Religion _ Mistranslations, Mistakes, and Out and Out Lies

The leaders of various religious groups, over the course of centuries have, quite often, lied. Now, I, personally, have no big trouble with lies. After all, to be totally honest, all story tellers lie and I love stories. But, when you are lying to control people, to gain power and wealth, that is unacceptable.

Again, I am going to stick to Christianity, not to pick on them, but their claim that their scriptures are historically perfect and, in fact, the very word of God, places a burden of truthfulness on them.

Let's look at the 4 Gospels. They contradict each other frequently. The early church fathers knew this, assuming they were literate and not psychotic, yet the swear that they are the given word of the Almighty. A lie, obviously.

They have placed the birth of Christ at December 25. Now, the Gospels tell of shepherd tending their flocks at night. It is cold in Israel at that time of year and the shepherds were doing no such thing. December 25 was the time of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia and also the birthday of the Roman god/ savior Mithra. The Church just decided to use an old holiday that folks weren't going to give up and make it Christian. Thus they lied.

The Gospel of Mark, in many Bibles, ends with the reappearance of Christ, post crucifixion. This has long been thought wrong and in fact, now that we analyze such things, we know that someone, somewhere,  added that on to the original text. We know that because it is written in  a very different style of Greek which, like English, changed as time passed. The original book ended with the women going to the tomb and finding it empty. From a writer's point of view, that is a much better ending. Obviously, this is the word of humans, not God.

Peter is called the first bishop of Rome, thus giving authority to the Popes and other church officials. Sorry, this is a bald faced lie since, when Peter lived, their was no church and thus no bishops. In addition, Peter still thought of himself as a Jew.

If all of these writing are the Holy Word of God, then how can Luke, in the book of Acts, give a totally different timeline to Paul's journeys than Paul does in his letters. While I am on the subject of Paul let me also note that Paul did not write all of those letters. Again, we know this because the style of writing differs and not all of the epistles use a Greek from the same era.

The early church historian, Tertullian, spoke of 'pious fraud,' in other words lying about facts behind the faith for, 'the good of the followers.' Pope Leo X commented on how the church had gained power and wealth from its 'little myth of Jesus.'

You get the idea. Those who founded the religion blatantly lied and continue to lie, and, again, Christianity does not have an exclusive on lying. Anytime people can gain power and wealth, and religion is a sure fire, tried and tested means of that, they will lie to consolidate their positions and lie to hold them. When you are shaping people's world view, their consciousness, the way they relate to each other, lying is inexcusable.