution. As hypocritical as it sounds, the church abhors science, yet makes use of it. I dont know of any other religion that so actively uses electronic musical instryuments, theatre sized screens, and modernized forms of entertainment for their churches. What would our world come to if we relied ONLY on the 2 bibles? We would still be living in well...40AD.
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Even personal freedom is hindered by the church. Abortion is not allowed everywhere because of the church. Same goes for euthanasia. Perhaps the most disturbing is the ban on gay marriages. What happened to God allowing freedom? The bible does say homosexuality is an abhorrence. The Christian church pressures governments and teaches the masses that homosexuals are dirty and that they shoud nto be married. No matter what way you put it, that is called forcing your beliefs on other people. "You are gay you guys cannot marry." There has been NO studies that demonstrate adopted children from gay couples end up any worse than heterosexual raised children. Hence, gay people marrying does not harm anyone else (or you cannot prove anyway), so preventing them from marrying is authoritarian and unreasonable.
So far, the religion itself is contradictory, dictatorial and violent, the chruch is pretty much the same, and impose their values on society, but the members are all very nice. But joining the religion would be not accepting those friends, but accepting the religion and the church. That is somethig I can never do. Accepting those friends is what I currently do, so essentially, nothing will change. And if some of them get offended by what I have said, then it is they who do not accept me and I have no choice but to let them go.
