Christianity in America: Culture or Cult?

What is Christianity?
Principle: One God who saves us from ourselves. "His" great actions and thoughts are shown in the New Testament and Old Testament in the Bible through his words, the words of his disciples, and others.

Reality: 
Christianity has a pyramid structure of power, with "God" at the top. However, to get to know "God" most must go through a church in which only they are capable of understanding "God". No one can understand "God" without the help of the church organization. The Catholic denomination is an excellent example of this. Everyone must go to their local father and confess their sins and the priest helps to "save them". The father goes to someone else until eventually the chain of "saving" goes all the way to the Pope. The Pope is literally an embodiment of "God" and therefore is infallable.
Protestant Christians (pretty much all other Christians) do not have a "Pope" but they still have a church organization that tells people how to believe. It deep Christian regions, removal from a church environment may mean becoming an outsider in their society and going to "Hell". This causes fear to leave and people feel forced to trust the Christian churches. This fear allows almost alll Christian churches to dominate their members. The members will do what the church says, including open discrimination against other religious views and viewpoints on their religion.
Christianity is a myriad of hypocrisies near impossible for any intelligent person to understand. It says to tolerate all, yet it does not. It only tolerates those who live a good “Christian” life. It says to not lie, cheat or steal, yet it commonly does that to its participants to gain followers and/or power. They will lie to the common person saying certain individuals are inferior and try to logic their way through such discrimination; however all they are doing is cheating many at the ability to freely acknowledge who they are and stealing their peace of mind. These groups say that all the members are equal and made in God's image. However, they are told to treat outside members differently displaying a different standard of ethics. Most people in this religion, whether conscious or not about it, are afraid of not being saved and therefore will act like a herd of sheep to be saved. They can and will discriminate, capitalizing on human nature to fear the unknown because it will get them closer to their religion.  There's what a Christian says, then there's what a Christian does.
Many Christian denominations follow the Exclusivisim belief. This belief states that only their faith is right and any others are in grave error and must change to be saved. Their beliefs, which may include a lack there of, are Satanic. The second, more moderate, belief is that of some other faiths having some truth in them, but only being partly developed. This still does not recognize any other religion as a completely legitimate faith, only a partially legitimate one. The final view is that all religions are credible when viewed from within. Still, not even this is total acceptance of opposing, non-discriminatory views as it doesn’t say that another religion can possibly be true when an outsider looks at it.  This does not mean if one holds a faith at all, it is impossible for them not to discriminate. One must simply know that other religions may be true anywhere, not just in their own social circles. Few Christians notice this and they are the few exceptions when mentioning how Christianity looks down on other religions. However, I do not have the time nor the inclination to look at every Christian denomination or belief to debate it. Such groups will recognize if they do or do not tolerate other religions. Christianity generally expects most others to accept its word blindly.
It says that all people can achieve salvation but yet many are deemed inferior by the church and have their whole way of life classified as in. They cannot achieve salvation because they themselves are inferior.

Indirectly, the Bible insults women. Men are the only ones who can hold positions of power. Women are meant to be contained to the house and cannot decide their own affairs. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent’ I Timothy 2:12. This quote explains the church's stance against partial birth abortion even to save the life of the mother. The mother cannot decide the importance of her own life because she is to keep silent if a man tells her to. Women, for the most part, are not allowed to partake in religion as priests, cardinals, or any other religious position of authority because women cannot have authority over men. They must keep silent about their beliefs and submit to their male counterparts.

Eve, the first woman, is blamed for all failures by reaching for the fruit of knowledge. The purpose of this is two fold. The first is to blame the woman for all failures in society therefore giving men a powerul position, allowing more to accept it. Men held positions of power at that time therefore having men in a position of power made it easier for the societies to accept. The second is to make outside knowledge look bad. This hidden act will make sure that the members do not seek information outside of the church. If the members do not get another opinion, they will gradually adopt the one of the church.

Directly, the bible directly condemns gays and other religious beliefs. “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”(Leviticus 18:22)Therefore meaning if a man falls in love with a man it is wrong. Note, some say that not the act of being homosexual but acting upon it is wrong. So a man who hid who is was would still be redeemable in the eyes of the church but not a man who falls in love with another man is acting upon his urge and is immoral and sinful. These people are inferior because they do not follow "God's Will". Hence, the church's stance on never allowing gay marriage in the first place. Now it argues the sanctity of marriage because marriage has gone on for so long for only one group. Why would a religious group discriminate against homosexual people? Homosexual people do not create children, which the church views as the main purpose for sex. Homosexual people, if allowed to marry, would naturally be allowed to have sex. This sex would not produce more children, which means less believers in the Church.

Considering this fact, homosexuals must be discriminated against for the same reason other religions must be converted. Sheer members would help the ideal of Christianity reign supreme above other ideals. Other religious practices are often discriminated against by the church. In Smith 61, the Bible claims "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no god.'" This outright calls anyone who is an atheist, obviously a non-Christian group, a fool. Most people say the common phrase "I will not suffer a fool gladly." Hence, the inability of Christian churches to "suffer" atheist fools.

During the inquisition, atheistic, along with any other religion that was not Christian was prosecuted for "witchcraft." The Bible says "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." This verse was intentionally changed for purposes of control. The word was originally poisoner and changed to suit a secular purpose. Witches are a religion outside of Christianity that existed well-before, during, and after the change and since Christianity wants to get rid of what is "wrong" then they can do what they need to accomplish that goal.

Also, Christians fear other religions. Most denominations believe that any other religion is wrong and will not get access to Heaven even if they are "good people" according to its rules. This belief, as interpreted by lay people (those people who are not priests), has stretched since the times of Dantè Allegrhi and his circle for "Virtuous Pagans", which is both closest to and furthest from Heaven. They are blinded by not recognizing the lord and therefore must be tormented by never knowing Him after death.

Considering these people are wrong, they must be shown the right way by public majority demonstrations of "the faith", until eventually they give up their Satanic ways. These demonstrations started with the inquisition back hundreds of years ago but thankfully have progressed into more "civil" manners such as open prayer in school events for the most part. Several Supreme Court cases have decided that such action is wrong but it still does not eliminate the problem.

The problem is that the Christian church is nothing more than a hierarchical structure of priests, clergy and popes through the years telling its members how to run its lives. However, these men seek more power to impose what their definition of "right" is. They do not tell people to publicly make others feel bad but rather blind people to the fact they are doing it. To this end, Christianity is always seeking new converts to the "better way of life", prosecutes (not in the legal sense most of the time) those who do not agree with their beliefs labeling them as outsiders, and creates public self-adoring events for its own stature and the humiliation of others. Many members are also told that they "give their life in service to God and that everything must reflect well on Him". In plain English this means that, they must be good people not for their own benefit but for the benefit of Christianity and everything reflects on the group. They are also told that the worldly possessions they may acquire contain little to no value in regards to salvation but yet churches encourage a donation from all their members. Logically, one would concur that the money is used to further the Church and since the church has money they are being saved. However, somehow the money donated goes from having no importance to salvation to a major role in salvation. Christianity is not a God worshiping religion but rather a God fearing one.

Way back at the start, when Jesus was alive, Christianity more obviously resembled a cult. Jesus was a criminal in the eyes of the law acting one way towards his religious faithful and acting another way to society who had not embraced him. He had 12 disciples that would help spread his word. His story has been altered somewhat probably, but we still know that he broke the law and produced a child (Dan Brown "The Da Vinci Code" [note to self: Get a better source]) (not both at once). However, the Bible repaints Mary Madelenge (sp) as a woman who wanted to make love a lot and Jesus as a virgin, immune to the pressures of the flesh. This would help Jesus gain a following, wanting to be saved and idolize him. Still to this day, people live asking themselves "What Would Jesus Do?"  instead of what is right and helps the most people.

What would you call a group would most find that requires you to live your life for an ideal that is impossible to see ever, constantly seeks new members to join, encourages a monetary donation, attacks those outside of its group, and insists on public demonstration of faith to the group? I would call it a cult. I would not call it a culture or a religion. A religion puts out the information and invites people to join, however it does not look down upon those who do not join. A culture is a group of people living harmoniously (well within reason) with a similar group of beliefs that do not harm anyone else. However, Christianity harms both those who practice it and those outside the religion.

http://www.fatalistic.net/kouri/discrim.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/1894/atheism.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_othe.htm
http://rightcyberup.org/cult.html#definition