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LELAND W. RUBLE

It’s not all that peculiar for the political right in the USA, to be influenced to a great extent by Christian organizations that identify more closely with a fundamentalist perspective of god, Jesus, and the Bible. This is not to deny that the political left is totally free of influence from fundamentalist religious authority. However, it has mainly been the conservative political right in this nation, represented by the Republican Party, that has been most swayed and most likely to embrace the extremism of a religious view of society, politics, and government.

While there has always been religious influence in government due to the overwhelming realization that most elected representatives in this nation, believe, or pretend to embrace religious dogmas of one sort or the other, extreme religious interference in government was at one time in our history, limited, and not as now, so enthusiastically embraced by right-wing political representatives sympathetic to the political right’s ambitious theocratic and fascist agenda.

Nearly all of the comments, arguments, and political objectives raised by the right wing in this nation are more than likely to appeal to those who view secular government as antagonistic to the creation of a society predicated on supernatural religious perceptions. Secular government has obstructed the ambitions of the religious right and made their efforts to Christianize the USA more difficult to accomplish their goals. In fact, many of the same right wing politicians are themselves converts to a strict fundamentalist religious perception of government and society. For instance, it was not surprising to note that Republican candidate for President, in 2008,  Ron Paul, who describes himself as a conservative libertarian (whatever that means), said in an interview published by Mark Wagner, Sept. 5, 2007, “But to those who have asked, I freely confess that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior, and that I seek His guidance in all that I do.” Regardless of his so-called libertarian persuasion, Ron Paul’s comment puts him in the same company of his conservative comrades who also believe in an authoritarian, inconspicuous, and tyrannical sky dictator. He also is pro-life, which is at odds with the thinking of a minority of libertarians not sympathetic to the ambitions of the political right.

When asked who disbelieved in the theory of evolution, three Republican candidates for president in 2008, former Governor Mike Huckabee, Rep. Tom Tancredo, and Senator Sam Brownback, raised their hands to demonstrate that they disbelieved in evolution. It’s difficult to imagine any one of these men being elected president in the 21st. century, while maintaining belief in ancient concepts that originated from biblical Scripture written by authors with an extremely limited knowledge of the natural and scientific definitions of existence.

It’s no secret why the Republican  rather than the Democratic Party, was chosen as the party most likely to sympathize with the Neanderthal concepts of religious fundamentalism. Ever since the election of Ronald Reagan, Bush l, and especially Bush ll, this political party has maintained an intimate relationship with the fundamentalist religious establishment. It also has enjoyed the widespread support and political contributions of religious zealots like the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, authoritarian religious despot Dr. James Dobson, and numerous other ingenious spokespersons who practice and preach a fundamentalist perception of the bible and reality.

It’s a well-known fact that America unlike the European nations, has a large population that leans perceptibly toward the fantasy of god belief, and has a very noisy, barbaric consortium of fundamentalist religious evangelists who dominate TV, radio, and mega-churches from coast to coast.

Church/State separation is not and never has been, in the USA, very effective in slowing or disrupting the massive flow of religious proselytism or the generosity of local, state, and government from contributing to the ambitions of the religious establishment. Of course, the tax-exempt status of religious property and donations greatly contributes to the religious establishment having an unequal advantage over other non-religious institutions that do not enjoy this same most generous privilege. For myself, I could never quite comprehend the rational for why the religious establishment in this or any country should not pay taxes, or be declared tax-exempt. And, in this current economic repression, why should the religious establishment not also be compelled legally to contribute to the welfare of city, state, and government by being fairly taxed for donations they receive, and for countless properties both the religious and non-religious taxpayer is taxed to make up for the enormous lost in tax-exempt religious funds. It is preposterous for governments to allow religious organizations the freedom of non-taxation, merely on the irrational basis of using their employment to inform the population that a supernatural and illusive god is a factual being with considerable ability to decide both one’s birth and destination after death. This in spite of the fact that not one member of the clergy or theologian can provide one iota of evidence for proof of a god’s existence.

How can any rational, secular government continue to allow a tax-exempt privilege to religious establishments that predicate their entire world view on a primitive, delusive perception of existence and reality? It defies credibility to think that the indoctrination, teaching, and practice of supernatural belief is considered a worthwhile enterprise so essential to humanity that it is allowed to pursue its objectives without being taxed for such absurd efforts. Who, what, or how in the remote past, was the decision that supernatural religious belief was such a worthy cause that its ambitions and efforts be exempted from taxation?

Religious belief, unlike science which contributes greatly to the welfare of civilization, is not as it pretends, some sort of moral guard against behavior that is disruptive and dangerous to the welfare of society. Indeed, the non-theist organization, Freedom From Religion Foundation (FRRF), publishes a monthly newsletter every month that contains two or three pages of current crimes committed by clergy in the USA and elsewhere. And nearly every day in the news, there is one or more reference to a member of the Islamic faith who has set off a bomb killing other members of the same faith, those of another but similar belief, or innocent people killed just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This from so-called morally religious individuals who pray constantly to an implausible god, and whose ayatollahs maintain an incredible authoritarian control over their converts.

There is not and not has been any indication that religious belief contributes to a more ideal and moral society. In fact, just the opposite exists. For instance, the Catholic Church as an example, which has been in the lucrative business of promoting its implausible theocratic interests for centuries, has in recent decades been revealed as one of the most corrupt, devious, and sinister organizations in existence for knowing, but doing nothing over the centuries to reprimand and censure the actions of clergy involved in sexually deviant behavior toward youthful members of its Church. Children, who unlike adults, are more easily manipulated by the authoritarian nature of a priest. There also is a strong suspicion that this Church and other religious establishments have for centuries been involved in devious acts, but only recently has the truth been exposed, mainly because of individuals more inclined and less fearful of  unmasking  religious hierarchies that no longer enjoy the dignified status and absolute authority these institutions previously exerted over their members.

The primary issues most likely to arouse the religious/political right are: abortion, gay and lesbian civil rights, stem-cell research, women’s rights, prayer in schools, the Ten Commandments on public property, local prayers before government meetings, the denial of evolution, and the election of candidates for public office who are sympathetic to the mangled beliefs of  fundamentalist religious concepts. (Check the web for many other issues of concern to the religious right.) And, don’t be surprised to learn that many of those participating in the politically motivated “Tea Parties” are also attended by those who, like their spokespersons Sarah Palin,  Glenn Beck,  and Sean Hannity, also have a fundamentalist religious perception of reality.

The question that seems most obvious of an explanation, is why do religious fundamentalists find that their theocratic ambitions can more likely be achieved through the Republican rather than the Democratic Party? Does the more liberal, less dogmatic politics of the Democratic Party present a problem for a religious fundamentalism that predicates its theology on a literal interpretation of biblical absurdity? Why would the religious Taliban in America, find that it’s ability to influence the Democratic Party, is more severely restricted, whereas its influence over the more conservative Republican Party welcomes this menacing anti-democratic abnormality? It’s most likely because the politics of this political party has over the last thirty years began to resemble more and more, not only an opposing political party, but also as a political vehicle through which the extremism of a Christian theocracy is capable of promoting its lunatic vision of an America under the influence of religious extremism.

It’s not that difficult to realize that the same ambitions that motivate Christian fundamentalists in this nation are the same ambitions and issues that motivate representatives of the Republican Party. Some of their most outspoken representatives such as Sarah Palin, are well known in the media for having religious convictions that lean severely toward a fundamentalist interpretation of biblical fantasy. If she ever became president, a remote possibility, but still a possibility, she would like former president George W. Bush, use her official status to promote a brand of archaic religious Christianity as deranged and backward as that promoted and enforced on the European continent during the centuries when both Catholic and Protestant churches were legally authorized by the then existing governments to have undue authority over human behavior and morality.

However, Palin is just one of many unhinged conservative politicians who maintain the same theofascist vision of a Christianized USA. Most of their names are known to the readers of this commentary. Everything they do in the public arena is designed to promote a theocratic vision of an America that resembles the same cockeyed vision that propels right wing radio propagandists. Shock jocks, frequently described in the media as leaders of the conservative Republican Party, such as bubblehead Rush Limbaugh, know-it-all Sean Hannity, fascist oriented media clown Glenn Beck, and countless other talk-radio jocks who daily promote a theocratic and fascist plutocratic vision of American. These are babbling, incoherent loud-mouths who depict a nightmare vision of an American that they think can only be salvaged by subscribing to the lunatic fantasy and excess of a conservative, religious politics that more likely than not, is a recipe for the end of democracy, liberty and sanity.

Make no mistake about it, over the last thirty years it has been the Republican Party that has been most motivated and accepting of the concepts generated by the efforts of the Christian Taliban  in this nation. It is the same political party that makes a tremendous effort to see to it that extreme religiously oriented individuals are elected, and once seated, are expected to further the objectives of a deluded theocratic hierarchy that yearns for the day when it dominates the American landscape with a thirteenth century version of religious and political tyranny.

Reviewed by

WILLIAM HARWOOD

As someone who spent several years “translating a bible bigger than any now in use,” to quote from Frank Zindler’s review in American Atheist, with no reasonable expectation of ever receiving even a minimum wage for the time I invested, I am probably not the best person to be asking illustrator R. Crumb why he turned Genesis into a graphic novel. A climber’s comment about why he climbed Mount Everest, “because it’s there,” seems to be the only explanation.

Certainly Crumb neither draws attention to Genesis’s absurdity and moral depravity nor attempts to do so. An Amazon reviewer suggested he was a guilty Catholic trying to make amends for his use of satire in his previous less-than-pious comics, and I see no evidence here that such an assessment was inaccurate. An illustrated version of the collection of fairy tales found in ninety percent of American homes and actually read in only a tiny fraction of that number serves the cause of religion considerably more than it serves the cause of freedom from religion. Given how unteachable the organized crime syndicate known as the Catholic Church is, it is unlikely to recognize that Crumb has provided it with a useful tool for propagating its pretence that human beings are the domesticated livestock of the most sadistic, evil, mass-murdering psychopath in all fiction. After all, for several centuries the RC Church refused to allow its bible to be translated into languages its mindslaves could read, out of fear that if they learned what their bible really says they would cease to be godworshippers. That did not happen, not because believers were saner or more intelligent than the church hierarchy feared, but because the masses were no more willing to read a vernacular bible than a Latin bible. So if the Vatican fears that an illustrated bible might draw the attention of pope addicts to the book’s status as the most obscene paean to evil ever written, with the possible exception of the Koran, they are still crediting the godphuqt with functioning human brains that they do not have.

Crumb appends his illustrations to the 2004 bible translation by Robert Alter, not the worst choice he could have made, but certainly a version that continues a centuries-long tradition of falsifying every passage that, in the original language, diametrically contradicted the mythology the translator wanted to perpetuate. Thus Alter’s translation begins, “When God began to create heaven and earth.” Compare that to The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated, which renders the same passage, “At commencement the gods conjured up the skies and the land.” Crumb reproduces the entire content of Alter’s translation unabridged, and adds comic-strip illustrations to each verse, creating a graphic novel.

For persons not familiar with the term “graphic novel,” it means simply “illustrated novel.” The illustrations are not “graphic” as some persons use that word, meaning permeated with images that the squeamish call “pornography.” In a couple of places (chapters 19, 24) Crumb illustrates expressions such as “lay with him” and “loved her” with depictions of the individuals copulating. But the drawings are not explicit, and a child would perceive the couples as simply cuddling.

As much as I hate to give aid and comfort to pushers of the most contagious form of mind-AIDS that has ever existed, I feel obliged to acknowledge that a religion that adopted this book and distributed paperback copies could greatly increase its following. I only hope that does not happen.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF EXODUS 22:18. Long ago and far away, God Almighty inspired his spokesman Moses to proclaim these frightful words from the housetops, Do not allow a witch to live (Exodus 22:18). Centuries later, God moved the Apostle Paul to write this verse, All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). In other words, Exodus 22:18 is as inspired as John 3:16, the latter being a verse which many believers regard as the most meaningful verse in the Bible.

2. THE REGRETTABLE RESULTS OF GOD’S RIGOROUS RULE. Now let us look at some of the regrettable results of the inspired verse, Exodus 22:18. A certain Simeon ben Shetach (first century BC/BCE) reportedly hanged eighty witches on one day (Sanhedrin 6.4). The activity of witches continued into New Testament times (for example Simon of Acts 8:9 and Elymas of Acts 13:8).  Revelation  21:8 promises witches a fiery destruction at death when God throws them into the lake of fire and burning brimstone. Burned to death at the stake and cast into the fiery lake to burn forever and a day! That’s cruel and unusual punishment to the nth degree!

During the Middle Ages the Church used Exodus 22:18 to subject witches to the most cruel torments. Tens of thousands of victims, often innocent, were burned alive. In 1484, Pope Innocent Vlll issued the bull (official edict), Summis Desiderantes, declaring Germany full of witches and ordering witches to be put to death. Since 1484 an estimated nine million witches were executed.

Martin Luther (1483-1546), heeding Exodus 22:18, advocated the extermination of witches. On May 31, 1431, the English burned Joan of Arc as a witch in the public square of Rouen, France. In Great Britain from 3,000 to 30,000 witches were hanged.

CONCLUSION. All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). “Only God knows” how many witches died cruel deaths because of God’s cold-blooded command to cleanse the world of witches—hundreds? thousands? millions? Believers had to choose whether to obey or disobey this God-given command. After all, All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). 2 Timothy 3:16 means that God inspired every verse of Scripture. As we have just seen, Exodus 22:18 is as much God-inspired as John 3:16, a verse which many people think is the most important verse in the Bible. Therefore an honest-to-God believer has no choice but to execute witches, even burning them to death. No way can the believer avoid snuffing out the life of every witch he/she knows. Do you know any Christians who are doing their level best to rid the world of witches by slaughtering them?

Why didn’t a loving God issue a commandment like this? You shall not inflict cruel and unusual punishment on anyone! (See the eighth amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.A.) Never ever burn another witch to death. As for me, I’ll rescue the witches burning forever in hell and give them a painfree life on a perfect earth.

God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). So far as I’m concerned, God was anything but love when he commanded, Do not allow a witch to live (Exodus 22:18). What do you think?

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

Several days ago, my wife, Mary Elizabeth, remarked that “the Bible from cover to cover is full of absurdities.” According to the dictionary, “absurd” means not in accordance with common sense; ridiculous, foolish. In this short study we shall list twenty-five biblical absurdities from cover to cover.

Absurdity 1.  A subtle, speaking snake converses with the first female, Eve (Genesis 3:1-5).

Absurdity 2.  Methuselah died at the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine (Genesis 5:27).

Absurdity 3.  There were giants on earth who were descendants of supernatural beings and human women (Genesis 6:4).

Absurdity 4.  God commanded Abraham and his descendants to circumcise every baby boy, a cruel and senseless procedure (Genesis 17:11-12).

Absurdity 5.  God ordered Abraham to slay his son Isaac as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:1-19).

Absurdity 6.  The angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven and ordered him not to harm Isaac in any way (Genesis 22:12).

Absurdity 7.  God spoke to Moses out of a burning bush which did not burn up (Exodus 3:1-4:17).

Absurdity 8.  When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea to escape from slavery in Egypt, the Lord sent a strong east wind that blew all night until there was dry land where the water had been. The Israelites walked through on dry land with a wall of water on each side of them, but the Lord drowned the Egyptians in the sea (Exodus 14:1-31).

Absurdity 9.  Balaam’s dumb donkey spoke to the prophet Balaam with a human voice and made him stop his foolishness (Numbers 22: 28-30; 2 Peter 2:15-16).

Absurdity 10.  A woman whose young son had just died, brought the corpse to Elijah, who laid the corpse on Elijah’s bed and prayed, “Lord, bring this boy back to life!” Believe it or not, the boy started breathing (1 Kings 17:17-24).

Absurdity 11.  One day Elijah and Elisha were walking along when suddenly there appeared between them a flaming chariot pulled by fiery horses. And a strong wind took Elijah up into heaven (2 Kings 2:11).

Absurdity 12. Elisha died and was buried in a cave. Once when the Israelites were burying a man’s body they were frightened by a group of Moabites and hastily threw the body into Elisha’s cave. As soon as the man’s body touched the bones of Elisha, the man came back to life and stood up (2 Kings 13:20-21).

Absurdity 13.  Jesus conversed with the devil (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13).

Absurdity 14.  Jesus the exorcist sent demons into a herd of 2,000 pigs, who rushed down a steep slope to their death in the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:11-14; Luke 8:31-34).

Absurdity 15.  Jesus multiplied five loaves of bread and two fishes into enough food to feed 5,000 men plus women and children (Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6:34-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-71).

Absurdity 16.  Jesus walks on water (Matthew 14:22-27; Mark 6:45–51; John 6:16-21).

Absurdity 17.  On the cross, Jesus gave a loud cry and then he died. The earth shook, the rocks split apart, the graves broke open, and many of God’s people who had died were raised to life and went into the holy city, where many people saw them (Matthew 27:50-53).

Absurdity 18.  Jesus ascends into heaven and sits on God’s right hand (Mark 16:19-20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-11).

Absurdity 19.  Jesus said, “If you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have eternal life, and I will raise you up on the last day” (John 6:54).

Absurdity 20. A man named Lazarus was sick and died and his body was placed in a cave and had been there four days when Jesus came and shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” Lo and behold, Lazarus did live again and came out of the cave (John 11:1-44).

Absurdity 21.  When Simon offered money to Peter and John to buy the power to impart the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands, Peter answered him like this: “May you and your money go to hell, for thinking you can buy God’s gift with money!” (Acts 8:18-20; Today’s English Version).

Absurdity 22.  Melchizedek “is without father or mother or genealogy, but has neither beginning of days or end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever” (Hebrews 7:3).

Absurdity 23.  When a church member is sick, he/she should not call a physician but the elders of the church, who will pray for him/her, and rub olive oil on him/her in the name of the Lord, which will restore the sick person to health (James 5:13-16).

Absurdity 24.  The chief angel, Michael, argued with the devil about who would have the body of Moses (Jude 9).

Absurdity 25  The Apostle John saw a door that opened into heaven. A voice then spoke to John, saying, “Come up here, John!” There in heaven John saw a throne and God sitting on the throne (Revelation 4:1-3).

How about that?

STEPHEN VAN ECK

The Tea Party movement poses a clear and future threat to what we value. There is a LOT of anger out there, much of it misdirected. The Bailouts and Stimulus Bills they seethe about started under Bush—we’re just seeing a delayed reaction now. And the bonuses for incompetent bankers—why are they mad at government about that? Shouldn’t they be mad at the bankers? And why do they call the current Administration anti-business, even Marxist, when they attack the hated bonuses and risky business practices?

This anger could propel the Republicans to a Congressional takeover in November, especially given the cowardly retirements of several Democrats who have no viable replacements. Are they afraid of losing? Better to run and go down like a man, instead of giving up without even trying.

Once in power, the Republicans can be guaranteed to advance the cause of theocracy while they’re at it. Whatever bad policies they enact would be likely to endure even after they get tossed out again. (Case in point: The continued existence of the unconstitutional “Faith Based Initiative”, including illegal employment discrimination and taxpayer-funded proselytism.)  So, based on the premise that prevention is better than an uncertain cure, we need to do all we can to discredit the malevolent and irrational Tea Party movement. We need to put a wedge between them and the Republican Party, hoping they’ll form a third party instead. That would marginalize both them and the GOP, giving the economy enough time to improve to the point where the uncertainty that’s the root of much of the anger can be assuaged.

Please help pass on this warning.

STEPHEN VAN ECK

Have you ever seen “The 700 Club”?  Don’t. Your time and your brain cells are too valuable to waste. I’ve been monitoring the show, however, and I can satisfy any curiosity you many have about it.

They start off with a news segment featuring items of interest to right-wingers. The reportage is stopped frequently to allow Marion “Pat” Robertson to weigh in with his fatuous opinions.

Then they generally run a lot of self-serving features designed to separate you from your money. These stories all have the identical outline: They’re about some independent contractor or business proprietor. (Nobody ever seems to work FOR someone. They’re too ornery to take orders from someone else.) Anyway, their business is not doing well. Then, despite their financial struggles, they try tithing to the Christian Broadcasting Network. And like magic, their business starts to do gangbusters! (How much do you want to bet that in the cases where this actually happens, CBN puts out the word to its members in the area to patronize the local business?) Pat chimes in to quote the Scriptures where it says God will pay you back big time if you give His Servants money. They really make God seem like a Cosmic Slot Machine that always pays off. But it’s really not giving any more—it’s investing. There’s always an expectation of return.

Touting of tithing is usually followed by a feature on someone whose life was a mess until they gave their life to Jeezuz. This is concluded by issuing an Altar Call (Come to Jeezuz) urging the viewer to do likewise. (Really, are there many watching who aren’t already Christian?) Their improvised pitch, in an assumed gentle tone that’s offputting, goes on and on, and is truly mindnumbing.

A second little newsbreak, perhaps another tithing story, or maybe a guest who’s pushing a pious or tendentious book, or a Christian musician performing a lame-o number. Occasionally there’s a report on Operation Blessing, a division of CBN that takes advantage of natural disasters to elicit “faith commitments” from the people it helps (going so far as to turn Catholics into Protestants.) The Red Cross has no agenda, no ulterior motive. They help people for the sake of helping people. Not so Operation Blessing.

Sometimes they answer viewer’s questions in a segment called “Bring it On”. (They don’t want ME to do that!) Some days they have a Healing segment in which “Pat” or his sidekick get a “Word of Knowledge” direct from God Himself, and they announce that someone out there is suffering from sciatica or sinusitis or psittacosis or whatever, and God is now healing it! Claim it (the Word of Knowledge)! This segment reminds me of Romper Room, when the lady, at the end of the show, would look through her magic empty handmirror frame and say she sees Bobby, and Joey, and Janey, and Suzie … You could just imagine some dense little twerp thinking, “Hey! She sees ME! Wow!”

But it’s less innocuous then “Romper Room”. Those who aren’t healed (in other words, those not lucky enough for spontaneous remission) are left with no other conclusion that they lack sufficient faith—a convenient excuse for when God fails. When I was in college  many years ago, I’d sometimes pass a TV room in the morning when The 700 Club was on. There was a paltry handful of students watching who had spent their lives on crutches. They are still on crutches today. I actually felt sorry for the credulous for putting false hope in flimflam.

That’s The 700 Club. Are you missing anything? No. And I won’t miss it, either—I’ve had enough. I’ll let other people report on “Pat” when he says something inflammatory, bigoted, or erroneous, which is often. He and the show are all too predictable, especially politically. Maybe one of these days, Christians will finally realize what a nut ol’ “Pat” is. They’re sure slow learners, aren’t they?

LELAND W. RUBLE

Nearly every day there is news that either a politician, member of the clergy, or whatever, suggests a prayer to god with the expectation that he, it, or the nonexistent whatever, will miraculously intervene and prevent a bad situation from becoming worse.

Politicians are notorious for suggesting that we—meaning their constituents—pray to resolve a problem that can’t be fixed by legislation.

Why do so many people actually believe that prayers to a god believed to inhabit the outer reaches of the universe, is an actual existing reality that has the awesome ability to contribute to the resolution of a problem? The truth is that there is no factual evidence, physical, spiritual, magical, scientific, metaphysical, biologically, theologically or otherwise, to prove the reality of an existing god. IT  simply does not exist. By the way, if a god did exist there would be no atheists!

Prayer is, among many other frivolous human inducements, used during the time when one is being introduced to belief established on the fantasy of religions based on a god, a useful tool in the hands of the clergy. In fact, it’s one of the primary functions of religious faith. For some absurd reason, the god of the bible, we are informed, is someone or something capable of responding to prayers. This in spite of the well-known fact that no theocrat, member of the clergy, or theologian can prove that prayers reach their destination. If there is no god, a most likely fact, then it follows that prayers are one of many other examples of humankind performing an act that is totally anti-human and ludicrous.

Even though its never been proven—and never will—that a god whose existence is the product of human imagination, has the ability to respond to prayer, millions of people worldwide, still insist on believing that their prayers, like an e-mail sent electronically, will be carefully considered by a god with nothing else to do but listen to millions of prayers seeking its non-existing self to resolve a certain problem.

It is preposterous to hear politicians say, “God bless America” at the end of a speech. This also is a form of prayer. A request that god respond by blessing America, just because the politician seeking votes, made such an absurd request.

Praying is an irrational function of the human mind. Because there is no evidence of a god with the capability of responding to prayer, the entire exercise or ritual, whether done by a pope, member of the clergy, an individual, or a congregation of ten thousand, prayer is a meaningless, futile exercise in self-deception.

It is regrettable to think that so many live under the illusion that when they mouth a prayer to an invisible deity, and do it as though they were actually speaking to a god, they are acting no differently than someone with a serious mental problem who goes about sincerely believing he or she has a companion that is as real as a flesh and blood individual that passes them on the street, but is really invisible and nonexistent.

Prayer is an illusion. Take for instance the tragic earthquake in Haiti: The event itself was an act of nature. The thousands of lives lost as a consequence, were not due to the actions of a god or devil, but to the reality of the natural consequences of nature.

It is incredible to observe the religious make pleas in prayer for the assistance of a god to prevent further turmoil, do so, because they are convinced that their god has the awesome ability to intervene by preventing the tragedy from becoming even worse. Not only are the survivors praying—which is understandable since Haitians are known to be highly religious—but worldwide, leaders of the various religious establishments are daily requesting their members pray and send donations to a people who have lost what little they had in the way of lives, property, etc., in this devastating earthquake. As far as I’m concerned none of these prayers are capable of going anywhere except the empty space in which they are spoken.

The donations, assistance, and human labor will do far more for the victims of this earthquake than all the countless prayers to a god for its assistance.  I can’t be certain, but many of those engaged in praying for the Haitians, can’t be so gullible that they don’t know that the aid and humanitarian assistance of humans is far more welcome and probable than waiting anxiously for the unapparent and less likely intervention of an imagined god. In fact, some of the same people praying for god’s assistance, may also believe that because of past actions of the Haitians, their god was responsible for causing the earthquake. This is the mangled opinion of hardcore right wing theocrat Pat Robertson.

Prayer does nothing to contribute to the welfare of humanity. It’s doubtful if one prominent leader of a religious establishment has the courage to admit publicly that prayer is an effective antidote in the cure of some disease or illness. They know full well—with the exception of naïve, brainwashed and gullible hardcore disciples of the Christian Scientist faith—a religion that was established on magical illusions and prayerful appeals for a god’s intervention in the cure of illness and disease. It wouldn’t surprise some readers, if in private conversation, some members of the clergy actually admitted that prayer is simply a ritualistic  exercise done mainly as a means to persuade and convince one into accepting as a reality the illusion of a god listening to what one is praying for.

If prayer was actually something capable of producing results, then the god of Christianity would not have allowed the earthquake to occur in the first place in a country so impoverished, that few of its inhabitants have ever experienced the slightest degree of prosperity. However, because the earthquake was caused by natural circumstances, a nonexistent god’s intervention is a total improbability.

Of all the nonsensical, insane comments made in regard to the Haiti earthquake, Pat Robertson’s comment is the most absurd. He said that Haitians need to have a “…great turning to god.” He further stated, that the country had been “…cursed by one thing after the other” since they “swore a pact to the Devil.” In the first place Robertson has no supporting evidence for his cuckoo comment, and he was not an eyewitness to such an impractical event. And, as all other lunatic observations from this rabid right wing theocrat, his nutty proclamations are a further indication that his mind has stopped functioning intelligently. There also is no evidence, regardless of what Robertson may assume, for the belief that a devil exists.

Robertson’s mind, after years of being annexed permanently to his imaginary god, has evolved into a disordered voodoo jumble of loony prognostications and lunatic prophecies, so much so that whatever emerges from his lips, appeals only to that minority of hardcore religious fascists, and mainly regarded by the media as the utterance of a senile religious imbecile.

It’s been years since I last viewed Robertson on the TBN religious network, but I recall watching the antics of a squinty-eyed, smiley-faced con-man constantly urging his audience to pray for this, that, or whatever he at the moment imagined as urgent. He always assured his audience that whatever cause they prayed for, his god would likewise generously respond. And, a great deal of this imaginary praying involved Robertson’s convincing his converts to donate monetary donations so that his organization (religious business) could “…keep up the good work of the Lord,” as he often said.

What struck me as hypocrisy, and still does, is the fact that individuals like Robertson make daily pleas for donations while they themselves are worth millions and dabble in a variety of business enterprises unrelated to his religious objectives. The fact is, Robertson didn’t become a millionaire from printing his own money in the basement of his mansion. He became extremely wealthy from the generous donations of a naïve public that unquestionably supports  his many devious religious projects, and believes that what he does and is doing, is done in the name of god. How do we really know that none of the donations he receives from the public are not used to prop up and finance business enterprises unrelated to his religious objectives? We don’t.

The prayers that individuals like Robertson and others use are the prayers of hypocrites. Whether pope, member of the clergy, or politician, those who use prayer to promote an issue, themselves, or some cause, are depending on the naïve susceptibility of people who have since childhood, been religiously deceived into falsely believing that the preposterous (prayer) and the irrational is rational.

GARY WALKER

I recently read an AP article that a federal appeals court has allowed the return of the Fab Ten to a Kentucky county court house wall, because, according to the court, the Ten Commandments are not religiously oriented. Right! And just to reveal how non-religiously oriented the Fab Ten are, a Reverend Chester Shartzer, along with 200 sheeple hoisted the display upon the wall of the court house while singing God’s praises. Yes, nothing says “not religiously oriented” like a choir led by a preacher man praising god.

Although it’s been said many times, many ways, the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our country, that is a lie. In fact, the Fab Ten are unAmerican and in direct contradiction to our Constitution. Why does Reverend Shartzer hate America?

Behold, as any preacher worthy of his psalter will tell you, the Fab Ten can be divided into two groups: The first four deal with man’s relationship with God, and the last six deal with man’s relationship with man.

The man to man thing is not quite as offensive to America as the first four are. In a nutshell they include: honor your parents, don’t kill, don’t bear false witness, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, and don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or his ass, etc. These six were already part of most early cultures before Moses floated down a river in a hand basket. The problem is that many of these commands come with the death penalty as an attachment. Imagine if America enforced the death penalty for adultery! Hey, that just might solve our parking problems.

The last four commands, however, are so insulting and unAmerican that my spirit is sorely vexed. The very first Command is that we cannot have any other gods before the great Jehovah. Well, one of the main foundations of this country was, and is, religious freedom. We may have 1000 gods before petty, jealous Jehovah if we so choose, or we may worship no gods at all. In America, Jehovah’s henchmen may not use the arm of the state to force their brand of superstition upon all citizens.

In command #2, Jehovah says that we cannot make any carved images or a likeness of anything (no art) or he will punish our children. That’s right, he punishes children for the deeds of their fathers. Pathetic!

And #3, do not use the Lord’s name in vain. Every time an American utters god damn it, he must be put to death so that Jehovah’s delicate ego will not be bruised. This could really loosen up those parking spaces.

And my personal favorite is the fourth commandment to honor the Sabbath, which is SATURDAY, the seventh day. Death to those who violate this ridiculous command. And just to show he wasn’t kidding, the Bible god once had a man stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Num. 15:35). Although, the Bible god condoned slavery in two (#4&10) of the Fab Ten (and throughout the Bible), he did allow for slaves to have Saturday off along with everyone else. Mercival heavens! Jehovah was the first compassionate conservative. But, whether you observe the Bible Sabbath on Saturday, or the false sabbath of Sunday, many Americans work on either or both of these days. Should they be executed? More parking?

One of the most curious aspects of this relentless Ten Commandments fetish is that the average Christian could not recite them even if his salvation depended upon it. They want to pollute our public spaces with this religious nonsense, but do they actually want to obey these commands? I think that every pilgrim who wants to post the Fab Ten on public property should be condemned to actually obey them or face the penalty thus written in the Bible. Amen.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

Our study of the Guardian God is based on Psalm 121. Commentators assure us that “there is no more emphatic declaration of God’s ever-present protection and care” (God’s Word Today, November 2001, p. 21). We begin by quoting Psalm 121:

(1) I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. (2) My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. (3) He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. (4) Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (5) The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. (6) The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. (7) The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. (8) The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore (King James Version).

Now let us focus our attention on verse 7: The Lord will guard you from all evil, and always guard your life (New American Bible); The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life (Revised Standard Version); The Lord will protect you from all danger; he will keep you safe (Today’s English Version); The Lord will protect you and keep you safe from all dangers (Contemporary English Version); The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life (New International Version).

But we must ask, Is Psalm 121:7 true? Does the Lord really keep us safe from all dangers? Does he protect us from all harm? Does God’s care, love, and protection never fail? Before we answer these questions, let us consider how many people have suffered and died and are suffering and dying from the hostile actualities of life, such as accidents, black widow spiders, carnivorous animals, crimes, diseases, droughts, earthquakes, explosions, fires, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, plagues, poisonous snakes, terrorists, ticks, tornadoes, tsunamis, typhoons, volcanoes, and wars.

During the last 2,500 years, more or less, since God supposedly inspired a psalmist to write Psalm 121:7, zillions of people have suffered and died from these hostile actualities, from accidents to wars. When we face the facts, what can we say? Honesty compels some of us to conclude that there is no guardian God, no ever vigilant guide and refuge. Whether we like it or not, all of us, believers and unbelievers, are on our own. It’s up to us to protect ourselves. The harsh reality is that no supernatural powers, whether angels or gods, are protecting us and keeping us safe. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. Like it or not, we’re here today and gone tomorrow!

Yet, in spite of the hostile actualities of life, believers continue to sing with fervor Civilla D. Martin’s popular hymn of 1905, “God Will Take Care of You”: Be not dismay’d what-e-’er betide, God will take care of you; Beneath his wings of love abide, God will take care of you.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

Let us consider the complaints of David (the reputed author of Psalm 109) against his enemies: “Wicked men and liars have attacked me for no reason at all. They tell lies about me and say evil things about me. They oppose me, even though I love them and pray for them. They pay me back evil for good and hatred for my love” (Psalm 109: 1-5).

David then urges the Lord to act (Psalm 109:6-17): “Lord, choose a corrupt judge to try my enemy and let an accuser bring him to trial. May he be tried and found guilty, and may even his prayer be considered a crime! Cut his life short, and may another man take his job! May his children become orphans, and his wife a widow! Make his children beg for food and live in the slums. Let the people he owes take everything he owns and give it all to strangers. May no one ever be kind to him or care for the orphans he leaves behind. May all his descendants die and be completely forgotten! Lord, my enemy never even thought of being kind. In fact, he persecuted and killed the poor, the needy, and the helpless. Since he loves to curse others, may he himself be cursed! Since he hated to give blessings, may no one bless him!” Based on several translations.

Turning now to reactions to this terrible text, let us begin with “Two Different Psalms,” by J. Ashley Burke, The X-Rated Book (Houston, TX: J. A. B. Press, 1983), p. 114: “Some folks enjoy the calm of the Twenty Third Psalm And can recite it line for line; But they are unaware Of the malicious prayer Found in Psalm One Hundred and Nine.”

The reaction of Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) is scathing: “In the literature of the world there is nothing more infamous than the 109th Psalm” (What Do You Believe in the Bible?, 1882). Ingersoll continues: “Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer. Think of one infamous enough to answer it. Had this inspired psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written in blood on the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments” (“Heretics and Heresies”).

Other commentators find Psalm 109 to be “a lament notable for the length and vehemence of David’s prayer against evildoers.” Another scholar asks, “However much a man may suffer, is he ever justified in answering in words like those of Psalm 109?” Another thoughtful person challenges believers, “Defenders of the Bible must explain these horrendous imprecations within the framework of revelation.” Yet another points out that ‘”Mysterious’ was the one word written opposite this psalm in the pocket Bible of a late devout and popular writer. It represents the utter perplexity with which Psalm 109 is generally regarded.” Others make bold to point out that “Psalm 109 is the most complete list of curses in the Bible;” “a series of terrible curses and awful statements.” In short, “When the psalmist thinks of the injustice done to him and others, he breaks out in bitter, uncontrolled denunciation. He doesn’t mince words about his enemies.”

These words hot off the press: “Psalm 109 is probably the most disturbing of all biblical psalms. It’s the most extensive of psalms that are called ‘imprecations,’ a word whose Latin etymology suggests the idea of ‘praying against’ someone. Can prayer become an exercise to release one’s feelings of anger, envy, or vengeance? The words spoken in verses 6-19 are outrageous.”—God’s Word Today, February 2010, p. 14.

What is your reaction to this terrible text?

Keep on Reading. A. J. Mattill, Jr., “A Catalog of Consummate Curses,” The American Rationalist, Volume 44 (No. 2, March/April 2000), pp. 3-4.

WILLIAM HARWOOD

In The Late Great Planet Earth (Zondervan, 1970), Hal Lindsay concludes that the human race is on the verge of extinction. He reaches that accurate conclusion by starting from the inaccurate assumption that the Christian Bible, a 2,000-year-old equivalent of National Inquirer, is filled with psychic prophecies about events that were going to happen more than two millennia later. Yet instead of grasping that time is unidirectional, and that knowledge of the future cannot exceed what can be extrapolated from events already in progress (I can safely prophesy that the sun will rise tomorrow), incurable addicts of the god delusion purchased 35 million copies of Lindsey’s masturbation fantasy in the belief that calling ancient psychics “prophets” makes them any less fraudulent than their modern-day equivalents.

“It was a perfect night for a party. In the warm California evening the lemon trees perfumed the patio and the flickering Tiki torches cast shadows over a lavish table.” Whether that opening paragraph of Hal Lindsey’s fantasy novel is more or less imaginative than, “It was a dark and stormy night,” is irrelevant. What is significant is that 21 reprintings were purchased in the seven years following its initial publication by people so illiterate that they were able to mistake it for nonfiction. Since readers with functioning  human brains would have read no further, Lindsay was freed to aim the rest of his theobabble at scientifically illiterate unteachables who lacked the rationality to recognize that the snake oil they were being sold could be valid only if information can travel backward in time. And if anyone believes that can happen, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that I think will interest him.

Hal Lindsey received a “certificate” from Dallas Theological Seminary, and therefore conforms to H. L. Mencken’s definition of a theologian as a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that is not there—and finding it. But he is able to write (p. vii) that, “This is not a complex theological treatise.” In fact that is precisely what it is. Like all theologians, Lindsey ignores the methodology of scientific history, in which conclusions must conform to the evidence, and instead uses the methodology of theology in which evidence is distorted to whatever degree is necessary in order to make it conform to predetermined conclusions. Yet he is able to ridicule astrology and other forms of tealeaf reading while ignoring the reality that those other forms of prognostication use the identical techniques he uses himself in the rest of his book. The only difference between astrology and Lindseyology is that ancient astrology started from the assumption that lumps of fusing hydrogen were gods, while Lindsey’s virtual astrology starts from the assumption that a 2,000-year-old book of fairy tales was written by persons who received information about the future from the most sadistic, evil, insane, mass-murderer in all fiction.

Hal Lindsey knows as much about the composition of the Judaeo-Christian bible as I know about the Etruscan language—which has never been deciphered. He backs up his claim that his bible contains soon-to-be-fulfilled prophecies by arguing that it successfully prophesied events that are now part of history. And he is right. It did. There are many fulfilled prophecies in the bible. What Lindsey tries to rationalize away is that they were already fulfilled before they were prophesied. For example, Genesis shows the god Yahweh promising Abraham that his descendants will conquer and occupy the land that is now the nation of Israel. Since David was already king of Israel at the time the prophecy was concocted, the probability of the prophecy failing was zero to a million decimal places. The reason historians are able to date much of the book of Daniel to precisely 163 BCE is that all prophecies of events prior to that date were fulfilled, whereas events prophesied to occur after 163 BCE failed to be fulfilled. And the Essene portion of  Revelation can be dated to July/August of 70 CE, because it “prophesied” that the Jerusalem temple would be occupied by the Roman invaders, an event that happened in July, but that the temple would never be destroyed, an event that happened in August.

It requires no supernatural or paranormal power to make an accurate prophecy ex post facto. I hereby prophesy that Hitler will lose World War Two. Now was I right or was I right? Lindsey’s inability to grasp such a self-evident reality makes him an embarrassment to the kindergarten that graduated him. But the full extent of his crass gullibility is revealed by his belief that twentieth-century psychics are something other than lying, swindling humbugs. He not only parrots the delusion that Edgar Cayce accurately prophesied the future and had the nonexistent power of telepathy; he expresses similar belief in the self-serving lies of the humbug Jeane Dixon (p.4), and swallows the Big Lie that her prediction of John Kennedy’s assassination was made before the event she allegedly prophesied. No doubt he also regards the tales attributed to Baron Munchausen as true stories. How he rates Alice in Wonderland, I can only guess.

Lindsey is fully aware (p. 15) that, “Many so-called Biblical scholars today try to ‘late date’ such predictions as Isaiah’s to make his prophecies seem to be after the fact.” His response is that any scholar who recognizes retroactive prophecies for what they are, “also makes the Jewish people religious charlatans and deceivers.” That was essentially the same response pathetic Mormon apologists gave to the discovery that Joseph Smith plagiarized the Book of Mormon from a historical novel written by Solomon Spalding. Incurable Mormons argue that accusing that nice Mr. Smith of lying is dirty pool, and Lindsey argues that accusing biblical fantasizers of lying is dirty pool. Presumably he also sees accusing Richard Nixon of lying as dirty pool.

When I requisitioned The Late Great Planet Earth from my local library, I had in mind to write a whole book refuting Lindsey’s points one by one. What I discovered is that he only makes one point—over and over and over. He cites one after another fulfilled biblical prophecy, and argues that its fulfillment proves that ancient psychics really did have knowledge of the future. And the rebuttal of every one of those repetitions is that the spokesmen (which became prophetes in Greek) composed their alleged prophecies after the fact. He then goes on to misinterpret Revelation’s failed prophecy that the final battle of the war of 66-73 CE would end in a Jewish victory at Armageddon (it ended in a Roman victory at Masada) as a prophecy of events still to come. And he declares that his bible foretells the coming of an “antichrist.”

Hal Lindsey has clearly learned nothing in the forty years since The Late Great Planet Earth was published, and is as morally retarded, educationally handicapped, rationally unevolved, intestinally challenged, and intellectually bankrupt now as he was then. He was obliged to resign from Jim and Tammy Baker’s Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2006 over statements too racist even for them. But TBN still permits him to broadcast his propaganda at his own expense. And as recently as 2008 he described Barack Obama as the foretold “antichrist,” thereby firmly aligning himself with the far-right Republicanazis of the Christian Taliban. I am only amazed that he has not been given a regular timeslot on the Faux News Channel, where subhuman evolution is not merely an advantage but a prerequisite.

Nonetheless Lindsey’s conclusion that the species Homo sapiens is facing extinction is consistent with observable reality that is not based on, “Because Mother Goose said so.”  Humankind is indeed committing species suicide, and it is anthropocidal god addicts like Lindsey who are encouraging it to do so. Global warming, overpopulation, and air and water pollution are producing a planet incapable of supporting human life—and pushers of the god delusion are allowing it to happen in the conviction that their imaginary deus ex machina will intervene to save us in the last act. Newsflash: The Sky Führer that the godphuqt are counting on to save them DOES NOT EXIST! Anyone who does not know that either has not read Victor Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis, or is dangerously insane, or perhaps both. (Note that Stenger does not attempt to prove that entities we would consider gods do not exist on the fourteenth planet of Betelgeuse, only that a god with the characteristics Judaeo-Christian-Moslem religion attributes to the character mistranslated as ” God” cannot and therefore does not exist.)

If The Late Great Planet Earth had been published forty years later, would it have achieved success? Or would today’s more educated society have recognized Lindsey as the same kind of embarrassment to Christianity as Fred Phelps, Mel Gibson, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh? Before attempting to answer that, one should keep in mind the success of Left Behind, a series every bit as mindless, fanatic, ignorant, hate-ridden, intolerant, and subhuman stupid as anything Lindsey has written before or since.

All godworshipers are insane. Anyone who was not insane before he started believing that mass murder was evil when Hitler did it with gas chambers but is not evil when his imaginary Sky Führer does it with disease, famine, religious wars, natural disasters, transportation accidents, and old age, is certainly insane once he does acquire such a belief. But not all are so dangerously insane that they belong in cages with padded walls where they cannot pass on their mind-AIDS to the uninfected. That level of insanity is found only among the authors of books like The Late Great Planet Earth and Left Behind, and fanatics like Osama bin Laden, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Pat Robertson. The one point on which all of those incurables agree is that all of the others are raving lunatics. How any of those self-inflicted brain amputees are able to remember to take their pants down in the toilet, I cannot figure.

STEPHEN VAN ECK

A lot of us who are annoyed by Rightists have wondered, “What IS it about them? Why are they the way they are? Can they ever change?

The relatively new field of Evolutionary Psychology may provide some insight. Rejecting the Standard Social Model that deems a person a tabula rasa (blank slate), Evolutionary Psychology maintains that certain tendencies have been hotwired into the brain through eons of evolution.

This hardwiring became set during the Hunter-Gather phase, and pretty much came to a stop with the development of Agriculture and civilization. Both enabled more to survive, and insulate us from the harsh forces of nature that serve to weed out the maladaptive. There is therefore almost no natural mechanism to select for psychological adaptations more suited for modern civilization. So although we have 10,000 years of subsequent development in technology and society, we ourselves retain inclinations and instincts of ancient Hunter-Gathers. But biology need not be destiny.

I have concluded that a Rightist is someone who acts out of these ancient instincts, and who stoutly resists anything that goes against them. A Rightist is inclined to go with his gut, preferring kneejerk reaction, and is inherently anti-intellectual, since intellect so often violates his gut instincts.

This theory explains why Rightists are paranoid. Why Rightists are xenophobic. Why Rightists are staunchly religious. Why Rightists have irrational anarchistic sentiment, vigilante tendencies, and favor ruthless competition. Why Rightists believe in male domination and female subjection. All of these served some survival purpose and were wired into us during the Hunter-Gatherer phase. Rightists choose to remain there, ten thousand years in the past, rather than ignore their gut and cultivate the intellect. Rightists are atavistic.

Because it’s a choice, Rightists can choose to move on, and to let the intellect take priority over gut instincts. But the prospect frightens them, and the work involved is too daunting. So there they stay. The rest of us have chosen to apply the intellect, and have overcome our innate tendencies toward paranoia, xenophobia, sexism and religion. For this we earn the resentment of threatened Rightists, who deride us as “pointy-headed intellectuals” and “Elitists”, as if there’s something wrong with continuing to evolve. Or that hoary all-purpose slur, “Commie”.

The demands of civilization frustrate and confuse the Rightist, making them potentially dangerous. We cannot let those who are trapped by, and dominated by, primitive thinking and fear drag society backwards, let alone stall its development. Opposing and exposing Rightism is not merely a moral duty, it is self-defense, an ancient impulse a Rightist can readily grasp.

WILLIAM HARWOOD

In an appalling act of purblindless reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s pandering to Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938, Massachusetts voters chose to replace Senator Edward Kennedy with a Quisling committed to enabling the Republicanazi Party to repeal two thousand years of moral evolution and retain America’s unique status as the only nation in the Western world that sentences its chronically ill citizens to death if they cannot afford proper health care.

Absolutely nobody came out of the January 19, 2010 election with an intact reputation. The participant who contributed least to the debacle was the third-party candidate, a Libertarian named Joseph Kennedy whose one percent of the vote was insufficient to influence the result. Kennedy made no claim to be related to the senator whose seat he contested. But he probably counted on a lot of voters seeing the name “Joseph Kennedy” on the ballot and mistaking him for the former congressman of the same name who was Robert Kennedy’s son. And the number of votes he received suggests that a lot did—but not enough to affect the outcome.

A large share of the blame must be assigned to the Democratic nominee, Martha Coakley. In a state that had not elected a Republican senator for the past thirty years, Coakley assumed she could run her campaign on cruise control, and refused to recognize that her opponent was gaining momentum until it was too late. Given the magnitude of that misjudgment, the probability is that her career in politics is over, and for that she has no one to blame but herself.

But the primary culprit for the defeat that could turn Barack Obama into the longest-running lame duck president in American history is Barack Obama. His failure to campaign for Coakley until it was too late was merely the icing on the cake due to lack of leadership. From practically the day of his inauguration he set about alienating the voters who had elected him, by making no attempt to implement the changes they most wanted.

The one area in which he did try to bring about “change we can believe in” was the institution of universal health care. But his paranoid lust for what he called bipartisanship led him to metaphorically fellate the Senate’s most intransigent, power-drunk narcissists in the forlorn hope of winning their support, instead of throwing them under the bus and getting on with the job for which he was elected. Obama may have been the last person in the United States of America to open his eyes to the reality that the Republican Party was so deep in the pockets of the insurance companies, whose bribes purchased their elections, that there was not a snowflake’s chance in hell of their supporting any change to the status quo whatsoever. One can say this for Republicanazis: When they accept a bribe, they stay bribed. As a consequence, the House and Senate each wound up passing a bill that pandered to its own extremists, including godphuqt anti-abortionists (tautology) and a would-be Führer named Lieberman, to such a degree that it fell far short of anything that could honestly be described as “reform.” At this point, the probability of any healthcare bill being signed into law is not high—and Obama has no one to blame but himself.

But Obama’s capital default on his campaign promises was his refusal to repudiate the Bush administration’s treasonous violation of the First Amendment, and refusal to repudiate the Republicanazi dictum, “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Instead of abolishing Bush’s “faith based” misappropriation of taxpayers’ money for the propagation of religion, Obama expanded it—after securing the votes of America’s 100 million nontheists by expressly implying that they would henceforth be recognized as first-class citizens with all the rights granted to them by the First Amendment.

Obama lied to the 200 million Americans who support the separation of church and state. After winning their votes, he continued the Bush policy of turning the wall of separation into a picket fence. He lied to supporters of the Geneva Convention, by implying that the war crimes of the Bush Gestapo would be appropriately prosecuted. Instead he vetoed any attempt to bring to justice the perpetrators of acts that transformed America from the most trusted nation on earth into the most hated. Why? Is he planning, or even already perpetrating, crimes that could get himself prosecuted once he is out of office—if he does not establish the precedent that previous administrations are untouchable? Or is he just plain inept and, like the Robert Redford character in The Candidate, his response to his election is, “What do I do now?”

JIM LEE

I spoke to an Anglican worshiper early in the year of 2001, and I want to focus on this issue. Since I first met this lady I am discovering more and more that most Christians are not Christians after all, they only think they are. For want of a better word they are “church attendees” only, or you could say pew warmers with a very limited knowledge of the bible. To most of them the church is no more than a social club and a place to gossip. They are for want of a better word, cafeteria type Christians. In other words, they select only what they want.

In the past, I had discussions with a middle-age female Anglican worshiper when she visited our home one day in February 2001. I shared with her that my wife and I no longer believed in God or Jesus after doing some serious research into religions. She then informed us that she still believed in a God, but she stated, that her and her Christian friends really thought that the bible was a book of myths.

How can someone be a Christian if they have no belief in the bible? Just how many supposed Christians think like this? Is calling yourself a Christian some sort of ego trip? The mere fact that many may think that the bible is a work of myths throws some very serious doubt on what they actually believe.

If Adam and Eve are considered as myths, what happens to the “Original sin” we are all supposed to be contaminated with? Christians who believe that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, cannot call themselves true Christians, because if there is no Original Sin then there is no need for a redeemer (supposedly born of a virgin, so as to be sinless) by the name of Jesus born some 4000 years  after Adam and Eve. Why it took so long is anybody’s guess. Just why, if the Adam and Eve story is a myth,  was  Jesus crucified to save us from a sin we did not originally commit?

It becomes extremely important for the true Christian to believe the Genesis account of the Adam and Eve story about original sin, otherwise the introduction to Jesus as the redeemer in the New Testament and Christianity are meaningless exercises in futility. According to the teachings of Christianity, “All people are contaminated with the original sin” of Adam being tempted by Eve to taste the forbidden fruit. That, according to Christianity, makes everyone born contaminated by sin regardless of his or her belief or unbelief as taught by the church. If our contamination was because of Adam and Eve regardless of our consent or belief, then shouldn’t Jesus’ redemption be passive? By this, I mean, shouldn’t his sacrifice cancel out all sin whether we consent or not, or whether we believe or not?

To come up with a different argument or excuse, is to say God condemned us unconditionally and made redemption conditional. Christians often remark, “that God is no respecter of persons.”

The implication of this Christian argument is that Adam’s Original sin was superior to Jesus’ sacrifice, because Adam’s sin condemned all of us, whereas Jesus only saved some of us according to the teachings of the Christian church.

Question: Wasn’t Jesus’ crucifixion greater than Adam’s mistake? If the crucifixion and supposed resurrection triumphed over the Original sin, than the debt for all sin is paid for all time, regardless of our consent, regardless of our belief, and regardless of our faith. If there is no need to be a believer because we supposedly inherited a mythical Adam’s sinful nature, then there is no need to be a believer in order to be redeemed. Either Jesus paid the price for all sin for all time or he didn’t. To say that only those who accept Jesus, are redeemed, is a contradiction.

Why would a just and perfect god hold an innocent person responsible for a sin that was comitted by someone else?

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A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

Let’s focus our attention on Isaiah 63:1-6: 1. The prophet asks, “Who’s this coming from the city of Bozrah? [Bozrah is the capital of Edom, a small nation southeast of Judea.] Who is this splendidly dressed in red, marching along in power and strength?” “It’s I, the Lord! I have won the battle, and I can save you!” 2. “Why is your clothing so red, like that of a man who tramples grapes to make war? “3. The Lord answers, “I have trampled the nations like grapes, and no one came to help me. I trampled them in my anger, and their blood has stained all my clothing. 4. I decided that the time to rescue my people had come. It was time to punish their enemies. 5. I was amazed when I looked and saw that there was no one to help me. But my anger made me strong, and I won the victory all by myself. 6. I was so furious that I trampled whole nations and shattered them. I poured out their lifeblood everywhere on earth.” —Based on Today’s English Version and Contemporary English Version.

Isaiah 63:1-6 is one of the most brutal portrayals of God in the Bible. The prophet paints an appalling picture of the Lord marching in blood-stained garments. Think of it! The Lord’s robes were soaked in the blood of his enemies. The divine warrior was besmeared with blood and dirt. The Lord was fighting mad, a man of war (see Exodus 15:3). In his wrath, he stamped on the peoples, broke them to pieces in his fury, and spilled their precious blood on the ground, where it ran like water.

Let’s ask ourselves a few questions. How can a good God behave so viciously and so vengefully? How can a good God be angry with the Edomites forever (Malachi 1:4)?

Note too that the Lord is a partial God who plays favorites, fighting for Israel, his chosen people, but shattering and trampling the Edomites and spilling their blood. As the Lord said, “Jacob [Israel] I have loved, but Esau [Edom] have I hated” (Romans 9:13; Malachi 1:3).

Stop and think! The God of Isaiah 63:1-6 is ferocious, frightful, and furious. He is an angry, bloodshedding, brutal God, indeed, a mean and murderous God. His motto is, “Kill, kill, kill!” Is that the kind of God you want to love, obey, and worship? Is that the kind of God you want your family and friends to love, obey, and worship? I doubt it.

Warning! Don’t think you’ll get rid of the bloodthirsty God of Isaiah 63:1-6 by tossing out the Old Testament and adhering to the New Testament. No way, for in the New Testament, Revelation 19:11-16 develops Isaiah 63:1-6 and pictures the Conquering Christ as a ferocious warrior wearing a robe dipped in blood. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword to strike the nations. God and Christ are masters of destruction.

The Origin and Evolution of Religion

By William Harwood, 2009, World Audience Publishers, 303 Park Avenue South, #1440, New York, NY 10010,

IBSN 978-1-935444-84-8, 456 pp., ppb., $28,  ISBN 978-1-93544-28-2, hc, $40, reviewed by

Leland W. Ruble

Many individuals, unless totally lost in the belief that a god is more than a figment of the imagination, and not the deceptive manipulation of the clergy to maintain their status, have enough curiosity to find out whether or not the basis of their god beliefs are based on realistic, not imaginary fiction and myths. In this book the author William Harwood, presents for the reader a full and complete historical and religious record of how, over the ages, God as currently practiced by a variety of religions, has evolved from its primitive roots and expanded into what is recognized in the nontheist community as nothing more than an unrealistic symbol void of all substance.

The author has expanded his observations, historical data, and study into chapters, at the end of which there are numerous  notes explaining in further detail the source and substance of an issue. There is also a complete index included  to aid the reader in  easily locating the page where a certain issue, person, or subject is discussed.

In the first chapter “And Woman Created Goddess: The Origin of Religion,”  there is this comment: “There is no way of gauging the elapsed time from the creation of the first god to the creation of the first religion; for mere belief in gods did not constitute a religion. (Even Inuit tribes that have never had any religion, have included gods among the phenomena of the external world whose existence they have casually noted.) Not until the first true sun worshiper turned his face toward the god in the sky and asked it to ripen his crop in exchange for a gift, or until the first ambitious junior executive asked a river god to drown her rival, also in exchange for a designated gift, did nature deification evolve into religion,” (p. 25).

This is followed  by a comprehensive explanation for how and in what way primitive societies replaced Goddess the Mother with God the Father sometime during the years 3000 to 2000 BCE. Early mythology and astrology according to the author played a significant role in how early civilizations associated certain gods with specific tendencies. For instance, the author writes: “The first gods in the modern sense, capricious beings that needed to be constantly appeased lest they unleash the malevolence that was their most universal feature, were not the sky gods but the more accessible earth gods. The earth itself was generally hailed and adored as the Mother of all things. Her elder children, the birds that are not bound to the surface; the horse that can outrun any man; the sow that suckles a dozen infants to woman’s one; the cow and goat without whose milk human was unlikely to survive; the fig tree, or tree of life, whose ripened fruit so resembled the vulva that was the source of all life; and a host of other plants, animals, rivers and like immortals, human recognized to possess capacities that were lacking in himself,” (p. 29).

What god worshipers do not, and many may never realize, is that their worship of a god is a wildly delusive effort. A futile attempt to seriously imagine that the distorted image in their minds is truly based on something far more realistic than astrological mumbo-jumbo, theological elitism, mystical quackery, and imaginary myths that inhabit the various religious denominations. Even when presented with the truth, an observant religious fundamentalist will find countless ways to  avoid facing the truth concerning their beliefs. All one has to do is observe how frequently anti-evolutionists presented  with the facts, still insist on maintaining the Genesis fairy tale as the actual source of creation. Likewise for Flat Earthers, UFO conspirators, and those who imagine and sincerely believe that the remains  of Noah’s Ark  exist on  Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey.

A reading of this book would go a long way in educating the religious community to question the basis of their beliefs as the author explains in this paragraph: “Nonetheless, a slave mentality once acquired is not easily repudiated. Modern believers in such contrary-to-fact nonsense as astrology, spiritualism, Scientology, Bermuda Triangles, magical burial shrouds, past-life fantasies, near-death dreams, water witching, psychics, prophecy, palmistry, and ancient astronauts, differ very little from god addicts in their need to subjugate themselves to some “higher power” to which their own intellectual impotence can be attributed. Typical of the new sense is the religion-without-gods of UFOlogy,” (p. 49).

In chapter Two “Creation and Sin: The God Who Invented Death” the author explores in depth, the Old Testament god, and how it was created in the Jewish Marduk creation in the fifth century BCE, and became the basis for the book of Genesis. The author writes: “The Priestly author who wrote the Genesis creation myth, more than a thousand years after the Babylonian version, was a Jewish priest of the educated Levite caste who was thoroughly familiar with the myths of his tribe’s neighbors. That he consciously adapted Babylonian tales for his own purpose is not in doubt, since his six-day creation paralleled the six-stage creation invented by Zarathustra, while the order of his creation was basically the same order in which Marduk created everything in the author’s Babylonian source,” (p. 58).

The author has listed the perceived sins (there are many) that were recognized as criminal, and some which were not considered sins until later Christian times, such as birth control, homosexuality for women, premarital sex etc. It’s clear from this that it is religions based on a god, which have determined to a great extent what is perceived as moral or immoral in society. This is even more pronounced in societies where religious belief is dominant. For instance, the Islamic faith in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and in Christian dominated societies, such as the Holy See, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, and South America, where religion plays a significant role in how laws function or how legislation contributes to its version of morality.

In this book there is such a vast amount of historical data, facts, etc., that it would be impossible to choose one particular part or chapter and use that as an example of the author’s expertise in this most complicated, thoroughly examined, and easily readable expose of the gradual evolution of god in society. Here, however, is an example of the author writing about the myth of Solomon’s temple: “Jewish oral propaganda over the 48 years from 586 to 538 BCE converted a temple smaller than Bozo’s Big Top into something rivaling the Parthenon. The real Davidic “empire” was about the size of Pooh Bear’s Hundred Acre Wood. Solomon’s temple was about the size of an average McDonald’s and not necessarily on the same site as the temple begun under Darius l and refurbished by Herod. While the archaeologists are right in concluding that Jerusalem was not a bustling community during the Davidic dynasty’s heyday, they are simply not allowing for the possibility that there was at least a kernel of truth behind the imaginative propaganda,” (p. 113).

In chapter Seven “The Yahwist’s Tales” the author demonstrates the close similarity between the Epic of Gilgamesh with the Old Testament version of Genesis. Here is one of many examples that clearly show that Genesis was composed using nearly the same plot and language as Gilgamesh in the writing of the creation story. Gilgamesh: Enlil said to the gods in council. “The uproar of  mankind is intolerable, and sleep is no longer possible on account of the bubble.” So the gods in their hearts were moved to release the deluge. In the Yahwist version it reads: “We’re going to destroy the place because a great outcry against them has come to Yahweh’s attention, and Yahweh has sent us to destroy it,” Gen. 19:13, (p. 140). There are numerous other examples to prove beyond a doubt that the book of Genesis was crafted using the Epic of Gilgamesh as the source for this chapter in the Old Testament.

In chapter Nine, “The Deuteronomist” the author writes: “The Deuteronomist added a new dimension to literary deception. Whereas the Yahwist and the Elohist had not put any signature to their works, the Deuteronomist pretended that his scroll emanated from the quill of a man who had been dead for six hundred years. He supported that contention by writing his collection of taboos, ritual and propaganda in the first person. Among the later writers who followed D’s precedent were the authors of Enoch and Daniel; Joseph Smith; and the two fourth-century CE Greeks, ‘Dares’ and ‘Dictys,’ who claimed to be survivors of the Trojan War. The Deuteronomist claimed to be Moses,” (p. 159).

Chapter Thirteen, “From David to Jesus: The Age of the Messiah,” explores in depth how Jesus supposedly descended from David, and is described in the New Testament as the imagined Messiah. Here is a brief explanation: “The earliest claimant to messiahship  seems to have been the founder of the Essene sect, the Righteous Rabbi. While he first materialized around 140 BCE, it may be that he counted 483 years from 586 BCE and had himself proclaimed King of the Jews in 103 BCE. Such an action would explain why the Hasmonean King Alexander Yannai hanged him in that year. According to the Talmud, the hanging occurred on the eve of the Passover (Sanh. 43a), but as there is little doubt that the Talmud authors confused the execution of the Righteous Rabbi in 103 BCE with the execution of Jesus the Nazirite 133 years later, that detail may have belonged only to a later event,” (p. 228).

Another paragraph that explains the deluded, futile pursuit of god worship is this: “On the other hand, the teaching of the Essenes derived from Siddhartha Gautama (“Buddha”), whose disciples had penetrated as far as Egypt, were masochistic and antihuman, and equated sexual recreation with the promulgations of the goddess-turned-devil. The Essenes rejected Zarathustra’s classification of celibacy as a cardinal vice, and accepted Gautama’s delusion that self-inflicted joy-deprivation was a virtue,” (p. 243).

And (p. 245), “Gautama’s teachings were accepted in toto by the Essenes, who remained celibate communists for the whole of their two-century existence.”

In chapter Fourteen “Requiem For a Dead Jew” there is this poignant paragraph explaining the true nature and not supernatural existence of Jesus: “There is no doubt that Jesus was Joseph’s natural son. Accusations that he was illegitimate were first made seventy years after Jesus’ death, when his equation in Greek eyes with the resurrected savior Dionysos led an interpolater to insert a virgin-birth myth into the gospel now known as Matthew. Since a Christian gospel was thus made to concede, in effect, that Jesus had not been sired by his mother’s husband, a Jewish writer accepted that (false) concession at face value and explained it by the most logical means. In fact Jesus died believing that Joseph was his father; Joseph died believing that he was Jesus’ father; and Mary died believing that Joseph was Jesus’ father. The pretence that such was not the case was first made in the reign of Trajan, when all the principals were safely dead and unable to sue for libel,” (p. 290).

There is much more concerning Jesus’ actual birth, including the false, theofascist misrepresentation of the gospel writer Paul who used his deceptions to make the case for a severe, delusive Christianity that survives to this day in the fundamentalist hierarchies of the Prostestant and Catholic religions. For instance, the religious opposition to women’s equal rights and other unjustifiable doctrines within the Christian faith are the result of Paul’s  tyrannical preaching and theology.

In the Appendix “Reviews of William Harwood’s Books”  there are numerous reviews of books published by the prolific author Dr. William Harwood. These are further examples of the author’s comprehensive expose of the Bible, God, and Jesus. The reader upon reading this book, will not be left wondering whether the Bible is or is not a truthful depiction of a supernatural god. It is not! It is as the author explains in page after page of conclusions, a book that was composed to satisfy the deluded yearnings and ambitions of a priestly class, and its theofascist anxiety to impose on society a frivolous, incoherent dogma of beliefs that have no foundation in relation to the actual existence that we as humans, are born, live, and die.

I can assure the reader—if not already convinced—that this exceptional, scholarly book will open one’s mind to the wasted theological folly of religions based on the absurdity of beliefs formulated on the nonsense of a non-existing tyrannical bogeyman in the sky.

James A. Worrell

Carla Hinton, Religious Editor:

Inquiring minds  would like to know if God/Jesus caused the earthquake in Haiti. The Reverend [sic] Pat Robertson said it was God’s punishment because Haitians had turned away from Jesus. Is this correct?

Could prayer have prevented this disaster? Recall that Jesus said anything you ask in his name, believing, will be given you. Was Jesus just pulling our legs with that statement?

Lastly, I know that Christians like to blame the Devil for bad things and praise God/Jesus for the good things. Isn’t God/Jesus strong enough to defeat the Devil when he wants to do bad things?

With only Christians going to heaven, that leaves over 5 billions of people that are non-Christian who are going to Hell. It looks like the Devil is winning more souls than God/Jesus.

Just answer a few questions, please. However, I suspect you will avoid them like they were poison because there is no God/Jesus, and prayer has absolutely no efficacy. You simply don’t have the answers.

Have a nice day. The Haitians aren’t.

Jim Worrell

STEPHEN VAN ECK

From time to time over the years, there has been the occasional odd conservative who has identified with Thomas Paine. They’ve done so for two reasons: First, to presumptuously enshrine themselves among the Founding Fathers, and second, because of two words, Common Sense, an uncommon degree of which they dare to claim in themselves. Other than that, they typically know nothing about Paine and his thinking. Such a man is Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck has a successful commentary show on the right-wing FOX News channel. He is the author of several best selling books. One of them is the recent manifesto, “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine”. But other than reprinting the original “Common Sense” as an appendix, it’s difficult to see any influence of Paine in this book, or in anything Beck has ever written or said. Certainly a man who’d write a chapter called, “The Cancer of Progressivism” cannot have any sympathy with Paine’s views in “Rights of Man” or his essay “Agrarian Justice”. Indeed, it’s highly unlikely Beck has ever read these. If he had, he would likely have been appalled by Paine’s clearly progressive views as to forswear him as an icon.

The same must hold true for Beck and his ignorance of “The Age of Reason”. In his manifesto, Beck expressed an attitude of unqualified favor toward religion, claiming it is a “unifying force” in society. This shows not only ignorance of Paine, but of history as well. History shows that the only way religion is a unifying force is through its lust to unify BY force.

Beck’s “Common Sense” cites our real economic and political problems, and uses them in an effort to undermine faith in government as the vehicle of the people to find solutions. By doing this he is feeding into the substantial paranoid and lunatic fringe in America, so in a way it’s incorrect to refer to him as a conservative. On his show, he demonstrates political thinking which is remarkably muddled—to Beck, a Liberal is a Socialist is a Communist, and everything boils down to only two real choices: between unspeakable progressive tyranny and the right way, the way of our “divinely inspired”, inerrant Founders, whom Beck knows shockingly little about. Especially his chosen icon of Paine. Beck has enjoyed success totally out of proportion to his merits, and is someone whose opinions are ultimately too poorly-founded for us to take seriously. He does show us, however, that knowledge of Paine needs to be disseminated more, to save him from being co-opted by ignorami.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

The word “Lucifer” in Isaiah 14:12 presents a minor problem to mainstream Christianity. It becomes a much larger problem to Bible literalists, and becomes a huge obstacle to the claims of Mormonisn. John J. Robinson in A Pilgrim’s Path, pp. 47-48 explains: “Lucifer makes his appearance in the fourteenth chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse, and nowhere else: ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’”

The first problem is that Lucifer is a Latin name. So how did it find its way into a Hebrew manuscript, written before there was a Roman language? To find the answer, I consulted a scholar at the library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. What Hebrew name, I asked, was Satan given in this chapter of Isaiah, which describes the angel who fell to become the ruler of hell?

The answer was a surprise. In the original Hebrew text, the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is not about a fallen angel, but about a fallen Babylonian king, who during his lifetime had persecuted the children of Israel. It contains no mention of Satan, either by name or reference. The Hebrew scholar could only speculate that some early Christian scribes, writing in the Latin tongue used by the church, had decided for themselves that they wanted the story to be about a fallen angel, a creature not even mentioned in the original Hebrew text, and to whom they gave the name “Lucifer.”

Why Lucifer? In Roman astronomy, Lucifer was the name given to the morning star (the star we now know by another name, Venus). The morning star appears in the heavens just before dawn, heralding the rising sun. The name derives from the Latin term lucem ferre, bringer, or “bearer, of light.” In the Hebrew text the expression used to describe the Babylonian king before his death is Helal, son of Shahar, which can best be translated as “Day star, son of the Dawn.” The name evokes the golden glitter of a proud king’s dress and court (much as his personal splendor earned for King XlV of France, the appellation, “The Sun King”).

The scholars authorized by King James l to translate the Bible into the current English did not use the original Hebrew texts, but used versions translated largely by St. Jerome in the fourth century. Jerome had mistranslated the Hebraic metaphor, “Day star, son of the Dawn,” as “Lucifer,” and over the centuries a metamorphosis took place. Lucifer the morning star became a disobedient angel, cast out of heaven to rule eternally in hell. Theologians, writers, and poets interwove the myth with the doctrine of the Fall, and in Christian tradition Lucifer is now the same as Satan, the Devil, and, ironically, the Prince of Darkness.

So “Lucifer” is nothing more than an ancient Latin name for the morning star, the bringer of light. That can be confusing for Christians who identify Christ himself as the morning star, a term used as a central theme in many Christian sermons. Jesus refers to himself as the morning star in Revelation 22:16: “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.”

And so there are those who do not read beyond the King James Version of the Bible, who say “Lucifer is Satan: so says the word of God.”

Henry Neufeld (a Christian who comments of Biblical sticky issues) went on to say:

“This passage is often related to Satan, and a similar thought is expressed in Luke 10:18 by Jesus that was not its first meaning. Its primary meaning is given in Isaiah 14:4 which says that when Israel is restored they will “take up this taunt against the king of Babylon ….”

How does the confusion in translating this verse arise? The Hebrew of this passage reads: “heleyl, ben shachar” which an be literally translated “shining one, son of dawn.” This phrase means, again literally, the planet Venus when it appears as a morning star. In the Septuagint, a 3rd century BCE translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, it is translated as “heosphoros” which also means Venus as a morning star.

How did the translation “lucifer” arise? This word comes from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Was Jerome in error? Not at all. In Latin at the time, “lucifer” actually meant Venus as a morning star. Isaiah is using this metaphor for a bright light, though not the greatest light to illustrate the apparent power of the Babylonian king which then faded. “Therefore, Lucifer wasn’t equated with Satan until after Jerome. Jerome wasn’t in error. Later Christians (and Mormons) both equated “Lucifer” with “Satan”.

So why does this create a problem for Christians? Christians now generally believe that Satan (or the Devil/Lucifer) is a “being” who has always existed. Therefore, they also think that the Jews of the Old Testament believed in this creature. The Isaiah scripture is used as proof (and has been used as such for hundreds of years). As Elaine Pagels explains, the Christian concept of Satan (Devil/Lucifer) has evolved over the years and the early bible writers didn’t believe in such a doctrine.

The irony for those who believe that “Lucifer” refers to Satan (Devil/Lucifer) is that the same ‘morning star’ or ‘light-bearer’ is used to refer to Jesus, in 2 Peter 1:19, where the Greek text has exactly the same term: ‘phos-phoros’ ‘light-bearer.’ This is the term used for Jesus in Revelation 22:16.

So why is Lucifer a far bigger problem to Mormons? Mormons claim that an ancient record (the Book of Mormon) was written in about 600 BCE, and the author in 600 BCE supposedly copied Isaiah (¹) in Isaiah’s original words.(²)

When Joseph Smith pretended to translate the supposed ‘ancient record,’ he included the Lucifer verse in the Book of Mormon. Obviously he wasn’t copying what Isaiah wrote. He was copying the King James Version of the Bible. Another book of Mormon scripture, the Doctrine & Covenants, furthers this problem in 76:26 (³) when it affirms the false Christian doctrine also spread into a third set of Mormon scriptures, the Pearl of Great Price, which describes a war in heaven based, in part, on Joseph Smith’s incorrect interpretation of the word “Lucifer” which only appears in Isaiah (this clearly illustrates the fraud of Mormonism.

Disclaimer:

Citation of Hebrew scripture and sources in articles or analysis is not in any way an acceptance, approval or validation of the Jewish religion, its works or scriptures. The Hebrew bible, like the Christian New Testament, is fictitious; from a 6-day creation of the universe; a cunning, walking, talking snake; big fish tales; world flood and an “invisible man in the Sky”—it is all fiction, a bold sham perpetrated on mankind.

Mormon Scripture citations:

1. There are at least five verses in the Book of Mormon, chapter 2 Nephi, which state that the author is providing the “words of Isaiah.” (2 Nephi 6:4, 5, 11:2, 8, and 12:1).

2. 2 Nephi 24:12; How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations!

3. D and C 76: 25 And this we saw also, and bear record, that an angel of God who who was in authority in the presence of God, who rebelled against the only Begotten son whom the Father loved and who was in the bosom of the Father, was thrust down from the presence of God and the Son.

26 And was called Perdition, for the heavens wept over him—he was Lucifer, a son of the morning.

27 And we beheld, and lo, he is fallen! Is fallen, even a son of the morning!

28 And while we were yet in the Spirit, the Lord commanded us that we should write the vision; for we beheld Satan, that old serpent, even the devil, who rebelled against God and sought to take the kingdom of our God and his Christ—