Christianity
A collection of links to sceptical sites on Christianity.
See also links to sceptical sites on
Islam
and
Judaism.
Please read
the atheism page
introduction
for background to this.
Almost all of my sceptical links on Christianity
are actually on
the main
atheism page.
For over a thousand years, the church banned books
and executed their authors.
Heresy, atheism, human rights, democracy,
science.
Many of the greatest, most noble thinkers in history were banned.
- Science, philosophy:
- Copernicus
- Galileo
- Francis Bacon
- Descartes
- Pascal
- Kant
- Erasmus Darwin
- Darwin
- Religion, freethought, atheism, philosophy:
- Abelard
- Erasmus
- Calvin
- Luther's Bible
- King James Bible
- Spinoza
- Bishop Berkeley
- Montaigne
- Voltaire
- David Hume
- Edward Gibbon
- Madame de Staël
- Darwin
- Politics, democracy, human rights:
- Thomas Hobbes
- Machiavelli
- John Locke
- Thomas Paine
- Bentham
- John Stuart Mill
- Rousseau
- Sartre
- Other non-fiction:
- Fiction, etc.
- Dante
- Rabelais
- Cervantes
- Daniel Defoe
- Samuel Richardson
- Oliver Goldsmith
- John Milton
- Jonathan Swift
- Laurence Sterne
- Casanova
- Sade
- Stendhal
- Honoré de Balzac
- Alexandre Dumas
- Victor Hugo
- Emile Zola
- Flaubert
- Andre Gide
- Christianity's persecution of those that translated and spread
its teachings:
- The church executed
William Tyndale
in 1536 for publishing the Bible in English,
and they did their best to stop any translation of the book.
Unfortunately for them, it is now freely available
here.
- Previously, in the 14th cent,
Pope Gregory XI
had tried to persuade
England to imprison
Wycliffe
for translating the Bible into English,
but was unsuccessful
(though the church successfully exterminated his followers).
- Apparently the church now believes it was wrong
and the Bible should be made available in English after all,
and it no longer (apparently) believes that translators should be
put to death.
- Limbo
is another great example of how the Catholic Church changes its beliefs over time,
and will change again in the future.
The Church used to insist that
infants who died
unbaptised would go to limbo, or even hell.
In any case, their parents would never see them again.
After torturing millions of bereaved mothers
with these claims for centuries,
the church has finally decided that no, actually, it just made the whole thing up.
- The Catholic Church has in fact changed a vast number of beliefs over the years:
-
It used to believe those who translated the Bible into English should be killed,
but doesn't think this any more.
- It used to believe unbaptised babies go to hell, or limbo,
but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to believe atheists and heretics should be
executed, but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to support slavery,
but doesn't any more.
-
It used to believe priests could marry, but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to believe the sun goes round the earth,
but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to believe the world is a few thousand years old, but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to believe humans have no animal ancestry,
but doesn't think this any more.
-
It used to believe in the
blood libel against the Jews,
and it even canonised "saints" who were supposed victims of "ritual murder" by the Jews,
but apparently it doesn't believe this any more.
- Decanonized saints
- If the church can actually name a saint, and get it wrong,
how can it possibly claim to be guided by God?
|
What else will the Catholic Church change in the future?
It is obvious that
in the future, the church will change its position on
contraception, women priests, and homosexuality.
It will forget that it ever opposed them,
and the fact that it ever did will just become the humorous answer to a trivia question:
"The church once opposed contraception - oddly enough!"
|
"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone.
...
Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth."
- Pope Gregory XVI
explicitly opposes freedom of speech and freedom of religion
in his encyclical of 1832.
"From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster
that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"
viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.""
- Pope Pius IX
explicitly opposes freedom of speech and freedom of religion
in his encyclical of 1864.
Return to Religions page.