One of the many things I found most annoying was that my ministry partner used a lot of fear tactics to scare people into converting to fundamentalist Christianity. For example he tended to believe that all sickness was as a result of the devil, or a consequence of your disobedience to God. I recall one particular day when we were out preaching in the streets that he called a woman forward out of the crowd. He stared into her eyes intently and told her that there was a "spirit of Aids" standing behind her and it was itching to get in, but if she gave her life to Christ right then and there that she would be saved from contracting that disease. He pretty much demonized every natural disease or disorder and used that methodology to obtain converts. Honestly I don't know if he did that intentionally or whether he did it unconsciously and actually believed what he was telling these people, but somehow deep inside I thought it was wrong in so many ways.
After having left the church I realized that Christianity as a whole is fear based and also one big self imposed guilt trip for those who choose to subscribe to those beliefs, this was one of the first things I argued against when I first began refuting Christian theology. Think about it for a minute, about 7,000 years ago Adam and Eve disobeyed Gods command to not eat of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil for in the day that they did so they would surely die Genesis 2:16,17. The rest of the story is told in Genesis 3 and according to Christianity this led to the fall of mankind because sin had been introduced in the world. God being pure and sinless etc. could not tolerate sin and so separated himself from mankind. He threw the couple out of the garden of Eden and imposed some curses upon all of mankind. I personally take issue with this matter since I don't like the idea of us vicariously being accused for something we had nothing to do with in the first place.
God goes on to later deliver the Hebrews from Egypt and establish his laws that also entailed was in which mankind can still approach him through a system of animal sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people, individuals, and tribes. This was supposed to be a type of what Christ was later to achieve through his death and resurrection on the cross. And as a result of it we are supposed to be forever grateful to God through our service and acceptance of Christ as our Lord and savior. This deity is not much different from the many deities throughout history who craved blood as a means of atonement or to appease an angry god and to stay his wrath from coming down upon humanity. 'And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.' Hebrews 9:22
What many Christians don't know is that on two occasions God did in the one case try one of his servants by asking for a blood sacrifice and on another occasion he accepted a blood sacrifice from a human who had promised him one. These tales can be found in the bible you can read about Abraham's test of faith where God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis chapter 22. And you can read about how Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to the Lord in Judges 11:30-39 apologists have tried hard to explain this text without Jephthah actually sacrificing his daughter but the text is in and of itself pretty clear that he did so "as he had vowed". And not to mention the ultimate human sacrifice of Christ himself. Vicarious suffering in my view is ridiculous and cruel considering that it punishes the innocent for the sinners in Gods eyes. If you commit a crime the only one who should be held responsible for that crime is you and only you. You can't execute a man for instance for a crime committed by his friend or his brother.
Christians are constantly degrading themselves for the sake of their imaginary deity, they don't value life as us atheists do and apparently have no self esteem. To them self esteem is arrogance and pride. It irritates me to no end when I hear Christians saying that they are nothing without God, that is a load of bullshit if you would just let God go and live your life productively and enjoy everything it has to offer. God is nothing more than an inhibitor, living life under his rule is just as bad as living under tyranny. I choose life, freedom, and the right to enjoy myself and those I love.
Fear is key for any religion and any great marketing strategy. We fear death, any con artist with a good tale can convert that into power. I cant even count the number of times I have heard "Don't you want to know what will happen when you die?" It is a great opener for the pitch of conversion.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you, and fear continues to be the driving force of the church today.
ReplyDelete"For example he tended to believe that all sickness was as a result of the devil, or a consequence of your disobedience to God."
ReplyDeleteThat type of BS burns my ass, there was a beautiful little 5 year old girl near here and she had cancer, and she just died Sunday this week, damn any god that would allow innocent children to get deathly diseases!
Also 6 million Jews were horrendously murdered while thousands were bulldozed alive into mass graves.
Double damn a god that would allow that to happen.
A god like that might just suddenly decide to boil all christians in oil one day, since he likes the smell of burning flesh!
Chatpilot, you've read the bible cover-to-cover, so you'll know what I'm talking about... Satan is not explicitly mentioned as Eden's snake. In fact, Genesis claims *the entire snake species* is cursed, NOT some devil. Further, this Satan character is not mentioned -at all- in the entire OT (until Job). The OT showed that god alone was the source of "blessings and curses."
ReplyDelete.
Which leads me to the next point. You've hit upon the crux of the "canonical" bible and the evolution of Judaism to Christianity...
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Obedience to the absurd and inane laws and rituals of the Pentateuch (after Genesis, that is) and the major concept of animal sacrifice hinge on one thing: appeasing an angry god to avoid his wrath. If you got Leprosy it was not from contact with the Hansen's Disease bacteria (heck, they didn't have microscopes in Bronze Age Israel), it was some angry spirit who needed animal blood. Natural disasters or military losses were not from explainable scientific or tactical causes - they were from god, who was angry for some apparent "sin." If you followed all the rules and bad things *still* happened, it had to be some unknown/unseen "sin." So when all else failed, the village's remaining "sins" were all hoisted onto a goat (the scapegoat) and fed to the demon lord Azazel via being shoved off a cliff or into the desert to die (according to Leviticus).
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Words attributed to Jesus claim he came not to abolish such Bronze Age laws, but to fulfill them and ensure everyone obeyed every single word/jot/pen-stroke of the Mosaic Law. It was Paul, who was Hellenized (raised in the Roman port city of Tarsus, known for its intellectual environment and Greek Philosophy), and was a non-native "college educated" (trained by the Pharisee Gamaliel), religious extremist (he murdered Christians) who couldn't let go of his zealot's faith and reinvented the law.
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With Rome about to stomp the temple and having already dispatched at least three "messiahs" (Simon of Peraea, Anthronges, and Jesus of Nazareth) - Paul had to rationalize his rabid faith from temporal/literal Judaism into Greek philosophy's metaphysics. The temple of OT prophecy was reinterpereted into a "spiritual temple." The living, human king/military-commander who would bring back the golden days of a Davidic dynasty (wishful prophecies by civil-war splintered Northern Kindom of Israel or Southern Kingdom of Judah prophets), was reinterpereted into some Melchizedek serving from some metaphysical heavenly temple-city. No physical temple to sacrifice animals in? It's OK, Paul reinterpereted Jesus into a "perpetual sacrifice" under his brand of metaphysics. He also allowed for the reworking of Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac into an allegory for god/Jesus. He murdered for his god, he'd be damned if he let Rome tale his faith.
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Today we still see the remnants of the OT's primitive cause-and-effect and subsequent stubborn transformations in Christianity's myths. We can thank Paul for that = a rabid OT apologist/reworker, murderer, educated elite, and religious extremist.
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The bible is a Bronze Age myth with centuries of apologists, like Paul, reworking it and adding books to it. I'm with you Steven, I'd damn god for him killing babies via cancer... if I had any shred of proof there even was a god to begin with that is.