 Page-96 Chapter Five Catholic Christians Murdered Protestant Christians Up to this point we have been learning about the slaughter of non-Christians, Jews, Cathars and Muslims, by Christian religious fanatics. The approach to this genocide by Christians was that my supernatural being (god) was the correct god to worship, whereas your supernatural being (god) was the incorrect god to worship. Few bothered to ask the question whether there were any supernatural beings at all. Ignorance and superstition ruled the day, and religions flourished in this unhealthy environment. The Romans had a more pragmatic and casual approach to religion. Believing in a religion, of which there were dozens in Roman times, was more like having a good luck charm rather than some cult where the lives of believers were intimately controlled by supernatural beings. It was also the time of the Roman peace (Pax Romana) when no part of the Roman Empire went to war with another part of the Roman Empire. Christianity destroyed the Roman Empire, with its clean water, sanitation and freedom of religion and ushered in the Christian era of ignorance, warfare, disease and brutality that caused the death of millions of innocent human beings. The real legacy of Christianity has been death and destruction on a scale unseen up to this point in human history. In 1527 Martin Luther opened up a new battlefield in these Christian wars of religious insanity. Luther said that people should have greater control over their own destinies rather than having their lives tightly controlled by the central Catholic authorities. This protest came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. The rich and powerful hierarchy of the Catholic Church fought back against this possible loss of power and wealth. The initial battle would take place in what is now Germany and it would be called the Thirty Years war that lasted from 1618 to 1648. It was the Protestant Lutherans in Germany, initially, against the Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe; the theory being, let's kill off all those people who worship the same supernatural being (god) but in the wrong way. There were political and ethnic reasons for the conflict as well, but it was the stupidity of religion which set the forces of war in motion. Page-97 The picture in the German principalities was further muddied by the presence of the Calvinist Christians in the region. The chart below shows the explosion of Protestant sects in Europe during this period.  It would be impossible to determine the exact number of innocent human beings who were killed in this war of religious stupidity. Some estimate the reduction of population in the German states at from 25 percent to 40 percent. The territory of Wüttemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In Brandenburg the losses amounted to half the population, while in other areas an estimated two-thirds of the people died. The male population of the German states as a whole was reduced by almost half. The population of Czech lands declined by one-third due to war, disease and the expulsion of Protestant Czechs. By now the unfortunate people in the affected areas must have been longing for the Roman "oppression" of Pax Romana. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. As a result of the Thirty Years war, the power of the Catholic Church was diminished and Protestant sects grew in both number and power. The Thirty Years War may have been the most destructive religious war in Europe, but it was not the first. The French Wars of Religion, which lasted from 1562 to 1598, were just as brutal and filled with religious atrocities. One is reminded of the slaughter of 20,000 Cathar men, women and children by Christians in the south of France in an earlier time. On the next page are two contemporary depictions of Christian atrocities during both the Thirty Years War and the French Wars of Religion. Page-98  The hanging of captured persons of the "wrong" religion during the Thirty Years war.  The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of French Huguenots August 23, 1572. In 1534 Protestant protesters put up anti-Catholic posters in Paris and other French cities. The protesters were called Huguenots, as opposed to the Catholics which they called Papists. France was tightly under Catholic control and many of the Protestants responsible for putting up the posters were arrested and burned alive in front of Notre Dame Cathedral on January 21, 1535. One of the protesters, John Calvin, escaped to Switzerland where he founded the Calvinist sect of Protestantism. Protestants continued to be persecuted by Catholics in Page-99 France and in 1545 the Catholic King Francis I ordered Protestants in the city of Mérindol to be punished for their heresy. Catholic forces sent by Francis I killed hundreds of thousands of Protestants in Mérindol and 22 to 28 nearby villages, all of which were destroyed. In the city of Vassy hundreds of Protestants were massacred and in Toulouse 3,000 Huguenots were killed. In these Catholic religious atrocities, no distinctions were made for women or children. There can be no greater proof that fanatical religious belief can turn people into subhuman monsters, willing to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of their religion. Promoting the destructive ignorance and superstition of religion should be a crime against humanity punishable by death. Protestant England and Catholic Spain were at times drawn into the thirty-five plus years of the French Wars of Religion. In the city of Nêmes Protestant forces massacred Catholics. Catholics massacred Protestants in Rouen, Orange and Paris. On St. Bartholomew's Day August 23, 1572 Catholics in Paris began massacring Huguenot men, women and children. The slaughter went on for days and spread into the countryside. It is estimated that up to 70,000 men, women and children were killed in Paris and its environs over a period of about a week. Despite this persecution, the Calvinist movement grew in France. By 1562 there were about two million Calvinists in France, including half the nobility, and 1,200 to 1,250 Calvinist churches. This religious stupidity of the mutual slaughter of "persons of the wrong religion" would continue for decades until the Edict of Fontainebleau in October of 1685 made the Protestant religion legal in France. The eighty-year Netherlands war of independence that lasted from 1568 to 1648 was also a religious war. In this case it was Catholic Spain attempting to impose its religion on the Dutch Protestants. It was another of the many instances of the Christian religion causing death and destruction. The conflict was filled with the usual religious atrocities until this mutual slaughter ended in 1648 with the Peace of Münster. Page-116 Chapter Six Protestant Christians Murdered Catholic Christians During the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651, over 500,000 Catholics were killed in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In that same conflict, approximately 112,000 Protestants were killed. The casualty figures reveal that this was a religious war despite other factors that might have been involved. In England the population was reduced by 3.7%, in Scotland by 6% and in Ireland by 41%. The war was yet another example of the Christian religion bringing death and destruction wherever it has raised its ugly head. All through the Christian Dark Ages the Roman Catholic religion flourished in England and Wales right up until 1534. It was in that year that King Henry VIII made the Church of England the official religion of England so that he could divorce an unwanted wife. At this time the Church of England became an Anglican Protestant sect with religious rituals not unlike those of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry VIII declared anyone opposing this break with the Catholic Church in Rome to be a traitor. Catholic priests were hunted down and killed, along with many ordinary Catholics. Thomas More, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, was executed in 1535 for opposing the marriage of the divorced King, which was against Catholic law. Catholic monasteries and abbeys were despoiled and torn down. In 1553 a Catholic queen, Mary Queen of Scots, came to the throne. Bloody Mary, as she came to be known, had 300 Protestants burned at the stake in more Christian insanity. When Mary died in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I became the new ruler and the Church of England was reinstated as the official religion of England. The pope in Rome promptly excommunicated Elizabeth I. Charles I became King of England in 1625. Charles I believed that the rituals of the Church of England should more closely follow those of the Roman Catholic Church. This variation of the Protestant sect was called High Anglican. Puritan Protestants thought the High Anglican rituals too closely mirrored those of the Roman Catholic Church and this was the main source of conflict in the English Civil War. Some even call this conflict the Puritan rebellion. Page-117 Another issue was the power of the king over the English parliament. Those opposing the king and his power were called Parliamentarians or Roundheads. Those supporting the king were called Royalists. In 1647 the Scots of the North agreed to support the king if he allowed the establishment of the Presbyterian religion in Scotland. This was another indication of the religious nature of the English Civil War. In 1649 Oliver Cromwell, at the head of an army of Roundheads, landed at Dublin in Ireland to put down a Royalist uprising there. When Cromwell took the city of Drogheda, he massacred 3,500 people. The dead included Royalist prisoners, civilians and Catholic priests. Another massacre took place in the city of Wexford. All Irish-owned land was confiscated and distributed to Parliamentary (Protestant) supporters. Oliver Cromwell ruled England as a military dictator for a time until Charles II was placed on the throne in 1660 to rule as a constitutional monarch. The Church of England continued as the official religion of England, but hundreds of thousands of Catholic men, women and children had been slaughtered because of the stupidity of the Christian religion. In France, during the French Revolution, the Revolutionary government passed laws to end the power of the Catholic Church in France. The Catholic clergy had taxed their local peasants ten percent of their crops and used these resources to help the poor and carry out other Church functions. The Catholic Church was also the largest landowner in France on which the peasants lived as serfs. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 ended this domination by the Catholic clergy. Catholic priests, on orders from the pope in Rome, refused to abide by the Civil Constitution and the Revolutionary government began killing priests. Catholics rose up in rebellion against these actions and the Revolutionary government sent an army to quell the rebellion in the Atlantic Vendée region. It is estimated that between 117,000 and 250,000 Catholic men, women and children were slaughtered over the stupidity of the Christian religion. In the city of Nantes, the Revolutionary commander Jean-Baptiste Carrier disposed of Vendéean prisoners-of-war in a horrifically efficient form of mass execution. In the so-called "noyades" (mass drownings) naked men, women and children were tied together in specially constructed boats, towed out to the middle of the river Loire and then sunk. One should note that women and children were considered to be prisoners- of-war in this religion-based genocide where Catholics of all ages and any gender were fair game. In a letter to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris French general Francois Joseph Westermann stated the following: "There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and children by our free sabers. I crushed the children under the feet of our horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop. Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment." It is estimated that 5,000 Catholic men, women and children were drowned in the "noyades," and as many as 250,000 by all means of killing. Unless one assumes that the killers were all atheists, this genocide was carried out by Protestant Christians. Page-125 Chapter Seven Christians Murdered Witches in Europe and Salem Apologists for the Christian Bible claim there is no call for Christians to kill witches in Christian scriptures. It is difficult to determine if these individuals are just ignorant of what is contained in their own Bible, or if they are trying to spin the story so that Christians look less ridiculous. It is probably a bit of both since most Christians are ignorant of what is written in their own Bible, and most Christian religious fanatics would lie to defend their evil and despicable religion. There are numerous passages in the Christian Bible that condemn witchcraft, wizardry, and sorcery. But first an individual must believe that such nonsense is possible. Well, Christians believe in "miracles," Satan and other such nonsense, so the fact that they believe there could be witches and wizards should come as no surprise. Rational beings know that there are no supernatural beings or beings with supernatural powers, but Christian religious fanatics are not rational beings. Listed below are three references from the Christian Bible concerning witches, wizards, etc. Exodus 22:18 "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." Translation: If you do not kill witches you are committing a sin. This is a "commandment" from the Christian god to kill witches. Leviticus 20:27 "A man, also a woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or that is of a wizard, shall surely be put to death; thou shall stone them with stones." Deuteronomy 18:10 "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft." The first part of this updated memo to religious nuts 2,000 years ago was that Hebrews no longer had to sacrifice their firstborn children to the Hebrew/Christian god as they had been told to do for quite some time. The question that must be asked is why they were dumb enough to sacrifice their children in the first place, and why they didn't kill the clerics who told them to do so? Page-126 It is estimated that ignorant and superstitious Christians executed between 40,000 and 60,000 innocent human beings as witches during the years 1480 to 1750. These unfortunate victims of moronic Christian religious nut cases were most often burned alive, drowned or hanged. But this was only the peak of this Christian religious madness. People falsely accused of being witches were killed during the Inquisitions and even earlier. A detailed accounting of these Christian religious atrocities will be discussed later in this chapter, but first we must examine why anyone would be dumb enough to believe in witches in the first place. Granted that Christians do seem to be the dumbest of the dumb, but the willingness to believe in the most ridiculous nonsense appears to be a common human condition. The human fascination with UFOs is a prime example. If there were really as many UFOs as believers claim, these supposed aliens from other planets would need an air traffic control center here on Earth to keep UFOs from crashing into each other. The believers in UFOs are completely ignorant of the distances involved in travel to other solar systems. That is the key. One must be ignorant to believe in UFOs as well as religion. Keep in mind that a person can be "educated" and still be ignorant in certain matters. A doctorate in theology has the same worth as a doctorate in making mud pies. Continued In Part Three |
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