THE GOLDEN RULE VS. THE HAMMER OF PUNISHMENT

For this entry, I've decided to talk about the golden rule, something any decent person will endorse, no matter their religion of lack thereof. This account is taken from another website: http://www.kawasakimotorcycle.org/forum/main-lobby/70204-i-got-pulled-over-today-need-help-2.html

“Buck Snoddy...was a rural Arizona cop back in the 1940s and 1950s (Buck caught the FBI's #1 Most Wanted one year, and was featured in a Dragnet episode a few years later after catching a fugitive from LAPD). Legend has it that Buck never issued a traffic ticket -- if you had been dangerous, he'd just arrest you, otherwise, you got a Buck Talk, during which he explained in excruciating detail the depths of your error. Few people wanted to chance another roadside chat!

An insight into his character are stories such as the time a kid came out of a dance after drinking a few more beers than he should have. Buck sees him weaving through the lot, comes up behind him, and as the kid digs his car keys out, shouts "Hey, how you doing, Mike?" and slaps the kid on the back. Of course, the keys fall to the ground. Buck kicks them under the car, then helps Mike look for them. He says “I have to go check the doors on Main Street, but I'll bring a flashlight back with me. Have a seat in your car, and I'll be back in a few minutes."

Mike, of course, sits down. Next thing he knows, Buck is slamming his hand several times on the car roof to wake him up, and the sun is rising. Buck says "Enjoying the hangover? Your keys are under the car, now get the hell home and be smarter next week."

It would have been easier for him to arrest Mike for public drunkenness, or driving under the influence …. Instead, Buck cut a good kid some slack and gave him a lesson that was remembered 50 years later....”

My wife's father worked as a deputy under Buck Snoddy. He was a man of similar attitude and character, respected and loved by the people he served. He was slow to arrest but quick to be stern and pointed, such as the times he saw workmen in a bar blowing their paychecks and ordered them to go straight home and give their money to their wives. Those were the days when benevolent men such as he could get away with doing such things. You might say it was pre-civil rights times. They were sort of neighborly, fatherly and grandfatherly types of community guardians nobody wanted to mess with.

I'm sure there are still many officers of the law with similar attitudes, but our straight laced, litigious society has made it increasingly difficult for them to follow their charitable instincts. Buck Snoddy didn't have to worry about MADD MOTHERS descending on him in lantern jawed vindictive fury. He also served in a much less crowded environment where everybody basically knew everybody else and had a neighborly concern for each other.

What these men, and their modern counterparts, really championed was the Golden Rule, which is common to all advanced moral systems. They really believed in loving their neighbors as much as they loved themselves and their own families.

We need more of that attitude and practice in our present world. There would be far fewer people in prison or shadowed by a felony record for the rest of their lives.

"HOLY MOSES" -- WHAT A STORY

This blog entry is the first in a series of entries showing the fictional and mythological origins of common Bible stories and beliefs.

Part 1

Everybody in the Western world, and much of the rest of humanity, is familiar with the story of Moses in the bull rushes. It's a Sunday School favorite. Several other “Bible stories” are also sentimental favorites. They are so ubiquitous that hardly anyone questions their historical authenticity.

The mental picture in people's minds is of a robed Moses sitting in a tent in the middle of the Sinai desert, writing his heart out under some sort of godly inspiration. They have similar pictures of other supposed Bible writers and are absolutely convinced that it all was directly from the mouth of their God.

Surprise!

There has been abundant evidence available for decades that those inspirational little stories and accounts were made up fictions crafted centuries, even millenniums, after the supposed occurrences by imaginative select, edit, rearrange and paste scribes with an agenda. That agenda being the goal of those religious leaders (read: priests) to build a secure place for themselves that would be financed and maintained by the masses they had so carefully tutored and groomed.

They had just returned from several generations of Babylonian captivity (around 600 B.C.) during which they had been exposed to the highly advanced civilization of Babylon, its literature and highly developed religious hierarchies. The Jewish priestly class could now write and publish, possibly for the first time in Israelite history. They were finally equipped to craft a self-serving theocracy and determinedly set about doing so.

The Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, is really a religious novel based on legends and myths, plus an occasional carefully edited and enhanced historical occurrence, that were adopted by the Israelite priesthood and re-crafted to support the doctrine and perspective they wanted people to accept. Included in that approach were the chauvinistic Israelite aspirations that would appeal to the population (the “chosen” people, etc.).

Go to this video presentation for an illuminating rundown and overview that goes hand in hand with my recent post about the “Famn Damily” concerning what actually happened to produce what we call “The Bible”: http://www.anatheist.net/2011/01/a-history-of-god/.

Let's start with that picture of Moses floating in the Nile.

Laurence Gardner reveals some interesting historical facts in his book, The Origin of God.

About 400 years had transpired since the family entourage had gone to Egypt in the days of the drought and famine. This is a period of time about the same as that which separates me from my earliest colonial ancestor in the Lynn, Massachusetts settlement of 1630.

Gardner points out that the Moses story was adapted from a Mesopotamian original, the Legend of Sharru-kin and pertains to Sargon the Great. king of Akkad. The translated account reads: “My changeling mother conceived me; in secret she bare me. She set me in a basket of rushes, and with pitch she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river, which rose not over me. The river bore me up, and carried me to Akki, the drawer of the water.”

During the intervening three hundred plus years, the Israelites had become very much a part of the Egypt of their time. Some of them had become part of the ruling elite – the pharoanic dynasties. Their religious inclinations and beliefs had also achieved some prominence and led to philosophical conflict, probably with ethnic overtones.

I will quote from Gardner: “...the new pharaoh, Amenhotep IV, could not accept the Egyptian deities and their myriad idols....Yaouai, had been acknowledged and promoted as the Aten by his own father, Amenhotep III....(he) progressed and developed the Yaouai concept, even changing his own name from Amenhotep (Amen is pleased) to Akhenaten (Glorious spirit of the Aten)....he closed all the temples of the Egyptian gods and became very unpopular, particularly with the priests of Ra and those of the traditional national deity, Amen.”

There were numerous plots against Akhenaten's life. He was eventually forced to abdicate and his son, Tutankhaten, assumed the throne, soon after changing his name to Tutankhamun to show his allegiance to Amun, rather than to Aten. Akhenaten was banished from Egypt but was still regarded by his supporters as the royal Mose or Moses (“Mose, Mosis or Moses...was a distinctive appellation of an Egyptian royal heir.” – Gardner).

The word, “Moses,” became confused between its Egyptian meaning and the Hebrew word “mosche” which means “the drawer out,” taken from “m-sh-a,” to draw. From this confusion, a lot of spurious mythology has arisen.

A great deal more was going on in ancient Egypt than we are led to believe. The levitical priests and scribes may not have known about it all almost a millennium later when they set to work crafting what has come down to us. Their main concern was the creation of a story line that suited their purposes. To this end, they scoured the mythologies and histories of the nations around them and adapted, rewrote and fictionalized at will to come up with what millions now accept as divinely inspired history.

As I have witnessed politics and religion in action, I long ago decided that the first imperative in arriving at a semblance of truth on any political or religious subject was to determine what the “hidden agenda” might be. Rarely are those agendas featured on the six-o-clock news. Most people never suspect such agendas exist, but they certainly do. They also existed in 600 B.C. and in all the centuries since.

When reading any history, it is advisable to combine one's reading with a sizable grain of the proverbial salt.

THE REAL QUESTION

Today, we hear a lot about intelligent design from people who dogmatically proclaim that creation and life is too complex and unique to have arisen by chance. To their way of thinking, such complexity proves the existence of an anthropomorphized creator that planned and organized it all.

Anyone can see that the universe and life is indeed complex. But, this assumption leaves unanswered an even greater question. If the universe and all it contains is too complex, etc. to have arisen without a creator, who is the even greater creator who created the creator? The creator of that creator? Etc. Etc.
By their own reasoning, that creator would have to have been far more complex and wondrous than the creation he, she or it brought into being. Who or what gave rise to something or someone exponentially more complicated and wondrous than anything we see in the resulting universe?
Just saying that first cause, or God, always existed is a non-answer that requires an incredulous amount of faith. It is illogical.
Reason demands that at some point the beginnings of life either arose spontaneously or someone or something caused it all to begin. I find it much easier to believe that organic molecules interacted to produce the first primitive amino acids and then life forms than to believe that cosmic energy of some sort magically combined to form a being or force infinitely more massive and complex than any computer devised by man could ever aspire to be. If I couldn’t begin to produce anything remotely akin to myself, how did an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-everything creator somehow spring into existence?
Don’t tell me I have to take it on faith. There are plenty of people with that mental approach who are determined to kill me and wipe out the civilization thinking men have produced so their superstitions can keep future generations enslaved and ignorant. Not long ago, that same attitude permeated the Vatican and produced the former Dark Ages.
That attitude still permeates the thinking of far too many people. The same determination to enforce the ignorance of blind faith on the world is at work today every time zealots attempt to force “creation science” into the curriculum of another school, or the adherents of a particular superstition demand that everyone else be forced by law and decree to adhere to their religious prejudices, requirements and dogmas.
There has to be a beginning to everything that exists. That includes anything referred to as “god.” Somewhere, somehow, something came to be out of nothing. At least, science, quantum physics and mathematics continue to give answers that shed light on more and more of the mechanisms involved. Scientific understanding continues to grow. Religious dogma remains static and unreasoning.
Whether science can ever shed total light on the ultimate origin of everything remains to be seen, provided one of the religions predicated on blind faith in some deity doesn’t exterminate all of us before we have the chance to determine those answers. Or, stamps out the scientific advances that would enable us to stop extermination through celestial cataclysms like a comet striking earth again. I would be more optimistic if we still lived in a polytheistic world where people tolerated and even honored the imaginary gods of their neighbors.
Christianity and Islam have, in their zealous turn, through crusades and jihads, made that tolerant attitude all too rare. I fear we may be looking at total extermination in the name of blind faith in some deity. Or, we could face a worldwide bloodbath and another destruction of civilization to make way for a new Dark Age of superstitious ignorance that may never end before humanity inevitably becomes extinct through one chance happening or another. The demise of Tyrannosaurus Rex and a host of his contemporaries demolishes any human pomposity to which I might be prone.
I have no faith someone’s imaginary friend is going to step in and prevent it. Winning the lottery is much more likely.

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When History Isn't History

There are serveral videos by Carl Sagan available on You Tube which go into the cosmology found in the Hindu religion.  Go to You Tube and search for Carl Sagan on Hinduism.  You will be amazed at the superior insight the crafters of this ancient faith had over the concepts of the Western and Middle Eastern world.

Carl Sagan is gone from the world stage. Thanks to modern technology, his resounding voice of reason and intelligence has not been silenced as the proponents of superstitious ignorance might wish.

One of the greatest glories and fulfillments of evolved human intelligence is to question -- to toss out theories and prognostications and then to seek the facts that either prove or disprove them.

Adherents to superstitions have a different approach. They start with the conclusions their superstition endorses and then try to find or manufacture “facts” which support the superstition.

I've seen this mindset at work many times. It was very predominant in the old WCG, and it continues in the splinters as well as throughout the evangelical “Bible belt.” I've even heard it postulated by desperate sycophants that the speed of light and the speed of radioactive decay have changed over time.

It's certainly OK to question and theorize, but let's get real here! Scientific measurements don't change. OK, I know, light shows up as both waves and particles and it depends on the measurement method used, but light is always either a wave or a particle. Eventually, we'll figure out why it shows up both ways. If a particle can appear to show up in two places at the same time, there is a quantum reason we will come to understand thoroughly.

The universe operates by set laws and parameters. A gram or pound will still be a gram or pound tomorrow. A meter a meter. A degree Celsius will still be a degree Celsius tomorrow, or a million years in the future, etc., etc.

Radioactive decay was constant and stays constant. So does the speed of light.

In the past, I looked down on the “ignorant” Hindus – those poor deluded souls with their pantheon of gods and demi-gods. No more. Their pantheon is no more ignorant than the pantheon of christian saints! And, more saints are being beatified all the time. Hindu time scales are more reasonable than the biblical six thousand years or so since supposed creation.

If you read my blog on the “Famn Damily,” you know that the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam had an origin in polytheism very similar to the multiple gods theism existing throughout the world, including India. Theists try to keep people from knowing or even suspecting that is the case, but the most highly educated among them are not ignorant of the facts. It just isn't in their self-interest to let the masses know about it. “Faith” must be preserved at all costs.

I'm doing my utmost, as Thomas Paine would if he were still here, to get the facts out so people will no longer be hoodwinked into worshiping something that doesn't exist in actual fact and never did.

Am I going to turn Hindu? Of course not! Superstitions are still superstitions and trading in my old god for many gods of equally human manufacture would be no bargain and would make no sense.

What I'm saying is that Hinduism, in some of its aspects, is more reasonable than any of the Abrahamic faiths. Their morality is not inferior to Western Abrahamic moralities. Their approach is a better match for scientific inquiry and advancement than is the predominant Abrahamic-based approaches of the West and Middle East. Witness the hostility of faith based school boards toward the teaching of evolution.

The originators of the Abrahamic faiths had to manufacture a vast litany of mythological nonsense to support their chauvinistic program of making their hereditary line something special ( the "chosen people"). They contrived genealogies, chronologies, divine covenants and histories that scholars are disproving every day.

I was totally amazed in reading The Origin of God by Laurence Gardner to find how much of Genesis was concocted out of whole cloth that bears little resemblance to the true history of civilization in the Middle East. Just because someone claims to write history and puts names and dates in place doesn't mean that history can be trusted.

There are histories being written and circulated right now that deny the World War II holocaust! Let those get enough coverage and perpetuation and one can only wonder what people might believe happened a few centuries from now.

When evaluating any history, one must determine what the agenda of the author or authors happened to be. Just because it makes it into print is no proof of authenticity. Lies aren't just spoken. They are also written and printed. There are a multitude of those lies in the Bible.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FAMN DAMILY

Herbert Armstrong, as lousy a theologian as he was, got one thing about the scriptures partially right. He maintained that the Hebrew word “Elohim” was a “uni-plural” name for god that meant God was more than one, actually a family of beings.

From there, his understanding and subsequent teaching went way off into left field, and beyond, leading to the assertion that we, if saved and faithful to the end, would join that family – would actually be born as Gods, brothers of Jesus, at the resurrection.

I won't get into the varying teachings of multitudes of sects, philosophies, religious denominations, etc. that sometimes put us humans in the category of already being individuated parts of the universal god spirit. The Mormons expect to be glorified and become supreme gods over multitudes of worlds throughout the universe. I guess that pertains only to this planet as the originating center of everything because that's where they happen to be. I haven't delved into the specifics.

Ancient cultures of Southern Europe and the Middle East all worshiped anthropomorphized gods who were mirrors of human society on an exalted level. All the pantheons revolved around a supreme, randy, philandering divine patriarch with jealous wives, concubines, multitudes of quarreling children jockeying for position, etc.

In the Greek world, Zeus was at the top of the heap and father of the gods, with all the inevitable attendant problems. The Romans had their Jupiter.

The Canaanites and Mesopotamians had their own little god-family setup. Into this world was born a guy we know as Abraham.

In that world, there was a father of the local gods known as El Elyon, God Most High. One of his sons was Yahweh who became over time the specific god of the Israelites. Others of his sons and daughters became the exalted gods and goddesses of other tribes and localities. There was Ashtoreth, his wife, also called Asherah, Ishtar, Ninlil and Elath, Baal, his senior son, and Anath, his daughter.

They were known collectively as Elohim, the divine family of El or El Elyon.

The names given these gods varied throughout the Near East. El was Ilu Kergal to the sumerians. Baal was known as Hadad in Phoenicia and Nergal in Mesopotamia. Anath was Inana to the Sumerians and Astarte to the Phoenicians.

According to I Kings 11:5, Solomon worshiped Ashtoreth and that worship continued in Judea until the Babylonian captivity.

The Israelites did not consider Yahweh the only god any more than their neighbors did. That is why the commandment against worshiping other gods specifically stated that they should have no other gods “before” Yahweh because he was jealous of his position as their specific god. It took centuries of development before those other gods got shoved out of the way, sublimated and incorporated into just one deity that is worshiped to this very day as the one and only god. These gods were considered real and a competitive threat.

Scholars like Laurence Gardner, Chris Rolston, Mark Smith, Frank Cross and others tell us that the early picture given for Yahweh is that of a Near Eastern tribal deity. Those facts have been covered up and forgotten as that tribal deity evolved over time along with Israelite chauvinistic aspirations. Soon he became the only true god, the others being marginalized and finally, totally ignored by followers of Judaism and Christianity.

The Hebrew scriptures as we know them today weren't written by Moses or any of the other “heroes” they portray. They evolved slowly over centuries and began taking shape only after the Babylonian captivity during which the Jews became more highly educated and had access to the historical records and myths their “hosts” and scholarly neighbors had meticulously preserved. There was no organized Jewish book for centuries; just separate scrolls, revered in some places, questioned in others and constantly revised and edited to correspond to currently held opinions and doctrine, and, of course, the interests of the temple priesthood.

Laurence Gardner in The Origin of God makes this revealing statement about Genesis: “...there is little discrepancy between the manner of his biblical representation and those of the Sumerian, Akkadian and Canaanite tablets from which the Genesis portrayal derived....but there is much information in the source records which the Bible writers preferred to leave unstated....God's image becomes increasingly a matter of retrospective scribal interpretation.” In other words, there was “scribal spin.”

Gardner's book is currently available through bookstores and Amazon. It is thorough and scholarly but is easy to read and understand. Likewise, The Early History of God by Mark S. Smith.

These facts have been known to scholars for generations. Recent archaeological discoveries have added immense new knowledge which makes it plain that the common conceptions about the origin of the “god” people confidently worship are totally erroneous.

The Pentateuch, and much of the rest of the Old Testament, is basically a legendary fiction crafted in the centuries following the Babylonian captivity largely from sources the Israelites obtained from their more advanced captors and neighbors. It is based on fables and myths that circulated freely from nation to nation and tribe to tribe and were preserved in the libraries and archives of the more advanced peoples and the chauvinistic motives of the priests and scribes involved.

For quick and interesting info on the multiple gods theme, go to You Tube and look up videos by the backyard professor.  For another good rundown on how this evolution took place, here is another great You Tube video:  http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3

SUBSTITUTIONARY HUMAN SACRIFICE -- BARBARISM SANCTIFIED

Here is another post I first posted on The Painful Truth blog.

The blood soaked history of religions (all religions) is too little known or recognized in the modern world.

The myth continues that religion is the source of morality, mercy and everything good. Muslims, for example, try to paint themselves as peace loving while commissioning suicide bombers to blow up infidels and other Muslims who happen to follow a different variant of islam their particular sect or group considers heretical. They are not unique in this sanguine, shocking stain on the pages of religious history.

Nothing inflames passions more than religious fervency. This is especially true when those passions get inflamed even more by a mental pathology like extreme narcissism.

Witness Jonestown and what many of us experienced as unthinking adherents to WCG and its dizzying plethora of offshoots. It becomes a psychological addiction that many can never shake.

A detailed summary of just a few of the appalling atrocities religions have perpetrated on the world can be found at this website: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_haught/holy.html.

These facts demonstrate the absurdity of claims of benevolence and moral and ethical superiority for religion and religious belief – even that generally benign faith of Buddhism (see the above article). Most general adherents of all religions, unless and until inflamed, usually go through life with no murderous attitudes toward others. They’re just ordinary people trying to get by, someone with whom you could enjoy a cup of tea.

Interject the power mad narcissist in a position of leadership and/or influence and all bets are off.

But, that is only background for the real subject of this post; something the average Christian has just accepted through mental osmosis – the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Stop and think about it for a moment. Does “Jesus died for my sins” really make sense?

You may reply that it does because Jesus was special. He was God made flesh through a virgin birth. He never committed a sin and was guiltless. Therefore, as God made flesh, he could atone for all my sins by voluntarily sacrificing himself.

This whole idea of a substitutionary sacrifice or atonement makes no sense at all. I’m sure there are loving parents who would gladly suffer execution for a crime one of their children committed. They could protest that they are guiltless and, therefore, suffering the penalty in their offspring’s stead would justify the guilty one going free. There isn’t a court in the entire world that would entertain such a thing.

Besides, if Jesus really was god incarnate, his death would be an illusion in the first place. In effect, he would be sacrificing himself to himself to cancel a rule he set up in the beginning. When they call it a “mystery,” they’re dead right!

Several assumptions are at work here, and they all revolve around accepting one mythological absurdity after another, beginning with Genesis 1. These include the special creation of Adam and Eve, the “fall,” man’s death being an eternal penalty instead of a natural thing that befalls all creatures, etc.

Some will counter with the common self-righteous charge that I’m just “leaning to my own understanding” and they are too reverent to do that.

Everybody, yes EVERYBODY, has no choice but to lean to their own understanding, even if that means accepting somebody else’s understanding, so don’t try to belittle my understanding. Here’s a humorous little parody which illustrates how the average person gets their spiritual and religious “truths”: http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php.

Osiris (see:: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa2.htm) and Mithras (see: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html) supposedly were virgin-born of the gods and died for your sins long before Jesus was ever heard of. There is no evidence that the original Jewish apostles held any such beliefs — either in a virgin birth or a blood atonement. It was all grafted onto the Christianity created at the Council of Nicea and written into what we accept as the Bible after the fourth century (over three hundred years after any individual named “Jesus” walked the streets and roads of Judea). Read the history here: http://www.nexusmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=70.

The whole idea of a substitutionary sacrifice permeated the ancient world. It took many forms and the concept has never disappeared: “…without shedding of blood is no remission” Heb. 9:22.

We see it at work in the myth of Abraham’s proposed sacrifice of Isaac. We are assured by the scriptures that God told him to do it. Every psychopath who murders his or her children seems to come up with a similar statement. Today, only those with mental derangements claim such personal communication with the deity. This fact should give us pause to wonder about Abraham. Perhaps he had some unfortunate accident similar to Ellen G. White’s that led to partial-complex seizures: http://www.ellenwhiteexposed.com/egw79.htm.

Whatever really happened back there in the misty mythological past, at least an acceptable level of sanity took over before poor Isaac’s throat was slit. Maybe the psychological stress brought on another revelatory seizure. I’m too old and knowledgeable about history and the ways of the world to accept it all as scripturally stated. “Spin” is as old as human awareness, and I’ve had to be corrected from time to time about my recollections and interpretations about my own past. I can only imagine what might have happened if those memories had been passed on orally for hundreds of years, finally written down and then copied, translated, interpreted, etc, over and over for more hundreds of years.

At least, Abraham somehow came to his senses, according to the account we have. Beats what Jesus’ supposed father ended up doing, according to the myth.

We are told that God likes to smell the aroma of a sacrifice. I can relate. I enjoy smelling a barbecue. Anthropomorphizing that liking onto your deity is a stretch, but humans do create their gods in their image.

Most people conclude that only the sacrifice of animals was pleasing to God.

According to the scriptures, he got a few kicks out of the slaughtering and burning of humans as well, at least in the centuries before he was fully evolved.

For years, I read over Leviticus 27:28 and 29 and never noticed what it really said: “…no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of that he hath, both OF MAN and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH.” (Let’s be honest, I skimmed it. We tend as believers to be selective in our reading and our awareness of what we really are reading.)

“Oh, that didn’t really happen,” I can hear people saying.

Oh, but it did! Many Times, I’m sure, but few are recorded.

It took centuries for Israel to totally abandon human sacrifice.

Remember the account of Jephthah’s daughter? That’s another passage of scripture we tend to carelessly read over and dismiss one way or another. When we are people of faith, we tend to develop tunnel vision and selective scriptural amnesia. Here’s the account:

“Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah … and Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to me, when I return in peace … shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering…. And Jephthah came … unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child … he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! … I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back (remember Lev. 27:28-29). … And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains … at the end of two months … she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed.”

The God of Israel (I suspect that it was really the avaricious priests) even considered the firstborn son of every family something that had to be ransomed or redeemed so they would not be sacrificed. See Exodus 13:2. Those offerings for redemption went to the priests. It was quite a mafia-style protection racket! Such practices went by the way over the centuries, thankfully. They were once common to religions.

In Deuteronomy 13:13-19, it was commanded that a whole town, everyone and everything in it, be killed and burned AS A SACRIFICE TO GOD.

I know. God commanded it, so it’s all right.

The child murderer and Muslim cleric say the same thing.

If a real God really gives such commands, why doesn’t he have the “balls” to give the command in person? Or, more reasonably, do the job himself? Couldn’t he, if he really has the power attributed to him, have sent an asteroid to wipe out that city? Why does an all powerful deity have to have puny humans do his dirty work? Takes no courage to send a priestly lackey to in turn send the rank and file “Joe Blow” any more than it takes personal courage for a mafia don to send a hit man, or an imam to send a fanatical young boy or girl wearing a suicide vest.

Surely a few of the attackers were killed or seriously wounded. I guess they were just unfortunate “collateral damage.”

People worship a pusillanimous wimp!

Some power mad, probably wild-eyed and psychologically disturbed individuals in different places at some ancient times manufactured those sorry travesties of humans standing in for their all powerful deities and through fear and intimidation, got everybody to bow down to those sorry excuses of omnipotent gods and do whatever the exalted “holy” representative told them to do in their names.

Far too many people still worship some imaginary god they’re absolutely certain demands blood to be spilled for their sins. They are so grateful to be able to claim the substitutionary blood of somebody called “Jesus.”

What a delusion!

What barbarism!

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

The following article was first published on http://hwarmstrong.com/wordpress/ about a month ago.  Since it ties in perfectly with the subjects I present on this site, I am reproducing it here.

I am appalled!

I am flabbergasted!

A new poll is out, showing that close to half the population (40%) of the supposedly most advanced nation on earth believes in creationism! Not just general creationism with “God” as first cause to set evolution in motion, but totally stupid “God did it in the last few thousand years” creationism.

The question as to how dumb the American people can be was answered by the last (2010) election and this poll!

In the recent election, the American electorate gave overwhelming support to some of the most ignorant and totally dumb people like at no other time in our nation’s history. I just can’t believe that a total “dumb ass” incompetent like Sarah Palin can be a serious contender as a presidential nominee in less than two years.

It has been stated by several historians that nations get the leaders they deserve. If we’re really that dumb, then we have what we deserve in power right now and our position as the top nation of the world will soon be over.

I mean it! I totally believe that the USA is most likely doomed! Just like ancient Rome!

We have the same situation of treasure draining wars and occupations coupled with a predominantly super rich ruling class that basically buys elections. Serving the needs of the nation comes in a far second to promoting themselves and the interests of their millionaire and billionaire cronies.

Our “leaders” don’t have the understanding, moral principles or the gumption to take the steps necessary to turn things around. True education and true science continue to get “short shrift” and are often ridiculed by little minds with set-in-concrete pro-superstition attitudes in high places.

We have become an anti-science, pro-mythology bunch of under-educated, rap-spouting, superstition-championing idiots! We’re careening down a precipitous blind curve oblivious to what’s happening with our eyes glued to a “plastic Jesus” on the dashboard!

An additional 38% of Americans think that evolution was guided by their God. That is a little less insane but still shows an appalling lack of reasoning power or education in some basic facts of history, geology, paleontology, etc.

It also shows a total lack of any study of comparative religion. All these people know is what they have been fed and carelessly accepted without ever delving into facts like our founding fathers did.

I tremble for the fate of my descendants when I see the state of education in this country. I realize, as did James Madison when he wrote, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty,” that we are in dire straits when school boards dictate what can be in textbooks based on a religious bias and ban the dissemination of the knowledge of great men like Thomas Jefferson.

All people have to do is read Thomas Paine’s Age of reason or go online to look up the quotes of men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, regarding religion to see that this nation wasn’t founded by men who could be present-day adherents to the “Tea Party” or the ultra-conservative Republican right. Here are two sites to check out: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/washington.htm and http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jefferson.htm.

Benjamin Franklin is well known for his pithy sayings in Poor Richard’s Almanac. They have become so ubiquitous that many people believe a lot of them come from the Bible. Being a born diplomat, he was much less vocal about his feelings on religion. He was a staunch Deist. Read his very pointed comments that have been preserved at this website: http://articles.exchristian.net/2002/03/ben-franklin-quotes.php.f

Anyone can easily google any number of our founding fathers to see what they really felt on this and other vitally important topics.

Paine’s book is available right here on The Painful Truth website.

People have been lulled to sleep and told the same old nonsense over and over to the point that they just accept it. Hitler realized that if you tell people lies often enough and loudly enough, they will start to believe. It’s a feel-good thing. They can’t be bothered to question and they certainly don’t want to risk going to “hell” by asking some simple questions or reading something “satanic” like an uncensored textbook that teaches that horrible “evulooshin.” Rhymes with “Rooshin,” ya know.

All they think they need or want is their plastic Jesus. He’s gonna come and save them for sure. Viva la Rapture! Funny. I’ve been backward and forward through that Bible, and I have yet to read anything in there that uses that word in any such context.

Weren’t there a few million Jews in Aushwitz and Bergen-Belsen, etc. with similar expectations? Where was that “interventionist” god all the countless thousands of times innocent people have been brutalized and slaughtered time and again throughout history? Often in worship of another concept of that supposedly same god! There were a lot of devout Christians in the Waffen SS. The monsters who flew planes into the twin towers were very passionate worshipers of Allah.

I fear it is too late. Everywhere I look, I see decline. I see my nation basically bankrupt but unwilling to stop the party for the rich and powerful, and many states and local jurisdictions are about to fold under unmanageable budgets. Our greatness has been squandered and sabotaged from within and the “barbarians” without are getting stronger, richer, better educated and more determined.

And, they own us!

The time to call a halt was decades ago. But, we were mesmerized into thinking that we would always be at the top of the heap, so we could party on like drunken sailors. I remember the cliches well: “Use other people’s money,” “Trickle Down,” “Greed is good,” “Tap your equity,” etc., etc., ad nauseum.

We thought we were really clever. Turns out, we were and are abysmally stupid!

WHAT IS "AGNOSTIC ATHEISM?"

In my profile, I state that I am an “agnostic atheist.” Some may find that a confusing way of identifying what I believe, so I thought I'd try to explain.

Thomas Paine uses the term “God” in his book but is clearly atheist in his thinking. He did not believe in any of the extant gods or religions of his time (he clearly and unequivocally states that he does not), and neither do I. In that sense, I am, as he was, an atheist.

I also realize, as I'm sure Paine did, that there had to be a beginning of all that we see; a beginning scientists refer to with the vague term, “big bang.”

Until recent times and the advent of quantum theory and mechanics, about the only thing human minds could come up with as a first cause was an anthropomorphized being, or beings, called a god or gods to explain the existence of existence.

Paine never heard of quantum theory or quantum mechanics or quantum anything. I'm sure something like evolution probably never entered his mind. People of his time who realized that the gods people believed in couldn't be real usually turned to Deism – the belief that a real god started everything but then took a hands off policy.

Even Darwin had a hard time accepting the possibility of such a thing as actual evolution for a good long while. He wrestled mightily with what facts and reason told him and what had been drummed into him from the time he was a babe in a cradle.

I just don't know what happened to start it all back there billions of years ago. So, I add “agnostic” to my definition of my basically atheist beliefs, because “agnostic” simply means, “I don't know.”

I am, however, certain that there was not a super-intelligent being in the general pattern of a human being (I'll have more to say about that soon, after the reference books I've ordered arrive) that just magically sprang into existence or existed for all eternity, with an intelligence and powers that would dwarf anything we can imagine; which being then created all that we see here on earth and throughout the cosmos.

If there should now exist what many refer to as “universal consciousness,” it has to be a manifestation of the energy involved in and constituting the “big bang” and the subsequent evolution of the universe and life. It too would have had to evolve. It may be no more an actuality than the gods people have invented.

My mind is open to theories and postulates. It no longer is closed and padlocked by “faith.” As an agnostic, I will question until the day I depart this mortal life.

As far as the “gods” people prate about and get all emotional and hostile about, they do not exist, and those who promote them have nothing but “hearsay” to present in their defense.

Hearsay gets nowhere in a court of law, and it gets nowhere with me.  Not anymore.