The moral insanity of the Christian religion is apparent even in its central myth. Apparently, god was so mad at mankind (for being exactly as he made us), that he just had to kill someone. Rather than kill all of us or almost all of us (as he is alleged to have done once before with a flood), he decided to have a child and kill it just to get his anger out of his system. (I guess that is a bit of an improvement, maybe.)
A couple of years ago, someone sent me a quotation from one of the letters of Andrew Carnegie regarding this same point:
“The whole scheme of Christian Salvation is diabolical as revealed by the creeds. An angry God, imagine such a creator of the universe. Angry at what he knew was coming and was himself responsible for. Then he sets himself about to beget a son, in order that the child should beg him to forgive the Sinner. This however he cannot or will not do. He must punish somebody--so the son offers himself up & our creator punishes the innocent youth, never heard of before--for the guilty and became reconciled to us. . . . . I decline to accept Salvation from such a fiend.”
— Andrew Carnegie, to Sir James Donaldson, Principal of St. Andrews University, June 1, 1905. Letters (except to Haldane) in Library of Congress collection, cited by Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 1970.
I had often wondered why it seemed no one else noticed the twisted sickness at the core of Christianity's central myth. As usual though it turns out that all the things wrong with religion were noticed and commented on before any of us were born; yet still it persists.
Why does it persist? Because all religions are founded by a deeply disturbed and manipulative individual or group of individuals, and, with each generation, similarly disturbed individuals recognize religion's potential for controlling others to empower themselves and perpetuate it to that end. People who are psychopathic tend to get their way because they have no ethical boundaries; those who would oppose them are hampered by the fact that they do have such boundaries. (With regard to this topic, I recommend "Captive Hearts Captive Minds" by Madeline Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich and "Cults In Our Midst" by Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich.)
To empower themselves, such people supplant true morality with notions of authoritarianism in the minds of their flock. When you meet someone with an authoritarian personality, or moral philosophy, then you can rest assured that you are dealing with either one of the sheep or the wolf who controls them. The end result, as far as you are concerned, will probably be the same; if they feel the need, they will use the flock as a weapon. With a few simple words, they will turn it into a mob and set it upon you or anyone they perceive as an enemy.
The Carnegie quote above was taken from the Freedom From Religion Foundation website: www.ffrf.org. If you aren't familiar with them or their work, please visit and support them. The page on Carnegie also contains a wonderful example of the moral philosophy of a non-believer:
"When asked to sell five acres of his land for a 'free' cemetery open to all Protestants, Carnegie wrote he would be delighted to give the land away, 'provided it were open to all who desired to rest there of every sect or of none. . . . We poor mortals while living our short span are far too sharply separated. Surely, we should not refuse to lie down together at last upon the bosom of mother earth.'" (Carnegie to Benjamin M. Gemmill, Jan. 23, 1915).
The religious continuously slander us non-believers and say that we have no morality. In fact, as the juxtaposition of these two quotations from Andrew Carnegie make clear, the exact opposite is the truth. The slander of the religious is revealed, once again, to be an example of a "Big Lie", meaning a preposterous lie told over and over until people believe it, and also an example of projection and splitting--two symptoms of the severely emotionally disturbed.
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