Victims of the Christian Faith

Listed are only events that solely occurred on command or participation of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List is incomplete)

Let us start with my ancestory the Pagans...


Ancient Pagans


As soon as Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire by imperial edict (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.

Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.

Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.

Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyer."

Pagan services became punishable by death in 356.

Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues.
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..."

In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.

In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities.

The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.


This only scratches the surface on pagans who have been slaughtered by the christian faith...

more to come..

and we shall continue...


Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded.

Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany.

15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Number of victims unknown.

16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heads of all those (of what sort so ever there were) which were killed in the day, should be cut off from their bodies... and should be laid on the ground by each side of the wall", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk, and friends on the ground".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage.

Crusades (1095-1291)


First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II.

Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands.

9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then Turkish), thousands respectively.

Until January 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown)

After 6/3/98 Antiochia (then Turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women and children) killed.

Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres.

Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis.

Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (Jewish, Muslim, men, women, children).

In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude."

The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished."

Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following summer in all of Palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition".

Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. Thousands of heathens slaughtered "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ".

Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian.

Crusades (1095-1291)


Estimated totals:

Wertham: 1,000,000

Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the
Madness of Crowds (1841): 2,000,000 Europeans killed. [http://www.bootlegbooks.com/NonFiction/Mackay/PopDelusions/chap09.html]

Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual: 5,000,000


Individual Events:

Davies: Crusaders killed up to 8,000 Jews in Rhineland

Paul Johnson A History of the Jews (1987): 1,000 Jewish women in
Rhineland comm. suicide to avoid the mob, 1096.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v.5, 6


1st Crusade: 300,000 Eur. k at Battle of Nice [Nicea].

Crusaders vs. Solimon of Roum: 4,000 Christians, 3,000 Moslems

1098, Fall of Antioch: 100,000 Moslems massacred.

50,000 Pilgrims died of disease.

1099, Fall of Jerusalem: 70,000 Moslems massacred.

Siege of Tiberias: 30,000 Christians k.

Siege of Tyre: 1,000 Turks

Richard the Lionhearted executes 3,000 Moslem POWs.

1291: 100,000 Christians k after fall of Acre.

Fall of Christian Antioch: 17,000 massacred.

[TOTAL: 677,000 listed in these episodes here.]


Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/]

Jaffa: 20,000 Christians massacred, 1197

Sorokin estimates that French, English & Imperial German Crusaders lost a total of 3,600 in battle.



1st C (1096-99): 400

2nd C (1147-49): 750

3rd C (1189-91): 930

4th C (1202-04): 120

5th C (1228-29): 600

7th C (1248-54): 700


James Trager, The People's Chronology (1992)


1099: Crusaders slaughter 40,000 inhabs of Jerusalem. Dis/starv reduced Crusaders from 300,000 to 60,000.

1147: 2nd Crusades begins with 500,000. "Most" lost to
starv./disease/battle.

1190: 500 Jews massacred in York.

1192: 3rd Crusade reduced from 100,000 to 5,000 through famine, plagues and
desertions in campaign vs Antioch.

1212: Children's Crusade loses some 50,000.

[TOTAL: Just in these incidents, it appears the Europeans lost around
650,000.]


TOTAL: When I take all the individual death tolls listed here, weed out the duplicates, fill in the blanks, apply Occam ("Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate"), etc. I get a very rough total of 1½ M
deaths in the Crusades.

Heretics and Atheists



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Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany

Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims.

Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.

The Albigensians (Cathars) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept Roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control.

Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (the greatest single mass murderer prior to the Nazi era) in 1209. Beziérs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Number of victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbors and friends) estimated between 20,000-70,000.

Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed.

Subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated.


After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324.


Estimated one million victims (Cathar heresy alone)

Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).

Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada, a former Dominican friar, allegedly was responsible for 10,220 burnings.

John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415.

Michael Sattler, leader of a baptist community, was burned at the stake in Rottenburg, Germany, May 20, 1527. Several days later his wife and other follwers were also executed.

University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna.


Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.

Thomas Aikenhead, a twenty-year-old scottish student of Edinburgh University, was hanged for atheism and blasphemy.

seems more like victims to the political machinations of the catholic church. Life during those times you've indicated was generaly accompanied by acts of brutality and violence. The Dark Ages especially. How about the mongols, the magyars, the arabians, the turks, the macedonians, the romans, were all pretty brutal in there own right. Most of the first christian churches were in fact pagan temples that converted. The first 7 churches of the apocalypse were all former city-states of the Athenian in Asia Minor (modern day turkey). The fact that western civilazation didn't devolve into an illiterate society completely after the fall of the roman empire was probably due in large part to the work of the church. It was after all the only place to get a proper education during those times. Don't forget either that following the crusades was the black plague, must have been the scariest part of human history.

Witches as the Christian would call them.

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From the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.

In the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged.


Incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times


Religious Wars

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15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain.

1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action).

1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands.
Between 5000 and 6000 Protestants were drowned by Spanish Catholic Troops, "a disaster the burghers of Emden first realized when several thousand broad-brimmed Dutch hats floated by."

1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee.

17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'."

17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers."

17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany.

More recently:

Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.

In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.

Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.

In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.

In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."

On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms." Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html

I'm particularly peeved about that one. Although, they were all horrible.

But Hypatia was trying to educate people and the Christians would have none of it!

I sincerely believe that most Christians today would have never become Christians if they knew even a fragment of the truth of the religion.

Moreover, if they had a clue that Jesus was not the son of the God of Abraham but actually DENOUNCED the violence that mythology incites they'd quickly realize that to support Christianity is the most anti-Jesus thing a person can do!

To worship Christianity is to worship the enemies of Jesus.

Those who find the moral teachings of Jesus to be attractive should quickly recoginize that the rest of the religion neither supports those teachings nor practices them.

The best thing anyone can do for Jesus is to become a Buddhist and denounce Christianity.

In many ways I feel far closer to Jesus since I've denounced Christianity than I ever felt when I was a part of that religion.

The religion simply doesn't follow Jesus, they just use him as an excuse to use the Old Testament as a bigotry club in his name.

Christianity is truly a disgrace to Jesus.

And it remains so to this very day.

It's just a bigotry club in the name of Jesus.

Lest we be lulled in a sense of security in the notion that we are a more enlightened people who would never fall into the atrocious practices of the past, you need only see for yourself, in their own words the views and beliefs of some of our leaders who are of christian faith and the leaders of the christian faith:

Pat Robertson, GOP presidential candidate, 1988:
“When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no more satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more abortion on demand, and no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not allow anyone to practice it. ”

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that *tolerates* homosexuals."

--Jerry Falwell, 1993

"It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct"


--Mother Teresa, on AIDS

"Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory."

--Jimmy Swaggart

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

--George Herbert Walker Bush, Former U. S. President, 1988.

Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.

--Pat Buchanan

"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's pseudo-right to worship an idol."

--Rev. Joseph Morecraft, Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, "Biblical Role of Civil Government" speech given 8/31/93 at Biblical Worldview and Christian Education Conference

"We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America."

--Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan addressing the anti-gay rally in Des Moines, 2-11-96

''We are completely void of anything to do with God. Teachers can't touch a child - even to hug a crying child. Young boys are on Ritalin and a lot of the problem is because we have a female-dominated educational system which tries to make little boys act like little girls.''

--William "Bill" Murray, addressing the "God and Country II" rally, speaking about the need for prayer & Bible recitations in school

Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism."

--Pat Buchanan (11/22/83)

"...this monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types."

[Judge Braswell Dean, in Time Magazine, March 1981]

This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
-- Ann Coulter, responding to reports of Muslim crowds cheering the bombings of September 11, 2001, in her column for that week, "This is War"

What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous ... it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God! Get out of that seat ... You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.
-- Monique Davis, to talk-show host and atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield; in "Get Out of Here, Atheists!" from RichardDawkins.net (7 April, 2008)

Persecute them. ... Let them be put to shame and perish. ... Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. ... Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
-- The Rev Wiley S Drake, using Bible passages (such as Psalm 109, 55, 58, 68, 69, and 83; Matthew 23:13, 15-16, 23-24, 27, and 29; I Corinthians 16:22) in an attempt to put a hex upon employees of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group which, among other things, likes to turn in churches that violate the IRS prohibition against endorsing candidates; from CBS News (September 8, 2007)

I believe that feminists of the more aggressive persuasion are frustrated women unable to find the proper male leadership. If a woman were receiving the right kind of love and attention and leadership, she would not want to be liberated from that.
-- Tony Evans, quoted from the National Organization for Women, Promise Keepers Mobilization Project

The demise of our community and culture is the fault of sissified men who have been overly influenced by women.
-- Tony Evans, quoted from the National Organization for Women, Promise Keepers Mobilization Project

I strongly believe in the separation of church and state. But freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion, there is a better way.
-- Al Gore, speech at a Salvation Army drug rehabilitation center in Atlanta, Georgia, May, 1999, quoted from AANEWS #808 by American Atheists, August 28, 2000

It is only a small step away . . .

Ohh sure they just burned the library at Alexandria probably the largest cache of knowledge the world had known at the time.

shall we continue...

Now just imagine that even the Jews were slaughtered by the Christians.

Jews
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• Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.

• In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388.

• 694 17. Council of Toledo: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized.

• 1010 The Bishop of Limoges (France) had the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed.

• 1096 First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech)

• 1147 Second Crusade: Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France).

• 1189/90 Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked.

• 1235, Fulda/Germany: 34 Jewish men and women slain.

• 1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated.

• 1290 Bohemia (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed.

• 1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland.

• 1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned.

• 1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians).

• 1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered.

• 1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all Jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.

• 1492 In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492.

• 1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain.

Religious War- killing each other to find out who's imaginary friend is more peaceful.

shall we continue...

Now I really cry on this. I mean what I posted before made me deeply sad, but the killing of such a beautiful culture that holds to my heart is truly painful to witness. I am talking about the native indians. This is just a small list of what is collected thus far.

Native Peoples
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• Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.

• Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion."

While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it."

• On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:
"I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]

• Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ."

• In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess."

• On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead.

• The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and Spanish raids.

• As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous."

• The Indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell."

• What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive."

Or, on another occasion:

"The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs."

• The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". [SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated."

• "And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitlán [Mexico city] was next."

• Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other Spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).

• "When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead."


Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of America.


• Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the pilgrim fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy...", so that there usually was "no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children.

• In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the (generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown - "being idell ... did runne away unto the Indyans," - to live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).
"Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed: 'Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe'." Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow Englishmen: "This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia" methods were different: "when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community" down.

• On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the "Peqout War." The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from persecution in their own home country England.

• When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief's pledge they attacked.
Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after, because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and burned their villages.

The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies": men, women, children.

• So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance".

• Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:
"Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..."

• Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents".

• Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own words: "blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them." (This was inspired by Spanish methods of the time)
In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was near.

• The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good'."

• Other tribes were to follow the same path.

• Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his Beauty!"
"Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!"

• Like today, lying was morally acceptable to Christians then. "Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians 'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cutt downe theire Corne'."

• In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children.

• In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some "600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a 'barbeque'."

• To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed.

These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred. And the carnage was not over then.

• All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun.

• A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.

• In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even today.


I am sorry I have more, but I can't I am crying now actually. Will return back soon.

there there



*huggies*

You are very kind. I like the dog you have on your profile. Is that a mix with German Shepard? You know I like these dogs for they are so smart. I once had the opportunity to watch how they train these dogs to walk the blind as of other things. I found it most fascinating that they know when to cross the street when the street light indicates it is safe.

Sometimes I just think that some dogs are just much smarter then some of the humans posting here on mingle2

but in the end nice picture and thank you for the hug. I just find it sad that man uses religion and its lessons to do such atrocities.

I mean just think of it. You actually carrying a weapon and slaughtering innocent children and women in the name of God, because God whilst it! You have to really imagine the situation in real life!

One would think that we should learn from history, but instead it just repeats itself over and over again.

Let us continue...

More Glorious Events in U.S. History


• Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'."

• Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.

From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a LITTLE GIRL SIX YEARS OLD WITH A WHITE FLAG ON A STICK; SHE HAD NOT PROCEEDED BUT A FEW STEPS WHEN SHE WAS SHOT AND KILLED. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed ..." ((I had to put this in big caps, because I have a daughter not much older then this poor girl)) This is sad and pathetic!


• By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'."

20th Century Church Atrocities
________________________________________



• Catholic extermination camps

Surprisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveliç, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!

In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar -orthodox-Christian Serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdienst der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them.

• Catholic terror in Vietnam

In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters; the Viet Minh; - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-Buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam.

Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.

The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:

"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of Buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - ; mostly in street riots ; - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps.

To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life.

• Christianity kills the cat

On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of Würzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Würzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch burnings).

This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome.

• Rwanda Massacres

In 1994 in the small African country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumors about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:

"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.

According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..."

BBC aired:

Priests get death sentence for Rwandan genocide

BBC NEWS April 19, 1998

A court in Rwanda has sentenced two Roman Catholic priests to death for their role in the genocide of 1994, in which up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Pope John Paul said the priests must be made to account for their actions. Different sections of the Rwandan church have been widely accused of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994...

After reading all this, that is if you did, ask yourself: Should a Christian educate you on morality? I would hope not, yet if you believe they should then email me for another 10 pages of atrocities that have been done in the name of Christianity.

If I may give a suggestion. Open your mind to other spiritualities if you need it. There are so many that are so much more peaceful for the mind with a much better history of peace then any of the leading mediterrenean mythologies that dominate the world in wars to this day.

Why follow a bad road full of land mines when you can enjoy a garden full of flowers?


Now for the question of the day?

Can you name the 21st Centuries Atrocities Christianity or any of its denominations have created that has taken lives away from families?

sex abuse in the catholic church? but you should try to be more objective

Some claim or believe that the war on terrorism is more on a war of religion. The Middle East is a area that has been fighting about territorial dispute for thousands of years. The Muslims, The Christians, and the Jews all have something to say to the extreme that eventually they end up blowing each up because of it.

With America backing up Israel this will affect the country and its people very much allowing nations to be upset at the support we give.

While it is only a conspiracy (some absolutely believe it is true) the twin towers where blown up by the government with the influence of the Jews as they supposingly all employees and owners avoided going to work on that day knowing that planes will crash into them.

In the end that is something one could debate about for hours going both ways, yet you wouldn't find it surprising that over 70% of the nation believes we are grounded as a Judiac/Christian Nation and highly defend these ideals even if it allows us to attack a country as Iraq.

Some argue that the founding fathers were deists and that many of the inhabitants at the time left Europe from religous persecutions grounding yet again another christian religion with different rules making it a denomination. Look at the link "The Future of Religion" to see the many denominations and why they have been created if interested.

So could it be possible that the 21st century war is yet another christian atrocity waging wars onto countries that primarily practice a different religion? Even though these countries worship Muslim a younger version of a mediterrenean mythology they fight to preserve it in the name of a God.

To look deeper into the situation do some research and post what you think this war in the Middle East is really about? Do you think it is about oil only? Do you think it has to do with leverage and strategy to have the upper hand in power in the region, or do you think it really does have something to do with religion?

I would be interested in knowing your opinion on the matter.

To end this let me post some quotes on former President Bush to let you contemplate on what he means when they were said at the time and what his true intentions were.

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God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.

-- George W Bush, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, from minutes acquired by Haaretz from cease-fire negotiations between Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts (circa, June, 2003), quoted from Arnon Regular, "'Road map is a life saver for us,' PM Abbas tells Hamas" (Haaretz.com: June 27, 2003), quoted from EvilOz (The Iterative Record)

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This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.

-- George W Bush, using a loaded term which recalls the Christians' Medieval wars against Muslims in the so-called Holy Land, after stepping off the presidential helicopter on Sunday, September 16, 2001, quoted from Jonathan Lyons, "Bush enters Mideast's rhetorical minefield " (Reuters: September 21, 2001). Bush later apologized for this remark.

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I am mindful that we're all sinners...

-- George W Bush, speaking for -- uh, somebody -- umm, and, uh, showing just how out of touch he really is with everybody (except Evangelical Christians of the politically idolatrous variety). Bush is saying that there ought to be a law that would deny Americans the basic right to enter into a union with a partner of their choice and receive the same benefits as anyone who practices the Christian rite of monogamous heterosexual marriage -- even though there already is such a law, the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton in 1996; speaking at a Rose Garden news conference on July 30, 2003. Quoted from Neil A Lewis, "Bush Backs Bid to Block Gays From Marrying" (The New York Times: July 30, 2003)

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Tyrants and dictators will accept no other gods before them. They require disobedience to the First Commandment. They seek absolute control and are threatened by faith in God. They fear only the power they cannot possess -- the power of truth. So they resent the living example of the devout, especially the devotion of a unique people chosen by God.

-- George W Bush, blaming the Holocaust on godlessness, rather than on Christian anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, St Paul, and the Jesus of Matthew's and John's Gospels, and ignoring the fact that Adolf Hitler repeatedly called himself a Christian, pretended to be obeying Christ, and cannot be shown to have been an atheist, at the National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance at the US Capitol on April 19, 2001, quoted from Freedom From Religion Foundation, "Bush's Holocaust Remarks Distort History, Scapegoat Freethinkers" April 25, 2001

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"The very first act of the new Bush administration was to have a Protestant Evangelist minister officially dedicate the inauguration to Jesus Christ, whom he declared to be 'our savior.' Invoking 'the Father, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ' and 'the Holy Spirit,' Billy Graham's son, the man selected by President George W Bush to bless his presidency, excluded the tens of millions of Americans who are Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, Unitarians, agnostics, and atheists from his blessing by his particularistic and parochial language.
"The plain message conveyed by the new administration is that George W Bush's America is a Christian nation and that non-Christians are welcome into the tent so long as they agree to accept their status as a tolerated minority rather than as fully equal citizens. In effect, Bush is saying: 'This is our home, and in our home we pray to Jesus as our savior. If you want to be a guest in our home, you must accept the way we pray.'"