The Antichristian Phenomenon

In this article a few topics converge to the core of what I would call my quarrel with Christianity, its teachings and more importantly: its followers or rather lack thereof. You might think “a lack of following?” and following that remark present me with an estimate of the vast amount of people who identify themselves as Christians, being a big chunk of the global population pie. And that is exactly my point: these people identify themselves as Christians whereas I am speaking of strict followers of Biblical dogma.

I must start with the Old Testament. Anyone who has ever read even part of it will undoubtedly recognize that this collection of books is mostly concerned with he history of the people of Israel. The god found in the Old Testament presents itself as one only concerned with the Israelites. This god completely lacks any sympathy for any other tribe or people and will not hesitate to wipe out any people, city or tribe that are either a threat to his precious, chosen people or who simply piss him off for various petty reasons. It is an angry, tribal god, a boastful bully who enjoys the reek of burnt animals and requires his followers to cut off a part of their penises. Regarding the Israelites themselves, the Old Testament describes how this people was freed from Egyptian slavery and how they consequently, after many a bloody conquest, they established kingdoms (of Judah and Israel). However, these kingdoms were lost after the Israelites were conquered by other peoples, leading the Israelites into Babylonian exile. Of course, this was all the result of disobedience of that wonderful god. However, because the OT god is such a good guy, all hope was not lost, since through Isaiah it was prophesized a king would come who would would restore the kingdom of Israel, rebuild The Temple and other neat things such as reviving the dead and making the OT god the god of all nations and peoples.

This is a very important clash with Christian belief, which is rooted mainly in the New Testament. Jesus did not revive all the dead, nor does the entire world now serve God (look at me!), nor was death abolished since Jesus’ arrival – nay, Jesus even died himself. As the Moshiach (“the Anointed One” who will bring the Messianic age), Jesus utterly fails. Still, Christians swear by him as the Messiah prophesied in the Israelites’ scriptures, even though the Israelites’ themselves disagree (and for good reason). Leaning on the crutch that is the Old Testament, a new dogma developed with Jesus as the center-point. The gospels from the newly formed scriptures claim this Jesus figure spoke of a god of love for everyone; or rather: some new god as it does not match the pattern of our Old Testament friend. Other important theological additions include the concepts of Satan, heaven and hell. All these modifications and additions strike cacophonous chords with the older scriptures, but such seems the nature of Christianity: Reinventing dogma as it goes along. It is this exactly central characteristic that I often find myself entangled in.

To part from the basic level of scriptural discrepancy and move into the realm of Christian theology, we see the aforementioned central characteristic return. There are numerous Christian denominations with varying interpretations of the scriptures and I will concentrate on the prime example: Catholicism. Catholicism stands out among the denominations not just because of its size, but because of its sheer brutality. Over the centuries the Catholic Church made the Judeo-Christian religion into a political machine. This machine has had a firm grip on many powerful nations in the history of the world, with the pope at its head. This political influence brought about extra dogmatic additions and inventions which lead to “holy” wars (and consequential plunderings, one of the factors in the the amassment of the excessive wealth of the Vatican), the Spanish Inquisition, the selling letters of forgiveness “from god”, and so on. One of their more recent dogmatic inventions is papal inerrancy, which as an effect relieves the pope of any responsibility.

The Catholic Church is of course an extreme example of the reinvention of dogma and I am certainly not arguing that this practice will lead to the monstrosities we find in the history of the Catholic Church. To be fair, I will provide you with another example, and it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Mormonism. In addition to the original scriptures this church has the book of Mormon, magically revealed to the church’s founder Joseph Smith, Jr. The book was supposedly translated from golden plates having “unknown characters”, given to Joseph Smith by an angel named Moroni. The plates are, of course, now buried somewhere in the hills near Smith’s house. Mormonism hasn’t lead to anything too disturbing, barring occasional polygamy and the wearing of magical underwear.

You average non-catholic, non-Mormon Christian thinks he has not strayed as far from the Biblical path as those silly Mormons, but nothing less is true. Although they have indeed not built an empire or added any extra books to their precious Bible, they are in fact very unbiblical in just about every aspect of their lives. Most of them simply don’t realise it, because they haven’t actually read the Bible. I have no statistics on this, but time and time again I find myself debating a professed Christian who hasn’t even read “the Holy Book”. I am sure anyone who is active in these kinds of debates have had similar experience. These particular Christians tend to forget that there is a reason why we oppose their religion. It is because we have studied it, through experience and inquiry and have found it not to belong in the world we inhabit this day. Hiding gods whose baseless laws and morality they unverifiably passed to men have no place in modern government. Without actually having read the horrific, inhuman laws found in the New Testament or having realised God’s disgust for us as worthless, sinful mortals you as a self-proclaimed Christian have no right to call “their” God just and loving. These “Christians” have a one-sided conception of the Biblical god. In my experience, especially Christians from largely secular countries have this skewed perspective, and in these countries Christianity has once again reivented its dogma, and a new Christian god is born yet again.

There is but a relative handful of Christians who have actually understood the Bible and its god. A lot of them spend their lifetime trying to piece the biblical puzzle together in such a way that their god can be called loving in the face of his vile deeds – spending their lives studying theology. Some of these Christians write Apologetics, doing just that: thinking of excuses why an all-loving god would do such horrible things – and not to mention finding ways how scripture can be interpreted so that it doesn’t collide with scientific discoveries, but this is largely beside the point. There are also those Christians who do not try to understand the actions of God, but take them for face value. These Christians are abhorred by almost all Christians for giving them a bad image. It is the likes of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church I am speaking of. These Christians show a much better understanding of the Bible and God: God does indeed hate homosexuals, God does hate sinners, and God will punish us for eternity in hell after we have died if we escape the apocalypse. It is ironic that their scriptural knowledge is not applauded by fellow Christians, but rather ignored. Ignored, like Christians have ignored so much else: the maturing of human society, our sobering from our superstitious beliefs and our advancement in the knowledge of the world in which the Bliblical God and Biblical doctrine have no place.

Welcome! If you're new here, before you open your mail program to fire up a nasty email, you may want to first read our FAQ to avoid being ignored. If you like the content, we hope you will to subscribe to our RSS feed. Stay open minded!
If you don't like the content of this website on the other hand, kindly fuck off.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.