By Theodore Shoebat
All of civilization, came as a result of religious intolerance. When the Hebrews invaded Canaan, they overthrew the high places, for which children were burnt alive, toppled down the gods for which the heathens ate human flesh and indulged in the greatest violence, and placed the banner of Yahweh over the vanquished tabernacle of Molech.
When the Spaniard took Mexico, they purged the land of human sacrifice and cannibalism, shattered the idols which provoked men to bloodlust, and put the Cross over the demonic images which the people so revered.
After so much rich and revolutionary history, the modern era ushered in a new idea they called the “enlightenment,” which declared that all beliefs, both good and evil, deserve equal rights. Heresies such as Deism and Unitarianism arose within this era, and a number of thinkers, who grew in popularity, became the promoters of this new movement.
They were well known figures, such as Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Diderot, and Rousseau. Who were these men and were they really for liberty?
Their enlightenment vision of religious equality, has become sacred within the American conscious, because it made an impact on the US Constitution.
The First Amendment allows us freedom of speech. This in itself permits us to even question free speech itself including the right to question all the religious equality embedded in the US Constitution. While I have admired much of this constitution, I still question some of it’s tenets.
It was Voltaire, an ideologue behind the bloody French Revolution, who coined the phrase, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
I object. I refuse to die for somebody’s right to believe in the god of death, I would rather fight him for the God of life. To hell with Voltaire (an admirer of Muhammad) and all of his sycophants.
The freedom of religious equality is why in our day, soldiers die while busting terrorists. But in old Christendom, they busted FIRST their ideologies in order to prevent death.
I dare to question the taboo of questioning religious equality.
We don’t just need a war on terror, but a war on error.
It is religious equality which enables men taken by the doctrines of demons to wreak only havoc and destruction, in the name of freedom.
I refuse to believe that sending our men to die in Afghanistan while the very ideology of Islamic fundamentalism reigns free under religious equality, as if this is all done for the cause of freedom.
So what sprouted the Nairobi mall massacre, in which over 60 people were butchered in the most horrendous and sadistic ways? How do terrorists concoct such diabolic thoughts for which they had people’s fingers sharpened with knives as if they were pencils to then force these victims to write their names using their blood as ink? They even mutilated testicles, severed off noses with pliers, and plunged knives into children’s helpless bodies!
Nairobi mall massacre, another consequence to religious tolerance and equality
How could we fight terrorists without shutting first the spigot of the bloody religious spring from which it gushes forth? The reality that is that what few in the mainstream conservative and Christian establishments want to admit, is that this slaughter of innocent people would have never taken place if Islam was not deemed a religion deserving equal rights with Christianity.
Yet, we have the Calvinist minister John Piper, who said
We believe that every religion, world view, or philosophy of life may freely endeavor to influence and shape our culture.
Piper should speak for himself, I do not believe that every worldview should be given the liberty to shape our culture. If what Piper says is true, then why do we fight abortion? This murderous license came as a result of feminists having the freedom to shape society with their dangerous ideas, and to eventually manage them to permeate government, and to ultimately have them approved by the state, since their philosophy was given equal status to all other ideologies and religions.
Abortion, the consequence of religious equality
The religiosity of this feminist cult, was expressed by justice Anthony Kennedy (Catholic), after the Casey decision of 1992 in which abortion rights were upheld, which would go inline with Piper’s statement on religious freedom:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
This statement is not judicial, nor does it even have an air of legality, but it is metaphysical in its wordage and nature. Thus it is a religion, which should have never been given the liberty to be taught in society, and eventually accepted by the state.
The results of this are millions of children massacred, all of course in the name of “freedom.” A holocaust is done every year in America, with complete permission, while we talk of Hitler’s horrid Holocaust and say, “never again!” while it is occurring over and over again to the applause of the libertines who boast of being advancers of “equality and liberty.”
It is quite remarkable, how a few ideologues were able to have entire societies desensitized to murder, by covering their crimes with terms such as ”the right to privacy,” “freedom of conscious,” and “reproductive rights.” We must stop being dictated by words and cliches, and instead ruled by the civility and wisdom of Scripture.
The term freedom has been so exalted and made into an idol, that we believe it justifies us to make countless human sacrifices to it’s altar.
The flourishing and fruition of the Islamic religion in Kenya, was enabled by the Kenyan constitution which guarantees religious equality:
Section 78 (1): Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, and for the purposes of this section that freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.11 (2): Every religious community shall be entitled, at its own expense, to establish and maintain places of education and to manage a place of education which it wholly maintains, and no such community shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for persons of that community in the course of any education provided at a place of education which it wholly maintains or in the course of any education which it otherwise provides.
To “provide a place of education” to Muslims is to permit them to build madrassas, the very spigot which oozes the blood of the innocent, in whose behalf I write this essay. With a constitution such as this, it does not surprise me that the Islamists have been able to build madrasas (Muslim schools) in Kenya to teach young people sharia, or in other words, the doctrines that justify the murders of Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Heretics use liberty to plan for the destruction of liberty.
Muslim boys in Islamic school, the incubators of terrorism
If there was a policy of intoleration in Kenya (a majority Christian nation) towards false and dangerous religions, the mall massacre would have not occurred, since there would have been no leeway for the jihadists to have propagated their riotous ideas, or their violent religion, and there would have been no means for the terrorists to have been allowed to be in Kenya, nor to feel confident in their destructive beliefs.
Young Muslim terrorists
This is not to say that the US Constitution promotes violence, since it wishes for everyone to worship peaceably, but that religious equality ends up contradicting itself, since one religion or ideology must eventually be superior to the rest. We see this even in America, where secularism has deeply rooted itself in the nation.
Terrorists and other violent ideologues and cultists, are usually inclined to congregate in nations which suffer their disastrous beliefs. This provokes confidence, and from confidence comes the comfort to teach bloodshed, and what follows such influence, are crime and murder.
I am not alone in my opinion. Marcel-François Lefebvre, warned his country of France, all the way back in 1989, that if they gave equal rights to Islam, Christians would be killed:
All of this violence is attributed to an idea, and the instilling of that idea to members of the populace, and this is all openly allowed through the religious equality of a nation’s constitution.
The human soul is like a richly fertile field, ideas are like seeds, and their fruit the consequences of those ideas. Ideas are what dictate our actions. This was greatly implied by St. James when he wrote:
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. (James 2:18)
St. James
By not only pronouncing the Faith, but having an inner conviction in it, we do Christian actions.
Dangerous ideas bring forth poisonous fruit, they are the causes of violence, and we allow these very philosophies to flood society under the title of “religious equality,” and we do so proudly because we no longer believe that ideas matter.
The massacre which took place in the Nairobi mall, was done greatly as a result of Muslim clerics such as sheikh Ibrahim Omar (who was recently gunned down by angry Kenyans), and as we learn from Reuters, he was very popular amongst youths who felt “marginalized by the predominantly Christian government.”
His popularity was allowed to grow because of religious equality, and if it was not given rights in the constitution, then the bloodshed would have been prevented, and such dangerous ideas would have never gained the favor of so many youths.
President Obama’s Muslim family are currently fighting against Christianity in Kenya in their goal to transform the nation into a sharia state, and what is it that gives them this right but the religious equality of the Kenyan constitution.
But some might argue that these terrorists were Somali trained, but what the Muslims are doing in Kenya, they already did in Somalia. In Somalia, before it became a fully Islamic dominated country like it is now, there was a vibrant Christian community and even a very resplendent cathedral in Mogadishu, which can be seen in this photo:
Cathedral on left, in Mogadishu
Now, since Islam is the religion of the land, and not Christianity, this is what the cathedral became:
The Muslims want to bring this same chaos to Kenya.
Islam causes this destruction because it hates the Christian concept of God, and does not the Lord say that “all they that hate me love death”? and yet we believe that such bringers of death are worthy of freedom and equality.
When a British soldier was beheaded in broad daylight in London by a Muslim, everybody was attributing it to “radical Islam,” “Muslim extremism,” or just plain “Islam,” but nobody was pointing to the enabling of this violence: religious equality.
Many people laud themselves for believing in religious equality, or absolute equality. Many do not know that this concept is very new and modern, and, what many do not realize, is that it has enabled innumerable wicked persons to use their liberty to seize the liberty of others.
In the old days of Christendom, the ones which many Christians are either ashamed to even speak of, or proud to have nothing to do with, ideas mattered, and they were taken so seriously that they were the causes of some of the bloodiest wars in Christian history.
The ones which come to memory, are the wars between Christians and Muslims, which lasted from around the seventh century, all the way to about the sixteenth century, and the Albigensian Crusade, which was between Christians and heretical gnostics called Albigensians or Cathars, and which lasted from 1209 to 1229.
Christians fighting Muslims in Spain
Both of these wars were done over theological ideas, with one sect triumphing over the other. Islam was founded on various anti-Christian tenets, and the Muslims assumed, as the Mormons do, the facade of being true believers in Jesus Christ.
Muhammad the heresiarch
Though Islam technically was founded in 622 AD, we can affirm that Christianity is inherently averse toward the tenets of Islam, while Islam is innately a Christian heresy with beliefs deliberately against the very foundations of the Church’s orthodoxy.
Islamic doctrine states that God is not our Father, and that Christ is not His Son. This is openly conveyed in Surah 19, in which it reads:
It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, “Be”, and it is. Verily Allah is my Lord and your Lord: therefore serve Him; this is the Straight Way. (Surah 19:35-36)
It is here where Islam is not only going directly against the belief in the Father and the Son, but fitting the criteria of antichrist, as St. John declared:
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. (I John 2:22)
Islam teaches that Christ was never killed nor crucified, but that He only appeared to be crucified, and that He ascended to heaven. The Koran writes:
Because they rejected Faith; that they uttered against Mary a grievous false charge; That they said (in boast), ”We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”, but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, certainly they killed him not. No, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, the Wise. (Surah 4)
The denial of the crucifixion comes as a result of hatred for the cross of Christ, and St. Paul, when writing to the Philippians, warned against such heresies in the advent of Christianity:
Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) (Philippians 3:17-19)
This Muslim belief, that Christ only appeared to be crucified, existed long before Muhammad, and can be traced explicitly to the Apostolic age, in which St. Ignatius (a student of St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul, who was commissioned by the Apostles to be bishop of Antioch) warned against it as evil and dangerous in his epistle to the Trallians:
But if as some who are atheists — that is to say, infidels — pretend that he [Christ] only seemed to suffer, (they themselves only seeming to exist,) why then am I bound? why do I deserve to fight with beasts? Therefore do I die in vain: therefore I will not speak falsely against the Lord. Flee, therefore, these evil sprouts which bring forth deadly fruit, of which if any one taste, he shall presently die. (Epistle to the Tallians, 10-11, trans. Archbishop Wake)
St. Ignatius being fed to the lions for fighting against the pagans
Take notice that none of these ancient Christian writers expressed toleration toward these wicked doctrines, which is quite contrary to how the modern church establishment today is taking a stance toward false religions. But the modern may ask, “what is the big deal if someone does not believe that Christ was not crucified, or if He is not a son and God not his father?”
The answer to this question is the Nairobi mall massacre, nay, 9/11, the Armenian Genocide, and a myriad of other inhumanities orchestrated by the Muslims.
The animosity between Christianity and Islam did not just arise with Muhammad, but is an inevitable result of the Church battling with various heresies which came before, had numerous agreements with, and were adopted by, the cult of Islam. The war between Christianity and Islam is merely a continuation of the Church’s struggle with various heresies, which existed from the time of the Apostles, that Islam consists of.
Christians and Muslims fighting
For example, the great Muslim leader Akbah expressed this militant Unitarianism when he spoke of his desire to go
to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy [Allah’s] holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee. (1)
The “unity” here mentioned refers to the anti-Trinitarian nature of Allah, while the “rebellious nations” and “gods” allude to the countries of Christendom and the Godhead–that is, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
The contention between Islam’s heretical doctrine and Christianity’s orthodoxy, is what provoked the innumerable wars between Muslim and Christian, with the Muslims being the initial aggressors.
Christian warriors
Why were the Christians in Western Europe so enthusiastic and willing to go out of their way to fight against Muslims? Because in Christianity, ideas matter. It mattered both to the hermit, the scholar, the priest, and the knight, that a great horde of heretics, preaching blasphemies against Christ and His cross, trampled over the Holy Land which God Himself blessed and walked upon.
Modernly minded people cannot wrap their minds around this quite sublime way of thinking, because in reality, they have no zeal for the Faith, and to them, ideas have equal footing.
So would we condemn these Christians for valiantly subduing kingdoms, and fighting militarily the armies of false religions? How could we then disregard the words of St. Paul:
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. (Hebrews 11:32-34)
The New Testament never severed itself with the Old, but continues the quest to crush tyrannies and the very falsehoods which build them up. But of course we have John Piper, who wrote that Christians should:
Admit that the Christian church has often been too entangled with civil governments, with the result that violence has been endorsed by the church as a way of accomplishing religious, and not just civil, goals. The Crusades, for example, stand as a monument to collective Christian blindness to the teaching of Jesus. …Make clear that the use of God-sanctioned violence between Israel and the nations in the Old Testament is no longer God’s will for his people.
Should the Christians have then allowed the Muslims to have overrun the Holy Land and Christendom, and ignore the verse of St. Paul where militaristic stories are given to us as models of Faith?
The old Christians fought because to them, error had no right. There was almost no concept of religious liberty in old Christendom. And let us not forget that Joshua’s crusade in fighting and vanquishing the heathens of Canaan, was done as a battle between truth and evil ideas. This was made quite clear by Moses when he proclaimed:
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess the land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. (Deuteronomy 9:4)
Medieval depiction of Joshua leading the assault on Jericho
In fact, it was from the Torah, and the inspired writings of the prophets, that the Crusaders received their inspiration and Biblical obligation to fight and end false religion. And while this may shock or disturb modern Christians, we must remember that the modern concept of religious equality is non-existant in the Scriptures.
Just to give one example, under a biblical government, the worship of the sun, moon, or any other luminary, is punishable by death, as read in the Torah:
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. (Deuteronomy 17:2-5)
Medieval depiction of Moses seeing the heretical Hebrews worshipping the golden calf
When reading this verse, the pertinent question is why were these types of laws enacted? Because, if sun-worship was not suppressed and stopped, then Israel would have become a pagan tyranny, in which the worshippers of God would be killed, and humans sacrificed for the rituals of the sun-god. One does not need to go any further than pagan Mexico, to comprehend that sun-worship leads to purely cruel and violent despotism.
If you were to travel back in time and meet with, lets say, Pope Urban II (the one who commenced the First Crusade), or Hernando Cortez (conquerer of pagan Mexico) and tell them all religions need to have equal status, they would have glared at you as though you were a madman or from a different planet.
Pope Urban II commencing the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont
Hernando Cortes
I will give just two examples to show the stance these men took against false religions. For Hernando Cortes, here is a quote from Francisco Lopez de Gomara, an official biographer of his:
During the first days after the arrival of the Spaniards, whenever Moctezuma went to the temple, men were killed in sacrifice. To prevent this cruelty in the presence of the Spaniards who now had to escort him, Cortes admonished Moctezuma to order the priests not to sacrifice a human body, unless he wanted Cortes to lay waste the temple and the city. Cortes even told Moctezume that he desired to cast down the idols in his presence and before all the people. …The first time that Moctezuma went to the temple after his arrest, Cortes and the Spaniards went with him and, as soon as they entered, Cortes on one side and they on the other, began to cast down the idols from their pedestals and altars in the chapels and chambers. (2)
Pope Urban II, in his speech that commenced the First Crusade, praised Jerusalem and the land of Israel, called for battle against the Muslims to purge the Holy Land from paganism, and compared the Christian armies to those of Moses fighting the pagan Amalekites:
Of holy Jerusalem, brethren, we dare not speak, for we are exceedingly afraid and ashamed to speak of it. This very city, in which, as you all know, Christ Himself suffered for us, because our sins demanded it, has been reduced to the pollution of paganism and, I say it to our disgrace, withdrawn from the service of God. Who now serves the church of the Blessed Mary in the valley of Josaphat, in which church she herself was buried in body? But why do we pass over the Temple of Solomon, nay of the Lord, in which the barbarous nations placed their idols contrary to law, human and divine? …With Moses, we shall extend unwearied hands in prayer to Heaven, while you go forth and brandish the sword, like dauntless warriors, against Amalek. (3)
I would be willing to dispute that religious equality would have been combated with more enthusiasm and zeal by the ancient Christians, than the Christians today who are rightfully going against sodomite marriage. The idea was unthinkable.
Christianity, the only path to salvation, equal with Islam or any other false religion? The very thought was iconicievable to the Church, until recent times.
For the sake of clarification, I am not speaking of one Christian denomination tyrannizing another, I wish to see peace between orthodox Protestant sects and orthodox Catholics, just as Chris wanted peace between the Jews and the Samaritans. I am speaking of false and antichrist religions.
Because of our indifference to ideas, we have allowed Muslims, pagan environmentalists, fanatical socialists, Mormons (like Harry Reid), and other heretics, to infiltrate the government, because of religious equality. I would be willing to argue, that Obama’s presidency is an outcome of religious equality.
I can hear the arguments already, “Mormons are the nicest people in the world, Mormonism is a peaceful religion.” Many Mormons are peaceful, yes, not because of Mormonism. The early Mormons were very violent, one can only read about the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and Joseph Smith’s Alcoran (the Koran) or the Sword speech to understand this. It was not until the Mormons received intolerance from the US government, with the Mormon Extermination Order, and local American militias, that they became peaceful.
Peaceful Mormons are a result of intolerance toward their violent predecessors.
When Keith Ellison, a Muslim who became a congressman, refused to swear an oath over the Bible, and demanded that a Koran replace the Scriptures instead, and he, in turn, was given this right, this too is an indication that the place of Christianity has been put on equal footing with error, and the concern for ideas, is on the verge of death.
Dennis Prager reflected this indifferentism when he, in regards to this issue, said that Ellison should swear upon the Bible and a Koran, as though Truth can mix with falsehood:
All I am asking is that Keith Ellison bring a Bible along, I’m not asking him not to bring the Koran
If the Christians in those days had the mindset that most have today, they would have written down a policy tolerating all faiths as equals, and the Muslims, as a result of no Christian zeal, would have had a significant advantage militarily, and would have gained much ground over Christendom.
It is because of the old Christian zealots, who rejected religious equality, that Islam, and other dangerous religions, were hindered for centuries from accomplishing the universal conquests that they desired to do.
Godfrey of Bouillon, fighter of Muslims
The great expanse of the Islamic Ottoman empire, starting from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II, can be substantially attributed to the lack of crusading spirit, and thus the fading away of concern over ideas, which gradually took Europe.
Mehmet ii, Muslim heretic who conquered Christian Constantinople
The concept of religious equality did not arise to a majorly and more widespread point until the modern era, specifically in the times of the so-called Enlightenment period of the 18th century, in greater part due to the four horsemen of religious toleration, Diderot, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Rousseau.
Let us examine the statements and diatribes in regards to each one of these men, and see if they themselves truly believed in religious toleration.
THE PIONEERS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine is a figure favorited greatly by both liberals and conservatives, especially by Glenn Beck. He was a man who not only supported but heavily influenced the American Revolution with his book, Common Sense.
He was a staunch and ardent follower, and advancer, of Deism, or the belief that there is only one god, without any complex intricacies, such as the Trinity, and not defined by a standard and absolute system such as Christianity.
Paine stated numerous beliefs and epigrams which many of a modern and neutrally conservative persuasion would accept, such as his declaration of faith:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist of doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creature happy. (4)
Paine believed that all people who worshipped one god, regardless of their religious faith, were deists:
Every person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a Deist in the first article of his creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus, God, is the believe of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man’s creed. (5)
He expressed this same belief again in one letter he wrote:
There is, however, one point of union wherein all religions meet, and that is in the first article of every man’s creed, and of every nation’s creed, that has any creed at all, I believe in God. (6)
Similarly, Beck has a deistic view of God, he sees the nature of God as without Trinity, singular and separate from Christ, and (ironically) as subjective and definable to the worshipper. He expressed his deism in one speech:
This isn’t about one faith or one church over another, it is about the eternal principles of God. …Go to your churches, your synagogues, your mosques, anyone that is not preaching hate or division, anyone that is not teaching to kill another man, but you go to those that are teaching the lasting principles.
This way of perceiving God, as just an overly simple entity subject to the definitions of man, was reflected also in the allowing of Keith Ellison to swear upon the Koran, and not the Bible, since God can be whatever you make Him out to be, regardless of what book you look to learn of His nature and purpose.
The heresy of Deism is reminiscent to the heresy of Islam. Muhammad, like the Deists, took the Christians God and stripped of all His unique aspects, and simplified Him. Both the Muslims and the Deists reject the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, the belief that Christ is the Son of God, and a plethora of other orthodox tenets. To illustrate the heterodox of Deism, here is a statement of belief from Paine:
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. (7)
Old Koran
Now compare this to the Quran:
People of the Book, do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say anything about God except the truth: the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God, His word, directed to Mary, a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a ‘Trinity’—stop, that is better for you—God is only one God, He is far above having a son, everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust. (Sura 4)
It is appropriate to present the discernment and forewarning of St. James in the particular instilling of Deism, and the anti-Trinitarian “one God” of Muhammad, Paine, and Beck:
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (James 2:19)
“But does Thomas Paine have to do with devils?” you might ask.
Paine’s doctrine was favorable to the diabolical, and his enmity toward the sacred and the holy was so thick and vociferous, that he gave open delight to demons over Christianity:
It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrines of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit amongst us. *Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, conclusion, p. 145*
As Deism and Islamism have their close similarities, they also have their greatest point of agreement, and that is the hatred for Christianity.
Paine’s elegant style, pithy maxims, and seeming piety and love for justice, has charmed and attracted many a reader. But after one peruses his other works, what we find is that his evocative writings masqueraded his vicious war against Christianity, which he, in a frothing tone, described as inferior to Deism, and to every religion that has come into existence:
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. …The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism. It must have been the first, and will probably be the last that man believes. (8)
Samuel Adams
It is no wonder that the Founding Father, Samuel Adams, wrote to Paine surprised at his sacrilegious sentiments:
But when I heard you had turned your mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself astonished (9)
Paine wrote back to Adams, and went so far as to blame the violence of the Muslim Barbary pirates, with whom America warred with, on the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages, and thus on Christianity itself:
Even the depredation on your commerce by the Barbary powers, sprang from the crusades of the church against those powers. (10)
His dissimulating goals behind supporting the American Revolution, was to use America as a platform to conduct a revolution for the cause of his own religion, that is, Deism. He made this intention clear in his book, The Age of Reason:
Soon after I had published the pamphlet, ‘Common Sense,’ in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. …Human inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. (11)
He believed that Deism would put an end to the supposed tyranny which Christianity caused over the centuries, since he was sure that his heresy was incompatible for the purpose of despotism:
But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. (12)
But while this statement has a sense of piousness and innocent civility, it is not absent of hypocrisy. As he hailed toleration, he praised the French Revolution for its violently intolerant abolishment of the Catholic Church:
In countries under despotic governments, where inquiry is always forbidden, the people are condemned to believe as they have been taught by their priests. This was for many centuries the case in France: but this link in the chain of slavery, is happily broken by the revolution; and, that it may never be rivetted again, let us employ a part of the liberty we enjoy scrutinizing into the truth. (13)
As he gave his strong support for religious equality, he pushed for the belief that even the Catholic churches in France should be the equal property of the people and sold, and the money used to support the poor. It was socialism before Karl Marx, except it came from Deism and not the atheism of Communism. As Paine wrote:
The [French] constitution protects equally, at it ought to do, every profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The churches are the common property of all the people; they are the national goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any profession, because the right does not exist of giving to any that which appertains to all. It would be consistent with right that the churches be sold, and the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education of children or poor parents of every profession, and, if more than sufficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the support of the aged poor. (14)
Vladmir Lenin
This tyrannical envisioning has all the elements of a communist utopia, for it was Vladimir Lenin who had the church property in Russia stolen for the good of the collective populace. After the Bolsheviks took over Russia, Lenin stole all of the land owned by the nobility and the church, and gave it to the have-nots. The land was stolen “for the benefit of the community” and was “to be distributed in equal shares.”
Judas betraying Christ with a kiss
Alas! This is the wicked spirit of Judas, which masks itself as a defender of the poor with the goal of thievery. For St. John wrote:
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. (John 12:3-6)
Similarly to the deistic religion of Islam, when the Muslims conquered Spain they took over Christian lands and destroyed their churches. Church property became under the control of the Ummah and thus Christians were forced to comply with the Pact of Umar that guaranteed the Islamic enforcement over Christian lands. In the document it reads:
We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
Thomas Paine, though he is admired and promoted by Beck, is the antithesis to the values subscribed to by conservatives in America. Paine also accepted the French revolutionaries’ policy for the outlawing of church bells, as he wrote:
As to the bells, they are a public nuisance. …But if we permit ourselves to think of the sick, and the many sleepless nights and days they undergo, we shall feel the impropriety of increasing their distress by the noise of the bells, or any other noisy instruments. Quiet and private domestic devotion neither offends nor incommodes anybody; and the constitution has wisely guarded against the use of externals. Bells come under this description, and public processions still more so — Streets and highways are for the accommodation of persons following their several occupations, and no sectary has a right to incommode them — If any one has, every other has the same; and the meeting of various and contradictory processions would be tumultuous. Those who formed the constitution had wisely reflected upon these cases; and, whilst they were careful to reserve the equal right of every one, they restrained every one from giving offence, or incommoding another. (15)
His sentiments on the church bells is all too reminiscent to Stalinism and Islamism.
The younger Stalin
In Stalin’s Russia, October 1929, the seizure of all church bells was ordered because “the sound of bells disturbs the right to peace of the vast majority of atheists in the towns and the countryside.”
Al-Ghazali
The Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazalli, wrote:
They [the Christians] are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells
Beck is supporting Paine, a man who does not believe in the right to ownership, an individual freedom which every conservative upholds.
Paine gives the impression that he believed that all people should have the liberty to observe their religion, just as long as it does harm another person, and that he was not concerned what people do in their private lives. But, he wanted to tyrannically force Christians to keep their Faith privately.
In the intensity of the oppressive revolutionary mob in France, Thomas Paine called for the establishment of a deistic system of jurisprudence and education, being reminiscent of Islam’s sharia, that would prevent Catholicism from ever rooting itself again into the position it had for centuries in France’s government infrastructure and civilization, and to present the world with an example of extinguishing Christianity from the nation:
Let us devise means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish the ignorance that the ancient regime of kings and priests had spread among the people. –Let us cultivate justice and benevolence, that the God of our fathers may bless us. The helpless infant and the aged poor cry to us to remember them — Let not wretchedness be seen in our streets — Let France exhibit to the world the glorious example of expelling ignorance and misery together. (16)
DIDEROT
Diderot
Diderot expressed, with much passion, the importance of religious toleration, and the detrimental consequences of religious intoleration. But their two sides to the coin of Diderot’s agenda, for while he exuberantly trumped religious tolerance and equality, he did not have the same sentiments when it came to the doctrine of monarchy, nor Christianity.
Diderot wrote:
It is impious to expose religion to the odious imputations of tyranny, of callousness, of injustice, of unsociability, even with the aim of drawing back to the fold those who would unfortunately have strayed from it. (17)
But, he as well wrote ideas favorable to tolerance toward Islam, and expressing violent animosity toward intolerant Christians:
If your truth proscribes me, then my error, which I take for the truth, will proscribe you. Cease to be violent, or cease to reproach the pagans and Muslims for being violent. (18)
This statement not only reveals his sympathies toward islam, but it also shows just how far back into history Islam has received the favor of heretics. Diderot exposed his true violent intentions toward the Church, when he would declare, in fits and bouts of rage:
Ah! when then shall I see the last king, strangled with the bowels of the last priest! (19)
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire
Voltaire focused so much religious toleration that he wrote an entire book entitled, A Treatise on Toleration, in which he, being a deist, wrote a prayer to a universal god who is worshipped by all people of all faiths:
And if the scourge of war is not to be avoided, let us not mutually hate and destroy each other in the midst of peace; but rather make us of the few moments of our existence to join in praising, in a thousand different languages, from one extremity of the world to the other, Thy goodness, O all-merciful Creator, to whom we are indebted for the existence. (20)
Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance
In his Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, Voltaire wrote some of his fancies for Allah because of his deistic attributes, that he was transcendent and singular:
He [Muhammad] taught the Arabians who paid their adorations to the stars, that they ought only to adore the God who created the stars; that the books of the Jews and Christians being corrupted and interpolated, ought to be held in abhorrence … Among the incoherent declamations with which this book [the Koran], according to eastern taste, is filled; there are passages that appear truly sublime. …His [Muhammad’s] definition of God is expressed in a manner still more sublime (21)
Voltaire’ Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations
But, do not let his expressions of feigned piety and universal love, nor his gentle countenance, charm and beguile you as the serpent did to the woman in the garden, for within his fruit, which is pleasant to the eyes, is a poisonous substance ready to seize the soul with tares rooted in the abyss.
In his book on toleration, Voltaire praises, and posits excuses for, intoleration. He wrote that Nero’s persecution of the Christians, in which he executed St. Paul and St. Peter, for their refusal to worship him and his gods, had nothing to do with religion, but punishment for their burning of Rome (which was a false accusation):
Nero is said to have been a great persecutor of the Christians. But Tacitus tells us that they were accused of having set fire to the city of Rome, and were thereupon given up to the resentment of the population. But had religion anything to do with this charge? No, certainly. (22)
In the same same book, he justifies, and gives his applause to, the emperor of China, Yong-T-Chin, for intolerantly driving out Jesuit priests from his country:
It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom; but this was not because that himself was non-tolerance, but, on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so. …[W]e must confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of the blood? …It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and indecent disputes between these Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. (23)
Voltaire desired to destroy Christianity under the mask of, and through, religious toleration. For if all religious are considered equal, then one cult has the liberty to dominate the rest, and use the state, or mobs, to persecute the Church.
Rousseau
Rousseau, out of all the promoters of religious toleration, was probably the most honest when describing his schemes, and the most violent.
Like Paine, Voltaire, and Diderot, Rousseau was a Deist, and he made a seeming appearance to the idol of toleration, condemning the supposed warlike side of Christianity as “the most violent of earthly despotisms.” (24)
As a deist, Rousseau was more inclined to favor other religions over Christianity, specifically Islam, for he wrote in his book, The Social Contract, of his admiration for the Islamic system of government, or sharia law:
Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well well together; and as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good. (25)
The Social Contract
While both the religion of Rousseau and Muhammad were both deistic, they at the same time strived to establish their own philosophical utopias, in which ideas contrary to their own ideologies are limited and extinguished, and they both saw Christianity as their main enemy.
Rousseau considered Christianity as the biggest obstacle to his utopian vision, writing:
Nay, more, so far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the State, it [Christianity] has the effect of taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit. (26)
Since Christianity was contrary to his social contract, he desired to outlaw the Faith. Rousseau wanted a political system established, in which people’s beliefs are checked and examined to see if they obligate one to be loyal to the collective community, and this would determine if they are worthy of freedom or not:
The right which the social compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen, exceed the limits of public expediency. The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his duty; but the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members only so far as they have reference to morality and to the duties which he who professes them is bound to do to others. (27)
Now, Rousseau is careful to add in his enlightenment spirit of toleration, and makes sure to say that his ideal state would not force anyone to accept his state religion of deism, but he does write that anyone who refuses his social contract and his universal cult of the one god, should be punished, and specifies Catholics, or those who say that “Outside the Church is no salvation,” as the ones deserving oppression:
There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject. While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them–it can banish him, not from impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If anyone, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law. …The existence of a mighty, intelligent, and beneficent divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the law: these are its positive dogmas. …Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship.But whoever dares to say: ‘Outside the Church is no salvation,’ ought to be driven from the State (28)
What difference is there between the ideas of these men, and the sharia code of Muslims? Nothing. Both lead to the oppression of Christians.
THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT’S BELIEF IN RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
What was the consequence of these thinkers? Bloodshed. The deistic ideas which these philosophers propagated led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people for their faith. Those who screamed for toleration, used their liberties to cease all toleration toward Christianity.
French Revolution beheading
To give a major illustration as to how cruel the deists were in the French Revolution, in the city of Nantes, the sadistic revolutionary commander Jean-Baptiste Carrier disposed of Christian Vendéean prisoners-of-war in a horrifically efficient form of Islamic style mass execution. In the Noyades there was mass drowning when naked men, women, and children were tied together in specially constructed boats, towed out to the middle of the river Loire and then sunk.
Drowning Christians
Historians believe that around 170,000 Vendéeans were killed, around 5,000 in the Noyades. When it was over, French General Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating:
“There is no more Vendée… According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all.”
Butcherer of Christians, Francois Joseph Westermann
Some men have adored absolute equality, to the point that they would punish and kill those who do not.
The massacres of the revolution precipitated an immense impact on the people of France, especially the conservatives who, like the ones of America, wanted to preserve Christianity and biblical values. These people are known as the anti-Enligtenment thinkers, one of the most learned of whom was Joseph de Maistre.
Joseph de Maistre
De Maistre is one of the most elegant and zealous of the conservative writers, and because of all the violence and butcherings he witnessed, he was, understandably, so averse and resentful of deism and the enlightenment, that he wished that there was some sort of system in the government which could have prevented the spread of enlightenment philosophy, and in turn, would have stopped the violent revolution from ever happening.
With all of this horrid history and these deceptive philosophies, I am reminded of the words of De Maistre, written with anguished spirit on what evil men took his country:
What folly it was to grant everyone freedom of speech! This is what has ruined us. The so-called philosophers have all a certain fierce and rebellious pride which does not compromise with anything; they detest without exception every distinction they do not enjoy; they find fault in every authority; they hate anything above them. If they are allowed, they will attack everything, even God, because He is master. See if it is not the same men who have attacked both kings and the God Who established them. (29)
The violence of the deists of the French Revolution will be exceeded by the coming holocausts of the deist Muslims, and they will occur only in a land where religious equality is exalted, and they will never occur in a nation where Christianity is the religion of the land, and is superior to the evils of falsehood and demonic philosophers.
The prospect of tyranny provokes men of prudent thought to conclude that the dangerous beliefs and ideas, which will give rise to their oppressors, need to be prevented from planting their seeds into the souls of the nation, by a system of religious inequality.
In a nation where all ideas are equal, one of them will eventually rule over the others. What then is liberty for? It is for the saints to worship God, and observe His laws, without fear from the despotism of heretics. Christians must be ready to fight in this eternal war between truth and error. The dual is to the death.
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REFERENCES
(1) *In Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. v, ch. l, p. 953, brackets mine*
(2) *Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Cortes, ch. 85, trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson*
(3) *Urban II, Council of Clermont, The Version of Baldric of Dol, in Edward Peters, The First Crusade*
(4) *All of Paine’s works quoted here, is taken from The Theological Works of Thomas Paine, Chicago and New York: Belford, Clarke & Co, 1885, Paine, The Age of Reason, first part, p. 5*
(5) *Paine, Of the Religion of Deism*
(6) *Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(7) *Paine, The Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(7A) *Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, conclusion, p. 145*
(8) *Pain, The Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(9) *Quoted by Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(10) *Paine, Letter to Samuel Adams*
(11) *Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, first part, p. 6*
(12) *Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, second part, p. 150*
(13) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(14) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(15) *Thomas Paine, Letter to Camille Jordan*
(16) *Paine, Letter to Camile Jordan*
(17) *Diderot, Encyclopedie, article on “Intolerénce,” in Political Writings, ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler*
(18) *Diderot, Encyclopedie, article on “Intolerénce,” in Political Writings, ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler*
(19) *Abbe Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobonism, ch. v, p. 99*
(20) *Voltaire, An Address to the Deity, ch. 23, trans. William F. Flemming, ed. John R. Iverson*
(21)*Voltaire, An Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, ch. iv, pp. 43, 45, trans. Nugent, ellipses and brackets mine*
(22) *Voltaire, A Treatise on Toleration, ch. 8, p. 36*
(23) *Voltaire, A Treatise on Tolerance, ch. 4, p. 21, brackets and ellipses mine*
(24) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 139, trans. G.D.H. Cole*
(25)*Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 139*
(26) *Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8*
(27) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, p. 144*
(28) *Rousseau, Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8, pp. 144-145*
(29) *De Maistre, The Saint Petersburg Dialogue, eight dialogue, p. 269*