Ever since I was a kid I’ve wondered what the hell happened to all those beautifully carved ancient statues with their noses, eyes and extremities chopped off. Then I studied the history of the Roman Empire and discovered the sad truth: it was the Christians that done it!

Christianity did not grow from quiet proselytizing and teaching, but rather through an unprecedented orgy of violence and destruction. Ancient temples were destroyed, and the famous library of Alexandria was razed to the ground by mobs of Christian fanatics – among other crimes.

And all of it was justified as “holy.” Christian monasticism emphasized faith over knowledge. One monk was proud to have never read a book. Another sat on a pillar for 30 years. Both were made saints. Ignorance became a virtue over knowledge, and faith replaced reason. And so it is today.

In his classic 6-volume tome The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon saw his task as a historian of early Christianity as that of a dispassionate, scientific observer. His job was to see things as they are, rather than as the pious and powerful would want them to be.

Gibbon determined that the Pre-Christian Roman Empire was typified by “religious harmony,” and that the Roman elite were more interested in good governance than in imposing religious orthodoxy on their subjects. It simply wasn’t politically expedient and they didn’t really care what the people did, as long as they paid their taxes.

A distinctive feature of early Christianity by contrast was its “exclusive zeal for the truth of religion;” a rigid, intolerant obsessiveness that succeeded ultimately through bullying, intimidation and murder. And it promoted a class of wide-eyed, illiterate mystics as leaders. Indeed, Gibbon felt that Christian zealotry was ultimately responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, by creating citizens who were utterly contemptuous of their obligations as citizens of Rome.

The early history of Christianity wasn’t about tolerance, empathy or understanding. It tolerated no religion but its own. Paganism was considered evil and it was treated as such. Christian authorities condoned violent destruction of classical polytheism and most of the art, culture and literature of the classical world of Greece and Rome.

Gibbon’s take on the early Christians was that they were rabidly anti-intellectual, murderously intolerant book-burning thugs. One cannot help but recall the Nazis when reading about Christian mobs flaying the famous female mathematician Hypatia alive and destroying ancient temples and priceless works of art.

Roman philosopher Celsus was merciless in his ridicule of the new religious cult. He attacked the personality of the Christians themselves, condemning them as being uneducated and therefore popular with slaves and the lower classes. “Christianity is for hysterical women, children and idiots.” He appealed to a deep Roman snobbery by asking how the thoughts of cobblers and weavers could be put in the same class as the ideas of learned philosophers. He also quoted the words of Epictetus who said that Christians could face death fearlessly because they emphasized the irrational over reason and were childishly ignorant.

The destruction of the classical world wasn’t simply the result of the invading Germanic barbarian hordes, as most mainstream historians will tell you. It was mostly the result of religious fanatics who believed they were doing God’s will. The so-called barbarians held Roman culture in high regard. They assimilated quite easily with the Empire.

Early Christians rampaged through the classical world and trashed Greek and Roman culture, leaving western civilization in shambles. They engaged in wanton destruction of pagan temples once Emperor Constantine made Christianity the “official” religion of the empire. Christians went out of their way to destroy classical civilization, and on top of it they imposed a “new order” based on religious fervor.

Destroying a “pagan” statue or burning a book was akin to amputating a gangrenous limb: you save the healthy whole by preventing the spread of the infection. If you think that a marble statue is possessed by a demon, then it kinda makes sense to dig out its eyes and carve a cross on its forehead.

If you believe the theologian Tertullian that “Satan and his angels have filled the whole world,” and that they laid traps for the virtuous in the form of sensual pleasures and such – then avoiding the Romans’ holidays, rites, rituals, pageants, libraries and bath houses is perfectly rational. It also helped to have an innate disgust for human sexuality.

The early Christian world was in a state of perpetual metaphysical war, and choosing sides inevitably meant knowing your enemies. But where did this appetite for destruction come from? Why, Demons, of course! Many ancient Christians believed that the world we inhabit was a perilous place, crowded with malevolent supernatural beings who sometimes manifested themselves in various physical forms. It was the Christian’s duty to root these demons out!

Evidence of the rampant violence can be seen on most of the surviving classical statues, which show signs of the battering done by Christian zealots who were led to believe that all those beautiful statues contained a demon which could be eliminated by bashing it to pieces. Thus, arms, legs, noses, heads and especially genitalia were missing. Only pieces remain of the classical sculptures we see in museums today.

The cause of all this damage is never explained or discussed by museum officials. Not by historians. Not by schoolteachers. Not by Biblical scholars or archaeologists.

It’s one of history’s truly ‘taboo’ subjects. WTF?

The Christians destroyed pagan temples or converted them into churches and burned all the libraries, like the aforementioned Library of Alexandria. They burned huge numbers of irreplaceable books in the process. As a consequence of Christian hatred of the classical world and its freedoms, only about ten percent of the ancient writings survive today; some sources estimate five percent or less. An undisclosed number undoubtedly reside somewhere in the bowels of the infamous Vatican Library, hidden away forever…

Faithful Christian followers internalized the doctrine of corrupt preachers like John Chrysostom, which incited them to hate pagans, Jews, atheists and homosexuals. The Christians eagerly expelled and killed thousands of them and confiscated their property. They maintained a culture of fear and made it a dangerous time to be anything other than a practicing, baptized Christian.

Early Christian writings emphasized what amounted to strict social control, and they were in marked contrast to the wide variety of thoughts which were freely expressed in the writings of Roman and Greek thinkers of centuries past…

While the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians were certainly not saints, they did have a notable tolerance for different gods and religions. The persecution of Christians by the Romans was greatly exaggerated by the accounts of the Church, which like the Bible, was based more on faith narratives and allegory than historical facts. ‘Pagan’ philosophers such as Celsus and the last ‘pagan’ emperor, Emperor Julian – known as “the Apostate” – challenged the Christian narrative, but once they were out of the picture, dissenting voices were either killed or forced underground.

The Enlightenment view of our classical heritage was that it was essentially benign and rational. The advent of Christianity marked civilization’s plunge into darkness, until it was resuscitated by Renaissance humanists.

Sadly for us, the fanatical Christian monks and theologians backed by Christian emperors won the war, and classical civilization lost. Thus the Christian fascists who rule America today are carrying on the long-standing tradition of tearing down every last vestige of civilized culture, just as their forefathers did.

The evidence is clear that we are living through a new dark age. Hopefully it won’t take another thousand years before the next Enlightenment!