ignorance and misinformation?

[Guest guest]

 Unreliability of Christian sources about early Christianity

 

Many Christians are convinced that the Bible and the version of the history

presented by the Church and by mainstream academic institutions are accurate and

reliable. This is not a fact.

>From the end of 18th century, when the power of the Church in Europe declined

and intellectuals found a new freedom, the Bible (Old and New Testament) started

to be analyzed critically. The self-evident inconsistencies and the questionable

morality of the Bible text were exposed and confuted, and the development of

scientific research about history and archeology brought to light a vast number

of "forgotten facts" that started to change the perception of the world's

history. Now hundreds of books and scholars have come to the conclusion that the

history of Semitic religions and particularly of Christianity, as presented by

them, is a huge hoax: the result of ill-motivated propaganda.

 

In the west, the critical approach to the Bible counted many famous outspoken

intellectuals during the entire history, but especially since the 1700s. Let us

see some of their comments:

 

Voltaire: "Christianity is the most absurd and bloodthirsty religion."

George Bernard Shaw: " The Bible is full of fairy tales and anyone who believes

in the Bible is unfit to be a parent or vote . ... (It) is a false book, that

must be burned and buried... Jehovah is no God, but a barbarous tribal idol. "

Nietzsche: "I call Christianity the one Great Curse."

Mark Twain: " I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and

written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less

inspired by Him."

Colin Maine: "If we examine the Bible – both Old and New Testaments – we find

that the Bible God is more a sadistic monster than a god of love. If he were to

appear on earth as a human being, he would most likely be incarcerated in a

mental hospital as a dangerous psychopath."

Count Tolstoy: "Really no religion has preached things so evidently incompatible

with contemporary knowledge or so immoral as the doctrines preached by Church

Christianity".

Thomas Jefferson: "There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad,

bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country

particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified

degree... Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in

spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt...The gospel history of

Jesus consists of fabrications, superstitions and fanaticism... I consider the

book of Revelation, the ravings of a maniac.... Due to Christianity, millions of

innocent men, women and children have been burnt alive as witches... The day

will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his

father, in the womb of a Virgin, will be classified with the fable of the

generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter".

James Madison: "Christianity causes superstition, bigotry and persecution."

H.G.Wells: "You can trust a devout catholic, less than a Nazi spy... The most

evil thing in the world today is the Roman Catholic Church."

Matilda Joslyn Gage: "The sale of daughters was practiced in England for seven

hundred years after the introduction of Christianity.... In 1854, an objector to

women's rights cried out, First prove women have a soul, both Church and State

deny it."

Robert Ingersoll: " The real oppressor of the people is the Bible."

Bertrand Russell: "The clergy objected to giving pain killers to women during

child birth, lest she escape pain ordered on Eve... The church opposed the

abolition of slavery."

Charles Smith: "The doctrine of the Virgin Birth brands every natural mother as

impure."

J.C.Baretto Miranda: "Every word of theirs was a sentence of death, and at their

slightest nod, were moved to terror, the vast populations spread over the

Asiatic regions whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most

frivolous pretext, could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon, or

strangled or offered as food to the pyre."

Charles Dickens: "Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse

than they found it."

Diderot: "The God of Christians is a father who cares much about his apples and

very little about his children."

Freud (when in 1933 he was told that in Germany his books had been burned): "How

can people say there is no advancement of progress? In the middle ages, they

would have burned me, too!"

Gibbon: "(About the persecutions against Christians) we need to separate the few

genuine facts from an indigestible mass of fables and mistakes... The complete

disregard for truth and credibility in the presentation of these early martyrs

was due to a very natural mistake. The Church writers in the 4th and 5th

centuries gratified to the Roman magistrates the same dose of inflexible and

unquenchable zeal that filled their bosoms against the heretics and idolaters of

their times."

Claude Fauchet: "(The popes) have consecrated despotism and made God an

accomplice of tyrants."

Fredrich Wilhelm, emperor of Prussia (from his last will to his heirs):

"Regarding the Catholic religion, you must tolerate it in conformance to the

Westfalia treatise. But do not allow any Jesuit in your states. They are

diabolical beings, malefic and obnoxious creatures. Do not tolerate them for any

reason if they try to sneak into your states."

Fredrich II of Prussia: "You have no idea of what kind of scoundrels these

priests are: I have been extremely kind to them and they keep giving information

to my enemies. ... The priests inspire (in a small prince) a deep veneration for

priesthood, a sacred hatred against all other religions and finally, with the

help of the terrors created by the devil, can bend him to their will."

Giuseppe Garibaldi: "A man who defiles himself with the contact of priests

cannot be an honest person... The priest is the personification of deceit...

Only in a state of madness or total ignorance can someone trust his soul to a

descendent of Torquemada. ... The greatest enemy of Italy is the Pope... Jesus

said, 'All men are brothers' and the priests have made nations into so many

ferocious beasts who barbarously destroy each other."

Lord Harrington: "(The Jesuits' wickedness) eclipses Caligula, Erostratus, Nero

and Domitian."

Heine: "When they can no longer burn us at the stake, the priests come to ask us

for alms."

Victor Hugo (member of the international committee for the erection of a

monument to a famous intellectual tortured and killed by the Inquisition):

"Giordano Bruno is a noble victim who died for the sake of knowledge; I salute

his memory with a deep emotion." (Other members of the committee were Renan,

Spencer, Swinburne, Castelar, Büchner, Hamerling, Nordmann, Lambros, Bonghi,

Bovio, Carducci, Cavallotti, Mariani Minghetti, Rapisardi, Saffi, Spaventa,

Villari, Zanardelli.

Francis Herring: "(The Jesuit's politics) is the essence of Satan's politics,

the peak of human wickedness and cruelty."

Hitler: "For 1500 years the Church has been repeating that Jews are noxious. I

also have the same opinion, and thus I believe I am greatly pleasing the

Church."

Farinacci: "If we (Fascists) have espoused anti-semitism, it is due to the

teachings of the Catholic Church all along its history."

Leopardi: "When Napoleon wanted to eliminate the dacoits from a neighborhood in

Paris, he sent there jugglers and comedians to attract the general people to

fill the streets. A few months before, the pope wanted to eliminate the dacoits

from the city of Sonnino, a place within his state on the border of Naples,

where they had been hiding. So the pope ordered the complete destruction of that

city. Napoleon's plan was a success, while the pope considered that the same

result could be obtained only by total destruction of his own city."

Locke: "Freedom for all, except for the bloodthirsty Catholic sect."

Alessandro Manzoni: "The Church has always been the mother of all

superstitions."

Giuseppe Mazzini: "One day in 17th century in Italy, in Rome, men who called

themselves inquisitors, and claimed to have science and authority from God,

assembled to decree that the Earth does not move. In front of them, they had a

prisoner, his forehead shining with genius... who had revealed the secret of a

world. That man was Galileo."

Milton: "How can there be a devil if God is omnipotent, omniscient and

benevolent?"

Montesquieu: "Rome is openly dominated by corruption, and crime rules

shamelessly."

Carlo Monticelli: "The power of the popes has been a terrible disaster for

mankind, that still remains and will remain until the day when progress and

science will uproot the last traces of prejudice and ignorance from the soul and

the brain of men."

Morello: "If Italy could give a monetary value to all the damages caused by the

popes in the centuries by calling foreign invasions, by wars, persecution and

destructions of all kinds, an army of accountants would not be sufficient to

calculate it."

Mussolini: "The Vatican is the cancer that devours the life of our country."

Napoleon: "I am surrounded by priests who repeat that their kingdom is not in

this world, and who appropriate everything they can lay hands on... The popes

have committed too many stupid actions to be considered infallible... Dogmas

are the bastion of stupid and fanatic people... Italy started to decline when

priests wanted to govern finance, police and army."

Nietzsche: "The sacred history should rather be called bloody history."

Pettinato: "At the end of the 3rd century Commodian, the father of Christian

poetry, was already pleading with the Goths to destroy Rome, so that the city

proud of her eternity could cry eternally."

Popper: "In the name of tolerance, we should proclaim the right not to tolerate

the intolerant – those who steal, kidnap or sell slaves."

Ezra Pound: "There is no greater criminal than the archbishop of Canterbury who,

among the destitutes in the slums of London, preaches, 'go and multiply'."

Saint Simon: "The base ignorance of the priests, their fanatical sentiments

destroyed the noble morals and right knowledge of the famous Port Royal. Through

people tied to the popes with an abject submission they gave the absolute merit

to useless, ridiculous and narrow minded practices they imposed on the students

entrusted to them."

Gaetano Salvemini: "I will dedicate up to the last minute of my life to fighting

against the Catholic Church, if I am able to educate even one single Italian to

see the Catholic Church as the systematic destroyer of human dignity, my life

will not be in vain."

Luigi Settembrini: "National unity, freedom, emancipation of reason from faith,

this is the substance of our civilization, everything else is barbarious power.

The great enemy is the priest, we can't make peace with him."

Shelley: "Rome seems a city of dead people, or at least in the enthusiasm for

her ancient greatness one does not notice the Romans."

David Strauss: "Even if Jesus existed, the gospels were not written before the

2nd century."

Tocqueville: "Some profess the Christian dogmas because they believe them,

others because they are afraid they will be suspected of not believing them... A

Catholic's consciousness only depends on the pope... his only motherland is the

Church, in all political events he only sees what can profit or damage the

Church. As long as the Church is free and prospers, what does he care about the

rest... Such sentiments and ideas in people who educate children and costumes

will naturally destroy the soul of a nation."

 

In 1794, Thomas Paine wrote in Age of Reason for his fellow Americans: "All

national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear

to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and

monopolize power and profit... Each of those churches show certain books, which

they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God

was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of

God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the

Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the

other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.... When Moses

told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments

from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no

other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority

for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal

evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as

any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself,

without having recourse to supernatural intervention. It is, however, necessary

to except the declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers

upon the children; it is contrary to every principle of moral justice...

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and

torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half

the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a

demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to

corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I

detest everything that is cruel... Be this as it may, they decided by vote which

of the books out of the collection they had made should be the WORD OF GOD, and

which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such

as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of

votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the

people, since calling themselves Christians, had believed otherwise- for the

belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did

all this, we know nothing of; they called themselves by the general name of the

Church, and this is all we know of the matter."