Christian Myth: “Christianity is a loving peaceful belief system”

I blogged yesterday about the extreme ideas that are rather popular within mainstream Islam, so perhaps it is only fair to turn that coin over and look at the competition … “Christianity”.

It is generally asserted to be a peaceful and loving belief, and promoted as such, but once again this is not factually correct, there are some rather repugnant ideas that are promoted at “Truth”.

First, as I did yesterday for Islam, I need to start out by placing some emphases upon one very important point. Most Christians are decent and honourable people who strive to live good lives. The fact that they embrace of some rather bizarre beliefs and quite frankly abhorrently immoral ideas but do not then act upon such thoughts is perhaps down to the fact that our culture has successfully tamed and reigned in this belief, and so the abhorrent acts of violence and discrimination that it once inspired no longer prevails.

OK, so what exactly am I getting at?

Genocide is embraced as a good idea

Seriously … is this actually true?

Actually yes, most do not appreciate that they are endorsing this, but they really do believe it. Now ask yourself these questions, if you are (or were) a believer, was the idea that the Bible is wholly true, factual and the word of God accepted? If so, then ponder over all those bits in the Old Testament where Israel embarks upon a campaign of ethnic cleansing and proceeds to slaughter and wipe everybody out …

 “thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself” – Deut 20:13-14

It is about here that the “Ah, but that was just the Old testament” thought kicks in. However, this was not simply a tribe going rogue and becoming bad, they were doing this on the direct orders of God, so either you believe in this god or you don’t. In fact, most would reject this as “truth” and only believe the bits they like by simply turning a blind eye to the nasty bits. If they are indeed into the game of cutting out the nasty bits, why stop there, why not cut out all the bits that are not actually true at all. After all, what is generally believed by most is simply a subset of the bible, not all of it.

For acceptance of it all there is an alternative rationalization – “Ah, but ‘they’ were so evil that god needed to kill them all”. And the evidence for that thought is what exactly? This is simply an attempt to make things up to justify slaughter on an almost industrial scale, and what exactly is it that justifies the slaughter of infants and cattle?

Slavery Is a really good idea

The Old Testament contains a great deal of information of whom you can buy and sell, and also guidance on how to treat your slaves. for example, you are permitted to beat your slaves and that’s fine as long as they do not die within a few days as a result of such a beating.

Once again “Ah, but that is the Old Testament, we now have the New Testament” thought kicks in. OK, so should we now point out that Jesus himself not only stated that he came to not overthrow all these OT laws, but to fulfil them. And so you are now thinking, “Ah but that really means …” … no wait before you go there, let me remind you that he openly endorsed slavery himself, “Slaves, Obey your masters” and did not at any point in time suggest it to be a bad idea.

And of course it is about here that believers will start to rationalize with “Ah but that was a kinder gentler form of slavery” or some such daft nonsense. No, sorry you do not get to play that card, the bible is pro slavery from cover to cover, and does not ever suggest that owning people as property is wrong … period.

Thankfully as a culture we have worked that owning people is wrong, and yet there is a prevailing belief that the bible is the highest most moral standard there is, when clearly it is no such thing at all.

Everybody is wicked and evil

The core Christian claim is that all humans are wicked and evil, and that everybody must believe and be “born again” … translation – embrace their daft beliefs.

So let’s reply that without the religious jargon – we are supposedly “cured” be accepting the idea that a supernatural entity created our original ancestors who were then tricked by a talking snake into eating some fruit and that this was the cause of us all being wicked and evil. This god then gives birth to itself so that it can sacrifice itself to itself to appease its own anger towards us … this is quite frankly utter nonsense … and yet is accepted as normal by our culture.

[Sorry, I should have issued a Spoiler Alert: Jesus dies]

There is no evidence for any of this. We can also observe that Christians are not distinctly different either ethically or morally in any way at all, nor is their any evidence that all humans are by default wicked and evil. Most humans, with or without religious beliefs, are in fact decent and strive to be moral and live good lives, not because of any religious beliefs, but despite such strange beliefs.

The Flood

The supposedly perfect and loving god at one point decided that he has made such a hash of things that he decides to wipe out all life … yep, the flood story.

• So did god, who is supposedly all knowing, not see this coming when he starting everything?
• How did god, who is supposed to be perfect, make such a catastrophic flawed creation that he needs to wipe it all out?

No matter how you slice or dice it, the obliteration of all life on the planet is an extreme and rather “final solution” … and this is a kids story!

So what?

Rather sadly the belief endorses both slavery, genocide, and many other violent and abhorrent ideas, so this perhaps reflects the fact that the Bible is very much a reflection of the mindset that prevailed when it was written and echoes the prevailing culture of its origin.

If there had in fact been a real supernatural intervention then we should expect to find new startling information that conflicted with the prevailing culture and was clearly morally superior in every way, for example a bit of guidance on say germ theory, or the suggestion that slavery is not a good idea would have been quite revolutionary … but no, alas not.