FAITH AND RELIGION MANIPULATE
PEOPLE TO BECOME MARTYRS
Christianity says the seed of Christians is the blood of martyrs. Odd. Those who it says are in everlasting Hell are martyrs to their own version of faith. They have faith in themselves and what they think God should be but not faith in God himself. Sincerity is dangerous if Hell is real. It was reportedly because the Pharisees and scribes sincerely believed that Jesus did miracles by satanic power that he said they had an unforgiveable sin.
Fanaticism is usually a religious trait. Fanaticism in religion takes two
forms. The first oppresses the mind and tries to make you feel guilty for
disagreeing with the religious status quo. Christianity does this when it
forbids doubt (Question 177, A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, CTS, London)
which is the same as not allowing you to see clearly if the cult is true or not.
The second is when the religion has you doing, thinking and enduring something
harmful or hurtful that you wouldn’t be doing if you were a decent irreligious
person. For example, if it has you scared to eat meat on a Friday though you
have no other food in the house.
Political fanaticism is terrible but can be excused a little for it will have
some evidence for the stances it takes but there is no excuse at all for
religious fanaticism which has no evidence. And it never has any. A political
regime knows fine well that it has no right to kill citizens at whim even if it
kills. But with religion it could be argued that God authorises and needs those
killings for he kills anyway and is the master of life and death and if so he
has the right to tell you to kill. Religion is a licence for fanaticism.
Politics is not. Religious fanaticism cannot be refuted for you can never prove
that God didn't speak to a raving religious fanatic. Political fanaticism can
and always burns itself out. The evidence destroys it eventually. Religion is
worse for it is immune to evidence.
Tolerance is a big virtue these days. It is insulting for it implies putting up
with something undesirable. Religious tolerance means one religion merely
stomaching the others that disagree with it. There should be no religion as
there is enough around to test our tolerance without it adding to the problems.
People get some comfort from religion but have they considered how in the bigger
picture that this comfort is not worth it? Tolerance when practiced by a
believer in religion is itself a form of fanaticism.
The seed of fanaticism is faith. The Christian teaching is: “Faith is
trust in God and in his promises and in what he has revealed. It is the belief
that God is honest and reliable and leads to you believing all he allegedly
revealed. It is a supernatural gift from God for humanity is believed to prefer
to be independent from God. Humanity will only trust God and become dependant on
God if God helps them to do it, if God puts thoughts and realisations in their
minds and changes their emotions to make faith attractive. So it is not
natural.” Faith is a miracle.
Christianity wants and expects, like its God, all believers to believe in the
same stuff despite the problems of making this happen. So faith has to be caused
by the direct influence of God to make it possible. The teaching that we just
have to ask for faith and it is God's gift and he will give it is just a subtle
means of applying pressure and saying, "If you don't agree with us then you are
a bad egg."
Christian Faith involves believing all the dogma that the source God speaks
through states as true be it Church, prophet or Bible or any number of these.
That means that if you really have supernatural faith in some Catholic doctrines
and regard the Church as the source you will believe everything that source
says. That is why Catholics who might scoff at the virgin birth of Jesus are not
Catholics even if they believe everything else. They do not have the gift of
faith but imagine they have it. A person with real faith who refuses to believe
doctrines from the source of revelation and belief must be refusing to believe
God on purpose and is trying to stamp out the light of God so not only does she
know she is fighting God she is also giving up her trust in God. To deny or
question one principle taught by the source is say that the whole source is
unreliable. That is why the Church regards heresy or disagreeing with her
teaching as the worst and most dangerous sin.
Christian Faith cannot mean that God makes you see the evidence that verifies
the authenticity of the source of his doctrines for no two people agree on the
evidences and reasons. Furthermore, they differ on the interpretation of the
evidence and/or how helpful it is. For example, some accept some arguments for
God's existence and others accept none of them. So God helps you towards the
conclusion without any regard for the evidence. This really means that what you
feel God is saying to you is what matters not the evidence for the evidence is
not allowed to stand on its own for the whole process of getting to faith
requires prayer and openness to God’s guidance. So faith then is anti-evidence
though it pays lip-service to it. It is a superstition. It takes quite a lot of
arrogance to hold that what you want to be true is a communication from God and
therefore true and that those who disagree with you are wrong. With that belief
the more holier you seem to be the more black inside you would be because
fanaticism (the desire to hurt others over faith) and egotism would be behind
your holiness and it is not about God at all but only looks like it is.
The rock Christianity is built is on the doctrine of faith and it underlines how
that faith is all lies and wishful thinking so that is what the miracles it
boasts about are defending! It is feelings about doctrines that mean everything
to Christians not the doctrines and they disguise this self-indulgence as
selfless love for all.
It is common for Christians to mistake belief for faith. In fact, correct
Christian doctrine sees faith as a form of knowledge. Sensible people know that
the more outrageous a claim is the stronger the evidence is you need for it. You
need absolute proof to accuse people of original sin, to accuse them of being
responsible for breaking the law of God, to accuse them of needing a saviour, to
accuse them of being able to commit serious sin, to say Jesus rose from the
dead, to say priests forgive sins. Every religious doctrine needs absolute proof
for the claims made are so huge and strange. And this proof must be understood
by the person entering a religion before the person can be validly accepted.
Christians can only say, "The more miraculous the doctrine the more miraculously
perfect evidence you need that it is true. We agree. We have this evidence.
We know in our hearts that we are right." That attitude is arrogant and
vicious and irresponsible. Fundamentalist religion will only go out to murder
and maim if it thinks it knows that it should.
Martyrdom is testifying that your faith is true by dying for it.
Christianity thrived – and still does - on the lie that the twelve apostles of
Jesus were killed for their testimony that Jesus did miracles and he managed to
rise from the dead.
Clement of Rome writing either before 70AD or in 96AD is misinterpreted as
saying Peter and Paul were martyrs in Rome but the word he used does not mean
blood martyrs but just witnesses. He never says how they died but that they were
pestered to death like Joseph of the Bible. But Joseph was not pestered to death
for he lived a happy life after the pestering. So the expression is very loose
and poetic and not literal. Clement doesn’t even say where they died. Like
Joseph, Peter and Paul were persecuted or martyred but ended their days in
peace.
The early Church father Hippolytus was one of the best earliest sources that
denied the martyrdom that Christians alleged visited most of the apostles. His
account may contain some legendary material but there is no doubt that the
sources that say that most of the apostles died natural deaths must be right for
Christians wouldn’t have wanted that to be true. And it is easier to remember
martyrdoms than the more boring natural deaths. Martyrdoms make more impact and
draw more interest in the martyr’s cause. So let us not hope Hippolytus was
mistaken. There were no martyrdoms – Hippolytus was telling the truth.
The alleged predictions of martyrdom from Jesus are ambiguous. They can be
understood as predicting something other than death by martyrdom . But the texts
may still have been enough to cause the legend through people misunderstanding -
the gospel of John speaks of a case where Jesus was misunderstood. Evangelicals
though claiming to support the Bible only, still believe the martyrdom stories
though they come from legendary material that is full of wildly over the top
stories which is dishonest. Their faith in the apostles’ testimony does not come
from the Bible but from outside it though the Bible claims to provide evidence.
They say they believe what the apostles said about the resurrection because they
died for their faith.
The apostle James was said to have been slain by Herod in Acts 12 but no
indication is given that James chose this death to avoid denying Christ. It may
have been an assassination so he can’t be a martyr. For a person to be a true
martyr he has to embrace death rather than denying his faith. He must have no
other sufficient reason to choose death than to testify to it with his blood. He
has to have this choice right up to when the sword is about to fall on his neck.
He must not be blackmailed by the fear of divine retribution. The killers must
not have made threats to him to hurt his family. It would be easy for somebody
who was happier dead to be “martyred”. He must be sane and not senile. We have
no evidence that the apostles fulfilled these conditions – and the accounts of
their deaths are legendary and full of stupendous and foolish miracles. No
evidence is given by anybody in the early Church that claims any of the apostles
was a true martyr in support of their contention. Accordingly, the apostles
being martyrs is only hearsay not evidence and to deploy it to get converts for
Christ is dishonest.
The apostles might have given their lives for political reasons for that was
basically the reason they were slain if they were slain. If they died for
religious freedom, to be able to declare the sectarian faith of their Jesus as
true, that hardly makes them proper martyrs! It does not amount to being the
same as testifying with their blood that Jesus rose.
To argue the apostles were telling the truth because they were martyred is to
try and trick people. It is obvious that they might have been fooled themselves
and we have no real evidence that they died for belief in a Jesus who physically
not spiritually rose from the dead. If they died for belief that Jesus rose
spiritually or then they are no good to the Christians. They would not be the
first to die for something without sufficient evidence so if they did think
Jesus rose physically we can wonder if or how they knew that.
Even if the apostles died for Christianity, we don’t have any hard evidence for
what kind of Christianity this was. The gospels only say the body was missing
and that Jesus was raised but they never actually state that the body was
resurrected for they don’t know. There was a connection between the risen and
the crucified body but it is not stated what it is. The crucified body might
just have provided the seed of the new body.
Apostles dying for visions would mean nothing for visions are easy to explain
and are commonplace. Jesus himself said that the resurrection would be the only
proof (Matthew 12:38-40) for even fakes could do real miracles (Mark 13:22) for
presumably only God could have power over life and death.
Jesus stated that the Old Testament scriptures come first for they are more
convincing than men coming back from the dead (Luke 16:31) so it is forbidden to
believe in his resurrection unless the scriptures testify to it. He said that
the resurrection must be believed in mostly because it was predicted in the Old
Testament (Luke 24:25-27; Luke 24:44-47). He indicated that we must not believe
in his resurrection unless we see that it is prophesied there. If the apostles
died for Jesus then they did not die for Jesus or for visions or empty tombs or
miracles but for what they said the Old Testament said. They died for an
interpretation of the Old Testament that nobody honest or sane accepts as
correct.
It is certain that the gospels say that Jesus after he rose lied to the apostles
that his rising on the third day was predicted (Luke 24:46) so why listen to
anybody who dies for a lying messiah?
Jesus' would have believed that as God is all-powerful, he alone has power to
raise the dead as only he has power over life and death. So Christians argue
that Jesus was from God for he rose. But they don't want to remember that Satan
could make it look like his man rose from the dead. The evidence for a
resurrection means nothing if Jesus' teaching was unimpressive or not unique or
if it advocated evil. The resurrection is supposed to be important for it
inspires us to love and gives our love eternal meaning. If Jesus and his
teaching isn't special then all the evidence for the resurrection in the world
means nothing. You can have a lot of evidence for something but then you could
have a big piece of evidence that this something is not true. If Jesus ever
sinned or taught wrong morals then this is big evidence against the
resurrection. And he did both!
The evangelical habit of writing books to show that the resurrection is
believable history is a tactic to scare and bully sceptics to believe. They want
them to think, "There is something to this Jesus lark. I'm done for if he is the
Son of God and my saviour so I had better turn to him." Jesus' own boast that
the resurrection would prove his claims - if the gospels are to be believed -
smacks of that vicious attitude. It is also intended to make their believers
cockier. Weak believers are no help to priests and popes and evangelists who
seek to use religion to enjoy power over lives.
The argument that the apostles told the truth about Jesus for people don’t die
for what they know is lies is untrue. People do die for what they know is wrong
– people who seem happy even commit suicide though they could get help like many
do by opening up to their doctor. They die for the belief they know is untrue:
that there is no hope.
The resurrection of Jesus is a legend and is not convincing enough to base a
religion that makes huge and outrageous claims and equally crazy demands on.
People who understand the Christian message about faith and how it is a form of revelation from God are different from those who will not die for lies. It just is not the same thing.
Faith kills. Religion lures martyrs to their deaths and blames those who bear the actual sword!