Anne Frank was fifteen years old when the Nazis discovered her family’s hiding place in Amsterdam. She had been hiding behind a false wall, in cramped quarters, supplied rations by a sympathetic Christian family for two years before they were found and arrested in 1945.
They were all sent to death camps. Anne died seven months later in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany after having seen her sister die before her. Her crime was she was born and raised in the religion of her family. She was Jewish.
Anyone who has read the book or seen the movie “The Diary of Anne Frank” is familiar with the horrific existence this little girl had to endure before and up to her death. They may also recall that her writings exposed an innocents and goodness best personified by one line in her diary that she wrote while in hiding and living in fear dated July 1944. That one line read: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
And this would be the end of the story of that girl whose fear and pain we could only imagine, but which was finally put to rest with her death; except according to Christian doctrine it doesn’t end there. Not by a long shot.
No. Christian doctrine is very clear, very succinct, and very definitive: The only way to the Father is through the Son. In other words, unless one believes in the divinity of Jesus before they die they cannot enter heaven and are cast into Hell with the rest of the damned. And there, according to Christian tradition, the inmates are tortured endlessly. They burn in a lake of fire. They are tormented by demons. This all lasts for an eternity with no hope of relief. According to Christianity this is where Anne Frank is now. Those in heaven are treated to live video feeds of the damned going through this eternal punishment --sort of a special reward for belief. **
One can imagine that according to this lovely Christian doctrine that in her off hours in Hell, Anne is rooming with Hitler, Pol Pot, the 9/11 terrorists, and every child molester and mass murder who failed to accept Jesus as his savior before the switch was pulled and electricity coursed through their bodies extinguishing their despicable lives.
And why? Why is that fifteen year old girl who suffered so much in life condemned to an after-life of never ending suffering? Her crime was she was born and raised in the religion of her family. She was Jewish.
Some liberal Christians will say they reject that doctrine; that they don’t buy into it; that God is a loving God and would never permit such a thing. But that’s because they are in denial, preferring not to stare directly into the face of an intolerant, fear mongering, threatening and intimidating doctrine that is at the very heart of Christianity.
The True Christians will shrug their shoulders and say “God gave her free will. It was her choice to accept or reject Jesus.” In other words, she could have abandoned the faith of her parents, her grand parents, her great grandparents, etc., and simply seen it as a false religion, and come over to Jesus. Failing to do so wasn’t God’s fault – “HE didn’t condemn her – she condemned herself.” Some of them actually believe what they are saying is reasonable and just. They don’t even give it a second thought. I mean heck, don’t blame God for the acts of this 15 year old Jewess Christ Killer.
Others mouth similar, albeit less vehement words, but you can tell they are simply toeing the Christian line, feeling uncomfortable with it. Some will even offer that she may have accepted Jesus while in the death camp and could be with Him now. But they know what they are doing. They know they are trying to make the unjust sound just; the unfair sound fair; an inexplicably intolerant and horrific doctrine seem not so bad. They are embarrassed by the very doctrine that they themselves embrace.
And so, according to Christian doctrine, this innocent Jewish girl, like so many millions of others like her, was victimized twice: first by an inhumane totalitarian state to which murder of the innocent was a right; and then victimized by a religious doctrine to which eternal torture of an innocent is her just desserts.
Yep, Anne Frank had it coming. Just ask a loving Christian, or their loving God.
They were all sent to death camps. Anne died seven months later in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany after having seen her sister die before her. Her crime was she was born and raised in the religion of her family. She was Jewish.
Anyone who has read the book or seen the movie “The Diary of Anne Frank” is familiar with the horrific existence this little girl had to endure before and up to her death. They may also recall that her writings exposed an innocents and goodness best personified by one line in her diary that she wrote while in hiding and living in fear dated July 1944. That one line read: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
And this would be the end of the story of that girl whose fear and pain we could only imagine, but which was finally put to rest with her death; except according to Christian doctrine it doesn’t end there. Not by a long shot.
No. Christian doctrine is very clear, very succinct, and very definitive: The only way to the Father is through the Son. In other words, unless one believes in the divinity of Jesus before they die they cannot enter heaven and are cast into Hell with the rest of the damned. And there, according to Christian tradition, the inmates are tortured endlessly. They burn in a lake of fire. They are tormented by demons. This all lasts for an eternity with no hope of relief. According to Christianity this is where Anne Frank is now. Those in heaven are treated to live video feeds of the damned going through this eternal punishment --sort of a special reward for belief. **
One can imagine that according to this lovely Christian doctrine that in her off hours in Hell, Anne is rooming with Hitler, Pol Pot, the 9/11 terrorists, and every child molester and mass murder who failed to accept Jesus as his savior before the switch was pulled and electricity coursed through their bodies extinguishing their despicable lives.
And why? Why is that fifteen year old girl who suffered so much in life condemned to an after-life of never ending suffering? Her crime was she was born and raised in the religion of her family. She was Jewish.
Some liberal Christians will say they reject that doctrine; that they don’t buy into it; that God is a loving God and would never permit such a thing. But that’s because they are in denial, preferring not to stare directly into the face of an intolerant, fear mongering, threatening and intimidating doctrine that is at the very heart of Christianity.
The True Christians will shrug their shoulders and say “God gave her free will. It was her choice to accept or reject Jesus.” In other words, she could have abandoned the faith of her parents, her grand parents, her great grandparents, etc., and simply seen it as a false religion, and come over to Jesus. Failing to do so wasn’t God’s fault – “HE didn’t condemn her – she condemned herself.” Some of them actually believe what they are saying is reasonable and just. They don’t even give it a second thought. I mean heck, don’t blame God for the acts of this 15 year old Jewess Christ Killer.
Others mouth similar, albeit less vehement words, but you can tell they are simply toeing the Christian line, feeling uncomfortable with it. Some will even offer that she may have accepted Jesus while in the death camp and could be with Him now. But they know what they are doing. They know they are trying to make the unjust sound just; the unfair sound fair; an inexplicably intolerant and horrific doctrine seem not so bad. They are embarrassed by the very doctrine that they themselves embrace.
And so, according to Christian doctrine, this innocent Jewish girl, like so many millions of others like her, was victimized twice: first by an inhumane totalitarian state to which murder of the innocent was a right; and then victimized by a religious doctrine to which eternal torture of an innocent is her just desserts.
Yep, Anne Frank had it coming. Just ask a loving Christian, or their loving God.
** NOTE: Luke 16:19-31 is interpreted by some fundamentalists as evidence that souls in heaven can watch the torment of those in Hell.
This, of course, is just one example of the many irrational tenets and dogma of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and many other religions.
ReplyDeleteThese malicious morons who espouse this kind of mental insanity would also think nothing of the torture and death of small children or animals. They would use some arcane religious justification.
I have to disagree with you on one point, Hump. If the scriptures are to be taken as true, then Hitler isn't in hell - he's in heaven and enjoying watching Jews be tormented all over again. After all, Hitler was a christian - he believed in Jesus. According to the scriptures, all one needs to do to be "saved" is believe in Jesus. Rape, pillage, plunder, murder and burn, but make sure you believe in Jebus when you do it.
ReplyDelete@Tracy,
ReplyDeleteWas Hitler a Christian? No one really knows for sure what he believed at the end when he (per available evidence from Soviet war records) committed suicide before the Berlin bunker went up in flames in April 1945. Like most tyrants, he said whatever he thought would serve him politically. Per an article in the Secular Web (http://www.infidels.org/):
Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered April 12, 1922, and published in his My New Order:
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice ...
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.
When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.
[Quoted in Freethought Today April 1990.]
Once Hitler had gained power, he began to see Christianity as a threat to the National Socialists' domination of Germany. After 1935 his speeches and writings became more and more virulently anti-Christian; he argued that Christian worship was a sign of weakness, and that it should be replaced by reverence for the nation and the state, and of course for the National Socialist Party. However, he retained his belief in reincarnation, and his conviction that there was some supreme creative force whose will he was enacting.
The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity ... The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.
I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews.
[Quoted from Hitler's "Table Talks" with Bormann,
in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Allan Bullock.]
- Fastthumbs
I have no position on Hitler's belief or lack thereof. As fastthumbs shows, it could be interpreted either way.
ReplyDeleteWhat is clear, however, is that the root of anti-semetism lays with Christianity and its demonization of the Jews as "Christ Killers," and those "stiff necked people" who rejected Jesus as the messiah. The blame for 2,000 years of anti-semetism, and indeed the murder and persecution of Jews in Europe from the 12th century all the way to the Holcaust, can be laid at the feet of the biblical authors, Paul in particular.
Christianity will never win the title of religion of tolerance, peace much less religion of peace.
On the positive side, Christianity is tied for first place as the Religion of Most Grotesque Doctrine.
You're sensationalizing the belief in afterlife as if it was real... That's silly.
ReplyDeleteAnne had a rotten life because there are rotten people in the world. Some, like Hitler and his fascist state of mostly good Christian supporters, are worse than others.
Poor little Anne suffered tremendously while she lived, but upon death she slipped into oblivion just like everyone else had before her and just as we all will when death comes.
There is no afterlife. No suffering follows life and no joy either, Christian or not, saved or not.
Do you recall anything about the time before you were born? Do you have any recollection of the time that passes while you sleep so deeply that your brain fails even to keep track of passing time? That's death in a nutshell. There ain't nuttin', Honey.
Religion is nonsense - sure enough. Giving its add-on make-believe frill, afterlife, any sort of credence at all, speaking of it as if it mattered even a hoot, is as if being some sort of wacko believer ones self.
.
But hey, you should be glad the people downstairs didn't believe in the bible. Just imagine what would happen if they followed the 10 commandments.
ReplyDelete*knock knock* "Aufmachen!"
"yes?"
"Do you have any Jews in here?"
"Why yes Her Oberstormfuhrer, they're behind the bookcase"
Randall,
ReplyDeleteJust because I point out this afterlife dilemma doesn t mean we give it credence any mre than my pointing out the foolishness of belief in God its;f is giving it credence. I used Anne Frank as a foil fr the discussion.
Obviously we don't believe in the aferlife. The point of my article is simly to demonstrate:
a) the ugliness of Christan doctrine that their imaginary "loving God" dictated in the bible.
b) to demonstrate how some Christians have no problem with this idiocy and grotesque treatment of their fellow man by thei god...even endorsing it. again, a hypocrisy of their "loving religion.
I can't imagine anyone reading this posting would believe we are giving credence to afterlife; but simply exposing of the hiddeous injustice of Christian afterlife doctrine.
Amanda,
LOL..good point. " Thou shalt not bare false witness " would have ended things alot sooner for the Frank family.
Hump
Does anyone here know if there are any studies that show a link between certain mental illnesses and the extremely religious? I'm too lazy today to look it up. LOL! Liberal and moderate believers don't seem to buy into every aspect of their religion...but I wonder about the extremists.
ReplyDeleteRachelle...
ReplyDeleteUh oh...you haven't read my book (GASP!!!) or you forgot.
Yes, "hyper religiosity" is a recognized clinical term for people who have schizophrenia and demonstrate this kind of behavior.
Additionally, people who were molested by a close family friend or relative as a child have a higher instance of fundamentalist belief than those who were molested by a strager, or not molested at all. Evidently is is a by product of trauma by a trusted person which tends to influence religiosity later in life.
1/3rd of Bi polar / manic depressives are also more highly religious than is the general population not suffering from the disorder.
Hump
The ramifications of this Christian doctrine are intriguing. What about places where ‘The Word’ has yet to spread? A few isolated tribes in Africa or South America have likely never had the displeasure of hearing Jesus’ teachings. I guess it’s just too bad they weren’t lucky enough to have been born in a ‘Christian Nation’. Of course, this raises the question, why would a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God create a person that stands no chance of becoming enlightened to Christ and Christianity? As you pointed out, a fundie may use the excuse that Anne Frank had the knowledge of Jesus and thus the opportunity to accept Him as her savior (as ridiculous as this may be). People of remote tribes yet to be polluted by Christianity (however few there are) have no knowledge of Jesus and thus no chance at standing before the pearly gates. How screwed up is that?!
ReplyDeleteHeathen said:
ReplyDelete"People of remote tribes yet to be polluted by Christianity (however few there are) have no knowledge of Jesus and thus no chance at standing before the pearly gates. How screwed up is that?!"
Since the entire religion, just like all others, is just a collection of stories, fantasies, woo and supernatural make-believe dreamed up over thousands of years, one would expect it to be a mish-mash.
Heathen,
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting problem that the Xtians themselves don't know how to answer. Some say if they never heard the word, then those tribesman will ot suffer eternal damnation. Others say they are screwed. This site presents both perspectives:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/469
Which reminds me of a joke. These missionaries traveled to the inner jungles of New guinea to preach to the natives who had never heard of jesus. They spent months there doing this proselytizing.
One day the chief, one of the few non-coverting holdouts, fell ill. On his death bed, the missionaries came to him and asked him if he was ready to receive Jesus and get his reward in heaven.
The dying old man looked at them and said:
"Lets see if I have this right. If I have heard the Word and accept Him I am saved; if I reject Him I am damned.
But if I had NEVER heard the Word I would also be saved. SO WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU TELL ME ABOUT IT FOR??"
LOL!
ReplyDeleteHump said: "Uh oh...you haven't read my book (GASP!!!) or you forgot."
LOL! Sorry Hump..I definitely read your book. Consider it a brain fart. LOL! Maybe I was hoping the studies would be WIDELY reported. LOL!
Rachelle,
ReplyDeletehere's an extract from a 2006 clinical study that confirms bipolarism, and schizophrenia as causes for hyper religiosity. there are lots of others.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18045085
Hump,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. After discussing both sides, Estabrook and Thompson come to the conclusion that anyone ignorant of Christ’s teachings is damned:
“Those who never have heard—and thus never have obeyed—the truth of the gospel message will be lost! And if we do not do our utmost to get that message to them—so will we! While the unevangelized may be lost, they do not have to remain lost. And we may be all that stands between them and an eternity of separation from God.“
Amazing how Christians justify their tireless pursuit of conversion. It’s their duty and moral responsibility to show us heathens ‘The Truth’. However, the authors fail to address one question in particular. If God is omniscient, then clearly he must know that these tribesmen will not hear of Christ’s teachings. Thus, He has condemned them to an eternity of Hellfire (only because they were born in a location devoid of Christianity). Not very benevolent of Him :)
Heathen,
ReplyDeleteYep, indeed they did. But Esterbrook and Thompson aren't the sole aribitors of Christian doctrine.
If only they were. Then there wouldn't be 2800+ Christian sects with as many or more disagreements as to what the genuine and final Christian doctrine aka "inspired word of God" is.
Uh oh... I feel a new blog topic coming on.
:)
Hump
Thanks Hump! :)
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd mention this.
ReplyDeleteIn booktalk.org a religious fanatic who is obsessed with me reprinted this blog subject and agreed she had her trip to hell coming. His big objection to my post was the reference to souls in heaven being able to see those in hell. Imagine that.
Under cross examination by other members he claimed to mourn her death, with crocodile tears, then he noted that it was by typhus and not the gas chamber. He specifically went on to say that at least she did not have to suffer the embarrassment of being nude befor her death. He was grateful that her "modesty" was preserved.
This, ladies and gentlemen, this is Christianity run amok. His mind runs to a teen girls modesty/nudity before the horrific nature of her last few years and moments of existence, and her condemnation to a place of eternal torment that he sees as just.
One can only wonder what he does online when not typing his religious idiocy.
If it weren't so despicable and sickening and typical of the religiously fucked up it would be funny.
Idiots like that make me want to vomit...on them.
ReplyDeleteThis is the type of religious zealot you just can’t reason with. If his mind is this consumed by the religion virus, he’s beyond the point of return to sanity. Pretty disturbing that people like him are out there (more of them than we could imagine).
ReplyDeleteWould you mind if I reposted this and linked back to your blog?
ReplyDeleteRey Discomfort
ReplyDelete(great name by the way)
Be my guest!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWow. Even though i've seen my fair share of people being intollerant and and people thinking they're better than others, but this is just ridiculous. To decide that the fate of this poor girl was to go to hell because she did not believe in Jesus is unbelievable. It's crazy the lengths that people will go to to stick by their religion and undermine others.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, i'm doing a project for my sociology class about religion and why people are or are not observant and i prepared a survey. The project is due ina couple of days and i would love to get some extra responses. Your readers seem to be the perfect people to give their opinions on this, so if it's not too much to ask, would you mind maybe incorporating it into your next post or something just to encourage people to answer a few questions. That'd be much appreciated. Here's the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Eg6K01OMTyllCzgBrD0mRQ_3d_3d
Thanks so much and loved your post as usual.
Talya,
ReplyDeleteThanks for yoyur input.
I just took your survey. Everyone on this thread is receiving your post as well. I'll be glad to post it on the current topic comment section for you, and have those readers see your request as well.
Regards,
Hump
"you know you're going to hell.."
ReplyDeletepriceless
Finally. My opinion has been reflected.
ReplyDeleteFinally. My opinion has been reflected.
ReplyDelete