Honorary Knight Commander
"It cannot be emphasised too strongly that Christianity
has a vested interest in human misery. "
It is not accidental that Christianity is profoundly anti-pleasure, especially in the area of sex; this bias serves a specific function. Pleasure is the fuel of life, and sexual pleasure is the most intense form of pleasure that man can experience. To deny oneself pleasure, or to convince oneself that pleasure is evil, is to produce frustration and anxiety and thereby become potential material for salvation. Christianity cannot erase man's need for pleasure nor can it eradicate the various sources of pleasure. What it can do, however, and what it has been extremely effective in accomplishing, is to inculcate guilt in connection with pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure, when accompanied by guilt, becomes a means of perpetuating chronic guilt, and this serves to reinforce one's dependence on God.
It cannot be emphasised too strongly that Christianity has a vested interest in human misery. Christianity, more than any religion before or since, capitalized on human suffering; and it was enormously successful in insuring its own existence through the perpetuation of human suffering.
The belief in eternal torment, still subscribed to by fundamentalist Christian denominations, undoubtedly ranks as the most vicious and reprehensible doctrine of classical Christianity. It has resulted in an incalculable amount of psychological torture, especially among children where it is employed as a terror tactic to prompt obedience.
By placing a moral restriction on what one is permitted to believe, Christianity has declared itself an enemy of truth and the faculty by which man arrives at truth � Reason.
To be moral, according to Jesus, man must shackle his reason. He must force himself to believe that which he cannot understand and be unwilling to subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to more faith, and faith, according to Jesus, is the hallmark of virtue. This rejection of reason is devastating to the human mind and personality.
George H. Smith
'Atheism, The Case Against God'
Further reading
