The Roman Empire: Christianity
By Dmitry Galkovsky
Any religion is taken for granted by people who were raised in its cultural context. It is difficult
for a person to look at it (that is, at himself) from the outside. For a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist
or Hindu, his religious culture is the NORM. Conversely, anything that does not meet this norm
is perceived as something deeply abnormal. Abnormal in its very foundations.
If a person to some extent begins to perceive his culture as abnormal, he becomes a deeply
unhappy creature. Therefore, any criticism of religion is not as harmless as it seems at first
sight. I think it is unnecessary. A national religion should be taken for granted and not
questioned.
In our culture it is common to greet each other and shake hands. In principle, this is a mere
convention, which can be ignored. But this ignoring will immediately create a lot of problems
and is very likely to provoke a nervous breakdown in the long run.
Those people who carelessly criticize religion do not understand what they are striking at,
even in terms of everyday life.
And besides everyday life, there are many other things. Man emerges from nothingness and
goes into nothingness, without even realizing what happened, and which events he became a
part of. Religion gives some meaning to this initially senseless process and gives a starting
point. That is, among other things, religion is much more rational than the rational criticism to
which it is constantly subjected. At the end of the day, all these critics make the same mistake:
a scaling error. They try to establish a dialogue with eternity, but the very attempt is an
attempt to include in communication a biological object, namely a cunning but not very clever
mammal. This makes the very fact of conversation absurd and offensive. If you cannot talk
about rope in the house of a hanged man, imagine that you received an e-mail from a person
who lives for one day. He asks you some questions, argues about something, shares plans. But
it appeared 12 hours ago and in 12 hours it will disappear. Is it a person? It's a ring of
philological smoke melting in the air; conversing with it is RIDICULOUS.
I want to warn deeply religious people. They probably should not read this post. Although it
cannot and will not shake the Christian faith, which has long been the foundation of our world.
Moreover, criticism of Christianity does not indicate either great intelligence or great culture.
Eventually, every critic will find himself in the position of Laszlo Toth.
There was this dude in the 70’s, either a Hungarian or a Jew from Australia. He attacked
Michelangelo’s Pietà, smashed the Madonna’s head, broke off her arm and started screaming
that he is Christ, he does not and cannot have a mother, because God is eternal. They didn’t
even put this Australopithecus in jail. They gave him some pills and sent him on his way. Later,
something happened to Laszlo Toth’s brain which gave him a stroke. As a result of the stroke,
his arm was paralyzed.
Of course, you can comfort yourself by the fact that people will still rise, will acquire
immortality, they will have eight hearts and four brains, and then they will return to the topic
of eternity.
No doubt, people will become immortal, immortality is a trivial task that can be achieved in a
dozen ways. It will take another 200 years at most. The galaxy is inhabited not just by sentient
beings, but by immortal sentient beings. Mortality in a sentient being is an easily solvable
vulgarity, a paradox of the early stage of civilization.
The only question is whether this immortal intelligent creature will be human. And whether a
debate with God will not turn into a debate with itself.
But a historian ignoring the history of religion is as blind a fool as a biologist ignoring, for
example, the function of reproduction. So, let us pray and start – of course, humanely and as
gentle as possible.
In Christianity, there are three features that strike the eye of any unbiased observer.
Firstly, the gloomy depressive nature and obsession with the topic of death and the dead.
The main religious rite of Christians is the funeral, the funeral is the crowning glory of the
Christian saint's life, and his life itself is the PREPARATION OF A CORPSE.
These corpses are buried next to churches. Where there is a church, there is a cemetery,
where there is a cemetery, there is a church. Twin brothers. The churches themselves are also
cemeteries – people are buried in the floor, in the walls, sometimes even in the ceiling.
The chapel of the Church of All Saints in the Czech Republic. It is made from 40,000 human
skeletons.
I think 40,000 is an exaggeration, but a couple thousand for sure. A bone candelabrum – it
contains all bones of the human skeleton.
In fact, this church is a novelty. It was built on the eve of the beginning decadence by order of
Prince Schwarzenberg, old money from the Holy Roman Empire. Here is his small coat of arms,
laid out with bones. As they say, "each baron has his own quirk".
And the date with the Master's signature. But the church, which was built in 1870, was
functioning, and it did not cause any rejection among the parishioners or the clergy. And
Schwarzenberg would not have blasphemed like that. Their church only repeated the
Capuchin Church of the Virgin Mary in Rome.
The Church of the Virgin Mary is old, built at the beginning of the 17 th century, during the
ascent of Christianity. It contains the skeleton of the little princess Barberini, the niece of a
Pope. Four thousand skulls are built into the walls.
Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. Unlike the catacombs of Naples or Rome, these are purely
Christian catacombs, so they are fully available for viewing. They have been dug since the early
17th century. A total of eight thousand corpses are buried here, including 20th century corpses.
Above is a photo of monks. And these are secular corpses in the so-called "Gallery of
Professionals". Here they buried the intellectuals - artists, lawyers, officers, doctors.
This is a Portuguese church in Évora. The cobblestones in the walls are real skulls.
The motto above the entrance is: "Our bones are waiting for yours to join them".
Such artifacts are not a feature of Catholicism. Here is a similar burial on Orthodox Athos. First,
the dead monks are put into the ground. A few years later the graves are dug up and they see
if the corpse has decomposed correctly. If all is right, the rotten remains are scraped off the
skull and placed in the ossuary.
If the corpse is properly prepared by a righteous life, it does not rot, but dries up. Such a
mummified corpse is a great treasure. It is shown to the public, people are healed by touching
the corpse. Especially good corpses are cut into pieces and divided between several churches.
A piece of a corpse should also be laid in the foundation of each new church.
A Russian schema nun. Her attire resembles a cloth sarcophagus, painted with graves and
skulls. He who joins a monastery dies for the world. This is a living corpse. And this is a very
good thing in terms of Christian doctrine.
Certainly, in front of the parishioners these motives of death and the barbaric worship of
corpses are smoothed out. For example, relics are often kept underneath – in closed boxes.
But Christianity as a whole imposes on the culture the imprint of incredible sadness. It finds
its expression in everything – in architecture, painting, music. Sometimes it turns out solemnly
and even sweetly, because tears can bring relief and be an expression not of physical pain, but
nostalgia, love, and noble melancholia.
Secondly, Christianity is a very small and narrow religion. The whole content of the Christian
legend in terms of volume is equal to one medium sized ancient myth. They try to disguise this
fact by turning the Bible into a phone book or by supplementing it with stories about saints.
But these additions are artificial, uninteresting and even in this form create great difficulties
for the main legend. In general, no one knows them. The immaculate conception of the Virgin
Mary in the "papal dogmatic constitution of 1854" is the clerical apotheosis of such
"improvements". This is not artistic creativity but some kind of bureaucratic audit in a city
morgue.
Even if we assume for a moment that the crosses to the left and right in this painting by Palma
Il Vecchio are not a later addition, it accurately reflects the ratio of the visual power of pagan
(in the sense of ancient) culture and the puny literary myth of Christianity. Which even in its
core is a "collection of four texts" – that is, a list and a reference book, not a story.
Let us take a look at just one myth of the ancient religion – the myth of radiant Eos. Eos is a
beautiful girl with pink fingers. Every morning she flies into the sky in a chariot pulled by
Lampus and Phaeton, and lights up the earth.
Eos is a naughty girl, so her cheeks are always blushing after an eventful night. When the
kingdom of Eos comes in the morning, men get an erection.
Eos is kind, but forgetful. She fell in love with the beautiful young man Tithonus and married
him, asking Zeus to grant him immortality. But she forgot to ask for eternal youth as well, and
soon, Tithonus turned into an old man. In order not to see him, Eos locked Tithonus in a
separate room, from where he complained about his miserable fate in a squeaky voice. Out
of pity, Eos turned Dmitry Galkovsky into a cicada.
This is just ONE small story and it alone grants immense possibilities for human contacts. It’s
ENGAGING. You can joke, you can insinuate, discuss it. Everyone can get something from this
story: teenagers, young people, mature people, the elderly. You can laugh and you can cry. In
moderation, without excess.
Donatello. Protopope Avvakum.
What can a Christian tell you? Well, he comes home from the morgue and decides to amuse
his wife with an interesting story.
–
Man, they brought in an old man on Friday, he had lain around for two days already.
We put him in the freezer and over the weekend electricity went out. Can you imagine,
I open the freezer on Monday, and he’s still fresh. Only a toenail fell off.
Anyone would be shocked. And the Christian continues:
–
I brought the toenail with me. Wanna look at it?
This is… DIFFICULT. Very much so.
The only positive side here is that Christian culture quickly leads to the secularization of
society. People avoid talking about religious topics in everyday life, stop using religious
analogies, avoid contact with ministers of this religion. It is not by chance that it is a bad omen
to meet a priest in the street. Too many icons in the house lead to bad luck. A vacuum quickly
forms around a person who is constantly talking about religion. People scatter. The state seeks
to replace the sacral function of priests with moral preaching, statistical accounting, medical
care, art and philosophy; everything, except Christianity. “Please not the toenail.”
This is why atheism arose and gained a coherent doctrine only in the Christian world. Other
cultures simply don’t get what the problem is. Imagine a man who runs around children’s
Christmas parties and fights Santa Claus. He runs around and shouts “Don’t believe them, kids,
it’s a lie!”, then tries to press charges. Or he attacks Santa Claus and tears his bag of presents
apart. He behaves like a total idiot. But if Santa Claus walks around and shows the kids a dried
cat corpse, you could understand this man.
Thirdly, there is a ridiculous confusion in the basic doctrine of Christianity, which repels
neophytes.
And this, as well as the second feature, clearly shows that Christianity could only appear very
late, very quickly and was created by random people.
Christian theologists literally cannot see the forest through the trees of Trinity. How this is
possible is utterly incomprehensible. For primary propaganda, this creates enormous
difficulties. No other world religion is so difficult to understand by neophytes. In the 19th
century, the Europeans converted virginal Africa to Christianity with great effort with a
balance of power of 1000:1. And what now? Nowadays, Islam is successfully replacing
Christianity there. Because for an undeveloped consciousness it is completely ridiculous to
explain the Basic Formula of Christian doctrine. It’s like 2+2=5. And you have to consider that
Islam has the unpleasant circumcision and in general the Muslim world is a second-rate world.
But the Muslim doctrine is very clear. There is no god but Allah. His prophet is Mohammed.
Two witnesses to be accepted into Islam. THAT’S IT. In one day, a person can be accepted into
Islam and this acceptance is honest and strong. For a world religion, easy propaganda that
allows to convert people within a day is a basic requirement.
In fact, it is not clear how a doctrine with such a defective doctrine could be propagated
quantitatively. Chain reactions in Christianity are difficult. This religion conducts effective
propaganda when it already has political and military domination and is financed by the state.
It is problematic to impose it from scratch.
In other words, if we sum up, Christianity is a myth of the caste of gravediggers of a large
and cultured state, which turned into a dominant religion as the result of a coup d’état.
Original text: https://galkovsky.livejournal.com/195515.html
Translation by: RUSSIANS WITH ATTITUDE Podcast