::::::::
Up front and center, the following discussion is one that many may prefer to ignore completely. It is an effort to puncture the overblown balloons of the Christians who are that in name only.
When I profess to believe in ‘X’, the presumption is that I have at least more than passing knowledge as well as some essential evidence I can lay on the table that supports my belief in ‘X’. Otherwise, how was it that I happened to conclude the belief is a quite fair and natural question for the hearer or reader to raise.
Along those same logical lines, if I cannot provide the evidence, logic again stipulates that quite possibly my suppositions are in error, and even if they are not, it’s only by mere dint of luck, not reasoning, that they are not erroneous. It would be akin to correctly filling in the third bubble on a 4-part multiple-choice question because I had heard somewhere that I should always fill in that third bubble, when not a part of the question was understood. I shouldn’t thereafter claim I believed whatever the answer was when it was only luck that had guided me. For at least my own sense of intellectual integrity, I have an obligation to do additional research on the matter, to accumulate better evidence than what I’d gained via good fortune. Beliefs absent evidence is nothing but a game of Russian Roulette, without the dire consequences for being wrong.
Over and over and over I encounter folks who profess beliefs without a shred of genuine knowledge as to what’s behind them. On the one hand, it’s not always costly. Yet on the other, the habit of simply accepting by mindless rote a proposal as a tautology, without first demanding evidence, can lead to the most maleficent disaster. Iraq and 9/11 and WMD is one example. That housing values and the stock market will always go up is another.
Perhaps injudiciously I want to accost those who claim to be “Christians.” My bet is that few retain the first guess why, or what’s behind their “faith,” other than the accident of birth, being born to a couple who also subscribe to a faith because they were as well born into a couple, and so on. This isn’t to assert their faith is misplaced, only that it’s entirely poorly premised, and that, if they continue the assertion, they should at least know more about it than they do.
In 312, at the beginning of the 4th century, Emperor Constantine crossed the Alps into Italy, to face Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge. According to legend, during the night before the battle, Constantine suffered a dream in which the christian (small ‘c’, at the time) god directed the military commander to have a cross affixed to the shields the soldiers bore. That’s one telling of the tale. Another tale, this one with considerably less evidence and adherents behind it, was told by Eusebius that, while praying at noon — no one knows to which god(s); Jupiter, Hercules, Victory, Apollo . . . — the heavens opened and the sign of the cross shown above the sun with the message “In this sign, you will conquer.”
Regardless which account accounts for the conversion of Constantine to christianity or some other, history suggests it was less a religious conversion than a political ploy. As has been true of much of Italy’s history, it was then a conflagration of competing personalities and interests, each and all of whom were desirous of the throne. (Neither Machiavelli nor Karl Rove would hold later a candle to the expression of underhanded intrigue that existed back then.)
Constantine cemented his newly acquired authority by terminating the persecution of the christians in the Edict of Milan in 313, and their confiscated property was returned. It was around the age of 40 when Constantine declared his conversion to the faith, however weakly that was defined. It is interesting to observe that regardless of his conversion, it did not deter him from having his eldest son, Crispus, put to death with cold poison, and putting his wife, Fausta, killed by being tossed into boiling water.
The overriding difficulty he confronted was how to unify power under the aegis of a religion where there was less than uniform agreement among the disparate sects as to what ought to compose its orthodoxy, a religion that was interwoven with elements of Gnosticism and Manichaenism. There did not even exist unanimous agreement that Jesus of Nazareth was in some manner a deity, in some ethereal fashion related to this god that Constantine credited for his recent victory. And so long as there existed no tenets he could enforce, and further secure his power, he was at risk of losing that power. Putting an exclamation point to the possible consequences of losing power was demonstrated by the way Crispus and Fausta left the scene: not always a gently going into some dark good night.
Parenthetically, admittedly this report has a cynical tinge. But that’s because, no matter Constantine’s conversion, later beatified by the Church, it did not prevent him from passing laws that made it completely legal for a slave-owner to beat his slaves to death and to have molten lead poured down the throats of the slave nurses who failed in their obligation to prevent nubile lasses from being sexually seduced. Jesus supposedly confronted a gathering of men who were intent on stoning an adulteress. So, pouring hot lead down someone’s throat just doesn’t seem to reconcile with Jesus’ messages, or behaviors that would entitle the emperor to sainthood.
In 325, in a political move, Constantine directed the bishops to get their acts together, to convene a council at Nicea, to come up with something they could all agree on, and that facilitated consistent enforcement through the realm.
Since the second century, what to believe, what not to, what should be construed apostasy, what would be considered complete heresy, what books to include in a compendium that would eventually compose the Christian Bible . . . all questions the fathers struggled with. Irenaeus, born somewhere around 125, had his agenda. During the Council called by Constantine, Eusebius and the others attending, had theirs. Indeed, a great many felt the writings that constitute the now Old Testament should not be included because the god of that collection was a vengeful entity, one that did not square with the gentler, loving god of Jesus. In fact, all that was unanimous was that the first five books in what became the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and The Acts — certainly should be included, and that there ought to be none that might possibly elevate women to a status equal to that of men.
So that’s what we and the world have: a collection of texts, selected and organized by a select collection of men, each with his own perspectives and purposes, some, but not all, wholly pious and honorable, who were summoned to the task by an emperor whose first quest was to the order of his empire. You can like it or not, believe it or not. Whatever you choose, whatever you elect to believe, please let it be on something other than ignorant perpetuation of something handed down to you that you hadn’t the courage or inclination to investigate and challenge, if necessary.
All the preceding is presented by an atheist, me. Nonetheless, as Yogi said, “You can look it up,” or you can ask your minister or priest. The point I’m trying to convey is that, however folks feel they came by the level of intellect that separates them from simians, by the arduous process of evolution or some other, that they employ it to their own limits on behalf of an unfettered search for truth, and that none hold to beliefs just because they always have, and because they have enjoyed no deep experience with competing others. To comport oneself along those lines in effect is the denigration of that intellect and the adoption of fear as their life guide. Indeed, it is precisely that that made much, if not all, of George Bush’s calumnies the least possible in the first place.
— Ed Tubbs
