Do we really NEED all the diseases in the world that God designed to kill children and crops and cause sorrow and starvation galore?

Smallpox - Do we really NEED all the diseases in the world that God designed?

Or should we mourn the loss of Godʼs carefully designed banquet of diseases, disasters, starvation and disfigurement that God bestowed on humans for almost all of human history? Right up till the late 1800s about half of all children died before reaching the age of eight. And about half of all fertilized human egg cells (called zygotes) either pass out of the body naturally spontaneously without implanting or they perish in the fallopian tubes or uterus naturally. And even after the zygote stage a percentage of embryos and fetuses perish naturally spontaneously (also look up “vanishing twin syndrome” where one twin is absorbed by the other or by the uterine walls—something we hadnʼt noticed until ultra-sound was invented), and women used to perish in childbirth far more often in the past than now. So it looks like modern medicine and engineering is denying us a bounteous blessing of natural suffering that God bestowed on our ancestors for nearly a million years. Yet I bet there were Christians in the past who defended not only the pain and deadliness of childbirth, but even for small pox, malaria, and TB—all of which killed hundreds of millions in their heyday, and continue to kill many today. Though other Christians didnʼt defend such horrors but applauded them by preaching that everyone deserved such painful temporal earthly horrors, or worse—deserved horrific eternal pains—so as to try and induce repentance and increase church membership. Ingenious ad hoc, post hoc, reasoning in both cases. At best one is left with more questions than definitive answers.

Speaking of alleviating Godʼs well designed means of natural suffering, click on Maurice Hilleman and Norman Borlaug, and also, “Miracles” Performed by the Secular Saints of Johns Hopkins. And click here for much more on the problem of pain.

Every animal seems to be able to sense it is in danger, pain, and struggles to escape, even animals with the smallest brains and least number of neurons. While brainless animals like amoeba, can detect, pursue and trap prey by sticking out their pseudopods. Now compare the human brain which is not a single-celled organism like the amoeba but a multi-cellular organ with approximately 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion electro-chemical connections between them--no wonder we react to dangers, pains, and deathly imaginings. Even without immediate threats such imaginings (or memories of past dangers or pains) can cause humans to suffer panic attacks throughout their lives and/or strongly alter their behavior.

Isaiah 53 not a prophecy of Jesus

Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 is not a prophecy of Jesus, unless you ignore its original context and only focus on the potential ‘hits’ and ignore the clear ‘misses,’ using a hazy ‘pesher’ approach to its interpretation.

The trouble for Evangelical apologists is that there are no clear ‘dying/resurrected Messiah’ passages in the OT. And Isa. 53 is only advantageous to Christian apologists if they pick and choose which parts of it to emphasize and which to de-emphasize. For instance:

  1. Was Jesus “despised [and] shunned by men?” According to Luke 4:15, he taught in the synagogue and everyone praised him. And huge crowds supposedly followed him, and he was described as making a ‘Triumphal Entry’ into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:8-11; John 12:12-13,17-19).

  2. Was Jesus ‘familiar with disease’ and ‘stricken by God’ (where the Hebrew word for ‘stricken’ is one that is used in the Hebrew Scriptures to stand only for leprosy as at Leviticus 13:3,9,20 and 2 Kings 15:5).

  3. Was Jesus silent before his accusers? In each of the four gospels Jesus opened his mouth and said something before his accusers, such as “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Also, Jesus is accused of many things throughout the Gospels, like being a drunkard or possessed or breaking the law, or committing blasphemy and we can read his defense in each case, so Jesus had plenty of words for his accusers throughout his life per the Gospels. Christians read into the text that these were formal accusations as at a trial, but the text in Isaiah says no such thing, and as already stated, Jesus was not silent at his trial either, but is depicted as pronouncing counter judgment on his accusers by declaring that they would see the Son of Man coming soon.

  4. Was Jesusʼ “grave set among the wicked, and with the rich, in his death.” According to some Gospel passages there were no other bodies in the tomb in which Jesusʼ body was placed. So his grave was with himself, not with the wicked or with the rich. (“Among the wicked and with the rich” in Isa. 53 might also refer to two equally notorious groups if this is a Hebrew poetic parallelism). Nor does this passage say anything about a rich man providing a place for the servant. Christians read Gospel stories into such vague statements. (And perhaps the earliest Gospel author invented his story, adding “two bandits” on either side of Jesus on the cross, and having a man bury Jesus in “a tomb hewn of rock”—a tomb only a rich person could afford so that his Jesus story deliberately echoed the passage in Isaiah?)

  5. Was Jesus crushed by disease? “the Lord chose to crush him by disease, that if he made himself an offering for guilt, he might see offspring and have long life…” Did Jesus see any offspring, or have a long life?

  6. “Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.” Not sure how that applies to Jesus.

  7. Does Isaiah 53 mention the Messiah? Verse 1 does not actually say that the servantʼs message would not be believed, but merely asks, “Who can believe what we have heard?” There seems to be no prophecy there at all. Nor is there any indication that the servant would be arrested as a criminal or scourged or crucified with criminals or make intercession for his persecutors. None of that is in there. Verse 6 does say, “the Lord visited upon him the guilt of us all,” but there are other interpretations of that than the Christian one.

  8. There is a Judaic interpretation of Isaiah 53 that seems plausible. The suffering servant is the nation of Israel which is represented by King Uzziah, who was its king in Isaiahʼs time and who died of leprosy. According to Shmuel Golding, Isaiahʼs message may have been: “Here is your leprous king, who is in type suffering under Godʼs hand for you the backslidden servant nation of Israel” (which explains verse 6). Uzziah was taken away from the royal palace because of his affliction as a leper and spent his remaining years in isolation, which fits verse 8. Golding says the following:

    Israel is portrayed as a suffering servant on account of its anointed leader being stricken with leprosy. Israel, like the leper, is a suffering servant of God. Both have suffered humiliation at the hand of their fellowmen: the leper because of his unsightly appearance; Israel through its defeat at the hands of the Babylonians. The gist of the message is that Israel like the leper has suffered, but nevertheless will retain its identity in the form of the exiled Jewish people and that they will prosper in this form. [Shmuel Golding, The Light of Reason, volume II (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics, 1989), p. 36.]

    This interpretation of Isaiah 53 seems preferable to the Christian one because it does not suffer from drawbacks (1)-(6) mentioned above. It would also better explain the many changes of tense that occur in the chapter. And Israel is indeed referred to as ‘Godʼs servant’ (e.g., at Isa 49:3). However, the given interpretation does not make the chapter into a prophecy so much as an explanation of Israelʼs situation at around the time of Isaiah. At the very least, it shows, I think, that Isaiah 53 is not a clear example of a fulfilled prophecy (or set of fulfilled prophecies) in the Bible. So it is not any good support for premise (1) of the Argument from the Bible.

    Also, per Ehrman, Many readers fail to consider the verb tenses in these passages in Isa 53. They do not indicate that someone will come along at a later time and suffer in the future. They are talking about past suffering. The Servant has already suffered — although he “will be” vindicated.

Bart Ehrmanʼs Questions on Isaiah 53

Christians thought that Jesus was the messiah, and they knew that he had been crucified. And so they developed the idea that the messiah was supposed to be crucified. (And they started to appeal to non-messianic texts such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 in support of their views.)… Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), almost universally thought by scholars to be written by a different author from chapters 1-39 (themselves written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th c. BCE). Second Isaiah was writing after the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem (including the temple) in 586 BCE, while the leaders of the people and many of the elite had been taken into exile in Babylon, in what is known as the Babylonian Captivity… Several important points concerning Isaiah 53:

  1. It is to be remembered that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible are not predicting things that are to happen hundreds of years in advance; they are speaking to their own contexts and delivering a message for their own people to hear, about their own immediate futures;
  2. In this case, the author is not predicting that someone will suffer in the future for other peopleʼs sins at all. Many readers fail to consider the verb tenses in these passages. They do not indicate that someone will come along at a later time and suffer in the future. They are talking about past suffering. The Servant has already suffered — although he “will be” vindicated. And so this not about a future suffering messiah.
  3. In fact, it is not about the messiah at all. This is a point frequently overlooked in discussions of the passage. If you will look, you will notice that the term messiah never occurs in the passage. This is not predicting what the messiah will be.
  4. If the passage is not referring to the messiah, and is not referring to someone in the future who is going to suffer — who is it talking about? Here there really should be very little ambiguity. As I mentioned, this particular passage — Isaiah 53 — is one of four servant songs of Second Isaiah. And so the question is, who does Second Isaiah himself indicate that the servant is? A careful reading of the passages makes the identification quite clear: “But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen” (44:1); “Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant” (44:21); “And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified’” (49:3).

    The book of Second Isaiah itself indicates who the Servant of the Lord is. It is Israel, Godʼs people. In Isaiah 53, when the author describes the servantʼs past sufferings, he is talking about the sufferings they have experienced by being destroyed by the Babylonians. This is a suffering that has come about because of sins. But the suffering will be vindicated, because God will now restore Israel and bring them back to the land and enter into a new relationship with them.

    It may be fairly objected that the Servant is said to suffer for “our” sins, not “his” sins. Scholars have resolved that problem in a number of ways. It may be that the author is thinking that the portion of the people taken into exile have suffered for the sins of those in the land — some of them suffering for the sins of all. Those who have been taken into captivity have suffered displacement, loss, and exile for the sake of everyone else. But now the servant — Israel — will be exalted and restored to a close relationship with God — and be used by him to bring about justice throughout the earth.

    There may be problems with this interpretation — as there always are with every interpretation! — but the facts remain that the suffering servant is never described as the messiah, his suffering is portrayed as past instead of future, and he is explicitly identified on several occasions as “Israel.”

What Does Isaiah 53 Mean? How Best To Interpret it? Bibliography & Links to Online Sources

The “Servant of the Lord” in Isaiah: General Bibliography [Last updated 2015-05-18] click here.

Who Is the Servant of the Lord?: Jewish and Christian Interpretations on Isaiah 53 from Antiquity to the Middle Ages by Antti Laato, 2013, in-depth review by Alphonso Groenewald, click here.

“Kingship and Servanthood in the Book of Isaiah” by Ulrich Berges from a highly acclaimed volume published in 2014, The Book of Isaiah: Enduring Questions Answered Anew by Richard J. Bautch (Ed.), J. Todd Hibbard (Ed.), click here to read part of the article.

“For fundamentalists only: Isaiah 53 in context,” click here

Award winning Christian seminarian leaves the fold after examining the so-called Old Testament “Prophecies of Jesus” in detail: George Bethune English, The Grounds of Christianity Examined. For a bit of his story click here. For his view of Isaiah 53, click here and start reading at the paragraph beginning, “The next prophecy proposed to be considered, is the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah, consisting of part of the 52nd, and the whole of the 53rd chapter…”

Rabbi Tovia Singer (a conservative Jew who agrees that Scripture is inspired) defends Judaism against the Christian missionary selective quotation approach to the Hebrew Bible. Also does debates, and has recently re-edited his encyclopedic work that responds to numerous claims made by Christian missionaries, click here.

Fiddler Zvi disputes the Christian use of OT passages, including Isaiah 53, in an informative and entertaining fashion, click here.

Gerald Sigal, Isaiah 53: Who is the Servant? 307 pages, but a summary can be read for free by clicking here.

Uri Yosef, Counter Missionary Articles and Lessons, The Jewish Home. Click here then scroll down and click on the links to Identifying the “Suffering Servant.”

David Berger and Michael Wyschogrod, Jews & Jewish Christianity, a shorter work that discusses the use of Old Testament passages by Christians. Available for free along with many other pro-Jewish and anti-Christian missionary works, click here.

Rabbi Moshe Shulman, Judaismʼs Answer features many articles on Isaiah 53

Charles C. Hennell, An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity, 2d ed. (London: T. Allman, 1841), ch. 13, “On the Prophecies of Isaiah,” click here. See also, ch. 12, “On the Prophecies,” and ch. 14, “On the Prophecies of Daniel,” pp. 325-403

Michael Arnheim, Is Christianity True?, 1984, ch 6, “Fulfillment of Prophecy?”

Dewey M. Beegle, Prophecy and Prediction, 1978. An Evangelical Bible scholar and translator whose book on prophecy was composed in reply to various conservative views of Old Testament prophecy. Not available to read online, but copies can be obtained at oneʼs local library via inter-library loan. Info for Amazon purchase, click here. Beegleʼs testimony is also featured in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.

Christians or Non-Christians Who Suffer Depression or Attempt Suicide. What We All Have In Common.

Christians or Non-Christians Who Suffer Depression

Duke University Medical Centerʼs Epidemiologic Catchment Area survey (Meador, Koenig, Hughes, Turnbull & George, 1992) examined the relationship between religious affiliation and major depression. The six-month prevalence of major depression among Pentecostals was 5.4 percent compared to 1.7 percent for the entire sample.


Suicide occurs among Christians at essentially the same rate as non-Christians… Suicide kills a disproportionate number of young people and the elderly, and it has become increasingly prevalent among returning veterans [many of whom are Christians]. More active duty soldiers now die from suicide than from combat. A 2012 Dept. of Veterans Affairs study found that 22 veterans on average kill themselves each day, totaling more than 8,000 a year. Al Hsu, “When Suicide Strikes in the Body of Christ,” Christianity Today [online, April 9, 2013] Hsu is the author of Grieving a Suicide: A Loved Oneʼs Search for Comfort, Answers and Hope (InterVarsity Press, 2002)


Jarrid Wilson, cofounder of Anthem of Hope a Christian mental health organization, committed suicide at the age of thirty (died September 9, 2019). He was a graduate of Liberty University and Hope International University, pastor at Harvest Christian Fellowship--a megachurch in Riverside California, and author of several books, including, 30 Words: A Devotional for the Rest of Us; Jesus Swagger: Break Free from Poser Christianity; Wondrous Pursuit: Daily Encounters with an Almighty God; Love is Oxygen: How God Can Give You Life and Change Your World. On the day of his suicide Jarrid had officiated at another Christian's funeral and tweeted this:

"Officiating a funeral for a Jesus-loving woman who took her own life today. Your prayers are greatly appreciated for the family."

He died a day before World Suicide Prevention Day.


Daughter of Pastor Frank Page (who served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2006 to 2008) ended her life in 2009. The tragedy was kept quiet. For years, Page did not share the painful details of Melissaʼs death, fearing that some Christians might speak ill of her if they knew. Mental illness and suicide were taboo topics for many churches, seen as a kind of spiritual failure.


The son of the influential minister who wrote the mega-bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life, committed suicide. “Matthew Warren, Son of Influential Minister, Dies at 27” by Ravi Somaiya, New York Times, April 6, 2013

(In comparison neither of the daughters of the apostate author of a book titled, The Reason Driven Life—which was written in response to The Purpose Driven Life—have committed suicide. Nor did the daughters of Americaʼs Great Agnostic, Robert G. Ingersoll. Though some lovely Christians did try and spread the rumor that Ingersollʼs son had committed suicide until it was pointed out by Ingersoll that he never had a son. On the other hand, it must be admitted there have been cases of depression and suicide in the Darwin family tree, admittedly a fairly large tree by this day and age.)


Baptists in the Carolinas are soul searching after a spate of suicides and suicide attempts by pastors. In addition to the September suicide of David Treadway, two others in North Carolina attempted suicide, and three in South Carolina succeeded, all in the last four years.

Pastors: Mental Illness and Suicide — Rev. Teddy Parker Jr., 42, pastor of Bibb Mount Zion Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia, discovered by his wife in the driveway of their home, dead from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound. Ed Montgomery, 49, a pastor at Full Gospel Christian Assemblies International Church, Hazel Crest, Illinois, takes his own life in front of his son, after grieving the death of his wife who had died a year earlier from a brain aneurysm. Isaac Hunter, 36, founder and pastor of Summit Church in Orlando, Florida, admits to an affair that leads to his resignation, and while suffering from a troubled marriage he ends it all by killing himself… These events, which took place within the last five weeks, show we are all susceptible to mental illness - even the preacher… Iʼve personally been in that dark place myself. By Rev. Mark. H. Creech, Christian Post Columnist


Pastor Who Confessed: There Are Times ‘I Donʼt Feel Like God Is Hearing Me’ Kills Self as Congregation, Family Wait for Him on Sunday—“What I have always advised younger men in the ministry to do is to try to find someone who can be your pastor outside your congregation… You canʼt let anyone in your church be your pastor. You are their pastor,” he warned. The competitive nature of pastors hurts healthy camaraderie in the profession. “Every pastor needs a pastor to kind of lead and guide them. But itʼs hard for us to really find that relationship because often pastors are trying to compete with or cremate you… Thatʼs a sad truth about the ministry,” agreed Land, who is also executive editor of The Christian Post. “I love pastors. They are in good grace, but most of them are pretty competitive when it comes to other pastors.”


Why do Christians Kill Themselves? According to Christian apologist, C. Michael Patton…

…For the same reasons non-Christians kill themselves. Lifeʼs circumstances fare no better for believers than for others. The divorce rate is the same, cancer rate is the same, just as many Christians find themselves out of work as non-Christians, and tragedy is no less likely to enter our lives than others. In fact, one might make the case that Christians have much more temptation to do so… We believe that we are in a hostile world that is filled with evil and evil powers… I have often wondered if suicide was not more of a temptation for Christians (in one respect) due to the fact that we know we will be out of pain and with God. In short, the circumstances that cause one to be so distraught with life that they are willing to take their own life exist just as much (if not more so) with Christians as they do with non-Christians.

Suicidal Thoughts on Suicide by C. Michael Patton, Christian apologist

(Christian apologist, C. Michael Patton, who wrote the lines above had a sister named Angie who committed suicide. After that his father started drinking heavily, a seeming death wish that he never recovered from. His father died at 66, the official cause being pneumonia. The actual cause was the type of guilt that hopes for death and does not care about physical health and refuses to check into a hospital when pneumonia is about to take his life. Michaelʼs mother continued to suffer depression after her daughterʼs (Michaelʼs sisterʼs) suicide. She cried for two years as her blood pressure rose. Finally an aneurysm ruptured and left her paralyzed; a different person. Michael and his remaining sisters have experienced significant depression since their sisterʼs suicide. Michael writes about his bouts with suicidal depression on the same blog where he defends the Gospel.)


Another Christian apologist from my own city, Greenville, SC, Johnny Price, and who has been hard at it as a local apologist in print and other media for decades admitted in 2016 in a public Facebook post:

Since I re-entered the world of Facebook back in October 2015, Iʼve deliberately not posted anything personal. This is an exception. I am mentally ill. Iʼve suffered from various emotional disorders (mostly depression) since March, 1999. Currently it manifests itself in daily bouts of angst and uncertainty — sometimes severe, occasionally nearly immobilizing — when my feelings (!) of adequacy and worth take a beating.


Still another Christian writes…

Depression is a clinically-diagnosed mental illness. Itʼs also a relentless and evil sonofabitch. Itʼs not selfish to struggle with depression. Itʼs not a lack of understanding about God and his creation. Itʼs not something to be ashamed of. Call it what you want - Godʼs grace, luck, fate - but when I was sitting on the tile in my bathroom almost 5 years ago, I saw just a small sliver of light. Just enough to make me take a breath and look at the pills in my hand. It was enough for me to drop them and watch them scatter all over the cold floor. I still donʼt know what it was that opened my eyes and mind that night, but it was enough for me to not go through with swallowing them all. But, there are so many people, like the brilliant Robin Williams this week, who arenʼt granted that little sliver of light… And thereʼs another kind of evil lurking around the halls of the depressed, and itʼs the belief that those who are stricken with depression (or any mental illness) are suffering because of their lack of faith in Jesus. “If only youʼd pray for more joy,” people say. “If only youʼd ask God to take the pain.” Or, “Is there unresolved sin in your life?” Or how about this one, “If youʼd just meditate more on Godʼs Word…” Folks, saying someone is depressed or suicidal because they arenʼt praying enough, are self-absorbed, sinful, or donʼt have a deep enough faith? Itʼs abusive. And it needs to stop. Now… Sometimes, healing happens through good doctors, counselors, practitioners, and yes, medicine. Godʼs grace can look like a sliver of light on the bathroom floor, but it can also look like a life-changing counseling session or the right combination of drugs to regulate your brain chemistry. Prayer and a deepening faith have helped many along the road to depression. But it doesnʼt always work out that way. It didnʼt for me…

Nish Weiseth, “Thoughts on depression, suicide and being a Christian,” August 12, 2014. Nish is an Evangelical Christian and author who also writes pieces for Christianity Today on her experience of being a non-Mormon (a religious minority) in Utah.


Suicide Survivors: How the Clergy Can Help or Hurt You — “I have spoken with countless suicide survivors who have been deeply hurt by comments that ministers have made… I have been to funerals for angels who died by suicide when ministers have rambled on and on about suicide being a ‘sin.’ In spite of that horrible, unforgivable ‘sin,’ they said there may still be ‘hope’ that the person who died may actually go to Heaven. Many churches in the past would not even perform a funeral for someone who died by suicide because the ‘sin’ of suicide was so grievous and unforgivable… The ‘suicide is a sin’ mentality is still extant for many.”


Suicide in Jewish Tradition

Was typically frowned upon EXCEPT for cases in which suicide was undertaken for RELIGIOUS REASONS including mass suicide, which was regarded with veneration. This veneration is understood in the context of the doctrine of Kiddush ha-shem, i.e., ‘sanctification of the divine name’ which stated that suicide could be acceptable or even glorifying to God if one thereby avoided becoming a vehicle for desecration of His name in instances of rape, slavery or forced religious conversion to a non-Jewish religion. The best known example of this is Massada but mass suicides amongst persecuted Jewish communities continued to feature in Germany, France and Britain during the Middle Ages.

Suicide in Early Christian Tradition

Martyrdom was highly regarded by the early church and the boundary between it and suicide proved to be a narrow one. Tertullian addressing Christians in prison who were awaiting martyrdom, encouraged and strengthened them by citing the example of famous suicides including Lucretia, Dido and Cleopatra. Chrysostom and Ambrose both applauded Palagia, a girl of 15 who threw herself off the roof of a house rather than be captured by Roman soldiers. In Antioch, a woman called Domnina and her two daughters drowned themselves to avoid rape, an act which, as in the case of the Jews, was venerated.

Jerome also approved of suicide for religious reasons and did not condemn austerities which undermine the constitution and which might be regarded as slow suicide. He recounts, with the greatest admiration, the life and death of a young nun named Belsilla who imposed such penalties on herself that she died. Martyrdom eventually became so popular amongst the more fervent believers such as the Donatists that it threatened the credibility and, in places, the very existence of the church. How to respond to this fervour was a difficult task for leaders of a religion founded on Jesusʼs voluntary submission to death and whose early leaders had all been slain in the course of duty.

It was Augustine who synthesized Platonic and Jewish traditions on suicide in a way that gave greater emphasis to the former. In “The City of God” he concluded that suicide was never justified, not even in the cases mentioned above in Jewish and early Christian tradition. By the 5th century suicide was regarded by the church as sinful in all circumstances.

Suicide in the Middle Ages

Apparently suicidal depression was common in the Middle Ages because numerous guides survive that were written to instruct clergy how to go about ministering to those who were suicidal. Such guides emphasized keeping the person under close observation, keeping them busy, making them comfortable with warmth, food and music, and prescribing religious exhortation, as well as citing past success stories in which suicide was averted, and offering absolution from sins. Even in cases where the suicide was successful clergy held inquests and the records reveal that in the majority of the verdicts the suicide was attributed to a disturbance of the mind rather than the soul. As in the case of Jewish tradition this enabled the dead person to receive formal rites of burial. Throughout this period we see a dissonance between what the theologians taught concerning the horrendous nature of the sin of suicide, and what the clergy actually practiced. As for what the public believed, ‘folk’ superstitions concerning suicide proved remarkably resistant to change and persisted right up until the mid-nineteenth century, such as a belief that suicides were buried at crossroads.

Suicide From the 1600ʼs to Today

In the seventeenth century, under the influence of the new spirit of inquiry, the more educated classes began to question the prevailing view that suicide was always wrong. John Donne, who was for a while himself prone to suicidal urges, wrote a treatise called Biathanatos in which he tried to prove (rather unsuccessfully as it happens) that self murder was not a sin. Interestingly, he cites as support the contemporary practice of euthanasia in which female relatives of those who were dying and for whom nothing more could be done would assist death by removing the patientʼs pillows. Donne records that this was common practice and that it was regarded as a ‘pious act,’ reflecting the fact, again, of a wide divergence between what the church taught and what society as a whole actually practiced. The term ‘suicide’ was first coined by Walter Charlton in 1651 as a bid to rid it of the criminal and sinful associations which had previously stuck to it. Although his exercise at moral sanitization failed the term itself stuck.

Laws were introduced in the early nineteenth century to punish those who attempted suicide or who assisted others to end their lives. Just as in the ancient world the upper classes (particularly those of a more artistic bent) were spared the indignity of imprisonment and for a while suicide even came to enjoy a bit of a vogue amongst the romantics. The lower classes, however, could expect a sentence of 10 days with compulsory counseling from a clergyman. Subsequently even stiffer sentences were imposed and between 1944 and 1955 13% of the 40,000 who attempted suicide were prosecuted; 308 of these were sent to jail and even in 1955 a man received a two year jail sentence, although this was subsequently reduced to a month.

Suicide only ceased to be an indictable offence in 196l and continues to be an offence for those who aid or abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another (Suicide Act 1961). The ostensible aims of such sentences were to discourage suicide as a phenomenon, although it is hard to be sure that some of the wish to punish wasnʼt due to misplaced anger towards those who were regarded as a social nuisance, a spirit which lives on in many medical wards and admissions units.

The nineteenth century was a time in which men started to collect data and to apply scientific method to the social evils of the day. Professor Olive Anderson has written extensively about suicide at this time. Her researches indicate that, despite the prohibitions, suicide rates in the UK started to climb, especially among men, from the mid-1800s onwards. Although the sociologist Emile Durkheim blamed the ‘anomie’ of modern industrial society, the process of industrialization cannot be entirely held to blame since suicide rates were highest in the old county towns. At this time suicide continued to be associated in the public eye with sin but the finding that it also showed a strong association with alcohol abuse, poor physical health and poverty sensitized the public towards a more sympathetic and understanding attitude, itself assisted by the rise of the popular novel in which the suicides of the wronged, abandoned and destitute often featured.

However, poverty was also popularly identified in many a Victorian mind as the just deserts of a life given over to sin; considerable debate thus took place over which of the poor should be seen as ‘deserving’ and which were beyond help. Under these combined influences those who saw themselves as having a responsibility to promote public order developed a variety of social and philanthropic programs to combat suicide.

Suicide is less common during wartime and times of national crisis. Conversely, suicide rates increase after a celebrity takes their life or a suicide is displayed on television.

Churches would do well to become aware of the problem of depression and its treatment since Christians are by no means immune from depression or suicidal thinking. (In fact, despair even to the point of suicidal thoughts, was something experienced by a number of figures in the Bible who are presented in a favorable light from Paul to Job, David, Jeremiah and Elijah.)

Christians would also do well to become more concerned about social justice and more vocal in their opposition to the real social evils of society. Alcoholism, marital breakdown and unemployment are far more serious issues than, say, the New Age movement or whether women should be ordained.

However, the question remains ‘Are there ever circumstances which render it legitimate to end oneʼs own life?’ The ancient Jews and early Christians clearly thought so. Nowadays we face new dilemmas concerning medicineʼs increasing ability to sustain and prolong life beyond that determined by natural processes.

Much of the above is from Russell Blackerʼs article, Suicide Down the Ages - A Judeo-Christian Perspective, on the website of The Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF).


On suicide. “Rationally Speaking” is a well known blog and podcast by an atheist philosopher. See here, here, here, for discussion of suicide, i.e. what empirical inquiry tells us about suicides (who commits them, how, what are the best strategies for prevention) and how philosophers view suicide.


What does a nihilistʼs nihilist think of suicide? Forget Camus for a sec and read these quotations from E. M. Cioran:

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “Whatʼs your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

Why donʼt I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?

In a world without melancholy, nightingales would start burping.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us theirs?

Life inspires more dread than death—it is life which is the great unknown. (Or as Bertrand Russell put it, “We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think— in fact they do so.”)


The Lighter Side of Suicide?

Suicide is manʼs way of telling God, ‘You canʼt fire me - I quit.’—Bill Maher

Potential suicides should keep in mind that itʼs a decision they have to live with for the rest of their lives.—paraphrase of something Paul Tillich wrote

I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.—David Levithan

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.—Friedrich Nietzsche

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.—Tennessee Williams

The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.—Chuck Palahniuk

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.—Charles Bukowski

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.—Mahatma Gandhi

Once I tried to kill myself with a bungee cord. I kept almost dying.—Steven Wright

Thereʼs no reason to live, but thereʼs no reason to die, either… Life is not worth the bother of leaving it.—Jacques Rigaut

The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.—Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night


If the pain was constant and unbearable, or I was struggling for every breath and unable to sleep, I might consider suicide. I donʼt think Iʼve ever been the suicidal type because I have lots of addictive interests including making music. If the question is metaphysical, then I would add that metaphysics is sometimes full of bullsh*t. The thought of everything eventually perishing can create angst but not necessarily suicidal thoughts.

Cecil Wyche [agnostic, non-Christian, though interested in religious philosophy]


Devout Mormon Threatened to Harm Himself Unless His Brothers Stopped Cursing, Leaps to Death Rather than Endure Listening to Any More Profanity—(KSL News) Police now say an argument caused a 21-year-old man to jump from a moving truck. “Tyler Poulson was riding with his brothers last night when he became offended by one of them using profanity. Poulson, who recently returned from an LDS mission, threatened to get out of the truck if he continued. One of the men, not thinking he would, told Poulson to do so. Police said the car was going about 35 miles an hour when Poulson opened the door and jumped. He was pronounced dead on scene.” Posted Nov 12th, 2005

Is Religion Connected to Violence?

Is Religion Connected to Violence?

[I would qualify the statement on the right by adding that it is the depth to which you identify yourself primarily and solely with your particular beliefs, culture, race or nation, that is the depth by which you separate yourself from all that you share with the rest of humanity.]

On the topic of religion and violence, one cannot help but notice how religions piggy back on the horrors of war to both strengthen themselves and grow, or to strengthen the soldierʼs resolve, which usually makes wars last longer and grow bloodier. That includes when the cause of war is not religious. See for instance, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Evangelical Christian and historian of Christianity, Mark Noll. Or see what religion made of World War I. Religion made out like a bandit in that war, emphasizing it as the beginning of the worldʼs final judgment, even piggybacking on apocalyptic wartime fears to help the Pentecostal faith grow, see The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (received Christianity Todayʼs Book Award of Merit for 2015).

Second, scholars who claim religion has little to do with violence define “religious wars” in an extremely narrow fashion, as if they could only be deemed religious wars if Martin Luther and the pope literally led the troops themselves and they were fighting solely over the meaning and practice of the Lordʼs Supper. But in reality religion is interwoven into culture, society and governance and has been implicated in many tragic events for centuries, helping to heighten tensions and divisions not only between theologians, but between kings and kingdoms, and energized troops to fight and kill with greater ferocity and more firmly reject talk of compromise. See the hyperlinks to parts 1. to 5. of Things Christians Have Been Against to understand the scope of religion-related animosity throughout history.

Also, fighting over land and the extension of oneʼs kingdom (as well as cases of colonization of foreign lands) were related to spreading the religious beliefs of oneʼs kingdom, literally, back then. By the same token, to spread questions or heretical views of Christianity in such kingdoms was labeled not only a crime against God but also equated with treason and sedition. The idea that heretics must be persecuted was the rule for fourteen hundred or more years in European Christian society, defended by the papacy as well as the Reformers, Luther and Calvin, etc. (I also have posts on why that was so, biblically speaking.)

On the other hand one must not focus solely on religionʼs role in promoting divisiveness and violence, because mass movements also arise that are not strictly religious but resemble religionʼs claims and its ability to inspire devotion to a cause. Such mass movements arise in politics (progressive/liberal vs. conservative, unions vs labor, eco-warriors vs industrialists, etc.). Pride in oneʼs nation can become religion-like, so can pride in oneʼs heritage or race. And such movements can be coupled with claims that they are the best or only way. Sometimes such movements even promise a heavenly paradise on earth, be it a ‘workerʼs paradise’ or a ‘land of Aryan supremacy,’ or a world of Japanese supremacy, and like religion they often rely on scapegoats—‘outsiders’ ‘heretics’ to blame for why things arenʼt going the ‘right’ way (something religions also do) which helps unite and energize members of such movements via shared fears/hatreds. Such scapegoats have included in religion, Satan, while in other mass movments, ‘the Jews,’ ‘the Bolsheviks,‘ ‘the bourgeoisie,’ ‘the running dogs and paper dragons of the West.’ See Eric Hofferʼs classic study of the psychological traits shared by people attracted to enthusiastic mass movements, be they Christian, Muslim, fascist or communist.

Religious, political, nationalistic, racist mass movements, especially those employing generalized scapegoats and drawing sharp distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ most certainly contribute to animosities and violence. Religion of that sort also elevates cases of disagreement to celestially high levels whereby neither side can compromise because eternity is at stake.

The Difference Christianity Makes—Both the Subtle and Dark Differences

The Difference Christianity Makes—Both the Subtle and Dark Differences

Concerning my own past experience as a “born again” Christian, letting people “see Jesus” inside me was something I deemed very important.

Only after years of Christian experience and self-evaluation did I slowly realize that something did not ring quite honest or genuine when it came to “letting Jesus flow out of me.” As I see things now, I was trying to convince myself that Jesus was inside me, flowing out of me, perhaps as actors do when they are inhabited by a role that is flowing out of them, which can entail a great transformation. But is it necessarily a supernatural transformation in either case?

And Iʼve seen many Christian believers channel their religious opinions, interpretations, condescension toward others.

But if Jesus is real and Christians have the truest beliefs along with having the greatest probability that Jesus is living in THEIR hearts, then why did so many Christians for so many centuries (both Catholics and the founders of Protestantism, Luther and Calvin) stress so firmly that rulers and magistrates must persecute, torture, and even execute people who dared to preach beliefs or holy rites and practices different from their own?

What I am trying to say is perhaps put best by the following quotations…


Were it true that a converted man as such is of an entirely different kind from a natural man, there surely ought to be some distinctive radiance. But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from normal men. By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial “carnal” man would be in the same situation.
—William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience


I found myself in a Cambridge cafe having supper with some friends. We were on our way to a lecture by Harvey Cox, whose books Iʼd always found fascinating, though Iʼd filled their margins with vociferous criticisms [of his openness to alternative religious beliefs and practices]. I suddenly thought, “Listen, is there really that much difference ‘them’ and ‘us’?” I had always accepted the qualitative difference between the “saved” and the “unsaved.” Until that moment, it was as if I and my fellow-seminarians had been sitting in a “no-damnation” section of an otherwise “unsaved ” restaurant. Then, in a flash, we were all just people. My feeling about evangelism has never been quite the same.
—Robert M. Price, “Testimony Time


One Sunday afternoon my cousin and I were eating at a restaurant. He paused, and started pointing at people. “Heʼs a Christian… Heʼs a Christian… So is she, and she, and that other guy.” I asked how he was so sure. His reply? “I was a hard-core Evangelical Christian for a few years, remember? Itʼs not hard to see once you know what to look for. Look for someone who looks like theyʼre wearing clothes just a little bit nicer than theyʼre comfortable in, that have a smile on their face. It wonʼt look like a happy smile, itʼll look kind of contrived and forced, like theyʼre trying to convince themselves theyʼre happy and rich.”
—Justice McPherson


One of Christianityʼs chief offenses is not that it has enlisted the services of bad men, but that it has misdirected the energies of good ones. The kindly, the sensitive, the thoughtful, those who are striving to do their best under its influence, are troubled, and consequently often develop a more or less morbid frame of mind. The biographies of the best men in Christian history offer many melancholy examples of the extent to which they have falsely accused themselves of sins during their “unconverted” state, and the manner in which harmless actions are magnified into deadly offenses.
—Chapman Cohen, “Essays in Freethinking”


In the days of my youth, ministers depended on revivals to save souls and reform the world. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the hysterical “Amens,” the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many to lose what little sense they had. In this condition they flocked to the “mournerʼs bench”—asked for prayers of the faithful—had strange feelings, prayed, and wept and thought they had been “born again.” Then they would tell their experiences—how wicked they had been, how evil had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had suddenly become. They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling her experience, said, “Before I was converted, before I gave my heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit ʽem both, in a great measure.” Well, while the cold winter lasted, while the snows fell, the revival went on, but when the winter was over, the boats moved in the harbor again, the wagons rolled, and business started again, most of the converts “backslid” and fell again into their old ways. But the next winter they were on hand again, read to be “born again.” They formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter and backsliding every spring. I regard revivals as essentially barbaric. The fire that has to be blown all the time is a poor thing to get warm by. I think they do no good but much harm; they make innocent people think they are guilty, and very mean people think they are good.
—Robert Ingersoll, “Why I am An Agnostic”


Many of the most cordial Christians either hum hymns or listen to contemporary Christian music, or repeat Scripture in their heads, and wonder what they can do next to make someone think that theyʼre a “good little Christian.” I used to do the same thing, and now people wonder why I do not shower them with praise and gifts to make them think that I am a “good little Christian.” I used to go to peopleʼs houses and work and they would try to pay me, But No! I would not take a dime, because I wanted to emblazon on their brains the idea that I was a “good little Christian.” (The “people-pleasing-for-Christ” part of my life ended over 15 years ago.) Thatʼs what many Christians are, people pleasers, God pleasers, Jesus pleasers, preacher pleasers. Jesus was a people pleaser, thatʼs why he was so willing to die, either to please God or his ignorant followers.
—Ben at http://www.exchristian.net/ (edited by E.B.)


I had what I consider a “spiritual epiphany” regarding “evangelicalism” in high school when a group of friends and I drove to an evangelistic rally and heard the preacher rail on and on against the evils of drinking, smoking, and other things. The evangelist was a spectacular showman and implored the audience to take heed, come forward, let go of any liquor bottles or packs of cigarettes in their possession, repent, and sin no more with Godʼs power. Each word of the evangelist blazed with the certainty that God would heal His peopleʼs sinful ways and a choir was singing with trumpets blaring and the audience grew very excited. My friends all deposited their packs of cigarettes on the growing pile in the center of the rally and prayed with the ushers and pleaded with me to do so as well for the good of my soul. I refused. No sooner had the emotion-filled rally ended, no sooner had we traveled a few blocks in our car, than my friends bummed cigarettes off me.
—Dr. Charles Brewer, Professor of Psychology (as told to E.B. 7/18/06)


Psychotherapists will tell you that in dealing with an addict, you have to understand that the personʼs primary relationship is with the drug. The drug has the ability to control the addictʼs thinking to a remarkable degree, and you must understand that any relationship you may feel with the addict is a distant second to the one they have with their drug. The most devout Evangelical Christians are open and unabashed about this. Their “relationship with Jesus” as they use the term, is the primary relationship in their lives.

There are even scriptures that go something like, “Not unless you hate your mother and father can you be my disciple,” and, “Who are my mother and father? But he who hears and words of God and does them.” Jesus even suggested to one disciple that he ought not return home to help bury a dead family member, instead he ought to “Let the dead bury the dead.”

In other words, Evangelicals stress that oneʼs love for Jesus ought to be so strong that relatively speaking, oneʼs love for even close family members, must not compare. You may love your mother but you should love Jesus so much more that in comparison itʼs like you hate her. Doesnʼt this sound an awful lot like a drunkʼs love for the bottle?

It may be helpful when trying to have a relationship with a believer to remember that you and their relationship with you means very little to them compared to their need to continue in their thought addiction.

In fact “true believers” may happily sacrifice a relationship with their own spouses or children should those family members refuse to convert, or become “unbelievers.” In such cases the “true believer” feels they are making the ultimate sacrifice in “serving God rather than man.”

Evangelical beliefs may promise you comfort, security and power just like the ads for alcohol link its consumption with sexiness, sports activities, and a rippinʼ good time, but the promises in both cases often grow sour as the addict grows more hardened and insistent. Some people have an instant “conversion” to alcoholism. They take their first drink, or have their first good drunk and understand (in the words of a very young alcoholic client I once had) “This (drinking) is what I was put on this world to do.” For some people their religion is an illness they are trying to recover from and the recovery process is more difficult than recovering from alcoholism.
—Saint Vilis (vilis@rcn.com) at the Yahoo Group, ExitFundyism


An evangelical Christian once told me, “Only Jesus Christ can save human beings nd restore them to their lost state of peace with God, themselves and others.”

Yeah, sure, and only new Pepsi can make you feel really happy, and only our brand is better than the competition, and only our country is the best country.

It is truly amazing to me that people can utter such arrogant nonsense with no humor, no sense of how offensive they are to others, no doubt or trepidation, and no suspicion that they sound exactly like advertisers, con-men and other swindlers. It is really hard to understand such child-like prattling.

If I were especially conceited about something (a state I try to avoid, but if I fell into it…), if for instance I decided I had the best garden or the handsomest face in Ireland, I would still retain enough common sense to suspect that I would sound like a conceited fool if I went around telling everybody those opinions. I would have enough tact left, I hope, to satisfy my conceit by dreaming that other people would notice on their own that my garden and/or my face were especially lovely.

People who go around innocently and blithely announcing that they belong to the Master Race or the Best Country Club or have the One True Religion seem to have never gotten beyond the kindergarten level of ego-display. Do they have no modesty, no tact, no shame, no adult common sense at all? Do they have any suspicion how silly their conceit sounds to the majority of the nonwhite non-Christian men and women of the world? To me, they seem like little children wearing daddyʼs clothes and going around shouting, “Look how grown-up I am! Look at me, me, me!” There are more amusing things than ego-games, conceit and one-upmanship. Really, there are.

I suspect that people stay on that childish level because they have never discovered how interesting and exciting the adult world is. If one must play ego-games, I still think it would be more polite, and more adult, to play them in the privacy of oneʼs head. In fact, despite my efforts to be a kind of Buddhist, I do relapse into such ego-games on occasion; but I have enough respect for human intelligence to keep such thoughts to myself. I donʼt go around announcing that I have painted the greatest painting of our time; I hope that people will notice that by themselves. Why do the people whose ego-games consist of day-dreaming about being part of the Master Race or the One True Religion not keep that precious secret to themselves, also, and wait for the rest of the human race to notice their blinding superiority?
—Robert Anton Wilson


Quotations from Christians on Christianityʼs Dark Side

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
—Blaise Pascal, Pensees, (1670)

“Christianity has committed crimes so monstrous that the sun might sicken at them in heaven.”
—G. K. Chesterton in the Daily News, as quoted by Robert Blatchford, God and My Neighbor

“Even more disturbing as you say, is the ghastly record of Christian persecution. It had begun in Our Lordʼs time—‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of’ (John of all people!). I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse… Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.”
—C. S. Lewis in a letter to Bede Griffiths, dated Dec. 20, 1961, not long before Lewisʼ death, The Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed., W. H. Lewis, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 301.

“For centuries Christianity treasured the great commandment of love and mercy as traditional truth without recognizing it as a reason for opposing slavery, witch burning and all the other ancient and medieval forms of inhumanity. It was only when Christianity experienced the influence of the thinking of the Age of Enlightenment that it was stirred into entering the struggle for humanity. The remembrance of this ought to preserve it forever from assuming any air of superiority in comparison with thought.”
—Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (New York: The New American Library, 1963).

“[E]ven the great monastic communities of western Europe, such as Cluny Abbey, founded on renunciation of the world and denial of the flesh, quickly became owners of vast estates and wielders of enormous political power. They no longer protested against the world. They were the world, in all its pageantry and power, and they validated the dream of empire, which they consecrated as Crusades to destroy the infidel. That is why people should not look to religion for salvation or for a solution to the ills of the world. Failure to see the possibilities for corruption and destruction in religion is a failure of spiritual perception of the first order. Few people fail to see the destructive possibilities of other peopleʼs religions, but they can be remarkably blind to their own.”
—Keith Ward, The Case For Religion

“Framers of modern democratic theory in eighteenth century Europe [and colonial America] were profoundly influenced by the religious wars that had dominated the previous century and a half. Lockeʼs emphasis on tolerance and Rousseauʼs idea of a social contract were efforts to find unifying agreements that would discourage religious groups from appealing absolutely to a higher source of authority. The idea of civil society emerged as a way of saying that people who disagree with each other about such vital matters as religion could nevertheless live together in harmony.”
—Robert Wuthnow, Books & Culture (a newsletter produced by the editors of Christianity Today)

See also, http://infidels.org/library/modern/ed_babinski/experience.html.


Quotations From Non-Christians on Christianityʼs Dark Side

“Of course, what Keith Ward, above, describes is quite unremarkable. Sure religion can become corrupt and destructive—but so can any other philosophy. Ward makes a point of noting this as well, so why focus on religion? The difference between religion and other philosophies is the fact that other philosophies donʼt pretend to be holy or creations of a perfect God. Religions make total and absolute demands on adherents; other philosophies generally do not. Religion is not inherently evil, but it is not immune to all of the problems which afflict people generally and human organizations in particular.”
—Austin Cline (atheist)

The irony is that religious believers claim to possess the only inspired writings on earth, and claim to possess a prayer hotline by which they ask and receive guidance from God to lead them into truth, and claim to possess a new heart inside them via divine favor, have come up with plenty of intolerant (and also pseudoscientific) points of view. Think of the supernatural advantages, mentioned above, that religious believers claim to possess. Then compare the results century after century. Christians advocated the necessity of persecuting outsiders, including fellow Christians whose beliefs or religious practices differed from their own, and they did this for over one thousand years. When a devout Christian (or a large majority of Christians) ruled over a city, country or nation, they instituted laws against blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, etc., and continued to do so for centuries, from the days of Christian Roman Emperors who declared that all non-Trinitarians were demented and that the Emperor would punish them and destroy their writings, to the days of the Reformation when the same was still occurring, and hence they treated people like things in sociopathic fashion.

Add to that Christianityʼs proven tendency to splinter, along with the decrees of rival theologians against each other, and subsequent harsh actions by Christian rulers. Does this appear like a more inspired story than is told elsewhere concerning human behavior? The same insecurity, the same belligerence. But of course an apologist might say, the difference is that Christians are “forgiven” [sic].

Pulitzer prize-winning political scientist, Francis Fukuyama put it this way: “There was a time when religion played an all-powerful role in European politics with Protestants and Catholics organizing themselves into political factions and squandering the wealth of Europe on sectarian wars. [Like the “Thirty Yearʼs War” that began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window, and which turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery, leading to the deaths of more than a quarter of Europeʼs population. - ED.] English liberalism emerged in direct reaction to the religious fanaticism of the English Civil War. Contrary to those who at the time believed that religion was a necessary and permanent feature of the political landscape, liberalism vanquished religion in Europe. After a centuries-long confrontation with liberalism, religion was taught to be tolerant. In the sixteenth century, it would have seemed strange to most Europeans not to use political power to enforce belief in their particular sectarian faith. Today, the idea that the practice of religion other than oneʼs own should injure oneʼs own faith seems bizarre, even to the most pious churchmen. Religion has been relegated to the sphere of private life - exiled, it would seem, more or less permanently from European political life except on certain narrow issues like abortion… Religion per se did not create free societies; Christianity in a certain sense had to abolish itself through a secularization of its goals before liberalism could emerge… Political liberalism in England ended the religious wars between Protestant and Catholic that had nearly destroyed that country during the seventeenth century: with its advent, religion was defanged by being made tolerant.”

See, The Uniqueness of Christian Experience.

I agree with Eric Hoffer that people become devoted adherents of mass movements and political ideologies, be they fascist, communist, Christian, or Muslim, for some similar overlapping psychological reasons. Here are some quotations from Hoffer.
Hoffer also pointed out that all successful mass movements eventually seek and gain influence or control in the realm of politics/government in order to ensure they can predominate, consolidate and centralize their influence further. This is just as true of Christianity as other successful mass movements in religion and politics.

I donʼt blame all the worldʼs ills on religion. The problem is primate politics, people following alpha males (and sometimes alpha females) with relatively blind devotion, people raised in a culture or sub-culture who remain unaware of its unique prejudices, people blind to their own limitations of experience and knowledge, people blind to the fact that their egos are so fragile they are quite likely to attach them like barnacles to some bigger ‘cause’ which makes them feel invincible and like everyone should now listen to them. And no matter how many of their friends or family or fellow citizens they turn off or offend, they take no personal blame because it is in the name of the cause, the greater good they now feel they are embodying, that is hyper inflating their sense of selfhood and mission. And they will go quite far indeed to spread their beliefs, which helps expand their egos even more, to try and gain ascendancy for their beliefs within their culture, even going too far to ‘defend’ their beliefs. Of course the idea of how far is ‘too far’ is something people do not agree on.

Does “Atonement” Make Sense?

Does “Atonement“ Make Sense?

Donʼt Christians ever wonder why killing Godʼs son (whom they believe to have been “God the Son,” the second person of the “Trinity”) was not the greatest sin humans could ever commit? Humans killed God?! Isnʼt that the greatest sin anyone could possibly dream of ever committing? How could the humans who committed such a deed ever be forgiven except maybe by killing another divine savior to “atone” for killing the first one? And so on and so forth? At some point the cycle of “atonement” has to be broken by direct forgiveness. At some point direct forgiveness, not based on a bloody sacrifice, has to intervene to break the endless loop. Maybe thatʼs why Jesus himself did not believe that Godʼs forgiveness depended on a bloody sacrifice, but instead taught everyone to pray “in this way…Our Father…Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Simple. Direct forgiveness.

Has any theologian ever been able to demonstrate how “atonement” works, how physical pain unto death of an animal or person makes up for that time I talked back to my mother, or desired my neighborʼs wife or car? Sounds exactly like sympathetic magic. Or as comedian Doug Stanhope says, “‘Jesus died for your sins.’ How does one affect the other? I hit myself in the foot with a shovel for your mortgage. I donʼt get it.”

Or as my friend Tony Atkinson once asked, “How do ‘sins’ become something substantial in and of themselves? There are memories of being hurt, but ‘sins’ as substantial entities one can collect together and then place inside a body or soul? How do ‘sins’ become collected and where do they exist apart from being past acts? Are ‘sins’ the ‘bad’ memories of God? Do such memories ‘soil’ Godʼs mind? And he has to dispose of them? Is killing his own son a form of forgetfulness, a means of dissolving such memories? None of this makes sense.”

And is the Bible right about the life being “in the blood?” No, the life is in the brain and nervous system. We think nothing of blood transfusions, but cutting out part of oneʼs brain and replacing it with someone elseʼs is another more serious matter.

Also, Christianity comes along and suddenly all those bleeding animal sacrifices were for naught, because none of that animal blood did a thing, not if Christianity is true.

Also the scapegoat, the goat upon which the peopleʼs sins were placed, was NOT BLED, it “took the sins of the people” out into the desert. As for the Passover lamb in the Exodus story it did not die for anyoneʼs sins! It was so that the angel of death already saw death on the door posts of the Hebrews and didnʼt go in and kill their first born children. It was passing over those homes, but had nothing to do with any of the Jewish firstborn children inside those homes being sinners.

Though I admire Jesus for deploring the temptations of wealth, organized religion and its powerful sway, as well as hypocrisy, I no longer find the doctrines of either “original sin,” or “imputed righteousness” believable. I donʼt think the cosmos is the way it is simply because one human couple failed a test, nor do I believe that a man being executed 2000 years ago “paid the price” for the “worldʼs sins,” and we ought to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” for the forgiveness of sins, not even metaphorically. Sounds rather paganish, echoing vampirism or cannibalism, a theology taken right out of the ancient superstitious caldrons of blood sacrifice and appeasement. Sympathetic magic.

That being said, I saw the film, The Passion, and was moved when Jesusʼ mother ran toward him when he was being forced to carry the cross. As she struggled to reach out to her son who had just fallen carrying the cross she recalled the time Jesus fell as a child and she rushed to help him. My eyes teared up at that scene in the film. But the rest of the film was a blood orgy that did not move me any more than seeing any other human being unjustly tortured and murdered. I didnʼt feel ‘forgiven’ after watching the film, nor closer to God.

Though when I was young and raised Catholic I felt such a connection, and even cried after reading the Gospel stories of Jesusʼ death “for me, for me, for me.” (Ah, the self interest angle of Christianity, so prominent even in its hymns. Jesus loves me… This I know. Died for me. Me. Me. Me.) The Christian schema doesnʼt make sense to me anymore, neither intellectually nor emotionally. But direct forgiveness and people showing compassion to other people does.


Whenever I forgive someone Iʼm relatively straightforward and direct about it. But for God it takes a bloody miracle.


After the missionary explained the Bibleʼs superior civilized plan of salvation to several natives, one of them replied, “Like you, we love our gods and seek to love one another. What we do not understand is why your god tried to pin down sin by using His son as a voodoo doll.”


Christianity is merely paganism with a more successful advertising campaign.


Christianity teaches that Jesus had to die, or God couldnʼt forgive sins, not a single sin, not unless Jesus died first.

So why isnʼt Judas a “Saint?”


Conversation, A.D. 33

A: Have you heard the latest?

B: No, whatʼs happened?

A: The world has been redeemed!

B: You donʼt say!

A: Yes, the Dear Lord took on human form and had himself executed in Jerusalem; and with that the world has been redeemed and the devil hoodwinked.

B: Gosh, thatʼs simply lovely.

Arthur Shopenhauer


We relate to the suffering of a wide range of species not just human suffering. It was even discovered that deer react to the sound of a crying baby of almost any mammal species, not just the cry of a baby deer. But how does such empathy in nature provide evidence for the truth of any one religion in particular? It doesnʼt. Which reminds me of a poem…

Chipmunk Crucifixion

No chipmunk had to be crucified

on a tiny cross of twigs

To save all the other chippies,

Had to have nails pounded

through his little paws,

Had to take upon himself

all the sins of all the chippies

that ever were or would be

and die in agony

So that after they died

all the chippies

could live again forever,

But only if they believed

in all the sayings and doings

of the chipmunk crucified

on the tiny cross of twigs.

Antler, Last Words


Letʼs not forget that Jesus (after a few hours of pain) rose from the dead and ascended to a throne in heaven. So in essence, nobody really “killed” Jesus; it was more like a fraternity hazing, or an early version of the TV show, “Fear Factor,” where you endure all kinds of [fill in blank with favorite expletive] to win a valuable prize.

SOURCE: T-Shirt Hell Newsletter, 2/25/04


In the beginning God was perfect and whole, needing nothing.

Then he said, “I need an itch to scratch, Iʼll create humans. Of course I see that most of them will suffer, first on earth (where they shall be born into a world of pain, ignorance, swept up by hormonal waves of emotion, and experience uncertainty, dread, miscommunication), with eternal woes to follow for those who didnʼt ride the right waves of holy emotion by falling head over heels in love with Jesus of Nazareth and/or the writings of his disciples, nor interpret what was written with theological correctness.”

“Also, be it known that I cannot forgive anyone anything, not until Blood Is Shed. I know I had Jesus teach people that I would forgive those who forgave others—but I only truly forgive after BLOOD is shed. And a millennia of shedding animalʼs blood will be just for show, but ineffective. No genuine atonement will be achieved until Jesus of Nazareth bleeds to death. And even the blood of Jesus was shed in vain for the vast majority of doomed humanity who are going to wind up in hell anyway.”


For those who defend the idea of eternal wrath being meted out to people after mere decades spent in a “fallen,” confusing, painful and frustrating cosmos, one with fear, prejudice, cultural biases, mental blindness, ignorance, and demons running free (thank God for leaving Satan and his demons on earth), then I guess thereʼs not much in the way of reasonable conceptions of justice anyone can say to such a person. Because they believe it is perfectly just for God to arrange things such that people get born in a frying pan, only to be tossed into the fire, without reprieve, forever.

I say to such people, you can have your jealous God of wrath, who kills millions in the Bible while Satan kills a handful (and Satan even has to beg Godʼs permission to do so, so all the killings are ultimately Godʼs in the Bible).


Jews do not make material sacrifices on their holiest day of the year, the day of atonement. They offer a contrite heart on that holiest of days, based on teachings in the psalms and books of their prophets. The prophets in the Bible were at odds with the priests on the matter of the importance of material/animal sacrifices and the “shedding of blood.” Jesus himself taught people to pray, “Forgive us Father as we forgive others.”

Christians have differed in their understandings of what Jesusʼ death signified. Limited atonement or universal? Bloody or nonviolent (see the book listed at the end)? Theological brouhahas have continued throughout the history of Christian theology over the meaning and significance of Jesusʼ death. Some examples below:

  • 1500-1600s
    The Extent of the Atonement: A Dilemma for Reformed Theology from Calvin to the Consensus (1536-1675) (Studies in Christian History and Thought) by G. M. Thomas (2007)
  • 1600-1700s
    Atonement and Justification: English Evangelical Theology 1640-1790: An Evaluation by Alan C. Clifford (1990)
  • 1700s-1800s
    Atonement Controversy: In Welsh Theological Literature and Debate, 1707-1841 by Owen Thomas (2002)
  • 1800s
    Modern Anglican Theology: Chapters On Coleridge, Hare, Maurice, Kingsley And Jowett And On The Doctrine Of Sacrifice And Atonement (1859) by James H. Rigg (2008)
  • A Treatise on Atonement (1858) by Hosea Ballou. (Famed Universalist preacher from the Victorian era)
  • George MacDonaldʼs Challenging Theology of the Atonement, Suffering, and Death by Miho Yamaguchi (2007) MacDonald was a famous Victorian Universalist.
  • 1900-2000s
    Dostoevsky on Evil and Atonement: The Ontology of Personalism in His Major Fiction by Linda Kraeger and Joe Barnhart (1992) Dr. Barnhart is an ex-Christian. His testimony appears in Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists
  • The Atonement (Problems in Theology) by Michael M. Winter (1994)
  • Jesus and the Doctrine of the Atonement: Biblical Notes on a Controversial Topic by Gerd Lüdemann (1998) Gerd is an ex-Christian and former Lutheran theologian.
  • Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement by Anthony W. Bartlett (2001)
  • Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement by Gustaf Aulen and A. G. Herbert (2003)
  • Problems With Atonement: The Origins Of, And Controversy About, The Atonement Doctrine by Stephen Finlan (2005)
  • The Promise of Peace: A Unified Theory of Atonement by Alan Spence (2006)
  • The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views by Thomas R. Schreiner, James Beilby, Paul R. Eddy, and Gregory A. Boyd (2006)
  • Atonement and Violence: A Theological Conversation by J. Denny Weaver, Thomas N. Finger, T. Scott Daniels, and Hans Boersma (2006)
  • Options on Atonement in Christian Thought by Stephen Finlan (2007)
  • What About the Cross?: Exploring Models of the Atonement by Waldron Byron Scott (2007)
  • The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of Atonement by Derek Tidball, David Hilborn, and Justin Thacker (2008)
  • Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement by Michael C. Rea (2009)
  • The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology by Rashdall, Hastings (2009)
  • Historic Theories of Atonement by Robert Mackintosh (2009)
  • The Atonement and the Modern Mind by James Denney (2009)
  • The Atonement in modern religious thought : a theological symposium by Anonymous (2009)
  • Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement (Spck Classics) by Gustav Aulen and A. G. Herbert (2010)
  • The Nonviolent Atonement (Paperback) Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (2010) J. Denny Weaver “Sharp debates about the death of Jesus sparked by feminist and womanist theologians are the current cutting edge of discussions about Christology and atonement”
    From Publishers Weekly: Evangelical Christians sing hymns in which blood figures prominently; one in particular is called “Nothing But the Blood.” Such Christians may have to change their tune after reading J. Denny Weaverʼs The Non-Violent Atonement, which proposes that the idea of ‘satisfaction atonement’ must be jettisoned in favor of a nonviolent approach. Jesusʼ death, says Weaver, was not planned or sanctioned by God the Father; it was the inevitable result of sinful humans taking matters into their own hands. Perhaps the new hymn can be called “Everything But the Blood”?