The Jesus Myth

.Christopher Hitchens on Jesus and the Exodus
.

The Fall of Man

The Fall of Man as seen by Thomas Paine

“The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tête-à-tête is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit: or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women and doing more mischief.

But instead of this they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole—the secret of which is that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the pit—let him out again—gave him a triumph over the whole creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Authors emphasis 

Advertisement

Much of Religion is Falsifiable

Fal si fi a ble
“Able to be proven false, and therefore testable; as, most religious beliefs are not falsifiable and therefore outside the scope of experimental science”  Webster’s revised unabridged Dictionary

 The Christian religion makes many falsifiable claims about itself. It likes to tell its members that prayer is answered and is effective in curing sicknesses and helps in almost any situation.  Your pastor or priest or rabbi will not tell you about all the studies that have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that prayer is totally useless, other than as a ‘positive thinking’ or placebo exercise.

Those unlucky people who have had an arm or leg amputation, have never had their prayers answered to regrow said limb…in all of earthly recorded history.

Those two undeniable ‘facts’ completely falsify the Christian claim that prayer does work.  So I wonder why this is?  It seems that Christians would have caught on by now.  Remember Texas Governor Perry having his little prayer meeting trying to get some rain in the state to relieve a terrible drought?   The fires broke out and Texas has had the worst fire season ever…way to go god.

1.  Prayer is a falsifiable claim of Christianity. And it has been proven false.

Since the 1600’s or so science has been relentlessly working on many many projects that have inadvertently invaded the claims and assertions of religion.  Other than the people who write for the Biblical Archaeological Review the scientists whose field is archaeology, paleontology, biology, geology, physical anthropology, or radiometric dating do not work to try and prove the Bible…nor do they work to disprove it.  They simply do their job and report what they find without prejudice.

Likewise the field of genetics, although a relatively new science, it, along with other earth sciences, in just a few short years has made tremendous strides in defining our humanness and ancestry and giving us a sense of history that defies and falsifies what religion has been telling us for thousands of years.

What these sciences together have done is falsify most of the books of Genesis and Exodus.  We now have convincing scientific evidence that falsifies the stories that generation after generation was brainwashed with and told were true history.  From about 500+- AD when the Bible was canonized till the middle of the 20^th century, people who doubted the Christian religion and God were mostly without proofs of what they believed…not any longer.

Now we know where all of us humans came from…Africa…and most likely the Ethiopian area…and most likely about 50,000 + years ago.  Archaeologists and paleontologists have been saying this for years, and just in the last few years genetics and DNA has confirmed this. We have found proof that our ancestors mated successfully with Neanderthals.  There is new evidence (that is not fully confirmed yet), that our ancestors mated with some other ancient hominids.  The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable…we are not guessing anymore…we have the proof to back it up.

We don’t need a physical ‘missing link’ anymore…we can follow our history in the blood and DNA.  We are the last surviving representative of the genus Homo…which is estimated to be 2.3 to 2.4 million years old…we have really ancient ancestors, we can no longer deny this.  We are not related to a mythical ‘Adam and Eve’ or to the mythical sons of Noah.

2.  Adam and Eve is a falsified claim of Christianity…they are just a Biblical myth. ***

This is going to cost the Christian community a big case of heartburn.  Because of Paul inventing ‘Original Sin’ in the New Testament and placing the blame on Adam and Eve’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.  ***There are additional falsified claims in Genesis.

Because of ‘Original Sin’ concept Christianity needs the first couple…badly.  The whole of the need for Jesus was Paul saying that through Adam and Eve’s disobedience and downfall, sin passed down to all of mankind, Jesus had to provide a blood-sacrifice to expiate the sins we humans all have.  Think of this…a blood sacrifice to a god…how insane and silly is that?

Does any of this sound suspicious and slightly familiar?  Didn’t the old civilizations in South America and the really old cultures in the Middle East, and elsewhere kill people as sacrifices to god or the god’s?  Blood sacrifices…like Jesus.

From Wikipedia:
“In Trinitarian Christian teaching, God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, sacrificing his first-born son to accomplish the reconciliation of God and humanity, which had separated itself from God through sin (see the concept of original sin). According to a view that has featured prominently in Western theology since early in the 2nd millennium, God’s justice required an atonement for sin from humanity if human beings were to be restored to their place in creation and saved from damnation. However, God knew limited human beings could not make sufficient atonement, for humanity’s offense to God was infinite, so God created a covenant with Abraham, which he fulfilled when he sent his only Son to become the sacrifice for the broken covenant. In Christian theology, this sacrifice replaced the insufficient animal sacrifice of the Old Covenant; Christ the “Lamb of God” replaced the lambs’ sacrifice of the ancient Korban Todah (the Rite of Thanksgiving), chief of which is the Passover in the Mosaic Law.

3.  The need for Jesus as a blood sacrifice for ‘Original Sin’ is falsified by the non-existence of Adam and Eve.

Most archaeologists and earth scientists have known for years that there was never any evidence of the Hebrews (a million + strong) living in and subsequently leaving Egypt.  Repeated surveys of the Sinai desert by the best scientists in their field has never found the slightest bit of evidence for the Hebrew passage and their camping out for 40 years. There are no Egyptian records or writings supporting the myth of half or more of their population leaving suddenly. This is a non-event…it has no scientific attestation at all.

4.  The truth of the Exodus and the supernatural events that follow in the myth has been falsified by over a hundred years of searching for the slightest evidence…and not finding any.

In the thousands of years of human history, magical or supernatural explanations of phenomena have never once been proved…and natural explanations have ALWAYS worked. Never the other way round.

There is more to all of this, but it’s past my bedtime. 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml
http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/BioBookDNAMOLGEN.html
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/atlas.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
http://humanorigins.si.edu/
http://www.becominghuman.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/index.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#Judaism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_violence.

.

 

Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels

The Christian religion has had a few thousand years now to make a case for the fundamental concepts it pushes upon our world.  It has failed spectacularly to show ANY evidence for supernatural or magical forces, the existence of angels or demons or Satan, the efficacy of any ones prayers, the infallibility of heavens emissaries on earth (the Popes). It has failed horribly, and has never done what it claims it can do.

Of course I am not, by any means, the only person to understand this and note the inconsistencies and illogic that runs rampant throughout their beliefs.  Despite this several thousand years of apologetics and trying to clean up their Bible of the many mistakes it continues to be an unproven hypothesis.

“Many people– then and now– have assumed that these letters [of Paul] are genuine, and five of them were in fact incorporated into the New Testament as “letters of Paul.” Even today, scholars dispute which are authentic and which are not. Most scholars, however, agree that Paul actually wrote only eight of the thirteen “Pauline” letters now included in the New Testament collection: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Virtually all scholars agree that Paul himself did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus– letters written in a style different from Paul’s and reflecting situations and viewpoints in a style different from those in Paul’s own letters. About the authorship of Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, debate continues; but the majority of scholars include these, too, among the “deutero-Pauline”– literally, secondarily Pauline– letters.”
Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

“When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged or dressed them up”.   Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

“All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical reason to accept these attributions.”
Steve Mason, professor of religious studies, York University,  Toronto

“A generation after Jesus’ death, when the Gospels were written, the Romans had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple (in 70 C.E.); the most influential centers of Christianity were cities of the Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus and Rome. Although large numbers of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews came to predominate in the early Church. They controlled how the Gospels were written after 70 C.E.”
Bruce Chilton, Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College

“Other scholars have concluded that the Bible is the product of a purely human endeavor, that the identity of the authors is forever lost and that their work has been largely obliterated by centuries of translation and editing.”
Jeffery L. Sheler,“ Who Wrote the Bible,” (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

“The clerical confessions of lies and frauds in the ponderous volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia alone suffice …to wreck the Church and to destroy utterly the Christian religion…. The Church exists mostly for wealth and self-aggrandizement; to quit paying money to the priests would kill the whole scheme in a couple of years. This is the sovereign remedy.” Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity

“Enterprising spirits responded to this natural craving by pretended gospels full of romantic fables, and fantastic and striking details; their fabrications were eagerly read and accepted as true by common folk who were devoid of any critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The former had no motive other than that of a Pious Fraud.”  Catholic Encyclopedia

“The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud.” “The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy.” Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, “Ecclesiastical History”, Vol. I, p. 347

Many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In Ecclesiastical History, he writes, “We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwords to posterity.” (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, “How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived” (Vol. 12, chapter 32).

There is not the slightest bit of physical evidence that supports a historical Jesus; there are no artifacts or dwellings, no works of carpentry, no written manuscripts (by Jesus), nothing.  All we have are writings from other people and there is no contemporary recording of the man/God nothing written while he was alive.  All documents about Jesus came well after his supposed life on earth from people who had never even met him, from unknown authors, or from fraudulent mythical /allegorical writings.  There are no Roman Records that show Pontius Pilate executed a man named Jesus.

“The gospels are all priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates.” Those who concocted some of the hundreds of “alternative” gospels and epistles that were being kicked about during the first several centuries C.E. have even admitted that they had forged the documents.”  Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity

“Pauline/Roman Christians: When the Roman-backed instance of Christianity went in search of the ancient centers of Christianity, they discovered to their horror that the Ebionites and Gnostics pre-dated them. Their un-Christian answer was to edit verses, burn books, arrest and harass the other poverty-stricken Christians until no opposition was left. The form of Christianity that we have inherited from the Roman Empire is far from what Christianity originally was.”  Vexen Crabtree, Types of Christianity: Who were the original Christians? (2006)

According to the Gospels several things happened around the time that Jesus died on the cross.
His death was supposedly accompanied by a three hour blackout of the sun, earthquakes, and the rising of the dead. No record of these events can be found anywhere outside the Bible.

So what is a person to do? It seems to me that  anyone searching for something greater than oneself, a belief to offer hope and help, a God who’s always there to comfort and relieve stress is out of luck.  There are a little over 2.2 billion believers in the Christian God and only 1.1 billion non-believers, but those non-believers actually took the time to research their position and beliefs.  They didn’t come to that conclusion as a result of what they were born into. Of the 2.2 billion Christians in the world the vast majority have never researched one little bit of religion.  Their fathers and mothers were Christians…so they are too. They believe in some nebulous creator God who made the world 6,000 or so years ago and listens to their prayers and somehow watches over all of them.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our <a href="http://memebase.com/category/business-cat-2/"Business Cat lolz!

Did Jesus Fulfill Old Testament Prophecies

“I have examined all the passages in the New Testament quoted from the Old, and so-called prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such thing as a prophecy of any such person, and I deny there are any.”  Thomas Paine

Did Jesus fulfill the Old Testament prophecies?  Did He bring peace on earth, or bring all the Jews back to Israel and end disease and oppression?  Did He spread the knowledge of the One True God throughout all nations?  Wasn’t all of this supposed to be done during the Messiah’s lifetime? And didn’t he promise to return before many of his people died?

A case can be made that the New Testament was written to fulfill those Old Testament prophecies. A man can be falsely imbued with the necessary myths to make the old well known stories appear to be consummated.

“Every case of alleged fulfillment of messianic prophecy suffers from one of the following failings: the alleged Old Testament prophecy is not a messianic prophecy or not a prophecy at all, the prophecy has not been fulfilled by Jesus, or the prophecy is so vague as to be unconvincing in its application to Jesus.” Jim Lippard  “The Fabulous Prophecies of the Messiah,”

.

All three of them are evangelical fundamentalist wacko’s

Muslim Treachery

So a church in Gainesville, Florida is threatening to burn a bunch of Korans. The  pastor of the church Terry Jones is asking other religious groups to join in his “International Burn a Koran Day” on the ninth anniversary of the terror attack on New York city and Washington DC.

The controversial Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre claims they have received thousands of messages of support for their stand against what they call an “evil religion” and they have refused to back down.

And in Tennessee politicians are bashing Islam to get votes. The issue about the religion and what it stands for has been raised repeatedly on the campaign trail and the message seems clear…they don’t like the Muslim religion and they are preying on the Middle American fear of Islam and all that it has stood for in our minds since 9-11.  The Muslim’s are trying to build a Mosque in Tennessee and the people of the state don’t like it one bit.

Seeing as how the hard-line Muslim leaders around the world are not condemning the violence they have created, is seems only fair to me.  No matter what propaganda our own government (and other primarily Middle Eastern governments) puts out…most Americans, whether they admit it or not, believe that Islam is evil and terroristic.

One has only to look at or listen to the stories on the International news most days to find some example of the evil the Islam religion constantly propagates.  Women are less than human in the way they are treated and their teen children, both male and female, are considered weapons of mass destruction, and the people in general are victimized by their leaders

Their culture, which is nearly indistinguishable from their religion, is totally alien to America and our separation of church and state, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and they are trying to impose their Sharia law, which is merely a vehicle to keep women under their thumbs, on our land as well as others around the world. Make no mistake about this…Muslims are plotting world domination.  And they are more devious and blood-thirsty than Christian Dominionist’s.

And now they want to build a Mosque in sight of where the Twin Towers used to stand …the ultimate slap in the face to America…and it looks like they will get away with it.

All you ever hear from them is “Islam is a religion of peace and love”…Yeah right.  They are committed to the downfall of Christianity and Jewry, and there is no doubt about that at all.  Remember they have surpassed  the Catholic Church in member numbers and they have the highest birth rate of all the Western world.

Could this lead to the final war the Bible talks about?  Christianity and Islam fighting it out for the hearts and minds of the Human Race. Or could this just be more evidence that all religions are stupid and really really dangerous and should probably be banned?  Humans don’t know what the hell they are doing when they mess around with interpreting 2,000 year old goat herder crap.
.

.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Real Truths About Religion and God

People have responded to many of my posts about religion by asking me where my proofs come from. I suspect these people are just religious believers who want to convert me, and others, who write about non-belief.

There is information on any subject you can imagine on the Internet (as I’m sure you all know), including original research papers on subjects relating to Biblical truth. The popular science-type magazines all have a web presence. And contrary to some Christians beliefs, they are not part of an evil cabal out to satanize all who view them.

I have a blogroll type list of websites I use to gather information from, on the right side of my site…if you’re reading this…you will see it as you scroll down. These are legit sites and they have reliable, mainstream, real world information. If Christians were to ever actually seriously research their Biblical beliefs they would soon see how much they have been misinformed, and how wrong the Bible is.

I am a realist however, and I just put the stuff out there with the hope that it will strike a chord with someone who is searching for the truth, and maybe cause them to go to real world proofs, instead of Hebrew myths, that are a waste of precious time and energy.

The famous site listed below has all the answers to flood myth lined up and they are checkable. Other parts of the site have some of the best general information about scientific origins of the earth, universe, humans, etc. They have been around since the early nineties. If you take time to explore it thoroughly you will find links to original research and real world explanations of our earth, and all who live on, and in it. The people who write there are experts-who happen to not have a Doctorate of Divinity.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

If the Noachian Flood can be disproven (and it has been), then other parts of the Bible are also suspect of being wrong. And there are many other disproven Biblical assertions. Many Christians just don’t accept the truth. They cling very hard to a 2800 year old Hebrew myth, a view of a childish God, that people of the time didn’t have enough knowledge, or intellectual sense of the world, to question.

That the Christian faith has survived this long is not an indicator of its being true. To the contrary, it is an indicator of how easily the church adjusts its theology to conform as much as possible to currant social conventions (think slavery, polygamy, prostitution, kings killing on a whim, etc.). The church is known to burn papers (and people) that disagree with currant theological thought.

Think about the currant ‘state of the religion.’ Now, about 2008 years since the birth of Jesus (?) Roughly 1700 years since Christianity got the official ‘okey-dokey’ from secular rulers, and its still in a state of disrepair. There are maybe thousands of sects and they all differ. Muslims believe in the same God…so they say, and they are out to kill us…for heresy. Catholics believe Protestants practice heresy, and vice-versa. Mormons…who knows what they believe. There is either one that is right…or none is right. There is not two of them who are right…or three, or four…

Through manipulation of human thought and incorrect reasoning, physical threats, actual physical harm, and burning at the stake, or as little as social/societal ostracism, Christians have spread their evil plot to take over the world and control humans…every actions and thought…for more than two thousand years. Think about it for a while; think about the whole long history of Jews and Christians and what they have always wanted from us.

What has been, and is, their ultimate goal? It’s to take over control of all humanity and tell us how to think and act…they actually have that kind of control of a significant portion of the US population…think Bible belt and the Deep South. Churches are the social center and source of information, on how to conform…of many hundreds of thousands or millions of Evangelical Fundamentalist type people. I think those people are afraid that if they don’t belong to a church, they’ll automatically go out and start sinning in the worst possible way.

There is some evolving news about change in the Catholic position on humanity. They are actually starting to accept that humans have a looong history. Go to the site below and check it out. Notice in the upper right hand corner where the paper comes from. That old fossil…the Catholic Church…might have some life and intellect left after all. http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/zim/zim_251adamandeve.html

Below is a quote from the article mentioned above.

“The Catholic position on this is clear. St. Thomas says that “one should not try to defend the Christian faith with arguments that are so patently opposed to reason that the faith is made to look ridiculous.” It is simply nonsense to say that the world is only 6,000 years old (Catechesis, Creation and Evolution, Zenit News, Dec. 19, 2005).” My emphasis.

The Catholics are leading the pack in the changing of theological thought to match what is known to be true nowadays, although their present thought is a little dopey. I look forward to following this change. I also look forward to how the Evangelical Fundamentalists will continue to deny In-Your-Face truth.

Some suggested Google search terms that I have followed: Religion, God, Jesus, El, Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, biblical tribes, Scripture, Noah’s flood, Ur of the Chaldeans, city of Dan, city of Laish, sea people, Babylon, age of earth, Hebrews, Christian myth, Sumerians, Akkadians, Mesopotamia, Jericho, Chaldea or Chaldeans, Assyria, Indus valley civilization, ancient Egypt, Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, flood stories, flood myths, Myths, ancient native Americans, Solutrian, Clovis points, cave paintings, Adam and Eve, African civilization(s), Bronze age, iron age, ancient Briton, ancient Europe, Neanderthal, Hebron, Abraham, Lot, biology, Midrash, Torah, Jewish myths, ancient languages, archaeological dating, carbon dating, dating methods, Dendrocronology, stratigraphy, oil geology, Permian, Paleontology, DNA, rNA, genetics, human history, human pre-history, ancient India, ancient Iran, Stonehenge, henges, pyramids, stelas, Rosetta stone, cuneiform writing, hieroglyphs, Euphrates river, Tigris river, Geology, life sciences, and on and on….

The above terms represent maybe one twentieth of the search terms (sorry they aren’t alphabetized) I have used in following the paths of Christian religion. I have been doing this for about two years now, in my spare time. If the site is religious sect sponsored, they will often try to deny real world science by any means they can, including, but not limited to, lying and misdirection. There are a few exceptions that are starting to tackle the problem head on though, and the Catholic Church, as mentioned above, is one of them.

There is not one or two sites that can disprove all things religious untrue, though talkorigins.com comes close. I find you have to visit and really absorb many, many different viewpoints and disciplines and slowly let them simmer in your head. Good hunting.

For latest post go: Here

Religious Facts…Aren’t

The argument has been made that after Noah’s Flood Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth scattered to the four corners of the earth and repopulated a dead world. Well this makes a good campfire story, but consider the fact that the worship of Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, or El, never reached the four corners of the earth till long after the death of Jesus.

The Flood supposedly happened about 2300-2400 BCE. Afterwards, Noah and his son’s and their wives spread over the face of the earth to populate the continents with ‘God believing’ good people. After all, that was the purpose of the Flood…right? So we should be able to see Gods plan in action…right? He wiped the earth clean so the ‘Godly’ people of His choice would repopulate and make the world ‘Good’ again.

Tell me…how did that work out?

Of course it didn’t work out, because it never happened. Most of the population of the planet never heard of a Christian ‘God’ until thousands of years later.

There is NO evidence for a worldwide…sudden…or otherwise…belief in our Christian God all over the earth in the time after ‘The Flood’. The Christian God was not known outside the Middle East for thousands of years.

Why IS that, I wonder? Do you suppose it’s because the story is a fabrication of weird little Jewish men roaming around the hot deserts of Egypt, Israel, and Iraq? Figments of near heatstroke. A vain attempt to aggrandize their poor tribe, and give the Jewish people, who had no land of their own, a trace of pride and sense of power.

Now this same argument disproves the Tower of Babel myth, as it is well known that languages existed in populations all over the world. They never went away. If one is able to think seriously and critically about the claims of the Christian religion (and all others) they totally fall apart. They don’t have a consistency with the physical evidence that keeps popping up so inconveniently.

I wonder if there is some ‘apologetics’ in the literature that attempts to explain this? If anyone out there knows about any, a shout out would be appreciated.

So, I suppose the poor Christians will keep believing the lies…that their clergy keeps feeding to them.

Their House of Religion depends on the peasants suspending their disbelief…kind of like the movies…a fantastic, ephemeral vision…that does not really represent the real world. They go about their business and think they are living in the present; when in fact they live in an unreal mythological past where Gods in the sky and magic were ‘real’.

For latest post go: Here

Sunday Sermon Continued

Sunday Sermon Continued

This is a continuation of debate that started here: HERE

Hi Idugan, Welcome back.

Hey, if I could have done half as good as you are when I was in high school…that would have been a miracle.

“Why would man make up a God who is so just, etc? Why would man set up laws for himself that he knew he could not always keep? The idea that man made God up doesn’t make sense. Man naturally HATES God. So why would he make Him up?”

I’m sorry…you consider the Christian God just? How about His unconscionable treatment of Job? Heres an apparently honorable man of God, and God just lets the Devil experiment on him. His family is killed off he looses his land, cattle, he is stricken with boils. All to settle a little wager between God and the Devil. Job isn’t notified of the wager, so he has no idea what is going on. Can you imagine the terror in his soul? Is that a just God?

Men have been making up gods from the beginning of time…thats what we do best. I doubt if there has ever been a society on this earth in all of history who hasn’t had a ‘God’ myth. I don’t think your statement about men naturally hating God is true at all, else why would we humans keep making them up? I don’t hate God, all the people I know do not hate God. I can’t remember ever meeting someone who hated God. Now…not believing…thats another matter.

“ I’m no theologian of any kind. I have only truly been studying Scripture for about a year. I mean I’m only a senior in high school. So I won’t even pretend to have all the answers. I will only tell you what I believe, and I want to fully understand what you do and why. I just thought I should tell you that so you don’t feel like I’m attacking you because that is not my intention.”

Hey, who does have all the answers? Attack away. Just keep it on a civil level…no name calling or personal attacks. I respect you, and expect the same.

What Moses did was not a ‘minor infraction’. He deliberately went against what his God told him to do. The same God who led them out of Egypt. His annoyance with the people should not have gotten to be so big that he would willingly defile God. That is why he was punished. (And that was not the only sin that Moses ever committed.) The reason why these ‘myths’ as you like to call them do not make sense to you is because you are making up excuses. I’m not saying that I understand all of Scripture and every single thing about every story–because I don’t–but i do have faith in God that what is Word says is what happened and that God had a perfectly just reason for doing anything He has ever done.”

If you knew the Jews perhaps you would understand the point about Moses a little better. If you were leading a couple of million kvetching Jews through the hot barren desert, you would truly understand the temperament of Moses. The Jews are not an easygoing people, they complain A LOT. Reread the story of his time in the desert and pay particular attention to the interaction between Moses and the ‘people’ I am not making up excuses about anything…I see valid points of debate. Unlike most students of Christianity, I study with an open mind…I don’t have a preconceived viewpoint and a need to conform to what I know people around me think of the matter.

“I looked at that site that had the supposed contradictions in the Bible. I would just like to say that I read a lot of them and looked them up and I can try to show you that they are not contradictions–but I don’t think you would believe me so I’m not going to unless you ask me specifically to.”

Whatever you think. I have been looking at a number of them myself and I will continue, but most of them remain valid points of contention. I already have someone where I am, that is kind enough to spend time in discussion about them.

“Mans purpose is to glorify God by using the attributes of Himself (love, morals, etc) that He gave us. “Sin”=when I don’t fulfill the purpose/will of God. For example the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20. You say the only ’sin’ you commit is when you ‘occasionally have a bad thought about someone’ or lusted after someone other than your wife. And you know what I have committed sins..lots of them. Let me ask you something though, have you ever told a lie? or lost control of your anger? I have, and that’s why I am so grateful for my salvation.”

Pretty egotistical on Gods part if His purpose in making us was to have us constantly ‘glorify’ Him. Do you really think God needs this constant worshiping and adulation and glorifying? Is this OUR purpose in life? Don’t you think a grown up God would understand that we can love Him without all this drippy glorifying and constant wondering if we are sinning ALL the time?

“you said: “My point in this paragraph, is that people will believe almost anything. And they would rather follow than lead, or buck the establishment. Early Christians and Muslims tapped into that, and our present day leaders, both secular and religious, do the same.”

Don’t you think that you are also a ‘follower’ in your thoughts? I mean you’re not the first one to question the authenticity of the Bible and God.”

I am a follower, as I believe we all are. But in matters of the intellect, I follow where my thoughts lead me. I am not scared that if I get off the beaten track I’ll be cast in hell. The only reason that me and others question the authenticity of any religion, is because they are all open to criticism. We see silliness, made up drama, made up stories, allegory, plain old deception and greed, and other thing that often make no sense as described by followers

““Didn’t Jesus say that his disciples would live to see him return, and he would establish a new Jewish ‘ Kingdom of God’ on earth?” and “Even Jesus was wrong in his prediction.”

If you can show me where Jesus said that then fine. But I could not find it in Scripture. When the disciples asked when he would restore the kingdom Jesus replied that it was not for them to know the time or season (see Acts 1 :6-11 for the Ascension).”

Mathew 24:30-34 He was expecting a Jewish Kingdom of God, because he was Jewish, He was a rabbi, and great believer in the Jewish faith. The Christian faith as we know it today did not really start to evolve until a couple hundred years after the death of Jesus. Well, Paul was preparing the stage.

“The Kingdom of God is referred to frequently in the Tanakh (see 1 Chronicles 1 Chronicles 29:10-12 and Daniel 4:3 for example). It is tied to Jewish understanding that God will intervene to restore the nation of Israel, and return to rule over them. The Kingdom of God was expressly promised to the patriarch and prophet, King David, because he was a man “after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22); and God made the Davidic Covenant with King David, promising him that he would “never lack a man to sit upon His throne, forever” (1 Kings 9:5). From Wikipedia” That prophecy never made it-Bill

“Going back to the sin thing…When we sin we defile God’s creation. If we saw sin how God sees it we would shudder. (Zech 11:8; Ez. 20:43; 2 Cor 7:1). When we sin we rebel against God. A true ‘rebellion’ is when people try to assasinate those in charge and that’s why man did in Genesis 3:5–man wanted to be rid of God and to be like Him. When we sin we show ingratitude. God gives us everything (Life, love, friends, etc) and yet we sin. We rebel against God and yet we expect Him to keep blessing us. [These are some notes I took on a sermon about sin. It was the third in the series and it applies to people who believe it but I thought I would share it anyway.]”

Again with the sin thing. How old are you? Just live your life..and treat other people as you would like to be treated. Stay away from drugs, and when you’re old enough, treat alcohol with respect. If you find a woman you love, love her with all your heart, never cheat on her, and treat her with total respect. Follow these concepts and you really won’t have much to worry about. You keep worrying about sin so much and it will distort your brain…maybe make it explode. 🙂

Have a great life. I envy you your youth and promise.

A New Sunday Sermon…Kind of

A new Sunday Sermon…Kind of

Hi Idugan,

To first readers…this is a reply to a reply that is under the heading: Did Jesus Exist? Here

Wow, where to begin. First, let me thank you for taking so much time to correspond with me. Thank You.

I am using the Bible and references to God, Jesus, Scriptures, etc., because we are ‘talking’ about them, and you are familiar with the myths

To clarify part of this; I do not believe that the Bible and the depictions of God, et al., are anything more than mans interpretations, campfire myths, etc., of his beginnings. I think they had a kind of relevance in the early times of mans intellectual childhood. There were no words at first to describe his thoughts or feelings. There was no explanations of what he saw. With no concept of science and being unsophisticated in thought and preoccupied with not starving to death, he made up stories to describe what lay before him. Civilizations across the face of the earth all did the same; a lot of them were made up before the bible stories were written down, and some of them were written down before Moses, and others, wrote the Pentateuch.

For a God to be sorry for his creation speaks volumes about the image of this spirit creature. He made a ‘broken species’, feels sorry because they do not live up to ‘expectations’, and then murders millions of them, in an especially painful way, and then feels remorse. He did it to wipe out the sinfulness of His prior creation, and let a new, sinless mankind take over the earth. How well did that work out, I ask you? Do you not think a real God would realize the futility of this measure? Does this story (which has no support in science and actual geological history of the earth) not sound like a child’s tale? This was/is a 4,000-4500 year old morality tale.

God did not let Moses into the promised land for a minor infraction; after he had spent a lifetime following God and doing His will. God allowed Jesus to be descended from a murderer and adulterer. And although He has said that the son does inherits the sins of the father, He also said that the son does not inherit the sins of the father, I don’t know what to believe. Do you not see the craziness of this, the inconsistencies of these stories? As a race, we humans have grown up; the old fairy tales do not relate anymore-they might if they made more sense…were not so unbelievable and childish.

We are holding on to old concepts and beliefs well past their ‘sell by date’. You want to worship a God? Do so. Just don’t make the worship/initiation such a silly thing. How about: God, you made me, I acknowledge that, forgive me for my weaknesses and sins, I’ll try to do better. No need to go through the morality plays over and over and over again, they stick in the mind pretty quickly. And Christians need to stop proselytizing. Its very irritating for those of another faith. Everyone in the world has heard the story by now. Your eagerness and boldness in pointing out the ‘mistakes’ of other belief systems and cultures is just annoying and wrong.

Christians spend so much time and energy arguing about the nature of God and Jesus and invent such wild imagery of the proper way to worship and tithe, etc., that they end up killing each other about differences that really don’t exist in the real world.

Define ‘sin’ for me if you would Idugan.

The only thing I do to ‘sin’, is occasionally have a bad thought about someone. I have sometimes committed adultery in my mind, like Jimmy Carter, so I’m in good company. But, the older I get the less I find it happening.;-) I love my family and friends and try to be charitable to all I see and meet.

I don’t believe in the religions as they are now promoted. The theology is just plain crazy in my humble estimation. So consequently, I do not ‘worship’ that great spirit in the sky-and I don’t think He needs the stuff that Christianity pushes on helpless humans.

I think that evangelical, fundamentalists, are just plain brainwashed. They cannot seem to break out of a mold that was laid down hundreds of years ago, and worse, they don’t think they need to. “Gimme that ol’ time religion.” 🙂

To read and actually listen to the words of the Bible, God is VERY inconsistent. You might go: Here and see for yourself. They quote from real Bibles, so you will be reading actual real Scriptures. Easily checkable at Bible Gateway.

Paul established his ‘bonafides’ to his (Jesus’) followers by saying Jesus spoke to him in a beam of light. Then he proceeded to steer the flock away from an apocalyptic leaning. Didn’t Jesus say that his disciples would live to see him return, and he would establish a new Jewish ‘ Kingdom of God’ on earth?

People are lying to you when they tell you that Scriptures have not been altered. I don’t trust Paul..or Eusebius…..or Constantine for that matter.

You know what I consider interesting? That Islam, which was established around 250-300 years after Christianity, now has over 1,200,000,000 followers and is permanently ensconced over the whole world. And growing at a faster clip than Christianity. The Muslims have much higher fertility rates…in some cases twice as much…more little Muslims running around than little Christians. Oh yea…Mohammad loved little girls (and I do mean loved). My point in this paragraph, is that people will believe almost anything. And they would rather follow than lead, or buck the establishment. Early Christians and Muslims tapped into that, and our present day leaders, both secular and religious, do the same. Don’t rock the boat, and don’t ask too many questions

A lot of scholars think that John of Patmos was writing about Rome. He was clearly delusional. Ministers have been predicting the ‘End of the World’, based on bogus interpretations of Revelations for 2,000 years now. Even Jesus was wrong in his prediction. I don’t think the Apostles died for what they knew to be a lie, they died for a misguided belief. People have martyred themselves for less.

Regarding this line: “until you truly believe the Word of God and trust in Jesus for your salvation you cannot know ‘truth’.”

I would believe, if I truly knew what the real ‘truthful word’ was..or is. 🙂