Article: "Thou shalt not kill" -- the Forgotten Commandment

"We have the ability to take him out."
-Pat Robertson's recent thought that someoone should assassinate Hugo Chavez (president of Venezuela).

"Dereism: In psychiatry, activity and thought based on fantasy and wishes rather than logic or reason; overexercise of the imagination to the extent of ignoring reality, as seen in daydreaming. SEE autism. (dereistic, adj.)"

First off, some Christians (and others) reading this may say that this is biased. To those people I say "No crap it's biased!" Bias implies a point of view. At least my bias is obvious. I don't claim to know the "God given truth" or any other such absurdities. Despite what Christians and other fundamentalists like to think, neither do any of them.

What I am biased against are half-truths, lies, distortions, and distractions that Fundamentalist Christians promote in an effort to masquerade their religion as one of peace and love, in direct contradiction to historical and institutional evidence. This little written trial run will focus on the often cited "Biblical Values" that many American Christians will cite or refer to as the source of all that is, or was or will be, right in the world if people will only adhere to them.

A brief pointing out of the obvious: I don't believe in the Creator God of the Bible. Thus it stands to reason that I wouldn't believe that any collection of texts would be divinely sanctioned or inspired. So any of you who may wish to argue from that angle should just simply choose more gullible candidates for conversion. (Especially considering that I view anyone who believes that texts are divinely inspired and thus infallible and self-proving as a potentially dangerous person who needs psychiatric attention.)

A good Biblical Value is coercion and/or killing others who do not believe. Many Christians like to say that my interpretation is wrong. But after reading various texts from the Bible, my argument is validated. Luke 19:27 states "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me." Luke 14:23 says "And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and ledges, and compel them to come in, that my house be filled." (This was actually the verse used to justify the Inquisition and earlier horror shows.)

I cite just these two passages but there are many more from the new testament and thousands more in the old testament (especially the accounts of the Divinely sanctioned genocide of the Canaanites who had the audacity to be both nonbelievers and inhabitants of land the Hebrews wanted). The Bible has been cited by many Christian authorities to sanction forced conversion and mass murder of non-believers since the fall of the Roman Empire on up to the present day. Simply look at the European Conquests of the Americas and read the accounts left behind by the "settlers" for one source of good Biblical excuses.

Another fine Biblical Value, related to the above, is war. The book of Revelation is filled with war. Even words attributed to Jesus Himself talk of bringing war to the world. (Matthew 10:34) Then there is the old testament "A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!" (Jeremiah 48:10)

I could go on and list many more citations (and others have done so already) but even if one couldn't find direct scriptural references to divinely sanctioned horrors, the point is this: Throughout history Christians have tended to destroy and oppress whenever they were in control over societies and cultures. The fact that they have some skewed sense of their own place in history as being a superior moral guiding force for peace and love is simply a figment of their own denial. Their own Bible disproves that assertion. (Those who would like more citations as evidence can do web searches or contact me for a lengthy list.)

One historical example of a Christian much revered today is Martin Luther. But if you read his Bible based writings, it is clear that the man was nothing more then a sociopath who hated women, wanted to kill all Jewish people, and thought that peasants who rebelled against their "masters" should be exterminated. (although some Christians could argue that he was divinely sanctioned and is therefore beyond any of we mere humans' criticisms, as one sad person tried to argue with me a few months back.)

Even for the real nut job Christians who actually did get to do all the things that Martin Luther only dreamed of doing (such as his number one admirer Adolph Hitler), Christians could argue that those psychos were not "real Christians." If this argument is to hold any merit than it would have to explain why Christianity seems to be infested with so many of these "false" or "not real Christians" throughout history and up to the present day.

Even many historical figures who are held up as exemplars in the Christian world turn out to be violent hate-filled crack pots. (Christopher Columbus, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, several Popes, not to mention the thousands of reverends and priests who justified everything from burning heretics to conquering and enslaving nations. Need I make a more comprehensive list?)

Let us not forget that when Constantinople was finally destroyed it was by Christian faithful out on a crusade. The sad thing about that was, not only the city being a last connection to what was left of the classical world, but that it was also inhabited by Christians of a different brand then the crusaders who hacked their way through. (Christians seem to spend a lot of time in history killing each other and all using the Bible to back themselves up in doing so.)

What is it about the religion that makes it so? Besides the historical and present day evidence which is good enough for an evaluative socio-psychiatric diagnosis of the whole religion, two things stand out as being causes for Christianity's rampant destructive swath of conquest and intolerance: The first is the infestation of belief itself. The second is the Bible which, as mentioned above, is peppered with all sorts of excuses and precedents for justifying any oppression, coercion, or murder of non-believers. If Christians want to say that they have been following Biblical Values, I would have to wholeheartedly agree with them.

It's when we get retards who want to roll back the last three hundred years and recreate society (well, at least in the USA where we have movements like this) based on Biblical Values...this is when I must wholeheartedly agree that though I can see that Christians have usually been practicing Biblical Values, I cannot say that I agree with much of what those values actually mean in practice: Narrow-mindedness, bad mythology masquerading as science, historical obfuscation, faith over observable or testable experience, laws that make women into house slaves, laws that make children into property, laws that say it's okay to torture or harass your neighbors if they don't want to convert, laws that say it's okay to kill gays because God hates them too, etc. Need I go on any further?

You can say that my spiel against Biblical Values is merely because I am blind to God's truth, but frankly, if the Jesus many Christians say they worship (the Jesus of peace, love and justice) was here today, He would, to quote the bluegrass song, "kick the holy sh*t" of many of them. Especially the so-called "Moral Majority" ones right here in the good ole US of A.