An open letter to Facebook:

We, the undersigned, are writing to express our dismay and to request explanations for the recent wave of attacks against Romanian atheist Facebook pages and groups.



In the last few days, two of the main pages administered by the Romanian atheist community have been closed for allegedly posting content not complying to the Facebook guidelines. The main Facebook group used by the Romanian atheist community has also been shut down, as well as some personal accounts of people involved in the community.



While we understand that community guidelines are important on a communication plaform such as Facebook, we fail to see how these latest decisions follow regular procedures as they all seem to be part of the same purposeful campaign to silence the atheist voice in the Romanian online media. We should also point out that several similar pages and groups exist and that on many occasions the content provided on the Romanian pages has been inspired, translated or adapted from those pages that still seem to be doing well.



We have always considered that Facebook guarantees our freedom of speech and that personal sensibilities, even religious in nature, are not enough to completely shut down the means of expression for a whole community. The atheist community has never posted racist materials, has never promoted any kind of hate speech against any religious people and has always attempted to only ridicule ideas and not attack the people that were promoting those ideas.



It is clear that some religious groups might not want their propaganda to be criticized in any way.

We have even seen communications in religious groups that referred to a concerted action of reports against atheist pages and groups.

This is not the outcome of just a number of individuals feeling they are "harassed" or "discriminated" against, but the intentional and organized action of a group that feels they can and should dictate what the public discourse should be like.



We also understand that their numbers might be vastly larger than ours. But this should not be a factor in any decision to shut down pages or groups, as minorities of any kind also have a right to express themselves and not be silenced by the majority.



All things considered, we feel Facebook was wrong on allowing this to happen without giving detailed explanations or any specific instructions on how we could remedy the situation.



We are saddened by this turn of events and hope the international community will take a stand with us for our right to express ourselves which should indeed include the right to poke fun at any ideas, including religious beliefs.



Yours truly,



Ciprian Cucu, PhD., Assistant Professor

Marius Hanganu, Refugee Caseworker (Nürnberg, Germany)

Alin Andries, Software developer (Milan, Italy)

Eduard Longier, Freelance translator (Cracow, Poland)

Cornel Creţu, Blogger profudereligie.blogspot.ro (Braşov, Romania)

Andreea Băncioiu, Blogger korallion.blogspot.ro (Sibiu, Romania)

Alexandru Toma Patrascu, Marketing Manager (Bucharest, Romania)Monica Belitoiu, Communication Specialist (Bucharest, Romania)

Calin Miclaus, System administrator (Arad, Romania)Adrian Avarvarei, Software company owner (Cluj, Romania)

Laura Negoi, Sales Responsible (Galați, Romania)

Dacians and Orthodoxy

You may wonder what Dacians and Orthodoxy have in common. Nothing according to any historian who is worth anything, and everything according to the Orthodox Church.

First, some history:

Dacians (the Thracians that lived in the territory that today is Romania) were a polytheistic people, having Zamolxis as a main deity to whom they sacrificed people (who had to win a tournament for this privilege) hoping they will be granted whatever they may have needed. Some sources say that Thracians settled in this part of Europe around 1000 BC.

The ethnogenesis of the Romanian people has its roots in between 100BC and 100AD when the Dacians had the first significant contacts with the Roman Empire (another polytheistic bunch). Between the Roman conquest of Dacia (106 AD) and Emperor Aurelian’s withdrawal (271 AD), the natives gathered many cultural elements from the Romans including the Latin language, becoming a Romanized people. After the withdrawal, the Dacian territory has been subject to many invasions (Slavs, Goths, Visigoths etc) thus the freshly Romanized Dacians having their culture and language influenced even further.  The first mentions of Vlachs (romanic people) appeared in the 6^th century in Emperor Maurice’s Strategikon, this being the point in which Dacians had completely morphed into a new people.

It is needless to say that with all the people that traveled (peacefully or with weapons drawn) through Dacia, religion had become so diverse to the point in which every man had his own religion (Think just of the Roman auxilia that was gathered from all corners of the Roman Empire, and was then stationed in Dacia). Moreover, up until the 12^th century (and beyond) the Christian community in the area north of the Danube has been influenced by Slavic nations. Since the 9^th century, the Bulgarians who constantly raided the area north of the Danube started imposing Slavic language (their own) instead of Latin for Christian rites. It had been that way all the way to the 13^th century in which dates the first proof of an Orthodox Hierarchy on Romanian territory. This may seem as the beginning of the Romanian Orthodoxy, but there is another interesting thing people should know regarding this issue. As this new official religion was imported from the Byzantine Empire, the official rite languages were supposed to be Latin and Greek, but due to the constant arguments with the western church, and (more important) the Bulgarian influence, the Cyrillic alphabet and Slavic language had been imposed in the two Vallachian countries yet again, the official languages becoming Slavic and Greek (in some places). Romanians in the middle ages (including the priests) spoke as much Slavic or Greek as any person does today (none), so up until the 17^th century when the first Bible in Romanian was published, Romanians were more or less clueless to the meaning of Christianity or Orthodoxy (not that they are more informed today).

(Map of Dacia in the 3rd century AD)

Now for the sad part:

From the information given above (which can be found with a few google searches) it should be clear that Orthodoxy in Romania is about 8 centuries old, but due to the huge amount of beliefs and religions mashed up together in a rather small territory, Romanians are more superstitious rather than religious. Romania having always been a predominantly rural country with a most colorful and diverse folklore, is after so many years still a country in which everyone has his own “religion”.  I often encounter people who tell me it is bad omen to do things like whistling or opening an umbrella indoors and washing clothes or combing your hair on Sunday but when asked to explain why, I only get the classic answers: “Because that’s how it is.”, “Because it’s bad” or the worst and most annoying one “Because God will punish you”. The amount of silly superstitions (both Christian and Pagan) Romanians believe in is stunning, and they are so deeply built into our minds that most of us do not even notice them.

The problem is that despite the fact that we have the Bible in our own language, along with the massive amount of information that the internet (to which most of us have access to) provides, few really care to read anything on the subject, the rest opting for complacence rather than knowledge. Even worse, the Orthodox Church encourages and adopts superstition. Romanian Orthodoxy has more to do with folklore (The Holy Tradition) rather than Christianity.

(Picture of the "feathered ox". This event takes place in the day of the Pentecost, and is supposed to bring a gentler winter. People march with the ox through the town, and stop in front of the church. After the church service is over, the ox is released, and girls who manage to catch it and grab it by the horns are said to get married soon.)

Now what?

By now you should have a rough image of how things work in Romania in what regards religion and belief. But what can one do in order to stop this?

Whenever a debate occurs, there is a great chance of encountering one of the following as a participant: 

-the “Historian” (tries confusing you with erroneous Historical data)

-the Theologian (does the same thing as the “Historian”, but with a diploma given by the Church to prove he is “right”)

-the religious fanatic (rants randomly about a great variety of things, and quotes them from the bible to convince you)

-the new age hippie (combats and explains everything with incoherent babble about spirituality, energies, aliens and alternative medicine)

-the Dacomaniac (tries to convince you that Dacians were Christian before Christ was born, and if he fails tries to make you feel guilty for disappointing your ancestors).

These categories can be found in the natural state given above, or combined. One of the things they have in common is the belief that Romania has been Orthodox for 2000 years. There are numerous misquotes (or quotes that are out of context) of Romanian writers (some of them atheists) allover Romanian sites, blogs and facebook pages supporting the Romanian Orthodoxy which is 2000 years old according to their owners (oh, did you know Jesus was a Dacian?).

(Picture taken during the protests against the electronic ID cards. Banner says "The Orthodox Church - Mother of the Romanian folk (Mihai Eminescu)")




Mihai Eminescu – rather famous 19^th century poet and journalist- (who sent letters which still exist to his mistress saying he had no god but her) was quoted saying that “The Western Orthodox Church has been the supporter of the Latin element in the Danubian area for eighteen centuries. It stabilized and unified our language in such an admirable way that we are the only nation that has no dialects. It has saved us from being assimilated by the Polish, Hungarians, Tatars and Turks, and is today the only defense and support of the millions of Romanians that live outside our borders. Whoever combats the Church and its rites may be a cosmopolitan, socialist, universal republican or whatever it may come to mind, but he is not a Romanian”.

Whenever someone tries to point out the obvious mistakes in these quotes (or any religious argument for that matter), the response of is often rather “unsophisticated” (not to say downright idiotic). Getting through to these people is next to impossible. It is a continuous struggle for tolerance and reason in a place ruled by bigotry and grotesque ignorance. How do you convince a pagan, superstitious, poorly educated nation that it is not Christian? How do you replace wishful thinking and fear of the unknown with responsibility and knowledge?

(Picture of Romanian children doing the Nazi salute during the recent protests, holding Romanian flags.)

Orthodoxy in Virgin Mary's flower garden.

Since I write every day in my native language about atheism and religion worldwide, I thought it might be a good idea to write a few articles about Romanian Orthodoxy and atheism in English, for whomever it might concern.

Romania is a little  Eastern European country, part of the former Communist Bloc, one that has not yet recovered from the “miracles” of the communist reign, and one of the few orthodox countries, next to Russia, Moldavia, Greece, Bulgaria and a few others. I could not yet decide which one has destroyed our people more: the “communist period”, or the medieval cult of Orthodoxy, with its absurd claims, anti-humanism, discrimination policies and cupidity.  The religious nationalists call it “Virgin Mary’s flower garden”, because they want to feel special, elected by God and boast about the beauty of the country and the grip religion has on it, all in one name.

Even though we are not a particularly rich country, I can describe it as “decent”, if we talk about lifestyle and technology: we still have a great deal of areas not yet destroyed by man, one of the biggest populations of grey wolf in Europe and a beautiful and unique Delta on the river Danube. Cities are fairly modern and you could probably not distinguish between a city household in Romania and one in whatever other country. And, specifically, we love the Internet. 

What sets us back a whole lot (20+ years) compared to our European neighbors is our apparent incapacity of doing legit business, of electing leaders that are not crooked and of telling the clergy to please lay off our purses, go their way and take their medieval morals with them. Almost all of the population declares themselves as religious and the Orthodox Church claims some 87% of the population, based on a 2002 census.  This apparently allows the Orthodox Church to claim we are an “orthodox country” (even though the Constitution begs to differ), mix itself in the affairs of the state, influence laws and take public funding for granted.

Since the 1989 Revolution, the Church managed to introduce Orthodoxy as a confessional class in schools, taught  from kindergarten till the end of high school, and we only recently managed to make it an “opt out” class. The State pays quite a big deal of our tax money to pay for the clergy’s salaries, restoration and building of churches and parish houses, Religion teachers, manuals, Church personnel and “social work”. Yes, the churches’ “social work” is sponsored by the state. More than that, in the latter years the Orthodox Church tried to get control over ALL the orphanages, ALL the social help centers and ALL the nursing homes. They called it a “church-state partnership”. The state was supposed to give all the money, and the church was supposed to “administer it”, and we would speculate that they would probably do that by firing all the personnel, putting theology graduates with no medical, sociological or administrative education instead and spreading dogma to whomever came under their influence.

Seeing the Orthodox clergy parade with their expensive cars and wearing expensive accessories (gold watches and whatnot) makes us question their piety and need for spiritual wealth in the detriment of materialistic needs. This is made worse by the fact that that salaries and pensions are dropping, and poor people (who most have state pensions) are not properly taken care of.

In the last few years Atheists and Non-religious people, and even the well-intended, honest Christians have begun to declare themselves fed up with the church’s abuse of power, shameless mercantilism, intolerance and political involvement. Stories we used to tell over a beer out with friends started to make headlines and televisions started to report on cases of sheer lack of empathy or humanism in the church, like priests refusing to accept the burial of people in the Orthodox graveyards without the payment of the exorbitant sums they ask for, priests performing “faith healing” or exorcisms, some ending with the death  of the subject, drug dealing priests, homosexual relations with underage kids and money scams involving the church businesses.

It’s no surprise that the Church has named the attempt to verify their incomes and the legal prosecution of law-bending priests to be “a war on Orthodoxy”, conducted by the Atheists and Secularists. Even worse, because of this war the church is under a fierce attack: they are not allowed hate speech and discrimination against national, religious and sexual minorities, and what is a church if it’s not allowed to be as judgmental and discriminating as it pleases?

But now we are here. We started to work on informing the public. We started to form groups and we fight against the legal injustices. And, step by step, we are wining: we are constantly cutting slices off the monstrous influence this medieval dogma has on our minds, educational system, laws and tax money. And it is not too soon either.

This is the first of a series of articles about religion and atheism in "Virgin Mary’s flower garden”. I have my mind set on writing one every Saturday, and I would very much appreciate it if you would voice out any lack of clarity on my behalf. The situation here is very familiar to me, so if there are any questions I will gladly answer them (either by comment or a new article).