All I'm offering is the truth.

I am a pilot. I did my preflight inspection of Christianity. I checked everything from the struts, to the rotor, to the instruments and I have come to this conclusion:

Christianity does not fly.

I need to say that this article is not for the narrow-minded or squeamish of stomach. The factual information I am about to provide is frightening, and can (and should) destroy an entire faith. Why do I feel this way? I'll get to that in a moment. But first there is something I need to interject. I am a man of God. I absolutely accept his existence. But I refuse to believe. Belief is a very low form of evidence. It does not create reality nor does it conjure anything even remotely similar to what one might consider an answer to a prayer. Prayer encourages nothing but complacency. If you or someone you know is in a situation that you feel is an answered prayer, all I will say is that someone (you or somebody else) acted upon the desire to answer the prayer and therefore it was answered, not by God, but by you. God will not wipe your ass. If you're looking for a savior, look in the mirror.

"If we could only succeed in moving theism aside, then other avenues for exploring God might open up before our eyes. If the 'who' question as a means of entering a God inquiry has hit a stone wall, then perhaps we could try a 'what' question. If human analogies projected heavenward have become bankrupt, then perhaps we should examine those aspects of human experience where we feel compelled to venture beyond normal limits or into new horizons. Perhaps we could cast the Christian experience in nontheistic images. It is certainly worth a try."

What Spong means by "nontheistic" images is perception. We normally perceive God to be an old man on a cloud with a big Santa beard. I do not see God in this way. To me God is more like the Force, to use a cliched analogy. I see things from a teleological standpoint. The universe has a design and an order, therefore it must have a designer and an orderer. However, my perception of God is impersonal. It is an experience, not an image, and it is emotionally unsatisfying especially when one attempts to pray to laws of science.

My God image.

The evil of Christianity

Ayn Rand:

"An organism's life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil."

From The Objectivist Ethics

Allow me to separate Christians into two categories: open-minded and narrow-minded. The latter of the two is obviously the "bad" kind. They thump the Bible like no one else. I've heard some of them demonize things like mathematics and sociology because supposedly the moment one turns towards those things is when one turns away from God. (See Bill Moyers' interview with Dr. Criswell).

"It's in Revelations, people!"

No matter how much good even non-Christians may think is in the Bible, it is all cancelled out by the last book. Keep Rand's words in mind. Evil is that which holds death as its ultimate end. The Book of Revelation not only states that total annihilation of life on earth will happen, but that it will also be a good thing. Here is a moral reversal. Christians have somehow managed to mistake extermination for salvation. The narrow Christians thump on it harder than anyone. But all forms of Christianity that I am aware of have Revelation as the final book in their holy text. Because of this, I see little difference between the various denominations. They all celebrate armageddon as though they could hope for nothing better. Because of this, Christianity is the single greatest force of evil on the planet.

The cosmological decentralization

The problem is they've been promised heaven. I do not think there is such a thing, and if I did I wouldn't think a single human being could ever get there (I will explain why elsewhere). Ever seen the opening sequence of Contact? The camera pans out from the earth stretching all the way through the galaxy and into the universe. Hundreds (thousands?) of other galaxies pass by, illustrating the vastness of it all. It used to be that we were so arrogant as to believe that earth was the center of the universe. Then when we realized that was garbage, we decided it was the sun. Then we realize that our humble little planet is on the outskirts of the Milky Way, nowhere near a galactic center. But at least the Milky Way's in the center of the universe, right? Wrong. It's much like earth, on the outskirts. We're just an island compared to everything else. Scientists say that the mathematical make-up of the universe is such that it's basically impossible for there to not be life somewhere out there. So how could we be so arrogant as to believe that human beings are the chosen people, that God favors us above all others and everything starts and stops with our little planet? They say the Bible is the word of God only because the Bible itself says the same thing. That's circular reasoning. The authorship of most of the Bible is unknown.

But look at it. Analyze it. Christians don't realize how dangerous the Bible is to them. Observe:

Yes, they are identical, and no, I didn't simply copy and paste the same passage twice. Here is evidence of plagiarism in the Bible. These two books are credited by two authors and are separated by centuries (the author of Kings is "unknown" while Isaiah is "mostly Isaiah" since it's unlikely he wrote his own epitaph). So God inspired people to commit a crime? In my own personal experience of God, I have not encountered any evidence that he is cruel or evil. I personally don't think that he is all-powerful, but that's beside the point. I understand God to be a good, omnibenevolent being. God would never inspire his people to commit any crime, no matter how petty it may be.

Sheikh Ahmed Deedat:

"What have Christian scholars to say about the 'Book of Isaiah?' They say: 'MAINLY CREDITED TO ISAIAH. PARTS MAY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY OTHERS' In view of the confessions of Bible scholars, we will not take poor Isaiah to task. Can we then nail this plagiarism on the door of God? What blasphemy! Professor Cumptsy confirmed at question time, at the end of the aforementioned symposium (Mr. Armageddon's note: see Is The Bible God's Word? by Ahmed Deedat) that the 'Christians do not believe in a verbal inspiration of the Bible' So God Almighty had not absent-mindedly dictated the same tale twice! Human hands, all too human, had played havoc with this so-called Word of God — the Bible. Yet, Bible-thumpers will insist that 'every word, comma and full stop of the Bible is God's Word!'"

Now don't be alarmed by me quoting a Muslim Sheikh. I am not a fan of Islam. I find it to be almost as evil as Christianity with the exception of the fact that Islam does not call for the total annihilation of humanity but only the annihilation of non-muslims. However, Muslims are by far the best critics of Christian thought. For more of Deedat's writings, see Is The Bible God's Word? and his biggest mind fuck, Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction?

Computational error

Now consider this. Hebrews didn't count the day/night cycle the same way we do. We count one day from midnight to midnight (as the Romans did) but the Hebrews counted one day from dusk to dusk. Jesus's body did not get into the tomb until dusk, on Saturday.

Mary Magdalene found Jesus's body missing from his tomb Sunday morning, before the Jews would count the day as having begun (meaning, it was still night). So do the math. We have one day and two nights. That's it. Even if you count Friday, that's still only two days, not three. Yet we've been told that Jesus was in the tomb for three days and three nights. How can this be? How can the simplest of math errors exist in Christianity for over 2000 years?

Deedat continues:

"COUNT BACKWARDS TO SOLVE DILEMMA

For all their learning, you have got them hooked. And, they know it! We must not relent. The Christians are already inventing a way out of this dilemma. They have now invented the 'GOOD Wednesday' theory. 'The Plain Truth' with its monthly FREE worldwide circulation of 6 million copies, is offering further FREE books on the subject of 'Three DAYS and three NIGHTS'. There are other organisations in South Africa, like 'Bible Revelation' Johannesburg, who are also offering FREE books to prove that the 'crucifixion' took place on a GOOD Wednesday, and not on a GOOD Friday.

Mr. Robert Fahey from that great country, America — where almost all (?) new cults originate eg. the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Christian Scientists, the Mormons, you name them, and they have them — representing that premier Christian magazine, named in the previous paragraph, lectured recently in the 'Holiday Inn', Durban. He startled his over-whelmingly Christian audiences with a lot of novel ideas. Among these newfangled doctrines was one about Good Wednesday. He agreed 100% with the present writer's conclusion that Good Friday was actually disproving Christ's claim to be the Messiah. To solve this problem he suggested that we count backwards from the time he was discovered to be missing from the tomb, viz. on that Sunday morning, ('first day of the week') when Mary Magdalene went to anoint him. If we deduct 3 DAYS and 3 NIGHTS from Sunday morning, we ought to get WEDNESDAY as an answer. It is not difficult from here to get your THREE days and THREE nights to resolve the Christian dilemma. The audience, already pre-prepared with a flood of FREE [1] magazines and literature, gave Mr. Fahey a resounding applause.

1. They have a fantastic system for achieving a FREE world-wide monthly circulation of 6 million 'Plain Truth' magazines alone.

GOD OR THE DEVIL?

After the meeting, during a personal discussion [2], I congratulated Mr. Fahey for his ingenuity. 'How was it possible for the past two thousand years, that the Christian world had not known their religious arithmetic to get their sums right?' Even to this day the bulk of Christendom commemorate a GOOD FRIDAY instead of a GOOD WEDNESDAY. 'Who has deceived the 1,200,000,000 Christians of the world, including the Roman Catholics who claim an unbroken chain of Popes from the first Pope (Peter) to the present Pope, into falsely celebrating GOOD FRIDAY?', I asked Mr. Fahey.

Mr. Fahey, unashamedly answered: 'The Devil!' I said, 'If the Devil can succeed in confusing the Christians, and keep them confused for two thousand years in the most simple aspect of Faith, how much easier it would be for the Devil to mislead them in things concerning God?' Mr. Fahey blushed and walked away. If this is the belief of the trendsetters of Christianity, [3] we may well ask, 'is this 'crucifixion' not the mightiest hoax in history?' Should we not, now, more appropriately, call it cruci-fiction!

2. The Christians do not allow their speakers to be questioned in public.

3. At the rate of this cults progress, before long the whole Christian world will opt for a 'Good Wednesday'"

From Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction?

The Revised Standard Version

Possibly the greatest refutation of some of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity exist in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, or RSV. The RSV was the result of 30 some odd biblical scholars from all around the world studying the most ancient and most authentic manuscripts upon which the Bible was based (since all original manuscripts have been lost, if they even existed at all). There are thousands of these manuscripts. Just that can tell you how flawed the Bible is. One book conceived by thousands of different manuscripts? What if manuscript A is contradictory to manuscript B or C? What if passages were pulled from conflicting manuscripts?

But the purpose of the RSV was to have the most true-to-the-original translation of the Bible possible. You'd agree that the oldest manuscripts are closer to the truth, correct? What these scholars found was alarming. Not a single one of these thousands of manuscripts contained the following:

The word "begotten" in John 3:16

The ascension of Christ

The Holy Trinity

Thus refuting the claim that Jesus was the Son of God and the incarnation of God. This is not controversial, it is very well documented. The oldest manuscripts of the Bible actually contradict today's translations.

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

-Vladimir Lenin

...especially when that lie has been told so many times that nobody knows they are lying. But I will say it straight. The claim that Jesus is the Son of God is a lie.

In 1952 the RSV Bible was published. In 1971 its authors changed it back, reinserting the above editions because of the huge emotional outcry it generated. If you can get your hands on a 1952 RSV, good luck.

The myth of Christ

I'll let the following passages speak for themselves.

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

(Luke 19:27)

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

(Mathew 10:34)

"I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division."

(Luke 12:49 and 51)

So much for the "Prince of Peace."

Surviving the crucifixion

"But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas [Jonah]."

(Mathew 12:39)

This "sign" Jesus refers to is a miracle. So what is the story of Jonah? He was swallowed by a crawfish for three days and three nights. Was he dead? No. So Jesus himself says that he will not die.

The purpose of Roman crucifixion was slow, painful death. Jesus was placed on the cross at twelve noon. Mark 15:25 says that Jesus died at the third hour (3 o'clock) while Luke 23:43-44 says it was the sixth hour 6 o'clock) and John 19:14-16 says it was after the sixth hour. Mark 15:44 says that Pointius Pilate "marveled" that Jesus was already dead. Why? Because Pilate was expecting it to take much longer. Note that the only people who handled Jesus were Mary Magdalene and his two so-called "secret disciples" Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathe'a (Nicodemus is noticeably absent from all 26 books of the official New Testament). But Mary Magdalene went to Jesus's tomb after three days (or perhaps one day) to anoint his body. Why? Surely she knew that the human body goes stiff after three hours of death. After three days Jesus would be a crumbling and putrid corpse. She went there because she knew he'd be alive! She handled Jesus after removing him from the cross and saw that he had survived the crucifixion.

Deedat:

"(HOLY BIBLE) Mark 12:28

Now they [Jesus' followers] come to him concerning a Jewess who had seven husbands, according to a Jewish practice — if one man dies leaving no offspring behind, then the 2nd brother of the deceased husband takes her to wife, to give her his seed. But when he fails and dies, the 3rd takes her on; and so on and so on. In the case before Jesus, seven brothers had this one woman, one after another. All the seven brothers died, and in time, the woman also died. There was no problem while each was trying to fulfil his duty — it was ONE by ONE! But the question of the Jews was that, at the RESURRECTION, which one was going to have this woman, because they had all 'HAD' her here! The picture the Jews are trying to conjure up in Jesus' mind is that if the seven brothers are resurrected simultaneously at the RESURRECTION, and the woman also, then there will be a war in heaven among the seven brothers, all claiming the woman as his own wife, because they had 'all had her'. In short, which fellow will have this woman as his wife in heaven? In answer to that, Jesus says: 'Neither shall they die anymore' — meaning that the resurrected persons will be immortalised: needing no food, no shelter, no clothing, no sex, no rest. 'For they are equal unto the angels,' meaning that they will be ANGELISED, they will be SPIRITUALISED, they will become SPIRITUAL CREATURES, they will be SPIRITS! As regards himself, four chapters further on he says: 'A spirit has no flesh and bones, as you see me have' — I am NOT a spirit, I am NOT a ghost, I am NOT a spook, I am NOT RESURRECTED! I am the same living Jesus — ALIVE! [1]

'And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and feet.'

(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 24:40

1. Paul is more specific and succinct on this matter. He says in 1 Corinthians 15:35-46. 'But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?…so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption…It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual'."

After the so-called "resurrection," Jesus showed his followers his body, his wounds, and he even ate, not to prove that he was resurrected, but that he was alive. Jesus admits that a resurrected person is a spirit without a body. Jesus clearly had a body, therefore he was not resurrected.

What this adds up to

Consider what was revealed in the RSV: No "begotten," no ascension, and no trinity. Now consider the ample evidence within the New Testament that Jesus did not actually die on the cross (for tons of this evidence, see Deedat's Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction?). So...

Jesus was not the Son of God

Jesus was not the incarnation of God

And if Jesus did not actually die on the cross, Jesus was not even the Messiah.

This is why I have no fear of hell. Because if Jesus was not the Messiah, then not a single human being who has ever lived is saved. No one is going to heaven. Whatever savior that was promised to you has still yet to come. If you make the horrible mistake of ending this world yourselves, you're all going to hell. There will be no rapture.

The nature of man and woman.

Click the above link. Christianity states that all people on earth are sinners for a very flawed reason: they base "good" on an impossible standard. If the standard for good is godlike, then no human is good (because no human being is God). But in my life I have not encountered a single person I would consider to be evil. I look at babies and wonder about "original sin," how any infant can be capable of evil. Our minds are naturally creative. If it wasn't then we'd be extinct. If our nature was to destroy ourselves then we would have destroyed ourselves the moment we got the chance. As was stated in the musical Rent:

"The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation."

I may not accept the existence of a hereafter, but that does not condone evil. Some people need the idea of ultimate justice as an incentive to do good. So be it. But the fulfillment of that final book of the bible IS NOT GOOD. Mindless destruction never is.

One final note

I've quoted quite a lot from a Muslim Sheikh, so allow me state my stance on Islam. Indeed, on the whole Islam is more sound. Its holy text comes directly from God (or so they say) and is not "inspired" as the Christians say of their text. But remember where we stand in the universe, a tiny island out in the boondocks.

Shown above is a book of psychology. In it, Jaynes relates the history of the human mind. He goes to sources like the Bible and the Iliad for evidence. He explains his theory that the organ in between the two hemispheres of the brain that facilitates communication back and forth is recent in our evolution and that, in his view, when prophets thought they were hearing the voice of God, they were really just hearing one side of the brain trying to communicate with the other. This could very well be the case for all prophets, Mohammad included. So much for Islam.

The closing statement

"...they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."

Mathew 13:13

I couldn't have said it better myself.