In 1999/2000 the amount of easy accessible critical information on religion was not commonplace, and these articles and web site was an attemt to make this information more easy accessible. Today, much of this information is easy to find all over the internet. And thats great, but also depressing that we still are plagued with primitive backward bronze age superstition in the start of the third millennium.
A very important source for information has been Karlheinz Deschners "Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums", (The criminal history of Christianity). (10 books spanning 2000 years). Very comprehensive and very well documented. I have listed the other main sources here. My background is a university bachelor in history and a master in Archaeology. Religion and church history has been a hobby for years.
I have always wondered about the fact that religion is still around, now after science has brought humanity to a point where we even have discovered the very building blocks of life, the DNA. We can now see billions of light-years into space (still no glimpse of God or heaven though), and it is over 300 years since the Enlightenment.
Still, millions of grown ups in the western world cling to a childish idea that a mighty bearded sky-goblin is managing the whole show here on this planet. At least he used to do so in the good old days, between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Then he killed whole armies, wiped out whole cities and tribes and did numerous miracles and a lot of other crazy stuff. The strict and bad tempered sky-goblin obviously stopped interfering with human history 2000 years ago, but that does not seem to bother the believers at all. They still think he is continuously monitoring them and takes a keen personal interest in every single one of his followers tiny boring lives, and keeps track of their bad thoughts and good deeds. And why do they believe all this?? Because it says so in an old book with lots of strange, archaic desert-stories written by mostly anonymous authors 2000 years ago.
I will try to update these pages now and then, whenever I find time. Thanks to Clayton Brown for input on spelling and grammar.
Most believers in this invisible sky-goblin are otherwise ordinary, normal and sane people, many capable of both reading and writing, some even do maths pretty well, and the majority are probably able to separate real life events from fantasies in every other arena of life except when it comes to religion. Then they turn from being reasonably rational adults into anxious, superstitious six-year olds, frightened of a strict invisible father in the sky.
No one ever heard him speak, but somehow he silently communicates with the dudes in the fancy gowns (and sometimes funny hats), - the priests. They seem to understand his magic silent communication and can mediate the congregation what the sky-goblin thinks. In an amazing way the priest's and the sky-goblin's opinions very often converge. It's marvellous!
What is very disturbing here, is that most of these people do not know the first thing about their religion's background or history. Very few have ever really read the Bible, and most have an almost total ignorance of even the simplest facts of church history.
That is what I'll try to do something about here. On these pages I present some of the essential things that most people do not know about Christianity, but things that they should know to be able to make informed choices about the religion's assertions. This information is some of the results of years of reading and studying the subject. I have tried to make a tiny bit of this material available on these web-pages, and there are several other resources on the Internet for the reader who wants more in-depth information on the subject.
But you don't have to take my word for it. I really recommend readers to do check up the information on these pages for themselves.
And feel free to use, cite, copy, and link to these texts as you will.
R.L.Boersheim
bandoli@frisurf.no