NOTE: Quotes in this paper, unless otherwise indicated, come from Billy Graham’s first book, Peace With God. Page numbers refer to the revised paperback edition, published in 1984. Historical information was drawn from the hardcover edition of Graham’s autobiography, Just As I Am. Scriptural passages were taken from The Billy Graham Training Center Bible, which uses the New King James translation.
Preface
Here is my third paper concerning the potential for
dictatorship in the United States. My first two papers focused on the political
danger posed by religious conservatives. In Rush Limbaugh: Voice of the
Religious Threat in America, I briefly described the enemy ideology; and in Sean Hannity and the Tactics of the Enemy, I addressed some of the
strategies that religious conservatives use to spread their ideas throughout
the culture.
This third essay takes a more fundamental look at the threat
of American dictatorship. Putting politics and the media in the background, I
more critically examine the threat’s religious nature. Here I inspect
the evangelical creed of Billy Graham. In my view, his brand of Christian faith is the root cause of countless problems with today's culture.
The Evangelist of the Masses
In 1934 Billy Graham committed
his life to Jesus Christ. He was sixteen years old.
By 1940 he was an ordained
Southern Baptist minister, graduated from the Florida Bible Institute with a
bachelor’s degree in theology.
In 1949 he achieved national
fame during a celebrated campaign in Los Angeles, where famous radio
personality Stuart Hamblen publicly pledged his life to Christ after listening
to Graham’s sermons.
Graham’s popularity quickly
blossomed with some additional help from William Randolph Hearst, who allegedly
ordered his many newspapers to “puff” the promising young evangelist. It wasn’t
long before competing newspapers followed the media tycoon’s lead.
Within a year of the Los Angeles
Campaign, Graham started an evangelical radio program, The Hour of Decision;
he began making propaganda films; and he formed the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association (BGEA), which, to this day, remains a powerhouse for the global
distribution of Christianity with annual support and revenues now totaling
approximately $90 million. (www.billygraham.org, BGEA 2003 Annual Report)
On July 14, 1950, Graham met
Harry S. Truman at the White House. This was his first time witnessing to a
President. During that conversation, in response to Graham’s inquiry into his
religious beliefs, Truman said that he tried to live according to “the Sermon
on the Mount and the Golden Rule.” Graham boldly informed the President that
that was not enough. “It’s faith in Christ and His death on the Cross that you
need,” he replied. (Just As I Am, p. xx)
Since 1950 Graham has ministered to eleven American Presidents,
befriending and influencing several of them. George W. Bush, for example, in
his autobiography A Charge To Keep, credits Graham with planting a
“mustard seed” of faith in his soul in 1985—a faith which grew for a year, he
says, and ultimately helped him give up drinking and recommit his life to
Christ.
Graham has also met many foreign
leaders, such as Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II. In 1992 he handed
copies of the Bible and his first book, Peace With God, to Kim Il Sung,
then president of communist North Korea.
Most of Graham’s life, however,
has been spent attending to the masses of common folk. Over the decades, in
addition to setting up charitable organizations, he’s conducted hundreds of
popular campaigns and crusades in cities all over the world. In 2004 he set a
Rose Bowl attendance record for a non-sporting event, drawing more than 300,000
people over four days. (www.ap.org, Billy Graham Wraps Up Historic Crusade, Nov. 22, 2004) According to his bio, he’s preached the gospel message to “more people face-to-face than anyone in history.” He created two still-thriving
periodicals, Christianity Today (originally aimed at presenting the
fundamentalist viewpoint to Protestant liberals) and Decision (the
official magazine of Graham’s Association). He continues to make propaganda
films; he’s hosted successful television and radio programs; he has a newspaper
column; and he’s written numerous religious books. His classic, Peace With
God, has been read by millions of people in over thirty languages.
In 1983 Ronald Reagan gave
Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in recognition of his service to the
nation. And in 1996 Graham rose to the highest rank of citizen when he was
presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, an honor which had been previously
awarded only 113 times in America’s history. He and his wife, Ruth, received
this medal for their “outstanding and lasting contributions to morality, racial
equality, family, philanthropy, and religion.” Representative Charles Taylor
(NC), who introduced the legislation to honor the Grahams, said at the time:
“there exists no greater public servants in our nation, or indeed the world,
than the Rev. and Mrs. Graham.” To Taylor—and presumably to his fellow
Congressmen who unanimously supported his bill—this evangelical couple
“represent[s] the mainstream of American Christianity.” (www.congressionalgoldmedal.com/BillyRuthGraham.htm)
The Bible Says …
With the money his Association collects, Graham builds schools for
training more evangelists and sponsors seminars and conferences with the
purpose of spreading Christian fundamentalism throughout the world. In the year
2000, for example, he invited 10,000 Christian leaders from more than 200
countries to Amsterdam, where they pledged their lives to the shared mission of
“world evangelization.” In their “Charter of Commitments,” these Christians
agreed that:
The Bible is indispensable to true evangelism. The Word of God itself provides both the content and authority for all evangelism. Without it there is no message to preach to the lost. (www.christianitytoday.com, The Amsterdam Declaration)
The evangelist’s absolute
dependency upon the Bible is also reflected in Peace With God. In this
book, as is customary in many such religious works, Graham quotes and
references the Bible ad nauseam. Phrases such as “The Bible tells us …” and
“The Bible teaches …” can be found on practically every page—sometimes multiple
times in the same paragraph. (p. 108) “The Bible says …” appears over 80 times
within the 276 pages of the revised paperback edition—and that’s only one
example of many synonymous expressions used throughout the book.
Clearly, evangelists are
intimately attached to the Bible. And to understand these people—to know what
they truly represent—we ought to pay careful attention to their special
relationship with the most popular and revered book in the history of Western
civilization.
The Wedding of Ignorance and Contradiction
O God! There are many things in [the Bible] I do not understand. There are many
problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming
contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with
modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions
… others are raising …
Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith
to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to
be Your inspired Word. (Just As I Am, p. 139)
At the ripe age of thirty, Graham programmed himself with the above
standing order; he packed his suitcases and moved to the land of make-believe.
He knew full well that he was ignorant of the truth and that the Bible was
riddled with contradictions and impossibilities. Yet, still he married his mind
to that ancient book which so thoroughly confounded him. He gave up on reason
and science and placed his ring of faith upon the imaginary finger of God.
Graham must have had a damn good
reason for wedding himself to the Bible, given all of its flaws:
If I could not trust the Bible, I could not go
on. I would have to quit the school presidency. [At the time, Graham was
president of Northwestern Schools, a Christian college in Minnesota.] I would
have to leave pulpit evangelism … It was not too late to become a dairy farmer.
(Just As I Am, p. 139)
I guess Graham hated dairy
farming more than he valued the truth.
An
Anti-World Worldview
Do
not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)
The Bible taught Graham to hate
dairy farming. It taught him, in fact, to hate the entire world. In Peace
With God, Graham tells us that the Bible tells us that “[we] have three
enemies that will be warring against [us] as long as [we] live.” (p. 190) One
of these “enemies” is: “the world … the cosmos, this world system.” (p.
193) Graham says that this place tends to lure us into sinful pleasures.
Therefore, we must take care to be “in” the world, but not “of” it. (p. 198)
Question: Why do
the Bible and Mr. Graham want us to think that “the world” is our enemy?
Perhaps it has something to do
with the stipulated fact that the Bible contradicts much of what we know to be
true about the world. Hell, even Graham recognized the Bible’s “many seeming
contradictions” and its inconsistency with scientific findings.
Indeed, the World is a natural
enemy of the Bible. By merely existing, Nature undermines the validity of much
of what’s written in the Testaments. For Graham’s myth-based worldview to
survive such a powerful, natural assault, the World itself must be utterly
demonized and disregarded.
In Peace With God, Graham
wastes zero time beginning his demonization of reality. Here is how he starts
the preface to the revised edition:
In
the three decades since Peace with God was originally written, an
embattled world seems to have permanently lost its fragile grasp on serenity.
For the first time in history, an entire generation of young people lives in
fear that time, in the form of a nuclear holocaust, will run out before they
can grow up, which may explain in part why tragic numbers of them at the peak
of youthful promise find various ways to drop out of life. We have become a
generation of escape artists. As I write these words, armed conflicts are
raging in many places around the globe and the streets of more than one great
city ring with gunfire. An American president was assassinated since the book
was written, as were an attorney general, a civil rights leader, an Egyptian
president and a famous rock star. Another president was the victim of an
attempted assassination. Hostages have been in many places and a Korean
passenger jet shot down. Many wars have been fought. Nor can we turn to the
security of our homes to find inner peace, for many of our homes simply aren’t
there anymore as nearly half of all new marriages now end in divorce. This
strife that runs rampant in the world at large is but a reflection of the
conflict storming individual hearts. (p. vii)
And concluding the book Graham
reminds us that:
The world is becoming more helpless and more hopeless
as we enter this terribly involved and complicated computerized technological
age. (p. 260)
And also:
It seems that the world is heading toward Armageddon …
We’re not going to have peace—permanent peace—until the Prince of Peace comes.
(p. 273)
Wars, family strife, helplessness, hopelessness, terrible computers,
Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus … If you haven’t yet figured out the
proper Christian attitude toward the world, Graham does have a more direct
approach:
Our
attitude toward [the world] as Christians can be summed up in one word—renounce.
There can be no bargaining, compromise, or hesitation. (p. 198)
Remember: True Christians must
renounce the world because it is their natural enemy. If they didn’t give up
reality, they might actually renounce the Bible, instead, on account of its
many problems and contradictions. Then evangelists like Graham, whose
livelihood depends upon the validity of the Gospels, would have to find a real
job—such as dairy farming.
Is this principle still too abstract? If so, Graham is happy to further
concretize it for you:
When
Christ enters into the human heart, He expects to be Lord and Master. He
commands complete surrender. He demands control of your intellectual processes.
He requires that your body be subject to Him. He expects you to surrender your
talents and abilities to Him. He expects nothing less than that all your work
and labor will be performed in His name.
Too
many of today’s professing Christians would give up going to church before they
would give up getting a new refrigerator. Given a choice between making the
down payment on a new car or contributing to the building of a new Sunday
school, it is easy to guess what the decision of many would be. Thousands of
so-called Christians are putting money and the things that make up our high
standard of living ahead of the teachings of Christ. We can find time for the
movies, baseball, or football games, but we can’t find time for God. We can
save toward a new home or a bigger television set, but we feel we no longer can
afford to tithe. This is idolatry. (p. 148)
Renounce this world, Graham
says, and surrender your mind and money to the Bible’s fantasyland: a magical
place where the heavens and the earth were created ex nihilo by a singular,
mysterious force, who today conveniently reveals itself only to people of
special faith; a dreamland where human beings sprang from dirt and one male
bone; where Adam’s “sin” is supernaturally inherited by every newborn babe;
where a man once walked on water and rose from the dead, not to mention every
other physically impossible thing that Jesus did; and where reunion with God
requires that we ignore the knowledge of our senses and reason and have
absolute faith in the Bible’s fables. Yes, Graham says, believe in this
alternate universe of talking snakes and virgin mommies. Support your
evangelist. Don’t buy that new household appliance, you idolater! Tithe to your
local church, instead.
How else will religion survive
the awful blows of reality?
Satan’s
Irrefutable Logic
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made. (Genesis 3:1)
Evangelism has many powerful
enemies. In addition to its omnipresent, metaphysical antagonist, the
World, it also has a terrible man-made attacker with which it must
contend. This foe is Reason, or, as Christians have personified it: the
Antichrist, Lucifer, Satan, the Deceiver, the Murderer, the Ruler of this
World, the Serpent of Old, the Prince of Darkness, the Wicked One, the Father
of Lies, the Adversary. You name it.
[T]he devil is a creature of vastly superior
intelligence, a mighty and gifted spirit of infinite resourcefulness … His
reasoning is brilliant, his plans ingenious, his logic well nigh irrefutable.
God’s mighty adversary is no bungling creature with horns and tail—he is a
prince of lofty stature, of unlimited craft and cunning, able to take advantage
of every opportunity that presents itself, able to turn every situation to his
own advantage. (p. 63)
You cannot argue with [Satan] for he is the greatest
debater of all time. (p. 191)
Question: Why exactly
is Reason (i.e., “the devil”) an enemy of the Bible and Mr. Graham?
Well, clearly the Bible cannot compete with the mountain of rationality
and science against its fictional world. And such a radical evasion of the
truth as that of the evangelist must necessarily result in more and more
dishonesty and an increasing supply of enemies. You see, once the world is
rejected and demonized by the Christian fundamentalist, reason soon shares its
fate, because reason and logic are the mental tools with which man understands
the world. They present another sinister threat to the Bible-thumper’s means of
survival. For if too many people are logically persuaded to reject the
Scriptures, then it’s off to the dairy farm for Graham and friends.
We know that the Antichrist will appear and try to
ensnare the minds and hearts of men. (p. 63)
I suspect that the myth of Satan
and Hell is a conscious attempt to frighten humans away from their own
reasoning minds, just as I suspect that the myth of God and Heaven is an
attempt to guilt humans away from the facts and values of this world. Being fundamentally
and professionally dependent upon the Bible’s particular fiction and
lies, people like Graham necessarily accept its never-ending, no-holds-barred
battle with the Objective World and the Reasoning Mind:
Always the devil is standing at your side tempting,
coaxing, threatening, cajoling. And always on your other side stands Jesus, the
all-loving, the all-forgiving, waiting for you to turn to Him and ask His aid,
waiting to give you supernatural power to resist the Evil one. You belong to
one or the other. (pp. 64-5)
Perhaps Graham knows that the
World and the Mind, if not stopped, will one day fully mythologize the stories
of the Bible, just as they made mincemeat of the Greek gods and several other
defunct religions. Human history has painted a long picture of one religious
failure after another—it is a tale of reason and science evolving and growing
stronger and faith and religion flailing and slowly dying out. And one day Man
will, most likely, embrace the Tree of Knowledge and the Logic of Satan. He
will finally understand truth and falsehood, good and evil, as it relates to
the Bible and the World. He will cure himself of the insanity of revelation and
prayer. And he will end his faith in the Judeo-Christian absurdity.
I believe that religion’s day of
reckoning is coming. That victory, however, is not an absolute certainty. For,
people like Graham are doing everything in their power to stop people like me.
The Myth
of the Sinful Self
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)
Graham’s blacklist wouldn’t be
complete without some mention of Human Nature:
The third enemy that you will face immediately is the
lust of the flesh. The flesh is that evil tendency of your inward self. (p.
196)
Bible-loving Christians believe
that Human Nature, or the Self, is also to be renounced, because it is inherently
sinful:
Just as we inherit characteristics such as intellect,
coloring, body size, temperament, etc., from our parents and grandparents,
mankind inherited its fallen, corrupt nature from Adam. (p. 46)
It is not difficult, then, to
understand the mythological source of the hardcore Christian’s increasingly
maniacal anti-selfism. God, you see, initially rubbed some dirt together and
created a servant named Adam, who, in turn, evilized his own soul by foolishly
disobeying the Lord’s will and eating the forbidden fruit. Adam’s sinful nature
was then passed down throughout the generations of man, as if it were a hair
color. And this bit of fantasy (Original Sin), says the evangelist, explains
why you have a selfish self, which does all sorts of nasty stuff that God
hates.
Egoism and selfishness are the marks of sin as surely
as are theft and murder. (p. 55)
To anti-self Christians, acting on the principle of self-interest is
equated with murder. To obey thy “corrupted” nature, they say, is to murder
thine hope of Heaven. To consider this animated body to be my most precious
value, as egoists believe, is to damn my soul to eternal Hell. My Fleshy Self,
therefore, is my own worst enemy—right after the Objective World and the
Logical Devil, of course.
Question: Why must the
Bible and Mr. Graham make an enemy of our selfish Human Nature (i.e., “the
flesh”)?
Let’s consider some basic facts.
First, like all living things, the human body has fundamental requirements for
its continued existence. I’m talking here about conditions of human life that come
even before food and water. What are these needs? Well, they happen to be precisely
the first two “enemies” of the true Christian: objective reality (the world)
and reason (the devil).
You see, in order to survive,
the human being must rely on his rational understanding of the world. If he consistently renounces his perception of the world and his reason, he will not be able to find food,
water, and shelter, and he will die.
But if man is permitted his means of personal survival,
if he is allowed to use this world and his reason in order to live,
then he will ultimately ruin
everything upon which religion is based. He will come to know myth from fact.
And, in the end, he will choose the truth in order to survive. Evangelists
must, therefore, ideologically sentence man to death on account of what he is:
a user of reason in an objective world system.
This, my dear reader, is the
face of supreme evil. It is the creed of evasion, lies, and sacrifice. It is
the expected design of the master scam artist, who takes people for everything
they’re worth—everything. The Bible itself is his handbook for pulling
the wool over society’s eyes. It is a tome for leeches. And people like Graham,
who make their living by selling the Bible’s fraudulent wares, use its vacuum
power to suck charitable gifts and works from productive men—in order to
sustain their own parasitic existence.
And what, might we ask, does man
get in return for sacrificing his own life to the Bible and its preachers? Ah,
yes, he gets a born-again self. Another fantasy. Another lie:
… I want to tell you some glorious news. Jesus said
you can be born anew! You can have the fresh and better start for which you’ve
prayed. You can lose your despised and sinful self and step forth a new person,
a clean and peaceful being from whom sin has been washed away. (p. 165)
While man’s real person
is being drained dry of life and value, he can imagine Jesus providing him with
a new nature, a new self, to replace the one that’s enslaved to religion.
And what kind of life can man
look forward to with his born-again self?
This new nature that you receive from God is bent to
the will of God. You will want to do only His will. You are utterly and
completely devoted to Him. There is a new self-determination, inclination,
disposition, a new principle of living, new choices. You seek to glorify God.
You seek fellowship with other Christians in the church. You love the Bible.
You love to spend time in prayer with God. Your whole disposition is changed.
Whereas your life once was filled with unbelief, the root and foundation of all
sin, and you once doubted God, now you believe Him. Now you have utmost
confidence and faith in God and His Word. (pp. 171-2)
You know, I always wanted to be
a dutiful slave to a higher power.
Praying
for a Dictator
Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your
Lord is coming. (Matthew 24:42)
So far I have pointed to
Graham’s three primary enemies, those that he actually admits to in Peace
With God: the World (objective reality), the Devil (reason), and the Flesh (selfishness).
Now I shall discuss something else that I suspect he hates almost as
passionately. That is: individual rights and capitalism.
As far as I can tell, Graham
rarely, if ever, denounces these ideas by name, and they are not part of his
official shitlist, which he discusses at length in chapter 14. Nevertheless, he
cannot deny that he advocates the antithesis of an individual rights-respecting
political system such as laissez faire capitalism. In fact, he has devoted his
entire adult life to preaching about and praying for the future religious
dictatorship of Jesus Christ:
One of these days the sky is going to break open and
the Lord Jesus Christ will come back. He will set up His reign upon this
planet[.] (p. 273)
Out of curiosity: What kind of
ruler would Lord Christ be, Mr. Graham?
Jesus demands Lordship over all such things. He wants
you to yield everything concerning your social life, your family life, your
business life to Him. He must have first place in everything you do or think or
say, for when you truly repent you turn toward God in everything. (p. 149)
Wow! Is that really what Jesus
would do? Let’s hear it from the Savior’s own mouth, shall we?
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to
save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save
it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself
destroyed or lost? (Luke 9:23-5)
You know, to me it sounds like
King Jesus is threatening our liberty. He seems to be saying that either we
surrender to his autocratic rule or suffer some type of cruel fate. Such an
ultimatum one delivers to a mortal enemy, not a peaceful neighbor. And, to
think, this kind of medieval mentality is idolized by today’s evangelicals!
After looking at all of this evidence, I conclude that the Bible is a
kind of declaration of war against civilization itself, and that Graham and
friends are the Gospel’s dutiful foot soldiers, spreading the Holy Dictator’s
surrender terms to the four corners of the globe:
The greatest warfare going on in the world today is
between mankind and God. People may not realize that they’re at war with God.
But if they don’t know Jesus Christ as Savior and if they haven’t surrendered
to Him as Lord, God considers them to be at war with Him. (p. 268)
Question: Why must the
Bible and Mr. Graham promote the idea of religious dictatorship and war?
Again, I think the answer
resides in man’s nature—only this time, man’s nature as it applies to a social
setting. Understand, first, that when government doesn’t deny humans
their ability to use reason and reality to sustain and improve their life—i.e.,
when the state recognizes and protects man’s individual rights—rational philosophers
and scientists eventually discover the truth by utilizing their skills in
observation, experimentation, and logic. These kinds of minds tend to expose
more and more of the false and harmful nature of religions like Christianity.
Thus, in order to conceal the evil face of religious belief, a powerful
dictator must eventually be installed to check the progress of rational
philosophy, scientific inquiry, and personal rights within the society. This
dictator—whether an individual strongman or a powerful collective—must be given
ultimate power to wage total war upon the voices of truth and freedom.
Otherwise, the forces of religion are doomed to extinction.
With such potent, omnipresent
enemies—and with such a massive reliance upon the initiation of force—should it
be surprising that devout Christians believe in and prepare for the ever-coming
Armageddon?
While we would like to take hope that universal peace
is drawing closer, it appears instead that we are standing on the brink of
Armageddon. (p. 59)
And given their fundamental
evasions and lies and utter estrangement from this world, should it be
surprising that their deepest longing is to flee Earth during the time of
Rapture?
We who are alive on that day will be caught up
together with those who have gone before to meet the Lord in the air … The day
is fast approaching when Jesus Christ will come back to “snatch away” His
followers from all the graveyards of the world, and those of us who are alive
and remain will join them in the great escape! That is the hope of the future
for the Christian. (p. 256)
Coincidentally, that is also my
hope: that Christian fundamentalists leave this world.
The
Master Race of Born Agains
And
he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power
over the nations. (Revelation 2:26)
I think it’s safe to assume that Jesus will not actually return to take
up his throne as the Holy Dictator of Earth. However, this doesn’t change the
fact that millions upon millions of Christians are being conditioned to accept
the idea of a future religious dictatorship—thanks to the Bible and the
evangelist’s message of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.
Question: If not
Christ, then who? Who is most likely to lord over us?
Indeed, I believe that evangelists,
for quite some time, have been training a substitute dictator for America. It’s
called: the born-again Christian majority.
Born-again Christians believe:
that man in his sinful “natural state [is] actually at enmity with God”; that
“[t]here is nothing about the old nature that God will accept”; that if we want
to avoid Hell, we have to believe that Jesus died for our sins, surrender our
life to him, and go through a “second birth” process; that “[t]he life that
comes from the new birth cannot be obtained by natural development or
self-effort”; that “[b]eing born again is altogether a work of the Holy
Spirit”; and that this new, divine self is literally “attached to God for
eternity.” (pp. 167-70)
Millions of Christians believe that they are in possession of a
supernatural, born-again self. They believe that the Holy Spirit is inside
them—that they are God’s chosen people. They believe that Jesus literally
“takes up residence in [their] hearts” (p. 170) and issues orders to them
through the Bible and the “sixth sense … which is the ability to believe.” (p.
181) And, thus, here we might observe the makings of a divine, superhuman
master race:
We
Christians are now duly appointed and commissioned ambassadors of the King of
kings. We are to let our flag fly high over our embassy …
We
are to take our stand and let all those around us know that we are Christians.
We are to bear witness for Christ …
God’s
purpose for you and me after we have been converted is that we be witnesses to
His saving grace and power. We are to be commandos for Christ. We are to be
minute-men for Him. (p. 212)
These “commandos for Christ”
make up the majority of Americans presently manipulating and reforming our
country’s political system. They are the people who support laws against
worldly pleasures (drugs, sex, gambling) and regulations against rational
values (money, property, science). In the name of “compassion” and “fairness,”
they support involuntary taxation of virtually everything under the Sun. They
are the people who use the power of government to forcibly take from the
selfish and productive and generously give to the selfless and predacious.
These people may call themselves
Republicans or Democrats. They may bicker and fight among themselves over whom
to victimize next—and whether to loosen the chains around favored slaves and
hostages. (After all, parasitism must be a tricky, dangerous business at the
Christian level.) Some of these people may want to control and violate your
mind, or your body, or both at the same time. Some may dream of raping and
pillaging infidels. Others may hunger for the neck and lifeblood of
capitalists. And when they don’t get along, or when prey is scarce, these
barbarians and vampires may even sink their claws into each other.
Let us always remember, however,
that in the blackened core of their souls born-again Christians religiously
hate this world and mankind. They are mortal enemies of reason and
civilization. They despise objective truth and freedom. And so, it should be no
surprise to us when their bubbling venom spills onto their political votes and
democratic laws.
We should expect from them
nothing less than a Gospel-based dictatorship.
Peace
Without God
If you are still with me, dear
reader, then by now you should see how the Bible and Graham’s Peace With God
are, implicitly, proclamations of war against reality and man. You understand
that a good, honest person does not preach that the world is your enemy; he
does not say that devils use logic to deceive you; that your nature is
inherently sinful; and that you should therefore unconditionally surrender your
life to the will of King Jesus. You know that the faithful Christian’s worst
enemies are the rational individual’s best friends.
In this paper I have laid out several of my better criticisms of
Christianity. I have tried to restrain my raw disgust for revealed religion,
while relatively calmly exposing the ideological evil of the Bible and Mr.
Graham. I hope that the threat of evangelism is somewhat clearer to you now.
Concerning Good “Christians”
One thing I have yet to address is the possibility that a few
“Christians” are, for the most part, intelligent and decent people who honestly
love this world, their reasoning mind, and their own natural self. They have a
productive life and a non-religious career path. They take ideas and science
seriously, and they understand and respect the individual rights of others.
Basically, they are “Christian” in name only, and they don’t consciously
realize the anti-man nature of their purported belief system.
I happen to believe, from personal experience, that such people may be
a tiny to small percentage of the Christian masses. To the extent that these
“Christians” live a peaceful, non-Christian lifestyle, I salute them and want
them on my side against the fundamentalists.
However, to the extent that anyone submits to the essential principles
and commandments of Christianity and promotes or tolerates this system of evil,
I thoroughly and utterly condemn them. And I promise to intelligently defend
myself against whatever force they use or threaten to use on me.
I am participating in the intellectual resistance against the waxing
threat of religious dictatorship in America. These papers are written not in
aggression, but in self-defense. Thus, if my desperate literary acts of
retaliation happen to unintentionally offend a few truly good “Christian”
readers, then I accept no blame whatsoever. I offer no apology. I say: Blame
those responsible for forcing me into this wild, urgent fight. Blame those who
deny and endanger my individual rights. Blame my evil targets: the most
consistent and visible representatives of Christianity.
Blame Billy Graham and friends.
My Next Battle
Another topic I have yet to
consider at length is the antidote to the Christian poison, because that
is beyond the scope of this essay. However, I do plan to offer some thoughts on
this matter in my next paper, which will deal with Rick Warren, founding pastor
of the famous Saddleback Church and author of the super-popular Christian
manifesto, The Purpose-Driven Life.
In the meantime, if you haven’t
done so already, I encourage you to study Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.
In direct contrast to Christianity, the Objectivist system is pro-world,
pro-logic, and pro-self. It advocates objective truth and freedom. And it is
the number one reason why I have personally achieved peace without
God.
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