It’s Time to Fight Religion and Tell the Truth About Faith and Violence

A post yesterday sought to tell some of the truth about the true, horrific history of Christianity that involves murder and mayhem on a huge scale.  Currently, we see constant deference toward and "tolerance" towards religion even though the "faithful" and "godly Christians" show little or no tolerance toward those of other faiths or no faith.  Meanwhile we see blathering liars engaging efforts to hide or rewrite the truth - e.g., the suggestion that Christianity had little to do with the Crusades even though the were conducted under Papal authority and many of the atrocities against the Cathars for instance were overseen by bishops and cardinals acting on orders from Rome. A piece in Salon makes the case that it is time to fight religion and tell the truth about its ugly fruits.  Here are highlights:

The relentless march of time generally affords humankind, which happens to include folks in the media, the chance to reflect on events and acquire wisdom. But the weeks passing since the massacre in Paris of the highly talented Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for their depictions of the Prophet Muhammad have only granted a good number of commentators the opportunity to bedork themselves time and again, . . . 

Rarely have murderers so clearly manifested their motive. With the exclamations they made as they carried out their atrocity — “Allahu Akbar!” and “On a vengé le prophète Mohamed, on a tué Charlie Hebdo!” (The prophet Muhammad has been avenged, we have killed Charlie Hebdo!) — the attackers explicitly told us they were killing for Islam, and imparted precisely the lesson they intended: Do not insult or ridicule our faith or you will pay the supreme price. They wrought violence against innocents who dared transgress the commandments of a religion they did not profess. What’s more, they de facto succeeded in imposing sharia tenets well beyond the confines of the Islamic world. 

Zogby’s is by far the most disgraceful, twisted, retrograde commentary on the Charlie Hebdo tragedy I have come across. Yet in adducing Pope Francis’ admonition to those who would insult faith, he unintentionally makes a point: Representatives of the world’s major religions usually stand together in calling for respect for their institutionalized fables, and they still, even now, usually get it. After all, respect, at least of a sort, is just what theocrats of old exacted, on pain of torture and death, when they ruled during the brutal millennium before the Renaissance that was once (and justly) known as the Dark Ages.

We are accustomed to reflexively deferring to “men of the cloth,” be they rabbis and priests or pastors and imams. In this we err, and err gravely. Those whose profession it is to spread misogynistic morals, debilitating sexual guilt, a hocus-pocus cosmogony, and tales of an enticing afterlife for which far too many are willing to die or kill, deserve the exact same “respect” we accord to shamans and sorcerers, alchemists and quacksalvers.

Out of misguided notions of “tolerance,” we avert our critical gaze from the blatant absurdities — parting seas, spontaneously igniting shrubbery, foodstuffs raining from the sky, virgin parturitions, garrulous slithering reptiles, airborne ungulates — proliferating throughout their “holy books.” We suffer, in the age of space travel, quantum theory and DNA decoding, the ridiculous superstitious notion of “holy books.”

And we countenance the nonsense term “Islamophobia,” banishing those who forthrightly voice their disagreements with the seventh-century faith to the land of bigots and racists; indeed, the portmanteau vogue word’s second component connotes something just short of mental illness.

The herd inclination of progressives to exculpate the canon of Islam and the role faith in general plays in inciting violence insults those with even a superficial knowledge of history. There is nothing commendable about covering up how religious convictions motivate killers, be they Christians (think of the Serbian Orthodox “cleansing” of Muslims in the Yugoslav war), Jews (recall Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 murder of 29 Palestinians at a Hebron holy site), Hindus (memorably, the Gujarat massacre in 2002 and, of course, the epochal Hindu-Muslim bloodshed accompanying Partition). Religion in each of these barbaric episodes (and many, many more) was the universally recognized primum mobile. Why should we not admit the same about the Charlie Hebdo slaughter?

This all leads us to an overarching issue of critical import. Adherence to any of the Abrahamic religions — that is, to the trumped-up doctrines of systematized, unverifiable fables mandating certain kinds of behavior and outlawing others — is, to repeat Kristof’s silly term, “otherizing,” or divisive, provocative, and ultimately inimical to social harmony. Traffickers in such fables, or those who provide cover to those who do, deserve to be disinvited from every forum convened to seek solutions to the problems they themselves have helped create.

We need to turn the tables and refuse to let the faith-based or their smooth-talking accomplices set the terms for debate; refuse to cower before the balderdash term Islamophobia; refuse to let faith-mongering fraudsters, from the Pope in the Vatican to the pastor down the street, educate our children or lecture us on morals or anything else. If we do not believe the Bible is true or the Quran inerrant, we need to say so, loudly, clearly and repeatedly, until the “sacred” sheen of these books wears off. And it will.

We need, after all, to tell the truth. If we don’t start doing this now, our next question must be, who among us will be the next victims?

Did the Historical Jesus Exist?

A negative answer to the question posed in the title of this post strikes terror into the hearts (and small minds) of conservative Christians and the professional Christian class that lives a parasitic existence maintaining power and control through manipulation of the Jesus story and selective parsing of the Bible.  Yet, a growing number of scholars are coming to believe that, in fact, the historical Jesus purportedly depicted in the Bible never existed.  Add this to the fact that the human genome project has proven that Adam and Eve never existed as historical persons and the entire Christian story line completely collapses.  A piece in AlterNet looks at the growing belief by scholars that Jesus never existed as a historical person.  Here are excerpts:

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.”  In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. 

At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized. 

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians—most of them Christian—analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth.  Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and  How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman .  

But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.”  In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received. 

The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving. A growing number of scholars are openly questioning or actively arguing against Jesus’ historicity. Since many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this debate even exists—that credible scholars might think Jesus never existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive: 

1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.  In the words of Bart Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. . . . . In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.”

2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts. Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just vague, but contradict the gospels.

3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. To make matter sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century, around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began.

4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other. If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz at ExChristian.net.   The gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest existing “life of Jesus,” and linguistic analysis suggests that Luke and Matthew both simply reworked Mark and added their own corrections and new material. But they contradict each other and, to an even greater degree contradict the much later gospel of John, because they were written with different objectives for different audiences.

5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.  They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, nonviolent pacifist to borrow from a much longer list assembled by Price . In his words (pp. 15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage.  But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.” 

Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’ longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions.

 Given the defects in the Jesus story line, it is frightening that the Republican Party has allowed itself to be hijacked by those who continue to claim the Bible is inerrant and literally "the word of God."  The GOP might just as well allow itself to be ruled by nursery rhymes. 

Who Was Jesus - Did He Exist

As we now head into the Christmas season holidays, an article in The Daily Beast looks at the question of who was Jesus.  Not in the sense of the Jesus of the Gospels, but in terms of did he exist and, if he did, who was he.  Past posts on this blog have looked at the fact that much of the Jesus storyline of death and resurrection was not new in the 1st Century.  The Egyptian cult of Isis - which had spread across the Roman Empire had a similar theme with the death and resurrection of Osiris.  And the cult of the Persian god Mithra likewise had parallels.  With so much energy put into Christianity for good and for bad (today's conservative Christians exemplify the bad), it is worth pondering who was Jesus.  Here are article excerpts:

Who was Jesus anyway? After twenty centuries, there is not much anyone can agree on. The four canonical gospels don’t measure up to modern standards of biographical writing, and—outside of this material—there is precious little contemporary evidence, apart from a few glancing mentions of Jesus or the movement centered on him. In truth, Jesus did not, in his own time, attract much notice.

This presents biographers with a problem. What can you base his reality on, unless you take it on faith?

The work of recent Christian scholars comes in every size and shape, with few common assumptions. Jesus may variously be regarded as a wandering magician or a Mediterranean peasant, a radical revolutionary (a Zealot) or a mystic or a radical Jew or, indeed, the long-awaited Messiah. Arguments can be mustered from the evidence to support all kinds of theories about his identity and true nature.

Plenty of fairly literal-minded Christians believe simply in the gospel truth. But even among these groups, there are severe differences. Some fundamentalist groups see him as a kind of avenging angel, ready to hurl into the flames of hell those who refuse to “believe.” Countless milder versions of this Jesus exist, including the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Son of Man who, like that shining figure in the Hebrew Book of Daniel, stands before God in our place. As ever, it depends on which verses in the Bible you happen to quote, building a theology on those select references, ignoring any verses that contradict your vision.

One of the great theologians of the twentieth century, Rudolf Bultmann, famously said in 1935: “I do indeed think that we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus.” He understood that the gospels were hardly straightforward biographical accounts but quasi-mythical tales that reflected views of Jesus put forward by various Christian communities in the decades after his death.

[A] lot has changed since Bultmann made that dire pronouncement. A lot of archaeological work has been done in the Middle East, and we have much clearer ideas about what ancient Palestine looked liked. . . . . And yet, we still can’t say that much about Jesus, as a man.

In writing about Jesus, as in my new biography I like to use the word mythos, the Greek word for a story with symbolic contours. This story has both literal heft and poetic levels of association.

So who is Jesus? For me, he’s the central character in the greatest story ever told. It’s a story about a gradually realizing kingdom that lies inside of us. He encouraged us to enter the wider mind of God through attachment to his teaching and example, but he left only one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s quite simple, this message, but it’s enough.

In the end, there is no proof that Jesus really existed.  As for this single commandment, the commandment is seemingly unknown to today's far right Christians and "family values" organizations that claim to be "Christian." Fear, the embrace of ignorance and hatred of others are the pillars of their belief system.  If Jesus did exist, I suspected he'd be sicked by the behavior of his most vocal followers. 

Another Indictment of America's Faux Exceptionalism

Many, especially on the far right and among Christofascist/Tea Party circles, like to bloviate about American exceptionalism.  American exceptionalism is, of course, a myth used by the ignorant and xenophobic to make themselves feel good about themselves and superior to others much as the Christofascists focus on condemning others rather than face the reality of their own hypocrisy filled, miserable lives.   But, as this blog has looked previously, there is one area in which America is exceptional, but in a very negative and unflattering way:  we have the shortest life expectancy of any developed nation and we have the least efficient health care system as well despite spending more on health care than any other nation.  The irony is that the policies that lead to this horrible distinction are those championed by those who most wrap themselves in patriotism and feign worship of Christianity.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this ignominious distinct held by America and offers an indictment of the nation's failing health care system and those responsible for the true "culture of death."  Here are excerpts:

January has turned out to be a banner month for fans of American exceptionalism. As documented in voluminous detail in a 404-page report released last week by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, Americans lead shorter lives than Western Europeans, Australians, Japanese and Canadians. Of the 17 countries measured, the United States placed dead last in life expectancy, even though we lead the planet in the amount we spend on health care (17.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 vs. 11.6 percent each for France and Germany). We get radically less bang for the buck than comparable nations. If that’s not exceptionalism, I don’t know what is.

Americans die young. The death rate for Americans younger than 50, the report showed, is almost off the comparative charts. A range of exceptionally American factors — car usage and lack of exercise, junk-food diets, violent deaths from guns, high numbers of uninsured and a concomitant lack of treatment, the high rate of poverty — all contribute to this grim distinction.  

The study enumerates other key, if unsurprising, factors in our shortness of life. “Americans are more likely to find their health care inaccessible or unaffordable,” it concludes. “Americans benefit less from safety net programs that can buffer the negative health effects of poverty and other social disadvantages.”

But a funny thing happens to Americans’ life expectancy when they age. The U.S. mortality rate is the highest of the 17 nations until Americans hit 50 and the second-highest until they hit 70. Then our mortality ranking precipitously shifts: By the time American seniors hit 80, they have some of the longest life expectancies in the world.

What gives? .  .  .  .   the larger part of the answer is that at age 65, Americans enter a health-care system that ceases to be exceptional when compared with the systems in the other 16 nations studied. They leave behind the private provision of medical coverage, forsake the genius of the market and avail themselves of universal medical insurance. For the first time, they are beneficiaries of the same kind of social policy that their counterparts in other lands enjoy. And presto, change-o: Their life expectancy catches up with and eventually surpasses those of the French, Germans, Britons and Canadians.

The big question raised by the data in this study is how Americans have allowed themselves to sink to the bottom of so many indexes that measure the quality and duration of our lives. What’s truly exceptional about America, it turns out, is the indifference we show to our compatriots, the absence of the kind of national solidarity more evident in the nations that surpass us on all these lists. Mitt Romney may have lost the election — thankfully — but his relegation of 47 percent of his fellow Americans to history’s scrap heap evinces a spirit that suffuses all too many of our institutional arrangements and social relations. 

Yes, it is damning and all too accurate.  Even more damning is that the policies that are the root cause of this disgrace track directly back to the GOP and its supposedly :godly Christian" base.  They are indeed modern day Pharisees.  They most certainly are not true followers of the Gospel message.

Deconstructing Thanksgiving Myths

Here in Virginia we are very conscious of the hijacking of the Thanksgiving tradition by the Pilgrims in New England.  Yet the myth that the tradition began in New England continues to this day as school children color pictures of puritan garbed colonists instead of the attire common in colonial Virginia.  Andrew Sullivan posted about this myth making.  I particularly like the last portion that gets down to the real founding principals of the Massachusetts colony which remain alive and well in today's Christian Right:

Akim Reinhardt debunks some of the tales behind our "modern, secular, national creation story": One example:

Any meal the Puritans might have shared with the Wampanoags was not the first
American Thanksgiving. Based on European harvest-home feasts, not Indian rituals, earlier examples include: 1578, Martin Forshiber’s Thanksgiving feast after his third Atlantic crossing to Canada;1598, Don Juan de Onate’s Thanksgiving feast on the banks of the Rio Grande after crossing the Mexican desert and before beginning his terroristic campaign to subdue the Pueblos;1606, Samuel de Champlain’s harvest feast in Quebec; 1619, Thanksgiving feast at Berkeley Plantation on the Chesapeake, with the Virginia Company decreeing that day (December 4) an annual holiday.

But, like any creation myth, the narrative serves a purpose:

Through it, [Americans] tell themselves that the United States was founded upon liberty and friendship. The Puritans were seeking freedom. The Indians welcomed and helped them. Things might have gotten very messy later on, but it all began with the best of intentions on both sides. ... After all, that’s a lot more comforting than telling yourself it began in a firmament of religious zealotry, colonialism, slavery, and genocide.

Truth be told, America has a very brutal and rapacious history - and it all conveniently gets white washed away far too often.  The godly folk don't like to be reminded of things like this:

"In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them."

"It may be demanded...Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But...sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents.... We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."

-Puritan divine Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana

The Opiate of American Exceptionalism

I have often complained about the myth of American exceptionalism that plays so well with the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party.  What better way to avoid facing reality than to (i) cling to a myth that America outshines every other nation on earth and (ii) refuse to accept objective reality that shows that America has many, many problems and that in numerous categories, America ranks far down the list compared to other nations which the Kool-Aid drinking loons of the GOP love to deride.  Frankly, it's part and parcel with the alternate universe the far right inhabits where facts, science and the truth are ignored and/or denied as much as possible.  It also fits perfectly with the Christianist myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation." A piece in the Sunday Review provides some stark data that underscores the lie of the cult of American exceptionalism.  It's not a pretty picture, but it is based on objective reality.  Here are some excerpts:

What might this mythical candidate talk about on the stump? He might vow to turn around the dismal statistics on child poverty, declaring it an outrage that of the 35 most economically advanced countries, the United States ranks 34th, edging out only Romania. He might take on educational achievement, noting that this country comes in only 28th in the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool, and at the other end of the scale, 14th in the percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a higher education. He might hammer on infant mortality, where the United States ranks worse than 48 other countries and territories, or point out that, contrary to fervent popular belief, the United States trails most of Europe, Australia and Canada in social mobility. 

The candidate might try to stir up his audience by flipping a familiar campaign trope: America is indeed No. 1, he might declare — in locking its citizens up, with an incarceration rate far higher than that of the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China; in obesity, easily outweighing second-place Mexico and with nearly 10 times the rate of Japan; in energy use per person, with double the consumption of prosperous Germany.

Americans demand constant reassurance that their country, their achievements and their values are extraordinary.  .  .  .  .  .  But during a presidential campaign, it can be deeply dysfunctional, ensuring that many major issues are barely discussed. Problems that cannot be candidly described and vigorously debated are unlikely to be addressed seriously. In a country where citizens think of themselves as practical problem-solvers and realists, this aversion to bad news is a surprising feature of the democratic process.

American exceptionalism has recently been championed by conservatives, who accuse President Obama of paying the notion insufficient respect. But the self-censorship it produces in politicians is bipartisan  .  .  .   Both parties would rather avert their eyes from such difficult challenges — because we, the people, would rather avert our eyes.

“European politicians exercise much greater freedom to address bluntly the uglier social problems,” says Deborah Lea Madsen, professor of American studies at the University of Geneva. An American politician who speaks too candidly about the country’s faults, she went on to say, risks being labeled with that most devastating of epithets: un-American. 

Of course, the reason talking directly about serious American problems is risky is that most voters don’t like it. Mark Rice, who teaches American studies at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., said students often arrived at his classes steeped in the notion that the United States excelled at everything. .  .  .  .  “Sure, we’re No. 1 in gross domestic product and military expenditures,” Mr. Rice says. “But on a lot of measures of quality of life, the U.S. ranking is far lower. I try to be as accurate as I can and I avoid editorializing. I try to complicate their thinking.” 

Sometimes the most patriotic thing one can do is to speak the truth and expose lies and inconvenient realities.  Sadly, most in the GOP prefer to remain cheer leaders supporting a myth rather than face problems and formulate a solution.  Currently, Mitt Romney is telling every audience he faces what he thinks they want to hear.  That may be popular with the ignorant and uninformed, but it does nothing to fix the nation's problems.  Indeed, one could argue that it is ultimately the cheer leaders who are the most "un-American" because they are leading the nation to more misfortune and a declining position in the world long term.