Why Christianity Fails

Is it moral to believe that your sins can be forgiven by the punishment of another person? Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I could say, if I really loved someone who'd been sentenced to prison, "If I could find a way of serving your sentence, I'd do it." I could do what Sydney Carton does in A Tale of Two Cities. "I'll take your place on the scaffold," but I can't take away your responsibilities, I can't forgive what you did, I can't say you didn't do it, I can't make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive Middle Eastern society was scapegoating. You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat and you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger; and you think you've taken away the sins of the tribe: a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and all morality must depend. It has a further implication. I'm told that I have to have a share in this human sacrifice even it took place long before I was born. I have no say in it happening, I wasn't consulted about it. Had I been present, I would've been bound to do my best to stop the public torture and execution of an eccentric preacher. I would do the same even now. No, no, I'm implicated in it myself, I myself drove in the nails, I was present at Calvary. It confirms the original filthy sin in which I was conceived and born the son of Adam in Genesis. Again, this may sound a mad belief but it is the Christian belief. Well, it's here that we find something very sinister about monotheism and about religious practice in general. It is incipiently at least, and I think often explicitly, totalitarian. I have no say in this. I am born under a celestial dictatorship which I could not have had any hand in choosing. I don't put myself under its government. I am told that it can watch me while I sleep. I'm told it can convict me of, here's the definition of totalitarianism, thought-crime- for what I think, I may be convicted and condemned. And if I commit a right action, it's only to evade this punishment and if I commit a wrong action I'm going to be caught up with not just punishment in life but even after I'm dead. In the old testament, gruesome as it is, recommending as it, of genocide, racism, tribalism, slavery, and the displacement and destruction of others, terrible as the old testament gods are, they don't promise to punish the dead. There's no talk of torturing you after the earth has closed over the Malachites. Only told when gentle Jesus, meek and mild, makes his appearance are those who won't accept the message told they must depart into everlasting fire. Is this morality? Is this ethics? I submit not only is it not, not only does it come with the false promise of vicarious redemption, but it is the origin of the totalitarian principle which has been such a burden and shame to our species for so long. I further think that it undermines us in our most essential integrity. It dissolves our obligation to live and witness in truth. Which of us would say that we would believe something because it might cheer us up? Or tell our children something was true because it might dry their eyes? Which of us indulges in wishful thinking? Who really cares about the pursuit of truth at all costs and at all hazards? Do you not hear it said repeatedly of religion and by the religious themselves that, "Well, it may not be really true. The stories may be fairy tales. The history may be dubious. But it provides consolation." Can anyone hear themselves saying this or have it said of them without some kind of embarrassment? Without the concession that thinking here is directly wishful that yes, it would be nice if you can throw you sins and responsibilities on someone else and have them resolved. But it's not true. And it's not morally sound. On our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong, and being able to choose the right action over wrong one, I think one must repudiate the claim that 'one doesn't have this moral discrimination innately but no, it must come from the agency of a celestial dictatorship which one must love and simultaneously fear.' What is it like? I never tried it. I've never been a cleric. What is it like to lie to children for a living and tell them that they have an authority that they must love (compulsory love-- what a grotesque idea) and be terrified of at the same time. What's that like, I want to know. And that we don't have an innate sense of right and wrong. What is it like? I can personalize it to this extent. My mother's Jewish ancestors are told that until they got to Mt. Sinai, they've been dragging themselves around the desert under the impression that adultery, murder, theft, and perjury were all fine. They get to Mt. Sinai only to be told it's not kosher after all. I'm sorry. Excuse me. We must have more self respect than that for ourselves and for others. Of course the story's a fiction. It's a fabrication exposed conclusively by Israeli archaeology. Nothing of the sort ever took place but suppose we took the metaphor. It's an insult. It's an insult to us. It's an insult to our deepest integrity. You're a clot of blood, a piece of mud. You're lucky to be alive. God fashioned you for his convenience even though you're born in filth and sin and even though every religion that has ever been is distinguished principally by the idea that we should be disgusted by our own sexuality (name me a religion that does not play upon that fact). So you're lucky to be here, originally sinful, and covered in shame and filth as you are. You're a wretched creature. BUT take heart, the universe is designed with you in mind and heaven has a plan for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I close by saying, I can't believe there's a thinking person here who does not realize that our species would begin to grow something like its full height if it left this childishness behind, if it emancipated itself from this sinister,childish nonsense. -Christopher Hitchens