Orgies for Jesus

Posted by Daniele Bolelli on December 17, 2011

[Site editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]

What if Christian theology dismissed the virgin birth and other miracles as fairy tales? What if your pastor/priest told you to flush the Ten Commandments down the toilet and instead live life to the fullest? What if Sunday service at your local church consisted in a juicy orgy? All of this could have happened had Carpocrates had his way.

Carpo … who? The lead character in our story was the leader of a second century Christian community based in the Greek islands. Back in those days, early Christians couldn’t agree on just about anything. Official Christian doctrine hadn’t been fully established yet, so an extremely wide range of opinions and teachings fell under the label of “Christianity.” The only thing they had in common was that they all thought Jesus was a cool guy. Other than that, everything else was up for debate since they couldn’t even agree on which books should become official scriptures. Some Christians believed their religion was to remain exclusively for Jewish people. Others wanted to open it to all ethnicities. Some believed Jesus and God were one. Others were far from sold about this. Some were strict ascetics. Others enjoyed a very sensual life. Some promoted women as leaders within their groups. Others felt women were good to cook dinner and make babies, but religious leaders? Ha!

In the midst of this very chaotic beginning, Carpocrates emerged as a particularly charismatic preacher, who soon attracted enough of a following as to give birth to his own branch of Christianity. His ideas were just a tad on the wild side. Jesus—Carpocrates argued—was as human as anyone else. He was a visionary whose brilliance and wisdom put him in touch with God, but was not God himself. This didn’t diminish Jesus’s status in Carpocrates’s eyes, since it set him up as a model of behavior that regular human beings could hope to emulate. The whole story of the virgin birth made Carpocrates laugh. In his view, good old Jesus was conceived in the old fashioned way: through sweaty sex. The depth of Jesus’s wisdom was enough for Carpocrates to admire and love him, so he felt no need for any supernatural special effects.

Since this beginning was apparently not controversial enough, Carpocrates promptly taught his followers to reject Mosaic Law as well as the prevailing morality of his times as mere human opinions, not divine commandments. A goodie-goodie morality was according to Carpocrates nothing but a cage built by those who were too scared by life’s intensity. The soul could only achieve freedom and fulfillment by experiencing all of life, without discriminating too much. Only in this way, it would free itself from the cycle of reincarnation …

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that? Carpocrates’s followers—like the members of many other early Christian sects—fully believed in reincarnation. And just like several tantric schools found in the history of both Hinduism and Buddhism, they also believed that human beings should explore every emotion without holding back. Sensual pleasure in their eyes was not any less sacred than the most spiritual practices, so good food, sex and every other earthly joy was embraced as a stepping stone toward liberation.

This determination to live life to the fullest went hand in hand with another radical notion. Carp considered differences in wealth and social class as unnatural perversions. Since everyone is born naked and equal in front of God, human attempts to gain status at the expense of others were misguided and ultimately against God’s plan. The cure for the very human tendency toward ego aggrandizing was to discourage the evil of private property. Instead, everything—from material possessions to sexual partners—was to be held in common. Coupled with Carp’s insistence on indulging in sensual pleasures, this idea led his followers to regularly stage sexual orgies as part of their spiritual practices … which makes you wonder: just how different would the world be had mainstream forms of Christianity decided to embrace Carpocrates rather than stern moralists like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine? I think it’s a safe bet that church attendance would be much higher.

Posted in: 50 Things Religion, Ancient History, Gnosticism, Jesus, Morality, Religion, Sexuality, Society

A Christian

Such astute clarity and mastery of the Queen’s English should be preserved for the ears of nothing less than Shakespeare himself LionDinner! The task of presenting your contingent more accurately would challenge Nietzsche himself.
Jesse

HELL YEAH! now that’s something i could look forward to…
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VN6I2RWLS666KKQR6UIPNLBGGU Seeker

Wonder why so many spout replies without checking out history to see if it is true.
Many sects of early christianity were into orgies of a type as reported by tertulian and many others who eventually got their type of christianity, which fit with current greek thought, as the dominant type.
Aphroditeskiss

You do realize that the Bible, as quoted above, was not put into use until several HUNDRED years after Jesus died, right? There was this lovely little gathering called the Council of Nicea, where early church fathers of various sects voted on which books would make the cut. Hence, the New Testament. It is historical fact that in Carpocrates’ time, the early church was, indeed, many different branches. Why do you think the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church acted as separate entities? Read a book other than the Bible every once in a while and you will realize there is a whole other world (proven in fact, by more sources than one singular, and really, insignificant, book). You may even come to see that this whole thing is just a farce. *GASP*!
Aphroditeskiss

Except for the fact that the ancient Greeks had condoms very similar to those used today. These were actually effective at preventing disease, and even more so, unwanted pregnancies. As for your ruined lives, everyone who participated knew what was going on. Therefore, they were not only ok with it, but also a willing participant.

Good try, though.

Next time, read a little bit about the culture in which these events took place before applying your oh-so-sensible opinions to them.
Aphroditeskiss

If Christians had respect for those who don’t believe in God, we would likely have more respect for them/you.
Also, there are very few modern Christians who actually practice the love one another ideal. Most are highly judgmental and proselytizing.

Personally, I do think it would be possible for both sides to engage in an open debate, if Christians would lay down their weapons. I realize there are plenty of antagonistic atheists out there; however, most of the venom and utter hatred comes from the Christian camp.
Aphroditeskiss

“…America is still in some sense a Christian institution….”

Actually, America has NEVER been a Christian institution. If you look at the founding documents (such as the Constitution), they clearly state that there will not be a set religion for the country, and that the right to worship (or not) as you will is yours, and you are not answerable for that to any government-run institution. Between that and the fact that the majority of the Founding Fathers were either agnostic or atheist does not hold up to this silly idea that America is a “Christian nation”.
BurningTightRope

@Aphroditeskiss – Aside from your point being bias and over generalized, lumping all christians into a certain ilk, you do have some points. — I consider myself a “recovering christian” and have returned to a largely agnostic point of view. That said, I think I’m very qualified to speak on both sides of the issue. I’ll never forget on the very first day that I became a christian, the only thing I said to my long standing, close friends was that I was born-again. INSTANTLY they shunned me without a word. And from that point on largely treated me like an outsider, though I did not disrespect them, judge them or proselytize or preach at them. Ha! I even kindly passed the joints while I hung out with them. But they gave up on me pretty fast. —- They had an instant prejudice without my saying a word, despite them having known (and “loved”) me for several years prior. From that point I was ongoingly ostracized. It was this action on their part which largely drove me into exclusively christian subcultural circles. There is NO QUESTION of that. Not to mention, anytime I did try to talk about my change of life (not witnessing ;-p) – but just about my head, like normal people, the other person almost always turned my experience into their argument and put me on the defensive. It was unreal, I couldn’t say “hi” to an old friend on the street without getting blasted with psuedo-scientific atheism just for answering their question “so what have you been up to?”.

Your simple presupposing about people who believe in christianity is incredibly knee-jerk and common. On one hand, yes – there are believers who cause this kind of reaction. I ran into them ad nauseam and equally (as a believer) couldn’t stand them. So your point is taken, but you fail to see that non-christians also have their weapons loaded and cocked as a paranoid precaution as they / we are constantly looking for a fight. It’s unrealistic to make statements that say that Christians in general disrespect, or that “very few” actually practice “love one another” or that “most” are highly judgmental and proselytizing or that “most of the venom and utter hatred” comes from the Christian camp. In my experience for 30 years observing both sides, ANY over generalizing of either camp is simply wrong. Doing so is subjective and slanted and exacerbates the problem. All christians and all people are not static, nor the same. Everyone grows and changes and is on the exact same search to find happiness and balance in ones inner heart and life – no matter what or how we believe. (unless we are truly defective somehow and are utterly sociopathic and violent).

One of my biggest arguments on the whole topic is that atheists, christians, pagans, and any sort of believers are PEOPLE first and foremost; and the root of problems, for ALL who practice any ideology, comes from being human. Period. Non-believers are so fond of pointing at all sorts of ill behavior by alleged christians in the name of God, but they almost always fail to see that it does not matter what a human believes or attempts to practice, as all humans fail and all humans are duped, and all humans are ultimately self serving and self preserving. We’re all victims of nature and nurture. —– I have experienced a percentage of ill behavior, by a smaller percentage of christian labeled people, but I cannot count every christian throughout history, nor through every season or trial of life, as fucked up. My bad experiences have been at the hands of a few, behaving in very human ways that have caused my displeasure. While they have used God as their justification, their actions were purely animal driven by their own selfish ambitions and personalities. —– Point being, no matter what the belief system, humans behave like humans. It’s simply bigotry to label any general group of people as being more to blame of ill behavior. That’s a large part of why religion evolved in the first place, society trying to find a less easily refutable reason for people to behave better toward one another. Emphasizing the concept of “god(s)” and the unknown / “supernatural” simply made sense for saying “you don’t like social rules of general conduct for all ? – take it up with god” – humans will always battle with other humans who put forth rules of order. The existence of god is still hard to argue, since NO ONE CAN REALLY KNOW — Regardless of choosing not to believe.

My disdain with behavior on this site, as far as mockery and name calling and generalization of any group that is made up of somewhat free thinking individuals, is what I see as one of my reasons for remaining on the spiritual fence. If unbelievers generally acted better than believers, I might be swayed – but it turns out they are no less or more fucking human than the christians they loathe. And that’s why Paul says “ALL are GUILTY and fall short of the glory of God”. “God” can act as a mechanism for a person to aspire to a higher state of being or to at least practice not doing wrong out of fear of punishment. Whatever the method – it’s ’cause PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY SELFISH and can be pretty fucked up to one another, whether they try to follow christianity or not. When the do, sometimes they succeed to act altruistically, sometimes, by human nature, they don’t.

The simplicity of “love one another” is a non-religious ideal. What’s your excuse? What’s my excuse? In both camps I’m SICK of the air of “we’re more superior than them” – “we’re NOT”.
BurningTightRope

@Aphroditeskiss – Aside from your point being bias and over generalized, lumping all christians into a certain ilk, you do have some points. — I consider myself a “recovering christian” and have returned to a largely agnostic point of view. That said, I think I’m very qualified to speak on both sides of the issue. I’ll never forget on the very first day that I became a christian, the only thing I said to my long standing, close friends was that I was born-again. INSTANTLY they shunned me without a word. And from that point on largely treated me like an outsider, though I did not disrespect them, judge them or proselytize or preach at them. Ha! I even kindly passed the joints while I hung out with them. But they gave up on me pretty fast. —- They had an instant prejudice without my saying a word, despite them having known (and “loved”) me for several years prior. From that point I was ongoingly ostracized. It was this action on their part which largely drove me into exclusively christian subcultural circles. There is NO QUESTION of that. Not to mention, anytime I did try to talk about my change of life (not witnessing ;-p) – but just about my head, like normal people, the other person almost always turned my experience into their argument and put me on the defensive. It was unreal, I couldn’t say “hi” to an old friend on the street without getting blasted with psuedo-scientific atheism just for answering their question “so what have you been up to?”.

Your simple presupposing about people who believe in christianity is incredibly knee-jerk and common. On one hand, yes – there are believers who cause this kind of reaction. I ran into them ad nauseam and equally (as a believer) couldn’t stand them. So your point is taken, but you fail to see that non-christians also have their weapons loaded and cocked as a paranoid precaution as they / we are constantly looking for a fight. It’s unrealistic to make statements that say that Christians in general disrespect, or that “very few” actually practice “love one another” or that “most” are highly judgmental and proselytizing or that “most of the venom and utter hatred” comes from the Christian camp. In my experience for 30 years observing both sides, ANY over generalizing of either camp is simply wrong. Doing so is subjective and slanted and exacerbates the problem. All christians and all people are not static, nor the same. Everyone grows and changes and is on the exact same search to find happiness and balance in ones inner heart and life – no matter what or how we believe. (unless we are truly defective somehow and are utterly sociopathic and violent).

One of my biggest arguments on the whole topic is that atheists, christians, pagans, and any sort of believers are PEOPLE first and foremost; and the root of problems, for ALL who practice any ideology, comes from being human. Period. Non-believers are so fond of pointing at all sorts of ill behavior by alleged christians in the name of God, but they almost always fail to see that it does not matter what a human believes or attempts to practice, as all humans fail and all humans are duped, and all humans are ultimately self serving and self preserving. We’re all victims of nature and nurture. —– I have experienced a percentage of ill behavior, by a smaller percentage of christian labeled people, but I cannot count every christian throughout history, nor through every season or trial of life, as fucked up. My bad experiences have been at the hands of a few, behaving in very human ways that have caused my displeasure. While they have used God as their justification, their actions were purely animal driven by their own selfish ambitions and personalities. —– Point being, no matter what the belief system, humans behave like humans. It’s simply bigotry to label any general group of people as being more to blame of ill behavior. That’s a large part of why religion evolved in the first place, society trying to find a less easily refutable reason for people to behave better toward one another. Emphasizing the concept of “god(s)” and the unknown / “supernatural” simply made sense for saying “you don’t like social rules of general conduct for all ? – take it up with god” – humans will always battle with other humans who put forth rules of order. The existence of god is still hard to argue, since NO ONE CAN REALLY KNOW — Regardless of choosing not to believe.

My disdain with behavior on this site, as far as mockery and name calling and generalization of any group that is made up of somewhat free thinking individuals, is what I see as one of my reasons for remaining on the spiritual fence. If unbelievers generally acted better than believers, I might be swayed – but it turns out they are no less or more fucking human than the christians they loathe. And that’s why Paul says “ALL are GUILTY and fall short of the glory of God”. “God” can act as a mechanism for a person to aspire to a higher state of being or to at least practice not doing wrong out of fear of punishment. Whatever the method – it’s ’cause PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY SELFISH and can be pretty fucked up to one another, whether they try to follow christianity or not. When the do, sometimes they succeed to act altruistically, sometimes, by human nature, they don’t.

The simplicity of “love one another” is a non-religious ideal. What’s your excuse? What’s my excuse? In both camps I’m SICK of the air of “we’re more superior than them” – “we’re NOT”.
BurningTightRope

@Aphroditeskiss – Aside from your point being bias and over generalized, lumping all christians into a certain ilk, you do have some points. — I consider myself a “recovering christian” and have returned to a largely agnostic point of view. That said, I think I’m very qualified to speak on both sides of the issue. I’ll never forget on the very first day that I became a christian, the only thing I said to my long standing, close friends was that I was born-again. INSTANTLY they shunned me without a word. And from that point on largely treated me like an outsider, though I did not disrespect them, judge them or proselytize or preach at them. Ha! I even kindly passed the joints while I hung out with them. But they gave up on me pretty fast. —- They had an instant prejudice without my saying a word, despite them having known (and “loved”) me for several years prior. From that point I was ongoingly ostracized. It was this action on their part which largely drove me into exclusively christian subcultural circles. There is NO QUESTION of that. Not to mention, anytime I did try to talk about my change of life (not witnessing ;-p) – but just about my head, like normal people, the other person almost always turned my experience into their argument and put me on the defensive. It was unreal, I couldn’t say “hi” to an old friend on the street without getting blasted with psuedo-scientific atheism just for answering their question “so what have you been up to?”.

Your simple presupposing about people who believe in christianity is incredibly knee-jerk and common. On one hand, yes – there are believers who cause this kind of reaction. I ran into them ad nauseam and equally (as a believer) couldn’t stand them. So your point is taken, but you fail to see that non-christians also have their weapons loaded and cocked as a paranoid precaution as they / we are constantly looking for a fight. It’s unrealistic to make statements that say that Christians in general disrespect, or that “very few” actually practice “love one another” or that “most” are highly judgmental and proselytizing or that “most of the venom and utter hatred” comes from the Christian camp. In my experience for 30 years observing both sides, ANY over generalizing of either camp is simply wrong. Doing so is subjective and slanted and exacerbates the problem. All christians and all people are not static, nor the same. Everyone grows and changes and is on the exact same search to find happiness and balance in ones inner heart and life – no matter what or how we believe. (unless we are truly defective somehow and are utterly sociopathic and violent).

One of my biggest arguments on the whole topic is that atheists, christians, pagans, and any sort of believers are PEOPLE first and foremost; and the root of problems, for ALL who practice any ideology, comes from being human. Period. Non-believers are so fond of pointing at all sorts of ill behavior by alleged christians in the name of God, but they almost always fail to see that it does not matter what a human believes or attempts to practice, as all humans fail and all humans are duped, and all humans are ultimately self serving and self preserving. We’re all victims of nature and nurture. —– I have experienced a percentage of ill behavior, by a smaller percentage of christian labeled people, but I cannot count every christian throughout history, nor through every season or trial of life, as fucked up. My bad experiences have been at the hands of a few, behaving in very human ways that have caused my displeasure. While they have used God as their justification, their actions were purely animal driven by their own selfish ambitions and personalities. —– Point being, no matter what the belief system, humans behave like humans. It’s simply bigotry to label any general group of people as being more to blame of ill behavior. That’s a large part of why religion evolved in the first place, society trying to find a less easily refutable reason for people to behave better toward one another. Emphasizing the concept of “god(s)” and the unknown / “supernatural” simply made sense for saying “you don’t like social rules of general conduct for all ? – take it up with god” – humans will always battle with other humans who put forth rules of order. The existence of god is still hard to argue, since NO ONE CAN REALLY KNOW — Regardless of choosing not to believe.

My disdain with behavior on this site, as far as mockery and name calling and generalization of any group that is made up of somewhat free thinking individuals, is what I see as one of my reasons for remaining on the spiritual fence. If unbelievers generally acted better than believers, I might be swayed – but it turns out they are no less or more fucking human than the christians they loathe. And that’s why Paul says “ALL are GUILTY and fall short of the glory of God”. “God” can act as a mechanism for a person to aspire to a higher state of being or to at least practice not doing wrong out of fear of punishment. Whatever the method – it’s ’cause PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY SELFISH and can be pretty fucked up to one another, whether they try to follow christianity or not. When the do, sometimes they succeed to act altruistically, sometimes, by human nature, they don’t.

The simplicity of “love one another” is a non-religious ideal. What’s your excuse? What’s my excuse? In both camps I’m SICK of the air of “we’re more superior than them” – “we’re NOT”.
BurningTightRope

@Aphroditeskiss – Aside from your point being bias and over generalized, lumping all christians into a certain ilk, you do have some points. — I consider myself a “recovering christian” and have returned to a largely agnostic point of view. That said, I think I’m very qualified to speak on both sides of the issue. I’ll never forget on the very first day that I became a christian, the only thing I said to my long standing, close friends was that I was born-again. INSTANTLY they shunned me without a word. And from that point on largely treated me like an outsider, though I did not disrespect them, judge them or proselytize or preach at them. Ha! I even kindly passed the joints while I hung out with them. But they gave up on me pretty fast. —- They had an instant prejudice without my saying a word, despite them having known (and “loved”) me for several years prior. From that point I was ongoingly ostracized. It was this action on their part which largely drove me into exclusively christian subcultural circles. There is NO QUESTION of that. Not to mention, anytime I did try to talk about my change of life (not witnessing ;-p) – but just about my head, like normal people, the other person almost always turned my experience into their argument and put me on the defensive. It was unreal, I couldn’t say “hi” to an old friend on the street without getting blasted with psuedo-scientific atheism just for answering their question “so what have you been up to?”.

Your simple presupposing about people who believe in christianity is incredibly knee-jerk and common. On one hand, yes – there are believers who cause this kind of reaction. I ran into them ad nauseam and equally (as a believer) couldn’t stand them. So your point is taken, but you fail to see that non-christians also have their weapons loaded and cocked as a paranoid precaution as they / we are constantly looking for a fight. It’s unrealistic to make statements that say that Christians in general disrespect, or that “very few” actually practice “love one another” or that “most” are highly judgmental and proselytizing or that “most of the venom and utter hatred” comes from the Christian camp. In my experience for 30 years observing both sides, ANY over generalizing of either camp is simply wrong. Doing so is subjective and slanted and exacerbates the problem. All christians and all people are not static, nor the same. Everyone grows and changes and is on the exact same search to find happiness and balance in ones inner heart and life – no matter what or how we believe. (unless we are truly defective somehow and are utterly sociopathic and violent).

One of my biggest arguments on the whole topic is that atheists, christians, pagans, and any sort of believers are PEOPLE first and foremost; and the root of problems, for ALL who practice any ideology, comes from being human. Period. Non-believers are so fond of pointing at all sorts of ill behavior by alleged christians in the name of God, but they almost always fail to see that it does not matter what a human believes or attempts to practice, as all humans fail and all humans are duped, and all humans are ultimately self serving and self preserving. We’re all victims of nature and nurture. —– I have experienced a percentage of ill behavior, by a smaller percentage of christian labeled people, but I cannot count every christian throughout history, nor through every season or trial of life, as fucked up. My bad experiences have been at the hands of a few, behaving in very human ways that have caused my displeasure. While they have used God as their justification, their actions were purely animal driven by their own selfish ambitions and personalities. —– Point being, no matter what the belief system, humans behave like humans. It’s simply bigotry to label any general group of people as being more to blame of ill behavior. That’s a large part of why religion evolved in the first place, society trying to find a less easily refutable reason for people to behave better toward one another. Emphasizing the concept of “god(s)” and the unknown / “supernatural” simply made sense for saying “you don’t like social rules of general conduct for all ? – take it up with god” – humans will always battle with other humans who put forth rules of order. The existence of god is still hard to argue, since NO ONE CAN REALLY KNOW — Regardless of choosing not to believe.

My disdain with behavior on this site, as far as mockery and name calling and generalization of any group that is made up of somewhat free thinking individuals, is what I see as one of my reasons for remaining on the spiritual fence. If unbelievers generally acted better than believers, I might be swayed – but it turns out they are no less or more fucking human than the christians they loathe. And that’s why Paul says “ALL are GUILTY and fall short of the glory of God”. “God” can act as a mechanism for a person to aspire to a higher state of being or to at least practice not doing wrong out of fear of punishment. Whatever the method – it’s ’cause PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY SELFISH and can be pretty fucked up to one another, whether they try to follow christianity or not. When the do, sometimes they succeed to act altruistically, sometimes, by human nature, they don’t.

The simplicity of “love one another” is a non-religious ideal. What’s your excuse? What’s my excuse? In both camps I’m SICK of the air of “we’re more superior than them” – “we’re NOT”.
A Christian

Actually there were some Atheists and Agnostics but by no means a majority. The constitutional view of inherent equality of human freedoms and life drew from the Christian moral foundation. By a Christian institution I was refering to the influence and majority of the population, not a legalistic binding sense. Trying to redact history because of your disdain for Christianity is not only ignorant but pointless.

Orgies for Jesus

more disinformation

more disinformation