There are dozens of offshoots of Christianity: Catholicism, Protestantism, Greek Orthodoxy, Jesuit churches, Baptist churches, Revivalist churches, Pentecostal churches, Anglicanism/episcopalianism, Latter-Day Saints (aka Mormonism), Eastern Orthodoxy, Evangelism (born-again churches), Branch-Davidian churches, Methodist churches, ad infinitum. These are all separate churches (schools of thought) dealing with the same faith; the same holy book - that book being the Bible.
Now, you'd think that - if the Holy Bible is the true and infallible word of God - there could be no separatism within Christianity. And yet there is. These bodies all interpret the Bible in different ways - interpret being the key word. They twist the words (and cherry-pick certain passages) to justify their own means. To twist the words of the supposedly one and only deity must take a hell of a lot of faith for a Christian!
The New Testament was finished in around 200 AD - 167 years after the death of Christ. You think that leaves a lot of time for these folks to fill in the gaps and twist certain details? Christ was a brilliant baker and he had a keen taste for wine. No, wait! Let's just say he is made of bread and wine. Yeah! The Eucharist, motherfucker! Christ walked upon the water of a shallow puddle. No, wait! Let's just say he can walk on any body of water! Yeah! (Christ must make for a brilliant buoyancy aid - forget inflatable rings; throw me a Christ!)
The Old Testament was written in around the year 1500 BC. Moses was the champion of the Jews - he spoke to God through a burning bush on Mount Sinai - when no one was around - and received the Ten Commandments from Yahveh (along with a command to take his people to Judea). Next, along came Abraham who had a son: David. David went on all kinds of whacky adventures (such as killing a giant man called Goliath with a sling shot - doesn't that sound like something out of a Beano comic to you?) And Jesus was - supposedly - of the line of David. Now, the twelve apostles had - one can say - quite a lot of time to connect the dots. And yet they failed. The prophet of the line of David was meant to be born in Bethlehem, but he was in fact born in Nazareth. Doesn't that strike you as... well... not fitting in with the prophecy? Well, I can't be sure, but... LOOK AT THAT MASSIVE GLARING ERROR! LOOK AT IT! JESUS! IT'S LIKE A WELT ON YOUR FUCKING FOREHEAD! LOOK AT IT!
It also strikes me as odd that we meet Jesus as a newborn baby in Nazareth and then as an adult at the age of thirty. I'm guessing during his youth he sat around smoking pot and listening to Judas Priest and fiddling with his balls - something dull and unimportant like that.
Another of my niggles has to do with certain factual errors in the Bible. Firstly, I'll start at the beginning. Forget that God created the world in total darkness before creating light; forget about Eve being fashioned out of one of Adam's ribs; forget about the talking snake; forget about Jonah living inside the big fish (I'm guessing a tuna) for three days; forget that the world is - as of today - supposedly 6,013 years old; forget about Noah fulfilling the impossible task of fitting each species - the total of which numbers in the billions - onto a tiny boat; and forget the fact that God gives no mention of dinosaurs. What concerns me is the following: Adam and Eve committed the first original sin* by having children (so exercising their free will (which was awarded them by God) and angering their oh-so-precious, jealous God). Their children were Cain and Abel. Of course, Cain grew up to eventually kill Abel. They were banished by God from Eden and had to live in Nod - east of Eden. In the next chapter, we go on to hear about Cain's wife. 'Wait,' I hear you ask. 'Where did she come from?' Exactly. Eve conceived no female children. That detail was made up. You'd think that might be important, right? Apparently, God forgets things here and there. (Also, if she did have a female child, Cain and she would still be committing incest - an abomination in the face of the Lord.)
Defects in Christ's teachings and behaviours:
A lot of people think Christ was the best and wisest of men. They do this unthinkingly and with little or no knowledge of the subject. Yes, Christ said the meek shall inherit the Earth (when he comes back to kill all the non-believers and cast them into Hell like withering sticks), and he also said that we should turn the other cheek. One thing that's always misappropriated to Christ is the adage: "Do unto others that which you would wish to be done unto yourself". That little nugget was in fact said by Confucius around 500 years before the birth of Christ.
I know the details quite roughly - being an infidel and all - but here's what I know. In the story of the Gadarene Swine, some people are being possessed by demons. Christ comes along and - pow! - he gets rid of the demons. But that's not the whole story. Instead of vanquishing the demons with his powers of omnipotence, he sends them into the bodies of pigs. The pigs proceed to run down a hill in madness into the Mediterranean sea and drown. Does that seem very moral to you?
Another one of my favourites is the parable of the fig tree. Christ comes across a fig tree that bears no fruit. In anger, he reduces the tree to ashes and expounds something along the lines of: 'Fig tree, on thee shalt ne'er groweth figs from herein' - give or take my poor attempt at Middle English. It's not the fig tree's fault that it bore no fruit. The fact is that, when Christ came upon the tree, it was not the season in which figs grow. Albeit a fig tree cannot feel pain, but the action strikes me as immoral nonetheless - all this coming from a perfect being.
Also, whilst Christ - quite admirably - never said anything of homosexuality (unlike the maddened Yahveh of the Old Testament) he was very vocal on hell and punishment. He said: "I have come to set the son at variance with the father, and the daughter at variance with the mother" - in effect, he's saying that a Christian must put God and Jesus before family. He was neutral on punishment, though - unlike Yahveh who said that disobedient children and adulterers should be stoned to death (as should be people who turn to other, 'impure' gods).*
Why can't Christians be less Christian and more Christ-like? It's because they want to tell people what to do and not do it themselves. Missionaries travel to certain countries - Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda... - to help people build schools and clinics, but then they also teach them that they shouldn't wear contraception and that they should pro-create as much as possible upon consummation. They tell them that Hell awaits them if they should be so brash as to commit even the pettiest of sins. They tell them in order to be granted favour with God. They do things not out of the goodness of their own hearts, but, rather, for eternity. They do it through fear. They hope and pray for Heaven and they feel a real and tangible fear of Hell. Fear compels the best of religious people to commit great misdeeds. Hope compels the hopeless to try to reach their goals. Religious people have blinkers upon their eyes. They feel they're doing good, when the ends they create are more evil, regressive and degenerative than they could ever imagine with their narrow views of existence.
I will update this in future as I feel I've missed quite a bit out. Stay tuned, kids. Remember: be yourselves and don't take any bullshit! On a different note, don't fuck until you get married, kids. Your penis makes you a very naughty boy, young man. You must refrain from having sex. When you get married, though, you can fuck as much as you like - without condoms, too! You can have as many little waterhead babies as you like. What? No! Forget about resources; God'll sort that out. Just keep fucking! Do God's work - and fuck! (It's funny, you know: your mother and I are both Catholic and we hardly ever fuck anymore. I guess that's 'cause she's so fucking ugly, though - it's amazing what fourteen kids can do to a woman's anatomy.)
* Original sin: after Adam and Eve did the wild thing, they - and their descendants - were for ever separated from their loving God as being fallen creatures. (Isn't that nice? Brings a tear to my eye.) Luckily for me, I'm an atheist and an evolved being so no such condemnations apply to me. Enjoy your day.
*In fact, in Deuteronomy, God says that if one knows of a town in which people worship a foreign god, one should kill all the babies, children, adults and livestock in that town and raze it. Doesn't he seem like such a lovely god? A loving god? And remember, this god supposedly created all of us - even the heathen. How competent can a god be if he creates 'perfect' things which he then feels must be destroyed? I for one don't care for such incompetence, evil and immorality.
Now, you'd think that - if the Holy Bible is the true and infallible word of God - there could be no separatism within Christianity. And yet there is. These bodies all interpret the Bible in different ways - interpret being the key word. They twist the words (and cherry-pick certain passages) to justify their own means. To twist the words of the supposedly one and only deity must take a hell of a lot of faith for a Christian!
The New Testament was finished in around 200 AD - 167 years after the death of Christ. You think that leaves a lot of time for these folks to fill in the gaps and twist certain details? Christ was a brilliant baker and he had a keen taste for wine. No, wait! Let's just say he is made of bread and wine. Yeah! The Eucharist, motherfucker! Christ walked upon the water of a shallow puddle. No, wait! Let's just say he can walk on any body of water! Yeah! (Christ must make for a brilliant buoyancy aid - forget inflatable rings; throw me a Christ!)
The Old Testament was written in around the year 1500 BC. Moses was the champion of the Jews - he spoke to God through a burning bush on Mount Sinai - when no one was around - and received the Ten Commandments from Yahveh (along with a command to take his people to Judea). Next, along came Abraham who had a son: David. David went on all kinds of whacky adventures (such as killing a giant man called Goliath with a sling shot - doesn't that sound like something out of a Beano comic to you?) And Jesus was - supposedly - of the line of David. Now, the twelve apostles had - one can say - quite a lot of time to connect the dots. And yet they failed. The prophet of the line of David was meant to be born in Bethlehem, but he was in fact born in Nazareth. Doesn't that strike you as... well... not fitting in with the prophecy? Well, I can't be sure, but... LOOK AT THAT MASSIVE GLARING ERROR! LOOK AT IT! JESUS! IT'S LIKE A WELT ON YOUR FUCKING FOREHEAD! LOOK AT IT!
It also strikes me as odd that we meet Jesus as a newborn baby in Nazareth and then as an adult at the age of thirty. I'm guessing during his youth he sat around smoking pot and listening to Judas Priest and fiddling with his balls - something dull and unimportant like that.
Another of my niggles has to do with certain factual errors in the Bible. Firstly, I'll start at the beginning. Forget that God created the world in total darkness before creating light; forget about Eve being fashioned out of one of Adam's ribs; forget about the talking snake; forget about Jonah living inside the big fish (I'm guessing a tuna) for three days; forget that the world is - as of today - supposedly 6,013 years old; forget about Noah fulfilling the impossible task of fitting each species - the total of which numbers in the billions - onto a tiny boat; and forget the fact that God gives no mention of dinosaurs. What concerns me is the following: Adam and Eve committed the first original sin* by having children (so exercising their free will (which was awarded them by God) and angering their oh-so-precious, jealous God). Their children were Cain and Abel. Of course, Cain grew up to eventually kill Abel. They were banished by God from Eden and had to live in Nod - east of Eden. In the next chapter, we go on to hear about Cain's wife. 'Wait,' I hear you ask. 'Where did she come from?' Exactly. Eve conceived no female children. That detail was made up. You'd think that might be important, right? Apparently, God forgets things here and there. (Also, if she did have a female child, Cain and she would still be committing incest - an abomination in the face of the Lord.)
Defects in Christ's teachings and behaviours:
A lot of people think Christ was the best and wisest of men. They do this unthinkingly and with little or no knowledge of the subject. Yes, Christ said the meek shall inherit the Earth (when he comes back to kill all the non-believers and cast them into Hell like withering sticks), and he also said that we should turn the other cheek. One thing that's always misappropriated to Christ is the adage: "Do unto others that which you would wish to be done unto yourself". That little nugget was in fact said by Confucius around 500 years before the birth of Christ.
I know the details quite roughly - being an infidel and all - but here's what I know. In the story of the Gadarene Swine, some people are being possessed by demons. Christ comes along and - pow! - he gets rid of the demons. But that's not the whole story. Instead of vanquishing the demons with his powers of omnipotence, he sends them into the bodies of pigs. The pigs proceed to run down a hill in madness into the Mediterranean sea and drown. Does that seem very moral to you?
Another one of my favourites is the parable of the fig tree. Christ comes across a fig tree that bears no fruit. In anger, he reduces the tree to ashes and expounds something along the lines of: 'Fig tree, on thee shalt ne'er groweth figs from herein' - give or take my poor attempt at Middle English. It's not the fig tree's fault that it bore no fruit. The fact is that, when Christ came upon the tree, it was not the season in which figs grow. Albeit a fig tree cannot feel pain, but the action strikes me as immoral nonetheless - all this coming from a perfect being.
Also, whilst Christ - quite admirably - never said anything of homosexuality (unlike the maddened Yahveh of the Old Testament) he was very vocal on hell and punishment. He said: "I have come to set the son at variance with the father, and the daughter at variance with the mother" - in effect, he's saying that a Christian must put God and Jesus before family. He was neutral on punishment, though - unlike Yahveh who said that disobedient children and adulterers should be stoned to death (as should be people who turn to other, 'impure' gods).*
Why can't Christians be less Christian and more Christ-like? It's because they want to tell people what to do and not do it themselves. Missionaries travel to certain countries - Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda... - to help people build schools and clinics, but then they also teach them that they shouldn't wear contraception and that they should pro-create as much as possible upon consummation. They tell them that Hell awaits them if they should be so brash as to commit even the pettiest of sins. They tell them in order to be granted favour with God. They do things not out of the goodness of their own hearts, but, rather, for eternity. They do it through fear. They hope and pray for Heaven and they feel a real and tangible fear of Hell. Fear compels the best of religious people to commit great misdeeds. Hope compels the hopeless to try to reach their goals. Religious people have blinkers upon their eyes. They feel they're doing good, when the ends they create are more evil, regressive and degenerative than they could ever imagine with their narrow views of existence.
I will update this in future as I feel I've missed quite a bit out. Stay tuned, kids. Remember: be yourselves and don't take any bullshit! On a different note, don't fuck until you get married, kids. Your penis makes you a very naughty boy, young man. You must refrain from having sex. When you get married, though, you can fuck as much as you like - without condoms, too! You can have as many little waterhead babies as you like. What? No! Forget about resources; God'll sort that out. Just keep fucking! Do God's work - and fuck! (It's funny, you know: your mother and I are both Catholic and we hardly ever fuck anymore. I guess that's 'cause she's so fucking ugly, though - it's amazing what fourteen kids can do to a woman's anatomy.)
* Original sin: after Adam and Eve did the wild thing, they - and their descendants - were for ever separated from their loving God as being fallen creatures. (Isn't that nice? Brings a tear to my eye.) Luckily for me, I'm an atheist and an evolved being so no such condemnations apply to me. Enjoy your day.
*In fact, in Deuteronomy, God says that if one knows of a town in which people worship a foreign god, one should kill all the babies, children, adults and livestock in that town and raze it. Doesn't he seem like such a lovely god? A loving god? And remember, this god supposedly created all of us - even the heathen. How competent can a god be if he creates 'perfect' things which he then feels must be destroyed? I for one don't care for such incompetence, evil and immorality.
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