Homo-sapiens and God

Christopher Hitchens– “Hitch”– Thankfully his words live on…

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Of course the ‘Creationists’ get around this by swearing that our ability to age-date artifact, rocks, and other items is faulty and the earth has only been around for 6,000 years, but we know they are mislead and very very wrong.

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The Elite 1% Are Taking Over The World

“As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break the last vestiges of unions, slashed jobs, froze wages, threw millions of people out of their homes, and stood by idly as we created a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed.”
Chris Hedges, This Time We’re Taking The Whole Planet With Us, truthdig.com, 3-7-2011
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Did a Divine Jesus Really Exist or Was He Just Human

The following list is of the historians and writers who lived in the same area and within Christ’s alleged lifetime or within a hundred years after his death

Apollonius         Persius
Appian                Petronius
Arrian                 Phaedrus
Aulus Gellius    Philo-Judaeus
Columella           Phlegon
Damis                  Pliny the Elder
Dio Chrysostom     Pliny the Younger
Dion Pruseus       Plutarch
Epictetus              Pompon Mela
Favorinus             Ptolemy
Florus Lucius       Quintilian
Hermogones         Quintius Curtius
Josephus                Seneca
Justus of Tiberius     Silius Italicus
Juvenal                    Statius
Lucanus                   Suetonius
Lucian                      Tacitus
Lysias                       Theon of Smyran
Martial                     Valerius Flaccus
Paterculus              Valerius Maximus
Pausanias

However, aside from two passages in the works of a Jewish writer mentioned above and two heavily disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there just isn’t any contemporary–or soon after his death, mention of Jesus Christ in the writing of scholars and historians.

Philo (20 BC-50 AD) was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived well after the reputed death of Christ.

Philo was the one who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate (Jesus himself) supposedly dwelt in that land, and in the presence of multitudes he revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers–Philo apparently never knew it.

His writings include an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ was said to exist on earth.  He lived in or near Jerusalem when Christ was supposedly born and when the Herod massacre occurred. Philo was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem; he was there when the crucifixion and reputed earthquake, supernatural darkness, and the resurrection of the dead zombies in the graveyard took place. – He never wrote about it.

Had these events really taken place you would think the word would spread all over the Middle East and Mediterranean world which at the time was teaming with religious fervor and many many stories going around about a Messiah.  Here was a man who would be the Messiah, who raised the dead and cured incurable diseases and yet no one wrote of him.

Justus of Tiberius was a Jewish author and historian who lived in the second half of the 1st century AD and was a native of Christ’s own country, Galilee. He wrote a history covering this time of Christ’s reputed existence. Sadly the original work has perished, but Photius, a Christian scholar and critic of the ninth century who was acquainted with it says: “He (Justus) makes not the least mention of the appearances of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did” (Photius’ Bibliotheca, code 33).

“Josephus:  (37 – c.100 AD) Late in the first century, Josephus wrote his celebrated work, “The Antiquities of the Jews”, giving a history of his race from the earliest ages down to his own time. Modern versions of this work contain the following passage:

“‘Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Book XVIII, Chapter iii, Section 3)

For sixteen hundred years or so Christians have been citing this passage as a testimonial, to the historical existence, and the divine character of Jesus Christ. However most all Biblical scholars agree that the sentence is probably a pious forgery written by a scribe or zealous Christian many years after Josephus.

Consider:

“Its brevity disproves its authenticity. Josephus’ work is voluminous and exhaustive. It comprises twenty books. Whole pages are devoted to petty robbers and obscure seditious leaders. Nearly forty chapters are devoted to the life of a single king. Yet this remarkable being, the greatest product of his race, a being of whom the prophets foretold ten thousand wonderful things, a being greater than any earthly king, is dismissed with a dozen lines.”– The Christ, John E. Remsburg, reprinted by Prometheus Books, New York, 1994, pages 171-3.

I’m divided on this…the man may have existed, but I really doubt he was the Messiah or divine in any way.  Just myths like the Old Testament.  Too much stuff just doesn’t add up…the whole story is incoherent and flawed…not a sign of a God inspired work.

“The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus… The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information — not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life”…Moncure D. Conway, Modern Thought

 YEAH!!!…I just heard that bastard  Osama bin Laden is dead 
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Christians Are Whiners

The Christian complains about an increasingly secular world, but the Republican Party is controlled by right wing evangelical fundamentalists.  No atheists allowed

The Air Force academy in Colorado is run by right wing evangelical fundamentalists. You either bend to what they want or you are an outcast and stand to lose your appointment.

“Evangelical Christians are at it again. The proselytizing only-through-Christ bunch have now taken up desecration of non-Christian religious sites: Not Jews this time but Wiccans. What the hell goes through the minds of these evangelicals who think they can tell other religions—at a military academy no less—what to believe? At their core, evangelicals who despise pluralism are infantile.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/03/christians-desecrate-wiccan-religious-site-at-air-force-academy/

The troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq are of the same family group of fundamentalists and they threaten the lives of atheist troops.

In most of the South and especially throughout the “Bible Belt” you are mostly a social outcast if you don’t fall into the dominant Christian group of your town- i.e. Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.

In the Middle East and Much of Asia if you decline membership in the Islamic religion you are a social outcast to 98 percent or more of the population…if you’re Jewish you are dead-meat.

In China the Christian believing population is exploding so fast the government is scrambling to keep up and control it.

In Australia the churches have access to school classes and it is smiled upon by the government.

So I’m just wondering where the hell Christians are getting this bit about secularism is getting worse and worse.  Maybe in Europe, where it is predicted that nine countries will go atheist in the next few years, but I certainly don’t see it in the rest of the world.

Christians are just a bunch of whiners anyway. 🙂

“None of today’s problems are caused by Atheists – just think about it.” Cobourg Atheists

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Is God The Basis For Our Morality

A correspondent writes the following to me”

“In regards to atheism, if you show me how something can come out of nothing I will convert to!”

Sure I can show you something that came out of nothing…the myth about gods…any god.  There was never any proof for any god…still isn’t, and yet some people swear that a god somehow controls who they are and what they do…what happened to free-will?
He then continues:

“Moreover my question in regards to killing was not why you wouldnt do it, its more of what instills that ideology or law in your persona. Why are we born with this mentality, who instilled it in us at birth?” <sic>

When early man was roaming the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago the evidence seems to show that humans hunted and killed each other with abandon. This went on for a looong time and probably reached its climax in early Biblical times and up until the Catholic Church was usurped as a political power over humans.  Nowadays there are so many of us and we have the ability to choose who rules over us (mostly), and it’s politically incorrect to kill citizens with abandon. Humans have the innate desire for self preservation and the smart ones realize that they must act with compassion towards others if they expect the same back to them.

Of course there are some religions that continue to kill with seemingly no consequences.  They do this by targeting enemies and citizens alike…scaring everyone to death.  Christianity’s last big fling at this process was Hitler’s time; who along with the explicit help of the Catholic Church (which was violently against Jews at the time) and eventually the Lutheran’s and such…contrived to wipe Jews off the face of the earth.  Of course we know they also went after the mentally deficient, the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s witnesses, some other small sects, and of course anybody who disagreed with them.

Muslims are pretty much stuck in the 7^th Century, where they will probably stay as long as the religion is allowed to continue.  In the Middle East and some other parts of the third world they (Muslim’s) continue to kill with impunity, and of course the leaders are fanatically trying to bring this practice to America.  The Muslim Allah is supposed to be the same as the Christian and Jewish God…is He (God/Allah/Yahweh) also instilling the same innate reverence for life and morality in the Muslim’s as Christianity is supposed to have.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that the argument that God/Allah/Yahweh provides humans with their basis for morals or reverence for life stands up.  It’s only the last few years that these things and the concurrent arguments have started to appear and that more or less seems to be simultaneous with higher civilization.

Early Christianity may have spouted morality, but the record shows that it is responsible for millions of deaths, what with all the many religious wars, which, by the way, continue today in many places in the world.

Also for your consideration is the Catholic/Spanish Inquisitions and the witch hunts of the Dark Ages in which as many as three million innocent people were put to death by “Christianity.”

We should also remember that the Spanish Christian’s of the 15^th and 16^th Century and the later European Christians killed or enslaved as many as 100,000,000 indigenous people of the North, Central, and South America, and all the Caribbean Islands.

I wonder where their God given morals and reverence for life was.

Don’t forget that the early Hebrews were killing men, women, and children, whole tribes and all their animals.  And their “God” was telling them to do this…

Religion/God/Allah/Yahweh has never been a sound basis for morality, and it’s certainly not instilled in us from birth by some non-existent spirit floating in the sky.

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Human Rights vs. Government Rights

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” Abraham Lincoln, 1864

Down through time, during man’s ascendancy on this earth, we have had people who wielded power over us. It probably started out with the biggest and strongest of the group defying anyone in his tribe to stop him from telling them what to do, and backing it up with muscle and a big club.

Over time, as the tribes got bigger, there was probably some kind of system to pick the person who was discerned as the best candidate for the Job. The strongest, the most intelligent, or the one with the most backers, wife’s, or any combination of the above.

At some point in our history…our leaders came to believe that they were picked by ‘God’ or ‘the gods’ to fill the role of leader, and of course this was followed by some leaders thinking they were gods, and they started to picked their own successors. At any rate most of the leaders of humankind have had problems with the power they wielded. Hell, even Solomon was selling his people into slavery to enrich the treasury.

From the written history we have of the Middle Eastern world of Biblical times we know that the Kings and leaders of the time were always going to war to either overthrow another tribe and take their animals, crops, women, gold, tactical location, for sport, or they were defending themselves from bloodthirsty Kings trying to do the same to them. These leaders, almost to the man, turned out to be wicked and corrupt. They had no sense of respect for the rights of humans they purported to represent and guide. The common man has always been cannon fodder for Kings and leaders throughout our human history. Used up and discarded.

As our recorded history continued through the Greeks, Romans, Catholic Popes, Kings in France, England, and elsewhere on the European and Asian continents, Kings and other unelected leaders have consistently taxed and starved and caused their subjects to die in any manner of ghastly ways while they go about spending tax money on and for themselves and their supporters. This has never changed.

Our leaders today; Kings, princes, presidents, military juntas, what have you; continue in this fine tradition even now. Some are more sophisticated than others. The military juntas say they had to take over from freely elected presidents because the president was leading the country the wrong way. So in the ‘interest of the people’ they take over the power.

Russian socialists just don’t seem to die out…they go away for awhile, but they keep sneaking back in, after all the ‘people’ don’t know how to rule themselves…only the party can realize the dream of equality for you. The Chinese, as always, copied and then morph into something hardly recognizable as communism any more.

America started out with high hopes and a radically new form of Government…where the ‘people’ actually had the power to vote out of office those they didn’t like. But, as always, the twin drugs of power and practically unlimited money took over, and men schemed and manipulated the unwritten rules, the laws, and the national parties and the common folk. Propaganda, misdirection, and manipulation of news or information access have been honed into highly effective tools to control people’s thoughts, actions and even thinking processes.

The political parties in America almost totally control the way our people think and act nowadays. They control every bit of money, all transactions of a monetary nature, in practically the whole world, are either now under their control or observation…or the politicians, and the flunky’s that work for them, are actively seeking the means to bring them under their control or observation in the near future.

Nowadays it’s a common practice to award No-Bid contracts worth billions of dollars to your campaign supporters or ex-employer, where in the past this was illegal. Actually this is still illegal, but the politicians just ignore the laws…and we let them get away with it…after all its unpatriotic to question or challenge our leaders. If you were to get too vocal in your protests then you might find yourself on a terrorist watch list, as some anti-war protesters in Maryland found out. Go Here for more.

Our leaders in the last seven years have managed to take away the right to petition a judge for a hearing if you’re arrested. This is a principle of law that goes back hundreds of years, in most countries the world over, and our leaders have decided that we don’t have that right anymore…they didn’t ask…they just took it away. It used to be that those in power had to go before a judge and show cause and ask for permission to search our homes or personal papers or computer…that was also taken away…this was a part of the constitutional law our ancestors fought the American Revolution over, and our leaders swear an oath to uphold.  No matter, we don’t need this protection any more…the poor outgunned federal government needs the power now.

This leader we all suffer under now has even promoted unlisted laws that they can’t tell us about. They are secret laws that you can be prosecuted on…but they can’t tell us exactly what they are and why we need them. We as a people had no input on this; we were not represented in their passing. Again people are put in the place of having no protection from the Kings.

Now some people will say we get the government we deserve, and that’s true to a certain degree. However I posit that the whole political process in American has been totally subverted and is mostly used to the advantage of the very, very rich and very, very powerful and to the detriment of the common people. America, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China are the most spied upon, politically controlled, and manipulated people in the world now. This is not just my perception, go here for more information

All of our electronic communications (emails, blogs, websites, cell phones and land line phones) are diverted to supercomputers that search and scan for anything out of the ordinary in our thoughts as expressed in our communications. As I’ve already mentioned all monetary transactions are now monitored so the government can get their unfair share of taxes. Billions, even Trillions of dollars of tax money have just disappeared with no explanations to us poor people who work really hard to succeed and pay their taxes. If we use too much cash money…the government suspects us of being drug dealers, money launderers, arms dealers or some such crap, and they promptly investigate. Even ex-Senator Bob Dole was caught up in this silliness.

Our government is inexorably moving to a kind of democratic dictatorship. Where we vote for those that would totally control our whole life…in all respects. They just slowly add things that enslave us. You don’t even notice them sneaking up on you.

Nothing ever truly changes in Kings and politics…it’s all about control, power, and money…always was.

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Did God Help the Hebrews?

“I’ve often thought that the Bible should have a disclaimer in front saying this is fiction” Ian McKellen

The Jewish people claim that Yahweh, Elohim, or God, pick whichever name you like, was the creator of the world …and humanity…and made himself known to Abraham as a God and protector of the Hebrew race. Not the human race, which was flourishing at the time, but the Jewish race.

Taking the numbers from the Bible, describing Huge battles involving thousands or hundreds of thousands of warriors, the population of earth had to be tremendous…in the millions and millions. ‘God’ picks Hebrews as ‘His’ people???

Now if you know anything about the history of the Middle East, Hebrews, Jews, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Judea, or any of the various tribal groups roaming around the Holy Land area, you know that the Hebrew tribes never were very successful as a country, or military power, or race for that matter.

They had three kings, all of three of which were hugely flawed. They were constantly revising their theology and beliefs. Many of them converted to other religions when they were dispersed at different times during their history. Now if you KNEW that your God was the only true one…how could you change your religion?

Time after time they go into battle and lose. They are conquered time and again, they are dispersed and exiled many times and finally the Romans conquer and destroy Jerusalem and what’s left of the Jews spread all over the world.

There is no real evidence of a ‘God’ helping them or being advantageous to their existence.

Do any of you ‘out there’ see some evidence of an omnipotent, omniscient being helping the Jews? I sure don’t.

Why would anybody want to carry on the worship of a God that so obviouly had no power over our world? Who would want to be associated with a ‘God’ that never helped it’s subjects? Why would you want to buy into that whole guilt and sin fantasy?

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Old Religious Flood Stories

So I’m talking with this guy about Noah’s ark and the Great flood. He tells me that most cultures, religions, and races have a flood myth.

I say to him “yeah, that’s because most old societies back then gathered and created towns and villages near a water source, and those sources would occasionally flood.”

“No,” he says, “I’m talking about the stories they tell about their god’s flooding the whole world and choosing some ‘good’ people to survive on a boat or raft. You know like Noah.”

I ask for examples, but he really doesn’t know any, he just knows that other religions and races have flood stories. We talk of other things for awhile and finally we go our separate ways.

Once at home I decide to research the flood stories on the Internet. I’ve heard this before, and never really researched it much. I found that many of the flood myths contain similar qualities

• Humans are guilty of sin or transgression against the gods
• A god or gods sends a flood as punishment.
• Instructions are sent to an individual to build a boat or craft of some kind.
• The instructions include ensuring the survival of all species…or at least some of them
• The flood destroys the old race of sinners
• After the flood, a new, less sinful race emerges to regenerate the species.

The Hebrew (Noah’s) flood is one of the few that can…kind of…be dated. Most of the Christian religious sects agree on a window of from 2700 to 2200 BC, with around 2300 to 2500 BC being the average. Of course, as I have wrote here before, there is absolutely no evidence for a world-wide flood anywhere near those dates. In fact there is no evidence for world-wide flooding at any past age.

The oldest story I have found is the Epic of Gilgamesh, tentatively dated at about 1000 or more years before the OT Hebrew legend. Since the Hebrew story has so many similarities to Gilgamesh, and the Gilgamesh story is out of Babylon, where the Jews just happened to spend a lot of time (think of the ‘Exile), and is where many scholars think the majority a lot of the OT was put to papyrus. By the way, you can see this late composition of the scriptures by noting that there are some glaring anachronisms in Genesis.

There are a number of flood stories that some scholars think have been polluted by early Christian proselytizers. These are primarily American Indian and South American Indian. (Minus the really old South American tribes) As you read some of the old stories you can see the Biblical influence.

So, yes there are many flood stories from around the world, but most of them disagree on the details, but some of them kind of agree. Why do you think this would be? Is there some kind of ‘group’ human memory going on here?

Believe me, if the people that research these kinds of things (geologists, archaeologists, etc.) ever found some kind of proof for a historical world-wide flood, and they have been looking down through the years, you would hear about it. A find of that magnitude would make him/her rich and famous.

There is a man, George Valas, of the National Technical Information Centre and Library, in Hungary who has an interesting theory. The full paper can be read: Here:

He writes:

“It is an old enigma whether the myths of Flood obtained in different mythologies created independently of each other in different parts of the world are based on real events or not. The paleoclimatologic research obtained in the late eighties that the melting was extremely violent in some periods of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, creating “ideal” conditions for cataclysmic floods, more violent than we can imagine now. The period about 8250 B.C., the years after so called Younger Dryas episode of severe refreezing rises above the others of such periods with the second most violent melting of the whole Pleistocene-Holocene transition, with strongly increased seasonality concentrating the melting to a short period within the year, and a monsoon activity in the presently arid Middle East 30% stronger than it is observed in the contemporary monsoon zone. It is very likely that this coincidence of circumstances might cause such cataclysmic floods that may cause to born the myths of Flood.

A series of the largest natural catastrophes in the history of mankind can perhaps be discovered by comparison of recent results in paleoclimatology with traditions of religions. The origin of the biblical myth of the Flood is an ancient enigma that is complicated by similar myths in other beliefs in other parts of the world. An old hypothesis suggested that in the background of these myths there were real floods of cataclysmic size. Attempts to identify these real floods or find any connection between them have as yet been unsuccessful. However, recent paleoclimatic investigations have put this enigma in a new light, as a consequence of which it seems likely that all these floods took place during the last deglaciation period, during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene. The most likely time for the biblical Flood is about 8,250 B.C. (10,200 B.P.), the end of the Younger Dryas cold episode.

Given that the text of the Old Testament should not be taken literally, one of the first questions is: Do verses 7:10-7:12, 7:17-7:24, and 8:2-8:11 of Genesis reflect some real event? Was there any real flood of unprecedented size in the background of the biblical myth of the Flood? Even though one of accepted answers is that indeed there was (Tokarev (ed.) 1982), attempts to identify the geological layers of that flood have been unsuccessful. One possible reason for this may be the incorrect dating of the supposed event.

The situation is complicated by other similar myths in other beliefs in other parts of the world, from Sumerian Ziusudra myth through different Indian and Chinese myths to a large variety of myths of flood among different native American nations and tribes (Tokarev (ed.) 1982). It is not likely at all that these myths are spread from one centre, because

i) There are too great differences between them (Tokarev (ed.)1982);

ii) The cultures in the Middle East, in India, in China, and in
Americas developed independently of each other in the last
20,000 years (Barraclough and Stone 1990).

A real flood of global size is simply impossible, because the amount of all water on the Earth is far not enough for a “global” flood: any real floods in the background of these different myths had to be different ones (except the Biblical and the Sumerian myths that can reflect the same event observed independently of each other by two different populations at two different places). Despite it being difficult to imagine that these different myths reflect events completely independent of each other, there is no evidence of any connection between these different floods.”

There is more to this paper, and it’s an easy read, you may want to follow the link. Here

That makes two theories now, if you also consider the Black Sea Deluge , that make infinitely more sense to explain this damnable flood story that the Hebrews wrote of and the Christians gloomed onto as the workings of Yahweh, Elohim, El, Jehovah, or whatever. The other cultures also attributed ‘their’ flood to their gods, but Christianity says they are false gods so their stories are not true…well maybe Yahweh is false too. These are just old stories and myths; they can’t be proven, but most of the assertions (Noah’s two or seven of every animal, only 8 people survived, etc.) can be disproved.

The Christians just keep trying to put a square peg into a round hole. Maybe they need to regroup and rethink the reality out here.

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Gas Prices…Whats up?

OK, so Iraq is now producing more oil than it did before we trashed their country. Read this on the net, so it must be true.

The other oil producing countries in the MiddleEast seem to be producing as much. The humongous oil tankers still seem to be chugging around all over the world.

Our oil refineries on the gulf coast have had plenty of time for repair after being slammed by Katrina.

Where the hell is our $1.50 a gallon gasoline??