The Mechanism of the Propagation of Christianity
as the Dominant Religion in Western Culture
Early in human history, religions evolved naturally and innocently as humans sought to explain the existence and nature of the world. With civilization and with the growth of the sciences, however, the necessity of invoking superstition in describing the world has slowly declined.While civilization may have brought about the beginning of the end of religion as a necessary component of philosophical thought, it also brought about a new reason for religions to flourish, namely the ability of the few to dominate over and control the many. Throughout civilization, the few have always sought a mechanism of attaining power over the many. Some have accomplished this through government and some though religion. Frequently, as is the case with Christianity, the mechanisms of government and religion have been used in tandem to control the masses. But where did Christianity come from, and how did it evolve into such a powerful weapon of enslavement? I do not believe it evolved at all - I believe it was designed for the express purpose of controling the populace.
Christianity is unique among religions in that it is never truly at odds with competing dogmas. While the proponents of Christianity engage in warfare against members of competing religions from time to time, Christianity itself absorbs conflicting religions rather than competing with them. The gods and deities of the other religion become the tools and puppets of the Christian Anti-God Satan. Celebrations and festivals of the competing religion are transformed into Christian celebrations honoring God or Jesus. Concomitantly, the Christian Church-State passes law making the festival associated with the non-Christian deity illegal. Thus, the festival that the peasant classes enjoy continues uninterrupted and the meaning behind the festival remains largely unchanged - only the name of the god being celebrated changes. As time passes, the changes that occurred are forgotten and the deity originally associated with the festival lost. As Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984 observed, "Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." The result inevitably is the demise of the competing religion until it no longer poses a threat to the Christian dogma. By absorbing other religions rather than conflicting with them, Christianity NEVER appears weak or flawed or threatened to Christians themselves. Rather than weakening or losing members, Christianity actually increases in strength and dominance with every competing dogma it absorbs. This has been the way of the Christian religion from the beginning, and over the millennia it has absorbed so many competing ideologies that it is essentially impossible to detect any sign of the original "Christian" religion, if indeed there was an original Christian religion. Some examples follow.
The Immaculate Conception of Jesus Christ
The immaculate conception of Jesus Christ is neither original nor surprising, since at the time that Jesus is alleged to have lived immaculate conception was a common method for deities to introduce worldly "of the flesh" God-like sons and daughters. Jesus may very well have been derived from the legends of Hercules, the hero from Greek mythology. Indeed, Hercules pre-dates Jesus, who's life (and death) bears a striking resemblance to his Greek counterpart. Both figures were born of Gods to virgin mothers, lived their lives performing good deeds and miraculous acts, and rose to Heaven (or Mt. Olympus - the Greek equivalent) on death. While it cannot be stated as fact that Jesus is derived from Hercules, the influence of Greek mythology on Christianity is a certainty, as the presence of mythical Greek figures in the Holy Bible proves.There remains also the interesting possibility that Jesus was not only modeled after Hercules but created as a result of Hercules. Prior to Jesus, Christianity was at a disadvantage in that it was one of the few religions (or perhaps the only religion) that lacked a living, breathing "in the flesh" God-like figure. In addition to the actual Gods such as Zeus, the earlier religion of the Greeks had conjured Hercules - a human "god" - and the presence of such a figure may have offered some degree of credibility to that religion. Where was the human "God" of the Christians? Enter Jesus - the Christian human "God".
Sunday as the Sabbath
The 4th of the Ten Commandments of the Christian Bible states, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." The "Sabbath" is the last day of the week however - Saturday. All but a small handful of Christians today ignore this and celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday instead. Why? "Sunday" literally means "Day of the Sun" and was from at least the 4th century B.C.E. until the 4th century C.E. a day of festival for worshipers of the Sun, namely the Mithras. Sun worship was, of course, a component of religions other than Christianity, and over time the celebration of the Christian Sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sunday. This move from the Saturday to Sunday Sabbath was eventually finalized through the edict of Emperor Constantine in 321 C.E. Thus, a day of festival of 'pagan' religions had been transformed into a day of rest of the Christian religion.
"The [Catholic] Church took the pagan buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan Roman Pantheon, [the Roman] temple to all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday . . . The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom. Balder the beautiful: the White God, the old Scandinavians called him. The sun has worshipers at this very hour in Persia and other lands . . . Hence the Church would seem to have said, 'Keep that old, pagan name. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.' And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus. The sun is a fitting emblem of Jesus. The Fathers often compared Jesus to the sun; as they compared Mary to the moon."Christmas as the Birth of Christ
-- William L. Gildea, "Paschale Gaudium," in "The Catholic World," 58, March, 1894. "The Church made a sacred day of Sunday . . . largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun;--for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance."
-- Arthur Weigall, "The Paganism in Our Christianity," 1928, p. 145.
Before Christ, and therefore before the celebration of the birth of Christ, Germanic, Roman, and Celtic people celebrated the Winter Solstice. Once a year, they decorated their homes with Holly, mistletoe, Yule logs, and wassail bowls, and decorated trees with ornaments. The word "Yule-tide", actually means "wheel time" (the cycles of time) and is a reference to these celebrations.During the 3rd and 4th centuries B.C.E., the Persian Mithras would sacrifice a bull on December 25 to celebrate the Sol Invictus (the Invincible Sun). The ceremony signaled the birth of a young Sun God who sprang from a rock or a cave in the form of a newborn infant. Sound familiar?
The ancient Romans celebrated the festival of Saturnalia from December 17th to the 24th to honor Saturn, the god of grain and agriculture. The festival consisted of a period of goodwill devoted to visiting friends and the giving of gifts. The festival of Saturnia culminated with the celebration of the Winter Solstice on December 25th - A ceremony of the annual renewing of the Sun.
On December 25th 354 C.E., Pope Liberus conjured the Nativity - a celebration of the birth of the Christ Child. This Nativity celebration, invented 354 years after the alleged birth of the Christ child, is as best I can tell the only component of the modern day Christmas celebration that was actually invented by Christians. And even that is dubious, given that Liberus invented the Nativity as a replacement of Sol Invictus - the celebration of the birth of the Sun God who sprang from a rock or a cave in the form of a newborn infant. Thus, Pope Liberus began the custom of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on December 25th, and this celebration grew in popularity as the rituals of Mithra and Saturnalia that were formerly celebrated on the 25th of December slowly faded in memory.
The Origin of Easter
Easter is derived from pre-Christian celebrations of the Vernal Equinox which occurs on or near March 21 of each year. The name "Easter" is most likely derived from the Great Mother Goddess Eostre, who's name was in turn derived from the ancient word "Eastre", which means Spring. Another possible origin for the term "Easter" is Ostara - the Norse Goddess of fertility. Celebration of Ostara was likewise during the Vernal Equinox, fertility being associated with the flowering of springtime.Around 200 B.C.E., a cult appeared in Rome centered on Cybele - the Phrygian fertility goddess. Attis, the lover of Cybele, was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, Attis died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.
Following the alleged life of Christ, ancient Christians claimed that Satan had created the counterfeit deities Cybele and Attis in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. A more likely explanation, however, is that early Christians had simply borrowed from the earlier legend of Attis and from this developed the resurrection myth of Christ in order to conquer and Christianize the competing belief.
In addition to the holiday itself, the familiar elements and decorations that are normally associated with the Christian Easter are pagan in origin. For example, 'hot cross buns' are derived from the ritualistic bread eaten at the feast of Eostre, the Saxon fertility Goddess. The symbols of the Norse Goddess Ostara were the hare and the egg. Dyed eggs, as symbols of regeneration and fertility, date back to the early ancient Egyptians.
Valentine's Day
The celebration now known as St. Valentine's Day was originally a celebration of sensual pleasure in honor of the Lupercus - the god of fertility. In 496 C.E., Pope Gelasius outlawed the celebration of the "pagan" God Luperus and introduced Saint Valentine as a Christian substitute.Halloween
That the Halloween season was originally a pagan holiday before being transformed into a series of Christian holidays (e.g. "All Saints' Day" and "All Souls' Day" on Nov. 1-2) is widely known and therefore won't be discussed at length here. I mention it only to point out the peculiar fact that some Christians refuse to celebrate Halloween because of its pagan origins, yet they celebrate all the other Christian holidays which are also pagan in origin ... (?)The Christian Fish Symbol
The familiar fish symbol commonly seen on the rear fenders of automobiles was originally an ancient pagan symbol of fertility and sexuality associated with a range of goddeses (Tirgata, Aphrodite, Pelagia, Delphine) from various religions and cults. What looks like a fish is actually an ancient symbol of the female genitalia. When Christians later adopted the ancient symbol, they simply rotated it 90 degrees to make it look less like a vagina and more like a fish.The Christian Cross
Early Christians most commonly depicted Jesus as a lamb or (more commonly) a shepherd carrying a lamb. It was not until the 5th century C.E. that the cross first appeared as a Christian symbol, and this was the Greek cross of equal length arms. The corpse of Jesus was not depicted on a cross until the 7th century C.E. In these early crucifixion symbols from the 7th century, the cross was in the form of the 'tau' and may have been taken from the Druids who made identical crosses to represent the Thau god. In the original Greek Bible, Jesus was crucified on a "stauros" - a simple vertical pole or "torture stake".The Pentagram
The pentagram as a religious symbol has a lengthy history but most likely originated with the ancient Celtics. Christians inverted the symbol and associated it with Satan. Originally, however, the pentagram had nothing to do with Satan or with Christianity.
Up to this point I have described only ancient examples of Christian propagation - Examples which illustrate the methods though which Christianity gained early dominance and supremacy in Western culture. Christianity continues to propagate by these same techniques today, however, and I'll offer some examples to illustrate this.
Christian Origins of the United States
Just as early Christians transformed the deities of other faiths into Christian deities and/or puppets of the Christian Satan, modern Christians transform non-Christian figures of historic importance into Christian heroes. As I've already illustrated in another essay on this site, The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the United States, the founding fathers of the nation in which I live - the writers of the US Constitution and drafters of the Declaration of Independence - were largely Deists, Agnostics, and Unitarians (rejecting the Trinity). Those who may potentially have been Christian, such as George Washington, usually remained quiet about their personal beliefs, striving to maintain the unbiased perspective necessary to erect a fair and impartial government. Today, these non-Christian founders of my nation are frequently depicted as "God fearing" Christian men, and in many cases fables have been created in which these non-Christians are performing Christian deeds. In cases where a non-Christian founding father has not been transformed into a Christian, false stories are usually told of death bed conversions.The Cold War Invasion of Christianity in US Government
During the infamous US - USSR Cold War, Christians in the US portrayed "the enemy" (i.e. the USSR and affiliated nations) as "Godless" and "non-Christian." The implication of course was that in the 'good versus bad' struggle, an economic division was transformed into a religious division, with the 'good side' being Christian and the 'bad side' being Atheistic. With Senator Joe McCarthy attacking the character of anyone with suspicious affiliations and anti-Communist hysteria at its climax, Christians found an opportunity to inject Christian dogma into the US government. The US motto stamped on coins and currency was transformed from the secular "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of many, one") to the Christian "In God We Trust". In the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States, the words "One nation, indivisible" were transformed to "One nation, under God, indivisible." In the back of my mind, I cannot help picturing Squealer from George Orwell's Animal Farm climbing the ladder each night in the cover of darkness, changing "Four legs good - Two legs bad" to read "Four legs good - Two legs better."The Blue Laws as a Mechanism of Christian Control
Still remaining today in at least some of the 50 United States, South Carolina included, are Christian "Blue Laws" designed to force citizens to maintain behavior that conforms to the requirements of the Christian faith. Most of those blue laws that remain today pertain specifically to the behavior of the citizenry on the pagan day of festival that the Christian Church adopted as it's own "Sabbath" - Sunday. Today, however, the blue laws have little to do with the moral behavior of the citizenry - they serve primarily to direct a suitable portion of the citizen's cash flow into Christian Churches. In many areas of South Carolina, for example, it remains illegal for all but a few exempt commercial establishments to open before noon (1:30 PM where I live) on a Sunday. Is this because Christians are not supposed to work on the day they believe to be their 'Sabbath'? Of course not ... the existing law would only serve to delay sinning until 1:30! Churches of today, however, are 'cash cows' and as such are in direct competition with commerce. By preventing commercial establishments from opening before 1:30 PM on Sundays, the Christian Churches are able to prevent the citizenry from spending money on Sunday morning outside of Church donations.Other blue laws that remain in effect are equally ludicrous, such as laws preventing taverns from selling alcohol if the door of the tavern is within a certain distance of the door of a church. In at least one instance that I personally know of, a church moved next door to a tavern, and as a result the tavern owner was required to brick up the door and cut a new door in the opposite wall in order to conform to the law!
The Ten Commandments as 'Good Moral Guidelines'
As this is being written, an ongoing battle within the government of the United States is the appearance of the Christian 'Ten Commandments' in government buildings and in schools. The issue is being fueled by hysteria over school shootings in which Christians (along with people of other faiths) have died. The arguments that the Christians use to gain favor for the introduction of the Commandments in schools and courthouses are seductive ... "They're just good moral guidelines! ... 'Thou shalt not kill' - What can that hurt? ... What kind of country have we become where we cannot even have 'Thou shalt not kill' and 'Thou shalt not steal' posted on a school wall?" Indeed, these are seductive arguments, and frequently we non-Christians are tempted to agree without thinking about the matter too carefully. Unfortunately, the Christians who push this issue never seem to mention those 'other' Commandments in their pleas. What are the Ten Commandments?1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Translation Gods other than the Christian God are forbidden.
2. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
Translation Don't make idols/images of the Christian God (or any other god) or you, your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, and maybe even your great great grandchildren are going to suffer.
3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain."
Translation Don't break a promise to the Christian God or he'll be really pissed!
4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."
Translation Don't work on Saturday - the Christian Sabbath. Hopefully, His Majesty won't mind the change to Sunday or Hell is going to be awfully full of Christians!
I have now gone through the top four of the Ten Commandments and I have yet to come across these 'good moral guidelines' that Christians want to put on school walls. Instead, these first four commandments say only that the Christian god is the only god, that no other gods are to be worshipped, and that we must perform rituals in honor of this Christian god (e.g. keeping the "Sabbath" holy). These are the 'good moral guidelines' that all public school children in America are supposed to be forced to obey? Do Christians honestly believe that this is not offensive to Muslims and Atheists?
5. "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
Translation Don't let your folks rot in the nursing home ... finally I get to one of those 'good moral guidelines'!
6. "Thou shalt not kill."
Translation At first, this sounds okay. Unfortunately, the original Hebrew Scriptures go on to specify when this commandment must be obeyed and when it may be broken. It is okay, for example, to kill people who are members of other religions, who curse their parents, or who work on Saturday. Also, women who are engaged and who have sex with men other than the ones they are engaged to may be killed.
7. "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Translation If you are a man, you may have sex outside of marriage only with women who are unmarried and not claimed as the property of another man.
8. "Thou shalt not steal."
Translation This is actually a reference to slaves and not to material property. I don't think there is much value in hanging a sign on a school wall warning children not to run away with the slaves of other people.
9. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
Translation Don't lie against your neighbor in court. Presumably, lying outside of court is permissible.
10. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."
Translation Don't lust after your neighbor's possessions, including his wife and his slaves. I fail to see the 'good moral guideline' in this, and I don't think we need signs in our schools telling children that wives and slaves are possessions on the same level as an ox.
These are the 'good moral guidelines' that Christians tell us are suitable for display in schools and courthouses? The only 'good moral guideline' I am able to distill out of all this rubbish is "Honour thy father and thy mother."
We must always be vigilant and wary of the motives of others, for the price of historical revisionism is high. Let the ever pertinent words of Winston ring loud in your ears...
"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased,
the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."
