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Alrighty then - here it goes. 
17th-Dec-2006 09:30 am
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I know that there are a large number of Christian people who read this blog and consider me a friend, either in real time or here on EmoLiveJournal. It's no secret that I am not a fan of religion, Christianity's Catholic faction in particular, and I have a lifetime of reasons for it. I've had issues in the past with people who felt a need to convert me to their way of thinking in order to even accept me in conversation, and these sorts of people fail to understand that such things are not going to fly. Not just the door-to-door proselytizers, I always invite them in and offer something to drink and a snack if I have one and then have a conversation about religion and state my oppositions clearly and concisely in a nonthreatning and respectful manner. I have the luxury of knowing people on LJ and in my personal life who are devoutly religious and although I couldn't be any further from that thinking, I'm still appreciated and loved and respected as a human and as a friend because we're NOT the labels we wear, we're NOT the designs for living we choose, and there are many variables in life. This isn't a totalitarian state (not yet, anyway) wherein faith rules the land and dictates your thoughts and such, there is nothing tantamount to Sharia law here in the US - though the fundamentalist factions of Christianity would have us there if they stood any opportunity to bring it into fruition.

I find hypocrisy staggering and the refusal to question unacceptable, which is why I am the lone atheist in a family of devout believers. We never see eye to eye, because no matter how much I accept them as individuals in spite of our differences I'm always looked down upon because there's a truth I don't find that meets with their worldview - something I am denying just to spite them, their delicate sensibilities cannot handle anything but carbon copies of themselves. Religious superiority. I suppose it is only fair to be forthright in stating that I believe as an atheist that I am truly more evolved than they are, if only because I have no need or desire to tear their belief systems down in order to accept them. I can embrace them wholly as individuals without requiring them to be of a similar mindset to my own and not have to hold them at arms length based on such things. It's just my lot in life and I accepted it long ago so this is no big deal to me. Sooner or later I get "You need to get right with God" or "You're just rebelling against God because of X reason or Y reason, you'll see the truth one of these days". I think my father and oldest brother (practicing Catholic) are the only two that are evolved enough to find respect in my 10+ years of independent theological study and have a healthy measure of respect for WHY I believe as I do. They disagree with me wholly in the broadest senses of religion and its benefits versus its costs to humanity, but at least they come to hear me out when I point out inaccuracies and contradictions as part of the basis for my lack of faith, and the invariable failure of the concepts of religion and God to meet my standards of logic and reason. It all falls apart like a virus under ultraviolet light, something so seemingly perfect and methodical and complex just torn into pieces when you shine a certain light on it. I can only get so far in conversations with them, because once the wheels start to turn and actual ponderance and consideration for finding even a modicum of truth or logic/reason in what I have to say enters into it, they begin to question and that is when the walls come slamming down. Challenges of faith are difficult to reconcile, I suppose because for the religious mind it creates guilt and some kind of interpreted betrayal against God. I don't pretend to understand that, but I can at least see how powerful it is in one's heart and mind.

So here I've found a good bit of backstory to support why I think Christianity is such an unhealthy thing in my view - histrionically speaking, that is. Read and keep an open mind. I issue no challenges to anyone's faith, just presenting the things I don't believe many people consider about the history of certain branches of religious faith.
VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

(Originally posted at Fuck the Lord!)



A religion of peace my ASS.
How many people have been killed by Christians since Biblical times?

by Kelsos
“WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD’S DIVINE GLORY”

Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete)

Ancient Pagans
* As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
* Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
* Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
* Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as “temple destroyer.” [DA468]
* Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
* Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he “followed meticulously all Christian teachings…”
* In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
* In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
* The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
[DO19-25]

Mission
* Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
* Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
* Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
* 15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
* 16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops “pacified and civilized” Ireland, where only Gaelic “wild Irish”, “unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing.” One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that “the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies… and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie”, which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused “greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde”.
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]

Crusades (1095-1291)
* First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
* Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
* 9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
* Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
* after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians “did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy’s] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies,” according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
* Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine “the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians” said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
* Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: “there [in front of Solomon’s temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes”, and after that “happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour’s tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude”)
* The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: “It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished.” [TG79]
* Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that “even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition”. One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
* Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered “in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ”. [WW45]
* Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
* Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224]
Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.
Heretics
* Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
* Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
* Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
* Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
* subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
* After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
* Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
* Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
* Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
* John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
* University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
* Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.

Witches
* from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
* in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
* incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times

Religious Wars
* 15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
* 1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
* 1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
* 1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
* 17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, “cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals… and then dumped him into the river […but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [… and] dragged what was left … to the gallows of Montfaulcon, ‘to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows’.” [SH191]
* 17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. “In a single church fifty women were found beheaded,” reported poet Friedrich Schiller, “and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers.” [SH191]
* 17th century 30 years’ war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]

Jews
* Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
* In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
* 17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
* The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities’ Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
* First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
* Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
* Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
* Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
* 1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
* 1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
* 1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
* 1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
* 1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
* 1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
* 1391 Seville’s Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored “badges of shame” that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
* 1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
* 1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]

(I feel sick …) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz.

Native Peoples
* Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
* Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, “ought to be good servants … [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion.” [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as “idolators” and “slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order,” his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as “beasts” because “they eat when they are hungry,” and made love “openly whenever they feel like it.” [SH204-205]
* On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, “making the declarations that are required” - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And “nobody objected.” If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:

I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you … and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church … and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him.” [SH66]

* Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: “justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England … to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, … and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ.” [SH235]
* In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of “the marvelous goodness and providence of God” to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as “for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess.” [SH109,238]
* On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204]
* The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and spanish raids.
* As one of the culprits wrote: “So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous.” [SH69]
* The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As “they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell.” [SH70]
* What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
“The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties … They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles… then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive.” [SH72]
Or, on another occasion:
“The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts…Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs.” [SH83]
* The “island’s population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus’s arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out.” Eventually all the island’s natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were “forced” to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus “the Caribbean’s millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century”. [SH72-73] “In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated.” [SH75]
* “And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitln [Mexico city] was next.” [SH75]
* Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
* “When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead.” [SH95]

Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of Amerikkka.

* Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the pilgrim fathers: “Their Warres are farre less bloudy…”, so that there usually was “no great slawter of nether side”. Indeed, “they might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men.” What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]
* In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the (generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown - “being idell … did runne away unto the Indyans,” - to live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).
“Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed: ‘Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe’.” [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow englishmen: “This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia” methods were different: “when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community” down. [SH105]
* On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the “Peqout War”. The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from persecution in their own home country England.
* When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief’s pledge they attacked. Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after, because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and burned their villages.
The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote: “And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished … God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven … Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies”: men, women, children. [SH113-114]
* So “the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance”. [SH111].
* Because of his readers’ assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:
“Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them…” (Deut 20)
* Mason’s comrade Underhill recalled how “great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers” yet reassured his readers that “sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents”. [SH114]
* Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists’ own words: “blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them.” (This was inspired by spanish methods of the time)
In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was near. [SH107-119]
* The surviving handful of Indians “were parceled out to live in servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for ‘a share’ of the captives, specifically ‘a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good’.” [SH115]
* Other tribes were to follow the same path.
* Comment the Christian exterminators: “God’s Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his Beauty!”
“Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!” [TA]
* Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. “Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians ‘grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie’, advised the Council of State in Virginia, ‘we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cutt downe theire Corne’.” [SH106]
* In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
* In a single massacre in “King Philip’s War” of 1675 and 1676 some “600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a ‘barbeque’.” [SH115]
* To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118] These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred. And the carnage was not over then.
* All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun.
* A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.
* In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even today.

More Glorious events in US history

* Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England’s most esteemed religious leaders, in “1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs ‘to hunt Indians as they do bears’.” [SH241]
* Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church (”I long to be wading in gore”) had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs’ waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.
From an eye-witness account: “There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed …” [SH131]
More gory details.
* By the 1860s, “in Hawai’i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands’ native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to ‘the amputation of diseased members of the body’.” [SH244]

20th Century Church Atrocities

Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi “Sicherheitsdient der SS”, watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]

Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican’s spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam “Soldiers of Christ”, a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism. The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read: “Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp.”

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in “detention camps.” Out of protest dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI’s lost their life.

Christianity kills the cat
On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of Wrzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel’s grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Wrzburg was notorious for it’s extensive witch burnings). This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]

Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:
o “Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda’s capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.

According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive…” [S2]
* As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages never come to an end.

If today Christians talk to me about morality, this is why they make me sick.

credit:

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
Comments 
17th-Dec-2006 02:49 pm (UTC)
thank you so much for posting this.
17th-Dec-2006 03:00 pm (UTC)
I had to collect myself before writing a comment because it's just so painful to read that people are killed for just what they believed in. Yes, I know it happens and I know people are sometimes killed for less. This just makes know my choice to leave the Christian path.

It's funny so many of them talk of being a 'good christian' and still do things that I think no loving God would want. Thank you for posting this.

17th-Dec-2006 03:24 pm (UTC)
Good post, Jude. I find Christianity frightening and incomprehensible. I also consider mono-focussed religious instruction for children to be brainwashing. I don't see why it gets a 'pass' when all its kindred establishments are supposed to be 'evil'.
17th-Dec-2006 05:34 pm (UTC)
thank you. being part taino/arawak myself, i can't tell you how strongly this information about the Caribbean natives is suppressed in the islands. you only hear of it by word of mouth, and are considered crazy or a conspiracy theorist/fanatic for voicing it. these atrocities were in no small part why i renounced and denounced my catholic upbringing. i am not an atheist, but i want no part in any of the abrahamic religions, or any out of the so-called fertile crescent, including islam.
17th-Dec-2006 05:53 pm (UTC)
i'm reprinting the article in my journal, btw, i hope you don't mind.
17th-Dec-2006 05:34 pm (UTC)
i will come back and finish this when im feeling stronger. once id read to the bottom of the section on jews i had no stomach to read more just yet. i agree with you , and its the main reason why im not a christian. i cant reconcile their need to crush under foot any opposing beliefs, and their purported peaceful-lovingness, when this shit is in their history.
i had no idea this was all so extensive tho, thank you for enlightening me, as usual.
17th-Dec-2006 08:32 pm (UTC) - Forgot my DJ handle or password, but thought I'd contribute...
Anonymous
I've never been good at giving exact quotes or location of said quotes, but I can at least do a decent job of paraphrasing the heart of the issue (seems to be anyway).

When taking a look at the Christian bible, and it's 66 accepted books, there are many famous commands as set forth by God, the Father. Most famous of these are the 10 commandments. When it comes to the new testament, there are only 2 that Jesus gave to the world.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."

"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every living creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Let's take a glance at the first commandment. Love others as you love yourself. Obviously, from very far back, this commandment was HEARD, but not truly listened to. If it had been, would such atrocities have occurred that are clearly and directly related to directives given by leaders that proclaimed the Christ? This is where man has, once again, used religion to accomplish personal agenda and see to fruition whatever plans they masked under the guise of holiness. Perhaps, just maybe, the doers of these things didn't understand the LOVE that Jesus was purveying. Assuming a deity can truly look within all things that comprise a human and determine motive, Jesus means that we should love each other the best ways we know how to do so. Clearly, to me at least, these monsters who use religion to carry out plans for "God's Kingdom" could not have ever known the love that God would have for his children, much less the love His children OUGHT to have toward one another in emulation of the love God has for us. When we are directed to love one another, it is to do so with the best intentions as God would have the best intentions. But being the flawed pieces of shit we often are, somewhere VERY early the truth in these words was twisted and used as a tool of war rather than a pathway to cherishing each and every person we commune with on a daily basis.

Secondly, "Go ye into all the world..." This part is very easy to follow. Go out and PREACH the gospel. PREACH is a far cry from "accept it or die." Conversion to a new mindset cannot be forced, whether it is trying to change someone's mind about which restaurant serves the best steak or if it is to believe that there is a heaven that God built for his children, that the story of Jesus is a testament to his unending love for us, and that accepting that and loving God is the way to one day be truly happy forever. The imperative here is that a person must CHOOSE to do so. You cannot baptize the unwilling...you just end up drowning them or getting their brand new shoes soaking wet. Either way, you piss someone off. I am not interested in prostelytizing for the sake of doing so.

So were these people who went into all the world preaching or giving ultimatums? I think we can all answer that. We live by example. We testify to our personal lives in the way that we portray ourselves every day. And every day holds something new that could change how you see something, from the smallest and insignificant-to-anyone-but-you things all the way up to a life-altering experience. Who we are is evident in what we do, but people these days still try and talk about it rather than execute what they say. Words have become so meaningless and impotent that most "believers" could not talk their way out of a prison constructed of wet Kleenex. Backs against the wall, and with people not believing the bullshit you have to say because you don't live how you talk, and they know how you live, you fulfill that very expectation when your back is to the wall and react to the resistance with strong, deliberate, and cookie-cutter war tactics that find root in our survival instinct. Kill or be killed, survival of the fittest. The reason humans resort to killing in the name of religion is because the religion cannot survive without followers, and with no new followers it can't spread either. Tell others about God and His Son, not give the do-or-die ultimatum of which even baptist preachers passive-aggresively hand in their infamous hellfire and brimstone sermons. "The fear is what keeps us here," as one of my favorite bands Zao says about how life is today.

17th-Dec-2006 08:33 pm (UTC) - Finishing the above commentary (ran out of space!!)
Anonymous
As I alluded to before, the only way to eliminate the doubt/fear/resistance to belief is to realize that faith is internal. It cannot be SHARED with someone else. I cannot FEEL what you feel. You cannot feel what Billy Bob feels. Faith is a feeling. It is intangible. It grows from a personal relationship that is shared with your God. Until you have this, you cannot love your neighbor as you love yourself. Religion is a mockery of faith. It has all the trappings of God but denies the power and truth that lies within the fabric of faith, love, hope, and charity. Religion is the schism that exists between God and man. We are not little ants that need a queen to tell us what to do, nor are we born in a caste system where there is no hope of ascension from the misery we experience in our daily lives. If there's any way to get to heaven, it's by accepting the fundamental truths of what happened and what IS happening every day in that relationship, not by accepting that the church is your boss and that without it the world will fail.

My goal is not to advocate a churchless anarchy; rather, I advocate a church where LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF is the core principal. There need only be this principal. The rest of the commandments, ALL of them, would not be necessary if we would just love and accept that we are as we are, and that we're all DIFFERENT because that's the way, according to the Bible that all these factions stand so firmly on, God created us. Without differences, there would be no reason to love another as yourself, because the other would be exactly like yourself and you would love yourself and them, making the principal a STUPID ASS AXIOM. Anyone with any kind of mind would realize this, especially a deity.

As I said before, I advocate LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. I am working on loving myself more as the days progress so that I may better love others and show them that that is how love works, rather than TELL them how love is. In a perfect world, we could all reach self-actualization by the time we have a reasoning mind and a conscience (which I might add would be hardwired in the womb, not from upbringing). This, I believe, is the heart of the problem for the Church: they are trying to use Religion and War as tools to create this Utopia, but it will never be reached because that requires intense structuring, structuring that requires everyone doing exactly what someone else wants them to do, and think a certain way, and believe a certain thing exactly as someone else says it should be believed.

Long story short, this is why I ultimately say a big "fuck you" to Religion. And a big "FUCK YOU" to the people in the church who perpetuate that establishment of hatemongering, xenophobia, homophobia, and any other kind of phobia you can apply. I don't need any of you to affirm to me what I believe, because no one can affirm to ANYONE what should be believed. Just LOVE each other.

--NOT ANONYMOUS--
Jeff
17th-Dec-2006 11:01 pm (UTC)
It always saddens me to hear stuff like this. The apostle Paul once wrote a scathing indictment to some of his fellows: "It is because of YOU that my name is blasphemed among the nations!" - basically that God's good reputation is being blackened by those who are supposed to be doing PR for him, rather than against him.

I'm a Christian, and many of my best friends are Jews, Wiccans, and atheists. I know how hard it is to try to figure out truth in this world without someone trying to spin you into buying their particular brand of propaganda.

To be fair, though, just because someone calls himself a Christian doesn't mean he really is one. To quote an oft-heard meme, a lot of the culprits "would make Jesus vomit". And many of the world's worst atrocities have been committed in the name of atheism - Torquemada killed his thousands, while Hitler and Stalin killed their millions, not to mention Mao, Pol Pot, etc. (Hitler paid religious lip service with his "Gott Mit Uns" slogan, but was an occultist and no Christian).

Such atrocities don't happen because Christianity is corrupt, but rather because humans are corrupt, and the fact that some of them are Christians and others are atheists or other things is largely beside the point - corrupt is as corrupt does.
18th-Dec-2006 03:19 am (UTC)
There is, however, one CRITICAL distinction the argument of "currupt is as corrupt does" fails to take into consideration. NO ONE has killed, tortured, etc in the NAME of atheism. Sure, Hitler et all may have fallen into that camp, but they did *not* state, "I am going to kill you becuase *no* God has told me to so." They did so for other reason (purity of the race, nationalism, power, etc). Whereas on the other hand, many religious people have used *god* as their justification for destruction.
18th-Dec-2006 04:16 am (UTC)
The point is that people are people. Whether they are committing their atrocities in the name of religion or an ideology is immaterial. It is one person (or group) inflicting or forcing their views on another using their own rationalizations. As Lovemefearme said above, “It's funny so many of them talk of being a 'good christian' and still do things that I think no loving God would want.” Now, that statement was made in support of atheism, but I, as a Christian, would have to agree. My understanding is that it is supposed to be a free choice not at the point of a gun or otherwise coerced. That humans twisted it to serve their own goals for money and power should come as no shock. People who proclaimed to be Christians (leaders or otherwise) have used force to increase their power, and people of other ideologies have used force to increase their power. And if one is taking the stand that there is no God, then God could not have told them to do anything evil. Therefore we are back to the point of people are people, and they will use whatever rationalizations that they need to in order to increase their power.
18th-Dec-2006 09:16 am (UTC)
If you say "Religion is the enemy of the State. You are religious. Therefore you are an enemy of the State and must be killed", you are effectively killing in the name of atheism, whether you use those exact words or not.

Killing people merely because they believe in any kind of religion makes as much logical and moral sense as slaughtering people for believing in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy, or even Xenu.
18th-Dec-2006 05:02 am (UTC) - Bloody history of man
I'm just glad none of this happened while Jesus was alive, or he'd have been pissed as shit.

What this proves to me is that yeah, people suck for the most part, especially when they receive a modicum of power, and, yes, Jesus was tossing pearls to swine when teaching about love and forgiveness. And yeah, Jesus is an ideal that some of us decide to take up, no matter how shitty the rest of the Christians in the world have been and are, no matter how increasingly difficult it is to love and forgive and treat people by the golden rule. Especially in traffic.

This does not make me question the teachings of the Jesus; it makes me lose faith in man. But, being human, I have to forgive them/us for being fallible and weak and prone to the vices that plague humanity: greed, vengeance, pride, fear, hatred, etc.

Jesus, like any spiritual teacher, represents our higher selves, what we can attain to be. It does not make us greater just because we wish to learn how to not be an insufferable cock-head all our lives, and choose to do it through the teachings of one Jesus -even though who the fuck knows where most of that stuff was even written and my whom, and what about the stuff that was NOT put into the book?. -It makes us seekers of becoming spiritually enlightened.

We have all met those types of people, those kinds with that special light inside them, that overflowing love and kindness and just - SOMETHING that shone from within. You can't expect an angry mob to represent Jesus. Pedophiles and murderers and rapists and thieves do not represent Jesus so much as they represent humanity. Oddly, they represent those who Jesus would try and understand, try and heal through love. But if they were doing all that in HIS name? Christ, I don't know what would happen. i think he would cry...

Jesus is my role model because he embraced the outcasts, the sick, poor, etc. and tried to heal their sick hearts, their sadness, their ailments, etc. Jesus is about love; I know the multitude that consider themselves Christian wear his name around their necks like a fucking badge that gets them into all the hottest places where they can squat and shit on the faces of those who are not in the "in" crowd. And one day, maybe it WILL get them in the hottest place. i don't really believe in any kind of traditional hell, however.

I don't know how things get so fouled up, but once it is in our hands, even a small request like "love thy neighbor" gets misconstrued and messed up. I don't know where some Christians get off thinking they are superior or how they can sleep at night doing the things they do in the name of Jesus. It does make religion pretty shameful, and a pretty disgusting idea, I agree. Christianity would be a beautiful thing if it weren't for the fucking Christians involved.

There have been people who have done some good in the name of Christ, in the name of God, in the name of Buddha, Shiva, etc. and even in the name of being an evolved human being. I think that is all Jesus was asking - be a better person by treating people well. How did this message get so fucking messed up? I refer to the vices once again: fear, greed, hatred, vengeance, etc.
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