I think, therefore, I am not Christian.

This is an argument I had with myself not long ago forcing me to evaluate not only my belief structure, but an entire religion.

I have read story upon story of Christianity corrupting the way that people think about themselves. Ranging everywhere from women to African
Americans to homosexuals. Now, although I was once among the opiated masses, I knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with the hypocrisy of believing that one group of people was inferior to another group. It was with this thinking that upon reexamination I stumbled across several incongruities in the entire faith system.

It starts with the symbology of the diety figures littered throughout the Bible. Upon exploring Egyptian mythology I came across the name Amen which comes at the end of Christian prayer. In Egyptian it is a ram headed god that looks like the Christian devil. In roman mythology, Lucifer was god of the sun and Diana’s brother. In many mythologies goddesses and snakes working together are common. Christianity stole figureheads from several ancient religions and wrapped them in cloths of mockery. The ancient world was rife with tales of virgin births, miracle-working saviors, tripartite gods, gods taking human form, gods arising from the dead, heavens and hells, and days of judgment. In addition to the myths, many of the ceremonies of ancient religions also match those of that latecomer, Christianity. To cite one more example consider Mithraism, a Persian religion predating Christianity by centuries. Mithra, the savior of the Mithraic religion and a god who took human form, was born of a virgin; he belonged to the holy trinity and was a link between heaven and earth; and he ascended into heaven after his death. His followers believed in heaven and hell, looked forward to a day of judgment, and referred to Mithra as “the light of the world.” They also practiced baptism (for purification purposes) and ritual cannibalism, the eating of bread and the drinking of wine to symbolize the eating and drinking of the god’s body and blood. Given all this, Mithra’s birthday should come as no surprise: December 25th; this event was, of course, celebrated by Mithra’s followers at midnight.

Then I looked at the date of the nativity as recorded in scripture. It is indisputable that Luke dates the birth of Jesus to 6 A.D . It is also indisputable that Matthew dates the birth of Jesus before 4 B.C. This is an irreconcilable contradiction.

I then attempted to determine whether or not anything written in the Bible was actually historically accurate. I came across an interesting discovery. Mark, the oldest of the gospels, was written at least 30 years after Christ’s death, and the newest of them might have been written more than 200 years after His death. These texts have been amended, translated, and re-translated so often that it’s extremely difficult to gauge the accuracy of current editions. Even aside from the matter of the accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after the death of their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus seminar, a colloquium of over 200 protestant gospel scholars mostly employed at religious colleges and seminaries undertook, in 1985, a multi-year investigation into the historicity of the statements and deeds attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded that only 18% of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus had a high likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very real sense fundamentalists, who claim to believe in the literal truth of the Bible, are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they are followers of those who, decades or centuries later, put words in his mouth.

For the sake of brevity (and because if any of you have actually read this through all the way, I’d be very surprised) I will close with a part of the Mormon marriage ceremony. This mainly applies to you girls because it is so demeaning. You approach the altar wearing strange clothing, make silly hand signs at one another, and stand there as the clergy demeans the clergy of other religions. You then have to take off your clothes and wearing nothing but a sheet, be blessed by an elder of the church. They then return your garments, which you are to wear always, next to your skin. Then you are given a spiritual name and told that if the husband chose, and you were faithful, your husband would use that name to call you into the celestial kingdom. Also, you are told that if you broke the oaths you made there, ever, you would be handed over to Satan for all eternity. All this time your parents, if not Mormon, have to wait in a holding room until you are finished with the ceremony.