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 

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Muslim Cleric Calls For Beheading

Well once again the public face of Islam is showing just how modern and tolerant they are. An Australian born Muslim cleric has publicly called for the beheading of a Dutch politician who is anti-Islamic.  The politician, Geert Wilders, and his Dutch Freedom Party are currently trying to form a new minority government with Liberals and Christian Democrats.

The Netherlands’ newspaper ‘De Telegraaf’ displayed on its front page the story of Feiz Muhammad’s speech demonizing Mr. Wilders and calling for his beheading.

Feiz Muhammad has gained infamy for calling for radicalization of  Muslim children and blaming rape victims for their own attacks.  According to his website Mr. Muhammad is now based in Malaysia

Totally ignoring his own low-life Satanic views of all of humanity Mr. Muhammad called Geert Wilders “this Satan, this devil, this politician in Holland” and says that anyone who talks about Islam like Wilders does should be executed by beheading.

Apparently there is no free speech in Denmark as Mr. Wilders is on trial for hate speech and discrimination against Muslims. Mr. Wilders also made a film in 2008 accusing the Koran of inciting violence (which it does), and the film used images of terrorists mixed with quotations from the Koran.  The charges against Wilders also included an opinion piece he wrote for a Dutch newspaper where he compared Islam to fascism and the Holy Koran to Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf.”

Mr. Wilders has also been in the press lately for his plans to speak out against the planned “Mosque” in New York City on the anniversary of the Muslim attack against America on September 11^th of 2001 that killed 2977 human people…and 19 Muslim scum hijackers who were financed by Saudi Arabian Muslims.

From everything I have learned about this Wilders guy he is just exercising his Human right to speak his mind (and the truth by the way), but the Danish have strict hate speech/blasphemy laws.

And from what I have learned about the scumbag Feiz Muhammad he is a typical right wing Muslim religionist spouting typical Islamic crap…may he shake the hand of a left-handed skeptic.

I’m not convinced that Islam will grow up and join the Human Race anytime soon.

Just one more reason to reject religion…they’re too damn dangerous and blood-thirsty

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51264420100903

Go to Jihad Watch to get more understanding of Muslim cleric creeps

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No Visible Means of Scientific Support

Quote of the day

“But, Gods, gods, angels, demons, devil, heaven, hell, people formed from dust or ribs, the dead rising, water walking, transformation of water into an alcohol, millions of animal species on a boat, etc., etc., defies mans experience, observations and understanding of natural law. It has no visible means of scientific support.  I am not skeptical about it having occurred; I reject it entirely. I am a person who respects the laws of the natural universe and whose thinking is grounded in reality.
Please don’t call me a religious skeptic.  To quote Katherine Hepburn: “I am an atheist and that’s it.” The atheist Camel Chronicles, Dromedary Hump, BookSurge Publishing, 2009

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. – Christopher Hitchens

Wall of Separation Between Church and State.”

Michael Zimmerman has an article in the Huffington Post called The Danger of Ignoring Creationism. In it he says: “…The Discovery Institute is little more than a shill for the billionaire Howard Ahmanson.  And Mr. Zimmerman quotes Ahmanson as saying, “My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.”

Well that should be an interesting situation.  That means we will have to go out and kill homosexuals and stone to death anyone who commits adultery.  Women who give birth to boys will have to be put away for 30 days, and if they give birth to girls they will have to go away for 60 days. Women on their period will have to be confined to quarters for 7 days.  We won’t be allowed to eat Pork anymore…God, I’ll miss bacon.

Just think of all the people who will go to prison for blasphemy, and heresy will of course mean burning at the stake, as will witchcraft and demonry…is that even a word? 🙂  Now if Mr. Ahmanson is a real fundamentalist (sure sounds like he is) we won’t be allowed to dance or drink or use lipstick or dress up with jewelry. Any music more advanced than Laurence Welk would be outlawed, and you might as well forget Mohawk and Mullet haircuts (no loss there).

Do we reeaalllly want people who think like this to have any power at all over us?  I don’t think so, but the religious right is totally behind this kind of power grab…you know those fundagelicals and all those ‘Raptured’ people and followers of the 700 clubs Pat Robertson and his fellow Millenarianists. They actively want the Christian bible to be “The Law” and everyone to submit to what they believe in…with no exceptions. See blasphemy and heresy above.

We’re not talking Sunday School teachers taking over…we’re talking hard line Dark Ages Inquisition and burn at the stake fanatics…these people are truly scary.  They lie and cheat and scheme and talk a good game, but deep down they are evil.

Late thought:  Can you imagine the Inquisition in today’s world of electronics and computers and miniature video cameras?  A shiver just went down my spine.

The quote of the day below takes on serious meaning when confronted by people like Howard Ahmanson and Pat Robertson and crew.

Quote of the day

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

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-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

God and Christianity and Us Poor Humans

I’ve recently been in a discussion with a person about Satan and why he would even bother anymore since his fate is already sealed. We and Satan already know he loses the battle with God, and…all the people who follow Christianity know it.  The story has been outlined for us by the Church; we know Armageddon will be coming, the Four Horsemen, the Anti-Christ, and whatever else John writes in Revelation.

This God of Christianity is going to allow this melodrama to proceed to the point of human annihilation on this planet, and somehow God calls this victory.  ALL the various Christian denominations believe they alone will survive and live forever…either in Heaven or in a  Earthly Paradise, looked over by God–in person.  All this Armageddon and stuff is caused by a Devil (or is it the original plan of God when He started all this crappy melodrama?), who knows he will lose the fight; does this make even the slightest bit of sense?

I like the following part of an essay that I have already posted earlier on my blog…it speaks to the problem with Devils and any other spirits called up by religion.

“For many centuries the church filled the world with devils — with malicious spirits that caused storm and tempest, disease, accident and death — that filled the night with visions of despair; with prophecies that drove the dreamers mad. These devils assumed a thousand forms — countless disguises in their efforts to capture souls and destroy the church. They deceived sometimes the wisest and the best, made priests forget their vows. They melted virtue’s snow in passion’s fire, and in cunning ways entrapped and smirched the innocent and good. These devils gave witches and wizards their supernatural powers, and told them the secrets of the future.

Millions of men and women were destroyed because they had sold themselves to the Devil.

No man has genius enough to describe the agonies that have been inflicted on innocent men and women because of this absurd belief. How it darkened the mind, hardened the heart, and poisoned life! It made the Universe a madhouse presided over by an insane God.

Think! Why would a merciful God allow his children to be the victims of devils? Why would a decent God allow his worshipers to believe in devils, and by reason of that belief to persecute torture and burn their fellow-men?”  Robert Ingersall

Does this man above speak the truth?  Did the churches do these terrible crimes?  Yes they did…its known written history.  And then later on in the American colonies the Puritans repeated the deadly serious criminal act of burning and hanging “witches” and railing against demons.  I think this is a serious mistake that a real “God driven” religion would not make.

Or would you think that there was real demons and evil spirits and Satan himself doing these things?  If not, how would you reconcile the churches doing these things in the name of God?  Do many Christians you know believe in Satan and think he sends his minions to do bad stuff in the world…like he was supposed to have done in the Dark Ages and in the Puritan states of America’s past?

Think about this; The Catholic Church (who was the victor in the God Wars way back then) was the keeper of the scriptures and writings of all of early Christianity. They molded the church (and Scripture), in the way they wanted. They alone keep the religious fires burning in the beginning years.  They promulgated the evil words that started the above scenarios. They started the whole mess.

The Protestant Reformation or Revolution started by Luther started out with the best intentions, but they made at least one mistake…they used the same book, and that book is terribly, terribly wrong about so many things

“This fact is forgotten by Protestants. They read blood-curdling stories of the Inquisition and of atrocities committed by Catholics, but what does the average Protestant know of Protestant atrocities in the centuries succeeding the Reformation? Nothing, unless he makes a special study of the subject . . . Yet they are perfectly well known to every scholar . . . If I do not enumerate here the persecutions carried on by Catholics in the past, it is because it is not necessary in this book to do so. This volume is addressed especially to Protestants, and Catholic persecutions are to them sufficiently well known . . .

…What makes, however, Protestant persecutions especially revolting is the fact that they were absolutely inconsistent with the primary doctrine of Protestantism — the right of private judgment in matters of religious belief! Nothing can be more illogical than at one moment to assert that one may interpret the Bible to suit himself, and at the next to torture and kill him for having done so!”  The Double Standard of Protestant “Inquisition Polemics” by John Stoddard

So why do you think religion is any different today?  We no longer believe in witches and demons…at least most of humanity does not, but there are still many inconsistencies in how Christians practice their faith and most of them pick and choose their theology to suit their life and how they want to live it.

I think that a religion based on a real God who is able to interact with us would be unquestionably believed by all people, there would be unanimity in all matters of belief and understanding in His message. There would have been no need or reason for all the unbelievable terror and evil carried out in His name, no evil men sentencing people to death in His name, no churches growing fat off the dissemination of the “Holy Word”.  No people using His church and His religion to sodomize helpless children or prey on the weak and vulnerable, to steal others wealth and in general keep people under the yoke and in their control.  And there would be NO need for devils, demons and such.

The common apologetic for these problems mentioned is that it is evil men who have done this; God and The Church are blameless in this matter. Really!!–not much of a God to allow so much crime in His house.

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Demons and Devils and Popes, Bishops and Priests

“All the fathers of the church believed in devils. All the saints won their crowns by overcoming devils. All the popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, believed in devils. Most of their time was occupied in fighting devils. The whole Catholic world, from the lowest layman to the highest priest, believed in devils. They proved the existence of devils by the New Testament. They knew that these devils were citizens of hell. They knew that Satan was their king. They knew that hell was made for the Devil and his angels.”

As late as the middle of the sixteenth century, every infant that was baptized was, by that ceremony, freed from a devil. When the holy water was applied the priest said: “I command thee, thou unclean spirit, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou come out and depart from this infant, whom our Lord Jesus Christ has vouchsafed to call to his holy baptism, to be made a member of his body, and of his holy congregation.” At that time the fathers — the theologians, the commentators — agreed that unbaptized children, including those that were born dead, went to hell.

And these same fathers — theologians and commentators — said: “God is love.”

These babes were pure as Pity’s tears, innocent as their mother’s loving smiles, and yet the makers of our creeds believed and taught that leering, unclean fiends inhabited their dimpled flesh. O, the unscarchable riches of Christianity!

For many centuries the church filled the world with devils — with malicious spirits that caused storm and tempest, disease, accident and death — that filled the night with visions of despair; with prophecies that drove the dreamers mad. These devils assumed a thousand forms — countless disguises in their efforts to capture souls and destroy the church. They deceived sometimes the wisest and the best, made priests forget their vows. They melted virtue’s snow in passion’s fire, and in cunning ways entrapped and smirched the innocent and good. These devils gave witches and wizards their supernatural powers, and told them the secrets of the future.

Millions of men and women were destroyed because they had sold themselves to the Devil.

No man has genius enough to describe the agonies that have been inflicted on innocent men and women because of this absurd belief. How it darkened the mind, hardened the heart, and poisoned life! It made the Universe a madhouse presided over by an insane God.

Think! Why would a merciful God allow his children to be the victims of devils? Why would a decent God allow his worshipers to believe in devils, and by reason of that belief to persecute, torture and burn their fellow-men?

Christians did not ask these questions. They believed the Bible; they had confidence in the words of Christ.

How did your Devil, who was at one time an angel of light, come to sin? There was no other devil to tempt him. He was in perfectly good society — in the company of God — of the Trinity. All of his associates were perfect. How did he fall? He knew that God was infinite, and yet he waged war against him and induced about a third of the angels to volunteer. He knew that he could not succeed; knew that he would be defeated and cast out; knew that he was fighting for failure.

Why did God create those angels, knowing that they would rebel? Why did he deliberately sow the seeds of discord in heaven, knowing that he would cast them into the lake of eternal fire — knowing that for them he would create the eternal prison, whose dungeons would echo forever the sobs and shrieks of endless pain?
Robert Ingersoll late 1800’s

Remember people God never changes and he is a God of love….right….right???

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Will We Ever Agree About Religion ??

I’m having a great discussion at the “Bloom Where You’re Planted” blog Here. It started with his blog on the resurrection that I replied to around Easter time, and quickly blossomed into a full discussion on religion.

You write:
“…it has relevance for anyone who is getting their information about Christianity from secular sources like college, Wikipedia, and the internet in general.  Our modern culture in the USA is so ruled by secular thought that it’s hard to even see where the bias comes in.  When the founding fathers of our country determined that there should be a wall of separation between the church and the state, they had it exactly right.  But their intent has been so mangled that it has come to mean something much different from what they intended…”

In regard to this opening sentence in your reply. Where else does one get information about religion but colleges, encyclopedias, other books, and the internet? One cannot just go to the Bible and theistic tomes written by the founders of a particular sect and expect unbiased and factual information. You must check many sources and compile diverse viewpoints and thoughts to arrive at a synthesis or approximation of truth. If you only follow one line of thought or viewpoint then your understanding of that subject is necessarily biased…and may not be true in a literal sense.

When our founding fathers erected that wall of separation between religion and state they were responding to the religious darkness that had for so long constrained and controlled the world that our forefathers knew. They and their ancestors had suffered religious and spiritual control by kings and religious leaders of the old country. Our main founding fathers were mostly agnostic or non-believers and they didn’t want the same kind of government leadership they were breaking away from.

As for the intent of the founders being mangled, I think what you are talking about is the normal expansion of knowledge and understanding that intelligent people experience as their civilization grows and begins to comprehend the truths and reality of the world around them.

I agree with you about the USSR and China and their treatment of the various religions they try to suppress. My only thought in bringing up the genocides that Christians (and other religions) have committed is to make the point that no matter the religion…one is not better than the other in regard to human rights.  In fact, if you think it through, all religions and all secular authorities have abused humans throughout time. Even Solomon hired out his citizens for slaves labor.  We in the US do it as well as anybody.

You write:
“It’s really interesting that you’ve mentioned your belief that Adam and Eve never existed at least three times now.”

In regard to Adam and Eve, should one take it as a literal story… were they (and the rest of the universe) really created and placed in the Garden of Eden about 6,000 years ago? If that is your position…you are up against tremendous-testable-scientific-evidence that modern mankind (and the universe) has been around for waaay longer than 6,000 years, and then of course there is the Neanderthal’s which in all ways appear to be a natural human predecessor and 98.5% human.  Then there are the other various predecessors to the  Neanderthals such as Homo-habilis, Homo antecessor, Homo erectus, etc.

You write:
“…by the way, the original sin was actually committed by Satan, and the sin was pride.  He decided that he really didn’t need God telling him how he should live.  So he led a revolt, and for this he and his minions were cast out of heaven.”

I’m talking about the “original sin that Paul wrote of in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 for its scriptural base, and see it as perhaps implied in Old Testament passages such as Psalm 51:5 and Psalm 58:3. According to Paul, Adam and Eves consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the origination of sin in all humans thereafter.  Jesus was our redeemer of that sin, to make us OK with God again, by his death on the cross.

A short aside here, the Bible says that God does punish the son for the sins of the father and then it says in a different place that he does…which is right?

Just a thought about Satan’s revolt…God deconstructs him…end of problem.

You have to wonder about this; God (omnipotent and omniscient) made evil in the form of Satan and fully allows him to exist and foment seriously bad Mojo for us humans…key point here being–“God allows this”  The tremendously bad logic in this story just overwhelms me…does no one else see it?

I’m talking here of the theology that the evangelical fundamentalists have been championing in our times as the reason for Jesus’ being alive and being crucified. He died for our “sins” so we would/will have eternal life.  Without Jesus dying to atone for this inherited sin we would all go to hell.  Yeah, I know it’s kind of a hokey story, but remember Paul was making this stuff up 2,000 years ago. So the natural logic here is that if Adam and Eve did not exist; as they surely didn’t, we have no real need for Jesus. Now Jesus mentions God making humans, but he does not name names, even though as a Jewish rabbi he had access to the Torah or Tanakh

You write:
“…Without God’s definition of right and wrong, it’s up to man to decide, and we have a hard time agreeing on anything.  Some societies see it as OK to murder if you have a good reason, others say it’s never OK.  You say you’re against abortion, but not enough that you would actually agree with a law that made it illegal.  You say that you would never want to “impose my feelings or morals about these matters on anybody else”.  But you do.  You also say you are “totally on the side of women on this matter.”  So you’re saying you won’t take sides, but you are on the side of women.”

Our society right here in the US says it’s all right to kill…not murder. Distinction?  I agree with you that mankind has a hard time agreeing on anything, but we have had some success in the past at this and there is the UN statement on human rights which is a step in the right direction, however futile it appears now.

The thing is that people live together and decide that there are certain ways to conduct themselfs when in this societal milieu, and most people follow the rules.  When there are disruptive forces afoot then we tend to make laws to punish the wrong-doers who step out of line.  When families are involved we are much more controlling of social misfits. All societies will make laws against murder and thievery and the more common misdeeds naturally. In smaller social groups the laws tend to be unwritten but known by all, in larger groups they get written down and advertised …think of the code of Hammurabi in Babylon.

The point is that as groups of people get together they tend to set guidelines for behavior, which is simply a way of living peacefully and without fear.  The God of Moses seems to go way overboard when Gods laws include how to treat women when they’re menstruating and what to eat and how to prepare it, and many other weird commandments or laws that Deuteronomy puts forth.  I really feel that this is not God’s thinking.

Men have been able to visualize “perfect societies forever…they did not, and do not, need a god to instruct them in what’s good for them; that information has been floating around forever and is self evident.  By the way most Biblical scholars believe that Moses did not write the Pentateuch. It was written anonymously in the late 7^th. Century with later additions after the fall of Judah in 586 BC

You write:
“…You say you’re against abortion, but not enough that you would actually agree with a law that made it illegal.  You say that you would never want to “impose my feelings or morals about these matters on anybody else”.  But you do.  You also say you are “totally on the side of women on this matter.”  So you’re saying you won’t take sides, but you are on the side of women.”

I admitted that although I did not like the idea of abortion, I believed that there are exceptions to this, as there is to most things in life.  To me the mother’s life takes precedence and if there’s a problem in this regard…the baby is sacrificed. Rape or incest is arguably the worst thing that can happen to a woman or girl-child, and making a woman/child carry a baby under these circumstances amounts to pure evil. These are decisions to be made by the women alone…not some church or government official. I would not vote or champion a cause to take away this right of women.

I would not impose my feelings or morals on someone, that’s not the same as talking about these things. Impose has the connotation of forcing ones viewpoint on someone…forcibly making a person do or not do whatever evil it is you are selling.  I don’t believe I said I would not take sides. I will not force (by legislation or other means) my position on others.

By the way I would welcome your input on the thought of abortion and how it has slowed population growth in the US, thereby, in some ways, helping our quality of living by alleviating some eco-concerns. Think of how bad smog and water quality (or availability) and crowding and scarceness of resources, etc. would be if we had an additional 100 to 150 million people living in our country right now.

You write:
“Have you ever watched the movie Bruce Almighty?  Funny, but it made a good point or two.  For one, when Bruce had the ability to be god, he didn’t do too well at it.  He tried to just grant every prayer request, but it went completely amuck.  For another, when he couldn’t make his girl love him without taking away her free will, God (played by Morgan Freeman) said ‘Welcome to my world, son.  If you figure that one out, you let me know….'”

I never saw the complete movie, but am familiar enough with it to understand what you are saying.  I wrote a post awhile back about the matter of free-will, I’ll have to find it and give you the Biblical references, but the gist of it is that the Bible says in many places we have free-will and many places it says we don’t  have free-will.  I still haven’t figured this out.

If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; … Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.— Deuteronomy, Chapter 17:2-3,5

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Islam Shows True Colors

The religious savages of the Afghani Taleban have shown just how evil they really are.  They publicly executed a young couple who had run away to get married.

“An unmarried young boy of 19 and an unmarried girl of 18 who loved each other and wanted to get married had eloped because their families would not approve the marriage.”

Officials said the couple were traced by militants after they tried to go to Iran. They were made to return to their village in Khash Rod district.

“Three Taleban mullahs brought them to the local mosque and they passed a fatwa (religious decree) that they must be killed. They were shot and killed in front of the mosque in public,” the governor said.

Go Here for full story

Isn’t the Islamic religion grand?

Don’t you think we should welcome them with open arms and adopt their religious views here in the US?

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Adam and Eve Did Not Exist

Paul uses the story of Adam and Eve to form the basis for the Christian doctrine of Original sin. “Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” Paul of Tarsus wrote in his epistle to the Romans in about 58CE. However Chapter 3 of Genesis does not use the word ‘sin’ and Genesis 3:24 says they are expelled ” lest he put forth his hand and take also of the ‘Tree of Life’ and eat, and live forever.” (So Adam and Eve were not immortal at their original conception)

St Augustine of Hippo understood Paul to have said that Adam’s sin was hereditary. “Death passed upon all men because of Adam, in whom all sinned.”  The concept of ‘Original sin’, that all men are born in a condition of sinfulness and must have redemption became a cornerstone of most Christian theological tradition.  However Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox churches, Congregationalist churches, and the Mormons don’t share this belief.

Over the centuries Christian beliefs have come to say that the serpent that tempted Eve was Satan or that Satan was using the serpent as a mouthpiece…although there is no mention of this identification in the Hebrew Torah

Early church followers held that because Eve was the one who tempted Adam to eat the fruit she (Eve) and ALL women who followed her were the first sinners and especially responsible for the ‘Fall.’  Tertullian would tell his listeners in the second century CE that women were the devils gateway, and go on to explain that they were responsible for the death of Jesus.

We can see that the story of Adam and Eve is a pivotal point in Christianity. The exegesis of the early chapter is the basis for the theology of the New Testament. If Adam and Eve did not play out as Genesis says it did, then there is no need for Jesus to redeem our sins…indeed, we have no sins, as the original story mentions none. It is only Paul, writing some four thousand years later, who puts this whole fiction into action.  It is Paul who comes up with the idea and later writers pick it up and run with it and expand upon it.

Now what happens if we remove Adam and Eve from the mix entirely?  We have this book that was written by Hebrews, Jews, and later Christians over a period of perhaps 800 to a 1000 years.  By the actions and words of one man (Paul) who lived a few years after Jesus practically the whole world of Christian thought and theology hangs.

In the Biblical sense Adam and Eve did not exist. The story of men and women living on this earth far transcends the petty story found in the Bible. Adam and Eve were not the beginning of the human race; they are nothing more than a footnote in a fictive mythological story written by some of our ancestors. The story of humans goes back many hundreds of thousands of years and is spread over the whole earth. We did not come from two progenitors 6000+- years ago.  Our footprints, handprints, tools, habitats, art, and handiwork have been found all over the globe going back a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and many more years.

We humans have a history that is told in archaeological artifacts and human bones and pottery and stunning artwork on cave walls.  We find finely crafted spearheads in animals that have not walked the earth for over 10,000 years, we find Homo sapiens skeletons superimposed with Neanderthal bones in Israeli caves from 50,000 years ago, we find 10,000 year old graveyards in the middle of the Sahara desert…relics from a time when the Sahara was green and home to ancient animals and human societies.

We humans also have sciences now that can read the ancient stories entwined in our blood.  The stories that are told there….are not the stories of the Bible.  We did not spread out all over the earth from “East of Eden” 6000 years ago. By that time humans were everywhere; in China and Southeast Asia, in Australia and Borneo, in North and South America, all of Europe, and many of the smaller ocean islands.

There is archaeological evidence of “us” all over the place and in time periods going back hundreds of thousands of years. The evidence is overwhelming, there are no doubts anymore. Adam and Eve as a Biblical truth…is not the truth.

Christianity, as well as Judaism and Islam, and all the other religions are relics of a time when we humans were making up gods…when we thought we needed them…when we had no way of ascertaining what was real in our world and what was myth.  Some of us still look and hope to find a higher being that they can lay their troubles on, someone who can make them happier and richer and healthier, while forgetting to look inside themselves and finding their own will.

Jesus was only needed to redeem our sins brought on by the downfall of Adam and Eve…our ‘original sin’ Most of Christianity relies on the story of Jesus as their basic reason for being. In fact if you follow all the lines of reasoning you will find that Adam and Eve is essential to the whole story of God. Take away Adam and Eve and it all falls apart.

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The Exodus Never Happened

Israeli archaeologist Ze’ev Herzog⁽¹⁾ provides a controversial  consensus view on the historicity of the Exodus and some other parts of the Hebrew myth.

In 1999, Herzog’s Haaretz weekly magazine cover page article “Deconstructing the walls of Jericho” attracted considerable public attention and debates. In this article Herzog claims that “the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort (Asherah) and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period (c920-900 BC ) of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai”  Wikipedia

If the whole Exodus story itself is unhistorical we can safely dismiss the other parts of the story [the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21), the manna from heaven (Exodus 16:15-35) and the supply of water from the Rock in Horeb (Exodus 17:7)] as mythical addition to an already fictitious account.

⁽¹⁾Ze’ev Herzog (born 1941) is an Israeli archeologist, professor of archaeology at The Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. Ze’ev Herzog is the director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology since 2005.

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