EXPLORING THE ORIGIN OF KING JOSIAH’S JUDAIC GOD; PLUS
THE EARLY HISTORY AND REPROCUTIONS OF THE
ABRAHAMIC FAITHS: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAMISM.
After an INTRODUCTION
on page 4 and FOREWORD on page 7
we begin with our primitive period. See OUR
BEGINNING, page 10
Sumer’s records date to around 2600 BCE, but remained
obscure until after Semitic speaking Akkadians conquered Sumer and deciphered a
syllabary writing system; using hundreds of damp clay tablets recording the
Enuma Elish creation myth with Marduk’s creation of humankind; also: the tower
of Babel story, plus the Epic of King Gilgamesh’s search for Utnapishtim, the
hero of Sumer’s ancient flood myth. See
MESOPOTAMIA, page 15.
Judah’s King Josiah, (640-609 BCE), fabricated his own
myths of creation, flood, and search; an epic tale of tribal propaganda with
wrathful Yahweh as tribal god, who commanded believers to kill apostates,
blasphemers and proponents of other gods; a regressive dogma; murdering
foreigners, and the erudite discerning Israelites. In 444 BCE Ezra &
Nehemiah pronounced “the epic of political-religious propaganda” Holy Scripture.
But Yahweh’s impotency against Christianity’s Crusades, Inquisitions and the
Vatican’s complicity in the Holocaust, proves the Judaic god is an imaginary
patron of our prestigious professional proponents of the Abrahamic faith’s mythical
gods. See JUDAISM, page 17 and
CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM page 63.
History has found 50 “redeeming gods”, such as Persia’s
Mithras, 500 years before Jesus. Rome worshipped Mithraism 200 years before
approving Christianity, but the biographies of all of the earlier gods and that
of Jesus are virtually identical. See CHRISTIANITY
page 27.
Mohammad claimed that for 22 years, angel Gabriel’s
visitations provided precepts for his Koran; although Gabriel was a
Judaic-Christian Archangel. See ISLAMISM
page 44.
I have unwavering faith in our planet’s immutable forces and scientific principles, including
evolution’s erratic progression; all were discovered
by our world’s scientists. See MY FAITH
AND NOTES page 69.
Marginalizing females robbed religious civilizations of
50% of their total brain-power. See OUR
CONSTERNATIONS AND OUR SAVIORS
This document and the 13 supportive documents
enumerated on page 74
Copyright
© 2012 Samuel Terrill Redwine Sr.
DEFINITIONS
Antinomianism: “Christian theological doctrine; that faith alone, not obedience to the
moral law, is required for salvation”.
Blasphemy:
“any remark deliberately mocking or contemptuous of God”.
Cult: “a system of religious
worship or ritual”.
Fable; fabulous; fancy; fantasy;
fantastic; legend; legendary: “connote imaginary, unreal or
fictitious”.
Faith: "unquestioning belief that does not
require proof or evidence".
Fundamentalism: “religious beliefs based on a
literal interpretation of everything in the Bible and regarded as fundamental
to Christian faith and morals; the twentieth
century movement among some American Protestants, is based on those beliefs”.
Gods: “any of the various
beings conceived of as supernatural,
immortal, and having special powers over the lives and affairs of people and
the course of nature. In a monotheistic religion, the single god is considered omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and
creator and ruler of the universe”.
History, historical: “a chronological record of the past”.
Life: “that property of
plants and animals which makes it possible for them to take in food, get energy
from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings, and reproduce”.
Myth; mystical; mythology;
mythological; mystical; mythical;
mythological; “connote
imaginary and unreal or any fictitious story, unscientific account, theory or
belief”.
Philosophy: “the use of reason and argument in seeking truth and
knowledge of reality, especially of the
causes and nature of things and of the principles governing existence”.
Propaganda: “any systematic, widespread, dissemination or promotion of particular
ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. to further one’s own cause or to damage an
opposing one”.
Reason: means “to think coherently and
logically; to draw inferences or conclusions from facts whether known or
assumed”.
Religion: “the belief in a personal god or super-human controlling power to be
obeyed and worshipped as the creators and rulers of the universe”
Science: “systematized knowledge derived from observation, study and
experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of
what is being studied”.
Secularism’s doctrine: “disregards or rejects any form of religious faith; especially that
religion and ecclesiastical affairs should
not enter into the functions of the state”. Secularists advocate tolerant
worldly views and believe that it is ignorant and unfair to inculcate the minds
of little children with supernaturalism’s inherent fallacies.
Supernatural: “that which exists or occurs outside the normal experience or knowledge of man; not explainable by the
known forces or laws of nature”.
INTRODUCTION
The following quotations are from The Age of Reason; by Thomas Paine, an American Revolutionary patriot, (1737-1809); who
succinctly, expressed what I wish to say.
“IT has been
my intention for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion;
I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that
consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it
to be the last offering I should make to my fellow citizens of all nations, and
that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not
admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.”
“The
circumstance—appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles, of faith, has not
only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly
necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of
government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity. I
believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and
endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed
that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress
of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not
believing them.”
“I do not mean by
this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same
right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness
of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. INFIDELITY does not consist in
believing, or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what he
does not believe”.
“It is impossible
to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has
produced in society.—in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a
revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the
system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and
state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited,
by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon
first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be
changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the
world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of
religion would follow”.
Samuel P.
Huntington’s 1996 book: The Clash of Civilizations; said Islam is a
political ideology; that religion
is the principal defining characteristic of civilizations, that Muslims make up
about one-fifth of the world’s population, and in the 1990s were far more
involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilization. (I’m
apprehensive because America is the most religious of Western democracies.) Mr.
Huntington said that the world’s great religions antedate Western civilization;
that our world is moving out of its Western phase; that ideologies typifying
Western civilization will decline, replaced by religions and other culturally
based forms of identity and commitment; that the Westphalian treaty’s
separation of internal politics from religion is ending; that religion is likely to intrude
into international affairs; that intercivilizational clash of political ideas
spawned by the West is being supplanted by an intercivilizational clash of
culture and religion.—He said late twentieth century saw a global resurgence of
worldly religions; intensifying religious consciousness and the rise of fundamentalist
movements; reinforcing their differences— that the world’s Christians peaked at
about 30% in the 1980s, leveled off in 1996 and would be about 25% by 2025— that
the world’s Muslims will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20% of
the world’s population by the turn of the century, surpassing the number of
Christians some years later; probably accounting for 30% of the world’s
population by 2025.
Mr. Huntington also said that indigenization and the
revival of religion are global phenomena; most evident in the
dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Asia’s and
Islam’s cultural assertiveness and challenges to the West; that Islam’s challenge manifests in its
pervasive cultural, social, and political resurgence in the Muslim world;
accompanying rejection of Western institutions and values; and that Asia’s
challenge is manifest in East Asian civilizations—Sinic, Japanese, Buddhist,
and Muslim, emphasizing their cultural differences from the West and, at times,
the commonalities they share, often identified with Confucianism; that Asians
and Muslims stress the superiority of their cultures to Western culture. In
contrast, people in other non-Western civilizations, i.e., Hindu, Orthodox,
Latin American, and African—may affirm the distinctive character of their
cultures, but as of the mid-1990s had been hesitant about proclaiming their
superiority to Western culture. Asia & Islam stand alone; at times
together, in an increasingly confident assertiveness with respect to the West.
He said
“Related but different causes lie behind these
challenges. Asian assertiveness is rooted in economic growth; Muslim assertiveness
stems in considerable measure from social mobilization and population growth.
Each of these challenges is having and will continue to have into the
twenty-first century a highly destabilizing impact on global politics. The
nature of those impacts, however, differs significantly. The economic
development of China and other Asian societies provides their governments with
both the incentives and the resources to become more demanding in their dealing
with other countries, and particularly the expansion of the fifteen to
twenty-four-year-old age cohort, provides recruits for fundamentalism,
terrorism, insurgency, and migration. Economic growth threatens Muslim governments
and non-Muslim societies.—To ignore the impact of the Islamic Resurgence on
Eastern Hemisphere politics in the late twentieth century is equivalent to
ignoring the impact of the Protestant Reformation on European politics in the
late sixteenth century.—The Resurgence will also have shown that ‘Islam is the solution’ to the problems of morality, identity, meaning, and faith, but
not to the problems of social injustice, political repression, economic
backwardness, and military weakness. These failures could generate widespread
disillusionment with political Islam, and a search for alternative ‘solutions’ to these
problems”.
Life teaches: the
golden rule is the first step toward world peace. The bible teaches: hate and
revenge are sacred obligations, and that the Judaic god is partial to Jews, but
during their ignominious history the god failed to save innocent Jews from the
Vatican’s Inquisitions, Persecutions, Crusades and the
Vatican’s complicity in the Holocaust, (See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM).
This treatise
explores our misconceptions about Yahweh,
God, Allah and their holy
books. Where, when, how, why and who conceptualized the fabrications? Believers profess blind-faith: that the bible’s perfidious god is our source of all
goodness. It is absurd that people grovel and worship the bible’s egomaniacal,
pathological “God”. Deceitful interpretations by the prestigious professional
proponents of Abrahamic religions’ mystical gods prompted
my search for
reasonable explanations. I have not found an iota of tangible evidence
supporting authenticity of the bible’s Pentateuch, but lots of evidence explaining why our world
is fraught with a plethora of blind-faith believers in an Abrahamic faith; that
succeeded by slaughtering all naysayers. About 1000 years ago, Judaism and
Christianity forewent the killing, but Islam still kills their dissenters. Who abides faith in religions that
murdered millions of the innocent, to gain an illogical imposition upon
society, but hypocritically consider family planning sinful? I have no faith in
ignorance, which sired the Abrahamic religions; they thrive on it and beget it.
I fear zealots’ dogmatic killer instinct, i.e., Yahweh’s commanding death for
apostates, blasphemers, infidels, and proponents of other gods.
FOREWORD
You say you don’t believe in evolution? Not surprising; a
2008 Gallup poll found that only 15% of Americans accepted the proposition that
humans developed over millions of years; revealing
our national ignorance of the scientific facts versus religious beliefs;
it’s inimical for our political future. Wait! Don’t leave; I’m a little slow;
working with 14 pt. font, zoomed 100%, on a 24 inch monitor trying to see
punctuation;. Prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods blame
evolution on educated nonbelievers, but evolution’s a natural process of all
living things. “Survival of the fittest”, is best explained by noting that the
vast quantity of seeds, eggs and sperm produced is an excessive potential for
life because it far exceeds Earth’s ability to support them all, so each faces
a life and death struggle against all other living things; a natural
progression, allowing the stronger healthier living things to survive and reproduce.
For billions of years of occasional mutations, all living things gradually
improved; beginning with single cell microorganisms, which evolved into today’s
living things, where each struggles, competing against other living things. Man
has abetted evolution by selectively breeding his domestic plants and animals.
Consider this very implausible proposition: for millennia, religious societies
killed their most intelligent citizens and became less intelligent; this
evolutionary state of affairs is pertinent to my premise. See EVOLUTION page 66.
Another fact essential to my premise is our plethora of
nonthinkers and dearth of thinkers and their relationship to man’s ignoble
fabrications of three superficial religions, who nonthinkers worship, but
thinkers have been aware of man’s conspiratorial ideas; his conceptualizations
seeking opportunities to challenge fellowmen, etc. Since our beginning,
thinkers explored and reasoned the insignificance of mystical gods. Ancient
Jews and Christians murdered their thinkers who professed disbelief, and today’s
Islamic Muslims continue to slaughter nonbelieving thinkers.
You say you’ve pondered the mysteries of the bible’s
Judaic God to no avail? I lost faith forty nine years ago, after a family
disaster, when our preacher explained: “God” was testing us. I was familiar
with the bible and suspected a god that destroyed the world’s population with a
flood, except for one family, was a stupid egomaniacal pathological killer; not
benevolent and forgiving, which is appropriate for a biblical “God”. My
skepticism was confirmed; religion is
illogical, but I presumed there was a logical reason for the Pentateuch’s
incongruity and perverse stories where “God” commands Israel’s army to destroy
nations, but to save young virgins for the soldiers. A monstrous god that
commands obeisant propitiation, but kills innocent foreign women children and
infants, is now acclaimed by many of our world’s people as their creator and
daily guide. They fear it; grovel on their knees reverently seeking the fatuous
promise of eternal life. Reliance on the intangible “holy books” cries-out for
rational explanations. For 49 years, I have searched history for clues. The
bible and two extraordinary books by Jewish professors published earlier this
century, connected-the-dots and provided intimations as to why an ancient king
was motivated to compose a legendary tribal epic; unequivocally resolving the
incongruous equivocations of the Pentateuch’s “Judaic God”-character: Yahweh.
Marvin A. Sweeny’s book: King Josiah of Judah,
The Lost Messiah of Israel; plus Israel Finkelstein’s and Neil Asher Silberman’s: The
Bible Unearthed; plus our education problems and
Islamic terrorism; inspired and prompted this treatise. Many ancients postulated the bible’s origin. Two centuries of
explorations by archaeologists and epigraphists reveal
the bible’s books of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy” were extrapolated
from Josiah’s politically inspired, tribal propaganda. Its leading character
was portrayed as a hard-nosed, wrathful tribal god who coerced Josiah’s
subjects away from polytheism’s pagan gods; assuring their allegiance by
killing apostates, blasphemers, etc. Josiah’s propaganda reveals the origins of
the Hebrew bible’s Pentateuch and its Judaic God. My comprehensive truthful
response delineates the Abrahamic religions absurd dogma and their bloody
histories.
The universe’s
infiniteness is
incomprehensible, and is crucial to what 95 years taught me. The Hubble’s
powerful telescope, above the atmosphere, enables today’s astronomers to view
the awesome cosmos billions of light-years away. Without countervailing
evidence, we nonbelievers realize that it was not created for the exclusive
convenience of Adam & Eve, or for the progeny of Abraham Isaac & Jacob.
Life taught: we are obliged to treat our Earth, with respectful affection; and I’m obliged to
treat others honestly and respectfully; also that we are attracted to opposing
poles; positively, by our humane
desire for an undiscriminating inclusiveness, our curiosity,
creative-initiative, and craving, for additional knowledge, or negatively,
by foregoing inclusiveness and worldly knowledge; relying on Pentateuch’s
egomaniacal, intolerant, jealous, death-dealing god character, Yahweh.
Sunday school impressed “Jesus’s altruism” on me, but as an
adult, I could not believe a genocidal tyrannical “Judaic God” commanded
believers to kill nonbelievers, even if the victim is a family member. Why was the “Judaic God” portrayed so
iniquitously? I’m swimming upstream against hordes of believers who inherited
their faith from ancient ancestors who were forced to believe in aristocracy’s
wrathful god or die; and whose progeny taught children that “God” must be
obeyed as He commands or they would die. Why
do descendants worship spurious gods; why
do Religion-Lites satiate them with righteous self-satisfaction; and why does Islam enforce Josiah’s ossified vengeful dogma’s totalitarianism?
It’s because the “holy books” precepts are
from Josiah’s tribal propaganda, his fabulous biblical saga. Christianity and Islamism were
extrapolated from the Hebrew bible’s Holy Scriptures, whose origin was deduced
by correlating a few biblical clues with other information. Bible scholars
confirm that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy
were fabricated during the reign of Judah’s King Josiah, and that after his death,
his scholars revised them in Babylonian exile; adding Joshua, Judges,
1&2Samuel and 1&2Kings. Josiah’s self-aggrandizing propaganda proclaims
himself Yahweh’s ideal, most righteous
king; deceitfully denigrating earlier Israeli and Judahite kings. This is the bible story I have long wanted
to tell.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the year 648 BCE,
Prince Josiah was born in small restive Judah.
His father’s assassination left 8 year old Josiah to rule the kingdom for 31
years, but he inadvertently created the Hebrew Bible’s
Holy Scriptures. Josiah did not intend to author a bible, but to survive
polytheism’s divisiveness, and to impress the
Israelites with their tribe’s epical uniqueness, his team of political and
religious leaders fabricated a tract of royal tribal propaganda; the fabulous
legend of his tribe’s mythical ancestors and a tribal god. Misunderstandings, resulting
from worshiping polytheism’s divisive gods had destroyed several Judahite
kings. To fully appreciate young King Josiah’s political precariousness, we
must explore humankind’s historical beginning
and our primitive god-ideas.
However, if you are interested in the Earth’s beginning,
see Wikipedia’s History of the Earth, “describing the most important events and
fundamental stages in the development of Planet Earth from its formation to the
present day”, including Human Evolution and Civilization. “Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago,
and is about one-third the age of the universe”.
OUR BEGINNING
As life’s decisions are influenced by the consequences of
our earlier experiences, I’ll begin this saga at the primordial spark of life,
3.5 billion years ago; in the shallows of some African lake with single cell
organisms, which through eons of time, multiplied, mutated, and developed
through innumerable biological stages via natural selection, when only the
fittest survive to repeat the reproductive process, known as evolution.
Thence, we reached the developmental stage of genus Homo or primate, and after
evolving the ability to stand erect and walk on two legs, we became what we now
know to have been species Homo erectus. During the Pleistocene geological age, when
continental ice sheets were spreading and receding, our brains
evolved into the sagacious, discerning species, Homo sapiens.
Mystical gods were vital features of primitive
humanity. It’s obvious that Homo erectus wasn’t
interested in self-delusion. Indulgence with gods awaited arrival of Homo
sapiens’ exuberant curiosity before
we questioned the how or why of our existence. “You are probably aware that our first fearsome gods were the
terrifying unpredictable forces of nature”.
Natural phenomena, our slowly evolving intellects, and imaginations,
prompted us to ponder god-ideas, i.e., the use of occult powers to
politically organize and manipulate the thoughtless disoriented members of our
tribal community.
Female’s
wellspring was venerated as “Nature’s life-giving, energizing power”. Our
Mother-Earth provided our sustenance. Our long evolutionary development
sensitized us to our environment. Our “Earth’s mother was the Sun, which arose
each morning, as we did, and traveled across the sky”, keeping watch over her
plant and animal life; nourishing us with warmth and rain. We eventually realized the
Sun’s magnificent influence as the moving force that constituted the god-idea. “The productive power in all plants
and animals emanated from Sun, which
we worshipped as nature’s great energizer. The god of light and creation”, able to manipulate us with
unanticipated rewards of goodness or punish us with nature’s fearsome
outbursts. This is the source of our
god-idea, where we first assigned occult powers to
the sun and poisoned our minds with its mythologies. To please the
seemingly fanciful churlish whims of our sun-god, we performed rituals and sacrificed our children to appease or
appeal to Sun. We celebrated Sun’s summer and winter solstices and its spring
and autumn equinoxes. Sun could not be ignored. It appears
that early names of the gods were compounded or derived from words that
originally meant the sun. We primitive ignorant males venerated fire and
serpents with no consideration for the lives of rival tribes. The Lotus and Fichus Religiosa or banyan
trees were religiously significant. Trees were designated as either female or
male, but most gods were thought to be androgynous.
. We men worshiped women as our Sun’s
dearest creation, part of Sun’s vital system; our source of new lives; we
considered them androgynous; their regenerative powers requiring only the Sun’s
consent. Females were the political-social leaders of communal groups. A
mothers’ eminence was proportional to the new lives she had brought forth and
to their wellbeing, and the Sun-god was accountable for each child’s welfare.
Matriarchal arrangements fulfilled us males; convinced
that female leadership served our best interests, we never felt the pangs of
unsatisfied sexual desire and the Sun-god received credit for women’s
ability to create new lives. If our community
needed new sons, we appealed to
the Sun-god. We were not part of the female families, but as our
community’s guardian-hunters, we lived separately and at puberty, boys were
sent to live with us. Matriarchal
communities tolerated and accommodated us males without jealousy. Women dominated, but welcomed men; their maternal
instincts blossomed throughout that golden era, and communal life thrived, under their velvet yoke, but was destined
to implode when nature’s secret
was revealed. We assumed the Sun-god was punishing women, who failed to regularly bring
forth a new life, so the disclosure was slow to materialize, but eventually we
males realized the significant consequences of
coition to our low social position in our community; we lost our old
equiponderance and saw women through a new lens. Without our male
complicity, women were unable to create new lives, and we stupidly repudiated
their divinity. Ignorance poisoned our perspective, our disposition, our
attitude and our opportunities for convivial fornication.
We men were no longer the compliant gender; we were gods and we demanded women worship us. The yoni was no longer our sacred
religious symbol; we men worshipped our own genitals; our favorite symbol was
the phallus. Today’s places of worship
feature towers, spires and minarets. The Washington Monument is another phallic
example, as well as New York City’s twin erections, the World Trade Center
towers, that were destroyed recently by Islamic extremists. Significantly,
today’s world’s newest, tallest towers, i.e., symbolic phallic erections, are
in two Islamic countries; these are an addition to their religion’s ubiquitous
minarets.
Male testes have
been man’s only god, since the end of primitive matriarchy.
“After male reproductive power had
become God, and when, through superstition and sensuality, the masses of the
people had descended to the rank of slaves, monarchs, representing themselves
to their ignorant subjects as the source of all blessings, even of life itself,
appropriated the titles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration
which had formerly belonged to it”.
After our awakening, gender roles of gods were reversed,
depravity ruled; decency was the first casualty of our dominance. Male vanity, ego, pride, jealousy, greed and
our stupidity, limited our scope of influence. As we could no longer depend
upon the cooperation of women,
and fellowmen were challenging competitors who formed contentious cliques vying
for tribal leadership; we fought as we collected women for sexual service.
Astute conniving jungle men conceived of voodooist’s
sorcery, with gods, fetishes, and sacrificial rituals; a religious scam to outwit their tribe. All gods were male with male
prerogatives. We fought and divided into competitive sects. Male homosexual priests
prostituted women to fund their sect; formed under the guise of celibacy.
Professionals perpetuated this perfidious scam during polytheism’s history as
we followed receding ice sheets into North Africa and established Egyptian dynasties;
then to East Asia, and Mesopotamia’s Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and
Assyrian Empires, where monarchs appropriated the con-game, and proclaimed
gods; building altars within their lands to facilitate sacrificial
slaughtering, and the prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods
collected their portions of the meat; perpetuating the scam. Then to ancient
Greece, and to Rome, which forced Christianity onto Europe’s pagan inhabitants.
Our male obsession with righteous self-importance subdued
women. Their progeny belonged to us males. Primitive professional priests
enforced dynastic monarch’s commands by sanctifying the murder of the
discerning astute contemptuous infidels. Judah’s King Josiah salvaged his
Judahites from polytheism’s divisive gods by decreeing a tribal god. Josiah’s
saga is the source of the original Abrahamic faith’s Judaism. You’ll enjoy the
story about a young man who inherited Judah and created eleven of the bible’s
first twelve books. I don’t know who wrote the bible’s book of Ruth.
All quotations and much information were gleaned from Eliza
Burt Gamble’s: God Ideas of the Ancients.
WHENCE THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
Vatican’s Dionysius
Exiguus, in the 6th century invented the Anno Domini era, which is
used to number the years of both the Gregorian and the Julian calendar. Today’s
bible scholars prefer the designation CE (Common Era), and BCE (Before Common
Era).
I love the
following story; although skeptical, I have not attempted to disprove it.
Dr. Lipovisky’s www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/Lipoviskyl01.pdf
says that about 8,000 years ago the Black and
Azov Seas didn’t exist; that at that time the area was a huge basin of below
sea-level-land where the Danube, Dniester, Bug, Dnieper, Don, Kuban and
Kizil-Irmak Rivers fed a small freshwater lake, and that the plentiful fresh
water, mild climate and flat lands of the basin supported a population of
Indo-European agrarians; and that 6th-4th millennia BCE
seismic movements in the Bosporus allowed the Mediterranean Sea to begin
filling the basin with sea water; forcing the populations’ gradual migration
outward. He says available histories of the Indo-Europeans’ movements, show
that the Celts and Germans occupied the northwestern borders of the great empty
basin, the Balts and Slavs occupied the northern borders, the ancestors of the
Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Scythians occupied the northeast, the Indo-Iranian
tribes, the southeast, the ancestors of the Italians and Greeks lived in the
northern portion of the Balkan Peninsula; also that the Hittites, Luwains,
Palaics and all those whom we classify with the Anatolian group of
Indo-European languages, occupied the southern most regions of the great empty
basin, and were forced to move out to northern Asia Minor or Anatolia.
Subsequently, the Celts, and then, the Germans gradually occupied northwestern
Europe, while the Slavs and Balts spread into northern and Eastern Europe,
already occupied by the Finno-Urgric peoples. The Indo-Iranian languages speakers
invaded the territory of Iran, Central Asia and northern India.
Dr. Lipovisky says the prolonged archaeological
excavations in Palestine unearthed proof that the Canaanites were a Western
Semitic people, who also came from the north in the 4th-3rd
millennia BCE, and at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, large
groups of Western Semitic peoples, specifically the Amorites, began settling in
mass in Mesopotamia, Syria and Canaan, and took control over a majority of the
cities, forming their own Amorite countries, for example Babylon—during the
reign of the infamous ruler Hammurapi in the 18th century BCE.
He says northwestern Mesopotamia was the fatherland of
Semitic peoples, and that this significant area, in terms of territory is
portioned off from the remaining portion of Anatolia by the imposing mountain
range Taurus from the north and the east, and from the west by the mountain
chain Nur; a three-sided shelter that beneficently effected the people’s lives
during their early period.
He says the Indo-Aryans mingled with and displaced the
Hurrians of Eastern Anatolia. Ayrianized Hurrians first displaced the Eastern
Semites (Akkadians) from the upper courses of the Tigris River, and then at the
end of the 3rd millennium BCE, occupied the land of Western Semites
(Amorites) in the upper courses of the Euphrates River. The last wave of
Western Semites in the 12th-11th centuries BCE was also
caused by the movements of Hurrians and Indo-Europeans into northwestern
Mesopotamia.
He says “the Indo-Europeans’ movement to the south and
east resulted in the displacement of the Semites from their original homeland
in the northwest of Mesopotamia”, and that an analogous situation happened to
the Hurrians in eastern Anatolia; highly oppressed by the Indo-Europeans in
that region, they were forced to move south and settle in northern Mesopotamia
and Syria in the12th-11th centuries BCE; also that Akkad
was the first Semitic country founded in central Mesopotamia by Eastern
Semites, who subsequently subordinated Sumer, their southern neighbor.
He says the ancient Near East represented a world
dominated by Semitic peoples. Akkad and Assyria, Babylon and Phoenicia, Israel and
the Syrian kingdoms were all offspring’s of active Semites, and Sumer, the
world’s oldest country had been fully assimilated with the Semites, and had,
since ancient times, become an integral part of their world. Dr. Lipovisky says
that Egypt had long resisted the supremacy of the Semitic peoples, but had
adopted their language and culture, and that the Indo-Europeans appeared later;
their first countries, including the Hittite Empire remained on the periphery
within the northern and eastern boundaries of the Near East.
Dr. Lipovisky says that this model of the
Indo-European’s expansion in all directions from the Black Sea finds
circumstantial evidence in the ancient historians’ sources, covering the life
of the Germanic tribes of Ostrogoths in the Crimea in the early centuries of
the Common Era. These sources also deal with the eastern Slavic people, the
Drevlians, as a neighbor of the “lost” German tribe in the territory of today’s
Ukraine, as well as with the sojourn of the Baltic Lats in the upper Volga
region.
MESOPOTAMIA
The following information
was gleaned from Wikipedia.
“Land of Rivers” is a toponym for the
Tigris-Euphrates River system, largely corresponding to modern day Iraq,
northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and southwestern Iran; widely
considered to be the cradle of civilization. Bronze Age Mesopotamia included
Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian Empires. The indigenous
Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated
Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history.
Prehistoric “Urbaidians” evolved from the
Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia, and the cities of Sumer in southern
Mesopotamia were the world’s first civilizing force; draining marshes for
agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries such as weaving,
masonry, and pottery. In the 5000s BCE, they were the first civilization to
practice intensive, year-round agriculture, using large-scale mono-cropping,
organized irrigation, and a specialized labor force; an economy allowing the
population to settle, and store surplus food; accommodating a denser
population; providing a divided labor force, instead of migrating; searching
for better grazing lands.
By the late 4th millennium BCE,
Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent city-states, which were
divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated
to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a
priestly governor or by a king who was ultimately tied to the city’s religious
rites. Sumerians were probably the first to record their beliefs, which became
the inspiration for much of later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and
astrology. Citizens’ owed labor-duty to the temple, which organized the mass
labor projects needed for irrigated agriculture. Wealthy citizens could avoid
laboring by payments in silver. Sumner’s temple-centered farming communities’
social stability enabled them to survive for around four thousand years.
Sumer’s historical records date to the
2600s BCE, historians theorize they date to Egypt’s first Dynasty, about 3000 BCE; remaining obscure until the
Sumerian civilization was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the
Akkadian Empire around 2270 BCE, who deciphered a syllabary writing system;
producing our oldest written history. The dynastic period began about 2900 BCE
and includes such legendary figures as Enmerkar and Gilgamesh—who are supposed
to have reigned shortly before the historic record opens. As the Epic of
Gilgamesh shows, it was a violent period. Cities increased in size and became
walled, others disappeared.
Sumerians developed a complex system of
metrology; resulting in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. The
earliest Babylonian numerals date from 2700-2300 BCE, when the abacus first
appeared and they wrote multiplication tables on moist clay tablets, dealing
with geometrical exercises and division problems; also a table of successive
columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal
number system. The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral
system.
Classical Sumer ended with the rise of the
Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BCE. Following the Gutian
period, there is a “Sumerian renaissance in the 21st century BCE,
cut short in the 20th century by Semitic Amorite (Babylonian)
invasions. The city of Babylon claimed to be the successor of ancient Eridu;
attaining independence with the rise in the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in
1894 BCE. Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the holy city of Mesopotamia around the
time Amorite king, Hummurabi first created the short lived Babylonian Empire,
which quickly dissolved upon his death and Babylon spent long periods under
Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. Babylon again became the seat of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612-539 BCE when it was conquered by the Achaemenid
Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and, after his death; it
became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Around 150 BCE, Mesopotamia was under
the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battle ground between the
Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia (particularly Assyria) coming
under periodic Roman control. It fell to Sassanid Persians in 226 CE, and
remained under Persian Rule until the 7th century Arab Islamic
conquest of the Sassanid Empire. All information
was gleaned from Wikipedia.
Ancient Mesopotamia is a historical example of how political leaders
used a belief in mystical gods to persuade their ignorant subjects to martyr
themselves in order to enhance their leader’s career. Man’s divisiveness is
directly proportional to the number of gods involved. It is why King Josiah of
Judah presciently proclaimed his own exclusive monotheistic tribal god. You
will fully comprehend and enjoy how a very young king resolved his kingdom’s
polytheism problems which he postulated had destroyed the nation of Israel and
contributed to his father’s assassination. Inadvertently, his solution became
eleven of the bible’s first twelve books. The story is my next chapter:
JUDAISM.
JUDAISM
Egypt’s first dynasty (3000 BCE), on the Nile river and
Mesopotamia’s Babylon (2100 BCE), in the Tigris-Euphrates river area,
worshipped gods, and prepared for an after-life. “Mesopotamia invented writing;
theirs is the oldest written history. Their Enuma Elish, a creation myth,
includes a story of the tower of Babel and legendry Babylonian King Giglamesh’s
Epic flood was adopted from Sumerian mythology about 2000 BCE”; later copied in
Genesis. Egypt and Babylon vied for the lands between them. Egypt’s forts
protected the northern Sinai’s coastal road, leading to its military garrisoned
Canaan area. By the 10th century BCE, roaming Mesopotamian Semitic
nomads had settled in the delta of the Nile, and in
Canaan near the Mediterranean Sea’s southeastern end;
forming two small kingdoms; Israel in the northern agrarian area and Judah in the southern semi-desert region. Assyria was
amalgamating its future, empire; to be centered in the Tigris River’s upper
valley, which eventually extended from the head of the Persian Gulf to Egypt
and Asia Minor. With only folktales,
but without a written history, young King Josiah fabricated an epical legendry
fable, discombobulating his contentious polytheistic pagan world.
My story begins
in 734 BCE, when Tiglathpileser 3, king of Assyria, (745-727 BCE), marched against King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria, (2Kings 15:29
&16:7-9); they made war against his vassal, King Ahaz of Judah. He punished Israel; carrying
some of its people into exile, (2Kings 17:1-6). Israel was destroyed and taken
in 722 BCE after a three year siege by Shalmaneser 4, king of Assyria (727-722
BCE) who enslaved Israel’s more
skillful people, moved them to Assyrian territories, replacing them with
deportees. Political leaders, scholars, scribes, priests and many others eluded
capture, making their way south to Jerusalem in
Judah where
King Hezekiah reigned over his war-weary nomadic shepherds.
He died in 698 B.C.E; his 12 year old son, Manasseh, became king; reigned for
55 years. His son, Amon, became king at age 22, but when 24 was assassinated in
a coup d’état, (2Kings 20-23); and 8 year old son, Josiah, inherited the
restive little kingdom in 640 BCE. He was scared. As an astute eager young man,
feeling his virility, he attributed his father’s death to the worship of
polytheism’s divisive gods. Fearing for his life, he sought sanctification for his reign, and at
age 26 renovated the temple, where a Torah scroll
of tribal laws was found. In the intervening years, since Israel’s loss, the migrants had sought duties
commensurate with their expertise; bible scholars assume Josiah’s political team
composed and planted the scroll to promote his ideas for a tribal god. The discovery initiated Josiah’s reform
program. He corrected the “cultic transgressions of his predecessors”, removed
all pagan worship sites, and prohibited polytheism, plus the “sacrificing of
small children on religious alters”, and dreamed of an influential Judahite
nation’s exclusive god and culture. Josiah’s political team initiated his
aspirations; coalescing, invigorating, motivating and inspiring his people with
tribal uniqueness; fabricating an inspirational conspiratorial tribal
fable; a tract of “political and religious tribal propaganda, as they imagined
a retrospective of their history should
have been”. How King Josiah’s
alter ego, mystical Yahweh, created the world and its first inhabitants, Adam & Eve, in the Garden of Eden, plus the sagas of sons
Cain & Able and Noah & the flood (ideas from Mesopotamian mythology)
Yahweh chose Abraham to father a nation, through his son Isaac, whose son
Jacob’s twelve sons fathered the twelve tribes of Israel. While in Egypt seeking succor from famine,
they multiplied, and were enslaved by the Pharaoh. It told of Moses’ birth and that Yahweh promised them a land of their
own, overcame the mighty Pharaoh, helped them escape, provided tribal laws and
for forty years guided their search, throughout Sinai for the Promised Land. Moses did not survive the long drawn-out search, but
genocidal Yahweh intervened and Joshua destroyed Canaanite cities; killing
everyone including innocent mothers and children, allowing David and Solomon to base empires in Jerusalem. The fable tells that when Solomon died,
Yahweh divided the tribes; ten selected Jeroboam’s leadership and developed the
nation of Israel. The two remaining tribes went with Reroboam’s Judah,
(1Kings 11-12). Josiah composed his fabulous tale especially to reassure his
Judahites of Yahweh’s relationship to all Israeli tribes. The deceitful fable
did not relate the actual history of the two significant little kingdoms.
Josiah’s self-aggrandizing fable portrays
Yahweh naming Josiah the righteous ideal king, Israelites his chosen people,
and Jerusalem’s
Temple the only legitimate place of worship.
His fable also included Yahweh’s code of laws, (Deuteronomy); covering all
aspects of tribal life, with death threats for anyone who dared defy them;
promising that King David’s
progeny would rule Judah forever.
Egypt’s dynastic
empires left a history carved in stone. Epigraphists
have found no record of the Israelite’s Egyptian
bondage, extensive search,
or of Solomon’s
vast empire except in Josiah’s
propaganda; his legendary epical theological fable, falsely claiming Judah’s dominance over Israel and
events they imagined had happened a millennium earlier; its main themes were
the Judahites righteous fidelity to Yahweh, the god’s disallowance of all other
gods and prohibiting Israelites marrying
foreign women. His fabulous saga included deceitful ancient prophesies of
recent genealogical and political events; not
miraculous revelations; but simply aggregations of mythological adventures
which reinforced Josiah’s tribal propaganda. Its success was two-fold; mystical
Yahweh sanctified Josiah’s reign; and was partial to its chosen
Israelites, but decreed that foreigners, apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers,
and the proponents of other gods were to be hated, avenged and killed; assuring
the compliant allegiance of Josiah’s subjects, who treasured his fable as their
tribe’s legendary epic.
Josiah was 39
(609 BCE) when Pharaoh-Necho’s army killed him at Megiddo (2Kings 23:29), and
Egypt reclaimed Judah. Necho, (2Kings 23-24); consecutively
appointed Josiah’s sons; Jehoahaz age 23; Eliakim age25, known as Jehoiakim,
then his son Jehoiachin age 18; followed by third son, Zedekiah age 21, as
Kings of Judah. Crown prince Nebuchadnezzar, of Babylon, (Daniel 1:1-7); advanced to Jerusalem in 608, spared
rebellious King Jehoiakim, but carried off several princes. Nebuchadnezzar was
King of Babylon (608-562 BCE; 2Kings 24:1-16), conquered
Jerusalem again. King Zedekiah (2Kings 24:18- 20 and 25:1-30)
pledged allegiance to the Babylonian king, (Jeremiah 39:1-10); but proved
disloyal. Nebuchadnezzar besieged
Jerusalem for nineteen months, ending in 586 BCE, executed its community
leaders, burned the city and exiled survivors, who revised and redacted their
legendary epic while in Babylon; bible scholars call them Deuteronomistic Histories;
DtrH1, the Josianic edition and
DtrH2, the exilic edition, which includes their tribe’s subsequent history plus
the convoluted solutions to Yahweh’s promises, in the Josianic edition to David and
Josiah, which could no longer be fulfilled.
Bible scholars have studied the revisions for centuries. The Josianic
edition was in Hebrew, but all corrections and additions were in the Aramaic
lingua franca.
Forty eight years
after Jerusalem’s
fall, Cyrus, Persia’s king,
destroyed the Babylonian Empire in 538 BCE and issued a decree permitting Jews
to return to Judah (Ezra 1-10
& Nehemiah 1-2).
They returned under aegis of Artaxerxes 1, king of Persia (464-424 BCE).
Furnished with royal power, Ezra, in
458 BCE and Nehemiah in 445 BCE
brought back exiles, rebuilt the wall, reestablished a Jewish community
and in 444BCE, with the exilic edition of
King Josiah’s tribal propaganda for their Holy
Scriptures, established new monotheistic Judaism. Monotheism’s doctrine: “there is one
God who rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked; everyone must worship
God as He commands or die”. Monotheism’s Holy Scriptures were: “Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These narrate the story of the
people of Israel from the creation of the world, through the
period of the flood and the patriarchs, to the Exodus from Egypt, the
wanderings in the desert, the giving of the law at Sinai”.& “The Former
Prophets—Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings—tell the story of the
people of Israel from their crossing of the river Jordan, conquest of Canaan,
through the rise and fall of the Israelite kingdoms, to their defeat and exile
by Assyrians and Babylonians”. Holy
Scriptures became the Hebrew bible’s
first books; followed by: “Writings, a collection of
homilies, poems, prayers, proverbs and Psalms, apparently from the fifth to the
second century BCE—in the Persian and Hellenistic periods”.
“The Persian
Period (400-330 BCE);-----For about 150 years after Nehemiah’s
time, the Persians controlled Judea; ruled by high priests who were responsible
to the Jewish government, but the Jews were allowed to carry on their religious
observances without interference”. Persia’s god Mithras dated to 1500 BCE, but
in the 6th century BCE, the Persian mystic Zarathustra subordinated
the story of Mithras to a grand struggle between a god and a devil that
supposedly culminates in judgment day. Mithras was worshiped across Asia from
the Indus River to the Black Sea.
“The Greek Period
(330-166 BCE); -----In 333 BCE the Persian armies stationed in Macedonia
were defeated by Alexander the Great. He was convinced that Greek culture was
the one force that could unify the world. Alexander permitted the Jews to
observe their laws and even granted them exemption from tribute or tax during
their sabbatical years. When he built Alexander in Egypt, he encouraged Jews to
live there and gave them some of the same privileges he gave his Greek
subjects”. This led to the Holy Scriptures translation into Greek (Septuagint),
revealing to the Hellenistic world that Jew’s God disavowed marriages to
foreigners, and preferred to kill them.
“The Hasmonean
Period (166-63 BCE); -----When this historical period began, the Jews were
being greatly oppressed. The Polemics had been tolerant of the Jews and their
religious practices, but the Seleucid rulers were determined to force Hellenism
on them. Copies of the Scriptures were ordered destroyed and laws were enforced
with extreme cruelty. Led by Judas the Maccabee, the Syrians were defeated in a
series of battles, which secured the independence of the province of Judea and
were the foundation of the Hasmonean dynasty. This time period was filled with
numerous political struggles, posing many problems to the religiously-oriented Jews”.
“The Roman Period
(63 BCE-CE 135); -----In year 63
BCE, Pompey, the Roman general, captured Jerusalem, and the provinces of Palestine became
subject to Rome”. Martin Goodman’s book; Rome and Jerusalem, describes
in great detail how the Roman troops attacked a Jerusalem market in 66 CE,
killing 3,600 including children and infants, beginning a cycle of increasing
violence and rebellious Jewish mobs retaliating. “In the first months of the
ensuing conflict in Jerusalem the Romans themselves were not directly involved.
Factional strife within the Jewish population led to heavy loss of life”. For
years the Jews harassed and killed Roman troops, which quietly withdrew, but
the rebels cornered and devastated retreating troops; humiliating the empire,
and delaying their attack until 70 CE, when a massive Roman army arrived
outside Jerusalem’s walls and began a five month siege, starving and murdering
rebellious inhabitants, then burned and leveled the entire city to the ground.
“Rome continued its war against Judaism by refusing to allow Jews the freedom
permitted to all ordinary subjects of the emperor, to rebuild their destroyed sanctuary”. The resulting Jewish diaspora’s resentment
disrupted surrounding regions with deadly attacks, impelling Roman
over-reaction. “Jews in the Roman empire hated Roman rule”. The emperor Hadrian
ruled (117-138). Early in his reign he visited Judaea. “The Judaea that Hadrian
had in mind was not to be Jewish. ‘At Jerusalem, he founded a city in place of
the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on
the site of the temple of the god he raised anew temple to Jupiter’.—Hadrian’s
reformed province was to have at its heart, not a rebuilt Jewish Temple but a
Roman colony, named ‘Aelia’ in recognition of his own family and himself and
‘Cappitolina’ in honor of Jupitor Capitolinus, whose cult was to be of central
importance in the new city—war broke out because ‘the Jews deemed it intolerable
that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites
planted there’. Aelia Capitolina was not to be refounded as a Greek city in
which Jews might settle and be ‘civilized’, but as a Roman colony, inhabited by
gentiles, from which Jews were to be excluded.—By planting a Roman Colony on
the site where the Jewish Temple had once stood, he [Hadrian] made it crystal
clear that the Temple was not to be rebuilt. Leaving the site of Jerusalem
empty for sixty years had proven an invitation to the Jews to agitate for a
return to their former glories”. While Hadrian was visiting his distant
provinces in year 132, the Jews revolted and occupied their strengthened rural
positions, underground refuges, etc. Hadrian’s best generals intercepted small
groups; starved, exhausted and exterminated them. “In the event these Jewish
fighters were to maintain their independence for some three and a half years,
inflicting heavy losses on the Roman force sent to suppress them, until in 135
they were finally overwhelmed.—‘very few of the Jews in fact survived. Fifty of
their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most
famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men
were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that
perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the
whole of Judaea was made desolate—many Romans, moreover perished in this war.’—After
seventy years of tension and conflict, Jews could never again realistically
hope to live in the Roman empire with the same freedom as other minorities to
practice their ancestral customs and worship their God in their own land”.----
“When Augustus, the first Roman emperor (27 BCE-14 CE), died it was his
divinity that was celebrated—the imperial cult, the worship of emperors dead
and alive, rapidly became one of the most powerful forces toward the
unification of the Roman world—some of the temples and altars dedicated to this
worship were set up on local initiative, and can be seen as a means for
provincials to make religious sense of the irruption of Roman power into the
lives of their communities”. The city, Aelia Capitolina, flourished as the home
of Rome’s legions. There had been no Jewish state for 175 years, when in 306 CE
emperor Constantine ascended to power and converted to Christianity in year
325. In year 361 emperor Julian ordered reconstruction of the Temple, but it
was soon stopped.
Hebrew bible was translated into Greek Septuagint, about 250 BCE; 600 years later, Saint Jerome,
(340?-420 CE), translated much of Septuagint
into Latin; then translated the Hebrew
bible into Latin Vulgate and
adopted it as the first part of Christianity’s canon. Known as the Douay Bible; its verses incriminating
Yahweh were excused or removed.
Martin Luther, (1483-1546), translated the New Testament into German. More than
1100 years after Saint Jerome’s translation, Luther, with collaborators
tailored their translation of the Old
Testament to his
doctrine, which influenced William Tyndale’s English bible, a precursor of the King James 1 Version for Protestants,
published in 1611 CE as the Authorized
Version. In late nineteenth century, it was redacted, revised; and known as
the Revised Version. In 1901 the KJV was revised again and called the American Standard Version. In the mid
twentieth century, it was revised and renamed the Revised Standard Version. Recently revised again, it is now called: Today’s New International Version; TNIV.
The Hebrew bible, purports to represent historical events for
two thousand years, from the twentieth century BCE, until its completion by
edict of the Rabbinical Council of Jamnia, 90 CE. Deuteronomistic History concocted by King Josiah was a deceitful ruse to convince his people
that Yahweh, had guided their
ancient ancestors and would protect them as long as they obeisantly worshipped
Yahweh and Josiah, the specious god’s Earthly emissary. His people needed to
believe that their ancestors were epically heroic, and that Josiah’s kingdom
was assured a great future with its exclusive tribal god, who later in the bible
vicariously enjoys destroying his enemies, e.g., commanding the Israelite army
to kill them all, including children, but to save young virgins for their own
pleasure. It was classic BS. King Josiah’s tribal propaganda’s tyrannical
Yahweh is the Judaic “God”, which precludes the bible being the “word of God”.
History shows the Jews’ Yahweh was impotent during their history of
Christianity’s Crusades,
inquisitions, persecutions, executions, and midtwentyth century’s Holocaust.; when
some six million Jewish mothers, fathers, children, etc. were maliciously
murdered with the Vatican’s active complicity. See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM…page 63……….
Ezra and
Nehemiah adopted Josiah’s tribal propaganda for Judaism’s Holy
Scriptures; proclaiming an exclusive god, ethnological superiority to rival
kingdoms, and that Yahweh’s commands to kill nonbelievers assured their tribe’s
future, but Yahweh’s egomaniacal stupidity and malevolent lust for the blood of
foreigners has been a feverish boil on Israel’s bottom. Killing all nonbelievers assured Judaism a
successful first millennium; an egregious error that rid Jewish culture of its
sagacious discerning citizens; leaving the ignorant to propagate believers,
which explains our plethora of believers and dearth of thinkers.
Josiah’s tribal god, Yahweh was adopted by other political leaders because it sanctified killing nonbelievers,
etc. Abetted by prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, progeny
adopted specious beliefs; propagating more ignorant believers. Belief in a god
is an aberration requiring blind faith.
Everything is possible, but blind faith by billions has caused innumerable
conflicts that contentiously divide us. Another fact: men determined sacredness, composed fables,
legends, songs and dance; establishing the eminence of spurious gods. We are a
restless people; a few seek knowledge; others remain devoid of knowledge, goals or
beliefs; while the majority grovel on their knees, clinging to the Big-Lie of devils in a nether world, and
righteous gods up in the sky.
The bible’s
first five books divulge Josiah’s “theological hopes”, i.e., his imagination’s
fabulous tribal god’s creation of the world. The adventurous tales of Yahweh
with the patriarchs depicts Josiah’s grandiose visions. He composed a tribal
code threatening death for all who dared investigate or criticize his
monotheistic god-idea; attributing the code to Yahweh;
intending the god’s death threats, and his own compliant killing, to convince
his subjects of his divinity. He aspired to be divine, and portrayed himself as
“God’s” ideal, most righteous king and administrator of the god’s laws; which
convinced his followers of his spurious divinity. Josiah rid his kingdom of
nonbelievers, and his fable served as Judah’s
legendary epic for two centuries before Jews adopted it for their Holy Scriptures, whose
origin was not a miraculous revelation, but a youthful king’s insurance to
protect himself from polytheism’s divisiveness.
He was astute and prescient; and Yahweh was an effective vengeful propagandist,
but an ignorant, disruptive, vindictive, rapacious failure, as “God”; concocted
by Josiah’s sanctimonious, ambitious, ignorant, vindictive, rapacious scholars.
Supernatural was not responsible for our Moral Code; and the “holy
books” are not axiomatic, but are simply divisive
intimidating deceitful propaganda; copied from more ancient fabrications from
Egypt and Mesopotamia.
King Josiah’s
concept of the genesis of humanity, i.e., Creationism:
is the doctrine that “ascribes the origin of matter,
species, etc. to acts of creation by God”; it’s also the doctrine “that God
creates a new soul for every human being born”: opposed to Traducianism,
defined as “the theological doctrine that the soul is inherited from the
parents”. Antinomianism: is a Christian theological doctrine decreeing: “faith alone,
not obedience to the moral law, is necessary for salvation”. It is clear that
this allowed clergy and believers to lie, steal, etc. as well as kill
nonbelievers, with divine impunity. Man’s concocted specious godly doctrines
are deemed indisputable; but are obviously designed to present religion’s
ordure in a palatable manner.
Josiah did
not seek to mislead posterity, but to coerce his people away from polytheism’s
many gods by proclaiming his alter ego as their exclusive tribal god, for their psychological advantage; to unite,
inspire and invigorate them; it also protected his personal security. Should Josiah
be held accountable for the despoliation and desecration caused by a belief in
the malevolent god of his pernicious ruse? Josiah was not composing the Holy
Scriptures, but unholy propaganda he deemed necessary to
manage his Judahite kingdom. King
Josiah‘s deceitful ruse, the bible’s early books, is the basis of Judaism’s,
Christianity’s and Islam’s subjugated multitudes that have
been forced to obey specific specious gods and murder all naysayers.
Yahweh’s
exclusivity is stupid, and is opposed to the heterogeneity necessary to sustain
our existence on Earth. Doubts about King Josiah’s biblical fable
persist. For the past 200 years,
epigraphists, archaeologists, scholars,
and others searched biblical regions and found a history much
simpler than the bible’s; which is the only reference found of the
Patriarchs, the Exodus, the Conquest of Canaan, and the empires of David and Solomon.
“Hebrew was originally
Canaanites who worshipped Israelite’s angry jealous God”. And “The Jewish
sects: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes flourished in Jerusalem from the 2nd
century BCE to the 1st century CE”.
The most egregious consequences of King Josiah’s self-aggrandizing pernicious
ruse: is religion’s deceptive perpetration and
perpetuation of it upon an ignorant gullible humanity for the past twenty six
centuries. Why did the Israelites and progeny believe Josiah’s tribal
propaganda was Holy Scripture? What resulted, and why, after their ignominious
history, is it considered sacred? It’s because semi-developed intellects follow
paths of least resistance to resolve conundrums; and gods are simple solutions
to unfathomable queries. Faith in specious gods does not require developed
intellects, as ignorance, imagination, and emotion are
sufficient; therefore: blind faith in mystical gods is inversely proportional
to intelligence. To comprehend Yahweh’s adamant barbarity toward all Jewish
opposition you must read the bible.
“God’s” irrational criminality is a strange unbelievable behavior for
peace-loving people to emulate, but Josiah’s fable, the Pentateuch has been
believed by billions of the ignorant and gullible. Its obvious unreasonableness
is blatantly mythical and untrue. It is impossible to understand how “God” can
be perceived as good as the bible’s portrayal is not commendable. To know
“God’s” true character, read the following bible verses: Genesis 7:20-23 and 19: 3-8/Exodus 12:29-30 and 17:14-16
and 21:7-8 and 22:24/Leviticus 24:16 and 25:44-46/Numbers 21:31-35 and 25: 3-9
and 31: 1-18 /Deuteronomy 6:10-12 and 7: 1-6 and 13:6-16 and 20:10-18 and
22:20-21 and 25:11-12 and 28:15-68 and 31:3-5/Joshua 6:20-21 and 7:24-25 and
8:1-8 and 10:12-14 and 11:12-15/ Judges 11:30-31 and 19:22-24/ 1st
Samuel; chapters 5 & 6 and 15:1-3/2nd Samuel; chapters; 11 &
12/ 1st King 14:10/1st Chronicles 21:8-12/ Ezra 10:10-11/
Esther 2:2-4/ the book of Job/Isaiah 3:16-17 and 13:15-20/Jeremiah 3:1-3 and
7:29-34 and 19:9/Ezekiel 3:20 and 4:12-13 and 6:3-7 and 9:5-7/Psalm 109 and
137:8-9; (From KJV) these verses expose the Judaic-god’s true character.
The original Holy Scriptures were tribal propaganda; fabricated because the
assassination of Josiah’s father indicated a rift of tribal non-allegiance.
Fear of rebellious subjects inspired Josiah’s famous biblical fable, but
fictional god-Yahweh is impotent; unable to help his chosen people in their
struggle to survive, to replenish, to sustain, and to promote their primitive
Judaism’s regressive self-repressive beliefs.
King Josiah’s deceitful fabrication of his tribe’s
ancient history with Yahweh’s, commands for Jewish-purity, human sacrifices,
circumcision, hateful revenge and death for all foreigners, apostates, blasphemers,
nonbelievers and the proponents of other gods; as sacred principles, proved to
be self-defeating; begrudged by neighboring kingdoms who resented Jew’s exclusive
god, and their ambitious resourceful culture. In order to ameliorate their
deteriorating situation in a contentious polytheistic pagan world, Jewish
political leaders once again resorted to a fable, a sequel to: Yahweh’s
creating the world. Their new fable’s recompensive gesture told of Jesus’
Immaculate Conception by a propitious Yahweh with a betrothed Jewish virgin in
order to sire a sane sensible benevolent Jewish messiah. The fable adopted a 6th
century BCE Persian legend (500 years before Jesus) about the birth of god
Mithras, who was born of a virgin at the winter’s solstice with a nativity
scene of shepherds attracted by a holy light. Christianity’s ancient fable of
the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus,
was adopted from Egyptian mythology’s black mother Isis and child deity Horus,
the Sun god.
Mithraism was about a century older than Judaism and
was 600 years old when Jews fabricated their Jesus fable in the 2nd
half of the 1st century, and plagiarized Persian god Mithras’
biography for their new messiah, Jesus.
Christianity is based on the Jesus-fable, but Christians
blamed Jews for killing Jesus, further vilifying all Hebrew. Christians persecuted and killed Jews
unmercifully during the Crusades, the Christian Inquisitions and the Holocaust because of misguided ignorant Christian hatred. (See CHRISTIAN ANTIJUDAISM); plus www.truthbeknown.com/victims.html also see www.freewebs.com/thetruth/inguisition.html
Also see POST SCRIPTS and my next
chapter: CHRISTIANITY, which relates the destiny of the Jew’s new Jesus-fable.
Quotes & information
were gleaned from: The Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein and
Neil Asher Silberman. Quote in paragraph 1 is from Wikipedia. Quotations in paragraphs
7; 8; 9 are from Zondervan’s KJV bible, and Paragraph 10 is from Martin Goodman’s:
Rome and Jerusalem. The Persian legend
and the Egyptian mythology are from Wikipedia.
CHRISTIANITY
See JUDAISM’S paragraph’s 7
& 20. Jew’s Jesus-fable became Christianity’s first Gospel; others were
careless copies. Bart D. Ehrman’s lectures: Lost Christianities, says in the 2nd
& 3rd centuries CE, a mélange of books about the gospels were
written and that copies of the gospels were hand-lettered; that each was
subject to errors and omissions, often complying with the scribe’s views; that
no originals exist; the earliest copies extant are from the Middle Ages,
476-1450, but no two are identical. Dr. Ehrman says many ancient books about
the lives of Mary and Jesus are considered forgeries; that all books were
anonymous, pseudonymous, or forgeries, as none were written by an apostle, including
the 27 proposed in 367 CE by Athanasius (296?-373), the Bishop of Alexandria,
for Christianity’s New Testament.
Dr. Ehrman says at the Common Era’s beginning, virtually
everyone was pagan; that ancient religions emphasized sacrifices and prayers,
rather than beliefs; essentially polytheistic; the only exception being
monotheistic Jews. Dr. Ehrman says “ancient religions had no beliefs to
confirm, theologies to embrace, or creeds to recite. There was no such thing as
heresy in religions. There were no ethics; ethics was a matter for philosophy,
not religion”. Dr. Ehrman says Jewish Eboinites may have been the earliest Christians,
who believed Jesus was the Jewish messiah, appointed by the Jewish God as the
Jewish savior for the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law, and that
to be “right with God” one had to be Jewish; consequentially, converting other
Jews to their faith in Jesus. If Gentiles converted, they had to convert to
Judaism also. Jesus disappointed Jews’ idea of a messiah, they expected the
messiah to be great and powerful, but Eboinites thought Jesus was the perfect
sacrifice for all sins, no more sacrifices were needed. “In the ancient world,
most people ate meat only after it had been sacrificed in a religious ceremony; for this reason, the
Eboinites became vegetarian”.
Ehrman says Eboinites insisted on remaining Jewish and
did not believe in Jesus’ virgin birth or his divinity, but was “fully human,
born of the sexual union of Joseph and Mary, and adopted to be God’s son at
baptism—that the Eboinites understanding of Jesus was probably correct. By the
second century, most Christian converts were former pagans who converted to believe
in one God after worshipping many gods, but who were not interested in becoming
Jews. Starting with Apostle Paul, Christianity began appealing to Gentiles by
urging that they did not have to become Jews [be circumcised] in order to
accept the salvation brought by the Jewish God. Paul himself went further: A
person is made right with God completely by faith in Christ’s death and
resurrection alone, not by doing the works prescribed by the Jewish law”. Ehrman says that Gentiles who wanted to be
right with God and followed the law had fallen from grace; that after Jesus’
death, Eboinites claimed to follow Jesus’ brother, James, the head of
Jerusalem’s church, who had their own sacred writings; supposedly derived from
Jesus’ disciples.
Dr. Ehrman says that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who
accepted the authority of the Hebrew bibles Pentateuch. But the Marcionites insisted
that Jewish law had no relation to Jesus or his God; “that Jesus was not
actually born into this world or part of it. He was not a flesh and blood human
but a phantasm”. Professor Ehrman says that two to three hundred years after
Jesus’ time; diverse groups still disagreed about his views. “Ebionites used
the Gospel of Mathew. Those who separated the Jesus from the Christ used the
Gospel of Mark. Marcionites used the Gospel of Luke”. Followers of Valentinus
used the Gospel of John. Ehrman says Eusebius’s 4th century’s
Ecclesiastical History, figured prominently in theological disputes of his day,
and is one of antiquity’s most important writings. “Rather than being the
original view always shared by the majority of Christians, what later came to
be known as orthodoxy was just one of the numerous forms of Christianity in the
early centuries, the one that ended up acquiring the majority of converts over
time, then rewrote the history of the conflict to make it appear that this view
had always been systematically eliminated from the historical record”. A foot note: Saint Jerome was the son of Eusebius.
In 63 BCE the provinces of Palestine became subject to
Rome. There is no public record of Jesus and inexplicably he left no writings
for his followers. Authors, who have analyzed the bible, claim that historians
active during Jesus’s alleged lifetime did not mention Jesus in their prolific
writings, e.g., the “Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, Philo
(Judaeus), (20 BCE-50 CE)”, and other contemporaneous historians didn’t know
about Jesus or his momentous miracles. The writings of Josephus (37-95?),
Jewish historian are considered untrustworthy because he was Jerusalem’s
propagandist, and double-agent with Rome’s legions. Persia’s mystical god, Mithras
and the Jewish Jesus-fable share the same biography; both feature immaculate
conceptions with virgin births at the winter solstice and both emphasize
humankind’s redemption resulting from their sacrificial death followed by their
resurrection and ascent to heaven at the spring equinox. Both tell of their
last supper linked with the blood sacrifice whose symbolic recreation by eating
bread and wine provided salvation for all worshippers. There were similarities
in religions because a process of diffusion was practiced without restraint,
and competitive near-eastern religions shared numerous stories and rituals that
appealed to worshippers. As the youngest of these religions, Christianity was
especially skillful in adopting for its purposes those features of other
religions that would enhance and enlarge its appeal. The information about Mithras is from Wikipedia.
“The apostles convened the first Church council, the
Council of Jerusalem, around the year 50, which affirmed that Gentiles could
become Christians without adopting all of the Mosaic Law. Growing tensions soon
led to a starker separation that was virtually complete by the time Christians
refused to join the Bar Khokba revolt of 132”. (From
Wikipedia)
Bible scholars agree that Jesus was crucified, that
Christianity has always been divided, and that there were many Christian cults
in the 2nd and 3rd centuries with varying views of Jesus.
Dr. Ehrman says “significantly the dominant view was found to be held by a
group located in the capital of the Roman Empire, which was able to use its
vast resources and administrative skill to exert influence on churches in
surrounding areas and, then throughout the world. Thus by the beginning of the
fourth century, it was the Roman
form of Christianity that was dominant, with the Roman Catholic Church, that determined the course of future
Christianity”.
The following was gleaned
from Wikipedia
“Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BCE. Destruction of
Jerusalem’s Temple in 70 CE, started Jewish migration to Egypt and the failure
of the Jewish state in 135 CE increased it, especially to Alexandria, the
center of commerce between Europe, Asia, India and beyond. In the
syncretization of Alexandra’s various cults, Christianity was supreme. Jew’s
fantasy of a messiah, Jesus was endemic in Egypt’s religious milieu, but before
Christianity received Rome’s approval, Rome destroyed Alexandra’s Great Library
of invaluable volumes. Egypt’s Athanasius served as bishop of Alexandra for 45
years, but was exiled five times by four Roman emperors, spending 17 of the 45
years in exile. In the end his theological enemies were exiled, and the
church’s future was shaped by Athanasius’s writings”.
Persia’s Mithraism emerged in Rome some 200 years before
Christianity became a major religious movement competitive with the Roman
Empire’s many other cults. Christianity gained support in the 3rd
century, but unlike other near-eastern cults with the exception of Judaism,
Christian doctrine prohibited the worship of other gods and goddesses,
including the Roman emperors who demanded treatment as deities. Christianity
was considered subversive and prohibited. Both the Emperors Commodus (180-92)
and Diocletian (284-305) took up the cause of Mithraism, with Diocletian as
late as 307 having proclaimed Mithras to be the protector of the Roman Empire.
However, upon the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine, followed by his
Edict of Milan, 313 CE; guaranteeing freedom of worship to all religions
Christianity suddenly prevailed. As gleaned
from Wikipedia.
Before Constantine’s conversion, Rome had persecuted
early Christians, but the fact that Christianity sanctified
the murder of all infidels, simplified Constantine’s forcing Christianity
throughout pagan Europe, and abetted his establishing and managing Constantinople’s
Eastern Roman Empire and its Eastern Christian Church.
David P. Goldman, in his book: How Civilizations Die
says:--“between the conversion of Constantine in 325 CE and the crowning of
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, the population of Europe fell by
half or more; the great engineering, manufacturing, and trading network of Rome
disappeared; cities were abandoned; and the great culture of the classical
world was for the most part lost”.----“The bonds of blood and tradition that
gave cohesion to the peoples of the ancient world disintegrated. The Christian
message—that every individual must undergo a second birth, to replace his
sinful Gentile nature with a rebirth into a new people (the ‘tribe of
Christians’ and ‘the race of those who honor God’ in the words of Eusebius)—resonated
through the rubble of ancient paganism. Obstacles to evangelization had been
torn down by circumstance”.
“The conversion of the ancient world did not proceed
mostly by baptizing individuals ready to abandon their pagan roots, however. Christianity became a state religion by
imperial edict, and the peoples of the Greek and Latin worlds accepted the new
cult in more or less the same way that they had accepted other cults before
it”. (My emphasis)
“After the fall of Rome, the Church stood as the only
cohesive entity between the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Sea—even if it held on
in just a few remote islands of faith and learning in a sea of anarchy. The
Church did not have the means to evangelize individual souls. Instead it recruited kings, who could make
their peoples Christian. And it enlisted these kings to conquer their neighbors
who might resist. From the Gothic invasion of Italy in 401 CE to the defeat
of the Magyars at Lech in 955 and the conversion of St. Vladimir in 1015, the barbarians entered Christian life not
as individuals adopted into the new People of God, but as tribes incorporated
into Christendom through conquest or alliance”.
“Charlemagne earned his title ‘Holy Roman Emperor’—by
conquering the pagan Saxons. Six
thousand pagan nobles who refused the cross were slaughtered on a single day in
782. The Europe that emerged from the alliance of throne and altar was a
different entity, settled by different people, from the Rome whose authority
and symbols it invoked. Christianity created Europe.—the Church taught
illiterate tribal chieftains to read and made them kings of nations under the
unifying sign of the cross. The nations took letters, culture, statecraft, and
authority from the Church, but they joined Christendom with their traditions,
customs, and superstitions intact”.
Ancient dynasties derived authority from the sovereignty
of specious gods, whose prestigious professional proponents enforced
surveillance, torture and censorship. “The original Inquisition was initiated
in the 13th century by the Church to deal with heretics and other
undesirables, and continued off and on for 600 years, but it’s a mistake to
think of the Inquisition as just a metaphor, or as relegated to the past. For
one thing, within the Church, it has never quite ended; the office charged
today with safeguarding doctrine and meting out discipline occupies the
Inquisition’s old palazzo at the Vatican. More to the point, the Inquisition
had all the hallmarks of a modern institution; with a bureaucracy, a memory, a
procedure, a set of tools, a staff of technocrats, and an all-encompassing
ideology that brooked no dissent. It was not a relic but a harbinger. You can
see this in the work of someone like Bernard GUI—a historical figure. He was a
Dominican priest, and in 1307 he was indeed made an inquisitor by Pope Clement
V, with responsibility for a broad swath of southern France. Gui’s most
productive day was April 5, 1310, when he condemned 17 people to death. Over a
period of 15 years, Gui pronounced some 633 men and women guilty of heresy. We
know of the disposition of these cases because Gui wrote everything down—the
record survives in his Liber sententisrum, his ‘Book of Sentences’.—He was
methodical, learned, clever, patient, and relentless—all of this can be
inferred from the paper trail. Gui was a prodigious writer. Among other things,
he compiled a lengthy manual for inquisitors called Practica officii
inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, or ‘Conduct of the Inquisition into
Heretical Depravity’. The manual covers the nature and types of heresy an
inquisitor might encounter and also provides advice on everything from
conducting an interrogation to pronouncing a death sentence. Inquisition
records can be highly detailed and shockingly mundane. An itemized accounting
of expenses for the burning of four heretics in 1323 survives from
Carcassonne”; its suffice to say: the large wood, the vine branches, the straw
the four stakes, the ropes and the executioner’s fee totaled 8 livres, 14. “And
then there is the matter of torture. Pope Innocent IV authorized its use by the
Inquisition in 1252 in the papal bull Ad extirpanda. Few words summon the Dark
Ages as quickly as torture, but the uncomfortable reality is that the emergence
of torture as an instrument of justice marks the advent of a modern way of
thinking; the truth can be ascertained without God’s help; thus the [Churches’]
reliance, not on judges or juries, but on iudicium Dei—the judgment of an all
knowing God—to determine guilt or innocence. This often took the form of trial
by ordeal. The accused would be submerged in water, or made to walk on red-hot
coals, or forced to plunge an arm into boiling water. If he or she suffered no
harm, or if the wounds healed sufficiently within a certain period of time,
then it was the judgment of God that the accused was innocent. This regime was
common in Europe for many centuries”. Quoted from Cullen Murphy’s article in The Atlantic;
Feb.1, 2012.
During Middle Ages’, (476-1450), period of medieval
serfdom, governing authorities and land holding aristocracies found Christianity
an essential political force. Blind-faith was mandatory, especially serf tenant
farmers who served land owners as knights, i.e., men-of-war-on-work
horses, but Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation movement in the 1500s, when
King Henry 8th broke with Rome, stimulated competition as rival
Catholic and Protestant nations competed to replace the Jews as God’s chosen.
Each, through deceitful intrigue, tried to destroy its competition; finally
igniting the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, which began with German Catholics
killing each other, but then French Cardinal Richelieu’s collusive support for
the Protestant Reformation’s movement against West Central Europe’s Holy Roman
Empire, spread the devastation and extended the fighting for years to enhance
France’s position in the race to be God’s chosen people. David P. Goldman says:
“Two rival versions of Christianity fought to the death in the Thirty Years’
war: the Catholic concept of universal empire, and the obsession of the French
that they, among all the nations of Christendom, were chosen by God as his
proxy on earth. Both of these were religious passions, and thus the Thirty Years’
War was a religious war. But it was not the Catholic-Protestant war.—It was a
war between Christianity and neo-pagan national idolatry, and Christianity
lost.—in place of universal empire, the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the war
established nation-states, and the Catholic
Church delegated its authority to Europe’s Catholic dynasties”, which spread
and enforced Christianity at the point of a sword.
Strobe Talbott, in his book: The Great
Experiment says: “The Peace of Westphalia—1648—established a pattern that would
continue for the next three hundred years: increasingly destructive wars led to
increasingly ambitious treaties—the peacemakers resolved that the religion of each state would be determined by its king
or prince—Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist; if a ruler changed his religion, he
would forfeit his lands. The Catholic proponents of this feature of the treaty
intended it to discourage rulers from converting to Protestantism and
accelerating the spread of the Reformation. They hoped in that fashion to
preserve the European status quo and the Holy Roman Empire as its bulwark. The effect was the opposite.
Westphalia enhanced the power of political leaders within their own domains and
thereby further weakened the empire by creating a mélange of about three
hundred largely autonomous polities—looking back on Westphalia and seeking to
explain its result, nineteenth-century scholars came up with the term
‘nation-state’. The hyphen meant that nationality and statehood were closely
aligned. It was a designation for a supposedly new non-ecumenical
political constructs—the cobbling together of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ into a
single term lent credence to national as the basis of statehood”.
Goldman says “For centuries Christianity was burned,
tortured, and starved out of the European peoples”. Talbott says “By the end of
the Thirty Years War, combat, along with disease, famine, and migration caused
by marauding armies and the resulting devastation of economies, had reduced the
population of central Europe by about a third”. I must add that in order to
survive, the starving people resorted to cannibalizing the most recently
killed.
The two wonderful books quoted above, emphasize and
reiterate my point: vanity and righteous self-satisfaction assures ignorant
virile male believers they are religiously following the path of their vain,
jealous, vengeful, virile male “God”. Leaders are reduced to stupid
bloodthirsty despots when their misperceived godly powers replace a state’s
sovereignty. Male followers are the same ilk and ken; proud to die, killing
nonbelievers.
Christianity’s fervor produced the “European
Dark Ages,
(476-1000), responsible for wide spread ignorance,
pervasive poverty and cultural decline during a period of intellectual
stagnation brought about when Christian regimes closed libraries, banned books,
scientific inquiry, etc., impoverishing all human progress”. “The world failed
to regain the knowledge until many centuries afterward”.
The following quotations
were gleaned from Google’s Timeline Vatican City
“On July 15, 1205, Pope Innocent III decreed
that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude and subjugation due to
crucifixion of Jesus”.
“On July 23, 1253, Jews were expelled from
Vienne, France by order of Pope Innocent III”.
“On May 28, 1731, all Hebrew books in Papal
states were confiscated”.
“In 1864 Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical
‘Quanta cura” which included The Syllabus of Errors in contemporary beliefs;
including 80 negative points condemning modern ideas such as freedom of speech
and religion and separation of church and state”.
“On Feb.2, 1906 a Papal encyclical denounced
the separation of church and state”.
“On Dec. 31, 1930, Pontifical encyclical
Casti connubial was against mixed marriages”.
“On July 20, 1933, Vatican secretary of state
Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed an accord with Hitler”.
“On Oct. 23, 1946, A Vatican document advised
French church authorities on how to handle information requests from Jewish
officials, asking them not to put anything in writing. ‘Children who have been
baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that cannot ensure their
Christian education’. The document surfaced in 2004”.
“On Feb. 13, 1953, Pope Pius XII asked the
U.S. to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg”.
“In 1964 Saul Friedlander published ‘Pius XII
and the Third Reich’”.
“In 1992 Jason Berry authored ‘Lead Us Not
Into Temptation’, a work on clerical sex abuse”.
“On Feb. 20, 1994, Pope John Paul II demanded
juristic discrimination of homosexuals”. “On April 7, 1995, Pope John Paul II
made remarks, at the conclusion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah
(holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of Jews for
the first time”.
“In 1998, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland sent
a letter to the Vatican seeking advice on how to proceed with charges of sexual
molestation by Rev. Lawrence Murphy, who had worked at the former St. John’s
School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin (1950-1975), died in July 1996.
Murphy had molested as many as 200 deaf students. Cardinal Ratzinger, who had
led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 until 2005, when
he was elected pope, did not respond. The case was made public in 2010”.
“In 1999, John L. Heibron, a historian of
science, authored ‘The Sun in the Church’”. In 1999, Monsignor Luigi Marinelli
authored ‘Via col Vento in Vaticano’; alleging intrigue and corruption in the
Vatican”. “In 1999 John Cromwell published ‘Hitler’s Pope’”. “In 1999, Thomas
Plante edited ‘Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned: Perspectives on Sexual Abuse
Committed By Roman Catholic Priests’”.
“In 2000, Gary Wills authored ‘Papal Sin: Structures
of Deceit’”.
“In 2002, the Bishop of the Diocese of
Dorchester, NH, named 14 priests implicated in the sexual abuse of children
from 1963-1987; and the Archdiocese of Boston identified 80 priests as having
abused children over the last 40 years; and Anthony J. O’Connel, Palm Beach
Catholic bishop, resigned after admitting to the sexual abuse of a teen-age
seminary student, 27 years earlier; and Pope John Paul II accepted the
resignation of Julius Paetz, archbishop of Poznan, Poland, due to a sex scandal
and accusations of molesting young seminarians”.
“On Nov. 29, 2005, the Vatican published its
document on gays in the clergy, saying men with ‘deep-seated’ homosexual
tendencies should not be ordained, but those with a ‘transitory problem’ could
be if they had overcome them for three years”. “In 2005 John Cromwell authored
the ‘Pope in Winter: The Dark face of John Paul II’s Papacy”.
“On Feb. 2, 2006, the Vatican announced that
Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of an auxiliary bishop of
Detroit, Thomas Gambleton, who recently revealed that a priest abused him 60
years ago”. “On Feb. 26, 2006, in Canada 19 Catholic priests signed an open
letter in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper denouncing Vatican opposition to gay
marriage and having homosexuals in the priesthood”.
“On Jan. 11, 2007, a U.S. federal judge ruled
that the Vatican can be sued for damages by victims of clerical sex abuse”.
“On July 21, 2008, in Sidney, Pope Benedict
XVI met privately with Australians who were sexually abused as children by
priests”.
“On Dec. 17, 2009, the Vatican said Donal
Murray; a Roman Catholic bishop in Ireland has resigned after a probe of child
sex abuse by clergymen accused him of ignoring reports of crimes by priests in
his diocese from 1982-1996”.
“On April 18, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI met in
Malta with a group of clerical sex abuse victims, and promised them that the
Catholic church would seek justice for pedophile priests and implement
‘effective measures’ to protect young people from abuse. Ten Maltese men said
they were abused by priests at a Catholic orphanage”. “On April 22, 2010, Pope
Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Irish Bishop James Molarity of
Kildare, who acknowledged failing to report abuse to police, while a German
bishop also offered to step down”. “On May 8, 2010, Bishop Walter Mixa, has
acknowledged slapping children and is being investigated for sexual abuse of minors
and financial misconduct, lost his job”. “On Dec.6, 2010, in Ireland Tony Walsh
was convicted of raping 3 boys over a 5 year period three decades earlier.
Investigators had concluded that Walsh had raped and molested hundreds of boys
and girls while serving as a Dublin priest from 1978 to 1996. Investigators
also reported that the Vatican had tried to stop the Dublin church from
defrocking Walsh”.
“On Feb. 18, 2011, the Vatican said Fernando
Karadima, a prominent Chilean priest, has been found guilty of abusing minors
and must retire”. “On May 4, 2011, the Vatican condemned former Canadian Bishop
Raymond Lahey, after he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography”. “On
July 20, 2011, Ireland’s lawmakers declared that the Vatican encouraged Catholic
bishops not to tell police about suspected pedophile priests”.
“On Jan. 26, 2012, the Vatican defended its
transfer of a top official to Washington after he exposed alleged corruption”.
The following quotations
are from Thomas Paine’s 18th century book: The Age of Reason. “We know from history, that one of the
principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New
Testament was formed; (he died in 373 CE.); and we know also, from the absurd
jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also
from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is
composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius
that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present
to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote. Those
who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have
no true foundation for future happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime,
but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb
of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never
force belief upon ourselves in anything. — Christianity grounds itself
originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established
altogether by the sword and that in the worst use of it—not to terrify, but to
extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire
of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians
read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called
Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was
not established by the sword”.—“It has been by wandering from the immutable
laws of science, and the light of reason,
and setting up an invented thing called ‘revealed religion’,
that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty.
The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the
religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself and
the founder of a new religion—.The philosopher knows that the laws of the
Creator have never changed, with respect either to the principles of science,
or the properties of matter.
Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man”? Paine was an
American patriot; a dedicated deist, he believed “in the existence of a God on
purely rational grounds without reliance on revelation or authority; especially
the 17th & 18th century doctrine that God created the
world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning”. The
Age of Reason, sold eight editions the first year.
In 1933, Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican’s Assistant Secretary
of State, negotiated an agreement between Adolph Hitler and Pope Pius XI
allowing the Vatican to select Germany’s bishops, clergy, teachers, etc. with
Germany paying the bill. Hitler acquiesced only after the pope conceded that
Hitler should have complete political control. Pacelli persuaded Germany’s
Bishops to disband Catholic’s powerful Center Political Party, assuring
Nazism’s successful rise to power unopposed by Catholicism. The agreement
“created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing
struggle against international Jewry”. Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius
XII in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War. Gleaned
from Hitler’s Pope by John Cromwell,.
To recap: it appears obvious that a confluence of the
points listed in the first paragraph, indicate a pathway to convert Jews to a
more benevolent, saner Jewish god or messiah, than their problematic Yahweh,
but the ruse failed. The sagacious Jewish majority didn’t accept the
Jesus-idea, even though they had proffered innumerable possibilities in their
hodge-podge of books, which left the door open to Jerusalem’s Roman
subjugators, who welcomed the idea of exchanging Mithras for a Jewish god;
using Jewish law to sanctify killing apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers,
proponents of other gods plus non-allegiants, while exploiting pagan Europe’s
foibles, and thereby replace the Jews as Yahweh’s chosen people. They succeeded
in a big way, with the Vatican becoming the nerve center of all Christendom.
Professor Bart D. Ehrman, in his new book: “Did Jesus
Exist?” says “belief in Jesus is a problem”; explaining that it is not because
Jesus was mythical, but that Jesus is too historical; that he was a first
century apocalyptic Jew, who preached the end of the world was near, when God
would destroy all who defied Jewish law, which included the Romans, but when he
preached his beliefs in Jerusalem and did not deny being King of the Jews, the
Romans, who appointed all kings, crucified Jesus. Dr. Ehrman deplores the
Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus’ biography as that of antiquity’s many mythical
gods, such as Persia’s god Mithras, but failed to explain why the author of
Jew’s Jesus fable (Christian’s Gospels) adopted the biography of the earlier
gods. Ehrman carefully analyzed Jesus’ life, and decries professional proponents,
who present Jesus as a discerning modern “God”, but says Jesus spoke only in
supernatural terms; unconcerned about family values, abortion, same-sex
marriage, etc. This contentious confusion is difficult to unravel, but supports
my viewpoint, that clergy has misrepresented both the Judaic god and Jesus. The
Pentateuch’s vengeful god isn’t benevolent or forgiving and Jesus did not
create miracles; both were contrived and neither is divine.
The following quotations
were gleaned from The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S
Female author D.M. Murdock’s 1999 thought provoking
book: The Christ Conspiracy should be read by “every thinking individual
concerned about the moral, ethical, and spiritual aspects of our culture.—It
may well be the most dangerous and important book of our time, for it reveals
beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is not a historical figure but
simply a mythological toehold by which power mongers provide the dope of hope
to the needy, malleable and violent masses”. Murdock’s extraordinary wealth of
knowledge “about the world’s many ancient religions relentlessly brings to
light many lost, hidden and destroyed religious, mythological and spiritual
traditions that reveal “the same tales around the world about a variety of
godmen and sons of God, a number of whom also had virgin births or were of
divine origin; were born on or near December 25th in a cave or underground;
were baptized; worked miracles; held high morals, were compassionate, toiled
for humanity and healed the sick; were the basis of soul salvation and/or were
called Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer; had Eucharist; vanquished darkness; were
hung on trees or crucified; and were resurrected and returned to heaven, whence
they came. The list of these saviors and sons of God includes the following:”
Adad and Marduk of Assyria; Adonis, Aesciepius, Apollo, Dionysus, Hercules and
Zeus of Greece; Alcides of Thebes; Attis of Phrygia; Baal or Bel of
Babylon/Phoenicia; Balder and Frey of Scandinavia; Bali of Afghanistan; Beddru
of Japan; Buddha and Krishna of India; Chu Chulainn of Ireland; Codom and Deva
Tat of Siam; Crite of Chaldea; Dahzbog of the Slavs; Domuzi of Sumeria; Fo-hi,
Lao-Kiun, Tien and Chang-Ti of China; Hermes of Egypt/Greece; Hesus of the
Druids and Gauls; Indra of Tibet/India; Ieo of China; Issa/Isa of Arabia; Jao
of Nepal; Jupiter/ Jove of Rome; Mithra of Persia/India; Odin/Wodin/Woden/Wotan
of the Scandinavians; Prometheus of Caucasus/Greece; Quetzalcoatl of Mexico; Quirinius
of Rome; Salaviahana of southern India; Tammuz of Syria; Thor of the Gauls;
Universal Monarch of the Sibyls; Wittoba of the Bilingonese and Telingonese;
Zalmoxis of Thrace; Zarathustra/Zoroaster of Persia; and Zoar of the bonzes; a
total of 50.
“This list does not pretend to be complete, nor is there
adequate room here to go into detail of all these mythological characters. It
should be noted that as with Jesus, a number of these characters have been
thought of in the past as being historical persons, but today almost none of
them are considered as such”. The major players, which Murdock describes in
great detail, are as follows: Attis, Buddha, Dionysus/Bacchus,
Hercules/Heracles, Horus & Osiris of Egypt, Krishna of India, Mithra of
Persia, Prometheus of Greece, Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, Serapis of Egypt, and
Zoroaster/Zarathustra. Ms. Murdock also details many other Saviors and Sons of
God and several “daughters of God” and goddesses such as Diana Soteira, the
Arabian Issa, Aescleoius, Esculapius, the Greek god Orpheus.
D.M. Murdock’s conclusion: “It is evident that Jesus
Christ is a mythical character based on these various ubiquitous godmen and
universal saviors who were part of the ancient world for thousands of years
prior to the Christian era. As Massey says: The same legend was repeated in
many lands with a change of name, and at times of sex, for the sufferer, but
none of the initiated in the esoteric wisdom ever looked upon the Kamite Iusa,
a gnostic Horus, Jesus, Tammuz, Krishna, Buddha, Witoba, or any other of the
many saviors as historic in personality for the simple reason that they had
been more truly taught”.
“The existence and identity of all these mysterious
characters who are so identical in their persona and exploits, constituting the
universal mythos, have been hidden from the masses as part of the Christ
Conspiracy”.—The miraculous and implausible exploits of other cultures, however
are to be tossed aside as being unhistorical, mythological and downright
ridiculous. As we have seen and will continue to see, these other cultures had
the identical stories as those found in the bible; therefore, following the
‘logic’ of biblical proponents, we should also toss out the Judo-Christian
versions as ‘merely’ mythological and allegorical at best, and diabolical at
worst. As history, these various biblical tales are no more factual than the
stories of the Greek gods or the Arabian Knights. As allegory, however, they
record an ancient wisdom that goes back well beyond the founding of the Hebrew nation,
into the deepest mists of time”.
“It has been demonstrated that Christianity got it all
wrong—except the end to its erroneous means: it succeeded in enriching and
empowering its most effective ‘prestigious professional’ proponents many times
over. According to the same astrological system used to create Christianity,
the age for such divisiveness, fascism and hierarchical exploitation is now
drawing to a close, and lying, deceit, cheating and stealing will fall by the
wayside ‘the truth will be shouted from the rooftops’; exposing Earth’s ‘dirty
little secret’. As Jacolliot says: ‘Apostles of Jesus, you have counted too
much upon human credulity, trusted too much that the future might not unveil
your maneuvers and your fabricated recitals—the sanctity of your object made
you too oblivious of means, and you have taken the good faith of peoples by
surprise in reproducing the fables of another age, which you believed buried
forever’”.
“But the future is now, and the maneuvers are being
unveiled. As far as Christianity’s role in this ‘New Age’, Carpenter states:
‘Christianity must either now come frankly forward and, acknowledge its
parentage from the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate that and carry
mankind one step forward in the path of evolution—or else it must perish. There
is no alternative’”.
“Despite the vilification of the so-called New Age
movement, the fact is that we are entering into a new age. ‘I am with you
always to the close of the age’—so ends the Gospel of Mathew. What does this mysterious
statement mean, and why was this all-important book ended with it? The age
referred to in the gospel tale is that of Pisces, and through contrivance and
duplicity, coercion and slaughter, the fish-god ‘Jesus’ the Piscean Solar
Avatar, has indeed been with us, but now it is the close of the age, and his
time is over.
“Traditionally these times of transition between one age
and the next have been regarded as the
ongoing destruction of the Earth and the endless warfare over ideology will
indeed produce the ‘Armageddon’ so long awaited and planned for by those who
cannot live for today but must look towards an afterlife. By realizing the
cultural unity revealed behind the Christ conspiracy, humanity can pull
together and prevent this fall, to create a better world”. The above quotations were gleaned from The Christ
Conspiracy by Acharya S.
“On the contradictions within the Judeo-Christian
scriptures eminent freethinker Robert Ingersoll commented, ‘If a man would
follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If
he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane’”.
Apostle Paul decreed the unrealistic proposition: that to
be saved one must believe Jesus died to atone for man’s sins. I believe:
ignorant Christians have slaughtered more innocent people than ignorant Jews
and ignorant Muslims combined.(See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM). My main interest is
thwarting Christian control of our government. Majorities of our electorate are
“born-again” Christians whose religiosity, supported by “talk radio’s” millions
of ignorant followers, can rescind our “Bill of Rights”. Today, many white
Christians appear resentful of our president’s blackness and have formed a “tea
party” of segregationists in opposition. Can anyone explain why America’s
conservative voters have more faith in ancient suppositions and ignorant
conjecture than in nature’s immutable
forces and scientific principles, which includes evolution? It is obvious to many people that they must
remain alert for the unsubstantiated propositions, which confront us daily, but
con-games and the scamming arts are as old as man’s cognition. I have mentioned
earlier that religious beliefs began in the jungles of Africa, however in spite
of our world’s magnificent trove of knowledge prestigious professional
proponents of mystical gods always find eager audiences of credulous believers;
although Christian values, such as: “love thy neighbor”, are needed, they belie
Christianity’s historic gruesome authoritarianism, death and devastation.
Hearsay is the only evidence for a living Jesus. His crucifixion in year 29,
and the New Testament’s assemblage in year 367, 338 years later, is perplexing,
as our United States is only 236 years old. Retelling dubious legends over a
protracted period of time, assures their enhancement by each god’s prestigious
professional proponents.
Prussia, a principality of west-central Europe’s Holy
Roman Empire (800-1806) was Catholic, but Martin Luther’s 16th
century religious movement aimed at reforming the Roman Catholic Church
resulted, in establishing Protestant churches, which converted my family to
Protestantism. In order to marginalize England’s Catholicism, Queen Ann
financed the immigration of European Protestants and my Redwine ancestors were
among the many Palatines from Prussia’s lands within the Rhine Palatinate, who
traveled down the Rhine River to Holland and thence to England. “Lists of
Germans from the Palatinate Who Came to England in 1709”, (taken at Walworth,
May 27th, 1709), show three Redwines: Frederick, age 32 and his wife, also his
son age 2, accompanied by 22 year old Jacob. On September 29, 1750, the good
Ship Osgood arrived in Philadelphia, from Rotterdam, last from Cowes,. Among
its numerous Palatines from Cowes was Ludwig Redwine, possibly the 2 year old
son of Frederick in 1709, if so he would have been 43, and Johan Michael who
was 18. Followers of English clergyman John Wesley, they popularized Methodism
in colonial America. Ideas of liberty and freedom from religious tyranny were
minimal in medieval Europe, but British subjects in colonial America soon
declared their independence and both they and France’s citizens fought
revolutions; freeing themselves from mandated church-state subjugation. Today
America’s Christian hierarchy plans to collusively manage our nation’s
government. Comprehension of the horrific crimes against humanity, caused by
man’s stupid emulation of “God”, should have sensitized Christian hierarchy,
eons ago, but prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods’ perpetuated
King Josiah’s tribal propaganda as sacred doctrine; demonstrating that
religion’s duplicitous delusions stem from the complicity of divination’s
illusionists. During its first millennium, Christianity permitted no dissent,
but slaughtered their astute discerning thinking nonbelievers. Can Christians
explain this?
My only interest
in the Abrahamic faiths’ misinformed multitudes is their reliance upon their
mystical gods’ spurious sovereignty. I hope to thwart Christian hierarchy’s
plans to control of our secular democracy. Religious ignorance has always
opposed undiscriminating inclusiveness, as well as Confucius’ proposition: that
we are all the same except for our experiences.
Secularism’s doctrine: “disregards or rejects any form of religious faith;
especially that religion and
ecclesiastical affairs should not enter into the functions of the state”.
Secularism advocates tolerant worldly views. We think that it is ignorant and
unfair to inculcate the minds of little children with the fallaciousness
inherent in any supernatural doctrine.
It is obvius: that
worldwide propogation of the Abrahamic religions, by their prestigious
professional proponents of mystical gods, brainwashed believers. Evidently
they are aware of their particular god’s mythology, but remain unaware of their
god’s inscrutable perfidious unforgivable bloody history, which today’s
professionals are apt to repeat, while attempting to salvage their confidence
game from the disclosures of modern science.
Thomas Jefferson said: “in every country and every age the
priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the
despot—they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into
mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for
their purposes”.
ISLAMISM
The following quotations
about Muhammad are from Wikipedia
“Muhammad 570-June 8, 632 was a leader from Mecca who
unified Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by
Muslims and Baha’is to be a messenger and prophet of God, and by most Muslims
as the last prophet sent by God for mankind. Muhammad is generally considered
to be the founder of Islam, although this is a view not shared by Muslims.
Muslims consider him to be the restorer of an uncorrupted monotheistic faith of
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets”.
“Born in about 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he
was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu
Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was
married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in
the surrounding mountains for several nights of seclusion and prayer, he later
reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation
from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations
publically, proclaiming that ‘God is One’, that complete ‘surrender’ to Him
(lit. Islam) is the only way acceptable to God, and that he himself was a
prophet and messenger, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets”.
“Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was met with
hostility from some Meccan tribes; he and his followers were treated harshly.
To escape persecution, Muhammad sent some of his followers to Abyssinia before
he and his followers in Mecca migrated to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the
year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.
In Medina, Muhammad united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. After
eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had
grown to 10,000, conquered Mecca. Muhammad destroyed the pagan idols in Mecca
and then sent his followers out to destroy all of the remaining pagan temples
throughout Eastern Arabia. In 622, a few months after returning to Medina from
The Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death,
most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam, and he had united Arabia
into a single Muslim religious polity”. Biblically, Islamists are descendants
of Abraham and Hagar, Genesis 15, 16 and 17.
John L. Esposito’s lectures on Islam say that tribal and
family honor were central virtues in pre-Islamic Arabian polytheistic
religions; that Islam has more than a billion followers in 56 countries, and
its geographic, cultural, and religious diversity reflects its status as an
Abrahamic faith, with global presence and impact, but that threats of political
Islam’s fundamentalism challenge the world. He says that for many Muslims,
religion and society, faith and power, are closely intertwined—that religious
doctrines, laws, and practices result from sacred texts and from fallible
interpreters, whose conclusions reflect their intelligence, political and
social contexts, customs, power & privilege; and that male interpreters,
live in patriarchal societies, which affects their development of Islamic law,
especially on women and family; that the five pillars of Islam; all refer to
religion, except the third, which requires an annual contribution of 2.5
percent of an individual’s wealth and assets including annual income.
Esposito says: in 610, Muhammad received a call to
prophet-hood with his first revelation; “the message of Islam was revealed
during and responded to a time of great socioeconomic transition in Arabia.
Mecca was emerging as a major mercantile center at the heart of a new
political, social, and economic order. New wealth and the rise of a new
commercial class led to the greater division between social classes and a
growing disparity between rich and poor”. Mohammad received revelations for 22
years, until his death in 632 CE. They were collected later and compiled into
the quran. Dr. Esposito says “Muhammad’s reformist message posed an unwelcome
challenge to the religious and political establishment, the priests, tribal
leaders, and business men of the community. The new religious message that Muhammad
preached—denounced the status quo and called for social justice for the poor
and the most vulnerable in society: women, children, and orphans”. The quran’s
message is essentially the same as the Hebrew bible and Old Testament, but
Islam is both a faith and a political order; “it split into a Sunni majority
and Shii minority over issues of leadership. These differing religious and
political views led to different interpretations of history. Sunni’s claim a
‘Golden Age’ when they were a great world power and civilization, which they
believe is evidence of God’s favor upon them and a historic validation of
Muslim beliefs. Shii, as an oppressed and disinherited minority see in these
same developments the illegitimate usurpation of power by Sunni rulers at the
expense of a just society”. Muhammad consolidated Muslim authority over Arabia
by force and diplomacy; a century after his death, his rule extended from North
Africa to South Asia, an empire greater than Rome’s. Islam was to be a
community of believers—who lived according to Islamic law—adopting and adapting
existing political institutions and sciences—motivated by religious fervor and
economic rewards. “The inhabitants of newly conquered areas were given three
options: (1) convert to Islam, (2) accept ‘protected’ status and pay a poll
tax, or (3) face battle or the sword, if they rejected the first two options”.
The period of Muhammad (632-66) serves as the idealized
past to which Muslims look for inspiration and guidance. From 8th-12th
centuries, Islam and Muslim political power expanded exponentially; that
from750-1258 Islamic regimes became an empire of wealth, political power, and
cultural accomplishments. : “Enormous wealth enabled the Abbasid caliphs to become
great patrons of art and culture resulting in the florescence of Islamic civilization—Europeans,
emerging from the Dark Ages, turned to Muslim centers of learning to regain
their lost heritage and to learn from Muslin advances. The Crusades (1095-1453)
established a paradigm of confrontation between Islam and Christianity and
Islam and the West, the legacy of which continues to affect Muslim-Christian
relations and relations between the Muslim world and the West. The Christian
West experienced the spread of Islam as both a religious and political threat.
Europe engaged—a struggle to reconquer territories in Spain, Italy and Sicily,
and the Crusades, a holy war. The Crusades ended in 1453 when Constantinople,
the Byzantine capital, fell to the Turks and was renamed Istanbul”; the seat of
the Ottoman Empire.
“The Abbasid caliphate was replaced by a variety and
series of sultanates. They extended from Africa to Southeast Asia. Three
imperial sultanates emerged: the Turkish Ottoman Empire (1281-1924), the
Persian Safavid Empire (1501-1722), and the Indian Mughal Empire (1520-1857),
all of which experienced political power and cultural florescence. By the turn
of the 18th century, the power and prosperity of the sultanates was
in serious decline. This decline coincided with the Industrial Revolution and
modernization in the West, leading to clashes in the era of European
colonialism”. The dynamic expansion of imperial Islam gave way to political
disintegration and social and moral decline, from the 17th to the 20th
centuries, followed by European colonialism throughout much of the Muslim world.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Arabia, Africa, and India
experienced a revival of Islam’s politicized religion. “A series of revivalist
movements led to the establishment of several Islamic states: the Wahhabi in
Arabia and Africa, the Fulani in Nigeria, the Sanusi in Libya, and the Mahdi in
the Sudan”. In the last decades of the 20th century, the Muslim
world experienced the impact of another revival or resurgence of Islam in
personal and in public life. On the personal level, many Muslims have become
more religiously observant. In the public sphere, new Islamic governments or
republics have been established in Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. At the same
time, radical Islamic organizations have engaged in violence and terrorism to
topple governments.
During the 20th century, Islamic empires and
sultanates were obliterated and replaced by modern nation-states. Many
countries in the Middle-East were quite literally newly created, ’mapped out’
by European colonial powers (Britain and France) after World War 1”. The West
expected these modern nation-states to generally follow a Western secular path
of development, but the majority, such as Egypt, Syria, Iran, Malaysia, and
Indonesia, whose populations were mostly Muslim, created Muslim states, whose
progress and prosperity depended on the degree they conformed to Western
secular values. Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran were seen as the more
advanced and secular. Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Afghanistan,
Bangladesh and Pakistan were regarded as more traditional, religious and
backward. The Arab-Israeli war and a series of wars and riots, during the 1960s
and 1970s revealed the weaknesses of many states. The 1978-1979 Iranian
Revolution alerted the West to Islam’s profound change. Illiteracy, poverty,
failed economies, high unemployment, and malapportionment of wealth, caused
Muslims to question national identity, political legitimacy and the meaning of
their religious faith.
Their dissatisfaction with modernity was marked by their
quest for self-identity and greater authenticity, as many reaffirmed the
importance of Islam in their daily lives. Islamic ideology, and politics
reemerged as a major force that both Muslim and Western governments had to
accommodate. Muslims are experiencing an identity crisis precipitated by a
sense of utter impotence and loss of self-esteem; a disillusionment with West’s
models of development, and as an ally. Islamic movements and organizations
sprang up across the Muslim world. The Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, the militants
who seized the Grand Mosque in 1979, the religious extremists who assassinated
Anwar Sadat in 1981, and the Afghan freedom fighters in the late 1970s and
early 1980s; made it clear by the late 1980s-early 1990s that the Islamists had
moved into mainstream politics and society. “Other extremists were convicted in
America and Europe for terrorist acts, such as the bombing of New York’s World
Trade Center in 1993, of the American barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1995, and of
American embassies in Africa in 1998”, “leading some governments & analysts
to identify: ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ as a major threat to global stability”.
[Terrorists, in the name of Islam destroyed the World Trade Center’s two towers
in in New York, killing more than 3000 innocent people, and attacked the
Pentagon in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001], leading President G.W. Bush
to invade Iran and Afghanistan in 2003. (See MIDDLE EAST FIASCO).
“At the heart of this “struggle for the soul of Islam”
between conservatives and reformers, mainstream Muslims and extremists is the
question of who should interpret Islam and how reform should be achieved. Its
major issues include the relationship of religion to state and society, the
role of Islamic law, the status of women and non-Muslims, the compatibility of
Islam and democracy, and relations with the West”. Muslims were brought to America
as slaves before the 19th century; presently some 6 million Muslims
reside and work in secular America. “Significant numbers of immigrants from
Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan settled in the Midwest and Canada as blue-collar
workers and assimilated into American society”. Some 15 million Muslim
immigrants reside and work in secular Europe, but are not assimilated.
“Since September 11, 2001, the processes of adaptation
and change have become more difficult as Muslims face those who charge that
Islam is incompatible with or a threat to Western societies. This is compounded
by legislation and policies that threaten the civil liberties of Muslims. The
agenda facing Islam in the 21st century is daunting. Unlike Judaism
and Christianity, which had decades, indeed centuries to undergo their own
processes of modern reform, Muslim societies have a far more telescoped time
frame. They do so in response not only to the realities in their societies and
communities, but also to a Western-dominated world and era of globalization”.
“Islam today is at a crossroads. Mainstream Muslims from
conservative and traditional to fundamentalists or extremists often engage in a
‘holy war’ that pits Muslim against Muslim, as well as Muslim against
non-Muslim.
All of the above
information was gleaned from John L. Esposito’s lectures on ISLAM.
David P. Goldman, in his book: How Civilizations Die
says: “between the conversion of Constantine in 325 CE and the crowning of
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, the population of Europe fell by
half or more; the great engineering, manufacturing, and trading network of Rome
disappeared; cities were abandoned; and the great culture of the classical world
was for the most part lost”. During this wretched period when Rome was forcing
Christianity onto European pagans at the point of a sword;
Mohammed (570?-632 CE), realized that suppressing
knowledge and killing nonbelievers, would work for Muslims just like it was
doing for Judaism and Christianity. He claimed the Hebrew
archangel Gabriel provided his Koran’s
precepts. An adherent of Islam, Muslimism’s an Abrahamic faith, subscribing to
King Josiah’s dogma; which is identical
in the Old Testament and the Koran. One can embrace it, but Islamic
apostates, blasphemers, etc. are killed; Their goal: convert or destroy the world;
as the Christians did during their first sesquimillenniums. Islamism is a perfect example of how religions
govern nations. The crux of Abrahamic faiths is male superiority; during our existence man has instigated many
perturbing decisions; the least exemplary was his niggardly, vainglorious
domination of woman. The Middle East shows what subjugating women do to a
society. Muslim’s male dominated culture is an extreme example of men’s
attitude toward women; repressing them. Poorly educated, and their
virginity considered sacred, they experience a brutal surgical removal of the
clitoris to circumvent pleasurable coition. Her husband is selected by her
parents and premarital sexual experience or adultery is punished by beheading
in the public square, or by her family as “honor killing”. Incited by Allah’s prestigious professional
proponents, ignorant and sexually deprived males, filled with religious fervor, sacrifice
themselves by killing a few infidels to assure their lasciviously anticipated
eternal-life. Ponder Islam’s aggressive vengeful male dominated culture;
furthering ignorance by withholding knowledge and killing their complaining erudite
discerning citizens. Is this the goal of America’s Religious Right Coalition’s Christian Fundamentalism?
Islamic Muslims,
engrossed in memorizing the Koran, murdering infidels, etc. are incapable of
thinking, inventing or developing science. They did not participate in the
industrial revolution and their
fundamentalist concept of Abrahamic faiths are a perfect example of religion in action, which we should avoid, but 86% of
our nation’s semi-civilized society admits to being guided by an Abrahamic
faith. Possibly our faithful would prefer to have a typical ecclesiastical
dictator such as Iran’s, etc.
In Islam’s drive to rid the world of non-Muslims it
is often reported that the last sound victims hear from suicide bombers or
executioners, are the shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” or “God is great”. Judaism and
Christianity each spent a thousand years adhering to Yahweh’s demands that
blasphemers, apostates, nonbelievers, proponents of other gods, etc. must be
killed by believers even when members of one’s family; not an excuse for Islam
whose godliness is just as deceitful as those of the Jews and Christians.
Allah’s
prestigious professional proponents govern and see opportunities to be
humankind’s only religion and thereby rule a worldwide despotic theocracy.
Demographics favor them, as their women’s birthrate averages three times that of
U.S. women’s and five times that of European, Russian and Chinese women’s.
European nations’ increasing Muslim migrants have not assimilated. In a few
generations Western Europe will assimilate them by embracing Islam’s religious
totalitarianism, as Muslims follow Yahweh’s commands to rid the world of
infidels, which excludes only Muslim’s true believers. Similar to Judaism and
Christianity, Islam adopted King Josiah’s tribal propaganda. We understand
ancient ignorance and
should understand Religion-Lite’s vacuousness. Also, please understand: the Islamic regimes’ “will-to-succeed” has sucked us dry of blood, treasure, and will,
fighting on their turf. They want us to continue fighting, but not resort to a scorched-earth type of revenge; in order to prevent their pursuit of
nuclear weapons.
Muslims missed
the civilizing influence of Europe’s 18th century period of
Enlightenment and can avoid additional self-destruction by denying King
Josiah’s vengeful dogma. Ignorance can’t
expand civilizations; and blind faith in a god is inversely proportional to
one’s worldly knowledge.
Allah’s specious sovereignty is Islam’s license for religious tyranny without
any accountability”.
Allah is one
of the aliases of Yahweh, the Jew’s God-character, which was King Josiah’s occult superego; onto which he projected
his vilest intentions to punish his tribe’s non-allegiant troublemakers with
death. I have noted: subsequent political leaders employed similar deceptive
ploys to confound and manipulate their subjugated; always with the complicity
of religion’s prestigious professional proponents; which
Islam continues. The Religious Right wants
to use the dominionist movement as their means to dominate life in the “born
again” U.S.A. I’ve explained the fallacies in all Abrahamic faiths and have
recommended a better way, but unless the international community reaches a
communal agreement about how to resolve global warming’s problems and Islam’s
religious terrorism, which the Pentateuch advocates, fallacious beliefs will
convince Allah’s prestigious professional proponents to nuclearly obliterate
the world’s infidels, which, by the way, include Muslim females and everyone
except Islamic male true believers; assuring a revered position is reserved in
heaven for them and that their sharia law governs worldwide.
The following quotation is from www.handbookforinfidels.com
“This life sucking ideology has survived for fourteen
centuries because it has been sheltered from criticism by the combined forces
of violence (on their part)—its devotees have been insulated from the ideas of
non-believers who tend to be far more adept at critical thinking. It’s time for
all progressives to do what we can to help eradicate this deadly mind-virus, by
resisting its spread in the west, and by undermining its central truth-claims
via honest conversations in all available venues. We need to create an environment
in which myth based religions such as Islam [plus Judaism and Christianity] are
constantly being confronted by Reason, Skepticism and Reality [in addition to
hearty measure of Ridicule]. These religions have bullied, brutalized and
befuddled mankind for centuries. It is time to fight back! And Islam, the
biggest meanest bully of them all, is just begging to get its ass kicked. So,
let’s make that happen, on a global scale. Let’s show the True Believers that
we Infidels still have a little grit and determination. And that militant
progressives, armed with Reason and Science, and firmly grounded in Reality,
can prevail over ignorant zealots motivated by ancient superstitions”.
“If you believe in progressive ideals, and support
progressive agendas, you need to get involved before the essential
tools/weapons of free speech and freedom of the press are sacrificed completely
in the interest of multiculturalism and political pandering. The struggle over
free speech is the front line in this war. And we’ve already lost a lot of
ground here, and in Western Europe (where, in some countries, criticizing Islam
has become a criminal offense) and in the U.S. (where making a honest, sensible
statement about Muslims, on airliners can get you fired by National Public
Radio). For the concerned citizen in the western world the first order of
business is reversing this dangerous trend. We need to halt the steady erosion
of our essential liberties, and vigorously reassert our right to speak plainly
and openly about important issues, even if this means ‘offending’ our
ideological enemies—who have no qualms about giving offence to us”.
“Infidels are intellectual discovers who sail
unknown seas and find new isles and continents in the realms of thought—one who
has a new fact—an idea of his own—an intellectual capitalist, who excites the
envy and hatred of the theological pauper. Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature,
because he imagined that phenomena were produced to reward or punish him.—when
some town or city was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined that the crimes
of the inhabitants had been avenged”.
SYNOPSIS
First
we’ll enumerate the significant religious wars:
(a)
Muslim’s military conquests: from 634-1800. “Most historians agree that
the Sassanid, Persian and Byzantine Roman empires were militarily and
economically exhausted from decades of fighting one another”. The Muslim
Empire’s area of influence stretched from the borders of China and Indian
subcontinent, across central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily, and
the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.
(b)
Christianity’s military Reconquista: almost 800 years of fighting to
retake the Muslim controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula, end when “the
Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) was issued on 31 March,
1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella 1 of Castile and
Ferdinand 2 of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of Jews from [their kingdoms,
territories and possessions]. The edict was formally revoked on 16 December
1968 following the Second Vatican Council”.
(c) Christian’s 11th,12th
and 13th century unsuccessful Crusades to retake the “Holy Lands”,
unmercyfully slaughtered Jews and Muslims wherever they were found.
(d)
France’s 8 religious wars: from March 1562-April 1598, pitted French
Catholics against early French Protestants, (Huguenots).
(e)
Europe’s 30 year war (1618-1648) pitted the Catholics against Martin
Luther’s Reformation’s Protestants. The above
information was gleaned from Wikipedia.
Next: what we’ve
determined:
(a): We
know: prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods first conned us
in primitive jungles with polytheism’s gods; then enforced the commands of
dynastic monarch’s specious gods, with torture and death.
(b): We
know: the bible is
NOT “the word of God” as the bible’s books of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy were fabricated by King Josiah’s team of scholars as tribal
propaganda, to motivate, invigorate, inspire, and intimidate his subjects. There is no evidence for a “God”.
(c): We
know the biblical Judaic God is fraudulent, because it is the evil Yahweh,
the fictional god in King Josiah’s
tribal propaganda.
(d): We
know the fraudulent Hebrew bible
inspired the so-called holy books of Christianity and Muslimism.
(e): We
know the Gospels are fables, because the fraudulent Judaic God allegedly
sired Jesus, destroying any possibility of divinity.
We know
the origins of the Abrahamic faiths; they are tragic atrocities; their fictitious gods were foisted upon
humanity by two ancient Eastern cultures whose uninformed multitudes have
suffered utmost. Now
we’ll examine the problems that have bedeviled most of humankind due to
their thoughtless blind-faith in the Abrahamic religion’s fraudulent
gods.
Our imagination
produced all gods. Our ignorance deluded us into the self-inflicted impulse to
be dominated by King Josiah’s, monotheistic god; and feel compelled to
worship his perverse dogma. Our problems began when we condescended to worship
the god we had created; complicating our lives by
disagreeing and fighting over the god; dividing into multiple sects, attempting
to settle unanswerable questions. I argue: all gods are mythical; we created
and manipulated them as per our aspirations. Wishful fantasies and ritualistic
groveling cannot make them more than cerebral aberrations. Without evidence of
gods it’s absurd for believers to kill others because of a fanatical adherence
to a particular version of a mystical god; an irrational situation that remains
incomprehensible to logical thought.
Religion, when contemplated by inquisitive minds, reveals confusion about the unknown, but
prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, continue promulgating
incomprehensibility with foolhardy certainty. Answers to queries based
on conjecture are not valid and is the crux of skepticism; we’ve
divided into the gullible and skeptics; such as agnostics, deists,
free-thinkers, nonbelievers, infidels, secularists, and atheists; each doubting
group claims an intrinsic definition.
This thing we call religion has been a horrific
nightmare. Our problems began when prestigious primitive professional proponents
of mystical gods’ enhanced their careers with divination; promising salvation,
urging suckers “to get right with god”. Abrahamic faiths perpetuated the myths,
but without an iota of evidence it is daunting. Credulity is not a crime, but because
of slight differences in religious beliefs, Christians slaughtered each other;
proving we are easily brain-washed, and that blind-faith clouds our mind and
warps our thinking. For 300 plus years, Rome worshipped a state-god, either
Jupitor or Mithras, but during Emperor Constantine’s reign, (306-337) they
exchanged gods, and Rome killed Europe’s pagan kings who refused the cross and,
at sword’s point, appointed Christian kings; forcing Europe’s conversion to
Christianity; imposing the Vatican over all Christendom. Martin Luther’s
Reformation movement in the 1500s, ignited Europe’s smoldering conflagration of
despotic Christian regimes; culminating in the 30 year war (1618-48).
“Beginning of the
seventeenth century, absolute monarchy triumphed over the ruins of European
Middle Ages’ oligarchical and feudal liberties. The rights of man were
completely confounded in the midst of Europe’s splendor and its literature.
Ideas concerning liberty, political activity and freedom of religion were
minimal. At that time in America, independence from England plus freedom from
church-state tyranny were uppermost in the minds of all citizens, and humble
communities put the boldest theories of human reason into
practice”.
The bible’s miracles have been discredited by the
scholars, epigraphists and
archaeologists who sought proof of its credibility. Their two
hundred year search of the
biblical region included excavations and carbon-dating of each level of
destruction, at each of the ancient ruins of destroyed centers of habitation,
and all histories including those carved in stone, in the lands between the
Nile River and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which has been amalgamated and
conclusions published, authored by bible scholars and archaeologists.
I’ve explored
man’s god-ideas and hasten to add: early Homo sapiens, i.e., modern man, ventured away from the
equatorial jungles, followed the receding ice sheets and occupied the more
temperate regions of the world. Evolution improved the brains and dexterity of
adventurous challengers. The positive pole enticed the erudite, sagacious and
discerning who perceived of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
biology, etc.; they furthered knowledge, developed science beneficial for all
humankind, e.g. plans, tools and machinery to cope with the prodigious problems in the
agricultural, bronze, iron, industrial, electronics and space ages. Ten thousand
years ago we became agriculturists; and our adventurous progress continues.
Man’s ingenuity is undeniable his ability to think, to invent and resolve
realistic conundrums, has provided us a more fruitful life, but his infamous
calumnious efforts to exploit supernatural god-ideas proved his Nemesis (the goddess of
retributive justice), his ego and
ignorance deluded him into murdering infidels. Comparing
history’s thinkers, who chose the “positive pole”, with those who chose the
“negative pole”, reveals religion’s irrational beliefs; misinforming
multitudes; inhibiting their ingenuities and our world’s acceptance of
“undiscriminating inclusiveness”.
As I age, past experiences leads my mind to contemplate political and religious
conundrums, e.g., humanity’s obeisance
to King Josiah’s vengeful “God”, which for
2600 years, prompted us to pusillanimously wallow in the self-deprecating, idea
that humans and other species were deposited in full bloom
on Earth, by a superhuman god, for a
special purpose; subjugating each of us forever. The tortuous ratiocinations
required to justify Josiah’s tribal propaganda as holy
aren’t warranted. The prestigious professional proponents of the Abrahamic
faiths successfully spread spurious beliefs worldwide. Religion’s
incongruity, combined with our imagination, fear and ignorance was unfathomable so we conceded to a god’s
prestigious professional political promoters and prolonged our lives by
acquiescing to specious beliefs, but blind-faith
has been our Nemesis.
The god-idea is as
old as our primitive cognition; based on fears and imagination, it explained
and confirmed our relationship to all we failed to comprehend. Taught to
children, it increased believers at the exponential rate of population
multiplicity. The Abrahamic faith’s history of torture and malicious, killing
in the name of “God”; belies reasons for berating us more knowledgeable
discerning infidels about the Judaic god than protagonists, the misinformed proponents
of “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”.
The Abrahamic
faiths were extrapolated from King
Josiah’s tribal propaganda. They succeeded because Yahweh
demanded death for all apostates, nonbelievers, blasphemers and the proponents
of other gods. Judaism and
Christianity were despotic theocracies such as today’s Islamic regimes. The essence of King Josiah’s Abrahamic faiths
is male superiority; responsible for contentious global divisions. In addition
to generating new lives, our diplomatic, perspicacious women will resolve our
religious and racial distinctions. women’s sensibilities and capabilities
equal those of men, except for brute strength and male sperm. Provide man adequate sex
and a little sustenance and, like stallions, he can be domesticated. Males were
intrigued with miraculous god-ideas, so when King Josiah needed a tribal god to
manage his restive Judaic subjects, we know why the virile ideal male, Yahweh’s vanity, jealousy and vindictive
rapacious prejudices created the partnership between man and “God”. Woman was
not included. “God’s” inconsideration of women was concocted
by males. Men’s blind
faith in their mythical egomaniacal, wrathful, tyrannical male god, rather than
in a mythical, intelligent, empathetic, sensuous woman, is inexplicably
perverse and stupid.
The Abrahamic faiths’ history of inquisitions, persecutions,
stonings, burnings, beheadings and religious wars, all in the name of their
god, belies their claims of godliness. They worship King Josiah’s despicable god; we can’t blame religion’s
militancy on a fictional god character; the problems are men’s
imaginations, testosterone and conspiratorial minds. Religions’ perceived
militancy is that of man; his indifference to its past persecutions,
degradation and killing only adds to the confusion, amid questions about
religion’s purpose. They, hypocritically, avoid references to their less than
holy past and present gods as sacred; supported by billions who inherited
misguided beliefs without investigating the god vs. secularism situation. If there is a god and a heaven,
it’s reasonable to assume we would be allowed a more sensible arrangement, as
unsubstantiated theories, concepts, etc. are invalid, even though they were
conjured by the ancients. “Illusion and faith aren’t sensible substitutions for
sound science”, which accepts only the provable; advancing knowledge,
but Abrahamic religions are obstructive, stagnant, backward, waste- lands of hypocrisy;
unable, for 2600 years, to add to world knowledge. Islamic fundamental
totalitarianism remains in the 7th century CE when
Mohammad claimed Hebrew archangel; Gabriel revealed his koran’s precepts. The region had once been a progressive
knowledgeable civilization, but today’s Islamic regimes are theocratic tyrannies, exporting “sacred” terrorism and enforcing
sharai law. After its numerous historic religious wars, Western Europe forewent
the Abrahamic religions’ illogical divisiveness and formed their secular European Union.
We are a plague that has infested the Earth’s
skin, an infestation of organisms consuming our host while we contemplate
global agreements on ways to avoid self-destruction before our host collapses.
Alternatively, we may be a malignancy, developing at the exponential rate of
population multiplicity. When our host becomes uninhabitable, we will need to
move onto another host and begin a new infestation. Globally, we haven’t
considered mutually agreeable plans to further enhance our tolerance of each
other’s ethnic peculiarities. Earth accepted the single cell microorganisms of
life and nourished them for billions of years while they developed into our
numerous species of animal life; microscopic viries and bacteria, plus the
aquatic, the avian, and mammals including us. All life depends upon global
willingness to agree to stabilize and reverse our thoughtless destruction of
the Earth’s natural benevolence. We’ve adapted and thrived beyond expectations
and our infestation is beyond humane control. We’ve polluted two of life’s
necessities, air and water, and must convince global nations to take emergency
measures that require compliant agreements to eliminate all elements contributing to global divisiveness or
else humankind must anticipate our irreversible extermination as an endangered
species.
People believe
because they don’t know any better. Our lexicon is rife with words meaning
unreal or unknown, which may be used to describe a pseudo universe devoid
of human knowledge, where organized religion’s alliance has
staked its unholy claim and touts its worthless stock to gullible congregations.
Religions allusion to supernaturalism’s
gods, ghosts, etc. is
unfamiliar territory and opens unlimited fields of thought just as extensive
and complex as we will allow our imagination to develop. It’s a fertile field
in which to grow fairytales, visions, claims of gods, etc. For instance: if you
compose a fable of your grandparent’s adventures with a miracle working god and
your ignorant friends believe it and teach their children, and they, teach it
to their children ad finitum, believers will about double each generation. A
millennium later, innumerable ones will support your fable as factual. If
believers have been killing nonbelievers, a majority will have developed a
blind-faith and believe your fable is true; that God exists because multitudes,
regularly, grovel on their knees, worshipping it.
Abrahamic faiths’
prestigious professional proponents credit “God” for humanity’s moral code and
beneficence, but in the bible’s first five books there is no benevolent god;
the Pentateuch portrays the Judaic god as a mad monstrous killer. Our concern should be for each other from
whom all goodness flows. Our
conviviality and consideration for fellow humankind along with our Moral Code
and Golden Rule evolved. Primitive guides to morality, maternal love, kindness,
and empathy evolved millennia before King Josiah’s god-Yahweh’s Ten
Commandments: Exodus 20: 2-17; eleven verses, (2-12), pertain to the god’s
egomania, with only five verses for killing, adultery, stealing, lying and
coveting thy neighbor’s possessions.
Among our human masses, ignorance, misinformation and
religions flourish; they worship supernatural gods,
known only via conjecture, ruse, subterfuge, and lies. Their blind faith in the
illogical reveals mortal fears of exclusion by Father, Son or Holy Ghost;
similar to Hindu’s supreme trinity. Brahma created the universe,
Vishnu is Preserver and Siva is the god of destruction and reproduction. Holy
Ghost is undefined. Realistically, the unholy trinity I have gleaned from my 95
years and the Abrahamic religion’s
despicable history is: “ignorance, dogma & despotism”.
Abrahamic faiths have
no knowledgeable facts; their biblical fables reveal how King Josiah misled
our ancestors into believing their salvation required them to torture and
murder all those unwilling to obey Josiah’s monotheistic god. Religion’s responsibility for the millions
slaughtered by our ancestors, in “God’s” name, is an irreconcilable stain on
our collective conscience. I have learned how god-ideas became
imbedded in primitive minds amid vast ignorance, and
developed religion’s malevolent history. Our delusions,
concerning humankind’s purpose, began
in primitive times when non-comprehension was explained by the occult powers of
mythical gods; there’s no evidence supporting simple-minded solutions devised
by primitive imaginations. As I became more familiar with bible’s tyrannical god’s methods for
dealing with nonbelievers, critics, etc., curiosity led me to search for why
the god was portrayed as vain, vile, vicious, and vengeful and why was man so enthralled with the idea
of an immoral violent god? I found
that man had created all gods, and was especially enamored with the bible’s god
because man had created that particular god in his own exalted, self-image, the
perfect male, mean spirited, ready to destroy all who failed to worship the
god’s egomania; I learned of the bible’s contrived godliness; its mythology,
false prophesies and inherent fallacies. The only goodness in our semi-civilized
world comes from fellow humans; we must be tolerant and respectful of each
other. Confucius said:
“We are all the same except for our experiences”, but Abrahamic faiths’
intolerant divisive “Gods” are incompatible with our desire to become
undiscriminating and inclusive. Gods are offered by their prestigious
professional proponents as man’s ideal of holy behavior, but the bible’s
Pentateuch does not support them. There is no “God”, heaven, etc. Religion’s
gift to man is “hell on Earth” with its deceptive professional proponents. It
is wrong to believe threats of hell and promises of eternal life prevent our
becoming uncivilized and backward, because the Islamic regimes are the most
uncivilized, violent, backward and most
religiously devout societies on Earth.
Our only exposure to supernaturalism is in the Holy Books and other fairytales. Supernaturalism is religion’s
subterfuge; so why do we worship supernatural gods and why are civilized
societies guided by King Josiah’s
vengeful dogma? The bible’s “God” is
portrayed as a perfidious tyrant; but believers
attribute all goodness to the spurious evil aberration.
My reasoning is
derived from the diametrically opposed positions of King Josiah of
Judah, and Charles Robert Darwin, the nineteenth century English author of,
On the Origin of Species and of, The Descent of Man. My remarks are
unambiguous; uncomplicated by Deuteronomistic History’s convoluted meaninglessness and its
consequential theological dogma. As
blind-faith reveals more trust in our ignorance than our intellect, I’ll explain how religion’s
irrationality came from man’s conspiratorial ruminations, wishful thinking and
persistent search for propositions to exploit his fellow man. So
when our political leaders promised us suckers eternal life; we didn’t
challenge it. Since superstitions ruled the land; we have deceived our stupid
selves about the god problem. Our imagination led us to follow leaders
espousing a close personal relationship to a fearsome tho specious god. King
Josiah’s unabashed desire to unify, inspire and
motivate his war weary subjects, led him to deceive them
with an epical fable about the personal relationship of their miracle working
tribal god, with their mythological ancestors very ingeniously portrayed as
Josiah’s political and religious scholars “retrospectively imagined it all
should have been”.
Abrahamic faiths
promulgate faith in King Josiah’s mystical god that commands death for infidels; an immoral unlawful act, but congregations worship the unholy
violent phantasm. There is not a remote connection to an ever-present,
all-knowing, all-powerful superhuman God. Promoting unknowns under the guise of
personal salvation convinces humankind they must submit their will to a god’s
prestigious professional proponents and refuse information that’d set them
aright.
Religion’s unsubstantiated dogma is insidious
hearsay. Suffering is not virtuous; and each child born is not burdened with
original sin. It is masochistic to confess and plead mercy from the perfidious Judaic
god’s prestigious professional proponents, or worship a savior god to access
heaven or avoid hell’s fires; self-serving threats by clergy, who appear to be
unaware that Heaven’s God, Jesus and
Allah plus Hell’s Devil are all legendry. It is vital for us to treat the world’s people
as we wish to be treated.
Ignorance embraced Abrahamic religions’ fallacies. Our brains and computers, both require
rational, factual input in order to develop rational factual solutions, but Abrahamic religion’s lack thereof forced
it to rely upon conjecture, blind faith,
and murdering millions of nonbelievers,
to obtain its illogical imposition upon the world’s trustful societies.
Archaeologists &
epigraphists have found
history simpler than King Josiah’s biblical
fable about the Patriarchs, the ancient Israelites, etc.; a good reason to
reject the holy books’ prophesies and miracles; which are the sole source of
Abrahamic faiths’ relevant knowledge; Disclosure, leaves large segments of our
world’s population suffering from delusive blind faith in stultifying beliefs
that encourage religious terrorism, but inhibits proposals
for global programs to reduce world apprehensions.
lph Waldo Emerson
warned us not to follow the crowd;
but to think and reason independently. I
argue for a world managed by its perspicacious peace-loving women;
dedicated to ethnological sameness, undiscriminating inclusiveness and global
harmony. The idea of
world-government was promoted “by eleven U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt
through Bill Clinton”. The possibility of a peaceful healthy world for humanity
to enjoy should encourage the worlds astute and discerning to temper their
contentious attitudes about ethnological disparities, and diplomatically and
reasonably organize, socially, politically, religiously and otherwise to
promote and work toward a more peaceful ecumenical world.
Dear reader, to understand the magnificent release I
experience by sensing freedom from gods, and other mythical delusions see
Ingersoll’s Vow in FINAL NOTES. Also recognize the historical clues of the
Abrahamic religion’s deceptive fearsome illusions which misled
our ignorant ancient ancestors, and provided religions’ bloody success. Everyone
wants to live forever, but from the seventh century BCE, until the sixteenth
century CE, nonbelievers were killed by either Jews or Christians. Religion
subjugated the faithful, which makes me question why today’s believers don’t
know about the bible’s egomaniacal pathological killer, “God”; as
they inherited an instinctive fear of the specious god’s wrath. Please be aware
of what is expected if Christianity ever gains its anticipated opportunity to
govern us, because Christian ideology embraces the Old Testament’s
fundamentalism; relegating our secular democracy to an Islamic type tyrannical
theocracy; constraining government’s flexibility and stemming our ability to
expand and improve beyond the narrow capabilities of the prestigious
professional proponents of the government’s god, who eversince our
earliest cognitive experiences have convinced everyone to believe in their
gods. There has never been tangible evidence that gods exist and in spite of
the Jesus fables, no one claims they do. Creeds say “I believe”, but billions
have fought and died defending a particular religion’s absurd beliefs.
I have explored
religion’s devious quandaries. I’m satisfied biblical
faith is erroneous. I presume believers are not curious and regret their
disinterest. There is something mentally devastating in believing we are subjugated
to imaginary spiritual powers; although evidence is plentiful that fearsome
gods were created by monarchs and promoted by priests, in order to
subjugate the people. Our Founding Fathers warned us to remain alert to
religion’s conniving ruses directed toward ecclesiastical control of our
nation’s governing apparatus.
Non-thinking men depended upon gods, thus it remains, but now
we consider ourselves informed and understand how our ancestors’ faults were
due to their lack of knowledge, which
encouraged the worship of false gods. But how do we explain to progeny why we
inexplicably grovel before mythology’s misbegotten gods?
Our Electorate’s enthusiasm for specious Jesus is our
Nemesis, which will probably destroy us. Whatever evil deeds ancient clergy
decreed, modern clergy’s misperception of their “holy powers” will tempt them
to replicate. I reject religion’s spurious salvation; my main interest is
saving our country from deceptive divinity and religious tyranny. Our America
was organized as a secular democracy; the first 10, plus the 14th
amendments to our constitution, guarantees us freedom from religion and a
separation of Church & State, plus freedoms of speech, press, etc. Each of
us is sovereign and has natural rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness”.
Having read this far, you surely realize that
the bible’s Pentateuch’s stupid god character was teaching the Jews revengeful
hatred toward all foreigners, and not to marry them, but It was written
specifically to serve as King Josiah’s enforcer. Such a menacing intimidating
god, threatening death for every infraction and eliciting revenge and death for
foreigners is frighteningly unsuitable to influence a peace seeking world, but
the Jews and Christians followed their bible’s teachings, and killed their
apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers, proponents of other gods, and in the 30
year war, Christians slaughtered Christians. Believing in false gods drove man
to commit inconceivable brutal bloody crimes as per today’s religious Islamic regimes.
The deaths, despoliation and ignorance caused by those particular religious ideas
are regretted. Realistically, our world’s salvation depends upon global
agreements to stop global-warming; and that depends upon a respectful
cooperation of global humanity. Jewish exclusiveness resulted in resentment and
their ignominious existence. The racial purity of nation-states is inimical to
world peace and consanguinity accentuates debilities. Charles Darwin’s research
accentuated the inherent advantages in cross-breeding plants. I have observed
superb individuals whose parents were racially diverse, and haven’t heard
anyone complain. Like plants, humans are improved by cross-breeding; we must
conclude that NATURE’S grand plan for us includes the eventual interbreeding of
all races; so why not now? I oppose Yahweh’s stupid racial purity and advocate
undistinguishing inclusiveness and unfettered knowledge as our path to world
peace.
CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM
Regions
controlled by the papacy have persistently tyrannized the Jews. Pope Innocent
III, in early thirteenth century demanded they mark themselves as Jews with a
particular type of headgear and in the seventeenth century, Pope Paul IV
insisted that Jews be ostracized in special ghettos and wear yellow
identification badges. They had not been allowed to own land, hold public
office or work at most forms of trade. Church law forbade Christians to loan
money at interest; Jews became licensed money lenders with interest rates
defined by the Vatican.
During the
European Middle Ages, (476 -1450), Jews were persecuted unmercifully; the
problem originated with Christianity’s accusation that Jews had killed Jesus. “The Crusaders made it part of their
mission to torment and kill Jews on their way to the Holy land”. The papacy’s
repression of Jews persisted into nineteenth century Rome and during Pope Leo
XIII’s reign more extreme forms of anti-Judaism erupted among Vatican clerics who alleged
Jewish perfidy, obstinacy, etc.; reinforcing the Catholic view, “that the Jews
were responsible for their own misfortune—a view that was to encourage Catholic
Church officials in the 1930s to look the other way as Nazi anti-Semitism raged
in Germany”, the most powerful Catholic community.
In 1933, Eugenio
Pacelli, Vatican’s Assistant Secretary of State, negotiated an agreement
between Adolph Hitler and Pope Pius XI allowing the Vatican to select Germany’s
bishops, clergy, teachers, etc. with Germany paying the bill. Hitler acquiesced
only after the pope conceded that Hitler should have complete political
control. Pacelli persuaded Germany’s Bishops to disband Catholic’s powerful
Center Political Party, assuring Nazism’s successful rise to power unopposed by
Catholicism. The agreement “created an area of trust that was particularly significant
in the developing struggle against international Jewry”. Eugenio Pacelli was
elected Pope Pius XII in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War.
The above
information and quotations were gleaned from John Cromwell’s book, Hitler’s Pope. All Christians would
benefit by reading Mr. Cromwell’s book. He says: “I applied for access to
crucial material in Rome, assuring those who had charge of the archives that I
was on the side of my subject. By the middle of 1997, nearing the end of my
research, I found myself in a state I can only describe as moral shock. The
material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of Pacelli’s life,
amounted not to exoneration but to a wider indictment”.
Cromwell’s book
relates the Vatican’s version of future pope, Eugenio Pacelli’s constant
involvement with Hitler’s final resolution for Germany’s Jewish population; the
midtwentyth century Holocaust, where Christians were instrumental in
killing six million innocent Jews, all due to envisioned ancient hatreds,
fostered by a belief that Jews crucified Jesus. When these six million Jews are added to
the innumerable nonbelievers persecuted and killed throughout Christianity’s
history, it refutes any claim they have to represent a sacred religion. Ignorance is
inexcusable.
I’ll also call
attention to the Vatican’s midtwentyth century agreements with Italy’s
Mussolini and Spain’s Franco; two other totalitarian dictators.
The following
information and quotations are from the Holocaust Encyclopedia
“Since the night of ‘Broken Glass’ pogrom
(Nov.9-10, 1938), the German government had sought to accelerate the pace of
forced Jewish emigration—also hoping to exploit the unwillingness of other
nations to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees to justify the Nazi regime’s
anti-Jewish goals. On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner, St. Louis,
sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba with 937 refugees, most all were
Jews fleeing from the Third Reich”. In addition, “two smaller ships, the
French, Flandre, and the British, Orduna with a total of 176 Jewish refugees,
sailed to Cuba in May 1939”; neither was allowed to dock in Cuba. The Flandre
returned to France. “The Orduna proceeded to a series of Latin American ports;
its 72 passengers finally disembarked in the U.S. controlled Canal Zone in
Panama. The United States eventually
admitted most of them”.
“The majority of
the (St. Louis’) Jewish passengers had applied for U.S. visas, and had planned
to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States.—When the St
Louis arrived in Havana harbor on May 27, the Cuban government admitted 28
passengers: 22 of them were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas; (of) the remaining
six, four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals had valid entry documents.
One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a
hospital in Havana The remaining 908 passengers (one passenger had died of
natural causes in route)---743 had been waiting to receive U.S. visas. The
Cuban government refused to admit them or allow them to disembark from the
ship”. On June 2, the ship was ordered out of Cuban waters after the U.S.-based
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee refused to post a $453,500 bond; “sailing
so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on
the St Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge.
Roosevelt never responded. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated
that the passengers must ‘await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for
and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United
States. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was
27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least
several years.”
“Following the U.S. government’s refusal to
permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June
6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany. However, Jewish
organizations, (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee),
negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the
passengers”: Great Britain took 288; the Netherlands admitted 181; Belgium took
in 214 and 224 found at least temporary refuge in France. One of Great
Britain’s passengers was killed during an air raid in 1940. “Of the 620
passengers who returned to continent, 87 managed to emigrate before the German
invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. (And) 532 were trapped when Germany
conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278, survived the Holocaust;
254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and
86 who had been admitted to France”. Faith’s divisiveness prevents undistinguishing
inclusiveness.
EVOLUTION
The following
is gleaned from Wikipedia’s Evolutionary History of Life.
Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old,
but present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor, from
which all known species have diverged through the process of evolution.
Life began along with oxygenic photosynthesis
3.5 billion years ago, which eventually led to the oxygenation of the
atmosphere, beginning around 2.4 billion years ago. The earliest evidence of
complex organisms dates from 1.8 billion years ago; their diversification
accelerated when they started using oxygen in their metabolism. Later, around
1.7 billion years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear, with
differentiated cells performing specialized functions.
Evidence suggests that algal scum formed on
the land as early as 1.2 billion years ago, and that the earliest land plants
date to around 450 million years ago.
Invertebrate animals appeared between 630-542
million years ago, while vertebrates originated about 525 million years ago,
during the Cambrian explosion. In the middle to late Permian period, 299-251
million years ago, synapsids dominated other terrestrial animals The
Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago almost wiped out all
complex life.
During the recovery from this catastrophe
archosaurs became the most abundant land vertebrates, displacing threrapsids in
the mid-Triassic. One anchosaur group, the dinosaurs, dominated the Jurassic
and Cretaceous periods. The ancestors of mammals survived only as small
insectivores. After the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years
ago killed off the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals increased rapidly in size and
diversity. Such mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing
opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants
appeared and rapidly diversified in the Early Cretaceous; 130-90 million years
ago, probably helped by coevolution with pollinating insects. Flowering plants
and marine phytoplankton are still the dominate producers of organic matter.
Social insects appeared around the same time as flowering plants. Although they
occupy only small parts of the insect family-tree, they now form over half the
total mass of insects. Humans evolved from a linage of upright-walking apes
whose earliest fossils date from over 6 million years ago. Although early
members of this linage had chimpanzee-sized brains, there are signs of a steady
increase in brain size after about 3 million years ago.
Also see Wikipedia’s Earliest History of Earth.
MATTER VS SPIRIT
Matter is
“whatever occupies space and is perceptible to the senses in some way”. Spirit is “the thinking, motivating,
feeling part of man, often as distinguished from the body”. Spiritual is “supernatural or imaginary
and is all that’s opposed to matter”.
Primitive
humanity feared attacks from both animals and humans; somewhere in our early development
we found reasons to believe that the nonphysical was part of our physical
world, and vice versa. Our fear of the paranormal developed sensitivities to
the presence of animate beings, and our imaginations presumed the possibility
of earthly gods. At some point in our primitive or ancient times, we realized:
the deities we had identified as being most important, were all perceptible
matter; things we could see, feel, or hear. We
imagined that gods had imperceptible powers over us which we call fanciful or
imaginary such as religion’s spiritual powers.
My view of the
unresolved question of matter vs. spirit, is that our brain, the center of our nervous system, is of
matter; receiving the sensory impulses from our senses and transmitting motor
impulses to our muscles. What we speak of as our mind, is actually a division of our brain
which handles our memory, recollection, our intellect and intelligence; what we
think, what we feel or will, etc., the seat of our conscious and unconscious.
Religion is an
abstraction, dealing with our condescension, to obey and worship an abstruse mystical deity; something we permit our minds to do,
but our brains remind us that the concept is unfathomable and that we are
misleading our brain’s logic. Our mind accepts religion’s irrational concepts by
giving our imagination the benefit of doubt; ignoring our brain’s logic.
I believe our mind is
free of our brain’s logic and free to wander, to wonder, to
imagine, to suppose, to wish-for, to consider possibilities, and to either
accept or reject them; our will is free and often not encumbered by our brain,
a convenience for wishful thinking; our
brain’s logic cannot consider details of the non-existent and our mind
is unconcerned about the impossible or
non-existent. We willingly
accept conjecture or the spurious or prejudice, etc. without evidence for our
brain to contemplate its probability. I’m aware: religions regard the mind as
the “Soul, an entity which is the immortal or spiritual part of a person and having no physical or material reality
is credited with the functions of thinking and willing hence determining
behavior”; BS! My argument: religion’s forceful influence in our world is
misdirected, that the idea of life after death, is impossible, that our mind
(or soul) is not separate from our body, and is not spiritual, but is a part of
our brain and is of matter. When our brain dies, our mind also dies and
our essence is no more. Religion’s fatuous promises clouds reasoning and people
accept unintelligent definitions without question.
Neuroscientists
assure us: our minds do not exist independent of our body, but are mental;
which is not possible after the brain is
denied oxygen. Our brain can mislead us; brain imaging shows that regions which
become active when we only imagine we see or hear something are identical to
those that become active when we actually do see or hear something. I think of
the mind as
integral to the brain but acts independently. If our mind doesn’t avail itself of our brain’s logic, it’s free to believe anything, even when no
favorable evidence exists. Our mind’s freewill permits us to ignore the brain’s
assistance in correcting fanciful unrealistic thoughts with more reasonable
possibilities. So I’ll repeat the following: Ignorance and
wishful thinking embraced religion’s fallacies. Our brains and computers, both require
rational, factual input to develop rational factual solutions, but Abrahamic
religions’ lack thereof forced it to rely upon conjecture, blind faith, and killing
millions of nonbelievers, to obtain its illogical imposition upon the
world’s ignorant gullible trustful societies.
I’ve contemplated
the Pentateuch’s messages for many of my 95
years, and found them unreasonable. This treatise relates my search for a
truthful reason for the bible’s absurd incoherence, and found King Josiah’s tribal propaganda is the bible’s early
books. My choice for learning about the machinations of today’s Christianity is
the American Fascist: The Christian War on
America by Chris Hedges, and The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S.
They help us better understand the politically conservative Religious Right Coalition’s calumnious schemes to amend our
Constitution from a freedom loving secular democracy into a tyrannical
book-burning autocracy without benefit of our constitutionally guaranteed
freedoms and rights.
German philosopher Kant, (1724-1804), said we individuals
are sovereign; a rational concept replacing the sovereignty of the politician’s
god, “which has always been a
license for religious tyranny without accountability.
MY FAITH & NOTES
Greetings, dear reader, I’m so very proud of you because
you have an open mind, are curious and eager to
learn; otherwise you would not be reading this. Your comprehension of my
exploration of the origins of the Judaic god and holy books proves you are now
better informed about this matter than some eighty percent of our world’s
people; congratulations!
I have no faith in the Abrahamic faiths Judaism, Christianity or Islamism, whose vengeful intolerant dogma decreed the
slaughter of multimillions of apostates, blasphemers, unbelievers and
proponents of other gods, while fighting history’s religious wars, including
Islam’s terrorism, but increasing numbers of us are learning about religion’s
bloody history; dismissing god-ideas; realizing that, figuratively, God
is the sum of Earth’s natural forces, processes and scientific principles. The Religious Right Coalition’s stupidity, e.g., its Middle East wars,
financial meltdown, etc. must not be our future, as people must awake and
realize that Abrahamic religions accentuate the supernatural, and denigrate
knowledge, because knowledge will expose organized religion’s conspicuously vulnerable
underbelly.
My faith is in REALITY, i.e., NATURE’S
immutable forces and scientific principles, including evolution’s
erratic progression. World
scientists revealed the immutable forces controlling the motions of the cosmos
and all life, enabling astronomers, mathematicians and scientists to develop
productive concepts; beginning with the lever and the wheel; also steam
engines, electricity, trains, automobiles, airplanes, computers, space flight
and wireless transmission’s radios, televisions, our ubiquitous telephones and
other electronic devices. Man didn’t create the forces; he discovered them in
spite of the Church’s opposition to knowledge. These natural forces never
demean, redeem nor threaten us with infinite damnation; so nature’s
ramifications created life. I don’t worship nature; I respectfully appreciate
its bountiful sustenance, wondrous beauty, and abhor its despoliation. Confucius said “we are all the same except
for our experiences”. Possibly a little undiscriminating
inclusiveness might smooth and level our troubled road to international
agreements, and help rectify our world’s contentious situations, and
develop mutually beneficial ways to compromise. It’s taken since the Ice Age to
get where we are today. Let’s encourage our reservoir of perspicacious women to
collectively demand a voice in all international-policy-making-decisions
because we men have failed.
In their attempt
to explain the universe; primitive prestigious professional proponents of
mystical gods rationalized; a superhuman god created their
incomprehensible world with all life. It is analogous to my word
processer; unable to comprehend its miraculousness—there must be a god inside
the electronic device reading as I work; thoughtfully coaching my grammar,
spelling, etc. In Arthur C. Clarke’s book
Profiles of the Future, his third law is that “Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
Despite Abrahamic religions’ perfidious unforgivable
history, I wish to thank Religion-Lites
for the extensive efforts they have made to provide schools and help for needy
members plus hospitals for communal use, but I extend them no credit for their
extensive, self-promotional proselytation.
All gods are speculative,
but possibly science will discover some semblance of a universal power-center,
or maybe our world’s scientific community will develop a more detailed analysis
of the “big bang” theory; at that time, open minds of discerning individuals
will reconsider all tangible evidence.
Advanced age has made me cognizant of a few important
things I hadn’t thought about; especially how much more tolerant and
understanding we men become after our testis haven’t functioned for decades,
our libido is an ancient memory and our brain is devoid of the extracurricular; surprising
us with its great interest in life’s mysteries; how sagacious, discerning and
astute women are, and how irresponsible we men have been,
thinking that women’s brains were marginalized by the bible’s god. We erred; female’s intellect is intact,
but male intelligence is attenuated by their testosterone’s insidious stimulus.
We ignored women’s intellect and accentuated their sexuality; conforming to
evolution’s natural system, most of us found a compliant mate and promptly reproduced.
Although I have no consideration for conventional man’s
imaginary gods, I am highly concerned for the multitudes of my fellow human
beings; from whom all goodness flows,
who appear secure in their religious ignorance, but their intentions, are good;
it simply divides them into different kinds of bigots who insist upon
worshipping Abrahamic religion’s three intolerant gods. Conventional males,
even after marriage, prefer male companionship. They don’t love men,
but seek their approval; evincing man’s
innate instinct to lead fellowmen. Unconventional men are thinkers;
uninterested in leading, who only tolerate other males, but excel as attentive
loving husbands and able fathers. I suspect approximately 80% of humans are
non-thinking believers and that only about 20% are unbelieving thinkers.
I began writing this treatise with a ball point pen in
September, 2008, a month after my 91st birthday. Sometime later my
grandson, Bradley Hess provided this word-processer and guided me. I will
complete my 95th year and have my 95th birthday in August
of 2012, and begin my 96th year. I live alone in Plano, a part of
greater-Dallas, Texas. I am in hospice with visiting nurses, etc. The first year, after my wife Marie expired,
was devoted to producing my 36,000 word Recollections & Reminiscence. I do
not have a television or radio, but I have a Kindle, and order magazines,
books, etc. from Amazon; adjusting font size to resolve a major vision
impairment. In February of 2012 I was connected to the internet, and the
world’s vast trove of information became available, which has helped me explain
my views of the three Abrahamic faiths.
As a free-thinking nonagenarian, living alone in H. L.
Mencken’s “bible belt”, I
know it’s unwise to expound upon my neighbors’ foibles, but such is life; many are convinced we nonbelievers are
unreliable devil’s workers; and should go to Hell—immediately. Maybe some
religious idiot will ring my doorbell and announce: “God sent me”; and
terminate me, but all of my doctors and caregivers are considerate kind and
generous individuals who I respect, cherish and will always remember, including
my dear chaplain.
Wisdom isn’t
limited to experienced adults; a grandson, Samuel T. 3rd, at age
five asked his parents if religion wasn’t
make-believe.
A four year old
granddaughter, Sidonie, was stumping me with numerous riddles, so I asked her:
which came first, the chicken or the egg. A moment later she inquired if I knew
the story about Noah’s ark. I allowed as how I did and she said, “You know how
all the animals had to march on the ark two by two; well an egg can’t march”.
To further questions she replied: “Everybody knows an egg can’t march”.
As a matter of fact the Abrahamic religions are “adult-make-believe”;
based entirely upon mythology: contrived by ignorant vindictive rapacious men;
the prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, who scammed people
into submitting to the subjugation of their religious and political leaders, and
thereby avoid total confiscation, persecution, torture or death; all as
described earlier in this treatise. Ever since the Enlightment, that same
enterprising profession continues to preach inscrutable dogma, but their
careers depend upon the extent of their community’s ignorance of the Abrahamic
religion’s perfidious ancient history. “Think of the thousands and thousands of
men who depend for their living upon the ignorance of mankind! Think of those
who grow rich on credulity and who fatten on faith”! Do the prestigious
professional proponents of mystical gods, tacitly understand that they only
pretend to believe their perfidious inscrutable creeds, or like their
congregations, they just stupidly accept them.
Everyone knows a
mind that’s closed “is a worrisome thing that’ll lead you to sing the blues in
the night”, but curiosity has an open mind, where you’ll always find more
reasonable ideas are indubitably right.
Doesn’t the
Pentateuch’s unreasonableness ever
challenge your faith?
DRINK MY WINE
SEEK
TRUTH IN ALL THINGS
QUESTION
EVERYTHING
BEGRUDGE
NO ONE
CHECK
ALL FACTS
AVOID
TRIVIA
ACCEPT
LIFE
BE
DISCREET
DO NO
HARM
BE
DIPLOMATIC
AVOID
THE UNREAL
REMAIN
BONA FIDE
KEEP
AN OPEN MIND
LOVE
REASONABLENESS
OBSERVE
THE GOLDEN RULE
FORM
INDEPENDENT OPINIONS
DON’T
BLINDLY FOLLOW OTHERS
BE
HELPFUL; AVOID CONTRARINESS
LIVE
WITH SENSE OF JOYOUS WONDER
RESPECT
OTHERS; DO NOT CENSOR THEM
ALLOW
INNATE REASON TO
BE YOUR GUIDE
IGNORE
THE INCONSIDERATION OF OTHERS
POLITENESS
IS LIFE’S ESSENTIAL LUBRICANT
ALWAYS
STRIVE TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW
CULTURAL
HARMONY ASSURES WORLD PEACE
RELAXATION
CONCEIVES POSITIVE THOUGHTS
BE
SKEPTICAL OF IDEAS LACKING TANGIBILITY
TREAT
ALL LIFE WITH RESPECT AND HONESTY.
THE
LITTLE SPERM THAT WAS YOU SURVIVED.
VALUE
THE FUTURE ON A TIMESCALE LONGER THAN YOUR OWN,
AS
LIFE’S AN ADVENTURE, STRESSING PERSEVERANCE, TENACITY,
RESILIENCY
AND ENDURANCE, WITH AN OPEN INQUIRING MIND SEEKING,
KNOWLEDGE & LIBERTY; FREE OF RELIGION’S BIGOTRY.
TO
LOVE AND BE LOVED, WITH LITTLE CHILDREN, ARE WONDEROUS
GIFTS. I
WISH YOU LONG LIVES, WONDROUS LOVE, MUCH HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENT WITH
INTERESTING, CREATIVE, UNRESTRICTED PROFESSIONAL CAREERS AND SUSTAINED
ILLIMITABLE PROSPERITY.
Samuel Terrill
Redwine Sr.
In addition to the above, 27,869
word document exploring the earthly
origin of King Josiah’s Judaic god, we continue with the following 13 supportive
documents, listed sequentially.
OUR SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION—12,280 words
OUR CONSTERNATIONS AND OUR SAVIORS— 3,646 words
RELIGIOUS TYRANNY—1,399 words
ETCETERA—2,690 words
RECAPTULATION—2,122words
OUR FUTURE AND EPILOGUE—2,003 words
HISTORICAL DATES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY—978 words
SECULARISM—792 words
UNITED STATES & U.S. ECONOMY—966 words
PARTY REVERSAL—355 words
MIDDLE EAST FIASCO—431 words
THE
ENLIGHTENMENT—2,806 words
POSTSCRIPT—16,183
words
EXPLORING THE ORIGIN OF KING JOSIAH’S JUDAIC GOD; PLUS
THE EARLY HISTORY AND REPROCUTIONS OF THE
ABRAHAMIC FAITHS: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAMISM.
After an INTRODUCTION
on page 4 and FOREWORD on page 7
we begin with our primitive period. See OUR
BEGINNING, page 10
Sumer’s records date to around 2600 BCE, but remained
obscure until after Semitic speaking Akkadians conquered Sumer and deciphered a
syllabary writing system; using hundreds of damp clay tablets recording the
Enuma Elish creation myth with Marduk’s creation of humankind; also: the tower
of Babel story, plus the Epic of King Gilgamesh’s search for Utnapishtim, the
hero of Sumer’s ancient flood myth. See
MESOPOTAMIA, page 15.
Judah’s King Josiah, (640-609 BCE), fabricated his own
myths of creation, flood, and search; an epic tale of tribal propaganda with
wrathful Yahweh as tribal god, who commanded believers to kill apostates,
blasphemers and proponents of other gods; a regressive dogma; murdering
foreigners, and the erudite discerning Israelites. In 444 BCE Ezra &
Nehemiah pronounced “the epic of political-religious propaganda” Holy Scripture.
But Yahweh’s impotency against Christianity’s Crusades, Inquisitions and the
Vatican’s complicity in the Holocaust, proves the Judaic god is an imaginary
patron of our prestigious professional proponents of the Abrahamic faith’s mythical
gods. See JUDAISM, page 17 and
CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM page 63.
History has found 50 “redeeming gods”, such as Persia’s
Mithras, 500 years before Jesus. Rome worshipped Mithraism 200 years before
approving Christianity, but the biographies of all of the earlier gods and that
of Jesus are virtually identical. See CHRISTIANITY
page 27.
Mohammad claimed that for 22 years, angel Gabriel’s
visitations provided precepts for his Koran; although Gabriel was a
Judaic-Christian Archangel. See ISLAMISM
page 44.
I have unwavering faith in our planet’s immutable forces and scientific principles, including
evolution’s erratic progression; all were discovered
by our world’s scientists. See MY FAITH
AND NOTES page 69.
Marginalizing females robbed religious civilizations of
50% of their total brain-power. See OUR
CONSTERNATIONS AND OUR SAVIORS
This document and the 13 supportive documents
enumerated on page 74
Copyright
© 2012 Samuel Terrill Redwine Sr.
DEFINITIONS
Antinomianism: “Christian theological doctrine; that faith alone, not obedience to the
moral law, is required for salvation”.
Blasphemy:
“any remark deliberately mocking or contemptuous of God”.
Cult: “a system of religious
worship or ritual”.
Fable; fabulous; fancy; fantasy;
fantastic; legend; legendary: “connote imaginary, unreal or
fictitious”.
Faith: "unquestioning belief that does not
require proof or evidence".
Fundamentalism: “religious beliefs based on a
literal interpretation of everything in the Bible and regarded as fundamental
to Christian faith and morals; the twentieth
century movement among some American Protestants, is based on those beliefs”.
Gods: “any of the various
beings conceived of as supernatural,
immortal, and having special powers over the lives and affairs of people and
the course of nature. In a monotheistic religion, the single god is considered omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and
creator and ruler of the universe”.
History, historical: “a chronological record of the past”.
Life: “that property of
plants and animals which makes it possible for them to take in food, get energy
from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings, and reproduce”.
Myth; mystical; mythology;
mythological; mystical; mythical;
mythological; “connote
imaginary and unreal or any fictitious story, unscientific account, theory or
belief”.
Philosophy: “the use of reason and argument in seeking truth and
knowledge of reality, especially of the
causes and nature of things and of the principles governing existence”.
Propaganda: “any systematic, widespread, dissemination or promotion of particular
ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. to further one’s own cause or to damage an
opposing one”.
Reason: means “to think coherently and
logically; to draw inferences or conclusions from facts whether known or
assumed”.
Religion: “the belief in a personal god or super-human controlling power to be
obeyed and worshipped as the creators and rulers of the universe”
Science: “systematized knowledge derived from observation, study and
experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of
what is being studied”.
Secularism’s doctrine: “disregards or rejects any form of religious faith; especially that
religion and ecclesiastical affairs should
not enter into the functions of the state”. Secularists advocate tolerant
worldly views and believe that it is ignorant and unfair to inculcate the minds
of little children with supernaturalism’s inherent fallacies.
Supernatural: “that which exists or occurs outside the normal experience or knowledge of man; not explainable by the
known forces or laws of nature”.
INTRODUCTION
The following quotations are from The Age of Reason; by Thomas Paine, an American Revolutionary patriot, (1737-1809); who
succinctly, expressed what I wish to say.
“IT has been
my intention for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion;
I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that
consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it
to be the last offering I should make to my fellow citizens of all nations, and
that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not
admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.”
“The
circumstance—appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles, of faith, has not
only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly
necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of
government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity. I
believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and
endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed
that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress
of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not
believing them.”
“I do not mean by
this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same
right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness
of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. INFIDELITY does not consist in
believing, or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what he
does not believe”.
“It is impossible
to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has
produced in society.—in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a
revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the
system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and
state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited,
by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon
first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be
changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the
world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of
religion would follow”.
Samuel P.
Huntington’s 1996 book: The Clash of Civilizations; said Islam is a
political ideology; that religion
is the principal defining characteristic of civilizations, that Muslims make up
about one-fifth of the world’s population, and in the 1990s were far more
involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilization. (I’m
apprehensive because America is the most religious of Western democracies.) Mr.
Huntington said that the world’s great religions antedate Western civilization;
that our world is moving out of its Western phase; that ideologies typifying
Western civilization will decline, replaced by religions and other culturally
based forms of identity and commitment; that the Westphalian treaty’s
separation of internal politics from religion is ending; that religion is likely to intrude
into international affairs; that intercivilizational clash of political ideas
spawned by the West is being supplanted by an intercivilizational clash of
culture and religion.—He said late twentieth century saw a global resurgence of
worldly religions; intensifying religious consciousness and the rise of fundamentalist
movements; reinforcing their differences— that the world’s Christians peaked at
about 30% in the 1980s, leveled off in 1996 and would be about 25% by 2025— that
the world’s Muslims will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20% of
the world’s population by the turn of the century, surpassing the number of
Christians some years later; probably accounting for 30% of the world’s
population by 2025.
Mr. Huntington also said that indigenization and the
revival of religion are global phenomena; most evident in the
dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Asia’s and
Islam’s cultural assertiveness and challenges to the West; that Islam’s challenge manifests in its
pervasive cultural, social, and political resurgence in the Muslim world;
accompanying rejection of Western institutions and values; and that Asia’s
challenge is manifest in East Asian civilizations—Sinic, Japanese, Buddhist,
and Muslim, emphasizing their cultural differences from the West and, at times,
the commonalities they share, often identified with Confucianism; that Asians
and Muslims stress the superiority of their cultures to Western culture. In
contrast, people in other non-Western civilizations, i.e., Hindu, Orthodox,
Latin American, and African—may affirm the distinctive character of their
cultures, but as of the mid-1990s had been hesitant about proclaiming their
superiority to Western culture. Asia & Islam stand alone; at times
together, in an increasingly confident assertiveness with respect to the West.
He said
“Related but different causes lie behind these
challenges. Asian assertiveness is rooted in economic growth; Muslim assertiveness
stems in considerable measure from social mobilization and population growth.
Each of these challenges is having and will continue to have into the
twenty-first century a highly destabilizing impact on global politics. The
nature of those impacts, however, differs significantly. The economic
development of China and other Asian societies provides their governments with
both the incentives and the resources to become more demanding in their dealing
with other countries, and particularly the expansion of the fifteen to
twenty-four-year-old age cohort, provides recruits for fundamentalism,
terrorism, insurgency, and migration. Economic growth threatens Muslim governments
and non-Muslim societies.—To ignore the impact of the Islamic Resurgence on
Eastern Hemisphere politics in the late twentieth century is equivalent to
ignoring the impact of the Protestant Reformation on European politics in the
late sixteenth century.—The Resurgence will also have shown that ‘Islam is the solution’ to the problems of morality, identity, meaning, and faith, but
not to the problems of social injustice, political repression, economic
backwardness, and military weakness. These failures could generate widespread
disillusionment with political Islam, and a search for alternative ‘solutions’ to these
problems”.
Life teaches: the
golden rule is the first step toward world peace. The bible teaches: hate and
revenge are sacred obligations, and that the Judaic god is partial to Jews, but
during their ignominious history the god failed to save innocent Jews from the
Vatican’s Inquisitions, Persecutions, Crusades and the
Vatican’s complicity in the Holocaust, (See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM).
This treatise
explores our misconceptions about Yahweh,
God, Allah and their holy
books. Where, when, how, why and who conceptualized the fabrications? Believers profess blind-faith: that the bible’s perfidious god is our source of all
goodness. It is absurd that people grovel and worship the bible’s egomaniacal,
pathological “God”. Deceitful interpretations by the prestigious professional
proponents of Abrahamic religions’ mystical gods prompted
my search for
reasonable explanations. I have not found an iota of tangible evidence
supporting authenticity of the bible’s Pentateuch, but lots of evidence explaining why our world
is fraught with a plethora of blind-faith believers in an Abrahamic faith; that
succeeded by slaughtering all naysayers. About 1000 years ago, Judaism and
Christianity forewent the killing, but Islam still kills their dissenters. Who abides faith in religions that
murdered millions of the innocent, to gain an illogical imposition upon
society, but hypocritically consider family planning sinful? I have no faith in
ignorance, which sired the Abrahamic religions; they thrive on it and beget it.
I fear zealots’ dogmatic killer instinct, i.e., Yahweh’s commanding death for
apostates, blasphemers, infidels, and proponents of other gods.
FOREWORD
You say you don’t believe in evolution? Not surprising; a
2008 Gallup poll found that only 15% of Americans accepted the proposition that
humans developed over millions of years; revealing
our national ignorance of the scientific facts versus religious beliefs;
it’s inimical for our political future. Wait! Don’t leave; I’m a little slow;
working with 14 pt. font, zoomed 100%, on a 24 inch monitor trying to see
punctuation;. Prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods blame
evolution on educated nonbelievers, but evolution’s a natural process of all
living things. “Survival of the fittest”, is best explained by noting that the
vast quantity of seeds, eggs and sperm produced is an excessive potential for
life because it far exceeds Earth’s ability to support them all, so each faces
a life and death struggle against all other living things; a natural
progression, allowing the stronger healthier living things to survive and reproduce.
For billions of years of occasional mutations, all living things gradually
improved; beginning with single cell microorganisms, which evolved into today’s
living things, where each struggles, competing against other living things. Man
has abetted evolution by selectively breeding his domestic plants and animals.
Consider this very implausible proposition: for millennia, religious societies
killed their most intelligent citizens and became less intelligent; this
evolutionary state of affairs is pertinent to my premise. See EVOLUTION page 66.
Another fact essential to my premise is our plethora of
nonthinkers and dearth of thinkers and their relationship to man’s ignoble
fabrications of three superficial religions, who nonthinkers worship, but
thinkers have been aware of man’s conspiratorial ideas; his conceptualizations
seeking opportunities to challenge fellowmen, etc. Since our beginning,
thinkers explored and reasoned the insignificance of mystical gods. Ancient
Jews and Christians murdered their thinkers who professed disbelief, and today’s
Islamic Muslims continue to slaughter nonbelieving thinkers.
You say you’ve pondered the mysteries of the bible’s
Judaic God to no avail? I lost faith forty nine years ago, after a family
disaster, when our preacher explained: “God” was testing us. I was familiar
with the bible and suspected a god that destroyed the world’s population with a
flood, except for one family, was a stupid egomaniacal pathological killer; not
benevolent and forgiving, which is appropriate for a biblical “God”. My
skepticism was confirmed; religion is
illogical, but I presumed there was a logical reason for the Pentateuch’s
incongruity and perverse stories where “God” commands Israel’s army to destroy
nations, but to save young virgins for the soldiers. A monstrous god that
commands obeisant propitiation, but kills innocent foreign women children and
infants, is now acclaimed by many of our world’s people as their creator and
daily guide. They fear it; grovel on their knees reverently seeking the fatuous
promise of eternal life. Reliance on the intangible “holy books” cries-out for
rational explanations. For 49 years, I have searched history for clues. The
bible and two extraordinary books by Jewish professors published earlier this
century, connected-the-dots and provided intimations as to why an ancient king
was motivated to compose a legendary tribal epic; unequivocally resolving the
incongruous equivocations of the Pentateuch’s “Judaic God”-character: Yahweh.
Marvin A. Sweeny’s book: King Josiah of Judah,
The Lost Messiah of Israel; plus Israel Finkelstein’s and Neil Asher Silberman’s: The
Bible Unearthed; plus our education problems and
Islamic terrorism; inspired and prompted this treatise. Many ancients postulated the bible’s origin. Two centuries of
explorations by archaeologists and epigraphists reveal
the bible’s books of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy” were extrapolated
from Josiah’s politically inspired, tribal propaganda. Its leading character
was portrayed as a hard-nosed, wrathful tribal god who coerced Josiah’s
subjects away from polytheism’s pagan gods; assuring their allegiance by
killing apostates, blasphemers, etc. Josiah’s propaganda reveals the origins of
the Hebrew bible’s Pentateuch and its Judaic God. My comprehensive truthful
response delineates the Abrahamic religions absurd dogma and their bloody
histories.
The universe’s
infiniteness is
incomprehensible, and is crucial to what 95 years taught me. The Hubble’s
powerful telescope, above the atmosphere, enables today’s astronomers to view
the awesome cosmos billions of light-years away. Without countervailing
evidence, we nonbelievers realize that it was not created for the exclusive
convenience of Adam & Eve, or for the progeny of Abraham Isaac & Jacob.
Life taught: we are obliged to treat our Earth, with respectful affection; and I’m obliged to
treat others honestly and respectfully; also that we are attracted to opposing
poles; positively, by our humane
desire for an undiscriminating inclusiveness, our curiosity,
creative-initiative, and craving, for additional knowledge, or negatively,
by foregoing inclusiveness and worldly knowledge; relying on Pentateuch’s
egomaniacal, intolerant, jealous, death-dealing god character, Yahweh.
Sunday school impressed “Jesus’s altruism” on me, but as an
adult, I could not believe a genocidal tyrannical “Judaic God” commanded
believers to kill nonbelievers, even if the victim is a family member. Why was the “Judaic God” portrayed so
iniquitously? I’m swimming upstream against hordes of believers who inherited
their faith from ancient ancestors who were forced to believe in aristocracy’s
wrathful god or die; and whose progeny taught children that “God” must be
obeyed as He commands or they would die. Why
do descendants worship spurious gods; why
do Religion-Lites satiate them with righteous self-satisfaction; and why does Islam enforce Josiah’s ossified vengeful dogma’s totalitarianism?
It’s because the “holy books” precepts are
from Josiah’s tribal propaganda, his fabulous biblical saga. Christianity and Islamism were
extrapolated from the Hebrew bible’s Holy Scriptures, whose origin was deduced
by correlating a few biblical clues with other information. Bible scholars
confirm that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy
were fabricated during the reign of Judah’s King Josiah, and that after his death,
his scholars revised them in Babylonian exile; adding Joshua, Judges,
1&2Samuel and 1&2Kings. Josiah’s self-aggrandizing propaganda proclaims
himself Yahweh’s ideal, most righteous
king; deceitfully denigrating earlier Israeli and Judahite kings. This is the bible story I have long wanted
to tell.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the year 648 BCE,
Prince Josiah was born in small restive Judah.
His father’s assassination left 8 year old Josiah to rule the kingdom for 31
years, but he inadvertently created the Hebrew Bible’s
Holy Scriptures. Josiah did not intend to author a bible, but to survive
polytheism’s divisiveness, and to impress the
Israelites with their tribe’s epical uniqueness, his team of political and
religious leaders fabricated a tract of royal tribal propaganda; the fabulous
legend of his tribe’s mythical ancestors and a tribal god. Misunderstandings, resulting
from worshiping polytheism’s divisive gods had destroyed several Judahite
kings. To fully appreciate young King Josiah’s political precariousness, we
must explore humankind’s historical beginning
and our primitive god-ideas.
However, if you are interested in the Earth’s beginning,
see Wikipedia’s History of the Earth, “describing the most important events and
fundamental stages in the development of Planet Earth from its formation to the
present day”, including Human Evolution and Civilization. “Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago,
and is about one-third the age of the universe”.
OUR BEGINNING
As life’s decisions are influenced by the consequences of
our earlier experiences, I’ll begin this saga at the primordial spark of life,
3.5 billion years ago; in the shallows of some African lake with single cell
organisms, which through eons of time, multiplied, mutated, and developed
through innumerable biological stages via natural selection, when only the
fittest survive to repeat the reproductive process, known as evolution.
Thence, we reached the developmental stage of genus Homo or primate, and after
evolving the ability to stand erect and walk on two legs, we became what we now
know to have been species Homo erectus. During the Pleistocene geological age, when
continental ice sheets were spreading and receding, our brains
evolved into the sagacious, discerning species, Homo sapiens.
Mystical gods were vital features of primitive
humanity. It’s obvious that Homo erectus wasn’t
interested in self-delusion. Indulgence with gods awaited arrival of Homo
sapiens’ exuberant curiosity before
we questioned the how or why of our existence. “You are probably aware that our first fearsome gods were the
terrifying unpredictable forces of nature”.
Natural phenomena, our slowly evolving intellects, and imaginations,
prompted us to ponder god-ideas, i.e., the use of occult powers to
politically organize and manipulate the thoughtless disoriented members of our
tribal community.
Female’s
wellspring was venerated as “Nature’s life-giving, energizing power”. Our
Mother-Earth provided our sustenance. Our long evolutionary development
sensitized us to our environment. Our “Earth’s mother was the Sun, which arose
each morning, as we did, and traveled across the sky”, keeping watch over her
plant and animal life; nourishing us with warmth and rain. We eventually realized the
Sun’s magnificent influence as the moving force that constituted the god-idea. “The productive power in all plants
and animals emanated from Sun, which
we worshipped as nature’s great energizer. The god of light and creation”, able to manipulate us with
unanticipated rewards of goodness or punish us with nature’s fearsome
outbursts. This is the source of our
god-idea, where we first assigned occult powers to
the sun and poisoned our minds with its mythologies. To please the
seemingly fanciful churlish whims of our sun-god, we performed rituals and sacrificed our children to appease or
appeal to Sun. We celebrated Sun’s summer and winter solstices and its spring
and autumn equinoxes. Sun could not be ignored. It appears
that early names of the gods were compounded or derived from words that
originally meant the sun. We primitive ignorant males venerated fire and
serpents with no consideration for the lives of rival tribes. The Lotus and Fichus Religiosa or banyan
trees were religiously significant. Trees were designated as either female or
male, but most gods were thought to be androgynous.
. We men worshiped women as our Sun’s
dearest creation, part of Sun’s vital system; our source of new lives; we
considered them androgynous; their regenerative powers requiring only the Sun’s
consent. Females were the political-social leaders of communal groups. A
mothers’ eminence was proportional to the new lives she had brought forth and
to their wellbeing, and the Sun-god was accountable for each child’s welfare.
Matriarchal arrangements fulfilled us males; convinced
that female leadership served our best interests, we never felt the pangs of
unsatisfied sexual desire and the Sun-god received credit for women’s
ability to create new lives. If our community
needed new sons, we appealed to
the Sun-god. We were not part of the female families, but as our
community’s guardian-hunters, we lived separately and at puberty, boys were
sent to live with us. Matriarchal
communities tolerated and accommodated us males without jealousy. Women dominated, but welcomed men; their maternal
instincts blossomed throughout that golden era, and communal life thrived, under their velvet yoke, but was destined
to implode when nature’s secret
was revealed. We assumed the Sun-god was punishing women, who failed to regularly bring
forth a new life, so the disclosure was slow to materialize, but eventually we
males realized the significant consequences of
coition to our low social position in our community; we lost our old
equiponderance and saw women through a new lens. Without our male
complicity, women were unable to create new lives, and we stupidly repudiated
their divinity. Ignorance poisoned our perspective, our disposition, our
attitude and our opportunities for convivial fornication.
We men were no longer the compliant gender; we were gods and we demanded women worship us. The yoni was no longer our sacred
religious symbol; we men worshipped our own genitals; our favorite symbol was
the phallus. Today’s places of worship
feature towers, spires and minarets. The Washington Monument is another phallic
example, as well as New York City’s twin erections, the World Trade Center
towers, that were destroyed recently by Islamic extremists. Significantly,
today’s world’s newest, tallest towers, i.e., symbolic phallic erections, are
in two Islamic countries; these are an addition to their religion’s ubiquitous
minarets.
Male testes have
been man’s only god, since the end of primitive matriarchy.
“After male reproductive power had
become God, and when, through superstition and sensuality, the masses of the
people had descended to the rank of slaves, monarchs, representing themselves
to their ignorant subjects as the source of all blessings, even of life itself,
appropriated the titles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration
which had formerly belonged to it”.
After our awakening, gender roles of gods were reversed,
depravity ruled; decency was the first casualty of our dominance. Male vanity, ego, pride, jealousy, greed and
our stupidity, limited our scope of influence. As we could no longer depend
upon the cooperation of women,
and fellowmen were challenging competitors who formed contentious cliques vying
for tribal leadership; we fought as we collected women for sexual service.
Astute conniving jungle men conceived of voodooist’s
sorcery, with gods, fetishes, and sacrificial rituals; a religious scam to outwit their tribe. All gods were male with male
prerogatives. We fought and divided into competitive sects. Male homosexual priests
prostituted women to fund their sect; formed under the guise of celibacy.
Professionals perpetuated this perfidious scam during polytheism’s history as
we followed receding ice sheets into North Africa and established Egyptian dynasties;
then to East Asia, and Mesopotamia’s Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and
Assyrian Empires, where monarchs appropriated the con-game, and proclaimed
gods; building altars within their lands to facilitate sacrificial
slaughtering, and the prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods
collected their portions of the meat; perpetuating the scam. Then to ancient
Greece, and to Rome, which forced Christianity onto Europe’s pagan inhabitants.
Our male obsession with righteous self-importance subdued
women. Their progeny belonged to us males. Primitive professional priests
enforced dynastic monarch’s commands by sanctifying the murder of the
discerning astute contemptuous infidels. Judah’s King Josiah salvaged his
Judahites from polytheism’s divisive gods by decreeing a tribal god. Josiah’s
saga is the source of the original Abrahamic faith’s Judaism. You’ll enjoy the
story about a young man who inherited Judah and created eleven of the bible’s
first twelve books. I don’t know who wrote the bible’s book of Ruth.
All quotations and much information were gleaned from Eliza
Burt Gamble’s: God Ideas of the Ancients.
WHENCE THE SEMITIC PEOPLE
Vatican’s Dionysius
Exiguus, in the 6th century invented the Anno Domini era, which is
used to number the years of both the Gregorian and the Julian calendar. Today’s
bible scholars prefer the designation CE (Common Era), and BCE (Before Common
Era).
I love the
following story; although skeptical, I have not attempted to disprove it.
Dr. Lipovisky’s www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/Lipoviskyl01.pdf
says that about 8,000 years ago the Black and
Azov Seas didn’t exist; that at that time the area was a huge basin of below
sea-level-land where the Danube, Dniester, Bug, Dnieper, Don, Kuban and
Kizil-Irmak Rivers fed a small freshwater lake, and that the plentiful fresh
water, mild climate and flat lands of the basin supported a population of
Indo-European agrarians; and that 6th-4th millennia BCE
seismic movements in the Bosporus allowed the Mediterranean Sea to begin
filling the basin with sea water; forcing the populations’ gradual migration
outward. He says available histories of the Indo-Europeans’ movements, show
that the Celts and Germans occupied the northwestern borders of the great empty
basin, the Balts and Slavs occupied the northern borders, the ancestors of the
Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Scythians occupied the northeast, the Indo-Iranian
tribes, the southeast, the ancestors of the Italians and Greeks lived in the
northern portion of the Balkan Peninsula; also that the Hittites, Luwains,
Palaics and all those whom we classify with the Anatolian group of
Indo-European languages, occupied the southern most regions of the great empty
basin, and were forced to move out to northern Asia Minor or Anatolia.
Subsequently, the Celts, and then, the Germans gradually occupied northwestern
Europe, while the Slavs and Balts spread into northern and Eastern Europe,
already occupied by the Finno-Urgric peoples. The Indo-Iranian languages speakers
invaded the territory of Iran, Central Asia and northern India.
Dr. Lipovisky says the prolonged archaeological
excavations in Palestine unearthed proof that the Canaanites were a Western
Semitic people, who also came from the north in the 4th-3rd
millennia BCE, and at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, large
groups of Western Semitic peoples, specifically the Amorites, began settling in
mass in Mesopotamia, Syria and Canaan, and took control over a majority of the
cities, forming their own Amorite countries, for example Babylon—during the
reign of the infamous ruler Hammurapi in the 18th century BCE.
He says northwestern Mesopotamia was the fatherland of
Semitic peoples, and that this significant area, in terms of territory is
portioned off from the remaining portion of Anatolia by the imposing mountain
range Taurus from the north and the east, and from the west by the mountain
chain Nur; a three-sided shelter that beneficently effected the people’s lives
during their early period.
He says the Indo-Aryans mingled with and displaced the
Hurrians of Eastern Anatolia. Ayrianized Hurrians first displaced the Eastern
Semites (Akkadians) from the upper courses of the Tigris River, and then at the
end of the 3rd millennium BCE, occupied the land of Western Semites
(Amorites) in the upper courses of the Euphrates River. The last wave of
Western Semites in the 12th-11th centuries BCE was also
caused by the movements of Hurrians and Indo-Europeans into northwestern
Mesopotamia.
He says “the Indo-Europeans’ movement to the south and
east resulted in the displacement of the Semites from their original homeland
in the northwest of Mesopotamia”, and that an analogous situation happened to
the Hurrians in eastern Anatolia; highly oppressed by the Indo-Europeans in
that region, they were forced to move south and settle in northern Mesopotamia
and Syria in the12th-11th centuries BCE; also that Akkad
was the first Semitic country founded in central Mesopotamia by Eastern
Semites, who subsequently subordinated Sumer, their southern neighbor.
He says the ancient Near East represented a world
dominated by Semitic peoples. Akkad and Assyria, Babylon and Phoenicia, Israel and
the Syrian kingdoms were all offspring’s of active Semites, and Sumer, the
world’s oldest country had been fully assimilated with the Semites, and had,
since ancient times, become an integral part of their world. Dr. Lipovisky says
that Egypt had long resisted the supremacy of the Semitic peoples, but had
adopted their language and culture, and that the Indo-Europeans appeared later;
their first countries, including the Hittite Empire remained on the periphery
within the northern and eastern boundaries of the Near East.
Dr. Lipovisky says that this model of the
Indo-European’s expansion in all directions from the Black Sea finds
circumstantial evidence in the ancient historians’ sources, covering the life
of the Germanic tribes of Ostrogoths in the Crimea in the early centuries of
the Common Era. These sources also deal with the eastern Slavic people, the
Drevlians, as a neighbor of the “lost” German tribe in the territory of today’s
Ukraine, as well as with the sojourn of the Baltic Lats in the upper Volga
region.
MESOPOTAMIA
The following information
was gleaned from Wikipedia.
“Land of Rivers” is a toponym for the
Tigris-Euphrates River system, largely corresponding to modern day Iraq,
northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and southwestern Iran; widely
considered to be the cradle of civilization. Bronze Age Mesopotamia included
Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian Empires. The indigenous
Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated
Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history.
Prehistoric “Urbaidians” evolved from the
Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia, and the cities of Sumer in southern
Mesopotamia were the world’s first civilizing force; draining marshes for
agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries such as weaving,
masonry, and pottery. In the 5000s BCE, they were the first civilization to
practice intensive, year-round agriculture, using large-scale mono-cropping,
organized irrigation, and a specialized labor force; an economy allowing the
population to settle, and store surplus food; accommodating a denser
population; providing a divided labor force, instead of migrating; searching
for better grazing lands.
By the late 4th millennium BCE,
Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent city-states, which were
divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated
to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a
priestly governor or by a king who was ultimately tied to the city’s religious
rites. Sumerians were probably the first to record their beliefs, which became
the inspiration for much of later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and
astrology. Citizens’ owed labor-duty to the temple, which organized the mass
labor projects needed for irrigated agriculture. Wealthy citizens could avoid
laboring by payments in silver. Sumner’s temple-centered farming communities’
social stability enabled them to survive for around four thousand years.
Sumer’s historical records date to the
2600s BCE, historians theorize they date to Egypt’s first Dynasty, about 3000 BCE; remaining obscure until the
Sumerian civilization was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the
Akkadian Empire around 2270 BCE, who deciphered a syllabary writing system;
producing our oldest written history. The dynastic period began about 2900 BCE
and includes such legendary figures as Enmerkar and Gilgamesh—who are supposed
to have reigned shortly before the historic record opens. As the Epic of
Gilgamesh shows, it was a violent period. Cities increased in size and became
walled, others disappeared.
Sumerians developed a complex system of
metrology; resulting in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. The
earliest Babylonian numerals date from 2700-2300 BCE, when the abacus first
appeared and they wrote multiplication tables on moist clay tablets, dealing
with geometrical exercises and division problems; also a table of successive
columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal
number system. The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral
system.
Classical Sumer ended with the rise of the
Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BCE. Following the Gutian
period, there is a “Sumerian renaissance in the 21st century BCE,
cut short in the 20th century by Semitic Amorite (Babylonian)
invasions. The city of Babylon claimed to be the successor of ancient Eridu;
attaining independence with the rise in the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in
1894 BCE. Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the holy city of Mesopotamia around the
time Amorite king, Hummurabi first created the short lived Babylonian Empire,
which quickly dissolved upon his death and Babylon spent long periods under
Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. Babylon again became the seat of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612-539 BCE when it was conquered by the Achaemenid
Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and, after his death; it
became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Around 150 BCE, Mesopotamia was under
the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battle ground between the
Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia (particularly Assyria) coming
under periodic Roman control. It fell to Sassanid Persians in 226 CE, and
remained under Persian Rule until the 7th century Arab Islamic
conquest of the Sassanid Empire. All information
was gleaned from Wikipedia.
Ancient Mesopotamia is a historical example of how political leaders
used a belief in mystical gods to persuade their ignorant subjects to martyr
themselves in order to enhance their leader’s career. Man’s divisiveness is
directly proportional to the number of gods involved. It is why King Josiah of
Judah presciently proclaimed his own exclusive monotheistic tribal god. You
will fully comprehend and enjoy how a very young king resolved his kingdom’s
polytheism problems which he postulated had destroyed the nation of Israel and
contributed to his father’s assassination. Inadvertently, his solution became
eleven of the bible’s first twelve books. The story is my next chapter:
JUDAISM.
JUDAISM
Egypt’s first dynasty (3000 BCE), on the Nile river and
Mesopotamia’s Babylon (2100 BCE), in the Tigris-Euphrates river area,
worshipped gods, and prepared for an after-life. “Mesopotamia invented writing;
theirs is the oldest written history. Their Enuma Elish, a creation myth,
includes a story of the tower of Babel and legendry Babylonian King Giglamesh’s
Epic flood was adopted from Sumerian mythology about 2000 BCE”; later copied in
Genesis. Egypt and Babylon vied for the lands between them. Egypt’s forts
protected the northern Sinai’s coastal road, leading to its military garrisoned
Canaan area. By the 10th century BCE, roaming Mesopotamian Semitic
nomads had settled in the delta of the Nile, and in
Canaan near the Mediterranean Sea’s southeastern end;
forming two small kingdoms; Israel in the northern agrarian area and Judah in the southern semi-desert region. Assyria was
amalgamating its future, empire; to be centered in the Tigris River’s upper
valley, which eventually extended from the head of the Persian Gulf to Egypt
and Asia Minor. With only folktales,
but without a written history, young King Josiah fabricated an epical legendry
fable, discombobulating his contentious polytheistic pagan world.
My story begins
in 734 BCE, when Tiglathpileser 3, king of Assyria, (745-727 BCE), marched against King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria, (2Kings 15:29
&16:7-9); they made war against his vassal, King Ahaz of Judah. He punished Israel; carrying
some of its people into exile, (2Kings 17:1-6). Israel was destroyed and taken
in 722 BCE after a three year siege by Shalmaneser 4, king of Assyria (727-722
BCE) who enslaved Israel’s more
skillful people, moved them to Assyrian territories, replacing them with
deportees. Political leaders, scholars, scribes, priests and many others eluded
capture, making their way south to Jerusalem in
Judah where
King Hezekiah reigned over his war-weary nomadic shepherds.
He died in 698 B.C.E; his 12 year old son, Manasseh, became king; reigned for
55 years. His son, Amon, became king at age 22, but when 24 was assassinated in
a coup d’état, (2Kings 20-23); and 8 year old son, Josiah, inherited the
restive little kingdom in 640 BCE. He was scared. As an astute eager young man,
feeling his virility, he attributed his father’s death to the worship of
polytheism’s divisive gods. Fearing for his life, he sought sanctification for his reign, and at
age 26 renovated the temple, where a Torah scroll
of tribal laws was found. In the intervening years, since Israel’s loss, the migrants had sought duties
commensurate with their expertise; bible scholars assume Josiah’s political team
composed and planted the scroll to promote his ideas for a tribal god. The discovery initiated Josiah’s reform
program. He corrected the “cultic transgressions of his predecessors”, removed
all pagan worship sites, and prohibited polytheism, plus the “sacrificing of
small children on religious alters”, and dreamed of an influential Judahite
nation’s exclusive god and culture. Josiah’s political team initiated his
aspirations; coalescing, invigorating, motivating and inspiring his people with
tribal uniqueness; fabricating an inspirational conspiratorial tribal
fable; a tract of “political and religious tribal propaganda, as they imagined
a retrospective of their history should
have been”. How King Josiah’s
alter ego, mystical Yahweh, created the world and its first inhabitants, Adam & Eve, in the Garden of Eden, plus the sagas of sons
Cain & Able and Noah & the flood (ideas from Mesopotamian mythology)
Yahweh chose Abraham to father a nation, through his son Isaac, whose son
Jacob’s twelve sons fathered the twelve tribes of Israel. While in Egypt seeking succor from famine,
they multiplied, and were enslaved by the Pharaoh. It told of Moses’ birth and that Yahweh promised them a land of their
own, overcame the mighty Pharaoh, helped them escape, provided tribal laws and
for forty years guided their search, throughout Sinai for the Promised Land. Moses did not survive the long drawn-out search, but
genocidal Yahweh intervened and Joshua destroyed Canaanite cities; killing
everyone including innocent mothers and children, allowing David and Solomon to base empires in Jerusalem. The fable tells that when Solomon died,
Yahweh divided the tribes; ten selected Jeroboam’s leadership and developed the
nation of Israel. The two remaining tribes went with Reroboam’s Judah,
(1Kings 11-12). Josiah composed his fabulous tale especially to reassure his
Judahites of Yahweh’s relationship to all Israeli tribes. The deceitful fable
did not relate the actual history of the two significant little kingdoms.
Josiah’s self-aggrandizing fable portrays
Yahweh naming Josiah the righteous ideal king, Israelites his chosen people,
and Jerusalem’s
Temple the only legitimate place of worship.
His fable also included Yahweh’s code of laws, (Deuteronomy); covering all
aspects of tribal life, with death threats for anyone who dared defy them;
promising that King David’s
progeny would rule Judah forever.
Egypt’s dynastic
empires left a history carved in stone. Epigraphists
have found no record of the Israelite’s Egyptian
bondage, extensive search,
or of Solomon’s
vast empire except in Josiah’s
propaganda; his legendary epical theological fable, falsely claiming Judah’s dominance over Israel and
events they imagined had happened a millennium earlier; its main themes were
the Judahites righteous fidelity to Yahweh, the god’s disallowance of all other
gods and prohibiting Israelites marrying
foreign women. His fabulous saga included deceitful ancient prophesies of
recent genealogical and political events; not
miraculous revelations; but simply aggregations of mythological adventures
which reinforced Josiah’s tribal propaganda. Its success was two-fold; mystical
Yahweh sanctified Josiah’s reign; and was partial to its chosen
Israelites, but decreed that foreigners, apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers,
and the proponents of other gods were to be hated, avenged and killed; assuring
the compliant allegiance of Josiah’s subjects, who treasured his fable as their
tribe’s legendary epic.
Josiah was 39
(609 BCE) when Pharaoh-Necho’s army killed him at Megiddo (2Kings 23:29), and
Egypt reclaimed Judah. Necho, (2Kings 23-24); consecutively
appointed Josiah’s sons; Jehoahaz age 23; Eliakim age25, known as Jehoiakim,
then his son Jehoiachin age 18; followed by third son, Zedekiah age 21, as
Kings of Judah. Crown prince Nebuchadnezzar, of Babylon, (Daniel 1:1-7); advanced to Jerusalem in 608, spared
rebellious King Jehoiakim, but carried off several princes. Nebuchadnezzar was
King of Babylon (608-562 BCE; 2Kings 24:1-16), conquered
Jerusalem again. King Zedekiah (2Kings 24:18- 20 and 25:1-30)
pledged allegiance to the Babylonian king, (Jeremiah 39:1-10); but proved
disloyal. Nebuchadnezzar besieged
Jerusalem for nineteen months, ending in 586 BCE, executed its community
leaders, burned the city and exiled survivors, who revised and redacted their
legendary epic while in Babylon; bible scholars call them Deuteronomistic Histories;
DtrH1, the Josianic edition and
DtrH2, the exilic edition, which includes their tribe’s subsequent history plus
the convoluted solutions to Yahweh’s promises, in the Josianic edition to David and
Josiah, which could no longer be fulfilled.
Bible scholars have studied the revisions for centuries. The Josianic
edition was in Hebrew, but all corrections and additions were in the Aramaic
lingua franca.
Forty eight years
after Jerusalem’s
fall, Cyrus, Persia’s king,
destroyed the Babylonian Empire in 538 BCE and issued a decree permitting Jews
to return to Judah (Ezra 1-10
& Nehemiah 1-2).
They returned under aegis of Artaxerxes 1, king of Persia (464-424 BCE).
Furnished with royal power, Ezra, in
458 BCE and Nehemiah in 445 BCE
brought back exiles, rebuilt the wall, reestablished a Jewish community
and in 444BCE, with the exilic edition of
King Josiah’s tribal propaganda for their Holy
Scriptures, established new monotheistic Judaism. Monotheism’s doctrine: “there is one
God who rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked; everyone must worship
God as He commands or die”. Monotheism’s Holy Scriptures were: “Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These narrate the story of the
people of Israel from the creation of the world, through the
period of the flood and the patriarchs, to the Exodus from Egypt, the
wanderings in the desert, the giving of the law at Sinai”.& “The Former
Prophets—Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings—tell the story of the
people of Israel from their crossing of the river Jordan, conquest of Canaan,
through the rise and fall of the Israelite kingdoms, to their defeat and exile
by Assyrians and Babylonians”. Holy
Scriptures became the Hebrew bible’s
first books; followed by: “Writings, a collection of
homilies, poems, prayers, proverbs and Psalms, apparently from the fifth to the
second century BCE—in the Persian and Hellenistic periods”.
“The Persian
Period (400-330 BCE);-----For about 150 years after Nehemiah’s
time, the Persians controlled Judea; ruled by high priests who were responsible
to the Jewish government, but the Jews were allowed to carry on their religious
observances without interference”. Persia’s god Mithras dated to 1500 BCE, but
in the 6th century BCE, the Persian mystic Zarathustra subordinated
the story of Mithras to a grand struggle between a god and a devil that
supposedly culminates in judgment day. Mithras was worshiped across Asia from
the Indus River to the Black Sea.
“The Greek Period
(330-166 BCE); -----In 333 BCE the Persian armies stationed in Macedonia
were defeated by Alexander the Great. He was convinced that Greek culture was
the one force that could unify the world. Alexander permitted the Jews to
observe their laws and even granted them exemption from tribute or tax during
their sabbatical years. When he built Alexander in Egypt, he encouraged Jews to
live there and gave them some of the same privileges he gave his Greek
subjects”. This led to the Holy Scriptures translation into Greek (Septuagint),
revealing to the Hellenistic world that Jew’s God disavowed marriages to
foreigners, and preferred to kill them.
“The Hasmonean
Period (166-63 BCE); -----When this historical period began, the Jews were
being greatly oppressed. The Polemics had been tolerant of the Jews and their
religious practices, but the Seleucid rulers were determined to force Hellenism
on them. Copies of the Scriptures were ordered destroyed and laws were enforced
with extreme cruelty. Led by Judas the Maccabee, the Syrians were defeated in a
series of battles, which secured the independence of the province of Judea and
were the foundation of the Hasmonean dynasty. This time period was filled with
numerous political struggles, posing many problems to the religiously-oriented Jews”.
“The Roman Period
(63 BCE-CE 135); -----In year 63
BCE, Pompey, the Roman general, captured Jerusalem, and the provinces of Palestine became
subject to Rome”. Martin Goodman’s book; Rome and Jerusalem, describes
in great detail how the Roman troops attacked a Jerusalem market in 66 CE,
killing 3,600 including children and infants, beginning a cycle of increasing
violence and rebellious Jewish mobs retaliating. “In the first months of the
ensuing conflict in Jerusalem the Romans themselves were not directly involved.
Factional strife within the Jewish population led to heavy loss of life”. For
years the Jews harassed and killed Roman troops, which quietly withdrew, but
the rebels cornered and devastated retreating troops; humiliating the empire,
and delaying their attack until 70 CE, when a massive Roman army arrived
outside Jerusalem’s walls and began a five month siege, starving and murdering
rebellious inhabitants, then burned and leveled the entire city to the ground.
“Rome continued its war against Judaism by refusing to allow Jews the freedom
permitted to all ordinary subjects of the emperor, to rebuild their destroyed sanctuary”. The resulting Jewish diaspora’s resentment
disrupted surrounding regions with deadly attacks, impelling Roman
over-reaction. “Jews in the Roman empire hated Roman rule”. The emperor Hadrian
ruled (117-138). Early in his reign he visited Judaea. “The Judaea that Hadrian
had in mind was not to be Jewish. ‘At Jerusalem, he founded a city in place of
the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on
the site of the temple of the god he raised anew temple to Jupiter’.—Hadrian’s
reformed province was to have at its heart, not a rebuilt Jewish Temple but a
Roman colony, named ‘Aelia’ in recognition of his own family and himself and
‘Cappitolina’ in honor of Jupitor Capitolinus, whose cult was to be of central
importance in the new city—war broke out because ‘the Jews deemed it intolerable
that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites
planted there’. Aelia Capitolina was not to be refounded as a Greek city in
which Jews might settle and be ‘civilized’, but as a Roman colony, inhabited by
gentiles, from which Jews were to be excluded.—By planting a Roman Colony on
the site where the Jewish Temple had once stood, he [Hadrian] made it crystal
clear that the Temple was not to be rebuilt. Leaving the site of Jerusalem
empty for sixty years had proven an invitation to the Jews to agitate for a
return to their former glories”. While Hadrian was visiting his distant
provinces in year 132, the Jews revolted and occupied their strengthened rural
positions, underground refuges, etc. Hadrian’s best generals intercepted small
groups; starved, exhausted and exterminated them. “In the event these Jewish
fighters were to maintain their independence for some three and a half years,
inflicting heavy losses on the Roman force sent to suppress them, until in 135
they were finally overwhelmed.—‘very few of the Jews in fact survived. Fifty of
their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most
famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men
were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that
perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the
whole of Judaea was made desolate—many Romans, moreover perished in this war.’—After
seventy years of tension and conflict, Jews could never again realistically
hope to live in the Roman empire with the same freedom as other minorities to
practice their ancestral customs and worship their God in their own land”.----
“When Augustus, the first Roman emperor (27 BCE-14 CE), died it was his
divinity that was celebrated—the imperial cult, the worship of emperors dead
and alive, rapidly became one of the most powerful forces toward the
unification of the Roman world—some of the temples and altars dedicated to this
worship were set up on local initiative, and can be seen as a means for
provincials to make religious sense of the irruption of Roman power into the
lives of their communities”. The city, Aelia Capitolina, flourished as the home
of Rome’s legions. There had been no Jewish state for 175 years, when in 306 CE
emperor Constantine ascended to power and converted to Christianity in year
325. In year 361 emperor Julian ordered reconstruction of the Temple, but it
was soon stopped.
Hebrew bible was translated into Greek Septuagint, about 250 BCE; 600 years later, Saint Jerome,
(340?-420 CE), translated much of Septuagint
into Latin; then translated the Hebrew
bible into Latin Vulgate and
adopted it as the first part of Christianity’s canon. Known as the Douay Bible; its verses incriminating
Yahweh were excused or removed.
Martin Luther, (1483-1546), translated the New Testament into German. More than
1100 years after Saint Jerome’s translation, Luther, with collaborators
tailored their translation of the Old
Testament to his
doctrine, which influenced William Tyndale’s English bible, a precursor of the King James 1 Version for Protestants,
published in 1611 CE as the Authorized
Version. In late nineteenth century, it was redacted, revised; and known as
the Revised Version. In 1901 the KJV was revised again and called the American Standard Version. In the mid
twentieth century, it was revised and renamed the Revised Standard Version. Recently revised again, it is now called: Today’s New International Version; TNIV.
The Hebrew bible, purports to represent historical events for
two thousand years, from the twentieth century BCE, until its completion by
edict of the Rabbinical Council of Jamnia, 90 CE. Deuteronomistic History concocted by King Josiah was a deceitful ruse to convince his people
that Yahweh, had guided their
ancient ancestors and would protect them as long as they obeisantly worshipped
Yahweh and Josiah, the specious god’s Earthly emissary. His people needed to
believe that their ancestors were epically heroic, and that Josiah’s kingdom
was assured a great future with its exclusive tribal god, who later in the bible
vicariously enjoys destroying his enemies, e.g., commanding the Israelite army
to kill them all, including children, but to save young virgins for their own
pleasure. It was classic BS. King Josiah’s tribal propaganda’s tyrannical
Yahweh is the Judaic “God”, which precludes the bible being the “word of God”.
History shows the Jews’ Yahweh was impotent during their history of
Christianity’s Crusades,
inquisitions, persecutions, executions, and midtwentyth century’s Holocaust.; when
some six million Jewish mothers, fathers, children, etc. were maliciously
murdered with the Vatican’s active complicity. See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM…page 63……….
Ezra and
Nehemiah adopted Josiah’s tribal propaganda for Judaism’s Holy
Scriptures; proclaiming an exclusive god, ethnological superiority to rival
kingdoms, and that Yahweh’s commands to kill nonbelievers assured their tribe’s
future, but Yahweh’s egomaniacal stupidity and malevolent lust for the blood of
foreigners has been a feverish boil on Israel’s bottom. Killing all nonbelievers assured Judaism a
successful first millennium; an egregious error that rid Jewish culture of its
sagacious discerning citizens; leaving the ignorant to propagate believers,
which explains our plethora of believers and dearth of thinkers.
Josiah’s tribal god, Yahweh was adopted by other political leaders because it sanctified killing nonbelievers,
etc. Abetted by prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, progeny
adopted specious beliefs; propagating more ignorant believers. Belief in a god
is an aberration requiring blind faith.
Everything is possible, but blind faith by billions has caused innumerable
conflicts that contentiously divide us. Another fact: men determined sacredness, composed fables,
legends, songs and dance; establishing the eminence of spurious gods. We are a
restless people; a few seek knowledge; others remain devoid of knowledge, goals or
beliefs; while the majority grovel on their knees, clinging to the Big-Lie of devils in a nether world, and
righteous gods up in the sky.
The bible’s
first five books divulge Josiah’s “theological hopes”, i.e., his imagination’s
fabulous tribal god’s creation of the world. The adventurous tales of Yahweh
with the patriarchs depicts Josiah’s grandiose visions. He composed a tribal
code threatening death for all who dared investigate or criticize his
monotheistic god-idea; attributing the code to Yahweh;
intending the god’s death threats, and his own compliant killing, to convince
his subjects of his divinity. He aspired to be divine, and portrayed himself as
“God’s” ideal, most righteous king and administrator of the god’s laws; which
convinced his followers of his spurious divinity. Josiah rid his kingdom of
nonbelievers, and his fable served as Judah’s
legendary epic for two centuries before Jews adopted it for their Holy Scriptures, whose
origin was not a miraculous revelation, but a youthful king’s insurance to
protect himself from polytheism’s divisiveness.
He was astute and prescient; and Yahweh was an effective vengeful propagandist,
but an ignorant, disruptive, vindictive, rapacious failure, as “God”; concocted
by Josiah’s sanctimonious, ambitious, ignorant, vindictive, rapacious scholars.
Supernatural was not responsible for our Moral Code; and the “holy
books” are not axiomatic, but are simply divisive
intimidating deceitful propaganda; copied from more ancient fabrications from
Egypt and Mesopotamia.
King Josiah’s
concept of the genesis of humanity, i.e., Creationism:
is the doctrine that “ascribes the origin of matter,
species, etc. to acts of creation by God”; it’s also the doctrine “that God
creates a new soul for every human being born”: opposed to Traducianism,
defined as “the theological doctrine that the soul is inherited from the
parents”. Antinomianism: is a Christian theological doctrine decreeing: “faith alone,
not obedience to the moral law, is necessary for salvation”. It is clear that
this allowed clergy and believers to lie, steal, etc. as well as kill
nonbelievers, with divine impunity. Man’s concocted specious godly doctrines
are deemed indisputable; but are obviously designed to present religion’s
ordure in a palatable manner.
Josiah did
not seek to mislead posterity, but to coerce his people away from polytheism’s
many gods by proclaiming his alter ego as their exclusive tribal god, for their psychological advantage; to unite,
inspire and invigorate them; it also protected his personal security. Should Josiah
be held accountable for the despoliation and desecration caused by a belief in
the malevolent god of his pernicious ruse? Josiah was not composing the Holy
Scriptures, but unholy propaganda he deemed necessary to
manage his Judahite kingdom. King
Josiah‘s deceitful ruse, the bible’s early books, is the basis of Judaism’s,
Christianity’s and Islam’s subjugated multitudes that have
been forced to obey specific specious gods and murder all naysayers.
Yahweh’s
exclusivity is stupid, and is opposed to the heterogeneity necessary to sustain
our existence on Earth. Doubts about King Josiah’s biblical fable
persist. For the past 200 years,
epigraphists, archaeologists, scholars,
and others searched biblical regions and found a history much
simpler than the bible’s; which is the only reference found of the
Patriarchs, the Exodus, the Conquest of Canaan, and the empires of David and Solomon.
“Hebrew was originally
Canaanites who worshipped Israelite’s angry jealous God”. And “The Jewish
sects: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes flourished in Jerusalem from the 2nd
century BCE to the 1st century CE”.
The most egregious consequences of King Josiah’s self-aggrandizing pernicious
ruse: is religion’s deceptive perpetration and
perpetuation of it upon an ignorant gullible humanity for the past twenty six
centuries. Why did the Israelites and progeny believe Josiah’s tribal
propaganda was Holy Scripture? What resulted, and why, after their ignominious
history, is it considered sacred? It’s because semi-developed intellects follow
paths of least resistance to resolve conundrums; and gods are simple solutions
to unfathomable queries. Faith in specious gods does not require developed
intellects, as ignorance, imagination, and emotion are
sufficient; therefore: blind faith in mystical gods is inversely proportional
to intelligence. To comprehend Yahweh’s adamant barbarity toward all Jewish
opposition you must read the bible.
“God’s” irrational criminality is a strange unbelievable behavior for
peace-loving people to emulate, but Josiah’s fable, the Pentateuch has been
believed by billions of the ignorant and gullible. Its obvious unreasonableness
is blatantly mythical and untrue. It is impossible to understand how “God” can
be perceived as good as the bible’s portrayal is not commendable. To know
“God’s” true character, read the following bible verses: Genesis 7:20-23 and 19: 3-8/Exodus 12:29-30 and 17:14-16
and 21:7-8 and 22:24/Leviticus 24:16 and 25:44-46/Numbers 21:31-35 and 25: 3-9
and 31: 1-18 /Deuteronomy 6:10-12 and 7: 1-6 and 13:6-16 and 20:10-18 and
22:20-21 and 25:11-12 and 28:15-68 and 31:3-5/Joshua 6:20-21 and 7:24-25 and
8:1-8 and 10:12-14 and 11:12-15/ Judges 11:30-31 and 19:22-24/ 1st
Samuel; chapters 5 & 6 and 15:1-3/2nd Samuel; chapters; 11 &
12/ 1st King 14:10/1st Chronicles 21:8-12/ Ezra 10:10-11/
Esther 2:2-4/ the book of Job/Isaiah 3:16-17 and 13:15-20/Jeremiah 3:1-3 and
7:29-34 and 19:9/Ezekiel 3:20 and 4:12-13 and 6:3-7 and 9:5-7/Psalm 109 and
137:8-9; (From KJV) these verses expose the Judaic-god’s true character.
The original Holy Scriptures were tribal propaganda; fabricated because the
assassination of Josiah’s father indicated a rift of tribal non-allegiance.
Fear of rebellious subjects inspired Josiah’s famous biblical fable, but
fictional god-Yahweh is impotent; unable to help his chosen people in their
struggle to survive, to replenish, to sustain, and to promote their primitive
Judaism’s regressive self-repressive beliefs.
King Josiah’s deceitful fabrication of his tribe’s
ancient history with Yahweh’s, commands for Jewish-purity, human sacrifices,
circumcision, hateful revenge and death for all foreigners, apostates, blasphemers,
nonbelievers and the proponents of other gods; as sacred principles, proved to
be self-defeating; begrudged by neighboring kingdoms who resented Jew’s exclusive
god, and their ambitious resourceful culture. In order to ameliorate their
deteriorating situation in a contentious polytheistic pagan world, Jewish
political leaders once again resorted to a fable, a sequel to: Yahweh’s
creating the world. Their new fable’s recompensive gesture told of Jesus’
Immaculate Conception by a propitious Yahweh with a betrothed Jewish virgin in
order to sire a sane sensible benevolent Jewish messiah. The fable adopted a 6th
century BCE Persian legend (500 years before Jesus) about the birth of god
Mithras, who was born of a virgin at the winter’s solstice with a nativity
scene of shepherds attracted by a holy light. Christianity’s ancient fable of
the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus,
was adopted from Egyptian mythology’s black mother Isis and child deity Horus,
the Sun god.
Mithraism was about a century older than Judaism and
was 600 years old when Jews fabricated their Jesus fable in the 2nd
half of the 1st century, and plagiarized Persian god Mithras’
biography for their new messiah, Jesus.
Christianity is based on the Jesus-fable, but Christians
blamed Jews for killing Jesus, further vilifying all Hebrew. Christians persecuted and killed Jews
unmercifully during the Crusades, the Christian Inquisitions and the Holocaust because of misguided ignorant Christian hatred. (See CHRISTIAN ANTIJUDAISM); plus www.truthbeknown.com/victims.html also see www.freewebs.com/thetruth/inguisition.html
Also see POST SCRIPTS and my next
chapter: CHRISTIANITY, which relates the destiny of the Jew’s new Jesus-fable.
Quotes & information
were gleaned from: The Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein and
Neil Asher Silberman. Quote in paragraph 1 is from Wikipedia. Quotations in paragraphs
7; 8; 9 are from Zondervan’s KJV bible, and Paragraph 10 is from Martin Goodman’s:
Rome and Jerusalem. The Persian legend
and the Egyptian mythology are from Wikipedia.
CHRISTIANITY
See JUDAISM’S paragraph’s 7
& 20. Jew’s Jesus-fable became Christianity’s first Gospel; others were
careless copies. Bart D. Ehrman’s lectures: Lost Christianities, says in the 2nd
& 3rd centuries CE, a mélange of books about the gospels were
written and that copies of the gospels were hand-lettered; that each was
subject to errors and omissions, often complying with the scribe’s views; that
no originals exist; the earliest copies extant are from the Middle Ages,
476-1450, but no two are identical. Dr. Ehrman says many ancient books about
the lives of Mary and Jesus are considered forgeries; that all books were
anonymous, pseudonymous, or forgeries, as none were written by an apostle, including
the 27 proposed in 367 CE by Athanasius (296?-373), the Bishop of Alexandria,
for Christianity’s New Testament.
Dr. Ehrman says at the Common Era’s beginning, virtually
everyone was pagan; that ancient religions emphasized sacrifices and prayers,
rather than beliefs; essentially polytheistic; the only exception being
monotheistic Jews. Dr. Ehrman says “ancient religions had no beliefs to
confirm, theologies to embrace, or creeds to recite. There was no such thing as
heresy in religions. There were no ethics; ethics was a matter for philosophy,
not religion”. Dr. Ehrman says Jewish Eboinites may have been the earliest Christians,
who believed Jesus was the Jewish messiah, appointed by the Jewish God as the
Jewish savior for the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law, and that
to be “right with God” one had to be Jewish; consequentially, converting other
Jews to their faith in Jesus. If Gentiles converted, they had to convert to
Judaism also. Jesus disappointed Jews’ idea of a messiah, they expected the
messiah to be great and powerful, but Eboinites thought Jesus was the perfect
sacrifice for all sins, no more sacrifices were needed. “In the ancient world,
most people ate meat only after it had been sacrificed in a religious ceremony; for this reason, the
Eboinites became vegetarian”.
Ehrman says Eboinites insisted on remaining Jewish and
did not believe in Jesus’ virgin birth or his divinity, but was “fully human,
born of the sexual union of Joseph and Mary, and adopted to be God’s son at
baptism—that the Eboinites understanding of Jesus was probably correct. By the
second century, most Christian converts were former pagans who converted to believe
in one God after worshipping many gods, but who were not interested in becoming
Jews. Starting with Apostle Paul, Christianity began appealing to Gentiles by
urging that they did not have to become Jews [be circumcised] in order to
accept the salvation brought by the Jewish God. Paul himself went further: A
person is made right with God completely by faith in Christ’s death and
resurrection alone, not by doing the works prescribed by the Jewish law”. Ehrman says that Gentiles who wanted to be
right with God and followed the law had fallen from grace; that after Jesus’
death, Eboinites claimed to follow Jesus’ brother, James, the head of
Jerusalem’s church, who had their own sacred writings; supposedly derived from
Jesus’ disciples.
Dr. Ehrman says that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who
accepted the authority of the Hebrew bibles Pentateuch. But the Marcionites insisted
that Jewish law had no relation to Jesus or his God; “that Jesus was not
actually born into this world or part of it. He was not a flesh and blood human
but a phantasm”. Professor Ehrman says that two to three hundred years after
Jesus’ time; diverse groups still disagreed about his views. “Ebionites used
the Gospel of Mathew. Those who separated the Jesus from the Christ used the
Gospel of Mark. Marcionites used the Gospel of Luke”. Followers of Valentinus
used the Gospel of John. Ehrman says Eusebius’s 4th century’s
Ecclesiastical History, figured prominently in theological disputes of his day,
and is one of antiquity’s most important writings. “Rather than being the
original view always shared by the majority of Christians, what later came to
be known as orthodoxy was just one of the numerous forms of Christianity in the
early centuries, the one that ended up acquiring the majority of converts over
time, then rewrote the history of the conflict to make it appear that this view
had always been systematically eliminated from the historical record”. A foot note: Saint Jerome was the son of Eusebius.
In 63 BCE the provinces of Palestine became subject to
Rome. There is no public record of Jesus and inexplicably he left no writings
for his followers. Authors, who have analyzed the bible, claim that historians
active during Jesus’s alleged lifetime did not mention Jesus in their prolific
writings, e.g., the “Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, Philo
(Judaeus), (20 BCE-50 CE)”, and other contemporaneous historians didn’t know
about Jesus or his momentous miracles. The writings of Josephus (37-95?),
Jewish historian are considered untrustworthy because he was Jerusalem’s
propagandist, and double-agent with Rome’s legions. Persia’s mystical god, Mithras
and the Jewish Jesus-fable share the same biography; both feature immaculate
conceptions with virgin births at the winter solstice and both emphasize
humankind’s redemption resulting from their sacrificial death followed by their
resurrection and ascent to heaven at the spring equinox. Both tell of their
last supper linked with the blood sacrifice whose symbolic recreation by eating
bread and wine provided salvation for all worshippers. There were similarities
in religions because a process of diffusion was practiced without restraint,
and competitive near-eastern religions shared numerous stories and rituals that
appealed to worshippers. As the youngest of these religions, Christianity was
especially skillful in adopting for its purposes those features of other
religions that would enhance and enlarge its appeal. The information about Mithras is from Wikipedia.
“The apostles convened the first Church council, the
Council of Jerusalem, around the year 50, which affirmed that Gentiles could
become Christians without adopting all of the Mosaic Law. Growing tensions soon
led to a starker separation that was virtually complete by the time Christians
refused to join the Bar Khokba revolt of 132”. (From
Wikipedia)
Bible scholars agree that Jesus was crucified, that
Christianity has always been divided, and that there were many Christian cults
in the 2nd and 3rd centuries with varying views of Jesus.
Dr. Ehrman says “significantly the dominant view was found to be held by a
group located in the capital of the Roman Empire, which was able to use its
vast resources and administrative skill to exert influence on churches in
surrounding areas and, then throughout the world. Thus by the beginning of the
fourth century, it was the Roman
form of Christianity that was dominant, with the Roman Catholic Church, that determined the course of future
Christianity”.
The following was gleaned
from Wikipedia
“Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BCE. Destruction of
Jerusalem’s Temple in 70 CE, started Jewish migration to Egypt and the failure
of the Jewish state in 135 CE increased it, especially to Alexandria, the
center of commerce between Europe, Asia, India and beyond. In the
syncretization of Alexandra’s various cults, Christianity was supreme. Jew’s
fantasy of a messiah, Jesus was endemic in Egypt’s religious milieu, but before
Christianity received Rome’s approval, Rome destroyed Alexandra’s Great Library
of invaluable volumes. Egypt’s Athanasius served as bishop of Alexandra for 45
years, but was exiled five times by four Roman emperors, spending 17 of the 45
years in exile. In the end his theological enemies were exiled, and the
church’s future was shaped by Athanasius’s writings”.
Persia’s Mithraism emerged in Rome some 200 years before
Christianity became a major religious movement competitive with the Roman
Empire’s many other cults. Christianity gained support in the 3rd
century, but unlike other near-eastern cults with the exception of Judaism,
Christian doctrine prohibited the worship of other gods and goddesses,
including the Roman emperors who demanded treatment as deities. Christianity
was considered subversive and prohibited. Both the Emperors Commodus (180-92)
and Diocletian (284-305) took up the cause of Mithraism, with Diocletian as
late as 307 having proclaimed Mithras to be the protector of the Roman Empire.
However, upon the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine, followed by his
Edict of Milan, 313 CE; guaranteeing freedom of worship to all religions
Christianity suddenly prevailed. As gleaned
from Wikipedia.
Before Constantine’s conversion, Rome had persecuted
early Christians, but the fact that Christianity sanctified
the murder of all infidels, simplified Constantine’s forcing Christianity
throughout pagan Europe, and abetted his establishing and managing Constantinople’s
Eastern Roman Empire and its Eastern Christian Church.
David P. Goldman, in his book: How Civilizations Die
says:--“between the conversion of Constantine in 325 CE and the crowning of
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, the population of Europe fell by
half or more; the great engineering, manufacturing, and trading network of Rome
disappeared; cities were abandoned; and the great culture of the classical
world was for the most part lost”.----“The bonds of blood and tradition that
gave cohesion to the peoples of the ancient world disintegrated. The Christian
message—that every individual must undergo a second birth, to replace his
sinful Gentile nature with a rebirth into a new people (the ‘tribe of
Christians’ and ‘the race of those who honor God’ in the words of Eusebius)—resonated
through the rubble of ancient paganism. Obstacles to evangelization had been
torn down by circumstance”.
“The conversion of the ancient world did not proceed
mostly by baptizing individuals ready to abandon their pagan roots, however. Christianity became a state religion by
imperial edict, and the peoples of the Greek and Latin worlds accepted the new
cult in more or less the same way that they had accepted other cults before
it”. (My emphasis)
“After the fall of Rome, the Church stood as the only
cohesive entity between the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Sea—even if it held on
in just a few remote islands of faith and learning in a sea of anarchy. The
Church did not have the means to evangelize individual souls. Instead it recruited kings, who could make
their peoples Christian. And it enlisted these kings to conquer their neighbors
who might resist. From the Gothic invasion of Italy in 401 CE to the defeat
of the Magyars at Lech in 955 and the conversion of St. Vladimir in 1015, the barbarians entered Christian life not
as individuals adopted into the new People of God, but as tribes incorporated
into Christendom through conquest or alliance”.
“Charlemagne earned his title ‘Holy Roman Emperor’—by
conquering the pagan Saxons. Six
thousand pagan nobles who refused the cross were slaughtered on a single day in
782. The Europe that emerged from the alliance of throne and altar was a
different entity, settled by different people, from the Rome whose authority
and symbols it invoked. Christianity created Europe.—the Church taught
illiterate tribal chieftains to read and made them kings of nations under the
unifying sign of the cross. The nations took letters, culture, statecraft, and
authority from the Church, but they joined Christendom with their traditions,
customs, and superstitions intact”.
Ancient dynasties derived authority from the sovereignty
of specious gods, whose prestigious professional proponents enforced
surveillance, torture and censorship. “The original Inquisition was initiated
in the 13th century by the Church to deal with heretics and other
undesirables, and continued off and on for 600 years, but it’s a mistake to
think of the Inquisition as just a metaphor, or as relegated to the past. For
one thing, within the Church, it has never quite ended; the office charged
today with safeguarding doctrine and meting out discipline occupies the
Inquisition’s old palazzo at the Vatican. More to the point, the Inquisition
had all the hallmarks of a modern institution; with a bureaucracy, a memory, a
procedure, a set of tools, a staff of technocrats, and an all-encompassing
ideology that brooked no dissent. It was not a relic but a harbinger. You can
see this in the work of someone like Bernard GUI—a historical figure. He was a
Dominican priest, and in 1307 he was indeed made an inquisitor by Pope Clement
V, with responsibility for a broad swath of southern France. Gui’s most
productive day was April 5, 1310, when he condemned 17 people to death. Over a
period of 15 years, Gui pronounced some 633 men and women guilty of heresy. We
know of the disposition of these cases because Gui wrote everything down—the
record survives in his Liber sententisrum, his ‘Book of Sentences’.—He was
methodical, learned, clever, patient, and relentless—all of this can be
inferred from the paper trail. Gui was a prodigious writer. Among other things,
he compiled a lengthy manual for inquisitors called Practica officii
inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, or ‘Conduct of the Inquisition into
Heretical Depravity’. The manual covers the nature and types of heresy an
inquisitor might encounter and also provides advice on everything from
conducting an interrogation to pronouncing a death sentence. Inquisition
records can be highly detailed and shockingly mundane. An itemized accounting
of expenses for the burning of four heretics in 1323 survives from
Carcassonne”; its suffice to say: the large wood, the vine branches, the straw
the four stakes, the ropes and the executioner’s fee totaled 8 livres, 14. “And
then there is the matter of torture. Pope Innocent IV authorized its use by the
Inquisition in 1252 in the papal bull Ad extirpanda. Few words summon the Dark
Ages as quickly as torture, but the uncomfortable reality is that the emergence
of torture as an instrument of justice marks the advent of a modern way of
thinking; the truth can be ascertained without God’s help; thus the [Churches’]
reliance, not on judges or juries, but on iudicium Dei—the judgment of an all
knowing God—to determine guilt or innocence. This often took the form of trial
by ordeal. The accused would be submerged in water, or made to walk on red-hot
coals, or forced to plunge an arm into boiling water. If he or she suffered no
harm, or if the wounds healed sufficiently within a certain period of time,
then it was the judgment of God that the accused was innocent. This regime was
common in Europe for many centuries”. Quoted from Cullen Murphy’s article in The Atlantic;
Feb.1, 2012.
During Middle Ages’, (476-1450), period of medieval
serfdom, governing authorities and land holding aristocracies found Christianity
an essential political force. Blind-faith was mandatory, especially serf tenant
farmers who served land owners as knights, i.e., men-of-war-on-work
horses, but Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation movement in the 1500s, when
King Henry 8th broke with Rome, stimulated competition as rival
Catholic and Protestant nations competed to replace the Jews as God’s chosen.
Each, through deceitful intrigue, tried to destroy its competition; finally
igniting the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, which began with German Catholics
killing each other, but then French Cardinal Richelieu’s collusive support for
the Protestant Reformation’s movement against West Central Europe’s Holy Roman
Empire, spread the devastation and extended the fighting for years to enhance
France’s position in the race to be God’s chosen people. David P. Goldman says:
“Two rival versions of Christianity fought to the death in the Thirty Years’
war: the Catholic concept of universal empire, and the obsession of the French
that they, among all the nations of Christendom, were chosen by God as his
proxy on earth. Both of these were religious passions, and thus the Thirty Years’
War was a religious war. But it was not the Catholic-Protestant war.—It was a
war between Christianity and neo-pagan national idolatry, and Christianity
lost.—in place of universal empire, the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the war
established nation-states, and the Catholic
Church delegated its authority to Europe’s Catholic dynasties”, which spread
and enforced Christianity at the point of a sword.
Strobe Talbott, in his book: The Great
Experiment says: “The Peace of Westphalia—1648—established a pattern that would
continue for the next three hundred years: increasingly destructive wars led to
increasingly ambitious treaties—the peacemakers resolved that the religion of each state would be determined by its king
or prince—Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist; if a ruler changed his religion, he
would forfeit his lands. The Catholic proponents of this feature of the treaty
intended it to discourage rulers from converting to Protestantism and
accelerating the spread of the Reformation. They hoped in that fashion to
preserve the European status quo and the Holy Roman Empire as its bulwark. The effect was the opposite.
Westphalia enhanced the power of political leaders within their own domains and
thereby further weakened the empire by creating a mélange of about three
hundred largely autonomous polities—looking back on Westphalia and seeking to
explain its result, nineteenth-century scholars came up with the term
‘nation-state’. The hyphen meant that nationality and statehood were closely
aligned. It was a designation for a supposedly new non-ecumenical
political constructs—the cobbling together of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ into a
single term lent credence to national as the basis of statehood”.
Goldman says “For centuries Christianity was burned,
tortured, and starved out of the European peoples”. Talbott says “By the end of
the Thirty Years War, combat, along with disease, famine, and migration caused
by marauding armies and the resulting devastation of economies, had reduced the
population of central Europe by about a third”. I must add that in order to
survive, the starving people resorted to cannibalizing the most recently
killed.
The two wonderful books quoted above, emphasize and
reiterate my point: vanity and righteous self-satisfaction assures ignorant
virile male believers they are religiously following the path of their vain,
jealous, vengeful, virile male “God”. Leaders are reduced to stupid
bloodthirsty despots when their misperceived godly powers replace a state’s
sovereignty. Male followers are the same ilk and ken; proud to die, killing
nonbelievers.
Christianity’s fervor produced the “European
Dark Ages,
(476-1000), responsible for wide spread ignorance,
pervasive poverty and cultural decline during a period of intellectual
stagnation brought about when Christian regimes closed libraries, banned books,
scientific inquiry, etc., impoverishing all human progress”. “The world failed
to regain the knowledge until many centuries afterward”.
The following quotations
were gleaned from Google’s Timeline Vatican City
“On July 15, 1205, Pope Innocent III decreed
that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude and subjugation due to
crucifixion of Jesus”.
“On July 23, 1253, Jews were expelled from
Vienne, France by order of Pope Innocent III”.
“On May 28, 1731, all Hebrew books in Papal
states were confiscated”.
“In 1864 Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical
‘Quanta cura” which included The Syllabus of Errors in contemporary beliefs;
including 80 negative points condemning modern ideas such as freedom of speech
and religion and separation of church and state”.
“On Feb.2, 1906 a Papal encyclical denounced
the separation of church and state”.
“On Dec. 31, 1930, Pontifical encyclical
Casti connubial was against mixed marriages”.
“On July 20, 1933, Vatican secretary of state
Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed an accord with Hitler”.
“On Oct. 23, 1946, A Vatican document advised
French church authorities on how to handle information requests from Jewish
officials, asking them not to put anything in writing. ‘Children who have been
baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that cannot ensure their
Christian education’. The document surfaced in 2004”.
“On Feb. 13, 1953, Pope Pius XII asked the
U.S. to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg”.
“In 1964 Saul Friedlander published ‘Pius XII
and the Third Reich’”.
“In 1992 Jason Berry authored ‘Lead Us Not
Into Temptation’, a work on clerical sex abuse”.
“On Feb. 20, 1994, Pope John Paul II demanded
juristic discrimination of homosexuals”. “On April 7, 1995, Pope John Paul II
made remarks, at the conclusion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah
(holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of Jews for
the first time”.
“In 1998, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland sent
a letter to the Vatican seeking advice on how to proceed with charges of sexual
molestation by Rev. Lawrence Murphy, who had worked at the former St. John’s
School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin (1950-1975), died in July 1996.
Murphy had molested as many as 200 deaf students. Cardinal Ratzinger, who had
led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 until 2005, when
he was elected pope, did not respond. The case was made public in 2010”.
“In 1999, John L. Heibron, a historian of
science, authored ‘The Sun in the Church’”. In 1999, Monsignor Luigi Marinelli
authored ‘Via col Vento in Vaticano’; alleging intrigue and corruption in the
Vatican”. “In 1999 John Cromwell published ‘Hitler’s Pope’”. “In 1999, Thomas
Plante edited ‘Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned: Perspectives on Sexual Abuse
Committed By Roman Catholic Priests’”.
“In 2000, Gary Wills authored ‘Papal Sin: Structures
of Deceit’”.
“In 2002, the Bishop of the Diocese of
Dorchester, NH, named 14 priests implicated in the sexual abuse of children
from 1963-1987; and the Archdiocese of Boston identified 80 priests as having
abused children over the last 40 years; and Anthony J. O’Connel, Palm Beach
Catholic bishop, resigned after admitting to the sexual abuse of a teen-age
seminary student, 27 years earlier; and Pope John Paul II accepted the
resignation of Julius Paetz, archbishop of Poznan, Poland, due to a sex scandal
and accusations of molesting young seminarians”.
“On Nov. 29, 2005, the Vatican published its
document on gays in the clergy, saying men with ‘deep-seated’ homosexual
tendencies should not be ordained, but those with a ‘transitory problem’ could
be if they had overcome them for three years”. “In 2005 John Cromwell authored
the ‘Pope in Winter: The Dark face of John Paul II’s Papacy”.
“On Feb. 2, 2006, the Vatican announced that
Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of an auxiliary bishop of
Detroit, Thomas Gambleton, who recently revealed that a priest abused him 60
years ago”. “On Feb. 26, 2006, in Canada 19 Catholic priests signed an open
letter in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper denouncing Vatican opposition to gay
marriage and having homosexuals in the priesthood”.
“On Jan. 11, 2007, a U.S. federal judge ruled
that the Vatican can be sued for damages by victims of clerical sex abuse”.
“On July 21, 2008, in Sidney, Pope Benedict
XVI met privately with Australians who were sexually abused as children by
priests”.
“On Dec. 17, 2009, the Vatican said Donal
Murray; a Roman Catholic bishop in Ireland has resigned after a probe of child
sex abuse by clergymen accused him of ignoring reports of crimes by priests in
his diocese from 1982-1996”.
“On April 18, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI met in
Malta with a group of clerical sex abuse victims, and promised them that the
Catholic church would seek justice for pedophile priests and implement
‘effective measures’ to protect young people from abuse. Ten Maltese men said
they were abused by priests at a Catholic orphanage”. “On April 22, 2010, Pope
Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Irish Bishop James Molarity of
Kildare, who acknowledged failing to report abuse to police, while a German
bishop also offered to step down”. “On May 8, 2010, Bishop Walter Mixa, has
acknowledged slapping children and is being investigated for sexual abuse of minors
and financial misconduct, lost his job”. “On Dec.6, 2010, in Ireland Tony Walsh
was convicted of raping 3 boys over a 5 year period three decades earlier.
Investigators had concluded that Walsh had raped and molested hundreds of boys
and girls while serving as a Dublin priest from 1978 to 1996. Investigators
also reported that the Vatican had tried to stop the Dublin church from
defrocking Walsh”.
“On Feb. 18, 2011, the Vatican said Fernando
Karadima, a prominent Chilean priest, has been found guilty of abusing minors
and must retire”. “On May 4, 2011, the Vatican condemned former Canadian Bishop
Raymond Lahey, after he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography”. “On
July 20, 2011, Ireland’s lawmakers declared that the Vatican encouraged Catholic
bishops not to tell police about suspected pedophile priests”.
“On Jan. 26, 2012, the Vatican defended its
transfer of a top official to Washington after he exposed alleged corruption”.
The following quotations
are from Thomas Paine’s 18th century book: The Age of Reason. “We know from history, that one of the
principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New
Testament was formed; (he died in 373 CE.); and we know also, from the absurd
jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also
from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is
composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius
that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present
to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote. Those
who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have
no true foundation for future happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime,
but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb
of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never
force belief upon ourselves in anything. — Christianity grounds itself
originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established
altogether by the sword and that in the worst use of it—not to terrify, but to
extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire
of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians
read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called
Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was
not established by the sword”.—“It has been by wandering from the immutable
laws of science, and the light of reason,
and setting up an invented thing called ‘revealed religion’,
that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty.
The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the
religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself and
the founder of a new religion—.The philosopher knows that the laws of the
Creator have never changed, with respect either to the principles of science,
or the properties of matter.
Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man”? Paine was an
American patriot; a dedicated deist, he believed “in the existence of a God on
purely rational grounds without reliance on revelation or authority; especially
the 17th & 18th century doctrine that God created the
world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning”. The
Age of Reason, sold eight editions the first year.
In 1933, Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican’s Assistant Secretary
of State, negotiated an agreement between Adolph Hitler and Pope Pius XI
allowing the Vatican to select Germany’s bishops, clergy, teachers, etc. with
Germany paying the bill. Hitler acquiesced only after the pope conceded that
Hitler should have complete political control. Pacelli persuaded Germany’s
Bishops to disband Catholic’s powerful Center Political Party, assuring
Nazism’s successful rise to power unopposed by Catholicism. The agreement
“created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing
struggle against international Jewry”. Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius
XII in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War. Gleaned
from Hitler’s Pope by John Cromwell,.
To recap: it appears obvious that a confluence of the
points listed in the first paragraph, indicate a pathway to convert Jews to a
more benevolent, saner Jewish god or messiah, than their problematic Yahweh,
but the ruse failed. The sagacious Jewish majority didn’t accept the
Jesus-idea, even though they had proffered innumerable possibilities in their
hodge-podge of books, which left the door open to Jerusalem’s Roman
subjugators, who welcomed the idea of exchanging Mithras for a Jewish god;
using Jewish law to sanctify killing apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers,
proponents of other gods plus non-allegiants, while exploiting pagan Europe’s
foibles, and thereby replace the Jews as Yahweh’s chosen people. They succeeded
in a big way, with the Vatican becoming the nerve center of all Christendom.
Professor Bart D. Ehrman, in his new book: “Did Jesus
Exist?” says “belief in Jesus is a problem”; explaining that it is not because
Jesus was mythical, but that Jesus is too historical; that he was a first
century apocalyptic Jew, who preached the end of the world was near, when God
would destroy all who defied Jewish law, which included the Romans, but when he
preached his beliefs in Jerusalem and did not deny being King of the Jews, the
Romans, who appointed all kings, crucified Jesus. Dr. Ehrman deplores the
Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus’ biography as that of antiquity’s many mythical
gods, such as Persia’s god Mithras, but failed to explain why the author of
Jew’s Jesus fable (Christian’s Gospels) adopted the biography of the earlier
gods. Ehrman carefully analyzed Jesus’ life, and decries professional proponents,
who present Jesus as a discerning modern “God”, but says Jesus spoke only in
supernatural terms; unconcerned about family values, abortion, same-sex
marriage, etc. This contentious confusion is difficult to unravel, but supports
my viewpoint, that clergy has misrepresented both the Judaic god and Jesus. The
Pentateuch’s vengeful god isn’t benevolent or forgiving and Jesus did not
create miracles; both were contrived and neither is divine.
The following quotations
were gleaned from The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S
Female author D.M. Murdock’s 1999 thought provoking
book: The Christ Conspiracy should be read by “every thinking individual
concerned about the moral, ethical, and spiritual aspects of our culture.—It
may well be the most dangerous and important book of our time, for it reveals
beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is not a historical figure but
simply a mythological toehold by which power mongers provide the dope of hope
to the needy, malleable and violent masses”. Murdock’s extraordinary wealth of
knowledge “about the world’s many ancient religions relentlessly brings to
light many lost, hidden and destroyed religious, mythological and spiritual
traditions that reveal “the same tales around the world about a variety of
godmen and sons of God, a number of whom also had virgin births or were of
divine origin; were born on or near December 25th in a cave or underground;
were baptized; worked miracles; held high morals, were compassionate, toiled
for humanity and healed the sick; were the basis of soul salvation and/or were
called Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer; had Eucharist; vanquished darkness; were
hung on trees or crucified; and were resurrected and returned to heaven, whence
they came. The list of these saviors and sons of God includes the following:”
Adad and Marduk of Assyria; Adonis, Aesciepius, Apollo, Dionysus, Hercules and
Zeus of Greece; Alcides of Thebes; Attis of Phrygia; Baal or Bel of
Babylon/Phoenicia; Balder and Frey of Scandinavia; Bali of Afghanistan; Beddru
of Japan; Buddha and Krishna of India; Chu Chulainn of Ireland; Codom and Deva
Tat of Siam; Crite of Chaldea; Dahzbog of the Slavs; Domuzi of Sumeria; Fo-hi,
Lao-Kiun, Tien and Chang-Ti of China; Hermes of Egypt/Greece; Hesus of the
Druids and Gauls; Indra of Tibet/India; Ieo of China; Issa/Isa of Arabia; Jao
of Nepal; Jupiter/ Jove of Rome; Mithra of Persia/India; Odin/Wodin/Woden/Wotan
of the Scandinavians; Prometheus of Caucasus/Greece; Quetzalcoatl of Mexico; Quirinius
of Rome; Salaviahana of southern India; Tammuz of Syria; Thor of the Gauls;
Universal Monarch of the Sibyls; Wittoba of the Bilingonese and Telingonese;
Zalmoxis of Thrace; Zarathustra/Zoroaster of Persia; and Zoar of the bonzes; a
total of 50.
“This list does not pretend to be complete, nor is there
adequate room here to go into detail of all these mythological characters. It
should be noted that as with Jesus, a number of these characters have been
thought of in the past as being historical persons, but today almost none of
them are considered as such”. The major players, which Murdock describes in
great detail, are as follows: Attis, Buddha, Dionysus/Bacchus,
Hercules/Heracles, Horus & Osiris of Egypt, Krishna of India, Mithra of
Persia, Prometheus of Greece, Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, Serapis of Egypt, and
Zoroaster/Zarathustra. Ms. Murdock also details many other Saviors and Sons of
God and several “daughters of God” and goddesses such as Diana Soteira, the
Arabian Issa, Aescleoius, Esculapius, the Greek god Orpheus.
D.M. Murdock’s conclusion: “It is evident that Jesus
Christ is a mythical character based on these various ubiquitous godmen and
universal saviors who were part of the ancient world for thousands of years
prior to the Christian era. As Massey says: The same legend was repeated in
many lands with a change of name, and at times of sex, for the sufferer, but
none of the initiated in the esoteric wisdom ever looked upon the Kamite Iusa,
a gnostic Horus, Jesus, Tammuz, Krishna, Buddha, Witoba, or any other of the
many saviors as historic in personality for the simple reason that they had
been more truly taught”.
“The existence and identity of all these mysterious
characters who are so identical in their persona and exploits, constituting the
universal mythos, have been hidden from the masses as part of the Christ
Conspiracy”.—The miraculous and implausible exploits of other cultures, however
are to be tossed aside as being unhistorical, mythological and downright
ridiculous. As we have seen and will continue to see, these other cultures had
the identical stories as those found in the bible; therefore, following the
‘logic’ of biblical proponents, we should also toss out the Judo-Christian
versions as ‘merely’ mythological and allegorical at best, and diabolical at
worst. As history, these various biblical tales are no more factual than the
stories of the Greek gods or the Arabian Knights. As allegory, however, they
record an ancient wisdom that goes back well beyond the founding of the Hebrew nation,
into the deepest mists of time”.
“It has been demonstrated that Christianity got it all
wrong—except the end to its erroneous means: it succeeded in enriching and
empowering its most effective ‘prestigious professional’ proponents many times
over. According to the same astrological system used to create Christianity,
the age for such divisiveness, fascism and hierarchical exploitation is now
drawing to a close, and lying, deceit, cheating and stealing will fall by the
wayside ‘the truth will be shouted from the rooftops’; exposing Earth’s ‘dirty
little secret’. As Jacolliot says: ‘Apostles of Jesus, you have counted too
much upon human credulity, trusted too much that the future might not unveil
your maneuvers and your fabricated recitals—the sanctity of your object made
you too oblivious of means, and you have taken the good faith of peoples by
surprise in reproducing the fables of another age, which you believed buried
forever’”.
“But the future is now, and the maneuvers are being
unveiled. As far as Christianity’s role in this ‘New Age’, Carpenter states:
‘Christianity must either now come frankly forward and, acknowledge its
parentage from the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate that and carry
mankind one step forward in the path of evolution—or else it must perish. There
is no alternative’”.
“Despite the vilification of the so-called New Age
movement, the fact is that we are entering into a new age. ‘I am with you
always to the close of the age’—so ends the Gospel of Mathew. What does this mysterious
statement mean, and why was this all-important book ended with it? The age
referred to in the gospel tale is that of Pisces, and through contrivance and
duplicity, coercion and slaughter, the fish-god ‘Jesus’ the Piscean Solar
Avatar, has indeed been with us, but now it is the close of the age, and his
time is over.
“Traditionally these times of transition between one age
and the next have been regarded as the
ongoing destruction of the Earth and the endless warfare over ideology will
indeed produce the ‘Armageddon’ so long awaited and planned for by those who
cannot live for today but must look towards an afterlife. By realizing the
cultural unity revealed behind the Christ conspiracy, humanity can pull
together and prevent this fall, to create a better world”. The above quotations were gleaned from The Christ
Conspiracy by Acharya S.
“On the contradictions within the Judeo-Christian
scriptures eminent freethinker Robert Ingersoll commented, ‘If a man would
follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If
he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane’”.
Apostle Paul decreed the unrealistic proposition: that to
be saved one must believe Jesus died to atone for man’s sins. I believe:
ignorant Christians have slaughtered more innocent people than ignorant Jews
and ignorant Muslims combined.(See CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM). My main interest is
thwarting Christian control of our government. Majorities of our electorate are
“born-again” Christians whose religiosity, supported by “talk radio’s” millions
of ignorant followers, can rescind our “Bill of Rights”. Today, many white
Christians appear resentful of our president’s blackness and have formed a “tea
party” of segregationists in opposition. Can anyone explain why America’s
conservative voters have more faith in ancient suppositions and ignorant
conjecture than in nature’s immutable
forces and scientific principles, which includes evolution? It is obvious to many people that they must
remain alert for the unsubstantiated propositions, which confront us daily, but
con-games and the scamming arts are as old as man’s cognition. I have mentioned
earlier that religious beliefs began in the jungles of Africa, however in spite
of our world’s magnificent trove of knowledge prestigious professional
proponents of mystical gods always find eager audiences of credulous believers;
although Christian values, such as: “love thy neighbor”, are needed, they belie
Christianity’s historic gruesome authoritarianism, death and devastation.
Hearsay is the only evidence for a living Jesus. His crucifixion in year 29,
and the New Testament’s assemblage in year 367, 338 years later, is perplexing,
as our United States is only 236 years old. Retelling dubious legends over a
protracted period of time, assures their enhancement by each god’s prestigious
professional proponents.
Prussia, a principality of west-central Europe’s Holy
Roman Empire (800-1806) was Catholic, but Martin Luther’s 16th
century religious movement aimed at reforming the Roman Catholic Church
resulted, in establishing Protestant churches, which converted my family to
Protestantism. In order to marginalize England’s Catholicism, Queen Ann
financed the immigration of European Protestants and my Redwine ancestors were
among the many Palatines from Prussia’s lands within the Rhine Palatinate, who
traveled down the Rhine River to Holland and thence to England. “Lists of
Germans from the Palatinate Who Came to England in 1709”, (taken at Walworth,
May 27th, 1709), show three Redwines: Frederick, age 32 and his wife, also his
son age 2, accompanied by 22 year old Jacob. On September 29, 1750, the good
Ship Osgood arrived in Philadelphia, from Rotterdam, last from Cowes,. Among
its numerous Palatines from Cowes was Ludwig Redwine, possibly the 2 year old
son of Frederick in 1709, if so he would have been 43, and Johan Michael who
was 18. Followers of English clergyman John Wesley, they popularized Methodism
in colonial America. Ideas of liberty and freedom from religious tyranny were
minimal in medieval Europe, but British subjects in colonial America soon
declared their independence and both they and France’s citizens fought
revolutions; freeing themselves from mandated church-state subjugation. Today
America’s Christian hierarchy plans to collusively manage our nation’s
government. Comprehension of the horrific crimes against humanity, caused by
man’s stupid emulation of “God”, should have sensitized Christian hierarchy,
eons ago, but prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods’ perpetuated
King Josiah’s tribal propaganda as sacred doctrine; demonstrating that
religion’s duplicitous delusions stem from the complicity of divination’s
illusionists. During its first millennium, Christianity permitted no dissent,
but slaughtered their astute discerning thinking nonbelievers. Can Christians
explain this?
My only interest
in the Abrahamic faiths’ misinformed multitudes is their reliance upon their
mystical gods’ spurious sovereignty. I hope to thwart Christian hierarchy’s
plans to control of our secular democracy. Religious ignorance has always
opposed undiscriminating inclusiveness, as well as Confucius’ proposition: that
we are all the same except for our experiences.
Secularism’s doctrine: “disregards or rejects any form of religious faith;
especially that religion and
ecclesiastical affairs should not enter into the functions of the state”.
Secularism advocates tolerant worldly views. We think that it is ignorant and
unfair to inculcate the minds of little children with the fallaciousness
inherent in any supernatural doctrine.
It is obvius: that
worldwide propogation of the Abrahamic religions, by their prestigious
professional proponents of mystical gods, brainwashed believers. Evidently
they are aware of their particular god’s mythology, but remain unaware of their
god’s inscrutable perfidious unforgivable bloody history, which today’s
professionals are apt to repeat, while attempting to salvage their confidence
game from the disclosures of modern science.
Thomas Jefferson said: “in every country and every age the
priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the
despot—they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into
mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for
their purposes”.
ISLAMISM
The following quotations
about Muhammad are from Wikipedia
“Muhammad 570-June 8, 632 was a leader from Mecca who
unified Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by
Muslims and Baha’is to be a messenger and prophet of God, and by most Muslims
as the last prophet sent by God for mankind. Muhammad is generally considered
to be the founder of Islam, although this is a view not shared by Muslims.
Muslims consider him to be the restorer of an uncorrupted monotheistic faith of
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets”.
“Born in about 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he
was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu
Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was
married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in
the surrounding mountains for several nights of seclusion and prayer, he later
reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation
from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations
publically, proclaiming that ‘God is One’, that complete ‘surrender’ to Him
(lit. Islam) is the only way acceptable to God, and that he himself was a
prophet and messenger, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets”.
“Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was met with
hostility from some Meccan tribes; he and his followers were treated harshly.
To escape persecution, Muhammad sent some of his followers to Abyssinia before
he and his followers in Mecca migrated to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the
year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.
In Medina, Muhammad united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. After
eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had
grown to 10,000, conquered Mecca. Muhammad destroyed the pagan idols in Mecca
and then sent his followers out to destroy all of the remaining pagan temples
throughout Eastern Arabia. In 622, a few months after returning to Medina from
The Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death,
most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam, and he had united Arabia
into a single Muslim religious polity”. Biblically, Islamists are descendants
of Abraham and Hagar, Genesis 15, 16 and 17.
John L. Esposito’s lectures on Islam say that tribal and
family honor were central virtues in pre-Islamic Arabian polytheistic
religions; that Islam has more than a billion followers in 56 countries, and
its geographic, cultural, and religious diversity reflects its status as an
Abrahamic faith, with global presence and impact, but that threats of political
Islam’s fundamentalism challenge the world. He says that for many Muslims,
religion and society, faith and power, are closely intertwined—that religious
doctrines, laws, and practices result from sacred texts and from fallible
interpreters, whose conclusions reflect their intelligence, political and
social contexts, customs, power & privilege; and that male interpreters,
live in patriarchal societies, which affects their development of Islamic law,
especially on women and family; that the five pillars of Islam; all refer to
religion, except the third, which requires an annual contribution of 2.5
percent of an individual’s wealth and assets including annual income.
Esposito says: in 610, Muhammad received a call to
prophet-hood with his first revelation; “the message of Islam was revealed
during and responded to a time of great socioeconomic transition in Arabia.
Mecca was emerging as a major mercantile center at the heart of a new
political, social, and economic order. New wealth and the rise of a new
commercial class led to the greater division between social classes and a
growing disparity between rich and poor”. Mohammad received revelations for 22
years, until his death in 632 CE. They were collected later and compiled into
the quran. Dr. Esposito says “Muhammad’s reformist message posed an unwelcome
challenge to the religious and political establishment, the priests, tribal
leaders, and business men of the community. The new religious message that Muhammad
preached—denounced the status quo and called for social justice for the poor
and the most vulnerable in society: women, children, and orphans”. The quran’s
message is essentially the same as the Hebrew bible and Old Testament, but
Islam is both a faith and a political order; “it split into a Sunni majority
and Shii minority over issues of leadership. These differing religious and
political views led to different interpretations of history. Sunni’s claim a
‘Golden Age’ when they were a great world power and civilization, which they
believe is evidence of God’s favor upon them and a historic validation of
Muslim beliefs. Shii, as an oppressed and disinherited minority see in these
same developments the illegitimate usurpation of power by Sunni rulers at the
expense of a just society”. Muhammad consolidated Muslim authority over Arabia
by force and diplomacy; a century after his death, his rule extended from North
Africa to South Asia, an empire greater than Rome’s. Islam was to be a
community of believers—who lived according to Islamic law—adopting and adapting
existing political institutions and sciences—motivated by religious fervor and
economic rewards. “The inhabitants of newly conquered areas were given three
options: (1) convert to Islam, (2) accept ‘protected’ status and pay a poll
tax, or (3) face battle or the sword, if they rejected the first two options”.
The period of Muhammad (632-66) serves as the idealized
past to which Muslims look for inspiration and guidance. From 8th-12th
centuries, Islam and Muslim political power expanded exponentially; that
from750-1258 Islamic regimes became an empire of wealth, political power, and
cultural accomplishments. : “Enormous wealth enabled the Abbasid caliphs to become
great patrons of art and culture resulting in the florescence of Islamic civilization—Europeans,
emerging from the Dark Ages, turned to Muslim centers of learning to regain
their lost heritage and to learn from Muslin advances. The Crusades (1095-1453)
established a paradigm of confrontation between Islam and Christianity and
Islam and the West, the legacy of which continues to affect Muslim-Christian
relations and relations between the Muslim world and the West. The Christian
West experienced the spread of Islam as both a religious and political threat.
Europe engaged—a struggle to reconquer territories in Spain, Italy and Sicily,
and the Crusades, a holy war. The Crusades ended in 1453 when Constantinople,
the Byzantine capital, fell to the Turks and was renamed Istanbul”; the seat of
the Ottoman Empire.
“The Abbasid caliphate was replaced by a variety and
series of sultanates. They extended from Africa to Southeast Asia. Three
imperial sultanates emerged: the Turkish Ottoman Empire (1281-1924), the
Persian Safavid Empire (1501-1722), and the Indian Mughal Empire (1520-1857),
all of which experienced political power and cultural florescence. By the turn
of the 18th century, the power and prosperity of the sultanates was
in serious decline. This decline coincided with the Industrial Revolution and
modernization in the West, leading to clashes in the era of European
colonialism”. The dynamic expansion of imperial Islam gave way to political
disintegration and social and moral decline, from the 17th to the 20th
centuries, followed by European colonialism throughout much of the Muslim world.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Arabia, Africa, and India
experienced a revival of Islam’s politicized religion. “A series of revivalist
movements led to the establishment of several Islamic states: the Wahhabi in
Arabia and Africa, the Fulani in Nigeria, the Sanusi in Libya, and the Mahdi in
the Sudan”. In the last decades of the 20th century, the Muslim
world experienced the impact of another revival or resurgence of Islam in
personal and in public life. On the personal level, many Muslims have become
more religiously observant. In the public sphere, new Islamic governments or
republics have been established in Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. At the same
time, radical Islamic organizations have engaged in violence and terrorism to
topple governments.
During the 20th century, Islamic empires and
sultanates were obliterated and replaced by modern nation-states. Many
countries in the Middle-East were quite literally newly created, ’mapped out’
by European colonial powers (Britain and France) after World War 1”. The West
expected these modern nation-states to generally follow a Western secular path
of development, but the majority, such as Egypt, Syria, Iran, Malaysia, and
Indonesia, whose populations were mostly Muslim, created Muslim states, whose
progress and prosperity depended on the degree they conformed to Western
secular values. Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran were seen as the more
advanced and secular. Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Afghanistan,
Bangladesh and Pakistan were regarded as more traditional, religious and
backward. The Arab-Israeli war and a series of wars and riots, during the 1960s
and 1970s revealed the weaknesses of many states. The 1978-1979 Iranian
Revolution alerted the West to Islam’s profound change. Illiteracy, poverty,
failed economies, high unemployment, and malapportionment of wealth, caused
Muslims to question national identity, political legitimacy and the meaning of
their religious faith.
Their dissatisfaction with modernity was marked by their
quest for self-identity and greater authenticity, as many reaffirmed the
importance of Islam in their daily lives. Islamic ideology, and politics
reemerged as a major force that both Muslim and Western governments had to
accommodate. Muslims are experiencing an identity crisis precipitated by a
sense of utter impotence and loss of self-esteem; a disillusionment with West’s
models of development, and as an ally. Islamic movements and organizations
sprang up across the Muslim world. The Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, the militants
who seized the Grand Mosque in 1979, the religious extremists who assassinated
Anwar Sadat in 1981, and the Afghan freedom fighters in the late 1970s and
early 1980s; made it clear by the late 1980s-early 1990s that the Islamists had
moved into mainstream politics and society. “Other extremists were convicted in
America and Europe for terrorist acts, such as the bombing of New York’s World
Trade Center in 1993, of the American barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1995, and of
American embassies in Africa in 1998”, “leading some governments & analysts
to identify: ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ as a major threat to global stability”.
[Terrorists, in the name of Islam destroyed the World Trade Center’s two towers
in in New York, killing more than 3000 innocent people, and attacked the
Pentagon in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001], leading President G.W. Bush
to invade Iran and Afghanistan in 2003. (See MIDDLE EAST FIASCO).
“At the heart of this “struggle for the soul of Islam”
between conservatives and reformers, mainstream Muslims and extremists is the
question of who should interpret Islam and how reform should be achieved. Its
major issues include the relationship of religion to state and society, the
role of Islamic law, the status of women and non-Muslims, the compatibility of
Islam and democracy, and relations with the West”. Muslims were brought to America
as slaves before the 19th century; presently some 6 million Muslims
reside and work in secular America. “Significant numbers of immigrants from
Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan settled in the Midwest and Canada as blue-collar
workers and assimilated into American society”. Some 15 million Muslim
immigrants reside and work in secular Europe, but are not assimilated.
“Since September 11, 2001, the processes of adaptation
and change have become more difficult as Muslims face those who charge that
Islam is incompatible with or a threat to Western societies. This is compounded
by legislation and policies that threaten the civil liberties of Muslims. The
agenda facing Islam in the 21st century is daunting. Unlike Judaism
and Christianity, which had decades, indeed centuries to undergo their own
processes of modern reform, Muslim societies have a far more telescoped time
frame. They do so in response not only to the realities in their societies and
communities, but also to a Western-dominated world and era of globalization”.
“Islam today is at a crossroads. Mainstream Muslims from
conservative and traditional to fundamentalists or extremists often engage in a
‘holy war’ that pits Muslim against Muslim, as well as Muslim against
non-Muslim.
All of the above
information was gleaned from John L. Esposito’s lectures on ISLAM.
David P. Goldman, in his book: How Civilizations Die
says: “between the conversion of Constantine in 325 CE and the crowning of
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, the population of Europe fell by
half or more; the great engineering, manufacturing, and trading network of Rome
disappeared; cities were abandoned; and the great culture of the classical world
was for the most part lost”. During this wretched period when Rome was forcing
Christianity onto European pagans at the point of a sword;
Mohammed (570?-632 CE), realized that suppressing
knowledge and killing nonbelievers, would work for Muslims just like it was
doing for Judaism and Christianity. He claimed the Hebrew
archangel Gabriel provided his Koran’s
precepts. An adherent of Islam, Muslimism’s an Abrahamic faith, subscribing to
King Josiah’s dogma; which is identical
in the Old Testament and the Koran. One can embrace it, but Islamic
apostates, blasphemers, etc. are killed; Their goal: convert or destroy the world;
as the Christians did during their first sesquimillenniums. Islamism is a perfect example of how religions
govern nations. The crux of Abrahamic faiths is male superiority; during our existence man has instigated many
perturbing decisions; the least exemplary was his niggardly, vainglorious
domination of woman. The Middle East shows what subjugating women do to a
society. Muslim’s male dominated culture is an extreme example of men’s
attitude toward women; repressing them. Poorly educated, and their
virginity considered sacred, they experience a brutal surgical removal of the
clitoris to circumvent pleasurable coition. Her husband is selected by her
parents and premarital sexual experience or adultery is punished by beheading
in the public square, or by her family as “honor killing”. Incited by Allah’s prestigious professional
proponents, ignorant and sexually deprived males, filled with religious fervor, sacrifice
themselves by killing a few infidels to assure their lasciviously anticipated
eternal-life. Ponder Islam’s aggressive vengeful male dominated culture;
furthering ignorance by withholding knowledge and killing their complaining erudite
discerning citizens. Is this the goal of America’s Religious Right Coalition’s Christian Fundamentalism?
Islamic Muslims,
engrossed in memorizing the Koran, murdering infidels, etc. are incapable of
thinking, inventing or developing science. They did not participate in the
industrial revolution and their
fundamentalist concept of Abrahamic faiths are a perfect example of religion in action, which we should avoid, but 86% of
our nation’s semi-civilized society admits to being guided by an Abrahamic
faith. Possibly our faithful would prefer to have a typical ecclesiastical
dictator such as Iran’s, etc.
In Islam’s drive to rid the world of non-Muslims it
is often reported that the last sound victims hear from suicide bombers or
executioners, are the shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” or “God is great”. Judaism and
Christianity each spent a thousand years adhering to Yahweh’s demands that
blasphemers, apostates, nonbelievers, proponents of other gods, etc. must be
killed by believers even when members of one’s family; not an excuse for Islam
whose godliness is just as deceitful as those of the Jews and Christians.
Allah’s
prestigious professional proponents govern and see opportunities to be
humankind’s only religion and thereby rule a worldwide despotic theocracy.
Demographics favor them, as their women’s birthrate averages three times that of
U.S. women’s and five times that of European, Russian and Chinese women’s.
European nations’ increasing Muslim migrants have not assimilated. In a few
generations Western Europe will assimilate them by embracing Islam’s religious
totalitarianism, as Muslims follow Yahweh’s commands to rid the world of
infidels, which excludes only Muslim’s true believers. Similar to Judaism and
Christianity, Islam adopted King Josiah’s tribal propaganda. We understand
ancient ignorance and
should understand Religion-Lite’s vacuousness. Also, please understand: the Islamic regimes’ “will-to-succeed” has sucked us dry of blood, treasure, and will,
fighting on their turf. They want us to continue fighting, but not resort to a scorched-earth type of revenge; in order to prevent their pursuit of
nuclear weapons.
Muslims missed
the civilizing influence of Europe’s 18th century period of
Enlightenment and can avoid additional self-destruction by denying King
Josiah’s vengeful dogma. Ignorance can’t
expand civilizations; and blind faith in a god is inversely proportional to
one’s worldly knowledge.
Allah’s specious sovereignty is Islam’s license for religious tyranny without
any accountability”.
Allah is one
of the aliases of Yahweh, the Jew’s God-character, which was King Josiah’s occult superego; onto which he projected
his vilest intentions to punish his tribe’s non-allegiant troublemakers with
death. I have noted: subsequent political leaders employed similar deceptive
ploys to confound and manipulate their subjugated; always with the complicity
of religion’s prestigious professional proponents; which
Islam continues. The Religious Right wants
to use the dominionist movement as their means to dominate life in the “born
again” U.S.A. I’ve explained the fallacies in all Abrahamic faiths and have
recommended a better way, but unless the international community reaches a
communal agreement about how to resolve global warming’s problems and Islam’s
religious terrorism, which the Pentateuch advocates, fallacious beliefs will
convince Allah’s prestigious professional proponents to nuclearly obliterate
the world’s infidels, which, by the way, include Muslim females and everyone
except Islamic male true believers; assuring a revered position is reserved in
heaven for them and that their sharia law governs worldwide.
The following quotation is from www.handbookforinfidels.com
“This life sucking ideology has survived for fourteen
centuries because it has been sheltered from criticism by the combined forces
of violence (on their part)—its devotees have been insulated from the ideas of
non-believers who tend to be far more adept at critical thinking. It’s time for
all progressives to do what we can to help eradicate this deadly mind-virus, by
resisting its spread in the west, and by undermining its central truth-claims
via honest conversations in all available venues. We need to create an environment
in which myth based religions such as Islam [plus Judaism and Christianity] are
constantly being confronted by Reason, Skepticism and Reality [in addition to
hearty measure of Ridicule]. These religions have bullied, brutalized and
befuddled mankind for centuries. It is time to fight back! And Islam, the
biggest meanest bully of them all, is just begging to get its ass kicked. So,
let’s make that happen, on a global scale. Let’s show the True Believers that
we Infidels still have a little grit and determination. And that militant
progressives, armed with Reason and Science, and firmly grounded in Reality,
can prevail over ignorant zealots motivated by ancient superstitions”.
“If you believe in progressive ideals, and support
progressive agendas, you need to get involved before the essential
tools/weapons of free speech and freedom of the press are sacrificed completely
in the interest of multiculturalism and political pandering. The struggle over
free speech is the front line in this war. And we’ve already lost a lot of
ground here, and in Western Europe (where, in some countries, criticizing Islam
has become a criminal offense) and in the U.S. (where making a honest, sensible
statement about Muslims, on airliners can get you fired by National Public
Radio). For the concerned citizen in the western world the first order of
business is reversing this dangerous trend. We need to halt the steady erosion
of our essential liberties, and vigorously reassert our right to speak plainly
and openly about important issues, even if this means ‘offending’ our
ideological enemies—who have no qualms about giving offence to us”.
“Infidels are intellectual discovers who sail
unknown seas and find new isles and continents in the realms of thought—one who
has a new fact—an idea of his own—an intellectual capitalist, who excites the
envy and hatred of the theological pauper. Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature,
because he imagined that phenomena were produced to reward or punish him.—when
some town or city was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined that the crimes
of the inhabitants had been avenged”.
SYNOPSIS
First
we’ll enumerate the significant religious wars:
(a)
Muslim’s military conquests: from 634-1800. “Most historians agree that
the Sassanid, Persian and Byzantine Roman empires were militarily and
economically exhausted from decades of fighting one another”. The Muslim
Empire’s area of influence stretched from the borders of China and Indian
subcontinent, across central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily, and
the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.
(b)
Christianity’s military Reconquista: almost 800 years of fighting to
retake the Muslim controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula, end when “the
Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) was issued on 31 March,
1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella 1 of Castile and
Ferdinand 2 of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of Jews from [their kingdoms,
territories and possessions]. The edict was formally revoked on 16 December
1968 following the Second Vatican Council”.
(c) Christian’s 11th,12th
and 13th century unsuccessful Crusades to retake the “Holy Lands”,
unmercyfully slaughtered Jews and Muslims wherever they were found.
(d)
France’s 8 religious wars: from March 1562-April 1598, pitted French
Catholics against early French Protestants, (Huguenots).
(e)
Europe’s 30 year war (1618-1648) pitted the Catholics against Martin
Luther’s Reformation’s Protestants. The above
information was gleaned from Wikipedia.
Next: what we’ve
determined:
(a): We
know: prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods first conned us
in primitive jungles with polytheism’s gods; then enforced the commands of
dynastic monarch’s specious gods, with torture and death.
(b): We
know: the bible is
NOT “the word of God” as the bible’s books of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy were fabricated by King Josiah’s team of scholars as tribal
propaganda, to motivate, invigorate, inspire, and intimidate his subjects. There is no evidence for a “God”.
(c): We
know the biblical Judaic God is fraudulent, because it is the evil Yahweh,
the fictional god in King Josiah’s
tribal propaganda.
(d): We
know the fraudulent Hebrew bible
inspired the so-called holy books of Christianity and Muslimism.
(e): We
know the Gospels are fables, because the fraudulent Judaic God allegedly
sired Jesus, destroying any possibility of divinity.
We know
the origins of the Abrahamic faiths; they are tragic atrocities; their fictitious gods were foisted upon
humanity by two ancient Eastern cultures whose uninformed multitudes have
suffered utmost. Now
we’ll examine the problems that have bedeviled most of humankind due to
their thoughtless blind-faith in the Abrahamic religion’s fraudulent
gods.
Our imagination
produced all gods. Our ignorance deluded us into the self-inflicted impulse to
be dominated by King Josiah’s, monotheistic god; and feel compelled to
worship his perverse dogma. Our problems began when we condescended to worship
the god we had created; complicating our lives by
disagreeing and fighting over the god; dividing into multiple sects, attempting
to settle unanswerable questions. I argue: all gods are mythical; we created
and manipulated them as per our aspirations. Wishful fantasies and ritualistic
groveling cannot make them more than cerebral aberrations. Without evidence of
gods it’s absurd for believers to kill others because of a fanatical adherence
to a particular version of a mystical god; an irrational situation that remains
incomprehensible to logical thought.
Religion, when contemplated by inquisitive minds, reveals confusion about the unknown, but
prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, continue promulgating
incomprehensibility with foolhardy certainty. Answers to queries based
on conjecture are not valid and is the crux of skepticism; we’ve
divided into the gullible and skeptics; such as agnostics, deists,
free-thinkers, nonbelievers, infidels, secularists, and atheists; each doubting
group claims an intrinsic definition.
This thing we call religion has been a horrific
nightmare. Our problems began when prestigious primitive professional proponents
of mystical gods’ enhanced their careers with divination; promising salvation,
urging suckers “to get right with god”. Abrahamic faiths perpetuated the myths,
but without an iota of evidence it is daunting. Credulity is not a crime, but because
of slight differences in religious beliefs, Christians slaughtered each other;
proving we are easily brain-washed, and that blind-faith clouds our mind and
warps our thinking. For 300 plus years, Rome worshipped a state-god, either
Jupitor or Mithras, but during Emperor Constantine’s reign, (306-337) they
exchanged gods, and Rome killed Europe’s pagan kings who refused the cross and,
at sword’s point, appointed Christian kings; forcing Europe’s conversion to
Christianity; imposing the Vatican over all Christendom. Martin Luther’s
Reformation movement in the 1500s, ignited Europe’s smoldering conflagration of
despotic Christian regimes; culminating in the 30 year war (1618-48).
“Beginning of the
seventeenth century, absolute monarchy triumphed over the ruins of European
Middle Ages’ oligarchical and feudal liberties. The rights of man were
completely confounded in the midst of Europe’s splendor and its literature.
Ideas concerning liberty, political activity and freedom of religion were
minimal. At that time in America, independence from England plus freedom from
church-state tyranny were uppermost in the minds of all citizens, and humble
communities put the boldest theories of human reason into
practice”.
The bible’s miracles have been discredited by the
scholars, epigraphists and
archaeologists who sought proof of its credibility. Their two
hundred year search of the
biblical region included excavations and carbon-dating of each level of
destruction, at each of the ancient ruins of destroyed centers of habitation,
and all histories including those carved in stone, in the lands between the
Nile River and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which has been amalgamated and
conclusions published, authored by bible scholars and archaeologists.
I’ve explored
man’s god-ideas and hasten to add: early Homo sapiens, i.e., modern man, ventured away from the
equatorial jungles, followed the receding ice sheets and occupied the more
temperate regions of the world. Evolution improved the brains and dexterity of
adventurous challengers. The positive pole enticed the erudite, sagacious and
discerning who perceived of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
biology, etc.; they furthered knowledge, developed science beneficial for all
humankind, e.g. plans, tools and machinery to cope with the prodigious problems in the
agricultural, bronze, iron, industrial, electronics and space ages. Ten thousand
years ago we became agriculturists; and our adventurous progress continues.
Man’s ingenuity is undeniable his ability to think, to invent and resolve
realistic conundrums, has provided us a more fruitful life, but his infamous
calumnious efforts to exploit supernatural god-ideas proved his Nemesis (the goddess of
retributive justice), his ego and
ignorance deluded him into murdering infidels. Comparing
history’s thinkers, who chose the “positive pole”, with those who chose the
“negative pole”, reveals religion’s irrational beliefs; misinforming
multitudes; inhibiting their ingenuities and our world’s acceptance of
“undiscriminating inclusiveness”.
As I age, past experiences leads my mind to contemplate political and religious
conundrums, e.g., humanity’s obeisance
to King Josiah’s vengeful “God”, which for
2600 years, prompted us to pusillanimously wallow in the self-deprecating, idea
that humans and other species were deposited in full bloom
on Earth, by a superhuman god, for a
special purpose; subjugating each of us forever. The tortuous ratiocinations
required to justify Josiah’s tribal propaganda as holy
aren’t warranted. The prestigious professional proponents of the Abrahamic
faiths successfully spread spurious beliefs worldwide. Religion’s
incongruity, combined with our imagination, fear and ignorance was unfathomable so we conceded to a god’s
prestigious professional political promoters and prolonged our lives by
acquiescing to specious beliefs, but blind-faith
has been our Nemesis.
The god-idea is as
old as our primitive cognition; based on fears and imagination, it explained
and confirmed our relationship to all we failed to comprehend. Taught to
children, it increased believers at the exponential rate of population
multiplicity. The Abrahamic faith’s history of torture and malicious, killing
in the name of “God”; belies reasons for berating us more knowledgeable
discerning infidels about the Judaic god than protagonists, the misinformed proponents
of “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”.
The Abrahamic
faiths were extrapolated from King
Josiah’s tribal propaganda. They succeeded because Yahweh
demanded death for all apostates, nonbelievers, blasphemers and the proponents
of other gods. Judaism and
Christianity were despotic theocracies such as today’s Islamic regimes. The essence of King Josiah’s Abrahamic faiths
is male superiority; responsible for contentious global divisions. In addition
to generating new lives, our diplomatic, perspicacious women will resolve our
religious and racial distinctions. women’s sensibilities and capabilities
equal those of men, except for brute strength and male sperm. Provide man adequate sex
and a little sustenance and, like stallions, he can be domesticated. Males were
intrigued with miraculous god-ideas, so when King Josiah needed a tribal god to
manage his restive Judaic subjects, we know why the virile ideal male, Yahweh’s vanity, jealousy and vindictive
rapacious prejudices created the partnership between man and “God”. Woman was
not included. “God’s” inconsideration of women was concocted
by males. Men’s blind
faith in their mythical egomaniacal, wrathful, tyrannical male god, rather than
in a mythical, intelligent, empathetic, sensuous woman, is inexplicably
perverse and stupid.
The Abrahamic faiths’ history of inquisitions, persecutions,
stonings, burnings, beheadings and religious wars, all in the name of their
god, belies their claims of godliness. They worship King Josiah’s despicable god; we can’t blame religion’s
militancy on a fictional god character; the problems are men’s
imaginations, testosterone and conspiratorial minds. Religions’ perceived
militancy is that of man; his indifference to its past persecutions,
degradation and killing only adds to the confusion, amid questions about
religion’s purpose. They, hypocritically, avoid references to their less than
holy past and present gods as sacred; supported by billions who inherited
misguided beliefs without investigating the god vs. secularism situation. If there is a god and a heaven,
it’s reasonable to assume we would be allowed a more sensible arrangement, as
unsubstantiated theories, concepts, etc. are invalid, even though they were
conjured by the ancients. “Illusion and faith aren’t sensible substitutions for
sound science”, which accepts only the provable; advancing knowledge,
but Abrahamic religions are obstructive, stagnant, backward, waste- lands of hypocrisy;
unable, for 2600 years, to add to world knowledge. Islamic fundamental
totalitarianism remains in the 7th century CE when
Mohammad claimed Hebrew archangel; Gabriel revealed his koran’s precepts. The region had once been a progressive
knowledgeable civilization, but today’s Islamic regimes are theocratic tyrannies, exporting “sacred” terrorism and enforcing
sharai law. After its numerous historic religious wars, Western Europe forewent
the Abrahamic religions’ illogical divisiveness and formed their secular European Union.
We are a plague that has infested the Earth’s
skin, an infestation of organisms consuming our host while we contemplate
global agreements on ways to avoid self-destruction before our host collapses.
Alternatively, we may be a malignancy, developing at the exponential rate of
population multiplicity. When our host becomes uninhabitable, we will need to
move onto another host and begin a new infestation. Globally, we haven’t
considered mutually agreeable plans to further enhance our tolerance of each
other’s ethnic peculiarities. Earth accepted the single cell microorganisms of
life and nourished them for billions of years while they developed into our
numerous species of animal life; microscopic viries and bacteria, plus the
aquatic, the avian, and mammals including us. All life depends upon global
willingness to agree to stabilize and reverse our thoughtless destruction of
the Earth’s natural benevolence. We’ve adapted and thrived beyond expectations
and our infestation is beyond humane control. We’ve polluted two of life’s
necessities, air and water, and must convince global nations to take emergency
measures that require compliant agreements to eliminate all elements contributing to global divisiveness or
else humankind must anticipate our irreversible extermination as an endangered
species.
People believe
because they don’t know any better. Our lexicon is rife with words meaning
unreal or unknown, which may be used to describe a pseudo universe devoid
of human knowledge, where organized religion’s alliance has
staked its unholy claim and touts its worthless stock to gullible congregations.
Religions allusion to supernaturalism’s
gods, ghosts, etc. is
unfamiliar territory and opens unlimited fields of thought just as extensive
and complex as we will allow our imagination to develop. It’s a fertile field
in which to grow fairytales, visions, claims of gods, etc. For instance: if you
compose a fable of your grandparent’s adventures with a miracle working god and
your ignorant friends believe it and teach their children, and they, teach it
to their children ad finitum, believers will about double each generation. A
millennium later, innumerable ones will support your fable as factual. If
believers have been killing nonbelievers, a majority will have developed a
blind-faith and believe your fable is true; that God exists because multitudes,
regularly, grovel on their knees, worshipping it.
Abrahamic faiths’
prestigious professional proponents credit “God” for humanity’s moral code and
beneficence, but in the bible’s first five books there is no benevolent god;
the Pentateuch portrays the Judaic god as a mad monstrous killer. Our concern should be for each other from
whom all goodness flows. Our
conviviality and consideration for fellow humankind along with our Moral Code
and Golden Rule evolved. Primitive guides to morality, maternal love, kindness,
and empathy evolved millennia before King Josiah’s god-Yahweh’s Ten
Commandments: Exodus 20: 2-17; eleven verses, (2-12), pertain to the god’s
egomania, with only five verses for killing, adultery, stealing, lying and
coveting thy neighbor’s possessions.
Among our human masses, ignorance, misinformation and
religions flourish; they worship supernatural gods,
known only via conjecture, ruse, subterfuge, and lies. Their blind faith in the
illogical reveals mortal fears of exclusion by Father, Son or Holy Ghost;
similar to Hindu’s supreme trinity. Brahma created the universe,
Vishnu is Preserver and Siva is the god of destruction and reproduction. Holy
Ghost is undefined. Realistically, the unholy trinity I have gleaned from my 95
years and the Abrahamic religion’s
despicable history is: “ignorance, dogma & despotism”.
Abrahamic faiths have
no knowledgeable facts; their biblical fables reveal how King Josiah misled
our ancestors into believing their salvation required them to torture and
murder all those unwilling to obey Josiah’s monotheistic god. Religion’s responsibility for the millions
slaughtered by our ancestors, in “God’s” name, is an irreconcilable stain on
our collective conscience. I have learned how god-ideas became
imbedded in primitive minds amid vast ignorance, and
developed religion’s malevolent history. Our delusions,
concerning humankind’s purpose, began
in primitive times when non-comprehension was explained by the occult powers of
mythical gods; there’s no evidence supporting simple-minded solutions devised
by primitive imaginations. As I became more familiar with bible’s tyrannical god’s methods for
dealing with nonbelievers, critics, etc., curiosity led me to search for why
the god was portrayed as vain, vile, vicious, and vengeful and why was man so enthralled with the idea
of an immoral violent god? I found
that man had created all gods, and was especially enamored with the bible’s god
because man had created that particular god in his own exalted, self-image, the
perfect male, mean spirited, ready to destroy all who failed to worship the
god’s egomania; I learned of the bible’s contrived godliness; its mythology,
false prophesies and inherent fallacies. The only goodness in our semi-civilized
world comes from fellow humans; we must be tolerant and respectful of each
other. Confucius said:
“We are all the same except for our experiences”, but Abrahamic faiths’
intolerant divisive “Gods” are incompatible with our desire to become
undiscriminating and inclusive. Gods are offered by their prestigious
professional proponents as man’s ideal of holy behavior, but the bible’s
Pentateuch does not support them. There is no “God”, heaven, etc. Religion’s
gift to man is “hell on Earth” with its deceptive professional proponents. It
is wrong to believe threats of hell and promises of eternal life prevent our
becoming uncivilized and backward, because the Islamic regimes are the most
uncivilized, violent, backward and most
religiously devout societies on Earth.
Our only exposure to supernaturalism is in the Holy Books and other fairytales. Supernaturalism is religion’s
subterfuge; so why do we worship supernatural gods and why are civilized
societies guided by King Josiah’s
vengeful dogma? The bible’s “God” is
portrayed as a perfidious tyrant; but believers
attribute all goodness to the spurious evil aberration.
My reasoning is
derived from the diametrically opposed positions of King Josiah of
Judah, and Charles Robert Darwin, the nineteenth century English author of,
On the Origin of Species and of, The Descent of Man. My remarks are
unambiguous; uncomplicated by Deuteronomistic History’s convoluted meaninglessness and its
consequential theological dogma. As
blind-faith reveals more trust in our ignorance than our intellect, I’ll explain how religion’s
irrationality came from man’s conspiratorial ruminations, wishful thinking and
persistent search for propositions to exploit his fellow man. So
when our political leaders promised us suckers eternal life; we didn’t
challenge it. Since superstitions ruled the land; we have deceived our stupid
selves about the god problem. Our imagination led us to follow leaders
espousing a close personal relationship to a fearsome tho specious god. King
Josiah’s unabashed desire to unify, inspire and
motivate his war weary subjects, led him to deceive them
with an epical fable about the personal relationship of their miracle working
tribal god, with their mythological ancestors very ingeniously portrayed as
Josiah’s political and religious scholars “retrospectively imagined it all
should have been”.
Abrahamic faiths
promulgate faith in King Josiah’s mystical god that commands death for infidels; an immoral unlawful act, but congregations worship the unholy
violent phantasm. There is not a remote connection to an ever-present,
all-knowing, all-powerful superhuman God. Promoting unknowns under the guise of
personal salvation convinces humankind they must submit their will to a god’s
prestigious professional proponents and refuse information that’d set them
aright.
Religion’s unsubstantiated dogma is insidious
hearsay. Suffering is not virtuous; and each child born is not burdened with
original sin. It is masochistic to confess and plead mercy from the perfidious Judaic
god’s prestigious professional proponents, or worship a savior god to access
heaven or avoid hell’s fires; self-serving threats by clergy, who appear to be
unaware that Heaven’s God, Jesus and
Allah plus Hell’s Devil are all legendry. It is vital for us to treat the world’s people
as we wish to be treated.
Ignorance embraced Abrahamic religions’ fallacies. Our brains and computers, both require
rational, factual input in order to develop rational factual solutions, but Abrahamic religion’s lack thereof forced
it to rely upon conjecture, blind faith,
and murdering millions of nonbelievers,
to obtain its illogical imposition upon the world’s trustful societies.
Archaeologists &
epigraphists have found
history simpler than King Josiah’s biblical
fable about the Patriarchs, the ancient Israelites, etc.; a good reason to
reject the holy books’ prophesies and miracles; which are the sole source of
Abrahamic faiths’ relevant knowledge; Disclosure, leaves large segments of our
world’s population suffering from delusive blind faith in stultifying beliefs
that encourage religious terrorism, but inhibits proposals
for global programs to reduce world apprehensions.
lph Waldo Emerson
warned us not to follow the crowd;
but to think and reason independently. I
argue for a world managed by its perspicacious peace-loving women;
dedicated to ethnological sameness, undiscriminating inclusiveness and global
harmony. The idea of
world-government was promoted “by eleven U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt
through Bill Clinton”. The possibility of a peaceful healthy world for humanity
to enjoy should encourage the worlds astute and discerning to temper their
contentious attitudes about ethnological disparities, and diplomatically and
reasonably organize, socially, politically, religiously and otherwise to
promote and work toward a more peaceful ecumenical world.
Dear reader, to understand the magnificent release I
experience by sensing freedom from gods, and other mythical delusions see
Ingersoll’s Vow in FINAL NOTES. Also recognize the historical clues of the
Abrahamic religion’s deceptive fearsome illusions which misled
our ignorant ancient ancestors, and provided religions’ bloody success. Everyone
wants to live forever, but from the seventh century BCE, until the sixteenth
century CE, nonbelievers were killed by either Jews or Christians. Religion
subjugated the faithful, which makes me question why today’s believers don’t
know about the bible’s egomaniacal pathological killer, “God”; as
they inherited an instinctive fear of the specious god’s wrath. Please be aware
of what is expected if Christianity ever gains its anticipated opportunity to
govern us, because Christian ideology embraces the Old Testament’s
fundamentalism; relegating our secular democracy to an Islamic type tyrannical
theocracy; constraining government’s flexibility and stemming our ability to
expand and improve beyond the narrow capabilities of the prestigious
professional proponents of the government’s god, who eversince our
earliest cognitive experiences have convinced everyone to believe in their
gods. There has never been tangible evidence that gods exist and in spite of
the Jesus fables, no one claims they do. Creeds say “I believe”, but billions
have fought and died defending a particular religion’s absurd beliefs.
I have explored
religion’s devious quandaries. I’m satisfied biblical
faith is erroneous. I presume believers are not curious and regret their
disinterest. There is something mentally devastating in believing we are subjugated
to imaginary spiritual powers; although evidence is plentiful that fearsome
gods were created by monarchs and promoted by priests, in order to
subjugate the people. Our Founding Fathers warned us to remain alert to
religion’s conniving ruses directed toward ecclesiastical control of our
nation’s governing apparatus.
Non-thinking men depended upon gods, thus it remains, but now
we consider ourselves informed and understand how our ancestors’ faults were
due to their lack of knowledge, which
encouraged the worship of false gods. But how do we explain to progeny why we
inexplicably grovel before mythology’s misbegotten gods?
Our Electorate’s enthusiasm for specious Jesus is our
Nemesis, which will probably destroy us. Whatever evil deeds ancient clergy
decreed, modern clergy’s misperception of their “holy powers” will tempt them
to replicate. I reject religion’s spurious salvation; my main interest is
saving our country from deceptive divinity and religious tyranny. Our America
was organized as a secular democracy; the first 10, plus the 14th
amendments to our constitution, guarantees us freedom from religion and a
separation of Church & State, plus freedoms of speech, press, etc. Each of
us is sovereign and has natural rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness”.
Having read this far, you surely realize that
the bible’s Pentateuch’s stupid god character was teaching the Jews revengeful
hatred toward all foreigners, and not to marry them, but It was written
specifically to serve as King Josiah’s enforcer. Such a menacing intimidating
god, threatening death for every infraction and eliciting revenge and death for
foreigners is frighteningly unsuitable to influence a peace seeking world, but
the Jews and Christians followed their bible’s teachings, and killed their
apostates, blasphemers, nonbelievers, proponents of other gods, and in the 30
year war, Christians slaughtered Christians. Believing in false gods drove man
to commit inconceivable brutal bloody crimes as per today’s religious Islamic regimes.
The deaths, despoliation and ignorance caused by those particular religious ideas
are regretted. Realistically, our world’s salvation depends upon global
agreements to stop global-warming; and that depends upon a respectful
cooperation of global humanity. Jewish exclusiveness resulted in resentment and
their ignominious existence. The racial purity of nation-states is inimical to
world peace and consanguinity accentuates debilities. Charles Darwin’s research
accentuated the inherent advantages in cross-breeding plants. I have observed
superb individuals whose parents were racially diverse, and haven’t heard
anyone complain. Like plants, humans are improved by cross-breeding; we must
conclude that NATURE’S grand plan for us includes the eventual interbreeding of
all races; so why not now? I oppose Yahweh’s stupid racial purity and advocate
undistinguishing inclusiveness and unfettered knowledge as our path to world
peace.
CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM
Regions
controlled by the papacy have persistently tyrannized the Jews. Pope Innocent
III, in early thirteenth century demanded they mark themselves as Jews with a
particular type of headgear and in the seventeenth century, Pope Paul IV
insisted that Jews be ostracized in special ghettos and wear yellow
identification badges. They had not been allowed to own land, hold public
office or work at most forms of trade. Church law forbade Christians to loan
money at interest; Jews became licensed money lenders with interest rates
defined by the Vatican.
During the
European Middle Ages, (476 -1450), Jews were persecuted unmercifully; the
problem originated with Christianity’s accusation that Jews had killed Jesus. “The Crusaders made it part of their
mission to torment and kill Jews on their way to the Holy land”. The papacy’s
repression of Jews persisted into nineteenth century Rome and during Pope Leo
XIII’s reign more extreme forms of anti-Judaism erupted among Vatican clerics who alleged
Jewish perfidy, obstinacy, etc.; reinforcing the Catholic view, “that the Jews
were responsible for their own misfortune—a view that was to encourage Catholic
Church officials in the 1930s to look the other way as Nazi anti-Semitism raged
in Germany”, the most powerful Catholic community.
In 1933, Eugenio
Pacelli, Vatican’s Assistant Secretary of State, negotiated an agreement
between Adolph Hitler and Pope Pius XI allowing the Vatican to select Germany’s
bishops, clergy, teachers, etc. with Germany paying the bill. Hitler acquiesced
only after the pope conceded that Hitler should have complete political
control. Pacelli persuaded Germany’s Bishops to disband Catholic’s powerful
Center Political Party, assuring Nazism’s successful rise to power unopposed by
Catholicism. The agreement “created an area of trust that was particularly significant
in the developing struggle against international Jewry”. Eugenio Pacelli was
elected Pope Pius XII in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War.
The above
information and quotations were gleaned from John Cromwell’s book, Hitler’s Pope. All Christians would
benefit by reading Mr. Cromwell’s book. He says: “I applied for access to
crucial material in Rome, assuring those who had charge of the archives that I
was on the side of my subject. By the middle of 1997, nearing the end of my
research, I found myself in a state I can only describe as moral shock. The
material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of Pacelli’s life,
amounted not to exoneration but to a wider indictment”.
Cromwell’s book
relates the Vatican’s version of future pope, Eugenio Pacelli’s constant
involvement with Hitler’s final resolution for Germany’s Jewish population; the
midtwentyth century Holocaust, where Christians were instrumental in
killing six million innocent Jews, all due to envisioned ancient hatreds,
fostered by a belief that Jews crucified Jesus. When these six million Jews are added to
the innumerable nonbelievers persecuted and killed throughout Christianity’s
history, it refutes any claim they have to represent a sacred religion. Ignorance is
inexcusable.
I’ll also call
attention to the Vatican’s midtwentyth century agreements with Italy’s
Mussolini and Spain’s Franco; two other totalitarian dictators.
The following
information and quotations are from the Holocaust Encyclopedia
“Since the night of ‘Broken Glass’ pogrom
(Nov.9-10, 1938), the German government had sought to accelerate the pace of
forced Jewish emigration—also hoping to exploit the unwillingness of other
nations to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees to justify the Nazi regime’s
anti-Jewish goals. On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner, St. Louis,
sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba with 937 refugees, most all were
Jews fleeing from the Third Reich”. In addition, “two smaller ships, the
French, Flandre, and the British, Orduna with a total of 176 Jewish refugees,
sailed to Cuba in May 1939”; neither was allowed to dock in Cuba. The Flandre
returned to France. “The Orduna proceeded to a series of Latin American ports;
its 72 passengers finally disembarked in the U.S. controlled Canal Zone in
Panama. The United States eventually
admitted most of them”.
“The majority of
the (St. Louis’) Jewish passengers had applied for U.S. visas, and had planned
to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States.—When the St
Louis arrived in Havana harbor on May 27, the Cuban government admitted 28
passengers: 22 of them were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas; (of) the remaining
six, four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals had valid entry documents.
One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a
hospital in Havana The remaining 908 passengers (one passenger had died of
natural causes in route)---743 had been waiting to receive U.S. visas. The
Cuban government refused to admit them or allow them to disembark from the
ship”. On June 2, the ship was ordered out of Cuban waters after the U.S.-based
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee refused to post a $453,500 bond; “sailing
so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on
the St Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge.
Roosevelt never responded. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated
that the passengers must ‘await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for
and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United
States. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was
27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least
several years.”
“Following the U.S. government’s refusal to
permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June
6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany. However, Jewish
organizations, (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee),
negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the
passengers”: Great Britain took 288; the Netherlands admitted 181; Belgium took
in 214 and 224 found at least temporary refuge in France. One of Great
Britain’s passengers was killed during an air raid in 1940. “Of the 620
passengers who returned to continent, 87 managed to emigrate before the German
invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. (And) 532 were trapped when Germany
conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278, survived the Holocaust;
254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and
86 who had been admitted to France”. Faith’s divisiveness prevents undistinguishing
inclusiveness.
EVOLUTION
The following
is gleaned from Wikipedia’s Evolutionary History of Life.
Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old,
but present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor, from
which all known species have diverged through the process of evolution.
Life began along with oxygenic photosynthesis
3.5 billion years ago, which eventually led to the oxygenation of the
atmosphere, beginning around 2.4 billion years ago. The earliest evidence of
complex organisms dates from 1.8 billion years ago; their diversification
accelerated when they started using oxygen in their metabolism. Later, around
1.7 billion years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear, with
differentiated cells performing specialized functions.
Evidence suggests that algal scum formed on
the land as early as 1.2 billion years ago, and that the earliest land plants
date to around 450 million years ago.
Invertebrate animals appeared between 630-542
million years ago, while vertebrates originated about 525 million years ago,
during the Cambrian explosion. In the middle to late Permian period, 299-251
million years ago, synapsids dominated other terrestrial animals The
Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago almost wiped out all
complex life.
During the recovery from this catastrophe
archosaurs became the most abundant land vertebrates, displacing threrapsids in
the mid-Triassic. One anchosaur group, the dinosaurs, dominated the Jurassic
and Cretaceous periods. The ancestors of mammals survived only as small
insectivores. After the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years
ago killed off the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals increased rapidly in size and
diversity. Such mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing
opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants
appeared and rapidly diversified in the Early Cretaceous; 130-90 million years
ago, probably helped by coevolution with pollinating insects. Flowering plants
and marine phytoplankton are still the dominate producers of organic matter.
Social insects appeared around the same time as flowering plants. Although they
occupy only small parts of the insect family-tree, they now form over half the
total mass of insects. Humans evolved from a linage of upright-walking apes
whose earliest fossils date from over 6 million years ago. Although early
members of this linage had chimpanzee-sized brains, there are signs of a steady
increase in brain size after about 3 million years ago.
Also see Wikipedia’s Earliest History of Earth.
MATTER VS SPIRIT
Matter is
“whatever occupies space and is perceptible to the senses in some way”. Spirit is “the thinking, motivating,
feeling part of man, often as distinguished from the body”. Spiritual is “supernatural or imaginary
and is all that’s opposed to matter”.
Primitive
humanity feared attacks from both animals and humans; somewhere in our early development
we found reasons to believe that the nonphysical was part of our physical
world, and vice versa. Our fear of the paranormal developed sensitivities to
the presence of animate beings, and our imaginations presumed the possibility
of earthly gods. At some point in our primitive or ancient times, we realized:
the deities we had identified as being most important, were all perceptible
matter; things we could see, feel, or hear. We
imagined that gods had imperceptible powers over us which we call fanciful or
imaginary such as religion’s spiritual powers.
My view of the
unresolved question of matter vs. spirit, is that our brain, the center of our nervous system, is of
matter; receiving the sensory impulses from our senses and transmitting motor
impulses to our muscles. What we speak of as our mind, is actually a division of our brain
which handles our memory, recollection, our intellect and intelligence; what we
think, what we feel or will, etc., the seat of our conscious and unconscious.
Religion is an
abstraction, dealing with our condescension, to obey and worship an abstruse mystical deity; something we permit our minds to do,
but our brains remind us that the concept is unfathomable and that we are
misleading our brain’s logic. Our mind accepts religion’s irrational concepts by
giving our imagination the benefit of doubt; ignoring our brain’s logic.
I believe our mind is
free of our brain’s logic and free to wander, to wonder, to
imagine, to suppose, to wish-for, to consider possibilities, and to either
accept or reject them; our will is free and often not encumbered by our brain,
a convenience for wishful thinking; our
brain’s logic cannot consider details of the non-existent and our mind
is unconcerned about the impossible or
non-existent. We willingly
accept conjecture or the spurious or prejudice, etc. without evidence for our
brain to contemplate its probability. I’m aware: religions regard the mind as
the “Soul, an entity which is the immortal or spiritual part of a person and having no physical or material reality
is credited with the functions of thinking and willing hence determining
behavior”; BS! My argument: religion’s forceful influence in our world is
misdirected, that the idea of life after death, is impossible, that our mind
(or soul) is not separate from our body, and is not spiritual, but is a part of
our brain and is of matter. When our brain dies, our mind also dies and
our essence is no more. Religion’s fatuous promises clouds reasoning and people
accept unintelligent definitions without question.
Neuroscientists
assure us: our minds do not exist independent of our body, but are mental;
which is not possible after the brain is
denied oxygen. Our brain can mislead us; brain imaging shows that regions which
become active when we only imagine we see or hear something are identical to
those that become active when we actually do see or hear something. I think of
the mind as
integral to the brain but acts independently. If our mind doesn’t avail itself of our brain’s logic, it’s free to believe anything, even when no
favorable evidence exists. Our mind’s freewill permits us to ignore the brain’s
assistance in correcting fanciful unrealistic thoughts with more reasonable
possibilities. So I’ll repeat the following: Ignorance and
wishful thinking embraced religion’s fallacies. Our brains and computers, both require
rational, factual input to develop rational factual solutions, but Abrahamic
religions’ lack thereof forced it to rely upon conjecture, blind faith, and killing
millions of nonbelievers, to obtain its illogical imposition upon the
world’s ignorant gullible trustful societies.
I’ve contemplated
the Pentateuch’s messages for many of my 95
years, and found them unreasonable. This treatise relates my search for a
truthful reason for the bible’s absurd incoherence, and found King Josiah’s tribal propaganda is the bible’s early
books. My choice for learning about the machinations of today’s Christianity is
the American Fascist: The Christian War on
America by Chris Hedges, and The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S.
They help us better understand the politically conservative Religious Right Coalition’s calumnious schemes to amend our
Constitution from a freedom loving secular democracy into a tyrannical
book-burning autocracy without benefit of our constitutionally guaranteed
freedoms and rights.
German philosopher Kant, (1724-1804), said we individuals
are sovereign; a rational concept replacing the sovereignty of the politician’s
god, “which has always been a
license for religious tyranny without accountability.
MY FAITH & NOTES
Greetings, dear reader, I’m so very proud of you because
you have an open mind, are curious and eager to
learn; otherwise you would not be reading this. Your comprehension of my
exploration of the origins of the Judaic god and holy books proves you are now
better informed about this matter than some eighty percent of our world’s
people; congratulations!
I have no faith in the Abrahamic faiths Judaism, Christianity or Islamism, whose vengeful intolerant dogma decreed the
slaughter of multimillions of apostates, blasphemers, unbelievers and
proponents of other gods, while fighting history’s religious wars, including
Islam’s terrorism, but increasing numbers of us are learning about religion’s
bloody history; dismissing god-ideas; realizing that, figuratively, God
is the sum of Earth’s natural forces, processes and scientific principles. The Religious Right Coalition’s stupidity, e.g., its Middle East wars,
financial meltdown, etc. must not be our future, as people must awake and
realize that Abrahamic religions accentuate the supernatural, and denigrate
knowledge, because knowledge will expose organized religion’s conspicuously vulnerable
underbelly.
My faith is in REALITY, i.e., NATURE’S
immutable forces and scientific principles, including evolution’s
erratic progression. World
scientists revealed the immutable forces controlling the motions of the cosmos
and all life, enabling astronomers, mathematicians and scientists to develop
productive concepts; beginning with the lever and the wheel; also steam
engines, electricity, trains, automobiles, airplanes, computers, space flight
and wireless transmission’s radios, televisions, our ubiquitous telephones and
other electronic devices. Man didn’t create the forces; he discovered them in
spite of the Church’s opposition to knowledge. These natural forces never
demean, redeem nor threaten us with infinite damnation; so nature’s
ramifications created life. I don’t worship nature; I respectfully appreciate
its bountiful sustenance, wondrous beauty, and abhor its despoliation. Confucius said “we are all the same except
for our experiences”. Possibly a little undiscriminating
inclusiveness might smooth and level our troubled road to international
agreements, and help rectify our world’s contentious situations, and
develop mutually beneficial ways to compromise. It’s taken since the Ice Age to
get where we are today. Let’s encourage our reservoir of perspicacious women to
collectively demand a voice in all international-policy-making-decisions
because we men have failed.
In their attempt
to explain the universe; primitive prestigious professional proponents of
mystical gods rationalized; a superhuman god created their
incomprehensible world with all life. It is analogous to my word
processer; unable to comprehend its miraculousness—there must be a god inside
the electronic device reading as I work; thoughtfully coaching my grammar,
spelling, etc. In Arthur C. Clarke’s book
Profiles of the Future, his third law is that “Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
Despite Abrahamic religions’ perfidious unforgivable
history, I wish to thank Religion-Lites
for the extensive efforts they have made to provide schools and help for needy
members plus hospitals for communal use, but I extend them no credit for their
extensive, self-promotional proselytation.
All gods are speculative,
but possibly science will discover some semblance of a universal power-center,
or maybe our world’s scientific community will develop a more detailed analysis
of the “big bang” theory; at that time, open minds of discerning individuals
will reconsider all tangible evidence.
Advanced age has made me cognizant of a few important
things I hadn’t thought about; especially how much more tolerant and
understanding we men become after our testis haven’t functioned for decades,
our libido is an ancient memory and our brain is devoid of the extracurricular; surprising
us with its great interest in life’s mysteries; how sagacious, discerning and
astute women are, and how irresponsible we men have been,
thinking that women’s brains were marginalized by the bible’s god. We erred; female’s intellect is intact,
but male intelligence is attenuated by their testosterone’s insidious stimulus.
We ignored women’s intellect and accentuated their sexuality; conforming to
evolution’s natural system, most of us found a compliant mate and promptly reproduced.
Although I have no consideration for conventional man’s
imaginary gods, I am highly concerned for the multitudes of my fellow human
beings; from whom all goodness flows,
who appear secure in their religious ignorance, but their intentions, are good;
it simply divides them into different kinds of bigots who insist upon
worshipping Abrahamic religion’s three intolerant gods. Conventional males,
even after marriage, prefer male companionship. They don’t love men,
but seek their approval; evincing man’s
innate instinct to lead fellowmen. Unconventional men are thinkers;
uninterested in leading, who only tolerate other males, but excel as attentive
loving husbands and able fathers. I suspect approximately 80% of humans are
non-thinking believers and that only about 20% are unbelieving thinkers.
I began writing this treatise with a ball point pen in
September, 2008, a month after my 91st birthday. Sometime later my
grandson, Bradley Hess provided this word-processer and guided me. I will
complete my 95th year and have my 95th birthday in August
of 2012, and begin my 96th year. I live alone in Plano, a part of
greater-Dallas, Texas. I am in hospice with visiting nurses, etc. The first year, after my wife Marie expired,
was devoted to producing my 36,000 word Recollections & Reminiscence. I do
not have a television or radio, but I have a Kindle, and order magazines,
books, etc. from Amazon; adjusting font size to resolve a major vision
impairment. In February of 2012 I was connected to the internet, and the
world’s vast trove of information became available, which has helped me explain
my views of the three Abrahamic faiths.
As a free-thinking nonagenarian, living alone in H. L.
Mencken’s “bible belt”, I
know it’s unwise to expound upon my neighbors’ foibles, but such is life; many are convinced we nonbelievers are
unreliable devil’s workers; and should go to Hell—immediately. Maybe some
religious idiot will ring my doorbell and announce: “God sent me”; and
terminate me, but all of my doctors and caregivers are considerate kind and
generous individuals who I respect, cherish and will always remember, including
my dear chaplain.
Wisdom isn’t
limited to experienced adults; a grandson, Samuel T. 3rd, at age
five asked his parents if religion wasn’t
make-believe.
A four year old
granddaughter, Sidonie, was stumping me with numerous riddles, so I asked her:
which came first, the chicken or the egg. A moment later she inquired if I knew
the story about Noah’s ark. I allowed as how I did and she said, “You know how
all the animals had to march on the ark two by two; well an egg can’t march”.
To further questions she replied: “Everybody knows an egg can’t march”.
As a matter of fact the Abrahamic religions are “adult-make-believe”;
based entirely upon mythology: contrived by ignorant vindictive rapacious men;
the prestigious professional proponents of mystical gods, who scammed people
into submitting to the subjugation of their religious and political leaders, and
thereby avoid total confiscation, persecution, torture or death; all as
described earlier in this treatise. Ever since the Enlightment, that same
enterprising profession continues to preach inscrutable dogma, but their
careers depend upon the extent of their community’s ignorance of the Abrahamic
religion’s perfidious ancient history. “Think of the thousands and thousands of
men who depend for their living upon the ignorance of mankind! Think of those
who grow rich on credulity and who fatten on faith”! Do the prestigious
professional proponents of mystical gods, tacitly understand that they only
pretend to believe their perfidious inscrutable creeds, or like their
congregations, they just stupidly accept them.
Everyone knows a
mind that’s closed “is a worrisome thing that’ll lead you to sing the blues in
the night”, but curiosity has an open mind, where you’ll always find more
reasonable ideas are indubitably right.
Doesn’t the
Pentateuch’s unreasonableness ever
challenge your faith?
DRINK MY WINE
SEEK
TRUTH IN ALL THINGS
QUESTION
EVERYTHING
BEGRUDGE
NO ONE
CHECK
ALL FACTS
AVOID
TRIVIA
ACCEPT
LIFE
BE
DISCREET
DO NO
HARM
BE
DIPLOMATIC
AVOID
THE UNREAL
REMAIN
BONA FIDE
KEEP
AN OPEN MIND
LOVE
REASONABLENESS
OBSERVE
THE GOLDEN RULE
FORM
INDEPENDENT OPINIONS
DON’T
BLINDLY FOLLOW OTHERS
BE
HELPFUL; AVOID CONTRARINESS
LIVE
WITH SENSE OF JOYOUS WONDER
RESPECT
OTHERS; DO NOT CENSOR THEM
ALLOW
INNATE REASON TO
BE YOUR GUIDE
IGNORE
THE INCONSIDERATION OF OTHERS
POLITENESS
IS LIFE’S ESSENTIAL LUBRICANT
ALWAYS
STRIVE TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW
CULTURAL
HARMONY ASSURES WORLD PEACE
RELAXATION
CONCEIVES POSITIVE THOUGHTS
BE
SKEPTICAL OF IDEAS LACKING TANGIBILITY
TREAT
ALL LIFE WITH RESPECT AND HONESTY.
THE
LITTLE SPERM THAT WAS YOU SURVIVED.
VALUE
THE FUTURE ON A TIMESCALE LONGER THAN YOUR OWN,
AS
LIFE’S AN ADVENTURE, STRESSING PERSEVERANCE, TENACITY,
RESILIENCY
AND ENDURANCE, WITH AN OPEN INQUIRING MIND SEEKING,
KNOWLEDGE & LIBERTY; FREE OF RELIGION’S BIGOTRY.
TO
LOVE AND BE LOVED, WITH LITTLE CHILDREN, ARE WONDEROUS
GIFTS. I
WISH YOU LONG LIVES, WONDROUS LOVE, MUCH HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENT WITH
INTERESTING, CREATIVE, UNRESTRICTED PROFESSIONAL CAREERS AND SUSTAINED
ILLIMITABLE PROSPERITY.
Samuel Terrill
Redwine Sr.
In addition to the above, 27,869
word document exploring the earthly
origin of King Josiah’s Judaic god, we continue with the following 13 supportive
documents, listed sequentially.
OUR SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION—12,280 words
OUR CONSTERNATIONS AND OUR SAVIORS— 3,646 words
RELIGIOUS TYRANNY—1,399 words
ETCETERA—2,690 words
RECAPTULATION—2,122words
OUR FUTURE AND EPILOGUE—2,003 words
HISTORICAL DATES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY—978 words
SECULARISM—792 words
UNITED STATES & U.S. ECONOMY—966 words
PARTY REVERSAL—355 words
MIDDLE EAST FIASCO—431 words
THE
ENLIGHTENMENT—2,806 words
POSTSCRIPT—16,183
words