THE FAB TEN

February 8th, 2010

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.

THE GUARDIAN GOD

February 7th, 2010

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 TERRIBLE TEXT

February 7th, 2010

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.

The Late Great Homo sapiens: A response to Hal Lindsey’s delusion that the Bible contains information that travelled backwards in time

February 2nd, 2010

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.


INSIGHTS INTO THE NATURE OF RIGHTISM

January 28th, 2010

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.

Massachusetts Votes to Repeal Third Millennium

January 21st, 2010

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?”

Just Who Is a Christian?

January 20th, 2010

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?

Non-Believers Giving Aid For Haiti Earthquake

January 17th, 2010

To support the effort, send checks, money orders etc. to:

Non-Believers Giving Aid

11605 Meridian Market View

Unit 124 PMB 381

Falcon, Colorado 80831 USA

Make checks payable to: Non-Believers Giving Aid

Or email rec@RichardDawkins.net for instructions how to give by direct wire transfer.

AN APPALLING PICTURE

January 15th, 2010

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.


GOD, JESUS, AND THE BIBLE

January 14th, 2010

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.






Haiti

January 14th, 2010

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

GLENN BECK AND THE CO-OPTING OF PAINE

January 6th, 2010

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.


LUCIFER: A PROBLEM FOR CHRISTIANITY

January 4th, 2010

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—


Limbaugh’s Phony Heart Attack Scheme

January 3rd, 2010

LELAND W. RUBLE

When I first read in the news that Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital for what was described as a “heart attack,” my first impression was that it was just another scheme in a series of schemes this tub of lard and devious propagandist for a fascist conservative ideology, had devised in order to gain publicity and sympathy for his narrow, constrained views of reality.

It was all too perfect. Take a vacation in Hawaii at the same time President Obama was vacationing, and then with a bit of feigned incredulity, pretend to have severe pain in the location of his heart. I’m not even sure if the man has a heart! He knew that this was one way he could generate publicity, not only for himself, but also in an effort to make the vapid remark upon being released, “I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the United States Health system.” Only a multimillionaire who’s made his fortune deceiving the public with an ideology that is Machiavellian, a distortion of reality, and oozing with multiple strains of a fascist ideology, could make such an idiotic remark. Only an overstuffed, over-rated shill and propagandist for the idle-brained babble that flits from his less than fuctioning brain could make such an outlandish remark.

His expense for this temporary stay in the hospital—which will cost thousands of dollars—will be a drop in the bucket to a man that smokes $10 cigars and flies about from here to there on his own private jet. For a clown that has an egomaniac view of himself, staying out of the news for just one day was probably too much of a strain on his brain. In fact the doctors, instead of focusing on his heart, should instead, have focused on his brain to see how much further it has deteriorated over the last decade.

Now ditto fans of the creepy fascist driven Limbaugh can expect to hear him endlessly, like a caged parrot, repetitiously ramble on and on about the imaginary pain he falsely claimed originated in his heart. Let’s hope the more intelligent of his listeners (if there are any) will get disgusted and so bored with listening to his overblown excuses for a staged heart ailment, and in turn, shut him up by turning off their radios.

Rick Warren Needs More Money!

January 2nd, 2010

Leland W. Ruble

Somehow Rick Warren’s plea for an extra million to continue as an apologist for a primitive dictator known as the Christian God, just seems a bit unrealistic. Saddleback Church, his home away from home, and the place where he spreads his propaganda of god belief, is no different than past members of the clergy who plea for donations whenever they feel financially threatened or in need of more funds to spread their quack religious theology. For instance, an Ohio evangelical pastor Ron Parsley, begged his congregation for 3 million to make up for his church’s lost of $3.1 million in a lawsuit filed by a family who disclosed that their son was spanked at its day-care center, to the extent that his buttocks and legs were covered with welts and abrasions.

Warren blames the lack of funds on the recession etc. What I would like to ask Warren is, how about donating some of the millions you’ve made from the sale of 30 million copies of your book The Purpose Driven Life? Instead of running around the country appearing on talk shows and falsely pretending he knows more about god than most people, he should instead, go to his nearest bank and withdraw a million or so from his personal account and use it to fund his church. Surely there must be one or two members of his congregation aware of Warren’s personal wealth. Or have they all been seduced to the extent that they no longer know how to oppose a preacher who has filled their brains to overflowing with images of an afterlife flitting about in some remote region of the universe?

This is the same preacher who only conceded after being constantly criticized for his anti-homosexual views, to voice opposition to the anti-homosexual legislation being debated in Uganda. The legislation calls for the death penalty of anyone suspected of being a homosexual. He would never have conceded if it wasn’t for pundits like Rachel Maddow and others who criticized and exposed him for his extreme anti-homosexual views. The man is a charlatan. A trickster who has learned how to fleece his flock and feed them the nonsense of a religion based on fairy tales, myth, magic, and mystical gibberish.

Warren has been known to be closely associated with a zealous Uganda pastor known as Martin Ssempa, a radical fundamentalist Christian preacher who resembles to an extent, an African version of Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell. Although neither man called for the death penalty of known homosexuals, their speeches and interviews with the media gave the impression that both men strongly opposed the homosexual agenda, and if they had their way would not stand in the way of severe penalties for homosexuals.

As for Warren asking for more money to spread his nonsensical religious theology, he’s doing what other megachurch evangelists have been doing for decades, duping their congregations into donating to a mystical  propaganda predicated on the false insane belief that an invisible sky god has the ability to interfere in their lives. Rick Warren is just another in an assortment of Christian clergy who’ve become successful preachers mainly by exploiting their congregations with a phony mucky-muck religious message that is focused on the irrational, the insane, and the delusional.


Decoding the Language of God: Can a Scientist Really be a Believer?

December 29th, 2009

George C. Cunningham, MD, MPH, 2009, Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 142268-2119. ISBN-978-1-59102-766-9, 269 pp, ppb, $18, reviewed by

WILLIAM HARWOOD

Decoding the Language of God is George Cunningham’s personal response to the claims of Francis Collins and Collins’s most-cited precursor, C. S. Lewis. That makes it understandable that the author does not include a bibliography, since even Richard Dawkins did not rebut Collins’s specific arguments. It is nonetheless unfortunate that Ronald Aronson’s Living Without God was not consulted, since it would have disabused Cunningham of the blatantly falsified statistics that he quotes as accurate, that the number of nontheists (a term that includes all who do not believe in the god of religion that intervenes in human affairs) is as low as 14.2 percent of the American population.

“I do not think most believers have evil intentions. For the most part they are unaware of just how their belief in the primary importance of a possible supernatural world contributes to the harm done to real people in this real material world” (p.23). I could have made that same statement myself—and so could Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, whom Cunningham denigrates as “militant atheists.” At least he has the integrity to put “militant atheists” in quotation marks.

Chapter six, “The Bible,” can be described as trivial. Ninety percent of it is accurate and comprehensible, but it adds nothing to the findings of Michael Arnheim, Bart Ehrman, Richard Friedman, William Harwood, Randall Helms, Joseph Hoffman, Martin Larson, Gerald Larue, Robert Price, and others. Of course those are all biblical historians who would be equally out of their depth if they ventured into the field of medicine or public health.

Cunningham reports (p. 228) that, according to Collins, the “launching pad” for his transition from nontheism to theism was C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. That confession alone raises doubts about Collins’s capacity for rational human thought even before Cunningham examines it in detail. I wrote of Lewis’s masturbation fantasy, “None of the god delusion’s debunkers proves the insanity of religion and the brain atrophy of its apologists as effectively as the apologists themselves, most notably the poster boy for fairy-tale-think, C. S. Lewis.” Cunningham’s evaluation of Lewis (p. 229) is not different from mine, merely politer.

It should surprise no one that, with C. S. Lewis as a role model, Francis Collins likewise expressed indefensible opinions that led Cunningham to report (p. 230) that, “Collins has cited no scientific evidence that would support the concept of God as a person.” Collins did, however, believe he was offering supporting evidence. Cunningham’s demolition of Collins’s arguments were greatly simplified by the circumstance that Collins’s whole case was a “god of the gaps” rationalization—if science cannot fully explain something down to the minutest detail, then, “God did it.”

Cunningham argues (p. 242) that, “Scientists who defend their nonreligious worldview need to avoid elitist tactics such as denigrating the intelligence of their religious opponents.” Pardon me if I disagree. I do not see him pulling his punches when he says of his opponent (p.65), “Collins finally gives up any claim of being a reasonable scientist when he says, ‘we may never fully understand the reasons’ for suffering as part of God’s plan. What kind of God expects us to live according to a plan that makes no sense to us and is beyond our comprehension? What kind of God would give us a brain that can reason and follow logic then expect us to believe in and worship an irrational, unintelligible, or evil God?”

In spelling out the oxymoronic quality of the belief of some Christian sects (p. 186) that, “It is only because of God’s love and mercy that a few are spared from the torments  of hell,” Cunningham comments, “I cannot reconcile this view with the concept of a loving God,” and adds (p. 62), “It is impossible to conceive of or imagine any remotely plausible reason for any all-powerful, all-loving, all-good God to be compelled to cause suffering.” He asks (p. 184), “If humans can do good without evil, cannot God do likewise? If God’s Moral Law prohibits humans from using evil means to accomplish good ends, why does God have to violate the prohibition?”

To the self-evident delusion of Collins, Lewis, and their fellow fantasizers that morality needs a metaphysical author, Cunningham responds (p. 54) by citing “books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, among others. The fact that these authors express such moral outrage at religion’s harmful effects does establish that atheists have a set of moral values based on humanistic reason, and they refute the charge that there can be no basis for morality without God.”

Collins postulated that a god of the gaps who hardwired a Moral Law into the human mind could only have been the god Jesus. Cunningham’s rebuttal is many-pronged, starting (p. 48) with, “Collins assumes facts not in evidence, namely, the truth and accuracy of the Bible.” He then proceeds to show that (a) there is no such innate instinct, or there would be no psychopaths; (b) such moral imperatives as do exist can be explained by cultural evolution; and (c) failure to prove an evolutionary basis for altruistic behavior does not prove that “God did it.”

Cunningham asks (p. 78), “If moral standards are such an essential part of human nature, wouldn’t these standards be self-evident and universally accepted?” He continues (p. 79), “Collins’s response is that Moral Law, instilled in us all by God, requires that we kill witches if we really believe they do horrible things and are servants of the devil. I’m sure this argument would be accepted by the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, who sincerely believed we Westerners are servants of the devil and should be killed for the horrible things we do.”

He writes (p. 91), “The Moral Law is violated constantly, so much so that the violations could also be described as intrinsic to human nature …. In fact, Collins prejudices his argument when he names the phenomena the ‘Moral Law’ because he assumes, without independent evidence, that there is a lawmaker, which is the very claim that he is trying to establish.” In summary (p. 93), “If instead of God, Collins proposed that the Moral Law was due to an undetectable altruistic virus implanted in human brains by extraterrestrials, would we, by rejecting the natural explanation proposed, have to accept this explanation as valid? This is why I find Collins’s proposition that the Moral Law is a signpost pointing to divine intervention irrational and not intellectually satisfying.”

Commenting on the claim that the Bible’s myriad of OT death penalties was composed to conform to a divinely-mandated Moral Law, Cunningham asks (p. 147), “Are these parts of the Bible just wrong? Were they right before Jesus was born and wrong now?” And on page 235, “The overwhelming scientific evidence that material things have direct influence in creating the Moral Law makes it clear that there is nothing supernatural about it.”

Cunningham responds to Collins’s citing of other scientists who agree with him (p. 19), “The respect for the power of scientific knowledge explains why people who wish to defend their belief in God always cite the very small number of scientists who are believers … The believers reason that if scientists can share their beliefs, then those beliefs must be rational and scientifically sound.” As for the silent majority (p. 190), “The fact that most scientists avoid any involvement with religion is because it is in their self-interest to do so. Too many scientists are quiet atheists because they feel they would risk loss of public support and private funding.” That reason why the educated are unwilling to come out of the closet also explains why pollsters, by the implied threat of social and economic harm that a truthful answer would trigger, are able to solicit answers that support the pretence that the number of nontheists in the general population is less than half of the true figure of 36 percent.

In direct response to Collins’s claim to speak for a large number of scientists, Cunningham states that (p. 233-234, 236), “Contrary to Collins’s claim that many scientists share his view, such scientists are rarities …. His arguments are more reflective of the needs of Collins’s unique human personality than his scientific intelligence …. In fact, he arrives at his conclusion that the Moral Law is the instillation of a glimpse of divinity only by denying the evidence for the causal role of genes and custom. This leaves the unproved, default explanation that ‘Jesus did it.’ You don’t prove your explanation by proving that some other explanation is false or incomplete.”

Collins rejected Richard Dawkins’ definition of religious faith as, “blind trust in the absence of evidence even in the teeth of evidence.” As Cunningham points out (p. 173), “This is an apt description of Collins’s faith despite his claims of rationality.”

Cunningham also challenges Collins’s claims that religion is basically a force for good; that “Aha!” insights are messages from a source outside of the human brain; that “God”, unlike all the other emotionally-satisfying dreams, is not simply a wish fulfillment; and that the existence of miracles proves the existence of God.

Cunningham agrees with Collins’s contention (p. 48) that, “Wishing for something has no bearing on whether or not that something exists.” He calls the argument that, “all human desires can ultimately be fulfilled, and therefore God must exist to satisfy them” (p. 51), “flawed logic.” He asserts (p. 53-54) that “No scientist or rational person would deny that while god or God might exist elsewhere, god or God also has to exist as a mental state in the brain. But this is where unicorns, fairies, and dragons also reside, and we find no evidence of their existence elsewhere …. While this is only a partial explanation for the persistence of religion, the desire for a loving father and for immortality is based on wish fulfillment.”

Collins recounts various incidents during which he felt a ’special kind of joy associated with flashes of insight.’ … This is not, as Collins claims, ‘an experience that defies a completely naturalistic explanation.’ Collins denies scientific fact when he claims it cannot be explained in term of  ’some combination of neurotransmitters landing on precisely the right receptors’” (p. 50).

On miracles (p. 72), “The Jews and Romans of [Jesus'] times witnessed his miracles and still treated him as a troublesome man, or a blasphemer, or a false prophet. They were people with limited scientific knowledge who readily accepted the supernatural. If all the supposed eyewitnesses … were not convinced … why should anyone … accept miracles on the basis of thirdhand biblical stories today?” Furthermore (p. 202), “If Collins and other Christian believers accept biblical reports of miracles and are convinced that miraculous cures at Christian sites are true, don’t they also have to accept the possibility that the miracles of Islam and Hindu gurus are also genuine miracles unexplainable by natural means?”

Collins invoked the last resort of many apologists for their god’s inconsistency, that what seems evil to us is really the deity’s incomprehensible ways. Cunningham probably makes him wish he had left that issue alone. He cites Lewis’s contention that God’s love does not include kindness, and responds (p. 172), “God could be kind to someone God did not love, but God could not be unkind to someone God loved perfectly. Lewis’s attempt to redefine the nature of love as it might apply to God is an unintelligible distortion and describes a God undeserving of worship.”

“Does any religion provide satisfying answers to all the interesting questions about the origin of the universe? The recurring answer that an incomprehensible God did it is an answer that explains nothing. It is like saying, ‘It’s magic’” (p. 117). “My question is, if this perfect being exists, how could he have created in such a slow, wasteful manner such an imperfect universe? … The existence of an imperfect universe is incompatible with the claim that a perfect creator God exists.”

Collins is far from a biblical literalist, and rejects Intelligent Design as “a ‘God of the gaps’ theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain.” As Cunningham points out (p. 170), “This is exactly what Collins does to explain the big bang, the anthropic coincidences, and the Moral Law.”

As for religion doing more good  than harm, Cunningham writes (p. 174) that, “Collins cites examples of the ‘wonderful things done in the name of religion: Moses freeing the Jews from Egyptian-imposed slavery (for which there is no historical evidence);’ … If the Bible is historically accurate, Moses and the Jews used their freedom to commit genocide against the inhabitants of Palestine and established their own slaves.”

Cunningham got a few things wrong. He got far more right. And if his pretence that religion is not a contagious form of insanity leads to his book being read by curable believers who would not expose themselves to the findings of the authors he denigrates as “militant atheists,” that makes it as useful a contribution to the promotion of reality as theirs.



THE PROSECUTION OF GOD

December 27th, 2009

LELAND W. RUBLE

The Bible is filled with matters related to punishment for not obeying rules, regulations, and a host of commandments, which supposedly were concocted by a never-seen god, whose existence has not, and never will be ascertained as a factually living, thriving being. He/she/it or whatever, is advertised by the religious as existing, even though there is zip, zero, zilch evidence for its existence. The idea of an existing god(s) has been promoted by lies, hearsay, rumors, and myths that originated in the imaginations of the priestly class those main objective has always been to gain authoritarian influence and control over the societies in which they function. Without a god, they would have no authority nor the capability to interfere in politics or established governments.

If Flat Earthers and no-nothing creationists were asked if the biblical god created this planet and life, the answer would be, “Without a doubt.” If nontheists were asked the same question, it would be a resounding “No.”

Isn’t it ironic that the same god who supposedly informs humanity that if they don’t obey its commandments—most of which are no longer applicable, since they were concocted in an age when god belief in some denominations was even more insane then it is in this era—they would be severely punished. However, this same god avoids any form of punishment for breaking every one of its commands.

The religionists do not question, and even ignore this god’s countless acts of murder, for droughts, hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, disease, earthquakes and disregard for humanity, by breaking every commandment it insists humans not disobey. If, as the religionists believe, their god is the cause of everything, including the creation of its opposite, Satan, then it is also responsible for every tragedy that occurs on this planet. There’s always an irrational excuse from religious fundamentalists for every natural and manmade disaster. For example, the tragedy of 9/11 was blamed by the late Jerry Falwell in the presence of Pat Robertson, as the result of pagans, abortionists, feminists, and gays for bringing about the attacks in New York and Washington. In other words God had no intention of intervening, because those previously mentioned, are detested by their god.

Isn’t this enough to conclude that the biblical god is the most insane tyrannical despot and non-existent object of devotion ever conceived in the imagination of priestly authoritarians? How can this god get away with informing humanity (through its authors) that it can’t do this or do that without being eternally disciplined in an afterlife, yet it, itself, can do whatever it damn well pleases without being convicted of crimes against humanity? Do the priests, clergy, and preachers of this imagined god, realize just how totally contradictory their god’s commands are, especially when it gets away with murder, yet is not found guilty for the same and worse crimes it commands humanity (its supposed creation) not commit?  How do the religious worship and dedicate their lives to a god who is the most criminally, invisible, and psychotic deity ever imagined by the human mind?

As for the afterlife as described in the bible, we are offered two choices—in some religions there are more—hell or heaven. Neither is a realistic option for spending eternity. And, a god that condemns anyone for living an existence the religious fatuously proclaim, god created, should never, no matter what, deserve eternity being stuffed into an oven and roasted over and over again in a mythical hell. Only a religious maniac with the intention of creating fear in his converts, and those not yet converted, could imagine and concoct such a sadistic scenario.

The only individuals on this planet who accuse the biblical god of crimes against humanity, are those who have come to the realization that the nonexistent god worshiped by the religious, is nothing more than a horrible, nightmare creation of human imagination.

Because a thing (god) cannot be proven to be an existing entity, it is absurd to place faith in an unverifiable, nonsensical object. Having faith and not proof, does not suggest by any rational means, that a god exists. We can prove gravity exists, time exists, life exists, death exists, but no theologian, no matter how expert he may be in matters relating to theology, can offer one iota of evidence that the biblical god was, is, or still is, an actual existing entity. Faith that something which the universe does not recognize, may exist, is the same as someone believing the earth is flat and that photos of this planet as a round globe are deceptive distortions of reality. Likewise for those who insist on criticizing evolution, because if they admitted it was a reality, they would be compelled to deny the false evidence of creation as depicted in the bible. And, worse than this, would result for members of the clergy, in permanent unemployment once the creation myth in Genesis were exposed as another fairy tale in a bible that is the writing of authors whose minds were seeped in the fantasy of an unreal supernatural reality.

Since it is impossible—if a god(s) doesn’t exist—to prosecute a nonexistent god for its crimes against humanity, another, or several alternatives are possible. To convince the religious community that their make-believe god is without doubt, the worst tyrannical criminal in the known history of this planet, it is essential to bring attention to its atrocities through books, articles, the world-wide net, and other forms of communication that is not, as in some societies, suppressed by existing governments that do not recognize any form of church/state separation.

How then would one go about prosecuting a non-existing thing? It would require an individual or group of people to sue this entity in a court for crimes committed by its clergy, for defending the atrocities this god supposedly did according to the authors of its supernatural existence in the biblical text.

Therefore, the prosecution of god if directed toward those who defend its countless tragedies are prosecuted, they should have to coherently explain why they find  no fault with its ordering its prophets and converts to kill innocent women, children, babies, men, and animals. They should also be required to explain why they praise, pray, obey, and follow the dictates of this god even though it has a record of being a cruel tyrant that has shown little, if any respect, for humans that believe in other gods or especially, no gods. They should also have to explain why this god was so disrespectful of life, that it found it suitable to create the circumstances that led to the flooding and drowning of all human and animal life, with the insane exception of one human family and an odd assortment of animals.

They should be required to present evidence of their god’s actions in regard to plagues, diseases, illness, and other tragedies done because this god was pissed off at some individual or group that opposed its authoritarian dictatorship over human life. The clergy should also be held responsible for all those who, by sincerely believing what their clergy preached, in turn, committed outrageous crimes in this god’s name. Crimes such as the sexual assault of children, the bombing of abortion clinics, and the killing of doctors involved in legal and medically sanctioned abortions.

Psychologists and psychiatrists should be required to present evidence for how many patients they have treated, who are mentally incapacitated because of religious delusions derived from belief in a god. A convert to the pseudoreligion of Christian Science should be required to present evidence for how many patients did not survive as a result of prayers to an almighty god. And, if possible, present evidence for how this god intervenes physically or spiritually by answering prayers (an absolutely impossible claim). The current pope and his entire entourage of bishops and cardinals should be subpoenaed and required to divulge how and in what way the thousands of saints recognized by his church have the awesome ability to intervene in someone’s life even though they no longer exist. The clergy should also have to give a rational explanation for what they mean by spiritual, and identify for the court exactly where and in what part of the body this thing resides. They should also be asked to give evidence for a virgin birth, the location of heaven, the location of hell, the probable time when they expect the return of Jesus, proof of why the Christian religion believes there is such a thing as a Holy Ghost, and why this god required his son or himself—if god is Jesus and Jesus is the Holy Spirit and all three are one—then it follows that the biblical god brutally crucified himself for the nonexistent sins of past and present human beings.

There should also be a requirement that those professing belief (without proof) in a god, clearly explain how they arrived at this conclusion without presenting any evidence to sustain such an absurd belief. Anyone can nominate, for instance, a large stone, and say god resides in this stone, but the only way you’ll be convinced, is by having faith that the stone is the habitation of a god. Without proof of a god, there is NO god. God is established on faith, but faith is NOT evidence. The reason most atheists become atheists, is because they arrived at the conclusion that it is utterly impossible and improbable for such a thing as a god to exist. The universe (cosmos) is the origin and creation of its own existence. It does not need nor require the intervention of a god to go about its business of sustaining itself. It’s absurd to even think a god had any authority over the universe, this planet, or any physical element.

The universe does not need a god to create a planet. The universe does not require a god to create human, animal, or plant life. The universe is the source of all creation. It does not need a spokesperson in the form of a tyrannical god to do what it has done for the billions of years before some remote civilization imagined a primitive concept of a god as a way to explain what they lacked the knowledge to understand.

Naturally, no court will (not in this era) ever convene to question the authenticity of the biblical god or any other god promoted by belief based on some mythical fairy tale.

The civilized world is evolving from reliance on non-existent gods, and away from beliefs that are reliant on assuming a supernatural existence separate from the one we physically inhabit, and relying on a more humanistic approach toward life that is absent the dictate and impractical demands of religions based on a fatuous, idiotic assumption that a god is real, and not the misconceived deception of an ancient priestly class that used god-belief to create the circumstances for authoritarian dominance over society.



“GOD IS LOVE”

December 26th, 2009

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

1. A Towering Text. Only twice does the Bible explicitly say that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Yet commentators declare that “God is love” is “one of the greatest statements in the Bible.” God is love is the author’s “outstanding contribution to Christian theology.” God is love is probably the greatest single statement about God in the whole Bible.” “These three words, God is love, take us to the highest summits in Scripture.” “Johannine thought is the highest conception of the divine nature man can hold. All God’s activity is loving activity. If he creates, he creates in love; if he rules, he rules in love; if he judges, he judges in love.”

2. A Vicious Verse. “God is love” is a vicious verse, for it enables careful readers to destroy mercilessly people’s faith by proving again and again that God is not love. Here we consider a few of the many brutal blows.

A. God was not love when he constructed a system of nature bloody-red in tooth, fang, and claw which wounds sensitive flesh.

B. God was not love when he created monsters with pointed horns and saber teeth and agonizing stings to torture other creatures.

C. God was not love when he created flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and ticks to make life miserable for animals and humans.

D. God was not love when he designed an animal world in which cannibalism (the eating of one’s own kind) is commonplace, involving 140 different species.

E. God was not love when he created the king of terrifying dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurus rex) one of the greatest engines for destruction the world has ever seen, which could rip to shreds any creature crossing its path.

F. God was not love when he heartlessly drowned all but a boatload of people (Genesis 7:9-13, 17-24). The horrors of this world-wide flood are magnified to the nth degree if those fundamentalists are correct who teach that “God once drowned and sent to hell every person alive on earth excepting eight persons who found grace in his sight.”

G. God was not love when he commanded Abraham and his descendants to circumcise every baby when he is eight days old—a painfully cruel and senseless procedure (Genesis 17:10-14).

H. God was not love when he inaugurated and supported the barbaric sacrifice of zillions of animals to gain his favor, culminating in the sacrifice of Jesus (Genesis 8:20; Leviticus; John 1:29; Hebrews 9:22; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 13:8). A God who supports butcher-shop religion/packinghouse piety/slaughterhouse spirituality cannot be love.

I. God was not love when he commanded the Israelites to kill 21,000,000 people to conquer Canaan (Exodus 12:37; Deuteronomy 7:1-6).

J. God was not love when he smote all the firstborn in Egypt (Exodus 12:29).

K. God was not love when he said that he hates women who wear men’s clothing and men who wear women’s clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5).

L. God was not love when he commanded that a guilty man sentenced to be beaten must lie face downward and be whipped up to forty lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).

M. God was not love when he inspired Samson to murder thirty Philistines (Judges 14:19). See Hebrews 11:32, which praises Samson as one of the heroes of faith.

N. God is not love when he or Jesus damns the masses of mankind to unending, unspeakable, torments in hell (Matthew 5:22, 29:30; 13:40-50; 18:8; 25:41, 46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 3:17; 12:5; Revelation 21:8).

Conclusion. In my opinion, the author of 1 John erred when he claimed that “God is love.” For some unknown reason, he overlooked the countless verses in the Bible and the cruelties of nature which show that the God of the Bible is as bad as bad can be.


Birth Date of the Historical Jesus

December 21st, 2009

JIM LEE

Long before the creation of man, the biblical god provided the basis for the measuring of time. Gen.1:14-15, tells us that one of the purposes of the “luminaries in the expanse of the heavens” is that they might serve for “seasons and for days and years.” The solar day, and the solar year, and the lunar months are the natural division of time.

For those who are believers in the time of Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden, time has been measured in terms of years. Thus Adam was “A hundred and thirty years” of age when he became the father of Seth. See Genesis 5:3.

In Roman chronology, the era of the Foundation of Rome (ab urbe condita, or auc) dates from April 22, 753 BCE, and the Julian era dates from the reform of the calendar by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. He then issued a decree changing the Roman calendar from a lunar to a solar year, so he had his astronomer Sosigenes invent what is known as the Julian calendar. In 44 BCE, Julius Caesar changed the name of the month Quintilis to Julius (July) after himself. The month of Sextilis was renamed to Augustus (August) in honor of Roman emperor Caesar Augustus who succeeded Julius Caesar.

The Romans were a dominating force of power when the supposed Jesus was said to have been born, and in 525 CE (AD), the Julian calendar was replaced by a new calendar which the 6th century Pope had prepared when he commissioned a Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus who fixed the date of the birth of Jesus in the year of Rome 753, or 0 BCE. Jesus’ first birthday for example would be 1 Anno Domini (year of our Lord) usually shown as 1 CE (AD). The calendar, when finished, was gradually adopted throughout Christendom.

In the 14th century, Pope Gregory Xlll on advice from his astronomers issued the Gregorian calendar which is almost universally adopted throughout the world. The Gregorian calendar has months named after the gods of Janus, Mars, and the goddess of Juno, and continues to be used by Christendom to this very day.

In recent times, modern scholars have found that some of the dates of Roman history, near the beginning of the Christian era, cannot be reconciled with what has been recorded in New Testament writings. Such as when Herod the Great (73-4 BCE) reigned as King of Judea (37-4 BCE) ordered the “Massacre of the Innocents.” Death of all infant boys under the age of two, in Bethlehem, and all its districts, so as to make sure that the infant Jesus was killed. (See Matt. 2:16).

No other gospel writer makes mention of this massacre, and it is now generally regarded as being false. Herod the Great had already been dead four years before the birth of Jesus, as calculated by Dionysius Exiguus. This created a serious problem with New Testament writings, and the easiest way to resolve this predicament was for modern scholars to move the Birth date of Jesus back to 4 or 5 BCE, just prior to Herod’s death. At this point of time, I am trying to establish at what time in modern history was this date changed, [At the moment it points to James Ussher 1581-1656, an Irish church dignitary and Anglican scholar. Ussher had numerous writings, the most important being "Annals of the World," 1650-1654  and translated in 1658. These writings establish his biblical chronology with the creation being fixed at 4004 BCE. This date is widely accepted by the church and is included in the page margins of many editions of the "Authorized King James versions of the bible.]

Both of these dates are in contradiction to the Gospel of Luke. When Mary (who was about to give birth) and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, the Census was being taken according to New Testament writings but no dates are given. According to the historian of that era, Josephus, it can be calculated that the Census took place in 6 CE. Is this the true date or the supposed date of Jesus’ birth?

We also know at this point in time, that Calendars throughout the world were being modified to show Monday as being the first day of the week, instead of the biblical Sunday. Perhaps we should ask why? Maybe in another 100 years in the future, Sunday will once more be recognized as the first day of the week and as the true Sabbath.


CHRISTMAS CAROLS FOR THE PSYCHIATRICALLY CHALLENGED

December 18th, 2009

Anonymous

1. Schizophrenia—Do You Hear What I Hear?

2. Multiple Personality Disorder—We Three Queens Disoriented are

3. Amnesia—I Don’t Know if I’ll be Home for Christmas

4. Narcissistic—Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

5. Manic—Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and …

6. Paranoid—Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

7. Borderline Personality Disorder—Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

8. Full Personality Disorder—You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll tell You Why

9. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder—Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, …

10. Agoraphobia—I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn’t leave My House

11. Senile Dementia—Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House in My Slippers and Robe

12. Oppositional Defiant Disorder—I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House

13. Social Anxiety Disorder—Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas while I Sit Here and Hyperventilate.