The Antichristian Phenomenon

When we talk about religion, we always see it as something cultural, even as a cultural phonomenon perhaps. Religion is however quite far from it, especially when we actually talk about religion and not so much about its practices (although we will get there too). Religion is first of all a political tool. Religion is used as a banner to divide or unite people, and it has been excused as a justification in warfare many times. Religion is also secondly a socio-political identity.

However, to understand what this means, we must first understand that religion in a political context is not always as much as believing or having faith in god(s), but merely faith in something, whether it be a divine being or not. The definition of religion is:

1. A belief or faith in something
2. Rituals
3. Rules

Suddenly the word religion gains a very broad meaning, and can span more than the world religions which be invoked in our thinking when the word religion is mentioned. As such, many of our current cultural phenomena can be seen as a religion. One of those can be the animal right activist groups. To be an animal rights activist, you should first of all share a belief that animals are equal to or better than humans, rituals might involve to not eat meat or consume any product taken from dead/living animals and lastly, rules that forbid you to say, eat meat. This is all put into an overarching system and also gives the animal right activist an identity with other animal right activists by following this agenda. Thus, to truly be an animal right activist means that you actually follow a religion of sorts, in a purely political context. The only reason why you or anyone else would declare yourself an animal right activist is only to politically prove you share the idea of these typical ethics and morals mentioned (animals are of equal or above equal worth compared to humans, you follow a vegetarian diet, you do not consider any form of research conducted on animals ethically correct etc), thus, declaring yourself an animal rights activist outside a political context is useless. Obviously, the idea also unites other animal rights activists under certain organizations such as WWF but also creates a we vs them mentality, let’s say, the evil factories that pollute the rivers and seas so fish will die.

It is also very evident that religion is also more strongly envoked upon when a political identity is needed. I saw a short three-part documentary called We Are All Neighbours today, conducted by anthropologist Tone Bringa in a small village in Bosnia. 1/3 of the population was Catholic, the remaining 2/3 Muslim. It is recorded during the early 90s, (1993) and the conflict between Croatians and Muslims over Bosnia has just begun. At first, the conflict can be heard because of gunshots and shelling, but it is only in a distance and remains so for quite a while. While the villagers are worried the war will break out and soldiers will invade their village, they still don’t understand much of the basic idea of the conflict, that different ethnical groups (Croats, Serbs, Muslims) struggle to gain politcal control over a country (Bosnia). Croats, Serbs and Muslims have lived peacefully in this village for quite some time, and they don’t understand why the fuss. Sure, some of them have different faiths (Catholics vs Muslims) but they still believe in the same god. They also openly declares they don’t understand how you can attack your own neighbour for belonging to a different ethnical group. However, as the violence draws closer it eventually escalates in a bloodbath, where neighbour stands against neighbour, and eventually the Catholics kill their Muslim neighbours when the Croatian soldiers arrive (Croatia is more strongly associated with Catholicism). We can clearly see as the violence draws closer the villagers also keep more and more to themselves; Muslims to Muslims and Catholics to Catholics, despite many of them being good friends before the war begun. They often excused their own newly gained animosity with that “they might consider me a spy” or equally farfetched reasonings. In a world of paranoia however, it doesn’t seem as impossible as it would have before the war.

Here, we can clearly see how one’s religious identity becomes more important to strengthen one’s national identity (Catholics associate themselves with Croatia and support the Croatian army, Muslims the Bosnians and Serbs). Thus, religion is merely a political construct, and when you openly declare you are this or that, you also openly declare a political stance. It might not sound very rational to claim, especially if we look at something such as Atheism.

However, Atheism maybe more than anything is a political construct and many ideas in Atheism support this. First of all, there is a “belief” in science, that at least science is more superior to any other way to view the world. Science is associated with a secular society, and in turn associated with freedom of thought. Here, we can slowly see how Atheism is taking upon more and more political leanings, since freedom of thought often reconciles with freedom of speech. Atheism also often stands for many other common ideas in secular societies, such as a more social welfare model as well as Liberalism (which has partly been mentioned with freedom of speech). Religion on the other hand, is often associated with Conservatism (in a political sense but also culturally) and then that religion’s internal structure (ie rules and rituals) will decide how a Conservative society will look like.

Of course, I am not going so far as saying it is always this way, this is merely shown to point out an example how many Atheists might actually consider themselves, and that at least in a political context, their lack of belief in a god will actually create such as strong socio-political identity that it can be considered a religion, and how the word religion in turn is merely there to express one’s raher ethical, moral and political views than actually your ideas of faith.

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It is done, your holy saviour is defeated once more, and even the ultimate might of your omnipresent and omnibenevolent imaginary sky daddy was not enough to stop this truly evil deed.

Where is he Christian?! I ain’t seeing jack shit.

But we all know that nothing is going to happen and you know it as well. It is why you think you need to act and show your outrage. Your god cannot defend himself because he does not exist, so by this act going unpunished the seed of doubt it further planted within you.

This is perhaps a perfect example of outright lies used to further a theological position.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2007450000,00.html

From the article…

A CATHOLIC leader has claimed condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, the head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”. (more…)

The constant “Holier-Than-Thou” attitude that exudes from Christianity exists inward just as strongly as out.

Vatican says other Christian churches “wounded”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican said on Tuesday Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism were not full churches of Jesus Christ.

Protestant leaders said this was offensive and would hurt inter-denominational dialogue.

A 16-page document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict once headed, described Christian Orthodox churches as true churches, but suffering from a “wound” since they do not recognize the primacy of Pope.

But the document said the “wound is still more profound” in Protestant denominations.

“Despite the fact that this teaching has created no little distress … it is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of ‘Church’ could possibly be attributed to them,” it said.

The Vatican text, which restates the controversial document “Dominus Iesus” issued by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2000, said the Church wanted to stress this point because some Catholic theologians continued to misunderstand it.

And later in the article…

The document said the Council’s opening to other faiths recognized there were “many elements of sanctification and truth” in other Christian denominations, but stressed only Catholicism had all the elements to be Christ’s Church fully.

Such infighting and bickering shows how infantile Christianity truly is. Even if every sentient being on this planet proclaimed themselves to be Christian, someone would pipe up with “Well we’re the REAL Christians”. If every one of them were Catholic, some Bishop somewhere would proclaim only red-haired Catholics as REAL Catholics. It amazes and saddens me that none of them can see the inherent hypocrisy of their beliefs.

News of a few days old, but you know, I hate blogging about the very latest news, since you never know if it’s completely correct until a few days passed and it cooled down a bit.

Vatican cardinal calls on Catholics to stop funding Amnesty

I’ll quote the article in case it goes down sometime … I hate losing good articles.

· Group ‘betrayed mission’ over new abortion policy
· Human rights organisation fears dip in donations

Tom Kington in Rome
Thursday June 14, 2007
The Guardian

A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights.

“The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics,” said a statement from Cardinal Martino’s office yesterday.

“AI has betrayed its mission,” Cardinal Martino told the US National Catholic Register in an interview.

Amnesty changed its neutral stance on abortion in April, but its Italy chairman Paolo Pobbiati insisted its new position had been misinterpreted by the cardinal.

“This has nothing to do with legitimising abortion as part of a campaign for human rights, it is to do with combating violence against women,” he said.

“It was partly inspired by our experience in Africa where soldiers rape women in communities they attack to force them to have their children. We also believe women who have had abortions should benefit from medical care regardless of the reason for the abortion. Moreover we aim to promote education and contraception to reduce abortion rates.”

“AI does not take a position on whether abortion should be legal or whether it is right or wrong,” it added in a statement.

In his interview with the National Catholic Register, Cardinal Martino did not see any grey areas.

“The Church teaches that it is never justifiable to kill an innocent life. Abortion is murder,” he said. “To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed. How can we say that killing a child in some cases is good and in other cases it is evil?”

In a statement released in Italy, Amnesty stated it did not receive funding from the Vatican or the Catholic church. Amnesty also declines support from governments and political parties. But Mr Pobbiati admitted that the fallout for funding could be serious if individual Catholics heeded Cardinal Martino’s advice.

“This could be a danger to donations and we are extremely upset about these statements,” he said.

Amnesty’s joint campaigning with Catholic organisations could also be complicated by the Vatican’s position, he said.

“We mount joint campaigns with organisations like Caritas and the Community of Sant’Egidio against the death penalty and child soldiers and in favour of arms control. We sincerely hope Catholics will not share Martino’s views on funding.”

A quick rhetorical question. Isn’t Amnesty International that organization which protects (among others) Christians from persecution for their beliefs, in countries like China?

It just goes to show once more: Christians don’t give a damn about the greater good, they don’t give a damn about making the world a better place. All they care about is their dogma and lies. The moment you disagree with them, it doesn’t matter how much good you do, because disagreeing with their dogma seems to already be a deadly sin.