Organized Religion: The Fall of Intelligence
Being raised Christian, I can say I am no stranger to their way of thinking. I did not simply decide one day to step away from the church and its following, on the contrary, I began by asking questions. For years now I have been questioning absolutely everything, for questioning is the pathway to truth.
For over two thousand years, Christian philosophers and worshipers alike have agreed that their God is All-Powerful, All-Good, and All-Knowing. To question and therefore disprove this basic fact of Christianity is a simple task, all one must do is define these three words. The answer to the question we seek is in the statement itself.
First, we will define the idea of an All-Powerful being. To be All-Powerful is to be in control of all objects, alive and inanimate, simultaneously with no exceptions.
Second, we define All-Good as a being completely incapable of evil. To be All-Good is to be only right and just, without flaw. A being, a god, who is All-Good must be, and is, perfect in every way.
Finally, the attribute of being All-Knowing is to be in control of all knowledge as well as being aware of all happenings and actions as well as thoughts. To be All-Knowing is to see all and know all.
Separately these attributes make a fine god indeed. Yet together the mixture is not possible in any form. If we look but do not see, all seems well and good. Although if we begin to question and think intelligently and individually, we see the impossibility of this equation.
Subsequently, by using our human knowledge, we find that the traits of All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Good cannot exist in the same place, or being, simultaneously due to the fact that the creatures of Earth, namely humans, are not Evil-less, so to speak.
The Christian God, who is said to have created all life and objects on Earth, then cannot be a god who is in control of all objects, and yet only capable of good deeds. If the Christian God did indeed create all living creatures, this God cannot be all the ideas in which most Christians take as truth. Therefore, the Christian God is an impossible being in the form all church-going Christians believe it to be.
Therefore, perhaps it is not the Christian who is wrong in being misled, but instead it is the unquestioning churchgoer. As the American Philosopher Thomas Paine once wrote, All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish (Islamic), appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. (Paine, Age of Reason). To those who consider the Church to be of truth only, and directly from the Bible itself, I ask that these people consider where this unquestionable knowledge comes from.
In the case of the Christian Bible, it is said that the writer had divine inspiration, or help from God or an angel. The fact is that no one knows who wrote the gospels under the pen names of Paul, Mark, and so on. Although the Bible has many wonderful ideas on how one person should treat another, this still does not make any of the stories true. All the stories and tales of the Bible are hearsay from those around Jesus Christ, but none of the books are actually written by Jesus.
Furthermore, not all the gospels were put into the final copy of the Bible; in fact church officials voted down most. Some 92 gospels were deemed unworthy because they did not teach as the church wanted to teach. Due to this, what Bible-believing Christians see as truth now could have simply been voted down by this council, and a different idea incorporated.
In order to show the truly devastating effect that the church has on the world, I wish to bring to mind the Christian Crusades of the middle ages. Many historians believe the death toll of all the wars to be in the hundreds of millions including Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so many more innocent people. The battle cry of the Christian raiders became “Deus vult! (God wills it). In a speech by the pope at the time of the war, he stressed the importance of Gods will of the war against the Muslims. A segment of his speech shown below represents the lies the pope tells the people in order to build the ranks:
“God himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. God wills it! (A History of the Christian Church, Williston Walker)
Perhaps there is also error in the Bible itself and not only in the established church. The Bible has many stories of the good deeds of God and Jesus Christ, but how many of these stories have base? Many of the Bibles stories actually contradict each other, as we shall see.
The story of Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for humanity has its flaws that are quite obvious if we would only look deeper into the message. The creators of this myth make it increasingly obvious that their Almighty God himself is capable of being hoodwinked by Satan. These writers show that the devil has tricked God into believing that he must sacrifice either the whole of his creation, or himself in the form of a man- Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this shows how the Evil One has triumphed while the Almighty has fallen. This idea, although a mainstream belief, is directly contrary to the idea that God is All-Knowing and All-Powerful. Was the only way that our sins could be redeemed was by the brutal and painful death of Christ? He was nailed to a cross with nails in his wrists, causing great duress. This man, this supposed God, died in great pain for your sins. Could not the great All-Knowing God devise some alternative method for dealing with the Great Deceiver?
Yet another fault in Christian dogma comes through the story of the Garden of Eden and the Apple of Knowledge. We can see that God tells Adam and Eve to not eat of the apples on the tree- God told Adam not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that it was wrong to do so (Genesis 2:17). To eat from the Tree of Knowledge gives one knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil (Genesis 3:5). With the apple representing knowledge, it is clear that God fears what may come if his new creation gains too much knowledge. This idea of the church fearing knowledge is shown even in more recent times. In 391, Christians burned down one of the world’s greatest libraries in Alexandra, said to have housed 700, 000 scrolls. [The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61, and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.] Also, in modern times, the church has denounced science in the fields of genetics, stem cell research, and many more fascinating fields of study based on imagined rules and morals. This fact furthers the point of the Church denouncing knowledge in favor of blind faith.
Then, after this great making of the world and all creatures in it, the Bible tells us that God rested. Why would an omnipotent being need to rest? I can see no explanation. After all, God is thought to be All-Powerful and should not require rest in any manner. In fact, God simply should have snapped his fingers to bring the perfect world into existence instead of taking the sixth day course of creation in which he did. When God rested though, he defied the laws of logic. A being who cannot get tired, nor weak, nor sleepy – by his implications of omnipotence – would not need to rest or sleep. However, resting on the seventh day was exactly what God did, something completely unnecessary and in retrospect, absolutely ridiculous.
Some facts of the Bible are quite sickening in themselves if we would only see what we are reading. Such instances are the enslavement of Africans or animals (Exodus 21:2-6; Leviticus 25:44-46), the selling of daughters (Exodus 21:7), the killing of witches (Exodus 22:18), the killing of heretics (Exodus 22:20), the killing of violators of the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14-15, Exodus 35:2), the killing of children who curse their parents (Leviticus 20:9), the forcing of raped women to marry their rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28), the killing of adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), the killing of blasphemers (Leviticus 24:16), and the killing of unchaste women (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).
Let us then investigate further into the Bible itself in order to show more the fallacy in it. God made “light” on the first day (Genesis 1:3), but then made the Sun and stars later (Genesis 1:16). The light, as we know, comes from the chemical and atomic reactions of Hydrogen and Helium in the Sun. These chemical and atomic reactions cause energy to come out of the Sun in the form of light. God cannot create light and then create the sun a day later. They are intrinsically one and the same thing. One may argue that God created the concept of light, but why would God then have taken a day to invent the concept of sky and ground before physically bringing them into existence, as well as the concepts of vegetation, the birds and the fish, and the land creatures? However, light should not need to be created if God will eventually create the Sun days later. And if light exists without the Sun, then the creation of the moon, the Sun, and the stars are completely unnecessary. Even if God did create the concept of light on the first day, would it not seem logical to then build the concept of light – the Sun and the stars – the day after, instead of then creating the sky and the ground, the vegetation, and then the concept of light?
Furthermore, we find that the creation of man and woman has been arranged quite strangely indeed. God, according to the first chapter of Genesis, made man and woman (Genesis 1:27) at one time, but according to the second chapter of Genesis, there was a time when man didn’t have a suitable helper (Genesis 2:20) and a time when woman was created after the existence of man (Genesis 2:22). These are contradictory versions of the story of creation, and both cannot be correct. In one version, man and woman were created at once in the same day, whereas in the other, man was created, God waited around a while (he let man name all the creatures), and then he created woman.
With more research we find that the Bible talks about four rivers coming from the one river in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10). The rivers are the Pishon (Genesis 2:11), Gihon (Genesis 2:13), Tigris (Genesis 2:14), and Euphrates (2:14). Reality is the only thing that disagrees with the Bible. There is no Pishon or Gihon River. The Tigris River starts in Turkey and goes into Iraq, where it finally empties out into the Gulf of Oman. The Euphrates River starts in Turkey and goes through Syria, and then to Iraq where it finally joins the Tigris and empties out into the Gulf of Oman. Of course, the Gihon and Pishon rivers could simply be names for rivers that we today know by other names, but this is not factual, as there are no other rivers within the area of the Tigris and Euphrates. There are no four rivers leading off into the distances. There is actually only one river that breaks off into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
To show that the Bible itself could be a symbolism for many things, as many Christians believe, I will show an example. A Christian Theologian could say that a particular verse means something symbolically, but once one verse is molded to mean metaphorically, symbolically, or any form that is not literal, all verses of the Bible could be said to be meant in the same way. For example, if you say that Adam and Eve didn’t literally live and that they were a symbol of civilization’s grass roots, then would it not also be equally logical to say that God didn’t really exist, but he was just a symbol for the dogma and superstition of the people of that time, explaining things (the existence of the Universe, the snakes crawling, pain during pregnancy, the stars, the Sun, etc.) that they could not find out through the science of their time? In fact, I could say that Christ didn’t really die on the cross. That was just a symbol for things getting better in the future. Christ didn’t really die for your sins. That was just a metaphor to demonstrate the self-centeredness of the people of that time. Heaven also is no actual truth, it is symbolic of what we all hope and try to achieve to be. Clearly, once you say one part of the Bible stands as a symbol; nothing stops others from declaring other parts of the Bible as symbols.
I will say this of Faith; it has been the foundation of every religion, every cult, every sect, every religious terrorist organization that desired to gain advocates whose will greatly exceeded their intelligence. When a religion asks that its followers believe all that it declares, and to do so without evidence, it speaks volumes of the intent and meaning of that religion. These churches and mosques, they will keep their followers in the shadows of millenniums past.
Although many ideas in this short essay are controversial and opposing common belief, the purpose behind it is to stimulate thought through individualism. Those who do not think for themselves are not free and are not living life to the fullest everyday. The church oppresses these peoples lives and this is an unacceptable fault. If nothing else has been accomplished in these few pages, I hope that the reader has been stimulated enough to begin his/her own questioning and reasoning of all things in order to rid the mind of painful ignorance and to find the truth in all things.
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