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means by which human beings can be induced to commit atrocities upon other human beings. We see that the image of Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his own son, is not so compelling a picture after all. It merely symbolizes a sort of mindless belief in the orders of someone or something “out there” that certainly may not have the best interests of humanity at heart. We can perceive, in the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son, the Right Man terror of Cain who killed his brother because his sacrifice was not accepted. A god who picks and chooses what sacrifice is “good enough” - setting brother against brother - is certainly a “Jealous god”, and such a god is a psychopath. is that of sin. Awareness of the nature of sin led to a growth industry in agencies and techniques for dealing with it. These agencies became centers of economic and military power, as they are today. Christianity - promoting the ideals of Judaism under a thin veneer of the “New Covenant” - changed the ways in which men and women interacted with one another. It changed the attitude to life’s one certainty: death. It changed the degree of freedom with which people could acceptably choose what to think and believe. Pagans had been intolerant of the Jews and Christians whose religions tolerated no gods but their own. The rising domination of Christianity created a much sharper conflict between religions, and religious intolerance became the norm, not the exception. Christianity also brought the open coercion of religious belief. You could even say that, by the modern definition of a cult as a group that uses manipulation and mind control to induce worship, Christianity is the Mother of all Cults - in service to the misogynistic, fascist ideals of Judaism! The rising Christian hierarchy of the Dark Ages was quick to mobilize military forces against believers in other gods and most especially, against other Christians who promoted less Fascist systems of belief. This probably included the original Christians and the original teachings. The change of the Western world from Pagan to Christian effectively changed how people viewed themselves and their interactions with 33 High Strangeness The main template of Christianity - received directly from Judaism - The history of sin from that point to now, is a story of its triumph.