AW! Epistles
From David Braunsberg
Abstract
Sunday, May 13, 2001
On one of your web pages you say that the modern story of Prometheus bound to a rock while a bird preyed on his organs is a Christian fraud. Would you be able to explain to me then why there is a piece of pottery which dates to over 300 years before Christ, which came from southern Italy, that depicts Prometheus bound to a rock while the bird that preyed on on his organs lies mortally wounded on the ground? Would you also be able to explain to me why there is an ancient piece of Greek pottery which depicts Promethus tied to a tree, with no nails in his hands or feet, while a bird eats at his liver?
Those old legends from around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea often had local forms—you mention two of them, the second being a crucifixion—and I agree that the legend of the eagles eating his liver existed early. The fraud was not in making up the story but in propagating only the one version. There are sins of commission but also sins of omission.
The picture that I am sending you [never received] is a picture of an ancient bowl with Prometheus on it, tied to a tree, while the eagle eats at his liver. I doubt that Promethus is crucified in this picture, because a real crucifixion is on a cross, and Prometheus is not on a cross. He is just tied to a tree, with his feet on the ground, and is is not nailed to anything. There is also another thing that you need to correct. You say that Krishna was depicted as if crucified. I have done some passionate research on this topic, and the only death account, in valid sources, that I could find was that he died while meditating in a forest when a hunter shot him in the foot with an arrow accidentially. I even sent an e-mail to a college professor who maintains a web site on the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, asking him if there were any versions of Krishna’s death which said that he died on a tree or was crucified between two thieves. In reply he said to me that the death of Krishna to which I referred (which was that he died in a forest when a hunter accidentially shot him with an arrow) was the one and only version of Krishna’s death. It can be found in the 16th book of the Mahabharata.
If we are to use the word crucifixion, you must necessarily be correct—it refers to a cross. The punishment however is hanging on a tree, a form that applied to several very ancient gods, and most scholars, even Christian ones, recognize that the cross is a symbolic tree. Indeed the OT reference to it is Deuteronomy 21:22, often taken as prophetic, and Peter and the apostles in Acts 5:30 and 10:39 say Jesus had been hanged on a tree. Crucifixions generally did not involve nailing but tying, and tying even when the hands or wrists were nailed to make sure the weight was carried even if flesh yielded. Ultimately, the point is that the saviour of mankind, here the Titan Prometheus, was cruelly punished, or at least had to suffer cruelly in the myth.
On Krishna, so far as I can recollect, the basis of it was an ancient cave temple somewhere in India that contained icons of Krishna apparently crucified. The legend is around 3000 years old. Two problems arise, the first is whether the icons have been properly interpreted, and the inference is that they have not, but the other is that the compilers of the Hindu sacred texts have altered the legend in the present era—when Christianity reached India with the Nestorians—to avoid any implication that they had derived it from Christianity, or indeed to eliminate any possibility of Krishna being mistaken for Christ that might have assisted Christian proselytizing. That this is possible is indicated by the accretion of the legends of Gopala to those of Krishna in the early centuries AD, showing that the Krishna legends were still changing in the Christian era.
One query: what is a “valid source?”—it sounds a bit like question begging. Would an ancient icon be a valid source?
I consider a valid source to be a source that is maintained by people who know a lot about the subject, such as the web sites maintained by professors who are experts in Indian languages and sites run by Hindus themselves. These are the kinds of sites that I have searched through. I have also looked in books written by Hindu writers and mythology books in my research.
I do not have a picture of the piece of pottery which has Promethus bound to a rock on it, but I found a reference to it in my copy of the Promethus Bound play by Aeschylus.
Talking about the thing with Krishna depicted as if crucified, can you point me to any books which are of a little more recent date than the book by Kersey Graves, which talks about these icons of Krishna apparently crucified? Or could you tell me of web sites where I can find out information about these icons and what the scholarly opinion is about them? In my opinion it may have been better for Hindus to keep Krishna crucified, if that is what the origional legend was in the first place. That may have in fact helped prevent the Nestorians from making many converts among the Hindus, since they would already have their own crucified savior. The Hindus may not have had to worry about implications of deriving the crucifixion from Christianity if a legend about Krishna being crucified was much older than Christianity itself and had existed long before Christians ever came to India.
Also, would you be able to scan and send me a picture over the internet of some of those icons of Krishna crucified? Also, what is the name of that temple which has those icons in it? I would like to look it up.
The reference came from Kersey Graves’ book, which I have not got, so I can add nothing more definite, although I recall a TV documentary showing some ancient Indian site in this context (though it might have been Discovery Channel!).
We cannot tell how these Indians felt when Christians came among them missionizing, except that their reaction would have depended on how important the crucifixion of Krishna was in their own religious outlook. Christians made it central. For other sun gods, it seems not to have been central but just part of the god’s myth. According to Graves, evidence of the myth of the crucifixion of Krishna still existed in Victorian times, and Christians deliberately despoiled books containing it. I would put less emphasis on this than on the icons, if you can trace them, because it is possible that the Christian myth was syncretized to Krishna in the years since Christianity arrived in India. This is the whole trouble with written sources. No one knows when a legend was introduced. An ancient sculpture or icon in context tells us more in this respect.
That really was my point about a valid source. I was not being coy or awkward but simply suggesting that iconography can be placed in a historical period more closely than a text. Documents are often unreliable, especially religious ones that have a clear purpose of persuasion to a particular belief. It is better to regard them as unreliable until they can be shown to be genuine.
Further to what we were discussing about the cross: because of our Christian culture and its imagery we always think of the cross as being the instrument of the saviour god’s torture. However, the celestial origin of it in solar myths is that the sun crosses over the celestial equator, the heavenly sign of the equinoxes. The image of a crossover in the sky would be a cross, but the cross would be a cross like the Greek letter Chi (X) not a Plus (+). Constantine’s cross in the heavens that signalled his victory at the Milvian bridge was a Chi not a Plus, and the traditional Roman sign of the Christian was Chi Ro, the first two letter of the name Christ. This shape is the shape a man takes when he is stretched out by bonds such as he might have if tied to the ground or to a tree. So we might be looking for icons in which the god is depicted such that his body forms a cross, like that of the famous illustration by Leonardo. In the traditional story of the death of Krishna, the god is sitting crosslegged, which is why he could be wounded in his foot, possibly a remnant of the original myth.
The cross of Christ, as experts seem to agree, was actually a bar placed across the top of an upright, so it was not a cross at all. It was a “Tee” (T), called “Taw” in Hebrew and “Tau” in Greek. So the cross that the victim was suspended from was actually a crossbar, and perhaps in those days this was called the cross. The “Taw” sign was the symbol of the dying and rising god, Tammuz, and “tau” was the sign that was made on the heads of those marked for salvation by the god. I mention these things because the crucifixion images you are seeking might not be as conventional as the ones you have in mind based on the Catholic crucifix.
Finally, I think you should borrow a copy of the Graves’ book, if they are available these days, and find out what sources he used. Many of them were obviously wrong, but I do not imagine they thought so at the time, so you will be able to get the original citations of these icons from there, and then find out what the modern opinion is.
There is something that I forgot to say in my last e-mail about valid sources. If you are basing the idea of Krishna being crucified on an icon from an ancient temple then that can be a valid source. But if scholars are not really sure what that icon really means and even Hindus are not sure either, and it’s true meaning is in dispute, then you are basing something on unstable ground.
Not me. I write on the page you refer to:
Kersey Graves, in a well known book written over a century ago, gives examples of sixteen crucified gods or saviours. Most are very ancient and arguable, depending upon the interpretation of pictures or sculptures since no original written sources now exist, often victims of Christians determined to preserve the memory of only one crucified god.
As I said in my last note, there is nothing surprising about any god with a solar aspect being crucified or suffering some equivalent fate.
Talking about another savior on your web site, in my research I have never been able to find any sources which said that Ixion bore any sins of the world on his back. Your are going to have to say on your web site the legend that Ixion was a king who tried to rape the goddess Hera on Mount Olympus. Zeus tricked him to see if he really did try to rape her by forming a cloud in the shape of Hera and putting it in her bed when Ixion was drunk. He had sex with the cloud and Zeus had him tied to a burning wheel which would rotate forever in the underworld. I have two ancient pieces of art, one which is from Italy, and another which might come from Greece which depicts Ixion’s punishment. I will eventually send them to you.
Well, I haven’t got the time to cover classical mythology as well as the Jewish and Christian varieties, and there are good mythological sites anyway. Ixion was another sun god condemned by the sky God Zeus to be crucified on the solar wheel as it traversed the sky forever. A man tied to a wheel is crucified, as I said in my last letter because his body forms a cross. This myth seems to be a Hellenic version of a non-Hellenic sun god where the god is considered ignoble for ravaging the wife of Zeus, and so is punished.
Concerning Quezalcoatl, I have not found any legends which say that he was crucified. There are two legends about his death that I have found. The first one was that he threw himself onto a funeral pyre and he was cremated, where upon he was resurrected as the planet venus. The other legend that I found was that he departed in a boat on the Gulf of Mexico. Some said that they heard him say that he would one day return, while others saw his body burn up in the heat of the sun. Birds flew out of his ashes which carried his heart up to the sky to become the planet Venus. I have another picture from an ancient Aztec relief which depicts Quezalcoatl as the planet Venus which I will also sent you eventually.
All I knew of was the disappearance to the east, but he has characteristics of a sun god again. The Aztecs seem to have been sun worshippers and Venus is the planet that heralds the sun. I do not know whether Kersey Graves’ book is illustrated, but you really ought to look there first. There are pictures of Ixion crucified on a wheel and Prometheus tied to a post in World Mythology edited by Roy Willis. There is also a picture that purports to illustrate the legend that you describe about Quetzalcoatl rising as Venus. To me, it shows a sun figure emerging from a fire with outstretched arms! I can see no heart or birds or planet Venus. Elsewhere, Nanahuatzin self-immolates on another pyre to create the fifth sun.
Krishna sitting in a cross legged position may have nothing to do with any original myth of Krishna being crucified. The cross legged sitting position of someone meditating is, at least I think it is, a traditional sitting position for meditating in India. Krishna’s death as recorded in the Mahabharata sounds a lot more like the death of the Greek hero Achilles, than it does the death of Christ. I remember reading once that Greek colonies existed in India as early as the time of the Buddha, and it may be possible that the Indians got the story of Krishna’s death from the story of Achilles. Of course it could be the other way around too.
It seems odd to the western way of thinking that a man whose whole people had just been killed off should be peacefully practising yoga in the forest. That is the way of mythology. It gave Krishna a way of being wounded in the sole of the foot while sitting with his legs crossed. I agree it sounds like the myth of Achilles, but I have never heard of Greek colonies in India in the sixth century BC and think it extremely unlikely to be true. More to the point is that both Indians and Greeks were Aryans and had a common stock of myths.
It may be possible that any stories of Krishna being crucified, was an adaptation of the story of Christ into Hinduism. Christianity arrived in India some time in the AD 60s with S Thomas, and arriverd into northern India with the Nestorian missions sometime in the fourth century AD.
I am getting puzzled by some of this. I have already said this to you:
It is possible that the Christian myth was syncretized to Krishna in the years since Christianity arrived in India. This is the whole trouble with written sources. No one knows when a legend was introduced. An ancient sculpture or icon in context tells us more in this respect.
Are you reading what I write to you? Though the mission of Thomas is a myth, the Nestorians missionized early throughout Asia. One should not forget though that Nestorians were branded heretics by the orthodox, so do Christians claim them as their own or not? Then they rejected them, but now, of course, they will claim them as their own.
In one of your e-mails to me you said that one of the problems with the icons of Krishna being crucified is that they have not been properly interpreted and that the inference is that they have not been properly interpreted. The Mahabharata is a very important epic in the religious life of all, or virtually all, Hindus in the world and it states that he died in the way I told you, so if the British wrote any report about any crucifixion of Krishna, they sure would not have gotten it from the Hindu scriptures. If these icons of Krishna apparently being crucified may not have been properly interpreted than there may have been no legend of Krishna ever being crucified.
I think this is true, but sun gods were often crucified to reflect their crossing over the celestial equator in the spring and autumn equinoxes, and so we should not be surprised to hear that there is or was such a legend about Krishna. I it was who said to you that the Hindus might have decided to suppress the crucifixion myths to avoid parallels with Christianity that might have lost proselytes to the missionaries.
I don’t think that it is good to base anything on the writings of Kersey Graves. www.infidels.org is a website which puts up a lot of skeptical papers on religion, and they have an online library. One of the books that they have in their library is the 16 crucified saviors by Graves. At the very top of the page of the table of contents for the book they put a note to the reader, which says: “the scholarship of Kersey Graves has been questioned by numerous freethinkers; the inclusion of The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors in the Secular Web’s Historical Library does not constitute endorsement by Internet Infidels, Inc. This document was included for historical purposes; readers should be extremely cautious in trusting anything in this book.”
Again, I am puzzled about why you are telling me what I already know, and have mentioned on the page that invited your response. Did you read it? I copied it in my last but one e-mail. RTFAQs as they put on the web
Ixion was no sun god, he was a mortal king. Apollo was the sun god. Ixion was condemned to be tied to a burning wheel forever in the underworld, not in the sky.
You have a suspicious credulity about ancient mythology. You will be telling me that Herakles was an ancient stable lad next! Ancient kings were often the god of the tribe, because unsophisticated people saw themselves as ruled by the god, not by the man who acted for him on earth. Ixion was a Thessalian sun god. He was married to Dia, meaning the sky, but had intercourse with a cloud, but the cloud was the wife of the sky god, Zeus, who therefore punished the headstrong sun god. This signifies a victory of the Greeks (God = Zeus) over the Thessalians (God = Ixion). You will find that, like most ancient myths, there are competing versions. In one version the punishment was an eternal crucifixion in Tartarus but in another the eternal crucifixion was in the sky. The latter was probably the original one, but the Greeks would not allow such a glorious crucifixion and placed it in hell. The cause of the punishment might have been historic—an ambush of Ionians (Eioneus) who were trapped and burnt in a fiery pit—but even this might have been part of a solar myth.
Yes I am reading what you write to me. Personally, I think that you should change your way of writing and admit to your readers that your sources are not valid. Don’t base your writings on sources which you yourself admit are probably wrong. It doesn’t matter if people back 100 years ago thought the info in Grave’s book was valid or not, this is today not 100 years ago. There are sins of comission and sins of omission as they say. If there is the possibility that any odd tales of Krishna being crucified may have been an adaptation of the Christian story into Hinduism then you are going to have to say that on your website. The story of St. Thomas going to India may not be a myth, then again it might be. We don’t know. The possibility is still there and that cannot be denied. Krishna is not a sun god, and I will confirm that in the next day or so when I will talk to a Hindu priest in my city.
I assume you are reading what is in the e-mails because you quote it back at me as if you had said it yourself. It therefore is not penetrating your consciousness. As to the pages, you seem to have read one or two passages in some of my pages very closely and ignored the fact that I have already warned the readers that the sources are dubious, and have pointed out the passage where I say it to you in this correspondence. I do say this:
These myths arose before the time of Christ, but their exact date cannot be fixed. They show that the belief in the crucifixion of gods was prevalent long before the crucifixion of Christ. To establish this point then, six will prove it as well as sixteen. Indeed, one case is sufficient. The reader is left to decide.
When I recommended that you refer to Graves’ book and said that I imagine that they thought they were right at the time, I was saying that they had genuine reasons for putting down what they said, not that it is valid today, as you will surely realise. The point is that you can check the sources that they thought were genuine but which are now disputed. I am quite happy to accept that some of the alleged crucifixions could be due to latter day syncretism to Christianity. Those repsponsible for evaluating them should do so, not just pretend they are not there. And the whole point of the page that Christians do not like is that crucifixion was an earlier syncretization with Christianity, in the sense that Paul and others realised the value of having a newly crucified example of an old phenomenon. Regarding S Thomas, you are hacking at me for using allegedly dubious sources, then do the same yourself with even more dubious sources. If the possibility is there, will you concede that the possibility is there that the word Christ was passed into classical language from Krishna by Indians resident at Alexandria. Or is the possibility only there when you agree with it? On your last point, I cannot see how a Hindu can enlighten us about the origins of Krishna any more than a Christian can enlighten us about the origins of Christ. Both have their preferred mythology that they will believe despite any evidence to the contrary.
On your web site you say that Promethus was described by Hesiod as having been nailed to an upright beam of timber to which were affixed extended arms of wood. I have researched one of Hesiod’s works and he says that Promethus was tied or chained to a rock. You can see that Promethus was not nailed, rather he was tied, to a beam of timber, to which were not affixed extended arms of wood. You will see that when you get that picture I am going to send you again. Then you also say: “The poet, in portraying his propitiatory offering, says” and then you quote some ryming poem about Promethus, written by a poet that you do not identify. There is an author out there named Acharya S who has written a book in which she believes that Jesus was just one big compilation of myths from other cultures. In a footnote on her website she says:
Taylor indicates that the following stanza is found in “Potter’s beautiful translation” of Aeschylsus’s play: “Lo, streaming from the fatal tree, His all atoning blood! Is this the infinite? ’Tis he—Promethus, and a God! Well might the sun in darkness hide, And veil his glories in, When God, the Great Promethus, died, for man, the creature’s sin.” However, this stanza apparently does not appear in modern translations, including Potter’s. It is well known that the Christians mutiliated or distroyed virtually all of the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors, such that we might suspect this stanza has either been removed or obfuscated through mistranslation. On the other hand, it may be a mistake on Taylor’s part or a result of his ambiguous language preceeding the passage, or he may have been thinking or another “Promethus Bound” written after the Christian era, perhaps by Milton. Taylor was in prison when he wrote the Diegesis, thereby having difficulty accessing books, so he is to be excused for errors that invariably creep into anyone’s work.
I hate it when people say that Christians mutiliated the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors. Like they would have any evidence of that anyway. The only way we would ever know if Christians possibly mutiliated those writings would be if we were to find very ancient copies from before the Christian era, or even the origionals of these works themselves and see how they compare to the copies from Christian scribes. Even then that might not neccessarily mean that they deliberately mutiliated the texts, because just like everyone else, Christians are human and they can make some accidential mistakes, which can happen to any text that is copied by hand. More classical works and manuscripts would probably survive if the barbarian invasions had not occured at the beginning of the Dark Ages, when many libraries in western Europe were torched.
The source says not “Hesiod” but “Hesiod, Seneca and other writers.” I take it that various details are taken from different writers, and not all from Hesiod. Regarding the poet: I have looked at the page and as you say I have not identified the poet. However, it does not matter who the poet is because the poem is merely a description of a scene like the one you were going to send to me. There is nothing in the poem that anyone can claim is not true. Human were punished by Zeus for their sins and Prometheus took pity on them and gave them warmth. He was therefore punished too by Zeus. He was a vicarious atonement for the sins of humanity, because he suffered having saved humans. The poet describes Prometheus as tied to a fatal tree but that is what is on the pot. I therefore cannot see what you are beefing about, except that you cannot bear to accept that Christians have attempted to cover up and re-write history.
Regarding the mutilation of ancient works, there is plenty of evidence of it and I have some of it on my pages. So you have not read them! Why should Christians who were perfectly happy to burn to death countless thousands of human beings flinch at burning or mutilating books? It is sheer childishness to think otherwise. The Christians destroyed libraries and schools to start the dark age not the barbarians, but you are on shaky ground to admit that barbarians did it. They were Christians! They had already converted to Arianism. So, who mutilated books, did you say?
On your web site you say that the whole story of Promethus’ crucifixion, burial, and ressurrection was acted in pantomime in Athens five hundred years before Christ. Well I know a few things. One is that Promethus never died on the rock or the tree he was bound to and so he had no burial or resurrection. Hercules eventually came and killed the eagle, and freed Promethus from being bound. There is no death account recorded in the play Promethus Bound by Aeschylus, I know, since I own a copy of it. My copy also contains fragments of the two other lost plays by Aeschylus on Promethus which formed a trilogy with the extant Promethus Bound play. Those fragments, which primarily survive in the writings of other ancient authors, indicate that Promethus is eventually freed by Hercules. You also quote Mark Felix. Yes, Felix did say “Your victorious trophies not only represent a simple cross, but a cross with a man on it.” but I don’t know for sure where you get the phrase “and this man S Jerome calls a god.” Now if you are talking about the S Jerome who translated the Vulgate Bible then there is no way Felix could have quoted from him because by the time S Jerome was born, Felix had been dead for at least a century. Also, Mark Felix calls the figure on the wooden trophies a man not a god. S Jerome may have said in one of his writings that this figure on the trophies was a god, but Felix could not have quoted him now could he? I also own a copy of Octavius by Mark Felix, which does not contain the phrase “and this man St Jerome calls a god.”
Unfortunately the start of wisdom is the recognition that you are ignorant. You have an idea that you know something, and it seems it suffices whether it is true or not. I have already pointed out several times in this correspondence that myths do not come singly. They are not novels copyrighted by their owners so that others could not use them for their own purposes and mutate them. These changes happen naturally by the mixing and movement of populations, as well as the inventions of priests and poets. They evolve, something that Christians cannot even understand, they are so enamoured of their eternal creeds. The version of Prometheus given by Aeschylus has Prometheus bound for eternity, because as a god, he was immortal and his liver grew again every night, but Zeus fired a thunderbolt that sent the captive to Tartarus still bound. Tartarus is the underworld and therefore means death! Then Prometheus tells Zeus the secret he wanted to know and his son Herakles killed the eagle and freed the captive. Prometheus was therefore resurrected as an assistant to Herakles. Tartarus is death, liberation from Tartarus is resurrection. Are you a little wiser and perhaps humbler for this news?
Now, regarding Minucius Felix, you are quite right, Jerome cannot be there and so is not in Octavius. It is my own comment wrongly included as part of the quotation. Such things remind us we are human and are not gods ourselves. I shall correct this, and I am glad you showed me it.
Accepting that you intend only to be helpful, I shall clarify the page to meet some of your criticisms of the source—Graves’ book. It will certainly strengthen the argument to get rid of uncertain and dubious points. The advantage is that Graves’ work provokes reaction, so makes otherwise unthinking people think.
There is the possibility that the Greeks could have gotten the word Christ from the Indian word Krishna. I do acknowledge that. Not all of the barbarians were Christians, a number of them were still pagan. I know that some of them were Christians but not like they actually gave a shit about literature and scholarship. Many of the libraries of Western europe were distroyed by their hands. The great libraries of Constantinople were distroyed by Christian crusaders but we should remember that all they were looking for was loot and money and killed many of their fellow Christians in the process just as the barbarians did. In reality they were not really Christians because they did not live by Christ’s teachings. Although Christians have killed in the name of Christ and showed racism against their fellow man, you will not find the New Testament telling people to do that. Many of the great libraries of central asia were also distroyed by the Mongolians in their invasions. The cities that contained these libraries had Christian communities in them and the libraries did probably contain classical Greek works. Some of the Mongolians were Christians as well, but a large number of them were pagans also. We should also remember that many Christians were killed by their hands and so the Christian Mongolians were killing their own fellow Christians in the persuit of selfish interests. Again they were not really Christians but rather Christians in name only. As Justin Martyr says in his first Apology:"Let it be understood that those who are not living by Christ’s teachings are not Christians at all—eventhough they might profess his teachings with their lips."
You seem to think that you are smarter than Christan scholars and when you speak of them by putting apostrophies around ’scholars’. Then if you are, one day you will become famous because you have overthrown mainstream scholarship.
I think it is time we drew this correspondence to an end. I have tried to meet your criticisms when I think they are justified and I think the page is much improved as a result.
You are typically dogmatic because you are not interested in truth but only to verify your prejudices. I keep the website precisely because Christians like yourself are liars and cheats. They have consistently rewritten history to suit themselves, thus proving the Christian dogma, but the world and history is pretty big, and even Christians with 1000 years of total control in Europe have been unable to get rid of all the clues. Fortunately the clues, unlike Christian mythology, make a lot of sense. I do not think I am smarter than Christian ’scholars.’ I am simply more honest than they are. I call them ’scholars’ with the quizzical marks because scholars are meant to be honest enquirers after truth, not obfuscators, destroyers and disturbers of evidence. I also am not deluded like most Christians. I know that I will not be famous, and that above all I shall not be famous by revealing the truth about Christianity. I offer what I have discovered to enlighten others—not particularly Christians, who have closed their minds and even their eyes and ears to the truth, but those few who are interested in the real origins of our preferred religious mythology.
Unable to deny the awful criminal and murderous history of Christianity, you say that those who perpetrated it were not real Christians. Real Christians follow the precepts of the New Testament. You are talking through your hat. There is hardly a Christian in the world who follows the tenets of Jesus, including yourself. Few Christians ever did. What then does being a Christian mean? It means nothing except that it is taken to confer the right to lie with what they think is God’s approval, and to provide them a false veneer of respectability to fool others that they are honest and upright citizens, kind to humans and beasts. History proves otherwise, and you have just confirmed it from your own pen. You cite Justin Martyr, the first in a long line of Christian writers outside the New Testament to continue the Christian delusion. Not only is it necessary to live by Christ’s precepts to be a Christian, but previous good men—Pagans in other words—he also claimed to be Christians even though they had no idea of it themselves. This is the sort of dishonest crap we have heard from Christianity since it began. It is certain that far more people have lived in the world doing nothing but good without being Christian than there were equivalent Christians. You are warned in your own holy book—the one that you ignore in practice—that ’by their fruits are they known.’ That is the criterion I use to judge Christianity. Evil fruit grow on an evil tree! Christianity’s fruits declare it the work of the devil.
Perhaps you will learn sense one day, but there is as much chance of that as there is of my getting famous.
