I Used To Be a Born-Again Christian. Animals Are Why I’m Not!
Personal Journeys—
typically absurd representation of Jesus who, in reality, would have probably looked much more like a modern Palestinian man, conforms to innumerable idiotic description of the Christ. Assuming he really existed.
I was a born-again Christian in my youth. Headed the Baptist Youth Fellowship at my church. Then I actually read the Bible. In it, God demanded animal sacrifices because He enjoyed the smell of their burning flesh! He condoned the killing of disobedient children! He ordered the murders of unfaithful wives! He killed babies and committed the greatest genocide in history! (The Great Deluge). Aside from the humans he killed, all those millions of innocent animals died!
I decided God was evil. Now I am sure He doesn’t exist!
Animals didn’t fare too well under Jesus, either. He ran a herd of pigs off a cliff, and ate fish. Not a real loving god to those animals that died because of him!
And, if you buy into the Trinity, Jesus and God are the same person. So Jesus was in on all the atrocities of the Old Testament, animal sacrifice, slavery, and all. Of course He might have changed His mind about all that, but the very idea of a God who changes His mind to reflect current social values doesn’t sound like much of a God!
The whole premise of Christianity is that we all need to be saved from Original Sin, which we all inherited from Adam and Eve. Problem is that there never was an Adam and Eve. Humans evolved from a community of some 10,000 hominids in Africa. No Adam and Eve, no Original Sin. No reason for Christ to have died. Not to mention that the whole concept of an “original sin” is downright idiotic.
The Bible, supposedly the Word of God, is a mishmash of folklore, Bronze Age superstition, myth and lies. Cure leprosy by killing a dove and dripping its blood on your big toe? Kill children for dissing their parents? Get a wife by raping a virgin? Buy slaves from your neighbors? Talking snakes? And on and on.
The New Testament is just as screwed up. In Matthew, Jesus’ genealogy differs from the one listed in Mark! In one of his letters (Epistle to Philemon), Paul tells a Christian slaveowner how to properly treat his Christian slave!
And this is only one of thousands of religions people have believed in across the centuries.
Do you believe in Baal? Ra? Thor? Jupiter? Zeus? Horus? Isis? Odin? Caesar?
Then you, too, are an atheist (at least about most of the gods in history).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roland Windsor Vincent is an Animal Rights activist, political strategist, attorney, public speaker, and writer. He is now TGP’s Special Editor for Socialism, Environment & Animal Rights.
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