Alexander Hislop wants to Chant Down Babylon, and So Do I

The Two Babylons: or, the Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife – Alexander Hislop (1916)

            (Recently I came across a Reading List for a University lecture course taught by the great Sun Ra back in the day.  Fascinating stuff.  This is my review of the first book on the Sun Ra Reading List.  I hope to make it through them all this year. - RXTT)

            This one is heavy.  First, a little background.  I am the son of an Episcopal Priest.  Because of this, I grew up in church, and because of my curiosity, I was always reading the Bible, or any theology that came my way.  I wanted to know what in this collection of books (BIBLIA means a collection of separate books, hence our Bible) was the source for the seemingly infinite variety of denominations and sects that claimed to be following the teachings of Jesus the Christ.  In all my study as a youth, and in the decades since, I have never found any of what Jesus the Christ taught, preached, or espoused, to be complex.  His teachings are exceedingly basic, and applicable to all humans in all lands.  The many religions/sects/cults (they are all the same thing) that sprung up in Jesus’ wake, however, have conflated his teachings, and obscured the simple message behind walls of ritual, baroque language, and the seemingly impenetrable man-made creation of the priesthood.  The worst one seems to be the Roman Catholic Church.

            A quick history lesson: the times in which Jesus the Christ lived are estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,100 years ago.  No one can be sure. There is no record anywhere of the date of his birth, the date of his mitzvah (Jesus was a Jew, you know), or of the date of his death.  There are no Roman or old Israelite records showing Jesus specifically being tried and executed.  All we have are the words of Scripture, in which very little of Jesus’ life is actually discussed.  There is nothing in the Bible between his birth and the time he came of age, and very little between that and his rise as a prophet and leader of men.  You can find Bibles that mark all of the words claimed to be spoken by Jesus the Christ in red letters, and let me tell you, it is barely two pages of text collectively.  That is, two pages of text, out of a collection of books running thousands of pages long.

            The initial Christians, in the three to four-hundred years after his passing, maintained for the most part the teachings he gave.  People today talk constantly about Jesus’ calls to be humble, to turn the other cheek to your enemy, to not use violence, for violence is an evil method.  These are all great teachings and deeply valuable, as evident in the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent protest, and in India’s Revolt from the yoke of the British Empire, with Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent protest tactics.  They were also central to the early Christians.  However, if you actually read the Gospels instead of accepting your local cult leader’s (priest’s) interpretation, you will see that Jesus preached against many things which, today, are not so commonly discussed.  Jesus preached against all organized religion of any type, and the idea that any intermediary can or should come between a human and his divinity (God).  He saw first-hand the corruption Rabbinical “leaders” caused in his Jewish faith.  He saw how those people get assigned power over the rest of us, power which only leads to evil and ill.  Jesus also preached heavily for the personal dissolution of the family.  He states many times that a good person values god more than their family.  Jesus lived in a time where one’s family dictated everything about your life.  If you were born to a rich landowner, you were to be a rich landowner.  If you were born to a destitute family, you deserved it and you were going to stay destitute.  The modern ideal of a human being making something out of themselves, regardless of their familial status or where they come from, is a very recent phenomenon, and for most of human history this has not been the case.

            Jesus also preached separation from the concerns of the state.  He witnessed the corruption inherent when a powerful religion (concerned primarily with men’s souls) comingled and eventually entrenched themselves into local (Roman) politics.  What is the old saying?  “Power tends to corrupt.  Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”  Jesus preached against the old codes in the Bible, stating that, as he had come to redeem the world of all sin, past and present, the old Abrahamaic and Mosaic laws of the Hebrews were null and void, and there was but one way to salvation, faith in the teachings of Jesus.  This may have been his greatest act of rebellion, and is most definitely the teaching that caused him to be executed by religions leaders using the Roman courts as their proxy.  (Many claim that Jesus was put to death for preaching to non-Jews.  In fact, many of the apostles were against Jesus teaching his lessons to non-Jews.  Jesus did not see the difference, for we are all human, and his teachings applied to all.  He began preaching to “gentiles,” the non-Jews such as Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, etc. who happened to live in or near Israel.  It is easy to see how this would piss off some rich bastard priesthood/rabbis whose sole claim to power was being able to guide Hebrews to God.)

            In other words, Jesus’ teachings amounted to a direct and absolute threat to all established powers in his world.  “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” as Jesus stated so famously when asked about money and taxes.  Jesus did not care about money.  The early Christians followed his teachings, abstaining from blind obedience to families, the state or any organized religion, and not seeking to hoard riches or wealth.  They met in un-decorated rooms, and humbly prayed, quietly, as Jesus taught.  It only took three to four hundred years for these good teachings to be overrun by an organization seeking to regain their power, both religious and political, and for them to claim to be the sole and only source for true salvation.  That group of evil bastards is, according to Mr. Hislop, what is currently known as the Roman Catholic Church, home of endless nun-rapes, pedophiles, bastard children, and the most exquisite blasphemies and idolatries ever, all the while telling the millions of Christians worldwide that they are the sinners, that they are born evil, and that only through the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and their priests can humans hope to achieve redemption.

            It is this organization, at one point so powerful that the Pope actually ruled an entire empire (Papal States - edit, thanks to !@#$#%$), that Alexander Hislop has put squarely in his sights.  His disdain for the evils of the RCC is so great that he spent a great part of his life in research, reading, learning, and understanding exactly how the RCC has managed to enslave much of the world in a deeply Pagan and un-Christian religion.  Hislop goes into extravagant detail about pretty much every single aspect of what we call today Roman Catholicism, and how it is all just a subversion of Christian tropes in service of a more ancient pagan belief, the worship of the god/godman called Baal, Cyrus, or Nimrod.  This individual, Hislop claims, was the son of Noah, the first creator of a large walled city after the Biblical Flood (Babylon), who, after his death in a violent manner, was deified as having been resurrected as the God of all Men.  His wife, Semiramis, gave birth to a son, Tammuz, in a virgin birth.  The Babylonian religion coalesced these two entities, the father and the son, as being the same person, essentially having Nimrod father himself and be reborn as Tammuz.  They also ended up worshiping Semiramis as a goddess who had a miraculous “Virgin” birth.  She became so very powerful as a goddess object of worship that Tammuz was infantilized, and both of them were portrayed just as Mary and Jesus are now portrayed, a virgin mother saint holding her sainted son, reborn of the Father.

            When the Roman Emperors’ began to attempt to control Christianity, they essentially couched the old paganism in Christian symbolism, turning the ancient festival of Saturnalia (celebrating the Virgin birth of Tammuz/Mithra) into Christmas, turning the spring festivals to Ishtar (a goddess Hislop shows to be just an inversion of the worship of Semiramis) into the High festival of Easter, supposedly commemorating Jesus’ reincarnation after his crucifixion, but celebrated with Pagan symbols such as eggs, rabbits, and other ancient stand-ins for fertility.  They declared formally that they were the only true Christian religion, that no others are valid, and that redemption and salvation do not come from faith in Jesus the Christ and following his teachings, but in endless cycles of pagan bullshit such as flagellation, contrition, the paying of tithes, suffering for suffering’s sake, and the constant reminder of the horrors that the human body of Jesus endured by the fetish of the Roman execution device of the cross.  This is essentially religious horror-porn.  Christ never mentioned any of these things as divine and in fact, actually denounced most of them.

            One of the biggest areas that Hislop explores is the method by which the Roman Catholic Church has ingrained the cardinal sin of idolatry into its very essence.  The very first of the Mosaic Commandments states thus, “I am the Lord, thy God.  Thou shall have no other gods before me.  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”  Jesus, in his Gospels, states that this Commandment takes precedence above all others.  However, this is exactly the opposite of what the Roman Catholic Babylon Church has forced upon the devout.  Their houses of worship are covered in idols, images, and statues that are MEANT to be prayed to.  Instead of praying quietly to god, as commanded by Jesus, Roman Catholics are expected to supplicate to dead saints (many of them converted Pagan gods or ideas), and Mary and the priests to plead to God on their behalf.  Nowhere is Jesus mentioned.  The pagan worship of a Virgin Mother has so corrupted the Roman Catholic Church that even the Popes exclaim that Mary is the redeemer, the one who makes Jesus save us.  That is deep blasphemy.

            I have not even scratched the surface of what Hislop exposes.  In the Gospels, Jesus states that we are all to confess our sins to each other, including religious leaders.  This keeps everyone humble, and human, and understanding of our failings, and better able to accept the faults of others (a very Christian thing to do), but the Roman Catholic Church does not follow Jesus’ teachings on this.  They demand that all subjects confess their sins to a Priest, who remains anonymous, and then the priest will give them some rote bullshit to do to be “absolved,” such as reciting countless prayers to Mary (more blasphemy). Never, ever, do the Priests confess their sins to the people in their care.  In fact, when the people come out and inform authorities that many of the Roman Catholic priests/monks/nuns are pedophiles, rapists, abusers, inveterate drunks, gamblers, and all-around professional sinners, there is never any accountability!   Rapist pedophile priests are slightly chastised and sent to a different parish, where their evil can continue unabated.  Recently a comprehensive list of priests accused of credible sexual rape and abuse, has been published.  It runs over THREE THOUSAND NAMES LONG.  None of these assholes will be jailed.  None will even be prosecuted in court.  The Roman Catholic Church treats their priest’s crimes as “sins” to be dealt with internally, regardless of the horror and trauma they cause to countless generations of people.  This has been the case for hundreds of years.  If anyone does come to trial, it is always some ancient old priest who raped kids for decades, but now looks so feeble and old that people feel pity for the rapist!

            Religion is, to me, the last great superstition left in humanity.  It is the single largest source of pain, suffering, and outright evil in the world.  The biggest crimes against humanity have been done in the name of religion, or attempting to stop one specific religion.  It is all a crock of shit.  As soon as we all rid ourselves of the idea that cryptic and debased belief systems are truth and the key to happiness once we are dead, then humanity will reach a deeper closeness with the true teachings that Jesus the Christ died to impart.  Mr. Hislop, as a Christian in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, is a devout believer in Jesus.  He deeply believes that Jesus and his sacrifice were, as Jesus stated, the final redemption of mankind, and that no other redemption is required, which is the exact opposite of what the Roman Catholic Church preaches.  I do not feel this way.  I do not “believe” in anything.  I am purely a human being, living my life as best I see fit, and trying my hardest to help others when I can, and not hurt others when I am able to stop myself from doing so.  I have had many people in my life, people very close to me, tell me that in my day to day living, I am the closest thing to a Christian they know.  I take it as a compliment.  Jesus was a REBEL.  Jesus knew his teachings were important enough to die for.  Jesus whupped some money-lender ass when they defiled his father’s house. 

            This is not an easy book to read.  The work is dense, and Mr. Hislop gives you everything he can find to prove his point.  There are so many examples, so many unavoidable truths within, that I can see why this book is not more widely known.  The Wizard of Oz does NOT want you to see how he makes the magic happen.

(EDITED for clarity - 2/5/2020 - RXTT)

(This book can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://www.ldolphin.org/PDFs/The_Two_Babylons-Alexander_Hislop.pdf )

What Exactly Did the Ancient Mystics Experience, and Why?

The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East: A Contribution to Current Research on Hallucinations Drawn from Coptic and Other Texts – Violet MacDermot (1971)

            Sometimes I find myself drawn to read a reference work.  I really love reference materials, as they gather and explore a large amount of data into one cohesive book.  I have always enjoyed pouring information into my grey matter and seeing the connections made therein.  Having read quite a few books in the past two years dealing with the rise of worship, the human need for ritual, the neurophysiology of the human brain and how it affects what is called the mystical, and the development of mythology and the mythological basis for all of our religious belief systems, I figured that this book was indeed for me.  In this masterwork, Violet MacDermot has gathered together writings from the Egyptians, the Coptic Christians, the Gnostic Christians and the Hebrews, and seeks to understand the means by which these people enabled, experienced, and interpreted mystic visions/hallucinations.  It is an exhaustive book, and well worth going back to as a reference source.

            A book of this scope has many themes to explore.  One of the main ones is the change in mystical visions from the time of the Egyptian ascetics to the Hellenic/Greek times, to that of the early Hebrew mystics and then the Christian saints and martyr seers.  It explores the details of the ritual, religious life of an Egyptian believer, and then details how this differed from the life of the hermit mystic.  During and before the time of the Egyptian kingdoms, the role of ritual and religion was to help the individual understand their place in the larger scheme of things.  This included the general understanding that the divine was to be found in all things, both living and inanimate, and that to serve the greater community was the utmost goal.  The individual themselves is not of primal importance.  They are just a cog in the greater machine.  The gods depended upon the people’s rituals to ensure their endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.  Without strict regulations on rituals and religious services, the whole fabric of human society would have crumbled (in their eyes), and the legitimacy of their divine rulers (kings or pharaohs) would be devalued.  MacDermot provides countless examples translated from original source materials to show that the Egyptian devout felt their participation integral to the orderliness of the world around them.  The mystics at this time would do everything the opposite of what was expected from society.  They would remove themselves from the towns and cities, living alone in the deserts.  They would avoid the ritual prayers and ceremonies of the regular folk, and instead focus their whole energies into meditation, fasting, and the attempt to have the soul be rid completely of the trappings of the normal Egyptian world.  Because of this they found divinity in themselves, the full realization of it coming only very near death, as one lets go of this world and the soul moves onto the next.  Instead of ensuring proper mummification so that their body would be reunited with their soul in the afterlife, they sought a total wasting away, allowing their soul to unify with the divine and avoid the endless repetition of birth/death/rebirth.  This would prove to be very influential to the Hellenic, Hebrew, and Christian mystics who came after them.

            It seems that every new culture strives to erase the ideas of the past, or at least refute them.  The Greek philosophers did not agree with the Egyptian mystics.  They saw the world as a quite different place, and their mystical visions changed accordingly.  Many of them came to believe that the material world was one of pure degradation, always rotting, always in a state of decline, and that the spiritual world, the world of ideal forms and of the spirit, was one of perfection.  The Hellenic mystics would use many of the same techniques as the Egyptian mystics to bring about ecstatic visions.  Everything from fasting, to physical deprivation, to ritual dance, to chanting, to a secluded desert hermit life was utilized.  Their end goals were different though.  They did not come from a society that demanded everyone adhere to a specific set of ritual. Instead, they lived in a world where the philosophers told them that the divine/ideal was to be reached through pure thought, through philosophy, as it were.  They would meditate on the ideal, seeking to eliminate all thought of the base natural world from their minds.  Even though their aims were different, the visions described and experiences claimed were very similar to those of their predecessors in Egypt.  This continues on through the Hebrew and the early Christian mystical tradition.

            After the Egyptians and the Greeks, the mystics of the Hebrew and the early Christian faith were a bit different.  They did not see the world as divinity manifested (Egyptian) or as a shadow of the divine (Greeks), but instead they saw a strict duality of good versus evil.  Many tended to believe in the Manichean thought that the natural world is a wholly evil construct, one in which the body is purely a prison for the divine soul.  Because of this, any and all human activity was derided as either evil, or drawn from evil.  Of course, these activities were merely the residue of the earlier ages of religious thought.  Sex was evil, where before it was a personal experience of divinity.  Orgiastic feasts were evil, where before they allowed the community to share in the bounty that divinity had provided on the Earth.  To the mystic seers even the idea of organized religion was an evil, created on Earth to draw humans away from the truly divine, which could only be achieved by the total obliteration of the self, both physical and mental.  It really is insane how humanity creates its gods and means of worship, and then rails against it at a later time, only to then destroy and rail against the latest religious ideas.  

For modern Americans, a nice view from the balcony can be an ecstatic experience.

             If anything, books such as these that aggregate the religious literature over thousands of years and dozens of cultures go to show the deep schizophrenia that exists in the human mind when it is forced to believe something that is essentially a fairy tale explanation for the way the world appears to us.  Mystics to this day continue on with these self-mortification practices, starving themselves, ingesting hallucinogenic substances, enduring endless pain and discomfort, and separating themselves from the society at large, all to attempt to commune with a non-existent divinity.  So many people have died and suffered at the hands of those that believe their rituals are the true ones, and that any others must be stopped at any cost.  Currently there is a war going on in Islam, between different cults, each claiming they are the one true way to salvation and the divine.  The same thing goes on in Christianity, as the orthodox and the charismatic Pentecostals fight it out in the court of public opinion, as well as in our legislatures.  No one talks about this.  It is a hard subject to broach.  The more one learns about humanity’s religious history, the more one sees how it is all a very carefully constructed house of cards, ready to fall down at any moment, but taking up vast amounts of resources and time from millions of blindly faithful people that could be better served in the betterment of humanity at large.

            The best part of this book consists of the translations of source materials that Ms. MacDermot has gathered up.  It is quite amazing to see the literal plagiarism used to prop up the stories about saints and martyrs and mystics.  The people who wrote about the Christian martyrs used the writings about Hellenic mystics as source material, copying nearly every detail.  The Hellenic mystery cult writers did the same thing with the writings of the Egyptians.  So many things are accepted at face value because some learned wise man wrote it down thousands of years ago.  It is ridiculous.  Every new religion has to usurp the rituals and holidays of the ones that came before it, and by doing so, usually turn out to employ the exact same means that were deemed blasphemous or heretic.  The very early Christians followed the rules Jesus gave very strictly.  Jesus said to leave your family, to avoid sex, to not worship idols, to avoid working, to basically stop taking part in society and society’s rituals.  The Christian church however, created “sacraments” to ensure that the masses would still take care of their familial obligations, would still marry and have many children, would still pray to images of saints and martyrs, would still find employment to pay the 10% tithe required by the church, and would continue in their yearly rituals, disguised as Christian holidays (Easter = Ishtar, Christian Saint Feast days replacing those of previous religions, etc.).  In other words, the Church forced its followers to adhere to the very same things that their namesake, Jesus Christ, instructed them to avoid.  If that does not let you know it is all a crock of shit, then perhaps you should read this book and start the exploration for yourself.

(This book is out of print but can be purchased used here: AMAZON  )

Asimov explores the historical aspects of the New Testament like no one else

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: New Testament – Isaac Asimov (1962)

            I read and reviewed the first volume of this great book, covering the Old Testament, and was amazed by the vast data contained within.  I had long been aware that the Bible as we know it is a collection of writings of many types, including poetic allegory, letters to various congregations, tribal history, collections of prayers, etc.  Reading about the Old Testament in volume one helped shine a light on the tribal history aspects of the Old Testament.  In it Asimov describes the meaning behind the many names and places found in the writings, as well as providing historical perspective which helped me to understand the political currents that underlie much of Jewish history.

            Having been raised in the church, and having attended countless hours of Sunday school, this Asimov book not only resonates with its information but it provides the answers to questions I would voice in my youth but whose answers the teachers never knew.  Countless books have been written exploring every minute aspect of the theology and spirituality.  Asimov, a non-practicing Jew by heritage and an atheist by decision, does not go into the mystical or miraculous stories presented in the New Testament, but instead focuses on what has been termed the “historical Jesus.”  Reading through the Gospels, researchers and historians have found two different stories being told.  One is the story of a historical person, called Jesus, who as a learned rabbi taught new lessons to the Jews and was crucified for what they perceived as heresy.  This is the figure that Asimov explores as he travels through the Middle East preaching and gaining followers.

            It is amazing to think that, of all the religions that humans have created to worship their gods, there have been very few that are considered “world” religions.  Most religions are exclusive by nature, and they serve a specific subset of humans.  Judaism is a religion whose god has made a covenant with them as the “chosen people.”  In fact, most religions before the age of Buddha were specifically tribal and the gods were seen to support one human group while fighting with the gods of other human groups for dominance.  Buddhism was the first religion that succeeded in being a world religion, a religion that anyone from any tribe or any ethnicity could join and belong to.  Christianity was the second great “world” religion, which was originally intended solely for other Jews, but which, either through the actions of Jesus himself, or his early disciples, spread to accept any and all “Gentiles.”  A gentile was any non-Jewish human, but in the times of Jesus was usually taken to mean either those Hellenic Jews that had adopted Greek customs or Greeks and Romans that had adopted Jewish customs.  Most gentiles were not circumcised as Jews were and this was a large point of contention among the early apostles.  The more orthodox among them saw circumcision as crucial to becoming a Christian, since it was the original sign of the covenant between Jews and God.  The apostles that won out however, taught that Jesus brought a new covenant, replacing all old ones, and that the covenant was for any and all who wished to join.

            There is a lot of historical speculation as to whether Buddhist teachings made it all the way to the Middle East by Jesus’ time, for there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that Jesus was aware of the Buddhist teachings, and shared them in his own teachings.  It would make a lot of sense if this was the case, but the fact is that a lot of Jesus’ teachings are mirrored in many other religions theology.  What seemed to be different with Christianity is that Jesus was seen as a redeemer of all humanity.  This has allowed Christianity to spread worldwide, first taking over the Roman Empire itself within 400 years of Jesus’ birth. 

            One of the coolest parts of Asimov’s book is that he is such a widely read human being. He brings details and knowledge from very disparate sources to bear on his work.  I cannot imagine how much he must have read to compile the information found within his Guide to the Bible.  I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a general knowledge of the Bible but wishes to understand the historical grounding for the tales found within.  Asimov does not discuss anything miraculous, nor does he explore the theology behind the writing.  He thinks that has been covered by countless people already.  What he does give you is like a behind-the-scenes exploration which illuminates and educates.  Asimov is highly readable and never lords his massive intelligence over the reader.  He comes off like someone who was so interested in a subject that he researched it profoundly and wants to share the aggregated knowledge the discovered.  To a nerd like me, it is pure gold.  I wish that churches would teach this book along with the actual Bible to better educate people about the kingdoms, times, and people described within.

(To read this book in PDF format, click here: https://archive.org/download/AsimovsGuideToTheBibleTheOldAndNewTestaments2Vols.IsaacAsimov/Asimov's%20Guide%20to%20the%20Bible_%20The%20Old%20and%20New%20Testaments%20(2%20Vols.)%20-%20Isaac%20Asimov.pdf)

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

 

Science has had to withstand attacks from religion for so long...

The Warfare of Science – Andrew Dickson White (1888)

Over the last decades there has been a faux-uproar, fully manufactured and completely baseless, concerning what certain super-rich, super-powerful people have termed a “war on christianity.”  It is a deeply cynical ploy to distract from the seemingly endless failures of christian religious leadership, and to lay the blame on what they refer to as the “secularization of society.”  Most often than not, it is the inquisitive and varied fields of science that are blamed for this.  The real truth behind these accusations is that it the “war” has actually been the exact opposite of what these greed-head control freaks claim.  Religions, mainly the christian faiths, both Catholic and Protestant, have been waging war against the intellectual and societal advances brought forth for humanity by the scientific endeavor for thousands of years.  This slim book, by Andrew Dickson White, President of Cornell University, and written nearly 130 years ago, seeks to “present an outline of the great, sacred struggle for the liberty of science.” 

The single worst flaw of religious dogma is the blind adherence to old texts, and the belief that within them are contained everything that is true and real about the Universe we live in, and that, if not included in the old text, then it is against “god” and must be exterminated.  The horrid truth to all this is that it essentially forces the populace to live based upon a very select few and their views and interpretations of what ancient, rewritten, edited, plagiarized, and outright falsified texts supposedly really mean.  That is the beauty of the scientific method.  It works without belief.  It is self-correcting.  Nothing, not even seemingly self-evident “facts” are above suspicion and all such “facts” are to be repeatedly verified via experiment and observation. Any new ideas or research must build on and include what has already been verified before, and if it shows that the previous knowledge was faulty in any way, it is to be re-checked and exposed to scrutiny.  This is the exact opposite of dogmatic religion.  Dogmatic religion asks the believer to ignore any questions they may have about what is being taught to them, for that is a sin against “god.” 

Oh man did I get angry reading this book!  Mr. White starts off by stating his thesis, that “In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interests of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science, and invariably.  And, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and of science.  I say ‘invariably.’  I mean exactly that.  It is a rule to which history shows not one exception.”

Mr. White was a devout christian himself, and speaks very highly of the great value to humanity brought forth by the great religions of the world, but he spares no one when it comes to the use of theology to assail the foundations of rigorous science.  One of the first sciences he speaks of when it comes to religion’s attack on its findings is Geography.  It is hard to imagine now how vehemently religious leaders opposed the idea that the Earth was anything other than what is described in the book of Genesis.  The highest religious leaders took turns in first assaulting the theory that the Earth was a sphere, an idea that was crafted centuries before christianity, based on careful observations of the natural world.  These religious leaders and theologians, second in power only to kings, used poetic language from the Bible as if it was literal history and fact, assuming that when the Bible speaks of “pillars of heaven” and the heavens “stretched out like a curtain” by god, it is speaking literal fact.  Anyone who claimed the Earth was round was charged with the most heinous crimes at the time, blasphemy, heresy, and atheism.  These “crimes” were punishable by death.  For the most part, western culture has tended to accept a line from the Bible quoted out of context as holding more truth than verified scientific experiment.  There are still many in power that either believe this way, or pretend to in order to befriend the religious powers that help them get elected.

The cracks in their bullshit are starting to show

Even someone like Christopher Columbus, whose explorations opened Europe and European powers to the easily exploited resources of the New World, faced intense backlash from all religious corners, not because he was irreligious, but because he believed the world a sphere which would allow him to sail west and reach the “east.”  Before his historic sailing, “the Bishop of Ceuta worsted him in Portugal…[and] at the Junta of Salamanca the theologians overwhelmed him with quotations from the Psalms, from St. Paul, and from St. Augustine.”  They were using theology to fight science.  Even after he had returned from his trips with evidence of a new world to explore, the then-current Pope, Alexander VI, issued a papal bull demarcating the whole of the Earth as a flat disk, based on circular theological arguments. 

Mr. White asks what came of this battle and what results were seen.  He states that what happened was that the idea was planted in the world that religion and science are enemies, creating a rift that has yet to be healed.  However, he also asked what the nascent science of Geography did for religion, and he finds that it actually gave humanity “a far more ennobling conception of the world, and a far truer conception of him who made it and who sustains it.”  To a faithful believer, the mysteries cleared away by science do not detract from the greatness of their god.  It only enhances their understanding of his greatness!  Isn’t that a much more sensible way to look at things?   

The book goes on in detail to discuss religion’s tactics in their battle against other sciences, from Astronomy, Chemistry, and Physics, to Medicine and the Industrial Sciences.  In every single case, the general advancement and betterment of humanity had to take a back seat to the imagined dangers that the sciences posed to these dogmatic idiots and their conceptions of divinity and humanity’s place in it.  It hurts to remember that even to the present day there are still people who seek to use poetic language in the Bible to justify their beliefs in the inherent superiority of one type of human over another, or in the inherent evil of those that believe otherwise.  These bastards have always been very certain of what their god was telling them.  This certitude is the true enemy of humanity and human advancement.  Until it is done away with, we will continue to rail against new ideas, to denigrate those that are different, to condemn millions to servitude and ignorance and suffering, and to bask in the self-righteousness of those that “know” they are never wrong, because the Bible says so.

(This book can be read/downloaded here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/49212/49212-h/49212-h.htm )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )