Author Archive for johan de haan
When I contemplate the inevitability and the finality of my own mortal demise, there is one consideration against which I test the question of how I would choose to meet my own end, the ardent hope that my life will be considered as righteous and just, with all its imperfections, by those who know me best. The realisation that life is but a precious and flickering moment of consciousness means that the only real treasure in one´s final hours must surely be the certainty that there are those whose lives you have improved, who have cherished your life and believe that your absence leaves a wrinkle in the fabric of their existence. I realised long ago that I do not fear death, although there is some concern about the manner in which that inevitability will come to pass, but that I do fear the possibility of reaching the end of my life without that sense of fulfilment.
This realisation has motivates me each day to achieve some small piece of that puzzle, but at the same time feeds my disdain for the false promise of consolation, the claim that our lives constitute nothing but a fleeting precursor to an eternal state of submission and that the conduct of my life is entirely irrelevant not only to myself but also to those whose love and respect I cherish. When we test the value of our lives against achievement and fulfilment, what could be more polluting than the primitive and immoral doctrine that life constitutes a frightful free-for-all in which we all serve but one self-centred purpose, the salvation of self. For not only does this imply the utter irrelevance of our lives save for the fulfilment of varying theocratic criteria, but it renders every act of kindness and love an act of self-interest designed to satisfy the standards of a divine overlord. Christianity not only mandates the enslavement of our lives to a self-serving ideal of eternal preservation, thereby stripped all our moral decisions of any worth beyond the desperate attempt to secure our eternal soul from the damnation of hell fire, but it reduces the remembrance of our loved ones to the grotesque enquiry as to whether or not enough has been done to avoid the wrath of the capricious dictator in whose benefit a life has been lived and lost.
The loss of the great Christopher Hitchens placed this implication in stark contrast. His untimely death deprived us of one of the great moral and philosophical minds of our time, whose work freed and inspired millions the world over and whose illness and death evoked empathy and compassion from friend and foe alike. Upon his passing the world celebrated his work and achievements, shed tears in remembrance and showed its gratitude and appreciation for a lifetime of work and dedication to principles. Whilst the loss of such a great man was a tragedy he left us with a priceless and timeless volume of work as a celebration of his life.
In contrast, consider for a moment those who die in faith were we to take the traditions of the Christian faith seriously. Consider for a moment the utter irrelevance of earthly deeds save for the faith based determination as to whether one has done enough to avoid damnation and endure eternal submission. What purpose does remembrance serve, what value is there in the celebration of a life when the only consideration is the fearful and irrational contemplation of whether or a loved one has arrived at the right gate in the magical yonder. In essence, to truly believe just an ideology forces one to reduce a human lifetime to nothing more than the flip of a coin, and to wrestle endlessly with the false dilemma of whether or not a love one´s life has been redeemed. In addition, the notion of theistic significance in death raises the question of the personal accountability on the part of friends and family not to mention one´s religious leaders in reviewing the sum of a life. If the faithful themselves took their religion seriously would not each funeral be a post-match interview to discuss the success or failure or our communal ability to redeem the living from eternal damnation and would not the primary criteria for work as a religious leader be the tally of safe arrivals? It is with ease that we identify the shameless cherry picking of believers in seeking to impose their bronze age moral standards but how not more so does religion reveal its hypocrisy at the moment of death. Whilst on the one hand offering false consolation for the very thing which loved ones are mandated to accept and treasure as the ultimate purpose of the divine mind, and on the other threatening eternal consequences for the departed without accepting its own culpability were such a scenario to be real.
Whilst in practice believers shy away from considering this unavoidable conclusion at times of need and desperation, recognising the inherent poor taste of raises these considerations at the moment of greatest sadness, what Christianity replaces it with is the mere endorsement of divine figures, appeals to the divine and the religiously correct mild expectation that heavenly reward is a given and that the singing of praise of a benign dictator should suffice to appease the tears and pain of those in mourning. I cannot but cringe at the realisation that all this tapestry and make believe is at the expense of the value of human life and death, at the expense of everything that makes life significant.
The very nature of religion is to reduce human worth to that of a plaything strung along helplessly at the behest of a capricious master. It insists that our lives are valueless save to provide an arbitrary measure against which an absolute dictatorship will test the suitability of individual souls to tender praise or endure damnation. It insists that our present existence constitutes but a moral trial, in which our bodies are but valueless vessels temporarily endowed with the necessary machinery to allow such a test to take place. When my own hour has come I hope my death will be celebrated as a culmination of a life, not the uncertain commencement of an obscure magical eternity of which I desire no part, an eternity which if it did exist would render our every moment irrelevant.
The human quest for liberty has inspired countless oppressed peoples to remove the shackles of tyranny. It has revealed itself in revolts and uprisings throughout history and in recent years it has defined the fall of several longserving dictators, with one of them, Muammar Gaddafi, having now lost his grasp on power, and in the process, his life. In this spirit one could not but sympathise with the efforts of the Libyan uprising and its removal of the Gaddafi regime from the throne, putting an end to four decades of exploitation by one of the longest ruling dictators in recent history.
Yet this sympathy has been tempered somewhat by the brutal manner in which members of that family, Muammar himself included, have been brutalized and murdered, how a defenceless father and many of those around him were gunned down in cold blood before a baying mob. Under any other circumstances the world would be up in arms at such an event, yet the inconsistency with which humanity, and world leaders especially, responded, leaves a bitter tinge to the affair.
Firstly, this is the same Muammar Gaddafi who was received with a hug on the red carpet in Rome, who pitched his imposing extravagent tent in Paris, who was received with open arms in Washington and who had the weasely presence of Tony Blair singing his praises in the very spot now bombed by NATO warplanes. What changed in the last 12 months in the approach of the international community from puckering up to this dictator to serve their own interests, to bombing his convoy which clearly formed no threat within the contemplation of the UN Security Council mandate. As was the case with tyrants Mabuto Sese Seko, Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin, the world seems content to cozy up when it suits them but to turn on these leaders in their weakest moment.
Secondly, whilst the rule of Muammar Gaddafi was brutal and violent, what purpose has been served by his brutal and violent extermination? What great moral justification can one give for shooting a 69 year old defenceless man in the head as he begs for mercy and whilst he has yet to stand trial for his offences? The International Criminal Court had afterall been one of the first international organisations to publicly and forcefully announce its intentions to deal with the horrors of the Gaddafi regime, a Court whose very purpose involves attending to the criminal conduct of leaders such as he. Why is it that as the bloodied images of a dead leader screened on televisions the world over not a single world leader bothered to mention this ommission, and the new leaders of Libya, proudly promising a new government of law and order (if unfortunately of the theocratic kind) have failed to address the hardly minor concern of why no consideration was given to the role of international justice. Indeed, its as though these organs are of absolutely no consequence in the matter, and that the opportunity to have dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi brought to justice in an objective manner on the international stage enjoys neither the favour nor the interest of those who claim the right to make decisions on matters of life and death.
Everything points to a ruthless intention to find Gaddafi and execute him in as degrading a manner as possible. Clearly no member of the National Transitional Council had issued orders to its fighters to attempt to secure Muammar Gadaffi alive nor for that matter did any of the western powers who had brought the regime to its knees and seemingly intentionally ushered in the final moments of this tragic battle make respecting the rules of engagement a pre-condition to continued military support. The end of the Gaddafi era was marked with a mob feasting on human suffering and the principes of international law deliberately ignored.
Yet what should perhaps concern us most is the manner in which the fall of the Gaddafi and his murder have been categorised by theocratic madness and hysteria. The men who shot Gaddafi in cold blood were yelling "God is Great" as they did so and the leaders behind this movement have been citing the will of god more often than they have given concrete indications of the kind of Libya they intend to create. What purpose is served violently bringing down one regime of tyrants if the men intending to replace them claim to do so by divine right, and gun down defenceless men who claimed the same authority?
No matter the offences any government or individual has committed against our fellow men and women, above all we should treasure as supreme the virtues of right, the important of justice and the necessity of due process. Violent retribution, revenge and responding to injustice with the moral standars of bronze age tribesmen is as dangerous as the very evil embodied by men such as Muammar Gaddafi, in fact more so, for the fist of one dictator can never be as forceful, immoral and offensive as the fists of thousands of men claiming to do so on behalf a celestial dictator. Men are capable of great evil, but men are capable of even greater evil when they believe their conduct has divine approval and accordingly, as much as we should celebrate the removal of one kind of offence to humanity, eqaully should we resist any effort to impose theocratic thinking no matter what it is designed to replace.
In response to reading about the alleged historical references by one “Thallus” to certain events of the Christian tradition I was compelled to conduct an investigation as to the accuracy of the claims made about his alleged confirmation of certain events of the Christian tradition. Indeed, before critically commenting on any new allegation that would cement even a shred of truth in the longstanding false claims and mythical superstitious nonsense maintained by organised religion, one is objectively compelled to investigate such matters and consider in details whether the claims made therein are true.
Having done so however, the only conclusion that one can draw is that not only is the tendering of the alleged account of Thallus not evidence for the fairy tales of the Christian tradition but that efforts to make it so constitute a shameless attempt at justifying the unevidenced with the make-believe.
In reaching this conclusion I point to a number of observations that can be made about the alleged works of Thallus as follows:
1. We have very little evidence concerning what it is that Thallus is alleged to have said or written at all, virtually all the information available to us is handed down by Christian apologists who make particular allegations concerning what was contained in the work of Thallus. There are some fragments of his work available to us but these are almost exclusively contained in the works of other historians. Indeed, the first reference to Thallus of which we are aware is in 180 CE by the Bishop of Antioch, Theophilus. Insofar as these accounts seem to concern the Christian tradition, it is clear that the allegations by these Christian apologists are in fact summaries of the Christian tradition rather than any historical account of what is alleged to have occurred and in particular a reproduction of particular claims of certain Gospel traditions. Given that the willingness of Church Fathers to falsify historical accounts which contain any reference to the existence of a Jesus figure one ought to be justifiably skeptical of the hearsay allegations of those who were feverishly intent on justifying their religious tradition.
2.As for the allegations concerning when Thallus is alleged to have written his accounts, I note that there is no evidence for Thallus as a contemporary of the Gospel events in the historical record. Allowing for a moment that references are true this raises the obvious question of probabilities, if indeed Thallus was referring to the Christian tradition in his writings this would logically suggest that he was in fact writing in the 2nd century CE, which is consistent with all the references made of his work, which only start appearing at the end of the 2nd century CE.
3. We therefore have no basis upon which to confirm when or whether Thallus did in fact make any reference to events in the Gospels at all, and if so what he is alleged to have said about them. The most significant of these apologetic claims was made by George Syncellus in the 9th-century quoting Julius Africanus about the crucifixion: "after the most dreadful darkness fell over the whole world, the rocks were torn apart by an earthquake and much of Judaea and the rest of the land was torn down. Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun in the third book of his Histories, without reason it seems to me." All this is a hearsay allegation about what Thallus is alleged to have said about a “dreadful darkness” of the whole world, which is not only historical nonsense it is also not an aspect which is alleged in any of the competing Gospel accounts. Indeed, we have no reason to believe this refers to the alleged crucifixion at all. Africanus is challenging the claim that the darkness in question could have been a natural event such as a solar eclipse. Precisely why Thallus would have referenced only the darkness and not the earthquake or walking dead in the streets of Jerusalem is not entirely clear to me, what is clear is that the quotation is an attempt by a non-contemporary apologist to justify his own religious tradition. As we do not have any background information about Thallus nor the context in which Africanus was making this quote we really cannot attach any value to this quote as a historical reference to anything. (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/thallus.html)
4. The ambiguity in the claims about Thallus are however compounded when we further consider the quoted Africanus passage as follows :"Phlegon reports that in the time of Tiberius Caesar, during the full moon, a full eclipse of the sun happened, from the sixth hour until the ninth. Clearly this is our eclipse!..." Firstly we know that Phlegon wrote in around 140 CE, which again makes this a hearsay account in the 2nd order, however, it is peculiar that Africanus rejects Thallus' alleged claims about a solar eclipse but immediately thereafter cites Phlegon’s reference in support thereof. Richard Carrier identifies the fact that the language used suggests that the citation is out of place and that a scribe copying the passage in question and inserted the Phlegon phrase, which was incorporated by a later scribe copying the same work mistaking the insertion as part of the original text. The Africanus quote in the work of Syncellus is followed by a passage from Eusebius which quotes Phlegon correctly, it would therefore seem that the Phlegon passage was inserted after Syncellus, or that the account in Africanus is incorrectly attributed by Syncellus to Thallus when it should have been reference to the account of Phlegon. (See "The Case Against the historical Christ" by RG PRice http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm)
5. Indeed, when considering the works of Phlegon we can refer to the writings of Jerome as cited by Syncellus as follows:"[Phlegon] wrote more on these events in his 13th book, saying this: "Now, in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (32 AD), a great eclipse of the sun occurred at the sixth hour [noon] that excelled every other before it, turning the day into such darkness of night that the stars could be seen in heaven, and the earth moved in Bithynia, toppling many buildings in the city of Nicaea." It is clear that Phlegon did not mention Jesus at all but was merely referencing an earthquake in Bithynia, which is more than 700 kilometers away from the place of the crucifixion. (http://www.attalus.org/translate/jerome2.html#2040)
6. Finally I note that Origen who was a contemporary of Africanus, makes no mention of the details contained in Phlegon’s account of the earthquake or the eclipse. Indeed, these details appear only in the much later versions of the same account. The errors in the Africanus account of the records of Phlegon give a very clear indication of the degree to which the allegations of Thallus would have been augmented in the same manner.
In summary, it is clear that Thallus did not mention Jesus at all, and that Africanus was drawing a link between one account and another and adding his own interpretation of what was being referred to. This is confirmed by the failure of other Christian historians and leaders such as Eusebius to cite these accounts or to reference them in their support of Christian apologism. Indeed, it is a recurring theme in the false accounts given in support of the Jesus myth that the conflicts between the different Church fathers and apologists reveal the very lies told in order to justify it.
In summary, based on the accounts of the aforesaid Church fathers there are three options which reasonably all renounce the claim by apologists that the Thallus reference is in fact a true account referring to the crucifixion: either the account is a fabrication by Syncellus or Thallus; the reference to Thallus should have been to Phlegon; or the account is correct but Thallus fails to expressly mention Jesus or the crucifixion and the reference in this regard is constructed by apologists. The attempt by apologists to cite Thallus as a historical reference to Jesus is a false and misleading one, but this is not surprising, afterall it fits comfortably into the long and odious tradition of the Christian Church to justify its traditions by whatever means possible, including the falsification and misrepresentation of evidence. Indeed, to date such falsehoods constitute the only and therefore the best justification for the entire affair.
Of course, objectively the faithful should have no need for such dishonesty given that they claim to believe by faith, it is therefore a revealing aspect of the apologetic effort that not only do they seem unfulfilled by faith, but that they care not for truth, evidence or reason. It is one thing to believe without evidence, it is another all together to believe by the force of one’s own falsifications.
It is peculiar that one of the central figures of the Christian and Islamic tradition is an allegedly 1st century Jewish preacher for whom there is no contemporary evidence. Not only is there is no evidence that any of the claims contained in the contradictory gospels compiled decades after the events they claim to describe, and indeed after the Christian tradition had already been established by the likes of Paul of Tarsus, are even remotely true, but there is no evidence for a historical Jesus figure. Of course, in the mind of the religious believer this should and does not matter, afterall faith is belief without and often in spite of the evidence and as such the revelation that the entire tale is a myth would only matter if one cared sincerely about matters of evidence and reason. From the point of the objective observer however, it is a fact of history that there is no objective contemporary evidence that the person of Jesus ever existed. The only conclusion that can therefore reasonably be drawn is that the entire tale was a fabrication at the end of the 1st century CE to justify a religious tradition which was already in existence and to add royalty and divine merit to what was the concocted cult of a few deluded patriachs.
Let us be clear, there is not a single piece of physical evidence that a biblical Jesus ever existed, there are no artefacts, works of carpentry or any works allegedly written by the man-god himself. All that the religious tradition has to justify its claims is the very same religious tradition, it’s a house of cards no different to claiming the tale of Little Red Riding Hood is true because the tale of Little Red Riding Hood says so. We now know that the claims about the town of Nazareth are false, that the miracle birth and childhood of the Jesus figure was a later addition to the gospels and does not appear in the oldest Gospel of Mark, that all the tales were written by unknown but non-contemporary authors who lived decades after the alleged events they were describing, that there is no historical record to justify the miraculous events of guiding stars, ripping curtains, darkened earth of the resurrection of Saints in the streets of Jerusalem, the alleged census or any other of the concrete claims made in the Gospels which can be tested.
Every single claim made about Jesus whether in the bible or in the spurious non-contemporary accounts in the decades and centuries that followed are hearsay accounts, compiled after the alleged presence on earth of this man-god and without any source of objective authority or reference. Every single letter in every single book of the new testament was compiled over thousands of different manuscripts and books (many of which have not been included in the Cannon) centuries later and therefore do not constitute a reliable source of information on which the existence of a historical let alone a biblical Jesus can be alleged. Indeed, this evidence would not survive inquiry in a court of law or a simple act of reasoning, why then it continues to convinces millions of fervent believers is a matter of some intrigue. Indeed, it is structurally no different to belief in Wotan, fairies or Unicorns yet continues to command the ear of countless grown up humans who insist that not only is it true, but that it is divinely true by the power of its own authority.
None of the New Testament epistle writers describe Jesus as a teacher or a miracle worker, or mention Nazareth. Indeed, despite these epistles being the earliest productions of the Christian tradition which predate the Gospels, there is not a single quote, parable or teaching of Jesus to be found. There is no mention of the disciples and the notion of Jesus is presented as a spiritual eternal god. As Earl Doherty writes in his book “The Jesus Puzzle”, “Christian documents outside the Gospels, even at the end of the first century and beyond, show no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus were in circulation”.
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Puzzle-Christianity-Mythical-Christ/dp/0968601405
The Gospels are dated between 70 CE and 90 CE and contain an inconsistent and often contradictory account of the life of Jesus. The fact that the four gospels on which the substantive notion of Jesus is based post-date the epistles of Paul of Tarsus adds to the intrigue of how the earlier Christian traditions came into existence and how these changed over time. With the adoption by the Roman Catholic Church, these fictitious accounts were elevated to the position of infallible godly inspiration and unquestionable history. Yet, they are not authored by the disciples, whose historicity cannot be evidenced, but were written based on the claims of various Church fathers and Christian leaders of the 1st and 2nd century CE, whilst their divine significance postdates their authorship by several centuries. We literally have no idea who wrote these texts and therefore no idea where they sourced their information, we do know that none of the authors even claim to have met the earthly Jesus and that what remains of their writings is the copies of copies of manuscripts that survived long enough for the Roman Catholic Church to incorporate them into Christian scripture.
There has of late been a apologetic attempt by some Christians to attempt to argue the historicity of Jesus based on extra-biblical sources, however, to make this claim is to either fundamentally misconstrue what is meant with contemporary or confirmatory evidence, or to deliberately misrepresent as evidence for that which it is not. For the avoidance of doubt, there is at present no evidence whatsoever of either the figure of Jesus or the claims made about him. All that exists is historical evidence confirming the presence of Christians in the first and second century CE and confirming some of the fundamental claims of the Christian tradition that had already been formulated at that time. One will note of course that the authorities cited are always the same, indeed, it is significant to note that after 2000 years of ardent searching this is the best by way of confirmatory evidence that the entire Christian tradition is able to muster. The most often cited examples can be commented on as follows:
1.Josephus Flavius: He was a Jewish historian and the first non-Christian to mention the Christian tradition or the figure of Christ. Most scholars now agree that Josephus' account of Jesus in his work Antiquities came was a forgery by the Church Father, Eusebius, however, one can deny Josephus as a contemporary witness by simply noting that he was only born in 37 C.E. and he only wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E.
2.Pliny the Younger: His work references information about Christian believers and their beliefs, the existence of which is not denied. He makes no mention of the Jesus figure as independent from the claims of Christians and in any event he was born many decades after Jesus is alleged to have lived.
3.Tacitus: This Roman historian was born in 64 C.E. and therefore not a contemporary witness. His Annals, written in the early 2nd century CE makes reference to a Christ figure, but there is no evidence justifying this reference and again he was not a contemporary of this Christ figure. His references to the presence of Christians in the Roman Empire is merely confirming what we already know and which no serious historian would deny, that there were Christians in the first and second century CE. Again, Tacitus is not a contemporary witness and in his account of Christ is entirely relying on hearsay evidence.
4.Suetonius: Another Roman Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. makes an obscure mention of a "Chrestus,". Even if it were the case that this was a reference to Jesus, which is disputable, we would merely be dealing with another non-contemporary witness relying on hearsay evidence.
5.The Jewish Talmud: The attempt by apologists to rely on the Talmud to justify the figure of Jessu is rather bizarre, given that the Jewish tradition distinctly rejects the idea that a saviour man-god came to earth as the messiah. In any event, most Jewish scholars agree that the reference to Yeshu is in fact a reference to Yeshu ben Pandera, who lived in the 2nd centuy CE. In any event, it would be bizarre to claim that the Palestinian Talmud, which came into existence in the 3rd to 5th century C.E., or the Babylonian Talmud, which was written between the 3rd to 6th century C.E can be cited as authority for events in the 1st century CE. Again, to make this claim suggests that one either grossly misunderstands the concept of evidence or that one is deliberately misrepresenting non-Christian accounts for the Jesus figure.
The fact of the matter is that not a single historian, follower or scribe during the time when Jesus was alleged to have lived, performing miracles and generally upsetting the powers that be with the authority of God, makes any mention of him whatsoever. Given that he is alleged to have attracted great multitudes, argued and debated with the religious and political leaders of his time and healed the sick in great numbers it is utterly staggering that not a single reference can be found of this allegedly divine prophet who not only acted with the authority of God but was alleged to be God. This in circumstances where countless historians who did live during the time of Jesus make not a single mention of the fact that he even existed, I recommend in this regard the work of JE Remsberg “The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences for His Existence”.
http://www.amazon.com/Christ-Critical-Analysis-Evidence-Existence/dp/0879759240
In summary, the claims about Jesus are as reliable as the claims about Prometheus, Hercules or Wotan and the entire tale is the evidentiary equivalent of Humpty Dumpty and Grandfather Smurf. Of course, if the believers wishes to maintain that an eccentric Jewish preacher existed during the early 1st century CE and that he constitutes their best chance at a fulfilled life, then by all means let them cling to this bizarre insistence. However, let us desist from the false claim that faith can be justified, that half truths and misrepresentations are a basis to maintain the cult of the Nazareen. After all, if there were evidence for a particularly tradition religious tradition, “faith” would become obsolete.
Unfortunately, those who believe without evidence or reason cannot be challenged in their beliefs with evidence and reason, and one can only be liberated from this primitive indoctrination by the personal choice to consider all matters of existence based on reason and evidence, not to justify one’s preconceptions and wish-thinking but in an earnest quest for what is true. For as Carl Sagan noted, "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe."
Consider for a moment the abject terror to which the victims at Utoya were subjected in their final moments, how they must have pleaded and begged their executioner to forgo their demise, how the heroic shielded their beloved and how the screams and anguish must have risen above the island as Anders Behring Breivik, the self proclaimed saviour of Christianity, made his way through the rattrap of the innocent. Contemplate briefly the helplessness that the survivors must have felt as they saw young men and women cut down in a hail of bullets, the utter dread with which they realized the extent of their incapacity in the face of the tragedy as it unfolded before them. The fear that gripped them not only shaking every possible security they believed they had at that moment but was guaranteed to pursue them for the rest of their days, infecting every moment of consciousness, ever second of sleep. Now conduct the thought experience of whether, if you had been in a position to prevent this atrocity from happening, you would. If you had prior knowledge, would you have taken steps to notify the police or if need be would you have confronted and disarmed this man? Would you have been willing to kill this man if you knew it would save the lives of nearly a hundred innocent bystanders, would you been prepared to surrender your own life if you reasonably believed that in doing so you would spare the innocent the nightmare to come?
One can, with a certain degree of confidence, assert that for many there would be no question and that for the majority of those who could not muster the courage of an Alfieri tragedy, there would still have been no question as to the moral necessity of acting so as to prevent or limit the suffering of those who would be affected. In fact, as a measure of moral discourse one could safely make the assertion that all but a precious few would have little doubt in implementing Philippa Foot’s trolley experiment if necessary to protect the victims, based on the humanist understanding that this would have constituted the most moral of possible outcomes. As a final augmentation consider for a moment that one had both foreknowledge of the event and that you were in a position to ensure that it did not happen without risk or injury to yourself, could you for a moment justify your own failure to act if that opportunity had arisen, would you have survived your own culpability if in that moment you had not taken the action that was necessary? Surely not.
Yet that is what one must believe if one believes in the cult of the Nazareen, one must assert that to allow the atrocity to occur was absolutely unquestioningly the best and most moral of outcomes. For one must accept that a merciful all-powerful deity whose will embodies perfection, knowingly allowed Anders to plan his attacks over a period of several years, facilitated every step by failing to “inspire” a single inquisitive law enforcement officer to look amongst the reeds, was in the room as the bomb was manufactured and the weapons prepared, failed to step in at any moment to jam the firing pin, blind the attacker, or cease the functioning of his heart or allow a brave man or woman to overpower him. Or one must believe that during the entire process from the forming of the bizarre theocratic ideas in the mind of one madman, to the preparation, the co-ordination and the execution, a loving all powerful being looked on in indifference, impervious to the screams He could already hear, the broken hearts He would take no measure to protect and the untold suffering it would inflict. That in each moment, with each bullet and with each life lost the God of the universe observed with cold indifference, caring neither for the triumph of evil nor for the sacrifice of innocence, but content to watch the systematic destruction of young lives for his amusement.
The fact that a self-proclaimed Christian was the cause of this tragedy has been roundly ignored by the religious, save for the hypocritical populists such as Bill O’Reilly who claim the right to dissociate their Christian faith from such acts of immorality whilst merrily imposing this tactic against all others. What is telling however is the hypocrisy with which the religious deride as immoral this act of terror but do not hold their God, an accomplice guilty by association by any measure, to account for the same acts. It is further peculiar that those of the Christian faith would shred their sackcloth over the murder of mainly secular and atheist young men and women, but take no thought for the claims of their own faith which mandate that in addition to suffering this outrage the victims should now be punished eternally for their non-belief. What greater hypocrisy could there be than to deride the earthly and temporary terror of a few when glorifying the eternal and permanent torture and pain for the many by the same divine force that allow the tragedy to occur in the first place. What the dark hour on Utoya teaches us is not only the danger of the theocratic mind but the abject poverty of Christian theology in its utter inability to rationalize its own response.
There is an aspect of religious apologism that perturbs my humble sensibilities, that puts an unjustified smirk on the faces of the faithful and is rarely outed as the fallacious reasoning that it is. It concerns the erroneous link alleged between the universe as we understand it and theism. Far too often one hears the religious person proclaiming that the beauty of the natural world, the complexity of biological evolution, to the extent that religious ignorance has not mandated its rejection, or the origin of the cosmos is direct evidence for the existence of the very creator alleged by the ignorant nomads whose ideology they have assumed by faith. Not only is this tendency strictly unbiblical given the clear and glaring inconsistency between the religious claims and our scientific understanding of the world, but it makes a mockery of religious theology in shifting its parameters whenever opportunity calls. The distinction between deism and theism is obvious yet the religious mind refuses to acknowledge it, claiming shamelessly that observances in the natural world not only affirm the necessity of godly worship but constitute direct evidence justifying one’s belief in a particular deity, in whose name one claims knowledge of the godly mandate and of the divine will.
The failure to understand the distinction between deism and theism stems in part from the utter lack of knowledge most religious people have concerning the contents and consequences of their religion’s theology. Many believers whilst pleasantly respectful of unbelievers who proclaim religious faith in another theocratic ideology, are shocked and dismayed with the proposition that one could declare oneself an atheist with no belief in any gods. In this context I have literally been told by well-wishing believers that even proclaimed faith in Zeus of ancient Greek mythology is an improvement to the principled declaration that one has no religious faith. The observation that my atheism extends merely one god further in the realm of millions of possible deities is generally lost in the mist of indignation.
In practice most believers seem to extend little significant to the theological positions their religion takes or has taken, whether it concerns the peculiar imperialistic tendencies of Salafism as defined by Muhammad Ibn Ahd-al-Wahha or the murderous fascination of early Catholic fathers such as Origen and Tertullian, the believer is generally ignorant of the religious basis for his faith or merely declares that his worship of the “true god” stands above the theological skirmishes that defined its development. Unfortunately the refusal to recognise the significance of what it means to hold religious faith and the hypocritical willingness to declare faith in the “one true god” without acknowledging the very human origins of this concepts leads unavoidability to a muddling of the lines between deism and theism.
To clarify the distinction, deism is a product of the enlightenment, a product of a genuine, if misplaced, desire to reconcile the natural world with the notion of a creator without the overwhelming pungent ignorance of traditional religious theology, a movement of scientific endeavour which whilst considering the existence of a creator deity as an essential ingredient of the natural world, recognized that for this concept to remain believable it had to be removed from the claim to know the identity and will of this creator. It was labelled by the Pierre Viret as a heresy, but perhaps best described by Paul Hazard as “rationalists with nostalgia for religion: men, that is, who had allowed the spirit of the age to separate them from orthodoxy, but who liked to believe that the slope they had started upon was not slippery enough to lead them to atheism.” Indeed it is an attempt to reconcile the notion of a creator with the clear fallacy of all religious proclamation and the unavoidable observation that any claim to know the identity or mind of a deity constitutes intellectual and academic dishonesty. Deism at its most simple is merely the assertion that based on the natural world we can infer a deity whose identity and will are unknowable.
The concept of deism is in stark contrast with the notion of theism, for it proclaims not only that the natural world is evidence for a deity but that his gender, identity and will are absolutely known. That not only can the chosen few assert to know the desire of this most high in the natural world but that one has absolute knowledge of his intention to impose a celestial North Korea based on an alleged infringement by our long dead ancestors. Although the religious are loath to admit it, there has been an incredible shift in the manner in which the Christian faith in particular has moved away from the claim that the contents of the Bible constitute the necessary link between this claim and deity in question. Relatively recently John Toland in this thesis “Christianity Not Mysterious” set out the prevailing theological position of the 17th century that reason was in fact the justification for the theistic position, that the Christian faith was justified and that none of it was contrary to reason. The traditional theological explanation for the apparent inconsistency between what religion claimed and human understanding was the insufficiency of that understanding. Yet whilst this insistence has been relinquished by all but the most indoctrinated and fervent followers of the faith, there has been a hypocritical attempt to replace the waning authority of textual literalism shamelessly with the deistic arguments of the enlightenment, as though the reliance on an ideology that denies the truth of the theistic position is nevertheless ripe ground for its redemption.
Yet this attempt constitutes false reasoning of the highest order not to mention an opportunistic rejection of centuries of Christian fire enforced doctrine. Deism is an assertion of atheism in Yahweh in everyway that matters, an assertion of non-belief in all religious faith. The notion of a deity revealed in the natural order makes no allowance for faith, prayer, moral or historical claims, let alone the bizarre assertion that a birth in a manger to a virgin hands the male beneficiary the keys to the universe, the authority to assert not only an immoral doctrine but to punish eternally those who refuse to accept it. As such, we should courteously reject any attempt to justify religious faith of any sort based on any reference to the natural world - the doctrines, theology and moral claims of religious faith do not stem from a nostalgic attempt to reconcile a bronze age concept of god with scientific progress but the baseless claim to absolute certainty based on the allegations of those who neither recognized the dilemma nor sought to address it.
There is an aspect of religious apologism that perturbs my humble sensibilities, that puts an unjustified smirk on the faces of the faithful and is rarely outed as the fallacious reasoning that it is. It concerns the erroneous link alleged between the universe as we understand it and theism. Far too often one hears the religious person proclaiming that the beauty of the natural world, the complexity of biological evolution, to the extent that religious ignorance has not mandated its rejection, or the origin of the cosmos is direct evidence for the existence of the very creator alleged by the ignorant nomads whose ideology they have assumed by faith. Not only is this tendency strictly unbiblical given the clear and glaring inconsistency between the religious claims and our scientific understanding of the world, but it makes a mockery of religious theology in shifting its parameters whenever opportunity calls. The distinction between deism and theism is obvious yet the religious mind refuses to acknowledge it, claiming shamelessly that observances in the natural world not only affirm the necessity of godly worship but constitute direct evidence justifying one’s belief in a particular deity, in whose name one claims knowledge of the godly mandate and of the divine will.
The failure to understand the distinction between deism and theism stems in part from the utter lack of knowledge most religious people have concerning the contents and consequences of their religion’s theology. Many believers whilst pleasantly respectful of unbelievers who proclaim religious faith in another theocratic ideology, are shocked and dismayed with the proposition that one could declare oneself an atheist with no belief in any gods. In this context I have literally been told by well-wishing believers that even proclaimed faith in Zeus of ancient Greek mythology is an improvement to the principled declaration that one has no religious faith. The observation that my atheism extends merely one god further in the realm of millions of possible deities is generally lost in the mist of indignation.
In practice most believers seem to extend little significant to the theological positions their religion takes or has taken, whether it concerns the peculiar imperialistic tendencies of Salafism as defined by Muhammad Ibn Ahd-al-Wahha or the murderous fascination of early Catholic fathers such as Origen and Tertullian, the believer is generally ignorant of the religious basis for his faith or merely declares that his worship of the “true god” stands above the theological skirmishes that defined its development. Unfortunately the refusal to recognise the significance of what it means to hold religious faith and the hypocritical willingness to declare faith in the “one true god” without acknowledging the very human origins of this concepts leads unavoidability to a muddling of the lines between deism and theism.
To clarify the distinction, deism is a product of the enlightenment, a product of a genuine, if misplaced, desire to reconcile the natural world with the notion of a creator without the overwhelming pungent ignorance of traditional religious theology, a movement of scientific endeavour which whilst considering the existence of a creator deity as an essential ingredient of the natural world, recognized that for this concept to remain believable it had to be removed from the claim to know the identity and will of this creator. It was labelled by the Pierre Viret as a heresy, but perhaps best described by Paul Hazard as “rationalists with nostalgia for religion: men, that is, who had allowed the spirit of the age to separate them from orthodoxy, but who liked to believe that the slope they had started upon was not slippery enough to lead them to atheism.” Indeed it is an attempt to reconcile the notion of a creator with the clear fallacy of all religious proclamation and the unavoidable observation that any claim to know the identity or mind of a deity constitutes intellectual and academic dishonesty. Deism at its most simple is merely the assertion that based on the natural world we can infer a deity whose identity and will are unknowable.
The concept of deism is in stark contrast with the notion of theism, for it proclaims not only that the natural world is evidence for a deity but that his gender, identity and will are absolutely known. That not only can the chosen few assert to know the desire of this most high in the natural world but that one has absolute knowledge of his intention to impose a celestial North Korea based on an alleged infringement by our long dead ancestors. Although the religious are loath to admit it, there has been an incredible shift in the manner in which the Christian faith in particular has moved away from the claim that the contents of the Bible constitute the necessary link between this claim and deity in question. Relatively recently John Toland in this thesis “Christianity Not Mysterious” set out the prevailing theological position of the 17th century that reason was in fact the justification for the theistic position, that the Christian faith was justified and that none of it was contrary to reason. The traditional theological explanation for the apparent inconsistency between what religion claimed and human understanding was the insufficiency of that understanding. Yet whilst this insistence has been relinquished by all but the most indoctrinated and fervent followers of the faith, there has been a hypocritical attempt to replace the waning authority of textual literalism shamelessly with the deistic arguments of the enlightenment, as though the reliance on an ideology that denies the truth of the theistic position is nevertheless ripe ground for its redemption.
Yet this attempt constitutes false reasoning of the highest order not to mention an opportunistic rejection of centuries of Christian fire enforced doctrine. Deism is an assertion of atheism in Yahweh in everyway that matters, an assertion of non-belief in all religious faith. The notion of a deity revealed in the natural order makes no allowance for faith, prayer, moral or historical claims, let alone the bizarre assertion that a birth in a manger to a virgin hands the male beneficiary the keys to the universe, the authority to assert not only an immoral doctrine but to punish eternally those who refuse to accept it. As such, we should courteously reject any attempt to justify religious faith of any sort based on any reference to the natural world - the doctrines, theology and moral claims of religious faith do not stem from a nostalgic attempt to reconcile a bronze age concept of god with scientific progress but the baseless claim to absolute certainty based on the allegations of those who neither recognized the dilemma nor sought to address it.
The horrendous howl from the religious that was heard in response to this past week’s events in the Pacific surprised even the most cynical of superstition’s critics. In the midst of the suffering, death and destruction, there were those of the bronze age persuasion who either justified the event as a sign from the heavens, a punishment for adoration not tendered or blamed the people of Japan for their ill-considered decision to test the power of the Lord by settling along the “ring of fire”. One could not help but suppress a feeling of intense nausea, not unlike that honest revulsion that gave Nietzsche cause to wash his hands ever so often, every time another personal assistant of the most high reasoned that human suffering and the forces of nature are so designed as to further the mastery of an invisible man-god whose will they alone have been privy to.
To name but an example, one Janet Grochowina proposed that the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the lives of innocent men, women and children was her god’s punishment for the events of World War 2, as though the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities had insufficiently quenched the thirst of this self-serving tyrant. To have to suffer this level of mindless drivel is a thankless task, save for the timely reminder of the kind of ignorance on which religion feeds on and the self-imposed sciolism and self-righteous immorality that it breeds. For some reason, Christianity stands head and shoulders above the other prevailing superstitions in its opportunistic exploitation of human suffering. The world’s other leading brands, for all their obvious flaws and frauds, at least have the common decency to keep their smirks and satisfaction to themselves until the dust has settled, but the apocalyptic cult of the Prince of Peace simply cannot help but preach from the rooftops about either the pending doom of us all or the godlessness of those suffering this calamity. My own stab at an explanation would point to the pent up frustration of waiting two thousand years for the return of the aforementioned man-god but when it comes to this kind of religious wallowing one can never tell.
A peculiarity of this feast of faith is the complete conviction that a supernatural explanation premised on a bronze age desert god reincarnate is an explanation at all. The first point is that there is a whole list of fairytales and myths which are equally suited for such thumb-suck. In fact, the Japanese have a tale custom made, far better suited than the ignorance of bronze age Palestine, not to mention more palatable. In Japanese mythology a giant catfish called “Namazu” is controlled by the god “Kashima” who restrains the beast by placing a large stone on its back. When Kashima lets his guard down the fish thrashes about causing earthquakes. It’s a stretch but certainly less reprehensible than the claim that a fearsome, loathing and vengeful man-god who didn’t bother to introduce himself experiences some sick heavenly arousal at the sight of a destroyed coastline.
What is however roundly depressing is the complete ignorance of the evidenced scientific explanation for earthquakes and tsunamis, leaving one contemplating whether religion breeds ignorance or whether the reverse is true. Most of the faithful appear ignorant of plate tectonics or the fact that Japan lies at the meeting of three such plates, the Pacific, the Philippine and the Eurasia plate. They maintain this self-imposed empty-headedness no matter now simply the scientific evidence is presented or how patiently its consequences are explained. Nor does it bear influence to point out that if anything, we are the lucky recipients of a time when this process is relatively calm, that our ancestors were the sufferers of far more violent exhibitions of these natural forces. A swathe of our species, charmed by myth and miracle simply continues to insist that claiming that "god did it" is not only more satisfying but that it is the only explanation that merits attention.
Where these same people would howl with glee should a Japanese holy man report on the fact that Namazu is on the loose and Kashima should be encouraged accordingly, they insist unflinchingly, at the cost of their own dignity and moral standing that an invisible theistic influence masterminds and controls the avoidable suffering of humankind, that some higher purpose is served by the endless shedding of human tears.
Not that we require further justification to fight the influence of religion wherever we find it, but this grotesque orgy of immoral contempt and sadism is due reminder that in contrast to this hysteria there is only one overriding influence that matters when the forces of nature conspire against us, human solidarity. An influence far greater, moral and valuable than any supernatural meddling you care to imagine.
The horrendous howl from the religious that was heard in response to this past week’s events in the Pacific surprised even the most cynical of superstition’s critics. In the midst of the suffering, death and destruction, there were those of the bronze age persuasion who either justified the event as a sign from the heavens, a punishment for adoration not tendered or blamed the people of Japan for their ill-considered decision to test the power of the Lord by settling along the “ring of fire”. One could not help but suppress a feeling of intense nausea, not unlike that honest revulsion that gave Nietzsche cause to wash his hands ever so often, every time another personal assistant of the most high reasoned that human suffering and the forces of nature are so designed as to further the mastery of an invisible man-god whose will they alone have been privy to.
To name but an example, one Janet Grochowina proposed that the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the lives of innocent men, women and children was her god’s punishment for the events of World War 2, as though the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities had insufficiently quenched the thirst of this self-serving tyrant. To have to suffer this level of mindless drivel is a thankless task, save for the timely reminder of the kind of ignorance on which religion feeds on and the self-imposed sciolism and self-righteous immorality that it breeds. For some reason, Christianity stands head and shoulders above the other prevailing superstitions in its opportunistic exploitation of human suffering. The world’s other leading brands, for all their obvious flaws and frauds, at least have the common decency to keep their smirks and satisfaction to themselves until the dust has settled, but the apocalyptic cult of the Prince of Peace simply cannot help but preach from the rooftops about either the pending doom of us all or the godlessness of those suffering this calamity. My own stab at an explanation would point to the pent up frustration of waiting two thousand years for the return of the aforementioned man-god but when it comes to this kind of religious wallowing one can never tell.
A peculiarity of this feast of faith is the complete conviction that a supernatural explanation premised on a bronze age desert god reincarnate is an explanation at all. The first point is that there is a whole list of fairytales and myths which are equally suited for such thumb-suck. In fact, the Japanese have a tale custom made, far better suited than the ignorance of bronze age Palestine, not to mention more palatable. In Japanese mythology a giant catfish called “Namazu” is controlled by the god “Kashima” who restrains the beast by placing a large stone on its back. When Kashima lets his guard down the fish thrashes about causing earthquakes. It’s a stretch but certainly less reprehensible than the claim that a fearsome, loathing and vengeful man-god who didn’t bother to introduce himself experiences some sick heavenly arousal at the sight of a destroyed coastline.
What is however roundly depressing is the complete ignorance of the evidenced scientific explanation for earthquakes and tsunamis, leaving one contemplating whether religion breeds ignorance or whether the reverse is true. Most of the faithful appear ignorant of plate tectonics or the fact that Japan lies at the meeting of three such plates, the Pacific, the Philippine and the Eurasia plate. They maintain this self-imposed empty-headedness no matter now simply the scientific evidence is presented or how patiently its consequences are explained. Nor does it bear influence to point out that if anything, we are the lucky recipients of a time when this process is relatively calm, that our ancestors were the sufferers of far more violent exhibitions of these natural forces. A swathe of our species, charmed by myth and miracle simply continues to insist that claiming that "god did it" is not only more satisfying but that it is the only explanation that merits attention.
Where these same people would howl with glee should a Japanese holy man report on the fact that Namazu is on the loose and Kashima should be encouraged accordingly, they insist unflinchingly, at the cost of their own dignity and moral standing that an invisible theistic influence masterminds and controls the avoidable suffering of humankind, that some higher purpose is served by the endless shedding of human tears.
Not that we require further justification to fight the influence of religion wherever we find it, but this grotesque orgy of immoral contempt and sadism is due reminder that in contrast to this hysteria there is only one overriding influence that matters when the forces of nature conspire against us, human solidarity. An influence far greater, moral and valuable than any supernatural meddling you care to imagine.
Notwithstanding tirades against the perpetuation of parables I retrain a considerable sympathy for the simplicity of my species. There is something markedly solidaire in the efforts of our kind, regardless of its futility or infantilism, and it is endearing to consider our flaws, our customs, our traditions and our so evidently primitive retention of ignorance and superstition. Of course one is no less obliged to correct its practice and preaching anymore than one should relinquish the cause of gender equality, but one cannot help extending a degree of sympathy to the preservationist hope that gives rise to religious observance. Faith for the median believer is a matter of social cohesion, an expression of trepidation in the face of our glaring insignificance and a childlike acceptance of the claims of old. We have evolved into the most social of primates, the most creative of minds, and whilst we are too easily flattered by the limitless resourcefulness of our own imagination, we represent an unparalleled achievement for which we credit ourselves only in part.
One of the more remarkable religious figures of recent history is the German missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who despite his profession of the Christian faith exhibited a enviably degree of rational humanism in his approach to his role as a minister of religious faith. One of his noteworthy observations was that “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings”, a statement which suitably defines the origin and explains the development of social morality without appeal to the heavens and without the paradoxical insistence on the infallibility of ancient texts. The social danger of religion is its senseless insistence that a bronze age moral compass constitutes the one and only unalterable rulebook to which our species should adhere. A stagnant, stifling set of standards premised not on moral lessons, human solidarity and the lectures of history but the shrill insistence that the ignorant bronze age patriarchs of old not only had authority to determine the rules that governed their societies but that by the mere allegation of a divine finger their authority extends to billions of human beings living in a modern, irreversibly altered world in which our moral standards succeed by virtue of our ability to recognise the significance and function of equality, freedom, dignity, personal responsibility and common interests.
Religious observance, particular when reduced to rigid institutions such as the Catholic Church constitute a searing force of polarization pitting the faithful against all those who fail to share their obsession, be they adherents to another brand of superstition or by their insistence that human imagination alone, not matter how grand or totalitarian, cannot and must not constitute a basis for belief or action. Whilst few Christians today will acknowledge the divisive nature of their beliefs, and generally let their morality be guided by our more enlightened societies, Pope Leo XIII pointed out that the Gospel of the Christian faith testifies that those who do no accept the yoke of faith are its enemies, doomed to suffer eternal damnation for their unbelief, that “all heretics who are not with Him and do not gather with Him, scatter His flock and are His adversaries“, hailing the term, “He that is not with Me is against Me".
The oft repeated religious non-argument that a sense of morality, respect and compassion must be premised on a delusion is countered with mere reference to either the immorality of religion or to the ability of human beings to distance themselves from the crude social norms of generations past and to settle on a functional, variable and above all, moral, set of standards that requires no appeal to the heavens and need not be enforced with endless threats of hell and damnation. One such a philosopher, John Stuart Mill, whose works molded our zeitgeist as indeed it did our understanding of the premises of falsification in the implementation of the scientific method, noted that “If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.” How distinct this human affair from the Hitchcock like shrill idiocies of the Christian message, the vile suggestion that any breaker of the ranks shall be fed to the birds that they may gorge themselves, that suicide and mutilation should be the response to any criticism of the doctrine, that those who cannot or will not suffer the claims of the clergy shall not only be the subject of correction but shall incur eternal damnation in a lake of sulfur where their cries and endless desperation shall be audible to the thoughtless lucky few who groveled to the right deity, in the right manner and at the right time.
Flawed though we may be, we possess the enviable ability to reason and rationalize the world and our place in it, not merely in relation to the science that forms us but in the social bonds that bind us. Whilst in this we are not unique in the animal world, we are unparalleled and successful by virtue of that great ability to admit when we err and to augment based on changes in circumstance and understanding. Social morality is superior to claims of divine inspiration precisely because it is fluid and subject to review and reason, precisely because it must be argued and defended and because it is not forced upon us with mythical threats of torture at the pitchforks of demons.
To recognise that our species has laboured through the pains of its youth, the fears of its fables and has, against the odds and the expectations of the faithful, succeeded by our own hand, is to recognise that religion seeks our resubmission to an immovable, unalterable dictatorship of the sky, which is not just flawed but eternally so. Religion is the blemished contention that the scientific and moral truth of our world is to be found scribbled on stone tablets and cowhide and that to question the absolute truth of this assertion will cause the sky to fall.
Notwithstanding tirades against the perpetuation of parables I retrain a considerable sympathy for the simplicity of my species. There is something markedly solidaire in the efforts of our kind, regardless of its futility or infantilism, and it is endearing to consider our flaws, our customs, our traditions and our so evidently primitive retention of ignorance and superstition. Of course one is no less obliged to correct its practice and preaching anymore than one should relinquish the cause of gender equality, but one cannot help extending a degree of sympathy to the preservationist hope that gives rise to religious observance. Faith for the median believer is a matter of social cohesion, an expression of trepidation in the face of our glaring insignificance and a childlike acceptance of the claims of old. We have evolved into the most social of primates, the most creative of minds, and whilst we are too easily flattered by the limitless resourcefulness of our own imagination, we represent an unparalleled achievement for which we credit ourselves only in part.
One of the more remarkable religious figures of recent history is the German missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who despite his profession of the Christian faith exhibited a enviably degree of rational humanism in his approach to his role as a minister of religious faith. One of his noteworthy observations was that “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings”, a statement which suitably defines the origin and explains the development of social morality without appeal to the heavens and without the paradoxical insistence on the infallibility of ancient texts. The social danger of religion is its senseless insistence that a bronze age moral compass constitutes the one and only unalterable rulebook to which our species should adhere. A stagnant, stifling set of standards premised not on moral lessons, human solidarity and the lectures of history but the shrill insistence that the ignorant bronze age patriarchs of old not only had authority to determine the rules that governed their societies but that by the mere allegation of a divine finger their authority extends to billions of human beings living in a modern, irreversibly altered world in which our moral standards succeed by virtue of our ability to recognise the significance and function of equality, freedom, dignity, personal responsibility and common interests.
Religious observance, particular when reduced to rigid institutions such as the Catholic Church constitute a searing force of polarization pitting the faithful against all those who fail to share their obsession, be they adherents to another brand of superstition or by their insistence that human imagination alone, not matter how grand or totalitarian, cannot and must not constitute a basis for belief or action. Whilst few Christians today will acknowledge the divisive nature of their beliefs, and generally let their morality be guided by our more enlightened societies, Pope Leo XIII pointed out that the Gospel of the Christian faith testifies that those who do no accept the yoke of faith are its enemies, doomed to suffer eternal damnation for their unbelief, that “all heretics who are not with Him and do not gather with Him, scatter His flock and are His adversaries“, hailing the term, “He that is not with Me is against Me".
The oft repeated religious non-argument that a sense of morality, respect and compassion must be premised on a delusion is countered with mere reference to either the immorality of religion or to the ability of human beings to distance themselves from the crude social norms of generations past and to settle on a functional, variable and above all, moral, set of standards that requires no appeal to the heavens and need not be enforced with endless threats of hell and damnation. One such a philosopher, John Stuart Mill, whose works molded our zeitgeist as indeed it did our understanding of the premises of falsification in the implementation of the scientific method, noted that “If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.” How distinct this human affair from the Hitchcock like shrill idiocies of the Christian message, the vile suggestion that any breaker of the ranks shall be fed to the birds that they may gorge themselves, that suicide and mutilation should be the response to any criticism of the doctrine, that those who cannot or will not suffer the claims of the clergy shall not only be the subject of correction but shall incur eternal damnation in a lake of sulfur where their cries and endless desperation shall be audible to the thoughtless lucky few who groveled to the right deity, in the right manner and at the right time.
Flawed though we may be, we possess the enviable ability to reason and rationalize the world and our place in it, not merely in relation to the science that forms us but in the social bonds that bind us. Whilst in this we are not unique in the animal world, we are unparalleled and successful by virtue of that great ability to admit when we err and to augment based on changes in circumstance and understanding. Social morality is superior to claims of divine inspiration precisely because it is fluid and subject to review and reason, precisely because it must be argued and defended and because it is not forced upon us with mythical threats of torture at the pitchforks of demons.
To recognise that our species has laboured through the pains of its youth, the fears of its fables and has, against the odds and the expectations of the faithful, succeeded by our own hand, is to recognise that religion seeks our resubmission to an immovable, unalterable dictatorship of the sky, which is not just flawed but eternally so. Religion is the blemished contention that the scientific and moral truth of our world is to be found scribbled on stone tablets and cowhide and that to question the absolute truth of this assertion will cause the sky to fall.
The wisdom of a frail geriatric should not be lightly discarded, afterall, no matter the state of the flesh, the wisdom of the ages is often found in those with a fair dose of life experience. Such circumspection and respect can however not be afforded in the case of one Joseph Ratzinger, who in his fragility truly does say the very strangest of things. At this time of year it is customary for the Pope to don his pointy hat and present his “Urbi et Orbi”, addressing the enclave of the Vatican and the world at large. The phrase contains a striking irony which anyone with a notion of Catholic history will of course recognise, but to delve into the idiocies of Catholic theology would distract from the fundamental objection to the notion that the Catholic Church, or indeed any bronze age hangover, has the authority to argue its moral fortitude or for that matter has any place informing us of the good tidings and peace which its brand of superstition brings. Rather the objection this festive season is to the moral revulsion we should feel towards the Christian Christmas story, its claim to liberate mankind and the selfserving moral relativism that permeates all religion.
In more strident times, before the chisel of secularism and the Kingdom of Italy had overturned the Church’s power, the Papal message to the world was of a very different sort altogether. Of the heretical Cathars, Arnaud-Amuary, the papal legate sent by the Vatican to lead the Christian Crusaders, is renowned to have said, “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” —"Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own"; Pope Honorius, by infallible Papal Decree, ordered that the murder of the excommunicated would not be considered homocide where the faithful believers, fired with zeal for the church, chose to butcher them; and the Church spent several centuries pillaging and plundering the Middle East under the cry “deus volt” – “God wills it”. Indeed one could spend numerous volumes digging up the very worst of the Catholic Church’s track record, from its anti-semitism, its intolerance and its unending quest for earthly power. What is fundamental to all these examples however, is the shameless manner in which Papal statements are acclaimed as the infallible word of a bronze-age god breathed upon his vicar on earth one moment and discarded in favour of the more politically correct the next. How bizarre it must seem to the victims of the Church’s power, whether long dead or the present sufferers of its superstitions, to hear the Pope mumble words of peace and tolerance and imploring the world not to be too harsh on the followers of his faith. How exceedingly hypocritical for this institute of ignorance to allign itself with a festive message of a secular world which it still sabotages whenever the opportunity arises.
Yet the conduct of the Church should not be mistaken as a mere earthly affair, on the contrary, it is remarkable how all Christian denominations have reduced their celebration of Christmas to a mere selection of a one liner in Luke 2:14, and wish all the merry cheer of Christmas and peace on earth. Any part time student of theological works realises that the words of the alleged angels that fateful night were specific in noting that the peace in the world is limited to those on whom the favour of God rests, that Jesus did not come to bring peace but a sword, to separate rather than to unify and to rule rather than to serve. The fact that the wolf came dressed as a lamb, that our assigned dictator was said to have been magically born of a virgin and laid in a manger is neither here nor there. It does not feed the hungry to claim that by faith we are fed, nor the sick to claim that by prayer we are healed but its does pull the wool over the eyes of the innocent to allege that on Christmas day many centuries ago a son of god became man for the entertainment of the heavenly realm and by virtue of a predistined and insignificant holy affair his tyranny shall prevail for eternity.
In the same manner that every sensible human being is repulsed by the notion of an eternal hell by virtue of the factor of time, the suffering experienced by a eternal being in an earthly setting pales in comparison to the relative insignificance of that event. If indeed the myth of the Christian Christmas held any truth to it, we would still be folly to attach any significance to it other than to note the tomfoolery of the supernatural. If a Jewish man-god was born two thousand years ago to suffer an earthly injustice to settle the eternal justice of the heavans his sacrifice is as insignificant to us as we are to the universe, as paled by the expanse of time as we are paled by the expanse of space. Christmas in the hands of the religious is not a festival of hope, peace and goodwill, on the contrary, it has historically been a time for the religious to regail us with the selfrighteousness of their fairytale and the dictatorship to come. It is however, as with the earthly simpletons that claim to represent it, a masterpiece in marketing, a fluid and variable set of symbols and syllables primed for the ears of the audience.
The variability of faith and its shameless willingness to reallign its theology to meet the needs of its target audience notwithstanding its own proclaimed infallibility or the infallibity of its holy texts is truly a unmatched act of fraud and corruption, permeated by self loathing and opportunism. Yet its ability to commit such treason against humanity in the full glare of public scrutiny and get away with it must surely be a case of heavenly marketing.
The wisdom of a frail geriatric should not be lightly discarded, afterall, no matter the state of the flesh, the wisdom of the ages is often found in those with a fair dose of life experience. Such circumspection and respect can however not be afforded in the case of one Joseph Ratzinger, who in his fragility truly does say the very strangest of things. At this time of year it is customary for the Pope to don his pointy hat and present his “Urbi et Orbi”, addressing the enclave of the Vatican and the world at large. The phrase contains a striking irony which anyone with a notion of Catholic history will of course recognise, but to delve into the idiocies of Catholic theology would distract from the fundamental objection to the notion that the Catholic Church, or indeed any bronze age hangover, has the authority to argue its moral fortitude or for that matter has any place informing us of the good tidings and peace which its brand of superstition brings. Rather the objection this festive season is to the moral revulsion we should feel towards the Christian Christmas story, its claim to liberate mankind and the selfserving moral relativism that permeates all religion.
In more strident times, before the chisel of secularism and the Kingdom of Italy had overturned the Church’s power, the Papal message to the world was of a very different sort altogether. Of the heretical Cathars, Arnaud-Amuary, the papal legate sent by the Vatican to lead the Christian Crusaders, is renowned to have said, “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” —"Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own"; Pope Honorius, by infallible Papal Decree, ordered that the murder of the excommunicated would not be considered homocide where the faithful believers, fired with zeal for the church, chose to butcher them; and the Church spent several centuries pillaging and plundering the Middle East under the cry “deus volt” – “God wills it”. Indeed one could spend numerous volumes digging up the very worst of the Catholic Church’s track record, from its anti-semitism, its intolerance and its unending quest for earthly power. What is fundamental to all these examples however, is the shameless manner in which Papal statements are acclaimed as the infallible word of a bronze-age god breathed upon his vicar on earth one moment and discarded in favour of the more politically correct the next. How bizarre it must seem to the victims of the Church’s power, whether long dead or the present sufferers of its superstitions, to hear the Pope mumble words of peace and tolerance and imploring the world not to be too harsh on the followers of his faith. How exceedingly hypocritical for this institute of ignorance to allign itself with a festive message of a secular world which it still sabotages whenever the opportunity arises.
Yet the conduct of the Church should not be mistaken as a mere earthly affair, on the contrary, it is remarkable how all Christian denominations have reduced their celebration of Christmas to a mere selection of a one liner in Luke 2:14, and wish all the merry cheer of Christmas and peace on earth. Any part time student of theological works realises that the words of the alleged angels that fateful night were specific in noting that the peace in the world is limited to those on whom the favour of God rests, that Jesus did not come to bring peace but a sword, to separate rather than to unify and to rule rather than to serve. The fact that the wolf came dressed as a lamb, that our assigned dictator was said to have been magically born of a virgin and laid in a manger is neither here nor there. It does not feed the hungry to claim that by faith we are fed, nor the sick to claim that by prayer we are healed but its does pull the wool over the eyes of the innocent to allege that on Christmas day many centuries ago a son of god became man for the entertainment of the heavenly realm and by virtue of a predistined and insignificant holy affair his tyranny shall prevail for eternity.
In the same manner that every sensible human being is repulsed by the notion of an eternal hell by virtue of the factor of time, the suffering experienced by a eternal being in an earthly setting pales in comparison to the relative insignificance of that event. If indeed the myth of the Christian Christmas held any truth to it, we would still be folly to attach any significance to it other than to note the tomfoolery of the supernatural. If a Jewish man-god was born two thousand years ago to suffer an earthly injustice to settle the eternal justice of the heavans his sacrifice is as insignificant to us as we are to the universe, as paled by the expanse of time as we are paled by the expanse of space. Christmas in the hands of the religious is not a festival of hope, peace and goodwill, on the contrary, it has historically been a time for the religious to regail us with the selfrighteousness of their fairytale and the dictatorship to come. It is however, as with the earthly simpletons that claim to represent it, a masterpiece in marketing, a fluid and variable set of symbols and syllables primed for the ears of the audience.
The variability of faith and its shameless willingness to reallign its theology to meet the needs of its target audience notwithstanding its own proclaimed infallibility or the infallibity of its holy texts is truly a unmatched act of fraud and corruption, permeated by self loathing and opportunism. Yet its ability to commit such treason against humanity in the full glare of public scrutiny and get away with it must surely be a case of heavenly marketing.
It’s that merry time of year once more when churches morph into a placid haven for every simple soul haunted by baseless illusions of broadway grandeur and a soapbox for off-key musicians of every kind. Indeed, for the humble admission price of lending one’s ears to bronze age drivel, and the timeous surrender of hard-earned pennies into a refashioned sock, the theatre has literally come to a house of worship near you. For those of you misfortunate enough to have observed the “the Starry Messenger”, one can rest assured that one’s dose of churchly drama will not provide quite the same length of dreariness however, the central message is of course eerily similar. In the many generations since the non-event of the virgin birth, adults of our species can still be observed donning their fake wings and re-enacting the preceding non-event of a young woman being confronted with a heavenly creature boldly announcing the magical expropriation of her womb. So enthralling do adherents of the christian faith find this tale that it is of course the standard fare of December sermons and has been for as long as one would care to investigate. So enticing are the economic benefits of its reproduction that to the extent that playstations and sugary treats have not usurped its once unquestioned dominance, the fairytale is rehashed, rephrased, reproduced and stamped into the starry eyed innocence of the young with wanton abandon.
Were I a man of superstition, prone to wishthinking, I would long since have come to the unavoidable conclusion that in a deviant act of heavenly, or hellish, tomfoolery, a power greater than I has assigned dark comedy to haunt me wherever I would rather not go. Indeed, how else but by black magic is one to explain the fantastical comedy of events that I had the pleasure of witnessing at one such theatrical production. Deep into the very midst of this churchly affair, with the communal act of cannibalism having been completed and with the usual misconstruction of the Isaiah prophecy having found its way into the liturgy, a veiled maiden appeared from behind a curtain with the name Mary. Young and beautiful she was, humming to herself in blissful ignorance and youthful naivety, quite unaware that her fertility and features were such as to tempt the very gods into a pre-marital sexual affair. Suddenly, from the behind the same curtain, accompanied with the customary burst of special effect smoke, appeared a heavenly minion, winged and blonde, dressed in the very whitest of robes, truly an angel of the most high. In a raspy voice, intermingled with the tell-tale fuzz of an amateur sound director, a promise was made, a prediction of a holy and immaculate conception of a child, as so selectively told in the Gospel of Luke. Predictable, as all prospective teenage mothers would be hasty in doing, notice was had of the fact that such reproduction is quite uncommon and Mary, rightly so, queried “how is this possible, I am but a virgin”. To which the angel of god responded in shameless fashion, “That’s OK, God will come on you”.
Any godless heathen with a certain degree of experience with any combination of sexual relations would of course be hard pressed not to exploit this exchange for one’s own amusement in so serious a setting but from various corners of the house of God, the grunts, grimaces and giggles were audible, and whilst it began with what were no doubt a bunch of bored adolescents, the rumbling quickly spread and the cast of actors were struck by a moment of stunned silence as they realized the implication of their poor choice of words, no doubt berating the biblical scholars of the latest rehash of the New International Version for retaining such phrases in so sexually enlightened an era. Noticeably Mary’s cheeks took on a bashful red hue, suggesting but for a moment that this particular actress may have been more knowledgeable of earthly matters than the simple Jewish maiden she had been asked to portray, god’s will notwithstanding.
Naturally, quite instinctively, one is drawn to the enviable dilemma of how best to regale future generations with the happenstance of this fateful day. Does one cite the colorful antics of Trevor Nunn’s “A comedy of errors” in comparison, or does one gather the jovial amongst you around one’s favourite barstool repeating by way of annual tradition this story until it becomes a legend in its own right, a pro-fairyism if you will? Then it struck me, yet again, that in the midst of this serving of infantile humour and comedy one is confronted with the stupendous ignorance and idiocy of it all. The merriment in this tale is not one of language or circumstance but rests on the absolute absurdity of the tale itself. Here I was, drawn once more into the religious company of my fellow men and women, many of whom seek to maintain that the creator and heaven and earth, the loving patriarch and ruler of all, based on a mistranslation of an ancient text, and in correction of a wrong he himself had created and could have erased at a whim, sent himself as himself to be himself as a man, to be born of a virgin in the backward waters of primitive Palestine for no other reason than that he sought to have himself crucified to satiate his own thirst for a human sacrifice. Not only that, but that this magical manifestation of a god walked the earth justified by nothing but biological impossibility and cheap trickery and who by deed or revelation alone would leave nothing in substantiation of this alleged supernatural endorsement.
The infantile humour is not to be found in a moment of awkwardness, a flash of hypocrisy or the pitiful insistence by believers to impregnate each other and their young with this shameless concoction, it is to be found in the entire construct of the christian faith, the rank idiocy of its founding principles and the communal madness which still haunts our species to this day. This Christmas, when the faithful speak of good tidings, heavenly hosts, magical stars and god incarnate I beg but a moment of reflection upon a due and appropriate challenge, that as queried by David Hume, we ponder briefly the challenge of the more likely: That the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?
It’s that merry time of year once more when churches morph into a placid haven for every simple soul haunted by baseless illusions of broadway grandeur and a soapbox for off-key musicians of every kind. Indeed, for the humble admission price of lending one’s ears to bronze age drivel, and the timeous surrender of hard-earned pennies into a refashioned sock, the theatre has literally come to a house of worship near you. For those of you misfortunate enough to have observed the “the Starry Messenger”, one can rest assured that one’s dose of churchly drama will not provide quite the same length of dreariness however, the central message is of course eerily similar. In the many generations since the non-event of the virgin birth, adults of our species can still be observed donning their fake wings and re-enacting the preceding non-event of a young woman being confronted with a heavenly creature boldly announcing the magical expropriation of her womb. So enthralling do adherents of the christian faith find this tale that it is of course the standard fare of December sermons and has been for as long as one would care to investigate. So enticing are the economic benefits of its reproduction that to the extent that playstations and sugary treats have not usurped its once unquestioned dominance, the fairytale is rehashed, rephrased, reproduced and stamped into the starry eyed innocence of the young with wanton abandon.
Were I a man of superstition, prone to wishthinking, I would long since have come to the unavoidable conclusion that in a deviant act of heavenly, or hellish, tomfoolery, a power greater than I has assigned dark comedy to haunt me wherever I would rather not go. Indeed, how else but by black magic is one to explain the fantastical comedy of events that I had the pleasure of witnessing at one such theatrical production. Deep into the very midst of this churchly affair, with the communal act of cannibalism having been completed and with the usual misconstruction of the Isaiah prophecy having found its way into the liturgy, a veiled maiden appeared from behind a curtain with the name Mary. Young and beautiful she was, humming to herself in blissful ignorance and youthful naivety, quite unaware that her fertility and features were such as to tempt the very gods into a pre-marital sexual affair. Suddenly, from the behind the same curtain, accompanied with the customary burst of special effect smoke, appeared a heavenly minion, winged and blonde, dressed in the very whitest of robes, truly an angel of the most high. In a raspy voice, intermingled with the tell-tale fuzz of an amateur sound director, a promise was made, a prediction of a holy and immaculate conception of a child, as so selectively told in the Gospel of Luke. Predictable, as all prospective teenage mothers would be hasty in doing, notice was had of the fact that such reproduction is quite uncommon and Mary, rightly so, queried “how is this possible, I am but a virgin”. To which the angel of god responded in shameless fashion, “That’s OK, God will come on you”.
Any godless heathen with a certain degree of experience with any combination of sexual relations would of course be hard pressed not to exploit this exchange for one’s own amusement in so serious a setting but from various corners of the house of God, the grunts, grimaces and giggles were audible, and whilst it began with what were no doubt a bunch of bored adolescents, the rumbling quickly spread and the cast of actors were struck by a moment of stunned silence as they realized the implication of their poor choice of words, no doubt berating the biblical scholars of the latest rehash of the New International Version for retaining such phrases in so sexually enlightened an era. Noticeably Mary’s cheeks took on a bashful red hue, suggesting but for a moment that this particular actress may have been more knowledgeable of earthly matters than the simple Jewish maiden she had been asked to portray, god’s will notwithstanding.
Naturally, quite instinctively, one is drawn to the enviable dilemma of how best to regale future generations with the happenstance of this fateful day. Does one cite the colorful antics of Trevor Nunn’s “A comedy of errors” in comparison, or does one gather the jovial amongst you around one’s favourite barstool repeating by way of annual tradition this story until it becomes a legend in its own right, a pro-fairyism if you will? Then it struck me, yet again, that in the midst of this serving of infantile humour and comedy one is confronted with the stupendous ignorance and idiocy of it all. The merriment in this tale is not one of language or circumstance but rests on the absolute absurdity of the tale itself. Here I was, drawn once more into the religious company of my fellow men and women, many of whom seek to maintain that the creator and heaven and earth, the loving patriarch and ruler of all, based on a mistranslation of an ancient text, and in correction of a wrong he himself had created and could have erased at a whim, sent himself as himself to be himself as a man, to be born of a virgin in the backward waters of primitive Palestine for no other reason than that he sought to have himself crucified to satiate his own thirst for a human sacrifice. Not only that, but that this magical manifestation of a god walked the earth justified by nothing but biological impossibility and cheap trickery and who by deed or revelation alone would leave nothing in substantiation of this alleged supernatural endorsement.
The infantile humour is not to be found in a moment of awkwardness, a flash of hypocrisy or the pitiful insistence by believers to impregnate each other and their young with this shameless concoction, it is to be found in the entire construct of the christian faith, the rank idiocy of its founding principles and the communal madness which still haunts our species to this day. This Christmas, when the faithful speak of good tidings, heavenly hosts, magical stars and god incarnate I beg but a moment of reflection upon a due and appropriate challenge, that as queried by David Hume, we ponder briefly the challenge of the more likely: That the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic’s Index of prohibited works of literature and science, once enforced in the name of papal infallibility, and ruthlessly so, included the works of Voltaire, Descartes and countless other authors we now consider as fundamental to the development of modern society, as recently as 1948. The list had included the likes of Kepler and Galileo, but as always, papal infallibility is as fluid as the morality that governs this primitive institution, and when the winds of change are such as to threaten to topple the most colorful of Episcopal Mitres from its fluffy white perch, scriptural literalism and the executioner will sway to hypocrisy and opportunism whenever there is some overwhelming scientific probability to render it legitimate. Indeed, it’s the kind of creative nonsense that calls upon the faithful to deny those conclusions of science which are contrary to the doctrine of faith, until such time as the Church has had time to change the doctrine of faith, an intelligent design of religion on the facetted evolution of society’s refusal to suffer bronze age beliefs.
Our modern perception of the Roman Catholic Church as the janitor of old buildings and the provider of a different geriatric every few years to amuse us with his favourite tricks whilst hiding behind bullet proof glass, is in itself a testament of the degree to which we have separated ourselves from the theocratic oversight of this institution. None of the twenty thousand who were slaughtered at the Massacre of Béziers by Papal instruction could have dreamt of a time when the Holy See’s authority would be reduced to a symbolic figment of an ignorant past. Yet the indoctrination and violent imposition that shaped dark age Europe and resisted the development of our secular modern societies so violently still retains much of its grotesque authority. The self righteous egotism that tolerated Pope Pius V’s claim that “the Pope and God are the same, so he has all the power in Heaven and Earth”, reached it heights at the time when Popes were carried in a velvet throne on the shoulders of men, a symbolic idiocy of self-grandeur that bizarrely survived well into the 20th century. The Roman Catholic Church is unrecognizable, either from the monstrosity of its medieval rage or the hermit of its 19th century vacillation, it is a hollow shell of primitive simplicity. Yet it is an unfortunate truth that little more than a century separates us from the pronouncement of Pope Leo XIII that the Catholic Church “holds upon this earth the place of God Almighty”, and that the stability of Christendom was not premised on a unified faith in Christ but that the flock would be of one mind and of one heart in their veneration for the Apostolic See. For the majority of the indoctrinated generations that followed, kept ignorant and fearful in a haze of incense and the threat of eternal terror as they were, the yoke of this senseless institution remains and whilst the Church increasingly relies on the benefits of generous tourists to polish the treasures it so desperately retains, for many the Church remains a source of authority and fear and the representation on earth of the vile and dictatorial ruler whose wrath it claims to restrain.
Of course, having established the variability of Papal infallibility, notwithstanding its proclaimed divine authority, as well as the shameless willingness of its representatives to threaten the world with eternal hell, natural disasters and obligatory obedience at the pain of torture and death, we have to ask why the Catholic delusions of self grandeur are any more threatening than little red riding hood’s wolf. The answer is simple, by virtue of the remnant fear and indoctrination too many of us tolerate not only the utter immorality of the religious lie to the extent that we willingly fund its perpetuation, feel the compulsion to indoctrinate our children and consider its adherence a virtue, but we turn a blind eye to the worst of evils, the worst of exploitation and the most grotesque of abuses that this institution commits for no other reason than that its adherents claim to act in the name of God. Consider for a moment the conduct of the former Bishop of Bruges, found to have raped and abused his own underage nephew, the role of Cardinal Godfried Danneels in suppressing its revelation and the Papal outrage not at the abuse in question but the fact that the Belgian authorities had the gall to interfere with the Church’s autonomy to deal with such matters in the privacy of it’s own home. Think not for a moment that this is an isolated matter, Belgium alone has seen the reporting of hundreds of abuse claims, the recently established investigation in the Netherlands has uncovered hundreds more. In Ireland revelations that Brendan Smyth, a predatory vile monster of a man, had abused up to a hundred children with the knowledge and passive observance of his superiors were but the very beginning of a grotesque series of revelations which included a government report on the widespread torture and rape of orphans in Catholic institutions, the Church’s admission to have shielded and facilitated the abusers and the nauseating McCoy report on the Holy Family School in Galway where 121 intellectually handicapped children were abused and tortured over a period of 30 years, to name but some of the long list of sexual abuse scandals on which the Church has already spent more than Euro 150 million in out of court settlement.
Across the Atlantic the scale of the abuse in Catholic institutions is even more terrifying, with the John Jay report of the City University of New York revealing that 95% of dioceses had been involved in sexual abuse scandals, allegations of abuse had been leveled against 4% of catholic priests and a total of 11,000 instances of abuse had been recorded over a 50 year period. The statistics themselves are too horrific to contemplate, each telling a revolting tale of self-righteous men exploiting the blind faith of their flock to sexually abuse and exploit the very weakest of their community. A small part of this was brilliantly documented in the world renowned documentary, “Deliver us from Evil“, which followed the stories of the abuse victims and their families who suffered at the hands of a Catholic Priest by the name of Oliver O’Grady, a pedophile who, with the knowledge and facilitation of his Church superiors, including the former Archbishop and now Cardinal, Roger Mahony, had, by his own admission, raped and abused no less than 25 children. The scale of abuse and exploitation is only really put into some perspective when one considers that the Catholic Church has paid out in the region of 2 billion USD in settlement of the abuse cases against it in the US alone, financed through real estate deals, the closure of churches, the filing of bankruptcy and the reallocation of funds purely to avoiding a more public scandal and criminal charges being filed against the abusers. Of course the Church has not been nearly as civil in its treatment of victims, using coercion, threats and blackmail to prevent victims from going public whilst declaring that penance and atonement were the appropriate remedy, a torturous tendency identified by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea and Virginia Goldner in “Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims The Sexual Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church”.
The Catholic Church’s refusal to deal with the scale or significance of the scandal is particularly evident in the degree to which it has been willing not only to protect these men but to shield the very worst of offenders. One of the more renowned examples is the Archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law, who resigned from his post and fled for the safety of the Vatican in 2002, with Papal knowledge and endorsement, when the details of his efforts to cover up child abuse by priests he had personally appointed and reassigned was made public. The truly fetid aspect of this tale is that Law was a participant in the Papal Conclave that elected the present Pope Benedict, a Pope who Geoffrey Robertson in his splendid work “The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse” points out is as much to blame for the cover-up of abuse as any of his priests. Indeed, it was he who decreed that superiority of the interests of the Church above those of victims and dictated the enforced silence of abused and abuser. As the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the current Pope had issued a 21st century version of the Crimen Sollicitationis, obliging the absolute secrecy of abuse cases based on the principle of the Exclusive Competence of the Holy See. By what right any of these men claim to tender moral authority over the rest of humanity or consider themselves as suitable commentators on the sexual habits of others is beyond all contemplation.
Yet to return to the structural objection to the Catholic faith, the child abuse scandal, whilst grotesque in its magnitude and reason alone for the renouncing of this ideological dictatorship, is but an expression of two of the historical pillars of Catholicism, namely, the insistence on both divine authority and its vicarious infallibility, and the Church’s relentless willingness to indoctrinate generation upon generation of boys and girls with the same timeless fairytale, regardless of the terror and destruction its shameless quest at self-preservation lets loose upon its adherents. This combination of tactics in the context of the innocent, the weak and the indoctrinated facilitates the grotesque environment in which men of authority can so abuse their power without fear of consequence, secure in the knowledge that no matter the revelation, faith and fear conquers all.
Befittingly, Pope John Paul II once said that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young", yet surely objectively the correct formulation of this wisdom is that “there should be no place in the life of the young for the priesthood and religion”? Surely, when institutional religion has so repeatedly illustrated its inability to act in the best interests of children and views the purpose of its influence as the safeguarding of the faith rather than the protection, education and development of future generations, our duty is to reject both its tenants and its alleged intentions. To lie for a living is no small matter, to lie for a living at the expense of those who cannot tell the difference and in their naivety suffer both your errors and your evils, represents an intolerable abuse of all that is good, innocent and lovely in those who hold our future in their hands, and all that is vile and detestable in what remains of the superstitions of our fathers.
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