The Crimes and Genocide of Christianity
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,
the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that
we called it the word of a demon, than that of a god. It is a history of
wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for
my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel."
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.
Thomas Paine was not Christian, he was a deist. The same can be said of most of America's Founding
Fathers; they were deists and not Christians.
Today Christians worship a Hebrew/Christian God that has sanctioned abominable criminal acts and they
even glorify those acts. In Genesis 6-9 this Hebrew/Christian God sends a Great Flood to drown the entire
population of the Earth except for a chosen few. Drowned in this fictional flood would have been innocent
children and even infants. Such an act would have been the greatest genocide of all time. How could any
decent person accept such a horrendous crime? The answer is that Christians have been psychologically
conditioned - usually from early childhood - to accept as just any acts committed by the Hebrew/Christian
God. This acceptance of criminality has served to debase the human species to this very day. Fortunately,
the Great Flood never happened. It is a pagan myth borrowed by ancient Hebrew priests.
The Hebrew/Christian Bible is polluted with hundreds of glorified criminal acts that believers seem not
to notice for what they are. The intent of the originators of these stories of horror was to frighten ignorant
people and keep them under the control of the ancient rulers and priesthood. However, some of these
accounts of barbarism were true, as illustrated in the two quotes from the Hebrew/Christian Bible below:
Numbers 3:13 "For all the firstborn are Mine; on the day that I struck down the firstborn in
the land of Egypt, I sanctified to Myself all the firstborn of Israel, from man
to beast. They shall be Mine; I am the Lord."
Exodus 13:2 "Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the
sons of Israel, both man and beast; it belongs to Me."
The pagan god Ba'al was worshiped in the territories that the Hebrews took over through acts of
genocide, encouraged and sanctified by the Hebrew/Christian God. Ba'al was the Canaanite god of fertility
and had been worshiped in the area for many thousands of years. Human sacrifice - usually of children -
was one aspect of the worship of Ba'al, and the sacrifice of animals as burnt offerings was practiced by the
Hebrews. The money-changers in the Temple in Jerusalem were there to facilitate, in addition to commercial
transactions, the purchase of animals for sacrifice. Ba'al in the Semite language meant Lord, and the name
appears in 3,500-year-old Ugarit tablets. Ba'al was the son of the Semite god El and one finds many Hebrew
words ending in el which means "of God," such as Samuel, Immanuel and even Israel. Psalm 82:1 says this:
"God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods." This passage seems to indicate
that the Hebrews worshiped a pantheon of gods before they became monotheistic, including Ba'al and El.
In Genesis 16:1-5 we have this story from Abraham's wife Sari: "So she named the Lord who spoke to her,
'You are El-roi;' for she said, 'Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing Him'?" In 1 Kings
18:21 Elijah is made to say: "If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Ba'al is God, follow him."
The worship of both Ba'al and El was probably practiced by the early Hebrews, including the practice
of child sacrifice. There are many more sanctions for human sacrifice to honor the Hebrew/Christian
God in the Bible in addition to the two shown above. Jeremiah 19:5 mentions the sacrifice of children to
Ba'al and Jephthah offers his daughter as a "burnt" sacrifice. In the Book of Judges 11:31 we have this:
"whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return from Ammon, shall surely be
the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering." Jephthah's daughter then emerged from the house.
In the Book of Judges there is also the mention of "Ba'al Berith" which means Lord of the Covenant.
Once these sanctions became part of the "sacred texts" of the Hebrews it would have been difficult to
purge these commandments from the Hebrew/Christian God, so one still finds them in the Bible today.
It boggles the mind that believers in this Hebrew/Christian God can read these passages and still worship
such a bloodthirsty God.
Later myths in the Hebrew/Christian Bible called human and child sacrifices a sin, as if this would
expunge the initial approval of such heinous acts by the Hebrew/Christian God. Most of these attempts
to "sanitize" the earlier abominations of the Hebrew/Christian God are contained in Deuteronomy in the
Hebrew/Christian Bible. Deuteronomy also contains several hundred definitions of new sins that the
Hebrew/Christian God gave to Moses, but which Moses "forgot" to pass on the Hebrew people. Actually
these new sins were more ways the Hebrew priests invented to keep themselves in power and the Hebrew
people under their control; much in the same way that Christian priests and ministers do to this very day.
Deuteronomy 23:2 says this: "The child begotten out of wedlock shall not enter into the congregation
of the Lord; even to the tenth generation shall he not enter the congregation of the Lord." Here the
Hebrew/Christian Bible is saying that an illegitimate child cannot go to heaven, nor can his descendants
to the tenth generation. This is the vindictiveness of the Hebrew/Christian Bible to which Thomas Paine
refers. An innocent child is being punished by the cruel and vindictive Hebrew/Christian God. Later in
the Hebrew/Christian Bible this stupidity is reversed, proving the Hebrew/Christian Bible, like the
religion itself, is the invention of mortal humans.
Deuteronomy contains hundreds of new "sins" that Moses "forgot" to pass on to the Hebrews.
Deuteronomy 18:10 says, "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or daughter
pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch." This
is a restatement of Exodus 22:17 which says, "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." These "sins" were
used to justify the burning of thousands of innocent people as "witches" by the Christian religion. The
passage in Deuteronomy 18:10 also reveals that the Hebrews used to burn their first-born children alive
as an offering to the Hebrew/Christian God. In more recent times Christian religious fanatics have
expressed ignorant objections to the Harry Potter book series because of their belief that the books
promote "witchcraft."
The Phoenicians in Tyre in the Eastern Mediterranean also worshiped Ba'al and practiced child sacrifice.
When they lost their base in Tyre, the Phoenicians established a new base at Carthage near modern Tunis
in Tunisia. During the Punic Wars the Romans defeated the Carthaginians and put an end to child sacrifice.
The Celts in Gaul (France) and Britannia (England) also practiced human sacrifice. The Romans defeated
the Celts and ended human sacrifice in those areas as well. One would think that the Romans would be
held in high esteem for stamping out child and human sacrifice, but the Roman Empire has acquired a bad
reputation for its supposed "persecution" of Christians. The Romans were actually dealing with the criminals
who were the early Christians. The early Christians were "end-timers" who believed that the world would
end in their lifetime, Jesus would reappear, etc., etc. To avoid this period of chaos, Christians tried to get
the Romans to kill them so that they would become martyrs and thus go directly to heaven. Many of these
Christian nut cases would approach travelers on the road and demand that the travelers kill them. If the
Romans they encountered refused to kill them, these Christian terrorists would kill the Roman travelers.
Christians would also present themselves before Roman magistrates and demand that they be sentenced
to death so that they could die as martyrs.
Edward Gibbon gives a good account of how the early Christians tried to force the Romans to kill them
in his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. What follows is a quote from page
547 of the 1994 Penguin Press edition: "The behaviour of the Christians was too remarkable to escape the
notice of ancient philosophers; but they seem to have considered it with much less admiration than
astonishment. Incapable of conceiving the motives which sometimes transported the fortitude of believers
beyond the bounds of prudence or reason, they treated such an eagerness to die as a strange result of
obstinate despair, of stupid insensibility, or superstitious phrenzy. 'Unhappy men,' exclaimed the proconsul
Antoninus to the Christians of Asia, 'unhappy men, if you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult for
you to find ropes and precipices'?"
Both the Hebrews and the early Christians were intolerant of other religions. The Romans, on the other
hand, believed in freedom of religion; that all people should be allowed to practice religion in their own way
as long as they respected the beliefs of others and committed no crimes in the process. There were
instances where Hebrews slaughtered people who did not believe in the Hebrew religion. The following is
from page 515-516 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Penguin edition: "From
the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of
Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked
at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they (the Hebrews) committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus,
and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are
tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race
of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only
of the Roman government, but of humankind."
What the Hebrews and early Christians objected to was the introduction of Greek and Roman culture
into the Eastern Mediterranean region. This is not much different than the current Islamic reaction to
Western culture, where we find Muslims seeking martyrdom, as did the early Christians, so that they can
go directly to Paradise. The early Christians were terrorists much as are the Islamic terrorists of our own
time. And like many Islamic fundamentalists today, the early Christians believed that the world would end
in their time. Many early Christians abandoned their children and went off to pray in anticipation of the
coming apocalypse. The Christian Jesus even encouraged people not to marry and produce children since
these children would just be killed when the world ended. We have traces of this philosophy of the Christian
Jesus in the New Testament. The following is from Luke 20:34-36, "And Jesus said to them, 'The sons of
this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the
resurrection from the dead neither marry or are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because
they are equal to the angels and are the sons of God, being sons of the resurrection'."
In addition to encouraging his followers not marry and have children, the Christian Jesus also told them
to refuse to perform any civic or military duties. But what really got the early Christians into trouble with
the Romans was that, like the Hebrews, the early Christians committed terrorist acts. Far from being a
gentle and peace-loving figure, the Christian Jesus encouraged murder and anarchy. The following is from
Luke 12: 49-53, "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled...Do you think
that I have come to give peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house
there will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and
son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her
daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." These are the words of a madman.
When Alexander the Great conquered Judea in 334 B.C.E, he brought with him Greek culture and
Greek settlers. Then in 63 B.C.E. the Romans occupied Judea and introduced Roman culture and Roman
settlers. Both influences were more modern and less fanatical than the cultures of the Hebrews and
early Christians. Bands of Hebrew Zealots called dagger-men (Sicarii) operated as religious terrorists in
Judea to oppose this "polluting" of Hebrew culture in the same way that the Islamic terrorists of today are
opposing the introduction of modern society into the Islamic world. Bruce Lawrence has written an
excellent account of this clash of cultures in his book Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt
Against the Modern Age. In Judea the Zealots would attack and kill Greek and Roman men, women and
children to terrorize the population. They also attacked and killed Hebrews who had accepted Greek and
Roman culture. It probably was also these Zealots who left Jerusalem and set up a separate community
at Qumran near the Dead Sea and wrote the now-famous Dead Sea Scrolls that outline this conflict
between cultures. When John the Baptist is said to have gone "into the desert," he probably went to
Qumran. There is some evidence that both John the Baptist and the Christian Jesus were Zealots and
religious terrorists. They would have been revered by their followers as is Osama bin Laden by Islamic
fundamentalists today.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written decades after the stories they relate,
were written by unknown authors and were most likely heavily edited to both sanitize the content and
provide a version friendly to the establishment of a new religion. Volumes have been written and spoken
to explain away passages that are problematic, such as the followers of Jesus using swords, but from many
of these passages it can be determined what was really happening. It is much like the early Hebrews
worshiping the pagan gods El and Ba'al and engaging in human sacrifice by burning their first-born children
alive. Later passages in the Old Testament condemn these practices, revealing to us that such things really
did happen. It is the same with the Gospels. We get hints of what was really happening and then the
editing that explains away these events. The actual use of swords by the followers of Jesus is explained
away by some prophecy in which the swords are needed to fulfill the prophecy; a prophecy of Isaiah in
the case of the swords. Instead of Jesus and his armed followers occupying the Temple in Jerusalem the
Gospels have Jesus "teaching" day after day in the Temple. The encounter where Peter cuts off the ear
of the high priest's servant is transferred to a garden outside the Temple. There are many versions of
events related differently in each of the four Gospels and many editions of the Gospels, each with its own
translation and interpretation. Most of those cited below are from the King James Version and the New
English Bible.
When the story of the Christian Jesus "casting the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem"
is told, modern Christians accept the pictures in their Bibles of a bearded Jesus in flowing robes single-
handedly overturning the tables of the money-changers and look no further. The Temple in Jerusalem
was not some simple place of worship. The Temple was a vast complex with its own guards. It functioned
as a commercial center and a center of government for the Hebrew theocracy in which the government and
religion were closely connected. One could not simply walk in alone and raise hell as deluded Christians
are so often told. The attack by the Christian Jesus on the Temple in Jerusalem was actually an armed
takeover of the vast Temple complex by a large number of religious terrorists. Jesus did not act alone,
and the Christian Bible even describes the armed attack. The following is from Mark 14:47 of the New
English Bible: "One of our party drew his sword and struck at the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear."
Luke 22:36 says: "Then he said unto them, But he that hath a purse, let him take it and likewise his script;
and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." Luke 22:38 says "And they said, Lord
behold, here are two swords, and he said to them, it is enough." And Luke 22:49 asks: "Lord, shall we use
our swords?" And finally Mark 14:49 says that the Christian Jesus and his armed terrorists held the Temple
"day after day." The fact that the terrorists under the leadership of the Christian Jesus were able to hold
the Temple despite the presence of Roman troops in the area tells one that this was a large group of armed
terrorists.
Roman troops from Fort Antonious just outside the Temple walls eventually drove the Christian Jesus
and his force of armed religious terrorists from the Temple. Then a cohort of Roman troops pursued and
apprehended the terrorist leader, the Christian Jesus. Early versions of the Christian Bible in Greek did
say that the Christian Jesus was arrested by a "cohort" of Roman soldiers. A Roman cohort at the time
consisted of about 600 men. So that it would not be so obvious that a large force was needed to overcome
the Christian Jesus and his religious terrorists, later versions of the Christian Bible changed the words "a
cohort of Roman soldiers" to "a band of Roman soldiers." The Christian Jesus was arrested for his terrorist
activities and executed by the Romans for those terrorist acts. Hebrew priests played no part in the arrest
or execution of the Christian Jesus. That was a later invention to cover up the terrorist acts of the
Christian Jesus.
The Christian religion, with its strange idea that people should not marry or perform their civic duties,
weakened the Roman Empire. When the Vandals besieged Rome in 455 C.E., instead of resisting the
barbarians, the Christian Pope allowed the Vandals to sack the city as long as "Church property" and the
"Christian priests" were not harmed. Thousands of Roman men, women and children were taken back to
North Africa as slaves. This was one of the early instances in which the Christian Church was responsible
for death and destruction on a massive scale, and most of this death and destruction came about because
the Christian Church was intolerant of other religions.
The Cathars of France practiced a slightly different form of the Christian religion in the early
thirteenth century C.E. The Christian Pope Innocent III established the first Inquisition and called for
the "extermination" of these "heretics." He ordered up the "Albigensian Crusade" a la Billy Graham. In
a single day over 20,000 men, women and children in the city of Languedoc were slaughtered, and this
slaughter would go on for thirty years! During the "Shepherd's Crusade" of 1251, almost every Jew in
southern France was murdered. In 1288 the first mass burning at the stake of Jews took place in France.
In 1483 in Spain 700 "secret Jews" (Conversos) were burned at the stake. In 1492 all Jews were expelled
from Spain. In 1572, on St. Bartholomew's Day, tens of thousands of Protestants were massacred
throughout France. On this occasion Pope Gregory XIII said in a letter to Charles IX of France, "We
rejoice that with the help of God you have relieved the world of these wretched heretics."
The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno said that only ignorant people believed in the literal
interpretation of the Christian Bible. Bruno also said, "Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve
around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings
in habit these planets." The Christian Church claimed that the Earth was the "center of the universe"
because the Christian God had "created" the Earth. The Christian Church considered the brilliant and far-
reaching thoughts of Giordano Bruno to be "heresy" and condemned him to death, but more for his scorn
of the literal truth of the Christian Bible than for expressing the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus. On February
17, 1600, the Christian Church stripped Giordano Bruno naked, tied him to a stake in the Campo dei Fiori
in Rome and burned him alive while idiot monks prayed for his "soul." A statue of Giordano Bruno now
stands in the square at Campo dei Fiori in Rome where the Christian Church committed its heinous crime.
 Giordano Bruno Campo dei Fiori in Rome
Nicolaus Copernicus had the good fortune to reside in Poland, a great distance from the Pope in Rome.
Copernicus was also careful about expressing his ideas of a sun-centered universe too openly. Between
1510 and 1514 Copernicus wrote an essay on the sun-centered universe known as the Commentariolus
and sent it to various astronomers. Georg Joachim Rheticus from the University of Wittenberg in Germany
came to work with Copernicus and published in 1540 Narrotio prima expressing the ideas of Copernicus
about a sun-centered universe. Rheticus also encouraged Copernicus to have On the Revolutions published
in Germany in 1542 setting forth the idea of a sun-centered universe. Giordano Bruno probably read some
of these works on his travels before he was tricked into returning to Italy to face the Inquisition for saying
people should not believe in the Christian Bible.
The first person to face the Inquisition for expressing the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus was Galileo
Galilei in 1632. Under threats of torture and a horrible death, Galileo renounced the idea of a sun-centered
universe and escaped from the sewer of religious fanaticism in Rome. Any intelligent person must ask why
the Christian God did not inform Adam and Eve about the true structure of the solar system. The answer
is that the notion of some supernatural being "creating" the solar system was the only answer ignorant people
living thousands of years ago could come up with. And why didn't the Christian God tell Noah about
kangaroos in Australia or the existence of dinosaurs? The answer is that the people living back then did not
know about things far away from them in distance or time. The Greek myths about giants was the result
of dinosaur fossils being found in Greece. The only explanation the Greeks could come up with is that a
race of giants must have existed in the dim past. We don't believe in these Greek myths today, so why
believe in a "creation" of the Earth and a Great Flood? The only reason religion survives today is that
humans fear death and religion provides some with a way to cheat death and live forever. The price for
this false comfort is the death of intellect.
Today people tend to think that the horrors of the Inquisition and the genocide of the "crusades" are
historical artifacts from the past that cannot be repeated. Yes, now we believe that the sun is the center
of our solar system and not the Earth, but religion cannot take too many "hits" like that and survive. The
recent invention of "creationism" is an attempt to salvage religion from reality. Space-based telescopes
actually show us solar systems being formed from interstellar dust. These solar systems are not being
"created" by some supernatural being, and the process takes millions of years and not six days. Yet
millions of supposedly intelligent people still believe in the "creation" myth. Why? The answer is that
ignorant belief is fostered by a process of psychological conditioning that believers go through from early
childhood.
Fundamentalism is the literal belief in anything said by a religion. That ignorance killed Giordano Bruno
and it is still killing innocent human beings today. Fundamentalist Jews believe that the Sabbath day is
so "holy" that nothing should disturb this observance of faith. No so long ago, in our modern age,
fundamentalist Jews set fire to a movie theater in Israel because it was open on the Sabbath. Hundreds of
children perished in the same manner as did Giordano Bruno from this ignorant and barbaric act.
Fundamentalist Christians in the United States send brainwashed young people into America's public
schools to proselytize other students into the Christian religion. They are also told by the adults who are
manipulating them that they should harass suspected homosexual students, those of other religions, and
atheists. This has resulted in the many school shootings we have experienced in recent times and the
rash of student suicides. Proselytizing Christians are murderers! These same Christian fundamentalists at
times deny needed medical treatment to their own children and rely on prayer to their God instead. This
religious ignorance has resulted in many horrible and painful deaths of innocent children.
However, the most obvious damage being done by fundamentalist religious belief today is the rise of
fundamentalist Islam. Both Christianity and Islam believe that all people must join their faith. If not, each
faith thinks it will lose the comfort that believing in life after death provides. In order to accomplish this,
religion must murder the human intellect or face its own destruction, and that is the greatest of all crimes.
Anyone believing in the Christian religion today is both ignorant and culpable in the past and continuing
crimes and genocide committed by the Christian religion. To proselytize in this abominable belief system is
to spread destructive ignorance and superstition. A recent discovery in Egypt has provided some insight into the sick and twisted Christian religion. When a plague swept the ancient Roman world in the third century C.E., Christian religious fanatics "rejoiced" at this massive human misery because they thought in their brainwashed pea brains that this was the "end of the world" which would usher in heaven on Earth. In this regard Christians are no different than Islamic religious terrorists who also look forward to the destruction of all humanity. The significant passage is underlined in the article below.    Cyprian was the Bishop of Carthage (c.200-258 C.E.), and a typical twisted and fanatical Christian of the period. The plague did weaken the Roman Empire but the real destruction of the Roman Empire came about because the Romans adopted the Christian religion and sent humanity into the Dark Ages, from which we are yet to recover intellectually. Bibliography
1. Lawrence, Bruce B., Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age, New
York, Harper & Row, 1989.
2. Booth, Father Leo, When God Becomes a Drug: Breaking the Chains of Religious Addiction and
Abuse, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991.
3. Graham, Lloyd M., Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, New York, Carol Publishing Group, 1995.
4. Barthel, Manfred, What the Bible Really Says, New Jersey, William Morrow & Co., 1982.
5. Cohn, Norman, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith,
Avon, England, The Bath Press, 1993.
6. Vermes, Geza, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, London, England, Penguin Press, 1997.
7. Shanks, Hershel, The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, New York, Random House, 1998.
8. Baigent, Michael, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception: Why a Handful of Religious Scholars Conspired to
Suppress the Revolutionary Contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
9. Allegro, John, The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed, New York, Gramercy Publishing, 1956.
10. Carmichael, Joel, The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth, New York, Dorset Press, 1989.
11. Spong, John Shelby, Resurrection, Myth or Reality?: A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity,
San Francisco, Harper-Collins, 1994.
12. Bernstein, Alan E. The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian
Worlds, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1993.
13. Pagels, Elaine, The Origin of Satan, New York, Random House, 1995.
14. Pagels, Elaine, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, New York, Vintage Books, 1989.
15. Fox, Robin Lane, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1992.
16. Levy, Leonard W., Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, From Moses to Salman Rushdie,
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
17. Roberts, Paul William, In Search of the Birth of Jesus: The Real Journey of the Magi, New York,
Putnam's Publishing, 1995.
18. Mack, Burton L. Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth, San Francisco,
Harper-Collins, 1995.
19. Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, The Penguin
Press, 1994 three volume edition.
20. Galileo on the Internet http://www.answers.com/topic/galileo-galilei
Copyright © 2010 by Paul Roebling
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