Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Pew Research: Religion-related conflict and pressure worsened in more countries in 2023, especially social hostilities, while government restrictions remained near record highs.

How SCOTUS is dismantling the Separation of Church and State.

When JD Vance became a Catholic, he wondered what his dead grandmother would think. Awwwh!

The pressure on the Church of England to ditch its slavery reparations plan.

Thirty years of fighting for a secular UK.

World of Woo: Homeopathy is a delusional disorder.

Environment: Trump Administration abandons fight against clean energy.

Humanists International urged the European Union to address the growing dominance of a handful of large technology companies in AI. They argued that excessive reliance on a few corporations could create economic and political vulnerabilities and undermine democratic accountability.

Just how racist is Christian nationalism supposed to be? As Trump’s popularity hits epic lows, his MAGA movement gets more openly racist and hostile to democracy.

How to refute an antivaxxer.

Cervical cancer deaths fall to zero in young women given HPV vaccine.

Why the UK’s proposed social media ban for under 16s would impact everyone, not just children.

Metal-driven chemical reaction in deep sea may explain origin of life.

Rucho is the real threat to American democracy. (Robert A. Rucho, a  NC state senator).

The terrifying world of the ‘TikTok Farlands’.

Consciousness might be emergent, but emergence does not imply it always converges on the same kind of mind. Our experience of time is just as foundational as the physics.

The Mars delusion. (very long read).

Sunday Book Club: How to Be a Happy Skeptic. (See first video below).

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos: Massimo Pigliucci on Doubt, Moral Courage, and Living without Illusions. She thought the Bible was moral. The most controversial idea in biology.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week!!

[Strega]

Thanks, Reg!!!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Happy Summer Solstice too! This is near to where I live. Older than the pyramids of Egypt!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

The pressure on the Church of England to ditch its slavery reparations plan.

If someone in the Church of England today held someone as a slave or profits from the slavery that still take place in Saharan Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Red China, this would be a legitimate concern.

Otherwise, don’t be surprised if this is where Church “reparations” would actually flow, from one form of oppression to another:

‘We cannot walk with you unless you repent,’ African archbishops tell Church of England
https://religionnews.com/2023/02/16/we-cannot-walk-with-you-unless-you-repent-african-archbishops-tell-church-of-england/

In any case, don’t expect anyone in the Church of England to say: “Last one out, please lock up and turn out the light.”

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

From “the Necessity of Atheism” by DR. D. M. BROOKS, 1933

 

The Christian Church has had the audacity, in modern times, to proclaim

that it had abolished slavery and the slave trade. It is difficult to

understand how any “righteous” man could make that contention

remembering that it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century

that slavery became illegal in Christian countries, with one exception,

Abyssinia, the oldest of the Christian countries, which still maintains

slavery. In our own country, a nation had to be embroiled in a civil war

before slavery could be abolished. Abolished by Christianity in the

nineteenth century, when Christianity has been dominant in most

civilized countries since the third century, and when the traffic in

human flesh flourished right through those centuries in which

Christianity was most powerful!

 

A reference to the facts show that this claim is as spurious as many

others which the ecclesiastics have boldly affirmed throughout the ages.

For not only is this contrary to the truth, but it is an undeniable fact

that it was only by the aid and sanction of the theological forces that

slavery was able to degrade our civilization as long as it did.

 

On referring to that legend which has been the source of most of our

suffering and inhumanity, the Bible, a direct sanction for slavery is

given in the Old Testament. Leviticus XXV gives explicit instructions as

to where and from whom slaves should be bought, and sanctions the

repulsive feature of separation of the slave from his family. Leviticus

XXVII gives the “price” of human beings.

 

The Koran, which the Christians look upon as a ridiculous smattering of

utterances of a spurious prophet, sets a superior example to the

Christian “Divine Revelations.”

 

“God hath ordained that your brothers should be your slaves, therefore,

let him whom God hath ordained to be the slave of his brother, his

brother must give him of the clothes wherewith he clotheth himself, and

not order him to do anything beyond his power…. A man who illtreats

his slave will not enter paradise…. Whoever is the cause of separation

between mother and child by selling and giving, God will separate him

from his friends on the day of resurrection.”

 

The New Testament follows the Old Testament, and there is nowhere to be

found in its contents anything to suggest the elimination of this

practice. Jesus did not condemn this practice, but accepted slavery as

he accepted most institutions about him, and all superstitions. The

teachings of Paul on the question of slavery are clear and explicit.

Pope Leo, in his letter of 1888 to the Bishop of Brazil, remarks:

 

“When amid the slave multitude whom she has numbered among her children,

some led astray by some hope of liberty, have had recourse to violence

and sedition, the Church has always condemned these unlawful efforts,

and through her ministers has applied the remedy of patience….”

 

St. Peter was addressing himself especially to the slaves when he wrote,

“For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God a man endures

sorrows, suffering wrongfully.”

 

The Church certainly saw nothing wrong with slavery when she preached

patience to her slaves. It did not condemn slavery, but condemned the

slaves for revolting. This in 1888!

 

In the “Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics” is found: “There is no

explicit condemnation in the teaching of our Lord…. It remains true

that the abolitionist could point to no one text in the Gospels in

defense of his position, while those who defended slavery could appeal

at any rate to the letter of Scripture.”

 

It is true that slavery existed under Pagan civilization, but there it

represented a phase of social development, while Christian slavery stood

for a deliberate retrogression in social life. It was Seneca who said,

“Live gently and kindly with your slave, and admit him to conversation

with you, to council with you, and to share in your meals.”

 

Think of what would have occurred if one of our philosophers had

admonished a slave-holding Christian in the above manner.

 

“We are apt to think of the ancient slave as being identical with the

miserable and degraded being that disgraced Christian countries less

than a century ago. This, however, is far from the truth. The Roman

slave did not, of necessity, lack education. Slaves were to be found who

were doctors, writers, poets, philosophers, and moralists. Plautus,

Ph�drus, Terence, Epictetus, were slaves. Slaves were the intimates of

men of all stations of life, even the emperor. Certainly, it never

dawned on the Roman mind to prohibit education to the slave. That was

left for the Christian world, and almost within our own time.” (For a

good account of the close association of Christianity with slavery see,

“_Christianity, Slavery, and Labor,” Chapman Cohen._)

 

In Rome, the slave kept his individuality, and outwardly there was no

distinction in color and clothing; there was very little sound barrier

between the slave and the freeman. The slave attended the same games as

the freeman, participated in the affairs of the municipality, and

attended the same college. The ancients kept the bodies of their slaves

in bondage, but they placed no restraint upon the mind and no check upon

his education. It has even been said that the slave class of antiquity

really corresponded to our free laboring class. It is also well known

that a well-conducted slave, by his own earnings, was able to purchase

his freedom in the course of a few years.

 

There can be no comparison, therefore, between Pagan and Christian

slavery, except to the detriment of the latter. The Christian slave

trade represents one of the most frightful and systematic brutalities

the world has ever known. The contrast between the Pagan and Christian

slavery is even more marked when the dependence of the Christian slave

upon the good nature of his master is considered. Compare this with the

decrees of the Roman emperors:

 

“Masters were prohibited sending their slaves into the arena without a

judicial sentence. Claudius punished as a murderer any master who killed

his slave. Nero appointed judges to hear the complaints of slaves as to

ill-treatment or insufficient feeding. Domitian forbade the mutilation

of slaves; Hadrian forbade the selling of slaves to gladiators,

destroyed private prisons for them, and ordered that they who were

proved to have ill-treated their slaves be forced to sell them.

Caracalla forbade the selling of children into slavery.”

 

“All that need be added to this is that the later Christian slavery

represented a distinct retrogression, deliberately revived from motives

of sheer cupidity, and accompanied by more revolting features than the

slavery of ancient times.” (_Chapman Cohen._)

 

In the “History of Ethics Within Organized Christianity” is recorded,

“The Church, as such, never contemplated doing away with slavery as

such, even though Stoicism had denounced it as ‘Contra Mundum.’ Nowhere

does the early Church condemn slavery as an institution. Kindness to the

slave is frequently recommended, but this was done quite as forcibly,

and upon a much broader ground by the pagan writers. It would be indeed

nearer the truth to say that the Christians who wrote in favor of the

mitigation of the lot of the slave were far more indebted to pagans than

to Christian influence.”

 

The Church itself owned many slaves, advised its adherents to will their

slaves to her, and was the last to liberate the slaves which she owned.

Yet, the apologists for the Church would have us believe that she was

instrumental in the destruction of slavery, when it is a fact that there

is nowhere a clear condemnation of slavery on the part of the Church.

 

H. C. Lea in his “Studies of the Church History” says, “The Church held

many slaves, and while their treatment was in general sufficiently

humane to cause the number to grow by voluntary accretions, yet it had

no scruple to assert vigorously their claim to ownership. When the Papal

Church granted a slave to a monastery, the dread anathema, involving

eternal perdition, was pronounced against anyone daring to interfere

with the gift; and those who were appointed to take charge of the lands

and farms of the Church, were especially instructed that it was part of

their duty to pursue and recapture fugitive bondsmen.”

 

It must not be assumed that the Catholic Church was the only

ecclesiastical body to condone slavery, or that it was only the traffic

in black slaves that flourished a few hundred years ago.

 

“In the seventeenth century, thousands of Irish men, women and children,

were seized by the order or under the license of the English government,

and sold as slaves for use in the West Indies. In the Calendar of State

Papers, under various dates, between 1653-1656, the following entries

occur: ‘For a license to Sir John Clotworthy to transport to America 500

natural Irishmen.’ A slave dealer, named Schlick, is granted a license

to take 400 children from Ireland for New England, and Virginia. Later,

100 Irish girls and a like number of youths are sold to the planters in

Jamaica.

 

“Had the Church been against slavery it would have branded it as a

wrong, and have set the example of liberating its own slaves. It did

neither. Nay, the Church not only held slaves itself, not only protected

others who held slaves, but it thundered against all who should despoil

its property by selling or liberating slaves belonging to the Church.

The whole history of the Christian Church shows that it has never felt

itself called upon to fight any sound institution, no matter what its

character, so long as it favored the Church. Slavery and serfdom, war,

piracy, child labor, have all been in turn sanctioned.” (_Chapman Cohen:

“Christianity, Slavery, and Labor.”_)

 

In Abyssinia, the influence of Christianity has been dominant for a

longer period of time than anywhere else in the world. The population of

Abyssinia is at least ten million, and of this population not less than

one-fifth, probably more, are slaves. In 1929, Lady Kathleen Simon

published her book entitled, “Slavery,” dealing with the slave trade of

the world. In this work it is pointed out that slave-owning is an

integral part of the religion of the country, and that opposition to the

abolition of slavery comes principally from the priesthood which

considers itself the guardian of the Mosaic law, and regards slavery as

an institution ordered by Jehovah.

 

Slave raids are constant in this country, and are accompanied by the

greatest brutality and cruelty. Vast areas are depopulated by these

raids and even at this date, gangs of slaves may be seen by travelers,

with the dead and dying bodies of those that have fallen strewn along

the roadside. “The slave trade in Abyssinia is open, its horrors are

well known, and it is supported by the Christian Church of the country.

Such is slavery in the most Christian country in the world today, the

country which has the longest Christian history of any nation in the

world. Its existence helps us to realize the value of the statement that

the power of Christianity in the world destroyed the slave trade.

Slavery flourishes in the oldest of Christian countries in the world,

backed up by the Church, the Old Bible, and the New Testament. It has

all the horrors, all the brutalities, all the degradations of the slave

trade at its worst. Such is Christian Abyssinia, and such, but for the

saving grace of secular civilization, would be the rest of the world.”

(_Chapman Cohen._)

 

The slave system that arose in Christian times, created by and continued

by Christians in the most Christian of countries, provides the final and

unanswerable indictment of the Christian Church.

 

Slavery was unknown to the Africans until it was introduced by the

Christian Portuguese. In 1517 the Spaniards began to ship negro slaves

to Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rica. John Hawkins was the first

Englishman of note to engage in the traffic, and Queen Elizabeth loaned

this virtuous and pious gentleman the ship called ‘Jesus’. English companies

were licensed to engage in this trade and during the reign of William

and Mary it was thrown open to all.

 

Between 1680 and 1700, it has been said that 140,000 Negroes were

imported by the English-African Company, and about 160,000 more by

private traders. Between 1700 and 1786, as many as 610,000 were

transported to Jamaica alone. In the hundred years ending 1776, the

English carried into the Spanish, French, and English Colonies three

million slaves.

 

The cruelty experienced by these human cargoes on their transportation

defies description. The chaining, the branding, the mutilation, the

close quarters, the deaths by suffocation and disease, are a sterling

example of man’s inhumanity to man when his conscience is relieved by

finding support of his inhumane actions sanctioned in that most holy of

holies, the Bible. Exclusive of the slaves who died before leaving

Africa, not more than fifty out of a hundred lived to work on the

plantations. Ingram’s “History of Slavery” calculates that although

between 1690 and 1820 no less than 800,000 Negroes had been imported to

Jamaica, yet, at the latter date, only 340,000 were on the island.

 

Slavery in America received the same sanction by the religionists which

it received on the continent. George Whitefield, the great Methodist

preacher, was an earnest supporter of slavery. When the importation of

slaves finally ceased the states began the new industry of breeding

slaves; the leading state for this breeding, and the one which contained

the largest number of stud farms, was Virginia. Lord Macaulay, in a

speech delivered before the House of Commons on February 26, 1845, said:

“The slave states of the Union are of two classes, the breeding states,

where the human beast of burden increases, and multiplies, and becomes

strong for labor; and the sugar and cotton states to which these beasts

of burden are sent to be worked to death. Bad enough it is that

civilized man should sail to an uncivilized quarter of the world where

slavery existed, should buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them

away to labor in a distant land; bad enough! But that a civilized man, a

baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free state, a man

frequenting a Christian Church, should breed slaves for exportation, and

if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even beget slaves for

exportation, should see children, sometimes his own children, gambolling

from infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with

their faces, and should sell them for $400 or $500 a head, and send them

to lead in a remote country a life which is a lingering death, a life

about which the best thing that can be said is that it is sure to be

short; this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror

excited by that slave trade which is the curse of the African coast. And

mark, I am speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between

Dublin and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the

Thames.”

 

It has been estimated that the members and ministers of the Orthodox

churches in the South owned no less than 660,000 slaves.

 

Thomas Paine, in 1775, when he wrote his article on “Justice and

Humanity,” was the first to demand emancipation in a lucid manner. The

campaign for liberation of the slaves was therefore inaugurated by a

freethinker, and triumphantly closed by another freethinker, Abraham

Lincoln. In this manner did the Church abolish slavery. With

characteristic disregard for the truth, the religionists have laid claim

to Lincoln, which claim has been amply refuted; but we are still

awaiting the Church’s claim to Paine as one of her devotees.

 

“And, truly, the case against Christianity is plain and damning. Never,

during the whole of its history has it spoken in a clear voice against

slavery; always, as we have seen, its chief supporters have been

pronounced believers. They have cited religious teaching in its defence,

they have used all the power of the Church for its maintenance.

Naturally, in a world in which the vast majority are professing

Christians, believers are to be found on the side of humanity and

justice. But to that the reply is plain. Men are human before they are

Christians; both history and experience point to the constant lesson of

the many cases in which the claims of a developing humanity override

those of an inculcated religious teaching.

 

“But the damning fact against Christianity is, not that it found slavery

here when it arrived, and accepted it as a settled institution, not even

that it is plainly taught in its ‘sacred’ books, but, that it

deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years

invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries

before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and

fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an

influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished

slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or

punishment for heresy. It was the growing moral and social sense of

mankind that compelled Christians and Christianity to give up these and

other things.” (_C. Cohen: “Christianity, Slavery, and Labor.”_)

 

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Fantastic essay! Bill Maher summed it up by pointing out that if The Bible was really anti-slavery, slavery would have been mentioned in The Top Ten.

[jakelafort]

So the Christian Nationalism get-together had a publisher of Nazi lit. Ok and it was a bit too extreme for some of the attendants. Not clear how well those books sold as the few references seemed contradictory.

Arab/Muslim nations love them some Protocols of the Elders of Zion and i believe Mein Kampf as well. The indoctrination of lets say Palestinian kids in Gaza (but it is all over the middle east ) into virulent Jew hatred is a cultural obsession and pervasive.

If you use your imagination and project the worst how will Christian Nationalism play out in USA or anywhere in the west? Any chance it will approach the worst of Islamic Nationalism? Lets take the Islamic Republic of Iran as a model. Anyone think USA or any western nation might degenerate to the point where its comparable in its degradation of human rights and assorted odious attributes?

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

If you use your imagination and project the worst how will Christian Nationalism play out in USA or anywhere in the west? Any chance it will approach the worst of Islamic Nationalism? Lets take the Islamic Republic of Iran as a model. Anyone think USA or any western nation might degenerate to the point where its comparable in its degradation of human rights and assorted odious attributes?

Sci-Fi writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote of a not-too-distant Christian Theocracy in the U.S.A. in his book Revolt In 2100. It was a collection of 3 short stories about a Televangelist Prophet Nehemiah Scudder who becomes President in 2012, then Dictator in 2016, using mass communication, techniques of advertising and propaganda, and an army of devoted enforcers.

He was the beginning a dynasty of theocratic despots who ruled for nearly a century. Then citizens, the military, and the Prophet’s “Virgins” rise up in a underground revolution and establish a freer society.

In the afterward, Heinlein definitely saw this as possible here, and hoped it would never happen. He noted that religious hysteria has broken out many times in our history. He also noted how far the Klan got in the ‘Twenties without even a dynamic leader and how far Marxism had progressed in snuffing out freedom of thought on half the planet without even having the advantage of being a religion.

To quote Heinlein: “The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbeliever:

How to refute an antivaxxer.

This is science writing done right! It points out in precise and plain language, the benefits of vaccine and how many lives it has saved and that the risks of vaccine are no greater than the risks of living.

The only thing that disappointed me was that someone sat on this for a year before I and other readers could read it:

As I write this in the summer of 2025, vaccination is under existential threat in the United States—and increasingly so throughout the world.

Now that it’s out, though, this article needs to be in the curricula of anyone educating on science. Too often, science education is put in the hands of Hank Kimball:

Pseudoscience runs rings around this approach, but simple, precise writing on science stops the vicious cycle.

[jakelafort]

Yeah Enco,

My kneejerk reaction to the threat of Christian Nationalism is grounded in the notion that our history as a nation has enough in the virtues of democracy and limitation of powers that resistance to Christianity as a governing power, the power, would not get too far. But hell who the fuck knows. I am the one who keeps saying people are imprinted by those rivers and how there is nobody home.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

A cautionary tale on critically thinking about everything you read from any source, hard copy or electronic:

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend
Jun 22, 2026 at 04:46 PM EDT
Mark Keierleber

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend

My questions were: How would anyone verify a statistic like this? Hospital records? Local papers seeking “Man Bites Dog” headlines? (a dying institution, and the ones that are still living don’t do gumshoe investigations,) Court records of lawsuits against parasol manufacturers?

And how many of these deaths are of people who think Gravity is “just a theory?”. Or who think they are Timothy Leary or Mary Poppins? Is Nina Jankowitz among the ill-fated?

Ad s “Central European News” a Putin-run Bot Farm?

[Belle Rose]

Ever heard of Chaco Canyon? Now that is the ultimate solstice spot of all time!

[jakelafort]

Negotiating with the Cult of Iran is a fool’s errand.

They had a plan and said yes it can. Who put the estoppel on the topple? Would it have worked?

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-900176

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Yeah Enco,

My kneejerk reaction to the threat of Christian Nationalism is grounded in the notion that our history as a nation has enough in the virtues of democracy and limitation of powers that resistance to Christianity as a governing power, the power, would not get too far. But hell who the fuck knows. I am the one who keeps saying people are imprinted by those rivers and how there is nobody home.

On the positive side, religion is still on the downward slide and various schools of unbelief are on the increase in the U.S.A., MAGA has detractors among both Liberals and Conservatives. Trump has only 30% support according to polls linked on The Drudge Report. And Forums like this are still here.

On the negative side, MAGA has control of the Executive and Judicial Branches and the Legislative Branch is either pro-MAGA or Pro-Woke or ineffectual. In The Televised Fourth Estate, Fox, NewsMax, and OAN, are solidly pro-MAGA, and CBS and CNN slant MAGA. ABC and MSNOW have dissenting voices but all networks can be and have been cowed by threats to pull licenses.

Off the top of my head, MAGA has lots of TechBro support. Musk’s X and Grok are MAGA-Friendly, Thiel’s and Altman’s Palantir contract with the U.S. Government providing military and surveillance service, Bezos of Amazon is MAGA-sympathetic as is his Washington Post, and Zuckerberg’s Meta folded to MAGA early on.

We can agree that where the nation will go next is anybody’s guess.

[Author]

Posts