Religion

See also: Galileo, Evolution, Passion of the Western Mind

A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Quotations	Women and the Bible	Religious Affiliation Worldwide
Christianity in America: 1/03 Economist article	The New Testament: Encyclopedia Britannica excerpt on its creation	The rise of the religious right: Bush's "Jesus moment" (9/99 Economist article)
The Gun Commandments: Economist article on America's love affair with guns and religion	God's Own Scholars: article on one fundamentalist US school.	Christianity Islam

Pat Robertson advocates assassinating Chavez 8/23/05

What's Going On? Krugman on religious extremism in politics.

Was Jesus a Republican?

The Jesus Factor - Frontline Special on Religion and Bush, April, 2004

New York Times article on the Faith-Based President, 10/17/04

… What does that make Dennis Rader, the church council president arrested in Wichita's B.T.K. serial killer case? Was God instructing Terry Ratzmann, the devoted member of the Living Church of God who this month murdered his pastor, an elderly man, two teenagers and two others before killing himself at a weekly church service in Wisconsin? The religious elements of these stories, including the role played by the end-of-times fatalism of Mr. Ratzmann's church, are left largely unexamined by the same news outlets that serve up Ashley Smith's tale as an inspirational parable for profit.

- Frank Rich, New York Times , 3/27/05

Jerry Falwell has a lot to say. Falwell is the fundamentalist who opened the Republican National Convention in 2000 (the GOP kept him under lock-and-key this time around). He asserts that the AIDS crisis is "God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

…

In the days after September 11th Falwell said that America deserved to be attacked for, "throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools." He implicated supporters of civil liberties and women's rights, among others, saying: "I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

- Gov. Howard Dean, M.D., Democracy for America, 9/21/04 email

"But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not of the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be together... but let each one of you be alone."

- Kahlil Gabrin, The Prophet

Paul's Second Letter To The Corinthians: "The letter kills, the Spirit gives life." - UK Guardian 10/05/2003

But, you know, the Lord Jesus said, "By their fruits, you shall know them." And speaking as a humble fruit inspector of the Lord, I'd say that if this person is a Born Again Christian, there's a mixed signal somewhere." I feel the same way.

If Tom Delay is acting out of his Born Again Christian convictions in pushing legislation that disadvantages the poor every time he opens his mouth, I'm not saying he's not a Born Again Christian, but as a the Lord's humble fruit inspector, it sure looks suspicious to me. And anybody who claims in the name of God they're gonna run over people of other nations, and just willy-nilly, by your own free will, reshape the world in your own image, and claim that you're acting on behalf of God, that sounds a lot like Caesar to me.

- Joseph C. Hough, President, Union Theological Seminary, in an interview with Bill Moyers, 10/25/03

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one" "The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning" "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." "Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people." - Voltaire (1694 - 1778)	"Is god willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?" - Epicurus (341-270 BC)
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin	"In this "sacred" book of family scandals we find filth, sex orgies, cannibalism, atrocities, sex perversions, incest, bloody violence unparalleled in any other chronicle in all the literature of the world. Fortunately, not one-third of the human family has ever heard of the Christian Bible; not one-tenth of the Christians have ever read it, and no two who have read it agree as to its meaning. Won't you help get this book out of the hands of our children, out of decent homes, and out of hotel and motel rooms? " - Frank C. Hughes
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." - Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)	"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." - President John F. Kennedy
"Let us thank God, the Almighty, that he has blessed our generation and us and granted us to be a part of this time and this hour." - Adolf Hitler (who, like most high-ranking Nazis and fascists, including Franco and Mussolini, was raised as a Christian (Catholic)).

 Capital and Other Offenses in the Bible

Cursing Mom and Dad: "Whoever curses his mother or his father should be put to death." - Exodus 21:17

Killing someone, unless he is a slave: "When a man strikes a slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he is to be punished. If the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished. For the slave is his money." - Exodus 21:20 Note that beating a slave, even savagely with a weapon, is perfectly OK as long as he takes 24-48 hours to die. Also, restitution is to the owner of the slave, not the human being who was beaten (since according to the OT, the slave is not human but "money."

"When men strive together and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who has hurt her shall be fined according to the woman's husband shall lay upon him." - Exoduse 21:22 Note that the death of the fetus is NOT considered murder, as abortion rights advocates claim.

Biblical Quotations on Women

1 Cor.14:34-36 "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."

Eph.5:22-24 "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing."

Col.3:18 "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord."

1 Tim.2:11-15 "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing

1 Pet.3:1 "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands."

Religious Affiliation Worldwide

The phrase "global village" has become a common way of referring to the ever smaller world which we did. But what does it mean in human terms? If our world were a village of 1000 people, what would we be? The World's Development Forum tells us that there would be 329 Christians, 174 Muslims, 131 Indians, 61 Buddhists, 52 animists, 3 Jews, 34 members of other religions, such as Sikhs, Janes, Zorastrians, Bahi's, and 216 would be without any religion. In this village, there would be 564 Asians, 210 Europeans, 86 Africans, 80 South Americans, and 60 North Americans. And in the same village, 60 persons would have the income, 500 would be hungry, 600 would live in shantytowns, and 700 would be illiterate.

- Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey From Bozeman to Banaros by Diana L. Peck, Beacon Press, Boston, Mass, 1993, page 202

Religion	Date Founded	Sacred Texts	Members	% of World
Christianity	30 CE	The Bible	2,015 million	33% (dropping) 5
Islam	622 CE	Qur'an & Hadith	1,215 million	20% (growing) 5
No religion *	No date	None	925 million	15% (dropping) 5
Hinduism	1,500 BCE	The Veda	786 million	13% (stable) 5
Buddhism	523 BCE	The Tripitaka	362 million	6% (stable) 5
Atheists	No date	None	211 million	4%
Chinese folk rel.	270 BCE	None	188 million	4%
New Asian rel.	Various	Various	106 million	2%
Tribal Religions	Prehistory	Oral tradition	91 million	2%
Other	Various	Various	19 million	<1%
Judaism	No consensus	Torah, Talmud	18 million	<1%
Sikhism	1500 CE	Guru Granth Sahib	16 million	<1%
Shamanists	Prehistory	Oral Tradition	12 million	<1%
Spiritism			7 million	<1%
Confucianism	520 BCE	Lun Yu	5 million	<1%
Baha'i Faith	1863 CE	Most Holy Book	4 million	<1%
Jainism	570 BCE	Siddhanta, Pakrit	3 million	<1%
Shinto	500 CE	Kojiki, Nohon Shoki	3 million	<1%
Zoroastrianism	No consensus	Avesta	0.2 million	<1%

* Persons with no religion, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, etc.

Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm

The Bible

For a good skeptical Bible, highlighting many of the logical and moral inconsistencies, see: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/.

The Creation of the New Testament

From the Encyclopedia Britannica, 2003:

The New Testament ... consists of 27 books, which are the residue, or precipitate, out of many 1st-2nd-century-AD writings that Christian groups considered sacred. In these various writings the early church transmitted its traditions: its experience, understanding, and interpretation of Jesus as the Christ and the self-understanding of the church. In a seemingly circuitous interplay between the historical and theological processes, the church selected these 27 writings as normative for its life and teachings-i.e., as its canon (from the Greek kanxn, literally, a reed or cane used as a measuring rod and, figuratively, a rule or standard)... Through a complex process the canon was fixed for both the Eastern and Western churches in the 4th century. The canon contained four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Acts, 21 letters, and one book of a strictly revelatory character, Revelation. These were not necessarily the oldest writings, not all equally revelatory, and not all directed to the church at large.

The Old Testament in its Greek translation, the Septuagint (LXX), was the Bible of the earliest Christians. The New Covenant, or Testament, was viewed as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of salvation that were continued for the new Israel, the church, through the Holy Spirit, which had come through Christ, upon the whole people of God. Thus, the Spirit, which in the Old Testament had been viewed as resting only on special charismatic figures, in the New Testament became "democratized"-i.e., was given to the whole people of the New Covenant. In postbiblical Judaism of the first Christian centuries, it was believed that the Spirit had ceased after the writing of the Book of Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament canon) and that no longer could anyone say "Thus saith the Lord," as had the prophets, nor could any further holy writ be produced.

The descent of the Spirit on the community of the Messiah (i.e., the Christ) was thus perceived by Christians as a sign of the beginning of the age to come, and the church understood itself as having access to that inspiration through the Spirit. Having this understanding of itself, the church created the New Testament canon not only as a continuation and fulfillment of the Old Testament but also as qualitatively different, because a new age had been ushered in. These 27 books, therefore, were not merely appended to the traditional Jewish threefold division of the Old Testament-the Law (Torah), the Prophets (NeviÆim), and the Writings (Ketuvim)-but rather became the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible, of which the Old Testament is the first.

Because of a belief that something almost magical occurs-with an element of secrecy-when a transmitted oral tradition is put into writing, there was, in both the Old and New Testaments, an expression of reluctance about committing sacred material to writing. When such sacred writings are studied to find the revealed word of God, a settled delimiting of the writings-i.e., a canon-must be selected. In the last decade of the 1st century, the Synod of Jamnia (Jabneh),in Palestine, fixed the canon of the Bible for Judaism, which, following a long period of flux and fluidity and controversy about certain of its books, Christians came to call the Old Testament. A possible factor in the timing of this Jewish canon was a situation of crisis: the fall of Jerusalem and reaction to the fact that the Septuagint was used by Christians and to their advantage, as in the translation of the Hebrew word Åalma ("young woman") in chapter 7, verse 14, ofIsaiah-"Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"-into the Greek term parthenos ("virgin").

As far as the New Testament is concerned, there could be no Bible without a church that created it; yet conversely, having been nurtured by the content of the writings themselves, the church selected the canon. The concept of inspiration was not decisive in the matter of demarcation because the church understood itself as having access to inspiration through the guidance of the Spirit. Indeed, until c. AD 150, Christians could produce writings either anonymously or pseudonymously-i.e., using the name of some acknowledged important biblical or apostolic figure. The practice was not believed to be either a trick or fraud. Apart from letters in which the person of the writer was clearly attested-as in those of Paul, which have distinctive historical, theological, and stylistic traits peculiar to Paul-the other writings placed their emphases on the message or revelation conveyed, and the author was considered to be only an instrument or witness to the Holy Spirit or the Lord. When the message was committed to writing, the instrument was considered irrelevant, because the true author was believed to be the Spirit. By the mid-2nd century, however, with the delay of the final coming (the Parousia) of the Messiah as the victorious eschatological (end-time) judge and with a resulting increased awareness of history, increasingly a distinction was made between the apostolic time and the present. There also was a gradual cessation of "authentically pseudonymous" writings in which the author could identify with Christ and the Apostles and thereby gain ecclesiastical recognition.

The process of canonization

The process of canonization was relatively long and remarkably flexible and detached; various books in use were recognized as inspired, but the Church Fathers noted, without embarrassment or criticism, how some held certain books to be canonical and others did not. Emerging Christianity assumed that through the Spirit the selection of canonical books was "certain" enough for the needs of the church. Inspiration, it is to be stressed, was neither a divisive nor a decisive criterion. Only when the canon had become self-evident was it argued that inspiration and canonicity coincided, and this coincidence became the presupposition of Protestant orthodoxy (e.g., the authority of the Bible through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit).