There are many written articles about Christianity. Some praise it while others curse it. Due to the fact that “history is written by those who won”, we find a very few article that criticize this religion.
One of the best I have read so far was Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian”, but the essay was more about refutation against supernaturalism. Now thanks to the advent of “New Atheism,” there are more commentaries that disparaged Christianity on its merits.
Ask a typical Filipino in the street about Christianity and he will tell you a lot of good things about it. Who can blame them? That information was forced-fed into his mind – that’s how four hundred years of Spanish rule messing up our brains.
And what does a typical Filipino really knows? Most of his information was derived from Christian missionaries, priests and TV Christian evangelists.
According to its paid apologists, Christianity has a superior worldview compared to other religions out there. It is a religion (or a lifestyle, because Christian don’t want to call Christianity a religion) of peace…of love…of doing good to others.
Yep! Peace with a price.
Christianity is a religion of blood lust!
It is a religion whose foundation is the worship of a man condemned to die in a cross.
Hmmmmm…Christian apologists always reason out that Christ death is for our own salvation from sin. So, it’s about a god who would be appeased with the sight and sacrifice of gore, blood and guts. Such a tragic used of adoration.
And what peace are we talking about? Throughout its history, Christianity is soaked by the blood of its innocent victims. Inside its “holy book” we can read stories of how a certain deity orders its “chosen people” to slaughter and plunder their neighbor. Women, children and old folks were not spared. And as Christianity “light the world”, Crusades, inquisitions, holy wars and witch hunts literally burned a lot of communities. Just read your history books. And just imagine how many innocent lives were prematurely ended, burned like firewood in the name of Jehovah. This is what Christianity meant by “love thy neighbors”.
Some say Christianity brought progress. Really? So know most countries that were influenced by Christian missionaries were turned into “banana republics”. There are strings attached to these so-called “progress”, and that’s the eradication of a nation’s culture, thanks to these “missionaries” and the interest of those people behind them.
I find Christianity odious, the fact that it was founded by a liar named Saul of Tarsus. Saul (who was later called Paul) founded this religion by mixing together some old Middle Eastern religious belief and Greek philosophies. Then placing an obscure Jewish persona and viola! He created a cult whose main belief is a cooked-up prophecy about the end of Roman rule in Palestine.
And what were Paul’s issues?
The guy was a hysterical fundy who found pleasure in hating the world. His taste for humiliation, his sexual impotence, his hatred to himself. The man is a perverted masochist!
He’s also a misogynist. He loathed women and found them repulsive. This tent seller also abhorred intelligence and is seen frequently preaching loathing of knowledge, philosophy and science. He scoffed at knowledge…well that’s obvious, his audience were neither learned nor intellectuals, but ordinary townsfolk – simpletons whose lives were surrounded by superstitious beliefs to make it more exciting compare to the realities of their mundane lives. Now…Paul was said to be educated by the Pharisees…So? Pharisees are as ignorant to science and philosophy as a modern-day Christian pastor.
His preaching was centered to a man called Jesus. Who is this man? Christians claimed he is the Son of God that came down from Earth to save us from sin. Now…accepting without admitting that the story was true, what did Jesus really accomplish?
As a Man-God it seems Jesus has accomplished nothing. He didn’t give us anything new in ethics. Most of his teachings were already taught by other philosophers and teachers ahead of his time. His moral ideas are unsystematic and are notoriously obscure. His ethics were not prescribe base on human happiness and well being but instead backed by brute sanctions of threats and punishments.
He never tackled critical moral problems in his time: Issues such as slavery and discrimination against women. He never even talked about basic human rights.
He seems to be ignorant with hygiene and healthcare issues. Gosh! He even promotes folklore remedies and erroneous ideas about the cause of diseases.
He didn’t invent anything that can ease the work of a Jewish peasant. As a son of a carpenter, he didn’t even contributed any major breakthrough in carpentry and wood-working.
This Jesus person also has this temperament of a boiling tea-kettle. He curses other life forms just because of some physical discomfort and he whipped and scourged legitimate entrepreneurs while promised salvation on con-men.
If we were to strip Jesus of his so-called “divinity”, what will be left is a mediocre preacher who held erroneous beliefs, a pretentious fraud, or at worst, a hot-headed madcap.
From Paul to Jesus, we now have Christianity…with the help of forgers, confidence men, lunatics, despots and power-hungry “vicars of Christ” Christianity flourished from an obscure Jewish cult to a mega-religion. Stories of a so-called “Son of God” were invented, recopied – and as these scribes add, subtract, and omit on its parchments the Christian “good news” was created.
Now thanks to modern secular laws, Christianity’s corrupting power was clipped. There are no more killing and mayhem in the name of Jesus. No more smokes from burning bodies…but still we have book burning activities, thanks to Paul!
Today, we find Christians in a non-ending feud with other Christians for the title crown “Who is the true Christian” and as Christians throw mud at each other their pastors and priests are running happily in the bank, depositing money called “tithes” that their witless adherents voluntarily gave so God would save their pitiful souls. Will the money bore God’s name? I doubt it. Wait till the Reverend signs a check and see if the signatory will be Yahweh.
We now have a multi-billion industry. From selling salvation to preaching obscure teaching from an ancient book – re-interpreted to fit a timelier flavor. We also have Christian “apologists” who earns million on books about resurrected flawed philosophies – ALL TAX FREE!!!
When Nietzsche declared God is dead and Voltaire announced that the Bible will cease to exist, they were right. God is dead, and what we are just seeing now is his corpse, attached in strings like a puppet being pulled by Christian evangelists. And when these Christian proudly publicized that they converted Voltaire’s garage into a Bible publishing house…well they’re not publishing the Bible as God’s word but only its empty shell that were already been diluted by their self interpretation to safe guard their own doctrines and interest.
This is what Christianity is all about. It is an empty temple ruled by the rotting carcass of a dead Canaanite deity named Yahweh and his bastard son. A book – compiled by power hungry priests – that was re-interpreted many times by fakers whose vested interest is to accumulate dollars and power.
It seems the religion itself is baldy in need of salvation more than its adherents.
Interesting articles regarding atheism in a country which is rooted in religious values,some of the best educational systems in the world and yet steeped in primitive understanding and beliefs…
I am married to a Filipina,and very happy too;yet I cannot bring myself to”come out”as an atheist for fear of hurting the family’s feelings,although as was previously mentioned,the Filipino folks I am sure would not burn me at the stake for my(non)beliefs! It seems,like everywhere else in this world, that free thinkers have a long way to go before we are fully accepted as a genuine part of modern society.
How about this hypocrisy: Claiming to be a “freethinker” on one hand, while on the other hand asserting that there is no such thing as free will because the universe (including the human mind) is determined by the laws of chemistry and physics. You believe yourself to be a freethinker because your brain chemistry compels you to believe that you are.
I think you misunderstand what a freethinker is. A freethinker is defined as someone who, well, thinks for themselves. They come to their conclusions based not on common belief, dogma and authority but based on reason, logic and experience.
christianity functions like a business in the service sector… the service it claims is that it provides you the conduit that allows you to commune with god…. they also claim that there is only one true god, and by extension it is their god…. arrogant but very shrewd, for this automatically eliminates the competition, they then go one step further, claiming that their way of worship is the only right way of doing so, eliminating any sectarian competition. put it this way, if christianity were to accept the existence of other gods or way of worship, it will give the individual a choice and thus bargaining power (you can shop around for the best deal) …. they then claim the separation of church and state, this way they don't have to pay taxes, at the same time reserving the right to interfere in matters of state which they feel affects them…. (very onerous) the church demands transparency, but does not hesitate to shield pedophile priest, much of it's operation is clouded in secrecy, much like organized crime institutions like the italian cosa nostra or the chinese triads, at least this institutions of crime do not claim any moral superiority, even openly declaring their nefarious intent, the catholic church is a fraud, and their cloak of moral superiority a sham…..
I used to be a good christian (passively following everything) now i've never been to church for quite a while. Dont know why, probably because the sermon is too boring and I'm no longer motivated to listen to there nonsense. Another thing is that, I'm gay & i cant explain why the church I so adore cant understand I like ass more than pussy.
Wow what an angry post.
Mainly true however you blame Saul/Paul of Tarsus for writings which are actually not all his, e.g. half of the epistles (especially misogynic comments) originally attributed to him were written from other unknown writer. And the other half “genuine” are likely tempered with from scribes and priests similar like the gospels.
About Saul/Paul being an “hysterical fundy” so far I have come just along 1 medical diagnosis for Hysteria causing the temporary blindness and possible impotence of Saul/Paul (M. Onfray ‘in defense of atheism’ ) quoting French doctors. But Hysteria and epileptic seizures have sometime similar symptoms. So the usual medical diagnosis (M. Gazzaniga, R. Sapolsky, and several other neuroscientists) is temporal lobe epilepsy of Saul/Paul explaining his hearing of voices and *divine* revelations.
About the content of his epistles: they circle around the superstitious believes of the region and time, the Greek Krestos/Christus/Christ – redeemer of sin coming down for the highest heavenly sphere-7 to the lowest heavenly sphere-1 (just above earth) to wrestle the planet back from demons, tricking them by faking his own death with resurrection after 3 days like a dozen of other mythical figures of the time.
Funny that Christian faithful who often try to explain away contradicting or repugnant Bible verses with ‘you have to see it in context’ do not know the context of their own Christian founder.
And nothing about a mortal Jewish preacher, heir to the Davidic throne ruling Judea as king of the chosen people under the law of the Torah …etc… is inside his epistles. Especially nothing anti-Roman pro Jewish (adhering to the law) can be found in his writings.
The merger of a Jewish messiahs, heir of the Davidic throne myth, with the competing Greek Christ figure of Saul/Paul was coming many decades later with the gospel of Mark and his later copycats. And as this was still not sufficient to join the different fractions and also as counter to Marcion, finally Luke had to write the ‘acts of the apostles’ to spin together a story combining Jewish Jesus with his preacher Petrus (Peter) and the Christ preacher (Saul/Paul) into one shared narrative of joint traveling.
And the contradictions of this merger continued during the holy trinity and divinity yes/no of Jesus discussion all the way through the 4th century AD.
A couple of well researched books from history and Biblical scholarship on the topic are :
‘The Jesus puzzle’ from Earl Doherty
‘The incredible shrinking son of man’ from Robert Price
‘How Jesus became Christian’ from Barrie Wilson
Plus some more of course…
Thanks for the feedback @ RolandF, but I intended this post to be more into an anti-theist's point of view than an atheist's skepticism.
Erratum: 4 thousand years of Spanish Rule?
Error was fixed. Inaantok eh pasensya na.