Christianity:
The Debit Account
(This was first published by the National Secular Society, London in
1979)
IN I955 I GAVE TWO BROADCAST TALKS on Morals without
Religion, in whichI suggested that Scientific Humanism was the natural
successor to Christianity. The broadcasts caused some excitement: and
many Christians protested, with varying degrees of vehemence, that it
was a pity I did not
know more about the religion I had so irresponsibly attacked.I thought
there might be something in this. Up to the time of the broadcasts, I
had been interested in philosophical theism rather than in historical
Christianity, about which I knew no more than the average lay-man who
has had a nominally Christian education. So I decided to fill this gap
in my knowledge. In the last few years I have studied the Bible
diligently, and now, I suspect, know a good deal more about it than
the average vicar; and I have also read many books about the origins
and history of the Church. This reading has altered my view
profoundly.
At the time of the broadcasts, I held two assumptions that were common
among the more highbrow type of sceptic. These were: (i) that Jesus,
though he was deluded in believing himself to be the long-awaited
Jewish Messiah, was, nevertheless, a great moral teacher, and a man of
outstanding moral excellence, and (ii) that though Christianity is now
rapidly being outgrown, it was a great force for good in its day. In
the light of wider knowledge, both assumptions now seem to me to be
false. I now incline to the view that the conversion of Europe to
Christianity was one of the greatest disasters of history.
Historical
Christianity
Clerics frequently refer to
"the Christian message" of love and human brotherhood. But
there is nothing exclusively Christian about this message; it is basic
to modern Humanism, as it was to the pre-Christian Humanism of China,
Greece and Rome. In the sixth century B.C. Confucius propounded the
Golden Rule, and Lao-Tzu enjoined his followers to "requite
injuries with good deeds." And later the Stoics, among others,
emphatically proclaimed the brotherhood of man regardless of race or
nation. There is no ground whatever for the claim, so often made by
religious apologists, that these ideals are specifically Christian and
originated with Jesus.
What were specifically Christian were some less enlightened teachings,
which have done untold harm. Christians claim that organised
Christianity has been a great force for good, but this view can be
maintained on one assumption only: that everything good in the
Christian era is a result of Christianity, and that everything bad
happened in spite of it. But, as a matter of historical fact many of
the worst features of life in the ages of faith (and later) have
stemmed directly from the teaching of the Church. Outstanding among
these features are the doctrine of hell, intolerance and persecution,
anti-intellectualism, asceticism, otherworldliness, and the
condonation of slavery.
The hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably
caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of
natural human sympathy, than any religious belief in the history of
mankind. Yet this doctrine was unambiguously taught by Jesus.
"The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do
iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be
wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. Ch. 13)- "Then shall
he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire ... And these shall go away into everlasting
punishment" (Matt. Ch. 25). "He that shall blaspheme against
the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal
damnation" (Mark, Ch. 3).The Roman Catholic Church still teaches
the doctrine of eternal punishment, but the current tendency among
Protestants is to say that Jesus's
pronouncements on this subject were "symbolic." But no one
has yet answered the question why, if Jesus did not intend his
statements about hell to be taken literally, he made them in a form
that ensured that they would be taken literally. Why, in other
words, did he deliberately mislead his hearers? If he was God, he must
surely have been able to foresee what disastrous results would follow.
Intolerance
and Persecution
No other religion has such a
bloodstained record as Christianity. During the ages of faith the
Church argued, not illogically, that any degree of cruelty towards
sinners and heretics was justified, if there was a chance that it
could save them, or others, from the eternal torments of hell. Thus,
in the name of the religion of love, hundreds of thousands of people
were not merely killed but atrociously tortured in ways that make the
gas chambers of Belsen seem humane. Europe, also, was frequently
devastated by religious wars, which destroyed a far higher proportion
of the population than the global wars of the twentieth century. The
Thirty Year's War, for example, reduced the population of Germany by a
third.
Anti-Intellectualism
Jesus exhorted his followers to
"become as little children," and the Church
throughout history has extolled credulity, and feared and distrusted
the free intelligence. During the Dark Ages the Church was in control
of education, and for centuries scarcely anyone who was not a
potential priest learned to read or write. One of the most persistent
fallacies about the Christian Church is that it kept learning alive
during the Dark and Middle Ages. What the Church did was to keep
learning alive in the monasteries, while preventing the spread of
knowledge outside them. To quote W H. Lecky, "The period of
Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the
history of the human mind ... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as
sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most
enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the
education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities,
not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and
industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the
intellectual revival of Europe begin" (History of European
Morals, Ch. IV). Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth
century, however, nine-tenths of Christian Europe was illiterate.
Asceticism
and Otherworldliness
Jesus was a celibate, who appeared
to regard sexual love as displeasing to
God. "The children of this world marry, and are given in
marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that
world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given
in marriage" (Luke, Ch. 20). "There be eunuchs, which
have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake"
(Matt., Ch. 19). This tendency was even stronger in Paul. "It
is good for a man not to touch a woman ... But if they cannot contain,
let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn" (I
Con, Ch. 7). This attitude accounts in part for the strong neurotic
and masochistic strain in Christianity.
Jesus
believed that the Last Judgment was at hand: "Verily I say
unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the
Son of Man be come" (Matt. Ch. 10). "There be some
standing here that shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom" (Matt., Ch. ). "This
generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled" (Matt.,
Ch. 24). "The kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark, Ch.I).
Jesus's
moral teaching was therefore directed mainly towards getting believers
into heaven: he showed little concern for the affairs of this world.
Later, the Church ceased to believe that the end of the world was
imminent, but it still held that this life was no more than a
momentary prelude to eternity, and of little importance except as a
preparation for the life to come. Thus throughout most of its history
the Church has been indifferent to social progress and social reform.
It has encouraged its members to regard suffering and misery as part
of the inscrutable decrees of Providence; to be patient under wrong
and oppression; to accept evil instead of resisting it: all in the
certainty that things would be put right in the next world. To a
privileged minority this attitude has obvious advantages, in that it
helps to keep the unprivileged majority resigned to their lot, but it
has retarded human progress for centuries. The emancipation of slaves
and of women, and factory reform in the nineteenth century are three
progressive struggles which the laity waged themselves with little or
no support from the clergy.
Slavery
There is no justification for the
common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of
slavery. The Negro slave trade-a far more infamous practice than
slavery in the ancient world-was initiated, carried on and defended by
Christian men in Christian countries. To quote H. A. L. Fisher, "It
is a terrible commentary on Christian civilisation that the longest
period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action
of Spain and Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the
Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the
established religion of Europe" (History of Europe, Chap.
23).
The abolitionist movement took its impetus ... from the secular
humanitarianism of the Enlightenment. Many of the leading
abolitionists were unbelievers Condorcet ... in France, Abraham
Lincoln in America, Fox and Pitt in Great Britain. Christians like
William Wilberforce who actively opposed the slave trade were far from
typical: with the honourable exception of the Quakers, the attitude of
most of the Churches towards abolition was in America actively
hostile, and in Britain (to use Wilberforce's own words)
"shamefully lukewarm." The Churches, of course, had no
difficulty in citing scriptural authority for their attitude. The Old
Testament sanctions slavery (cf. Leviticus 25, 44-46): the New
Testament contains no condemnation of it: and St. Paul told slaves to
obey their masters
(Colossians, 3, 22). (The Greek word for slave, doulos, is wrongly
translated in the New Testament as "servant.")
The
Establishment
The indictment against
Christianity is formidable: and when Christians today grow indignant
about obscurantism, intolerance and ideological persecution in
Communist countries, they would do well to remember that the Church in
the ages of faith had a far worse record. This is not to deny that the
Church has also done some good; so, too, has Communism. But the
crucial fact, surely is that, as Voltaire remarked, men who believe
absurdities will commit atrocities. One of the best ways to improve
men's behaviour is to enlighten their minds: and today, against the
strong opposition of the Church and the Establishment, Scientific
Humanism is attempting to do just that.
Read also:-
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Jesus"
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