“religion is something we can perhaps do without”.. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in his book “Ethics for the New Millennium”.
"In those days, Pope Leo said to the clergy: 'When Jesus the Son of Man shall come to the seat of our Majesty, say first of all, 'Friend, wherefore art Thou come hither? And if He gives you naught in silver or gold, cast Him forth into outer darkness.'" (A History of the Popes, Dr Joseph McCabe, ibid., vol. 2, chapter on "The Age of Power" Luigi Cascioli was a former priest who left the faith to become a militant atheist. He wrote a book called 'The Fable of Christ', perhaps taking the title from that frank admission by Pope Leo X.
It was Pope Leo X who made the most infamous and damaging statement about Christianity in the history of the Church. His declaration revealed to the world papal knowledge of the Vatican's false presentation of Jesus Christ and unashamedly exposed the puerile nature of the Christian religion. At a lavish Good Friday banquet in the Vatican in 1514, and in the company of "seven intimates" (Annales Ecclesiastici, Caesar Baronius, Folio Antwerp, 1597, tome 14), Leo made an amazing announcement that the Church has since tried hard to invalidate.
Christ a superstition and a “fable”—Pope Leo X, At a lavish Good Friday banquet in the Vatican in 1514. Raising a chalice of wine into the air, Pope Leo toasted:“How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors.” The pope’s pronouncement is recorded in the diaries and records of both Pietro Cardinal Bembo (Letters and Comments on Pope Leo X, 1842 reprint) and Paolo Cardinal Giovio (De Vita Leonis Decimi, , op. cit.), two associates who were witnesses to it.
Most of us think we know what the word fable means, but the reality is that it carries several meanings, which staunch Christians may perceive as an OK (a story of the supernatural or extraordinary person) to a discrete academic neutral (a short tale to teach a moral) to an insult (an untruth, lie or a falsehood). But as Cascioli is a militant atheist, we may guess quite safely that he would have the last in mind. A Catholic priest, Father Enrico Righi, was so annoyed with the blasphemous book that he denounced Cascioli in his parish newsletter for daring to even question Christ’s historical existence. Ironically, both Cascioli and Father Righi were actually from the same town and even went to the same seminary school when they were teenagers. I reckon Cascioli was looking for a fight, maybe to prove a point or to pursue his hobbyhorse, so he launched legal proceedings against the padre 3 years ago. He accused the Catholic priest of 'Abuso di Credulita Popolare' meaning 'Abuse of Popular Belief', designated an offence in Italy to protect people against being swindled or conned.
The idea that Jesus was divine was a later Christian invention found only in John, the last gospel, written some 60 years after the events described, and written by an unknown author. The raising of Lazurus from the dead, and the divinity of Jesus are not found in any of the other 3 gospels. The belief that Jesus was God or divine was not the belief of Jesus’s earliest followers, nor of Jesus himself. Bart D. Ehrman now describes himself as “an agnostic scholar of the New Testament.”
Bart D. Ehrman, the author of “Jesus Interrupted, Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them”) (HarperCollins, 2009) was a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, who was certain that every word in the Bible had been inspired by God when he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, intending to become a Professor of the Bible. 49 As a seeker of truth, things did not turn out as he planned. found in historical-critical bible study classes things that biblical scholars have unearthed in the last two hundred years that graduates that even go on to become pastors don’t and won’t mention in their sermons: That the authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works. That it contains books that were forged in the name of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later. Established Christian doctrines-such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity were inventions of still later theologians.
“These things are clearer than the light to all men; and the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all Churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.”
Letter of Martin Luther to Pope Leo X (Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520)
Gandhi probably meant God does not favor or follow any organized religion.
QUESTION:
Why should WE favor or follow any organized religion?
THINK, if we didn’t have religion, we would not have had:
** The Crusades , where Christians burned alive Jews and Muslims together in Jerusalem.
** The Inquisition, which lasted over 400 years.
** The Salem witch hangings.
** The “30 year War” between Protestants and Catholics
** The violence and killings in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants.
** The conflict between Hindus and Moslems, in India, including the formation of two states, India and Pakistan.
** The assassination of the source of the above quote “God has no Religion”, Mahatma Ghandi.
** The killings in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias.
** The killings in Afghanistan between Sunnis and Shias.
** The Holocaust.
** The turmoil presently in the Mid-East between Israel and Palestine.
** The possible war between Israel, the United States, and Iran.
If there were no organized religion, none of the above would have happened.
Think of it. None of the above.
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” Dalai Lama
“More violence has occurred in the name of religion than for any other reason.” Deepak Chopra in New York Times Bestseller “The Book of Secrets”
“Religion is something we can perhaps do without.” – Dalai Lama From his book Ethics for the New Millennium
The Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra quotes are contained in the new book by Samuel Butler, “Beyond All Religion”.
“The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave.” Robert Green Ingersoll, in Some Mistakes of Moses:III: The Politicians
A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and ... inform the other if there is sex after death.
Their biggest fear was that there was no after-life at all. After a long life together, the husband was the first to die.
True to his word, he made the first contact: "Marion .... Marion ..." "Is that you, Bob?" "Yes, I've come back like we agreed." "That's wonderful! What's it like?" "Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it's off to the golf course. I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times ..."
"Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots of greens). Another romp around the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon."
"After supper, it's back to the golf course again. Then it's more sex until late at night. I catch some much needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again." "Oh, Bob! Are you in Heaven?" "No, I'm a rabbit somewhere near Mildura.”
Goodbye, cruel world I'm leaving you today Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Goodbye all you people There's nothing you can say To make me change my mind Goodbye!!!
An Act Of Punishment:-
From infancy in arms to tottering age, not one was spared—seven thousand, it is said, were slaughtered in the Church of Mary Magdalen to which they had fled for asylum—and the total number of slain is set down by the legates at nearly twenty thousand….
A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs us that when Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he feared the heretics would escape by feigning orthodoxy, and fiercely replied, “Kill them all, for God knows his own!”
In the mad carnage and pillage the town was set on fire, and the sun of that awful July day closed on a mass of smouldering ruins and blackened corpses—a holocaust to a deity of mercy and love whom the Cathari might well be pardoned for regarding as the Principle of Evil.
The inquisitors’ use of torture was equally horrific, for it did not end at confession. Once they procured a confession, they began torture anew to extract names of associates until the last drop of information was squeezed from the mangled husk of what had once been a human being.
Once accused, the pitiful defendant was guaranteed to suffer. Torture yielded the required confession—if not out of truth, then out of the victim’s desperation to bring an end to the pain. Horrifically, protestations of innocence and even the oath of orthodoxy did not bring relief, for suspects professing orthodox belief were committed to a test of faith, and here the church demonstrated the full measure of its creativity.
Trials by water and fire were popularized and sanctioned by the Catholic Church for the testing of faith by way of Judicium Dei—Judgment of God, a concept based upon superstition. It was believed that the purity of water would not accept a guilty body into its midst, and so floaters were judged guilty and executed, sinkers were considered innocent, and if rescued before drowning, spared. It was believed that earthly fire, like the flames of Hell, would not harm those who were (in their view) the faithful Christians bearing the promise of paradise.
The “hot iron test” was the most commonly employed, as it was simple and readily available. In this test, the accused was required to carry a redhot piece of iron for a certain number of steps, usually nine. Judgment was offered either at the time of the test (those burned were judged guilty) or several days later (those whose wounds were healing were declared innocent, whereas those whose wounds became infected were deemed guilty).
Other variations existed, such as determining whether or not a person suffered a burn when an arm was immersed up to the elbow in boiling water or boiling oil.
Lest a person presume such insane methods were rarely employed, the Council of Rheims in 1157 ordered “trials by ordeal” to satisfy all cases of suspected heresy.
Now, why all this discussion about what are now littleknown and dead sects? Well, the intent is neither to glorify them beyond the merits of their ideology, nor to evoke sympathy for their cause, but rather to draw attention to the alternate Christian ideologies that have become obscure in the shadow of prevailing Trinitarianism.
The Corinthians, the Basilidians, the Paulicians, the Cathari and the Carpocratians may be littleknown today, but they were dynamic Christian ideologies that shared a significant place in history. But history, as the saying goes, is written by the victors. “Moreover,” writes Ehrman, “the victors in the struggles to establish Christian orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict …”
The Catholic Church attempted to systematically erase the memory of all other sects and scriptures contrary to their own, and at this, they were largely successful. Given their vicious methodology, we should not be surprised.
Additionally, historical attempts to vilify all other religions or Christian sects prejudiced the minds of the populace. So successful were these efforts that the records and holy books of those who appear to have been closest to the teachings of the apostolic fathers have been largely lost.
Similarly, those closest to embodying the practices and creed of the prophet Jesus have come to be regarded as heretics, simply because they did not embrace the “evolved” doctrines of the Trinitarian victors. In other words, they were condemned for nonconformity with views which, though lacking scriptural authority, were selected by men of position and propagated for reasons of political expediency.
Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!
One of the curious elements of Trinitarian history lies in the fact that in all its travels throughout the Christian world, it had to be forced upon a previously Unitarian people. The Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals, the Arians, Donatists and Paulicians—all had to be muscled aside prior to the imposition of Trinitarian rule.
Even in England and Ireland there is suspicion that, contrary to official historical accounts, a good percentage of the population were staunch Unitarian Christian prior to receiving Trinitarian “encouragement.” Whereas Unitarians attempted to spread faith through example and invitation, the Catholic Church spread Trinitarian faith by shearing the populace with the sharp blades of compulsion and elimination.
Reviewing unprejudiced historical accounts, a large population of the religious throughout the known world voiced their opposition to Trinitarian Christianity, and those who denied Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and death were not necessarily a minority.
Many would argue that from a gut level it makes more sense for God to have punished Judas for his treachery than to have tortured Jesus for his innocence. The argument would be more convincing if the doctrines of atonement and original sin could be shown to be invalid, for these two doctrines hinge off the doorframe of the alleged death of Jesus.
The first hurdle for many people in considering such revolutionary notions is the ageold assertion that Jesus Christ was the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), for in the mind of the Trinitarian, this verse can have no relevance other than to that of the doctrine of atonement. Unitarians, however, conceive Jesus to have lived a life of sacrifice in order to bear a purifying teaching which, if adopted, would put humankind on the path of God’s design.
REFERENCES:
Conybeare, Fred. C., M.A. 1898. The Key of Truth. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lea, Henry Charles. Vol. I, p. 154.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2003. Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Oxford University Press.
If God had a name what would it be? And would you call it to his face? If you were faced with Him in all His glory What would you ask if you had just one question?
And yeah, yeah, God is great Yeah, yeah, God is good And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?
If God had a face what would it look like? And would you want to see if, seeing meant That you would have to believe in things like heaven And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?
And yeah, yeah, God is great Yeah, yeah, God is good And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?