Christianity is a religion, but it is also a collection of claims about the world we all live in, and that is the concerning aspect. When ex-Christians, humanists, and others speak out towards Christianity it is not done so in objection to religion or anyone’s personal beliefs, it’s only in objection to the claims made by Christianity.
If we are to take Christianity seriously it must be open to critique and criticism, just as anything else held to be factual. It must be treated with the same level of honesty as any other set of claims. Too often open discussion is discouraged by the desire to respect people’s beliefs or religion in general. But again, while Christianity may be a religion it is not the religious aspect of it that begs our attention.
We can all agree on the importance of distinguishing the difference between what is and isn’t factual. Everyone is entitled to their own personal beliefs but when people treat false claims as fact, it affects us all.
The most obvious reason to speak up against Christianity is for the sake of the individuals who follow it. As a Christian the thought of Christianity brings a great deal of happiness, if you are still convinced it’s claims are actually true. But even if there was nothing more than a possibility of Christianity being false, don’t we owe it to all Christians to alert them of this possibility?
When Christians do openly question and research their religion’s claims, they are filled with regret. Not because they learned that Christianity isn’t true, but because of how much of their lives were lost to it. The biggest regret is always that of not learning the truth sooner. It’s tragic for someone to be so emotionally invested in claims that are simply not true. No one deserves to waste their precious time on earth devoted to false promises of non existing rewards.
Sure, it is easy to point fingers at those who disagree with us, especially over political topics, and just assume they are evil people acting out of hate. However, in most cases of harm being brought upon others in the name of Christianity, these acts are not done out of hate. They are not simply “extreme Christian fundamentalists” trying to fulfill a hateful personal agenda.
In reality they are simply caring people trying to do what would be morally right based on their misunderstanding of reality. Our concept of reality is the foundation all of our decisions are based on. If that basis is skewed, so are our decisions and actions that are based upon it. A great deal of harm comes from simply making it socially acceptable to base real world decisions on Christianity’s claims. We may not all agree that Christianity is false, but we can all agree on the importance of distinguishing the difference between what is and isn’t true.
All major campaigns, in the US, against gay rights base their motives on the following 3 claims made by Christianity; that souls exist and that homosexuality is both an unnatural abomination and a sin (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). If you were led to believe that the Bible were true, wouldn’t you also be against anything that publicly encourages an act that will cause people an eternity of torment?
By discouraging homosexuality fundamentalists are convinced they’re helping homosexuals in the long run, and preventing others from also being at risk of sin. What is seen as an attack on equality is seen by fundamentalists as taking a stand against the social acceptance of a sin.
Aside from stripping people of their basic rights, the Bible’s demonization of homosexuality has led to hundreds of millions worldwide to be rejected by their families and the public. This has led gay & bisexual teens to depression and suicide, along with violent and even deadly hate crimes against them.
In reality, homosexuality is not a choice. No one chooses their sexual preference or who they are physically attracted to. Everyone’s sexual orientation is determined biologically through genetics and epigenetics.
In the first few weeks of development all fetuses are female, hence why we are all born with breast tissue and nipples. It is not until about week 6 that fetuses with the male Y chromosome form testis, which produce the hormone testosterone. About the 8th week is when the testosterone is released, which masculinizes the body including a part of the brain known as the Hypothalamus, which partially controls who we are sexually attracted to. The more the Hypothalamus is exposed to testosterone the more one is attracted to women.
Occasionally a male fetus only produces sufficient testosterone to masculinize the body but not the brain, or its brain does not absorb enough to make it fully heterosexual. The development process of a fetus is never 100% precise so homosexuality and bisexuality commonly results from these variations.
Our genes can also determine one’s sexual orientation. When one identical twin is gay the other is gay up to 70% of the time, showing that genetics can play a role in homosexuality. Epigenetics can determine one’s sexual orientation too. Epigenetics causes changes in the underlying DNA sequence without making a change to the DNA itself. That is how twins with identical DNA can still be born with differences such as sexual orientation.
The Bible doesn’t say to avoid hospitals but it does say anything one would go to a hospital for can be done just by praying. The most popular faith healing verse, Mark 16:17-18, was added to scripture much later in history. Regardless, the Bible clearly says ANYTHING you ask for through prayer will indeed happen (John 15:7 & Matthew 21:22). In John 14:12 we are told that anyone who has faith in Jesus will be able to perform all the miracles that he did, which includes his acts of healing, and even greater ones.
In reality, faith healing has never healed a person. Though when someone believes strongly enough that they are being cured, a rush of adrenaline will mask the pain. They can be conned into thinking they are healed, resulting in unattend medical conditions that only worsen over time. In many cases parents, who honestly believe in the word of God, rely on faith healing for their children. The parents don’t seek medical attention because they are convinced God is in fact healing their child, even shortly after they die from curable diseases.
To support Christianity is to support claims of false medical practice. Below are a few children who have died from treatable sickness because their parents put faith in the Bible’s claims.
Ian Lundman – age 11 – Minneapolis
Ian died of diabetes in 1989 because his mother and stepfather had religious beliefs against medical care. They retained a Christian Science practitioner for spiritual treatment of Ian’s illness. The practitioner billed them $446 for his useless prayers.
Matthew Swan – age 16 months – Detroit, Michigan
Matthew died of spinal meningitis in 1977 because his parents, Doug and Rita Swan, retained Christian Science practitioners for spiritual treatments instead using antibiotic treatment that would have saved his life. The practitioners repeatedly said they were healing Matthew but no healing occurred.
Amy Hermanson – age 7 – Sarasota, Florida
Amy died in 1986 of diabetes because her Christian mother refused to take her to a doctor for religious reasons. Amy was talented little girl, she took piano, violin, harp, and art lessons and also excelled in academic subjects.
Robyn Twitchell – age 2 – Massachusetts
Robyn died In 1986 of peritonitis and a twisted bowel after a five-day illness because his parents Ginger and David insisted on Christian Science treatment instead of medical treatment. Neighbors closed their bedroom window so they would not hear the boy’s screams.
Andrew Wantland – age 12 – LaHabra, California
Andrew died of untreated diabetes in 1992. His mother who lived in Philadelphia had joint custody and wanted medical care provided for her children. Andrew’s father did not inform the mother her son was ill or that he hired a Christian Science practitioner as a faith healer instead seeking proper medical care.
Harrison Johnson – age 2 – Tampa, Florida
In 1998 Harrison Johnson was stung 432 times by wasps. Not until after 7 hours of praying with fellow church members did his parents call for medical help, despite alarming symptoms and being unresponsive for 30 to 45 minutes. Six minutes after the 911 call, the EMT’s arrived to find the toddler without a pulse and not breathing.
Despite false claims of success faith healing has never been proven to work. There have been situations where, after praying, a patient gets well even though the doctor said it would be impossible. But the same has happened when people didn’t pray. Tragically the complete opposite happens and with or without prayer the patient takes a fatal turn for the worse. Such situations are only proof that even doctors can be mistaken and wrong. Others have heard stories of stories about blind people being able to see after the aid of faith healing but there is never basic evidence to back such stories. Simple documentation like before and after photos of the physical changes in the structure of the patient’s eye would serve as solid proof.
In documentary titled “Miracles for Sale” Darren Brown shows how easy it is to make any actor a faith healer. With only six months of training Darren turned a regular person into a convincing faith healer. The volunteer was able to convince 100% of the approached patients in the streets of Texas that they were actually healed and free of their pains.
Blurring the line between reality and fantasy has led to fatal outcomes. When people credit the voices in their heads, unfiltered thoughts, to a higher power such as “God” their rational judgment is removed from the picture. This delusion becomes especially dangerous when people are told not to question the voices in their head, even when it says to kill your own child like in the story of Abraham and Isaac or Jephthah and his daughter.
The Bible’s claims about the existence of souls, the ability to reside in a heaven upon one’s death, and the ability to be possessed by evil spirits have all led to the murder of innocents. Below are four examples of deaths caused by blurring the line between reality and Bible based myths.
CHILLING security footage shows the moment a deranged mum held a gun to her son’s head at a shooting range before pulling the trigger. The woman killed him before turning the gun on herself. Marie Moore, who thought she was the Anti-Christ, took her 20-year-old son Mitchell to the Shoot Straight range in Casselberry, Florida, for what he thought was an afternoon’s firing practice, the Daily Mail reports. But as he concentrated on the target in front of him, his 44-year-old mother picked up a gun, pointed it at the back of his head and murdered him at point-blank range. Mitchell slumped to the floor dead as his mother stepped back, placed the gun in her mouth and again pulled the trigger. She died a short time later in hospital.
‘I’m so sorry. I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell,’ she wrote in a suicide note.
Former pastor Blair Donnelly, 48, stabbed his daughter, Stephanie, 16, to death in the family home. A hush has fallen over Kitimat after a local dad was deemed not criminally responsible for stabbing his teenage daughter to death in the family home. “No one’s talking about it – it’s just too shocking, too horrific. A child is the most precious thing you have,” said Kitimat Coun. Joanne Monaghan Thursday night. Monaghan was reacting to a ruling by Supreme Court Judge Harvey Groberman on Wednesday that Blair Donnelly, 48, was in a psychotic state when he stabbed his daughter Stephanie, 16, to death.
In a jailhouse interview, 33-year-old Joseph Hagerman told 13NEWS he knew what he was doing when he decapitated his five-year old son, Joshua. Hagerman was arraigned just before noon Wednesday morning. When asked by the judge, he said he understood he was being charged with murdering his son and wounding his wife. He asked for a lawyer to be appointed to his case. The judge set a bond hearing for Thursday at 9:00 a.m. In the Tuesday night interview, Hagerman made numerous biblical references about the end times and admitted to cutting off his son’s head to save him from the anti-Christ. Joseph Hagerman told 13NEWS that he and his family are very religious. He said his son had recently been communicating to him that the anti-Christ was going to kill him, though he did not say it directly.
TYLER, Texas – A woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons was acquitted of all charges by reason of insanity Saturday after a jury determined she did not know right from wrong during the killings. A jury found that Deanna Laney was legally insane May 9 when she killed her two older sons, ages 6 and 8, in the front yard and left the youngest, now 2, maimed in his crib. Laney, 39, would have received an automatic life sentence had she been convicted of capital murder…
…Psychiatrists testified that Laney believed she was divinely chosen by God – just as Mary was chosen to bear Christ – to kill her children as a test of faith and then serve as a witness after the world ended. In a videotape played at her trial, Laney said she saw her youngest son play with a spear, hold a rock and squeeze a frog, and took them all as signs from God that she should kill her children.
Almost all “pro-life” groups base their decisions on Biblical claims about life, instead of on an understand of life. The Bible claims that a “soul” actually exists, leading many to think consciousness could possibly exist before the brain starts to develop and that a soul is also at risk of being aborted. Since we don’t know when during development this soul is supposedly inserted, since it doesn’t actually exist, believers try to play it safe and take a stand against abortion all together.
Aside from unwanted births, abortions also protect women from a variety of health conditions. Sometimes abortion is the only way to save a woman’s life from preeclampsia, a pregnancy related form of high blood pressure that can lead to convulsions, failure of organ systems, coma, or death. Certain other conditions, such as severe diabetes, heart disease, or trauma from car accidents, may also require abortion to save a woman’s life. Termination of pregnancy is also essential to save the life of a woman with an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy.
Some anti-choice propaganda falsely claim, as a scare-tactic, having an abortion increases a woman’s risk of cancer. In reality, pregnancy is what increases a woman’s risk of having cancer, and studies have shown that abortions are sometimes necessary to avoid being at risk of cancer.
If one actually takes the time to study life’s development process and learn about abortions, before making decisions about it, they would know that human lives are NOT being aborted.
Life does not start at conception, it starts long before conception. Every sperm and every cell is a living organism, with their own life spans and the ability to respond to stimuli. “Human life” however does not start until long after conception, but what exactly counts as human life? Is the biological organism being halted during an abortion considered human?
90% of all abortions occur during the first trimester, the first 13 weeks of development, yet significant brain development does not occur until week 20. The embryos being aborted are not even conscious beings and don’t have the ability to consciously react to its surrounding environment. One might argue, “but it has the potential become a human” but that is true for the embryos of all living organisms. Since all organisms start off as a near identical cluster of cells they all have the potential to develop into any animal. What decides the final outcome is the blueprints, the DNA inside the cells which determine how the cells form. Despite anti-choice propaganda the embryo of humans does not have all of its genes at conception. The DNA blueprint is generated progressively, by interactions with the environment and by complex internal negotiations within an increasing complex embryo.
In the early stages of development the embryo of a human is not even on a direct path towards a fully developed human baby. Since our DNA still contains all of instructions from our evolutionary ancestors the embryo goes through many of the early development stages of other animals before heading in the direction of human development. Before the embryo develops anything that resembles a human face it first develops a tail only to later be removed when a newer gene kicks in to guided the development in a new direction. Even with most of the blueprints written out and some of the parts in place an embryo is no more a human life than a door is a mansion or a pigment is a painting.
15% of all pregnancies naturally end in spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, without the woman even knowing they were pregnant. Sometimes the pregnancy will only last a few weeks and the women may think the spontaneous abortions is just her menses. 25% of all women will have a natural spontaneous abortion in their life.
This life, however short, is a beautiful window of opportunity we should value and be grateful for. Claims of the Biblical Heaven make people look forward to the ending of this life. According to recent polls, 44% of Americans believe the world will be destroyed in their lifetime and eagerly await the end times instead of working together to prevent it. This should terrify any life appreciating person.
Not everyone is just sitting back and waiting for the end to come. In October of 2013, the belief in a Biblical Heaven resulted in a 12-year-old girl hanging herself in her own bedroom. She left behind a note saying, “Dear Mum. Please don’t be sad. I just miss daddy so much, I want to see him again.” In April of 2009 security footage captured the shooting of 20-year-old Mitchell More by his mother at a shooting range. As Mitchell’s body dropped to the floor his mother placed the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger again. She left behind a suicide note stating, “I’m so sorry. I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell.” These may be just two examples but they clearly demonstrate what can happen when people take false claims seriously.
Children and even adults are not getting proper educations because evidence-based education is being censored or replaced by Bible-based “alternatives” in churches, private schools, and occasionally public schools. Christianity encourages dogmatic faith, the idea that their claims must be believed to be true no matter what. This is the polar opposite of honesty. Education can only exist when people are humble, willing to put aside the assumption that they are right. Education will always be hindered when honesty is substituted with faith.
In South Africa, 5.3 million people suffer from HIV because the Catholic Church convinces them that death is better than using a condom, since the Bible condemns the “wasting of seeds.” Around the world religion is the leading cause of division, segregating and labeling people from birth. In the US religious “Blue Laws” tell others what they can and cannot buy, sell, be fired for, or do on certain days based on the Bible. Many Christian organizations, such as Regent and Liberty “universities”, wish to take this one step further. They focus on training “Christian soldiers” for positions in courthouses and government to force scripture into law.
In Orania Africa a white Christian cult is training for racial genocide, believing it is what lead them to Heaven. If you think this sounds “un-Christ-like” you may want to double check what the Bible says, it regularly teaches violence against non-Christians. Besides, if you honestly thought the claims of Christianity were true, wouldn’t you see anyone standing in the way of people being “saved” as a threat to society?
False claims like dogs being color blind, bats being blind, or that cow tipping is a thing have little to no impact on society. The false claims of Christianity on the other hand have a massive impact on society, causing much more harm than good. If you make it socially acceptable for people to treat Christianity as a valid source of truth then you are directly supporting all the harm that stems from doing so. You are what the mafia calls, an enabler.