Alternative Religion/ Library

THE “INFIDEL” REDEEMS CHRISTENDOM

As very pertinent to an understanding of the Rebirth of Learning, a paragraph will be devoted to a summary notice of Arabian culture and its saving influence on Christian ignorance; for it was, the Arabs who brought learning, literature and science to benighted Christendom and created the Renaissance which ended the Dark Ages of Faith.

”When the Arabs came in contact with other civilizations (in the eighth century), notably with that of Persia, their speculative and scientific activities were stimulated into action. About A.D. 750 the Abassides, an enlightened line of Caliphs, came to the throne, who encouraged learning, and patronized the representatives of foreign culture. ... They made ample use of Greek philosophy, and in their free inquiries into the secrets of nature, in which they soon outstripped the Greeks themselves, they paid little attention to the precepts of the Koran. The Arabians translated [the works of Plato, Galen, and Aristotle]. ... The Arabians developed Greek philosophy in its relation to medicine, and in this regard they exerted the most far-reaching influence in Europe. ... The Arabian philosophy, as is well known, exercised a profound influence on the Scholastic philosophy of the twelfth and succeeding centuries.” (CE. i, 675-6.) “The Arabian conquerors had learned from the Syrians the arts and sciences of the Greek world. They became especially proficient in medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, for the study of which they erected in every part of their domain schools and libraries. In the twelfth century—[the first Christians ones were in the thirteenth]—Moorish Spain had nineteen colleges, and their renown attracted hundreds of Christian scholars from every part of Europe. Herein lay a grave menace to Christian orthodoxy.

”The BIBLE had been set up as an infallible source of knowledge not only in matters of religion, but of history, chronology, and physical science. The result was a reaction against the very essentials of Christianity. ... Biblical chronology, as then [19th century] understood, and the literal historic ²⁹⁹ interpretation of the Book of Genesis were thrown into confusion by the advancing sciences—astronomy, with its grand nebular hypothesis; biology, with its even more fruitful theory of evolution; geology, and prehistoric archaeology. ... But able apologists were forthcoming to assay a conciliation of science and religion”! (CE. i, 621, 622.) Be it noted, that it was not until late nineteenth century, when natural Science had made the “sacred science” of the Bible ridiculous, that the “conciliators” came forth with the Big False Pretense that “the Holy Bible was never intended as a Book of Science, but only of moral and religious edification”! Why then, one wonders, does Holy Bible teach “Science”—abound in what is—though false and ridiculous—essentially teachings of “science”: e.g. the origin and form of the earth, and its fixity in space at the center of the universe as the “footstool of God”; the position and movements of sun and stars in the phony “firmament of heaven”; the origin and “Fall of Man” and the “special creation” of animals; the geographical absurdities of the Garden of Eden and its Four Rivers, the Flood and the Divine original and purpose of the Rainbow; the differentiation of languages at Babel; the cause of disease as the reactions to malignant devils in the inner works of men, and the Divine prescriptions for cure of the “Great Physician,” the “Lord who healeth thee,” by spit-salve, prayers of faith, ointment, holy water, and devil-exorcism by ignorant priests? If the Holy Ghost of God wrote or inspired the Bible, funny it is that it talked such foolishness, which was exactly what ignorant priests would have written out of the ignorance and superstitions of their times, without any inspiration of God to confirm them in the nonsense. If the All-Wise God who dictated the Blessed Bible and its foolish “science falsely so called,” had just spoken the facts of his own divine Creation, truthfully,—had just once said that the earth is round instead of flat, and revolves on its axis and around the sun instead of standing still while the sun went around it; that disease is caused by dirt and germs, instead of by devils; and had given sensible precepts of prophylaxis and of cure; in a word, had “revealed” out of his supposed Infinite Wisdom some of the things which are just now, after some thousands of years of Bible-worship and bloody Church-repression, being painfully and dearly worked out by heroic human effort,—Who would not gladly and proudly hail the “Holy Bible, Book Divine,” and for a certainty know that it was truly the intellectual work of a God? But! The priests and the parsons pretend yet that it is Divine; men of science and the coming generation know that it is ignorant priestly Imposture.

But to return to the Arabs, who “in their free inquiries into the secrets of Nature paid little attention to the precepts of the Koran,” and were destined to “throw into confusion” the “sacred science” of the Blessed Bible. “ It cannot be exactly said when the first translations of Arabic writings began to be received by the Christians of the West: probably about 1000. In the beginning of the twelfth century the contributions of Mohammedan science and philosophy to Latin Christendom became more and more frequent and important. ... About 1134 John of Luna translated Al-Fergani's treatise‘ Astronomy,' which was an abridgement of Ptolemy's‘ Almagest,' thereby introducing Christians to the Ptolemaic system,” —followed by a page of other Arabian works translated for the Christians. (CE, xii, 49; cf. ib. xv, 184.) Thus ³⁰⁰ Christendom got even its grand fable of the earth as the center of the universe from the Greek Ptolemy through the Arabs,—and damned Copernicus and martyred Galileo for daring to disprove it . “In 1085 Toledo was taken from the Moors, and Spain became the transmitter of Arabian medicine.” (CE. x, 130.) Gerard of Cremona (died 1187), “ a twelfth century student of Arabic science and translator from Arabic into Latin, went to Toledo, and soon acquired a great proficiency in Arabic; he translated not only the‘ Almagest,' but also the entire works of Avicenna, into Latin; he translated 76 books from Arabic into Latin. His activities, and that of a group of men who formed a regular college of translators at Toledo, brought the world of Arabian learning within reach of the scholars of Latin Christendom, and prepared the way for that conflict of ideas out of which sprang the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century.” (CE. vi, 468.) At this late period of Christian intellectual awakening, now for the first time “Aristotle's philosophy was finding its way through Moorish and Jewish channels into the Christian schools of Europe.” (CE. vi, 555.) Even “the compass was invented in the East and brought to Europe by the Arabs.” (CE. i, 379.) And so of scores of inventions and branches of learning which were known to and cultivated by the Infidel Arabs, which through them became elements of the slow civilizing of quasi-barbarian Christendom so long under the divine tutelage of Holy Church and the priests.

Thus Christendom had wallowed through a thousand years of Christian ignorance until it was awakened by the shock of contact with Arabian civilization and learning through the Crusades. Then, slowly and dangerously , “as might have been foreseen, a revival of learning, so soon as the West was capable of it,” occurred. (CE. xii, 765.) One can only wonder why the Christian West, instructed by God's own Teacher, was not sooner capable of learning anything but monkish lore or religious lies. The Church apologizes, that “ the middle Ages occupy those tumultuous years when barbarians turned Christians were learning slowly to be civilized, from 476 [the end of the Roman Empire] to 1400.” (CE. xii, 765.) But, the Eastern Empire, dominated by the original “Orthodox” Eastern Catholic Church, was never “overthrown by the barbarians,” but remained in quiet and undisputed possession of its Faith and “Christian Civilization”; but its whole history is almost as foul and besotted, blood-reddened and Christian-barbarous as the Western Empire. And, since the closing of the Pagan schools in 529 at Christian behest, “the Church had no rival” as sole and inspired civilizer and instructor of Christendom. The poor Arabs were at that time disunited and ever-warring tribes of idolatrous barbarians, steeped in ignorance and “sin.” Mohammed fled from their fury in the Great Hegira in 622; he died ten years later, in 632. Yet, in exactly 100 years, even before they were checked by the Christian Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in the heart of France, in the year 732, the Mohammedan Arabs became and remained the most highly civilized people in the world, the masters of an illustrious Empire of far greater extent than Christendom,—and which embraced the greater part of Christendom; and minions of good Christians quickly dropped God and Christ and became worshippers of Allah and his Prophet Mohammed. A strange Providence of the Christian God! This leads to a moment's disposal of one of the most pretentious and specious clerical claims, that the “divinity” of the Christian religion is proved by its “miraculous spread and preservation.” ³⁰¹

THE “MIRACULOUS ATTESTATIONS” OF CHRISTIANITY

One of the Church's most precious platitudes is its oft-used plea of “the demonstration of the truth of Christianity based on the wonderful propagation of His religion.” (CE. i, 621.) Starting with a handful of Galilean peasants, in three centuries, up to the time of Constantine, it claims to have been “preached to every creature which is under heaven” (Gal. i, 23), and to have won maybe a million or two out of the hundred millions of the Roman Empire. We have seen the mode and manner of “conversion” of very many of these comers to the Christ; as well as of the most dubious Christian efficacy of the hordes of “barbarians” later won by the missionary sword. This “rapid spread” and propagation of the Faith is a “triumphant proof of the divinity and truth of Christianity”! It is also a familiar and threadbare “proof,” the “miraculous” persistence and preservation of the Christian religion through some nineteen centuries. If this be a proof, many “false” religions are even more divine and true; for the religions of Brahma, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, have existed and persisted, all for many centuries, some for a millennium, before Christianity, and ever since until now, and they embrace together countless millions more of devout worshippers than does Christianity. And we have seen the conditions of ignorance in which Christianity flourished and the terror by which it was preserved during the ages of Faith; and all world knows what the Church has become, and is faster becoming, with the advent and advance of the Age of Reason.

But if the slow and tortuous spread of Christianity by force and arms is proof of its “miraculous” character, what shall we say of Mohammedanism? “Its uninterrupted spread, from the seventh century to the present time, among all the races of the continent, is one of the most remarkable facts of history. Today a Mussulman may travel from Monrovia to Mecca, and thence to Batavia without once setting foot on‘ infidel' soil. Three phases in this movement of expansion may be distinguished. In the first (638-1050) the Arabs, in a rapid advance, propagated Islam along the whole Mediterranean coast, from Egypt to Morocco, a conquest greatly aided by the exploitation of the country by Byzantine [Christian] governors, the divisions among the Christians, and political disorganization. The second period (1050-1750)—all Africa except Ethiopia. ... The last period of the Mohammedan expansion extends to the present time. ... Daily, one may say, Islam spreads.” (CE. i, 187.) Christianity retrogresses. Aye, worse than that, for the vaunted miraculous nature and preservation of Christianity: “The one dangerous rival with which Christianity had to contend in the Middle Ages was the Mohammedan religion. Within a century of its birth, it had torn from Christendom some of its fairest lands, and extended like a huge crescent from Spain over Northern Africa, Egypt, PALESTINE, Arabia, Persia, and Syria, to the eastern part of Asia Minor. The danger which this fanatic religion offered to Christian faith, in countries where the two religions come in contact, was not to be lightly treated.” (CE. i, 620-1.) Thus at the first onrush of the champions of Mohammed the Impostor, of a notoriously false Faith, the “Infidels” wrested from the devotees of the True Faith their holiest shrines, the empty Sepulchre of their dead God, the sites of his birth, crucifixion and resurrection; and they hold them unto this day. During three ³⁰² hundred years of bloody and fanatic “Holy Wars” united Christendom lost millions of lives and treasure in efforts to “rescue” this empty grave of its Christ from the impudent impostors; but for three hundred years the armies of the Cross were beaten and driven away from their sacred goal. “This immense fact,” says Ingersoll, “sowed the seeds of distrust throughout Christendom, and millions began to lose confidence in a God who had been vanquished by Mohammed. ... At that time the world believed in trial by battle—that God would take the side of the right—and there had been a trial by battle between the Cross and the Crescent, and Mohammed had been victorious.” In their Westward course of conquest, “the Moslems even crossed the Pyrennees, threatening to stable their horses in St. Peter's at Rome, but were at last defeated by Charles Martel at Tours, in 732, just one hundred years from the death of Mohammed. This defeat arrested their western conquests and saved Europe. ... They were finally conquered by the Mongols and Turks, in the thirteenth century, but the new conquerors adopted Mohammed's religion, and in the fifteenth century, overthrew the tottering Byzantine Empire (1453). From that stronghold (Constantinople) they even threatened the German Empire, but were successfully defeated at the gates of Vienna, and driven back across the Danube, in 1683.” (CE. x, 425.) The Christian God had failed to protect and save the vast majority of his own people. As Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes aptly says: “If the test of the validity of a religion is to be its growth, spread and proselyting capacity, then Mohammedanism can make a more impressive appeal than Christianity. Christianity had the advantage of being launched six and a half centuries before Mohammedanism. Yet today the Mohammedans far outnumber the Christians, and the Mohammedans have, moreover, reconquered the very areas in which Christianity arose and established its first strongholds.” (Barnes, The Twilight of Christianity, p. 416.) This may close with a quaint specimen of medieval Christian historical learning, from that great literary light of the Church, Monk Matthew Paris (died 1259), who, says CE., “as an historian holds the first place among English chroniclers.” In “his great work,‘ Chronica Majora,' from the Creation until the year of his death,” the erudite Monk explains the unworthy motives why Mohammed quit the True Church and became an impious Infidel: “It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and became heretic because he failed to be elected pope. Also having drunk to excess, he fell by the roadside, and in this condition was killed by swine. And for that reason, his followers abhor pork even unto this day”! This notable occurrence was probably later than the time when Buddha was canonized a Catholic Saint.

“THE MARKS OF THE BEAST”

”And the Beast was taken ... which deceived them that had received the Mark of the Beast ... and both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.” (Rev. xix, 20.)  

In a word, men had long since come painfully to realize the incontrovertible truth stated by the historian of Civilization in England: “The prosperity of nations depends upon principles to which the clergy, as a body, are invariably opposed.” (Buckle, Vol. 11, Pt. 1, p. 42.) What of the divine mark of “unity” is thus left in the Church is the fast disappearing coherence of decaying particles in face of the general debacle attendant upon the Articles of Death.

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