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Perfect Sinless Life = Genocidal Maniac

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I have blogged previously on the idea that the concept of sin causes religious folks to behave in various evil and irrational ways. Thus, I identify the concept of sin as the “enemy” in terms of religion. That is, sin is the part of religion that does the most damage to human society and increases suffering, war, and the like.

In the post, I will examine an interesting discovery that I made recently: Especially when we are talking about a major Western religion (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), a person who lives a perfect, sinless life (from the perspective of that religion) is frequently also found to be a genocidal maniac who commits numerous war crimes.

This seems counter-intuitive because these folks look so good, at least from outward appearances. And there is absolutely no doubt (at least not within their own circle) concerning their sincerity.

A few examples would suffice. I have previously called out good old King Josiah, arguably the first truly monotheistic Jewish king. (I believe that Solomon, for example, was a standard, run-of-the-mill pagan who simply worshiped Yahweh as a pagan god.) Josiah is held up by many Christians as the ideal godly person within the Old Testament canon. He truly worshipped God!

And, again, looking at it from the perspective of either Rabbinic Judaism or Christianity, Josiah looks really good: He did embrace utterly the way of the law of Elohim. And he was revered for this reason during his own time, at least from what we can tell from the biblical record.

That record, as well as extra-biblical sources, also tell a darker story: Josiah was one of the most maniacal mass murderers in ancient times. He was responsible for eradicating massive numbers of his own subjects for the simple (and in our minds unacceptable) reason that they practiced a different religion from his. And he is actually praised in the bible for doing this! (See: 2 Kings 23:4-10).

And, of course, all of this genocidal activity is fully justified, because it was blessed by God. In this respect, Josiah is depressingly similar to other figures of the OT who get treated with great deference by Christians. These include Elijah, who massacred the worshippers of Baal (a very common practice at the time, apparently), and of course Joshua, who wiped out entire tribes of Canaanites, Hittites, etc., during the invasion of the Land of Canaan as described in the Book of Joshua. Typically, the tribe of Israel was instructed by Joshua to “kill everything that breaths”, and, again, this was all justified by divine blessing. See for example, this ridiculous excuse for a website in which the slaughter of innocent children is condoned because of the “wicked idolatry” of the people of Canaan. (Isn’t it interesting that in every religious text, pretty much without exception, the practitioners of another faith are referred to as “wicked idolaters” or some other similar fluff, right before we decide that it would be a great idea to kill them?)

Moving into the Christian era, the New Testament is devoid of any genocidal maniacs, which is pleasant to be honest. However, we don’t get too far into the Christian era before we have the rise of despicable creatures like Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. Cyril was actually declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, despite his genocidal persecution of Jews and pagans, as well as the murder of Hypatia, an innocent prominent woman for the sole reason that she was an agnostic, and led a school of Neo-Platonic philosophy. His shock troops, the notorious Parabalani, were probably the first true terrorists in the world. Certainly, the murder of Hypatia, an innocent civilian by any measure, is the textbook definition of terrorism. The sainthood of Cyril undoubtedly states where the Roman Catholic Church stood on these actions.

Later Christians were no better. Another example from the 15th century would be Tomas de Torquemada, who I have blogged on previously. Torquemada was the original Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. Far from the deranged monster that is frequently depicted in film and print, Torquemada was a very charming and admirable person who convinced almost everyone he knew of his utter and complete devotion to God. Why? He truly was sincere! Torquemada simply took literally and idea that many Christians pay lip service to, but do not behave as if they believe: Hell is real and far worse than anything we experience in this life. Thus, to Torquemada, torturing someone to death in an attempt to get them to repent and accept the true religion was not only justifiable: He was actually doing that person a favor!

Yet another would include Sir Thomas More. While More certainly lived an exemplary life, at least within the context of his Roman Catholic religion, he personally imprisoned Protestants for heresy and ordered the execution by burning of six Protestants. Their crime: Heresy due to their being Protestant. In More’s mind, nothing else was required in order to justify their agonizing death. More even regarded their death as being a requirement of God.

Protestants do not fare well either. As this site points out, many Protestants have committed terrible atrocities against Catholics, on the sole cause that they were Catholic. Again, no crime other than practicing a religion other than my own is needed to justify the death sentence for these people.

It boggles the mind. I think I am making an important point here though: Frequently I hear Christians argue in favor of Christianity by stating that the behavior of prominent Christians throughout history is so refined, so representative of the nature and purpose of God. Not. It turns out that Christians are just like everybody else: Christians have behaved in a manner equally as despicable and reprehensible as any other group in human history. Certainly, there are very admirable Christians who are not genocidal maniacs. Mother Teresa comes to mind. Also St. Francis of Asisi. But do not be fooled by these positive examples. A perfect, sinless life within a religious context is sometimes the gateway into something far darker.

Truth Believer

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My wife is awesome. She is in the bathroom right now, singing her heart out with her headset on. It’s great. I’m sitting in our home office right next door and I can hear her going nuts in there.

We had a very significant talk last night. I made it very clear to her (as I will again) and wish to let all of my friends know that I am not trying to talk you into believing like me. (Well, maybe just a little.) Let me explain.

I do not want my Christian friends to stop being Christian, just like I do not want my Hindu friends to stop being Hindu. I had an employee a while back who was awesome named Shashi. Shashi is a great guy, and his wife Shree is also precious. Both of them are Hindu. When they found out that I was practicing yoga, they embraced me, gave me books, showered me with gifts, and the like. I would never ask Shashi and Shree to come to a Christian meeting, anymore than I would invite my Christian friends to go to yoga (unless I get a clear message that they are open to this).

What my wife has done is to cross over into a state in which she is very tolerant of people of other faiths. We talked about another friend (the wife of an aggressively Christian church friend named Gopal) who we will call Shruthi (not her real name). Shruthi was also a very wonderful person. She was beautiful, charming, vivacious, funny, and all that. She was also Hindu. Because her husband Gopal was aggressively Christian, he was putting enormous pressure on her to convert. He basically thought she was going to Hell. In fact, the prospect that his wife would go to Hell was driving him crazy. He proceeded to recruit other folks in the church (including my wife and I) to “witness” to Shruthi in order to convince her to “receive Jesus”.

My conversation with Shruthi was an absolutely pivotal moment for me: I realized that I no longer wanted Shruthi to become a Christian. I liked her as a Hindu. She told me that she was happy as a Hindu, that she regarded it as a path to God, and she did not understand why “you Christians” were always telling her otherwise. She was a bit annoyed actually. She made it very clear to me, though, that she was not interested in becoming a Christian and preferred to stay as she was. And I found that I agreed with her, and that I was happy to leave her alone in her Hinduism.

At that moment, I realized that I was no longer the same kind of Christian as Gopal. Last night my wife told me that she had an identical conversation with Shruthi with an identical outcome: She also did not believe that Shruthi was “going to Hell” and had no desire to convert her to Christianity. So I guess she did the same thing as me without realizing it.

Remember please that one of the cardinal points of the Christian faith (at least the aggressively evangelical Christianity that my wife and I were both involved in) is that anyone who has not accepted Jesus into their heart and dedicated their lives to Him is going to Hell, pure and simple. For this reason, we as Christians should try with all of our hearts to get all of our “lost friends” to pray the sinner’s prayer and accept Jesus into their hearts. Implicit in this attitude is the idea that Jesus is the only valid and legitimate way to God, and that Hinduism, Buddhism, and all the rest are simply lies. Again, the idea that Christianity has a monopoly on the truth.

Given that I no longer wanted Shruthi to accept Jesus, I realize now (even more than I did then) that this meant that I no longer was a Christian, as my religious group defined that term. I was something different. I call this thing I have become a Truth Believer.

Move later.

Inspired

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In my last post, I stated the following seemingly preposterous proposition:

The collection of ancient documents commonly referred to as the bible (actually a combination of ancient Jewish documents commonly referred to among Christians as the Old Testament plus early Christian documents referred to as the New Testament) is merely a work of human culture, and not the “Word of God” in any sense.

 So there it is. I am now officially a (or is it “an”?) heretic. Great. Because, of course, this statement would have undoubtedly led to a gruesome and violent death in many parts of Western Europe and even what is now the US during significant parts of history. I hope to at least satisfy you as my readers as to why I am willing to take this position and perhaps consider adopting it yourselves.
Let’s start with a basic assumption: The burden is on religion to prove the veracity, divine authority, or such thing for their particular brand of “The Truth”. And herein lies the core issue: Each religion (at least the more aggressive western religions, as we will see) claims to have a monopoly on “The Truth”. I call this the Claim of Exclusivity, and this is fundamental to Christianity’s current claim that the bible is the “Word of God”. And the stakes are very high. We must always remember that each western religion (especially Christianity and Islam) has a claim of divine condemnation as well: If you do not accept their particular brand of religion (and often that can be quite specific), you will surely rot in Hell, at least according to what the adherents of the religion believe.
And they seem like such nice people in general. I have mentioned my fried Ray previously, and he and I had an amusing interchange regarding Christianity’s assertion that the bible (which I will stubbornly refuse to capitalize in this blog) is the “Word of God”. Once I challenged this assumption for Ray, he proceeded to try to justify it. Basically, Ray’s arguments for the authority of scripture look like this:
  • Folks who believe that the bible is the “Word of God” are happier in general than people who do not.
  • These folks are also generally nicer than other folks, although sometimes they can be naughty.
  • Thus, the concept of the bible being the “Word of God” has been good for people generally.

Forgive me, but I had to point out to Ray the obvious fallacy (which you undoubtedly see already). I will do so again here: It is exactly like believing in Santa Claus. Why do parents so stubbornly refuse to tell their offspring the truth about Santa Claus? Simple. They want to continue to manipulate their children so that they will obey. Santa provides great leverage. Even if the child is in on the deal, Santa still works. The child knows that Santa is a fake, but why “out” dear old Santa? The child gets such great stuff, after all. As for the parent, he or she probably knows that the child (who is not stupid after all) has calculated the speed required for Santa to visit each and every home on planet Earth in a single day, and has realized that it significantly exceeds the speed of light. Thus, Santa would have to be divine to accomplish this feat. For this reason, for many years, I have thought of Santa as the Christian patron saint of capitalism. More on Santa and the whole Christmas thing later.

Religion (assuming Ray’s explanation to be the most correct one for believing religious tenets), can thus simply be thought of in this way: It is, well, exactly like Santa. We believe in Jesus (or Buddha, or Mohammed, or whatever), because we need a reason to live a better life. I love the definition of religion from Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Paraphrasing, Vonnegut invents a character named Bokonon who recognizes the need to create a new religion. Because of the great suffering of his people, he creates a set of comforting lies he calls foma. Basically a foma is a harmless lie which, if you believe it, will give you hope and cause you to live a better life.

Early in my Christian period, I had a friend (who later attacked me by the way) who was kind of sketchy. Joe, the leader of the Christian commune at which I was living, had a habit of adopting derelicts (one of whom he had live with me for a while). Mike was an ex-con with a very pretty but very pregnant young wife. Mike liked weed and other drugs though, and had trouble settling down with his wife. Mike once told me the following very revealing thing about himself:

Even if it’s not true (referring to our particular brand of Protestant Charismatic Christianity), we are better off. We live a better life by believing. I am here, with my wife. I am not doing drugs or alcohol. I am taking care of my kids. You see that, right? We are better off even if it’s all lies.

What I did not learn until later was that Mike had converted in jail, and had received probation because of this. He was also physically abusing that pretty young wife. But as long as he would remain in the religious community, he had a way of remaining at large (provided that he did not do drugs or alcohol, attended regular meetings, and so forth.)

This what I call The Payoff: Each religion provides a benefit for believing. In the case of Christianity this has historically taken the form of a tight (often secret) community, with all that that entails. There is no doubt that religion has provided a powerful set of networks which have been a central way of grooming leaders within our culture.

Back to the core issue of this blog: Whether the bible is the “Word of God”. The central tenet of modern Evangelical Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity (yes I will be this specific in this blog) is that the bible was effectively faxed from heaven in its current form. Thus, the bible is literally a word for word speaking from the Mind of God. I have actually argued this point with various Christians (some of whom were, admittedly, very conservative) and have been told by them that the King James translators were guided by the Hand of God. (No kidding.) Thus, the King James translation of the bible (and no other translation) contains the correct and true reading of God’s Word. (If you were born in a country that does not speak English, I guess you are out of luck.)

And, of course, every single detail in the bible is literally true and correct in every way. You can argue with these folks all you like: Trust me, I used to be one of them. I certainly was not capable at that time of admitting the possibility that I might be wrong. This is the central marker of religion: An extreme reluctance to admit the possibility that what you have been indoctrinated to believe might not be true.

And therein lies the thing that I want to ask for from my friends, and those who are kindred souls (I hope you are out there): I will certainly admit that I could be wrong. Please be kind enough to return the favor. I will not take kindly to a Christian soul telling me that I am going to Hell (although that may not stop you). I like to think that I am as spiritual a man as anyone I have known. Certainly, I work at it pretty hard. Thus, I will not accept the concept from any religion that their brand of “The Truth” is the only path to God.

Like I told my son tonight: I do not want my Christian friend to stop being Christian any more than I want my Hindu friend to stop being Hindu. All I am asking for is that all of my religious friends admit that they could be wrong. I will surely do the same. I would submit, though, that it is physically impossible to admit that your religion might be wrong, while asserting that your religion’s particular book is the “Word of God”.

It may even be impossible to believe the “foma”, the comfortable religious lies, while admitting they could be wrong. It would defeat the purpose of making you a true believer, if the possibility existed that the religion could be wrong. Thus, I may effectively be asking for the end of religion. I am not sure that would be a bad thing, although you may disagree. Certainly, for me, I will no longer believe the convenient lies. I choose to seek what I call the Non-Cultural Truth. Assuming that religion is culture, then there is a possibility for a core of Truth underlying all religions. Many have sought this. I may be on a vain quest, but it is certainly one which I relish. Join me there, please.