If you believe in a evangelical fundamentalist God
What in modern times is the country Armenia, was in ancient times a very valuable resource for mankind…it is thought that much of mans knowledge of metallurgy was gained here around the ancient city of Metsamor. It was occupied from around 7,000 BC to perhaps 1700 AD and was an astronomical site as well as metallurgical.
Excavation of the ruins has discovered a very large metal industry including a foundry with 2 kinds of blast furnaces. The foundry is known to have extracted and processed gold, copper, and several types of manganese, zinc, strychnine, mercury, and iron. Metal from the foundries of Metsamor found their way to Egypt, Central Asia and China.
Several Huge underground caves have been uncovered that are believed to have been storehouses for base metal, as well as a grain storage for winter months. The first iron in the ancient world may have been forged here.
It is believed that metal working got its start there about 5,000 BC…one more blow to the Young Earth Creationists who STILL believe the earth was formed by a Mesopotamian god around 4000 + BC, and Tubal-Cain invented metal working well after the creation, but before the “Flood” on or about 2400 BC
There are many very ancient human sites around the Armenia/Turkey area going back at least 9,000 to 11,000 years or more. The whole Babylonian/Turkey/Armenia/Iran/Iraq/Israel/Egypt area is the largest cradle of human civilization…although humans were not originally from there, when we migrated out of Africa to the areas they were found to be very conducive to human life.
There is no foundation for making the moral and supernatural claims that the Christian religion makes. That is not to say that the evidence is inadequate…it is to say that there is NO evidence for almost all of their claims. All religions have human fingerprints all over them and the Christian religion has never even come close to proving that there is anything true about their claims that a god created the world about 6,000 years ago in a fit of creation that lasted 6 literal days.
If that were true the Sumerians and other people living in the Fertile Crescent at the time would have sure been surprised…they had already built a large city or two and were in the middle of perfecting agriculture and culture building. They and their brethren in Jericho had been advancing civilization for a few thousand years already.
It must have pretty disconcerting for the Chinese, Indus Valley, East Indian, European, Asian, Australian, North and South American peoples that had thriving cities, culture, and advanced civilizations already going by 6,000 years ago. In the Fertile Crescent I wonder what the existing people did when Adam and Eve were plopped down in their midst? I mean they were intellectual infants…didn’t know how to farm, hitch up a water buffalo to a plow, make cheese or beer or anything useful, and they kept running around naked for god’s sake. And where were their bellybuttons??
God must have phoned in the creation of Adam and Eve, because he created them with absolutely no skills or inbreed knowledge of the world and its ways. The Sumerians however already knew mathematics and about the seasons and animal husbandry, maybe some astronomy, and a myriad of other things necessary to survive in a cold and cruel world. They had known these things for thousands of years before God “Created the Earth” in 6,000 BC.
“If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we’re going?” -Justin Brown
This past Tuesday an off-duty Muslim police officer boarded a train in Southern Egypt and opened fire on a group of Coptic Christians, killing one and wounding 4 others. This comes less than 2 weeks after the New Years bombing massacre that killed 25 Coptic Christians at their church in Alexandria
The state news agency, MENA, quoted an Interior Ministry official as saying a Muslim police officer boarded a Cairo-bound train in the town of Samalut in Minya province and began firing a handgun. The official said a 71-year-old Coptic man was killed and his wife and four other Christians — three women and a man — were wounded.
I wonder if this Muslim police officer was a moderate or extremist. You can’t really tell by looking at them can you? Most people would assume that the good guys work for the cops, but that does not seem to be true anymore does it?
This just naturally leads into the next story.
David Briggs, writing in Tuesdays Huffington Post reports that a new study is showing that Muslim-controlled countries are far worse in allowing religious freedoms and human rights
He writes:
“Few nations keep their vows when it comes to religious freedom.
Churches are attacked on Christmas in India and Egypt. Religious believers in North Korea are tortured in prison camps. Hindus and Sikhs are harassed in Afghanistan.
“Despite routine constitutional promises to the contrary, religious freedoms are denied around the globe and violent persecution is pervasive,” Brian Grim of the Pew Research Center and Roger Finke of Pennsylvania State University report in a new book.
Yet even amid this widespread disregard for religious freedom, one group of countries stands out: Muslim-majority nations.
“Religious persecution is not only more prevalent among Muslim-majority countries, but it also generally occurs at more severe levels,” Grim and Finke write in The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century.”
So not only are Muslim-controlled countries persecuting more people, but they are much more severe in their persecution. The Muslims really like to kill people…Jews and Christians particularly, for the smallest offense. You know like writing about Islam and telling all just how stupid, evil and blood-thirsty the religion really is. Or maybe wanting to believe in another religion and leave Islam in the sh-t-heap of history where it belongs. If I was writing this blog in Iraq or India or any of several dozen other countries that are bogged down in this horrible medieval cult of murderers, I would be, in a very short time, killed by a righteous Muslim gunman.
Islam cannot survive in the light of day; it cannot endure close rational, non-sectarian examination, by logical and truthful people. It has even more problems than Christianity in its dogma and Koran with logic, misunderstanding, absurdities, inconsistencies, contradictions, ethics and precepts problems a-plenty.
Christian Fundamentalists and ALL Muslims hold it to be true that if the Bible or Koran is without error or inconsistency, it must be the work of God, and because it is the work of God, it must be without error or inconsistency. It seems not to matter which proposition comes first, the other is thought to follow. Perfect example here of circular reasoning that is to be found in almost all religious thought.
Some of the findings that authors Grim and Finke write about in: “The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century.”
• 78 percent of Muslim-majority countries, compared with 10 percent of Christian-majority countries and 43 percent of other nations, had high levels of government restrictions on religion.
• Violent religious persecution is present in every country with a Muslim majority with a population of more than 2 million.
• 62 percent of Muslim-majority countries had at least moderate levels of persecution, with more than 200 people persecuted. In comparison, 28 percent of Christian-majority nations and 60 percent of other countries had similar levels of abuse.
• At the highest levels of persecution, 45 percent of Muslim-majority countries — more than four times the percentage of Christian-majority countries — were found to have more than a thousand people abused or displaced because of religion.
To me, this is a real good indicator of just how evil this religion is. It talks peace and love, but is shown by cold hard statistics to be ruthless and unforgiving in the real world. It doesn’t deserve any respect and should not be allowed in civilized company.
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It seems that Sweden is very quickly being taken over by Muslims, and the rest of the western world should be taking notes and preparing themselves, as we are in a 400 year old war with Islam and most people don’t even know it.
Excerpt from a story by Fjordman in Europe News
“On the 11th of December 2010, the first-ever suicide bombing in Scandinavia occurred when Taimour Abdulwahab, an Iraqi-born Muslim and Swedish citizen with a wife and children in Luton, Britain, was carrying explosives and mistakenly set off an explosion near a busy Christmas shopping street in Stockholm just before he could murder dozens of people.”
Here was a man who had a good life, a good family and one would think every reason in the world to be satisfied and live in peace. But, his mind was contaminated with a terrible religious virus called “Islam”. This virus causes its victims to do crazy things like takeover airplanes and fly them into occupied buildings, strap bombs to their bodies and kill innocent men, women, and children, kill (or try to) cartoonists for drawing a likeness of Muhammad, kill their women who talk to a single Christian, or in some way besmirch the family “honor”.
“Prohibiting all forms of criticism or mockery of Islam and its Prophet is an essential part of Sharia, Islamic religious law. According to Islamic historical sources, individuals such as the poetess Asma bint Marwan were killed by the followers of Muhammad for having done nothing other than mocking Islam. This then became a part of the Sunna, the personal example of Muhammad and his companions, which is the most authoritative source of Islamic law next to the Koran itself. It was for the same reason that Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam in 2004. Yes, mainstream, traditional Islam today stipulates that those who mock Islam deserve to be murdered. No other major religion on this planet dictates anything similar.” My emphasis. This alone is legal reason to outlaw Islam.
“If a single non-Muslim says anything critical about Islam, his entire community can in principle be punished for this. Basically, this means that if one cartoonist in Germany, the USA or Denmark makes a cartoon mocking Muhammad, this could potentially trigger Jihadist terrorist attacks against his entire country for “waging a war against Islam,” because his “tribe” is held collectively responsible for his actions. This was exactly the Islamic logic behind Taimour Abdulwahab’s terror attack in Stockholm. There is no such thing as an individual in this culture; the tribe is everything. Muslims, being good hypocrites, are always the first following an Islamic terrorist attack to state that all Muslims should not be punished for the actions of a few,yet this is precisely what their own laws prescribe for non-Muslims.” My emphasis. This shows how treacherous the Islamic religion is…they cannot to be trusted under any circumstance.
This just in (late 12-31-10)…Muslims set off bomb outside a church in Egypt, killing at least 11 Christians of the Copt sect. Watch for details on your local news on New Year’s Day…so sad.
“Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political person, faction, or class, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.
Don’t be fooled by your local Muslims talk of Islam being a religion of peace…it is not…it wants to rule our world and it is working tirelessly to that end.
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It is the oldest, most vicious, and most profitable con that governments all over the world use. Some wars are probably warranted, such as the war against Hitler and the Japanese empire. Some are just totally unjustified ways of killing off our children in the pursuit of some perverse national objective or business for relatives, friends, or business associates…such as the Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan debacles.
Politicians of all stripes and parties routinely lie and mislead their constituents and the whole country into believing a big lie, not admitting even to themselves that they are leading innocent people to their death and wide spread redistribution of money from taxpayers to government coffers and ultimately to their friends (and their own) bank accounts. It is cold and cruel and calculated evil of the first order and it doesn’t seem to faze any politicians at all.
The only ones to profit are politicians, businesses, and bankers. The profits are dollars…the losses are the deaths of our children and tens of thousands, or more, civilians who have the misfortune to be in the way. The general public pays…a few evil people make billions and the propaganda campaigns distort the actual truths so no one is held responsible for the carnage.
The real but not advertised toll of wars are newly placed gravestones, shattered minds, mangled bodies, broken homes, broken hearts, depression, economic instability, and mind-boggling tax bills for our future generations and all of these combine and contribute to our sense of constant struggle and loss of stability in our lives. We have a predatory government that feeds on its citizens.
For the very few the racket of war brings immense profits, but as always the cost of the operation of war is paid by us…the people who keep getting bamboozled.
Kind of reminds me of the Wall Street bailout too. We take the losses…the billionaires take the profit.
In our current war with Iraq and Afghanistan compare what’s happening or happened there and go ahead and get really mad. Our past and present (Bush/Obama) presidents have totally wasted billions and billions (some say Trillions) of dollars, but more importantly thousands and thousands of our young and bright sons and daughters in a useless and criminally misguided campaign. Does the word Vietnam bring back any memories to you? (We lost that one too). And do you know what we get out of it…for the average person nothing but a tremendous tax bill that our children and grandchildren will still be paying for when we are dead and buried.
The government has effectively mortgaged our and our baby’s souls to pay for this. We are nothing but a future source of income for the feds.
Think of what you have been duped into believing and check out the facts that both the Vietnam war and the Iraq/Afghanistan war were sold to us by our elected officials by using known falsehoods and manipulated data. Look at your Senators and Congress person and even your president…do they look concerned that thousands of our young people and as much as a million civilians in Iraq/Afghanistan have been killed in Iraq/Afghanistan? Ask them for honest opinions and see what you get.
These were/are not wars to secure American freedoms, rather they are wars of profit for a selected few…they have done nothing but divide our people, kill our young, and disillusion the nation.
How long will we as a people put up with getting swindled by our own government?
Quote of the day
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?”—Blaise Pascal
Protestants who are reminded of their religion do more good deeds and trust that other people will do so, as well. But when Catholics are reminded of their religion, they do less public service and are less trusting that others will do so. Cornell News Service
Tehran, Iran: Morals squads venture forth once more to police the cosmopolitan, fashionable and uninhibited in the name of religion. Yale Global Online
Former first lady Laura Bush revealed in an interview this week that she supports the legalization of same-sex marriage and abortion. The Christian Post
Is it not a fact that Osama bin Laden invoked God when he directed his hijacked suicide airliner s into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001?
But is it also not a fact that President George W. Bush invoked God when he unleashed his missiles and bombers on the people of Iraq?
Palestinians have likewise invoked God when they strapped dynamite to their waists and boarded a crowded bus or entered a public restaurant in Israel to destroy themselves and anyone who happens to be near.
The Jews in Israel have invoked God as they sent their tanks into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to knock down houses that were thought to provide shelter to their enemies, believing this to be the appropriate and righteous response to the terror that victimized them.
Catholics and Protestants have both invoked God as they killed each other in Ireland, the last gasp of a dying fury that spawned a thirty-year religious war and in 1588 propelled the Spanish Armada to a watery grave as it sought to win back Protestant England for the Vatican. Bishop John Shelby Spong, The Sins of Scripture, 2005
Adding to the above mentioned deadly actions fueled by religion is the Crusades and the many wars between Catholics and Protestants in the Middle Ages and the other modern day conflicts such as Kosovo/Bosnia/Cyprus/East Timor/Kashmir/Kurdistan/ etc, etc.
The specter of Catholics and Protestants down on their knees praying to the exact same Yahweh/Jehovah for victory over their opponents is just laughable and totally ridiculous. How on earth can those people involved keep a straight face when they do the praying. How do they deal with the incongruity of asking God to kill others…knowing that the others are praying for the same thing, to the same God.
Quote of the day:
“The millions of Christians in this country reflect just about every conceivable political point of view. For one highly conservative group to proclaim itself ‘the Christian Coalition’ strikes me as decidedly un-Christian arrogance…. We reflect countless races, religions and lifestyles, and we often differ on questions of morality and behavior. The only way so diverse a nation can survive is by all of us practicing a high degree of tolerance. But tolerance is not the way of the Christian right. Its leaders want to impose their one-size-fits-all morality on everyone. It won’t work. When any group tries to impose its values on everyone else, the result will inevitably be resentment, hatred and violence.” Senator Warren Rudman…Amen to that 🙂
There are roughly 1.8 billion Muslims in this world. Of those, about 900,000,000 are women and female children. A large percentage of these women and children are arguably the most abused humans on earth. The males in the Islamic societies literally hold the power of life or death over them. The laws of their lands, more often then not, either do not have laws against violence on females and they look the other way, or in some cases actually sanction the violent beatings and mistreatment of women. Stoning to death or throwing acid in a woman’s face is not uncommon in the Muslim world.
In various Muslim controlled countries women may not go outside without a husband or close family male relative. They may not hold jobs or drive cars or do anything that somehow puts them over or in control of a male. If they are allowed to go outside at all they may have to take segregated or female only buses. They may not speak loudly, they may not appear on the balcony of their home, they may not appear on TV or radio shows, they may not appear in pictures in newspapers, books, shops, or their homes. In Saudi Arabia non related women and men are strictly segregated in public and males have full and total control over women in their family
In Islamic culture it is often socially acceptable to kill girls and women who are suspected of “immoral behavior”. This is done to “preserve the family honor”
In 1990, Iraq issued a decree effectively allowing men to kill their wives, daughters or sisters for adultery.
In Pakistan, current penal laws stipulate stoning to death as the maximum penalty for murder. Unlike man, however, an accused woman is not allowed to testify on her own behalf. Women who claim to have been raped are often imprisoned for committing ‘zina’, sex outside marriage. In maximum-sentence rape cases, women’s testimonies carry no weight. They must produce four adult, pious, male Muslims who actually witnessed the crime. An estimated 2000 women languish in Pakistani jails under ordinances governing such crimes as ‘zina’. http://www.themodernreligion.com/ugly/ugly_women.htm
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The top officials of the fundamentalist regime in Iran emphasize that it is the “sacred” responsibility of a woman to serve her husband and take care of the household. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the mullahs’ “supreme leader,” has declared that “women’s first job is to be a wife and mother.” Khamenei dismissed the notion of women’s equal participation in social life in July 1997 as “negative, primitive and childish.”
It has become common practice to sell or force very young girls to marry much older husbands, giving rise to all sorts of social ills. Adineh magazine wrote in summer 1991: “An 11-year-old girl was married off to a 27-year-old man. The father, who had seven daughters, received $300 for his consent. The morning after the marriage ceremonies, the girl was taken to hospital suffering from severe lacerations to her genitals.” http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/mhviran.htm
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“A Yemeni-American woman sought advice from several imams after her Yemeni husband of just a few months started to slap, punch and degrade her.
The clerics offered marriage counseling, but only if the husband came too, a condition she knew doomed the idea. Her sister suggested she lose weight and be more obedient. Her father encouraged obedience, too, while her husband hit her through three pregnancies. After she filed for divorce, she said, her father hauled her home and hit her too, for shaming him.
In Islamic culture it is often socially acceptable to kill girls and women who are suspected of “immoral behavior”. This is done to “preserve the family honor”
Recently the case of early marriage in Yemen has come to light, especially after the divorce of a little girl last month,” said Amatalrazaq Hummad, Yemen’s Minister of Social Affairs, in an interview with the Qatari daily Al-Watan.
Hummad was referring to the case of ‘Noujoud’, the first eight-year-old child to obtain a divorce from her husband who is in his early 30s, through a court in Sanaa.
Verse 34 of an-Nisa is one of the most important verses for husband and wife relationship in Islam. In most translations, it gives permission to men to beat/hit (they both have the same word in Arabic) their wives if they fear “rebellion,” or “nushûz“. Many interpretive problems have arisen regarding the occasions (if any) on which beating is appropriate, the type of beating prescribed, and whether beating remains discountenanced even if acceptable.
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The incidence (of wife abuse) in many Muslim-majority countries (where women hide their bruises and little is ever reported to authorities) is uncertain, but believed to be great by Muslim feminists. In some Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, reports indicate that domestic violence is quite widespread. One recent study, in Syria, found that 25% of the married women surveyed said that they had been beaten by their husbands.
One study found that half of Palestinian women have been the victims of domestic violence. A WHO study in Babol found that within the previous year 15.0% of wives had been physically abused, 42.4% had been sexually abused and 81.5% had been psychologically abused (to various degrees) by their husbands, blaming low income, young age, unemployment and low education.
A 1987 study conducted by the Women’s Division and another study by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 1996 suggested that domestic violence takes place in approximately 80 percent of the households in the country. In Pakistan, domestic violence occurs in forms of beatings, sexual violence or torture, mutilation, acid attacks and burning the victim alive (bride burning). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_domestic_violence
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Now other countries and societies have problems with violence against women, but most of them don’t have religious and governmental agencies on the side of the male offender. Most humane and Democratic and civilized countries punish men who beat, kill, and rape women and female children…or any child for that matter. Muslim controlled countries mostly do not. Isn’t Allah the same God as the Christian one?
You know, 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?
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?
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.
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
The Catholic Church faces a real conundrum; on the one hand they do accept much of evolution and the things that it implies. They do accept that much of the Old Testament is nothing but allegory, the Noachian Flood was not real, the earth (and universe) is billions of years old…not 6000, etc.. These tales […]
The things that the Reverend Barber is railing against here are the favorite projects of the Republican Party nowadays. They do not help America anymore, they are destroying it piece by piece. “It is extreme and immoral to suppress the right to vote,” It is extreme and immoral to deny Medicaid for millions of poor […]
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