A Journal for Western Man-- Issue III
Part II
G. Stolyarov II
With the Church subdued and any potential malcontents held at bay, the kings were free to set their eyes elsewhere, to expand their territorial domain into new lands. The first such wave of expansion came during the Crusades, when the Church's power was waning but still possessed some influence. Then Christian slaughtered Muslim and Jew, and acts of massive brutality were committed among peoples who all followed the same God and the same Old Testament. And why? All for a strip of land considered to be the home of Jesus Christ, whom both Christians and Muslims sought to please by possessing it! How was it that supposedly devout followers of God would turn on each other and murder in His name? (One may keep in mind that, according to Christian fatalist dogma, absolutely everything that happens is part of God's grand, unfathomable scheme of things.) To that the author proposes one hypothesis: that God is cruel and enjoys watching petty sufferings of His pawns. Yet a justification of that will follow later on. Currently we shall continue our exploration of the follies of Monotheist religions. A second period of tumultuous development came during the period of "Gold, God, and Glory". While certain priests and conquistadors attempted to free Native Americans from forced labor which they had been shackled with by overt worshippers of many bloodthirsty gods, and relocate them to missions (where they would perform a bit more learning and uncoerced labor), the new "Christians" conducted, "by God's will," countless bloodthirsty rebellions against the Holy Fathers of the Church.
Despite (or because of, depending on the way one views history) internal conflicts and an elevation of opulence and splendor, the Catholic Church had begun to face armed opposition from both more moderate believers (Lutherans) and the radical Christians (Hussites, Calvinists). Over a century bloody wars of Reformation were waged throughout Europe, all struggles between God's children attempting to please the Great and Merciful through offerings of human blood. In the meantime, to the east, the Orthodox "Children of God" from Russia were being persecuted as a result of their own Reformation, this time instituted by the Czar Alexis to strengthen his new autocracy and weaken the old customs representing a more-or-less feudal society. Simultaneously, Russians and Catholic Poles were slicing open each other's heads in order to "prove" the "superiority" of their beliefs. Even in the Catholic ranks there existed a conflict between the Jesuits and Dominicans that was far from non-violent.
Yet these conflicts at the end of a theocratic age were followed by one of the most progressive concepts known to this day, the separation of church and state. A new series of "enlightened" rulers found the religious structure of their time increasingly fallible due to nonstop internal conflicts, so they resolved to set it aside and rule through their own reasoning, which, though far from perfect itself, was certainly less bloody than the dogma of the Church. They turned to the works of Monsieur de Montesquieu, who had first formulated the separation of powers doctrine, as guidance for their reforms. Beginning with Henry VIII in England and expanding with Louis XIV in France, Peter I in Russia, and Frederick II in Prussia, the concept of a government separate from the Church soon encompassed the entire European continent with the exception of Spain and Italy, whose influence over worldly events weakened significantly as a result. "Divine right" prevailed for some longer time, yet it was nothing but figurative then. The new monarchs were learned and even humanist to some extent. They encouraged arts, sciences, philosophies, and societies thrived. That was the epoch in which the most important contributions to the overthrow of dogma were made.
But this essay is not intended to relate a history of religion to the reader. Once again, such would be a million-page endeavor, since blunders and atrocities committed in the name of a god were so frequent in the past and still exist in the present (since one realizes that the Enlightenment did not completely eradicate superstition and fanatics of the far left are reviving it while these very words are being written). We are on the search for the essence of the subject, the moral that can be used in order to reduce such atrocities in the future. The author believes that Herr Marx had made a slight error when calling religion "the opium of the people," for opium is a potent narcotic which slows action. It is true that dogma slows progress, but action and progress had never been synonymous. Progress inevitably consists of action, but not all deeds are for the good of men. Instead, religion is a powerful stimulant (calling it cocaine would make for a good metaphor), inciting people to all the wrong deeds, just like a drug of that nature would. It is, when applied to stale and obsolete infrastructures, a utensil of retrogression and stagnation, but passivity is not its means for achieving such. Both it and the actual stimulant plants false thoughts and impulses into the human mind which have absolutely no relation to the world of things or the world of ideas. Such misconceptions inevitably bring about suffering. As the reader may remember from past deliberations on the subject of virtue, the difference between it and dogma is that the latter applies itself in such a way so as to harm other people or restrict such activity that poses no genuine danger to anyone. Dogma will always be at the heart of a religion, since in its roots lies a concept that is not founded on anything other than speculation.
For all the author knows, a Supreme Being may well exist, even if there is no way to prove its existence. M. de Voltaire had once suggested that such a structured universe as our own could not have been formed out of chaos but must have been designed intelligently. He compared the mechanisms of the cosmos to those of a watch and, just like a watch needs to have had a watchmaker, the functions of our surroundings suggest that they were invented with a purpose in mind. Dr. Hawking, formulator of the Big Bang Theory, suggests a perfectly scientific claim that God initiated the explosion of the original singularity, which led to the beginning of the universe. He states that, since during the first microsecond of time nothing behaved in any comprehensible manner, that was the time when God created the Laws of Science, which the cosmos had been regulated by ever since. This Deist interpretation bifurcates religion and reality, and henceforth permits its advocates to thrive in the material world by applying reason and not depending on capricious cosmic favors. Although this author questions both Deism and the Big Bang Theory, their advocates are inherently incapable of inflicting harm to denizens of this Planet Earth from religious and/or “scientific” principles and thereby our differences can be articulated in a humane, purely verbal fashion. But just like the atoms of a watch cannot comprehend the nature of their watchmaker, how is it possible for humans to have concocted such detailed and unlikely systems of worship? Would the Supreme Being (or beings, for that matter, since nothing points to the existence of only one. But since they seem to have acted in coordination with each other's efforts if and when they designed the universe, they shall be referred to here as the Creative Entity) even communicate with the creatures that he had made if we do not converse with our watches? What basis, then, is there for the Bible or for any other form of literature that attempts to explain the nature of a God? If the author's reasoning here is not sufficient to the unyielding reader, one historical example from recent past will absolutely disprove whatever is written about a great, omnipotent, merciful, and rewarding God.
Although most of the stories presented in the Bible are contradictory in themselves, the author shall give a little ground to that book's advocates to prove that his reasoning can triumph even under such conditions. Let us assume that the great God did indeed save Moses and his tribe of Israelites, numbering in the tens of thousands at most, from pursuit by the Egyptians by causing the Red Sea to recede before them. Such was the act of the "Great and Merciful" to save his "chosen people" from persecution. Why, then, did the "Great and Merciful" ignore the pleas of six million of his "chosen," who were brutally murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust? That is certainly an inexplicable inconsistency. Or is it?