Well the United Nations has gone and done it. This Thursday (3-26-09) a UN forum passed a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion” despite the concerns of many that it will be used to justify the clamping down on free speech in Muslim and other countries with high Muslim populations.The UN Human Rights Council passed the non-binding text that was proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states.The vote was 23 in favor, 11 against, with 13 abstentions.
Western democratic governments and a broad alliance of activist groups voiced dismay about the text, which adds to recent efforts to broaden the concept of human rights to protect communities of believers rather than individuals
“The resolution said Muslim minorities had faced intolerance, discrimination and acts of violence since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, including laws and administrative procedures that stigmatize religious followers.
“Defamation of religious is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence,” the adopted text read, addingthat“Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”
It called on states to ensure that religious places, sites, shrines and symbols are protected, to reinforce laws “to deny impunity” for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious minorities, and “to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs.” From Reuters
This “defamation of religion” resolution is widely thought to ultimately muzzle any contrary views of the Islamic religion and allow Islamic states to continue to violate human rights. England already seems to have some form of restriction on free speech against religions as I keep reading of people getting in trouble speaking out against the Muslims in their country.
I particularly like the line above “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism”
Say what? Wrongly associated? Human rights and terrorism?Of course that religion is associated with terrorism and human rights violations.Islam and the Islamic way of looking at the world is directly responsible for terrorism…who the hell was piloting the planes that crashed into the twin towers on September 11,2001? Muslims were doing the deed, and they were financed by Saudi Arabian hard-line Muslim religionists.
Human rights violations you say; who in the hell punishes the woman who gets forcibly raped rather than the rapist, except the bloody Muslims s–t-heads?Who else kills the people born with a sexual preference different than their own, except the bloody Muslims?
Do you suppose this UN resolution will stop the Muslims from demonizing Israel and the Jews and Christianity?I wouldn’t hold my breath on this.
Who is it that is speaking out and saying that they want “Sharia law” to be the law of the land…everywhere—I believe that would be the Muslims.
Within Sharia law{1}{2}, there is a group of really interesting laws of “Haram” offenses which carry severe punishments. This would include pre-marital sexual intercourse, sex by divorced persons, post-marital sex, adultery, false accusation of unlawful intercourse, drinking alcohol, theft, and highway robbery, and of course homosexuality. Haram sexual offenses can carry a sentence of stoning to death or severe flogging.
Half or more of our country would be on death row if that ever happened here.
The Muslim religion is the direct cause of most of the worlds bloody fighting and genocide going on today, and now they want to get a “Get out of Jail free” card against any disparaging talk of them. And those that do talk bad of them will eventually get their ass thrown in jail for speaking out against Islam.
It seems the Muslims want “heresy” to be a criminal offence used against the whole world, secular and theist.I seem to remember some talk of this from evangelical fundamentalist type people too.
That just shows you a small part of how messed up the world is today…and it’s directly caused by religion…Muslims in this particular case.
The further I investigate the Christian religion and survey the timelines and civilizations that were flourishing around the Levant and Mesopotamian areas, in the supposed time of Adam and Eve, the more I realize that the creationist people at ‘Answers in Genesis’ (AiG) are right in their most loudly proclaimed message. The whole truth or lie of the Bible and the Christian religion is depended on that single chapter of Genesis. The information given in this seminal work of Christianity absolutely has to be true or the whole house of cards falls apart.
AiG and their brethren, the hundreds of evangelical fundamentalist sects out there, have to have this key grounding to their beliefs or the whole theological mess makes no sense.
The earth and the universe have to be only 6,000 to 10,000 years old; otherwise their Noah’s Flood and ‘Flood Geology’ story falls apart because it is dependent on the figuring of generations since Adam. The Tower of Babel explanation is connected to the timing of the spread of language and the 6 procreating passengers of the Ark. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden play the most important part of all.
All of these stories intertwine and depend on each other to shore up the modern day exegesis of the Christian faith as expressed by evangelical fundamentalism. The drama that is to follow Genesis has to have the elements of this first chapter in it to make sense, for Jesus mentions both Adam and Eve and Noah in the New Testament scriptures.
Matthew 24:37-39: (Jesus speaking) “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
Matthew 10:4: (Jesus Speaking) “And he said unto them, ‘Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female?”
It needs to be mentioned that of course Jesus had the Hebrew ‘Bible’ (Tanakh) to read in his time on earth, as all the old stories, including Genesis, had been recorded and saved by Hebrew scribes around 500 to 600 BC, probably during or just after the exile. So if Jesus were not the Son of God or God Himself (that Trinity myth gets me so confused) and have firsthand knowledge of these happenings, at least He would know the story and know it was part of His heritage
After the flood subsided and the sons and daughters-in-law of Noah (Noah had no other children according to the Bible) spread over the earth they of course were to multiply and subdue the earth again, and they all spoke one language, as they came from the same land and family. This ties the Tower of Babel story inextricably to the Noachian Flood. If a normal person were to hear or read the stories of Genesis (and who hasn’t?) and our beginnings without applying any basic reasoning skills or knowledge of what’s going on in the world now, I think the normal response is to believe they are reporting actual historical happenings.
These stories in Genesis and the other Biblical writings of the Hebrews of the Old Testament and the later scribbling of Paul and other writers of the New Testament have been pushed upon the Western world as an absolutely-totally-accurate description of how our world and humanity began. Well they have to do this because we’re talking about ‘The God of Everything’ and it’s not possible that He could be wrong, if He is found to be wrong then He has no real authority or potency…in fact He would not be a God.
For two thousand years they have pretty much got away with it. In the Dark Ages after the downfall of Rome and in the Middle Ages up till around the 1800’s there was little-to-no resistance to the Christian world-view and in fact you could get into serious trouble by actually speaking out about and denying the truth of God, Jehovah, Yahweh and Jesus. Actually, in some places you could get into serious trouble up into the 1900’s for sins against God.
The church and its leaders were quick to protect their turf and muzzle any dissent or opposition to their perceived “Truth.” It is factual recorded history that many many thousands, maybe millions of human were killed in the establishing and early continuation of Christianity. Many Popes and early leaders of the ‘Mother Church’ were totally depraved and preyed on their flocks, much wealth was stolen and put into church vaults and Cathedrals and buildings and to supporting extravagant lifestyles of the elite. All in all, the rise of the Christian faith has been a bloody non-Godly event in our human history.
Now, the Christian faith and its sourcebook, the Bible, is facing increasing pressure to prove itself to be a religion of truth or actual relevance as more and more evidence of our earth’s history and the history of mans beginnings is coming into focus. When this Bible was written I doubt there was much thought given to us humans eventually being able to figure out what actually-really happened in our past. The Hebrews were writing in a time of mythical constructs and beliefs, they had already been through a number of gods before and none of them proved to be strong enough or able to bring the people together. A synthesis was needed. The Egyptians and Sumerians were next door so to speak and they had pretty well developed theories of godship…Hmmm.
There are many methods to date old artifact, and dating only as far back as 4,000 or 5,000 BC is totally easy and totally doable by a plethora of dating methods that can be easily cross referenced, and for a lot of the times, there are written records. Egypt and the Mesopotamian area of this planet are arguably the most studied, measured, and scrutinized places on earth. Archaeology has been going on in the Holy Land and surrounds forever, it seems. Scholarly men and women have been digging up and analyzing every sign of ancient habitation for over 200 years there. We have a tremendous store of factual data on the real history and goings on in this area of the earth.
The Bible says that the earth was created in 6 days and that Adam and Eve were created on the last day…or maybe the first day…depends on your interpretation. The religious right says this was 6,000 years ago, plus or minus a few years
It is an easily checked fact that Egypt in the Nile valley and Sumeria in Mesopotamia were functioning city states/civilizations at this time. A little harder to find, but the facts are out there, is that the Indus Valley Civilization in parts of what is modern day Pakistan and India and the Chinese civilization in Asia were flourishing at the Biblical time in which God was supposedly creating the earth, our solar system, the whole universe, and Adam and Eve. You have to wonder what these people were thinking… 🙂
The Sumerian civilization lasted from the first settlement in Eridu in the Ubaid period in the late 6th. millennium BC through the Uruk period in the 4th. millennium BC and the Dynastic period of the 3rd. millennium BC until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd. millennium BC. These dates are not disputed by archaeologists who work in the field, and are fully supported by many different methods of dating…in short, these are facts. The Sumerians already had a pantheon of gods as evidenced by their artifacts and ruins, but that did not include Jehovah or Yahweh. The plains of Shinar and the Tigris and Euphrates fall into this real estate, and some say the Garden of Eden was in this area. So why didn’t the Sumerians know of our God? (Hint: he wasn’t invented yet)
In Egypt, by about 5500 BC, small tribes that were living in the Nile valley developed into a series of unique cultures that demonstrated a firm understanding and control of agriculture and animal husbandry. They can be identified by their unique pottery and personal items they produced, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in Upper Egypt, the Badari, was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.
In southern Egypt, the Naqada culture, similar to the Badari, began to expand along the Nile by about 4000 BC. Over a period of about 1000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley. By 3100 BC Upper and Lower Egypt were unified under Narmer and he became the first king or pharaoh of the First Dynasty. For nearly 3,000 +- years after this event Egypt was the center of civilization
Again, as in Mesopotamian ages, the Egyptian ages are easily found and cross checkable by different methods and held to be true by working archaeologists and other scientists all over the world. These ages are known facts as opposed to the myths written by a tribe of wandering Hebrew sheep/goat herders.
So what do you think the reaction of the average ancient Egyptians would be to God/Yahweh/Jehovah moving to and fro across the earth while they were trying to farm it and build monuments and such? Those Egyptians were around then, of that there is no doubt at all. What were the Sumerians thinking as this God/Jehovah/Yahweh was flying around setting up the Garden and making the “first” humans in the middle of their farm fields and interfering with their building of the first true cities.
Something seems to be incompatible and out of place here. The actual-real-physical evidence says there was no “Garden of Eden” here and that humans had been around for many thousands of years before.
So there was no actual-real-physical creation of Adam and Eve anywhere near 4,000 BC in or around the Middle Eastern area. If in fact there is a God who created the first Humans he did not make them there, and he did not make them in or about 4,000 BC…and we can prove it. Christians have a book written by a tribe of sheep/goat herders that has many-many errors of dating and impossible goings on. This book has no more reality attached to it than the works of Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, or any other religion. It has no more claim to be true than any other. Actually less if you factor in how much scholarship has been expended on it and come up with no factual proofs of its beginnings
What happens if the story of Adam and Eve is proven wrong? Do we just say ho-hum and go about our business, but still believe in Christianity, still believe in the divinity of Jesus? Do we still believe in Angels and magic?
What do we do with the story of Jesus? If Adam and Eve are not true…they weren’t created in a garden somewhere in Northern Africa or around Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago, and all the real evidence points to this; what do we do with Jesus? There is no need for him to redeem original sin that never happened, in fact we can break free of this 6,000 lb. elephant that we have carrying around on our back since Paul invented this lie. To carry this even further, we can break out of this creepy drama that God supposedly set up for his creations to go through and maybe set up a rational version of SkyGod worship. 🙂
The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the creation of Adam and Eve is not a real historical event and that the Bible timeline in relation to the beginnings of humanity and the earth is just wrong in ALL ways…it is all made up by our human ancestors…there is no truth there.
As for the other crap that the people at ‘Answers in Genesis’ believe such as; Ice Age after the flood, Neanderthals being offspring of one of Noah’s sons and living after the flood, etc,….well, I won’t even go there…yet
Sorry folks, my reply panel is not working correctly and I’m having to bring this debate to the front page. For those of you who would like to follow along we are coming from the post entitled “Christianity Kills” further down on this page.
Hi QBOA thanks for your reply.
You write:
>>”The problem or issue iwth science is that it makes bad philosophers. Science studies efficient cause in an organized way. Final cause (the why of things) is excluded.”<<
Well, philosophers study such things as existence, truth, knowledge, justice, mind, language, and validity using reasoned argument. I would argue that science is looking for the same things. They wrestle with the problem of existence by looking at our human beginnings, they are constantly looking for truth and knowledge and the science of language looks for any knowledge pertaining to its beginnings. Just looking for and describing what and how things happen usually gives us a why. There is no need for any other kind of ‘why’
You write:
>>”How is it possible to descern good or evil in people then based on your experience? The problem with science is the belief that everything can be known in the causal system of the processes of nature; there are no nonphysical elements.”<<
Humans have the ability to discern good from evil…well, except for mentally disturbed people. We also seem to have a built in sense of morality despite many religious people thinking we do not. The “Golden Rule” seems to have evolved in most societies quite independent from each other and independent from religion. Confucius wrote of it about 500 years before Christ.
You write:
>>”To extend this false assumption(which it is, becuase there is no science to back such a thing up) one has to draw the logical conclusions from it. Free will is an illusion, then morality is also an illusion, because it is concerned only with free choices; an act is not immoral if it couldn’t have been otherwise. Indeed science is an illusion because everything in domain of space-time concepts is based on laws of science. My body is simply an assembly of carbon, H2O and some other elements with chemical reactions. And they will be reprocessed after I die.”<<
Church theosophers have been arguing free will and morality and such for over 2000 years. The Bible hints that we do, and do not, have free will. Which side is right? I don’t care because I can live my life, and make moral choices all on my own, and be perfectly happy and well adjusted without any feedback from religion. I think that today’s society lays out morality for the common person in the laws that we now have. In early times there was no body of laws laid out and followed that protected us from evil people. The Hebrews were just early on trying to protect the commoner. As for your body elements and chemicals, yes you are right, of course, that’s exactly what happens.
“…atheism is not a conscious act of turning away from all gods. It is simply the final destination for those who think. …you will be pleased to discover that the sky does not fall down on your head. … if you still want to pray, you can (the success rate of your prayers is unlikely to change).”Guy P. Harrison
After going over all of this God and religion stuff for nearly two years now and not really finding any new facts (except for occasional new science coming up…that all supports, so far, the ‘No God’ theory that I hold) I have boiled it all down to this….
The fact that Adam and Eve did not exist (among other things that are known to be untrue in the Bible), completely unhinges the Christian religion. For, if there was no Adam and Eve, the whole Christian scheme of redemption falls completely apart. There is no need of Jesus…as there was no original sin. The God story keeps falling apart upon close modern examination.
Year after year the science gets better, and it invariably proves something else is not true in the Bible.
It can be proven, by many paths, that the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve, and the Exodus are not historical happenings. A real God would not write this untrue stuff…but men would.
Christians can deny this all they want and it will not change the facts. The evidence keeps getting stronger, not weaker.
…” I deny the existence of all Gods: those of the Mayans, the Hindu, the Ancient Egyptians, and the God of the Old and New Testaments. If I am right, all of these are fictional constructs invented by clever humans for … a variety of purposes, ranging from psychological comfort to entertainment.” Doug Jesseph
A bestselling author and founder of a New York church that ministers to teens who are hooked on drugs, David Wilkerson, is predicting a soon to happen “earth shattering calamity” centered around New York.
He writes in his blog:
“AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE – EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.”
He goes on to explain that large areas will be involved, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut, and that large cities across America will experience riots and fires. Then he says, “There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
“God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations,” Wilkerson claims. “He is destroying the secular foundations.” Wilkerson urges people to stockpile at least a 30-day supply of food and necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees.
“I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off, I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose.”
David Wilkerson is the founding pastor of Times Square Church in New York City, he launched a ministry to gang members and drug addicts in 1958. In 1963 Wilkerson co-authored the bestselling book “The Cross and the Switchblade” about his ministry’s first five years ministering to gang members and druggies
The full story can be found on Wilkerson’s blog here.
OK, these evangelical types have been predicting the ‘End Times’ ever since Jesus did the same thing in the New Testament. The end of days has been said to be here at least a hundred or more times that I know of. You hear stories of them (evangelicals) in Israel trying to incite war between the Jews and Muslims to bring about Armageddon. These are truly disturbed people.
I think it will be interesting to see what happens over the next year. The world situation being what it is though, I wonder what the odds would be for a large event such as Mr. Wilkerson predicts happening anyway?
Oh well, if it does happen remember you heard it here second. 🙂
Paul uses the story of Adam and Eve to form the basis for the Christian doctrine of Original sin. “Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” Paul of Tarsus wrote in his epistle to the Romans in about 58CE. However Chapter 3 of Genesis does not use the word ‘sin’ and Genesis 3:24 says they are expelled ” lest he put forth his hand and take also of the ‘Tree of Life’ and eat, and live forever.” (So Adam and Eve were not immortal at their original conception)
St Augustine of Hippo understood Paul to have said that Adam’s sin was hereditary. “Death passed upon all men because of Adam, in whom all sinned.” The concept of ‘Original sin’, that all men are born in a condition of sinfulness and must have redemption became a cornerstone of most Christian theological tradition. However Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox churches, Congregationalist churches, and the Mormons don’t share this belief.
Over the centuries Christian beliefs have come to say that the serpent that tempted Eve was Satan or that Satan was using the serpent as a mouthpiece…although there is no mention of this identification in the Hebrew Torah
Early church followers held that because Eve was the one who tempted Adam to eat the fruit she (Eve) and ALL women who followed her were the first sinners and especially responsible for the ‘Fall.’ Tertullian would tell his listeners in the second century CE that women were the devils gateway, and go on to explain that they were responsible for the death of Jesus.
We can see that the story of Adam and Eve is a pivotal point in Christianity. The exegesis of the early chapter is the basis for the theology of the New Testament. If Adam and Eve did not play out as Genesis says it did, then there is no need for Jesus to redeem our sins…indeed, we have no sins, as the original story mentions none. It is only Paul, writing some four thousand years later, who puts this whole fiction into action. It is Paul who comes up with the idea and later writers pick it up and run with it and expand upon it.
Now what happens if we remove Adam and Eve from the mix entirely? We have this book that was written by Hebrews, Jews, and later Christians over a period of perhaps 800 to a 1000 years. By the actions and words of one man (Paul) who lived a few years after Jesus practically the whole world of Christian thought and theology hangs.
In the Biblical sense Adam and Eve did not exist. The story of men and women living on this earth far transcends the petty story found in the Bible. Adam and Eve were not the beginning of the human race; they are nothing more than a footnote in a fictive mythological story written by some of our ancestors. The story of humans goes back many hundreds of thousands of years and is spread over the whole earth. We did not come from two progenitors 6000+- years ago. Our footprints, handprints, tools, habitats, art, and handiwork have been found all over the globe going back a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and many more years.
We humans have a history that is told in archaeological artifacts and human bones and pottery and stunning artwork on cave walls. We find finely crafted spearheads in animals that have not walked the earth for over 10,000 years, we find Homo sapiens skeletons superimposed with Neanderthal bones in Israeli caves from 50,000 years ago, we find 10,000 year old graveyards in the middle of the Sahara desert…relics from a time when the Sahara was green and home to ancient animals and human societies.
We humans also have sciences now that can read the ancient stories entwined in our blood. The stories that are told there….are not the stories of the Bible. We did not spread out all over the earth from “East of Eden” 6000 years ago. By that time humans were everywhere; in China and Southeast Asia, in Australia and Borneo, in North and South America, all of Europe, and many of the smaller ocean islands.
There is archaeological evidence of “us” all over the place and in time periods going back hundreds of thousands of years. The evidence is overwhelming, there are no doubts anymore. Adam and Eve as a Biblical truth…is not the truth.
Christianity, as well as Judaism and Islam, and all the other religions are relics of a time when we humans were making up gods…when we thought we needed them…when we had no way of ascertaining what was real in our world and what was myth. Some of us still look and hope to find a higher being that they can lay their troubles on, someone who can make them happier and richer and healthier, while forgetting to look inside themselves and finding their own will.
Jesus was only needed to redeem our sins brought on by the downfall of Adam and Eve…our ‘original sin’ Most of Christianity relies on the story of Jesus as their basic reason for being. In fact if you follow all the lines of reasoning you will find that Adam and Eve is essential to the whole story of God. Take away Adam and Eve and it all falls apart.
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