Freedom of Religion: Fact and Fantasy

February 11, 2013 / Posted in  atheism, Bible, Bullying, Christian Terrorists, Church history, History of USA, Jewish history, Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther, Old Testament, Robert Vander Plaats, separation of church and state, suicide, Torah

Freedom of religion is a centuries-old expression. In most cases freedom of religion does not exist. It is not accepted by SCOTUS or most courts or jurists. It is not enshrined in the nation, nor in separate states. At best it is a buzzword, but in reality freedom of religion is a fantasy that has enchained the USA since its inception as American colonies.

From Maine to Georgia, the North American colonies were not founded as bastions of theological freedom or the right to disbelieve that which came from the pulpits of the churches that existed in Europe. Those who came had a narrow definition of what religion was: what god should be prayed to, whom would be empowered to lead assemblies in vocal or silent prayer, and what the congregation would give to sustain the spokesperson of its god.

Plymouth colony (Massachusetts) was among the most intolerant colonies, in part due to its Puritan background, and in part due to the misogyny of its leaders who read the gynophobia plastered across the pages of Paul written by various hands. When any person would speak out in favor of a different form of worship, or for the rights of women to participate in a discussion of a biblical text or a pastor’s sermon, the heavy hand of hardened clerics came crashing down with excruciating éclat.

Mistress Anne Hutchinson was chastised, defamed, libeled and slandered for her outspokenness and denunciation of those who would not let her speak or preach. She was better read and knew the scriptures far more accurately than the pandering Puritan preachers of her ossified community.

Born Anne Marbury (1591–1643), Hutchinson was a Puritan woman, spiritual adviser, mother of 15. More so, Anne Hutchinson was an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy that doomed early Puritanism to play a minor role in the devolution of faith in Massachusetts.

A charismatic and popular preacher who threatened Puritan pastors, Hutchinson who was expelled from her colony in 1637 for the crime of challenging the authority of the male ministers mincing words to justify good works that had nothing in common with the Reformation of John Knox, Martin Luther, John Calvin and other would-be reformers turned revolutionaries. A woman who refused to be silent, Hutchinson exposed the subordination of women in the culture of colonial Massachusetts, spelling out articulate arguments against the reading of the most heated passages in the Epistles of Paul. Hutchinson rejected the staid sentence secreted sourly into 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, where women were to be silent, noting that the full passage referred to the church, not a permanent position in discussion of sermons or scripture.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 has traditionally been linked with 1 Timothy 2:8-15. This is the mark of an addition by a copyist, that modern theologians are only now beginning to understand, but Hutchinson fought for the right of women to read and study scripture without the menacing mention of women being silent based on based on the idea that all people were like little children whom Jesus invited to visit him (Matthew 19:14).

What Hutchinson did not argue is the text itself. Such an education was forbidden women by men who were threatened by any thought of equality between the sexes.  The transmogrification of equality is the leftover garbage of the establishment of Christianity as an official religion by the Emperor in the fourth century CE.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is a declarative statement and does not match the rest of the text. Translation and interpretation have never been strong suits in theological studies from the ancient world to this day when school pretend to teach both sciences.

A more careful study of the questionable declarative verse would come by noting that the writers of the Pauline epistle to the church at Corinth ignore the scripture’s declaration that women will prophesy ¹ and have already done so in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 11:5) that the persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus, allegedly also wrote: the two verses are self-contradictory, with 34-35 being at best a gloss or marginalia eased into the text by a medieval monk. Furthermore, the Paul of the New Testament permitted women to participate when properly adorned (1 Corinthians 11:2-16). Yet, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 stands out in sermons of all Christian cults and creeds–and has no biblical foundation except for itself (as I tell my students, you cannot use one book to prove the validity and credibility of that same book).

Gideon’s massacre (Old Testament)Few have had the courage of Hutchinson to strike back at the theological machinations and insanity of the patriarchy that controls Christianity.  This patriarchy, using those select lines that were added to a book compiled and plagiarized from far older sources and passed off by those who would control,was accepted by those who would bow before alleged superiors who claimed to be intercessor between god and man (ignoring woman) being controlled all in the name of fear of a wrathful demon known as YHWH who unleashed holocaust after holocaust in the Torah and Book of Prophets (Old Testament) through the mass murderers Joshua and Gideon. The Bible is a sponge of blood, from Genesis through Revelation.

There was nothing “meek and mild” (a phrase that applies only to the Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew 11:28-30.  In the original Greek it means “in control” and “with great power that is under control” and not subject to anger) about the Mistress who rattled the Puritan community and distressed the Fathers of the Colony.

Anne Hutchinson heartily made her displeasure known with the fools she suffered, especially with witless John Wilson and his rogue interpretation of religion “of one of works”. Having enough of his prattle that was barely substantiated, Mistress Hutchinson got up and left whenever the millstone minister rose to pray or preach parched words of damnation and demons.

Repeatedly, Goodwife Hutchinson was reprimanded to mind the ministry of men, and to silence herself as being less than a man in the eyes of a critical god. Expelled by the “men of god” who declared End Times and an apocalyptic war against non-believers, Hutchinson was exiled from her original home and community.  With many of her supporters, Hutchinson established the settlement of Portsmouth (that would become the Colony of Rhode Island) and Providence Plantations. Even at Portsmouth, Hutchinson’s heroic stand for her opinions and interpretations were met with scorn.  The chauvinistic chorus of male misogynists damned her, “for she is but a woman” mangling ever attempt at true democracy.

A feisty firebrand who insisted on faith and with no emphasis on good works, Hutchinson ultimately found a home on the ancient landmark called Split Rock in what later became The Bronx in New York City. Her attempt to help others, including the original aboriginal population of who became known as Indians, the city fathers found arguments against her, and leagued with “forces unknown.”  In August 1643, Hutchinson and all but one of the 16 members of her household were massacred during an attack by the native Siwanoy who took her 9-year-old daughter Susanna as a captive.  This hatred-inspired fear of women spilled its poison into other colonies with a speed unmatched since the imaginary war in heaven between the Advocate of Job 2:1 (a Babylonian tale) known as Satan, and the mythical Akkadian god incorporated into the Bible under the name of Michael.

Maryland was established as a colony for Roman Catholics by Lord George Calvert in 1625. Roman Catholics were quickly disenfranchised as being “papists” and too attached to the plutocracy of the Vatican and the demands of the papacy.  The “good Christians” of Maryland, roared against Roman Catholic priests rejected as following a foreign potentate who wanted to turn the New World colonies into vassal states of the Vatican to reigned over by a diabolical pope and priests who would grow fat on the food denied the poor.

Roman Catholics in Maryland were disenfranchised in 1646. They were, however, allowed along with “all [other] Christians” (emphasis mine) to live and work in Maryland in 1649 by means of the Maryland Toleration Act.

The Maryland Toleration Act became the source for the First Amendment of the fledgling United States of America. It was never, originally, a popular document nor a well-received First Amendment.

Virginia’s House of Burgesses recognized the Church of England as the official religion of the colony in 1619. The tie to the Established Church in England was, however, weak, and Anglicans in Virginia frequently pursued a course different from their counterparts in London.

In 1775, the bishop of London (Richard Terrick, 1710 – 1777) appointed James Blair to represent his interests in the colony, but there was scant attention to the authority from London in matters of religion, except that all prayer books and services followed the Church of England style that were far more closely related to the doctrines of Martin Luther than those of John Calvin.

The German, a former Augustinian monk who wrote numerous tracts in defence of the papacy and Rome, Martin Luther became over time  contemptuous of Jews (whom initially he had written in defense of) and argued for a strict interpretation of the words of the Bible with little to no tolerance for apostasy or heresy. Jews were not welcome anywhere in the New World when the colonies were formed.  They were slandered as being slayers of “the Christ”–a title Jesus never used in the original New Testament.

Little is known about the first Jew to visit the colonies.  The “sons of Israel” were poorly tolerated in colonial America (cf. Warren Blumenfeld (2012), “On The Discursive Construction of Jewish “Racialization” And “Race Passing”: Jews As “U-boats” With A Mysterious ‘Queer Light'”, Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 1-28). Jews were accepted only if they could bring supplies to the colonies, as was the case with the second Jew who sailed to the New World: Solomon Franco.

Solomon Franco was a Sephardic Jew from Holland. There is scant record of this enterprising man, except it is believed that he settled in the city of Boston in 1649.

Franco delivered “needed” supplies to Edward Gibbons, a Major General in the Massachusetts militia.  Franco quickly wore out his welcome when he demanded payment.

Gibbons was astonished that anyone would expect payment from a man of his rank–especially a Jew. A dispute broke out over who should pay Franco (Gibbons or Perada a Dutch merchant who arranged for the shipment of goods). On May 6, 1649, the Massachusetts General Court that Franco was to be expelled from the colony, but granted Franco “six shillings per week out of the Treasury for ten weeks, for sustenance, till he can get his passage to Holland”. The “sustenance allowance quickly ran out.

Five years later Solomon Pietersen, a merchant from Amsterdam, sailed into Boston. In 1656, Pietersen became the first known Americanized Jew to intermarry with a Christian. This action was deemed scandalous, being tantamount to “race mixing” that was illegal. Pietersen’s marriage to a Christian woman (referred even then to miscegenation, coming from the Latin miscere “to mix” + genus “kind”) is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation; the same bigotry that has been the lot of LGBT people by such biblical illiterates as Bob Vander Plaats of Iowa, Timothy Dolan of New York, Francis George of Chicago, Bryan Fischer, Ann Coulter and the ever-ignorant Benedict XVI (who declared he would resign as pope on February 28–an action that has not occurred since the Middle Ages) who painfully mistranslated and misinterpreted the universal myth of Ham {Greek Χαμ, Kham ; Arabic: حام, Ḥām, “hot” or “burnt”} in reference to skin pigmentation: Black for Africans, “dark brown” for Jews and “Arabs” {the Semitic or Abrahamic people of Mesopotamia Africa}, and so forth; Genesis 9:20-27), “forced”, according to some records, calls for his formal conversion to Christianity. There are no records showing Pietersen formally converted, but his daughter Anna was baptized in childhood—one of the forced/enforced requirements of that day to stay in the colony.

The third Jew to arrive at New Amsterdam (lower Manhattan, where Wall Street is today) was Jacob Barsimson. Barsimson was born in Holland and worked for the Dutch East India Company. He was among the refugees who was aboard the Peartree on August 22, 1654, fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition when Portugal conquered Batavia (Jakarta).

Around this time 23 more Jews (four couples, two widows, and thirteen children) arrived as refugees from Brasil (that had been a Dutch colony before it was conquered by the Portuguese. The refugees’ spokesperson was Asser Levy, primarily because he represented the legendary priestly class of the ancient Hebrews. Levy argued for Jewish rights in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. Levy won for the Jews basic civil rights including admission into the House of Burghers and was also granted the privilege of serving guard duty for the colony–something no non-Christian was allowed to do, so great was the colonists fear of angering their god of wrath. Levy’s victory was not without a fight.

The Christians of the local Dutch Reformed Church, led by local merchants, appealed to the colonial governor, Peter Stuyvesant, to have the Jews expelled, on the grounds, as Stuyvesant wrote to the Dutch West India Company (September 22, 1654), that the Jews practiced usury and were “deceitful trading with the Christians … [praying] that the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—ne [be] not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships’ most affectionate subjects”.

The Dutch West India Company declined because of several influential Jews in New Amsterdam who promised to provide “the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation”. To the consternation of “good Christians” in New Amsterdam, the Dutch West India Company went further:

“We would have liked to effectuate and fulfill your wishes and request that the new territories should no more be allowed to be infected by people of the Jewish nation, for we foresee therefrom the same difficulties which you fear, but after having further weighed and considered the matter, we observe that this would be somewhat unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by this nation, with others, in the taking of Brazil, as also because of the large amount of capital which they still have invested in the shares of this company. Therefore after many deliberations we have finally decided and resolved to apostille [annotate] upon a certain petition presented by said Portuguese Jews that these people may travel and trade to and in New Netherland and live and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation. You will now govern yourself accordingly.”

After New Amsterdam fell to the British, in 1737 the General Assembly, of what became New York, voted that no Jew was to be allowed to vote for members of that body. Few Jews moved beyond New York City. There were not sufficient Jews in Upstate New York to form a congregation until 1838, and there were no rabbis to serve until 1846.

There was no recognized Jewish community or congregation in Boston before 1840, and while an occasional Jew made it into Vermont and New Hampshire, there were no congregations until 1882. While there were a few Jews in Massachusetts, there was no significant record of any Jew or of any Jewish congregation before 1800. Even fewer lived in Maryland. Pennsylvania had its first Jewish emigrant, Joseph Simon, in 1730, but there was no synagogue or cemetery for Jews until 1732 at Shaefferstown, and a synagogue established in 1839 at Easton.

Pennsylvania was carved out for Quakers. While the Quakers were more tolerant, they were to the far left of the Church of England that was too “popery”, and Quakers’ aversion to violence, war, and argument made them as distrusted as were the animosities between chrestianos and christianos until the Emperor Constantine I created his crated “catholic [universal] church” in 325 CE (Eusebius, Vita Constantini 36-37, in Greek) by decree with no reference to Matthew 16:18.

Roman Catholicism, having been suppressed in the past (Jenkins, Philip (1 April 2003). The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. Oxford University Press. p. 23) throughout the seaboard colonies continued to be feared as being covert workers for a Catholic invasion and take over orchestrated by the Pope in the Vatican.  Americans continued to arm themselves against alleged invasion of Roman Catholic Spaniards from Florida, Mexico, Cuba, and other Latin American nations, and found solace only in the Second Amendment that they believed was their buttress for maintaining guns and other weapons, even though the Amendment said it was to sustain “a militia” and arms previously had been housed in arsenals at public expense.

Blacks and Irish Catholics were considered evil and worthless in early USA history.  Cartoons and caricatures depicting the Pope as “the Great Whore” and priests as cutthroats and worse spread from broadsheets to newspapers and books. With the rise of the Khristian Knights of the [KKK] Klan, attacks on Roman Catholics increased along with the slaughter of Blacks and other minorities.

Even the otherwise well-read democrat and orator for human rights and civil liberties for all, Thomas Jefferson, wrote against Roman Catholicism. Jefferson argued: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government,” (Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813) and that “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own” (Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814).

By the 1840s the nightmare fantasy fable of End of Times and the invention of a physical hell spawned by ancient Mesopotamian civilizations and plagiarized by Abrahamic religions throughout the Middle East, was directly linked to the influx of Roman Catholics.  Roman Catholics seemed more intent on damnation than on salvation even for the most avid Puritans.  More and more the papacy was labeled the Whore of Babylon (Dante, Inferno Canto 19, drawn from the ranting of John “of

Patmos” (an island where those determined to be insane were housed, with the writer of Revelation being consider “quite mad” even by his coreligionists who thought him suicidal or prone to murder) in Apocalypse 13 and 17:1-2.  Both the Apocalypse and other renderings of End Time theology were, plagiarized from old Babylonian tales and Akkadian folklore interwoven into Egyptian records. The Apocalypse 13, 17:1-2 are closely identified with the tale found in the Babylonian Book of Daniel 5, 9:27) leading to the indiscriminate slaughter of Roman Catholics and the burning of their property 1840-1872 (Jimmy Akin (2001-03-01). “The History of Anti-Catholicism”. This Rock. Catholic Answers).

Today’s Roman Catholic Church in the USA is the most oppressive religion deny women the right of choice, and rejecting basic human rights for various groups from non-Christians to LGBT people, always, as pedophile protecting prelate Timothy Dolan intones, in the ”name of Jesus Christ”. The German Pope, Benedict XVI, is chief of those who are opposed to the Constitution of the USA’s proclamation of all people being equal and afforded equality before the law while protecting pedophile priests from the Jesuits in Alaska who sexually assaulted little girls to priests in the Diocese of Oregon who raped little girls and boys under the age of 12.

While Colonial charters and laws contained specific proscriptions against Roman Catholics by state constitutions, atheists are openly attacked in the same way and with an identical fury as the early Roman Catholics and Jews. Atheists, however, are attacked more frequently than either of the groups of oppressed people, with students in USA schools and universities bullying atheists in quest that their victims commit suicide, especially if the victim is LGBT: from ten-year-old Ashlynn Conner, to 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, and more, with the majority of the tormentors being parents, siblings, classmates, evangelical groups (such as Focus on the Family, Vander Plaats’ organized hate group The FAMiLY who leads the charge against women’s rights by invoking the insanity in by nine nightmare clinically insane Republican Representatives strangling democracy in the Iowa legislature to declare sperm, ova, zygote, and fetus a “person” and its “destruction” murder.  If this barbaric broadside would past, the Tea Party Republicans would many any woman who was raped stand trial for first degree murder), and especially the carnivorous cults of the Wisconsin Evangelical Synod, Missouri Lutheran church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and the Roman Catholic Church and the US Council of Roman Catholic Bishops (read here and here).

Atheists cannot hold public office in Arkansas (Article 19, Section 1), Maryland (Article 37), Mississippi (Article 14, Section 265), North Carolina (Article 6, Section 8), Pennsylvania (Article 1, Section 4, while the wording is tricky, the message that those who differ in their interpretation and belief in a god cannot be disqualified), South Carolina (Article 17, Section 4), Tennessee (Article 9, Section 2), Texas (Article 1, Section 4)—while the 14th Amendment, Section 6 technically makes it moot, the states that discriminate reject that amendment, and several contenders for the presidency of the USA have campaigned to have the Amendment overturned.

Atheists have only limited rights, and are openly attacked from Virginia to California, Minnesota to Texas and all other states. A federal court in Indiana dismissed a claim that an Indiana law prohibiting secular celebrants from solemnizing marriages (Indiana code 31-11-6-1), while allowing religious representatives to do so openly violated the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the USA rejecting a brief submitted by the Center for Inquiry in Center for Inquiry, Inc., et al. v Clerk, Marion Circuit Court, et al that is here (pdf) with this double standard extensively covered in numerous legal cases.

Humanists enjoy life. They seek out the better in themselves and other people. They do not attack, but teach that all things are open to questioning and debate. To silence debate is the mark of religion that offers no freedom to the individual, only mental, and frequently physical slavery. Socrates was the thinker who best represented humanism: questioning everything, working to change that which could be changed, and accepting fate for what was in store by being a model citizen, an educated teacher, an analytic debater, and a good spouse who made sure all debts were paid (Plato, Phaedo; cp. Waterfield,Robin (2009). Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths. New York:W.W.Norton and Company).

Distrust in oneself and in those who admit/claim to be atheists is a prime reason for the social ostracization of atheists and atheism. Several psychological studies show that results were consistent with the hypothesis that the relationship between belief in God and atheist distrust was fully mediated by the belief that people behave better if they feel that God is watching them: if you are not a believer you will suffer the pains and fires of hell. Other studies show atheists were systematically socially excluded only in high-trust domains; belief in God, but not authoritarianism, predicted this discriminatory decision-making against atheists in high trust domains (Gervais, Will M.; Shariff, Azim F.; Norenzayan, Ara (December 2011). “Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice”. doi: 10.1037/a0025882 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 101(6), 1189-1206).

Many people argue that atheists and nonbelievers are expressing hidden anger against a god that/who offended them or did not give them what they asked for (Exline, Julie J.; Park, Crystal L.; Smyth, Joshua M.; Carey, Michael P (January 2011). “Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer”. doi: 10.1037/a0021716 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 100(1), 129-148). This has been repeatedly been disproven, with research on why many elect atheism, being a study of 350 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism.  Those who vouched that they had no belief in a god had a wide reading of history , science and religion (75 times) that grew throughout their lifetime; disgust with religious hypocrisy (60) as seen in the case of Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, Bishop Eddie Long

(whose victims Bishop Eddie Long’s boy friends call him a “monster” as the bishop had no less than four boy-toys, while Long claims the charges are false and he was the victim); influence of particular author or book (55); a byproduct of Socialist materialism (30); effects of college education (25); effects of study of sciences (25); and others in lesser numbers. Less frequently emotional factors were mentioned, such as: illness and death in family, the horrors of war, the futility of prayer, the evils and unhappiness in the world, etc. 36% of the atheists were oldest children, while only 15% were youngest children; about 9% were only children (Vetter, G. B.; Green, M. (July 1932). “Personality and group factors in the making of atheists”. doi: 10.1037/h0075273 The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol 27(2), 179-194).

Most people who reject god do so after intensive study of history, science, religion, and philosophy: atheists tend to be more educated and broadly versed than do theists (Teo, Thomas (2009), Editorial. doi: 10.1037/a0017640 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Vol 29(2), 61-62). Families do disassociate themselves from members who declare their rejection of any god(s) that the family may believe in and worship, but this is a sign of paternalism and the fear of the family unit not being carried on by future like-minded generations.

By 2013, there is only an abridged form of religious freedom with many states within the union, with many states disenfranchising or denying the right to serve in a public office if the individual does not recognize a god. Even the deity is questioned as it was in the past: Jesus has to be Caucasian white, the name of the creator has to be God (not Allah), and so forth.  The act of swearing an oath is said to have religious connotations as it affirms the existence of a deity and a person’s confession of the existence of a deity, but this has no biblical support. On the contrary, the Bible expressly forbids people to swear (Matthew 5:34, James 5:12), therefore to swear “So help me god” is actually biblically prohibited since it is a rejection of YHWH and Jesus and an affirmation of a pagan god.

A Christian pastor does not mean that the man or woman in a suit pounding pulpits as if he were the Wrath of Moses.  A Christian preacher is not a man in a red dress covered with delicate lace sitting enthroned in a cathedral.  Christianity never initially meant a dictatorship over a group of semi-thinking people as found in Vander Plaats The FAMiLY, or James Dobson’s American Family Association, or other certified hate groups; Christianity never commanded that the individual denies the rights of others to believe or disbelieve as the individual chooses.

Various evangelical groups reject non-evangelical groups with their own interpretation of holy books and leaders. These groups ranged from chrestianos to christianos, concerning the warrior messiah of Matthew 10:34 to the prince of peace in Isaiah 9:6.  The two were joined by Constantine who controlled the ultimate canonization of scripture.  For this reason, it can truly be written, that Christianity is among the most barbaric of religions and has been since it was created by the Emperor Constantine I for religion (the Church) claims superiority over the state throughout history, even within the USA where politicians ranging from US Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), to Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and former (now Governor) Sam Brownback (R-KS, converted to Roman Catholicism by Opus Dei under Rev. John McCloskey’s guidance) all reject a wall separating state and church.

The Roman Emperor at the time of the assaults on Rome and the City of Constantine, Constantine I created an ecclesia (ἐκκλησίαa: public court, political assembly of citizens of an ancient Greek state [American Heritage Dictionary] who had the obligation to do business and bring wealth to the emperor) where only his interpretation of Paulinity.  The Pauline church was Constantine’s make-believe early “church” in opposition to the brothers of Jesus who saw the movement as a reformed Judaism.  Determined to be the sole arbiter of thought and expression, Constantine’s church would be a national unit that would allow Constantine absolute control over the empire’s faiths.

Constantine burned all books, scrolls, records, gospels, epistles that he did not approve–a common practice especially when it comes to religion and its denial of individual freedoms and human rights. Constantine’s church [business enterprise] was not known as Christianity after the theological coup. To ensure imperial control over the newly created church, Constantine ordered the works of Arius and other “heretics” were burned, in the manner of the Coptic pope in Egypt demanding that the famed library of Alexandria be destroyed.

It was under the clerical  Catholic cannibalism of the pseudo-Christian Coptic Pope Cyril that the famed astronomer, philosopher, mathematician, scientist, librarian and atheist Hypatia was torn apart by Coptic Christian monks who shredded her skin, tearing it off while she lived, and throwing her living body onto a pyre of burning scrolls and writings of ancient thinkers in all then-known fields of academic inquiry. The death of Hypatia was planned by the Coptic monks and set a signal for all bibliolators in the conservative Christian community to rise up against the ‘learned scholars’ of Alexandria, a center of knowledge throughout the ancient world and destroy all things that were not of, from, and within the Bible. It was the beginning of the Dark Ages in Egypt that spread like a fungus throughout Europe, turning off all lights that pierced the darkness of biblical literalism and enforced belief (George F. Simmons (1992). Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable Mathematics. New York, NY: MacGraw Hill; Maria Dzielska (1995). Hypatia of Alexandria, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, (Revealing Antiquity, 8), p. xi, 157).

With the message of the mythical Paul cannibalizing Christianity, the law body (the ecclesia, by the fifth century transmogrifying the true meaning of the word by attaching to it the incorrect translation and title of “the Church”) gave the world the grotesque Inquisition. The bloody Inquisition did not remain uniquely Roman Catholic.  It quickly was taken up by such “reformers” as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Henry VIII and his heirs, Scandinavian potentates, and the most vile representatives of man in Russia and captive provinces.  All based their “reformations” on spurious tracts that were current but did not reflect original documents designed to ensure peace or protect people. Few men, after the second century CE, realized that there never was a St. Peter, St. Paul, or Roman Popes (the first does not appear or is catalogued before the second century, not even in the first edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, with some writers arguing that there were no bishops nor a pope in Rome before the end of the fourth century).

The protesting reformer, Martin Luther’s war against the Jews and his books (Von den Jüden und iren Lügen, 1543, that the German ex-Augustinian monk wrote: Conversion of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man working — or rather playing — from without. If these offences be taken away, worse will follow. For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation, that they may become incorrigible, as Ecclesiastes says, for every one who is incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction; cf. Oberman, Heiko. Luthers Werke. Erlangen 1854, 32:282, 298, in Grisar, Hartmann. Luther. St. Louis 1915, 4:286 and 5:406; cp. Luther, Martin. Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi) that became the supporting arguments for Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, and the mincing of the madman Richard Land and the Southern Baptist Conventions who use them against the LGBT community, and the Pentecostal preachers against Muslims, etc, as with Terry Jones of Florida. When in another nation, the visitor must respect or at least obey the laws of that nation and not enforce on others his or her own views or theologies but this is not the role of the USA evangelists who feel they have a right to enter any nation and “convert” others to their insanity.

What maintains religious officiates is the absurdity of tithing. The “tithe” was an ancient law to appease a jealous king who was also a god (Genesis 14:20) and came from the “spoils” [theft] of wars. Tithing became a special bribe mortals made to kings/gods (Genesis 28:20-22) and became a part of “the Laws of Moses” that are plagiarized from the Code of Hammurabi and other ancient Middle Eastern texts with the arrival of the Egyptian mercenaries Apiru who served in the Akkadian army (Leviticus 27:30-32) that had been the main support of temple priest (reclassified as Levites in Numbers 18:20-32) who were guardians of wealth (Nehemiah 13:4-12). There is nothing spiritual about tithing, as throughout the Middle East it was extortion money paid to the most unscrupulous elements of society. TIPS, however, were medieval in origin and meant To Insure Prompt Service that were given out by lords and clergy to get immediate service–it was never a wage paid at the end of a meal, nor required, but, like in the bible, was a bribe.