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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Is Christianity Doomed?

Christians nowadays are in a very unstable position although they will deny it strongly.  Arguing philosophy and exegesis of the Bible is pretty much a waste of time now.  The thing that is killing religion in our times is science and the unstoppable uncovering of evidence that disproves most of the foundation of all religions. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all irrevocably tied to the Bible. All that believers in Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, or Allah can do nowadays is say they don’t believe the sciences that contradict their theology.

The believers in God have to deny that we can accurately date tens of thousands of artifacts and human bones and artwork and structures that are scattered all over the earth and give live testimony to our civilizations verrry looong past.  The many evidences we have for our past are real and tangible and their provenance can be scientifically proven…and there is so much of it.  The followers of God and Allah sometimes say that it doesn’t matter what evidence there is, God is outside of the evidence and cannot be proven…or disproven.

Perhaps true.  But, what can be proven beyond a doubt, is that certain things that are described in the infallible ‘Word of God’ inspired Bible are not true and not infallible or factual and that a lot of the stories are not to be trusted as actually happening.  Another thing that stands out is the actual explanation of the supposedly unfolding drama is stupid. The most stupid part is that Satan knows he will fail because it’s part of the drama that God set up…preordained from the very beginning if you will.

If you believe the story of Gods plan you have to accept the fact that God actually created this WHOLE drama from the beginning. He created all Evil, Satan, the Demons, He set up the Fall, giving us Original Sin, He was the playwright, the creator of unimaginable human suffering and death. A loving God creates two humans and actually sets them up for failure and then kicks them out of his care and lets these poor people try to survive with nothing…that part of the story is both scary and a not very bright explanation of a Gods actions.  Wake up Christians…A true humane God would not do these things.

Some things to consider:

1.       We know that the flood described in the Bible never happened.

2.        We know that humans and civilizations were spread all over the earth in the time of the deluge and  Tower of Babel.

3.       We know that Neanderthals were walking the earth for tens of thousands of years before a supposed Adam and Eve were created.

4.       We know that Homo sapiens or ‘modern humans’ were walking the earth tens of thousands of years before the Biblical folklore was even thought of.

5.       We know that Moses did not write the Pentateuch.

6.       We know, although fundamentalists deny it, that there are many, many contradictions and falsehoods in the scripture.

7.       We know that the Hebrews conception of ‘God’ changed mightily over the years. They once had a pantheon of gods and worshiped idols at late as 500BCE.

8.       There is no evidence outside the Bible, in other historic documents or the archeological record, for a mass migration from Egypt involving hundreds of thousands of people.

9.       No evidence for Joshua’s knocking down of Jericho’s walls or destruction of Ai and other cities.

10.   Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or were destroyed by “Sea People”-Philistines, or others.

Just the first 4 things above are enough to prove the Bible false.

Religion is a construct of the human mind…its explanation of creation is a story from a very old tribe
of Sheep/Goat herders, in the language, and with the worldview, of the times it was written in.  The Old and New Testament scriptures are very different views of God, and how he treats and interacts with humans…they are not compatible…and not ‘Gods’ word.

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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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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.

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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’.

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