GodWars: The history of crimes against humanity by the cults of the Jealous Gods
“Blame the corruption on human failings, not the religion” source link:
You often hear the argument, when a Christian or Muslim commits a crime against humanity, that you cannot blame the religion for the acts of “some” corrupt individuals. All organizations will become corrupt, right? To an extent this is true. Even Buddhism’s history is filled with corrupt leaders who kept silent when political leaders started wars and mistreated their subjects (or, on the other hand, Buddhists who led violent popular rebellions against their emperors instead of seeking peaceful solutions). Any and all religions can be nailed with the charge, “you are more interested in your own power than helping people”.
But there is a limit beyond which this argument fails. Not all religions are equal when it comes to their record of atrocities and persecutions. The two major Jealous-God religions, Christianity and Islam, each has a history of CONSTANT warfare against other faiths—not just complicity in the usual territorial wars but an active role in causing wars. Both Christianity and Islam have a record of CONSTANT persecution of pagan religions and atheism—not just occasional, intermittent, politically-driven persecutions as happened in pagan societies but religiously-mandated oppression of “thought crimes” which has exterminated entire belief systems. When considering propaganda about how brave Christian missionaries were when they started preaching (backed up by galleons, then gunboats) in Africa or Islamic nations, imagine what would have happened if a group of African animists had landed in Europe in 600AD…or 1200AD…or 1500AD…or even 1800AD and tried to promote their religion?
It is clear that some ideologies actually cause more hatred and evil than can be explained by mere human greed. Saying that Christianity or Islam are generally peaceful and tolerant, only tainted by a few bad individuals is similar to saying that Communism is basically good, and all its crimes can be blamed on “wayward” or “fringe” individuals who were not “true Communists”. (Yes, Communist apologists actually say this). This is nonsense—Communism, at its core, is hateful and evil. Its foundation is class warfare combined with a hatred of anyone doing better than you. By rejecting the human desire to work for better individual conditions, and by also rejecting democracy for the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, Communism causes hate, violence, and tyranny. It is true that some, perhaps many, individual Marxists wanted to help people and saw themselves as liberators for a truly good cause. But overall, the only conclusion is that these are good people using a bad ideology for their own, good purposes (the exact opposite of the “don’t blame the ideology” argument). And nobody would argue that other ideologies, such as Racism or Nationalism, are “good”.
The same is true for the Jealous-God religions, Christianity and Islam. There are many good individuals and even good leaders who use portions of these teachings (heavily edited to remove the hateful parts) to help people and liberate the downtrodden. But the religions themselves are, at their core, hateful and violent. The idea that anyone who does not worship the correct god deserves to die and/or be tortured is the core belief of these two faiths, and this idea is pure hate. Jealous Gods who run concentration camps (hells) will have followers who run concentration camps. Jealous Gods who slaughter people will have followers who slaughter people. There is no mystery as to why century after century of Christian and Muslim dominance over much of the world has never led to peace, why the traditional religions are going extinct, why violence and war are as endemic as ever. Crusaders and Jihadists and Conquistadores and idol-smashers are the direct, natural result of these religions; peace and tolerance are the exception, and only are promoted by individuals who deviate from the texts and church doctrines and ignore much of their own religions.
The March of the Jealous God Religions
Christianity’s rise to power and those lovely dark ages
The history of the world leaves no doubt as to the hate and violence caused by the Jealous God ideologies. Just look at the maps of the old empires, then look at the distribution of the surviving faiths today. Christianity conquered all of Europe. Paganism was eliminated by force. Perhaps some of the Roman faiths deserved it for allowing the persecution of Christians, but that persecution was political and intermittent, while the Christian assault on pagans was religious, relentless, total, and continued until their extinction. Heretics and Jews fared little better. Even after the decline of Rome, Christian Franks attacked the Saxons, murdered those who would not convert; and Christians pursued Northern Crusades against the Prussians and then against the Lithuanians, and a crusade in France against the Cathar heretics, crusades far more successful than those against Islam. The Church outlawed any expression of any pagan faith all across Europe. Note that the date of “conversion” listed for each part of Europe is the date the KING was converted (or replaced by a rival who agreed to support Christianity). There is no question of what happened next: the ruler said that the people had to be Christian, and nobody could disobey the king and remain alive. How many martyrs for paganism were there, whose courage is forgotten because they were on the losing side? The witch-hunts and inquisitions were not the first ways in which Christians performed human sacrifice to appease their angry god; by that time very few actual (as opposed to presumed) pagans and witches remained in Europe.
Islam marches onto the scene
Before we discuss the age of Christian worldwide conquest, let us not forget the second of the expansionist religions, Islam. Upon its foundation, Islam rapidly conquered Christian and Zoroastrian territories. They alternated periods of “tolerance” of Christians and Jews (where the non-Muslims just had to pay higher taxes) with actual repression. Islam really did have a better record of tolerance than that of the Christian world (many “heretic” Christian churches did better under Muslim rule than they had under the opporession of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire; in Spain, the Jews were more free under Islam than the barbarian Christians that had been temporarily displaced). But this kind of tolerance only extended to other “people of the Book”. When Afghanistan and India and Central Asia were overrun by Islam’s armies, the Hindus and Buddhists were often exterminated. Hinduism survived in India due to sheer mass of population, which made Islamic rulers have to deal more rationally with its presence, but the less militant Buddhism went extinct in these areas (and in Indonesia when the Muslims took over there as well). When Muslims complain about the Christian crusades, they should be reminded that at the same time, Hindu temples and “idols” were being destroyed and Hindu people slaughtered by repeated Muslim invasions of India. Those Buddha statues smashed in the museums of Afghanistan and on the Bamiyan cliffs were the last remnant of that faith in the region (and had already been badly damaged by earlier Muslim fanatics than the Taliban)—the Buddhist people who one lived there had been eliminated long before.
Every religion is equally bad, right?
In contrast to the Jealous-Gods religions, let’s look at the early history of another major missionary religion—Buddhism. In every part of the world where Buddhism is influential, the religion arrived peacefully. India did not conquer Central Asia, India did not conquer China, China did not conquer Japan, Sri Lanka did not conquer Thailand. There were no crusades. In China, Buddhism shares the hearts and minds with Taoism; in Tibet, with an old faith called Bon; in Mongolia (where the Chinese sent Buddhist missionaries to make them more ‘peaceful’) with shamanism; in Japan, with Shinto; in parts of southeast Asia, Buddhism and Hinduism at one time coexisted. Of course there were tensions and debates and a struggle for official recognition that renewed when new dynasties or political leaders emerged. But there is an order of magnitude of difference in the problems caused by Buddhist corruption and the evils that have been inflicted upon the human race by the Jealous God religions.
The age of Imperialism: galleons and muskets
Whatever bloodshed has been caused by Islam from Timur to today, Christianity can match Islam’s violence and far surpass it in the last 500 years. The Americas were colonized, the most powerful native leaders often lured unarmed into meetings where they could be dishonorably murdered. Some of these societies certainly had bloodthirsty religions already–but not all, and the first ill-prepared starving European colonists often were helped out by their “heathen” neighbors before those natives were wiped out. Central and South America and the Philippines were conquered by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries arriving with the Bible and the sword. The Caribbean Islanders were exterminated. Slave-labor filled the galleons with gold. Where they ran out of natives to work to death, African slaves were imported to fill the labor gap. In most cases the destruction of native and slaves’ religions prevented effective resistance to colonialism. Only in Haiti, where elements of an African religion survived in secret behind Christian images, did slaves actually overthrow their masters (and first Catholics and now Protestants continue to try and exterminate the worship of African gods there). The Maya also tried to hide their gods behind saints, but evangelicals are targeting the survivors for one last cleansing push.
While the Americas were overrun and the fringes of Africa enslaved, the first missionary inroads were made in Asia. Indonesia like the Philippines was under assault, and Portuguese missionaries attacked Hindu and Muslim alike in India. Japan’s unifier-to-be Nobunaga violently crushed the power of the Buddhists (to the cheers of the missionaries) and favored Christianity, and it was the established religion under some Japanese feudal lords. Japan was well on its way towards enslavement. The arrogance of the Christians (and Catholic-Protestant rivalry) caused them to lose their power in the same way they had approved when it was done to the Buddhists. There were similar attempts to create Christian royal families in other Asian nations, still too strong for outright conquest. But advances in European warmaking technology soon made such maneuvering unnecessary. Gunboats and rifles opened Africa, India, Australia and the Pacific Islands, and most of East Asia to the missionaries, some of whom organized their own mercenary armies to support local leaders they hoped would be pro-Christian “new Constantines”.
The age of Imperialism: gunboats and machine guns
Between 1500 and 1900 there were few places where Christianity did not become the official faith by force. Africa’s coasts had been exploited for a while, but in the 1800’s the Europeans had started to penetrate into the interior regions. Every country took a share as the continent was divided up. India, divided against itself, was carved up by the English (who beat out the French and others). Even in China, Christians (most of whom converted to get bribes and business contracts) became the upper class, getting favors in the courts and stomping on their poor heathen neighbors who did not convert. Christian England actually started wars to be able to sell illegal drugs in China and undermine their society. Any protest or revolt against the Christian offenses and foreign domination was crushed by the arrival of a fleet of ironclads and an army of soldiers. The only reason China was not conquered outright was because none of the European powers would allow any of the others to be the first to do it. Greedy Catholic mercenaries, then the French Empire, intervened violently in Viet Nam (murdering thousands for every missionary detained or pro-Christian coup-plotter convicted) and eventually conquered it; a century later, Catholic oppression of Buddhists there undermined the South’s ability to become unified against the Communist takeover.
England’s colony the United States viewed expansion as its destiny and the original occupiers of the continent as pagan savages to be slaughtered or rounded up in concentration camps. The children of United States-conquered (and Canadian-, and Australian-) natives were forced into Christian schools where their original beliefs and culture were suppressed. The Tasmanian race was made extinct. The “Christian nation” of the United States was made that way by force, whether or not the founding fathers intended it to be a Christian-only territory (and just consider that they chose democracy, a purely pagan invention, over the divine rights of monarchy as the basis to found our nation on, and produced a constitution free of religion). The natives were forced to convert, if they survived the massacres. The slaves (from animist or Muslim Africa) were forced to give up their beliefs, if they survived the crossing. And during the time of rapid growth of the new nation through immigration, bigoted anti-Asian laws kept out what was predicted to be a flood of Chinese and Japanese immigrants. The United States might still be a 50% or more Christian nation even if it had been a tolerant society–demographics favored the Europeans–but it certainly would not be able to pretend that other faiths did not have a role to play, or that its future would not be shared by all.
Aftershocks
European Christianity of course had divided into warring churches, each nation suffering brutal divisions as Catholic and Protestant vied for power. The Jews of Europe were the victims of both; nothing that the Fascists did was original except for the poison. Jews had to live in ghettos and wear distinctive markings, were restricted but tolerated when they were useful to a local ruler and then left open to mass murder when a scapegoat was needed. Pogroms followed the Crusades and Inquisition; Fascism followed pogroms. Catholics blame Martin Luther and Protestants blame the Vatican for the origins of the Nazi evil (when they aren’t trying to pin it on paganism or the worship of godless science) but no matter what kind of pseudoscientific bullshit was used to condone it in Germany, the hatred of Jews was and is 100% Christian in origin and was a direct result of both Catholic and Protestant beliefs.
Colonialism lost favor after World War II, but its aftereffects are still with us today. Marxism, a hate-filled cult born over the failure of the corrupt churches to restrain greed and protect people from child labor and other forms of exploitation, turned out to be a blessing for Evangelicals. Communists took over struggling countries in the most divisive and bloodthirsty way; while Buddhism and Taoism were crushed in China and Mongolia and Cambodia, the Christians waited like vultures. The moment that Communism faded and the missionaries were let back in, they swooped in to convert as many as possible to try and finish the job of exterminating the Asian faiths that Mao and Pol Pot had started. [Note that the Russian Orthodox Church is at a similar disadvantage in trying to regain its traditional market share of the ex-Communist nation’s population, and has responded by trying to suppress the Protestant Evangelicals and Catholics who are trying to take advantage of the situation].
Other parts of the world remain in chaos and poverty after their conquerers left them without resources and also without their indigenous cultures to rebuild a new society. The aftershocks are still being felt in Africa, which had been split between the European powers in a “scramble” driven in part by the political influence of missionaries. In Uganda, Africa, Muslim fought Christian after they had beaten down the traditional pagan religion—then, upon Christian victory, the rival Catholic and Protestant factions turned machine guns against each other. In Nigeria and the Sudan, Muslim and Christian slaughter each other in competition for the conversion rights of the few remaining animists, whose own beliefs are forgotten, leaving Africans spiritually disconnected from their ancestors. Missionaries gloat over their success in wiping out paganism. So-called witches are still being burnt in modern Christian Africa. Africa is the evangelicals’ greatest success. It is also a humanitarian disaster.
Religious repression still happens today, on both a national scale (most world governments actively favor and promote Christianity) and a local level. In Indonesia, a “tolerant” Muslim country, paganism and polytheism and atheism are outlawed. Even Chinese Buddhists and Taoists and Confucians (those who survived the massacres caused by the Christian Dutch colonialists, then the Muslim dictators who followed) have to pretend their religions are “one-god” faiths. Those who follow traditional religions have no choice at all—they must “choose” either Christianity or Islam as their official faith. Naturally, this is a great opening for missionaries to teach the pagans what their “legal” faith says.
Christian missionaries especially are still advancing their cause by using continuous coercion on a local level. We often hear about the village in India or Indonesia or Madagascar or Nigeria that converts to Christianity and then burns all their old pagan items. How certain are you that 100% of the people living there wanted to do this? How many favor paganism but are too afraid to speak out against the destruction of their culture? As an example, while Buddhism may be prevalent in many parts of Asia, it always coexists with local religions and the pre-Buddhist beliefs. Without persecution or repression, there was no way for Buddhism to completely eliminate the competition, and in fact most Chinese and other East Asians are not “Buddhist” but mix those teachings with Taoism and Confucian ethics and ancestor worship and astrology. Buddhism and Hinduism mixed in ancient Indochina and Indonesia; the same kind of tolerant mixing of diverse ideas was the norm for most other societies including Greece and Rome before the advent of the “Jealous-God” cults. In normal human societies, tolerance is the norm unless a faith is used to organize political power (or gets a reputation that allows scapegoating). It is only in Christian and Islamic societies where a person with beliefs that involve no foreign power or political threat will still be murdered or tortured just for his or her thoughts. Even in the Christian world, people have a much harder time giving up their old beliefs than they do accepting a new god. In the Yucatan, Mayans mixed their old gods with Catholic saints (until the past few decades when the Protestants sought to eliminate the last vestiges of ‘paganism’). In Haiti and Brazil and Cuba, African gods were secretly maintained behind the images of saints despite centuries of repression by the Church. Islamic leaders in sub-Saharan Africa at first had to watch their faith mixed in with the hated pagan religions in the same way; in Indonesia Islam and Hinduism were layered in the minds of much of the public. The same trend is true for Christianity in Africa proper today. In each case it takes centuries of campaign after campaign by the Christian and Muslim leaders to wear down the power of the old beliefs and rituals.
For any group of people to give up a religion completely and replace it entirely with a new concept is a rare thing. Therefore, what should we make of these stories where “a whole village” converts? It’s really the story of a critical mass of people converting, due to bribes (“charity” schools or Bible-based reading lessons or even just a steel knife—which is how many Pacific Islanders said they knew the Europeans’ god provided better stuff then their own gods had) or a wish to associate with the modern and powerful Westerner, or a wish to be on top of the new order that would come once the Christians control the village politics. This critical mass (doesn’t even have to be 50% if they are loud and the non-Christians silent or afraid to resist) then are used by the missionary to establish a local culture of peer pressure and social penalties to keep the rest from trying to proclaim their own ideas or defend the traditional religion. The missionary (who probably loves having his ego inflated as he thinks of himself as a little Constantine or St. Patrick or Cortez) is then free to organize the bonfire that destroys the cultural implements and, more importantly, any chance that the old religion will ever be able to compete again. A few recalcitrant pagans may be beaten or told to be elsewhere, or just go missing, and the task is complete. Repeat for village after village, nation after nation, for centuries on end and you have the great triumph of Jesus over the competition.
This joyful celebration of repression even touches the lists of heroes and saints for these religions. The Christians are so proud of their victory over Roman paganism. But did 100% of the citizens of Roman Europe or Africa or the Middle-East convert peacefully? No! But they had no choice. The proudest moment in the Islamic origin story is the breaking of the “idols” of the pre-Islamic gods in Mecca. Did all of the Arabs want to join the new religion? No! But they had no choice. “They got what they deserved” may be one way to look at it, since in each case the pagan leaders attacked the believers of the new religion. But once those leaders were defeated, does the same argument apply to the ordinary citizens not involved in the initial struggle? And how about all the millions around the world who have been victimized since the writing of the Bible and the Koran? Recently, two Mexican saints were the subject of debate. They were natives living after the Spanish/Catholic conquest of their corner of Mexico who had witnessed their tribe trying to secretly hold a ceremony including their old beliefs. The two saints-to-be, probably looking for a reward or a higher position in the new order, informed the Church authorities, who punished the rest of the tribe. The natives then killed the two collaborators. In the eyes of the Church these two are heroes for risking their lives. But in reality they are the moral equivalent of Nazi collaborators and quislings, the kind of people who would tell if their neighbor was hiding a Jewish family after the German army passed by. This sort of collaboration was probably repeated over and over in every part of the world as the Christian imperialists marched through. The Communists didn’t have to invent their tactics for social oppression, they only had to copy the Church.
Today, most nations in the world are either 80-90% Christian or 80-90% Muslim. Such high percentages do not come naturally. They are the result of centuries of continuous crimes against humanity. There are many reasons why we should oppose this trend. These demographics do not just reflect a loss of culture or diversity. They also warn of a loss of ideas and thoughts, which are the engine that drives human moral and spiritual evolution. Even science benefits from having access to worldviews and ideas that are different from that of the established church. We are in danger of having a One World Religion—Christianity, or some alliance of “Abrahamic” Christianity and Islam—and of becoming a monoculture without intellectual vitality, moral improvement, political debate, or scientific insight.