When Alfred North Whitehead was the Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University he made this observation:
"Christian theology has been the greatest disaster in the history of the human race." Was he correct?
A brief review:
391 A.D. Christians burn down one of the world's greatest libraries in Alexandria that housed over 700,000
scrolls.
1099: Christian crusaders take Jerusalem and massacre Jews and Muslims. In the streets were piles of
heads, hands and feet. Millions were killed as a result of the Crusades.
1208: Pope Innocent orders a Crusade against the French Cathars. Over 100,000 were killed by Arnaud's
men at Beziers.
1231: Pope Gregory 1X establishes the Inquisition. Inquisitors were given license to explore every means
of horror and cruelty. Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Ovens built to kill people, made famous by Nazi Germany, were first used in the Christian Inquisition of Eastern Europe. The gruesome tortures used on hundreds of thousands of non-Christians were so repugnant and horrible that I cannot even describe them to you.
1377: The Pope's army descended on the Italian town of Cessna. For three days and nights beginning
on February 3, the slaughter continued. The squares were filled with blood. Women were raped, ransom
was placed on children, and priceless works of art destroyed. Over 3000 were butchered.
1497: The Church began an enormous burning in Florence. The works of Latin and Italian poets, illuminated
manuscripts, women's ornaments, musical instruments, and paintings were all burned.
1500's: The witch hunts are going full speed ahead. Members of the clergy proudly report how many they
have killed. The Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov bragged that he had killed over 20,000 of the horrible
"devil worshippers." Historians estimate that more than nine million (NINE MILLION) persons were executed after 1484, mostly women. This was as brutal as anything that happened in the Nazi's 20th
century holocaust.
1572: On St. Bartholomew's Day, over 10,000 Protestants are slaughtered in France. "We rejoice that you have relieved the world of these wretched heretics." wrote Pope Gregory X111.
It would take 100 pages to continue throughout history. In the peasant revolt of Germany, Martin Luther
issued a statement that...quote "to cut the throat of a peasant will get you in heaven faster than prayer."
To continue into today, 2002, with a complete documentation would take another 300 pages.
Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, says for a press release that..."Our Christian God is a good God...but the God of Islam is an evil God..." He is obviously totally historically and religiously illiterate, as is his father
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson assured the country on national television that "God let Sept. 11 happen due to the degradation of America...for keeping God out of the classrooms...and allowing abortion and gays and lesbians to live as human beings..." (paraphrased)
The priests and Bishops of the Roman Catholic church are being exposed for their obscene conduct over
dozens of years in destroying hundreds of human lives with their predatory sexual practices. While at the
same time they blabber on and on about morality and ethics from their pulpits. And the gullible listen.
It is not just the Roman Catholic church. Every year the Freedom From Religion Foundation exposes
hundreds of clergy in every Christian denomination who have been convicted.
Almost without exception, every violent right wing group in America uses the language and symbols of
Christianity to support their carnage...from destroying abortion clinics and doctors to blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City...to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.
You remember the fundamentalist minister, Jim Jones, in central America. A grisly cartoon in the Seattle
Times said it all. There was a figure, a skeleton clothed in a white sheet , bent down almost to his knees, marching. It is clutching in its hand a sign that says..."JONES SAVES."
"Religion is a disease", wrote Heraclitus. Our American literary and philosophical giant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, put it in these words..."Christian doctrines and creeds are a disease of the intellect."
And Alfred North Whitehead reminded us that "Christian theology has been the greatest disaster in the
history of the human race."
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