"How
well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ
has been for us..." Pope Leo X (1513-1521) - (Tony
Bushby - The Bible Fraud)
The Church stooped
to fraud, as with pious legends, bogus relics and dubious miracles;
for centuries it profited from a mythical "Donation of Constantine"
that had allegedly bequeathed Western Europe to Sylvester I (r.
314-35) and from "False Decretals" (c. 842) that forged a series
of documents to give a sacred antiquity to papal omnipotence.The
Inquisition almost fatally disgraced the Church. Even while preaching
peace the Church fomented religious wars in 16th century France
and the Thirty Years War in 17th century Germany. (Will
and Ariel Durant - The Lessons of History, pg 45)
Every
Ten Commandments you see - from the 5,000 pound granite behemoth
inside the Alabama State Judicial Building to the little wallet
card sold at Christian bookstores - is bogus. For a proof, read
the Bible, King James version. The familiar "rules" about having
no other goods, not killing or coveting are given to Moses on tablets,
which he smashes in Exodus 32:19. It is only when Moses goes back
for new tablets that we see the phrase "ten commandments." (Exodus
34:28). But the Commandments on these tablets are significantly
different than the rules given on the first tablets. (Russ
Kick - 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know, pg 10)
Had
Jesus as a person existed, it is impossible to explain, why his
contemporaries, the authors and historians of his time do not take
notice of him. If Abraham Lincoln was important enough to attract
the attention of his contemporaries, how much more was Jesus? It
was not until 800 years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus
is seen in the form of a human being on the cross. The church historian
Mosheim writes: The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ
deception and fraud." Dr. Robertson Smith adds: "There was an enormous
floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views."
The early Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the work
of an awowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict
to destroy his writings, a work called Philosophy of Oracles was
produced in which the author is made to write almost as a Christian;
and the name of Porphyry was signed to it.When to this manufacture
of doubtful evidence we add the terrible vandalism of destroying
nearly every great Pagan classic, we can form the idea of the desperate
means to which the early Christian Church resorted to "prove" that
Jesus was not a myth. Apostle Paul knows nothing about Jesus. He
does not mention in all his 13 epistles a Jesus born of a virgin.
Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus like Paul could go throughout
the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus without ever
quoting a single one of his sayings? Today a preacher is expelled
from his denomination if he suppresses the miraculous conception
of Jesus; but Paul was guilty of that very heresy. How to explain
it? It is quite simple: the virgin born Jesus was not yet invented
when Paul was preaching Christianity. (M.
M. Mangasarian - The Truth About Jesus, pgs 18, 50)
Such
is the strange construction of the Christian system of faith that
every evidence the heavens afford to man either directly contradicts
it or renders it absurd. There have been men in the world who believe
that a pious fraud might be productive of some good. But the fraud
being once established, could not afterwards be explained, and it
begets a calamitous necessity of going on. It is next to impossible
to account for the continued persecution carried out by the Church
for several hundred years against the sciences, if the Church had
not some record that it was originally no other than a pious fraud,
or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence
the scientific discovery of the structure of the universe afforded.
(The
Thomas Paine Reader, pg 443)
Religion
has been taught by a specially privileged class in every country,
from the point of view favoured by that class. It was, and is still,
in the interests of this class to propagate certain religious beliefs
without any regard as to whether they are true or not. Political
education is likewise bound up by similar restrictions. (Arthur
Findley - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 1, pgs 36-37)
Fraud,
forgery, intrigue, terror, persecution, inprisonment and wholesale
murder combined to produce the Christian Church, which set itself
up and the protector of Eucharist, a pagan ceremony to which it
attached the name of Christ. Likewise, it adopted the Pagan form
of infant baptism and abolished the Jesuian form of adult baptism.
From the pagans it acquired the form of Church service, their marriage
and other ceremonies, their ritual, their holy days and vestments,
in fact the entire Apostolic outlook was changed to conform to pagan
customs and beliefs. Even the name it gave to Jesus came from paganism,
as the Egyptian god Osiris was known as Chrest, and to the Greeks
as Chrestos. Like the dictators of our own times, the Church secured
great power and wealth by every evil device, ad just as Hitler and
Mussolini did for Germany and Italy, it brought Europe to the depths
of degradation. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 1, pgs 569-570)
The
summary of 700 years of Christian expansionism in northern Europe
is that the work was mainly done by the sword, in the interests
of kings and tyrants, who supported it, as against the resistance
of their subjects, who saw in the Church an instrument for their
subjection. Christianity, in short, was as truly a religion of the
sword, as Islam. The heathen, broadly speaking, were never persuaded,
never convinced, never won by the appeal of the new doctrine; they
were either transferred by their kings to the Church like so many
cattle, or beaten down into submission after generations of resistance
and massacre. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance, pg 678)
Does
history support a belief in God? If by God we mean a supreme being
inteeligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative.
History at bottom remains a process of natural selection of the
fittest in a struggle where goodness receives no favors, misfortunes
abound, and the final test is the ability to survive. (Will
and Ariel Durant - The Lessons of History, pg 46)
Religious
organizations always came into being as the result of an action
of a ruler or a noble. King Asoka of India established the Buddhist
Church; Vistaspa, the wealthy Persian nobleman the Zoroastrian Church
of Persia and Constantine established the Christian Church, shortly
after he murdered Licinius, his brother-in-law. To Henry VIII falls
the credit of founding the Episcopalian Church of England. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance, Vol 2, pgs 85, 110)
The
history of theology and of the church teaches us that whenever Christendom
appears as a concrete socioeconomic, political or similar program,
it deteriorates into an instrument of man's rule over other men.
(Demosthenes
Savramis - The satanizing of woman, pg 38)
"The
'Law', the 'Will of God', the 'Sacred Book', 'Inspiration' are all
merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to
power and by which he maintains his power. (Friedrich
Nietzsche - The Anti-Christ, pg 80)
Religion
is a weapon of political control, by which people are tricked into
abandoning reason and autonomy (Daniel
Pouzzner - Innovism)
The
exact number of people killed in various witch-hunts, crusades,
inquisitions, religious wars, etc., is not recorded anywhere, but
the total must run into the tens of millions; Homer Smith arrives
at a figure of 60,000,000 in his Man and His Gods, including all
Moslems killed in the several Crusades, and hte non-Whites in Africa,
the Americas and Oceania wiped out in the process of Christianizing
the world. (Robert
Anton Wilson - Ishtar Rising, pg 89)
None
of the major world religions could have achieved their eminence,
were it not for their capacity to sponsor and encourage military
conquest and to aid and abet harsh forms of political repression
and control. I wish I could say that the emergence of world religions
to our kind's tendency to adopt more human principles of spiritual
and ethical beliefs. But the historical achievements of the principal
religions of love and mercy constitute a decisive refutation of
any such view. Each of the nonkilling religions is implicated in
devastating inversions of the principle of nonkilling and reverence
for life. Indeed, were it not for their ability to sponsor and encourage
militarism and harsh measures of state control, there would be no
world religions in the world today. (Marvin
Harris - Our Kind, pg 446)
God
has always been a god of battles to the scoundrels who make their
god in their own image. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 1, pg 362)
Are
you the devil? I bet you thought you would never qualify. Wrong!
Unchanged since 3000 years, the decisive criterion for being the
Evil Umpire isn't horns, hoofs, or a fondness to toast people literally.
It is a single question: do you support plunder and murder by your
leaders? If you do not, you are the Devil, the Unamerican, the Enemy
of the Proletariat - pick the devil figure of your favorite ideology.
The fact that this would qualify even Jesus, Buddha, Karl Marx or
George Washington for devils of their own beliefs yet it remains
unchanged reveals the true priority of the genre. Ideology exists
to justify crime. (George
Cordell - Quiz: Are You the Devil?)
Crime may lurk behind the biggest personal
fortunes, but where does ideology come into the picture? An ordained
priest of two major religions, now a professor in Honolulu explains
the connection: "The huge cathedrals and pagodas, the priests'
often comfortable lifestyle rarely if ever came from the pennies
of the believers. They came from huge contributions by a few very
rich, who in exchange determined what is going to be preached."
The church, a forerunner of today's war-cheering corporate media?
"One could say that." (George
Cordell - Quiz: Are You the Devil?)
The
AP contacted dioceses across the country and found that 1,341 clergy
members have been accused of molesting minors, with more than half
the dioceses yet to report. (USA
Today)
The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a
world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order
to subsist, and then passes a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill,"
is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at
a loss to understand how manking has entertained or given it house
room all this long. (Peter De Vries) in (Colin
Jarman - The Book of Poisonous Quotes, pg 224)
With
priests and monks dying of plague just as quickly and thiefs and
murderers, saints dying like sinners, many began to question the
authority of the Church. The plague shattered people's faith in
the Church which had been unable to stop the epidemic. And it shattered
their faith in the aristocrats who mostly just ran away (History
Bites)
In
1881 a new translation of the Bible was made which revealed 36,191
mistakes in the version of 1611, still looked upon by many Christians
as infallible and the Word of God. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 2 pg 215))
Islam,
according to historian Paul Johnson, is a Jewish heresy and so is
Christianity. Who hates Jews more than Christians and Islamics?
It's because we are brothers.The greatest battles of all are between
brothers. (Paul
Metzger - I Have Met God and He Lives in Brooklyn)
Islam
was politically compromised within the lifetime of its founder by
the action of no less a person than the founder himself. (Arnold
J. Toynbee - A Study of History, Vol 1 pg 555)
The
resumé of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church
bears more than a few smudges. At 17, on trial for being an "imposter",
he admitted in a New York court that he had told people he had visions
from staring at a "seer stone" revealing to him where to dig for
buried treasure. A decade plus later, he set up a bank in Ohio and
issued Mormon money that his accountant later admitted was backed
by strongboxes filled with sand and metal bolts, topped by a layer
of silver coins. So, the prophet engaged in necromancy and financial
chicanery. (Richard
Zacks - An Underground Education, pgs 239-240)
Non-Aristotelian logic deals with
probabilities. Aristotelian logic deals with certainities, and in
the lack of certainities throughout most of life, Aristotelian logic
subliminally programs us to invent fictitious certainties. This
explains most of the ideologies and damned near all religions on
the planet, I think. (Robert
Anton Wilson - Quantum Psychology, pg 174)
Prostitution
and Christian morality have in the past acted in collusion with
business. In certain region the Church handled the matter himself.
In the papal city of Avignon, the queen acted as protector of the
public brothel, the Abbaye. The women working there were pledged
to remain good Christians, and the customers had to be Christians
as well; pagans and Jews were expressly banned. Pope Julius II established
a similar house in Rome. Elsewhere, the Church refrained from direct
involvement with such prostitution, but collected a part of the
take anyway. To facilitate financing of the Basilica a special tax
on courtesans was introduced; it led to the collection of four times
more money than the sale of papal indulgences. (Demosthenes
Savramis - The satanizing of woman, pgs 89-90)
Murders
were common in the Lateran Palace, and much blood reddened the streets
of Rome, especially during episcopal elections. Anathemas were scattered
far and wide. 42 of the 85 popes who ruled from 600 to 1050 had
each a reign of less than two years, quite a number suffering violent
deaths because of their outrages. Thousands of victims languished
in the papal dungeons, without trial or reason, and many ended their
days there. Ecclesiastical offices were sold to the highest bidder,
no matter who he was. There was no ethical standard in the Church,
which was a money-making affair that could only prosper by keeping
the people ignorant. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance pgs 799-800)
Pope
John XII was one of the greatest scoundrels in history. There was
no crime that he did not commit. The palaces of Nero or Caligula
, two of the worst Roman emperors, never witnessed more wanton scenes
than took place at the Lateran Palace, the Pope's residence in Rome.
Amongst his many misdeeds were murder, perjury, adultery, incest
with his two sisters, rape and sacrilege. He turned his palace into
a brothel, cut out the eyes, or castrated those who criticised him,
and raped girls and women who came to pray at St. Peter's. He gambled,
cursed and drank to the devil. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 1, pgs 817-818)
The
separation of church of state has been a mockery. The state of governmental
body controlled the Church which became a government instrument
to control and dictate to the people for the benefit of the government.
The Church had become a government tool, a hireling of the State,
working cooperatively to benefit itself in a self-serving manner.
It promotes the government's tax lies, persuading its believers
to pay, while itself being exempt (Dan
Israel - Christianity Unmasked, pg. 144, 147)
The
modern wealth of the Vatican is based on the generosity of Benito
Mussolini. The Lateran Treaty, which his government concluded with
the Vatican in 1929 gave the Holy See sovereignty, exemption from
property, income and import taxes, diplomatic immunity, 750 million
lire, and 5 percent of the state bonds of Fascist Italy. Catholic
religious teaching was introduced in all public high schools. (David
A. Yallop - In God's Name, pgs 92-93)
Items
such as bombs, tanks, guns and contraceptives might be condemned
in the Vatican pulpit,. but the shares Bernardino Nogara bought
for the Vatican in companies that manufactured these items helped
to fill the coffers in St. Peter's. When Mussolini needed armaments
for his invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, a substantial proportion was
supplied by a munitions plant Nogara had acquired on behalf of Vatican.
(David
A. Yallop - In God's Name, pgs 94-95)
“Fascism
is the regime that corresponds most closely to the concepts of the
Church of Rome” (Civilta Cattolica, 1939) in (Eric
Jon Phelps - Vatican assassins, pg 488)
When
Cardinal Pacelli became Pius XII in 1939, he welcomed to the Vatican
from time to time, the infamous Ribbentropp to hear from him the
plans Germany had made for the conquest of Europe. This fact has
now been revealed in the impartial Annual Register. Another visitor
was Matsuoke, the Japanese envoy, who told His Holiness what Japan
proposed to do, to be rewarded with a high Papal decoration. Japan
received the blessing of the Vicar of Christ on the foul work he
was doing in China, and proposed to do until all Asia was in her
power. While these interchanges of confidence took place, the Roman
Catholic bishops met in 1940 at Fulda, in Prussia, to resolve that
"after the completion of the final German victory, special ceremonies
of gratitude to the German troops and loyalty to Hitler will be
announced." There is no doubt about the attitude of the Roman Catholic
Church in Germany towards the Nazi Party, and, when the attempt
was made on Hitler's life in 1944, the Pope, Piux XII, was so relieved
at his escape that he sent him a telegram of congratulation. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 2 pg 1069)
For
the Vatican, one of the major advantages to emerge from the very
lucrative concordat with Hitler was confirmation of the Kirchensteuer
(church tax). This is a state tax that is still deducted at source
from all wage-earners in Germany. The tax represents between 8 and
10 percent on income tax collected by the German government. Substantial
amounts derived from the Kirchensteuer began to flow to the Vatican
in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. The flow
continued throughout the war ($100 million in 1943, for example)
(David
A Yallop - In God's Name, pgs 96)
If the Mafia wished to bring some of their
cleaned money into Italy, they used Vatican Bank channels. The money
was converted to bonds directly by Edilcentro of Washington (a subsidiary
of Immobiliare that built the Watergate complex among other things)
When John Paul 1 became pope, only 1047 of the 11000 accounts of
the Vatican Bank belonged to religious orders and institutes, 312
to parishes and 290 to dioceses. The remaining 9351 were the property
of diplomats, prelates and "privileged citizens", a lot of them
foreign. Many of the account holders used the facility to export
currency out of Italy illegally. Deposits were not subjected to
any taxation. Michele Sindona, the Vatican's money expert was a
financial adviser to the Mafia families Gambino and Inzerillo. (David
A. Yallop - In God's Name, pgs 130, 154, 126)
Dogmas
separate but ethics unite the human race. This means that religion
(and any other belief) based on dogma is unethical. (Arthur
Findlay - The Curse of Ignorance Vol 2 pg 22) |