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Debate: IS THE BIBLE THE UNERRING WORD OF THE CREATOR?
Both participants agree:
A. That there is a Creator that is factually, rationally, and scientifically provable
B. That materialism and evolution are factually, rationally, and scientifically false
Positions to be debated:
1. Who or what is the Creator?
2. Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?
3. Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?
4. Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?
5. Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?
6. Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?
7. Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?
8. Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?
9. Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?
10. Is the Bible the source of goodness?
1. Who or what is the Creator?
2. Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?
3. Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?
4. Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?
5. Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?
6. Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?
7. Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?
8. Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?
9. Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?
10. Is the Bible the source of goodness?
R. Wysong is of the negative.
D. Nemos is of the affirmative.
Both participants agree:
A. That there is a Creator that is factually, rationally, and scientifically provable
B. That materialism and evolution are factually, rationally, and scientifically false
Positions to be debated:
1. Who or what is the Creator?
2. Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?
3. Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?
4. Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?
5. Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?
6. Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?
7. Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?
8. Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?
9. Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?
10. Is the Bible the source of goodness?
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1. Who or what is the Creator?
WYSONG: Who or what is the Creator?:
What we can know about the Creator can only be gleaned from the creation itself, not human institutions and human books ostensibly speaking for the Creator.
The creation is complex beyond comprehension. We don't know how anything in the natural world, including all the natural laws that govern it, could come to be.
Much less do we have any idea what the source of all this phantasmagoric reality is. We can no more comprehend it than comprehend infinity, or time without beginning or end.
So, faced with this unknowingness, humans from the beginning of time have attempted to anthropomorphize the Creator into human forms, like all the gods that speak our language and write to us.
But these gods are not the Creator, they are human constructs that are used by humans to rule over other humans or assume knowledge not possessed.
We must be content with the limits of our knowing and understanding and go about the business of following our Creator-given conscience and reasoning abilities to live a life true to conscience and truth.
Since the creation does not lie, ever, truth is the best description of what the Creator is. To the extent that we seek and come to know truth is the extent to which we can know the Creator.
Anthropomorphized book-writing gods do not do.
What we can know about the Creator can only be gleaned from the creation itself, not human institutions and human books ostensibly speaking for the Creator.
The creation is complex beyond comprehension. We don't know how anything in the natural world, including all the natural laws that govern it, could come to be.
Much less do we have any idea what the source of all this phantasmagoric reality is. We can no more comprehend it than comprehend infinity, or time without beginning or end.
So, faced with this unknowingness, humans from the beginning of time have attempted to anthropomorphize the Creator into human forms, like all the gods that speak our language and write to us.
But these gods are not the Creator, they are human constructs that are used by humans to rule over other humans or assume knowledge not possessed.
We must be content with the limits of our knowing and understanding and go about the business of following our Creator-given conscience and reasoning abilities to live a life true to conscience and truth.
Since the creation does not lie, ever, truth is the best description of what the Creator is. To the extent that we seek and come to know truth is the extent to which we can know the Creator.
Anthropomorphized book-writing gods do not do.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Who or what is the Creator?:
The world is not what we were told. It's a lot weirder.
If one accepts the existence of a creator, a series of other questions must certainly follow in short order – questions such as: Who is this Creator? What do they want? Why did they create us? And how can we know for sure?
Logical deduction shows us that our Creator is, in many ways, more complex and even ineffable than we can ever know.
However, our creator is also a loving God with a purpose and plan for His creation. It was not made randomly, because we are the only habitable planet in the universe – and we are the geocentric center of the universe. And in this center, we – mankind, are the superior and dominant species
(Aside from our UNNatural competition – the Nephilim.)
One might say, with sincerity, based on these facts – that we are the apple of the creators eye, His greatest piece of art on a huge canvas filled with beauty. His highest form of life on His creation. Caretakers of His Garden paradise.
I believe that it can be shown that He has sent messages (and messengers) throughout human history to guide His children towards the nobler path, salvation and repentance of evil. I believe those messengers were sent (the prophets, Angels, and His own son in mortal form, Yeshuah – Jesus Christ) to convince us to choose him of our own volition.
Using deductive reasoning and the scientific method, as well as vetted historical accounts as well as current events, I will endeavor to prove this to be the case. That there is only One true God, only one Creator, and that while we cannot fully comprehend anything multiple dimensions beyond our own limited understanding – we can Trust His word is authentic and from Him.
A small window into eternity. As the holy scriptures can be proven authentic and divinely inspired – a claim that only the Christian scriptures (the original manuscripts, not todays modern corrupted English bibles) will confirm.
In short, Our loving Creator gave us free will and has been encouraging us, begging us, commanding us, pleading with us – to use it to choose Righteousness over Evil. But as He loves us, Free will is given us as an inalienable right. We must all make the choice between Good, and Evil. Between Sin, and righteousness. This is the great test, this is the purpose of the mortal life.
I intend to explore the following realms for evidence of my position:
Anthropology (People movements)
Etymology (Language Evolution)
Prophecy (foreknowledge of events beyond human capability, including "blind" prophecies where the speaker had no idea of what they spoke.
Historical Accounts (From Famous and Not so Famous people that testify to the truth of God's impact on History)
Archeology (Hieroglyphs of every ancient culture testify to my position, Megalithic structures around the world, Giants, Elongated skulls etc)
Genetics (Hybrid humanity – multiple species)
Miracles (The kind that only God could have done, such as leaving balls of pure sulphur embedded in the stone around Sodom and Gamorrah)
Government Coverups (Hiding the truth, going to war against the Christian God, YHWH. The Iraq War 2003, etc)
The Illuminati's Mystery Babylon Religion (Satanism masked as Paganism – The worlds most powerful people absolutely believe in Satan – The enemy – and follow its orders) Including Judaism, An Imposter and Deception
Hidden History (Various)
Aliens (They are real, and are fallen angels)
The Other religions (All of which were also flesh and blood mortal Nephilim "gods" pretending to be Gods)
In summary: there is a creator, provable by the observable scientific method and reasoning.
Equally so, there is a single true religion whose scriptures are:
A. Divinely inspired by God himself (this book is testable)
B. Has an accurate historical account of major events, including early histories of various peoples and massive anthropological, etymological and migratory information that also checks out against history. With events like the Flood of Noah explained in the most accurate way of all the various flood myths. (which are universal because they are various perspectives of the same story, generally the local tyrant "Nephilim" demigods godkings perspective. But the actual fallout of events is best explained and in most detail by the scriptural account of ancient (moreso than heavily censored current) Christians/Hebrews. Including the explosion in population in the post flood setting)
C. Has an accurate prophetic account of major events including the secession of empires over world history, various destructions (such as Sodom and Gomorrah), Wars, and Emergences of new leaders, laws, dates, etc.
D. Yeshuah (Jesus Christ's true Hebrew Name) was a real man, he existed – and furthermore, was the divinely parented son of God himself, as part of Gods plan to redeem humanity from its mortal materialistic (sinful) natures and bring us back into alignment with our higher spiritual core selves. Something Yeshuah did, not necessarily by miracle, but by example with His life and His sacrifice – and then resurrection. His story gave mankind Hope in a world of godkings and human sacrifice and the fallen tyrant gods of the Satanic secret societies were cruelly oppressive to everyone with fear of death. His story inspired mankind to rise above their fear of Death and live for something bigger than life itself, eternity in righteousness. And that story continues to inspire people today, over 2000 years later.
E. The "Deep State" elite hate Christianity (Esp. White Christians) above all targets on earth because they serve Satan, in a direct and willing and deeply devoted manner in the higher initiations of the secret societies. Self admittedly they serve and commune with Satan. They Hate Christianity because only it is real. Every other religion on other (not moral code religions, but creationists) is the pagan Nephilim's perspective. Their story is universal and basically the same story. "wisdom serpents" or some variation, a flood, giants eating or ruling over humans, etc.
The deep states entire religious code actually is built upon the Teachings of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil (Kaballah and the problem reaction solution techniques they employ to control)
and worship of the fallen angels and their demigod tyrant king of the FIRST one world government, Nimrod. Builder of the Tower of Babel – whom they seek to mimic and use transhumanism to self ascend to demigod status like Nimrod did (who BECAME a giant but I born with those genes) and unite his one world religion once more. They deify and revere Nimrod, they want to be him.
F. The Fallen Angels of Genesis 6, (the entire "his story" that was covered up and censored from the Bible, also – about 1/3 of the bible was removed) are the very same "Aliens" of today. They aren't from outer space, and they've been here before. It didn't work out very well for us.
G. A loving and kind God left instructions for people to follow, including the best moral code, dietary code, best holidays (arguably).
The world is not what we were told. It's a lot weirder.
If one accepts the existence of a creator, a series of other questions must certainly follow in short order – questions such as: Who is this Creator? What do they want? Why did they create us? And how can we know for sure?
WYSONG: That does not mean those questions can be answered by mortals.
NEMOS: It wasn't, it inspired by divinity. This is evident from a study of eschatology and a deeper study of scriptural historical "superaccuracy." I agree that we can never see the universe from the creators eyes, but that does not mean the creator does not want a relationship with his children. Even a small child can lovingly tend an insect, frog, crab, puppy, kitten, etc. Though it can never understand them, fully. We will never be ON His level, so to speak – but that doesn't mean He does not have expectations, love, and righteous wrath.
Logical deduction shows us that our Creator is, in many ways, more complex and even ineffable than we can ever know.
WYSONG: Agreed that the Creator is beyond comprehension. Since the Creator is ineffable, an effable book cannot prove otherwise.
The language and assumptions in the N position outlined here reduce the Creator to a human-like being.
The language and assumptions in the N position outlined here reduce the Creator to a human-like being.
NEMOS: See above, and yes – ineffable is a decent word to describe scripture, it's truly beyond human comprehension fully. A lifetime of study continues to reveal more nuance to the student. One can never know it all, only grow continually closer in relationship to the ineffable one may never understand – yet be blessed by. Ironically the creator's own Son reduced himself to a human-like being, toured the region raising the dead (himself included) and performing miracles of similar sort. History records it. It happened. He was real. Examples: A, B. It's funny because many believe Jesus never even existed (showing they've not actually researched Him or asked historians) and was just a new incarnation of various sun gods over history.
However, our creator is also a loving God with a purpose and plan for His creation. It was not made randomly, because we are the only habitable planet in the universe – and we are the geocentric center of the universe. And in this center, we – mankind, are the superior and dominant species
WYSONG: These things are not known for certain.
NEMOS: If the creator does not care, why are we at the center? Why does history record the events of His holy word – such as the flood, which could not possibly have happened without divine circumstance (Hydroplate theory is what truly happened during the flood, and the waters above) The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? It was not made randomly, because we are the only habitable planet in the universe – and we are the geocentric center of the universe. And in this center, we – mankind, are the superior and dominant species
(Aside from our UNNatural competition – the Nephilim.)
WYSONG: How does one meet a Nephilim to evaluate him, her, it?
NEMOS: Your local Synagogue (Demogue of Sin) of Satan – Ever met an Edomite?
One might say, with sincerity, based on these facts – that we are the apple of the creators eye, His greatest piece of art on a huge canvas filled with beauty. His highest form of life on His creation. Caretakers of His Garden paradise.
WYSONG: Those "facts" and claims need to be detailed and proven. The Creator cannot be diminished by anthropomorphism–attributing human characteristics to that which is not human: "His," apple of the Creator's eye," book writing, etc.
NEMOS: It can be shown that He has sent messages (and messengers) throughout human history to guide His children towards the nobler path, salvation and repentance of evil. I believe those messengers were sent (the prophets, Angels, and His own son in mortal form, Jesus Christ) to convince us to choose him of our own volition.
I believe that it can be shown that He has sent messages (and messengers) throughout human history to guide His children towards the nobler path, salvation and repentance of evil. I believe those messengers were sent (the prophets, Angels, and His own son in mortal form, Yeshuah – Jesus Christ) to convince us to choose him of our own volition.
WYSONG: That is not known. Waiting for proof. Messengers are not needed to listen to our own Creator-given conscience guiding us to a more noble life.
Jesus is not a proven historical figure.
Jesus is not a proven historical figure.
NEMOS: Proof (Navigate to How to prove Which God is Real? Section) , and Yes, Jesus was the most proven historical figure in human history. Moreso than anyone else who ever lived by every metric of evidence anthropologists, historians, and archeologists would use to build the case for anyone. For example, we have far more proof for Jesus than for Julius Caesar. History records it. It happened. He was real.
Examples: A, B.
Examples: A, B.
Using deductive reasoning and the scientific method, as well as vetted historical accounts as well as current events, I will endeavor to prove this to be the case. That there is only One true God, only one Creator, and that while we cannot fully comprehend anything multiple dimensions beyond our own limited understanding – we can Trust His word is authentic and from Him.
WYSONG: Again there is the admission of unknowability. That does not comport with an unknowable Creator writing a book for us that is filled with unreason, contradictions, untruths, and ethical horrors. "Trust" does not solve that.
NEMOS: He can be both A. Unknowable (fully) and yet B. Communicate with us, establish rules and relationship, and bless and curse and judge. We don't need to understand His power, it still happens. The ant may not understand the child's magnifying glass, but he feels the heat if it is used to roast him. As for your understanding of scripture is not well developed, I understand why you might think these things about it. The scriptures were filled with the best code of Ethics we've ever had (the foundation of Western Christian Freedoms such as free speech.) As we will demonstrate throughout this debate – God's judgements are always just, when considered in context. The God that flooded the world and killed so many people, had a parasite invasion of Nephilim "All flesh was corrupted" hybrids running around eating each other. It was essentially a zombie apocalypse with giants. What Choice did our creator have, except to clean up our mess and start over with someone "pure in his generations?"wyet if you do not understand the full context – YHWH becomes a genocidal creator. Who creates and then destroys on a whim – which itself would be petty and illogical for a supreme intelligence. I forgive your accusations against scripture and hope that we can come to understand that in this above all things, perhaps – Context is Key
YHWH Never lies. It is men who lie. Our creator is incapable of it, according to His own word. (Which tests true, with all the prophecy and hidden divine codes and things beyond human ability to have known without a divinely inspired author)
YHWH Never lies. It is men who lie. Our creator is incapable of it, according to His own word. (Which tests true, with all the prophecy and hidden divine codes and things beyond human ability to have known without a divinely inspired author)
A small window into eternity. As the holy scriptures can be proven authentic and divinely inspired – a claim that only the Christian scriptures (the original manuscripts, not todays modern corrupted English bibles) will confirm.
WYSONG: There are no original manuscripts of the Bible.
NEMOS: Actually this helps prove the scriptures! If the originals were here, they could have changed them as they tried numerous times. But since we are cross comparing later copies, we're able to divine the original words with supreme unerring accuracy! A divine twist of fate, perhaps – as YHWH promised to preserve His word. But not in the local bookstore! We have to dive deeper into history, comparative analysis, and closer to source texts. Of which there are. . .many.
And as they were then validated accurate by the original Christian library in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Original Manuscripts in part.
And as they were then validated accurate by the original Christian library in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Original Manuscripts in part.
In short, Our loving Creator gave us free will and has been encouraging us, begging us, commanding us, pleading with us – to use it to choose Righteousness over Evil. But as He loves us, Free will is given us as an inalienable right. We must all make the choice between Good, and Evil. Between Sin, and righteousness. This is the great test, this is the purpose of the mortal life.
WYSONG: That is evangelism-speak and expressions of belief. Proof, facts, and reason are needed.
Free will given to us by the Creator is the ability to listen to and obey or ignore our conscience and reasoning faculties– not look for religious humans or their man-made books to tell us what to do.
Free will given to us by the Creator is the ability to listen to and obey or ignore our conscience and reasoning faculties– not look for religious humans or their man-made books to tell us what to do.
NEMOS: That is the final conclusion once the proof, facts, and reason are considered. Perhaps you, too, will soon be praising YHWH's loving mercy as you come to know He is real during the course of this debate. It was not until I had the logic, reason, and evidence in the scriptures that I could fully understand the current political landscape and the Unholy war the Nephilim deep state are waging against all of hue-man kind. Now I can explain pretty much every real conspiracy in all of human history by following this war.
I have very few questions left. . . That is the power of scripture for me, as a lifelong researcher into politics, health, conspiracies, the deep state, the new world order, etc. It was the last piece of the puzzle for me, a super-atheist at the time.
I have very few questions left. . . That is the power of scripture for me, as a lifelong researcher into politics, health, conspiracies, the deep state, the new world order, etc. It was the last piece of the puzzle for me, a super-atheist at the time.
I intend to explore the following realms for evidence of my position:
Anthropology (People movements)
Etymology (Language Evolution)
Prophecy (foreknowledge of events beyond human capability, including "blind" prophecies where the speaker had no idea of what they spoke.
Historical Accounts (From Famous and Not so Famous people that testify to the truth of God's impact on History)
Archeology (Hieroglyphs of every ancient culture testify to my position, Megalithic structures around the world, Giants, Elongated skulls etc)
Genetics (Hybrid humanity – multiple species)
Miracles (The kind that only God could have done, such as leaving balls of pure sulphur embedded in the stone around Sodom and Gamorrah)
Government Coverups (Hiding the truth, going to war against the Christian God, YHWH. The Iraq War 2003, etc)
The Illuminati's Mystery Babylon Religion (Satanism masked as Paganism – The worlds most powerful people absolutely believe in Satan – The enemy – and follow its orders) Including Judaism, An Imposter and Deception
Hidden History (Various)
Aliens (They are real, and are fallen angels)
The Other religions (All of which were also flesh and blood mortal Nephilim "gods" pretending to be Gods)
In summary: there is a creator, provable by the observable scientific method and reasoning.
WYSONG: Agreed.
Equally so, there is a single true religion whose scriptures are:
WYSONG: The only true religion is truth since truth is what the Creator is.
Nature, the product of the Creator, never lies. Human-made religions and their holy books always do.
Nature, the product of the Creator, never lies. Human-made religions and their holy books always do.
NEMOS: How can you know that the Creator is Truth? Who told you this?
A. Divinely inspired by God himself (this book is testable)
B. Has an accurate historical account of major events, including early histories of various peoples and massive anthropological, etymological and migratory information that also checks out against history. With events like the Flood of Noah explained in the most accurate way of all the various flood myths. (which are universal because they are various perspectives of the same story, generally the local tyrant "Nephilim" demigods godkings perspective. But the actual fallout of events is best explained and in most detail by the scriptural account of ancient (moreso than heavily censored current) Christians/Hebrews. Including the explosion in population in the post flood setting)
C. Has an accurate prophetic account of major events including the secession of empires over world history, various destructions (such as Sodom and Gomorrah), Wars, and Emergences of new leaders, laws, dates, etc.
D. Yeshuah (Jesus Christ's true Hebrew Name) was a real man, he existed – and furthermore, was the divinely parented son of God himself, as part of Gods plan to redeem humanity from its mortal materialistic (sinful) natures and bring us back into alignment with our higher spiritual core selves. Something Yeshuah did, not necessarily by miracle, but by example with His life and His sacrifice – and then resurrection. His story gave mankind Hope in a world of godkings and human sacrifice and the fallen tyrant gods of the Satanic secret societies were cruelly oppressive to everyone with fear of death. His story inspired mankind to rise above their fear of Death and live for something bigger than life itself, eternity in righteousness. And that story continues to inspire people today, over 2000 years later.
E. The "Deep State" elite hate Christianity (Esp. White Christians) above all targets on earth because they serve Satan, in a direct and willing and deeply devoted manner in the higher initiations of the secret societies. Self admittedly they serve and commune with Satan. They Hate Christianity because only it is real. Every other religion on other (not moral code religions, but creationists) is the pagan Nephilim's perspective. Their story is universal and basically the same story. "wisdom serpents" or some variation, a flood, giants eating or ruling over humans, etc.
The deep states entire religious code actually is built upon the Teachings of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil (Kaballah and the problem reaction solution techniques they employ to control)
and worship of the fallen angels and their demigod tyrant king of the FIRST one world government, Nimrod. Builder of the Tower of Babel – whom they seek to mimic and use transhumanism to self ascend to demigod status like Nimrod did (who BECAME a giant but I born with those genes) and unite his one world religion once more. They deify and revere Nimrod, they want to be him.
F. The Fallen Angels of Genesis 6, (the entire "his story" that was covered up and censored from the Bible, also – about 1/3 of the bible was removed) are the very same "Aliens" of today. They aren't from outer space, and they've been here before. It didn't work out very well for us.
G. A loving and kind God left instructions for people to follow, including the best moral code, dietary code, best holidays (arguably).
WYSONG: The above will be addressed when it is presented with proofs, not claims.
There is nothing of merit in the Bible that can't be gleaned from an individual's Creator-given conscience and reason.
There is much in the Bible, as will be shown, that is the opposite of reason, fact, love, kindness, morality, ethics, justice, empathy, and basic decency–all of which prove it is of flawed human, not incomprehensible Creator (truth) origin.
If what I present proves true, attributing the Bible to the Creator is not the road to "salvation." Rather, it fits the definition of sacrilege: Desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of that which can be known of the Creator.
There is nothing of merit in the Bible that can't be gleaned from an individual's Creator-given conscience and reason.
There is much in the Bible, as will be shown, that is the opposite of reason, fact, love, kindness, morality, ethics, justice, empathy, and basic decency–all of which prove it is of flawed human, not incomprehensible Creator (truth) origin.
If what I present proves true, attributing the Bible to the Creator is not the road to "salvation." Rather, it fits the definition of sacrilege: Desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of that which can be known of the Creator.
NEMOS: Here are a few things "in the Bible that can't be gleaned from an individual's Creator-given conscience and reason."
There are specific historical truths, ongoing religious Seedwars against you by entire people groups you don't even know, and accurate predictions of future events with insight into modern politics (The Time of Tribulation is Nigh). I realize this is a lot, and it requires many hours of research to validate. I promise it will be worth the time. This is a debate and I am at begrudged to be as short and to the point as I can.
All of this, as well as a fixed, anchored moral code that is not subject to the post modernist world view of subjective morality.
Without a moral anchor, you cannot have morality. As People's hearts are wicked by default and as we can see with our modern college kids, morality is not a fixed point without God.
Again, to accuse God and His word of the evils you say is to do so from a position of ignorance and without context. As I will prove in any specific accusations you may try to imply. Essentially you're smearing YHWH without evidence. What Evils has YHWH done?
As for the definition of sacrilege: Desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of that which can be known of the Creator.
So by it's very definition, which you kindly provided – Only a God that has something that can be known about Him can be profaned against. If your nebulous, "ineffable" and unknowable creator has nothing that we can know about him. He cannot be profaned by the very definition of the word. I know much about our creator. I'd love to share it with you once you come over.
There are specific historical truths, ongoing religious Seedwars against you by entire people groups you don't even know, and accurate predictions of future events with insight into modern politics (The Time of Tribulation is Nigh). I realize this is a lot, and it requires many hours of research to validate. I promise it will be worth the time. This is a debate and I am at begrudged to be as short and to the point as I can.
All of this, as well as a fixed, anchored moral code that is not subject to the post modernist world view of subjective morality.
Without a moral anchor, you cannot have morality. As People's hearts are wicked by default and as we can see with our modern college kids, morality is not a fixed point without God.
Again, to accuse God and His word of the evils you say is to do so from a position of ignorance and without context. As I will prove in any specific accusations you may try to imply. Essentially you're smearing YHWH without evidence. What Evils has YHWH done?
As for the definition of sacrilege: Desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of that which can be known of the Creator.
So by it's very definition, which you kindly provided – Only a God that has something that can be known about Him can be profaned against. If your nebulous, "ineffable" and unknowable creator has nothing that we can know about him. He cannot be profaned by the very definition of the word. I know much about our creator. I'd love to share it with you once you come over.
2. Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?
WYSONG: Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?:
There has been no rebuttal to my answer to question #1.
Instead, the response was, "Nothing to rebut yet. You've only listed your opinion so far."
In my answer, it was shown that it is unreasonable that the incomprehensible Creator of the universe could be anthropomorphized into writing a book, a book that doesn't even have any original copies.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If that is an opinion, it is the only reasonable one possible based on what we can and cannot know about the Creator which can only be inferred from the creation itself.
Diverting the debate to arguments from the book itself, using hermeneutics, eschatology, history, prophesy, Bible scholars, etc. avoids the essential #1 question in this debate and are red herring logical fallacies.
Nevertheless, let's look at what the Bible says to see if it is befitting the Creator, the very source of truth, ethics, and justice.
Believers would point to the Ten Commandments as the gold standard for directing our lives. However, the only thing in that list having to do with morality and ethics is the prohibition of lying, stealing, and murder. But nobody needs a book to tell them those acts are wrong. The Creator-given conscience takes care of that and is why all civilizations prior to the Bible and those void a Bible have those prohibitions.
Everything else in the Commandments, like keeping the Sabbath, is about religious doctrines devised by the writers of the Bible (who named themselves as the chosen race) and their power and has nothing to do with probity.
The Bible and the thousands of interpretations and religions derived from it are an attempt to replace Creator-given free will, conscience, and duty to truth with human institutions empowering a few over the many. The bane of humans desiring to rule others has plagued the world since its beginning.
Here are some examples of how that plays out in the Bible.
The god/Jesus deity created by the writers of the Bible not only violates the basic moral rules prohibiting lying, stealing, and murder but demonstrates how to be cruel and unjust on a scale beyond imagination:
Killed all of humanity except 8 adults in a horrific flood as a lesson on morality. The estimated toll was as much as 4 billion people, including innocent infants, children, adults, and animals. (Genesis 6-9)
Kills the firstborn humans, including innocent infants, children, and animals of the entire Egyptian nation, and then commanded that the slaughter be celebrated yearly as Passover. (Exodus 12; 14; Romans 9:17)
Says innocent dwarfs, people with flat noses, those lame, with broken feet, unrounded corners of beards, and all people other than one race, the Hebrews (who, not so coincidentally, wrote the Bible words), are in disfavor with god/Jesus. (Leviticus 21; 29; Numbers 14:2)
Condemned victims for ten generations if they have mutilated sex organs or are of illegitimate birth. (Deuteronomy 23:1-)
Kills people for making an ointment, burning incense, taking a census (75,000 slaughtered), for not cutting the ends of young boys' penises off, or eating fat. (Exodus 30:33; 2 Chronicles 26:19-;1Chronicles 21; Torah)
Killed 50,000 threescore and ten men for looking in a box. (1Samuel 6:19)
Forced innocent children to wander and die in a wilderness for forty years because of the sins of the parents. (Numbers 14:33)
Commands killing unbelievers. (Deuteronomy 13; 2 Kings 10)
Condemned to leprosy children, their children, and a king who burned incense. (2 Chronicles 26:19-)
Orders that young boys who disobey or curse their parents be stoned to death. (Exodus 21:17; Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Starved people, opened the earth to swallow them when they desired to eat, and then sent a plague to kill 14,700 more who complained about it. (Numbers 16)
Killed people for working or gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and for profaning it. (Numbers 15:32-36: Exodus 31:14,15)
Induced snakes to bite people and sent bears out of the woods to tear apart forty-two children who called a man "baldhead." (Jeremiah 8:18; 2 Kings 2:23,24)
Sent a famine that forced people to eat their children, and beheaded seventy innocent sons and put their heads in a pile as a lesson. (2 Kings 6:28-)
Tells men to kill their wives (even if pregnant), children, and friends if they disagree with them on religion, commands no mercy be given, and is wrathful if lives are spared. (Deuteronomy 13:6-; Exodus 32:27)
Condoned Jael lying to a man and driving a tent peg into the man's temple while he slept. (Judges 4:17-21)
Is partial to one race and keeps them in good graces if they commit murder, bash babies to the ground, and rip open pregnant women. (Exodus 22:20; Hosea 13:16; Joshua 10:1-42; 1 Samuel 15:3)
Condones the practice of incest, adultery, genocide, sexism, keeping concubines (300 for Solomon), keeping and beating slaves (with the only limitation being to not injure their eyes or teeth). (Genesis 19; 20; 28; 29; Exodus 21; . . . throughout Torah)
Commands the killing of adulterers and non-virgins brought to marriage. (Deuteronomy 22:20-)
Commanded Jews to slaughter entire cities and to steal all their goods, kill and maim the animals, but keep alive the young virgin maidens to rape for their pleasure. (Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:6; 13; Judges 21; Numbers 31)
Equates love with having himself in the form of Jesus sacrificially tortured to death. Guilt for this is collectivized by demanding that all people be responsible for the torture that was necessary to make amends for an original sin for which all humans but Adam and Eve had no part, but for which all of humanity is condemned to eternal torture in hell if they don't agree. (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12,14;1John 1:8-10).
These are the words and commands of psychopathic men, not the Creator of goodness and justice.
Following these Bible lessons of outrageous cruelty, religions have justified such horror since the time that they, not the Creator, wrote the book.
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Any person who has taken control of their Creator-given mind and conscience would be horrified by killing, maiming, and torturing innocent babies, children, adults, and animals. Such gruesomeness is not consistent with even human standards of ethics, morality, and justice, let alone the origin of these virtues, the Creator.
Reducing the Creator to religions and holy books is idolatry, the worship of human-made objects, including human-made books.
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Justifying and even applauding horrific indefensible acts described in the Bible, even teaching them to children in Bible schools, epitomizes heresy and sacrilege. It defames, not honors, the Creator.
The Bible turns thinking people of conscience away from the true Creator, the very source of justice, truth, kindness, forgiveness, and empathy.
So, not only is it unreasonable to claim the Creator wrote a book, the Bible itself shows it could not be of the Creator.
There has been no rebuttal to my answer to question #1.
Instead, the response was, "Nothing to rebut yet. You've only listed your opinion so far."
In my answer, it was shown that it is unreasonable that the incomprehensible Creator of the universe could be anthropomorphized into writing a book, a book that doesn't even have any original copies.
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If that is an opinion, it is the only reasonable one possible based on what we can and cannot know about the Creator which can only be inferred from the creation itself.
NEMOS: This is indeed your opinion, based on the information you have. I do not fault you for holding this opinion, but logically speaking, you're attempting to prove God is unknowable, which discounts divine acts from what can only be God who was speaking through those acts to get us to know Him better. You're almost trying to make the same argument that God is not real. In this paradigm, being so unknowable and without guidance as to the personality and identity of YHWH – God is neutered of having any involvement in the affairs of His creation by simple virtue of the fact we'd be too ignorant to divine the messages even if he tried to send them. But we are not, history has recorded many such miracles and divine acts.
Tyre and the Bible
Petra and the Bible
Babylon and the Bible
Egypt and the Bible
Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone? You can find unnaturally pure sulphur balls the size of tennis balls embedded in stone all over the place. They rained from the sky and destroyed the place, as scripture records.
Or what about the Great Flood itself?
There are also examples of Blind Prophecies such as:
Daniel 2 – The Prophetic Timeline – Nebuchadnezzar's Dream
Daniel 7 – Daniel's Dream of Four Beasts
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And many that are not so blind such as:
The Banned Prophecy of Yeshuah (Jesus Christ) 400BC (Fulfilled)
To say "Diverting the debate to arguments from the book itself, using hermeneutics, eschatology, history, prophesy, Bible scholars, etc. avoids the essential #1 question in this debate and are red herring logical fallacies." is to put forth ones own opinion over facts, evidence, and logical deductive reasoning while simultaneously rejecting countering evidence or reason. This is, itself, a false argument and logically fallacious. You argue that God cannot be known because we cannot trust the Bible, I argue that we can trust the original scriptures (which admittedly were corrupted and perverted in modern English translations.) In attempting to prove God is unknowable, you discount the most important witness: God himself. Whom says "Test all things; hold fast what is good." See 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
God is indeed incomprehensible, and yet, He has made outreach attempts to mankind throughout "His-Story" to understand him better, and to outline that God, or YHWH (His name) is a Just and Merciful deity, yet, Justice requires wrath, at times. And people will point to wrath to deny Mercy in our Creator, all too often.
Yet it is within context that we define Justice v Tyranny, a topic we should all be all to familiar with in our own time, today.
Tyre and the Bible
Petra and the Bible
Babylon and the Bible
Egypt and the Bible
Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone? You can find unnaturally pure sulphur balls the size of tennis balls embedded in stone all over the place. They rained from the sky and destroyed the place, as scripture records.
Or what about the Great Flood itself?
There are also examples of Blind Prophecies such as:
Daniel 2 – The Prophetic Timeline – Nebuchadnezzar's Dream
Daniel 7 – Daniel's Dream of Four Beasts
⌕ Click to enlarge
And many that are not so blind such as:
The Banned Prophecy of Yeshuah (Jesus Christ) 400BC (Fulfilled)
To say "Diverting the debate to arguments from the book itself, using hermeneutics, eschatology, history, prophesy, Bible scholars, etc. avoids the essential #1 question in this debate and are red herring logical fallacies." is to put forth ones own opinion over facts, evidence, and logical deductive reasoning while simultaneously rejecting countering evidence or reason. This is, itself, a false argument and logically fallacious. You argue that God cannot be known because we cannot trust the Bible, I argue that we can trust the original scriptures (which admittedly were corrupted and perverted in modern English translations.) In attempting to prove God is unknowable, you discount the most important witness: God himself. Whom says "Test all things; hold fast what is good." See 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
God is indeed incomprehensible, and yet, He has made outreach attempts to mankind throughout "His-Story" to understand him better, and to outline that God, or YHWH (His name) is a Just and Merciful deity, yet, Justice requires wrath, at times. And people will point to wrath to deny Mercy in our Creator, all too often.
Yet it is within context that we define Justice v Tyranny, a topic we should all be all to familiar with in our own time, today.
Diverting the debate to arguments from the book itself, using hermeneutics, eschatology, history, prophesy, Bible scholars, etc. avoids the essential #1 question in this debate and are red herring logical fallacies.
Nevertheless, let's look at what the Bible says to see if it is befitting the Creator, the very source of truth, ethics, and justice.
Believers would point to the Ten Commandments as the gold standard for directing our lives. However, the only thing in that list having to do with morality and ethics is the prohibition of lying, stealing, and murder. But nobody needs a book to tell them those acts are wrong. The Creator-given conscience takes care of that and is why all civilizations prior to the Bible and those void a Bible have those prohibitions.
Everything else in the Commandments, like keeping the Sabbath, is about religious doctrines devised by the writers of the Bible (who named themselves as the chosen race) and their power and has nothing to do with probity.
NEMOS: Four of the commandments are about our obligations to YHWH (God) and the other six are about our moral obligations to our fellow man (Ie, respecting their rights and property) Most cultures previous to Christianity accepted Slavery as the norm, and did not consider Truth nor Justice Nor Mercy to be virtues in most of human history and in most of human culture. These commandments formed the foundation of the legal and moral system which changed all of that, and gave us the height of modern western Civilization (which frankly peaked some years ago… and is in decline now after corruption by Jewish elements into all governments pushing for a satanic NWO)
The Bible and the thousands of interpretations and religions derived from it are an attempt to replace Creator-given free will, conscience, and duty to truth with human institutions empowering a few over the many. The bane of humans desiring to rule others has plagued the world since its beginning.
William Wilberforce and Christian Culture are responsible for the end of slavery, almost exclusively, across the Christian world (it still happens in Islamic and African nations, where slaves are sold on blocks in slave markets.) Not sure which Bible you are reading, but the one I read speaks of freeing us from the doctrines and commandments of men and speaks deeply to the free will o every man over his own soul.
Yeshuah, Jesus himself (His true Hebrew name), went to the poor the lame the blind and the sick, not to the halls of Power, in preaching His ministry of redemption.
The Bible and the thousands of interpretations and religions derived from it are an attempt to replace Creator-given free will, conscience, and duty to truth with human institutions empowering a few over the many. The bane of humans desiring to rule others has plagued the world since its beginning.
William Wilberforce and Christian Culture are responsible for the end of slavery, almost exclusively, across the Christian world (it still happens in Islamic and African nations, where slaves are sold on blocks in slave markets.) Not sure which Bible you are reading, but the one I read speaks of freeing us from the doctrines and commandments of men and speaks deeply to the free will o every man over his own soul.
Yeshuah, Jesus himself (His true Hebrew name), went to the poor the lame the blind and the sick, not to the halls of Power, in preaching His ministry of redemption.
The Bible and the thousands of interpretations and religions derived from it are an attempt to replace Creator-given free will, conscience, and duty to truth with human institutions empowering a few over the many. The bane of humans desiring to rule others has plagued the world since its beginning.
Here are some examples of how that plays out in the Bible.
The god/Jesus deity created by the writers of the Bible not only violates the basic moral rules prohibiting lying, stealing, and murder but demonstrates how to be cruel and unjust on a scale beyond imagination:
Killed all of humanity except 8 adults in a horrific flood as a lesson on morality. The estimated toll was as much as 4 billion people, including innocent infants, children, adults, and animals. (Genesis 6-9)
Kills the firstborn humans, including innocent infants, children, and animals of the entire Egyptian nation, and then commanded that the slaughter be celebrated yearly as Passover. (Exodus 12; 14; Romans 9:17)
NEMOS: As a previously lifelong Anti-theist who debated Christians for fun (And never lost) as though it were helping the world (I went to public school and for a time believed that religion – specifically Christianity – was the root of all evil on earth..) I've made this argument many times myself. Why would God be so cruel as to kill so many? Why Babies – Aren't they innocent?
First, you said a few basically incorrect things which contradict your statement just previous, how can you say a God whose 10 commandments are specifically against murder, stealing, and lying would violate the basic rules of his own 10 commandments? God was Just in all his actions. Surely you do not conflate a death penalty with murder? YHWH is the source of all morality, the source of the biblical Law (which has penalties for sin and evil and the crimes you accused God of above.) and the ultimate source of justice in this world as well, which eventually finds us all – in this life or the next.
Secondly, The specific historical events you mentioned above absolutely happened. YHWH, God – wiped out all life on earth except what was on the Ark.
But you fail to ask WHY he did such a thing. The scriptures tell us clearly that the world was full of sin, but our world today is full of sin – perhaps even worse. The scriptures tell us violence increased on the earth… but the scriptures also clearly tells us WHY these things happened.
Genesis 6 – The Fallen Angels & The Nephilim.
(Matthew 24:36-51; Mark 13:32-37; Luke 12:35-48)
1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
Noah's Favor with God
8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. 10And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Noah Builds the Ark
(Genesis 9:1-17)
13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. 17And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. 19And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 21And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. 22Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
The preflood world was overwhelmed with Giant Cannibals, eating mankind, and beyond that – the sinful teachings of the fallen watcher angels also spread to humans DNA becoming even more corrupted by genetic engineering and splicing animal-human and cross species animal hybrids. Loosely, collectively known as the Nephilim – A word similar to Mutants. These Mutants, made outside of Gods image, by the fallen angels (We know them today as Satan, the adversary) are the children of Satan. Literally in the case of the giants, figuratively in the case of the Nephilim – those who corrupt the temple and change themselves from Human are no longer made in Gods image, no longer have His name written on their DNA numerically and become damned. They are not allowed into the standard afterlife and become demonic wandering spirits in death. (Which is why Demons are almost nonexistence in the preflood scriptures, then suddenly everywhere.)
God wiped out 4billion (by your estimate) cannibalistic mutant freaks who ruled over mankind, enslaved us, and consumed us as meat. While engaging in Satanic worship of their fallen angel forebears. He saved Noah and his family – because they were "pure in their generations" or as we say today, Genes.
As for Exodus, God was punishing a nation that was brutally enslaving his people (including children) and working them to death. Constantly murdering their own sons, etc to wipe them out. After continual enslavement and ethnic cleansing in the post Joseph/Pre exodus era of Egypt, God punished the Egyptians righteously. They are not His people and His mercy is exclusively for His people who follow His rules and morality.
He is the God of a Nation, a nation that has rules and laws, and those who do not follow those codes are not part of that nation, and not citizens, they have no rights, in the legalistic sense, under God. Generally they are enemies oppressing Gods people, however – God protects even them in some situations from retaliation by His people because it is unrighteous. Example, when God told the nations not to invade Mt. Seir.
First, you said a few basically incorrect things which contradict your statement just previous, how can you say a God whose 10 commandments are specifically against murder, stealing, and lying would violate the basic rules of his own 10 commandments? God was Just in all his actions. Surely you do not conflate a death penalty with murder? YHWH is the source of all morality, the source of the biblical Law (which has penalties for sin and evil and the crimes you accused God of above.) and the ultimate source of justice in this world as well, which eventually finds us all – in this life or the next.
Secondly, The specific historical events you mentioned above absolutely happened. YHWH, God – wiped out all life on earth except what was on the Ark.
But you fail to ask WHY he did such a thing. The scriptures tell us clearly that the world was full of sin, but our world today is full of sin – perhaps even worse. The scriptures tell us violence increased on the earth… but the scriptures also clearly tells us WHY these things happened.
Genesis 6 – The Fallen Angels & The Nephilim.
(Matthew 24:36-51; Mark 13:32-37; Luke 12:35-48)
1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
Noah's Favor with God
8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. 10And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Noah Builds the Ark
(Genesis 9:1-17)
13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. 17And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. 19And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 21And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. 22Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
The preflood world was overwhelmed with Giant Cannibals, eating mankind, and beyond that – the sinful teachings of the fallen watcher angels also spread to humans DNA becoming even more corrupted by genetic engineering and splicing animal-human and cross species animal hybrids. Loosely, collectively known as the Nephilim – A word similar to Mutants. These Mutants, made outside of Gods image, by the fallen angels (We know them today as Satan, the adversary) are the children of Satan. Literally in the case of the giants, figuratively in the case of the Nephilim – those who corrupt the temple and change themselves from Human are no longer made in Gods image, no longer have His name written on their DNA numerically and become damned. They are not allowed into the standard afterlife and become demonic wandering spirits in death. (Which is why Demons are almost nonexistence in the preflood scriptures, then suddenly everywhere.)
God wiped out 4billion (by your estimate) cannibalistic mutant freaks who ruled over mankind, enslaved us, and consumed us as meat. While engaging in Satanic worship of their fallen angel forebears. He saved Noah and his family – because they were "pure in their generations" or as we say today, Genes.
As for Exodus, God was punishing a nation that was brutally enslaving his people (including children) and working them to death. Constantly murdering their own sons, etc to wipe them out. After continual enslavement and ethnic cleansing in the post Joseph/Pre exodus era of Egypt, God punished the Egyptians righteously. They are not His people and His mercy is exclusively for His people who follow His rules and morality.
He is the God of a Nation, a nation that has rules and laws, and those who do not follow those codes are not part of that nation, and not citizens, they have no rights, in the legalistic sense, under God. Generally they are enemies oppressing Gods people, however – God protects even them in some situations from retaliation by His people because it is unrighteous. Example, when God told the nations not to invade Mt. Seir.
Says innocent dwarfs, people with flat noses, those lame, with broken feet, unrounded corners of beards, and all people other than one race, the Hebrews (who, not so coincidentally, wrote the Bible words), are in disfavor with god/Jesus. (Leviticus 21; 29; Numbers 14:2)
NEMOS: Numbers 14:2 says –
2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!
Leviticus 21-29 is about honoring the dead and burying them, in Hebrew custom rather than pagan rituals. And about touching dead bodies (which defiles people for a period of time, a biblical sanitation law) You're twisting it sorely out of context to say that YHWH is condemning peoples beards..
And the rest of is discusses the Priestly Levitical tribe's priestly rules, not allowing those with deformations and various specific health issues to be the priests that do the sacrificing. Makes sense, and is not cruel. God simply has standards.
2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!
Leviticus 21-29 is about honoring the dead and burying them, in Hebrew custom rather than pagan rituals. And about touching dead bodies (which defiles people for a period of time, a biblical sanitation law) You're twisting it sorely out of context to say that YHWH is condemning peoples beards..
And the rest of is discusses the Priestly Levitical tribe's priestly rules, not allowing those with deformations and various specific health issues to be the priests that do the sacrificing. Makes sense, and is not cruel. God simply has standards.
Condemned victims for ten generations if they have mutilated sex organs or are of illegitimate birth. (Deuteronomy 23:1-)
NEMOS: It is a horrible sin to have a child outside of wedlock because of the damage it does to the children, and therefore to society as well, and while modern society has greatly relaxed its views on sexually promiscuous behavior, we are certainly reaping the harvest in our current world of broken families, fleshful and lustful materialistic focuses, and breakdown of culture.
A little slut shaming is good for mankind, and for the women that might be destroyed by such behavior as well. I can only speak from my personal experience, as a child of a broken home. My mother and Father divorced when I was 1. I never knew a normal relationship with either of them. My mother became a drug addicted prostitute and drug my siblings along for the ride. My father was a workaholic and I barely know the man. I wish someone had slut shamed my mother just once and maybe none of that had to have happened. Maybe my brother wouldn't be constantly screaming "I want to die" as he finally detoxes from heroin on my couch. I don't know what might have been. But I know the pain of being the baby in that arrangement, and I suspect Gods laws around such things are, even if difficult for us to understand at times, for our own good.
A little slut shaming is good for mankind, and for the women that might be destroyed by such behavior as well. I can only speak from my personal experience, as a child of a broken home. My mother and Father divorced when I was 1. I never knew a normal relationship with either of them. My mother became a drug addicted prostitute and drug my siblings along for the ride. My father was a workaholic and I barely know the man. I wish someone had slut shamed my mother just once and maybe none of that had to have happened. Maybe my brother wouldn't be constantly screaming "I want to die" as he finally detoxes from heroin on my couch. I don't know what might have been. But I know the pain of being the baby in that arrangement, and I suspect Gods laws around such things are, even if difficult for us to understand at times, for our own good.
Kills people for making an ointment, burning incense, taking a census (75,000 slaughtered), for not cutting the ends of young boys' penises off, or eating fat. (Exodus 30:33; 2 Chronicles 26:19-;1Chronicles 21; Torah)
NEMOS: There are many rules that may not make sense at first to us – The dietary laws are fairly simple, most of those animals that are "unclean" to eat spread or harbor or incubate zoonotic (cross species) disease, or eat their own poop, which concentrates toxins in the flesh. Modern "medicine" and chemical saturation has masked the problem, but even today Pork etc are huge issues with diseases around the world. Also Parasites are huge in those non biblical diets as well. In the old world, it would have been even more pronounced as the diseases had fewer options for the poor to treat.
Our government puts people in prison for protesting. God killed a few throughout scripture for profaning His Holy places. I think Gods approach actually makes more sense than America's, here. Holy things are not meant to be mocked, but are serious. And about serious issues such as people escaping the kind of pain I mentioned above as a result of basic sinful stupidity. If death is a penalty for some people who profane and mock God (whom knows their hearts and souls) then I can live with that, no problem. Some things are meant to be kept sacred. In our modern world of materialism and postmodernism, its the exact opposite – which is the better choice?
Our government puts people in prison for protesting. God killed a few throughout scripture for profaning His Holy places. I think Gods approach actually makes more sense than America's, here. Holy things are not meant to be mocked, but are serious. And about serious issues such as people escaping the kind of pain I mentioned above as a result of basic sinful stupidity. If death is a penalty for some people who profane and mock God (whom knows their hearts and souls) then I can live with that, no problem. Some things are meant to be kept sacred. In our modern world of materialism and postmodernism, its the exact opposite – which is the better choice?
Killed 50,000 threescore and ten men for looking in a box. (1Samuel 6:19)
NEMOS: Children are not innocent of the sins of their parents. Sins carry over genetically, it has been proven with modern epigenetics that Murder, as one example, leaves a genetic scar which carries on to the offspring of the murderer. Which itself leaves them more open to violence. Genetics are incredibly important. God works through such mechanisms. Scripture tells us the sins of the father pass on to the son. It is a warning not to sin and hurt your own offspring. Because in the grand scheme of things its all eternal, your offspring are a part of you, good and bad. The way to protect them is to follow YHWHs law zealously, and God blesses your genetics for 1000 generations.
Forced innocent children to wander and die in a wilderness for forty years because of the sins of the parents. (Numbers 14:33)
Commands killing unbelievers. (Deuteronomy 13; 2 Kings 10)
NEMOS: Your interpretation is stretching the grammar.. this is in reference to false prophets actively attempting to lead YHWH's people away from Him and into sin, for which the penalty is death. Rightly so. Magicians and Charlatans, etc.
Condemned to leprosy children, their children, and a king who burned incense. (2 Chronicles 26:19-)
NEMOS: See above on Gods laws dealing with Holy and Sacred places and objects.
Orders that young boys who disobey or curse their parents be stoned to death. (Exodus 21:17; Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
NEMOS: Would you rather governments be the final arbiters of justice in regards to our children? Or us? Obviously no sane parent wants to kill their own children, but what if your son was Bill Gates? It would be about time to have a talk with the elders of your local village at this point.
Starved people, opened the earth to swallow them when they desired to eat, and then sent a plague to kill 14,700 more who complained about it. (Numbers 16)
Starved people, opened the earth to swallow them when they desired to eat, and then sent a plague to kill 14,700 more who complained about it. (Numbers 16)
Starved people, opened the earth to swallow them when they desired to eat, and then sent a plague to kill 14,700 more who complained about it. (Numbers 16)
Killed people for working or gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and for profaning it. (Numbers 15:32-36: Exodus 31:14,15)
Induced snakes to bite people and sent bears out of the woods to tear apart forty-two children who called a man "baldhead." (Jeremiah 8:18; 2 Kings 2:23,24)
NEMOS: Jeremiah 18:8 says "18 When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me." Re-check your verses.
As for the children, I think we can logically deduce the children were assaulting the elder man, probably throwing stones and rocks. How else would a prophet of a Just God curse children, and who else could 2 bears kill 42 children? The children, upon seeing bears, would have scattered under normal circumstances so that only a few would have been mauled. Even in the heart of a small town in Alaska a polar bear only was able to kill a few people before being stopped by locals recently, for example. two bears can't catch 42 kids under normal circumstances, it would be impossible.
As for the children, I think we can logically deduce the children were assaulting the elder man, probably throwing stones and rocks. How else would a prophet of a Just God curse children, and who else could 2 bears kill 42 children? The children, upon seeing bears, would have scattered under normal circumstances so that only a few would have been mauled. Even in the heart of a small town in Alaska a polar bear only was able to kill a few people before being stopped by locals recently, for example. two bears can't catch 42 kids under normal circumstances, it would be impossible.
Sent a famine that forced people to eat their children, and beheaded seventy innocent sons and put their heads in a pile as a lesson. (2 Kings 6:28-)
NEMOS: Context, again, is king – if you actually read the passage this is the result of a seige by an enemy. The very King of Israel himself tore off his clothes and wore sackcloth upon hearing this womans story.
"The Siege and Famine of Samaria
24And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. 25And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver. 26And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. 27And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 28And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. 29So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. 30And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. 31Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day."
~2Kings6
"The Siege and Famine of Samaria
24And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. 25And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver. 26And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. 27And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 28And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. 29So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. 30And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. 31Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day."
~2Kings6
Tells men to kill their wives (even if pregnant), children, and friends if they disagree with them on religion, commands no mercy be given, and is wrathful if lives are spared. (Deuteronomy 13:6-; Exodus 32:27)
NEMOS: "And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."
Same as false prophets. To try to willfully turn people away from YHWH deserves death by YHWHs laws. This is an enticement which ends up with eternal damnation, its serious stuff.
Same as false prophets. To try to willfully turn people away from YHWH deserves death by YHWHs laws. This is an enticement which ends up with eternal damnation, its serious stuff.
Condoned Jael lying to a man and driving a tent peg into the man's temple while he slept. (Judges 4:17-21)
NEMOS: This was an enemy General, in the middle of a war. Who wouldn't? Brave woman, saved many lives.
Is partial to one race and keeps them in good graces if they commit murder, bash babies to the ground, and rip open pregnant women. (Exodus 22:20; Hosea 13:16; Joshua 10:1-42; 1 Samuel 15:3)
NEMOS: "thou shalt not commit murder" I suggest you re-read those within context.
Condones the practice of incest, adultery, genocide, sexism, keeping concubines (300 for Solomon), keeping and beating slaves (with the only limitation being to not injure their eyes or teeth). (Genesis 19; 20; 28; 29; Exodus 21; . . . throughout Torah)
NEMOS: "Thou shalt not commit adultery" "Thou shalt not commit murder" Nothing against numerous wives. Solomon was a sinner whose problem was women which caused him to fall away from God and become a pagan, sacrificing to other Gods.
Need I remind you that Christians ended, but did not invent, slavery? Slavery was commonplace in the ancient world – when your neighbor tribe got together and attacked you, and you somehow survived, you didn't give them their weapons back and let them go. You either A. Killed them, or B. Put them to work so they weren't a burden.
YHWH is such a righteous God, he has commandments even of how you treat these prisoners of war. Do we not demand good treatment of POWs in modern conventional warfare today? (Not that we get it mind you…) Yet another example of his merciful and just nature.
Need I remind you that Christians ended, but did not invent, slavery? Slavery was commonplace in the ancient world – when your neighbor tribe got together and attacked you, and you somehow survived, you didn't give them their weapons back and let them go. You either A. Killed them, or B. Put them to work so they weren't a burden.
YHWH is such a righteous God, he has commandments even of how you treat these prisoners of war. Do we not demand good treatment of POWs in modern conventional warfare today? (Not that we get it mind you…) Yet another example of his merciful and just nature.
Commands the killing of adulterers and non-virgins brought to marriage. (Deuteronomy 22:20-)
NEMOS: Deadbeat dads aren't popular these days either, in extreme cases Biblical law calls for death penalty. It keeps the herd holy, but when we began a cultural degradation into "acceptance of diversity" instead of the previous cultural historical norm of "Oppose Evil", we took the very slippery slope into current postmodernist thinking, open grooming of children in media, entertainment, and schools – funded by government, and worse. Now we live in a shithole of sin. I call it the Sin War. Frankly, I'd rather have kept the death penalty for perverts, groomers, etc. And maybe in our modern thinking the death penalty for cheating is too much, but then again – look at the price we've paid culturally for acceptance and tolerance of every evil and betrayal. We have the right to think it's a bit much, but strictly speaking of morals – killing evil is righteous.
How many cries of passion each year are reported over cheating? How much violence, drama, and problems are associated with it? Not to mention the broken families, impacted children, etc. Many of those children of single moms will end up abused sexually. I'm not saying I think its not harsh, I am saying those crimes and problems would not exist if we followed YHWHs law:
"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel."
How many cries of passion each year are reported over cheating? How much violence, drama, and problems are associated with it? Not to mention the broken families, impacted children, etc. Many of those children of single moms will end up abused sexually. I'm not saying I think its not harsh, I am saying those crimes and problems would not exist if we followed YHWHs law:
"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel."
Commanded Jews to slaughter entire cities and to steal all their goods, kill and maim the animals, but keep alive the young virgin maidens to rape for their pleasure. (Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:6; 13; Judges 21; Numbers 31)
NEMOS: If men had committed war or rape of a Hebrew women, the city of men were put to death sometimes, but generally when you see God wiping out entire tribes, its because they are the descendants of the Nephilim giants. To abandon the innocent women after the men were killed would be a fate worse than death in that time period in most of the world. Unless they were Nephilim. Then it was a total wipeout.
Equates love with having himself in the form of Jesus sacrificially tortured to death. Guilt for this is collectivized by demanding that all people be responsible for the torture that was necessary to make amends for an original sin for which all humans but Adam and Eve had no part, but for which all of humanity is condemned to eternal torture in hell if they don't agree. (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12,14;1John 1:8-10).
NEMOS: YHWH Respects free will to such an extent, that when he sought to remind His people of Him and write his law upon their hearts and memories, he did so through the most human act of all. One guaranteed to reach all but the hardest and coldest of hearts – A man dying a horrible death to save his people. A story so impactful it still brings people to tears 2000 years later. I'm one as I write this. Only the Jews and Romans were responsible for His death, but we are all part of Adam and Eve, and their sin is imprinted on our genetics and souls.
But if one innocent man can condemn all mankind, one innocent man's death can redeem it. But it's a choice, because of loving creator bestowed us with Free Will, He continually tries to woo us back to him through miracles, wonders, healings, protections from war and famine and natural disaster, etc. But the greatest act of all was the sacrifice of His own human son to tell us He loves us and we should come back to Him. All our sorrows come from being apart from Him and His laws.
But if one innocent man can condemn all mankind, one innocent man's death can redeem it. But it's a choice, because of loving creator bestowed us with Free Will, He continually tries to woo us back to him through miracles, wonders, healings, protections from war and famine and natural disaster, etc. But the greatest act of all was the sacrifice of His own human son to tell us He loves us and we should come back to Him. All our sorrows come from being apart from Him and His laws.
These are the words and commands of psychopathic men, not the Creator of goodness and justice.
NEMOS: I think we can see that you lack context and an in depth study of the WHYs behind these WHATs you speak against so strongly. It helped me a lot. Plainly speaking, you don't know what you speak of!
It is indeed true that this message has been attacked more than any other throughout human history, and we've seen that in our own era as well – with the Elite's Cultural Sinwar against Christians and the Christian values western society were built upon. Like the Abolition of Slavery, Which of course upset the Jewish slavemasters and slaveship owners in the Democrat party (The party of slavery, mind you.) People have died preserving this information, been burnt en masse at the stake with their painstakingly handcopied scriptures were tied around their necks to burn with them. This message has been persecuted by those in power, Especially by the Pagan Controlled Opposition Satanic Church of Rome – Catholicism. You will not find me defending the history of the Catholic Church, an entity that was purely a pagan attempt to infiltrate and corrupt/monopolize the Christian message a few hundred years After Christ. In essence, Pagan Emperor Constantine formed a Christian Church and Outlawed any form of other Christianity (By pain of Death) other than the Nicean form, which promoted pagan Easter and many other forms of early infiltration of Doctrine which have nothing to do with the Bible – Today they are obsessed with Mariolatry and consuming other religions to form a NWO one world religion like Chrislam) to conflate Christianity with Catholicism historically would impugn the innocent with the horrendous and unending crimes of the Roman Church, and to ignore historical atrocities such as the Dark Ages (The Church killing Christians for reading the bible) and constant historical witch hunts which were a pretext by Rome to murder Christians – something they have a history of doing even before forming a false Church, as far back as Nero.
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It is indeed true that this message has been attacked more than any other throughout human history, and we've seen that in our own era as well – with the Elite's Cultural Sinwar against Christians and the Christian values western society were built upon. Like the Abolition of Slavery, Which of course upset the Jewish slavemasters and slaveship owners in the Democrat party (The party of slavery, mind you.) People have died preserving this information, been burnt en masse at the stake with their painstakingly handcopied scriptures were tied around their necks to burn with them. This message has been persecuted by those in power, Especially by the Pagan Controlled Opposition Satanic Church of Rome – Catholicism. You will not find me defending the history of the Catholic Church, an entity that was purely a pagan attempt to infiltrate and corrupt/monopolize the Christian message a few hundred years After Christ. In essence, Pagan Emperor Constantine formed a Christian Church and Outlawed any form of other Christianity (By pain of Death) other than the Nicean form, which promoted pagan Easter and many other forms of early infiltration of Doctrine which have nothing to do with the Bible – Today they are obsessed with Mariolatry and consuming other religions to form a NWO one world religion like Chrislam) to conflate Christianity with Catholicism historically would impugn the innocent with the horrendous and unending crimes of the Roman Church, and to ignore historical atrocities such as the Dark Ages (The Church killing Christians for reading the bible) and constant historical witch hunts which were a pretext by Rome to murder Christians – something they have a history of doing even before forming a false Church, as far back as Nero.
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Following these Bible lessons of outrageous cruelty, religions have justified such horror since the time that they, not the Creator, wrote the book.
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NEMOS: Allow me to use your own graphic to make my point, the most urgently prosecuted by the Church were those who disagreed with its doctrines or quite simply, read the bible for themselves. These "heretics" were the first in line for such tools of torture you show above and impugn to all Christians. You inadvertently blame the victim in this.
You can see a documentary covering this "pilgrim church" (the real followers of Christ) throughout history here.
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Modern Catholicism
The Papacy (And therefore unholy Catholic Church of Rome) has no legitimate claim to the authority of the apostles, or Christ. It's all a lie and fake news in history.
See: Was Peter The Rock Upon Which the Church Was Built? Doctrines of Men: RESOLVED
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The Catholic Church (Or Church of Rome) was the Pagan Emperor approved bishops convening to delete 1/3 of the Bible as the ancients knew it. The Ethiopian Canon still includes them, oldest on earth. They are responsible for censoring the true bible and forcing people into intermediary salvation middlemen, fact checking (Like Facebook fact checks for fake news…deceptively and with an agenda) and killing anyone who disagreed with them.
…The long-held claim that the Roman Catholic Church was the only church which never changed is not supported by church history not even Roman Catholic history. How sad to realize that this false claim influenced so many to join or to stay in this false church which actually is the product of centuries of changes. Most of these changes came as a result of yielding to heathen customs and practices which were subsequently incorporated into Roman Catholic teachings and worship. The following is a partial list of heathen, unscriptural practices which became a part of Roman Catholic dogma over a period of seventeen centuries. Some of the dates given are approximate. In many cases, these heresies were even debated for years before being given the status of required beliefs:
300 AD Prayers for the dead
300 AD Making the sign of the cross
375 AD Veneration of angels & dead saints
375 AD Use of images in worship
394 AD The Mass as a daily celebration
431 AD Exaltation of Mary with term "Mother of God" applied at Council of Ephesus
526 AD Extreme Unction (Last Rites)
593 AD Doctrine of Purgatory – Gregory
600 AD Prayers to Mary & dead saints
786 AD Worship of cross, images & relics
995 AD Canonization of dead saints
1079 AD Celibacy of priesthood
1090 AD The Rosary
1190 AD Indulgences
1215 AD Transubstantiation – Innocent III
1215 AD Auricular Confession of sins to a priest
1220 AD Adoration of the wafer (Host)
1414 AD Cup forbidden to the people at communion
1439 AD Purgatory proclaimed as a dogma
1439 AD The doctrine of the Seven Sacraments confirmed
1545 AD Tradition declared of equal authority with Bible by Council of Trent
1546 AD Apocryphal books added to Bible
1854 AD Immaculate Conception of Mary
1870 AD Infallibility of pope in matters of faith and morals claimed by Vatican Council
1950 AD Assumption of Virgin Mary (bodily ascension into heaven after her death)
1965 AD Mary proclaimed Mother of the Church
Although some of the preceding Roman Catholic heresies are now being questioned by many, both inside and outside the church, none have been officially repudiated and all continue to be practiced by millions of Catholics around the world. The urgent need today is for Roman Catholics; yes, and all who claim to be Christians, to examine their own beliefs and the teachings of their churches by the only sure standard – the Bible. Whatever contradicts, adds to or subtracts from the sixty-six books of the Old and the New Testaments, is error no matter how many may cling to it.
Roman Catholics who read the Bible will soon discover that many Catholic teachings and practices are specifically forbidden by Jesus Christ Himself. Note carefully the following warnings given by the Lord Jesus Christ to the religious leaders of His day concerning vain worship, vain tradition and vain repetitions. All of these are particularly applicable to Roman Catholicism today. Vain worship: In Matthew 15:8-9, Jesus said, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the command men of men." All worship is indeed vain when it is based upon the commandments of men rather than the Word of God. Vain tradition: In Matthew 15:6b, Jesus said, "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. "
[Note: Valid tradition is based upon Scripture and confirms it. Vain tradition is based upon man's teachings and violates it. In Roman Catholicism, tradition is consistently elevated above the Scripture which results in vain worship (no matter how sincere) and makes the commandment of God of no effect – a very serious matter.]
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You can see a documentary covering this "pilgrim church" (the real followers of Christ) throughout history here.
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Modern Catholicism
The Papacy (And therefore unholy Catholic Church of Rome) has no legitimate claim to the authority of the apostles, or Christ. It's all a lie and fake news in history.
See: Was Peter The Rock Upon Which the Church Was Built? Doctrines of Men: RESOLVED
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The Catholic Church (Or Church of Rome) was the Pagan Emperor approved bishops convening to delete 1/3 of the Bible as the ancients knew it. The Ethiopian Canon still includes them, oldest on earth. They are responsible for censoring the true bible and forcing people into intermediary salvation middlemen, fact checking (Like Facebook fact checks for fake news…deceptively and with an agenda) and killing anyone who disagreed with them.
…The long-held claim that the Roman Catholic Church was the only church which never changed is not supported by church history not even Roman Catholic history. How sad to realize that this false claim influenced so many to join or to stay in this false church which actually is the product of centuries of changes. Most of these changes came as a result of yielding to heathen customs and practices which were subsequently incorporated into Roman Catholic teachings and worship. The following is a partial list of heathen, unscriptural practices which became a part of Roman Catholic dogma over a period of seventeen centuries. Some of the dates given are approximate. In many cases, these heresies were even debated for years before being given the status of required beliefs:
300 AD Prayers for the dead
300 AD Making the sign of the cross
375 AD Veneration of angels & dead saints
375 AD Use of images in worship
394 AD The Mass as a daily celebration
431 AD Exaltation of Mary with term "Mother of God" applied at Council of Ephesus
526 AD Extreme Unction (Last Rites)
593 AD Doctrine of Purgatory – Gregory
600 AD Prayers to Mary & dead saints
786 AD Worship of cross, images & relics
995 AD Canonization of dead saints
1079 AD Celibacy of priesthood
1090 AD The Rosary
1190 AD Indulgences
1215 AD Transubstantiation – Innocent III
1215 AD Auricular Confession of sins to a priest
1220 AD Adoration of the wafer (Host)
1414 AD Cup forbidden to the people at communion
1439 AD Purgatory proclaimed as a dogma
1439 AD The doctrine of the Seven Sacraments confirmed
1545 AD Tradition declared of equal authority with Bible by Council of Trent
1546 AD Apocryphal books added to Bible
1854 AD Immaculate Conception of Mary
1870 AD Infallibility of pope in matters of faith and morals claimed by Vatican Council
1950 AD Assumption of Virgin Mary (bodily ascension into heaven after her death)
1965 AD Mary proclaimed Mother of the Church
Although some of the preceding Roman Catholic heresies are now being questioned by many, both inside and outside the church, none have been officially repudiated and all continue to be practiced by millions of Catholics around the world. The urgent need today is for Roman Catholics; yes, and all who claim to be Christians, to examine their own beliefs and the teachings of their churches by the only sure standard – the Bible. Whatever contradicts, adds to or subtracts from the sixty-six books of the Old and the New Testaments, is error no matter how many may cling to it.
Roman Catholics who read the Bible will soon discover that many Catholic teachings and practices are specifically forbidden by Jesus Christ Himself. Note carefully the following warnings given by the Lord Jesus Christ to the religious leaders of His day concerning vain worship, vain tradition and vain repetitions. All of these are particularly applicable to Roman Catholicism today. Vain worship: In Matthew 15:8-9, Jesus said, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the command men of men." All worship is indeed vain when it is based upon the commandments of men rather than the Word of God. Vain tradition: In Matthew 15:6b, Jesus said, "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. "
[Note: Valid tradition is based upon Scripture and confirms it. Vain tradition is based upon man's teachings and violates it. In Roman Catholicism, tradition is consistently elevated above the Scripture which results in vain worship (no matter how sincere) and makes the commandment of God of no effect – a very serious matter.]
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Any person who has taken control of their Creator-given mind and conscience would be horrified by killing, maiming, and torturing innocent babies, children, adults, and animals. Such gruesomeness is not consistent with even human standards of ethics, morality, and justice, let alone the origin of these virtues, the Creator.
Reducing the Creator to religions and holy books is idolatry, the worship of human-made objects, including human-made books.
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Justifying and even applauding horrific indefensible acts described in the Bible, even teaching them to children in Bible schools, epitomizes heresy and sacrilege. It defames, not honors, the Creator.
The Bible turns thinking people of conscience away from the true Creator, the very source of justice, truth, kindness, forgiveness, and empathy.
So, not only is it unreasonable to claim the Creator wrote a book, the Bible itself shows it could not be of the Creator.
NEMOS: Fundamentally speaking – a people must have a concrete anchored (fixed) moral compass or they fall for generational propaganda like the transgender fad of the postmodernist, subjectivist thinking where there is no such thing as good or evil – only perspective.
NEMOS: Does the Bible provide ethical, moral, and justice guidance?:
Famously so, for example, most people in the world have heard the Gospel message and have heard about Gods eternal legal/moral code – The Lawbooks given us by Moses. This extensive yet simple (by modern contrast) legal code of just over 600 laws (iirc) has formed the basis of modern western legal systems. For example, Christians like William Wilberforce are largely responsible for the end of historical slavery in the modern era. (The jewish deep state have reversed this, turning us all into "wage slaves" using the central banking system, but even this is hidden.)
Virtues such as Truth and Mercy were not even considered important qualities, much less virtues, in the ancient pre Christ world. A world rule by iron fisted tyrants and "god kings" who often demanded human sacrifice and other evils.
Much of the natural rights basis we take for granted in our US Constitution is derived from the biblical moral and legal system.
Famously so, for example, most people in the world have heard the Gospel message and have heard about Gods eternal legal/moral code – The Lawbooks given us by Moses. This extensive yet simple (by modern contrast) legal code of just over 600 laws (iirc) has formed the basis of modern western legal systems. For example, Christians like William Wilberforce are largely responsible for the end of historical slavery in the modern era. (The jewish deep state have reversed this, turning us all into "wage slaves" using the central banking system, but even this is hidden.)
Virtues such as Truth and Mercy were not even considered important qualities, much less virtues, in the ancient pre Christ world. A world rule by iron fisted tyrants and "god kings" who often demanded human sacrifice and other evils.
Much of the natural rights basis we take for granted in our US Constitution is derived from the biblical moral and legal system.
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
3. Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?
WYSONG: Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?:
The Bible says:
A fish swallowed a man who then lived for three days in its belly and then was spit out on dry land. (Jonah 1-2)
A boat could hold and feed breeding representatives of all land creatures on Earth for a year. (Genesis 7-8)
The Earth will remain forever (Ecclesiastes 1:4) —but that contradicts the Creator's Second Law of Thermodynamics that demands all things eventually degrade to absolute disorder.
Genesis says the creation occurred in steps, days, interpreted by some as twenty-four hours and others as thousands of years each. But that contradicts the absolute interdependency of planets, moon, stars, and sun as well as that of plant and animal creatures.
In the book of Joshua, it says the sun stood still permitting the Jews to slaughter non-believers. (Joshua 10:12) This denies the catastrophic effects of a sun in stasis.
The god of the Bible is said to do nothing without revealing it first to his prophets. (Amos 3:7) But it would be impossible for an infinite god to reveal all actions to a finite mortal, nor is there any evidence the Creator has done so.
Leprosy, venereal disease, and other ailments are said to be cured by treatments such as sprinkling the blood of two turtledoves around a house, getting rid of demons, or being dipped in water seven times. (Leviticus 13; 14; 15)
Men who lap water like a dog are said to be the best soldiers. (Judges 7:5-)
An entire army would flee because one soldier was killed with a stone. (1 Samuel 17:49-51)
A plague that killed 24,000 could be stopped by thrusting a spear into the genitals of a woman. (Numbers 25:8)
Jesus/god says only those without sin should judge, but that would mean courts would be vacant of judges and juries. (John 8: 3-11)
A dead person could come to life and sneeze seven times because a prophet laid on him. (2 Kings 4:34-36)
. . . and so on.
Given that the Creator is the epitome of reason and truth, such nonsense attributions are slanderous and blasphemous and prove the Bible to not be the product of the Creator.
The Bible says:
A fish swallowed a man who then lived for three days in its belly and then was spit out on dry land. (Jonah 1-2)
NEMOS: As unbelievable as it sounds, it's actually not even a unique situation. Here are modern parallel accounts of the same.
A boat could hold and feed breeding representatives of all land creatures on Earth for a year. (Genesis 7-8)
The Earth will remain forever (Ecclesiastes 1:4) —but that contradicts the Creator's Second Law of Thermodynamics that demands all things eventually degrade to absolute disorder.
NEMOS: The second law of thermodynamics primarily deals with transfer of energy from hot to cold, however – this has given rise to the term and theory of entropy.
Matter can change form through physical and chemical changes, but through any of these changes matter is conserved. The same amount of matter exists before and after the change—none is created or destroyed. This concept is called the Law of Conservation of Mass. Entropy does have some measure of truth to it, in that in our physical world – we can observe the degradation inherent in all living systems. As though our expiration date soon approaches. We've been getting weaker, sicker, and more short lived since creation.
Evolutionary Timeline Fact V Darwinism
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Matter can change form through physical and chemical changes, but through any of these changes matter is conserved. The same amount of matter exists before and after the change—none is created or destroyed. This concept is called the Law of Conservation of Mass. Entropy does have some measure of truth to it, in that in our physical world – we can observe the degradation inherent in all living systems. As though our expiration date soon approaches. We've been getting weaker, sicker, and more short lived since creation.
Evolutionary Timeline Fact V Darwinism
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Genesis says the creation occurred in steps, days, interpreted by some as twenty-four hours and others as thousands of years each. But that contradicts the absolute interdependency of planets, moon, stars, and sun as well as that of plant and animal creatures.
NEMOS: In the standard cosmology theory, yes. How could the earth have been created before the sun if we're supposed to be spinning around the sun? Standard cosmology is a antichristian deception to debunk God and destroy faith. Predicted by scripture as the Great Falling Away, or Apostacy. This "Deep State Scientism" has been used to attack the word of God for the last 500 years that many in the scientific community actually believe the debate is over and "God is dead" – They are badly mistaken. See God's Not Dead: Debate Series – How To Prove God.
In the book of Joshua, it says the sun stood still permitting the Jews to slaughter non-believers. (Joshua 10:12) This denies the catastrophic effects of a sun in stasis.
NEMOS: See the answer above: also the Sun revolves around the earth, not vice versa. See Biblical Earth – Young, Stationary, Geocentric, Flat, Hollow & Domed and
Biblical Earth Cosmology – FAQ
Biblical Earth Cosmology – FAQ
The god of the Bible is said to do nothing without revealing it first to his prophets. (Amos 3:7) But it would be impossible for an infinite god to reveal all actions to a finite mortal, nor is there any evidence the Creator has done so.
NEMOS: This is a logical error, to assume that an infinite God would need to use an infinite message to say something finite to finite creatures. As for evidence the creator has done so: See Prophecy and Prescience – Tracking Prophetic Predictives
Leprosy, venereal disease, and other ailments are said to be cured by treatments such as sprinkling the blood of two turtledoves around a house, getting rid of demons, or being dipped in water seven times. (Leviticus 13; 14; 15)
NEMOS: Leviticus in this section rightly deals with isolation and quarantine measures for a healthy society in the event of an outbreak of plague or leprosy. The priests are charged with seeing to the ill and checking for remission of illness (contagion risk) to keep society clean.
As for the ritualistic cleansing – many sicknesses are the result of sin, not "germ theory" (debunked, consider Terrain theory instead, including spiritual terrain – as the mind has an absolute and scientifically validated effect on the physical body including health.) God has ordained within His eternal laws various rituals of faith and sacrifice that function as punishment for bad behavior in society. See my post: In Defense of Blood Sacrifice & Circumcisions for practical reasons that God would ask for such things. Mankind needs law and Law needs justice. All too often, the punishment for "sin" (crime) was to lose your money or assets (a fine, often in the form of an animal sacrifice – which in a largely agrarian world living off of the land, this would be more realistic than a fine of money. It's also symbolic of the ultimate redeeming sacrifice that all mankind shares – Yeshuah (Jesus Christ).
As for the ritualistic cleansing – many sicknesses are the result of sin, not "germ theory" (debunked, consider Terrain theory instead, including spiritual terrain – as the mind has an absolute and scientifically validated effect on the physical body including health.) God has ordained within His eternal laws various rituals of faith and sacrifice that function as punishment for bad behavior in society. See my post: In Defense of Blood Sacrifice & Circumcisions for practical reasons that God would ask for such things. Mankind needs law and Law needs justice. All too often, the punishment for "sin" (crime) was to lose your money or assets (a fine, often in the form of an animal sacrifice – which in a largely agrarian world living off of the land, this would be more realistic than a fine of money. It's also symbolic of the ultimate redeeming sacrifice that all mankind shares – Yeshuah (Jesus Christ).
Men who lap water like a dog are said to be the best soldiers. (Judges 7:5-)
NEMOS: This is without context:
So these men did not lap water like dogs, face to water. "6 Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink." they merely used their hand to scoop or "lap" the water. If you have studied the way a dogs tongue works when drinking water, its a fascinating muscle. It actually bends down sharply while the very tip bends up and forms a bowl in the dogs tongue. When is then elevatored back into the mouth.
Much like our hand when we scoop or "lap" water.
Also, the point of this was not to say they are better warriors. But that God would provide the victory despite overwhelming odds. Because God forced Gidion to get rid of over 30,000 troops and go to battle with only 300. Many battles in the scriptures are this way – When YHWH's people followed the eternal laws – God fought for them. And they could take cities by marching in circles around them, they could win overwhelming victories against huge powerful forces with a few hundred men, etc. Because faith, not strength, is more righteous to YHWH.
- Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh.
- The LORD said to Gideon, "You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her,
- announce now to the people, `Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.'" So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.
- But the LORD said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will sift them for you there. If I say, `This one shall go with you,' he shall go; but if I say, `This one shall not go with you,' he shall not go."
- So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the LORD told him, "Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink."
- Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink.
- The LORD said to Gideon, "With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place."
So these men did not lap water like dogs, face to water. "6 Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink." they merely used their hand to scoop or "lap" the water. If you have studied the way a dogs tongue works when drinking water, its a fascinating muscle. It actually bends down sharply while the very tip bends up and forms a bowl in the dogs tongue. When is then elevatored back into the mouth.
Much like our hand when we scoop or "lap" water.
Also, the point of this was not to say they are better warriors. But that God would provide the victory despite overwhelming odds. Because God forced Gidion to get rid of over 30,000 troops and go to battle with only 300. Many battles in the scriptures are this way – When YHWH's people followed the eternal laws – God fought for them. And they could take cities by marching in circles around them, they could win overwhelming victories against huge powerful forces with a few hundred men, etc. Because faith, not strength, is more righteous to YHWH.
An entire army would flee because one soldier was killed with a stone. (1 Samuel 17:49-51)
NEMOS: Israelites had a reputation across the ancient world of winning unwinnable battles (See above) when God fought for them. David killed a 12ish foot tall giant, their mightiest warrior, with his first sling. An unarmored child defeated the greatest warrior they knew of. A walking legend, the seed of the serpent Nephilim Goliath.
Of course they fled. Reputation and superstition also had an undeniable impact on wars in those days as they do today. If the local boyscout killed General Patton in his first skirmish as a new recruit. He'd had done something akin to David killing Goliath. It would have had an incredibly demoralizing impact on enemy forces who would assume the MEN behind David could be even more dangerous than this scrawny boy.
Of course they fled. Reputation and superstition also had an undeniable impact on wars in those days as they do today. If the local boyscout killed General Patton in his first skirmish as a new recruit. He'd had done something akin to David killing Goliath. It would have had an incredibly demoralizing impact on enemy forces who would assume the MEN behind David could be even more dangerous than this scrawny boy.
A plague that killed 24,000 could be stopped by thrusting a spear into the genitals of a woman. (Numbers 25:8)
NEMOS: Context, again:
So treason had been committed against God and the nations laws. Moses (the leader) ordered the leaders of each tribe to slay the traitors. The spear entered the women's belly through the mans back. Where did you even get genitals from here? This didn't happen. Not that the method of slaying mattered, it was the death penalty given for treason. Something still done today. God punishes betrayal and in many instances the harm would come to the people for harboring this sin among them and not punishing it according to the law. Generally YHWH forewarned His people of this and gave them opportunity to avoid it.
- While Israel was staying in Shittim, a the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with the daughters of Moab,
- who also invited them to the sacrifices for their gods. And the people ate and bowed down to these gods.
- So Israel joined in worshiping Baal of Peor, and the anger of the LORD burned against them.
- Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that His fierce anger may turn away from Israel."
- So Moses told the judges of Israel, "Each of you must kill all of his men who have joined in worshiping Baal of Peor."
So treason had been committed against God and the nations laws. Moses (the leader) ordered the leaders of each tribe to slay the traitors. The spear entered the women's belly through the mans back. Where did you even get genitals from here? This didn't happen. Not that the method of slaying mattered, it was the death penalty given for treason. Something still done today. God punishes betrayal and in many instances the harm would come to the people for harboring this sin among them and not punishing it according to the law. Generally YHWH forewarned His people of this and gave them opportunity to avoid it.
Jesus/god says only those without sin should judge, but that would mean courts would be vacant of judges and juries. (John 8: 3-11)
NEMOS: And alas, the nation of Israel is overthrown, in captivity among the nations, and bereft of Judges and Juries, Priests and Kings. However, "not sinning" is not impossible, it only seems so to modern man. Paul managed to pull off a sinless lifestyle, although he did stumble with the flesh. Which is why he told people to be like him, as he was like Yeshuah/Jesus.
A dead person could come to life and sneeze seven times because a prophet laid on him. (2 Kings 4:34-36)
NEMOS: An unusual situation, assuredly. A dead child was brought back to life, however. In the very bed his mother had made for this wandering prophet to take his rest in on occasion. This poor child had died of a brain issue. His head hurt him, and within hours he had passed. I suspect the rather unique sneezing situation is related to this. But I do not pretend to have all answers.
. . . and so on.
Given that the Creator is the epitome of reason and truth, such nonsense attributions are slanderous and blasphemous and prove the Bible to not be the product of the Creator.
NEMOS: Context is King.
NEMOS: Does the Bible comport with the reasonable and truthful reality the Creator is responsible for?:
Although the biblical teachers rely heavily on wordplay, metaphor, analogy and symbolism in order to communicate complex messages simply to a wide audience, and despite the governments of the world uniting behind fake scientism attempting to debunk God and scripture, the Bible is historical and scientifically accurate fact.
Although the biblical teachers rely heavily on wordplay, metaphor, analogy and symbolism in order to communicate complex messages simply to a wide audience, and despite the governments of the world uniting behind fake scientism attempting to debunk God and scripture, the Bible is historical and scientifically accurate fact.
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
4. Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?
WYSONG: Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?:
The Creator's natural laws are consistent and not contradictory. Therefore, a Creator book must be the same.
However, the Bible says:
A person cannot live and see the Bible god vs god talked face to face with men, wrestled with a man and put his leg out of joint, and demanded that a camp be kept clean so he could walk through it at night. (Exodus 33:20;1Timothy 6:16 vs Exodus 33:11, Numbers 12:5,8; Numbers 14:13-20/Genesis 32:24-30 vs Leviticus 26:12; Deuteronomy 23:14;1Chronicles 17:6)
No man can hear god's voice vs he speaks and is heard. (John 5:37 vs Mark 1:11; Mark 9:7)
God does not change his mind vs he changes it. (Psalm 89:34; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 1:10-12; James 1:17-20; vs Exodus 32:14; Numbers 14:13-20; Hebrews 7:18; 8:6-13)
Women with no hymen should be stoned to death vs there should be forgiveness for fornication. (Deuteronomy 22:20,21 vs John 8:4-11)
God cannot defeat chariots of iron vs he is all-powerful. (Judges 1:19 vs Job 37:23; Revelations 4:11, 7:12)
Wisdom, knowledge, and pride are good vs those attributes are condemned. (Acts 17:11 vs Proverbs 19:8; Matthew 10:16,19; Romans 12:2; Philippians 1:9-10;1Thessalonians 5:21;1Peter 3:15)
Animals are to be sacrificed, maimed, and given diseases vs cruelty to animals is condemned. (Leviticus, Deuteronomy vs Proverbs 12:10)
God is not all-knowing vs he is all-knowing. (Exodus 3:7-; 12:13; 33; 34-; Numbers 12:5-;1Samuel 8:21- vs Jeremiah 39; Ezekial 7:3,8; Revelations)
God promises not to get angry vs he does get angry and slaughters thousands. (Isaiah 54:9-10; Jeremiah 3:12 vs throughout the Bible)
God demands aid, love, and assisting the enemy vs commands killing and plundering them. (Exodus:23:4,5 vs Numbers 31; Deuteronomy 13)
The Bible god is perfect vs he has regrets. (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 18:30 vs Genesis 6:7; Judges 2:18;1Chronicles 21:15; Jeremiah 26:19; Joel 2:13)
An eye for eye justice vs forgive and turn the other cheek. (Leviticus 24:16- 22 vs Matthew 5:38,39)
It is impossible to fall from grace vs it is possible. (John 3:16; Acts 16:31 vs Joshua 2:13;1Corinthians 5:11-13; Galatians 5:19-21;1Timothy 5:8;1Peter 1:17; Revelations 21:8)
People should be critical and prudent vs believe like children and don't question. (Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2;1Thessalonians 5:21 vs Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17;1Timothy 1:4; 6:4; 2 Timothy 2:23; Titus 3:9)
Distinguishing good from bad is condemned vs exercising conscience is praised. (Genesis 3:4 vs Hebrews 5:14)
Divorce is okay vs it's sinful. (Deuteronomy 24:1,3; Isaiah 50:1 vs Matthew 19:9; Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18)
Jesus brings peace vs he comes to divide. (John 14:27; Acts 10:36;1Corinthians 14:33; Hebrews 12:14 vs Matthew 10:21, 22, 34-36; Mark 13:12- 13, Luke 12:51-53; 14:26; 21:16-17;1Thessalonians 5:3)
Jesus says anyone who calls another a fool is condemned vs he calls people fools. (Matthew 5:22 vs Matthew 23:17)
Jesus says commandments must be obeyed to be saved vs he disobeys them. (Mark 10:19 vs Matthew 12:46-50; 19:29; 21:1; Mark 2:24-27 [work on Sabbath]; 3:31-35; 5:13; 10:29,30, Luke 8:20-21; 9:61-62; 18:29-30 [disrespect parents] Luke 19:29-35 [theft])
Defend beliefs vs don't argue. (Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2;1Thessalonians 5:21;1Peter 3:15 vs1Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 2:14, 23-26)
Don't judge vs do judge. (John 8:15-, 12:47; Romans 14:13 vs1Corinthians 5:3, 6:2, 11-13;1Timothy 5:20; 2 Timothy 4:1,8)
The second coming will be attended by signs and miracles vs there will be no signs and miracles. (Matthew 24:29-30; Mark 13; Luke 21:10-11 vs Luke 17:20-)
Only those who believe in Jesus will have everlasting life vs those who don't will also have everlasting life—albeit in Hell. (John 3:16 vs Revelations 14:10,11)
People are saved by faith vs they are saved by works. (John 3:16; Romans 3:27; 9:32 vs Exodus 32:33; Matthew 5:48; 24:13; Mark 9:41; 10:21; Luke 10:25-37; John 8:31; Romans 1:20; 2:6; 11:21-22; 1Corinthians 9:24; 10:12; 2 Corinthians 6:3-10; Philippians 2:12; 3:13; Hebrews 6:4-8; 10:26-31; 12:1; James 2:17,24; 1John 2:3-4; 3:10; Revelations 2:6)
People must imitate Paul vs one must follow God, not men. (I Corinthians 4:16; 2 Corinthians 11:20 vs Matthew 10:38; Mark 8:34; 2 Peter 2:19)
Jesus was crucified on the third hour vs the sixth hour. (Mark 15:25 vs John 19: 14,15)
Polygamy is okay vs it's not okay. (Genesis 19, 20, 21, 29 vs Matthew 19:3-9; Ephesians 5:28-31;1Corinthians 7:2,12-16;1Timothy 3:2)
Prophecy is good vs it's bad. (Acts 19:6; 1Corinthians 14; 1Thessalonians 5:20 vs Leviticus 19:31; Leviticus 20:27)
People must follow law vs they must follow their conscience. (Romans 11:21,22; 1Timothy 1:8-10; 1John 2:3,4 vs Romans 2:15)
Bible apologists can respond to any of the above with claims about context, syntax, variable meanings in ancient languages, and so on. I once did that too. But really, people the world over are encouraged to, on their own, read the Bible and gather its truths and inspiration. Reading the verses cited above for what they clearly say proves the opposite, namely that the Bible is neither consistent with facts nor consistent with itself.
Surely the Creator would not create a book with such vulnerabilities. To make the attribution is, therefore, slanderous and blasphemous.
The Creator's natural laws are consistent and not contradictory. Therefore, a Creator book must be the same.
However, the Bible says:
A person cannot live and see the Bible god vs god talked face to face with men, wrestled with a man and put his leg out of joint, and demanded that a camp be kept clean so he could walk through it at night. (Exodus 33:20;1Timothy 6:16 vs Exodus 33:11, Numbers 12:5,8; Numbers 14:13-20/Genesis 32:24-30 vs Leviticus 26:12; Deuteronomy 23:14;1Chronicles 17:6)
NEMOS: You're conflating angelic messengers in bodies of flesh with the creator who has never done these things. The bible is quite clear on this.
No man can hear god's voice vs he speaks and is heard. (John 5:37 vs Mark 1:11; Mark 9:7)
NEMOS: It doesn't say "no man can hear god's voice" it says "And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape." which is specifically when Yeshuah/Jesus is speaking to the demonic serpent seed Pharisees. These are not human, they are the Jewish Nephilim – seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15) hybrids. There is no contradiction here, one merely needs to consider the audience Yeshuah is speaking to in context. He continually rebukes the Pharisees and puts them outside of His message of salvation to the Israelites.
God does not change his mind vs he changes it. (Psalm 89:34; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 1:10-12; James 1:17-20; vs Exodus 32:14; Numbers 14:13-20; Hebrews 7:18; 8:6-13)
NEMOS: These verses all confirm Gods eternal and unchanging nature – a God on a spectrum of Mercy and Justice. Love and Wrath. Nothing in these verses contradict this or one another. At times this wrath is stirred and justice earned, which can be abated by certain acts of atonement – with numerous precedents found in scripture – notably the story of Jonah.
Women with no hymen should be stoned to death vs there should be forgiveness for fornication. (Deuteronomy 22:20,21 vs John 8:4-11)
NEMOS: I'm beginning to wonder if you pulled this list from some anti-Christian website which barely bothered to research before making surface level accusations about a book deeper than the sea…
In this instance, Jesus was being entrapped by the powerful Priest sect of Pharisees. Who wanted to see him killed or discredited. Now Jesus confirms that he is a savior of mercy, and is lenient when it comes to the law.
The law DOES call for the death penalty for adultery in this case, a horrible thing which not only ruins families and marriages but destroys many children, leads to horrible secondary effects such as feminist societies of single mom's who can't stop riding the c**k carousel. I speak as the son of a crack whore, a little slut shaming goes a long ways, this law would have saved many children a lifetime of horror. Is it too strict? Or are Gods laws simply strict by modern, tolerate-all-evil society? My little brother and sister also ended up on heroin and involved in prostitution.
Jesus wisely sidesteps the entrapment, and also saves this woman's life (excusing if not openly forgiving her sin, something He has authority to do) by winnowing out the crowd of accusers until there were not 2 or more accusers (as required by Gods fair law) to convict her. Giving her an "out" in His mercy. Jesus's life was a testament that the Law of God allows for mercy as well.
In this instance, Jesus was being entrapped by the powerful Priest sect of Pharisees. Who wanted to see him killed or discredited. Now Jesus confirms that he is a savior of mercy, and is lenient when it comes to the law.
The law DOES call for the death penalty for adultery in this case, a horrible thing which not only ruins families and marriages but destroys many children, leads to horrible secondary effects such as feminist societies of single mom's who can't stop riding the c**k carousel. I speak as the son of a crack whore, a little slut shaming goes a long ways, this law would have saved many children a lifetime of horror. Is it too strict? Or are Gods laws simply strict by modern, tolerate-all-evil society? My little brother and sister also ended up on heroin and involved in prostitution.
Jesus wisely sidesteps the entrapment, and also saves this woman's life (excusing if not openly forgiving her sin, something He has authority to do) by winnowing out the crowd of accusers until there were not 2 or more accusers (as required by Gods fair law) to convict her. Giving her an "out" in His mercy. Jesus's life was a testament that the Law of God allows for mercy as well.
God cannot defeat chariots of iron vs he is all-powerful. (Judges 1:19 vs Job 37:23; Revelations 4:11, 7:12)
NEMOS: There is no promise that God will allow us to win every single battle, though He be with us in war. This chapter speaks of the 12 tribes waging a massively successful war against the Giant, Cannibalistic Canaanites. This one setback may have simply been Gods testing their faith. As we see later, they failed in their God-given holy war against the Giants. They let some live.
Wisdom, knowledge, and pride are good vs those attributes are condemned. (Acts 17:11 vs Proverbs 19:8; Matthew 10:16,19; Romans 12:2; Philippians 1:9-10;1Thessalonians 5:21;1Peter 3:15)
NEMOS: Acts 17:11 is a favorite, it speaks to the wisdom of testing all things and diligently researching truth. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
What conflict do you see presented between that, and Proverbs 19:8, which says: "He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul: he that keepeth understanding shall find good." I fail to see this conflict, nor with Matthew:
16 "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves….
19 But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak."
Nor Romans: "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
Nor: Philippians:
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
10 That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
Nor 1Thessalonians, another oft quoted personal favorite: 21 "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
Nor Peter: "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:"
What conflict do you see presented between that, and Proverbs 19:8, which says: "He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul: he that keepeth understanding shall find good." I fail to see this conflict, nor with Matthew:
16 "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves….
19 But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak."
Nor Romans: "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
Nor: Philippians:
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
10 That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
Nor 1Thessalonians, another oft quoted personal favorite: 21 "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
Nor Peter: "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:"
Animals are to be sacrificed, maimed, and given diseases vs cruelty to animals is condemned. (Leviticus, Deuteronomy vs Proverbs 12:10)
God is not all-knowing vs he is all-knowing. (Exodus 3:7-; 12:13; 33; 34-; Numbers 12:5-;1Samuel 8:21- vs Jeremiah 39; Ezekial 7:3,8; Revelations)
God promises not to get angry vs he does get angry and slaughters thousands. (Isaiah 54:9-10; Jeremiah 3:12 vs throughout the Bible)
God demands aid, love, and assisting the enemy vs commands killing and plundering them. (Exodus:23:4,5 vs Numbers 31; Deuteronomy 13)
The Bible god is perfect vs he has regrets. (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 18:30 vs Genesis 6:7; Judges 2:18;1Chronicles 21:15; Jeremiah 26:19; Joel 2:13)
An eye for eye justice vs forgive and turn the other cheek. (Leviticus 24:16- 22 vs Matthew 5:38,39)
It is impossible to fall from grace vs it is possible. (John 3:16; Acts 16:31 vs Joshua 2:13;1Corinthians 5:11-13; Galatians 5:19-21;1Timothy 5:8;1Peter 1:17; Revelations 21:8)
People should be critical and prudent vs believe like children and don't question. (Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2;1Thessalonians 5:21 vs Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17;1Timothy 1:4; 6:4; 2 Timothy 2:23; Titus 3:9)
Distinguishing good from bad is condemned vs exercising conscience is praised. (Genesis 3:4 vs Hebrews 5:14)
Divorce is okay vs it's sinful. (Deuteronomy 24:1,3; Isaiah 50:1 vs Matthew 19:9; Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18)
Jesus brings peace vs he comes to divide. (John 14:27; Acts 10:36;1Corinthians 14:33; Hebrews 12:14 vs Matthew 10:21, 22, 34-36; Mark 13:12- 13, Luke 12:51-53; 14:26; 21:16-17;1Thessalonians 5:3)
Jesus says anyone who calls another a fool is condemned vs he calls people fools. (Matthew 5:22 vs Matthew 23:17)
Jesus says commandments must be obeyed to be saved vs he disobeys them. (Mark 10:19 vs Matthew 12:46-50; 19:29; 21:1; Mark 2:24-27 [work on Sabbath]; 3:31-35; 5:13; 10:29,30, Luke 8:20-21; 9:61-62; 18:29-30 [disrespect parents] Luke 19:29-35 [theft])
Defend beliefs vs don't argue. (Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2;1Thessalonians 5:21;1Peter 3:15 vs1Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 2:14, 23-26)
Don't judge vs do judge. (John 8:15-, 12:47; Romans 14:13 vs1Corinthians 5:3, 6:2, 11-13;1Timothy 5:20; 2 Timothy 4:1,8)
The second coming will be attended by signs and miracles vs there will be no signs and miracles. (Matthew 24:29-30; Mark 13; Luke 21:10-11 vs Luke 17:20-)
Only those who believe in Jesus will have everlasting life vs those who don't will also have everlasting life—albeit in Hell. (John 3:16 vs Revelations 14:10,11)
People are saved by faith vs they are saved by works. (John 3:16; Romans 3:27; 9:32 vs Exodus 32:33; Matthew 5:48; 24:13; Mark 9:41; 10:21; Luke 10:25-37; John 8:31; Romans 1:20; 2:6; 11:21-22; 1Corinthians 9:24; 10:12; 2 Corinthians 6:3-10; Philippians 2:12; 3:13; Hebrews 6:4-8; 10:26-31; 12:1; James 2:17,24; 1John 2:3-4; 3:10; Revelations 2:6)
People must imitate Paul vs one must follow God, not men. (I Corinthians 4:16; 2 Corinthians 11:20 vs Matthew 10:38; Mark 8:34; 2 Peter 2:19)
Jesus was crucified on the third hour vs the sixth hour. (Mark 15:25 vs John 19: 14,15)
Polygamy is okay vs it's not okay. (Genesis 19, 20, 21, 29 vs Matthew 19:3-9; Ephesians 5:28-31;1Corinthians 7:2,12-16;1Timothy 3:2)
Prophecy is good vs it's bad. (Acts 19:6; 1Corinthians 14; 1Thessalonians 5:20 vs Leviticus 19:31; Leviticus 20:27)
People must follow law vs they must follow their conscience. (Romans 11:21,22; 1Timothy 1:8-10; 1John 2:3,4 vs Romans 2:15)
Bible apologists can respond to any of the above with claims about context, syntax, variable meanings in ancient languages, and so on. I once did that too. But really, people the world over are encouraged to, on their own, read the Bible and gather its truths and inspiration. Reading the verses cited above for what they clearly say proves the opposite, namely that the Bible is neither consistent with facts nor consistent with itself.
Surely the Creator would not create a book with such vulnerabilities. To make the attribution is, therefore, slanderous and blasphemous.
NEMOS: Is the Bible consistent and not contradictory as are the Creator's natural laws?:
The historical accounts found within the holy word of God, the scriptures (of which many bad or deceptive translations in various languages exist to great headache for everyone involved) are indeed historically and scientifically accurate and consistent with the observable world and scientific method. Furthermore, Gods personality is consistent throughout the entirety of human history, He never changed at all. Therefore, we (mankind) should know exactly who our creator is and what is expected of us by now. Gods consistency is shown in that God is incapable of telling lies. Everything God says is truth. And while it sometimes may seem to take hundreds or even thousands of years for something to happen as He said it would, it always, always does and often with fine detail.
The historical accounts found within the holy word of God, the scriptures (of which many bad or deceptive translations in various languages exist to great headache for everyone involved) are indeed historically and scientifically accurate and consistent with the observable world and scientific method. Furthermore, Gods personality is consistent throughout the entirety of human history, He never changed at all. Therefore, we (mankind) should know exactly who our creator is and what is expected of us by now. Gods consistency is shown in that God is incapable of telling lies. Everything God says is truth. And while it sometimes may seem to take hundreds or even thousands of years for something to happen as He said it would, it always, always does and often with fine detail.
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
5. Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?
WYSONG: Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?:
Beliefs based upon events of the past are best derived from reliable evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, artifacts, archeology, paleontology, reliable dating, and self-written documents. That's the preferred evidence used by historians to create a credible history.
That's not the evidence available for god figures, of which there are thousands. It's noteworthy that the gods, prophets, great sages, and theologians upon which religions are based have all died out. None are around or being born into our day to interview and check credentials. Those who do appear as our contemporaries always turn out to be either frauds or far less than claimed.
Notice that it's always in the ancient past when nothing can be verified with certainty that the great religious figures existed. Religions capitalize on the human inclination to ascribe greater credit to the unfamiliar than to the familiar. People and script in the distant past, from a different country, with a different language, somehow always seem more fascinating and believable than our neighbors and contemporary writings.
A case in point is Christianity.
(The following history of Christianity threw me for a loop when I first discovered it. As I learn more, I'm more and more astonished. But, as is apparent in our dissection of evolution, materialism, and religion thus far, consensus views being out of step with reality are not only common but expected. If what follows seems too unbelievable, please delve more deeply by perusing the sources in the Resource section for this chapter or Internet search any of the terms, names, or phrases.)
Noncontemporary Hearsay Evidence
Exceptional claims, particularly related to events in the misty past, demand evidence, not uncritical acceptance.
Instead, religions are usually founded on the most unreliable support of all, namely noncontemporary hearsay evidence. That means we today are relying on the writings of someone testifying about a religious figure. But that person is reporting what they heard or read about the stories of someone else who did not even live at the same time as the religious figure upon which the religion is based.
Imagine one day being dragged into court to face an accuser who got on the stand and said under oath, "I heard from someone who heard from someone else who heard from someone else—who can't be found and was not born until the year 2000—that you were a serial killer in 1961." There's no evidence other than the accuser's word. Of course, no judge or jury in a just society would take for granted the accuser's hearsay words. A qualified judge would throw the matter out before it ever got to trial.
Tragically, throughout history, the firm belief in such sham evidence has been used to kill and torture millions.
Courts interested in truth only allow direct eyewitness evidence, logic, expert witnesses, circumstantial evidence, scientific, and other demonstrative evidence. What courts forbid is hearsay evidence, particularly if it's noncontemporary.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Reliable Evidence
People today agree that many god figures, such as Hercules and Zeus, didn't exist. Reliable evidence is lacking.
Astonishingly, I found that there is scholarly debate today about whether Jesus is a historical figure or an imagined religious playmate. Even many of the earliest Christians did not espouse the belief.
Bible scholars rely upon tenuous evidence to argue that he did exist. But that's either because they have a vested interest in their own belief or position, or because it's safe. It's safe because it's impossible to prove a negative. One cannot prove that Santa Claus, tooth fairies, or any proposed figure of the past, like Jesus, did not exist. That would require universal knowledge of all potential hiding places in the universe which, of course, no one possesses.
True history, which is not tradition, myth, opinion, belief, or hearsay, traces to the sources. Generally, accepted historical figures such as Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Napoleon, Hitler, Greek philosophers, etc., are usually supported by artifacts, busts, first-hand writings, and eyewitness accounts.
However, no bust of Jesus sculpted by a contemporary can be found. None of the Bible writers describe the physical appearance of Jesus, as was common in historical writings about noted people. There are no proven Jesus artifacts, no eyewitness testimonies, no descendants with pedigrees, and no works of carpentry, dwellings, or written documents attributable to him. Although this is also true for other figures who are thought to be valid historically, it would seem that mountains of incontestable evidence would exist for Jesus, considered to be the same as the Creator by most Christians.
No Eyewitness Accounts
The Bible is thought to be a first-hand eyewitness account. However, the stories are actually from authors who lived after the events happened. Christian song stories, word of mouth accounts, and writings were passed on for decades and centuries throughout the Middle East and Roman Empire. Only later were writings winnowed into the holy books upon which billions of readers, today and in the past, base beliefs.
Imagine trying to recall accurately what somebody said a month ago, let alone decades or hundreds of years ago. Even if there were first-person accounts, imagine attempting to recall and write the exact words from another person decades after the words were spoken.
All the New Testament documents turn out to be just copies of copies of copies of noncontemporary hearsay evidence, the most unreliable of all evidence.
Moreover, the early church, the holder of the copies upon which the Bible was based, was not above fabrication and prevarication. For example, Ignatius of Loyola, the theologian founder of the Jesuits, wrote: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black if the Hierarchical Church so decides it." The early church father and sainted John Chrysostom wrote: "And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived."
Contemporary Writers
Astonishingly, there is no support for Jesus from contemporary Roman, Jewish, or Greek writings.
Josephus was ostensibly a Jewish noble, a general in wars against the Romans, and then a defector who later even assumed the emperor Vespasian's family name of Flavius. Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities book, was the earliest historian to mention Jesus and his brother, James. But he was not born until 37CE, which was after Jesus' reported death. He didn't write Antiquities until 93 CE. The small portion of his writings, about a paragraph, called the "Testimonium Flavianum," uncharacteristically (since Josephus was a Jew and remained such) affirms Jesus as the Messiah.
A survey by Feldman found that 4 scholars regard the passage as completely genuine, 6 more as mostly genuine; 20 accept it with some interpolations (putting words in another person's mouth—meaning later editors inserted the words and ascribed them to Josephus), 9 thought there to be several interpolations; 13 regard it as being totally an interpolation. The Caesar editors and/or the Catholic Eusebius reportedly did this Jesus insertion in the third to fourth century CE.
The reference to Jesus as Messiah would create some much-needed secular evidence for an earthly Jesus. Thus, it has been enthusiastically used by Christians ever since.
Huge amounts of ink have been spilled arguing whether Josephus affirms the existence of Jesus or not. In those puddles of ink can be found compelling evidence and arguments that Josephus was, in fact, a fictional character created by the Romans who devised Christianity to quash the continuously rebellious Jews. The New Testament stories, particularly the Gospels, written, accumulated, and given imprimatur by Caesars in the second to fourth centuries, follow quite closely the Josephus writings dated at 93 CE. This would make the Gospels not original accounts of Christianity, but copies of Roman writings some sixty years after the time of Jesus.
Most scholars regard the New Testament as pro-Roman. Others take it a step further arguing that Christianity is a mere Roman political device to create a story that fulfills awaited Jewish prophesies. By blending Judaism with the new Christian religion, the Caesars created a new Roman controlled messianic Jewish religion that was inclusive of all peoples under the Roman domain.
Roman Christianity was opened to Jew and Gentile alike, abrogating the Jewish claim to being god's chosen people. This had the effect of denying their clannishness which fed their rebellious proclivities. The Roman Jesus messiah preached "turn the other cheek" anti-sedition, and kept the money flowing to Rome with Jesus' command to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's." This pacifistic and Roman obedience message served well the interests of Caesars, and later their religious heirs, the Roman Catholic popes, who arrogated to themselves "Christ on Earth" authority and power.
If we keep in mind that Rome was the greatest power on Earth at the time, and primarily interested in keeping that position and power, such shenanigans with religion are to be expected. Think of the covert and deceptive things governments do to this day to retain or expand their power. Nothing is beyond bounds.
More so was this true in the past when plebian ignorance was enforced and people were constantly reminded of the consequences of disobedience by public executions and impaled bodies and heads scattered strategically about like billboards. Religions were the greatest threat since they required homage to other than Roman leaders and engendered enthusiastic rebellious gumption. To deal with that, the Caesars simply adopted religious beliefs into an amalgamated state religion with them at the head.
In that regard, it is of note that the first official Christian religion is called, to this day, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This name embraces the very purpose of the Caesars: one universal (the definition of "catholic") Roman authority.
A common Christian retort to the idea that Rome and Christianity are inextricably related are the stories of early Christian persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Romans. But historical research demonstrates that Christians assimilated well into Roman society, as was the objective of the Caesars, and were not singled out for persecution, other than in stories created hundreds of years after a person's death.
But there was utility in this theme of heroic martyrdom, which, not coincidentally, emulated Greek, Roman, and Jewish mythologies. In ancient times, death was common everywhere all the time. So, a heroic death at least gave a person longevity in legends. Moreover, the state would kill people for picayune infractions, or even reports of such. It's likely that many Christian deaths were due to matters entirely unrelated to Christianity. As it turns out though, people were venerated hundreds of years after their deaths in order to serve the purposes of those venerating them. Stories of "martyrs" banded people together in an us-against-them mentality, used in religions down to this day.
An internet search will provide you (living 2000 years since the purported events) with a lifetime of study to try to determine if the words of someone of questionable existence, Flavius Josephus, writing in 93 CE, proves the existence of people living more than 60 years before that.
Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Origen and other early religious writers mentioning Jesus were also not contemporaries of Jesus. The dates of documents and the birthdates of the writers always give the writers away as unreliable storytellers expressing beliefs, not facts, about Jesus' existence.
All their testimony is, therefore, hearsay as well.
The Bible claims great multitudes and fame followed Jesus and that Jewish high priests and Roman officials knew of him. The Bible describes a three-day eclipse, an earthquake with graves opening up at the time of Jesus. Not a single historian, philosopher, scribe, astronomer or follower who lived during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him or these spectacular events. This is in spite of historians, poets, orators, and travelers aplenty in the time of Jesus.
Although Pontius Pilate has been verified archeologically, there is no secular evidence of him trying Jesus. Nor is there such evidence of Herod killing all the baby boys in Bethlehem (although the historical Herod seemed capable of such atrocity). Additionally, there are many Roman records of the killing of many messiahs, but none for Jesus.
This incredible silence is particularly noteworthy since Jerusalem was a center for scribes, books, education, and record keeping.
Philo Judaeus (also known as Philo of Alexander) was born in 20 BC and died 50 CE, spanning the entire life of Jesus. He was considered the most noteworthy Jewish-Hellenistic historian of the time. He lived and traveled in Greece and Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus and wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area and of a pre-Christian celestial Jewish messiah. In all of his volumes of writings, there isn't one reference to an earthly Jesus.
There is also no mention of an earthly Jesus in other historical writings of the time, such as from:
Aulus Perseus (60 CE)
Columella (1st cent, CE)
Dio Chrysostom (1st cent, CE)
Justus of Tiberius (1st cent, CE)
Livy (59 BC-17 CE)
Lucanus (63 AD)
Lucius Florus (1st cent, CE)
Petronius (66 CE)
Phaedrus (15 BC-50 CE)
Phlegon (1st cent, CE)
Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE)
​Plutarch (46-119 CE)
Pomponius Mela (40 CE)
Rufus Curtius (1st cent, CE)
Quintilian (35-LOO CE)
Quintus Curtius (1st cent, CE)
Seneca (1 BC-65 CE)
Silius Italicus (25-101 CE)
Statius Caeliaus (1st cent, CE)
Theon of Smyrna (70-135 CE)
Valerius Flaccus (1st cent, CE)
Valerius Maximus (20 CE)
Gospels and Letters
Although it is thought that the four gospels were the only ones and were written by contemporary disciples of Jesus, that cannot be established as true. For one thing, the texts of the gospels do not identify their authors. Nor have any of the originals been found. For another, Irenaeus of Lyon, who lived in the middle of the second century, primarily chose certain gospels from among many that were lost or destroyed. Some early Christians accepted one gospel, others accepted four, while others accepted more than four.
Historians date the writing of the gospels from 70 CE to 90 CE which would put them beyond the feasible age of the disciples (given the short lifespans for common people of the day). Besides, the disciples were likely illiterate peasants not capable of the sophisticated language and style in the gospels.
The gospel writers do not admit to actually seeing Jesus. They were not eyewitnesses.
Paul's and others' New Testament letters which follow the gospels reveal that the authors never met a physical Jesus.
The gospels do cite historically verified people, events, and places which seem to give credibility to the stories. But inventing historical events that are then seeded with real places and people is common in fictional stories. Historicizing myths is done even today in fiction such as Superman and Star Trek.
There Should Be Unequivocal Evidence
The laws of nature, the things of creation, are clear, unequivocal, and universally understood by people of all cultures and languages. There is no interpretation of 2+2 or that heavy things fall down. People of all rank and file understand perfectly.
Jesus is worshipped as a god-man on Earth in whom all must believe to be saved. If that be the case, the Creator of the universe would be capable of making sure the evidence for the existence of Jesus on Earth was overwhelming unambiguous and crystal clear, like 2+2=4.
The question looms as to why a pivotal and critical figure that people are required to believe in was not born in our modern era. Rather than handwritten scraps of copies of copies of unknown origin, there could be first-hand documents, photographs, recordings, interviews, videos, DNA testing, forensic technology, and other means to prove beyond any doubt the existence and acts of Jesus.
Nevertheless, people en masse, Christian and not, believe Jesus and his acts are certain. I did too at one time. That's what happens when faith trumps reason and evidence and even lack thereof.
To repeat, a quick internet search will provide an almost endless array of information briefly touched upon here. Search words and names in this chapter as well as phrases such as "did Jesus exist," "pagan origins of Christianity," "origin of the Bible," etc. (truthbeknown.com is a good start.)
Why Belief
There were cultural and religious reasons for belief in a messiah. In 70 CE, under Titus, the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem. About a thousand desperate Jews later took a stand on Masada and rather than be captured or slaughtered, committed suicide. Indeed, these were times in need of a savior.
The Jews had prophesized one in the Old Testament and fervently hoped one would appear to lead them out from the oppression of the Romans and into the Promised Land. As this oppression was escalating, savior stories were being composed and written, and messiahs popped up here and there. These provided hope and served to authenticate Hebrew scripture and validate the Jewish priests. Forced fulfillment of prophecy was common.
Today many scholars (not all) agree that an unremarkable Clark Kent physical Jesus did exist. However, they do not agree that he was the Superman version walking on water, raising the dead, etc. Myths abounded in the time of Jesus, as even the Bible admits. (2Peter1:16) Scholars thus conclude, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, and due to the shared features with prior pagan gods described in the debate topic, that the Superman version of Jesus was a myth as well. They contend that the sensational version of Jesus, complete with a resurrection and the ability to erase sin was needed.
The Roman goal was enduring awe and dedication from the masses, so a fantastic story worthy of a god fit the bill. Once the state fostered Christianity with Caesars as god personified and the fulfillment of Jewish messiah stories (Roman popes taking over later where Caesars left off), people had little choice but to believe. Today, however, it's the sheer momentum and ubiquity of the belief in itself that is compelling. People find it hard even to imagine that a belief so prevalent, supported by so much voice and ink, and with such stature, architectural presence, religious hierarchy, scholarship, and wealth could be questionable.
I had been swept along in this belief as well. But fealty to truth, the Creator, always defeats belief and faith.
Resources for further study:
Acharya, S., The Christ Conspiracy, The Greatest Story Ever Sold.
Atwill, Joseph, Caesar's Messiah.
Carotta, Francesco, Jesus Was Caesar, On the Julian Origin of Christianity.
Carrier, Richard, On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
Dyer, Jay, Christian apologist refuting those who doubt the Bible and Jesus' existence, 🔗jaysanalysis.com/category/apologetics.
Ellerbe, Helen, The Dark Side of Christian History.
Fitzgerald, David, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All.
Freke, Timothy, The Jesus Mysteries, Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?
Humphreys, Kenneth, Jesus Never Existed, An Introduction to the Ultimate Heresy.
Jabbar, Malik H., The Astrological Foundation of The Christ Myth, Book One.
Murdock, Dorothy, Scholarly examination of the history of pagan and Christian religions and their parallels. 🔗truthbeknown.com.
Piso, Roman, Piso Christ, A Book of the New Classical Scholarship.
Reuchlin, Abelard, The true authorship of the New Testament.
Robinson, D. C., Caesar's Messiah – Why the Church MUST Answer, A Discourse/Reflection on Joseph Atwill's Caesar's.
Valliant, James, Creating Christ, How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity.
Wikipedia. Christ Myth Theory, an exhaustive and documented discussion of pros and cons, proponents and critics. 🔗wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory.
Williams, Walter, The Historical Origin of Christianity.
Beliefs based upon events of the past are best derived from reliable evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, artifacts, archeology, paleontology, reliable dating, and self-written documents. That's the preferred evidence used by historians to create a credible history.
That's not the evidence available for god figures, of which there are thousands. It's noteworthy that the gods, prophets, great sages, and theologians upon which religions are based have all died out. None are around or being born into our day to interview and check credentials. Those who do appear as our contemporaries always turn out to be either frauds or far less than claimed.
Notice that it's always in the ancient past when nothing can be verified with certainty that the great religious figures existed. Religions capitalize on the human inclination to ascribe greater credit to the unfamiliar than to the familiar. People and script in the distant past, from a different country, with a different language, somehow always seem more fascinating and believable than our neighbors and contemporary writings.
A case in point is Christianity.
(The following history of Christianity threw me for a loop when I first discovered it. As I learn more, I'm more and more astonished. But, as is apparent in our dissection of evolution, materialism, and religion thus far, consensus views being out of step with reality are not only common but expected. If what follows seems too unbelievable, please delve more deeply by perusing the sources in the Resource section for this chapter or Internet search any of the terms, names, or phrases.)
Noncontemporary Hearsay Evidence
Exceptional claims, particularly related to events in the misty past, demand evidence, not uncritical acceptance.
Instead, religions are usually founded on the most unreliable support of all, namely noncontemporary hearsay evidence. That means we today are relying on the writings of someone testifying about a religious figure. But that person is reporting what they heard or read about the stories of someone else who did not even live at the same time as the religious figure upon which the religion is based.
Imagine one day being dragged into court to face an accuser who got on the stand and said under oath, "I heard from someone who heard from someone else who heard from someone else—who can't be found and was not born until the year 2000—that you were a serial killer in 1961." There's no evidence other than the accuser's word. Of course, no judge or jury in a just society would take for granted the accuser's hearsay words. A qualified judge would throw the matter out before it ever got to trial.
Tragically, throughout history, the firm belief in such sham evidence has been used to kill and torture millions.
Courts interested in truth only allow direct eyewitness evidence, logic, expert witnesses, circumstantial evidence, scientific, and other demonstrative evidence. What courts forbid is hearsay evidence, particularly if it's noncontemporary.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Reliable Evidence
People today agree that many god figures, such as Hercules and Zeus, didn't exist. Reliable evidence is lacking.
Astonishingly, I found that there is scholarly debate today about whether Jesus is a historical figure or an imagined religious playmate. Even many of the earliest Christians did not espouse the belief.
Bible scholars rely upon tenuous evidence to argue that he did exist. But that's either because they have a vested interest in their own belief or position, or because it's safe. It's safe because it's impossible to prove a negative. One cannot prove that Santa Claus, tooth fairies, or any proposed figure of the past, like Jesus, did not exist. That would require universal knowledge of all potential hiding places in the universe which, of course, no one possesses.
True history, which is not tradition, myth, opinion, belief, or hearsay, traces to the sources. Generally, accepted historical figures such as Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Napoleon, Hitler, Greek philosophers, etc., are usually supported by artifacts, busts, first-hand writings, and eyewitness accounts.
However, no bust of Jesus sculpted by a contemporary can be found. None of the Bible writers describe the physical appearance of Jesus, as was common in historical writings about noted people. There are no proven Jesus artifacts, no eyewitness testimonies, no descendants with pedigrees, and no works of carpentry, dwellings, or written documents attributable to him. Although this is also true for other figures who are thought to be valid historically, it would seem that mountains of incontestable evidence would exist for Jesus, considered to be the same as the Creator by most Christians.
No Eyewitness Accounts
The Bible is thought to be a first-hand eyewitness account. However, the stories are actually from authors who lived after the events happened. Christian song stories, word of mouth accounts, and writings were passed on for decades and centuries throughout the Middle East and Roman Empire. Only later were writings winnowed into the holy books upon which billions of readers, today and in the past, base beliefs.
Imagine trying to recall accurately what somebody said a month ago, let alone decades or hundreds of years ago. Even if there were first-person accounts, imagine attempting to recall and write the exact words from another person decades after the words were spoken.
All the New Testament documents turn out to be just copies of copies of copies of noncontemporary hearsay evidence, the most unreliable of all evidence.
Moreover, the early church, the holder of the copies upon which the Bible was based, was not above fabrication and prevarication. For example, Ignatius of Loyola, the theologian founder of the Jesuits, wrote: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black if the Hierarchical Church so decides it." The early church father and sainted John Chrysostom wrote: "And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived."
Contemporary Writers
Astonishingly, there is no support for Jesus from contemporary Roman, Jewish, or Greek writings.
Josephus was ostensibly a Jewish noble, a general in wars against the Romans, and then a defector who later even assumed the emperor Vespasian's family name of Flavius. Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities book, was the earliest historian to mention Jesus and his brother, James. But he was not born until 37CE, which was after Jesus' reported death. He didn't write Antiquities until 93 CE. The small portion of his writings, about a paragraph, called the "Testimonium Flavianum," uncharacteristically (since Josephus was a Jew and remained such) affirms Jesus as the Messiah.
A survey by Feldman found that 4 scholars regard the passage as completely genuine, 6 more as mostly genuine; 20 accept it with some interpolations (putting words in another person's mouth—meaning later editors inserted the words and ascribed them to Josephus), 9 thought there to be several interpolations; 13 regard it as being totally an interpolation. The Caesar editors and/or the Catholic Eusebius reportedly did this Jesus insertion in the third to fourth century CE.
The reference to Jesus as Messiah would create some much-needed secular evidence for an earthly Jesus. Thus, it has been enthusiastically used by Christians ever since.
Huge amounts of ink have been spilled arguing whether Josephus affirms the existence of Jesus or not. In those puddles of ink can be found compelling evidence and arguments that Josephus was, in fact, a fictional character created by the Romans who devised Christianity to quash the continuously rebellious Jews. The New Testament stories, particularly the Gospels, written, accumulated, and given imprimatur by Caesars in the second to fourth centuries, follow quite closely the Josephus writings dated at 93 CE. This would make the Gospels not original accounts of Christianity, but copies of Roman writings some sixty years after the time of Jesus.
Most scholars regard the New Testament as pro-Roman. Others take it a step further arguing that Christianity is a mere Roman political device to create a story that fulfills awaited Jewish prophesies. By blending Judaism with the new Christian religion, the Caesars created a new Roman controlled messianic Jewish religion that was inclusive of all peoples under the Roman domain.
Roman Christianity was opened to Jew and Gentile alike, abrogating the Jewish claim to being god's chosen people. This had the effect of denying their clannishness which fed their rebellious proclivities. The Roman Jesus messiah preached "turn the other cheek" anti-sedition, and kept the money flowing to Rome with Jesus' command to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's." This pacifistic and Roman obedience message served well the interests of Caesars, and later their religious heirs, the Roman Catholic popes, who arrogated to themselves "Christ on Earth" authority and power.
If we keep in mind that Rome was the greatest power on Earth at the time, and primarily interested in keeping that position and power, such shenanigans with religion are to be expected. Think of the covert and deceptive things governments do to this day to retain or expand their power. Nothing is beyond bounds.
More so was this true in the past when plebian ignorance was enforced and people were constantly reminded of the consequences of disobedience by public executions and impaled bodies and heads scattered strategically about like billboards. Religions were the greatest threat since they required homage to other than Roman leaders and engendered enthusiastic rebellious gumption. To deal with that, the Caesars simply adopted religious beliefs into an amalgamated state religion with them at the head.
In that regard, it is of note that the first official Christian religion is called, to this day, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This name embraces the very purpose of the Caesars: one universal (the definition of "catholic") Roman authority.
A common Christian retort to the idea that Rome and Christianity are inextricably related are the stories of early Christian persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Romans. But historical research demonstrates that Christians assimilated well into Roman society, as was the objective of the Caesars, and were not singled out for persecution, other than in stories created hundreds of years after a person's death.
But there was utility in this theme of heroic martyrdom, which, not coincidentally, emulated Greek, Roman, and Jewish mythologies. In ancient times, death was common everywhere all the time. So, a heroic death at least gave a person longevity in legends. Moreover, the state would kill people for picayune infractions, or even reports of such. It's likely that many Christian deaths were due to matters entirely unrelated to Christianity. As it turns out though, people were venerated hundreds of years after their deaths in order to serve the purposes of those venerating them. Stories of "martyrs" banded people together in an us-against-them mentality, used in religions down to this day.
An internet search will provide you (living 2000 years since the purported events) with a lifetime of study to try to determine if the words of someone of questionable existence, Flavius Josephus, writing in 93 CE, proves the existence of people living more than 60 years before that.
Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Origen and other early religious writers mentioning Jesus were also not contemporaries of Jesus. The dates of documents and the birthdates of the writers always give the writers away as unreliable storytellers expressing beliefs, not facts, about Jesus' existence.
All their testimony is, therefore, hearsay as well.
The Bible claims great multitudes and fame followed Jesus and that Jewish high priests and Roman officials knew of him. The Bible describes a three-day eclipse, an earthquake with graves opening up at the time of Jesus. Not a single historian, philosopher, scribe, astronomer or follower who lived during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him or these spectacular events. This is in spite of historians, poets, orators, and travelers aplenty in the time of Jesus.
Although Pontius Pilate has been verified archeologically, there is no secular evidence of him trying Jesus. Nor is there such evidence of Herod killing all the baby boys in Bethlehem (although the historical Herod seemed capable of such atrocity). Additionally, there are many Roman records of the killing of many messiahs, but none for Jesus.
This incredible silence is particularly noteworthy since Jerusalem was a center for scribes, books, education, and record keeping.
Philo Judaeus (also known as Philo of Alexander) was born in 20 BC and died 50 CE, spanning the entire life of Jesus. He was considered the most noteworthy Jewish-Hellenistic historian of the time. He lived and traveled in Greece and Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus and wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area and of a pre-Christian celestial Jewish messiah. In all of his volumes of writings, there isn't one reference to an earthly Jesus.
There is also no mention of an earthly Jesus in other historical writings of the time, such as from:
Aulus Perseus (60 CE)
Columella (1st cent, CE)
Dio Chrysostom (1st cent, CE)
Justus of Tiberius (1st cent, CE)
Livy (59 BC-17 CE)
Lucanus (63 AD)
Lucius Florus (1st cent, CE)
Petronius (66 CE)
Phaedrus (15 BC-50 CE)
Phlegon (1st cent, CE)
Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE)
​Plutarch (46-119 CE)
Pomponius Mela (40 CE)
Rufus Curtius (1st cent, CE)
Quintilian (35-LOO CE)
Quintus Curtius (1st cent, CE)
Seneca (1 BC-65 CE)
Silius Italicus (25-101 CE)
Statius Caeliaus (1st cent, CE)
Theon of Smyrna (70-135 CE)
Valerius Flaccus (1st cent, CE)
Valerius Maximus (20 CE)
Gospels and Letters
Although it is thought that the four gospels were the only ones and were written by contemporary disciples of Jesus, that cannot be established as true. For one thing, the texts of the gospels do not identify their authors. Nor have any of the originals been found. For another, Irenaeus of Lyon, who lived in the middle of the second century, primarily chose certain gospels from among many that were lost or destroyed. Some early Christians accepted one gospel, others accepted four, while others accepted more than four.
Historians date the writing of the gospels from 70 CE to 90 CE which would put them beyond the feasible age of the disciples (given the short lifespans for common people of the day). Besides, the disciples were likely illiterate peasants not capable of the sophisticated language and style in the gospels.
The gospel writers do not admit to actually seeing Jesus. They were not eyewitnesses.
Paul's and others' New Testament letters which follow the gospels reveal that the authors never met a physical Jesus.
The gospels do cite historically verified people, events, and places which seem to give credibility to the stories. But inventing historical events that are then seeded with real places and people is common in fictional stories. Historicizing myths is done even today in fiction such as Superman and Star Trek.
There Should Be Unequivocal Evidence
The laws of nature, the things of creation, are clear, unequivocal, and universally understood by people of all cultures and languages. There is no interpretation of 2+2 or that heavy things fall down. People of all rank and file understand perfectly.
Jesus is worshipped as a god-man on Earth in whom all must believe to be saved. If that be the case, the Creator of the universe would be capable of making sure the evidence for the existence of Jesus on Earth was overwhelming unambiguous and crystal clear, like 2+2=4.
The question looms as to why a pivotal and critical figure that people are required to believe in was not born in our modern era. Rather than handwritten scraps of copies of copies of unknown origin, there could be first-hand documents, photographs, recordings, interviews, videos, DNA testing, forensic technology, and other means to prove beyond any doubt the existence and acts of Jesus.
Nevertheless, people en masse, Christian and not, believe Jesus and his acts are certain. I did too at one time. That's what happens when faith trumps reason and evidence and even lack thereof.
To repeat, a quick internet search will provide an almost endless array of information briefly touched upon here. Search words and names in this chapter as well as phrases such as "did Jesus exist," "pagan origins of Christianity," "origin of the Bible," etc. (truthbeknown.com is a good start.)
Why Belief
There were cultural and religious reasons for belief in a messiah. In 70 CE, under Titus, the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem. About a thousand desperate Jews later took a stand on Masada and rather than be captured or slaughtered, committed suicide. Indeed, these were times in need of a savior.
The Jews had prophesized one in the Old Testament and fervently hoped one would appear to lead them out from the oppression of the Romans and into the Promised Land. As this oppression was escalating, savior stories were being composed and written, and messiahs popped up here and there. These provided hope and served to authenticate Hebrew scripture and validate the Jewish priests. Forced fulfillment of prophecy was common.
Today many scholars (not all) agree that an unremarkable Clark Kent physical Jesus did exist. However, they do not agree that he was the Superman version walking on water, raising the dead, etc. Myths abounded in the time of Jesus, as even the Bible admits. (2Peter1:16) Scholars thus conclude, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, and due to the shared features with prior pagan gods described in the debate topic, that the Superman version of Jesus was a myth as well. They contend that the sensational version of Jesus, complete with a resurrection and the ability to erase sin was needed.
The Roman goal was enduring awe and dedication from the masses, so a fantastic story worthy of a god fit the bill. Once the state fostered Christianity with Caesars as god personified and the fulfillment of Jewish messiah stories (Roman popes taking over later where Caesars left off), people had little choice but to believe. Today, however, it's the sheer momentum and ubiquity of the belief in itself that is compelling. People find it hard even to imagine that a belief so prevalent, supported by so much voice and ink, and with such stature, architectural presence, religious hierarchy, scholarship, and wealth could be questionable.
I had been swept along in this belief as well. But fealty to truth, the Creator, always defeats belief and faith.
Resources for further study:
Acharya, S., The Christ Conspiracy, The Greatest Story Ever Sold.
Atwill, Joseph, Caesar's Messiah.
Carotta, Francesco, Jesus Was Caesar, On the Julian Origin of Christianity.
Carrier, Richard, On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
Dyer, Jay, Christian apologist refuting those who doubt the Bible and Jesus' existence, 🔗jaysanalysis.com/category/apologetics.
Ellerbe, Helen, The Dark Side of Christian History.
Fitzgerald, David, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All.
Freke, Timothy, The Jesus Mysteries, Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?
Humphreys, Kenneth, Jesus Never Existed, An Introduction to the Ultimate Heresy.
Jabbar, Malik H., The Astrological Foundation of The Christ Myth, Book One.
Murdock, Dorothy, Scholarly examination of the history of pagan and Christian religions and their parallels. 🔗truthbeknown.com.
Piso, Roman, Piso Christ, A Book of the New Classical Scholarship.
Reuchlin, Abelard, The true authorship of the New Testament.
Robinson, D. C., Caesar's Messiah – Why the Church MUST Answer, A Discourse/Reflection on Joseph Atwill's Caesar's.
Valliant, James, Creating Christ, How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity.
Wikipedia. Christ Myth Theory, an exhaustive and documented discussion of pros and cons, proponents and critics. 🔗wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory.
Williams, Walter, The Historical Origin of Christianity.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Does Jesus prove the Bible is from the Creator?:
. . . in progress . . .
. . . in progress . . .
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
6. Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?
WYSONG: Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?:
During college, I jettisoned the Christian religion of my youth and climbed on board the prevailing academic, evolutionist, materialistic, and atheistic train. Then, in my early medical years, I discovered the evidence and logic on origins. This was convincing of intelligent causation but gave no direction for where to go from there.
Curious about who this Creator was, various religions and holy books were examined. Critiques of non-Christian religions (written by Christians) and Bible proofs (used by Bible apologists) led me to believe that the Bible was the Creator's word. After all, the Creator, like a human father, would surely want to talk to its creation. I settled on a Bible-based religion that seemed most rational and faithful to the book.
This led to an immersion in Bible apologetics, hermeneutics, and critical evaluation of competing religions. After all, if this was the true religion, the others were false and had to be exposed so their followers could escape the Bible's imminent apocalypse.
Although reading contrary literature was strongly discouraged, it seemed that if this religion was the truth there should be no fear of any information. Such exploration resulted in discoveries and epiphanies that shook my beliefs.
I shared these with fellow believers. The headquarters of the religion was also contacted for rebuttals to Bible passages that seemed to disprove some of their doctrines. The result was a visit (trial of sorts) by a leader. Satisfactory answers weren't given and it became clear that compliance, not truth, was the real agenda of the organization. So, after about three years of this sidetrack in the quest for truth, I moved on.
The break was not nearly as clean and neat as that sounds. What I was doing was considered apostasy and heresy. Nor was it easy to leave behind so many friends, although several I spoke to about what I was discovering fell away along with me. The sense of belonging and comradery in this religion were powerful draws. Leaving behind a religion you commit to can be like having your world collapse in on you. But, truth was the goal. Living in a lie was not possible.
Looking back, the experience was an invaluable awakening to independent and open thinking and what it's like to be willingly brain-washed.
After leaving this religion, exploration widened to include information that challenged the very notion that the Bible was written (inspired) by the Creator of the universe.
In examining the earliest moorings of Judaism and Christianity, it was astonishing to learn that virtually everything in the Bible was known and practiced in cultures prior to the Bible. This included Minoan, Egyptian, Indus Valley, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman civilizations. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Hymn of Ra, the Gilgamesh Epic, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Enuma Elish mythology, and many other religions/mythologies cross-pollinate the Bible and other holy books.
Features of gods, some dating back thousands of years before Christianity, include a heroic male demigod, often the son of a god and a mortal woman, miracles surrounding the birth, atonement, original sin, births announced by stars, birth at a December 25 solstice (Greco-Roman sun gods), tyrants trying to kill them in infancy, passion and violent death, bearing sins so humans could rise to heaven, rising from the dead, worshiped by "wise men," fasting for 40 days, baptism by water, twelve followers, miracles such as water walking and changing water into wine, the demigod being referred to as "king of kings," "lamb of god," "alpha and omega," "the truth," "the light," and likened to both a lion and a lamb, resurrection to eternal life, considered a savior and redeemer, and more.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Many gods before Christianity were worshipped as a trinity. For example, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva; Horus-Isis-Osiris; Astarte-Anat-Quedesht; Dionysus-Demeter-Poseidon; Attis-Maia-Zeus; Astarte- Eshmun-Melkarth. Other pre-Christian doctrines include holy water, confession, penance, salvation based upon belief, priestly garb and ritual, Sunday worship, Saturday worship, temples, sacrificial blood, wine as blood (Dionysus cult), Eucharist communion, idolatrous reverence for holy writings, the cross symbol, three crosses with thieves to the side, halos, tithing, the Christmas tree, Easter, an end-time apocalypse, eternal punishment, a devil, hellfire, and more.
Consider the mythological god Attis, 1250 BC:
Many Christian features trace back to ancient sun worship and the astrological zodiac. The sun made crops grow, brought warmth, gave light, and vanquished the terrifying predator-filled darkness. Little wonder it was worshiped as savior and light of the world. The sun was seen to pass through twelve major star constellations during a twelve-month year giving rise to the four-seasons in the cross of the zodiac. The sun was anthropomorphized as were the star constellations.
Notice the features of the Egyptian sun god Horus, 3000 BC, as compared to modern-day Christianity:
The symbols in the zodiac are not just an artistic tool to track the sun, stars, and seasons. The zodiac doubles as a pagan religious symbol. For example, the bright star in the East is Sirius, which on December 24th aligns with the three kings. These stars in Orion's Belt point to the sunrise on December 25th. Thus the three kings "follow" the bright star in the East to locate the sunrise, the birth of the sun (son). This mimics the events surrounding the Christmas story.
⌕ Click to enlarge
There are 12 parts of the astrological zodiac. Notice there are 12 disciples of Jesus, 12 tribes, kings, judges, and princes of Israel, 12 brothers of Joseph, and Jesus was at the temple at age 12.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Jesus is often shown superimposed on the sun in the middle of the astrological cross. (Incidentally, the Romans crucified people on stakes, not crosses, if for no other reason than the impracticality of building stable crosses.)
⌕ Click to enlarge
In the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam there are most especially common themes and doctrines. Christianity morphed out of Judaism and paganism, and Islam morphed out of both Judaism and Christianity. Judaism morphed out of the pagan religions preceding or concurrent with it, such as monotheistic Zoroastrianism.
Christianity thus appears as an amalgam of Jewish, Greek, and pagan beliefs. Since the early Christians lived among these cultures, it's little wonder that the people and the times would influence the Jesus story. There was also a practical aspect to this plagiarism. Christian states found it useful to adopt beliefs of the people they conquered to help assimilation and decrease the potential for rebellion.
Although this information was new to me, it was by no means new. For example, Higgins (1772-1833), in his Anacalypsis, concluded: "One thing is clear — the mythos of the Hindus, the mythos of the Jews and the mythos of the Greeks are all at bottom the same; and what is called their early histories are not histories of humankind, but are contrivances under the appearance of histories to perpetuate doctrines."
Most astonishing is the fact that a number of writers in the first four centuries, including Christians, knew of the plagiarism. For example, sainted Justin Martyr (100 CE), a pagan turned Christian, attempted to defend Christianity in the face of pagan claims that Christianity was nothing more than a rehash of their gods. Being well aware of pagan beliefs, Martyr didn't deny this but rather defended Christianity with his absurd "diabolical mimicry" argument: Satan read the Old Testament prophesies about the messiah and imitated Christ in the form of pagan gods prior to Jesus. In other words, any parallels to paganism are the devil's doing and should create no doubt that Jesus was god and did the things said of him. But pagan writers, such as Celsus, would have none of it. Pagans were used to syncretism (the amalgamation of different religions) among pagan religions and easily recognized Christian plagiarism.
Clearly, if Bible-based religions are truth and not human imaginings, they should stand alone, be unique, and historically first. So, it is shocking to learn that the mythological pagan gods anathematized and ridiculed by Christendom, were antecedents to all of Christendom's doctrines and provide proof that the Bible is not the work of the Creator.
Resources for further study:
🔗ancientfacts.net/5-holy-books-predate-bible/?view=all.
George, G. M., James' Stolen Legacy, The Egyptian Origins of Western Philosophy.
Hebrew earliest writings. 🔗livescience.com/8008-bible-possibly-written-centuries-earlier-text-suggests.html.
Jackson, John, Christianity Before Christ, and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
Judaism, Pagan Origins. 🔗youtube.com/watch?v=ZECezMYug8c.
Religions Predating the Bible. 🔗oldest.org/religion/religious-texts.
Holy Book History
Johnson, P., A History of Christianity. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1980.
Pagels, E., The Gnostic Gospels. New York, Vintage Books, 1989.
Sunderland, J., The Origin and Character of the Bible. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1947.
Religion
Religious History. 🔗truthbeknown.com.
During college, I jettisoned the Christian religion of my youth and climbed on board the prevailing academic, evolutionist, materialistic, and atheistic train. Then, in my early medical years, I discovered the evidence and logic on origins. This was convincing of intelligent causation but gave no direction for where to go from there.
Curious about who this Creator was, various religions and holy books were examined. Critiques of non-Christian religions (written by Christians) and Bible proofs (used by Bible apologists) led me to believe that the Bible was the Creator's word. After all, the Creator, like a human father, would surely want to talk to its creation. I settled on a Bible-based religion that seemed most rational and faithful to the book.
This led to an immersion in Bible apologetics, hermeneutics, and critical evaluation of competing religions. After all, if this was the true religion, the others were false and had to be exposed so their followers could escape the Bible's imminent apocalypse.
Although reading contrary literature was strongly discouraged, it seemed that if this religion was the truth there should be no fear of any information. Such exploration resulted in discoveries and epiphanies that shook my beliefs.
I shared these with fellow believers. The headquarters of the religion was also contacted for rebuttals to Bible passages that seemed to disprove some of their doctrines. The result was a visit (trial of sorts) by a leader. Satisfactory answers weren't given and it became clear that compliance, not truth, was the real agenda of the organization. So, after about three years of this sidetrack in the quest for truth, I moved on.
The break was not nearly as clean and neat as that sounds. What I was doing was considered apostasy and heresy. Nor was it easy to leave behind so many friends, although several I spoke to about what I was discovering fell away along with me. The sense of belonging and comradery in this religion were powerful draws. Leaving behind a religion you commit to can be like having your world collapse in on you. But, truth was the goal. Living in a lie was not possible.
Looking back, the experience was an invaluable awakening to independent and open thinking and what it's like to be willingly brain-washed.
After leaving this religion, exploration widened to include information that challenged the very notion that the Bible was written (inspired) by the Creator of the universe.
In examining the earliest moorings of Judaism and Christianity, it was astonishing to learn that virtually everything in the Bible was known and practiced in cultures prior to the Bible. This included Minoan, Egyptian, Indus Valley, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman civilizations. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Hymn of Ra, the Gilgamesh Epic, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Enuma Elish mythology, and many other religions/mythologies cross-pollinate the Bible and other holy books.
Features of gods, some dating back thousands of years before Christianity, include a heroic male demigod, often the son of a god and a mortal woman, miracles surrounding the birth, atonement, original sin, births announced by stars, birth at a December 25 solstice (Greco-Roman sun gods), tyrants trying to kill them in infancy, passion and violent death, bearing sins so humans could rise to heaven, rising from the dead, worshiped by "wise men," fasting for 40 days, baptism by water, twelve followers, miracles such as water walking and changing water into wine, the demigod being referred to as "king of kings," "lamb of god," "alpha and omega," "the truth," "the light," and likened to both a lion and a lamb, resurrection to eternal life, considered a savior and redeemer, and more.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Many gods before Christianity were worshipped as a trinity. For example, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva; Horus-Isis-Osiris; Astarte-Anat-Quedesht; Dionysus-Demeter-Poseidon; Attis-Maia-Zeus; Astarte- Eshmun-Melkarth. Other pre-Christian doctrines include holy water, confession, penance, salvation based upon belief, priestly garb and ritual, Sunday worship, Saturday worship, temples, sacrificial blood, wine as blood (Dionysus cult), Eucharist communion, idolatrous reverence for holy writings, the cross symbol, three crosses with thieves to the side, halos, tithing, the Christmas tree, Easter, an end-time apocalypse, eternal punishment, a devil, hellfire, and more.
Consider the mythological god Attis, 1250 BC:
- Was born on December 25th of the Virgin Nana
- Was considered the "only begotten son" and killed for the salvation of humankind
- His followers had a meal of bread that represented him
- His priests were eunuchs
- He was both the Divine Son and the Father
- On Friday he was crucified on a tree
- He descended into the underworld
- After three days he was resurrected
Many Christian features trace back to ancient sun worship and the astrological zodiac. The sun made crops grow, brought warmth, gave light, and vanquished the terrifying predator-filled darkness. Little wonder it was worshiped as savior and light of the world. The sun was seen to pass through twelve major star constellations during a twelve-month year giving rise to the four-seasons in the cross of the zodiac. The sun was anthropomorphized as were the star constellations.
Notice the features of the Egyptian sun god Horus, 3000 BC, as compared to modern-day Christianity:
- Born December 25th
- Born of a virgin
- Birth accompanied by a star in the East
- Adored as a savior by three kings
- Child-teacher in a temple
- Baptized at 30 and began ministry
- 12 disciples
- Called a lamb, lion, and identified with a cross
- Trinity
- Performed miracles like healings, water walking, fishing bounty, seven loaves feeding a multitude, raising people from the dead
- Known as "truth," "the light," "God's anointed one," "lamb of god"
- Betrayed by a friend, crucified, dead for three days
- Resurrected
- A Millennial reign . . . (271 Egyptian-Christian parallels are found at: asifthinkingmatters.com/preexistingdata)
The symbols in the zodiac are not just an artistic tool to track the sun, stars, and seasons. The zodiac doubles as a pagan religious symbol. For example, the bright star in the East is Sirius, which on December 24th aligns with the three kings. These stars in Orion's Belt point to the sunrise on December 25th. Thus the three kings "follow" the bright star in the East to locate the sunrise, the birth of the sun (son). This mimics the events surrounding the Christmas story.
⌕ Click to enlarge
There are 12 parts of the astrological zodiac. Notice there are 12 disciples of Jesus, 12 tribes, kings, judges, and princes of Israel, 12 brothers of Joseph, and Jesus was at the temple at age 12.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Jesus is often shown superimposed on the sun in the middle of the astrological cross. (Incidentally, the Romans crucified people on stakes, not crosses, if for no other reason than the impracticality of building stable crosses.)
⌕ Click to enlarge
In the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam there are most especially common themes and doctrines. Christianity morphed out of Judaism and paganism, and Islam morphed out of both Judaism and Christianity. Judaism morphed out of the pagan religions preceding or concurrent with it, such as monotheistic Zoroastrianism.
Christianity thus appears as an amalgam of Jewish, Greek, and pagan beliefs. Since the early Christians lived among these cultures, it's little wonder that the people and the times would influence the Jesus story. There was also a practical aspect to this plagiarism. Christian states found it useful to adopt beliefs of the people they conquered to help assimilation and decrease the potential for rebellion.
Although this information was new to me, it was by no means new. For example, Higgins (1772-1833), in his Anacalypsis, concluded: "One thing is clear — the mythos of the Hindus, the mythos of the Jews and the mythos of the Greeks are all at bottom the same; and what is called their early histories are not histories of humankind, but are contrivances under the appearance of histories to perpetuate doctrines."
Most astonishing is the fact that a number of writers in the first four centuries, including Christians, knew of the plagiarism. For example, sainted Justin Martyr (100 CE), a pagan turned Christian, attempted to defend Christianity in the face of pagan claims that Christianity was nothing more than a rehash of their gods. Being well aware of pagan beliefs, Martyr didn't deny this but rather defended Christianity with his absurd "diabolical mimicry" argument: Satan read the Old Testament prophesies about the messiah and imitated Christ in the form of pagan gods prior to Jesus. In other words, any parallels to paganism are the devil's doing and should create no doubt that Jesus was god and did the things said of him. But pagan writers, such as Celsus, would have none of it. Pagans were used to syncretism (the amalgamation of different religions) among pagan religions and easily recognized Christian plagiarism.
Clearly, if Bible-based religions are truth and not human imaginings, they should stand alone, be unique, and historically first. So, it is shocking to learn that the mythological pagan gods anathematized and ridiculed by Christendom, were antecedents to all of Christendom's doctrines and provide proof that the Bible is not the work of the Creator.
Resources for further study:
🔗ancientfacts.net/5-holy-books-predate-bible/?view=all.
George, G. M., James' Stolen Legacy, The Egyptian Origins of Western Philosophy.
Hebrew earliest writings. 🔗livescience.com/8008-bible-possibly-written-centuries-earlier-text-suggests.html.
Jackson, John, Christianity Before Christ, and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
Judaism, Pagan Origins. 🔗youtube.com/watch?v=ZECezMYug8c.
Religions Predating the Bible. 🔗oldest.org/religion/religious-texts.
Holy Book History
Johnson, P., A History of Christianity. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1980.
Pagels, E., The Gnostic Gospels. New York, Vintage Books, 1989.
Sunderland, J., The Origin and Character of the Bible. Boston, The Beacon Press, 1947.
Religion
Religious History. 🔗truthbeknown.com.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Is the Bible an amalgam of pagan religions?:
. . . in progress . . .
. . . in progress . . .
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
7. Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?
WYSONG: Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?:
For believers, the ace in the hole for Creator authorship of the Bible is prophecy. For example, one Internet Bible apologist proclaims that "2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors."
This works if you confine yourself to limited information. However, in no case is there a documented example of people reading a holy book prophecy at a certain date, then taking action based upon it, then having it come true at a later date.
Even if a prophecy happens to predict accurately, that would not single a holy book out as being unique or divinely written. Quantum reality permits clairvoyance and there is substantial evidence, in real time, today, that people not claiming to be inspired by god can make accurate predictions (prophesies).
A remarkable example of this is the dreams of Dr. Andrew Paguette. For decades he has cataloged dreams at one date and then have the events of the dream happen at a later time. He has comprised a research dataset from dozens of dream journals containing over 15,000 dream records produced over a period of three decades. He makes no claim to being an agent of or inspired by the Creator or any religion.
But by the prophesy = Creator authorship standard, Dr. Paquette's prophesies would prove his records are of the Creator and therefore an addendum to the Bible.
Prophesy has allegedly also been discovered in ancient cultures predating the Bible. For example, the Dogon tribe in West Africa has lore dating to 3200 BC about a companion star to Sirius. They say it has a 50-year elliptical orbit, is super dense, and rotates on its axis. The star is called Sirius B. It's smaller than Earth, invisible to the naked eye, not discovered by astronomers until 1862, and not photographed until 1970. The Dogon also described a third Sirius star (C), not discovered until 1995 with .05 the mass of Sirius B. Many Dogon details are said to have been found in 400-year-old artifacts.
Long before Galileo invented the telescope, the Dogon are reported to have explained that Jupiter has four major moons, and Saturn has rings. Does this mean the Dogon are inspired by the Creator? Using Bible inspiration logic, that would have to be so. Yes, the Dogon lore is disputed by scientists. So too the Bible's lore. Such is the way of things made of men.
People can, after the fact, retrodict (find an event, then find something in the past that supposedly predicted it) and use this reverse engineering to show proofs of prophecy.
For example, the 911 Trade Center destruction has been shown to be predicted in Star Wars, and by reading certain texts upside down, diagonally, and backward. Consider how words and numbers can be used to show extraordinary things, whether or not they are found in a holy book: 9/11 is the date of the Trade Center terrorist attack and 911 is the emergency number; 9+1+1=11; 9-11(September 11) is the 254th day of the year, 2+5+4=11; After 9-11 there are one hundred and 11 days left in the year; The twin towers look like an 11; The first flight to hit the towers was 11; There were 92 people on board: 9+2=11; New York is the 11th state added to the union; New York City has 11 letters; The winning lottery number on that day was 911. All of this was elaborated after the event.
Such coincidences surrounding various events and written words provide fuel for endless conspiracy, prophetic, and inspirational theories.
The Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11, and 70 equals 85 – which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and exploded on April 13. All elaborated after the explosion.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Some Kabbalistic Jews go so far as to attach meaning to the spacing between words.
A favorite evangelistic tactic is to prophesize the end of the world. The message is simple: Believe what my religion says, or be doomed in a coming apocalypse. That message certainly caught my attention at one time. If the end was coming, I wanted my family and me on the boat. It led me through all sorts of hermeneutical exercises cross-referencing passages all over the Bible to verify the date Bible scholars said was certain.
We are vulnerable to a doomsday message because people throughout time have thought that the world revolves around them and that they and their special generation have been singled out. It is human to think that our time is the best of times and the worst of times.
Consider the words from an Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C. (notice that's BC): "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
Writers of holy books were like all other people and were dramatically influenced by the political events of their times, surrounding religious beliefs, and natural disasters thought to be acts of their gods.
At the very time that Christian Biblical stories were being composed, Pompeii and its sister Roman city, Herculaneum, were turned to ashes by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (79 CE). A memory was embedded that echoed through centuries. It and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE created the language and metaphors for Biblical eschatology (final prophetic events) that have inspired prophetic doom for the past 2000 years.
When Vesuvius erupted, an estimated 4,000 feet of the 8,000-foot mountain exploded into the sky and across land and sea. The sun darkened as far away as Rome. But people closer to ground zero were blinded. When they attempted a breath, they inhaled volcanic cinders that were more than a thousand degrees. The pyroclastic flow was so fast and lethal that it would disintegrate a person before nerves could transmit to the brain that anything was even happening.
Food and water were decimated. Disease became rampant. The volcano's impact on life and survival created a memory that burnt into minds for centuries.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "world," to the Italians, was Rome and its provinces. For Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Vesuvian cataclysm was interpreted as an act of gods to end the world.
The Vesuvian end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. provided fodder for religious stories. It was not enough to simply experience or observe such events. The survivors perceived deeper meaning and a cause other than blind nature.
Dio Cassius, some 130 years after the eruption, wrote in his History of Rome:
". . . giants (black volcanic dust clouds) appeared, now, on the mountain, now in the surrounding country, and again in the cities, wandering over the Earth day and night, and also flitting through the air . . . day was turned into night and light into darkness . . . a sound of trumpets was heard . . . others believed the whole universe was being resolved into chaos and fire . . . it destroyed all fish and birds . . . believed the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the Earth, and the Earth was being lifted into the sky . . . a terrible pestilence upon them."
Out of the mix of the Vesuvius disaster, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the desire for an end to Roman persecution, the apocalyptic narrative in the New Testament was created.
Dio's account of the Vesuvius eruption contains language practically identical to the Bible's apocalyptic verses written at a similar time:
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened . . . and lightning will come out of the east and shine even into the west . . . the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give light, and the stars shall fall from heaven . . . and great earthquakes, and famines and pestilences and fearful sights and great signs will there be from heaven – the sea and the waves roaring and men's hearts filling with fear . . . the angel took the censer and filled it with fire and cast it to Earth and there were voices, thunderings, lightnings and earthquakes . . . followed hail mingled with fire and blood . . . and a third of the trees were burnt up. And the second angel sounded and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became blood and a third of the creatures in the sea died . . . and he opened the bottomless pit and there arose smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened . . . and I saw the three horses of the apocalypse and these three were the third part of the men killed by the smoke and brimstone." (Revelation)
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings. Anti-typical, modern-day, end-of-our-world meaning is attached to those ancient words with author attribution given to the Creator of the universe.
End-time musings by apocalyptic religionists can fuel unspeakable hatred. If we become convinced that the end is imminent, that our group has been singled out as superior to all others by the authority of god and our special belief, and that our actions can hasten the end and speed us to our great reward (such as stature in heaven or a bounty of virgins), then almost any atrocity can be justified. Millions have been butchered in holy wars fomented by holy book end-time prophesies.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spent millions renovating Tehran in preparation for the imminent return of the Mahdi, a ninth-century figure who will emerge from a well, partner with Jesus, and violently convert the world to Islam.
At the same time, messianic Jews are trying to get the cornerstones for a new temple in place to be ready for the coming of their Messiah and the end to Islam. Clyde Lott, a Mississippi preacher, is attempting to breed blemish-free red heifers (red hairs only) for export to Jerusalem. The Bible says (Numbers 19:2-10) their sacrifice and ashes are necessary to purify the Jews to build the temple. Muslims specify a yellow heifer.
For many Bible believers, the end times started clicking on May 15, 1948, when the United Nations recognized Israel. So, there is no time to spare in making prophecy fit world events. Every disaster, every conflict in the world gladdens a prophet of doom somewhere.
End-of-the-world religious predictions fuel fear, false hope, and satisfy our it's-all-about-me obsession. They serve to keep a lot of people industriously calculating dates and watching the newspapers hoping they read more and more like the events presaging Revelation's Armageddon, or Islam's coming of al-Mahdi and "The Hour." Almost fifty percent of the population believes their god will bring an end to the world within the next fifty years, rewarding the believers and slaughtering the unbelievers.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If there is a divine plan that the Creator wants us to know, and it includes the end of the world, why would it be made a mystery? Certainly, if there is honesty, justice, and truth (which there is), all of us should have equal access. We should not be faced with the impossible task of trying to find out which modern or ancient "prophet" (among the tens of thousands) has the right prediction.
Holiness, purity, grace, or ethics have nothing to do with making presumptuous predictions in the name of the Creator of the universe. Life is about getting out there and doing and being good, not attempting to discern ancient manuscripts to calculate end-time prophecies.
Perhaps the healthiest perspective is to not worry about the end of the world today when it is already tomorrow at the other end of the world.
Resources for further study:
Colavito, M., The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind-Mind Split. New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
Doland, P., Another Case Not Made, A Critique of Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator' (2005). 23 Jun 2008. 🔗infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/creator.html.
Festinger, Leon, et al., When Prophecy Fails, a study of cognitive dissonance in those who believe in Prophecy.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pellegrino, C., Ghosts of Vesuvius. New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Rapture Ready. 🔗raptureready.com.
Religious Tolerance. 🔗religioustolerance.org.
Prophesy not unique: See Clairvoyance/Premonition under chapter 35 resources.
Barker, J. C., Premonitions of the Aberfan Disaster. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 55 (1967), 189-237.
Behe, G., Titanic, Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy. Wellingborough, Patrick Stephens, 1988.
Bem, Dr. Daryl, 🔗news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-brains-ability-see-future; 🔗skeptiko.com/daryl-bem-responds-to-parapsychology-debunkers.
Boundary Institute. Premonitions of 9/11. 1 Feb 2008. 🔗boundaryinstitute.org/premon911.htm.
Brennan, J. H., Time Travel. St. Paul, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.
Cayce, Edgar, 🔗edgarcayce.org/the-readings/ancient-mysteries/seven-prophecies-that-came-true.
Cox, W. E., Precognition, An Analysis, II. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50 (1956), 99-109.
🔗discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time.
Dossey, Larry, MD, The Science of Premonitions.
Dunne, B. J., et al., Precognitive Remote Perception. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (Report), Aug 1983.
Feeling the Future, A Meta-analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events. [Under Editorial Review]. 🔗dbem.org/FF Meta-analysis 6.2.pdf; Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. 🔗dbem.org/FeelingFuture.pdf.
🔗hogueProphecy.com.
Honorton, C., et al., Future-telling, A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments. Journal of Parapsychology, 53 (1989), 281-209.
Mossbridge, Julie, Ph.D., The Premonition Code, The Science of Precognition. noetic.org.
Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data? A response to Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas (2011). 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoWagenmakers.pdf.
One Mind, How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters (Explains why premonition and other seemingly extraordinary abilities are actually ordinary in the underlying reality.)
Paquette, Andy, Dreamer, 20 years of psychic dreams and how they changed my life.
🔗popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/book-excerpt-there-no-such-thing-time.
Response to Alcock's "Back from the Future, Comments on Bem." 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoAlcock.pdf.
Rosenblatt, Marty, Physicist, 🔗appliedprecog.com.
Saltmarsh, H., The Future and Beyond, Paranormal Foreknowledge and Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, 2003.
Schmeidler, G., An Experiment in Precognitive Clairvoyance, Part I, The Main Results and Part 2, The Reliability of The Scores. Journal of Parapsychology, 28 (1964), 1-27.
Snow, C. B., Mass Dreams of the Future. Sedona, Deep Forest Press, 1989.
Stratton, J. A., Electromagnetic Theory. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1941.
Time travel, See resources below.
Townshend, C. H., Indisputable clairvoyance of M. Adolphe Didier. The Zoist, XI, Apr 1853, 75-78.
Townshend, C. H., Recent Clairvoyance of Alexis Didier. The Zoist, IX, Jan 1852, 402-411.
Universe is timeless, permitting access both ways. 🔗platonia.com/barbour_emergence_of_time.pdf.
For believers, the ace in the hole for Creator authorship of the Bible is prophecy. For example, one Internet Bible apologist proclaims that "2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors."
This works if you confine yourself to limited information. However, in no case is there a documented example of people reading a holy book prophecy at a certain date, then taking action based upon it, then having it come true at a later date.
Even if a prophecy happens to predict accurately, that would not single a holy book out as being unique or divinely written. Quantum reality permits clairvoyance and there is substantial evidence, in real time, today, that people not claiming to be inspired by god can make accurate predictions (prophesies).
A remarkable example of this is the dreams of Dr. Andrew Paguette. For decades he has cataloged dreams at one date and then have the events of the dream happen at a later time. He has comprised a research dataset from dozens of dream journals containing over 15,000 dream records produced over a period of three decades. He makes no claim to being an agent of or inspired by the Creator or any religion.
But by the prophesy = Creator authorship standard, Dr. Paquette's prophesies would prove his records are of the Creator and therefore an addendum to the Bible.
Prophesy has allegedly also been discovered in ancient cultures predating the Bible. For example, the Dogon tribe in West Africa has lore dating to 3200 BC about a companion star to Sirius. They say it has a 50-year elliptical orbit, is super dense, and rotates on its axis. The star is called Sirius B. It's smaller than Earth, invisible to the naked eye, not discovered by astronomers until 1862, and not photographed until 1970. The Dogon also described a third Sirius star (C), not discovered until 1995 with .05 the mass of Sirius B. Many Dogon details are said to have been found in 400-year-old artifacts.
Long before Galileo invented the telescope, the Dogon are reported to have explained that Jupiter has four major moons, and Saturn has rings. Does this mean the Dogon are inspired by the Creator? Using Bible inspiration logic, that would have to be so. Yes, the Dogon lore is disputed by scientists. So too the Bible's lore. Such is the way of things made of men.
People can, after the fact, retrodict (find an event, then find something in the past that supposedly predicted it) and use this reverse engineering to show proofs of prophecy.
For example, the 911 Trade Center destruction has been shown to be predicted in Star Wars, and by reading certain texts upside down, diagonally, and backward. Consider how words and numbers can be used to show extraordinary things, whether or not they are found in a holy book: 9/11 is the date of the Trade Center terrorist attack and 911 is the emergency number; 9+1+1=11; 9-11(September 11) is the 254th day of the year, 2+5+4=11; After 9-11 there are one hundred and 11 days left in the year; The twin towers look like an 11; The first flight to hit the towers was 11; There were 92 people on board: 9+2=11; New York is the 11th state added to the union; New York City has 11 letters; The winning lottery number on that day was 911. All of this was elaborated after the event.
Such coincidences surrounding various events and written words provide fuel for endless conspiracy, prophetic, and inspirational theories.
The Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11, and 70 equals 85 – which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and exploded on April 13. All elaborated after the explosion.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Some Kabbalistic Jews go so far as to attach meaning to the spacing between words.
A favorite evangelistic tactic is to prophesize the end of the world. The message is simple: Believe what my religion says, or be doomed in a coming apocalypse. That message certainly caught my attention at one time. If the end was coming, I wanted my family and me on the boat. It led me through all sorts of hermeneutical exercises cross-referencing passages all over the Bible to verify the date Bible scholars said was certain.
We are vulnerable to a doomsday message because people throughout time have thought that the world revolves around them and that they and their special generation have been singled out. It is human to think that our time is the best of times and the worst of times.
Consider the words from an Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C. (notice that's BC): "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
Writers of holy books were like all other people and were dramatically influenced by the political events of their times, surrounding religious beliefs, and natural disasters thought to be acts of their gods.
At the very time that Christian Biblical stories were being composed, Pompeii and its sister Roman city, Herculaneum, were turned to ashes by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (79 CE). A memory was embedded that echoed through centuries. It and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE created the language and metaphors for Biblical eschatology (final prophetic events) that have inspired prophetic doom for the past 2000 years.
When Vesuvius erupted, an estimated 4,000 feet of the 8,000-foot mountain exploded into the sky and across land and sea. The sun darkened as far away as Rome. But people closer to ground zero were blinded. When they attempted a breath, they inhaled volcanic cinders that were more than a thousand degrees. The pyroclastic flow was so fast and lethal that it would disintegrate a person before nerves could transmit to the brain that anything was even happening.
Food and water were decimated. Disease became rampant. The volcano's impact on life and survival created a memory that burnt into minds for centuries.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "world," to the Italians, was Rome and its provinces. For Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Vesuvian cataclysm was interpreted as an act of gods to end the world.
The Vesuvian end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. provided fodder for religious stories. It was not enough to simply experience or observe such events. The survivors perceived deeper meaning and a cause other than blind nature.
Dio Cassius, some 130 years after the eruption, wrote in his History of Rome:
". . . giants (black volcanic dust clouds) appeared, now, on the mountain, now in the surrounding country, and again in the cities, wandering over the Earth day and night, and also flitting through the air . . . day was turned into night and light into darkness . . . a sound of trumpets was heard . . . others believed the whole universe was being resolved into chaos and fire . . . it destroyed all fish and birds . . . believed the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the Earth, and the Earth was being lifted into the sky . . . a terrible pestilence upon them."
Out of the mix of the Vesuvius disaster, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the desire for an end to Roman persecution, the apocalyptic narrative in the New Testament was created.
Dio's account of the Vesuvius eruption contains language practically identical to the Bible's apocalyptic verses written at a similar time:
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened . . . and lightning will come out of the east and shine even into the west . . . the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give light, and the stars shall fall from heaven . . . and great earthquakes, and famines and pestilences and fearful sights and great signs will there be from heaven – the sea and the waves roaring and men's hearts filling with fear . . . the angel took the censer and filled it with fire and cast it to Earth and there were voices, thunderings, lightnings and earthquakes . . . followed hail mingled with fire and blood . . . and a third of the trees were burnt up. And the second angel sounded and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became blood and a third of the creatures in the sea died . . . and he opened the bottomless pit and there arose smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened . . . and I saw the three horses of the apocalypse and these three were the third part of the men killed by the smoke and brimstone." (Revelation)
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings. Anti-typical, modern-day, end-of-our-world meaning is attached to those ancient words with author attribution given to the Creator of the universe.
End-time musings by apocalyptic religionists can fuel unspeakable hatred. If we become convinced that the end is imminent, that our group has been singled out as superior to all others by the authority of god and our special belief, and that our actions can hasten the end and speed us to our great reward (such as stature in heaven or a bounty of virgins), then almost any atrocity can be justified. Millions have been butchered in holy wars fomented by holy book end-time prophesies.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spent millions renovating Tehran in preparation for the imminent return of the Mahdi, a ninth-century figure who will emerge from a well, partner with Jesus, and violently convert the world to Islam.
At the same time, messianic Jews are trying to get the cornerstones for a new temple in place to be ready for the coming of their Messiah and the end to Islam. Clyde Lott, a Mississippi preacher, is attempting to breed blemish-free red heifers (red hairs only) for export to Jerusalem. The Bible says (Numbers 19:2-10) their sacrifice and ashes are necessary to purify the Jews to build the temple. Muslims specify a yellow heifer.
For many Bible believers, the end times started clicking on May 15, 1948, when the United Nations recognized Israel. So, there is no time to spare in making prophecy fit world events. Every disaster, every conflict in the world gladdens a prophet of doom somewhere.
End-of-the-world religious predictions fuel fear, false hope, and satisfy our it's-all-about-me obsession. They serve to keep a lot of people industriously calculating dates and watching the newspapers hoping they read more and more like the events presaging Revelation's Armageddon, or Islam's coming of al-Mahdi and "The Hour." Almost fifty percent of the population believes their god will bring an end to the world within the next fifty years, rewarding the believers and slaughtering the unbelievers.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If there is a divine plan that the Creator wants us to know, and it includes the end of the world, why would it be made a mystery? Certainly, if there is honesty, justice, and truth (which there is), all of us should have equal access. We should not be faced with the impossible task of trying to find out which modern or ancient "prophet" (among the tens of thousands) has the right prediction.
Holiness, purity, grace, or ethics have nothing to do with making presumptuous predictions in the name of the Creator of the universe. Life is about getting out there and doing and being good, not attempting to discern ancient manuscripts to calculate end-time prophecies.
Perhaps the healthiest perspective is to not worry about the end of the world today when it is already tomorrow at the other end of the world.
Resources for further study:
Colavito, M., The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind-Mind Split. New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
Doland, P., Another Case Not Made, A Critique of Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator' (2005). 23 Jun 2008. 🔗infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/creator.html.
Festinger, Leon, et al., When Prophecy Fails, a study of cognitive dissonance in those who believe in Prophecy.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pellegrino, C., Ghosts of Vesuvius. New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Rapture Ready. 🔗raptureready.com.
Religious Tolerance. 🔗religioustolerance.org.
Prophesy not unique: See Clairvoyance/Premonition under chapter 35 resources.
Barker, J. C., Premonitions of the Aberfan Disaster. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 55 (1967), 189-237.
Behe, G., Titanic, Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy. Wellingborough, Patrick Stephens, 1988.
Bem, Dr. Daryl, 🔗news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-brains-ability-see-future; 🔗skeptiko.com/daryl-bem-responds-to-parapsychology-debunkers.
Boundary Institute. Premonitions of 9/11. 1 Feb 2008. 🔗boundaryinstitute.org/premon911.htm.
Brennan, J. H., Time Travel. St. Paul, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.
Cayce, Edgar, 🔗edgarcayce.org/the-readings/ancient-mysteries/seven-prophecies-that-came-true.
Cox, W. E., Precognition, An Analysis, II. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50 (1956), 99-109.
🔗discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time.
Dossey, Larry, MD, The Science of Premonitions.
Dunne, B. J., et al., Precognitive Remote Perception. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (Report), Aug 1983.
Feeling the Future, A Meta-analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events. [Under Editorial Review]. 🔗dbem.org/FF Meta-analysis 6.2.pdf; Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. 🔗dbem.org/FeelingFuture.pdf.
🔗hogueProphecy.com.
Honorton, C., et al., Future-telling, A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments. Journal of Parapsychology, 53 (1989), 281-209.
Mossbridge, Julie, Ph.D., The Premonition Code, The Science of Precognition. noetic.org.
Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data? A response to Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas (2011). 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoWagenmakers.pdf.
One Mind, How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters (Explains why premonition and other seemingly extraordinary abilities are actually ordinary in the underlying reality.)
Paquette, Andy, Dreamer, 20 years of psychic dreams and how they changed my life.
🔗popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/book-excerpt-there-no-such-thing-time.
Response to Alcock's "Back from the Future, Comments on Bem." 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoAlcock.pdf.
Rosenblatt, Marty, Physicist, 🔗appliedprecog.com.
Saltmarsh, H., The Future and Beyond, Paranormal Foreknowledge and Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, 2003.
Schmeidler, G., An Experiment in Precognitive Clairvoyance, Part I, The Main Results and Part 2, The Reliability of The Scores. Journal of Parapsychology, 28 (1964), 1-27.
Snow, C. B., Mass Dreams of the Future. Sedona, Deep Forest Press, 1989.
Stratton, J. A., Electromagnetic Theory. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1941.
Time travel, See resources below.
Townshend, C. H., Indisputable clairvoyance of M. Adolphe Didier. The Zoist, XI, Apr 1853, 75-78.
Townshend, C. H., Recent Clairvoyance of Alexis Didier. The Zoist, IX, Jan 1852, 402-411.
Universe is timeless, permitting access both ways. 🔗platonia.com/barbour_emergence_of_time.pdf.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Does prophesy prove the Bible is from the Creator?:
Prophecy and Prescience – Tracking Prophetic Predictives
Prophecy and Prescience – Tracking Prophetic Predictives
WYSONG: For believers, the ace in the hole for Creator authorship of the Bible is prophecy. For example, one Internet Bible apologist proclaims that "2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors."
This works if you confine yourself to limited information. However, in no case is there a documented example of people reading a holy book prophecy at a certain date, then taking action based upon it, then having it come true at a later date.
Even if a prophecy happens to predict accurately, that would not single a holy book out as being unique or divinely written. Quantum reality permits clairvoyance and there is substantial evidence, in real time, today, that people not claiming to be inspired by god can make accurate predictions (prophesies).
A remarkable example of this is the dreams of Dr. Andrew Paguette. For decades he has cataloged dreams at one date and then have the events of the dream happen at a later time. He has comprised a research dataset from dozens of dream journals containing over 15,000 dream records produced over a period of three decades. He makes no claim to being an agent of or inspired by the Creator or any religion.
But by the prophesy = Creator authorship standard, Dr. Paquette's prophesies would prove his records are of the Creator and therefore an addendum to the Bible.
Prophesy has allegedly also been discovered in ancient cultures predating the Bible. For example, the Dogon tribe in West Africa has lore dating to 3200 BC about a companion star to Sirius. They say it has a 50-year elliptical orbit, is super dense, and rotates on its axis. The star is called Sirius B. It's smaller than Earth, invisible to the naked eye, not discovered by astronomers until 1862, and not photographed until 1970. The Dogon also described a third Sirius star (C), not discovered until 1995 with .05 the mass of Sirius B. Many Dogon details are said to have been found in 400-year-old artifacts.
Long before Galileo invented the telescope, the Dogon are reported to have explained that Jupiter has four major moons, and Saturn has rings. Does this mean the Dogon are inspired by the Creator? Using Bible inspiration logic, that would have to be so. Yes, the Dogon lore is disputed by scientists. So too the Bible's lore. Such is the way of things made of men.
People can, after the fact, retrodict (find an event, then find something in the past that supposedly predicted it) and use this reverse engineering to show proofs of prophecy.
For example, the 911 Trade Center destruction has been shown to be predicted in Star Wars, and by reading certain texts upside down, diagonally, and backward. Consider how words and numbers can be used to show extraordinary things, whether or not they are found in a holy book: 9/11 is the date of the Trade Center terrorist attack and 911 is the emergency number; 9+1+1=11; 9-11(September 11) is the 254th day of the year, 2+5+4=11; After 9-11 there are one hundred and 11 days left in the year; The twin towers look like an 11; The first flight to hit the towers was 11; There were 92 people on board: 9+2=11; New York is the 11th state added to the union; New York City has 11 letters; The winning lottery number on that day was 911. All of this was elaborated after the event.
Such coincidences surrounding various events and written words provide fuel for endless conspiracy, prophetic, and inspirational theories.
The Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11, and 70 equals 85 – which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and exploded on April 13. All elaborated after the explosion.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Some Kabbalistic Jews go so far as to attach meaning to the spacing between words.
A favorite evangelistic tactic is to prophesize the end of the world. The message is simple: Believe what my religion says, or be doomed in a coming apocalypse. That message certainly caught my attention at one time. If the end was coming, I wanted my family and me on the boat. It led me through all sorts of hermeneutical exercises cross-referencing passages all over the Bible to verify the date Bible scholars said was certain.
We are vulnerable to a doomsday message because people throughout time have thought that the world revolves around them and that they and their special generation have been singled out. It is human to think that our time is the best of times and the worst of times.
Consider the words from an Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C. (notice that's BC): "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
Writers of holy books were like all other people and were dramatically influenced by the political events of their times, surrounding religious beliefs, and natural disasters thought to be acts of their gods.
At the very time that Christian Biblical stories were being composed, Pompeii and its sister Roman city, Herculaneum, were turned to ashes by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (79 CE). A memory was embedded that echoed through centuries. It and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE created the language and metaphors for Biblical eschatology (final prophetic events) that have inspired prophetic doom for the past 2000 years.
When Vesuvius erupted, an estimated 4,000 feet of the 8,000-foot mountain exploded into the sky and across land and sea. The sun darkened as far away as Rome. But people closer to ground zero were blinded. When they attempted a breath, they inhaled volcanic cinders that were more than a thousand degrees. The pyroclastic flow was so fast and lethal that it would disintegrate a person before nerves could transmit to the brain that anything was even happening.
Food and water were decimated. Disease became rampant. The volcano's impact on life and survival created a memory that burnt into minds for centuries.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "world," to the Italians, was Rome and its provinces. For Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Vesuvian cataclysm was interpreted as an act of gods to end the world.
The Vesuvian end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. provided fodder for religious stories. It was not enough to simply experience or observe such events. The survivors perceived deeper meaning and a cause other than blind nature.
Dio Cassius, some 130 years after the eruption, wrote in his History of Rome:
". . . giants (black volcanic dust clouds) appeared, now, on the mountain, now in the surrounding country, and again in the cities, wandering over the Earth day and night, and also flitting through the air . . . day was turned into night and light into darkness . . . a sound of trumpets was heard . . . others believed the whole universe was being resolved into chaos and fire . . . it destroyed all fish and birds . . . believed the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the Earth, and the Earth was being lifted into the sky . . . a terrible pestilence upon them."
Out of the mix of the Vesuvius disaster, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the desire for an end to Roman persecution, the apocalyptic narrative in the New Testament was created.
Dio's account of the Vesuvius eruption contains language practically identical to the Bible's apocalyptic verses written at a similar time:
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened . . . and lightning will come out of the east and shine even into the west . . . the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give light, and the stars shall fall from heaven . . . and great earthquakes, and famines and pestilences and fearful sights and great signs will there be from heaven – the sea and the waves roaring and men's hearts filling with fear . . . the angel took the censer and filled it with fire and cast it to Earth and there were voices, thunderings, lightnings and earthquakes . . . followed hail mingled with fire and blood . . . and a third of the trees were burnt up. And the second angel sounded and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became blood and a third of the creatures in the sea died . . . and he opened the bottomless pit and there arose smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened . . . and I saw the three horses of the apocalypse and these three were the third part of the men killed by the smoke and brimstone." (Revelation)
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings. Anti-typical, modern-day, end-of-our-world meaning is attached to those ancient words with author attribution given to the Creator of the universe.
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings.
For example, the Bible says the end was supposed to happen way back in the first century.
Matt 24:34 – "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened"
Matt 16:28 – "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
Matt 10:23 – "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes".
Rev 3:11 – "I am coming soon"
Rev 22:7 – "Look, I am coming soon!"
Rev 22:12 – "Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done"
Rev 22:20 – "He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon.""
End-time musings by apocalyptic religionists can fuel unspeakable hatred. If we become convinced that the end is imminent, that our group has been singled out as superior to all others by the authority of god and our special belief, and that our actions can hasten the end and speed us to our great reward (such as stature in heaven or a bounty of virgins), then almost any atrocity can be justified. Millions have been butchered in holy wars fomented by holy book end-time prophesies.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spent millions renovating Tehran in preparation for the imminent return of the Mahdi, a ninth-century figure who will emerge from a well, partner with Jesus, and violently convert the world to Islam.
At the same time, messianic Jews are trying to get the cornerstones for a new temple in place to be ready for the coming of their Messiah and the end to Islam. Clyde Lott, a Mississippi preacher, is attempting to breed blemish-free red heifers (red hairs only) for export to Jerusalem. The Bible says (Numbers 19:2-10) their sacrifice and ashes are necessary to purify the Jews to build the temple. Muslims specify a yellow heifer.
For many Bible believers, the end times started clicking on May 15, 1948, when the United Nations recognized Israel. So, there is no time to spare in making prophecy fit world events. Every disaster, every conflict in the world gladdens a prophet of doom somewhere.
End-of-the-world religious predictions fuel fear, false hope, and satisfy our it's-all-about-me obsession. They serve to keep a lot of people industriously calculating dates and watching the newspapers hoping they read more and more like the events presaging Revelation's Armageddon, or Islam's coming of al-Mahdi and "The Hour." Almost fifty percent of the population believes their god will bring an end to the world within the next fifty years, rewarding the believers and slaughtering the unbelievers.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If there is a divine plan that the Creator wants us to know, and it includes the end of the world, why would it be made a mystery? Certainly, if there is honesty, justice, and truth (which there is), all of us should have equal access. We should not be faced with the impossible task of trying to find out which modern or ancient "prophet" (among the tens of thousands) has the right prediction.
Holiness, purity, grace, or ethics have nothing to do with making presumptuous predictions in the name of the Creator of the universe. Life is about getting out there and doing and being good, not attempting to discern ancient manuscripts to calculate end-time prophecies.
Perhaps the healthiest perspective is to not worry about the end of the world today when it is already tomorrow at the other end of the world.
Resources for further study:
Colavito, M., The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind-Mind Split. New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
Doland, P., Another Case Not Made, A Critique of Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator' (2005). 23 Jun 2008. 🔗infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/creator.html.
Festinger, Leon, et al., When Prophecy Fails, a study of cognitive dissonance in those who believe in Prophecy.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pellegrino, C., Ghosts of Vesuvius. New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Rapture Ready. 🔗raptureready.com.
Religious Tolerance. 🔗religioustolerance.org.
Prophesy not unique: See Clairvoyance/Premonition under chapter 35 resources.
Barker, J. C., Premonitions of the Aberfan Disaster. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 55 (1967), 189-237.
Behe, G., Titanic, Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy. Wellingborough, Patrick Stephens, 1988.
Bem, Dr. Daryl, 🔗news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-brains-ability-see-future; 🔗skeptiko.com/daryl-bem-responds-to-parapsychology-debunkers.
Boundary Institute. Premonitions of 9/11. 1 Feb 2008. 🔗boundaryinstitute.org/premon911.htm.
Brennan, J. H., Time Travel. St. Paul, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.
Cayce, Edgar, 🔗edgarcayce.org/the-readings/ancient-mysteries/seven-prophecies-that-came-true.
Cox, W. E., Precognition, An Analysis, II. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50 (1956), 99-109.
🔗discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time.
Dossey, Larry, MD, The Science of Premonitions.
Dunne, B. J., et al., Precognitive Remote Perception. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (Report), Aug 1983.
Feeling the Future, A Meta-analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events. [Under Editorial Review]. 🔗dbem.org/FF Meta-analysis 6.2.pdf; Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. 🔗dbem.org/FeelingFuture.pdf.
🔗hogueProphecy.com.
Honorton, C., et al., Future-telling, A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments. Journal of Parapsychology, 53 (1989), 281-209.
Mossbridge, Julie, Ph.D., The Premonition Code, The Science of Precognition. noetic.org.
Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data? A response to Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas (2011). 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoWagenmakers.pdf.
One Mind, How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters (Explains why premonition and other seemingly extraordinary abilities are actually ordinary in the underlying reality.)
Paquette, Andy, Dreamer, 20 years of psychic dreams and how they changed my life. 🔗popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/book-excerpt-there-no-such-thing-time.
Response to Alcock's "Back from the Future, Comments on Bem." 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoAlcock.pdf.
Rosenblatt, Marty, Physicist, 🔗appliedprecog.com.
Saltmarsh, H., The Future and Beyond, Paranormal Foreknowledge and Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, 2003.
Schmeidler, G., An Experiment in Precognitive Clairvoyance, Part I, The Main Results and Part 2, The Reliability of The Scores. Journal of Parapsychology, 28 (1964), 1-27.
Snow, C. B., Mass Dreams of the Future. Sedona, Deep Forest Press, 1989.
Stratton, J. A., Electromagnetic Theory. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1941.
Time travel, See resources below.
Townshend, C. H., Indisputable clairvoyance of M. Adolphe Didier. The Zoist, XI, Apr 1853, 75-78.
Townshend, C. H., Recent Clairvoyance of Alexis Didier. The Zoist, IX, Jan 1852, 402-411.
Universe is timeless, permitting access both ways. 🔗platonia.com/barbour_emergence_of_time.pdf.
This works if you confine yourself to limited information. However, in no case is there a documented example of people reading a holy book prophecy at a certain date, then taking action based upon it, then having it come true at a later date.
Even if a prophecy happens to predict accurately, that would not single a holy book out as being unique or divinely written. Quantum reality permits clairvoyance and there is substantial evidence, in real time, today, that people not claiming to be inspired by god can make accurate predictions (prophesies).
A remarkable example of this is the dreams of Dr. Andrew Paguette. For decades he has cataloged dreams at one date and then have the events of the dream happen at a later time. He has comprised a research dataset from dozens of dream journals containing over 15,000 dream records produced over a period of three decades. He makes no claim to being an agent of or inspired by the Creator or any religion.
But by the prophesy = Creator authorship standard, Dr. Paquette's prophesies would prove his records are of the Creator and therefore an addendum to the Bible.
Prophesy has allegedly also been discovered in ancient cultures predating the Bible. For example, the Dogon tribe in West Africa has lore dating to 3200 BC about a companion star to Sirius. They say it has a 50-year elliptical orbit, is super dense, and rotates on its axis. The star is called Sirius B. It's smaller than Earth, invisible to the naked eye, not discovered by astronomers until 1862, and not photographed until 1970. The Dogon also described a third Sirius star (C), not discovered until 1995 with .05 the mass of Sirius B. Many Dogon details are said to have been found in 400-year-old artifacts.
Long before Galileo invented the telescope, the Dogon are reported to have explained that Jupiter has four major moons, and Saturn has rings. Does this mean the Dogon are inspired by the Creator? Using Bible inspiration logic, that would have to be so. Yes, the Dogon lore is disputed by scientists. So too the Bible's lore. Such is the way of things made of men.
People can, after the fact, retrodict (find an event, then find something in the past that supposedly predicted it) and use this reverse engineering to show proofs of prophecy.
For example, the 911 Trade Center destruction has been shown to be predicted in Star Wars, and by reading certain texts upside down, diagonally, and backward. Consider how words and numbers can be used to show extraordinary things, whether or not they are found in a holy book: 9/11 is the date of the Trade Center terrorist attack and 911 is the emergency number; 9+1+1=11; 9-11(September 11) is the 254th day of the year, 2+5+4=11; After 9-11 there are one hundred and 11 days left in the year; The twin towers look like an 11; The first flight to hit the towers was 11; There were 92 people on board: 9+2=11; New York is the 11th state added to the union; New York City has 11 letters; The winning lottery number on that day was 911. All of this was elaborated after the event.
Such coincidences surrounding various events and written words provide fuel for endless conspiracy, prophetic, and inspirational theories.
The Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11, and 70 equals 85 – which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and exploded on April 13. All elaborated after the explosion.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Some Kabbalistic Jews go so far as to attach meaning to the spacing between words.
A favorite evangelistic tactic is to prophesize the end of the world. The message is simple: Believe what my religion says, or be doomed in a coming apocalypse. That message certainly caught my attention at one time. If the end was coming, I wanted my family and me on the boat. It led me through all sorts of hermeneutical exercises cross-referencing passages all over the Bible to verify the date Bible scholars said was certain.
We are vulnerable to a doomsday message because people throughout time have thought that the world revolves around them and that they and their special generation have been singled out. It is human to think that our time is the best of times and the worst of times.
Consider the words from an Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C. (notice that's BC): "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
Writers of holy books were like all other people and were dramatically influenced by the political events of their times, surrounding religious beliefs, and natural disasters thought to be acts of their gods.
At the very time that Christian Biblical stories were being composed, Pompeii and its sister Roman city, Herculaneum, were turned to ashes by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (79 CE). A memory was embedded that echoed through centuries. It and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE created the language and metaphors for Biblical eschatology (final prophetic events) that have inspired prophetic doom for the past 2000 years.
When Vesuvius erupted, an estimated 4,000 feet of the 8,000-foot mountain exploded into the sky and across land and sea. The sun darkened as far away as Rome. But people closer to ground zero were blinded. When they attempted a breath, they inhaled volcanic cinders that were more than a thousand degrees. The pyroclastic flow was so fast and lethal that it would disintegrate a person before nerves could transmit to the brain that anything was even happening.
Food and water were decimated. Disease became rampant. The volcano's impact on life and survival created a memory that burnt into minds for centuries.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "world," to the Italians, was Rome and its provinces. For Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Vesuvian cataclysm was interpreted as an act of gods to end the world.
The Vesuvian end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. provided fodder for religious stories. It was not enough to simply experience or observe such events. The survivors perceived deeper meaning and a cause other than blind nature.
Dio Cassius, some 130 years after the eruption, wrote in his History of Rome:
". . . giants (black volcanic dust clouds) appeared, now, on the mountain, now in the surrounding country, and again in the cities, wandering over the Earth day and night, and also flitting through the air . . . day was turned into night and light into darkness . . . a sound of trumpets was heard . . . others believed the whole universe was being resolved into chaos and fire . . . it destroyed all fish and birds . . . believed the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the Earth, and the Earth was being lifted into the sky . . . a terrible pestilence upon them."
Out of the mix of the Vesuvius disaster, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the desire for an end to Roman persecution, the apocalyptic narrative in the New Testament was created.
Dio's account of the Vesuvius eruption contains language practically identical to the Bible's apocalyptic verses written at a similar time:
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened . . . and lightning will come out of the east and shine even into the west . . . the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give light, and the stars shall fall from heaven . . . and great earthquakes, and famines and pestilences and fearful sights and great signs will there be from heaven – the sea and the waves roaring and men's hearts filling with fear . . . the angel took the censer and filled it with fire and cast it to Earth and there were voices, thunderings, lightnings and earthquakes . . . followed hail mingled with fire and blood . . . and a third of the trees were burnt up. And the second angel sounded and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and a third part of the sea became blood and a third of the creatures in the sea died . . . and he opened the bottomless pit and there arose smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened . . . and I saw the three horses of the apocalypse and these three were the third part of the men killed by the smoke and brimstone." (Revelation)
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings. Anti-typical, modern-day, end-of-our-world meaning is attached to those ancient words with author attribution given to the Creator of the universe.
Now, some 1700 years later, Bible readers ignore the political, religious, volcanic, and historical context of the writings.
For example, the Bible says the end was supposed to happen way back in the first century.
Matt 24:34 – "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened"
Matt 16:28 – "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
Matt 10:23 – "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes".
Rev 3:11 – "I am coming soon"
Rev 22:7 – "Look, I am coming soon!"
Rev 22:12 – "Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done"
Rev 22:20 – "He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon.""
End-time musings by apocalyptic religionists can fuel unspeakable hatred. If we become convinced that the end is imminent, that our group has been singled out as superior to all others by the authority of god and our special belief, and that our actions can hasten the end and speed us to our great reward (such as stature in heaven or a bounty of virgins), then almost any atrocity can be justified. Millions have been butchered in holy wars fomented by holy book end-time prophesies.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spent millions renovating Tehran in preparation for the imminent return of the Mahdi, a ninth-century figure who will emerge from a well, partner with Jesus, and violently convert the world to Islam.
At the same time, messianic Jews are trying to get the cornerstones for a new temple in place to be ready for the coming of their Messiah and the end to Islam. Clyde Lott, a Mississippi preacher, is attempting to breed blemish-free red heifers (red hairs only) for export to Jerusalem. The Bible says (Numbers 19:2-10) their sacrifice and ashes are necessary to purify the Jews to build the temple. Muslims specify a yellow heifer.
For many Bible believers, the end times started clicking on May 15, 1948, when the United Nations recognized Israel. So, there is no time to spare in making prophecy fit world events. Every disaster, every conflict in the world gladdens a prophet of doom somewhere.
End-of-the-world religious predictions fuel fear, false hope, and satisfy our it's-all-about-me obsession. They serve to keep a lot of people industriously calculating dates and watching the newspapers hoping they read more and more like the events presaging Revelation's Armageddon, or Islam's coming of al-Mahdi and "The Hour." Almost fifty percent of the population believes their god will bring an end to the world within the next fifty years, rewarding the believers and slaughtering the unbelievers.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If there is a divine plan that the Creator wants us to know, and it includes the end of the world, why would it be made a mystery? Certainly, if there is honesty, justice, and truth (which there is), all of us should have equal access. We should not be faced with the impossible task of trying to find out which modern or ancient "prophet" (among the tens of thousands) has the right prediction.
Holiness, purity, grace, or ethics have nothing to do with making presumptuous predictions in the name of the Creator of the universe. Life is about getting out there and doing and being good, not attempting to discern ancient manuscripts to calculate end-time prophecies.
Perhaps the healthiest perspective is to not worry about the end of the world today when it is already tomorrow at the other end of the world.
Resources for further study:
Colavito, M., The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind-Mind Split. New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
Doland, P., Another Case Not Made, A Critique of Lee Strobel's "The Case for a Creator' (2005). 23 Jun 2008. 🔗infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/creator.html.
Festinger, Leon, et al., When Prophecy Fails, a study of cognitive dissonance in those who believe in Prophecy.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pellegrino, C., Ghosts of Vesuvius. New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Rapture Ready. 🔗raptureready.com.
Religious Tolerance. 🔗religioustolerance.org.
Prophesy not unique: See Clairvoyance/Premonition under chapter 35 resources.
Barker, J. C., Premonitions of the Aberfan Disaster. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 55 (1967), 189-237.
Behe, G., Titanic, Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy. Wellingborough, Patrick Stephens, 1988.
Bem, Dr. Daryl, 🔗news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-brains-ability-see-future; 🔗skeptiko.com/daryl-bem-responds-to-parapsychology-debunkers.
Boundary Institute. Premonitions of 9/11. 1 Feb 2008. 🔗boundaryinstitute.org/premon911.htm.
Brennan, J. H., Time Travel. St. Paul, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.
Cayce, Edgar, 🔗edgarcayce.org/the-readings/ancient-mysteries/seven-prophecies-that-came-true.
Cox, W. E., Precognition, An Analysis, II. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50 (1956), 99-109.
🔗discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time.
Dossey, Larry, MD, The Science of Premonitions.
Dunne, B. J., et al., Precognitive Remote Perception. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (Report), Aug 1983.
Feeling the Future, A Meta-analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events. [Under Editorial Review]. 🔗dbem.org/FF Meta-analysis 6.2.pdf; Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. 🔗dbem.org/FeelingFuture.pdf.
🔗hogueProphecy.com.
Honorton, C., et al., Future-telling, A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments. Journal of Parapsychology, 53 (1989), 281-209.
Mossbridge, Julie, Ph.D., The Premonition Code, The Science of Precognition. noetic.org.
Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data? A response to Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas (2011). 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoWagenmakers.pdf.
One Mind, How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters (Explains why premonition and other seemingly extraordinary abilities are actually ordinary in the underlying reality.)
Paquette, Andy, Dreamer, 20 years of psychic dreams and how they changed my life. 🔗popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/book-excerpt-there-no-such-thing-time.
Response to Alcock's "Back from the Future, Comments on Bem." 🔗dbem.org/ResponsetoAlcock.pdf.
Rosenblatt, Marty, Physicist, 🔗appliedprecog.com.
Saltmarsh, H., The Future and Beyond, Paranormal Foreknowledge and Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, 2003.
Schmeidler, G., An Experiment in Precognitive Clairvoyance, Part I, The Main Results and Part 2, The Reliability of The Scores. Journal of Parapsychology, 28 (1964), 1-27.
Snow, C. B., Mass Dreams of the Future. Sedona, Deep Forest Press, 1989.
Stratton, J. A., Electromagnetic Theory. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1941.
Time travel, See resources below.
Townshend, C. H., Indisputable clairvoyance of M. Adolphe Didier. The Zoist, XI, Apr 1853, 75-78.
Townshend, C. H., Recent Clairvoyance of Alexis Didier. The Zoist, IX, Jan 1852, 402-411.
Universe is timeless, permitting access both ways. 🔗platonia.com/barbour_emergence_of_time.pdf.
8. Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?
WYSONG: Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?:
Given that nobody likes to have their sure religious beliefs overturned, defenses against challenge are usually ready and waiting. Although faith, not reason, is the mainstay of religious defense, reason is attempted at every opportunity. Using all the presuppositions inherent in the Bible-based religion I attached to, I became pretty good at defending my beliefs and, sadly, convincing others. That is until I opened my mind. Then, the full array of facts and unbridled reason made my clever arguments seem silly. I had fallen victim to confirmation bias, that is, entertaining only those facts and ideas which comported with my preexisting beliefs.
Here are some of the defensive arguments I used when a believer and my opponent has used in this debate.
Prophesy
Bible prophesy as proof of Creator authorship is defeated by the thousands of fulfilled predictions/prophesies by people who have nothing to do with the Bible. (See Part 7).
The Waiting for "New Light" Argument
To those who, in effect, worship a holy book, contradictions, conflicts with ethics, injustice, absurdities, and obscure passages are attributed to "spiritual blindness." "Divine mysteries" veiled in the mysterious sacred words must wait for "new light" to be shed through special anointed human religious agents.
However, the ever-present prospect of "new light" effectively inoculates holy books against any possible disproof. Making a holy book unfalsifiable also makes it unverifiable.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "Out of Date" Argument
The previous parts of this debate outlining how the Bible conflicts with reason, facts, consistency, and ethics create a terrible dilemma for believers. In defense, they (and I for a time) say the "Old Testament law" is out of date and replaced by the "new law" of Jesus and Paul. (Romans 10; 2; Corinthians 3) Those guys of the past, well, you know, boys will be boys. (Similarly, Islamic scholars solve such problems in their holy book by what they call abrogation, meaning the more recent texts trump the older ones. Jihadists disagree.)
The Bible Itself, however, says all of it must be embraced and specifically forbids selective cherry-picking. The New Testament refers to the Hebrew (old) books and says: "All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." (2Timothy 3:16) "You received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God." (1Thessalonians 2:13).
Everything in the Bible is to be exactly obeyed upon penalty of death or worse: "See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it." (Deuteronomy 12:32; also note: Joshua 1:8; Isaiah 40:8: Leviticus 19:37, Matthew 5:17; Luke 16:17; John 7:23; 10:17-19,35; 1Corinthians 4:6; Hebrews 11; 1Peter 1:20,21). "The word of our God stands forever" (Isaiah 40:8); "The scripture cannot be broken." (John 10:35; see also Hebrews 11:1-39; Matthew 5:17)
The Allegory, Metaphor, Symbolism, and Context Argument
As I look back, I was able to set aside virtually every criticism of the Bible because I had allowed myself to be convinced by superficial proofs that it was inerrant. Once you do that you're bulletproof.
For example, the literal meaning of words is taken until there is a conflict with fact, science, or other words in the book. Then the interpretation is groomed with arguments about symbolism and context to make the problem disappear. It's like making a doctrinal smoothie—a little of this, a little of that, a lot of the most delicious, and something to mask the bitter taste of contradictions and nonsense.
All words permit multiple meanings, particularly when parsing ancient languages. This can result in obvious virtue (like not slaughtering unbelievers) being a crime, and obvious crime (like stoning to death a disobedient son, offering a daughter to be raped, etc.) being a virtue.
But this means the Bible has no certainty or ethical standard. And certainty, unlike human-created words, is what the Creator is, as evidenced by the natural laws governing us and the universe.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The Religious Experience Argument
Many believe their religion is affirmed by the feeling of holiness and connection to god when reading their holy book, the joy of conversion, the results of prayer, or being transformed from a wayward life when "born again." Such feelings, and then any benefit that coincidentally may come to life, are considered all the proof needed that holy providence is at play.
But feel-good personal experiences are not a compelling reason for committed religious belief. After all, people can experience transformation by getting a new job, being in love, having children, or having quarters gush out of a slot machine. Some never feel closer to god than when their children martyr themselves blowing themselves up in a shopping mall, guaranteeing the family a certain seat in heaven and a paycheck from sponsors of terrorism.
If you feel good, saved, excited, or fulfilled, that's true to you. But it has nothing to do with the rest of reality—where the real world and Creator of the universe reside.
Arguments from Authority, Name Dropping, and History
Many believers cite religious authorities as proof. There are religious scholars, departments in universities, and countless books that defend human-made religions. Famous people, scientists, Ph.D.'s, and rulers can be quoted who espouse belief. Then there are thousands of years of religious history, Cathedrals, traditions, beautiful music, and community. The Bible is the best-selling book in history, with over five billion sold and distributed. The Koran has sold about 800 million.
⌕ Click to enlarge
But, of course, none of that proves anything other than the ability of humans to create ideas and institutions that other humans follow. Truth, on the other hand, is revealed by reason, evidence, natural law, experience, and conscience which have nothing to do with following other people's ideas or commands as set forth in the Bible.
Resources for further research:
Agards Bible Timeline. 18 Jun 2008. 🔗agards-bible-timeline.com.
Bageant, J., What the Left Behind Series Really Means. News Intelligence Analysis. 13 Dec 2005.
Halsell, G., Prophecy and Politics. Village Voice, 18 May 2004.
Given that nobody likes to have their sure religious beliefs overturned, defenses against challenge are usually ready and waiting. Although faith, not reason, is the mainstay of religious defense, reason is attempted at every opportunity. Using all the presuppositions inherent in the Bible-based religion I attached to, I became pretty good at defending my beliefs and, sadly, convincing others. That is until I opened my mind. Then, the full array of facts and unbridled reason made my clever arguments seem silly. I had fallen victim to confirmation bias, that is, entertaining only those facts and ideas which comported with my preexisting beliefs.
Here are some of the defensive arguments I used when a believer and my opponent has used in this debate.
Prophesy
Bible prophesy as proof of Creator authorship is defeated by the thousands of fulfilled predictions/prophesies by people who have nothing to do with the Bible. (See Part 7).
The Waiting for "New Light" Argument
To those who, in effect, worship a holy book, contradictions, conflicts with ethics, injustice, absurdities, and obscure passages are attributed to "spiritual blindness." "Divine mysteries" veiled in the mysterious sacred words must wait for "new light" to be shed through special anointed human religious agents.
However, the ever-present prospect of "new light" effectively inoculates holy books against any possible disproof. Making a holy book unfalsifiable also makes it unverifiable.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The "Out of Date" Argument
The previous parts of this debate outlining how the Bible conflicts with reason, facts, consistency, and ethics create a terrible dilemma for believers. In defense, they (and I for a time) say the "Old Testament law" is out of date and replaced by the "new law" of Jesus and Paul. (Romans 10; 2; Corinthians 3) Those guys of the past, well, you know, boys will be boys. (Similarly, Islamic scholars solve such problems in their holy book by what they call abrogation, meaning the more recent texts trump the older ones. Jihadists disagree.)
The Bible Itself, however, says all of it must be embraced and specifically forbids selective cherry-picking. The New Testament refers to the Hebrew (old) books and says: "All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." (2Timothy 3:16) "You received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God." (1Thessalonians 2:13).
Everything in the Bible is to be exactly obeyed upon penalty of death or worse: "See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it." (Deuteronomy 12:32; also note: Joshua 1:8; Isaiah 40:8: Leviticus 19:37, Matthew 5:17; Luke 16:17; John 7:23; 10:17-19,35; 1Corinthians 4:6; Hebrews 11; 1Peter 1:20,21). "The word of our God stands forever" (Isaiah 40:8); "The scripture cannot be broken." (John 10:35; see also Hebrews 11:1-39; Matthew 5:17)
The Allegory, Metaphor, Symbolism, and Context Argument
As I look back, I was able to set aside virtually every criticism of the Bible because I had allowed myself to be convinced by superficial proofs that it was inerrant. Once you do that you're bulletproof.
For example, the literal meaning of words is taken until there is a conflict with fact, science, or other words in the book. Then the interpretation is groomed with arguments about symbolism and context to make the problem disappear. It's like making a doctrinal smoothie—a little of this, a little of that, a lot of the most delicious, and something to mask the bitter taste of contradictions and nonsense.
All words permit multiple meanings, particularly when parsing ancient languages. This can result in obvious virtue (like not slaughtering unbelievers) being a crime, and obvious crime (like stoning to death a disobedient son, offering a daughter to be raped, etc.) being a virtue.
But this means the Bible has no certainty or ethical standard. And certainty, unlike human-created words, is what the Creator is, as evidenced by the natural laws governing us and the universe.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The Religious Experience Argument
Many believe their religion is affirmed by the feeling of holiness and connection to god when reading their holy book, the joy of conversion, the results of prayer, or being transformed from a wayward life when "born again." Such feelings, and then any benefit that coincidentally may come to life, are considered all the proof needed that holy providence is at play.
But feel-good personal experiences are not a compelling reason for committed religious belief. After all, people can experience transformation by getting a new job, being in love, having children, or having quarters gush out of a slot machine. Some never feel closer to god than when their children martyr themselves blowing themselves up in a shopping mall, guaranteeing the family a certain seat in heaven and a paycheck from sponsors of terrorism.
If you feel good, saved, excited, or fulfilled, that's true to you. But it has nothing to do with the rest of reality—where the real world and Creator of the universe reside.
Arguments from Authority, Name Dropping, and History
Many believers cite religious authorities as proof. There are religious scholars, departments in universities, and countless books that defend human-made religions. Famous people, scientists, Ph.D.'s, and rulers can be quoted who espouse belief. Then there are thousands of years of religious history, Cathedrals, traditions, beautiful music, and community. The Bible is the best-selling book in history, with over five billion sold and distributed. The Koran has sold about 800 million.
⌕ Click to enlarge
But, of course, none of that proves anything other than the ability of humans to create ideas and institutions that other humans follow. Truth, on the other hand, is revealed by reason, evidence, natural law, experience, and conscience which have nothing to do with following other people's ideas or commands as set forth in the Bible.
Resources for further research:
Agards Bible Timeline. 18 Jun 2008. 🔗agards-bible-timeline.com.
Bageant, J., What the Left Behind Series Really Means. News Intelligence Analysis. 13 Dec 2005.
Halsell, G., Prophecy and Politics. Village Voice, 18 May 2004.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Is there a rational defense for the claim that the Bible is from the Creator?:
. . . in progress . . .
. . . in progress . . .
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
9. Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?
WYSONG: Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?:
Most religious believers, unlike Dustin Nemos, don't bother with the nitty-gritty details and work required to argue their beliefs intelligently. Instead, they claim faith, which, by definition, requires no defense. Even highly intelligent people working in the sciences and applied fields where strict proof and evidence are required will proudly proclaim religious faith. (While, if they are theistic evolutionists, denying that faith has anything to do with evolution.)
Using faith as a reason to believe is like saying I can believe in any stupid thing I want and that's as legitimate as the laws of geometry or the wrongness of murder.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If we are ever to have a chance at a better world, we must agree that it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Faith without fact is unreasonable. (Hell is best described as a world without reason.) Far better it would be if we simply said we don't know when we don't.
Thomas Jefferson admonished: "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong . . . you must recur to the pretensions of the (Bible) writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature."
During my Bible-believing days I tried to apply reason as best I could and cited scriptures in support, such as: ". . . do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions . . ." (1John 4:1) Also: "always be ready to make a defense before everyone . . ." (1Peter 3:15; see also Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2; 1Thessalonians 5:21) My opponents could, of course, site completely contradictory passages hailing the virtues of blind faith: "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1; etc.)
Well into the nineteenth-century, American citizens could be jailed for the blasphemy of Bible criticism. The famous evangelist, Spurgeon, summed up the obligation of the dutiful flock by saying, "If the whole of all evil and wickedness were rolled up into one gigantic black ball of corruption it would be less than the sin of unbelief." To this day there remains a lingering paranoia about being critical of holy books and religions.
Belief in belief has the bonus of being politically correct. Somehow, the mere proclamation, "I believe and have faith . . ." is supposed to garner respect and end any dispute. Everything is open to question, just not faith.
But forgotten in this zeal to protect and justify faith is the fact that it is belief that starts the evil. The body merely repeats the impressions that have been made upon it by the mind's beliefs.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Faith and Belief in Search of Facts
Although holy book believers will proudly proclaim their faith-based belief, wearing it as an unchallengeable badge of honor, they inwardly crave facts and evidence to counter criticism and quiet their own suppressed doubts. That's why so much current energy and hope is invested in holy book archeology and scientific creationism.
It's a human failing, called confirmation bias, that we consider and remember evidence that is consistent with our beliefs and ignore evidence that might disconfirm them. It's like looking at a crowd and picking out only our friends.
Consider how reason has been used by Bible believers to chase belief about the shape of the Earth. Isaiah (written about 600-700 B.C.) speaks of the "circle" of the Earth (Isaiah 40:22). That is taken as proof of Bible inspiration since the Earth was not supposedly proven to be a circle until it was circumnavigated in the sixteenth century. But even that Bible proof is wrong since the Earth is supposedly an oblate speroid.
Although the interpretation of that scripture is now taken to be obvious, the round Earth interpretation only came after the sixteenth-century discovery. This is true to form since never do holy books forecast a scientific discovery. Rather, verses are found post hoc—after a scientific discovery— to make the holy book seem like it was accurate science all along, but we were just too sinful or spiritually dumb to get it.
In fact, prior to the supposed discovery of a round Earth and long after Isaiah was written, Bible texts were used to persecute anyone who did not believe the Earth was flat, a disc, had corners, was geometrical, stationary, floated on water, rested on foundations, and, like the Jewish Tabernacle, was the center of the universe.
Moreover, consider that in the above Isaiah 40 verse, the Hebrew word for circle is hwg (chûgh). This is a different word than the Hebrew word for ball or sphere, which is duwr, as used in Isaiah 22:18 (not referring to the shape of the Earth).
It would, therefore, seem that in Isaiah 40 the circle referred to is like a disc that can be seen by standing in an area where one can look to the horizon without obstruction for 360 degrees. As one turns in a circle to view the horizon, there appears to be a perfect circle.
This corresponds to other verses implying that the Earth is a circular disc. For example, in Revelation 1:7 Jesus is said to be coming on a cloud and that "every eye will see him," which, of course, would not be possible for the people on the other side of a round Earth.
During the Dark Ages when the clergy used the Bible to wield absolute power and dictate finality on all matters, the idea of a flat Earth was law. Even today, a twentieth-century Bible-based religion, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, fervently holds to a flat Earth cosmology and cites numerous scriptures as proof. (Job 38:12-14; Matthew 4:1-12; Daniel 4: 10,11; etc.) Samuel Rowbotham, a modern-day flat-Earther cites 76 different Bible verses that deny a round Earth.
Even if the Bible taught a spherical Earth, or, more accurately an oblate speroid, that would not be a reason to attribute the book to the Creator. Belief in a round Earth predates the Bible by thousands of years. It was an inference from observation by ancients like Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy observing how the stars and moon circled the Earth, the outline of the Earth on the moon during the lunar cycle, and the disappearance and reappearance of ships on the horizon.
For some Bible believers, however, the Earth remained flat. Only with the explorations of Columbus and Magellan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the round Earth given religious standing.
Moreover, it was even pronounced that questions about the exact nature of the heavens were wasted effort since the Bible said there was going to be a "new heavens and new Earth." In the meantime, St. Philastrius pronounced that it was heresy not to believe that god hung the stars in the sky each evening and took them down in the morning.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Galileo, persecuted for claiming the Earth orbited the sun, rather than vice versa, was not absolved by the Catholic Church until 1992. And even today, defenders of the Bible's geocentric view are putting forth selective facts and arguments that the Earth is the focal point of the entire universe. (see: theprinciplemovie.com)
(In fact, the truth about cosmology is not determined by religion. It's made apparent by facts, reason, and natural law. That analysis clearly shows the falsity of the current evolutionary-materialistic model: A big bang of nothing created an infinite meaningless universe containing atomic dust that gravitationally accreted into heavenly bodies including our Earthball moving in several different directions at 2.8 million mph and holding an atmosphere next to the vacuum of space while spontaneously forming life from primeval sludge that then evolved into complicated rocks called humans with no free will. How this is scientifically refuted is found here: https://www.asifthinkingmatters.com/blog/category/lies-as-big-as-the-universe)
To explain contradictions between the Bible and facts, people of faith say those who read the Bible and believed in a flat and geocentric Earth, and stars hung each evening, just didn't know how to read the text correctly. One gets the sneaking suspicion, however, if discovery had revealed that the Earth was flat and supported by pillars, that the "circle" scripture would be read to mean other than sphere, and the "foundation" scriptures would be heralded as proof of the Bible's science.
Faith is like a talisman that can change any contrary word or fact into support.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The Source of Faith and Belief
Faith and belief are so handy because they are immune to disproof. By definition, faith and belief do not need to be tied to reality, and reality is the only thing that can disprove anything.
We hate the confusion and heavy lifting of self-responsibility, foresight-driven thinking, reflecting upon what is within, sorting through evidence, evaluating all options, and making decisions for ourselves. We hate doubt and like the ease of being told what to do to be safe now and in the hereafter. We want, like fast food, answers in an easy-open package. A book, a material idol that materializes (anthropomorphizes) the Creator, and religion experts to explain what the rules of the biggest dad of all are, fills the bill.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Truth is Anti-Faith and Anti-Belief
Accountants, lawyers, factory workers, taxi drivers, carpenters, doctors, moms, dads, and kids use facts and reason in going about daily life and business. We unscrew caps counter-clockwise, place food in the mouth and not the ears, add and subtract in checkbooks, don't walk into traffic, and push the brakes when we want to stop. What is it that comes over us such that once the topic of religion is brought up a lever is switched in the brain so that rational discourse ends, logical action stops, eyes glaze over, ears seal off, and the mouth spews only unctuous pre-learned incantations?
⌕ Click to enlarge
No, faith and belief are not badges of honor. Any belief not honestly derived, as well as being constantly available for dismissal by open inquiry, is one long sin.
Life is supposed to be an adaptable, dynamic process. Not a living death where we select a belief state (always put forth by authority figures) to shelter us from the tides of inquiry and criticism. Bertrand Russell said, "Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found."
Contrary to faith, things of the Creator are clear, obvious, and unerring. Faith, on the other hand, is the uncoupling of our brains and conscience from the regularity and reality of the world. In other words, faith is credulity.
As such, faith in the Bible is opposed to the Creator, the epitome of reason and truth. Embracing it is therefore heresy. It is in opposition to the very Creator people think they are confirming.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Resources for further study:
Dawkins, R., The God Delusion. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Ehrman, B. D., Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Ehrman, B., Lost Christianities. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Flemings, H., A Philosophical Scientific and Theological Defense for the Notion that a God Exists. Lanham, University Press of America, 2003.
Harris, S., The End of Faith, Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2004.
Harris, S., The End of Faith, Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2004.
Harris, S., The End of Faith. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2004.
Leidloff, J., The Continuum Concept. Reading, Addison Wesley Press, 1977.
Osman, A., Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs, The Essene Revelations on the Historical Jesus. Rochester, Bear & Company, 1992.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pearce, J., The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit, A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2007.
Schadewald, R. J., The Flat-Earth Bible. Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society, 44 (1987).
Schneider, R. J., Does the Bible teach a spherical earth? Berea college, ASA3 org; from PSCF 53 (Sep 2001), 159-169.
Spencer, R., The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington, D. C., Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2005.
Teeple, H., How Did Christianity Really Begin? Evanston, Religion and Ethics Institute, 1992.
Vining, M., Jesus the Wicked Priest, How Christianity Was Born of An Essene Schism. Rochester, Bear & Company, 2008.
Wolff, R., Original Wisdom. Rochester, Inner Traditions, 2001.
Wysong, R. L., Living Life As If Thinking Matters. Midland, Inquiry Press, 2008.
Most religious believers, unlike Dustin Nemos, don't bother with the nitty-gritty details and work required to argue their beliefs intelligently. Instead, they claim faith, which, by definition, requires no defense. Even highly intelligent people working in the sciences and applied fields where strict proof and evidence are required will proudly proclaim religious faith. (While, if they are theistic evolutionists, denying that faith has anything to do with evolution.)
Using faith as a reason to believe is like saying I can believe in any stupid thing I want and that's as legitimate as the laws of geometry or the wrongness of murder.
⌕ Click to enlarge
If we are ever to have a chance at a better world, we must agree that it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Faith without fact is unreasonable. (Hell is best described as a world without reason.) Far better it would be if we simply said we don't know when we don't.
Thomas Jefferson admonished: "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong . . . you must recur to the pretensions of the (Bible) writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature."
During my Bible-believing days I tried to apply reason as best I could and cited scriptures in support, such as: ". . . do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions . . ." (1John 4:1) Also: "always be ready to make a defense before everyone . . ." (1Peter 3:15; see also Proverbs 14:15; Romans 12:2; 1Thessalonians 5:21) My opponents could, of course, site completely contradictory passages hailing the virtues of blind faith: "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1; etc.)
Well into the nineteenth-century, American citizens could be jailed for the blasphemy of Bible criticism. The famous evangelist, Spurgeon, summed up the obligation of the dutiful flock by saying, "If the whole of all evil and wickedness were rolled up into one gigantic black ball of corruption it would be less than the sin of unbelief." To this day there remains a lingering paranoia about being critical of holy books and religions.
Belief in belief has the bonus of being politically correct. Somehow, the mere proclamation, "I believe and have faith . . ." is supposed to garner respect and end any dispute. Everything is open to question, just not faith.
But forgotten in this zeal to protect and justify faith is the fact that it is belief that starts the evil. The body merely repeats the impressions that have been made upon it by the mind's beliefs.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Faith and Belief in Search of Facts
Although holy book believers will proudly proclaim their faith-based belief, wearing it as an unchallengeable badge of honor, they inwardly crave facts and evidence to counter criticism and quiet their own suppressed doubts. That's why so much current energy and hope is invested in holy book archeology and scientific creationism.
It's a human failing, called confirmation bias, that we consider and remember evidence that is consistent with our beliefs and ignore evidence that might disconfirm them. It's like looking at a crowd and picking out only our friends.
Consider how reason has been used by Bible believers to chase belief about the shape of the Earth. Isaiah (written about 600-700 B.C.) speaks of the "circle" of the Earth (Isaiah 40:22). That is taken as proof of Bible inspiration since the Earth was not supposedly proven to be a circle until it was circumnavigated in the sixteenth century. But even that Bible proof is wrong since the Earth is supposedly an oblate speroid.
Although the interpretation of that scripture is now taken to be obvious, the round Earth interpretation only came after the sixteenth-century discovery. This is true to form since never do holy books forecast a scientific discovery. Rather, verses are found post hoc—after a scientific discovery— to make the holy book seem like it was accurate science all along, but we were just too sinful or spiritually dumb to get it.
In fact, prior to the supposed discovery of a round Earth and long after Isaiah was written, Bible texts were used to persecute anyone who did not believe the Earth was flat, a disc, had corners, was geometrical, stationary, floated on water, rested on foundations, and, like the Jewish Tabernacle, was the center of the universe.
Moreover, consider that in the above Isaiah 40 verse, the Hebrew word for circle is hwg (chûgh). This is a different word than the Hebrew word for ball or sphere, which is duwr, as used in Isaiah 22:18 (not referring to the shape of the Earth).
It would, therefore, seem that in Isaiah 40 the circle referred to is like a disc that can be seen by standing in an area where one can look to the horizon without obstruction for 360 degrees. As one turns in a circle to view the horizon, there appears to be a perfect circle.
This corresponds to other verses implying that the Earth is a circular disc. For example, in Revelation 1:7 Jesus is said to be coming on a cloud and that "every eye will see him," which, of course, would not be possible for the people on the other side of a round Earth.
During the Dark Ages when the clergy used the Bible to wield absolute power and dictate finality on all matters, the idea of a flat Earth was law. Even today, a twentieth-century Bible-based religion, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, fervently holds to a flat Earth cosmology and cites numerous scriptures as proof. (Job 38:12-14; Matthew 4:1-12; Daniel 4: 10,11; etc.) Samuel Rowbotham, a modern-day flat-Earther cites 76 different Bible verses that deny a round Earth.
Even if the Bible taught a spherical Earth, or, more accurately an oblate speroid, that would not be a reason to attribute the book to the Creator. Belief in a round Earth predates the Bible by thousands of years. It was an inference from observation by ancients like Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy observing how the stars and moon circled the Earth, the outline of the Earth on the moon during the lunar cycle, and the disappearance and reappearance of ships on the horizon.
For some Bible believers, however, the Earth remained flat. Only with the explorations of Columbus and Magellan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the round Earth given religious standing.
Moreover, it was even pronounced that questions about the exact nature of the heavens were wasted effort since the Bible said there was going to be a "new heavens and new Earth." In the meantime, St. Philastrius pronounced that it was heresy not to believe that god hung the stars in the sky each evening and took them down in the morning.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Galileo, persecuted for claiming the Earth orbited the sun, rather than vice versa, was not absolved by the Catholic Church until 1992. And even today, defenders of the Bible's geocentric view are putting forth selective facts and arguments that the Earth is the focal point of the entire universe. (see: theprinciplemovie.com)
(In fact, the truth about cosmology is not determined by religion. It's made apparent by facts, reason, and natural law. That analysis clearly shows the falsity of the current evolutionary-materialistic model: A big bang of nothing created an infinite meaningless universe containing atomic dust that gravitationally accreted into heavenly bodies including our Earthball moving in several different directions at 2.8 million mph and holding an atmosphere next to the vacuum of space while spontaneously forming life from primeval sludge that then evolved into complicated rocks called humans with no free will. How this is scientifically refuted is found here: https://www.asifthinkingmatters.com/blog/category/lies-as-big-as-the-universe)
To explain contradictions between the Bible and facts, people of faith say those who read the Bible and believed in a flat and geocentric Earth, and stars hung each evening, just didn't know how to read the text correctly. One gets the sneaking suspicion, however, if discovery had revealed that the Earth was flat and supported by pillars, that the "circle" scripture would be read to mean other than sphere, and the "foundation" scriptures would be heralded as proof of the Bible's science.
Faith is like a talisman that can change any contrary word or fact into support.
⌕ Click to enlarge
The Source of Faith and Belief
Faith and belief are so handy because they are immune to disproof. By definition, faith and belief do not need to be tied to reality, and reality is the only thing that can disprove anything.
We hate the confusion and heavy lifting of self-responsibility, foresight-driven thinking, reflecting upon what is within, sorting through evidence, evaluating all options, and making decisions for ourselves. We hate doubt and like the ease of being told what to do to be safe now and in the hereafter. We want, like fast food, answers in an easy-open package. A book, a material idol that materializes (anthropomorphizes) the Creator, and religion experts to explain what the rules of the biggest dad of all are, fills the bill.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Truth is Anti-Faith and Anti-Belief
Accountants, lawyers, factory workers, taxi drivers, carpenters, doctors, moms, dads, and kids use facts and reason in going about daily life and business. We unscrew caps counter-clockwise, place food in the mouth and not the ears, add and subtract in checkbooks, don't walk into traffic, and push the brakes when we want to stop. What is it that comes over us such that once the topic of religion is brought up a lever is switched in the brain so that rational discourse ends, logical action stops, eyes glaze over, ears seal off, and the mouth spews only unctuous pre-learned incantations?
⌕ Click to enlarge
No, faith and belief are not badges of honor. Any belief not honestly derived, as well as being constantly available for dismissal by open inquiry, is one long sin.
Life is supposed to be an adaptable, dynamic process. Not a living death where we select a belief state (always put forth by authority figures) to shelter us from the tides of inquiry and criticism. Bertrand Russell said, "Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found."
Contrary to faith, things of the Creator are clear, obvious, and unerring. Faith, on the other hand, is the uncoupling of our brains and conscience from the regularity and reality of the world. In other words, faith is credulity.
As such, faith in the Bible is opposed to the Creator, the epitome of reason and truth. Embracing it is therefore heresy. It is in opposition to the very Creator people think they are confirming.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Resources for further study:
Dawkins, R., The God Delusion. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Ehrman, B. D., Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Ehrman, B., Lost Christianities. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Flemings, H., A Philosophical Scientific and Theological Defense for the Notion that a God Exists. Lanham, University Press of America, 2003.
Harris, S., The End of Faith, Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2004.
Harris, S., The End of Faith, Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2004.
Harris, S., The End of Faith. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2004.
Leidloff, J., The Continuum Concept. Reading, Addison Wesley Press, 1977.
Osman, A., Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs, The Essene Revelations on the Historical Jesus. Rochester, Bear & Company, 1992.
Pearce, J., The Biology of Transcendence. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2002.
Pearce, J., The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit, A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart. Rochester, Park Street Press, 2007.
Schadewald, R. J., The Flat-Earth Bible. Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society, 44 (1987).
Schneider, R. J., Does the Bible teach a spherical earth? Berea college, ASA3 org; from PSCF 53 (Sep 2001), 159-169.
Spencer, R., The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington, D. C., Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2005.
Teeple, H., How Did Christianity Really Begin? Evanston, Religion and Ethics Institute, 1992.
Vining, M., Jesus the Wicked Priest, How Christianity Was Born of An Essene Schism. Rochester, Bear & Company, 2008.
Wolff, R., Original Wisdom. Rochester, Inner Traditions, 2001.
Wysong, R. L., Living Life As If Thinking Matters. Midland, Inquiry Press, 2008.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Is faith a reason to believe the Bible is from the Creator?:
. . . in progress . . .
. . . in progress . . .
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
10. Is the Bible the source of goodness?
WYSONG: Is the Bible the source of goodness?:
If any religionist is asked to describe an ethical precept that is unknown without their religion, they will be incapable of doing so. The only thing unique to religions are human-made stories, doctrines, rituals, and equating, murder, torture, animal cruelty and ritualistic sacrifice, maiming, genocide, racism, and ignorance with morality. (See Part 2)
Concerning the Bible, Adam and Eve had no such holy book, nor did Noah, Abraham, or any of the people mentioned there. People were not without ethical direction before Moses descended from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. Moreover, only three of the Ten Commandments—shalt not steal, kill, or lie—qualifies as ethics. But that doesn't single out the Bible as unique since no society has existed or could exist without these prohibitions.
Some of the Commandments are impossible to comply with, such as not coveting (desiring) things. That's condemning people for thoughts that pop into their heads. Other Commandments about the name of god, a sabbath, graven images(idols), and swearing, have nothing at all to do with ethics.
Other Bible rules also don't make sense if followed through. For example, "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mathew 22:39) would make functioning, even survival, impossible. Imagine trying to care about every aspect of all your neighbors' lives like you care about yours.
Spiritual movements and leaders such as Lao-tze, Zoroaster, Confucius, Hinayana, Zen Buddhism, Jainism, Shankara, Padmasambhava, Nagarjuna, Epictetus, and Longchenpa claim no Western-style god or inspired holy book, and yet represent highly moral systems. Even diehard atheists and agnostics feel an ethical pull.
The fact of the matter is that bad, as well as good people, emerge out of every religion and every society.
The poor farmer in a third-world country tied to the plow from sunup to sundown eking out a living for his family, and the primitive in the middle of the bush without any reading skills, must still be capable of discerning right from wrong.
And that is the case. The Senoi of the Malay jungle live a highly ethical and benevolent life where unconditional love is just a fact. The Yequana aborigines of the upper Cuara River basin in Venezuela demonstrate similar wisdom without compulsion. These remote people have no formal religions, codes, holy books, prophets, priests, or other such trappings.
Contrary to the refrain that religion is the source of goodness, throughout history, slitting throats, warring, and denial of basic human rights are the signatures of human-made holy book religions. Right today, Sunday schools teach children to celebrate in song the slaughter of non-Jews at Jericho, the annihilation of humans and creatures by a world flood, the killing of innocent first-born children, and to look forward to an Armageddon where everyone who does not believe as they do is slaughtered.
Go through the inspection at an airport to be reminded of the horrendous deeds perpetrated by human-made religions. The Qur'an can be read to make it moral to fly planes into office buildings, behead nonbelievers, kill women who are raped, marry nine-year-old little girls, cut the clitoris and labia off girls (circumcision/infibulation) and sew the vagina all but closed, only to be broken open on the wedding night.
The Bible justifies killing whole populations in unbelieving cities, brides who are not virgin, adulterers, those who take the Lord's name in vain, those who disobey a mother or father, and young boys who aren't circumcised— and done so "correctly" by a Jewish mohel biting the foreskin off so blood is let.
Slavery is a Bible practice. In large part, it's justified by Bible racism. The granddaddy of all racisms is Jews writing a Bible, claiming god wrote it, and then having that god say he chose them over all other races. (Nah, that wouldn't be coincidence, would it?) The "mark of Cain" and "Curse of Ham" are also Biblical justifications. Then there's the story of Noah and his family being the only people to survive the worldwide flood. They are thought to be white. Therefore, it's reasoned, black, yellow, and brown races must have been on board, but way back with the animals! (Yes, yes, I know there are passages contrary to slavery. But that makes the point that any form of morality can be derived from the Bible.)
Muslims and Hindus war in Pakistan and India. Jonestown cultists committed suicide following their Bible-thumping leader. Protestants and Catholics kill one another in the British-Irish conflict. Catholic priests (including modern day), supposedly obedient to the Biblical doctrine of celibacy, have sexually abused and scarred for life innumerable children. Meanwhile, the church hierarchy and many parishioners turn a blind eye. (See the documentary movie, The Spotlight.)
⌕ Click to enlarge
⌕ Click to enlarge
Other religions condemn these horrors, but the underlying cause is largely ignored: Islamists are simply acting on belief and faith in a holy book.
If today's Jews and Christians followed their holy books (as they have in the past and are commanded to by the books), they would be engaged in similar horrors.
True, many now put a liberal patina on holy books, but literate people without coaches read scriptural urgings that clearly encourage the killing of unbelievers and those who commit the sin of reason.
In other words, morality is not a reason to embrace religion, it's a reason to flee from it.
RELIGIONS ARE ETHICALLY TAMED BY SECULAR GOVERNMENTS
Religious atrocities are held in check today because the secular state has stepped in to forbid it. Where religion can dictate its own terms, fuse eschatology (end-time guessing) with the state, and make demands people cannot refuse, heads getting lopped off and religious war and torture of heretics are still a part of life.
Even in modern societies, religions bless troops and condemn those being blessed on the other side. Nations that do not benefit from such helpful guidance could fare at least as well.
⌕ Click to enlarge
It's a sad fact of history that the words that divide people and then unite them in butchering one another are often traceable to the religious institutions and holy books humans create.
AMERICA'S VIRTUE IS NOT DUE TO RELIGION
Christians and Jews brag that America's greatness is the result of Judeo-Christian principles. The fact is, the unsavory history of Judeo-Christian religions led America's founders to write a Constitution that separated church and state. It doesn't even once cite or refer to any holy book. Moreover, the very first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
People were fleeing to the New World in search of both freedom of religion and freedom from it. Most Founding Fathers understood this and created a secular (meaning nonreligious, not godless) nation based on freedom and the inherent "God-given" morality within each individual. "God," for most of the founders, was a secular Creator.
THE GOOD RELIGIONS DO DOES NOT EXCUSE THE BAD
This does not deny that religions can do good. For example, even in Islamic states that promote terrorism and brutal punishment for disobedience, social services, and charitable giving rivals that of any other religion or nation. The same is true for Christianity and Judaism even before the secular state tamed them. However, religions and holy books that justify both atrocity and benevolence provide no clear ethical guidance that should supersede one's conscience, nor are they reflective of the pure unequivocal justice of the Creator.
Nevertheless, nobody likes uncertainty. Thus, there is a natural inclination to follow systematized and formalized morality. People want clear and easy, right and wrong, black and white. We don't want to have to think and probe our consciences: "Somebody just tell me what to do so I can check off my moral chores, avoid god's ire, and get on with my life."
⌕ Click to enlarge
Religions come to the rescue by providing grocery lists of dos and don'ts to check off each day. But does it fit any semblance of rationality that guidance from the Creator of the universe as to right and wrong should come from such stories as an angel Gabriel reciting text to the illiterate Mohammed in a cave in 610 CE, or Joseph Smith burying his face in a white top hat in the 1800s to read god's Mormon messages from a "seer" stone, or Moses climbing a cloud-covered mountain and remaining there for forty days to obtain the Ten Commandments written on stone by the finger of god?
Such untenable stories serve only to create huge worldwide religious institutions with immense power over people's minds. Dutiful believers can then employ the Nuremberg defense, regardless of the damage done by following religious rules: "I was only following god's orders."
GOODNESS COMES FROM FREE WILL AND CONSCIENCE, NOT FOLLOWING OTHERS
It's human to seek to be good. That's a consequence of free will, not an original sin putting us in need of salvation. The struggle between right and wrong, good and bad, underlies and pervades every religious, political, legal, and social institution, and has from time immemorial. Equity, justice, propriety, social graces, respect, honesty, and so on weigh on each of us personally every day because we have been given the gifts of conscience and free choice.
On the other hand, thousands of years of cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques, pyramids, Inquisitions, mummification, animal sacrifices, self-mutilation, witch trials, holy book reading, wall wailing, breast-beating, flagellation, jihads, fatwas, idolatry, sacrifices, converting savages, witch trials, celibacy, polygamy, circumcision, infibulation, not sparing the rod, stonings, suttees, ecumenism, parochial schools, catechisms, beheadings, conquistadors, pilgrimages, holy books in motel room drawers, drawing and quartering, eye and tongue removals, forbidden foods, special clothing, tithing, speaking in tongues, poison drinking, dancing with snakes, indulgences, evangelizing, chants, excommunications, hymn singing, hermeneutics (deciphering holy books written in arcane languages), eschatology (attempting to figure out from holy books when the world will end), missions, confessions, wafer eating, wine drinking, prayer in the right direction, penance, and heretic burning have not brought us closer to truth, made us better people, nor improved our lot.
Religions impose the impossible task of eliminating uncontrollable thoughts ("thou shalt not covet") and leaving people forever guilty and condemned for having them. Our measure should be what we choose to do, not by thoughts we have no control over.
Note how the religious leaders writing the Bible, from the get-go, attempt to deny free choice and conscience. Eve's "original sin" was to eat an apple from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." (Gen 2:17) To know good and evil is to exercise one's own conscience. This was painted by the Bible writers as so egregiously criminal that all humans, billions and billions of us, supposedly inherit it as an "original sin" and the cause of all depravity and death.
This mysterious passage becomes crystal clear when the true authors are recognized, namely human religious leaders. These leaders didn't want people to decide for themselves. Their goal was power and control, meaning they alone, not the people, were to have the "knowledge of good and evil." Proof that is the case is the supposed knowledge of good and evil laid out as rules and regulations in their holy book.
Actually, the ultimate sin is not to eat the apple, meaning to follow other humans (and their human-made religious "knowledge of good and evil") rather than one's own Creator-given conscience.
When people come to believe that following the rules of others constitutes their duty to ethics, they abandon the best moral governor of all, conscience. We must freely author our actions.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Yes, we all struggle with nasty thoughts and imperfect actions, but we almost always intuitively know how we should behave. If we don't know and act improperly, consequences always follow and we make better choices next time. Such experience is the best teacher of all. And Earth life gives us plenty of that.
Up to a certain age, children have little empathy or ethics. They simply follow the commands of elders for fear of punishment. Adulthood brings with it free choice and an active conscience.
However, unlike a hairy chest or breasts that come automatically with maturity, activating free choice and conscience is a choice. We can remain like children and look to humans, institutions, and their holy books (surrogate moms and dads) for rules to live by, or listen to the voice of conscience and decide for ourselves what is right or wrong—eat the apple—implanted by the Creator.
We are also given reason and logic. Engaging those truth-deciphering skills is as much a matter of ethics as not lying, stealing, or harming others. Without truth, we live in a lie and contribute to a false world that ultimately brings harm and disrespects the Creator.
We may be diamonds in the rough and struggle with making goodness manifest. But it's always there, urging if we will only listen to the voice within, rather than follow others and their holy books.
If any religionist is asked to describe an ethical precept that is unknown without their religion, they will be incapable of doing so. The only thing unique to religions are human-made stories, doctrines, rituals, and equating, murder, torture, animal cruelty and ritualistic sacrifice, maiming, genocide, racism, and ignorance with morality. (See Part 2)
Concerning the Bible, Adam and Eve had no such holy book, nor did Noah, Abraham, or any of the people mentioned there. People were not without ethical direction before Moses descended from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. Moreover, only three of the Ten Commandments—shalt not steal, kill, or lie—qualifies as ethics. But that doesn't single out the Bible as unique since no society has existed or could exist without these prohibitions.
Some of the Commandments are impossible to comply with, such as not coveting (desiring) things. That's condemning people for thoughts that pop into their heads. Other Commandments about the name of god, a sabbath, graven images(idols), and swearing, have nothing at all to do with ethics.
Other Bible rules also don't make sense if followed through. For example, "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mathew 22:39) would make functioning, even survival, impossible. Imagine trying to care about every aspect of all your neighbors' lives like you care about yours.
Spiritual movements and leaders such as Lao-tze, Zoroaster, Confucius, Hinayana, Zen Buddhism, Jainism, Shankara, Padmasambhava, Nagarjuna, Epictetus, and Longchenpa claim no Western-style god or inspired holy book, and yet represent highly moral systems. Even diehard atheists and agnostics feel an ethical pull.
The fact of the matter is that bad, as well as good people, emerge out of every religion and every society.
The poor farmer in a third-world country tied to the plow from sunup to sundown eking out a living for his family, and the primitive in the middle of the bush without any reading skills, must still be capable of discerning right from wrong.
And that is the case. The Senoi of the Malay jungle live a highly ethical and benevolent life where unconditional love is just a fact. The Yequana aborigines of the upper Cuara River basin in Venezuela demonstrate similar wisdom without compulsion. These remote people have no formal religions, codes, holy books, prophets, priests, or other such trappings.
Contrary to the refrain that religion is the source of goodness, throughout history, slitting throats, warring, and denial of basic human rights are the signatures of human-made holy book religions. Right today, Sunday schools teach children to celebrate in song the slaughter of non-Jews at Jericho, the annihilation of humans and creatures by a world flood, the killing of innocent first-born children, and to look forward to an Armageddon where everyone who does not believe as they do is slaughtered.
Go through the inspection at an airport to be reminded of the horrendous deeds perpetrated by human-made religions. The Qur'an can be read to make it moral to fly planes into office buildings, behead nonbelievers, kill women who are raped, marry nine-year-old little girls, cut the clitoris and labia off girls (circumcision/infibulation) and sew the vagina all but closed, only to be broken open on the wedding night.
The Bible justifies killing whole populations in unbelieving cities, brides who are not virgin, adulterers, those who take the Lord's name in vain, those who disobey a mother or father, and young boys who aren't circumcised— and done so "correctly" by a Jewish mohel biting the foreskin off so blood is let.
Slavery is a Bible practice. In large part, it's justified by Bible racism. The granddaddy of all racisms is Jews writing a Bible, claiming god wrote it, and then having that god say he chose them over all other races. (Nah, that wouldn't be coincidence, would it?) The "mark of Cain" and "Curse of Ham" are also Biblical justifications. Then there's the story of Noah and his family being the only people to survive the worldwide flood. They are thought to be white. Therefore, it's reasoned, black, yellow, and brown races must have been on board, but way back with the animals! (Yes, yes, I know there are passages contrary to slavery. But that makes the point that any form of morality can be derived from the Bible.)
Muslims and Hindus war in Pakistan and India. Jonestown cultists committed suicide following their Bible-thumping leader. Protestants and Catholics kill one another in the British-Irish conflict. Catholic priests (including modern day), supposedly obedient to the Biblical doctrine of celibacy, have sexually abused and scarred for life innumerable children. Meanwhile, the church hierarchy and many parishioners turn a blind eye. (See the documentary movie, The Spotlight.)
⌕ Click to enlarge
⌕ Click to enlarge
Other religions condemn these horrors, but the underlying cause is largely ignored: Islamists are simply acting on belief and faith in a holy book.
If today's Jews and Christians followed their holy books (as they have in the past and are commanded to by the books), they would be engaged in similar horrors.
True, many now put a liberal patina on holy books, but literate people without coaches read scriptural urgings that clearly encourage the killing of unbelievers and those who commit the sin of reason.
In other words, morality is not a reason to embrace religion, it's a reason to flee from it.
RELIGIONS ARE ETHICALLY TAMED BY SECULAR GOVERNMENTS
Religious atrocities are held in check today because the secular state has stepped in to forbid it. Where religion can dictate its own terms, fuse eschatology (end-time guessing) with the state, and make demands people cannot refuse, heads getting lopped off and religious war and torture of heretics are still a part of life.
Even in modern societies, religions bless troops and condemn those being blessed on the other side. Nations that do not benefit from such helpful guidance could fare at least as well.
⌕ Click to enlarge
It's a sad fact of history that the words that divide people and then unite them in butchering one another are often traceable to the religious institutions and holy books humans create.
AMERICA'S VIRTUE IS NOT DUE TO RELIGION
Christians and Jews brag that America's greatness is the result of Judeo-Christian principles. The fact is, the unsavory history of Judeo-Christian religions led America's founders to write a Constitution that separated church and state. It doesn't even once cite or refer to any holy book. Moreover, the very first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
People were fleeing to the New World in search of both freedom of religion and freedom from it. Most Founding Fathers understood this and created a secular (meaning nonreligious, not godless) nation based on freedom and the inherent "God-given" morality within each individual. "God," for most of the founders, was a secular Creator.
THE GOOD RELIGIONS DO DOES NOT EXCUSE THE BAD
This does not deny that religions can do good. For example, even in Islamic states that promote terrorism and brutal punishment for disobedience, social services, and charitable giving rivals that of any other religion or nation. The same is true for Christianity and Judaism even before the secular state tamed them. However, religions and holy books that justify both atrocity and benevolence provide no clear ethical guidance that should supersede one's conscience, nor are they reflective of the pure unequivocal justice of the Creator.
Nevertheless, nobody likes uncertainty. Thus, there is a natural inclination to follow systematized and formalized morality. People want clear and easy, right and wrong, black and white. We don't want to have to think and probe our consciences: "Somebody just tell me what to do so I can check off my moral chores, avoid god's ire, and get on with my life."
⌕ Click to enlarge
Religions come to the rescue by providing grocery lists of dos and don'ts to check off each day. But does it fit any semblance of rationality that guidance from the Creator of the universe as to right and wrong should come from such stories as an angel Gabriel reciting text to the illiterate Mohammed in a cave in 610 CE, or Joseph Smith burying his face in a white top hat in the 1800s to read god's Mormon messages from a "seer" stone, or Moses climbing a cloud-covered mountain and remaining there for forty days to obtain the Ten Commandments written on stone by the finger of god?
Such untenable stories serve only to create huge worldwide religious institutions with immense power over people's minds. Dutiful believers can then employ the Nuremberg defense, regardless of the damage done by following religious rules: "I was only following god's orders."
GOODNESS COMES FROM FREE WILL AND CONSCIENCE, NOT FOLLOWING OTHERS
It's human to seek to be good. That's a consequence of free will, not an original sin putting us in need of salvation. The struggle between right and wrong, good and bad, underlies and pervades every religious, political, legal, and social institution, and has from time immemorial. Equity, justice, propriety, social graces, respect, honesty, and so on weigh on each of us personally every day because we have been given the gifts of conscience and free choice.
On the other hand, thousands of years of cathedrals, temples, churches, mosques, pyramids, Inquisitions, mummification, animal sacrifices, self-mutilation, witch trials, holy book reading, wall wailing, breast-beating, flagellation, jihads, fatwas, idolatry, sacrifices, converting savages, witch trials, celibacy, polygamy, circumcision, infibulation, not sparing the rod, stonings, suttees, ecumenism, parochial schools, catechisms, beheadings, conquistadors, pilgrimages, holy books in motel room drawers, drawing and quartering, eye and tongue removals, forbidden foods, special clothing, tithing, speaking in tongues, poison drinking, dancing with snakes, indulgences, evangelizing, chants, excommunications, hymn singing, hermeneutics (deciphering holy books written in arcane languages), eschatology (attempting to figure out from holy books when the world will end), missions, confessions, wafer eating, wine drinking, prayer in the right direction, penance, and heretic burning have not brought us closer to truth, made us better people, nor improved our lot.
Religions impose the impossible task of eliminating uncontrollable thoughts ("thou shalt not covet") and leaving people forever guilty and condemned for having them. Our measure should be what we choose to do, not by thoughts we have no control over.
Note how the religious leaders writing the Bible, from the get-go, attempt to deny free choice and conscience. Eve's "original sin" was to eat an apple from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." (Gen 2:17) To know good and evil is to exercise one's own conscience. This was painted by the Bible writers as so egregiously criminal that all humans, billions and billions of us, supposedly inherit it as an "original sin" and the cause of all depravity and death.
This mysterious passage becomes crystal clear when the true authors are recognized, namely human religious leaders. These leaders didn't want people to decide for themselves. Their goal was power and control, meaning they alone, not the people, were to have the "knowledge of good and evil." Proof that is the case is the supposed knowledge of good and evil laid out as rules and regulations in their holy book.
Actually, the ultimate sin is not to eat the apple, meaning to follow other humans (and their human-made religious "knowledge of good and evil") rather than one's own Creator-given conscience.
When people come to believe that following the rules of others constitutes their duty to ethics, they abandon the best moral governor of all, conscience. We must freely author our actions.
⌕ Click to enlarge
Yes, we all struggle with nasty thoughts and imperfect actions, but we almost always intuitively know how we should behave. If we don't know and act improperly, consequences always follow and we make better choices next time. Such experience is the best teacher of all. And Earth life gives us plenty of that.
Up to a certain age, children have little empathy or ethics. They simply follow the commands of elders for fear of punishment. Adulthood brings with it free choice and an active conscience.
However, unlike a hairy chest or breasts that come automatically with maturity, activating free choice and conscience is a choice. We can remain like children and look to humans, institutions, and their holy books (surrogate moms and dads) for rules to live by, or listen to the voice of conscience and decide for ourselves what is right or wrong—eat the apple—implanted by the Creator.
We are also given reason and logic. Engaging those truth-deciphering skills is as much a matter of ethics as not lying, stealing, or harming others. Without truth, we live in a lie and contribute to a false world that ultimately brings harm and disrespects the Creator.
We may be diamonds in the rough and struggle with making goodness manifest. But it's always there, urging if we will only listen to the voice within, rather than follow others and their holy books.
NEMOS: ... in progress ...
NEMOS: Is the Bible the source of goodness?:
. . . in progress . . .
. . . in progress . . .
WYSONG: ... in progress ...
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