Bits and Bobs Page II
Of which some are Strange But True...
In the year 415, Christian monks who considered her a pagan, beat the woman scientist Hypatia, head of the legendary Alexandria library, to death. The leader of the monks, Cyril, was canonized a saint.
In 1553, the physician Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of blood, was burned alive in John Calvin's Geneva for doubting the Trinity.
Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the Vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). Priests often sprinkled his troops with holy water. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church to blindly follow all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.
The years 1844, 1873, 1914, 1915, 1925, 1941 and 1975 were predicted to be the end of the world by Jehovah's' Witnesses. As is the year 2000.
I can't prove that the Christian God does not exist. On the other hand, Christians can not prove that Hubert the invisible five hundred-foot tall, purple beaver God does not exist either.
Why does the christian church use Sunday as their day of rest and worship? I will take this opportunity to remind them to read their own bibles, from page 1 of Genesis to the last page of Revelations nowhere does it say that the Sabbath be changed from the Hebrew Saturday Sabbath. Needless to say their Sabbath day was instituted as a direct order from their god.
Why are there no independently verifiable miracles nowadays? And how come those piddling little miracles that are reported assume no significance whatsoever? I mean, the face of Christ embedded on a tortilla in New Mexico, wow.
Pope Sixtus IV, who built the Sistine Chapel, licensed the brothels of Rome, bringing himself an extra income of 30,000 ducats a year.
Pope Alexander VI had ten illegitimate children, and surely broke some kind of record sleeping with three generations - his mother, his mistress, and their daughter (the infamous Lucrezia Borgia). But the most influential popes, notably Gregory the Great, followed Augustine's lead in declaring all sex, for whatever reason, a sin.
The Immaculate Conception of Mary was not decreed until 1858, contradicting the teachings of a number of earlier popes.
How come Adam and Eve didn't start a tribe of inbred blithering idiots? The same can be said of Noah and his offspring after the flood.
Here are three dumb laws that still remain on the statue books in England:
In Hereford you can shoot a Welsh person all day, but only on Sunday, with a Longbow, in the Cathedral Close.
If you are in York in sight of a Scotsman, it is still legal to shoot him with a bow and arrow, except on Sundays.
Throughout the whole of England it is illegal to eat mince pies on the 25th of December.
In the Bible, words having to do with killing significantly outnumber words having to do with love.
Why does the bible trace the line of Jesus back through to David - via Joseph? Joseph wasn't Jesus' father!
Islamic religious law decrees that thieves shall have their hands or feet chopped off, and unmarried lovers shall be killed. In the Sudan in 1983 and 1984, 66 thieves were axed in public. A moderate Muslim leader, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was hanged for heresy in 1985 because he opposed these amputations. In Saudi Arabia a teen-age princess and her lover were executed in public in 1977. In Pakistan in 1987, a 25-year-old carpenter's daughter was sentenced to be stoned to death for engaging in unmarried sex. In the United Arab Emirates in 1984, a cook and a maid were sentenced to stoning for adultery -- but, as a show of mercy, the execution was postponed until after the maid's baby was born.
In 1983 in Darkley, Northern Ireland, Catholic terrorists with automatic weapons burst into a Protestant church on a Sunday morning and opened fire, killing three worshipers and wounding seven. It was just one of hundreds of Catholic-Protestant ambushes that have taken 2,600 lives in Ulster since age-old religious hostility turned violent again in 1969.
America is the most 'religious' of the world's industrialized nations, and yet is the most violent nation in the world.
In January 1993 religious leaders in Somalia sentenced five women to be stoned to death for adultery. Worshippers killed the women after evening prayers. Cheering onlookers videotaped the execution. United Nations observers who tried to save the women were driven off.
February 24th 2000 - Church steward Anthony Phillips, 43, of Wolverhampton, England was jailed for life. He was found guilty of murdering his neighbour Lorraine Howell, 34. He beheaded her with an axe "to do God's way" after discovering that she had given birth to a baby girl fathered by his then 16-year-old son Jamie. The presiding judge said that Phillips, who was described in court as 'a devout Christian', had "destroyed the lives of two families".
The following is taken from the readers book review section on amazon.co.uk. It is from a UK reader concerning the book 'The Jesus Mysteries' by Gandy and Freke:
"Compelling reading for the open minded. The copy of this book that I requested Amazon to send my (born again) mother-in-law was taken to her church and burnt. A sure sign that this book addresses the questions that Christianity doesn't want raised."
Pope Pius V, as Grand Inquisitor, sent soldiers to kill 2,000 Waldensians in southern Italy. Upon becoming pope, he dispatched troops against Huguenots in France, and told the commander to execute all prisoners. Pius also launched the final crusade against Islam, sending a fleet against Muslims in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. And he intensified the Inquisition against suspected heretics. Pius later was canonized a saint.
If the ancient Jewish Rabbi Jesus Christ really did exist, and was the son of God, he would have known everything that was due to befall the human race. Then why on earth didn't he in any of the four gospels, warn mankind against all the evil that would be perpetrated in his name in the next 2000 years?
"Religion is about as much use as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest" - Martin J Burn - 2000
© Copyright Martin J Burn 2000
