Objectivist Philosophy vs. Christian Religion

Billy Graham and the Christian Crusade Against Truth and Freedom

Rush Limbaugh: Voice of the Religious Threat in America

Sean Hannity and the Tactics of the Enemy

Billy Graham and the Christian Crusade Against Truth and Freedom

Rick Warren: Master Assimilator for the Christian Collective

[NOTE: Quotes in this paper, unless otherwise indicated, come from Billy Graham's first book, Peace With God. Page numbers refer to the revised paperback edition, published in 1984. Historical information was drawn from the hardcover edition of Graham's autobiography, Just As I Am. Scriptural passages were taken from The Billy Graham Training Center Bible, which uses the New King James translation.]

Preface

Here is my third paper concerning the potential for dictatorship in the United States. My first two papers focused on the political danger posed by religious conservatives. In Rush Limbaugh: Voice of the Religious Threat in America, I briefly described the enemy ideology; and in Sean Hannity and the Tactics of the Enemy, I addressed some of the strategies that religious conservatives use to spread their ideas throughout the culture.

This third essay takes a more fundamental look at the threat of American dictatorship. Putting politics and the media in the background, I more critically examine the threat's religious nature. Here I inspect the evangelical creed of Billy Graham. In my view, his brand of Christian faith is the root cause of countless problems with today's culture.

The Evangelist of the Masses

In 1934 Billy Graham committed his life to Jesus Christ. He was sixteen years old.

By 1940 he was an ordained Southern Baptist minister, graduated from the Florida Bible Institute with a bachelor's degree in theology.

In 1949 he achieved national fame during a celebrated campaign in Los Angeles, where famous radio personality Stuart Hamblen publicly pledged his life to Christ after listening to Graham's sermons.

Graham's popularity quickly blossomed with some additional help from William Randolph Hearst, who allegedly ordered his many newspapers to "puff" the promising young evangelist. It wasn't long before competing newspapers followed the media tycoon's lead.

Within a year of the Los Angeles Campaign, Graham started an evangelical radio program, The Hour of Decision; he began making propaganda films; and he formed the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), which, to this day, remains a powerhouse for the global distribution of Christianity with annual support and revenues now totaling approximately $90 million. (www.billygraham.org, BGEA 2003 Annual Report)

On July 14, 1950, Graham met Harry S. Truman at the White House. This was his first time witnessing to a President. During that conversation, in response to Graham's inquiry into his religious beliefs, Truman said that he tried to live according to "the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule." Graham boldly informed the President that that was not enough. "It's faith in Christ and His death on the Cross that you need," he replied. (Just As I Am, p. xx)

Since 1950 Graham has ministered to eleven American Presidents, befriending and influencing several of them. George W. Bush, for example, in his autobiography A Charge To Keep, credits Graham with planting a "mustard seed" of faith in his soul in 1985—a faith which grew for a year, he says, and ultimately helped him give up drinking and recommit his life to Christ.

Graham has also met many foreign leaders, such as Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II. In 1992 he handed copies of the Bible and his first book, Peace With God, to Kim Il Sung, then president of communist North Korea.

Most of Graham's life, however, has been spent attending to the masses of common folk. Over the decades, in addition to setting up charitable organizations, he's conducted hundreds of popular campaigns and crusades in cities all over the world. In 2004 he set a Rose Bowl attendance record for a non-sporting event, drawing more than 300,000 people over four days. (www.ap.org, Billy Graham Wraps Up Historic Crusade, Nov. 22, 2004) According to his bio, he's preached the gospel message to "more people face-to-face than anyone in history." He created two still-thriving periodicals, Christianity Today (originally aimed at presenting the fundamentalist viewpoint to Protestant liberals) and Decision (the official magazine of Graham's Association). He continues to make propaganda films; he's hosted successful television and radio programs; he has a newspaper column; and he's written numerous religious books. His classic, Peace With God, has been read by millions of people in over thirty languages.

In 1983 Ronald Reagan gave Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in recognition of his service to the nation. And in 1996 Graham rose to the highest rank of citizen when he was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, an honor which had been previously awarded only 113 times in America's history. He and his wife, Ruth, received this medal for their "outstanding and lasting contributions to morality, racial equality, family, philanthropy, and religion." Representative Charles Taylor (NC), who introduced the legislation to honor the Grahams, said at the time: "there exists no greater public servants in our nation, or indeed the world, than the Rev. and Mrs. Graham." To Taylor—and presumably to his fellow Congressmen who unanimously supported his bill—this evangelical couple "represent[s] the mainstream of American Christianity." (www.congressionalgoldmedal.com/BillyRuthGraham.htm)

The Bible Says …

With the money his Association collects, Graham builds schools for training more evangelists and sponsors seminars and conferences with the purpose of spreading Christian fundamentalism throughout the world. In the year 2000, for example, he invited 10,000 Christian leaders from more than 200 countries to Amsterdam, where they pledged their lives to the shared mission of "world evangelization." In their "Charter of Commitments," these Christians agreed that:

The Bible is indispensable to true evangelism. The Word of God itself provides both the content and authority for all evangelism. Without it there is no message to preach to the lost. (www.christianitytoday.com, The Amsterdam Declaration)

The evangelist's absolute dependency upon the Bible is also reflected in Peace With God. In this book, as is customary in many such religious works, Graham quotes and references the Bible ad nauseam. Phrases such as "The Bible tells us …" and "The Bible teaches …" can be found on practically every page—sometimes multiple times in the same paragraph. (p. 108) "The Bible says …" appears over 80 times within the 276 pages of the revised paperback edition—and that's only one example of many synonymous expressions used throughout the book.

Clearly, evangelists are intimately attached to the Bible. And to understand these people—to know what they truly represent—we ought to pay careful attention to their special relationship with the most popular and revered book in the history of Western civilization.

The Wedding of Ignorance and Contradiction

O God! There are many things in [the Bible] I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can't answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions … others are raising …

Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I'm going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word. (Just As I Am, p. 139)

At the ripe age of thirty, Graham programmed himself with the above standing order; he packed his suitcases and moved to the land of make-believe. He knew full well that he was ignorant of the truth and that the Bible was riddled with contradictions and impossibilities. Yet, still he married his mind to that ancient book which so thoroughly confounded him. He gave up on reason and science and placed his ring of faith upon the imaginary finger of God.

Graham must have had a damn good reason for wedding himself to the Bible, given all of its flaws:

If I could not trust the Bible, I could not go on. I would have to quit the school presidency. [At the time, Graham was president of Northwestern Schools, a Christian college in Minnesota.] I would have to leave pulpit evangelism … It was not too late to become a dairy farmer. (Just As I Am, p. 139)

Apparently Graham hated dairy farming more than he valued the truth.

An Anti-World Worldview

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)

The Bible taught Graham to hate dairy farming. It taught him, in fact, to hate the entire world. In Peace With God, Graham tells us that the Bible tells us that "[we] have three enemies that will be warring against [us] as long as [we] live." (p. 190) One of these "enemies" is: "the world … the cosmos, this world system." (p. 193) Graham says that this place tends to lure us into sinful pleasures. Therefore, we must take care to be "in" the world, but not "of" it. (p. 198)

Question: Why would the Bible and Mr. Graham want us to think that "the world" was our enemy?

Perhaps it has something to do with the stipulated fact that the Bible contradicts much of what we know to be true about the world. Hell, even Graham recognized the Bible's "many seeming contradictions" and its inconsistency with scientific findings.

Indeed, the World is a natural enemy of the Bible. By merely existing, Nature undermines the validity of much of what's written in the Testaments. For Graham's myth-based worldview to survive such a powerful, natural assault, the World itself must be utterly demonized and disregarded.

In Peace With God, Graham wastes zero time beginning his demonization of reality. Here is how he starts the preface to the revised edition:

In the three decades since Peace with God was originally written, an embattled world seems to have permanently lost its fragile grasp on serenity. For the first time in history, an entire generation of young people lives in fear that time, in the form of a nuclear holocaust, will run out before they can grow up, which may explain in part why tragic numbers of them at the peak of youthful promise find various ways to drop out of life. We have become a generation of escape artists. As I write these words, armed conflicts are raging in many places around the globe and the streets of more than one great city ring with gunfire. An American president was assassinated since the book was written, as were an attorney general, a civil rights leader, an Egyptian president and a famous rock star. Another president was the victim of an attempted assassination. Hostages have been in many places and a Korean passenger jet shot down. Many wars have been fought. Nor can we turn to the security of our homes to find inner peace, for many of our homes simply aren't there anymore as nearly half of all new marriages now end in divorce. This strife that runs rampant in the world at large is but a reflection of the conflict storming individual hearts. (p. vii)

And concluding the book Graham reminds us that:

The world is becoming more helpless and more hopeless as we enter this terribly involved and complicated computerized technological age. (p. 260)

And also:

It seems that the world is heading toward Armageddon … We're not going to have peace—permanent peace—until the Prince of Peace comes. (p. 273)

Wars, family strife, helplessness, hopelessness, terrible computers, Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus … If you haven't yet figured out the proper Christian attitude toward the world, Graham does have a more direct approach:

Our attitude toward [the world] as Christians can be summed up in one word—renounce. There can be no bargaining, compromise, or hesitation. (p. 198)

Remember: True Christians must renounce the world because it is their natural enemy. If they didn't give up reality, they might actually renounce the Bible, instead, on account of its many problems and contradictions. Then evangelists like Graham, whose livelihood depends upon the validity of the Gospels, would have to find a real job—such as dairy farming.

Is this principle still too abstract? If so, Graham is happy to further concretize it for you:

When Christ enters into the human heart, He expects to be Lord and Master. He commands complete surrender. He demands control of your intellectual processes. He requires that your body be subject to Him. He expects you to surrender your talents and abilities to Him. He expects nothing less than that all your work and labor will be performed in His name.

Too many of today's professing Christians would give up going to church before they would give up getting a new refrigerator. Given a choice between making the down payment on a new car or contributing to the building of a new Sunday school, it is easy to guess what the decision of many would be. Thousands of so-called Christians are putting money and the things that make up our high standard of living ahead of the teachings of Christ. We can find time for the movies, baseball, or football games, but we can't find time for God. We can save toward a new home or a bigger television set, but we feel we no longer can afford to tithe. This is idolatry. (p. 148)

Renounce this world, Graham says, and surrender your mind and money to the Bible's fantasyland: a magical place where the heavens and the earth were created ex nihilo by a singular, mysterious force, who today conveniently reveals itself only to people of special faith; a dreamland where human beings sprang from dirt and one male bone; where Adam's "sin" is supernaturally inherited by every newborn babe; where a man once walked on water and rose from the dead, not to mention every other physically impossible thing that Jesus did; and where reunion with God requires that we ignore the knowledge of our senses and reason and have absolute faith in the Bible's fables. Yes, Graham says, believe in this alternate universe of talking snakes and virgin mommies. Support your evangelist. Don't buy that new household appliance, you idolater! Tithe to your local church, instead.

How else will religion survive the awful blows of reality?

Satan's Irrefutable Logic

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. (Genesis 3:1)

Evangelism has many powerful enemies. In addition to its omnipresent, metaphysical antagonist, the World, it also has a terrible man-made attacker with which it must contend. This foe is Reason, or, as Christians have personified it: the Antichrist, Lucifer, Satan, the Deceiver, the Murderer, the Ruler of this World, the Serpent of Old, the Prince of Darkness, the Wicked One, the Father of Lies, the Adversary …

[T]he devil is a creature of vastly superior intelligence, a mighty and gifted spirit of infinite resourcefulness … His reasoning is brilliant, his plans ingenious, his logic well nigh irrefutable. God's mighty adversary is no bungling creature with horns and tail—he is a prince of lofty stature, of unlimited craft and cunning, able to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself, able to turn every situation to his own advantage. (p. 63)

You cannot argue with [Satan] for he is the greatest debater of all time. (p. 191)

Question: Why exactly is Reason (i.e., "the devil") an enemy of the Bible and Mr. Graham?

Well, clearly the Bible cannot compete with the mountain of rationality and science against its fictional world. And such a radical evasion of the truth as that of the evangelist must necessarily result in more and more dishonesty and an increasing supply of enemies. You see, once the world is rejected and demonized, reason will share its fate, because reason and logic are the mental tools with which man understands the real world. Reason presents another sinister threat to the Bible-thumper's means of survival. For, if too many people are logically persuaded to reject the Scriptures and accept reality, then it's off to the dairy farm for Graham and friends.

We know that the Antichrist will appear and try to ensnare the minds and hearts of men. (p. 63)

I suspect that the myth of Satan and Hell is a conscious attempt to frighten humans away from their own reasoning minds, just as I suspect that the myth of God and Heaven is an attempt to guilt humans away from the facts and values of this world. Being fundamentally and professionally dependent upon the Bible's particular fiction and lies, people like Graham necessarily accept its never-ending, no-holds-barred battle with the Objective World and the Reasoning Mind:

Always the devil is standing at your side tempting, coaxing, threatening, cajoling. And always on your other side stands Jesus, the all-loving, the all-forgiving, waiting for you to turn to Him and ask His aid, waiting to give you supernatural power to resist the Evil one. You belong to one or the other. (pp. 64-5)

Perhaps Graham knows that the World and the Mind, if not stopped, will one day fully mythologize the stories of the Bible, just as they made mincemeat of the Greek gods and several other defunct religions. Human history has painted a long picture of one religious failure after another—it is a tale of reason and science evolving and growing stronger and faith and religion flailing and slowly dying out. And one day Man will, most likely, embrace the Tree of Knowledge and the Logic of Satan. He will finally understand truth and falsehood, good and evil, as it relates to the Bible and the World. He will cure himself of the insanity of revelation and prayer. And he will end his faith in the Judeo-Christian absurdity.

I believe that religion's day of reckoning is coming. That victory, however, is not an absolute certainty. For, people like Graham are doing everything in their power to stop people like me.

The Myth of the Sinful Self

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)

Graham's blacklist wouldn't be complete without some mention of Human Nature:

The third enemy that you will face immediately is the lust of the flesh. The flesh is that evil tendency of your inward self. (p. 196)

Bible-loving Christians believe that Human Nature, or the Self, is also to be renounced, because it is inherently sinful:

Just as we inherit characteristics such as intellect, coloring, body size, temperament, etc., from our parents and grandparents, mankind inherited its fallen, corrupt nature from Adam. (p. 46)

It is not difficult, then, to understand the mythological source of the hardcore Christian's increasingly maniacal anti-selfism. God, you see, initially rubbed some dirt together and created a servant named Adam, who, in turn, evilized his own soul by foolishly disobeying the Lord's will and eating the forbidden fruit. Adam's sinful nature was then passed down throughout the generations of man, as if it were a hair color. And this bit of fantasy (Original Sin), says the evangelist, explains why you have a selfish self, which does all sorts of nasty stuff that God hates.

Egoism and selfishness are the marks of sin as surely as are theft and murder. (p. 55)

To anti-self Christians, acting on the principle of self-interest is equated with murder. To obey thy "corrupted" nature, they say, is to murder thine hope of Heaven. To consider this animated body to be my most precious value, as egoists believe, is to damn my soul to eternal Hell. My Fleshy Self, therefore, is my own worst enemy—right after the Objective World and the Logical Devil, of course.

Question: Why must the Bible and Mr. Graham make an enemy of our selfish Human Nature (i.e., "the flesh")?

Let's consider some basic facts. First, like all living things, the human body has fundamental requirements for its continued existence. I'm talking here about conditions of life that come even before food and water. What are these needs? Well, they happen to be precisely the first two "enemies" of the true Christian: objective reality (the world) and reason (the devil).

You see, in order to survive, the human being must rely on his rational understanding of the world. If denied his perception and conceptual brainpower, he will not be able to find food, water, and shelter, and he will die. It's as simple as that.

Thus, having made mortal enemies of the World and Reason, consistent Christians find it necessary to also condemn the Human Self. For, man relies upon this world and his reason in order to live. If he is permitted his means of survival, he will ultimately ruin everything upon which religion is based. He will come to know myth from fact. And, in the end, he will choose the truth in order to survive. Evangelists must, therefore, ideologically sentence man to selflessness and death on account of what he is: a user of reason in an objective world system.

This, my dear reader, is the face of supreme evil. It is the creed of evasion, lies, and sacrifice. It is the expected design of the master scam artist, who takes people for everything they're worth—everything. The Bible itself is his handbook for pulling the wool over society's eyes. It is a tome for leeches. And people like Graham, who make their living by selling the Bible's fraudulent wares, use its vacuum power to suck charitable gifts and works from productive men—in order to sustain their own parasitic existence.

And what, might we ask, does man get in return for sacrificing his own life to the Bible and its preachers? Ah, yes, he gets a born-again self. Another fantasy. Another lie:

… I want to tell you some glorious news. Jesus said you can be born anew! You can have the fresh and better start for which you've prayed. You can lose your despised and sinful self and step forth a new person, a clean and peaceful being from whom sin has been washed away. (p. 165)

While man's real person is being drained dry of life and value, he can imagine Jesus providing him with a new nature, a new self, to replace the one that's enslaved to religion.

And what kind of life can man look forward to with his born-again self?

This new nature that you receive from God is bent to the will of God. You will want to do only His will. You are utterly and completely devoted to Him. There is a new self-determination, inclination, disposition, a new principle of living, new choices. You seek to glorify God. You seek fellowship with other Christians in the church. You love the Bible. You love to spend time in prayer with God. Your whole disposition is changed. Whereas your life once was filled with unbelief, the root and foundation of all sin, and you once doubted God, now you believe Him. Now you have utmost confidence and faith in God and His Word. (pp. 171-2)

In other words, you become a dutiful slave to a higher power.

Praying for a Dictator

Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. (Matthew 24:42)

So far I have pointed to Graham's three primary enemies, those that he actually admits to in Peace With God: the World (objective reality), the Devil (reason), and the Flesh (selfishness). Now I shall discuss something else that I suspect he hates almost as passionately. That is: individual rights and capitalism.

As far as I can tell, Graham rarely, if ever, denounces these ideas by name. They are not part of his official shitlist, which he discusses at length in chapter 14. Nevertheless, he cannot deny that he advocates the antithesis of an individual rights-respecting political system such as laissez faire capitalism. In fact, he has devoted his entire adult life to preaching about and praying for the future religious dictatorship of Jesus Christ:

One of these days the sky is going to break open and the Lord Jesus Christ will come back. He will set up His reign upon this planet[.] (p. 273)

Out of curiosity: What kind of ruler would Lord Christ be, Mr. Graham?

Jesus demands Lordship over all such things. He wants you to yield everything concerning your social life, your family life, your business life to Him. He must have first place in everything you do or think or say, for when you truly repent you turn toward God in everything. (p. 149)

Wow! Is that really what Jesus would do? Let's hear it from the Savior's own mouth, shall we?

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? (Luke 9:23-5)

You know, to me it sounds like King Jesus is threatening our liberty. He seems to be saying that either we surrender to his autocratic rule or suffer some type of cruel fate. Such an ultimatum one delivers to a mortal enemy, not a peaceful neighbor. And, to think, this kind of medieval mentality is idolized by today's evangelicals!

After looking at all of this evidence, I conclude that the Bible is a kind of declaration of war against civilization itself, and that Graham and friends are the Gospel's dutiful foot soldiers, spreading the Holy Dictator's surrender terms to the four corners of the globe:

The greatest warfare going on in the world today is between mankind and God. People may not realize that they're at war with God. But if they don't know Jesus Christ as Savior and if they haven't surrendered to Him as Lord, God considers them to be at war with Him. (p. 268)

Question: Why must the Bible and Mr. Graham promote the idea of religious dictatorship and war?

Again, I think the answer resides in man's nature—only this time, man's nature as it applies to a social setting. Understand, first, that when government doesn't deny humans their ability to use reason and reality to sustain and improve their life—i.e., when the state recognizes and protects man's individual rights—rational philosophers and scientists eventually discover the truth by utilizing their skills in observation, experimentation, and logic. These kinds of minds tend to expose more and more of the false and harmful nature of religions like Christianity. Thus, in order to conceal the evil face of religious belief, a powerful dictator must eventually be installed to check the progress of rational philosophy, scientific inquiry, and personal rights within the society. This dictator—whether an individual strongman or a powerful collective—must be given ultimate power to wage total war upon the voices of truth and freedom. Otherwise, the forces of religion are doomed to extinction.

With such potent, omnipresent enemies—and with such a massive reliance upon the initiation of force—should it be surprising that devout Christians believe in and prepare for the ever-coming Armageddon?

While we would like to take hope that universal peace is drawing closer, it appears instead that we are standing on the brink of Armageddon. (p. 59)

And given their fundamental evasions and lies and utter estrangement from this world, should it be surprising that their deepest longing is to flee Earth during the time of Rapture?

We who are alive on that day will be caught up together with those who have gone before to meet the Lord in the air … The day is fast approaching when Jesus Christ will come back to "snatch away" His followers from all the graveyards of the world, and those of us who are alive and remain will join them in the great escape! That is the hope of the future for the Christian. (p. 256)

If I had renounced this world and my life, I would probably yearn for death, too.

The Master Race of Born Agains

And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. (Revelation 2:26)

Jesus, of course, is not actually going to return and take up his throne as the Holy Dictator of Earth. However, this doesn't change the fact that millions upon millions of Christians are being conditioned to accept the idea of a future religious dictatorship—thanks to the Bible and the evangelist's message of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.

Question: If not Christ, then who? Who is most likely to lord over us?

Indeed, I believe that evangelists, for quite some time, have been training an alternate dictator for America. It's called: the born-again Christian majority.

Born-again Christians believe: that man in his sinful "natural state [is] actually at enmity with God"; that "[t]here is nothing about the old nature that God will accept"; that if we want to avoid Hell, we have to believe that Jesus died for our sins, surrender our life to him, and go through a "second birth" process; that "[t]he life that comes from the new birth cannot be obtained by natural development or self-effort"; that "[b]eing born again is altogether a work of the Holy Spirit"; and that this new, divine self is literally "attached to God for eternity." (pp. 167-70)

Millions of Christians believe that they are in possession of a supernatural, born-again self. They believe that the Holy Spirit is inside them—that they are God's chosen people. They believe that Jesus literally "takes up residence in [their] hearts" (p. 170) and issues orders to them through the Bible and the "sixth sense … which is the ability to believe." (p. 181) And, thus, here we might observe the makings of a divine, superhuman master race:

We Christians are now duly appointed and commissioned ambassadors of the King of kings. We are to let our flag fly high over our embassy …

We are to take our stand and let all those around us know that we are Christians. We are to bear witness for Christ …

God's purpose for you and me after we have been converted is that we be witnesses to His saving grace and power. We are to be commandos for Christ. We are to be minute-men for Him. (p. 212)

These "commandos for Christ" make up the majority of Americans presently manipulating and reforming our country's political system. They are the people who support laws against worldly pleasures (drugs, sex, gambling) and regulations against rational values (money, property, science). In the name of "compassion" and "fairness," they support involuntary taxation of virtually everything under the Sun. They are the people who use the power of government to forcibly take from the selfish and productive and generously give to the selfless and predacious.

These people may call themselves Republicans or Democrats. They may bicker and fight among themselves over whom to victimize next—and whether to loosen the chains around favored slaves and hostages. (After all, parasitism must be a tricky, dangerous business at the Christian level.) Some of these people may want to control and violate your mind, or your body, or both at the same time. Some may dream of raping and pillaging infidels. Others may hunger for the neck and lifeblood of capitalists. And when they don't get along, or when prey is scarce, these barbarians and vampires may even sink their claws into each other.

Let us always remember, however, that in the blackened core of their souls born-again Christians religiously hate this world and mankind. They are mortal enemies of reason and civilization. They despise objective truth and freedom. And so, it should be no surprise to us when their bubbling venom spills onto their political votes and democratic laws.

We should expect from them nothing less than a Gospel-based dictatorship.

Peace Without God

If you are still with me, dear reader, then by now you should see how the Bible and Graham's Peace With God are, implicitly, proclamations of war against reality and man. You understand that a good, honest person does not preach that the world is your enemy; he does not say that devils use logic to deceive you; that your nature is inherently sinful; and that you should therefore unconditionally surrender your life to the will of King Jesus. You know that the faithful Christian's worst enemies are the rational individual's best friends.

In this paper I have laid out several of my better criticisms of Christianity. I have tried to restrain my raw disgust for revealed religion, while relatively calmly exposing the ideological evil of the Bible and Mr. Graham. I hope that the threat of evangelism is somewhat clearer to you now.

Concerning Good "Christians"

One thing I have yet to address is the possibility that a few "Christians" are, for the most part, intelligent and decent people who honestly love this world, their reasoning mind, and their own natural self. They have a productive life and a non-religious career path. They take ideas and science seriously, and they understand and respect the individual rights of others. Basically, they are "Christian" in name only, and they don't consciously realize the anti-man nature of their purported belief system.

I happen to believe, from personal experience, that such people may be a tiny to small percentage of the Christian masses. To the extent that these "Christians" live a peaceful, non-Christian lifestyle, I salute them and want them on my side against the fundamentalists.

However, to the extent that anyone submits to the essential principles and commandments of Christianity and promotes or tolerates this system of evil, I thoroughly and utterly condemn them. And I promise to intelligently defend myself against whatever force they use or threaten to use on me.

I am participating in the intellectual resistance against the waxing threat of religious dictatorship in America. These papers are written not in aggression, but in self-defense. Thus, if my desperate literary acts of retaliation happen to unintentionally offend a few truly good "Christian" readers, then I accept no blame whatsoever. I offer no apology. I say: Blame those responsible for forcing me into this wild, urgent fight. Blame those who deny and endanger my individual rights. Blame my evil targets: the most consistent and visible representatives of Christianity.

Blame Billy Graham and friends.

My Next Battle

Another topic I have yet to consider at length is the antidote to the Christian poison, because that is beyond the scope of this essay. However, I do plan to offer some thoughts on this matter in my next paper, which will deal with Rick Warren, founding pastor of the famous Saddleback Church and author of the super-popular Christian manifesto, The Purpose-Driven Life.

In the meantime, if you haven't done so already, I encourage you to study Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. In direct contrast to Christianity, the Objectivist system is pro-world, pro-logic, and pro-self. It advocates objective truth and freedom. And it is the number one reason why I have personally achieved peace without God.