The Antichristian Phenomenon

This summer I have been taking a few classes at the Community College in my hometown, one of which was an online Macroeconomics course. A few of you who have been reading my personal blog as of late have read at least a portion of my recent bind in this class, but I think the general ACP readers will find interest in the full story, accounted in full and in order.

Most of us never really think much of the stories about teachers and professors espousing their religious beliefs and actively discriminating until it happens directly to you. I didn’t think it would happen, or could happen, and especially not in an economics course. Yet, here are the events… (more…)

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Religious ideals about sexuality permeate our society to this very day. In the western society it is Christianity which has set our current norms. It may be apparent that things are different on the eastern and African front, where the Islamic religion prevails, but I’ll remain culturally local and only try to shake our own foundations. Normality as we know it is culturally founded on our Christian history, which is a clear invitation to critical inspection. To what extent has Christian doctrine influenced our ideas and perceptions regarding sexuality. Should we accept these, or is it time for a new paradigm?

I think I should start off with sexual education early at school. This is where everybody should come into contact with sexuality for the first time. Unfortunately, sex education is not compulsory in all schools, or even present at all in some countries. This is a shame because I think everybody should be taught some basics about sex and contraception. The worst case scenario is seen in the US, where so-called “abstinence-only sex education” prevails. To me that sounds a lot like a “bookless book club”. The whole idea is a farce and filled with propaganda against contraception. It is this kind of anti-knowledge that frustrates me the most. This is important stuff that shouldn’t be brushed behind the curtain, like it’s something to be ashamed of. Bring out the condoms and dildos already!

And while we’re still talking about teenagers, it’s time we remove the taboo of masturbation. Anyone who says he or she doesn’t do it is a liar, especially if they are in their teenage years. So what has made this topic indiscussable? People are evolutionary wired to like sex, so what is so damn wrong with simulating it? This has close ties with the taboo on pornography, the helping hand for masturbation. The social stigma on this genre is counterproductive in teaching the new generation about sex. Your teachers at school will not be giving examples in sexual education as portrayed in Monty Python’s Meaning of life, but I see absolutely no problem in displaying a pornographic film as part of this education. It’s only the activity that has produced everyone.

The abstinence-only generation is a generation that is geared towards pre-marital chastity simply because they know no different. It’s fine that somebody would choose for this for whatever reasons, but I simply detest the demonisation of sex before - what I perceive as - the empty gesture of marriage. Chastity has made it into the list of virtues, while lust has made it into the list of sins. What’s wrong with liking things that feel good, and what’s so good about not acting upon them? Excepting personal preference, I am truly in the dark about this. In this modern day and age, where we can prevent babies from spawning after having a lovely time with somebody you like, should it matter whether you’re married or not? I can understand the complications of getting a baby if you haven’t settled down with somebody because you are just fooling and experimenting around, but those scenarios are easily preventable nowadays.

So, on to marriage itself! As you’ve noticed, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. It’s a strange ritual, but I’ll not get into the technicalities of it. The fact remains that marriage is in many countries still a privilege, not a right, for heterosexual couples. I think it is quite fine that a religious institution has rules as to who can marry who, but a government should wake up to the twentyfirst century and realise that there are gay couples out there. There is absolutely no reason to reserve an official, recognised bonding to two people if and only if they are of different sex. There is no such thing as the “traditional family” of a husband, wife and kids. Historically, this kind of family is quite young. Marriage in historical terms was usually a man, a wife (usually arranged by parents) and then some additional lovers for the man: a polygyny. This is the kind of thing you would find in, oh let’s see, the Old Testament. Take that, you bible-pushing asshats! The modern marriage is a fresh concoction, a new paradigm that shifts from securing family wealth to romantic love male-female monogamy. And I’m not only for breaking the opposite sex restriction, I’m also in favour of the two people restriction. Why is it not allowed for more people to join in marriage? If there is a group of censenting adults who wish to share life together, why are they restricted from doing so? What is the sin of polyamory?

There is none, and it is time to break these taboos. We must reconsider the foundations of society in a new, rational perspective. We must be wary not to accept anything just because it is historically or culturally “simply so”. It is time to critically examine every direct and indirect restriction that pesters modern day life and depraves us or our fellow human beings of freedoms they may not have even imagined of having. We must open these closed doors to knowledge and true freedom.

Religion and family have had a close link throughout the history of humanity. The Catholic Church played a key role in the development of the family during their roughly 1000 year period in which the Vatican was the chief influence in European political and social aspects. Although it was mainly a union for economic purposes during the majority of human history, the Vatican strongly supported the family as a social unit, and to the present still is one of the main supporters of traditional family values. (more…)

Let me first preface this critique by saying that prior to this I had a lot of respect for Ben Stein. I have read his commentary on the economy and I quite enjoyed it. I always took him for a realistic perspective and didn’t think he would fall victim to this kind of a work. I am dismayed at having seen him take this direction. At first I saw what Stein’s point was, but as I learned more and more about this documentary and how he treated the scientific community, all I have to say is it’s underhanded. He apparently tries to create this huge controversy in the scientific community and he sensationalized the topic a little too much in this documentary, to the point where I’m wondering how much he’s getting paid to back this up. My one fear for those who see this is that they will not look at it from an intellectual perspective, and rather look at the sensational points that Stein pointed out to give a rather “damning” image of science and the scientific community… (more…)

I’ve decided we need some reviews here and there on this site, this is my first one for “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris: (more…)

Culture’s definition is loosely connected to real life and elusive at best. People who have been assigned to watch over what some people think is culture are being criticized by thousands. I’m part of a culture. You are part of a culture. This website is part of a culture. What culture? Cultures are being added to the big soup of multicultural madness faster than you can decide whether you want to be a part of them or not. Politicians speak out about “our” culture. Things like subcultures arise from the masses of people resisting the very concept of culture. Culture nowadays is a broad term used to define everything two people and their dog take part in. The attention we give to culture is a cultural phenomenon. To quote the mighty wisdom of Wikipedia here: “Cultures can be understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another“. There, a definition. What good does this do? A definition can’t get much more tolerating than this.

But, some really interesting aspects of culture can be derived from the definition. Culture is progressive, liberal even, in nature. It’s never static, not for a second. Culture is constantly evolving into something new. Visit deviantART and watch culture evolve in real-time. Culture is not a static definable object, it’s an everlasting process of creation fueled by creativity and man’s hunger for something new to identify himself by. As long as people are communicating with each other, this cultural process will thrive. There’s no need for anything else, just communication between people. If a person stands out by doing something different, and is successful in his attempts, people will mimic the abnormality until it becomes normal. When the numbers grow you can start defining certain branches of cultural development, each of them going it’s own way evolving further into something completely new. Even if you take a closer look into one of these branches you’ll discover a finer grain of subcultures. The branches will collide and interweave over time, split up again or merge with other branches. They don’t know about physical borders, the influences between branches are only limited by the amount of communication between them. The process of cultural development is a complex and highly dynamic one. There’s no way of telling what will change tomorrow.

And now, all of a sudden, cultural preservation pops up. People start defining culture as something static, as an object, instead of the process it really is. They see the process as a threat to the object they’ve defined. This cultural snapshot is usually the culture these people are comfortable with, and most likely the culture that provides them with great power. They take an aggressive conservative stance against culture and provide people with their static, crippled substitute for culture. They’ll do anything to preserve their position in culture, even if it takes culture itself down in the process. Culturally different people are looked down upon and oppressed. The cultural placebo is force-fed into the mouths of the innocent at gunpoint. The non-conformists are beaten into obedient good citizen. Cultural developments are set aside as evil, it’s practitioners as terrorists. Even the last cultural strongholds are raped by abusing tentatively free media to spread the conformist’s message into the homes of millions.

Sounds familiar? It’s the Christian way of doing things. Hijacking culture to stop it from evolving, to stop it from being what it actually is - an everlasting process. They have been quite successful at it too. The American elections are the latest prime example of the immense success of the Christian anti-cultural influence. Many of the hot topics during these elections are Christian ones, topics that aren’t even that important in the grand scheme of things. I see the effects in my own country, the Netherlands, too. Politicians on the conservative right of the political spectrum are talking about conserving our identity and culture. Opposers, among whom our crown princess Maxima, are mocked because of their criticism. The reduction of tolerance comes at a price. Two anti-culturalists have been killed and terrorist threats have never been so real. Politicians can’t walk across the street without fully armed bodyguards at their sides to protect them from the very thing they preach - forceful preservation of culture.

You see, cultural preservation isn’t just about the five hundred year old church around the corner that has to make way for a new mall. It’s a tool used by the powerful for preserving their power in a virtual substitute culture. The cultural preservation most people are familiar with, that of property ownership, is actually basically the same thing. Churches, especially Christian churches, often don’t have to pay taxes. Christian initiatives are subsidized and tax money is spent on preserving their places of worship, just because it’s of cultural significance. I do wonder though, why every church is treated like it’s historical influence is great enough to save it from demolition. Even in these times of heavily reduced church attendance. It seems the Christian influence upon the western culture has made it’s dominance stick, which is worrying, to say the least.

So what about it? What can we, the youth, do to save culture? The answer is quite simple, we should keep on doing what we do best. Non-conformance is the only way to save culture, pubescent behavior keeps it from dying altogether. So if you’ve got kids, and they’re rebellious, be proud of them. They are the real preservers of culture.

Let’s try seeing Christianity through different eyes, how it really is.

Christianity, Inc. is the single most powerful, wealthy and influential corporation in the world. It enjoys a ‘religious’ and thus special status in countries where it controls or at least has a hand in the government–in these countries, it is also given special status including exemption from laws like torture, child abuse, and in America, separation of Church and State. Those who subscribe to Christians are also given legal immunity to criticism and annoyance, and legal preference over anyone who disgusts them (homosexuality) or who disagrees with them (atheists, skeptics, agnostics, etc).

Christianity markets a wide variety of products, from placebo salvation, superiority, and wealth to books, music and video games. Nearly every idea or product ever created has been consumed by Christianity and turned into something profitable, including the Pagan holidays Yuletide, the Spring Equinox, and Samhain–turned into Christmas, Easter, and Halloween respectively, three of the largest moneymaking schemes in the history of mankind. Members of the corporation’s ‘club’ are expected to pay, at the very least, weekly tithes of their paycheck to keep their churches well decorated and run–many churches display such opulent wealth like giant screen TVs, stained glass, ceiling murals, and statues. The more impressive, the better. In fact, according to Avro Manhattan in The Vatican Billions,

“The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican’s financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.

The Vatican’s treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.

The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars.

Ironically, Christianity, Inc. has stated in press releases such as “The Bible” that its goals on Earth are, in addition to spreading the word of an imaginary figure named “God”, to help the poor. Christianity, Inc. has not responded to requests for comments on why it uses the world’s fortunes to fight homosexuality, abortion and in the past racial and gender equality instead of using the money for purposes such as feeding Africa.

Such hypocrisy is standard with Christianity–Christians often are against measures such as universal healthcare, peace, equality and tolerance listed as goals in their Bible. The corporation is also suspected of administering powerful hallucinogens to their consumers, leading them to see visions of faces in toast and to believe in irrational ideas such as a zombie Prophet, ‘Jesus’, an all-loving all-knowing all-powerful stalker in the clouds too lazy to do anything, and people with wings a.k.a. ‘angels’.

Christianity, Inc. is obviously a serious threat to the global society. I suggest mass layoffs.

The Holy Bible. It is without question the work of God himself. Every word, every sentence, every story is the exact word of God. Christianity uses the Bible as the sole foundation on which the philosophy is constructed. The only way to live a good and moral life is to live by the guidelines set out in the Bible. Don’t even think about questioning it’s infinite wisdom, by doing so you’ll be questioning the infinite wisdom of the heavenly father himself. You don’t want to suffer the vengeful wrath of God now do you?

Entire countries, cultures even, have been converted to comply with the exact law of God. God fearing citizens have done their job well, protecting their fellow countrymen from a one-way trip to Hell. By making sure everybody has to comply by law people will be saved, whether they want to or not. Abortion and same sex marriages are evil, women should stay at home and science, oh my, stop those fools from questioning the Lord’s work.

There’s one big problem with this blindly following of a piece of literature. This book is written by dozens of people over a period of approximately one thousand six hundred years! There’s no way to ask the original authors about their intentions with it. Maybe the Bible as we know today is just a collection of fairy tales and folklore with a common topic. It’s not illogical for a librarian in ancient Greece to have combined some of the similar works into one, just like we combine the contemporary Grimm fairy tales into a single book. There’s no way of knowing for sure (some of) the original authors were actually serious about this guy-in-the-sky concept. A mighty and totalitarian god sending down his only son to earth, just to be sacrificed by his own creation, which is in turn mislead by the devil, an ex-employee of his, sounds like one hell of a concept for a Hollywood block buster. Maybe it’s intended that way, too. The moral guidelines found in the Bible are maybe just a byproduct. You’ll find plenty of examples of modern morality in contemporary novels. That does not necessarily mean the novelist’s goal is to teach about morality. Often references like those spice up the story, make it more lively. Imagine writing a romantic novel about the ER at a local hospital. The doctor has a steamy relationship with the head nurse, who in turn regularly exchanges bodily fluids with the football stud cancer patient. The doctor is his former coach and finds his nurse in the stud’s room in a natural but unwanted position, after speeding to his room because of a mysterious spike in his heart rhythm. Now imagine having to write this novel without using any reference to morality. It’s impossible, right? You’ll probably end up writing this using the morals you encounter in your daily life. Why wouldn’t the original authors of the Bible have done the same thing? And if so, why would you copy those ancient morals and apply them to your own life in the modern world, while the author was just writing for your amusement?

What if. What if The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were written two thousand years ago. What if the Greek librarian decided to put this combined work on display. We couldn’t ask Tolkien about the intentions of his work, neither could we know for sure his books were purely fictional. With the current course of events in mind it’s quite plausible our world would have looked quite a bit different.

Every boy from the age of twelve or so would have served in the military. We would have accused our adversaries of alliance with the forces of Mordor. Old men with staffs and beards would be screaming their lungs out on the tops of their own towers. We would march out with the full might of combined armies to meet the forces of Mordor at every volcanic eruption. Everybody would have been talking about Smaug without actually ever having seen it. We would have eye witnesses claiming to have heard dwarves singing while exploring caves in eastern France. Without boring you with endless hilarious possibilities, the message should be clear by now. Blindly following a moral extract from a work of fiction as your only guide in life isn’t just foolish, it’s dangerous too.

I debated whether or not to put this under the DC series but decided against it. This is less a “debunking” or awareness article and more of a ramble. As you may or may or not know, I work a part time customer service oriented job during the summer. This is something I discovered, much to my displeasure.

(more…)

Debunking Christianity III — Of War and Manipulation

I deliberated quite a bit about whether or not to include this article under the Debunking Christianity series. I finally decided to include this with DC because it fits into my overall goal statement, which I will type up in the very near future, and should have posted before I even began the series. This is not your typical “Religion = war!1!! War iz teh evul! Stop relijuns = no more warz!111!!!” article that you might see elsewhere on this topic. It is less of a “debunking” and more of an awareness article, but it still fits.

Without further ado, here is the Debunking Christianity view of war and its ties with religion. (more…)