After My Divine Revelation
After My Divine RevelationI wrote a long page on my historical beliefs. These are shorter and somewhat analytical.
I believe that there is a caring God. Maybe it is just a hope and not a true belief. There is always Pascal's wager.
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If you have read my pages on religion, you know that I write many
words and have evolved from being a Catholic to being a believer in God
but a disbeliever in religion. So I have come to the end of the
road. Not only have I stopped believing in religion, I believe
that organized religion is conspiracy against the very people it claims
to want to help.
We can start with the Old / Hebrew Testament. There is a
book, "Who Wrote the Bible?". This lays out that there were
two similar histories which seem to have a common origin and were
stitched back together by the priests when the two cultures
reunited. All well and good. You can take the first five
books apart and put them together using this book. That this book
is accurate I have no doubts. A priest, editor, not Moses wrote
these books. It seems to me that the books are self-serving as
are the remaining books of the Hebrew Testament.
The concept here is that the priests served their own interests by
writing a book elevating their status. All of the remainder of
the Hebrew Testament, supports not only this concept but the concept of
male superiority over women. The Hebrew Testament was written to
refute references to a female deities.
How do they belittle women? By ignoring them. The book
is written by men, about men, and for men. In the Hebrew
testament, women are looked down upon. Lot's wife: not strong
enough. Lot's daughter: an appeasement to Lot's attackers.
Delilah: cunning and taking advantage of a sleeping man. Eve:
tempted by a snake and tempts her spouse. Life goes on. The
Christian Testament? The book does not do this but the church
poses Mary Magdaline as a prostitute when other histories show her a
close companion of Jesus. And where are the wives of Jesus, Paul,
the Apostles? The culture of the time would have ignored these
men if they were not married. Ignored at best as not being
married then is as scorned as homosexual today. Worse.
The Christian Testament is even more obviously written to support
male dominance. Worse off the history of the Catholic and
Christian churches has amplified this. Today we do not even know
about the female deities. Christian testament books make sure
that women have a place and that place is below that of men. Any
woman is treated by Jesus and the men as second class citizens.
For example the woman who washed Jesus feet with oil. The men
berated her for wasting oil. Jesus accepted her homage.
Generous of him. Mary. Joseph was generous in taking a
pregnant woman as wife. Nice of him. And although the
Testament does not denigrate Mary Magdaline, the historic church
certainly did.
The Moslems and the Mormons claim a separate but equal status and
role of men and women. No one would want to claim that men and
women are the same. But a religion which lays out the roles that
each sex should play borders on lunacy.
And lunacy has prevailed. Jesus said some good things.
Don't shit on the path that you walk. But can we be sure that
Jesus said anything? The Nicene Council basically defined Jesus
to us by their choice of books in the Testament and the dogma passed
down. If you grew up a Christian, you learned the Nicene
(Apostles) Creed. You cannot get a better definition of what they
wanted than this "prayer".
All of the books and teachings portray a single motive: men dominate
while women serve. The really sad part is that so few people
challenge this today. As we learn more about the universe and
more about the history of the earth and more about the history of its
people, believing in fairy tales with such motives is really sad.
The purpose of a fairy tale is to teach a moral value or to make
something complex simple. The Little Mermaid is a great example
but if you only read Disney's version, you miss the point. If you
only read the Bible and its associated fairy tales, you believe that
men are dominant. My entire generation grew up believing this --
as did those before.
The older generations did not have the resources that we have today.
They did not have the scholars printing controversial papers.
They did not have the knowledge that has been painstakingly put
together piece by piece of relics and documents.
But we have these today and I see little progress in overcoming thousands of years of lies and bigotry.
Why do we think that "marriage" is only a contract between one man
and one woman? The Bible tells us so. The negative
implications of this heritage seriously limits our ability to maintain
social sanity. While we are making serious progress in many
things, there are still people, many people, most people, who hang onto
teachings that would be ludicrous if not so commonly believed.
But do we believe them? We cut and paste these beliefs at our
convenience. The Bible clearly states that any form of birth
control is against God. Any sex outside of marriage is against
God. HIV/AIDS is God's punishment for breaking his rules.
Why do Catholic countries in the world give out birth control pills
to their young women? Because a twelve year old mother is a
problem to her baby, herself, and her community. The world has
multiplied its population by two and one half times since World War
II. 60 years. At this rate, the world will starve
itself in another 100 years. Countries famous for their grain
fields are now importing grains. All of our social problems can
be directed to almost any concept that we can argue. But the one
thing we cannot argue is that going down the current moral pathways
will doom our world.
I do not dispel the concept of a God. Of one God. I
dispel that current teachings of the organized religions who want to
tell me that everything would be just fine if we put the Genie back in
the bottle. I am glad that I shall not live to see the end of the
world. It will not be pretty.
I saw this on one of the church letter signs yesterday. For
the last year I have been feeling more and more sad for the people who
believe the religions hoax. The primary purpose of any church of
any religion is to amplify that religion and church. The priests
in the Hebrew Bible testament started a really bad concept:
propagate the fairy tale by expecting and maybe requiring believers to
pay for their beliefs in time and money. The more time and money
a person invests, the more likely he continues to support any charade. This is just human nature.
But. There is always a but.. When I see signs such as
the above, I lose faith in the intelligence of all people. Does
the minister in this church really believe that God is punishing some
group of people or maybe all people for some imagined
transgression? I think the minister believes this. The
frightening part is that is followers are expected to believe it also.
Religion attempts to explain that which requires faith. If
there is a scientific explanation, there is no need for faith.
God fills the holes in what we do not yet understand. Science has
been the enemy of religions throughout history. As science
debunks a belief, the religion either capitulates, turns on science, or
evolves.
Only the really stupid believe that the universe with the Earth as
the center was created in 6 days. Many believe that Jesus was not
married. Mary Magdaline was a prostitute. And other
irrational concepts.
But when I see signs like the above, I lose faith in people and any
belief that the concept of a religion serves a useful purpose. I
can believe a scorpions serves a useful purpose. A mouse. A
bank robber. But not a church.
The gravitational pull of the moon and sun cause earthquakes.
Earthquakes produce tsunamis. We could argue that God created a
universe with these properties. We might even argue that God
created them to punish people millions of years after he created the
universe. We are biting our tail at this point as we are
arguing in favor of predestination and against free will. That
God invented people with the intent of punishing them That God is
a liar. The bible claims that God stated he would never again
kill the people with a flood. People die in tsunamis. If
God created the tsunami to punish people, the Bible lies. If God
created the tsunami with no such intent, then He is incompetent.
In any case, science can explain the earthquake and tsunami with simple
gravitation. There is no need to involve faith.
These ministers should stop trying to prove himself by involving God in physical events.
I believe that the various prophets from Moses to Jesus to
Mohammed to Joe Smith were a succession of hoaxes. In some
respect these are all identical people: they found that they
could have followers because they were able to convince people that
they had a direct line to God.
I read "Holy Blood. Holy Grail" and realized that Jesus Christ
was what he claimed to be: a good man. The Council of Nicea
imported his ideas, translated them, and made Jesus into God for
primarily financial and social positioning. We can trace all of
our beliefs that Jesus was God to this council. The
Nicene/Apostles creed lays this out in spades.
Nicea deified Jesus. It is consistent that the Jews knew
and wrote of Jesus as a holy man. As did Mohammed in the Koran. As
did other Christian writings. The reason for Nicea was to
organize a church hierarchy. Their method: decide for all time a unified
claim of divinity for Jesus and put it in a book.
I could go on but it makes no difference. The people of the
world have each accepted their own choice of con jobs. The best
con job I think is Jesus. Nicea has crowned him with all of the
accouterments of a god. Virgin birth (no personal history).
Ascension
into the heavens (no body to desecrate) Miracles. Ability to
incorporate in multiple places. Ultimately rising into the air
and disappearing. Anything that anyone at that time claimed to
need to be a god was ascribed to Jesus. The list is pretty
long. The council must have lasted a long time to make sure that
their documents were consistent and pointing in the direction of a
resident church.
Maybe the fact that there are few people who are true Christians is
sufficient to prove the hoax. I have never met a true Christian.
The best religion is Buddhism. They recognize hypocrisy as their foundation -- as opposed to a person.
If there is a god, then how I behave makes a difference.
But. If I behave like there is a difference, I am a
hypocrite. What I need to do is to lead the best and most honest
(least hypocritical) life that I am able. This is a tough
job. Wish nothing on someone that you do not wish for
yourself. Wish
only good things and learn what are the good things.
I had a Buddhist leader lay it out one day. I am praying that
the slow driver in front of me will speed up. He is praying that
that person behind him will not be in such a hurry. Both are OK
but it is not OK to have a bad thought of the other person.
And never argue with the masses. You will only make enemies. It must have been an interesting time in Nicea.
And if it were a Mosque, the issue is still the same. Either
this country has freedom of religion for all or it is a bigoted,
hypocritical, collage of lies. We already know that the USA is
really the home of hypocrisy every time we see the Stars And Bars
flown. If the Southern states cannot get past slavery, how can
the rest of us get past dogmatic jig-saw puzzles? Some of the
speakers are correct: it is a local issue. But the
President is
also correct: we are either home for the free or the home of
hypocrisy. The people wanting to build the community center had
nothing to do with the zealots that bombed the towers. Neither
did their religion. Get off it people: just build the community
center and be happy. And learn a second language, it helps
understand the world's cultures. But then Jesus Christ had
zealots as followers.. Remember the guy with the sword who cut off the
soldier's ear? To carry a sword in Jesus time almost by itself
made you a zealot.
I believe there is a God. My personal opinion. I also
believe in Pascal's wager. Whether or not there is life after
death, we each have our own opinion. I have heard most of the religious
concepts of Heaven. There is only one heaven for me. After
I die and I wake up on the other side, Dido, my dog, will be waiting
for me with his yellow ball and that grin on his face. No
Dido. No Heaven. Sometimes I think God entered my life as
my dog. I have heard no definition of heaven that does not include my dog.
This is a longer page than I would have expected. My evolution
from being a devoted Catholic to my current life has had many twists
and turns. I no longer believe in any of the Jesus myth. I
can no longer believe in any promised life after death. I do hope
that there is one but whether there is or not, it cannot change how I
live today. This is simple.
If I think that I shall be rewarded for what I am doing now, that is
OK. But if my behavior is different because of anticipated reward
then I am a hypocrite. The same goes for punishment in this life
or afterwards.
If I think that someone who has harmed me will be punished later,
then I am projecting myself into his relationship with his God.
This hypocritical and self-defeating. The same is true for
projecting a reward onto someone who has helped me. Maybe they
helped me just because they are good people.
Mostly I have come to feel sad for the people who believe in
churches. They are wasting so much of their good thoughts and
efforts on fairy tales. If there were a way to get the church
community to act benevolently without the fairy tales then we would
have a good, healthy, happy, community.
It has taken a long time but I have finally seen the light. I
had to read "Holy Blood Holy Grail" again to make sure of myself.
I had joined Facebook. I asked for comments on the book. I
got an instant response asserting the Jesus Christ is God and is a
member of the Holy Trinity. My university Philosophy of Religion
course made one thing clear: if there is a rational explanation, then
it is not a miracle. There is a rational explanation for
everything in the New testament regarding Jesus, I may or ma not
agree with all of the explanations but since they exist then I either
choose to accept the "miracles" on faith or I choose to not
believe. In this case, I choose to not believe. There is
just too much evidence indicating that the Bible Jesus is an elaborate
hoax to believe it has any relevance to the historic Jesus. G. B.
SHaw said 2 relevant things here. The first was that people would
flock to Jesus except for the miracles. I could accept a Jesus
without the miracles. The Holy Grail book portrays Jesus without
miracles. The second thing that Shaw said was "If I ever met a
Christian, I would become one". The fact that Christians do not
follow Jesus teachings is the best answer to refusing to believe that
Jesus is God. If you are a Christina, then for-profit insurance
companies are against your beliefs. If you are a Christian, you
want health care for everyone, even those not yet born. If you
are a Christian, you work as hard for your community as you do for
yourself. If you are a Christian, race, religion, sex, and sexual
preference do not influence how you respect other people. If you
are a Christian, you take personal responsibility for the health of
anything or anyone that your God has created. So far I have not
seen any of these Christians. I have seen a whole lot of the
other kind.
As you can figure out from
above the Catholic Church is not my favorite organization. I
think the current pope has some serious problems facing him. You
know most of them. One of them is the acceptance by Catholic
countries of abortion rights.. He made a trip to South and
Central America to try to push his agenda. I think he lost ground
this year but he tried.
By the way my position on abortion is that it is wrong, seriously
wrong but that as a man, in general, my vote does not count.
But a serious issue was addressed in the most positive statement
that I have heard to date by a religious leader: arguing creationism
against evolution is a ridiculous waste of time. He seems to
stand on the science side explaining that scientific facts cannot
contradict religious beliefs. If you take the stand that they
can, then you have absolved yourself of any responsibility toward
protecting the earth from the currently, scientifically known, behavior
that is changing the world in a negative manner, e.g. global warming.
I was very surprised to hear this from any religious leader. The pope has set a good example of global personal responsibility. As he said: the earth itself cannot be wrong. But then he said it better than I can. I am just supporting his statement and am surprised to be able to do so.
"When we present Jesus as a
pro-war, anti-poor, anti-homosexual,
anti-environment, pro-nuclear weapons authority figure draped in an
American flag, I think we are making a travesty of the portrait of
Jesus we find in the gospels," Brian D. McLaren.
This is more of what I think Jesus had in mind: http://www.emergentvillage.com
I just finished reading the book for the second time. Reading
a detective story the first time always leaves me feeling like I am
missing something. So I read it again. Oftentimes months
later. No, I did not miss anything but I did confuse some of the
story line with other of Dan Brown's books. Some authors I enjoy
but find a hard read. Crichton is one of them. Grisholm,
Crichton, Clancy all have agendas. Most of these agendas are
pretty blatant. Grisholm has attacked cigarette companies and or
anti-social issues. Clancy makes Nixon, GWB, and Al Capp
all look like bleeding liberals. Clancy is prostituting his
name. He has been for a decade or more. He wrote some
seriously good stuff. He also let his name be used on the covers
of books that he did not write. Unless you read the lower half of
the cover you will think he is the author and not just a pimp.
Sad.
Brown has pretty much just told stories. That is, until the DaVinci code.
Luckily I read Holy Blood, Holy
Grail before I read this book. I mean Holy Blood is a book that will take
your faith to the wall and back. The DaVinci Code is just a
story. I remember a similar combination of books from high
school. Carlisle wrote "The History of the French
Revolution". This was an extensive history with extensive details
and references. It could put all but the most devoted historians
to sleep -- but if you wanted to know what happened, it was in his
books. A well known author of the time wrote a novel taken almost
directly from Carlisle. The author added names, filed in
suspected
events and made a story out of it. THe story has become more
famous than the original. Maybe because Dickens is known for more
things than just one book. I make this analogy because I suspect
nobody sued Dickens for writing a story. The authors of Holy
Blood sued Brown for his story. A very expensive way to increase
the sales of both books. It also seems to have validated both
books.
The interesting thing to me is that the book sold millions of copies
in hard cover. I waited and waited for soft cover. The week
after I bought the hard cover, I saw piles of the paperback at
Costco. I guess I should subscribe to Publishers' Weekly.
Now I have two copies. THe book was enjoyable although I found
the plot jumping in strange directions. But then if you want to
cover all of the best parts of Holy Blood, then you have to do a lot of
jumping or write a longer story. The story is long enough.
The really curious thing though is the movie. WIth all of the
millions of copies of the book. With all of the controversial
ideas in the book. With all of the time it spent having only
expensive hard cover printings, no one seemed to care about the subject
matter. That is, nobody cared until the movie was about to be
released. Then the Catholic Church was angered. The entire
Christian community is angered. Preachers are decrying the book
from their pulpits. Church spokesmen and claiming the book is
full
of fallacies. Opus Dei is really better than that. People
--
it is just a story. It is fiction. True it is fiction like
Tale of Two Cities was fiction. There is a lot of factual,
statistical, historical, information intertwined in the story.
The facts and the story are carefully intertwined to imply more truth
than the Church admits to. This is what fiction writers do.
THey give you an environment with which you can identify. They
make the story as close to home as they can. They they add
characters and events that are fiction but could happen so that you can
feel the pain or joy of the hero. sometimes I get so wrapped up
in a book that I have to check outdoors to see if the weather changed
on me. Unlikely here in the desert.
But it is a story. It is fiction. If you want to get
upset, read Holy Blood. That is upsetting. After a couple
of hundred pages you understand the fallacy of the Roman Catholic
Church. It lays out the Nicene conference and the actions of
Constantine (the first pope). I applauded this chapter because I
had it in black and white what I always knew in my heart but could not
nail down the specifics. Now they were nailed down. THe
shocker came when the book went on to paint the entire Jesus story as a
conspiracy. This had me reading through the night.
Why? Many years ago I took a philosophy of religion class at
the University of Wisconsin. This was one of my more enjoyable
classes. It laid out the ground rules for a religion. What
it could say. What it could not say. THe fallacies in the
historic proofs of God. Yes. Before its time the concept of
Creationism was debunked. ALong with its little brother,
Intelligent Design. We had another name for it but if you can
learn how false it is in an entry level philosophy course you wonder
why
so many people are taking it seriously.
One of the things that we learned in this class were word
definitions: knowledge, faith, belief that, belief in, etc.
Once we had this foundation, we could discuss religion. Most
"discussions" of religion end up as battles because the basic
definitions of words are not agreed upon. I had a friend once
that stated: "It is true if the bible says it is true". Since the
Bible does not go into arithmetic, 2 plus 2 equals 4 may be in question
but that Jesus was born of a virgin mother is not in question.
I consider this absolutely preposterous but I am willing to accept a
middle ground. I am willing to accept that things that we do not
understand may be miracles and that we take their consequences on
faith. I am willing to accept faith. I need faith.
But there is a limit. As we learned in class, if there is a
possible logical explanation for something that does not include a
miracle, then there is no need for faith. If you desire to accept
the miracle version, then you need more than faith. I do not have
a word for what you need here.
It is obvious that Paul, the converted apostle, was married.
He could not have been the executive officer of the Sanhedran
otherwise. It is also obvious that Jesus was either married or he
was a social outcast. Jewish law and customs at the time required
all men to be married. So when I read that the most obvious
spouse is Mary Magdaline, this makes sense. That the church has
cast her as a prostitute also makes sense. How better to make
Jesus celibate than to make the only woman named in the bible to
associate with him a prostitute. Come on now. DO you really
believe that she was a whore? The bible does not say so.
Just the sermons do. I have found most Catholic (and some other)
sermons to be based upon lies. Personal experience. So why
not accept that Jesus was married? What does this
invalidate? The Bible tells us that all deacons or better in the
church must be "men of one wife". Jesus was heading up a church
for which he was the sole exception to this rule. I know, the
rule came later. No. THe rule was there. The letter
came later.
We have the marriage at Cana which could have been Jesus
wedding. We have the DaVinci Last Supper painting where the ONLY
non-bearded person at the table is reasonably a woman. Did
someone
ask DaVinci who it was? Did the little scribed names under the
painting come with the painting? I do not think so. You can
go through the logic in Holy BLood and find some misstatements.
You can find some filling ins. You can find a whole lot of things
that are not fact but are conjecture. THe point is, that Holy
Blood give a reasonable explanation for a great deal of Jesus life and
actions. Sans miracles.
George Bernard Shaw wrote two things that I remember clearly: "If I
ever met a Christian, I would become one." and "People would flock to
Jesus except for the miracles" (paraphrased but as close as I can
remember). What is it about rational explanation that invalidates
Jesus? Why do we need the miracles? Jesus said what many
said before him. Love thy neighbor. The kingdom of heaven
is within you. His byline is known to not be original. Do
we need original miracles to buy his line? Even the miracles are
not unique to Jesus.
So. When it is all finished, I believe in God. I pray to
God. I hope to find all of the answers to all of my questions
when I die. But Jesus? I believe in Jesus too. I do
not believe the collection of stories we call the New Testament.
I do believe that I shall see Jesus when I get there and he will lay it
all out for me. Miracles? I do not think so. If we
did not need the miracles, the Church would not be so upset about the
DaVinci Code book.
As I have said before, trying to be a Christian when they have supported fairy tales in school instead of science, is very difficult. Lying to a child is the worst of sins (Matthew 18:6 or is it Matthew 6:18). Trying to have a rational life when I have to deal with irrational people is impossible. If we are to get along, then your belief in miracles should only be shared with other people with similar beliefs. Foisting them off on the general public as truths and laws is an abomination of our society. Enough.
"Finally a god, a natural higher force, resolved this conflict, separating earth from heaven, parting the dry land from the waters, and dividing the clear air from the clouds, thus organizing all things into a balanced union. In the highest sphere he made a heavenly vault of weightless and untainted ether. The next lower region he filled with air, light but not without substance. Then came the heavy earth, which sank down under its own weight and was encircled by the sea. " Roman Mythology.
I found an interesting link on this subject: www.Mythinglinks.org.
You know (I start a lot of my thoughts with "you know"), I really get tired of this business of Creationism wanting equal time with Evolution in our schools. The Creationists are correct: they need equal time with Science. We spend a lot of time teaching Science, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic in our schools. Because of various restraints, we do not spend enough time on literature, arts, crafts and social activities. We do not spend enough time on cultural history and value systems. We do not spend enough time on historic literature.
Because we do not spend time on values and cultures, our children grow up believing that mythology is fact. I mean, there really is a Hamlet's Castle in Denmark. You can visit it. Does this mean there really was a Hamlet? No. Shakespeare envisioned his play while staying in this castle. Creationism is good mythology: as good as any other story teaching us values about how to live. Every culture has a Creation Myth. Most have a lot in common with the others.
Confusing moral stories with Science leaves our children
confused between fact and fiction. Worse is a great deal of
adults really
end up believing in myths. This seriously inhibits technical
progress and
does little to improve moral substance. The sooner we start
teaching
social and cultural values and stop confusing these with science, the
sooner we
can start getting the our value system on track. and we need to
get our
value system on track.
I resent the concept of passing laws to make other people follow the dictums of your beliefs. If you do not want to shop on Sunday, stay home. Do not pass stupid laws to make me follow your beliefs. This applies also to abortion. I am against abortion. I have reason to be against abortion. I think that Roe Versus Wade is the law of the land and has saved many mothers’ lives. They are saved from the back room, coat-hanger abortions that happened until the 1970’s. If you are truly against abortion, then pay for those who want one: pay the mother to have the baby and also pay for their good health. Educate those wanting abortions how terrible the abortion is. Passing laws because you cannot do your job just proves that you have not done your job.