20 reasons to abandon Christianity

From http://www.seesharppress.com/20reasons.html

This pamphlet briefly looks at many of the reasons that Christianity
is undesirable from both a personal and a social point of view. All of
the matters discussed here have been dealt with elsewhere at greater
length, but that's beside the point: the purpose of 20 Reasons to
Abandon Christianity is to list the most outstanding misery-producing
and socially destructive qualities of Christianity in one place. When
considered in toto, they lead to an irresistible conclusion: that
Christianity must be abandoned, for the sake of both personal
happiness and social progress.

As regards the title, "abandon"—rather than "suppress" or "do away
with"—was chosen deliberately. Attempts to coercively suppress beliefs
are not only ethically wrong, but in the long run they are often
ineffective—as the recent resurgence of religion in the former Soviet
Union demonstrates. If Christianity is ever to disappear, it will be
because individual human beings wake up, abandon their destructive,
repressive beliefs, and choose life, choose to be here now.

1. Christianity is based on fear. While today there are liberal clergy
who preach a gospel of love, they ignore the bulk of Christian
teachings, not to mention the bulk of Christian history. Throughout
almost its entire time on Earth, the motor driving Christianity has
been—in addition to the fear of death—fear of the devil and fear of
hell. One can only imagine how potent these threats seemed prior to
the rise of science and rational thinking, which have largely robbed
these bogeys of their power to inspire terror. But even today, the
existence of the devil and hell are cardinal doctrinal tenets of
almost all Christian creeds, and many fundamentalist preachers still
openly resort to terrorizing their followers with lurid, sadistic
portraits of the suffering of nonbelievers after death. This is not an
attempt to convince through logic and reason; it is not an attempt to
appeal to the better nature of individuals; rather, it is an attempt
to whip the flock into line through threats, through appeals to a base
part of human nature—fear and cowardice.

2. Christianity preys on the innocent. If Christian fear-mongering
were directed solely at adults, it would be bad enough, but Christians
routinely terrorize helpless children through grisly depictions of the
endless horrors and suffering they'll be subjected to if they don't
live good Christian lives. Christianity has darkened the early years
of generation after generation of children, who have lived in terror
of dying while in mortal sin and going to endless torment as a result.
All of these children were trusting of adults, and they did not have
the ability to analyze what they were being told; they were simply
helpless victims, who, ironically, victimized following generations in
the same manner that they themselves had been victimized. The nearly
2000 years of Christian terrorizing of children ranks as one of its
greatest crimes. And it's one that continues to this day.

As an example of Christianity's cruel brainwashing of the innocent,
consider this quotation from an officially approved, 19th-century
Catholic children's book (Tracts for Spiritual Reading, by Rev. J.
Furniss, C.S.S.R.):

Look into this little prison. In the middle of it there is a boy,
a young man. He is silent; despair is on him . . . His eyes are
burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears.
His breathing is difficult. Sometimes he opens his mouth and breath of
blazing fire rolls out of it. But listen! There is a sound just like
that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No;
then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalding
veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The
marrow is boiling in his bones. Ask him why he is thus tormented. His
answer is that when he was alive, his blood boiled to do very wicked
things.

There are many similar passages in this book. Commenting on it,
William Meagher, Vicar-General of Dublin, states in his Approbation:

"I have carefully read over this Little Volume for Children and
have found nothing whatever in it contrary to the doctrines of the
Holy Faith; but on the contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct and
edify the youthful classes for whose benefit it has been written."

3. Christianity is based on dishonesty. The Christian appeal to fear,
to cowardice, is an admission that the evidence supporting Christian
beliefs is far from compelling. If the evidence were such that
Christianity's truth was immediately apparent to anyone who considered
it, Christians—including those who wrote the Gospels—would feel no
need to resort to the cheap tactic of using fear-inducing threats to
inspire "belief." ("Lip service" is a more accurate term.) That the
Christian clergy have been more than willing to accept such lip
service (plus the dollars and obedience that go with it) in place of
genuine belief, is an additional indictment of the basic dishonesty of
Christianity.

How deep dishonesty runs in Christianity can be gauged by one of the
most popular Christian arguments for belief in God: Pascal's wager.
This "wager" holds that it's safer to "believe" in God (as if belief
were volitional!) than not to believe, because God might exist, and if
it does, it will save "believers" and condemn nonbelievers to hell
after death. This is an appeal to pure cowardice. It has absolutely
nothing to do with the search for truth. Instead, it's an appeal to
abandon honesty and intellectual integrity, and to pretend that lip
service is the same thing as actual belief. If the patriarchal God of
Christianity really exists, one wonders how it would judge the cowards
and hypocrites who advance and bow to this particularly craven
"wager."

4. Christianity is extremely egocentric. The deep egocentrism of
Christianity is intimately tied to its reliance on fear. In addition
to the fears of the devil and hell, Christianity plays on another of
humankind's most basic fears: death, the dissolution of the individual
ego. Perhaps Christianity's strongest appeal is its promise of eternal
life. While there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim,
most people are so terrified of death that they cling to this treacly
promise insisting, like frightened children, that it must be true.
Nietzsche put the matter well: "salvation of the soul—in plain words,
the world revolves around me." It's difficult to see anything
spiritual in this desperate grasping at straws—this desperate grasping
at the illusion of personal immortality.

Another manifestation of the extreme egotism of Christianity is the
belief that God is intimately concerned with picayune aspects of, and
directly intervenes in, the lives of individuals. If God, the creator
and controller of the universe, is vitally concerned with your sex
life, you must be pretty damned important. Many Christians take this
particular form of egotism much further and actually imagine that God
has a plan for them, or that God directly talks to, directs, or even
does favors for them.(1) If one ignored the frequent and glaring
contradictions in this supposed divine guidance, and the dead bodies
sometimes left in its wake, one could almost believe that the
individuals making such claims are guided by God. But one can't ignore
the contradictions in and the oftentimes horrible results of following
such "divine guidance." As "Agent Mulder" put it (perhaps paraphrasing
Thomas Szasz) in a 1998 X-Files episode, "When you talk to God it's
prayer, but when God talks to you it's schizophrenia. . . . God may
have his reasons, but he sure seems to employ a lot of psychotics to
carry out his job orders."

In less extreme cases, the insistence that one is receiving divine
guidance or special treatment from God is usually the attempt of those
who feel worthless—or helpless, adrift in an uncaring universe—to feel
important or cared for. This less sinister form of egotism is commonly
found in the expressions of disaster survivors that "God must have had
a reason for saving me" (in contrast to their less-worthy-of-life
fellow disaster victims, whom God—who controls all things—killed).
Again, it's very difficult to see anything spiritual in such
egocentricity.

5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality. It's only
natural that those who believe (or play act at believing) that they
have a direct line to the Almighty would feel superior to others. This
is so obvious that it needs little elaboration. A brief look at
religious terminology confirms it. Christians have often called
themselves "God's people," "the chosen people," "the elect," "the
righteous," etc., while nonbelievers have been labeled "heathens,"
"infidels," and "atheistic Communists" (as if atheism and Communism
are intimately connected). This sets up a two-tiered division of
humanity, in which "God's people" feel superior to those who are not
"God's people."

That many competing religions with contradictory beliefs make the same
claim seems not to matter at all to the members of the various sects
that claim to be the only carriers of "the true faith." The carnage
that results when two competing sects of "God's people" collide—as in
Ireland and Palestine—would be quite amusing but for the suffering it
causes.

6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism. Given that Christians claim
to have the one true faith, to have a book that is the Word of God,
and (in many cases) to receive guidance directly from God, they feel
little or no compunction about using force and coercion to enforce
"God's Will" (which they, of course, interpret and understand). Given
that they believe (or pretend) that they're receiving orders from the
Almighty (who would cast them into hell should they disobey), it's
little wonder that they feel no reluctance, and in fact are eager, to
intrude into the most personal aspects of the lives of nonbelievers.
This is most obvious today in the area of sex, with Christians
attempting to deny women the right to abortion and to mandate
near-useless abstinence-only sex "education" in the public schools.
It's also obvious in the area of education, with Christians attempting
to force biology teachers to teach their creation myth (but not those
of Hindus, Native Americans, et al.) in place of (or as being equally
valid as) the very well established theory of evolution. But the
authoritarian tendencies of Christianity reach much further than this.

Up until well into the 20th century in the United States and other
Christian countries (notably Ireland), Christian churches pressured
governments into passing laws forbidding the sale and distribution of
birth control devices, and they also managed to enact laws forbidding
even the description of birth control devices. This assault on free
speech was part and parcel of Christianity's shameful history of
attempting to suppress "indecent" and "subversive" materials (and to
throw their producers in jail or burn them alive). This anti-free
speech stance of Christianity dates back centuries, with the cases of
Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno (who was burnt alive) being good
illustrations of it. Perhaps the most colorful example of this
intrusive Christian tendency toward censorship is the Catholic
Church's Index of Prohibited Books, which dates from the 16th century
and which was abandoned only in the latter part of the 20th
century—not because the church recognized it as a crime against human
freedom, but because it could no longer be enforced (not that it was
ever systematically enforced—that was too big a job even for the
Inquisition).

Christian authoritarianism extends, however, far beyond attempts to
suppress free speech; it extends even to attempts to suppress freedom
of belief. In the 15th century, under Ferdinand and Isabella at about
the time of Columbus's discovery of the New World, Spain's Jews were
ordered either to convert to Christianity or to flee the country;
about half chose exile, while those who remained, the "Conversos,"
were favorite targets of the Inquisition. A few years later, Spain's
Muslims were forced to make a similar choice.

This Christian hatred of freedom of belief—and of individual freedom
in general—extends to this day. Up until the late 19th century in
England, atheists who had the temerity to openly advocate their
beliefs were jailed. Even today in many parts of the United States
laws still exist that forbid atheists from serving on juries or from
holding public office. And it's no mystery what the driving force is
behind laws against victimless "crimes" such as nudity, sodomy,
fornication, cohabitation, and prostitution.

If your nonintrusive beliefs or actions are not in accord with
Christian "morality," you can bet that Christians will feel completely
justified—not to mention righteous—in poking their noses (often in the
form of state police agencies) into your private life.

7. Christianity is cruel. Throughout its history, cruelty—both to self
and others—has been one of the most prominent features of
Christianity. From its very start, Christianity, with its bleak view
of life, its emphasis upon sexual sin, and its almost
impossible-to-meet demands for sexual "purity," encouraged guilt,
penance, and self-torture. Today, this self-torture is primarily
psychological, in the form of guilt arising from following (or
denying, and thus obsessing over) one's natural sexual desires. In
earlier centuries, it was often physical. W.E.H. Lecky relates:

For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was
regarded as the highest proof of excellence. . . . The cleanliness of
the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who
were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. . . .
But of all the evidences of the loathsome excesses to which this
spirit was carried, the life of St. Simeon Stylites is probably the
most remarkable. . . . He had bound a rope around him so that it
became embedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it. A horrible
stench, intolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and
worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed. . .
. For a whole year, we are told, St. Simeon stood upon one leg, the
other being covered with hideous ulcers, while his biographer [St.
Anthony] was commissioned to stand by his side, to pick up the worms
that fell from his body, and to replace them in the sores, the saint
saying to the worms, "Eat what God has given you." From every quarter
pilgrims of every degree thronged to do him homage. A crowd of
prelates followed him to the grave. A brilliant star is said to have
shone miraculously over his pillar; the general voice of mankind
pronounced him to be the highest model of a Christian saint; and
several other anchorites [Christian hermits] imitated or emulated his
penances.

Given that the Bible nowhere condemns torture and sometimes prescribes
shockingly cruel penalties (such as burning alive), and that
Christians so wholeheartedly approved of self-torture, it's not
surprising that they thought little of inflicting appallingly cruel
treatment upon others. At the height of Christianity's power and
influence, hundreds of thousands of "witches" were brutally tortured
and burned alive under the auspices of ecclesiastical witch finders,
and the Inquisition visited similarly cruel treatment upon those
accused of heresy. Henry Charles Lea records:

Two hundred wretches crowded the filthy gaol and it was requisite
to forbid the rest of the Conversos [Jews intimidated into converting
to Christianity] from leaving the city [Jaen, Spain] without a
license. With Diego's assistance [Diego de Algeciras, a petty criminal
and kept perjurer] and the free use of torture, on both accused and
witnesses, it was not difficult to obtain whatever evidence was
desired. The notary of the tribunal, Antonio de Barcena, was
especially successful in this. On one occasion, he locked a young girl
of fifteen in a room, stripped her naked and scourged her until she
consented to bear testimony against her mother. A prisoner was carried
in a chair to the auto da fe with his feet burnt to the bone; he and
his wife were burnt alive . . . The cells in which the unfortunates
were confined in heavy chains were narrow, dark, humid, filthy and
overrun with vermin, while their sequestrated property was squandered
by the officials, so that they nearly starved in prison while their
helpless children starved outside.

While the torture and murder of heretics and "witches" is now largely
a thing of the past, Christians can still be remarkably cruel. One
current example is provided by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka,
Kansas. Its members picket the funerals of victims of AIDS and gay
bashings, brandishing signs reading, "God Hates Fags," "AIDS Cures
Fags," and "Thank God for AIDS." The pastor of this church reportedly
once sent a "condolence" card to the bereaved mother of an AIDS
victim, reading "Another Dead Fag."(2) Christians are also at the
forefront of those advocating vicious, life-destroying penalties for
those who commit victimless "crimes," as well as being at the
forefront of those who support the death penalty and those who want to
make prison conditions even more barbaric than they are now.

But this should not be surprising coming from Christians, members of a
religion that teaches that eternal torture is not only justified, but
that the "saved" will enjoy seeing the torture of others. As St.
Thomas Aquinas put it:

In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful
and that they may give to God more copious thanks for it, they are
permitted perfectly to behold the sufferings of the damned . . . The
saints will rejoice in the punishment of the damned.

Thus the vision of heaven of Christianity's greatest theologian is a
vision of the sadistic enjoyment of endless torture.

8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific. For over a
millennium Christianity arrested the development of science and
scientific thinking. In Christendom, from the time of Augustine until
the Renaissance, systematic investigation of the natural world was
restricted to theological investigation—the interpretation of biblical
passages, the gleaning of clues from the lives of the saints, etc.;
there was no direct observation and interpretation of natural
processes, because that was considered a useless pursuit, as all
knowledge resided in scripture. The results of this are well known:
scientific knowledge advanced hardly an inch in the over 1000 years
from the rise of orthodox Christianity in the fourth century to the
1500s, and the populace was mired in the deepest squalor and
ignorance, living in dire fear of the supernatural—believing in
paranormal explanations for the most ordinary natural events. This
ignorance had tragic results: it made the populace more than ready to
accept witchcraft as an explanation for everything from illness to
thunderstorms, and hundreds of thousands of women paid for that
ignorance with their lives. One of the commonest charges against
witches was that they had raised hailstorms or other weather
disturbances to cause misfortune to their neighbors. In an era when
supernatural explanations were readily accepted, such charges held
weight—and countless innocent people died horrible deaths as a result.
Another result was that the fearful populace remained very dependent
upon Christianity and its clerical wise men for protection against the
supernatural evils which they believed surrounded and constantly
menaced them. For men and women of the Middle Ages, the walls
veritably crawled with demons and witches; and their only protection
from those evils was the church.

When scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the
Renaissance—after a 1000-year-plus hiatus—organized Christianity did
everything it could to stamp it out. The cases of Copernicus and
Galileo are particularly relevant here, because when the Catholic
Church banned the Copernican theory (that the Earth revolves around
the sun) and banned Galileo from teaching it, it did not consider the
evidence for that theory: it was enough that it contradicted
scripture. Given that the Copernican theory directly contradicted the
Word of God, the Catholic hierarchy reasoned that it must be false.
Protestants shared this view. John Calvin rhetorically asked, "Who
will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the
Holy Spirit?"

More lately, the Catholic Church and the more liberal Protestant
congregations have realized that fighting against science is a losing
battle, and they've taken to claiming that there is no contradiction
between science and religion. This is disingenuous at best. As long as
Christian sects continue to claim as fact—without offering a shred of
evidence beyond the anecdotal—that physically impossible events
occurred (or are still occurring), the conflict between science and
religion will remain. That many churchmen and many scientists seem
content to let this conflict lie doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Today, however, the conflict between religion and science is largely
being played out in the area of public school biology education, with
Christian fundamentalists demanding that their creation myth be taught
in place of (or along with) the theory of evolution in the public
schools. Their tactics rely heavily on public misunderstanding of
science. They nitpick the fossil record for its gaps (hardly
surprising given that we inhabit a geologically and meteorologically
very active planet), while offering absurd interpretations of their
own which we're supposed to accept at face value—such as that dinosaur
fossils were placed in the earth by Satan to confuse humankind, or
that Noah took baby dinosaurs on the ark.

They also attempt to take advantage of public ignorance of the nature
of scientific theories. In popular use, "theory" is employed as a
synonym for "hypothesis," "conjecture," or even "wild guess," that is,
it signifies an idea with no special merit or backing. The use of the
term in science is quite different. There, "theory" refers to a
well-developed, logically consistent explanation of a phenomenon, and
an explanation that is consistent with observed facts. This is very
different than a wild guess. But fundamentalists deliberately confuse
the two uses of the term in an attempt to make their religious myth
appear as valid as a well-supported scientific theory.

They also attempt to confuse the issue by claiming that those
nonspecialists who accept the theory of evolution have no more reason
to do so than they have in accepting their religious creation myth, or
even that those who accept evolution do so on "faith." Again, this is
more than a bit dishonest.

Thanks to scientific investigation, human knowledge has advanced to
the point where no one can know more than a tiny fraction of the
whole. Even the most knowledgeable scientists often know little beyond
their specialty areas. But because of the structure of science, they
(and everyone else) can feel reasonably secure in accepting the
theories developed by scientists in other disciplines as the best
possible current explanations of the areas of nature those disciplines
cover. They (and we) can feel secure doing this because of the
structure of science, and more particularly, because of the scientific
method. That method basically consists of gathering as much
information about a phenomenon (both in nature and in the laboratory)
as possible, then developing explanations for it (hypotheses), and
then testing the hypotheses to see how well they explain the observed
facts, and whether or not any of those observed facts are inconsistent
with the hypotheses. Those hypotheses that are inconsistent with
observed facts are discarded or modified, while those that are
consistent are retained, and those that survive repeated testing are
often labeled "theories," as in "the theory of relativity" and "the
theory of evolution."

This is the reason that nonspecialists are justified in accepting
scientific theories outside their disciplines as the best current
explanations of observed phenomena: those who developed the theories
were following standard scientific practice and reasoning—and if they
deviate from that, other scientists will quickly call them to task.

No matter how much fundamentalists might protest to the contrary,
there is a world of difference between "faith" in scientific theories
(produced using the scientific method, and subject to near-continual
testing and scrutiny) and faith in the entirely unsupported myths
recorded 3000 years ago by slave-holding goat herders.

Nearly 500 years ago Martin Luther, in his Table Talk, stated: "Reason
is the greatest enemy that faith has." The opposite is also true.

9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex. For
centuries, Christianity has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on
sex, to the exclusion of almost everything else (except power, money,
and the infliction of cruelty). This stems from the numerous "thou
shalt nots" relating to sex in the Bible. That the Ten Commandments
contain a commandment forbidding the coveting of one's neighbor's
wife, but do not even mention slavery, torture, or cruelty—which were
abundantly common in the time the Commandments were written— speaks
volumes about their writer's preoccupation with sex (and women as
property).

Today, judging from the pronouncements of many Christian leaders, one
would think that "morality" consists solely of what one does in one's
bedroom. The Catholic Church is the prime example here, with its moral
pronouncements rarely going beyond the matters of birth control and
abortion (and with its moral emphasis seemingly entirely on those
matters). Also note that the official Catholic view of sex—that it's
for the purpose of procreation only—reduces human sexual relations to
those of brood animals. For more than a century the Catholic Church
has also been the driving force behind efforts to prohibit access to
birth control devices and information—to everyone, not just Catholics.

The Catholic Church, however, is far from alone in its sick obsession
with sex. The current Christian hate campaign against homosexuals is
another prominent manifestation of this perverse preoccupation. Even
at this writing, condemnation of "sodomites" from church pulpits is
still very, very common—with Christian clergymen wringing their hands
as they piously proclaim that their words of hate have nothing to do
with gay bashings and the murder of gays.

10. Christianity produces sexual misery. In addition to the misery
produced by authoritarian Christian intrusions into the sex lives of
non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own
adherents through its insistence that sex (except the very narrow
variety it sanctions) is evil, against God's law. Christianity
proscribes sex between unmarried people, sex outside of marriage,
homosexual relations, bestiality, (3) and even "impure" sexual
thoughts. Indulging in such things can and will, in the conventional
Christian view, lead straight to hell.

Given that human beings are by nature highly sexual beings, and that
their urges very often do not fit into the only officially sanctioned
Christian form of sexuality (monogamous, heterosexual marriage), it's
inevitable that those who attempt to follow Christian "morality" in
this area are often miserable, as their strongest urges run smack dab
into the wall of religious belief. This is inevitable in Christian
adolescents and unmarried young people in that the only "pure" way for
them to behave is celibately—in the strict Christian view, even
masturbation is prohibited. Phillip Roth has well described the
dilemma of the religiously/sexually repressed young in Portnoy's
Complaint as "being torn between desires that are repugnant to my
conscience and a conscience repugnant to my desires." Thus the years
of adolescence and young adulthood for many Christians are poisoned by
"sinful" urges, unfulfilled longings, and intense guilt (after the
urges become too much to bear and are acted upon).

Even after Christian young people receive a license from church and
state to have sex, they often discover that the sexual release
promised by marriage is not all that it's cracked up to be. One
gathers that in marriages between those who have followed Christian
rules up until marriage—that is, no sex at all—sexual ineptitude and
lack of fulfillment are all too common. Even when Christian married
people do have good sexual relations, the problems do not end. Sexual
attractions ebb and flow, and new attractions inevitably arise. In
conventional Christian relationships, one is not allowed to act on
these new attractions. One is often not even permitted to admit that
such attractions exist. As Sten Linnander puts it, "with traditional
[Christian] morality, you have to choose between being unfaithful to
yourself or to another."

The dilemma is even worse for gay teens and young people in that
Christianity never offers them release from their unrequited urges.
They are simply condemned to lifelong celibacy. If they indulge their
natural desires, they become "sodomites" subject not only to Earthly
persecution (due to Christian-inspired laws), but to being roasted
alive forever in the pit. Given the internalized homophobia Christian
teachings inspire, not to mention the very real discrimination gay
people face, it's not surprising that a great many homosexually
oriented Christians choose to live a lie. In most cases, this leads to
lifelong personal torture, but it can have even more tragic results.

A prime example is Marshall Applewhite, "John Do," the guru of the
Heaven's Gate religious cult. Applewhite grew up in the South in a
repressive Christian fundamentalist family. Horrified by his
homosexual urges, he began to think of sexuality itself as evil, and
eventually underwent castration to curb his sexual urges.(4) Several
of his followers took his anti-sexual teachings to heart and likewise
underwent castration before, at "Do's" direction, killing themselves.

11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of
morality. Christianity not only reduces, for all practical purposes,
the question of morality to that of sexual behavior, but by listing
its prohibitions, it encourages an "everything not prohibited is
permitted" mentality. So, for instance, medieval inquisitors tortured
their victims, while at the same time they went to lengths to avoid
spilling the blood of those they tortured—though they thought nothing
of burning them alive. Another very relevant example is that until the
latter part of the 19th century Christians engaged in the slave trade,
and Christian preachers defended it, citing biblical passages, from
the pulpit. Today, with the exception of a relatively few liberal
churchgoers, Christians ignore the very real evils plaguing our
society—poverty; homelessness; hunger; militarism; a grossly unfair
distribution of wealth and income; ecological despoliation exacerbated
by corporate greed; overpopulation; sexism; racism; homophobia;
freedom-denying, invasive drug laws; an inadequate educational system;
etc., etc.—unless they're actively working to worsen those evils in
the name of Christian morality or "family values."

12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing on
imaginary evils. Organized Christianity is a skillful apologist for
the status quo and all the evils that go along with it. It diverts
attention from real problems by focusing attention on sexual issues,
and when confronted with social evils such as poverty glibly dismisses
them with platitudes such as, "The poor ye have always with you." When
confronted with the problems of militarism and war, most Christians
shrug and say, "That's human nature. It's always been that way, and it
always will." One suspects that 200 years ago their forebears would
have said exactly the same thing about slavery.

This regressive, conservative tendency of Christianity has been
present from its very start. The Bible is quite explicit in its
instructions to accept the status quo: "Let every soul be subject unto
the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that
be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power,
resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation." (Romans 13:1–2)

13. Christianity depreciates the natural world. In addition to its
morbid preoccupation with sex, Christianity creates social myopia
through its emphasis on the supposed afterlife—encouraging Christians
not to be concerned with "the things of this world" (except, of
course, their neighbors' sexual practices). In the conventional
Christian view, life in this "vale of tears" is not important—what
matters is preparing for the next life. (Of course it follows from
this that the "vale of tears" itself is quite unimportant—it's merely
the backdrop to the testing of the faithful.)

The Christian belief in the unimportance of happiness and well-being
in this world is well illustrated by a statement by St. Alphonsus:

It would be a great advantage to suffer during all our lives all
the torments of the martyrs in exchange for one moment of heaven.
Sufferings in this world are a sign that God loves us and intends to
save us.

This focus on the afterlife often leads to a distinct lack of concern
for the natural world, and sometimes to outright anti-ecological
attitudes. Ronald Reagan's fundamentalist Secretary of the Interior,
James Watt, went so far as to actively encourage the strip mining and
clear cutting of the American West, reasoning that ecological damage
didn't matter because the "rapture" was at hand.

14. Christianity models hierarchical, authoritarian organization.
Christianity is perhaps the ultimate top-down enterprise. In its
simplest form, it consists of God on top, its "servants," the clergy,
next down, and the great unwashed masses at the bottom, with those
above issuing, in turn, thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots backed by the
threat of eternal damnation. But a great many Christian sects go far
beyond this, having several layers of management and bureaucracy.
Catholicism is perhaps the most extreme example of this with its
laity, monks, nuns, priests, monsignors, bishops, archbishops,
cardinals, and popes, all giving and taking orders in an almost
military manner. This type of organization cannot but accustom those
in its sway—especially those who have been indoctrinated and attending
its ceremonies since birth—into accepting hierarchical, authoritarian
organization as the natural, if not the only, form of organization.
Those who find such organization natural will see nothing wrong with
hierarchical, authoritarian organization in other forms, be they
corporations, with their multiple layers of brown-nosing management,
or governments, with their judges, legislators, presidents, and
politburos. The indoctrination by example that Christianity provides
in the area of organization is almost surely a powerful influence
against social change toward freer, more egalitarian forms of
organization.

15. Christianity sanctions slavery. The African slave trade was almost
entirely conducted by Christians. They transported their victims to
the New World in slave ships with names such as "Mercy" and "Jesus,"
where they were bought by Christians, both Catholic and Protestant.
Organized Christianity was not silent on this horror: it actively
encouraged it and engaged in it. From the friars who enslaved Native
Americans in the Southwest and Mexico to the Protestant preachers who
defended slavery from the pulpit in Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia, the record of Christianity as regards slavery is quite
shameful. While many abolitionists were Christians, they were a very
small group, well hated by most of their fellow Christians.

The Christians who supported and engaged in slavery were amply
supported by the Bible, in which slavery is accepted as a given, as
simply a part of the social landscape. There are numerous biblical
passages that implicitly or explicitly endorse slavery, such as Exodus
21:20–21: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid with a rod, and
he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding,
if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his
money." Other passages that support slavery include Ephesians 6:5,
Colossians 3:22, Titus 2:9–10, Exodus 21:2–6, Leviticus 25:44–46, 1
Peter 2:18, and 1 Timothy 6:1. Christian slave owners in colonial
America were well acquainted with these passages.

16. Christianity is misogynistic. Misogyny is fundamental to the basic
writings of Christianity. In passage after passage, women are
encouraged—no, commanded—to accept an inferior role, and to be ashamed
of themselves for the simple fact that they are women. Misogynistic
biblical passages are so common that it's difficult to know which to
cite. From the New Testament we find "Wives, submit yourselves unto
your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. . . ." (Ephesians
5:22–23) and "These [redeemed] are they which were not defiled with
women; . . ." (Revelation 14:4); and from the Old Testament we find
"How then can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that
is born of a woman?" (Job 25:4) Other relevant New Testament passages
include Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Corinthians 11:3, 11:9, and
14:34; and 1 Timothy 2:11–12 and 5:5–6. Other Old Testament passages
include Numbers 5:20–22 and Leviticus 12:2–5 and 15:17–33.

Later Christian writers extended the misogynistic themes in the Bible
with a vengeance. Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, wrote:

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn
to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that
you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His
punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are
she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It
was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the
force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man!
Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die. . .
. Woman, you are the gate to hell.

One can find similarly misogynistic—though sometimes less
venomous—statements in the writings of many other church fathers and
theologians, including St. Ambrose, St. Anthony, Thomas Aquinas, St.
Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, and St.
Jerome.

This misogynistic bias in Christianity's basic texts has long been
translated into misogyny in practice. Throughout almost the entire
time that Christianity had Europe and America in its lock grip, women
were treated as chattel—they had essentially no political rights, and
their right to own property was severely restricted. Perhaps the
clearest illustration of the status of women in the ages when
Christianity was at its most powerful is the prevalence of wife
beating. This degrading, disgusting practice was very common
throughout Christendom well up into the 19th century, and under
English Common Law husbands who beat their wives were specifically
exempted from prosecution. (While wife beating is still common in
Christian lands, at least in some countries abusers are at least
sometimes prosecuted.)

At about the same time that English Common Law (with its wife-beating
exemption) was being formulated and codified, Christians all across
Europe were engaging in a half-millennium-long orgy of torture and
murder of "witches"—at the direct behest and under the direction of
the highest church authorities. The watchword of the time was Exodus
22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and at the very
minimum hundreds of thousands of women were brutally murdered as a
result of this divine injunction, and the papal bulls amplifying it
(e.g., Spondit Pariter, by John XXII, and Summis Desiderantes, by
Innocent VIII). Andrew Dickson White notes:

On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII sent forth the
bull Summis Desiderantes. Of all documents ever issued from Rome,
imperial or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the
greatest shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more
clearly dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the
clergy of Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers . . .
[W]itch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to scour
Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their use
[by the Dominicans Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger]—"The Witch
Hammer", Malleus Maleficarum. . . . With the application of torture to
thousands of women, in accordance with the precepts laid down in the
Malleus, it was not difficult to extract masses of proof . . . The
poor creatures writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had
been nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve
their sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would
satisfy the inquisitors and judges. . . . Under the doctrine of
"excepted cases," there was no limit to torture for persons accused of
heresy or witchcraft.

Given this bloody, hateful history, it's not surprising that women
have always held very subservient positions in Christian churches. In
fact, there appear to have been no female clergy in any Christian
church prior to the 20th century (with the exception of those who
posed as men, such as Pope Joan), and even today a great many
Christian sects (most notably the Catholic Church) continue to resist
ordaining female clergy. While a few liberal Protestant churches have
ordained women in recent years, it's difficult to see this as a great
step forward for women; it's easier to see it as analogous to the Ku
Klux Klan's appointing a few token blacks as Klaxons.

As for the improvements in the status of women over the last two
centuries, the Christian churches either did nothing to support them
or actively opposed them. This is most obvious as regards women's
control over their own bodies. Organized Christianity has opposed this
from the start, and as late as the 1960s the Catholic Church was still
putting its energies into the imposition of laws prohibiting access to
contraceptives. Having lost that battle, Christianity has more
recently put its energies into attempts to outlaw the right of women
to abortion.

Many of those leading the fight for women's rights have had no
illusions about the misogynistic nature of Christianity. These women
included Mary Wollstonecraft, Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Margaret Sanger (whose slogan, "No God. No master,"
remains relevant to this day).

17. Christianity is homophobic. Christianity from its beginnings has
been markedly homophobic. The biblical basis for this homophobia lies
in the story of Sodom in Genesis, and in Leviticus. Leviticus 18:22
reads: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is
abomination," and Leviticus 20:13 reads: "If a man lie with mankind as
he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination:
they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

This sounds remarkably harsh, yet Leviticus proscribes a great many
other things, declares many of them "abominations," and prescribes the
death penalty for several other acts, some of which are shockingly
picayune. Leviticus 17:10–13 prohibits the eating of blood sausage;
Leviticus 11:6–7 prohibits the eating of "unclean" hares and swine;
Leviticus 11:10 declares shellfish "abominations"; Leviticus 20:9
prescribes the death penalty for cursing one's father or mother;
Leviticus 20:10 prescribes the death penalty for adultery; Leviticus
20:14 prescribes the penalty of being burnt alive for having a
three-way with one's wife and mother-in-law; and Leviticus 20:15
declares, "And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to
death: and ye shall slay the beast" (which seems rather unfair to the
poor beast). (One suspects that American Christians have never
attempted to pass laws enforcing Leviticus 20:15, because if passed
and enforced such laws would decimate both the rural, Bible-Belt
population and the cattle industry.)

Curiously, given the multitude of prohibitions in Leviticus, the vast
majority of present-day Christians have chosen to focus only upon
Leviticus 20:13, the verse calling for the death penalty for
homosexual acts. And at least some of them haven't been averse to
acting on it. (To be fair, some Christian "reconstructionists" are
currently calling for institution of the death penalty for adultery
and atheism as well as for "sodomy.")

Throughout history, homosexuality has been illegal in Christian lands,
and the penalties have been severe. In the Middle Ages, strangled gay
men were sometimes placed on the wood piles at the burning of witches
(hence the term "faggot"). One member of the British royalty caught
having homosexual relations suffered an even more grisly fate: Edward
II's penalty was being held down while a red hot poker was jammed
through his rectum and intestines. In more modern times, countless gay
people have been jailed for years for the victimless "crime" of having
consensual sex. It was only in 2003 that the Supreme Court struck down
the felony laws on the books in many American states prescribing
lengthy prison terms for consensual "sodomy." And many Christians
would love to reinstate those laws.

Thus the current wave of gay bashings and murders of gay people should
come as no surprise. Christians can find justification for such
violence in the Bible and also in the hate-filled sermons issuing from
all too many pulpits in this country. If history is any indication,
the homophobic messages in those sermons will continue to be issued
for many years to come.

18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's teachings. Mark, the
oldest of the Gospels, was written at least 30 years after Christ's
death, and the newest of them might have been written more than 200
years after his death. These texts have been amended, translated, and
re-translated so often that it's extremely difficult to gauge the
accuracy of current editions—even aside from the matter of the
accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after the death of
their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus Seminar, a
colloquium of over 200 Protestant Gospel scholars mostly employed at
religious colleges and seminaries, undertook in 1985 a multi-year
investigation into the historicity of the statements and deeds
attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded that only 18%
of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus had a high
likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very real sense
fundamentalists—who claim to believe in the literal truth of the
Bible—are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they are followers of
those who, decades or centuries later, put words in his mouth.

19. The Bible, Christianity's basic text, is riddled with
contradictions. There are a number of glaring contradictions in the
Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and including some within
the same books. A few examples:

". . . God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man."
(James:1:13)
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham."
(Genesis 22:1)

". . . for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever."
(Jeremiah 3:12)
"Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever. Thus
saith the Lord."
(Jeremiah 17:4)


"If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true."
(John 5:31, J.C. speaking)
"I am one that bear witness of myself . . ."
(John 8:18, J.C. speaking)

and last but not least:


"I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
(Genesis 32:30)
"No man hath seen God at any time."
(John 1:18)
"And I [God] will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts . . ."
(Exodus 33:23)

Christian apologists typically attempt to explain away such
contradictions by claiming that the fault lies in the translation, and
that there were no contradictions in the original text. It's difficult
to see how this could be so, given how direct many biblical
contradictions are; but even if these Christian apologetics held
water, it would follow that every part of the Bible should be as
suspect as the contradictory sections, thus reinforcing the previous
point: that the Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's words.

20. Christianity borrowed its central myths and ceremonies from other
ancient religions. The ancient world was rife with tales of virgin
births, miracle-working saviors, tripartite gods, gods taking human
form, gods arising from the dead, heavens and hells, and days of
judgment. In addition to the myths, many of the ceremonies of ancient
religions also match those of that syncretic latecomer, Christianity.
To cite but one example (there are many others), consider Mithraism, a
Persian religion predating Christianity by centuries. Mithra, the
savior of the Mithraic religion and a god who took human form, was
born of a virgin; he belonged to the holy trinity and was a link
between heaven and Earth; and he ascended into heaven after his death.
His followers believed in heaven and hell, looked forward to a day of
judgment, and referred to Mithra as "the Light of the World." They
also practiced baptism (for purification purposes) and ritual
cannibalism—the eating of bread and the drinking of wine to symbolize
the eating and drinking of the god's body and blood. Given all this,
Mithra's birthday should come as no surprise: December 25th; this
event was, of course, celebrated by Mithra's followers at midnight.

Mithraism is but the most striking example of the appearance of these
myths and ceremonies prior to the advent of Christianity. They
appear—in more scattered form—in many other pre-Christian religions.

A Final Word: These are but some of the major problems attending
Christianity, and they provide overwhelming reasons for its
abandon-ment. (Even if you discount half, two-thirds, or even
three-quarters of these arguments, the conclusion is still
irresistible.) For further discussion of these issues, and for
consideration of many others not even mentioned here, please see the
following books and pamphlets: