On the Immorality of Christianity

The languid success of logic and facts to dislodge believers from their mistaken beliefs, calls for a new course in the claim for morality’s mantle; religion fails humanity on ethics.


There appears to be no amount of reason or facts that will extricate believers from their cognitive biases, or the nucleus of their intractable, mistaken, and teleological beliefs. Non-theists, in my humble, yet scholarly opinion, need to set aside the Pathos and Logos based arguments. Instead, nonbelievers must begin to advocate on the ethical grounds, that, revealed religion is an antagonist to humanity's progress and ultimately, its survival. It usurps our innate nature of goodness, and transgresses on our naturally earned ethics.

Further, consider, the believer must first successfully defend the idea of providence, which they cannot, and then, the veracity of such a notion, which has been an abysmal failure for the faithful. The devotees of Christ, fortified only with ancient apocryphal and worrisome scripture—putting it mildly, cannot attempt to mount a defense that religion offers us a moral mapping of the mind. In fact, instead, I would argue on the offensive—on the immorality of Christianity.

Chiefly, a person of Christian religious belief needs quite a bit of instilling indoctrination, in fact utter brainwashing, to convince one's self that they, for merely being born, are worthy of “Hell” because an alleged ancient ancestor ate of a forbidden fruit—the idea of “original sin.” Christianity edifies, and thereby institutionalizes, the fallacious concept of salvation through willful subjugation and degradation of our native decency. (This is why, mistakenly, “Christ followers” feel they need a "Savior.”)

Yet, it takes brutish masochism and sheer madness to accept the outrageously wicked and ghoulish notion of vicarious redemption through prostrating exaltation, and then evangelizing for two millennia the murder of an Antiquity's age, itinerant and eccentric preacher. That a bloody, torturous human sacrifice—the ostensible crucifixion at Calvary, found at the center of Christianity—can cleanse away your responsibilities and actions in life. (Actually, there is scant evidence, of any type, for a historical Jesus and zero evidence for a divine Jesus. The dubious and anonymous, not eponymous, four Gospels found in the New Testament, are rife with contradictions and written, at their earliest, decades after a historical Jesus would have lived, if he did at all.)

Moreover, the notion of a human oblation, as a means of vicarious redemption—scapegoating, to a perceived, totalitarian deity is antithetical to human morality; it is the essence of immorality as it is incompatible with human sovereignty, self-respect, and even life itself. Therefore, Christianity is not only silent on true morality—reciprocity, altruism, liberty and life, it is a purveyor of a litany of insidious ideas, spanning infanticide to homophobia, the endorsement of slavery—treating neighboring conquered states as farm equipment—to perpetuating misogyny and the bridge to righteous murder.

Religion and the Christian belief in particular, is tyranny of the mind, when properly understood, can only be construed, at best, as immoral. Wretchedly, it fetters the believer to fear of punishment even after death. Still worse, Christianity compels its ardent activists to love and worship an ethereal, celestial tyrant in life, learning only of his insidious plan through esoteric, immutable texts. Indeed, a cursory stroll through any number of passages in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, naming only a few books of biblical spite, reveals an unmatched wickedness commanded by Abraham's god.

Conversely, morality is innate. Evolution is conclusive on this fact. It is a far better "selector" to the survival of the species—humans, than divinely inspired murder, mayhem, genocide and human enslavement. Christianity, on the other hand, commands compulsory fear, obligatory love, the subjugation of women, and the willful suspension of progressive reasoning via a theology of abject despair.

Consequently, rational ethics, not revealed religion, satisfyingly obliterates the maladaptive and unethical irrationality believers use to justify their god and even their sect of faith. It is through a systematic breakdown of the illogical fallacies religionists use to prop up their dysfunctional immorality—addictive dependence on a non-existent deity—where we find a conduit conducive to modern, civilized morality, secular and scientific ethics.

And so, humankind, despite a vile, prolonged era of religious perversion of our intrinsic virtue, remains moral. We have earned it through millions of years of evolution. While religion stands regrettably as a dark, sinister reminder of the true depravity dogma breeds and passes on to its true believers.

— About the Author —

Frank J. Ranelli is an independent scholar of comparative and contemplative religions, skeptic and critic, author and contrarian essayist. Frank has studied extensively Abrahamic-based religions since 2001, with an emphasis on Metaphysics and Philosophy. His erudite and iconoclastic style of provocative writing has been extensively published, and debated widely, in a variety of news outlets and across the Internet since 2006.