As I indicated earlier, Western
Civilization is fundamentally based upon religious beliefs from the
Western Christian Church. I also asserted earlier that it was the very
beliefs of the Western Christian Church which underlie many of the
obvious faults which we have identified as "problems" for modern
mankind, not just here in the United States, but virtually everywhere
around the world. We are now ready to look at why this is so.
Christianity is, at its base,
a religion that is based on guilt. There should be no surprise at this,
because Christianity is based on Judaism, another religion which is
based on guilt. Remember all those comedy routines about Jewish mothers
who lay guilt trips on their children? Those have been staples of
entertainment shows for many years. And Christianity inherited that
guilt-based system of morality from the Jews.
The first thing that Christians have to feel guilty about is Original Sin. Contrary to popular opinion, babies are NOT born into this world free of guilt. Even before you are born into this world, you are saddled with Original Sin.
And do you remember Jimmy
Carter's public confession that he had sinned in his heart by thinking
lustful thoughts about a woman other than his wife? There was a big
brouhaha over that gaffe. But this is an excellent example of how
Christianity operates to ensure that each of us always feels guilty
about some act or omission, in thought or deed.
Of course, since we are all
sinners, constantly sinning in God's eyes, we must go running to church
every week to throw money into the collection plate and participate in
confession and/or communion to be absolved of our sins. It's a great
racket these Christian churches have, isn't it?
One difficulty arises because
the more fundamentalist Christian sects, particularly those who claim
to be "born again" Christians, have taken the concept of absolution
from sin to new heights. In some of these sects, absolution from sin
has evolved into a license to sin, for the greater glory of God and/or
the greater good of some identifiable group, with the only requirement
for making everything O. K. being to make it to the next church
service you can in order to be absolved from all sins to date.
Is it any wonder that some of
the greatest frauds committed in the name of God have been perpetrated
by so-called "born again" Christians? No, it is no wonder at all. It
is, instead, a natural consequence of Christianity being overloaded
with guilt in the first place, which creates a need for absolution from
the underlying sin, and since absolution removes all heavenly
consequences of sin, it removes the guilt. Since most of these
Christian ministers are absolutely convinced that the civil authorities
would never dare to mess with "men of the cloth," many feel licensed by
their position as Christian ministers, or even as prominent lay people,
to commit any massive fraud or other crime, so long as it is not likely
to result in their getting prosecuted for it.
Most scandals involving
Christian clergy usually include allegations of financial or sexual
misdeeds. They spend so much time preaching against greed and lust that
I guess they just have to try it from time to time to make certain that
they still understand it.
Because Roman Catholic priests
are not allowed to have wives, or sexual contact of any sort at all,
those men are under the most pressure to commit various kinds of sexual
"sins." Some involve affairs with women. Some involve homosexuality.
The most insidious involve molestation of young girls and/or boys that
happen to fall under their spell. Stories about such incidents pop up
from time to time in virtually all of the media. Are they untrue? Well,
perhaps some are untrue, but most are probably true.
And what is the explanation
from the church? Well, if you can get any at all, and most of the time
you will not, the explanation usually amounts to: priests are human and
humans sin; the church is sorry this mess occurred. End of interview.
No church, and least of all
the Roman Catholic Church, wants to admit that any flaws in the system
exist, let alone the truth: the flaws in the system are fundamental,
and you must just expect this sort of thing to happen.
Remember, the attitude of the
Christian churches is that pleasure is not a desirable activity for
mankind. The founding colonists for the United States were the English
Puritans, who came to this country so that they could practice
religious beliefs which totally denied any concept that pleasure was a
desirable state of existence. Roman Catholics only require an ascetic
lifestyle for priests and nuns, but the message to lay people is still
there, under the surface: pleasure is just one step away from sin, so
you are best to avoid it.
But most Christian churches
save their loudest ranting and raving for anything to do with sexual
practices: condoms, abortion, sex education, and so forth. In the view
of these groups, even talking about sex is virtually a sin because
somebody might want to do it after hearing it talked about. The idea
seems to be that if you keep sex a secret until after marriage, then
unmarried people won't even think about doing it. And, that extends in
spades to young people, who are supposed to never hear anything at all
about sex in order to prevent them from having impure thoughts prior to
marriage. Lucky for us all, the human drive to have sex is so strong it
can overcome all obstacles placed there by the Christian churches, or
else many of us would never be here because our parents would not have
had the slightest clue as to how to cause a woman to have a baby. Is
this crazy, or what? Of course it is.
This nearly myopic
preoccupation with preventing young people from having any knowledge
about sex extends to causing segregation of the sexes at an early age.
From about the time a child is potty trained, it is no longer
acceptable for a child to use a public rest room with a parent of the
opposite sex. A little older, and it is no longer acceptable for such a
child to bathe or sleep with a child of the opposite sex. A nudity
taboo supposedly prevents children from ever seeing anyone's genital
regions. Parents are even expected to dream up fanciful explanations
for what two dogs in heat are doing to each other. Is this crazy, or
what? Of course it is.
But this all goes too far when
we train young kids to like those of their own sex and dislike those of
the opposite sex. This sort of training warps most of the individuals
involved so that they are mentally ill for the remainder of their
lives. Why does Johnny beat his wife? Well, what do you expect: he was
taught to hate women from a very early age. Why are Harry and Sally
getting divorced? Well, they never really became friends because they
never really trusted one another. And why was that? The same: they were
taught from their earliest years only to trust those of their own sex.
Is this crazy, or what? Of course it is.
Is it any wonder that young
people find homosexual relationships attractive? You make members of
the opposite sex totally unattractive, except as sex objects, and then
you wonder why there are so few good relationships between people of
the opposite sex?
And the base cause of this
phenomena must be laid at the door of Christianity. The Christian
church is so fearful of young people having sex that it would rather
mess up their entire lives, and destroy Western Civilization as well,
instead of taking just a little risk that some couple might actually
like one another, and that those feelings of friendship might then lead
to sex.
Is this too harsh an
assessment of Christianity? I don't think so. As I pointed out earlier,
Christianity is an Apollonian creed, and denies the need for Dionysian
("pleasure") activities. If there is anything which epitomizes a
Dionysian activity, it is pleasurable sex. In those Dionysian cultures
which have existed, such as the Polynesian culture, sex was just a
natural and pleasurable part of a natural and pleasurable life style.
In the Polynesian culture, there was no stigma to having a child out of
wedlock. And in fact, it was often considered as a prerequisite to
hooking a great warrior for a husband to display a strong young boy
which a woman had produced from a casual liaison. One of the first
things that the Christian missionaries did to the Polynesians was to
alter their sexual practices.
Is there any more ill to be
said of Christianity? I cannot depart this subject without mentioning
that other great pillar of Christianity: hypocrisy. In a desire for
expedience, any decent Christian preacher can rationalize and justify
any action whatsoever by merely misquoting some portion of the Bible.
Christianity is such a difficult religion to believe in with a whole
heart that hypocrisy becomes the refuge for the vast majority of
alleged believers. The preachers preach what is good for the
congregation to hear, as opposed to what they might really believe to
be the truth. They can preach a lengthy sermon about turning the other
cheek this Sunday, and then take our nation to war the next Sunday.
There are no moral absolutes, so the end justifies the means. Adolph
Hitler relied more than many would care to admit on support from the
German Christian churches. Most nations conscript God into their
armies. That conscription tends to blur the line between those wars
which were essentially nationalistic and those which were essentially
religious in nature. But the bottom line is that Christianity has an
awful lot of dead humans to be called to account for. And several of
the bloodiest wars were fomented by clergy seeking to advance their
position in the church hierarchy. Of course, you say, all of that was
long ago in the past, and would never happen today. To that I say, oh
really? Then just how do you explain away the troubles in Ireland,
anyway? That surely qualifies as a religious war between two different
factions of Christianity. You can deplore it all day long, but the fact
remains: it is still there.
Well, this "bash the
Christians" Section has gone on long enough. Now, how about a solution?
For that, it is time to start a new Section.
[XXX revise to include other religions, and "God" is bad. XXX]