February 13, 1989. To the Editor of the TOKYO WEEKENDER
Re: On religious issues.
Dear Mr. Alexander,
Jan. 27, I had an announcement in the Japan Times calling for a discussing by an anti-clerical group on "How to Counter Evangelization", although the responds was poor, two callers mentioned your article about Kenny Joseph, which draw my attention to your paper.
Please permit me to explain my concern. I am highly critical about Christianity and religion in general. Religious people are usually dangerous egoists, who hope that god looks upon them more favorably than on others and their goodness is either bribery (paradise) or cowardice (fear of hell). I am sure, also Mr. Joseph - just like all engaged Christians including the witch burners and those who smashed the windows of atheist groups and those who try to muzzle critics - hopes to score high in heaven.
It would be good if the mass media would be more critical towards the church and help to fade out Christianity and religion. As for the Japan Times I lost all hope. They obviously favor the Christians.
For Europe I can say the churches are gaining in influence. The way church critics are persecuted nowadays in Germany was 10 or 20 years ago when the democratic consciousness was higher not possible. And that papers like Die Süddeutsche refuse advertisement for well documented books critical of Christianity like a book about the Vatican and its involvement with the Croatian Ustacha and the concentration champ Jasenovac is of grave concern to me. There is nothing left for me but to become a "letter-writting worrywart".
If you mention me and my concern favorably in
your paper I would be very grateful.
Sincerely yours,
Holger Hermann Haupt
Although the editor called the evangelist Kenny Joseph a "rabble-rousing, letter-writing, worry-wart of the keeper of the flame of Christianity", he mentioned his concern and his mission's big-saving deals on a "real, honest" videotape on the life of Christ at only 5000 Yen.
March 3rd, the missionary Kenny Joseph, himself had a letter published praising movies like "Ben Hur", "Sampson and Delilah" or "The Ten Commandments" for their happy endings claiming the movie makers of "The Last Temptation" "have only one object in mind: Make more moolah" and "The parent company, Universal MCA, whose top leaders are almost all Jewish, planned on a $ 50 million profit". His letter ended: "And thank God no assassination squads are after the Jewish money-men and makers of this film. God will judge, then by His only begotten son, Jesus!"
Provoked by "Rev." Kenny Joseph's anti-Semitism, many readers wrote protest letters to the editor including myself. Here my letter, written March 7, 1989, published March 31, unabridged:
To the Tokyo WEEKENDER
Letter to the Editor
Re: Mr. Joseph's letter
Mr. Joseph's anti-Semitic letter provokes me also to write a letter. It seems Christians even after almost 2000 years of persecution and atrocities towards Jews still do not have a sense of guilt and regret. But perhaps I am wrong and even Christians, or at least people who consider themselves Christians, although they are too lazy to have a look at the bible, will protest against this anti-Semitism. Hopefully.
I would like to use this opportunity first to show Mr. Joseph that it is not necessary to be a Jew to be critical about the official Jesus picture. I am German and there is not a drop of Jewish blood in my veins, (or the Nazis would surely have found out about it and killed my parents) but I am highly critical about the account of Jesus and share with Celsus (also not a Jew) the opinion that everything was `prophesied' because it had happened, and not that it had happened because it was prophesied. And for the idea, so upsetting for Christians, that Judas acted on Jesus' instructions to have (Deutero-)Sacharja's prophecy come true we find also in Harald von Mendelssohn's interesting book `Jesus - Rebel or Saviour'.
Secondly, I would like to take a deeper look into the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, which Mr. Joseph passed out in front of the cinemas.
I wonder whether Mr. Joseph who so smartly figured out other people's profit or loss ever noticed how from Gospel to Gospel the wonders increase, which is the greatest wonder of the whole bible to me: the oldest evangelist described Jesus as a human being, Matthew and Luke described a demigod and John a real god, but incarnated. So the youngest, the Gospel of John is the most unlikely to give the 'true picture' of Jesus, though it explains Mr. Joseph's anti-Semitism, for the fourth gospel is the most anti-Jewish gospel; more than fifty times they figure as Jesus' enemies and most of the time they try to kill him (Jh. 5,16; 7,1; 7,13; 10,31; 18,36 etc.) And John, or rather John's Jesus, denies that the Jews are children of Abraham but lets them descend from Satan (Jh. 8,44; 5,37; 7,28; 8,19; 8,55; 16,3 etc.) We find the most glaring dualism: on one side the children of god, light, truth, faith, one the other Satan's synagogue, darkness, falsehood and heresy.
But also the oldest writer of the New Testament, the fanatic Paul, "the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity" (Nietzsche), the classic figure of intolerance, damns the Jews and accuses them of murder of prophets. Matthew lets his Jesus defame the Jews as murderers of prophets (Mt. 23, 30 et seq.).
Could Jesus not count? Of all the many prophets mentioned in the Old Testament I could only find Uriah (Jeremia 26, 23) who was killed by king Jojakim and Daniel in the lions' den, an attempt at murder. Maybe Mr. Joseph can come up with some more murdered prophets.
By the way, my teacher, too, also a lay-priest, taught us kids that the Jews were murderers of their prophets, and that in Germany after the war!
And even more radical (Luk. 19,27): "But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them bring them here and slay them before me." Does that not sound like an invitation to holocaust? Well, John Chrysostomos (354-407), holder of the title doctor ecclesiae, the highest honor the Catholica has to give, interpreted it as such, just as was done again by the clergy in Nazi-Germany to please the Nazis.
But back to the question: Who was Jesus really? I don't know. Probably someone who thought he could deceive the people by the above-mentioned trick with Judas and become king of the Jews. But things didn't work out as planned and it came to the crucifixion, a mishap so to say, but his disciples, simple peasants, could not believe that their master had failed, and interpreted his death the way that is still popular.
The account of Jesus' life in the different Gospels, written several generations later, is only a collection of, at its time of writing, current pagan beliefs and wonders: Water walkers already included Asclepios, Sarapis and also Buddha. Just as Peter, a disciple of Jesus, walked on water so did a disciple of Buddha. Also Joshua and Elijah walked across the Jordan.
The title Son of God was held by many others, for example Pythagoras, Plato, Augustus and Apollonius of Tyana. Asclepios raised six people from death - the details are the same as in Jesus' two resuscitations. He also healed blind and lame people. Hercules after been born to the married virgin Alkmene was persecuted as a child. And just as Jesus in John's Gospel he died with the word: It is accomplished. There was an earthquake and darkness, a well-known motif, that was also used for Ceasar. Finally he hovered away to heaven, as before him Romulus and Enoch, and after him Jesus.
Euripides (480-406 BC) tells us that Dionysus turned water into wine. Also the Dionysus cult already knew something similar to the Holy Communion, with the same meaning for life after death. Just like Prometheus at the Caucasus and Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver of the 9th century BC, Dionysus, too, belongs to the crucified gods. And long before Christ, the Dionysus' parish worshipped their god on an altar-table with a wine-chalice on a cross. There are also: Dionysus on a donkey, D. on a ship and as master of the sea, D. and the dry figs, D. and the vine, the mockery and suffering of D., D. whose flesh is eaten and whose blood is drunk.
There is also a similarity between Mithras and Jesus. Mithras was the sun god and his holy day was dies solis, Sunday. His birthday was dies natalis solis, the 25th of December. When Luke wrote the sentimental account of Jesus' birth he obviously cribbed from Hellenic sources.
At the end of my letter I want to declare that I do not fear to appear in front of God. On the contrary, I would seek him because I would like to ask him some questions, if he exists. I do not want to discuss the god idea here, but it is evident to me that neither the tribal god of the Jews nor the Christian derivation of this god, exists. What kind of god would cause so much suffering in his name, even to the present day. A God who wants to give eternal suffering often for minor offences, does not know justice and shows less compassion and ethic behaviour than an average human, such a god should not be worshipped, but rebelled against.
What I fear however is that Christians like Mr. Joseph might attract enough devotees to create a new Middle Age.
Holger Hermann Haupt
As an excuse for publishing "Rev." Kenny Joseph's
anti-Semitic letter, the editor of the Tokyo Weekender explained
that he honours everybody's right of freedom of expression and
that he publishes all the letters he receives. Soon, he was
flooded the letters. I wrote also another one (published April
28. 1989).
To the Editor:
The editor's decision to print all letters without censorship should really be applauded. I must admit that were I editor - though committed to freedom of speech - I would never permit a Christian to express his opinion in my paper, but only because it is my experience that papers controlled by Christians will suppress critical or compromising information about the church you send them. And, of course, the Christian sermon, too, is a most undemocratic solo performance where contradictions are not permitted.
During such sermons not only god is worshipped (Does he need it for his happiness?), but it is also a place for inciting the believers against the non-believer. I know of a priest (in my home country West Germany) who called only last year from the pulpit "not to buy from atheists". Not very original, since the Nazi had already the slogan "Don't buy from Jews!"
In the WEEKENDER MAILBOX more and more letters by Christians trying to whitewash Mr. Joseph's provocative statements are appearing. Every one deserved an answer but I will only respond to Mr. Elkins' letter (April 7). Although I agree with Mr. Elkins that instead of pouring out invectives we should disagree rationally (Mr. Joseph did surely not do that.) I was surprised by his statement about the media. Do the media really constantly slander Christians? I found that the opposite is true, namely that the media exercise self-restrain when it comes to criticism of the church and Christianity, of course, because they are mostly owned or controlled by Christians.
But let us first look at invectives. In Christian literature there is no lack of it: Starting with St. Paul, but probably earlier, opponents are defamed as hypocrites, like the Jewish Christians around St. Peter (Gal. 2,13), who called him probably abnormal, lunatic, greedy, a coward and even defrauder, because these are the reproaches against which he defends himself in his (genuine) letters (only half of his letters are genuine), in Phil. 3,2 he counters then with `dog'. Twenty years after St. Paul's death the Jewish Christian Matthew is still polemizing against pagan Christians (Mt. 10, 5 et seq.) calling them dogs and pigs (Mt. 7, 6).
The Early Fathers, like Ignatius, Ireneus, Ephram, Athanasius, Hilarius, Johannes Chrystomos, Hieronymos, Augustinus, pope Leo I. increased this vocabulary with "mud", "dirt", "stinking filth", "expectoration", "dregs", "precursor of the Anti-Christ", "sons of the devil", "friends of the Jews", "beasts", "insects", "rabid dogs", "slaughter animals" etc. Martin Luther called the pope "carnival mask", "king of rats", "dragon of hell", "robber", "arch-pestilential monster", "someone, who the devil shit into the church" etc.
Unfortunately, most of the time they did not leave it by invectives but they had to torture and kill to satisfy their hatred.
But now to the mass media: It would be good if the mass media would do all to fade out Christianity, we would not have to worry about a new Middle Age. But they do the contrary. There is hardly a major paper that would venture to publish criticism of the church and Christianity.
In West Germany (like in some other European countries) the churches are protected against criticism by the so-called blasphemy clause 166 of the Criminal Code. When some personages who felt committed to democracy and freedom of speech tried in a paid advertisement to call for the abolition of this paragraph, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung und Die Zeit (both major German papers) refused.
And when people are persecuted under this clause, although normally very eager for scandals, the papers will not write about it. They even ignored scandals like that: The Catholics distributed pamphlets calling women who had abortions Auschwitz-murderer and contraception early-abortion, but the District Attorney persecutes those who felt provoked by this comparison and demonstrated against the church.
An other case: An attorney, Gottfried Niemietz, quotes a client during a lecture who said that the church is "the biggest criminal organization in history". He is persecuted for that.
Considering the track of blood the church left through history and the fact that we are a democracy we should not only have the right to quote it, but also say it.
The above-mentioned papers refused also advertisement for church-critical books, including Vladimir Dedijer's book about the Vatican's involvement with the Ustasha and the KZ Jasenovac which consists almost entirely of documents and testimonies of witnesses of the war crimes trails. The Catholics tried during the WW II in Croatia to exterminate the Orthodox Serbs, of course also the Jews and Gypsies, and the third largest concentration camp at that time on European soil was Jasenovac run by Catholic clergyman, Jesuits and Franciscan monks.
We hope we can crash the church's power to suppress such information, and make the Christians' crimes as known as the Nazi's.
When I tried here in Japan in a letter to the JAPAN TIMES to inform the public about the persecutions of atheists in Germany - I even added copies of protest letters of notable personages like Nobel Prize winners George Wald and Noam Chromsky, also winner of the General Science Award in Kyoto (JT, Nov. 25, 1988) and other information material for reference - my letter was left unpublished, like all but one (accident?) of my church-critical letters.
Most of the media remain in the hands of Christians. And our thinking, just like government decisions and the law, are still too much coined by Christianity.
Holger Hermann Haupt
PS: I always added my address and telephone
number and asked to contact me to organize an anti-clerical group
to counter Christian missionaries. I would not do that again,
because my telephone started ringing at night and some of the
ugly calls made we very depressed.
To the Editor of the Tokyo Weekender (published
May 26, 1989):
Although the response to my last letter was very poor, I received a letter from Mr.Kenny Joseph (it remind me of Matth. 5, 3) and I would like to answer him through the WEEKENDER.
First Mr. Joseph suggested I invest Yen 6000 for his video about Jesus (note the price increase of Yen 1000, obviously Mr. Joseph also likes to `make more moolah', see TOKYO WEEKENDER, Mar. 3). Then he claimed that this film about Jesus was seen by 330 million people. By which multiplier did he increase the truth… 10, 20, 30? Anyway, what we witness here is Christian tradition: St. Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans 3:7 that lies are permissible if for the glorification of God. For those who come up with a different interpretation: The above is the interpretation of the church.
Also J. Chrysostomes stressed the necessity of lies with the help of O.T. and N.T. Origen wrote "even God lies out of love" and the theologian Johann Gottfried Herder "to lie is not a sin but a merit" (of course, if it helps the church).
Next in his letter, Mr. Joseph thanked God for the German reformator Martin Luther, which explains even more his anti-Semitism: Not only did Martin Luther repeat all Catholic lies about the Jews like the poisoning of wells, Host desecration and ritual murder, but in his paper "About the Jews and Their Lies" (1543), he surpassed in Jew-baiting not only the Catholic saints but also Adolf Hitler. I cannot quote directly from it, because it is too distasteful.
By the way, historic records show that in the Protestant part of Germany more witches and Jews were burned than in the Catholic part. After Hilter seized power, the Lutheran church immediately introduced "the Aryan clause," making it impossible for Jewish converts to become clergymen or employees of the church and from Feb. 10, 1939, onward, they were no longer tolerated as members.
The above-mentioned paper by Martin Luther was called "the arsenal", because from there the Protestants got their weapons (speak arguments and stimuli) against the Jews.
And at the War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg, the editor of the infamous Nazi newspaper "Stürmer", Julius Streicher, referred to Martin Luther with some legitimacy who - as he thought - should be tried instead of himself.
Both churches, however - Catholic and Protestant - helped the Nazis with their church registers to find Jewish converts.
Mr. Joseph continued this letter, that he is "sad that another German boy who had a Jewish father ... read similar books like you are touting, Holger, especially one by Feuerbach." The book by Harald von Mendelssohn I mentioned in my first letter was first published 1981. Unlikely that Karl Marx read it.
And if Mr. Joseph thinks that Feuerbach wrote
about the pagan origin of the Christian faith, he is mistaken.
But the Early Fathers did. They had no choice, because they faced
the dilemma that at their time everybody knew about it.
(unpublished: Justin for example admitted readily the in my
letter mentioned similarity of Jesus with Dionysus and the other
sons of Zeus, Hermes, Asclepios and Heracles. And it seems that
he wanted to say, that if you believe that they could do these
wonders, why don't you believe us, when we say the same about
Jesus. The same with Origen: To make the Christian faith more
credible or palatable he showed the commonness of pagan and
Christian religion: The creation of Adam from clay and the
clay-born people of the Hellenic myth, Eve and Pandora, the
paradise and the garden of Jupiter, the fall of the angles and
the fall of the Titans, Jesus' birth by a virgin and Plato's
similar birth, the Christian Eucharist and the pagan sacrificial
meal etc. And to make Jesus' resurrection more believable he
reminded the people that also Er, the son of Armenios, rose from
the dead 12 days after he was burned and that Herakles, Theseus
and Orpheus just like Jesus went to the nether world before their
resurrection. )
The Early Fathers, like Tertullian, Theophilus - also Justin, even - produced a theory that the pagans had stolen the Christian teaching. Of course there is something queer about it. Naturally, this could not have happened, because the pagan mysteries were first. But according to these ancient theologians, the Devil disclosed all the Christian secrets already in pre-Christian time to the pagans. The pagan origin of the Christian faith is still known and accepted by Christian theologians. Daniel-Rops, a modern Catholic, wrote that the pagan tradition was `baptized'. What a cynicism!
But back to Feuerbach: He put nature in place of God and science and reason in place of belief. For him, it was hypocrisy to adhere to the Christian dogma that contradicted scientific knowledge. God and the religion were only ideals, hypostases of the best in us.
Those who know me will realize that I would never agree to that. Religion is mankind's worst creation. It turned out the beast in man. And even those religious people super-exploited by the churches who really help the needy are only egoists to me; those who hope that God looks upon them more favorably than on others. And their goodness is either bribery (paradise) or cowardice (fear of hell).
(unpublished: Concerning the other evil Mr. Joseph mentioned: Karl Marx. I would suggest that Mr. Joseph reads Hermann von Berg, who through economic and historic studies arrived at the conclusion that Marxism is only a plagiaristic, pseudo-theoretic, eclectic compiled ideology already inferior at the time of its compilation to the respective disciplines what explains from the theoretic roots the defects of real socialism. Mr. Joseph could than argue more efficiently against Marxism and wouldn't need Marx' Jewish ancestors any more.
But when Mr. Joseph writes that Marxists murdered 166 million innocents it is another exaggeration: The implacably hostile government of The Republic of China announced its official estimate of the mainland death roll in the period 1949-69 as `at least 39, 940, 000'. The Walker Report published by the US Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death roll within China since 1949 between 32.25 and 61.7 million. S. V. Utechin, an expert on Soviet affairs, regarded estimates of 8 to 10 million victims of Stalin's Great Purge as `probably not exaggerations'. And according to the Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sarg more than a third of the 8 million Khmers were killed between April 1975 and January 1979. The other killings - although very deplorable - will not substantially increase the total. )
As a Christian Mr. Joseph should not accuse others of something the Christians themselves did so over-zealously: There were villages in Germany where the witch-burners didn't leave one woman alive. And Haiti had about 1.1 million inhabitants when the Catholics arrived, this figure was rapidly reduced to 46 000 in 1510 and in 1517 only about 1000 were left. The Catholic Spaniards reduced Mexico's population of about 11 million in a 100 years time to 1.5 million.
Bishop Las Casas who according to a modern Jesuit was too sensitive for his job described this slayings very vividly. And what has Mr. Wojtyla (better known as Pope John Paul II) to say to the Latin Americans? Not sorry, no. He said: "Here, under difficulties and sacrifices, something of beauty was achieved. Here is now Christ witnessed ..."
Mr. Joseph writes further: "Please, Holger, don't make any more Marxists through your anti-evangelism ..."
I can ensure everyone that I do not make Marxists. I abhor Marxism and favor free enterprise, even freer and less restricted than it is nowadays. I would fancy an equal tax rate of - let's say - 10% of everyone's income, but do not know how I should justify it that one person pays more than another. A fixed amount that everybody would have to pay regardless of his income seems to me even more just.
The only thing I liked about Communism, was its uncompromising anti-religious standpoint. But what happened to this standpoint: `Soviet Union lifts ban on religious activity' (headline in April 8, JT) and in Poland they are even debating whether to restore former church properties, including buildings, hospitals, schools, universities and land (JT, April 28). Are they mad? Does the Communist Party in Poland not know how this property was appropriated, namely through taxes, tenure, tribute, tithe and double tithe, high charges, blackmail, selling of indulgences, miracle and relic fraud?
Since Mr. Joseph came up with this subject.
There are even Christians who try to sell Jesus as "the
first communist". He surely wasn't a capitalist. But the
first communist he wasn't either, there were many charismatic
leaders before him, who shared with their flock and lived some
kind of communism. And how about the cavemen?
(unpublished: Please permit me also to comment briefly on the
third evil Mr. Joseph mentioned in his letter: Darwinism.
Darwin's theory might have faults and science might one day come
up with a better theory. But Christianity will not have a say in
that matter. Not too long ago Christians still had to believe
that God created the world in 4004 BC (Bishop Usher's
calculation). Even Bertrand Russell's great great grandfather had
to face reprisals when he doubted that.) Today, we know that the
world is much older and the date Bishop Usher computed is at best
the date a demon came into this world. A demon who took for the
first 4 millennia open pleasure in the slaughter committed by his
chosen people and after that in the slaughter committed in the
disguise of love and charity. This demon is `the King of Kings
and Lord of Lords' Mr. Joseph is touting.
Contact address for the anti-clerical movement: …..
Holger Hermann Haupt
PS: Many angry caller complained that I called god a demon. Of
course, HE HImself had no complains. Bumper sticker motto
(from American Atheists): Blasphemy is a victimless crime.
Some one wanted to stop the ungoing discussion in the Tokyo Weekender Mailbox:
To the Editor (published June 9,1989):
Re: Mr. Ferguson's proposal to cutoff Mailbox discussions, like the current religious controversy, after a fixed time span. If you are not interested in this subject, don't read it.
When I first read Mr. Ferguson's letter I suspected a Christian because it is my experience that Christians when they do not have the possibility to suppress compromising information through intimidation or with the help of the law, like the blaspheme clause in West Germany (s. WEEKENDER Mailbox from April 28), they try to hinder such discussions on the pretext of tolerance, mutual understanding ("You have your belief and I have my belief") or that it is not of general interest or no longer of interest [e.g. Robert Leiber (Jesuit, professor for church history, confidant of Pope Pius XII, apologist) who spread false information in the Civilta Cattolica, the magazine Look and else where about the help the Roman Jews received from the Vatican during the Nazi occupation told the Roman Jews when they wanted him to correct his statements, that "these things happened so many years ago, that ..." what did not hinder him to continue to make the same apologetic statements.
The letters the Roman Jews wrote to the respective editors were of course ignored. (from "The Vatican Papers" by Nino Lo Bello)]
But Mr. Ferguson's carefully worded letter does not allow the suggestion that he is a Christian, let us therefore suppose that he is as sincere about what he wrote as Mr. Joseph is Christian and I am anti-Christian. And all we can deduce from his letter is that he is not interested in the current religious controversy. Of course, there are people who are not interested in Christianity or religion at all, although Christianity still influences most of our public life, like political decisions, our law, education, sexuality, even medical decisions (like abortion, transplantation, euthanasia etc.) and science. Just as there are people (like some callers) who are not interested in the `Party line', the whodunit or the crossword puzzle.
If the editor would comply with every reader's wish not to publish what is not of interest to him he would end up with a blank paper. I will therefore tell Mr. Ferguson what people do when they are not interested in an article: They will skip it. To facilitate it I suggest that we letter-writers (or the editor) give our letter some kind of heading (e. g. On religious issues). And what Mr. Ferguson also did not consider is that to cut off a controversy after a fixed time span would leave at least one party very unsatisfied or even angry, as it happened to me when the Japan Times gave me the chance to challenge Archbishop William A. Carew's assertion that tens of thousands of Christians became blood witnesses during the first centuries of the Christian era but when a Christian, Mr. Dyer, wrote in an aggressive letter that in the catacombs I would find bones of possibly 176 000 martyred Christians (Any travel guide about Rome would reveal that as nonsense) my answer to Mr. Dyer's letter was not published. It is surely better to leave it to the letter-writer when to withdraw from the discussion. Reasons for it are plenty: from defeat to the feeling to be the winner (because the other party did not counter conclusively), to too busy or absentia.
In the foreign community of Tokyo are surely
people of many nations with varied ethnic and religious beliefs
(Mr. Ferguson) and we can only hope that they will use the
WEEKENDER Mailbox to air their opinions now that Mr. Alexander
pledged his word to publish them. It will widen our horizon. I,
for example, would have liked to hear a Muslim's opinion about
the controversy on Salman Rushdie's book and Chomeini's call to
kill him. Of course I would have equally enjoyed to read letters
defending the freedom of expression. When the Muslims staged a
rally and demonstration against Salman Rushdie's "Satanic
Verses" the Japan Times received more than 20 letters
(inside information), but decided not to publish them. The
WEEKENDER surely has found a market gap.
Holger Hermann Haupt
This next letter was written May 24, 1989, in response to an very angry letter by "Rev." (that is how he signs his letters, of course without quotation marks) Kenny Joseph, who by this time was more upset about my letters than Scorceses' movie, but no longer published.
To the Editor:
More about Christianity
Answer to Mr. Joseph's letter May 19
First I thought it not necessary to write an answer to Mr. Joseph's letter from May 19 because what he writes only proofs that what I wrote about invectives and Christians in my answer to Mr. Elkins' letter was right. [I hope Mr. Elkins noted that in both letters (May 5 and May 19) Mr. Joseph defamed other people's opinion as garbage.] But than I have been convinced that there are people especially those who fulfil the prerequisite mentioned by Matth. 5, 3 who cannot see the most obvious and think Mr. Joseph has outwitted me with his mean imputations.
Mr. Joseph, the man who tried all to have the movie "The last Temptation" forbidden, accuses me and some other "trained seals and knee-jerk liberals" of unliberal conduct and imputes that I or we want to shut off this forum for foreigners by promoting "one-party lines". The man who calls my writing garbage and in his previous letter wrote "Feuerbach's garbage" and "triplets of evil - Darwin, Feuerbach, Marx" and who gave me the feeling through his letter from Mar. 3 that he regretted it that "no assassination squads are after the Jewish money-men ..." whose Jesus picture varies from the simple movie "Jesus" he is touting this man even cites Voltaire to defend his right of expression and to hurt us. In a different context, where Voltaire would not be so convenient he would surely also call his writing garbage and if he had the power he would suppress all kind of criticism of the church and he would not wait for "God and His only begotten son, Jesus" (the Saviour!) to damn us to eternal sufferings but do it himself as far as possible.
When I wrote in my letter (April 28) the intolerant sounding sentence that I would never permit a Christian to express his opinion in my paper I gave a reason for it namely that Christians would never publish anything critical of the faith in their papers. But when I criticized the church for its undemocratic solo performances it was directly influenced by an article in the "Marler Zeitung" (Zeitung means newspaper) from 1987 Feb. 2 about a lecture the historian and church critic Karlheinz Deschner hold in Marl. Just like Mr. Joseph, they did not counter any of the arguments or compromising information but accused Karlheinz Deschner only of conducting an unfair, undemocratic solo performance. Especially embarrassing for the Christian church was that they were invited to earlier and also to later anticlerical events but ignored the invitation. The only thing the church did was to send the Christian mob to disturb our meetings, quite successfully by the way. …
In his sermon to New Year's Eve 1986 (repeated in SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG) cardinal Wetter instigated the Christians in the Cathedral in Munich to disturb the peace because some anticlericals were acquitted on the grounds that their action did not disturb the peace, what means according to the cardinal the Christians are to peaceful. The Christian mob follows willingly.
If the Christian clergy were given another chance to run a country, it will be worse than "KGB land" (although Mr. Joseph will surely have fun), it will be as it was from Constantine the Great (Killer, he killed even his own relatives) - yes, already in the early 4th century, the Christians started with their persecutions - up to the Enlightenment. No, Mr. Joseph, there is no "Jesus-bashing" going on for 2000 years. Most of the time the smallest deviation from the dogma of the church brought people at the stake. But since 2000 years, the world is deceived and ruined by people like you, Mr. Joseph, and in the name of an unimportant man named Jesus who is not even mentioned by Josephus Flavius who wrote a detailed history of the Jews and mentions John the Baptist, Herodes and Pilatus. Only Christian sources tell us about Jesus. Full of contradictions, though. The resurrection for example is first witnessed by Mary Magdalene in Galilee, according to Mark. To get rid of the stigma that the first witness was a highly hysterical woman (Jesus had exorcized seven demons from her!) Matthew adds "the other Mary". But women were not highly respected as witnesses nor a backwoods place like Galilee, therefore Luke substituted two male witnesses, the disciples of Emmaus, for the Marys and moved the occurrence close to the capital Jerusalem.
Back to Mr. Joseph's letter: He associates me with "a half-drunk bum" (invective (!), lucky he is that I am so peaceable), accuses me of plagiarism: "the same garbage", but admits that he never bought it (and therefore not read it.) He would have accused me of eating little children, if he were sure that the readers believed it, as the Early Fathers did to discredit to pagans, the disciples of the heretic Markion and many others, and the Popes taught about the Jews. Thanks to liars like the Early Fathers, the Popes and missionaries like Mr. Joseph and thanks to murderers like Constantine the Great, Clovis I, Charlemagne, Cort s etc. Christianity became an ecumenic religion.
Although I consulted different books, I could not find any reference either to the Hidden Gospel nor to the 11th commandment. Both are completely unknown to me. But it sounds to me more like another American sect rather than the writing of people who are committed to the achievements of the Enlightenment.
Next Mr. Joseph asks who was saved (name and telephone number) "by the saving grace of ..." and he names the Hellenic heroes I mentioned in my previous letter from whose legends the Christian evangelist plagiarized their Jesus picture.
Saved? Why do we have to be saved? Because Eve snitched an apple 4000 BC (or was it 4 000 000 BC? When according to the recent NHK program "The Evolution of Man" the first hominids appeared?)
Also Mr. Joseph wouldn't be able to name anyone "who was saved by the saving grace" of Jesus. Our conceptions of the Beyond are all speculative. The only way to find out is to die. If the Christians are so sure that they will enjoy eternal happiness beside Jesus with vista of hell where all their enemies are burning, why do they have such a hard time to die. In case of the Popes the best doctors of the medical world were summoned to their death-bed to prolong their lifes. Why? Because of eternal happiness? Or did they have doubts? Well, it is impossible to say who was saved in the name of Christ but it is easy to say who was killed in the name of Christ (With other people's life the popes and priests are not as careful as with their own!) namely in the run of history the pagans, the Jews, the Langobardes, the Saxons, the Saracens, the Hungarians, the Britons, the Poles, the Albingenses, the Waldenses, the Hugenottes, the peasants, the Haitians, Mexicans, Incas and other natives of America and other continents, of course also the Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox. Oh, sorry I forgot the witches, or shall I better say women? Before they died they were tortured - usually naked under the crucifix - by or in the present of clerical celibates (Lets promote sexual freedom that these things never happen again!) Pouring acid into the vagina were as common as breaking bones. After the torture the women were sometimes left hanging in the air on chains attached to their broken limbs in a witch tower (as documented for Lindheim, German town in the Wetterau) till the next festivity or Sunday when they were slowly burned on the market place. Pleasures you will not find in "KGB land" but in "Kenny Joseph Land'.
Some more headlines: Children, men, young and old, women beheaded, stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, burned alive, quartered alive, cut into pieces alive, buried alive, crucified alive by representatives of the Catholic church! Skinned alive, scalped alive, eyes put out, Noses and ears cut off by representatives of the Catholic church! 300 Orthodox Priests stabbed in Zagreb, the Orthodox Metropolitan Dositei tortured till mad, the 80 year old Metropolitan of Sarajewo, Petar Simonic, strangled, 81 year old Bishop Platov from Banja Luka shoed like a horse and forced to walk till collapsed, than a fire was made on his chest, his eyes put out, ears and nose cut off and only than he was killed, all this atrocities committed by Catholics in the name of the only salvation giving religion!
You tell me, all this happened long ago in the Middle Age and is not up-to-date. You are wrong, this things happened in our century between 1941 and 1943 in Croatia. Other mass slaughters committed by the Catholic church in our century include the Ukraine, after a Catholic Poland reappeared due to the Treaty of Versailles, where again the Orthodox were massacred, their churches desecrated as latrines or stables or reduced to cinders, 1938 these pogroms flared up again, and Abyssinia, a crime committed by Mussolini with encouragement from the Vatican.
And all this was not committed out of hatred. Oh no, out of love. Fortunately they are - thanks to our modern constitutions - no longer able to love us.
By now I hope to have convinced most of my readers that Christianity does not mean charity but crime and murder and in a future letter after the summer vacation we can maybe take a closer look at the nonsense the Bible is touting.
If there is a publisher among the readers I
would like to write a breviary on our subject to help to immunize
the Japanese against Christianity (read Mr. Joseph's letters and
you will see that it is necessary). The book would surely be
highly readable and thrilling, with more crimes than any
thriller.
Holger Hermann Haupt
Acknowledgement
Information gathered from Karlheinz Deschner's "Crime History of Christianity" and from publications of the American Atheists.
Recommended reading: "The Bible Handbook" (about Bible contradictions, Absurdities, Atrocities, unfulfilled Prophecies and Immoralities) by American Atheists Press and "The World's Sixteen Crucitfied Saviours" (Christianity before Christ) by Kersey Graves.
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