Why I am an Atheist Part II

(note - in case you can't tell from the title, this post is a direct continuation of the previous one. If you have not read Part I please scroll down and do so now. Part II isn't going to make much sense to you without Part I. This post was started on 5/1 - this is Part II of a three part series. This part deals with organized religion while the third part will deal with the concept of god itself. While I'm doing this note I'd like to thank Jerry Monaco over at Livejournal for posting a reference to my blog on his site… my site traffic has jumped tremendously since then. Everyone who is visiting from there thank you for coming by. I encourage all of you to drop me a comment, let me know what you think! So anyway, on with the show! Hope you all enjoy!)

So here ended any thought I had of becoming a priest. At this point, during the time between 1996 and 98, I still very much believed in the concept of god. God created us for his own (unknowable) purpose. He takes a hands off approach to running the world, essentially he got us going and then backed off. We are free here on earth to do our own thing. When we die god will judge us based on our actions during life. This is what I came to believe, I had moved into the realm of deism.

After going so long without applying inquiry or critical thinking skills to the subject of religion it was time to turn my attention to the subject. I started researching the issue as I would have any other issue. The things I started learning were very disturbing to me. I had never known that for the most part the early Christians simply took and reworked existing pagan holidays as their own. I never realized that the bible as we know it wasn't put together until 300 years after the events they reported on. The first list of New Testament Cannon was drafted by the Bishop of Alexandria in 367, it wasn't officially adopted until the Third Council of Carthage in 397 AD. And the books that were chosen to form the new testament? At the time of the Council of Carthage there were no fewer then 20 known gospels including the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of Judas, Sayings Gospel Q (thought to be one of two gospels used as source material for the Gospel of Matthew and Luke), and several letters such as Clement and Barnabas. None of those books made it into the final new testament. Why not?

Even bigger then the idea that there were several competing gospels, each with their own view of Jesus, there were also several competing Christian philosophies! There were many groups of Christians who each had their own Christian philosophies that were completely different and incompatible with the others. We had Arianism (Jesus was closer to god then any other man who ever existed but ultimately he was still a man), Gnosticism (the gospels should be interpreted as allegory, not literally - emphasis placed on mystical elements of the religion), Mandaeanism (worshiped John the Baptist instead of Jesus), Marcionism (the god of Christianity is incompatible with the god of Judaism, therefore the two religions are unrelated), Judaizers (Christians must continue to follow the Law of Moses - the polar opposite of the Marcionists), etc. Ummm... huh? There was no single unified view of Jesus and what he represented either in gospel or doctrine? What the hell? This is NOT what we were taught in Sunday school!!

So wait, if there were all these competing philosophies why did they all die out leaving only one to survive and become what we know today as Catholicism? Naturally, since the catholic philosophy was the only one that truly was divinely inspired and the only one that accurately represented the will of god people quickly abandoned their mis-informed philosophies and flocked to Catholicism! Since it was divinely inspired it was so clearly right as to be undeniable! That is how it happened... isn't it? No? Not so much? Oh, that's right! Catholicism spread the same way religion has always spread historically... by killing lots of people! That's the proper way to show divine inspiration, mass slaughter!

In 390 A.D. the Roman Emperor Theodosius I declared the Nicene version of Christianity (the forerunner of Catholicism) to be the official, and only, religion of the entire Roman Empire. Theodosius enacted programs designed to destroy all rival religions including all other Christian philosophies. Those who did not profess Nicene Christianity were exiled or exterminated, non-Nicene church property and material was confiscated and destroyed. Heresy against Nicene Christianity became punishable by death. Non-Nicene believers were considered to be agents of the devil and treated as such. Some historians believe that in the years following Christianity gaining a place of power in the Roman Empire that more Christians died at the hands of other Christians then died during the persecution of the Christians by the Romans in times prior.

Those early Christians, gotta love 'em! They make modern day Muslim extremists look like peace loving hippies by comparison! This is how organized religion spread, not by having the most compelling belief system, not by having the best argument, not by the gradual conversion of people who saw the wisdom of the teachings, but by killing anyone who disagreed! So of what worth is the Christian teachings? What makes the Nicene Christian teachings any more valid then the Gnostic Christian teachings or the Arianist Christian teachings or the Mandaeanist Christian teachings? Because the Nicene's had more swords? Because they had the weight of the Roman Legions behind them? We are supposed to accept, on faith no less, that the Nicene teachings are the correct teachings, that those teachings will put us on the path to heaven. Because they slaughtered the most people? Is that supposed to be what gives them their validity? Why are we supposed to accept these teachings? Because Theodosius said so? Ultimately that's what it boils down to... Christians today believe as they do because Theodosius said so seventeen hundred years ago and back up his declaration with arms. If Theodosius had sided with the Arianist Christians instead of the Nicene Christians back then Christians around the world today would believe that Jesus was a great and holy man but still just a man and not the actual son of god. Considering how Christianity has impacted the world it's amazing to think how much of that came from a single decision made by a single person almost 1700 years ago.

Christianity as it exists today exists due to a decision of a Roman Emperor and shear force of arms. So I ask what possible validity those teachings can have? How can we trust or believe that those teachings truly represent god's will? We cannot. The teachings of the church have nothing to do with following god; they have everything to do with men and power. All church actions from the slaughter of the non-Nicene Christians to the crusades to the inquisition have been about maintaining and expanding the power of the church. God is invoked to serve the interests of church leaders not the other way around. How can we accept the church as a moral and spiritual authority when their hands are stained in the blood of countless innocents throughout history? Why would we still follow the church? Why is the church deserving of forgiveness for the atrocities it has committed? It is the same institution as the one who ordered the crusades or the inquisition, the same institution that slaughtered those who did not agree with it. The same hypocritical institution preaching the same millennia old morality that it always has.

Time has not changed much. They may not openly slaughter those who do not agree with them anymore but don't think for one second that means they no longer cause harm. Just 60 years ago they stood by in silence as the holocaust took place. Interestingly enough they recently apologized for that (don't worry Vatican, your followers will forgive you... they've forgived everything else you've ever done.) Look at the AIDS crisis in Africa. Those people need help, they are dying from this disease on a massive scale. Education on condom usage would go a very long way to controlling this epidemic but the church's response is to say that birth control is a sin. Let them die just don't let them use a condom! Look through history, look at all the harm the church has caused. The slaughter of "heretics" in ancient Rome, the inquisition, the crusades, the suppression of scientific thought and knowledge in the middle ages, their response (or lack thereof) to the holocaust, their treatment of the AIDS crisis. Look at the report that I linked to in a prior post about Christian hospitals refusing emergency contraception to rape victims! This is a LAW in seven states currently with more to follow requiring all hospitals to dispense emergency contraception to rape victims and the church is trying to refuse to follow the law! A law to help rape victims of all things!!

The church feels they are above the law. If there is a law that they disagree with they will do everything they can to either ignore it or try to introduce new laws exempting them from it. Anyone remember RLPA or RFRA? "Government must show a compelling interest before burdening a religious institution with any generally applicable, neutral, civil law." These were actual laws introduced here in the U.S. that would essentially exempt religious organizations from all generally applicable laws (the laws that every one else has to follow) unless government could actually prove that those religions should be subject to the same laws that everyone else has to follow. Fortunately these acts got knocked down by the supreme court as unconstitutional but religion kept trying four times to make this happen. First the Religious Freedom Amendment, when that was declared unconstitutional they introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, when that was defeated they introduced the Religious Liberty Protection Act, when that was defeated they started introducing versions of RLPA and RFRA on the state level. This is what organized religion does, they consider themselves above the law, they believe they can do whatever they want to do and it's okay because they are a religion, they believe that the "law of god" trumps the laws of man. And if the laws of god says let the people in Africa die rather then use a condom, or let's force a rape victim to carry her attacker's child rather then give her emergency contraception, or to ignore the laws that govern everybody else then so be it!

The church will argue that they are necessary for morality. But if this was a true statement then every atheist in the world would be a brutal mass murder. Since we know that's not a true statement the claim that religion is necessary for morality is clearly false. I have met plenty of atheists through previous involvement with the American Atheist Organization who were good moral people. By the same token I've met plenty of religious people who were completely immoral. Onanite keeps a nice running list on his blog about priests and ministers who are arrested for molesting kids. That is not to say that all atheists are good people and all religious people are not. There are "saints" and "sinners" on both sides which goes to show that morality, despite what the church wants us to think, is independent of religion.

So this is where I was at at this point in my life. I saw the church as an evil and oppressive regime. They are nothing but an organization of people, some good some not, who have no more claim to knowing what god really wants then you or I. They achieved their power through slaughter, they are responsible for more atrocities throughout history then any other institution, they consider themselves to be above the law; they still engage in policies and practices that hurt people, especially women. There is nothing divinely inspired, or even good, about organized religion.

It is incomprehensible to me that anybody can look at the church and consider it a source of good in this world. No amount of good that the church might have done through charity work could ever make up for the harm they have inflicted through the years. No institution that was built upon the bones of those who did not agree can ever claim to be a source of good.

The year is 1998 - at this point in my life I had rejected organized religion and moved toward deism. Soon I would begin to question the idea of god itself...