tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59749693708465749172024-02-19T04:25:53.985-08:00Zen of Zero...A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-20789846897149338302017-06-04T11:38:00.002-07:002022-05-01T11:30:11.874-07:00<h2>Book Links </h2>
I wasn’t planning to post any more at this blog, but several new factors arose:<br />
<br />
• I’ve been wanting to add some “postscripts” to my book and doing so seems easier at this blog site (possibly as “Comments”) than at my <a href="https://zenofzero.net">website</a>.<br />
<br />
• Two weeks ago (and for the second time), my website went “dead” for a week. I’m hoping that this blog site (i.e., Google’s “blogspot”) is more reliable <br />
<br />
• Google now provides, free, 15 GB of digital storage, and whereas I don’t know how much longer I’ll continue to pay to host my book at my website, I therefore decided to store my book also with Google.<br />
<br />
As a result, below is my book’s Table of Contents, with titles linked to storage at Google.<br />
<br />
Two notes about these Contents are the following:<br />
<br />
1. A “redundancy” exists in the following list, in that the 39 “Yx Chapters” linked here are also the 39 prior posts at this blog.<br />
<br />
2. The link in the following to “Preliminaries” leads to, among others, a page entitled “About the book”. In that text is given an e-mail address to which readers can send suggestions about how to improve the book. Rather than sending suggestions to that address, however, I invite readers to submit their suggestions as Comments at the end of this blog post. If you choose to do so, please reference the chapter and page numbers to which your comments refer.<br />
<br />
The book’s linked Table of Contents follows.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">Love Letters from Grampa –</span></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">about Life, Liberty, and the Zen of Zero</span></h2>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">Table of Contents</span></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2PB1jhMLJIdYXFIQ01uUTl1N2M/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Preliminaries:</a></h3>
<h3>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2PB1jhMLJIdcGhHUFQ4VWxUWlU/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Preface:</a></h3>
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 1 (A – H):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Awareness – Happiness</span></h3>
<br />
A – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddWV2VXNSZzJTVU0" target="_blank">Awareness</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
B <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbEIzUjZOXzYzQWM" target="_blank">Board Meeting</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
C1 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdYUg4SjdHUkZsMHM" target="_blank">Connected Concepts</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
C2<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIda2hiUHNVZV9FWms" target="_blank">Contentious Communications</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
D <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdcEpxYVdWZy1SR2c" target="_blank">Digging for Decisions</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
E <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdS0hlbTVrdmc1amc" target="_blank">Evaluating Endeavors</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
F <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWnhabUd1MzJtczA" target="_blank">Figuring out Feelings</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
G <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdT25wdFN3QkltQ0E" target="_blank">Goals of the Game</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
H1 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMGgxcWFBeFQ3R1U" target="_blank">Happiness = Progress</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
H2 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVnhpNGJoZDZoaGM" target="_blank">Hope = Expected Value</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<h2>
<br /><span style="color: #45818e;">PART 2 (I, Ideas):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Belief in God is Bad Science…</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="color: #134f5c; white-space: pre;"> </span></h3>
<br />
Ia <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUm1tQ1lKblFBVjA" target="_blank">Awareness of Ideas</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ib1 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMTBHQUVobHM5dG8" target="_blank">Basic Ideas in Science</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ib2 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUGxsV0h0djdIYmc" target="_blank">Basic Ideas about Logic</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ic <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZVFjTE41OW5wTzA" target="_blank">Constraining Ideas</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Id <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdY3lqN2pMeElhRms" target="_blank">Digging into the God Idea</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ie <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQzVOT3lXSHdvdTA" target="_blank">Evaluating “Proofs” of God</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
If <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdYmU0RTBnbDM5a3c" target="_blank">Finding Immortal Fallacies</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ig <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddUlCRGgxVHNRRTQ" target="_blank">Gaining Confidence & Trust</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ih <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMm55eGV2M3BWa2s" target="_blank">Hypotheses &Probabilities</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ii <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdM1RuV3FuZmdJanM" target="_blank">Indoctrination in Ignorance</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 2x (Ix):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">EXcursion into the Origins of the God Idea</span></h3>
<br />
Ix01 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZU5sb2hkcmJfaEU" target="_blank">Introduction</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ix02 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdaDg1NjZib3J5eFU" target="_blank">Spirits, Souls, & Gods</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ix03 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZTFPemVWbEZ3Rmc" target="_blank">Genesis & Flood Myths</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ix04 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMXVTSmFLRWhUbmc" target="_blank">Flooded by Frozen Myths</a><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Ix05 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQWtIb2lhRFRRSkU" target="_blank">Biblical Flood & Genesis Myths</a><br />
<br />
Ix06 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIda0I1RGR0dW04SUE" target="_blank">Gilgamesh & the Flood</a><br />
<br />
Ix07 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdOVBUZENoV09vVVk" target="_blank">Stories in the Stars</a><br />
<br />
Ix08 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZDJIZXhNNjR0SzA" target="_blank">Some Biblical Star Myths</a><br />
<br />
Ix09 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZlpDRU9tMGNuT3M" target="_blank">Changing Ideas of the Gods</a><br />
<br />
Ix10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIda1BxM19ZeW9MRGc" target="_blank">Homer’s Help to Humanity</a><br />
<br />
Ix11 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2PB1jhMLJIdS3dXcnBqdFYxT3M" target="_blank">Changing Ideas of Death</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 3 (J – Q):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">[Belief in God is Bad Science…] and Even Worse Policy</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
J1 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdOUZ0OGt5a1ZSV3M" target="_blank">Supernatural Jabberwocky</a><br />
<br />
J2 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdeTZmYnRUOHdYYUk" target="_blank">Justice & Morality</a><br />
<br />
J3 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVUJQV0FMcTVRWGc" target="_blank">Interpersonal Justice & Morality</a><br />
<br />
J4 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdT3FySjVFaE9meFk" target="_blank">Judging Judges</a><br />
<br />
K <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdb0NTRkRiR3RiTzA" target="_blank">Kindness with Keenness</a><br />
<br />
L <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQzJMVE1yNG9URjQ" target="_blank">Love within Limits</a><br />
<br />
M1 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUHBHbWdZTWVuMWc" target="_blank">The Mountainous God Lie</a><br />
<br />
M2 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNnE5M1ZSTEJocUU" target="_blank">Misconceived Morality</a><br />
<br />
M3 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddFBWVmtMVkI4a00" target="_blank">Muddled Moralities</a><br />
<br />
M4<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWXR0TWxoZEQwTG8" target="_blank">Morality without Gods</a><br />
<br />
N <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdc2dHcFc4ZWR5STA" target="_blank">Nature, Nurture, & “No!”</a><br />
<br />
O1 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdcWxIUVFobmtoWFU" target="_blank">Opinions & Objectives</a><br />
<br />
O2 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdY2lXa1pMVXRlbk0" target="_blank">Objectives of the Gods</a><br />
<br />
P1 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddGxJRjJhRGpCZ0E" target="_blank">The Purpose of Life</a><br />
<br />
P2 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUnlqN3MwZWZndms" target="_blank">Premisses behind Purposes</a><br />
<br />
P3 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdY09lVzhvOUNSMlU" target="_blank">Some Purposes Pursued</a><br />
<br />
P4<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdajk0bFB3djY4ODg" target="_blank">Premisses about Authority</a><br />
<br />
P5 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNmxfMmdSYkYtbDA" target="_blank">Some Sad Personal Policies</a><br />
<br />
P6 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMjg3bGRzSjI0R3M" target="_blank">Some Sick Social Policies</a><br />
<br />
P7 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZWZWOTVIV2NYaW8" target="_blank">Problems Religions Cause Individuals</a><br />
<br />
P8 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdd1Y5aENBTF91cmM" target="_blank">Problems Religions Cause Groups</a><br />
<br />
P9 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdRWVnZ1FLNFhTTjg" target="_blank">Problems Religions Cause Societies</a><br />
<br />
P10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdb0tEWVhvRW1KdDA" target="_blank">Parasites & Power Mongers</a><br />
<br />
Q1 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdLU51ZTU5QW93ems" target="_blank">Questioning Questions</a><br />
<br />
Q2 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUVBPZkxYRmxKcDA" target="_blank">Quality & Quotations</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 3x (Qx):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">EXcursions through Religious Quagmires</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Qx01 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdd29PblVscEJTdkU" target="_blank">Introduction</a><br />
<br />
Qx02 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVi1mV2VMOW10bTA" target="_blank">Policies in Genesis – 1</a><br />
<br />
Qx03 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX2VNR3VGWnVIbXc" target="_blank">Policies in Genesis – 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx04 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZE9HYlc2c0IxMzQ" target="_blank">Policies in Genesis – 3</a><br />
<br />
Qx05 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQWU5SnQyWGs3bG8" target="_blank">Policies in Exodus – 1</a><br />
<br />
Qx06 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdR2M5WWlhZVlleVU" target="_blank">Policies in Exodus – 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx07 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbHQzMHVrRXM2TFU" target="_blank">Policies in Exodus – 3</a><br />
<br />
Qx08 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdendNS1JXTy1Wd1k" target="_blank">Policies in Leviticus & Numbers</a><br />
<br />
Qx09 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbXQ2Wk5TUzhjTHM" target="_blank">Policies in Deuteronomy</a><br />
<br />
Qx10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdN2U4SVNmWThLNVU" target="_blank">Purposes of Old Testament Policies</a><br />
<br />
Qx11 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdR2FqdGFHeHZ6ZmM" target="_blank">Policies in Matthew – 1</a><br />
<br />
Qx12 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdY1pSOHlreUExVkU" target="_blank">Policies in Matthew – 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx13 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdN21LdEpJTFJnc3M" target="_blank">New Testament Injustices</a><br />
<br />
Qx14 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVkVwVlZYdXhUNkU" target="_blank">New Testament Immoralities</a><br />
<br />
Qx15 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdcjlBX09sT19fMG8" target="_blank">New Testament Incoherencies</a><br />
<br />
Qx16 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdRFdTOWVuWG9rWjA" target="_blank">New Testament Insanities</a><br />
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Qx17 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVzNINmRjSlZ2dzg" target="_blank">NT Sins Against Humanity</a><br />
<br />
Qx18 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMzFvcGFlaGplUnM" target="_blank">NT Crimes Against Humanity</a><br />
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Qx19 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdaWxMUDhGa0NtZ2c" target="_blank">Christian Childishness</a><br />
<br />
Qx20 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX0Uta3FRWjlDWVk" target="_blank">Biblical Balderdash</a><br />
<br />
Qx21 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdaF8wT09zbnRTT00" target="_blank">LDS Ludicrousness – 1</a><br />
<br />
Qx22 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX3J0Vzdwd1VqRVE" target="_blank">LDS Ludicrousness – 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx23 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdTG9GR0ZrUmJVc28" target="_blank">LDS Ludicrousness – 3</a><br />
<br />
Qx24 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdY01ESTNjZ3Jtams" target="_blank">LDS Ludicrousness – 4</a><br />
<br />
Qx25 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNXJ2QWRyTFhpME0" target="_blank">Muhammad & the Quran</a><br />
<br />
Qx26 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdU1F5by1LRzJuUm8" target="_blank">Quran – Periods 1 & 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx27 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMVpzNEQwYkZUYWc" target="_blank">Quran – 3rd Period – 1</a><br />
<br />
Qx28 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdakk3TGxveXhIX28" target="_blank">Quran – 3rd Period – 2</a><br />
<br />
Qx29 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdd1dqeEZEcjBmVUk" target="_blank">Quran – 3rd Period – 3</a><br />
<br />
Qx30 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSVo1OWxsUUxkVlk" target="_blank">Quitting the Quagmires</a><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 4 (R – X):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Replace Belief in God with Confidence in the Scientific Method…</span></h3>
<br />
R<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdeTVOVEhsNU5sOGc" target="_blank">Reason vs. Reality</a><br />
<br />
S <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSG5PRTUwa2pQXzg" target="_blank">Science & Models</a><br />
<br />
T1 – <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQU0yRXRsWG9tUHc" target="_blank">“Truth” & Knowledge</a><br />
<br />
T2<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdR2lRUF92VkhxTDQ" target="_blank">“Truth” & Understanding</a><br />
<br />
U <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdOTNCQ2pMeDB1bVk" target="_blank">Ubiquitous Uncertainties</a><br />
<br />
V <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdODJLTEhPUVEtQ28" target="_blank">Values & Objectives</a><br />
<br />
W <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNk8tYi1pMkxJYmc" target="_blank">Words, Wisdom, & Worldviews</a><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">X: EXchanging Worldview</span></h3>
<br />
X01<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdM01aMGUyLTFtYk0" target="_blank">EXposing Ignorance</a><br />
<br />
X02<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNFF6XzdsaEpkSjg" target="_blank">EXcavating Reasons</a><br />
<br />
X03<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQk9Tb3RndDhvOXM" target="_blank">EXamining Reasons</a><br />
<br />
X04 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdLVl0M0JnWkV6cm8" target="_blank">EXamining Goals</a><br />
<br />
X05 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNDkxT0VCV1g1SFk" target="_blank">EXamining Interactions</a><br />
<br />
X06 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdc3VSVlZKeTBFdEE" target="_blank">EXamining Organizations</a><br />
<br />
X07 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX0dMMjZIT0xsNUk" target="_blank">EXamining Possibilities</a><br />
<br />
X08 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWGNsOEZqeTZuQ0E" target="_blank">EXamining Operations</a><br />
<br />
X09 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQ1RDVjE5X3VlbVE" target="_blank">EXploring Prospects</a><br />
<br />
X10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdb19nbTdPUkVTVWs" target="_blank">EXtending Justice</a><br />
<br />
X11 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdczJfU0pxTUsxbXM" target="_blank">EXpropriating Rights</a><br />
<br />
X12 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSTZKQ0ROMmNabzg" target="_blank">EXposing Violence</a><br />
<br />
X13 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVXNZNElDVm1iRGc" target="_blank">EXuding EXtremism</a><br />
<br />
X14 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZ0VjajlhejFyaXM" target="_blank">EXporting Delusions</a><br />
<br />
X15 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNWNRMjltaXlXeVE" target="_blank">EXpanding Education</a><br />
<br />
X16 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbjlSdFVlQ2tIdXc" target="_blank">EXtolling Critical Thinking</a><br />
<br />
X17 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNmdWY0RRaFdwaGs" target="_blank">EXtirpating Corruption</a><br />
<br />
X18 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNGFSMDhHbDZCYjQ" target="_blank">EXploiting Competition</a><br />
<br />
X19 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWmR4Mjlzb1RFSms" target="_blank">EXtracting Evaluative Thinking</a><br />
<br />
X20 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZm9GVEx4RF9hQ1U" target="_blank">EXpelling Educational Myths</a><br />
<br />
X21 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZFAxUkJBTUNHME0" target="_blank">EXorcising Child Abuse</a><br />
<br />
X22 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWE8zTlEtS0xPblU" target="_blank">EXiting the Vicious Circle</a><br />
<br />
X23 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdaFJLRllkaXl1RGc" target="_blank">EXpanding Women’s Liberation</a><br />
<br />
X24 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdeWUxUms2Y1pIRkU" target="_blank">EXtolling Individualism</a><br />
<br />
X25 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVVUxcUZ0cXN6R1U" target="_blank">EXtinguishing Violence</a><br />
<br />
X26 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX1FuZERPWWp0R2c" target="_blank">EXtrapolating Laws</a><br />
<br />
X27 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdN0M2OXZ1clg1QWc" target="_blank">EXcoriating Theism</a><br />
<br />
X28 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNDVnLUcwZEduaFE" target="_blank">EXemplifying Humanism</a><br />
<br />
X29 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSTBaM2poN3NJRTg" target="_blank">EXplaining Humanism</a><br />
<br />
X30 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdU19OZ3YtbTdBWXM" target="_blank">EXcluding Theists</a><br />
<br />
X31 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMlgyZTVkdHNyQnc" target="_blank">EXacerbating Criticisms</a><br />
<br />
X32<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQjRsZlBCSWU2Vkk" target="_blank">EXterminating Terrorism</a><br />
<br />
X33 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdc1BzR2lVdE83S1U" target="_blank">EXperimental Cooperatives</a><br />
<br />
X34<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdS0xyaWJPN0ZDd0U" target="_blank">EXtraterritorial Cooperatives</a><br />
<br />
X35<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSUk1b2JGc2ZSU1k" target="_blank">EXtraterrestrial Perspectives</a><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #45818e;">PART 5 (Y & Z):</span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> [Replace Belief in God with Confidence in the Scientific Method…]<br /> and with Trust in Yourself (= Zen) – to Help Knowledge Expand</span></h3>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Y: You, Your Indoctrination, & Your Potentials</span></h3>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
Y01 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX05lcU0zc1pJbjQ" target="_blank">You & Your Parents</a><br />
<br />
Y02 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMDhEMGpra0w3aW8" target="_blank">Your Premisses & Purposes</a><br />
<br />
Y03<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSkxvSGpYcUlwakk" target="_blank">Your Purposes & Values</a><br />
<br />
Y04 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdTEU1bEtuczQ0OVU" target="_blank">Your Principles & Policies</a><br />
<br />
Y05 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMDV6UDB2Ny1NSjQ" target="_blank">Your Decisions & Goals</a><br />
<br />
Y06 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdN0djTkNHeVo5WEU" target="_blank">Your Hopes & Priorities</a><br />
<br />
Y07<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>–<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdV0o1Qm82cmNpSk0" target="_blank">Your Delusions & Addictions</a><br />
<br />
Y08 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdX1Z3bE1sM3JjVUU" target="_blank">Your Choices & Changes</a><br />
<br />
Y09 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbFVseURQLThYZG8" target="_blank">Your Challenges & Constraints</a><br />
<br />
Y10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdU3c4eVl5OC1vLUU" target="_blank">Your Reality & Your Future</a><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Yx: EXploring Your Indoctrination in the Mountainous God Lie</span></h3>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
Yx01 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWlNNQ0t2TDFmSDQ" target="_blank">Introduction</a><br />
<br />
Yx02 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSzFSekYtT19nVlk" target="_blank">Creation of the Old Testament</a><br />
<br />
Yx03 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdRWt5TERLVENDRm8" target="_blank">Lies & Corruption in Genesis 1–3</a><br />
<br />
Yx04 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdS0xpSTRQQkJwYjA" target="_blank">Basic Errors Borrowed for the Bible</a><br />
<br />
Yx05 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdWHRtX1Z0MDRSUm8" target="_blank">The Crazy Fable about Cain & Abel</a><br />
<br />
Yx06 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSjFnVVBnYnNJX2M" target="_blank">Little Boys with their Tall Tales</a><br />
<br />
Yx07 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdTkd6NnJlU3RJeU0" target="_blank">Potential Evils of Clerical Babble</a><br />
<br />
Yx08 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUXh5b1p1OWZmajg" target="_blank">Naked Evils of Clerical Slavery</a><br />
<br />
Yx09 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddXB0ZGh6djE1OTQ" target="_blank">Clerical Enslavement of Thoughts</a><br />
<br />
Yx10 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdRVZGQWhyS1N6RnM" target="_blank">Cultures & Their Stories</a><br />
<br />
Yx11 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNUs2VTAtZHVQNDQ" target="_blank">Clerical Enslavement of Cultures</a><br />
<br />
Yx12 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQnM5SkVIVzhjZkE" target="_blank">The Mythical Moses – Part 1</a><br />
<br />
Yx13 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdOFd1UTA0Q3d1aVk" target="_blank">The Mythical Moses – Part 2</a><br />
<br />
Yx14 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQXJWMzJPTVNWV2c" target="_blank">The Law Lie 1 – Morality</a><br />
<br />
Yx15 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdU25jV193M2ViV28" target="_blank">The Law Lie 2 – Justice</a><br />
<br />
Yx16 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdN25CVWEwa2w3dW8" target="_blank">The Law Lie 3 – Customs</a><br />
<br />
Yx17 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUHd1SjkzbHBLb2M" target="_blank">The Law Lie 4 – Contracts</a><br />
<br />
Yx18 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVGEyVm1sU2lFQ2M" target="_blank">The Law Lie 5 – Leaders</a><br />
<br />
Yx19 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddVJybzZlMUlTNHc" target="_blank">The Law Lie 6 – Law & Order 1</a><br />
<br />
Yx20 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdVWZiWTdqLUx2S0k" target="_blank">The Law Lie 7 – Law & Order 2</a><br />
<br />
Yx21 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNkI5OXE4OHRpcjQ" target="_blank">Clerical Quackery (CQ) 1 – Life after Death</a><br />
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Yx22 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMHZnMzI5RG43SEk" target="_blank">Clerical Quackery (CQ) 2 – Judgment after Death</a><br />
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Yx23 – <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdTWIxX0pJSzRMbW8" target="_blank">CQ 3 – Mesopotamian & Zoroastrian Speculations</a><br />
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Yx24 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdMGxNOWZxWWpBZ2c" target="_blank">CQ 4 – The Problem of Evil</a><br />
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Yx25 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdT3llYVhBT0t1RFU" target="_blank">CQ 5 – Physics vs. Metaphysics (P vs. M) in Ancient Greece 1</a><br />
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Yx26 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNHhrcV9HZ1NOcWM" target="_blank">CQ 6 – P vs. M in Ancient Greece 2 – Plato</a><br />
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Yx27 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdbGpzaXhRZDJHOFE" target="_blank">CQ 7 – P vs. M in Ancient Greece 3 – Aristotle</a><br />
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Yx28 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdOGZCREpwY1REUVE" target="_blank">CQ 8 – Ancient Greece 4 – Epicureans vs. Stoics</a><br />
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Yx29 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdUW53MlFMUnRlX2c" target="_blank">CQ 9 – Greek Influences on Judaism</a><br />
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Yx30 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZF9PRTNsOGJoQjg" target="_blank">CQ10 – The Composite Christ</a><br />
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Yx31 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIddGZZNXRReHpoTm8" target="_blank">CQ11 – The Concocted Christ</a><br />
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Yx32 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNkRsNG5Eb3czLUk" target="_blank">CQ12 – The Corporate Christ</a><br />
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Yx33 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQjZrbG8tSGU3Zmc" target="_blank">The Pathetic Muhammad (pbuh)</a><br />
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Yx34 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdRmE0Slk2RVlPemM" target="_blank">Five Structural Errors in Islam</a><br />
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Yx35 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdSEx0SEFTSXg2MGM" target="_blank">Five Foundational Evils of Islam</a><br />
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Yx36 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNGFpVFdvVXE3YWs" target="_blank">Closing Comments 1 – Origins of the God Lie</a><br />
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Yx37 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdNTdrR2lFSFBhdVk" target="_blank">Closing Comments 2 – Promotion of the God Lie</a><br />
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Yx38 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZTVDYmRzUGIyb1U" target="_blank">Closing Comments 3 – Adoption of the God Lie</a><br />
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Yx39 –<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdZ01uZ2FySVZOUVk" target="_blank">Closing Comments 4 – Rejection of the God Lie</a><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Z: The Zeitgeist is Zerotheism</span></h3>
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<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
Z<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>– <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PB1jhMLJIdQ255VFpSaERDUDA" target="_blank">The Zen of Zero & Dynamics of the Dao</a><br />
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<br />A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-26995294481328748692011-01-13T07:41:00.000-08:002012-12-27T01:58:11.090-08:00Closing Comments – 4 – Rejection of the God Lie••••<br />
This is the 39th and final post in a series dealing with what I call “the God Lie”. For this final post, my goal is to add some closing comments on the rejection of the God Lie. When convenient, I’ll illustrate my comments with insights entertainingly created between 1985 and 1995 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson">Bill Watterson</a> in his Calvin and Hobbes comic strips (which, I remind readers, are still copyrighted and can’t be used for commercial purposes without the approval of Universal Press Syndicate).<br />
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Many times in earlier posts of this series, I provided examples of people rejecting both the God Lie and the clerics who promoted it. The first documented <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/08/lies-corruption-in-genesis-1-3.html">example</a> of rejecting the God Lie seems to be the Sumerian statement from approximately 4500 years ago:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">A man without a god – for a strong man it is no loss.</span></blockquote>
As for rejecting associated clerical con games, it seems that the first documented example resulted in “<a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">the world’s first political revolution</a>” led by Urukagina in the Sumerian city of Lagash (modern-day Tell al-Hiba in Iraq) in about 2350 BCE. Prior to the revolution, Urukagina described clerical excesses as follows:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">In the garden of a humble person a priest could cut a tree or carry away its fruit. When a dead man was placed in the tomb, it was necessary to deliver in his name seven jars of beer and 420 loaves of bread… uh-mush priest received one-half gur {about fourteen gallons} of barley, one garment, one turban, and one bed… priest’s assistant received one-fourth gur of barley…</span></blockquote>
After his reforms, according to Urukagina:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">When a dead man was placed in the tomb, (only) three jars of beer and eighty loaves of bread were delivered in his name. The uh-mush priest received one bed and one turban. The priest’s assistant received one-eighth gur of barley… The youth was not required to work in the a-zar-la; the workingman was not forced to beg for his bread. The priest no longer invaded the garden of a humble person.</span> </blockquote>
Thus, Urukagina managed to curtail some excesses of the ancient Sumerian priests, but as humans have again and again relearned during the subsequent 4350 years, it’s damn hard to totally eliminate clerical parasites.<br />
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Similar occurred in ancient Egypt approximately two centuries later, in what’s called “<a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/08/clerical-quackery-2-judgment-after.html">the world’s second political revolution</a>”. Prior to this revolution, the Egyptian priests (of course in collusion with political leaders) had promoted the scam that the leaders, buried in their pyramids, would live forever. After the revolution, the priests (wanting to stay in power) permitted people to believe that they, too, could live forever – provided (of course) that they followed the rules prescribed by the priests. What a con game – which continues to this day, e.g., in Christianity and Islam.<br />
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In Chapter XIII of his 1791 book <i>The Ruins</i> (<i>Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires</i>), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Volney">Volney</a> (Constantin François de Chassebœuf, 1757–1820) outlined how similar revolutions, rejecting the God Lie and curtailing clerical excesses, occurred during the subsequent ~4,000 years:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author than the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no other type and model than those of physical powers, material beings, producing either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on sensitive beings; that followed the same course, and been uniform in its proceedings; that in all of them the dogma has never failed to represent, under the name of gods, the operations of nature, and passions and prejudices of men; that the moral of them all has had for its object the desire of happiness and the aversion to pain; but that the people, and the greater part of legislators, not knowing the route to be pursued, have formed false and therefore discordant ideas of virtue and vice of good and evil, that is to say, of what renders man happy or miserable; that in every instance, the means and the causes of propagating and establishing systems have exhibited the same scenes of passion and the same events; everywhere disputes about words, pretexts for zeal, revolutions and wars excited by the ambition of princes, the knavery of apostles, the credulity of proselytes, the ignorance of the vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed, you will see that the whole history of the spirit of religion is only the history of the errors of the human mind, which, placed in a world that it does not comprehend, endeavors nevertheless to solve the enigma; and which, beholding with astonishment this mysterious and visible prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons, builds systems; then, finding one defective, destroys it for another not less so; hates the error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it embraces, rejects the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of discordant beings; and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and happiness, wanders blindly in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt. </span> </blockquote>
Similar continued during the American, French, and Russian revolutions, which in large measure were revolts against clerical hegemony, the claimed “divine right of kings”, and similar nonsense claimed to be “revelations” from God. For enlightened Americans, the Civil War was a death knell for Christianity: many in the South used the Bible to justify slavery; many in the North were convinced that slavery couldn’t be justified. For enlightened Europeans, WWII horrors perpetrated by the Nazis was a death knell of religions based on the Bible: after 2,000 years of Christian persecution of Jews, the Holocaust finally convinced a significant fraction of all Jews that there was no Yahweh to protect them – and convinced a significant fraction of all Christians that the Bible’s Gospels contained not “Good News” but evil.<br />
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In particular, the Nuremberg trials revealed to both Christians and Jews the evils contained in the Bible’s “revelations”: Moses allegedly came down from the mountain with “revealed” laws from God and proceeded to order the slaughter of those who didn’t believe him (similar to “revelations” claimed by Muhammad); the Levites who allegedly did the slaughtering followed his orders; but at Nuremberg, the judgment of the world was that “I was only following orders” didn’t absolve people from their “crimes against humanity”, such as those that Moses, Muhammad, and Hitler allegedly ordered. The Nuremberg trials established that, not some god or some “revelation”, but “we the people” will judge morality – a lesson yet to be learned by the vast majority of Muslims.<br />
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And for many enlightened people throughout the modern world, September 11, 2001 was a death knell for the concept of ‘faith’. Sam Harris’ book <i>The End of Faith</i>, which he started writing the day after 9/11, was seminal. But even the lesser-known author Graham Lawrence (whose book, <i>The Fallible Gospels</i>, seems unfortunately to have disappeared from the web) wrote compellingly:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">What I am against is stupid religion, not necessarily the idea of religion itself: religion that is not philosophical or sophisticated, but that can only survive by sacrificing common sense and keeping people in the dark. I am against the idea of an educational system without the courage to teach its own children the complexities of a truth that is big enough to stand up to archaeology and psychology and textual analysis.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Truth is not found through ‘faith’. Confusing it with ‘trust’ and making faith into a virtue was one of the biggest mistakes the human race ever made. Having ‘faith’ means uncritically trusting the word of another person absolutely, accepting his or her pronouncements, whatever their nature, as beyond argument. Anything that is beyond discussion, anything that cannot be disproved, can by definition be used by the unscrupulous. Your faith could be in someone inhumane, misguided, greedy, dangerous, or just deluded. Unquestioning faith flings wide the doors of exploitation of the gullible and persecution of the heretic who disagrees.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">If faith is its own justification, there is absolutely no reason that can be given to justify why faith in the words of Saint Paul is superior as an alternative to faith in the words of Muhammad, or Joseph Smith of the Mormons, or the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, or the people who in living memory have been the motivators for gun-battle sieges in Texas and mass suicides in Jonestown and nerve gas in Tokyo subways. Faith provides no defense, no protection against error, and no possibility for development. Faith does not just give us charity and pilgrimages. It gives us holy wars, death sentences and book burnings, and Islamic suicide bombers who have the obscene belief that they go to Paradise on slaughtering a bus-full of innocents, just because somebody told them this was so…</span></blockquote>
In this final post of this series, however, I don’t want to again review the historical development and rejection of the God Lie; instead, I’d like to add a few closing comments on why and how it’s being rejected by modern people. In general and in contrast to the bloody revolutions of the past, the current revolution is relatively peaceful and personal – save for bloody reactions by backward Muslims.<br />
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<b><i>1. The Nonsense about Heaven and Hell</i></b><br />
For example, it’s rather fun to see that many people are rejecting even the lie of eternal life in paradise, simply because it doesn’t make sense. <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">Elsewhere</a>, I’ve already addressed the obvious problem that eternal happiness would be psychologically impossible (because we’re happy only when we think we’re making progress, overcoming obstacles, toward achieving our goals – whereas, in paradise, there would be no obstacles!), but I admit that I rather enjoy the illogic of the concept of heaven illustrated by Bill Watterson:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvitUtBykIAXA1iNRgizYOLT6b4-KN41V3jsfVFLcdI5pQ9jqyP_DoE_CbZTIbjWMs02OHIl8NtLAsJXzElhU-F0H0H2XsxivpLRCYqDTurr4R60hoomOzbxwVWPgM69hrItRVoUutZGU/s1600/1.+Tigers+in+Heaven.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvitUtBykIAXA1iNRgizYOLT6b4-KN41V3jsfVFLcdI5pQ9jqyP_DoE_CbZTIbjWMs02OHIl8NtLAsJXzElhU-F0H0H2XsxivpLRCYqDTurr4R60hoomOzbxwVWPgM69hrItRVoUutZGU/s1600/1.+Tigers+in+Heaven.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. Calvin (C): “Do you think tigers go to the same heaven that people go to?” 2. C: “I mean, in heaven, everyone is supposed to be <b>happy</b>, right? But people wouldn’t be happy if they were always in danger of being eaten by tigers!” 3. C: “On the other hand, heaven wouldn’t be a very nice <b><i>without</i></b> tigers, either. <b><i>I</i></b> wouldn’t be happy if there weren’t any tigers. I’d miss them.” 4. C: “Maybe tigers don’t eat people in heaven.” Hobbes (H): “But then <b><i>we</i></b> wouldn’t be happy.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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And that’s not the only problem with the silly idea of heaven:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy55-K_rf2m-_PwzhO_bvo_XIJbnna7AkorPP6GuuZ1tFuI5d20pyEdjT98Pcp0055RWVo105lUK6lYufydfI4gcahHA7npR165Cv6-li1IStKggyC5A4-Tq48oXdiomBLOC7H_G3Fmb8/s1600/2.+Allowed+to+be+bad.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy55-K_rf2m-_PwzhO_bvo_XIJbnna7AkorPP6GuuZ1tFuI5d20pyEdjT98Pcp0055RWVo105lUK6lYufydfI4gcahHA7npR165Cv6-li1IStKggyC5A4-Tq48oXdiomBLOC7H_G3Fmb8/s1600/2.+Allowed+to+be+bad.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “If heaven is good and I like to be bad, how am I supposed to be happy there?” 2. H: “How will you get to heaven if you like to be bad?” C: “Let’s say I didn’t <b><i>do</i></b> what I <b><i>wanted</i></b> to do.” 3. C: “Suppose I led a blameless life! Suppose I denied my true dark nature!” 4. H: “I’m not sure I have that much imagination.” C: “Maybe heaven is a place where you’re <b><i>allowed</i></b> to be bad!”]</span></td></tr>
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But although many people have rejected the idea of heaven, because of its silliness, many more people have rejected the idea of hell, because of its hideousness. The damnable clerics of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) chose to try to rule the people through fear and injustice, threatening people with torture for an infinite time, not only for finite crimes but even for fictitious crimes (such as failing to believe in clerical balderdash). As Robert Ingersoll (a colonel in the American Civil War and, later, the attorney general of Illinois) wrote more than a century ago:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman… to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena…</span></blockquote>
More recently, Robert Anton Wilson wrote in his 1999 book <i>Cheerful Reflections on Death and Dying:</i><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">An idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me, because when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called 'God', as totally mad. I mean, guys, compare that 'God' with the worst monsters you can think of – Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-masochistic fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously…</span></blockquote>
Unfortunately, though, a huge number of brain-damaged people still do take such nonsense “seriously”. For example, a 2007 <a href="http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religious-landscape-study-key-findings.pdf">survey</a> of 35,000 Americans by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 74% of those surveyed believe in heaven [84% of all Protestants, 82% of all Catholics, 95% of all Mormons, and 85% of all (American) Muslims – but probably close to 100% of all Muslims living in Islamic countries]. The survey also found that 59% of all Americans believe in hell [73% of Protestants, 60% of all Catholics, 59% of all Mormons, and 80% of all (American) Muslims, although again, probably close to 100% of all Muslims living in Islamic countries]. Such people obviously pay no attention to Nietzsche’s plea in his book <i><a href="http://philosophy.thecastsite.com/readings/nietzsche3.pdf">Thus Spoke Zarathustra</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary; so, let them fade away! Once the sacrilege against God was the greatest sacrilege, but God died…</span></blockquote>
But looking on the bright side of the above-referenced data, approximately 25% of Americans have rejected the silly idea of heaven and 40% have rejected the hideous idea of hell. Probably similar percentages are applicable in Canada and Australia. And although most Muslims throughout the world are still mired in such mindless ideas (as are most Christians in Africa and Central and South America), the percentages of Europeans and Asians who believe in such ideas are almost certainly smaller than for Americans.<br />
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So, save for the case of the poor Muslim people, some progress is being made – and probably much more will be made during the coming decades. Who knows, it may not be much longer before all the damn clerics promoting the silly idea of heaven and the hideous idea of hell will find themselves in jail, which is where they belong: <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-clerics-are-terrorists.html">they’re terrorists</a>; they terrorize, especially, children and adults with childish minds.<br />
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In fact, progress is being made rejecting the entire God idea, especially among young people living in democracies. For example, a 2010 Pew Forum <a href="http://pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx">poll</a> found:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Compared with their elders today, young people [in the U.S.] are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination. Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular". This compares with less than one-fifth of people in their 30s (19%), 15% of those in their 40s, 14% of those in their 50s, and 10% or less among those 60 and older.</span></blockquote>
Thanks to such youngsters, things are looking up (!) – even in the religiously backward U.S. (where by “religiously backward”, I mean compared with Europeans and most Asians – not compared with Muslims, who are the most religiously retarded people in the world).<br />
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But even though progress is being made, yet still today, perhaps 10% of the economies of Western societies (and more in Muslim societies) is consumed by clerical quacks promoting lies. Yet to be fair, quite likely the vast majority of today’s clerical quacks don’t purposefully lie. Instead, they are so poorly educated, so thoroughly indoctrinated, or so mentally deficient that they “think” that what they promote is “true”, without knowing even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">what “truth” means</a>.<br />
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<b><i>2. More Mythical Nonsense</i></b><br />
But the myths about heaven and hell are just part of the silliness of the Abrahamic religions. In total, the myths of all religions have been and continue to be the foundations of all clerical con games. As Joseph Wheless wrote in his 1930 book <i><a href="http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/forgery_christianity.pdf">Forgery in Christianity</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Mythology has well been called the Theology of dead religions. The world is a vast cemetery of deceased gods and teeming scrap-heap of decayed and discarded priest-imposed religious beliefs – superstitions. All the dead gods and religions of Paganism, all the yet surviving but fast moribund deities and faiths of the XXth Century world, all (except, the Jews and Christians [and Muslims] say, their own) all were admittedly the fraudulent handiwork of priests and professional god-and-mythmakers. In a word, short and ugly, but true – every priest of every god and religion (saving, for the nonce, the Jewish-Christian[-Muslim] ones) was a conscious and unconscionable falsifier and impostor – a common liar for his god. All plied their artful, unholy priestcraft in the name of gods, for power and pelf…</span></blockquote>
More and more, though, people are rejecting the clerics’ con games, basically because people are seeing that religious ideas just don’t make sense. They’re all based on mythical nonsense, similar to the Santa Claus myth, as Watterson illustrated:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbu9CiQN243ByiZgXmDCnZLj20og0AvFKG9QfuFR0muhqRXIZWTlRqwwR0490RhvgJdRuqp3r_4zQtf2aTFuoLUIoeJLJphO56mj4C-O-AiykEcKdY5j0gKhEbhrFI4amea2J0tt1s5cc/s1600/3.+Santa+Claus+Thing.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbu9CiQN243ByiZgXmDCnZLj20og0AvFKG9QfuFR0muhqRXIZWTlRqwwR0490RhvgJdRuqp3r_4zQtf2aTFuoLUIoeJLJphO56mj4C-O-AiykEcKdY5j0gKhEbhrFI4amea2J0tt1s5cc/s1600/3.+Santa+Claus+Thing.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn’t make sense.” 2. C: “Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists, why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it?” 3. C: “And if he <b><i>doesn’t</i></b> exist, what’s the meaning of all this?” 4. H: “I dunno… Isn’t this a religious holiday?” C: “Yeah, but actually, I’ve got the same questions about God.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
The main myths of all organized religions are wild speculations about how the universe came into existence, what controls nature, how humans came to be, what our purpose is, what happens to us when we die, etc. The fundamental myth deals with creation. Given that, upon encountering some complex device (a watch, a car, a computer), most people normally assume that something intelligent and therefore even-more complicated (e.g., a human) created it, religious people accepted (and still accept) the myth that something even-more complicated (God) created the universe (or, originally, the world, which was thought to be the center of creation) and created humans.<br />
<br />
Such an argument (by analogy) has, however, at least three major inadequacies. One is that, as the philosopher David Hume demonstrated, no “argument by analogy” is logically sound: analogies can serve to illuminate an argument, but never to prove one. A second inadequacy with the argument is that it leads to the obvious (but unanswered) question: how was the creator god created? I’ll address this inadequacy in a later paragraph. And the third inadequacy of this “argument-from-design analogy” is that, it’s now known that such is not how nature operates: in nature, complexity arises not from even greater complexity, but from simplicity.<br />
<br />
There are innumerable examples. Something as complicated as a tree is created by a seed, something as complicated as a seed is created from a sequence of molecules in a genetic code, something as complicated as a molecule is created by arrangements of atoms, something as complicated as an atom is created by arrangements of elementary particles, and something as complicated as elementary particles is created by arrangements of packets of energy – and the first appearance of energy seems to have been created by a single, symmetry-breaking quantum-like fluctuation in the original “total nothingness”, not from total nothingness suddenly popping a unbelievable complex god into existence, capable of creating trees, humans, and everything else! <br />
<br />
Yet, the silly creation myths persist. Illustrative is Calvin’s creation story, which is similar to Zarathustra’s seven-period creation myth (which was subsequently adopted by Persians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, et al.):<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2qw0vOKWKXTnFAmmSaGOvVOu3SBlGF9RrGtYEyC6Pel_ubRAZJ4HdJQ6ZiQdHh1oQV95omEkWSqCP4EKdjTL007vq0FQdKC8gn1tEwVToWTxV12Dd6GJgua_Xo_xTJkbxa0AxY9Q02PA/s1600/4.+Genesis.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2qw0vOKWKXTnFAmmSaGOvVOu3SBlGF9RrGtYEyC6Pel_ubRAZJ4HdJQ6ZiQdHh1oQV95omEkWSqCP4EKdjTL007vq0FQdKC8gn1tEwVToWTxV12Dd6GJgua_Xo_xTJkbxa0AxY9Q02PA/s1600/4.+Genesis.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. First there was nothing… 2. …then there was Calvin! 3. Calvin, the mighty god created the universe with pure will! 4. From utter nothingness comes swirling form! Life begins where once was void! 5. But Calvin is no kind and loving god! He’s one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice! 6. Yes, Calvin is a god of the underworld! And the puny inhabitants of Earth displease him! 7. The great Calvin ignores their pleas for mercy and the doomed writhe in agony! 8. Calvin’s Dad: “Have you seen how absorbed Calvin is with those tinkertoys? He’s creating whole worlds over there!” Calvin’s Mom: “I’ll bet he grows up to be an architect.” {or more likely, a cleric!}]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
It’s sad to see that so many people still believe such silliness. Their concepts of the universe and their place with in it are childish. But of course, even a child asks: “Where did the creator god come from?” And if the response is that god always existed, then why don’t they just assume that the universe always existed? Or if they claim that their god was created, then how? The probability that a creator god (the grand architect!) would pop into existence from total nothingness is <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">vanishingly smaller</a> than the probability that a symmetry-breaking, quantum-like fluctuation in total nothingness created the first separation of energy into positive and negative components, leading to the Big Bang, elementary particles, atoms, stars, their remnants (subsequently forming planets), and eventually life, including humans. But religious people aren’t to think about such things; they’re to have faith; they’re to believe – in the dogma promoted by lame-brain clerics with the collection plates.<br />
<br />
As for life on Earth <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5mIZvkR1m4&feature=channel_page">starting</a> possibly via autocatalytic reactions of complex hydrocarbon molecules becoming encased in semi-permeable membranes, then storing information about their environment, reproducing, and eventually leading to “evolutionarily perfect” humans – well, Hobbes had something to say about that:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoaEQWIaOEuNvMW5bTDjZLDGM37gIUN1A8YmuxAXiGBPaBBbBrBWAEk12wh33CeGxAt8BhxlKogqv4P5egz7UyjTlfuXv-s2fAzndBlHPB4G2y7TQGrSPT-Qwkay61syOm-YkbWqWDK7g/s1600/5.+Evolutionary+Perfection.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoaEQWIaOEuNvMW5bTDjZLDGM37gIUN1A8YmuxAXiGBPaBBbBrBWAEk12wh33CeGxAt8BhxlKogqv4P5egz7UyjTlfuXv-s2fAzndBlHPB4G2y7TQGrSPT-Qwkay61syOm-YkbWqWDK7g/s1600/5.+Evolutionary+Perfection.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “When you look at me, it’s clear that my genes contain the evolutionary perfection of earthly DNA.” 2. C: “I am the culmination of creation.” 3. H: “With no tail?! I don’t think so!” C: “ Stop that! My butt doesn’t <b><i>need</i></b> aesthetic enhancement!”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
Actually, upon thinking more about evolution, even Calvin was perplexed:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjc6G121J171SJ9bVN_T8xlbRzFEt350Od9dq59wmxEhwBQrENXDeHsF2VvdoTIWRtY4-f4HbiLXZ8NM9MxWaYad03spGXpTMsXMw678lVoOlPOI-HhIO37IAeiNcvgWb-jXHT7o0dmQ/s1600/6.+Sense+of+Humor.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjc6G121J171SJ9bVN_T8xlbRzFEt350Od9dq59wmxEhwBQrENXDeHsF2VvdoTIWRtY4-f4HbiLXZ8NM9MxWaYad03spGXpTMsXMw678lVoOlPOI-HhIO37IAeiNcvgWb-jXHT7o0dmQ/s1600/6.+Sense+of+Humor.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor?” 2. C: “When you think about it, it’s weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We <b>laugh</b> at nonsense. We like it. We think it’s funny.” 3. C: “Don’t you think it’s odd that we <b><i>appreciate</i></b> absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?” 4. H: “I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.” 5. {Calvin is dumbfounded.} 6. C: “I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
Talking about absurdities, consider this. All organized religions are remnants of the biggest blunders science ever made! Religions are the remnants of ancient “reasons” or “explanations” for creation, astronomy, biology, geology… nature’s violence and benevolence, life and death, illnesses and infirmities, social organizations and moralities, people’s purposes, and so on. Yet, during the most recent few hundred years, competent scientists in the many responsible scientific disciplines have debunked every single one of such wild speculations. As Sam Harris recently wrote in an article for the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> entitled “<a href="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/gods-dupes1">God’s Dupes</a>”:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Indeed, it is time we broke this spell en masse. Every one of the world’s “great” religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain – from cosmology to psychology to economics – has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.</span></blockquote>
But because clerics tell people what they want to hear (e.g., that they’ll live forever in paradise if they just do what the clerics say), people adopt the debunked religious myths and reject the best explanations that science has been able to provide. It’s absurd – but understandable.<br />
<br />
<b><i>3. Clerical Dogma</i></b><br />
It’s understandable, also, why clerical con artists and colluding politicians promote their nonsense, namely, to gain and maintain power over the people. As the Greek historian Polybius (c.200–118 BCE) wrote, writing about even more ancient clerics and politicians:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Since the masses of the people are inconsistent, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods and the belief in punishment after death</span>.</blockquote>
For Polybius, “the ancients” to whom he referred (who had “invent[ed] gods and the belief in punishment after death”) were probably the ancient Egyptian clerics, from ~2,000 years earlier. Later, ~2,000 years after Polybius, d’Holbach wrote similar in his 1761 book <i><a href="http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/cu_holb.pdf">Christianity Unveiled</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Religion is the art of inspiring mankind with an enthusiasm, which is designed to divert their attention from the evils with which they are overwhelmed by those who govern them. By means of the invisible powers with which they are threatened, they are forced to suffer in silence the miseries with which they are afflicted by visible ones. They are taught to hope that, if they consent to become miserable in this world, they will for that reason be happy in the next.</span></blockquote>
But now, more than 4,000 years since such ideas were “invent[ed]” to control the people, a significant percentage of all people in the non-Muslim world are beginning to question clerical dogma, finally realizing that clerics (and brainwashed parents) don’t know what they’re talking about:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCy8AUHzO1c78HQGWvXs5OScm7M8xkau9AFJae4YnU5lAk0Gy1CDjCXKOuq8NwmCSK3gHmKrLIjAsasWYVNRVZP-kYf4m7aHdrgyL-JO3MRbpCv0SFAyyylzY4ucJNa8tGPvloK7v_HD8/s1600/7.+Carburetor.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCy8AUHzO1c78HQGWvXs5OScm7M8xkau9AFJae4YnU5lAk0Gy1CDjCXKOuq8NwmCSK3gHmKrLIjAsasWYVNRVZP-kYf4m7aHdrgyL-JO3MRbpCv0SFAyyylzY4ucJNa8tGPvloK7v_HD8/s1600/7.+Carburetor.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Hey Dad, how does a carburetor work?” 2. Calvin’s Dad (CD): “I can’t tell you.” 3. C: “Why not?” 4. CD: “It’s a secret.” C: “<b>No it isn’t! You just don’t know!</b>”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
For example, more people are seriously questioning the clerical dogma that any god dictated morality – as well as other crazy concepts, such as the Jewish/ Persian/ ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian silliness about the first two people, the Islamic silliness that we’re being tested, and the Christian silliness of original sin:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyN44SAsocmFu9R_aB5crp4LIEUgGgfzl2tBwCtOaSI9qbUAwg9mvOMqLY41Ce3LsBwQU7vDBajnMtEdZHCssZ6yfQoGMdeFJLh_yR_xuWL6-Q0APQDsLLQ95SfHOcrHocciRro4INNWc/s1600/8.+Sinful+Babies.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyN44SAsocmFu9R_aB5crp4LIEUgGgfzl2tBwCtOaSI9qbUAwg9mvOMqLY41Ce3LsBwQU7vDBajnMtEdZHCssZ6yfQoGMdeFJLh_yR_xuWL6-Q0APQDsLLQ95SfHOcrHocciRro4INNWc/s1600/8.+Sinful+Babies.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Do you think babies are born sinful? That they come into the world as sinners?” 2. H: “No, I think they’re just quick studies.” 3. C: “Whenever you discuss certain things with animals, you get insulted.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
More people are also questioning all the so-called “signs” and “revelations”, especially upon finding that science provides better explanations:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNgV14JS4aFHSVnEqSMfAQL_82sAN1EIZpUzlxfQldITXvaKU4lIaeaQfg6Z2w634h8UERh0etfa646LARfa0dd8FxVFqt23M_nsX1pWumhGtyn7UFLFsdVtghDxCbmc_qSuS3_HUZCzA/s1600/9.+Cuulonimbal+Thing.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNgV14JS4aFHSVnEqSMfAQL_82sAN1EIZpUzlxfQldITXvaKU4lIaeaQfg6Z2w634h8UERh0etfa646LARfa0dd8FxVFqt23M_nsX1pWumhGtyn7UFLFsdVtghDxCbmc_qSuS3_HUZCzA/s1600/9.+Cuulonimbal+Thing.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “I saw a cloud that looked just like me!” 2. H: “Really?” C: “There was my head, huge and white, floating in the ethereal blue! Obviously it’s a <b><i>sign</i></b>!” 3. H: “Of what?” C: “Very peculiar high altitude winds, I guess.” 4. C: “You know, some sort of cumulonimbal thing.” H: “Science kind of takes the fun out of the portent business.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
And more people are beginning to develop more realistic expectations of how the future can be predicted and influenced – well, at least, some people are:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicexBxi1JC1L6Dlj7P_9oEdgXMGFySdDVg9a8_VXzQv_ITZNHIDX2Rv-iOzPMM-I1EiVmdZPDMwYDkhqTomKa9MHhWvxOyz5z6YCgxhfGa0u5R-E7vQdv8EK8nMTOxfWQ37hWxA_ZWNkY/s1600/10.+Planning+for+the+Future.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicexBxi1JC1L6Dlj7P_9oEdgXMGFySdDVg9a8_VXzQv_ITZNHIDX2Rv-iOzPMM-I1EiVmdZPDMwYDkhqTomKa9MHhWvxOyz5z6YCgxhfGa0u5R-E7vQdv8EK8nMTOxfWQ37hWxA_ZWNkY/s1600/10.+Planning+for+the+Future.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “I’ve been thinking about this astrology stuff.” 2. C: “Everyone want to know what the future holds, but you just have to wait ‘til it happens.” 3. H: “So really, the best preparation for the future is take the present and… {Calvin trips: “<b>Whoop! Aaughh!</b>”} 4. {Hobbes continues} “… think about what you’re doing?” C: “No. Get yourself a good luck charm. Man, here comes <b><i>another</i></b> bath!”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
In fact, the doubts of an increasing percentage of all people have emboldened them to challenge god:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0UuxeTMZNMZ-FNxdunX-UhMrE7q3UsAM8h98n59Mx-Xsc3tgYvsIroDY6kCX2hd-ueqXHVQNVLImY_hn61_a7oazyrx8pkHo-_P16A1khua6qK7uXhdffDsjS5dB6US9FdWLGm-VBh0/s1600/11.+Become+an+Atheist.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0UuxeTMZNMZ-FNxdunX-UhMrE7q3UsAM8h98n59Mx-Xsc3tgYvsIroDY6kCX2hd-ueqXHVQNVLImY_hn61_a7oazyrx8pkHo-_P16A1khua6qK7uXhdffDsjS5dB6US9FdWLGm-VBh0/s1600/11.+Become+an+Atheist.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. {Calvin, dejected, with his sled on grass rather than snow} 2. C {disgruntled}: “If <b><i>I</i></b> was in charge, we’d never see grass between October and May.” 3. C {shouting at the sky}: “On ‘Three’, ready? One… two; three!” 4. “<b>Snow!</b>” 5. {Calvin frustrated} 6. “<b>I said ‘Snow!’ C’mon! Snow!</b>” 7. {An angry Calvin} “<b>SNOW!</b>” 8. {A belligerent Calvin} “OK, then, <b><i>don’t</i></b> snow! See what <b><i>I</i></b> care! I <b><i>like</i></b> this weather! Let’s have it forever!” 9. {Calvin on his knees}: “<b><i>Pleeaase </i></b>snow! Please?? Just a foot! OK, eight inches! That’s all! C’mon! Six inches, even! How about just six??” 10. {Calvin, frustrated} “<b>I’m <i>waaiiiting</i></b>…” 11. {Calvin, furious} “<b>RRRRGGHHH</b>” 12. {Calvin, exhausted} 13. “<b>Do you want me to become an atheist?</b>”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
Undoubtedly, substantial doubt is appropriate. As Volney also wrote in his book <i>The Ruins:</i><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">And what is doubt… that it should be a crime? Can man feel otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and of importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it. His punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or equivocal, how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without evidence or proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous man loses himself in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense examines and discusses, that he may be consistent in his opinions. The honest man will bear contradiction, because it gives rise to evidence. Violence is the argument of falsehood; and to impose a creed by authority is the act and indication of a tyrant.</span></blockquote>
As more people become more aware of more aspects of the mountainous God Lie, as more people realize that they’ve been duped by clerical quackery, as more people withdraw their trust in clerics, I suspect that all the organized religions will collapse. I expect that this collapse will occur amazingly rapidly, as rapidly as Catholics are now abandoning their religion, because of the way their priests have raped children. Trust takes years to build and yet can be lost almost instantaneously. As science expands, religion contracts. I expect that, perhaps within a few decades in the U.S. and within a century in Muslim countries, all ideas about all gods will be confined to those who are mentally ill or “mentally challenged” (viz., imbeciles).<br />
<br />
<b><i>4. Connecting the Dots Differently</i></b><br />
Doubting the existence of any god and angry at how clerics had manipulated them, people have started to search for ways to “connect the dots” by themselves:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii9LW3Lot0r0QJdqTH2XWRN6D_cEM_BSWOu3PYZ6Hlj1QCCH-TqcVLQz5v7BvXoJ88_qW3Vo6fCWq4a8BUK5G1Aa7pvFUepsRu-FTv4XBxwf6kz-LGPuTpgp9vFd9c1Ty8URJYiG6CTBs/s1600/12.+Connecting+the+Dots.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii9LW3Lot0r0QJdqTH2XWRN6D_cEM_BSWOu3PYZ6Hlj1QCCH-TqcVLQz5v7BvXoJ88_qW3Vo6fCWq4a8BUK5G1Aa7pvFUepsRu-FTv4XBxwf6kz-LGPuTpgp9vFd9c1Ty8URJYiG6CTBs/s1600/12.+Connecting+the+Dots.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “This connect-the-dots book really makes me mad! Look at this.” 2. H: “It’s a duck.” C: “I know! Who wants to draw a duck?! <b><i>I</i></b> sure didn’t! They <b><i>made</i></b> me!” 3. C: “I’ve been manipulated! My natural artistic talent has been used against my will to create some corporate entity’s crude idea of waterfowl! It’s outrageous!” 4. H: “Another blow to creative integrity.” C: “From now on, I’ll connect the dots my <b><i>own</i></b> way.”]</span></td></tr>
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Although it has taken thousands of years, people have slowly begun to connect the dots themselves, developing more realistic worldviews – but not without some lingering (and sometimes, rather dangerous) doubts:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6tMBqCOcnjIdS__-kvHK4MoKk1yxcMhm2pfuMLmtGF0M6yikDSpIMZ_2iCdBsmx80E2KXclFuGwBHEItB8jEtU11LdMRRuukaWcQCIF1CfVAthshfcgJi6ZAnkOwT3766T73TVQtHooQ/s1600/13.+No+Afterlife.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6tMBqCOcnjIdS__-kvHK4MoKk1yxcMhm2pfuMLmtGF0M6yikDSpIMZ_2iCdBsmx80E2KXclFuGwBHEItB8jEtU11LdMRRuukaWcQCIF1CfVAthshfcgJi6ZAnkOwT3766T73TVQtHooQ/s1600/13.+No+Afterlife.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “What if there’s no afterlife? Suppose this is all we get.” 2. {Hobbes looks around and thinks about it.} 3. H: “Oh, what the heck. I’ll take it anyway.” C: “Yeah, but if I’m not going to be eternally rewarded for my behavior, I’d sure like to know <b><i>now</i></b>.”]</span></td></tr>
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In fact, realism can lead not only to doubts but a dour outlook on life:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTiIpQacVMTR-gVZeAYpr_LKAVDe2pPoZ0aodA0jJwNj27QRpwRuXrx3ZtR3Q0f7bBbHXaqUVO_C58hGBux9L7cmIwUZ1zQ0Vdjm9KVlNIdKsTuqvwecnecAYOSvLP1wmyBBS0aGchI1E/s1600/14.+Bad+Day+in+Perspective.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTiIpQacVMTR-gVZeAYpr_LKAVDe2pPoZ0aodA0jJwNj27QRpwRuXrx3ZtR3Q0f7bBbHXaqUVO_C58hGBux9L7cmIwUZ1zQ0Vdjm9KVlNIdKsTuqvwecnecAYOSvLP1wmyBBS0aGchI1E/s1600/14.+Bad+Day+in+Perspective.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “The problem with people is they don’t look at the big picture.” 2. C: “Eventually, we’re each going to die, our species will go extinct, the Sun will explode, and the Universe will collapse.” 3. C: “Existence is not only temporary, it’s pointless! We’re all doomed, and worse, nothing matters!” 4. H: “I see why people don’t like to look at the big picture.” C: “Well, it puts a bad day in perspective.”]</span></td></tr>
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<b><i>5. Some New Religions</i></b><br />
Without doubt, many people have rejected the old religions, but in many cases, when previously accepted worldviews begin to collapse, the ruins can be hazardous. For example, a significant fraction of all people have replaced organized religion with other distractions from reality, such as watching TV:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN_RJgLgEJUbs7bzDmySYZgOfC_U4LctPRyr8mJOW855ZXobdbhndiGq8W0AYPo8gzX17KKYtQ2OaTT_55K0T645stIgS_n4FKhLQDQkgOXM0deDPq-r0PW6hYkKf0qS1QMwYrs0YcLkk/s1600/15.+TV+on.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN_RJgLgEJUbs7bzDmySYZgOfC_U4LctPRyr8mJOW855ZXobdbhndiGq8W0AYPo8gzX17KKYtQ2OaTT_55K0T645stIgS_n4FKhLQDQkgOXM0deDPq-r0PW6hYkKf0qS1QMwYrs0YcLkk/s1600/15.+TV+on.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “I can’t sleep, Hobbes. I’ve been thinking.” H: “What about?” 2. C: “Well, suppose there’s no afterlife. That would mean <b><i>this</i></b> life is all you get.” 3. C: “And <b><i>that</i></b> would mean I’m sitting here in bed as precious moments of my all-too-short life disappear forever.” 4. Calvin’s Mom {shaking Calvin’s sleeping Dad }: “Honey, wake up. Do you hear the television on?”]</span></td></tr>
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For some people, “religiously” watching TV can become obsessive:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQY78xtRdX9dD2ImKUkckv70Eqq7UjV3WMihtIagQKcC3eDkiFq1TLZPet-y411gzoOMrdnEdcEs8MVoeHDvhkwXQ_lVFnNzdhNfq3W2ZDbu1FFWE18nHikL-uwVm67MueheuJAYjewo/s1600/16.+Lukewarm+Tapioca.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQY78xtRdX9dD2ImKUkckv70Eqq7UjV3WMihtIagQKcC3eDkiFq1TLZPet-y411gzoOMrdnEdcEs8MVoeHDvhkwXQ_lVFnNzdhNfq3W2ZDbu1FFWE18nHikL-uwVm67MueheuJAYjewo/s1600/16.+Lukewarm+Tapioca.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Oh greatest of the mass media, thank you for elevating emotion, reducing thought, and stifling imagination.” 2. C: “Thank you for the artificiality of quick solutions and for the insidious manipulation of human desires for commercial purposes.” 3. C: “This bowl of lukewarm tapioca represents my brain. I offer it in humble sacrifice. Bestow thy flickering light forever.” 4. {A sleepy Calvin’s mother can’t make sense of the scene.}]</span></td></tr>
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Yet, unless a child is mentally abused with religious indoctrination, organized religions can’t compete in the modern world: they can’t capture children’s imaginations so completely as can cartoons, sitcoms, movies, etc. available on TVs, DVDs, the big screen, the internet, etc. Unfortunately, though, the myths of these “new religions” can become as mind numbing as the old, even for Hobbes:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPUDPvIpNJdRENslm14XglONFOhUHQm5suC4lISZYiD9jSieJQtLKRsDIbGr7IfMglB6FCqevRtW4m4IMJwc3VbAuyBYZ1snjO6vz1Rs9zp3WwHhnbVwjoNFRxgjJ-n9Yvyc1oX8qz48/s1600/17.+Marx+hadn%2527t+seen+anything.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPUDPvIpNJdRENslm14XglONFOhUHQm5suC4lISZYiD9jSieJQtLKRsDIbGr7IfMglB6FCqevRtW4m4IMJwc3VbAuyBYZ1snjO6vz1Rs9zp3WwHhnbVwjoNFRxgjJ-n9Yvyc1oX8qz48/s1600/17.+Marx+hadn%2527t+seen+anything.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “It says here that ‘Religion is the opiate of the masses.’ What do you suppose <b><i>that</i></b> means?” 2. {A sarcastic comment from an apparently sentient TV}: “It means Karl Marx hadn’t seen anything yet.” 3. H: “What are you watching?” 4. C: “Garbage. This show would insult a 6-year-old! And I should know.” 5. H: “So why watch it?” C: “All the other shows are even worse!” 6. H: “Why watch TV at all then?” C: “There’s nothing to do.” 7. H: “<b>Nothing to do?!</b> You could read a book! or write a letter! or take a walk!” 8. H: “When you’re old, you’ll wish you had more than memories of this tripe to look back on.” C: “Undoubtedly.” 9. {What’s on TV intrigues Hobbes} 10. {Hobbes also succumbs}]</span></td></tr>
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Recalling the truism that half of the people have below-average intelligence, we then shouldn’t be surprised that, along with mindless TV (and “escapism” movies, internet porn, etc.), a large fraction of all people in “wealthy” countries have also succumbed to TV’s conquering ally, unthinking consumerism:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibK95M792wqruoSDmO1LwQePby4_pMETWnxZCQ195hyphenhyphenDr6B8BJzbTP1KzRh5EnTr3uYD74NJqWrLzC6iiKHOUJVC2BJhfAHpNHk3y-oBnwgNwTDtwTS_8sG-wXOKsCP1mp4G6_FG71Dow/s1600/18.+Frenzied+Acquisition.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibK95M792wqruoSDmO1LwQePby4_pMETWnxZCQ195hyphenhyphenDr6B8BJzbTP1KzRh5EnTr3uYD74NJqWrLzC6iiKHOUJVC2BJhfAHpNHk3y-oBnwgNwTDtwTS_8sG-wXOKsCP1mp4G6_FG71Dow/s1600/18.+Frenzied+Acquisition.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[(1) C: “The Christmas season is always a time for personal reflection.” (2) C: “Too often we don’t examine our lives. This is a time to take stock and think about what’s important.” (3) C: “It’s a time to rededicate oneself to frenzied acquisition… A time to spread the joy of material wealth… A time to glorify personal excess of every kind!” (4) C: “…a time to atone for one’s frugality!” H: “Earthly rewards make consumerism a popular religion.”]</span></td></tr>
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And along with addictions to mind-numbing entertainment and frenzied consumerism, a large fraction of all people throughout the world are placated as spectators of professional sports, such as baseball, basketball, football, and so on. In contrast, Calvin wasn’t just a spectator but engaged in his favorite sport, Calvinball! In fact, he invented it:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNhVedypU4JV7kE-ALPz-Nlb-EZSw6WtXuxQKo0brUVotvd4p-IJklxZ2wV5KEbgJ0_XpE5sTDjouUG1KxFaoNYb36eBOvrqrwR5cvmvC_zslZcRubENcJrsIR72qC9hopTbGegeQ7528/s1600/19.+Calvinball+1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNhVedypU4JV7kE-ALPz-Nlb-EZSw6WtXuxQKo0brUVotvd4p-IJklxZ2wV5KEbgJ0_XpE5sTDjouUG1KxFaoNYb36eBOvrqrwR5cvmvC_zslZcRubENcJrsIR72qC9hopTbGegeQ7528/s1600/19.+Calvinball+1.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “So what’s the game I get to play if I’m good?” Calvin’s babysitter, Rosalyn (R): “You can decide. Pick your favorite game.” 2. C: “Is this a trick? Can we really play my favorite game??” R: “Sure, why not? What is it?” 3. C: <b>Calvinball!!</b>” R: “<b>Calvin</b>ball?” 4. C: “Get out the time-fracture wickets, Hobbes! We’re gonna play Calvinball!” R: “What the heck is Calvinball?”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZYr78DA50NBZX3MJObPYpGBnIZ6mdX6rqGK-tgLfZWpdpfrUARGMAaGVrNBRGYGtUexfCPb958TuHJvx71Va3b27Ihe2-3zdlecj1JgQv_cQZZYf0Ygx2OSRIJI30PiF2Q34Ct5IoT4/s1600/20.+Calvinball+2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZYr78DA50NBZX3MJObPYpGBnIZ6mdX6rqGK-tgLfZWpdpfrUARGMAaGVrNBRGYGtUexfCPb958TuHJvx71Va3b27Ihe2-3zdlecj1JgQv_cQZZYf0Ygx2OSRIJI30PiF2Q34Ct5IoT4/s1600/20.+Calvinball+2.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. Calvin dancing and singing: “Other kids’ games are all such a bore! They’ve gotta have rules and they gotta keep score! Calvinball is better by far! It’s never the same! It’s always bizarre! You don’t need a team or a referee! You know that it’s great, ‘cause it’s named after me! If you wanna…” 2. C (to Rosalyn): “Uh, feel free to harmonize on the Rumma Tum Tums.” R: “This was a mistake.”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicpdEk5b63lgBHs4-OX4273xnLMw-Sn404JXNKSscQGX8RzezeV2HeNBxHIe6AR2lTGaHaln2-GOkDFN1bDS2sawJ_8R3qetPKzCW6gI9G3HwC_QDSGbCW-1iBs_U3JFOm9eiXdn9GPHg/s1600/21.+Calvinball+3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicpdEk5b63lgBHs4-OX4273xnLMw-Sn404JXNKSscQGX8RzezeV2HeNBxHIe6AR2lTGaHaln2-GOkDFN1bDS2sawJ_8R3qetPKzCW6gI9G3HwC_QDSGbCW-1iBs_U3JFOm9eiXdn9GPHg/s1600/21.+Calvinball+3.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “I’ve got the Calvinball! Everybody has go in slow motion now!” 2. R: “Wait a minute, Calvin, I don’t…” C (interrupting Rosalyn): “You have to <b><i>talk</i></b> in slow motion too. Liiike thisss.” 3. R: “Thiisss gaaaame maaakes noooo sennnse! It’ssss aasss iffff you’rrrre maaakinnnggg iiiiit uuuup aaas youuu gooo.” 4. C (to plush-toy Hobbes, not full-size Hobbes, since another person is present): “Hobbes! She stumbled into the perimeter of wisdom! Run!!” R: “Oh…”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmeBdI4kR4ZxdFPGuP0MD0A69QN_DQIPxJqSJECz9Icbt-QoBxtmNN5g3SfQrqZj272ZhGPFssVqeeIVy3IRghVN-_nYpfPFNlEZogW7stHqei-8XlpAnwtK4Dy48rXIfwjeHuuYKLfFY/s1600/22.+Calvinball+4.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmeBdI4kR4ZxdFPGuP0MD0A69QN_DQIPxJqSJECz9Icbt-QoBxtmNN5g3SfQrqZj272ZhGPFssVqeeIVy3IRghVN-_nYpfPFNlEZogW7stHqei-8XlpAnwtK4Dy48rXIfwjeHuuYKLfFY/s1600/22.+Calvinball+4.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. R: “If I’m in the perimeter of wisdom, then I get to make a decree.” C: “A decree? Um… OK.” 2. R: “I decree you have to catch a water balloon that I throw high in the air.” C: “Oh <b><i>no</i></b>!” 3. C (to Hobbes): “Man, she picked up the nuances of this game <b><i>fast</i></b>!” 4. R: “Ha! This <b><i>is</i></b> fun!”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIBKuFk70WkNRk2J7WZPazSncWHZcr0Gz3PlzFl5bbLfSkcwnOuia_X3qjZ4NMU_PAsKdecDdIf_b7WEbORDVZxOpDQ0f1Ng2p-RxDWIbi3F9YWaBNyAyn9g5MsEs9MqRAWmUt8xbNO0/s1600/23.+Calvinball+5.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIBKuFk70WkNRk2J7WZPazSncWHZcr0Gz3PlzFl5bbLfSkcwnOuia_X3qjZ4NMU_PAsKdecDdIf_b7WEbORDVZxOpDQ0f1Ng2p-RxDWIbi3F9YWaBNyAyn9g5MsEs9MqRAWmUt8xbNO0/s1600/23.+Calvinball+5.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. R: “OK Calvin, you have to catch the water balloon!” C: “<b>Aaa!</b>” 2. C: “Ha! I’m in the corollary zone! If I catch the balloon, the thrower has to bend over and hold still!” R: “<b><i>What?!</i></b>” 3. C: “<b>I caught it!! Ha ha ha ha!</b>” 4. C: “Oh this is going to be <b><i>sweet</i></b>!” Rosalyn (protecting her backside with Hobbes): “I’m taking Hobbes prisoner!”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnLPssNtZq1UJwz-W9h_jGq3_XuaGoTpKHbV0xaGgEiC2ohTYnxpcNiKIXvE6cjgR7NU0UwByOJI-53dJckva7YzoeKPR2lmT6CGCPz5mSYiel0wNf31JogH8r-g5-s52TlOgxLoH7x8/s1600/24.+Calvinball+6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnLPssNtZq1UJwz-W9h_jGq3_XuaGoTpKHbV0xaGgEiC2ohTYnxpcNiKIXvE6cjgR7NU0UwByOJI-53dJckva7YzoeKPR2lmT6CGCPz5mSYiel0wNf31JogH8r-g5-s52TlOgxLoH7x8/s1600/24.+Calvinball+6.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Hobbes! Don’t guard Rosalyn! I’m going to get her with this balloon!” R: “The tiger is my prisoner!” 2. C: “I guess I’ll just have to soak you <b><i>both</i></b> then! Ha ha ha!” R: “Sorry, Calvin, I touched you with the baby sitter flag.” 3. C: “The baby sitter flag?? What’s that?” R: “It means you must obey the baby sitter.” 4. R “… who says it’s a half-hour past your bedtime now. Let’s go in.” C: “Awwwwww! Darn baby sitter flag.”]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjodvpk-9gw6lJIRPQyQRg7y67FWij58dzOAFD8gZQaP3Yc6GIJJFtHnyag1O8-8lGX7TIn9mnCacO3qbvmrLSECvXTkQO-4qB2v3pJi_affT5wSqtWZX9zQBjMfQQPqcp86IlRwLvkYEE/s1600/25.+Calvinball+7.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjodvpk-9gw6lJIRPQyQRg7y67FWij58dzOAFD8gZQaP3Yc6GIJJFtHnyag1O8-8lGX7TIn9mnCacO3qbvmrLSECvXTkQO-4qB2v3pJi_affT5wSqtWZX9zQBjMfQQPqcp86IlRwLvkYEE/s1600/25.+Calvinball+7.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. Calvin’s Dad (CD) returning home: “Our house is still standing. That’s a good sign.” 2. Calvin’s Mom (CM): “We’re home! Is everything OK?” R: “Fine.” 3. R: “Calvin did his homework, then we played a game, and Calvin went to bed.” CD: “It’s awfully late for jokes, Rosalyn.” 4. C: “I’ve noticed that when we play games with girls, you get captured a lot.” H: “Some of us are just irresistible.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><i>6. The Painfully Slow Process of Civilizing Males</i></b><br />
Actually, there’s a lot more to the story that Watterson illustrated in the above strips (and which he also illustrated in still other strips). In total, it’s the long tale of the painfully slow process of civilizing males. To civilize males requires that their two primary instinctive drives be channeled into enterprises less destructive for themselves and more productive for their communities. Those two primary instinctive drives are sex and power, with the latter instinctively codified in males via the law of the jungle, might makes right.<br />
<br />
Correspondingly, all organized religions have undertaken two primary functions. The first has been to manipulate and try to control the sex drive of especially men. Details range from the idiocy of Christian abstinence (which hasn’t worked, even in their own clergy; as Voltaire said, “It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity is a virtue”) to Islam’s licentiousness (which includes abominable treatment of women, treating them essentially as cattle). The result is that no other animal is as sexually confused as are religious fundamentalists, and with their perfectly normal and natural sexual urges frustrated by clerical stupidity, testosterone-sodden men have then sought relief by raping children, by treating the women in their lives as subhuman, and even by going on murderous and suicidal rampages, e.g., to finally gain sexual satisfaction from the promised 72 perpetual virgins awaiting them in Islam’s fictitious version of paradise.<br />
<br />
And the second primary function of all organized religions has been to claim superior force, i.e., that their omnipotent (“all powerful”) god is in control (e.g., not only judging people’s sex lives but also their fate in a fictitious “afterlife”). If people would reject the oxymoronic idea of “life after death” (do words no longer need meaning?) and would adopt the mantra “make love not war” (relieving natural concupiscence using contraceptives, essentially as soon as teenagers reach sexual and psychological maturity), then rather than continue to drive their youth and their communities crazy, all organized religions (and especially fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism) would immediately collapse, literally overnight.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, though, progress civilizing males has been made (and can still be made) by women: of course they can satisfy men’s sexual drives (customs willing), but they can also channel male’s desire for power, e.g., into gaining power over that which threaten women (such as threats from poverty, the environment, or other people). In total, the history of how women have been able to defang men (and the clerics’ omnipotent god) is a very long story (yet to unfold in Muslim countries). Here, I’ll mention just a few points illustrated by Bill Watterson.<br />
<br />
For example, with the above Calvinball sequence, Watterson cleverly illustrated how Calvin’s babysitter Rosalyn outsmarted, constrained, defeated, redirected and generally civilized Calvin’s excesses. As I illustrated in earlier posts, Watterson similarly illustrated that the women in Calvin’s life (his mother, his neighbor Suzie, and his teacher Miss Wormwood) were able to civilize him. As an additional example, notice in the following strip not only Calvin’s craziness but also his mother’s careful rebuke of his repugnant forecasts, referring instead to the pleasure of spring flowers.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrpYDZG3UBZAgOnAFm2ZpPkclbCi19IkRdvI61IqSqjNdhTNBUThEKWkAXtvgAbF6EYpswx6Ij0tkVw6jWhcjQ60OB_QPxBujtQK_mQtnaxQsZq3kUHNpUoatvaXJAZ-Kou2ketmk3cpo/s1600/26.+Waiting+for+Daffodils.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrpYDZG3UBZAgOnAFm2ZpPkclbCi19IkRdvI61IqSqjNdhTNBUThEKWkAXtvgAbF6EYpswx6Ij0tkVw6jWhcjQ60OB_QPxBujtQK_mQtnaxQsZq3kUHNpUoatvaXJAZ-Kou2ketmk3cpo/s1600/26.+Waiting+for+Daffodils.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[{Signs held by grotesque snowmen: “Repent Sinners”, “The End is Near”, “Spring is Coming”}, C: “They’re snowmen prophets of doom.” CM: “You certainly take the pleasure out of waiting for daffodils.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
That Calvin’s excesses were constrained by the women in his life is, I think, especially relevant for the rejection of the brutality and misogyny of all the Abrahamic religions, now especially prevalent in Islam but still present in Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, etc. As I’ve written extensively elsewhere (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X23_EXpanding_Women%27s_Liberation.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/06/some-new-old-wives-tales.html">here</a>), I’m certain that the key to freeing the world from religious balderdash (especially Islamic balderdash) is realization of basic human rights by women – so they can then civilize men!<br />
<br />
That’s not to suggest that an unfortunately large percentage of all religious women don’t display even more irrational attraction to their imagined heroic “prophets” and gods than do similarly emotional men. Yet, in general, women are typically more willing than men to cooperate (rather than compete) and to show love (rather than hate) for fellow humans; they are generally quicker to include than exclude; they seem more willing to provide than demand services. After all, after all supernatural silliness is subtracted, all religions are basically just organizations of communities, at which women generally excel. And fortunately for humanity, women have been able to civilize some males:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxPhBceyB8ewq8bVTczYRmA649wkdioX29vjMymrEyrKotf1kjVwSYWAL5DaKH5q8Xcyw6z-0O2n7NWy3lPK05MquB7XxHxMn5Y9sr-EZTtppeA2RRnAm7Bz0iTZz86OFMZCNKXfZBDEE/s1600/27.+Don%2527t+you+go+anywhere.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxPhBceyB8ewq8bVTczYRmA649wkdioX29vjMymrEyrKotf1kjVwSYWAL5DaKH5q8Xcyw6z-0O2n7NWy3lPK05MquB7XxHxMn5Y9sr-EZTtppeA2RRnAm7Bz0iTZz86OFMZCNKXfZBDEE/s1600/27.+Don%2527t+you+go+anywhere.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C: “Mom says death is as natural as birth, and it’s all part of the life cycle.” 2. C: “She says we don’t really understand it, but there are many things we don’t understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have.” 3. C: “I guess that makes sense.” 4. C: “…but don’t <b><i>you</i></b> go anywhere.” H: “Don’t worry.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
Actually, Watterson went even further in his comic strips, illustrating his apparent view that, in the end, secular philosophers will be victorious even in all the silly games that the clerics of the world have concocted, out of thin air. Recall that he named Calvin after the theologian John Calvin (1509–64), who concocted his own Calvinball, making it up as he went along. That is, similar to the founders of all religions (Zarathustra, Hilkiah, Ezra, Paul, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, et al.), Calvin simply pulled his religious dogma out of thin air (to put it politely) – or actually, out of thick air, polluted with clerical avarice and the people’s ignorance. But as Watterson illustrated (e.g., in the Calvinball strip that I used two posts ago), Hobbes invariably outsmarted Calvin even at his own game. Recall that Hobbes was named after the secular philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), creator of the concept of “the social contract”, i.e., the idea that the bases of interpersonal morality are simply rules that help us live together productively in our societies.<br />
<br />
In contrast, the Abrahamic religions promote atrocious immoralities. Of course, moralities have meaning only relative to some objectives, but rather than choosing the personal objective of thriving by using one’s brain as best one can and the interpersonal objective of living together productively in society, the Abrahamic religions are based on absurd objectives, such as placating a fictitious, tyrannical god, gaining entrance to a fictitious, illogical heaven, and avoiding an equally fictitious hell. Consequently, most of the moralities promoted in the Abrahamic religions are absurd. True (as I tried to show in early posts of this series), some of the interpersonal moralities (such as not to steal, lie, kill, etc.) are simply restatements of prehistoric cultural norms (finally recorded by the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Indians more than a thousand years before the earliest books of the Bible), but more significantly and damningly, the Abrahamic religions require people to replace their reasoning power with authoritarian power of numbskull clerics. Yet, abandoning one’s reasoning to anyone, abandoning one’s own ability to evaluate the evidence, is the depth of personal immorality, resulting in atrocious interpersonal immoralities. Therefore, at their bases, all the Abrahamic religions are deeply immoral.<br />
<br />
<b><i>7. Rejecting “Holy Books”</i></b><br />
In sum, an increasing percentage of all people have applied their most important personal moral imperative (to use their brains as best they can) to reject the God Lie promoted in the world’s “holy books”. Robert Ingersoll lamented:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?</span></blockquote>
Illustrative is the idiocy that has raged during my entire life between the Israelis and the Arabs. If their DNA codes are read, the people are found to be close cousins, but they proceed to kill each other, because they have different covetous clerical hierarchies reading and preaching from different “holy books”. Maybe the end of such stupidity could be hastened if all such “holy books” carried warnings on their covers, something similar to:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">WARNING:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">This “holy book” is bad.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">It will mess with your mind.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">It should never be taken seriously.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">If taken seriously, severe mental damage will occur.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Keep this book out of reach of children and those who are childish.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">As antidotes, require extensive study in logic, science, and critical thinking. </span></div>
<br />
But the chances, anytime soon, of having such a warning on all the world’s “holy books” are slim, because the world’s clerics are powerfully entrenched. They’ve captured the imagination of more than half of all people in the world, convincing them that they’re special, because they believe what the clerics say (despite the total lack of evidence to support the clerics’ crazy claims) and convincing them to abandon their minds to their clerics’ whims, in large measure because, most unfortunately, a substantial fraction of all humans are wild dreamers and schemers, similar to Calvin:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8cBTbggjZ6G03QK_3eSUje3svK1I9Y0vH9fFe35aMuIh6rROpzCLrrC1hLxD_fYSzCW_wRjLdgm4DC2eiDndkAdusCUr5E5FK6zr7Fi9lbcpL_Tj3yNl-ZSEbWgTxHrJVhu_K2M09CI/s1600/28.+I+got+my+wish.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8cBTbggjZ6G03QK_3eSUje3svK1I9Y0vH9fFe35aMuIh6rROpzCLrrC1hLxD_fYSzCW_wRjLdgm4DC2eiDndkAdusCUr5E5FK6zr7Fi9lbcpL_Tj3yNl-ZSEbWgTxHrJVhu_K2M09CI/s1600/28.+I+got+my+wish.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">[1. C {addressing Hobbes}: “If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?” 2. H {contemplating}: “…Hmm…” C: “Anything at all! Whatever you want!” 3. H: “A sandwich.” C: “<b>A sandwich?!? What kind of a stupid wish is <i>that</i>?!</b>” 4. C: “Talk about a failure of imagination! <b><i>I’d</i></b> ask for a trillion billion dollars, my own Space Shuttle, and a private continent!” 5. H {eating a sandwich}: “I got <i><b>my</b></i> wish.”]</span></td></tr>
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<br />
Wild dreamers and schemers that they are, clerics claim that the universe didn’t create itself (e.g., by a quantum-like symmetry-breaking fluctuation in the original total void) but was created by a giant magic-man in the sky, and if only the people will follow the policies promoted by the con-artist clerics (policies that of course include paying the parasite clerics to keep preaching their nonsense), then the people will live forever in paradise with their fictitious god in the sky. What a racket! What evil!<br />
<br />
In a recent <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=freeman-dyson-global-warming-esp-an-2011-01-07">article</a> in <i>Scientific American</i>, John Horgan relayed an appropriate term to describe such people that was coined by the biologist Peter Medawar in his 1984 book <i>The Limits of Science: </i> they're “bunkrapt”, i.e., such people are raptured by bunk! In contrast, as Confucius (or K’ung fu-tzu, 551–479 BCE) said,<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is the beginning of wisdom.</span></blockquote>
At about the same time in China, Lao Tzu (who documented Daoism in <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching">Dao De Ching</a>)</i> stated the concept more forcefully:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.</span></blockquote>
Socrates (469–399 BCE) reportedly said similar:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">… the most reprehensible form of ignorance [is] that of thinking one knows what one does not know…”</span></blockquote>
That one concept (expressed by Confucius, LaoTzu, or Socrates) is worth more than all the statements in all the “holy books” of the world!<br />
<br />
<b><i>8. Dangers of Believing Balderdash</i></b><br />
In this series of posts, I’ve tried to show that, in the main, the “holy books” of all the Abrahamic religions were all derived from Zarathustra’s wild speculations (which, in turn, were probably derived from even earlier speculations by ancient Egyptians and Indians) that some god created the universe, the alleged role of people in “the scheme of things”, and their assumed rewards or punishment in a nonexistent afterlife. Therefore, all the “Abrahamic religions” (or more accurately, all the “Zarathustric religions”) were and still are based on ignorance: balderdash based on totally arbitrary dogma, i.e., assumptions “pulled out of the air”, with none based on principles derived from data and whose predictions have been (or even “can be”) tested. Consequently, as people slowly become reliant on their own brains, as people slowly become more educated in critical thinking and in science, and as more men are civilized by women, all the Abrahamic religions (and all religions built on similar balderdash) will collapse into a rubble of primitive speculations that they are, just as other religions collapsed when their adherents learned that gods weren’t responsible for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, thunder and lightning, etc.<br />
<br />
As ignorance decreases, so does worship of any god. Thus, when people understood the nature of volcanoes, the Sun and Moon, winds, thunderstorms, etc., people no longer worshiped such “gods”. And when people understand how the universe began (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo">possibly</a> from a quantum-like, symmetry-breaking <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">fluctuation</a> in a total void), how life might have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5mIZvkR1m4&feature=channel_page">begun</a> and seems to have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUu5hBp1AU8&feature=related">evolved</a>, and even that the “post-modern” religious, existential philosophers’ “ground of being” is probably <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/02/god-is-total-nothingness.html">total nothingness</a> – that is, once people’s ignorance is dispelled – then all the gods of all organized religions will vanish. All were just mental aberrations derived from ignorance. As <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/lemuel_washburn/bible_worth_reading.html">Lemuel Washburn</a> rhetorically asked a century ago:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Where are the sons of gods that loved the daughters of men? Where are the nymphs, the goddesses of the winds and waters? Where are the gnomes that lived inside the earth? Where are the goblins that used to play tricks on mortals? Where are the fairies that could blight or bless the human heart? Where are the ghosts that haunted this globe? Where are the witches that flew in and out of the homes of men? Where is the devil that once roamed over the earth? Where are they? Gone with the ignorance that believed in them.</span></blockquote>
In his <i><a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm">Letters from the Earth</a></i>, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens, 1835–1910) said it well:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable… Yet, he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it!</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Moreover – if I may put another strain upon you – he thinks he is the Creator's pet! He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea?</span></blockquote>
In reality, though, it’s not just a “quaint idea”: the universal weakness of basing beliefs on balderdash is the reason why every organized religion has led to dissension, division, and bloodshed. People who are conned or forced into adopting pure, unadulterated balderdash (usually when they are still children) divorce themselves from basing decisions on evidence and reason. Their opinions are irrational, based on some dictator’s fiat. And from such silly speculations, their actions are irrational, emotional, and usually based on some dictator’s fiat. The result is a plague of irrationality and therefore immorality: “kill the infidels”, “burn the witches”, “abortion is murder”, “Allahu akbar.” As Voltaire said:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.</span></blockquote>
Thereby, it’s a fair assessment to say that all clerics, missionaries, and their religious followers are not only bonkers but dangerous. Not only do they claim to know what’s unknown, but again and again, they’ve promoted open hostility toward those who debunk their claims to knowledge – or toward those who just say they’re bonkers.<br />
<br />
In contrast, people with a naturalistic worldviews (such as the ancient Greek philosophers Democrates and Epicurus) offered the not-so-appealing prospect that when you die, you’re dead. The naturalistic worldview, however, did (and does!) provide liberation from fear of death and from clerical parasites. Yet, because science didn’t develop sufficient strength and because the vast majority of the people remained uneducated and superstitious, then as the Greeks fell to the Romans and the Romans succumbed to Christianity, the supernaturalists won the battle, plunging Europe into centuries of Dark Ages, similar to the Dark Ages maintained by supernaturalists in today’s Muslim countries. And even after the Enlightenment in the West, the war between naturalists (e.g., the <a href="http://www.the-brights.net/">Brights</a>) and the supernaturalists continues – although in most of Europe today, the supernaturalists have finally and thankfully lost the high ground.<br />
<br />
<b><i>9. Religion Without Gods</i></b><br />
The myths of organized religions are slowly being rejected and replaced with scientific ideas, but every step of the way, clerics have fought the advancement of science. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 11 April 1820 letter to Correa de Serra:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Priests... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.</span></blockquote>
But although many of us have rejected “the ignorant legends of the barbaric past” and the “revelations” in all “holy books”, we haven’t rejected (and don’t intend to reject) religion – in the broadest sense of the word.<br />
<br />
The narrow sense of the word ‘religion’ is as given in the first three of four definitions in the <i>New Oxford American Dictionary:</i><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power…</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• details of belief as taught or discussed…</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• a particular system of faith and worship…</span></blockquote>
With such meanings for ‘religion’ it’s easy to agree with Robert Ingersoll:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Religion makes enemies instead of friends. That one word, ‘religion’, covers all the horizon of memory with visions of war, of outrage, of persecution, of tyranny, and death. That one word brings to the mind every instrument with which man has tortured man. In that one word are all the fagots and flames and dungeons of the past, and in that word is the infinite and eternal hell of the future…</span></blockquote>
It’s similarly easy to agree with Joseph Lewis:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Let me tell you that religion is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great scheme of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people. The penalty for this type of extortion should be as severe as it is of other forms of dishonesty.</span></blockquote>
But meanwhile, in the process of rejecting the old religions, the word ‘religion’ has come to mean, in its broadest sense, what’s given by the fourth definition in the same dictionary:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance…</span></blockquote>
Thus, when humans reject god-based religions but are still religious, it means that individuals select and try to adhere to a set of principles and behaviors the each individual considers to be important – though not necessarily of “supreme importance”, because few people who reject ideas about any god are fanatics.<br />
<br />
Most of us who reject “the god idea” (because insufficient evidence supports it) protect our individuality, but we’re pleased to engage in cooperative activities. Individually, we religiously pursue a huge number of activities (from sports to star gazing); collectively, too, the range of our activities is enormous (from politics to participating in the production of goods and services). Generally in our view, communities of believers are just too myopic, “thinking” that they’re special, confining their cooperative activities to those who think similarly, following some living or long-dead leader as if he (or, in some cases, she) knows (or knew) how to live any better than we can evaluate by ourselves.<br />
<br />
In particular, we reject basing our beliefs on fear of hell and greed for heaven; instead, we hold religiously to the concept that all beliefs should be held only as strongly as relevant evidence justifies. We reject the concept that morality has anything to do with any gods; instead, we religiously adhere to the personal moral code of always using our brains as best we can (which of course includes evaluating evidence) and to interpersonal moral codes that promote human progress toward less violence and more sustainable development. And because of lack of evidence to support the idea of the existence of any god and the vast evidence that supports the indictment that belief in any god curtails human progress (e.g., stimulating violence among humans and destruction of the natural environment), we reject all god ideas; yet, we’re thankful for opportunities to participate in our economies, we’re especially thankful for the progress that a few brilliant humans have already accomplished, and we’re in awe of our great good-fortune to have had a chance to participate in this glorious natural experiment called life. As Robert Ingersoll wrote in his 1872 book <i><a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/gods.html">The Gods</a></i><i>:</i><br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">We are not endeavoring to chain the future, but to free the present. We are not forging fetters for our children, but we are breaking those our fathers made for us. We are the advocates of inquiry, of investigation and thought. This of itself, is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions…</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Nature, so long as we can discern, without passion and without intention, forms, transforms, and retransforms forever. She neither weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and obliterates him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death, smiles and tears are alike to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by worship nor melted by tears. She does not know even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between poison in the fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Only through man does nature take cognizance of the good, the true, and the beautiful; and, so far as we know, man is the highest intelligence…</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Philosophy has not the egotism of faith. While superstition builds walls and creates obstructions, science opens all the highways of thought. We do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything, and to have solved all difficulties, but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods; that it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. We are satisfied that there can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. We do not expect to accomplish everything in our day; but we want to do what good we can, and to render all the service possible in the holy cause of human progress. We know that doing away with gods and supernatural persons and powers is not an end. It is a means to an end, the real end being the happiness of man…</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<b><i>10. Back to the Beginning</i></b><br />
As I’ve tried to convey in all these posts, I’m opposed to all organized religions – because all are just organized ignorance, claiming to know what isn’t known. And although no one can know with certainty whether any god exists or not, yet based on the evidence (or rather, the lack thereof) it’s clear that the most certain knowledge that humans possess (even more certain than the assumption that we exist) is that no god exists or has ever existed and, further, that this life is the only life that each one of us will experience. In contrast, organized religions posit wild speculations that gods and after-lives exist, and as a result, propose a variety of personal and social policies that have zero scientific bases, relying only on personal whims of clerical con artists.<br />
<br />
In his book <i><a href="http://www.cyjack.com/main/cognition.html">The World As I See It</a></i>, Einstein provided an apt summary for this entire series of posts:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and desire are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present itself to us.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Now, what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions – fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates for itself more or less analogous beings on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. One's object now is to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed towards a mortal. I am speaking now of the religion of fear.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste, which sets up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases the leader or ruler whose position depends on other factors, or a privileged class, combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The social feelings are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes, the God who, according to the width of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life as such, the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing, who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, which is continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in a nation's life. That primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that they are all intermediate types, with this reservation, that on the higher levels of social life, the religion of morality predominates.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. Only individuals of exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, as a general rule, get in any real sense beyond this level. But there is a third state of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form, and which I will call “cosmic religious feeling”.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear in earlier stages of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer especially, contains a much stronger element of it. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no Church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with the highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as Atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events – that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through. Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion which pioneer work in theoretical science demands, can grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics!</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to those like-minded with themselves, scattered through the earth and the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man strength of this sort. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter, God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, insofar as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.</span></blockquote>
Which then brings me back to concept of awe that I addressed in the first chapter (entitled <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">Awareness</a>) of my on-line <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>. As referenced in that chapter, Rolf Edberg summarized the concept beautifully:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">On a little speck in the universe, there is a species in which billions of years of evolution have led up to a mind through which the cosmos can experience itself, and nature can investigate her own nature.</span></blockquote>
Stated differently, as also addressed in that chapter, Alan Watts’ succinct summary is not only sufficient and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">scientifically accurate</a>, it’s inspiring: Each of us is the Universe “I’ing”.<br />
<br />
Which then seem to be a fitting place to end this Appendix – save to again relay thoughts conveyed by Bill Watterson in his 1990 Commencement Address at his Alma Mater, Kenyon College:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself… Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it’s going to come in handy all the time… Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules, and rewards… To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble…</span></blockquote>
<br />
<b>Postface</b><br />
This is the end of “Act Two” for this Blog. Two-and-a-half years ago, I described the purpose of this Act Two in a <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/06/end-of-act-i-impending-demise-of.html">post</a> at the end of Act One. In that post, I suggested that, in the posts of Act Two, I might also include comments on topics in the news, but instead, I posted such comments at my other blog, <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/">Means and Ends</a>, which has had disappointingly few visitors. As for what to do now, I’m not sure.<br />
<br />
For sure, I’m going to take a break from posting at either blog, to write the final (“Z”) chapter of my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>. But I’m not sure that it’s worth my effort to write an appendix for the Z-chapter. As mentioned in the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/06/end-of-act-i-impending-demise-of.html">earlier post</a>, the purpose of the Z-appendix would be to describe some simple math and physics useful for understanding how the universe might have been created by a symmetry-breaking quantum-like fluctuation in total nothingness.<br />
<br />
When I started writing the book in earnest (16 years ago!), writing such an appendix seemed to be a good idea, but with the video by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss entitled “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo">A Universe from Nothing</a>”, with the new book co-authored by the physicist Stephen Hawking entitled <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Design_%28book%29">The Grand Design</a></i>, with books and articles by the physicist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_J._Stenger">Victor Stenger</a> such as <i>God: The Failed Hypothesis,</i> and with other analyses readily available, I now question if it would be wise to invest two-or-more years of my life in the proposed undertaking. Instead, I’m thinking it would be better if I tried not only to clean up the writing in my book (which will be a substantial effort) but also to write a “condensed version” of the book, because I’m painfully aware that the length of what’s posted over at <a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a> is intimidating, especially for the young readers for whom it was written.<br />
<br />
In a few months, I’ll decide what to do next. A possibility is that, for Act III, I’ll post the “condensed version” of my book. Who knows, after such an Act III, I may still have enough energy and interest to return to the promised simple math and physics, which would then be Act IV. As for my <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/">other blog</a>, I might abandon it: apparently it hasn’t even reached the level of being “background noise”!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-77060953139551539972010-12-11T05:35:00.000-08:002011-02-16T04:45:50.813-08:00Closing Comments – 3 – Adoption of the God Lie•••• <br />
This is the 38th in a series of posts dealing with the history (and even some prehistory) of what I call “the God Lie”, and it’s the third of four posts containing some closing comments on the 1) Origins, 2) Promotion, 3) Adoption, and 4) Rejection of the God Lie. My goal for this post is to provide some closing comments on what appear to be the most important reasons why people adopted (and still adopt) the God Lie. When convenient, I’ll illustrate those reasons with the insights entertainingly created between 1985 and 1995 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson">Bill Watterson</a> in his Calvin and Hobbes comic strips (which, I remind readers, are still copyrighted and can’t be used for commercial purposes without the approval of Universal Press Syndicate). <br />
<br />
In the previous two posts, I tried to convey some closing comments on apparent origins of the God Lie and how it was promoted. In his amazing 1921 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/"><i>The Story of Religious Controversy</i></a>, the ex-Catholic priest Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) provided the following summary (to which I’ve added the italics):<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;"><i>The clue to the evolution of gods is… the rise of man to tribal organizations under chiefs.</i> When men become hunters and fighters, the strong or cunning man gets chosen as leader. He becomes a chief. The leadership becomes hereditary. And, as the spirit-world is a duplicate of the living world, there are more powerful spirits in the world beyond the grave. Famous ancestors or former members of the tribe rise in the memory above all the ordinary spirits, who are individually forgotten. They are on the way to become gods. But it is a very gradual process, with all sorts of shades of belief, all degrees of “godness”, so to say.<br />
<br />
We see the rise from a crowd of spirits to a few outstanding spirits which, <i>under the fostering influences of the priests,</i> became what we may call gods. We see the nature-gods gradually… rising to importance above deified ancestors. We see rude huts over chief’s remains or fetishes growing into carved temples. <i>We see priesthoods gaining in power, wealth, and organization.</i> We see the departed spirits gradually acquiring a home, at first in the forest or beyond the hills or in some other vague place, then underground, then with the great spirits in the sky. We see, in fine, a strong tendency everywhere for one great spirit, and it is very commonly the sky-god, to predominate. The whole story of man’s religious evolution lies before us, not in a dead and speculative chronicle, but in living remnants of the various ages through which the [human] race has passed…<br />
<br />
The facts give no indication whatever of a religious instinct, an inner sense or urge, or whatever new name one invented. <i>From beginning to end it is a question “of drawing wrong inferences from observed facts”</i> – the shadow, the dream, the nightmare, disease, death, the movements of wind and river, the rain, the sun and moon, the annual birth and death of vegetation. <i>The only urge beyond the subtle urge of priesthoods [to gain power]… is the curiosity of man.</i> He itches to explain things. From beginning to end religion is an explanation or interpretation of obscure and dark things.</blockquote>With respect to the power grab by priests (and other clerics), maybe in the beginning it was (as McCabe wrote) “the <i>subtle</i> urge of priesthoods [to gain power]…” but as they gained power, the subtlety certainly subsided! As <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Rocker#Works">Rudolf Rocker</a> (1873–1958) wrote in his 1937 book <a href="http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/rocker/nc-2.htm"><i>Nationalism and Culture</i></a><i>:</i> <br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Although the priest is the [claimed] mediator between man and this higher power on which the subject feels himself dependent and which, therefore, becomes fate to him, Volney’s contention that religion is the invention of the priest shoots wide of the mark; for there were religious concepts long before there was a priestly caste. It can also be safely assumed that the priest himself was originally convinced of the correctness of his understanding. But gradually there dawned on him the idea of what unlimited power the blind belief and gloomy fear of his fellowmen had put into his hands, and what benefit could accrue to him from this. Thus awoke in the priest the consciousness of power, and with this the lust for power, which grew constantly greater as the priesthood became more and more definitely a separate caste in society. Out of the lust for power there developed the “will to power”, and with that there evolved in the priesthood a peculiar need. Impelled by this, they tried to direct the religious feelings of believers into definite courses and so to shape the impulses of their faith as to make them serve the priestly quest for power.</blockquote>It’s easy to agree with Rocker that the people’s “blind belief and gloomy fears” provided clerics with opportunities to gain power over the people. In turn, Rocker was apparently agreeing with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), since Rocker put “will to power” in quotation marks and Nietzsche’s (posthumous) 1901 book is entitled <a href="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_wtp01.htm"><i>Will to Power</i></a>. In his 1886 book <a href="http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Beyond_Good_and_Evil_NT.pdf"><i>Beyond Good and Evil</i></a>, Nietzsche wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body… will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant – not from any morality or immorality but because it is <i>living</i> and because life simply is will to power... </blockquote>It would be a misreading of Nietzsche, however (and a misreading of anthropology and psychology), to conclude that man’s “will to power” is confined to power over other people: ever since descending from the trees, humans have sought power over their environments, food supplies, modes of travel, etc. Such people were (and are), as Nietzsche wrote in <a href="http://philosophy.thecastsite.com/readings/nietzsche3.pdf"><i>Thus Spoke Zarathustra</i></a>, “the creators, the harvesters, the celebrators… the victor[s], the self conqueror[s], the master[s] of [their] senses, the ruler[s] of [their] virtues.” Thus, for the vast majority of humans, our “will to power” is our “will power” (!) to understand, grow, and prosper. It’s only for certain pathetic humans (such as pimps, misogynist patriarchs, politicians, priests and other clerical parasites) that their “will to power” degenerates to seeking power over other people. <br />
<br />
In their will to gain power over people and yet with no capabilities other than mouthing meaningless words (such as ‘god’, ‘sin’, ‘afterlife’, and so on), ancient priests and subsequent clerics concocted various religious confidence schemes, as I outlined in the previous post. But of course, for their con games to prosper, then as in any con game, clerics needed (and still need) to appear to provide people with relief from their fears – and more. Therefore, to “hook their marks” clerics provided a variety of “come-ons” with the exact “hook” that ensnared (and still ensnares) each “mark” depending on specific psychological weaknesses of each “mark”.<br />
<br />
Stated differently, there are a mind-boggling number of reasons why people adopted (and still adopt) the God Lie. In earlier chapters (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X02_EXcavating_Reasons.pdf">here</a>), I reviewed some of those reasons, which I (somewhat jokingly) listed alphabetically as follows:<br />
<blockquote>Addiction, Animal-training, (seeking) Answers, (out of) Arrogance, (wanting) Assurance, (feeling) Awe, (feeling) Betrayed, (desiring to) Belittle (others), (seeking) Career-advancement, (seeking) Certainty, Childhood Conditioning, (seeking) Comfort, (seeking) Company, (seeking) Control, Cowardice, Credulity, (seeking) Customers, (fearing) Death, (lost in) Dreams, Egomania, Epilepsy, (seeking) Eternal Life, (out of) Fear, Following (leaders), Foolishness, (seeking) Friends, (out of) Frustration, (desiring) Goals, (out of) Greed, (seeking) Guidance, (out of) Guilt, (to get out of the) Gutter, (seeking) Happiness, Herd instinct, Hero worship, (seeking) Hope, Hypnosis, (unconstrained) Imagination, Ignorance, Indoctrination, (out of) Inquisitiveness, (lacking) Judgment, (seeking) Kinship, (desiring) Kindness, (seeking) Knowledge, (intellectual) Laziness, (out of) Loneliness, (searching for) Love, Megalomania, (seeking a) Mate, (searching for) Meaning, (out of) Misery, Narcissism, (fear of) Ostracism, (an) Opiate, Pack instinct, Parental pressure, (seeking) Peace, Political (purposes), (some other) Psychosis, (seeking) Purpose, (unanswered) Questions, (sheer) Rationalization, Revelation, Savagery, Schizophrenia, (seeking) Security, Selfishness, Selflessness, Socialization, (seeking) Support, (following) Tradition, (simply) Training, Tribalism, (unease caused by) Uncertainty, (to relieve) Unhappiness, (because of) Visions, (marriage or other) Vows, (out of) Weakness, (seeking) Wisdom, (living on) Wishes, Xenophobia, Yearnings (for assurance, brotherhood, comfort, development, empathy, friends, guidance, heaven, insight, justice, kindness, love…), Zonked out (on drugs).</blockquote>In this post, I certainly don’t want to repeat details about those reasons or how different people seem to combine different reasons to “justify their faith” (to themselves). Instead, here my goal is “simply” to provide some summary comments on what seem to have been the predominant reasons why the God Lie started – and continues to this day! In the process, I’ll try to illustrate that each “positive” reason (i.e., one that had some “upside potential”) also contains “downside” or “negative” consequences. I’ll emphasize this dual nature of some of the principal reasons for adopting the God Lie by displaying the dichotomy even in the section titles that follow.<br />
<br />
<i><b>1. Satisfying / Frustrating Quests for Understanding</b></i><br />
<br />
Undoubtedly, the deep roots of all organized religion are buried in ignorance, feeding on fears (e.g., of death and of powerful, natural forces, which still today are commonly, ignorantly, and ridiculously called “supernatural forces”). More than 350 years ago, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/">Thomas Hobbes </a>(1588–1679, after whom Bill Watterson named Calvin’s plush-toy-tiger Hobbes, and who, in his 1660 book <a href="http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html"><i>Leviathan</i></a>, was the first “to advance a secular, scientific account of moral and political life”) summarized the origin of religions as follows: <br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.</blockquote>But describing the same reason more positively, then rather than saying that all religions are based on ignorance, we can acknowledge that a reason why people adopted (and still adopt) the God Lie is to try to satisfy their desire for knowledge and understanding. This was expressed by McCabe (in the quotation at the start of this post) as “[man] itches to explain things.” Approximately 2300 years earlier, Aristotle expressed the same idea as: “Man by nature desires to know”. As far as I recall, however, Aristotle neglected to add two obvious and important points: 1) that we desire knowledge because it usually helps us to survive (and prosper), and 2) that most unfortunately, far too many people fail to evaluate if answers they are provided actually contain any <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">knowledge</a>, let alone <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T2_Truth_&_Understanding.pdf">understanding</a>.<br />
<br />
As a result in the case of organized religions, the people’s positive attribute of seeking knowledge is overwhelmed by the negative consequences of clerics’ providing the people with, not understanding, but balderdash. In his Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, Bill Watterson aptly illustrated the concept:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-small;">[Panel (1) Calvin (C), named after the theologian John Calvin (1509–1564): “How do bank machines work?” (2) Calvin’s Dad (CD): “Well, let’s say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount…” (3) CD: “…and behind the machine there’s a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.” (4) C: “Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?” CD: “Exactly.”]</span></td></tr>
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Yet, supplied with similar balderdash, religious people claim that they then have understanding! For example, Islam’s ludicrous “holy book” (the Koran or spelled Qur’an) conveys the following nonsense:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">And one of His signs is that He [Allah] shows you the lightning for fear and for hope, and sends down water from the clouds then gives life therewith to the earth after its death; most surely there are signs in this for a people who understand. (</span><span style="color: red;">30</span><i style="color: red;">.</i><span style="color: red;">24</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">)</span></blockquote>In reality, the cause of thunder and lightning has (of course) absolutely nothing to do with people’s fears and hopes; instead, the causes of people’s fears and hopes when they encounter lightning storms are the storms, themselves! Similarly, the claim that Allah “sends down water from the clouds then gives life therewith to the earth after its death” is (of course) more nonsense: life on Earth has continued for two or three billion years, not only not dying for lack of rain during dry seasons, but much of life is well-supplied with water in the oceans! Further and similar to all religious people, the poor Muslim people have had (and continue to have) great difficulty interpreting the alleged “signs”, as Watterson illustrated:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQf4QkCuwEq2fP4XE9W-Lo9TIvUW7_qEiKA2ZI8vSwN87jdemgeT6T2hVxCm6e6J3Aya13bZlXX3UVRiJr4ck3KbPz_JwSsyx1tmDQMDlCWMzdkxZYTX3ttlzK2ZKgnoFpwaMWOgjMlr0/s1600/2.+Omen+%253A+Portent.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQf4QkCuwEq2fP4XE9W-Lo9TIvUW7_qEiKA2ZI8vSwN87jdemgeT6T2hVxCm6e6J3Aya13bZlXX3UVRiJr4ck3KbPz_JwSsyx1tmDQMDlCWMzdkxZYTX3ttlzK2ZKgnoFpwaMWOgjMlr0/s1600/2.+Omen+%253A+Portent.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) {Calvin sees a strange-looking cloud}, (2) {The cloud seems to portray a menacing face, startling Calvin}, (3) {The cloud changes shape and “the sign” puzzles Calvin}, (4) C: “Boy, there’s nothing worse than an inscrutable omen.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">]</span></span></td></tr>
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To the rescue, all clerics have always been available to provide the people with interpretations of such “signs” and “inscrutable omens” – for a price! And most unfortunately, the vast majority of humans have been (and continue to be) satisfied with superficial, erroneous claims to understanding, e.g., the pathetic, pompous, pious claims to “understanding” peddled by clerics that gods exist and are in control – of course adding that they (the clerics) are in communication with the controlling gods. Silly people!<br />
<br />
Similarly, many silly people are amazingly susceptible to “conspiracy theories”, e.g., probably the majority of Muslims accept the “theory” that the “Jews control… [whatever, from the media to the world]” and probably the majority of the members of the American Tea Party movement accept the “theory” that anthropogenic global warming is “nothing but a hoax promoted by liberal lefties.” The commonality seems to be that, yes, people desire to know, but even more so, they just want “explanations”! <br />
<br />
Of course, most people would probably prefer if the supplied explanations were correct (i.e., if the alleged understanding has a high probability of being correct), but many people are apparently satisfied if they are given some reasonable sounding (and preferably simple) explanation, even if the “explanation” is some cockamamie conspiracy theory or some equally cockamamie explanation containing the word ‘God’ – which is simply an abbreviation for “I don’t know” (or, as Americans usually slur it, “I dunno”).<br />
<br />
For example, consider the following illustrations (which I already used in an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IaAwarenessofIdeas.pdf">earlier chapter</a>):<br />
<blockquote>• Why is there so much evil in the world? To which the clerics respond: “God works in mysterious ways.” (Translation: “I dunno.”)<br />
<br />
• Why do bad things happen to good people? Response by clerics: “God works in mysterious ways.” (Translation: “I dunno.”) <br />
<br />
• Why doesn’t God defeat the devil? Response by clerics: “God works in mysterious ways.” (Translation: “I dunno.”) <br />
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• Who made the universe? Response by clerics: “God did.” (Translation: “I dunno.”)<br />
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• What existed before “the beginning” and what did God use to make the universe? Response by clerics: “God only knows.” (Translation: “I dunno.”)<br />
<br />
• Who created God? Response by clerics: “God always existed” or “God created himself.” (Translation: “I dunno.”)<br />
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• Why doesn’t God eliminate all the confusion about his existence? Response by the clerics: “God works in mysterious ways.” (Translation: “I dunno.”)</blockquote>As Nietzsche had his Zarathustra say in <i>Thus Spoke Zarathustra:</i><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">… into every gap they [the prophets and priests] had plugged a delusion, their stopgap, whom they named God.</blockquote>The result in religious people is an amazing combination of ignorance and arrogance, as Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899) outlined:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Only the very ignorant are perfectly satisfied that they know. To the common man the great problems are easy. He has no trouble in accounting for the universe. He can tell you the origin and destiny of man and the why and wherefore of things. As a rule, he is a believer in special providence, and is egotistic enough to suppose that everything that happens in the universe happens in reference to him… Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!</blockquote>Such people, it would seem, fail to appreciate the wisdom expressed by Pharaoh Akhenaten (who reigned from about 1353 to about 1336 BCE): <br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.</blockquote>And so, religious people looked (and still look) for guidance from their gods:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: {Filling a balloon with water} “Fwooshh” (2) C: “In order to determine if there is any universal moral law beyond human convention {e.g., as I’ve described in earlier posts, the ancient Egyptians’ <i>Ma’at,</i> the ancient Hindus’ <i>Ritam, </i>the ancient Persians’ <i>Asha,</i> the Ancient Greeks’ <i>Logos,</i> the Ancient Jews’ <i>Wisdom,</i> the Gnostics’ <i>Sophia</i>, and the Christians’ <i>Word</i>}, I have devised the following test.” (3) C: “I will throw this water balloon at Susie Derkins unless I receive some sign with the next 30 seconds that this wrong.” (4) C: “It is in the universe’s power to stop me. I’ll accept any remarkable physical happenstance as a sign that I shouldn’t do this.” (5) C: “Ready?… <b>Go!</b> Tum te tum doo doo.” (6) C: “…Nothing’s happeninngg… Five seconds to go!” (7) C: <b>Time’s up!</b> That proves it! There’s no moral law! WHEEE! Ha ha!” (8) C: “Hey Susie!!” {SPLOOSH} (9) {Susie chasing Calvin, and Calvin yelling} “HELP! HELP! HEL…” (10) C {Clobbered}: “Why does the universe always give you the sign <b>after</b> you do it??”]</span></td></tr>
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Actually, with the above strip, Watterson provided some lessons also for irreligious people, including: 1) Experimental results can easily be misinterpreted. 2) In your experiments, ensure that all variables are controlled (and realize that few women can be controlled – claims of all the Abrahamic religions to the contrary notwithstanding). 3) In particular, ensure that all sentient beings allegedly involved in your experiments are present (after, of course, confirming that they exist!). 4) Be very circumspect of proposed hypotheses that violate already well-established principles, e.g., as Ayn Rand wrote in her book <i>Philosophy: Who Needs It?</i><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute – and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions – and of your ambition – will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept.</blockquote>5) Thereby, realize that some theories aren’t worth testing, e.g., as Richard Feynman relayed:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers – because I am scientific, I know all about flying saucers! I said, “I don’t think there are flying saucers.” So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely.” At that he said, “You aren’t very scientific. If you can’t prove it’s impossible, then how can you say what’s more likely and what’s less likely?” But that’s the way that IS scientific. It’s scientific only to say what’s more likely and what’s less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, “Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it’s much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.” It’s just more likely; that’s all. </blockquote><i><b>2. Satisfying / Manipulating Basic Instinctive Needs</b></i><br />
<br />
As Rocker wrote, clerics built their power on “the blind belief and gloomy fear of his fellowmen”. People’s primary fear (“programmed” into our DNA) is fear of death; therefore, in their “blind belief”, people eagerly adopted (and still adopt) the untestable idea of “life after death” – too blinded by fear (and greed) to notice that “life after death” is an oxymoron. But stated more positively, people adopt religions seeking security. As Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong recently <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1405840/posts">said</a> (for which he has received continuing criticism from Christian fundamentalists):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">People don’t realize religion is never a search for truth. Religion is a search for security. Now [i.e., currently], we have theological enterprises that try to shape truth. But the bedrock of our religion is a search for security. And that comes out of the very dawning of self-consciousness… [We] started out by naming every tree and rock and shrub and bush and river and ocean – it had a spirit. And we worked out a way of accommodating that spirit. That’s where religion starts – in a search for security in a radically insecure world.</span></blockquote>When people first adopted the (silly) idea that they would be immune from death is unknown. As mentioned in the previous post, archeological data suggest that such a belief existed even 100,000 years ago! If the beliefs of Native Americans a few centuries ago are indicative of beliefs of earlier hunter-gatherers, then belief in a “happy hunting ground” after death was widespread tens of thousands of years ago. As mentioned in earlier posts in this series, by the time the pyramids were constructed (~4,500 years ago), Egyptians were obsessed with the idea of life-after-death, just as fundamental Christians are, today, as well as the vast majority of “modern” Muslims.<br />
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I expect that few people would deny that there are positive aspects to belief in an afterlife. Undoubtedly, overcoming fear of death is desirable, but it should be done rationally. For example, in contrast to the irrationality of religious people, the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–271 BCE) reasoned:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">…death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.</blockquote>More succinctly: one can't be aware of a lack of awareness.<br />
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But although there may be benefits from religious methods for avoiding fear of death, there are also many negative aspects of especially Christian and Muslim speculations about the oxymoronic idea of “life after death”. (Do words no longer need meaning?!) Later in this post, I’ll briefly mention more of those negative aspects, including denying reality and engaging in corrupting, greedy quests for unearned rewards. In this section, though, I want to focus “just” on the negative consequence that, unfortunately for humanity, people coupled (and still couple) their fear of death and their wishful belief in an afterlife with the concepts of good and evil. Watterson illustrated the concept in a strip that I already used two posts ago, but I think it’s so insightful that I hope readers will consider it again:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqw4ErtW5Nt_W01GX50wwuG1kRSxP3kFHS5MMtnScjjfqL99REJ5DkCq4TFuXiGdjTHfSRwS9wBm893ncsm9m8i1EYN3z9bBhreoj5ZLsHds-fPpp2biyUC6gwKTQsvZMo26p1XbDKqQ/s1600/4.+Pittsburgh+-+good+or+bad.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqw4ErtW5Nt_W01GX50wwuG1kRSxP3kFHS5MMtnScjjfqL99REJ5DkCq4TFuXiGdjTHfSRwS9wBm893ncsm9m8i1EYN3z9bBhreoj5ZLsHds-fPpp2biyUC6gwKTQsvZMo26p1XbDKqQ/s1600/4.+Pittsburgh+-+good+or+bad.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) Calvin (C): “I wonder where we go when we die.” (3) Hobbes (H): “Pittsburgh?” (4) C: “You mean if we’re good or if we’re bad?”]</span></td></tr>
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Linking people’s fate in an imagined afterlife to their behavior in this (our only!) life was (and continues to be) not only the primary “meal ticket” of all Christian and Muslim clerics but also has resulted in an absolutely horrible corruption of the concept of morality. As I’ve described in earlier chapters (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">here</a>) and earlier posts in this series (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html">here</a>), moral values (as with any values) have meaning only relative to some objective. For social animals (such as humans) a set of “moral behaviors” slowly evolved (with experience) to assist individuals to live productively with others in families, clans, tribes, and communities. Such are the real-life bases of morality. In contrast, if an individual’s prime goal is to live eternally in paradise, then he or she will adopt whatever moral principles the con-artist clerics claim are necessary to attain that goal, out to an including crashing hijacked airliners into civilian skyscrapers, murdering thousands of innocent people.<br />
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Thereby, the clerics of all organized religions hijacked morality. In conflict with the reality that moral activities are those that evolution and experiences have revealed to be beneficial for people and their communities, clerics promote the silly idea that moral principles are rules of conduct declared, once-and-for-all by their (fictitious) gods! Consequently, if the clerics tell the people that birth control is evil, masturbation and homosexuality are “abominations before the Lord”, Jews killed Jesus or are “pigs”, girls can be sold like cattle, women are less intelligent than men (and are to be obedient to them – and can be killed by them for “dishonoring” their families), wives can be raped at will (or be beaten), thieves should have appendages cut off, adulterers should be stoned to death, and similar rules that barbarians established a thousand-and-more years ago, then foolish, “modern” people abandon their natural and developed understanding of morality in a greedy grab for eternal life in paradise.<br />
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Yet, it’s clear that clerics were (and continue to be) clever con artists, having learned how to capitalize on the people’s fears and greed and knowing that “you can never cheat an honest man.” As I reviewed in earlier posts in this series, the assumed linkage between morality in this life and fate in an imagined afterlife is abundantly clear in ancient Egypt’s <i>Book of the Dead</i> and in Zarathustra’s speculations. Such wild speculations then came to dominate first Jewish, then Christian, and especially Muslim “holy scripture”. And in what one must admit was a competent “bait and switch”, clerics managed to transfer people’s fear of death, first to fear of the god who “judged the dead” and then to fear of the clerics (who claimed to be spokesmen for their gods). As all clerics learned, fear is a powerful motivating force.<br />
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For example, the Jewish Bible (the <i>Tanakh)</i> frequently repeats the hideous message (e.g., at <i>Job 28,</i> 28, <i>Psalm 111</i>, and <i>Proverbs 9,</i> 10):<br />
<blockquote style="color: red;">The fear of the Lord is [the beginning of] wisdom…</blockquote>What the Jewish clerics undoubtedly meant (similar to all clerics before and since) was: “Fear us clerics!” Then, following Zarathustra, subsequent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clerics “upped the ante”, coupling people’s fear of death with fear of punishment after death. For example, the New Testament (e.g. at <i>Luke 12,</i> 5) promotes the hideous idea:<br />
<blockquote style="color: red;">But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into Hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.</blockquote>That same hideousness is repeated again and again (and again!) in the Koran:<br />
<blockquote style="color: red;">Me [Allah] alone should you fear (2.41) …fear me if you are believers (3.175) … fear Me [Allah]. (5.3; 5.44)… call on Him [Allah] fearing and hoping… (7.56) … remember your Lord within yourself humbly and fearing (7.205) … fear him [Allah] (9.13) …surely I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the punishment of a mighty day (10.15) Most surely there is a sign in this for him who fears the chastisement of the hereafter… (11.103) They fear their Lord above them and do what they are commanded. (16.50) Say: I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the chastisement of a grievous day… (39.13) We [Allah] know best what they say, and you are not one to compel them; therefore remind him by means of the Quran who fears My threat. (50.45)… And We left therein a sign for those who fear the painful punishment (51.37)… He who fears will mind… (87.10)</blockquote>In addition, the Koran contains some of the most hideous descriptions of a fictitious Hell that have ever (unfortunately) been recorded. I won’t illustrate them; interested readers may want to start at the webpage of the <a href="http://www.shariahprogram.ca/articles/hell-devil-description.shtml">Shariah Program</a>, which contains approximately 200 quotations (I can’t be bothered even to count them all) from Islamic “holy scripture” describing the Hell imagined by macabre Muslim maniacs.<br />
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In happy contrast, Hindu clerics at least had the decency to promote (in <i>The Upanishads):</i><br />
<blockquote style="color: red;">He who knows the joy of Brahman (i.e., God)… is free from fear.</blockquote>But even in this case, it’s a crazy case of freedom from fear – it’s a delusion generated by denial, similar to what Watterson illustrated:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFacIoa-0HE81p7nmRqYeyVnPn17Ul-Lct4sYKekCDVpmQ4XkZbiKQwGZmiZFYc_NeEdTfqjnJ24RPJ879fb7vdt7cc8aRS5IELU5WSVbWawTQYtagZxCpgaVyLhvaSwlEaPUrj5DOGgw/s1600/5.+Don%2527t+think+about+that.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFacIoa-0HE81p7nmRqYeyVnPn17Ul-Lct4sYKekCDVpmQ4XkZbiKQwGZmiZFYc_NeEdTfqjnJ24RPJ879fb7vdt7cc8aRS5IELU5WSVbWawTQYtagZxCpgaVyLhvaSwlEaPUrj5DOGgw/s1600/5.+Don%2527t+think+about+that.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “I say a day without denial is a day you’ve got to face.” (2) C: “From now on, I’m not going to think about anything that’s unpleasant.” H: “Isn’t that a pretty self-deceiving way to go through life?” (3) {Calvin, seemingly perplexed} (4) C: “I’m not going to think about that.”]</span></td></tr>
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Thereby, one can clearly see a major “downside” of belief in an afterlife: living in the delusion of an afterlife, people lose control to the clerics of the one life they have. As Robert Ingersoll wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The priest pretended to stand between the wrath of the gods and the helplessness of man. He was man’s attorney at the court of heaven. He carried to the invisible world a flag of truce, a protest and a request. He came back with a command, with authority and with power. Man fell upon his knees before his own servant, and the priest, taking advantage of the awe inspired by his supposed influence with the gods, made of his fellowman a cringing hypocrite and slave.</blockquote>It’s no wonder that, since so many humans fear death and therefore hold fast to the delusion that they’ll live forever, people who believe such nonsense develop so little wisdom. As Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.</blockquote>In addition to fear, greed can be a powerful motivating force, as ancient Egyptian and Zoroastrian clerics learned. Following them, Christian and Muslim clerics added (to the stick of a fearful hell) a carrot of greed for perpetual paradise, to get their donkey believers to obey them. And the people bought into the con games, obviously “thinking” that the risk (in losing control of their lives to the clerics) was worth the potential reward (of eternal bliss in paradise).<br />
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I put the word ‘thinking’ in quotation marks, because such a conclusion is mind boggling in its egotistic stupidity: do such people really “think” that their blind beliefs in clerical fairytales sufficiently justifies their gaining eternal life in paradise? Wouldn’t someone who dismisses such fairytales and concentrates on helping humanity (e.g., by inventing labor-saving devices from wheels to the internet, by developing vaccines against killer viruses, by stopping annihilating asteroids, or “just” by saving ecosystems, defusing the population bomb, or making progress in reducing violence) be more likely to receive such a reward? But then, as Watterson illustrated, many people are happy to gain unearned rewards:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKnSQipMRTIz8w08Bdh-QGmltTjgLwQO7z-uOIFRZC0kBo3moNb5Fpc0_nFcLyqtWTqUBrqZJwpDQlvwguladHTOJmVK_uuXN3iPAMLAiHMmtoe-GtwWVx4Snh8qQTOSBrm5F2UvAOBE/s1600/6.+Immoral+Rewards.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKnSQipMRTIz8w08Bdh-QGmltTjgLwQO7z-uOIFRZC0kBo3moNb5Fpc0_nFcLyqtWTqUBrqZJwpDQlvwguladHTOJmVK_uuXN3iPAMLAiHMmtoe-GtwWVx4Snh8qQTOSBrm5F2UvAOBE/s1600/6.+Immoral+Rewards.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Susie, can I copy your answers?” S: “Heck no!” (2) C: “Why not?” S: “Because you’d get a good grade without doing any work.” (3) C: “<b>So?</b>” S: “So it’s wrong to get rewards you haven’t earned.” (4) C: “I’ve never heard of anyone who couldn’t live with that.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Christian clerics, however (probably because they decried pleasures of the flesh as “sinful”), were never able to construct a very appealing picture of Heaven: everything they proposed would eventually become “boring as hell”! The madman Muhammad, in contrast, was able to construct an appealing picture of Paradise (at least for men): he made it an eternal whorehouse, each man “blessed” with 72 “perpetual virgins” <i>(hurs)</i>. Watterson, however, saw more. I mean, even a mujahideen would probably get bored with his 72 <i>hurs</i> (probably more correctly translated as “<a href="http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html">white raisins</a>”) after the first few hundred thousand years or so in paradise. In contrast, Watterson saw the need for people to be creative:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVfajanR_gtOd5GzhcYh7K0Cp3vc23FPImJXkgwuLq8WeT3ZnG5QPU0atbcWoXakZgx6c37WUC7GgZHgefz5hbLXkSR6_qNnNuKKBOQsQ_onYGTZ-ZJ_mhYa8K_2pqTr_cPsZGnXccPz4/s1600/7.+Heaven+-+play+sax.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVfajanR_gtOd5GzhcYh7K0Cp3vc23FPImJXkgwuLq8WeT3ZnG5QPU0atbcWoXakZgx6c37WUC7GgZHgefz5hbLXkSR6_qNnNuKKBOQsQ_onYGTZ-ZJ_mhYa8K_2pqTr_cPsZGnXccPz4/s1600/7.+Heaven+-+play+sax.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Hobbes, what do you think happens to us when we die?” (2) {Hobbes thinks about it.} (3) H: “I think we play saxophone for an all-girl cabaret in New Orleans.” (4) C: “So you believe in heaven?” H: “Call it what you like.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Calvin, though, wondered even about the need for creativity:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkdq1OsNShM0t3wIuYDdbPAloZV6p4RO0Fj_dD8Yrwl5hsesBjNqVdXpRoq9dbK8b5ldfFcIp6YO6jZkgsI6QTKEzBRNzmJxFI-_sgDnkXFEzeIcunl5hADWAulZUy70aEu_-UjJa6sdw/s1600/8.+Why+create.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkdq1OsNShM0t3wIuYDdbPAloZV6p4RO0Fj_dD8Yrwl5hsesBjNqVdXpRoq9dbK8b5ldfFcIp6YO6jZkgsI6QTKEzBRNzmJxFI-_sgDnkXFEzeIcunl5hADWAulZUy70aEu_-UjJa6sdw/s1600/8.+Why+create.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Why does man create?” (2) C: "Is it man’s purpose on Earth to express himself, to bring form to thought, and to discover meaning in experience?" (3) {Calving pondering the question} (4) C: “Or is it just something to do when he’s bored?”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
As another option, probably the theologian John Calvin imagined that we want to create because we were allegedly created in the image of a creator god:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJYNqoU125XadZnsBi8P-JwLxjw8RkCPk7BPBXj1ntP_NXrdH9EeuuutKJ1ZPrDcdnFZL0UzGvsAgwCXkkLqsiZCetc5Zffa7qO-SECoT9qFXh96VEXDYAV4ikpoVFHGSOeUHl-mHVyzc/s1600/9.+Made+in+God%2527s+Image.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJYNqoU125XadZnsBi8P-JwLxjw8RkCPk7BPBXj1ntP_NXrdH9EeuuutKJ1ZPrDcdnFZL0UzGvsAgwCXkkLqsiZCetc5Zffa7qO-SECoT9qFXh96VEXDYAV4ikpoVFHGSOeUHl-mHVyzc/s1600/9.+Made+in+God%2527s+Image.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[C: “Made in God’s own image, yes sir!” H: “God must have a goofy sense of humor.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Agreed: God must have had “a goofy sense of humor”! For example, how else can one explain the Biblical story about God's destruction of the Tower of Babel, destruction that God allegedly “justified” as follows (<i>Genesis 11,</i> 6):<br />
<blockquote style="color: red;">Here they are, one people with a single language, and now they have started to do this [build the tower]; henceforward nothing they have a mind to do will be beyond their reach.</blockquote>I would certainly hope so! Aren’t we to be creators in the image of a creator god?! Further, as Nietzsche had his Zarathustra say:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Creating – that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming light… Away from God and gods this Will lured me: what would there be to create, after all, if there were gods?</span></blockquote>But maybe Watterson again saw it better, this time relayed in a response from Hobbes to another of Calvin’s curiosities:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGFRX7WujgOazM3q9uVvXbJNURAM5nc4Q1_ksrZ3vOBO6JBSzMJLI6wwVmcpsjJrnPEd_NExNR8CPhZ7oG8_LqlH2jD5B3_XnvtyoStaRWEnsOFWdxbpba7S57oxpeAhC58UpwPsu_GGA/s1600/10.+Thinking+too+much.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGFRX7WujgOazM3q9uVvXbJNURAM5nc4Q1_ksrZ3vOBO6JBSzMJLI6wwVmcpsjJrnPEd_NExNR8CPhZ7oG8_LqlH2jD5B3_XnvtyoStaRWEnsOFWdxbpba7S57oxpeAhC58UpwPsu_GGA/s1600/10.+Thinking+too+much.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Look how your tail flips around!” (2) C: “I wonder which muscles control that. I can sort of clench my butt, but I don’t think it could wiggle a tail. Hmmm, how strange!” (3) C: “I’ve never really thought about butt muscles before.” (4) H: “Some things don’t need the thought people give them.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
I would certainly agree that gods and afterlives, for example, “don’t need the thought people give them.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say that thinking about such things is a total waste of time – save for time spent considering how to rid the world of such ignorance and associated fear and greed.<br />
<br />
It’s all sooooo… Stupid! Christianity, for example, promises to satisfy demands from nonproducers to get something for nothing – and not get some measly “something”, but the most astounding benefit imaginable for absolute pittance, i.e., eternal life in heaven (while enjoying watching your enemies’ unending agony in hell), as a “reward” for simply saying you believe such balderdash. Of course, to gain such rewards, Christians are also required “to love one another” and to love God, but as Ingersoll saw:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Human love is generous and noble. The love of God is selfish, because man does not love God for God’s sake, but for his own…</blockquote>Similar applies to Christian love of others: it’s not done out of generosity but greed (for eternal life in paradise). Nonetheless, some defense of Christianity can be mounted, in that (at least now, after being “humanized” by Humanists) it’s not quite so depraved as Islam: Islam promises eternal life in paradise not for just believing in its silliness but for killing those who don’t! Thus, although Christianity is bad, <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/09/five-foundational-evils-of-islam.html">Islam is evil</a>.<br />
<br />
<i><b>3. Additional Psychological Manipulations / Guidance</b></i><br />
<i><b> </b></i> <br />
As I suggested earlier in this post with my alphabetized list, there are many reasons why people adopted (and still adopt) the God Lie. Many of these reasons are consistent with “codes” programmed into our DNA. These include our instinct to continue living, our herd and pack instincts (which manifest in our tendencies to join tribes or communities and to follow charismatic leaders), and our instincts as social animals (e.g., seeking companions, being altruistic, punishing “cheaters”, etc.). In this section, I’ll address a few such reasons (dealing with seeking purposes, friends, and companions) that have both positive and negative consequences. In the final two sections of this post, I’ll address other reasons and methods that have predominantly negative consequences, both for individuals and their societies.<br />
<br />
It’s of course correct that positive attributes of religion dealing with forming communities and acting purposefully are available in many other venues (including families, civic organizations, and communities of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism">Humanists</a>, <a href="http://www.the-brights.net/">Brights</a>, etc.), but being the first of such organizations by thousands of years – except of course for families and clans – religions certainly are much better established, organized, and funded. In fact, one can see that most religions are modeled after interactions in families and clans, as recent anthropological studies have <a href="http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2008/0909-palmer-religion-evolution.php">investigated</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">[Craig T.] Palmer [associate professor of anthropology, Univ. of Missouri] and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship, totemism (the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor), and shamanism (the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors). They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims. <br />
<br />
“Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members,” Steadman said. “They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families – where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures.”</blockquote>At the Richard Dawkins Forum, in a thread foolishly deleted by an incompetent administrator, "bobalu49" added:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Basically, they [the anthropologist mentioned in the above-quoted news release] observe that religious talk facilitates social cooperation in family and kinship relationship groups. Religion serves a fundamental social organizational purpose (establishing authority and cooperation) and for that reason has survived. “Man” invented “God” in his own image, and invented religion to help keep the family and tribe together. Religion is such a successful invention it doesn’t depend on whether there is any truth behind any of the claims of a supernatural being or not.<br />
<br />
It’s not so much that God is a delusion as it is a metaphor used to get little children to behave. Unfortunately some folks never grow up and take responsibility for their own actions. Thus we hear people telling us it’s “God’s Plan” to invade other countries and kill thousands of people including innocent children.<br />
<br />
Come to think of it, this sort of religion requires that there not be a god or else they couldn’t get away with the atrocities they commit in the name of their god.</blockquote>In addition, many people apparently are unable to discern their purpose in life (e.g., to help all types of intelligence to prosper). As a result of their inabilities to identify their purpose in life, such people are susceptible to suggestion made by others, because as Watterson illustrated, living one’s life without a conceived purpose can be depressing:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFprTUEi5kQqsi9eUKVAT0xETP_56o6YUr5dEJwwnSGQuo3w4GPrKWW9noPApkehdYNqAy3GsaUrif9gppwNpYM0-9MFJED7YBTIc2T_vxCIuzfsXBTcQ5xJs9acpnV5IAyWDOyLwIeOQ/s1600/11.+No+Purpose.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFprTUEi5kQqsi9eUKVAT0xETP_56o6YUr5dEJwwnSGQuo3w4GPrKWW9noPApkehdYNqAy3GsaUrif9gppwNpYM0-9MFJED7YBTIc2T_vxCIuzfsXBTcQ5xJs9acpnV5IAyWDOyLwIeOQ/s1600/11.+No+Purpose.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Susie, do you want to trade Captain Napalm bubble gum cards?” (2) C: “After chewing almost $20 worth of gum, I’ve collected all the cards except numbers 8 and 34. I’ll trade you any duplicate for either of those.” (3) S: “I don’t collect Captain Napalm bubble gum cards.” (4) C: “It must be depressing to go through life with no purpose.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
As well, people (being social animals) seek friends:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobhK_JBJD4npqZ5chOpDXFdABDx0RlcxFkMoJ1Z0ME0XfuGpNpYoibhHGrKOi-cV5mX71iwA1ThgIiYoEzwC3FdjEPO0SPYlHxAEYiYIKeAOI5mIYX2ixQL_uLbbLkDPx60ZX2AfnicU/s1600/12.+Friends.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobhK_JBJD4npqZ5chOpDXFdABDx0RlcxFkMoJ1Z0ME0XfuGpNpYoibhHGrKOi-cV5mX71iwA1ThgIiYoEzwC3FdjEPO0SPYlHxAEYiYIKeAOI5mIYX2ixQL_uLbbLkDPx60ZX2AfnicU/s1600/12.+Friends.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) S: “Sniff. That stupid Calvin. Why does he call me names for no reason? It’s just mean.” (2) S: “I wish I had a hundred friends. Then I wouldn’t care. I’d say, 'Who needs you, Calvin? I’ve got a hundred other friends'!" (3) S: “Then my hundred friends and I would go do something fun, and leave Calvin all alone! Ha!” (4) S: “…and as long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Meanwhile, Calvin had an ideal, imaginary friend (Hobbes), always much more agreeable and reliable than any real person – just as religious people have their ideal, imaginary friends (e.g., Jesus and Muhammad):<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5-vuB6bhxwydBZl9BD6YxXOVa0GiVp4KKAWGx-dryUOjNXVJPToeinFPKtYfrcuFVBpvK7BHp138FpktBGluvI7n6Cr5lMKleop0d8tOGjNkB-Kq6rmaCE-2MdqS2tFPbupb3mxFVZE/s1600/13.+People+more+like+animals.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5-vuB6bhxwydBZl9BD6YxXOVa0GiVp4KKAWGx-dryUOjNXVJPToeinFPKtYfrcuFVBpvK7BHp138FpktBGluvI7n6Cr5lMKleop0d8tOGjNkB-Kq6rmaCE-2MdqS2tFPbupb3mxFVZE/s1600/13.+People+more+like+animals.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “True friends are hard to come by.” (2) C: “I need more money.” {!} (3) C: “I wish people were more like animals.” (4) C: “Animals don’t try to change you or make you fit in. They just enjoy the pleasure of your company.” (5) C: “Animals aren’t conditional about friendships. Animals like you just the way you are.” (6) C: “They listen to your problems. They comfort you when you’re sad. And all they ask in return is a little kindness.” (7) H: “<b>Whooonk</b> *Sob* It’s so… so <b>true</b>! <b>Hoot</b>! THBPBTPTH!” (8) H: “…and speaking of ‘a little kindness’, I’d have a tuna fish sandwich any time soon that you happen to make one…” (8) C: “Of course, <b>some</b> animals get on your nerves once in a while.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Actually, speaking about “a little kindness" and “get[ing] on your nerves”, there’s more to having Yahweh, Jesus, Muhammad, or Allah as one’s “friend”. It was illustrated by someone else’s perceptive removal of one letter in a line familiar in Christian and formerly Christian countries: “You’ve got a f_iend in Jesus.” That is, in all the Abrahamic religions (and in all, similar, political tyrannies), fear and love of God (or similar, tyrannical leaders) are weirdly intertwined in a “paradoxical psychological phenomenon” now called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome">Stockholm Syndrome</a><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">…wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.</blockquote>Maybe readers remember the Patty Hearst case. The psychological diagnosis seems to be that people (e.g., battered wives) can begin to love those who don’t mistreat them quite so badly as they might, “mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.” As stated in the referenced Wikipedia article:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, widely credited with Stockholm Syndrome’s psychiatric definition, describes it as “a primitive gratitude for the gift of life,” not unlike that felt by an infant.</blockquote>It’s probably why people could proclaim their love for brutal tyrants (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and other tyrants, such as those now ruling most Muslim countries). I can imagine such people thinking:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">“The glorious ruler hasn’t yet unleashed his fury on me. Isn’t he wonderful?!”</blockquote>Although the sickness is now called the Stockholm Syndrome (because psychiatrists first recognized it in hostages during a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm), yet given the number of sufferers inflicted, it would be more appropriate to call it something similar to “the Abrahamic-Religion Syndrome”. That is, clerics of all the Abrahamic religions require followers to simultaneously love and fear their (fictitious) god.<br />
<br />
Thousands of years ago, clerics apparently stumbled upon the value (to them!) of inducing the Stockholm Syndrome in their followers, probably by seeing (and possibly experiencing) similar psychoses induced by political tyrants. For example, as I sketched in earlier posts in this series (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/12/mythical-monster-moses-1.html">here</a>), the clerical authors of the <i>Pentateuch</i> (whom I refer to as Ezra and co-conspirators) probably modeled the behavior of their “mythical Moses monster” after such historically verified, tyrannical monsters as the Egyptian pharaoh Thothmes III (c.1480–1425 BCE) and the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser (c.1115–1076 BCE). Moreover, ruling by fear was probably the norm for most mid-eastern tribal groups, providing a template for the subsequent ruling by fear, while demanding love, promoted in Christianity and Islam, respectively established by (the “butcher emperor”) Constantine and (the madman) Muhammad.<br />
<br />
Thus, still another reason why people adopted (and still adopt) the God Lie is that they suffered (and still suffer) from the Stockholm Syndrome, saying to themselves, in effect:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">“Isn’t God wonderful? He hasn’t yet destroyed me, like He did Job. And if I just do exactly what the clerics say, then maybe He won’t torture me for eternity in Hell.”</blockquote>Yet, even if their imaginary “friends” (Yahweh, Jesus, Muhammad, Allah…) are the worst-imaginable terrorists, for some people their only friends are imaginary or animals – or as in the case of Calvin, an imaginary animal:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HdAn4vRjCQ09ttafOvX-EmyiKUqkalPrcqimFaluA44ib1P37yyiPeMXlHLZjypx1fPBXk_eXSOzMJgE_iDtEGjwnpC98cCXAmC9lysyiovXExcvdqTyEdJK0P2Zn220qES5q8b8yGs/s1600/14.+Imaginary+Friend.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HdAn4vRjCQ09ttafOvX-EmyiKUqkalPrcqimFaluA44ib1P37yyiPeMXlHLZjypx1fPBXk_eXSOzMJgE_iDtEGjwnpC98cCXAmC9lysyiovXExcvdqTyEdJK0P2Zn220qES5q8b8yGs/s1600/14.+Imaginary+Friend.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) Calvin’s Uncle (CU): “Boy, Calvin takes that stuffed tiger everywhere he goes.” Calvin’s Mother (CM): “Yeah, they’re inseparable.” (2) CU: “Do you worry about that? I mean, shouldn’t he be playing with real friends?” (3) CM: “Oh, I think he will when he’s ready. Didn’t you ever have an imaginary friend?” (4) CU: “Sometimes I think <b>all</b> my friends have been imaginary.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
But as Richard Dawkins asked:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Wouldn’t it be lovely to believe in an imaginary friend who listens to your thoughts, listens to your prayers, comforts you, consoles you, gives you life after death, can give you advice? Of course it’s satisfying, if you can believe it. But who wants to believe a lie?</blockquote>Unfortunately for the rest of us, obviously a significant fraction of all humans do believe such a lie: it’s called the God Lie. Whether or not they “truly believe” the lie is known only to them, but what does seem obvious is that they WANT to believe it’s “the Truth”.<br />
<br />
<i><b>4. Guiding / Corrupting Societies</b></i><br />
<br />
Additional negative aspects of the methods used by clerics to control communities then become apparent. Certainly it’s the case, as Calvin saw, that there’s a lot of lying going on: civilized life sometimes recommends that we lie, e.g., to disguise our greed:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgylmL6RMwb4fw1VStYe_v_7yszErsFZjZLAEHzKTp7CYOsgeCnI7jCI1wnlseHy-0bKB24k3qiHN7dGR7tzJ0AbqKTAfV1Uw7DGiI9BO2t1jacgT5ALW8eo7YhBlGzY6pezQYQ7w5nHic/s1600/15.+Be+Dishonest.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgylmL6RMwb4fw1VStYe_v_7yszErsFZjZLAEHzKTp7CYOsgeCnI7jCI1wnlseHy-0bKB24k3qiHN7dGR7tzJ0AbqKTAfV1Uw7DGiI9BO2t1jacgT5ALW8eo7YhBlGzY6pezQYQ7w5nHic/s1600/15.+Be+Dishonest.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “<b>I</b> want the last piece of pie! Don’t divide it up! Give it to <b>me</b>!” CM: “Don’t be selfish Calvin.” (2) C: “So the real message here is ‘be dishonest’?” (3) {Calvin gets the pie!}]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
But even so, civilized life doesn’t require that we lie to ourselves:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRykTXfW3kpLKm_8swoTz5zc2g76wzFynwFN9P4u_PGNVyTRzc3leA2lnqt5TwhNEfIqPc7NSZteqcKJmRHNfGga6fXMoaoZ0OB5HXTEETvWw-J_-8dF_7jnQqgxy7BHfOC1HHB5m7mKk/s1600/16.+Reality+I+accept.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRykTXfW3kpLKm_8swoTz5zc2g76wzFynwFN9P4u_PGNVyTRzc3leA2lnqt5TwhNEfIqPc7NSZteqcKJmRHNfGga6fXMoaoZ0OB5HXTEETvWw-J_-8dF_7jnQqgxy7BHfOC1HHB5m7mKk/s1600/16.+Reality+I+accept.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) H: “Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework?” (2) C: “I’m pretty sure the assignment was optional.” (3) H: “Denial springs eternal.” C: “It’s not denial. I’m just very selective about the reality I accept.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Yet, such is a requirement of all organized religions: denial of reality. And once people begin to lie to themselves (e.g., that they “truly believe” that their protecting/threatening god exists and that they’ll get eternal bliss in paradise just for obeying lame-brain but conniving clerics), then lying to others becomes progressively easier:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCH3qvQGw_0nfQqDsERhX_avSVLFDf_bUxkGy-EBh6hwiYL-Hi80KWF8hudRAtTF0720z5BRwYlF_V21gL5XaZQMGLjvFZhNWcApCZxTQAHmWbILED5cUFBfRWSL3B74G2IWyVJWri9ec/s1600/17.+They+Lie%252C+I+Lie.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCH3qvQGw_0nfQqDsERhX_avSVLFDf_bUxkGy-EBh6hwiYL-Hi80KWF8hudRAtTF0720z5BRwYlF_V21gL5XaZQMGLjvFZhNWcApCZxTQAHmWbILED5cUFBfRWSL3B74G2IWyVJWri9ec/s1600/17.+They+Lie%252C+I+Lie.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Any monsters under my bed tonight?!” (2) Monsters: “Nope!” “No!” “Uh-uh” (3) C: “Well, there’d better <b>not</b> be! I’d hate to have to <b>torch</b> one with my fame thrower!” (4) H: “You have a flame thrower??” C: “They lie. I lie.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Thereby, Christians and Muslims (for example) become slaves to their delusions, controlled by clerics in power (just as Calvin was controlled by his parents):<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Bo5eA8LRXnELMLG4PmYVRXGCtDUa1uWHpWpBCx3SlSA7I2rO-VHJknuxSvE7tqjUrHAj1yOxVVpPU9wKOTRdCGPA4AaDO-Wuw4EIJmYTx9GPOSzBSp5uimsDpdcYN3uz62M3VYSL6T0/s1600/18.+Destinies+controlled.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Bo5eA8LRXnELMLG4PmYVRXGCtDUa1uWHpWpBCx3SlSA7I2rO-VHJknuxSvE7tqjUrHAj1yOxVVpPU9wKOTRdCGPA4AaDO-Wuw4EIJmYTx9GPOSzBSp5uimsDpdcYN3uz62M3VYSL6T0/s1600/18.+Destinies+controlled.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Do you believe our destinies are controlled by the stars?” (2) H: “No, I think we can do whatever we want with our lives.” (3) {Calvin wondering} (4) C: “Not to hear Mom and Dad tell it.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Especially in the case for Muslims (as I addressed in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/09/five-foundational-evils-of-islam.html">earlier post</a>), they also become astoundingly fatalistic, regardless of how evidence contradicts their fatalism. As a result, nothing (so they claim) is their fault:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-9Mt_vr0jitOwsKbgG8Tt45lToB1oY50umytQkx96_K36U7dXQqtOQ9onpvtO0GSpH2T2oKmVoKjy9ntrN031EHwAs6LbYRMQYK0-5ZoL3ft-rf5MoJnepOUWg7UlJ7v1T68teBoAzY/s1600/19.+Fatalism.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-9Mt_vr0jitOwsKbgG8Tt45lToB1oY50umytQkx96_K36U7dXQqtOQ9onpvtO0GSpH2T2oKmVoKjy9ntrN031EHwAs6LbYRMQYK0-5ZoL3ft-rf5MoJnepOUWg7UlJ7v1T68teBoAzY/s1600/19.+Fatalism.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “I’ve decided to be a fatalist.” (2) C: “All events are preordained and unalterable. Whatever will be will be. That way, if anything bad happens, it’s not my fault. It’s fate.” {The theologian John Calvin called it ‘predestination’} (3) {Hobbes trips Calvin, who hollers} “WAUGH!” (4) H: “Too bad you were fated to do that.” C: “<b>That wasn’t fate!</b>”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
In their resulting stupor, religious people live in their lies, delusions, denials, and deceptions, seeking happiness:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPEf9K4ybDrBDBz80L7lG-wpfDu5RhuTxYUNUk16PlKjmJ7D7iI5aYjw73Fb5SUH-OckgE4-k0Gtv2iQ24p7qMeTQZkknI5aJm3GKXvPtOgePGLFmhrYQwZ812csSxI-Pzc0CbjNwqo4/s1600/20.+Pretty+Afternoon.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPEf9K4ybDrBDBz80L7lG-wpfDu5RhuTxYUNUk16PlKjmJ7D7iI5aYjw73Fb5SUH-OckgE4-k0Gtv2iQ24p7qMeTQZkknI5aJm3GKXvPtOgePGLFmhrYQwZ812csSxI-Pzc0CbjNwqo4/s1600/20.+Pretty+Afternoon.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “You know what I’ve noticed, Hobbes? Things don’t bug you if you don’t think about them.” (2) C: “So from now on, I simply won’t think about anything I don’t like, and I’ll be happy all the time!” (3) H: “Don’t you think that’s a pretty silly and irresponsible way to live?” (4) C: “What a pretty afternoon.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
And yes, religious people can thereby seem to gain happiness, but as George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.</blockquote>What’s “more to the point” is that, by denying reality, all organized religions corrupt both real happiness (<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">making progress toward real goals</a>) and the real bases of morality (which, again, aren’t proclamations from some god but are simply ways found through experience to be useful for social animals to interact). The corruption starts with lying to oneself, as Thomas Paine (1737–1809) saw:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.</blockquote>And to top it off, after denying reality, lying to themselves, living in delusions, refusing to learn, and blaming others, religious people amazingly develop ignorant arrogance:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHBu2DQLVcfGq3rPDhBV3IUe4MN6xN0p9f71BOjkfUnB47qmnz2f0yRGU3-6FUv2wheC12Yc2FrbjmpAB6oY0hr3i80ZiilB6BifWZJwNoYrM6c9bNQP48UuHeIK97xjPwIpzixX41Q50/s1600/21.+Instantaneous+Ignorance.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHBu2DQLVcfGq3rPDhBV3IUe4MN6xN0p9f71BOjkfUnB47qmnz2f0yRGU3-6FUv2wheC12Yc2FrbjmpAB6oY0hr3i80ZiilB6BifWZJwNoYrM6c9bNQP48UuHeIK97xjPwIpzixX41Q50/s1600/21.+Instantaneous+Ignorance.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C {working on a homework assignment}: “This is hopeless! How am I supposed to create a desert scene in this shoe box when I don’t even know what a desert looks like?!” (2) C: “<b>I’ve</b> never been to a desert! Mom and Dad never take me anywhere fun on vacations! If they’d taken me to a desert sometime, I’d know this stuff!” (3) H: “Why don’t you get out a book?” C: “And go to all that <b>trouble</b>?! Yeah, sure! Look, I’m a busy guy! I’ve got other things to do with my life besides <b>this</b>, you know!” (4) H: “Right. Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?” C: “My TV show starts in 20 minutes. Are you going to help me or not?”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
As Robert Ingersoll saw, such ignorant arrogance is the death knell of social cooperation:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God’s sheep and Devil’s goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned… He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance…</blockquote>Thereby, adopting the lie of an afterlife in heaven has managed to turn life on Earth into hell. As D.M. Brooks wrote in his 1933 book <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20248/20248-8.txt"><i>The Necessity of Atheism:</i></a><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">There are embodied in all creeds three human impulses: fear, conceit, and hatred; and religion has given an air of respectability to these passions. Religion is a malignant disease born of fear, a cancer which has been eating into the vitals of everything that is worthwhile in our civilization; and by its growth obstructing those advances which make for a more healthful life… religion has provided the shackles and securely and jealously enslaved the mind. With the aid of his religious beliefs man has been ensnared into a mental prison in which he has been an all too willing captive. Surely it is easier to believe than to think.<br />
<br />
Religious philosophy is slave philosophy; it teaches of a God who is personally interested in the individual and who will reward present misery with future bliss. The demoralizing effect of this infamous fraud is apparent everywhere. If a worker is constantly assailed with this nonsense from the pulpit, the result is the production in him of a mental as well as a physical slavery; it aggravates his mental inertia, and the force of repetition achieving its effects, he soon resigns himself to his present miserable state drugged with the delusion of a better life in the hereafter. He believes that his destiny is predetermined by God and that he will be rewarded in heaven for his sufferings on earth.</blockquote>And the basic cause is that religious people abandon common sense:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijoUfBWSeophc2bZiSgqMJs0kPqH7CQW2L7WUxkGdx4Y3sMWPxPVYON_UZwFaVBS5h8WIbVoQmXyNa2k0Q3TgLB6SAJ-xT2yqOfElqmnoi8hFeKdmz2FLvfKDCYtVYlccCPGam4PPxSyQ/s1600/22.+Ignore+Common+Sense.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijoUfBWSeophc2bZiSgqMJs0kPqH7CQW2L7WUxkGdx4Y3sMWPxPVYON_UZwFaVBS5h8WIbVoQmXyNa2k0Q3TgLB6SAJ-xT2yqOfElqmnoi8hFeKdmz2FLvfKDCYtVYlccCPGam4PPxSyQ/s1600/22.+Ignore+Common+Sense.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) CM: “Calvin. How did you break this dish?!” C: “I was carrying too much and it dropped.” (2) CM: “Your problem is you’ve got no common sense.” (3) C: “<b>I’ve got plenty of common sense</b>!” (4) C: “I just choose to ignore it.”]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Choosing to ignore common sense is one of the dumbest and most irresponsible thing that religious people do: they don’t apply common sense to judge what does and what doesn’t qualify as ‘evidence’ and they don’t apply common sense to hold beliefs only as strongly as relevant, reliable evidence warrants. Such foolishness is called ‘faith’, and audaciously, clerical con artists of the world describe such faith as a “moral good”, instead of the evil it obviously is. The consequences of such evil (to individuals and to societies) have been horrible. Some such consequences were described well more than 200 years ago by Paul Henri d’Holbach (1723–1789) in the Preface to his 1772 book <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7319"><i>Good Sense:</i></a><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense, or in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in Theology, a system revered in all countries by a great number of men; an object regarded by them as most important, and indispensable to happiness. An examination of the principles upon which this pretended system is founded forces us to acknowledge that these principles are only suppositions, imagined by ignorance, propagated by enthusiasm or knavery, adopted by timid credulity, preserved by custom which never reasons, and revered solely because not understood. <br />
<br />
In a word, whoever uses common sense upon religious opinions, and will bestow on this inquiry the attention that is commonly given to most subjects, will easily perceive that Religion is a mere castle in the air. Theology is ignorance of natural causes, a tissue of fallacies and contradictions. In every country, it presents romances void of probability, the hero of which is composed of impossible qualities. His name, exciting fear in all minds, is only a vague word to which men affix ideas or qualities, which are either contradicted by facts or inconsistent.<br />
<br />
Notions of this being, or rather, the word by which he is designated, would be a matter of indifference, if it did not cause innumerable ravages in the world. But men, prepossessed with the opinion that this phantom is a reality of the greatest interest, instead of concluding wisely from its incomprehensibility that they are not bound to regard it, infer on the contrary that they must contemplate it, without ceasing, and never lose sight of it. Their invincible ignorance upon this subject irritates their curiosity; instead of putting them upon guard against their imagination, this ignorance renders them decisive, dogmatic, imperious, and even exasperates them against all who oppose doubts to the reveries which they have begotten.<br />
<br />
What perplexity arises when it is required to solve an insolvable problem; unceasing meditation upon an object, impossible to understand, but in which however he thinks himself much concerned, cannot but excite man and produce a fever in his brain. Let interest, vanity, and ambition co-operate ever so little with this unfortunate turn of mind, and society must necessarily be disturbed. This is the reason that so many nations have often been the scene of extravagances of senseless visionaries, who, believing their empty speculations to be eternal truths and publishing them as such, have kindled the zeal of princes and their subjects and made them take up arms for opinions, represented to them as essential to the glory of the Deity. In all parts of our globe, fanatics have cut each other’s throats, publicly burnt each other, committed without a scruple and even as a duty, the greatest crimes, and shed torrents of blood. For what? To strengthen, support, or propagate the impertinent conjectures of some enthusiasts or to give validity to the cheats of impostors, in the name of a being who exists only in their imagination and who has made himself known only by the ravages, disputes, and follies he has caused.<br />
<br />
Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, bloodthirsty. We find in all the religions “a God of armies,” a “jealous God,” an “avenging God,” a “destroying God,” a “God,” who is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshipers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere be seen who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him they must inflict on themselves the most exquisite torments. The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have everywhere disquieted their minds and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness.<br />
<br />
How could the human mind progress while tormented with frightful phantoms and guided by men interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him and of directing his actions.<br />
<br />
Thus, man has remained a slave without courage, fearing to reason, and unable to extricate himself from the labyrinth in which he has been wandering. He believes himself forced under the yoke of his gods, known to him only by the fabulous accounts given by his ministers, who, after binding each unhappy mortal in the chains of prejudice, remain his masters or else abandon him defenseless to the absolute power of tyrants, no less terrible than the gods, of whom they are the representatives.<br />
<br />
Oppressed by the double yoke of spiritual and temporal power, it has been impossible for the people to be happy. Religion became sacred, and men have had no other morality than what their legislators and priests brought from the unknown regions of heaven. The human mind, confused by theological opinions, ceased to know its own powers, mistrusted experience, feared truth and disdained reason, in order to follow authority. Man has been a mere machine in the hands of tyrants and priests. Always treated as a slave, man has contracted the vices of slavery.<br />
<br />
Such are the true causes of the corruption of morals. Ignorance and servitude are calculated to make men wicked and unhappy. Knowledge, Reason, and Liberty can alone reform and make men happier. But everything conspires to blind them and to confirm their errors. Priests cheat them, tyrants corrupt and enslave them. Tyranny ever was, and ever will be, the true cause of man’s depravity, and also of his calamities. Almost always fascinated by religious fiction, poor mortals turn not their eyes to the natural and obvious causes of their misery, but attribute their vices to the imperfection of their natures and their unhappiness to the anger of the gods. They offer to heaven vows, sacrifices, and presents to obtain the end of sufferings, which in reality, are attributable only to the negligence, ignorance, and perversity of their guides, to the folly of their customs, and above all, to the general want of knowledge. Let men’s minds be filled with true ideas, let their reason be cultivated, and there will be no need of opposing to the passions such a feeble barrier as the fear of gods. Men will be good when they are well instructed – and when they are despised for evil, or justly rewarded for good, which they do to their fellow citizens.<br />
<br />
In vain should we attempt to cure men of their vices, unless we begin by curing them of their prejudices. It is only by showing them the truth that they will perceive their true interests and the real motives that ought to incline them to do good. Instructors have long enough fixed men’s eyes upon heaven; let them now turn them upon earth. An incomprehensible theology, ridiculous fables, impenetrable mysteries, puerile ceremonies are to be no longer endured. Let the human mind apply itself to what is natural, to intelligible objects, truth, and useful knowledge.<br />
<br />
Does it not suffice to annihilate religious prejudice to show that, what is inconceivable to man, cannot be good for him? Does it require anything but plain common sense, to perceive that a being, incompatible with the most evident notions – that a cause continually opposed to the effects which we attribute to it – that a being of whom we can say nothing without falling into contradiction – that a being who, far from explaining the enigmas of the universe, only makes them more inexplicable – that a being, whom for so many ages men have vainly addressed to obtain their happiness and the end of sufferings – does it require, I say, anything but plain, common sense, to perceive that the idea of such a being is an idea without model and that he himself is merely a phantom of the imagination? Is anything necessary but common sense to perceive, at least, that it is folly and madness for men to hate and damn one another about unintelligible opinions concerning a being of this kind? In short, does not everything prove that morality and virtue are totally incompatible with the notions of a God, whom his ministers and interpreters have described, in every country, as the most capricious, unjust, and cruel of tyrants, whose pretended will, however, must serve as law and rule the inhabitants of the earth?<br />
<br />
To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: they have need only of common sense. They have only to commune with themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consider the objects of society and of the individuals who compose it, and they will easily perceive that virtue is advantageous and vice disadvantageous to themselves. Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable, not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but because it is pleasant to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime, not because they will be punished in another world, but because they will suffer for it in this. <i>These are,</i> says Montesquieu, <i>means to prevent crimes – these are punishments; these reform manners – these are good examples.</i><br />
<br />
The way of truth is straight; that of imposture is crooked and dark. Truth, ever necessary to man, must necessarily be felt by all upright minds; the lessons of reason are to be followed by all honest men. Men are unhappy only because they are ignorant; they are ignorant, only because everything conspires to prevent their being enlightened; they are wicked only because their reason is not sufficiently developed.<br />
<br />
By what fatality, then, have the first founders of all sects given to their gods ferocious characters, at which nature revolts? Can we imagine a conduct more abominable than that which Moses tells us his God showed towards the Egyptians, where that assassin proceeds boldly to declare, in the name and by the order of his God, that Egypt shall be afflicted with the greatest calamities that can happen to man? Of all the different ideas, which they give us of a supreme being, of a God, creator and preserver of mankind, there are none more horrible than those of the impostors, who represented themselves as inspired by a divine spirit, and “Thus saith the Lord.”<br />
<br />
Why, O theologians! do you presume to inquire into the impenetrable mysteries of a being whom you consider inconceivable to the human mind? You are the blasphemers, when you imagine that a being, perfect according to you, could be guilty of such cruelty towards creatures whom he has made out of nothing. Confess, your ignorance of a creating God and cease meddling with mysteries, which are repugnant to <i>Common Sense.</i></blockquote><br />
<i><b>5. Educating / Brainwashing Children</b></i><br />
<br />
The prime reason why religious people show such little common sense is, of course, childhood indoctrination in supercilious, supernatural nonsense. In turn, a critical component of such brainwashing is parental indoctrination of their children, by parents who were similarly brainwashed when they were children. And in turn, the reason why childhood indoctrination is so effective is because the survival advantage of trusting our parents is “programmed” into our DNA. As Richard Dawkins wrote in his book <a href="http://scilib.narod.ru/Biology/Dawkins/Rainbow/index.html"><i>Unweaving the Rainbow:</i></a><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Children are naturally credulous. Of course they are, what else would you expect? They arrive in the world knowing nothing, surrounded by adults who know, by comparison, everything. It is earnestly true that fire burns, that snakes bite, that if you walk unprotected in the noon sun you will bake red, raw and, as we now know, cancerous. Moreover, the other and apparently more scientific way to gain useful knowledge, learning by trial and error, is often a bad idea because the errors are too costly. If your mother tells you never to paddle in the lake because of the crocodiles, it is no good coming over all skeptical and scientific and ‘adult’ and saying, “Thank you mother, but I prefer to put it to the experimental test.” Too often, such experiments would be terminal. It is easy to see why natural selection – the survival of the fittest – might penalize an experimental and skeptical turn of mind and favor simple credulity in children.<br />
<br />
But this has an unfortunate by-product which can’t be helped. If your parents tell you something that isn’t true, you must believe that, too. How could you not? Children are not equipped to know the difference between a true warning about genuine dangers and a false warning about going blind, say, or going to hell, if you ‘sin’. If they were so equipped, they wouldn’t need warnings at all. Credulity, as a survival device, comes as a package. You believe what you are told, the false with the true. Parents and elders know so much, it is natural to assume that they know everything and natural to believe them. So when they tell you about Father Christmas coming down the chimney and about faith ‘moving mountains’, of course you believe that, too.<br />
<br />
Children are gullible because they need to be if they are to fulfill their ‘caterpillar’ role in life. Butterflies have wings because their role is to locate members of the opposite sex and spread their offspring to new food plants. They have modest appetites satisfied by occasional sips of nectar. They eat little protein by comparison with caterpillars, which constitute the growing stage in the life history. Juvenile animals in general have the role of preparing to become successfully reproducing adults. Caterpillars are there to feed as rapidly as possible in order to chrysalize into flying, reproducing, dispersing adults. To this end they have no wings but instead have stout munching jaws and voracious, single-minded appetites.<br />
<br />
Human children need to be credulous for a similar reason. They are information caterpillars. They are there to become reproducing adults, in a sophisticated, knowledge-based society. And by far the most important source of their information diet is their elders, above all their parents. For the same kind of reason as caterpillars have chumbling, hoovering jaws for sucking up cabbage flesh, human children have wide open ears and eyes, and gaping, trusting minds for sucking up language and other knowledge. They are suckers for adult knowledge. Tidal waves of data, gigabytes of wisdom flood through the portals of the infant skull, and most of it originates in the culture built up by parents and generations of ancestors.<br />
<br />
Not to grow up properly is to retain our ‘caterpillar’ quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don’t grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child’s brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the skeptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science…</blockquote>Of course, skepticism can develop not only from scientific studies but also from receiving conflicting “information”, e.g., from different parents, as Bill Watterson suggested:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JUQmC9xQU5EbH9DqqQcImZKImRo2ZUUCt6QUrzkZogQ7iz81QTuJJGjv9jKIQ594AYL2inj9D2zKe8sJdaq9VwfOsEHWtBNc-EHp3v2h4GVMzY0_6OKYPeAcWJ7csqPfBWqiftvlTyI/s1600/23.+Until+the+bridge+breaks.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JUQmC9xQU5EbH9DqqQcImZKImRo2ZUUCt6QUrzkZogQ7iz81QTuJJGjv9jKIQ594AYL2inj9D2zKe8sJdaq9VwfOsEHWtBNc-EHp3v2h4GVMzY0_6OKYPeAcWJ7csqPfBWqiftvlTyI/s1600/23.+Until+the+bridge+breaks.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “How do they know the load limit on bridges Dad?” {Sign near bridge: “Load Limit 10 Tons”} (2) CD: “They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks.” (3) CD: “Then, they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge.” (4) C: “Oh. I should’ve guessed.” Calvin’s Mom (CM): “Dear, if you don’t now the answer, just tell him!”]</span></td></tr>
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Sometimes, however, a child’s intelligence and experiences provoke revulsion at some indoctrination:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRH8pFID9Mr3vMGMTD8vNpmWsah0ZVMFcOhpI01AzwdORSlPBPdnSZOA3a5oJdGrVE2CxfBGeRzB96AmumVDsP6zWq7u0uF3i48CPduwRaLWb3rKu3vkOlZe4iHPYdfOAjTyL6e2fLcMg/s1600/24.+Blue+Light+Special.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRH8pFID9Mr3vMGMTD8vNpmWsah0ZVMFcOhpI01AzwdORSlPBPdnSZOA3a5oJdGrVE2CxfBGeRzB96AmumVDsP6zWq7u0uF3i48CPduwRaLWb3rKu3vkOlZe4iHPYdfOAjTyL6e2fLcMg/s1600/24.+Blue+Light+Special.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “Dad, how do people make babies?” (2) CD: “Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.” (3) C: “<b>I came from Sears??</b>” CD: No, <b>you</b> were a Blue Light Special at K-Mart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.” (4) C: “<b>AAUUGHHH!</b>” CM: “Dear, what are you telling Calvin now?!”]</span></td></tr>
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Richard Dawkins continues:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">On their own, then, the words ‘gullible’ and ‘credulous’ are not quite right for children. Truly credulous people believe whatever they have most recently been told, even if this contradicts what others have told them before. The quality of childhood that I am trying to pin down is not pure gullibility but a complex combination of gullibility coupled with its opposite – stubborn persistence in a belief, once acquired. The full recipe, then, is extreme early gullibility followed by equally obstinate subsequent unshakeability. You can see what a devastating combination this could be. Those old Jesuits knew what they were about: “Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.”</blockquote>The efficacy of childhood indoctrination has been known for thousands of years and has been utilized by all tyrants, not just by religious leaders, as the following quotations illustrate:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">• Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up? By no manner of means will we allow it. [Plato]<br />
<br />
• Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. [Bible, Proverbs 22, 6]<br />
<br />
• Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life. [Ignatius of Loyola, 1491–1556, principal founder and first Superior General of the Jesuits] <br />
<br />
• Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. [Vladimir Lenin]<br />
<br />
• Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. [Joseph Stalin]<br />
<br />
• At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each schoolchild in Italy is studying. [Benito Mussolini]<br />
<br />
• By educating the young generation along the right lines, the People’s State will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destinies of the world… I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin for my young men. [Adolph Hitler]</blockquote>And the poor kids grow up without knowing how their minds have been warped by their indoctrination: <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhApNY0rE1CzK6tDq9yA5FrF2Y9KnHQkvlznxO3zfo_4B8tI5RV6RY5h-HGifoEvKbFWCbO2607Fx4JFHo8zFBaoQ49qdGD7MJ7nDTb_JvqfTZAzrQZkgPd0m4h3tmY77ThGixL3Gz3NQ4/s1600/25.+Brainwashing.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhApNY0rE1CzK6tDq9yA5FrF2Y9KnHQkvlznxO3zfo_4B8tI5RV6RY5h-HGifoEvKbFWCbO2607Fx4JFHo8zFBaoQ49qdGD7MJ7nDTb_JvqfTZAzrQZkgPd0m4h3tmY77ThGixL3Gz3NQ4/s1600/25.+Brainwashing.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: “You know what’s weird? I don’t remember much of anything until I was three years old.” (2) C: “Half of my life is a complete blank! I must’ve been brainwashed!” (3) C: “Good heavens, what kind of sicko would brainwash an infant?! And what did I know that someone wanted me to forget??” (4) C: “Boy, am I mysterious.” H: “I seem to recall you spend most of the time burping up.”]</span></td></tr>
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Meanwhile, the answer to Calvin’s question, “What kind of sicko would brainwash [kids]?” is obvious: tyrants, such as clerics! It’s immoral – and should be a crime.<br />
<br />
Indoctrination of children explains why the probability is high (I expect it’s greater than 90%) that people who are religious profess the religion of their parents. In his 1980 communication “<a href="http://www.cin.org/jp2ency/freedom.html">The Freedom of Conscience and of Religion</a>”, the damnable Pope John Paul II put the following spin on such brainwashing of children, arguing for<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">…freedom for parents to educate their children in the religious convictions that inspire their own life, and to have them attend catechetical and religious instruction as provided by their faith community…</blockquote>What about freedom for children not to be brainwashed in religious balderdash?! <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/7/3/10732/10732-8.txt">Arthur Schopenhauer</a> (1788–1860) clearly saw both the problem and its solution:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">We know that man is in general superior to all other animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being trained. Mohammedans [Muslims] are trained to pray with their faces turned towards Mecca, five times a day; and they never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross themselves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on. Indeed, it may be said that religion is the <i>chef d’oeuvre</i> [viz., ‘masterpiece’] of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they shall think – and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early. There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity…<br />
<br />
The human intellect is said to be so constituted that “general ideas” arise by abstraction from “particular observations”, and therefore come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for what he learns – who has no teacher and no book – such a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly, he treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called the “natural” method of education.<br />
<br />
Contrarily, the “artificial” method is to hear what other people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular observations, which go to make these general ideas, will come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.<br />
<br />
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is putting the cart before the horse.<br />
<br />
Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience; and it is seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of learning are possessed of common sense, such as is often to be met with in people who have had no instruction at all.<br />
<br />
<i>To acquire a knowledge of the world</i> might be defined as the aim of all education; and it follows from what I have said that special stress should be laid upon beginning to acquire this knowledge “at the right end”. As I have shown, this means, in the main, that the particular observation of a thing shall precede the general idea of it; further, that narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before ideas of a wide range.<br />
<br />
It means, therefore, that the whole system of education shall follow in the steps that must have been taken by the ideas themselves in the course of their formation. But whenever any of these steps are skipped or left out, the instruction is defective, and the ideas obtained are false; and finally, a distorted view of the world arises, peculiar to the individual himself – a view such as almost everyone entertains for some time, and most men for as long as they live.<br />
<br />
No one can look into his own mind without seeing that it was only after reaching a very mature age, and in some cases when he least expected it, that he came to a right understanding or a clear view of many matters in his life, that, after all, were not very difficult or complicated. Up till then, they were points in his knowledge of the world which were still obscure, due to his having skipped some particular lesson in those early days of his education, whatever it may have been like – whether artificial and conventional, or of that natural kind which is based upon individual experience.<br />
<br />
It follows that an attempt should be made to find out the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that education may proceed methodically by keeping to it; and that children may become acquainted with the ways of the world, without getting wrong ideas into their heads, which very often cannot be got out again. If this plan were adopted, special care would have to be taken to prevent children from using words without clearly understanding their meaning and application. The fatal tendency to be satisfied with words instead of trying to understand things – to learn phrases by heart, so that they may prove a refuge in time of need, exists, as a rule, even in children; and the tendency lasts on into manhood, making the knowledge of many learned persons to consist in mere verbiage.<br />
<br />
However, the main endeavor must always be to let particular observations precede general ideas, and not vice versa, as is usually and unfortunately the case; as though a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the rhyme! The ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, “prejudices”, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.<br />
<br />
A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself, and he sees them from many sides; but this method of learning is not nearly so short or so quick as the method which employs abstract ideas and makes hasty generalizations about everything. Experience, therefore, will be a long time in correcting preconceived ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an end; for wherever a man finds that the aspect of things seems to contradict the general ideas he has formed, he will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial and one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and deny that it stands in any contradiction at all with his preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve them uninjured.<br />
<br />
So it is that many a man carries about a burden of wrong notions all his life long – crotchets, whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last become fixed ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his fundamental ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his own way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his ideas ready-made from other people; and this it is that makes him – as it makes how many others! – so shallow and superficial.<br />
<br />
Instead of that method of instruction, care should be taken to educate children on the natural lines. No idea should ever be established in a child’s mind otherwise than by what the child can see for itself, or at any rate it should be verified by the same means; and the result of this would be that the child’s ideas, if few, would be well grounded and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by its own standard rather than by another’s; and so it would escape a thousand strange fancies and prejudices, and not need to have them eradicated by the lessons it will subsequently be taught in the school of life. The child would, in this way, have its mind once for all habituated to clear views and thoroughgoing knowledge; it would use its own judgment and take an unbiased estimate of things.<br />
<br />
And, in general, children should not form their notions of what life is like from the copy before they have learned it from the original, to whatever aspect of it their attention may be directed. Instead, therefore, of hastening to place “books”, and books alone, in their hands, let them be made acquainted, step-by-step, with “things” – with the actual circumstances of human life. And above all let care be taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of the world as it is, to educate them always to derive their ideas directly from real life, and to shape them in conformity with it – not to fetch them from other sources, such as books, fairy tales, or what people say – then to apply them ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either see things in a false light or try in vain to “remodel the world” to suit their views, and so enter upon false paths; and that, too, whether they are only constructing theories of life or engaged in the actual business of it.<br />
<br />
It is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on to bear a crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons, which are learned from real life in the world have to be devoted mainly to their extirpation. “To unlearn the evil” was the answer, according to Diogenes Laërtius, Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of knowledge was most necessary; and we can see what he meant.<br />
<br />
No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural science, history, and so on. And in general, the branches of knowledge which are to be studied at any period of life should be such as the mind is equal to at that period and can perfectly understand.</blockquote>In his book <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20248/20248-8.txt">The Necessity of Atheism</a>, Brooks summarized well the evils of indoctrinating children in religious balderdash:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">I execrate the enslavement of the mind of our young children by the ecclesiastics. Is anything so pitiful to behold as the firm grasp that the Church places on the mind of the youngest of children? Children at play, children of four and five years of age, will be heard to mention with fearful tones various religious rites, such as baptism and confirmation, and to perform in their manner these rites with their dolls. Fear! Fear! instilled into the minds of the impressionable children!<br />
<br />
Think of the degradation that the ecclesiastics practice when they insist that from the time a child is out of its infancy its instruction shall be placed in their hands. They take the most precious possession of man, his mind, and mould it to their desire. The mind of a child is plastic, it is like a moist piece of clay and they mould it and form it to their desire. Warped and poured into the ecclesiastic mould of fear, the mind of the child becomes set and fixed with the years.<br />
<br />
Then it is too late for rational thinking, as far as religious matters go, the mind of the adult is firmly set in the form that the ecclesiastic has fashioned for him in his youth. It is impossible for the adult so taught to reason clearly and rationally concerning his religion; the mould is too strong, the clay has set, reason cannot penetrate into that hardened form. That is why it is almost impossible for the adult who has been exposed to this mental molding from his infancy to break away from the fears and superstitions learned on his mother’s knee.<br />
<br />
If Christianity, Hebrewism [Judaism], Mohammedanism [Islam], or any other creed is true, its truth must be more apparent at the age of twenty-five than it is at the age of five. Why does the ecclesiastic not leave off his advances until the child reaches a mature age, an age when he can reason? Then, if theism is true, he can accept it with a reasoning mind, not a blindly faithful mind. The theist realizes, however, that belief is at one pole, reason at the other. Belief, creed, religion, are ideations of the primitive mind and the mind of the child; reason is the product of mature thought. Schopenhauer remarked that, “The power of religious dogma when inculcated early is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity.”<br />
<br />
The ecclesiastic has from earliest times taken the standpoint that the masses of people are of crude susceptibility and clumsy intelligence, “sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery; and religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life.” [Schopenhauer] Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that the end justifies the means.</blockquote>Indoctrinating children in any religion is the depth of immorality; it’s evil; it should be prosecuted not only as a crime against individual children but as a crime against humanity. Thankfully, clerics are now in jail and their organizations have been sued for raping children’s bodies. Surely it won’t be much longer until similar legal actions are taken against clerics for raping children’s minds – and as Watterson suggested, maybe people should take legal actions against their religious parents, holding them liable for damages:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[1) C: “Here, Dad, I’d like you to sign this form and have it notarized.” 2) D {reading the form}: “I, the undersigned Dad, attest that I have never parented before, and insofar as I have no experience in the job… 3) D {continuing to read}: I am liable for my mistakes and I agree to pay for any counseling, in perpetuity, Calvin may require as a result of my parental ineptitude.” 4) C {mad, sent to his room}: “I don’t see how you’re allowed to have a kid without signing one of those.”]</span></td></tr>
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Suing parents for indoctrinating their children in religious balderdash is one possible way to try to exterminate the god meme. Earlier in my book (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X15_EXpanding_Education.pdf">here</a>), I already devoted 20 chapters (!) to investigating other possible ways. In the next post, I’ll provide some closing comments on progress already made rejecting the God Lie.<br />
<br />
[To be concluded…]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-84655068255618477052010-11-21T04:49:00.000-08:002011-02-07T01:42:24.004-08:00Closing Comments – 2 – Promotion of the God Lie•••• <br />
This is the 37th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie” and the 2nd of four posts containing some closing comments on the 1) Origins, 2) Promotion, 3) Adoption, and 4) Rejection of the God Lie. For these final four posts I’ve decided to have a little fun (☺) by illustrating ideas with some Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, which were created during 1985 to 1995 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson">Bill Watterson</a> and which (I remind readers) are still copyrighted, requiring permission from Universal Press Syndicate before being used for commercial purposes.<br />
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As I briefly reviewed in the previous post, the origins of the God Lie seem to have been a series of mistaken ideas by primitive people, mistakes that clerics later manipulated into lies. These mistakes can be organized into two broad categories. One category includes misinterpretations of experiences and misunderstandings of natural phenomena, including:<br />
<blockquote>1) The people’s mistaken idea (probably derived from speculations about their own shadows, images, dreams, and hallucinations) that they possessed a “second self”, “spirit”, or “soul”,<br />
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2) Their mistaken idea that “the spirits of the dead” were still present (since such “spirits” appeared in their dreams and hallucinations),<br />
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3) Their mistake that they, too, would experience an “afterlife”,<br />
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4) Their mistake that everything (animals, streams, mountains, storms, etc.) possessed spirits,<br />
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5) Their mistake that the spirits of especially powerful natural forces (thunder storms, floods, earthquakes, etc.) could be placated, similar to how powerful tribal leader could be swayed by showing deference, and<br />
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6) Their mistake of permitting certain members of their tribes to intervene with powerful spirits on their behalf – probably members who could guide the people’s “entrance to the spirit world”, for example by dispensing hallucinogens or by inducing group hypnosis (e.g., by leading rhythmic chants, similar to the those heard in temples, synagogues, churches, and mosques to this day).</blockquote>This sixth mistake (listed above) was potentially the most serious, because ancient people thereby permitted their “doctors” or shamans (forerunners of today’s clerics) to gain substantial power over the people (by controlling their imaginations), and as the people eventually learned, power usually corrupts.<br />
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A second category of mistakes (illustrated in the previous post) dealt with the purpose of life and how to achieve that purpose, mistakes that are still being made by more than half of all people living today (courtesy clerical lies). Correctly seen, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P01_The_Purpose_of_Life.pdf">the purpose of life </a>is obvious and was obviously well known (before clerics confused people), namely, for life to continue. Such knowledge is “programmed” into our DNA; life that wasn’t so programmed is now extinct; a major part of that programming governs reproduction and then (after offspring have matured) discarding aged, temporary hosts of the still-living, billion-year-old DNA in favor of the new hosts, more capable of surviving in ever-changing physical and biological environments. <br />
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Perplexing questions for humans, however, have persisted: not whether to keep our DNA alive, but how? In fact, deciding how to ensure that our genes continue is what gives our lives meaning, to ourselves and to others. During our temporary hosting of our DNA, secular humanists do what we can to find intelligent, scientifically defensible solutions to human problems, to try to help the human DNA continue. In contrast, essentially all religious people (misled by clerical lies) foolishly and selfishly seek their own survival – for eternity! As Einstein summarized:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.</span></blockquote>Yet, in their “ridiculous egotism” (promoted by clerics) more than half of all people living today believe that they can continue to host their own DNA forever, in an imagined paradise, provided they do exactly what their clerics say – out to and including crashing hijacked airlines into building, incinerating their own DNA. It’s not only criminally insane; it’s immoral.<br />
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Such is the wicked control that clerics can gain over imaginations when people <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">immorally hold beliefs more strongly than is justified by relevant evidence</a>. Instead of evaluating evidence, religious people “listen to their hearts”, they emotionally “do what feels right”, they “let their imaginations run wild”, they “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">rely on logic rather than reality</a>”; thereby, they permit their clerics to gain authority over their lives. Such mistakes have caused (and continue to cause) humanity major harm. Below is an example of how Bill Watterson illustrated such errors:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[For some reason (unknown to me) the quality of these strips has deteriorated; therefore, I'll retype the text in captions. Here, in the first panel (1), Calvin (C) states: "Mom wants me to try an experiment tonight", (2) C: "She says that the monsters under my bed may need me to THINK about them to exist, (3) C: "Her theory is that if I just don't think about them, they'll go away." (4) Hobbes (H): "…Of course, that idea of being dragged under the bed and devoured by monsters has a way of gripping the mind." C: "And it's not like Mom and Dad go away when I stop thinking about THEM."]</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[Comment on some 2011/02/07 Editing: The cause of the mentioned deterioration in the quality of Watterson's comic strips was apparently my mistaken assumption that their quality would be preserved in the transformation from the original GIF figures, to figures in a Microsoft Word document, and then to figures for a blogpost. Upon returning to the original GIF figures, the quality has been improved. Nonetheless, I've decided to keep these captions, in part because the Google translator of course doesn't translate text within figures, and in part because the text in some of the GIF figures (especially of Watterson's color, Sunday strips) is still difficult to decipher. Besides, readers can skip these captions relatively easily, especially if their browser displays the smaller font size of the captions.]</span></div></td></tr>
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When people first made such errors is, of course, unknown. In general, it’s extremely difficult to establish pre-historic human chronology, especially since different tribes adopted different activities at different times. Further, not only are the time durations enormous (measured in tens of thousands of years!) but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_religion#Prehistoric_evidence_of_religion">archeological evidence</a> of prehistoric religions is notoriously difficult (and contentious) to interpret: it’s always difficult to determine what someone else is (or was) thinking; it’s almost impossible to do so when the only available data are from a few trinkets, skeletons, grave sites, and paintings on cave walls.<br />
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Nonetheless, evidence suggests that what’s now called ‘religion’ started during the early phase of the Stone Age (i.e., the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age). For example, evidence for symbolic thought has been found at the <a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Blombos.html">Blombos Cave</a> in South Africa and evidence for belief in an afterlife has been found at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qafzeh">Qafzeh Cave</a> in Israel, with both sets of evidence dated to be from about 100,000 years ago. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting">Cave paintings</a>, dating from about 30,000 years ago, have been interpreted as evidence of shamanism and animism. <br />
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As far as I know, the first evidence that shamans may have started to abuse their power is from the hilltop sanctuary in southern Turkey called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe">Göbekli Tepe</a> (Turkish for “hill with a potbelly”), dated to be from the start of the Neolithic (New Stone) Age. It was erected about 11,500 years ago. As summarized in the referenced Wikipedia article:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">At present, Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and paid or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot “read” the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation. Alternatively, they may have served as totems… It is also apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e., there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings ignore game on which the society mainly subsisted, like deer, in favor of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders, and scorpions.</span></blockquote>During similar times at other places in the world, however, primitive economies were probably too weak to support a cadre of shamans, who therefore probably couldn’t gain substantial power. I expect, instead, that most primitive people’s ideas about animism and their shamans were similar to the following <a href="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-quotes.html">opinions</a> expressed by Native Americans during the most recent few centuries:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man, the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.</span> [Chief Seattle (1786–1866), leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes] </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">The Great Spirit is in all things. He is in the air we breathe. The Great Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She nourishes us… That which we put into the ground she returns to us… Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption, help us to find the way to restore our humanity.</span> [Big Thunder (<a href="http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2009/01/native-american-prayer-big-thunder.html">Bedagi</a>), late 19th Century, Wabanaki Algonquin]</blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beasts, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and moon should man learn…</span> [Eagle Chief (Letakos-Lesa), c. 1904, Chief of the Pawnee] </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.</span> [Tom Brown, Jr., <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brown_%28naturalist%29">The Tracker</a>, b.1950, student of Stalking Wolf, Apache] </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">The traditions of our people are handed down from father to son. The Chief is considered to be the most learned, and the leader of the tribe. The Doctor, however, is thought to have more inspiration. He is supposed to be in communion with spirits… He cures the sick by the laying of hands, and payers and incantations, and heavenly songs. He infuses new life into the patient and performs most wonderful feats of skill in his practice… He clothes himself in the skins of young innocent animals, such as the fawn, and decorates himself with the plumage of harmless birds, such as the dove and hummingbird…</span> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Winnemucca">Sarah Winnemucca</a>, c.1841–1891, Paiute]</blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">From Wakan-Tanka, the Great Mystery, comes all power. It is from Wakan-Tanka that the holy man has wisdom and the power to heal and make holy charms. Man knows that all healing plants are given by Wakan-Tanka; therefore, they are holy. So too is the buffalo holy, because it is the gift of Wakan-Tanka.</span> [Flat-Iron (Maza Blaska), late 19th Century, Oglala Sioux Chief]</blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their [Christian] dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.</span> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitkala-Sa">Zitkala-Sa</a>, 1876–1938, Sioux]</blockquote>If readers gain the impression that animism and paganism seem a lot more sensible (and provide much more pleasant and uplifting feelings) than the blood, gore, mental slavery, and war of the Abrahamic religions, then welcome to the club!<br />
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But in any event, the Göbekli Tepe site seems to be the first site yet found where the power of “priests” (shamans) started to corrupt. Not incidentally, as stated in the referenced Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe">article</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Dağ 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.</span></blockquote>It suggests that the long, slow, Agricultural (or Neolithic) Revolution (which started at different times in different locations and possibly started in Turkey near the Göbekli Tepe site) led not only to more secure food supplies but also to more clerical parasites. Later, by the time that writing was developed sufficiently to convey ideas (in about 3,000 BCE), the parasitic priests essentially controlled their societies, as illustrated by such “monuments to folly” as the pyramids in Egypt and both stone shrines and brick sanctuaries in <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/10/potential-evils-of-clerical-babble.html">Mesopotamia</a>. Still later (during the subsequent 5,000 years!), such monuments to folly were followed by all the foolish temples, cathedrals, mosques, etc. that have drained and continue to drain human and economic resources.<br />
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All of which is consistent with the assessment by evolutionary biologist Tom Ray that “successful systems attract parasites”. Ray's concept was illustrated by Matt Ridley in his 2010 book <i>The Rational Optimist</i> (as reported in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/18tier.html">book review</a> by John Tierney) with some examples of parasites subsequent to the first human parasites, i.e., the priests of the Neolithic Age: <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers. </span></blockquote>But returning to the Agricultural or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution">Neolithic Revolution</a>, it appears to have been a “mixed blessing”, similar to all subsequent revolutions. As stated in the referenced Wikipedia article,<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">… the Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques… it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human history, into sedentary societies based in built-up villages and towns, which radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation (e.g., irrigation and food storage technologies) that allowed extensive surplus food production. These developments provided the basis for concentrated high population densities settlements, specialized and complex labor diversification, trading economies, the development of non-portable art, architecture, and culture, centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies and depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g., property regimes and writing). The first full-blown manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities (ca. 3,500 BCE), whose emergence also inaugurates the end of the prehistoric Neolithic period.</span> </blockquote>What such a summary doesn’t address (but it’s addressed later in the same Wikipedia article) are the many new problems faced by the people: not only the problems caused by the priests with their “hierarchical ideologies and depersonalized systems of knowledge” but also overpopulation, pollution (e.g., of water supplies) with associated diseases, and diseases spread from domesticated animals to humans (including influenza, smallpox, and measles), diseases that subsequently decimated, for example, Native Americans who were inadvertently infected by European carriers. As stated in the referenced Wikipedia article:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">It is often argued that agriculture gave humans more control over their food supply, but this has been disputed by the finding that nutritional standards of Neolithic populations were generally inferior to that of hunter gatherers, and life expectancy may in fact have been shorter, in part due to diseases. Average height, for example, went down from 5' 10" (178 cm) for men and 5' 6" (168 cm) for women to 5' 3" (165 cm) and 5' 1" (155 cm), respectively and it took until the twentieth century for average human height to come back to the pre-Neolithic Revolution levels.</blockquote>In sum, it seems that, the further the agricultural revolution progressed, the more the people’s troubles increased, apparently consistent with the ecological principle that the population of any species grows to meet and then exceed natural carrying capacities, a process that’s subsequently corrected with starvation, disease, and (in the case of people) wars.<br />
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Simultaneously, what seems to have happened (and continues to this day!) is that the people mistakenly thought that “the gods” controlled not only natural phenomena but also the fates of individuals and their societies. From those faulty premisses (that gods exist and that they were in control), the people apparently concluded (using sound logic but from faulty premisses!) that their instinctively known prime goal (their genetic survival) could be best achieved if they could gain favor of the controlling gods. The essence of that error was well illustrated by Bill Watterson in a comic strip that I also used in the previous post:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(2) H: "Do you think there's a god?" (4) C: "Well <b>some</b>body's out to get me."]</span></td></tr>
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The people then made the enormously grievous mistake that “the gods” were “out to get me” because the people had (somehow or other) offended the gods, which to this day, clerics call “sins”. Unfortunately, though, the people didn’t know what they might have done to offend the gods – although, if they had (at some time and in some manner) violated cultural norms, they probably did feel some guilt, since the DNA of humans (and monkeys, dolphins, whales, etc.) also contains the “programming” to be social animals. And as Bill Watterson illustrated, the resulting guilt probably made the people feel even worse:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: <b>"Mom! Mom! A big dog knocked me down and he stole Hobbes!"</b> (2) C: "I tried to catch him, but I couldn't, and now I've lost my best friend." (3) Calvin's Mom (CM): "Well Calvin, if you wouldn't drag that tiger everywhere, things like this wouldn't happen." (4) C: "There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse!"] </span></td></tr>
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Worse still, the people were then “ripe for the picking” by con artists whom we now call clerics: for the price of freeloading on producers, the con artists were more than willing to tell the people not only how they had “sinned against the gods” but also what “goodies” the people should give to the gods to appease them. Further, being the self-proclaimed, altruistic spokesmen for the gods, the clerics assigned themselves the “onerous task” of “collecting the goodies” for the gods – and what the gods didn’t consume, the clerics did. It’s the most widespread, longest running, and most-lucrative con game the world has ever known – and it continues to this day!<br />
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It’s a con game – based on lies (as are all con games) – because in fact, no cleric (or anyone else, for that matter) “knows” what any god wants. Perhaps surprising to more than half of all people in the world today, that fact is amazingly consistent with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain</a>, namely, that there are no gods (and never were any). Yet, all con-artist clerics (to this day) have claimed that they know what their gods want – which turns out to be amazingly similar to what the clerics want: a free ride on the backs of producers. As Robert Ingersoll wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver… Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give…</blockquote>In addition, by the way, the ideas of all clerics are also ridiculous: an omnipotent, omniscient god (for example) can’t have an unfulfilled want. Consequently (I want to add), the collapse of all such clerical con games could be expedited if all religious people would inform their clerics that they no longer want to deal with any god (such as Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah) who is so pitiful as to have an unfulfilled want!<br />
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Anyway, as far as I know the first clear evidence of the con games run by all clerics (claiming to know what their gods want) is contained in the written version of the Mesopotamian genesis myth entitled <i>Enuma Elish</i> or <a href="http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/enuma.html"><i>Enûma Eliš</i></a><i>,</i> the title of which is the first two words of the myth, translated to be: “When on high”. The available version of this myth (written on clay tablets) is from the time of ancient Babylon (about 1800 BCE, more than a 1,000 years before the oldest writings in the Bible), since it describes how the patron god of Babylon (Marduk) rose to preeminence among the gods, becoming “lord of lords”, “leader of the gods”, and “reviver of the dead”. The oral form of the original myth is of course lost in antiquity, but it’s presumably derived from Sumerian mythology (probably from before 3,000 BCE).<br />
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The existing written version of the <i>Enuma Elish</i> contains the following “explanation” of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix04FloodedbyFrozenMyths.pdf">the purpose of man</a>, as promoted by parasitic priests:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">Now that Marduk [the chief god, who had conquered the original “saltwater mother”, Tiamat] has heard what the [other] gods are saying, he is moved with desire to create a work of consummate art…<br />
<blockquote>Blood to blood I join, <br />
Blood to bone I form an original thing;<br />
Its name is Man,<br />
Aboriginal man is mine in making.<br />
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All his occupations are faithful service,<br />
the gods that fell have rest,<br />
I will subtly alter their operations,<br />
divided companies equally blest…</blockquote></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>That is, according to the clerics who concocted this myth, man’s purpose was to serve the gods: “all [man’s] occupations are faithful service, [so] the gods that fell have rest…” Similarly, Calvin decided (as did <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/07/pathetic-muhammad-pbuh.html">Muhammad</a>) that his purpose in life was to have others serve him:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmMr3WSg2TLvOsnrwerbH9VIDUe0sC_Jw8mX2Kndv5ON4YHsLkKmXpAib5ovP2juknqIKQWBycKbKrkqxDA1smalI1B8Lm3oQYzIamP09hOB0p2y5J04L6NdwZR3FSyMWjQ9M6RbtSjxA/s1600/4.+Purpose+-+Serene.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmMr3WSg2TLvOsnrwerbH9VIDUe0sC_Jw8mX2Kndv5ON4YHsLkKmXpAib5ovP2juknqIKQWBycKbKrkqxDA1smalI1B8Lm3oQYzIamP09hOB0p2y5J04L6NdwZR3FSyMWjQ9M6RbtSjxA/s1600/4.+Purpose+-+Serene.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "I'm at peace with the world. I'm completely serene." H: "Why is that?" (2) C: "I've discovered my purpose in life. I know why I was put here and why everything exists." (3) H: "Oh really?" C: "Yes, I am here so everybody can do what I want." (4) H: "It's nice to have that cleared up." C: "Once everyone accepts it, they'll be serene too."]</span></td></tr>
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">But even the tyrant Calvin encountered limits (just as parasitic clerics sometimes experience constraints from superiors, e.g., the people):</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8X3z_ji16Pl5OPFFmlGAdoK4_FFeDlyKqXFS50ZpwFb_UXAyGTy5HrIuImBqHOGCPwhT1KGaR6zmYZtQcTwiMYcjj66y-EnAwIDiKhvEc0KWwSFEYHCHWoNQ1OEOfcLQgecHhbAoJQQ/s1600/5.+Parental+tyranny.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8X3z_ji16Pl5OPFFmlGAdoK4_FFeDlyKqXFS50ZpwFb_UXAyGTy5HrIuImBqHOGCPwhT1KGaR6zmYZtQcTwiMYcjj66y-EnAwIDiKhvEc0KWwSFEYHCHWoNQ1OEOfcLQgecHhbAoJQQ/s1600/5.+Parental+tyranny.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "As I, the maniacal tyrant, look down upon my pathetic subjects…" (2) C: "…I reflect on how their puny lives mean nothing to me except as the brute labor necessary to execute my mad desires! My lunatic whims are their laws! Ha Ha Ha!" (3) CM: "I thought I told you to gather the trash." (4) C: "Being a parent must be nice."]</span></td></tr>
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Thereby, the alleged statement by Jesus, both in the synoptic gospels (e.g., at <i>Luke 14,</i> 25) and in the (Gnostic’s) <i>Gospel of Thomas</i> (at 55), “Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple…” becomes more understandable. Yet, despite his mother’s guidance, Calvin (similar to Jesus) found ways to continue to rule, behaving as if he were god (similar to the depicted madmen <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/12/mythical-monster-moses-1.html">Moses</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/08/five-structural-errors-in-islam.html">Muhammad</a>):</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuej3VLIe5RuS5W0UuNL-yN3oDazrisX5GizGFeNid6D4SSuCIky64d1-wbitZDeIkEwAwcGa0rAZOAjYZBhuHqEol4JExvUPR1lQIklZJPcRoujOXO4eUoegnKrIaLQYMzu8IZ70eTUY/s1600/6.+Worship+me.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuej3VLIe5RuS5W0UuNL-yN3oDazrisX5GizGFeNid6D4SSuCIky64d1-wbitZDeIkEwAwcGa0rAZOAjYZBhuHqEol4JExvUPR1lQIklZJPcRoujOXO4eUoegnKrIaLQYMzu8IZ70eTUY/s1600/6.+Worship+me.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "As I have created you, so can I destroy you!" (2) C: "Therefore, in recognition of my supreme power, you must worship me!" (3) C: "Yes, bow before mighty Calvin and tremble, for I am the eternal, all knowing…" (4) PAFF ]</span></td></tr>
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Fortunately, though, as illustrated in the above strip’s final panel, some people didn’t buy into the clerics’ claims. In particular, it’s relevant to mention that the source of the snowball in the final panel (above) is Calvin’s archenemy, his next-door neighbor Susie – a dreaded female! Similarly, at least since the time of the ancient Babylonians, the vast majority of the clerics of all the Abrahamic religions have been misogynists:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmTCRusnBgxPwEckAJRJIXSg7c0VHI0-v2h-qRCuAKZBz-RLvbASXu3KbukCCr6wvJVfIHEOr3TBxI1Ay7hvQLmNvf9PzKudzqoDs8ID4P2_kzc1vm18_d8kd82fgGWkzRj4IO2NCVy4/s1600/7.+Hate+being+a+girl.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmTCRusnBgxPwEckAJRJIXSg7c0VHI0-v2h-qRCuAKZBz-RLvbASXu3KbukCCr6wvJVfIHEOr3TBxI1Ay7hvQLmNvf9PzKudzqoDs8ID4P2_kzc1vm18_d8kd82fgGWkzRj4IO2NCVy4/s1600/7.+Hate+being+a+girl.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Do you hate being a girl?" Susie (S): "It's gotta be better than the alternative." (2) C: "What's it like? Is it like being a bug?" S: "Like a <b>what</b>?" (3) C: "I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend the magnitude of it." (4) C: "I must've put my finger on it."]</span></td></tr>
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In reality, though, the misogyny of clerics of the Abrahamic religions seems to have been derived from goals of earlier clerics. Thus, in Mesopotamia (from which the Abrahamic religions evolved) another major goal of the earlier Akkadian and Sumerian clerics (besides avoiding working for a living) was apparently to eradicate the still-earlier, more-peaceful, matriarchal (or at least matrilineal) culture, with its goddesses, when the Earth was considered to be the mother of all life and when “Mother Nature” was treated with loving respect. As I suggested in an earlier, speculative <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix09ChangingGods.pdf">chapter</a>, during the first phase of the agricultural revolution, living conditions in these areas were probably quite idyllic – especially for males! Probably similar conditions are described as follows in a <a href="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-nativeamericans.html">proverb</a> of the Native American Cherokee tribe:<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">When the white man discovered this country, [we] were running it. No taxes, no debt, women did all the work. White man thought he could improve on a system like this!</span> </blockquote>Later during the Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East, population pressures and agricultural methods apparently strained natural resources. An example of the straining of natural resources seems to have been the salinization of Mesopotamian soil caused by irrigation. The salinization may be the meaning of the metaphor in the <i>Enuma Elish</i> of Marduk killing the saltwater mother Tiamat. As another example, perhaps readers of this series of posts recall that the moral of the original <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix06Gilgamesh.pdf"><i>Atrahasis Epic</i></a> (which later Jewish priests plagiarized to form the Noah myth) was that the gods flooded the earth in response to the population explosion.<br />
<br />
In any event, the method used by the Mesopotamian misogynist clerics seems to have been to promote an unwritten, secret law (subsequently adopted by clerics of all Abrahamic religions) that basically said: if you men will obey us clerics, then we’ll approve your ruling your women. Thereby the misogynist little boys (the clerics) started up their various, secret clubs:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2B-kqjifq_4V_kg7JgRY3UbyTaWAWEPQWAdqaxrQqttSAMnsK0mFpv6v0S00NQqEPoQFf8sb3nPjyKyJrTUt-D5omGfYBEcP25oMZH6jeqExq2nhq8zPXIM6EalW7E7QrQLOWlWXB07s/s1600/8.+Starting+Club.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2B-kqjifq_4V_kg7JgRY3UbyTaWAWEPQWAdqaxrQqttSAMnsK0mFpv6v0S00NQqEPoQFf8sb3nPjyKyJrTUt-D5omGfYBEcP25oMZH6jeqExq2nhq8zPXIM6EalW7E7QrQLOWlWXB07s/s1600/8.+Starting+Club.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Good new, Hobbes! I'm starting a secret club, and you can be in it!" H: "Oh boy!" (2) C: "It'll be great! We'll think of secret names for ourselves, secret codes for our secret correspondence, a secret handshake…" (3) C: "We'll have a secret club house with a secret knock to get in, and we'll do big, secretive things!" H: "Why all the secrecy?" (4) C: "People pay more attention to you when they think you're up to something."]</span></td></tr>
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Currently, similar “secrecy” seems to be a prime attraction of Islam to poorly educated Westerners, who revel in “secret”, Arabic “code words”, “secret names”, and so on. Maybe Pope Benedict is catching on: there are suggestions that he will permit Catholic masses to again be performed in Latin. But in addition to secrecy, to define themselves any “in group” of course needs an “out group”, and the most appropriate “out group” for male clerics was obviously females:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAHctTtPz_JppdV8QaE7UT2boJJxiX1tz5sNJYA2yZQv8uJnXY8_VChKz0U1HXQKnI12Tm4rsvwucGcRXzdYK0T7BE22H9v0ec8N-OZ-VDBPXHwWRxt4xWHC0c35DP6UX7MF20da-yYAY/s1600/9a.+Slimy+Girls.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAHctTtPz_JppdV8QaE7UT2boJJxiX1tz5sNJYA2yZQv8uJnXY8_VChKz0U1HXQKnI12Tm4rsvwucGcRXzdYK0T7BE22H9v0ec8N-OZ-VDBPXHwWRxt4xWHC0c35DP6UX7MF20da-yYAY/s1600/9a.+Slimy+Girls.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) S: "Hi, Calvin! What are you doing, making paper hats? Can I make one too?" (2) C: "Don't be ridiculous. This is the official chapeau of our top secret club, GROSS – Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS!" (3) S: "Slimy girls?!" C: "I know that's redundant, but otherwise it doesn't spell anything. Now go away." (4) S: "<b>Girls aren't slimy!</b>" C: "Don't get gunk on me, I took a bath last Saturday and I'm all clean."]</span></td></tr>
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To this day, similar continues in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc., although once their con games were up and running (raking in the gold), they could afford more elaborate chapeaux and regalia, e.g., see the following photo taken this week by Giuseppe Giglia, ANSA (and posted here via European Pressphoto Agency and the 2010/11/20 issue of <i>The New York Times)</i> showing Pope Benedict XVI in his golden chapeau, on his way to pass out red hats to his 24 new cardinals:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYcKpJAmtrx5sZMT2-Uxgs8v7bVkSecSWHYHmrmDU14r_VevRobdqffwRH9O9D6s9jnsfaWHOhaoenjsEcttQUOCuyzJvgQqj169nVxOorUPDaicQRKKpMDM6zY8h96EKHvpaFv_sNj-s/s1600/8b.+The+Pope%2527s+Hat.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYcKpJAmtrx5sZMT2-Uxgs8v7bVkSecSWHYHmrmDU14r_VevRobdqffwRH9O9D6s9jnsfaWHOhaoenjsEcttQUOCuyzJvgQqj169nVxOorUPDaicQRKKpMDM6zY8h96EKHvpaFv_sNj-s/s400/8b.+The+Pope%2527s+Hat.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br />
But getting back to Calvin and Hobbes (whose hats were made from paper rather than gold), Watterson proceeded to illustrate how misogynist religions were (and are) concocted and promoted (by maniacs such as Ezra, Constantine, Muhammad, and all subsequent chief rabbis, popes, ayatollahs, and grand muftis):<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JTv-GrfGh0_dB3DPjO1_j3bg6FnJGPbIcRG070_J-eUvBtjOxT5ASDkw5LNN-Z0a-tEc2Uly_wOUOjWCu4LbrQ3x3z30OhaYeN9pvk97BKJL0I7ijBFIEtKAW4d2Grkc1264z2oRr2Y/s1600/10.+Start+the+Meetings.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JTv-GrfGh0_dB3DPjO1_j3bg6FnJGPbIcRG070_J-eUvBtjOxT5ASDkw5LNN-Z0a-tEc2Uly_wOUOjWCu4LbrQ3x3z30OhaYeN9pvk97BKJL0I7ijBFIEtKAW4d2Grkc1264z2oRr2Y/s1600/10.+Start+the+Meetings.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Attention! All rise! This meeting of GROSS is now called to order by the great grandiose dictator-for-life, the ruler supreme, the fearless, the brave, the held-high-in-esteem, Calvin the Bold! Yes, stand up and hail his humbleness now! May his wisdom prevail!" (2) H: "Three cheers for first tiger and El Presidente, Hobbes, the delight of all cognoscenti! He's savvy! He has a prodigious IQ, and lots of panache, as all tigers do! In his fancy chapeau, he's a leader with taste! May his orders be heeded and his views be embraced!" (3) C: "You can tell this is a great club by the way we start our meeting."]</span></td></tr>
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They claimed (and still claim) authority to define principles:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghXwzrzVHxY-8h8MxDnNHzM1IaJohxA441un5luCptWRdG3F5EMydZrl-6Y3vrcqEagnAP9XIg4T4yk0qVsV3IEG3Vtp1_OzkQiCjabJysqxstA1eWkYTTNSlQWUWlP-B54NX-ysj1OXk/s1600/11.+Whims+into+principles.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghXwzrzVHxY-8h8MxDnNHzM1IaJohxA441un5luCptWRdG3F5EMydZrl-6Y3vrcqEagnAP9XIg4T4yk0qVsV3IEG3Vtp1_OzkQiCjabJysqxstA1eWkYTTNSlQWUWlP-B54NX-ysj1OXk/s1600/11.+Whims+into+principles.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available." (2) C: "Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise." (3) C: "And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads." (4) H: "I wonder which <b>you</b> are." C: "I pragmatically turn my whims into principles!"]</span></td></tr>
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Principles that are claimed can protect people (better known as “protection rackets”):<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE1HZaKnowKK7Zgqfs8D8DG-pRj2Z6tKPpbTvhn8JqtIVmoGltLP3ku9beNEkkxXs2GkE8nWOFI_LhVy7OrLfh4STI9osiZHjgeF7qs4X1Rc8_qijDggCcUYLhQk20gFqRfPaOih2uCJk/s1600/12.+Insurance+50%25C2%25A2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE1HZaKnowKK7Zgqfs8D8DG-pRj2Z6tKPpbTvhn8JqtIVmoGltLP3ku9beNEkkxXs2GkE8nWOFI_LhVy7OrLfh4STI9osiZHjgeF7qs4X1Rc8_qijDggCcUYLhQk20gFqRfPaOih2uCJk/s1600/12.+Insurance+50%25C2%25A2.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) The sign: "Insurance 50¢" (2) S: "Insurance?? What a dumb idea!" (3) S: "Why would anyone buy insurance from you?!" (4) THWPING!]</span></td></tr>
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They manipulate the concepts of morality and virtue to serve themselves (so the people will serve them):<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWbXLjIrXVOQdmbAB68TQn89X9dhuQdJMohE8DUX2qjGwjmP9KN1-0ffHcsLwb8GVMHOkp1SeFGdH-836TuKsTeglkLp-tFPRjiJQI1O_fDtNmOahc53DN7WXFk2RPysx_GPptYscZHW0/s1600/13.++New+Year%2527s+Resolutions.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWbXLjIrXVOQdmbAB68TQn89X9dhuQdJMohE8DUX2qjGwjmP9KN1-0ffHcsLwb8GVMHOkp1SeFGdH-836TuKsTeglkLp-tFPRjiJQI1O_fDtNmOahc53DN7WXFk2RPysx_GPptYscZHW0/s1600/13.++New+Year%2527s+Resolutions.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) H: "How are you doing on your New Year's resolutions?" C: "I didn't make any." (2) C: "See, in order to improve oneself, one must have some idea of what's 'good'. That implies certain values." (3) C: "But as we all know, values are relative. Every system of belief is equally valid, and we need to tolerate diversity. Virtue isn't 'better' than vice. It's just different." (4) H: "I don't know if I can tolerate that much tolerance." C: "I refuse to be victimized by notions of virtuous behavior."]</span></td></tr>
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Starting from the people’s understanding of “the spirit of the law”, which humans learned (and still learn) <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">the same way that all social animals learn about justice and empathy</a>, the clerics claimed (and still claim) authority to define “the letter of the law” – while avoiding the spirit of the law:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0jaUVXQrm-RvZs2FiZ1F0sar8fftySqM6YInzEgumCaCCbaQG77mwkZfa3zoc302HCpioeBudCp8NySBPPjjrOCqj8dMmgAoO0p-jf4t_PUh5y87ceh2RMKO0nqZl_zOKNRcc7a4h7c/s1600/14.+Letter+of+the+Law.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0jaUVXQrm-RvZs2FiZ1F0sar8fftySqM6YInzEgumCaCCbaQG77mwkZfa3zoc302HCpioeBudCp8NySBPPjjrOCqj8dMmgAoO0p-jf4t_PUh5y87ceh2RMKO0nqZl_zOKNRcc7a4h7c/s1600/14.+Letter+of+the+Law.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) CM: "Goodness, you're filthy. Into the tub with you." (2) C: "I obey the letter of the law, if not the spirit." (3) CM: "<b>Let's hear some water running</b>!" (4) C: "Nuts."]</span></td></tr>
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They define what’s “sacred” and “divine”:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGdeqhI1SeiX725h5Cqg1GtBMPU-ye3EIIlv7YHDDYSxkxlwT2WIw2DqsjH3TWr2nk2RTd6QTbyzBa_9lMMOib_ipjkbnI96hgVs_XKoL5fX2WwRNyzhkJCSIY6VCczAGxIk0Bh1DtH0/s1600/15.+Consecrated+snowballs.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGdeqhI1SeiX725h5Cqg1GtBMPU-ye3EIIlv7YHDDYSxkxlwT2WIw2DqsjH3TWr2nk2RTd6QTbyzBa_9lMMOib_ipjkbnI96hgVs_XKoL5fX2WwRNyzhkJCSIY6VCczAGxIk0Bh1DtH0/s1600/15.+Consecrated+snowballs.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Oh lovely snowball, packed with care, smack a head that's unaware!" (2) C: "Then with freezing ice to spare, melt and soak through underwear!" (3) C: "Fly straight and true, hit hard and square! This, oh snowball, is my prayer." (4) C: "I only throw consecrated snowballs."]</span></td></tr>
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And, of course, they bundle it all in rituals:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7dCk6H4lN1Z6YNLaD_pan03oWaKu-z48Q920dANUhizMNbAVYJiEFFR8_tg5ud3GhGwbt1WuNn7g4X7TYFq3Vj4ACXFl7PkiaS3GpUC15m0DW9PoZfDZAIfNoEoixUVImAAc2H7p4E4c/s1600/16.+Rituals+Important.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7dCk6H4lN1Z6YNLaD_pan03oWaKu-z48Q920dANUhizMNbAVYJiEFFR8_tg5ud3GhGwbt1WuNn7g4X7TYFq3Vj4ACXFl7PkiaS3GpUC15m0DW9PoZfDZAIfNoEoixUVImAAc2H7p4E4c/s1600/16.+Rituals+Important.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "I think rituals are important." (2) C: "<b>My</b> favorite ritual is eating three bowls of 'Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs' and watching TV cartoons all Saturday morning." (3) C: "After a few hours, I'm so overstimulated I can't sit still or even think straight." (4) H: "Sort of a transcendental experience, huh?" C: "Yeah, I achieve a lower consciousness."]</span></td></tr>
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Perhaps no culture has ever succumbed so completely to priestly rituals as Ancient Egypt. An illustration is the following quotation (to which I’ve added the italics and some notes in brackets) from Bob Brier’s book entitled <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-Magic-Bob-Brier/dp/0688007961">Ancient Egyptian Magic</a></i>.<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The House of Life [in Ancient Egypt] was a building, or perhaps a small group of buildings, where the library of the temple was kept and where <i>the custodians of the knowledge </i>of the temple studied [what a insult to the word ‘knowledge’!]. Here the layman would come it he had a problem and needed a magic spell or charm. The priests could interpret dreams, supply incantations to make someone fall in love, cure an illness, dispense magic amulets, or counteract malevolent influences. <i>To maintain their powers, </i>the priests kept their books away from the few laymen who could read. Indeed <i>secrecy</i> was an important part of their business. In the Book of the Dead prepared for the priest Nebseni, one of his titles is given as “presiding over the <i>secrets</i> of the temple.”</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Their treasure papyri were kept in a secluded section of the House of Life, often in niches dug into the walls of the temple. There was an important House of Life at Edfu, a great temple dedicated to Horus [the mythical son of the god Osiris and the goddess Isis]. Edfu is the best preserved temple in all of Egypt, as it was covered in sand until recent times. On one of the walls of the temple is engraved a list of the sacred books kept in the House of Life. Along with the books on rules of the temple, inventories of the temple holdings, and religious calendars, there were numerous books on magic. These give us an idea of the powers supposedly possessed by <i>priest-magicians</i> of ancient Egypt:</span></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• The Book of Appeasing Sekhmet [the goddess of healing, whose name means “she who is powerful”, and who is usually portrayed as a women with the head of a lioness – opposite from the Sphinx!]</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• The Book of Magical Protection of the King in His Palace</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• Spell for Warding Off the Evil Eye</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• The Book of Repelling Crocodiles</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• The Book of Knowledge of the <i>Secrets</i> of the Laboratory</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• The Book of Knowing the <i>Secret</i> Forms of the God.</span></blockquote></blockquote>If readers sometime have a few hours (or days or…) with little else to do, they might want to explore on the internet using such search words as “Ancient Egyptian Magic”, “Medicine in Ancient Egypt”, “the gods of Ancient Egypt”, and similar. And if the enormous amount of information found should cause headaches, then maybe inflicted readers would want to try an Ancient Egyptian cure for headaches (here taken from the web page “Sekhmet & Ancient Egyptian Medicine”, which unfortunately now seems to be unavailable):<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple;">This is the remedy which Auset (Isis) prepared for her father [the sun god] Ra [apparently even gods get headaches!]. Take equal parts of each of these: berry of the coriander, berry of the poppy plant, wormwood, berry of the sames-plant, berry of the juniper plant, and honey. Mix the ingredients together, and a paste will form. Smear the afflicted person with the paste, and he will instantly become well.</span></blockquote>Who knows, that treatment might even work! Yet, I recommend against readers using the following “remedy” (obtained from the same internet source) for curing skin lesions:<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple;">After the scab has fallen off, put on it a scribe’s excrement. Mix in fresh milk, and apply it as a poultice.</span></blockquote>Imagine it: even the feces of the lowest-level priests (the scribes) were promoted (by the priests) as being of value to the people! Talk about arrogance! Talk about ignorance! The hallmark of all clerics: arrogant ignorance.<br />
<br />
Similar to all clerics, the real understanding of the priests of ancient Egypt (buried beneath their secrecy and rituals) was extremely meager. Yes, there are at least 42 aspects of how to live “morally”, but there never were 42 gods (each of whom allegedly represented one of those principles). And yes, the Nile River did flood every year when the star Sirius (the goddess Isis) appeared, but Isis’s appearance identified the time – she didn’t cause the flood! The little that the priests knew had engendered in the people some confidence in the priests’ abilities. Subsequently, over centuries, the priests exuded confidence that they could interpret dreams, cure illnesses, and so on – even to the extreme that the lowest priest’s excrement had medicinal value! And thus, the con game continued.<br />
<br />
The range, variation, and mutually contradictory nature of such ritualized “esoteric knowledge” concocted (out of thin air!) by clerics of the world are mind-boggling. In one case, it was the names of the 42 Egyptian gods; in another, it was “knowledge” of the multiple name of the single god (e.g., Marduk’s 50 names); in another, it was “knowledge” of the names of the 1600 (!) Aztec gods; in still another, it was “knowledge” of the purpose of the gods; and in still another, it was “knowledge” of how the “one true god” chose to populate America. But looked at differently, all such “knowledge” is identical: none of it is <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">knowledge</a>; none of it is has a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/S_Science_and_Models.pdf">scientific base</a>; none of it has sufficient data to support its being called even a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ib1BasicScience.pdf">hypothesis</a>; all of it is mere <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IaAwarenessofIdeas.pdf">speculation</a>; none of it is “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">true</a>”; it’s a mountain of lies; in fact, it’s not just a mountain of lies, it’s mountain range after mountain range of lies – sold for profit (for themselves), as Watterson saw:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOx2Lh-dNm0bff5c2LiEAnMWq4hcLz9i5J66iyvyJDMfokAIWWDW62gLunK5VPlZLmzHxLs8nys2QSZOA64ZoUCxv-I_HBOKjYj7pJFTGpO9a2wKYziNx-9Y-YAK70EmGAYyWH-l90WEc/s1600/17.+Torment%252C+Horror%252C+Integrity.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOx2Lh-dNm0bff5c2LiEAnMWq4hcLz9i5J66iyvyJDMfokAIWWDW62gLunK5VPlZLmzHxLs8nys2QSZOA64ZoUCxv-I_HBOKjYj7pJFTGpO9a2wKYziNx-9Y-YAK70EmGAYyWH-l90WEc/s1600/17.+Torment%252C+Horror%252C+Integrity.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "Look at that kid's snowman! What a pathetic cliche!" (2) C: "Am I supposed to identify with this complacent moron and his shovel?? This snowman says nothing about the human condition! Is this all the kid has to say about contemporary suburban life?!" (3) C: "The souless banality of this snowman is a sad comment on today's art world." (4) C: "Now come look at <b>my</b> snowman." (5) C: "I call it, 'The Torment of Existence Weighed Against the Horror of Nonbeing'." (6) C: "As he melts, the sculpture becomes even more poignant." (7) H: "I admire your willingness to put artistic integrity before marketability." (7) {Questioning look} (8) {Questioning thought} (9) {Revised plan!}] </span></td></tr>
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That such stupidity and craven cupidity continue was recently illustrated in the 2010/11/13 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/us/13exorcism.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB">report</a> in <i>The New York Times</i> by Laurie Goodstein that the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. held a conference this month to “prepare more priests and bishops to respond to the demand… for exorcists.” According to Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., who organized the conference:<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple;">Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one… It’s only used in those cases where the Devil is involved in an extraordinary sort of way in terms of actually being in possession of the person… The ordinary work of the Devil is temptation… and the ordinary response is a good spiritual life, observing the sacraments and praying. The Devil doesn’t normally possess someone who is leading a good spiritual life.</span></blockquote>Bizarre! Simultaneously, I expect that those “possessed” Catholics and their clerics would be adamant in criticizing the “foolish” 2.8 million Muslims who <a href="http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article195300.ece">this week</a> are circumambulating the Kaaba, “Islam’s holiest site”, casting stones at Satan. But as Watterson saw, treading on what others imagine to be sacred is a “touchy subject”:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0DFYp1WWzz8qhEzFlohdi63zAJyyUd1w5_Qn4B7u4Zhbtwjhvw5Xfptl-5cNFNfoN9xPTy9oUBPKT7zRF31nwhtDrx3Wt7EYwsr6HOuCYDmluAAPS4Ctf8E6CJx-M8uihuKSznAmPIqc/s1600/18.+Ritual+spiritual.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0DFYp1WWzz8qhEzFlohdi63zAJyyUd1w5_Qn4B7u4Zhbtwjhvw5Xfptl-5cNFNfoN9xPTy9oUBPKT7zRF31nwhtDrx3Wt7EYwsr6HOuCYDmluAAPS4Ctf8E6CJx-M8uihuKSznAmPIqc/s1600/18.+Ritual+spiritual.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) Calvin's Teacher: "Yes Calvin?" C: "Miss Wormwood, I'm a fierce advocate of the separation of Church and State." (2) C: "Nevertheless, I feel the need for spiritual guidance and comfort as I face the day's struggles." (3) C: "So, I was wondering if I could strip down, smear myself with paste, and set fire to this little effigy of you in a non-denominational sort of way." (4) C {approaching the Principal's office}: "Boy, what a touchy subject!"]</span></td></tr>
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Yet, not only most people but also most priests (past and present) are probably too poorly educated to realize that they’re involved in con games: they’re just pawns in some high priest’s game. Some junior priests, however, probably eventually saw (and see) through the con game, realizing that the claimed “knowledge” is mere speculation. But rather than “ex-communicate the dissidents”, senior priests learned how to use the demonstrated intelligence of a few junior priests to strengthen their (Egyptian-style) “pyramid scheme”: senior priests provided (and still provide) junior priests who see through the silliness the opportunity to “move-up in the hierarchy”, to the next level of the conspiracy. In this next level, the more intelligent priests were (and still are) told that they’re right about their assessments of the claimed “knowledge” incorporated in their rituals – and so, they’re “initiated” to “deeper knowledge”. And so on it goes, layer after layer: in every religion a hierarchy of clerics develops, with not only power increasing at each successive “inner layer” but also the hilarity, laughing all the way to the bank.<br />
<br />
More than two centuries ago, in his book <i><a href="http://emotional-literacy-education.com/classic-books-online-a/ruins10.htm">The Ruins</a></i>, Volney summarized it well:<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">… among all nations the spirit of the priesthood, their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were absolutely the same:</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at enmity with the rest of society; [Footnote #1]</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of other classes;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of the soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant…</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount than princes;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and certain revenues exempt from charges;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness and licentiousness;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the labors of others;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of attracting the reverence of the people, while they were playing the parts of gods, of whom they styled themselves the interpreters and mediators, to assume all their powers; that, with this design, they had (according to the degree of ignorance or information of their people) assumed by turns the character of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes, fortune-tellers, magicians [Footnote #2], necromancers, quacks, physicians, courtiers, confessors of princes, always aiming at the great object to govern for their own advantage;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it to themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt or their disobedience;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• And that they always stigmatized with impiety whatever crossed their interests;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the monopoly of science;</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">• That finally, at all times and in all places, they had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded with scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling words and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities of the greatest value.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><b>Footnotes</b> [emphasizing the lies in Christianity, but similar could be written about all religions]:</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><b>#1:</b> That we may understand the general feelings of priests respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the church. “The people,” says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit, p. 315, “are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act otherwise respecting them. The case was similar with the ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut themselves up in their temples, and there composed their mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people.” And forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: “for had the people been in the secret they might have been offended at the deception played upon them. In the meantime how is it possible to conduct one’s self otherwise with the people so long as they are people? For my own part, to myself I shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass of mankind, I shall be a priest.”</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“A little jargon,” says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome (Hieron. ad. Nep.) “is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire. Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said, not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity dictated to them.”</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">“We endeavor,” says Sanchoniaton, “to excite admiration by means of the marvelous.” (Proep. Evang. lib. 3)</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact counterpart of the Egyptian priests. Such was the practice of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same career. It is useless to point out the whole depravity of such a doctrine. In general every association which has mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom into knaves and dupes, or in other words, agents and instruments. It is thus we ought to judge of those modern clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists, Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe. These societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., “who,” says Plutarch, “led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only individuals, but kings and nations.”</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><b>#2:</b> What is a magician, in the sense in which people understand the word? A man who by words and gestures pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compels them to descend at his call and obey his orders. Such was the conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have given them the denomination of Magicians.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render, by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of grace, what is this but a trick of magic? And where is the difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country is fully established! Everywhere it is the assumption of an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the people shall regain their importance, they will forever abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.</span></blockquote>Of course, all priests and most religious people would probably object to the above descriptions. But from my perspective, anyone is either lying or insane who claims to know the names of the 42 or 1600 different gods, or claims to be aware of the purpose of the “one-and-only true god”, or claims to have been instructed by an angel, or in some way or other has perpetuated his (or sometimes her) version of the God Lie. All are claims to “fake knowledge” – and for at least the past 5,000 years, clerics have grabbed power based on nothing but fake knowledge. But the people “bought it”, which is what the clerics wanted – while audaciously claiming to serve the people, rather than themselves:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4dhByrqJD_0Z2nM1wRQtAWS_g2uSortkzCI9wNZ-pT0r7aKXuezGJxP4C2FDrxO0UHst_e92X5mTrjm-U3F8UMpMlOS5TrOqHZ89hapy-5dS0ZB2BbXN5U-bT2WyGPSTn20sYQOEEOW4/s1600/19.+As+an+audience.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4dhByrqJD_0Z2nM1wRQtAWS_g2uSortkzCI9wNZ-pT0r7aKXuezGJxP4C2FDrxO0UHst_e92X5mTrjm-U3F8UMpMlOS5TrOqHZ89hapy-5dS0ZB2BbXN5U-bT2WyGPSTn20sYQOEEOW4/s1600/19.+As+an+audience.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "I like people. I'm interested in people." (2) H: "<b>You??</b>" (3) C: "As an audience, I mean." H: "Oh."]</span></td></tr>
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“But”, defenders may object, “the end justifies the means: clerics use their power not for personal gain but to help the people – to guide them spiritually and morally. Even if there aren’t 42 gods, promoting them is a way to promote the people to observe 42 principles of morality.”<br />
<br />
No, the end doesn’t justify the means. Looked at one way, there are no ends: never yet has there been an end; all previously claimed “ends” have merely been additional means. Or looked at another way, the means are ends in themselves – and the question that must be addressed is: which end is most important? That is, it’s a question of values. In turn, any question of values is a question of objectives, because values can be measured only with respect to some objective. And if one’s objectives include the foolish notion of placating some god, then since gods don’t exist, one can do what one pleases, including raping little boys and girls, treating bigger girls like dirt, and sending older boys off to fight in “holy wars”. Looked at still another way, there’s the assessment by Socrates, “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance”, and what all clerics do is promote ignorance – and therefore, evil.<br />
<br />
Further, since all religions (similar to Calvin’s) were and still are based on whims and wild speculations, completely divorced from data, then disagreements among clerical con artists inevitably occur, leading to animosities and turf wars: <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggE0lbFdNqla3Nm4BcJIEj8pi3MowsDG9YBOQHCF9Lamth51sC-1LzNGhpCtincpsACXQjIXnM6D4bG3n0-iagKwKai3MBpeTmagIvdhBdAHMyxoenYV8VZa1hdxMGm9jbpWrOidNfXk4/s1600/20.+You+Anarchist.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggE0lbFdNqla3Nm4BcJIEj8pi3MowsDG9YBOQHCF9Lamth51sC-1LzNGhpCtincpsACXQjIXnM6D4bG3n0-iagKwKai3MBpeTmagIvdhBdAHMyxoenYV8VZa1hdxMGm9jbpWrOidNfXk4/s1600/20.+You+Anarchist.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "This meeting of the <b>G</b>et <b>R</b>id <b>O</b>f <b>S</b>limy Girl<b>S</b> club is now in session! First tiger Hobbes will present our financial report." (2) H: "Wait, we didn't sing the GROSS anthem." C: "We sing that at the <b>end</b> of the meeting." (3) H: "I want to sing it <b>now</b>." C: "We can't. We have to follow proper protocol! See? It says on the agenda that we sing the anthem <b>last</b>!" (4) H {singing}: "<b>Ohhohhh GROHOSS, Best Club in the Cosmos…</b>" C: "<b>Stop that, you anarchist!</b>"] </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi64wZTWKZhoo0D4dIbcCvnq6izUmx2dG99OXsoigzB-Byu6uKjmydw0hNvawJ6Aoqwl2qyKCFEIfacz7mv_pou5LHcZch5ripKZescEhSVI_75HUaSYCcykwZ9VX_PK7q_0mfMeS5yUyw/s1600/21.+Until+Voice+Changes.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi64wZTWKZhoo0D4dIbcCvnq6izUmx2dG99OXsoigzB-Byu6uKjmydw0hNvawJ6Aoqwl2qyKCFEIfacz7mv_pou5LHcZch5ripKZescEhSVI_75HUaSYCcykwZ9VX_PK7q_0mfMeS5yUyw/s1600/21.+Until+Voice+Changes.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "You get two demerits for singing the club anthem before it was on the agenda!" H: "Well, <b>you</b> get <b>five</b> demerits for not taking off your hat during its hallowed refrain!" (2) C: "You can't give me demerits! I outrank you." H: "Ha! You're just a figurehead! Your duties are ceremonial! I have all the <b>real</b> responsibilities!" (3) C: "<b>What</b>?! I'm dictator-for-life! I have ten <b>times</b> the importance of a lowly first tiger! A <b>hundred</b> times! A <b>million</b> times!" (4) H: "If you're so important, how come you sing the soprano part of our anthem?" C: "<b>That's just till my voice changes!</b>"]</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaFyAKZjXkFYY_ntMNy9Rshm9aE5FU5dKdPUaMR5BP2AhuhVIw1qKL3b-X6p7jp57hCHJheAYyDrQnIFMSQ-4ZoE_Fq2CLGij6DUjR_lyyzD_N6YiJVl-cDqm_IiH0p4E8VVlNrUBIhk/s1600/22.+Calvin%2527s+a+Dope.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaFyAKZjXkFYY_ntMNy9Rshm9aE5FU5dKdPUaMR5BP2AhuhVIw1qKL3b-X6p7jp57hCHJheAYyDrQnIFMSQ-4ZoE_Fq2CLGij6DUjR_lyyzD_N6YiJVl-cDqm_IiH0p4E8VVlNrUBIhk/s1600/22.+Calvin%2527s+a+Dope.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "By golly, I won't stand for this insubordination! You are hereby demoted to 'Club Mascot'!" H: "Oh yeah?! Well <b>you</b> can be 'Club Chowder Head', because <b>I quit!</b>" (2) H: "I'm forming my <b>own</b> club, and it's going to be a lot better than <b>this</b> one!" C: "Ha! Your sorry club won't have a cool acronym for a name, I'll bet!" (3) H: "It will too! <b>My</b> club is called CAD." C: "CAD? What's <b>that</b> supposed to stand for?" (4) H: "Calvin's A Dope!" C: "<b>That's not a name for a club!</b>']</span></td></tr>
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It would be hilarious if it weren’t for the horrors that have occurred (and are still occurring) with crazy members of childish, religious clubs killing and being killed by crazy members of other, childish, religious clubs. Each club promotes the lies that their way is the only way, that their god is the “true” god, and that dying for their god (to keep their club’s clerics in power) guarantees instant access to paradise.<br />
<br />
Such craziness isn’t new. For example, the following illustrates how Hindu priests manipulated soldiers to fight in their “holy war” by trying to convince a soldier (Arjuna, who didn’t want to engage in war) that he had an “indestructible soul”. The quotation is from the “sacred” Hindu scripture <i><a href="http://www.thenagain.info/Classes/Sources/Gita.html">The Bhagavad Gītā </a></i>(“the song of god”), composed sometime between 300 BCE and 300 CE. It was allegedly written by Lord Krishna (who, similar to claims about Jesus, is claimed to be a manifestation of God):<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">There is no existence for that which is unreal; there is no non-existence for that which is real. And the correct conclusion about both is perceived by those who perceive the truth. Know that to be indestructible which pervades all this; the destruction of that inexhaustible principle none can bring about. These bodies that pertain to the embodied self which is eternal, indestructible, and indefinable, are said to be perishable; therefore do engage in battle, O descendant of Bharata! He who thinks it to be the killer and he who thinks it to be killed, both know nothing. The self kills not, and the self is not killed. It is not born, nor does it ever die, nor, having existed, does it exist no more. Unborn, everlasting, unchangeable, and primeval, the self is not killed when the body is killed.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">O son of Pritha, how can that man who knows the self to be indestructible, everlasting, unborn, and inexhaustible, how and whom can he kill, whom can he cause to be killed? As a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the embodied self, casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones. Weapons do not divide the self into pieces; fire does not burn it; waters do not moisten it; the wind does not dry it up. It is not divisible; it is not combustible; it is not to be moistened; it is not to be dried up. It is everlasting, all-pervading, stable, firm, and eternal. It is said to be unperceived, to be unthinkable, to be unchangeable. Therefore, knowing it to be such, you ought not to grieve.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">But even if you think that the self is constantly born, and constantly dies, still, Arjuna, you ought not to grieve like this. For to one that is born, death is certain; and to one that dies, birth is certain. Therefore, you should not grieve about things that are unavoidable. The source of things, Arjuna, is unperceived; their middle state is perceived; and their end again is unperceived. Why lament over them? One looks upon it as a wonder; another similarly speaks of it as a wonder; another, too, hears of it as a wonder; and even after having heard of it, no one does really know it. This embodied self, Arjuna, within every one’s body is always indestructible. Therefore you ought not to grieve for any being.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Having regard to your own duty also, you ought not to falter, for there is nothing better for a Kshatriya than a righteous battle. Happy those Kshatriyas, O son of Pritha, who can find such a battle to fight – an open door to heaven! But if you will not fight this righteous battle, then you will have abandoned your own duty and your fame, and you will incur sin. All beings, too, will tell of your everlasting infamy; and to one who has been honored, infamy is a greater evil than death. Warriors who are masters of great chariots will think that you abstained from the battle through fear, and having been highly thought of by them, you will fall down to littleness. Your enemies, too, decrying your power, will speak much about you that should not be spoken. And what, indeed, is more lamentable than that? Killed, you will obtain heaven; victorious, you will enjoy the earth. Therefore arise, O son of Kunti, resolved to engage in battle. Looking alike on pleasure and pain, on gain and loss, on victory and defeat, then prepare for battle, and thus you will not incur sin.</span></blockquote>Clerics have used similar jabberwocky about “indestructible souls” to manipulate people for thousands of years, including the Christian clerics who manipulated followers to fight in their “holy war” against the Muslims during the Crusades and the Islamic clerics who (still today!) manipulate Muslims to become <i>mujahideen</i> (“holy warriors”), dying for the <i>jihad</i> (“holy war”) to gain instant entrance to a fictitious paradise. All are just modified versions of CALVINBALL:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyp66G9UBXhJD5XtRsn1e0Yqn0b2RZSn1MzsXayP7f-TTX3A8QR20hWYajVi3is62SxBhkoMrjKJa0ohDFC9f41Kc7qOjCUNBPWDXS3gw7Okd4HowgWsR8qUkThvGBRLUtI_Rw-RUbLto/s1600/23.+Calvinball.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyp66G9UBXhJD5XtRsn1e0Yqn0b2RZSn1MzsXayP7f-TTX3A8QR20hWYajVi3is62SxBhkoMrjKJa0ohDFC9f41Kc7qOjCUNBPWDXS3gw7Okd4HowgWsR8qUkThvGBRLUtI_Rw-RUbLto/s1600/23.+Calvinball.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "I got a goal!" (2) H: "OK, the score is oogy to boogy." C: "I already <b>had</b> oogy!" (3) H: "Your just ran into the invisible sector! You have to cover your eyes now, because everything is invisible to you!" C: "Invisible sector?? I didn't know we had an invisible sector! Where is it?" (4) H: "You can't see it. It's invisible." C: "How do I know I went in it then?" (5) H: "You can't see anything, right?" C: "OK, so how do I get out?" (6) H: "Somebody bonks you with the Calvinball! I get another point!" C: "Hey! Ow! Why you…!" (7) C: "That was a rotten rule! I decree no more invisible sectors! …In fact, I'll show <b>you</b>! <b>You</b> just ran into a vortex spot! You have to spin around until you fall down!" (8) H: "Sorry. This vortex spot is in the boomerang zone, so the vortex returns to whoever calls it! <b>You</b> spin!" C: "<b>That's not fair!</b>" (9) H: "You know the Calvinball rules." C: "Yeah, yeah. Anything we make up. Well, you'll pay for this." (10) C: "This game lends itself to certain abuses." H: "Guess how you get out of the boomerang zone!"]</span></td></tr>
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A particular result is the trouble Muslim terrorists cause the rest of us today. To be sure, a significant part of that trouble is to defeat the terrorists without causing ourselves even more problems, similar to the problems Calvin created, fighting his terrorists:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT85L80nVLcCVmIMZX29U4UCE_wNtIxEeWvFcBu7aX5yrPSLx_dGSkZEt8pa1OUzGZ1gNwezhzeMElu5sOpg6dvTsgMh2iAFHPSfV_8B2B6yQGTPr2JY_DNg-DjlTe6aNS3dUhb33Im80/s1600/24.+Smells+awful+in+here.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT85L80nVLcCVmIMZX29U4UCE_wNtIxEeWvFcBu7aX5yrPSLx_dGSkZEt8pa1OUzGZ1gNwezhzeMElu5sOpg6dvTsgMh2iAFHPSfV_8B2B6yQGTPr2JY_DNg-DjlTe6aNS3dUhb33Im80/s1600/24.+Smells+awful+in+here.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) CM: "Whooo! It smells awful in here! Why does your room stink?" (2) C: "It's because of the darn monsters under my bed!" (3) CM: "Calvin, I don't believe for a minute that your nighttime 'monsters' are causing the smell." C: "But it's true." (4) C: "See? They don't eat all the garbage we throw down there to keep 'em quiet."]</span></td></tr>
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Which, of course, leads to new schemes to promote “homeland security”:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiB5bndWZrBOPtR7yCP8juExMDgrB63M6IK510GnWN87gTDajnhXnLjvgY_uYgHzlcaXYxvCIf2vnc7ttTFvvAU3PqtMepwYq5fI5z8nGQVDwihq7vlAzzRNwmQV-g2dZI91Tfr3ppfE0/s1600/25.+Burn+the+house+down.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiB5bndWZrBOPtR7yCP8juExMDgrB63M6IK510GnWN87gTDajnhXnLjvgY_uYgHzlcaXYxvCIf2vnc7ttTFvvAU3PqtMepwYq5fI5z8nGQVDwihq7vlAzzRNwmQV-g2dZI91Tfr3ppfE0/s1600/25.+Burn+the+house+down.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">[(1) C: "As soon as we turn the lights off, the monsters will come back out form under the bed." (2) C: "They're not going to go away, so I guess we need to find some way to live with them." (3) H: "It's hard to co-exist with things that want to kill you." C: "Well we've got to do <b>something</b>." (4) H: "We are. We're staying awake all night with the lights on." C: "I wonder if we could set fire to the bed without burning the house down."]</span></td></tr>
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In the next post, I plan to add some summary comments on why people adopted (and still adopt) the crazy idea that gods exist, when the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain (even more certain than the knowledge that we exist) is that there are no gods (and never were any). Then, for the final post, I plan to add a few closing comments on the possibility that we may yet be able to get religious people to smarten up, to get them to turn on their own lights – without our burning down our own houses in the process.<br />
<br />
[To be continued…]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-50269318042234103652010-10-28T06:06:00.000-07:002010-11-13T07:13:11.769-08:00Closing Comments - 1 - Origins of the God Lie••••<br />
This is the 36th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie”. For the final four posts of this series, I want to add some closing comments dealing with 1) the Origins, 2) the Promotion, 3) the Adoption, and 4) the Rejection of the God Lie. In the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html">first post</a>, I defined the God Lie as follows.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The Mountainous God Lie – Lingering social evils from initial misunderstandings and then subsequent deliberate falsification of the records, plus manipulation of ignorant people by stupid or poorly educated or power mongering priests and politicians:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">• That gods exist,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That birth of children is controlled the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That the dead are ruled by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That people have souls, which are judged by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That stars and their constellations are signs from the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That movements of stars tell stories of gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That dreams contain messages from the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That magic displays the mystery of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That mysteries conceal the secrets of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That sacrifices are needed to placate the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That rituals reveal knowledge of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That mistakes are ‘sins’ against the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That sins offend and are punished by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerics can forgive sins on behalf of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerics are in contact with the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerics exercise authority on behalf of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerics are spokesmen for the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerics preach the wills of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerical “knowledge” is direct from the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That clerical hierarchies are established by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That rather than serving themselves, the clerics serve the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That paying the clerics placates the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That prayers have power to persuade the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That tithes are collected on behalf of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That “oracles” and “prophets” speak for the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That “truth” is told about prophets and gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That a “race” of people was chosen by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That covenants can be established with the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That morality is defined by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That customs are created by the gods</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That laws are dictated by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That leaders are chosen by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That rulers know right by the grace of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That order is ordained by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That punishment is performed by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That judges are judged by gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That leaders rule by the grace of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That kingdoms are established by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That the fate of societies is controlled by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That human rights are endowed by the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That people should put their trust in the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That believers gain grace as a gift of the gods,</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">• That wars are waged on behalf of the gods…</span> </blockquote>If the reader wonders why the number of lies listed (I think 46 are listed above) exceeds the number of posts “completed” (i.e., 34), I can offer two major reasons / excuses: 1) some posts outlined the historical development of more than one lie (e.g., the lies dealing with “sin”), and 2) I already addressed some of the lies earlier in my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a> (e.g., the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IfFindingImmortalFallacies.pdf">faulty logic</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">misinterpreted evidence</a> that led to the mistaken ideas that souls and gods exist, the nonsense that led to the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">myths</a> “that stars and their constellations are signs from the gods” and “that movements of stars tell stories of gods”, and the unjustified speculations that <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">justice</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/M4_Morality_without_Gods.pdf">morality</a> have anything to do with any gods). Yet, I admit that I didn’t address some of the lies in appropriate detail – my excuse for which is the following.<br />
<br />
<b><i>1. Less than I wanted, but more than I expected</i></b><br />
Originally, I had planned on reviewing the most recent 2,000 years of the history of the God Lie more completely. I came to realize, however, that the task would require at least another 36 posts – and the return on the investment of at least two more years of my life was insufficient to impel me, especially when so many excellent reports written by competent historians are readily available. If I (trained as a physical scientist, not as a historian) were to write more about the most recent 2,000 years, I could have provided more recent examples of the lies “that kingdoms are established by the gods” and “that wars are waged on behalf of the gods” (I already did provide examples of those lies in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia) and, importantly, the lie “that human rights are endowed by the gods” (which is <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X11_EXpropriating_Rights.pdf">still promoted to this day</a>). In the case of human rights, some examples are briefly illustrated below.<br />
<br />
An ignominious illustration of the lie “that human rights are endowed by the gods” (rather than the more realistic appraisal that people have had to wrestle what they consider to be their rights from clerics and politicians, who have colluded to rule the people) is the response by Pope Innocent III (1161–1216) to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta">Magna Carta</a>, by which British land owners forced King John to <a href="http://www.crf-usa.org/foundations-of-our-constitution/magna-carta.html">admit</a> that he was constrained by law, unable to arrest and punish a free man without judgment “by judges ruled by the law of the land or by one’s peers in a trial by combat.” Thus, claiming to be God’s representative on Earth, the despicable Pope Innocent proclaimed: <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">Consequently, in the name of God Almighty, by the authority of the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, and by our Own, We reprove and condemn this Charter [the Magna Carta]; under pain of anathema We forbid the King to observe it or the barons to demand its execution. We declare the Charter null and of no effect, as well as all the obligations contracted to confirm it. It is Our wish that in no case should it have any effect.</span></blockquote>In contrast to this pope’s claim of “authority” (from “God Almighty” and the “Apostles”) to withhold elementary judicial rights from the people, in reality, the only authority he possessed (and similarly, the only authority possessed by any religious leader who has ever lived) is that he and his henchmen had captured, hoodwinked, and controlled the imagination (the delusions) of the people. As George Carlin put it:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">I have as much authority as the Pope; I just don't have as many people who believe it</span>. </blockquote>As another example, more than 700 years later the damnable Pope Gregory XVI (1765–1846) made the following proclamation about rights won by the people as a result of the American and French Revolutions:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">The unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens and is by no means worthy of favor and support.</span></blockquote>In his 17 March 1814 letter to Horatio Spafford, Thomas Jefferson summarized it well:<br />
<blockquote> <span style="color: blue;">In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.</span></blockquote>For an illuminating description of how, as late as 1860, the pope (Pius IX) attempted to thwart democracy, I encourage readers to study the ex-priest Joseph McCabe’s <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/condemned_opinions.html"><i>Rome’s Syllabus Of Condemned Opinions – The Last Blast Of The Catholic Church’s Medieval Trumpet</i></a>. Unfortunately for Muslims (and for the world), Islamic clerics are still “trumpeting” such anti-human lies, claiming to speak for their fictitious god.<br />
<br />
Additional examples dealing with human rights for women and minorities are readily available – at least in the non-Muslim world (since little progress attaining such rights has yet been made by Muslims). For example, as McCabe wrote in his 1929 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/"><i>The Story of Religious Controversy</i></a><i>:</i><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">This is the stark truth about the redemption of woman from all the injustices which Christianity had brought upon her. Not one single Christian clergyman the world over raised a finger in the work until it had so far succeeded that the clergy had to save their faces by joining it. No amount of pulpit rhetoric, no amount of strained apology from Christian feminist writers, can lessen the significance of that fact. And to it you must add another of equal significance: The men and women who started the revolt against the injustice and carried it to the stage of invincibility were non-Christian in the proportion of at least five to one.</span></blockquote>Even as recently as the 1960s, in his <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html"><i>Letter from a Birmingham Jail</i></a>, Martin Luther King (MLK) responded to clerics advising him to “go slow”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the </span><i style="color: blue;">status quo</i><span style="color: blue;"> to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true </span><i style="color: blue;">ekklesia</i><span style="color: blue;"> and the hope of the world.</span></blockquote>Thereby, MLK acknowledged (perhaps unwittingly) that, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">similar to other social animals</a>, humans possess inherent, instinctive understanding (“inner spiritual… <i>ekklesia</i>”) of justice, which leaders of organized religions have commonly subverted (“inextricably bound to the <i>status quo</i>”) to keep their con games going, protecting their own parasitic existences.<br />
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Additional illustrations of how parasitic leeches known as clerics sucked the lifeblood of the people during the Dark Ages of Europe were given by William J. Robinson, quoted here from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20248/20248-8.txt"><i>The Necessity of Atheism</i></a> by D.M. Brooks:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">We are told by the Church apologists that during the Middle Ages the priests and monks kept up the torch of learning, that, being the only literate people, they brought back the study of the classics. Historically speaking, this is about the most impudent statement that one could imagine. It was the Church that retarded human progress at least one thousand years, it is the Church that put a thick, impenetrable pall over the sun of learning and science, so that humanity was enveloped in utter darkness, and if the priests and monks later learned to read and write (from the Arabs, Jews, and Greeks exiled from Constantinople after 1453), it is because they wanted to keep the power in their hands; the people they did not permit to learn either to read or write. (Even the reading of the Bible, bear in mind, was considered a crime.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">We are told that the priests and monks built hospitals and gave alms to the poor. Having gotten enormous tracts of the best land into their hands, so that the people were starving, they were willing to throw a bone occasionally to the latter. It cost them nothing and it gave them a reputation for charity. They built enormous monasteries with well-filled cellars, and lived on the fat of the land, while the people lived in wretched hovels, working their lives away for a crust of bread. The beasts, the domestic animals lived a more comfortable life than did the men, women, and children of the people. And the Church never, never raised a finger to ameliorate their condition. It kept them in superstitious darkness and helped the temporal lords – for a long period the spiritual were also the temporal lords – to keep them in fear, subjection and slavery.</span></blockquote>Similarly, to this day, parasitic Islamic clerics live in relative luxury by leeching the lifeblood of the poor Muslim people, who live in “fear, subjection and slavery” because the clerics have captured, hoodwinked, and control the people’s imaginations / delusions. <br />
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Originally, also, I had planned to provide more details about the lies in Mormonism, even though I covered some of the lies in earlier chapters (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx21_LDS_Ludicrousness_-_1.pdf">here</a>). In <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/07/clerical-quackery-1-life-after-death.html">earlier posts of this series</a>, I did address Joseph Smith’s lie that he could translate anything with his “peep stone”, a lie that became the <i>Book of Abraham,</i> but I was planning to provide more evidence in support of the assessment that Sidney Rigdon wrote the <i>Book of Mormon</i>. Subsequently, however, I found that, in his on-line <a href="http://www.i4m.com/think/history/Book-of-Mormon.pdf">book</a>, Craig Criddle has done a great job marshalling relevant evidence, and I encourage interested readers to peruse his contribution to exposing still another foundational lie of Mormonism.<br />
<br />
In sum, although this series of posts has been less than I wanted, it’s also more than I expected – in that, innumerable times during the past more-than-two years of reading and writing, I was on the verge of quitting, with thoughts such as: “Why am I trying to do this? Leave it to the historians! Look at what tremendous reports are already available!” In that regard, if readers desire further details about the God Lie (including lies in addition to those that I’ve addressed), I encourage them to explore the tremendous resources available at the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/">library</a> and <a href="http://secweb.infidels.org/">kiosk</a> of the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/">Secular Web</a> – and if you’re so inclined, financially contribute to the non-profit sponsoring organization (the Internet Infidels Inc.), “dedicated to promoting and defending a naturalistic worldview…”<br />
<i><b><br />
2. Mistakes of the “supernatural” worldview that led to the God Lie</b></i><br />
As I mentioned both in the introduction to the above list of lies and several times in these posts, the God Lie almost certainly wasn’t originally a lie but a series of mistakes by primitive people. They didn’t realize (and still today, more than half of all people in the world don’t realize) that there is no such thing as “the supernatural”: if something exists, perforce it’s natural; therefore, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">supernatural things such as gods don’t exist</a>.<br />
<br />
As a result (i.e., because the resulting God Lie is based on the mistaken idea that anything supernatural exists), many times during the writing of these posts, I wrestled with the question: Should I call it “the Mountainous God Lie” or “the Mountainous God Mistake”? Eventually I chose the term “God Lie”, because clerics deliberately manipulated the mistakes into lies. For the rest of this post, my goal is to briefly review some of the mistakes made by primitive people; in the next post, I’ll emphasize how clerics (for their own parasitic and power-mongering benefits) morphed the mistakes into lies. <br />
<br />
In an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix02SpiritsSoulsandGods.pdf">earlier chapter</a>, I provided a brief review of how the god idea probably began. My review relied on the analysis by the ex-priest Joseph McCabe, given in his excellent 1929 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/"><i>The Story of Religious Controversy</i></a>. In outline, anthropological studies suggest that primitive people first adopted the idea of “spirits” from trying to understand their own shadows, their images (e.g., in pools of water), their dreams (in which one’s “other self” seemed capable of leaving one’s body to engage in various activities), and their hallucinations (stimulated by starvation and/or by ingesting various hallucinogens). Such experiences and their interpretations seemed to have led primitive people to assume that each person possessed a second self (a “spirit”) and to acknowledge (and eventually revere) alleged spirits of their dead ancestors (whose spirits seemed to visit the people in their dreams) and alleged spirits in the natural world (i.e., the idea, known as animism, that animals, streams, forests, mountains, etc. had spirits). Such mistakes led people to fear and to associated worship of the most powerful spirits, thereby “deifying” their most famous ancestors (e.g., probably Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Thoth in ancient Egypt) and those “spirits” that were assumed to control the most powerful natural forces, such as volcanoes, thunder and lightning, etc. <br />
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The essence of such mistakes can be seen in the following <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes">Calvin and Hobbes</a> comic strip produced by the brilliant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson">Bill Watterson</a>. [NB: all comics in these posts are copyrighted and cannot be used for commercial purposes without the approval of Universal Press Syndicate.] Watterson named Calvin after the (fanatical, Christian) 16th-century theologian John Calvin; Calvin’s plush-toy tiger, Hobbes – whom Calvin (alone) saw as an intelligent, full-sized tiger – was named after the (atheistic) 17th-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes; in the strip below, Calvin is (once again) in a confrontation with his father. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHVvCSuYh9jhjaUx8SqwfG3DT79CVUhbx5gXaGZ5TUA57dD0jJXtBouKyoXiAcnme9TpDJISb4vzjBcQhGxmEArbY6WH4Ls0Wi_xVhea6f9HksLidFHgYkQIjTgX90fPz4B8qFNVV1yjA/s1600/1.+Burn+the+leaves.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHVvCSuYh9jhjaUx8SqwfG3DT79CVUhbx5gXaGZ5TUA57dD0jJXtBouKyoXiAcnme9TpDJISb4vzjBcQhGxmEArbY6WH4Ls0Wi_xVhea6f9HksLidFHgYkQIjTgX90fPz4B8qFNVV1yjA/s1600/1.+Burn+the+leaves.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Similarly, it’s easy to imagine that primitive people living near volcanoes, for example, worshiped “the volcano god”, worshiping ignorance, “thinking” that they could propitiate the powerful volcano god, similar to how they would try to win favors from powerful tribal leaders by showing deference. A tragic example of such ignorance occurred the other day, during the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi, as reported in a 2010/10/27 Associated Press article by Slamet Riyadi entitled “Indonesia volcano kills 30 including spirit keeper”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Among the dead was Maridjan, an 83-year-old man who had been entrusted by a highly respected late king to watch over the volcano’s spirits. “We found his body,” said Suseno, a rescue worker, amid reports that the old man was found in the position of praying, kneeling face-down on the floor. Maridjan, who for years led ceremonies in which rice and flowers were thrown into the crater to appease spirits, has angered officials in the past by refusing to evacuate even during eruptions. They accused him of setting a wrong example, stopping other villagers from leaving, but Maridjan always said he would only go if he got a sign from the long-dead king who appointed him.</span></blockquote>Likewise, ancient northern Europeans (and ancient Mesopotamians) worshiped the wind god, among other gods, worshiping ignorance, convinced that the wind represented the rushing of souls through the air – and it was “thought” to be wise to be in good favor of the god who controlled the souls of the dead. Calvin’s father similarly confused Calvin:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStFM7s_HpJzDYnddJu6-Y7Fc3lrvKmI91Qp5wkWGCi98EdcPHaSt9Mpugx5yn6DDdY80rfEqn6ZBuo_kmOPEmnZuNXuw_Yz1pwAGjGzUWA6XdJzQUS1oo75Rx4V-HXN-Ts6mJlKc7B1g/s1600/2.+Wind+=+trees+sneezing.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStFM7s_HpJzDYnddJu6-Y7Fc3lrvKmI91Qp5wkWGCi98EdcPHaSt9Mpugx5yn6DDdY80rfEqn6ZBuo_kmOPEmnZuNXuw_Yz1pwAGjGzUWA6XdJzQUS1oo75Rx4V-HXN-Ts6mJlKc7B1g/s1600/2.+Wind+=+trees+sneezing.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
The ancient Greeks (and similarly, the ancient Mesopotamians and northern Europeans) worshiped the god of thunder and lightning, worshiping ignorance, for surely it was “wise” to display obeisance to the god who controlled such powerful storms. The ancient Egyptians (and many others, including ancient Americans and Babylonians) worshiped the Sun, worshiping ignorance, because it seemed to control the crops; so, the people tried to win favor from the Sun god through bribery. The ancient Arabs (and other desert nomads) didn’t worship the Sun (the Sun was a daily enemy); they worshiped the Moon, worshiping ignorance, because it seemed to govern the blessed, cool nights; so, the people tried to gain control over their environment by bribing the Moon god (Allah).<br />
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As their thoughts expanded with their empires, the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Persians, and Indians worshiped – and following them to this day, religious Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, etc. still worship – the creator of the universe and of life, worshiping ignorance, because they “thought” and still “think” it wise to be in the good favor of such a powerful god. And if recent data interpretations are found to be valid, leading to the suggestion that the universe actually created itself (perhaps by a quantum-like symmetry-breaking fluctuation in a total void) then religious people will finally be able to worship what, in their ignorance, they’ve actually been worshiping all along, namely, <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/02/god-is-total-nothingness.html">total nothingness</a>! <br />
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<i><b>3. Mistakes about life that exacerbated the God Lie</b></i><br />
Even more egregious (than the mistakes that morphed into lies about forces governing nature) were the mistakes made by our ancient ancestors about the forces and factors governing life. For example, although it was a personal evil to believe that some volcano was controlled by a volcano god (i.e., the personal evil of holding beliefs more strongly than relevant evidence warrants), yet it was a more serious mistake (an interpersonal evil) to assume that the volcano god would be placated by pushing a virgin girl into the volcano’s crater (i.e., the evil of not acknowledging that everyone has an equal right to claim one’s own existence). In turn, such evils were derived from ignorance, consistent with the assessment by Socrates: “<span style="color: blue;">There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.</span>”<br />
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In turn, the fundamental ignorance was (and, for the majority of people living today, continues to be) failure to identify sensible answers to the question: What’s the purpose of life? In a number of strips, Bill Watterson brilliantly illustrated this fundamental quandary as follows. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WQ3lnRZuOSfgyU9DDgLgPAj_aASP5OpsFDp3aks3ShGVdo8-JlKpRkh6L8voF58NuIqfXeQYiDBMmAuD_9SRt7ixOO-BDdVroG9huZgt8U8iTodYDbQAMx5u5lOlj8T8lsIHhVcOIYM/s1600/3.+Point+of+Existence.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WQ3lnRZuOSfgyU9DDgLgPAj_aASP5OpsFDp3aks3ShGVdo8-JlKpRkh6L8voF58NuIqfXeQYiDBMmAuD_9SRt7ixOO-BDdVroG9huZgt8U8iTodYDbQAMx5u5lOlj8T8lsIHhVcOIYM/s1600/3.+Point+of+Existence.gif" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WQ3lnRZuOSfgyU9DDgLgPAj_aASP5OpsFDp3aks3ShGVdo8-JlKpRkh6L8voF58NuIqfXeQYiDBMmAuD_9SRt7ixOO-BDdVroG9huZgt8U8iTodYDbQAMx5u5lOlj8T8lsIHhVcOIYM/s1600/3.+Point+of+Existence.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlHFW737tOQaDB8s0MXfQPuNZf5aj_r6j2hNfnh6WrUCncY3RWLHUDlJnFwU1BVTm2_Hdtq4rg_AwTCnfmAXYIZ57THStqWmLr9azBQyukdzJ_6Ha7Y5p3c2UK4_0rPSL6FZ02VHGkhyphenhyphen0/s1600/4.+Why+are+we+here%3f.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlHFW737tOQaDB8s0MXfQPuNZf5aj_r6j2hNfnh6WrUCncY3RWLHUDlJnFwU1BVTm2_Hdtq4rg_AwTCnfmAXYIZ57THStqWmLr9azBQyukdzJ_6Ha7Y5p3c2UK4_0rPSL6FZ02VHGkhyphenhyphen0/s1600/4.+Why+are+we+here%3f.gif" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-WQ3lnRZuOSfgyU9DDgLgPAj_aASP5OpsFDp3aks3ShGVdo8-JlKpRkh6L8voF58NuIqfXeQYiDBMmAuD_9SRt7ixOO-BDdVroG9huZgt8U8iTodYDbQAMx5u5lOlj8T8lsIHhVcOIYM/s1600/3.+Point+of+Existence.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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In addition, Watterson provided at least hints for the solution to the fundamental quandary:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizUQBw1fK3dIIOZiIynQAJulmGJ_Sfew-etaOccBLoh6Y9Yl9_VcD1JvOUxF2rTObvrQl4OoLdUdUzEvlmtkA4d65NEsKqaGgBlXK1eHGDcsllhiah5E-D-7SQL0un0tvO-95CWVreIk/s1600/5.+Tiger+Food.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizUQBw1fK3dIIOZiIynQAJulmGJ_Sfew-etaOccBLoh6Y9Yl9_VcD1JvOUxF2rTObvrQl4OoLdUdUzEvlmtkA4d65NEsKqaGgBlXK1eHGDcsllhiah5E-D-7SQL0un0tvO-95CWVreIk/s1600/5.+Tiger+Food.gif" /></a> <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1JRbFfq0AoAMMy7nr9hnZXhDO1Hy_OXevvYJP3m9O06rfZuGXTEHeXVn4VP72YW3U3oRTY6qh5GhbLs82zLRKVP4OCA2_F6A773kXZZbRwNkKBhlbCVAIQ40zYFUXtVeNRKT0AMdOGg/s1600/6.+Seafood.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1JRbFfq0AoAMMy7nr9hnZXhDO1Hy_OXevvYJP3m9O06rfZuGXTEHeXVn4VP72YW3U3oRTY6qh5GhbLs82zLRKVP4OCA2_F6A773kXZZbRwNkKBhlbCVAIQ40zYFUXtVeNRKT0AMdOGg/s1600/6.+Seafood.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1JRbFfq0AoAMMy7nr9hnZXhDO1Hy_OXevvYJP3m9O06rfZuGXTEHeXVn4VP72YW3U3oRTY6qh5GhbLs82zLRKVP4OCA2_F6A773kXZZbRwNkKBhlbCVAIQ40zYFUXtVeNRKT0AMdOGg/s1600/6.+Seafood.gif" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1JRbFfq0AoAMMy7nr9hnZXhDO1Hy_OXevvYJP3m9O06rfZuGXTEHeXVn4VP72YW3U3oRTY6qh5GhbLs82zLRKVP4OCA2_F6A773kXZZbRwNkKBhlbCVAIQ40zYFUXtVeNRKT0AMdOGg/s1600/6.+Seafood.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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Calvin was obviously dissatisfied with Hobbes’ answers. His answers, however, at least contained humor and common sense. In contrast, it’s sad to realize that more than half of all people living today “think” (usually as a result of childhood indoctrination) that their purpose in life is to placate some “creator god” – rather than realize that the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P01_The_Purpose_of_Life.pdf">fundamental purpose of all life is "just" to live</a>. Those of us who have rejected the God Lie are then free to choose additional purposes, including enjoying a good lunch.<br />
<br />
Dismissing Hobbes’ answers, Calvin compounded his confusion by considering other factors that influence one’s choices about how to live, such as the following:<br />
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Nature’s indifference,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBzN5Fb39LqX3jNeEp3nSfuTh-kKL5j3YBn2An8iAVN2QKALAgC26yCpgCeAx8PbdzHxCtDjL76HP3qNX9C8huOmBmW0POL7mW9l4ips6GYqVtjYlzs_s3HNWWbL5Fx6TXMelBZkSfaE/s1600/7.+Nature%27s+Indifference.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBzN5Fb39LqX3jNeEp3nSfuTh-kKL5j3YBn2An8iAVN2QKALAgC26yCpgCeAx8PbdzHxCtDjL76HP3qNX9C8huOmBmW0POL7mW9l4ips6GYqVtjYlzs_s3HNWWbL5Fx6TXMelBZkSfaE/s1600/7.+Nature%27s+Indifference.gif" /></a><br />
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Life’s injustices,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYubFt2lmQhi5m7s60s13MqTCXhv000mqkQAhgqtppzsczSECebUFGl6tHnffR26p7XhgxziJ1tfmddZDi3sos5P1ECrDkuBtzTv6PSrDDhE3G8uB2MCU0q3s5I0misIol5JJ0rn-Gy2g/s1600/8.+Not+Fair.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYubFt2lmQhi5m7s60s13MqTCXhv000mqkQAhgqtppzsczSECebUFGl6tHnffR26p7XhgxziJ1tfmddZDi3sos5P1ECrDkuBtzTv6PSrDDhE3G8uB2MCU0q3s5I0misIol5JJ0rn-Gy2g/s1600/8.+Not+Fair.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Tyrants of various types,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGWzRS-PDnh4caFWodWhQNVLFYOJYU0rSaA_EcwVwRN-qBPuPO9CFu7SsXukCmr4mJoG3_eb-Z7Q3YFZ4aCE3vfjZA7Hw-j0YrK1VqVC5I37sd6KbFQLGN-wwXY0qtWodB7epTqnfLhI/s1600/9.+Cenorship+&+Oppression.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGWzRS-PDnh4caFWodWhQNVLFYOJYU0rSaA_EcwVwRN-qBPuPO9CFu7SsXukCmr4mJoG3_eb-Z7Q3YFZ4aCE3vfjZA7Hw-j0YrK1VqVC5I37sd6KbFQLGN-wwXY0qtWodB7epTqnfLhI/s1600/9.+Cenorship+&+Oppression.gif" /></a><br />
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Including those who are immediate threats to one's survival,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8_eniPt-NH9rZFOcsiVqHrVDM4Qp96BVq0QjOKLx0wycFaTxdmm7J_729YvOfJdnmIG8CmgeblYVUGEb3Z9QnUouDotJegJ_Na7dmTq9YRYW2HaAQBBk4q4NegCmv2XnggC5b2GjBAc/s1600/10.+Guy+with+a+razor.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8_eniPt-NH9rZFOcsiVqHrVDM4Qp96BVq0QjOKLx0wycFaTxdmm7J_729YvOfJdnmIG8CmgeblYVUGEb3Z9QnUouDotJegJ_Na7dmTq9YRYW2HaAQBBk4q4NegCmv2XnggC5b2GjBAc/s1600/10.+Guy+with+a+razor.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Such factors led (and still lead) people to additional quandaries, such as those illustrated by Watterson as follows:<br />
<br />
About death,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSO6NpbU8vXcG4Vj4rDEMaGz4b36q6ydegOLl00stNFPn_i0FgLmMMV6KK5iOcmJKtsknPymqVrIyOhIpU5n_ic-S-ROEWlofYxaP4M8y93ArE0oqQWnqF6Qt-heSEH4OGFYsePUhFhA/s1600/11.+Stupid+World.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSO6NpbU8vXcG4Vj4rDEMaGz4b36q6ydegOLl00stNFPn_i0FgLmMMV6KK5iOcmJKtsknPymqVrIyOhIpU5n_ic-S-ROEWlofYxaP4M8y93ArE0oqQWnqF6Qt-heSEH4OGFYsePUhFhA/s1600/11.+Stupid+World.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
About the reason for death,<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWbKExofViJSoeQd2wPtc0OT36cm3YIX4B_32aQAGBj4yJbGRQIQStQGrFoOFY69-u6c6ooj7rDfCzs7VSIS-ZapfeB4nartz1iGUO-zA-y82XVbR_ekV7J7Uenue9hyphenhyphenqQTUIiNc9lLiM/s1600/12.+Mean+or+Arbitrary.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWbKExofViJSoeQd2wPtc0OT36cm3YIX4B_32aQAGBj4yJbGRQIQStQGrFoOFY69-u6c6ooj7rDfCzs7VSIS-ZapfeB4nartz1iGUO-zA-y82XVbR_ekV7J7Uenue9hyphenhyphenqQTUIiNc9lLiM/s1600/12.+Mean+or+Arbitrary.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
And about what happens after we die, either good,<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkll62x_KQGp8v7Ax7asPCXpxGw_xtTd4GXBQOn4BYF_nAc1wvMQq7aVrYD9mVvK3TPA1ZOs81hX8O7hlNGxtCQhkuFwEhsq5xWmYIcpSsgwKH0kGiG0Q5o-XgrTQcKPItMdTvXyoQss/s1600/13.+Heaven+-+play+sax.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkll62x_KQGp8v7Ax7asPCXpxGw_xtTd4GXBQOn4BYF_nAc1wvMQq7aVrYD9mVvK3TPA1ZOs81hX8O7hlNGxtCQhkuFwEhsq5xWmYIcpSsgwKH0kGiG0Q5o-XgrTQcKPItMdTvXyoQss/s1600/13.+Heaven+-+play+sax.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Or not so good,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWcGSm6FnfC6Pev-R1TXcngKzpzLz_T5NZcNch_jON1WFQ1BPDzki7-h2dv09SaT9PqY7e0jjeewEe3fmxiIJve3yGLmEfd6n0NZdRmuFJwYWT1ylx5zjErQNHttyBZ7FrNUiVRIzo5A/s1600/14.+Pittsburgh.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFWcGSm6FnfC6Pev-R1TXcngKzpzLz_T5NZcNch_jON1WFQ1BPDzki7-h2dv09SaT9PqY7e0jjeewEe3fmxiIJve3yGLmEfd6n0NZdRmuFJwYWT1ylx5zjErQNHttyBZ7FrNUiVRIzo5A/s1600/14.+Pittsburgh.gif" /></a> <br />
<br />
About the existence of any god,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXKnyX72VpZP0OOOxdJ9byXSleEGADBZXkX_RALEB5WOMAliU-UXMmuXdNFHMkJaW8DqlGV0Kr0KTuXqR-OBQaFA4k_XDWAfkPIHqlv4wNZD3CvnIs5PMKM-mffiylK2H5gCzyKqc6G4c/s1600/15.+Somebody%27s+out+to+get+me.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXKnyX72VpZP0OOOxdJ9byXSleEGADBZXkX_RALEB5WOMAliU-UXMmuXdNFHMkJaW8DqlGV0Kr0KTuXqR-OBQaFA4k_XDWAfkPIHqlv4wNZD3CvnIs5PMKM-mffiylK2H5gCzyKqc6G4c/s1600/15.+Somebody%27s+out+to+get+me.gif" /></a> <br />
<br />
And about the source of evil,<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHRj9fbDWOG7xyox4Qr0Fu34oanE1sKLehQ9p6VxtPqEaMhCWGYZF0lbiQSWcyhZ4_ho2Y6gWOb-vWhhPwU2Zqz0hykLovpGx-rN38UF5-Gv0NVmu6S3wLpGe-HtNVrjAbLG3Tj0B6Ca8/s1600/16.+The+Devil.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHRj9fbDWOG7xyox4Qr0Fu34oanE1sKLehQ9p6VxtPqEaMhCWGYZF0lbiQSWcyhZ4_ho2Y6gWOb-vWhhPwU2Zqz0hykLovpGx-rN38UF5-Gv0NVmu6S3wLpGe-HtNVrjAbLG3Tj0B6Ca8/s1600/16.+The+Devil.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
As a result of so many unanswered questions about the natural world and our place within it, primitive people concocted myths, and as President John F. Kennedy said:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.</blockquote>Additionally, Watterson provided insight into why humans find the “explanations” contained in myths to be attractive. Among the reasons, maybe foremost is that myths are almost invariably simplistic – similar to much on TV and talk-radio (e.g., in the U.S., the “shows” put on by Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, “heroes” of the current, mindless, American “Tea Party Movement”):<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJypBxlq33oCYs1fYdLczktVwkzKDcTeJ63L26mgDfVpfsiMupe39v4qdbigQVhA9pYomYgMmcEWJK3GZN2kb6hlU6MRyG87qLdsN1-pO_WUAFitYUqeeHG3ZVKF9s-YQgo0ADipVDlc/s1600/17.+Talk-radio.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJypBxlq33oCYs1fYdLczktVwkzKDcTeJ63L26mgDfVpfsiMupe39v4qdbigQVhA9pYomYgMmcEWJK3GZN2kb6hlU6MRyG87qLdsN1-pO_WUAFitYUqeeHG3ZVKF9s-YQgo0ADipVDlc/s1600/17.+Talk-radio.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
In addition, people mesmerized by myths are typically pugnacious:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg14pGe1WcxGtwLmy_dNgJ-gUJiTSgbu9pct-3yHlbuVCM6qhDngTckF-v3JWZt0sg8vWFAl18kt6CbJgvzF89YaUFxApvyYHKCVbaaNiEDuiUy6XYfOYR64NjF3_Cma8LtQUxFo0xwBBE/s1600/18.+Rudeness+&+Disrespect.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg14pGe1WcxGtwLmy_dNgJ-gUJiTSgbu9pct-3yHlbuVCM6qhDngTckF-v3JWZt0sg8vWFAl18kt6CbJgvzF89YaUFxApvyYHKCVbaaNiEDuiUy6XYfOYR64NjF3_Cma8LtQUxFo0xwBBE/s1600/18.+Rudeness+&+Disrespect.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
And more generally (and in more ways than one) myths “are made” for those who don’t (or can’t) think for themselves; they want all concepts simple:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm2XncT5fUmMTDEiPE8EeQvO584K80dzDUgJUdii-_v7e0PvX8E9qSq748P-qebprH_W9pW6VgJc28tSkZapqUCNay-HW9Jnf7dd3xNCGN8Y_zK2aLu7ruC1azr3Ylqc7H6Nsrgdga8JA/s1600/19.+Short+attention+span.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm2XncT5fUmMTDEiPE8EeQvO584K80dzDUgJUdii-_v7e0PvX8E9qSq748P-qebprH_W9pW6VgJc28tSkZapqUCNay-HW9Jnf7dd3xNCGN8Y_zK2aLu7ruC1azr3Ylqc7H6Nsrgdga8JA/s1600/19.+Short+attention+span.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Thereby, myths attract those who “justify” avoiding new ideas:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Xl54DRFcgRasKWs6sJSJEopQNXRq026bdYT42dGymTZEdEsmvykTpWTJOV8jkccqv_5PpYOloO-VvSQdb429DdBBqpVC3PHGVdT_dRdy-dWgaINS8ju3o-I91WylHb658qppxZaffms/s1600/20.+Procrastination+&+Rationalizing.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Xl54DRFcgRasKWs6sJSJEopQNXRq026bdYT42dGymTZEdEsmvykTpWTJOV8jkccqv_5PpYOloO-VvSQdb429DdBBqpVC3PHGVdT_dRdy-dWgaINS8ju3o-I91WylHb658qppxZaffms/s1600/20.+Procrastination+&+Rationalizing.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Those who take refuge in their religions:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8rrwbX7krJmQl3gc9B0bFAYVnrSeufgzAnJZDPYwmMicd-lcpiU8CUimZKYcQhNXHcis_MocfCN5xynTqd0lY6_AiN2aeFrE20eut-HWsCHLWSMwhohsY6wej-71h4liRFibL6ofEFA/s1600/21.+Against+my+religion.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8rrwbX7krJmQl3gc9B0bFAYVnrSeufgzAnJZDPYwmMicd-lcpiU8CUimZKYcQhNXHcis_MocfCN5xynTqd0lY6_AiN2aeFrE20eut-HWsCHLWSMwhohsY6wej-71h4liRFibL6ofEFA/s1600/21.+Against+my+religion.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
And those who find comfort in their ignorance (a fundamental American right, held tenaciously by members of the Tea Party Movement):<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJCjDcHKlbpKu0S23byTylVrMXcT98Sor4ruT8Of_L7MP4ns0LfccDsjqe7xgnRVEfaxRsHi8_SslQzTDVTBX9vexsx5yap3hSPDW7ej1NCa8NOJaB4XPKwmCScTw4KcXPkFJ3Al1Zcxs/s1600/22.+Ignorance+is+bliss.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJCjDcHKlbpKu0S23byTylVrMXcT98Sor4ruT8Of_L7MP4ns0LfccDsjqe7xgnRVEfaxRsHi8_SslQzTDVTBX9vexsx5yap3hSPDW7ej1NCa8NOJaB4XPKwmCScTw4KcXPkFJ3Al1Zcxs/s1600/22.+Ignorance+is+bliss.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
They even revel in their ignorant ideas:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeyv4y29VvWN4u6SsGIVPWsrasYT8u7bbiht01pTPj3J_yV4wIaxYFS64cP6A-_X0MfU74M1vcwDrQRet_aLlad9FCf84_5jiHmkvSPzTQDBxhsLsafPSGk6m0F7GQt8pR-YReh7NxOf0/s1600/23.+Useless+Information.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeyv4y29VvWN4u6SsGIVPWsrasYT8u7bbiht01pTPj3J_yV4wIaxYFS64cP6A-_X0MfU74M1vcwDrQRet_aLlad9FCf84_5jiHmkvSPzTQDBxhsLsafPSGk6m0F7GQt8pR-YReh7NxOf0/s1600/23.+Useless+Information.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Ignorant ideas and useless information that lead to ignorant actions:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrnTwEmxMyZlQQrBJj8a6bV5BHH8zpERF5NtWIPLHUdi5uWTvnX_UyB7zJ6DpvtSVWyb8tOqTsbM-L8gJMyPOCz6wXKBP9tFXxhqkX5W0NHo7vk7zYBM-4-qtzUkyrOTowOHjRmiWF_w/s1600/24.+Ignorant+Action.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrnTwEmxMyZlQQrBJj8a6bV5BHH8zpERF5NtWIPLHUdi5uWTvnX_UyB7zJ6DpvtSVWyb8tOqTsbM-L8gJMyPOCz6wXKBP9tFXxhqkX5W0NHo7vk7zYBM-4-qtzUkyrOTowOHjRmiWF_w/s1600/24.+Ignorant+Action.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
And yet, they’re convinced that they should be running the world:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_zWBq_NLAXlkJbTya_HO_ZIzXYmKSODagQ-8YCiOiGSos8MuEhlLLSBL4vR01uZXPfbDVoSAT_LVCs3Acht3vdaZkemSr_L5Q3dyqz_DaHJ4ze00R47z56e2JW8WkodOGH7m5AcCrzI/s1600/25.+Riffraff+in+the+Universe.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_zWBq_NLAXlkJbTya_HO_ZIzXYmKSODagQ-8YCiOiGSos8MuEhlLLSBL4vR01uZXPfbDVoSAT_LVCs3Acht3vdaZkemSr_L5Q3dyqz_DaHJ4ze00R47z56e2JW8WkodOGH7m5AcCrzI/s1600/25.+Riffraff+in+the+Universe.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
Even though they refuse to accept responsibility for their actions:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitbZN6jHSFvfpfScKF2QMb80rQrhNn-S0qESQXC-T4EsqKcLFSM8WiBhstzWw_FLrrBFdB6pxq3vRQ5NspqLS9e5vJ-wer0cCWLuKmAu-GqU2TIIhGzOLjYOiJoGM-mUFX-fx-rg83aRg/s1600/26.+Not+responsible+for+their+actions.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitbZN6jHSFvfpfScKF2QMb80rQrhNn-S0qESQXC-T4EsqKcLFSM8WiBhstzWw_FLrrBFdB6pxq3vRQ5NspqLS9e5vJ-wer0cCWLuKmAu-GqU2TIIhGzOLjYOiJoGM-mUFX-fx-rg83aRg/s1600/26.+Not+responsible+for+their+actions.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
All of which is unfortunately now being illustrated as part of the mid-term elections to be held in the U.S. in the next few days. In this election, the influence of America’s Tea Party threatens to be significant. In a recent <i>New York Times</i> “opinionater” column entitled “Building a Nation of Know-Nothings”, Timothy Egan described the situation well:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Climate-change denial [a fundamental “plank” of the Tea Party’s “platform”] is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from [Rush] Limbaugh and Fox [Network TV, e.g., host of the Glen Beck farce].</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?</span></blockquote>The above is also an appropriate summary for all religious people: they both ignore the past and refuse to comprehend the present.<br />
<br />
In sum, during the past 5,000-and-more years and continuing to this day, mistaken answers to questions about the nature of the universe and about the purpose of life led to a host of simplistic myths. Subsequently, as I’ll briefly review in the next post, such mistakes provided con artists (commonly called “clerics”) opportunities to profit from the people’s ignorance, fear and greed, by promoting the God Lie.<br />
<br />
[To be continued…]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://zenofzero.net/"> www.zenofzero.net</a> <br />
<br />
••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-44084768710603283592010-09-11T05:15:00.000-07:002011-04-28T15:04:36.342-07:00Five Foundational Evils of Islam••••<br />
This is the 35th in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the God Lie”. In the previous post, I tried to outline what I described as “five structural errors” in Islam, namely:<br />
<blockquote>1. Islam’s error of identifying Muhammad as “the perfect man”,<br />
2. Islam’s error of assuming that the Koran is from God/Allah,<br />
3. Islam’s error of adopting Muhammad’s laws as Allah’s laws (<i>sharia</i>),<br />
4. Islam’s error of promoting deception (<i>taqiyya</i>), and<br />
5. Islam’s fatal philosophical errors. </blockquote>My goal for this post is to try to explain what I mean by the following “five foundational evils” of Islam:<br />
<blockquote>1. Islam’s evil of promoting beliefs in the absence of reliable evidence,<br />
2. Islam’s evil of demanding adherence to dogmatic ignorance,<br />
3. Islam’s evils of violating human rights and advocating hate,<br />
4. Islam’s evil psychological manipulations of “true believers”, and<br />
5. Islam’s evil of waging incessant, immoral war against “unbelievers”.</blockquote>At the outset, I should acknowledge that the above-listed evils (or “extreme immoralities”) of Islam are immoral according to my judgment (and also, I’m sure, in the judgments of essentially all secular humanists) but not in the judgments of essentially all Muslims. In their judgments, the topics listed above aren’t “evil” but “good”, because as Ali Sina <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/05/islam-and-the-golden-rule.html">summarized</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">According to Muslims it is not the Golden Rule that defines the good and bad, it is Muhammad who does it. They believe that what is good for Islam is the highest virtue and what is bad for Islam is the ultimate evil. This is the definition of good and evil in Islam.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">This is the ethos of all cults. From Asahara’s “Aum Shinrikyo” to Jim Jones’ “People’s Temple” and from Sun Myung Moon’s “Unification Church” to David Koresh’s “Davidian Branch”, the recurring theme is that the cult’s interests override human understanding of right and wrong. In order to advance the interest of the cult, which is regarded as the ultimate good, everything (including lying and even murder and assassination) is permissible. The end is deemed to be so lofty that it justifies the means. This is the same idea of fascism where the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it are enforced…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">The first requisite to feel the pain and suffering of others is to accept that they have feelings like us and they also feel hurt the way we do. If we deny such feelings in others we do not feel any remorse in abusing them. Muhammad claimed all those who disbelieve in Allah are the worst creatures. He even said that all non-believers will end up in hell where they will be tortured for eternity. How then can Muslims treat equally those whom they believe to be worse than beasts and deserve eternal punishment?</span></blockquote>Thereby, just as Emerson said about social justice (“One man’s justice is another’s injustice”), one person’s morality can be another’s immorality. Consequently, before trying to describe details about what I consider to be evils in Islam, it seems appropriate to review my meaning for ‘morality’.<br />
<br />
In my on-line <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>, of which this series of posts is an appendix, I devoted many chapters to the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Here, therefore, I’ll provide only an outline, along with references to my more-complete explanations:<br />
<blockquote>• Rather than a “black-versus-white” or “good-versus-evil” view of morality, and rather than struggle to identify appropriate adjectives or modifying phrases (e.g., “partially good”, “somewhat evil”, etc.), it’s convenient to use a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">numerical scale</a>. At places in what follows, therefore, I’ll identify moral values on a numerical scale ranging from –10 to +10, with –10 corresponding to something judged to be “extremely bad” and +10 corresponding to something judged to be “extremely good”. <br />
<br />
• As with any value, moral value has meaning only relative to some objective. For instance, if your goal is to build a sturdy house, then it would be “good” to use appropriate building materials (e.g., the use of bricks and mortar might be judged to have a moral value of +8, and use of lumber, maybe a +6), whereas building a house out of marshmallows and peanut butter, for example, would probably be judged to have a very low moral value (maybe a –7). Consequently, to discuss, evaluate and compare (and perhaps even agree on) morality, it’s first necessary to discuss and compare <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/V_Values_&_Objectives.pdf">objectives</a>.<br />
<br />
• The root reason why judgments about morality are contentious (e.g., the morality of parents’ indoctrinating their children in religion) is disagreements about fundamental goals. Even a child asks “Why are we here?” – and no one knows the answer with certainty (or even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P01_The_Purpose_of_Life.pdf">if the question is reasonable</a>). As I reviewed in earlier posts in this series, Zarathustra’s answer (that we’re here to participate in a cosmic battle between good and evil) is the basis of the philosophies of both ancient Greek mystics (Pythagoras, Plato, the Stoics…) and of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam…), but the philosophies of both the ancient Greek realists (Democritus, Aristotle, Epicurus…) and of most philosophers today are consistent with the fundamental idea of existentialism (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre…): “existence before essence”. That is, in contrast to religious and metaphysical ideas that each human possesses an “immortal soul” with “eternal essence”, existentialism recognizes that humans first exist – and then we define our goals (or have them defined for us by our experiences and culture). <br />
<br />
• Given that humans are goal-driven animals (with feelings of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">happiness</a> arising when we think that we’re making progress toward achieving our goals), it’s understandable that humans are susceptible even to sometimes-bizarre suggestions about “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P01_The_Purpose_of_Life.pdf">the purpose of life</a>” (i.e., what our goals “should be”), e.g., to placate some god or to follow in some charismatic leader’s footsteps. Because people adopt different prime goals, they have different concepts of morality (because, again, moral values, as with any values, can be judged only relative to some goal).<br />
<br />
• People adopt thousands of goals (e.g., to build houses, to teach their children religion, to be happy, to finish a damnable writing task, etc.), but the prime goals of all humans seem to be similar. Prime goals are those goals for which all other (then, lower-priority) goals would be willingly sacrificed. Even a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/BoardMeeting.pdf">simple analysis</a> suggests the obvious result that all humans pursue the following trio of interconnected, prime goals: the survival (or even “thrival”) of themselves, their families (whatever extent they recognize to be “family”), and their other values (e.g., honesty, bravery, fidelity, liberty, etc.). It’s relative to those prime goals that most of our judgments about morality are made, as I’ll outline and illustrate below.<br />
<br />
• Relative to our prime goal to survive (or better, thrive!), essentially all humans judge that continuing to live has high moral value (maybe a +9 or maybe even a +10, on a morality scale running from –10 to +10), but exceptions occur. Some exceptions arise from confused thought, some exceptions arise from indoctrination (e.g., religious indoctrination in the oxymoronic idea of “life after death” and the ridiculous idea that religious martyrs gain instant access to eternal paradise), but some exceptions arise because, in certain circumstances, another prime goal takes precedence (e.g., even other animals will risk their lives to save the lives of family members, especially their offspring).<br />
<br />
• Relative to our prime goal of helping our families survive (whatever extent we recognize for our family), essentially all humans judge that protecting our families has high moral value (ranging perhaps from +1 to +10 on the morality scale, depending on details of the “protection”). In this post, I won’t have need to delve into the huge number of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/V_Values_&_Objectives.pdf">complicated details</a> that arise, also, from what different people consider to be “family members”. Nonetheless, it’s relevant to mention the horrors that have resulted from considering as family only those people who belong to the same tribe, religion, or “race”, as did Ezra (writing as Moses), Muhammad, and Hitler. In wonderful contrast were Zarathustra, the Buddha, Cyrus the Great, Socrates (“I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world”) and the resulting brotherhood sentiments of the Epicureans and Stoics, which were adopted by most Christians and all humanists.<br />
<br />
• Relative to our prime goal of maintaining our other values, judging the morality of any act can become even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/V_Values_&_Objectives.pdf">more complicated</a>, depending on our decision about how knowledge can be gained (i.e., our <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Y02_Your_Premisses_&_Purposes.pdf">epistemology</a>) and our resulting worldview. For religious people, their worldview results in their clerics dictating values. For humanists with a naturalistic worldview, each of us must decide on our other values by ourselves. </blockquote>That said, I can now explain what I mean by labeling the indicated features of Islam to be “foundational evils.” Such judgments are based on my own perspective of morality, two important features of which are the following.<br />
<blockquote>1. In the category of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">personal morality</a>, I consider the highest moral value (i.e., a +10) to be to use one’s brain as best one can (which means more than just thinking: relying on data is essential), i.e., evaluate. In that respect, I generally agree with Socrates’ assessment, “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance”, although when applied to personal morality, I would prefer a statement similar to: “There is only one good, willingness to learn, and one evil, refusal.” <br />
<br />
2. In the category of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J3InterpersonalJandM.pdf">interpersonal morality</a>, I’ve found it difficult to identify a single, all-encompassing description of acts with the highest moral value (i.e., a +10). Elsewhere, I’ve discussed the wisdom reflected in parables and sayings from essentially every culture dealing with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Love_within_Limits.pdf">love (within limits)</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">kindness (with keenness)</a>. And of course the reason for dealing with others compassionately is what’s described in Buddhism as <i>karma</i> and in modern American culture as: “What goes around comes around.” As for more formal statements of the highest interpersonal morality, there is Kant’s, “Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end”, as well as my own, “Always recognize that everyone has an equal right to claim one’s own existence.” </blockquote>I therefore reassert that, from the perspective of my worldview (and, I’m sure, the worldview of all Humanists), the identified foundational features of Islam (listed at the beginning of this post and to be addressed below) are, in thought and deed, evils (i.e., on a morality scale running between –10 and +10, all have negative values). I’ll now start on my list with:<br />
<i><b><br />
1. Islam’s evil of promoting beliefs in the absence of reliable evidence.</b></i><br />
<br />
In general, intelligent people hold their beliefs only as strongly as relevant evidence warrants. It’s a part of what I consider to be the epitome of personal morality, viz., to use one’s brain as best one can, i.e., evaluate. In contrast, suppose I said to you that I believed that you’re a liar, thief, murderer, or child molester. Suppose, further, that you then asked me: “Why?” or “How come?” If I responded “Just because” or “Because I believe you are”, surely you would be (at minimum) indignant. If you were still willing to talk to me (and hadn’t started swinging your fist!), you might ask me: “What’s your evidence?” And if I responded something similar to “I have no evidence; I just believe it’s so”, then surely (as a minimum) you would have nothing more to do with me – and consider me to be immoral (or an immoral fool, although that would be somewhat of a pleonasm, since being foolish is almost always immoral).<br />
<br />
Similar foolishness is the hallmark of religious people. For a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X02_EXcavating_Reasons.pdf">host of reasons</a>, they believe in the existence of various gods. Two of the main reasons for belief in a god (or gods) are apparently childhood indoctrination and the allure of replacing fear of death with dreams of eternal life in paradise (i.e., falling for the proof-by-pleasure logical fallacy). In reality, meanwhile, there’s <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">zero reliable evidence</a> for the existence of any god. As a result, I certainly agree with Richard Robinson’s summary in his 1964 book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/11393708/An-Atheists-Values-1964-by-Richard-Robinson-19021996"><i>An Atheist’s Values</i></a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Religion is more of an evil than a good because it is gravely inimical to truth and reason… [Religious] Faith is a great vice, an example of obstinately refusing to listen to reason, something irrational and undesirable, a form of self-hypnotism… It follows that, far from its being wicked to undermine [religious] faith, it is a duty to do so. We ought to do what we can towards eradicating the evil habit of believing without regard to evidence…</span></blockquote>Such errors – such evils – have led to the current, overt support of Islamic terrorists by approximately 100 million Muslims and <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2007/12/most-americans-support-muslim.html">the inadvertent support</a> of Islamic terrorists by approximately a billion Muslims and a billion Christians. Such inadvertent support of terrorists, from both mainstream Muslims and Christians, follows from their foolish, evil choice of holding beliefs more strongly than is justified by relevant evidence.<br />
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Muslims further compound their “evil habit of believing without regard to evidence” by denigrating us ‘unbelievers’ – an ignorance, an evil, that sensible humans should challenge. But before explaining what I mean, it’s important to point out what Muslims mean by calling the rest of us ‘unbelievers’ (or <i>kafirs</i>). In reality (as opposed to the distinction promoted by Muslims), everyone is both a believer and an unbeliever. I, for example, believe in the efficacy of the scientific method (since evidence suggests it works), while simultaneously, I don’t believe in the existence of any god (since <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">there’s zero evidence to support the idea that such things as gods exist</a>). But of course, by ‘unbelievers’ (<i>kafirs</i>) Muslims don’t mean themselves (who are unbelievers in, for example, the scientific method); they mean unbelievers in Islamic balderdash. That distinction, alone, reveals another layer of ignorance (and therefore, evil). <br />
<br />
In fact, there are multiple layers to the Islamic evil of promoting beliefs in the absence of reliable evidence. One layer is the ignorance to believe in something without evidentiary support (a very serious evil, maybe a –9 on a personal morality scale running form –10 to +10). A second layer of evil is the ignorance to maliciously segregate people into ‘believers’ versus ‘unbelievers’ (somewhere around a –4 on an interpersonal morality scale), when in reality, all of us are both believers and unbelievers (depending on the concepts under consideration). A third layer of evil (maybe a –8 on the same interpersonal morality scale) is to identify a group of people who don’t believe in a certain, totally speculative idea (based on zero data) as being of a lower class than people who gullibly and greedily adopt such beliefs. And a fourth layer of evil (close to a –10 on an interpersonal morality scale that runs from –10 to +10) is Islam’s promotion of Koranic injunctions advocating torture (“<span style="color: red;">smite all their fingertips off</span>”) and death (“<span style="color: red;">smite ye above their necks</span>”) for those who hold their beliefs only as strongly as relevant evidence recommends. Such is one group of evils promoted in Islam; another is:<br />
<i><b><br />
2. Islam’s evil of demanding adherence to dogmatic ignorance.</b></i><br />
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In some respects, this group of evils is similar to the first group addressed above (i.e., believing in the absence of supporting evidence), but as I’ll try to explain, Islam’s demand that Muslims adhere to dogmatic ignorance introduces multiple additional layers of interpersonal immorality. Later in this post, I’ll outline some of these additional evils (out to and including waging incessant and immoral war against “unbelievers” – in Islamic balderdash), but in this section, I want to focus “just” on the evil perpetrated by Islamic clerics against Muslims, demanding that they adhere to Islamic dogma. Thus, although it’s a personal evil to believe more strongly than relevant evidence warrants (perhaps a –9 on a personal morality scale), it’s a case of interpersonal evil (perpetrated by Islamic clerics) to demand that Muslims adhere to Islamic dogma (it’s at least a –9 on an interpersonal morality scale), because it horribly violates what I consider to be the fundamental interpersonal moral good of recognizing that everyone has an equal right to claim one’s own existence.<br />
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The concept of ‘dogma’ is defined as “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” As I’ve repeatedly stated in these posts, the only principle or set of principles that’s “incontrovertibly true” are those dealing with closed systems (such as pure mathematics, games, and all religions). <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">Consequently</a>, the “truths” of any dogma have nothing to do with truth in the real, open-system world, where the most that can be determined (applying the scientific method and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T2_Truth_&_Understanding.pdf">Bayes’ theorem</a>) is the probability that some claim is true. In contrast, it’s incontrovertibly true (choosing examples in specific closed systems) that in poker “a flush always beats a straight” and in baseball that “three strikes and you’re out”, but in reality, it certainly isn’t incontrovertibly true that Moses parted the Reed Sea, Jesus walked on water, or that Gabriel conveyed any message from Allah to Muhammad. Instead, all such religious “truth” is simply dogma, promoted by clerics either from ignorance or for their own parasitic benefits (or both).<br />
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Thanks to the efforts of Humanists (many of whom were murdered by religious fanatics), Judaism and Christianity are now passed their horrible phases of killing people who don’t believe their dogmas. In Islam, however, the standard Sharia-law penalty for not adhering to Islamic dogma is still death. This particularly barbaric law of the Sharia code is the prime reason why Muslims continue to wallow in their version of the Dark Ages: any Muslim who dares to suggest that there’s something wrong with Islam can be (and probably would be) charged with apostasy – and if the religious police don’t enforce the law, Muslim fanatics will (as readers can confirm from thousands of historic and current examples by searching on the internet using “apostasy +Islam”). The following overview is given in the Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam">Apostasy in Islam</a> (omitting references and correcting some punctuation errors):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The traditional view sees that every person who disbelieves something that is “necessarily known to be part of Islam” by Islamic traditional scholars leads to apostasy, for instance, rejecting any sentence of the Quran and the Sunna considered to be “certainly told” by the prophet Mohammad, or considering some secular laws superior to Islamic law… Some contemporary Muslim scholars ascribe additional requirements to disbelief to constitute apostasy, that is, an act against Islam, e.g., joining the enemies who are at war with Muslims, or as in Quran (Q. 5:33), “those who wage war against God and His Apostle”. For those Islamic scholars, however, what constitutes “war against Allah and His Apostle” varies widely. For many of them it can be as simple as declaring disbelief in Islam or explaining their reasons and arguments for that disbelief.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In Islamic law (</span><i style="color: blue;">sharia</i><span style="color: blue;">), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (</span><i style="color: blue;">fiqh</i><span style="color: blue;">), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi’a scholars.</span></blockquote>As an example, the same article translates (from Arabic) the following from the “Online Saudi-Arabian Curriculum”, taught at schools, under the title “Judgments on Apostates”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">An Apostate will be suppressed three days in prison in order that he may repent… otherwise, he should be killed, because he has changed his true religion; therefore, there is no use from his living, regardless of being a man or a woman, as Mohammad said: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him”, narrated by Al-Bukhari…</span></blockquote>For Iran, the founder of the current Islamic Republic, the maniac Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–89), <a href="http://www.iranianatheist.com/2010/07/apostasy-in-iran.html">stated</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">Whoever insults Prophet, whoever insults sacred <i>Imams</i> [preachers], there is an obligation for Muslims to kill him… If anyone ridicules a <i>mullah</i> [scholar], he ridicules Islam. If he does it intentionally (he is sane, not crazy) then he is an innate apostate. His wife is forbidden to him. His possessions must also be given to heirs. He should be killed. </span></blockquote>In Pakistan, similar barbarity is practiced. Of particular interest (as I reviewed in an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X18_EXploiting_Competition.pdf">earlier chapter</a>) is that one of Pakistan’s founding fathers (and one of the most “popular and respected authors in the Islamic domains, if indeed he is not the single most widely read writer among Muslims at the present time”), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_Ala_Maududi">Abul Ala Maududi</a>, attempted to “justify” such blatant barbarity by developing an analogy between punishment for apostasy in Islam with punishment for treason in civilized counties. Thus in his “manifesto” entitled <a href="http://www.answering-islam.org/Hahn/Mawdudi/index.htm"><i>The Punishment of the Apostate According to Islamic Law</i></a>, Mawdudi wrote:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Every person is a natural born citizen of the United States who was born from the children of a citizen, whether he was born inside or outside the United States. And a citizen by choice can be any person, who, after fulfilling some legal conditions, takes an oath of allegiance to the constitution to the United States. Apart from both of these kinds of citizens the remaining people are aliens according to American law. American law distinguishes between citizens’ and aliens’ rights and obligations in the same way that British law distinguishes between subjects’ and aliens’ rights and obligations. An alien is free to become a citizen of the United States after he has fulfilled the legal conditions for citizenship. But after he becomes a citizen he does not have the freedom, while residing within the borders of the United States, to renounce this citizenship and to revert to his previous citizenship. Likewise a born citizen also does not have the right, while in the United States, to choose another nationality and to take an oath of allegiance to another state. Analogously in the United States also the laws of treason and rebellion with reference to citizens rest on the same principles on which the British laws of treason and rebellion are founded.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Consider the law of any nation in the world and you will see the same principles operative, i.e., any state uses force to prevent the disintegration of those elements which unite it and to suppress anything tending to destroy its order…</span></blockquote>Mawdudi’s argument that Islam is thereby considered to be not just a religion but a political ideology is revealing (a topic that I’ll return to later in this post), but his argument that apostasy is therefore equivalent to treason (e.g., in the U.S.) is fatally flawed (in more ways than one). In the U.S. (and similarly in other civilized nations), it’s not treason to think differently and to express one’s opinion. Instead, as stated in the U.S. Constitution (Article III, Section 3)<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #38761d;">Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same </span><i style="color: #38761d;">overt act</i><span style="color: #38761d;"> [italics added] or on confession in open court.</span></blockquote>As I wrote earlier in my book:<br />
<blockquote>In the U.S., it isn’t treason to think, or speak, or petition, or organize demonstrations against the “order” (e.g., to say that the President [Bush] is a nut and his policies are absurd – otherwise, my writings in this book would be treasonous!), but in Pakistan (and in other Islamic nations) it’s “treason” (punishable by death) to speak, or petition, or organize demonstrations against the “order” established by the clerics, which is based on the absurd fairy tale that some giant Jabberwock in the sky controls the universe – and that the madman Muhammad was his messenger!</blockquote>Muslim governments are currently attempting to force such Islamic idiocy on the whole world via a UN resolution prohibiting “blasphemy” (of religious balderdash). In an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/05/un-is-hopeless.html">earlier post</a>, I already ranted against this idiocy. Here, therefore, I’ll repeat only my “bottom line”: the instant that such a resolution passes in the UN (it has already passed in the Muslim-dominated Human Rights Council of the UN) is the same instant that all non-Muslim nations should discontinue their membership in the UN, starting afresh with a new international organization, re-establishing what was good with the current UN, but prohibiting all Muslim nations from joining the new international organization until they become civilized.<br />
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But in that regard and before leaving the evil of demanding belief in dogma, I should at least mention the heroes in Islamic countries who are currently risking their lives – and in many cases, losing their lives – trying to separate religion from politics in their countries. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of such “liberals”, a few of whom I’ve tried to honor in <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/05/some-saudi-odds-ends.html">another post</a>. They are the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov">Andrei Sakharovs</a> of the current age. They deserve our support, of course, but equally obviously, we can’t provide the support they need and deserve, since it would put their lives in even greater jeopardy. When they win (and I have no doubt that eventually they or their successors will wrestle control of their countries from their damnable clerics), the world will finally be able to give them the honor they deserve: with their writings (and more), they are currently fighting tyrannies as bad as the worst of the Catholic tyranny that dragged Europe down into its Dark Ages and held it down for the worst part of 1,000 years, demanding adherence to dogma, under penalty of death.<br />
<br />
<i><b>3. Islam’s evils of violating human rights and advocating hate.</b></i><br />
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It might be thought that the worst evil of any tyranny would be to force people, under penalty of death, to abide by the dogma of the dictator (which, in the case of Islamic theocracies, is the country’s leading cleric), but actually, Islam’s violations of other human rights are even worse, especially for women. I can’t adequately describe all the horrible treatments of Muslim women. What follows is from Chapter Three of <a href="http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/book_on_women.html"><i>Women, Islam & Equality</i></a>, a 1995 publication of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. It focuses on Iran, but similar could be written about essentially all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia. <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The theocracy of the mullahs of Iran, who for 16 years [now, for more than 30 years] have ruled and issued decrees in the name of Islam and the Islamic Republic, is recognized throughout the world as history’s most misogynist regime. For Khomeini and his retinue, gender is the primary distinction. The mullahs’ God, like themselves, is a misogynist torturer, constantly calculating human beings’ sexual offenses. They view woman as the embodiment of sexual desire, the source of sin, and the manifestation of Satan. She must be kept out of the public view at all times, reserving her for use, under the absolute domination of men, for sexual pleasure and reproduction. In this system of values, a woman is never considered a human being, although as a concession, she has been described on a par with children and the mentally imbalanced. At other times, to discredit her views and testimony, she is classified among thieves and “those who wage war on God.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In his most famous book, </span><i style="color: blue;">Tahrir-ol Vasileh </i><span style="color: blue;">(Instrument of Writing), a collection of his views and fatwas, Khomeini carefully degrades women to a level less than that of slaves and bordering on that of animals. In the chapter on cleanliness, he declares women </span><i style="color: blue;">najes</i><span style="color: blue;"> (filthy), meaning that if men need to wash only once to cleanse themselves, women must do so twice. In his view, the multitudes of women who gather for prayers cannot hold collective prayers unless a man leads them. Although Islam emphasizes praying collectively in the mosque, Khomeini recommends that women pray at home, and even there, it is better that they pray in the closet. Women do not have the right to leave home without the permission of their husbands. Men have to provide for their living expenses, but husbands are not required to pay for their wives’ serious illnesses. Denied independent means, the wife must tolerate her condition, and await death.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">From this perspective, everything finds meaning in the context of the wife’s attractiveness. If a woman refrains from creating an environment which provides pleasure to her husband, he has the right to beat her and to add to the beating every day to force the wife into submission. In such a situation, the husband need not even provide for his wife’s expenses. All these affairs are unilateral and are the husband’s prerogative. The wife has but one responsibility: total submission. The husband can divorce his wife in absentia: “In divorce, it is not necessary for the wife to know, let alone agree.” Khomeini has also sanctioned “temporary marriage,” legitimizing prostitution, specifying that a sum be paid to the woman for use of her body. If we add to this collection Khomeini’s fatwa sanctioning the rape of virgin girls before their execution and the fatwa permitting executions of pregnant women, we arrive at a general understanding of the views of the mullahs’ mentor.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">His disciple, Rafsanjani also calls for gender apartheid: “Equality does not take precedence over justice… Justice does not mean that all laws must be the same for men and women. One of the mistakes that Westerners make is to forget this… The difference in the stature, vitality, voice, development, muscular quality and physical strength of men and women shows that men are stronger and more capable in all fields… Men’s brains are larger… These differences affect the delegation of responsibilities, duties and rights.” Rafsanjani describes an equitable division of labor as follows: “Women are consumers, but men are to manage…” Even in the home, he does not accept women as managers: “Running the affairs of the household and financial matters are the responsibility of the husband.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The </span><i style="color: blue;">Majlis</i><span style="color: blue;"> [deputies] have similar views. They believe, for example: “Women must be kept unaware… Women must accept that men rule over them. The world must also realize that men are superior.” The head of the regime’s Judiciary says: “Your wife, who is your possession, is in fact your slave.”</span></blockquote>Women, however, aren’t the only targets of the hate preached by Muslim clerics. In fact, they stimulate even more hate for <i>kafirs</i> (i.e., unbelievers), for whom they advocate death. Exactly whom they threaten to kill is described as follows in an important article entitled “<a href="http://opposemosqueatgroundzero.wordpress.com/islam-stats/">Statistical Islam</a>” written by Bruce Warner:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">There is a second division that overwhelms the reader of the historical Koran</span> [the first division being between the Medina verses (36%) and the Mecca verses (64%)]<span style="color: blue;">. A majority of the text concerns the </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><i style="color: blue;"> </i><span style="color: blue;">(unbeliever); it’s not about being a Muslim, but about the </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;">. A note: most Koran translations use the word “unbeliever” instead of </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;">, but </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> is the actual Arabic word.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">This term is so important and so unknown that the meaning of </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> must be defined. The original meaning of the word is one who covers or conceals the known truth. A </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> knows that the Koran is true</span> [cough, cough]<span style="color: blue;">, but denies it. The Koran says that the </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> may be deceived, plotted against, hated, enslaved, mocked, tortured and worse. The word is usually translated as “unbeliever” but this translation is wrong. The word “unbeliever” is logically and emotionally neutral, whereas, </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> is the most abusive, prejudiced and hateful word in any language.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">There are many religious names for </span><i style="color: blue;">kafirs</i><span style="color: blue;">: polytheists, idolaters, People of the Book (Christians and Jews), atheists, agnostics, and pagans. </span><i style="color: blue;">Kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> covers them all, because no matter what the religious name is, they can all be treated the same. What Mohammad said and did to polytheists can be done to any other category of </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;">.</span></blockquote>Typical of the Koran’s recommended treatment of <i>kafirs</i> is: <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">I [Allah] will instill terror into the hearts of the kafirs: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them. (Q.8:12)</span></blockquote>The Koran is therefore “hate literature”, as defined by most civilized countries.<br />
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4. Islam’s evil psychological manipulations of “true believers”.</b></i><br />
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If one asks how Islam can stimulate so much hate in Muslims, brief answers usually include indoctrination of children and the fear and greed of adults. But to understand how the minds of most Muslims have been so badly corrupted (a corruption caused by clerics, families, and by patriarchal, tribal Muslim cultures), one needs to dig into details of the horrible psychological manipulations and resulting personality distortions of the poor Muslim people. In a single post, however, it’s impossible to treat the subject in depth – especially for someone (such as I) who isn’t trained in psychology. Therefore, below I’ll provide just a few quotations and references associated with the indicated subtitles, which for lack of an obvious alternative, I’ll generally arrange in the same order as experienced by Muslims during their lives.<br />
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<i>4.1 Mistreatment of Infants </i><br />
To gain some appreciation for Islam’s psychological distortions, I encourage interested readers to peruse the series of 15 posts entitled “<a href="http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/the_arab_mind/index.html">The Arab Mind</a>” at the blog <i>ShrinkWrapped, A Psychoanalyst Attempts to Understand the World.</i> In Part II of his series, adult consequences of differences in parental treatments of male vs. female infants are detailed, including the following.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Arab boys are typically breast fed for 2 to 3 years, while girls are weaned after only 1 year. There are complicated reasons for this including the folk mores that support pampering the nursing infant and the belief (which has some truth to it) that the mother will become pregnant more easily (in order to have a son) after the infant is weaned. [As the psychologist Lloyd deMause </span><a href="http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln03_terrorism.html" style="color: blue;">relays</a><span style="color: blue;">, it’s common in Muslim families that: “When a boy is born, the family rejoices; when a girl is born, the whole family mourns.”]</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Arab mothers practice demand feeding. The girl is thus weaned well before the development of significant language and once weaned, her needs are relatively neglected. The young boy, on the other hand, continues nursing until long after the establishment of language. He is able to verbalize his desires and is instantly gratified when he desires the breast, which comforts and arouses as well as nourishes. As per Patai (p. 33) [Raphael Patai, author of the book </span><i style="color: blue;">The Arab Mind</i><span style="color: blue;">]:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">“... the verbalization of the one major childhood desire, that for the mother’s breast, is followed, in most cases at least, by instant gratification. And, what is psychologically equally important, the emphatic verbal formulation of the wish carries in itself, almost automatically, the guarantee of its fulfillment without the need for any additional action on the part of the child. This experience, repeated several times a day for a number of months, cannot fail to leave a lasting impression on the psyche of the boy child. It may not be too far-fetched to seek a connection between this situation in childhood and a characteristic trait of the adult Arab personality that has frequently been observed and commented upon: the proclivity for making an emphatic verbal statement of intention and then failing to follow it up with any action that could lead to its realization. It would seem that – at least in certain contexts and moods – stating an intention or wish in itself provides a psychological satisfaction which actually can become a deterrent to undertaking the action that is averred.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In addition, we now know that insufficient frustration in early life, i.e., imperfect and occasionally delayed gratification, is an essential component of a healthy character. Children who receive too much gratification, just as those who receive insufficient gratification in early life, are prone to developing narcissistic and borderline character traits, such as, among others, poor frustration tolerance, poor affect control, and over-reliance on the environment to help regulate internal mood states.</span></blockquote>In Part IX of his series, the author adds:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The young boy who is always gratified does not develop the necessary ability to tolerate reasonable frustration; at the same time he develops an exaggerated sense of self, a grandiose self. The young girl who is deprived of gratification develops a deeply impaired and damaged self, what has been called in its extreme form “soul murder” and what in more attenuated forms can evidence as poor self-esteem. In the cases of extreme gratification and extreme deprivation, the parent responds to personal designs and needs as opposed to the Western ideal of responding to the child’s infantile needs. Such needs include a deft dosage of deprivation and a reasonable amount of gratification; at the extremes, narcissistic vulnerability is the result.</span></blockquote><i>4.2 Emotional Distortions</i><br />
For those readers familiar with the emotional phases through which most Western children evolve to reach adulthood (e.g., Erikson’s model of psychosocial development), the inhibitions to which most Muslim children are subjected are shocking. In general, as <a href="http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htm">described</a> by Arlene F. Harder:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Our personality traits come in opposites. We think of ourselves as optimistic or pessimistic, independent or dependent, emotional or unemotional, adventurous or cautious, leader or follower, aggressive or passive. Many of these are inborn temperament traits, but other characteristics, such as feeling either competent or inferior, appear to be learned, based on the challenges and support we receive in growing up.</span></blockquote>For Muslim children, the challenges (in particular, mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuses) are so formidable and the lack of parental support experienced by both girls and boys is usually so glaring that I expect most psychologists would be astounded if any Muslim ever reaches emotional adulthood.<br />
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I’m incompetent to provide a full description. I’d encourage interested readers to study the already referenced articles by “ShrinkWrapped” about the Arab Mind and then compare his descriptions with that of Erikson’s insights as given by the psychologist <a href="http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/erikson.html">George Boeree</a>. From that comparison, I suspect readers will agree that, in every one of Erikson’s “eight learning phases”, Muslim children suffer severe maladaptations: in the “trust vs. distrust” phase of infants and the “autonomy vs. shame and doubt” phase of toddlers, boys are pushed to one extreme (too trusting and too much autonomy) while girls are pushed to the other extreme; in childhood and adolescent years, especially because of authoritarian fathers, boys are again pushed to one extreme and girls to the other extreme of the ranges of “initiative vs. guilt”, “inferiority vs. industry”, and “identify vs. role confusion”, a common manifestation of which is fanaticism; as a result, it’s common to find most adult Muslims in the final three phases identified by Erickson (“intimacy vs. isolation”, “generativity vs. stagnation”, and “integrity vs. despair”) trapped in states of isolation, stagnation, and despair – leading many Muslims to become terrorists.<br />
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<i>4.3 Sexual Abuse</i> <br />
As bad as are the physical, mental, and emotional abuses of Muslim children, their sexual abuse is even worse: it’s rampant. It’s a combination of physical, mental, and emotional abuses. Further, their sexual abuse is essentially continuous, starting when children are infants and continuing until especially the abused males are sufficiently mature sexually to start abusing younger children.<br />
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It’s difficult to obtain reliable statistics about the extent of sexual abuse of any group of children. In his online book <a href="http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln05_psychogenic.html">The Emotional Life of Nations</a> Lloyd deMause provides evidence suggesting that approximately 50% of even Western children are sexually abused (e.g., about 60% of all North American girls and 45% of all North American boys); reliable data for the Near and Far East don’t exist; I expect that essentially all children in these areas are sexually abused. DeMause concludes: “children who had not been sexually molested by their caretakers were a recent historical achievement, experienced by only a minority of children in a few places in the world.”<br />
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In Muslim countries, sexual abuse of children starts when they are infants, by parents (and others) massaging the infant’s genitals “to quieten them”, “to make them sleep”, or in the case of boys, “to make their penises grow longer”. As toddlers, children are used essentially as sex toys by both men and women. In later years, boys suffer painful circumcisions, a terrible number of girls are forced to have horrible, criminal, beastly genital mutilations, men use children for oral, anal, and vaginal sex (many apparently preferring to have sex with children rather than with women), many boys are forced into the street to earn money for the family as prostitutes, and a horrible number of girls are sold by their families like cattle. In his referenced book, deMause describes some of the physiological, psychological, and social consequences of such childhood trauma. As a result: “When these abused children grow up, they feel that every time they try to self-activate, every time they do something independently for themselves, they will lose the approval of the parents in their head.” They’re then ripe for picking by clerics, to use as pawns in clerical “holy wars”, so the clerics can continue their parasitic existences.<br />
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Illustrative are the <a href="http://www.homa.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56&Itemid=53">abhorrent teachings</a> of the founder of Iran’s current Islamic theocracy, the damnable Ayatollah Khomeini:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine; other sexual act such as foreplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged.</span></blockquote>And thus the monster Khomeini sanctioned and <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/videos-features/khomeini-sexually-assaulting-crying-and-screaming-4-year-old-girl-with-parental-consent/">practiced</a> the depth of interpersonal immorality: not just to use others as means to one’s own ends, but to use little girls (even infant girls!) for one’s sexual gratification. <br />
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<i>4.4 Maligning Individualism </i><br />
The purpose of a major portion of the brainwashing of Muslim children, by clerics and by parents (who were similarly brainwashed when they were children), is to subsume their individualism, replacing it with membership in the Islamic collective, called the <i>ummah</i> (which, for Star Trek fans, is similar to the Borg). In his 1951 book <i>The True Believer</i>, the American “longshoreman-philosopher” Eric Hoffer clearly saw the general mechanism and its operation:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Self-surrender, which is the source of a mass movements unity and vigor, is a sacrifice… To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, Ivan, or Tadao – a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses that made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding them and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant whole.</span></blockquote>In the case of Muslims, the “exultant whole” is the <i>ummah</i>, and the Koran tells them: <span style="color: red;">“You [Muslims] are the best of peoples” (Q.3:110)</span>. The Koran further states (as Ibn Warraq summarizes in his excellent article entitled “<a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=3766&sec_id=3766">Islam, Middle East and Fascism</a>”):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Islam is the most perfect of religion, and Muslims are the chosen people, as sura v.3 tells us: </span><span style="color: red;">“This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor to you and chosen for you Islam as a religion.”</span> <span style="color: blue;">Islam is destined to triumph ultimately, sura ix.33:</span> <span style="color: red;"> “He it is Who sent His Messenger with guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religions, though the polytheists are averse”</span> <span style="color: blue;">(see also xlviii.28; lxi.9). </span></blockquote>Star Trek’s Borg said: “You will be assimilated; resistance is futile.” Muslims say similar. In the end, though, freedom will prevail over such evil.<br />
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<i>4.5 Indoctrination in ignorance</i><br />
I have already devoted a section in this post to “Islam’s evil of demanding adherence to dogmatic ignorance”, but here, I should at least mention some evil consequences of such psychological manipulations of the people by Muslim clerics, called <i>mullahs</i> (“scholars”) and <i>imams</i> (preachers). Important details are given in the recent article entitled “<a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/op-ed/islam-the-mental-immune-system/">Islam & the Mental Immune System</a>” by Amil Imani and Wafa Sultan. An excerpt follows.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Muslims living in theocratic states, in particular, tend to be victims of their religious brains: their religious brains are indoctrinated, from the moment of birth, by an extensive ruthless in-power cadre of self-serving mullahs and imams who are intent at maintaining their stranglehold on the rank and file of the faithful – their very source of support and livelihood… The mullahs and imams, as well as parents and others, envelop the receptive mind, feed it their dogma, and shield it from information that may undermine or falsify their version of belief… [And], for as long as there are bigoted, self-serving clergy and their collaborators with first exclusive access to the blank slate, the problem of supplying wave after wave of Islamofascists will persist. It is the brain/mind that assesses things, makes decisions, and orders actions. To the extent that the in-place software of the religious brain is exclusionary in nature, hateful in orientation, and violent in tendency, to that extent the individual is both the perpetrator and the victim of barbaric acts.</span></blockquote>Thus, by indoctrinating the people in Islamic ignorance, Muslim clerics mass-produce mindless automatons, willing and even eager to protect their evil, parasitic, clerical masters.<br />
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<i>4.6 Mental Submission/ Slavery</i><br />
For Muslim children to reject their individuality and to accept clerical dogma as true, their natural inquisitiveness must be suppressed. To do so, Muslim clerics promote the evil of discouraging and even prohibiting free inquiry and critical thinking, since such would lead to questioning Islam’s “sacred literature”. As Muhammad allegedly (and stupidly) <a href="http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/mehat/past_conferences/Masid.pdf">said</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">Any change is considered innovation (in Arabic, <i>bid’a</i>), and innovation is errant behavior (<i>dalala</i>).</blockquote>The result is mental submission – even, mental slavery. As an otherwise almost trivial example, five times a day, Muslims must repeatedly bow so low and so fervently to their imaginary master (Allah) that the foreheads of many become permanently bruised. More significantly, hundreds of times a day Muslims will think or say <i>inshallah</i> (“if god wills it”) to acknowledge that they are their imaginary master’s (Allah’s) slaves. In fact, the word ‘Islam’, itself, means ‘submission’ (to the Muslims’ imaginary master, Allah).<br />
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Cowered into submission to Allah (i.e., in reality, to the clerics), Muslims are ripe for submission, also, to political despots. As a result, Muslims become slaves of both clerics and politicians, who in all Muslim countries are in collusion. As the psychologist Wafa Sultan (who lived in Syria for her first three decades and who is now living in the U.S., but is under daily death-threats from Muslim fanatics) wrote in her 2009 book <i>A God Who Hates</i> (reviewed, e.g., <a href="http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4385">here</a>):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Never in the history of Islam has a Muslim cleric protested against the actions of a Muslim ruler, because of the total belief that obedience to the ruler is an extension of obedience toward God and his Prophet. There is only one exception to this: a Muslim cleric of one denomination may protest against the actions of a ruler who belongs to a different one. How can a Muslim escape the grasp of his ruler when he is completely convinced of the necessity of obeying him? How can he protest against this obedience, which represents obedience to his Prophet and therefore also to his God? He cannot. Islam is indeed a despotic regime. It has been so since its inception, and remains so today. Is there a relationship more representative of the ugliest forms of slavery than that between a ruler and a populace whom he flogs and whose money he steals while they themselves have no right to protest against this behavior? The ruler acts by divine decree, and the people obey him by divine decree.</span></blockquote>Thus, just as in Christendom during the Dark Ages of Europe, today in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Muslim dictatorships, the collusion between Islamic clerics and politicians uses the people as mere pawns, behavior that again is at the lower limit of interpersonal immorality.<br />
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4.7 Promotion of Barbaric Morality</i><br />
Oppression from Islam’s pyramid of power (starting at the top with an all-powerful god – who in reality is, of course, nothing but a manipulative tool of clerical and political despots) continues on down from Muslim men to Muslim women (as I already outlined in the previous section, dealing with violating human rights). And as in the classic sadistic skit in which the boss berates the husband, who goes home and criticizes his wife, who scolds the boy, who beats the dog, who chases the cat, who kills the mouse… many Muslim mothers turn the lives of their daughters and daughters-in-law into hell, many of whom chose suicide – in some cases taking with them the lives of the horrible unbelievers (<i>kafirs</i>), who Islamic indoctrination teaches are the scum of the earth. Islam is thus a power pyramid built with fear above and hate below, relying on the overriding law of the jungle, might makes right. <br />
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Many examples of the resulting barbaric morality are available, but here I’ll mention only the horrible concept of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing">honor killings</a>” of Muslim women, which is a part of the primitive, tribal “honor system” of most Islamic cultures. As already mentioned, as a result of the poor training by their mothers and their beatings and rapes by those in authority, the majority of Muslim males fail to become individuals. Instead, most consider themselves as just “part of the collective” (be it the family, the tribe, or the <i>ummah</i>); as a result, collective ‘honor’ dominates, while individual honor is not only unknown but even unfathomable. Similar occurred among ancient tribal cultures, including the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, and early Romans. <br />
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As described in detail by others, the <a href="http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/08/shame-arab-psyche-and-islam.html">result</a> is not the familiar (individualistic) “guilt culture” of the West, but instead, most Muslim cultures are (communal) “<a href="http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/shame_guilt.htm">shame cultures</a>”. In such cultures, your immorality is not judged by your recognizing that you erred, but by others deciding that you (or something you possess) erred. And since in Muslim cultures men own women, then if the community gains the impression that a woman has done something wrong, it’s not her individual guilt that's recognized as significant, but the shame she has brought to her owner. Human Rights Watch <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Watch">states</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce – even from an abusive husband – or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a way that “dishonors” her family is sufficient to trigger an attack on her life.</span></blockquote>As a result, men kill their woman accused of shaming their “owners” – and thereby, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing">approximately</a> 5,000 such “honor killings” are estimated to occur annually throughout the Muslim world. How many women are beaten is unknown, but almost certainly it’s ubiquitous, since the Koran (Q.4:34) <a href="http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-wife-beating-koran-4-34.htm">condones wife beating</a>.<br />
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<i>4.8 Malignant Sexuality</i><br />
But of all Islam’s psychological manipulations and distortions and associated evils, none is worse than Islam’s malignant manipulations of human sexuality. I’ve already mentioned sexual abuse of infants and children, which are manifestations of Islam’s wretched distortions of the sexuality of men (and women). For example, not only is the Koran misogynistic (e.g., see Suras 4.3, 4.11, and 4.34), Muhammad reportedly made such hideous statements as the <a href="http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/mehat/past_conferences/Masid.pdf">following</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">• Women are deficient in intelligence and in religion.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Never will succeed such a nation as makes a woman their ruler.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Ask the opinion of your wives, but always do the opposite. </span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• After my disappearance there will be no greater source of chaos and disorder for my nation than women.</span></blockquote>Examples of resulting, malignant Islamic laws dealing with human sexuality include the following, copied from Gadi Adelman’s article <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/op-ed/discussing-islam-a-losing-battle/">Discussing Islam</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law allows obligatory female genital castration.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law allows husbands to hit their wives.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law requires women to obtain permission from husbands for daily freedoms, such as leaving the house unescorted by a male family member.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law instructs compulsory acceptance of polygamy and forced child marriages.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law requires the testimony of four male witnesses to prove rape.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law commands that homosexuals be executed.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">• Sharia law orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.</span></blockquote>Now, there’s “no way” that I can provide even adequate references to the enormous problems caused by Muhammad’s idiotic ideas about women and sex. Below is just a single example. It’s from a 6 August 2010 symposium on “Islam’s War on Women’s Pleasure”, as <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/08/06/symposium-islam%E2%80%99s-war-on-women%E2%80%99s-sexual-pleasure/">reported</a> by Dr. Jamie Glazov. The comments below are statements by Dr. Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">My findings are that growing up in the Muslim cultures is psychologically unhealthy on numerous realms. The positive attitude towards anger and the narcissistic concept of honor prevents many Muslims from maturing as human beings. Together with the racist and aggressive attitude towards non-Muslims, a strong identification with the Muslim umma and favoring of Middle Age religious dogmas at the expense of common sense, human rights and science, the Muslim mentality makes it impossible for most Muslims to integrate into our democratic, secular and civilized Western culture. Not only that: it makes Muslims into less happy and mentally healthy people. No wonder that the core of such a culture is based on the repression of sexuality and female qualities.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">There is no doubt that Muslim men’s negative view on women has a high price not only for the women but also for the men and Muslim culture in general. We men receive a long row of qualities when we open up to women: empathy, the ability to function in groups without creating hierarchies, and more mature ways of experiencing and expressing our emotions – these are among the most important…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The wish to bring happiness to one’s partner – especially sexual happiness –</span><i style="color: blue;"> is fundamental for being able to experience and express love.</i><span style="color: blue;"> Men who do not have this wish will be cut off from the maturing experience of learning from the kind of wisdom and emotional life that only women express fully. This leaves men less mature and less happy. The point is that the more you give, the more you get – on all levels. Men who joyfully see themselves as a source of bliss, satisfaction, and happiness to their female partner have found the key to their own human growth and a successful relationship.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Since Islam and the Muslim culture prevent men and women from freely meeting as equal partners, Muslims are cut off from this important cause of happiness and maturity. The result is the childish fanaticism and immature ways of handling emotions that clearly characterize Muslim societies. The propagation of the Islamic scriptures and Muslim males’ suppression of women and their ignoring of female qualities and need for happiness is the main cause for the suffering and hate in Islamic societies. That terrorism arises is no surprise.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The suppression of women in Islam and Muslim culture is an effective tool in keeping its propagators aggressive and emotionally cold towards their infidel victims. If we manage to liberate the Muslim women, we have Islam cornered and removed its corner teeth…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The question is: Why are Muslim men so vulnerable? How did Muslim men end up on such a fragile pedestal? The answer is that Islam and Muslim culture depend on male aggression and needs to suppress female sensitivity. The reason for this is that this culture is aiming on conquering and domination. In such a culture, female softness and empathy would be distracting and a hurdle. In such a culture, men are simply worth more than women. This is the reason that Muslim boys are treated as kings from birth and therefore develop a fragile glass-like personality that is unable to handle defeat, inferiority, and criticism.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I am sure that Dr. Kobrin and Dr. Gutmann are right about Israel: It is an unwelcome showcase in the Middle East that risks tempting the area’s Muslim women by promoting gender equality, human rights, and freedom. This of course provokes the insecure Muslim men and contributes to their hate and wish for destruction of Israel and Western civilization in general. The hate of women is in this way is very closely connected with Islam’s wish for destruction of the free world.</span></blockquote>Actually, though, there’s probably more (than misogyny) to “Islam’s wish for destruction of the free world” (dealing with desires of Muslim’s to “cleanse their sins”, “uphold their honor”, and “punish evil”), as I’ll try to outline in the next two subsections.<br />
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<i>4.9 Philosophical Evils</i><br />
As a result of Muslims’ indoctrination in ignorance, their outlook on life is essentially unanimously perverted, leading them to erroneously conclude that their purpose in life is to placate Allah (rather than, e.g., “to help intelligence go on”), that life is a test (rather than “a happening to experience”), and therefore, that they are Allah’s slaves. Consistent with being Allah’s slaves, Muslims adopt a horrible fatalism (<i>inshallah</i> = “if Allah wills it”), and consistent with all such philosophical errors (and evils), Muslims become trapped in a horrible Catch-22: forbidden to question their indoctrination, they’re trapped into the mind-numbing (and immoral) requirement that they uncritically accept Islamic dogma. <br />
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An example of such a distorted view of the purpose of life is the following statement by “the philosophical father” of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden’s <i>al Qaeda</i>, i.e., <a href="http://members.cox.net/slsturgi3/PhilosopherOfIslamicTerror.htm">Sayyid Qutb</a> (pronounced KUH-tahb). His writings have been <a href="http://www.gloria-center.org/meria/2003/12/paz.pdf">described</a> “as significant [to Islamic supremacism] as Lenin was to Communism.” In his book I<i>n the Shade of the Qur’an</i>, written while he was in an Egyptian prison between 1954 and the year of his execution, 1966, Qutb wrote:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">To live “in the shade of the Qur’an” is a great blessing which can only be fully appreciated by those who experience it. It is a rich experience that gives meaning to life and makes it worth living. I am deeply thankful to God Almighty for blessing me with this uplifting experience for a considerable time, which was the happiest and most fruitful period of my life – a privilege for which I am eternally grateful.</span></blockquote>Actually, though, I could agree with part of what Qutb wrote: living “in the shade of the Qur’an” can give “meaning to life” and make life “worth living” (for those who don’t have the smarts to decide, by themselves, on the meaning and purpose of their own lives). To follow the path (<i>sharia</i>) blazed by the megalomaniacal narcissist Muhammad, however, is not a “blessing”; it’s a curse. Many Nazis and Communists apparently similarly “thought” that following Hitler and Lenin gave “meaning to life” and made their life “worth living”, but in the judgment of most of us, they were bonkers.<br />
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The resulting horrible fatalism, adopted by essentially all Muslims, is prescribed in the Koran:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">If Allah afflicts you with some hurt, there is no one who can remove it except Him; and if He desires good for you, there is no one who can repel His bounty. He strikes with it whom He wishes of his servants. [Q.10:107]</span></blockquote>The consequences of such fatalism were described well in a recent <a href="http://www.muslimsdebate.com/search_result.php?news_id=4399">article</a> by the brave Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is trying to have the Koran classified in Holland as hate literature and who therefore lives under constant threats of being murdered by Muslim maniacs. Some excerpts from his article follow, in which he quotes Winston Churchill and Aldous Huxley.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">In the late 1890s, Winston Churchill was a soldier and a war correspondent in British India (contemporary Pakistan) and the Sudan. Churchill was a perceptive young man, whose months in Pakistan and the Sudan allowed him to grasp with amazing clarity what the problem is with Islam and “the curses it lays on its votaries.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">“Besides the fanatical frenzy… there is this fearful fatalistic apathy,” he wrote. “The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist where the followers of the Prophet rule or live… The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to a sole man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men… Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.” And Churchill concluded: “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world…”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The author Aldous Huxley, who lived in North Africa in the 1920s, made the following observation: “About the immediate causes of things – precisely how they happen – they [Muslims] seem to feel not the slightest interest. Indeed, it is not even admitted that there are such things as immediate causes: God is directly responsible for everything. ‘Do you think it will rain?’ you ask pointing to menacing clouds overhead. ‘If God wills,’ is the answer. You pass the native hospital. ‘Are the doctors good?’ ‘In our country,’ the Arab gravely replies, in the tone of Solomon, ‘we say that doctors are of no avail. If Allah wills that a man die, he will die. If not, he will recover.’ All of which is profoundly true, so true, indeed, that is not worth saying. To the Arab, however, it seems the last word in human wisdom… They have relapsed – all except those who are educated according to Western methods – into pre-scientific fatalism, with its attendant incuriosity and apathy.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Islam deprives Muslims of their freedom. That is a shame, because free people are capable of great things, as history has shown. The Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Indian, Indonesian peoples have tremendous potential. If they were not captives of Islam, if they could liberate themselves from the yoke of Islam, if they would cease to take Muhammad as a role model and if they got rid of the evil Koran, they would be able to achieve great things which would benefit not only them but the entire world.</span></blockquote>Even worse for the entire world than Islamic fatalism, however, is that Muhammad managed to infect the minds of his followers with a twisted and evil “death wish”, which I’ll address, below, in a separate subsection.<br />
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<i>4.10 Martyrdom </i><br />
As with essentially all of Muhammad’s ideas, his idea of martyrdom wasn’t new: for example and as I reviewed in earlier posts in this series, Socrates accepted his execution to uphold his honor and Athenian law, Jewish martyrs willingly went to their deaths during the Maccabean Revolt against the Greek rulers, and maniacal Christian martyrs behaved similarly during Roman persecution. Muhammad, however, managed to push martyrdom one (evil) step further: whereas his goal was to conquer, he promised his “holy warriors” (<i>mujahideen</i>) instant access to paradise not just for death during Islam’s defense but also during offense. As Fjordman recently explained in his <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/op-ed/why-muslims-like-plato/">article</a> entitled “Why Muslims like Plato?”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The image of Socrates as a martyr who died for his beliefs might make sense to Christians, but less so to Muslims. This is because a Muslim <i>shahid</i>, a term often translated as </span><span style="color: blue;">‘</span><span style="color: blue;">martyr</span><span style="color: blue;">’</span><span style="color: blue;">, is not a person who dies for his beliefs but rather one who murders others for their beliefs and himself dies in the process, for example by blowing up a bus full of unarmed non-Muslim civilians. According to such an Islamic worldview, Socrates was a weakling and a failure.</span></blockquote>An illustrative analysis of the resulting Muslim mindset is the following quotation from an <a href="http://primal-page.com/olsson.htm">article</a> entitled “Group Death Myths in Terror Cult Groups”, which was published in the Winter 2007 issue of <i>The Journal of Psychohistory.</i> The article was written by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Peter Olsson, author of <i>Malignant Pied Pipers of our Time.</i><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The terrifying psychological link between destructive and apocalyptic cults and Bin Laden’s terror cult lies in their total and massive denial of death… These destructive cult leaders project their inner, unresolved narcissistic wounds and attendant rage onto and into their cult followers and subsequently anyone who disagrees with their narrow fundamentalist worldview. The terror cult death myths serve to promote acted-out murderous or suicidal urges upon the “Evil” they perceive in the external world. Bin Laden grandiosely defines t</span><span style="color: blue;">he </span><span style="color: blue;">“</span><span style="color: blue;">West</span><span style="color: blue;">”</span><span style="color: blue;"> and U.S. as evil infidels.</span></blockquote>This “denial of death” or “death wish” is as old as Islam. <a href="http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200405240846.asp">For example</a>, the commander of Muslim forces at the Battle of Qadisiyya in the year 663 sent the following message to the commander of the Persians:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">You… should convert to Islam, and then you will be safe, for if you don’t, you should know that I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life.</span></blockquote>According to the same reference, a few years ago, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, parroted:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">We are going to win, because they love life and we love death. </span></blockquote>Similarly, the al-Qaeda spokesman claiming responsibility for the 2004 Madrid bombing re-parroted:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">You love life and we love death, which gives an example of what the Prophet Muhammad said.</span></blockquote>Of course, in reality, such maniacs don’t “love death”, because obviously, they don’t know (and can’t know) death. Instead, what they love is the images of paradise that Islam has implanted in their brainwashed (or better, “brain-warped”) minds. <br />
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The resulting warped mindset of Muslim maniacs is illustrated in the following quotation from the 11 August 2010 <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/11/expose-ji-crown-prince-abdul-rohim-sees-violent-jihad-inevitable.html">article</a> by Hasyim Widhiarto in <i>The Jakarta Post</i> entitled “JI [Jamaah Islamiyah] crown prince Abdul Rohim sees violent jihad as inevitable”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">The youngest son of firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, Abdul Rohim, 31, is tipped by many to become the future leader of the </span><i style="color: blue;">jihadist</i><span style="color: blue;"> movement in Indonesia. The young and energetic father of three daughters talked with The Jakarta Post’s Hasyim Widhiarto several days before the police arrested Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of the </span><i style="color: blue;">Jamaah Islamiyah</i><span style="color: blue;">. Here is an excerpt of the interview…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">“So it’s obvious to see many Muslims who feel satisfied with the government as long as they are allowed to build mosques, run daily prayers, and fast during Ramadan. But Islam is not as simple as that. It is true that all Muslims must adhere to all five pillars of Islamic principles. But like a house, Islam cannot stand with only pillars. It needs walls, a roof, paint, and other things to be complete. That’s why a Muslim must always refer to the Koran and the deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“People may say that some Islamic law, like cutting off hands and </span><i style="color: purple;">rajam</i><span style="color: purple;"> (stoning to death), are cruel, but that is what the Koran says. No matter how bad the laws are, they are undoubtedly the laws of Allah.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“Once the entire Islamic law is upheld, it will bring mankind into a happy and orderly life, which cannot be achieved with any man-made laws…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">“For us, the implementation of </span><i style="color: purple;">sharia</i><span style="color: purple;"> is our final goal. It’s because once you declare your </span><i style="color: purple;">syahadat</i><span style="color: purple;"> creed [i.e., that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger], you must apply Islamic teachings entirely and not partially. Of course, we cannot ask Osama (bin Laden) to come to Indonesia and implement </span><i style="color: purple;">sharia</i><span style="color: purple;"> here. It is our obligation to do that and Allah will ask your responsibility in the afterlife.”</span></blockquote>The above quotation reveals this maniac’s mindset: his statement “No matter how bad the <i>[sharia]</i> laws are, they are undoubtedly the laws of Allah” reveals that he’s lost his natural sense of morality and justice, his statement “Once the entire Islamic law is upheld, it will bring mankind into a happy and orderly life, which cannot be achieved with any man-made laws” reveals that he’s lost his ability to think rationally, and his statement “It is our obligation to do that and Allah will ask your responsibility in the afterlife” reveals his suppressed fear, possibility derived from his father having beaten Islam into him. I find it stunning to realize that a human can so completely abandon his humanity and become an automaton.<br />
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A huge amount can be written (and has been written) on the warped mindsets of terrorists. Here, I’ll provide just a single additional example. The following is also from the <a href="http://primal-page.com/olsson.htm">article</a>, quoted above, by Peter Olsson, an article that I recommend be read in its entirety.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Terrorist Bin Laden of 9-11-01 infamy, shows a frighteningly similar pattern to Malignant Cult Leaders. Disappointment in his wealthy hypocritical Saudi father who had 50+ children, died young, and left them all alone, is a powerful dynamic. Osama’s father though espousing strict Islamism (Wahabbism) had, like other Saudi father-figures, prospered while the poor Saudi masses were suppressed. Osama bin Laden is the ultimate example of repressed adolescent rebellion finally run wild and out of control. Osama bin Laden searched for stronger radical Islamic father figures. Azzam of Afghanistan and Turabi of Sudan filled the bill according to Bodansky (1999). Bin Laden now leads his adoring cult of Islamofascist adolescent rebels, into the Holy Terror War of WWIII.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">In essence, bin Laden acts-out his narcissistic rage and inner disappointments out across the entire world. America becomes another hated father and authority figure. Bin Laden’s relentless Holy War of Apocalypse dwarfs Waco, Jonestown, and Asahara’s Tokyo gas attack (Van Beima, 1995). Each of these apocalyptic cult leaders created and then projected external dangers and evils (really their own inner demons and self-hate) to justify suicidal or homicidal death rituals for their cults.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Charismatic Apocalyptic Cult leaders, in their denial, rebellion and acting out, try to hide the evidence of their inner narcissistic wounds. They act-out their inner disappointments by leading their adoring followers and then innocent victims to their deaths. They may be legends in their own mind, but they really are the ultimate deniers of death.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">It is important for all thinking, independent, freedom-loving, and personally responsible people to be aware of the chicanery of malignant cult leaders. WWIII is ultimately a battle for the civilized Mind and Soul. Bin Laden’s self-proclaimed Jihad is as flawed as our Bush administrations’ notion of “Preemptive War”. Hopefully, there will be a victory of inner responsibility and altruistic leadership, over the tendency to externalize, project, and act-out hatred and narcissistic rage.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: blue;">DeMause (2006, pp. 305-307) points to a hopeful and positive solution to the terrorism problem. He describes a proposed UN-sponsored Marshall Plan designed to reduce the abusive childrearing that is creating the terrorists. DeMause describes Robert McFarland’s 23-year-old Community Parenting Program in Boulder Colorado, the Home Visiting Program run by the state of Colorado, and Margaret R. Kind M.D.’s program in New York City. DeMause says of these remarkable programs and I concur:</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: #3d85c6;">“I have found during my four decades of research – child abuse and neglect are the central causes of wars, terrorism and social violence, and prevention of terrorism can only be accomplished by helping the family to be more loving, more nurturing and more respectful of their children’s independence.”</span></blockquote><i><b>5. Islam’s evil of waging incessant, immoral war against “unbelievers”.</b></i><br />
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That Islam promotes incessant war against “unbelievers” (in their balderdash) is prescribed in many verses of the Koran, e.g., Sura 9, 29 states: <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.</span></blockquote>If you don’t want to be a <i>dhimmi</i> (i.e., in “a state of subjection”) and if you feel the above Koran declaration of war and subjugation violates reasonable statements of interpersonal morality (such as “everyone has an equal right to claim one’s own existence”), then welcome to the civilized, secular world.<br />
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That Islam’s declared, incessant war on unbelievers (in their balderdash) is immoral (not only because of its goal and its conduct but also because it’s unprovoked) is described well in the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war">article</a> by Raymond Ibrahim entitled “How <i>Taqiyya</i> Alters Islam’s Rules of War” and published in the Winter 2010 issue (Vol. XVII, No. 1, pp. 3–13) of <i>The Middle East Quarterly</i> (quoted below with his references omitted):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">That Islam legitimizes deceit [</span><i style="color: blue;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: blue;">] during war is, of course, not all that astonishing; after all, as the Elizabethan writer John Lyly put it, “All’s fair in love and war.” Other non-Muslim philosophers and strategists – such as Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes – justified deceit in warfare. Deception of the enemy during war is only common sense. The crucial difference in Islam, however, is that war against the infidel is a perpetual affair – until, in the words of the Qur’an, “all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to God.” In his entry on </span><i style="color: blue;">jihad</i> <span style="color: blue;">from the Encyclopedia of Islam, Emile Tyan states: “The duty of the</span> <i style="color: blue;">jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> exists as long as the universal domination of Islam has not been attained. Peace with non-Muslim nations is, therefore, a provisional state of affairs only; the chance of circumstances alone can justify it temporarily.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Moreover, going back to the doctrine of abrogation, Muslim scholars such as Ibn Salama (d. 1020) agree that Qur’an 9:5, known as </span><i style="color: blue;">ayat as-sayf</i><span style="color: blue;"> or the sword verse, has abrogated some 124 of the more peaceful Meccan verses, including “every other verse in the Qur’an [that] commands or implies anything less than a total offensive against the nonbelievers.” In fact, all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence agree that “</span><i style="color: blue;">jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> is when Muslims wage war on infidels, after having called on them to embrace Islam or at least pay tribute [</span><i style="color: blue;">jizya</i><span style="color: blue;">] and live in submission [in a state of </span><i style="color: blue;">dhimmitude</i><span style="color: blue;">], and the infidels refuse.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Obligatory </span><i style="color: blue;">jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> is best expressed by Islam’s dichotomized worldview that pits the realm of Islam against the realm of war. The first, </span><i style="color: blue;">dar al-Islam,</i><span style="color: blue;"> is the “realm of submission,” the world where </span><i style="color: blue;">Shari’a</i><span style="color: blue;"> governs; the second, </span><i style="color: blue;">dar al-Harb</i><span style="color: blue;"> (the realm of war), is the non-Islamic world. A struggle continues until the realm of Islam subsumes the non-Islamic world – a perpetual affair that continues to the present day. The renowned Muslim historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) clearly articulates this division:</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“In the Muslim community, </span><i style="color: purple;">jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the </span><i style="color: purple;">jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense. But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Finally and all evidence aside, lest it still appear unreasonable for a faith with over one billion adherents to obligate unprovoked warfare in its name, it is worth noting that the expansionist </span><i style="color: blue;">jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> is seen as an altruistic endeavor, not unlike the nineteenth century ideology of “the white man’s burden.” The logic is that the world, whether under democracy, socialism, communism, or any other system of governance, is inevitably living in bondage – a great sin, since the good of all humanity is found in living in accordance to God’s law. In this context, Muslim deception can be viewed as a slightly less than noble means to a glorious end – Islamic hegemony under </span><i style="color: blue;">Shari’a</i><span style="color: blue;"> rule, which is seen as good for both Muslims and non-Muslims.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">This view has an ancient pedigree: Soon after the death of Muhammad (634), as the </span><i style="color: blue;">jihad</i> <span style="color: blue;">fighters burst out of the Arabian peninsula, a soon-to-be conquered Persian commander asked the invading Muslims what they wanted. They memorably replied as follows:</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“God has sent us and brought us here so that we may free those who desire from servitude to earthly rulers and make them servants of God, that we may change their poverty into wealth and free them from the tyranny and chaos of [false] religions and bring them to the justice of Islam. He has sent us to bring his religion to all his creatures and call them to Islam. Whoever accepts it from us will be safe, and we shall leave him alone; but whoever refuses, we shall fight until we fulfill the promise of God.”</span><br />
<div style="color: blue;"><br />
</div><div style="color: blue;">Fourteen hundred years later – in March 2009 – Saudi legal expert Basem Alem publicly echoed this view:</div><br />
<span style="color: purple;">“As a member of the true religion, I have a greater right to invade [others] in order to impose a certain way of life [according to </span><i style="color: purple;">Shari’a</i><span style="color: purple;">], which history has proven to be the best and most just of all civilizations. This is the true meaning of offensive </span><i style="color: purple;">jihad</i><span style="color: purple;">. When we wage </span><i style="color: purple;">jihad</i><span style="color: purple;">, it is not in order to convert people to Islam, but in order to liberate them from the dark slavery in which they live.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">And it should go without saying that </span><i style="color: blue;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: blue;"> in the service of altruism is permissible. For example, only recently, after publicly recounting a story where a Muslim tricked a Jew into converting to Islam – warning him that if he tried to abandon Islam, Muslims would kill him as an apostate – Muslim cleric Mahmoud al-Masri called it a “beautiful trick.” After all, from an Islamic point of view, it was the Jew who, in the end, benefited from the deception, which brought him to Islam…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">This, then, is the dilemma: Islamic law unambiguously splits the world into two perpetually warring halves – the Islamic world versus the non-Islamic – and holds it to be God’s will for the former to subsume the latter. Yet, if war with the infidel is a perpetual affair, if war is deceit, and if deeds are justified by intentions – any number of Muslims will naturally conclude that they have a divinely sanctioned right to deceive, so long as they believe their deception serves to aid Islam “until all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to God.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Such deception will further be seen as a means to an altruistic end. Muslim overtures for peace, dialogue, or even temporary truces must be seen in this light, evoking the practical observations of philosopher James Lorimer, uttered over a century ago: “So long as Islam endures, the reconciliation of its adherents, even with Jews and Christians, and still more with the rest of mankind, must continue to be an insoluble problem.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In closing, whereas it may be more appropriate to talk of “war and peace” as natural corollaries in a Western context, when discussing Islam, it is more accurate to talk of “war and deceit.” For, from an Islamic point of view, times of peace – that is, whenever Islam is significantly weaker than its infidel rivals – are times of feigned peace and pretense, in a word, </span><i style="color: blue;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: blue;">.</span></blockquote>If the reader judges that it’s highly moral (maybe a +6 on a morality scale running from –10 to +10) to develop and promote friendships and that it’s highly moral (maybe a +8) to treat others as well as you would wish they’d treat you, then you would probably judge <i>taqiyya</i> to be highly immoral (maybe a –7 on the same morality scale, because it destroys friendships by mistreating others), and you would probably judge waging unprovoked war to subjugate others (to use others as a means to one’s own ends) to be close to the limit of immorality (i.e., at least a –9). Such is another of the evils of Islam.<br />
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Consistent with <i>taqiyya</i>, Islamic clerics immorally portray Islam to “unbelievers” and to initiates as a “Religion of Peace”, while promoting Islam to its mature members (e.g., its <i>mujahideen</i>, i.e., its “holy warriors”) as superior to and at war with all “unbelievers” (in its balderdash). As an example, the former Mufti of Egypt and (as of 28 March 2010) the new <i>Sheikh</i> (head) of Al-Azhar University (widely regarded as the most authoritative Sunni Islam’s religious establishment), Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb (whose name is also spelled Tayeb) stated during an <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4518.htm">interview</a> with Egyptian journalist Markram Muhamad Ahmad, as reported in the 11 August 2010 issue of MEMRI (Special Dispatch No. 31558): <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">It is not true that Islamic civilization imposed itself upon the world by the force of the sword. Islam spread throughout the world because it is the religion of natural faith and the religion of wisdom, which spoke to the minds of the people and to their hearts, cultivating equality among humans and promoting justice. The sword is not fitting as a symbol of Islam because Islam [represents] mercy and justice, and because a Muslim does not bear his sword in order to attack others, but in order to protect the land, the homeland, and the faith. Islam encourages a Muslim to be strong and capable of defending his homeland, his religion, and himself, but does not encourage him to act aggressively toward others.</span></blockquote>He added:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">The “verse of the sword” descended regarding those who came out against Islam and fought Muslims, expelled them from their homes, and did them great injustice. The context of the verse – the verses which precede and follow it – confirms this [understanding]. Proper Koranic thinking determines that there is no religious coercion. When Allah approached the Prophet and said: “Will you then force men till they become believers?” [Koran 10:99] the intent of the question at the beginning of the verse is to refute [any claim] that the Prophet was forcing the people to believe [in Islam].</span></blockquote>This cleric is either ignorant or a liar, and given that he’s head of Al-Azhar University, it seems unlikely that he’s ignorant of Islam. In contrast to such deception, the following quotations illustrate the opinions of various Islamic supremacists that Islam is superior to and at war with all “unbelievers” (in its balderdash).<br />
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1. The first example (from Robert Spencer’s 2002 book <i>Islam Unveiled</i>) is a statement by the Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–89; the maniacal founder of the current, Iranian, Shi’ite theocracy) as given in Amir Taheri’s book, <i>Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism,</i> Adler & Adler, 1987, p. 242. <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur’anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.</span></blockquote>2. The following is from a 14 August 2007 statement by the current, maniacal President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose recent “fraudulent re-election” caused widespread unrest and suppression in Iran):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">There is no truth on earth but monotheism and following tenets of Islam, and there is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam over mankind.</span></blockquote>3. The following is from <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/7325/the-two-faces-of-al-qaeda">another article</a> by Raymond Ibrahim, this one entitled “The Two Faces of Al Qaeda” (a Sunni terrorist organization), published in the 21 Sept. 2007 issue of <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i> (Vol. 54, Issue 4, p. B13):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Soon after 9/11, an influential group of Saudis wrote an open letter to the United States saying, “The heart of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is justice, kindness, and charity.” Bin Laden wrote in response:</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s [Allah’s] Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us – till you believe in Allah alone.” So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility – that is, battle – ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed, or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">Allah Almighty’s Word to his Prophet recounts in summation the true relationship: “O Prophet! Wage war against the infidels and hypocrites and be ruthless. Their abode is hell – an evil fate!” Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred – directed from the Muslim to the infidel – is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.</span></blockquote>4. The following are statements by bin Laden’s advisor and Al Qaeda’s chief fanatic and spokesman Ayman al-Zawahiri:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">I say to you that we are in a battle and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">There is no reform except through <i>jihad</i>…</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">Like its glorious predecessors in New York, Washington, and Madrid, this blessed battle has transferred the battle to the enemies’ land.</span></blockquote>5. The following is by the would-be Times-Square bomber Faisal Shahzad:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">You will see that the Muslim world has just started… Islam is coming to the world, </span><i style="color: purple;">inshallah</i> [Allah willing]<span style="color: purple;">, Islam will spread on the whole world. And the democracy will be defeated, and so was Communism defeated, and all the others isms and schisms will be defeated, and the word of Allah will be supreme,</span> <i style="color: purple;">inshallah</i><span style="color: purple;">. And Muslims are gonna do that.</span></blockquote>6. As another example (from hundreds if not thousands that could be chosen), the <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4523.htm">following</a> is from Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi, speaking on Egypt’s Al-Rahma TV on 19 July 2010:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">Devotion to </span><i style="color: purple;">Jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer</span> [in Islamic balderdash]<span style="color: purple;">.</span></blockquote>7. And as my final example, the following 2007/07/01 <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2115832,00.html">statement</a> is by Hassan Butt, a former Muslim terrorist who was born and raised in Britain and who explains the “justification” used by Muslim terrorists for waging unprovoked war against the entire world, including civilians. <br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">…what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland, and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.<br />
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How did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting this (flawed) utopian goal? How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? There isn’t enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a dualistic model of the world. Many Muslims may or may not agree with secularism, but at the moment, formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion. There is no ‘rendering unto Caesar’ in Islamic theology because state and religion are considered to be one and the same. The centuries-old reasoning of Islamic jurists also extends to the world stage where the rules of interaction between <i>Dar ul-Islam</i> (the Land of Islam) and <i>Dar ul-Kufr</i> (the Land of Unbelief) have been set down to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.<br />
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What radicals and extremists do is to take these premisses two steps further. Their first step has been to reason that since there is no Islamic state in existence, the whole world must be <i>Dar ul-Kufr.</i> Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world. Many of my former peers, myself included, were taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War <i>(Dar ul-Harb)</i> allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In <i>Dar ul-Harb,</i> anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.</blockquote>In the U.S. and U.K., illustrations of such “treachery” (i.e., subterfuge, or “Stealth Jihad”, or covert activities of Muslim maniacs practicing <i>taqiyya</i>) are documented in the 23 January 2010 blog <a href="http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/muslim-subversion-sedition-and-social.html">post</a> by “tencherbone” entitled “Muslim Subversion, Sedition, and Social Sabotage – Islam is the Enemy Within”. One example of such subterfuge in the U.S., described by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (namely, Mohamed Akram), is contained in the <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/document/id/20">document</a> entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America”. [By the way, readers who choose to download the <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf">full document</a> should notice that: 1) although the first 15 pages are in Arabic, the remainder of the document provides a translation into English, and 2) the final page of the document lists 29 Islamic organizations in North America that are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (from the Muslim Students’ Association, MSA, to the Foundation for International Development, FID)]. Revealing statements in the document include the following:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">In order for Islam and its Movement to become “a part of the homeland” in which it lives, “stable” in its land, “rooted” in the spirits and minds of its people, “enabled” in the live [sic] of its society and has firmly-established “organizations” on which the Islamic structure is built and with which the testimony of civilization is achieved, the Movement must plan and struggle to obtain “the keys” and the tools of this process in carry [sic] out this grand mission as a “Civilization </span><i style="color: purple;">Jihadist</i><span style="color: purple;">” responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslims and – on top of them – the Muslim Brotherhood in this country.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">The process of settlement is a “Civilization-</span><i style="color: purple;">Jihadist</i><span style="color: purple;"> Process” with all the word means. The </span><i style="color: purple;">Ikhwan</i><i style="color: purple;"> </i><span style="color: purple;">[brothers] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand </span><i style="color: purple;">Jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for </span><i style="color: purple;">Jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform </span><i style="color: purple;">Jihad</i><span style="color: purple;"> and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes…</span></blockquote>The obvious conclusion, then, is that no one should trust what any Muslim says: the Koran requires “true” Muslims to continuously try both to advance Islam and, when it’s expedient, to lie while doing so. The only trustworthy Muslim is therefore an ex-Muslim – and even then, one needs to be cautious, since to advance Islam, Muslims are permitted to claim to be ex-Muslims. Consequently, the only ex-Muslims that can be trusted are those (such as Al Sina, Ibn Warraq, and Wafa Sultan) who actively and effectively attempt to exterminate Islam – and who, thereby, deserve western freedoms more than the majority of westerners.<br />
<br />
In sum, it’s critical for all civilized people to realize that Islam is not a “religion of peace”. In fact, it’s not just a religion: similar to Nazism, Islam is a totalitarian ideology that uses the trappings of religion to advance its supremacist political agenda (recall “Gott mit uns” of the Nazis). Further, it’s not just “Islamophobes” who say that Islam isn’t a religion of peace. [And actually, the term “Islamophobia” should be rejected, because a ‘phobia’ is an <i>irrational</i> fear.] For example, the <a href="http://www.parvez-video.com/religion_islam.asp">following</a> is the opinion of the “right-hand man of the founder of Pakistan”, “prominent Islamic scholar”, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghulam_Ahmed_Pervez">Allama Pervez </a>(1903–85):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the ordinary sense of the word. ‘Religion’ is the English equivalent for the Arabic word </span><i style="color: purple;">Mazhah</i><span style="color: purple;">, which does not occur even once in the whole of the Holy Quran. The Quran has, instead, used the word </span><i style="color: purple;">Addeen</i><span style="color: purple;"> for Islam, which means a particular way of life.</span></blockquote>That is, the madman Muhammad declared war on those who didn’t believe his balderdash and who refused to be ruled by Arabs. Muslims follow Muhammad. Therefore, it’s time (in fact, it’s way past time) to realize that Islamic Fundamentalists (or “Islamists”) are waging an immoral, incessant war on the civilized world.<br />
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To be sure, all Muslims aren’t Islamists. As in most religions, probably the majority of Muslims don’t study their “holy books” – a large fraction of them can’t even read. Similar to most of us, the vast majority of Muslims undoubtedly want “just” peace and prosperity. Yet, according to <a href="http://media.gallup.com/WorldPoll/PDF/ExtremismInMuslimWorld.pdf">Gallup poll data</a> published in 2006, such evils are adopted by about 7% of all Muslims (ranging from a high of 26% in Egypt to a low of 1% in Morocco), i.e., by roughly 80 million Muslims worldwide. That is, roughly 80 million Muslims (!) desire your subjugation or death. In particular in the U.S., where a few percent of the total population practices Islam, <a href="http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=772">polls show</a> that approximately 300,000 American Muslims support suicide bombing and at least 100,000 American Muslims support <i>Al Qaeda</i> – and “fully 25% refused to answer the question.”<br />
<br />
Again, Islamists don’t consider the war they wage against us to be immoral: as far as they’re concerned, our enslavement is for our own good; only evil <i>kafirs</i> don’t want to be Muslims! Further, they consider the rules of war as described, for example, in the treaties of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions">Geneva Conventions</a> to be merely man-made laws, not what they claim to be God’s laws (as given in the Koran), which permit such activities as targeting civilians, using female prisoners as sex slaves, and beheading male prisoners. They consider flying aircraft loaded with passengers into a civilian skyscraper or detonating a bomb in a hospital ward for infants to be “justified”, because all non-Muslims are <i>kafirs</i> (i.e., worse than vermin). They do not recognize your right to claim your own existence, unless you acknowledge that you are Allah’s slave. It’s we (who choose freedom over slavery, who claim our right to our own existences) who declare their war mongering as immoral. <br />
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To win the war against Islamists won’t be easy, because it’s both an <a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/67091/sec_id/67091">ideological</a> and an <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/S6800/courseworks/thirdWar.pdf">asymmetric</a> war. Consequences of the asymmetry are familiar: a single critically placed monkey wrench can ruin the most elaborate machine, it’s always easier to destroy than create, fear is easier to generate than security, and nihilists will always have an advantage so long as anything is cherished. One complication of the ideological battle is that it’s much easier for the Islamists to spread their message in the free world (where freedom and methods to communicate are available) than it is for us to spread enlightenment in their closed and technologically backward nations. An additional major <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2008/12/barbarians-within-without.html">complication</a> is that a huge number of Muslim barbarians are already within our gates.<br />
<br />
Consequently, to win the war against such uncivilized, barbaric, supremacists, the following five steps seem essential.<br />
<br />
1. All citizens in the free world should become informed about the Muslim menace and then communicate their concerns to their elected representatives, too many of whom are either ignorant of the threat or are being paid by oil-rich Arabs to ignore the threat. A likely alternative to informed decisions, now, will be bloodbaths on our streets in years to come – because, in the end, the majority of Americans (for example) won’t surrender their freedoms.<br />
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2. Following the lead of Geert Wilders, our elected representatives should remove from its pedestal what all Muslims worship most: not Allah, not the memory of Muhammad, but the Koran, itself. If Muslims could be honest with themselves, they’d recognize that they worship the Koran not because it’s “Allah’s holy book”, but because of vacuous promises from clerical con artists of supremacy in this life and paradise in a fictitious life-after-death. But whereas brainwashed Muslims are mentally unable to be honest with themselves, and whereas the Koran promotes not only nonsense but also evil, then all governments in the free world should diminish the Islamists’ communication advantages by taking appropriate measures toward classifying the Koran as “hate literature” – and then each country should proceed according to its own laws governing such hideous literature, e.g., to ban it from general circulation within their countries (just as most Islamic countries ban free-world literature).<br />
<br />
3. All fundamentalist Islamic clerics and all those affiliated with such organizations as the Muslim Brotherhood should be banned from the free world. To permit them to remain among us is as foolish as it would have been to invite Nazis or Communists to promote their ideologies within our countries.<br />
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4. All Muslim immigration to the civilized world should be terminated, save for those ex-Muslims seeking political asylum as a result of their concerted efforts to undermine the Islamists.<br />
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5. All Islamists residing in the civilized world (i.e., those who consider Muhammad to be “the perfect man”, those who consider Islam to be “an all-encompassing way of life”, and those who support the violent replacement of their host country’s laws with Islamic laws, i.e., <i>sharia</i>) – should be charged with treason and, if found guilty, either incarcerated or relocated to Islamic nations. As Serge Trifkovic recently <a href="http://missioneuropakmartell.wordpress.com/ressourcen/serge-trifkovic-can-the-west-be-saved/">wrote</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">I submit to you that all Western countries need laws that will treat any naturalized citizen’s or legally resident alien’s known adherence to an Islamist world outlook as excludable – on <i>political</i>, rather than “religious” grounds. It is politically feasible to articulate the demand that citizenship of a democratic Western country should be denied to all Islamic activists.</span></blockquote>Amazingly, even some Muslims agree – and would go even further. For example, the <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2288.htm">following</a> was written by Khudayr Taher, an Iraqi Shi’ite writer living in the U.S.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Countries have the right to defend themselves and assure their citizens’ safety from terrorism. Likewise, it is clear that the [major] source of the terrorist crimes in Europe and America is the Muslims who live in these countries.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The security services cannot know people’s intentions and sort out who is the noble immigrant and who is a terrorist criminal. [But] wherever there are Muslims, their presence has produced crimes of terrorism and murder.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Among those Muslims in Europe and America who do not practice terrorism, most of them do not have loyalty and sincere attachment to these countries that have offered them all of the means of life in dignity – housing, studies, work, and citizenship…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The legitimate question is this: Since the security services cannot sort out the good immigrant from the bad terrorist… why don’t these countries deport all Muslims, of all races, from Europe and America, and [thus] find rest from the danger of terrorism, and protect their peoples?</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I, as an Arab Muslim immigrant, sincerely call on the countries of Europe and America to deport all Muslims from their territories – including myself, despite my love and my sincere attachment to the U.S…</span></blockquote>I, on the other hand, wouldn’t want to go that far. Rather, I’d say to Khudayr Taher: “Welcome to freedom; consider yourself at home!”<br />
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As for military actions in the war against Islamists, such activities should be targeted and minimized: maybe deploy some “special forces” on the ground, but in general, optimize use of drones, bombers, and missiles to destroy terrorist training-camps and any facilities developing advanced weapons. And as for “winning the hearts and minds” of the people, although we should blanket them in their own languages with messages of freedom conceived since the time of the Enlightenment, no money or effort should be expended on “nation building”. In general, best will be to leave it to Muslims to break free from their clerical chains by themselves.<br />
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In my view, therefore, the key to winning the war against the Islamists is the same as the key used to win the war against Communists: confinement. If the Islamists have no victims to plunder, if we confine them to live in Muhammad’s sewer, then eventually, Muslims will get sick of Islam’s errors and evils. In his excellent presentation “<a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/67091/sec_id/67091">Islam: What Is To Be Done?</a>” Hugh Fitzgerald (who is much more knowledgeable than I about both history and Islam) suggests similar and emphasizes that the first important step is for citizens of the free world to inform themselves about Islam:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Which now brings me to what, instead of those wasteful wars, and that sentimental messianism, of Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, should be done – not to bring “victory” in the war of self-defense against the </span><i style="color: blue;">Jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> now visited, in every sense, upon us, because no “victory” is possible – but, rather, to “redimension” (cut down to size) the problem, to make it less dangerous, to bring down the level of risk. How is this to be done? </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In the first place, through self-education and through dissemination of what you have learned about Islam to others. They don’t have to know everything about Islam, but they have to know something. And bookish knowledge should be supplemented by an understanding of Muslim behavior, and how it reflects what Islam inculcates. You don’t have to know a specialized vocabulary, though such words as </span><i style="color: blue;">Jihad</i><span style="color: blue;"> and </span><i style="color: blue;">dhimmi</i><span style="color: blue;"> and </span><i style="color: blue;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: blue;"> are useful to understand, to define for others, and to employ… </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">And then what? Then one would see that the war of self-defense against Islam is primarily an ideological war, and we have to be sure of ourselves, sure that whatever our own great faults, or the faults of our societies, they are as nothing compared to the death-in-life that Islam presents. We need to grasp what Islam teaches, and what the consequences are of growing up in societies suffused with Islam, and what happens to individual liberties, to the enterprise of science, to the practice of art, when one is raised up in a society where everything militates against free and skeptical inquiry…</span></blockquote>If Americans, for example, would educate themselves about Islam, then in contrast to the recent debacle, surely they’d stand up for their rights, refusing to submit to Muslim blackmail (i.e., refuse to behave as <i>dhimmis</i>). In this debacle, no less than the American President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Commanding General in Afghanistan (as well as a bunch of clerical con artists) put enormous, direct pressure on a flamboyant, otherwise-ignorable, probably schizophrenic pastor in Gainesville, Florida, not to burn his copy of the Koran today, the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, saying that the pastor’s exercise of freedom of speech would “put our troops at risk.”<br />
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Where was the uproar? For what, pray tell, do those well-paid government servants think that our brave troops willingly risk their lives – if not to protect American freedoms? (That a host of clerics followed suit is understandable, since I expect that they’re all beginning to feel that their con games are collapsing.) I hope that, in contrast to such a debacle and by the time of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans would reject such <i>dhimmintude</i>.<br />
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Thus, whereas the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain (even more certain than the knowledge that we exist) is that there are no gods (and never were any), therefore, no book is “holy”: they’re all just tools-of-the-trade of clerical con artists. If a book belongs to you and if you’re so inclined, then burn it – or if you're worried about resulting air pollution, then bury it. It's biodegradable. In time, all “holy books” will rot away.<br />
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On the other hand, though, in the case of a “keeper”, if you’re inclined to burn, bury, or otherwise destroy your copies of the two volumes of Morse and Feshbach’s <i>Methods of Theoretical Physics</i>, then since I gave my copies to one of my sons, perhaps you’d first contact me. Maybe we could make a deal.<br />
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<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
••••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-26304722452670900272010-08-23T05:25:00.000-07:002010-10-03T15:08:37.329-07:00Five Structural Errors in Islam••••<br />
This is the 34th in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the Mountainous God Lie”. By that expression, I mean mistakes by primitive people and manipulations by conniving clerics that, when repeated and reflected in the light of current knowledge, are now seen to be mountains of clerical lies. The first 30 posts in this series dealt with mistakes and manipulations at the foundations of the related religions known as Zoroastrianism and Judaism, which evolved from myths and mysticism of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India.<br />
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I devoted only three posts to Christianity, which evolved from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Indo-European polytheism. Those three posts dealt only with the first three-or-so centuries of Christianity, not only because voluminous literature is readily available describing Christianity’s theocratic expansion and humanist containment since the time of “the butcher emperor” Constantine but also because (thanks to that containment) Christianity is now relatively benign, unlike Islam.<br />
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This post is the second of three dealing with Islam. In the previous post, I provided a little information about major mistakes and failures of the alleged founder of Islam, i.e., the pathetic, psychotic Muhammad (pbuh = pity be upon him). Islam is another offshoot of Zoroastrianism (via Judaism), degraded with some pre-Islamic Arab culture, such as its anti-human misogyny, polygamy, patriarchy, tribalism, and totalitarianism.<br />
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Similar to my review of Christianity, my review of Islam will be curtailed. Thus, I don’t intend to review the massive, readily available literature on Islam’s theocratic expansion and military containment since the time of Muhammad. Instead, for these final two posts in this series dealing with the major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), my goal is to outline today’s Islam, in large part because oil revenues have unfortunately resuscitated an otherwise-dying religion, whose disease is now harming the health of the entire world. In this and the next post, I’ll focus on Islam’s errors and evils.<br />
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As the reader probably knows, Islam is described as being built on “five pillars of faith”, which are usually abbreviated as <a href="http://www.islam101.com/dawah/pillars.html">follows</a>.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">1. Faith in the Oneness of God and finality of the prophethood of Muhammad, </span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">2. Establishment of daily prayers,</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">3. Concern for and alms giving to the needy,</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">4. Self-purification through fasting, and</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">5. A pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.</span></blockquote>In this post, I’ll try to outline the following “five structural errors in Islam”, which are five fatal structural faults in the pillars of Islam:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #38761d;">1. Islam’s error of identifying Muhammad as “the perfect man”,</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">2. Islam’s error of assuming that the Koran is from God/Allah,</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">3. Islam’s error of adopting Muhammad’s laws as Allah’s laws (</span><i style="color: #38761d;">sharia</i><span style="color: #38761d;">),</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">4. Islam’s error of promoting deception (</span><i style="color: #38761d;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: #38761d;">), and</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">5. Islam’s fatal philosophical errors.</span> </blockquote>In the next post, I’ll try to outline the following “five foundational evils of Islam”, which are five deadly foundational failures in the pillars of Islam:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #38761d;">1. Islam’s evil of promoting beliefs in the absence of reliable evidence,</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">2. Islam’s evil of demanding adherence to dogmatic ignorance,</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">3. Islam’s evils of violating human rights and advocating hate,</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">4. Islam’s evil psychological manipulations of “true believers”, and</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">5. Islam’s evil of waging incessant, immoral war against “unbelievers”.</span></blockquote>As Muslims become more adept at critical thinking, the above listed errors and evils of Islam will lead to its collapse.<br />
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1. Islam’s error of identifying Muhammad as “the perfect man”.</b></i><br />
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In view of information cursorily reviewed in the previous post, it’s difficult to imagine how any sane, humane person (not indoctrinated in ignorance) could consider Muhammad to have been “the perfect man”. Muslims do. Their phrase for “the prefect man” is <i>al-insan al-kamil. </i> They’re convinced that Muhammad was <i>al-insan al-kamil,</i> because Muslims abide by the Koran (or spelled Quran or Qur’an), and it states, for example:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">Certainly you have in the Apostle of Allah</span> [i.e., Muhammad] <span style="color: red;">an excellent exemplar…</span> (Quran 33:21)</blockquote>In total, the Koran states <a href="http://opposemosqueatgroundzero.wordpress.com/islam-stats/">91 times</a> that Muhammad is “the perfect man” – or variations thereof, e.g., “the ideal man”, “a superior being”, “the mercy of God among mankind”, “the noblest of all humanity”, “the seal of the prophets”, etc. [That is, in reality, Muhammad wrote into the Koran 91 times that he was “the perfect man” (or variations thereof), thus demonstrating that he (similar to Moses) didn’t consider humility to be a virtue.] As a result, descriptions of Muhammad such as the following are readily available (e.g., on the internet), this example copied from <a href="http://www.ummah.net/Al_adaab/muhammad/perfect_man.html">muhammad/pefect man.html</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: purple;">The Holy Prophet Muhammad </span><i style="color: purple;">Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam</i><span style="color: purple;"> <span style="color: black;">[viz., “Muhammad, may Allah exalt the mention of his name at the highest angelic sphere” – whatever that might mean!]</span> is thus a true example of a perfect man. He lived the life of an ordinary man. He helped the poor, orphans and widows. He was kind to the weak and hospitable to strangers and travelers. He suffered from all but harmed none. He was affectionate and loving towards his friends and forgiving and merciful towards his enemies. He was sincere and honest in his mission; good and fair in his dealings; and just in deciding affairs of friends as well as of enemies. In short, all goodness and excellence have been combined in the person and personality of </span><i style="color: purple;">Hazrat Muhammad Sall Allahu alaihi wa Aalihi wa Sallim.</i></blockquote>What a disconnect between what a perfect person would be and what Muhammad actually was! Actually, though, although I wouldn’t be too harsh in my criticism of the above-quoted description of a perfect person, I’d add that, in my view, a perfect person would also be a producer rather than a parasite: the contributions from a single Faraday, Edison, or Marconi, for example, were worth more that a billion times the “contributions” from Moses, Muhammad, Mao, or similar. But regardless of such an addition to any description of a perfect man, and for reasons outlined in the previous post, the above quotation certainly doesn’t describe the Muhammad of Islamic literature.<br />
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When I encounter such a disconnect (or “cognitive dissonance”), what comes to mind is the following penetrating assessment by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860):<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">We know that man is in general superior to all other animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being trained. Mohammedans [Muslims] are trained to pray with their faces turned towards Mecca, five times a day; and they never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross themselves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on. Indeed, it may be said that religion is the <i>chef d’oeuvre</i> [masterpiece] of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they shall think – and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early. <i>There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity</i> [italics added]…</blockquote>And thus the poor children born into Islam are indoctrinated with the lie that Muhammad was a perfect man – just as the poor children born into Christianity are indoctrinated with the lie that Jesus was the son of God, the poor children born into Judaism are indoctrinated with the lie that God communicated laws to Moses, and the poor children born into Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, etc. are indoctrinated with the lie that such things as gods actually exist (rather than being what they are, i.e., mistaken speculations by primitive, ignorant people).<br />
<br />
Now, I won’t use additional space (beyond what I used in the previous post) to debunk the claim that Muhammad was “the perfect man”. Readers can find thousands of such assessments on the web. In my opinion, one of the best assessments is the following <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-challenge/the-challenge/">Challenge</a> by the ex-Muslim Ali Sina, who “put his money where his mouth is”:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">I receive many emails from angry Muslims, who sometimes beg me and sometimes order me to remove this <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/">site</a>. I consider both, pleading and bullying, signs of psychopathology. <i>Argumentum ad baculum</i> and <i>argumentum ad misericordiam</i> are both logical fallacies.<br />
<br />
If you do not like this site and want me to remove it, [then] instead of acting as a bully or as a victim, disprove my charges against Muhammad. Not only will I remove the site, I will publicly announce that Islam is a true religion. I will also pay $50,000 U.S. dollars to anyone who can disprove any of the dozen… accusations that I have made against Muhammad. I accuse Muhammad of being a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a madman, [and] a looter.</blockquote>Associated with his <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-challenge/the-challenge/">Challenge</a>, Ali Sina provides links to his writings that detail each of his listed accusations against Muhammad (or, actually, against the person depicted in basic Islamic literature as Muhammad). Readers may want to pursue those details or see some of the details <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/op-ed/explore-the-life-of-prophet-muhammad/">here</a>. After studying such sources, if anyone should still maintain that Muhammad was “the perfect man”, then I’d recommend that Schopenhauer’s statement be reconsidered:<br />
<blockquote><i style="color: blue;">There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity… </i><span style="color: blue;"> </span></blockquote><i><b>2. Islam’s error of assuming that the Koran is from God/Allah.</b></i><br />
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I admit that I sometimes despair for humanity. Approximately a billion Christians firmly “believe” (i.e., “wish to be”) that the Bible is “God’s holy words” (the other billion-or-so Christians are less adamant). Simultaneously and similarly, somewhere around a billion Muslims firmly believe that the Koran is “Allah’s final, complete, and perfect message to mankind.” Meanwhile, the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain (even more certain than the knowledge that we exist) is: <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IhHypothesesandProbabilities.pdf">there are no gods (and never were any)</a>. With equal certainty, therefore, we can be sure that no god communicated any message to anyone; consequently, logically consistent with the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain is that roughly two billion people in the world are bonkers. And I’m sorry, but I additionally admit that, were it not for the possible harm to sensible humans, I sometimes think that the best way to eliminate such ignorance would be if those two billion people would confront each other – maybe in the middle of the Sahara desert – to establish whose “holy book” is “true”, fighting it out to mutual annihilation.<br />
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Otherwise, attempts are made to eliminate the ignorance of such boneheads by trying to explain to them that their “holy books” certainly weren’t written by (or on behalf of) any god. In the case of Islam, in particular, many methods are available to demonstrate that the Koran isn’t from God/Allah. Below, I’ll briefly describe three such methods.<br />
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<i>2.1 Applications of logic.</i><br />
One method is to apply even just a little logic. For example, the following quotation is from pp. 22–23 of the 2010 e-book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad"><i>Unmasking Muhammad – The Malignant Narcissist and His Grand Delusion Allah</i></a> by Sujit Das:<br />
<blockquote><b style="color: blue;">Discrediting Muhammad by His Own Words and Conduct</b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">It is strange but true that, after a logical analysis, it is possible to discredit Muhammad by using his own words and actions. His life was full of contradictions. There is a vast difference between “Muhammad of faith” and “Muhammad of fact”. Often he did not practice what he preached. [The] Qur’an originally treated Muhammad as a humble messenger of Allah, gradually this relationship developed into duality, and ultimately Muhammad appeared as God’s superior. This is the time when the whole Divine drama of Muhammad is exposed, and the stupid Prophet of Islam hammers a nail in his own prophetic coffin.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In context of the satanic verses</span> [i.e., verses that Muhammad composed but later withdrew, as famously outlined in Salman Rushdie’s 1988 book <i>The Satanic Verses,</i> which led to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a <i>fatwa</i> (ruling) for Rushdie’s murder] <span style="color: blue;">Tabari and Ibn Sa’d recorded these disgraceful words of Muhammad:</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken.” (Tabari: 6.111)</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;">“I ascribed to Allah, what He had not said.” (Ibn Sa’d, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, vol. 1)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">This single confession of Muhammad is enough to disqualify him of his prophetic claim. Muhammad said that he was deceived by Satan [into writing the satanic verses] and a revelation from Allah confirmed it. But how can we be sure that the second revelation was not also from Satan? The guaranty of “genuineness” of one revelation cannot be another revelation. It’s beyond any logic. If Muhammad could be deceived by Satan once, how could he know on all other occasions that he hadn’t been deceived? How can we ignore the possibility that Gabriel was actually Satan himself in disguise and hence the whole Qur’an is satanic?</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Allah challenged in the Qur’an,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">And if you are in doubt concerning that We have sent down on Our servant [Muhammad], then bring a Sura like it. (Q.2:23)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Satan took Allah’s challenge and easily produced “a Sura like this”. Muslims believe that Qur’an is miraculous in beauty and no one can make anything to compare to it because it is Divine. Satan produced the verses and Muhammad spoke those words from Satan, but everyone including Muhammad himself thought these verses were part of the Qur’an. Surely those satanic verses sound exactly like those of the Qur’an. If they did not sound like the Qur’an, then surely Muhammad, his followers and the Quraysh would never have accepted them…</span></blockquote>In his referenced e-book, Sujit Das provides other examples of blatant logical errors in the Koran (see, e.g., pp. 23–32), but rather than apply additional logic to debunk the Koran, I’ll move on to<br />
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<i>2.2 Evaluations based on common decency.</i><br />
For both novice and expert, perhaps the best way to debunk the idea that the Koran is from God/Allah is just to read the text and judge it based on your own sense of morality and justice. As a novice, that’s what I did in my on-line book in the four chapters starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx25_Muhammad_&_The_Quran.pdf">here</a>. More significant than anything I wrote, however, is the following written by the amazing Ali Sina, describing how he first began to explore details of the religion (Islam) in which he was indoctrinated when he was young. This quotation is from his essay “<a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/frombelief.htm">From Belief to Enlightenment</a>”. <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">It didn’t take long before I came upon verses I found hard to accept. One of these verses was:</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed. (Quran 4:48)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I found it hard to accept that Gandhi [for example] would burn in hell forever because he was a polytheist with no hope of redemption, while a Muslim murderer could hope to receive Allah’s forgiveness. This raised a disturbing question. Why is Allah so desperate to be known as the only God? If there is no other god but him, what’s the fuss? Against whom is he competing? Why should he even care whether anyone knows him and praises him or not. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I learned about the size of this universe. Light, which travels at a speed of 300 thousand kilometers per second, takes 20 billion years to reach us from the galaxies that are at the edges of the universe. How many galaxies are there? How many stars are there in these galaxies? How many planets are there in this universe? These thoughts were mind-boggling. If Allah is the creator of this vast universe, why he is so concerned about being known as the only god by a bunch of apes living on a small planet in the Milky Way?</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Now that I had lived in the West, had many western friends who were kind to me, liked me, opened their hearts and homes to me, and accepted me as their friend, it was really hard to accept that Allah didn’t want me to befriend them:</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah. (Q.3:28)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Isn’t Allah the creator of the unbelievers too? Isn’t he the god of everybody? Why should he be so unkind to unbelievers? Wouldn’t it be better if Muslims befriended unbelievers and taught them Islam by good example? By keeping ourselves aloof and distant from unbelievers, the gap of misunderstandings will never be bridged. How in the world will unbelievers learn about Islam if we do not associate with them? These were the questions I kept asking myself. The answer to these questions came in a very disconcerting verse. Allah’s order was to, “<span style="color: red;">slay them wherever ye catch them.</span>” (Q.2:191)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I thought of my own friends, remembering their kindnesses and love for me, and wondered how in the world a true god would ask anyone to kill another human being just because he does not believe. That seemed absurd, yet this concept was repeated so often in the Quran there was no doubt about it. In verse 8:65, Allah tells his prophet: </span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">O Prophet! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I wondered why would Allah send a messenger to make war? Shouldn’t God teach us to love each other and be tolerant towards each other’s beliefs? And if Allah is really so concerned about making people believe in him to the extent that he would kill them if they don’t believe, why would he not kill them himself? Why does he ask us to do his dirty work? Are we Allah’s hit men?</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Although I knew of <i>Jihad</i> and never questioned it before, I found it hard to accept that God would resort to imposing such violent measures on people. What was more shocking was the cruelty of Allah in dealing with unbelievers:</span> <br />
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<span style="color: red;">I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them. (Q.8:12)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">It seemed Allah was not just satisfied with killing unbelievers; he enjoyed torturing them before killing them. Smiting people’s heads from above their necks and chopping their fingertips were very cruel acts. Would God really give such orders? And yet the worst is what he promised to do with unbelievers in the other world:</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">These two antagonists dispute with each other about their Lord. But those who deny (their Lord), for them will be cut out a garment of Fire: over their heads will be poured out boiling water. With it will be scalded what is within their bodies, as well as (their) skins. In addition there will be maces of iron (to punish) them. Every time they wish to get away therefrom, from anguish, they will be forced back therein, and (it will be said), “Taste ye the Penalty of Burning!” (Q.22:19-22)</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">How could the creator of this universe be so cruel? I was shocked to learn that Quran tells Muslims to:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Kill unbelievers wherever they find them (Q.2:191),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Murder them and treat them harshly (Q.9:123),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Fight them (Q.8:65) until no other religion than Islam is left (Q.2:193),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax if they are Christians or Jews (Q.9:29),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Slay them if they are Pagans (Q.9:5), crucify, or cut off their hands and feet,</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Expel them from the land in disgrace. And as if this were not enough, “<span style="color: red;">they shall have a great punishment in [the] world hereafter</span>” (Q.5:34),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Not befriend their own fathers or brothers if they are not believers (Q.9:23), (Q.3:28),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Kill their own family in the battles of Badr and Uhud and asks Muslims to “<span style="color: red;">strive against the unbelievers with great endeavor</span>” (Q.25:52),</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• Be stern with them because they belong to hell (Q.66:9). </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">How can any sensible person remain unmoved when he or she finds the Quran saying:</span> <span style="color: blue;"> “</span><span style="color: red;">strike off the heads of the unbelievers</span><span style="color: blue;">” then after a “</span><span style="color: red;">wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives</span><span style="color: blue;">” (Q.47:4)?</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">I was also shocked to learn the Quran denies freedom of belief for all and clearly states Islam is the only acceptable religion (Q.3:85). Allah relegates those who do not believe in the Quran to hell (Q.5:11) and calls them <i>najis</i> (filthy, untouchable, impure) (Q.9:28). He says unbelievers will go to hell and will drink boiling water (Q.14:17). Further, “</span><span style="color: red;">As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods</span><span style="color: blue;">” (Q.22:9). How sadistic! </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The book of Allah says women are inferior to men and their husbands have the right to beat them (Q.4:34), and that women will go to hell if they are disobedient to their husbands (Q.66:10). It says men have an advantage over women (Q.2:228). It not only denies women equal right to their inheritance (Q.4:11-12), it also regards them as imbeciles and decrees that their testimony alone is not admissible in court (Q.2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce [four] male witness[es], which of course is a joke. Rapists don’t rape in the presence of witnesses. But the most shocking verse is where Allah allows Muslims to rape women captured in wars even if they are married before being captured (Q.4:24; Q.4:3). The holy prophet raped the prettiest women he captured in his raids on the same day he killed their husbands and loved ones. This is why anytime a Muslim army subdues another nation, they call them </span><i style="color: blue;">kafir</i><span style="color: blue;"> and rape their women. Pakistani soldiers raped up to 250,000 Bengali women in 1971 and massacred 3,000,000 unarmed civilians when their religious leader decreed that Bangladeshis are un-Islamic. This is why the prison guards in the Islamic regime of Iran rape the women and then kill them after calling them apostates and the enemies of Allah… </span> </blockquote>For sensible people (those who hold beliefs only as strongly as relevant evidence warrants, those who therefore conclude that there are no gods and never were any gods and that, consequently, there are no prophets of any gods or any “holy books” from any god) and for people who through nature and nurture have acquired (<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">similar</a> to other social animals) <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/M4_Morality_without_Gods.pdf">moral principles</a> that permit and expedite the smooth functioning of their society, then analyses of the Koran such as the above by Ali Sina would normally be enough to lead them to conclude something similar to: “The Koran is horrible! It’s worse than Hitler’s <i>Mein Kampf.</i> It should be banned – or at least restricted, to be read only by acknowledged scholars for their study of how hideous humans once were.”<br />
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A similar conclusion was reached by Indian scholar Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who in the late 19th Century summarized his view of the Koran as follows (as reported in the already referenced <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad">book</a> by Sujit Das):<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Having thus given a cursory view of the Qur’an I lay it before the sensible persons, with the purpose that they should know what kind of book the Qur’an is. If they ask me, I have no hesitation to say that it cannot be work either of God or of a learned man, nor can it be a book of knowledge. The Qur’an is the result of ignorance, the source of animalization of humans… a fruitful cause of destroying peace, an incentive to war, a propagator of hostility amongst men and a promoter of suffering in society.</blockquote><i>2.3 Explorations of the Koran's human origins.</i><br />
In addition to the above, two, simple methods to debunk the idea that the Koran is from God/Allah (i.e., via logical analyses and via relying on common-sense ideas of morality and justice), then still another method is to uncover the human origins of the Koran, similar to studies that have revealed the human origins of the Bible.<br />
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In my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">online book</a> and in the previous posts of this series, I’ve tried to provide ample reasons and references for the conclusion that none of the entire Bible (Jewish and Christian) is a communication from any god. Trying to follow the scholarly studies of others, I tried to show that the Old and New Testaments are collections and contortions of assorted myths, mysticism, and mistakes from the ancient mid-eastern milieu. A few examples that I’ve already described in detail are the following.<br />
<blockquote>• The myth about <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix05BiblicalMyths.pdf">Adam and Eve</a> is a sloppy amalgamation of the Mesopotamian myths about Adapa and Ninti (“the lady of the rib”) and of similar Egyptian and Ethiopian myths,<br />
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• The myth about <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix06Gilgamesh.pdf">Noah</a> is a rehash of the Mesopotamian myth about Utanapishtam (or Ziusudra or Ubar-Tutu or Atrahasis or Shuruppak) from approximately 2,000 years earlier,<br />
<br />
• The myth about <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/05/law-lie-6-law-order-1.html">Lot</a> (Sodom and Gomorrah) is possibly derived from the eruption of the island of Thera (or Santorini) in about 1500 BCE, causing massive destruction in the Minoan society (in which homosexuality was common),<br />
<br />
• The myths about <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/12/mythical-monster-moses-1.html">Moses</a> were fabricated from stories about Sargon the Great (2334–2279 BCE) and from ancient Egyptian myths, and<br />
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• The myths about <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/05/clerical-quackery-11-concocted-christ.html">Jesus</a> (e.g., about his alleged virgin birth and sundry miracles) were fabricated from similar stories about imagined Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu gods, and so on.</blockquote>Thereby, as a result of such investigations into the human origins of the Bible, the human origins of the Koran are already obvious. Thus, since the Koran retells the stories about Adam, Noah, Lot, Moses, Jesus, et al., the Koran is therefore obviously not from any god but is simply derived from the same, human, milieu of myths and mistaken ideas about gods.<br />
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In the case of the Koran, unfortunately, not many scholars have published detailed analyses similar to those that have revealed the human origins of the Bible. To make significant progress (in historical, archeological, etymological and similar studies of the Koran’s human origins) is difficult; it’s a task that can only be undertaken by experts – who must have the freedom to follow the evidence, wherever it leads. <a href="http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html">Thwarting such efforts</a>, the damnable Islamic clerics (called <i>ulema)</i> erect enormous barriers, out to and including issuing death-penalty <i>fatwas</i> (rulings) against anyone (Muslim or not) who threatens to upset their cozy financial interests in maintaining the <i>status quo.</i> For example, Saudi clerics [who collected <a href="http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article81851.ece">SR60 billion</a> (~20 billion $US) in Saudi <i>zakat</i> tax last year!] don’t permit the needed archaeological studies in their country. Nonetheless, in spite of obstructions, death threats, murders, and forced recantations (e.g., see the <i>Introduction</i> of the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16055814/The-Hidden-Life-of-the-Prophet-Muhammad">book</a> by Dr. A.A. Ahmed), progress has been made. The details, however, are far too complicated to be reviewed in a single post; therefore, I’ll simply provide just a few references for interested readers.<br />
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• <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/arabia1.html">Here</a> are a few samples of ancient accounts of pre-Islamic Arabia from c.430 BCE (from <i>The Histories </i>by Herodotus) to c. 550 CE (from <i>History of the Wars</i> by Procopius of Caesarea). From Procopius’ account, the reader can gain some appreciation that the Arabs were considered to be ferocious warriors:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">It seemed to the Omeritae</span> [living in what is now Yemen] <span style="color: blue;">a difficult thing to cross a country </span>[now Saudi Arabia]<span style="color: blue;"> which was a desert and which extended so far that a long time was required for the journey across it, and then to go against such a people much more warlike than themselves.</span></blockquote>• <a href="http://www.inthenameofallah.org/preislamicarabia.html">Here</a> is a brief summary of the history of pre-Islamic Arabia, which includes the statement:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The Bedouin’s love of poetry was his only cultural asset and legacy. Their poets were held with great esteem and were extremely influential because of their mastery of the spoken word. They acted as the historians, propagandists and spokesmen of their tribes. They were in fact the equivalent of the modern news media reporters. </blockquote>• Consistent with his Bedouin culture, Muhammad considered himself a poet (the Koran is written as poetry). The <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/AbulKasem41205.htm">essay</a> by Abul Kasem entitled <i>Who Authored the Qur’an? – an Enquiry</i> identifies many people who apparently contributed (either directly or indirectly, e.g., by supplying Muhammad with stories) to writing what is now called the Koran:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">During my investigative phase I found that a lot of people were involved in the compilation and the construction of the Qur’an. Unknown to the vast majority of Muslims, and buried deep inside the Qur’an, </span><i style="color: blue;">Ahadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> </span>[i.e., the collection of <i>hadith</i>] <span style="color: blue;">and </span><i style="color: blue;">Sirah</i><span style="color: blue;"> there [is] copious evidence to reject, out of hand, the contention that the Qur’an is the creation of Allah. Making Allah the author of the Quran, I think, is the prime lie perpetrated on mankind for more than a millennium. We can, with certainty, say that it was not even Muhammad alone who authored the Qur’an. In fact, the major part of the Qur’an was either composed by or inspired and written by a few other individuals. The most notable among them were:</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Imrul Qays – an ancient poet of Arabia who died a few decades before Muhammad’s birth,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Zayd b. Amr b. Naufal – an ‘apostate’ of his time </span>[i.e., an apostate from polytheism]<span style="color: blue;"> who preached and propagated Hanifism </span>[which is what Muhammad originally called his “new” religion]<span style="color: blue;">,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Labid – another poet,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Hasan b. Thabit – the official poet of Muhammad,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Salman, the Persian – Muhammad’s confidant and an advisor,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Bahira – a Nestoraian Christian monk of the Syrian church,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Jabr – a Christian neighbor of Muhammad,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Ibn Qumta – a Christian slave,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Khadijah – Muhammad’s first wife,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Waraqa – Khadijah’s cousin brother,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Ubay b. Ka’b – Muhammad’s secretary and a Qur’an scribe, and</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Muhammad himself.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">There were other parties involved too. They were:</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• The Sabeans,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Aisha – Muhammad’s child bride,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Abdallah [or Abdullah] b. Salam b. al-Harith – a Jewish [rabbi] convert to Islam,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Mukhyariq [or Mukhayriq] – a Rabbi and another Jewish convert to Islam.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Of course, my list of the possible authors of the Qur’an is not exhaustive. There may be many other parties involved that I might not have even heard of. But for a concise discussion the above list should be ample… In this article I have simply enumerated the contribution of the above sources in the authorship of the Qur’an.</span></blockquote>An illustration given by Kasem (on p. 7 of his <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/AbulKasem41205.htm">essay</a>) is the following:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">W. St. Calir-Tisdall, the author of the famous essay The Origin of Islam (</span><i style="color: blue;">The Origins of the Koran, </i><span style="color: blue;">pp.235-236), by comparing two passages from the Sabaa Mu’allaqat, finds close similarity with… verses from the Qur’an… Commenting on verse 54.1 W. St. Clair-Tisdall writes:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">It was the custom of the time for… orators to hang up their compositions upon the Ka’aba; and we know the seven Mu’allaqat </span>[i.e., poems by seven, famous, pre-Islamic poets]<span style="color: #0b5394;"> were exposed. We are told that Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, was one day repeating as she went along the above verse. Just then she met the daughter of Imrul Qays, who cried out, “O that’s what your father has taken from one of my father’s poems, and calls it something that has come down to him out of heaven”…</span></blockquote>For extensive examples of how pre-Islamic poetry was used in the concoction of the Koran, I heartily recommend the 2006 on-line book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16055814/The-Hidden-Life-of-the-Prophet-Muhammad"><i>The Hidden Life of the Prophet Muhammad</i></a> by A.A. Ahmed.<br />
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• To gain an overview of how the Koran and the “biographies” of Muhammad were cobbled together during the first three-or-so centuries of “Islam”, the reader might first want to study Sharon Morad’s <a href="http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/books/origins-koran.html">summary</a> (a little of which I quoted near the start of the previous post) of the 1998 book <i>The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book,</i> edited by the ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq. As Morad points out, though:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">Most of the essays are now a bit dated, and those familiar with the modern revisionist approach to Islamic history will recognize the areas where further study has proposed conclusions very different to some of the authors included here. [Nonetheless,] These essays are foundational reading for all students of the Koran.</blockquote>Readers may be interested to know that the first chapter of Ibn Warraq’s referenced book is <a href="http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=0cbe362262abd70c07710525c4bfa746&topic=226.0">available</a> at the Resources Center of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain. The following <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/2309627/Why-I-Am-Not-a-Muslim-by-Ibn-Warraq">excerpt</a> from Chapter 2, “The Origins of Islam”, of the 1995 book <i>Why I am not a Muslim </i>by Ibn Warraq is enlightening:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Muhammad was not an original thinker: he did not formulate any new ethical principles, but merely borrowed from the prevailing cultural milieu. The eclectic nature of Islam has been recognized for a long time. Even Muhammad knew Islam was not a new religion, and the revelations contained in the Koran merely confirmed already existing scriptures. The Prophet always claimed Islam’s affiliation with the great religions of the Jews, Christians, and others. Muslim commentators such as al-Sharestani have acknowledged that the Prophet transferred to Islam the beliefs and practices of the heathen or pagan Arabs, especially into the ceremonies of the pilgrimage to Mecca.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">And yet Muslims in general continue to hold that their faith came directly from heaven, that the Koran was brought down by the angel Gabriel from God himself to Muhammad. The Koran is held to be of eternal origin, recorded in heaven, lying as it does there upon the Preserved Table (suras 85.21, 6.19; 97). God is the source of Islam – to find a human origin for any part of it is not only vain but also meaningless and, of course, blasphemous. Perhaps Muslims have the unconscious fear that if we can trace the teachings of the Koran to a purely human and earthly source, then the entire edifice of Islam will crumble. But as Renan used to say, “Religions are facts; they must be discussed as facts, and subjected to the rules of historical criticism.” To paraphrase Renan again, the critical study of the origins of Islam will only yield definitive historical results when it is carried out in a purely secular and profane spirit by people uninfluenced by dogmatic theology. Only then will we recover the historical Muhammad, and only then will his extraordinary life be integrated as a part of human history, with a secular meaning for all of us – Muslims and non-Muslims alike…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">While Muir and Torrey are convinced that the Abrahamic origin of the Kaaba [the square stone building at Mecca, </span><span style="color: blue;">“</span><span style="color: blue;">the site most holy to Muslims and toward which they must face when praying</span><span style="color: blue;">”</span><span style="color: blue;">] was a popular belief long before the time of Muhammad, Snouck Hurgronje and Aloys Sprenger agree that the association of Abraham with the Kaaba was Muhammad’s personal invention, and it served as a means to liberate Islam from Judaism. Sprenger’s conclusion is harsh: “By this lie… Mohammed gave to Islam all that man needs and which differentiates religion from philosophy: a nationality, ceremonies, historical memories, mysteries, an assurance of entering heaven, all the while deceiving his own conscience and those of others”…</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The works of Ignaz Goldziher and Henri Corbin on the influence of Zoroastrianism on Islam; the works of Geiger, Torrey, and Katsch on the influence of Judaism; Richard Bell’s pioneering work on the influence of Christianity; the work of Wellhausen, Noldeke, Hurgronje, and Robertson Smith on the influence of Sabianism and pre-Islamic Arabia; and the work of Arthur Jeffery on the foreign vocabulary of the Koran, all combine to make us concur with Zwemer’s conclusion that Islam “is not an invention, but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the genius of Mohammad in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for human ills and forcing it down by means of the sword.”</span></blockquote>Readers interested in more recent results from historical studies of the Koran might want to first read the summary by Sean Gannon available <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=123065">here</a>.<br />
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In sum, whichever way it’s examined, Islam’s claim that the Koran was conveyed to Muhammad from God/Allah is ridiculous. Moreover, such a conclusion certainly isn’t recent. For example in his 2010 <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad">e-book</a> already referenced, Sujit Das relays the following:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Perhaps the greatest freethinker in the whole of Islam was Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925). His general philosophy was that no authority was beyond criticism. He was a true humanist and had boundless faith in human reason. Al-Razi argued…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people’s guides, and make people dependent upon them?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Al-Razi maintained the view that reason is superior to revelation and salvation is only possible through philosophy. The Prophets, the billy goats with long beards (as Al-Razi disdainfully described them), cannot claim any intellectual and spiritual superiority. These billy goats pretend to come with a message from God, all the while exhausting themselves spouting their lies and imposing on the masses blind obedience to the “words of the master”. As for the Qur’an, it is but an associated mixture of “absurd and inconsistent fables”. Al-Razi continued,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: “Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one”. Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter… By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: “Produce something like it”?!</span></blockquote>Yet, merchant/trader that he was, Muhammad deserves some credit: he repackaged available Zoroastrian / Jewish / Christian / Sabian and pre-Islamic polytheistic poems and myths, and offered his “customers” more for less, i.e., a sexier heaven (literally!) and a more sadistic hell, at a cost of not the usual 10% tithing but only 2.5% – although the fine print adds: not 2.5% of one’s income, but an annual tax of 2.5% of one’s net worth! But even if they failed to read the fine print, sensible Arabs of Mecca refused to join his religion and (as I demonstrated in the previous post by quoting the Koran) they called him “mad” and “a mad poet”. During the first ten-or-so years of his promoting his “new” religion (which was just a sloppy amalgamation of old religions), Muhammad did, however, manage to convince a hundred-or-so people to join him – mostly women and slaves (i.e., those who had little to lose and whose sanity was questioned).<br />
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Undaunted even after his uncle and his first wife died (who were his prime supporters) – that is, after he relocated from Mecca to Medina – the merchant/trader Muhammad offered even more for still less: he saw how to capitalize on the malignant desires of brigands, sex maniacs, and assorted other brutes and beasts. First, he promised them all the booty and women they could plunder (for a mere surcharge, payable to him, of 20% of the booty and the first pick of captured women – to be his personal sex slaves). Then, applying the experience he gained in his “cut-throat” religious business, Muhammad sold his customers the next phase of the martyrdom craziness: not just the Jewish instant-heaven for defending your religion, not just the Christian instant-heaven for perseverance in your religion, but “guaranteed” instant access to paradise (complete with 72 “renewable” virgins for each brute) for “martyrs” killed in their pillage and plunder, euphemistically called “holy war” or <i>jihad</i>.<br />
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With that offer, Muhammad had more recruits (i.e., rabid dogs) than he could satisfy by looting other Arab tribes. So, he (and subsequent Muslim leaders) proceeded to attack and loot other countries: to the North, which had been weakened by centuries of wars between the Roman and Persian empires (both of which were unprepared for attacks on their “soft underbellies” by marauding, fanatic Arabs), and to the West, across North Africa, which had been weakened and demoralized by centuries of Christian sectarian strife. The result was to expand Islam’s real estate holding – which Muslim terrorists continue to seek to do, to this day.<br />
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Unfortunately for past and present Muslim terrorists, however, Muhammad seems to have made a slight mistake in promising his martyrs 72 perpetual virgins. Thus, as explained in a 4 March 2002 <a href="http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html">article</a> in <i>The New York Times</i> by Alexander Stille:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">…the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word ‘hur’, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply “white</span><span style="color: blue;">”</span><span style="color: blue;">. Islamic tradition insists the term ‘hur’ stands for ‘houri’, which means </span><span style="color: blue;">“</span><span style="color: blue;">virgin</span><span style="color: blue;">”</span><span style="color: blue;">, but Mr. Luxenberg <span style="color: black;">[a German scholar of ancient Semitic languages and author of <i>The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran</i>]</span> insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, ‘hur’ means “white raisin.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called <i>Hymns of Paradise</i> by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word ‘paradise’ was derived from the Aramaic word for </span><span style="color: blue;">‘</span><span style="color: blue;">garden</span><span style="color: blue;">’</span><span style="color: blue;"> and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits, and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as ‘hur’, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors.</span></blockquote>It’s a pity (for victims of Islamic idiocy) that <i>mujahideen</i> maniacs don’t realize that white raisins are readily available at local supermarkets.<br />
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<i><b>3. Islam’s error of adopting Muhammad’s laws as Allah’s laws </b></i><b>(sharia).</b><br />
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It’s mind boggling that any human living today would choose to abide by laws based on the words and deeds of the seventh century Bedouin bandit Muhammad, justifiably <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-challenge/the-challenge/">described</a> by Ali Sina as “a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a madman, [and] a looter.” Yet, a billion Muslims do accept Muhammad’s laws as Allah’s laws.<br />
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Their logic is sound: in their indoctrinated view, God/Allah communicated with Muhammad (via the fictitious angel Gabriel); Muhammad was “the perfect man”; therefore, his words and deeds should be the basis of their laws (called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia"><i>sharia</i></a> or spelled <i>shari’a</i> or <i>shari’ah,</i> meaning “pathway”, and “based on the teachings of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet as given in the <i>Hadith</i> and <i>Sunnah</i>”). But although their logic is sound their conclusion is wrong (in fact, doubly wrong), first because it’s based on Muhammad’s faulty claim that he was “the perfect man” and second because it rests on the untestable premiss (and therefore, gobbledygook) that God/Allah exists.<br />
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Of course, Muslims don’t agree that their conclusion is wrong, since they obviously don’t mind relying on meaningless premisses. Even they, however, admit that deriving laws from Muhammad’s words and deeds is complicated, requiring the guidance of Islamic clerics [those who are pleased to be called “scholars” (<i>ulema</i>), i.e., people who waste their lives studying Islam’s “sacred literature”]. In fact, history has shown that following Muhammad’s path (<i>sharia</i>) has been so complicated (and contentious) that Islam <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches">split</a> into multiple sects (e.g., Sunni, Shia, Khawariji, Kalam, Sufi) and sub-sects (e.g., only within the Sunni sect, Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki, and Hanbali/Wahhabism), each of whose members <a href="http://www.progressive-muslim.org/fight-among-muslim-sects-mullahs.htm">commonly call</a> members of competing sects “not true Muslims” or “apostates”, thereby “justifying” murders and wars. A recent example is the Iraq (Sunni) and Iran (Shia) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War">war</a>, which raged from 1980 to 1988 and in which approximately a half a million people were killed. The loss of so many lives, however, is apparently not to be grieved, for as the dictators and clerical leeches on both sides consoled, those who died were martyrs for their causes and are now in paradise enjoying their 72 white raisins.<br />
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The resulting murders and wars within and between sects have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28karsh.html">persisted</a> essentially continuously since 24 years after Muhammad’s death (“when the head of universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, [was] murdered by political rivals”), in spite of Allah’s alleged injunction:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">Do not be like those who became divided and disputed, despite the clear proofs that were given to them. (Q3:105)</span></blockquote>From which the obvious conclusion is that, in reality, no communication from any god ever provided “clear proofs” – which (surprise, surprise) is logically consistent with the premisses that there are no gods (and never were any gods) and that all religious murders and wars have been caused (and continue to be caused) by ignorant and power-mongering clerics. As an Iranian recently <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">said</a> about Iran’s current, leading clerics:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">[They’re] society’s dregs and fascists who consist of a concoction of ignorance and madness… [and] those who are convinced that yogurt is black. </span></blockquote>But continuing with the silly speculation that a creator god exists (rather than the more reasonable conclusions that either the universe has always existed or, e.g., it was created by a <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/02/god-is-total-nothingness.html">quantum-like symmetry-breaking fluctuation in total nothingness</a>), Islamic clerics during the past millennium and more have continuously churned out sharia rulings (or <i>fatwas</i>).<br />
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Some <a href="http://listverse.com/2010/02/25/top-10-bizarre-or-ridiculous-fatwas/">recent rulings</a> have ranged from the ridiculous to the absurd, including the following:<br />
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• In 1993, the “supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia” (the “Grand Mufti”) Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz (or written Abdillah Bin Baz) <a href="http://khalas.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/a-flat-earth-the-islamic-perspective/">ruled</a>, consistent with the Koran:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished.</blockquote>Again, that was the Grand Mufti’s ruling in 1993 not 993.<br />
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• In 2007, the “head of Al-Azhar University’s department of Hadith” (Al-Azhar being “one of Sunni Islam’s most prestigious institution”) <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20070522065034319C480927">ruled</a> that, based on the <i>hadith</i> in which Muhammad allegedly told a woman to nurse a teenage boy to establish a family bond, unrelated men and women would be permitted to work together in the same office or other facility if the employed women would similarly nurse their male colleagues. Many males were apparently willing to comply, but wouldncha know, once again, the trouble-making women were hesitant to cooperate, apparently having the audacity to claim that they own their own bodies.<br />
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• And then there are Islam’s list of 70 <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/2/20/15517/5559">toilet-rules</a>, which I’ll leave to readers to ridicule – although, maybe I should a least mention the required, final prayer: “<span style="color: purple;">Praise be to Allah who relieved me of the filth and gave me relief.</span>” Isn’t it great the way Allah gets down and digs into the dirty details? Although, truth be known, I’d rather prefer if Allah paid more attention to the big picture, e.g., progress toward more peace and prosperity, which Islam seems hell-bent on flushing down the toilet.<br />
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But beyond such asinine <i>fatwas</i> (which may, in fact, follow from sound logical analyses – but are unreliable, because once again, they’re based on the untestable premiss that Allah exits and the faulty premiss that Muhammad was “the perfect man”), Islamic “scholars” (who apparently don’t have the smarts to question their premisses) do encounter other logical problems. Thus, disregarding the many problems that engage the “minds” of today’s Islamic clerics [such as whether women are permitted to drive cars (when Bedouin women were permitted to drive camels), whether DNA evidence can be used as a “witness” of rape, and so on], a logical conundrum arises from what’s identified in the Koran as <a href="http://www.meforum.org/article/1754">abrogation</a>.<br />
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Specifically, according to no less an authority than the Koran itself, God/Allah allegedly revised/ redacted/ changed his most holy of creations (the Koran), abrogating or canceling what allegedly he had previously dictated (via Gabriel) to Muhammad as inviolable. The pertinent “communication” is in the <i>sura</i> (chapter) called <i>Al-Barqarah:</i><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">None of our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar… (Q.2:106)</span></blockquote>So, maybe my statement should be abrogated: God/Allah didn’t abrogate anything in the Koran; instead, given that ‘abrogate’ means to “repeal or do away with”, then according to the above quotation, God/Allah “substituted something better or similar” – which to the rest of us means ‘abrogate’!<br />
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If that’s still unclear, maybe an example will help. Thus, at one point the Koran provides Allah’s immutable rule (and sweet sentiment):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">If anyone slew an innocent person it would be as if he slew all mankind, and if anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind. (Q.5:32)</span></blockquote>Not incidentally, the above verse was quite likely written by the Jewish rabbi Al-Husayn ibn Sailam (who converted to Islam, whose name Muhammad <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_ibn_Salam">changed</a> to Abdullah ibn Sallam, and who, subsequently, was “constantly in his [Muhammad’s] company”), because Q.5:32 is almost identical to the <a href="http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=8760.96;theme=30">statement</a> in the Jerusalem Talmud, <i>Sanhedrin</i> 4:1 (22a), which was finalized hundreds of years before Muhammad was born and which Rabbi Al-Husayn almost certainly would have known:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #38761d;">Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world. </span> </blockquote>Anyway, the challenge for Islamic clerics was (and still is!) to explain how Q.5:32 (equating the slaying of an single person to slaying all mankind) could be consistent with other statements in the Koran, such “the Sura of the Sword”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">…slay the unbelievers wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush… (Q.9:5) </span></blockquote>Well, never underestimate the ability of any religion’s clerics to squirm out of logical absurdities by redefining words and introducing new balderdash: the result is new dogma and resulting sectarian divisions. In the case under consideration, some illustrative squirming is the following.<br />
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• One group of Islamic clerics claim (with zero evidence to support their claim) that “abrogation” doesn’t apply to the Koran, itself. Instead, what Allah meant (say these clowns who claim to know “the thoughts” of the first symmetry-breaking quantum-like fluctuation in a total void) was that some statements given to other “prophets” (Moses, Jesus, et al.) were abrogated. Thus, in the current case (claim these clerics), what Allah abrogated was the earlier Jewish statement,<br />
<blockquote style="color: #38761d;">Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world… </blockquote>And what Allah did (wise as such an unstable quantum-fluctuation must have been) was to introduce the word ‘innocent’:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">If anyone slew an </span><i style="color: red;">innocent</i><span style="color: red;"> person it would be as if he slew all mankind… (Q.5:3</span><span style="color: red;">2)</span></blockquote>Consequently (claim these clowns), whereas nonbelievers aren’t innocent, therefore in the Sura of the Sword, Allah has given his approval to slaughter unbelievers – because they’re obviously guilty (of not believing Muhammad’s balderdash).<br />
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• A second group of Islamic clerics also claims that abrogation doesn’t apply to the Koran, and what people are to understand (according to these idiots) is that Allah has proclaimed different rules to apply to different cases: slaying (innocent) Muslims is forbidden, but slaying (guilty) unbelievers is approved – because they’re not really people, doncha know.<br />
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• A third group of Islamic clerics accepts abrogation within the Koran, but what’s to be understood (according to these imbeciles) is that Allah’s rules are so versatile that they adjust with changing times, as illustrated in the Koran. Thus, when Muhammad was starting out (in Mecca) peaceful rules applied, when he began to gain strength (in Medina) he was permitted to defend himself (killing people in the process), and when he had assembled the most powerful army in Arabia, then he was permitted to “kill the unbelievers”. Therefore, claim these imbecile clerics, Allah’s rules change with changing times – and, of course, it’s the prerogative of the clerics to choose which rules apply at the present time.<br />
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• And still another group of devious Islamic clerics accept abrogation within the Koran basically without qualification. They admit (at least among themselves, rarely to others – and never to new recruits to Islam) that the Sura of the Sword does in fact <a href="http://www.islamreview.com/articles/quransdoctrine.shtml">abrogate</a> all “124 verses [in the Koran] that call for tolerance and patience.” Thereby, for example, they throw out the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/2110/the-issue-of-compulsion-in-religion-islam-is-what-its">familiar</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">There is no compulsion in religion. (Q.2:256)</span></blockquote>There are <a href="http://www.islamreview.com/articles/quransdoctrine.shtml">other</a> manipulations, misrepresentations, and obfuscations (e.g., effectively, “Of course there’s no compulsion in religion; it’s not our fault that you unbelievers feel compulsion about keeping your head attached to the rest of your body”), but I won’t go into them. New interpretations lead to new sects and sub-sects – and the volcanic eruption of another mountain of lies.<br />
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Meanwhile, those of us whose brains are still functioning easily see through the entire charade of abrogation and resulting sharia law: Muhammad changed the rules as he went along (when he was weak, he preached peace and harmony; when he was strong, he preached war). It’s been similar for all subsequent charismatic, charlatan clerics. As Salman Rushdie said: <br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Fundamentalism isn’t about religion; it’s about power.</span></blockquote>Yet, in spite of the confusion and troubles caused by abrogation, most Islamic clerics have agreed on a set of laws that Allah allegedly dictated. In their scheme, the usual “rationale” behind establishing any law is the following, applied in the indicated order, as relayed by “<a href="http://forum.darwinawards.com/index.php?showtopic=8197&st=42">abbas</a>” at <i>The Philosophy Forum:</i><br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">1. Does the Koran say anything about the situation? If so, follow that! – no further consideration.<br />
2. Does the life of Muhammad tell us anything about the situation? If so, follow that! – no further consideration.<br />
3. Have there been past Sharia rulings about the situation? If so, follow that! – no further consideration.<br />
4. Have there been any opinions by past or present Imams of great respect? If so, follow that! – no further consideration.<br />
5. Does the local Imam have an opinion? If so, follow that! – no further consideration.<br />
6. If none of the above, the Sharia court shall render a verdict in accordance with Koranic principles.</blockquote>The author comments further:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">This type of law is based in the past. It offers little opportunity for evolution of thought to fit evolution of society. In fact, it discourages societal evolution and encourages continuance of old tribal ways… which can still be observed today in almost all aspects of daily life in Muslim states. Tribalism and sectarianism are the factors that are preventing Muslim states from entering the modern age. Of course, the POV [point of view] of Muslim leaders is that they don’t want to enter the modern age.</span></blockquote>Examples of well-established sharia law include the following, copied from Gadi Adelman’s article <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/op-ed/discussing-islam-a-losing-battle/">Discussing Islam</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">• Sharia law commands that drinkers and gamblers are to be whipped. <br />
• Sharia law allows a plaintiff to exact legal revenge, literally an eye for an eye.<br />
• Sharia law commands that a thief must have a hand cut off.<br />
• Sharia law orders death for both Muslim and non-Muslim critics of the Quran, Mohammed, and even Sharia itself.<br />
• Sharia law orders apostates to be killed.<br />
• Sharia law commands offensive, aggressive, and unjust <i>Jihad</i> (war).<br />
• The Quran instructs Muslims to lie to further and protect Islam <i>(Taqiyya).</i></blockquote>I recommend that all non-Muslims re-read the last-four of the above laws, think about them, and realize that, thereby, Islam has declared war on you, to be waged (surreptitiously when necessary) until you surrender to Islam. In the next post, I’ll comment further on the evil of Islam’s declaring and waging incessant war against humanity.<br />
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4. Islam’s error of promoting deception </b></i><b>(</b><b>taqiyya</b><b>).</b><br />
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I especially recommend considering the final law listed above, dealing with deception, i.e., <i>taqiyya</i>. Raymond Ibrahim provides details in his <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war">article</a> “How <i>Taqiyya</i> Alters Islam’s Rules of War”, published in the Winter 2010 issue (Vol. XVII, No. 1, pp. 3–13) of <i>The Middle East Quarterly</i> (quoted below with references omitted):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Qur’anic verse 3:28 is often seen as the primary verse that sanctions deception towards non-Muslims:</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">Let believers [Muslims] not take infidels [non-Muslims] for friends and allies instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with God – unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (d. 923), author of a standard and authoritative Qur’an commentary, explains verse 3:28 as follows:</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: purple;">If you [Muslims] are under their [non-Muslims’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them with your tongue while harboring inner animosity for them… [know that] God has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels rather than other believers – except when infidels are above them [in authority]. Should that be the case, let them act friendly towards them while preserving their religion</span>. </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: blue;">Regarding Qur’an 3:28, Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), another prime authority on the Qur’an, writes,</span> <span style="color: purple;">“Whoever at any time or place fears… evil [from non-Muslims] may protect himself through outward show.”</span> <span style="color: blue;">As proof of this, he quotes Muhammad’s close companion Abu Darda, who said,</span> <span style="color: purple;">“Let us grin in the face of some people while our hearts curse them.”</span> <span style="color: blue;">Another companion, simply known as Al-Hasan, said,</span> <span style="color: purple;">“Doing </span><i style="color: purple;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: purple;"> is acceptable till the Day of Judgment [i.e., in perpetuity].”</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Other prominent scholars, such as Abu ‘Abdullah al-Qurtubi (1214-73) and Muhyi ‘d-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240), have extended </span><i style="color: blue;">taqiyya</i><span style="color: blue;"> to cover deeds. In other words, Muslims can behave like infidels and worse – for example, by bowing down and worshiping idols and crosses, offering false testimony, and even exposing the weaknesses of their fellow Muslims to the infidel enemy – anything short of actually killing a Muslim: </span><span style="color: purple;"> “</span><i style="color: purple;">Taqiyya</i><span style="color: purple;">, even if committed without duress, does not lead to a state of infidelity – even if it leads to sin deserving of hellfire.”</span></blockquote>Thereby, in short, Islam informs the world that no Muslim can be trusted in dealing with non-Muslims.<br />
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That’s an astounding error – unless (of course) Muslims don’t expect non-Muslims to learn what Islam teaches or Muslims don’t want non-Muslims as friends. In fact, the latter is what Islam teaches:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: red;">Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers [in Muhammad’s balderdash]… except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them... (Q.3:28)</span></blockquote>And I admit that, if you don’t want friends, then being deceitful is a sure-fire method of not having any. Yet, most people consider it an error to avoid friendship – or even an evil, as I’ll address in the next post.<br />
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<i><b>5. Islam’s fatal philosophical errors. </b></i><br />
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Islam’s philosophical errors are like explosives planted to demolish decrepit building. Here, in this final section of this long post, I’ll just very briefly describe some of Islam’s explosive and fatal philosophical errors. By ‘fatal’, I mean that, as the minds of more Muslims are freed from their clerics’ dogma and deception, as more Muslims begin to be able to think for themselves and think critically rather than emotionally, then upon realizing Islam’s philosophical errors, Islam will explosively collapse under the weight of its own absurdities.<br />
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5.1 Islam’s fatal epistemological errors. </i><br />
Epistemology (from Greek <i>epistēmē</i> meaning ‘knowledge’) is “the study of the methods, validity, and scope of knowledge”, providing the ability to distinguish justified belief from balderdash. The <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ib1BasicScience.pdf">scientific method</a> (“guess, test, and reassess”) has been found to be the only way to gain justifiable knowledge about the world external to our minds – and even about how our minds work. The scientific method (coupled with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T2_Truth_&_Understanding.pdf">Bayes' theorem</a>) yields estimates for the probability that any claims to truth for “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">open systems</a>” are valid.<br />
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In contrast, Islam (similar to all Abrahamic religions) is based on the nonsense that absolute truth (a concept appropriate only to “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">closed systems</a>”, such as all religions) can be or has been obtained in some “prophet’s” revelations (i.e., dreams, hallucinations, or similar) and that such closed-system truths are valid in the open-system known as reality. People believe such closed-system truths are true in reality simply because such beliefs are satisfying (the “proof-by-pleasure logical fallacy”, consistent with the root of the word ‘be-lief’, i.e., “wish to be”). As Bertrand Russell wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way… <i>So long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence</i> [italics added], they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans.</blockquote><i>5.2 Islam’s fatal ontological errors.</i><br />
Ontology (from Greek <i>ōn</i>, <i>ont-</i> meaning ‘being’) is the study of the nature of existence or being. Just as there are two types of ‘truth’ [for open systems (such as natural systems, for which ‘truth’ can be approached only asymptotically, using the scientific method) and for closed systems (such as all games, including all religions), in which ‘truth’ is defined by “the rules of the game”], there are two types of existence: things and processes (or ‘phenomena’) that exist in reality and those that exist only as ideas.<br />
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That specific phenomena exist in reality is established as a hypothesis by collecting relevant evidence, i.e., phenomenologically. The probability that some existence hypothesis is true can then be estimated (using Bayes’ method) via tests of predictions of the hypothesis. For example, the hypothesis “I exist” leads to predictions (e.g., that I should be able to type the next few words). From the outcomes of such tests, I’ve <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">concluded</a> that the hypothesis “I exist” is valid to within about 1 part in 10^24 – leaving room for the miniscule possibility that, in fact, I may be just a simulation in some humongous computer.<br />
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Meanwhile, in our minds, we can imagine many more phenomena than exist in reality, e.g., invisible flying pink elephants. The electro-chemical signals in our brains exist in reality, but the objects of our thoughts exist only as ideas. As an example, the famous dictum of Descartes, “I think; therefore, I am”, is invalid: his more complete statement (which would have been tautologically valid) should have been: “I think; therefore, I am thinking.”<br />
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In particular, no reliable evidence has ever been obtained to support the hypothesis (or better, the ‘speculation’) that any god exists in reality. I’ve <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">crudely estimated</a> the probability that any creator god exists (or has ever existed) – based not on evidence (since there is none) but on the possibility that such a god could come into existence – to be less than one part in 10^500. Stated differently, the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to obtain, vastly more certain even than the knowledge that we exist, is that no creator god exists or has ever existed.<br />
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When Muslims (and other religionists) realize their mistake of confusing existence in reality with existence of ideas in their minds, they’ll realize how foolish they have been to fall for their clerics’ con game. As Sunand Tryambak Joshi summarized:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The atheist, agnostic, or secularist… should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people’s religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an “intelligent creator” should be held accountable for their folly: they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools.</blockquote><i>5.3 Islam’s fatal logical errors.</i><br />
The fatal errors in logic, especially by those Muslims who claim to be logical, are so egregious as to be laughable. They pride themselves with their applications of Aristotle’s logic but have apparently failed to notice that neither Aristotelian logic nor any other deductive logic is capable of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">producing new information</a>: at best, sound deductions can produce only knowledge consistent with premisses. Thus, if one assumes that a creator god exists who communicated the Koran to humans, then sound logic leads to logically correct (but horrible) conclusions such as the correctness of beating women, raping female captives, cutting off the hands of thieves, and smiting off the fingertips and necks of “unbelievers” (in Muslim balderdash).<br />
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Such conclusions, however, aren’t “true” (in reality) because they start from the untestable premiss (and therefore gobbledygook) that a creator god exists. To determine the existence of anything (e.g., some god), deductions are completely useless, since (again) deductions can’t produce new information. To obtain new information (e.g., about the existence of any god), then ontology teaches us that we must rely on phenomenology: evidence must be obtained, hypotheses must be formulated that are testable, and so on, via the scientific method.<br />
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And as I’ve written so many times that I’m becoming “sick and tired” of writing it, there’s zero evidence that any creator god exists or has ever existed. Yes, certainly, data support the hypotheses that we and the universe exist, but the data provide evidence only that we and the universe exist. How we and the universe seem to have come into existence are entirely different questions, which I’ve explored <a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/02/god-is-total-nothingness.html">elsewhere</a>. Here, I’ll let Joseph Daleiden summarize:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">In the final analysis all theology… is a marvelous exercise in logic based on premisses that are no more verifiable – or reasonable – than astrology, palmistry, or belief in the Easter Bunny. Theology pretends to search for truth, but no method could lead a person further… from the truth than that intellectual charade.</blockquote><i>5.4 Islam’s other, fatal, philosophical errors.</i><br />
In this post, I won’t go into additional details of Islam’s fatal philosophical errors, e.g., in aesthetics, ethics, politics, etc. Partly for fun, however, consider how far a society can advance starting from the aesthetic idiocy <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/">pronounced</a> by the founder of Iran’s current theocracy, the Ayatollah Khomeini (who was also a professor of philosophy!):<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.</blockquote>Really? Some of us enjoy ourselves – and we’re serious – when we poke fun at sanctimonious BS from supercilious fools. As H.L. Mencken said about 75 years ago:<br />
<blockquote style="color: blue;">The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe – that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.</blockquote>And thus, all praise is due his noodliness, the <a href="http://www.venganza.org/">Flying Spaghetti Monster</a> (pbuh = pesto be upon him)!<br />
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What’s not so much fun, however, is to consider (as I’ll do in the next post) the evils resulting from Islam’s errors in personal and interpersonal morality and in political and social philosophy.<br />
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[To be continued]<br />
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<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
••••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-88779848660532084262010-07-30T11:25:00.000-07:002013-01-13T11:39:33.610-08:00The Pathetic Muhammad (pbuh)•••<br />
This is the 33rd in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the God Lie”. Most of the first 29 posts in this series dealt with how the mountainous lie known as Judaism developed (predominantly from earlier Mesopotamian myths and Zoroastrianism). The previous three posts dealt with how the mountainous lie called Christianity was created (predominantly from Judaism and from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Indian metaphysics and polytheism). My goal for this and the next two posts is to outline a few features of the mountainous lie known as Islam, which basically is another version of Judaism [i.e., the theocracy foisted on the Hebrews by Ezra and co-conspirators (Ezra & C-C)], with the addition of more Zoroastrianism (especially its speculations about heaven and hell), some Christianity, and assorted Arab myths and polytheistic practices (e.g., the pilgrimage to Mecca to kiss a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone">small, black stone</a>, possibly a meteorite).<br />
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The alleged founder of Islam was Muhammad (c.570–632 CE). In contrast to the cases for Moses and Jesus, there’s not much doubt that Muhammad existed, but similar to the cases for those alleged “founders” of Judaism and Christianity, existing stories about Muhammad are of questionable reliability. His “official biographies” (called <i>sira</i> or spelled <i>sirah</i>), allegedly containing the traditions and sayings of Muhammad (called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith"><i>hadith</i></a>) and allegedly containing accounts of his daily practices (called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnah"><i>sunnah</i></a>), were written 120 to 300 years after his death and can therefore be expected to have been at least amplified in their retelling – if not completely <a href="http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=0cbe362262abd70c07710525c4bfa746&topic=226.msg5737#msg5737">fabricated</a>. <br />
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An illustration is the <a href="http://www.islamreview.com/articles/howdidjerusalem.shtml">story</a> about Muhammad’s nighttime ride to Jerusalem on a magical horse (“with the head of a woman, wings of an eagle, the tail of a peacock, and hoofs reaching the horizon”), there to ascend “to the seventh heaven with the angel Gabriel”, along the way having nice little chats with Adam, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, John the Baptist, Jesus, et al., who “accepted him as their master.” Eventually, so the story goes (which is essentially identical to a much earlier <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/2309627/Why-I-Am-Not-a-Muslim-by-Ibn-Warraq">Zoroastrian story</a>, save for the names of the cast of characters), Muhammad met God/Allah – and if anyone believes that, then I have some great oceanfront property in North Dakota that I’m willing to almost give away.<br />
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More generally and since many of the major stories about Muhammad are so similar to the stories about the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/12/mythical-monster-moses-1.html">mythical monster Moses</a>, it’s appropriate to be skeptical about the veracity of all existing stories about Muhammad. For example, the stories about Muhammad climbing a mountain to receive “revelations” from “the creator of the universe” (e.g., that the creator demands worship from his ant-like creations, that Muhammad was to be recognized as the creator’s spokesman, and that Muhammad was to establish a theocracy), his having such “laws” recorded in a “holy book” (called the Koran or spelled Qur’an), his “exodus” from Mecca to Medina, his ordering the slaughter of “unbelievers” (with the plunder of villages, the murder or enslavement of captured males, and the rape of captured females) are so similar to Ezra & C-C’s fictitious stories about Moses that an appropriate response would be: “Gimme a break.”<br />
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But regardless of the veracity of such stories, since believing in their “truth” is the foundation of Islam, then to investigate Islam (as I plan to do in the next two posts), it’s necessary to consider the stories. In what follows, I’ll consider a few of them, in each case as if they actually occurred and as if Muhammad actually existed. In each consideration, however, it’s to be understood that I intend that caveats be added, such as “assuming it actually occurred”, “assuming that Muhammad actually existed”, and similar. And I should add that, in view of recent studies by competent historians, I include such caveats with more than normal emphasis. <br />
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Illustrative of such studies in the following quotation from Sharon Morad’s <a href="http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/books/origins-koran.html">summary</a> of Ibn Warraq’s <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/koran_prob.htm">Introduction</a> to the 1988 book <i>The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book </i>(where the original references are listed).<br />
<blockquote>
<b style="color: blue;">Skepticism of the Sources (pp. 18-34)</b><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad died in 632. The earliest written material of his life is the </span><i style="color: blue;">sira</i><span style="color: blue;"> of Ibn Ishaq (750), but Ibn Ishaq’s work was lost. We only have parts of it, available in quotation by Ibn Hisham (834). The </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> are even later. There are six authoritative collections of </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;">: Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Maja, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, and al-Nisai. All are dated between 200 and 300 years after Muhammad.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Scholars have attempted to distinguish which </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> contain real information from those containing legendary, theological or political embellishment. Wellhausen insists that the 8th century version (i.e., Ibn Ishaq) was accurate, and later versions were deliberate fictions designed to alter the 8th century story. Caetani and Cammens suggest that most </span><i style="color: blue;">sira</i><span style="color: blue;"> were invented to construct an ‘ideal’ past and a justification for contemporary exaggerated exegesis of the Koran.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Most scholars conclude that the stories about Muhammad prior to becoming a prophet are fictitious. In his important critique of the </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> Goldhizer argues that many </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> accepted even by the most rigorous collectors were 8th and 9th century forgeries with fictitious </span><i style="color: blue;">isnads</i> [i.e., “information about the route by which information has been obtained”]<span style="color: blue;">. These</span> <i style="color: blue;">hadith</i> <span style="color: blue;">arose out of quarrels between the ‘Umayyads</span> [i.e., “members of Muslim dynasties that claimed descent from ‘Umayya (a distant relative of Muhammad) and that ruled the Islamic world from 660 (or 661) to 750 and Moorish Spain from 756 to 1031”]<span style="color: blue;"> and their opponents – both sides freely inventing</span> <i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> to support their respective positions. The manufacture of </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> sped up under the ‘Abbasids who were vying with the ‘Alids for primacy. Even Muslims acknowledged a vast number of forgeries [~90% of </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> were discarded], but even so, the collectors were not so rigorous as could be hoped. Even in the 10th century over 200 forgeries were identified in Bukhari. At one point 12 different versions of his work existed. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">In his study of the <i>hadith</i> Schacht concludes:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">• </span><i style="color: blue;">Isnads</i><span style="color: blue;"> only began to be widely used after the ‘Abbasid revolution, and then they were formulated carelessly,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• The better an </span><i style="color: blue;">isnad</i><span style="color: blue;"> looks the more likely it was to be spurious,</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• No existing </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> can reliably be ascribed to Muhammad, and</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">• Most of the classical corpus was widely disseminated after Shafi’i (820) and most of the legal tradition was formulated in the 9th century.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">His methodology includes looking at legal decisions – if they didn’t refer to a crucial tradition, it’s because the tradition wasn’t there. He argues that traditions were created in response to 9th century conditions and then redacted back several centuries. Islam cannot be traced accurately back before the 8th century.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Wansbrough argues that the Koran and the </span><i style="color: blue;">hadith</i><span style="color: blue;"> developed out of sectarian controversies and were projected back to the time of Muhammad. Islamic law developed after contact with Rabbinic Judaism outside the </span><i style="color: blue;">Hijaz</i><span style="color: blue;"> <span style="color: black;">[“a coastal region in western Saudi Arabia that borders the Red Sea”]</span>. Muhammad is portrayed as a Mosaic-type prophet, but the religion was Arabized – Arabic prophet, Arabic Holy language, Arabic scripture. At the same time as the formation of this Arabic religion, we see the beginning of interest in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, further suggestive of a rise in Arab nationalism. Negative evidence further supports a late date for the creation of the Koran. There is no record of the Koran being used in legal decisions before the 9th century, and the </span><i style="color: blue;">Fiqh Akbar I</i><span style="color: blue;"> (a sort of Muslim creed drafted in the mid-8th century to represent orthodox views) contains no reference to the Koran.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Cook, Crone, and Hinds argue that Islam developed as an attempt to find a common identity among peoples united in conquests that began when the Arabs joined Messianic Judaism in an attempt to retake the Promised Land. Looking at non-Muslim [sources] all we can say is that Muhammad lived, was a merchant and taught about Abraham. But other than that, non-Muslim sources do not confirm the traditional Islamic account. We have no reason to think that he lived in central Arabia (much less Mecca) or that he taught about the Koran. The Koran first appears late in the 7th century, and the first inscriptions with Koranic material (e.g. on coins and the Dome of the Rock) show trivial divergence from the canonical text. The earliest Greek sources say that Muhammad was alive in 634 (Muslim sources say he died in 632). In the 660s [an] Armenian chronicler describes the community of Jews and Arabs, but Muslims say that the Arabs split with the Jews during Muhammad’s lifetime. The Armenian also describes Palestine as the focal point of the Ishmaelite (i.e. Arab) activity, though Muslims say this focus switched to Mecca in AH 2 <span style="color: black;">[the second year after the </span></span><i style="color: black;">Hijra</i><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: black;">, i.e., after Muhammad’s alleged “exodus” from Mecca to Medina in 622]</span>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">The result of their research is described in </span><i style="color: blue;">Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977).</i> <span style="color: blue;">The major thesis of this work is that Muhammad preached a message of Jewish Messianism and became involved in a joint attempt by Jews and Arabs, citing common Abrahamic decent, to reconquer Palestine. Therefore, the earliest non-Muslim sources report strong anti-Christian sentiment. But, eventually the Arabs quarreled with the Jews in Palestine and needed to establish a separate religious identity. They were inhibited by lack of an indigenous religious structure; so, they borrowed heavily from the Samaritans: note the similar emphasis on the unity of God, the </span><i style="color: blue;">fatiha</i><span style="color: blue;"> <span style="color: black;">[the short, first chapter of the Koran, “used as an essential element of ritual prayer”]</span> resembles a Samaritan prayer, the Koran only seems to know of the Torah or the Psalms (the Samaritans do not recognize the rest of the Hebrew scriptures), the importance of Moses, and the similarities between the Samaritan view of the Messiah and the Muslim concept of the Mahdi.</span></blockquote>
The possibility should therefore be entertained that essentially all orthodox Muslim stories about Muhammad were fabricated. Yet, until more historical and archeological evidence has been accumulated (comparable to the evidence, reviewed in earlier posts, that the stories about Moses were fabricated), then for this and the next post, I’ll proceed with the tentative hypothesis that the orthodox Muslim stories are reliable.<br />
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Related to the orthodox Muslim stories, an enormous amount of written material is already available, as the reader can easily confirm (e.g., start <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Articles/ArticlesArchive.htm">here</a>). In fact, even I have contributed to the literature, although by training and experience, I’m a physical scientist, not a historian. For example, in my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">on-line book</a>, starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx25_Muhammad_&_The_Quran.pdf">here</a>, I devoted five of the “Qx chapters” to some of the horrible personal and public policies promoted in the Koran. In addition, in many of the “X-chapters” of the book (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X12_EXposing_Violence.pdf">here</a>), I suggest ways that secular and scientific humanists might be able to thwart the Muslim supremacists from forcing such horrible policies on the rest of the world. And I’d agree that, as well as not being a historian, I’m obviously not impartial.<br />
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As for this and the next two posts (after several failed attempts to start them and after spending far more time than I ever wanted to waste reading about Muhammad and Islam), I finally decided on an approach that might be of some value toward the goal of helping to eradicate the mental plague known as Islam, especially from the minds of the poor Muslim people who had the misfortune to be indoctrinated in Islam when they were children. They deserve our sympathy, and I think that all of us should do what we can to help them recover their humanity. Toward that end, I thought it might useful if I at least mentioned some of Muhammad’s major mistakes and some of Islam’s significant errors and evils. In this post I’ll list and outline some of Muhammad’s mistakes, failures, apparent mental problems, etc., and in the next two posts, I’ll outline some of Islam’s resulting errors and evils.<br />
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1. Muhammad’s major failure to hold his beliefs only as strongly as relevant and reliable evidence warranted</b></i><br />
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Essentially all human progress has been built on the bedrock principle of holding beliefs only as strongly as relevant evidence warrants. Thereby, humans decided which berries were safe to eat, learned how to construct shelters and control fires, domesticated animals, planted and irrigated crops, and so on, out to an including creating the internet. It’s the essence of the scientific method: guess, test, and reassess. Muhammad, on the other, not only failed to hold his beliefs only as strongly as evidence warranted, he preached a policy exactly opposite to what he practiced!<br />
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To see what I mean, consider the following five <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/id2/index.htm">translations</a> of <i>Koran 17,</i> 36:<br />
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<span style="color: red;">You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I [Allah] have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them. [Translation from submission.org]</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">And do not uphold what you have no knowledge of. For the hearing, eyesight, and mind, all these you are responsible for. [free-minds.org]</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">And pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge; for every act of hearing, or of seeing or of (feeling in) the heart will be inquired into (on the Day of Reckoning). [Yusufali]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">(O man), follow not that whereof thou hast no knowledge. Lo! the hearing and the sight and the heart – of each of these it will be asked. [Pickthal]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">And follow not that of which you have not the knowledge; surely the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these, shall be questioned about that. [Shakir] </span></blockquote>
Yet in contrast (as will be illustrated below) and similar to all religious people to this day, Muhammad hypocritically held tenaciously to a bunch of beliefs that had zero supporting evidence, e.g., for the existence of (first) multi-gods, and then (later in his life) the single god Allah.<br />
<br />
<i><b>2. Muhammad’s major failure to appreciate what qualifies as ‘evidence’</b></i><br />
<br />
Of course, Muhammad would have objected (as do all religious people to this day) to the assessment that he held (and they hold) beliefs that have no supporting evidence. He (and they) would claim that abundant evidence supports the belief that, for example, God (or Allah) exists. Such objections, however, are derived from failure to appreciate what qualifies as ‘<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IhHypothesesandProbabilities.pdf">evidence</a>’. For example, that the universe and people seem to exist is evidence not for the existence of some creator god but evidence only that the universe and people exist.<br />
<br />
Not only is there zero evidence to support the claim that God (or Allah) created the universe, the claim is both incoherent and unnecessary. The claim that God/Allah created the universe is incoherent, because it leads to the obvious question: “Then, who created God?” If the response is either that “God always existed” or “God was self created”, then one could equally well conclude either that the universe always existed or that the universe created itself (<a href="http://meansnends.blogspot.com/2010/02/god-is-total-nothingness.html">for example</a>, by a symmetry-breaking quantum-like fluctuation in a total void). Thereby, not only is the claim that God/Allah created the universe incoherent, it’s unnecessary. <br />
<br />
Evidence suggests that we exist. The probability that the evidence is misleading is about 1 part in 10^24 (which is roughly the chance that, for example, we’re all just simulations in some humongous computer game). By the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">same reasoning</a> and based on the total lack of any relevant evidence, the probability that any god exists (or has ever existed) is much less than 1 part in 10^500. Therefore, since all knowledge claimed about any god is completely unreliable, then as the above quote from the Koran (17, 36) advises, Muhammad should have taken his own advice to “follow not that whereof thou hast no knowledge.” Instead, Muhammad’s message was the hypocrite’s: “Do as I say; not as I do.”<br />
<br />
<i><b>3. Muhammad’s major mistake of being so gullible, failing to be skeptical</b></i><br />
<br />
Humanity has advanced by applying the scientific method and associated skepticism (e.g., of the reliability and relevance of the data and its interpretation). An example already reviewed in these posts (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/11/clerical-quackery-5-physics-versus.html">here</a>) occurred in ancient Greece: Thales, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus opened the flood gates of skepticism with their criticisms of the ideas of Homer and Hesiod; their skepticism led to new ideas conceived by Anaximander, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Socrates, et al., which led to still more skepticism, more new ideas, and the resulting Golden Age of Ancient Greece. In contrast, humanity has stagnated whenever dogma dominated, i.e., whenever ideas (religious, political, or other ideas) have been adopted without criticism and correction. Thus, Christian dogma led to Europe’s Dark Ages, and Islamic dogma is the cause of the continuing stagnation of the Muslim world.<br />
<br />
Fundamental to the Muslim world’s stagnation was Muhammad’s uncritical adoption of Zarathustra’s speculations that some god created the universe, that people were involved in a “cosmic battle” between good and evil, that people’s performance in this battle would be suitably rewarded or punished in some imagined afterlife, etc. Long before Muhammad’s time, the Jews and Christians had similarly adopted Zarathustra’s wild speculations, which is why in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/03/clerical-quackery-9-greek-influences-on.html">earlier post</a> I identified Hellenized Judaism as Zoroastrianism 4.0, Paul’s Christianity as Zoroastrianism 5.0, and Muhammad’s Islam as Zoroastrianism 6.0. All such dogma was (and continues to be), in <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx20_Biblical_Balderdash.pdf">Kurt Vonnegut’s words</a>, “clearly invented balderdash.”<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Muslims defend Muhammad for being skeptical (e.g., of the Jewish idea that God needed to rest on the seventh day of creation and of the Christian idea that Jesus was God’s son), but even such alleged skepticism reveals Muhammad’s failure as a skeptic: he had bought the farm, but then wasted his time complaining about the presence of a few weeds. Thus, he uncritically adopted as reliable a huge number of totally bogus stories (about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.) that (as I’ve reviewed in earlier posts in this series) Ezra & C-C almost certainly concocted to try to convince the Jews to leave Babylon and return to their homeland. Thereby, far closer to reality than Muhammad’s claim (and Islam’s dogma) that the angel Gabriel dictated the Koran to Muhammad is to say that the racist, Persian-partisan Ezra, in effect, dictated most of the religious content of the Koran to Muhammad. <br />
<br />
The consequences were and continue to be significant. For example, as a result of Muhammad’s failure to be skeptical, he incorporated Jewish dogma into the Koran. The Koran, therefore, is a concoction based on silly myths (slightly mangled from the Jewish versions, which in turn originated in ancient Mesopotamian) about Adam being the first man, Noah and his ark, Abraham fathering Ishmael, and all the fictitious stories about Moses (e.g., about his magical tricks at the Egyptian court, his parting the Reed Sea, and similar silliness). Worse, by far, was that Muhammad’s uncritical, gullible acceptance of Ezra & C-C’s bogus stories about Moses (and Joshua) killing unbelievers (of Zarathustra’s speculations) led to Muhammad’s horrible policy of killing “unbelievers” (of his own wild speculations).<br />
<br />
Thus, Muhammad’s ordering the killing of thousands of Arabs, the subsequent killing of millions of people conquered by Muslim fanatics, and the killing of unbelievers by Islamic terrorists that continues to this day all followed from Muhammad’s gullible acceptance of, for example, the bogus story concocted by Ezra & C-C that Moses and Joshua did similar. As I’ve suggested in earlier posts in this series (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/mythical-monster-moses-2.html">here</a>), Ezra & C-C may have concocted their fable about the “mythical Moses monster” by relying on historical examples set by megalomaniacs such as the Egyptian pharaoh Thothmes III (c. 1480–1425 BCE, “the Alexander the Great of Ancient Egypt”) and the hideous Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I (who ruled from about 1115–1076 BCE). But whether or not those were the sources of Ezra & C-C concocted tales about Moses, it’s clear from the frequent references to Moses in the Koran (more than a hundred such references!) that the mythical Moses monster was Muhammad’s mentor, i.e., like a gullible child or someone with a child’s intelligence, Muhammad accepted the Moses stories as “true”. <br />
<br />
<i><b>4. Muhammad’s major failures to understand the meaning of ‘truth’ and to realize that he had fallen for the “feel-good fallacy”</b></i><br />
<br />
Xenophanes (c.570 – c.480 BCE; a skeptic, a scientist, and one of the earliest and greatest of the Greek philosophers) saw the nature of ‘truth’ in the real world: <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #38761d;">But as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor will he know it – neither of the gods nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter the final truth, he would himself not know it, for all is but a woven web of guesses.</span></blockquote>
Contemporaneously in China, Lao Tzu (literally, “Lao the Master”) said something similar:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #38761d;">Not-knowing is true knowledge; presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health.</span></blockquote>
Expressed in modern terms, the wisdom of such assessments is that, for <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">open systems</a> (such as reality, in which we can never be certain what’s around the next bend in space-time), we can never be certain that what we’ve discovered is “true”. At best, using the scientific method, the most we can learn about reality is the probability that some claim is true. More than 1,000 years after Xenophanes and Lao Tzu, Muhammad (c.570 – 632 CE) apparently still didn’t understand their wisdom, just as the world’s religious mystics today apparently still don’t understand.<br />
<br />
To make more progress towards peace and prosperity throughout the world, what desperately needs to be understood by everyone is that there are <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">two types of “truth”</a>: one type for what are called “open systems” (e.g., judicial systems and all systems that incorporate reality) and another type of truth for “closed systems” (e.g., pure mathematics and all games, such as all religions). In closed systems, various arbitrary rules can be specified; examples of resulting closed-system truths include: “1+1 = 2”, “in baseball, three strikes and you’re out”, “in poker, a flush always beats a straight”, and “in religion, God will punish you if you disobey the clerics”. Muhammad obviously made the mistake (and to this day, religious mystics continue to make the mistake) of adopting closed-system truths as truths in the open system known as reality.<br />
<br />
As a result, Muhammad produced a book (the Koran) full of closed-system truths that have as little to do with reality as “1 + 1 = 2”. As Einstein said:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #38761d;">As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.</span></blockquote>
In particular, if numbers and the concept of equality are defined, then 1 + 1 = 2 is simply the definition of mathematical addition. In contrast, if one molecule of carbon dioxide reacts with one molecule of water, then the result is one molecule of carbonic acid, i.e., 1 + 1 = 1. That is, in the language of science and in reality, number needn’t be conserved in natural processes (nor need mass – but energy and electrical charge seem to be, although we can never be certain that those open-system claims are true).<br />
<br />
The claims in the Koran (and in all “holy books”) are therefore just closed-system truths, as arbitrary, capricious, and whimsical as “three strikes and you’re out”, “a flush always beats a straight”, and “God will punish you if you disobey the clerics”. Such “truths” are relevant only in closed-system games. They’re important only if you’re interested in playing or watching the games – or (as clerical quacks of all religions have learned) if you’re interested in making money and gaining power by conning gullible people into believing that closed-system truths are reliable in reality. <br />
<br />
For open systems, intelligent people test to see if truth is being approached by subjecting predictions of specific hypotheses to experimental tests (e.g., if it’s true that the Sun rises each morning, then it should rise tomorrow morning, which is a prediction that can be tested). Thus, for open systems, the best we can do is to be honest and to use the scientific method (in conjunction with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T2_Truth_&_Understanding.pdf">Bayes’ method</a>) to evaluate the probability for the validity of any proposition. On the other hand, for closed systems, intelligent people establish if some proposition is true by determining if the alleged truth and its deductions are consistent with whatever “rule book” is being used (e.g., by checking to see if, in the game of poker, a flush always beats a straight). But less than intelligent people (such as Muhammad) or people indoctrinated in religious balderdash commonly decide on the veracity of some proposed truth by succumbing to the “feel-good” or “proof-by-pleasure” logical fallacy, i.e., if it feels good, it must be true.<br />
<br />
As a result, Muhammad adopted from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity a host of “feel-good fallacies”, e.g., that some god created the universe, that when people die they don’t “really” die, that maniacal religious martyrs are rewarded in paradise, etc. Muhammad also added some “feel-good fallacies” of his own, e.g., that (as his grandfather had told him when he was a boy) he was destined to rule Arabia, that (as his first wife told him) he was in direct contact with the creator of the universe (for whom he just happened to be the spokesman), and that (as Allah’s spokesman and after his first wife had died) he was entitled to as many additional wives and 20% of as much booty as his henchmen could plunder.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, even a child should be able to see through such con games. In fact, after Muhammad’s first wife (Khadija) died, his child-bride Aisha (whom he married when she was six and with whom he had vaginal sex when she was nine) reportedly did see through Muhammad’s shenanigans. Thus, in <i>al-Siyuti v.6,</i> p.629, it’s reported that Aisha said to Muhammad:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: purple;">Verily, your lord [Allah] is ever quick to fulfill your whims and desires. </span> </blockquote>
Surely it won’t be much longer before the majority of Muslims will see through Muhammad’s chicanery as clearly as Aisha did.<br />
<br />
<i><b>5. Muhammad’s Megalomania</b></i><br />
<br />
It’s one level of degeneracy (common among religious people) to claim that some open-system proposition is true (when the most that can be known is an estimate for the probability that it's true). It’s an even lower level of degeneracy to demand that other people accept your propositions as true. If you gain sufficient power and then enforce your demand that other people accept and adopt your beliefs as true, you’re a despot: one who has degenerated to the depth of interpersonal <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J3InterpersonalJandM.pdf">immorality</a>, refusing to acknowledge the equal right of others to claim their own existences – in particular, to hold their own opinions.<br />
<br />
Such was Muhammad (and Hitler, Stalin, Mao, et al.). As the reader can ascertain from a huge number of websites (and other sources), Muhammad first had critics of his speculations murdered. He then increased his military and financial powers by having his band of marauders raid and pillage caravans and villages. Later, Muhammad and subsequent Muslim rulers had their armies attack, ravage, and plunder cities and other nations. Thereby, Muhammad became (as did Hitler, Stalin, Mao, et al.) what the fictitious Moses was depicted to have been: a murdering megalomaniac.<br />
<br />
In his edifying 2010 on-line book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad"><i>Unmasking Muhammad – The Malignant Narcissist and His Grand Delusion Allah</i></a>, Sujit Das provides further information about Muhammad’s megalomania:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">[The] Following quotations from authentic Islamic sources prove that Muhammad lived in a grandiose fantasy world and was a denier of reality. Muhammad reinterpreted reality to fit his fantasies.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Allah’s Apostle said, “Whoever obeys me will enter Paradise, and whoever disobeys me will not enter it.” (Bukhari: 9.92.384)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Allah’s Apostle said, “Whoever obeys me, obeys Allah, and whoever disobeys me, disobeys Allah, and whoever obeys the ruler I appoint, obeys me, and whoever disobeys him, disobeys me.” (Bukhari: 9.89.251)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Allah’s Apostle: the Lord of the Muslims, Leader of the Allah Fearing, Messenger of the Lord of the Worlds, the Peerless and Unequalled. (Ishaq: 233)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Allah addressed the believers and said, “In Allah’s Apostle you have a fine example for anyone who hopes to be in the place where Allah is.” (Ishaq: 467)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">I heard Allah’s Apostle saying, “He who obeys me, obeys Allah, and he who disobeys me, disobeys Allah.” (Bukhari: 4.52.203)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">Those who speak negatively of Allah and His Apostle shall be cursed. (Q: 33.57)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">For he who insults you (Muhammad) will be cut off. (Q: 108.3)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Though Muhammad placed himself in the position of a humble servant of Allah, we cannot see any humbleness in the above words, and, surprisingly, his God tolerated his arrogance. After a certain period elapsed, Allah became less important than Muhammad, “The living God”. The person of Muhammad stood out above all in front rank, and Allah was given a secondary position in His capacity as the auxiliary of the Prophet. Allah is no longer the Supreme Being. We can [see it in] the following Qur’anic verse.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">Lo! Allah and His angels pray peace to Prophet (Muhammad). O ye who believe also shower praises on him and salute him with a worthy salutation. (Q: 33.56)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">The above Qur’anic verse alone is enough to prove that Allah is a myth and Muhammad was a vulgar imposter. Muhammad not only ridiculed and belittled his God, but at the same time also represented the entire Divine system as a big joke.</span></blockquote>
And if the reader missed the joke, then reconsider the final quote from the Koran in the above: it states that Allah (Himself) prays for (to what or to whom?) and showers praises on Muhammad! Talk about a role reversal! Talk about megalomania: Muhammad claims that even God/Allah is subservient to Muhammad.<br />
<br />
<i><b>6. Muhammad’s Lies and Narcissism</b></i><br />
<br />
Now, whereas I’m neither a historian nor a psychiatrist, it’s certainly appropriate for me to constrain my speculations about why Muhammad became such a megalomaniac. In fact, it’s essentially impossible for anyone to decipher someone else’s motives and therefore, for example, to determine if someone is lying or just mistaken. In some cases, however, not much interpretation is needed. In particular, we can be fairly confident that the Muhammad described in Muslim literature was a liar, because it reports that he promoted lying. Illustrative is the following <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Muhammad/myths-mu-dishonesty.htm">quotation</a> from the website with the sarcastic title <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/">The Religion of Peace</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Although Muslims are required to be truthful with each other, Muhammad did approve of lying in cases where doing so advanced the cause of Islam, either in war or peace. His famous statement that “War is deceit” is found in Bukhari 52:269 and elsewhere. It is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim to deceive an enemy in order to gain power.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">This applies not only in war, but also when it comes to assassinating enemies of Islam. Muhammad gave permission for Muslims to lie in order to draw out those who spoke against the “Religion of Peace” from their places of refuge so that they might be killed for expressing their discontent. This was the case with the murder of Ka’b al-Ashraf, who had composed derogatory poems about Muslim women:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Allah’s Apostle said, “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” The Prophet said, “Yes.” Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Ka’b).” The Prophet said, “You may say it.” (Bukhari 59:369)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad also sent his men to kill a Jew at Khaybar named Usayr ibn Zarim. In order to fool the man into dropping his guard and leaving his fortress, the Muslims pretended that Muhammad wanted to reconcile their differences and that they had nothing to fear:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">When they came to him they spoke to him and made him promises, treating him well, saying that if he would come to the apostle, he would give him an appointment and honor him. They kept on at him until he went with them with a number of Jews… [Once the Jews were disarmed] all the apostles’ companions fell upon their Jewish companions and killed them except one man who escaped on his feet. (Ibn Ishaq 981).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad found lies to be useful not just in making it easier to kill his critics, but also to secure debt (Ibn Ishaq 770) and bring peace:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">[Allah’s Apostle said] “He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar.” (Bukhari 49:85</span><span style="color: purple;">7)</span></blockquote>
And then, of course there’s Muhammad’s “Big Lie” that he was in communication with (and acted on behalf of) no less than the creator of the universe. I don’t have the needed competence (either in history or psychiatry) to appropriately explore this Big Lie, but perhaps it would be useful if I provided at least rough estimates of the probabilities for the following four possibilities, along with sources of more information. <br />
<i><br />
6.1 The possibility that the Muslim interpretation is true.</i><br />
The Muslim interpretation is that Allah chose Muhammad as his prophet and so on. But given that the most certain knowledge that humans have been able to gain is that no god exists or has ever existed (with the estimated <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">probability</a> that such knowledge is wrong being much less than one part in about 10^500), it follows that any claim of Muhammad being a prophet of any god is ridiculous. Therefore, Muhammad’s claims should be dismissed as either delusions or lies.<br />
<br />
<i>6.2 The possibility that Muhammad believed that he was Allah’s prophet.</i><br />
As readers can easily confirm (e.g., perhaps start with the Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Muhammad">Criticism of Muhammad</a>), many people have suggested that Muhammad was mentally ill. There are reports of his having multiple and severe headaches and suggestions that he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy and/or was schizophrenic (complete with seeing visions and hearing voices). Even Muhammad apparently continued to be concerned that he was mentally ill, since in the Koran there are a number of suggestions that his contemporaries considered him to be “mad” or “possessed”, e.g., <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: red;">And they say: O thou unto whom the Reminder is revealed, lo! thou art indeed a madman. (Qu’ran 15, 6; Pickthal translation)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">What! shall we forsake our gods for a mad poet? (Q.37, 36)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">Wherein [in Paradise] there is no headache nor are they made mad thereby. (Q.37, 47)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">Even so, there came no messenger unto those before them but they said: a wizard or a madman! (Q.51, 52)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">Though art not, for thy Lord’s favor, mad or possessed. (Q.68, 2)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">And lo! those who disbelieve would fain disconcert thee with their eyes when they hear the Reminder, and they say: Lo! he is indeed mad… (Q.68, 51)</span></blockquote>
Therefore, although it’s essentially impossible to know what Muhammad “truly believed”, there’s a chance (maybe with a probability of about one in four or ~25% that it’s true) that Muhammad “truly believed” that he was a prophet of Allah, i.e., that he was delusional. Similarly today, some people apparently “truly believe” that they were captured by extra-terrestrials.<br />
<i><br />
6.3 The possibility that Muhammad purposefully lied for political purposes.</i><br />
Given the nonlinearity of interpersonal relations and therefore the impossibility of predicting consequences of what seem to be small perturbations (described by the familiar analogy of a pebble thrown into a quiet pond), there’s a possibility that what appears to be Muhammad’s madness was actually his method to respond to suggestions from his grandfather. His grandfather seems to have been the most important male in his early life (his father died before he was born). In turn, to try to understand Muhammad’s grandfather, it’s useful to a least glance back at another generation earlier.<br />
<br />
Muhammad’s great grandfather lived in Mecca, which was an important trade and (polytheistic) religious center. According to Muslim tradition, he <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16055814/The-Hidden-Life-of-the-Prophet-Muhammad">reportedly</a> gained control of Mecca “through deception… he bought the keys of al-Ka’bah [or Kaaba, housing the black stone]… in exchange for a bottle of wine.”<br />
<br />
Later, as a result, Muhammad’s grandfather controlled the Kaaba. As described in the important, on-line, 2006 book by A.A. Ahmed entitled <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16055814/The-Hidden-Life-of-the-Prophet-Muhammad">The Hidden Life of the Prophet Muhammad</a>, his grandfather perceived how a new religion (eventually called Islam) could be used to unify the Arab tribes:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">In his book, Al-Hizb Al-Hashmi Wa Tasis Al-Dawla Al-Islamyia </span><i style="color: blue;">(The Hashmite Party and The Foundation of the Islamic State),</i><span style="color: blue;"> Sayyid Mahamoud al-Qimni traces the origin of the Islamic religion to Abd Al-Mutalab, the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad. “If God wants to establish a state, he creates men like these” said Abd Al- Mutalab while pointing his hand towards his sons” (al-Qimni 1996: 51) <span style="color: black;">[one of whom would become Muhammad’s father]</span>…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">According to al-Qimni the idea of creating an Islamic state and religion goes back to the grandfather of the Prophet. Abd Al-Mutalab understood that the Arab tribes were impossible to be united into one kingdom because of a lack of tribal cohesion. In a kingdom, the ruling tribe would dominate other tribes and no tribe would accept that. For that reason the only way to unite the Arab tribes together was to have a King-Prophet to rule over them. Such a unity could not be resisted, because it would be considered of divine origin. When he understood the problem, Abd Al-Mutalab borrowed the idea of the King-Prophet from the Jewish example of King David and his son, King Solomon. And so, he began his religion of <i>Al-Hanafi ya,</i> which he traced its origin to the ancestor of the Arabs, Ibrahim “or Abraham”…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">After the death of [Muhammad’s great grandfather], the leadership of Mecca and the Ka’bah passed to [Muhammad’s grandfather]. As soon as he became a leader, [Muhammad’s grandfather] began “to lay the foundation for a new religion in which all hearts could be united in one God”… He called for the abolition of idols. God would not accept any supplication from a person except his good works. God was the God of Ibrahim, “or Abraham,” the father of all the Arab tribes and the Jewish tribes. [Muhammad’s grandfather] had a vision while he was sleeping in the courtyard of the Ka’bah that the God of Ibrahim had commanded him to dig the well of Zamzam… Then he renounced all pagan worship and practices and asked the people of Mecca to return to the religion of Ibrahim, which was the religion of <i>Hanafi ya.</i> When the month of Ramadan came he would go to the cave of Hirah <span style="color: black;">[as Muhammad later did]</span> and worship.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">[Muhammad’s grandfather] began to invite the people of Makka [Mecca] to do good and refrain from evil because he believed in the resurrection of the souls and their judgment on the last day. In fact, [he] was not the first founder of the </span><i style="color: blue;">Hanafi ya</i><span style="color: blue;">, but according to al-Qimni, some people from Yemen founded the religion in the first century before the birth of Christ… [Muhammad’s grandfather] did not know the origin of the </span><i style="color: blue;">Hanafi ya </i><span style="color: blue;">and hence attributed it to the Hebrew prophet, Ibrahim… The Yemeni people used to worship one god whom they called Al-Rahman…</span> [which is the name for his god that Muhammad originally used, before it seemed politically expedient to call him by the name more familiar to the Arab polytheists, i.e., Allah, the moon god]<span style="color: blue;">.</span></blockquote>
How all the above might have influenced Muhammad is suggested by the following two reported incidents. For one, upon his being asked why he named the boy ‘Muhammad’ (which is derived from the Arabic word for ‘praise’), his grandfather <a href="http://www.sunnahonline.com/library/history/0091.htm">allegedly responded</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: purple;">
I did so with the desire that my grandson would be praised by Allah in Heaven and by men on earth.</blockquote>
As for the second incident, it’s <a href="http://www.islambasics.com/index.php?act=download&BID=46">reported</a> that, after Muhammad’s mother also died (when he was six) and he went to live with his grandfather, his grandfather repeatedly said about the boy (“who he kept… by his side at all times”):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: purple;">This boy will be important one day.</span></blockquote>
I therefore think that the possibility should be considered (with the probability of it being correct perhaps again somewhere around 1 in 4 or 25%) that in later life, Muhammad purposefully fabricated his role as Allah’s prophet to achieve his grandfather’s expectations that “this boy will be important one day… praised by Allah” for uniting the Arab tribes. <br />
<br />
<i>6.4 The possibility that Muhammad was a pathological liar.</i><br />
I’d assign another ~25% probability to the possibility that Muhammad was a pathological liar (leaving the remaining ~25% probability for other possibilities, such as the possibility that essentially the entire story about Muhammad was fabricated). With respect to the suggestion that Muhammad was a pathological liar, however, then given my lack of relevant training and experiences, I should leave to historians and psychologists the tasks of describing the details and possibly even identifying the cause(s) of Muhammad’s mental condition. Nonetheless, for the reader’s possible interest and convenience, I’ll add the following notes.<br />
<br />
Even from what has been recorded about Muhammad, his childhood seems to have been terribly traumatic. First, he never knew his father (who died before Muhammad was born), and having no father was probably especially significant among the patriarchal Arabs. Then, when he was a baby, his mother gave him to a Bedouin nurse to live with her. When he was about two, the nurse became concerned that he was “<a href="http://www.san.beck.org/AB13-MuhammadandIslam.html">possessed by an evil spirit</a>” and sought to return him to his mother. His mother, however, basically refused to take him, and the nurse (or another nurse) kept him for two more years. After that, Muhammad finally lived with his mother – for two years, until she died, whereupon he lived with his grandfather for two years, until his grandfather also died.<br />
<br />
After all that, after the death of his father, the rejection by his mother, his unknown but likely traumatic experiences when under the care of the Bedouin nurse(s), and then the death of his mother and grandfather, all before he was eight years old, Muhammad went to live with his uncle. His uncle apparently treated him well – but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if his uncle (and/or the Bedouins with whom Muhammad lived for the first four years of his life) used him as a sex object, since such was <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X21_EXorcising_Child_Abuse.pdf">common</a> in primitive societies – and is still common in <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/06/some-new-old-wives-tales.html">many Muslim countries</a>. <br />
<br />
Research has <a href="http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.cfm">shown</a> that a child with such experiences will commonly have, as a minimum, serious difficulties in establishing his or her “self identity” and in feeling empathy for others. As a result, rather than the Muslim method of identifying him as “the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)”, with “pbuh” an abbreviation for “peace be upon him”, I think it more appropriate to refer to him (as in this post’s title) as “the Pathetic Muhammad (pbuh)”, with this “pbuh” an abbreviation for “pity be upon him.”<br />
<br />
Now, although there are many reports about Muhammad’s traumatic childhood, I’ve seen relatively few reports about his life during his teens and early twenties. Reports suggest that he “was a loner” (e.g., enjoying the “women’s work” of tending sheep, alone), but under his uncle’s guidance, he apparently became competent in his uncle’s business of trading and transporting goods (e.g., between Yemen and Syria) and gained a reputation for industry and honesty. As a result (according to Muslim tradition), when he was 25 Muhammad’s personal life improved dramatically: he accepted the proposal from his boss, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadijah_bint_Khuwaylid">Khadija</a>, to become her husband.<br />
<br />
Khadijah was a widow approximately 15 years older than Muhammad. She ran a successful trading business, later inherited from her father and headquartered in Mecca. With Khadija, Muhammad seemed to have his first and only happy home life. She may already have had three daughters from her previous marriage(s); they had another daughter (Fatimah) and two sons. Muhammad’s marriage to Khadija for 24 years, essentially doubling his age, seemed to be the best years of his life, although both his sons died (when Muhammad was thirty five and forty five). Khadija seemed to have encouraged his “prophethood”, and (as I’ll outline in the next post) it seems to have been during these years that he (and possibly others, including Khadija) composed the “peaceful verses” of the Koran.<br />
<br />
In fact, as readers can easily confirm, there are many reports that Muhammad didn’t accept his initial “visits” from the angel Gabriel as being other than a delusion. It’s reported that it was Khadija’s cousin, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraqah_ibn_Nawfal">Waraqah ibn Nawfal</a> (a priest of the Christian Ebionites sect, i.e., the original Jewish-Christian sect, with the word ‘Ebionites’ derived from the Hebrew word <i>Ebionim</i> meaning “the poor ones”) who suggested to him that he was being contacted by God/Allah. Further, some authors (e.g., start from the Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraqah_ibn_Nawfal">article</a> about Waraqah) suggest that he was one of the sources of some of Muhammad’s “revelations” included in the Koran.<br />
<br />
When Muhammad was about 50, his life again turned bad: according to available reports, both Khadija and Muhammad's uncle/ protector / foster-father died (in the same year), his role as a prophet was rejected by the Meccans (his uncle had protected him from the Meccans who considered him “mad”), he and his approximately 70 followers took refuge in Medina, he became the town’s ruler, and he began the business of being a brigand. Extrapolating from my own “mid-life crisis” (after experiences that were bad but nowhere near so bad as Muhammad’s) I expect that Muhammad “lost it”. Muslim raids, murders, enslavements, rapes, etc. followed, and it seems that Muhammad then wrote the horrible verses of the Koran, “abrogating” (or overruling) the peaceful verses. As a result, the Koran became a handbook for terrorists, as it is to this day.<br />
<br />
Readers should consult more competent authors for analyses of Muhammad’s mental condition. For example, consider the following from the essay “<a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/frombelief.htm">From Belief to Enlightenment</a>” by the ex-Muslim Ali Sina:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad was an emotionally sick man who was not in control of himself. He grew up as an orphan in the care of five different foster parents before he reached the age of eight. As soon as he became attached to someone, he was snatched away and given to someone else. This must have been hard on him and was detrimental to his emotional health. As a child, deprived of love and a sense of belonging, he grew with deep feelings of fear and lack of self-confidence. He became a narcissist. A narcissist is a person who has not received enough love in his childhood, who is incapable of loving, but instead craves attention, respect and recognition. He sees his own worth in the way others view him. Without that recognition he is nobody. He becomes manipulative and a pathetic liar.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Narcissists are grandiose dreamers. They want to conquer the world and dominate everyone. Only in their megalomaniac reveries is their narcissism satisfied. Some famous narcissists are Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Mao. Narcissists are intelligent, yet emotional wrecks. They are deeply disturbed people. They set themselves extremely high goals. Their goals always have to do with domination, power and respect. They are nobody if they are neglected.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Narcissists often seek alibis to impose their control over their unwary victims. For Hitler it was the party and race, for Mussolini it was fascism or the unity of the nation against others, and for Muhammad it was religion. These causes are just tools in their quest for power. Instead of promoting themselves, the narcissists promote a cause, an ideology, or a religion while presenting themselves as the only authority and the representative of these causes. Hitler did not call the Germans to love him as a person but to love and respect him because he was the Fuhrer. Muhammad could not ask anyone to obey him, but he could easily demand his followers to obey Allah and his messenger. Of course Allah was Muhammad’s own alter ego, so all the obedience was for him in the final account. In this way he could wield control over everyone’s life by telling them he is the representative of God and what he says is what God has ordained. </span></blockquote>
For further investigations of Muhammad’s narcissistic delusions, I recommend that readers refer to Ali Sina’s 2008 break-through book <i>Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet</i> (the Table of Contents and selected sections of which are available <a href="http://schnellmann.org/Understanding_Muhammad_Contents.html">here</a>) as well as the important 2010 e-book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad"><i>Unmasking Muhammad – The Malignant Narcissist and His Grand Delusion Allah</i></a> by Sujit Das. The following is from a <a href="http://www.felibri.com/content/understanding-muhammad-psychobiography-allahs-prophet">review</a> of Ali Sina’s book by Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of <i>Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited.</i><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Why are some Muslims intolerant, violent and supremacist? Why do they bully? What spurs them to riot and murder over the silliest things?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">To understand Muslims, one must understand their prophet. This psychobiography</span> [by Ali Sina] <span style="color: blue;">seeks to unveil the mystery of the prophet of Islam. Historians tell us Muhammad used to withdraw to a cave, spending days wrapped in his thoughts. He heard bells ringing and had ghostly visions. He thought he was demon possessed, until his wife reassured him he had become a prophet. Convinced of his status, he was intolerant of those who rejected him, assassinated those who criticized him, raided, looted, and massacred entire populations. He reduced thousands to slavery, raped (and allowed his men to rape) female captives. All of this, he did with a clear conscience and a sense of entitlement. He was magnanimous toward those who admired him, but vengeful toward those who did not. He believed he was the most perfect human creation and the universe’s </span><i style="color: blue;">raison d’être. </i><span style="color: blue;"> Muhammad was no ordinary man.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">This book ventures beyond the stories. Focusing on the “why” rather than the “what,” it unravels the mystique of one of the most enigmatic and influential men in history. Islam is Muhammadanism. Muslims worship and emulate Muhammad. Only by understanding him can one know what makes them tick.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><i>Understanding Muhammad</i> begins with a brief history of his life. Muhammad had a loveless childhood. He then passed to the care of relatives who took pity on him and spoiled him. As the result he developed narcissistic personality disorder, a trait that made him a megalomaniac bereft of conscience. Muhammad believed in his own cause. Even when he lied, he felt entitled and justified to do so. Thanks to another mental illness, namely temporal lobe epilepsy, the prophet of Islam had vivid hallucinations he interpreted as mystical and divine intimations. He also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, causing his fixations on numbers, rituals and stringent rules. In the addition, he suffered from acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone resulting in large bones and odd facial features.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">The combination of his psychological disorders and his unusual physiognomy made him a phenomenon that set him apart from ordinary people. His uneducated followers interpreted his differences as signs of his prophethood. Like devotees of all cults, they rose to champion his cause with dedication. By defying death and butchering others they made Islam the world’s second largest religion, now the biggest threat to world peace. The author argues that Islam is incompatible with democracy and human rights, and the only way to avert the clash between barbarity and civilization, and a world disaster, is to expose its fallacy and demystify it. “Muslims must be weaned from Islam for humanity to live in peace,” says Ali Sina.</span></blockquote>
Other ex-Muslims have reached similar conclusions about Muhammad. For example, the following is from the <a href="http://www.apostatesofislam.com/">homepage</a> of the Apostates of Islam, whose members include Ibn Warraq, Taslima Nasrin, Parvin Darabi, Nonie Darwish, and Anwar Shaikh:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">We are ex-Muslims…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Why Muhammad was not a prophet…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives and their “right hand possessions.” (Quran 33:50) He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way. Muhammad was a narcissist like Hitler, Saddam or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a six-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big, and as a narcissist, he honestly believed he is entitled to do as he pleased…</span></blockquote>
In his online 2010 <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad">book</a> <i>Unmasking Muhammad – The Malignant Narcissist and His Grand Delusion Allah,</i> Sujit Das summarizes as follows (to which I’ve made a few, minor, editorial changes):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Critics often ask the question: Was Muhammad a knowing fraud or did he genuinely believe that the revelations were coming from a God? No matter the truth, the answer simply does not have much meaning. Even if he were sincere, his sincerity does not relieve him from criminal charges against him. If a racially prejudiced White person “sincerely believes” that Blacks should not have equal rights, his sincerity does not affect our moral condemnation of his belief. For the same reason we condemn those Hindus who still believe in untouchability. In the same way, Muhammad cannot get away in any case. If he was not a knowing fraud, then we can say that he was capable of self-deception. He used to bring messages freely from his God to justify political murders, assassinations, raid, booty, pedophilia, abundant sex, even to solve his domestic problems, all clear evidence that he was an absolute fake; his sincerity means nothing.</span></blockquote>
All of which reminds me (and apparently also “<a href="http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/opinion/16brooks.html">Dan of California</a>” of the <a href="http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html">Cherokee legend</a> that I quoted earlier in my online <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #38761d;">An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">He continued, “The other is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win grandfather?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”</span></blockquote>
Thereby, it appears that, after Khadija, their two sons, and his uncle died, Muhammad fed his evil wolf. As a result, Muhammad lost his natural understanding of (and natural proclivity for) <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">morality and justice</a>: he abandoned any hope he might have had to be a productive member of his society, he treated his subsequent wives (including his child bride) as mere sex objects, he murdered his critics and those who would not obey him, he raided, raped, and plundered people, and in general, he made the horrible mistake of concluding that the end justifies the means.<br />
<br />
The means that he chose were horrible: rather than using reasoning and setting an honorable example, he chose to persuade by initiating physical violence; unlike Gandhi, he chose the law of the jungle, might makes right; he thus chose brutality, as Muslim terrorists do to this day. Further, the end he chose couldn’t have been worse: he didn’t choose some goal that might help humanity; instead, he chose goals (either rationally or irrationally) to help himself – just as subsequent Muslim fanatics have chosen to help themselves. Thus, he didn’t (and they don’t) seek to live a moral life and to be productive for the benefit of other humans, but he chose (and they choose) goals for personal benefits: to placate an imagined god, in turn for the selfish goal of eternal happiness in an imagined paradise and to avoid the horrors of an imagined hell. The result was (and is) to create hell on Earth.<br />
<br />
My goal for the next two posts is to outline how Muhammad’s mistakes, failures, lies, megalomania, and narcissism were used to create and perpetuate the hell on Earth into which (most unfortunately for them) most Muslims were born. To end this post, I want to quote the following, century-old, inspirational poem by <a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1913/tagore-bibl.html">Rabindra Nath Tagore</a>, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, in which he describes his vision of heaven on Earth. I’ll add that I’m ashamed to say it’s a poem that I had never seen until I read the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30674995/Unmasking-Muhammad">book</a> by Sujit Das. Similar to the book by Das (but unlike anything from Muhammad), Tagore’s poem is a gift to all humanity. I should also add that I took the liberty to make two minor changes to the poem, changes with which I expect Tagore would approve, if he could have seen another century of “ever widening thought and action.”<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #38761d; text-align: center;">
<i>Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,<br />
Where knowledge is free,<br />
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #38761d;">by narrow domestic walls,<br />
Where words come out from the depth of truth,<br />
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,<br />
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way<br />
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit,<br />
Where the mind is led forward…<br />
into ever-widening thought and action:<br />
Into that heaven of freedom… let [the world] awake.</i><span style="color: blue;"> </span></div>
<br />
[To be continued]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
•••A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-83176072284286084032010-06-23T10:30:00.000-07:002010-08-01T11:44:39.122-07:00Clerical Quackery 12 – The Corporate Christ<div><br />
</div>This is the 32nd in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the God Lie”, the 12th in a subseries of posts dealing with Clerical Quackery, and my third and final post dealing with clerical quackery involved in creating Christianity. In the prior two posts, I tried to outline how Christianity was concocted from a variety of available ingredients and how a new group of clerics claimed “authority” over “the supernatural” (and over the people) by composing myths about such a savior, called Jesus the Christ. In this post, I’ll try to at least sketch how and why “the Corporate Christ” (or “Christ Incorporated”) emerged, i.e., how a new breed of clerics sold and eventually amassed enormous wealth and power promoting their confidence scheme (or “con game”).<br />
<br />
In a nutshell, gullible people bought into the Christian con game (and still buy into it) because what the con-artist clerics were selling was consistent with what a large fraction of all people, especially effeminate people, desired. The desire arose because evolution “genetically programmed” social animals (such as people) to be kind and to help one another, especially those needing help in birthing and raising offspring. When people saw that some people didn’t behave similarly and yet seemed to gain from their “selfish” behavior and, simultaneously, when people were unable to see that, in fact, their own “unselfish” behavior actually did have its own “selfish” rewards (in that “what goes around comes back around” leads to a desirable society), then people concluded that justice (which <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">nature “teaches” everyone</a>) demanded that they should be rewarded for their “altruistic” behavior. Consequently, when a group of con artists offered an absolutely fantastic reward (namely, eternal life in paradise) simply for behaving in a normal, social manner (plus, of course, paying 10% of their income to the con artists!), then people leapt (and still leap) at the opportunity.<br />
<br />
Still more was (and continues to be) offered by the Christian con artists. If the people realized that they hadn’t always been altruistic (or worse, had behaved in a manner that evolution and social conditioning had taught them was immoral), the clerics offered the people a “clean slate”, wiping sins clean, being “born again”, <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> a contrived ceremony called baptism. Further, as an added “come on”, the clerics guaranteed that no less than the creator of the universe would love them, protect them, and provide for them for eternity (and all the more so if the people made additional contributions to the clerics’ collection plates). As a result, the people most susceptible to the Christian con were (and still are) the poor, the stressed, the losers (including alcohol and drug addicts), the poorly educated, and those with overly sensitive emotions and underdeveloped abilities to think critically.<br />
<br />
Below, I’ll try to sketch at least a little of the development of the Christian con during its first few hundred years. The sketch suggests that, similar to all clerics before and since, the real god that Christian clerics worshiped (and still worship) is power (preferably in the form of money). To gain a clearer and more complete picture of the resultant “Corporate Christ”, I recommend that the reader consult any of a huge number of books written by competent historians; my training and career were in the physical sciences. A book that I found to be especially illuminating, recommend to the reader, and will frequently quote in this post is the 1902 online book by John M. Robertson entitled <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Short History of Christianity</span></a>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">In the Beginning…</span><br />
Originally, Christianity <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_of_early_Christianity_and_Judaism">appears to have been</a> just another sect of Judaism, which is another religion based on the wild speculation that some “god” created the universe and which in turn (as I’ve tried to outline in earlier posts in this series) was derived from data-less speculations by the Persian mystic Zarathustra. Additional speculations incorporated into the Christian sect seem to have been promoted among the Jewish sect called the Essenes (whose Dead Sea Scrolls show that they longed for “a teacher of righteousness”), a sect called the Nazarenes (which might have been an offshoot of the Essenes, with the word ‘nazar’ meaning ‘branch’ or ‘sprout’ and which has nothing to do with a town called Nazareth, which probably didn’t exist during the alleged lifetime of Jesus), and a sect called the Ebionites (from the Hebrew word <span style="font-style: italic;">Ebionim</span>, meaning “the poor” and one of whose saying probably was “blessed are the poor”). As <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/">Robertson</a> further points out:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">[The Ebionites] used a form of the Gospel of Matthew lacking the first two chapters</span> [dealing with the Christ’s alleged “virgin birth” and associated astrological nonsense associated with the start of the Age of Pisces, the fish]<span style="color: #000099;">, denied the divinity of Jesus, and rejected the apostleship of Paul…</span></blockquote>Paul (or Saul of Tarsus, c. 5 BCE – c. 67 CE) became famous (or, some would say, “notorious” – if they agree that he ever existed!) for contaminating non-Jews (or “Gentiles”) with the idea of a Jewish “savior”. Probably, so long as any Jewish sect continued to emphasize a savior for the Jewish people (at least, a savior for those Jews who resented both other Jewish sects, including the Sadducees and the Pharisees, as well as domination by first the Greeks and then the Romans), the rest of the world would have been relatively immune from any Jewish balderdash about a supernatural savior. Paul, however, unfortunately decided (against the apparent opposition of at least the Ebionites) that his phantom Jesus (seen only in a “vision”) wasn’t just a savior for the Jews but for everyone, saving us from our “original sin” of being related to Adam – but (as I’ve detailed elsewhere, starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx13_New_Testament_Injustices.pdf">here</a>), apparently not saving converts from mentally debilitating balderdash.<br />
<br />
In defense of Paul’s depicted character, I’ll add that, similar to Jesus (if he existed), possibly Muhammad, and the probable creator of Mormonism (Sidney Rigdon), Paul seems to have been not overly concerned about making a fortune for himself (although, similar to the others mentioned, he undoubtedly found preaching easier than working for a living). Instead (similar to the others mentioned), he obviously sought power over people and almost certainly he was mentally imbalanced. As an illustration of his mental condition, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Romans 11,</span> 33 Paul exclaims:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">O depth of wealth, wisdom, and knowledge in God! How unsearchable his judgments, how untraceable his ways! Who knows the mind of the Lord?</blockquote>And yet, in the rest of his letters (or Epistles), Paul proceeds to explain God’s “unsearchable judgments” and his “untraceable… ways”, thereby demonstrating Paul’s “thinking” that he “knows the mind of the Lord”! In reality, Paul obviously found his own judgments to be “unsearchable” and his own ways to be “untraceable”.<br />
<br />
In earlier chapters (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx13_New_Testament_Injustices.pdf">here</a>), I’ve already criticized Paul’s concoction, now known as Christianity (but which, more accurately, should be called “Paulism”). Here, therefore, I’ll simply quote a little of the criticism of Paulism contained in Graham Lawrence’s recent book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fallible Gospels </span>(which was formerly available on the web):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Paul is really a dreadful cheat about this concept of faith, avoiding definition and moving the theological goalposts to suit his purpose. To the Jews, faith had been trust in their God to guide the destiny of their nation as the Chosen People. To Paul, faith meant completely uncritical acceptance of what Paul said God had done and what Paul said the crucifixion and resurrection meant. Faith essentially meant loyalty and obedience to him, not just trust in and devotion to God.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">Paul cheats because by using the same word, ‘faith’, faiths in entirely different things are identified and given the same status and significance. Paul points out that Abraham was “justified” by God because of his faith (Rom. 4.1-5); he could not have been justified by the Law of Moses because he predated Moses. Paul’s logic is that you, too, are therefore justified by faith, made into a just person and given a new status in the eyes of God. The trouble is, he meant that you are justified by your faith in Jesus, as interpreted by Paul.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">This contains a hole sufficiently large for me to drive a logical coach and four horses through without brushing the sides. Just as Abraham predated Moses, he predated Jesus. If Abraham was justified by faith before the crucifixion and resurrection, then you don’t need to know about or believe in the crucifixion and resurrection to be saved, in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason that you do not need the Law of Moses.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">Paul would no doubt have reacted with anger and contempt to such an argument, as he would not have been able to counter its logic. There is ample evidence that he was not impressed by logic or by rational or intellectual knowledge (Rom. 1.21-22; Col. 2.8; I Cor. 1.19-21, 3.18-19, 13.8). This is hardly surprising, as it was sometimes used to make a fool out of him; Paul did not do well against the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17.17-18, 17.32). He was not a stupid man, but he was so utterly convinced about his revelation that rationality was beside the point, completely irrelevant in comparison.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">Ultimately, no matter how many millions of followers accept the words of any religious leader, no one can demonstrate any method of proving that what their particular leader said or believed is true or correct. Christianity must inevitably rest upon the irrational foundation of indefensible faith.</span> </blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Why Christianity Initially Spread</span><br />
As I already outlined, there appear to have been many reasons why non-Jewish people were susceptible to Paul’s concoction and the resulting Christian con. The reasons include the following.<br />
<blockquote>• Throughout the Roman Empire, superstition was rampant, including astrological nonsense and silly speculations that things called “gods” actually existed.<br />
<br />
• Christianity provided people with an opportunity to join a peaceful, protective, helpful group to propitiate “supernatural” powers (e.g., with a communal meal), with the propitiation apparently especially important when the alignment of the planets Jupiter and Saturn (representing Jesus and Yahweh, respectively) indicated the end of the old Age of Aries and the beginning of the new Age of Pisces – which Paul interpreted to mean the end of the world.<br />
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• For good reasons, people who weren’t warriors were especially fearful (afraid not only of their own deaths but also because it was a brutal time period, with thieves, thugs and wars almost everywhere); therefore, the people (especially women and effeminate men) were susceptible to offers of a personal savior, especially one who (so it was claimed) offered life after death.<br />
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• People who were failures or felt guilt from prior behavior welcomed the opportunity to have a new beginning, with their “sins washed clean” in a baptismal ceremony, then to be accepted by the group as “good people”.<br />
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• The poor and the downtrodden (including women and slaves) were especially receptive even to hints that they might find relief by joining the new religion. If nothing else, followers had a new leader, and they apparently could convince themselves that their new leader (Jesus) not only considered them important but even loved them.<br />
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• In its simplest form, Christianity had a powerful and valuable social message: we should love one another. As I already mentioned and as I’ve reviewed in earlier chapters (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">here</a>) and earlier posts (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html">here</a>), such reciprocal altruism is “genetically programmed” in all social animals (such as dolphins, elephants, monkeys, and humans); therefore, regardless of its superfluous balderdash dealing with “gods” and “the supernatural”, the Christian message resonated in the minds of new recruits.</blockquote>In brief, what Christianity offered was pure Zoroastrianism (including the speculation that everyone has a critical role in the ongoing “cosmic battle” between good and evil, with everlasting consequences in heaven or hell), but without the racism that Ezra added to create Judaism and without the warrior culture of Mithraism (another offshoot of Zoroastrianism, which was spread by Roman soldiers and was the main rival to Christianity during its first three centuries).<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">How Christianity Initially Spread</span><br />
Although historical evidence is scant and of doubtful veracity, probably the most critical step in the spread of Christianity during its first century was its adoption of the organizational structure developed by the Greek Mystery religions and also used by the dominant Jewish sects (the Sadducees and the Pharisees). In turn, probably the most important aspects of this adopted organizational structure dealt with funding and with weekly assemblies of “believers”, either in private residences or at synagogues (from the Greek prefix <span style="font-style: italic;">syn</span>- meaning ‘together’ and <span style="font-style: italic;">agein</span>, ‘bring’). As <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/">Robertson</a> describes:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">The Greek societies gave a model to the early Christian churches in more than one point of organization, most of them having had “presbyters” and a “bishop” (</span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">episcopos</span><span style="color: #000099;">), and some being called “synagogues”, a term synonymous with </span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">ecclesia</span> [i.e., ‘assembly’ or ‘church’]<span style="color: #000099;">.</span></blockquote>The Jewish Christian sect apparently applied the funding scheme used by priests of the Jewish Temple. Thus, under Greek rule, when the Jews migrated to other areas (e.g., to the city of Alexandria), the Jewish priesthood sent “apostles” (from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">apostolos</span>, meaning ‘messenger’) to collect “tributes” or tithes to fund the Temple and its priests. There were 12 principal apostles, one for each of the 12 Jewish tribes (in turn, one for each sign of the zodiac). This Jewish organizational structure continued during Roman rule but became essentially independent of Temple priests after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE. Copying the older administrative structure, the Jewish Christian sect identified its own 12 apostles and had its own requests for revenue.<br />
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Yet, although the original Christianity was just another Jewish sect, rupture of relations between the Christian and other Jewish sects was apparently inevitable, not only from disagreements about whether or not “the savior” had appeared but also from diverging opinions about the meaning of “saved”. Thus, for the older Jewish sects (continuing with the traditional Jewish emphasis on family and tribe) a “savior” was to save the Jewish nation, whereas for the new Jewish sect (the Christians, apparently having adopted “foreign” ideas about individualism) being “saved” was as Zarathustra had originally speculated, i.e., not for the tribe or nation but for each individual. The resulting schism led not only to expulsion of members of the Christian sect from Jewish synagogues, but in accordance with the “laws of Moses” about promoting any new religion, it apparently led to a Jewish campaign to exterminate Christians. As examples, according to Paul before his conversion to Christianity (or his creation of “Paulism”) he was among the Jews who persecuted Christians, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Acts</span> tells of the stoning to death of “Saint” Steven and the decapitation of “Saint” James, son of Zebedee, who became known as the first Christian martyrs.<br />
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Friction also developed between Gentile-converts to Christianity and the original Jewish Christians, including Peter (or <span style="font-style: italic;">Cephas</span>, the rock) and James the Just, who continued to follow “the laws of Moses”, e.g., dealing with circumcision and diet. Evidence for such friction is available in some of Paul’s letters (if they can be trusted as historically reliable). For example, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Galatians 2,</span> 9, Paul claims that an agreement was reached between him and the “original apostles”:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #6600cc;">Recognizing, then, the favor thus bestowed upon me</span> [viz., his vision of Jesus]<span style="color: #6600cc;">, those reputed pillars of our society, James, Cephas</span> [Peter]<span style="color: #6600cc;">, and John</span> [“reputed pillars”!!]<span style="color: #6600cc;"> accepted Barnabas</span> [Paul’s cohort] <span style="color: #6600cc;">and myself as partners, and shook hands upon it, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews. All they asked was that we should keep their poor in mind, which is the very thing I made it my business to do.</span></blockquote>Incidentally, notice that these “original apostles” (James, Peter, and John) gave permission for Paul to proceed to recruit Gentiles provided that Paul kept the money flowing “back home”. Subsequently, however, dissension developed (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Galatians 2,</span> 11):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #6600cc;">But when Cephas</span> [Peter] <span style="color: #6600cc;">came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. For until certain persons came from James, he was taking his meals with gentile Christians; but when they came, he drew back and began to hold aloof, because he was afraid of the advocates of circumcision.</span></blockquote>At <span style="font-style: italic;">2 Corinthians 11,</span> 5, after listing his claimed accomplishments, Paul adds (according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Today’s English Version</span> of the Bible):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">I do not think that I am the least bit inferior to those very special so-called apostles of yours!</blockquote>And at <span style="font-style: italic;">2 Corinthians 11,</span> 13, Paul goes ballistic:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">Such men are sham apostles, crooked in all their practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ.</blockquote>Obviously, then, friction developed between the Gentile and Jewish Christians, and for Paul to describe Peter <span style="font-style: italic;">et al.</span> as “reputed pillars of our society”, “so-called apostles”, and “sham apostles” (when they were allegedly commissioned by Jesus) shows that Paul’s faith had degenerated into fanaticism, unfortunately a common fate of religious people who are mentally deficient or disturbed.<br />
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As the Christian sect grew, animosities grew also between it and the main, surviving, Jewish sect (the Pharisees, whose beliefs formed the basis for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees">Rabbinic Judaism</a>). As <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/">Robertson</a> summarizes:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">The relation of Judaism to Jesuism</span> [Christianity]<span style="color: #000099;">, then, was somewhat as that of a mother country to a colony; the later growing by help of the former, deriving from it speech, lore, ideals, methods, models, and prestige, till in time the new environment elicits special characteristics, and mere geographical division no less than self-interest vetoes the payment of the old tribute. As usual, there was in the colony a loyalist party</span> [consisting of Peter <span style="font-style: italic;">et al.</span>]<span style="color: #000099;"> which bitterly resisted the severance.</span></blockquote>Evidence for the clashes between the Pharisees and the Christians appears in subsequent Christian literature, e.g., with statements such as <span style="font-style: italic;">(Matthew 23):</span> “<span style="color: #cc0000;">Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are… You snakes, you viper’s brood…</span>” (allegedly said the hypocrite Jesus, after telling others to love their enemies). Worse appears at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 27, </span>26, where the author concocts the story that, after the conviction and sentencing of Jesus, the assembled Jews allegedly said: “<span style="color: #cc0000;">His blood be on us and our children.</span>” That single line (almost certainly written by a Jewish Greek sometime after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE, whose probability of accurately reflecting history is essentially zero, and which was probably written as an <span style="font-style: italic;">ex-post-facto</span> – i.e., fake – “prophecy” of the Temple’s destruction) arguably led to the murder of at least ten million Jews during the subsequent 2,000 years, with Christian blaming Jews for the death of Jesus – which even for Christian simpletons is a ridiculous idea, since Jesus was allegedly a god, and gods (allegedly being immortal) don’t die (they just vanish when they’re exposed to even a whiff of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IhHypothesesandProbabilities.pdf">common sense</a>).<br />
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In spite of such animosities, the new Jewish Christian sect grew relatively rapidly not only because of its organizational structure and because (as already mentioned) it promoted messages that Gentiles were willing to buy (without the need to follow the details of Jewish law, especially the hideous policy of circumcision – probably originally established to remind men what pain the priests could cause if they were disobeyed) but also because promoting the new religion (proselytizing) was part of the new sect’s creed. In contrast, other religions not only didn’t try to recruit members but most established major barriers to entrance (e.g., the stringent initiation processes of the Mystery religions). Therefore, essentially the only impediment experienced by the Christian hustlers was people’s reluctance to buy into a new con game.<br />
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The resulting growth of Christianity was, however, not so surprisingly large as might at first be expected from the estimate that it grew from a few hundred people to a number of million during its first 300 years; instead, the result follows from simple mathematics. Thus, during the initial growth phase (before the market started to saturate with the new product), then consistent with the proselytizing mandate, the incremental change in the number of adherents, dN, during any short time interval, dt, would be proportional to the current number of adherents, N (i.e., dN = <span style="font-style: italic;">g</span> N dt, where <span style="font-style: italic;">g</span> is a proportionality constant, known as the growth rate); so, solving the resulting differential equation reveals that the growth is exponential. That is, if the number of Christians at time zero was No, then the number at any time, t, would be given by N = No exp ( <i>g</i> t). For example, to grow from, say, a hundred people to a million people in 300 years (or from a thousand to ten million in the same time period) required a growth rate <i>g</i> = [ln (N/No)] / t = [ln (10^4)] / (300 yrs), i.e., a growth rate of approximately only 3% per year, which isn’t very impressive: it would mean only that, on average, every 100 people would need to convert (or “contaminate”) only 3 additional people per year.<br />
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Although the rate of growth of the number of Christians wasn’t very impressive, the con artists promoting Christianity displayed substantial marketing skills. Not only did they manipulate their pitch to fit local tastes, they incorporated many of their competitors “come-ons”, including baptism (performed for thousands of years, with records of baptism in Sumerian and ancient Egyptian literature), special symbols (such as the cross, which Egyptians had used for thousands of years, first as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh"><span style="font-style: italic;">ankh</span></a> and then to represent the pre-Christian “cult of the cross”), communal, sacrificial meals (rituals practiced by polytheists for at least the prior 5,000 years), festival and holy days [such as at the summer and winter solstices (with the winter solstice being the celebrated birthday of Mithra) and the spring and autumn equinoxes (with the celebration of “rebirth” in the spring equinox being celebrated for at least 5,000 years before Christianity)], and “passion plays” (e.g., dealing with the god Dionysus). In particular, following the Greeks whose theatrical productions were renown for at least 500 years, the Christians apparently put on skits or plays to promote their religion.<br />
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So long as Christianity’s growth was primarily among the poor and illiterate, copying pagan rituals and producing plays or skits were probably sufficient to “entertain the masses”. To fill leadership positions in the new Church with intellectuals, however, a literature base for the new religion was apparently deemed necessary. Of course, the Christians had a major “leg up” on competing pagan religions, since the Christians had what was almost certainly the most widely distributed tract of religious writing available in the Roman Empire (namely, the Jewish Bible), but Christian intellectuals apparently decided that literature focused on the new creed would be useful. As a result, during the time period from roughly 50–150 CE the myth-writing phase of the new religion got underway in earnest, with the myths apparently derived in part from the Jewish Bible (as illustrated in the previous post) and in part from the skits or plays that were produced for the masses.<br />
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For example, although it’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativity_play">commonly suggested</a> that “the Nativity play” (dealing with the alleged virgin-birth of Jesus, a play that’s still performed in most Christian schools by elementary-school children near the time of every winter solstice) and “the Passion play” (e.g., dealing with the alleged death of Jesus, as portrayed in Mel Gibson’s hideous movie) were first performed in the Middle Ages, yet it seems highly likely that such skits were actually performed even before the scripts were written into the Gospels of the New Testament (NT). Thus, as <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part1.htm">Robertson</a> describes in some detail, many scenes described in <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Luke</span> make sense only if it’s assumed that they were essentially actors’ scripts for non-historical events (e.g., the “virgin birth” of Jesus and his “resurrection” after death) and for obviously impossible-to-record dialogues and monologues (e.g., between Gabriel and Mary as well as the prayers of the isolated Jesus to his fictitious god). No doubt the plays were entertaining to the generally illiterate audiences (who could nonetheless easily follow the jumps in dialogues and rapid changes in scenes), but the result is that, for approximately 2,000 years, Christians have been worshiping characters (Jesus, Mary, Gabriel…) of stage plays, similar to how many TV and movie actors are “worshiped” today.<br />
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And just as today, people who were especially emotional seem to have been particularly impressed by the supernatural, fictional aspects of Jesus’ birth and death. Those stories (derived from earlier pagan stories) coupled with messages to help the poor and oppressed and to love one another, apparently stimulated many women and effeminate men to embrace the new religion – and one another (literally and figuratively). For the Christian clerics, such reactions were a financial “godsend” (although Paul, for example at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Corinthians 5,</span> complained about the resulting debauchery at the church meetings), since some of the women so enamored had control of substantial wealth (e.g., from husbands who had been killed in Roman wars). As <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part1.htm">Robertson</a> summarizes:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">An important source of income from an early stage was the munificence of the rich women coverts; and insofar as the Christist movement stood for a restraint on sexual license, it doubtless gained from the moral bias as well as from the superstition of women of the upper and middle classes throughout the empire. The richer women were indeed made to feel that it was their duty to make “oblations” in proportion to their means…<br />
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On the other hand, then as now, the giving of alms to the poor was a means of enlisting the sympathetic support of serious women; and the Christists here had a lead not only from oriental example in general and that of later Judaism in particular, but from the policy of food-doles now systematically pursued in the Roman empire. The later epistles show that much was made of the good offices of “widows”, who themselves poor and wholly or partly supported by the congregations, would serve as comforters of suffering or bereaved members, and ministrants to the sick.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Sliding down the Slippery Slope from Fantasy to Fanaticism</span><br />
Two posts ago I quoted the c.111 CE letter from the governor of Bithynia (present-day northwestern Turkey), Pliny the Younger, to the Roman emperor Trajan. If the letter is authentic, it provides an early indication of the nature of Christianity, describing it as a “contagious superstition”. Yet, to the Christians, their beliefs seemed not only innocent but commendable. As Pliny allegedly wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">They [the Christians] affirmed, however, the whole of their guilt, or their error, was that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. Even this practice, however, they had abandoned after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had forbidden political associations. I judged it so much the more necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves, who were styled deaconesses, but I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition. </blockquote>But whereas the Roman authorities considered refusal to honor the state gods to be treason (as did the earlier Greeks, who therefore executed Socrates), Pliny allegedly states:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. For whatever the nature of their creed might be, I could at least feel not doubt that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy deserved chastisement.</blockquote>A synonym for “inflexible obstinacy” is ‘fanaticism’, and similar to the Jews during the Maccabean Revolt (167–165 BCE), the Christian “martyrs” convinced themselves that dying for their religion guaranteed them eternal life in paradise (just as Islamic fanatics later did – and still do). Thus, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch#Letters">Ignatius</a>, the third Bishop of Antioch, allegedly wrote on his way to being martyred in the Coliseum at Rome, in about 108 CE:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">I am writing to all the Churches and I enjoin all, that I am dying willingly for God’s sake, if only you do not prevent it. I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.</blockquote>After a century and more of the murder of such “martyrs” (the total number of whom is now essentially impossible to determine, but there’s no doubt that the total number is vastly smaller than the number of “heathens” killed by the Christians once they gained power), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian">Tertullian</a> (c. 160 – 220 CE, “the father of Latin Christianity”) <a href="http://www.mortalresurrection.com/2010/02/06/the-blood-of-the-martyrs/">wrote the following</a>, which basically says “bring it on”:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">…go zealously on… you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent… your cruelty, however exquisite, [doesn’t] avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed…<br />
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That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fullness of God’s grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offenses.</blockquote>And apparently the result was as Tertullian suggested: rather than the resulting execution of Christians diminishing membership in the cult, their self-designated “baptism in blood” apparently led to increased interest in Christianity, presumably because simple people began to wonder what could be so important in the new cult that members would willingly choose death rather than abandon it. Similar fascination with martyrdom persists to this day, as evidenced by current interest in Islam by simpletons because of the fanaticism of their “holy warriors”.<br />
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Thereby, what religion amply reveals is a fundamental flaw in the minds of apparently the majority of humans: of course willingness to die for a belief isn’t a flaw (all humans probably consider such willingness to be perhaps the single most honorable trait of humans); the flaw is in basing beliefs not on evidence but on desires. In brief, Jews, Christians, Muslims et al. desire to live forever; therefore, they believe they can; consequently, they’re willing to die as martyrs to do so. Stated differently, without a shred of evidence to support their beliefs, religious fanatics believe that, by dying (e.g., as Jewish zealots, as Christian martyrs, or as Muslim mujahideen), they’ll live forever in paradise. Meanwhile, for those of us whose brains are still functioning, we judge that, if you’re willing to die fighting for the freedom of your family and society, then honor is your due; but if you’re willing to die so you’ll live forever, then you’re a religious fanatic, you have a serious mental problem, you’ve lost touch with reality – in a word, you’re bonkers.<br />
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Reality tries to teach all of us, every day of our lives, that we should hold beliefs only as strongly as relevant evidence warrants. Unfortunately, however, religious people choose to ignore reality and to live in a world of “make believe”. Illustrative of such make believe are the ideas promoted by “the Church Father” Tertullian in the following quotation, which is an abbreviation of the summary given in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian">Wikipedia article</a> on Tertullian:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">• The soul was not preexistent, as Plato affirmed, nor subject to metempsychosis or reincarnation, as the Pythagoreans held. In each individual it is a new product, proceeding equally with the body from the parents, and not created later and associated with the body <span style="font-style: italic;">(De anima, xxvii).</span> This position is called traducianism in opposition to ‘creationism’, or the idea that each soul is a fresh creation of God. For Tertullian the soul is, however, a distinct entity and a certain corporeity and as such it may be tormented in Hell <span style="font-style: italic;">(De anima, lviii).</span><br />
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• The soul’s sinfulness is easily explained by its traducian origin <span style="font-style: italic;">(De anima, xxxix).</span> It is in bondage to Satan (whose works it renounces in baptism), but has seeds of good <span style="font-style: italic;">(De anima, xli),</span> and when awakened, it passes to health and at once calls upon God <span style="font-style: italic;">(Apol., xvii.)</span> and is naturally Christian. It exists in all men alike; it is a culprit and yet an unconscious witness by its impulse to worship, its fear of demons, and its musings on death to the power, benignity, and judgment of God as revealed in the Christian’s Scriptures <span style="font-style: italic;">(De testimonio, v-vi).</span><br />
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• God, who made the world out of nothing through his Son, the Word, has corporeity though he is a spirit <span style="font-style: italic;">(De praescriptione, vii.; Adv. Praxeam, vii.)…</span><br />
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• The Son is distinct from the Father, and the Spirit from both the Father and the Son (<span style="font-style: italic;">Adv. Praxeam, xxv).</span> “These three are one substance, not one person; and it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ in respect not of the singularity of number but the unity of the substance.” The very names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ indicate the distinction of personality. The Father is one, the Son is one, and the Spirit is one <span style="font-style: italic;">(Adv. Praxeam, ix). </span><br />
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• In soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] Tertullian does not dogmatize, he prefers to keep silence at the mystery of the cross <span style="font-style: italic;">(De Patientia, iii).</span> The sufferings of Christ’s life as well as of the crucifixion are efficacious to redemption. In the water of baptism, which (upon a partial quotation of John 3:5) is made necessary <span style="font-style: italic;">(De baptismate, vi.),</span> we are born again…<br />
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• With reference to the “rule of faith”, it may be said that Tertullian is constantly using this expression, and by it means now the authoritative tradition handed down in the Church, now the Scriptures themselves, and, perhaps, a definite doctrinal formula. While he nowhere gives a list of the books of Scripture, he divides them into two parts and calls them the instrumentum and testamentum <span style="font-style: italic;">(Adv. Marcionem, iv.1). </span> He distinguishes between the four Gospels and insists upon their apostolic origin as accrediting their authority <span style="font-style: italic;">(De praescriptione, xxxvi; Adv. Marcionem, iv.1–5)… </span></blockquote>And in case readers didn’t follow all of that, a synopsis is the following: without a shred of evidence to support his claims, Tertullian (similar to all religionists, before and since) proposed a bunch of meaningless crap that isn’t worth the electromagnetic excitations used to transfer it over the web. As Graham Lawrence aptly summarized in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fallible Gospels:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">What is theology, after all? It could hardly be respected as either art or science. Sitting in a chair pontificating about the nature of the soul, or the Trinity, or whether Jesus was pre-existent and through him things were created, and what happens after death. There is such an utter fantastic pointlessness about just making assertions based on absolutely nothing but imagination or wishful thinking. Why not make assertions about being telepathically bombarded with political opinions by a race of intelligent but malicious digestive biscuits that live under the shade of large rocks on the planet Neptune? Who can argue with it, if you don’t have to demonstrate what basis it rests on? Would God himself have made us into conscious and intelligent beings in order to be so gullible?</blockquote>A review and overview (say by an imagined god!) of some of the squabbles (or “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity">theological disputes</a>”) during the development of Christian dogma, illustrates the idiocy of all organized religions:<br />
<blockquote>• As already mentioned, the first major schism in Christianity occurred over the question of whether God wanted non-Jewish Christian males to be circumcised and to follow Jewish dietary laws. The insane “Saint” Paul said “No”, the original Jewish Christians probably said “Yes”, and God looked on his work of the first day and said: “What a bunch of nincompoops.”<br />
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• Subsequently, Christianity splintered over the question of the nature of the fabled Jesus. The Gnostics (who thought matter was evil and light was good, i.e., not knowing that matter and light are both energy, via E = mc^2) maintained (“docetism”) that Jesus couldn’t have been made of icky matter, that his physical body was therefore just an illusion (as was his crucifixion), and consequently, the idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus (i.e., the Eucharist ceremony of Christianity) was abominable. And God looked on his work of the second day and said: “They’re all bonkers.”<br />
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• Another branch of Gnosticism, the Marcionites (followers of Marcion of Sinope, who in turn was a follower of Paul and who made his money with a fleet of ships), maintained that the Jewish god (Yahweh) was the evil god who made matter and not the good god who made light. And God looked on his work of the third day and said: “What evidence do these morons have that things called gods even exist?”<br />
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• Tertullian (quoted above) was one of those who rejected Marcion’s message, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian">sarcastically wondering</a> if the “shipmaster from Pontus [Marcion]… had ever been guilty of taking on contraband goods or tampering with them after they were aboard.” And God looked on his work of the fourth day and said: “What on Earth are these people smoking?”<br />
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• In further conflict with what has become orthodox-western Christianity, the Arians maintained: “Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was, therefore, of lesser status than God.” And God looked on his work of the fifth day and said: “Will this craziness never end?”<br />
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• The Christians who eventually won the arguments maintained that three (the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) are one. And God looked on his work of the sixth day and said, “For Christ’s sake, give it a rest!”</blockquote>But instead of giving their brains a much-needed rest and without having a shred of data to support a single, ridiculous claim, the religious lame-brains continued to argue (over nothing but blatant balderdash); yet, at least their arguments didn’t degenerate to blows, until the emperor Constantine became involved.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Christian Fanaticism Combined with Constantine’s Sword</span><br />
Constantine was a real “piece of work”, on par with the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/12/mythical-monster-moses-1.html">mythical monster Moses</a> and the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2010/07/pathetic-muhammad-pbuh.html">murdering megalomaniac Muhammad</a>. Constantine was as much the founder of Christianity as Moses (or, in reality, Ezra) was of Judaism and Muhammad was of Islam. Constantine probably delayed the demise of Christian foolishness by at least a thousand years.<br />
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Constantine’s father was the politically astute Roman soldier Flavius Constantius, a member of Emperor Aurelian’s imperial bodyguard. His mother, Helena (later dubbed “Saint” Helena), was a Christian and either she or her mother seems to have been a stable-maid or innkeeper. Constantine’s father (Constantius) later abandoned Helena to marry one of the Emperor Maximian’s daughters and to become Caesar (junior emperor) over Britain and Gaul. When Constantine claimed the same position upon his father’s death, the Western Roman Emperor Maxentius (who reigned from 306–312), the son of Maximian, described Constantine as “the son of a harlot” (i.e., “Saint” Helena).<br />
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Constantine (c.274–337) apparently realized that, if he were to achieve his ambition of being ruler of the entire Roman empire, then with his “questionable” background, he would need to be even more politically astute – and ruthless – than his father. Details of his career <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I">demonstrate</a> his abilities to keep his army loyal, to manipulate the public (e.g., dealing with his religious inclinations, if any), and to murder anyone, including his wife and son. He became known as “the butcher emperor of Rome”; Western (Roman) Christians later called him “Constantine the Great”; Eastern (Orthodox) Christians, whom Constantine set up at his new headquarters in the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul), still call him “Saint Constantine”.<br />
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It was presumably a combination of Constantine’s Christian mother’s influence and the value he saw in having millions of Christians beholden to him that led to the 313 Edict of Milan, ending the persecution of Christians and restoration of their confiscated properties. The edict was co-signed by Constantine and the emperor of the western part of the Eastern Roman Emperor, Constantine’s brother-in-law Licinius. Later (in 325), after Constantine became sole emperor, he had Licinius killed.<br />
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Constantine’s experiences and his becoming sole emperor were turning points for establishing “the Corporate Christ”, as the following introductory comments by <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part1.htm">Robertson</a> illustrate:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">[Constantine’s] father [Constantius] had been a monotheist, who protected the Christians on philosophical principles; and from the constant success of Constantius in all his undertakings, as compared with the ill fortune of his own rivals, the son argued that the religion of One God was propitious to his house. His personal success in war was always his main argument for the Christian creed, and in such an age it was not the least convincing. The fact that he postponed his baptism till shortly before his death is not to be taken as indicating any religious hesitations on his part. Multitudes of Christians in that age did the same thing, on the ground that baptism took away all sin, and that it was bad economy to receive it early. In his case such a reason was especially weighty, and there is no reason to suppose that he had any other. Since, however, the pagans still greatly outnumbered the Christians, he could not afford to declare definitely against all other cults; and, beginning by decreeing toleration for all, he kept the pagan title of </span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">pontifex maximus,</span><span style="color: #000099;"> and continued through the greater part of his life to issue coins or medals on which he figured as the devotee of Apollo or Mars or Herakles or Mithra or Zeus.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">While, however, he thus propitiated other gods and worshippers, he gave the Christians from the first a unique financial support. Formerly, the clergy in general had been wont to supplement their monthly allowances by trading, farming, banking, by handicraft, and by practicing as physicians; but the emperor now enacted that they should have regular annual allowances, and that the church’s widows and virgins should be similarly supported. Further, not only did he restore the possessions taken from believers during the persecution, he enacted that all their priests (like those of Egypt and of the later empire in general) should be exempt from municipal burdens; a step as much to their interest as it was to the injury of the State and of all public spirit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">The instant effect was to draw to the priesthood multitudes of gain-seekers, the churches of Carthage and Constantinople soon had 500 priests apiece, and so strong were the protests of the municipalities against the financial disorder he had created that Constantine was fain to restrict his decree. Certainly pagan flamens </span>[priests “serving” particular deities]<span style="color: #000099;"> and public priests of the provinces, a restricted class, had had the same privilege, and this he maintained for them despite Christian appeals; nor does he seem to have withdrawn it from the priests and elders of the Jewish synagogues, who had also enjoyed it; but his direct gifts to the churches were considerable, and by permitting them to receive legacies in the manner of the pagan temples he established their financial basis. So great was their gain that laws had to be passed limiting the number of the clergy, and from this time forward, laws were necessary to restrain priests and bishops from further enriching themselves by lending at interest.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Clerical power was still further extended. Bishops, who had hitherto acted as arbitrators in Christian disputes, had their decisions legally enforced, and the important legal process of freeing slaves was transferred from the temples to the churches. Some pagan temples he temporarily suppressed, on moral grounds; some he allowed to be destroyed as no longer in use; but though he built and richly endowed several great Christian churches and passed some laws against pagan practices, he never ventured on the general persecution of pagans which his Christian hangers-on desired; and the assertions of Eusebius as to his having plundered the temples and brought paganism into contempt are among the many fictions some of them perhaps later forgeries in the works of that historian. As it was, Christian converts were sufficiently multiplied…</span></blockquote>With the increase in converts, treasury, and power, the Christian clerics were ready to learn Constantine’s next lesson, namely, how to slaughter one’s opponents. That is, by the time of Constantine, Christianity had adapted and adopted essentially all features of the pagan religions, except war: the Christians argued fanatically, but they generally maintained the “turn-the-other-cheek” policy of pacifism, a policy that presumably attracted many effeminate people and presumably explains why Christian persecution persisted for two centuries. Once he became sole emperor, however, Constantine showed the Christians how to use the sword to get their way, and a new wave of militant Christian clerics grabbed the sword and associated power with gusto. Within a century, the mystic Christian murderers bludgeoned Europe into its Dark Ages, which continued for the worst part of the next 1,000 years.<br />
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The root cause of the Dark Ages was dogma, which dictates what people are to think. Dogma is common in all religions, because religious ideas have no evidentiary basis; they arise solely from someone’s whim; therefore, if a religious group is to maintain cohesion, the group must agree to some otherwise arbitrary dogma. Constantine showed the Christian clerics how to apply force to establish dogma, just as Moses had allegedly done <span style="font-style: italic;">(Exodus 32)</span> and as Muhammad later did. Thus, as described by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I">Wikipedia article</a> on Constantine, the descent into the Christian Dark Ages started in 316, only three years after their own persecution officially ended:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Constantine himself disliked the risks to societal stability, [which] religious disputes and controversies brought with them, preferring where possible to establish an orthodoxy. The emperor saw it as his duty to ensure that God was properly worshipped in his empire, and what proper worship consisted of was for the Church to determine. In 316, Constantine acted as a judge in a North African dispute concerning the validity of Donatism. </span> [The North African Donatists refused to recognize the authority of priests and bishops who had renounced Christianity during the persecution but were returned to power by Constantine.] <span style="color: #000099;">After deciding against the Donatists, Constantine led an army of Christians against the Donatist Christians. After 300 years of pacifism, this was the first intra-Christian persecution. More significantly, in 325 he summoned the Council of Nicaea, effectively the first Ecumenical Council… Nicaea was to deal mostly with the heresy of Arianism.</span> </blockquote>The Arians, followers of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism">Arius of Alexandria</a>, believed in their own special balderdash, namely, that “the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by – and is therefore distinct from and inferior to – God the Father.” At the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed">First Council of Nicaea</a>, Constantine had clerics (who wanted to stay in power) agree to a creed in which Jesus was proclaimed both “the Son of God” and “very God of very God” (whatever that might mean). The creed added:<br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">…those who say: “There was a time when he was not”; and “He was not before he was made”; and “He was made out of nothing”, or “He is of another substance” or “essence”, or “The Son of God is created”, or “changeable”, or “alterable” – they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.</span></blockquote>At his <a href="http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/history/intolerance.html">website</a>, Edward Babinski has assembled approximately 30 quotations relevant to the resulting Christian-induced mayhem, two of which are the following.<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Walter Nigg, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Heretics:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">The first ecumenical church council, the Council of Nicaea, assembled in the year 325 in the imperial palace of the first Christian emperor, Constantine. Once the discussions started the participants threw their episcopal dignity to the wind and shouted wildly at each other. They were concerned primarily with improving their positions of power. Diplomacy was wielded as a weapon, and intrigues often replaced intelligence. There were so many ignorant bishops that one participant bluntly called the council “a synod of nothing but blockheads.” Constantine, who treated religious questions solely from a political point of view, assured unanimity by banishing all the bishops who would not sign the new profession of faith hammered out at the council. In this way unity was achieved...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">The council also pronounced Arius a heretic. People who owned his writings were ordered to deliver them up on pain of punishment. Arius was banished. And the emperor declared that to side with Arius was a crime. Violent repression of the Arian heresy, however, accomplished the opposite, and served to spread rather than crush the heresy...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Someone close to the emperor intervened on Arius’ part and in 330, Arius was reinstated to his priesthood. The hoped for reconciliation between Arius and Athanasius, failed; the factional struggle continued and became intertwined with political disputes. Then, ten years after being condemned, Arianism gained the upper hand, was proclaimed truth, and the opposing party condemned as advocates of error. In 335 it was Bishop Athanasius’ turn to go off into exile...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">But then, on the eve of his reinstallation to ecclesiastical power, Arius died (or was possibly murdered). History is dumb as to the means of his death, but Athanasius circulated his own version of what happened. He said that Arius fainted in a public privy, and, like Judas Iscariot, his bowels poured out of him, his liver emerged, covered with blood, and then, suffering the most violent pain, he discharged his heart, the seat of all his wickedness. To crown these horrors, Arius’ whole body became thinner and thinner until at last the heretic fell through the opening of the privy into the sewer beneath. Which no doubt tells us more about the character of Athanasius, who spread such a repulsive story, than about what really happened to Arius... </span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Martin A. Larson, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Story of Christian Origins:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">When the Emperor Constantine repented the murder of his wife, his son, and “some of his nearest relatives,” he was told by a Roman philosopher that such guilt as his could not be eradicated. When some Christian bishops, however, informed him that he could be purified by baptism, he was delighted, and became a Christian. Afterwards, he always carried a priest with him and accepted baptism only on his deathbed so that he might commit sin with impunity to the very end.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Constantine was induced by the bishops to issue a decree outlawing all Christian sects (“the Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, Montanists,” etc.) other than the one he had converted to. They were “in league with the devil,” and he “commanded all their houses of prayer be made over to the Catholic Church; that no facility whatever be left for any future gathering.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Ironically, scarcely was the signet dry on this edict when Arianism erupted in the East, Donatism split the northwestern African churches into warring camps, and Manichaeism began to spread throughout Christendom.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">There is only one phase of ancient Christian persecution which remains fully recorded: the five decades in which Arian and Athanasian Christians contended for supremacy and in which several hundreds of thousands must have perished while millions suffered distress or exile.</span></blockquote>It’s thus seen that the real lesson Constantine taught the clerics (a lesson also learned by followers of Moses and Muhammad) was: once you pick up the sword, you need to keep swinging it. Illustrating the resulting blood that flowed is another of the quotations assembled by <a href="http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/history/intolerance.html">Babinski</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Joseph McCabe, <span style="font-style: italic;">How Christianity Triumphed:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">After one “election meeting” in a church, in October 366, the “ushers” picked up from the floor one hundred and sixty Christian corpses! It is sheer affectation of modern Roman Catholic writers to question this, as we learn it from a report to the emperor of two priests of the time. The riots of the Christians which filled the streets of Rome with blood for a week, are, in fact, ironically recorded by the contemporary Roman writer, Ammianus Marcellinus.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">In one day the Christians murdered more of their brethren than the pagans can be positively proved to have martyred in three centuries, and the total number of the slain during the fight for the papal chair (in which the supporters of Pope Damasus literally cut his way, with swords and axes, to the papal chair through the supporters of the rival candidate Ursicinus) is probably as great as the total number of actual martyrs. If we add to these the number of the slain in the fights of the Arians and Trinitarians in the east and the fights of Catholics and Donatists in Africa, we get a sum of “martyrs” many times as large as the genuine victims of Roman law; and we should still have to add the massacre by Theodosius at Thessalonica, the massacre of a regiment of Arian soldiers, the lives sacrificed under Constantius, Valentinian, etc.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">This frightful and sordid temper of the new Christendom is luridly exhibited in the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria in 415. Under the “great” Father of the Church, Cyril of Alexandria, a Christian mob, led by a minor cleric of the church, stripped Hypatia naked and gashed her with oyster shells until she died. She was a teacher of mathematics and philosophy, a person of the highest ideals and character. This barbaric fury (of the Christians) raged from Rome to Alexandria and Antioch, and degraded the cities with spectacles that paganism had never witnessed...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Salvianus, a priest of Marseilles of the fifth century, deplores the vanished virtue of the pagan world and declares that “The whole body of Christians is a sink of iniquity.” “Very few,” he says, “avoid evil.” He challenges his readers: “How many in the Church will you find that are not drunkards or adulterers, or fornicators, or gamblers, or robbers, or murderers – or all together?”</span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;"> (De Gubernatione Dei,</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> III, 9) Gregory of Tours, in the next century, gives, incredible as it may seem, an even darker picture of the Christian world, over part of which he presides.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">You cannot read these truths, unless you can read bad Latin, because they are never translated. It is the flowers, the rare examples of virtue, the untruths of Eusebius and the Martyrologies, that are translated. It is the legends of St. Agnes and St. Catherine, the heroic fictions of St. Lawrence and St. Sebastian that you read. But there were ten vices for every virtue, ten lies for every truth, a hundred murders for every genuine martyrdom.</span></blockquote>As <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part2.htm">Robertson</a> perceptively summarized:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The hatred was beyond all measure, and can be accounted for only by recognizing that a creed which appeals to emotion and degrades reason is potentially the worst stimulant of evil passions.</blockquote>I would add that every organized religion (particularly Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) “appeals to emotion and degrades reason”.<br />
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Immediately following Constantine, conditions became even worse, as <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part2.htm">Robertson</a> describes:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Under the family of Constantine his creed and his policy were maintained, with no better fruits under either the personal or the political aspect. To his three sons (Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans) with two of his nephews, [Constantine] left the empire, but immediately the nephews were massacred with their fathers. Of the three sons, the second destroyed the first in war (340) and the third, succeeding to the western provinces of the first, fell in war with a new competitor, Magnentius (350), whereafter Constantius, defeating the latter by deputy, became sole emperor (353–361). To him appears to be chargeable the deliberate assassination at one stroke of the two surviving brothers of his father and all their sons save two, Gallus and Julian (the sons of Julius Constans) and at his hands began at least the theoretical persecution of paganism on the eager pressure of the church which forty years before had been persecuted. It thus remains matter of history that while many pagans had been in favor of tolerance before the establishment of Christianity, the Christians, who had naturally condemned all persecution while they suffered from it, were ready to become zealous persecutors as soon as they had the power.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Last Light Before Descent into the Christian Dark Ages</span><br />
After Constantine’s son Constantius became emperor, an opportunity arose to avoid the Black Hole into which Christianity was dragging Europe. The opportunity was provided by the Roman emperor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_the_Apostate">Julian</a> (331–363 BCE), who, though he was emperor for only 20 months, ranks with Marcus Aurelius (121–180) as one of the few emperors worthy of the rank. He died young (at the age of 31 or 32) from an arrow wound obtained while fighting the Persians, and with his death, Europe accelerated its descent into the Christian Dark Ages.<br />
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Christians called Julian (and still call him) “Julian the apostate”, because he rejected Christian (and Jewish) balderdash. As illustrations, consider the following samples of Julian’s criticism, first of Judaism, from <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Two Orations of the Emperor Julian</span></a>.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">Now it is true that the Hellenes invented their myths about the gods, incredible and monstrous stories. For they said that Kronos swallowed his children and then vomited them forth; and they even told of lawless unions, how Zeus had intercourse with his mother, and after having a child by her, married his own daughter, or rather did not even marry her, but simply had intercourse with her and then handed her over to another. Then, too, there is the legend that Dionysus was rent asunder and his limbs joined together again. This is the sort of thing described in the myths of the Hellenes. Compare with them the Jewish doctrine, how the garden was planted by God and Adam was fashioned by Him, and next, for Adam, woman came to be. For God said, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">“It is not good that the man should be alone. Let us make him an help meet like, him.”</span> Yet so far was she from helping him at all that she deceived him, and was in part the cause of his and her own fall from their life of ease in the garden.<br />
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This is wholly fabulous. For is it probable that God did not know that the being he was creating as a help meet would prove to be not so much a blessing as a misfortune to him who received her? Again, what sort of language are we to say that the serpent used when he talked with Eve? Was it the language of human beings? And in what do such legends as these differ from the myths that were invented by the Hellenes? Moreover, is it not excessively strange that God should deny to the human beings whom he had fashioned the power to distinguish between good and evil? What could be more foolish than being unable to distinguish good from bad? For it is evident that he [man] would not avoid the latter, I mean things evil, nor would he strive after the former, I mean things good. And, in short, God refused to let man taste of wisdom, than which there could be nothing of more value for man. For that the power to distinguish between good and less good is the property of wisdom is evident surely even to the witless; so that the serpent was a benefactor rather than a destroyer of the human race.<br />
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Furthermore, their God must be called envious. For when he saw that man had attained to a share of wisdom, that he might not, God said, taste of the tree of life, he cast him out of the garden, saying in so many words, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">“Behold, Adam has become as one of us, because he knows good from bad; and now let him not put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and thus live forever.”</span> Accordingly, unless every one of these legends is a myth that involves some secret interpretation, as I indeed believe, they are filled with many blasphemous sayings about God. For in the first place to be ignorant that she who was created as a help meet would be the cause of the fall; secondly to refuse the knowledge of good and bad, which knowledge alone seems to give coherence to the mind of man; and lastly to be jealous lest man should take of the tree of life and from mortal become immortal – this is to be grudging and envious overmuch.</blockquote>And on the Christians, Julian wrote the following:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">But as for the commandment </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">“Thou shalt not worship other gods,”</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> to this surely he [Moses/Ezra] adds a terrible libel upon God: “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">For I am a jealous God,”</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> he says, and in another place again, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">“Our God is a consuming fire.”</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> Then if a man is jealous and envious you think him blameworthy, whereas if God is called jealous you think it a divine quality? And yet how is it reasonable to speak falsely of God in a matter that is so evident? For if he is indeed jealous, then against his will are all other gods worshipped, and against his will do all the remaining nations worship their gods. Then how is it that he did not himself restrain them, if he is so jealous and does not wish that the others should be worshipped, but only himself? Can it be that he was not able to do so, or did he not wish even from the beginning to prevent the other gods also from being worshipped? However, the first explanation is impious, to say, I mean, that he was unable; and the second is in accordance with what we do ourselves. Lay aside this nonsense and do not draw down on yourselves such terrible blasphemy. For if it is God’s will that none other should be worshipped, why do you worship this spurious son of his whom he has never yet recognized or considered as his own?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">But what great gift of this sort do the Hebrews boast of as bestowed on them by God, the Hebrews who have persuaded you [Christians] to desert to them? If you had at any rate paid heed to their teachings, you would not have fared altogether ill, and though worse than you did before, when you were with us, still your condition would have been bearable and supportable. For you would be worshipping one god instead of many, not a man, or rather many wretched men. And though you would be following a law</span> [said to be the laws of Moses] <span style="color: #3333ff;">that is harsh and stern and contains much that is savage and barbarous, instead of our mild and humane laws, and would in other respects be inferior to us, yet you would be more holy and purer than now in your forms of worship. But now it has come to pass that like leeches you have sucked the worst blood from that source and left the purer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years, and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement. As for purity of life you do not know whether he so much as mentioned it; but you emulate the rages and the bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples and altars, and you slaughtered not only those of us who remained true to the teachings of their fathers, but also men who were as much astray as yourselves, heretics, because they did not wail over the corpse in the same fashion as yourselves. But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands. The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius… But to tell the truth, you have taken pride in outdoing our vulgarity (this, I think, is a thing that happens to all nations, and very naturally) and you thought that you must adapt your ways to the lives of the baser sort, shopkeepers, tax-gatherers, dancers and libertines.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">But that not only the Galileans of our day but also those of the earliest time, those who were the first to receive the teaching from Paul, were men of this sort, is evident from the testimony of Paul himself in a letter addressed to them. For unless he actually knew that they had committed all these disgraceful acts, he was not, I think, so impudent as to write to those men themselves concerning their conduct, in language for which, even though in the same letter he included as many eulogies of them, he ought to have blushed, yes, even if those eulogies were deserved, while if they were false and fabricated, then he ought to have sunk into the ground to escape seeming to behave with wanton flattery and slavish adulation. But the following are the very words that Paul wrote concerning those who had heard his teaching, and were addressed to the men themselves:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">“Be not deceived: neither idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And of this ye are not ignorant, brethren, that such were you also; but ye washed yourselves, but ye were sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Do you see that he says that these men too had been of such sort, but that they “had been sanctified” and “had been washed,” water being able to cleanse and winning power to purify when it shall go down into the soul? And baptism does not take away his leprosy from the leper, or scabs, or pimples, or warts, or gout, or dysentery, or dropsy, or a whitlow, in fact no disorder of the body, great or small, then shall it do away with adultery and theft and in short all the transgressions of the soul?…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">But you are so misguided that you have not even remained faithful to the teachings that were handed down to you by the apostles. And these also have been altered, so as to be worse and more impious, by those who came after. At any rate neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God. But the worthy John, since he perceived that a great number of people in many of the towns of Greece and Italy had already been infected by this disease, and because he heard, I suppose, that even the tombs of Peter and Paul were being worshipped – secretly, it is true, but still he did hear this – he, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus God…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Furthermore, Jesus prays in such language as would be used by a pitiful wretch who cannot bear misfortune with serenity, and though he is a god is reassured by an angel. And who told you, Luke, the story of the angel, if indeed this ever happened? For those who were there when he prayed could not see the angel, for they were asleep.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Listen to a fine statesmanlike piece of advice:</span> <span style="color: #cc0000;">“Sell that ye have and give to the poor; provide yourselves with bags which wax not old.”</span> <span style="color: #3333ff;"> Can anyone quote a more statesmanlike ordinance than this? For if all men were to obey you who would there be to buy? Can anyone praise this teaching when, if it be carried out, no city, no nation, not a single family will hold together? For, if everything has been sold, how can any house or family be of any value? Moreover the fact that if everything in the city were being sold at once there would be no one to trade is obvious, without being mentioned.</span></blockquote>Again, the above was written by no less than the emperor of the Roman Empire, Julian, but it was too little, too late. Similar to the Muslim world today, the Roman world had gone mad: the people apparently didn’t care that Julian might be able to save the Roman world from economic ruin; they had been convinced by Christian clerics that they already had a savior, who would save them even in the world to come – if only the clerics were paid enough. Data-based Greek reason had thus been sacrificed on the alter of emotion-based Jewish superstition, and it required more than a thousand years of mayhem before reason could be resurrected.<br />
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Support for the above assessment is available from literally thousands of authors. One example appears in the preface to d’Holbach’s brilliant 1761 book <a href="http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/cu_holb.pdf"><span style="font-style: italic;">Christianity Unveiled</span></a>. The preface is entitled “A Letter from the Author to a Friend”, a friend who apparently criticized D’Holbach’s book, similar to how Benjamin Franklin <a href="http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=58">criticized</a> a draft version of Thomas Paine’s 1795 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Age of Reason</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;">: </span> not for its content, but for the influence it might have on “the ignorant masses”. d’Holbach’s response to his friend includes the following.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">I RECEIVE, Sir, with gratitude, the remarks which you send me upon my work. If I am sensible to the praises you condescend to give it, I am too fond of truth to be displeased with the frankness with which you propose your objections. I find them sufficiently weighty to merit all my attention. He but ill deserves the title of philosopher, who has not the courage to hear his opinions contradicted. We are not divines; our disputes are of a nature to terminate amicably; they in no way resemble those of the apostles of superstition, who endeavor to overreach each other by captious arguments, and who, at the expense of good faith, contend only to advocate the cause of their vanity and their prejudices. We both desire the happiness of mankind, we both search after truth; this being the case, we cannot disagree.<br />
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You begin by admitting the necessity of examining religion, and submitting opinions to the decision of reason. You acknowledge that Christianity cannot sustain this trial, and that in the eye of good sense it can never appear to be any thing but a tissue of absurdities, of unconnected fables, senseless dogmas, puerile ceremonies, and notions borrowed from the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Grecians, and Romans. In one word, you confess that this religious system is only the deformed offspring of almost all ancient superstitions, begotten by oriental fanaticism, and diversely modified by the circumstances and prejudices of those who have since pretended to be the inspired ambassadors of God, and the interpreters of his will.<br />
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You tremble at the horrors which the intolerant spirit of Christians has caused them to commit, whenever they had power to do it; you feel that a religion founded on a sanguinary deity must be a religion of blood. You lament that frenzy, which in infancy takes possession of princes and people, and renders them equally the slaves of superstition and her priests; which prevents their acquaintance with their true interests, renders them deaf to reason, and turns them aside from the great objects by which they ought to be occupied. You confess that a religion founded upon enthusiasm or imposture can have no sure principles; that it must prove an eternal source of disputes, and always end in causing troubles, persecutions, and ravages; especially when political power conceives itself indispensably obliged to enter into its quarrels. In fine, you go so far as to agree that a good Christian who follows literally the conduct prescribed to him as the most perfect by the gospel, knows not in this world any thing of those duties on which true morality is founded; and that if he wants energy he must prove an useless misanthrope, or if his temper be warm, a turbulent fanatic.</blockquote>Now, after my having included the above quotation from d’Holbach, the reader might expect me to turn to one or more obvious topics (such as warped ideas of Christian morality and family values, the horrible moral examples set by Christian clerics during the past 2,000 years, their obstruction of progress in education, democracy, workers’ rights and human rights, etc.), but although such topics are “ripe for review”, I admit to feeling similar to how Graham Lawrence must have felt when he reached a similar point in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fallible Gospels</span> and wrote (in the final chapter):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">This is hardly the “end” of the story, but there are too many other stories that cannot be told here… in the name of the wise and tolerant Jesus, people would be tortured or exploited, or forbidden to read newspapers or celebrate birthdays or to save the lives of their dying children if they needed a blood transfusion… However, my point has been made. The growth and development of the Christian Church has been demonstrated to have relied upon the manipulation of history, the distortion of truth, superstition and gullibility, creativity and expediency, baseless theory, rivalry and power, and intolerance and neurosis. Once we have left behind the fascination of those earliest years, and we are wading through the quicksand of theology and doctrine, I may not have lost interest; but I have certainly lost patience.</blockquote>Nonetheless, one relevant topic that intrigues me is the economic strength of the resulting “Corporate Christ”, but adequate information seems unavailable. In his book <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Short History of Christianity</span></a> Robertson mentions:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The play of economic interest in the establishment and maintenance of religions is one of the constant forces in their history. In the simplest forms of savage life, the medicine man or priest makes a superior living out of his function, and every powerful cult in antiquity enriched its priests. The developed worships of Assyria and Babylon, Phoenicia and Egypt, were carried on by great priestly corporations, with enormous revenues. Those of the Egyptian priesthood, in particular, being reckoned even in the Roman period at a third of the wealth of the nation.</blockquote>I’ve been unable to find comparable information for Christianity, but I’d hazard the guess that, at the height of its power, the Catholic Church controlled at least two thirds of Europe’s economy, as I expect that “Islam Incorporated” currently does in Muslim countries still shrouded in their clerically imposed Dark Ages, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the West, thankfully, we’ve now managed to limit the control of our economies by “Christ Incorporated” to maybe 1–10% of our economies, and if pending lawsuits are successful, we may yet (in Voltaire’s words) <a href="http://www.interfaithforums.com/voltaire/2792-voltaire-overview.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">écrasez l'infâme</span></a> [“crush the infamous one” (i.e., persecuting and privileged religion)].<br />
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As for dealing with the huge topics of the moral and intellectual corruption and social stagnation caused by Christianity, earlier in my on-line <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>, I already devoted its entire <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3.html">Part 3</a>, consisting of 25 chapters, to the “pathetic personal policies and sick social policies” advocated in, especially, the Christian religion, in <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">Part 3x</a> are 10 chapters (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx11_Policies_in_Matthew_-_1.pdf">here</a> focused on the sick policies advocated in the NT, and most of the 35 “X-chapters” of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_4.html">Part 4</a> deal with how religions have inhibited progress toward peace and prosperity throughout the world. Therefore, I plan to set aside further comments on such topics until the summary chapter of this series on “the Mountainous God Lie”.<br />
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And as for the most obvious topic that deserves to be addressed at this juncture, namely, the depth to which the Western World sunk during the Dark Ages caused by Christianity, I’ll rely on the reason (or excuse) that I mentioned at the start of these three posts on Christianity. That is, if readers desire further information about the horrors that descended on Europe (and elsewhere, including the Americas) because of Christian dogma, then rather than reading anything that I (not a historian) might write, I recommend that they consult any of hundreds (if not thousands) of books by competent historians, philosophers, and ex-theologians. Here, therefore, to conclude this post and these posts dealing with Christianity, I’ll just mention and provide some quotations from a few such books (all available on the web) that I found particularly interesting.<br />
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One such book, which I’ve quoted many times in these posts, is <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Story of Religious Controversy</span></a> by the ex-Franciscan monk Joseph McCabe (1867–1955). Some of the chapter titles, alone, are informative:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Chapter XVIII - The Degradation Of Woman<br />
Chapter XIX - Christianity And Slavery<br />
Chapter XX - The Church And The School<br />
Chapter XXI - The Dark Ages<br />
Chapter XXII - New Light On Witchcraft<br />
Chapter XXIII - The Horrors Of The Inquisition</blockquote>My first illustrative quotation is contained within the 1933 book by D.M. Brooks entitled <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20248/20248-8.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Necessity of Atheism</span></a>, in turn quoting Dr. William J. Robinson:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">We are told by the Church apologists that during the Middle Ages the priests and monks kept up the torch of learning, that, being the only literate people, they brought back the study of the classics. Historically speaking, this is about the most impudent statement that one could imagine. It was the Church that retarded human progress at least one thousand years, it is the Church that put a thick, impenetrable pall over the sun of learning and science, so that humanity was enveloped in utter darkness, and if the priests and monks later learned to read and write (from the Arabs, Jews, and Greeks exiled from Constantinople after 1453), it is because they wanted to keep the power in their hands; the people they did not permit to learn either to read or write. (Even the reading of the Bible, bear in mind, was considered a crime.)<br />
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We are told that the priests and monks built hospitals and gave alms to the poor. Having gotten enormous tracts of the best land into their hands, so that the people were starving, they were willing to throw a bone occasionally to the latter. It cost them nothing and it gave them a reputation for charity. They built enormous monasteries with well-filled cellars, and lived on the fat of the land, while the people lived in wretched hovels, working their lives away for a crust of bread. The beasts, the domestic animals lived a more comfortable life than did the men, women, and children of the people. And the Church never, never raised a finger to ameliorate their condition. It kept them in superstitious darkness and helped the temporal lords – for a long period the spiritual were also the temporal lords – to keep them in fear, subjection and slavery.</blockquote>My second illustration is from <a href="http://englishatheist.org/killing/part1.htm">Robertson</a>, whose book I’ve quoted many times in this post.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">What had socially happened was essentially an economic process, howbeit one set up by a religious credence. Paganism as a public system disappeared because it was deprived of all its revenues; Christianity as a system finally flourished because the church was legally empowered to receive donations and legacies without limit, and debarred from parting with any of its property. Any corporation whatever, any creed whatever, would have flourished on such a basis, while only a priesthood capable of building up a voluntary revenue as the Christian church had originally done could survive on pagan lines after the Christian creed had been established…<br />
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The summary of seven hundred years of Christian expansion in northern Europe is that the work was, in the main, done by the sword, in the interest of kings and tyrants, who supported it, as against the resistance of their subjects, who saw in the church an instrument for their subjection. Christianity in short was as truly a religion of the sword as Islam… The heathen, broadly speaking, were never persuaded, never convinced, never won by the appeal of the new doctrine: they were either transferred by their kings to the church like so many cattle, or beaten down into submission after generations of resistance and massacre. For a long time after the German conquest, any Slav found away from home was liable to be executed on the spot, or killed like a wild beast by any Christian who would. And centuries after the barbarian heathenism of Europe was ostensibly drowned in blood, Christian Spain, having overthrown the Muslim Moors, proceeded in the same fashion to dragoon Muslims and Jews into the true faith, baptizing in droves those who yielded or dissembled, and driving out of the country myriads more who would not submit. The misery and the butchery wrought from first to last are unimaginable…<br />
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If the merits of Christianity as a civilizing force are to be in any way determined by its influence in working bloodshed, its record in the matter of witch-slaying alone would serve to place it, in that regard, lower than any other creed. Classic paganism knew no such infamy. All the horrors which Christians are wont to cite as typically heathen… dwindle beside the dreadful sum of evil set forth in the past of their own faith. For the Protestant lands burned at least as many hapless women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft as the Inquisition burned men for heresy. Most of the victims were women whose sole offense had been to have few friends. To be left a childless widow or an old maid was to run the risk of impeachment as a witch by any superstitious or malevolent neighbor, and the danger seems to have been actually doubled when such a woman gave herself to the work of rustic medicine-making in a spirit of goodwill to her kind. Lonely women who suffered in their minds from their very loneliness were almost sure to be condemned, and in cases where partial insanity did not lead them to admit the insane charges against them, torture easily attained the same end…<br />
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The intellectual fatality of the Reformation was that it set up against the principle of papal authority not that of private judgment but that of revelation, and thus still made ancient ignorance the arbiter in the deepest problems. It is indeed vain to say, with Erasmus and with Goethe, that Luther did ill to force a crisis, and that the reform of the Church should have been left to time and the process of culture. No culture could have reformed the papacy as an economic system: the struggle there was finally not between knowledge and ignorance but between vested interests and outsiders’ rights. In the Rome of Leo X… there were 2500 venal offices, half of them created by Leo to raise funds for the building of St. Peter’s, and probably most were cultured men. What they fought for was not dogma but revenue; Luther when among them had been scandalized by their irreligion, not by their superstition…<br />
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The net gain from Protestantism thus lay in the disruption of centralized spiritual tyranny. The rents in the structure made openings for air and light at a time when new currents were beginning to blow and new light to shine. Twenty years before Luther’s schism, Columbus had found the New World. Copernicus, dying in 1543, left his teaching to the world in which Protestantism had just established itself. Early in the next century Kepler and Galileo began to roll back for men the old dream-boundaries of the universe. The modern era was in full progression, and with it, Christianity had begun its era of slow decline.</blockquote>My third illustration is from Ingersoll’s 1872 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/gods.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Gods</span></a>.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">During that frightful period known as the “Dark Ages”, faith reigned, with scarcely a rebellious subject. Her temples were “carpeted with knees”, and the wealth of nations adorned her countless shrines. The great painters prostituted their genius to immortalize her vagaries, while the poets enshrined them in song. At her bidding, man covered the earth with blood, the scales of justice were turned with her gold, and for her use were invented all the cunning instruments of pain. She built cathedrals for God and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. For centuries the world was retracing its steps – going steadily back toward barbaric night…<br />
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The thoughts of man, in order to be of any real worth, must be free. Under the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed, and instead of bravely solving a problem for itself, tremblingly adopts the solution of another. As long as a majority of men will cringe to the very earth before some petty prince or king, what must be the infinite abjectness of their little souls in the presence of their supposed creator and God? Under such circumstances, what can their thoughts be worth?…<br />
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For ages all nations supposed that the sick and insane were possessed by evil spirits. For thousands of years the practice of medicine consisted in frightening these spirits away. Usually the priests would make the loudest and most discordant noises possible. They would blow horns, beat upon rude drums, clash cymbals, and in the meantime utter the most unearthly yells. If the noise remedy failed, they would implore the aid of some more powerful spirit.<br />
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To pacify these spirits was considered of infinite importance. The poor barbarian, knowing that men could be softened by gifts, gave to these spirits that which to him seemed of the most value. With bursting heart he would offer the blood of his dearest child. It was impossible for him to conceive of a god utterly unlike himself, and he naturally supposed that these powers of the air would be affected a little at the sight of so great and so deep a sorrow. It was with the barbarian then as with the civilized now – one class lived upon and made merchandise of the fears of another. Certain persons took it upon themselves to appease the gods, and to instruct the people in their duties to these unseen powers. This was the origin of the priesthood.<br />
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The priest pretended to stand between the wrath of the gods and the helplessness of man. He was man’s attorney at the court of heaven. He carried to the invisible world a flag of truce, a protest and a request. He came back with a command, with authority and with power. Man fell upon his knees before his own servant, and the priest, taking advantage of the awe inspired by his supposed influence with the gods, made of his fellowman a cringing hypocrite and slave.</blockquote>And my fourth and final quotation is from Gerald Massey (1828–1907) who wrote the following for his 1887 lecture <a href="http://gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/dpr_01_historical_jesus.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;">:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #009900;">The Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false theory, and waged incessant warfare against Nature and Evolution… and against some of the noblest instincts, during eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood have been spilled to keep the barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been honeycombed with the graves of the martyrs of Freethought. Heaven has been filled with a horror of great darkness in the name of God…<br />
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The Christian Theology was responsible for substituting faith instead of knowledge; and the European mind is only just beginning to recover from the mental paralysis induced by that doctrine which came to its natural culmination in the Dark Ages. The Christian religion is responsible for enthroning the cross of death in heaven, with a deity on it, doing public penance for a private failure in the commencement of creation. It has taught men to believe that the vilest spirit may be washed white, in the atoning blood of the purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging God. It has divinized a figure of helpless human suffering, and a face of pitiful pain; as if there were naught but a great heartache at the core of all things; or the vast Infinite were but a veiled and sad-eyed sorrow that brings visibly to birth in the miseries of human life…<br />
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But “in the old Pagan world men deified the beautiful, the glad”; as they will again, upon a loftier pedestal, when the fable of this fictitious fall of man, and false redemption by the cloud-begotten God, has passed away like a phantasm of the night, and men awake to learn that they are here to wage ceaseless war upon sordid suffering, remediable wrong, and preventable pain; here to put an end to them, not to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow to be adored as a type of the Eternal. For the most beneficent is the most beautiful; the happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is most glad.</blockquote><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
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</div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-16176148920128926262010-05-19T02:09:00.000-07:002010-06-21T12:00:36.252-07:00Clerical Quackery 11 – The Concocted Christ<div><br /></div>This is the 31st in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the God Lie”, the 11th in a subseries of posts emphasizing Clerical Quackery, and the 2nd dealing with clerical quackery involved in the concoction of Christianity. In the previous post, I outlined (and provided a few references for) how Christianity was concocted from a variety of ingredients, including the Mystery religions, astrological nonsense, wild metaphysical speculations, ubiquitous superstition, and other cultural and political factors. As a continuation of the previous post, my goal for this post is to outline (and provide references for) a specific one of the “other cultural and political factors”, namely (using the numbering system of the previous post):<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">7. Blatant conspiracy by a new breed of clerics.</span><br />As the popular Jewish-American comedian Lewis Black <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGrlWOhtj3g">recently joked</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">You don’t understand the Jewish people… We Jews understand… We know what we’re good at, and what we’re really good at is bullshit.</blockquote> Well, a comedian can get away with such a sweeping generalization (perhaps Black was illustrating his competence at slinging BS!), but whereas I know a lot of Jewish people who excel in science rather than in BS, it would probably be better to restrict the indictment to ancient Jewish clerics and to admit that many people with Jewish ancestry continue to excel at storytelling, e.g., those in the entertainment industry.<br /><br />The Old Testament (OT) contains a huge number of examples of both storytelling and BS by ancient Jewish clerics: no god created the universe, a snake didn’t have a conversation with the first two humans, no one loaded members of all animal species into an ark, the multiplicity of languages didn’t result because a tower was built in Babylon, Abraham didn’t have a chat with any god or any angels, Lot’s wife wasn’t turned into a pillar of salt, Joseph didn’t enslave all the Egyptians (except the priests), Moses didn’t part the Red Sea (or the Reed Sea), Joshua’s trumpeters didn’t blow down the walls of Jericho, Jonah didn’t live for three days inside a whale, and so on. For purposes of this post, a particularly relevant example of clerical BS is the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Daniel,</span> which I briefly reviewed in an earlier post.<br /><br />Similar to the stories about Moses (almost certainly concocted by Ezra and co-conspirators as commentary on their conditions during their exile in Babylon), the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> commented on then-current (second century BCE) events by constructing fictional tales in a sixth century BCE historical setting. It’s unknown (but doubtful) if many second-century-BCE Jews believed that <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> described what actually occurred centuries earlier in Babylon (only “mentally challenged” Christians believe such nonsense!), but in any case, the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> skillfully managed to convince people about Zarathustra’s ideas of an end-of-time when a savior would rule and justice would prevail, i.e., “the righteous” (e.g., the martyrs) would be rewarded and “the evil” (apostates and ruling Greeks) would be punished. Such is the skill of a competent storyteller.<br /><br />The example set by the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> (it was adopted into Jewish canon by the ruling clerics, the Sadducees, and its ideas were promoted with vigor in the Dead Sea Scrolls, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Origin_of_the_Scrolls">presumably written</a> by the Essenes) appears to have been the template used by later Jewish authors in concocting the Gospels of the New Testament (NT). The Essenes were waiting for a “messiah” (“the promised deliverer of the Jewish nation prophesied in the Hebrew Bible”), astrologers appear to have concluded that the end of the Age of Aires / the start of the Age of Pisces would occur during the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix08BiblicalStarMyths.pdf">triple conjunction</a> of Jupiter (Jesus) and Saturn (Yahweh), and Jewish storytellers who had essentially memorized the OT started spinning out tales about God’s alleged son, Jesus. The mystery, treachery, and intrigue of the concocted Jesus story would have made Alfred Hitchcock envious, and the blood and gore obviously did make Mel Gibson drool. What the vast majority of (simpleton) Christians didn’t (and apparently still don’t) realize, however, is that such mystery, treachery, intrigue, and blood and gore was (and is!) a humongous pile of BS.<br /><br />Now, for purposes of this post, there’s no need to review any of the vast literature dealing with whether or not Jesus even existed. Interested readers may want to explore on the internet some of the 15,000 Google-hits that the phrase “did Jesus exist” yields. In case anyone is interested in my opinion (although they shouldn’t be, since it’s an uninformed opinion by a non-historian), I’ll mention that I expect that there was an itinerant mystic named Jesus who managed to convince a few first-century Jews that he wasn’t bonkers – in spite of evidence to the contrary. Among those so convinced seem to be his brother James (“the Just”), Peter (or Cephas, “the rock”), Thomas (“the Contender”), and his girlfriend Mary of Magdala (or Mary Magdalene).<br /><br />If one doesn’t accept the possibility that such a Jesus existed, it would then seem necessary to develop and defend elaborate hypotheses to explain the writings by those mentioned (and others) that were found in 1945 at <a href="http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html">Nag Hammadi</a>, as well as the <a href="http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gospel According to Mary</span></a>. For example, if one assumes that Jesus didn’t exist, it would seem difficult to explain such childish arguments as the following, recorded in Chapter 9 of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gospel of Mary:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her.<br /><br />But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, “Say what you wish to say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.”<br /><br />Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior: “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?”<br /><br />Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?”<br /><br />Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather, let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.”<br /><br />And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.</blockquote>But whether or not Mary Magdalene’s Jesus existed, a separate question is: Did the Jesus described in the NT ever exist? And it’s relatively easy to show that an appropriate answer to that question is: “Don’t be silly! Of course the Jesus described in the NT never existed: he’s a character of childish fiction.” As famously summarized by the theologian, medical doctor, humanist, and the winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), in his 1906 book entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Quest for the Historical Jesus: </span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of God upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. His image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which come to the surface one after another.... </blockquote>As a result, there’s a dramatic difference between the Jesus described in the Nag Hammadi (NH) scrolls (written by members of a Christian sect called the Gnostics) <span style="font-style: italic;">versus</span> the Jesus of the NT. To begin the comparison, consider some characteristics of the NH-Jesus depicted in the <a href="http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_thomas.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gospel of Thomas</span></a>; in it, Jesus appears to be a nutcase who thinks he’s light (rather than matter), but he seems to have meant well, and he does provide some sound advice. The following quotations are illustrative (without being too badly contaminated by the verbal dysentery of most of his alleged statements):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Jesus said, “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”<br /><br />Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’, say to them, ‘We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image’…”<br /><br />His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”<br /><jesus> [Jesus said] “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”<br /><br />Jesus said to them, “If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits.”</jesus></blockquote>In contrast to the NH-Jesus, the NT-Jesus appears to be mostly a contrived character in a childish drama, a little of which I’ll illustrate later in this post.<br /><br />Importantly for comparison with the Jesus of the NT, there’s nothing in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Gospel of Thomas</span> (or in most NH scrolls) about Jesus dying for our sins to provide us with the opportunity for eternal life in paradise or about his forming a church – which are foundational dogmas of “modern” Christianity. Thus, in contrast to the NH-scrolls, the NT contains wild speculations such as at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Gospel of John 3</span>, 16, “<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”</span>, and the play on words at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 16,</span> 18 that all popes have claimed gives them authority over the world: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“And I</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">say this to you: You are Peter </span>[or Cephas, Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">Kephas</span>; Aramaic: <span style="font-style: italic;">Kêfâ</span>, “rock, stone”; Greek for “rock, stone”, <span style="font-style: italic;">Pétros</span>, i.e., Peter]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, the Rock; and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall never conquer it.”</span> Not entirely incidentally, although the NT-Jesus praises Peter for his response to the question “Who do you say I am?” (namely, e.g., at <span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 9,</span> 21: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“God’s Messiah”</span>), leading to Jesus proclaiming Peter as “the rock” on which the Christian church would be built, yet in the NH’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Gospel of Thomas</span> (v.13), Jesus was apparently so disappointed in Peter’s response (namely, <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“You are like a just messenger”</span>) that Jesus ignored his response!<br /><br />What therefore seems to have occurred ~2,000 years ago is that the two groups of mystics (the Gnostics and a group that followed Peter) were competing (for control over converts), and until the Roman emperor Constantine (c.274–337 CE) made Christianity the empire’s “state religion” in 324 CE, giving the Catholic Church “the power of the sword”, then as seen by comparing the NH gospels with the NT gospels, it was initially a “war of words” (or, more accurately, a war of BS) between the two groups. Further, as for the claim by Peter’s group (in the NT) that <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall never conquer it”</span>, that may yet be seen to be another of the NT’s failed prophecies, since Peter’s church may soon be drowned by the pedophilia of its priests (and thereby, some good may yet come from such evil), for as Jesus allegedly said (<span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 17,</span> 2): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone round his neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”</span><br /><br />As for the NT’s depiction of Jesus, it may contain a kernel of a historical Jesus, but the structure concocted around the kernel is like the layered leaves of an artichoke, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artichoke">appropriately described</a> (it would seem) as: “a perennial thistle originating… around the Mediterranean.” The layered leaves of the Jesus artichoke would choke a horse: they include the silly idea of a ghost impregnating the “virgin Mary”, Jesus’ birth marked by a star (undoubtedly a literary construct, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix08BiblicalStarMyths.pdf">probably</a><a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix08BiblicalStarMyths.pdf"> representing</a> the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that astrologers used to identify the start of the Age of Pisces), his being lost and then found in the temple when he was 12 years old, saying (<span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 2,</span> 49), <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Did you not know that I was bound to be in my Father’s house?”</span> (since, with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">Jesus as Jupiter</a>, with its 12-year period of rotation about the Sun, he would necessarily return to the same “house” of the Zodiac), with Jesus as the Sun being followed by 12 apostles (one for each of the signs of the Zodiac), his feeding of the multitude with a few loaves of bread and two fishes (i.e., Pisces), “the lamb of God” being “crucified on the cross” (at the end of the Age of Aries, the ram), being dead for three days (as the Moon is, every month), and then rising from the dead (as the Sun does after the winter solstice and for millennia was worshiped for doing so). The resulting “Mediterranean thistle” has been described in detail by hundreds of competent authors during the most recent more-than-a-century; therefore, rather than my engaging in the effort of trying to describe the resulting “thistle” in detail, below I’ll simply quote three such authors.<br /><br />My first example is from the Egyptologist Gerald Massey (1828–1907) who wrote the following for his 1887 lecture <a href="http://gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/dpr_01_historical_jesus.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ</span></a>.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">In presenting my readers with some of the data which show that much of the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology, I have to ask you to bear in mind that the facts, like other foundations, have been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a hieroglyphical language, that was never really read by Greek or Roman, and could not be read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other day! In this way the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology remained as hidden as those of the Nile, until the century in which we live…<br /><br />Secondly, although I am able to read the hieroglyphics, nothing offered to you is based on my translation. I work too warily for that! The transcription and literal rendering of the hieroglyphic texts herein employed are by scholars of indisputable authority. There is no loophole of escape that way. I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago. At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the “Christian scheme” (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a fraud, founded on a fable in the Old!<br /><br />I then accepted the Canonical Gospels as containing a veritable human history, and assumed, as others do, that the history proved itself. Finding that Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, was an historical character, known to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Talmud</span>, I made the common mistake of supposing that this proved the personal existence of the Jesus found portrayed in the Canonical Gospels. But after you have heard my story, and weighed the evidence now for the first time collected and presented to the public, you will not wonder that I should have changed my views, or that I should be impelled to tell the truth to others, as it now appears to myself; although I am only able to summarize here, in the briefest manner possible, a few of the facts that I have dealt with exhaustively elsewhere…<br /><br />According to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract “Shabbath,” this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as a wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being hanged on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. This is the manner of death assigned to Jesus in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Acts</span>…<br /><br />The “blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus,” as Justin Martyr calls them, always refer to Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, and not to the Jesus of the Gospels. It is Ben-Pandira they mean when they say they have another and a truer account of the birth and life, the wonder-working and death of Jehoshua or Jesus. This repudiation is perfectly honest and soundly based. The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who had learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put to death by them as a sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known to Celsus, the writer of the “True Logos,” a work which the Christians managed to get rid of bodily, with so many other of the anti-Christian evidences…<br /><br />When the true tradition of Ben-Pandira is recovered, it shows that he was the sole historical Jesus who was hung on a tree by the Jews, not crucified in the Roman fashion, and authenticates the claim now to be made on behalf of the astronomical allegory to the dispensational Jesus, the Kronian Christ, the mythical Messiah of the Canonical Gospels, and the Jesus of Paul, who was not the carnalized Christ. For I hold that the Jesus of the “other Gospel,” according to the Apostles Cephas [Peter] and James, who was utterly repudiated by Paul, was none other than Ben-Pandira, the Nazarene, of whom James was a follower, according to a comment on him found in the Book <span style="font-style: italic;">Abodazura</span>. Anyway, there are two Jesuses, or Jesus and the Christ, one of whom is repudiated by Paul.<br /><br />But Jehoshua, the son of Pandira, can never be converted into Jesus Christ, the son of a virgin mother, as an historic character. Nor can the dates given ever be reconciled with contemporary history. The historical Herod, who sought to slay the young child Jesus, is known to have died four years before the date of the Christian era, assigned for the birth of Jesus.<br /><br />So much for the historic Jesus. And now for the mythical Christ. Here we can tread on firmer ground.<br /><br />The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother – a factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one that can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions of primitive sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in theology. The virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden Queen, Mut-em-ua, the future mother of Amenhept III some 16 centuries BCE, who impersonated the eternal virgin that produced the eternal child…</blockquote>Massey goes on to show how the Christians copied Egyptian ideas in the creation of their fable about Jesus the Christ. A point that I emphasized in an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">earlier chapter</a> is that the date (otherwise arbitrarily) chosen for the alleged birth of “the fisher of men” was the astrologers’ exact date for the beginning of the Age of Pisces (the fish) and the end of the Age of Aries (the ram or lamb), which accounts both for the “death of the lamb of god (Aires)” on the (astrological) cross and why this mythical/astrological Jesus is called ICHTHYS, allegedly an acronym for <span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-family:Baskerville;font-size:medium;" >I<span class="italic" style="font-style: italic;">esous </span>Ch<span class="italic" style="font-style: italic;">ristos</span>, Th<span class="italic" style="font-style: italic;">eou </span>U<span class="italic" style="font-style: italic;">ios</span>, S<span class="italic" style="font-style: italic;">oter </span>(Jesus Christ, Son of God, <span apple_mouseover_highlight="1">Savior</span>), </span>but actually, it’s the Greek word for ‘fish’. It also explains why “modern” Christians display fish decals on their car bumpers. Massey adds:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Nothing is more certain, according to honest evidence, than that the Christian scheme of redemption is founded on a fable misinterpreted; that the prophecy of fulfillment was solely astronomical, and the Coming One as the Christ who came in the end of an age, or of the world, was but a metaphorical figure, a type of time, from the first, which never could take form in historic personality, any more than Time in Person could come out of a clock-case when the hour strikes; that no Jesus could become a Nazarene by being born at, or taken to, Nazareth; and that the history in our Gospels is from beginning to end the identifiable story of the Sun-God, and the Gnostic Christ who never could be made flesh. When we did not know the one it was possible to believe the other; but when once we truly know, then the false belief is no longer possible…</blockquote>My second example is from the ex-Presbyterian pastor M.M. Mangasarian (1859–1943) who wrote the following in his 1909 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/truth_about_jesus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Truth about Jesus – Is He a Myth?</span></a><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence. As far as possible, let us be passive, showing no predisposition one way or another. We can afford to be independent. If the evidence proves the historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the evidence is not sufficient to prove it, there is no reason why we should fear to say so; besides, it is our duty to inform ourselves on this question. As intelligent beings we desire to know whether this Jesus, whose worship is not only costing the world millions <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[now, hundreds of billions of dollars per year!]</span> of the people’s money, but which is also drawing to his service the time, the energies, the affection, the devotion, and the labor of humanity – is a myth, or a reality. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">We believe that all religious persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds and intolerance, which still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be replaced by love and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see that the God-Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to which credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been fighting in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved of the thralldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another. In every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the root of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or death to the Christian religion…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">A human Jesus may or may not have existed, but we are as sure as we can be of anything, that a virgin-born God, named Jesus, such as we must believe in or be eternally lost, is an impossibility – except to credulity. But credulity is no evidence at all, even when it is dignified by the name of FAITH.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Let us pause for a moment to reflect: The final argument for the existence of the miraculous Jesus, preached in church and Sunday-school, these two thousand years, as the sole savior of the world, is an appeal to faith – the same to which Muhammad resorts to establish his claims, and Joseph Smith, to prove his revelation. There is no other possible way by which the virgin birth or the godhood of a man can be established. And such a faith is never free, it is always maintained by the sword now, and by hell-fire hereafter…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, “The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud.” [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Ecclesiastical Hist.,</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Vol. I, p. 347.] Again, he says: “The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy.” Will not some believer tell us why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Another historian, Milman, writes that, “Pious fraud was admitted and avowed” by the early missionaries of Jesus. “It was an age of literary frauds,” writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that, “There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no other purpose than to deceive.” And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, “There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views.” Books which are now rejected as apocryphal were at one time received as inspired, and books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is puzzling that there should be a whole literature of fraud and forgery in the name of a historical person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can easily explain the legends and traditions springing up in his name…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form of a human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the ancient catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross bearing a human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a lamb with a cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it is a lamb which we see entombed in the “holy sepulcher.” In more than one mosaic of early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a lamb, which is bleeding for the salvation of the world. How a lamb came to play so important a role in Christianity is variously explained. The similarity between the name of the Hindu god, Agni, and the meaning of the same word in Latin, which is a lamb, is one theory. Another is that a ram, one of the signs of the zodiac, often confounded by the ancients with a lamb, is the origin of the popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol – a reverence which all religions based on sun worship shared. The lamb in Christianity takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal lamb did in the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in Babylonia.</span> [And as mentioned earlier in this post, the death of the lamb symbolizes the end of the Age of Aries, the ram, and the beginning of the Age of Pisces, the fish.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">To the same effect is the following letter of the bishop of Mende, in France, bearing date of the year 800 CE: “Because the darkness has disappeared, and because also Christ is a real man, Pope Adrian commands us to paint him under the form of a man. The lamb of God must not any longer be painted on a cross, but after a human form has been placed on the cross, there is no objection to have a lamb also represented with it, either at the foot of the cross or on the opposite side.” [Translated from the French of Didron; quoted by Malvert.] We leave it to our readers to draw the necessary conclusions from the above letter. How did a lamb hold its place on the cross for eight hundred years? If Jesus was really crucified, and that fact was a matter of history, why did it take eight hundred years for a Christian bishop to write, “now that Christ is a real man,” etc.? Today, it would be considered a blasphemy to place a lamb on a cross…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">We have said enough to show that, in all probability – for let us not be dogmatic – the story of Jesus (his birth and betrayal by one of his own disciples, his trial in a Roman court, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension) belongs to the order of imaginative literature. Conceived at first as a religious drama, it received many new accretions as it traveled from country to country and from age to age. The “piece” shows signs of having been touched and retouched to make it acceptable to the different countries in which it was played. The hand of the adapter, the interpolator and the reviser is unmistakably present. As an allegory, or as a dramatic composition, meant for the religious stage, it proved one of the strongest productions of Pagan or Christian times. But as real history, it lacks the fundamental requisite – probability. As a play, it is stirring and strong; as history, it lacks naturalness and consistency. The miraculous is ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a miracle, and as such, at least, we are safe in declaring him unhistorical…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">What are the elements out of which the Jesus story was evolved? The Jewish people were in constant expectation of a Messiah. The belief prevailed that his name would be Joshua, which in English is Jesus. The meaning of the word is savior. In ancient Syrian mythology, Joshua was a Sun God. The Old-Testament Joshua, who “stopped the Sun,” was in all probability this same Syrian divinity. According to tradition this Joshua, or Jesus, was the Son of Mary, a name which with slight variations is found in nearly all the old mythologies. Greek and Hindu divinities were mothered by either a Mary, Meriam, Myrrah, or Merri. Maria or Mares is the oldest word for ‘sea’ – the earliest source of life. The ancients looked upon the seawater as the mother of every living thing. “Joshua (or Jesus), son of Mary,” was already a part of the religious outfit of the Asiatic world when Paul began his missionary tours. His Jesus, or anointed one, crucified or slain, did in no sense represent a new or original message. It is no more strange that Paul’s mythological “savior” should loom into prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a mythical Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over the fairest portions of the earth.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">It is also well known that there is in the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Talmud</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> the story of a Jesus, Ben (or son) of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years before the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe this Jesus is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua. But may it not be that such a legend accepted as true – to the ancients all legends were true – contributed its share toward marking the outlines of the later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea has been to show that the materials for a Jesus myth were at hand, and that, therefore, to account for the rise and progress of the Christian cult is no more difficult than to explain the widely spread religion of the Indian Krishna, or of the Persian Mithra. [For a fuller discussion of the various “christs” in mythology read Robertson’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Christianity and Mythology</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> and his </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Pagan Christs</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">.]</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I not have made more friends – provoked a warmer response from the public at large – had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar phrases about the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God, the Virgin-born Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this Jesus whom Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose altar the Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as much of an idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we – we Americans of the twentieth century – are an idolatrous people, inasmuch as we worship a name, or at most, a man of whom we know nothing provable…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The Christian religion has the appearance of being one great myth, constructed out of many minor myths. It is the same with Muhamadanism [Islam] or Judaism, which latter is the mischievous parent of both [Islam] and the Christian faiths. It is the same with all supernatural creeds. Myth is the dominating element in them all. Compared with these Asiatic religions how glorious is science! How wholesome, helpful, and luminous, are her commandments!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">If I were to command you to believe that Mount Olympus was once tenanted by blue eyed gods and their consorts – sipping nectar and ambrosia the live-long day – you will answer, “Oh, that is only mythology.” If I were to tell you that you cannot be saved unless you believe that Minerva was born full-fledged from the brain of Jupiter, you will laugh at me. If I were to tell you that you must punish your innocent sons for the guilt of their brothers and sisters, you will answer that I insult your moral sense. And yet, every Sunday, the preacher repeats the myth of Adam and Eve, and how God killed his innocent son to please himself, or to satisfy the devil, and with bated breath, and on your knees, you whisper, Amen…</span></blockquote>And my third example is from Joseph Wheless [“Lately Major, Judge Advocate, U.S.A.; Associate Editor (in section of comparative Law) of American Bar Association Journal; Life Member of American Law Institute; etc.”] from his 1930 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/forgery_in_christianity/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Forgery in Christianity</span></a>. In his book, Wheless carefully documents evidence for the following indictment:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">THE INDICTMENT<br /><br />I charge, and purpose to prove, from unimpeachable texts and historical records, and by authoritative clerical confessions, beyond the possibility of denial, evasion, or refutation:<br /><br />1. That the Bible, in its every Book, and in the strictest legal and moral sense, is a huge forgery.<br /><br />2. That every Book of the New Testament is a forgery of the Christian Church; and every significant passage in those Books, on which the fabric of the Church and its principal Dogmas are founded, is a further and conscious later forgery, wrought with definite fraudulent intent.<br /><br />3. Especially, and specifically, that the “famous Peterine text” – “Upon this Rock I will build my church” – the cornerstone of the gigantic fabric of imposture – and the other, “Go, teach all nations” – were never uttered by the Jew Jesus, but are palpable and easily proven late Church forgeries.<br /><br />4. That the Christian Church, from its inception in the first little Jewish-Christian religious societies until it reached the apex of its temporal glory and moral degradation, was a vast and tireless Forgery-mill.<br /><br />5. That the Church was founded upon, and through the Dark Ages of Faith has battened on – yet languishes decadently upon – monumental and petty forgeries and pious frauds, possible only because of its own shameless mendacity and through the crass ignorance and superstition of the sodden masses of its deluded votaries, purposely kept in that base condition for purposes of ecclesiastical graft and aggrandizement through conscious and most unconscionable imposture.<br /><br />6. That every conceivable form of religious lie, fraud, and imposture has ever been the work of Priests; and through all the history of the Christian Church, as through all human history, has been – and, so far as they have not been shamed out of it by skeptical ridicule and exposure, yet is – the age-long stock in trade and sole means of existence of the priests and ministers of all the religions.<br /><br />7. That the clerical mind, which “reasons in chains,” is, from its vicious and vacuous “education” and the special selfish interests of the priestly class, incapable either of the perception or the utterance of truth, in matters where the interests of priestcraft are concerned.</blockquote>Now, in this single post, I certainly can’t provide details supporting Wheless’ “indictment”; readers interested in the details would profit from reading <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/forgery_in_christianity/">his book</a>. An outline of the Christian clerics’ con game, however, is available even in the NT – in fact, the obvious reason for their concocting the NT seems to have been to develop such details. Further, as I’ll sketch below, the methods used by the Christian clerics are so painfully obvious that it hurts to realize how many people fell (and still fall!) for such chicanery. In outline, the clerics’ method consists of two principal steps: 1) Submit the (preposterous) proposal that their fictitious Jesus had the authority of no less than the creator of the universe (“God”), and 2) Add the (preposterous) proposal that Jesus subsequently passed on God’s authority to the new breed of clerics.<br /><br />The second step in the clerics’ con game (i.e., the claim that Jesus delegated his “authority” to the clerics) is easiest to demonstrate. It’s detailed in the following NT quotations (from the <span style="font-style: italic;">New English Bible)</span>, to which I’ve added the italics.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then he</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">called his twelve disciples to him and gave them </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">authority</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every kind of ailment and disease.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 10,</span> 1)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">tell you this: whatever you </span>[apostles] <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">forbid</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> on earth shall be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">allow</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> on earth shall be allowed in heaven… if two of you agree on earth about any request you have to make, that request will be granted by my heavenly Father.</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 18,</span> 18)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">now called the Twelve</span> [apostles] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">together and gave them </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">power and authority… </span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 9,</span> 1)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The seventy-two</span> [disciples] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">came back jubilant. “In your name, Lord,” they said, “even the devils submit to us.” He</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">replied, “I watched how Satan fell, like lightning, out of the sky. And now you see that I have </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">given you the power</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> to tread underfoot snakes and scorpions and all the forces of the enemy, and nothing will ever harm you.” </span> [Or, in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New American Standard Bible:</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Behold, I have given you </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">authority</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.”</span>] (<span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 10,</span> 18)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Believe me </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">when I say that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else accept the evidence of the deeds themselves. In truth, in very truth I tell you</span> [apostles]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, he who has faith in me will do what I am doing; and he will do greater things still because I am going to the Father. Indeed, anything you</span> [apostles] <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">ask in my name I will do</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">…</span></span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">John 14,</span> 11)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“The glory which thou </span>[God]<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">gavest me</span></span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span>[Jesus] <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I have given to them</span> [the apostles] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">that they may be one, as we</span> [God and Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">are one; I in them and thou in me…</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">John 17, </span>22)</blockquote>On the other hand, the first step in the clerics’ con game (i.e., to show that Jesus had acquired his authority from God) was more complicated than the second step (to show that Jesus passed his authority onto the clerics); therefore, the clerics used a multi-pronged attack. In the first prong, the clerics simply claimed it was so, as shown in the following quotations, to which I’ve added the italics:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Father loves the Son and has entrusted him with all </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">authority</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">John 3,</span> 35)</blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">They</span> [Jesus and his disciples]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> came once more to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple court the chief priests, lawyers, and elders came to him and said, </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“By what authority are you acting like this?</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Who gave you </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">authority</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> to act in this way?”…</span> [Then, after Jesus posed a question that they refused to answer] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Jesus said to them, “Then neither will I tell you by what </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">authority</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> I act”</span> [although the other gospels, especially <span style="font-style: italic;">John</span>, claim that Jesus did tell them by what authority he acted, as I’ll show in the quotation that immediately follows]. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 11,</span> 27)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">To this charge</span> [of claiming equality with God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Jesus replied, “In truth, in very truth I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he does only what he sees the Father doing: what the Father does, the Son does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all his works, and will show greater yet, to fill you with wonder. As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to men, as he determines. And again, the Father does not judge anyone, but has given </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">full jurisdiction to the Son;</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> it his will that all should pay the same honor to the son as to the Father. To deny honor to the Son is to deny it the Father who sent him.”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">John 5,</span> 19)</blockquote>As an additional prong, the aspiring clerics promoted the silliness illustrated at <span style="font-style: italic;">John 8, </span>45, where the clerics have their Jesus say the following (in response to those assembled who said that he was “possessed”, and later, at <span style="font-style: italic;">John 10,</span> 20, that he was “raving”, i.e., that he was insane):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But I</span> [Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">speak the truth and therefore you do not believe me. Which of you can prove me in the wrong?</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">”</span></blockquote>Incidentally, the same silliness was used by (“the mad poet”) Muhammad in promoting his con game, apparently not realizing (or not caring) that sensible people respond with something similar to: “Hello? You’re the one making the claim; it’s your job to back it up; I’m not gonna waste my time demonstrating that you’re bonkers.” As someone else said: it’s never necessary to debunk something that hasn’t been established. Thus, as I describe in detail in other chapters (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">here</a>), no one can “prove” the truth or falsity of any fairy tale; for example, that Superman either is or isn’t harmed by kryptonite. Similarly, although probably no one will ever be able to prove that most of the alleged claims of Jesus (or Moses or Muhammad or Joseph Smith) were false, it’s equally probable that no one will ever be able to prove that all invisible flying elephants aren’t pink – and it would be equally pointless to try.<br /><br />The above two methods of attempting to show that Jesus received his “authority” from God (i.e., claiming it was so and then challenging people to prove it wrong), however, were probably insufficient to convince skeptics. The new breed of con-artist clerics therefore perpetrated their prime ruse, which is summarized in the NT at <span style="font-style: italic;">Acts 2, </span>22, where Peter (whom the Catholics call “the first pope”, but he <a href="http://webspace.webring.com/people/np/paul_tobin/peterpope.html">almost certainly wasn’t</a>) allegedly told those assembled:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Men of Israel, listen to me: I speak of Jesus of Nazareth</span> [by the way, it should be not “Jesus of Nazareth” but “Jesus the Nazarene”, where the Nazarenes were probably a faction of the Essenes; <a href="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html">that is</a>, there’s no evidence that a town called Nazareth existed during the first century CE]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, a man singled out by God and made known to you through miracles, portents, and signs…</span></blockquote>From that quotation one can see that the principal prong of the clerics’ thrust was (and still is): the “miracles, portents, and signs” performed by Jesus demonstrate that he was God’s representative on Earth.<br /><br />As for the specific “miracles, portents, and signs” by which Jesus allegedly revealed his “authority”, they’ve got to be one of the most ridiculous sets of fabricated nonsense that ever insulted human intelligence – which the mindless masses lapped up (and still lap up) like warm milk. Below, I’ll provide a few illustrations of the alleged: 1) Miracles, 2) Portents, and 3) Signs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Miracles</span><br />The word ‘miracle’ has multiple meanings. For those of us who consider the word ‘supernatural’ to be meaningless, the word ‘miracle’ is sometimes used to describe simply “a surprising and welcome event”, where by ‘surprising’ is meant that the probability of the event occurring is close to being zero – although, actually, most of us avoid using the word ‘miracle’. The biblical sense of the word ‘miracle’, on the other hand, is “a surprising and welcome event” resulting from “the work of a divine agency.” Consequently, for those of us who have <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">reasoned from the evidence</a> that the most certain knowledge humans have been able to gain (even more certain than the knowledge that we exist!) is that no “divine agency” (or god) exists or has ever existed, we conclude that the biblical sense of the word ‘miracle’ is pure gobbledygook.<br /><br />For those who can believe in biblical-type miracles (with no more evidence than that some con-artist clerical author said they occurred), then according to the NT, Jesus allegedly performed a host of miracles: he turned water into wine, walked on water, stopped the wind from blowing, cured people of illnesses and deformities by driving out the “evil spirits” that caused them, and similar silliness, including bringing dead people (including himself) back to life. Such, however, aren’t ‘miracles’ (either in the supernatural sense or in the sense of events with low probability that occurred) but only reports of alleged miracles. In fact, nowhere in the NT are there any ‘miracles’ (in either sense of the word).<br /><br />Thus, for example and for some strange reason, nowhere in the NT (or, for that matter, in any “holy book”) does one find a combination of quantum mechanics and general relatively (yielding a “theory of everything” or TOE), or the DNA sequencing for the human genome, or even Maxwell’s equations, or even (for crying out loud) the periodic table of the elements. If such had been included in the NT, they would have been “miracles” worth considering. Instead, the Gospels provide stories that a child could concoct, and surely such stories convince no one whose mental development has progressed beyond that of a little child’s that Christ performed any miracles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Portents</span><br />According to my dictionary, the primary definition of a ‘portent’ is “a sign or warning that something, especially momentous or calamitous, is likely to happen.” Thus, a ‘portent’ is not your everyday, garden-variety ‘prophecy’ (e.g., that it’ll rain tomorrow) but a prophecy with major consequences (e.g., that there’ll be no tomorrow). In the case of the clerics’ fabricated Jesus, his most famous portent was that the world was about to end, e.g., his “apocalyptic” statements:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God already come in power.” </span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 9,</span> 1)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 16,</span> 28)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">tell you this: the present generation will live to see it all. Heaven and earth will pass away…”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 13,</span> 30, <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 24,</span> 34, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 21,</span> 32)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God.”</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 9,</span> 27)</blockquote>In reality, the “kingdom of God” is not yet here, “in power” (as much as the Catholic Church and the “Christian Reich” in the U.S. have tried to make it so), and unless I missed something, “heaven and earth” have not yet passed away. Therefore, the “portents” of the clerics’ Jesus are obviously not worth the paper they were written on, not worth the horrible amount of time and mental energy wasted defending them (see, e.g., most of the 250,000 Google hits for “Jesus false prophecies”), and certainly not worth the money people have paid the clerics for running their resulting con game.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Signs</span><br />As I’ll suggest below, the alleged “signs” that the clerics’ Jesus fulfilled are even sillier than his alleged “miracles” and “portents”. Further, not only are they silly, but all of them contradict what Jesus allegedly said! Thus, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 8, </span>11 we find:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then the Pharisees came out and engaged him </span>[Jesus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">in discussion. To test him they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply to himself and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? I tell you this: no sign shall be given to this generation.”</span></blockquote>Yet even in the same gospel, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 15,</span> 33, we learn that, after the crucifixion:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">At midday a darkness fell over the whole land, which lasted till three in the afternoon.</blockquote>Hello? Wasn’t that a sign? But, but… didn’t he say that there’d be no sign? And similarly, if Jesus said “no sign shall be given to this generation”, then why does Peter tell us (as already quoted, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Acts 2,</span> 22), what has been promoted during the past 1900 years by all Christian apologists, that Jesus was <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“a man singled out by God and made known to you through miracles, portents, and signs…”</span> Couldn’t the storytellers at least keep their stories straight?!<br /><br />But ignoring the inconsistencies and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx15_NT_Incoherencies.pdf">incoherencies</a> in the NT stories (as we’re apparently supposed to do!), it’s clear that, what the NT storytellers did to concoct the alleged “signs” was to construct tales about Jesus based on OT statements and “prophecies” (with some superstitious, astrological, and metaphysical nonsense added to spice up the tales), and <span style="font-style: italic;">voilà,</span> Jesus the Christ satisfied the “signs” contained in the OT. A “tell” of the authors’ “technique” (lies!) can be seen at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 26, </span>53–54, were Jesus allegedly says to his captors:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Do you suppose that I cannot appeal to my Father, who would at once send to my aid more than twelve legions of angles? </span> [A rather presumptuous claim – and not explaining why more than one angel would have been sufficient!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But how then could the scriptures be fulfilled, which say that this must be?”</span></blockquote>That is, above all, the “prophecies” of “the scriptures” (the OT) had to be “fulfilled”!<br /><br />Similar craziness appears at <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 4 </span>(and at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 13),</span> where the clerical authors portray their Jesus as a purposefully deceptive teacher. The purpose of his deception is apparently to fulfill some prophecy – which is eminently silly, since any prophecy worth a damn wouldn’t need any contrivance to make it occur! Further, though, the overall purpose was even worse. As stated at <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 4,</span> 12, the clerics’ Jesus spoke in parables, so the people would NOT understand him – for <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven.”</span> Hello? Wouldn’t it rather be expected that Jesus would think it would be a good idea for people to “turn to God and be forgiven”?! Rather than this, he wanted to confuse the people with parables, so that a prophecy would be fulfilled? Somebody’s gotta be kidding!<br /><br />The same clerical shenanigans are also clearly outlined at <span style="font-style: italic;">John 5,</span> 36:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“There is enough to testify that the Father has sent me</span> [Jesus]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, in the works my Father gave me to do and to finish – the very works I have in hand</span> [i.e., the OT]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. This testimony to me was given by the Father who sent me, although you never heard his voice or saw his form. But his word has found no home in you </span>[the Jewish people to whom he was speaking]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, for you do not believe the one whom he sent. You study the scriptures diligently, supposing that in having them you have eternal life; yet, although their testimony points to me, you refuse to come to me for that life…”</span></blockquote>That is, again, the authors of the NT Gospels claim that the OT “points to” Jesus. The resulting literary concoctions (the Gospels of the NT) are so audaciously stupid, so filled with clerical BS, that one would hope no one would be so dumb as to fall for them: what the authors obviously did was just use scenes from the OT as “stage props” for their fictitious Jesus depicted in the Gospels.<br /><br />Now, I certainly don’t plan to address all the alleged “signs” of Jesus contained in the OT; it’s claimed that there are more than a hundred of them. Interested readers may want to investigate a few of the 1,290,000 Google hits for “prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament” – the vast majority of which, of course, defend the silly claim that such “prophecies” provide “signs” of Jesus (rather than as “stage props” for a fictitious Jesus). But just to illustrate how silly such “signs” (and their defenses) are, below I’ll comment a little on two such claims, dealing with the concocted stories about the birth and death of the clerics’ Jesus.<br /><br />As for the alleged “miraculous, virgin birth” of Jesus, for some strange reason [I’m being sarcastic], it’s not mentioned in <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark</span>, which of the four gospels included in the NT, scholars agree that it was the first one written. [As well, by the way, the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark</span> contains nothing about Jesus being sighted after his execution – at least, not in the original version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark</span>, before later clerics added the material at <span style="font-style: italic;">Mark 16,</span> 9–20.] The “virgin birth” was apparently also unmentioned in the original version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span>, called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gospel of the Hebrews</span> or <a href="http://www.upto11.net/generic_wiki.php?q=authentic_matthew"><span style="font-style: italic;">Authentic Matthew</span></a>. It thus seems to have become standard policy for subsequent clerics to add their own twists to earlier tales.<br /><br />In particular, the authors of <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Luke</span> (whoever they might have been) apparently decided that, if gods of the polytheists could be born from virgins, then so could their Jesus. In fact, these unknown authors went so far as to claim that the “wonderful event” of the birth of their god from a virgin was foretold in the OT. Thus, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Luke 1, </span>28–36, we are treated to a riveting, first-hand account of the following conversation between the angel Gabriel and a virgin by the name of Mary (not Jesus’ girlfriend; his alleged mother). [Unfortunately, the original digital recording of this conversation was lost in a magnetic storm (I guess).]<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Greetings</span> [Gabriel reportedly said to Mary]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, most favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was deeply troubled by what he said and wondered what this greeting might mean. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for God has been gracious to you; you shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall give him the name Jesus. He will be great; he will bear the title ‘Son of the Most High’; the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will be king over Israel for ever; his reign shall never end.” “How can that be?” said Mary; “I am still a virgin.” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy child to be born will be called ‘Son of God’.” </span></blockquote>And at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 1,</span> 22, we learn:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">All this happened to fulfill what the Lord declared through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel…”</blockquote>The particular OT “prophet” being referenced is Isaiah, but unfortunately for the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> (and all subsequent Christians), there was a slight glitch in the system: the version of the OT [from which (the Greek-speaking) author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> was working, to concoct his tale about Jesus] had a serious, relevant, translation error. What the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> read in his version of the Hebrew “holy book” (the <span style="font-style: italic;">Septuagint)</span> was as quoted above. But Isaiah’s <a href="http://www.harrington-sites.com/terms.htm">original Hebrew statement</a>, as given in the “holy book” of the Jews, is <span style="font-style: italic;">“Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel”,</span> which correctly translated (which is now done, e.g., in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New English Bible)</span> is:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">A young woman </span>[not a virgin!!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">is with child </span>[not “will conceive”]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and she will bear a son and will call him Emmanuel.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 7,</span> 14) </blockquote>That is, in Isaiah’s time (about 700 BCE), the “prophecy” was that a young woman, who was then pregnant, would give birth to a son who was to be called Emmanuel – not a particularly startling “prophecy” (there was a ~50% chance the baby would be boy and maybe a ~1% chance that he would be called ‘Emmanuel’) and this “prophecy” had nothing whatsoever to do with the fabled virgin-birth of Jesus!<br /><br />Soon after <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew</span> was written (probably after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 CE), Jews familiar with their own “holy scripture” called attention to the Christian error of claiming that Isaiah described a virgin birth. Confirmation of that statement is available in “Saint” Justin’s <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-dialoguetrypho.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Dialogue with Trypho the Jew</span></a>, written in about 150 CE:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">And Trypho answered, “The Scripture has not, ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,’ but, ‘Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son,’ and so on, as you quoted. But the whole prophecy refers to Hezekiah, and it is proved that it was fulfilled in him, according to the terms of this prophecy. Moreover, in the fables of those who are called Greeks, it is written that Perseus was begotten of Danae, who was a virgin; he who was called among them Zeus having descended on her in the form of a golden shower. And you ought to feel ashamed when you make assertions similar to theirs, and rather [should] say that this Jesus was born man of men. And if you prove from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, and that on account of having led a life conformed to the law, and perfect, He deserved the honor of being elected to be Christ [it is well]; but do not venture to tell monstrous phenomena, lest you be convicted of talking foolishly like the Greeks.”</span> (Chapter LXVII)</blockquote>In response to Trypho (with the entire, almost-certainly fictional dialogue written similar to one of Plato’s dialogues, but with Justin acting as if he were Socrates – but without the mental competence for the part!), Justin includes his ridiculous (and ridiculed) “the devil did it” and provides one of the most famous examples of how humans can waste their lives studying minutia of “sacred scripture”, looking for knowledge that isn't there.<br /><br />Justin Martyr did demonstrate, however, that he was “well versed” in the OT (similar to how many bright Muslim youngsters, today, have their potentials for doing something useful ruined by memorizing the Koran) and that he had the agility to twist the writings in the “holy book” of the Jews to defend his own desires (specifically, his desire to live forever in paradise), just as have all subsequent Christian apologists. Thus, as Joseph Wheless wrote in 1930 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/forgery_in_christianity/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Forgery in Christianity: </span></a><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Thus is apparent, and confessed, the dishonesty of “Matthew” and of the Church of Christ in perverting this idle, false, and falsified text of Isaiah into a “prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ”, and in persisting in retaining this falsity in their dishonest Bibles as the basis of their own bogus theology unto this day of the Twentieth Century. The Church, full knowing its falsity, yet clings to this precious lie of Virgin Birth and all the concatenated consequences… As Thomas Jefferson prophetically wrote – as is being verified:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”</span></blockquote>And what horrors have followed from this fanciful fable! For example, for denying the Virgin Birth (as well as maintaining other “heresies”, e.g., that other stars were similar to our Sun) the Roman Catholic Inquisition burned the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno">Four hundred years later,</a> in 2000, “Cardinal Angelo Sodano [then Vatican Secretary of State (under Pope John Paul II), now Dean of the College of Cardinals (a position previously held by now Pope Benedict XVI)] declared Bruno’s death to be a ‘sad episode’… [but] despite his regret, he defended Bruno’s persecutors [!], maintaining that the inquisitors ‘had the desire to preserve freedom and promote the common good’…”, text that Sodano seems to have borrowed from Orwell’s <span style="font-style: italic;">1984.</span> Consistent with Sodano’s sense of history, honor, and justice [I find it difficult not to be sarcastic], in 1998 he “intervened to halt an investigation into sexual abuse by the founder of the Legion of Christ… [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcial_Maciel">Father Marcial Maciel</a>, who] was found guilty of having forced homosexual relations with underage boys and… fathered at least one child.”<br /><br />But turning back ~2,000 years to similar corruptions by the first Christian clerics, after they had concocted a fanciful, fraudulent birth for their savior, they apparently decided to concoct an equally deceitful tale about his death. For the motif for the crucifixion story, they obviously used <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 53,</span> 3–12 (which was allegedly written during the 8th Century BCE):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">He was despised… tormented and humbled by suffering… we despised him. Yet on himself he bore our sufferings, our torments he endured, while we counted him smitten by God… he was pierced for our transgressions, tortured for our iniquities; the chastisement he bore is health for us and by his scourging we are healed. We had all strayed like sheep, each of us had gone his own way; but the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all. He was afflicted, he submitted to be struck down and did not open his mouth; he was led like a sheep to the slaughter… Without protection, without justice, he was taken away; and who gave a thought to his fate, how he was cut off from the world of living men, stricken to the death for my people’s transgression?… Yet the Lord took thought for his tortured servant and healed him who had made himself a sacrifice for sin… </blockquote>To that motif, the clerical authors of the NT added OT details, mostly borrowed from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Psalms</span> (allegedly written approximately 1,000 years earlier). To illustrate, below I’ll quote a part of the story (as given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 27,</span> 33–52) and insert the alleged “signs” that Jesus was fulfilling.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Pilate’s soldiers then took Jesus into the Governor’s headquarters, where they collected the whole company around him. They stripped him and dressed him a scarlet mantle; and plaiting a crown of thorns, they placed it on his head, with a cane in his right hand. Falling on their knees before him they jeered at him: “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and used the cane to beat him about the head. When they had finished their mockery, they took off the mantle and dressed him in his own clothes.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then they led him away to be crucified… So they came to a place called Gogotha… and there he was offered a draught of wine [or vinegar] mixed with gall; but when he had tasted it, he would not drink.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 69,</span> 21: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“They… gave me vinegar when I was thirsty.”</span>]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">After fastening him to the cross they dived his clothes among them by casting lots…</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 22,</span> 18: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“They share out my garments among them and cast lots for my clothes.”</span>]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The passers-by hurled abuse at him: the wagged their heads…</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 22,</span> 7: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“All who see me jeer at me, make mouths at me, and wag their heads…”</span>] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So, too, the chief priests with the lawyers and elders mocked at him: “He saved others,” they said, “but he cannot save himself. King of Israel, indeed! Let him come down now from the cross, and then we will believe him. Did he trust in God? Let God rescue him, if he wants him – for he said he was God’s Son.”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 22,</span> 8: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“He threw himself on the Lord for rescue; let the Lord deliver him, for he holds him dear!”</span>]…<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">From midday a darkness fell over the whole land, which lasted until three in the afternoon </span>[<span style="font-style: italic;">Amos 8,</span> 9: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight…”</span>]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; and about three, Jesus cried aloud… “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 22,</span> 1: <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me…”</span>]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…</span></blockquote>“So,” asks the true believer to this day, “isn’t that amazing? Look at all the signs that our Lord Jesus fulfilled! And those given above are just a few of the hundreds of ways that our Savior fulfilled OT scripture.”<br /><br />To which someone who has at least a few remnants of rationally remaining responds: “But rather than fulfilling scripture written centuries earlier, isn’t it rather more likely that the clerical authors of the NT were just using the OT text (probably open in front of them) to fabricate their Jesus story? In general, as the philosopher David Hume (1711–76) proposed for the evaluation of any alleged “miracle”, it’s rational to put most confidence in the possibility that has the highest probability of occurrence. In the present case, therefore, it’s more reasonable to assume that the NT clerical authors simply concocted the Jesus story based on what was available in the OT (surely the probability is at least 50%) rather than to assume that predictions/ prophecies/ stories written centuries earlier were being fulfilled (to the letter!), the probability of which is expected to be somewhere down near one part in a google (i.e., 1 part in 10^100).”<br /><br />“Ah yes,” respond Christian believers familiar with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Y06_Your_Hopes_&_Priorities.pdf">Pascal’s wager</a>, “but sometimes it’s wisest to bet on the ‘long shot’. Look at the payback: even if the probability is small, given that the reward for believing is huge (it’s eternal life in paradise!), then the smartest wager is to bet that it’s all true.”<br /><br />“Yes, but,” responds someone whose brain is still functioning, “you have only the clerics’ claim that the reward for believing what they say is eternal life in paradise. Meanwhile, as I reported <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">elsewhere</a>, I had a little chat with your God and he let me in on the skinny:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">He said that he purposefully flooded the world, but not with water, with words! He said that eternity is a real bore and what he’s looking for is a few intelligent people who can think for themselves, who can bring something original to his table, not just <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/3Preface.pdf">parrots</a> mindlessly repeating the same old BS, who never had an original thought. So, he developed a test: he said that those who buy into any clerics’ con game fail the test; their remains are just recycled in the environment, for use by later candidates. The few who think for themselves, the few who demand to see data, the few who conclude that there’s no evidence that any god ever existed, the few who choose to live their lives the best way they can, using their brains as best they can, the few who work hard to solve the world’s problems intelligently, the few who thereby help intelligent life continue are the few he chooses as company.</blockquote>“And thus, Pascal (and you) couldn’t have made a worse bet: the only way to get eternal life in paradise is to totally disregard its possibility and to do something useful for humanity with the life you have – the life you lose if you buy into the clerics' BS.”<br /><br />Apparently, however, as Julius Caesar said: “Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true” (which is consistent with the Anglo-Saxon root of the word 'belief': with 'lief' meaning 'wish', then 'belief' means "wish to be"). Apparently, also, many people willingly relinquish authority over their lives, presumably because doing so relieves them of associated decisions and responsibilities, permitting them to live like little children, imagining that they’re protected by a powerful, benevolent father-figure in the sky. And so long as people continue to be frightened by the vicissitudes of life and continue to dream of eternal peace and plenty in paradise, there’ll probably be con artists who’ll try to cash in on such people’s hopes and fears.<br /><br />In the case of the Christian clerics, in summary, the essence of their con was (and still is) to claim that they received their “authority” (over the people) from Jesus, who in turn received his authority from God. The “proof” that Jesus was God’s representative was proposed to be that, most importantly, their Jesus performed a bunch of “miracles” (violating the principle of causality), uttered important “portents” (e.g., that the world was about to end), and fulfilled a bunch of OT “signs” that allegedly announced his coming (rather than used to connect the Jesus myth), and secondarily, because no one could prove false the claim that Jesus had been given such authority (or that invisible flying elephants aren’t pink).<br /><br />In reality, though, the entire Jesus concoction provides another example of the character of all clerics: they’re either nincompoops or pathetic parasites. Thus, rather than gain authority by becoming experts in some productive field of human endeavor (fishing, farming, sailing, mining, building, trading, protecting the people, protecting the environment, teaching, engineering, medicine, science…), the new breed of clerics (similar to all clerics before and since) claimed that they were God’s representatives – either because they were bonkers or because they decided that it would be easier to leech off the people than be productive. Most unfortunately for the world, people bought into the Christian clerics’ con, and ever since, the clerics have been laughing as they stashed and squandered their loot. As examples, Catholic clerics have squirreled away a fortune surely worth trillions of U.S. dollars, and even the little Mormon Church (about 10 million members), which originally was just another variation of Christianity and is now straining to regain that status, <a href="http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_tithing_section1.html">collects</a> approximately 7 billion U.S. dollars per year from their con.<br /><br />And thus, in reality, the fatal flaw is with the people: those who are duped want to be duped, for as all con artists know, “you can never cheat an honest man.” Thus, even though all organized religions (including Judaism and Islam) are just humongous piles of BS, yet gullible, frightened, egotistical, greedy people (“thinking” that they’re so important as to “deserve” eternal peace and plenty in paradise) are obviously eager to swallow such BS. Which then leads me to more of what the ex-Presbyterian pastor M.M. Mangasarian (1859–1943) wrote in his 1909 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/truth_about_jesus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Truth about Jesus – Is He a Myth?</span></a><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before history was born, there was myth; before men could think, they dreamed. It was with the human race in its infancy as it is with the child. The child’s imagination is more active than its reason. It is easier for it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than it guesses. This wild flight of fancy is checked only by experience. It is reflection which introduces a bit into the mouth of imagination, curbing its pace and subduing its restless spirit. It is, then, as we grow older, and, if I may use the word, riper, that we learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, between history and myth.<br /><br />In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and bizarre they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream, for instance, of castles in the air – gorgeous and clothed with the azure hue of the skies. We fill the space about and over us with spirits, fairies, gods, and other invisible and airy beings. We covet the rainbow. We reach out for the moon. Our feet do not really begin to touch the firm ground until we have reached the years of discretion.<br /><br />I know there are those who wish they could always remain children – living in dreamland. But even if this were desirable, it is not possible. Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it, then, to take up arms against destiny?<br /><br />Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born in the childhood of the race. Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this thought a world of meaning.<br /><br />Children make religions.<br />Grown up people create science.<br />The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of mankind.<br />The school is the birthplace of science.<br />Religion is the science of the child.<br />Science is the religion of the matured man…</blockquote><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-55097087233811905422010-04-28T04:29:00.000-07:002010-08-04T01:27:54.477-07:00Clerical Quackery 10 – The Composite Christ<div><br />
</div>This is the 30th in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the Mountainous God Lie” and the 10th in a subseries of posts emphasizing Clerical Quackery. The metaphor that I’ve been using is that the God Lie is a mountain range of lies, with many different mountain peaks. In this mountain-range metaphor, the different peaks represent different religions, including various polytheistic religions of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Europe, and so on, as well as various monotheistic religions such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. I’ve acknowledged that the foothills of many of the mountains are not lies but misunderstandings by primitive people, but during especially the most recent ~2500 years, clerical quacks and affiliated politicians have apparently deliberately perpetuated such misunderstandings as lies – for the profit, power, and presumed prestige they provided (and still provide).<br />
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In the previous post, I essentially finished my planned tromp up the mountain of lies known as Judaism (at least, up to the Maccabean revolt). My plan for the remaining posts is to pick up the pace. In fact, rather than attempt to hike up the mountains of lies known as Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism, I plan to (in effect) fly over the mountain peaks in a helicopter, point out some prominent features, and mention the names of some guides who can more competently lead readers to detailed explorations, should readers desire. In defense of my plan, I submit the following three points:<br />
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1. Whereas in the previous posts in this series I’ve now at least tried to expose the mountain of lies known as Judaism (i.e., lies incorporated into the Old Testament), such exposure already reveals many of the lies at the base of Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism (such as the existence of gods, sons of gods, prophets of gods, communications from gods, etc.), since Judaism is the bedrock on which rest these other mountains of lies;<br />
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2. Although I’ve now at least sketched the first ~3,000 years of written records of the development of the God Lie, leaving “only” the most recent 2,000 years of history, yet there’s at least an order-of-magnitude more literature available dealing with the most recent 2,000 years of religious lies; therefore, exploring Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism in similar detail would be at least an order of magnitude more challenging than exploring the lies in Judaism; and<br />
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3. Fortunately for humanity, many diligent, competent, and brave historians have already devoted decades of their lives to exposing the mountains of lies known as Christianity and Mormonism; consequently, and also given the facts that I’m not a historian and that, with my age, my mountain climbing abilities have diminished, I think it best if, for these final posts in this series, I simply provide some illustrations of and references to reports on the explorations led by more competent guides.<br />
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I should add that, unfortunately for humanity, not so many historians have (as yet) similarly tried to expose Islamic lies (since Muslims threaten to murder those who try). As I’ll illustrate in a later post, however, some historians have done so – and I hope readers will revel in such honesty and bravery. In these next few posts, I’ll “fly over” the mountain of lies called Christianity and call attention to some of the brave people who tried to expose its lies.<br />
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If I were encouraged to try to give a brief overview of Christianity, I’d probably try something similar to: “mysticism for the masses.” It emerged as a concoction of at least the following primary ingredients:<br />
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1. Mysticism,<br />
2. Sun worship and associated astrological nonsense,<br />
3. Ubiquitous superstition,<br />
4. The “Mystery religions”,<br />
5. Silly metaphysical speculations, and<br />
6. Other cultural and political factors, especially<br />
7. Blatant conspiracy by a new breed of clerics.<br />
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In this post, I’ll outline my meaning for the first six of the above ingredients and provide references where more details can be found; in the next two posts, I’ll try to explain what I mean by “blatant conspiracy by a new breed of clerics.”<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">1. Mysticism</span><br />
Many “Church fathers” claimed that Christianity was an ancient religion. For example, “the first great Christian philosopher” (an oxymoron that I didn’t concoct!) “Saint” Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) stated:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">What is now called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients, and was not lacking at the very beginnings of the human race. When Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion already in existence received the name of Christian. </blockquote>If readers are confused by such a seemingly bizarre claim (even if one acknowledges that Augustine probably thought that the human race started only a few thousand years earlier), the resolution is that he probably saw that the Christian religion was (and still is) mysticism for the masses. In turn, we now know that the first mystics were the first people who lost control of their rational faculties (<span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> mental illness, starvation, meditation, fasting, physical or sexual abuse, ingesting mind-warping drugs discovered by the tribe’s stone-age Shaman or Medicine Man, etc.). Subsequently, such “mystical experiences” (e.g., feeling “unity with the divine”, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X03_EXamining_Reasons.pdf">apparently caused</a> by blocking sensory input to the “orientation association area” of the brain) were promoted in most of the world’s religions, including Hinduism (with meditation and with hallucinogens or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen">entheogens</a> such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Soma</span>), Zoroastrianism (with <span style="font-style: italic;">Homa</span>), and <a href="http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm">quite likely</a> many Jewish religious sects such as the <a href="http://www.psychointegrator.com/down/biblical_entheogens.pdf">Essenes</a> (with the bark of the acacia tree or the shrub <span style="font-style: italic;">Peganum harmala</span>, from which both the Hindu’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Soma</span> and the Zoroastrian’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Homa</span> can be produced).<br />
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In fact, as an internet search can quickly reveal, many scholars have suggested that the Old Testament’s (OT’s) Adam and Eve myth about eating “the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” refers to their ingesting an entheogen (perhaps the bark of the acacia tree or <span style="font-style: italic;">Amanita</span> mushrooms growing symbiotically with host trees such as birch and pine) that provided knowledge of the “spirit world”; therefore, perhaps the moral of the Jewish version of the Adam and Eve myth is, in the vernacular, “Don’t do drugs”! As for the other alleged tree in the alleged Garden of Eden (the Tree of Life, the fruit of which would allegedly yield eternal life), scholars suggest that the New Testament’s (NT’s) <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Revelation</span> reveals that its fruit was also the mushroom entheogen <span style="font-style: italic;">Amanita</span>. Therefore, perhaps more accurate than Thomas Jefferson’s assessment that <span style="font-style: italic;">Revelation</span> is “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherencies of our own nightly dreams” is to <a href="http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889223">say</a> that its author (St. John of Patmos) was on a drug-induced trip:<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;"></span><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">[T]he Tree of Life in </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Revelation</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> was long understood as </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Amanita</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">… Near the start of the visionary journey in </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Revelation</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">, John eats the little scrolls with writing on them (dried </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Amanita</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> caps, per Heinrich), given by the angel… From </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Revelations 10</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">, 8:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel ...” [H]e said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">In his book </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Strange Fruit</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> (p. 129) Clark Heinrich explains:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #009900;">This “scroll-eating” [in </span><span style="color: #009900; font-style: italic;">Revelation</span><span style="color: #009900;">] is the same as in </span><span style="color: #009900; font-style: italic;">Ezekiel</span><span style="color: #009900;">, a metaphor for the dried cap of a fly agaric mushroom. Dried caps are as pliable as leather and have a sweet, honey-like smell, unlike the fresh mushroom, yet eating them often causes an upset stomach… The veil remnants on the cap often look like obscure writing of some kind, while the cap itself contains, and can reveal, the “word of God”, a word that can be seen as well as heard through the secret door of the mind…</span></blockquote><span style="color: #3366ff;"></span> <br />
<blockquote></blockquote>And thus, for example, in some ways it’s “entertaining” that tens of millions of current Christians are anxiously awaiting “<a href="http://www.raptureready.com/">Rapture Time</a>”, which may be best described as a drug addict’s psychedelic ravings!<br />
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Not all of Christianity’s “mysticism for the masses”, however, was associated with various hallucinogens (including wine). Some of the mysticism was (and still is) associated with various types of meditation, fasting, and mental illness. As examples of such mental problems, it’s reported in the NT that the mother of Jesus considered him “possessed” and Paul was judged to be “mad” (possibly with temporal lobe epilepsy) – and in fact, Muhammad describes himself in the Koran as “the mad poet” and the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">probable founder of Mormonism</a> (i.e., Sidney Rigdon) was described by his brother (a medical doctor) as being mentally unbalanced ever since he fell from a horse, had his foot caught in a stirrup, and was dragged on his head.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">2. Sun worship and associated astrological nonsense</span><br />
As suggested above, the roots of Christian mysticism appear to extend into the Stone Age; in addition, the portions of Christianity related to Sun worship extend back to at least 8,000 BCE (from which time first evidence of Sun worship is available). As described by Alvin Boyd Kuhn in his presentation “<a href="http://www.tphta.ws/ABK_SSSM.HTM">Spiritual Symbolism of the Sun and Moon</a>”:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">The (apparent) annual revolution of the sun about the earth, or more properly the course of the sun through the four seasons or four quarters (twelve signs) of the zodiac, was the entire symbolical basis of ancient religious systematism. The divinity in man was typed by the sun, and the sun’s yearly experience in its journeying was made the outward typograph of the experience of the spirit in mortal man. As the sun descended into the dark realm of winter, died and was buried out of sight, to be revived and raised up again to glory in the vernal equinox, so the [Sun] god descended into the depths of night and winter in matter, lost his divine nature and died on the cross of incarnation, to rise again, as did Osiris in Egypt, “on the third day in the moon.” The new moon was born on the third day of the dark period. And this, be it known on authority, was the origin of the three days during which all Saviors in ancient scriptures reposed in the tomb of death.<br />
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The zodiacal chart is divided into four quarters to match the four seasons, the four cardinal points, and the fourfold segmentation of man’s nature. At the junction points of each two of these divisions, or at the two solstices and equinoxes, the ancients celebrated the four great religious festivals of the year. In June came the great Fire-festival, symbolic of the highest expression of the fiery nature of deity; in September came the festival that commemorated the incarnation, under whatever name; in December was celebrated the end of the dark night of death, and the birth or quickening of the Sun-god to new life; and at the vernal equinox in March followed the joyous festival of the bursting of the bars of death in matter, or the resurrection. Each of these was of cardinal importance and significance; yet it might be said that of the four the autumn and spring occasions were the ones of primary rating. They severally symbolize the descent of the god into incarnation and his re-arising after ‘death’…<br />
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Then we have also the cycle of the Great Year, a period of 25,868 years, measured by the total precession of the equinoxes through the entire twelve signs, giving us the different astronomical “Ages.” Each of these twelve divisions lasted 2155 years; and the ancient sages represented the Messiah as coming at the beginning of each new Age under the form of the sign. In Libra he came as the Lord of the Balance, or the King of Righteousness; in Scorpio he came as the divine Scorpion, to sting the god into incarnational Lethe from which he was to awake on Christmas in his quickening to life; in Sagittarius he came as the half-animal Archer aiming at the distant goal of unification of his two elements; in Capricorn he came as the mountain goat scaling the heights of the spirit; in Aquarius he was the Water-Pourer, or universal server; in Pisces he came as the Ichthys, the divine Fish, as the food of man; in Aries the ram or Lamb of God, sacrificed for the world; in Taurus, as the Golden Bull or Calf, the male Cow of life and plenty of ancient Egypt; in Gemini as the two divine twins, the god in his biune form, the one of which, like John the Baptist decreases as the other increases; in Cancer as the Good Scarab or Beetle, type of the self-renewing divine life; in Leo as the lion of the house of Judah; in Virgo as the shoot of the vine, constellated in this sign in old zodiacs. Jesus of Galilee came at or near the beginning of the Piscean era; his followers were called the Pisciculi (little fishes) and his disciples were figured as rude fisherman…</blockquote>Readers interested in more information about astrological aspects of both Judaism and Christianity might want to <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">start</a> their exploration with a couple of earlier chapters in my book, read some recent books such as Acharya S’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Christ Conspiracy – The Greatest Story Ever Sold,</span> and search on the web using “astrology +Christianity” (and similar)<span style="font-style: italic;">.</span> The <a href="http://webzoom.freewebs.com/courtneyroberts/srpaper.doc">following quotation</a> is illustrative of the type of information readily available on the web; its author is given as “Student No. 038694”; I obtained it from the <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/courtneyroberts/">website</a> of Courtney Roberts, one of whose books is <a href="http://www.courtneyrobertshome.com/thestarofthemagi.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Star of the Magi</span></a>.<br />
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<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">Such is the poetry of the astrological </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">lingua franca</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">. After all</span> [in the new age, starting at the beginning of the Current Era (CE)]<span style="color: #3333ff;">, the constellation Pisces</span> [the fish] <span style="color: #3333ff;">was the new host of the Sun and its vernal equinox for the next two millennia to come</span> [i.e., because of precession of the Earth’s axis of rotation, then for the past 2,000 years, Pisces has been the last constellation that’s visible just before dawn (called “heliacal rising”) on the first day of spring, whereas in approximately 200 years, it will be the constellation Aquarius – the idea conveyed in the lyrics of the song: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”].<br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">This fact was not lost upon the earliest Christians. They were quick to adopt the symbol of the fish, and used it to identify themselves to one another. This usage is usually explained by an acrostic derivation from the phrase “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour” in Greek, which yields the Greek letters that compose the word for fish, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ichthys</span>. What seems to have been completely forgotten in this tradition was that <span style="font-style: italic;">Ichthys</span> was also the Greek name for Pisces. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The astrological</span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;"> lingua franca</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> permeates the Gospels, where mythological imagery cloaks the astronomical revelation of the dawn of a new aeon, and the arrival of a new, piscine Solar hero. In the following gospel passages, substituting the word “Pisces” for fish may help to more closely approximate the meaning in Greek. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">All four canonical gospels agree that Jesus began his ministry after being dramatically pulled up out of the River Jordan by John the Baptist. Christ purifies himself in the wilderness, and then sets right to work among the fishermen on the shores of the sea of Galilee, calling Simon, Andrew, James and John, to drop their nets and become fishers of men (Matthew 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">In the gospel of Mark, the earliest of the four, Jesus spends most of the first eight chapters either afloat in a fishing boat or ministering on the shore. The first time he goes to the Sea of Galilee, he nets his first disciples. The second time, he calls Alphaeus, and is thronged at the seaside by the multitudes, desperate for his word and his touch. The third time, he calls for a boat, because the crowds on the shore have become too intense. In Chapter 4, he returns to the shore once more:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">1) And he began again to teach by the seaside: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land.</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">2) And he taught them many things by parables…(KJV)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Jesus habitually crosses back and forth from one side of the Sea of Galilee to another, also making side trips to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and the coastal city of Caesarea. After Mark’s story of the first miracle of the loaves and fishes in chapter 6, Jesus boards a boat and crosses the sea a fourth time. He appears to his disciples later that night walking on water, as their fishing boat struggles through a storm. He performs another miracle of bread and fishes, and again crosses the sea in Chapter 8. Six times in all Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, healing and teaching to the surging crowds on the shore wherever he goes. In Chapter 10, he departs for the coasts of Judea.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The author of the later gospel of Luke tells the story in Chapter 5 of Jesus retreating to the fishing boat to escape the pressing crowds on the shore, and teaching them while afloat on the sea. After Christ dismisses the crowds, he helps the fishermen to a miraculous catch. They had toiled all night and caught nothing, but once Jesus tells them to drop their nets, they catch such a multitude of fish that their nets almost burst.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The gospel attributed to John, although quite different in structure from the synoptic gospels, includes the story of the miracle of loaves and fishes in Chapter 6. It also recounts that Jesus subsequently walked on the water and calmed the sea before joining the disciples in the fishing boat. However, this gospel ends with a fish story not found in the others, which mirrors the tale of the miraculous draught in Luke. John’s version is set after the crucifixion, and takes Jesus and his disciples right back to where it all started, to a fishing boat on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (Tiberias).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">Chapter 21:3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing. 4) But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that is was Jesus. 5) Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. 6) And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. (KJV)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The disciples then recognize Jesus and come ashore, where Jesus has a fire laid, and is cooking fish and bread on the coals. He tells the disciples to come and dine, and to bring the fish they have caught…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Meanwhile, Christ became increasingly became identified with the all-powerful Sun God, albeit in a new, piscine guise. This belief was also enshrined within the Church Calendar, particularly during the reign of</span> [the Roman emperor] <span style="color: #3333ff;">Constantine.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Constantine’s vision was considerably more eclectic than his later Christian hagiographers like to admit. He solidified his own power base by merging the Mithraism of his soldiers and the Imperial solar cult, with Christianity. In fusing God/Christ with the Sun/Emperor, he established a schedule of solar worship within Christianity that remains to this day. Christ’s birthday was fixed on December 25th, the birthday of Sol Invictus, and the birthday of John the Baptist and Easter were arrayed around it at the solstice and equinox points that marked the Sun’s annual journey. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">On March 7, 321, Constantine issued the civil legislation that made Sunday, and not the Sabbath, the official day of worship, proclaiming, “Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the Sun.” His choice of the Sun’s day contained an implicit suggestion of which deity they ought to be worshipping…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">All in all, it appears that astrology and stellar religion had a profound influence on early Christianity. It would be hard to imagine Christian lore without it. While there is much in Christianity that doesn’t stem from astrology, if we could somehow remove the influence of astrology and stellar religion, Christianity would stand to lose the Star of Bethlehem, all the fish stories, the Virgin birth, as well as the Virgin herself and her cults, Christmas, Sunday, etc.</span> </blockquote>By the way, if it’s confusing that sometimes in the NT Jesus is identified as the Sun and at other times as the constellation Pisces (and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix08BiblicalStarMyths.pdf">at still other times</a> as the planet Jupiter!), then readers should learn to just “go with the flow”: Jesus became many different things (including the Word or <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos</span> as well as Love, Peace, and Justice) to different people.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">3. Ubiquitous Superstition</span><br />
It’s mind-numbing to consider how much superstition polluted so much of the lives of ancient people – and so many “modern” people! In Chapter 8 of his excellent 1929 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Story of Religious Controversy</span></a>, the ex-Catholic priest <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCabe">Joseph McCabe</a> (1867–1955) includes the following description of some superstitions (and associated “sins”) of the ancient Mesopotamians (whom McCabe calls ‘Babylonians’) and that were incorporated into Christianity.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">We turn now to a very different, but equally interesting and illuminating, aspect of Babylonian religious and moral life. We have seen what a land of gods and goddesses it was. We shall now see that it was a land of devils innumerable; and the very source of the weird belief in legions of malignant spirits which, through Judaism, passed on into Christianity. And this side of Babylonian life must be considered here because it is intimately connected with the virtue of the Babylonian people. No one who is acquainted with it can doubt that if, as we saw, adultery was a vice in ancient Babylon, there were more urgent incentives to avoid it than there are in Christendom.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Had, then, the Babylonians a worse hell than that of the Christian Church? No: no other religion surpasses Christianity in that respect, and very few approach it. The Babylonians seem in their latest days – I should think under Persian influence – to have partially adopted the belief in punishment and reward after death. During practically the whole of their four thousand years’ history, they had no idea of reward and punishment beyond the grave. They believed, however, more intensely than most Christians believe in hell, that a man was punished in this world for his sins; and, since there was no escape from the penalty before it was felt (as there is in the case of hell), the deterrent was very effective.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">There were two foundations of the Babylonian belief. One was their extreme vagueness about life after death. That the mental part of a man survived the body they fully believed. This was the oldest and most deeply ingrained of religious beliefs. But all that the Babylonians knew, though their learned priest speculated much on the subject, was that the dead passed into a dark, dim cave under the earth, Arabu, or the House of Arabu. In the legend of Ishtar, who (as we shall see) “descended into hell,” it is said:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #6600cc;">…to the land whence there is no return, the land of darkness,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Ishtar, the daughter of Sin [the Moon god], turned her mind,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">The daughter of Sin turned her mind;</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">To the home of darkness, the dwelling of Irhalla,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">To the house whence no one issues who has once entered it,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">To the road from whence there is no return, when once it has been trodden,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">To the house whose inhabitants are deprived of light,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">The place where dust is their nourishment, their food clay,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">They have no light, dwelling in dense darkness,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">And they are clothed, like birds, in a garment of feathers,</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Where, over gate and bolt, dust is scattered.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Here again, we may note in passing, the Babylonians were the teachers of the Jews. Through the greater part of the Old Testament the Jews know only that the dead pass underground to Sheol, </span><span style="color: #3333ff;">“</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">the land of darkness”; and Sheol is only a variant of another Babylonian name for the home of the dead, Shuala. It was only when they came much later under Egyptian and Persian influence that the Jews began to talk of “the spirit returning to God who made it.” In the end, when Greek influence fell on them, their educated men began (like the writer of </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">) to reject the very idea of immortality. So little question is there of “revelation” in the Hebrew religion; and, as to the “religious instinct,” we need not observe that it seems to have taught the early civilizations entirely contradictory things about the most fundamental of religious beliefs!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The Babylonians dreaded this lower world. Their priests avoided mention of it. It was felt that the dead were soured by their gloomy prison underground, and would harm the living. This was one of the primitive roots of the belief in malignant spirits; and it leads us on to the next basis of Babylonian character – the belief that the gods allowed legions of devils to torment the sinner in this life. One large class of the Babylonian devils has the express title “shades of the dead.” Other and more powerful demons are clearly gods of an earlier generation whom a more successful religion has turned into devils. Alongside of the elaborate religion, the virtual Monotheism, of the priests and the educated, Babylonia had plenty of religion in its more primitive stages: spirits of the river, the tree, the field, etc., and countless legions of evil spirits warring against men.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">If there is one thing that Christianity owes to Babylon more plainly than another it is the belief in legions of devils. There were countless numbers of them, arranged by the priests in classes for the purpose of exorcism. They lurked by day in dark places, old ruins or groves, or in the desert, at night they set out to torture humanity. Every evil, from a tornado to a toothache, came from them. Most dreaded of all were the “night spirits,” Lilu and his wife Lilitu: and it would be profoundly interesting to trace the evolution of Lilitu into Lilith, the “screech owl,” the “night monster,” of the Jews, the vampire or blood-sucker of the Arabs, the fanciful creature of some of our modern novelists and mystics.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">But our material is too vast and our space too small. What we have to notice here is that these immense armies of demons were responsible for every disease and misfortune of the Babylonians. Did a maid show the symptoms of anemia? Obviously Lilu or Lilitu had been busy at night with her body. Did a man or woman have an erotic dream leaving him or her excited and unsatisfied? It was Ardat Lili. Headaches, toothaches, stomachaches – every organ of the body had its demonic tormentors. Fevers (from the marshes), plagues and all pestilences were their work. Even “the evil wind, the terrible wind, that sets one’s hair on end” had its demon. Pictorially they were represented as ferocious beings of animal head and human body: the prototypes of our devil pictures. Some were so powerful that they were next to gods. </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">The Book of Job</span><span style="color: #3333ff;"> is thoroughly Babylonian.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">It followed that devil-dealers, sorcerers and witches, were very common. They turned on or turned away the “evil eye”: they gave magical (and often poisonous) potions: they made little clay or pitch images of your enemy and injured or killed him through that. Dreadful, you say, for so high a civilization! Why, the whole of Europe believed and did these things until modern times. Late in the Middle Ages cardinals sought to kill a pope by getting a sorcerer to make a wax image of him!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">What could a man do but appeal to the more powerful spirits, the gods? Hence the immense number of priestly spells, incantations, and exorcisms, to which I have referred. These were at first merely magical formulae (much as you read in the first part of Goethe’s “Faust,” which is thoroughly Babylonian). The gods were conjured to drive out the devils. But, as we saw, the ethical note gradually entered. The gods were the “fathers” of all men; they were full of love and mercy, and so on. Why, then, did they permit these demons to torture their children? The answer was as natural as on the lips of a modern preacher. Men had offended the gods by their “sins.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">It is curious how religious writers still boast that Christianity invented the sense of “sin.” Even if this were true, we should be the reverse of grateful. It has so obscured the real meaning of social law and character that it has actually led to far more “sin,” far more injury to men, than there would otherwise have been. At the best it is a morbid illusion. At its commonest it is a fear that the gods will punish a man, just as in ancient Babylon. It is as old as civilization: that is to say, as old as the priesthoods which invented it and profited by it.</span></blockquote>By the time of the start of Christianity (i.e., the start of the astrological age of Pisces, the fish), however, existing clerics of the huge number of religions in the Mediterranean region had “sown up the market” selling “forgiveness” for almost every conceivable “sin”. Christianity, then, would likely never have emerged were it not for the pernicious “genius” of “Saint” Paul (who thereby became the real founder of Christianity). Thus, as I’ve already described many times in these posts and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx16_NT_Insanities.pdf">elsewhere</a>, Paul concocted the ridiculous notion (on which the clerical con-game known as Christianity is based) that everyone was a sinner, from birth – because we’re all related to Adam, who allegedly violated God’s order not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil) – even though, before having eaten fruit from that tree, it would have been logically impossible for Adam to have know that it was ‘good’ to obey God and ‘evil’ not to! Clerics, however, have never let a little matter like logic constrain them, and seeing that Paul’s new sin was a money-maker, the new breed of clerical con artists started cashing in.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">4. The “Mystery Religions”</span><br />
As the reader can quickly confirm, an enormous amount has been written on “Mystery religions and Christianity”; e.g., that phrase yields ~700,000 “Google hits”! Much of what’s written, however, is “Christian apologetics”, vainly attempting to discount the connections. The Wikipedia article entitled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries">Greco-Roman Mysteries</a> provides a good summary and references many books devoted to the subject. An outline of the link between Christianity and the Greek Mystery religions is given in Andrew Benson’s book <a href="http://www.jesushistory.info/mystery_religions_influence.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Origins of Christianity and the Bible</span></a>. The following, dealing with Greek Mystery religions, is from the 1939 online-book entitled <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Life of Greece</span></a> by Will Durant.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">We have left for the last the most troublesome, the most popular, the most difficult to classify, of all the Greek gods. Only late in his career was Dionysus</span> [also called Bacchus] <span style="color: #3333ff;">received into Olympus</span> [i.e., accepted by Greek clerics as one of the Olympian gods]<span style="color: #3333ff;">. In Thrace </span>[the land between the Aegean and Black Seas]<span style="color: #3333ff;">, which gave him as a Greek gift to Greece, he was the god of liquor brewed from barley, and was known as Sabazius; in Greece he became a god of wine, the nourisher and guardian of the vine; he began as a goddess of fertility, became a god of intoxication, and ended as a son of god dying to save mankind</span> [i.e., one of the forerunners of the Jesus of the Gospels]<span style="color: #3333ff;">…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Mourning for Dionysus’ death, and joyful celebration of his resurrection, formed the basis of a ritual extremely widespread among the Greeks. In springtime, when the vine was bursting into blossom, Greek women went up into the hills to meet the reborn god. For two days they drank without restraint, and like our less religious bacchanalians, considered him witless who would not lose his wits. They marched in wild procession, led by Maenads, or mad women, devoted to Dionysus; they listened tensely to the story they knew so well, of the suffering, death, and resurrection of their god; and as they drank and danced they fell into a frenzy in which all bonds were loosed…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Such was the passionate cult that came down from Thrace into Greece like a medieval epidemic of religion, dragging one region after another from the cold and clear Olympians of the state worship into a faith and ritual that satisfied the craving for excitement and release, the longing for enthusiasm and possession, mysticism and mystery</span> [as did Christianity, about a thousand years later]<span style="color: #3333ff;">. The priests of Delphi and the rulers of Athens tried to keep the cult at a distance, but failed </span>[just as, a thousand-or-so years later, the Romans tried to constrain Christianity]<span style="color: #3333ff;">; all they could do was to adopt Dionysus into Olympus, Hellenize and humanize him, give him an official festival, and turn the revelry of his worshipers from the mad ecstasy of wine among the hills into the stately processions, the robust songs, and the noble drama of the Great Dionysia</span> [just as the Romans eventually did with Christianity]<span style="color: #3333ff;">. For a while they won Dionysus over to Apollo, but in the end Apollo yielded to Dionysus’ heir and conqueror, Christ…</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">In the seventh century</span> [BCE] <span style="color: #3333ff;">there came into Hellas, from Egypt, Thrace, and Thessaly, another mystic cult, even more important in Greek history than the mysteries of Eleusis. At its source we find, in the age of the Argonauts, the obscure but fascinating figure of Orpheus, a Thracian who “in culture, music, and poetry,” says Diodorus, “far surpassed all men of whom we have a record.” Very probably he existed, though all that we now know of him bears the marks of myth. He is pictured as a gentle spirit, tender, meditative, affectionate; sometimes a musician, sometimes a reforming ascetic priest of Dionysus. He played the lyre so well, and sang to it so melodiously, that those who heard him almost began to worship him as a god; wild animals became tame at his voice, and trees and rocks left their places to follow the sound of his harp. He married the fair Eurydice, and almost went mad when death took her. He plunged into Hades, charmed Persephone with his lyre, and was allowed to lead Eurydice up to life again on condition that he should not look back upon her until the surface of the earth was reached. At the last barrier anxiety overcame him lest she should no longer be following; he looked back, only to see her snatched down once more into the nether world. Thracian women, resenting his unwillingness to console himself with them, tore him to pieces in one of their Dionysian revels; Zeus atoned for them by placing the lyre of Orpheus as a constellation among the stars. The severed head, still singing, was buried at Lesbos in a cleft that became the site of a popular oracle; there, we are told, the nightingales sang with especial tenderness.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">In later days it was claimed that he had left behind him many sacred songs; and perhaps it was so. At the behest of Hipparchus, says Greek tradition, a scholar named Onomacritus, about 520 BCE, edited these as the Homeric lays had been edited a generation before. In the sixth century, or earlier, these hymns had acquired a sacred character as divinely inspired, and formed the basis of a mystical cult related to that of Dionysus but far superior to it in doctrine, ritual, and moral influence. The creed was essentially an affirmation of the passion (suffering), death, and resurrection of the divine son Dionysus Zagreus, and the resurrection of all men into a future of reward and punishment. Since the Titans, who had slain Dionysus, were believed to have been the ancestors of man, a taint of original sin rested upon all humanity; and in punishment for this the soul was enclosed in the body as in a prison or a tomb <span style="color: black;">[an idea later adopted by the Gnostics]</span>. But man might console himself by knowing that the Titans had eaten Dionysus, and that therefore every man harbored, in his soul, a particle of indestructible divinity. In a mystic sacrament of communion the Orphic worshipers ate the raw flesh of a bull as a symbol of Dionysus to commemorate the slaying and eating of the god, and to absorb the divine essence anew</span> [similar to the Eucharist (or “Holy Communion”) ritual practiced by Christians to this day]<span style="color: #3333ff;">.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">After death, said Orphic theology, the soul goes down to Hades, and must face judgment by the gods of the underworld; the Orphic hymns and ritual, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, instructed the faithful in the art of preparing for this comprehensive and final examination. If the verdict was guilty there would be severe punishment. One form of the doctrine conceived this punishment as eternal, and transmitted to later </span>[Christian and Islamic] <span style="color: #3333ff;">theology the notion of hell. Another form adopted the idea of transmigration: the soul was reborn again and again into lives happier or bitterer than before according to the purity or impurity of its former existence; and this wheel of rebirth would turn until complete purity was achieved, and the soul was admitted to the Islands of the Blest.</span> [<a href="http://www.reincarnation.ws/reincarnation_in_early_christianity.html">Similar ideas were common</a> within Christianity until the hideous Roman Emperor Justin (who ruled from 565 to 578 CE) saw that he would have more power over the people by purging the idea of reincarnation.] <span style="color: #3333ff;">Another variant offered hope that the punishment in Hades might be ended through penances performed in advance by the individual, or, after his death, by his friends. In this way a doctrine of purgatory and indulgences arose; and Plato describes with almost the anger of a Luther</span> [1483–1545] <span style="color: #3333ff;">the peddling of such indulgences in the Athens of the fourth century BCE:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #6600cc;">Mendicant prophets go to rich men’s doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them of making atonement for their sins or those of their fathers by sacrifices or charms… And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus… according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals but whole cities that expiations and atonements may be made by sacrifices and amusements [ceremonies?] which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead. The latter [ceremonies] they call mysteries, and these redeem us from the Pains of Hell; but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Nevertheless there were in Orphism idealistic trends that culminated in the morals and monasticism of Christianity. The reckless looseness of the Olympians was replaced by a strict code of conduct, and the mighty Zeus was slowly dethroned by the gentle figure of Orpheus, even as Yahweh was to be dethroned by Christ. A conception of sin and conscience, a dualistic view of the body as evil and of the soul as divine, entered into Greek thought; the subjugation of the flesh became a main purpose of religion, as a condition of the release for the soul. The brotherhood of Orphic initiates had no ecclesiastical organization and no separate life; but they were distinguished by the wearing of white garments, the avoidance of flesh food, and a degree of asceticism not usually associated with Hellenic ways. They represented, in several aspects, a Puritan Reformation in the history of Greece. Their rites encroached more and more upon the public worship of the Olympian gods. The influence of the sect was extensive and enduring. Perhaps it was here that the Pythagoreans</span> [as well as the Jewish sect known as the Essenes] <span style="color: #3333ff;">took their diet, their dress, and their theory of transmigration; it is worthy of note that the oldest Orphic documents now extant were found in southern Italy.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Plato, though he rejected much in Orphism, accepted its opposition of body and soul, its puritan tendency, its hope of immortality. Part of the pantheism and asceticism of Stoicism may be traced to an Orphic origin. The Neo-Platonists of Alexandria possessed a large collection of Orphic writings, and based upon them much of their theology and their mysticism. The doctrines of hell, purgatory, and heaven, of the body versus the soul, of the divine son slain and reborn, as well as the sacramental eating of the body and blood and divinity of the god, directly or deviously influenced Christianity, which was itself a mystery religion of atonement and hope, of mystic union and release. The basic ideas and ritual of the Orphic cult are alive and flourishing amongst us today…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Between these upper and nether poles of Greek religion, the Olympian and the subterranean, surged an ocean of magic, superstition, and sorcery; behind and below the geniuses whom we shall celebrate were masses of people poor and simple, to whom religion was a mesh of fears rather than a ladder of hope. It was not merely that the average Greek accepted miracle stories – of Theseus rising from the dead to fight at Marathon, or of Dionysus changing water into wine – such stories appear among every people…</span></blockquote>Before “Saint” Paul, participation in the mystery religions was limited to “initiates” (such as Plato); therefore, what Paul did was essentially “reveal” the Mysteries to the masses, thereby violating millennium-old rules for initiates. As Rudolf Steiner wrote in his 1902 book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/2523021/eBook-Antroposofia-EnG-Rudolf-Steiner-Christianity-as-Mystical-Fact-and-the-Mysteries-of-Antiquity"><span style="font-style: italic;">Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;">:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">Christianity brought the content of the Mysteries out of the darkness of the temple into the clear light of day. The one spiritual stream within Christianity… led to the idea that this content must necessarily be retained in the form of faith.</blockquote>Thus, the “real founder of Christianity” (Paul) promoted the idea to the masses that, if they’d just have “faith” (that he wasn’t a quack), they’d be rewarded with eternal life in paradise.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">5. Silly Metaphysical Speculations</span><br />
Essentially all of the metaphysical speculations incorporated into Christianity were derived from Plato (who in turn obtained his speculations from Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans, who probably obtained theirs from the Zoroastrians and Hindus). The incorporation of such ideas into Christianity proceeded especially <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE – 50 CE), many of whose writings are <a href="http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/philo.html">online</a>. Thereby, in many ways Philo was the prime metaphysical mover of Christianity. His writings (motivated by Plato and probably studied by Paul) are tedious; his main “contribution” was to introduce “allegorical interpretations” of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span>. For example, he famously interpreted the snake in the Adam and Eve story of <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> as Satan – even though, as I demonstrated in early posts in this series, the ancient Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Sumerians almost certainly created the original myth to “explain” why snakes shed their skins (and therefore seem to have acquired eternal life).<br />
<br />
The following are a couple of paragraphs from the summary article entitled “<a href="http://www.plosin.com/work/PlatoPlatonism.html">Plato and Platonism</a>”, which appeared in <span style="font-style: italic;">The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia</span> (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000, pp. 109-14).<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">In the decades after Plato’s death the Academy, under Arcesilaus (c. 300 BCE) and later Carneades (c. 200 CE), changed its emphasis from mathematics and science to a kind of skepticism, apparently in reaction to trends in Hellenistic philosophy. Little is known about the Academy during these years. The first centuries… [BCE], however, saw the development of “Middle” Platonism in Athens, Alexandria, and elsewhere. This was an uneasy synthesis of a variety of influences: Aristotelian, Stoic, Pythagorean, Hebrew, Zoroastrian, and Gnostic among them. Plato’s Forms were now conceived as Ideas in the mind of God, who is in turn an amalgam of Aristotle’s prime mover and the God of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures; matter and soul were opposed; several “grades” of reality were distinguished; and genuine knowledge or understanding was often taken to require a divine “spark” or illumination. Hints of all of these views can be found in Plato’s writings, especially when one is equipped with techniques of allegorical interpretation. Such techniques, routinely practiced on the Homeric epics as well as the scriptures, were now widely applied to philosophical texts.<br />
<br />
The Alexandrian Jew Philo (c.30 BCE – 45 CE) was heavily influenced by Middle Platonism, as were the early Christian apologists Justin Martyr (d. 165), Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), and Origen (185–254). All four writers used Middle Platonism – especially the cosmology of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Timaeus</span> – to reveal the mysteries of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> account of creation. Platonism, suitably understood, became an important ally of Jewish and Christian revelation. It is not hard to see why. Unlike Aristotle, who maintained the eternity of the world and the materiality of the soul, Plato’s insistence on the immortality of the soul, the role of the Demiurge [the Creator] in creating and sustaining the world, and the necessity of teleological explanation, could be harmonized with what had been revealed about the world in the scriptures.</blockquote>One of the most enduring metaphysical speculations thereby incorporated into Christianity was the idea that ‘right’ or ‘order’ was “built into the fabric of the universe”. At least a thousand years before Christianity, this idea appeared in Egypt as <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span>, in India as <span style="font-style: italic;">Ritam</span>, and in Persia as <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span>. The Christian metaphysicists used Heraclitus’ word for it, <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos</span> (which is usually translated as “the Word”), an idea also promoted by the Pythagoreans, Plato, Philo, and the Gnostics.<br />
<br />
Gnosticism (where <span style="font-style: italic;">gnōsis</span> is the Greek word for ‘knowledge’) competed with Christianity; in fact, many of the early Christian metaphysicists were Gnostics. “In a nutshell”, the (crazy) Gnostic speculation was that, whereas matter (e.g., the human body) was ‘bad’ and energy (e.g., spiritual energy) was ‘good’ (before it was known that matter consists of energy, via E = mc^2!), therefore “the good god” wouldn’t have created matter; instead, it must have been created by a lesser god (the Demiurge). But, claiming knowledge from outside Plato’s cave in which everyone else was confined, the Gnostics were certain that the good god did send us an emissary (the Christ, i.e., “the anointed one”), to enlighten us about the glorious heavenly realm that we could enter, if only we’d believe that they weren’t spouting utter nonsense.<br />
<br />
Readers who are interested in a less abusive treatment of Gnostic beliefs might want to start at the relevant Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism">article</a>. Indications that Paul was a Gnostic (and was therefore believed in an entirely different Jesus from the one described in the Gospels and “worshiped” by essentially all of today’s Christians) is available in following “<a href="http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/prayp.html">Prayer of the Apostle Paul</a>”, which was found near Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) in 1945:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #cc0000;">(Approximately two lines are missing.)<br />
<br />
... your light, give me your mercy! My Redeemer, redeem me, for I am yours; the one who has come forth from you. You are my mind; bring me forth! You are my treasure house; open for me! You are my fullness; take me to you! You are (my) repose; give me the perfect thing that cannot be grasped!<br />
<br />
I invoke you, the one who is and who pre-existed in the name which is exalted above every name, through Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords, the King of the ages; give me your gifts, of which you do not repent, through the Son of Man, the Spirit, the Paraclete of truth. Give me authority when I ask you; give healing for my body when I ask you through the Evangelist, and redeem my eternal light soul and my spirit. And the First-born of the Pleroma of grace – reveal him to my mind!<br />
<br />
Grant what no angel eye has seen and no archon ear (has) heard, and what has not entered into the human heart which came to be angelic and (modeled) after the image of the psychic God when it was formed in the beginning, since I have faith and hope. And place upon me your beloved, elect, and blessed greatness, the First-born, the First-begotten, and the wonderful mystery of your house; for yours is the power and the glory and the praise and the greatness for ever and ever. Amen.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">Prayer of Paul (the) Apostle.<br />
In Peace.<br />
Christ is holy.</div></blockquote>If “Saint” Paul really composed the above, then clearly he was more an adherent of Gnosticism than what is now commonly called Christianity.<br />
<br />
In sum, early Christianity was a concoction of many ingredients, including ancient mysticism, sun worship and astrology, the Mystery religions, multiple strands of Greek metaphysics (from Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plato, Zeno the Stoic, Diogenes the Cynic, etc.), and Gnosticism. As a result, in most respects Christianity was (and still is) just renamed paganism, a concept that has been well known for more than a century. For example, it was detailed in the 568-page 1883 book <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft_djvu.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions</span></a> by Thomas William Doane. Below are quotations from Chapter XXXVI of Doane’s book (with his references omitted), starting on p. 384 and then quickly jumping to p. 408.<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">OUR assertion that that which is called Christianity is nothing more than the religion of Paganism, we consider to have been fully verified. We have found among the heathen, centuries before the time of Christ Jesus, the belief in an incarnate God born of a virgin; his previous existence in heaven; the celestial signs at the time of his birth; the rejoicing in heaven; the adoration by the magi and shepherds; the offerings of precious substances to the divine child; the slaughter of the innocents; the presentation at the temple; the temptation by the devil; the performing of miracles; the crucifixion by enemies; and the death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. We have also found the belief that this incarnate God was from all eternity; that he was the Creator of the world, and that he is to be Judge of the dead at the last day. We have also seen the practice of Baptism, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, added to the belief in a Triune God, consisting of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">The early Christian saints, bishops, and fathers, confessedly adopted the liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and terms of heathenism; making it their boast, that the pagan religion, properly explained, really was nothing else than Christianity; that the best and wisest of its professors, in all ages, had been Christians all along; that Christianity was but a name more recently acquired to a religion which had previously existed, and had been known to the Greek philosophers, to Plato, Socrates, and Heraclitus; and that “if the writings of Cicero had been read as they ought to have been, there would have been no occasion for the Christian Scriptures.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">And our Protestant, and most orthodox Christian divines, the best learned on ecclesiastical antiquity, and most entirely persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion, unable to resist or to conflict with the constraining demonstration of the data that prove the absolute sameness and identity of Paganism and Christianity, and unable to point out so much as one single idea or notion, of which they could show that it was peculiar to Christianity, or that Christianity had it, and Paganism had it not, have invented the apology of an hypothesis, that the Pagan religion was typical, and that Krishna, Buddha, Bacchus, Hercules, Adonis, Osiris, Horus, &c., were all of them types and forerunners of the true and real Savior, Christ Jesus. Those who are satisfied with this kind of reasoning are certainly welcome to it. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">That Christianity is nothing more than Paganism under a new name, has, as we said above, been admitted over and over again by the Fathers of the Church, and others. Aringhus (in his account of subterraneous Rome) acknowledges the conformity between the Pagan and Christian form of worship, and defends the admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of the Church, by the authority of the wisest prelates and governors, whom, he says, found it necessary, in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble, and wink at many things, and yield to the times; and not to use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Melito (a Christian bishop of Sardis), in an apology delivered to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, in the year 170, claims the patronage of the emperor, for the now-called Christian religion, which he calls our philosophy, “on account of its high antiquity, as having been imported from countries lying beyond the limits of the Roman empire, in the region of his ancestor Augustus, who found its importation ominous of good fortune to his government.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">This is an absolute demonstration that Christianity did not originate in Judea, which was a Roman province, but really was an exotic oriental fable, imported from India, and that Paul was doing as he claimed, viz., preaching a God manifest in the flesh who had been “believed on in the world” centuries before his time, and a doctrine which “had already been preached unto every creature under heaven.” </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Baronius (an eminent Catholic ecclesiastical historian) says: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">It is permitted to the Church to use, for the purpose of piety, the ceremonies which the pagans used for the purpose of impiety in a superstitious religion, after having first expiated them by consecration to the end, that the devil might receive a greater affront from employing, in honor of Jesus Christ, that which his enemy had destined for his own service.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Clarke, in his </span><span style="color: #3333ff; font-style: italic;">Evidences of Revealed Religion</span><span style="color: #3333ff;">, says: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Some of the ancient writers of the church have not scrupled expressly to call the Athenian Socrates, and some others of the best of the heathen moralists, by the name of Christians, and to affirm, as the law was as it were a schoolmaster, to bring the Jews unto Christ, so true moral philosophy was to the Gentiles a preparative to receive the gospel.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Clemens Alexandrinus says:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Those who lived according to the Logos were really Christians, though they have been thought to be atheists; as Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks, and such as resembled them…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Eusebius, the great champion of Christianity, admits that that which is called the Christian religion, is neither new nor strange, but if it be lawful to testify, the truth was known to the ancients. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">How the common people were Christianized, we gather from a remarkable passage which Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, has preserved for us, in the life of Gregory, surnamed “Thauma-turgus” that is, “the wonder worker.” The passage is as follows: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled multitude persisted in their worship of images, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, he granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping that in process of time, they would return of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">The historian remarks that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respective festivals, and to do everything which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honor of their gods. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well-turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, that:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">…it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire; not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Faustus, writing to St. Augustine, says: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">You have substituted your agapae for the sacrifices of the Pagans; for their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very same honors. You appease the alludes of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivities of the Gentiles, their caleuds, and their solstices; and, as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you from the Pagans, except that you hold your assemblies apart from them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Ammonius Saceus (a Greek philosopher, founder of the Neo-platonic school) taught that: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">Christianity and Paganism, when rightly understood, differ in no essential points, but had a common origin, and are really one and the same thing.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Justin explains the thing in the following manner: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">It having reached the devil’s ears that the prophets had foretold that Christ would come… he (the devil) set the heathen poets to bring forward a great many who should be called sons of Jove (i.e.,” The Sons of God”). The devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same character as the prodigious fables and poetic stories.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Caecilius, in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Octavius of Minucius Felix</span>, says: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">All these fragments of crack-brained opiniatry and silly solaces played off in the sweetness of song by (the) deceitful (Pagan) poets, by you too credulous creatures (i.e., the Christians) have been shamefully reformed and made over to your own god.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">Cecils, the Epicurean philosopher, wrote that: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">The Christian religion contains nothing but what Christians hold is common with heathens; nothing new, or truly great.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">This assertion is fully verified by Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, which is one of the most remarkable admissions ever made by a Christian writer. He says: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">In saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men</span><span style="color: #6600cc;">’</span><span style="color: #6600cc;">s hands, we concur with Memmder, the comedian; and by declaring the Logos, the first begotten of God, our master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human mixture, to be crucified and dead, and to have rose again, and ascended into heaven, we say no more in this, than what you say of those whom you style the Sons of Jove. For you need not be told what a parcel of sons, the writers most in vogue among you, assign to Jove. There’s Mercury, Jove’s interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There’s Esculapius, the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after that ascending into heaven. There’s Bacchus, torn to pieces, and Hercules, burnt to get rid of his pains. There’s Pollux and Castor, the sous of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danae; and not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed emperors and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Cassar mount to heaven from the funeral pile? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">As to the son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the son of God is very justifiable, upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you have your Mercury in worship, under the title of the Word and Messenger of God. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">As to the objection of our Jesus being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the fore mentioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Esculapius…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">We have seen, then, that the only difference between Christianity and Paganism is that Brahma, Ormuzd, Osiris, Zeus, Jupiter, etc., are called by another name; Krishna, Buddha, Bacchus, Adonis, Mithras, etc., have been turned into Christ Jesus; Venus pigeon into the Holy Ghost; Diana, Isis, Devaki, etc., into the Virgin Mary; and the demi-gods and heroes into saints. The exploits of the one were represented as the miracles of the other. Pagan festivals became Christian holidays, and Pagan temples became Christian churches.</span></blockquote>The reason why Christianity spread relatively rapidly among “the pagans”, therefore, appears to be that it was so similar to existing pagan religions. Christianity, however, was available to everyone and promised eternal life in paradise without nearly so much effort (or so many hangovers) as the Mystery religions: all that “initiates” of the Christianity needed to do was to state that they “believed” in the nonsense being promoted.<br />
<br />
That the resulting concoction spread rapidly throughout “the ignorant masses” can be seen in the following <a href="http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/pliny-the-younger.htm">letter</a> written by the Roman governor of Bithynia (present-day northwestern Turkey), Pliny the Younger (c.62–c.113 CE). The letter was written (in about 111 CE) to the Roman emperor Trajan:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">It is a rule, Sir, which I inviolably observe, to refer myself to you in all my doubts; for who is more capable of guiding my uncertainty or informing my ignorance? Having never been present at any trials of the Christians, I am unacquainted with the method and limits to be observed either in examining or punishing them. Whether any difference is to be allowed between the youngest and the adult; whether repentance admits to a pardon, or if a man has been once a Christian it avails him nothing to recant; whether the mere profession of Christianity, albeit without crimes, or only the crimes associated therewith are punishable – in all these points I am greatly doubtful.<br />
<br />
In the meanwhile, the method I have observed towards those who have denounced to me as Christians is this: I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. For whatever the nature of their creed might be, I could at least feel not doubt that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy deserved chastisement. There were others also possessed with the same infatuation, but being citizens of Rome, I directed them to be carried thither.<br />
<br />
These accusations spread (as is usually the case) from the mere fact of the matter being investigated and several forms of the mischief came to light. A placard was put up, without any signature, accusing a large number of persons by name. Those who denied they were, or had ever been, Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose, together with those of the gods, and who finally cursed Christ – none of which acts, it is into performing – these I thought it proper to discharge. Others who were named by that informer at first confessed themselves Christians, and then denied it; true, they had been of that persuasion but they had quitted it, some three years, others many years, and a few as much as twenty-five years ago. They all worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, and cursed Christ.<br />
<br />
They affirmed, however, the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. Even this practice, however, they had abandoned after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had forbidden political associations. I judged it so much the more necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves, who were styled deaconesses: but I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition.<br />
<br />
I therefore adjourned the proceedings, and betook myself at once to your counsel. For the matter seemed to me well worth referring to you, especially considering the numbers endangered. Persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes are, and will be, involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread through the villages and rural districts; it seems possible, however, to check and cure it.</blockquote>Thereby, Roman officials made three horrible errors: 1) to torture people to try to ascertain their beliefs (a technique later adopted by Christians, once they were in power), 2) to try to stop superstition by force rather than by educating the people (just as later Christians eschewed education in anything but their dogmas), and 3) to conclude that, thereby, they could “check and cure… this contagious superstition” (i.e., Christianity).<br />
<br />
An additional way that Roman officials tried to “check and cure… [the] contagious superstition” was to imprison Christian leaders, such as Paul. That such “spiritual leaders” were running scams was clearly seen and described by (the rhetorician, satirist, and Epicurean) Lucian of Samosata (c.125–c.180 CE) in his “<a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/alexander.html">Alexander the Oracle-Monger</a>”, quoted below. This particular description is not necessarily about Christian clerics, but being an Epicurean, Lucian would undoubtedly have described all clerics as similar con artists:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #009900;">These ambitious scoundrels were quite devoid of scruples, and they had now joined forces; it could not escape their penetration that human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, <span style="font-style: italic;">fear</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">hope</span>, and that anyone who can make these serve his ends may be sure of rapid fortune. They realized that, whether a man is most swayed by the one or the other [fear or hope], what he must most depend upon and desire is a knowledge of futurity… men thronged the temples, longed for fore-knowledge, and to attain it sacrificed their hecatombs or dedicated their golden ingots… [T]hey [the clerics] looked for immediate wealth and prosperity; the result surpassed their most sanguine expectations.</blockquote>Lucian’s writings are important, because <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm">he provides us with</a> “the earliest independent substantial secular source for the existence of Christianity following the Flavian forgers and myth-makers from late in the first century.” In Lucian’s presumed fictional story entitled <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Passing of Peregrinus [Proteus]</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian">Lucian</a> <a href="http://carrington-arts.com/cliff/PROTEUS5.htm">seems to be describing</a> not some fictional character Peregrinus Proteus but none other than “Saint” Paul himself:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #009900;">It was then that he</span> [Proteus = Paul?] <span style="color: #009900;">learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine. And –how else could it be? – in a trice he made them all look like children, for he was prophet, cult-leader, head of the synagogue, and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and explained some of their books and even composed many, and they revered him as a god, made use of him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector, next after that other <span style="color: black;">[Jesus?]</span>, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">Then at length Proteus</span> [Paul?] <span style="color: #009900;">was apprehended for this and thrown into prison </span>[as was Paul]<span style="color: #009900;">, which itself gave him no little reputation as an asset for his future career and the charlatanism and notoriety-seeking that he was enamored of. Well, when he had been imprisoned, the Christians, regarding the incident as a calamity, left nothing undone in the effort to rescue him. Then, as this was impossible, every other form of attention was shown him, not in any casual way but with assiduity, and from the very break of day aged widows and orphan children could be seen waiting near the prison, while their officials even slept inside with him after bribing the guards. Then elaborate meals were brought in, and sacred books of theirs were read aloud, and excellent Peregrinus <span style="color: black;">[Paul?] </span>for he still went by that name – was called by them “the new Socrates.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #009900;">Indeed, people came even from the cities in Asia, sent by the Christians at their common expense, to succor and defend and encourage the hero. They show incredible speed whenever any such public action is taken; for in no time they lavish their all. So it was then in the case of Peregrinus </span>[Paul?]<span style="color: #009900;">; much money came to him from them by reason of his imprisonment, and he procured not a little revenue from it. The poor wretches have convinced themselves, first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into custody; most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver</span> [Jesus?] <span style="color: #009900;">persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once, for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist <span style="color: black;">[Jesus]</span> himself and living under his laws. Therefore they despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan and trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk.</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">6. Other Cultural & Political Factors.</span><br />
In the fabrication of Christianity, a large number and range of other cultural and political factors entered, each of which has been studied in depth. Here, I’ll only mention some of the factors and provide a few references where readers can begin to explore the topics in depth, should they desire.<br />
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• The Hellenization of the ancient world continued, especially at its intellectual center, Alexandria, where Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Persian, and Indian ideas were shared and intermingled. As reported in the <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1171&letter=A"><span style="font-style: italic;">Jewish Encyclopedia</span></a>: “the whole city was divided into five districts, which were named after the first five letters of the Greek alphabet. Of these five districts two were denominated Jewish districts, because the majority of their inhabitants were Jews.”<br />
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• Although Greek philosophical ideas (e.g., of the Epicureans and Stoics) were entertained by the educated elite (e.g., those who studied in Alexandria), the vast majority of people were uneducated and therefore according to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_religion">Wikipedia article on Hellenistic religions</a>, the people “would consult oracles and use charms and figurines to deter misfortune and cast spells [and use] astrology, which sought to determine a person’s character and future in the movements of the sun, moon, and planets.”<br />
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• Having adopted a homeland in the most undesirable location in the ancient world (and in the modern world?!), i.e., in the middle of the road between great powers (Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome…), the ancient Jewish people were almost continuously being “walked over”, which they obviously resented. Even the 100-year-old article on <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08386a.htm">the History of the Jews</a> in the biased <span style="font-style: italic;">Catholic Encyclopedia</span> describes the terrible troubles the Jews caused themselves by not having a better realtor (“location, location, location”) than Yahweh.<br />
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• Judaism split into factions, including the Sadducees (the old guard, rejecting “new fangled ideas” about life-after-death), the Pharisees (who adopted many Zoroastrian ideas), and the Essenes (a Pythagorean-like cult, who adopted ideas from Plato and the Greek Mystery religions). <a href="http://www.jesushistory.info/cultural_background_of_christianity.htm">In particular</a>, from the Dionysus Mystery religion (which had spread to Palestine) the Essenes (who probably composed the Dead Sea Scrolls) adopted the “ritual of repentance followed by baptizing as the means for spiritual purification…” (as did John the Baptist) and assumed (according to the Jewish historian Josephus, c.37–c.100 CE) “that the bodies are corruptible… but that the souls are immortal and continue forever.” Thereby, the Essenes adopted basic concepts that were used by Paul and the Gospel writers in their concoction of Christianity.<br />
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• Many Jews (future Christians) must have become extremely dissatisfied with Judaism and its patriarchy. Yahweh seemed to have welched on his alleged promise of a homeland for the Jewish people (and surely many of them were tired of hearing the same-old excuse that it was their fault and not Yahweh’s), and as in the rest of the Greco-Roman empire, <a href="http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777121908/">patriarchy was dying</a> (in part because of the independent spirit of many ancient Greeks and in part because, upon returning from war to their homes, Roman Legionaries were probably reluctant to be ruled by their fathers – and had the physical and financial resources to be independent).<br />
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• Along with the decay of patriarchy (which has yet to occur in “the Muslim world”), interest in ruling “father gods” probably waned. That is, consistent with the corrected astrological mantra “as above, so below” (namely, “as below, so above”!), many ancient people preferred to recognize not “god the father” but god’s son, e.g., Mithras rather than Ahura Mazda, Horus rather than Osiris, Apollo rather than Zeus, Jupiter rather than Saturn, and Jesus rather than Yahweh. In fact, throughout the Roman Empire, there was renewed interest in the worship of goddesses, including the worship of the mothers of such “sons of gods”.<br />
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Illustrative of some of the controversies (which raged for centuries) is the following <a href="http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/camel3.html">quotation</a> from “Did Jesus Exist? Part 3: The Religion of the Word”, which adds: “Much of the material in this article comes from Earl Doherty’s excellent website <a href="http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/">The Jesus Puzzle</a>, and his book by the same name.”<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #3333ff;">First-century Palestine was a religious and ethnic melting pot, a crossroads where many peoples, beliefs and cultures intermingled. It was also a time of upheaval – Jewish resentment against Roman rule was building, new sects were splintering off everywhere, and messianic expectation had risen to a fever pitch.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Many new religions arose from this ferment, but most of them faded away or were stamped out by their competitors or the authorities. Out of this Darwinian competition, however, there was one new faith that managed to survive. This religion would not have been unfamiliar to many people living today. At its core it was predominantly Jewish, believing in the monotheistic God of Abraham and relying, at least in part, on the Old Testament scriptures. But it also drew on ideas from Greek Platonism, such as that objects in the material world were only imperfect reflections of objects in a higher, heavenly plane. More importantly, it also incorporated the Platonic concept of the Logos.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #3333ff;">The Platonists faced a problem: like the Jews, they believed in a single, ultimate deity possessing all perfections. But they also believed that the material world was composed of imperfect matter. A perfect deity could not interact directly with imperfection, and so their solution was the Logos, Greek for “word”. The Platonists saw the Logos as an agent of the deity – an “emanation” of the divine which could act as an intermediary between God and the world. (Some traditions of Judaism described a similar personified divine agent, which was named Wisdom; see Proverbs chapter 8, for example.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The new religion incorporated this concept of the Logos, which they styled the Son after dividing the previously united Jewish deity into the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It also drew on the ethical teachings of a band of Greek philosophers called the Cynics, as well as aspects of those ancient, enigmatic cults, the mystery religions: the concept of dying and rising deities (in accordance with the cycles of nature), the idea of a sacramental meal, and the concept of redemptive sacrifice. And finally, it touched on the apocalyptic expectation common among first-century radical sects, the belief that the final judgment and the coming of the kingdom of God were just around the corner.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The religion that emerged from these disparate elements was, of course, called Christianity. An offshoot of messianic Judaism, it believed in a Son of God named Jesus Christ, co-eternal in power and glory with the Father, the agent of creation by which all material things were made and the instrument of humanity’s redemption. He was crucified, and in his suffering and subsequent death took humanity’s sins upon himself, offering his blood as payment for our crimes, and after three days was resurrected and took his place alongside the Father. Jesus was the source of wisdom, the long-awaited messiah, a divine “mystery” whose coming was prophesied by and hidden in the Old Testament scriptures, and he was to be the judge of humankind when the end times came. All in all, it was very similar to what Christians believe today - except for one minor detail.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">This Jesus was never on Earth.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">The early Christians believed in a /spiritual/ redeemer, a heavenly being whose crucifixion, death and resurrection took place not on the Earth, but in a Platonic higher realm. This Jesus was never incarnated in human form.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">This was the Christianity of the earliest Christians, namely the writers of the New Testament </span>[Paul’s] <span style="color: #3333ff;">epistles (which are widely agreed to predate the gospels). This is the Jesus that Paul believed in and wrote about in his letters.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">Of course, this is not widely recognized by Christians today. This is because most of them read the Bible with what NT scholar Earl Doherty calls “gospel-colored glasses” – they know about the gospel stories of a historical Jesus, and so they unconsciously read that material into the epistles, assuming that Paul was talking about the same Jesus that the gospels describe.</span></blockquote>That is, as pointed out by the ex-Presbyterian pastor M.M. Mangasarian (1859–1943) in his 1909 book <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/truth_about_jesus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Truth about Jesus – Is He a Myth?</span></a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #3333ff;">In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait is drawn for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same persons at all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a miraculously born savior. He does not mention a single time, in all his thirteen epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his birth was accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew nothing of a Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It is not imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or that he considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to them in any of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled from his denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous conception of the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very heresy. How explain it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus was not yet invented when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither he, nor the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a person. The virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle Paul…</blockquote>For many Jews, probably the final phase in their disillusionment with Judaism came with the Roman’s destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 CE and the banishment of the Jews. During the more-than-two centuries since the Maccabees tried to “save” the Jewish people and their religion, many “saviors” seemed to have arisen, but none was successful. I therefore suspect that disillusioned Jews with literary skills (such as the writers of the NT’s Gospels) decided to concoct a “true savior”, i.e., a fictitious Jesus the Christ. In the next two posts, I’ll address such increased fascination with and indulgence in apocalyptic stories, but I’ll do so under the title:<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">7. Blatant conspiracy by a new breed of clerics</span><br />
As a preview of the next post, what seems to have happened is that, near the turn of the millennium, Jewish expectations of a “savior” (to free them from Roman rule) reached (as quoted above) “a fever pitch”. Of the many who claimed to be the expected savior, at least one seems to have managed to gain a few followers. He, however, possibly being a former member of the Essenes sect and possibly having learned some Egyptian “magic tricks”, promoted concepts that conflicted with the ruling Jewish priesthood; therefore, consistent with Jewish law as allegedly dictated by their god, this “savior” (probably one of many with the common name Jesus) was executed for his apostasy (just as is still done in Islam today). During his short career as “savior”, this Jesus seems to have gained a few followers, and subsequently, his followers were pursued (e.g., by Paul) and punished (e.g., as reported in the NT, the stoning to death of Stephen, “the first Christian martyr”, in about 35 BCE).<br />
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On one such pursuit, on the road to Damascus, Paul (who seems to have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy) had a vision of the dead Jesus – and to this apparition he ascribed the properties of the Gnostics’ imagined emissary of the good god. Thus, in Paul’s prayer to the good god (quoted above in full), there’s no indication that Paul’s Jesus was the Jesus of “flesh and blood” known by others:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #cc0000;">Give me authority when I ask you; give healing for my body when I ask you through the Evangelist, and redeem my eternal light soul and my spirit. And the First-born of the Pleroma of grace – </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-style: italic;">reveal him to my mind! Grant what no angel eye has seen and no archon ear (has) heard</span> [italics added]<span style="color: #cc0000;">, and what has not entered into the human heart which came to be angelic and (modeled) after the image of the psychic God when it was formed in the beginning, since I have faith and hope.</span></blockquote>Poor old Paul, however, apparently became deeply puzzled by the obvious question: why would the good god permit his emissary – his son – to be executed? In a flash of insight (having lost his rational faculties), Paul speculated that, just as people sacrificed animals “thinking” that they could thereby “atone for their sins”, the good god (according to Paul) decided to sacrifice his alleged son, Jesus – to appease himself – to atone for the “original sin” of humanity, i.e., our collective guilt (!) for being related to Adam and Eve, who ate from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil). Paul added (although it’s rarely reported) that if people were stupid enough to believe his wild speculation, then they’d buy into anything – an addendum from which subsequent Christian clerics and TV Evangelists have accrued hundreds of billions of dollars – not to lightly dismiss other perks that clerics claim, such as having vaginal sex with senseless women and forcing oral and anal sex on defenseless children, since to acquire such perks seems to be a prime reason why so many sexual perverts become clerics, whether Christian, Muslim, Mormon, or whatever.<br />
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Paul’s ghostly Jesus, however, was far too esoteric for the uneducated and simple masses, who (as attested by the fortune made by Mel Gibson with his movie “The Passion of Christ”) were – and still are – moved more by “treachery, beatings, blood, and agony” (as the movie critic David Denby <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/03/01/040301crci_cinema">wrote</a> about Gibson’s horrible movie). Some talented Jewish writers who were thoroughly familiar with the Jewish “holy book” apparently reached a similar conclusion about the need for “treachery, beatings, blood, and agony.” They therefore composed a large number of fictitious stories about the executed Jesus, stories that were consistent with Pagan myths about other “sons of God”, consistent with wild speculations by astrologers and metaphysicists of the day, consistent with fake “prophecies” in the Old Testament, and consistent with perceived need for “treachery, beatings, blood, and agony.” After a lot of wrangling by critics, four of the resulting seventy-or-so stories were adopted as the Gospels (i.e., “good news”) of the New Testament. These fictitious stories subsequently became the foundation of Christianity and are promoted by clerical quacks and adopted by simpletons as “sacred truths” to this day.<br />
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[To be continued]<br />
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<a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
<div><br />
</div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-35485721682459448612010-03-30T03:45:00.000-07:002010-04-06T01:08:56.349-07:00Clerical Quackery 9 – Greek Influences on Judaism as illustrated in Ecclesiastes & Daniel<div><br /></div>This is the 29th in a series of posts dealing with the history of what I call “the God Lie” and the 9th in a subseries of posts emphasizing Clerical Quackery. In the prior four posts, I tried to show some of the ideas developed in ancient Greece. In this post, my goal is to at least outline how some of those Greek ideas impacted and further transformed Judaism, as illustrated in two Old Testament books: <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of Daniel.</span><br /><br />Such transformations were beyond those aspects of Zoroastrianism incorporated into Judaism during the approximately two centuries that the Persians ruled the Jews, from 540–332 BCE. The Greek-induced transformations occurred after the army of Alexander II of Macedonia (356–325 BCE) conquered the Persian Empire and the Greeks began their approximately two-centuries rule over the Jews. In future posts, I’ll try to show how further transformations of Judaism led to Christianity and Islam.<br /><br />The resulting, Greek-induced transformations of Judaism led to what can be called Judaism 4.0 (or more accurately, Zoroastrianism 4.0), according to the following scheme:<br /><blockquote>• “In the beginning” Judaism 1.0 was similar to other tribal religions in the Middle East, with a warrior god Yahweh along with his consort (the mother goddess, “queen of heaven”) Asherah. Yahweh allegedly protected Abraham’s little tribe, whose members certainly didn’t consider Yahweh to be the only god that existed; i.e., Judaism 1.0 wasn’t monotheism but monolatry.<br /><br />• During the 7th Century BCE, the high priest Hilkiah proclaimed Judaism 2.0, following his alleged discovery of the “the book of the law.” Under Hilkiah’s tutelage, Josiah (who became king of Judah in about 640 BCE, when he was eight years old) banned the goddess Asherah, specified Abraham’s tribal god as the national god, and claimed that an alleged “prophet” of Yahweh, Moses, dictated “God’s Laws” (which, unsurprisingly, claimed that the clerics were in charge of Jewish culture).<br /><br />• After the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great conquered the new Babylonian Empire, the Jews were permitted to return from “captivity” in Babylon to their homeland (now a part of the Persian Empire), and sometime during ~450–350 BCE, Ezra and co-conspirators (Ezra & C-C) created and documented Judaism 3.0 as the first part of what most Christians call the Old Testament (OT). In the process, Yahweh was transformed into the sole god, a universal god of righteousness and justice, modeled after the similar Persian (Zoroastrian) god Ahura Mazda. Thereby, Judaism 3.0 could also be labeled as Zoroastrianism 3.0 (which went through its own evolutionary phases after Zoroastrianism 1.0 was concocted by Zarathustra and then subsequent Zoroastrian priests introduced their modifications to Zarathustra’s scheme).<br /><br />• And after the army of the Greeks (or, in their own language, “the Hellenes”) defeated the Persians, then during the subsequent two centuries of cultural “Hellenization”, Judaism 4.0 emerged, which incorporated still more of Zoroastrianism – but this assimilation of additional Zoroastrian ideas into Judaism wasn’t directly <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> the Persians, but indirectly <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> the Greeks, especially by adopting the Zoroastrian-inspired ideas of the philosopher and would-be playwright Plato.</blockquote>In later posts, as I already mentioned, I plan to at least skim the next phases in the evolution of Zoroastrianism: a few centuries after Judaism 4.0 (or Zoroastrianism 4.0) was adopted, Judaism 5.0 (Zoroastrianism 5.0) emerged as Christianity, and about six centuries still later, Judaism 6.0 (or Zoroastrianism 6.0) emerged as Islam.<br /><br />Actually, though, and as might be expected, such transformations weren’t so “cut and dried” as the above scheme suggests. For example, in reality a number of “updates” to Judaism 4.0 were introduced (Judaism 4.1, 4.2, 4.3…) by different Jewish sects (the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes…) adding varying amounts of additional aspects of Zoroastrianism (angels, Satan, predestination, judgment after death, a coming messiah, an end-of-time apocalypse, paradise for the believers, etc.). Similarly, the number of “updates” to Christianity (Zoroastrianism 5.0) and Islam (Zoroastrianism 6.0) that have been and continue to be promoted boggles the mind – especially when they’re all make believe, without a shred of data to support them, and all are promoted by clerical quacks primarily for their own profit.<br /><br />But setting all that aside for now (even though humanity desperately needs a new “operating system”, namely, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">Scientific Humanism 1.0</a>), my plan for this post is to list and briefly illustrate some of the ancient Greek ideas that had varying degrees of influence on ancient Jewish culture. I’ll start with a group of Greek ideas (all labeled with the letter O for “Other Influences”) that seem to have had relatively little direct influence and then turn to a group of ideas (all labeled with the letter P for “Philosophy and Psychology”) that were incorporated directly into the “holy books” of Judaism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">O. Other Greek Influences on Jewish Culture</span><br />Although the goal of this post is to illustrate some of the ideas of the ancient Greeks that were incorporated into Judaism, I should at least mention some of the many developments of the ancient Greeks that, to varying degrees, also influenced Jewish culture (if not Judaism). Immediately below I’ll try to explain what I mean.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">O.1 Greek Science</span><br />As I tried to illustrate in the previous four posts, the ancient Greeks developed many ideas. Judaism 4.0 incorporated only some of them. For example, as far as I recall, there’s not a single comment in the OT dealing with the concept proposed by Anaxagoras (c.500–428 BCE) that the Sun was a “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">red-hot stone… larger than the Peloponnesus</span>” or with the ideas developed by Democritus (c.460–c.370 BCE) that “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">nothing exists except atoms and empty space…</span>” In fact (at least as documented in the Bible), Jewish science, mathematics, medicine, and engineering even into the Christian era were more than six centuries (!) behind Greek developments in those fields, and yet, surely some of the developments were adopted by some of the intelligent Jewish people. Stated differently, one shouldn't expect any "holy book" to accurately describe what actually happened, since all "holy books"were written not by historians but by clerical partisans.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">O.2 Greek Law & Associated Politics</span><br />As described by Will Durant on p. 297 of his 1939 <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Life of Greece,</span> Greek law went through three phases:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The earliest Greeks appear to have conceived of law as sacred custom, divinely sanctioned and revealed; </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">themis</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> meant to them both these customs and a goddess who (like India’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Rita</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> or China’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Tao</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> or </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Tien</span> [or Zarathustra’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span> or Egypt’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span><span style="font-style: italic;">]</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span> embodied the moral order and harmony of the world. Law was a part of theology, and the oldest Greek laws of property were mingled with liturgical regulations in the ancient temple codes. Perhaps as old as such religious law were the rules [were] established by the decrees of tribal chieftains or kings, which began as force and ended, in time, as sanctities.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The second phase of Greek legal history was the collection and co-ordination of these holy customs by lawgivers <span style="font-style: italic;">(</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">thesmothetai</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span> like Zaleucus, Charondas, Draco, Solon; when such men put their new codes into writing, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">thesmoi</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, or sacred usages, became </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">nomoi</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, or man-made laws. In these codes law freed itself from religion, and became increasingly secular; the intention of the agent entered more fully into judgment of the act; </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">family liability was replaced by individual responsibility</span> [italics added]<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, and private revenge gave way to statutory punishment by the state.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The third step in Greek legal development was the accumulative growth of a body of law. When a Periclean Greek speaks of the law of Athens he means the codes of Draco and Solon, and the measures that have been passed – and not repealed – by the Assembly or the Council. If a new law contravenes an old one, the repeal of the latter is prerequisite; but scrutiny is seldom complete, and two statutes are often found in ludicrous contradiction. In periods of exceptional legal confusion a committee of </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">nomothetai</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, or law determiners, is chosen by lot from the popular courts to decide which laws shall be retained; in such cases advocates are appointed to defend the old laws against those who propose to repeal them. Under the supervision of these </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">nomothetai</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> the laws of Athens, phrased in simple and intelligible language, are cut upon stone slabs in the King’s Porch; and thereafter no magistrate is allowed to decide a case by an unwritten law.</span></blockquote>In contrast, Judaism 4.0 remained stuck in the first phase of the development of law and associated politics (just as most of Islam is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_democracy">still stuck today</a>, approximately 2500 years behind the Greeks), with the people indoctrinated with the balderdash that their laws were dictated by some giant Jabberwock in the sky (who just happened to have prescribed a set of laws permitting clerical parasites to leech off the people).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">O.3 Greek Arts, Crafts, and Economics</span><br />I’m not going to try to summarize Greek advances in the arts, crafts, and economics. Instead, I’ll try to make just the single point that, although the Jewish clerics resisted such developments, apparently many Jewish people relished and copied them, incorporating them into their economy. For example, as described by Andrew Benson in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Origins of Christianity and the Bible</span> (<a href="http://www.jesushistory.info/cultural_background_of_christianity.htm">partially available</a> on the web):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The Greeks influenced the people of Palestine even before the Hellenistic era. Excavations have shown that during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE Greek art was highly prized in Palestine. All important excavations of 5th century sites have yielded Greek pottery and other Greek objects. Wealthy Phoenicians buried their dead in marble sarcophagi that had been carved by Greek craftsmen.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The Greeks invented money: coins. Sometime before 450 BCE the Persians abandoned their means of exchange (by precious metals) and adopted the Attic [Athenian] standard of making coins. By the middle of the fourth century the Persian satraps and local rulers of Cilicia, Syria, and Palestine produced coins that imitated the Greek coins. Judea received permission to strike its own silver coins, which were imitations of Attic coins. The biblical archaeologist Professor William Albright wrote that Alexander’s conquest of Palestine in 331</span> [332?]<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> BCE only intensified and organized the Hellenistic movement that was already well under way. This Hellenistic movement transformed Judaism and eventually brought about Christianity.</span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">O.4 Other Aspects of Greek Culture</span><br />As for other Greek cultural influences on the Jews during their two-and-more centuries of Hellenization, again there’s “no way” that I can do the subject justice – nor do I want to even try! Historians have spent their professional lives focusing on (and arguing about!) the subject. Interested readers might want to glance at the <a href="http://fontes.lstc.edu/%7Erklein/Doc8/hengel.doc">article</a> by Lester L. Grabble entitled “The Jews and Hellenization: Hengel and His Critics”, which references many historical books and articles, including several by Martin Hengel. Grabble’s summary point is the following:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Although there are many points to be debated in current study, Hengel’s dictum is becoming more and more accepted: one can no longer talk of Judaism vs. Hellenism nor of Palestinian vs. Hellenistic Judaism. To do so is to create an artificial binary opposition and to reduce an enormously complex picture to stark, unshaded black and white. It is also to treat a lengthy process as if it were a single… event – as if conception, pregnancy, birth, childhood, and adulthood could be simultaneous.</blockquote>The only two points that I would make (because not only did I find them interesting but they’re relevant to material in this post) are the following.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">O.4.1 Greek Literature</span><br />One of the stunning achievements of the ancient Greeks was, of course, their literature, from Homer (or whoever wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey</span>) to poets and playwrights such as Aeschylus (535–456 BCE), Pindar (c.518–c.438 BCE), Sophocles (c.496–406 BCE), and Euripides (c.485–406 BCE). I know of no ancient Jewish literature of comparable quality, perhaps because of my limited education, but I suspect because the Jewish clerics controlled both their culture and their historical records. The nearest to “great literature” that the Jewish clerics did preserve (and then, only after substantial arguments among themselves) is what many (including me) consider to be the best book in the OT, namely, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>.<br /><br />Later in this post, I’ll include several quotations from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>; here, therefore, I want to insert a few general comments about it. The word <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> is derived from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">ekklēsiastēs</span> meaning “member of an assembly” or “speaker”. When “the speaker” (identified in the text with either the name or title Qoheleth) lived or who he (or she?) was is unknown. The opening line of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> claims that it was written by King Solomon, but I doubt if there’s a single biblical scholar who accepts that claim. As the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes">Wikipedia article</a> on <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Most critical scholars suggest that <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> was written around 250 BCE <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[about 700 years after Solomon lived!]</span>… The latest possible date for it is set by the fact that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sirach">Ben Sirach</a> (written ca. 180 BCE) repeatedly quotes or paraphrases it…</blockquote>There are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanakh">suggestions</a> that Ecclesiastes wasn’t accepted into the “holy book” of the Jews (as “canon”) until the time period 70–90 CE. I expect that it wasn’t accepted until some cleric (or group of clerics) added the following two conclusions (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 12,</span> 9–14) as a “postscript” or “postface”:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also taught knowledge to the people; he carefully evaluated and arranged many proverbs. The Teacher sought to find delightful words, and to write accurately truthful sayings. The words of the sages are like prods, and the collected sayings are like firmly fixed nails; they are given by one shepherd.<br /><br />Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. There is no end to the making of many books, and much study is exhausting to the body. Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will evaluate every deed, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.</blockquote>The above, however, is NOT what <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> is about. To my mind, further, there’s no doubt that the above wasn’t written by “the Teacher” (Qoheleth), not only because its content conflicts with much of the text but also because it obviously was written to inform the reader (or the son of the writer of the postface) about “the Teacher”. I suspect, therefore, that some cleric (or group of clerics) added the above postface to <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> and that the majority of the Jewish clerics accepted <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> into their “holy book” only after such a “disclaimer” was added to what Qoheleth had written. As given in the assessment in the already-referenced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes">Wikipedia article</a>:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Ecclesiastes</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> is accepted as canonical by both Judaism and Christianity. However, in the first century AD, literal interpretation of the work led to debate over whether it was to be included in the Jewish canon. The House of Hillel and the House of Shammai debated its inclusion, with the Hillel school arguing for it. Its inclusion was decided when Eleazar ben Azariah was made head of the assembly… Arguments against its inclusion were alleged opposition to statements in Psalms, internal incoherency, and heresy (Epicureanism). It was accepted because of its attribution to Solomon, and to the orthodox statement at 12:12-14</span> [i.e., the above-quoted “postface”].</blockquote>And I’m stimulated to add that it’s “interesting” to learn about the method that clerics thereby use to decide what is and what isn’t their god’s words (or at least, his "inspiration")! As I intend to illustrate in later posts, similar clerical silliness (and skullduggery) prevailed to decide what was to be included as “holy scripture” in the New Testament (NT) and the Koran.<br /><br />But anyway, returning to the literary quality of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>, for now I’ll ask the reader to just consider how Qoheleth expanded so beautifully on Homer’s line (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> Bk. XI, Line 379):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">There is a time for many words, and there is a time for sleep. </blockquote>In <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>, Qoheleth wrote the familiar (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 3,</span> 1–8):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For everything its season, and for every activity under heaven its time: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to pull down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh… a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">O.4.2 Greek Sports</span><br />And the second point that I found interesting about influences of Greek culture on the ancient Jews was some of the resentment to Greek influences expressed by Jewish clerics, e.g., the resentment described in the <span style="font-style: italic;">apocryphal</span> (hidden) book<span style="font-style: italic;"> 2 Maccabees</span>. Thus, as described in the <a href="http://www.jesushistory.info/cultural_background_of_christianity.htm">book</a> by Andrew Benson (already referenced):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">A staunch Hellenist Jew named Jason became the high priest [of Judaism] from 175 to 172 BCE. His name originally was Jesus, but because of his love for the Greek culture he changed it to Jason. He transformed Jerusalem into a Greek city, with Greek schools and gymnasiums where traditionally young athletes exercised nude (a Greek athletic practice). Even some of the young priests at Jerusalem took up the Greek language, athletic sports, and manner of dress: “</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…he [Jason] founded a gymnasium right under the citadel, and he induced the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. There was… an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways…</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">” (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">2 Maccabees</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> 4:12-13 RSV) During the heyday of Greek influence the priests of the Jerusalem temple would sometimes leave the sacrifices half-burned on the altar to rush off to a stadium to compete in the Greek games: “</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…the priests were no longer intent upon their service at the altar. Despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling arena after the call to the discus, disdaining the honors prized by their fathers and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige.</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">” (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">2 Maccabees </span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">4:14-15 RSV)</span></blockquote>And thus, as has re-occurred so many times, probably many youngsters adapted to (and even relished) change, while old fogeys resisted. Similar occurs today, most dramatically in the Muslim world but also in the West, almost invariably with the clerics worrying that change will diminish their perks and their power and with the young thinking that they have little to lose but their chains.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">P. Greek Philosophical and Psychological Influences on Judaism</span><br />Whether they liked it or not, the Jewish clerics (and therefore Judaism) were eventually profoundly influenced by Greek philosophy and psychology. Below I’ll try to illustrate some of the resulting influences, with the illustrations organized into various subcategories (identified in subsection titles); for each, I’ll try to at least suggest resulting variations in opinions, since as was quoted above:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">To do [otherwise] is to create an artificial binary opposition and to reduce an enormously complex picture to stark, unshaded black and white. It is also to treat a lengthy process as if it were a single… event – as if conception, pregnancy, birth, childhood, and adulthood could be simultaneous. </blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.1 Skepticism vs. Authoritarianism</span><br />It may be a safe generalization to claim that all social change starts with skepticism of the <span style="font-style: italic;">status quo</span>. For example, skepticism of existing “authority” (commonly claimed by a culture’s clerics) initiated philosophical and scientific progress in ancient Greece. Similar occurred elsewhere, e.g., the progress made by Confucius, the Buddha, and Zarathustra. On the other hand, skepticism against the value of change can be a bulwark to maintain the <span style="font-style: italic;">status quo</span>! An example is the forceful statement by the Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes (c.384–322 BCE), famous for his speeches urging resistance against expansionist plans of Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedonia. Demosthenes urged:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches and the like. All these are the work of human hands aided by money. But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all… What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.</blockquote>A safer generalization may therefore be that skepticism abounds; therefore, one would be well advised to investigate what people are skeptical about and, following the scientific method, put all ideas to experimental tests.<br /><br />In the previous four posts in this series I provided illustrations of the skepticism of some ancient Greeks; a few illustrations follow.<br /><blockquote>• Skepticism of Greek mythology as recorded by “the authorities” (Homer and Hesiod) was rampant, including the saying of the Seven Sages that “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage</span>” and the fragment from Heraclitus (c.535–c.475 BCE): “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">[Homer] should be turned out of the lists and whipped.</span>”<br /><br />• Skepticism of the gods include the statement by Xenophanes (c.570–c.480 BCE) that “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the words which men do, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods’ bodies the same shape as their own</span>” as well as the honest, agnostic statement by Protagoras (c.485–c.415 BCE): “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.</span>”<br /><br />• Skepticism about the ideas of physicists (from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">phusis</span> meaning ‘nature’) started with skepticism of the idea of Thales (c.624–c.545 BCE) that “Water is the cause of all things” and continued for essentially every theory proposed during the subsequent three-and-more centuries.<br /><br />• Skepticism even about humans’ ability to know anything with certainty was admirably illustrated by the statement by Xenophanes (c.570–c.480 BCE) that’s as valid today as it was in his day: “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">But as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor will he know it – neither of the gods nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter the final truth, he would himself not know it, for all is but a woven web of guesses.</span>”</blockquote>Unfortunately, however, ancient Greece also had its authoritarian mystics who were skeptical of the skeptics’ ideas, who didn’t test their own ideas against data, who didn’t appreciate Xenophanes’ wisdom, and instead foolishly claiming that their knowledge was “certain”. Examples included Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics. And unfortunately for the world, Jewish clerics (and subsequent Christian and Muslim clerics) also failed to appreciate Xenophanes’ wisdom; as a result, their mystical mumbo-jumbo still pollutes the world.<br /><br />Little skepticism is recorded in “official Judaism” (e.g., in the OT). That is, similar to Greek clerics and mystic philosophers, Jewish clerics were certain that they knew “the Truth” – just as do today’s Christian and Muslim clerics, without knowing even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">what ‘truth’ means</a>! Nonetheless, there are hints even in the OT that some skepticism did creep into Judaism. An example is the following from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes 7,</span> 14–16:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In times of prosperity be joyful, but in times of adversity consider this: God has made one as well as the other, so that no one can discover what the future holds. During the days of my fleeting life I have seen both of these things: sometimes a righteous person dies prematurely in spite of his righteousness, and sometimes a wicked person lives long in spite of his evil deeds. So, do not be excessively righteous or excessively wise; otherwise, you might be disappointed.</blockquote>With his statement “<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">no one can discover what the future holds</span>”, the author (Qoheleth) thereby discounted all “prophecy” (just as Homer had Hector and Telemachus discount prophecies, as I illustrated in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/11/clerical-quackery-5-physics-versus.html">earlier post</a>). Further, with his statement “<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">sometimes a righteous person dies prematurely in spite of his righteousness, and sometimes a wicked person lives long in spite of his evil deeds</span>” (which is consistent with Jobs’ experiences), Qoheleth promoted skepticism of the Jewish clerics’ claim of God’s righteousness and justice.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.2 Cynicism vs. Naiveté</span><br />Skepticism can lead to cynicism. For example, the skepticism of the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (c. 365–c.270 BCE), who is usually credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher (and who, by the way, traveled with Alexander all the way to India), led him to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho">cynical conclusion</a>: “<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification.</span>” Meanwhile, though, I’m skeptical that Pyrrho should be credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher (all philosophers are skeptics, and Xenophanes seems to have been more skeptical than Pyrrho) and I admit to being sufficiently cynical of Pyrrho’s quoted statement to say that, if it were so, if “against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification”, then all science would be destroyed and, for example, this computer wouldn’t work!<br /><br />Stated differently, skepticism is healthy and cynicism is a common consequence of skepticism, but to make progress, new hypotheses must be proposed and their predictions tested. Otherwise, similar to recent experiences with the global warming problem, skepticism and cynicism can lead to just a bunch of mindless denials. For example, currently in the U.S., conservative Republicans seem intent on denying every new idea, from the possibility of global warming to improvements to health care, and from the need to regulate the financial industry to the American citizenship of Barack Obama; yet, most of them naively cling to the authority of the Bible’s fairy tales!<br /><br />But returning to the cynicism of ancient Greek philosophers, another <a href="http://www.pantheism.net/paul/heraklit.htm">illustration</a> appears in one of the stories about Heraclitus (c.535–c.475 BCE):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Heraclitus was once asked to write a constitution for Ephesus, but refused. He used to play at knucklebones with children by the temple of Artemis. When adults came to gape, he replied: “Why should you be astonished, you rascals? Isn’t it better to do this than to take part in your civil life?”</blockquote>Consistently, one of the <a href="http://www.pantarei.org/about/">fragments</a> from Heraclitus’ writings is:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Ephesians might as well hang themselves, every man of them, and leave their city to be governed by youngsters…</span><br /></blockquote>The most famous cynic among the ancient Greek philosophers was, of course, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope">Diogenes the Cynic</a> (c.412–323 BCE), who “was the only man to mock Alexander the Great [to his face] and live.” A familiar story about Diogenes is that he went about Athens with a lantern, claiming he was looking for at least one honest man. In an earlier post, I provided an example of his debunking Plato’s idea of Forms; a more famous example of the trouble he caused Plato was that, after Plato defined ‘man’ to be a “featherless biped”, Diogenes plucked a chicken, brought it to Plato’s Academy, and said: “This is Plato’s man!”<br /><br />Describing anyone as a cynic, however, is not very illuminating: the object of the person’s cynicism should be specified. In the case of Diogenes the Cynic (also called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope">Diogenes of Sinope</a>), “his life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as corrupt society.” His disdain for the Eleusinian Mysteries is clear in his following statement, as <a href="http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dldiogenes.htm">reported</a> by Diogenes Laërtius:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">“It will,” he replied, “be an absurd thing if Aegesilaus and Epaminondas</span> [or, we might say, Abu’l-Ala-Al-Ma’arri, Omar Khayyam, David Hume, and Spinoza] <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">are to live in the mud, and some miserable wretches, who have been initiated, are to be in the islands of the blest.”</span></blockquote>Diogenes Laërtius also reports:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">…that when in the course of his life he [Diogenes the Cynic] beheld pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the wisest of all animals; but when again he beheld interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and those who listened to them, and men puffed up with glory or riches, then he thought that there was not a more foolish animal than man.</blockquote>He was also called “Diogenes the Dog”, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope">apparently</a> for multiple reasons. One reason is that the “the terms ‘cynic’ and ‘cynical’ are derived from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">kynikos</span>, the adjective form of <span style="font-style: italic;">kynon</span>, meaning ‘dog’.” Diogenes, however, was not cynical about virtue and about friendship, famously saying: “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Other dogs bite their enemies; I bite my friends to save them.</span>”<br /><br />Meanwhile, if any of the ancient Jews were cynical, little of their cynicism was recorded in the OT, as might have been expected – at least by those of us who are cynical of the intellectual honesty of any cleric! Nonetheless, some cynicism appears in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>. Further, it seems likely that the author knew of Diogenes the Cynic, since at <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes 7,</span> 28, Qoheleth wrote:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">What I have continually sought, I have not found; I have found only one upright man among a thousand, but I have not found one upright woman among all of them.</blockquote>The above variation on the familiar story about Diogenes makes me wonder if the misogyny of many ancient Semitic cultures (and even “modern” Muslim cultures) stimulated Qoheleth to include his insulting comment about women. On the other hand, perhaps he never knew his mother!<br /><br />More famous skepticism and cynicism in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> appears in its opening lines, which have been translated in many ways:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!<br />• Utterly senseless, everything is senseless!<br />• Utterly absurd, everything is absurd!<br />• Meaningless of meaninglessness! All is meaningless!<br />• Futility of futilities, all is futile!<br />• Absolutely pointless! Everything is pointless!</blockquote>That’s about as cynical as one can get – about everything! But Qoheleth’s philosophy wasn’t so coherent as was Diogenes’; for example, Qoheleth obviously decided that writing <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> wasn’t “pointless”!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.3 Pessimism vs. Optimism</span><br />From my own experiences and with the help of my dictionary’s definitions, I suggest that skepticism (<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">from Greek </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">skepsis</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> meaning ‘doubt’</span>) and cynicism (<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">from Greek </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Kunosarges</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">, the name of the gymnasium where the first cynic, Antisthenes, taught, but popularly taken to mean ‘doglike, churlish’</span>) commonly lead to pessimism (<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">the belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good</span>). A few examples of pessimistic statements by ancient Greeks are the following (in the main, taken from Bartlett’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Familiar Quotations</span>).<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Until he is dead, do not yet call a man happy, but only lucky. </span> (Solon, c.630–c.555 BCE)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">In Greece wise men speak and fools decide. </span> [Anacharsis (fl. c. 600 BCE)]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">[Anacharsis] laughed at him [Solon] for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders’ webs and could catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich.</span> [From Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE), <span style="font-style: italic;">Parallel Lives, Life of Solon.</span>]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The best of all things for earthly men is not to be born and not to see the beams of the bright sun; but if born, then as quickly as possible to pass the gates of Hades and to lie deep buried. </span>(Theognis, fl. c. 545 BCE).</blockquote>Skepticism and cynicism needn’t lead to pessimism, however. For example, in response to someone who said that it was a bad thing to live, Diogenes the Cynic responded: “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Not to live, but to live badly.</span>”<br /><br />In general, subsequent to the Babylonian exile, pessimism didn’t seem to permeate Jewish society – although, as I showed in an earlier post, there is pessimism in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of Job</span>, whenever it might have been written. The reason why the Jews seem to have remained optimistic is presumably because Ezra & C-C’s “redaction” of the Jewish “holy book” infused the Jews with thoughts that their god was in control and, after his petulance was assuaged, he would look after them. Although (as I illustrated in earlier posts) that idea appears so frequently in the OT that it can drive the reader to distraction, yet once again in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>, more cynical, pessimistic, and even fatalistic ideas appear, e.g., at <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 9,</span> 11 (with italics added):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Again, I observed this on the earth: the race is not always won by the swiftest, the battle is not always won by the strongest; prosperity does not always belong to those who are the wisest, wealth does not always belong to those who are the most discerning, nor does success always come to those with the most knowledge – <span style="font-style: italic;">for time and chance may overcome them all.</span></blockquote>As a general rule, I expect that, to suggest (as in Homer’s books) that “time and chance” is overall – in particular, over the authority of some god – is about as close as one can come to denying the god promoted by any group of clerics and still have them include your ideas in their “holy book”!<br /><br />Such cynicism and pessimism (consistent with Qoheleth’s “all is pointless”) seems to be the common, dead-end conclusion of religions that don’t offer a fictitious paradise after death – and as the following quotations show, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> Qoheleth makes his opinion abundantly clear that, when you’re dead, you’re just dead:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For the fate of humans and the fate of animals are the same: as one dies, so dies the other; both have the same breath. There is no advantage for humans over animals, for both are fleeting. Both go to the same place, both come from the dust, and to dust both return. Who really knows if the human spirit ascends upward</span> [as Plato promoted]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and the animal’s spirit descends into the earth</span> [with which Pythagoras disagreed]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">? So I perceived there is nothing better than for people to enjoy their work <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[as Epicurus recommended]</span>, because that is their reward; for who can show them what the future holds? </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 3</span>, 19–22)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But whoever is among the living has hope; a live dog </span>[Diogenes?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">is better than a dead lion </span>[Alexander?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything; they have no further reward – and even the memory of them disappears… Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with all your might, because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, the place where you will eventually go. </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 9</span>, 4–10)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The light of day is sweet, and pleasant to the eye is the sight of the sun; if a man lives for many years, he should rejoice in all of them. But let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. Everything that is to come will be emptiness.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 11</span>, 8)</blockquote>As suggested by the notes added to the above quotations, Qoheleth apparently adopted some of Epicurus’ ideas, but he missed the most important ones, namely, to forget about gods and any “afterlife”. Further, as Epicurus wrote in his <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/Lives.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Pythocles</span></a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">It is unwise to desire what is impossible: to proclaim a uniform theory about everything… Rather than committing to explanations based on unwarranted assumptions and dogma, we may only theorize as far as the phenomena allow. For our life has no need of unreasonable and groundless opinions; our one need is untroubled existence. So, if one is satisfied (as he should be) with that which is shown to be less than certain, it is no cause for concern that things can be explained in more than one way, consistent with the evidence. But if one accepts one explanation and rejects another that is equally consistent with the evidence, he is obviously rejecting science altogether and taking refuge in myth. </blockquote>In particular, starting with the silly assumptions that gods exist, that humanity started in paradise (and has been degenerating ever since), and that death is the end of one’s existence, Qoheleth reached the inevitable conclusion that life is pointless. Of course, the sensible resolution to that philosophical predicament is to reject the data-less assumptions that gods exist and that humanity started in paradise and, instead, to adopt the data-rich, testable hypothesis that humanity has evolved (and will continue to evolve, so long as we help one another). But ignoring that realistic, atheistic, and optimistic resolution, Jewish clerics (intent on feathering their own nests) eventually adopted Zarathustra’s data-less (yet, optimistic) speculation that, after people die, they’re judged and, depending on their behavior during life, are rewarded or punished appropriately – of course with glorious rewards for those who obey the clerics and terrible punishments for those who disobey.<br /><br />Thereby, Jewish clerics began incorporating into their fictitious scheme not only additional aspects of Zoroastrianism but also some elements of Greek (and Zarathustra’s) individualism. Below, I’ll try to illustrate my meaning, but I feel the need to provide some background information, which I’ll do with the following section and its subsections.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.4 Individualism vs. Collectivism</span><br />The topic of individualism vs. collectivism is huge, both historically and psychologically, and it’s as important for us today as it was for the first human tribes, a hundred (or so) thousand years ago. Today in the U.S., arguments rage over ideas about collectivism promoted by liberal Democrats vs. individualism promoted by conservative Republicans, and today in the world (with the collectivism of communism of diminished concern), arguments rage over the collectivism of socialism vs. the individualism of free enterprise and over the collectivism of Islam vs. the individualism of the West.<br /><br />In the West, an individual’s challenge is to decide how much to help others while still looking after oneself. In Islam, in contrast (and as was the case in fascist countries and as is still the case in communist countries), as Hitler said, “<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">…we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community…</span>” or as Khrushchev said, “<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.</span>” For example, A.K. Brohi (1915–87), Pakistan’s Law Minister in both the 1950s and 70s, chillingly <a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=3766&sec_id=3766"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">maintained</span></a> (to which I've added the italics):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Human duties and rights have been vigorously defined and their orderly enforcement is the duty of the whole of organized communities and the task is specifically entrusted to the law enforcement organs of the state. <span style="font-style: italic;"> The individual if necessary has to be sacrificed in order that that the life of the organism be saved.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span>Collectivity has a special sanctity attached to it in Islam…<span style="font-style: italic;"> [In Islam] there are no ‘human rights’ or ‘freedoms’ admissible to man</span>… in essence the believer owes obligation or duties to God, if only because he is called upon to obey the Divine Law, and such human rights as he is made to acknowledge seem to stem from his primary duty to obey God.</blockquote>No doubt the resulting strife between individualism and collectivism will continue – so long as we seek to survive (even thrive) as individuals and yet, as members of a community, our survival depends on the prosperity of our society. In turn, the prosperity of any society commonly depends critically on the accomplishments of especially competent individuals, e.g., one Steve Jobs accomplishes more than a million of the rest of us – and one Einstein, more than a billion of us. The challenge is to appreciate that, as Heraclitus said approximately 2500 years ago:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">The opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things happen by strife and necessity. People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre. </blockquote>Now, tracing the history of the attempt to find “an attunement of opposite tensions” between individualism vs. collectivism, even in just ancient Persia or Greece, or just among the ancient Jews, is far too great a task for me to even try to undertake – even if I were a historian! Instead, in the following subsections, I’ll simply list a few topics (each of which is probably already the subject of multiple Ph.D. theses!), provide a few examples to try to illustrate what I mean, and then try to steer the whole toward showing how (and maybe why) some ancient Greeks and Jews adopted martyrdom, a crazy idea still practiced by far-too-many “modern” Muslims. For a very few martyrs (such as Socrates, Mattathias, and maybe Jesus – if he existed), perhaps their martyrdom was for their perceived good of the collective, but for the vast majority of Jews, Christians, and “modern” Muslims, their martyrdom was (and is) a deluded, egotistical, extreme form of individualism (seeking eternal bliss in some fictitious paradise).<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">P.4.1 Individualism vs. Tribalism </span><br />Every culture has its myths and stories, which to a large extent define its culture. In the past, most such myths and stories involved “the gods” and therefore defined each culture’s religion. Also, usually incorporated in such stories are anecdotes that stimulate each culture’s adoption of specific policies from among the continuum of policies between individualism and collectivism. Literally hundreds of examples could be given.<br /><br />For example, as I reviewed in earlier posts in this series, the ancient Sumerians had their story about Adapa (a precursor to the story about Adam, of Adam and Eve fame, who declined the offer from the gods for eternal life), their story about Ubar-Tutu or Utnapishtim (a precursor to the story about Noah, who with the help of his god saved his family from the flood), and of course, their famous story about Gilgamesh or “Gilga the Hero”. Adapa was a loner, Utnapishtim was a family man, and readers who have treated themselves to the version of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Epic of Gilgamesh </span>written by Sin-leqe-unnini will recall Gilga’s transformations: from a loner (“like a wild bull”), to his friendship and adventures with Enkidu, to his despair at the death of his friend, to his lonely but egotistical search for eternal life, and finally, to his discoveries of meaning in friendship, family, and producing something of lasting value for his community:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Choose to live and choose to love; choose to rise above and give back what you yourself were given. Be moderate as you flee for survival in a boat that has no place for riches… even if I were to fail… all future clans would say I did the job.</blockquote>Relevant stories are also available, of course, from ancient Egypt, India, and Persia, but to move this post along, I’ll jump to Homer’s stories from ancient Greece.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey</span>, Homer’s messages about individualism vs. collectivism are complicated and confusing. In contrast to the case for patriarchal groups (such as the ancient Persians and Jews and “modern” Muslims), Homer tells us little about the fathers of his heroes. Further, in some cases it’s difficult to know who Homer suggests are heroes: Agamemnon (the most powerful Greek king) is depicted sometimes as a bully and a bungler; Hector is depicted as a hero of his own collective (the enemy), e.g., with his “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">There is one omen, and one only – that a man should fight for his country</span>”; Achilles (the most famous of the Greek fighters) is depicted as a whiny brat, whose vulnerable tendon seems really to be his individualism (refusing to fight – until his best buddy is killed – because of Agamemnon's personal insult and then horribly dragging behind his horse the dead body of Hector). In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey</span>, similarly, one wonders if Homer is describing Ulysses as a hero for his individualism (and trickery) or as a despicable character. Maybe the only hero in the tale is Ulysses’ wife, Penelope, in part for her individualism (and trickery), but also for her commitment to her husband. Perhaps the only lesson to be gained from Homer is not about what he advocated on the continuum between individualism and collectivism, but that, on such matters, great authors only lead their readers – and let them decide for themselves.<br /><br />And then there are the stories in the first part of the OT, which in general weren’t written by great authors. Again and again, the same stupefying messages are relayed: never mind fraternity (e.g., Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, etc.), women must obey their husbands or masters, since otherwise, women just cause trouble (e.g., Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Tamar, etc.), and always but always, fathers know best (e.g., Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob…) – provided that they obey God (aka the clerics) and thus don't behave as Adam did. In the ancient Jewish stories, then, there is short shrift for individualism (unless the individual is following the will of God, aka the clerics); instead, there’s unremitting emphasis on patriarchy, tribalism, and obeying the damn clerics (which continues in Islam to this day).<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">P.4.2 Personal vs. Collective Honor & Dishonor</span><br />In communal cultures, honor is defined not by the individual but by the group; as a consequence, individuals (e.g., in “modern” Muslim countries) usually aren’t concerned about guilt but about shame. An example from ancient Greece of such “collective responsibility” is in Hesiod’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Works and Days</span>: “<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.</span>” Similar, silly ideas of “communal guilt” are contained throughout the OT and, for that matter, also throughout the NT, e.g., the ridiculous claim that we're all guilty because Adam ate the apple! (I'm not; I have a perfect alibi; I wasn't even alive at the time!) Yet, in a particular example, recall that Abraham’s sense of justice was more advanced than God’s: Abraham managed to talk God out of destroying Sodom if first 50 and then finally at least 10 “godly people” resided therein.<br /><br />For hierarchical societies, those in power define ‘honor’ (for others!) as those behaviors that protect the power structure. Thus, patriarchs demand that their wives be ‘honorable’ (especially, not to engage in adultery, because their husbands don’t want their resources consumed by some other man’s child). Similarly, tribal leaders and clerics define honorable behavior in war as courage, because it protects their privileged positions. As a result, claims such as the following were common in the tribal days of ancient Greece:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">If to die honorably is the greatest part of virtue, for us fate’s done her best. Because we fought to crown Greece with freedom, we lie here enjoying timeless fame</span>. (Simonides, c. 556–468 BCE, <span style="font-style: italic;">For the Athenian Dead at Plataia</span>)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor’s edge.</span> (Simonides, c. 556–468 BCE, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cenotaph at the Isthmos</span>)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action.</span> (Thucydides, c.460–400 BCE)</blockquote>As I’ve illustrated in earlier posts in this series, the OT is loaded with similar nonsense, but in ancient Greece, ideas of honor as defined by individuals began to emerge. In part, the sense of personally defined honor seems to have come from the Olympic games, the first of which apparently occurred in 776 BCE (about the time of the writings of Homer and Hesiod). It’s clear that citizens of the Greek cities took collective pride in the accomplishments of their athletes, just as citizens of cities and nations, today, foolishly take collectives pride in the accomplishments of their athletes! <a href="http://etymonline.com/columns/Olympics.htm">Thus</a>, the home cities of winners of the Games typically “voted them free meals for the rest of their lives, or set up statues in their honor.” But simultaneously, winners at the Games almost certainly took pride in their individual accomplishments. Similarly, individual artists and tradesmen in ancient Greece were “honored” for their accomplishments, and thereby, new ideas about individualism and individual honor emerged.<br /><br />In addition, Greek philosophy bred individualism. For example, essentially every new idea was identified with the individual who proposed it, and still today, we can be overwhelmed by the names of so many individuals (such as Thales, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, etc.). In addition, there were individuals such as Socrates, whom some ancient Greeks considered to be so dishonorable that he was sentenced to death, and yet, “the Socratic method” is honored to this day – and should be taught to all children, to help them learn critical thinking skills! As well, there were such individuals as Diogenes the Cynic, whom some described as dishonorable (and beat him like a dog for his behavior), and yet, Alexander the Great reportedly said: “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.” Subsequently, the individualism practiced by Socrates and Diogenes became the foundation of Stoicism, which later infused both Judaism and Christianity with ideas of individual honor.<br /><br />Below, I’ll provide some illustrations of the influence of Greek individualism on Judaism as illustrated in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>, but for now, consider the following quotations taken not from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> but from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiasticus</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">33,</span> 19–22 and <span style="font-style: italic;">37,</span> 13), also called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirach"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sirach</span></a>, which seems to have been authored by Ben Sirah in about 180–175 BCE:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Whatever you are doing, rely on yourself, for this, too, is a way of keeping the commandments… [T]rust you own judgment, for it is your most reliable counselor.</blockquote>It’s easy to understand why <span style="font-style: italic;">Sirach</span> isn’t included in the Jewish <span style="font-style: italic;">Tanakh</span> and why most Protestant clerics refused to accept it as “canonical”: to advocate that individuals rely on themselves and trust their own judgment is to promote scientific humanism and, therefore, the end of clerical quackery!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">P.4.3 Individual Rights vs. Collective Responsibilities</span><br />Under the topic “individual rights” I mean to include various “freedoms to” and “freedoms from”, including any individual’s rights to define and pursue virtue and happiness. By collective responsibilities, I mean to include multiple topics dealing with justice and laws. Clearly, then, the topics in this subsection constitute a huge area of study, but here, I’ll just gloss over the topics, again trying to focus on how Greek ideas seeped into Judaism.<br /><br />It’s commonly accepted that humans have freedom to think as they want, but actually, the majority of humans don’t (and apparently can’t) exercise such freedom: their thoughts are unfortunately restricted by their childhood indoctrination in religious balderdash. When a few ancient Greeks had the mental ability and courage to overcome their religious indoctrination, they found that freedom to express their thoughts about nature and “the gods” was severely constrained. As examples, in about 450 BCE the Athenian legislature (no doubt stimulated by Greek clerics) made it illegal to teach “new theories about the things on high”, Anaxagoras was imprisoned for teaching that the sun was a red hot stone, the Athenians burned Protagoras’ book <span style="font-style: italic;">On The Gods</span> and exiled him, and Socrates was put to death for “not believing in the gods in which the state believes…” The poignancy of a statement by Diogenes the Cynic is then clear. As Diogenes Laërtius reports:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">On one occasion he [Diogenes the Cynic] was asked, what was the most excellent thing among men; and he said, “Freedom of speech.”</blockquote>Later in this post, I’ll briefly comment on the other side of this freedom vs. constraint divide, specifically, as it appeared among the Jews when they were prohibited by the Greeks from worshipping Yahweh, resulting in the terrorist activities (by religious Jews) known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabees">Maccabean Revolt</a>.<br /><br />Although speaking against the gods was prohibited in ancient Greece, people were apparently free to discuss how to live “the good life”. Thus, as I briefly addressed in the previous two posts, philosophers such as Democritus, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno the Stoic, et al. labored to define and pursue ‘virtue’, ‘honor’, ‘happiness’, etc. Similar freedom seems to have just barely been permitted by the Jewish clerics, one result of which was <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>.<br /><br />As I already suggested, the philosophical competence of the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> (Qoheleth) wasn’t comparable to that of the Greek philosophers mentioned in the previous paragraph. His philosophy wasn’t coherent. For example, his ideas about fate and chance (quoted earlier in this post) are inconsistent with the conclusion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will evaluate every deed, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.</blockquote>But then, as I also already mentioned, clearly the final two paragraphs of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> wasn't written by Qoheleth (just as the final verse of Deuteronomy, describing the funeral of Moses, obviously wasn't written by Moses). Instead, the final two paragraphs were obviously written by someone telling the reader who Qoheleth was and what he did:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Not only was the Teacher</span> [Qoheleth] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">wise, but he also taught knowledge to the people; he carefully evaluated and arranged</span> [not “created”]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> many proverbs. The Teacher sought to find delightful words, and to write accurately truthful sayings</span> [presumably created by others]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">.</span></blockquote>More specific criticism of the incoherence of Qoheleth’s philosophy (rather than criticism of the incoherence of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>) is that his ideas about happiness are inconsistent with his “vanity of vanities” theme. Thus, conflicting with his assertion that “all is meaningless”, he wrote (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ecc. 3,</span> 12–13 and <span style="font-style: italic;">9,</span> 9):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I have concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live, and also that everyone should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all his toil… Enjoy life with your beloved wife during all the days of your fleeting life…</blockquote>Furthermore, the above certainly aren’t original ideas (consistent with the concluding remarks in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> that “the Teacher… evaluated and arranged many proverbs… and truthful sayings”). Thus, the above quotation is essentially the same as what Sin-leqe-unnini wrote more than a thousand years earlier in his version of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Epic of Gilgamesh</span>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">What is best for us to do is now to sing and dance; relish warm food and cool drinks; cherish children to whom your love gives life; bathe easily in sweet, refreshing waters; [and] play joyfully with your chosen wife.</blockquote>And from at least the same time as Sin-leqe-unnini (but perhaps still another 1,000 years earlier), the ancient Egyptian <a href="http://newsblaze.com/story/20081130045902zzzz.nb/topstory.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Song of the Harper</span></a> contains similar ideas:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Seize the day! Hold holiday!<br />Be unwearied, unceasing, alive.<br />Let not your heart be troubled during your sojourn on earth,<br />Grieve not your heart, whatever comes<br />Recall not the evil…<br />But have joy, joy, joy, and pleasure!</blockquote>Nonetheless, is spite of such incoherencies (and plagiarisms) in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>, it seems clear that, during Hellenization, Greek-enhanced ideas that people should, by themselves, explore both virtue and happiness seem to have seeped into Jewish thoughts, undermining the clerics' con game.<br /><br />Once again, however, the Jewish clerics were disingenuous. Recall the earlier quotation in this post that “<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">arguments against [</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Ecclesiastes</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">’] inclusion [as canonical] were alleged opposition to statements in Psalms, internal incoherency, and heresy (Epicureanism).</span>” The above quotations show, however, that although Qoheleth’s arguments did suffer from “internal incoherency”, his assessment “that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live, and also that everyone should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all his toil” is not “Epicureanism”, since on the one hand, it’s derived from sources at least a thousand years earlier than when Epicurus lived, and on the other hand, it has little to do with Epicureanism. Thus, as I tried to show in the previous post, Epicurus didn’t promote hedonism; therefore, by disingenuously associating hedonism with Epicureanism, the Jewish clerics were almost certainly just continuing their campaign against Epicurus’ recommendations to refuse to live one's life based on "unwarranted assumptions and dogma" about "the gods" and "life-after-death".<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">P.4.4 The Psychology of Martyrdom</span><br />The reason, of course, why people seek pleasure and avoid pain is, first, because (as Spinoza said):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Pleasure and pain… are states or passions whereby every man’s power or endeavor to persist in his being is increased or diminished, helped or hindered.</blockquote>Second, if to Spinoza’s insight is added Maslow’s and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/EvaluatingEndeavors.pdf">additional analyses</a> of the meaning for “persist in [one’s] being”, then one can begin to understand people’s behavior. Thus, for example, one can understand why today’s scientific humanists seek to help intelligent life continue, and as a contrasting example, one can see why today’s fundamentalist Christians and Muslims do whatever their clerics ordain, including engaging in “holy wars”: they do so in the brainwashed belief that, thereby, they’ll “persist in [their] being” forever in paradise.<br /><br />One can similarly uncover reasons for the clash between ancient Greek and Jewish cultures known as the Maccabean Revolt, but the reasons are buried beneath multiple layers of laws. Thus, as I’ve outlined in earlier chapters (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">here</a>) and in earlier posts in this series (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html">here</a>), no law ever came from any god but from our animal instincts: all life “knows” that life is “good” and death is “evil”, and from that fundamental distinction between good and evil, as well as from the fact that the survival of relatively vulnerable humans is enhanced through in-group cooperation, followed all ideas about justice, morality, customs, and (at least for humans) laws.<br /><br />As I outlined earlier in this post, by ~500 BCE the Greeks had moved beyond early speculations that gods dictated laws (first accepting Solon’s laws and then forming the first democracy, in which the people prescribed the laws). When the Greeks conquered the ancient Jews, however, the Jews (similar to “modern” Muslims) were still stuck with the silly belief that their god dictated their laws. The consequence was as it is today between the West and fundamentalist Muslims: terrorism and war. And I’ll add that, what makes investigation of the Maccabean Revolt still interesting is that, in it, the (Jewish) terrorists won.<br /><br />Actually, though, in ancient Greece for centuries after it was clear that laws were made by men (e.g., Solon, c.630–c.560 BCE) and not by any god, irrational opinions about “the law” continued. Illustrative is the fragment from Heraclitus (c.540–c.475 BCE): “<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">T</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">he people should fight for their law as if defending the city’s wall.</span>” Perhaps by ‘law’ he meant his imagined <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos</span> (an imagined “moral order” of the universe), but in any case, if people are urged to fight, it would be better to urge them to fight for justice, not for their laws. Thus, as I quoted earlier in this post, Anacharsis laughed at Solon, himself, “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders’ webs and could catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich</span>” – a cynical view of a reality that, still today, persists throughout the world.<br /><br />As another example, as wise as Socrates (469–399 BCE) reportedly was, it’s easy to argue that he made a fool of himself (and a dead fool at that) defending Athenian laws. The trumped-up charges against him, “<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods in which the state believes, but brings in other new divinities; he also wrongs by corrupting the youth</span>,” seem to have been perpetrated by <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/accusers.html">three accusers</a>: Meletus (possibly because he was a religious fanatic, possibly because Socrates criticized his poetry, and possibly because he was just a puppet of Anytus), Anytus (from a family of tanners whose son Socrates advised not to continue in the tanning business), and Lycon (who may have blamed Socrates for a homosexual relationship between a friend of Socrates and Lycon’s son). When the jury convicted Socrates and his friends prepared a way for him to escape, Plato reports (in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.1b.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">Crito</span></a>) that Socrates stated his own objection to any escape with:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">…but will there be no one to remind you</span> [Socrates allegedly said to himself, about the place to which he might escape] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">that in your old age you violated the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more life?</span></blockquote>Plato states that Socrates added (speaking to himself):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Now</span> [if you drink the poison] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men.</span> [Happiness is imagining that you’re a victim!] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">But if you go forth</span> [i.e., escape]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and our brethren, the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy us.</span></blockquote>I like to think, however, that such poppycock reflected Plato’s and not Socrates’ ideas: it isn’t evil to resist injustice, it isn’t immoral to refuse to comply by unjust laws, and it isn't wrong to reject a mob's mindless, unjust verdict. Instead, people should hold covenants with their society only so long as their society’s laws are just. And the idea that laws are from “the world below” (or above) is total nonsense.<br /><br />Still worse (at least, if the following ideas are Socrates’ and not Plato’s), in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.1b.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">Phaedo</span></a> Plato attributes the following words to Socrates just before he drank the hemlock:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">We can and must pray to the gods that our sojourn on earth will continue happy beyond the grave. This is my prayer, and may it come to pass.</blockquote>If those were Socrates’ words, then Socrates had convinced himself that he possessed an immortal soul and was therefore the first of the fools (or, at least, the first famous fool) who willingly became a martyr for a cause, “thinking” that he would live forever – the same foolishness later told in the story about Jesus and repeated by every subsequent, crazy Christian martyr and maniacal Muslim mujahideen.<br /><br />Within Greece, the first person whose behavior ridiculed Socrates’ decision was apparently Diogenes the Cynic. He flouted not only Athenian laws but even customs, for example by masturbating in public, reportedly saying: “If only it were as easy to get rid of hunger by rubbing my stomach.” According to Diogenes Laërtius, he “<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">[deferred] all things rather to the principles of nature than to those of law; saying that he was adopting the same fashion of life as Hercules had, preferring nothing in the world to liberty.</span>” Outside of Greece, the first of the famous maniacs who followed Socrates’ foolishness were members of the Maccabee family (also known as the Hasmoneans).<br /><br />Before the Maccabean Revolt, the ruling Jewish clerics (the Sadducees) rejected Egyptian/ Hindu/ Zoroastrian/ Pythagorean/ Platonic speculations about life after death. I illustrated that statement in earlier posts, e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/10/clerical-quackery-4-problem-of-evil.html">here</a>, as well as with earlier quotations in this post from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> revealing Qoheleth’s opinion that, when you’re dead, you’re just dead. Associated with the Maccabean Revolt, however, Judaism changed dramatically: Jewish clerics known as the Pharisees adopted the Egyptian/ Hindu/ Zoroastrian/ Platonic scheme that people possessed immortal souls, they adopted the Egyptian/ Zoroastrian scheme that people would be judged after death and their eternal fate would be appropriately decided, and they adopted Zarathustra’s idea of an approaching “end of time”, after which a “messiah” would rule the world in “paradisiacal glory”.<br /><br />Those changes in dogma appear in the OT’s (canonical) <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Daniel. </span> This book is the first in what became a series of ridiculous “apocalyptic” literature (‘apocalyptic’ is a Greek word meaning ‘revelation’), predicting the destruction of the world. Later examples are the bizarre (drug-induced?) <span style="font-style: italic;">Revelation of Saint John the Divine</span> in the NT as well as similar silliness in the Koran and the Book of Mormon.<br /><br />Further, it’s interesting (at least to me) that Daniel is (as far as I know) the only book in the OT whose date of composition is amazingly reliably known: claims of the (unknown) author and claims of religious fundamentalist notwithstanding, it wasn’t written during the Babylonian exile (during the sixth century BCE) but between 167 and 163 BCE. Substantial confidence in this narrow window for the composition of Daniel is appropriate, because (for example) as shown in detail by <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/chris_sandoval/daniel.html">Chris Sandoval</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Actually, it is not a question of philosophical presuppositions, but a question of hard evidence and inference to the best explanation. Daniel’s “predictions” of events up to the desecration of the </span>[rebuilt, Jewish] <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Temple in 167 BC and the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt substantially came true – yet its predictions of a new invasion of Egypt</span> [ruled by the Greek dynasty called the Ptolemies] <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">by Antiochus</span> [the name of the eight, Greek rulers of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire">Seleucid Empire</a>, spanning from Syria to parts of today’s Pakistan] <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">and the Resurrection of the Dead soon thereafter totally failed. The author correctly “predicted” the rise of Alexander the Great, and the history of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings, but he fared far worse in his predictions that God would supernaturally slay Antiochus Epiphanes, raise the dead, and inaugurate the messianic age in 163 BC. The most likely explanation of this strange pattern is that these prophecies were first composed just before the time they started to fail by an author who had no genuine talent for predicting the future. </span></blockquote>Details of such crazy “predictions” of glory for the believers are available at <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel 12,</span> 1:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">At that time Michael, the great prince who watches over your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress unlike any other from the nation’s beginning up to that time. But at that time your own people, all those whose names are found written in the book, will escape.<br /><br />Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake – some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever.</blockquote>Thus, although the “holy warriors” of the Maccabean Revolt (“those bringing many to righteousness”) weren’t offered Muhammad’s 72 virgins (or, correctly translated, 72 white raisons) for their martyrdom, they were offered the ancient Egyptian and Platonic ideal of being “like the stars, forever and ever.”<br /><br />If readers are interested in historical information about the Maccabean Revolt and subsequent events, they might want to start with Chapter 29 entitled “<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap29.html">The Period of Jewish Independence</a>” of the thorough, on-line book <span style="font-style: italic;">Old Testament Life and Literature (1968) </span>by Gerald A. Larue. Here, I’ll just present and make a few comments about the following stimulating analysis <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Hanukkah%20Story&st=cse">published</a> in the 11 December 2009 issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> and written by the competent, Jewish, op-ed columnist David Brooks.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Hanukkah Story</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By David Brooks</span><br /><br />Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s a holiday that accurately reflects how politics is, how history is, how life is.<br /><br />It begins with the spread of Greek culture. Alexander’s Empire, and the smaller empires that succeeded it, brought modernizing ideas and institutions to the Middle East. At its best, Hellenistic culture emphasized the power of reason and the importance of individual conscience. It brought theaters, gymnasiums and debating societies to the cities. It raised living standards, especially in places like Jerusalem.<br /><br />Many Jewish reformers embraced these improvements. The Greeks had one central idea: their aspirations to create an advanced universal culture. And the Jews had their own central idea: the idea of one true God. The reformers wanted to merge these two ideas.<br /><br />Urbane Jews assimilated parts of Greek culture into their own, taking Greek names like Jason, exercising in the gymnasium and prospering within Greek institutions. Not all Jews assimilated. Some resisted quietly. Others fled to the hills. But Jerusalem did well. The Seleucid dynasty, which had political control over the area, was not merely tolerant; it used imperial money to help promote the diverse religions within its sphere.<br /><br />In 167 BCE, however, the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, issued a series of decrees defiling the temple, confiscating wealth and banning Jewish practice, under penalty of death. It’s unclear why he did this. Some historians believe that extremist Jewish reformers were in control and were hoping to wipe out what they saw as the primitive remnants of their faith. Others believe Antiochus thought the Jews were disloyal fifth columnists in his struggle against the Egyptians and, hence, was hoping to assimilate them into his nation.<br /><br />Regardless, those who refused to eat pork were killed in an early case of pure religious martyrdom.<br /><br />As Jeffrey Goldberg, who is writing a book on this period, points out, the Jews were slow to revolt. The cultural pressure on Jewish practice had been mounting; it was only when it hit an insane political level that Jewish traditionalists took up arms. When they did, the first person they killed was a fellow Jew.<br /><br />In the town of Modin, a Jew who was attempting to perform a sacrifice on a new Greek altar was slaughtered by Mattathias, the old head of a priestly family. Mattathias’s five sons, led by Judah Maccabee, then led an insurgent revolt against the regime.<br /><br />The Jewish civil war raised questions: Who is a Jew? Who gets to define the right level of observance? It also created a spiritual crisis. This was not a battle between tribes. It was a battle between theologies and threw up all sorts of issues about why bad things happen to faithful believers and what happens in the afterlife – issues that would reverberate in the region for centuries, to epic effect.<br /><br />The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics. They were not in total revolt against Greek culture. They used Greek constitutional language to explain themselves. They created a festival to commemorate their triumph (which is part of Greek, not Jewish, culture). Before long, they were electing their priests.<br /><br />On the other hand, they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.<br /><br />They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first. They retook Jerusalem in 164 BCE and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem.<br /><br />Generations of Sunday school teachers have turned Hanukkah into the story of unified Jewish bravery against an anti-Semitic Hellenic empire. Settlers in the West Bank tell it as a story of how the Jewish hard-core defeated the corrupt, assimilated Jewish masses. Rabbis later added the lamp miracle to give God at least a bit part in the proceedings.<br /><br />But there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.</blockquote>The only quarrels I have with Brooks’ article arise from his claim: “<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">The Maccabees</span> [like today’s Taliban] <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">heroically preserved the Jewish faith.</span>” Thus, on the one hand, no one (including Socrates, the Maccabees, the Jesus described in the New Testament, Christian martyrs, Muslim mujahideen, etc.) is “heroic” who “thinks” that eternal life in paradise follows death: such people aren’t heroic; they’re bonkers. And on the other hand, the Maccabees didn’t preserve “the Jewish faith”; instead, their actions precipitated the conversion of Judaism to Zoroastrianism, yielding Judaism 4.0.<br /><br />My own skepticism and cynicism lead me to summarize that the Maccabean Revolt provides additional prime examples of clerical quackery: clerics promote killing people to preserve their “sacred” dogma, but if elements of their dogma should impede their con game (i.e., constrain their power), they’ll relatively quickly identify convenient revisions to maintain their privileged, parasitic positions, preserving their own useless carcasses by maintaining control over the imagination (and therefore the purse strings) of the people. Thus, if what the clerical quacks need is some crazed “holy warriors” to do their fighting for them, they’ll offer the deluded fools eternal life in paradise, and if they need their “holy warriors” to fight also on “the Sabbath”, then certainly they’re willing to jettison even one of “God’s” Ten Commandments (as they did during the Maccabean revolt). And the reason why all religious dogma can nevertheless be so “flexible” (when convenient for the clerics) is obviously because, after all, it’s all just make believe.<br /><br />In addition, my pessimism suggests that humans will need to endure at least another century of such stupidities – should humanity manage to survive that long. During the most recent few centuries, humanists have managed to constrain most Jews and Christians from indulging in such insanities, but far-too-many Muslims continue to indulge in such madness, as is illustrated with the <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4022.htm">following statement</a>, one of hundreds if not thousands of similar examples that are readily available, this one made by the former Lebanese minister Elie Al-Firzli and aired on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV on February 17, 2010:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Religious ideology, the doctrine of faith, the yearning for martyrdom... I cannot see any justification for this longing – and to such an extent – other than the belief in a future in a world other than this. The yearning for martyrdom was one of the reasons for the qualitative leap in the conflict with the Israeli enemy… We have to believe that all the blood that is being shed in the name of martyrdom for the sake of the great victory is the gateway to the true life – the gateway to a life of glory, nobility, and honor… The road to life passes through death.</blockquote>Would that such idiots would see that the most commonly traveled road to insanity runs through organized religion.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-29528719082423974842010-02-21T04:31:00.000-08:002011-03-21T02:10:56.293-07:00Clerical Quackery 8 – Physics versus Metaphysics in Ancient Greece – 4 – Epicureans versus Stoics<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh1oR8UAqnLsgDFHnIlQ6LPnXxIK6MPhZUsY2JaPnpPxLegC0o-fDmX6qVyE6KgRph8JPx1ZFJdVcv4Fo9mifaJuJG0oAWhNYtp3R1eqHUXwcGpc4yPChRoVkmVfP_GXYbl-JGLQAw6Xk/s1600-h/the+epic+cure.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><br />
</a>This is the 28th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie”, the 8th in a subseries dealing with “Clerical Quackery”, and the 4th in the sub-subseries (!) dealing with “Physics <span style="font-style: italic;">versus</span> Metaphysics in Ancient Greece”. In case any readers have been trying to follow this series of posts and are beginning to wonder about its direction, it might be useful if I repeat that my reason for reviewing ideas from ancient Greece was (and still is!) to show how some of the silly, metaphysical ideas of the Greeks (e.g., Plato’s) were subsequently incorporated into the “holy books” of the Jews, Christians, and Arabs, which then went on to pollute the minds of a substantial fraction of all people currently in the world.<br />
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For this fourth and final post in this ridiculously brief review of skirmishes and battles that occurred in ancient Greece in the war between science and religion, I want to at least outline the culmination of clashes between those who tried to develop a naturalistic (or materialistic) worldview and those who clung to a supernatural (or idealistic) worldview. This culmination was between the Epicureans (who began to develop a naturalistic worldview) and the Stoics (who clung to supernaturalism).<br />
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Now, as readers can easily confirm, an enormous amount of information is available on the internet (and elsewhere) about the Epicureans and the Stoics. For example, at Google the word ‘Epicurean’ yields about 1.8 million hits and ‘Stoic’ yields about 3.2 million hits! Consequently, in this post, the only possibly unique and maybe useful contributions that I can make (even though I’m not a historian) are comments on Epicureanism and Stoicism as viewed by a physicist who is convinced that the god idea is ridiculous. As a result, I’ll devote more space to the naturalistic worldview of the Epicureans (because it relied on halting scientific advances in ancient Greece and rejected most of the then-current god ideas) and I’ll devote less space to the supernaturalistic worldview of the Stoics (because, although it relied on development in Aristotelian logic, the Stoics unfortunately based their deductions on faulty premisses of prehistoric mysticism, just as do “educated” religious people to this day).<br />
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For readers who seek additional information about the Epicureans and Stoics, perhaps it would be useful for me to mention some sources that I found particularly valuable. For example, an excellent, succinct, and easy-to-read summary is at the <a href="http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/latergreeks.html">webpage</a> created by Dr. C. George Boeree. For more in-depth analyses, an excellent website on Epicureanism is the <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/index.html">one</a> created by Vincent Cooke; another is <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/index.php">Epicurus.info</a>, apparently created by Erik Anderson. For thorough information about the Stoics, there is the always-illuminating <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a>. For still more complete information, there is the amazing, 889-page, 1939 online-book entitled <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Life of Greece</span></a> by Will Durant.<br />
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In Durant’s book I found only one serious error, one glaring omission, and one obnoxious bias. The error deals with his description of Stoical contributions to logic. Stoicism developed through extensions to Aristotelian logic, first by Zeno of Citium (c.334–c.262 BCE), the founder of Stoicism [and note the distinction between Zeno of (the Italian city of) Elea, famous for his paradoxes <span style="font-style: italic;">versus</span> the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium (i.e., Cyprus)] and then extended further by Zeno of Citium’s successors, Cleanthes (c.330–c.230 BCE) and especially Chrysippus (c.280–c.207 BCE). On p. 749 of his book, Durant states:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">It was probably Chrysippus who divided the Stoic system into logic, natural science, and ethics. Zeno and his successors prided themselves on their contributions to logical theory, but the streams of ink that flowed from them on this subject have left no appreciable residue of enlightenment or use.</blockquote>Maybe that seemed to be the case when Durant wrote his 1939 book, but subsequently, as described by Keith Devlin at a <a href="http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_june.html">webpage</a> of the Mathematical Association of America:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">What Zeno of Citium actually did was found the Stoic school of logic. Though modern mathematical logic is popularly credited as having its beginnings in the syllogistic logic of Aristotle, most of the fundamental notions of contemporary propositional logic began not with Aristotle but with Zeno and the Stoics… By singling out propositions as the building blocks for reasoning and identifying some of the abstract patterns involved in reasoning with propositions… the Stoics’ contribution to logic was a major intellectual achievement. Together with Aristotelian logic, it paved the way for all subsequent work in logic, right up to the present day, and led to much of twentieth century logic and computer science.</span> </blockquote>As for the one glaring omission and one obnoxious bias that I found in Durant’s book, I’ll get to them later in this post. First, I’ll try to at least sketch the philosophy of both the Epicureans and the Stoics.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Philosophical Overview</span></span><br />
As I argued in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/02/your-most-important-assumption.html">earlier post</a>, the fundamental step in the development of any philosophy is the decision about how to gain knowledge, i.e., one’s epistemology (from the Greek word for ‘knowledge’, <span style="font-style: italic;">epistēmē</span>). Following one’s epistemological choices, one then develops a worldview, from which follows other aspects of one’s philosophy, such as ethics. In this post, therefore, I’ll try to organize my brief reviews of both the Epicureans and Stoics under the headings: Epistemology, Worldview, and Ethics.<br />
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For both the Epicureans and Stoics (and for that matter, for all naturalists and supernaturalists), their epistemologies start from making observations and applying reasoning. Usually, naturalists are more skeptical than supernaturalists, more careful about their generalizations, hold them with less fervor, and therefore are less inclined to accept deductions from their generalizations than do supernaturalists, whom naturalists sometimes deride with the term “damnable deducers”. In general, supernaturalists <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">foolishly</a> conclude that they know “the truth”, whereas naturalists generally agree with the Greek philosopher Xenophanes (c.570–c.480 BCE): “<span style="color: #000099;">All is but a woven web of guesses.</span>”<br />
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Beyond those similarities (of observing and reasoning) and divergences (of the credence they give to their deductions), the epistemologies of the two groups separate further. Thus, the critical, additional step taken by religious people (i.e., idealistic people with a supernaturalistic worldview) to gain alleged <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">knowledge</a> is generally chosen from among the options crudely illustrated with the following partial list.<br />
<blockquote>• Throughout history, the epistemology of devout Hindus, Jews, and Muslims has relied on authoritarianism: they accept as knowledge – they “believe” as “true” – whatever their cultures (especially their fathers) say.<br />
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• Although Christianity began by adopting authoritarianism (as I plan to illustrate in a later post in this series), with the claimed “authority” being “prophecies” contained in the Old Testament plus “miracles” allegedly performed by the “savior” Jesus, yet the epistemology of the majority of “modern”, simpleton Christians (as well as similar Muslims) is the (logical fallacy known as the) Pleasure Principle: if it feels good, it must be “true” – and undoubtedly it feels good to such simpletons to “believe” that they’ll live forever in paradise.<br />
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• For less simplistic Christians (as well as some Muslims and some religious Jews), their epistemology continues to rely on reason or logic, which superficially seems commendable, but their logic is based on unfounded premisses (such as Aristotle’s incorrect premiss that a “creator god” was needed as a “first cause”, e.g., of motion). </blockquote>Below, I’ll sketch a little of the history of the epistemology and resulting philosophies of the Stoics and Epicureans, but before doing so, perhaps the following overview might be useful.<br />
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The Stoics continued using the epistemology of all prehistoric, religious people. The data from which they started was the obvious: amazingly complicated and perplexing aspects of nature, on Earth and in the heavens. The reasoning they applied to obtain their inferences was by analogy and seemed obvious (and still seems obvious to all religious people): whereas known things and processes are caused by some agent, there must be some agent (some god or other) who is the cause of natural things and processes. From that sweeping generalization (made by all religious people) the rest followed by deduction: given that god (or gods) exist, then [whatever]. As a result, the Stoics were (and all religious people are) primarily “deducers”, deducing all details from their first, sweeping, unverifiable premiss.<br />
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The Epicureans, on the other hand, were more skeptical, less confident that they possessed “the truth”. As Epicurus wrote in his <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/Lives.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Pythocles</span></a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">It is unwise to desire what is impossible: to proclaim a uniform theory about everything… Rather than committing to explanations based on unwarranted assumptions and dogma, we may only theorize as far as the phenomena allow. For our life has no need of unreasonable and groundless opinions; our one need is untroubled existence. So, if one is satisfied (as he should be) with that which is shown to be less than certain, it is no cause for concern that things can be explained in more than one way, consistent with the evidence. But if one accepts one explanation and rejects another that is equally consistent with the evidence, he is obviously rejecting science altogether and taking refuge in myth. </blockquote>If asked, most modern physicists would probably respond similarly! But be that as it is, the Epicureans were therefore less dogmatic: for them (and for all naturalists), the supernaturalists’ “solution” is worse than useless.<br />
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For simpletons, the supernaturalists’ “solution” obviously seems simple, but for others, it causes more perplexing questions than it proposes to answer. Thus, when told that God created everything, even children ask: “But, where did God come from?” Similarly, as relayed by the philosopher David Hume in his 1757 book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Natural History of Religion:</span><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">We are told by Sextus Empiricus that Epicurus, when a boy, reading with his preceptor these verses of Hesiod, </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Eldest of beings, Chaos first arose;</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Next Earth, wide-stretch’d, the seat of all</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">the young scholar first betrayed his inquisitive genius, by asking, “And Chaos whence?” but was told by his preceptor that he must have recourse to the philosophers for a solution of such questions. And from this hint Epicurus left philology and all other studies, in order to betake himself to that science, whence alone he expected satisfaction with regard to these sublime subjects.</span></blockquote>On the other hand, clerics (rather than “preceptors”) have always made themselves available to answer all such questions about their god(s) – if the simpletons will just do as the clerics say, which of course includes paying the clerics, so they can continue their parasitic existence promoting their quackery.<br />
<br />
For naturalists, maybe unfortunately but maybe not, we’re generally stuck with uncertainties and unknowns. Illustrative are the following <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman">comments</a> by Richard Feynman, co-winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt…<br />
<br />
We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain…<br />
<br />
…science [is] a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge…</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Stoics’ Worldview</span><br />
Given their epistemological choices to rely on observations of nature, on reason, and on the authority of parents, clerics, and their myths, the Stoics’ worldview was a continuation of “traditional”, supernatural nonsense, as first documented in ancient Greece by Homer and Hesiod. The Stoics, however, added “refinements” that they convinced themselves were rational. Admittedly, such refinements were usually logical, but they were also unsound, because they were based on unsubstantiated premisses about the existences of gods and immortal souls.<br />
<br />
The first ancient Greek who apparently convinced himself and his followers that a supernatural worldview was rational seems to have been Pythagoras (c.580–500 BCE), who (as I mentioned in an earlier post in this subseries) seems to have acquired his ideas from other cultures (including the Egyptians, probably the Zoroastrians, and possibly the Hindus). Later Greek mystics who lived among or were significantly influenced by Greek settlers in Italy compounded Pythagoras’ errors, building rational sandcastles in their minds, including:<br />
<blockquote>• Parmenides (c.515–c.450 BCE) who speculated, “<span style="color: #6600cc;">all is one</span>” and deduced that “<span style="color: #6600cc;">change is impossible</span>”, which led to the paradoxes mentioned in the previous post that were promoted by Zeno of Elea (c.490–c.430 BCE)<br />
<br />
• Empedocles (c.490–430 BCE), who speculated that “<span style="color: #6600cc;">when, released from the body, you ascend to the free ether; you will become an immortal god, escaping death</span>”, and of course<br />
<br />
• Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE), whose wild speculations were unfortunately incorporated into the foundations of not only Stoicism but also the data-less speculations known as Christianity and Islam.</blockquote>In turn, Plato’s mysticism was apparently derived from many sources, including initiation in one or more “mystery religions” (Egyptian or Pythagorean or Eleusinian).<br />
<br />
As I also mentioned in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/12/clerical-quackery-6-physics-versus.html">earlier post</a>, Plato wrote that he wouldn’t reveal "the Mysteries" in his writings. His writings suggest, however, that he incorporated ideas from many earlier mystics, including from Pythagoras about “ideal forms”, from Anaximenes (fl. 585 BCE), who <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece">speculated</a> that “the first principle” wasn’t water but air “<span style="color: #6600cc;">and as the soul, which is air, holds us together, so the air, or <span style="font-style: italic;">pneuma</span>, of the world is its pervasive spirit, breath, or God</span>”, from Heraclitus (c. 535–c.475 BCE) about the Logos or “reason incorporated into the fabric of the universe”, and from Empedocles (c.490–430 BCE) about humans possessing immortal souls. In particular, it appears that it was Anaximenes’ idea that led Plato to propose that the world (or the universe or nature) also had a soul, “the world soul” (or “the universal soul”).<br />
<br />
The fundamental dogma then adopted by the Stoics was that Nature (i.e., the entire universe) was “alive”, with a soul, and was god. For example:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #6600cc;">The universe itself is god and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is this same world’s guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality which embraces all existence…</span> [Chrysippus (c.280–c.207 BCE)]<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web.</span> [Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome from 161–180 CE]</blockquote>Having adopted that, in general, God was the universe and that, in particular, God was the universe’s “guiding principle” and its “mind and reason” (i.e., Heraclitus’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos</span>, which later became the Christians’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Word</span> and earlier was the Zoroastrians’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span>, the Egyptians’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span>, and the Hindus’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Ritam</span>), the Stoics proceeded to define their ethics, i.e., how they should live consistent with their worldview. The goal they adopted was that humans should live their lives with their souls “in harmony” with the world-soul (i.e., God or Nature). In the process of developing their goal, they apparently relied on some of Aristotle’s errors, which because the result is fundamental for the ethics of both Stoics and Epicureans, I should at least outline.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Aristotle’s Influence</span><br />
In developing their ethics, the Stoics unfortunately accepted Aristotle’s analysis of the “good life”. I used the word “unfortunately” and, earlier in this post, I mentioned a “glaring omission” in Durant’s book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Life of Greece</span>, because in his analysis of the “good life”, Aristotle made major mistakes, which the Stoics (and for that matter, also the Epicureans) failed to notice and which Durant failed to mention. In earlier chapters of my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>, I addressed these Aristotelian errors in multiple chapters (e.g., see <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/EvaluatingEndeavors.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">here</a>); in this post, I’ll try to outline his analysis and its errors in just a few paragraphs.<br />
<br />
Aristotle’s errors in his analysis of “the good life” appear in what is otherwise, I think, the best of his books: <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.mb.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">Nichomachean Ethics</span></a>. In it, Aristotle abandons his authoritarianism (mentioned in the previous post), starting his book with the humble and amazingly perceptive statement (Bk. 1, Pt. 3):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature… We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits…</span> </blockquote>As for the goal of his book, to me it’s amazing that, while the Jews, Persians, Egyptians, Hindus, and other religious people were mired in their desire to placate their god (or gods), Aristotle had the presence of mind (and maybe even the audacity!) to wonder about the best way to achieve happiness! And actually, I suspect that Aristotle felt free to explore such a question, because he had concluded (as I outlined in the previous post) that the creator God (who set things in the universe in motion) was subsequently busy “contemplating his own navel”, uninterested in the affairs of mere people (which is viewpoint that Epicurus and later Epicureans also adopted). In fact, the essence of that refrain has reverberated through subsequent millennia (and no doubt will continue): one’s worldview dictates one’s outlook on life.<br />
<br />
But generalizations aside for now, Aristotle specifies his goal for <span style="font-style: italic;">Nichomachean Ethics</span> as follows (Bk. I, Pts. 1, 2, & 4):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought</span> [especially by Socrates and Plato!] <span style="color: #000099;">to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is… </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">Therefore, if there is only one final end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are more than one, the most final of these will be what we are seeking. Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #000099;">Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else, but honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.</span></blockquote>What an astoundingly brilliant analysis – and all the more so, because in hindsight, it’s totally obvious!<br />
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In his 1964 book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/11393708/An-Atheists-Values-1964-by-Richard-Robinson-19021996"><span style="font-style: italic;">An Atheist's Values</span></a>, however, the philosopher Richard Robinson (1902–96) disagrees:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">If you go as far as Aristotle, and demand a good that is a pure end and in no way also a means, you are demanding an impossibility, and will be left with no good at all. Aristotle thought he was left with happiness, which, he said, is sought always for its own sake and never as a means to something else. But happiness is often sought as a means to something else. The manager of a factory tries to make the workers happy in order to get greater production. The politician tries to make the voters happy in order to stay in power. A man may try to make himself happy in order to make himself more efficient, or more conscientious, or in order to make his family happier. Everything whatever logically could be sought by someone as a means to something else. And it seems very probable that everything that is sought by anybody is sought by somebody as a means to something else. And, if that is so, Aristotle's good is non-existent.</blockquote>I would, however, disagree with Robinson: in his examples of the factory manager and politician, Robinson already suggests that what they sought was their own happiness (<span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> increased factory production and political power, respectively) and in his example of a man seeking to be more efficient, more conscientious, or to make his family happier, Robinson fails to address the obvious question about why the man would seek such, if not for his own, perceived, greater happiness.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, though, Aristotle then started down an unproductive path, beginning with his (I, 7):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man.</blockquote>That step, seeking to “ascertain the function of man”, started Aristotle down a path that has led literally billions of religious people to lose control of their lives (to their clerics). Aristotle’s inquiry about “the function of man” is equivalent to asking: “What’s the purpose of life?” It fails to recognize the obvious, namely (as I’ve argued <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P01_The_Purpose_of_Life.pdf">elsewhere</a>), the purpose of life is to live!<br />
<br />
In addition and simultaneously, Aristotle analysis contains the fatal error of inadequately appreciating what ‘happiness’ is – a somewhat surprising error, given that he was usually so careful (pedantically so!) about the meaning of words. In particular (as I’ve also argued <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">elsewhere</a>), with Aristotle’s almost exclusive focus on (left-brain) analysis, he failed to appreciate that ‘happiness’ is a (right-brain) emotion – an emotion (a right-brain synthesis) informing us of progress that we’re making (or think that we’re making) toward our goals. For example, if you conclude that you’re making progress understanding something (such as the concept of ‘happiness’!), then you’ll feel some amount of happiness, and even if you reach the ridiculous conclusion that you’re making progress toward the totally imaginary goal of living forever in paradise with God or Allah (e.g., by killing an abortion-clinic doctor or by hijacking an airplane and killing thousands of people), then again you’ll be happy: crazy, mind you, but happily so.<br />
<br />
Aristotle’s next major error was in his identification of the “function of man”. In an extensive analysis he sought to understand the “proper function of man”, examining what was “virtuous” for humans, defining “virtue” to be what is consistent with one’s “nature” (I, 7):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us… That which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life [according to reason], therefore, is also the happiest…</blockquote>The silliness of such a conclusion is easy to see if the reader will consider which would make you happier: learning another proof in, say, geometry, or learning that a certain someone loves you as much as you love her or him! Aristotle couldn’t recover from such errors, nor could the Stoics, who followed him down the same ‘stoical’ (emotionless) path.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stoical Ethics</span><br />
The Stoics’ epistemological mistakes (relying on reasoning from unsubstantiated premisses rather than relying on evidence), their resultant speculative worldview (of a universal soul, whom they called God or Zeus or Nature), and their unfortunate decision to adopt Aristotle’s analysis that life according to reason was the happiest, led them to pursue what they considered to be “virtue” with fanatical resolve. Illustrative are the following quotations from probably the most famous book by a Stoic, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Discourses</span></a> by Epictetus (50–138 CE). I’ve organized the quotations by showing links to ideas from earlier mystics.<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />
<blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Links to Socrates’ rejection of other people’s opinions:</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">For what do you think? Do you think that, if Socrates had wished to preserve externals, he would have come forward and said: “Anytus and Meletus can certainly kill me, but to harm me they are not able?” Was he so foolish as not to see that this way leads not to the preservation of life and fortune, but to another end? What is the reason, then, that he takes no account of his adversaries, and even irritates them?” [II, 2]</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Links to Pythagoras’ “Reason is immortal” and Plato’s immortal souls:</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">This is the true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is the combat, divine is the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for freedom from perturbation. Remember God: call on him as a helper and protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm. For what is a greater storm than that which comes from appearances which are violent and drive away the reason? For the storm itself, what else is it but an appearance? For take away the fear of death, and suppose as many thunders and lightnings as you please, and you will know what calm and serenity there is in the ruling faculty. [II, 18]</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Links to Diogenes the Cynic’s idea of freedom:</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">So Diogenes says that there is one way to freedom, and that is to die content. And he writes to the Persian king, “You cannot enslave the Athenian state any more than you can enslave fishes.” “How is that? Cannot I catch them?” “If you catch them,” says Diogenes, “they will immediately leave you, as fishes do; for if you catch a fish, it dies; and if these men that are caught shall die, of what use to you is the preparation for war?”…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Well then let us recapitulate the things which have been agreed on. The man who is not under restraint is free, to whom things are exactly in that state in which he wishes them to be; but he who can be restrained or compelled or hindered, or thrown into any circumstances against his will, is a slave. But who is free from restraint? He who desires nothing that belongs to others. And what are the things which belong to others? Those which are not in our power either to have or not to have, or to have of a certain kind or in a certain manner. Therefore [one’s] body belongs to another, the parts of the body belong to another, possession belongs to another. If, then, you are attached to any of these things as your own, you will pay the penalty which it is proper for him to pay who desires what belongs to another…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">Therefore see what Diogenes himself says and writes: “For this reason,” he says, “Diogenes, it is in your power to speak both with the King of the Persians and with Archidamus the king of the Lacedaemonians, as you please.” Was it because he was born of free parents? I suppose all the Athenians and all the Lacedaemonians, because they were born of slaves, could not talk with them as they wished, but feared and paid court to them. Why then does he say that it is in his power? “Because I do not consider the poor body to be my own, because I want nothing, because law is everything to me, and nothing else is.” These were the things which permitted him to be free… for freedom is acquired not by the full possession of the things which are desired, but by removing the desire. [IV, 1]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">And, of course, links to the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium:</span><br />
<span style="color: #6600cc;">What, then, is the material of the philosopher? Is it a cloak? No, but reason. What is his end? Is it to wear a cloak? No, but to possess the reason in a right state. Of what kind are his theorems? Are they those about the way in which the beard becomes great or the hair long? No, but rather what Zeno says, to know the elements of reason, what kind of a thing each of them is, and how they are fitted to one another, and what things are consequent upon them.</span></blockquote>All stoical ideas were, however, not so fanatical as suggested by the above quotations from Epictetus, who seemed to be willing to almost nonchalantly give up his arm or his leg or even his life to anyone who would make a claim on them. As illustrations of more reasonable opinions (and as a prelude to Christianity), the Stoics promoted the brotherhood of mankind, e.g.,<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #6600cc;">We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.</span> [Seneca the Younger, 4–65 CE]</blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: #6600cc;">The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other.</span> [Epictetus, 50–138 CE]</blockquote>Moreover, by the time of the stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE), Stoicism had mellowed to the wonderful description given in his <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Meditations</span></a>. Illustrative is his following statement (Bk. 11), which is also one of the first references to Christianity external to the creed:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed or continue to exist; but so that this readiness comes from a man’s own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity and in a way to persuade another, without tragic show. </span> </blockquote>It’s also clear that the Stoics (as well as the Epicureans) promoted one of the foundational features of the West, namely, individualism, but as readers can find on the internet (e.g., <a href="http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/doubtful_descent_3.htm">here</a>), it’s debatable if another foundational feature of the West, namely, human rights, should be attributed to the Stoics, in spite of the frequently quoted statement by Rome’s Seneca the Younger (c.4 BCE – 65 CE):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">It is a mistake to imagine that slavery pervades a man’s whole being; the better part of him is exempt from it: the body indeed is subjected and in the power of a master, but the mind is independent, and indeed is so free and wild, that it cannot be restrained even by this prison of the body, wherein it is confined.</blockquote>In fact, it's easy to argue that the Stoics suppressed the concept of human rights, since they promoted the bizarre concept that only your thoughts belong to you (would that it were so; would that indoctrination were prohibited!), and therefore, your claim on anything else (even your body!), for some unexplained reason, had less validity than another person's claim on what we in the West now consider to be your own.<br />
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In his book, Durant summarizes the Stoics’ influence as follows:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The Stoics lent countenance to superstition, and had an injurious effect upon science; but they saw clearly the basic problem of their age – the collapse of the theological basis of morals – and they made an honest attempt to bridge the gap between religion and philosophy.</blockquote>I would agree that the Stoics made “an honest attempt”, but similar to Buddhists, what an impossible method they chose: they sought happiness (an emotion) by suppressing emotion! That they could accomplish such a feat and that other mystics can convince themselves that, if they become slaves to their god, then they'll be free, and if they are killed for their cause, then they’ll live forever, leads me to marvel at the ability of humans to fool themselves. Feynman saw the problem and described the solution well:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Epicureanism</span><br />
While Zeno of Citium (c.334–c.262 BCE) and his followers suppressed emotions by extending Aristotle’s logic, applying it to the Socratic problem of how to live a “good life”, and unfortunately adopting Plato’s (and others’) unjustified premisses, Epicurus (341–270 BCE) developed his philosophy from the foundation provided by Democritus (c.460–c.370 BCE) and by refusing to follow Aristotle down the path he explored trying to ascertain “the function of man.” Instead, and perhaps also following the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus (c.410–c.355 BCE), Epicurus sought methods to optimize happiness, seeking a deliberate and delicate balance between seeking some pleasures while enduring some pains. Below, I’ll try to illustrate those comments and then comment on Epicurus’ failure to investigate and understand the nature of ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’, an error that began to be corrected almost 2,000 years later by the (stoical) “father of psychology”, Baruch Spinoza (1632–77). First, however, and consistent with my earlier remarks, I want to comment on the epistemology and worldview that Epicurus apparently adopted.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Epicurus’ Epistemology</span><br />
As I already mentioned, the fundamental step in developing one’s worldview is to decide how knowledge is to be gained. To try to understand Epicurus’ epistemology, we’re hampered because all of the ~300 books (or scrolls) that he reportedly wrote were lost – or destroyed by his adversaries (including first the Stoics and then the Christians). Several of his short documents survived, however, including four of his letters, a list of his principal doctrines, his <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Will</span>, and what have become known as “the Vatican Sayings” (contained in a 14th century document from the Vatican Library and which include quotations from later Epicureans). Copies of the surviving documents are available at Vincent Cook’s <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/">website</a>.<br />
<br />
Moreover, some of Epicurus’ complete books were apparently available to some ancient authors, and from those authors, additional information is available, specifically about Epicurus’ epistemology. Thus, in <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/Lives.html">Chapter 10</a>, entitled “The Life of Epicurus”, of his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers,</span> written in about 230 CE, Diogenes Laërtius references Epicurus’ book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Canon </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Criterion [of Truth]</span>, from which Epicurus’ epistemology is clear. In the following quotation from Diogenes Laërtius, the notes in braces, {…}, seem to have been added by Erik Anderson; I’ve added a few notes in brackets, […].<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">[Epicurus’] Three Divisions of Philosophy: Canonics, Physics, and Ethics
</span></div><br />
But first [writes Diogenes Laërtius], some few preliminary remarks about [Epicurus’] division of his philosophy. It is divided into three subjects: Canonics, Physics, and Ethics. Canonics forms the introduction to the system and is found in a single work entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Canon</span>. Physics consists of a comprehensive theory of nature; it is found in the thirty-seven books <span style="font-style: italic;">On Nature</span> and is also summarized among his <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters</span>. Ethics, finally, deals with choice and avoidance, which may be found in the books <span style="font-style: italic;">On Lifecourses</span>, among his <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters</span>, and in the book <span style="font-style: italic;">On the End-Goal</span>.<br />
<br />
Canonics and Physics are usually treated jointly. The former defines the criterion of truth and discusses first principles (the elementary part of philosophy), while the latter deals with the creation and destruction of things in nature. Ethics counsels upon things chosen versus those avoided, the art of living, and the end-goal. Dialectics they dismiss as superfluous – they say that ordinary terms for things is sufficient for physicists to advance their understanding of nature.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Some Elaboration on Canonics
</span><br />
Now in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Canon</span> Epicurus states that the criteria of truth are:<br />
• sensations {<span style="font-style: italic;">tas aistheses</span>},<br />
• preconceptions {<span style="font-style: italic;">prolepses</span>}, and<br />
• feelings {<span style="font-style: italic;">ta pathon</span>}.<br />
Epicureans in general also include: mental images focused by thought. His own statements are also to be found in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Herodotus</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Principle Doctrines.</span><br />
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“Sensation,” he says, “is non-rational and unbiased by memory, for it is neither produced spontaneously {inside the mind} nor can it add or subtract information from its external cause.
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<br />
“Nothing exists which can refute sensations. Similar sensations cannot refute each other {e.g., things seen}, because they are equally valid. Dissimilar sensations cannot either {e.g., things seen versus things heard}, since they do not discriminate the same things. Thus, one sensation cannot refute another, since they all command our attention. Nor can reason refute sensations, since all reason depends on them. The reality of independent sensations confirms the truth of sensory information (seeing and hearing are real, just as experiencing pain is).<br />
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“It follows that we can draw inferences about things hidden from our senses only from things apparent to our senses. Such knowledge results from applying sensory information to methods of confrontation, analogy, similarity, and combination, with some contribution from reasoning also.<br />
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“The visions produced by insanity and dreams also stem from real objects, for they do act upon us; and that which has no reality can produce no action.”
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<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Preconception,</span> the Epicureans say, is a kind of perception, correct opinion, conception, or general recollection of a frequently experienced external object. For example: ‘Such-and-such kind of thing is a man’ – as soon as the word ‘man’ is uttered, the figure of a man immediately comes to mind as a preconception, already formed by prior sensations.<br />
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Thus, the first notion a word awakens in us is a correct one; in fact, we could not inquire about anything if we had no previous notion of it. For example: ‘Is that a horse or an ox standing over there?’ One must have already preconceived the forms of a horse and an ox in order to ask this. We could not even give names to things if we had no preliminary notion of what the things were. It follows that preconceptions clearly exist.<br />
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Opinions also depend on preconceptions. They serve as our point of reference when we ask, for example, ‘How do we know if this is a man?’ The Epicureans also use the word assumption for opinion. An opinion may be true or false. True opinions are confirmed and uncontradicted {by the testimony of sensations}; false opinions are unconfirmed and contradicted {by the testimony of sensations}. Hence they speak of awaiting {testimony} when one awaits a closer view of an object before proclaiming it to be, for example, a tower.
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<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Feelings </span>they say are two: pleasure and pain, which affect every living being. Pleasure is congenial to our nature, while pain is hostile to it. Thus they serve as criteria for all choice of avoidance.<br />
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They also say that there are two kinds of philosophical inquiry: one concerns facts, the other mere words.</blockquote>The above clearly communicates the bases of Epicurus’ epistemology: he based his worldview and his philosophy not on words (as did Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and the earlier Sophists) but on data determined by the senses and from<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">… inferences about things hidden from our senses only from things apparent to our senses. Such knowledge results from applying sensory information to methods of confrontation, analogy, similarity, and combination, with some contribution from reasoning also.</blockquote>In his <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/Lives.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Herodotus</span></a>, Epicurus adds (in which the additions between slashes, /…/, are “scholarly repairs to text deemed corrupt or missing”):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">… we must conduct all our investigations based on the testimony of our senses, feelings, and all other valid criteria. In this way, we shall have some sign by which to make inferences about things awaiting confirmation /by the testimony of our senses/ <by> and also about things /that will remain/ <that> hidden from our senses.</that></by></blockquote>In fact, scientists apply the same methods to this day, save only that we use instruments developed to extend the range of our senses.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Naturalists’ Worldview</span><br />
As I tried to indicate in earlier posts in this subseries, a naturalistic worldview started to be developed in ancient Greece by Thales (c.624–c.545 BCE), who perhaps absorbed some of his ideas from travels in Mesopotamia and beyond. Thales’ speculation that “water is the cause of all things” led to a host of other speculations about natural causes by other Ionian Greeks (i.e., Greek settlers living in what is now western Turkey). These speculations included the idea of Anaximander (c.610–c.546 BCE) that humans were “like another animal, namely a fish, in the beginning” and the idea of Leucippus (first half of 5th century BCE) and his student Democritus (c.460–c.370 BCE) that “in reality there are atoms and space.” It was this idea of atoms that, a century later, became foundational for the worldview adopted by Epicurus (341–270 BCE). In what follows, consequently, I first want to comment on the ideas of some of the earlier materialists or naturalists.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Leucippus’ Atomic Hypothesis</span><br />
According to the book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers</span> by Diogenes Laërtius (already referenced), when Democritus was a boy in the Thracian city of Abdera (in the NE corner of Greece), he was a pupil of the Magi (Zoroastrian priests of what is now Iran) and the Chaldeans (astronomers and astrologers of what is now southern Iraq),<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">… whom [the Persian king] Xerxes had left with his father as teachers, when he had been hospitably received by him… and from these men he [Democritus], while still a boy, learned the principles of astronomy and theology. Afterwards, his father entrusted him to Leucippus…</blockquote>Other than being usually credited with formulating the atomic hypothesis, little is known about Democritus’ teacher Leucippus. He apparently belonged to the Ionian school of natural philosophy (of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, et al.), founding his own school in about 440 BCE.<br />
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According to the Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucippus">article</a> on Leucippus, the legend about his being a student of Zeno of Elea, as claimed in the referenced book by Diogenes Laërtius, is “totally false”. It does appear to be correct, however, that Leucippus’ main impetus for developing his atomic hypothesis was to reject the idea promoted by Zeno and his teacher Parmenides that a void couldn’t exist, instead proposing that the universe was entirely a “void” – save for the presence of what he called atoms (derived from the Greek prefix <span style="font-style: italic;">a-</span> , used for negation, and from <span style="font-style: italic;">temnein</span> meaning “to cut”; so, ‘atom’ means ‘uncuttable’ or ‘indivisible’). In turn, Leucippus’ atomic hypothesis was probably influenced by the Ionian physicist Anaxagoras (c.500–c.428 BCE), who lived at approximately the same time and who <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras">proposed</a> that all things “<span style="color: #6600cc;">originally… existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in number… /which originally/ existed in a confused and indistinguishable form /and which relied on/ mechanical processes [</span><span style="color: #6600cc; font-style: italic;">Nous</span><span style="color: #6600cc;">] in the formation of order</span>.”<br />
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Leucippus’ atomic hypothesis was revolutionary, summarized well by Feynman in Vol. II of his <span style="font-style: italic;">Lectures on Physics:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.</blockquote>We now know that the atomic hypothesis contains “an enormous amount of information”; Feynman illustrates what he meant in a great <a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_feynman.html">video</a> at the TED website. When the atomic hypothesis was proposed by Leucippus, promoted by Democritus, and a century-or-so later adopted by Epicurus, however, it was little more than speculation! Nonetheless, Leucippus’ speculation stimulated subsequent Epicureans (such as the Roman author Lucretius and most modern scientists) to develop a materialistic or naturalistic worldview, in dramatic conflict with the idealistic, supernatural worldviews of the Stoics and all religious people.<br />
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It isn’t clear what stimulated Leucippus to take such an enormous leap into the unknown (to postulate the existence of atoms separated by “the void”, without data to support his speculation). It might be thought that the stimulation was similar to how today’s teachers usually introduce the idea of atoms; that is, by asking students to imagine cutting something into smaller and smaller pieces until, with one more attempted cut, the pieces would no longer be the same substance. For example, continue to cut a crystal of table salt into pieces until finally only one molecule of sodium chloride remains; cut that one molecule, and the result will be one atom of sodium and one of chlorine (and so on, if the teacher wishes to introduce students to ideas about electrons, nuclei, nucleons, quarks, etc.). Although Leucippus might have imagined such cutting until no more cutting was possible (for, after all, he created the word ‘atom’, meaning ‘uncuttable’), yet historians suggest that he proposed his idea to resolve some of Zeno’s (or Parmenides’) paradoxes, namely, that change is an illusion and that movement is impossible.<br />
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How Zeno and Parmenides managed to trap themselves in such paradoxes is almost unimaginable, at least for those of us familiar with the idea of atoms separated by “a void” (i.e., with atoms sitting in “empty” space). What apparently happened was that Parmenides made the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">mistake</a> (common to almost all ancient Greek philosophers) of relying only on reason. He described his reliance on reasoning (rather than data) by writing:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">Let not the common usages of men<br />
Persuade your better taught experience,<br />
To trust to men’s unsafe deceitful sight,<br />
Or treacherous ears, or random speaking tongue:<br />
Reason alone will prove the truth of facts.</blockquote>Then, with the mistake of relying only on reason, Parmenides concluded that a void (what we call ‘space’ or “the vacuum”) could not exist, his (logical) argument being:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">For never shall this prevail, that things that are not <span style="font-weight: bold;">are</span>.</blockquote>That is, he apparently reasoned: since a void is nothing, it can’t exist.<br />
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Of course, it’s now obvious to us that Parmenides trapped himself in word games, not only because the void that he was considering was not ‘nothing’ but ‘space’ or ‘the vacuum’ (which is filled with negative energy) but also because he didn’t understand the concept of ‘existence’. And actually, even Epicurus continued to promote the same mistake, erroneously stating in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Herodotus:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">Nothing comes into existence from non-existence. For if that were possible, anything could be created out of anything, without requiring seeds. And if things which disappear became non-existent, everything in the universe would have surely vanished by now. But the universe has always been as it is now, and always will be, since there is nothing it can change into. Nor is there anything outside the universe which could infiltrate it and produce change.</blockquote>In contrast, it now <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">seems clear</a> both that our entire universe sums to nothing (in that, in total, almost certainly it contains zero electrical charge, zero momentum, and zero mass/energy) and that “totally nothing” can in fact yield something, e.g., by splitting into equal positive and negative “somethings” (such as energy), as presumably happened, leading to the Big Bang. Thereby, both Parmenides’ interpretation of his stated premiss “nothing comes from nothing” and Epicurus’ interpretation of his stated premiss “nothing comes into existence from non-existence” seem to be invalid: it appears that our universe (in total, nothing) did in fact come from nothing! As Einstein enigmatically said: “<span style="color: #000099;">[our] universe [is] matter expanding into nothing that is something</span>.”<br />
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From his incorrect conclusion that a void couldn’t exist, Parmenides then deduced that motion could not exist (for it would mean motion of something into nothing, which he had reasoned couldn’t exist), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides">concluding</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">[What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place, which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is.</blockquote>Parmenides’ conclusion that motion couldn’t exist was then illustrated by Zeno in his paradoxes.<br />
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Leucippus apparent argument, in contrast, was devastatingly simple. Unlike Parmenides and Zeno, he relied on evidence that motion does, in reality, occur. Therefore, he <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leucippus/">apparently reasoned</a>, there must be a void into which any material body moves. He then leaped to the conjecture that any material body must be made of smallest parts (atoms), that such atoms exist within what was otherwise a void, and that change occurs by rearrangements and motion of atoms in the void.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Democritus’ Extrapolations</span><br />
Democritus embraced and expanded Leucippus’ ideas of atoms in the void. Most unfortunately for us, though, none of Democritus’ books (or scrolls) has been found. What we <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/">now know</a> about his ideas is only through fragments of his writings and “secondhand reports, sometimes unreliable or conflicting.” Immediately below are some inferences about his ideas in physics; later, I’ll list some inferences about his ethical ideas.<br />
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For both sets of resulting “quotations”, however, it’s to be <a href="http://www.humanistictexts.org/democritus.htm">emphasized</a> that they “do not correspond [exactly] to any extant work”. Yet, to help the reader understand what seem to have been Democritus’ ideas (based on fragments and secondhand reports), the ideas are written as if they were direct quotations. As can be found at the referenced website, the original authors of these “extrapolations” are Kathleen Freeman (in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ancilla to The Pre-Socratic Philosophers</span>, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1948) and G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven (in “The Pre-Socratic Philosophers”, <span style="font-style: italic;">Selections from Early Greek Philosophy</span>, Milton C. Nahm, Cambridge University Press, 1962).<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">• We see changes in things because of the rearrangement of atoms, but atoms themselves are eternal. Words such as ‘nothing’, ‘the void’, and ‘the infinite’ describe space. Individual atoms are describable as ‘not nothing’, ‘being’, and ‘the compact’. There is no void in atoms, so they cannot be divided. I hold the same view as Leucippus regarding atoms and space: atoms are always in motion in space.</blockquote><blockquote style="color: #000099;">• The material cause of all things that exist is the coming together of atoms and void. Atoms are too small to be perceived by the senses. They are eternal and have many different shapes, and they can cluster together to create things that are perceivable. Differences in shape, arrangement, and position of atoms produce different things. By aggregation they provide bulky objects that we can perceive with our sight and other senses.<br />
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• It has often been demonstrated that we do not grasp how each thing is or is not. Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention. Atoms and void alone exist in reality… We know nothing accurately in reality, but only as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon the body and impinge upon it. It will be obvious that it is impossible to understand how in reality each thing is.<br />
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• There are two ways of knowledge, one genuine, one imperfect. To the latter belong all the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The real is separated from this. When the imperfect can do no more – neither see more minutely, nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor perceive by touch with greater clarity – and a finer investigation is needed, then the genuine way of knowledge comes in as having a tool for distinguishing more finely.</blockquote>In the last of the above “quotations”, it’s unclear what Democritus might have meant by “the genuine way of knowledge”. We now know that “the genuine way to knowledge” (about the world external to our minds) is to use the scientific method (“guess, test, and reassess”), but it’s unclear what experiments Leucippus and Democritus could have conducted to test the atomic hypothesis – especially since it was another 2,000-and-more years before appropriate experimental methods were developed! Perhaps they could have cut samples of various materials until their taste, color, etc. became imperceptible, but maybe Democritus meant that “the genuine way of knowledge" was, as Parmenides unfortunately said: “Reason alone will prove the truth of facts.”<br />
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Evidence to support the possibility that Democritus did propose to rely on “reason alone” is available in the following extrapolation of one of his most spectacular speculations (from the same source as the “quotations” given above):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">There is an infinite number of worlds of different sizes: some are larger than ours, some have no sun or moon, others have suns or moons that are bigger than ours. Some have many suns and moons. Worlds are spaced at differing distances from each other; in some parts of the universe there are more worlds, in other parts fewer. In some areas they are growing, in other parts, decreasing. They are destroyed by collision with one another. There are some worlds with no living creatures, plants, or moisture.</blockquote>It may be another 2,000 years before evidence is available to test that speculation!<br />
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Yet, although Democritus was obviously prone to wild speculations, there are some hints that he sought to gain reliable knowledge. An example is his oft-quoted line:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.</blockquote>In addition, as a result of his travels to Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, and perhaps India, he apparently boasted:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Of all my contemporaries I have covered the most ground in my travels, making the most exhaustive inquiries the while; I have seen the most climates and countries and listened to the greatest number of learned men.</blockquote>After exhausting his inheritance in his travels, he reportedly gave public lectures in his hometown of Abdera. Also, he wrote more than 60 “books” (or scrolls) dealing with a great variety of subjects, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/">including</a> ethics, physics, mathematics, music, and cosmology. It’s reported by Petronius (c.27–66 CE) in Chapter 11 of his presumed fictional story <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/petro/satyr/index.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Satyricon</span></a> that “<span style="color: #000099;">Democritus extracted the juices of every herb, and spent his life in experimenting, that no virtue of mineral or plant might escape detection.</span>” In <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/democrit.htm">addition</a>, Democritus “acquired fame with his knowledge of natural phenomena and predicted changes in the weather.” His mantra seems to have been:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Believe not everything, but only what is proven: the former is foolish, the latter the act of a sensible man.</blockquote>In the above “quotation”, it’s also unclear what Democritus might have meant by the word ‘proven’; it would have been better if he used a word such as ‘demonstrated’.<br />
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If readers compare the above “extrapolations” of Democritus’ ideas about physics with the ideas promoted by Epicurus (as given in his<span style="font-style: italic;"> Letter to Herodotus</span>), a great many similarities will be found. In fact, substantial uncertainties persist about which of the surviving Epicurean ideas should be attributed to him <span style="font-style: italic;">versus</span> Democritus. Interested readers might want to read Karl Marx’s 1841 <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm">doctoral dissertation</a>, entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature</span> in which Marx sought to differentiate between the ideas of the two. But for present purposes, pursuing such distinctions would be a distraction.<br />
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It would be more relevant to include, here, at least a brief description of the progress made developing the scientific method by Democritus’ friend (and/or his doctor), “the father of modern medicine”, Hippocrates (c. 460–377 BCE). In fact, in an earlier version of this post, I did include an outline of Hippocrates’ accomplishments, but not only did it continue for multiple pages, it was somewhat tangential: as important (even revolutionary) as were his accomplishments in developing the scientific method, his subject (medicine) wasn’t sufficiently broad to stimulate a major challenge to existing worldviews (and their associated outlooks on life). Therefore, I’ll postpone describing some of Hippocrates’ ideas until a later appendix [where I’ll also describe some of the progress by some astronomers, some mathematicians (including Euclid) and the amazing Archimedes (c.287–212 BCE)] and here just state that other progress was being made that influenced the development of Epicurus’ worldview.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Epicurus’ Worldview</span><br />
In developing his worldview, Epicurus was apparently influenced not only by scientific advances since the time of Leucippus and Democritus (including those by Hippocrates and Aristotle) but also by other philosophers. For example, in his 1939 <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece">book</a>, Durant states (p. 739):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">From Aristippus </span>[c.435–c.356 BCE] <span style="color: #000099;">he</span> [Epicurus, 341–c.270 BCE] <span style="color: #000099;">learned the wisdom of pleasure, and from Socrates</span> [c.470–399 BCE] <span style="color: #000099;">the pleasure of wisdom; from Pyrrho</span> [c.360–c.270 BCE] <span style="color: #000099;">he took the doctrine of tranquility, and a ringing word for it – </span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">ataraxia</span><span style="color: #000099;">. He must have watched with interest the career of his contemporary Theodorus of Cyrene, who preached an unmoralistic atheism</span> [a phrase that suggests Durant’s Christian bias] <span style="color: #000099;">so openly in Athens that the Assembly indicted him for impiety – a lesson that Epicurus did not forget.</span></blockquote>Epicurus may have been influenced, also, by a disciple of Democritus, Diagoras of Melos. Diagoras is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagoras_of_Melos">described</a> as “the first atheist”, he “made the Eleusinian Mysteries public, and discouraged people from being initiated… The Athenians accused him of impiety, and he was forced to flee the city.” As a result, Epicurus may have tempered his criticism of “the gods”, allowing the possibility that they existed but apparently adopting Aristotle’s position that the gods weren’t interested in the affairs of mere humans.<br />
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But regardless of Epicurus’ own opinions about the gods and in view of space limitations for this post, below I’ll simply list a few additional elements of his worldview (beyond those of Democritus), without further attempts to identify their possible origins. Of the many ideas in his worldview, I’ve listed below only those that were most revolutionary for his time, that have withstood the test of time, and that generated so much clerical bitterness (because the ideas undermined the clerics’ con games). In this list, I’ve used the same categorization as in Epicurus’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Herodotus </span>and again following <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/index.php">Erik Anderson</a>, I’ve used /…/ to indicated “scholarly repairs to text deemed corrupt or missing.”<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Atomic Motion:</span><br />
Motion [of atoms] through the void may traverse any ordinary distance in an extraordinarily short time, because the lack of obstruction from colliding bodies. Only through collision and non-collision can atomic motion resemble “slow” and “fast.”<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">The Soul:</span><br />
When the whole body is destroyed, it no longer possesses sensation, because the soul is dissolved… Those who say that the soul is incorporeal are talking nonsense.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">World-Systems:</span><br />
{World-systems, like all compounds, are perpetually created and destroyed}… /...Moreover, with regard to living things,/ it cannot be proven that the seeds from which animals, plants, and other things originate are not possible on any particular world-system.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Natural History:</span><br />
In their environment, primitive men were taught or inspired by instinct to do many kinds of things, but reason later built upon what had been begun by instinct. New discoveries were made – faster among some people, slower among others. In some ages and eras /progress occurred by great leaps/<progress>, in others by small steps… Words, for instance, were not initially coined by design. Men naturally experienced feelings and impressions which varied in the particulars from tribe to tribe, so that each of the individual feelings and impressions caused them to vocalize something in a particular way, in accordance also with differing racial and environmental factors.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Celestial Phenomena:</span><br />
The purpose of physics is to correctly identify the causes of phenomena that concern us… Our happiness depends on this, and on knowing what celestial bodes really are, and on related facts… Additionally, the worst turmoil in human souls arise because:<br />
<br />
• They think that celestial bodies are blessed and immortal [i.e., godlike] yet desire, scheme, and act in ways that are incompatible with divine nature.<br />
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• They either foresee their deaths as eternal suffering, as depicted in myths, or they fear the very lack of consciousness that accompanies death as if it could be of concern to them.<br />
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• They suffer all this, not because there is a reasonable basis, but because of their wild imagination – and by not setting a limit to suffering, their level of turmoil matches or exceeds what they would suffer even if there were a reasonable basis.<br />
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Peace of mind comes from having been freed from all this, and by always remembering the essential principles of our whole system of belief. Thus, we should pay attention to those feelings and sensations which are present within us (both those we have in common with humankind at large, and the particular ones we have in each of ourselves) according to each of the criteria of truth. Only then shall we pin down the sources of disturbance and fear. And when we have learned the causes of celestial phenomena and related events, we shall be free from whatever is terrifying to the rest of humankind.</progress></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>In his <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/Lives.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Pythocles</span></a>, Epicurus adds:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The regularity of celestial motions must be accounted for like events on earth, without introducing the need of the gods.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Naturalistic Ethics</span><br />
As already mentioned, once decisions are made about how knowledge is gained and a resulting worldview is established, consistent ethics can be developed. In the case of Epicurus, it appears that many of his ethical ideas (but not all) were restatements of the ethics of earlier naturalists, especially Democritus. Therefore, below I’ll first briefly review some of Democritus’ ideas, after inserting some additional comments about Democritus.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Democritus’ Ethics</span><br />
As also already mentioned, the atomic hypothesis of Leucippus and Democritus was sufficiently broad and fundamental that Democritus was able to develop a worldview and associated ethics based upon it – which if one stops to think about it, is really quite amazing. That is, although, now, their worldview (that the universe is natural) has sufficient experimental support that we scientific humanists (or naturalists or Brights) feel secure about it, one can imagine that the mystics and maybe others of his day would have considered Democritus foolish (or worse) to erect an ethical philosophy on such a “miniscule” foundation, i.e., invisible atoms <span style="font-style: italic;">versus</span> the mystics’ visible universe!<br />
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Actually, though, Democritus may have based his philosophy (or also based his philosophy) on ideas he picked up during his travels. In particular, as already mentioned, he reportedly traveled extensively (“squandering” his inheritance on his travels), including a trip to India. In India at the time, two competing schools of philosophy emerged, a mystical but skeptical school developed under Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha) and a skeptical, materialistic school under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C4%81rv%C4%81ka">Cārvāka</a> that promoted ideas similar to those later promoted by Democritus. Unfortunately, little is known about the Cārvāka philosophy (except that it was materialistic and atheistic), because the “ruling” clerics (the Hindus) apparently destroyed the writings of the school – similar to how clerics throughout history have reacted to ideas that challenge their privileged positions.<br />
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Yet, however Democritus might have developed his insight, the result was the atheistic premiss of his worldview:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The universe is infinite, because it has not been produced by a creator. The causes of what now exists had no beginning. </blockquote>Then, having laid the above-stated foundation for his worldview (with no “creator god”), Democritus proceeded to construct a consistent ethical philosophy. Extrapolations of his resulting ideas about how best to live one’s life include the following, which I’ve copied from the same <a href="http://www.humanistictexts.org/democritus.htm">source</a> as for the “quotations” given earlier in this post and which, therefore, should be subject to the same doubt about what his actual statements were:<br />
<blockquote>• <span style="color: #000099;">Imperturbable wisdom is worth everything. To a wise man, the whole earth is open, for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth.</span> [An assessment similar to that of Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, and the later, cosmopolitan ideas of the Stoics and Epicureans.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Men ask in their prayers for health from the gods, but do not know that the power to attain this lies in themselves. By doing the opposite of what they should do, through lack of control, they themselves become the betrayers of their own health to their desires. The things needed by the body are available to all without toil and trouble. But the things which require toil and trouble and which make life disagreeable are not desired by the body but by an ill-constitution of the mind.</span> [Ideas perhaps influenced by Hippocrates and that preceded, by about a century, similar ideas of the Epicureans and Stoics.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;"> It is possible without spending much of one’s money to educate one’s children, and so to build round their property and their persons a fortification and a safeguard. Frivolity in an educator of youth is the worst of all things, for it breeds those pleasures from which wickedness comes.</span> [Ideas repeated by Socrates and Aristotle and adopted by the Cynics.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Poverty under democracy is as much to be preferred to so-called prosperity under an autocracy, as is freedom to slavery.</span> [Ideas rejected by Plato but adopted by both Epicureans and Stoics.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">People are fools who yearn for what is absent, but neglect what they have…</span> [Similar to the (later) Jewish saying: “Happiness is wanting what you already have.”]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Happiness does not dwell in flocks of cattle or in gold. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a property of the soul</span> [which Democritus, probably influenced by Hippocrates, identifies as the mind]… <span style="color: #000099;">Men find happiness neither by means of the body nor through possessions, but through uprightness and wisdom.</span> [An incomplete idea that was promoted by Socrates, Aristotle, and both Epicureans and Stoics, improved upon by Spinoza, and corrected by modern psychologists, building on the work of Maslow.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Cheerfulness or well-being is created in man through a harmonious life and moderation of enjoyment.</span> [An idea as old as Sin-leqe-unnini’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Gilgamesh</span> and Homer’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Odyssey</span> and the essence of both Epicureanism and Stoicism. Incidentally, Democritus was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus">known</a> as “the laughing {or cheerful} philosopher” – a moniker that he may have earned because of his cheerfulness but perhaps because he laughed at human follies, seeming to mock people and their priests.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">One must respect one’s own opinion most, and this must stand as the law of one’s soul, preventing one from doing anything improper.</span> [Ideas adopted by both the Epicureans and Stoics.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Pleasure and absence of pleasure are the criteria of what is profitable and what is not. Accept no pleasure unless it is beneficial. Moderation multiplies pleasures and increases pleasure. If one oversteps the due measure, the most pleasurable things become most unpleasant.</span> [More ideas adopted by both Epicureans and Stoics.]<br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">Some men, not knowing about the dissolution of mortal nature, but acting on knowledge of the suffering in life, afflict the period of life with anxieties and fears, inventing false tales about the period after the end of life.</span> [An idea that most separates the naturalistic Epicureans from the supernaturalistic Stoics – as well as, of course, from all clerics who promoted and still promote the oxymoron of “life after death”.]</blockquote>The above were revolutionary ideas; one can easily see why mystics such as Plato would react with hostility. In fact, Aristotle’s student Aristoxenus (364–304 BCE) <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3936026">reportedly wrote</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Plato wanted to burn all the works of Democritus but was unable to do so, because the books were so popular and widely distributed.</blockquote>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3936026">same source</a> states:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Other sources suggest that the loss of most of Democritus’ writings is evidence that Plato succeeded. In either event, Plato managed to avoid any mention of Democritus in his own writings.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Eudoxus’ Ethics</span><br />
Another of Plato’s famous students, however, apparently disagreed with him, agreeing with Democritus’ statement: “<span style="color: #000099;">Pleasure and absence of pleasure are the criteria of what is profitable and what is not</span>.” His name (meaning “good opinion”) was <a href="http://www.physics.ubc.ca/%7Eberciu/PHILIP/TEACHING/PHYS340/NOTES/FILES/%287%29Greek-Astronomy.pdf">Eudoxus of Cnidus</a> (c.410–c.355 BCE), where Cnidus was a city “on the Resadiye Peninsula, on the Black Sea, now in Turkey.” According to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudoxus_of_Cnidus">Wikipedia article</a> on Eudoxus:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Eudoxus’s father Aeschines of Cnidus loved to watch stars at night. Eudoxus first traveled to Tarentum to study with Archytas, from whom he learned mathematics. While in Italy, Eudoxus visited Sicily, where he studied medicine with Philiston… Around 387 BC, at the age of 23, he traveled with the physician Theomedon… to Athens to study with the followers of Socrates. He eventually became the pupil of Plato, with whom he studied for several months, but due to a disagreement they had a falling out… Around 368 BC, Eudoxus returned to Athens with his students. According to some sources, around 367 he assumed headship of the Academy during Plato’s period in Syracuse, and taught Aristotle.</blockquote><span style="color: black;">I didn’t find details about Eudoxus’ “falling out” with Plato (possible causes include disagreements over astronomy, mathematics, or Democritus’ ideas about pleasure), but in </span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic;">Nichomachean Ethics</span><span style="color: black;"> (X, 1) Aristotle provides the following information, apparently supporting Eudoxus’ (and therefore, Democritus’) ideas about pleasure and pain – while (once again) criticizing Plato: </span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Eudoxus thought pleasure was the good because he saw all things, both rational and irrational, aiming at it, and because in all things that which is the object of choice is what is excellent, and that which is most the object of choice the greatest good; thus the fact that all things moved towards the same object indicated that this was for all things the chief good (for each thing, he argued, finds its own good, as it finds its own nourishment); and that which is good for all things and at which all aim was the good. His arguments were credited more because of the excellence of his character than for their own sake; he was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and therefore it was thought that he was not saying what he did say as a friend of pleasure, but that the facts really were so.<br />
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He believed that the same conclusion followed no less plainly from a study of the contrary of pleasure; pain was in itself an object of aversion to all things, and therefore its contrary must be similarly an object of choice. And again that is most an object of choice which we choose not because or for the sake of something else, and pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks to what end he is pleased, thus implying that pleasure is in itself an object of choice. Further, he argued that pleasure when added to any good, e.g., to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.<br />
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This argument seems to show it [pleasure] to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it.<br />
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Now it is clear that nothing else, any more than pleasure, can be the good if it is made more desirable by the addition of any of the things that are good in themselves. What, then, is there that satisfies this criterion, which at the same time we can participate in? It is something of this sort that we are looking for. Those who object that, that at which all things aim is not necessarily good are, we may surmise, talking nonsense. For we say that, that which every one thinks really is so; and the man who attacks this belief will hardly have anything more credible to maintain instead. If it is senseless creatures that desire the things in question, there might be something in what they say; but if intelligent creatures do so as well, what sense can there be in this view? But perhaps even in inferior creatures there is some natural good stronger than themselves which aims at their proper good.<br />
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Nor does the argument about the contrary of pleasure seem to be correct. They say that if pain is an evil it does not follow that pleasure is a good; for evil is opposed to evil and at the same time both are opposed to the neutral state – which is correct enough but does not apply to the things in question. For if both pleasure and pain belonged to the class of evils they ought both to be objects of aversion, while if they belonged to the class of neutrals neither should be an object of aversion or they should both be equally so; but in fact people evidently avoid the one as evil and choose the other as good; that then must be the nature of the opposition between them.</blockquote>Subsequently, Epicurus may have adopted and adapted such analyses to develop his own Ethics.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Epicurus’ Ethics</span><br />
As already mentioned, substantial uncertainty remains about Democritus’ ideas, because all his books were lost or destroyed. Similarly, by the way, almost all of the original books of the Stoics were lost or destroyed. Quite likely much of the destruction was by the subsequent Christian rabble at the urging of Christian demagogues. Most of Epicurus’ books were also lost or destroyed, but as also already mentioned, enough of his work remains for his ideas to be reconstructed fairly well.<br />
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In the case of Epicurus’ ethics, though, we know them not only “fairly well” but even “quite well”. For example, they’re available as <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/PD.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Principal Doctrines of Epicurus </span></a> in Book (or Chapter) X of <span style="font-style: italic;">Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers</span> by Diogenes Laërtius. As mentioned by Erik Anderson at the referenced website, “The authenticity of the Principal Doctrines is also asserted by <a href="http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/PD.html#3">testimonials</a> found in several works of antiquity.”<br />
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And now, I reach a predicament in this post. After such a long trek (which has taken me much longer than I expected!), with the final push being to climb to the summit of Epicurean Ethics, I find that, although not short on oxygen or time, I’m short on space. For interested fellow climbers, I’d recommend that they now go to Epicurus’ <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/principal.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Principal Doctrines</span></a>, to the additional Epicurean ideas contained in <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/vatican.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Vatican Sayings</span></a>, and even to a list of Epicurean quotations, e.g., <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/epicurus.html%27">here</a>. Below, I’ll list just a few Epicurean sayings that I relish.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">[Since] pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then, because of its natural kinship to us, is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters… When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality… but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind… Of all this, the beginning and the greatest good is prudence.<br />
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It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.<br />
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Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.<br />
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The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.<br />
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It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.<br />
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If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished, for they are forever praying for evil against one another.<br />
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Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary, and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.<br />
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I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.<br />
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No one chooses a thing seeing that it is evil, but being lured by it when it appears good in comparison to a greater evil, he is caught.<br />
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Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have, but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.<br />
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Question each of your desires: “What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is achieved and what if it is not?”<br />
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Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest.<br />
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The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.<br />
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You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.<br />
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[Interpersonal] justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.<br />
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There is no such thing as [social] justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.<br />
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Of all things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.<br />
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It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.</blockquote>Succinctly, what I most admire about Epicurus’ ethics is his advice to: 1) Forget about the gods, 2) Forget about death, and 3) Be careful in the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. On the other hand, one of his statements with which I disagree is his:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #6600cc;">It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn’t know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So, without the study of nature, there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.</blockquote>In my view, Epicurus thereby gave the rabble far too much credit! They “know” that their god exists; they “know” that they’re worthy of eternal life in paradise; so, the crazy Christians and Muslims fanatics of the world enjoy “pure pleasure” in their claimed “personal relationship” with their imaginary friend in the sky. Consequently, more important than having such people learn about “the nature of the universe” (as advised by Epicurus) is for them to first learn how to think critically. As the Buddha said:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Believe nothing… merely because you have been told it… or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.</blockquote>More succinctly, there’s the advice from the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), “<span style="color: #000099;">A wise [person]… proportions his belief to the evidence</span>” and the admonishment from the philosopher Comte de Volney (1757–1820), “<span style="color: #000099;">To believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly.</span>”<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Epicurus’ Riddle & Dilemma</span><br />
While I’m here, I should at least mention what are called Epicurus’ Riddle (or Paradox) and Epicurus’ Dilemma. The “riddle of Epicurus” is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy">commonly stated</a> as:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />
Then is he not omnipotent.<br />
Is he able, but not willing?<br />
Then is he malevolent.<br />
Is he both able and willing?<br />
Then whence cometh evil?<br />
Is he neither able nor willing?<br />
Then why call him God?</blockquote>Four points that should be mentioned are the following: 1) the above formulation of the “Problem of Evil” was not by Epicurus but by the philosopher David Hume, yet 2) a similar formulation is given by Lucretius (c.99–55 BCE) in his poem extolling Epicurus’ philosophy entitled “On the Nature of Things”, 3) Epicurus didn’t consider the riddle to be a paradox: he chose the resolution that either there were no gods or, if there were, they were disinterested in humans, and 4) a nice summary of the "epic-cure" was recently <a href="http://static.zooomr.com/images/6248823_61d969584a_o.jpg">posted</a> at static.zooomr.com:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh1oR8UAqnLsgDFHnIlQ6LPnXxIK6MPhZUsY2JaPnpPxLegC0o-fDmX6qVyE6KgRph8JPx1ZFJdVcv4Fo9mifaJuJG0oAWhNYtp3R1eqHUXwcGpc4yPChRoVkmVfP_GXYbl-JGLQAw6Xk/s1600-h/the+epic+cure.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446402487279456290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh1oR8UAqnLsgDFHnIlQ6LPnXxIK6MPhZUsY2JaPnpPxLegC0o-fDmX6qVyE6KgRph8JPx1ZFJdVcv4Fo9mifaJuJG0oAWhNYtp3R1eqHUXwcGpc4yPChRoVkmVfP_GXYbl-JGLQAw6Xk/s400/the+epic+cure.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 306px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
On the other hand, the “Epicurean Dilemma” was an aspect of his worldview that apparently did trouble him, and his chosen resolution not only influenced his ethics but also generated substantial and sustained criticism. The dilemma deals with determinism and with the nature of time. Only recently has a more defensible resolution to the dilemma been developed, in large measure through the studies of Ilya Prigogine, who won the 1977 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.” The proposed resolution is complicated; here, therefore, I’ll provide only an introduction; elsewhere (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/U_Ubiquitous_Uncertainties.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/05/being-and-time-from-nothing.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>), I’ve provided additional details.<br />
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As described in his 1997 book (partially available at Google books) entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The End of Certainty,</span> Prigogine introduces the “Epicurus’ Dilemma” as follows:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Is the universe ruled by deterministic laws? What is the nature of time? These questions were formulated by the pre-Socratics at the very start of Western rationality. After more than twenty-five hundred years, they are still with us. However, recent developments in physics and mathematics associated with chaos and instability have opened up different avenues of investigation. We are beginning to see these problems, which deal with the very position of mankind in nature, in a new light, and can now avoid the contradictions of the past.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">The Greek philosopher Epicurus was the first to address a fundamental dilemma. As a follower of Democritus, he believed that the world is made of atoms and the void. Moreover, he concluded, atoms fall through the void at the same speed and on parallel paths. How then could they collide? How could novelty associated with combinations of atoms ever appear? For Epicurus, the problems of science, the intelligibility of nature, and human destiny could not be separated. What could be the meaning of freedom in a deterministic world of atoms? As Epicurus wrote to Meneceus,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #006600;">Our will is autonomous and independent and to it we can attribute praise or disapproval. Thus, in order to keep our freedom, it would have been better to remain attached to the belief in gods rather than being slaves to the fate of the physicists: the former gives us the hope of winning the benevolence of deities through promise and sacrifices; the latter, on the contrary, brings with it an inviolable necessity</span>.<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">How contemporary this quotation sounds! Again and again, the greatest thinkers in Western tradition, such as Immanuel Kant, Alfred North Whitehead, and Martin Heidegger <span style="color: black;">[Sorry, Ilya (with whom I've argued in person), but surely you're joking to suggest those three as representatives of "the greatest thinkers in Western tradition"!]</span>, felt that they had to make a tragic choice between an alienating science or an antiscientific philosophy. They attempted to find some compromise, but none proved satisfactory.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Epicurus thought that he had found a solution to this dilemma, which he termed the </span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">clinamen</span><span style="color: #000099;">. As expressed by Lucretius,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #006600;">While the first bodies are being carried downward by their own weight in straight lines through the void, at times quite uncertain and at uncertain places, they deviate slightly from their course, just enough to be defined as having changed direction.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">But no mechanism was given for this </span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">clinamen</span><span style="color: #000099;">. No wonder that it has always been considered a foreign, arbitrary element. </span></blockquote>It should be <a href="http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/epicurus/">pointed out</a> that, with his <span style="font-style: italic;">clinamen</span>, “Epicurus added an element of chance to provide still more control and moral responsibility than physical determinism could provide.” But I’ll leave it to the reader to investigate details of Prigogine’s proposed resolution to Epicurus’ dilemma. A good <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine">summary</a> is available at Wikipedia.<br />
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In essence, the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/U_Ubiquitous_Uncertainties.pdf">proposed resolution</a> is first to recognize that isolated, linear, equilibrium, nondissipative, time-reversible systems, commonly considered in (classical, relativistic, and quantum) physics, rarely if ever exist. In reality, most systems are nonlinear, nonequilibrium, dissipative, and not isolated, and therefore are irreversible (i.e., they possess and display a preferred direction for time). Further, for nonlinear systems, uncertainties in initial conditions (no matter how small the uncertainties) eventually lead to random behavior, including chaos, increasing the system’s entropy, and for which only probabilities of possible outcomes can be predicted. Organization in complex systems can be achieved, however, even out of chaos, if nonisolated systems (such as stardust or a human) are exposed to some energy or other gradient (e.g., if stardust is influenced by a gravitational field or if a human ingests food). Consequently, although isolated systems will tend to equilibrium (a state of maximum randomness, maximum entropy, and for which time has no significance), yet nonisolated systems can decrease their entropy (without violating the second principle of thermodynamics) and evolve. Further, if they possess intelligence, then they can make choices; that is, their behaviors aren’t predetermined or predestined.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">More of Epicurus’ Legacy</span><br />
Undoubtedly Epicurus was brilliant, perhaps influencing more brilliant people than anyone else ever has – despite more than 2,200 years of distortions of his ideas. After his death in 270 BCE, his principles flourished for more than 500 years. The article entitled “<a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/history.html">Epicurean History</a>” at the website hosted by Vincent Cooke states:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">[Epicureanism]… had successfully acquitted itself as one of the leading and best organized of the Greek philosophical schools, providing an vibrant subculture to those who sought something better than the laughable myths and superstitious dread so characteristic of the dominant culture of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.</span> </blockquote>The article goes on to describe the attacks on Epicureanism by Stoics and Christians and its rediscovery by humanists in the 14th through 16th centuries. As a result, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) could write in his 31 October 1819 letter to William Short:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">I… am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (</span><span style="color: #000099; font-style: italic;">not the imputed</span><span style="color: #000099;">) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us… </span> </blockquote>I italicized Jefferson’s parenthetic remark, “not the imputed [doctrines of Epicurus]”, to emphasize Jefferson’s acknowledgement of how grotesquely Epicurus’ ideas were distorted.<br />
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An indication of how Epicurus’ ideas were distorted by other Greeks is available in his <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to Menoeceus</span></a>, to which I’ve added the italics:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, <span style="font-style: italic;">as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation</span>. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this, the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly.</blockquote>Illustrations of the “willful misrepresentation” of Epicurus’ ideas are the slanderous statements made by some of his contemporary and later Stoics, statements that Diogenes Laërtius <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/lives.html#A">records</a> and dismisses with “these people are stark mad.” Perhaps, however, a better expression than “stark mad” would be “scurrilous scum”: spreading false rumors about Epicurus and claiming that forged letters were from him, they set a precedent for the “dirty tricks” practiced by similar scum working for the elections of Presidents Nixon and the two Bushs.<br />
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An early illustration of clerical hostility to Epicurean ideas (undoubtedly derived from his rejection of concerns about life-after-death) is the following, copied from the same tremendous Epicurean <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/index.html">website</a> created by Vincent Cook:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Talmudic Mishnah,</span> one of the authoritative documents of Rabbinical Judaism</span> [conserved orally and then redacted in about 200 CE, by which time the Pharisees had incorporated Zarathustra’s ideas of life-after-death into Judaism]<span style="color: #000099;">, there is a remarkable statement in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractate</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Sanhedrin</span> [Chapter XI] that defines the Jewish religion in relation to Epicureanism </span>[copied from <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Talmud/sanhedrin11.html">here</a>]:<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">The following have no share in the world to come: He who says that there is no allusion in the Torah concerning resurrection, and he who says that the Torah was not given by Heaven, and a follower of Epicurus.</span></blockquote>One might have thought that it would be up to God to decide who has “a share in the world to come”, but then, the Jewish cleric who wrote the above nonsense was apparently just another quirk in a seemingly endless stream of quacks and dissemblers who claim to speak for the creator of the universe! The following from <a href="http://www.epicurus.net/en/alexander.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Alexander the Oracle-Monger</span></a> by Lucian of Samosata (c. 125–180 CE) is appropriate for all such quacks:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book [the <span style="font-style: italic;">Principal Doctrines</span> by Epicurus] upon its readers, of the peace, tranquility, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and insubordinate desires, of the judgment and candor that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.</blockquote>Hostility to (and associated distortion of) Epicurus’ ideas by subsequent Christians (no doubt because his ideas undermined the clerics’ con game) is still evident in Western culture. For example, <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Oxford American Dictionary</span> gives for the definition of ‘Epicurean’:<br />
<ul style="color: #000099;"><li>a disciple or student of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.</li>
<li>(epicurean) a person devoted to sensual enjoyment, esp. that derived from fine food and drink.</li>
</ul>Similarly, <span style="font-style: italic;">Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language</span> (Second College Edition) gives for ‘Epicurean’:<br />
<ol style="color: #000099;"><li>of Epicurus or his philosophy</li>
<li>[e] a) fond of luxury and sensuous pleasure, esp. that of eating and drinking, b) suited to or characteristic of an epicure [defined as: a person who enjoys and has a discriminating taste for fine foods and drinks]. Synonym: sensuous.</li>
</ol>Admittedly, the goal for dictionaries is to display “common meanings” of words, but both of those common meanings of ‘epicurean’ are terrible distortions of Epicurus’ philosophy. In fact, they distort his philosophy so badly that they are close to the exact antithesis of his ideas – and they are distortions that have been perpetrated for more than 2,200 years by the damnable clerics of Western culture.<br />
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An illustration is the “obnoxious bias” (which I mentioned earlier in this post) that appears in Will Durant’s 1939 book <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/7351192/Will-Durant-Thestoryofcivilization02-The-Life-of-Greece"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Life of Greece</span></a>. In his description of the Greek city of Sybarite in what is now Italy, Durant states (p. 185):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Sybarite became a synonym for epicurean. </span> [According to my dictionary, a ‘sybarite’ is “a person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury.”] <span style="color: #000099;">All physical labor was performed by slaves or serfs while the citizens, dressed in costly robes, took their ease in luxurious homes and consumed exotic delicacies.</span></blockquote>And yes, Durant’s use of ‘epicurean’ is consistent with dictionary definitions, but given that Durant was writing a history of Greece, shouldn’t he (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977) have tried to set the record straight? Or did his overt Christianity blind him to his bias?<br />
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Simultaneously, the word ‘stoical’ wasn’t distorted, presumably because Christians adopted many of the mystical ideas of the Stoics. Thus, the dictionaries referenced above, respectively, define ‘stoical’ as:<br />
<blockquote>• <span style="color: #000099;">enduring pain and hardship without showing one’s feeling or complaining</span><br />
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• <span style="color: #000099;">showing austere indifference to joy, grief, pleasure, or pain; calm and unflinching under suffering, bad fortune, etc.</span></blockquote>There was, of course, more to the Stoic philosophy than the above-two attributions of a Stoic, but because of their philosophy, Stoics did attempt to maintain calm in the face of adversity, and therefore, the above dictionary definitions of ‘stoical’ are fairly accurate – in contrast to the distortions contained in dictionary definitions for ‘epicurean’.<br />
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Almost certainly, the clerical, cultural, and resulting dictionary distortions of Epicureanism were a ruse. In reality, the original hostility to Epicureanism from the Stoics was probably derived not because of evaluations of how to gain happiness (because the goals and many of the methodologies were similar for both groups) but because the Epicureans concluded (in direct conflict with the Stoics) that, even if gods were to exist, humans should ignore them. Further, along with rejection of gods (or any world-soul), the Epicureans totally dismissed ideas about life-after-death as being not only meaningless but also a terrible and useless burden on life, undermining happiness. Most likely, therefore, Stoical and clerical hostility to the Epicureans (and subsequent naturalists) was because they dismissed the supernaturalists’ worldview as being, in a word, silly. Such dismissal undermined both the Stoics’ confidence in their worldview and what’s most important to all clerics: that they should be able to continue their parasitic existence, claiming to be representatives of the supernatural while leeching off the producers of the world.<br />
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And what blatant, witless hypocrites were and are the religious critics of Epicureanism! What audacity to criticize Epicurus for advocating that pleasures be pursued, when the essence of Plato’s and the Stoics’ mysticism, Christianity, Islam, etc. was and is to pursue “eternal pleasure”! If the truth be sought, their real complaint would undoubtedly be found in Epicurus’ advocating the pursuit of thoughtful pleasures (disregarding data-less ideas about eternal life) – which then was and is a challenge to all religious delusions.<br />
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Nonetheless, some criticisms of Epicurus are appropriate. Although he didn’t follow Aristotle’s mistaken attempt to identify “the function of man”, yet, similar to Aristotle, he failed to investigate the meaning of ‘happiness’ (or of ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’). Actually, though, Aristotle did see some of it. Thus, in Section 3 of Chapter 2 of his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">On the Soul</span></a>, Aristotle wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">It follows that first of all we must treat of nutrition and reproduction, for the nutritive soul is found along with all the others and is the most primitive and widely distributed power of soul, being indeed that one in virtue of which all are said to have life. The acts in which it manifests itself are reproduction and the use of food – reproduction, I say, because for any living thing that has reached its normal development and which is unmutilated, and whose mode of generation is not spontaneous, the most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That [or this] is the goal towards which all [living] things strive, <span style="font-style: italic;">that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible.</span></blockquote>In the quotation immediately above, I added the brackets and the italics to emphasize that Aristotle clearly saw that the prime goal of all life is (in modern terminology) to promote the survival of its genetic code, “for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible.”<br />
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If Aristotle had developed that idea further, perhaps he would have seen not only that ‘happiness’ arises from living in agreement with “the function of man” but also that the prime function of all humans was not “to live a life of reason” but to promote the survival of their genetic codes. Further, he or Epicurus might have then seen what Spinoza (1632–77) saw in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Ethics</span> (Part III), in the “Proof” of his Proposition LVII:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Pleasure and pain… are states or passions whereby every man’s power or endeavor to persist in his being is increased or diminished, helped or hindered.</blockquote>If to Spinoza’s idea is added analyses of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/EvaluatingEndeavors.pdf">human needs</a>, such as those identified by Maslow (1908–70), then improvements upon Aristotle’s idea of happiness and Epicurus’ ideas on pleasure and pain become <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Happiness.pdf">available</a>.<br />
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Another valid criticism of Epicurus arises from his failure to engage in politics. His decision was understandable, given the turmoil in Greek politics following the death of Alexander the Great. Yet, if he had developed his ideas of ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’ further (to see that they are emotions related to successes and failures in pursuit of one’s goals), then he probably would have seen the value to himself and those he considered to be his “family” of attempting to achieve the goal of developing a supportive political structure.<br />
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Subsequent Epicureans, however, did see such advantages. For example, as stated in the Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus">article</a> on Epicurus:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">Elements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history… His emphasis minimizing harm and maximizing happiness in his formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity was later picked up by the democratic thinkers of the French Revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to “life, liberty, and property.” To Locke, one’s own body was part of their property, and thus one’s right to property would theoretically guarantee safety for their persons, as well as their possessions… This triad, as well as the egalitarianism of Epicurus, was carried forward into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by the American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as “all men are created equal” and endowed with certain “inalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”</blockquote>And yet, in spite of the rancor between Epicureans and Stoics, there were actually two enduring similarities between the two schools. One of these similarities was individualism and was a sign of the times in which the founders of their schools lived (i.e., Epicurus and Zeno the Stoic). The other similarity, which can be described either as boldness or pigheadedness (!), continues to be a sign of our times.<br />
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How the individualism promoted by both the Epicureans and the Stoics was a sign (or better, “a product”) of the times follows because, with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, the old, secure, beneficial (even “bountiful”) political order of Athens began to collapse, requiring people to “look to their own resources” for their security and for what pleasures (or happiness) they could find. The resulting individualism (which, of course, already had famous precedents in Greece, all the way back to Achilles, Hector, Homer, Hesiod, Thales, Pythagoras, etc.) is probably the most important legacy that ancient Greece gave to the Western World. Even today, the individualism promoted by most ancient Greek philosophers (including both the Epicureans and the Stoics) is what most distinguishes the West from the collectivism promoted by religious Jews, Muslims, and others (of course including what’s left of communism).<br />
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As for the commonality of ‘boldness’ or ‘pigheadedness’ (the choice depending on one’s perspective!), the same continues to this day: people adopt a worldview (e.g., similar to Democritus and Epicurus, that everything is natural, or similar to Pythagoras and Plato, that something “supernatural” created the universe and is in control), and from their assumed worldview, people decide how to live their lives. Thus, for all the rancor that developed between the Epicureans and the Stoics, they pursued a similar goal and in a similar manner: they both sought to identify the ingredients for a good life and, following Socrates and Aristotle, they both attempted to achieve that identification <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> reason. The major difference between the two was derived from their different worldviews, just as it is today between scientific humanists and theists (better described, I think, as “<a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/01/dont-let-theists-negate-you-negate-them.html">unscientific antihumans</a>”).<br />
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Thus, Epicureans held the views either that there are no gods or, if there were, that they were uninvolved (and disinterested) in human affairs. The Stoics, in contrast, held the views either that the gods were involved and everywhere (“immanent”) or that God was, in fact, Nature, and since people were a part of nature, that each person (especially each person’s soul) was part of “the divine”. As a result, with such different worldviews, the Stoics decided that “the good life” was to align themselves with the desires of “the divine” – and mystic philosophers and clerics were (and still are) always willing, for a price, to tell people how to align themselves with “the divine”, whereas the Epicureans decided that “the good life” was to be happy (and philosophers such as Democritus, Eudoxus, Epicurus, et al.) struggled to try to define the ingredients for happiness.<br />
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Today, scientific humanists (but not “unscientific antihumans”) are more secure in their epistemological choices than were Democritus and Epicurus. Thereby, especially with the past few centuries developments and applications of the scientific method, our naturalistic worldview is more secure. Meanwhile, mystics to this day continue to “think” that knowledge of the universe can be gained by “wishful thinking”, from whatever makes them feel good, from their dreams and hallucinations, and similar silliness.<br />
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Nonetheless, it should be admitted that both scientists and mystics have boldly or pigheadedly climbed out on similar limbs: neither can be certain that their claimed knowledge is correct. Any scientist, however, will admit to his or her precarious claims to knowledge. In contrast, the religionists of the world still invariably claim that they are in possession of “the truth”, apparently not knowing what “truth” even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">means</a>. As a result of their different epistemologies, scientists continue to grow in their search for knowledge, while religious people stagnate, clinging fast to their claims to “the truth”. As Feynman said:<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #000099;">Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true…</span><br />
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[In contrast,] <span style="color: #000099;">I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and of many things I don’t know anything about… Some people say, “How can you live without knowing?” I don’t know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know…</span></blockquote>Bertrand Russell summarized it all, succinctly and well:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.</blockquote><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br />
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</div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-75248306143927691262010-01-10T04:38:00.000-08:002010-03-06T03:24:19.149-08:00Clerical Quackery 7 – Physics versus Metaphysics in Ancient Greece – 3 – Aristotle<div><br /></div>This is the 27th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie”, the 7th in a subseries dealing with “Clerical Quackery”, and the 3rd in the sub-subseries (!) dealing with “Physics vs. Metaphysics in Ancient Greece”, i.e., dealing with skirmishes and battles that occurred in ancient Greece in the war between science and religion that has raged during at least the past 2500 years. In the first post in this sub-subseries, I tried to sketch how people from Homer to Socrates were involved in the war; in the second, I focused on the mystic Plato; in this post, the emphasis will be on Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who may have been the most brilliant person who has ever lived.<br /><br />To try to reveal some of Aristotle’s astounding accomplishments, I’ll first sketch a little historical background for his ideas and summarize a little of the basics of Aristotelian logic, which in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ib2BasicLogic.pdf">chapter</a> I reviewed more thoroughly – although still superficially. To begin, I’ll address a fundamental problem in logic, which caused difficulties in ancient Greece, whose resolution Aristotle saw, but which continues to cause difficulties to this day. It’s the problem arising from the (unfortunately) multiple meanings of the verb “to be”.<br /><br />An illustration of the problem appears in the syllogism:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">God is love;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Love exists;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Therefore, God exists.</span><br /></div><br />In the above ‘syllogism’ [from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">syllogizesthai</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">syn</span>-, meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’, and <span style="font-style: italic;">logizeshai</span>, to reason (from <span style="font-style: italic;">logos</span> or ‘logic’); so, ‘syllogism’ is “putting reasoning together”] the error arises from the use of two different meanings for the verb “to be”. Thus, in the first premiss, “God is love” (which can be traced back from the New Testament to the Greek philosopher Empedocles, c.490–c.430 BCE), the verb “to be” is used to describe an assumed attribute of God (other attributes assumed, e.g., by Zarathustra, include omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence), whereas the second premiss, “Love exists”, deals with ‘existence’, which can also be expressed with the verb “to be” as “Love is”.<br /><br />As a result, the conclusion of the above syllogism is unreliable, not only because it’s based on the untested and untestable assumption that “God is love” but also because the logic is unsound. That is, even if the premisses were valid, the conclusion fails to follow, because the meanings of the verb “to be” have been shifted: it’s used in the first premiss to describe attribution, whereas the conclusion relies on the assumption that “to be” can also be used to describe existence.<br /><br />Such a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IfFindingImmortalFallacies.pdf">logical fallacy</a> (in which the meaning of words is shifted or “thrown around”) is called an amphibole or amphiboly (a Greek word derived from the prefix <span style="font-style: italic;">amphi</span>, meaning, e.g., ‘around’, and <span style="font-style: italic;">ballein</span>, meaning “to throw”). The silliness of the conclusion that the existence of an attribute implies the existence of the subject can be seen from:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Invisible flying elephants are pink;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Pink exists;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Therefore, … !</span><br /></div><br />In total, there are four different meanings or uses for the verb “to be”. The four are: 1) the ‘is’ of existence (e.g., “She is”), 2) the ‘is’ of equality (e.g., She is the same height as you), 3) the ‘is’ of attribution or predication (e.g., “She is older than you”), and 4) the use of ‘is’ as an auxiliary verb (e.g., “She is becoming confused”). If reasoning is to be sound, it’s essential that the different meanings of “to be” are used consistently.<br /><br />One way to avoid logical problems derived from the multiple meanings for “to be” is to eliminate its use! For example, the above four statements can be re-expressed as: 1) “She exists”, 2) “You and she have identical heights”, 3) “Her age exceeds yours”, and 4) “The subject confuses her.” Alternatively, in logical analyses we can use symbols rather than words. Thus, we can: 1) express ‘existence’ with the “identically equal to” sign, ≡ , which has three “bars” rather than the usual two, 2) express ‘equality” with the (two-bar) “equal to” sign, = , and 3) express attribution or predication using set theory, e.g., “Consider the set of all people whose age exceeds yours; the set includes her.” Note that, in logic, there’s rarely need to use “to be” as an auxiliary verb.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">“To be or not to be”</span><br />Turning now to some basic ideas of logic, most fundamental is a set of two elementary scientific principles, discovered by fish, monkeys, and eventually people, but apparently first appreciated by Aristotle. These two principles are that: 1) some things exist in reality (e.g., bananas) and 2) such things are distinct (i.e., the banana on the ground is not the same as the banana still in the tree). Those two principles are usually written as 1) A ≡ A (read as “A is identically equal to A”, by which is meant that A exists) and 2) A ≢ ¬A or A ≢ ~A (either of which are read as “A is not identically equal to not-A”), by which is meant that the A being considered is distinct.<br /><br />In ancient Greece, the “father of logic”, Aristotle, formulated these two principles as follows (from Part 3 of Book IV of his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span>):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This, then, is the most certain of all principles… it is impossible for the same man</span> [maybe Aristotle should have said “the sane man”!] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">at the same time to believe the same thing to be and not to be; for if a man were mistaken on this point he would have contrary opinions at the same time. It is for this reason that all who are carrying out a demonstration reduce it to this as an ultimate belief; for this is naturally the starting-point even for all the other axioms.</span></blockquote>Not to disparage the huge accomplishments of Aristotle to begin to describe how people put ideas together (i.e., create syllogisms), yet it’s unfortunately the case that Aristotelian logic has some severe limitations. I reviewed some of the limitations in chapters entitled <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ib2BasicLogic.pdf">Basic Ideas in Logic</a>, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">Reason vs. Reality</a>, and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T2_Truth_&_Understanding.pdf">“Truth” and Understanding</a>. One of the limitations in his logic (arising from ambiguity in language) can already be seen in the above quotation from his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span>.<br /><br />Thus, in his statement, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“it is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be and not to be”</span>, ambiguity arises from different meaning for the verb “to be”. Possibilities include the following:<br /><br />1) If by “to be” he meant ‘existence’, then his statement could be written as<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… it is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be</span> [or “to exist”; i.e., A ≡ A] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">and not to be</span> [or “not to exist”; i.e., A ≢ A]; </blockquote>2) If by “to be” he meant ‘identity’, then his statement could be written as<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… it is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be</span> [equal to something else, e.g., A = B] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">and not to be</span> [equal to the same thing, i.e., A ≠ B]; </blockquote>3) If, instead, he was using “to be” for ‘predication’ (i.e., according to my dictionary, “to state, affirm, or assert something about the subject of a sentence or an argument of proposition”), then his statement could be written as<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… it is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be</span> [a member of the set of, e.g., beautiful things]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> and not to be </span>[a member of the same set]. </blockquote>In this third possibility (dealing with predication) an additional complication can arise because words can be imprecise (compared, for example, with the language of mathematics). Thus, the concept in the third rewrite (above) can be quite wrong: someone can be simultaneously beautiful (e.g., in appearance) as well as ugly (e.g., in interactions with other people).<br /><br />Being careful with the definition of words (and, in general, Aristotle was so careful with his definitions that his writings can drive attentive readers up the wall!), Aristotle proceeded to formulate logic for cases in which “to be” is used to express attributions (that is, the “to be” of predication). Thus, from the scientific principles that things exist, A ≡ A, and are distinct, A ≢ ¬A, Aristotle proposed that humans who desired that their thoughts conform to reality must adhere to the following “axioms of logics”: 1) “the law of identify”, A = A (read as “A is equal to A” – and notice the difference between the identity and the equal signs), 2) “the law of noncontradiction”, A ≠ ¬A (read as “A is not equal to not-A”), and 3) “the law of the excluded middle”, which in set theory can be described as: A can not be both a member and not a member of a specified set – a “law” that has caused subsequent logicians a great many difficulties defining some sets, e.g., see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%99s_paradox">Russell’s paradox</a>.<br /><br />In part because of such complications, the “laws” of logic shouldn’t be called “laws”. Instead, they should be described as statements of scientific principles (that some things exist and are distinct). And being “only” scientific principles (similar to the scientific principles – not laws! – of mechanics, thermodynamics, etc.), then consistent with <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">Popper’s principle</a>, we can claim at most that they are falsifiable but (in the main, i.e., excluding “the law of the excluded middle”!) are not yet falsified.<br /><br />Aristotle’s statement of the “law” of the excluded middle is the following (from his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Posterior Analytics,</span> bk. I, pt. 11):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">It is impossible to affirm and deny simultaneously the same predicate of the same subject. </blockquote>His statement of the “law” of non-contradiction is the following (<span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics,</span> IV, 3):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything… which everyone must know who knows anything, he must already have when he comes to a special study. Evidently, then, such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject…</blockquote>Aristotle’s statement of the “law” of identity was as given a few paragraphs earlier – depending on exactly what he might have meant by his use of the verb “to be”, i.e., if he was using it to represent ‘existence’ or ‘identity” or ‘predication’! He states the principle more forcefully in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (XI, 5):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary recognize the truth; viz., that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be, or admit any other similar pair of opposites.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pre-Aristotelian Logic</span><br />To gain some appreciation of Aristotle’s huge accomplishments in logic, consider first what some earlier Greeks said about ‘reason’, starting with one of the few fragments we have from the mystical mathematician Pythagoras (c.580–500 BCE), from about 200 years before Aristotle: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Reason is immortal, all else mortal.” </span> Such a statement illustrates a mistake made by many people, even today: when they don’t understand something (e.g., reason, love, life, how the universe came into existence…) they have a tendency to worship it. The Greek playwright Sophocles (c.495–406 BCE) wrote: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Reason is God’s crowning gift to man.”</span> Thereby, Sophocles was just as wrong as Pythagoras: no god ever had anything to do with creating reason. Instead, as I tried to outline above and in earlier chapters, reason is simply the application to thoughts of two fundamental principles (discovered by animals millions of years ago) that things exist and are distinct (i.e., A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A).<br /><br />Parmenides (or “Parmen’s son”; c.515–c.450 BCE) appears to be the first who came close to recording that humans and other animals assumed A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A. He was born in the Greek city-state of Elea (or Elia) on the western side of southern Italy and founded the Eleatic school of philosophy. About 150 years later, Aristotle wrote that Parmenides (“one of the Italians” i.e., one of the Greek settlers in Italy) was a student of Xenophanes (the fellow who saw: <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">“All is but a woven web of guesses”</span>). Parmenides most famous statements are: <span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">“what is, is”</span></span> and <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">“what is not, is not”</span>. Those statements are close to saying A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A, but one can argue that what Parmenides said was “some things exist in reality and other things don’t”, without including the idea that the things that exist are distinct. That is, his statement that “what is not, is not” doesn’t mean A ≢ ¬A, but that some things (such as gods and invisible pink elephants that fly) don’t exist in reality but only as ideas; it doesn’t include the concept that things can’t be what they’re not (i.e., A ≢ ¬A).<br /><br />Unfortunately, Parmenides also wrote:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Whatever can be spoken [of] or thought of necessarily is, since it is possible for it to be, but it is not possible for nothing to be.</blockquote>And in case there’s doubt that he could have made such a huge mistake, in the same poem (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Way of Truth</span>), he stated the same idea again, somewhat differently:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It is the same thing – to think of something and to think that it is – since you will never find thought without what-is, to which it refers, and on which it depends.</blockquote>That means that invisible pink elephants (and gods) are really flying around all over the place – because “whatever can be spoken [of] or thought of necessarily is…” To which one could respond, in the vernacular, “Gimme a break!”<br /><br />During the next ~2500 years, thousands of philosophers, hundreds of thousands of clerics, and billions of people went off on absurd tangents from the crazy idea that <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“whatever can be… thought of necessarily is…”</span> For example, as I outlined in the previous post, Plato and his followers convinced themselves that gods and immortal souls were flying around all over the place. Two thousand (or so) years after Plato, Descartes continued the same dumb idea: he convinced himself not only that he existed (“I think; therefore, I am” – rather than the more nearly correct: “I think; therefore, I’m thinking”!) but also that God existed, because he (Descartes) could imagine God. After Descartes, Hegel continued this foolishness with “the real is rational [which may be true] and the rational is real [prove it!]”, which in turn led to Marx’s foolishness and communism. Meanwhile, all organized religions are still based on Parmenides’ absurd idea that <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“whatever can be… thought of necessarily is…”</span><br /><br />After Parmenides, more silliness was promoted by Empedocles (c.490–430 BCE). Empedocles lived in a Greek city in Sicily, and if he didn’t know Parmenides (although I wouldn’t be surprised if he studied under him), he <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empedocles">essentially certainly</a> studied Parmenides’ poem (quoted above) and he unfortunately adopted Pythagoras’ ideas about reincarnation. As summarized by Professor Barry D. Smith at his Ancient Greek Philosophy <a href="http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/GrPhil/Empedocles.htm">website</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Empedocles accepts Parmenides’ view that ultimately there is no generation or destruction; what is, is, and cannot come into being or perish. Fragments 11, 12 says, </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fools! – for they have no far-reaching thoughts – who deem that what-before-was-not comes into being, or that anything can perish and be utterly destroyed. For it cannot be that anything can arise from what in no way is, and it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; for it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it.</span></blockquote>Such a conclusion apparently seemed obvious (and still seems obvious!) to the mystics of the world, consistent with their desire for eternal life, described by Empedocles as follows:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When, released from the body, you ascend to the free ether; you will become an immortal god, escaping death.</blockquote>Ancient Greek (and subsequent) physicists, however, considered the mystics to be the “fools”. Currently, an enormous body of evidence supports the conclusion that a huge variety of things “come into being” from “what-before-was-not” (from self-replicating molecules to their abilities to form DNA and consciousness, from elementary particles to their abilities to create stars and black holes, and from photons to <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">possibly</a> the universe itself). It’s therefore reasonable to conclude that “immortal souls” also “came into being” from “what-before-was-not”, where by “came into being” is meant that they exist only as ideas in the minds of mystics, one definition of whom could be: those who agree with Parmenides that <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“whatever can be… thought of necessarily is…”!</span><br /><br />Yet, it was an important contribution by Parmenides to begin to formulate the fundamental scientific principles that A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A. 2500 years later, these fundamental principles of science – or stated equivalently, these fundamental premisses of logic (that things exist and are distinct) – have yet to be demonstrated wrong. But when Parmenides proposed that whatever could be imagined also exists, he unfortunately abandoned common sense.<br /><br />Parmenides also abandoned common sense by rejecting the idea of Heraclitus (c.540–c.480 BCE) that “all is flux”. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/">Instead</a>, “rejecting the reality of change… for [Parmenides] all was one indivisible, unchanging reality, and any appearances to the contrary were illusions, to be dispelled by reason and revelation.” Parmenides’ most famous student, Zeno of Elea (c.490–c.430 BCE), carried this abandonment of common sense to an extreme, resulting in some famous paradoxes, parts of which remained unresolved for more than 2,000 years!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Zeno’s Paradoxes</span><br />Zeno of Elea (distinct from Zeno of Citium, who founded the Stoic school of philosophy about 150 years later) apparently traveled with Parmenides, including a trip to Athens where (according to Plato) they met with Socrates when he was about 20 and Parmenides was about 65. As readers probably know, one of Zeno’s most famous paradoxes posits that, in a race, “swift Achilles” could never overtake a tortoise, because when Achilles would, say, cut the distance between them in half, the tortoise would move a small distance forward; when Achilles cut the new distance between them in half, the tortoise would again move a small distance forward; and so on, to infinity. Therefore, Zeno argued, Achilles would never catch up to the tortoise. Of course, common sense responds: “Gimme a break; things pass other things all the time!”<br /><br />Equally obvious is the time when Achilles would pass the tortoise. Thus, if the speed of Achilles is Sa, then the location of Achilles, La, at any time, T, is given by La = Sa x T . If the tortoise is given a head start of HS and if it moves at speed St, then the tortoise’s location, Lt, at any time is Lt = HS + (St x T). So, the time when the two locations are equal (i.e., when Achilles catches up to the tortoise and will subsequently pass it) can be found by equating the two locations: La = Sa x T = HS + (St x T) = Lt. Solving for the time gives the result that Achilles catches up to the tortoise at time T = HS / (Sa – St). For example, if the speed of Achilles is 11 m/s and tortoise is given a head start of 100 m but moves at 1 m/s (very rapid for a tortoise!), then Achilles would overtake the tortoise in (100 m) / (11 m/s – 1 m/s) = 10 seconds.<br /><br />Actually, although Zeno’s paradoxes may now seem to be rather silly, they had profound implications for philosophers in ancient Greece – and later! As the mathematician and philosopher Alfred Whitehead wrote in 1947:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I am fond of pointing out to my pupils that to be refuted in every century after you have written is the acme of triumph. I always make that remark in connection with Zeno. No one has ever touched Zeno without refuting him, and every century thinks it worthwhile to refute him.</blockquote>And although Zeno’s paradoxes did provide later philosophers with many <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/">challenges</a>, more important was Zeno’s method: he applied to philosophical questions what’s now called the method of <span style="font-style: italic;">reductio ad absurdum</span> (“reduction to absurdity”), which may have already been available in mathematics in the Pythagorean school. Thus, as stated by the Roman writer Apulius in his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Apuleius/apol.mb.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Defense</span></a> (Sec. 1, Pt. 4), Zeno “was the first to discover that most ingenious device of refuting hypotheses by the method of self-inconsistency.” The method became known in ancient Greece as “the dialectic”, from Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">dialektikē</span>, meaning “(art) of debate”, from <span style="font-style: italic;">dialegesthai</span>, meaning “converse with”. Stated differently, Zeno thereby realized that paradoxes can’t exist, because A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A.<br /><br />Apparently, though, Zeno didn’t realize that the method to resolve any apparent paradox (obtained by sound reasoning) is to check the premisses, because at least one of them must be wrong – or if he realized the method, he wasn’t able to apply it. If Zeno had applied the method, he might have made some amazing discoveries, including calculus, how to sum infinite series, and maybe even quantum mechanics!<br /><br />Nonetheless, Zeno still deserves substantial credit, because he was smart enough to notice that something was wrong, posing some paradoxes. Instead of doing a simple calculation to determine the time when Achilles would overtake the tortoise, Zeno apparently claimed that his argument demonstrated that Parmenides was right (that change was an illusion) and that our senses couldn’t be trusted. And in a way, he was right: our senses have their limitations. It’s usually a good idea, however, to trust “common sense”, because for every one of the few times that it may mislead, there’ll be a thousand-or-more times that common sense will be more reliable than any philosophical or religious argument! And when someone reaches a nonsensical conclusion such as runners can’t pass one another, or all invisible flying elephants are pink, or God made us in his image, then a reasonable response would be something similar to: “Have you spent much time trying to identify either errors in your reasoning or your incorrect premisses?”<br /><br />In particular, Zeno’s arguments contain many faulty premisses: 1) His failure to understand the concept of instantaneous speed (which, about 330 years ago, Newton and Leibniz independently resolved by taking ratios of infinitesimals, thereby creating differential calculus), 2) His assumption that forever cutting the distance between Achilles and the tortoise in half (with words such as “and so on, to infinity”) would still leave a finite distance between them, and thereby, his assumption that the infinite series wouldn’t converge (which, about 250 years ago, Euler showed was wrong), 3) His assumption that infinities weren’t countable (which, about 140 years ago, Cantor resolved with his theory of transfinite numbers), 4) His assumption that the positions and speeds (or momenta) of both Achilles and the tortoise (even when the differences in positions shrunk to atomic sizes) could always be specified exactly (which, about 80 years ago, Heisenberg showed was wrong, providing the foundation for quantum mechanics), and 5) His assumption that infinities exist in reality, an assumption that has no evidential support even though the idea is routinely used in pure mathematics and essentially all religions.<br /><br />About 100 years after Zeno, Aristotle proposed a resolution of Zeno’s paradox about Achilles and the tortoise. It’s a rather tortuous explanation (given in pts. 6–9 of bk. VI of his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span>), because he first tries very hard to understand and describe ‘time’, ‘motion’, and ‘continuity’, but the essence of his argument is correct:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Now since the motion of everything that is in motion occupies a period of time, and a greater magnitude is traversed in a longer time, it is impossible that a thing should undergo a finite motion in an infinite time…</blockquote>In fact, if Aristotle had gone just a little further with his ideas, he probably would have discovered the concept of instantaneous speed and differential calculus. Still, Aristotle's analyses of the meaning of ‘continuity’ (and “the continuum”) formed the basis of all “continuum mechanics” (e.g., of solids, liquids, and gases), which was universally used in mechanics until the start of the 20th Century, when the discrete nature of some things and processes was found to be important, leading to quantum mechanics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">“Measure for Measure”</span><br />After the mistakes made by Parmenides and Zeno, there were many generations of quiet-muddled thinking (especially by Plato), until Aristotle put reasoning back on track. In the first generation after Parmenides, Protagoras (c.485–c.415 BCE) made a little progress with logic. He was the fellow whom I mentioned two posts ago who was charged with “impiety” and whose books were burned because they contained the honest and totally justifiable (agnostic) statement: <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> “Respecting the gods, I am unable to know whether they exist or do not exist”.</span> One of his few other statements that survived the clerics’ burning of his books was: <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> “Man is the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not.”</span> That’s a great statement, both understandable and correct, but it’s more a statement about humans than about Nature’s principles that A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A.<br /><br />Maybe Protagoras was responding to the clerics who promoted people’s “belief” in the existence of various gods (if not invisible, flying, pink elephants!); it’s then a great “declaration of independence” to say: “Man is the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not”, i.e., “I’ll decide whether or not invisible flying elephants are pink!” Or maybe Protagoras was responding to the silly statement of Parmenides, “Whatever can be… thought of necessarily is…”; it’s then a great response to say: “Man is the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not”, i.e., “I’ll decide what is and what isn’t!” On the other hand, any implication from Protagoras’ statement that an individual’s decision (about what exists) being a valid “measure” of anything’s existence in reality would be quite wrong: just because someone decides that gods exist doesn’t mean that they do! As Aristotle wrote (<span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span>, XI, 6):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The saying of Protagoras is like the views we have mentioned; he said that man is the measure of all things, meaning simply that, that which seems to each man also assuredly is. If this were so, it follows that the same thing both is and is not, and is bad and good, and that the contents of all other opposite statements are true, because often a particular thing appears beautiful to some and the contrary of beautiful to others, and that which appears to each man is the measure… But to attend equally to the opinions and the fancies of disputing parties is childish; for clearly one of them must be mistaken.</blockquote>In the same generation as Protagoras (about 10 years younger) was Socrates (469–399 BCE). As I mentioned two posts ago, what’s known about Socrates is only what others recorded, and most of what was recorded was by his student Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE). It’s then essentially impossible to know the origin of ideas that Plato attributed to Socrates – or attributed to others. Thus, although I don’t know the source of it, the idea that A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A was recorded by Plato in about 380 BCE in his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthydemus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Euthydemus</span></a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">More of Plato’s Word Games</span><br />It appears that Euthydemus was a student of Protagoras, and I’d like to quote a portion of the (alleged) dialogue between Euthydemus and Socrates (as reported by Plato), because some of this dialogue provides an example of the “muddled mess of thinking” that existed before Aristotle, a mess that Socrates (or Plato) partially straightened out and that, later, Aristotle almost straightened out. The alleged conversation starts with the following:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Then tell me,” he [Euthydemus] said [to Socrates], “do you know anything?”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Yes,” I [Socrates] said, “I know many things, but not anything of much importance.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“That will do,” he said. “And would you admit that anything is what it is, and at the same time, is not what it is?” </span> [That question contains the ambiguity derived from the verb “to be”. Thus, one doesn’t know if the question refers to existence, identity, or set membership.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Certainly not.” </span>[i.e., I, Socrates, maintain that what is, is, and is not what it’s not.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“And did you not say that you knew something?”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“I did.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“If you know, you are knowing.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Certainly, of the knowledge which I have.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“That makes no difference. And must you not, if you are knowing, know all things?”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Certainly not,” I said, “for there are many other things which I do not know.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“And if you do not know, you are not knowing.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Yes, friend, of that which I do not know.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Still you are not knowing, and you said just now that you were knowing; and therefore you are and are not at the same time, and in reference to the same things.” </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“A pretty clatter, as men say, Euthydemus, this of yours! And will you explain how I possess that knowledge for which we were seeking? Do you mean to say that the same thing cannot be and also [cannot] not be? And therefore, since I know one thing, that I know all, for I cannot be knowing and not knowing at the same time. And if I know all things, then I must have the knowledge for which we are seeking. May I assume this to be your ingenious notion?”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Out of your own mouth, Socrates, you are convicted,” he said.</span></blockquote>Euthydemus (i.e., in reality, Plato) then goes on with similar absurdities to “demonstrate” that Socrates knows all things, knew all things when he was born – because it was knowledge possessed by his immortal soul!<br /><br />A second strange feature of the above report is that Plato seems to have believed the result (i.e., that each person has a “soul” that knows all things and always knew all things), and yet, Plato reports how Socrates demonstrated Euthydemus’ errors. Thus, Plato reports that Socrates states (to someone else who was “tripped up” by Euthydemus or his brother):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The two foreign gentlemen [Euthydemus and his brother] perceiving that [you] did not know, wanted to explain to you that the word ‘to learn’ [or the word ‘know’] has two meanings, and is used, first, in the sense of acquiring knowledge of some matter of which you previously have no knowledge, and also, when you have the knowledge, in the sense of reviewing this matter, whether something done or spoken by the light of this newly-acquired knowledge; the latter is generally called ‘knowing’ rather than ‘learning,’ but the word ‘learning’ is also used; and you did not see, as they explained to you, that the term is employed of two opposite sorts of men, of those who know, and of those who do not know. There was a similar trick in the second question, when they asked you whether men learn what they know or what they do not know. These parts of learning are not serious, and therefore I say that the gentlemen are not serious, but are only playing with you. For if a man had all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the wiser; he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and over setting them with distinctions of words. He would be like a person who pulls away a stool from some one when he is about to sit down, and then laughs and makes merry at the sight of his friend overturned and laid on his back.</blockquote>Plato thus reported that Socrates saw that these disciples of Protagoras (“Sophists”) were just playing “word games”, and yet, although Plato was apparently aware that the Sophists were capitalizing on failures to define words carefully, Plato in his writings trapped himself in his own word games! He appears to have relied on the foolishness of Parmenides’ statement, “Whatever can be… thought of necessarily is…”, and from that blunder (plus not being careful with definitions), he made an enormous number of mistakes, mistakes that, to this day (as I tried to outline in the previous post) continue to be perpetuated by all ideologues, including the promoters of all religions.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma</span><br />Still another mess left by Plato is associated with what’s now called “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma">the Euthyphro dilemma</a>”. Unlike paradoxes (which can’t exist – at least so long as the scientific principles that A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A remain valid!), dilemmas can exist (e.g., not being able to have your cake and eat it, too – or whether to pronounce 'Euthyphro' as “u-THY-froh” or “U-thuh-froh”!).<br /><br />The source of the dilemma is Plato’s statement (allegedly quoting Socrates) in Plato’s book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Euthyphro</span></a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.</blockquote>A more modern version, stated as a question for monotheists, might be:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Is something moral because God said so, or did God say so, because it’s moral?</blockquote>The dilemma follows from consideration of the two options. Thus, on the one hand, if something is moral because God said so, then morality seems to be nothing more than God’s whim: if God orders people to kill their children or if God murders homosexuals, drowns people, kills children and unbelievers, promotes rape and genocide, kills his own son, etc. (as He allegedly does, according to the Bible), then what hideous person would want anything to do with the morality of such a monster? And on the other hand, if God says something is moral because it is (that is, because morality is somehow “built into the fabric of the universe”, as the ancient Hindus maintained about <span style="font-style: italic;">Ritam</span>, the ancient Egyptians maintained about <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span>, Zarathustra maintained about <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span>, etc., including the Chinese <i>Tao</i>), then why don’t people just skip what God (i.e., any “holy book”) has to say about morality and seek to discern “the moral order” to which the wimpy God is required to conform?<br /><br />In general, if one encounters a dilemma that can’t be resolved, one is forced either to live with the dilemma (which most people find difficult to do) or to choose one of the available options. In the case of the Euthyphro dilemma, Jewish and Muslim clerics advocated (and still advocate) choosing the option that God is all-powerful (and that his ways are too mysterious for mere humans to understand). That is, consistent with the primitive, patriarchal, tribal customs that they “deified”, Jewish and Muslim clerics maintained (and still maintain) that whatever the all-powerful Yahweh or Allah said or did (as alleged in their “holy books”) is right, by definition, fundamentally because they adopt the law of the jungle (“might makes right”) – and wouldncha know, the clerics just happen to be the powerful god’s earthly representatives, so you’d better do exactly as they say.<br /><br />If a resolution to a dilemma is possible, then in principle at least, the resolution can be found in either of two ways: by uncovering faulty logic or by removing unjustified, faulty premisses. For example, upon being told that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too, many children will recognize that the dilemma is derived from the “false dichotomy” logical fallacy – and proceed to eat only a portion of their cake! Similarly, Plato’s (and subsequent Christian clerics’) proposed resolution to the Euthyphro dilemma was to assume that God is “all good” and, therefore, He would never prescribe anything evil as being moral. Consistently, in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span>, Plato proposed censorship of all suggestions (such as those in Homer and Hesiod) that the gods behaved immorally – and subsequent Christian clerics followed Plato’s recommendation to kill anyone who said otherwise. (And actually, subsequent Muslim clerics adopted similar policies, e.g., “kill the infidels”, even though they also adopted and still promote the option that whatever God says is right, because “might makes right” – illustrating that clerics don’t feel constrained by logic, so long as they can continue to be parasites.)<br /><br />The alternative (resolving dilemmas by identifying one or more faulty premisses) is the same method used to eliminate all paradoxes derived from sound logic. Such is the method used by scientific humanists to resolve the Euthyphro dilemma. Thus, given the substantial evidence [which I’ve at least sketched in early posts (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html">here</a>) and chapters (e.g., start <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/KindnesswithKeenness.pdf">here</a>)] showing that morality is derived from experiences gained by social animals (such as dolphins, monkeys, elephants, and humans) in how to live together cooperatively, scientific humanists reject the data-less, unjustified premiss (or better, “mere speculation”!) that any god exists or has ever existed. Thereby, the Euthyphro dilemma collapses into meaningless mumbo-jumbo, typical of Plato’s mystical ramblings (and similar balderdash in all “holy books” promoted by clerics).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aristotle</span><br />In contrast to Socrates’ student Plato, Plato’s student Aristotle surpassed his teacher. Two examples are Aristotle’s analyses and rejections of Plato’s ideas of Forms (outlined in the previous post) and Plato’s idea of souls (outlined in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix11ChangingIdeas.pdf">chapter</a>), leading to Aristotle’s famous statement: <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> “while both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.” </span><br /><br />There’s no doubt that Aristotle was brilliant. He was in the same league as Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume, Jefferson, Darwin, and Einstein. He was also a prolific writer – and now, it’s wonderful that his 29 books are just <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html">a few clicks away</a>, courtesy computers, the internet, and tremendous websites such as <a href="http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aristotle/index.html">Greek Texts</a> and the <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/">Internet Classics Archive at MIT</a>. Some praise of Aristotle, however, may be too profuse, e.g., Cicero described his books as “a river of flowing gold”; instead, readers might agree more with the assessment that Aristotle drowns his readers in a flood of unnecessary repetitions and pedantry – even while agreeing that his books contain nuggets of brilliance.<br /><br />For purposes of this series of posts dealing with the God Lie, however, it would be a distraction to try to survey all of Aristotle’s brilliant accomplishments. Instead, I’ll focus on some of the ways that he corrected Plato’s erroneous ideas and then comment on some of Aristotle’s own errors. I should also include at least a brief version of Aristotle’s biography, since he participated in initiating many ideas whose repercussions continue to this day.<br /><br />The Greek Texts <a href="http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aristotle/index.html">website</a> reviews that Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was born in Macedonia, where his father was court physician. At age 18, he traveled to Athens and studied under Plato. When he was 37 (when Plato died), Aristotle left Athens for Atarneus in Asia Minor and married the ruler’s niece. A few years after Aristotle moved to Atarneus, King Philip II of Macedonia summoned him to become the tutor of his 13-year-old son Alexander, later known as “Alexander the Great.”<br /><br />Relevant to the next post (dealing with the accomplishments of Epicurus, Zeno the Stoic, and others), I want to add that, accompanying Aristotle to Atarneus was another of Plato’s former students, Xenocrates, whose later lectures were said to have been attended by Epicurus and Zeno the Stoic. Similar to Aristotle, Xenocrates was a prolific writer, writing books on topics similar to those addressed by Aristotle. In contrast to Aristotle, however, Xenocrates promoted Plato’s Theory of Forms. In addition, Xenocrates attempted to resolve the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea by proposing (without justification) that some magnitudes were indivisible.<br /><br />In about 335 BCE, when Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) started his Asiatic campaign, Aristotle returned to Athens and opened his own school. It’s reported that, similar to Plato, Aristotle expounded his philosophy in “popular language” in various Dialogues, which were lost; what we have are his 29 more formal treatises (which may have been lost or hidden for ~200 years after his death, a year after Alexander’s death). It has been suggested that some of Aristotle’s surviving books were lecture notes recorded by his students, but from my experiences, it's difficult for me to imagine how any student could have recorded such details as appear throughout his books. Below, I’ll briefly review a few of his ideas, including his ideas about souls and gods – although in some cases, it’s difficult (and even inappropriate) to isolate such ideas from his other ideas; for example, his erroneous idea about God followed logically from the errors he made in physics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some of Aristotle’s Accomplishments</span><br />In the previous post I already showed at least a little of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Forms. Here, I’ll add only a few more comments. As readers can find, Aristotle devotes most of his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> to debunking Plato’s (or Pythagoras’) idea of Forms and a “good” god, involved in human affairs. As an example, Aristotle struck devastating blows to the foundation of Plato’s attempt to meld Pythagorean ideas about numbers and Socrates’ ideas about “the Good” (with a capital ‘G’, no less) with his comments: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“but the mathematical sciences take no account of goods and evils”</span> and <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“the impossible results of this view [Plato’s] would take too long to enumerate.” </span><br /><br />With respect to the setting for Aristotle’s ideas about souls, recall (e.g., from the previous post) that Plato proposed some bizarre ideas about souls and “eternal life”, which were subsequently used to construct the theoretical abominations subsequently called Christianity and Islam. In turn, Plato probably obtained his ideas from the Egyptians and from the Pythagoreans, and in turn, Pythagoras probably picked up his ideas from the Egyptians and perhaps from the Zoroastrians and Hindus. In contrast to the possibility of automatically adopting such ideas from “the ancients” and in conformity with Socrates’ recommendation to be careful with definitions, Aristotle started his book <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Soul </span>by carefully examining what “the ancients” seemed to have meant by the word ‘soul’.<br /><br />Thus, in Part 1 of Book I of <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Soul</span>, Aristotle states: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“The soul is in some sense the principle of animal life.”</span> He then summarizes his investigation of the meaning of the word ‘soul’ (bk. II, pt. 1):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">We have now given an answer to the question, What is soul? – an answer which applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing’s essence. </blockquote>Stated differently, if Aristotle could have used modern terminology, he might have said: “the soul is the DNA sequencing that defines any life form’s genetic code”! Aristotle then proceeded to the obvious conclusion:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body…</blockquote>Thereby, Aristotle not only undermined Plato’s (and Pythagoras’ and the Zoroastrian/ Hindu/ Egyptian – and subsequent Christian/ Islamic…) idea of soul, he prepared the way for what, still today, should destroy all religious people’s silly ideas about “immortal souls” – if only religious people would begin to base their idea on evidence rather than on dreamy speculations!<br /><br />That is, consistent with Aristotle’s idea that “the soul is inseparable from its body”, modern neurology has provided a vast amount of evidence that a person’s character, outlook on life, behavior, etc. (or, as religious people would say, a person’s ‘soul’) can be changed dramatically by physical or chemical changes in the brain. The obvious conclusion, then, is that there’s no “ghost in the machine” (i.e., ‘soul’); instead, the brain, itself, is what religious people are wont to call ‘soul’. As “Ebonmuse” recently wrote at his <a href="http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/09/ten-questions-to-ask-your-pastor.html">blog</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">As Carl Sagan observed, the history of the human species is a series of great demotions. The first was the Copernican revolution, demoting Earth from the center of the universe to one planet among many. The religious conservatives fought against this for a long time, but for the most part, they’ve come to accept it. The second was the Darwinian revolution, making human beings just one species among many, rather than the apex of creation. The religious conservatives, for the most part, have refused to come to terms with this and are still fighting against it. The third one, I think, is going to be the neurological revolution – the one that shows our mind is the result of physical causes, rather than the product of a supernatural soul. For the most part, religious conservatives haven’t even felt this blow yet. But I think, when its full force is recognized, it’s going to be the most decisive one of all. The knowledge that the mind is a physical phenomenon strikes directly at religious belief, far more so than evolution or heliocentrism do.</blockquote>Stated differently, now that ample evidence is available to debunk Plato’s (and earlier people’s) idea of ‘soul’ (a “ghost in the machine”), maybe religious fundamentalists will finally accept Aristotle’s idea!<br /><br />Aristotle made many other contributions, but attempting to outline them all would distract from the goal of this series of posts. Earlier in this post and in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ib2BasicLogic.pdf">chapter</a>, I outlined some of his astounding accomplishments in logic; in summary, it’s a testament to his brilliance that limitations on “Aristotelian logic” have been uncovered only during the most recent century. In earlier chapters, I already addressed some of his ideas about ethics (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/M3_Muddled_Moralities.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/P06_Some_Sick_Social_Policies.pdf">here</a>) and about politics (e.g., <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X08_EXamining_Operations.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X33_EXperimental_Cooperatives.pdf">here</a>).<br /><br />In this post, I should at least mention that, in addition to demolishing Plato’s ideas about Forms and souls, Aristotle demolished Plato’s damnable ideas (described in Plato’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Republic</span>, which I criticized in the previous post) about “the ideal society” (i.e., a communistic, totalitarian, theocracy, much like today’s Iran). Instead, Aristotle’s analysis in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Politics</span> led to such gems as the following:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• Man is by nature a political animal.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[which undermines not only communism but also the polygamy of Islam]</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• If liberty and equality… are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The basis of a democratic state is liberty.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• Law is order, and good law is good order.</span><br /><br /></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some of Aristotle’s Major Mistakes</span><br />Unfortunately, Aristotle also made many mistakes, and as inconsistent as it may seem, reliance on logic was his nemesis – as it is, to this day, with all religious philosophers who claim to be logical. Thus, although Aristotle obviously realized that sound logic provides knowledge consistent with assumptions, yet he apparently didn’t realize (what modern-day religious philosophers still don’t seem to realize) that logic can never produce new information – only knowledge that’s consistent with existing information. Therefore, for example (as I’ve described in detail <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">elsewhere</a>), it’s impossible to use logic to prove that any god exists (or has ever existed), since such a demonstration would yield new information. Thereby, all the claimed “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IeEvaluatingProofsofGod.pdf">logical proofs of God’s existence</a>” are, as Kant said, “So much… labor lost.” Instead, the only way to demonstrate that any god exists would be to provide relevant evidence.<br /><br />Many of Aristotle’s errors can be traced to his major mistake of starting from Socrates’ unproductive (even counterproductive) view of science, which Aristotle described as follows:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">For two things may be fairly ascribed to Socrates – inductive arguments and universal definitions, both of which are concerned with the starting-point of science.</blockquote>That assessment is consistent with Plato’s reports that Socrates spent his time talking to people, trying to determine what they meant by various concepts (such as honor, truth, wisdom, etc.) and then trying to find some common features of these concepts from which he could generalize (i.e., some common features from which, by induction, he could infer general principles). Such a procedure is, however, not the “starting-point of science.” Instead, as emphasized and repeatedly demonstrated by (especially) “the father of modern medicine” Hippocrates (c.460–377 BCE, a contemporary of Socrates), the “starting point (and essence!) of science” is the scientific method, i.e., observe, try to infer some hypothesis from the observations, and then perform experiments to test predictions of the hypothesis.<br /><br />Aristotle’s failure to appreciate the essence of science (i.e., his emphasis on definitions rather than data), as well as historical consequences of his failure, were well summarized by the 20th century philosopher Karl Popper in Section II of Chapter 11 of his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Open Society</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">and Its Enemies</span> and in Chapter 6, entitled “Two Kinds of Definitions”, of <span style="font-style: italic;">Popper Selections</span> (David Miller, Ed., Princeton University Press, 1985). Below, I’ve melded quotations from those two sources.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In science, we take care that the statements we make should never depend upon the meaning of our terms. Even where the terms are defined, we never try to derive any information from the definition, or to base any argument upon it. This is why our terms make so little trouble. We do not overburden them. We try to attach to them as little weight as possible. We do not take their “meaning” too seriously. We are always conscious that our terms are a little vague (since we have learnt to use them only in practical applications) and we reach precision not by reducing their penumbra of vagueness, but rather by keeping well within it, by carefully phrasing our sentences in such a way that the possible shades of meaning do not matter. This is how we avoid quarrelling about words. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Our “scientific knowledge”, in the sense in which this term may be properly used, remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions; the only effect is upon our language, which would lose, not precision, but merely brevity…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between this view of the part played by definitions, and Aristotle’s view. For Aristotle’s essentialist definitions</span> [i.e., in which a word is burdened with “capturing the essence” of some thing or process] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">are [imagined to be] the principles from which all our knowledge is derived; they thus [are imagined to] contain all our knowledge; and they [are imagined to] serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this… scientific… definitions do not contain any knowledge whatever, nor even any ‘opinion’; they do nothing but introduce new arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The problem of definitions and of the “meaning of terms” is the most important source of Aristotle’s regrettably still prevailing intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[and all religions!]</span>; for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein suffers… from this influence.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The development of thought since Aristotle could, I think, be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[such as in all religions!]</span> has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism, and that the degree to which the various sciences have been able to make any progress depended on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist method…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…Aristotle’s doctrine of definition… led to a good deal of hairsplitting. But later, philosophers began to feel that one cannot argue about definitions. In this way, essentialism not only encouraged verbalism, but it also led to the disillusionment with argument, that is, with reason. Scholasticism [,] mysticism [,] and despair in reason</span> [the hallmarks of all organized religions!]… <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">are the unavoidable results of the essentialism of Plato and Aristotle…</span></blockquote>In spite of Aristotle’s major error to emphasize definitions rather than data, Aristotle did appreciate that all his analyses relied on certain “primary premisses.” He didn’t see, however, that the reliability of his primary premisses could be judged only through experimental tests of their predictions, instead proposing and promoting the blatant stupidity (<span style="font-style: italic;">Posterior Analytics</span>, I, 31):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Scientific knowledge is not possible through the act of perception.</span> </blockquote>In <span style="font-style: italic;">Posterior Analytics</span> (II, 19), he went on to propose the following nonsense (to which I’ve added the italics):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premisses, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be <span style="font-style: italic;">intuition that apprehends the primary premisses</span> – a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, <span style="font-style: italic;">intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge.</span> And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premiss, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact.</blockquote>Aristotle’s bizarre proposals that “intuition [apprehends] the primary premisses” (a proposal that, during the 20th Century, Kurt Gödel pursued, even after he proved his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%83%C2%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems">incompleteness theorem</a>, and drove himself insane attempting to prove) and that “intuition [is] the originative source of scientific knowledge” led Aristotle to another major mistake, which I’ll summarize as follows: by failing to see that the only authority in science is evidence and by claiming, instead, that intuition is the source of scientific knowledge, Aristotle became an authoritarian, demanding that others acknowledge his intuition (and resulting pronouncements and definitions) as “the authority”.<br /><br />To illustrate and try to explain what a I mean, as well as to suggest why Aristotle’s authoritarianism was successful for so long, I’ll start with his famous statement (from his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span>, I, 1): <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Man by nature desires to know.”</span> Thereby, although Aristotle didn’t realize how knowledge of the world external to our minds can be gained (i.e., via the scientific method), yet he not only saw that humans have a desire to know, he also saw (perhaps intuitively!) that humans unfortunately have a propensity to accept even crazy “explanations” (such as the existence of various gods) as “knowledge”, if such explanations are presented with sufficient authority and give superficial appearances of explaining the unknown (e.g., “our holy book says…”). As a result and with his connections to the most powerful political authority of his time, Alexander the Great (Aristotle’s student), Aristotle became one such arrogant “authority”, dictating superficial “explanations” as “knowledge”, thereby trampling on the two-centuries-old wisdom of Xenophanes: <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> “all is but a woven web of guesses”.</span><br /><br />Many illustrations of Aristotle’s authoritarianism are available. One is his statement in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (II, 2): <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“Nothing infinite can exist [in reality].”</span> That may be correct, but such a bold pronouncement can’t be justified; instead, he should have stated something similar to: “To date, nothing infinite has yet been found in reality.” Another illustration is his statement in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span> (VIII, 1):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">…that which is produced or directed by nature can never be anything disorderly: for nature is everywhere the cause of order. </blockquote>He provided no justification for such a claim, and (of course) we now know that his claim is exactly contrary to the second principle of thermodynamics, one of whose statements is that, in isolated systems, nature always seeks to produce maximum disorder!<br /><br />Still another example of Aristotle’s authoritarianism is in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (IV, 4) where he attacks those who disagree with the scientific principles that things exist and are distinct (i.e., A ≡ A and A ≢ ¬A):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There are some who… assert that it is possible for the same thing to be and not to be… But we have now posited that it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be, and by this means have shown that this is the most indisputable of all principles. Some indeed demand that even this shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want of education, for not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education. For it is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything (there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration); but if there are things of which one should not demand demonstration, these persons could not say what principle they maintain to be more self-evident than the present one.</blockquote>That’s terrible authoritarianism, and moreover, it’s plain stupid! In fact, if it weren’t for the appearance of similar statements elsewhere in his writings, I would wonder if it were a translation error – for it rather hurts to see such a brilliant mind make such a colossal error. That is, Aristotle was totally wrong to suggest that it is “for want of education” or “the mark of a man who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not” that someone would demand a demonstration of any fundamental scientific principle (or axiom). In contrast, what Aristotle should have said is that the instances of demonstrations that things exist and are distinct (i.e., that A ≡ A, that A ≢ ¬A) are so numerous that even monkeys and babies have wholeheartedly adopted these hypotheses!<br /><br />Stated differently, what Aristotle should have written is that if anyone should suggest (in seriousness) that one of the fundamental axioms (or scientific principles) of logic is wrong, then the person should be strongly encouraged to demonstrate how the principles are wrong – guaranteeing a prize to anyone who can demonstrate that it’s wrong! Stated in the vernacular, if anyone should say something as horrible as the Bible’s <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“it’s a wicked generation that wants a sign”</span> or Aristotle’s <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“[it’s] the mark of a man who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not”</span>, then that person should be invited to blow it out his ear!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some of Aristotle’s Specific Errors</span><br />Aristotle’s misunderstanding of the essence of science, his failure to test predictions of his hypotheses and, instead, his reliance on definitions, intuition, and authoritarianism, led him to sometimes silly and sometimes serious errors. An example of one of his silly errors was his hypothesis that women have fewer teeth than men – and he apparently never took the trouble to ask his wife (or any other woman) to open her mouth, so he could count her teeth! Yet, maybe he wasn’t on speaking terms with his wife, for as Aristotle the philosopher said:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. [!] </blockquote>Some illustrations of Aristotle’s more serious errors are available in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span>. As a first example, consider his fundamental premiss (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span>, I, 5):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come from anything else…</blockquote>One can understand why Aristotle would make such an assumption, and one can admire Aristotle for trying so hard, so long ago, to understand Nature, but we who are accustomed to the scientific method would now inquire: What evidence supports such assumptions? What predictions follow from such a hypothesis? What are the results of experimental tests of those predictions? And, of course, we now know that, for example, all 20th century results in quantum mechanics show that both aspects of Aristotle’s “first presupposition” are wrong.<br /><br />Another serious error also appears near the beginning of his book on <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span>. Thus, by considering the behavior of plants, animals, and people, he concludes (bk. II, pt. 8):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If purpose, then, is inherent in art, so is it in Nature also… It is plain, then, that nature is a cause, a cause that operates for a purpose.</blockquote>Unfortunately, however, he reached his generalization considering only animate parts of nature; meanwhile, as far as is known, rocks, stars, galaxies… don’t have purposes – or stated more meaningfully, ‘purpose’ is a concept attributable only to life. Stated still differently, life has a purpose (namely, to continue living), but no evidence supports Aristotle’s assumption that inanimate Nature has any purpose. Thereby, Aristotle made the mistake of arguing by analogy, apparently not appreciating the conclusion reached by another of Socrates’ students, Euclid of Megara (c.435–c.365 BCE), that arguments by analogy never constitute “proof”. A still more serious example of Aristotle’s error of relying on an argument by analogy is his disgraceful “justification” of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/R_Reason_versus_Reality.pdf">slavery</a>.<br /><br />Similarly, by relying only on logic (based on incorrect premisses), Aristotle erroneously concluded in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span> (IV, 7 & 8) that a vacuum cannot exist:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">It is clear, then, from these considerations that there is no separate void.</blockquote>Further, in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (XI, 8) he erroneously added:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If, then, luck or spontaneity is a cause of the material universe, reason and nature are causes before it.</blockquote>Aristotle gave no justification for such claims. We could now argue that if (for example) the universe was created by a symmetry-breaking quantum-like fluctuation in the original total void, then “before” such a “creating fluctuation”, nothing existed; therefore, neither reason (based on existence and uniqueness) nor “nature” had any meaning; therefore, they couldn’t have been “causes before it.” Instead, the “cause” of the “spontaneity” would have been simply that, similar to other quantum mechanical systems, “total nothingness” fluctuates (and some such fluctuations are unstable). But Aristotle certainly can be pardoned for taking the easier route: he assumed (e.g., <span style="font-style: italic;">Meteorology</span>, I, 14) that <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">“the universe is permanent”. </span><br /><br />Relative to Aristotle’s influence on religions, his most egregious error followed from his unsupported and incorrect assumption (<span style="font-style: italic;">Physics</span>, VII, 1):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Everything that is in motion must be moved by something.</blockquote>The above error led Aristotle to conclude that there must have been a “prime mover” (God) who set things in the universe in motion, a conclusion later copied by many foolish religious philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). Unfortunately, Aristotle (and later religious philosophers) apparently never observed and considered motion resulting from, for example, a bubble bursting. That is, there’s no need for any external force (putting the water droplets from the bubble’s burst into motion); there’s need only that momentum be conserved (i.e., that the momenta of all exploded components of the bubble sum to the same value they had before the explosion, i.e., zero). In contrast to his silly conclusion that a God must have started all motions, if Aristotle had thought about an exploding bubble (or similar), he might have concluded that motion in the universe could have been started by a Big Bang!<br /><br />Aristotle repeats the same erroneous idea in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (XII, 6):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">… it is impossible that movement should either have come into being or cease to be (for it must always have existed), or that time should. For there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist.</blockquote>Relative to the first part of the above statement (i.e., his claim that movement can’t come into being or cease to be), Aristotle apparently never saw either a bubble burst (i.e., motion come into being) or something stop moving (e.g., a ball, stopped from rolling because of friction). And relative to the second part of his claim, he can be forgiven for not seeing that time is meaningless without energy; therefore, before the Big Bang (which created motion), i.e., before there was energy, there was no time.<br /><br />The culmination of his errors about motion and time appears in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (XII, 7), where he introduces his god as the prime mover, who (he decides, siding with Plato) must be “good”:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is in this sense a first principle. For the necessary has all these senses – that which is necessary perforce because it is contrary to the natural impulse, that without which the good is impossible, and that which cannot be otherwise but can exist only in a single way.</blockquote>Then, stuck with the assumption that his prime mover is “good”, Aristotle produces the following gobbledygook:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God.</blockquote>And with that error, he manages to dig himself into an even deeper hole (<span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span>, XII, 9):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine of things observed by us, the question how it must be situated in order to have that character involves difficulties. For if it thinks of nothing, what is there here of dignity? It is just like one who sleeps. And if it thinks, but this depends on something else, then (since that which is its substance is not the act of thinking, but a potency) it cannot be the best substance; for it is through thinking that its value belongs to it. Further, whether its substance is the faculty of thought or the act of thinking, what does it think of? Either of itself or of something else; and if of something else, either of the same thing always or of something different. Does it matter, then, or not, whether it thinks of the good or of any chance thing? Are there not some things about which it is incredible that it should think? Evidently, then, it thinks of that which is most divine and precious, and it does not change; for change would be change for the worse, and this would be already a movement. First, then, if ‘thought’ is not the act of thinking but a potency, it would be reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is wearisome to it. Secondly, there would evidently be something else more precious than thought, viz. that which is thought of. For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to one who thinks of the worst thing in the world, so that if this ought to be avoided (and it ought, for there are even some things which it is better not to see than to see), the act of thinking cannot be the best of things. Therefore it must be of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.</blockquote>Thus, according to Aristotle, after God set things in motion, then (in the vernacular), God has spent eternity contemplating his own navel! Well, sorry to burst Aristotle’s (and Thomas Aquinas’, and…) bubble, but if they’d watch a bubble bursting, then they’d see no need for “a first cause” (of motion); i.e., God isn’t needed – except, of course, in the case of clerics such as Thomas Aquinas and all other clerics before and since, God is needed for them to have the time to contemplate their own navel, rather than go out a produce something useful for other humans.<br /><br />But even though we can now see that Aristotle made many major errors, he was obviously an astounding genius, contributing such gems as: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."</span> In that regard, consider the wisdom of what he wrote in <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> (II, 1):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[as Xenophanes said]</span>, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[is the proverb about hitting a barn door that old?!]</span>, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it… It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[such as, as he points out, Pythagoras and Plato]</span>; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought</span>.</blockquote>By the same token, although Aristotle was wrong about much, he quite likely contributed more to “the powers of thought” than has anyone else!<br /><br />Still more to his credit, Aristotle demonstrated in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span> his disdain for all theologians:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The school of Hesiod and all the theologians thought only of what was plausible to themselves, and had no regard to us. For, asserting the first principles to be gods and born of gods, they say that the beings which did not taste of nectar and ambrosia became mortal; and clearly they are using words which are familiar to themselves, yet what they have said about the very application of these causes is above our comprehension. For if the gods taste of nectar and ambrosia for their pleasure, these are in no wise the causes of their existence; and if they taste them to maintain their existence, how can gods who need food be eternal? – <span style="font-style: italic;">But into the subtleties of the mythologists it is not worth our while to inquire seriously…</span></span> [Italics added]</blockquote>Aristotle adds a point that is especially appropriate for those who claim so many meanings for the word ‘God’ (e.g., God is Good, God is the creator of all, God is love, etc.):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">If, however, they</span> [i.e., definitions of words] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">were not limited, but one were to say that the word has an infinite number of meanings, obviously reasoning would be impossible; for not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and if words have no meaning our reasoning with one another, and indeed with ourselves, has been annihilated…</span></blockquote>Similar continues to this day. Thus, if you engage in discussions with religious people about their god, then if you don’t want “reasoning… [to be] annihilated”, first demand a clear and unique definition of their ‘god’ – rather than their usual definition, which is some version or other of: “I dunno”!<br /><br />But in the end, Aristotle was unable to overcome the entrenched, self-serving interests of the clerics in ancient Greece: they (and after them, Christian and Muslim clerics) lapped up Plato’s ideas like warm milk (and are still doing so, 2400 years later), causing Aristotle major problems. Thus, as described in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle">Wikipedia article on Aristotle</a>, which also refers to Aristotle’s former student, Alexander the Great:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Upon Alexander’s death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[a priest who “interpreted sacred mysteries”] </span>denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother’s family estate in Chalcis, explaining, “I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,” a reference to Athens’s prior trial and execution of Socrates. </blockquote>Looked at differently, the real “sacred mystery” was how clerics managed to dupe and enslave so many people for so long! But Aristotle saw how power mongers used religion to their advantage:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies [the planets] are gods, and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency… [For example] A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.</blockquote>As the Greek historian Polybius (c.204–c.122 BCE) later summarized:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Since the masses of the people are inconsistent, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods and the belief in punishment after death. </blockquote> Thus, the clerics duped and enslaved people (and still do) by capitalizing on people’s ignorance, egotism, fears, and greed (e.g., for eternal life).<br /><br />It’s clear why the Greek clerics were so opposed to Aristotle’s idea of God – and why, still today, all clerics continue to oppose his idea, instead promoting Plato’s prattle: if God is consumed by contemplating his own navel (or, according to Aristotle, thinking about himself), than there’s no need for clerics. The clerics therefore realized that Aristotle’s “heretical ideas” had to be stopped, since they undermined the clerics’ con games, threatening the clerics with what frightens them the most: the possibility that they might need to actually do something productive, like go out into the real world and work for a living! No cleric will willingly work; so, the ancient Greek clerics (and all clerics ever since) chose the easier route: stir the rabble to reject Aristotle’s idea.<br /><br />And thus, once again, the clerical quacks stymied science and humanity with their God Lie, just as they subsequently have done for more than 2300 years. Fortunately for us in the West, progress has been made constraining the clerics, permitting science and human rights to advance (although much still needs to be done to constrain the damnable Christian clerics in the U.S.), but unfortunately for all of us, Islamic clerics still enshroud most of the Muslim world in their version of the Dark Ages, caused by clerical power-mongering and the people’s ignorance, egotism, fears, and greed. With the internet, maybe it won't be too much longer before such ignorance and arrogance are dispelled.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-55328448160281746792009-12-19T03:08:00.000-08:002009-12-24T04:27:52.400-08:00Clerical Quackery 6 – Physics versus Metaphysics in Ancient Greece – 2 – Plato<div><br /></div>This is the 26th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie”, the 6th in a subseries dealing with “Clerical Quackery”, and the 2nd in the sub-subseries (!) dealing with “Physics vs. Metaphysics in Ancient Greece”, i.e., dealing with skirmishes and battles that occurred in Ancient Greece in the war between science and religion (or between realism and mysticism), a war that has been waged for at least 2500 years and continues today (e.g., in the war between the “modern world” and “Muslim supremacists”).<br /><br />Early in ancient Greece (as I outlined in the previous post) one side of this war was taken by the superstitious Greek “rabble”, their clerics, and other “metaphysicists” (or more accurately, ‘mystics’), including Homer, Hesiod, Heraclitus (partially), and Pythagoras (completely). On the other side were the first few physicists (i.e., those who tried to understand ‘nature’; Greek, <span style="font-style: italic;">phusis</span>), including Thales (“water is the cause of all things”), partially Xenophanes (“…all is but a woven web of guesses”), Anaxagoras (who suggested the Sun is a “red-hot stone”, rather than a god), Protagoras (“concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not…”), and Democritus (“by convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space”).<br /><br />Approximately 400 years after Homer and Hesiod, Socrates (469–399 BCE) seems to have tried to stay neutral in the war between science and religion, but he managed to offend the religious rabble and their clerics – who have always been eager to kill for their cause (perhaps because, beneath all their bluster, they know they’ve bought into a bill of goods, i.e., the God Lie). Yet, whatever the cause, after a trial that mocked justice, Socrates was found guilty and executed. The official verdict was:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods in which the state believes, but brings in other new divinities; he also wrongs by corrupting the youth.</blockquote>After Socrates’ execution, of course the battle between science and religion continued, with the next two primary combatants being the two most famous Greek philosophers, namely, Socrates’ student Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE) and Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE). As I plan to outline in the next post, Aristotle unfortunately engaged in some (useless) metaphysical speculations but also contributed a little to physics (including meteorology), quite a bit to biology (a branch of <span style="font-style: italic;">phusis</span>), and a lot to logic. For this post my goal is to at least outline some of the subterfuge promoted by Plato, who was a mystic – arguably, the most evil mystic the world has even known (using ‘evil’ in the sense of harm done to humanity). That is, it was Plato’s “Forms” into which later tyrants (including “Saint” Constantine, Muhammad, al-Wahhab, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Khomeini) poured their concrete for the foundations of their abominations, including various versions of Christianity, Islam, Fascism, and Communism.<br /><br />Before trying to explain what I mean, however, I should point out a complication about the word ‘existence’ that Plato apparently never appreciated and that has subsequently caused considerable <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/">confusion</a> throughout the world, especially among the religious. This confusion has arisen because the word ‘existence’ has multiple meanings. In what follows (except for cases in which I trust that my meaning will be obvious), I’ll distinguish two meanings for ‘existence’ by using the expanded phrases “exists in reality” versus “exists only as an idea”.<br /><br />By “exists in reality” I’ll mean that some type of measurement can be made on the subject and that independent observers generally agree on the results. For example, I expect that most observers would agree that, e.g., the Empire State Building “exits in reality”. On the other hand, by “exists only as an idea” I’ll mean that such measurements aren’t possible – although, in such cases, it might be possible to measure associated brain waves, but I’ll then describe the brain waves as “existing in reality” (as electro-chemical signals within someone’s brain), without meaning to confirm that what is being thought about also exists in reality. As illustrations, there’s no evidence to support the assumption that God (or any god) exists (or has ever existed) <span style="font-style: italic;">in reality,</span> but meanwhile, there’s no doubt that various gods exist and have existed <span style="font-style: italic;">as ideas</span> – otherwise, I wouldn’t be wasting so much time writing about the God Lie (which, fundamentally, is the lie that any god has ever existed in reality).<br /><br />In ancient Greece, enormous confusion arose (and persists in religious people to this day!) because so many otherwise-brilliant people didn’t (and foolish and/or uneducated religious people still don’t) distinguish between what exists in reality and what exists only as ideas. Unfortunately for the world, the distinction between the two meanings for ‘existence’ never penetrated Plato’s thick skull. [By the way, but maybe not entirely incidentally, ‘Plato’ was his nickname, meaning ‘broad’ or ‘thick’, suggested to refer to the size of his forehead!]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato as an Aspiring Mathematician</span><br />To try to uncover possible reasons why Plato managed to cause the world so much trouble, it might be useful to explore Plato’s background. In that regard, Aristotle mentions that Plato (born of a wealthy Athenian family with genetic lineage to the famous Athenian legislator, Solon, c.630–c.560 BCE) was first a student of Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus. As I mentioned in the previous post, Heraclitus was the Ionian who studied under Thales and who is famous for his ideas of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos</span> [which is used in the New Testament and which probably was an idea that he or Thales adapted from the Egyptian idea of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span> or Zarathustra’s idea of <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span>] and is famous for his idea “the attunement of opposite tensions” [which became known as “the dialectic”, which Hegel (1770–1831) promoted to try to find a synthesis of a thesis and its antithesis and which Marx (1818–83) used to formulate his dialectic materialism]. Heraclitus is also famous for his statements, “all is flux; nothing stays still… nothing endures but change” – a concept that apparently caused Plato a great deal of anxiety, resulting in his imagining ideal things (called “Forms”) that never change.<br /><br />After serving in the military from 409–404 BCE (during the war between Athens and Sparta) Plato apparently decided to become a playwright (which presumably explains why Plato expounded his philosophy via dialogues). Thus, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hermes and Plato</span> (partially available at Google books) Edouard Shure (1841–1929) states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">At the age of twenty-seven he [Plato] had written several tragedies and was about to offer one for competition. It was about this time that Plato met Socrates, who was discussing with some youths in the gardens of the Academy. He was speaking about the Just and the Unjust, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. The poet drew near to the philosopher, listened to him, and returned on the morrow and for several days afterwards. At the end of a few weeks, his mind had undergone a complete revolution… Another Plato had been born in him, as he listened to the words of the one who called himself “the one who brings souls to birth.” The important thing, he (Socrates) said, was to believe in the Just and the True, and to apply them to life. Plato had received from Socrates the great impulse, the active male principle of his life, his faith in justice and truth. He was indebted for the science and substance of his ideas to his initiation into the Mysteries, and his genius consists in the new form, at once poetic and dialectic, he was enabled to give to them.</blockquote>How Plato became “initiated” into the above-mentioned “Mysteries” seems unclear. After what was essentially the murder of Socrates, Plato probably distrusted the Greek “rabble” and their clerics, and left Athens. Thus, as given in <a href="http://www.plosin.com/work/PlatoPlatonism.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition – An Encyclopedia</span></a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Soon after Socrates' death in 399 BCE, Plato apparently left Athens for Megara </span>[a city in Attica, Greece]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, where he visited Euclides (450–380 BCE), founder of the Megarian school</span> [and another of Socrates’ students, who was present at his death and who famously and importantly rejected arguments by analogy]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; Cyrene</span> [a Greek colony in what is now Libya]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, where he visited the mathematician Theodorus (c.460–390 BCE)</span> [famous for what’s now called “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_Theodorus">the Spiral of Theodorus</a>”]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; and Italy, where he visited the Pythagorean Philolaus (c.470–390 BCE)…</span> </blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>It therefore appears that, soon after Socrates’ death, the erstwhile playwright Plato immersed himself in the field of (pure) mathematics.<br /><br />Relative to Plato’s “Theory of Forms”, it’s relevant to point out an important distinction between “pure” vs. “applied” mathematics. Applied math has been “the queen of science” ever since the first cave-woman divided the available meat into an appropriate number of portions and told her man to go out and get a half dozen more logs for the fire! Subsequently, applied math was used by architects, bureaucrats, engineers, etc. to build irrigation systems and dwellings, divide property, and collect taxes. Pure math, on the other hand, caught the attention of the first metaphysicist who noticed that 1 + 1 = 2, no matter the things being counted (pieces of meat, logs, taxes, stars, whatever); that is, pure math is an abstraction from reality. To this day, applied math continues to be the fundamental tool used in all branches of science, and pure math (which isn’t a branch of science) continues to be “merely” an abstraction – albeit sometimes extremely useful (e.g., in the formulation of general relativity, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and string theory).<br /><br />Not incidentally, a hint of differences in mental attitudes of people who pursue pure math vs. science is available from relatively recent <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X15_EXpanding_Education.pdf">data</a> about members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Thus, although I consider it disgraceful that 7% of NAS members “believe in a personal god” (because members of the Academy are charged with conveying their collective opinion to the U.S. Congress based on evidence, and yet, 7% believe in the existence in reality of “a personal god”, even though, in reality, there’s zero evidence to support such an opinion!), but for present purposes, it’s more interesting to note that “the highest rate of belief in god was found among mathematicians (14.3%)” – and if some of them are pure mathematicians (as they probably are) they shouldn’t even be members of the National Academy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Sciences</span>! The result suggests that, to this day, pure math continues to be a fertile field for mystics, i.e., those who have yet to develop the critically important habit of basing their ideas, opinions, and beliefs on evidence – which was Plato’s fatal error.<br /><br />Plato apparently concluded that (pure) mathematics (which includes the study of the geometry of perfect, idealized forms) leads to knowledge of “the truth”, not just in mathematics. Thus, in his most famous book, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span></a>, Plato wrote (bk. VII):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of aught perishing and transient… Geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.</blockquote>Approximately two decades after Socrates’ execution and after visiting and (no doubt) learning from the leading (pure) mathematicians around the Mediterranean Basin, Plato returned to Athens and established his own school (the original “Academy”, derived from the name of the man, Academos, who had formerly owned the land on which Plato’s school was established). The motto of Plato’s Academy was reportedly: “Let no one unversed in geometry enter here.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato the Mystic</span><br />Just what “truth” Plato claimed he discovered via math, he purposefully shrouded in mystery: apparently he was “an initiate” in the Pythagorean (or other) “Mysteries”, details of which he apparently swore not to reveal. Thus, in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Letter_%28Plato%29">Seventh Letter</a> of his <span style="font-style: italic;">Epistles</span> (i.e., “letters”) Plato wrote:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith</span> [of the Mysteries]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, for it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden</span> [in an “epiphany”, from Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">epiphaninein</span>, meaning ‘reveal’] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.</span></blockquote>Plato adds that such secrecy is necessary in order not “to expose [the Mysteries] to unseemly and degrading treatment”, and in his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Phaedo</span></a>, he claims:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the mire, but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with the gods.</blockquote>As for just what these Mysteries were (permitting one to “dwell with the gods”), it’s a long story – one that I plan to describe in at least a little detail in a later post dealing with one aspect of the creation of Christianity. Here I’ll give just a very brief introduction.<br /><br />In general, the Mysteries about how to enter “the spirit world” are as old as stone-age use by shamans of hallucinogenic plants (or “psychotropic substances” or “entheogens”, a Greek word meaning “becoming divine within”) and as old as the first instance of any of a variety of brain disorders, including epilepsy and schizophrenia (originally called “sacred diseases”), which in turn can be caused by, e.g., genetic anomalies, physical trauma, or chemical imbalances in the brain. From the time that writing first became available (in about 3000 BCE, with one of the first records being a recipe for making beer!), reports are available about the use of “mind-warping drugs”, including the Hindu’s <span style="font-style: italic;">soma</span>, the Zoroastrian’s <span style="font-style: italic;">homa</span>, and as readers can find from the internet, Wasson and colleagues have proposed that “a psychoactive brew from mushrooms” was probably used for induction into the “Eleusinian Mysteries” (at Eleusis, a city near Athens) by the ancient Greeks, possibly including Plato.<br /><br />But whatever the cause might have been (drugs or trauma or…), the result was that Plato “went mystic”, causing humanity an enormous amount of harm, comparable to the harm caused by (the epileptic?) “Saint” Paul (the real founder of Christianity) and by (the brain-damaged?) Muhammad. In his famous <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix11ChangingIdeas.pdf">cave analogy</a>, Plato leaves no doubt that he (egotistically and even maniacally) considered himself to be the one who climbed out of the cave and saw “the true nature of reality” in the full light of day, while the rest of us mere mortals were left behind in the fire-lit cave, trying to make sense of shadows on the walls.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato’s Forms</span><br />As already illustrated, Plato said he wouldn’t write about the Mysteries, but apparently he did give lecture about them, and from the “lecture notes” of Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle, it appears that Plato pursued the craziness promoted by Pythagoras. An example is the following, copied from Aristotle’s <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Metaphysics</span></a> (bk. 1, pt. 6):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">After the systems we have named <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[developed by Pythagoras and others]</span> came the philosophy of Plato, which in most respects followed these thinkers, but had peculiarities that distinguished it from the philosophy of the Italians <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[i.e., the Pythagoreans and the Eleatics]</span>. For, having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views he [Plato] held even in later years. Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal [in] these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to sensible things but to entities of another kind – for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible thing, as they were always changing</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[consistent with what Plato had learned of the thoughts of Heraclitus].</span> Things of this other sort [fixed things], then, he called Ideas [or Forms], and sensible things, he said, were all named after these, and in virtue of a relation to these; for the many existed by participation in the Ideas [or Forms] that have the same name as they. Only the name ‘participation’ was new; for the Pythagoreans say that things exist by ‘imitation’ of numbers, and Plato says they exist by ‘participation’, changing the name. But what the ‘participation’ or the ‘imitation’ of the Forms could be, they left an open question.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Further, besides sensible things and Forms he [Plato] says there are the objects of mathematics, which occupy an intermediate position, differing from sensible things in being eternal and unchangeable, [differing] from Forms in that there are many alike, while the Form itself is in each case unique. Since the Forms were the causes of all other things, he thought their elements were the elements of all things. As matter, the great and the small were principles; as essential reality, the One; for from the great and the small, by participation in the One, come the Numbers. But he agreed with the Pythagoreans in saying that the One is substance and not a predicate [or description] of something else; and in saying that the Numbers are the causes of the reality of other things, he agreed with them…</span></blockquote>In his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">On the Soul</span></a> (bk. I, pt. 2), Aristotle described Plato’s views more succinctly:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Again he [Plato] puts his view in yet other terms: Mind is the monad [unity, i.e., 1], science or knowledge the dyad [i.e., 2] (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to another), opinion the number of the plane [3], sensation the number of the solid [4]; the numbers are by him expressly identified with the Forms themselves or principles, and are formed out of the elements…</span> </blockquote>It seems appropriate to add a few comments about what poor-old Plato was apparently trying to do, namely, trying to identify “the fundamental stuff behind reality”.<br /><br />As I mentioned in the prior post, for approximately 200 years prior to Plato people speculated about such “fundamental stuff”. Thus, first Thales (c.624–c.545 BCE) claimed it was water; subsequently, Anaximander (c.610–c.546 BCE) claimed it was something indefinite, which he called <span style="font-style: italic;">apeiron</span>; Anaximenes of Miletus (c.585–c.528 BCE) claimed it was air; Heraclitus (c.535–c.475 BCE) claimed it was fire (which may have been symbolic for “change”); Anaxagoras (c.500–c.428 BCE) claimed it was <span style="font-style: italic;">nous</span> (God’s thoughts); others claimed it was various combinations (e.g., earth, air, water, and fire) and processes; and Democritus (c.460–c.370 BCE) claimed it was atoms and space. Plato apparently adopted Pythagoras’ claim that the “fundamental stuff behind reality” was ideas or “Forms”, which could be represented by numbers. Incidentally, today, most physicists would probably say that “the fundamental reality” (at least in our universe) is that “energy exists and exchanges”, whatever energy might be!<br /><br />As for more details about Plato’s Theory of Forms, it’s unfortunately difficult to find a concise summary in Plato’s works – because Plato apparently never wrote anything concisely! In particular (as I partially reviewed in an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Q2_Quality_&_Quotations.pdf">earlier chapter</a>), in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span> Plato pretends that Socrates is discussing various ideas with a variety of other people, and from the resulting “dialogues”, some idea of Plato’s Forms is available. The following pieces are illustrative.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">First… let me remind you of the distinction… between</span> [on the one hand] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the multiplicity of things that we call good or beautiful or whatever it may be and, on the other hand, Goodness itself or Beauty itself and so on. Corresponding to each of these sets of many things, we postulate a single Form or Real Essence, as we call it.</span></blockquote>With this, Plato is apparently proposing that, because there are a number of cases of, e.g., “good”, therefore (according to Plato), there is such a “thing” as Good (with a capital “G”, no less!), which has the property (unsurprisingly!) of “Goodness”. Thereby, he apparently didn’t appreciate that ‘goodness’ is subjective and depends on the subject’s objectives. Even more strangely, Plato proposed that this ideal “Good” actually exists (not just as ideas but in reality!) – and even worse, that “the Good” is what “believers” call ‘God’ – and still worse, that if people didn’t believe him, then they should be executed!<br /><br />Now if readers think that Plato couldn’t have been so dumb and so horrible as I’ve suggested, then I invite them to read the junk that Plato wrote. Below, I’ll comment on a tiny percentage of his writings, mostly from his most notorious book, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span>. To start, what follows is a sample of Plato’s illogical, despicable, despotic writings, to which I’ve added some notes in brackets.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It [Goodness] is the cause of knowledge and truth.</span> [What nonsense! “It {Goodness}” isn’t “the cause of knowledge” or “truth”. Knowledge is gained by people trying to understand. Closed-system truth is defined by whoever concocts the game (e.g., games of poker, baseball, pure math, or various religion). Open-system truth is what people try to determine – and it’s apparently done best by applying the scientific method.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And so, while you may think of it [Goodness] as an object of knowledge</span> [What stupidity! Who considers “Goodness {or goodness} as an object of knowledge”? “Goodness” is a descriptor used to describe some object or process, e.g., Plato’s thinking is the opposite from “goodness”!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth and knowledge and, precious as these both are, of still higher worth…</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> [Objects of knowledge] derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.</span></blockquote>There’s so much drivel in Plato’s final sentence, above, that it’s difficult to know where to start criticizing it! But starting with the first claim, consider: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“{Objects of knowledge} derive from the Good… their power of being known.”</span> Hello? Suppose my “object of knowledge” is how to correct Plato’s dumb statements. I suppose that they do have some “power of being known”, but this power isn’t “derive{d} from the Good.” Their “power of being known” is derived from so many people, over so many centuries, failing to see that what Plato is peddling is pure bunk; therefore, the “power” is derived not from anything good but from ignorance, gullibility, acquiescence to authority, etc., none of which is beneficial to the continuation of humans, i.e., it’s derived from what most humans consider to be evil, not good. Then there’s <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Goodness is not the same thing as being.” </span> Duh. Who said it was? And then the finale: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> “[Goodness is] even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.”</span> Hello? Pray tell what “beyond being” means? Does Plato mean it’s just an idea? If so, then how does an idea surpass “being” “in dignity and power”? I know a lot of ideas that aren’t dignified at all (funny how easily so many examples come to mind when reading Plato!), and as for the “power” of such ideas, apparently Plato never thought about how wimpy such ideas would be if the Sun’s power switched off!<br /><br />As I wrote in an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Q2_Quality_&_Quotations.pdf">earlier chapter</a>, it’s easy to imagine how one person’s mind can “go around the bend” as badly as Plato’s did (especially if he used mind-warping drugs), but what’s so amazing is that so many people (over so many centuries!) followed him around the same bend. The source of his leaps over logic seems to be simply his use of a capital letter. Thus, what he does, first, is play some grammatical games, starting with a perfectly good adjective (similar to ‘red’, as in “the red barn”). Next, he turns the adjective into a noun (as in “the barn’s redness is fading”). Then, he uses it as a subject – complete with a capital letter (“Yet, the Redness persists!”). Once he has the capital letter, he then gives this “noun” any attribute he desires: “For this Redness is the best of colors: the color of the most beautiful roses and sunsets, the color that transmits heat throughout the universe, the color that gives power to blood, and therefore – as must be obvious to all – Redness is the supreme color, chosen by the gods themselves”! Then, still worse, in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic </span>Plato takes the next horrible step in his idiocy, which in this case would be: “People who refuse to recognize Red to be the supreme color should be executed.”<br /><br />Now, I’m certainly not the first person to criticize Plato’s nonsense. One of the most penetrating criticisms is contained in a story about the Greek philosopher Diogenes (c.400–c.325 BCE), the most famous of the Cynics (the one who, readers might remember, was famous for wandering around Athens, “searching for an honest man”). The following is quoted from David Quinn’s <a href="http://members.optushome.com.au/davidquinn000/Diogenes%20Folder/Diogenes.html">webpage</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Plato was discoursing on his Theory of Ideas [or Forms] and, pointing to the cups on the table before him, said while there are many cups in the world, there is only one ‘idea’ of a cup, and this ‘cupness’ precedes the existence of all particular cups.<br /><br />"I can see the cup on the table," interrupted Diogenes, "but I can't see the ‘cupness’.”<br /><br />"That's because you have the eyes to see the cup," said Plato, "but", tapping his head with his forefinger, "you don't have the intellect with which to comprehend ‘cupness'."<br /><br />Diogenes walked up to the table, examined a cup and, looking inside, asked, "Is it empty?"<br /><br />Plato nodded.<br /><br />“Where is the ‘emptiness’ that precedes this empty cup?" asked Diogenes.<br /><br />Plato allowed himself a few moments to collect his thoughts, but Diogenes reached over and, tapping Plato's head with his finger, said, "I think you will find: here is the ‘emptiness’."</blockquote>I don’t know if, in the subsequent ~2400 years, anyone clobbered Plato’s Theory of Forms so well as Diogenes did!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato’s Ideas About Souls, Gods, and Creation</span><br />Now, although it’s essentially impossible to show details about any of Plato’s ideas without quoting pages and pages of rambling “dialogue”, I’ll try to get by with just sketching his ideas about souls and gods, etc. In an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Q2_Quality_&_Quotations.pdf">earlier chapter</a>, starting on p.16, I already went through the idiocy of Plato’s hypothesis about souls – as well as some of the horrible consequences, because so many Christians, Muslims, etc. adopted the same nonsense. In summary, Plato took huge leaps past logic to “demonstrate” (or more likely, to copy from Pythagoras – who in turn seems to have copied the idea from Zoroastrian priests, who in turn may have copied the idea from Egyptian or Indian priests!) that humans have “souls” that “existed before we were born” (because we know the “ideal Forms” without ever experiencing them while we’re alive). He concludes the idiocy with his asinine statement:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So now there is no longer any difficulty in stating expressly that… concerning all the stars and the moon, and concerning the years and months and all seasons, [no] other account [can] be given than this… namely, that, inasmuch as it has been shown they are all caused by one or more souls, which are good also with all goodness, we shall declare these souls to be the gods…</blockquote>As for Plato’s proposal of how his principal god allegedly created everything, I expect that, without reading Plato’s junk for themselves, readers would have difficulty believing that anyone could propose such nonsense. Therefore, as a sample, consider Plato’s following “explanation” (as given in his book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Timaeus</span></a>) of how his God created everything (and why!), to which I’ve again added the notes in brackets.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation. He was good </span>[Define ‘good’! ‘Good’ is a value, and values can be measured only with respect to some objective. What was your god’s objective? Was he bored and wanted to watch how ant-like people struggle to survive? Does he get his kicks from watching people suffer? Was he into voyeurism and just wanted to watch? And if so, how can you describe your wimpy, sadistic, voyeuristic god as ‘good’?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything.</span> [Oh come off it! Someone (such as you) can be jealous of a person who can think clearly – and that would be good!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> And being free from jealousy</span> [Really? Or is your god jealous of people who have the fortitude to struggle to survive in the face of their inevitable death?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.</span> [You mean that your egotistical god (desiring that “all things should be as like himself as they could be”) is such a wimp that he couldn’t make it easier for people to survive? Is that ‘good’?]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world </span>[according to the egomaniac Plato]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, as we shall do well in believing the testimony of wise men: God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.</span> [Do you mean that there are some things that your god is powerless to do? Don’t you worry that your god will reprimand you for describing him as a wimp?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest</span> [What “visible sphere”? Do you mean that there was something here before god? Who or what created it? And for that matter, who created your wimpy god?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.</span> [So, your god only cleans up messes – sort of like your mother? Yah, I can believe that: your mother is your god. But the question is: who will clean up the mess you’re now making?]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been other than the fairest</span> [Define ‘fairest’! It’s another value judgment – with meaning only relative to some goal. Was your god’s goal that all the gods would have the same (voyeuristic) view of the people? That would be fair! Why should it be only your god who gets to watch people have sex?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; and the creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible</span> [Do you mean that your wimpy god can’t see things in the infrared or ultraviolet?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole </span>[What a crazy use of the word ‘fairer’! Do you mean ‘better’? And if you mean ‘better’, then again I’d ask: measured against what objective? For example, for those creatures living in the oceans, then much better than to have the ‘intelligence’ that you claim to possess is to have gills!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; and that intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of soul. </span>[Oh, do tell! And what data, pray tell, support your speculation that living things have ‘souls’? Oh, sorry, I forgot: you don’t have a clue what the word ‘data’ means, do you? Okay, then, let’s see where your wild speculation about the existence of ‘souls’ leads you.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For which reason, when he was framing the universe</span> [So, now, you have your god just ‘framing’ the universe! Someone or something else created it (I presume), and your god just puts a frame around it!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, he put intelligence in soul</span> [Oh neat! In an unknown, unspecified, thing called ‘soul’ (whose existence in reality isn’t supported by a shred of data), your god manages to stuff ‘intelligence’ into it. If he (and you) wouldn’t mind some advice, I’d suggest that such a move wasn’t a very intelligent thing to do!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and soul in body </span>[Oh great: inside bodies, your god stuffs an undefined, unmeasured, hypothetical thing called ‘soul’ that contains some unspecified type of ‘intelligence’ – to do what, breathe underwater? And I wonder if your god has the intelligence to see that you’re just bandying about meaningless words, conveying no information, and demonstrating zero intelligence?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best. </span>[‘Fairest’ for what? ‘Best’ for what? (Besides possibly lulling people into ‘thinking’ that you know what the devil you’re talking about.)] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God. </span> [The “language of probability”? Somebody’s gotta be kidding! And all of this total nonsense resulted in your proposing that the world “became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence”? The world is living? In what sense do you use the word ‘living’? In what sense do you use the word ‘intelligence’? Other living things reproduce. Does the world? Other living things try to continue to live. Does the world? ‘Intelligence’ means “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” Does the world do that? Do you feel no constraint, whatsoever, in your choice of words?!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">This being supposed</span> [Ah! So, all the above was just a supposition, as in, “Let’s pretend.” And yet, later, you’ll propose that people who don’t believe in your god should be executed! But if it’s all just pretend, then who but an idiot – or better, an egotistical maniac – would propose to kill people who refuse to play your game of make believe!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, let us proceed to the next stage: In the likeness of what animal did the Creator make the world? </span> [Hello? If your god is just now creating the world, what’s with the animals? Where did they come from? Where do they live? I mean, it’s one thing to put the cart in front of the horse, but this is ridiculous: as yet, there are no horses!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It would be an unworthy thing to liken it [the world] to any nature which exists as a part only; for nothing can be beautiful which is like any imperfect thing</span> [What astounding nonsense! The nutcake Plato is claiming that something “which exists as a part only” is imperfect. Duh. How about an atom of someone’s body. Is the atom “imperfect”?! In addition, he’s saying that something that exists only as a part can’t be beautiful. Who in hell is he to say what’s beautiful? I say that the part of my daughter’s hair glistening in the Sun is beautiful – and to be blunt, I don’t give a damn if anyone disagrees with me.]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; but let us suppose the world to be the very image of that whole of which all other animals both individually and in their tribes are portions.</span> [You’re imagining that the world is the image of all animals? Boy, you have one powerfully weird imagination!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For the original of the universe contains in itself all intelligible beings</span> [Oh? Do tell! But first, pray tell, what the devil do you mean by “the original of the universe”?! Is this one just a replication of “the original”? Where did “the original” come from? And this “original” contains all intelligible beings? Are you and I and everyone else in “the original of the universe”? And, just out of idle curiosity: where did you say the data are that support your crazy idea?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, just as this world comprehends us and all other visible creatures.</span> [Hello? This world “comprehends us”? ‘Comprehends’ in the dictionary sense of “to grasp mentally; understand”? Have you considered seeing a psychiatrist?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> For the Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and most perfect of intelligible beings</span> [Your god made the world an intelligent being? Bizarre!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, framed one visible animal comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred nature.</span> [Plato: if you’re not just clowning around, you really otta have your head examined.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Are we right in saying that there is one world, or that they are many and infinite? </span> [I have a suggestion: why don’t you seek some data, rather than just continue with your wild speculations.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There must be one only, if the created copy is to accord with the original. </span> [It’s astounding that a single sentence can contain so much stupidity! It means, obviously, that it’s possible to make only one photocopy of any document. Thanks a lot, Plato: you just decimated by Xerox and Toshiba stocks!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For that which includes all other intelligible creatures cannot have a second or companion; in that case there would be need of another living being which would include both, and of which they would be parts, and the likeness would be more truly said to resemble not them, but that other which included them. In order, then, that the world might be solitary, like the perfect animal, the creator made not two worlds or an infinite number of them; but there is and ever will be one only-begotten and created heaven. </span>[Although, come to think of it, what’s really astounding is why any sane person would ever have paid any attention to the stupidities that Plato produced. And so, given that this crap is the basis of Christianity and Islam, it seems reasonable to question the sanity of Christians and Muslims!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also visible and tangible.</span> [Really? I can create ideas (just as you obviously can) none of which need be “corporeal” or “visible and tangible”. And in your case, the ideas are definitely not sensible!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> And nothing is visible where there is no fire</span> [Hello? Have you ever seen a piece of ice?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, or tangible which has no solidity </span>[Hello? Have you ever felt the wind and rain on your face?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and nothing is solid without earth </span>[Hello? Have you ever gone skating on ice, i.e., frozen water?]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth. </span> [Hello? What was burning – besides your other brain in “the original universe”?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third</span> [I guess Plato was into group sex!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; there must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond</span> [I wonder if he meant to write “the fairest blonde”!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">is that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to effect such a union.</span> [Maybe that means he likes women of particular sizes and proportions!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> For whenever in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what the first term is to it; and again, when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean – then the mean becoming first and last, and the first and last both becoming means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become the same with one another will be all one.</span> [Wow! Talk about kinky sex! And wouldn’t you know that he’d try to squeeze some math into his machinations?!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">If the universal frame had been created a surface only and having no depth, a single mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other terms; but now, as the world must be solid </span>[imagine how it would have shaken up poor Plato if he had learned that most of the Earth (including the oceans and the Earth’s interior) is liquid!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and solid bodies are always compacted not by one mean but by two</span> [now, there’s a bizarre theory that fortunately no longer pollutes the world!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the same proportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is air to water, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. </span> [Damn, but that’s gotta be close to the craziest gibberish ever concocted!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship; and having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand of any other than the framer.</span></blockquote>Sorry, but that’s all of Plato’s crap on the creation of the world that I can take. Yet, I should give credit where credit is due. Thus, Plato accomplished what many would consider to be impossible: he managed to make the Bible’s creation myths look good!<br /><br />And then there’s Plato’s crazy “proof” of the existence of each person’s “immortal soul”, given in<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Republic</span> (bk. X), in an alleged discussion between Socrates & Glaucon:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Are you not aware, I [allegedly Socrates] said, that the soul of man is immortal and imperishable?<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He [Glaucon] looked at me in astonishment, and said: No, by heaven: And are you really prepared to maintain this? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes, I said, I ought to be, and you too – there is no difficulty in proving it.<br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I see a great difficulty; but I should like to hear you state this argument of which you make so light. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Listen then. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I am attending.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There is a thing which you call good and another which you call evil?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes, he replied.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Would you agree with me in thinking that the corrupting and destroying element is the evil, and the saving and improving element the good?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes.</span> [Really? What about that which corrupts and destroys viruses? Care to define ‘evil’ and ‘good’?]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And you admit that every thing has a good and also an evil; as <span style="font-style: italic;">ophthalmia</span> is the evil of the eyes and disease of the whole body; as mildew is of corn, and rot of timber, or rust of copper and iron: in everything, or in almost everything, there is an inherent evil and disease?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes, he said.</span> [Come off it! It depends on the definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And anything which is infected by any of these evils is made evil, and at last wholly dissolves and dies? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">True. </span> [No it’s not! For example, we who want to live describe that which threatens our lives to be evil, but such a description is subjective. A virus, in and of itself, isn’t evil; it, too, just “wants” to survive. To the virus, that which threatens it (e.g., modern medicine) is evil!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction of each; and if this does not destroy them there is nothing else that will; for good certainly will not destroy them, nor again, that which is neither good nor evil. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Certainly not. </span> [What garbage! First, it isn’t necessarily correct that “the vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction of each”; for example, there are a huge number of causes of the destruction of humans (from floods to earthquakes), none of which reflect inherent vices and evils of humans. Second, we humans might describe as “good”, for example, that which kills some dangerous virus, but for the virus, our “good” is its “evil”!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">If, then, we find any nature which having this inherent corruption cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be certain that of such a nature there is no destruction? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">That may be assumed.</span> [Well, it may be, but it would certainly be stupid to do so! For example, as far as is known, an iron atom has a number of “inherent corruptions” (in that its electrons would merge with the protons in its nucleus, except for the need to preserve the electrons’ angular momenta, and its protons would repel one another, destroying the nucleus, except for the strong, attractive, nuclear force. Yet, although we find that the iron atom “having this inherent corruption” does not dissolve or self-destruct, the iron nucleus can be destroyed, e.g., by bombarding it with neutrons. Consequently, since at least one such case exists (although no doubt there are thousands more!), it’s incorrect to say “we may be certain that of such a nature there is no destruction.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now passing in review: unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. </span> [Depending on what might be meant by the undefined word ‘soul’!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But does any of these dissolve or destroy her? – and here do not let us fall into the error of supposing that the unjust and foolish man, when he is detected, perishes through his own injustice, which is an evil of the soul. Take the analogy of the body: The evil of the body is a disease which wastes and reduces and annihilates the body; and all the things of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation through their own corruption attaching to them and inhering in them and so destroying them. Is not this true?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes</span>. [No: not only is it untrue, it’s meaningless!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice or other evil which exists in the soul waste and consume her? Do they by attaching to the soul and inhering in her at last bring her to death, and so separate her from the body?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Certainly not.</span> [What nonsense! Suppose (in contrast to these word games) one considers only those concepts corresponding to things and processes whose existence (in reality) can be measured, e.g., rather than ‘soul’, consider ‘character’, and as an instance of ‘character’, consider “the ability to get along with others”, measures of which can be defined and made. Then, obviously this measure of a person’s “soul” (i.e., “the ability to get along with others”) can, in fact, be “corrupted” (or diminished or impaired), e.g., if the person is a murder, thief, philanderer, etc.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish from without through affection of external evil which could not be destroyed from within by a corruption of its own? </span><br /><br />[And so on this rambling nonsense continues, not worth that paper it’s written on and certainly not worth reading in more detail, leading to Plato’s:]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…But the soul which cannot be destroyed by an evil, whether inherent or external, must exist forever, and if existing forever, must be immortal? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Certainly. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">That is the conclusion, I said; and, if a true conclusion, then the souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed they will not diminish in number. Neither will they increase, for the increase of the immortal natures must come from something mortal, and all things would thus end in immortality. </span></blockquote>Plato’s idiocy about “immortal souls” (quoted above) is obviously just word games. In reality, the “souls” that Plato postulates exist not in reality but only as ideas – and illogical, nonsensical ideas at that! As Thomas Jefferson wrote (when he was 71 years old) in his 5 July 1814 letter to John Adams (his friend and also a former president):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Having more leisure… for reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Republic</span>. I am wrong, however, in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Plato’s Utopia</span><br />Actually, though, Plato’s “whimsies, puerilities, and unintelligible jargon” leads him to much worse than his speculations about souls and gods: ideologue that he was, it led him to promote a horrible dictatorship, as I’ll outline below. In what follows, though, I won’t add detailed, sarcastic comments. Instead, in the main, I’ll let Plato’s evil (his idiocy), which follows by deduction from his bizarre, unverified and unverifiable assumptions, speak for itself. In the main, I’ll just group his ideas under the listed headings.<br /><br />1. Plato’s proposal that, in the republic that he is designing, ideas will be censored. In particular, attempting to address the problem of evil, Plato proposed that God would be depicted only as good. The following is from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic,</span> bk. II, with the dialogue allegedly between Socrates and Adeimantus:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then the first thing [allegedly said by Socrates] will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded…<br /><br />But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them? [Adeimantus allegedly asks.]<br /><br />A fault which is most serious, I [allegedly Socrates] said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie.<br /><br />But when is this fault committed?<br /><br />Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes – as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original.<br /><br />Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blamable; but what are the stories which you mean?<br /><br />First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies, in high places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too – I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated on him. The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and they should sacrifice not a common [Eleusinian] pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; and then the number of the hearers will be very few indeed.<br /><br />Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.<br /><br />Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises his father when does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be following the example of the first and greatest among the gods.<br /><br />I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are quite unfit to be repeated…<br /><br />… all the battles of the gods in Homer – these tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.<br /><br />There you are right, he replied; but if any one asks where are such models to be found and of what tales are you speaking – how shall we answer him?<br /><br />I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, at this moment are not poets, but founders of a State: now the founders of a State ought to know the general forms in which poets should cast their tales, and the limits which must be observed by them, but to make the tales is not their business.<br /><br />Very true, he said; but what are these forms of theology which you mean?<br /><br />Something of this kind, I replied: God is always to be represented as he truly is, whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation is given.<br /><br />Right.<br /><br />And is he not truly good? and must he not be represented as such?<br /><br />Certainly.<br /><br />And no good thing is hurtful?<br /><br />No, indeed.<br /><br />And that which is not hurtful hurts not?<br /><br />Certainly not.<br /><br />And that which hurts not does no evil?<br /><br />No.<br /><br />And can that which does no evil be a cause of evil?<br /><br />Impossible.<br /><br />And the good is advantageous?<br /><br />Yes.<br /><br />And therefore the cause of well-being?<br /><br />Yes.<br /><br />It follows therefore that the good is not the cause of all things, but of the good only?<br /><br />Assuredly.<br /><br />Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.<br /><br />That appears to me to be most true, he said.<br /><br />Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots, and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good; but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill, Him wild hunger drives o'er the beauteous earth… he must say that God did what was just and right, and they were the better for being punished; but that those who are punished are miserable, and that God is the author of their misery – the poet is not to be permitted to say; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse or prose by any one whether old or young in any well-ordered commonwealth. Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious.<br /><br />I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my assent to the law.<br /><br />Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform – that God is not the author of all things, but of good only.<br /><br />That will do, he said.<br /><br />And what do you think of a second principle? Shall I ask you whether God is a magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously now in one shape, and now in another – sometimes himself changing and passing into many forms, sometimes deceiving us with the semblance of such transformations; or is he one and the same immutably fixed in his own proper image?<br /><br />Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being, as is supposed, the fairest and best that is conceivable, every god remains absolutely and for ever in his own form…<br /><br />Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon…<br /><br />These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them.<br /><br />I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make them my laws.</blockquote>2. Plato’s mistaken ideas about heroism and his advocacy of lying (from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic,</span> bk. III, allegedly a dialogue between Socrates and Adeimantus):<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"></span><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Such then, I said, are our principles of theology – some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to honor the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Certainly not, he said.</span> [What a horrible, moronic conclusion! The exact opposite is closer to the truth. Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to face one’s fears. If one is unafraid of death (e.g., deluded into imagining “life-after-death”), then it takes no courage to face death. The result is the crazy Muslim’s cry: “We love death!” What’s courageous is to do what one decides is necessary with full recognition that the result might be the end of one’s existence. As I wrote in the previous post: If you've been brainwashed into believing in a beneficent afterlife, then following clerical orders, it's logically impossible to risk your life and be a hero. What Plato is promoting is not “courage” but a way to dupe followers to blindly risk their lives to protect the rulers.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Impossible.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">That will be our duty, he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses </span>[from Homer, said by Achilles]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I would rather he a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to naught…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So I believe. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then persons of worth, even if only mortal men, must not be represented as overcome by laughter, and still less must such a representation of the gods be allowed. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Still less of the gods, as you say, he replied. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then we shall not suffer such an expression to be used about the gods as that of Homer when he describes how </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods, when they saw Hephaestus bustling about the mansion. On your views, we must not admit them…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Clearly not, he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the rest of the crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow sailors. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Most true, he said.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in the State, any of the craftsmen, whether he priest or physician or carpenter, he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally subversive and destructive of ship or State. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Most certainly, he said, if our idea of the State is ever carried out…</span></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>3. Plato’s advocacy of communism (from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic, </span>bk. III):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against any one who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviors of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for guardians concerning their houses and all other matters?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… The regulations which we are prescribing, my good Adeimantus, are not, as might be supposed, a number of great principles, but trifles all, if care be taken, as the saying is, of the one great thing – a thing, however, which I would rather call, not great, but sufficient for our purpose. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">What may that be? he asked. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Education, I said, and nurture: If our citizens are well educated, and grow into sensible men, they will easily see their way through all these, as well as other matters which I omit; such, for example, as marriage, the possession of women and the procreation of children, which will all follow the general principle that friends have all things in common, as the proverb says…</span><br /></blockquote>4. Plato’s further advocacy of political lies and his proposals that philosophers would rule and that humans would be bred and appropriately educated for their roles (from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic,</span> bk. V & VI, allegedly a dialogue among Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus)<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I mean, I replied, that our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects: we were saying that the use of all these things regarded as medicines might be of advantage. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And we were very right.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And this lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in the regulations of marriages and births…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I said: Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils – nor the human race, as I believe – and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Inasmuch as philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and those who wander in the region of the many and variable are not philosophers… </span> [And therefore his philosophers grasp nothing, since nothing is eternal and unchangeable!]… <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of the true being of each thing, and who have in their souls no clear pattern, and are unable as with a painter's eye to look at the absolute truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them – are not such persons, I ask, simply blind?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all – they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">What do you mean? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">True, he said, I had forgotten. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others</span> [Oh, the poor philosophers!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst. </span><br /></blockquote>5. And if you don’t buy into it, if you don’t believe in Plato’s gods, then Plato prescribed the punishment (from his last book, the <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.mb.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">Laws</span></a>, bk. X, allegedly spoken by “The Athenian Stranger”):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">After the prelude shall follow a discourse, which will be the interpreter of the law; this shall proclaim to all impious persons: that they must depart from their ways and go over to the pious. And to those who disobey, let the law about impiety be as follows: If a man is guilty of any impiety in word or deed, any one who happens to present shall give information to the magistrates, in aid of the law; and let the magistrates who first receive the information bring him before the appointed court according to the law; and if a magistrate, after receiving information, refuses to act, he shall be tried for impiety at the instance of any one who is willing to vindicate the laws; and if any one be cast, the court shall estimate the punishment of each act of impiety; and let all such criminals be imprisoned. There shall be three prisons in the state: the first of them is to be the common prison in the neighborhood of the agora for the safe-keeping of the generality of offenders; another is to be in the neighborhood of the nocturnal council, and is to be called the "House of Reformation"; another, to be situated in some wild and desolate region in the centre of the country, shall be called by some name expressive of retribution.<br /><br />Now, men fall into impiety from three causes, which have been already mentioned, and from each of these causes arise two sorts of impiety, in all six, which are worth distinguishing, and should not all have the same punishment. For he who does not believe in Gods, and yet has a righteous nature, hates the wicked and dislikes and refuses to do injustice, and avoids unrighteous men, and loves the righteous. But they who besides believing that the world is devoid of Gods are intemperate, and have at the same time good memories and quick wits, are worse; although both of them are unbelievers, much less injury is done by the one than by the other. The one may talk loosely about the Gods and about sacrifices and oaths, and perhaps by laughing at other men he may make them like himself, if he be not punished. But the other who holds the same opinions and is called a clever man, is full of stratagem and deceit – men of this class deal in prophecy and jugglery of all kinds, and out of their ranks sometimes come tyrants and demagogues and generals and hierophants of private mysteries and the Sophists, as they are termed, with their ingenious devices. There are many kinds of unbelievers, but two only for whom legislation is required; one the hypocritical sort, whose crime is deserving of death many times over, while the other needs only bonds and admonition.<br /><br />In like manner also the notion that the Gods take no thought of men produces two other sorts of crimes, and the notion that they may be propitiated produces two more. Assuming these divisions, let those who have been made what they are only from want of understanding, and not from malice or an evil nature, be placed by the judge in the House of Reformation, and ordered to suffer imprisonment during a period of not less than five years. And in the meantime let them have no intercourse with the other citizens, except with members of the nocturnal council, and with them let them converse with a view to the improvement of their soul's health. And when the time of their imprisonment has expired, if any of them be of sound mind let him be restored to sane company, but if not, and if he be condemned a second time, let him be punished with death.</blockquote>Which, then, is surely the lowest to which any student has ever sunk: in the above, Plato in essence argues that his teacher, Socrates, deserved to die! And perhaps recognizing what he had done, he decided (for the first time?) to put his words not in the mouth of Socrates but in the mouth of “the Athenian Stranger”.<br /><br />In overview, in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic </span>the ideologue Plato describes his utopia, i.e., what he considers to be an “ideal” government, complete with philosophers (such as him, of course) as rulers and with censorship, indoctrination, breeding humans for assigned roles, infiltrators and informants, and prosecution (including execution) of “deviants” – just as in Orwell’s <span style="font-style: italic;">1984.</span> Similar to all ideologues, Plato was certain that he knew best how others should live their lives. During the subsequent 2400 years, tyrants have instigated concepts similar to those in Plato’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Republic</span> to create their own utopias (for themselves!), including all Christian and Muslim theocrats and Communist and Fascist dictators. Indeed, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span> is still the blueprint used by the collusions of clerics and dictators in many Muslim countries, the worst examples being in Saudi Arabia and Iran.<br /><br />Which brings to mind another important paragraph in the letter from Jefferson to Adams (referenced above), since it demonstrates that Jefferson saw some of the horrors that were caused by the adoption of Plato’s ideas by the Abrahamic religions. To this Jefferson quotation, I’ve added a few notes in brackets and the italics.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In truth, he [Plato] is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of… Christianity <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[and all the Abrahamic religions]</span>. His foggy mind is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions. Yet this, which should have consigned him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of fame and reverence. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Christian priesthood… <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[and earlier, Jewish clerics, and later, Muslim clerics] </span>saw in the mysticism of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence…</span></blockquote>But Jefferson apparently couldn’t foresee how much worse Plato’s plague would harm humanity. As Jefferson wrote (essentially on his deathbed, declining an invitation to attend the 4th of July celebration in 1826):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form, which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion.<br /><br />All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.</blockquote>Yet, as we now know, subsequent ideologues [such as Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and various ayatollahs (such as Khomeini), would-be caliphs (such as bin Laden) and other demagogues] arose, “booted and spurred, ready to ride [the mass of mankind] legitimately, by the grace of God [or some other phantom of Plato’s fictitious Forms]”, trampling human rights, fanatically trying to create their own utopias, similar to the one described in Plato’s horrible book, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span>. In fact, if it weren’t for the existence of the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and other, similar, damnable “holy books”, I would classify <span style="font-style: italic;">The Republic</span> as the most horrible book ever written – or, as a minimum, down there with other trash, such as Marx and Engels’ <span style="font-style: italic;">The Communist Manifesto</span>, Hitler’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Mein Kampf</span>, Khomeini’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Islamic Government</span>, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Milestones</span>.<br /><br />All such books are similar, because all are written by ideologues with thoughts imprisoned by their own versions of Plato’s Forms, committed more to the closed-system “Truth” of their ideas than to the idea of <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">open-system “truth”</a>. For example, the (Shiite) leader of the Iranian revolution and subsequent dictator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khomeini">Khomeini</a> wrote regarding Plato: “In the field of divinity, he [Plato] has grave and solid views…” Sure he did: as solid as his fictitious Forms! In addition, similar to Platonic megalomaniacs before and since (such as Lenin and bin Laden), Khomeini proposed: “Establishing the Islamic state world-wide belongs to the great goals of the revolution.” Currently, members of the (Sunni) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood">Muslim Brotherhood</a> vigorously (but surreptitiously) apply their own version of Plato’s Forms, with one of their goals being:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">The process of settlement [in Western nations]… a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious…</blockquote>I expect that Plato would have enthusiastically supported members of the Muslim Brotherhood – and Jefferson would have forcefully deported them!<br /><br />[To be continued…]<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-24955363790501389432009-11-28T04:06:00.000-08:002012-10-28T05:31:13.826-07:00Clerical Quackery 5 – Physics versus Metaphysics in Ancient Greece – 1 – Homer to Socrates<div>
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Well, sorry, but after struggling with this post for two weeks, I decided to alter my earlier plans. This is the 25th in a series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie” and the 5th in the subseries of posts dealing with “Clerical Quackery”. In the previous post, I tried to show at least a little about how Persian (or Zoroastrian) ideas seeped into Jewish thoughts, as revealed in the Old Testament (OT, or more accurately, in the Jewish <span style="font-style: italic;">Tanakh</span>) as well as in other apocryphal (viz., “hidden”) Jewish literature, such as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Tobit</span>, and in other Jewish literature, such as the (banned) <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span>. In summary, over a period of about two centuries from the time that Cyrus the Great (who reigned from 559–530 BCE) permitted the Hebrews to return from Babylon to their homeland until the army of Alexander the Great (who reigned from 336–323 BCE) defeated the Persians, the ruling Hebrew clerics modified their Yahweh from the original, jealous, vengeful, tribal, mountain god into Zarathustra’s universal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent… creator god of righteousness and justice. But during those two centuries, the ruling Hebrew clerics (later called the Sadducees, who ruled the Jews on behalf of the Persians) didn’t adopt other aspects of Zoroastrianism, such as life- and judgment-after-death and a speculated, apocalyptic “end of time”, after which one or more saviors (<span style="font-style: italic;">Saoshants</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Saoshyants</span>) would create paradise on earth.<br />
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What I advertised that I’d do for this post is at least outline how, during the next two centuries (when the Jews were ruled by the Greeks), the conversion of Judaism into Zoroastrianism was essentially completed, at least among Jewish religious sects such as the Pharisees and the Essenes. Even the ruling Jewish sect (the Sadducees) apparently accepted Zoroastrian ideas of life- and judgment-after-death, and apparently did so for a very practical reason: to try to maintain political (and financial) control over the Jewish people. In fact and to the same end, the Jewish clerics went even further than the Zoroastrians: they mimicked the Greek idea of martyrdom, but modified it, promising eternal life in heaven for those killed defending clerical power – an idea that was subsequently promoted by Christian and Muslim clerics and that, still today, pollutes the world as a horrible tactic of Islamic terrorism. But, readers should take heart: this too will pass. History teaches that all religious sects (and all religions) come and go, because all rely on dogma (metaphysical speculations) rather than on scientifically established principles; therefore, Christianity and Islam, too, will eventually pass away.<br />
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My advertised plan, also, passed away. I abandoned it not only because the ideas that flowered in Ancient Greece have been so important to Western civilization [so important that it seemed “sacrilegious” (!) to try to include them only as an introduction to resulting changes in Judaism] but also because I felt obliged, in these posts dealing with Clerical Quackery, to try to outline how Greek clerics, profiting from superstitions of the Greek “rabble”, stomped on the flowers of the greatest thoughts of ancient Greece. Consequently, I plan to delay my advertised plan to show Greek-inspired changes to the religion of the Jews, and in this post, I’ll begin to provide an (admittedly) ridiculously brief review of some of the revolutionary ideas that blossomed in ancient Greece, ideas that were subsequently buried for approximately 1500 years (thanks to the efforts of damnable Greek, Jewish, Roman, Christian, and Muslim clerics) until the seeds were regenerated, resulting in the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.<br />
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As I mentioned in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix09ChangingGods.pdf">chapter</a>, many possible reasons (or combinations of reasons) might explain why, as Goethe said, “Of all peoples, the [ancient] Greeks dreamt the dream of life best.” Possible reasons include:<br />
<blockquote>
1) As in ancient Sumer, but for a different reason (namely, not that civilization was just starting, but because the mountainous terrain led to relative isolation), essentially independent city-states developed and later competed; thereby, different thoughts, actions, governments, etc. were explored and developed in the different cities; and/or<br />
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2) The ancient Greeks were seafarers (because, as with the Phoenicians, the limited natural resources of their land and the mountainous terrain forced them to explore, expand, trade, and raid); thereby, they were exposed to many different ideas from many different cultures (including the Minoans, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians); and/or<br />
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3) Until very late in ancient Greece (namely, the time of Alexander of Macedonia), no single ruler became dictator (such as Sargon, Hammurabi, and dozens of other tyrannical rulers, including the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Judea, and Israel); thereby, the competences of the people were better able to blossom; and/or<br />
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4) Individual Greek raiders, traders, and leaders became wealthy and could afford the luxury of taking time to think and of hiring other-than-clerics to educate their children (the most famous example of which is King Philip of Macedonia, who hired Aristotle to tutor his son, subsequently called “Alexander the Great”); thereby, some children were spared indoctrination in religious balderdash; and/or<br />
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5) The Greek clerics didn’t become so wealthy and powerful as the clerics in Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia (because the Greek clerics couldn’t so easily feed off the wealth provided by the land to the Greek rabble); thereby, try as the clerics did (e.g., by stimulating the rabble and their political leaders to restrict “dissidents and atheists”, by burning their books and with arrest, exile, and execution), yet the Greek clerics had more difficulty than Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew clerics leeching off the people, and/or<br />
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6) The Greeks had Homer!</blockquote>
The significance of Homer is that, from the 8th Century BCE until Greece fell to Rome in 146 BCE (and, in fact, even for centuries during Roman rule), the primary “narrative” of the Greeks (and the Romans) was the stories attributed to Homer, the most famous of which are contained in the two books that survived, i.e., <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad</span></a> and <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey</span></a>, arguably the two greatest stories ever told. As a result, and in contrast to the Hebrews during the same time period who heard, retold, and incorporated into their personalities the OT tales of Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Lott, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Ruth, David, Solomon, et al., the Greeks internalized Homer’s tales of Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Ulysses, Penelope, Telemachus, et al.<br />
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And what astounding differences there were (and are) between the narratives of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Hebrews, differences in depictions of the people, their gods, and their “holy men”. In the Hebrew tales, the unambiguous hero is their god, Yahweh, the secondary cast of alleged heroes included the [fake] prophets, and the only significant “honorable” feature of the principal people (as depicted by the clerical storytellers) was their obedience to God, i.e., to the clerics. As a few examples of the claimed, admirable behaviors of the Hebrew “heroes” (as I’ve detailed in earlier chapters and in earlier posts in this series):<br />
<blockquote>
• The “heroic” Noah was a drunken lout who had zero concept of justice,<br />
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• The “heroic” Abraham pimped his sister-wife, raped his slave girl, and in his deranged religious state, he was willing to murder his son,<br />
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• The “heroic” Lot should have been shot (if guns had been available) for offering his two daughters to be raped by a mob,<br />
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• The “heroic” Jacob cheated his brother out of his inheritance,<br />
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• The “heroic” Joseph enslaved the Egyptians,<br />
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• The “heroic” Moses and Joshua were maniacal murders, and so on, including<br />
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• The “heroic” King Solomon was a sex maniac, and his father, the despicable, “heroic” King David had a man killed to acquire his wife (Bathsheba), with whom he was having an adulterous affair.</blockquote>
It might be suggested that some Hebrew women (e.g., Sarah, Hagar, Rachel, Ruth…) were depicted as heroines, but it can be argued that their principal “heroism”, also, was their obedience (to their husbands, to their masters, to the clerics, and of course, to Yahweh). All of which are examples of the hideousness that can occur when “the winners” (in this case, the Jewish clerics) get to write, promote, and sanctify their society’s “history”.<br />
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In Homer’s tales, in contrast, people were depicted as heroes for their honesty, for their nascent humanism, and for their bravery, courage, fortitude, and tenacity [sometimes (e.g., Ulysses and his wife Penelope) using trickery to survive] – while the clerics are depicted as clueless cowards, the prophets as con men, and the gods as fickle, despicable, tyrants! The following quotations are illustrative [in which, however, there is a complication, namely, the quotations are from a translation (by Samuel Butler) of Homer’s books written in Latin; as a result, the Greek gods are identified with their Roman names, e.g., instead of identifying the chief (Greek) god and his wife as Zeus and Hera, they are identified as Jove (or Jupiter) and Juno, respectively]:<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">1) People Depicted as Heroes</span><br />
a. Honesty, etc.<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. IX]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Ill deeds do not prosper, and the weak confound the strong.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. VII]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Men live but for a little season; if they are hard, and deal hardly, people wish them ill so long as they are alive, and speak contemptuously of them when they are dead, but he that is righteous and deals righteously, the people tell of his praise among all lands, and many shall call him blessed. </span>[Said by Ulysses’ wife, Penelope, in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. XIX]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Therefore the fame of her excellence will never perish, and the immortals will fashion among earthly men a gracious song in honor of faithful Penelope.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. XXIV]</blockquote>
b. Bravery, etc.<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Always to be bravest and to be preeminent above others.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. V]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through [the battle] alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XV]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now, let me win noble renown.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XVIII]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">There is one omen, and one only – that a man should fight for his country. </span>[Contained in a speech by Hector, the greatest warrior of the Trojans,<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Iliad,</span> bk. XII]</blockquote>
c. Nascent humanism:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">Then Agamemnon [the most powerful of the Greek kings] spoke, rising in his place, and not going into the middle of the assembly. “Danaan heroes,” said he, “servants of Mars, it is well to listen when a man stands up to speak, and it is not seemly to interrupt him…</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XIX]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Have respect, therefore, to your own consciences and to public opinion…</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. II]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">There is no accounting for luck; Jove [aka Zeus] gives prosperity to rich and poor just as he chooses – so you must take what he has seen fit to send you, and make the best of it.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. VI]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Moderation is best in all things…</span> [Menelaus in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. XV]</blockquote>
<b>2) Cowardly, clueless clerics and useless seers and prophets:</b><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">Seer of evil, you never yet prophesied smooth things concerning me, but have ever loved to foretell that which was evil.</span> [Agamemnon’s criticism of the cleric (and alleged “seer”) Calchas, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. I]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Consider, therefore, whether or no you will protect me.</span> [The cowardly cleric Calchas’ plea to Achilles to protect him from Agamemnon’s wrath, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad, </span>bk. I]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Hector [the Trojan hero] looked fiercely at him [who had interpreted “a sign”, dealing with the flight of a bird] and said, “Polydamas, I like not of your reading [of this ‘portent’]. You can find a better saying than this if you will. If, however, you have spoken in good earnest, then indeed has heaven robbed you of your reason… you bid me be ruled… by the flight of wildfowl. What care I whether they fly towards dawn or dark, and whether they be on my right hand or on my left?”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XII]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">“My mother [Penelope] does indeed sometimes send for a soothsayer and question him, but I give his prophesying no heed.”</span> [Said by Telemachus, Ulysses’ son, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. I]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">“Go home, old man, and prophesy to your own children… I can read these omens myself much better than you can; birds are always flying about in the sunshine somewhere or other, but they seldom mean anything… You may preach as much as you please, but we shall only hate you the more.”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. II]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Ulysses looked sternly at him [the priest] and answered, “If you were their sacrificing priest, you must have prayed many a time that it might be long before I got home again…. Therefore you shall die.”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. XXII]</blockquote>
<b>3) The stumblebumb, despicable gods:</b><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">Uncontrollable laughter arose among the blessed gods.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. I, which brings to mind something that the all-powerful Yahweh was apparently powerless to do: laugh!]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Ofttimes in my father’s house have I [Achilles] heard you glory in that you alone of the immortals saved the son of Saturn [or the son of the Greek god Cronus, viz., the Roman god Jove (aka Zeus)] from ruin, when the others, with Juno, Neptune, and Pallas Minerva would have put him in bonds.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. I, describing how the gods fought among themselves, where (again) Juno was the Roman goddess (Greek, Hera) who was Jove’s (i.e., Zeus’) wife – and was among the conspirators who tried to put Jove (Zeus) “in bonds”!]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">“My own three favorite cities,” answered Juno [Jove’s wife], “are Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae. Sack them whenever you [Jove] may be displeased with them. I shall not defend them and I shall not care.”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. IV; showing that the gods didn’t really care about people.]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Asius the son of Hyrtacus in his dismay cried aloud and smote his two thighs. “Father Jove,” he cried, “of a truth you, too, are altogether given to lying.”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XII]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Now the other gods and the armed warriors on the plain slept soundly, but Jove was wakeful, for he was thinking how to do honor to Achilles… In the end he deemed it would be best to send <i>a lying dream</i> [italics added] to King Agamemnon.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. II; showing that the gods were liars – just as Yahweh is reported to be, at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 22,</span> 19–23]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Neptune, lord of the earthquake, spoke, saying, “Father Jove, what mortal in the whole world will again take the gods into his counsel? See you not how the Achaeans [the Greeks] have built a wall about their ships and driven a trench all round it, without offering hecatombs [sacrifices] to the gods? The fame of this wall will reach as far as dawn itself, and men will no longer think anything of the one which Phoebus Apollo and myself built…”</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad, </span>bk. XIV; showing that the Greek gods were as jealous of human accomplishments as was Yahweh (recall the Tower of Babel incident).]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">Father Jove, of all gods you are the most malicious. We are your own children, yet you show us no mercy in all our misery and afflictions.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. XX]</blockquote>
But although Homer thereby promoted personal honor, individualism, and skepticism (especially of the clerics and their gods), and even nascent humanism, it’s unfortunately true that Homer’s stories were mired in the supernaturalism of his time, which was centuries before halting progress was made understanding natural processes. In fact, centuries later, the damnable, Greek clerics (who profited from stimulating superstition among Greek cowards and ignoramuses, i.e., “the rabble”) managed to almost destroy the advances made by subsequent honorable skeptics, individualists, and humanists, contributing to the eventual downfall of Greece.<br />
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Illustrative of Homer’s promotions of superstition is the following (from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. I), in which Achilles is listening to the imagined goddess Minerva (allegedly his mother) advising him not to challenge Agamemnon: <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">And Minerva [aka Thetis] said, “I come from heaven, if you [Achilles] will hear me, to bid you stay your anger. Juno [Jove’s (i.e., Zeus’s) wife (aka Hera)] has sent me, who cares for both of you alike. Cease, then, this brawling, and do not draw your sword; rail at him [Agamemnon] if you will, and your railing will not be vain, for I tell you – and it shall surely be – that you shall hereafter receive gifts three times as splendid by reason of this present insult. Hold, therefore, and obey.”</span><br />
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And Achilles’ answer to the imagined Minerva: <span style="color: #000099;">“Goddess,” answered Achilles, “however angry a man may be, he must do as you command him. This will be best, for the gods ever hear the prayers of him who has obeyed them.”</span></blockquote>
The above is as bad as similar nonsense in the Bible. Other examples of Homer’s supernatural silliness include:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">All things are in the hand of heaven, and [the god] Folly, eldest of Jove’s [Zeus’] daughters, shuts men’s eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.</span> [Agamemnon in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad, </span>bk. XIX]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Jove’s [Zeus’] palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove… mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men</span>. [Achilles in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Iliad,</span> bk. XXIV]<br />
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<span style="color: #000099;">All men have need of the gods.</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. II]</blockquote>
Yet, Homer, himself, countered some of the superstition with statements such as the following, this one attribute to Zeus, himself:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly. </span>[<span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey,</span> bk. I]</blockquote>
Of course, Homer wasn’t the only ancient Greek who promoted supernaturalism. The most famous of the early mystics was Hesiod, who lived at approximately the same time as Homer and who unfortunately wrote “the bible” of the ancient Greeks, <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Theogony</span></a> (literally, “the genesis of the gods”), with its famous (balderdash!):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #cc0000;">
Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bore from union in love with Erebus. And Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods. And she brought forth long Hills, graceful haunts of the goddess-Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She bore also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love. But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys.</blockquote>
And although the above is unadulterated balderdash, it flows more smoothly, speaks more of love, and therefore, I enjoy reading it more than the balderdash of the Bible’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span>!<br />
<br />
Moreover, Hesiod took nascent humanism further than Homer had. In general, Homer’s gods (similar to all gods) were (and are) deifications of existing customs, as if looking at one’s customs through binoculars – held the wrong way! Thus, Homer’s gods reflected his time’s warrior culture, led by chief warriors such as Agamemnon and Achilles, and even above the gods was assumed to be (capricious) Fate. Hesiod, on the other hand, was apparently not a warrior but a farmer, and he assumed that above the gods was some natural order: not Fate, but Right or Truth or Justice (similar to earlier ideas of the Egyptians of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ma’at</span>, the Hindus of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ritam</span>, and Zarathustra’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span>). For example, in his book <a href="http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0020%2C002&query=init."><span style="font-style: italic;">Works and Days</span></a>, Hesiod wrote:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000099;">…lay up these things within your heart and listen now to Right, ceasing altogether to think of violence. For the son of Cronus [Zeus] has ordained this law for men, that fishes and beasts and winged fowls should devour one another, for Right is not in them; but to mankind he gave Right which proves far the best. For whoever knows the Right and is ready to speak it, far-seeing Zeus gives him prosperity; but whoever deliberately lies in his witness and forswears himself, and so hurts Justice and sins beyond repair, that man’s generation is left obscure thereafter. </span> </blockquote>
Anyway, between the two of them, Homer and Hesiod thereby defined and enlisted followers in the mystics’ side of a war that started in ancient Greece and that has subsequently raged for more than 2500 years. It’s the war between realists and mystics, or between naturalists and supernaturalists, or (literally) between physicists [i.e., those who study “natural things” (i.e., Greek, <span style="font-style: italic;">phusika</span>, from Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">phusis</span>, meaning ‘nature’)] and metaphysicists [i.e., those who study things ‘after’ or ‘beyond’ (<span style="font-style: italic;">meta</span>-) ‘nature’ (<span style="font-style: italic;">phusis</span>), i.e., those who study the (nonexistent!) “super-natural”], or (equivalently) between scientific-humanists and unscientific-antihumans (aka “theists”), or between facts and faith, or most simply, between science and religion.<br />
<br />
In this post, however, I won’t try even to outline the war between science and religion. It was well summarized by Robert Ingersoll:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #006600;">For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said “Think.”</span> [Although, for reasons described <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">elswhere</a>, I wish Ingersoll had written, instead: “The few have said ‘Evaluate’!”] <span style="color: #006600;"> The many have said “Believe!”</span></blockquote>
Instead of trying to outline the war, I’ll try just to sketch a few of the skirmishes that occurred in ancient Greece, with the goal of showing (in later posts) how the results of those skirmishes impacted Judaism (and subsequently, Christianity and Islam). And for this post, to try to succinctly outline centuries of skirmishes in the resulting war in ancient Greece (a war that countless historians have spent their lifetimes studying!), perhaps most efficacious would be to quote statements by some of the combatants, whom I’ll only briefly introduce.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Homer & Hesiod</span><br />
Little is known about “the blind poet” <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer">Homer</a>; in fact, there’s a possibility that, similar to Moses, he may never have existed; instead, his name may have become associated with poems that were maintained orally for centuries (from the time of the Trojan war, which occurred roughly when Moses allegedly lived, ~1200 BCE). If Homer existed, he may have been just one of the most entertaining “balladeers”. In contrast, there’s little doubt that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiod">Hesiod</a> existed, and his <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman">books</a> validate that he was an accomplished poet, knowledgeable as he could be (for his time) about astronomy and husbandry, and a great teller of tall tales!<br />
<br />
Although Hesiod’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Theogony</span> became the “bible” for superstitious Greeks, defining relations among the gods and their roles, he was also criticized, rebuked, and ridiculed. For example, from the Seven Sages (c.650–c.550 BCE; i.e., from that general time period but from unattributed authors) there is:<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #009900;">Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage [his soup or stew].</span> </blockquote>
Just imagine if a similar saying had developed about Moses, e.g., “Moses might as well have saved his threats to scare away the crows.” If so, the world might have been saved from 2500 years worth of biblical balderdash!<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Xenophanes & Heraclitus</span><br />
Both Hesiod and Homer were penetratingly criticized by both <a href="http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/deyoung1.html">Xenophanes</a> (c.570–c.480 BCE) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus">Heraclitus</a> (c.535–c.475 BCE), both of whom were Ionians (i.e., living in Greek colonies on the coast of what is now western Turkey). Xenophanes was one of the greatest of the early Greek philosophers, a skeptic and a physicist. Most unfortunately, only fragments of his writings remain; one (Fragment 11) states:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals – stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another.</blockquote>
Heraclitus is famous for his idea of the Logos (subsequently used in Christianity as “the Word”) and for his amazingly perceptive statements: <span style="color: #000099;">“All is flux; nothing stays still”</span>, <span style="color: #000099;">“Nothing endures but change”</span>, and his even more amazing (Tao-like):<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
The opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things happen by strife and necessity. People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.</blockquote>
Heraclitus’ assessments of Homer and Hesiod are similarly famous:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
[Homer] should be turned out of the lists and whipped.<br />
<br />
Hesiod is most men’s teacher. Men are sure he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night!</blockquote>
Actually, though (as pointed out by Cedric Whitman in his book<span style="font-style: italic;"> Homer and the Heroic Tradition</span>), once they accepted the silly idea of gods, Homer and Hesiod (and others, similarly) were essentially forced to depict their gods as “stumblebums”, because of a fundamental, logical inconsistency in the assumed characteristics of all gods. Thus, whereas the gods of ancient Greece were depicted as extrapolations of real, heroic figures (such as Achilles, Agamemnon, et al., who bravely faced death) and whereas the gods were considered immortal, therefore, they couldn’t be similarly heroic. Consequently, the depictions of the gods were paradoxical – and the gods were therefore ridiculed! As Ursula DeYoung <a href="http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/deyoung1.html">wrote</a>, quoting Whitman:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
Obviously one of the most salient characteristics of the gods is their immortality. This grants them eternity, invincibility, omniscience, foreknowledge. But it also deprives them of the key to human tragedy: the constant fear and possibility of death. Therefore, when a poignant human drama is played out on the divine level, it simply cannot possess the same gravity as it does for humans. No wound is fatal, and thus there can be no real fear for oneself or others. Through their invincibility, all divine wounds are quickly healed and often laughed at. In the endless seasons on Mount Olympus, all fights are of necessity merely transient, all anger temporary. Because of their eternal existence, all dilemmas are soon solved. As a result, when the actions of men are mirrored by the gods, “what is starkest tragedy on earth is often imaged in heaven as a light and sometimes slapstick comedy.” Many scholars believe that Homer realized this and “as a balance to the tremendous solemnity of his hero… thrust the gods into the ridiculous postures they sometimes assume.” </blockquote>
Similar can be said (and should be said!) about all immortal gods: if any of them ever existed (but, of course, none of them ever have!) all of them would have necessarily been wimps compared with heroic humans who had (and have) the courage to face their own extinction, i.e., those who rejected (and reject) the oxymoronic concept of “life after death”. Stated differently, all those who adopted (or still adopt), without a single shred of supporting evidence, the delusion – the craziness! – of “an afterlife” (including the Maccabees, the alleged Jesus, the alleged “perfect-man” Muhammad, all religious “martyrs”, and all “modern” Muslim suicide bombers) couldn’t (and can’t) be heroes. All were (and are) as wimpy as their gods. If you've been brainwashed into believing in a beneficent afterlife, then following clerical orders, it's logically impossible to risk your life and be a hero.<br />
<br />
Xenophanes summarized the silliness of the Greek gods as follows:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the words which men do, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods’ bodies the same shape as their own.</blockquote>
Although Xenophanes thereby rejected the anthropomorphic gods of Homer and Hesiod (i.e., the gods of the Greek rabble and their clerics), he unfortunately postulated a god similar to Zarathustra’s (and, therefore, similar to the revised Yahweh of the Jews) and a god similar to the god that Aristotle adopted approximately two centuries later. Fragmentary descriptions of Xenophanes’ god include the <a href="http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/deyoung4.html">following</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #cc0000;">
God is one, the greatest of gods and men… resembling mortals neither in body or mind… By effortless thought He controls all things with his mind… With all of his being, He sees and thinks and hears… He always remains in the same place, motionless; it is not fitting for him to chase now here, now there.</blockquote>
But in spite of such nonsense as the above, Xenophanes had the brilliance to add a statement (translated by the 20th century philosopher Karl Popper and to which I’ve added the italics) that’s as powerful today as it was more than 2500 years ago:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
But as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor will he know it – neither of the gods nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter the final truth, he would himself not know it, for <span style="font-style: italic;">all is but a woven web of guesses.</span></blockquote>
In modern terms, the critically important concept that Xenophanes apparently realized (a concept that, once realized, exposes all organized religions as the shams that they are) can be expressed as <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/T1_Truth_&_Knowledge.pdf">follows</a>. For <span style="font-style: italic;">closed systems</span> (such as games, all religions, and pure mathematics), ‘truth’ is whatever it’s defined to be (for example, in poker it’s true that a flush always beats a straight, in all religions their dogma is taken as true, and in propositional math, it’s true that, e.g., 1 + 1 = 2). On the other hand, for <span style="font-style: italic;">open systems</span> (including all of reality!), truth can be approached only asymptotically (e.g., the principles of mechanics, evolution, thermodynamics, etc., may be true – but then again, someone may yet show how such principles need to be corrected, to get closer to “the truth”). In fact, in reality, even 1 + 1 = 2 needn’t be true; e.g., one black hole plus another black hole yields how many black holes?! Therefore, in reality, all religions are just closed-system word-games.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Thales, Anaximander, & Democritus</span><br />
Actually, in ancient Greece even before Xenophanes’ time, the “web of guesses” about “the truth” began to be woven to try to understand not only the gods but also “natural things”. The first to do so seems to be Thales (c.624–c.545 BCE), born approximately 50 years earlier than Xenophanes, and the founder of the Ionian school (subsequently attended by Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and others). Thales is commonly called the first Greek philosopher, even “the first philosopher”, but one should be skeptical about such attributions, since anyone who “loves wisdom” is by definition a philosopher, and as illustrated in earlier posts in this series, there are written records of Egyptian and Mesopotamian “wisdom literature” from more than 2,000 years before Thales.<br />
<br />
Thales is also credited with founding geometry and predicting an eclipse, but more likely (I suspect) is that he learned about both from the Mesopotamians or Egyptians. Thus, as I plan to illustrate in another “appendix” for my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a>, the Babylonians had been using, for example, what is commonly called “Pythagoras’ theorem” for more than 1,000 years before Thales (and before Pythagoras!). Also, without benefit of Newton’s laws, predicting eclipses (a capability achieved by both the Egyptians and Mesopotamians approximately 1,000 years earlier than Thales) required amassing huge databases from centuries of observations, which Thales certainly couldn’t have done on his own. That Thales could have traveled to Mesopotamia, for example, to learn about when the next eclipse would occur, seems quite likely, since such travel was common: witness that in the year before Thales died, Persia conquered all the Greek cities in Asia Minor (in 546 BCE).<br />
<br />
In any case, Aristotle’s description of Thales as the first Greek physicist seems appropriate. Prior to Thales, brilliant people were obviously extremely successful studying, understanding, and manipulating “natural things” (to control fire, forge metals, make tools, use wheels, and build homes, temples, sailing ships, etc.), but the metaphysicists of the world (that is, the mystics of the world) were the only ones who claimed knowledge of how all the pieces of the world (and even of the universe!) fit together and evolved. [Mystics claim the luxury of not requiring that their speculations be constrained by data!] In general, for thousands of years within each culture, generation after generation retold the metaphysicists’ resulting myths, no doubt adding refinements to satisfy changing tastes and customs. Thales, in contrast, proposed what, at least to the Ancient Greeks, seemed to be a totally new idea; according to Aristotle (who lived about 250 years later), Thales proposed: <span style="color: #006600;">“Water is the cause of all things…”</span><br />
<br />
The historical record shows that the Ancient Greeks were, if not startled, then at least greatly stimulated by Thales’ proposal that “water is the cause of all things…” Thereby, he gained the reputation as the first Greek physicist. But just as Thales reputations as a mathematician and philosopher seem to be exaggerations, his contributions to physics should probably be similarly discounted, because for at least the previous 2,000 years, both Mesopotamian and Egyptian mystics had proposed that “In the beginning… water”. Therefore, it’s possible that Thales was doing little more than what the Hebrews were doing at the same time (e.g., in the construction of their genesis myths), i.e., borrowing ideas from Egyptians and/or Mesopotamians.<br />
<br />
Now, granted that a modern person’s first reaction to the speculation that “water is the cause of all things” is probably something similar to “get real” or “ya gotta be kidding” (demonstrating criticism, skepticism, and even cynicism), but second thoughts should include at least the following. First, because no original writings by Thales have been found, it’s difficult to know what he meant. But if he’s given the benefit of doubt, it’s clear that water is the “cause” of much (clouds, rains, rivers, erosion, filling of the seas) and certainly water is essential for much (including essentially all life on Earth). Second, modern minds shouldn’t hastily judge Thales without considering the “mind set” of his time: today, the speculation “water is the cause of all things” doesn’t pass “the snicker test”, but in his day, when essentially everyone in every community was certain that the gods caused everything, it would take a courageous genius to say: “No, I don’t think so; I see no justification for the speculation that the gods cause everything; instead, I propose that water is the cause of all things.”<br />
<br />
Further, though, Aristotle reported that Thales’ more complete speculation was: <span style="color: #006600;"> “Water is the cause of all things, and all things are filled with gods.”</span> It’s easy to imagine an ancient Greek’s reaction to Thales’ proposal, e.g., “How could Zeus and Hera and the rest of the gods be inside everything? They’re up on Mt. Olympus!” As to what Thales might have meant, that, too, seems unknown. Yet, if he’s again given the benefit of doubt, his proposal appears to deal not only with the fundamental “stuff” of the universe (i.e., water) and the fundamental process of the universe (i.e., “water is the cause of all things”) but possibly also contains a new concept about “the gods”. Thus, prior to Thales, all gods had “personalities” (Zeus was a tyrant, Yahweh was vengeful, etc.); in contrast, Thales proposed that the gods were in everything, from the stars, to the grass, to cow dung! Thus, rather than accept the views of Hesiod or Homer that the various gods controlled everything, Thales might have been proposing that all things contain their own causal relationships, i.e., that processes evolve of their own “nature” rather than because of the “will” of the external, eternal gods.<br />
<br />
Support for the possibility that, with his statement “all things are filled with gods”, Thales was proposing an entirely different perspective of “the gods” can be found from subsequent events. Thus, if the above was Thales’ idea and if this idea is coupled with the already referenced dissatisfaction with the gods as described by Homer and Hesiod, then perhaps the following statements can be seen as consequences of Thales’ proposal:<br />
<blockquote>
Xenophanes (c.570–c.475 BCE): <span style="color: #006600;">“She that they call Iris [the goddess of the rainbow] is likewise a cloud”</span> [where the significance of ‘likewise’, according to the historian John Burnet, was that Xenophanes had been listing other phenomena, pointing out that they are natural processes, having nothing to do with the mystics’ gods],<br />
<br />
Heraclitus (c.540–c.480 BCE): <span style="color: #006600;"> “God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger”</span>, and<br />
<br />
Pindar (c.518–c.438 BCE): <span style="color: #006600;"> “What is God? Everything.”</span><br />
<br />
And then, jumping ahead approximately 2,000 years (!), there is from Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), <span style="color: #006600;">“Besides God, no substance can be granted or conceived”</span> (a conclusion for which he was expelled from Judaism) and from the philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952, of “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” fame): <span style="color: #006600;">“My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.”</span></blockquote>
But questioning such descriptions, one can ask: Why use the word ‘God’ to describe ‘everything’? We already have perfectly good descriptions of ‘everything’ (e.g., “nature” or “the universe”), and to communicate with Nature, we needn’t pay surcharges to power-mongering con artists, posing as supernatural shaman and pretending to know the unknown!<br />
<br />
Yet, beyond what Thales may have meant by “all things are filled with gods”, of much greater importance for humanity is what he started. Thus, what happened next in ancient Greece (perhaps because the mystics didn’t realize what was going on, failing to perceive the threat to their con games) was that other physicists began to express their skepticism with criticism of his proposal. Now, granted that it wasn’t particularly significant that Thales proposed an alternative to the then-current ideas about gods and that his idea was met with skepticism and criticism. Many others (both before and after him) proposed alternatives that were similarly met with criticism and skepticism. Examples include the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, who (approximately 600 years earlier than Thales) proposed that there was only one God – an idea that the still-powerful, old-guard of Egyptian clerics eventually squelched. Also, possibly there was a Jewish fellow by the name of Jesus (ben Pandera?) who (approximately 600 years after Thales) seems to have promoted the Gnostics’ idea that the Jewish god, Yahweh, was the “evil god” who made matter and not the “good god” who made light, an idea that was met with so much skepticism and criticism by the ruling Jewish clerics that they approved his execution – rather than point out to him that E = mc^2 and, therefore, that matter and light are the same!<br />
<br />
But such speculations about “the supernatural” (by Akhenaten, Zarathustra, Homer, Hesiod, Ezra, Jesus, Muhammad…) are of no value to humanity (save for those who use such speculations as a part of religious con games), not only because such speculations contain no information but also because they can’t be tested. On the other hand, Thales’ idea that “water is the cause of all things” had the potential to be tested. Now, nascent engineers had (of course) been testing their theories (about how to control fire, smelt metal, construct shelters, boats, etc.) for at least the prior 10,000 years (!), but how to test proposals such as “water is the cause of all things” was apparently unclear. During the next few centuries after Thales, methods of testing speculations began to be developed, by such brilliant ancient Greek scientists as Thales’ student Anaximander (c.610–c.546 BCE, one of whose students was Pythagoras), Anaxagoras (c.500–428 BCE), and the “father of modern medicine”, Hippocrates(c.460–377 BCE ).<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, such budding scientists as Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Hippocrates also introduced wild speculations of their own. For example, Anaximander criticized Thales’ proposal not because of new experimental results but because of the proposal’s illogic: he pointed out that water was wet and therefore couldn’t explain its opposite, i.e., dryness. He then introduced his own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximander">speculation</a> that the “fundamental stuff” of which everything is made is <span style="font-style: italic;">apeiron</span>, something that [conveniently (!)] “explained” opposites but that was proposed to be imperceptible [and therefore extremely difficult to study experimentally (!)]. Others proposed that the “physics” of everything was “air” or “fire” or some other “thing”, that there was more than one “fundamental thing” (such as earth, air, fire, and water), and that there were various fundamental processes controlling interactions among these “things” (such as circular motions, various whirling motions, mind or “nous”, and even love). If readers desire further information, they might want to search on the internet for ideas proposed by Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others, all of whom lived during the next two centuries after Thales.<br />
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Actually, among all such speculations in ancient Greece, some amazingly perceptive ideas were “hit upon” – consistent with the principle that, if you throw enough darts, eventually a few may hit the dartboard! For example, Anaximander (c.610–c.545 BCE) came close to proposing a theory of evolution, approximately 2300 years before Darwin! He stated that humans were: <span style="color: #006600;">“like another animal, namely a fish, in the beginning.”</span> Also, Democritus [c.460–c.370 BCE, who is generally credited with the idea of atoms (where <span style="font-style: italic;">a</span> is a negating prefix, similar to the English ‘un’ or ‘in’, and <span style="font-style: italic;">tomb</span> is to ‘cut’ or ‘divide’, so ‘atom’ literally means ‘un-cuttable’ or ‘in-divisible’)] stated: <span style="color: #006600;"> “by convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.”</span> In general, though, most of the speculations were totally bizarre, such as those by Pythagoras, who was a real “nut case”.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Pythagoras</span><br />
Although I haven’t explored the following in depth, I get the impression that the religion Pythagoras started in a Greek colony in southern Italy was an early version of Christianity, promising immortality for his followers. Before his time, the Greeks had Homer’s tales about immortality (as described in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Odyssey</span>), but such immortality wasn’t a state to be desired. For example, when Ulysses found Achilles among the dead, Achilles described his immortality as follows: <span style="color: #000099;">“Rather would I live on ground as the hireling of another… than bear sway among all the dead that be departed.”</span> That is, “the Homeric tradition” among the Greeks – even among Greek “nobility” – was that life (even as a slave) was far better than “life after death”. Pythagoras’ vision of “life-after-death” was much more appealing.<br />
<br />
Relatively little is known about Pythagoras (c.580–c.500 BCE), because he left no written record – apparently because recording his ideas was “against his religion”. As can be found on the internet, indications are that he met with Thales, studied under Thales’ student Anaximander (Darwin’s forerunner!), traveled to Egypt (and while there, possibly became a priest and essentially certainly was exposed to Egyptian speculations about “the immortal soul”), then traveled (possibly as a prisoner) to Babylon (where he probably learned what we call “Pythagoras’ theorem”!), and then returned to southern Italy, where he led a group that used mathematics to “purify the soul” (so they could reunite with their idea of God).<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Apparently it’s unknown where Pythagoras got his wild ideas about “cleansing his soul” for the sake of its “immortality”, but similar ideas were prevalent in Egypt for ~2,000 years. In addition, perhaps in Persia he became aware of Zarathustra’s ideas. Thus, the second century (CE) Roman satirist Apuleius in </span><span style="color: black; font-style: italic;">The Defense,</span> Section 1, Part 1 (translated by H. E. Butler) wrote: “Many hold Pythagoras to have been a pupil of Zoroaster, and, like him, to have been skilled in magic.” In addition, maybe Pythagoras learned about “transmigration of the soul” (through various life-forms) from the Hindus (or from hearing about them). Illustrative of Pythagoras’ ideas about the “transmigration of the soul” are the report by Xenophanes (his contemporary, of “woven-web-of-guesses” fame) that Pythagoras <span style="color: #cc0000;">“once heard a dog howling and appealed to its master not to beat it, as he recognized the voice of a departed friend.”</span><br />
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On the other hand, rather than obtain his ideas from the Hindus, perhaps Pythagoras improvised on some ideas of other Greek religious “cults”. In particular, at about the same time as Pythagoras (and for approximately 1,000 years earlier!) the Dionysus cult [worshipers of “the god of wine and revelry”, Dionysus (Greek) or Bacchus (Roman), who similar to Jesus was the alleged son of the "father god" Zeus and a mortal woman (Semele)] reportedly worked themselves into frenzy until they felt that Dionysus entered their bodies, sharing his immortality with them. Thereby, for little more than the price of a few jugs of wine, the masses of poor and simple people (“the rabble”) could gain immortality and “oneness” with their god. [Ideas not too dissimilar to methods pursued by members of most Christian sects (seeking “oneness” with Jesus, the alleged son of Yahweh), although most Christians pursue the goal more solemnly, e.g., rather than drink wine, they drink their god’s blood (!), eat his body (!), sing their songs, and pay their tithes.] Meanwhile, in contrast to preaching in both contemporary Dionysus and subsequent Christian cults, Pythagoras apparently preached that the route to immortality was through leading an ascetic life, enriched with music and (his idea of) science, a route later followed by some Christian monks.<br />
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Presumably, it was Pythagoras’ experience with music (he might have played the lyre since he was a boy) that sent him off on his “numbers kick”. At first, his hypotheses were firmly rooted in experimental results: he found musical harmony when there were certain whole-number relations between lengths of musical strings. But from those sound (!) results, he leapt into wild speculations, first about relationships between numbers and human concepts [such as justice and marriage – leading him and/or his followers (including Plato) to conclude, for example, that justice is the number four and that marriage is the number seven!] and then into numerical and geometrical relationships for essentially everything, e.g., <span style="color: #cc0000;">“fire is composed of twenty-four right-angled triangles surrounded by four equilaterals [and] air is composed of forty-eighty triangles surrounded by eight equilaterals.”</span> Whatever! Of course such ideas are nothing but wild speculations, but just-as-crazy stuff abounds (and is considered to be “the Truth”!) in all religions.<br />
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There are hints that Pythagoras abandoned his craziness in “pure mathematics” by a result found in “applied mathematics”. By “numbers”, he and his followers meant whole numbers and their ratios, and it was the “rational numbers” that, according to their speculations, were the foundation of the universe. But when he or one of his followers evaluated the length of the hypotenuse of the simplest imaginable right-angle triangle (or the diagonal of a square), of base and height of unit length, then according to “Pythagoras’ theorem” (discovered ~2,000 years earlier by the Mesopotamians!), the length is the square root of two, an irrational number approximately equal to 1.414213562… where “…” means the digits never end, which probably blew “the faithful” away!<br />
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The consequences of the discovery of irrational numbers seem to be unknown. Stories persist that Pythagoras had the discoverer (the destroyer of his “number theory”) killed; what is known is that Pythagoras’ ideas continued to be promoted for more than a century in the school he founded. For example, Plato visited Pythagoras’ school in about 390 BCE – and was mentally infected by Pythagoras’ numerology. Yet, although Pythagoras was a “nut case” (as was Plato), he did make some useful contributions: I suspect that he “shook up” the clerics of other cults with his frequently repeated saying, <span style="color: #006600;">“Reason is immortal; all else [is] mortal”</span>, he deserves credit for his attempt to explain “things” using numbers (which can be said to be the beginning of theoretical physics), and even I agree with his statement: <span style="color: #006600;"> “The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil”</span> – if only one has the wisdom to distinguish good from evil (a challenge later taken up by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle).<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Anaxagoras & Protagoras</span><br />
Now, although I certainly don’t claim much knowledge about the ancient Greeks (my career was in the physical sciences, not history!), yet from the sources that I have looked at (mostly on the internet), it appears that clashes between the critics and the mystics developed roughly as follows. In the main, the new speculations about nature (i.e., about ‘physics’), proposed during the approximately 100 years between Thales and Anaxagoras, developed first in Greek colonies in what is now Turkey (by followers of Thales), mostly during the time when those Greek colonies where ruled by Persia. The Persians conquered the “Ionian” Greek colonies in 546 BCE (about the time of Thales’ death) and ruled during the next 50 years, until the Athenians helped the Ionians revolt in 498 BCE. That overthrow was, however, only temporary: the Persians regained control in 496 BCE, and during the next seventeen years, political control of Asia Minor vacillated between the warring Persians and Athenians, until the Athenians finally defeated the Persians in 479 BCE.<br />
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With the defeat of the Persians, when he was about 20 years old, Anaxagoras moved from Asia Minor (where the ideas of the physicists were developed) to Athens (where the ideas of the metaphysicists were still entrenched), he began to teach the new ideas (probably one of his students was Socrates), and thereby, he became the pioneer Athenian philosopher (after whom followed Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and many others). Sometime during this fifth century BCE, the Athenian clerics began to see the dangers of the cats that had been let out of the Greek colonial bags, namely, criticism and skepticism. That is, the mystics saw that criticism and skepticism, when applied to the mystics’ speculation about the gods, threatened the privileged positions that the con-artist clerics had grabbed: such “authorities” (in balderdash!) sometimes tolerate a few questions, but rarely tolerate questions that might undermine their financial well-being!<br />
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Some appreciation for why the clerics might have reacted negatively to the physicists can be gained from Part 30 of Aristotle’s (history) book <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.mb.txt"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Athenian Constitution</span></a>, which describes how ancient Athens was ruled. In particular, with the following (to which I’ve added the italics) Aristotle describes how the Athenians were governed in about 400 BCE:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
These were the recommendations of the committee; and when they had been ratified, the Five Thousand elected from their own number a hundred commissioners to draw up the [revised] constitution. They, on their appointment, drew up and produced the following recommendations. There should be a Council, holding office for a year, consisting of men over thirty years of age, serving without pay. To this body should belong the Generals, the nine Archons, the Amphictyonic Registrar (Hieromnemon), the Taxiarchs, the Hipparchs, the Phylarch, the commanders of garrisons, <span style="font-style: italic;">the Treasurers of Athena and the other gods, ten in number, the Hellenic Treasurers (Hellenotamiae),</span> the Treasurers of the other non-sacred moneys, to the number of twenty,<span style="font-style: italic;"> the ten Commissioners of Sacrifices (Hieropoei), and the ten Superintendents of the mysteries.</span></blockquote>
I’d be willing to bet my paycheck (if I had one!) that all those “Treasurers… of the gods”, “Commissioners of Sacrifices”, and “Superintendents of the mysteries” didn’t want to risk losing their paychecks by gambling with the upstart physicists!<br />
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One of the most important examples of the metaphysicists’ (or mystics’) reactions to the physicists occurred in the case of the fellow who brought teachings of Thales’ school to Athens, i.e., Anaxagoras. He wrote a book entitled <i>On Nature,</i> but only fragments of it have been found (copies were probably destroyed by the clerics). He taught that sun was a <span style="color: #006600;">“red-hot stone… larger than the Peloponnesse [the southern peninsula of Greece]”</span>, that the moon merely reflected the sun’s light, and solar eclipses were caused by the moon. Understandably, such teachings were received poorly by those in power in Athens, who “believed” that the sun and moon belonged to “the dominion of the gods”. Therefore, in about 450 BCE, the Athenian legislature made it illegal to teach new theories about “the things on high”, and Anaxagoras was imprisoned. [From about 500 BCE onward, the democratic Athenian legislature was controlled by “the rabble” (who, in turn, were manipulated by clerics and oligarchs) – just as most democracies were controlled for centuries in most Western countries and just as today the legislatures are similarly controlled (to varying degrees) in India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, and the United States by “the rabble”, who in turn are manipulated by clerics and the press (both, in turn, controlled by those with money).]<br />
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No doubt such censorship wasn’t the world’s first battle in the war between science and religion (surely similar censorship was practiced for thousands of years in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India), but the censorship of Anaxagoras appears to be the first serious constraint on freedom of speech that occurred in ancient Greece. Subsequent to his arrest, Anaxagoras was pardoned by his friend (and perhaps his former student) Pericles, who was a military and political leader in Athens and who became the first Athenian commander in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which started in 431 BCE – and continued for 27 years! And as Anaxagoras and after him Protagoras (c.485–c.415 BCE) and Socrates (469–399 BCE) learned, during or near wartime is an inauspicious time to criticize core beliefs of citizens indoctrinated in clerical balderdash.<br />
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Protagoras (an agnostic and the first of the Sophists, i.e., “teachers of virtue”) is most famous for his statement: <span style="color: #006600;">“Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”.</span> His agnostic statement that got him into even more trouble with the rabble and their ruling clerics is from his book <i>On The Gods:</i> <span style="color: #006600;"> “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”</span> The result was the first known instance of official “book burning”. Further, according to <a href="http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/deyoung4.html">DeYoung</a>:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
Protagoras… was put on a trial as a result of statements similar to those of Xenophanes, managed to escape, and then ironically drowned in doing so.</blockquote>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Socrates</span><br />
Subsequently there was Socrates, who is still considered by some to have been the wisest person who ever lived (although I question if such people have considered the wisdom of Confucius, the Buddha, Heraclitus, Epicurus, and many others, including Bacon, Spinoza, Goethe, and many more, including even Thomas Jefferson and Robert Ingersoll). Socrates got into even more trouble with the Greek rabble and their clerical taskmasters than Anaxagoras and Protagoras; in the end, they had him executed for treason.<br />
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Unfortunately, there’s no record of anything Socrates wrote; therefore, what we know about his thoughts is contained in reports by others, and most of these reports are from his student Plato. The problem with Plato’s reports is that he had his own “axe to grind”; so, it’s hard to know which ideas reported to be Socrates’ are actually Plato’s. Yet, if the editors of Bartlett’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Familiar Quotations</span> confirmed all their references (an assumption I’ll never check!), then the few statements attributed to Socrates do reveal astonishing ideas, as appropriate today as 2500 years ago. For example, about 500 years after Socrates, the Roman philosopher Diogenes Laertius wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he [Socrates] would say to himself, “How many things I have no need of!”</blockquote>
Also, about 400 years after Socrates, the Roman philosopher Plutarch gave the following as statements by Socrates:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.<br />
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There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.<br />
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I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.</blockquote>
And approximately 600 years after Socrates, the Roman writer Apuleius wrote:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #006600;">
Is not Socrates said actually to have urged his followers frequently to consider their image in a glass, that so those of them that prided themselves on their appearance might above all else take care that they did no dishonor to the splendor of their body by the blackness of their hearts; while those who regarded themselves as less than handsome in personal appearance might take especial pains to conceal the meanness of their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of his day actually went so far as to use the mirror as an instrument of moral discipline.</blockquote>
I don’t know if this last quotation accurately reflects what Socrates said; I have seen, however, that the same idea is contained in one of the fables attributed to Aesop (6th Century BCE).<br />
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Plato (c.428–c.348 BCE) provides the following information about Socrates, as if Plato were quoting Socrates. And even if these ideas are not from Socrates, the quotation provides an interesting look at what it must have been an “intellectual” ~2500 years ago in Greece.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #000099;">
When I [Socrates, according to Plato] was young… I was tremendously eager for the kind of wisdom which they call the investigation of nature. I thought it a glorious thing to know the causes of everything, why each thing comes into being and why it perishes and why it exists… [I was] always agitating myself with such questions as these: Do heat and cold, by a sort of decay, bring about the growth of animals, as some people say? Is it the blood, or air, or fire by which we think? Or is it none of these, and does the brain furnish the perceptions of hearing and sight and smell, and do memory and opinion arise from these, and does knowledge come from memory and opinion when they have attained fixity? And then I tried to find out how these things perish, and I investigated the phenomena of heaven and earth until finally I made up my mind I was by nature totally unfitted for this kind of investigation…<br />
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Then one day I heard a man reading from a book, as he said, by Anaxagoras, that it is the mind [“nous” or “God”] that arranges and causes all things. I was pleased with this theory of cause, and it seemed to me to be somehow right that the mind should be the cause of all things, and I thought, “If this is so, the mind in arranging things arranges everything and establishes each thing as it is best for it to be. So, if anyone wishes to find the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of a particular thing, he must find out what sort of existence, or passive state of any kind, or activity is best for it. And therefore in respect to that particular thing, and other things too, a man need examine nothing but what is best and most excellent; for then he will necessarily know also what is inferior, since the science of both is the same.”<br />
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As I considered these things I was delighted to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of things quite to my mind, and I thought he would tell me whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had told me that, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity of it, and would tell me the nature of the best and why it is best for the earth to be as it is; and if he said the earth was in the center, he would proceed to show that it is best for it to be in the center; and I had made up my mind that if he made those things clear to me, I would not yearn for any other kind of cause.<br />
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And I had determined that I would find out in the same way about the sun and the moon and the stars, their relative speed, their revolutions, and their other changes, and why the active or passive condition of each of them is for the best. For I never imagined that, when he said they were ordered by intelligence, he would introduce any other cause for these things than it is best for them to be as they are. So I thought when he assigned the cause of each thing of all things in common he would go on and explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common. I would not have given up these hopes for much money, and I seized the books very eagerly and read them as fast as I could, that I might know as fast as I could about the best and the worst.<br />
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My glorious hope… was quickly snatched away from me. As I went on with my reading I saw that the man made no use of intelligence, and did not assign any real causes to the ordering things, but mentioned as causes: air and ether and water and many other absurdities… But it is most absurd to call things of that sort causes… Whoever talks in that way is unable to make a distinction and to see that in reality a cause is one thing, and the thing without which the cause could never be a cause is quite another thing. And so it seems to me that most people, when they give the name of cause to the latter, are groping in the dark, as it were, and are giving it a name that does not belong to it. And so one man makes the earth stay below heavens by putting a vortex about it, and another regards the earth as a flat trough supported on a foundation of air; but they do not look for the power which causes things to be placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force, but they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this, and in truth they give no thought to the good, which must embrace and hold together all things.</blockquote>
It’s doubtful if we’ll ever learn if the above is an accurate reflection of Socrates’ thoughts or if they are Plato’s way to try to give more authority to his own ideas, deceiving readers into thinking that they originated from Socrates. In any event, the ideas glaringly demonstrate an error that we should always try to avoid but to which most of us succumb [I may be doing it in this post!]: seeking only information that supports our preconceptions.<br />
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Such an error seems especially embarrassing if made by Socrates (or even by Plato), because Plato’s description of how Socrates probed issues with questions, questioning people to uncover their assumptions, is still known as “the Socratic method”, and such questioning has (unfortunately) become identified as the most important characteristic of “critical thought”. I added the adverb “unfortunately”, because the most important characteristic of critical thought is not to probe assumptions (and especially, not to probe definitions) but to rely on evidence, which was a critically important failure of essentially all of even the best of the ancient Greeks – save “the father of modern medicine”, Hippocrates, (somewhat) and (certainly) save “the father of mechanics”, Archimedes. In contrast to them, as shown in the above quotation, Socrates (or Plato) didn’t seek what knowledge might be gained from data (from the universe around them) but sought support only for the preconception that everything was “for the good”.<br />
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Further, beyond the fundamental failure of essentially all Greek philosophers to evaluate their thoughts against evidence, the above quotation demonstrates Socrates’ (or Plato’s) failure to check even his definitions and premisses. Thus, behind the goal of seeking “the good, which must embrace and hold all things together” is the glaringly unsubstantiated premiss that there is “a purpose” behind natural processes. What evidence supports such an assumption? What was the purpose behind, for example, the death of so many Minoans by the tsunami that followed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thera_eruption">the eruption of the island of Thera</a> in about 1600 BCE? Was “<a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/05/law-lie-6-law-order-1.html">the purpose</a>” to kill all the homosexuals?! Besides, what definition is adopted for “the good”? I hope Plato wouldn’t have minded too much if I had vehemently disagreed with his definition of “the good”, which he provides elsewhere in his writings and which includes the ideas that philosophers (such as he) should be the rulers (!) and that those who didn’t “believe” in his god should first be imprisoned, and if they still didn’t “believe” after a “re-education” program, then such “atheists” should be executed – horrible ideas later adopted by Christian and Muslim clerics.<br />
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Actually, though, I’m skeptical that the above illustration (of seeking confirmations for preconceptions) accurately reflects Socrates’ method of seeking knowledge, because it’s not the method that he apparently used in other inquiries. Apparently, his other inquiries were not attempts to understand the rest of nature (viz., physics) but attempts to understand human nature, in general, and in particular, ideas about justice, bravery, beauty, and similar. He did this by talking to people (apparently to essentially everyone he could), thus trying to understand human thoughts by seeking data from all available sources. [In a sense, then, he wasn’t a physicist but a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist.]<br />
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Many examples of his inquiries are available in the many “Socratic Dialogues” (available on the internet), written by Plato (and therefore probably reflecting Plato’s opinions). Socrates’ fundamental concept seems to have been that the best that anyone can do is to pursue truth, even while he apparently recognized Xenophanes’ point that, in reality, truth can never be attained. As a result of Socrates’ many inquiries of many people, he was considered a “trouble maker” and eventually indicted with the charge:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #cc0000;">
Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods in which the state believes, but brings in other new divinities; he also wrongs by corrupting the youth.</blockquote>
He was found guilty and sentenced to death (by drinking a poison made from hemlock) – not just for what he thought, but for how he stimulated others to think. The famous 1787 painting by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) of Socrates reaching for the poison while still holding discussions is shown below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdL0l33ZppjioB45S4Yl0nMC4xLbLBoqSM7NAEoTIrWAa8sxuQK08-poKRsTa3Aw0c-vR4jVHfjy_8QSWSSDjf1nhw3r53Mhx4EqWaazONSMcAgE2amFoMvQ-qGypY_cmFgPuKIVsyp1s/s1600/smaller+socrates.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409141409472126386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdL0l33ZppjioB45S4Yl0nMC4xLbLBoqSM7NAEoTIrWAa8sxuQK08-poKRsTa3Aw0c-vR4jVHfjy_8QSWSSDjf1nhw3r53Mhx4EqWaazONSMcAgE2amFoMvQ-qGypY_cmFgPuKIVsyp1s/s400/smaller+socrates.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 229px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
In an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix11ChangingIdeas.pdf">chapter</a>, I reviewed some details about Socrates’ trial; in a subsequent post, I plan to comment more about his (in my opinion, unwise) choice of “martyrdom”. In the next post, continuing to explore physics and metaphysics in ancient Greece, I’ll address influences of Socrates’ death on Plato and influences of Socrates’ ideas on Aristotle. In later posts, I’ll turn to the influences of Aristotle on the two greatest philosophical groups in ancient Greece (the Epicureans and the Stoics) and to the (unfortunate) influence of Plato’s ideas on subsequent religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.<br />
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[To be continued…]<br />
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<a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.ne</a><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">t</a><br />
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A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-47932030345096628432009-10-28T04:06:00.000-07:002009-11-26T02:56:06.106-08:00Clerical Quackery 4 - The Problem of Evil, Prophecies & Zoroastrianism in Isaiah, Job, Tobit & Enoch<div><br /></div>This is the 24th in the series of posts dealing with what I call “the God Lie” and the 4th in the subseries of posts dealing with “Clerical Quackery”. My goal for these first few posts dealing with Clerical Quackery continues to be to try to at least outline how the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) incorporated Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Persian, and Greek ideas about life- and judgment-after-death into their “sacred scriptures”, i.e., into the Old Testament (OT), the New Testament (NT), the Koran (or Quran or Qur’an), the Book of Mormon, etc. In turn, ideas about life- and judgment-after-death (ideas derived from zero supporting data!) were incorporated into the various “holy books” in an attempt, in large measure, to solve the problem of evil, which in its simplest formulation is: Why do bad things happen to good people?<br /><br />For monotheists [i.e., those who assume the existence of only one god (where <span style="font-style: italic;">theos</span> is the Greek word for god), such as religious Jews and others who follow Zarathustra’s original ideas] the problem of evil can be rephrased as: If God is all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscient) and all good (omnibenevolent), then why is there so much evil in the world? As Robert Ingersoll wrote in 1872 in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gods:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgment, it was impossible to point out an imperfection. “Be kind enough,” said he, “to name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power.” “Well,” said I, “I would make good health catching, instead of disease.” The truth is, it is impossible to harmonize all the ills, and pains, and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by, and are watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent God, who is superior to and independent of nature.</blockquote>For duotheists (or ditheists or bitheists), particularly those (such as subsequent Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims) who assume the existence of a good supernatural being (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda,</span> God, or <span style="font-style: italic;">Allah</span>) and a bad supernatural being or devil (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ahriman</span>, Satan, or <span style="font-style: italic;">Shaitan</span>), the problem of evil can be rephrased as: If the good god is supreme, why doesn’t He eliminate the bad god? Thus, on the one hand, if He doesn’t know about the bad god, then He’s not omniscient, and on the other hand, if He does know about the bad god and doesn’t stop him, then either He’s impotent or malevolent!<br /><br />For polytheists, so many gods are assumed to exist that it’s simple to “solve” the problem of evil: just assign responsibilities for specific troubles and evils to any of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities">thousands of gods</a>! Hindus, however, choose a different “solution”: they claim that bad things happens to people as a result of their behavior(s) in this and previous incarnations (viz., it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">karma</span>). The Hindu “solution” may seem satisfactory if good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people, but unfortunately, it doesn’t provide insight when bad things happen to good people – because they were allegedly bad (in unknown ways) during previous, unknown lives!<br /><br />For atheists (better described as <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/01/dont-let-theists-negate-you-negate-them.html">scientific humanists</a> or Humanists), the question of why bad things happen to good people is answered, of course, without reference to any god (or gods). We start with the realizations that, thousands of years ago, people couldn’t see how humans could have evolved from simpler life forms, how life could have started (for example) <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> auto-catalytic or cross-catalytic chemical reactions of self-replicating molecules, and how the universe could have been created (for example) by a symmetry-breaking quantum fluctuation in an original void. Next, given that understanding of such processes is developing, we adopt the general principle that, if natural processes can account (or potentially account) for the origins and developments of humans, all life, and the universe, then unsubstantiated assumptions about supernatural processes should be discarded. Therefore, given the complete lack of even the tiniest shred of evidence supporting the existence of any supernatural processes (and associated gods), we dismiss all ideas about gods as understandable but ignorant speculations. As Robert Ingersoll wrote in 1890 in <span style="font-style: italic;">Liberty in Literature:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><blockquote>To the common man the great problems are easy. He has no trouble in accounting for the universe. He can tell you the origin and destiny of man and the why and wherefore of things. As a rule, he is a believer in special providence, and is egotistic enough to suppose that everything that happens in the universe happens in reference to him.</blockquote></span>Upon discarding all supernatural ideas as ignorant speculations, scientific humanists then take the next obvious step toward solving the problem of evil, namely, to separate it into two components: into evil caused by people and evil (or harm) caused by natural events. In the case of evil caused by people, we recognize a host of causes, many derived from ignorance (including lack of foresight, lack of empathy, inability to appreciate benefits of cooperation, etc.), poor education (including indoctrination in tribalism, religion, racism, etc.), bad parenting (including physical, emotional, sexual, and mental abuse of children), and despondency derived from intolerable living conditions (famine, violence, injustices, etc.), many of which in turn are derived from clerical ignorance. In the case of harm caused by nature, we admit (in the face of a huge amount of reliable data) that “stuff happens” or, stated in mathematical terms: whereas life and most other natural processes are nonlinear and stochastic, there are finite (non-zero) probabilities that events undesirable to life will occur (such as being blinded by bird dung, having all your possessions destroyed in a flood, contracting disease, etc.). As a result, “stuff happens” (by chance, by not taking adequate precautions, etc.) that frustrates life’s prime purpose, which is to thrive.<br /><br />In contrast to the case for scientific humanists, for religious people (in general) and for clerics (in particular) the problem of evil has been and continues to be a source of substantial anxiety. In fact, trying to solve the problem of evil has caused the demise of some religions and the breakup of others into multiple competing sects. For example, in this and the next post, I’ll try to at least outline how adopting different (silly) “solutions” to the problem of evil led to the breakup of the original Hebrew priesthood into various competing sects, including the Sadducees (more-or-less the “hang-ons” or the “cling-ons” of the original Hebrew priesthood), the Pharisees (who adopted some aspects of the Persian or Zoroastrian “solution” to the problem of evil), and still later, the Essenes, Christians, Muslims, etc. (who adopted essentially all of the Persian “solution” plus added a few refinements that were unfortunately promoted by mystic Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras and Plato).<br /><br />Actually, some of the many resulting rifts in the Abrahamic religions can be traced back to the Hebrew clerics' concoctions associated with the earliest myths in the OT's <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Genesis</span> plus their adoption of selected parts of Zarathustra’s ideas (briefly reviewed in the previous post). Thus, as a scanty overview:<br /><blockquote>• As I already tried to review (starting <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/08/lies-corruption-in-genesis-1-3.html">here</a>), the original Hebrew priests adopted the “solution” to the problem of evil that had been promoted for at least the prior 2,000 years by Mesopotamia priests, which (in essence) was: people experience evil because of “sin” [i.e., the people had done something not approved by God (or the gods) – aka the clerics!]. As a result (so the clerics claimed), the people were punished for their sins, and to placate God (and the clerics!), the people should provide the priests with “sin offerings”. For example, following the financial success of the Mesopotamian priests, the Hebrew priests concocted (out of thin air!) the story in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 2 & 3</span> that “the original sin” of the first humans (Adam and Eve) was to seek knowledge of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – and that everyone was guilty by (tribal) association. [And I admit that, given that the priests claimed authority to define ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as their “territory” (or more accurately, their “bread and butter” – and wine, and the choicest foods, fine clothing, gold, silver, and other perks), it’s easy to understand why the priests were opposed to people’s learning how to define ‘good’ and ‘evil’ by themselves, since it infringed on the clerics’ con game!]<br /><br />• As I plan to outline later in this post, one of the fundamental concoctions of clerics of the Essenes branch of Judaism (as recorded in their <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span>) was to assume that God allegedly flooded the Earth (saving only Enoch’s great-grandson, Noah, and his family), because the sons of God mentioned in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> were claimed to be fallen (Zoroastrian) angels, who fell for the sexual attractions of earthly women. [At least that much of their concoction I can understand!]<br /><br />• As I plan to sketch in later posts, one of the fundamental concoctions of Christian clerics (as recorded in the NT) was to assume that the Zoroastrian “savior” was Jesus (also God’s son), whom God allegedly had killed as a “sin offering” for humanity’s sin of being related to Adam and Eve, who allegedly sinned by eating fruit from the tree of knowledge (of good and evil), against God’s orders. [Even though, without knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve couldn’t have known that it was “good” to obey God’s orders!]<br /><br />• And as I plan to sketch in still-later posts, one of the fundamental concoctions of Muslim clerics (as given in the Koran) was to assume that the Zoroastrian devil (whom they named <span style="font-style: italic;">Shaitan</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Iblis</span>, the latter name possibly derived from the Greek word <span style="font-style: italic;">diabolis</span>) initiated his devilish ways (controlling evil) by refusing to “make obeisance” to Adam, after Adam managed to recite the names of the animals, allegedly dictated to him by God (or <span style="font-style: italic;">Allah</span>). [The principles were apparently not only that recitation (as opposed to thinking) was good but also that everyone should pay homage to the first person who recited, for example, that the name for a cow was ‘cow’ (although, come to think of it, wouldn’t it have been better to have called a cow a ‘moo’?) and the name for a duck was ‘duck’ (although, come to think of it, why not call ducks ‘quacks’ – rather than clerics?!).] </blockquote>But, snide remarks aside [yet, while willingly paying homage to Emerson’s perceptive assessment, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next”</span>], many ancient people obviously addressed the problem of evil, including the Persian philosopher Zarathustra, subsequent Zoroastrian priests, and the unknown authors of the Hebrew books<span style="font-style: italic;"> Isaiah, Job, Tobit, Enoch, Ecclesiastes, </span>and<span style="font-style: italic;"> Daniel</span>. In this post and the next, my goals are to cursorily review some of the ideas in those books (delaying, until the next post, most of my comments about <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span>) and to suggest how ideas about life- and judgment-after-death thereby seeped into Judaism. Accomplishing that goal is, however, vastly more complicated than might be expected, because similar to all clerics before and since, the ancient Hebrew clerics engaged in so much skullduggery.<br /><br />Three examples of such skullduggery (or unscrupulous trickery or quackery) are the following. First, during the period after returning from their Babylonian exile, the ruling Jewish clerics (later called the Sadducees) adopted only selected writing (such as the books of <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah, Job, Ecclesiastes,</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span>) as “sacred scripture”, labeling other writings (such as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Tobit</span>) as apocrypha literature (with ‘apocrypha’ from Greek <span style="font-style: italic;">apokruptein</span> meaning ‘hide away’), while not only disregarding but even banning other literature (such as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span>). Second, the Jewish clerics apparently felt no compunction about modifying selected texts (e.g., <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> & <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span>) as they saw fit; that is, when their ideas differed from ideas described by the original authors, the clerics would apparently just insert their ideas into the OT, attributing their thoughts to the original authors, who in some cases lived centuries earlier! Third, in other cases, the Jewish clerics (like essentially all clerics before and since) perpetrated even more flagrant fraud, e.g., the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Daniel</span> wasn’t written when claimed by the author(s) but about four centuries later and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span> wasn’t written when claimed by the author(s) but roughly two thousand years later! Below, I’ll provide more details.<br /><br />One illustration of such skullduggery is already available in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span>. I expect that, first, early Hebrew priests had their “perfectly good” myth of Adam and Eve given in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 2 & 3</span> – where by “perfectly good”, I mean that, at the time, it was probably just as good as any other wild speculation concocted out of thin air to “explain” the origin of humans. Subsequently, what seems to have happened is that, upon learning about the Persian Zarathustra’s omnipotent, omniscient… creator of the universe and the ideas of subsequent Zoroastrian priests (called <span style="font-style: italic;">Magi</span>, from which the English word ‘magic’ is derived) that their God (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span>) allegedly created everything in six (or seven) periods, then later Jewish priests (probably Ezra and Co-Conspirators, whom I’ve been identifying in these posts as Ezra & C-C) apparently just slapped the new creation myth in front of <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 2 & 3</span>, as <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 1</span>, without taking the trouble to eliminate inconsistencies between the two myths!<br /><br />Some of the inconsistencies were summarized by Anglican Church Bishop John William Colenso (as given in a 1933 <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/4803046/The-African-Origin-of-the-garden-of-eden">article</a> by John G. Jackson):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The following are the most noticeable points of differences between the two cosmogonies:<br /><br />1. In the first the earth emerges from the waters and is, therefore SATURATED WITH MOSITURE. In the second, the whole face of the ground REQUIRES TO BE MOISTENED.<br /><br />2. In the first, the birds and the beasts are created BEFORE MAN. In the second, man is created BEFORE THE BIRDS AND THE BEASTS.<br /><br />3. In the first, all fowls that fly are made out of the WATERS. In the second, the fowls of the air are made out of the GROUND.<br /><br />4. In the first, man is created in the image of God. In the second, man is made of the DUST OF THE GROUND and merely animated with the breath of life; and it is only after his eating the forbidden fruit that the Lord said, "Behold, the man has become AS ONE OF US, to know good and evil."<br /><br />5. In the first, man is made lord of the WHOLE EARTH. In the second, he is merely placed in the Garden of Eden, TO DRESS IT AND TO KEEP IT.<br /><br />6. In the first the man and the woman are CREATED TOGETHER as the closing and completing work of the whole creation; created also, as is evidently implied in the same kind of way, to be the complement of one another, and thus created, they are blessed TOGETHER. In the second, the beasts and birds are created BETWEEN the man and the woman. First, the man is made of the dust of the ground; he is placed by HIMSELF in the garden, charged with a solemn command, and threatened with a curse if he breaks it; THEN THE BEASTS AND BIRDS ARE MADE, and the man gives names to them; lastly, after all this, THE WOMAN IS MADE OUT OF ONE OF HIS RIBS, but merely as a helpmate for the man.</blockquote>From there, the OT gets worse – much worse. Not that the advocated <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">policies</a> become much worse than the male chauvinism that’s promoted in the OT’s second genesis myth (and the resulting horrible treatment of women that was characteristic of the Hebrew tribe and is still prevalent among most Muslim tribes), but the logical incoherencies boggle the mind.<br /><br />For example, as mentioned in the previous post, the early part of the OT (similar to other Mesopotamian myths) depicts death as just a dreary place (called Sheol) and restricts God’s activity to judging people while they’re alive. Further, the OT’s second genesis myth even precludes the possibility of people having eternal life. Thus, God ordained that humans would never be permitted to live forever, allegedly saying (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 3,</span> 22):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“The man has become like one of us</span> [immortals]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out his hand and takes fruit from the tree of life also, eats it, and lives for ever?” So the Lord God drove him</span> [Adam] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">out of the Garden of Eden… He cast him out, and to the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and a sword whirling and flashing to guard the way to the tree of</span> [eternal] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">life. </span></blockquote>Now, given that God allegedly precluded humans from living forever (even guarding the way to eternal life with <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“the cherubim and a sword whirling and flashing”</span>), it could be fascinating (if wild speculations of clerical quacks were of interest) to examine the mental gyrations that subsequent Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Mormon… clerics have used to “justify” the claim that God would change his mind and permit people to live forever, especially since at <span style="font-style: italic;">Numbers 23,</span> 19 we’re told, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change His mind”</span>, and at <span style="font-style: italic;">Malachi 3,</span> 6, God allegedly says: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I, the Lord, do not change.”</span><br /><br />Unfortunately for me, however, I find that even identifing such logical inconsistencies to be, not “fascinating”, but an annoying waste of time. I therefore sorely wish I could just dump such nonsense and get on to more rational ideas. [Just think what an enormous amount of brainpower has been wasted reading and thinking about the asinine “holy books” of the world!] But I’ve set myself the burdensome task of going through this junk; therefore, I’ll try to finish what I started. In particular, for this post, I want to at least sketch how (and perhaps why) the silly ideas of life- and judgment-after-death crept into the OT – apparently against God’s will!<br /><br />As I mentioned in the previous post, the OT’s first instance of resurrection from the dead seems to be at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 28</span>, where the Witch of Endor raises the prophet Samuel, himself, from the dead. Earlier, Samuel allegedly said (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 2,</span> 6): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> "The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and raises up."</span> From that quotation, apparently we’re to conclude that the Lord works through witches! <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection"> Subsequently</a>, the prophet Elijah allegedly resurrected a dead boy (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 17,</span> 17–24) and the prophet Elisha did similar (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 4,</span> 32–37). Thereby, not only witches but also “prophets” were apparently capable of bringing dead people back to life; therefore, I suppose, the fabricators of the New Testament (NT) decided that their fabricated Jesus should be able to do the same.<br /><br />Such cases, however, deal with resurrecting the dead only temporarily, not necessarily to eternal life. Yet, there are a couple of suggestions of the possibility of eternal life in <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Psalms</span>. For example, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Psalm 49, </span>15 there is: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“…God will ransom my life, he will take me from the power of Sheol…”</span> But it’s unknown when a specific Proverb or Psalm was added to the OT: surely no honest biblical scholar agrees with the Bible’s claims that they were written by Solomon and David, respectively. Similar suggestions of “resurrection” are given by the “major prophets” Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (and for Christians at least, Daniel), but again, it’s unknown when such suggestions were written or by whom. In fact, the books of these “major prophets” are such amazing illustrations of clerical quackery that I’ll devote a little space to them.<br /><br />I propose to devote only “a little space to them”, because as interested readers can easily find, an enormous amount has already be written. For a balanced overview, readers might profit from the article entitled “The Major Prophets”, available at the <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_otb4.htm">website</a> of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, which summarizes the viewpoints of both “Conservative Theologians” (CTs), who consider the Bible as “inspired by god and inerrant”, as well as “Liberal Theologians” (LTs), who “analyze the Bible as a historical document to determine the identify of the author(s) and/or redactor(s) of the final text.”<br /><br />My skepticism, however, puts me beyond the LTs and into the camp with those who dismiss essentially the entire Bible as unmitigated clerical quackery. We in the skeptics-camp ask, for example: How could it be that the authors of the Bible display their incompetence in so many ways (e.g., claiming, without a shred of evidence to support their claims, that the universe and everything in it were created in six days, that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago, that the Earth is a flat plate, that the Sun goes around the Earth, that humans popped into existence without benefit of evolution, that illnesses are caused by evil spirits, etc.) and yet, we’re to take it “on faith” that the authors provide “reliable” information about what happens to people after they die? As kids are wont to say: “Gimme a break!” But setting additional derogatory, introductory comments aside, I’ll now start on<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Book of the Prophet Isaiah.</span><br />I start with <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> not only because it seem to be a “turning point” of Judaism (changing Yahweh from the jealous, little, warrior, mountain god of the Hebrew tribe into Zarathustra’s universal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent… god of righteousness and justice) but also because of its foundational influence on Christianity; for example, it’s commonly stated (although I’ve never verified the statement) that <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> is quoted in the NT more than any other prophet, “with more than 250 allusions to Isaiah’s prophecies.” For readers desiring additional information about <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span>, Google should soon more-than-sate their interest. Thus, as illustrations, using the words “Isaiah” +”Old Testament” in a Google search yields 1,830,000 hits, while “Isaiah” +”New Testament” yield 1,730,000 hits. What an enormous waste of intellectual (and electromagnetic!) energy.<br /><br />Anyway, Liberal Theologians (LTs) generally agree that <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> was written by multiple authors and editors (or redactors) during the course of at least two centuries, from the time of “the original” (or First- or Proto-) Isaiah, son of Amoz (who <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah">seems</a> to have preached between 740 and 687 BCE), until roughly the time of Ezra, ~400 BCE. Some biblical scholars go further than the LTs’ admissions, however, to suggest that there were more than three authors [First-(or Proto-), Second- (or Deutro-), and Third- (or Trito-)] Isaiah. For example, in his 1910 book (available at Google Books) <span style="font-style: italic;">The Composition of the Book of Isaiah,</span> Robert Kennett concludes:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">(a) all of chs. 3, 5, 6, 7, 20 and 31 <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[of Isaiah]</span>, and large portions of chs. 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 17, 22 and 23, may be assigned to Isaiah, the son of Amoz;<br /><br />(b) all of chs. 13, 40 and 47, and large portions of chs. 14 ,21, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 48 may be assigned to the time of Cyrus <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[the Great]</span>;<br /><br />(c) all of chs. 15, 36, 37 and 39, and portions of chs. 16 and 38, may be assigned to the period between Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, but cannot be dated precisely;<br /><br />(d) the passage 23:1-14 may be assigned to the time of Alexander the Great;<br /><br />(e) all of chs. 11, 12, 19, 24-27, 29, 30, 32-35, 42, 49-66, and portions of chs. l, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18, 23, 41, 44, 45 and 48 may be assigned to the 2nd century BCE (167-140 BCE). </blockquote>Now, for those readers who might be thinking something similar to “Who cares; what difference does it make when it was written?”, a response is available that’s foundationally important for all the Abrahamic religions, namely: the time when the material was written is critical to the ruse promoted by all clerical quacks (especially in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> & <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span>, and in the NT, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, etc.) dealing with “prophecy”.<br /><br />As a general rule, and to be blunt: prophetic pronouncements of some event aren’t worth a damn if they’re made after the event occurs – a process that “those in the know” describe as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaticinium_ex_eventu">vaticinium ex eventu</a> (viz., prophecy after the event). The method that clerical quacks originally used to sell such “prophecies” (and they were amazingly successful doing so, since more than a billion people now “believe” that the “prophecies” weren’t faked!) was to promote the lie that the prophecies were recorded before the event occurred by claiming, for example, that the books of <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> were written centuries before they actually were. The authors of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Mormon</span>, however (which, actually, are closely related – as I plan to outline in a later post), win the prize for audacity: there’s no sensible doubt that both were written approximately 2,000 years after the time they’re claimed to have been written!<br /><br />There are, of course, many different kinds of prophecies. For example, if I prophesy that the Sun will rise tomorrow, probably not too many people will be impressed by my prophetic ability; if I prophesy that people will see the Sun rise tomorrow, then it’s a “fail-safe prophecy” (since if people aren’t here to see the Sun rise, there’ll be no one to criticize my prophecy!), and if I prophesy that good people will be pleased to see the Sun rise tomorrow, then it’s a “self-fulfilling prophecy”, since it defines “good people”. Many other types of prophecies are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaticinium_ex_eventu">named</a>, including prophecies that are vague, open-ended, recycled, catch-all, shotgunning, statistically likely, unfalsifiable, counting hits and not misses, allegory, moving the goalposts, and the one that I find especially amusing: “the Texas sharpshooter”, which refers to the Texan who shoots first and then draws a bulls eye around where the bullet hits!<br /><br />Of those many possibilities, vagueness was apparently a favorite of early “prophets”. For example, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 17,</span> 1, we’re told, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Damascus shall be a city no longer, she shall be but a heap of ruins. Forever desolate, flocks shall have her for their own, and lie there undisturbed.”</span> Who knows, it may yet happen! Another is at <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 19,</span> 5, where we’re told, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“The waters of the Nile shall drain away, the river shall be parched and run dry…”</span> And I agree: some day it probably will happen – maybe even before the Sun burns up all its hydrogen and becomes a Red Giant (in about five billion years).<br /><br />But a more reliable and impressive option (than using vagueness) is to make “prophecies” about events that have already occurred. An example is the ruse given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 44,</span> 24–28 (which I expect was written by Ezra & C-C):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">This is what the Lord, your protector, says</span> [so (or so it’s claimed) Isaiah (son of Amoz) says]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> the one who formed you in the womb: “I am the Lord, who made everything, who alone stretched out the sky, who fashioned the earth all by myself, who frustrates the omens of the empty talkers and humiliates the omen readers, who overturns the counsel of the wise men and makes their advice seem foolish, who fulfills the oracles of his prophetic servants and brings to pass the announcements of his messengers, who says about Jerusalem, ‘She will be inhabited,’ and about the towns of Judah, ‘They will be rebuilt, her ruins I will raise up,’ who says to the deep sea, ‘Be dry! I will dry up your sea currents,’ who commissions Cyrus, the one I appointed as shepherd to carry out all my wishes and to decree concerning Jerusalem, ‘She will be rebuilt,’ and concerning the temple, ‘It will be reconstructed’.”</span></blockquote>Thus, according to the above quotation (if the reader believes such silliness!), before the Assyrians overran Judah and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, Isaiah (son of Amoz) looked ~200 years into the future and saw not only that there would be a new empire that would defeat the Assyrians (namely, the Persian Empire, which had not yet been established in Isaiah’s time) but also that the new empire would be led by a fellow named Cyrus and that he (Cyrus the Great) would order that the towns of Judah be rebuilt and the temple in Jerusalem be reconstructed. And if the reader can buy that, boy do I have some great oceanfront property in Arizona that I’m willing to sell for pennies on the dollar.<br /><br />The reason why the clerical quacks (led, I suspect, by Ezra & C-C) promoted such a ruse seems clear. Apparently what happened is that, upon becoming acquainted with the Persians’ all-powerful, all-knowing creator god (i.e., Zarathustra’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span>), the Hebrew’s own, jealous, warrior, mountain god (<span style="font-style: italic;">Yahweh</span>) seemed pathetically feeble. So, I assume, Ezra & C-C proceeded to redefine their god, not only by revising (or “redacting”) the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span> (e.g., by inserting the first chapter of <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span>, so their new, improved god created the world in the same six or seven periods as <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span> did) but also by claiming that, ~200 years earlier, God told Isaiah the following (copied from selected portions of <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 40</span> through <span style="font-style: italic;">45</span>):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Keep silence before me</span> [God]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, all you coasts and islands </span>[I’m surprised that the coasts and islands were making so much noise!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; let the people come to meet me </span>[The coasts and islands were impeding the people? Where is He? In the sea?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. Let them come near, then let them speak; we will meet at the place of judgment, I and they.</span> [It’s not clear if this means during or after life.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Tell me, who raised up that one from the east</span> [i.e., Cyrus]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, one greeted by victory wherever he goes?… Whose work is this, I</span> [God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">ask, who has brought it to pass? Who has summoned the generations from the beginning? It is I, the Lord, I am the first, and to the last of them I am He. Coasts and islands saw it and were afraid; the world trembled from end to end… </span>[Which, I suppose, is the clerics’ explanation for earthquakes!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Here is my servant</span> [Cyrus<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">], whom I</span> [God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">uphold; my chosen one in whom I delight; I have bestowed my spirit upon him, and he will make justice shine on the nations </span>[Which is a characteristic of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span>, not <span style="font-style: italic;">Yahweh</span>!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… He will make justice shine on every race</span> [certainly a change from the racist policies promoted elsewhere in the OT!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, never faltering, never breaking down; he will plant justice on earth, while coasts and islands wait for his teaching.”</span> [What’s with the “coasts and islands”?!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thus speaks the Lord who is God, he who created the skies and stretched them out, who fashioned the earth and all that grows in it, who gave breath to its people, the breath of life to all who walk upon it </span>[again, very much Zarathustra’s universal god, not the tribal god of the Hebrews]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">: “I, the Lord, have called you</span> [Cyrus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">with righteous purpose</span> [a Zoroastrian phrase] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and taken you by the hand; I have formed you, and appointed you to be a light to all peoples, a beacon for the nations</span> [no longer just for the Hebrews] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">to open eyes that are blind, to bring captives out of prison, out of the dungeons where they lie in darkness</span> [again, Zoroastrian imagery]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thus says the Lord, Israel’s king, the Lord of Hosts, his ransomer</span> [and quite a braggart!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">: “I am the first and I am the last</span> [a direct quote from Zarathustra] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and there is no god but me…”</span> [If so, then why did you earlier say that you were a jealous god and that the Hebrews weren’t to put other gods before you?!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thus says the Lord to Cyrus his anointed </span>[i.e., the messiah]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, Cyrus who he has taken by the hand to subdue nations before him and undo the might of kings…</span> [although an impartial observer would probably say that Cyrus did it by himself, with no thanks to any god!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I have called you by name and given you your title… I alone have roused this man in righteousness</span> [Zarathustra would challenge that clerical claim: Zarathustra maintained that ‘righteousness’ was an individual’s choice]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and I will smooth his path before him…</span> [how about giving Cyrus credit for his accomplishments?!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Those who defy him</span> [Cyrus] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">are confounded and brought to shame, those who make idols perish in confusion. But Israel has been delivered by the Lord, delivered for all time to come; they shall not be confounded or put to shame for all eternity. </span>[Which is a good indication of the incompetence of Ezra & C-C as “prophets”, unable to foresee the Greeks, Romans, Christians, Muslims, Nazis…]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“There is no god but me; there is no god other than I, victorious and able to save. Look to me and be saved</span> [Saved from what? Apparently not saved from clerical quackery!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">you peoples from all corners of the earth</span> [now a god for everyone!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; for I am God, there is no other. By my life I have sworn</span> [Well, that’s cute, but given that He’s allegedly an immortal god, how can He die? Therefore, what value is to be placed on His swearing on His life?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, I have given a promise of victory, a promise that will not be broken, that to me every knee shall bend and by me every tongue shall swear…”</span> [Unless, of course, people come to their senses, reject the speculations of dimwit clerics, refuse to be slaves, and swear by science that they’ll put an end to all such supernatural silliness!]<br /></blockquote>And if it weren’t sufficiently clear why the clerical quacks perpetrated such a ruse, they describe it themselves (allegedly quoting God) at <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 45, </span>21, <span style="font-style: italic;">46,</span> 9, and <span style="font-style: italic;">48,</span> 3–6 (all of which, again, I expect was written by Ezra & C-C):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Tell me! Present the evidence! Let them consult with one another! Who predicted this in the past? Who announced it beforehand? Was it not I, the Lord?<br /><br />“Truly I am God, I have no peer; I am God, and there is none like me, who announces the end from the beginning and reveals beforehand what has not yet occurred…<br /><br />“I announced events beforehand, I issued the decrees and made the predictions; suddenly I acted and they came to pass… I announced them to you beforehand; before they happened, I predicted them for you… You have heard; now look at all the evidence!”</blockquote>Thus (at least, so the clerics claim), the ability to <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“reveal beforehand what has not yet occurred”</span> is “proof-positive” that the writer is reporting the words of God – not that the writer is describing events that had already occurred! But surely rational people ask: How could anyone be taken in by such silliness?! And worse, how could approximately a billion people in the world now believe such nonsense?<br /><br />Actually, though, in concocting the powers of their fictitious god, the clerical quacks apparently got carried away. That is, whoever concocted the ruse (pretending that he was Isaiah son of Amoz and could predict future events) got ahead of himself, apparently attempting some one-upmanship on the Zoroastrian priests, in the form of: “Our god’s better than your god!” In the process, whoever “redacted” <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> (whom I’ve been identifying as Ezra & C-C) plunged the revised Jewish religion into substantial trouble, by putting the following words into God’s mouth (<span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah 45</span>, 6):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“I am the Lord, there is no other; I make the light, I create darkness, </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">author alike of prosperity and trouble</span> [italics added]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. I, the Lord, do all these things.”</span></blockquote>With the claims that their god created “darkness” and was the author of “trouble”, Ezra & C-C plunged Judaism into darkness and trouble! One trouble was that the quotation immediately above contradicts what’s written in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 1</span> [i.e., <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“In the beginning… with darkness</span> (not created by God!)<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> over the face of the abyss… God said ‘Let there be light’…”</span>]. Maybe (as Alan Segal mentioned in his 2004 book <span style="font-style: italic;">Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion</span>), the first Genesis myth had not yet been written.<br /><br />In any case, and much more significantly, the author(s) of the above-quoted portion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span> thereby dumped on <span style="font-style: italic;">Yahweh</span> the problem of evil, i.e., they explicitly proposed that God was <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“author alike of prosperity and trouble”</span>, which caused first the Jewish clerics and then the Christian, Muslim, Mormon… clerics an enormous amount of trouble. Yet, the statement that <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“[God is] author alike of prosperity and trouble”</span> may be the most accurate prophetic announcement that the clerics ever made – for themselves: certainly their god is the source of both their prosperity and their trouble!<br /><br />Below and in the next post, I’ll try to at least sketch some of the Jewish clerics’ machinations and their apparent agony, trying to dig themselves out of their self-imposed darkness, attempting to solve the problems that Ezra & C-C caused by claiming that their god was the <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“author…of… trouble.”</span> In the OT, the resulting agony is best described in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span> and it’s at least mentioned in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span>; in the Jewish apocrypha literature the problem of evil is addressed in the short story entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span>; in totally renegade Jewish literature (excluded even from Apocrypha) the problem of evil was not only addressed but claimed to be solved (by copying Zarathustra’s ideas!) in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span>; and eventually in the OT, essentially Zarathustra’s scheme was adopted in <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span>, which was written approximately 300 years after Ezra & C-C caused the problem! Below, I’ll provide at least a few comments on <span style="font-style: italic;">Job, Tobit,</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span>; in the next post, I plan to comment on <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecclesiastes</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span>; here, I’ll start with<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Book of Job.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> was written by nobody knows whom, or where, or when. My own not-very-informed guess is that <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> was written during the third century BCE by a knowledgeable Jew living in Egypt or maybe Arabia, or by someone who had spent a substantial time living in other countries, from Greece to Persia. His knowledge of science (including what passed for science, such as astrology) was fairly good for the time (although by today’s standards, it was, of course, pathetic) and he seems to have been fairly knowledgeable in law, politics, and the Jewish religion.<br /><br />The fictional story in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> directly addresses the-until-recently unanswered question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Inconsistent with the correct answer to that question (namely, people’s inadequacies and nature’s vicissitudes) and inconsistent with Zarathustra’s incorrect answer (namely, something similar to: “Because there’s a cosmic battle between good and evil, which results in collateral damage!”) but consistent with Ezra & C-C silly claim that <span style="font-style: italic;">Yahweh</span> causes everything, the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> posits the bizarre scenario in which the fate of the main character, Job, was the result of a wager between God and one of his henchmen (or hench-angles), namely, Satan.<br /><br />Thus, in response to God’s praise of Job, Satan tells God that Job is “pure and upright” only because God protects him, to which God allegedly responded to Satan (<span style="font-style: italic;">Job 1,</span> 12):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“All right then, everything he</span> [Job] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">has is in your</span> [Satan’s] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">power.”</span></blockquote>That, then (at least according to the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span>) is how God controls evil: by farming out the dirty work to Satan! Thereby, however, if the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> was attempting to relieve God of the responsibility for evil, he certainly failed miserably: is there anything more evil than to offer a human’s well being as a wager?! Flip a coin; if it turns up Heads, the person thrives; if Tails, destroy him! Such a god doesn’t just control evil; he’s the epitome of evil!<br /><br />Incidentally (although it’s relevant in helping to establish when the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job </span>might have been written), it’s here in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> where Satan makes his first appearance in the OT – and he’s identified, in effect, as just one of God’s helpers/henchmen. Readers who disagree with that statement, e.g., those who mention that Satan appears in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 3</span> as the snake (or serpent), should note that the idea that the (talking!) snake in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> is other than a (wise) snake is a Christian concoction, apparently one of many “allegorical interpretations” of the OT promoted by Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE – 50 CE), who made the mistake of concluding that the OT authors “couldn’t be that stupid”!<br /><br />With Satan’s appearance in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span>, we then see another influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism (besides the realignment of <span style="font-style: italic;">Yahweh</span> from his old, Hebrew job as a warrior, mountain god to Zarathustra’s universal god of truth and justice). Actually, though, it wasn’t Zarathustra but later Zoroastrian priests who “deified” (“devil-ized”?) Satan. Thus, as described by <a href="http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/overview.htm">Shahriar Shahriari</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Even though </span>[according to the data-less speculations of Zarathustra] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">there is only one God</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda,</span> literally the “supremely wise creator”]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, our universe works on the basis of moral dualism. There is <span style="font-style: italic;">Spenta Mainyu</span> (progressive mentality) and <span style="font-style: italic;">Angra Mainyu</span> (evil or regressive mentality).</span> [That is, the distinction is in our own ‘mentality’, not in characteristics of any god or gods!] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Zarathushtra pleaded with us to think clearly before we choose, and asked us to choose the progressive choices to bring about beneficial consequences. He said that <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span> would not order us to choose either this or that… In other words, having given us the ability to choose, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahura Mazda</span> leaves us alone and allows us to make our choices. And if we choose good, we will bring about good, and if we choose evil, we will cause evil. This is how the moral universe operates</span> [according to Zarathustra].</blockquote>Stated differently (and as reviewed in the previous post), according to Zarathustra, people are to choose between the Spirit of Goodness [<span style="font-style: italic;">Spenta Mainyu </span>represented by <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span> (truth and righteousness)] and the Spirit of Evil [<span style="font-style: italic;">Angra Mainyu</span> or “the Lie”]. Subsequently, by the time of Ezra & C-C, Zoroastrian priests had corrupted Zarathustra’s original ideas by introducing the idea of a Devil. Thus, as Shahriar Shahriari further explains:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Based on</span> [Zarathustra’s] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">principle, we are the causes of all the good and all the evil that happens in our moral universe. Or simply stated, according to Zarathushtra, there is no Devil. However, some of the Post-Zarathushtra scripture</span> [written by subsequent Zoroastrian priests] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">introduced the concept of the Devil, or <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahriman</span>, which was effectively a personification of <span style="font-style: italic;">Angra Mainyu</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>[originally, “evil or regressive mentality” – of people].</blockquote>Incorporating the Zoroastrian priests’ concept of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahriman</span> (or Satan), the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> proposed a position partway between Ezra & C-C’s claim that God controls evil and the Zoroastrian priests’ claim that the Devil does. The proposed resolution was: God controls Satan.<br /><br />Below, I’ll provide an outline of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span>, although I certainly don’t want to add to the vast, useless literature attempting to analyze the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span>. Nonetheless, it might be useful to comment on ideas in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> about death (particularly, about the lack of an “afterlife”) and it might be useful to demonstrate in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> still other illustrations of clerical dishonesty – and ignorance!<br /><br />An outline of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span> is that, given free rein by God, Satan essentially destroyed Job’s life (having his 10 children either taken prisoner or killed and devastating his fortune, his reputation, and his health), whereupon, Job complained about the injustice he had suffered, disagreed with three “friends” (who basically said, “You must have done something wrong to incur God’s wrath”), leading Job to complain even about the injustices not only of his predicament but also of being unable to challenge his alleged accuser (God).<br /><br />Courtesy the calamities caused by Satan (and therefore by God), Job's situation became so dire that he wished for release available in death – or even, not to have been born, e.g., starting at <span style="font-style: italic;">Job 3,</span> 13:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For now</span> [if I, Job, were dead] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I would be lying down and would be quiet, I would be asleep and then at peace with kings and counselors of the earth who built for themselves places now desolate, or with princes who possessed gold, who filled their palaces with silver. Or why was I not buried like a stillborn infant, like infants who have never seen the light? There </span>[in Sheol]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners relax together; they do not hear the voice of the oppressor. Small and great are there, and the slave is free from his master…</span></blockquote>In theory (at least according to the wild, speculative theory of Zarathustra reviewed in the previous post), restitution for Job’s inappropriate trials and tribulations would be available in a rewarding afterlife, but the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> apparently wasn’t prepared to buy into Zarathustra’s full scheme, instead proposing that death was the end (<span style="font-style: italic;">Job 10,</span> 20):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Are not my days few? Cease, then, and leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort, before I depart, never to return, to the land of darkness and the deepest shadow, to the land of utter darkness, like the deepest darkness, and the deepest shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.</blockquote>The nearest the author came to promoting a scheme about life-after-death was with a question and wondering at <span style="font-style: italic;">Job 14, </span>13–15:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">O that you </span>[God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">would hide me</span> [Job] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">in Sheol, and conceal me till your anger has passed! O that you would set me a time and then remember me! If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait until my release comes. You will call and I – I will answer you; you will long for the creature you have made.</span></blockquote>If the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span> had ended at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 31</span>, with Job’s defending himself against the accusations of his “friends” (that he must have done something wrong), then in my view, the author would have made a valuable contribution, showing that there was something seriously wrong with the idea that God controlled evil, since bad things obviously do happen to good people. And actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job </span>ended. I suspect, however, that the Jewish clerics didn’t want to include in their “holy book” such a damning indictment of their ideas, and therefore, that they concocted different conclusions for <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Chapters 32 </span>through <span style="font-style: italic;">42</span>), which contain pathetic attempts to resolve the (in their scheme, irresolvable) problem of evil<br /><br />Thus, first (in what I suspect was a modification of the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span>) is a long speech (<span style="font-style: italic;">Chapters 32</span> through <span style="font-style: italic;">37</span>) by a younger man, Elihu, basically claiming that Job isn’t wise enough to understand God’s ways. The speech is a long-winded way of expressing the standard clerical cop-out: “God works in mysterious ways.” Surprisingly, the speech by Elihu includes a few lines that directly contradict Ezra & C-C’s claim (in <span style="font-style: italic;">Isaiah</span>) that God controls also evil. Specifically, Elihu states (<span style="font-style: italic;">Job 34,</span> 10–12):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Far be it from God to do evil or the Almighty to play false! For he pays a man according to his work and sees that he gets what his conduct deserves. The truth is </span>[cough, cough]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, God does no wrong; the Almighty does not pervert justice.</span> </blockquote>Second, in what I suspect is an additional modification of the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span>, the clerical authors provide readers with a wonderful treat [and yes, I’m being sarcastic], namely, four full chapters of a “Divine Speech” in which God speaks directly to Job, starting with (<span style="font-style: italic;">Job 38,</span> 2):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Who is this whose ignorant words cloud my design in darkness?</span> [Does He now have something against ‘darkness’; allegedly (according to Isaiah), He created it!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Brace yourself and stand up like a man; I </span>[God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">will ask questions, and you will answer.”</span></blockquote>As I’ve outlined <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix01Introduction.pdf">elsewhere</a>, the result is a ridiculous (even humorous) series of questions, allegedly from God, questions that we can now either answer directly (e.g., to dumb questions such as <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Have you visited the storehouse of the snow…”</span>, then an intelligent answer could be something similar to: “Of course! Haven’t you ever flown in an aircraft?”) or answer indirectly (e.g., to asinine questions such as <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“On what do [Earth’s] supporting pillars rest?”</span>, we could respond: “Good grief, God, don’t you know enough even to ask sensible questions?”).<br /><br />After all of which, according to (I suspect) the damnable clerics who mangled the end of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span>, Job admits that he’s too ignorant to understand the ways of God, he “despises” himself and repents “in dust and ashes”, God forgives him [But who will forgive God?!] and re-establishes Job, complete with a new set of 10 children [Isn’t one set as good as any other set?!], including three replacement daughters who were so beautiful [Isn’t that the only important feature of females?] that “their father granted them an inheritance alongside their brothers.” [Just think: permitting mere women to possess inheritances! What perversion will they think of next?] But as the reader can probably discern from my sarcasm, I’ve had about all that I can tolerate of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Job</span>; therefore, I’ll now turn to<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Book of Tobit.</span><br />As I already mentioned, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> is especially interesting, since it reveals another quirk of the clerical quacks: if they didn’t agree with some published ideas, then like all subsequent (and probably previous) ideologues, they tried to suppress such “subversive ideas”. In the case of the Jewish clerics, they classified such ideas as apocrypha literature. Subsequently, however, some clerical hierarchies accepted <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span>. Thus, as described in a Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit">article</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">[</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span><span style="font-style: italic;">]</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">is a book of scripture that is part of the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canon, pronounced canonical by the Council of Carthage of 397 and confirmed for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent (1546). It is listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[But]</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> is regarded by Protestants as apocryphal. It has never been included within the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[Jewish] </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Tanakh</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[i.e., the OT] </span>as canonical by ancient Judaism. However, it is found in the Greek Old Testament (the <span style="font-style: italic;">Septuagint)</span>, and Aramaic and Hebrew fragments of the book were discovered in Cave IV at Qumran in 1952<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[i.e., as one of the Dead Sea Scrolls]</span></span>.</span></blockquote>The <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.ebible.org/bible/kjv/Tobit.htm">Book of Tobit</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>(with the name derived from Hebrew <span style="font-style: italic;">tobyyah</span> meaning “Yahweh is good”) is a short story, written by who knows whom, when, or where. The same Wikipedia article on <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…neither the date nor location of composition is certain. The setting of the story is the eighth century BC, and uncritical readers have often assumed that it was written at that time.</blockquote>Biblical scholars <a href="http://www.mb-soft.com/believe/txs/tobit.htm">suggest</a> that <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> was written (relying heavily on some “pagan” folktales, including <span style="font-style: italic;">The Grateful Dead</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tale of Ahichar</span>) by a pious Jew (not necessarily a cleric) living in Palestine, possibly in the time period between c.200–170 BCE.<br /><br />In the story, bad things happen to two allegedly good people: Tobit and Sara (daughter of Tobit’s cousin and future wife of Tobit’s son, Tobias). Tobit’s good deeds (“good”, at least, according to the clerics) included proper worshipping, paying tithes (wouldn’t ya know!), giving alms, and burying Jews that the king had killed (clerics rarely if ever describe as ‘good’ those acts that are truly beneficial to humanity, such as developing understanding of nature and applying that understanding to help humanity!); the bad things that happened to Tobit included having his fortune confiscated by the king (for having buried the dead without permission) and losing his sight as a result of infection from bird droppings in his eyes – talk about “stuff happening”! Sara is described as “good and wise”, who “never polluted my name nor the name of my father”; the bad things that happened to her were that she had been married seven times, but all seven “had died in the marriage chamber”, not because (as her father’s maids accused) she had “strangled them”, but allegedly because they were killed by “the evil spirit”, “the Devil”, or “Asmodeus” (or <span style="font-style: italic;">Asmodai</span>, which is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodeus">apparently</a> derived from the Avestan (ancient Persian) word <span style="font-style: italic;">aēšma-daēva,</span> where <span style="font-style: italic;">aēšma</span> means ‘wrath’ and <span style="font-style: italic;">daēva</span> signifies ‘demon’).<br /><br />Similar to Job, both Tobit and Sara were so despondent that they prayed to God to release them in death, e.g., Tobit’s<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Now therefore</span> [God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">deal with me as seemeth best unto thee, and command my spirit to be taken from me, that I may be dissolved, and become earth…</span></blockquote>God, however (at least according to the story) had other desires and plans – apparently not realizing that omnipotent gods can’t have desires and plans, since what they desire must immediately occur!<br /><br />Anyway, according to the story (<span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit 3,</span> 16–17):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So the prayers of them both were heard before the majesty of the great God. And Raphael</span> [one of God’s angels, doncha know] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">was sent to heal them both, that is, to scale away the whiteness of Tobit’s eyes and to give Sara… for a wife to Tobias the son of Tobit; and to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit; because she</span> [Sara] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">belonged to Tobias</span> [Tobit’s son] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">by right of inheritance</span> [i.e., Tobias was a relative and therefore, according to Jewish custom at the time, he had “first dibs” on marrying her!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">.</span></blockquote>I’ll skip additional details about Tobit and end with the four comments, listed below.<br /><blockquote>1. In <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> (as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span>), there’s no indication of reward after death; instead, the focus is on this life. As I’ll outline in the next post, the idea of “just desserts” after death doesn’t enter the OT until <span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel</span> (not considered to be a “major prophet” in Judaism) and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch </span>(not accepted by mainline-Judaism, but accepted by some Jewish sects, e.g., the Essenes).<br /><br />2. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> contains the same sick philosophy as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span><span style="font-style: italic;">:</span> don’t rely on yourself; rely on the Lord – who works in mysterious ways. In reality, the ones who profit from such an anti-human philosophy are the damnable clerics, “happy-ever-aftering”, all the way to the bank to deposit the suckers’ tithes. Yet, the ruling clerics did accept <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> but not <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> as “holy scripture”, possibly because the Persian connection was more obscure in <span style="font-style: italic;">Job</span> than in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span>, in which Satan is given what is essentially the Persian name Asmodeus.<br /><br />3. The people who heard or read <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> were obviously superstitious, believing not only in God, the Devil, and at least one angel (Raphael) but also in other “miraculous” nonsense. Thus, following Raphael’s direction, Tobias used the gall of fish (which had <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“leaped out of the river and would have devoured him”</span>) to anoint Tobit’s eyes, to cure his blindness, and Tobias managed to avoid the fate of Sara’s previous seven husbands by burning the heart and the liver of the same fish, because upon smelling the smoke (so we’re told), the devil (who killed the prior husbands) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“fled into the utmost parts of Egypt.”</span></blockquote><blockquote>4. Whenever <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> was written, Zoroastrian ideas about the devil and about the existence of angels were obviously widely accepted by the Jewish people (since otherwise, they wouldn’t have paid any attention to the story). But meanwhile, there was obviously something in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> that the Jewish priests didn’t like: maybe the idea of the existence of angels, maybe that the Devil was called Asmodeus rather than Satan, maybe because Tobit’s son had a nice little dog (!), maybe because the writing was in green ink rather than red ink… who knows?! Whatever the reason, the ruling Jewish priests (the Sadducees) didn’t approve <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span> as “canonical” or “sacred” scripture, categorizing it as Apocrypha.</blockquote>But as much as the Sadducees disliked <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit</span>, they apparently disliked even more the final book that I’ll briefly review in this post, namely,<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Book of Enoch.</span><br />Once again, it’s unknown who wrote the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span>, where, or when. Surely only the most die-hard fundamentalists accept the idea (promoted in <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span>) that the book was written by Enoch, himself, i.e., the great-grandfather of Noah. As a Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_%28ancestor_of_Noah%29">article</a> explains:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Enoch… is a name occurring twice in the generations of Adam. In one reference, Enoch is described as a grandson of Adam <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> Cain, and as having had a city named after him. The second mention of the name describes Enoch as Adam’s great-grandson, through Seth, not Cain, and also states that Enoch “walked with God, and was not, for God took him,” thus avoiding death at the age of 365. Additionally, Enoch is described as the father of Methuselah and great-grandfather of Noah (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 5,</span> 22-29).</blockquote>Actually, there are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch_%28disambiguation%29">three books</a> with the title <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span>. For this post’s purposes, the book of interest is identified as <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch</span>, written in the second century BCE (or possibly earlier), whereas <span style="font-style: italic;">2 Enoch</span> was written in the first century CE and <span style="font-style: italic;">3 Enoch</span> was written in the fifth century CE. <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch</span> consists of five major sections (or sub-books), probably written at different times by different authors; in addition, a sixth book of <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch,</span> the <a href="http://www.piney.com/DSSBkGiants.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Giants</span></a>, was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (found during 1947–1956 at Qumran). Of the first five sub-books, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of the Watchers</span> is most relevant to this post, since it most clearly shows Zoroastrian influences (which were all eventually melded into Judaism <span style="font-style: italic;">via</span> the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Daniel</span>, which I plan to review in the next post). Ideas in <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch </span>appear to have resulted in the formation of at least one group of clerics who promoted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch">Enocchic Judaism</a>, the main features of which were:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The idea of the origin of the evil caused by the fallen angels, who came on the earth to unite with human women. These fallen angels are considered ultimately responsible for the spread of evil and impurity on the earth;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The absence in <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch</span> of formal parallels to the specific laws and commandment found in the Mosaic <span style="font-style: italic;">Torah</span> and of references to issues like Shabbat observance or the rite of circumcision. The Sinaitic covenant and <span style="font-style: italic;">Torah</span> are not of central importance in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch;</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The concept of “End of Days” as the time of final judgment that takes the place of promised earthly rewards;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• The rejection of the Second Temple’s sacrifices considered impure: according to <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch 89,</span> 73, the Jews, when returned from the exile, “reared up that tower (the temple) and they began again to place a table before the tower, but all the bread on it was polluted and not pure”;</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• A solar calendar in opposition to the moon-based calendar used in the Second Temple (a very important aspect for the determination of the dates of religious feasts);</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• An interest in the angelic world that involves life after death.</span><br /></blockquote>Although such ideas were rejected by the ruling priests of the time (i.e., the Sadducees), the ideas were obviously accepted by clerics who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls (probably the Essenes), and most of the ideas were later adopted by the founders of Christianity, especially the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch">ideas</a> dealing with a Messiah (called “Son of Man”), <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“with divine attributes, generated before the creation, who will act directly in the final judgment and sit on a throne of glory (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 46,</span> 1–4; <span style="font-style: italic;">48,</span> 2–7; <span style="font-style: italic;">69,</span> 26–29).”</span><br /><br />Now, although I’ve spent far more time investigating the matter than I wish I had (since all of it is comparable in importance to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!), yet I admit that, in some respects, I became somewhat impressed by the author (or authors) of <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch:</span> relying on knowledge of Zoroastrianism and of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, the author(s) both plugged a major hole in the OT and tried to provide a solution to the problem of evil, a solution that is as good as any other, once the fatal error is made to assume that gods exist. And if the reader thinks that such accomplishments might have been well received by other clerics, then be aware that fundamentalist clerics have never been interested in “truth” or “facts”. As Salman Rushdie recently said (who is still under a death “fatwa” proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for his “insults” to Muhammad contained in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satanic Verses</span>): <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Fundamentalism isn’t about religion; it’s about power.”</span><br /><br />As a result, the ruling Jewish clerics not only refused to accept <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> as “sacred scripture” but even <a href="http://www.jacksonsnyder.com/arc/2008/enoch.htm">banned the book</a>: it was never included in “the Jewish Bible” (the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tanakh</span>), and in the second century CE, Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai “cursed those who believed it”. Similar responses eventually came from ruling Christian clerics: in the fourth century CE Filastius “condemned it as heresy” and Chrysostom wrote “it would be folly to accept such insane blasphemy…” As a result, <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> was also excluded from the Catholic Bible – and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Enoch</span> essentially vanished from the world for approximately 1500 years (save for some of its lore that was maintained by the Freemasons, which eventually influenced Mormonism). What apparently upset the ruling clerics so much is <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch’s</span> blasphemous suggestion that some angels had “fallen”; I mean, everybody who is anyone knows that, when dancing on pins, angels don’t fall!<br /><br />There is, moreover, another general principle about religious rulers (i.e., theocrats) worth noting: no matter how bizarre the data-less speculation, if it’s put together with a sufficient number of “praise the Lords” and similar, some saps will not only willingly but even eagerly believe it. In the case of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span>, apparently what happened is that at least one renegade Jewish sect (probably the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_scrolls">Essenes</a>) bought into it. Possibly as a result of the Essenes acceptance of <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> as “holy scripture” (rather than bizarre speculations similar to the rest of the Bible!), early Christians bought into <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> with <a href="http://www.jesusbelievesinevolution.com/christians_accept_enoch.htm">gusto</a>, including the “big wigs” Justin Martyr (c.100–165), Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215), Tertullian (c.160–c.240), who called <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> “Holy Scripture”, and Origen (c.185– c.254). In fact, <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> is even quoted in the NT (at <span style="font-style: italic;">Jude 1,</span> 14). But as already noted, later Roman Christians ruled <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> to be heresy. The Ethiopian Christians, however, didn’t agree (after all, when did any Roman Catholic know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?); therefore, the Ethiopian church continued to treat <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> as “sacred scripture”. Copies of the Ethiopian version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> were retrieved in 1773, translated into English in 1821, and are now available on the internet, e.g., <a href="http://exodus2006.com/ENOCH.HTM">here</a> (the source of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> quotations below).<br /><br />What (mildly interested readers might wonder) was all the fuss about? Well, I’d like to assure such readers that they don’t want to know the details. In briefest outline, it appears that the established Jewish clerics didn’t appreciate <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch’s</span> describing not only the activities of so many angels but also the speculations about life- and judgment-after-death, and that later Christian clerics absolutely refused to accept <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch’s</span> suggestion that some angels would have “fallen” (in more ways than one) and had sex with earthly women – I mean, think of how many women might then claim that an angel impregnated them! But setting aside such silly clerical squabbles, perhaps some readers would be interested in why, in an earlier paragraph, I praised some accomplishments in <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> (incorporating both Sumerian and Zoroastrian ideas, plugging a hole in the OT, and attempting to solve the problem of evil). Below, I’ll briefly address those issues.<br /><br />My briefest comment deals with the Sumerian connection and consists of only two points: 1) As far as I know, the only “sacred scripture” that mentions Gilgamesh is the otherwise-missing sixth book within <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch</span> (found among the Dead Sea Scrolls), and 2) Readers might want to investigate the <a href="http://www.think-aboutit.com/Spiritual/apocryphical_book_of_enoch.htm">statement</a> that <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch</span> seems to be a Hebrew version of the story of the Sumerian wise man Adapa, “who [similar to the Egyptian Thoth and the Grecian Hermes] is credited with [developing writing and] writing mankind’s first book of astronomy and the calendar.”<br /><br />Now, although I have zero interest in the wild speculations of clerics, yet as I already mentioned, I’m somewhat impressed that the author(s) of <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch </span>managed to plug a gaping hole in the OT. The “gaping hole” appears way back at <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 6</span> and deals with the reason for the (<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix03GenesisandFloodMyths.pdf">fictitious</a>) worldwide flood, describing how God “sinned” (i.e., He admits that He made a mistake, which is what at <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 4,</span> 6, God stupidly defines to be a “sin”):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this) when the sons of God were having sexual relations with the daughters of humankind, who gave birth to their children. They were the mighty heroes of old, the famous men. But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended. So the Lord said, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”</blockquote>Readers interested in the speculation of savages (and perhaps readers stimulated by a little voyeurism) might have desired more details about the reported sexual rampages of “the sons of God”. If so, you’re in luck, because the unknown author(s) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> provided more details, e.g., at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 6–10</span>, we learn the “truth”:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And it came to pass, when the sons of men had increased, that in those days there were born to them fair and beautiful daughters. And the Angels, the sons of Heaven, saw them and desired them. And they said to one another: “Come, let us choose for ourselves wives, from the children of men, and let us beget, for ourselves, children.” </span> [What did they really want, sex or kids?]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And Semyaza</span> [Satan]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, who was their leader, said to them: “I fear that you may not wish this deed to be done and that I alone will pay for this great sin.”</span> [Which, sex or kids?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And they all answered him, and said: “Let us all swear an oath, and bind one-another with curses, so not to alter this plan, but to carry out this plan effectively.” Then they all swore together and all bound one another with curses to it.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And they were, in all, two hundred and they came down on Ardis, which is the summit of Mount Hermon. And they called the mountain Hermon because on it they swore and bound one another with curses… And they took wives for themselves and everyone chose for himself one each.</span> [Why they each chose only one woman isn’t explained.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And they began to go into them and were promiscuous with them. And they taught them charms and spells, and they showed them the cutting of roots and trees.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And they</span> [presumably the women!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">became pregnant and bore large giants.</span> [Well, I trust that they were small when they were born!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And their height was three thousand cubits</span> [about 2,000 ft – which leads one to wonder if their concrete legs were reinforced with steel or some exotic fiber!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. These devoured all the toil of men, until men were unable to sustain them. And the giants turned against them in order to devour men. And they began to sin</span> [in an unstated manner] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">against birds, and against animals, and against reptiles, and against fish, and they devoured one another’s flesh, and drank the blood from it.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then the Earth complained about the lawless ones.</span> [The Earth or the people?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And Azazel </span>[one of the “fallen angels”] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">taught men to make swords, and daggers, and shields, and breastplates. And he showed them the things after these, and the art of making them; bracelets, and ornaments, and the art of making up the eyes, and of beautifying the eyelids, and the most precious stones, and all kinds of colored dyes. </span>[What horrors!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And the world was changed. And there was great impiety, and much fornication, and they went astray, and all their ways became corrupt…</span></blockquote>Thereby, <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> attempts to blame the fallen angels for the evil in the world, but it doesn’t wash; instead, it reveals that God is a dud! Look at it this way: either God knew that some of the angels would fall or He didn’t. But on the one hand, if He didn’t know that the angels would fall, then He isn’t omniscient, and on the other hand, if He knew the angels would fall, then either he wanted them to fall (leading to major troubles, and therefore, He wasn’t omnibenevolent) or He was powerless to stop them (i.e., He wasn’t omnipotent). Of course, if He knew the angels would fall and had stopped them, then He would have been wrong about their falling (i.e., He wouldn’t be omniscient). Poor God: logically, He can’t exist!<br /><br />But setting logic aside (as all clerics desire that we do), <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> continues with the silly story:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And at the destruction of men they cried out; and their voices reached Heaven. And then Michael, Gabriel, Suriel and Uriel</span> [good angels] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">looked down from Heaven and saw the mass of blood that was being shed on the earth and all the iniquity that was being done on the earth. And they said to one another: “Let the devastated Earth cry out with the sound of their cries, up to the Gate of Heaven…”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And they said to their Lord, the King: “Lord of Lords, God of Gods, King of Kings! Your glorious throne endures for all the generations of the world, and blessed and praised! You have made everything, and power over everything is yours. And everything is uncovered, and open, in front of you, and you see everything, and there is nothing that can be hidden from you. See then what Azazel has done, how he has taught all iniquity on the earth and revealed the eternal secrets that are made in Heaven. And Semyaza </span>[Satan] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">has made known spells, he to whom you gave authority to rule over those who are with him. And they went into the daughters of men together, lay with those women, became unclean</span> [for doncha know, having sex with women makes even angels unclean]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and revealed to them these sins. And the women bore giants, and thereby the whole Earth has been filled with blood and iniquity. And now behold the souls which have died cry out</span> [so, dead souls are still alive!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> and complain unto the Gate of Heaven, and their lament has ascended, and they cannot go out in the face of the iniquity which is being committed on the earth. And you know everything, before it happens, and you know this, and what concerns each of them. But you say nothing to us. What ought we to do with them, about this?”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And then the Most High, the Great and Holy One, spoke and sent Arsyalalyur </span>[another good angel]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> to the son of Lamech</span> [i.e., to Noah]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and</span> [God] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">said to him </span>[Arsyalalyur]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">: “Say to him</span> [Noah] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">in my name; hide yourself! And reveal to him the end, which is coming, because the whole earth will be destroyed. A deluge is about to come on all the earth; and all that is in it will be destroyed. And now teach him so that he may escape and his offspring may survive for the whole Earth.”</span></blockquote>Unfortunately for humanity, however, God screwed up again (or his angels or the writer of this silliness), because next we learn (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 10,</span> 3–16):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And further the Lord said to Raphael</span> [another good angel, who also appears in <span style="font-style: italic;">Tobit]</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">:</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Bind Azazel</span> [one of the fallen angels]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> by his hands and his feet and throw him into the darkness.</span> [The ‘darkness’? But that’s good stuff – made by God!]<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> And split open the desert, which is in Dudael, and throw him there. And throw on him jagged and sharp stones and cover him with darkness. And let him stay there forever. </span> [Do you mean that angels can’t even get out of a pile of rocks?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And cover his face so that he may not see the light.</span> [Don’t you have the power to blind him?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> And so that, on the Great Day of Judgment</span> [Zarathustra’s Day of Judgment!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, he may be hurled into the fire.</span> [Angels burn? What chemical reactions occur?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And restore the Earth which the </span>[fallen]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Angels have ruined. And announce the restoration of the Earth. For I shall restore the Earth so that not all the sons of men shall be destroyed because of the knowledge which the Watchers</span> [i.e., the fallen angels] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">made known and taught to their sons…</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And the Lord said to Gabriel: “Proceed against the bastards, and the reprobates, and against the sons of the fornicators. And destroy the sons of the fornicators, and the sons of the Watchers, from amongst men. And send them out, and send them against one another, and let them destroy themselves in battle</span> [Why not just wait until they drowned, with all the innocent people – and animals? Do you mean that angels burn but can’t be drowned? Amazing.]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">; for they will not have length of days. And they will petition you, but the petitioners will gain nothing in respect of them, for they hope for eternal life, and that each of them will live life for five hundred years</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">.”</span> [Hello? Is eternal life only for five hundred years?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And the Lord said to Michael: “Go, inform Semyaza </span>[Satan, the chief devil]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and the others with him, who have associated with the women to corrupt themselves with them in all their uncleanness.</span> [Male chauvinist pigs!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> When all their sons kill each other, and when they see the destruction of their loved ones</span> [Are they really that bad? You’re saying that they loved their children.]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, bind them for seventy generations </span>[each of unknown duration!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, under the hills of the earth, until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the judgment, which is for all eternity, is accomplished. And in those days, they</span> [who?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">will lead them to the Abyss of Fire; in torment, and in prison they will be shut up for all eternity. And then Semyaza will be burnt, and from then on destroyed with them; together they will be bound until the end of all generations. And destroy all the souls of lust, and the sons of the Watchers </span>[the fallen angles]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, for they have wronged men. Destroy all wrong from the face of the Earth and every evil work will cease.” </span>[So, given the current state of the world, obviously somebody, or some angel, or God must have screwed up (again)!]</blockquote>Someone taken in by such silliness might wonder: If Satan is “bound” (“under the hills of the earth”), then why is there still so much evil in the world? Well, according to the author(s) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span>, God conveniently answered that question at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 15, </span>6–12, where God says to “the Watchers” (i.e., to the angels, in this case, the fallen angels):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“But you, formerly, were spiritual, living an eternal, immortal life, for all the generations of the world. For this reason I did not arrange wives for you <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[Are all angels males?! That's crazy: all angels that I know are females! If there are no female angels, then thanks anyway, I'll pass on the Heaven bit. As Mark Twain said: "Go to Heaven for the climate; Hell for the company."]</span>; because the dwelling of the spiritual ones is in Heaven.</span> [And as everybody who is anybody knows, “spiritual ones” (such as all Catholic priests) aren’t interested in sex. Or shall we agree with Robert Ingersoll: “To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy”?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> And now, the giants who were born from body and flesh will be called Evil Spirits on the Earth, and on the Earth will be their dwelling.</span> [So, doncha know, the evil spirits on Earth are the remnants of the giants.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“And evil spirits came out from their flesh, because from above they were created, from the Holy Watchers was their origin and first foundation. Evil spirits they will be on Earth and ‘Spirits of the Evil Ones’ they will be called.</span> [Hello? Are you saying that, if something is created “above”, then it’ll be evil “on Earth”? Okay, I can buy that. So, that means: any interference on Earth by anything from above, such as any god (hint, hint), is evil? Hmm, interesting theory.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And the dwelling of the Spirits of Heaven is Heaven, but the dwelling of the spirits of the Earth, who were born on the Earth, is Earth. And the spirits of the giants do wrong, are corrupt, attack, fight, break on the Earth, and cause sorrow. And they eat no food, do not thirst, and are not observed. And these spirits will rise against the sons of men, and against the women, because they came out of them during the days of slaughter and destruction.”</span><br /></blockquote>Clear enough? Evil in the world is caused by the remnants of the giants, specifically, their evil spirits. And you know, there might even be some “truth” in such silliness: otherwise, how are we to explain why the most evil people in the world today are the world’s clerics? Oh sure, they’re the most ignorant people in the world, but notice, also, that they’re the ones most consumed by evil spirits!<br /><br />Anyway, that silliness aside for now, the author(s) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Enoch</span> next provides us with brilliant insights about what happens to dead people’s souls (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 22,</span> 1–13):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And from there, I</span> [Enoch]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> went to another place, and he</span> [the angel Uriel]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> showed me in the west a large and high mountain, and a hard rock, and four beautiful places. And inside, it was deep, wide, and very smooth. How smooth is that which rolls, and deep and dark to look at!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then Raphael, one of the Holy Angels who was with me, answered me, and said to me: “These beautiful places are there so that the spirits, the souls of the dead, might be gathered into them. For them they were created; so that here they might gather the souls of the sons of men. And these places they made, where they will keep them until the Day of Judgment, and until their appointed time, and that appointed time will be long, until the great judgment comes upon them.”</span> [So, apparently they’re required to hang around for thousands of years. Boring! Apparently God never heard: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And I saw the spirits of the sons of men who were dead and their voices reached Heaven and complained. Then I asked Raphael, the Angel who was with me, and said to him: “Whose is this spirit, whose voice thus reaches Heaven and complains?” And he answered me, and said to me, saying: “This spirit is the one that came out of Abel, whom Cain, his brother, killed. And he will complain about him until his offspring are destroyed from the face of the Earth, and from amongst the offspring of men, his offspring perish.”</span> [Tribalism at its worst: blood revenge. Never mind that the “offspring” of Cain had nothing to do with the murder of Abel; they have the same blood; so, kill them!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then I asked about him, and about judgment on all, and I said: “Why is one separated from another?” And he answered me, and said to me: “These three places where made, in order that they might separate the spirits of the dead. And thus the souls of the righteous have been separated; this is the spring of water, and on it the light. Likewise, a place has been created for sinners, when they die, and are buried in the earth, and judgment has not come upon them during their life. And here their souls will be separated for this great torment, until the Great Day of Judgment and Punishment and Torment for those who curse, forever, and of vengeance on their souls. And there He will bind them forever. Verily, He is, from the beginning of the world. And thus a place has been separated for the souls of those who complain, and give information about their destruction, about when they were killed, in the days of the sinners. Thus a place has been created, for the souls of men who are not righteous, but sinners, accomplished in wrongdoing, and with the wrongdoers will be their lot. But their souls will not be killed on the Day of Judgment, nor will they rise from here.”</span><br /></blockquote>Ain’t it glorious to be provided such reliable information? And just think: some people don’t believe that it’s true! Boy, will they be in for a shock when they die.<br /><br />But surely sane people ask, “How could anyone believe such silliness?” That question seems especially poignant, given the silliness of the science contained in the same book. For example:<br /><blockquote>• <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 18,</span> 2–4: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I</span> [Enoch] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">saw the four winds which support the Earth and the sky.</span> [The winds support the Earth and the sky?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I saw how the winds stretch out the height of Heaven, and how they position themselves between Heaven and Earth; they are the Pillars of Heaven.</span> [Winds are the Pillars of Heaven?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> I saw the winds which turn the sky and cause the disc of the Sun and all the stars to set.</span> [The winds turn the sky?! Who would have thought?!]<br /><br />• <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Noah 65,</span> 7–8: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And further</span> [people have learned] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">how silver is produced from the dust of the earth and how soft metal occurs on the earth. For lead and tin are not produced from the earth, like the former; there is a spring which produces them, and an Angel who stands in it, and that Angel distributes them.</span> [Do tell!]<br /><br />• <span style="font-style: italic;">The First Parable 41,</span> 4–5: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And there I saw closed storehouses from which the winds are distributed, and the storehouse of the hail, and the storehouse of the mist, and the storehouse of the clouds; and its cloud remained over the earth, from the beginning of the world.</span> [Storehouses for wind, precipitation, and even for clouds? Golly, that’s neat!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> And I saw the Chambers of the Sun and the Moon, where they go out, and where they return. And their glorious return; and how one is more honored than the other is. And their magnificent course, and how they do not leave their course, neither adding nor subtracting from their course. And how they keep faith in one another, observing their oath.</span> [Didn’t you just know that the Sun and Moon had to swear oaths?!]<br /><br />• <span style="font-style: italic;">The First Parable 44,</span> 1: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And other things I saw concerning lightning, how some of the stars rise and become lightning but cannot lose their form.</span> [Stars become lightning! Wow! I wonder if that idea has been patented!]<br /></blockquote>If the clown who wrote such nonsense “thought” that the wind “turns the sky”, that lead and tin aren’t natural, that precipitation is stored in some “storehouse”, that stars can become lightning, and so on, then why, pray tell, would anyone believe his description of what happens to “souls” when people are dead? I mean, if some idiot promotes total nonsense about things for which evidence suggests they at least exist (e.g., the Sun and Moon, the stars, the wind, lightning, and so on), then why, pray tell, would anyone believe his descriptions of “eternal souls”, for which there’s zero evidence to suggest that they even exist? If a street-corner schizophrenic warns, “The end is near”, who but another schizophrenic pays attention to him? So, why pay attention to a scribal schizophrenic who proclaims that a Messiah (“the Chosen One”, “the son of Man”) is coming?<br /><br />People who believe such things apparently believe even such nonsense as the following, from <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 54,</span> 7–8:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And in those days, the punishment of the Lord of Spirits will go out, and all the storehouses of the waters which are above the sky and under the earth, will be opened. And all the waters will be joined with the waters that are above the sky. The water that is above the sky is male and the water that is under the Earth is female.</span> [By golly, finally an explanation for why precipitation falls down on the Earth!]</blockquote>A person would be bonkers to believe anything that anyone said who also said (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 72,</span> 5):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The wind blows the chariots on which it</span> [the Sun] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">ascends, and the Sun goes down in the sky and returns through the north in order to reach the east… ! </span></blockquote>And thus one sees one of the pillars of all organized religions: ignorance. To see another pillar, consider the following (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch 103,</span> 1–8), which is pure Zoroastrianism:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And now I swear to you, the righteous, by His Great Glory and His Honor, and by His Magnificent Sovereignty, and by His Majesty: I swear to you that I understand this mystery. </span> [Does he understand it any better than he understand astronomy, chemistry, metallurgy, and meteorology?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And I have read the Tablets of Heaven and seen the writing of the Holy Ones. And I found written and engraved in it, concerning them, that all good, and joy, and honor, have been made ready, and written down, for the spirits of those who died in righteousness. And much good will be given to you in recompense for your toil and that your lot will be more excellent than the lot of the living. And the spirits of you who have died in righteousness will live, and your spirits will rejoice and be glad, and the memory of them will remain in front of the Great One for all the generations of eternity. Therefore do not fear their abuse.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Woe to you, you sinners, when you die in your sin, and those who are like you say about you: “Blessed were the sinners, they saw their days. And now they have died in prosperity and wealth, distress and slaughter they did not see during their life, but they have died in glory, and judgment was not executed on them in their life.” Know that their souls will be made to go down into Sheol, they will be wretched, and their distress will be great. And in darkness, and in chains, and in burning flames, your spirits will come to the Great Judgment. And the Great Judgment will last for all generations, forever. Woe to you for you will not have peace.</span></blockquote>And thus one sees the twin pillars of all organized religions: ignorance and fear. As Robert Ingersoll wrote in 1877 in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ghosts:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of courage. Fear believes – courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays – courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats – courage advances. Fear is barbarism – courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion – courage is science.</blockquote>As for the particular fear of eternal torture in Hell, I wish every Christian, Muslim, Mormon… in the world would adopt Ingersoll’s summary:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel being in the universe. Compared with him, the most frightful deities of the most barbarous and degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy. There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a god. Lower than this the soul can never sink. If the doctrine of eternal damnation is true, let me share the fate of the unconverted; let me have my portion in hell, rather than in heaven with a god infamous enough to inflict eternal misery upon any of the sons of men.</blockquote>In sum, whoever wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Enoch </span>used the ignorance of supernaturalism and the fear of Zoroastrianism to plug the hole in the OT’s tall tale about giants to claim that the problem of evil was solved. But of course it wasn’t. In fact, the only known, sensible solution to the problem of evil starts by rejecting all data-less speculations about the supernatural, including the silly idea that any god exists or has ever existed. As Nâgarjunâ (c.150–250 CE) <a href="http://www.buddhivihara.org/article18.htm">said</a> (who was one of India’s greatest philosophers and is frequently called “the second Buddha”):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The gods are all eternal scoundrels<br />Incapable of dissolving the suffering of impermanence.<br />Those who serve them and venerate them<br />May even in this world sink into a sea of sorrow.<br />We know the gods are false and have no concrete being;<br />Therefore, the wise man believes them not.</blockquote>And to eliminate evil, no reasonable alternative appears to be available than to proceed as recommended by the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, c.563–c.460 BCE):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Believe nothing… merely because you have been told it… or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, <span style="font-style: italic;">after due examination and analysis</span> [italics added], you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.</blockquote>Such are the goals and procedures of scientific humanists. As Robert Ingersoll (“the magnificent”) wrote in 1895 in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Conclusion</span> of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Foundations of Faith:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits, to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then to be resigned – this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart.</blockquote><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://zenofzero.net/"></a></span><o:p></o:p> <!--EndFragment-->A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-54626952372794544062009-09-22T05:06:00.000-07:002009-12-25T05:55:01.099-08:00Clerical Quackery 3 – Mesopotamian & Zoroastrian Speculations about Life after Death<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The more I learn about the history of what I call “The God Lie”, the more I learn how little I know.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The subject matter is huge.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Readers who seek more reliable and in-depth information may want to start by studying the 736 page 2004 book edited (and contributed to) by Sarah Iles Johnston entitled <i>Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >[which is partially available at Google Books and which contains the contributions of 140 (!) scholars] and by reading the 866 page 2004 book written by Columbia University professor Alan F. Segal entitled </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > (which is also partially available at Google Books and the writing of which absorbed a decade of Segal’s life).</span></div><div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In the spirit of full disclosure, I should repeat that I’m no historian and add that I’m not even a disinterested investigator:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I seek evidence to test the hypothesis that an enormous God Lie has been foisted on humanity.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In the most recent posts in this series, I’ve been trying to expose some history of the lies:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);font-family:TrebuchetMS,serif;font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);font-family:TrebuchetMS,serif;font-size:100%;" ><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span">• That gods exist,</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span">• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods,</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span">• That people’s souls are judged by the gods,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color: rgb(210, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span">• That the dead are ruled by the gods…</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Such lies are promoted by clerical quacks of all the major religions in the world, including most sects of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as in sundry other shams such as Mormonism.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I call them clerical quacks because they claim (and profit from selling) knowledge about the unknowable.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In the previous post, I tried to show a little of the history of the Judgment-after-Death Lie as it was perpetrated in ancient Egypt.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In that post, I stated my goal for these next few posts:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">That goal is to provide at least a little evidence describing:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">1) how Mesopotamian ideas about “the afterlife” seem to have dominated the first part of the Old Testament (OT), 2) how those Mesopotamian ideas in the OT about “the afterlife” started to change later in the OT (e.g., in the Book of Daniel), caused by a confusing array of influences, first from the Zoroastrians, then by the Greeks (whose ideas originally were influenced by the Egyptians and then were influenced by the Persians, whom they had conquered), and then by the Romans (whose ideas were influenced by the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians), and then 3) how Egyptian (and Persian and Greek) ideas about life- and judgment-after-death completely dominated the New Testament (NT), the Koran (or Quran or Qur’an), and various “sacred scriptures” of the Mormons.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> In this and subsequent posts, I’ll pursue the above-quoted goal, especially to show that, in reality, the clerical quacks who concocted the “holy books” mentioned above apparently didn’t have the smarts to concoct the Judgment-after-Death Lie by themselves; instead, as I’ll try to show, they purloined the Lie from clerical quacks of earlier cultures.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Starting toward the stated goal, one immediately finds the surprising result (at least, it’s surprising to me) that the authors of the first part of the OT (including the Pentateuch), authors whom I’ve been identifying in these posts as Ezra and Co-Conspirators (Ezra & C-C), adopted speculations about what happens after people die not from the ancient Egyptians but from the ancient Mesopotamians.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Although I don’t plan to give a detailed defense of that last statement, I’ll try to provide at least an outline.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The most obvious initial feature of such an outline is that the description of “the afterlife” in the first part of the OT is dramatically different from the ancient Egyptian view:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">instead of envisioning a “happy ever aftering”, the ancient Hebrews adopted the Mesopotamian view that the afterlife was bleak.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In an <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix11ChangingIdeas.pdf">earlier chapter</a>, I sketched a few features of the bleak Mesopotamian view, it’s reviewed at many websites, and it’s described in amazing detail in Segal’s book (already referenced).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In this post, I’ll provide just a few illustrations of the Mesopotamian view and how it was incorporated into the first part of the OT.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, in a number of Mesopotamian myths, starting with some of the earliest (recorded ~3000 BCE), the goddess Inanna (Sumerian) or Ishtar (Akkadian) – for unspecified reasons! – descends to “the underworld” (ruled by her sister, Irkalla or Ereshkigal, or in later versions of the myth, by her husband Nergal, the god of violent destruction and war), passes through “the gates” (“gates” also mentioned in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt, as I quoted in the previous post), is murdered, and after being dead for three days (like other gods before and since, e.g., the Moon, Horus, and Jesus!), she’s resurrected and permitted to return to “the overworld” in exchange for the commitment to the underworld of her husband (the shepherd king, the god of vegetation, and a solar deity) Dumuzi or Damuzi (spelled Tammuz in the OT).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In the OT, Inanna/Ishtar is demonized as “the whore of Babylon”, apparently not only because the Hebrew patriarchs didn’t permit gods other than the (male) Yahweh but also because they were apparently severely hung-up on nudity (witness the myths about Adam and Eve and about Noah, Ham, and his son Canaan) – and in the most famous myth about Inanna, on her way through the seven gates to meet Irkalla/Ereshkigal, Inanna/Ishtar (the goddess of fertility) was stripped of her clothing, which presumably explains her depiction shown below (although the British Museum <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/queen_of_the_night_relief.aspx">website</a> states that this “Queen of the Night” may be a depiction of Ishtar’s sister, Ereshkigal):</span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPAwdtafie2JdMqONoOTdHsdQPQD13O3kQvsfBw1D_ENKXcOArzGmbqZzwvhkNxO7lf4sz61YJUQeDVNCZUK1-ulEBJHxTSoXieC8FqLd5sVPZ88f_GAFKwXkMKVMlo7w0CSNAZRIm5g/s1600-h/1.+inanna-253x300.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPAwdtafie2JdMqONoOTdHsdQPQD13O3kQvsfBw1D_ENKXcOArzGmbqZzwvhkNxO7lf4sz61YJUQeDVNCZUK1-ulEBJHxTSoXieC8FqLd5sVPZ88f_GAFKwXkMKVMlo7w0CSNAZRIm5g/s400/1.+inanna-253x300.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384262697657313458" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 253px; height: 300px;" border="0" /></a></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Subsequently, in one version of the myth, Ishtar exchanges places with Dumuzi every six months; in another version, Dumuzi’s sister (Belili or Geshtinanna) exchanges places with Dumuzi every six months.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Similar myths (“explaining” the growth and decay of vegetation) were later adopted throughout the Mediterranean area, as can be found at literally thousands of websites by searching with the words Demeter, Ceres, Persephone, Proserpina, Aphrodite, Adonis, and the Arabian goddess Alat.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In this post, however, I’ll omit outlining these other myths, because most of them evolved one-to-two thousand years later and added the feature that the god (and goddesses) of the underworld judged the dead.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Not only does the Mesopotamian Inanna-Dumuzi myth not incorporate judgment after death, it doesn’t dwell even on characteristics of the underworld.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Some features of the underworld are given, however, in myths about King Gilgamesh, who lived ~2700 BCE.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The most complete written version of the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > is attributed to Sîn-leqi-unninni (or Sin-leqe-unnini or Sin-liqe-unninni), about whom little is known.<span style=""> </span>His name means “O Moon God [Sîn], Accept my Prayer”; he’s described as “a scribe and scholar” who lived during the Kassite dynasty (c.1650–1150 BCE).<span style=""> </span>To write his version of</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i> The Epic, </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >Sin-leqe-unnini undoubtedly used earlier written and oral traditions.<span style=""> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh">Fragments</a> of earlier versions of the myth have been found that date before 2000 BCE.<span style=""> </span>[In fact, a fragment of </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>The Epic</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > was <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13515.html">found</a> near the Israeli city of Megiddo (from which the word </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Armageddon</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, meaning “hill of Megiddo”, is derived); the fragment dates from approximately the 14th century BCE, leaving little doubt that the Gilgamesh myth was available to the authors of the earliest part of the OT (as I suggested in earlier posts in this series).]<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In Tablet VII of the Sin-leqe-unnini version of the <a href="http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/">myth</a>, Gilgamesh’s companion (the “natural man” Enkidu) describes his dream about “the horror filled house of death” as follows:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Seizing me, he [“a man of dark visage – his face resembled the Anzu, his hands were the paws of a lion, his nails the talons of an eagle”]… led me down to the House of Darkness, the dwelling of Irkalla, to the house where those who enter do not come out, along the road of no return, to the house where those who dwell do without light, where dirt is their drink, their food is of clay, where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers, and light cannot be seen.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">They dwell in the dark, and upon the door and bolt, there lies dust.”</span></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The ancient Hebrews apparently held a similarly bleak view of the fate of the dead, although the OT doesn’t describe the underworld so completely as does <i>The</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Epic.</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" ><span style=""> </span>In the OT, the underworld is called </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Sheôl</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > (commonly written as Sheol), which seems to have been derived from the Mesopotamian word with similar meaning, i.e., Shuâlu.<span style=""> </span>In the OT, the first description of the afterlife seems to be at </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>1 Samuel 28, </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >which describes how King Saul went to “the Witch of Endor” (who, according to the allegedly earlier laws of Moses should have been put to death for her witchcraft!) and demanded of her:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:red;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Tell me my fortunes by consulting the dead, and call up the man I name to you.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The one whom King Saul named was no less than the hero of the two books of Samuel, i.e., the “prophet” Samuel, himself.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The witch reluctantly complied with Saul’s demand, and reported:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:red;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“I see a ghostly form coming up from the earth… like an old man coming up, wrapped in a cloak.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Upon being disturbed from among the dead, the ghostly Samuel allegedly said:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:red;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Why have you disturbed me and brought me up?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, the ancient Hebrews (or at least their clerics) apparently held the view that, after death, even their heroic prophets were just undisturbed ghosts dwelling in some underworld, i.e., the early Hebrew ideas seem to have been similar to the ideas already held throughout Mesopotamia for thousands of years.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As a particular example, the OT’s <i>Book of Job</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>(21 & 22)</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > describes Sheol as</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:red;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The land of darkness and deep shadows…</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">The land of densest gloom and not of light…</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Even where there is gleam, there it is as dark night.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In further conformity with Mesopotamian ideas about the fate of the dead and about the relationships between humans and their imagined gods, and in further contrast to Egyptian ideas of judgment after death, the ancient Hebrews apparently clung to the view that their god controlled not what happens after people died but what happens during their lives.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As a specific example from <i>The Epic</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, the following is the alleged argument among the gods about whether Gilgamesh or Enkidu should die:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[The gods]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Anu, Enlil, and Shamash held a council, and Anu </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the father of the gods]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> spoke to Enlil:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“Because they </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[Gilgamesh and Enkidu]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> killed the Bull of Heaven </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the constellation Taurus] </span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">and have also slain Humbaba </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the forest god] </span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">the one of them who pulled up the Cedar of the Mountain must die!”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Enlil </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[god of earth and “the savage arts of soldiers”] </span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">said:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“Let Enkidu </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the man of nature]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> die, but Gilgamesh </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the soldier]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> must not die!”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">But the Sun God of Heaven </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Shamash, god of justice]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> replied to valiant Enlil:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“Was it not at my command that they killed the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Should now innocent Enkidu die?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Then Enlil became angry at Shamash, saying:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“It is you who are responsible, because you traveled daily with them as their friend” </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[as the Sun, the god who can’t be looked upon (similar to Yahweh!) travels daily with everyone!]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Not only did the gods decide on people’s fates only while they were alive, even Gilgamesh (alleged to be two-thirds god and only one-third human) didn’t rank eternal life.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As the barmaid (and goddess) Siduri said to Gilgamesh:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Remember always, mighty king [Gilgamesh], that gods decreed the fates of all many years ago.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">They alone are let to be eternal, while we frail humans die, as you yourself must someday do.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">What is best for us to do is now to sing and dance; relish warm food and cool drinks; cherish children to whom your love gives life; bathe easily in sweet, refreshing waters; [and] play joyfully with your chosen wife. It is the will of the gods for you to smile on simple pleasures in the leisure time of your short days.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Similar good advice has been given repeatedly.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In ancient Egypt, it was relayed in the <i>Song of the Harper,</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > sung in Egypt before ~2500 BCE and quoted at the end of the previous post, e.g., “Follow thy heart and thy joy as long as thou livest upon earth.”<span style=""> </span>The wisdom also appears in the OT in </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Ecclesiastes</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > (“the Teacher”) as “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest.”<span style=""> </span>And it was re-expressed by the Roman poet Horace as </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Carpe diem,</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > viz., “seize the day”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In spite of such good advice, Gilgamesh (viz., “Gilga the hero”) pushed on to try to learn the secret of eternal life, seeking it from the only human to whom eternal life was granted by the gods, namely, Utnapishtim</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">(the “original Noah”).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">From him, Gilga received a plant that would have provided him with eternal youth, but while Gilga slept, the magic plant was stolen by a snake (which promptly shed its skin, apparently suggesting to ancient people that snakes possessed eternal life).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The theft is <a href="http://www.mythstories.com/snakeR.html">depicted</a> below.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrVc9iOFOfFY6czzZaXFXLqAozoNkjfJnZ0XgqVh8Mj-DCucYeY2FE737wb36tF1_aX7CHWkkcRUTZqQtl89S-y0hvX-U1hOnryhR914L5I44ZrLSkBDpnU-sy63v0HUKH_ap7ICrFgY/s1600-h/2.+gilga8.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrVc9iOFOfFY6czzZaXFXLqAozoNkjfJnZ0XgqVh8Mj-DCucYeY2FE737wb36tF1_aX7CHWkkcRUTZqQtl89S-y0hvX-U1hOnryhR914L5I44ZrLSkBDpnU-sy63v0HUKH_ap7ICrFgY/s400/2.+gilga8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384262705952681970" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 206px;" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">As a result,</span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Gilgamesh began to weep and, between sobs, said to the sailor-god who held his hand:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“Why do I bother working for nothing?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Who even notices what I do?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">I don’t value what I did, and now only the snake has won eternal life.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">In minutes, swift currents will lose forever that special sign that god had left for me.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Eventually, however, Gilga learned what sensible inquiries about death teach reasonable humans.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, speaking to Enkidu, Gilga says:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Only gods live forever… my friend; for even our longest days are numbered.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Why worry over being like dust in the wind?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Leap up for this great threat.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Fear not.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Even if I were to fail and fall in combat, all future clans would say I did the job.” </span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Italics added.]</span><span style="color:purple;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">And then, as reported in the final paragraph of <i>The Epic</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > (not including Tablet XII), Gilga sees all that there is to see:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Then they </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Gilga and the sailor-god]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> set out again, this time upon the land.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">After 10 miles they stopped to eat.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">After 30 miles they set up camp.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Next day they came to Uruk, full of shepherds.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Then Gilgamesh said this to the boatman:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“Rise up now, Urshanabi </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the boatman]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, and examine Uruk’s wall.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Study the base, the brick, the old design.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Is it permanent as can be?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Does it look like wisdom designed it?” </span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[Italics added.]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Readers can confirm that similar wisdom is contained in the Mesopotamian myths about Adapa, about Etana, and in the “Wisdom Lament” written by Shubshi-Meshre-Shakkan.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The moral of such myths from ancient Mesopotamia was that wisdom is gained not from knowledge of morality (as promoted in the OT) but from awareness of our mortality.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">During the subsequent 1,000-and-more years, ideas changed about the fate of people after they die, both among the Mesopotamians and Hebrews.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Details of how and why the ideas changed, however, are far from clear (at least to me).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">What is clear is that, by the time (~400 BCE ±50 years) when Ezra & C-C began assembling and editing (and concocting!) Hebrew stories that would become the first part of the OT, ideas about the fate of the dead depending on the person’s behavior during life had been accepted in essentially all cultures that surrounded the Hebrews.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Some examples follow. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">As I briefly reviewed in the previous post, ideas about life- and judgment-after-death had certainly been well established in Egypt – for at least the prior thousand years!</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In addition, certainly there were many opportunities for foreigners to become familiar with such Egyptian ideas.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">For example, although it’s uncertain who the <a href="http://touregypt.net/featurestories/hyksos.htm">Hyksos</a> were (historians have suggested that they were Canaanites or Lebanese or Syrians or Hittites or…), what’s obvious is that such “foreigners” (called <i>Aamu</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, i.e., “Asiatics”, by the Egyptians) ruled northern Egypt from about 1700 BCE until they were expelled in about 1550 BCE.<span style=""> </span>As they left, surely they took with them many Egyptian ideas.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Further, by the time of the pharaoh Thothmes III (“the Alexander the Great of ancient Egypt”), the Egyptians had many additional interactions both with Mesopotamians and with the Hittites (in what’s now Turkey) in their own lands.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">For example, at the 1470 BCE <a href="http://ancientskyscraper.com/339212.html">Battle of Armageddon</a></span> “on a 12-mile-wide plain near Megiddo, he [Thothmes III, i.e., “born of (the god) Thoth”] defeated the eastern Hittite and Syrian kings.”<span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt_%28Rawlinson%29/Thothmes_the_Third_and_Amenhotep_the_Second">Subsequently</a>, Thothmes III conquered Syria, the Hittite town of Carchemish on the Upper Euphrates, and “crossed the river into… Mesopotamia… capturing thirty kings or chiefs and erecting two tablets in the region, to indicate its subjection.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">It is possible that he even crossed the Tigris…”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Possibly as a result of such invasions, at least some of the “Asiatics” apparently found at least some of the Egyptian ideas about life- and judgment-after-death to be attractive. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18soul.html?scp=1&sq=Kuttamuwa&st=cse">For example</a>, an eighth century BCE inscription on a stone monument found in 2007 during excavations in southeastern Turkey instructed mourners to commemorate the deceased’s (Kuttamuwa’s) life with feasts “for my soul that is in this stele.”</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As pointed out by the archaeologist in charge (David Schloen of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago):</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Normally, in the Semitic cultures </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[including the Mesopotamians, Israelites, and Arabs] </span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">the soul of a person, their vital essence, adheres to the bones of the deceased, but here we have a culture that believed the soul is not in the corpse but has been transferred to the mortuary stone.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">As stated in the referenced article from <i>The</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>New York Times:</i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">In addition to the writing, a pictorial scene chiseled into the well-preserved stele depicts the culture’s view of the afterlife.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">A bearded man wearing a tasseled cap, presumably Kuttamuwa, raises a cup of wine and sits before a table laden with food, bread and roast duck in a stone bowl…</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: center;" align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4e4101GYy9av6P_XCRAOdq06LyFqzKOv0zFRp4XbXQV-yS-HwahzAzRF50E48JPQ33P4TGAlKE2NbvFuPVjKrEtsDQ44R5sglsvHdt-iLDNkVvWb8OL7ykVF4JkdezRTuOeaEd2GKX9s/s1600-h/3.+18soul_190.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4e4101GYy9av6P_XCRAOdq06LyFqzKOv0zFRp4XbXQV-yS-HwahzAzRF50E48JPQ33P4TGAlKE2NbvFuPVjKrEtsDQ44R5sglsvHdt-iLDNkVvWb8OL7ykVF4JkdezRTuOeaEd2GKX9s/s400/3.+18soul_190.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384262710805748818" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 245px;" border="0" /></a></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Joseph Wegner, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research, said cult offerings to the dead were common in the Middle East, but not the idea of a soul separate from the body – except in Egypt.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Farther east, in Mesopotamia, ideas about the afterlife also began to change.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Illustrative is the description given in Tablet XII of the Sin-leqe-unnini version of the Gilgamesh myth, although dating this tablet seems difficult:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">scholars suggest that it was added to <i>The Epic</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > centuries after Sin-leque-unnini had died.<span style=""> </span>It describes the fate of dead people in the underworld that’s dramatically different from the description given in Tablet VII (e.g., “the horror filled house of death”).<span style=""> </span>For example, in Tablet XII Gilgamesh asks and the ghost of Enkidu answers:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Did you see there anyone with five children?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Oh yes, they go about with laughs and shouts.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“And could you find a man with six or seven boys?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“You could, and they are treated as the gods.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Have you seen one who died too soon?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Oh yes; that one sips water fair and rests each night upon a couch.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Have you seen one who died in War?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Oh yes; his aged father weeps and his young widow visits graves.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Have you seen one buried poor, with other homeless nomads?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Oh yes; that one knows rest that is not sure, far from the proper place.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Have you seen a brother crying among relatives who chose to ignore his prayers?”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Oh yes; he brings bread to the hungry from the dumps of those who feed their dogs with food they keep from people, and he eats trash that no other man would want.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Note that the above Q&A session between Gilga and Enkidu gives no hint of a judge who decided one’s fate after death.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Instead, one’s fate was apparently assumed to follow from one’s activities while alive.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">That idea is similar to the data-less assumption in Hinduism and Buddhism about <i>karma, </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >viz., “the sum of a one’s actions in this and previous states of existence are assumed to dictate one’s fate in future existences.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, some time during the second or (more-likely) the first millennium BCE, ideas about judgment after death apparently seeped into Mesopotamian thoughts.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Whether such ideas were “home grown” or came from the west or from farther east is, however, unclear.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">If such ideas didn’t originate from Egypt, another likely source is from Persia (and even from farther east, including India).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">An especially likely source (and one that had major, subsequent influences on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) is the mysterious person Zarathustra (or Zarathushtra).<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Who Zarathustra was, where and when he lived, and even what his name means are unsettled.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In fact, so little is known about him that I can’t discern if he was one of the world’s first and most distinguished scientific humanists (among the ranks including Sin-leqe-unnini, Socrates, the Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, and Epicurus) or if he was primarily responsible for such unscientific antihuman abominations as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In either case, though, Zarathustra seems to have been one of the most influential people who ever lived, and it’s therefore most unfortunate that more about him isn’t known.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Plato and others “hellenized” Zarathustra’s name to ‘Zoroaster’.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I like to think that ‘Zoroaster’ means “seed of the stars” (<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf">as we all are!</a>), but many other possibilities have been suggested, including “golden star”, “radiant star”, “golden shining star”, “star follower”, “star of splendor”, “possessing divine knowledge”, “first born”, “seed of the woman”, and more.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Literally, ‘Zoroaster’ means, “undiluted stars”.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Meanwhile, the fellow’s real name, ‘Zarathustra’, literally may <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster">mean</a>: “with aging camels”, “with yellow camels”, “with angry camels”, “moving camels”, “desiring camels”, “golden camels”, and more.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">His full name was Zarathustra Spitama.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Following the conquest of Persia by Alexander of Macedonia (336–323 BCE), the Zoroastrian priests estimated that Zarathustra lived from c.628 – c.551 BCE, known as “the Traditional date”.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Recently, however, serious doubts have arisen about the Traditional date.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As stated in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster">Wikipedia article</a> about Zarathustra:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">…since the Old Avestan language of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> (that are attributed to the prophet himself; </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> being the earliest part of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Avesta</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, the bible of Zoroastrianism”</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">) is still very close to the Sanskrit of the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[Hindu’s]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Rig Veda</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">… it seemed implausible that the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Rig Veda</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> could be more than a few centuries apart, suggesting a date for the oldest surviving portion of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Avesta</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> of roughly the 11th</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> to 10th</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> century BCE.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">This 11th</span><span class="Apple-style-span">/10th</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> century BCE date </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[or even earlier, perhaps as early as 1400 BCE]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is now widely accepted among Iranists, who in recent decades found that the social customs described in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> roughly coincides with what is known of other pre-historical peoples of that period.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Supported by this historical evidence, the “Traditional date” can be conclusively ruled out, and the discreditation can to some extent be supported by the texts themselves:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> describe a society of bipartite (priests and herdsmen/farmers) nomadic pastoralists with tribal structures organized at most as small kingdoms. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The <i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i> states:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The area in which he lived was not yet urban, its economy being based on animal husbandry and pastoral occupations.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Nomads, who frequently raided those engaged in such occupations, were viewed by Zoroaster </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Zarathustra]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> as aggressive violators of order, and he called them followers of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Lie</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">From such cultural experiences – and no doubt from environmental factors experienced by everyone – Zarathustra’s view was apparently of a day-versus-night, light-versus-dark, white-versus-black, good-versus-evil, friend-versus-foe, order-versus-chaos, truth-versus-lie, dualistic world.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">As I addressed in an earlier post, similar can be seen in the earlier Egyptian myth about Osiris vs. Seth, which seems to have been used as the basis for the OT myth about Abel vs. Cain.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">It’s unknown, of course, how Zarathustra developed his dualistic philosophy.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">He may have developed it by himself, he may have had some exposure to Egyptian myths when the army of Thothmes III entered Mesopotamia, or (perhaps most likely) his ideas may have been a refinement of the earlier, more-primitive (or “proto”) Indo-Iranian Mazdian religion (named after the principle god, Mazda).</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In particular, since Zarathustra was apparently trained as a priest, he was probably familiar with myths that were quite likely repeated orally for a thousand-or-more years and finally recorded in the <i>Rig Veda</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > roughly during the period when Zarathustra lived.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In her 1988 book <i>The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > (partially available at Google books), Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty provides the following quotation from Mircea Eliade, who in turn is described as developing the ideas of Ananda K. Coomasraswamy:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The Vedic mythology and religion present us with a situation which is at first sight paradoxical.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">On the one hand, there is a distinction, opposition, and conflict between the Devas and the Asuras, the gods and the “demons”, the powers of Light and Darkness…</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">But on the other hand, numerous myths bring out the consubstantiality or brotherhood of the Devas and Asuras.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">One has the impression that Vedic doctrine is at pains to establish a double perspective:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">although, as an immediate reality and as the world appears to our eyes, the Devas and the gods [sic] are irreconcilably different by nature and condemned to fight one another, at the beginning of time, on the other hand, that is to say, before the Creation or before the world took its present form, they were consubstantial… </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Historians who are vastly more knowledgeable about the subject that I am (or ever will or want to be!) suggest, however, that subsequent Hindu mythology may have been influenced by Zarathustra’s ideas.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, in the same reference, O’Flaherty writes (p. 79):</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">In the first, the Vedic period </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[of Hindu mythology]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, gods and demons are clearly opposed to one another, and gods unite with men against the demons.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">In Vedic times, when gods were though to live on sacrificial offerings provided by devout men </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[as was described also in ancient Mesopotamian myths, such as </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix04FloodedbyFrozenMyths.pdf">The Enuma Elish</a></span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, the gods wished men to be virtuous, for then they would continue to offer sacrifices; the demons interfered with the sacrifice in order to weaken the gods; occasionally this action my have incidentally corrupted mankind.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Though men served merely as pawns in the cosmic battle, it was in their interest to serve the gods, for the demons would try to kill men (in order to divert the sacrifice from the gods) – unless men were protected by gods sated by sacrificial offerings… </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">This straightforward alignment of forces – men and gods vs. demons – changed radically in the second period, the post-Verdic [period]…</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">That change in Hinduism could have been stimulated by Zarathustra’s ideas, ideas that eventually seeped into Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Although Zarathustra’s theological ideas were just wild speculations (as is all theology, since it’s based on zero data) and are illogical, yet they were apparently sufficiently attractive that approximately half the people in the world still “believe” them to be “true”!</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">His principal idea was that an alleged omnipotent god, whom he called Ahura Mazda (viz., “Lord of Wisdom”, and whose subsequent names in other cultures include Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Yahweh, “just plain God”, or Allah), wants and/or needs humans to help in fighting evil.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The idea is illogical, because an omnipotent god wouldn’t want anything (a ‘want’ is an unfulfilled desire – and it’s naughty to suggest that an omnipotent god has a ‘want’!) and because certainly an omnipotent god wouldn’t “need” the help of puny little humans!</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">But regardless of such deficiencies, Zarathustra’s ideas persist – not only because they no doubt were (and are) consistent with people’s instinctual inclinations to fight “evil” (i.e., anything that threatens their survival!) but also because they apparently led (and still lead) people to think that they’re important, with something important that they must do.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Nonetheless, although Zarathustra’s basic idea is thereby easily mocked, I expect that most humanists would admire the way he promoted his ideas for the benefit of humanity.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I’ll provide some illustrations below, which are taken from the verses of the Zoroastrian “holy book” (the <i>Avesta)</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > that etymologists, linguists, and historians have concluded were probably written by Zarathustra himself, namely, the 17 hymns called the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Gathas.</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" ><span style=""> </span>But before considering some of these verses, readers will probably benefit from reading the following impressive <a href="http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/gatha/dji/introduc.htm">overview</a> written by K.D. Irani:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">THE THEOLOGY OF THE </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">GATHAS</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">It is important, as a preliminary consideration, to note that the type of religion preached by Zarathushtra is what may be called reflective religion. It is a fusion of a View of the World and a Way of Life offered to the prospective believer to be adopted upon due reflection as worthy of acceptance. A believer is one who chooses to encounter the world as the religious view declares it to be, and importantly, commits himself or herself in the Way of Life presented therein.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">What then is the religious view of Zarathushtra in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">? Zarathushtra conceives of the world we live in as a theater of conflict between two diametrically opposed moral spirits (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">mainyus</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">); they stand for mental attitudes in the psychological domain and also opposing moral vectors in all of creation. They are the Spirit of Goodness (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Spenta Mainyu</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">), and the Spirit of Evil (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Angre Mainyu,</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> not so named in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, but in the later literature). Their characters are defined in relation to the pivotal concept of Zarathustra’s theology, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, usually translated as Truth.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[As mentioned in the previous post, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is similar to the earlier Egyptian concept of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ma’at</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> and the perhaps-earlier Indian concept of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ritam</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> (from which the Western notion of ‘right’ may have been derived).]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Truth </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, in this context means the Ultimate Truth, that is, the Ideal form of existence of the world as envisioned by </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[Literally, Zarathustra’s “wise deity”; the omnipotent, omniscient… creator god]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">the form the world would have had but for the Spirit of Evil, and hence the form the world ought to have. Acting in accordance with Truth is the right thing to do; hence, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is also translated as Righteousness. Indeed, since Zarathustra’s theology is always projected with a moral dimension, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> always carries the joint meaning of Truth and Righteousness.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Thus, </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Zarathustra] </span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">comprehend</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[ed] </span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">the world as an intrinsically good, divine creation, contaminated by evil, but capable of being perfected by the actions of humans by reason of their capacity of moral choice. Human action can promote good and reject evil leading to its ultimate banishment from the world, though it may continue to exist as a conceptual possibility.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">From this follows the Way of Life in Zarathustra’s theology. According to it, each human being possesses, perhaps cultivated to different degrees, the quality of the Good-Mind, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Vohu-Mana,</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> in itself a divine creation. The Good-Mind enables us to grasp </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, the Ideal Truth; it also enables us to see any aspect of the world and recognize it for what it is, i.e., the way and the extent to which it is flawed. This is grasped by seeing reality and realizing how it deviates from its ideal state, i.e., </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">. This form of moral awareness is what is termed good-thought. From this good-thought one is inspired to do the right thing, to right the wrong, to perfect the state of imperfection. When the appropriate course of action is formulated and articulated it is called good word.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The inspiration that leads to action is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Spenta Armaity,</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> translated in the religious context as Piety or Devotion, and in the moral context as Benevolence or Right-Mindedness. This spirit is another aspect of Divinity; it inclines us to move from right conceptions to right actions. We thereby, with courage and confidence put our well-thought-out and well-formulated intentions into actions. This is called good-deed. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Here we can crystallize the oft-repeated trilogy of Zoroastrianism: Good-thoughts, Good-words, and Good-deeds</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[or </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Humata</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Hukhta</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Huvarshta</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">; italics added]</span><span style="color:navy;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The following, then, are some illustrations of what scholars have concluded are Zarathustra’s own descriptions (from ~3,000 years ago!); the complete set of his 17 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gathas">hymns</a> (of 238 verses, ~1300 lines, or ~6,000 words in total), as translated by Dinshah J. Iran (1881–1938), are available <a href="http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/gatha/dji/yasna29.htm">here</a>; for added emphasis, I’ve put some of Zarathustra’s statements in italics.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 29,</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > 5–10:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">And thus we two </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[Zarathustra and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, my soul and the soul of creation, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">prayed with hands outstretched to the Lord </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">; <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">And thus we two urged </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> with these entreaties: “Let not destruction overtake the right-living; Let not the diligent good suffer at the hands of evil.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Then, thus spake </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, the Lord of understanding and wisdom: “As there is no righteous spiritual lord or secular chief, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">So have I, as Creator, made thee </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span">[Zarathustra]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> the protector and guide, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">For the welfare of the world and its diligent people.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The Wise Lord </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, with the spirit of Truth and Righteousness </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, made these holy hymns, The Benevolent Providence gave these teachings for the well being of the world and its righteous people. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Whom hast Thou, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, ordained, verily to give forth, through the Good Mind, these bounties to mortals?</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">(Thus spake </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">): “The one who alone has hearkened to my precepts is known as Zarathushtra Spitama; For his Creator and for Truth he wishes to announce the Holy Message, Wherefore shall I bestow on him the gift of eloquent speech.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Thereupon the Soul of Creation </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> cried: “In my woes I have obtained for help the feeble voice of an humble man, when I wished for a mighty over-lord! Whenever shall I get one to give me help with power and with force?”</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, and O Spirit of Truth and Right! Do Ye grant me and my followers such authority and power through Truth, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">That with the Good Mind, we may bring the world peace and happiness…</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 30, </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >2–3, 9, 11:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Hearken with your ears to these best counsels, Reflect upon them with illumined judgment. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Let each one choose his creed with that freedom of choice each must have at great events…</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Or, in the translation of J.H. Moulton:</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Hear with your ears the best things; Look upon them with clear-seeing thought, For decision between two beliefs, Each man for himself before the Great Consummation…</span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Or, in the translation by T.R. Sethna:</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Hear the best (truth) with your ears and decide by your pure mind. Let everybody judge for his own self </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal;"><span style="color:purple;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">and find out what he ought to do…</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span></span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">In the beginning there were two primal spirits, Twins spontaneously active, These are the Good and the Evil, in thought, and in word, and in deed. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Between these two, let the wise choose aright. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Be good, not base!</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">So may we be like those making the world progress toward perfection; May Mazda and the Divine Spirits help us and guide our efforts through Truth; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">By Thy perfect Intelligence, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">O Mazda, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thou didst first create us having bodies and spiritual consciences, And by Thy Thought gave ourselves the power of thought, word, and deed. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thus leaving us free to choose our faith at our own will.</span></span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 43</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 1, 15:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Happiness be the lot of him who works for the happiness of others…</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Verily I believed Thee, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda Ahura,</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> to be the Supreme Benevolent Providence, When the Good Mind came to me and told me assuringly, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">That a reflective, contented mind is the best possession.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 47</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 4:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Whether a man’s possession be great or small, l</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal;"><span style="color:purple;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">et him ever aspire to righteousness and abjure the wicked</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">…</span></span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 48</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 5, 7, 12:</span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Let man be active, zealously caring for his land and creatures so that they may flourish…</span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Suppress all anger and violence; Abandon all ill will and strife!</span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Such are the saviors of the earth, Who, inspired by the Good Mind, cause betterment, By actions in tune with the laws of Truth and Justice.</span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 53</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 6:</span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">This, indeed is the case, O ye men and women! No happiness can be yours if the spirit of Falsehood directs your lives. Cast off from your selves the bonds that chain you to Untruth. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker…</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">How amazingly advanced, how amazingly Humanistic, were Zarathustra’s ideas!</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The reader is asked to compare Zarathustra’s ideas of an omnipotent, omniscient god who created the universe and advocated universal truth and justice, freedom of choice, rewards for the diligent, and happiness for everyone <i>versus</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > the ideas of contemporary Hebrews (as depicted in various places in the first part of the OT) of a jealous, warrior, mountain god who protected the little Hebrew tribe and demanded obedience.<span style=""> </span>Small wonder, then, that after the Hebrews came under the influence of the Persians, Ezra & C-C modified the OT, transforming their old god into Zarathustra’s more powerful god (e.g., immediately, by using the “seven-period” Persian creation myth to start their <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Genesis</span>).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In fact, though, the seven-period creation myth seems to have been a creation of later Zoroastrian priests.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Instead, Zarathustra’s ideas were less complicated, as given in <i>Yasna 31,</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > 7–9:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">He who in the First Beginning thus thought: Let the glorious heavens be clothed in light; He by His supreme understanding created the principles of Truth and Light; Enabling mortals thereby to maintain the Good Mind. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">O Wise Lord, O ever-the-same </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, by Thy Holy Spirit make these realms flourish.</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Not only did I conceive of Thee, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal;"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">As the very First and the Last </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span">[the alpha and the omega]</span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, As the Father of the Good Mind, As the veritable Creator of Truth and Right, As the Lord Judge of our actions in life, I beheld these with my very eyes!</span></span></span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal;"><span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thine was </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Armaity</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, the Spirit of Benevolence, Thine was the Wisdom, which created Life, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thine was the Divine Spirit which established choice between the diligent protector of creation and the not diligent.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Unfortunately, however (at least it’s viewed as unfortunate by Humanists), Zarathustra added to his theology some wild speculations about life- and judgment-after-death.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">If we were generous to him, we might speculate that such an intelligent person knew it was all nonsense, but he decided that he’d need such “enticement” to sell his ideas (which, even then and according to the <i>Gathas</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, he apparently had great difficulty selling).<span style=""> </span>In any case, the following <a href="http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/gatha/dji/introduc.htm">summary</a> by K.D. Irani provides an overview of Zarathustra’s ideas about life- and </span><span style="font-size:100%;">judgment</span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >-after-death.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The consequence of actions according to this way of life </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[advocated by Zarathustra]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is that, being in accord with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, it brings the world toward perfection in any way and to whatever extent it may be. In the social world we bring about a change toward a worthy social order. And as the social order is transformed to an ideal form we achieve the ideal dominion in which the right-minded person is happy and contented. This ideal social state is referred to by the Gathic term </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Khshathra Vairya,</span></i></span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> another divine aspect.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The individual who lives in accordance with this way of life reaches a state of well being, a state of psychic and spiritual integrity which one might plausibly characterize as perfection in this earthly state. This state is referred to by the Gathic term </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Haurvatat</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">. A person who has lived such a life comes, upon death, to a state of immortal bliss, known by the Gathic term, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ameretat</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Life after death in the Gathas is viewed as a state, the character of which is a consequence of the moral quality of one’s life. The notion of the final judgment upon the person is expressed dramatically in the crossing of the Bridge of the Separator (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">chinvad peretu</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">), where the virtuous cross to the Abode of Songs, the heavenly abode, and exist in a state of “Best Consciousness.” The wicked fall away into the House of Falsehood, existing in a state of “Worst Consciousness,” detached from Truth.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The focus of Gathic teaching is one of a world afflicted with suffering, inequity, and imperfection, the goal being to transform it and bring it to perfection, that is, in consonance with Truth, by the comprehending power of the Good-Mind. Such a perfecting world would progressively bring satisfaction to all the good creation. And it would inaugurate the desired kingdom, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Khshathra Vairya</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, where the ideal society would manifest peaceful social existence in which all interests would be harmonized and balanced in a just order, for that is an implication of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Asha</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">. This achievement depends on enlightened human thinking and right-minded human resolve. These are the religious goals according to the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Gathas</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, and bringing them about, the commandment of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda.</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Some illustrations of Zarathustra’s terribly unfortunate theoretical concoction, in his own words, are the following.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 31,</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > 20:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">The follower of the righteous shall attain the Abode of Light; But he who deceived the good and the righteous, For him shall the future be long life of misery and darkness, woe and despair, O ye of evil lives! Your own deeds will lead you to this dark existence.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">To him, who is Thy true friend in spirit and in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">action, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda Ahura</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">! To him shalt Thou give the perfection of integrity and immortality; To him shalt Thou give perpetual communion with Truth and the Holy Dominion, And to him shalt Thou give the sustaining power of the Good Mind…</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 32</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 3–7:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">O ye, evil ones, You are products of the Evil Mind And of arrogance and perversity; And so are those who honor you! Your evil deeds have long been known in the seven regions of the earth.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">For, ye liars confound the human mind, and make men act their worst, Make men speak as lovers of Evil, Separated from the Good Mind, Far removed from the will of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura Mazda, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Departing from the path of Truth and Right.</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">And thus the liars defrauded humanity of a life of happiness and immortal bliss; For the Evil One preaches with Evil Mind and Evil Word, Evil actions to the lying soul promising supremacy, But bringing it to ruin.</span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">These evil-doers, attaining notoriety by their aggression, Shall surely receive their due, before Thee, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Ahura, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Lord of the Best Understanding, ever mindful of man’s desserts. For the reign of Right shall be honored when Truth prevails in Thy realms, O </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda! </span></i></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">These sinners, none of them, know the end in store for them. None of them know of the destruction of evil with the flood of glowing metal. The final end is indeed known to Thee, O Most Wise Lord!</span></span></i></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 45, </i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >7:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Those who are living, those who have been, and those who are yet to be, Shall attain one of the awards He ordains. In immortality shall the soul of the righteous be ever in splendor. But in misery the soul of the wicked shall surely be. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span">These laws hath </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Mazda Ahura</span></i></span><span style="color:purple;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> ordained through His Sovereign Authority.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Yasna 53</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, 6:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">This, indeed is the case, O ye men and women! No happiness can be yours if the spirit of Falsehood directs your lives. Cast off from your selves the bonds that chain you to Untruth. Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker; The faithless-evil bring sorrow to others and destroy their own spiritual lives hereafter.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In his essay on “Sin and Salvation”, S.G.F. Brandon <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhiana.cgi?id=dv4-31">adds</a>:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">In the extant teaching of Zarathustra only cryptic references are made to the consequences of this choice </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[between good and evil]</span><span style="color:navy;"><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Thus there was to be an awful ordeal of crossing the Bridge of the Separator (Činvat); but the devotees of Ahura Mazdā are assured that they would be led safely across by Zarathustra himself (Yasna 46:10).</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Mention is also made of molten metal and fire as forms of Ahura Mazdā’s retribution (Yasna 30:7; 51:9). The just are promised that they will abide with Ahura Mazdā in the House of Song (Yasna 45:8, 48:7), while the unjust are doomed to the House of the Lie (Drūjō·nmāna 46:11). There is reason for thinking that the Bridge of the Separator was an ancient Iranian concept, concerned with proving the ritual fitness of the dead to enter the next world, and that Zarathustra readapted it as a post-mortem test of allegiance to Ahura Mazdā.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Subsequently, during the ~500 years after Zarathustra’s death until the “Zoroastrian” religion became established in Persia and then the Persians led by Cyrus the Great permitted the Hebrews to return from Babylon to their homeland (which, Segal points out, the Persians called the district of <i>Yehud</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, residents of which were called </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>yehudi</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, which eventually came to mean “a Jew”), Zoroastrian priests elaborated on Zarathustra’s ideas – rarely to their improvement!<span style=""> </span>One such glaringly foolish mistake, which seems clearly contrary to Zarathustra’s ideas, was to restrict membership in the Zoroastrian religion to those whose both parents were Zoroastrian.<span style=""> </span>That mistake, plus horrible discrimination against Zoroastrianism by conquering, Islamic Arabs, led to the almost-complete extinction of Zoroastrianism:<span style=""> </span>currently, there are about 200,000 Zoroastrians, approximately one half of whom live in India and are called Parsees.<span style=""> </span>Yet, Zarathustra’s wild speculations about life- and </span><span style="font-size:100%;">judgment</span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >-after-death live on in their foundational influence on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.<span style=""> </span>In other words, this judgment-after-death concoction of Zarathustra has horribly hobbled humanity for more than 3,000 years. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Meanwhile, though, Zarathustra’s best ideas live on in Humanism.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To illustrate my meaning, I’ll start by quoting from an <a href="http://www.vohuman.org/Article/New%20Scope%20on%20some%20Aspects%20of%20Zoroasrtrian%20History%20and%20Philosophy.htm">essay</a> by Professor Paul DuBreuil entitled “New Scope on some Aspects of Zoroastrian History and Philosophy”:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">In every religion there are always two kinds of believers:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">those who look for the spirit and those who follow the letter, the letter which, according to the Gospels [of Christianity], kills the spirit…</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">With that idea in mind, consider again some of Zarathustra’s statements, this time as <a href="http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/gatha/az/yasna43.htm">translated</a></span> by Mobed Firouz Azargoshasb (1912–1996), and consider how the spirit of the same statements might be rendered without reference to the primitive idea of gods.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 43, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">1: Mazda Ahura, the Absolute Ruler, has specified that good fortune is for him who makes others happy.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In more modern language, this could be rendered as:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">you’ll profit from trying to make others happy.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 43, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">5: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">As divine and sacred I recognize Thee, O Mazda Ahura, when I realized Thee as the First and eternal when life began; and when Thou ordained rewards for good thoughts, words and deeds; and when Thou specified through Thy wisdom that evil shall be the lot of wicked persons and that good persons shall reap the fruit of their goodness.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Thus it will continue up to the end of creation.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In more modern language:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">good thoughts, good words, and good deeds yield their own rewards; others yield otherwise.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 43, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">8: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">I replied thus:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">I am Zoroaster, the staunch enemy of liars and falsehood.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">I shall fight against liars as long as I have strength and shall uphold truth and righteous people whole-heartedly.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Language that needs no updating!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 43, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">13: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">As Divine and Sacred have I recognized Thee, O Ahura Mazda, when Vohuman entered within me, and light of Truth and Knowledge brightened my heart.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Do grant me a long life, O my Lord, so that I may achieve my best wishes and desires, the gift which no one else, except Thee, can grant: a life full of service to humanity and activity for the progress of the world which depends upon Thy Khashathra.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or, in more modern language:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">I seek to help humanity to go on.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 48, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">4: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">One who makes his mind better or worse, O Mazda, his deed, word, and conscience shall follow sure.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">The path selected by one’s voluntary choice, his will and faith shall also follow the same and shall be in tune with them.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">According to Thy wisdom, O Mazda, their destiny shall be distinct from each other.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or, in more modern language:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">People choose – and consequences follow.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 48, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">5: We should toil for the Mother Earth and progress of the world, leading all the creatures on to the Light and the Truth.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or, in more modern language:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Do your best to help humanity continue, which necessarily includes respect for nature.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 48, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">10: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">When shall my friends arrive for spreading the faith, O Mazda?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">When shall they smite down the rotting mass of lie and greed from the world?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">[The] wicked Karapans (priests) falsely fascinate the people, and the tyrant rulers rule over countries with evil intentions.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">That language, too, requires no revision!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna 53, </span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">8: <span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">The evil doers and wicked ones, indeed, shall finally be deceived and stung by men’s ridicule, chiding themselves.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">May men and women helped by good leaders and just kings enjoy peace and rest in their own clans and villages.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">May deceit and tribulation which drag down mankind to destruction disappear from this world.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">May the Almighty God, who is the Greatest of All, come to our help, as soon as possible.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:purple;" ><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Of course, the modern mind is inclined to criticize Zarathustra’s naivety, displayed in his prayers for help from some god to achieve such goals and in his expectation that help would soon arrive (which is another of Zarathustra's ideas later adopted by Jews, Christians, Muslims, et al.</span><span style="font-size:100%;">), but</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> if we recognize that Zarathustra lived when gods were assumed to control everything, examine the prime goal for which he strove (namely, to help humanity), and the methods that he proposed to reach his goals (“good thoughts, good works, good deeds”), then I’m certainly impressed that someone, alone and so long ago, saw so much, so clearly.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">In fact, I would go so far as to say that if all references to all supernatural nonsense were removed from his religion, then I, too, would be pleased to be called a Zoroastrian, or equivalently, a Humanist.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In any case, it could be argued that Zarathustra was the world’s first, great philosopher.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), however, mercilessly criticized Zarathustra, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra">writing</a>:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Zarathustra was the first </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[although that claim is debatable]</span><span style="color:blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: his work is the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself…</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In his book <i><a href="http://philosophy.eserver.org/nietzsche-zarathustra.txt">Thus Spoke Zarathustra</a></i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >, which contains his famous pronouncements, “God is dead”, “Plato is boring”, and “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently”, Nietzsche had his fictitious Zarathustra take the next step:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. […] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the “idealist” who flees from reality […]</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Am I understood?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite – into me – that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">This fictitious Zarathustra was what Nietzsche called an “<i>Übermensch</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >” (overman or superman):</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">“Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">shall be</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">remain faithful to the earth</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:blue;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!” </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Nietzsche thus reprimanded Zarathustra for concocting a “repressive moral code” (promoted in all organized religions); instead, Nietzsche promoted that people attain self-mastery and thereby become <i>Übermenschen.</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Yet in reality, in thought, in words, and in deeds, Zarathustra seems to have been a true <i>Übermensch</i></span><span style="font-style: normal;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span>His mantra “good thoughts, good words, good deeds” would have been inadequate if he hadn’t specified goals against which “good” was to be measured, but in fact, he did specify such goals:<span style=""> </span>to diligently help humanity, make others happy, and protect the rest of nature.<span style=""> </span>Moreover, as Nietzsche desired, Zarathustra advocated that others, also, use their own minds, as their highest authority, to make their own choices, saying: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128); font-style: italic;">Let everybody judge for his own self and find out what he ought to do… <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal;">I therefore suspect that, if subsequent translations of Zarathustra’s work had been available, along with distinctions now available between Zarathustra’s ideas and those of subsequent Zoroastrian clerics, Nietzsche might agree that “the real Zarathustra” was, in fact, the first <i>Übermensch.</i></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Later philosophers have heaped similar praise on Zarathustra.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">For example, in his <a href="http://www.vohuman.org/Article/New%20Scope%20on%20some%20Aspects%20of%20Zoroasrtrian%20History%20and%20Philosophy.htm">essay</a> quoted above, Professor DuBreuil adds: </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">Modern Zoroastrians have the huge responsibility to prove to the world that ‘eternal’ Iran is not what we see today, that they are still worthy of the fame that ancient Persians had in the eyes of the Greeks and the great Western thinkers. Remember that </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Yasna Astuye</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> (Y2.8) says: “the religion of Mazda restrains quarrels and puts weapons down.” Voltaire wrote that the best expression of morality he had ever known stands in this Zoroastrian precept of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Saddar</span></i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span">:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">“When you are not sure if an action is right or wrong, just abstain from doing it, i.e., when in doubt, don’t.” This brings us to make this statement:</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">If religions and nations had followed the contrary of the proverb, “the end justifies the means”, which conducted many powers to think that killings and persecutions were permitted to reach their political goals, the opposite would be that the nobility of any goal depends on the means used to reach it.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Thus, we could be sure that many dreadful slaughters, cruelties, and persecutions of all kinds may have been avoided and the world would have known far less misfortune. This ethic comes from the close Zoroastrian conjugation of doing good deeds that are in full agreement with good thoughts and words…</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style=";font-size:100%;color:navy;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Meanwhile, instead of the happy possibility described by DuBreuil, we have (as just a single, horrible example) the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul><li><span style="font-size:100%;">Almost certainly promoting development of weapons of mass destruction,</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">Apparently practicing any available means to sustain Iran’s fascist theocracy and his own dictatorship,</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">Seemingly endlessly preaching the religion of Persia’s barbaric, Arab conquerors, which is based on Muhammad’s genius not to see how astoundingly brainless religious people can be (since that had already been long established by Christian clerics) but to see the military implications of such mindlessness (as the original weapons of mass destruction),</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">This month <a href="http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP253509">proposing</a> that no society could be “superior to the society of Ali [ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law, the first Shi’ite Imam – who didn’t have the philosophical <a href="http://thinkexist.com/quotes/ali_ibn_abi_talib/">stature</a></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> to cleanup the dung of Zarathustra's camels] </span>and the Mahdi [the phantom Shi’ite <span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi">messiah</a></span> whose social views are therefore phantasmal]”, and</li><li>Bombastically promising to annihilate the Jews, i.e., those who for ~2500 years have been most faithfully following the original Persian religion of Zarathustra (as I’ll try to outline in the next post).<o:p></o:p></li></ul><span style="font-size:100%;"></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Actually, in most societies, a person would be considered traitorous to support the culture of one’s conquerors; yet, Ahmadinejad supports Islam rather than Zoroastrianism.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Similar occurs throughout the Muslim world (save in Arabia) and, for that matter, throughout the Christian world (save in Italy):</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">people preaching, practicing, and promoting the religion of their conquerors.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Would that, instead, everyone would consider what Zarathustra said:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color:purple;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Let everybody judge for his own self and find out what he ought to do…</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-66819890480537598822009-08-08T01:24:00.001-07:002009-09-10T04:53:35.514-07:00Clerical Quackery 2 - The Judgment-After-Death Lie in Ancient Egypt<div><br /></div>This has been a tough one. In fact, trying to learn this stuff is a lot like studying physics: the more you learn, the more you learn that you don’t know; the deeper you dig, the deeper the hole you find yourself in!<br /><br />Anyway, for this 22nd installment (!) of this series of posts dealing with what I call the God Lie and for this second installment of this series of posts dealing with what I call Clerical Quackery, my plan is to continue down the list (displayed in the previous post) to try to expose at least a little of the history of the lies<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That gods exist,<br />• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods,<br />• That people’s souls are judged by the gods,<br />• That the dead are ruled by the gods…</blockquote>More specifically, my goal for this post is to try to outline at least a little of some early history of the Judgment-after-Death Lie, in particular, as it arose in Egypt. At the outset, though, I should repeat that I’m incompetent to expose all aspects of the history of such lies – a caveat that I repeat in an attempt to defuse charges against me of engaging in “historical quackery”!<br /><br />Perhaps a comment on ‘quackery’ would be appropriate. Thus, if someone professes to know and attempts to profit from what he or she doesn’t know, then that someone can be appropriately charged with professional quackery, i.e., lying for profit. For example, I have no qualms about charging clerics with quackery, since they “make a living” by claiming that they know what can’t be known, for example, what happens to people’s “immortal souls” in some “afterlife” (both “immortal souls” and “afterlife” being meaningless concepts). Selling such nonsense is apparently easier than working for a living. As Voltaire said:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.</blockquote>Similarly, if I claimed to know the history or, more generally, the archaeology of the speculation that people’s souls are judged after death (in particular, how the idea started and how it evolved), then I’d be vulnerable to the charge of “archaeological quackery”, because in reality, I don’t know – nor does anyone else, as far as I have been able to determine. Therefore, in an attempt to at least deflect charges of being an archaeological or historical quack, let me not only admit my incompetence but also invite those more knowledgeable to correct inaccuracies in these posts. In the main, what I’m trying to do in these posts is “just” show what I’ve found (mostly on the internet) about what those more competent have learned about the God Lie, in general, and for this post in particular, about the Judgment-after-Death Lie as it developed in Ancient Egypt.<br /><br />In general, the Judgment-after-Death Lie seems to have resulted from what was a to-be-expected amalgamation (or evolution) of three related experiences: 1) primitive people’s experiences with the concept of justice, 2) their experiences with their own shadows, images, and dreams (leading to their speculations about the existence of sprits and souls and life-after-death), and 3) their observations of regeneration (or what was considered to be “rebirth”) in nature. How rapidly the amalgamation of those three ideas occurred is (as far as I know) unknown; it appears to have depended on the period and its circumstances.<br /><br />Thus, in prehistory the evolution of those ideas may have taken 10,000 years (but perhaps a single person had the idea!), in Egypt and Mesopotamia it seems to have evolved during a period of at least 2,000 years, while during a particular period in Jewish history (when the idea of judgment-after-death was already widespread throughout the Middle East), the amalgamation appears to have occurred within a few decades or less (during the forced Hellenization of the Hebrews under Antiochus Epiphanes and then the Maccabean revolt). Below and in subsequent posts on this topic, I’ll sketch at least a little of the evidence supporting those claims; in this post, I’ll focus on the lie as it developed in Ancient Egypt; I’ll organize the material in this post under the three topics listed above, starting with<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Justice</span><br />It seems reasonable to speculate that, of the three concepts listed above, ideas about justice probably came first, because soon after we’re born, Nature teaches all animals the meanings of natural and personal justice. As I’ve reviewed <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">elsewhere</a>, natural justice is just the principle that all effects have their causes (the principle of causality), and personal justice is just the consequences of natural justice applied to individuals. For example, if a monkey uses a boulder to try to break a nut, and if, instead, the boulder hits his hand holding the nut, then the monkey experiences both natural justice (the effect had a cause) and personal justice (the effect had a personal consequence). As a <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J2JusticeandMorality.pdf">summary</a>, it’s personal justice to generally get what we deserve – and, we hope, not get what we don’t deserve.<br /><br />For social animals such as monkeys, dolphins, elephants, and humans, interpersonal (or social) justice is personal justice for cases in which the interaction is not with something inanimate (such as a boulder) but with another member (or members) of the same species. As a result, social justice is subjective. As Emerson said:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">One man’s</span> [interpretation of social] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">justice is another’s </span>[interpretation of social] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">injustice.</span></blockquote>Given the <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/J3InterpersonalJandM.pdf">data</a> showing that animals such as monkeys display a sense of social justice, it therefore seems reasonable to assume that primitive people similarly sought social justice. In fact, evidence shows that at least by about 3000 BCE, the Ancient Egyptians “deified” the concept of justice (and more) as their goddess Ma’at.<br /><br />As quoted in an earlier post, in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gods of the Egyptians</span> Wallis Budge described Ma’at as: “…the personification of law, order, rule, truth, right, righteousness, canon, justice, straightness, integrity, uprightness and the highest conception of physical and moral law known to the Egyptians.” The Ancient Indians apparently concluded, similarly, that “order” or “the right” was “weaved into the fabric of the universe.”<span style=""> </span>Such a conclusion can be drawn even from one of the derivations of the word ‘right’:<span style=""> </span>besides the unfortunate derivation of ‘right’ from the Latin word <i>rectus</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (meaning ‘ruled’, suggesting that whatever the ruler said was right!), the word ‘right’ is suggested to be derived from the Indo-European base </span><i>reg</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> meaning “straight, put in order”.<br /><br />In the Hindu’s </span><i>Rig Veda</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (meaning “praise knowledge”), which was written in about 1500 BCE but whose oral tradition seems to go back at least a thousand years earlier, the idea of such “divine order” is exemplified in the word ‘Ritam’.<span style=""> </span>Thus, as given in an excellent article on Philosophy of Ethics in the </span><i>Encyclopedia Britannica:</i> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color:navy;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="color:navy;">The Vedas are, in a sense, hymns, but the gods to which they refer are not persons but manifestations of ultimate truth and reality.<span style=""> </span>In the Vedic philosophy, the basic principle of the universe, the ultimate reality on which the cosmos exists, is the principle of <i>Ritam</i></span><span style="color:navy;">, which is the word from which the Western notion of right is derived.<span style=""> </span>There is thus a belief in a right moral order somehow built into the universe itself.<span style=""> </span>Hence, truth and right are linked; to penetrate through illusion and understand the ultimate truth of human existence is to understand what is right… <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Whether the Hindus obtained such an idea from the Egyptians or vice versa, or whether the ideas of Ma’at and <i>Ritam</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> developed independently is unknown (as far as I know). Similar uncertainties surround the similar Zoroastrian deification of 'truth', 'righteousness', etc. as <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Asha Vahista </span>("Best Truth").<br /><br />In what I found to be a very good article on Ma’at, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat">Wikipedia</a> adds: “Ma’at was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation.” In some myths, Ma’at is described as the Sun god’s (Ra’s) daughter; in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat">figure</a> below, she’s depicted with her telltale ostrich feather. Notice, also, the staff in Ma’at’s right hand and the cross or <span style="font-style: italic;">ankh</span> (symbol for ‘life’) in her left hand.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirY9IeosElRtI9SDlyrmeemWQ-P9GUlaYbxw-eSlAJchepxd-nOb8-zYqKGm5HuQviGfzRqnu8IpKoLjBm3m89XCmRmOz3qiCwkO2JlhyphenhyphentqFF76vofuXVeP774o5Ia2ZPpfnUiPN620Bw/s1600-h/1.+Maat.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 373px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirY9IeosElRtI9SDlyrmeemWQ-P9GUlaYbxw-eSlAJchepxd-nOb8-zYqKGm5HuQviGfzRqnu8IpKoLjBm3m89XCmRmOz3qiCwkO2JlhyphenhyphentqFF76vofuXVeP774o5Ia2ZPpfnUiPN620Bw/s400/1.+Maat.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507581216441218" border="0" /></a><br />Thousands of years later, Ma’at seems to have evolved into the Gnostic Christians’ Sophia (goddess of Wisdom), who the now-orthodox Christians adopted as the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit (in their trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost). Consistently, the Gnostics criticized the now-orthodox Christians for their assumption that the Holy Ghost impregnated the “virgin” Mary; for example, in his <a href="http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gop.html">gospel</a>, Philip states:<br /></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Some said, “Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.” They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?</blockquote>In Egyptian mythology, Ma’at is frequently associated with the ibis-headed god <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth">Thoth</a>, depicted below; his “beak” is also sometimes considered to be a representation of the lunar disc; in some myths, Thoth is Ma’at’s consort. Thoth is another Egyptian god whose genealogy is confusing (at least to me): in reality, Thoth may have been the (human!) friend of (the human!) Osiris; if so, the god Thoth is then the deification of a person. Possibly as a result of Thoth’s assisting Osiris in Egypt's establishment, the god Thoth is then described as the god of magic, writing, religion, science, etc.<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR-48ues2uYfr5AnWmggNvdpTZALVJD1sq09U2QZkjc4zUH1owBN9zC0cim-d5zhqKecac8-lEcqL5sUsKRCxIuhasV7Yo_NJCcemdVW0ywYUJ6_fAA89wsbfoo31BohU2iIOmdQOh2Ls/s1600-h/2.+Thoth.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 347px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR-48ues2uYfr5AnWmggNvdpTZALVJD1sq09U2QZkjc4zUH1owBN9zC0cim-d5zhqKecac8-lEcqL5sUsKRCxIuhasV7Yo_NJCcemdVW0ywYUJ6_fAA89wsbfoo31BohU2iIOmdQOh2Ls/s400/2.+Thoth.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507424275974018" border="0" /></a><br />In some Egyptian myths, Thoth (similar to Ma’at) seems to be the deification of concepts (not only concepts similar to those deified by Ma’at but also the concept of mediating or arbitrating between good and evil). In other Egyptian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth">myths</a>, Thoth is considered: “the heart and tongue of Ra as well as the means by which Ra’s will was translated into speech… without his [Thoth’s] words, the Egyptians believed the gods would not exist.” Subsequently, Thoth (or Ma’at) was transplanted into the philosophies and religions of the Greeks, Hebrews, and Christians.</div><div><br /></div><div>The following are three examples of such transplants of Egyptian ideas about original order and wisdom: 1) Thoth (whom the Greeks called Hermes) and/or Ma’at evolved into Heraclitus' and Plato’s “Logos” (meaning ‘word’ or ‘reason’ or ‘order’ or “the principle of divine reason and creative order”), 2) the Hebrews appear to have adopted Thoth and/or Ma’at as Wisdom, "the master workman", e.g., from <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs 8,</span> 12–30:</div><div><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I, Wisdom, dwell in prudence… The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old… I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the Earth… before he had made the Earth… When he established the heavens, I was there… I was beside him, like a master workman…</blockquote>and 3) Thoth and/or Ma’at (transformed into the Logos and/or Wisdom) then appeared in [orthodox] Christian “holy scripture” (<span style="font-style: italic;">John 1,</span> 1) as:</div><div><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In the beginning was the Word</span> [or, in the original Greek version of the text, “the Logos”]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and the Word </span><span>[or, in the Hebrew tradition, Wisdom]</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> was with God, and the Word</span> [i.e., for the Ancient Egyptians, Thoth] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">was God.</span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"><div><span style="font-weight: normal;">What a pity that someone before Darwin didn't see (or wasn't successful in showing others) that "the natural order" was (and is) to evolve from the simpler to the more complex, rather than v.v. It could have saved the world from at least 5,000 years of religious, metaphysical (viz., "supernatural") insanity! </span><br /><br /></div>2. Rebirth After Death</span><br />As for when people adopted the idea of an “afterlife”, in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">post</a> in this series and in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix02SpiritsSoulsandGods.pdf">chapter</a>, I already reviewed at least a little of the substantial amount of archeological evidence from tens of thousands of years ago and interpreted to show that most prehistoric peoples adopted ideas about life-after-death. Their conceptions of what sort of life was available after death are (of course) unknown, but a common assumption is that primitive people must have thought life-after-death would be similar to the life-they-knew, since their dead were buried with implements, trinkets, etc. that were needed or cherished in the life they knew.<br /><br />It seems likely that ancient people first developed the idea of rebirth (after death) from observations of “rebirth” (or regeneration) of vegetation, but as far as I know, evidence of that speculation doesn’t appear until some of the first myths were written, after ~3000 BCE. In an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix11ChangingIdeas.pdf">chapter</a>, I sketched how Mesopotamian (viz., Sumerian, Akkadian, Kassite, and Assyrian) myths suggest how ideas changed, over the course of about 2,000 years, about life-after-death and judgment-after-death. I also sketched some of the changes in similar ideas among the Greeks, illustrated by writings from Homer to Plato, during a ~400-year period. In that earlier chapter, I purposefully avoided describing how such ideas evolved earlier in Ancient Egypt, because the evolution seems to have been so complicated! Here, I’ll “take the plunge” and try to at least outline how such ideas seem to have evolved in Egypt – although, once again, because I’m no historian, <span style="font-style: italic;">caveat lector!</span><br /><br />In contrast to Mesopotamian myths that mention life-after-death and judgment-after-death, the Egyptian myths are so explicit and elaborate that they boggle the mind. In view of time and space constraints (and, in truth, in view of my relative disinterest in any wild speculations, let alone interest in data-less ideas about life- and judgment-after-death), I won’t describe Egyptian myths in much detail; as readers can determine from searching on the internet, many others have described the myths extensively.<br /><br />Instead of digging into such details, I’ll emphasize aspects of Egyptian myths that will be relevant to achieving my goal for this and the next few posts. That goal is to provide at least a little evidence describing: 1) how Mesopotamian ideas about “the afterlife” seem to have dominated the first part of the Old Testament (OT), 2) how those Mesopotamian ideas in the OT about “the afterlife” started to change later in the OT (e.g., in the <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Daniel)</span>, caused by a confusing array of influences, first from the Zoroastrians, then by the Greeks (whose ideas originally were influenced by the Egyptians and then were influenced by the Persians, whom they had conquered), and then by the Romans (whose ideas were influenced by the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians), and then 3) how Egyptian (and Persian and Greek) ideas about life- and judgment-after-death completely dominated the New Testament (NT), the Koran (or Quran or Qur’an), and various “sacred scriptures” of the Mormons.<br /><br />Ancient people seem to have developed the idea of rebirth not only from the annual revival of vegetation but also from observations of repeated patterns of astronomical bodies, including:<br /><blockquote>• The Sun (“reborn” both daily and annually, the latter soon after the winter solstice, celebrated in essentially all ancient cultures and still every “Christmas”, when Jesus and Mithras and Horus were allegedly born),<br /><br />• The Moon (reborn monthly, after being “dead” for 3 days, similar to claims about the “resurrected” Jesus as well as similar claims made about many earlier “gods”),<br /><br />• The constellations (e.g., in the Zodiac, see the <a href="http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/%7Ebabul/AstroCourses/P303/Module1_p3.htm">figure</a> below, “reborn” annually), and<br /><br />• The planets (with varying times for “rebirth”, including Jupiter’s 12 years and Saturn’s 30 years, both <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">claimed</a> to be significant “periods” in the life of Horus, Jesus, and other “gods”).</blockquote>In addition, there are hints that at least by 2000 BCE and quite possibly earlier, both Egyptian and Mesopotamian priests were aware of the period for “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_year">the great year</a>”, that is, the ~26,000-year period of precession of the Earth’s rotation axis (e.g., the ~26,000 years from now when the Earth’s rotation axis will again return to pointing at the “North Star”, i.e., Polaris). As a result of this precession of the Earth’s rotation axis (and the associated “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix07StarStories.pdf">precession of the equinoxes</a>”), the constellation of the Zodiac that arises just before dawn at the spring equinox advances by one constellation every ~26,000 ÷ 12 constellations ≅ 2,200 years. Thus, 2,000 years ago, the constellation Pisces (the fish) rose just before dawn of the spring equinox, whereas in approximately 200 years from now, Aquarius (the water carrier) will – and therefore the lyrics of the song “Aquarius” in the musical <span style="font-style: italic;">Hair</span>: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGSWJmEA9FflNx6Wsq3OoCqJUS_eF0aV4ZmwLQbV0-UixGTNGbLX9y2gmZdB2b1or2E8NUVe3LBFZ6tCTJiyAPcHgHV2OTtpiKK2A6JUZpNW0gieTVCdsCidNzaFoNiZnyx0shnevZxk/s1600-h/3.+Zodiac.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 396px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGSWJmEA9FflNx6Wsq3OoCqJUS_eF0aV4ZmwLQbV0-UixGTNGbLX9y2gmZdB2b1or2E8NUVe3LBFZ6tCTJiyAPcHgHV2OTtpiKK2A6JUZpNW0gieTVCdsCidNzaFoNiZnyx0shnevZxk/s400/3.+Zodiac.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507422296871026" border="0" /></a><br />The time of the spring (or vernal) equinox was apparently monitored by ancient people in “Stonehenge-type” structures. At the time of the spring and autumn equinoxes, of course the Sun rises exactly in the East and sets exactly in the West, everywhere on Earth. The precession of the equinoxes (and of constellations) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession_%28astronomy%29#Cause">arises</a> mainly because the gravitational forces on the Earth from the Sun and Moon don’t act through the center of the Earth (as a result of the Earth’s equatorial bulge and the Moon not being on the solar plane), causing a unbalanced torque on the Earth about its center.<br /><br />Audrey Fletcher <a href="http://ancientegypt.hypermart.net/narmerplate/index.htm">suggests</a> that the Ancient Egyptians recognized the effects (but not the cause) of the precession of the equinoxes at least by ~4400 BCE, the start of the Age of Taurus. This was when the constellation that the Mesopotamians and then the Greeks called Taurus the bull first appeared just before dawn at the time of the spring equinox. Fletcher further suggests that the “world’s first historical document”, the Narmer Palette (or Nermer Plate) doesn’t commemorate the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt (as I mentioned in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/04/law-lie-5-leaders.html">earlier post</a> and as is suggested in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer_Palette">Wikipedia article</a>) but instead commemorated the start of the Age of Taurus.<br /><br />In any case, the beginnings of the various “astrological ages” <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix09ChangingGods.pdf">appear</a> to have been important, because the astrologically fixated clerics apparently invented new gods (and associated sacrifices to the gods of “sacred” animals of the Zodiac) with the start of each age. Thus,<br /><blockquote>• The bull seems to have been sacred during the Age of Taurus the bull (~4400–2200 BCE),<br /><br />• To start the Age of Aries the ram (~2200–0 BCE), the bull was killed (e.g., in subsequent myths about Gilgamesh and about Mithras), i.e., in astrological terms and because of precession of the equinoxes, Taurus the bull no longer was the constellation that arose just before dawn at the spring equinox; instead, Aries arose, and sacrifices were subsequently made (e.g., by the Hebrews) to the ram or lamb, and<br /><br />• To start the Age of Pisces the fish (~0–2200 CE) the lamb of God (aka Jesus) was killed (i.e., the constellation Aries, the ram, no longer arose just before dawn on the first day of spring; instead, Pisces did), the followers of Jesus (including nuns, which is the Chaldean word for ‘fish’) became “fishers of men”, Jesus allegedly fed the multitude with two fishes (i.e., Pisces), and even today, Christians put fish decals on their automobiles!</blockquote>Maybe when the Age of Aquarius starts in about 200 years, people will discontinue looking at their daily horoscopes (of course named after the Egyptian god Horus) and finally demand a halt to all such astrological and clerical quackery.<br /><br />But such happy possibilities aside for now, data are available to help establish early dates when people carefully monitored the Sun’s behavior, e.g., at the site at Stonehenge, England, which seems to have been built in about 3000 BCE. To date, what appears to be the first such structure was recently found in what is now Egypt’s Nubian Desert; it has been dated (via carbon isotopes in wood associated with the site) to be from about 5000 BCE. In addition, arrangements of the stones at the site <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabta_Playa">suggest</a> that it may have been established by 6400 BCE. At a minimum, the “Nabta Playa calendar site” demonstrates that its creators were avid “sky watchers”; further, though, it seems reasonable to infer that they were impressed with the regularity and “rebirth” of the Sun and specific constellations. In particular, there are suggestions that the stone structure was used not only to mark the summer solstice but also to locate the three stars in what the Greeks called “Orion’s belt”.<br /><br />By the way and not entirely incidentally, <a href="http://www.legon.demon.co.uk/osirion.htm">questions continue</a> about whether the Egyptians identified just one of the bright stars in the Orion constellation as their god Osiris, or if Osiris was the entire “stick man in the sky” (i.e., what the Greeks called Orion and what at least some Sumerians seemed to have called Gilgamesh). In any event and as far as I can tell, it’s unknown why the Egyptians became so fixated on the stars, a fixation succinctly summarized in their expression (the mantra of all astrologers): “as above, so below” – rather than the more realistic “as below, so above”! Nonetheless, what seems to be a reasonable speculation is the following.<br /><br />Surely one of the most significant events in the lives of the Ancient Egyptians was the annual flooding of the Nile. Without a calendar to record the date of the flood, the people must have been unable to prepare for it. Eventually, however, someone noticed that the flooding occurred each year, 70 days after the brightest star in the sky (i.e., the fourth brightest astronomical body in the sky – after the Sun, Moon, and Venus) disappeared in the West, i.e., when it first appeared in the East just before dawn. The Egyptians identified this star with the goddess Isis, which is the star the Greeks called Sirius.<br /><br />As a result of Sirius’ role in Egyptian life, in their myths and rituals 70 days became an pervasive number, representing the time between death and rebirth. As examples, 1) in the Isis/Horus myth, Isis searches for Osiris’ body for 70 days before Osiris was “resurrected”, 2) Isis disappears for 70 days before giving birth to Horus, <a href="http://souledout.org/nightsky/dogdays/dogdays.html">and</a> 3) “when a king died, his body was mummified, then interred in a pyramid or other tomb. By custom, burial took place 70 days after death, when the king was 'reborn' in the stars.”<br /><br />Subsequently, the number of days that Sirius/Isis was invisible, 70 (or 72), appears frequently in the Abrahamic religions. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70_%28number%29"> Thus</a>,<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">• Seventy souls went down to Egypt to begin the Hebrew’s Egyptian exile (Genesis 46:27),<br />• Seventy elders were assembled by Moses on God’s command in the desert (Numbers 11:16-30),<br />• The Old Testament (OT) allots three score and ten (70 years) for a man’s life (Psalm 90:10),<br />• According to Jewish tradition, there is a core of 70 nations and 70 world languages,<br />• In Jewish tradition, there were 70 men in the Great Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of ancient Israel. (Sanhedrin 1:4),<br />• Ptolemy II Philadelphus ordered 72 Jewish elders to translate the Torah into Greek; the result was the Septuagint (from the Latin for “seventy”),<br />• The Roman numeral seventy, LXX, is the scholarly symbol for the Septuagint,<br />• In the Gospel of Matthew, 18:21-22, Jesus tells Peter to forgive people seventy times seven times,<br />• In the Gospel of Luke 10:1-24, Jesus appoints Seventy Disciples and sends them out in pairs to preach the Gospel, and<br />• Seventy is a priesthood office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).</blockquote>As well, there are three references to the number 70 in the Koran, and a <a href="http://void.nothingness.org/archives/situationist/display/7990/index.php">report</a> on the internet states that there are (then) 106 references to the number 70 in the Islamic Hadiths, although I haven’t verified that claim.<br /><br />As another aside, the word ‘sirius’ in Greek means ‘scorching’, suggesting that the star Sirius was so named by the Greeks not only because it was so bright but also because, each year, it first arose before dawn during the hottest days of the summer. This so-called “heliacal rising” (with heliacal referring to a star’s rise near the Sun or <span style="font-style: italic;">Helios</span>) is “the first, brief, visual appearance of a star on the eastern horizon before sunrise; on the prior morning, sunlight makes the star invisible.” Further, it appears that the phrase “the dog days of summer” (which the Romans described as <span style="font-style: italic;">caniculares dies</span>) were so named not only because the dogs probably were inactive in the heat but also because such days started with the heliacal rising of Sirius, which is located in the constellation Canis Major (i.e., in one of the constellations imagined to be Orion’s two hunting dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor). Sirius is also called “the dog star”.<br /><br />But returning to the Ancient Egyptians, the Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120 CE) wrote: “Sirius is the one consecrated to Isis, for it brings the water.” Apparently this discovery was so significant (because the people – or at least the astrological priests – then had a way to predict the Nile’s flood) that this heliacal rising of Isis/Sirius was taken as the first day of the Egyptian calendar. Not knowing that the flooding of the Nile (in mid-July) arose because of springtime rains in the headwaters of the Nile (in central Africa), the effective use of Isis/Sirius to mark time in an annual calendar confirmed to the Ancient Egyptian the “truth” in their mantra “as above, so below” and provided “proof” that the stars were gods, controlling events on Earth.<br /><br />Accepting that the stars were gods controlling events on Earth, the Ancient Egyptians apparently found that it didn’t require much of a leap in imagination to accept the claim that their leaders (who obviously had control over many events on Earth) were also gods, destined after death to join the “heavenly host” of stars. Consistent with that conclusion, with the bounty of the Nile Valley providing substantial leisure time, with an amazing administrative structure that developed (taxing the harvests and then paying the people with the grain that had been collected in taxes – a scheme that every government in the world has been copying for the past ~5,000 years!), and probably consistent with women’s desires to get the men folk out of the house (!), the most elaborate burial edifices the world has ever known were constructed.<br /><br />Their pyramids, however, apparently didn’t satisfy the egos of the rulers; in addition, they had their tombs inscribed with boastful statements of their stature and accomplishments. <a href="http://www.robertbauval.co.uk/articles/articles/70days.html">The Pyramid Age</a> began in about 2800 BCE. One of the oldest inscriptions was for King Snefru, who ruled for ~24 years in about 2600 BCE and who oversaw the building of the first “true” pyramids (large, and orientated east-west rather than north-south, <a href="http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/snefru.htm">apparently</a> reflecting an emphasis on the Sun god (Ra) rather than on the stars). Snefru’s son, Khufu, was responsible for building the Great Pyramid at Giza. The inscription on Snefru’s tomb <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft_djvu.txt">states</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">King of Upper and Lower Egypt, favorite of the Two Goddesses</span> [probably Isis and Ma’at]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, Lord of Truth, Golden Sun-god, Snefru. Snefru, great god, who is given power, stability, life, health, joy of heart, forever. Subduer of the Barbarians.</span></blockquote>Subsequent tomb inscriptions were even more boastful, as recorded in what are now called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts">The Pyramid Texts</a>, found in the pyramids of the kings Unas (c. 2350 BCE), Teti (c. 2340 BCE), Pepi I (c. 2300 BCE) and Pepi II (and three of his queens, c. 2200 BCE). <a href="http://www.robertbauval.co.uk/articles/articles/70days.html"> Illustrative</a> is the inscription on the tomb of King Unas (or Unis), which includes:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">The sky is clear, Sothis</span> [Isis/Sirius] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">lives, I am a living one, the son of Sothis</span> [i.e., I’m Horus-the-Younger]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">… My house in the sky will not perish, my throne on earth will not be destroyed, for men hide, the gods fly away. Sothis has caused me to fly up to the sky in the company of my Brethren (the circumpolar, “imperishable” stars)…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Appointment as “Great One” is given to him</span> [Unas] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">by Orion</span> [Osiris]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, father of gods. King Unas has dawned again in the sky, shining as lord of the horizon.</span></blockquote>Further, the inscription describes Unas as being not only a god among men but also a god among gods – who eats other gods! It’s now called “The Cannibal Hymn” and includes:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">A god who lives on his fathers, who feeds on his mothers...</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Unas is the bull of heaven, who rages in his heart, who lives on the being of every god, who eats their entrails…</span><br /><br />[The goddess] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Shesmu cuts them up for King Unas and cooks for him a portion of them in his evening kettles (his evening meal). King Unas is he who eats their charms, and devours their glorious ones (souls). Their great ones are for his morning portion, their middle-sized ones are for his evening portion, their little ones are for his night portion.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">King Unas is the “Great Mighty-One” who overpowers the “Mighty Ones”. Whom he finds in his way, him he devours…</span></blockquote>Possibly the above is describing how the stars disappear either in sunlight or with the annual rotation of the Earth about the Sun, but possibly it suggests that some Ancient Egyptians practiced cannibalism. If the latter possibility seems unsavory to the reader, consider the subsequent Christian “Eucharist” ritual (copied from a similar ritual in Mithraism), in which Christians symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus! In any event, obviously the Pyramid Texts became “ritualized” (no doubt from the encouragement of the priests), eventually including no fewer than 759 “utterances” that the deceased king was to recite to ensure his eternal life. Relevant to these posts dealing with the life-after-death lie, <span style="font-style: italic;">Utterance 373</span> is particularly relevant:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Oho! Oho! Rise up, O Teti!<br />Take your head, collect your bones,<br />Gather your limbs, shake the earth from your flesh!<br />Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not,<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stand at the gates that bar the common people!</span></blockquote>That is, the line that I italicized states that eternal life was only for the kings, not for “the common people.”<br /><br />It therefore appears that, in the earliest Egyptian period, only the kings laid claim to eternal life among the stars. Subsequently, however, apparently some of the “nobles” claimed similar. An illustration is available in the Inscriptions of Harkhuf, The Explorer, whose “biography” (on the walls of his tomb) is introduced as follows in the multi-authored 1917 <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East – Egypt:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There is one of these biographies in which the official was a traveler, an explorer of unknown regions… [T]his bold Egyptian lord, Harkhuf by name, is thus the earliest-known adventurer in the vast and heroic work of earth’s exploration… Among his list of titles listed on the door of his tomb are “count”, “governor of the South”, and “wearer of the royal seal”. He “may have succeeded Uni in this office <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[Uni was a general and judge under King Pepi]</span>, but it was now becoming merely a rank.</blockquote>The Inscriptions of Harkhuf, The Explorer, include the following:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O ye living, who are upon earth, [who shall pass by this tomb whether] going down-stream or going up-stream, who shall say: “A thousand loaves, a thousand jars of beer for the owner of this tomb.” I will [...] for their sakes in the nether world. I am an excellent, equipped spirit, a ritual priest, whose mouth knows</span> [“a promise to intercede with the powers of the hereafter on behalf of the living who repeat a prayer for the sake of the deceased”]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">. As for any man who shall enter into [this] tomb [as his mortuary possession, I will seize] him like a wild fowl; he shall be judged for it by the great god.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I was one saying good things and repeating what was loved. Never did I say aught evil, to a powerful one against any people, <i>(for)</i> </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I desired that it might be well with me in the great god’s presence…</span> [Italics added]</blockquote>The last clause in the above quotation is, as far as I know, the first indication that other than Egyptian kings expected a chance for eternal life; i.e., that they would be judged, after death, “in the great god’s [i.e., Osiris’] presence.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Judgment after Death</span><br />Given the people’s speculations about life-after-death derived from the “rebirth” of vegetation and astronomical bodies, and given that Nature had taught people the meaning of ‘justice’, then upon experiencing injustices, the people probably began to speculate about the possibility of attaining justice in their next life, possibly thinking something similar to: “Well, if there’s no justice in this life, at least we’ll finally get justice in the next life – when everyone will be judged – and get their just desserts!” King Teti, however, stated that the gates were barred for “the common people”.<br /><br />People power, however, eventually prevailed. After approximately a thousand years (!) of corruption, by the kings and their clerics and then in addition by “the elite” (such as Harkhuf), the social order began to collapse and the world’s second, known, political-revolution occurred. <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">Recall </a>that the first such revolution occurred in Mesopotamia, led by Urukagina in about 2350 BCE; the result was to (temporarily) curb the excesses of the priests. In his great on-line <a href="http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/index.html">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ancient World,</span> Frank E. Smitha describes circumstances leading up to the revolution in Egypt as follows:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Egypt’s politics, like its religion, changed. Local authorities who had been appointed by ministers at the king’s court were allowed to bequeath their positions to their sons. Their descendants became hereditary nobles, and they believed that their positions were part of the god-given order. The new hereditary nobles wished to be united with Osiris after death, as was the king. And if the opportunity presented itself – if a king were weak or lazy – some nobles ruled their domains without interference from the king.<br /><br />Feuds within royal families and problems involving the succession of kings led to the demise of many Egyptian dynasties. When the eighth dynasty collapsed, around 2130 BCE, nobles took control over what had been units of the king’s army stationed in their area, and these nobles began to rule on their own. Kings remained, at least in name, but for two centuries no pharaoh ruled over the whole of Egypt, and common people suffered under the control of the local nobles. This happened during a period of unusual dryness in Africa and low flooding of the Nile. Famine appeared. Common Egyptians became violent, and anarchy swept north and south along the Nile. Peasants seized property. Servants overpowered their masters and made their masters servants. It was written that the high-born were full of lamentations and the poor full of joy. And taking advantage of the anarchy, people from Nubia (called Cush by the Egyptians) came north and settled in Egypt, as did mercenaries from elsewhere.<br /><br />Rebellions in different areas failed to unite with each other, and eventually nobles with armies suppressed the uprisings. Amid the warring, the same tendency that brought unity to Egypt a thousand years before brought unity to Egypt again. One ruler (from Thebes) spread his power over the whole of Egypt. Shortly thereafter (around 1900 BCE), someone usurped power at Thebes. This was Amenemhet I, who began a new dynasty – the twelfth…<br /><br />The new king had learned from the past. He believed that it was his duty to promote justice – as embodied in the goddess Ma’at. The worship of Ma’at now included a belief that, during the social upheavals, the gods had abandoned Egypt, and that it had been prophesied that a king would come and end the injustice. And it was believed that the prophecy had been fulfilled. The king was aware that poor people and nobles expected their king to be more concerned with their welfare than had kings centuries before, that they expected a system of justice that redressed mistreatment. The king and his ministers were more concerned than were previous kings about protecting common people from exploitation. The king opened positions in government to people of ability from outside his family.<br /><br />Nobles were allowed to retain some of their powers, and they received recognition of the place in the afterlife that they had wanted. <span style="font-style: italic;">Commoners were also recognized as having an afterlife, and it was now believed that commoners would meet Osiris when they died, and that Osiris, working with Ma’at, would judge people entering the underworld.</span> [Italics added] The Egyptians now believed that before one entered the underworld, his or her sins were put onto scales of justice. An ostrich feather represented Ma’at, and if an individual’s sins outweighed the ostrich feather he was rejected. Commoners saw their sins as weighing little, for most of them expected an eternal afterlife of paradise in pleasant labor, maintaining their earthy status amid kindly gods.</blockquote>But in reality, wouldn’t you know it, the clerics won again. Whereas previously they had power only over the king (through massaging his ego), and then power over both the king and the nobles (dictating the rituals required to achieve “eternal life”), once the people also claimed their “right” to live forever, the clerics then controlled the imagination of everyone!<br /><br />As for detail of the rigmarole that the clerics of Ancient Egypt concocted and that the people imagined they’d need to follow to achieve eternal life, they’re mind-boggling in their complexity. I don’t see much point in reviewing the complexity (many websites provide full details), but in the remainder of this post, I want to show at least a little of the imagined “judgment ceremony” to provide a contrast with another crazy concoction by the Mormon’s “first prophet and seer”, Joseph Smith, Jr.<br /><br />To outline the imagined judgment ceremony, which is specified in astounding detail in the Egyptian <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Dead">Book of the Dead</a> [or <span style="font-style: italic;">Book for the Dead</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Spells of Coming</span> (or <span style="font-style: italic;">Going</span>) <span style="font-style: italic;">Forth by Day</span>], I’ll rely on the great presentation at the <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptafterlife.html">Crystalinks website</a>. It starts with the following figure.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhswK6gMZDMzrcfQvz4ZO97CSkeLpYhEeQY01Wvw8p-4mtMhTN2mKwKWcQ4OYSIxrfX6DciFPg0TXu52PUpUYoBhDuHlmZY07BsHUR4HG2CpOQjI4of1M7vC9-BmiFKwOivFy6OJ-Nf_aE/s1600-h/4.+egyptianjudgment.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhswK6gMZDMzrcfQvz4ZO97CSkeLpYhEeQY01Wvw8p-4mtMhTN2mKwKWcQ4OYSIxrfX6DciFPg0TXu52PUpUYoBhDuHlmZY07BsHUR4HG2CpOQjI4of1M7vC9-BmiFKwOivFy6OJ-Nf_aE/s400/4.+egyptianjudgment.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507407369675602" border="0" /></a><br />Along the top and bottom of this figure are shown the 42 (!) gods (each representing a Nome or province of Egypt), whose names the deceased (namely, in this case, a fellow called Hunefer; the one wearing the “house coat”!) must know and to whom he must make his (42) “negative confessions”. In an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html">earlier post</a>, I displayed the full list. Here, I’ll list only a few, but I’ll include the <a href="http://bookofthedead.book-lover.com/bookofthedead10.html">names</a> of some of the gods to whom the “confessions” (or claims!) were made:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Usekh-nemmit</span> [“He of long strides”]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, comer forth from Anu</span> [Heliopolis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not committed sin.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Fenti</span> [“He of the nose”]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, comer forth from Khemenu</span> [Hermopolis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not robbed.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Neha-hāu</span> [“Stinking member”!]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, comer forth from Re-stau, I have not killed men.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Neba, comer forth in retreating</span> [or “who comest and goest”]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not plundered the property of God.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Set-qesu</span> [“Breaker of bones”]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, comer forth from Hensu</span> [Herakleopolis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not lied.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Uammti, comer forth from Khebt, I have not defiled any man’s wife.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Maa-anuf, comer forth from Per-Menu</span> [Panopolis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not defiled myself.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Tem-Sep, comer forth from Tetu</span> [Busiris]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not cursed the king.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Nefer-Tem, comer forth from Het-ka-Ptah</span> [Memphis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, I have not acted deceitfully; I have not committed wickedness.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">O Nekhen, comer forth from Heqāt, I have not turned a deaf ear to the words of the Law (or Truth)…</span></blockquote>In the above figure, both to the left and to the right of the “balance scale” (the purpose of which I’ll get to) are depictions of the goddess of truth, Ma’at. Measuring with the scales is the jackal-headed Anubis. To the right (perhaps recording the result of the measurement) is the ibis-headed Thoth. The balance, itself, was imagined to compare the weight of the sins of the deceased (as they weigh on his heart, which is on the left pan of the balance) against the weight of Ma’at’s feather (shown on the right pan). If the sins of the deceased weren’t “light as a feather”, if they outweighed Ma’at's “feather of truth and justice”, then the god Ammut (shown at the center, with “crocodile head and hippopotamus legs”) would devour the deceased’s heart – which would be the end of him!<br /><br />In the second figure (shown below, copied from the same <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptafterlife.html">Crystalink website</a>; originally from the Papyrus of Hunefer), more of the imagined “judgment ceremony” is depicted. At the top left, the deceased is addressing <a href="http://www.dpedtech.com/TThnfr.pdf">14 senior gods</a>,<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…beginning with Heru-akhuti or Ra (Sun), Tem (Tower), and Shu (Emperor). Then comes Nut (Star), Seb/Geb (Earth), Tefnut/Sekhmet (Strength), followed by a repeat of Horus, Isis, and Nebthys. Then come H*u (Ministrant of Cups), Saa (Ministrant of Discs), Uat-rest (The Way of South, the goddess of dreams), Uat-meh*t (The Way of North, the Full Moon [meh*uatchit]), and Uat-ament (The Way of West, goddess of the abode of dead). Mut, The Vulture Mother Goddess of Egypt is the Empress.” The Vulture Mother Goddess of Egypt is the Empress.</blockquote>At the lower left, the jackal-headed Anubis is leading the deceased toward “the balancing act”; in the next scene, the measurement is being made by Anubis and possibly the result is being recorded by Thoth. In the next scene (near the center), the falcon-headed Horus (presumably Horus-the-Younger) leads the deceased toward the final judge of the dead, Osiris, behind whom stands both his sister-wife Isis (in red) and his sister Nephthys (in green). Osiris “holds the symbols of Egyptian kingship in his hands: the shepherd’s crook to symbolize his role as shepherd of mankind, and the flail, to represent his ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjonJYeTKReKe3KqwTFs8RMUP5wxz9Hcie5l5hGLvVHhtGXgslrBgFN3I-01qB6kigHlVLJduilREnwWzDUNtzchFUJp8lp37QHdeWIKPeSFUtSc6fKEYagUAqM5ig_Uy1gmpMHQzXfvx8/s1600-h/5.+funerary+scene.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjonJYeTKReKe3KqwTFs8RMUP5wxz9Hcie5l5hGLvVHhtGXgslrBgFN3I-01qB6kigHlVLJduilREnwWzDUNtzchFUJp8lp37QHdeWIKPeSFUtSc6fKEYagUAqM5ig_Uy1gmpMHQzXfvx8/s400/5.+funerary+scene.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507404918721010" border="0" /></a><br />Now, for comparison (with all that Egyptian nonsense!), consider the nonsense perpetrated by Joseph Smith, Jr., the “first seer and prophet” of the Mormons. At the “<a href="http://www.lds.org/">official website</a>” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormon Church), as part of the “sacred scripture” called <a href="http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/contents">The Book of Abraham</a>, there is <a href="http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/fac_3">Facsimile No. 3</a>, shown below, with its accompanying EXPLANATION, as given by prophet (profit!) Joe himself – and to which I’ve added the notes that appear in brackets.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sh1vdy1YagoNeFsrif_w_aUIcRvDlj0jheeEkWvmV9Iw6CgkDb5_8hcwaQQQ2gIT8ldrWNRXHleuYC4qc8aK8IpxK_5Tp_9QVrJEdC0GZqxI__ss38pwI1fE2R64gHWTWStOMBvcI1A/s1600-h/6.+fac3.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sh1vdy1YagoNeFsrif_w_aUIcRvDlj0jheeEkWvmV9Iw6CgkDb5_8hcwaQQQ2gIT8ldrWNRXHleuYC4qc8aK8IpxK_5Tp_9QVrJEdC0GZqxI__ss38pwI1fE2R64gHWTWStOMBvcI1A/s400/6.+fac3.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367507394216834098" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">EXPLANATION </span>[according to Joseph Smith, Jr.]<br /></div><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 1.</span> [The numbers refer to the labels near each “subfigure” shown in the figure.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Abraham</span> [rather than Osiris!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">sitting upon Pharaoh’s throne, by the politeness of the king, with a crown upon his head, representing the Priesthood</span> [rather than the unification of Upper- and Lower-Egypt] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">as emblematical of the grand Presidency in Heaven; with the scepter of justice and judgment in his hand.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 2. King Pharaoh</span> [rather than Isis– couldn’t Joe at least notice her dress?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">whose name is given in the characters above his head.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 3. Signifies Abraham in Egypt as given also in Figure 10 of <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/07/clerical-quackery-1-life-after-death.html">Facsimile No. 1</a>.</span> [Sorry, Joe, but <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html">that’s</a> “the ever present libation platform that is common in nearly all drawings containing major god-figures. It is topped by the customary stylized papyrus blossom.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 4. Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt</span> [In a dress? It’s the goddess of justice, Ma’at!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">as written above the hand.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 5. Shulem</span> [the deceased!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, one of the king’s principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 6. Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince.</span> [Of course, it’s actually Anubis, depicted as black and with a jackal head; Smith obviously changed the head but kept Anubis’ color – and concluded that Anubis was a slave, probably with the thought: “Aren’t all black people slaves?”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Abraham</span> [Osiris!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">is reasoning upon the principles of Astronomy, in the king’s court </span>[rather than welcoming the deceased to the underworld, now that he’s passed “the feather test”]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">.</span></blockquote><br />Which leads me to wonder: when will the majority of the world’s people support passing laws to outlaw such balderdash as was promoted by Smith, Muhammad, “Saint” Paul, Ezra et al. – and is still promoted by the clueless but conniving clerics of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.? It could be a simple law, such as: “Anyone who promotes concepts unsupported by evidence is liable for all resulting damages.” As Joseph Lewis wrote:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Let me tell you that religion is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great scheme of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people. The penalty for this type of extortion should be as severe as it is of other forms of dishonesty.</blockquote>What a revolution would result from such a law! In contrast to the world’s first and second revolutions, the result would be a revolution that would make our progeny proud of their ancestors. Yet, even now, we can be proud of some of our ancient ancestors. For example, apparently not everyone in Ancient Egypt bought into their clerics’ balderdash. As an illustration, in his amazing <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Story of Religious Controversy,</span> the ex-Jesuit priest Joseph McCabe reports that in “Professor Steindorff’s <i>Religion of the Ancient Egyptians”</i> there is the following “funeral song, which he describes as ‘very old and popular’.” It's commonly called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Song of the Harper,</span> the earliest versions of which are from before 2500 BCE.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The gods [kings] who were in past times rest in their pyramids.<br />The noble also and the wise are buried in their pyramids.<br />They that built houses, their place is no longer.<br />Thou seest what is become of them…<br /><br />No one comes thence to tell us what is become of them,<br />To tell us how it fares with them, to comfort our heart.<br />Until thou approachest the place whither they are gone,<br />Forget not to glorify thyself with joyful heart,<br />And follow thy heart as long as thou livest.<br /><br />Lay myrrh upon thy head; clothe thyself in fine linen,<br />Anointing thyself with the truly marvelous things of god.<br />Adorn thyself; make thyself as fair as thou canst;<br />And let thy heart sink not.<br />Follow thy heart and thy joy<br />As long as thou livest upon earth:<br />Trouble not thy heart until the day of mourning come upon thee.<br />With joyous countenance keep a day of festival, and rest not in it;<br />For no one takes his goods with him;<br />Yea, no one returns that is gone hence.</blockquote>To me, such thoughts suggest that many ancient people were skeptical of their clerics’ concoctions, instead concluding that they should enjoy the life they had: “Follow thy heart and thy joy as long as thou livest upon earth.” Today, many people are similarly skeptical: well over a billion of us reject all organized religions. In fact, many of us are so skeptical of clerical concoctions that we’d support laws holding clerics liable for the damages caused by their damnable lies, damages that range from distorting the ambitions of youngsters to destroying lives in wars.<br /><br />Unfortunately, however, clerics still control the imaginations of the majority of the world’s people. Such people are obviously quite willing to pay their clerics for stimulating their imaginations and massaging their egos. In particular, Christian, Muslim, Mormon… clerics promote a game of “make believe” in which the people (the players, payers, and prayers) are permitted to imagine that they’re so important that they’ll live forever in paradise with their fictitious god(s). In such make-believe schemes (in which it apparently doesn’t bother adherents that the concept of “life after death” is an oxymoron), claims are made that, when they die, “good people” (such as they, of course) will go to some speculated version of Heaven and “bad people” (such as those who point out that “life after death” is an oxymoron!) will go to a fantasy place that adherents commonly call Hell. Soon, surely science will save us from such silliness, so that, in the lyrics of <a href="http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/0-9/5thdimension5417/ageofaquarius224585.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Aquarius</span></a>:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Harmony and understanding</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Sympathy and trust abounding</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">No more falsehoods or derisions…</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">And the mind’s true liberation</span> […from clerical quackery!]<br /></div><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div></div><p></p>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-210432142756518112009-07-01T02:12:00.000-07:002009-08-04T11:29:49.567-07:00Clerical Quackery 1 - The Life-After-Death Lie<div><br /></div>Every so often when climbing mountains, it’s useful to pause to assess how far you’ve come, how far there’s yet to go, and how to tackle the next phase of the climb. Similar seems useful here. I’ll therefore start by recalling that, way back (21 posts ago!), I introduced what I call <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/07/act-ii-mountainous-god-lie.html">The Mountainous God Lie</a>, defined as follows.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Mountainous God Lie – Lingering social evils from initial misunderstandings and then subsequent deliberate falsification of the records, plus manipulation of ignorant people by stupid or poorly educated or power mongering priests and politicians:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That gods exist,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That birth of children is controlled the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That the dead are ruled by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That people have souls, which are judged by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That stars and their constellations are signs from the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That movements of stars tell stories of gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That dreams contain messages from the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That magic displays the mystery of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That mysteries conceal the secrets of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That sacrifices are needed to placate the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That rituals reveal knowledge of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That mistakes are ‘sins’ against the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That sins offend and are punished by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerics can forgive sins on behalf of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerics are in contact with the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerics exercise authority on behalf of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerics are spokesmen for the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerics preach the wills of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerical “knowledge” is direct from the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That clerical hierarchies are established by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That rather than serving themselves, the clerics serve the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That paying the clerics placates the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That prayers have power to persuade the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That tithes are collected on behalf of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That “oracles” and “prophets” speak for the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That “truth” is told about prophets and gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That a “race” of people was chosen by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That covenants can be established with the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That morality is defined by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That customs are created by the gods</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That laws are dictated by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That leaders are chosen by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That rulers know right by the grace of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That order is ordained by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That punishment is performed by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That judges are judged by gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That leaders rule by the grace of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That kingdoms are established by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That the fate of societies is controlled by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That human rights are endowed by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That people should put their trust in the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That believers gain grace as a gift of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That wars are waged on behalf of the gods…</span><br /></blockquote>A more accurate analogy, however, is that the God Lie is not so much a single mountain of lies as multiple, mountain ranges of lies. Each organized religion (Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) is a more-or-less-isolated mountain range of lies, but they all rest on the bedrock lie that gods exist.<br /><br />In prior posts, I explored various peaks in at least one mountain range of clerical lies, specifically, those in Judaism. To <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/08/questions-about-creation-of-old.html">begin the exploration</a>, I tried to expose some of the lies contained in the first part of the Old Testament (OT). In turn, many of those lies were repeated from earlier cultures (particularly in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia) and, in turn, the same lies are repeated in Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc. The lies include the following (from the list given above):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That gods exist…<br />• That mistakes are ‘sins’ against the gods,<br />• That sins offend and are punished by the gods,<br />• That clerics can forgive sins on behalf of the gods…<br />• That prayers have power to persuade the gods,<br />• That tithes are collected on behalf of the gods,<br />• That “oracles” and “prophets” speak for the gods,<br />• That “truth” is told about prophets and gods,<br />• That a “race” of people was chosen by the gods…</blockquote>Next, in the preceding seven posts of this series, I explored what I call the Law Lie (a common formation in any religion’s mountain range of lies), namely (again from the first list above), the lies:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That morality is defined by the gods,<br />• That customs are created by the gods,<br />• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,<br />• That judges are judged by the gods,<br />• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,<br />• That covenants can be established with the gods,<br />• That leaders are chosen by the gods,<br />• That laws are dictated by the gods,<br />• That order is ordained by the gods…</blockquote>Now, for this and the remaining posts in this series, my goal is to at least partially address all the remaining lies in the first list given above, which collectively I’ll call “Clerical Quackery”:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods,<br />• That the dead are ruled by the gods,<br />• That people have souls, which are judged by the gods,<br />• That stars and their constellations are signs from the gods,<br />• That movements of stars tell stories of gods,<br />• That dreams contain messages from the gods,<br />• That magic displays the mystery of the gods,<br />• That mysteries conceal the secrets of the gods,<br />• That sacrifices are needed to placate the gods,<br />• That rituals reveal knowledge of the gods…<br />• That clerics are in contact with the gods,<br />• That clerics exercise authority on behalf of the gods,<br />• That clerics are spokesmen for the gods,<br />• That clerics preach the wills of the gods,<br />• That clerical “knowledge” is direct from the gods,<br />• That clerical hierarchies are established by the gods,<br />• That rather than serving themselves, the clerics serve the gods,<br />• That paying the clerics placates the gods…<br />• That leaders rule by the grace of the gods,<br />• That kingdoms are established by the gods,<br />• That the fate of societies is controlled by the gods,<br />• That human rights are endowed by the gods,<br />• That people should put their trust in the gods,<br />• That believers gain grace as a gift of the gods,<br />• That wars are waged on behalf of the gods…</blockquote>For this post, in particular, my goal is to provide at least a little evidence exposing a part of the first lie in the list immediately above, a lie that I’ll abbreviate to “The Life-after-Death Lie”.<br /><br />In an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">earlier post</a> in this series, I began to explore the origin of the Life-after-Death Lie by examining the source of the lies<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That gods exist,<br />• That people have immortal souls imbued by the gods…</blockquote>Readers of that post might remember the suggestions (especially from the tremendous, online, 1921 <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/">book</a> by the ex-Catholic priest Joseph McCabe entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Story of Religious Controversy</span>):<br /><blockquote>1) That tens of thousands of years ago, primitive people seem to have developed ideas about souls, spirits, and gods from their observations of their shadows and their images (e.g., in pools of water) and from trying to understand their dreams, which in turn led to ideas of life after death (at least as “spirits”),<br /><br />2) That people’s memories of their parents, grandparents, and tribal leaders probably led people to assume that their ancestors’ spirits were still present (which led to deification or “apotheosis” of ancestors and of especially powerful, deceased tribal leaders),<br /><br />3) That the idea of spirits in everything (animism) eventually developed, led by tribal shamans (which in turn led to various priesthoods), and<br /><br />4) That the especially powerful spirits (e.g., those “controlling” important natural processes, such as the winds, storms, volcanoes, etc.) were eventually identified and worshipped as gods, an identification consistent with the evolutionary lesson that taught people (and other animals) the survival value in trying to identify causes of all effects, a lesson that’s now apparently “hard-wired” in our brains.</blockquote>From available myths, archeological data, and written records, it’s clear that by 3000 BCE the Life-after-Death Lie (i.e., originally, the mistaken, oxymoronic idea of “life after death”) was accepted as “true” in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. Subsequently, the Life-after-Death Lie was incorporated into the foundations of Zoroastrianism (in Persia), some sects of Judaism (specifically, those that incorporated Zoroaster’s ideas), and all of Christianity, Islam, and similar con games such as Mormonism. Especially in Ancient Egypt and India, the resulting cacophonies of clerical rituals and the associated kaleidoscopes of gods developed in association with the Life-after-Death Lie must have been – and still are! – mind boggling. In these posts, I don’t plan to delve into the full pantheon of Egyptian (or Indian or Greek or Roman!) gods, but I’ll try to demonstrate the value in reviewing at least a little of the myth of the “holy trinity” of Egyptian gods, consisting of Osiris, his wife Isis, and their son Horus (“Horus the Younger”).<br /><br />This “holy trinity” of Osiris, Isis, and Horus continued to be worshiped by many followers until <a href="http://www.carnaval.com/isis">about</a> 400 CE. Probably such worship would have continued, but it was “outlawed” by Christian rulers of the Roman Empire. Yet, the Christians with their trinity of “father, son, and the holy ghost” didn’t really obliterate the earlier trinity of Osiris, Horus, and Isis, in part because the Christian “holy ghost” was commonly depicted as a bird (which was the symbol that the Ancient Egyptians commonly used to depict Isis) and also because many of the pictures and statues of the “virgin” Mary with baby Jesus [or “the Madonna (= <span style="font-style: italic;">mea Domina</span> = my lady) and child”] were actually of the goddess Isis with her and Osiris’ son Horus. For an illustrative comparison, see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis">figure</a> below – which, by the way, belies the claim of many Christians that at least their religion introduced reverence of mother and child.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqwnU8jyLzdtCEsvTjwb2pLMn9YGSSLW7nVG4xwRsaBaWmZtYzPsnnFiLb3Sss_DQkRZZxpKZG0pRZ0m-cOgCBv2z1MhsXum0lgPM-P9D6peWXee0JRuh-bXJvsBD1t1TFd9L4eGB93i8/s1600-h/1.+MaryAndHorus.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 365px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqwnU8jyLzdtCEsvTjwb2pLMn9YGSSLW7nVG4xwRsaBaWmZtYzPsnnFiLb3Sss_DQkRZZxpKZG0pRZ0m-cOgCBv2z1MhsXum0lgPM-P9D6peWXee0JRuh-bXJvsBD1t1TFd9L4eGB93i8/s400/1.+MaryAndHorus.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420487968204482" border="0" /></a><br />In this post, I want to show a little about the Egyptian “holy trinity”, because details will reveal one of the most dramatic illustrations of clerical quackery that’s been thoroughly documented, namely, how the Mormon prophet (or better, “profit”!) Joseph Smith, Jr. duped his followers (who now total approximately 10 million people) into giving him even more largess (and more wives) by misrepresenting an Egyptian papyrus originally used as part of the Life-after-Death Lie promoted by ancient Egyptian clerics.<br /><br />In the Egyptian creation myth (or, at least, in one of them – for there are several!), Osiris was the great-grandson of the creator god Nu (or Atum or Ra or Neb-er-tcher or Khepera!). The following is from the <i>Papyrus of Nesi Amsu</i> as given in the excellent, online, 1908 <a href="http://www.bencourtney.com/ebooks/egypt/">book</a> by E.A. Wallis Budge entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life.</span> In the following quotation, the speaker is the alleged creator god.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I evolved the evolving of evolutions.</span> [Who said Darwin was the first to propose the theory of evolution?! This myth is from ~5,000 years ago!] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I evolved myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera</span> [or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khepri">Khepri</a>] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">which were evolved at the beginning of all time.</span><br /><br />[The Ancient Egyptians imagined that Khepera pushed the Sun along. Later, he became identified with the Sun at dawn. Still later, Khepera became the same as Nefertum or <a href="http://www.nemo.nu/ibisportal/0egyptintro/1egypt/index.htm">Nefertem</a>, literally “the beauty of Tem”, the rising Sun. Meanwhile, ‘kheper’ is the dung or scarab beetle, which the Ancient Egyptians thought was created from dead matter, with the word ‘kheper’ meaning “to come into being”.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I evolved with the evolutions of the god Khepera; I evolved by the evolution of evolutions – that is to say, I developed myself from the primeval matter which I made, I developed myself out of the primeval matter. My name is Ausares (Osiris), the germ of primeval matter.</span> [If the reader wonders how Osiris, later in the myth identified as Khepera’s great-grandson, was also Khepera, then I’d be glad to explain it – as soon as some Christian will explain how Jesus is also his father!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I have wrought my will wholly in this earth, I have spread abroad and filled it, I have strengthened it (with) my hand. I was alone, for nothing had been brought forth; I had not then emitted from myself either Shu</span> [the <a href="http://www.nemo.nu/ibisportal/0egyptintro/1egypt/index.htm">wind god</a>; “the very old god of the cool and dry air, who separated the Earth from the sky”; his mother was the sky goddess Nut; his father was the earth-god Seb or Geb] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">or Tefnut</span> [“the goddess for rain, dew, and moisture”, twin sister of Shu].<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I uttered my own name, as a word of power, from my own mouth, and I straightaway evolved myself.</span> [Recall the New Testament’s plagiarism:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."</span> (KJV, <span style="font-style: italic;">John 1,</span> 1 or) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">"When all things began, the Word already was. The word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him.”</span> (NEB, <span style="font-style: italic;">John 1,</span> 1–3).]<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I evolved myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera, and I developed myself out of the primeval matter which has evolved multitudes of evolutions from the beginning of time.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Nothing existed on this earth then, and I made all things. There was none other who worked with me at that time. I performed all evolutions there by means of that divine Soul which I fashioned there, and which had remained inoperative in the watery abyss. I found no place there whereon to stand. But I was strong in my heart, and I made a foundation for myself, and I made everything which was made. I was alone. I made a foundation for my heart (or will), and I created multitudes of things which evolved themselves like unto the evolutions of the god Khepera, and their offspring came into being from the evolutions of their births.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I emitted from myself the gods Shu and Tefnut</span> [other versions of the myth state this “emission” was his spit or his ejaculation]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, and from being One I became Three</span> [the original trinity?!]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">; they sprang from me, and came into existence in this earth… Shu </span>[the wind god] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">and Tefnut </span>[the rain goddess] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">brought forth Seb</span> [or Geb, the earth-god] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">and Nut</span> [the sky goddess]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, and Nut brought forth Osiris</span> [the grandson of Osiris!]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, Horus-khent-an-maa </span>[Horus-the-Elder]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, Sut</span> [known in Christianity as Satan and in Islam as Shaitan or Iblis]<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">, Isis, and Nephthya</span> [or Nephthys or Nepthys] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">at one birth.</span></blockquote>In reality, Osiris might have been an early ruler in Egypt (before 3000 BCE). Also, as mentioned in the previous post, his wife Isis might have ruled after his death and authored Egypt’s first laws, with the help of Osiris’ friend Thoth (who, later, was also worshipped as a god).<br /><br />In any event, whatever the reality, what was recorded is a series of fantastic myths about Osiris, Isis, Horus, and others – myths almost as fantastic as the myths in the current “holy books” and “sacred scripture” polluting our planet! In particular, the Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch (c.46 – c.120 CE) provided the following summary of the Osiris-Isis-Horus myth, copied here from Budge’s book (referenced above). I’ve also added some comments in brackets.<br /><br />In addition, I want to add a more general comment, especially directed to any Christian, Muslim, or Mormon reader who might question, “Why do I want to read another old Egyptian myth?” To such a reader, I'd want to respond: “This myth was recorded about 2,000 years ago (by Plutarch), at the same time that the New Testament (NT) was being written (mostly by other Greeks), it describes another myth that had major influences on the stories told in the NT, and it tells a story that’s more than twice as old as the oldest story in the NT!"<div><br /></div><div>Plutarch’s description follows, in which I’ve used Budge’s footnotes to provide [in brackets] the Egyptian names of the gods for whom Plutarch gave the corresponding Greek names (names that will be useful in later posts). If readers desire to read a version of the myth whose English flows more smoothly, a good one is available <a href="http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythisis.htm">here</a>.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Rhea </span>[i.e., the Greek name of the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut, sister-wife of Geb, the earth-god]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, say they, having accompanied Saturn</span> [i.e., the earth-god Geb (or Keb or Seb)] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">by stealth, was discovered</span> [presumably having an affair with Geb] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">by the Sun </span>[Ra]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, who hereupon denounced a curse upon her, “that she should not be delivered </span>[i.e., give birth] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">in any month or year.” Mercury</span> [the Greek’s “messenger of the gods”, known in Egypt as Thoth (or Tehuti), the advisor and scribe of the gods]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, however, being likewise in love with the same goddess, in recompense of the favors which he had received from her</span> [Nut seems to have had sex with many gods!]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, plays at tables </span>[i.e., games of chance] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">with the Moon, and wins from her</span> [the Moon]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> the seventieth part of each of her illuminations</span> [“causing” the Moon’s diminished illumination!]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; these several parts, making in the whole five days, he</span> [Thoth] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">afterwards joined together, and added to the three hundred and sixty, of which the year formerly consisted</span> [and which then led to an undesirable calendar]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, which days therefore are even yet called by the Egyptians the ‘Epact’ or ‘super-added’</span> [days]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, and observed by them as the birthdays of their gods.</span> [In other words: although Thoth couldn’t violate Ra’s order (that Nut couldn’t give birth during any month or year), Thoth managed a “work around”: he created five new days!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">For upon the first of them</span> [the extra five days]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, say they, was OSIRIS born, just at whose entrance into the world a voice was heard, saying, “The lord of all the earth is born</span> [similar to proclamations made about Jesus]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">.” There are some indeed who relate this circumstance in a different manner, as that a certain person, named Pamyles, as he was fetching water from the temple of Jupiter</span> [Horus-the-Elder] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">at Thebes, heard a voice commanding him to proclaim aloud that “the good and great king Osiris was then born”; and that for this reason Saturn</span> [Geb] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">committed the education of the child to him, and that in memory of this event the Pamylia were afterwards instituted, a festival much resembling the Phalliphoria or Priapeia of the Greeks.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Upon the second of these days was AROUERIS born, whom some call</span> [the Greek god] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Apollo, and others distinguish by the name of the elder Orus</span> [Horus-the-Elder; god of Upper Egypt, with Ra]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. Upon the third</span> [day] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Typho [</span>Set, god of the desert; the principal god of Lower Egypt; demonized by Upper Egypt, and as a result, Set became similar to the Christian’s Satan] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">came into the world, being born neither at the proper time, nor by the proper place, but forcing his way through a wound which he had made in his mother’s side.</span> [The goddess]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> ISIS was born upon the fourth of them in the marshes of Egypt, as NEPTHYS was upon the last, whom some call Teleute and</span> [the Greek goddess] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Aphrodite, and others Nike.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Now as to the fathers of these children, the two first of them</span> [Osiris and Horus-the-Elder] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">are said to have been begotten by the Sun </span>[Ra]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, Isis by Mercury</span> [Thoth], <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Typho</span> [Set, Satan] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">and Nepthys by Saturn</span> [Geb – revealing that Nut certainly slept around!]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; and accordingly, the third of these super-added days, because it was looked upon as the birthday of Typho</span> [Set, Satan]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, was regarded by the kings </span>[especially of Upper Egypt!] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">as inauspicious, and consequently they neither transacted any business on it, or even suffered themselves to take any refreshment until the evening. They further add, that Typho</span> [Set] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">married</span> [his sister] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Nepthys; and that Isis and Osiris, having a mutual affection, loved each other in their mother’s womb before they were born, and that from this commerce sprang Aroueris</span> [Horus-the-Elder]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, whom the Egyptians likewise call the elder Orus</span> [Horus]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, and the Greeks Apollo.</span> [Notice the amazing amount of sharing of myths, both by the Greeks and the Hebrews, and which (as I’ll show in later posts) continued into Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Osiris, being now become king of Egypt, applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen, by turning them from their former indigent and barbarous course of life; he moreover taught them how to cultivate and improve the fruits of the earth; he gave them a body of laws to regulate their conduct by, and instructed them in that reverence and worship which they were to pay to the gods. With the same good disposition he afterwards traveled over the rest of the world inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline; not indeed compelling them by force of arms, but persuading them to yield to the strength of his reasons, which were conveyed to them in the most agreeable manner, in hymns and songs, accompanied by instruments of music: from which last circumstance the Greeks conclude him to have been the same with their Dionysius or Bacchus.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">During Osiris’ absence from his kingdom, Typho</span> [Set, Satan]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> had no opportunity of making any innovations in the state, Isis being extremely vigilant in the government, and always upon her guard. After his</span> [Osiris’] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">return, however, having first persuaded seventy-two other persons to join with him</span> [Set] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">in the conspiracy, together with a certain queen of Ethiopia named Aso, who chanced to be in Egypt at that time, he</span> [Set] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">contrived a proper stratagem to execute his base designs. For having privily taken the measure of Osiris’ body, he caused a chest to be made exactly of the same size with it, as beautiful as may be, and set off with all the ornaments of art. This chest he brought into his banqueting-room; where, after it had been much admired by all who were present, Typho</span> [Set]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, as it were in jest, promised to give it to any one of them whose body upon trial it might be found to fit.</span> [This would make a great movie, with Charlton Heston as Set!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Upon this the whole company one after another, go into it; but as it did not fit any of them, last of all Osiris lays himself down in it, upon which the conspirators immediately ran together, clapped the cover upon it, and then fastened it down on the outside with nails, pouring likewise melted lead over it. After this they carried it away to the riverside, and conveyed it to the sea by the Tanaïtic mouth of the Nile; which, for this reason, is still held in the utmost abomination by the Egyptians, and never named by them but with proper marks of detestation. These things, say they, were thus executed upon the 17th</span> [therefore, a triply unlucky] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">day of the month Athyr, when the sun was in Scorpio, in the 28th year of Osiris’ reign; though there are others who tell us that he was no more than 28 years old at this time.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The first who knew the accident which had befallen their king were the Pans and Satyrs who inhabited the country about Chemmis (Panopolis); and they immediately acquainting the people with the news gave the first occasion to the name <i>Panic Terrors</i>, which has ever since been made use of to signify any sudden affright or amazement of a multitude. As to</span> [Osiris’ sister-wife] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Isis, as soon as the report reached her she immediately cut off one of the locks of her hair</span> [as a sign of her grief] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">and put on mourning apparel upon the very spot where she then happened to be, which accordingly from this accident has ever since been called Koptis, or the city of mourning, though some are of opinion that this word rather signifies deprivation.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">After this she wandered everywhere about the country full of disquietude and perplexity in search of the chest, inquiring of every person she met with, even of some children whom she chanced to see, whether they knew what was become of it. Now it happened that these children had seen what Typho’s </span>[Set’s] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">accomplices had done with the body, and accordingly acquainted her by what mouth of the Nile it had been conveyed into the sea. For this reason, therefore, the Egyptians look upon children as endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in a sacred place), forming omens and presages from it.</span> [“Words of wisdom out of the mouths of babes.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Isis, during this interval, having been informed that Osiris, deceived by her sister Nepthys who was in love with him, had unwittingly united with her instead of herself </span>[i.e., Nepthys tricked Osiris into having sex with her, pretending that she was Isis, leading to the child Anubis]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, as she </span>[Isis] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">concluded from the melilot-garland </span>[a wreath of clover]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, which he had left with her, made it her</span> [Isis’s]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> business likewise to search out the child, the fruit of this unlawful commerce (for her sister, dreading the anger of her husband Typho</span> [Set]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, had exposed it as soon as it was born), and accordingly, after much pains and difficulty, by means of some dogs that conducted her</span> [Isis] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">to the place where it was, she found it and bred it up; so that in process of time it became her</span> [Isis’s]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> constant guard and attendant, and from hence obtained the name of Anubis</span> [the son of Osiris and Nepthys, always depicted with the head of a dog or jackal]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, being thought to watch and guard the gods, as dogs do mankind.</span> [Ya gotta love this myth! It's great the way it "explains" why the Moon isn't so bright as the Sun and weaves in the friendliness of dogs and how (and why) five more days were incorporated into the 360-day year!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">At length she</span> [Isis] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">receives more particular news of the chest, that it had been carried by the waves of the sea to the coast of Byblos</span> [Budges adds the footnote that this Byblos was “not the Byblos of Syria” (or of Lebanon, which was a source of paper and after which is named the Bible) but was in the papyrus swamps of the Delta; other authors, however, suggest that it was the Byblos of Lebanon]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, and there gently lodged in the branches of a bush of Tamarisk, which, in a short time, had shot up into a large and beautiful tree, growing round the chest and enclosing it on every side, so that it was not to be seen; and further, that the king of the country, amazed at its unusual size, had cut the tree down, and made that part of the trunk wherein the chest was concealed, a pillar to support the roof of his house.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">These things, say they, being made known to Isis in an extraordinary manner by the report of Demons </span>[the world being full of demons, doncha know]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, she immediately went to Byblos; where, setting herself down by the side of a fountain, she refused to speak to anybody, excepting only to the queen’s women who chanced to be there; these indeed she saluted and caressed in the kindest manner possible, plaiting their hair for them, and transmitting into them part of that wonderfully grateful odor which issued from her own body. This raised a great desire in the queen their mistress to see the stranger who had this admirable faculty of transfusing so fragrant a smell from herself into the hair and skin of other people. She </span><span>[the queen]</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> therefore sent for her </span><span>[Isis]</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> to court, and, after a further acquaintance with her, made her nurse to one of her sons. Now the name of the king who reigned at this time at Byblos, was Meloarthus, as that of his queen was Astarte, or, according to others, Saosis, though some call her Nemanoun, which answers to the Greek name Athenais.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Isis fed the child by giving it her finger to suck instead of the breast; she likewise put him every night into the fire in order to consume his mortal part, whilst transforming herself into a swallow </span>[at other times, Isis transforms herself into other birds]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, she hovered round the pillar and bemoaned her sad fate. Thus continued she to do for some time, till the queen, who stood watching her, observing the child to be all in a flame, cried out, and thereby deprived him of that immortality which would otherwise have been conferred upon him.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The Goddess</span> [Isis] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">upon this, discovering herself</span> [i.e., admitting who she was]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, requested that the pillar, which supported the roof, might be given her; which she accordingly took down, and then easily cutting it open, after she had taken out what she wanted</span> [i.e., Osiris’ coffin]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, she wrapped up the remainder of the trunk in fine linen, and pouring perfumed oil upon it, delivered it again into the hands of the king and queen (which piece of wood is to this day preserved in the temple of Isis, and worshipped by the people of Byblos). When this was done, she threw herself upon the chest, making at the same time such a loud and terrible lamentation over it, as frightened the younger of the king’s sons, who heard her, out of his life. But the elder of them she took with, her and set sail with the chest for Egypt; and it being now about morning, the river Phaedrus sending forth a rough and sharp air, she in her anger dried up its current</span> [i.e., Isis obviously performed some powerful magic, easily matching the stunts later claimed to be performed by Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, et al.]</blockquote>I now terminate quoting Plutarch’s report, because there are at least two different versions of the Osiris-Isis-Horus myth describing subsequent events (e.g., how Isis had sex with the dead Osiris, leading to the birth of Horus-the-Younger), and Plutarch skims over both versions. But since the subsequent events are important for purposes of this post, I’ll therefore first jump to a brief description of the myth that's given at the Carnaval.com <a href="http://www.carnaval.com/isis/">website</a> and that mentions both possibilities for how Isis became pregnant:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Back in Egypt, Isis lay in the form of a hawk upon the dead body of Osiris and thus miraculously conceived her son Horus </span>[the Younger].<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Or she left the coffin at a place in Egypt while she went to see Horus</span> [the Elder]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. The evil Set found the body of Osiris and tore it into fourteen pieces, and scatted them. Isis painstakingly sought the parts of Osiris’s body and Isis and Horus</span> [the Elder] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">put them together. As the wings of Isis fluttered over the corpse, Ra then reanimated him, and Osiris was resurrected. But, to confuse Set, Isis effected to have each part buried where she found it, which is why there were fourteen graves of Osiris in Egypt. But she could not find a penis which the fishes had swallowed, and had to make a synthetic one </span>[out of gold] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">to conceive, in this version, their child Horus </span>[the Younger]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. Osiris then reigned as the king of the dead while Horus reigned on earth.</span></blockquote>If Plutarch’s report was confusing and the above quotation too terse, then first I’d ask for even more patience from the reader: believe it or not, all this nonsense has had important ramifications, which persist to this day. To try to help the reader, what I propose to do, next, is try to eliminate (or at least acknowledge!) potential confusions, then provide a brief synopsis of the above myth, and then, try to show why “all of this nonsense” is still important, especially for Christians and Mormons.<br /><br />One potential confusion arises because there are two Horuses, whom I’ve taken pains to identify as Horus-the-Elder (Osiris’ brother) and Horus-the-Younger (Osiris’ son), both of whom are usually depicted with the head of a hawk (or falcon) – or as just a falcon, alone. In the myths, it’s not always clear (at least to me!) which Horus is being described. In addition, it’s confusing (at least to me) that in some myths, Horus (which one?) is described not only as “the son of God” (i.e., the son of the deified Osiris) but also “the Sun god” (i.e., Ra). [A similar confusion occurs about Jesus, claimed to be “the son of God” but who is frequently depicted as “the Sun God”.]</div><div><br /></div><div>Fortunately, the reader can clearly see the distinction between the two Horuses in the <a href="http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/nile5komombo&page=all">picture</a> shown below (copyright Brian J. McMorrow). Thus, Horus-the-Younger is clearly on the left – and yes, I’m being facetious. Actually, though, the two Horuses in this picture are distinguishable by their "head gear": because the Horus-on-the-left is wearing the Double Crown (<i>Pschen</i>t), signifying the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, then according to Budge, he's Horus-the-Younger, while Horus-on-the-right is wearing the White Crown (<i>Hedjet</i>) of Upper Egypt. That interpretation, however, has been challenged. Thus, <a href="http://ancientegypt.hypermart.net/records/index.htm">Audrey Fletcher</a> proposes that the head gear doesn't represent political organizations but constellations near the constellation that the Greeks called Orion and the Ancient Egyptians called Osiris. In addition and not incidentally, the woman depicted leaving the scene at the left is Nephthys (not Isis, as can be discerned from her head gear), Horus-on-the-right is holding a powerful staff (just as powerful, no doubt, as the staff of Moses), but why both Horuses are holding the "Christian" crosses in their left hands is too long a story to describe in detail. Suffice to say (at least for now) that the "Christian" cross (i.e., the <i>ankh</i>, a symbol for 'life') predates Christianity by thousands of years.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RyfrEsQKNqBs8_-Ntqe_8nfvac0EQzlqC7eP5EHZVlo2ng5v3uV107gKUhGByBxBT-UUKSKT1Hej8wyb7njyeYIfRTjwVojeWXHR5MD-JgPRmH192GcZNynnrEzwDeOe7X6k7CXOtXA/s1600-h/2.+The_two_Horuses.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RyfrEsQKNqBs8_-Ntqe_8nfvac0EQzlqC7eP5EHZVlo2ng5v3uV107gKUhGByBxBT-UUKSKT1Hej8wyb7njyeYIfRTjwVojeWXHR5MD-JgPRmH192GcZNynnrEzwDeOe7X6k7CXOtXA/s400/2.+The_two_Horuses.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420487786449682" border="0" /></a><br />In his book (already referenced), Budge provides the following “clarification” (in which it will be useful to notice his final sentence).<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">But, besides Rā, there existed in very early times a god called HORUS, whose symbol was the hawk, which, it seems, was the first living thing worshipped by the Egyptians; Horus was the Sun-god, like Rā, and in later times was confounded with Horus the son of Isis. The chief forms of Horus given in the texts are: (1) HERU-UR (Aroueris), (2) HERU-MERTI, (3) HERU-NUB, (4) HERU-KHENT-KHAT, (5) HERU-KHENT-AN-MAA, (6) HERU-KHUTI, (7) HERU-SAM-TAUI, (8) HERU-HEKENNU, (9) HERU-BEHUTET. Connected with one of the forms of Horus, originally, were the four gods of the cardinal points, or the “four, spirits of Horus,” who supported heaven at its four corners; their names were HAPI, TUAMUTEE, AMSET, and QEBHSENNUF, and they represented the north, east, south, and west respectively. The intestines of the dead were embalmed and placed in four jars, each being under the protection of one of these four gods.</blockquote>For readers who feel that Budge’s explanation didn’t help, there are three obvious ways to deal with resulting confusions: 1) Ignore them, call whoever it is just “Horus”, and go-with-the-flow of the story, 2) Assume that Horus-the-Younger was one-and-the-same as Horus-the-Elder (just as Jesus was allegedly one-and-the-same as God-the-father), and 3) Have a Christian explain #2 to you!<br /><br />With that straightened out [ :)> I’ll now turn to a synopsis of the Osiris-Isis-Horus myth (which is given at hundreds of websites). As described by Plutarch, Osiris was born of the Earth god Set and the sky goddess Nut, who in turn were created by the original god, who was also the Sun-god Ra at dawn. Importantly for the story, Osiris had two brothers, Horus (the elder) and Seth (or Set), and two sisters, his future wife Isis (with whom he had sex while they were still in Nut's womb – talk about intense incest!) and Seth’s future wife Nephthys (with whom he also had sex – but presumably not while still in Nut's womb).<br /><br />There are a number of different stories about how animosity developed between the two brothers Osiris and Seth, an animosity similar to the one between the OT-brothers Cain and Abel (which Hebrew storytellers seem to have used to reflect the animosity between farmers and shepherds). The Egyptian myth-makers might have used Osiris and Seth (or Set, or Sut, pronounced “soot”, as in “black as soot”) to reflect the fundamental “animosity” between day and night, between good and evil, between the Egyptians and Ethiopians, or between Upper- and Lower-Egypt before they were united.<br /><br />As for how the animosity allegedly developed, at least one of the myths discounts that Seth was jealous of Osiris’ accomplishments and, instead, attributes the rift to the behavior of their sister Nephthys, Seth’s wife. [As the mystic Pope John Paul II <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/etc/bio2.html">reportedly said</a> in 1985 to Dr. Nafis Sadik, now Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General: “Don’t you think that the irresponsible behavior of men is caused by women?”!] In the Egyptian myth, when Nephthys found herself childless by the impotent Seth, she seduced Osiris (pretending to be Isis), leading to the child Anubis, who grew to become the jackal-headed god in charge of embalming. Upon learning about this double betrayal by his brother Osiris and sister-wife Nephthys, Seth seethed.<br /><br />As illustrated by the above quotation from Plutarch, how Seth managed to murder his brother Osiris is a long and complicated story. The myth is made longer and more complicated by the story of how Osiris’ sister-wife Isis tracked down the coffin of her husband-brother buried in “the tree of life” in the town of Byblos. It then becomes even more complicated with Seth interfering again (cutting Osiris’ corpse into 14 pieces, and scattering the pieces over Egypt), Isis seeking, finding, and with the help of her sister Nephthys and Nephthys’ son Anubis, re-assembling the pieces (save for one piece, Osiris’ penis, which was eaten by a fish or a crocodile or crab – depending which myth one “believes”).<br /><br />Although, thereby, Osiris was in pretty bad shape (dead and <span style="font-style: italic;">sans</span> penis) his sister-wife Isis (who was the goddess not only of love but also of magic) made him whole again (with a make-shift penis), managed to have sex with the revived Osiris (eventually leading to the child Horus), and with the help of his and Nephthys’ son Anubis, Osiris went on to become the god of the underworld, judging the dead. Subsequently, Isis went on to give birth to Horus (on December 25, in a stable), who when he reached manhood, set out to kill his “wicked uncle” Set, lost at an eye in the process, became Egypt’s ruler, and went on to become “guardian” of all future Egyptian leaders as the god Horus.<br /><br />Even today, Horus’ eye is quite famous, “protected by the eye of Horus”. It appears, for example, on the American one-dollar bill. How Horus’ eye ended up on U.S. currency is another complicated story (dealing with the Freemasons), some of which I plan to examine in a later post dealing with clerical rituals. If readers care to check that Horus’ eye is indeed on the American one-dollar bill, they’ll find it atop the depicted pyramid, to the left of the phrase “In God We Trust”. As for which god it’s thereby claimed that American’s trust, the picture speaks for itself!<br /><br />In fact , given the old Chinese proverb that “a picture is worth more than ten thousand words”, it will have been useful (for later in this post, dealing with “the Mormon connection”) to illustrate how the dead Osiris with his artificial penis managed to impregnate Isis. Fortunately for readers who found the above synopsis to be either too confusing or two terse, many illustrations of the story are available, e.g., as vignettes on many papyri. As a case in point, the first figure below (from Budge’s book) shows Horus-the-Elder (hawk headed) and Anibus (jackal headed) “watching over the impregnation of Isis [in the form of a bird, possibly a hawk] by the dead Osiris.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUVunggS9ZszguWqAPAtNlKKzfBncgn0HuZIyhuBkoWBbjf2PethroOUxum_XFTANe0Lz2zYzIdz3W0ujqBXrAGU-OyVthFNwy6nvdxVsq3HgHvMvJwURmLXkJp5qCqBarE2b40V474ek/s1600-h/3.+Horus%28Eld%29+%26+Anubis.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUVunggS9ZszguWqAPAtNlKKzfBncgn0HuZIyhuBkoWBbjf2PethroOUxum_XFTANe0Lz2zYzIdz3W0ujqBXrAGU-OyVthFNwy6nvdxVsq3HgHvMvJwURmLXkJp5qCqBarE2b40V474ek/s400/3.+Horus%28Eld%29+%26+Anubis.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420480566843938" border="0" /></a><br />In the next figure (copied from the more <a href="http://users.bigpond.net.au/bstone/sex_and_egypt.htm">risqué website</a> “Sex and Ancient Egypt”) Osiris’ erect penis (his phallus) is displayed more prominently, with Horus-the-Elder and Isis’s sister, Nephthys, urging (?) them on. Not incidentally, Nephthys is sometimes <a href="http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/egyptmyth/tp/071507egyptiandeities.htm">depicted</a> as (another) falcon or as a woman with falcon wings.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd9quNvQ-sMAJxT5rsmgeUdb6SvnkP2nYZFHFJw9poU2MxYhC9jIBAdXGg-HO40nCjOtxUCD3AaVmqmcDZzYx9w8v8_2VuRZpIkZ5aZdnEBbJ5k26QqqfzeTMt5JNMhSNqxj-Qwwgc5VY/s1600-h/4.+OsirisImpregnating.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 359px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd9quNvQ-sMAJxT5rsmgeUdb6SvnkP2nYZFHFJw9poU2MxYhC9jIBAdXGg-HO40nCjOtxUCD3AaVmqmcDZzYx9w8v8_2VuRZpIkZ5aZdnEBbJ5k26QqqfzeTMt5JNMhSNqxj-Qwwgc5VY/s400/4.+OsirisImpregnating.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420477173651794" border="0" /></a><br />To this day, the affair is depicted on various temple walls in Egypt, as shown in photographs at many websites. For example, the first <a href="http://www.sam-carter.de/abydos.htm">photograph</a> shown below was taken at the Temple of Seti (or Sethos) I at Abydos, constructed during the time period from about 1290 to 1250 BCE; notice that it’s probably the same scene as is depicted, above, from Budge. The second <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DenderaHathorTempleComplexQenaEgypt589-2007feb10PhotoByCsorfolyDaniel.JPG">photograph</a> was taken at the Temple at Dendara, built during the first century BCE; notice that it seems to be the same scene as is depicted in the second sketch, above.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgakEtBTnxyO6SoRHMnLfI_OPbLWQP9GkelsLaN9cePHfctfwz_2xInSTFamMf44zXb3vcAYYCVNWRevSjsh_xtquyf_G4gC1TuCA5WY_5i2GX1U77wQIRNK1T8dNJ7kPD09O6vsvRFXh8/s1600-h/5.+roof_scene.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgakEtBTnxyO6SoRHMnLfI_OPbLWQP9GkelsLaN9cePHfctfwz_2xInSTFamMf44zXb3vcAYYCVNWRevSjsh_xtquyf_G4gC1TuCA5WY_5i2GX1U77wQIRNK1T8dNJ7kPD09O6vsvRFXh8/s400/5.+roof_scene.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420131929329586" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbiMMNa1k-QUP5rRCwS7ql2g9yRVcNAIF3bHR0ktKI1ror6b7QR2unWr2lmhSDG3lYQAVjL5wF5UveCcS8XQssj9hCD-0gw7pXLYHvhBzikH5oQ4Au_onOWMQRq6M6uF2TSEQSNZj10zI/s1600-h/6.+bier.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 335px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbiMMNa1k-QUP5rRCwS7ql2g9yRVcNAIF3bHR0ktKI1ror6b7QR2unWr2lmhSDG3lYQAVjL5wF5UveCcS8XQssj9hCD-0gw7pXLYHvhBzikH5oQ4Au_onOWMQRq6M6uF2TSEQSNZj10zI/s400/6.+bier.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420130879450050" border="0" /></a><br />The reason why so many illustrations of the impregnation of Isis by Osiris are available is because the myth became a part of Egyptian rituals associated with burying their dead, preparing them to be judged by the god Osiris in their “afterlife”. Unfortunately, many of the associated papyri are damaged, such as the one shown below, commonly identified as the <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vignette1.jpg">Joseph Smith Papyrus – Vignette #1</a>. It’s called a ‘vignette’, since obviously it’s just a small scene within a larger, textual document. In this scene, notice the four “jars” beneath the bier (as mentioned in the above quotation from Budge) and also, notice that someone has unfortunately sketched in some lines behind the rips of the papyrus.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLRGHaDOUmjKmB3oKtT94Noajci2Nl35vbup2ZegN3s1WmvRlMltXMdMXthDDRRMV-gmJfYf_WWIuu8yuxLDK46lgCrW8Mr9S3rLVqcb-VnJ7BYG5rZTc1A0QeBTwxxhLH7Vg73uMQTxY/s1600-h/7.+Vignette1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLRGHaDOUmjKmB3oKtT94Noajci2Nl35vbup2ZegN3s1WmvRlMltXMdMXthDDRRMV-gmJfYf_WWIuu8yuxLDK46lgCrW8Mr9S3rLVqcb-VnJ7BYG5rZTc1A0QeBTwxxhLH7Vg73uMQTxY/s400/7.+Vignette1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420123660362914" border="0" /></a><br />It might be useful to provide a brief introduction to Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–44) and a summary of how the above papyrus came to be associated with him. Smith is described by Mormons as the (first) “prophet and seer” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), he was a convicted “money digger” (who conned people out of money by using a “magic stone” that he claimed could identify buried treasures), and he finally did “hit pay dirt” by claiming that an angel had told him where to find “a golden bible”, written in “reformed Egyptian” (even though no such language exists), which he then claimed he translated (apparently by using the same “magic stone”). In 1830, Smith published the resulting Book of Mormon, which was <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Qx22_LDS_Ludicrousness_-_2.pdf">probably</a> (with probability of about 70%) a plagiarized production by the former Baptist priest Sidney Rigdon, who subsequently became “high priest” of Mormonism. In 1835, a traveling antiquities dealer sold Smith what’s now called “The Joseph Smith Papyrus”. The price tag for it plus some mummies was $2,500, i.e., more than $50,000 of today’s dollars! For over a century, this papyrus was thought to be lost (possibly in the Chicago fire), but in 1966 it was found at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.<br /><br />When Smith set himself the task of “translating” his purchased papyrus (which certainly would have been a daunting task, since he knew nothing about Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian religion, or anything Egyptian!), one of his first undertakings was to complete the vignette shown only partially on the above ripped papyrus. The parts torn from the papyrus seem to “conveniently” avoid showing that the “man” on the left (Horus-the-Elder) had the head of hawk and that Osiris was holding his erect penis. The “completed” vignette (i.e., with extrapolations for the torn pieces), as commissioned by Joseph Smith, is posted at “<a href="http://www.lds.org/">the official website</a>” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There, it’s identified as “<a href="http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/fac_1">Facsimile No. 1</a>”; it’s reproduced below; it’s now part of the Mormon’s <a href="http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/contents">Book of Abraham</a>, which is one of the “<a href="http://scriptures.lds.org/">holy scriptures</a>” of Mormonism.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimbQxbVCZOA1TZU17_kLsdt2oJEVVtjk7KYbaDuUx2Sh2AwHFDpgh-JNKc4ZSuAki5lRJWRQdn1Xh67HIwgWXdPypg_ZHHtey18hOnJTzzrrS2LPJF9wbkQkFWK8X1JSDVmL0gsXcF37s/s1600-h/8.+fac1.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 396px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimbQxbVCZOA1TZU17_kLsdt2oJEVVtjk7KYbaDuUx2Sh2AwHFDpgh-JNKc4ZSuAki5lRJWRQdn1Xh67HIwgWXdPypg_ZHHtey18hOnJTzzrrS2LPJF9wbkQkFWK8X1JSDVmL0gsXcF37s/s400/8.+fac1.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420117645935970" border="0" /></a><br />Immediately underneath “Facsimile #1” at the LDS website is the official EXPLANATION of each “figure” (see the items labeled 1 through 12 in the above). This “explanation” was written by Smith, himself; to it I’ve added some notes in brackets:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 1.</span> [The bird on the right] <span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">The Angel of the Lord.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 2.</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Abraham fastened upon an altar</span> [although with one foot and two hands up, it’s hard to see how he’s “fastened”!]<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 3. The idolatrous priest of Elkenah</span> [the black person with a white head, complete with knife in his hand] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 4. The altar for sacrifice by the idolatrous priests, standing before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and Pharaoh.</span> [Smith apparently decided that the four jars under the bier were four “gods” in the background.]<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 5. The idolatrous god of Elkenah.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 6. The idolatrous god of Libnah.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 7. The idolatrous god of Mahmackrah.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 8. The idolatrous god of Korash.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh.</span> [The crocodile!]<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 10. Abraham in Egypt.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 11. Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Fig. 12. Raukeeyang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify Shaumau, to be high, or the heavens, answering to the Hebrew word, Shaumahyeem.</span><br /></blockquote>And for readers who just finished reading the profit Joe’s “explanation” and responded with something similar to “Hello?”, then I can assure them that the above “explanation” is as given by Smith: according to him, the essence of the vignette is not about Osiris having sex with Isis but a depiction of a incident in the life of the patriarch of all the Abrahamic religions, i.e., father Abraham himself! As readers have probably concluded, there’s no doubt that Smith’s “explanation” is pure, unadulterated balderdash – similar to what might be concocted by any imaginative six-year old.<br /><br />Smith’s interpretations did, however, serve a purpose. According to Smith, one of the purchased papyri was written by the patriarch of the Abrahamic religions and another by the biblical Joseph when he was in Egypt. Smith wrote:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">… I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc. – a more full account of which will appear in its place, as I proceed to examine or unfold them. Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth.</blockquote>In 1842, Smith revealed his “translation” to the world (at least, his “translation” of the “writings of Abraham”) with the following introduction, a part of the first of a series of articles in the Mormon’s magazine <span style="font-style: italic;">Times and Seasons:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the Catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus.</blockquote>In the 1878 edition of this alleged “Book of Abraham”, the LDS Church <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html">deleted</a> the words “purporting to be”, and in 1890, the Church “officially recognized [the Book of Abraham] as scripture”.<br /><br />This “sacred scripture” of the LDS Church contains the <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html">idea</a>, essential to the Mormon sham, that the priesthood wasn’t restricted to the Levites, claiming that Abraham held the Priesthood of God. As a consequence, Smith’s status as a “prophet and seer” and Rigdon’s as the high priest of Mormonism were validated by Abraham, himself – at least according to Smith’s Book of Abraham. The book also “explained” why black people couldn't hold the priesthood, that there are many gods, that God lived near the star or planet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob">Kolob</a>, and similar nonsense, including the unsurprising “revelation” that God approves of lying “when a righteous purpose is served” – such as protecting the Mormon priesthood and increasing the Church’s cash flow!<br /><br />Meanwhile, as for what the undamaged “Joseph Smith Papyrus #1” actually showed, “the jury is still out.” On the one hand, it may be that this papyrus showed a picture of the “resurrection” of the dead person for whom the papyrus was created (namely, as shown below, the Egyptian priest Hôr, whose mother’s name was Taikhibit); if so, I’d suspect that Hôr wasn’t shown with an erect penis. On the other hand, it may be that whoever created this papyrus included (just as an illustration) the resurrection of Osiris, in which case, depending on various inclinations, Osiris may or may not have been shown with an erection. The attempt to complete the picture by Charles Larson, guided by the advice of Egyptologists and printed in his 1992, now-online book <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">By His Own Hands Upon Papyrus</span></a>, is shown below.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxv3Tf980l66O3K176FV8f0v15VVbbCUkpLMQIhB8DDft_xW094S1W7GnF1UQbeaBFqyePXBpnb_ZnBJ9XMIl5NFNA-Z6FKqEWAmVSc4TAShtBokWiwnDUd19-2t9CDsLew1e2wPTwaO8/s1600-h/9.+abra_4.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxv3Tf980l66O3K176FV8f0v15VVbbCUkpLMQIhB8DDft_xW094S1W7GnF1UQbeaBFqyePXBpnb_ZnBJ9XMIl5NFNA-Z6FKqEWAmVSc4TAShtBokWiwnDUd19-2t9CDsLew1e2wPTwaO8/s400/9.+abra_4.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353420115696335922" border="0" /></a><br />If I were required to put some money on it, I’d bet at least a small amount that the original vignette did show Osiris with an erection – solely because, to me, the rip in the papyrus (see the photograph shown earlier) seems too “convenient”, managing to just obliterate Osiris’ “personal parts”. That is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the relevant portion of the original papyrus was purposefully destroyed, either by its purveyor (Michael Chandler), so he wouldn’t be charged by “the authorities” with peddling “pornography” (as defined by the distorted views of sexuality with which Christianity has polluted the western world, courtesy the insane “Saint” Paul), or was destroyed by “profit” Joe, because he probably would have found it rather difficult to “explain” why Abraham was having an erection while he was being sacrificed!<br /><br />But setting aside all Smith’s silliness and towards providing a little information about the Ancient-Egyptian silliness dealing with “life after death”, I now want to provide at least a few details to show what “the Joseph Smith Papyri” are “all about”. Certainly they have nothing whatsoever to do with what Smith claimed: definitely the subject papyrus wasn’t written by the Jewish patriarch Abraham (who, if he ever lived, lived more than a thousand years before the Joseph-Smith papyrus was created). Before the papyrus was “re-discovered” (in 1966), Egyptologists could comment only on Smith’s “translation” based on his “facsimiles”. For example, the following are some <a href="http://trialsofascension.net/mormon/abraham.html">responses</a> by Egyptologists to a 1912 request for their opinions from Franklin S. Spalding (Episcopal Bishop of Utah) and published in his 1912 book <span style="font-style: italic;">Joseph Smith Jr., As a Translator:</span><br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Dr. Arthur Mace, Assistant Curator for the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York explained:</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> “The Book of Abraham, it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication… Joseph Smith’s interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end… five minutes study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of the imposture.”</span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Dr. A. H. Sayce from Oxford, England concurred:</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> “It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud.”</span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Dr. Flinders Petrie of London University wrote:</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“They are copies of Egyptian subjects of which I have seen dozens of examples. They are centuries later than Abraham. The attempts to guess a meaning for them in the professed explanations are too absurd to be noticed. It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations.”</span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Dr. James H. Breasted of the Haskell Oriental Museum, University of Chicago, declared:</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“It will be seen, then, that if Joseph Smith could read ancient Egyptian writing, his ability to do so had no connection with the decipherment of hieroglyphics by European scholars…”</span></blockquote>Later, in 1965, a microfiche of Smith’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar</span> (which he allegedly used to translate the papyri) was “leaked” from a Mormon vault to the outside world. About it, Dr. I.E. Edwards, Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the British Museum <a href="http://trialsofascension.net/mormon/abraham.html">wrote</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…[It’s] largely a piece of imagination and lacking in any kind of scientific value…[it reminded me of] the writings of psychic practitioners which are sometimes sent to me.</blockquote>When the original papyri were found in 1966, they finally could be studied in detail. Copies were published in the February 1968 issues of the Mormon magazine <span style="font-style: italic;">The Improvement Era.</span> Below are quotations by two competent Egyptologists, quoted from a <a href="http://www.geocities.com/martsego/other.html">website</a> created by James David. To these quotations I’ve added a few notes in brackets.<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Statements made by Richard A. Parker, Wilbour Professor of Egyptology and Chairman of the Department of Egyptology at Brown University in the </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 3</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">, no. 2, Summer 1968, p. 86:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This</span> [Facsimile #1] i<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">s a well-known scene from the Osiris mysteries, with Anubis, the jackal-headed god </span>[the son of Nephthys and Osiris]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> on the left ministering to the dead Osiris on the bier. The penciled (?) restoration is incorrect. Anubis should be jackal-headed. The left arm of Osiris is in reality lying at his side under him.</span> [Actually, though, that statement doesn’t conform to the quotation that follows.] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The apparent upper hand is part of the wing of a second bird, which is hovering over the erect phallus of Osiris (now broken away). The second bird is Isis, and she is magically impregnated by the dead Osiris and then later gives birth to Horus who avenges his father and takes over his inheritance. The complete bird</span> [on the right, which Joseph Smith labeled as Fig. 1 and “explained” was “The Angel of the Lord”)] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">represents Nephthys, sister to Osiris and Isis.</span> [Although the next quotation, below, suggests that this second bird is the soul (or “ba”) of Osiris, while other authors suggest that it represents the soul of whoever is on the “couch”]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. Beneath the bier are the four canopic jars with heads representative of the four sons of Horus, human-headed Imseti, baboon-headed Hapy, jackal-headed Duamutef, and falcon-headed Kebehsenuf…</span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Statements made by Klaus Baer, Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in the journal</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> Dialogue…</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> Autumn 1968, pp. 118-119:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The vignette on P. JS I</span> [i.e., Papyrus Joseph Smith #1]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> is unusual, but parallels exist on the walls of the Ptolemaic temple of Egypt, the closest being the scenes in the Osiris chapels on the roof of the Temple of Dendera.</span> [Shown earlier in this post.] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> The vignette shows the resurrection of Osiris… and the conception of Horus. Osiris (2)</span> [This “2” seems to correspond to Smith’s numbering of the twelve “figures”] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">is represented as a man on a lion-couch (4) attended by Anubis (3), the jackal-headed god who embalmed the dead and thereby assured their resurrection and existence in the hereafter. Below the couch are the canopic jars for the embalmed internal organs. The lids are the four sons of Horus, from the left to right Imset (8), Hapi (7), Qebeh-senuwef (6), and Duwa-mutef (5), who protect the liver, lungs, intestines, and stomach, respectively. At the head of the couch is a small offering stand (10) with a jug and some flowers on it and two larger vases on the ground beside it. The ba</span> [soul]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> of Osiris (1) is hovering above his head.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The versions of </span><span>[the]</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Osiris myth differ in telling how Seth disposed of Osiris after murdering him, but he was commonly believed to have cut Osiris into small pieces, which he scattered into the Nile, leaving Isis the task of fishing out and assembling the parts of her brother and husband so that he could be resurrected and beget Horus. In this she was helped by Horus </span><span>[presumably Horus-the-Elder]</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> in the shape of a crocodile, who is represented in the water (the zigzags) below the vignette (9). Below that is a decorative pattern derived from the niched facade of a protohistoric Egyptian palace.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There are some problems about restoring the missing parts of the body of Osiris. He was almost certainly represented as ithyphallic</span> [i.e., having an erect penis]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> ready to beget Horus</span> [-the-Younger]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, as in many of the other scenes at Dendera. I know of no representations of Osiris on a couch with both hands in front of his face. One would expect only one hand in front of his face, while the other was either shown below the body (impossible in P. JS I) or grasping the phallus. It the latter case it would be hard to avoid the suggestion of Professor Richard A. Parker that what looks like the upper hand of Osiris is actually the wingtip of a representation of Isis as a falcon hovering in the act of copulation.</span></blockquote>As for the contents of the text surrounding the vignette, in 2003 the hieroglyphics (<a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt6.html">or</a> “hieratic script, a cursive adaptation of hieroglyphic writing”) were translated by Egyptologist Robert K. Ritner of the University of Chicago. The following is a little of Ritner’s translation of the papyrus as given in his paper entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">“The Breathing Permit of Hôr” Among the Joseph Smith Papyri,</span> which was published in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of Near Eastern Studies (vol. 62</span>, no. 3, pp. 162–180, 2003) and his available <a href="http://www.utlm.org/other/robertritnerpapyriarticle.pdf">here</a>.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The true content of this papyrus concerns only the afterlife of the deceased Egyptian priest Hor</span> [also apparently called “Osiris-Hor”]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. “Books of Breathings,” such as this Joseph Smith example, are late funerary compositions derived from the traditional “Book of the Dead.” Like the “Book of the Dead,” the sole purpose of the later texts is to ensure the blessed afterlife of the deceased individual, who is elevated to divine status by judgment at the court of Osiris and is thereby guaranteed powers of rejuvenation. These powers, including mobility, sight, speech, hearing, and access to food offerings, are summarized in the term <i>snsn,</i> or “breathing,” which refers to the Egyptian expression <i>t·w n ºnh</i> “breath of life,” the fundamental characteristic that distinguishes the living. The title <i>sº.t n snsn</i>, literally, “Document of (or ‘for’) Breathing” employs the term for an official document or letter <i>(sº.t)</i>, so that these “books” serve as formal “permits”—or perhaps more accurately “passports”—to the world of the gods…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Here follows the transliteration and translation of Hor’s papyrus. Broken sections are indicated by { }. For the sake of simplicity, optional diacritics have been dropped (Hor, not Hôr). Following proper Egyptological convention, Egyptian names are rendered in Egyptian format, not Greek approximations (marred by alphabetic deficiencies and irrelevant terminations)…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The Breathing Document opens with a vignette depicting the resurrection of the Osiris Hor on the customary lion-headed funerary couch, attended by the jackal-headed Anubis and (probably) the winged Isis, while the human headed ba-spirit of Hor hovers above his head…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Address to Hor…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">{Osiris, the god’s father}, prophet of Amon-Re, King of the Gods, prophet of Min who slaughters his enemies, prophet of Khonsu, the {one who exercises} authority in Thebes, {. . .} Hor, the justified, son of the similarly titled overseer of secrets and purifier of the god, Osorwer, the justified, born by the {housewife and sistrum-player of } {Amon}-Re, Taikhibit, the justified!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">May your ba-spirit live among them, and may you be buried on the west {of Thebes}.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">{O Anubis {?}…} justification {?}. {May you give to him} a good and splendid burial on the west of Thebes as on the mountains of Ma{nu} {?}…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">{Osiris shall be towed in}to the great lake of Khonsu… and likewise {the Osiris Hôr, the justified,} born of Taikhibit, the justified,… after his two arms have been {placed} at his heart, while… the Breathing Document, being what… is written on its interior and exterior, shall be wrapped in royal linen and placed (under) his left arm in the midst of his heart. The remainder of his… wrappings shall be made over it. As for the one for whom this book is made… he thus breathes like the ba-spirit{s} of the gods, forever and… ever.</span></blockquote>For readers who desire more complete information about the entire ruse perpetrated by Smith, I’d recommend: 1) the (~1 hr) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE&feature=related">youtube video</a> entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost Book of Abraham,</span> 2) the <a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/papyrus/by_his_own_hand.htm">report</a> by Jerald and Sandra Tanner entitled “Solving the Mystery of the Joseph Smith Papyri”, and 3) the on-line <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html">book</a> by Charles Larson entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look At The Joseph Smith Papyri.</span><br /><br />Those who choose to read the second and third references (listed in the previous sentence) may become discouraged, however, to find that the authors are pursuing (at least) two objectives: not only to demonstrate why the Book of Abraham is a “farrago of nonsense from beginning to end” but also to promote “the one true religion, Christianity.” For example, everything written at the Tanner <a href="http://www.utlm.org/">website</a> is devoted to the stated purpose:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… to document problems with the claims of Mormonism and compare LDS doctrines with Christianity.</blockquote>Similarly, in the final chapter of his book <a href="http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt6.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus…</span></a> Larson (with Floyd McElveen) wrote (along with multiple paragraphs of similar nonsense):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Dear reader, by a simple prayer of faith you can make the decision today to receive God’s free offer of salvation. Recognizing your own helplessness and the precious provision of Jesus on the cross, you only need to confess your sin and ask God to forgive you and save you through the shed blood of Jesus Christ…</blockquote>It’s a pity that these alleged Christians apparently paid no attention to the teachings of their “savior” as given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 7,</span> 5:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye…</blockquote>That is, in reality, all of it (all of Smith’s “translations”, all of Mormonism, all of Islam, all of Christianity, all of Judaism, all of Zoroastrianism, all of Hinduism, all of all organized religions, including the religions of all ancient peoples) was and still is a monstrous farrago of supernatural nonsense – or more bluntly, as I’ll try to continue to show in subsequent posts, they’re all mountain ranges of monstrous lies.<br /><br />The most certain knowledge that we have been able to gain, even more certain than the knowledge that we exist, is that there are no gods and there never were any. Religious people have simply been chasing their own shadows, preening in their own images, and daydreaming – not only about the existence of gods but also about the possibility that they’d live forever. It’s time (in fact, it’s way past time) that everyone woke up to the naked knowledge not only that there are no gods (and never were any) but also that, after we die, we’re dead. That realization, however, needn’t be cause for concern, for as Epicurus (341–270 BCE) wrote:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">[It follows that] death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consist in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living… [Death should not] concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.</blockquote><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-39654282066649880322009-06-08T03:18:00.000-07:002010-02-03T14:56:10.135-08:00The Law Lie - 7 – Law & Order – 2<div><br /></div>My goal for this post is to continue to try to show at least a little of the history of the Law Lie, itself a part of the God Lie. In prior posts, the parts of the Law Lie addressed (at least partially) include the lies:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That morality is defined by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That judges are judged by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That customs were created by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That covenants can be established with the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That leaders are chosen by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That laws are dictated by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That order is ordained by the gods…</span><br /><br />As a continuation of the previous post, in this post I’ll to try to outline differences and similarities between civil laws of the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament (OT), and laws adopted by earlier groups.<br /><br />I can provide only an “outline” of similarities in the civil laws; books have been written on the subject. They show that, generally, the civil laws contained in the OT are similar to those in the earlier laws codes of the Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians, Akkadians, and Sumerians – although in some cases (to be indicated) the Hebrew laws were even more barbaric than laws established earlier. For reasons mentioned in the previous post, I’ll emphasize civil laws that contributed to what I described as the “hateful-mother/ despondent-daughter syndrome” and that illustrate my third claim (in the previous post), namely, that the OT laws contain no internal evidence that they were dictated by some god who was omnipotent and omniscient; instead, the laws suggest that they were dictated by someone who, today and by Western standards, would be judged as incompetent and obscene.<br /><br />In this post, I’ll avoid comparisons of religious laws, even though the majority of the laws in the OT deal with religious rites. That OT laws primarily deal with religious matters is consistent with the almost-certain fact that the OT laws were written by priests, whom I’ve been identifying in these posts as Ezra and Co-Conspirators (Ezra & C-C). I include among the co-conspirators Ezra’s great grandfather, the high priest Hilkiah, who claimed that he had found the “Laws of Moses” after they had been “mysteriously” misplaced for many centuries!<br /><br />There are several reasons why I plan to avoid emphasizing the OT’s religious laws. One reason is that I plan to address at least some aspects of such laws in a later post dealing with “religious rituals”, emphasizing the rituals practiced in Ancient Egypt (many of which the Hebrew priests probably copied). Another reason – a major reason – is simply that the OT’s religious laws and rituals are so astoundingly stupid! As an example, consider the following law, which fills the whole of <span style="font-style: italic;">Leviticus 1</span> (copied, here, from the digitized NET version of the Bible, as will be all biblical quotations in this post, unless noted otherwise).<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Meeting Tent: “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When someone among you presents an offering to the Lord, you must present your offering from the domesticated animals, either from the herd or from the flock. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd he must present it as a flawless male; he must present it at the entrance of the Meeting Tent for its acceptance before the Lord. He must lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. Then the one presenting the offering must slaughter the bull before the Lord, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, must present the blood and splash the blood against the sides of the altar which is at the entrance of the Meeting Tent. Next, the one presenting the offering must skin the burnt offering and cut it into parts, and the sons of Aaron, the priest, must put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then the sons of Aaron, the priests, must arrange the parts with the head and the suet on the wood that is in the fire on the altar. Finally, the one presenting the offering must wash its entrails and its legs in water and the priest must offer all of it up in smoke on the altar – it is a burnt offering, a gift of a soothing aroma to the Lord.<br /><br />‘If his offering is from the flock for a burnt offering – from the sheep or the goats – he must present a flawless male, and must slaughter it on the north side of the altar before the Lord, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, will splash its blood against the altar’s sides. Next, the one presenting the offering must cut it into parts, with its head and its suet, and the priest must arrange them on the wood which is in the fire, on the altar. Then the one presenting the offering must wash the entrails and the legs in water, and the priest must present all of it and offer it up in smoke on the altar – it is a burnt offering, a gift of a soothing aroma to the Lord.<br /><br />‘If his offering to the Lord is a burnt offering from the birds, he must present his offering from the turtledoves or from the young pigeons. The priest must present it at the altar, pinch off its head and offer the head up in smoke on the altar, and its blood must be drained out against the side of the altar. Then the priest must remove its entrails by cutting off its tail feathers, and throw them to the east side of the altar into the place of fatty ashes, and tear it open by its wings without dividing it into two parts. Finally, the priest must offer it up in smoke on the altar on the wood which is in the fire – it is a burnt offering, a gift of a soothing aroma to the Lord’.”</blockquote>Did you really want to read all that crap? Can you imagine the density of flies around that altar, splattered with blood?!<br /><br />The above is only the first of such stupid laws in <span style="font-style: italic;">Leviticus.</span> In sum, it would be far too onerous to provide details about the OT’s religious laws: there are literally hundreds of such picayunish laws, specifying everything from the priests’ dietary desires to their clothing, let alone the construction of altars, tabernacles, and whatever. Meanwhile, all such laws distract from the real horror perpetrated by the priests, which though specified in multiple ways, amounts to: we are to be the only priests; representatives of all other religions and apostates from ours are to be killed – as are all who challenge our authority. The same continues in Islam today.<br /><br />Still another reason for my not comparing religious laws of different groups is because comparable information doesn't seem to be available. To begin to see what I mean, consider the following religious laws contained in the Hittite law <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_laws">code</a>. In total there are five such laws – not five hundred; five! I’ve copied these laws from the online, 1937 <a href="http://dqhall59.com/Archaeology_and_the_Bible/index.htm">book</a> by George Barton entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">Archaeology and the Bible.</span> The Hittite laws were probably written sometime in the period between about 1650 and 1500 BCE (more than a thousand years before Ezra & C-C put the finishing touches on how to splatter Yahweh’s altar with blood!) and continued to be enforced (with few modifications) during most of the ~500-year Hittite (or Nesilim) Empire, which was centered in modern-day Turkey (the Anatolian peninsula).<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If anyone goes to visit a divinity and has made him angry, he should offer as a sacrifice flour and wine.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"> </span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Then he shall give 1 sheep, 10 loaves, and 1 jug of beer. Then afterward he shall offer a sacrifice for his house that the year may come around fortunately… </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If anyone sows seed upon seed, they shall put him by the side of the plough and harness a pair of oxen, and place this one over against those and them over against them, and the man shall die and the oxen shall die, and he who had first sown the field shall take it. Formerly they did thus. Now 1 sheep shall be substituted for the man, 2 sheep shall be substituted for the oxen; he shall give 30 loaves, 3 jugs of beer; this is a purificatory sacrifice, and he who first sowed the field shall cultivate it.</span><br /><br />[Note that the above Hittite law is similar to the OT’s law at <span style="font-style: italic;">Leviticus 19,</span> 19 (and at <span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy 22, </span>9): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“You must not allow two different kinds of your animals to breed, you must not sow your field with two different kinds of seed, and you must not wear a garment made of two different kinds of fabric.”</span>]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If anyone will establish the boundary of a field, he shall bring an offering: the owner of the field shall mark off 1 gipeshar and take it. He who would establish the boundary shall give 1 sheep, 10 loaves, 1 jug of beer; then afterward the field is sacrosanct. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">If anyone acquires a field and he establishes the boundary, he shall take flour and throw it toward the sun-goddess and say: “Thou has planted my plants in the ground!” Then he shall say: “Sun-goddess and Teshub, be not angry!”</span></blockquote>To be blunt, the sole insight that I gained from reading the religious laws in the OT is to get a clearer look at the underbelly of the religious beast. Thereby, in a way, the ancient Jewish priests deserve some credit, because (as far as I know) in no earlier law codes are the religious laws spelled out in such atrocious detail, e.g., specifications of the “sin offerings” to pay the parasitic priests.<br /><br />A little of the clerical leeching that occurred in the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash in about 2350 BCE can be seen in Urukagina's "praise poem", quoted in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">earlier post</a> in this series. Here, I'll just re-post selected lines, showing how "the world's first [political] revolution", led by Urukagina, also constrained the clerics:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">The incantation-priest measured out the barley rent (to his own advantage)…<br /><br />In the garden of a humble person a priest could cut a tree or carry away its fruit. When a dead man was placed in the tomb, it was necessary to deliver in his name seven jars of beer and 420 loaves of bread… uh-mush priest received one-half gur {about fourteen gallons} of barley, one garment, one turban, and one bed… priest’s assistant received one-fourth gur of barley…<br /><br />Everywhere from border to border there were the priest-judges {mash-kim}… Such were the practices of former days.<br /><br />When the god Ningirsu, the warrior of the god Enlil, granted the lugal-ship [leadership or kingship] of Lagash to Urukagina, picking him out of the entire population, he [Ningirsu] enjoined upon him (the restoration of) the divinely decreed way of life of former days…<br /><br />Everywhere from border to border no one spoke further of priest-judges (mashkim).<br /><br />When a dead man was placed in the tomb, (only) three jars of beer and eighty loaves of bread were delivered in his name. The uh-mush priest received one bed and one turban. The priest’s assistant received one-eighth gur of barley…<br /><br />The priest no longer invaded the garden of a humble person.</blockquote>No doubt priests in other societies similarly leeched off those they duped, but unfortunately, complete records of religious laws in other, early cultures (e.g., in Ancient Egypt) apparently haven’t been found. Based on what’s known about the rituals of the Egyptian priests, however (a little of which I’ll review in a later post), there seems little doubt that the Egyptian priests were just as parasitic as were the Hebrew and earlier Mesopotamian priests – and as are Islamic “clerics” in most Muslim countries today, especially the Shiite clerics in Iran and the Sunni clerics in Saudi Arabia.<br /><br />Thereby, the OT seems to be the first book in history that clearly documents the depths of depravity of the disciples of any deity. It reminds me of great quote in an op-ed article by Nicholas Kristof entitled "Overdosing on Islam", which appeared in the 12 May 2004 issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Another Shiite leader outside the club of power [in Iran], Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, has denounced the [Iranian] regime as “society’s dregs and fascists who consist of a concoction of ignorance and madness… [and] those who are convinced that yogurt is black.”</blockquote>In my view, that’s a good description of clerics of all religions: a collection of “society’s dregs and fascists who consist of a concoction of ignorance and madness… [and] those who are convinced that yogurt is black.”<br /><br />So, setting aside the OT’s religious laws, I’ll now turn to ancient civil laws, but because of time and space constraints, I’ll illustrate only a few such laws, emphasizing those dealing with (or led to subsequent) subjugation of women. Except when noted otherwise, all quotations of the ancient laws will be from Barton’s 1937 <a href="http://dqhall59.com/Archaeology_and_the_Bible/index.htm">book</a>. Incidentally, for readers who consult Barton’s book, you might want to notice that some of the dates Barton gives for the laws have been revised as a result of subsequent archaeological studies. In what follows, I’ve arranged the chosen laws in four categories, starting with:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Assault & Battery – Blood Revenge.</span><br />Probably one of the oldest tribal laws is the law of “blood revenge” (= the law of retaliation = the <span style="font-style: italic;">lex talionis</span>). It was practiced by many if not most aboriginal tribes throughout the world, it’s commonly described in American literature with a metaphorical reference to the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, and it’s one of the ugliest customs still prevalent in most Muslim countries. It’s “legalized” in the OT with the familiar “eye for an eye”, e.g., at <span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy 19,</span> 21:<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><blockquote>You must not show pity; the principle will be a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot.</blockquote></span>Yet, if the creator of the universe dictated the “Laws of Moses” (as is claimed in the OT), then wouldn’t he have been at least as perceptive as Mahatma (“great soul”) Gandhi, who said: “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.”<br /><br />If God wasn’t so perceptive as Gandhi, then couldn’t God have just copied laws from what for us is the oldest known law code, namely, that of Ur-Nammu? It was written in about 2100 BCE, ~800 years prior to when Moses allegedly wrote his laws, and ~1600 years before Ezra. The Ur-Nammu code includes (in its most complete version, which was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu">found</a> in 1965) the following laws, detailing not revenge but restitution:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out ½ a mina of silver.<br /><br />If a man has cut off another man’s foot, he is to pay ten shekels.<br /><br />If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall pay one mina of silver.<br /><br />If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver.<br /><br />If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.</blockquote>Instead of copying Ur-Nammu’s laws, God (aka Moses aka Ezra & C-C) apparently copied the idea of blood revenge from the laws of the Babylonian empire, written in about 1750 BCE (~300 years after Ur-Nammu, ~500 years before Moses allegedly lived, and ~1300 years before Ezra). In particular, King Hammurabi’s laws #196, 197, & 200 (of a total of 282 laws) state:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man destroys the eye of the son of a patrician, they shall destroy his eye.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If he breaks a man’s bone, they shall break his bone.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man knocks out the tooth of a man of his own rank, they shall knock his tooth out</span>.</blockquote>And if God were to try to defend his choice by saying that Ur-Nammu’s laws of restitution were superseded by Hammurabi’s laws of revenge, then perhaps he (or any of his defenders) would like to explain why he didn’t copy the Hittite laws, written c. 1650–1500 BCE: they superseded Hammurabi’s laws, and the Hittite Laws #7 through 17 (given below) are similarly void of tribalist, barbaric, laws of revenge:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If anyone blinds a free man, or knocks out some of his teeth, formerly he paid 1 mana of silver! Now he shall pay 20 shekels of silver and discharge the penalty…<br /><br />If anyone strikes a person on the head, formerly they paid 6 shekels of silver; for the blow he gave 3 shekels; to the palace he gave 3 shekels. Now the king gives up (the fine) to his palace, and he shall give 3 shekels to the one struck.<br /><br />If anyone strikes a person and makes him ill, and that one he makes unfit for work: he shall give a man instead of him. This one shall work in his house while he is convalescing; after he has recovered, then he shall give him 6 shekels of silver, and the doctor’s bill he shall pay.<br /><br />If anyone breaks the hand or foot of a free man, then he shall pay 20 shekels and discharge the penalty…<br /><br />If anyone breaks the nose of a free man, he shall give one mana of silver and discharge the penalty…<br /><br />If anyone cuts off the ear of a free man, he shall pay 12 shekels of silver and discharge the penalty.<br /><br />If anyone causes a pregnant free woman to miscarry, if it is nine months, if it is ten months, he shall give 10 shekels of silver and discharge the penalty.</blockquote>Of course, if you’re a god similar to Yahweh (who apparently likes to spy on people and enjoys lots of blood and gore), retribution is a lot more entertaining than restitution.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Laws Prohibiting Witchcraft or Sorcery.</span><br />To this day, it has always been critically important for clerics to be the sole agents, spokesmen, and controllers of the supernatural: if they let others engage in magic, then the rug would be pulled out from under their con games. And thus the following rules from the indicated law codes (arranged progressively farther back in time) demonstrate that Yahweh wasn’t such an ass as otherwise one might think – or more realistically, the Jewish priests learned from earlier people how to keep their con game going.<br /><blockquote>The “Laws of Moses” (ca. 650–450 BCE):<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live</span> (King James Version);<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> You shall not allow a witch to live</span> (New English Bible); <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">You must not allow a sorceress to live</span> (NET). (<span style="font-style: italic;">Exodus 22,</span> 18)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">A man or woman who has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; their bloodguilt is on themselves.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Leviticus 20,</span> 27)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There must never be found among you… anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy 18, </span>10–11)</blockquote>The Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia similarly prohibited sorcery. The ~1050 BCE law code of the Assyrians (a word derived from the name of their god Ashur) includes:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If either a man or a woman practices magic and is caught in the act, they shall arrest and try them; they shall kill one who practices magic. </blockquote>From earlier, the Hittite Code (ca. 1650–1500 BCE) includes:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If with fire anyone casts a spell upon a man and he dies, he shall afterward give his son for him. If anyone purifies a man by deceit, casting upon him a spell, if he casts it on the field or barn or anyone – witchcraft is a case for the king.<br /><br />If a free man kills a serpent and speaks the name of another, he shall pay 1 mana of silver; if a slave, he shall die.</blockquote>Somewhat similar, in the Hammurabi’s Code (ca. 1750 BCE):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">1. If a man brings an accusation against a man, that he has laid a death-spell upon him, and has not proved it, the accuser shall be put to death.<br /><br />2. If a man accuses another of practicing sorcery upon him, but has not proved it, he against whom the charge of sorcery is made shall go to the sacred river; into the sacred river he shall plunge, and if the sacred river overpowers him, his accuser shall take possession of his house. If the sacred river shows that man to be innocent, and he is unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be killed. He who plunged into the sacred river shall take the house of his accuser.</blockquote>Barton adds (referring first to the Hittite law):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Probably killing the snake as one pronounced the name of another was believed to direct the wrath of the snake toward that other so that the snake should not be satisfied until he killed the bearer of the name. It would be equivalent to casting a death-spell upon the man so named. This law, then, should be compared with [laws #] 1,2 of the Code of Hammurabi and with Exodus 22:18 and Deuteronomy 18:10, ff.</blockquote>Still earlier, the Ur-Nammu Code (ca. 2050 BCE) states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels.</blockquote>The “ordeal by water” referenced in both the Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu codes was another ancient custom that apparently intrigued Yahweh; I’ll emphasize such laws separately, immediately below, under the title<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Trial by Ordeal (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">judicium Dei</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> = judgment of God).</span><br />Poor old Yahweh: being jealous of other gods (as he admits in “his” Second Commandment), he apparently was piqued that other gods could test people’s guilt or innocence by using trials by ordeal. It’s understandable. If you were God (and assuming you could read), then what would you think if you read the following laws, this time arranged going forward in time.<br /><br />Another trial-by-ordeal law in the Ur-Nammu law code (from ~2050 BCE):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal proved her innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-third of a mina of silver. </span> </blockquote>And imagine God’s jealousy when he read (assuming he could read) or heard about another trial-by-ordeal in the ~1750 BCE Hammurabi Code:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If the finger has been pointed at the wife of a man because of another man <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[i.e., if she is accused of adultery]</span> and she has not been caught lying with the other man, for her husband’s sake she shall plunge into the sacred river.</blockquote>Notice that, in the immediately preceding (typically brutal and misogynist) Hammurabi law (which Ezra & C-C apparently followed rather closely), if a wife was simply accused of being an adulteress (“she has not been caught lying with the other man”), then she had to “prove” her innocence by surviving being thrown into the river.<br /><br />In the case of Hittites, I couldn’t find any laws dealing with cases that were judged by their god (or gods). Similarly, there seems to have been no trial by ordeal in Egypt. Thus, according to information at the amazingly thorough website of <a href="http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/law_and_order/index.html">André Dollinger</a> on law and order in Ancient Egypt:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Unlike other nations in the Near East, Egypt appears not to have known trials by ordeal, in which the accused in a criminal trial or the contestants in a civil litigation underwent an ordeal (often held in a river), the winner of which was supposed to be favored by the gods and therefore in the right. </blockquote>In the Hittite code, however, there are several laws in which the king acted as if he were a god, such as the following:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man lie with a cow, the punishment is death. They shall bring him to the gates of the king. The king may put him to death, or the king may let him live, but he shall not come near to the king.<br /><br />If a man lies with a hog or a dog, he shall die. They shall bring him to the gate of the palace, and the king may put him to death, or the king may let him live; but he shall not come near to the king.</blockquote>I guess that the Hittites didn’t have such a dangerous river as the Tigris and Euphrates into which to throw the accused (sometimes bound, sometimes not). In the Assyrian code (~1050 BCE), in contrast, it’s back to the river:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If a man speaks to a man as follows, “they have violated thy wife”, and there were not witnesses, they shall throw that man into fetters and bring him to the river.</blockquote>So, imagine the jealousy of Yahweh if he couldn’t have the fun of passing judgments on the accused (drowning those he didn’t like and permitting the others to swim to shore). Obviously, though, he had only himself to blame for his privations, since 1) The land he “promised” to “his people” might have been “flowing with milk and honey”, but he neglected to endow it with a sufficiently raging river, and 2) He had foolishly taught some of “his prophets” (Moses, Joshua, Samuel, et al.) how to part waters! So, what to do? Ah hah! Apparently he had heard about “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabar_bean">ordeal beans</a>” used in what’s now called Sierra Leone (but was then called Calabar):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…the <span style="font-style: italic;">E-ser-e</span> or ordeal beans of the people of Old Calabar [were] administered to persons accused of witchcraft or other crimes. In cases where the poisonous material did its deadly work, it was held at once to indicate and rightly to punish guilt; but when it was rejected by the stomach of the accused, innocence was held to be satisfactorily established.</blockquote>The result? Immediately below, in all its glory, is the “trial by ordeal” concocted by Yahweh (aka Moses aka Ezra & C-C), given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Numbers 5, </span>11–28:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Lord spoke to Moses: </span>“[Whereas I’ve heard tell about Calabar beans,] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him, and a man has sexual relations with her without her husband knowing it, and it is hidden that she has defiled herself, since there was no witness against her, nor was she caught – and if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife, when she is defiled; or if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife, when she is not defiled </span>[or, for that matter, any time he feels like accusing his wife of anything] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">– then the man must bring his wife to the priest, and he must bring the offering required for her, one tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he must not pour olive oil on it or put frankincense on it, because it is a grain offering of suspicion, a grain offering for remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance</span> [and for any other mumbo-jumbo that the priests want to add].<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">‘Then the priest will bring her near and have her stand before the Lord.</span> [Or, if he’s not present, just consider the priest as your lord and master.] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The priest will then take holy water in a pottery jar, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle</span> [and, unbeknown to the accused woman, add in some crushed Calabar beans]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and put it into the water. Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, uncover the woman’s head, and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest will put the woman under oath and say to the her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you, and if you have not gone astray and become defiled while under your husband’s authority</span> [your husband being your lord and master, in the absence of the priest and in the absence of the Lord, doncha know]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, may you be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you….” Then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse and will say to her, “The Lord make you an attested curse among your people, if the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your abdomen swell; and this water that causes the curse will go into your stomach, and make your abdomen swell and your thigh rot.” Then the woman must say, “Amen, amen.”</span> [Or, failing that, say “All men, all men, are women’s masters.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">‘Then the priest will write these curses on a scroll and then scrape them off into the bitter water.</span> [Just in case he didn’t sneak in enough Calabar beans with the dust from the floor.]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness. The priest will take the grain offering of suspicion from the woman’s hand, wave the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. Then the priest will take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water. When he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness – her abdomen will swell, her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself, and is clean, then she will be free of ill effects and will be able to bear children.</span> [For, after all, women are only good for bearing children.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">‘This is the law for cases of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband’s authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when jealous feelings come over a man and he becomes suspicious of his wife; then he must have the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest will carry out all this law upon her. Then the man will be free from iniquity, but that woman will bear the consequences of her iniquity’.”</span></blockquote>Ain’t that lovely? If a man wants not just to dump his wife (which he could easily do, according to <span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy 24,</span> 1-4), if in addition he wants to make her suffer, plenty, then what to do? Well, with no worry about repercussions from false accusations, he simply accuses her of adultery, passes the priest a few shekels under the table, the priest mixes in some crushed “ordeal beans” (or whatever) in a potion, and presto: the husband is not only rid of his nagging wife but she’d die a horrible death. Which therefore is one of many examples of<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Laws Discriminating Against Women.</span><br />Although the above two topics (dealing with sorcery and trial by ordeal) contained cases of discrimination against women, they’re almost incidental when incorporated into the full range of such cases. I won’t describe all of them, not only because of space limitations (there are literally hundreds of such laws) but also because, in truth, it’s too painful to be reminded of the horrors tribal men have perpetrated against women for thousands of years – and similar continues in most Muslim countries today. Also, I’ll dwell neither on the reasons for such brutality (I mentioned some in the previous post and in an <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/06/some-new-old-wives-tales.html">earlier post</a>) nor on possible ways to help liberate women from such male chauvinism (for suggestions, see some of the “<a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_4.html">X-chapters</a>” of my on-line book). Here, instead, I’ll provide just a few illustrations of such laws and add a few comments on them, starting with the oldest known laws and including brief mention of repercussions that persist to this day.<br /><br />The full text of the ~2350 BCE law code of “the world’s first social reformer”, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina">Urukagina</a>, hasn’t been found. Clay tablets referencing the code, however, lead to the <a href="http://www.duhaime.org/LegalResources/LawMuseum/LawArticle-44/Duhaimes-Timetable-of-World-Legal-History.aspx">conclusions</a> that “thieves and adulteresses [not adulterers!] were to be stoned to death [as in most Muslim countries, today] with stones inscribed with the name of their crime.”<br /><br />The laws in Ur-Nammu’s code (~2100 BCE) dealing with women and marriage include the following:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">If the wife of a man followed after another man and he slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male shall be set free.<br /><br />If a man proceeded by force, and deflowered the virgin slavewoman of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver.<br /><br />If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay her one mina of silver.<br /><br />If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay her half a mina of silver.<br /><br />If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver.<br /><br />If a prospective son-in-law enters the house of his prospective father-in-law, but his father-in-law later gives his daughter to another man, the father-in-law shall return to the rejected son-in-law twofold the amount of bridal presents he had brought.</blockquote>Although some of the above laws probably offend modern sensitivities, notice that divorced women did receive some alimony and that women could, perhaps, talk their fathers out of an arranged marriage. Subsequently, conditions for women deteriorated, as can be seen beginning with Hammurabi’s laws.<br /><br />In the following laws from the Hammurabi code (~ 1750 BCE), I’ve included their numbers (as given by Barton) for reference to text that follows.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">128. If a man takes a wife and does not execute contracts for her, that woman is no wife.<br /><br />129. If the wife of a man is caught lying with another man, they shall bind them and throw them into the water. If the husband of the woman would let her live, or the king would let his subject live, he may do so.<br /><br />130. If a man forces the betrothed wife of another who is living in her father’s house and has not known a man, and lied in her loins and they catch him, that man shall be put to death and that woman shall go free.<br /><br />131. If the wife of a man is accused by her husband, and she has not been caught lying with another man, she shall swear her innocence and return to her house.<br /><br />132. If the finger has been pointed at the wife of a man because of another man and she has not been caught lying with the other man, for her husband’s sake she shall plunge into the sacred river.<br /><br />137. If a man set his face against a concubine who has borne him children or a wife that has presented him with children, to put her way, he shall return to that woman her marriage portion, and shall give her the income of field, garden, and house, and she shall bring up her children. From the time that her children are grown, from whatever is given to her children, a portion like that of a son shall be given to her, and the husband of her choice she may marry.<br /><br />138. If a man would put away his spouse who has not borne him children, he shall giver her silver equal to her marriage gift, and the dowry which she brought from her father’s house he shall restore to her and may put her away.<br /><br />139. If she had no dowry, he shall give her one mana of silver for a divorce.<br /><br />140. If he belongs to the laboring class, he shall give her one-third of a mana of silver.<br /><br />141. If the wife of a man who is living in the house of her husband sets her face to go out and act the fool, her house neglects and her husband belittles, they shall prosecute that woman. If her husband says: “I divorce her,” he may divorce her. On her departure nothing shall be given her for her divorce. If her husband does not say: “I divorce her,” her husband may take another wife; that woman shall dwell as a slave in the house of her husband.<br /><br />142. If a woman hates her husband and says: “Thou shalt not hold me,” they shall make investigation concerning her into her defects. If she has been discreet and there is no fault, and her husband has gone out and greatly belittled her, that woman has no blame; she may take her marriage-portion and go to her father’s house.<br /><br />143. If she has not been discreet, and has gone out and neglected her house and belittle her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water.<br /><br />144. If a man takes a priestess and that priestess gives a female slave to her husband, and she has children; if that man sets his face to take a concubine, they shall not favor that man. He may not take a concubine.<br /><br />145. If a man takes a priestess and she does not present him with children and he sets his face to take a concubine, that man may take a concubine and bring her into his house. That concubine shall not rank with the wife.<br /><br />146. If a man takes a priestess and she gives to her husband a maidservant and she bears children, and afterward that maidservant would take rank with her mistress; because she has borne children her mistress may not sell her for money, but she may reduce her to bondage and count her among female slaves.<br /><br />147. If she has not borne children, her mistress may sell her for money.<br /><br />148. If a man takes a wife and she is attacked by disease, and he sets his face to take another, he may do it. His wife who was attacked by disease he may not divorce. She shall support her as long as she lives.<br /><br />149. If that woman does not choose to live in the house of her husband, he shall make good to her the dowry which she brought from her father’s house and she may go away.<br /><br />150. If a man presents his wife field, garden, house, or goods, and gives to her sealed deeds, after her husband’s death her children shall not press a claim against her. The mother after her death may leave it to her child whom she loves, but to a brother she may not leave it.<br /><br />151. If a wife who is living in the house of a husband has persuaded her husband and he has bound himself that she shall not be taken by a creditor of her husband, her creditor may not hold her husband.<br /><br />152. If they become indebted after the woman enters the man’s house, both of them are liable to the merchant.<br /><br />156. If a man has betrothed a bride to his son and his son has not known her and he lies in her loins, he shall pay her half a mana of silver and restore to her whatever she brought from the house of her father, and the man of her choice may marry her.<br /><br />157. If a man after his father’s death lies in the loins of his mother, they shall burn both of them.<br /><br />158. If a man after his father’s death is admitted to the loins of his chief wife who has borne children, that man shall be expelled from the house of his father.<br /><br />159. If a man who has brought a present unto the house of his father-in-law and has given a bride-price looks with longing upon another woman, and says to his father-in-law: “Thy daughter I will not take,” the father of the daughter shall keep whatever was brought to him.<br /><br />160. If a man brings a present to the house of a father-in-law and gives a bride-price, and the father of the daughter says: “I will not give thee my daughter,” whatever was brought him he shall double and restore it.<br /><br />161. If a man brings a present to the house of his father-in-law and gives a bride-price, and his neighbor slanders him, and the father says to the groom: “Thou shalt not take my daughter,” whatever was brought he shall double and restore to him.</blockquote>Barton (who seems to have been religious) adds the following.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">These Babylonian laws present numerous points of contact and of divergence, when compared with the Biblical laws on this same subject… The law (129) which imposes the death penalty upon a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife and upon the woman, finds an exact parallel in Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22, though the Biblical law, unlike the Babylonian, provide no way in which clemency could be extended to the offenders.<br /><br />The laws in 130, 156, concerning the violation of betrothed virgins, are in a general way paralleled by Leviticus 19:20-22 and Deuteronomy 22:23-26, though there are such differences that, while the underlying principles are the same, it is clear that there was entire independence of development. A religious element enters into Leviticus that’s entirely absent for the Babylonian code.<br /><br />The Bible contains two laws on this subject that are without parallel in the Babylonian code. These are found in Exodus 22:16, 17 and Deuteronomy 22:28, 29, and impose penalties for the violation of virgins who were not betrothed. In both codes the principle is manifest that the loss of a girl’s honor was to be compensated by money, though Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 recognizes that it has a value that money cannot buy.<br /><br />The laws relating to a wife whose fidelity is suspected (131, 132) find a general parallel in Numbers 5: 11-28. The provision at the end of 132 that the wife should plunge into the sacred river is in the nature of trial by ordeal. The law in Numbers imposes on such a woman trial by ordeal, through it is of a different sort. She must drink water in which dust from the floor of the sanctuary is mingled – dust surcharged with divine potency – and if she does not swell up and die, she is counted innocent.<br /><br />The laws which provide that a wife may present her husband with a slave-girl as a concubine (137, 144-147) are without parallel in the Biblical codes, but are strikingly illustrated by the patriarchal narratives. Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham (Gen. 16); Rachel and Leah gave Bilhah and Zilpah to Jacob (Gen 30:1-13). The law (146) which deals with such a slave-girl who would rank with her mistress is closely parallel to the story of the treatment of Hagar in Genesis 16: 5-7 and 21: 9,10.<br /><br />The laws on divorce (138-141) are really in advance of the one Biblical law on the subject (Deut. 24:1-4). The law in Deuteronomy permits a husband to put away a wife, who in any way does not please him, without alimony, while to the wife no privilege of initiating divorce proceeding is granted at all. The Babylonian laws secure to the divorced woman a maintenance, and, while by no means according her equal rights with the man, provide (142) that she may herself initiate the proceedings for divorce. The ordeal must have been an unpleasant one, but in Israel’s law a woman had no such rights.</blockquote>The Hittite code (ca. 1650–1500 BCE) contains the following laws:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">27. If a man takes a wife and brings her (to his house) and gives her dower rights therein; if the woman dies that man consuming the property, the goods, takes her estate, but if she dies in the house of her father, the property is for the children; that man shall not inherit that estate.<br /><br />28. If a maiden is betrothed to a man and elopes with another, the bride price he escapes. Then the first man (may swear to it) in any manner whatever. The father and mother need not swear. If the father and the mother gave her to the other man; then the father and mother swear. If the father and mother say, “she is his” (i.e., the first man’s) they shall separate her from him (i.e., the second man).<br /><br />29. If a woman is bound to a man and he has paid the bride price, and the father and mother afterward think ill of it and take her away from that man, then they shall return to him double the bride price.<br /><br />30. If a man does not take a woman and refuses, then the bride price, which he had paid, he shall lose.<br /><br />31. If a man likes a slave girl and afterward they get on badly and quarrel, they shall divide the house between them: the man shall take the children, and the woman shall take 1 child.<br /><br />32. If a slave takes a (free) woman, their law is the same.<br /><br />33. If a slave takes a slave girl, their law is the same.<br /><br />34. If a slave pays the bride price for a woman, and takes her for his wife, and gives her (up), no one shall remit (it).<br /><br />35. If an administrator (?) or a shepherd takes a free woman and does not pay the bride price, then he shall serve as a slave for three years.<br /><br />36. If a slave pays the bride price for a free girl and as a husband lives with her, no one shall afterward take her away.<br /><br />197. If a man seizes a woman in the mountain and commits the human crime, he shall die. If he seizes her in a house, the woman is at fault, she shall die. If the husband finds them and they are killed, there is no penalty.<br /><br />198. If he brings them to the gate of the palace and says: “Let not my wife die,” he may let his wife live; he may also let the ravisher live, but in that case he shall scar his head. If he shall say: “Let the two die,” then they shall receive their punishment. The king may kill them; the king may let them live.</blockquote>Barton adds:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The last two of these laws should be compared with Deuteronomy 22:22-17. The principles underlying the two codes are here the same, though the application is different. The Hittite code makes provision for sparing the life of the guilty man and woman, while the Hebrew law does not.</blockquote>Similar misogynistic laws were included in the Assyrian code and were probably enforced during the ~400 years after ~1000 BCE:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">11. If a man’s wife is going along the highway and a man seizes her without saying to her, “Let us embrace,” she does not consent, she defends herself, he is strong, he rapes her, whether he is caught on the wife of a man or witnesses see him; they shall kill the man; the woman was not to blame.<br /><br />12. If the wife of a man goes from her house unto a man and goes to a place where a man lives and he has intercourse with her, and knows she is the wife of a man they shall kill both the man and the woman.<br /><br />13. If a man’s wife and a man, either in a house of prostitution or on the highway, he knowing that she is a man’s wife, has intercourse with her, as if he were the man whose wife she is (and) they agree in the deed, the man has committed adultery. If not knowing that she was a man’s wife he had intercourse with her, the man is innocent of adultery. The husband shall take his wife and do with her what he pleases.<br /><br />15. If a man’s wife deceives a man, there is no blame attaching to the man; the husband of the woman shall visit punishment upon his wife as he wishes…<br /><br />37. If a man divorces his wife, he may give her whatever he pleases. If he does not wish, he may give her nothing and she shall go forth empty-handed.<br /><br />38. If a woman is detained in the house of her father and her husband divorces her, anything which he has voluntarily settled upon her he may take. He may not touch her marriage portion which she brought; it is secured to the woman.</blockquote>Barton adds:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Neither in the Code of Hammurabi nor in the Pentateuch nor the Hittite code have we as many laws relating to women as are found in this Assyrian code… Without going into great detail, we may note that the principles on which adultery and rape are punished are the same as those which underlie the Babylonian laws on chastity, marriage, and divorce. The same is true of the laws controlling the dowry rights of women (see Code of Hammurabi, 128-161). These principles are some of them also found in the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy… The death-penalty for adultery, for example, imposed in so many sections of the Assyrian code, is paralleled in Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22. The Assyrian law, however, commits the wife to the mercy of her husband in a way without parallel in the Bible. It also provides for mutilation of the face and hands in a way without parallel in Babylonia and Israel. Some slight parallel both to the power of the husband and to mutilation is found in the Hittite code, for example, 198, but of all these people the Assyrians were the most primitive in their attitudes toward such matters.</blockquote>As I already suggested, however, Barton seems to have been religious. In contrast, I see little difference between the above “primitive” Assyrian laws and what’s given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy 22,</span> 13-21:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Suppose a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her, and then rejects her, accusing her of impropriety and defaming her reputation by saying, “I married this woman but when I had sexual relations with her I discovered she was not a virgin!” Then the father and mother of the young woman must produce the evidence of virginity for the elders of the city at the gate. The young woman’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her. Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out before the city’s elders. The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish him. They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives. But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin, the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death, for she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by behaving like a prostitute while living in her father’s house.</blockquote>Think of those poor Hebrew girls with hymen ruptured by a fall, or maybe in play or during hard work in the fields, or whatever. What astounding evils have been caused by ignorance – and no one is so ignorant as the damnable clerics of the world!<br /><br />Separately, one of the most interesting Assyrian laws (if for no other reason than its apparent uniqueness – but it seems to have had huge repercussions throughout the Muslim world) is the following (which has some portions missing):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">40. Whether wives of men […] or women […] on the street (shall veil) their heads. Men’s daughters […] whether out-door (?) garments […] or […] garments, or […] shall be veiled […] their heads […] whether […] whether […] veiled, if she walk on the street by day she shall be veiled; the hierodule who has taken a husband shall be veiled […]; the foreign captive woman is veiled, the prostitute is unveiled, her head is uncovered; whoever sees a prostitute veiled shall seize her, he shall summon witnesses and take her to the portal of the palace. Her ornaments they shall not take away, but the garment in which she was seized they shall take. They shall give her 50 lashes and pour asphalt on her head. But if a man shall see a prostitute veiled and shall let her go and not bring her to the portal of the palace, they shall inflict on the man 50 stripes, his batikan and his garment they shall take, they shall pierce his ears, shall insert a cord in it, and bind it behind him and for one full month he shall perform work for the king. Female slaves are not veiled. Whoever sees a slave-woman veiled shall seize her and bring her to the portal of the palace; they shall cut off her ear. He who seized her shall take her garments. If a man sees a slave-woman veiled and lets her go and does not seize her, and does not take her to the portal of the palace, they shall arrest and try him; they shall give him 50 lashes, pierce his ear, insert a thread and bind it behind him, his batikan and garment they shall take, and for one full month he shall perform labor for the king.</blockquote>As Jessica Bieda describes in “Women in Mesopotamia” (the references for which are given in the original <a href="http://www.assyrianvoice.net/forum/index.php?topic=16767.5;wap2">article</a>):<br /><blockquote>[The above] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Middle Assyrian Law #40 <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[MAL 40]</span> institutionalized a ranking order for women: at the top, the married lady or her unmarried daughter; beneath her, but still counted among the respectable, the married concubine, whether freeborn or slave or temple prostitute; at the bottom, clearly marked off as not respectable, the unmarried temple prostitute, the harlot, and the slave woman (Lerner 250). Before the creation of the law sacred prostitutes, who, as priestesses representing various goddesses, had been fairly autonomous, independent, and even respected (Passman 45). Under MAL 40 the sacral nature of sexual temple service was no longer the decisive factor in determining a woman’s “respectability”, for the temple prostitute was regarded in the same way as the commercial prostitute (Lerner 250). In ancient Mesopotamian society, there was a clear distinction between religious and commercial prostitution, however MAL 40 blurred this distinction. Such a law served to lower the social standing of certain groups of women, therefore dividing them, and was an early sign of the open intervention of the state into the realm of private sexual conduct (Passman 45).</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The final civilization in Mesopotamian history that this essay will examine is Judea. June Stephenson summarizes the status of women during this time in her book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Women’s Roots:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position of wife occupied in the great countries round about… all the texts show that Israelites wanted mainly sons, to perpetuate the family line and fortune, and to preserve the ancestral inheritance… A husband could divorce his wife… women on the other hand could not ask for divorce… the wife called her husband Ba’al or master; she also called him adon or lord; she addressed him in fact as a slave addresses his master, or a subject, his king. The Decalogue includes a man’s wife among his possessions… all her life she remains a minor. The wife does not inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their fathers, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a girl or married woman needs (to be valid) the consent of the father or husband, and if this consent is withheld, the vow is null and void. A man had the right to sell his daughter. Women were excluded from the succession.” (Stephenson 70)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In Judea, religion instead of government was the law, and Jewish family life reflected the patriarchal structure of the religion (Stephenson 71). Because it was important for the population to increase, there was no room in society for unmarried men or women. When a woman got married, she had to prove her virginity in order to ensure that a man’s child was indeed his. Because the woman had been bought by her husband, adultery was a violation of the law of property and usually resulted in death to both parties (Stephenson 72). A woman’s first priority, and her greatest value as judged by men, was her ability to reproduce. Therefore, if a woman could not provide children for any reason, she was seen as a disgrace. For women, marriage was monogamous, though polygamous for men (Stephenson 72). It can be seen that women enjoyed very little, if any at all, freedoms during this time. Their lives (both public and private) were strictly controlled by their religion. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Throughout Mesopotamian history, women experienced different liberties and their role changed with each successive civilization. A patriarchal revolution took place that greatly affected women’s status; in general, women had a higher standing in the earlier Mesopotamian periods. The Code of Hammurabi was the beginning of the institutionalization of the patriarchal family as an aspect of state power (Lerner 253). It reflected a class society in which women’s status depended on the male family head’s social status and property. With the MAL 40, the state assumed control of female sexuality, which had previously been left to individual heads of families. From the middle of the second millennium BCE on, from the public veiling to the regulation by the state of birth control and abortion, the sexual control of women has been an essential feature of patriarchal power (Lerner 254). Unfortunately, the sexual control of women by outside forces is still a problem that is trying to be overcome today.</span></blockquote>The above Assyrian laws dealing with veils probably led to the Islamic custom – and subsequent Islamic laws – requiring women to be veiled. Additional Assyrian laws that, even today, seem to have influence in tribal groups common in Islamic countries include the following.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">55. If a man takes a virgin from the house of her father and does not return her to her father, if she has not been deflowered, or takes as a wife or held for a claim on the house of her father, and man who seizes the virgin, whether within the city or the country or by night on the highway or at a house of feasting or a city feast, and violates her, the father of the virgin may take the wife of the seducer of the virgin and give her to be ravished. To her husband he may not return her; he takes her. The father of the ravished girl gives her to the seducer as a possession. If he has no wife, the seducer shall give to her father 3 times the price of the virgin. The seducer who seized her shall not divorce her. If the father does not wish to receive 3 times the price of the virgin, he may give his daughter to whomsoever he pleases.<br /><br />56. If a virgin of her own accord gives herself to a man, the man must swear (it). His wife they shall not touch. Three times the price of the virgin the adulterer shall give and the father of the girl do with her whatsoever he pleases.<br /><br />59. On the correction of offenses (which are committed) which are written on (this) tablet, a man may (flog) his wife, pluck out her hair, may bruise and destroy her ears. There is no liability.</blockquote>Remnants of those laws can be seen in the current, barbaric Muslim practice of “honor killings” (almost invariably of women). And probably the “right-to-life” advocates both in Islam and Christianity would be pleased if the following Assyrian law were still enforced:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">53. If a woman by herself causes a miscarriage, they shall arrest her and put her on trial, they shall impale her on stakes and shall not bury her. If she dies in consequence of the miscarriage, they shall impale her on stakes and shall not bury her.</blockquote>Unsurprisingly, then (given their historical setting), the “laws of Moses” were misogynistic. As pointed out by Shamshad.M.Khan and Dr. Sherif Abdel Azeem, in an <a href="http://www.calltoislam.com/pdf/Putting%20Women%20Are%20Deficient%20In%20Their%20Intellect%20In%20Its%20Proper%20Context%20-%20CTI%20Research.pdf">article</a> by Muslims criticizing Jews (what else is new?):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">‘Despatches’ would do well to attend an orthodox synagogue to listen to the daily prayer made: “Praised be God that he has not created me a gentile. Praised be God that he has not created me a woman. Praised be God that he has not created me an ignoramus.”</span> [Religious Jews apparently praise God even when he grants only two out of three!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Women were not allowed to bear witness at all in early Jewish society. The Rabbis counted women’s not being able to bear witness among the nine curses inflicted upon all women because of the Fall… Women in today’s Israel are not allowed to give evidence in Rabbinical courts. The Rabbis justify why women cannot bear witness by citing Genesis 18:9-16, where it is stated that Sara, Abraham’s wife had lied. The Rabbis use this incident as evidence that women are unqualified to bear witness…</span></blockquote>Of course, it wasn’t just Judaism that adopted and promoted patriarchal misogyny. Some examples in other religions include the following.<br /><br />In Hinduism, <a href="http://www.duhaime.org/LegalResources/LawMuseum/LawArticle-297/200-BC--Laws-of-Manu.aspx">Manu’s laws</a> include:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In her childhood, a girl should be under the will of her father; in her youth, of her husband; her husband being dead, of her sons. A woman should never enjoy her own will.<br /><br />Though of bad conduct or debauched, or even devoid of good qualities, a husband must always be worshipped like a god by a good wife.</blockquote>Christianity (or better, <span style="font-style: italic;">Paul’s Insanity</span>) includes:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Corinthians 11,</span> 3)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, providing they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Timothy 2,</span> 13-15)</blockquote>And Islam contains similar laws discriminating against women, including that women have rights that are similar to men, but men are “a degree above them” (Koran 2:228), that a woman is worth one-half a man (2:282), that women are feeble and are unable to devise a plan (4:98), and that<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.</span> (4:34)</blockquote>But setting aside the “distractions” of subsequent religions until later posts, I’ll now rest my case. In this post, I’ve tried to present evidence supporting Item #3 in the previous post, namely<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><blockquote>3) With respect to the “Laws of Moses”, themselves, they contain no internal evidence that the author was an omnipotent and omniscient god; instead, the laws that deal with religious matters are consistent with laws already proscribed by other parasitic priesthoods (especially by the Egyptian priesthood) and the laws that deal with civil matters are similar to tribal and community laws that had already been established elsewhere in the Middle East.</blockquote></span>Although much more evidence is available and although I've deferred most comments on religious laws until later posts, I trust that, under existing time and space constraints, my point has been adequately made.<br /><br />The same point has also been made by many others. As a current example, see the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/31/women-religion-equality?commentpage=1">article</a> entitled “God is merciful, but only if you’re a man” by Ophelia Benson in the 31 May 2009 of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Observer,</span> which includes:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The God we have in the Big Three monotheisms is a God who originated in a period when male superiority was absolutely taken for granted. That time has passed, but the superior male God remains and that God holds women in contempt. That God is the one who puts “His” imprimatur on all those tyrannical laws. That God is a product of history – but taken to be eternal – which is a bad combination…</blockquote>Actually, though, the root problem isn’t with the god of the Abrahamic religions. The root problem is tribalism (with its subversion of individual honor by group honor), patriarchy (with its devaluation of females), and the associated lack of basic human rights. The Abrahamic religions “merely” sanctified such behavior, claiming that it was ordained by their fictitious god.<br /><br />During the past few centuries, humanists have managed to mollify the misogyny of most Christians. To make progress toward peace and prosperity in the world, similar must be done to eliminate the terrible problems caused by tribalism and patriarchy in Islam, Hinduism, and in China. Stated differently, to reduce physical violence and achieve sustainable development in the world, I think that one of our first goals should be to eliminate gender biases in births, nourishment, health care, education, employment, marriage, laws, etc., since I’m convinced that more progress towards peace and prosperity requires loving mothers and hopeful daughters.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-35277558897299716372009-05-23T12:59:00.000-07:002009-06-04T16:19:37.982-07:00The Law Lie – 6 – Law & Order – 1<div><br /></div>In the previous five posts, I tried to show at least a little of the history of some aspects of the Law Lie (itself part of the God Lie), including the lies<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That morality is defined by the gods,<br />• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,<br />• That judges are judged by the gods,<br />• That customs were created by the gods,<br />• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,<br />• That covenants can be established with the gods,<br />• That leaders are chosen by the gods…</blockquote>In this post and the next, my goal is to show even less of the history of two additional features of the Law Lie, namely, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that laws are dictated by the gods</span> and <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that order is ordained by the gods.</span> I’ve been forced to set my goals for these two posts even lower than in previous posts (“to show <span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">even less</span></span> of the history”) simply because my time and my knowledge of the subject are limited while the subject is huge.<br /><br />To give a hint of size of the subject, I’ll just mention that, during the past two thousands years and more, a huge number of books have been written (e.g., by philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli and Hobbs) describing (in some way or another) the “divinity” of law and order; during the past few centuries, a large number of books have been written about specific unsatisfactory aspects of such “divine laws” (e.g., dealing with political authority, slavery, private property, capital punishment, etc.); and especially during the past few decades, still more books have dealt with specific injustices in such laws (e.g., dealing with women’s rights, abortion, sexual orientations, etc.). In addition, many historians have written articles and books that compare law codes of different “divine authorities”.<br /><br />In an attempt to constrain the extent of my own report (an apparently failed attempt, since the result is so long that I’ve split it into two posts!), I’ve restricted my focus. Specifically, the focus of these two posts is on aspects of the lies that law and order are ordained by the gods that I’m convinced are especially important if humanity is ever able to reduce physical violence and achieve sustainable development. As to how such goals have been thwarted by the God Lie, here I’ll provide only a brief outline of links.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">Elsewhere</a>, I’ve written 35 chapters on such subjects, starting <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X01_EXposing_Ignorance.pdf">here</a>. I’ll summarize those chapters by stating my conviction that three of the most important challenges facing humanity are: 1) to liberate women from patriarchs, 2) to liberate men from tribalism, and 3) to promote children to continue to develop their critical- (or evaluative- or scientific-) thinking skills, skills that every child begins to develop while still an infant, but skills that are later thwarted by the authoritarianism rampant in patriarchy, tribalism, and in all Abrahamic religions, especially now in Islam. I agree with <a href="http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln07_evolution.html">Lloyd deMause</a> that a key to progress toward less violence and more sustainable development is “loving mothers; hopeful daughters”, and in these two posts, therefore, I’ll emphasize some hints that I’ve detected in the history of the God Lie that suggest the cause of the tragedy that’s now rampant in the world (especially in the Islamic world) of hateful mothers and despondent daughters.<br /><br />I’ll begin by stating the obvious that, in reality, law and order aren’t (and never were) established by any god, because gods have always existed only as figments of people’s <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">imaginations</a>. Instead, law and order were first demanded by leaders of essentially all pack and herd animals: the alpha male “barked” some rule (e.g., “stay away from my females”) and members of the herd or pack that attempted to break the leader’s rule soon learned the meaning of “law and order”. In the case of “the human animal”, perhaps the first demand for law and order was when some human alpha-male similarly barked: “stay away from my females.”<br /><br />Similar continues today. Yesterday (22 May 2009) a native Canadian living in a Toronto apartment, Matthew Coutts, <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1618828">reported</a> that his immigrant Muslim neighbor demanded that he stop speaking to the Muslim's wife. The Canadian states that he merely exchanged pleasantries, such as "Good morning" as he passed the woman in the hallway. In a heated exchange between the two men, the Muslim "included allusions to my impending death." The Canadian's landlady recommended, in effect, that he should just cringe, adding that the Muslim "could be dangerous"; I'd recommend that he report the incident to the police and, if possible, obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.<br /><br />That the law and order demanded by alpha males dominate the “divine laws” proscribed in the “holy books” of all Abrahamic religions was described well in an <a href="http://www.uuworld.org/2004/01/feature2.html">article </a>by Davidson Loehr entitled “The Fundamentalist Agenda”, the final paragraph of which is the following.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The only way all fundamentalisms</span> [i.e., the fundamanentalist sects of all religions, be they in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, or whatever] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we’ve all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group’s territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules; females obey the males and raise the children…</span></blockquote>I therefore suggest that the source of much trouble in the world, the cause of the hateful-mother/ despondent-daughter syndrome, is patriarchy/ tribalism/ male dominance/ fundamentalist religion. For these two posts, therefore, I plan to emphasize how “the divine laws” proscribed in the Old Testament (OT) attempted to cement male dominance. I’ll note, further, that most unfortunately, the attempt was successful, continued for much of the subsequent ~2500 years, and continues in most of the Muslim world almost as impervious to change as ever.<br /><br />Many authors have suggested reasons ‘why’ and ‘how’ male dominance might have re-emerged from dormancy. That males dominated females during the hunter-gather phase of human development in most environments seems likely, if the strength of males was valuable for hunting animals and defending against marauding tribes. If male strength wasn’t so important (e.g., maybe in communities that gained protein from fish or small game), maybe the rules were more egalitarian. But in either case, as human tribes gained more members, as human societies became more complicated, their laws undoubtedly became more intricate – and more “civilized”, which originally meant simply that the people lived in cities. In addition, evidence suggests that when people initially became more civilized, male dominance diminished.<br /><br />Possible reasons why the laws of the first civilizations suppressed male dominance seem self evident – and evidence supports the self-evident reasons. Thus, given that the first instances of city life (which, in the West, occurred in Egypt, Crete, and Mesopotamia) required an agricultural base and given that the agricultural revolution was probably led by women (whose gathering during the hunter-gather phase probably evolved into planting and harvesting crops), then it seem likely that, simultaneously, a change in culture occurred, from the male dominance of hunter societies (patriarchy) to cultures that provided more opportunities, freedoms, and respect for women. The result was not necessarily matriarchal societies (in which women would rule), but evidence suggests that many were matrilineal (in which children were named after their mothers and families were led by women). Evidence suggests, also, that during the early part of the agricultural revolution, goddesses (e.g., of fertility, such as Isis in Egypt and Inanna in Mesopotamia) were worshiped – again suggesting that women had earned and received respect from their communities. Given, also, the possibility that women invented writing (perhaps to keep account of their agricultural products), then women possibly defined and wrote the first laws.<br /><br />That women might have produced the first “civilized” laws is consistent with the following speculation, written in about 50 BCE by Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Antiquities of Egypt</span> (translated by Edwin Murphy and partially available at Google Books):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Moreover, they tell how Isis</span> [who may have been an earlier ruler in Egypt and was subsequently “deified” as a goddess] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">established laws which encouraged men to deal justly with each other and to refrain from unlawful violence and outrage through fear of punishment; for which reason the earliest Greeks called</span> [their earth-mother and goddess of grain; i.e., their Isis] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Demeter</span> [called Ceres by the Romans] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Law giver” (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Thesmosphorus</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">), since she gave men the first laws.</span></blockquote>That the Egyptian goddess Isis (sister-wife of the god Osiris, who possibly was also a deified, earlier ruler) was assumed to be the original lawgiver perhaps explains why subsequent Ancient Egyptians (in contrast to the Ancient Hebrews) treated men and women equal under the law. Whether it be myth or history, after Osiris (called by the Greeks Dionysus) was killed by his brother Seth (or Set or Sut, called Typhon by the Greeks), then according to Diodorus, Isis ruled Egypt “in perfect justice and to excel all monarchs in kindness to her subjects.”<br /><br />Diodorus adds the story that Isis was advised by the trusted, wise friend of Osiris, the god Thoth (or Tut) the “sacred scribe of the gods.” Thoth was called Hermes by the Greeks and possibly was another ingredient in the Hebrews’ myth about Moses. As is said to have been proclaimed by Thoth, himself:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I, Thoth, am the eminent writer, pure of hands… the writer of the truth, whose horror is the lie… the lord of the laws… I teach ma-a-t <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[order, universal law]</span> to the gods, I test (each) word for its veracity… I am the leader of the sky, the earth, and the nether-world.</blockquote>In other Egyptian myths, ma-a-t becomes Maat, Thoth’s wife and the goddess of law and order, or as Wallis Budge put it in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gods of the Egyptians,</span> the goddess Maat was <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“…the personification of law, order, rule, truth, right, righteousness, canon, justice, straightness, integrity, uprightness and the highest conception of physical and moral law known to the Egyptians.”</span> In any event, after the deification of Isis, her and Osiris’s son, Horus (if he existed) may have become pharaoh, and as I mentioned in the previous post, essentially all subsequent pharaohs represented themselves as reincarnations or at least representatives of (the god) Horus.<br /><br />Turning now to less myth and more history, on the left side of “the world’s oldest historical document”, the Narmer Palette shown in the previous post, the pharaoh who united upper and lower Egypt in about 3100 BCE (perhaps named Menes or Mēnēs, Mēnas, Mēnis, Meinis, Meni, Mēn, Mni – or the god Min – or the pharaohs Hor-Aha or Narmer) is shown establishing order with his club (or mace). Thereby, the most obvious information in the Narmer Palette is that a resurgent dynamic was occurring: the strength of men was again becoming “valuable”, in this case, to form a larger political unit. As I’ll mention later in this post, a similar dynamic apparently occurred in Mesopotamian; there, too, male dominance re-emerged, after apparently being suppressed for at least a thousand years before ~3000 BCE.<br /><br />What laws the first ruler of the united Egypt (Menes) proscribed in about 3000 BCE seems to be unknown. With no available compilation of Egyptian laws, historians have been forced to infer the laws of Ancient Egypt from scattered records. For example, based on the ~2600 BCE Will of Prince Nikaure (or Nik’ure), which I quoted in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/03/law-lie-4-contracts.html">post</a> (as well as on other documents quoted in that post), it seems clear that the legal status of men and women in Ancient Egypt was essentially equivalent: women could inherit and dispose of their property, and children would sometimes be named after their mothers (i.e., partially at least, a matrilineal society).<br /><br />The apparent lack of discrimination against women in the laws of Ancient Egypt is consistent not only with the respect given to the goddesses Isis and Maat but also with the likelihood that women continued to grow grains and work the land. In turn, as I’ve suggested <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix09ChangingGods.pdf">elsewhere</a>, perhaps the continued relative-respect given to Egyptian women and their role in society was based on the agricultural bounty of the Nile Valley. That is, with abundant food (in fact, Egypt was the “bread basket” of even the Roman Empire, thousands of years later), possibly with most of the food produced by women, and with few invaders (at least during the first 1,000 years of the unified Egypt), there was then little need for, first, population control, and later, for men as warriors. The main occupation of men in Ancient Egypt seems to be gazing at stars, concocting ideas of gods, dreaming about an afterlife, building pyramids, serving as administrators, and providing occasional stud services!<br /><br />Similar seems to have occurred in the Minoan civilization, which is commonly called “the first known European civilization”. The Minoan civilization, named after King Minos, blossomed on the island of Crete. Archeologists date several epochs of the Minoan civilization during the time period from about 3500 to 1000 BCE: it flourished during the approximate time period 2700 to 1500 BCE and decayed relatively rapidly after the eruption of the island of Thera (or Santorini) and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thera_eruption">associated</a> ~150 m high tsunami that devastated the north coast of Crete. This eruption was “one of the largest volcanic events on Earth in recorded history” (comparable to Krakatoa in Indonesia) and possibly was the “inspiration” for the OT myth about Sodom and Gomorrah – which might even be mangled Hebrew names of the Minoan cities of Zominthos and Gournia!<br /><br />My reasons for suggesting that the natural destruction caused by the Thera eruption may have led to the biblical story about a supernatural destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah include not only that the destruction actually occurred and evidence shows that Minoan traders traveled throughout the Mediterranean area (and no doubt told stories about the destruction) but also that, although records of Minoan laws are even more sparse than for the case of Egyptian laws, several lines of evidence suggest that Minoans openly practiced homosexuality. The Minoan society seems to have been much more peaceful than others of its time (or since!), there doesn’t seem to have been a warrior class, more goddesses than gods seem to have been worshipped, women participated in sporting activities, and possibly the limited availability of arable land on the island (plus the physical, economical, and spiritual liberation of the women) diminished desires for children – but not for sexual satisfaction, leading to acceptance of homosexuality. In foreign lands, if Minoan traders combined their stories about the destruction of their cities with invitations to participate in homosexuality, it’s easy to imagine that the result would be foreigners (especially foreign priests) concocting myths with the moral that their god took vengeance on such “immoral” people.<br /><br />But setting the possible origin of the myth about Sodom and Gomorrah aside, the Minoan experience seems to have parallels in other cultures. Thus, similar to the likely agricultural constraints on Crete, limitations on Mesopotamian lands (especially its salinization caused by irrigation, as opposed to the flooding in the Nile Valley, which replenished the soil) seem to have resulted (by approximately 3,000 BCE) in desires 1) to control birthrates (which as I showed in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/little-boys-with-their-tall-tales.html">post</a> is the moral of the original “Noah” flood myth) and 2) to produce (male) warriors to defend against raiders (who in turn were probably driven by deficiencies of their own land to feed their growing populations). The result seems to have been a reduction in the esteem granted to fertility goddesses [such as Inanna, the Mesopotamian equivalent of Isis, subsequently called Ishtar by the Babylonians and Assyrians, Aphrodite by the Greeks, Astarte by the Phoenicians, and Asherah (Yahweh’s consort) by the Hebrews], an increase in the esteem given to warrior gods (such as Yahweh), an increase in the desire for sons (to serve as warriors), an increase in the assignment of women to bear children, restrictions on women’s sexual activities, and as result, laws that repressed women.<br /><br />That suggested trend, however, seems to have been delayed in the southern cities of Sumer, since women there apparently fared much better under their laws than did women in the more northern Akkadian cities, until ~2,000 BCE. Around that time, Amorite tribes conquered Sumerian (and Akkadian) cities – and subsequently, they established the first Babylonian Empire. As Elisabeth Meir Tetlow describes in detail in her <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ONkJ_Rj1SS8C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA19&ots=ZbYYEGOKTz&dq=justice+%2BSumerian#PPA276,M1">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">Women, Crime, and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society, Vol. 1, The Ancient Near East:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">At that time, as Amorite influence began to appear, punishments were determined on the basis of the gender of the victim and the gender of the offender. Women generally received harsher punishments than men. Such laws illustrate the widening gap between the increasing power and authority of men and the decreasing power of women in the late Isin/Larsa period, which developed parallel to the decreasing influence of the land culture of the high urban civilization of Sumer and the increasing influence of Amorite tribal customs.</blockquote>Not incidentally, a similar dynamic may be occurring today, with Muslims attempting to have their tribal laws (called Sharia) supplement or replace the laws of the more civilized West.<br /><br />The possibility that women in Sumerian cities may have faired better for longer (by ~1,000 years!) in southern than northern Mesopotamian cities may have been caused by the continuing productivity of the irrigated and frequently flooded lands of the south. Also, the migration of the Amorite tribes into Sumer may have been the result of a climatic warm-period that occurred ~2,000 BCE, decreasing agricultural production (also in Egypt, where widespread social unrest occurred) and causing nomadic tribes (such as the Amorites and the Hebrews) to invade other lands in search of better fodder for their animals. Similar migration and its consequences may occur in the near future, especially in Europe, if global warming causes even more economic hardships for Muslims.<br /><br />In any case, what seems to have occurred in many ancient civilizations is that, after a bountiful time near the beginning of the agricultural revolution (probably led by women, who were then “equal before the law”), agricultural resources became constrained, the might and ferocity of men was needed for warfare, and men regained the dominance that they probably possessed during the much earlier hunter-gatherer period. With such male dominance, men again started to make the rules (establishing “law and order”), more gods (rather than goddesses) were worshipped, and of course, the men claimed that their laws were dictated to them by their gods. Diodorus summarized the result as follows:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">For in primitive Egypt, after life had become settled… they say that the first person who convinced the people to use written laws was Menes, a man both lofty in spirit and the most altruistic in his way of life of any lawgiver in memory. He claimed that Hermes</span> [Thoth] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">had given these laws to him as a source of many substantial benefits; and this, they say, is just what Minos of Crete</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">did among the Greeks and Lycurgos among the Lacedaemonians</span> [Spartans]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, the former asserting that he had received his revelations from Zeus, the latter from Apollo…</span></blockquote>Thus, similar to the myth in the OT that Moses received his laws from his god – but much earlier – Egyptians had their myth that Menes received his laws from his god, and Minoans (and then the Greeks) had their myths that Minos received his laws from his god.<br /><br />In the previous post I showed a little about similar claims by Mesopotamian leaders, including Urukagina’s claim (in about 2400 BCE) that he received his laws from the god Nignisur, Ur-Nammu’s claim (in about 2100 BCE) that he received his laws from the god Enlil, Lipit-Ishtar’s claim (in about 1900 BCE) that he received his laws from the gods Anu and Enlil, and Hammurabi’s claim (in about 1800 BCE) that he received his laws from Shamash. In fact, on the stele containing his law code, Hammurabi added the following <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi">figure</a> depicting his receiving his laws directly from the Sun god, Shamash, shown seated:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnBNDnZ0NuPeGDLf9qsZR00ISFHTOzIzUcZRkku1dlBdiR5-E2g_AOh2sTw6p67GCiOaiVkAiboOz47WiJrlB_DPvCUfoJQp4JjYHGXlhVqCGi87aGcvHjG9zkl9zOZcoo8IL9WUqJDA/s1600-h/Hammurabi+-+Shamash.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnBNDnZ0NuPeGDLf9qsZR00ISFHTOzIzUcZRkku1dlBdiR5-E2g_AOh2sTw6p67GCiOaiVkAiboOz47WiJrlB_DPvCUfoJQp4JjYHGXlhVqCGi87aGcvHjG9zkl9zOZcoo8IL9WUqJDA/s400/Hammurabi+-+Shamash.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339115174389705122" border="0" /></a><br />It’s then incorrect to identify Menes (or Narmer) as the first lawgiver – as is done, for example, on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court_building">South Wall Frieze</a> of the U.S. Supreme Court Building: the first human lawgiver was quite likely the first human male. Further, it's incorrect to identify the second and third lawgivers on the same Frieze as Hammurabi and Moses, respectively. Thereby the creators or approvers of the Frieze skipped over literally hundreds of other lawgivers, not necessarily more important than Hammurabi but certainly more important than the mythical Moses – reflecting a not untypical distortion of history by clerics and their dupes. In particular, for reasons to be addressed later in this post and the next, it’s clear that Moses wasn’t the author of the laws given in the OT.<br /><br />Similar to the case for the laws of the Egyptian Menes, the Indian Manu (who was the alleged author, for example, of the horrible <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/S_Science_and_Models.pdf">caste system</a>, remnants of which persist in India today), and the Cretan Minos, details of any laws that the Hebrew Moses might have proclaimed are lost to us in mythology and manipulated manuscripts. Further, the similarity of the names Menes, Manu, Minos, and Moses suggests that there may have been substantial intermingling of myths, as has been speculated by many authors (as the reader can attest by searching the internet). In any event, certainly the OT’s claim that Moses received his laws from his God wasn’t a new concept: the same idea had already been widely dispersed in the ancient world for at least 2,000 years! As Diodorus wrote:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Thus it is recorded that among the Arians</span> [Persians] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Zathraustes</span> [Zoroaster] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">claimed that the Good Spirit</span> [the god Ahura Mazda] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">gave him his laws… and among the Jews Moyses</span> [Moses] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">referred his laws to the god who is invoked as Iao</span> [Yahweh]. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">They all did this</span> [i.e., claimed that their laws were given to them by a god] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">either because they believed that a conception which would help humanity was marvelous and wholly divine, or because they held that the common crowd would be more likely to obey the laws if their attention was directed towards the majesty and power of those</span> [gods] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">to whom their laws were ascribed.</span></blockquote>It’s a pity that, ~2,000 years ago, Diodorus didn’t mention a third obvious reason why laws were claimed to be dictated by the gods, i.e., not only because 1) “a conception that would help humanity was… wholly divine” or 2) that “the common crowd” would be swayed by the “power of those [gods] to whom… laws were ascribed” but also because 3) the clerics thereby saw that promoting <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lies that the gods dictated laws and ordained order</span> would permit the priests to continue their parasitic existence, living off the producers of the world (as they do to this day). In particular, in the case of the clerics who concocted the Old Testament (OT) [whom I’ve been identifying in these posts as Ezra & Co-Conspirators (Ezra & C-C)], their claim that Yahweh gave Moses any laws is such a blatant lie that it’s amazing not only that the Ancient Hebrews believed it but also that, still today, most fundamentalist Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, etc. still believe such utter nonsense.<br /><br />The nonsense of the claim that the “Laws of Moses” were given to him by the first symmetry-breaking quantum fluctuation in the original void (i.e., “God”) can be seen from many different perspectives. Below and in the next post, I’ll list illustrations of what I mean. I’ve organized the material into three categories.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">1) Whereas the most certain knowledge that we possess (even more certain than the knowledge that we exist!) is that there are no gods (and never were any), then obviously, no god gave any laws to anyone.</span></span><br /><br />I won’t provide further justification for that statement; I’ve dwelt on it (at length!) in my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">online book</a> and in earlier posts in this blog.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">2) Statements within the OT reveal that Moses [who, as I’ve suggested in earlier posts entitled “The Mythical Moses Monster”, is (almost certainly) mostly a fictional character] didn’t write the laws attributed to him; instead, the “Laws of Moses” were (almost certainly) written by Levitical priests centuries after Moses allegedly died.</span></span><br /><br />Readers who desire support for that statement can find literally hundreds of thorough analyses on the internet, each quoting “chapter and verse”. Readers might want to start by examining the 2003 <a href="http://www.prudentialpublishing.info/">book</a> by Andrew D. Benson entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Origins of Christianity and the Bible.</span> Here, I’ll summarize with just a few points (made by Benson and other authors).<br /><br />The essence of the argument that the OT, itself, demonstrates the “Laws of Moses” weren’t written by Moses but by later priests follows as an obvious, logical explanation for silly mistakes in the time sequencing of OT statements (i.e., anachronisms). Some examples follow.<br /><br />• Similar to other groups, the Hebrews had their repertoire of myths, which Ezra & C-C modified to enhance the Levitical priesthood. I’ve provided many illustrations of such mangled myths in earlier posts in this series. Still another example is the priests’ silly addition to the Noah myth that Yahweh allegedly told Noah: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“You must take with you </span>[into the ark] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">seven of every kind of clean animal… two of every kind of unclean animal.”</span> The obvious problem with that statement, however (as noticed by Thomas Paine), is that the distinction between “clean” vs. “unclean” animals would make no sense until after the Levitical priests made such a distinction, which even according to the Bible’s chronology was many thousands of years after Noah!<br /><br />• According to Yahweh’s alleged covenant with Abraham, all Hebrew males were to be circumcised, but Ezra & C-C obviously inserted that requirement at a much later date, because in their fictitious story about the Exodus, neither Moses nor any of the Jews who allegedly wandered in the desert for 40 years were circumcised.<br /><br />• According to one of the “Laws of Moses” (namely, the Second Commandment) the Hebrews were not to make any carved images (<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“You shall not make a carved image for yourself nor the likeness of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth”</span>), but that’s obviously an addition to the OT later than the story about Moses, since in that story, he made an image of a snake, which the people allegedly used to cure themselves of snake bites.<br /><br />• According to the OT, the Jews were in possession of the “Laws of Moses” (as given in <span style="font-style: italic;">Leviticus</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Deuteronomy)</span> centuries before there were kings of Judah and Israel, but in the OT books of <span style="font-style: italic;">Samuel 1 & 2</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Kings 1 & 2</span>, the kings and the people obviously knew essentially nothing of such laws, until the high priest Hilkiah (Ezra's great grandfather) “miraculously” found “the book of the law [of Moses]” in “the house of the Lord” (built by Solomon, approximately three centuries earlier). Hilkiah had “the book of the law” read to Josiah (king of Judah from ~640–609 BCE, beginning his reign when he was only eight years old), who then (no doubt under the high priest's guidance) started laying down the law, executing priests of competing religions and destroying figurines of Yahweh’s consort, the mother goddess Asherah.<br /><br />In fact, the OT, itself, incriminates the Levitical priests of concocting the “Laws of Moses”. Thus, after the boy-king Josiah started laying down the law, “the prophet” Jeremiah (c.650 – c.585 BCE) recorded his opinions both about such laws and the “prophets” and priests who promoted them, allegedly saying (<span style="font-style: italic;">Jeremiah 8,</span> 8–10):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord”, when scribes with their lying pens have falsified it?… For all, high and low, are out for ill-gotten gain; prophets and priest are frauds, every one of them.</blockquote>As to how the “scribes with their lying pen falsified… the law of the Lord”, my relatively superficial studies of the research of archeologists and the writings of other authors (who have spent their lives studying details!) lead me to the following speculations.<br /><br />I wouldn’t be surprised if some Egyptian priest, whose name was shortened to Moses, did move to the Egyptian colony of Canaan sometime during the time period from about 1400–1200 BCE and did have some influence on the natives, who didn’t know how to write. He might have inscribed on stone tablets some variation of what he remembered from the <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2009/01/law-lie-1-morality.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Egyptian Book of the Dead</span></a>, e.g.,<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Nor have I despised god… Nor have I killed… Nor have I fornicated… Nor have I despoiled the thing of the god… Nor have I defiled the wife of a man… Nor have I cursed god… Nor have I borne false witness.</blockquote>The above “negative confessions” from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of the Dead</span> already contain five of the “Ten Commandments of Moses”:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain… Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery… Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor</span>…</blockquote>As for the significance of having written laws, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas make a good point in their <a href="http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/thera/egypt.html">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hiram Key:</span><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The idea of messages materializing out of marks on stone amazed ordinary people and the scribes who could make “stone talk” were considered to be holders of great magic. This is easily appreciated when one realizes that the Egyptians called hieroglyphics “the Words of the God”, a term that would often be repeated throughout the Bible.</span> </blockquote>Centuries after Moses allegedly inscribed the Ten Commandments in stone, the Canaanites who were later called Hebrews learned how to write their language (in about 1000 BCE) and began recording their stories, legends, myths, and chronicles. As given in Chapter 3 (entitled “The Origins and Development of the Laws of Moses”) of Benson’s book (referenced earlier):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The development of the Mosaic law is clouded with obscurity. Other than the Ten Commandments (which were probably written in hieroglyphics), the Israelites began to write parts of the law of Moses in Hebrew after they acquired the Hebrew alphabet from the Phoenicians… Scholars estimate that parts of the first four books of the Pentateuch were committed to writing between about 900 and 800 BCE. Deuteronomy, they believe, was committed to writing in the 7th century…</span> [Probably by or under the direction of the high priest Hilkiah, in about 620 BCE, who then informed King Josiah about the “Laws of Moses”.] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">They completed it <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[the Pentateuch]</span> after the exile, sometime after 450 BCE in the time of Ezra the scribe and before the Samaritans separated from the rest of the Israelites (perhaps around 432 BCE).</span></blockquote>For readers desiring a more thorough analyses of what might have occurred, I’d encourage them to start by reading Wikipedia’s excellent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed_:_Archaeology%27s_New_Vision_of_Ancient_Israel_and_the_Origin_of_Its_Sacred_Texts">summary</a> of the book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">3) With respect to the “Laws of Moses”, themselves, they contain no internal evidence that the author was an omnipotent and omniscient god; instead, the laws that deal with religious matters are similar to laws already proscribed by other parasitic priesthoods (especially by the Egyptian priesthood) and the laws that deal with civil matters are similar to tribal and community laws that had already been established elsewhere in the Middle East.</span></span><br /><br />Now, under space and time constraints, I’m unable to give a full explanation and defense for the above claim. In an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/M2_Misconceived_Morality.pdf">chapter</a>, I’ve illustrated what I mean solely in the case of the Ten Commandments. In addition, <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">elsewhere</a> I’ve gone through a substantial fraction of all the policies advocated in the OT (and in the NT, the Book of Mormon, and the Koran) and if the reader has the perseverance to go through all of that, I really don’t know how he or she could come to any conclusion than to agree that the clerics who wrote the “Laws of Moses” painted the Abrahamic god not as omnipotent and omniscient but as an impotent numbskull – with a bad attitude. Here, therefore, I’ll only outline the justification for my claim – an outline that, nonetheless, will continue for the rest of this post and the next!<br /><br />In the case of the Ten Commandments, the purpose of the First Four is clearly just to fortify the priesthood, but imagine the insolence of the authors who claimed that an omniscient god would be “jealous” and that an omnipotent god would became tired after snapping his fingers (or whatever) to create the world in six days and therefore “rested” on the seventh? Talk about “taking the Lord’s name in vain”! Then, think of the incompetence of anyone (or any god) who would demand (command) that you love him (when love, like any emotion, can’t be “commanded”). Further, think of the injustice of punishing your children and grandchildren (out to “the third and fourth generations”) for something that you allegedly did wrong – such as “taking the Lord’s name in vain”; if it were true, it could explain why Jewish priests have had so much trouble during the past ~2500 years: anyone (let alone a jealous god) would be insulted by having his name associated with such laws!<br /><br />As for inadequacies in Commandments Six through Ten:<br /><blockquote>• What if your father and mother don’t deserve to be honored?<br /><br />• Define ‘murder’, define ‘adultery’, define ‘steal’!<br /><br />• What if you “give false evidence” to deter someone from killing someone?<br /><br />• There’s nothing wrong if you ‘covet’ something! What’s important is: what actions (if any) do you plan to then take?</blockquote>And if the above isn’t enough evidence to support the claim that the Ten Commandments weren’t created by an omnipotent, omniscient god, then think of the incompetence of any legislator who doesn’t specify the consequence of breaking a proposed law, i.e., “Thou shalt not… [whatever]” or else… WHAT? He’ll take his ball and go back home?! Would that the little brat would!<br /><br />Now, I admit, “defenders of the faith” would probably point out that their god did specify the penalty for breaking his commandments, e.g., in his (alleged) statement at <span style="font-style: italic;">Exodus 15,</span> 26:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“If only you will obey the Lord your God, if you will do what is right in his eyes, if you will listen to his commands and keep all his statutes, then I will never bring upon you any of the sufferings which I brought on the Egyptians…”</blockquote>But as any lawyer worth her fee would tell you: “That statement specifies the consequences if you obey the law; not if you don’t.”<br /><br />And sure enough (according to the myth), almost immediately after Moses informed the people of “God’s laws”, Moses found that “God’s Laws” were inadequate. As a result, after people had Aaron create a golden calf idol, Moses had to <span style="font-style: italic;">ad lib</span> the missing “punishment part” of the code (<span style="font-style: italic;">Exodus 32,</span> 25):<br /><blockquote>[After coming down from the mountain] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Moses saw that the people were out of control… He took his place at the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come here to me”; and the Levites all rallied to him</span> [Moses was a Levite; subsequent priests were to be Levites]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. He said to them, “These are the words of the Lord the God of Israel</span> [although there’s neither evidence nor even any suggestion that God said such words to Moses!]:<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> ‘Arm yourselves, each of you, with his sword. Go through the camp from gate to gate and back again. Each of you kill his brother, his friend, his neighbor’.” The Levites obeyed, and about three thousand of the people died</span> [i.e., were murdered]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> that day. Moses then said </span>[to the Levites]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, “Today you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord completely, because you have turned each against his own son and his own brother</span> [i.e., murdered them] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and so have this day brought a blessing upon yourselves.”</span></blockquote>And thus Moses (allegedly) completed the Ten Commandments, incompetently specified by his god, by defining the punishment for breaking the laws – after the “crime” had been committed!<br /><br />Fortunately, such “retroactive” or “after-the-fact” or <span style="font-style: italic;">“ex-post-facto”</span> laws are now <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law">prohibited</a> in modern societies – and even in Iran and Pakistan! In fact, Article 11, paragraph 2 of the United Nations’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</span> prohibits such evil as was allegedly perpetrated by Moses (or his god) of specifying punishment <span style="font-style: italic;">ex post facto.</span><br /><br />Meanwhile, in reality, no evidence supports the above story about Moses defining the punishments for breaking a law after the law was broken, but the story, itself, provides many morals – beyond the hideous moral that the God of the Bible violates human rights by imposing <span style="font-style: italic;">ex-post-facto</span> laws. Some examples include the following.<br /><blockquote>• To maintain “law and order”, warnings and threats from any tyrant (human or god) aren’t sufficient; instead, force is needed.<br /><br />• To stay in control, a tyrant therefore needs a loyal police force (Levite priests or SS troopers or…) and needs to apply the law of the jungle: might makes right.<br /><br />• Do not expect a tyrant to abide by “the law”; thus, even the law “thou shalt not kill” (or “you shall not commit murder”) is a law for the people, not for the tyrant and his police (or priests).<br /><br />• Priests were (and still are) just primitive lawmakers and police – and, of course, great con artists, magically taming the supernatural for their own benefit.<br /><br />• Priests will do anything to “protect their turf” (that is, to protect their source of livelihood): if people stray from the system of beliefs that they preach (for their daily bread), history shows that priests will do anything, including murdering “nonbelievers”.<br /><br />• Never trust the words of any cleric, for with them (as Humpty Dumpty said), words mean whatever they want them to mean, “neither more nor less”. Thus, by murdering people, directly violating a “Thou shalt not…”, they “brought a blessing” on themselves.<br /><br />• Clerics who follow the Bible (preaching Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) have chosen an absolutely horrible “manual” to follow. It advocates the most extreme religious intolerance imaginable: worship our god or we’ll kill you.</blockquote>Aren’t those lovely morals? Then, is there any wonder why, yesterday (22 May 2009), U.S. Congressman Paul Broun (R–Ga.) introduced a resolution to make 2010 “The Year of the Bible”? The resolution <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090522/ap_on_go_co/us_bible_bill_1">states</a>, in part:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(153, 51, 153);">The president is encouraged… to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great Democratic form of government, as well as its rich spiritual heritage, and which has unified, healed and strengthened its people for over 200 years.</blockquote>Glorious! I think that even more glorious, however, would be if a law were enacted requiring everyone to demonstrate to schoolteachers basic competence in evaluative- or critical-thinking before being permitted either to vote or to run for any office!<br /><br />President Jefferson <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X26_EXtrapolating_Laws.pdf">proposed</a> something similar:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">What is proposed… is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education <span style="font-style: italic;">gratis</span>, and to strengthen parental excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while uneducated. Society has certainly a right to disavow him whom they offer, and are permitted to qualify for the duties of a citizen. If we do not force instruction, let us at least strengthen the motives to receive it when offered.</blockquote>But then, imagine the uproar from all religious fundamentalists who, unable to demonstrate rudimentary skills in critical thinking, would no longer be permitted to vote: no doubt they’d start screaming, like Moses and the Taliban, “Kill the infidels!”<br /><br />In any case, the above example from the Bible is one of the best available to show how power mongers control the people. Setting an example for Constantine, Muhammad, Hitler, and Stalin to follow, this part of the Bible has Moses first form a squad of killers (his Levites were like Constantine’s loyal legionaries, Muhammad’s mujahideen, Hitler’s SS troopers, and Stalin’s Secret Police), who would murder anyone for their leader. And then, the leader “justifies” his actions by claiming that they served some “higher good”. Such power mongers maintain that “the end justifies the means”, ignoring the reality that “means are ends in themselves”.<br /><br />In their completed form (stripped of nonessentials) the “Laws of Moses” became the simple rule: “Do whatever we clerics say – or die.” For later commandments, however, punishments were specified for breaking the clerics’ laws. In particular (although I’ve not bothered to verify the numbers), of the total of 613 (not Ten!) Commandments in the OT, the penalty for breaking 50 of them is death! Kill, kill, kill – not murder, mind you, because when the priests tell people to kill, then it’s “justified homicide”. It isn’t murder – even if you kill men, women, and children living peacefully on their own land – if they’re such horrible people as to think for themselves and worse: have a different priesthood. As Muslim clerics continue to claim, there’s room for only one con-game at a time.<br /><br />When the stupidity of most of “God’s laws” is combined with the inappropriateness of the associated penalties for breaking the laws, the result is ripe for ridicule. As a great illustration, consider the following anonymous letter, <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp">possibly</a> written by “Kent Ashcraft” and written as if it were a letter to the American “talk-show host” Laura Schlessinger.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Dear Dr. Laura,<br /><br />Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.<br /><br />I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.<br /><br />• When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?<br />
<br />• I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?<br />
<br />• I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.<br />
<br />• Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?<br />
<br />• I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?<br />
<br />• A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?<br />
<br />• Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?<br />
<br />• Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
<br /><br />• I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?<br />
<br />• My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)<br /><br />I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.<br /><br />Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.<br /><br />Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.</blockquote>Still another way to see that no omnipotent, omniscient god dictated the “Laws of Moses” is to compare his alleged laws with laws established earlier in other cultures. When such comparisons are made, as I’ll outline in the next post, then once again it’s seen that the fictitious god of the Bible (and of the Koran and the Book of Mormon) wasn’t omnipotent and omniscient but incompetent and obscene.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><br /><br /><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-43707328453405429622009-04-20T10:53:00.000-07:002009-05-07T12:01:27.101-07:00The Law Lie - 5 - Leaders<div><br /></div>With the previous four posts in this series, I tried to show at least a little of the history of some features of the Law Lie (itself part of the God Lie), including the lies:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That morality is defined by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That judges are judged by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That customs were created by the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That oaths are binding when sworn to the gods,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">• That covenants can be established with the gods…</span><br /><br />In this post, I want to show a little of the history of an additional feature of the Law Lie, namely, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that leaders are chosen by the gods.</span><br /><br />In reality, closer to the truth is that social animals (such as wolves, monkeys, and humans) form groups, members of each group develop concepts of morality, justice, and customs through experience, and within each group, commonly a leader emerges. For most social animals, this leader (commonly called “the alpha male”) is usually the strongest member of the group, e.g., King Gilgamesh. As humans became more knowledgeable, most people probably hoped that the leader would be the most intelligent member of the group. Such a hope would be consistent with the Sumerian proverb (from more than 4,000 years ago!) that <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">strength cannot keep pace with intelligence.</span> There are, however, many forms of intelligence, and history has unfortunately shown that human alpha males have commonly excelled in deceit, evasion, and treachery.<br /><br />In this series of posts dealing with the Mountainous God Lie, I’ve been trying to provide evidence to support the indictment that examples of such treacherous alpha males were those who fabricated the Old Testament (OT), whom I’ve been identifying as Ezra and co-conspirators (abbreviated to Ezra & C-C). Evidence suggests that Ezra & C-C collected and concocted fictitious stories (e.g., about Moses), assembled them to form the OT, and used the result to rule the Jewish people on behalf of their Persian masters. In subsequent posts I’ll try to provide evidence to support the indictments that Christian conspirators (primarily “Saint” Paul, “Saint” Constantine, and a host of popes), Muslim conspirators (particularly Muhammad and subsequent caliphs), and Mormon conspirators (especially Sydney Rigdon, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young) followed the example set by Ezra & C-C to rule those they had similarly duped.<br /><br />It seems obvious why primitive people would conclude that their leaders were chosen by the gods. In the worldview of primitive people, the gods control everything; therefore, the people probably reasoned that, since some alpha male had become their leader, it must have been because the gods had chosen him to rule – illustrating, once again, how preposterous conclusions can logically follow from false premisses. In fact, the first examples in Western history suggest even more preposterous conclusions: given that their leaders had “life over death” power over the people, they apparently accepted their leaders’ claims that the leaders were gods, sometimes “resurrected” gods, or at least, part gods.<br /><br />One example is the leader who united Upper and Lower Egypt in about 3100 BCE. His name is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meni">uncertain</a>; he has been identified as Menes (or Meni or Min), but he may have been pharaoh Hor-Aha or his father Narmer. Whoever he was, he apparently claimed to be a re-incarnation of the god Horus (the son of the god Osiris and the goddess Isis, who in turn may have been “deified” earlier rulers). Horus was typically represented as a falcon, which soars so high “into the heavens” that it becomes invisible. He’s shown in many details in what’s been called “the world’s oldest historical document”, the Narmer Palette (shown below); the falcon Horus appears prominently in the left side of the figure (to the right of Narmer), but if details of the Palette are examined, many depictions of Horus can be found. And I’ll add that, as interested readers can <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer_Palette">find</a>, interpretation of the Palette has been controversial during most of the century since it was found, and in fact, full interpretation of “the world’s oldest historical document” is still unsettled.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD7dczHENTEWp0G8SoTPZEdIrfiOqPNP7IigDCmD5GhL7uwQAFyXwXBidhGGW3rm-yZbClSLjd4zmD3NHkwikSDyKg4ahsC5Y5Xw6mm1waN8CVfMqjnB-NXO9g6Est7lirqebXPvqI8Lw/s1600-h/Narmer+Palette.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD7dczHENTEWp0G8SoTPZEdIrfiOqPNP7IigDCmD5GhL7uwQAFyXwXBidhGGW3rm-yZbClSLjd4zmD3NHkwikSDyKg4ahsC5Y5Xw6mm1waN8CVfMqjnB-NXO9g6Est7lirqebXPvqI8Lw/s400/Narmer+Palette.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326834717378744690" border="0" /></a><br />Subsequently, essentially all Egyptian pharaohs similarly claimed to be the resurrected or re-incarnated Horus, i.e., they claimed to be gods. Approximately 3,000 years later, Christian clerics claimed that their Jesus was the son of god (or even god, himself, in human form), and approximately 5,000 years after Menes, the Japanese were still claiming that their emperor was a god.<br /><br />Returning to the ancient past, an example from Mesopotamia of a leader claiming to be a god or related to a god is “the shepherd king”, King Dumuzi (c. 2800 BCE). He was claimed to be son of the Lord of the Earth (Enki) and to be married to the fertility goddess Inanna (subsequently called Ishtar, Aphrodite, and in northern Europe, Oestre or Ester, from which the English word ‘Easter’ and its European celebration are derived). Later, in Ancient Babylonia (and in the OT), Dumuzi was called Tammuz; he was worshipped as the god of spring <a href="http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2734&C=2445">fertility</a>, as was Osiris in Egypt.<br /><br />For readers of these posts, a more familiar example of a leader claiming to be a god or related to a god is King Gilgamesh (c. 2700 BCE, king of the city of Uruk, spelled Erech in the OT). In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Epic of Gilgamesh</span>, Gilgamesh is claimed to be “two-thirds god, one-third human”, which is genetically impossible. In his stimulating analysis of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Epic,</span> Bob Trubshaw <a href="http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/gilgamsh.htm">suggests</a> that, with such a description, Gilgamesh is being depicted as the planet that we call Mercury, which the Greeks called “the messenger of the gods”, which moves through only two-thirds of the Zodiac, and which the Sumerians might have concluded spends the other third of its time on Earth, as King Gilgamesh!<br /><br />But speculations aside, subsequent written records clearly show the lie (or, more generously for ancient people, “the mistake”) that leaders were chosen by the gods. The oldest surviving example seems to be the claim made by “the world’s first social reformer”, Urukagina, who became “lugal [ruler] of Lagash” in about 2400 BCE. In the depiction of conditions prior to his reforms (some of which I included in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.blogspot.com/2008/09/basic-ideas-borrowed-for-bible.html">post</a> in this series) clay tablets state the following, in which someone else (maybe the translator) has added the notes in parentheses and I’ve added the notes in brackets, […]:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When the god Ningirsu, the warrior of the god Enlil</span> [En = lord; lil = wind; therefore Enlil = Lord of the Wind, similar to the wind god Odin, called Woden in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon versions of Norse mythology and whom many of us still honor every Wednesday = Wodnesdaeg = Woden’s Day]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, granted the lugal-ship of Lagash to Urukagina, picking him out of the entire population, he</span> [Ningirsu] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">enjoined upon him (the restoration of) the divinely decreed way of life of former days. He</span> [Urukagina] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">carried out the instructions of his divine lugal, Ningirsu.</span></blockquote>Happiness is having the sky god’s warrior god chose you to rule! Incidentally, notice also that (consistent with my earlier post on <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that customs were created by the gods</span>) Urukagina described his community’s customs as “the divinely decreed way of life of former days.”<br /><br />A second written example of <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that leaders are chosen by the gods</span> appears in the law code of Ur-Nammu, written in Sumerian in about 2100 BCE. Its prologue <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu">states</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…After An</span> [king of the gods] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and Enlil had turned over the Kingship of Ur to Nanna </span>[sure they did!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">at that time did Ur-Nammu, son born of Ninsun</span> [a goddess, the “lady wild cow”]<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, f</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">or his beloved mother who bore him, in accordance with his principles of equity and truth... Then did Ur-Nammu the mighty warrior, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, by the might of Nanna, lord of the city, and in accordance with the true word of Utu</span> [the Sun god and god of justice]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, establish equity in the land…</span></blockquote>Still another example appears in the Law Code of <a href="http://www.re-quest.net/g2g/historical/laws/lipit-ishtar/">Lipit-Ishtar</a>, who ruled the first dynasty of Isin from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipit-Ishtar">about</a> 1934–1924 BCE:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When Anu </span>[same as An, the king of the gods] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and Enlil had called Lipit-Ishtar, Lipit-Ishtar the wise shepherd whose name had been pronounced by Nunamnir </span>[another name for Enlil]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, to the princeship of the land in order to establish justice in the land, to banish complaints, to turn back enmity and rebellion by force of arms, and to bring well-being to the Sumerians and Akkadians, then I, Lipit-Ishtar, the humble shepherd of Nippur, the stalwart farmer of Ur, who abandons not Eridu, the suitable lord of Erech, king of Isin, king of Sumer and Akkad, who am fit for the heart of</span> [the goddess] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Inanna</span> [but, come to think of it, I’m not that “humble”!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, established justice in Sumer and Akkad in accordance with the word of Enlil.</span></blockquote>Probably the most famous example from Ancient Mesopotamia, however, is the claim by Hammurabi, king of Babylon from c. 1795–1750 BCE and the first king of the Babylonian Empire, who had the following written in the preamble to his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi">law code</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When Anu the Sublime (King of the Anunaki</span> [which seems to mean “King of the gods”]) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">and Bel (the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land) assigned to Marduk (the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness</span> [for the Babylonians, Marduk replaced Enlil as the sky god]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">) dominion over earthly man and made him great among the Igigi </span>[the host of gods]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, they called Babylon by his illustrious name</span> [maybe that means that cities were “male” – whereas, nowadays, cities are commonly considered “female”]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth. Then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak, so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash</span> [similar to the Sumerian god Utu, the Sun god and god of justice]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.</span></blockquote>Many other examples are available, some of which I showed in earlier posts in this series. Thus, in earlier posts I quoted from tablets and stelae demonstrating: 1) that “the Alexander the Great of Ancient Egypt”, Thothmes III (c.1480–1425 BCE), claimed that he was chosen to rule by the chief Egyptian god of the time, Amen-Ra, 2) that the ruler of the Assyrian Empire from 1115–1077 BCE, Tiglath-Pileser I, claimed he ruled on behalf of his chief god, Ashur, and 3) that even Cyrus the Great, ruler of the Persian Empire from 559–530 BCE, claimed he conquered Babylon because:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">…he </span>[the god Marduk] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">pronounced the name Cyrus, king of Anshan, declared him… to be(come) the ruler of all the world.</span></blockquote>Consequently, when Cyrus freed the Jews (permitting them to return from Babylon to “the promised land”) and when subsequent Persian Emperors gave power over the Jewish people to the Jewish priests (who in turn were under the Persian governor!), the priests certainly didn’t set a precedent by claiming (as they wrote in their OT) that their god (Yahweh) had chosen prior Jewish leaders: people had being doing similar for at least the previous 2500 years! The redactors of the OT (i.e., Ezra & C-C) did, however, take such silliness to an extreme: they apparently re-worked, re-invented, and re-wrote essentially the entire history of the Hebrews and their neighbors, claiming that everything was under control of their creator god, that he dictated and controlled both the past, present, and future, that he had “personally” chosen the Hebrews as “his people”, and wouldn’t you know, that he had chosen them as his priests.<br /><br />Their rewrite of Jewish “history” (i.e., the resulting books in the OT, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> up through <span style="font-style: italic;">Ezra</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Nehemiah</span>) is such blatant theological propaganda, such a pack of priestly fabrications, such a distortion of reality that to anyone whose mind hasn’t been warped by religious indoctrination, the result is simply one humongous pile of BS. Below, I’ll try to illustrate what I mean. First, though, I’d like to make a couple of general comments. Then, my plan is to ease into at least a cursory examination of the “humongous pile of BS” contained in the next seven “books” of the OT that follow the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch.</span><br /><br />In my first general comment, I’ll try to diminish my criticism of Ezra & C-C. As a way of introduction, consider the final paragraph of an <a href="http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/False_Testament_%28Harpers%29.htm">article</a> by Daniel Lazare published in the March 2002 issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Harper’s Magazine</span> and entitled “Archaeology Refutes the Bible’s Claim to History” (more of which I’ll quote later in this post):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Does this mean that monotheism was nothing more than a con, a ruse cooked-up by ambitious priests in order to fool a gullible population? As with any religion, cynicism and belief, realpolitik and genuine fervor, all came together in a way that we can barely begin to untangle. To say that the Jerusalem priesthood intentionally cooked-up a phony history is to assume that the priests possessed a modern concept of historical truth and falsehood, and surely this is not so. As the biblical minimalist Thomas L. Thompson has noted, the Old Testament’s authors did not subscribe to a sequential chronology but to some more complicated arrangement in which the great events of the past were seen as taking place in some foggy time “before time”. The priests, after all, were not inventing a past; they were inventing a present and, they trusted, a future.</blockquote>Stating it differently – and being as generous to the clerical authors of the OT as I can stomach – I’d say this. Similar to essentially everyone living at the time (except followers of Confucius and the Buddha, some atheistic Greek philosophers, and no doubt other atheists who had sufficient presence of mind to keep their views on “the god idea” to themselves – so they’d be able to keep their heads attached to their bodies!), the Jewish clerics who were living in Babylon during the fifth century BCE and who had learned from the Persians about their all-powerful creator god (Ahura Mazda) were certain that the creator god controlled everything – past, present, and future. Starting from that faulty premiss, Ezra & C-C apparently challenged themselves to understand why they were losers in Babylon rather than winners in their homeland. With their experiences (no doubt) of being punished by their own fathers when they were children and had done something contrary to his will, they concluded “the obvious”: the Jewish people must have done something that had offended the all-powerful creator god. Whereupon, given some fables, myths, songs, and similar known by the people and given that they quite likely possessed scrolls that they repeatedly describe in the OT as the “Annals of the Kings…”, the clerics then apparently filled in details with “explanations” of what they assumed the Jews had done wrong, “justifying” their current predicament. The result is the OT.<br /><br />And in my other general comment I want to compare clerical vs. other leaders. Thus, although earlier Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, Persian… leaders claimed that the gods chose them to lead, yet such (political) leaders undoubtedly backed-up their claims with their weapons and warriors, relying on the law of the jungle that “might makes right”. Clerics, however, are a breed apart. Just as Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Hindu priests had done for thousands of years earlier (and to varying degrees of success), the Jewish clerics in Babylon apparently agreed with the Sumerian proverb “strength cannot keep pace with intelligence.” In particular, Ezra & C-C apparently concluded that, instead of trying to rule the returning Israelites on behalf of their Persian masters by force (which would require bravery, a virtue deficient in essentially all clerics), they saw that they could rule the people by capturing their imagination. Again, the result is the OT.<br /><br />Subsequent clerical con artists similarly concocted the New Testament (NT), the Koran, and the Book of Mormon. In times past, clerics were able to get away with fabricating such stories, because the majority of people were superstitious – and today, a horrible number of people still are. As a result, claims that God had chosen a particular person as leader (e.g., Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith) could be “corroborated” simply by fabricating stories of sundry supernatural stunts. For example, as given in the OT, God obviously chose Moses, for otherwise, how could he have caused the Egyptians so much trouble (including parting the Reed Sea, drowning the Egyptian army) and how could Moses have provided the Hebrews with so much (including water from rocks in the desert and manna from the heavens)? Similarly, and now moving on past the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span> of the OT, Joshua parted the Jordan River (when it was in flood, no less), used trumpets to blow down the walls of Jericho, and to top it off, made the Sun stand still “for about a full day” – for in those days, doncha know, the Sun moved around a nonspinning, flat-plate Earth! And by the way, there’s no doubt that the Sun did stand still, because (<span style="font-style: italic;">Joshua 10,</span> 13) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The event is recorded in the Scroll of the Upright One</span>, and everyone who is anyone knows that “the Upright One” never lied.<br /><br />Readers who can tolerate reading such silliness will encounter a continuous string of such supernatural nonsense throughout the Bible, both in the OT and the NT. Thus, similar supernatural silliness “supports” the claim that God chose Jesus, who (not to be outdone by Moses and Joshua) walked on water, turned water to wine, fed thousands with two loaves of bread, cured people of infirmities by driving out evil spirits, and brought people (including himself) back to life. As Marilla Young Ricker summarized:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Man has asked for the truth and the Church has given him miracles. He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology. He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible. This foolishness should stop.</blockquote>Actually, though, Ricker’s criticism certainly shouldn’t be restricted to “the [Catholic] Church”. For more than 100 generations, people have been indoctrinated with the idea that the foolishness concocted by Ezra & C-C is “the truth”. That is, the OT is the foundation not only of Judaism but also of Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. In the later religions, additional silliness is added, such as fictitious supernatural-beings called “angels” informing the mother of Jesus that she would bear a savior who was the son of the first symmetry-breaking quantum fluctuation in the original void that led to the Big Bang (i.e., “God”), informing “the prophet” Muhammad about the desires of the same omnipotent God (who, if he were omnipotent, could have no desires!), and informing Joseph Smith where the same omniscient God had hidden a “golden Bible” (who, if he were omniscient, would have known that the original inhabitants of the America were not the lost tribes of Israel and that his choice of Joseph Smith as his “prophet” would be a disaster, since even the people and police of New York State knew that he was a “gold digger”, a con artist, and a philanderer!).<br /><br />Nowadays, for some strange reason, whenever such claimed supernatural stunts are investigated scientifically, they’re found to be fraudulent, apparently designed to increase clerical power. Further, when scientists propose to test such claims, “modern” Christian and Mormon clerics still commonly repeat the admonition reportedly made by Jesus (e.g., at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 4,</span> 7)<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“You are not to put the Lord your God to the test.”</blockquote>It’s understandable why Christian and Mormon clerics would advocate such a policy (and I certainly prefer their policy over the policy advocated in both the OT and the Koran, namely, “kill the unbelievers”), but perhaps clerics of all the Abrahamic religions would like to explain why it conflicts with the procedure allegedly followed by Gideon, who repeatedly required God to produce evidence, e.g., starting at <span style="font-style: italic;">Judges 6,</span> 36:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Gideon said to God, “If you really intend to use me to deliver Israel, as you promised, then give me a sign as proof. Look, I am putting a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece, and the ground around it is dry, then I will be sure that you will use me to deliver Israel, as you promised.” The Lord did as he asked. When he got up the next morning, he squeezed the fleece, and enough dew dripped from it to fill a bowl. Gideon said to God, “Please do not get angry at me, when I ask for just one more sign. Please allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make only the fleece dry, while the ground around it is covered with dew.” That night God did as he asked. Only the fleece was dry and the ground around it was covered with dew</span>.</blockquote>I’d say: “Good for Gideon!” Unfortunately, though, his subjecting his god to such as test is about the only praiseworthy aspect of his bloody career (as described in the OT), and even that praise should be tempered, since he erred by not making his experimental-test public knowledge and by not waiting for independent confirmation of his experimental results before acting on them, e.g., as given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Judges 8,</span> 17, by executing the men of the city of Penuel for not believing him.<br /><br />Apparently, though (at least according to the authors of the OT), the test was sufficiently convincing for Gideon to lead his men to attack the Midianite army and to personally murder their kings (<span style="font-style: italic;">Judges 8,</span> 21). In turn, according to the story, that “success” was sufficient for the Israelites to offer Gideon authority over them, saying (<span style="font-style: italic;">Judges 8,</span> 22): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Rule over us – you, your son, and your grandson. For you have delivered us from Midian’s power.</span> But Gideon refused (at least, so the clerical authors claim), saying: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.</span><br /><br />In essence, that’s the theme of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of Judges,</span> a theme contained in its fictitious tales about Gideon, Samson, and other brutes (with the Samson myth being a Hebrew plagiarism of the myth about the superhuman and subsequent Sun-god Hercules, 'Samson' being a Hebrew word for 'Sun'). Thus, the reader is repeatedly told: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In those days, Israel had no king.</span> Instead, the priests ruled (as judges) – at least, according to the fantasies of Ezra & C-C.<br /><br />In the next several books of the OT, we learn about the kings whom God allegedly chose to rule the Jewish people. To start the story, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ruth </span>we meet the great grandmother of King David, i.e., Ruth, over whom a lot of ink has been uselessly spilled. On the one side, detractors of the story point out that Ruth was a Moabitess, and therefore (consistent with one of the alleged proclamations by Moses), she wouldn’t have been permitted to join the Jewish religion [allegedly showing that the Laws of Moses weren’t known to the author(s) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ruth</span> or that the clerical authors were just sloppy]. But on the other side, defenders of (or “apologists for”) the OT point out that the Moabite restriction from Moses was applicable only to males. Yet, all that aside, the story of Ruth is one of the few stories (is it the only story?) in the OT showing love and cooperation between women; it’s therefore a most welcome relief from the male mayhem, murder, and misogyny that dominate the rest of the OT.<br /><br />More of such mayhem, murder, and misogyny appears in the <span style="font-style: italic;">First Book of Samuel</span> (i.e., <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel</span>), in which we’re introduced to another of the real heroes of the clerics’ tales, i.e., fellow clerics (or prophets), such as Moses, Joshua, and now Samuel, who wasn't a king but a “prophet of the Lord”. I’ll skip some of the earlier supernatural stunts that Samuel allegedly performed and, instead, start with the story that when Samuel was old and his sons became judges who perverted justice, the elders of Israel reportedly said to him (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 8,</span> 5):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Look you are old, and your sons don’t follow your ways. So now, appoint over us a king to lead us, just like all the other nations have.</blockquote>Samuel reportedly warned the people about the excesses of kings (that they weren't good people, like the priests!) and warned the people that Yahweh would abandon them if they chose to be ruled by a king rather than by the clerics’ god (i.e., in reality, by the clerics), but the people reportedly insisted and persisted.<br /><br />Succumbing to the people’s will (so the story goes), we learn in <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 10</span> how “the prophet” Samuel “anointed” Saul to be king and about Samuel’s prophetic abilities. A slight problem exists, however, in that prophets in the religious sense are all fakes: no one (not even a god) can foretell the future in the detail claimed by clerics, since even a god can’t overcome the inherent uncertainties of the nonlinear system called “the human system” (or more simply, ‘humanity’). For readers who desire details to support that statement, they should have at least a bachelor’s degree in math and then investigate what are called “positive Lyapunov coefficients”, which lead to exponential divergence of nearby states of nonlinear systems.<br /><br />In essence, the results show that the detailed future of nonlinear systems isn't just unpredictable in practice; it’s unpredictable in principle. Thus, although general constraints on nonlinear systems can be prescribed, details can’t. For example, the future climate will continue to conform to the first and second principles of thermodynamics (conservation of energy and increase in entropy); therefore, the future climate (the 30-year average of the weather) can (in principle) be predicted – but not the future weather (i.e., the specific state of the atmosphere at a given place and time). Similarly, uncertainties in initial conditions (in the limit including quantum uncertainties) preclude exactly predicting the evolution of any nonlinear system (such as humanity): it’s not just that scientists and “prophets” can’t do it, even an omniscient god couldn’t do it – assuming that even such a god would be restricted by Nature’s requirement expressed in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.<br /><br />Meanwhile, though, anyone can guess the future (of course), and there’s a chance that the guesser will be lucky – but the more details guessed, the less likely that they’ll be correct. For example, someone might guess that I’ll die on August 27, and given that there’s 365 days in the year and ignoring variations in death rates with season, then there’s 1 chance in 365 that the guess will be right. Further, if that same someone guesses that I’ll die on the highway on August 27, then if the chance of anyone dying on the highway is one in 300 (pulling the number out of my hat), then the chance that the guesser would be right would be roughly 1 chance in 365 x 300 = 1 chance in roughly 100,000 = 1 / 10^5 = 10^(-5). And if the guesser further “prophesied” that I’d die on August 27 on the highway because a bridge will collapse, then if the chance of anyone being killed in such an accident is 1 in 10 million (again pulling the number out of my hat), then if it were to occur, then it would certainly be an impressive feat to have made such a call correctly, when there was only 1 chance in 10^5 x 10^7 = 10^12 (i.e., one chance in a trillion) that “the prophet” would be correct.<br /><br />With that example in mind, consider “the prophet” Samuel’s prediction for the first king of Israel, Saul (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 10,</span> 1–6):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head</span> [which was the “anointment” procedure]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">. Samuel kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you to lead his people Israel! You will rule over the Lord’s people and you will deliver them from the power of the enemies who surround them. This will be your sign that the Lord has chosen you as leader over his inheritance. When you leave me today, you will find two men near Rachel’s tomb at Zelzah on Benjamin’s border. They will say to you, ‘The donkeys you have gone looking for have been found. Your father is no longer concerned about the donkeys but has become anxious about you two! He is asking, “What should I do about my son”?’ As you continue on from there, you will come to the tall tree of Tabor. At that point three men who are going up to God at Bethel will meet you. One of them will be carrying three young goats, one of them will be carrying three round loaves of bread, and one of them will be carrying a container of wine. They will ask you how you’re doing and will give you two loaves of bread. You will accept them. Afterward you will go to Gibeah of God, where there are Philistine officials. When you enter the town, you will meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place. They will have harps, tambourines, flutes, and lyres, and they will be prophesying. Then the spirit of the Lord will rush upon you and you will prophesy with them. You will be changed into a different person.”</span></blockquote>I invite the reader to estimate the probability that such a “guess” (complete with the exact words of the two men and exactly where Saul would meet the three men, where they were going, and what each was carrying) would be correct. And I’ll add that I won’t argue with anyone whose estimate is anywhere near 1 chance in 10^24 !<br /><br />But, ‘lo and behold, Samuel guessed it right; in fact, he got it right on the nose! How do I know? It says so, right there at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 10,</span> 9: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">All these signs happened on that very day.</span> Isn’t that proof enough? I mean, if you can’t trust that the Bible is the unerring word of God, what can you trust? Would clerics lie? And if there’s some cynic who suggests that maybe Samuel staged the whole thing (telling the people where to be, what to say, what to be holding, etc., similar to the antics of the Mormon’s first “high priest” Sidney Rigdon), then I’m not even going to respond.<br /><br />In any event, as a result of all that, the prophet Samuel anointed Saul as the first king of Israel. But Samuel did it (allegedly) with additional help from Yahweh: at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 10,</span> 20 we’re told that Yahweh “fixed” the drawing of lots – which, as all gamblers know, is exactly what God does; i.e., he (or Satan) controls the outcome of every bet! Meanwhile, though, the people were apparently pleased with Yahweh’s choice of Saul, since: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">There was no one among the Israelites more handsome than he was; he stood head and shoulders above all the people.</span><br /><br />In time, however, Saul did what was “evil in the sight of the Lord” (at least, according to the clerical authors), namely, 1) as described at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 13,</span> 9, Saul took it upon himself to offer burnt offerings to Yahweh (rather than have a sacred priest do the job!) and 2) as described at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 15,</span> 22, he didn’t obey some orders given him by Yahweh (i.e., by Samuel), exactly, to the letter. Specifically, so the story goes, the bloodthirsty orders (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 15,</span> 3) given to Saul were to entirely exterminate the Amalekites:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Put them to death – man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.</blockquote>Foolish Saul: didn’t he know that when God says to kill everything, he’s to kill everything? Be a good little Nazi, Saul: follow orders! As Samuel reportedly said (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 15,</span> 22):<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as he does in obedience? Certainly, obedience is better than sacrifice; paying attention is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and presumption is like the evil of idolatry.</blockquote>So, people, don't presume anything! Just do as you're told (by the clerics).<div><br /></div><div>Anyway, with Saul failing to follow orders, Samuel, himself, did the Lord’s will: he had the army bring him the Amalekites’ King Agag, and then (apparently realizing that he was safe from harm), <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Samuel hacked Agag to pieces there in Gilgal before the Lord.</span> Apparently, also, Samuel was unaware of one of the minor, nuisance commandments that the Lord allegedly gave to Moses: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Thou shalt not kill. </span> In fact, the commandments of Moses aren’t even mentioned, anywhere, in the first or second books of Samuel.<br /><br />Following Saul’s failure to follow the orders of Yahweh (or Samuel), so the clerical authors contend, Yahweh <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 15,</span> 35). Thereby, once again the reader learns that Yahweh certainly isn’t omniscient, since once again, Yahweh made a mistake (choosing Saul) – just as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis</span> Yahweh admitted that he made a mistake by making the first humans. Yet, apparently “the prophet” Samuel didn’t see that he was depicting Yahweh as a knucklehead; instead, Samuel kept proclaiming Yahweh’s greatness (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 15,</span> 29): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Preeminent One of Israel</span> [i.e., Yahweh] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">does not go back on his word or change his mind.</span> Assuming he has one!<br /><br />The new king allegedly chosen by Yahweh to replace Saul (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 16,</span> 12) was David. Conveniently, the people’s choice was also David, because Yahweh had arranged (so the story goes) for the boy David to defeat the champion, the “giant” Goliath, of the coastal people, the Philistines. King Saul, however, wasn’t pleased with Yahweh's choice of David: Saul told his son, Jonathan, to kill David. Jonathan, however, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">loved David as much as he did his own life</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 18,</span> 1) and managed to convince his father to swear: <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">As surely as the Lord lives, he [David] will not be put to death.</span><br /><br />David wasn’t killed by Saul – though not for want of his trying (his oath to the contrary, sworn to “the Lord”, apparently being inconsequential). Simultaneously, David kept himself busy (of course with the Lord’s help) killing every man and woman in the cities of the Geshuites, Girzites, and Amalekites that he raided and then allying himself with Israel’s enemies, the Philistines (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Samuel 27</span>).<br /><br />The reader is then provided with details of another supernatural stunt. At Saul’s request, a magician brings Samuel back from the dead (!) to inform King Saul that the Philistines would kill him and three of his sons the next day. And sure enough, they were – exactly as the Lord’s prophet, Samuel, said. Aren’t the prophets of the Lord amazing?!<br /><br />Meanwhile, though, there’s a curious aspect to the story about Saul and his sons. Specifically, as pointed out by Frank Smitha in his online <a href="http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch04.htm">book</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The First Book of Samuel, 9:15, describes Saul as the Lord’s choice. And in Chapter 10 of the First Book of Samuel, Saul is described as one of Yahweh’s prophets. </span> [Yet,] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Saul appears to have been close to the worship of the Canaanite god Ba’al. He named one of his sons Eshbaal (meaning Ba’al exists) and another son he had named Meribaal (meaning Ba’al rewards)…</span></blockquote>I’ll leave it to the reader to investigate questions such as: Were the clerical authors of these fanciful tales just careless or were they (who apparently were clerics primarily from the southern kingdom of Judah rather than the northern kingdom of Israel) purposefully undermining the “legitimacy” of the larger kingdom of Israel, by suggesting that the Israelites weren’t “true believers”?<br /><br />In any event – at least according to the story – a civil war subsequently erupted (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Samuel</span>) between Israel and Judah in about 1000 BCE. Israel was led by Saul’s son Eshbaal (or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ish-bosheth">Ishbosheth</a>); Judah was led by David. As an outcome of the civil war, David became king of both Judah and Israel. Later, he led his army to defeat the Jebusites (or Amorites) and capture the old city of Jerusalem (first settled approximately 2,000 years earlier!), which for the next ~450 years was the capital first of the united Kingdom of Israel and then of the Kingdom of Judah, until the Babylonian conquest in 587 BCE.<br /><br />Eventually, David fell out of Yahweh’s favor (wouldncha know) because of a woman (wouldncha know): after committing adultery with her (Bathsheba), and impregnating her, David had her husband killed and married her. Thus did David do “evil in the sight of the Lord”, and so (so the story goes) Yahweh cut short David’s rule. Later, when he was near death, David chose his and Bathsheba’s second son, Solomon, to be king – of course with the Lord’s oversight.<br /><br />According to the clerics’ story, Yahweh communicated to Solomon in dreams (e.g., <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 3, </span>15), but (according to Homer’s tales about Agamemnon, the Koran’s tales about Muhammad, and the Mormon’s tales about Joseph Smith) relying on dreams can be dangerous, since sometimes gods apparently send “lying dreams”. But by proclaiming Solomon as king (with or without Yahweh’s involvement), David thereby adopted a practice that was probably initiated tens of thousands of years earlier, namely, leaders try to choose their successors.<br /><br />The clerics claim that Solomon was wise, e.g., <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 4, </span>31–33:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He was famous in all the neighboring nations. He composed 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs. He produced manuals on botany, describing every kind of plant, from the cedars of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on walls. He also produced manuals on biology, describing animals, birds, insects, and fish. People from all nations came to hear Solomon’s display of wisdom; they came from all the kings of the earth who heard about his wisdom.</blockquote>In contrast to such claims about his wisdom, however, Solomon (or the authors of the story) apparently thought that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, π, is exactly 3.<br /><br />That error can be seen in the description of details of the temple that Solomon allegedly built. It states (1<span style="font-style: italic;"> Kings 7,</span> 23, as given in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New English Bible</span>):<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He</span> [Solomon’s craftsman, Hiram of Tyre] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">then made the Sea</span> [a large bronze basin] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">of cast metal; it was round in shape, the diameter from rim to rim being ten cubits; it stood five cubits high, and it took a line thirty cubits long to go around it.</span></blockquote>So, for the basin, π = 3. In contrast to such an estimate, the Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Pi#History">article</a> on the history of π provides the following information.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The earliest known approximations</span> [for π] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">date from around 1900 BCE </span>[approximately 1,000 years before Solomon]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; they are 25/8 </span>[ = 3.13]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> (Babylonia) and 256/81</span> [ = 3.16 ]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> (Egypt), both within 1% of the true value.</span></blockquote>Not incidentally, readers should be alert to biblical “apologists” and “revisionists”. As an illustration of what I mean, consider the following.<br /><br />In the text of my <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">book</a> and in an earlier <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">appendix</a>, I almost invariably quote <span style="font-style: italic;">The New English Bible</span>, not only because it’s relatively easy to read (compared, e.g., with the <span style="font-style: italic;">King James Version</span>) but also because I found that the scholars who produced it were careful to show readers alternative translations (e.g., “Reed Sea” rather than “Red Sea” and “a young girl will give birth” rather than “a virgin will give birth”). The choice of the <span style="font-style: italic;">New English Bible</span>, however, forced me to (laboriously!) type all the quotations.<br /><br />In these posts, in contrast (which I’m also using as <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_5.html">another appendix</a> of my book) and in part because I’m older, lazier, and in truth, “sick and tired” of reading the stupid Bible, I’ve been copying and pasting the NET Bible, which is available <a href="http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=3086">here</a>. It’s produced by Regent University, “the nation’s top online Christian university” – which already should cause concern, since “Christian university” is an oxymoron.<br /><br />In particular, I’d call the reader’s attention to the fact that the same <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 7,</span> 23 is given in the NET bible as:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He also made the large bronze basin called “The Sea.” It measured 15 feet from rim to rim, was circular in shape, and stood seven-and-a-half feet high. Its circumference was 45 feet.</blockquote>That may initially seem to be a small change from the version given above (with ‘cubits’ changed to ‘feet’), but I’d ask the reader to notice that from the NET version, a reader might conclude that the OT is not saying π = 3, because in the NET, it’s unclear what diameter and circumference are meant: is one an inside dimension and the other an outside dimension? In contrast, in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New English Bible, </span>since it’s extremely difficult to use a line (e.g., a string) to measure the length of the inside of a basin and since, with ‘rim’ meaning “the upper or outer edge of an object”, “rim to rim” would mean an outside measurement, therefore, the clerics are clearly contending that π = 3.<br /><br />And to those biblical apologists who would say something similar to “What’s the big deal? π = 3 is close enough for religious purposes”, I think that the following two responses are appropriate. One response is to ask: if it’s not “a big deal”, then why do biblical apologists manipulate the text of the Bible to promote an ambiguity? And another response is to ask: since it’s claimed that the Bible is “the word of God”, then if God doesn’t know the correct value of π, who’s to say that his commandments aren’t similarly wrong? For example, is God correct in the details provided in the OT about how to beat one’s slave to death and how to sell one’s daughter into slavery?<br /><br />But moving on with the story, Solomon’s downfall (according to the misogynist clerics who concocted the silly Bible) was also his women: not that he was a sex maniac, but eventually some of his 700 wives and 300 concubines got him to worship their gods. As a result, Yahweh allegedly abandoned Solomon, choosing Jeroboam to be the next king, to punish Solomon and the United Kingdom. In turn, Jeroboam “did evil in the sight of the Lord”, and so, with the help of some supernatural stunts, Yahweh ended Jeroboam’s rule.<br /><br />According to the priests, Jeroboam’s unforgivable sin was <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">to appoint common people as priests at the high place</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 13,</span> 33). How Jeroboam could have been so stupid is unfathomable, when anyone who is anyone knows that only the established priesthood is permitted to assign priests. It was<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> a sin that caused Jeroboam’s dynasty to come to an end and to be destroyed from the face of the earth,</span> which (I trust) will be sufficient warning to anyone who tries to undermine any existing priesthood.<br /><br />Interestingly (at least to me) is that, in the process of destroying Jeroboam’s dynasty, Yahweh lied to Jeroboam’s wife, saying (<span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 14,</span> 8) that Jeroboam was <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“not like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me wholeheartedly by doing only what I approve” </span>– unless, of course, Yahweh approved of David’s adultery and then his murdering the woman’s husband. Thereby, the clerics are apparently saying that Yahweh approves of lying. But I admit that it seems rather superfluous for the clerics to put such words in the mouth of their puppet Yahweh, since surely the entire OT adequately illustrates the clerics’ principle that it’s okay to lie.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the list of kings goes on. After King Jeroboam comes his son, King Asa of Judah, who fought against a string of kings of the northern nation of Israel: Nadab, assassinated by Baasha, followed by his son Elah, who was assassinated by Zimri, who ruled for seven days, followed by Omri, the commander of the army, followed by his son Ahab. Ahab did more “evil in the sight of the Lord”, doing what his wife (Jezebel) wanted – which should be a lesson to all men who do what their wives desire: as anyone who read the story of Adam and Eve knows, women are to serve men, not v.v.<br /><br />And in part, I added all that to point out that Yahweh lied not only to Jeroboam’s wife but also to Ahab. In particular, at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 22,</span> 19–23, another of the true heroes of these fictitious tales, “the prophet” Micaiah, relays the following.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">That being the case, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the heavenly assembly standing on his right and on his left.</span> [The Lord sits on a throne like a tyrant king? Who would have thought?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Lord said, “Who will deceive Ahab, so he will attack Ramoth Gilead and die there?”</span> [The Lord deceives people? Really?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">One said this and another that. Then a spirit stepped forward and stood before the Lord.</span> [Spirits “step” and “stand”? Aren’t they supposed to float through the air?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He said, “I will deceive him.” The Lord asked him, “How?”</span> [God doesn’t already know? He needs to ask “How”? But, but, but… what about God’s claimed omniscience?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">He</span> [the spirit] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets.” The Lord said, “Deceive and overpower him. Go out and do as you have proposed.”</span> [The Lord approves of deception? Who would have thought? Or is it that religious people don’t think?!]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> So now, look, the Lord has placed a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours; but the Lord has decreed disaster for you.</span></blockquote>Talk about disaster! Once Yahweh approved putting lying spirits in the mouths of his prophets, all sorts of troubles started: Jesus told his followers that the world would end during their lifetimes (showing that he was a liar), Muhammad told his followers (in “the Satanic verses”) that it was okay to worship other gods at Mecca (and Salman Rushdie is still under a death “fatwa” for saying so in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satanic Verses</span>), and Joseph Smith damn near scuttled Mormonism by promising success to his followers who tried but failed to publish the Book of Mormon in Canada. And as bad as it is to see that God’s prophets are liars, to learn that God, himself, arranges such deception is enough to destroy a person’s faith in him and his various “holy books”.<br /><br />Of course, rather than just having blind faith and belief, people can build trust and confidence in the scientific method by performing experimental tests – just as Gideon did (although his test left a lot to be desired) and just as we’re next told “the prophet” Elijah did (assuming he didn’t cook the experiment). Oh, true enough, the clerical authors claim that Elijah pulled off some “pure” supernatural stunts, such as at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 17,</span> where we’re told that he was fed bread and meat each morning and evening by ravens, and then he was fed by a woman whose “jar of flour was never empty and the jug of oil never ran out”, no matter how much she took from them. In addition, Elijah supernaturally outclassed the Baal priests by having fire come down from the sky to kill two captains and their fifty men (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 1,</span> 10) and he parted the river Jordan with his cloak (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 2, </span>8). But supernatural-silliness aside, Elijah (budding scientist that he was) also tested god (again assuming he didn’t rig the experiment).<br /><br />Thus, at <span style="font-style: italic;">1 Kings 18, </span>20–25, we learn the following unquestionable “truth” from the “holy Bible”.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">When</span> [King] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Ahab saw</span> [the prophet] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Elijah, he said to him, “Is it really you, the one who brings disaster on Israel?” Elijah replied, “I have not brought disaster on Israel. But you and your father’s dynasty have, by abandoning the Lord’s commandments and following the Baals. Now send out messengers and assemble all Israel before me at Mount Carmel, as well as the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah whom <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[your wife]</span> Jezebel supports.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Ahab</span> [doing what he was told to do by the prophet Elijah – which, I suppose, is designed to tell us where the real power was] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">sent messengers to all the Israelites and had the prophets assemble at Mount Carmel. Elijah approached all the people and said, “How long are you going to be paralyzed by indecision? If the Lord is the true God, then follow him, but if Baal is, follow him!” But the people did not say a word.</span> [At least according to the reporters on the scene.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Elijah said to them: “I am the only prophet of the Lord who is left, but there are 450 prophets of Baal.</span> [The prophet-hood business was obviously quite lucrative for the Baalists! No wonder the Yahwists were displeased!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Let them bring us two bulls. Let them choose one of the bulls for themselves, cut it up into pieces, and place it on the wood. But they must not set it on fire. I will do the same to the other bull and place it on the wood. But I will not set it on fire. Then you will invoke the name of your god, and I will invoke the name of the Lord. The god who responds with fire will demonstrate that he is the true God.” All the people responded, “This will be a fair test.” </span> [I guess that, as numerous as they were, the prophets of Baal never learned the first rule of the prophet-hood business: no matter what the people say, don’t let some other con-artist set the rules of the game!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Elijah told the prophets of Baal, “Choose one of the bulls for yourselves and go first, for you are the majority. Invoke the name of your god, but do not light a fire.”</span> [It couldn’t be that Elijah said “do not light a fire” because he had hidden an incendiary device beneath the altar, could it?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So, they took a bull, as he had suggested, and prepared it. They invoked the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “Baal, answer us.” But there was no sound and no answer. They jumped around on the altar they had made</span>.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">At noon Elijah mocked them, “Yell louder! After all, he is a god; he may be deep in thought, or perhaps he stepped out for a moment or has taken a trip. Perhaps he is sleeping and needs to be awakened.” </span>[Oh, Elijah, you’re bad!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So they yelled louder and, in accordance with their prescribed ritual, mutilated themselves with swords and spears until their bodies were covered with blood. </span> [Prophets of Baal, don’t listen to Elijah: he’s setting you up for a fall!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Throughout the afternoon they were in an ecstatic frenzy, but there was no sound, no answer, and no response.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Elijah then told all the people, “Approach me.” So all the people</span> [being obedient, and tired of standing there all day!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">approached him. He repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. Then Elijah took twelve stones, corresponding to the number of tribes that descended from Jacob, to whom the Lord had said, “Israel will be your new name.” With the stones he constructed an altar for the Lord. Around the altar he made a trench large enough to contain two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut up the bull, and placed it on the wood. Then he said, “Fill four water jars and pour the water on the offering and the wood.” When they had done so, he said, “Do it again.” So they did it again. Then he said, “Do it a third time.” So they did it a third time.</span> [Which leads one to wonder: were the “water jars” filled with water – or were Elijah’s henchmen pouring a flammable fluid on the offering and the wood?!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The water</span> [?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">flowed down all sides of the altar and filled the trench. When it was time for the evening offering, Elijah the prophet approached the altar and prayed: “O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are the true God and that you are winning back their allegiance.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Then</span> [after Elijah gave a signal to his accomplice to light the fluid!] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">fire from the Lord fell from the sky.</span> [Did the fumes from the flammable fluid ignite first?] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, and the dirt, and licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they threw themselves down with their faces to the ground and said, “The Lord is the true God! The Lord is the true God!” Elijah told them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Don’t let even one of them escape!” So they seized them, and Elijah led them down to the Kishon Valley and executed them there.</span><br /></blockquote>Apparently, Elijah had also never heard about the nuisance commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, but beyond that, surely one should question if it’s desirable for the moral of this little story to be promoted. Think about it. Obviously the Baal priests were quite certain that their beliefs were right – that their ideas were “true”. Otherwise, would they have carried on in such a manner, mutilating themselves until “their bodies were covered in blood”? Then, Elijah pulls off his little stunt (starting a fire), in essence saying: if your beliefs aren’t supported by experimental tests, then you deserve to die. But is that really what the people who promote the Bible believe: that all those who hold beliefs more strongly than relevant evidence justifies should be executed?<br /><br />They might want to give such a policy a little more thought. In essence the policy is that those who don’t practice the scientific method in their daily lives (i.e., hold beliefs only as strongly as relevant and reliable evidence justifies) should be killed. Not only does that seem to be a very dangerous policy for any religious person to promote (!), it seems to be at the extreme of intolerance and hate: kill people whose beliefs are different from yours! Which then makes me wonder not only why Yahwists, Christians, Mormons, etc. complain when Muslims practice a similar policy (viz., kill the unbelievers of the one, true religion, i.e., Islam) but also why “we the people” permit, for example, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideons_International">Gideons International</a> to distribute the hideous Bible (as they do “in 80 languages and more than 175 countries”) when the Bible is the epitome of “hate literature” – although I admit that the Koran is a close runner-up for that title.<br /><br />But setting such puzzlements aside let me continue with the story about Elijah. When he was near his death (so “the good book” tells us), he passed on his prophetic powers (and his failure to follow the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”) to Elisha, who “called down God’s judgment” on 42 boys for calling him “baldy”. As a result, the boys were ripped apart by two bears. Apparently neither Elijah nor Elisha (nor Yahweh) had heard of the expression: “Let the punishment fit the crime.” And obviously, too, Yahweh was with Elisha, since (so the story goes) he brought a child back to life who had been dead for multiple days (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 4,</span> 32–37), he fed a hundred men with 20 loaves of bread – and there were leftovers (a prelude to a similar claim made about Jesus), and he cured a Syrian of skin disease (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 5,</span> 8–19), made an ax head float (<span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 6,</span> 1-7), blinded a raiding party, etc.<br /><br />Meanwhile, though, getting back to reality, there’s relatively little reliably known about any of the “prophets” or kings of Israel or Judah. One exception is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_stele">Tel Dan Stele</a>, which was found during the 1990s and is dated to the 9th or 8th centuries BCE. It was “erected by an Aramaean king in northernmost Israel to commemorate his victory over the ancient Hebrews; its author is unknown, but may be a king of Damascus…” The stele’s inscription has been translated (not without controversy) by André Lemaire as follows:</div><div><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">1’. [.....................].......[...................................] and cut [.........................]<br />2’. [.........] my father went up [....................f]ighting at/against Ab[....]<br />3’. And my father lay down; he went to his [fathers]. And the king of I[s-]<br />4’. rael penetrated into my father’s land[. And] Hadad made me – myself – king.<br />5’. And Hadad went in front of me[, and] I departed from ...........[.................]<br />6’. of my kings. And I killed two [power]ful kin[gs], who harnessed two thou[sand cha-]<br />7’. riots and two thousand horsemen. [I killed Jo]ram son of [Ahab]<br />8’. king of Israel, and I killed [Achaz]yahu son of [Joram kin]g<br />9’. of the House of David. And I set [.......................................................]<br />10’. their land ...[.......................................................................................]<br />11’. other ...[......................................................................... and Jehu ru-]<br />12’. led over Is[rael...................................................................................]<br />13’. siege upon [............................................................]</blockquote>In contrast to the Tel Dan Stele, the only uncontested, extra-biblical reference to a Jewish king seems to be a caption on “the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III” found in 1846 at the ancient Assyrian capital of Kalhu. This Shalmaneser (whose name means “the god Shulmanu is foremost”) was king of Assyria from 858–824 BCE. One of the five scenes on the <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/black_obelisk_of_shalmaneser.aspx">obelisk</a> has the title: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Jehu of Bit Omri</span> [the name of ancient northern Israel], who presumably is the fellow prostrated before King Shalmaneser III in the figure below.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTqqPugS3sWoK8TwrKPRl-sf3tzvkRkVkTeH9tVSFSPLA0GsQisQLcyzj-m-GfH-G13WWjS4H3Fs3ReOY7HyTmgD-jQKROPYusL_rTo7ydEik3F8uW5ERjfnwcwKq-Lgb_cy18BTbVRps/s1600-h/Shalmaneser-III.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 102px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTqqPugS3sWoK8TwrKPRl-sf3tzvkRkVkTeH9tVSFSPLA0GsQisQLcyzj-m-GfH-G13WWjS4H3Fs3ReOY7HyTmgD-jQKROPYusL_rTo7ydEik3F8uW5ERjfnwcwKq-Lgb_cy18BTbVRps/s400/Shalmaneser-III.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326833770375107346" border="0" /></a><br />Written in Assyrian cuneiform, the caption states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears.</blockquote>Someone seems to be mistaken or lying, however, because in the OT, Jehu isn’t the son of Omri. As readers can find from their own investigations, perhaps the obelisk is depicting Joram, grandson of Omri, or perhaps it does depict Jehu, and Shalmaneser is “legitimizing him” as a son of the former dynasty.<br /><br />In any event, after spending much more time investigating the topic than I expected to (or wanted to!), I concluded that the following line from the Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archeology_of_Israel">article</a> on the Archeology of Israel to be a concise and revealing summary of what I had found elsewhere.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Despite an on-going debate of the issue, the prevailing view still holds that the Bible is not wholly a work of fiction…</blockquote>That’s quite a summary: “the Bible is not <span style="font-style: italic;">wholly</span> a work of fiction”! If religious leaders would permit their followers to learn about that summary, I suspect that religious fundamentalists would be dissatisfied with such an assessment. In contrast, given the current problems in the world caused by such religious fundamentalists, I admit that I find it satisfying to speculate that, when Judaism collapses under its load of clerical lies, then so, too, will Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism.<br /><br />But in particular, with respect to the subject of this post (dealing with lie that leaders are chosen by the gods), I’ve been unable to find any reliable historical or archeological evidence to support the claim made throughout the OT that Jewish rulers were chosen by their god. Such claims were made by Jewish clerics, but because their claims commonly appear along with various supernatural stunts allegedly performed by their god (commonly with the involvement of some alleged “prophet”), sensible people don’t take such claims seriously.<br /><br />To summarize, the clerics provide (at <span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 17</span>) the following summary of “Israel’s sinful history”.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">This happened because the Israelites sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them up from the land of Egypt and freed them from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods; they observed the practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before Israel, and followed the example of the kings of Israel. The Israelites said things about the Lord their God that were not right. They built high places in all their cities, from the watchtower to the fortress. They set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. They burned incense on all the high places just like the nations whom the Lord had driven away from before them. Their evil practices made the Lord angry. They worshiped the disgusting idols in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The Lord solemnly warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and all the seers, “Turn back from your evil ways; obey my commandments and rules that are recorded in the law. I ordered your ancestors to keep this law and sent my servants the prophets to remind you of its demands.” But they did not pay attention and were as stubborn as their ancestors, who had not trusted the Lord their God. They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. They paid allegiance to worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God; they made two metal calves and an Asherah pole, bowed down to all the stars in the sky, and worshiped Baal. They passed their sons and daughters through the fire, and practiced divination and omen reading. They committed themselves to doing evil in the sight of the Lord and made him angry.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">So the Lord was furious with Israel and rejected them; only the tribe of Judah was left. Judah also failed to keep the commandments of the Lord their God; they followed Israel’s example. So the Lord rejected all of Israel’s descendants; he humiliated them and handed them over to robbers, until he had thrown them from his presence. He tore Israel away from David’s dynasty, and Jeroboam son of Nebat became their king. Jeroboam drove Israel away from the Lord and encouraged them to commit a serious sin. The Israelites followed in the sinful ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat and did not repudiate them. Finally the Lord rejected Israel just as he had warned he would do through all his servants the prophets. Israel was deported from its land to Assyria and remains there to this very day.</span> [Which indicates when the story was written!]<br /></blockquote>My own summary (in the vernacular) is: what BS! Somehow or other it fails to mention that the real heroes weren’t the cloistered clerics and prophets (living off the producers), but the Jewish people – who struggled to survive in a brutal environment, fought off marauders and diseases, and tried to feed their families, keep their communities functioning, and understand the world.<br /><br />In fact, as can be seen (for example) in the NOVA program <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Bible’s Buried Secrets</span></a>, there are hints that the Jewish people of the time were even more heroic than just to survive in such a hostile environment. Thus, archeological evidence suggests that the Jews were not only Canaanites, but Canaanites who rejected the feudalism of the time, seeking freedom. Their exodus wasn’t from Egypt but from Canaanite cities, to live in the hills, where at least some of them may have adopted some of the customs (e.g., circumcision and eating no pork) perhaps suggested by one or more Egyptian priests who lived among them (Canaan having been ruled by Egypt).<br /><br />If that’s something similar to what actually occurred, then it’s not only an inspirational story for anyone seeking freedom, it’s also a story with an important moral: eventually the poor Jewish people struggled out of a feudal frying pan and fell into a clerical fire. As Daniel Defoe (the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Robinson Crusoe</span>) wrote in <span style="font-style: italic;">The True-Born Englishman:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">And of all the plagues with which mankind are cursed<br />Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.</blockquote>And the reason, of course, is clear: civil tyranny can enslave and brutalize a person’s body; ecclesiastical tyranny (be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Mormon, or whatever) enslaves and brutalizes both body and brain.<br /><br />But regardless of what actually occurred, the heroes of the stories in the OT are clearly neither the people nor the kings: every one of the kings (David and Solomon included) “did evil in the sight of the Lord” – which, then, doesn’t say much for the Lord’s ability to choose leaders! Instead, the heroes of these clerical fantasies are (surprise, surprise) the clerics – or more specifically, the damnable “prophets” (such as Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and Micaiah) who lied about their capabilities to perform supernatural stunts, lied that they could communicate with the first symmetry-breaking quantum fluctuation in the original void (i.e., God), lied that they knew intimate details about the history of the Jewish people, and in particular, lied that their God had anything to do with choosing the people’s leaders.<br /><br />In contrast to such lies, the following two quotations seem to be honest appraisals of what really happened. The first is from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David">Wikipedia</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Surveys of surface-finds aimed at tracing settlement patterns and population changes have shown that between the 16th and 8th centuries BCE, a period which includes the biblical kingdoms of David and Solomon, the entire population of the hill country of Judah was no more than about 5,000 persons, most of them wandering pastoralists, with the entire urbanized area consisting of about twenty small villages.</blockquote>The second summary is more from the <a href="http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/False_Testament_%28Harpers%29.htm">article</a> by Daniel Lazare, referenced earlier in this post.<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">If the Old Testament is to be believed, David and Solomon, rulers of the southern kingdom of Judah from about 1005 to about 931 BCE, made themselves masters of the northern kingdom of Israel as well. They represent, in the official account, a rare moment of national unity and power; under their reign, the combined kingdom was a force throughout the Fertile Crescent. The unified kingdom is said to have split into two rump states shortly after Solomon’s death and, thus weakened, was all too easy for the Assyrian Empire and its Babylonian successor to pick off. But did a united monarchy encompassing all twelve tribes ever truly exist?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">According to the Bible, Solomon was both a master builder and an insatiable accumulator. He drank out of golden goblets, outfitted his soldiers with golden shields, maintained a fleet of sailing ships to seek out exotic treasures, kept a harem of 1,000 wives and concubines, and spent thirteen years building a palace and a richly decorated temple to house the Ark of the Covenant. Yet, not one goblet, not one brick, has ever been found to indicate that such a reign existed.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">If David and Solomon had been important regional power brokers, one might reasonably expect their names to crop up on monuments and in the diplomatic correspondence of the day. Yet once again the record is silent. True, an inscription referring to “Ahaziahu, son of Jehoram, king of the House of David” was found in 1993 on a fragment dating from the late ninth century BCE</span> [the Tel Dan Stele]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. But that was more than a hundred years after David’s death, and at most, all it indicates is that David (or someone with a similar name) was credited with establishing the Judahite royal line. It hardly proves that he ruled over a powerful empire.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Moreover, by the 1970s and 1980s a good deal of countervailing evidence – or, rather, lack of evidence – was beginning to accumulate. Supposedly, David had used his power base in Judah as a springboard from which to conquer the north. But archaeological surveys of the southern hill country show that Judah in the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE was too poor and backward and sparsely populated to support such a military expedition. Moreover, there was no evidence of wealth or booty flowing back to the southern power base once the conquest of the north had taken place. Jerusalem seems to have been hardly more than a rural village when Solomon was reportedly transforming it into a glittering capital. And although archaeologists had long credited Solomon with the construction of major palaces in the northern cities of Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo (better known as the site of Armageddon), recent analysis of pottery shards found on the sites, plus refined carbon-14 dating techniques, indicate that the palaces postdate Solomon’s reign by a century or more.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Finkelstein and Silberman concluded that Judah and Israel had never existed under the same roof. The Israelite culture that had taken shape in the central hill country around 1200 BCE had evolved into two distinct kingdoms from the start. Whereas Judah remained weak and isolated, Israel did in fact develop into an important regional power beginning around 900 BCE. It was as strong and rich as David and Solomon’s kingdom had supposedly been a century earlier, yet it was not the sort of state of which the Jewish priesthood approved. The reason had to do with the nature of the northern kingdom’s expansion. As Israel grew, various foreign cultures came under its sway, cultures that sacrificed to gods other than Yahweh. Pluralism became the order of the day: the northern kings could manage such a diverse empire only by allowing these cultures to worship their own gods in return for their continued loyalty. The result was a policy of religious syncretism, a theological pastiche in which the cult of Yahweh coexisted alongside those of other Semitic deities.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">When the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians, the Jewish priesthood concluded not that Israel had played its cards badly in the game of international politics but that by tolerating other cults it had given grave offense to the only god that mattered. Joining a stream of refugees to the south, the priests swelled the ranks of an influential political party dedicated to the proposition that the only way for Judah to avoid a similar fate was to cleanse itself of all rival beliefs and devote itself exclusively to Yahweh.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“They did wicked things that provoked Yahweh to anger. They worshiped idols, though Yahweh had said, 'You shall not do this’.” Such was the “Yahweh-alone” movement’s explanation for Israel’s downfall. The monotheistic movement reached a climax in the late seventh century BCE when a certain King Josiah took the throne and gave the go-ahead for a long-awaited purge. Storming through the countryside, Josiah and his Yahwist supporters destroyed rival shrines, slaughtered alien priests, defiled their altars, and ensured that henceforth even Jewish sacrifice take place exclusively in Jerusalem, where the priests could exercise tight control. The result, the priests and scribes believed, was a national <span style="font-style: italic;">renaissance</span> that would soon lead to the liberation of the north and a similar cleansing there as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">But then: disaster. After allowing his priests to establish a rigid religious dictatorship, Josiah rode off to rendezvous with an Egyptian pharaoh named Necho in the year 609 BCE. Although </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Chronicles</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> says that the two monarchs met to do battle, archaeologists, pointing out that Josiah was in no position to challenge the mighty Egyptian army, suspect that Necho merely summoned Josiah to some sort of royal parley and then had him killed for unknown reasons. A model of pious rectitude, Josiah had done everything he thought God wanted of him. He had purified his kingdom and consecrated his people exclusively to Yahweh. Yet he suffered regardless. Judah entered into a period of decline culminating some twenty-three years later in the Babylonian conquest and exile.</span></blockquote>The Babylonian conquest and exile, however, certainly didn’t end the lie that leaders were chosen by the gods. Throughout history, many political leaders have similarly used religion to rule “the masses”. As Aristotle said:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[or, maybe better, “immoral” and “unjust”]</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.</span></blockquote>In his <a href="http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume1/chap2.htm">book</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</span>, Edward Gibbon summarized well how Roman politicians used religion:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The various modes of worship… were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.</blockquote>Similar continued throughout history, into the 20th Century. For example, Hitler claimed:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker.</blockquote>Similarly, George W. Bush reportedly made the following <a href="http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/942">statement</a> to Texas evangelist James Robinson:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen… I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.</blockquote>And sad to say, there was widespread support for Bush’s claim among fundamentalist Christians, such as the <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2106590/">statement</a> by General William “Jerry” Boykin:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Why is this man</span> [George W. Bush] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">in the White House? The majority of America did not vote for him. He’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.</span></blockquote>Subsequently, Bush apparently did what God told him to do, for as he reportedly <a href="http://www.gainesvillehumanists.org/dubya.htm">said</a> to Abud Mazen (Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority) when they met in Aqaba:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam</span> [Hussein]<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, which I did…</span></blockquote>That ancient people concluded that the gods chose their leaders is understandable and forgivable; that “modern” people conclude similar is also understandable – but unforgivable. Surely to sanity it won’t be much longer until any leader who claims to be chosen and/or guided by some god will commit political suicide, by thereby providing ample evidence of his or her megalomania.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-46481610888195378962009-03-21T02:32:00.000-07:002009-04-19T06:54:14.384-07:00The Law Lie - 4 - Contracts<div><br /></div>Believe it or not, there <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> some structure behind this series of posts dealing with “The Law Lie” (itself a part of “The God Lie”). In turn, the structure in these posts follows from the historical structure behind laws.<br /><br />Thus, before any laws could be promulgated, opinions were required about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (i.e., about morality) and about justice; in addition, the laws of any society usually reflect its customs. Consequently, before addressing <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that laws are dictated by the gods,</span> it seemed necessary (or at least, useful) to expose 1) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that morality is defined by the gods,</span> 2) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that justice is the jurisdiction of the gods,</span> and 3) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that customs were created by the gods.</span> I therefore focused on those three lies in the previous three posts. In this post, as another preliminary before addressing the lie that laws are dictated by the gods, I want to expose aspects of the Law Lie incorporated in another historical precursor to a substantial body of law, namely, contracts.<br /><br />Written records show that, for at least the past 5,000 years, contracts have incorporated additional facets of the Law Lie. A facet familiar in many cultures is <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that oaths are binding when sworn to the gods.</span> One example is the oath commonly sworn by Muslims: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, and he is my witness that I promise this.” Another example is the <a href="http://www.sunnetworks.net/%7Eggarman/sohelpme.html">arguably</a> unconstitutional use by U.S. government officials of the phrase “so help me God.”<br /><br />That second example is especially noteworthy, because swearing with the oath “so help me God” is probably promoted by the majority of Americans – who are also Christian – and yet, as given at <span style="font-style: italic;">Matthew 5, </span>33–37, Jesus allegedly prohibited such oaths:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Again, you have learned that our forefathers were told, ‘Do not break your oath’ and ‘Oaths sworn to the Lord must be kept.’ But what I tell you is this: You are not to swear at all… Plain ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is all you need to say…”</blockquote>Another facet of the Law Lie occurs in Christian marriage-ceremony contracts, namely, <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie (from </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Matthew 19,</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> 6): “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”</span> In reality [<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“In truth, as God is my witness”</span> (!)], no god is involved in putting together any marriage! That is, in contrast to such lies (such nonsense!), since the knowledge that no god exists (or has ever existed) is even <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/IiIndoctrinationinIgnorance.pdf">firmer</a> than the knowledge that we humans exist, it follows that no god has (or has ever had) anything to do with any oath or any contract.<br /><br />When such mistakes first occurred (mistakes that are now lies promoted by conniving clerics of the world) is unknown. Even when humans first entered into contracts is unknown, but surely it was tens of thousands of years ago, e.g., when the first man and woman were married, when the first hunter agreed to share his kill with the craftsman who made arrows, or when the first two tribes agreed not to poach on the other tribe’s hunting area. In fact, even other animals (besides humans) seem to enter into contracts, e.g., herd animals such as elephants and dolphins apparently have “contractual relationships” to protect all young members of the herd, and pack animals such as dogs and wolves commonly enforce “territorial contracts”.<br /><br />The principal definition for ‘contract’ in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Oxford American Dictionary</span> is<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> a[n]… agreement… that is intended to be enforceable by law.</span> “In the beginning”, however, the only laws available to enforce contracts were what-can-be-called natural laws, i.e., instinctive reactions of humans (and other animals) when they find themselves in undesirable situations, namely, fighting, fleeing, or fencing-off. As examples: 1) if disagreements among human tribes arose about rights to a certain territory, then similar to other pack animals, fights might ensue (i.e., reliance on enforcement of the law of the jungle, “might makes right”), 2) if women and children were threatened, then, similar to other herd animals, members of a human tribe might flee from the intruders, and 3) if a member of a tribe violated a marriage agreement, then the tribe might exile the violator (fencing him or her off from future interactions with the tribe). It therefore seems highly probable that people entered into contracts long before Ezra & Co-conspirators (Ezra & C-C) put together (“redacted”) the first five books (the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span>) of the Old Testament (OT, about 2,400 years ago), long before the first laws were written (about 4,000 years ago), and even long before writing was invented (about 5,000 years ago).<br /><br />In all early societies, no doubt disputes arose over details of many contracts. Thus, someone may have agreed to trade ten sheep for an ox, but when the time for the trade arrived, disputes could arise, for example, about the age of the sheep or the health of the ox. In many cases, such disputes were probably adjudicated by the tribe’s leader or “council of elders”, with the judgment relying on reports of witnesses to the contract. With the invention of writing, contracts could be “spelled out”, certified by the parties involved and by witnesses, and the record could be used both to decrease the number and intensity of disputes that would need to be adjudicated and to permit more rapid resolution of any disputes that were brought before “the court”. Below, I’ll show examples of ancient contracts that scholars have posted on the internet.<br /><br />The earliest contracts that I found on the internet were from Ancient Egypt and were apparently assembled by William A. Ward of the Department of Egyptology at Brown University as part of his 1995 “NEH Lecture”. A copy of his lecture, with links to the original contracts, is <a href="http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/wardlect.shtml">here</a>. The first document Ward lists, dated to be from about 2600 BC, is the Will of Prince Nikaure, son of King Khafre. In part it states the following, with “[…]” representing missing text, “(text)” and “[text]” representing text added by someone else, and I’ve added a few notes in “curly brackets” {such as these!}:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Year of the 12th Counting of [all] large and small animals [of Upper and Lower Egypt]</span> {i.e., similar to Wills written today, this one starts with a specification of the date}.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Prince Nikaure [.....] makes [this deposition], he being alive on his feet and not being sick</span> {a statement similar to the familiar preamble in Wills today: “being of sound mind and body”}.<br /><br />{The Will now starts listing the desired disposition of his assets.} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"> Given to the King’s Acquaintance (his wife) Kaen-nebty: in the [.....] Nome (the estate named) ‘Khafre [.....].’</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">His son, the King’s Acquaintance Nikaure</span> {It’s not clear to me if the expression “the King’s Acquaintance” was similar to the modern phraseology, “citizen of…” or if the King (or Pharaoh) really knew these people – but then, Nikaure was a prince}<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">: in the Northern Nome (the estate named) “Khafre [.....].”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">His daughter, the King’s Acquaintance Hetepheres: in the Eastern Nome (the estate named) “Khafre [.....]” and in the Northeast Nome (the estate named) “Khafre [.....].”</span> {This prince certainly had a lot of “estates”!}<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">[His daughter], the King’s Acquaintance Kaen-nebty the Younger: in the [.....] Nome, (the estate named) “Great is the Power of Khafre,” and in the Dolphin Nome, (the estate named) “Khafre [.....]”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">His beloved wife, the King’s Acquaintance Kaen-nebty</span> {I wonder why this item wasn’t listed earlier, as another item left to his wife}<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">: in the Viper Nome, (the estate named) “Khafre is Goodly,” and in the Pomegranate-tree Nome, (the estate named) “Khafre [.....].”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">The tomb for his daughter in the pyramid-cemetery of (King) Khafre.</span></blockquote>I trust that the reader is impressed with the above document, not only because it’s more than 4,500 years old (!), i.e., more than 2,000 years older than the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span>, but because it gives important glimpses of Ancient Egyptian society. Thus, it shows not only that “marriage contracts” existed and were honored but also that property was owned (at least by this prince), that it could be disposed through inheritances, and that wives and daughters (as well as sons) could inherit property. In fact, according to Ward, the oldest known biography (dating from ~2700 BCE and found in the tomb of an Egyptian fellow by the name of Metchen) mentions land that he inherited not from his father but from his mother.<br /><br />From the same source, a second document (from ~1900 BCE) shows the Will of two brothers. The information that I’ve added in “curly brackets” is from the same source (i.e., Ward). By way of introduction, he notes:<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></span><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There are two documents recorded on this papyrus. The first is a copy made from the original in an official archive. This is the Will of the older of two brothers who has given his property to his younger brother. The copy was necessary to validate the provisions of the second document, the Will of the younger brother, who wishes to pass on the family property to his wife. Note that both brothers have the same given name, though are identified by nicknames so that no confusion would arise in the disposition of the property.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">First Will</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Copy of the Will made by the Trustworthy Sealer of the Controller of Works Ankh-renef.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Year 44, Month 2 of the Summer Season, day 13.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Will made by the Trustworthy Sealer of the Controller of Works Ihy-seneb, nick-named Ankh-renef, son of Shepsut</span> {Ward adds: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> “His mother. Egyptian men were as-often-as-not identified as the sons of their mother rather than as the sons of their father.”</span>}<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"> …</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">All my possessions in field and town shall belong to my brother, the Priest in Charge of the Duty-shifts (of priests) of (the god) Sopdu, Lord of the East, Ihy-seneb, nick-named Wah, son of Shepsut. All my dependents shall belong to my brother…</span></blockquote>It’s not clear if this older brother was married or had any children; by “dependents” he may have meant his slaves, which are mentioned in the Second Will, the Will of the younger brother Wah, made five years later and copied below.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Second Will</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Year 2, Month 2 of the Inundation Season, day 18.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Will made by the Priest in Charge of the Duty-shifts (of priests) of (the god) Sopdu, Lord of the East, Wah.</span> {Ward adds:<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> “Priests served in regular 8-hour shifts throughout the 24-hour day. This was to maintain the continuous cycle of ritual as well as astronomical observations during the night hours.</span>”}<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I am making a will for my wife, a lady of the town of Gesiabet, Sheftu, nick-named Teti, daughter of Sit-Sopdu </span>{her mother; i.e., daughters were also identified by naming their mother}<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"> concerning all the property that my brother Ankh-renef, the Trustworthy Sealer of the Controller of Works, gave to me along with all the goods belonging to his estate that he gave to me. She may give these things as she pleases to any children of mine she may bear.</span> {It’s therefore clear that women in Ancient Egypt were much more liberated than they were in Ancient Israel and Judaea and than they are in “modern” Muslim nations.}<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">I also give to her the four Canaanites that my brother Ankh-renef, the Trustworthy Sealer of Works, gave to me. She may give (them) as she please to her children.</span> {I assume that these ‘Canaanites’ were the ‘dependents’ mentioned in the Will of his brother, Ankh-renef. These Canaanites might be called ‘slaves’ (just as the Hebrews, who allegedly migrated from Canaan to Egypt at about this time, called themselves ‘slaves’), but consistent with material in the OT, Ward adds the note: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“The ‘four Canaanites’ are family dependents. It was customary in Egyptian Wills to care for such retainers</span> [Ward uses the word ‘retainers’ rather than ‘slaves’] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">and make sure they would remain employed by the family in the future. Many Canaanites and other foreigners migrated to Egypt in search of employment and a better life. Due to the fluid social strata in Egypt, many were able to rise far above the rank of household servants into the professions, high government office, etc.”</span> (I don’t know what evidence Ward has to support that statement, besides the OT.)}<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">As for my tomb, I shall be buried in it with my wife without anyone interfering therewith. As for the house that my brother Ankh-renef, the Trustworthy Sealer, built for me, my wife shall live therein and shall not be evicted from it by anyone.</span> {That is, as Ward notes: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> “Sheftu not only receives the security of a home, her ownership of which cannot be contested, but is also assured a proper burial in her husband’s tomb. The latter provision is the duty of the children.”</span>} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">The Deputy Gebu shall act as the guardian for my son.</span></blockquote>If you aren’t impressed by the above two documents, then I’d encourage you to read them again – and again! – and then, think about them! Through 4,000 years (four thousand years!!) of fog and murky mist of history (with stories of religions and wars that have been confused, obscured, camouflaged, and polluted by the smoke and mirrors of politicians and priests) these two Wills, like two brilliant lasers, reveal some truth: someone leaves his property and his household dependents to his brother, and that brother leaves his estate to his wife, with provisions for his children. They’re simple, honest, clear statements of life as it really was ~4,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt – at least for those Egyptians wealthy enough to be concerned about writing Wills.<br /><br />The above Wills also show the importance of written “contracts”. In contrast, a third document given by Ward and copied below, shows a dispute that arose from inadequacies of oral contracts. Unfortunately, Ward doesn’t give an estimate of the date of this document. In his notes, though, he does add the following information.<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This dispute was presented to an oracle; oracles were just as legally binding as cases heard in a regular law court. The oracle in question is that of the deified king Amenhotep I who, with his mother, became the patron saints of the village of Deir el-Medineh where a very active cult was maintained on their behalf.</blockquote>Given that Amenhotep I ruled from about 1526 to 1506 BCE, this dispute therefore occurred after 1500 BCE.<br /><br />Although this document is confusing, I’ll just quote it:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Help me, my lord! My mother has caused quarreling with my brothers, saying: “I gave you two shares of copper,” though it was really my father who gave me a copper bowl, a copper razor, and two copper jars. It was the Scribe Pentaweret who gave them to me. But she has taken them and bought a mirror. May my (lord) establish a price in deben for them. My father also gave me 5 sacks of emmer and 2 sacks of barley. They belong to my husband for a period of 7 years, but he has only received 4 sacks. “There is one man and one woman; take 2 shares.” Thus my mother said to me.</blockquote>Ward adds notes trying to infer what was going on, but if you read the notes, I expect that you’ll continue to be confused – and already, that’s the main point I wanted to make: here was a case where confusion (and a family quarrel) arose, because no written contract was prepared and witnessed.<br /><br />In contrast, Ward’s next document shows a firm contract between a bridegroom and his father-in-law:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Year 23, Month 1 of the Planting Season, day 5.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">This day, Telmontu</span> {the father-in-law} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">declared to the Chief Workman Khonsu and the Scribe Amon-nakht, son of Ipui</span> {i.e., two “officials”}<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">: “Cause Nakhemmut</span> {the bridegroom} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">to swear an Oath of the Lord to the effect that he will not depart from my daughter.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">The Oath of the Lord which he </span>{the bridegroom} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">swore: “As Amon lives, as the Ruler lives, if I should turn away to leave the daughter of Telmontu</span> {the father-in-law} <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">at any time, I will receive a hundred blows and be deprived of all profits that I have made with her…”</span><br /></blockquote>Ward adds the note:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The prospective bridegroom here renounces all claim to any community property he and his wife may gain during the coming marriage should he leave his wife. In case of a divorce, the wife is thus better off than under normal circumstances where community property is divided. This is a unique case in the known legal literature, but may represent a common practice</span>.</blockquote>And I would ask the reader to notice that the bridegroom swore his oath to the god, Amon.<br /><br />I’ll skip showing Ward’s example of a woman charging her husband with abuse (that is, she was struggling against the law of the jungle that her husband’s might made him right!), but I’d call the reader’s attention to two features of this case. One is that the abused wife apparently relates to “the court” that her husband broke his previous oath:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">And he swore (an Oath of the Lord) saying: “As Amon endures, as (the Ruler) endures…”</blockquote>That is, apparently oaths sworn to the gods were no more binding 4,000 years ago than they are now! And second, consider Ward’s note associated with this document, because it provides information about how the courts of Ancient Egypt functioned:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There was no professional judiciary in Egypt. All tribunals, from the Vizier’s court down to the local village courts, were made up of ordinary citizens who functioned as judges, jury, and attorneys for both defendant and plaintiff. The members of the tribunal are named… in all court proceedings as those responsible for hearing the case and passing judgment. “Judges” were appointed on an ad hoc basis for each individual trial, or, as in the case of village courts, for a full day during which several cases were heard.</blockquote>I’ll similarly skip over Ward’s other examples, but I’d like to quote two sentences from his <span style="font-style: italic;">Document IX,</span> dealing with the <span style="font-style: italic;">Will of Amonkhau in Favor of His Second Wife.</span> In his “presentation” to the court, Amonkhau states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">For Pharaoh has said: “Each one should do as he wishes with his prope</span>rty.”</blockquote>Amonkhau also states:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">… but Pharaoh has said: “Give the dowry of each woman to her.”</blockquote>From these two statements it seems clear that the Pharaoh has “proclaimed” various “laws of the land” – although, on the internet, I didn’t find an extensive list of what these laws were. Providing a little more information, Ward adds the note:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A woman’s inheritance was at least her dowry plus one-third of the community property gained during the marriage; this also applied in case of divorce. In the present case, the law seems to be that community property acquired during the second marriage should be inherited by the second wife and not by the first wife or her children.</blockquote>Such evidence suggests to me that later developments of contracts (and laws and judicial proceedings) by the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews were more primitive (by one or two thousand years!) than those of the Ancient Egyptians.<br /><br />Meanwhile, though, the people living in Mesopotamia seemed to be as advanced as (or even more advanced than) the Egyptians. Thus, marriage “contracts” were certainly already common in Sumer when they invented writing. For example, as I showed in an earlier post, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Instructions to Ziusudra from his father Curuppag, son of Ubara-Tutu</span> (first written before 2600 BCE) contains the advice:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">You should not play around with a married young woman: the slander could be serious. My son, you should not sit alone in a chamber with a married woman.</blockquote>A host of additional Mesopotamian contracts from the same time period and later has been <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/mesopotamia-contracts.html">assembled</a> on the internet by Paul Halsall, History Department, Fordum University. In turn, Halsall identifies his source for these documents as the article by George Aaron Barton entitled “Contracts” in <span style="font-style: italic;">Assyrian and Babylonian Literature: Selected Transactions, With a Critical Introduction by Robert Francis Harper</span> (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1904), pp. 256-276.<br /><br />Halsall has arranged the various contracts that have been found (on clay tablets) into eleven categories, only some of which I’ll illustrate immediately below (because some of the illustrations he gives are not so ancient). In what follows, I’ll quote both the translations (put in italics and colored purple) from the original tablets along with some of Halsall’s comments (colored blue and in which I’ve changed BC to BCE). In a few cases, to the original contracts I’ve added some notes in brackets […]; notes in parentheses (…) are either Halsall’s or Barton’s. When reading what follows, I hope the reader will pause to consider that, in contrast to the fake contracts (summarized later in this post) that were incorporated in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span> by Ezra & C-C, what follows are “the real McCoy”: real contracts dealings with real problems between and among real people.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I. Sales and Purchases</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">1. Contract for the Sale of a Slave, Reign of Rim-Sin, c. 2300 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In this transaction the sellers simply guarantee to make no further claim upon the slave…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Sini-Ishtar has bought a slave, Ea-tappi by name, from Ilu-elatti, and Akhia, his son, and has paid ten shekels of Silver, the price agreed. Ilu-elatti, and Akhia, his son, will not set up a future claim on the slave. In the presence of Ilu-iqisha, son of Likua; in the presence of Ilu-iqisha, son of Immeru; in the presence of Likulubishtum, son of Appa, the scribe, who sealed it with the seal of the witnesses. The tenth of Kisilimu, the year when Rim-Sin, the king, overcame the hostile enemies.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">2. Contract for the Sale of Real Estate, Sumer, c. 2000 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This is a transaction from the last days of Sumerian history. It exhibits a form of transfer and title which has a flavor of modern business…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Sini-Ishtar, the son of Ilu-eribu, and Apil-Ili, his brother, have bought one third Shar of land with a house constructed, next the house of Sini-Ishtar, and next the house of Minani; one third Shar of arable land next the house of Sini-Ishtar, which fronts on the street; the property of Minani, the son of Migrat-Sin, from Minani, the son of Migrat-Sin. They have paid four and a half shekels of silver, the price agreed. Never shall further claim be made, on account of the house of Minani. By their king they swore.</span> [Notice that, for this contract, the parties didn’t swear an oath to some god but to “their king”.] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">(The names of fourteen witnesses and a scribe then follow.) Month Tebet, year of the great wall of Karra-Shamash.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">II. Rentals</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Rent[ing] a House, One Year Term, c. 2000 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This is the simplest form of rental, and comes from early Babylonian times</span>.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">AKHIBTE has taken the house of Mashqu from Mashqu, the owner, on a lease for one year. He will pay one shekel of silver, the rent of one year. On the fifth of Tammuz he takes possession. (Then follow the names of four witnesses.) Dated the fifth of Tammuz, the year of the wall of Kar-Shamash.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">III. Labor Contracts</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Hire of Laborer, Reign of Shamshu-Iluna, c. 2200 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This is a contract from the reign of Shamshu-iluna of the Akkadian dynasty, c. 2200 BCE. It is [one] of many of like character.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"><span style="font-style: italic;">MAR-SIPPAR has hired for one year Marduk-nasir, son of Alabbana, from Munapirtu, his mother. He will pay as wages for one year two and a half shekels of silver. She has received one half shekel of silver, one se (1/180th of a shekel), out of a year’s wage</span>s.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">IV. Co-Partnerships</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Partners to Borrow Money against Harvest, c. 2000 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The two farmers who borrow the money on their crop are partners.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">SIN-KALAMA-IDI, son of Ulamasha, and Apil-ilu-shu, Son of Khayamdidu, have borrowed from Arad-Sin sixteen shekels of money for the garnering of the harvest. On the festival of Ab they will pay the wheat. (Names of three witnesses and a scribe follow, and the tablet is dated in the year of a certain flood. It is not stated in the reign of what king it was written, but it clearly is from either the dynasty of Ur III or that of Akkad.</span><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-style: italic;">…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">VIII. Marriage</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Marriage, Reign of Shamshu-ilu-na, c. 2200 BCE…</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The bride was a slave, and gained her freedom by marriage, and hence the penalty imposed upon her in case she divorced her husband is greater than that imposed on him in case he divorced her.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"><span style="font-style: italic;">RIMUM, son of Shamkhatum, has taken as a wife and spouse Bashtum, the daughter of Belizunu, the priestess (?) of Shamash, daughter of Uzibitum. Her bridal present shall be… shekels of money. When she receives it she shall be free. If Bashtum to Rimum, her husband shall say, “You are not my husband,</span>”</span> [i.e., if she divorces him] <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">they shall strangle her and cast her into the river. If Rimum to Bashtum, his wife, shall say, “You are not my wife,” he shall pay ten shekels of money as her alimony. They swore by</span> [the gods]<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Shamash, Marduk, their king Shamshu-ilu-na, and Sippar</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>[There was a city, Sippar (now Tell Abu Habbah, Iraq); did they swear also on the city?]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">X. Adoption</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Adoption, c. 2000 BCE</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">ARAD-ISKHARA, son of Ibni-Shamash, has adopted Ibni-Shamash. On the day when Arad-Iskhara to Ibni-Shamash, his father, shall say, “You are not my father,” he shall bind him with a chain and sell him for money. When Ibni-Shamash to Arad-Iskhara, his son, shall say, “You are not my son,” he shall depart from house and household goods; but a son shall he remain and inherit with his sons.</span></blockquote>Next, consider some examples of Mesopotamian contracts during the time period when the Jews were in Babylon and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span> was being “redacted” by Ezra & C-C. These examples are from the same <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/mesopotamia-contracts.html">source</a> and I’ll use the same format as for the examples given above.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I. Sales and Purchases</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for the Sale of a Slave, 8th year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 597 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This tablet affords a good example of the sale of a slave. In this case the persons who sell guarantee that the slave will neither become insubordinate, nor prove to be subject to any governmental claims, nor prove to have been emancipated by adoption. The word rendered “emancipation” means literally “adoption,” but adoption by a freeman was an early form of emancipation…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"><span style="font-style: italic;">SHAMASH-UBALLIT and Ubartum, children of Zakir, the son of Pashi-ummani, of their free-will have delivered Nanakirat and her unsveaned son, their slave, for nineteen shekels of money, for the price agreed, unto Kaçir and Nadin-Marduk, sons of Iqisha-aplu, son of Nur-Sin. Shamash-uballit and Ubartum guarantee against insubordination, the claim of the royal service, and emancipation. Witnesses: Na’id-Marduk, son of Nabu-nacir, son of Dabibi; Bel-shum-ishkun, son of Marduk-zir-epish, son of Irani; Nabu-ushallim, son of Bel-akhi-iddin, son of Bel-apal-uçur. In the dwelling of Damqa, their mother. And the scribe, Nur-Ea, son of Ina-Isaggil-ziri, son of Nur-Sin. Babylon, twenty-first of Kisilimu, eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for the Sale of a Standing Crop, 7th year of Cyrus, 532 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This contract belongs to a class intermediate between rental and the sale of land. Instead of either, the standing crop is sold.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">From a cultivated field which is situated on the alley of Li’u-Bel, Itti-Marduk-balatu, the son of Nabu-akhi-iddin, the son of Egibi, has made a purchase from Tashmitum-damqat, daughter of Shuzubu, son of Shigua, and Nadin-aplu, the son of Rimut, son of Epish-Ilu. Itti-Marduk-balatu has counted the money, the price of the crop of that field for the seventh year of Cyrus, King of Babylon, king of countries, into the hands of Tashmitum-damqat and Nadin-aplu. (The names of two witnesses and a scribe then follow) Babylon, Ululu thirteenth, the seventh year of Cyrus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for the Sale of Dates, 32nd year of Darius, 490 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Shibtu, the place of this transaction, was a suburb of Babylon. This shows how women, especially of the lower rank, carried on business for themselves. The father of Aqubatum, as his name, Aradya (“my slave”) shows, had been a slave.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">One talent one qa of dates from the woman Nukaibu daughter of Tabnisha, and the woman Khamaza, daughter of _______, to the woman Aqubatum, daughter of Aradya. In the month Siman they will deliver one talent one qa of dates. Scribe, Shamash-zir-epish, son of Shamash-malku. Shibtu, Adar the sixth, thirty-second year of Darius, King of Babylon and countries.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for the Sale of Wheat, 35th year of Darius, 487 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This tablet is a good illustration of the simple transactions in foodstuffs, of which we have many… The farmers usually contracted as in this document the sale of their produce far in advance of the harvest. In this instance the sale was made six months before the grain would be ripe and could be delivered.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"><span style="font-style: italic;">Six talents of wheat from Shamash-malku, son of Nabu-napshat-su-ziz, to Shamash-iddin, son of Rimut. In the month Siman, wheat, six talents in full, he will deliver in Shibtu, at the house of Shamash-iddin. Witnesses: Shamash-iddin, son of Nabu-usur-napishti; Abu-nu-emuq, son of Sin-akhi-iddin; Sharru-Bel, son of Sin-iddin; Aban-nimiqu-rukus, son of Malula. Scribe, Aradya, son of Epish-zir. Shibtu, eleventh of Kislimu, thirty-fifth year of Darius king of countries</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">II. Rentals</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Rent & Repair of a House, One Year Term, 35th year of Darius, 487 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This contract is most interesting. Iskhuya, apparently a tenant of Shamash-iddin, undertakes to repair the house in which he is living. In addition to the rent for the year he is to receive fifteen shekels in money, in two payments, at the beginning and the completion of the work. The last payment is to be made on the day of Bel, which seems to be identical with the first of Tebet, a week later than the contract was made. In case the repairs were not then completed, Iskhuya was to forfeit four shekels. Such business methods are not, therefore, altogether modern.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">In addition to the rent of the house of Shamash-iddin, son of Rimut, for this year, fifteen shekels of money in cash (shall go) to Iskhuya, son of Shaqa-Bel, son of the priest of Agish. Because of the payment he shall repair the weakness (of the house), he shall close up the crack of the wall. He shall pay a part of the money at the beginning, a part of the money at the completion. He shall pay it on the day of Bel, the day of wailing and weeping. In case the house is unfinished by Iskhuya after the</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;"> first day of Tebet, Shamash-iddin shall receive four shekels of money in cash into his possession at the hands of Iskhuya. (The names of three witnesses and a scribe then follow.) Dated at Shibtu, the twenty-first of Kislimu, the thirty-fifth year of Darius.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">III. Labor Contracts</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Production of a Coat of Mail, 34th year of Darius, 488 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This tablet is dated in the thirty-fourth year of Darius I (488 BCE) and was regarded as an important transaction, since it is signed by four witnesses and a scribe.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">One coat of mail, insignum of power which will protect, is to be made by the woman Mupagalgagitum, daughter of Qarikhiya, for Shamash-iddin, son of Rimut. She will deliver in the month Shebat one coat of mail, which is to be made and which will protect.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract of Warranty for Setting of a Gold Ring, 35th year of Artaxerxes, 429 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The transaction needs no comment. The wealthy representative of the house of Murashu obtained from the firm of jewelers which sold him the ring a guarantee that the setting would last for twenty years; if it does not, they are to forfeit ten manas.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Bel-akha-iddin and Bel-shunu, sons of Bel-_______ and Khatin, son of Bazuzu, spoke unto Bel-shum-iddin, son of Murashu, saying: “As to the ring in which an emerald has been set in gold, we guarantee that for twenty years the emerald will not fall from the gold ring. If the emerald falls from the gold ring before the expiration of twenty years, Bel-akha-iddin, Bel-shunu (and) Khatin will pay to Bel-shum-iddin ten manas of silver.” (The names of seven witnesses and a scribe are appended. The date is) Nippur, Elul eighth, the thirty-fifth year of Artaxerxes.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">IV. Co-Partnerships</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for a Partnership, 36th year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 568 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Nabu-akhi-iddin was an investor – a member of the great Egibi family. He contributed four manas of capital to this enterprise, while Bel-shunu, who was to carry on the business, contributed one half mana and seven shekels, whatever property he might have, and his time. His expenses in the conduct of the business up to four shekels may be paid from the common funds.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Two manas of money belonging to Nabu-akhi-iddin, son of Shula, son of Egibi, and one half mana seven shekels of money belonging to Bel-shunu, son of Bel-akhi-iddin, Son of Sin-emuq, they have put into a co-partnership with one another. Whatever remains to Bel-shunu in town or country over and above, becomes their common property. Whatever Bel-shunu spends for expenses in excess of four shekels of money shall be considered extravagant. (The contract is witnessed by three men and a scribe, and is dated at) Babylon, first of Ab, in the thirty-sixth year of Nebuchadnezzar.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">V. Loans and Mortgages</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Loan of Money, 40th year of Nabopolassar, 611 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This is a mortgage on real estate in security for a loan. The interest was at the rate of eleven and one-third per cent.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">ONE mana of money, a sum belonging to Iqisha-Marduk, son of Kalab-Sin, (is loaned) unto Nabu-etir, son of _____, son of _____. Yearly the amount of the mana shall increase its sum by seven shekels of money. His field near the gate of Bel is Iqisha-Marduk’s pledge. (This document bears the name of four witnesses, and is dated) at Babylon, Tammuz twenty-seventh, in the fourteenth year of Nabopolassar, (the father of Nebuchadnezzar).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Loan of Money, Sixth year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 598 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The rate of interest in this case was thirteen and one-third per cent.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">One mana of money, a sum belonging to Dan-Marduk, son of Apla, son of the Dagger-wearer, (is loaned) unto Kudurru, son of Iqisha-apla, son of Egibi. Yearly the amount of the mana shall increase its sum by eight shekels of money. Whatever he has in city or country, as much as it may be, is pledged to Dan-Marduk. (The date is) Babylon, Adar fourth, in Nebuchadnezzar’s sixth year.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Loan of Money, 5th year of Nabonidus, 550 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This loan was made Aru third, in the fifth year of Nabonidus. No security was given the creditor, but he received an interest of twenty per cent. </span>[Wow! Either there was serious inflation or the guy was a loan shark!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">One and a half manas of money belonging to Iddin-Marduk, son of Iqisha-apla, son of Nur-Sin, (is loaned) unto Ben-Hadad-natan, son of Addiya and Bunanit, his wife. Monthly the amount of a mana shall increase its sum by a shekel of money. From the first of the month Siman, of the fifth year of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, they shall pay the sum on the money. The call shall be made for the interest money at the house which belongs to Iba. Monthly shall the sum be paid.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">VI. Bankruptcy</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Purchase of Mortgage, 2nd year of Evil-Merodach, 560 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">[This contract] exhibits how in a case of bankruptcy the interests of the creditor were conserved in the sale of the mortgaged property. It also proves that in Babylonian law the value of the estate was not in such cases sacrificed to the creditor, but that the debtor could obtain the equity in his property which actually belonged to him</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Two thirds of a mana of money, a loan from Bel-zir-epish, son of Shapik-zir, son of the smith, to Nabu-apla-iddin, son of Balatu, son of the _____, a loan upon the Gin (of land) which was delivered unto the creditor, and (on) the house of Nabu-apla-iddin, (which) Nergal-sharra-usur, son of Bel-shum-ishkun, has bought for money. One-third mana of money for the payment wherewith the creditor to be paid Marduk-apla-iddin, son of Bel-zir-epish, son of the smith, has received as agent for Nergal-sharra-usur, from Nabu-akhi-iddin, son of Shula, son of Egibi. The receipt for two-thirds manas (which) Bel-zir-epish (loaned) to Nabu-apla-iddin, Marduk-apla-usur, his son gave to Nergal-sharra-usur. Until Marduk-apla-usur unto the scribes of the king shall speak and shall receive the seal of possession, Nabu-akhi-iddin, son of Nabu-shum-iddins, son of Bel-shuktanu, shall hold the certificate of the receipt of the two-thirds manas of money. (This instrument is dated) Babylon, Nisan twenty-sixth, of the second year of Evil-Merodach</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">VII. Power of Attorney</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Power of Attorney, 12th year of Artaxerxes, 452 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">…It appears that the two brothers mentioned in [this contract] wished to make provision for a slave of one of them, who was perhaps being cared for at the Temple of Sharru. One man, perhaps their tenant, was empowered to pay to another the rent of a house of theirs; he in turn was to take it to the temple and see that certain men receive it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Eighteen shekels of money, rent belonging to Arad-Anu-ilu-la-ilu-iprus and Shapi, sons of Arad-belanu, of _____. From the month Tebet, of the twelfth year of Artaxerxes, Bel-akhi-iddin, son of Bel-abu-akhi, shall receive eighteen shekels of money from the empowered attorney, Imsa-sharru-arda, son of Bel-iddin, on behalf of Arad-Anu-ilu-la-ilu-iprus and Shapi. He shall enter in the Temple of Sharru, into the little temple, the shrine, and shall deposit in the treasury the money, and the singer and the scribe shall receive it for the exalted divinity [and what the “exalted divinity” didn’t want, no doubt the clerics would put it to “good” use!] from the hand of Bel-akhi-iddin, son of Bel-abu-akhi, on behalf of Khuru, the slave of Arad-Anu-ilu-la-ilu-iprus, and Sharru-shu, son of Dan-ila.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">VIII. Marriage</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Marriage, 13th year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 591 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This contract is dated at Babylon, in the thirteenth year of the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar, and is an example of marriage by purchase – a form of marriage which had practically fallen into disuse at this time</span> [to be resurrected ~1200 years later in Islam!].<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Dagil-ili, son of Zambubu, spoke to Khamma, daughter of Nergal-iddin, son of Babutu, saying: “Give me Latubashinni your daughter; let her be my wife.” Khamma heard, and gave him Latubashinni, her daughter, as a wife; and Dagil-ili, of his own free-will, gave Ana-eli-Bel-amur, a slave, which he had bought for half a mana of money, and half a mana therewith to Khamma instead of Latubashinni, her daughter. On the day that Dagil-ili another wife shall take, Dagil-ili shall give one mana of money unto Latubashinni, and she shall return to her place – her former one. (Done) at the dwelling of Shum-iddin, son of Ishi-etir, son of Sin-damaqu.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">IX. Divorce</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Divorce, 3rd year of Nabonidus, 552 BCE.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">NA’ID-MARDUK, son of Shamash-balatsu-iqbi, will give, of his own free-will, to Ramua, his wife, and Arad-Bunini, his son, per day four qa of food, three qa of drink; per year fifteen manas of goods, one pi sesame, one pi salt, which is at the store-house. Na’id-Marduk will not increase it. In case she flees to Nergal [i.e., she dies], the flight shall not annul it. (Done) at the office of Mushezib-Marduk, priest of Sippar.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">X. Adoption</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Adoption, 9th year of Nabonidus, 544 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This document illustrates not only the method of adoption, but the way in which that process might be made impossible by the will of an ancestor in cases involving property.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">Bel-kagir, son of Nadinu, son of Sagillai, spoke thus to Nadinu, his father, son of Ziri-ya, son of Sagillai: “To Bit-turni you did send me and I took Zunna as my wife and she has not borne me son or daughter. Bel-ukin, son of Zunna, my wife, whom she bore to her former husband, Niqudu, son of Nur-Sin, let me adopt and let him be my son; on a tablet record his sonship, and seal and bequeath to him our revenues and property, as much as there is, and let him be the son taken by our hands.” Nadinu was not pleased with the word Bel-kagir, his son, spoke to him. Nadinu had written on a tablet, “For the future any other one is not to take their revenues and property,” and had bound the hands of Bel-kagir, and had published in the midst, saying: “On the day when Nadinu goes to his fate, after him, if a son shall be born from the loins of Bel-kagir, his son shall inherit the revenues and properties of Nadinu, his father; if a son is not born from the loins of Bel-kagir, Bel-kagir shall adopt his brother and fellow heir and shall bequeath his revenues and the properties of Nadinu his father to him. Bel-kagir may not adopt another one, but shall take his brother and fellow-heir unto sonship on account of the revenues and properties which Nadinu has bequeathed.”</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-style: italic;">(From this point the tablet is too broken for translation until we reach the witnesses. It was dated)</span> <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">at Babylon in the ninth year of Nabonidus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">XI. Inheritance</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Contract for Division of an Estate, 3rd year of Cyrus, 535 BCE.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A good example of a will has already been given above. It appears there that wills like that of Nadinu</span> [immediately above] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">would stand in spite of the wishes of some of the heirs. We may here illustrate the division of estates among the heirs. This instrument was executed at Borsippa in the third year of Cyrus.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204); font-style: italic;">TABLET concerning the division into gin of an estate the dowry of Banat-Esaggil, their mother, which Marduk-iddin-akhi, son of Nabu-bel-shinati, son of Nur-Papsukal, divided and of which he gave to Tukultum-Marduk, son of Nabu-bel-shinati, son of Nur-Papsukal, his brother, his portion. Thirty-three and two-thirds cubits, the upper long side on the north, twenty cubits bordering on the street of _____, the side of the house of Ina-qibi-Bel, son of Balatu, son of the Rab-Uru, and the side of the house of Nabu-uballit, son of Kabtiya, son of Nabu-shimi; thirty-three cubits and eight hands, the lower long side on the south, by the side of the house of Marduk-iddin-akhi, son of Nabu-bel-shinati, son of Nur-Papsukal; thirteen cubits eight-hands, the upper short side on the west, bordering on the street Katnu-agu, thirteen cubits eight hands, the lower short side on the east, eight cubits eight hands (being on) an alley which is eight fingers wide, on the side of the streets; Katnu-la-acu; the sum is eight and two thirds gin, the measurement of the estate, the portion of Tukultum-Marduk, together with two gin, the difference _____ which the chief justice, the shukkaltum and the judges have written upon the tablet and have granted to Tukultum-Marduk, son of Nabu-bel-shanati, son of Nur-Papsukal, from Marduk-iddin-akhi, son of Nabu-bel-shanati, his brother. Marduk-iddin-akhi has thus given it to Tukultum-Marduk. An exit, an inalienable privilege which belongs to the share of Tukultum-Marduk, Marduk-iddin-akhi, son of Nabu-bel-shanati, son of Nur-Papsukal, will not remove from Tukultum-Marduk, his brother. Their suit with one another concerning their estate is ended. They will not move against one another on the basis of the suit about the estate. In order that neither may undertake it they have issued duplicate (tablets).</span></blockquote>It’s interesting (at least to me) that, in contrast to the quoted contracts from Ancient Egypt, essentially all of the above Mesopotamian contracts didn’t invoke any gods. But as the following (and my final) example shows, the Ancient Arabs (similar to the Ancient Egyptians) did invoke their gods to “witness” their contracts – at least, for the case shown, pledging friendship. This example is described in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The History</span></a>, which was written in 440 BCE by “the world’s first historian”, Herodotus:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The Arabs keep such pledges more religiously than almost any other people. They plight faith with the forms following. When two men would swear a friendship, they stand on each side of a third: he with a sharp stone makes a cut on the inside of the hand of each near the middle finger, and, taking a piece from their dress, dips it in the blood of each, and moistens therewith seven stones lying in the midst, calling the while on [the gods] Bacchus and Urania. After this, the man who makes the pledge commends the stranger (or the citizen, if citizen he be) to all his friends, and they deem themselves bound to stand to the engagement. They have but these two gods, to wit, Bacchus and Urania… Bacchus they call in their language Orotal, and Urania, Alilat.</blockquote>This pledge of friendship is similar to the “blood-brother pledge” of Native Americans – although the method used by the Ancient Arabs was obviously more sanitary!<br /><br />In fact, Herodotus’s above description of the pledge of friendship among Ancient Arabs brings to mind a Calvin & Hobbs comic strip by a genius of our time, Bill Watterson. The strip is shown below; all figures in this post are © Bill Watterson; below each strip I’ve typed the text of each caption (not only because Google’s translator won’t translate the text in figures but also because, this morning, Google’s blogspot is being a pain).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXWn_Pi96YF3V7uQ72wgzAc2zZdFNDWo2AfeuDqYeCyoHDlkwod6egIgXL_yPbZok29CoJpyT0-Nl99N01Idm9FA_Ag0uuE8D7qpkU2JxN-nclAanUuXkp6SwBXeQY6FnoQz-Q-73EF7M/s1600-h/a+-+friends.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXWn_Pi96YF3V7uQ72wgzAc2zZdFNDWo2AfeuDqYeCyoHDlkwod6egIgXL_yPbZok29CoJpyT0-Nl99N01Idm9FA_Ag0uuE8D7qpkU2JxN-nclAanUuXkp6SwBXeQY6FnoQz-Q-73EF7M/s400/a+-+friends.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315637227494943010" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) Calvin (C): Here, Hobbes, I’ve drawn up a friendship contract for you to sign. Hobbes (H): A contract? 2) C: Right. It codifies the terms of our friendship. You can renegotiate in 20 years. 3) H: People are friends because the <span style="font-weight: bold;">want</span> to be, not because they <span style="font-weight: bold;">have</span> to be! 4) C: That’s what this fixes. H: If your friends are contractual, you don’t have any.]</span><br /></div><br />It might be of interest if some information was added about the two gods on whose names the Ancient Arabs swore their oaths of friendship, since Herodotus wrote his book approximately 1,000 years before Muhammad declared “There is only one god but Allah.” As seen in the above quotation from Herodotus, the two gods were Orotal (whom he considered to be the same as the Greek god Bacchus or Dionysus) and Alilat (or Allāt, al-Lāt, or al-’llāhat, whom he considered to be similar to the Greek goddess Urania or Aphrodite). Aremen Rizal <a href="http://www.matsati.com/islamic-diety.html">adds</a>:<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In pre-Islam era, Allah is the name of the highest deity of Mecca people. He is the protector god of Mecca and was worshipped along with his daughters (female deities) Allat, Al-Uzza, and Manat. Herodotus, the Greek historian from about 450 BCE, tells us that the North Arabians had a god and goddess named Orotal and Alilat. Orotal is simply a corruption of Allah, or Allah Ta’al, Allah The Most High.</blockquote><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All%C4%81t">Wikipedia</a> gives the following translation for a relevant sentence in Herodotus’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Histories</span> (III:38)<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">They <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">[the Ancient Arabs]</span> believe in no other gods except Dionysus and the heavenly Aphrodite; and they say that they wear their hair as Dionysus does his, cutting it round the head and shaving the temples. They call Dionysus, Orotal; and Aphrodite, Alilat.</blockquote>More than a thousand years later, as part of his Islamic revolution in the 7th Century CE, Muhammad elevated Allah to the position of sole, creator god, and simultaneously, he “dethroned”, “disrobed”, and discarded all goddesses, such as the pre-Islamic Allah’s three daughters al-‘Uzzá, Manāt, and al-Lāt (or Alilat or Aphrodite).<br /><br />The Hebrews had a similar “heave-ho”. During the 7th Century BCE (as described in the OT at <span style="font-style: italic;">2 Kings 23</span>), the misogynist Jewish clerics discredited, abused, and discarded Yahweh’s female companion i.e., the goddess <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptgods2.html">Asherah</a>. Archeological <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/dever.html">evidence</a> to support that statement is given by William Dever in a question and answer session associated with the PBS-NOVA TV program “The Bible’s Buried Secrets”:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Q: Are there any images of Asherah?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Dever: For a hundred years now we have known of little terracotta female figurines. They show a nude female; the sexual organs are not represented but the breasts are. They are found in tombs, they are found in households, they are found everywhere. There are thousands of them. They date all the way from the 10th century to the early 6th century. They have long been connected with one goddess or another, but many scholars are still hesitant to come to a conclusion. I think they are representations of Asherah, so I call them Asherah figurines.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Q: There aren’t such representations of Yahweh, are there?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Dever: No. Now, why is it that you could model the female deity but not the male deity? Well, I think the First and Second Commandments by now were taken pretty seriously. You just don’t portray Yahweh, the male deity, but the Mother Goddess is okay. But his consort is probably a lesser deity.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">We found molds for making Asherah figurines, mass-producing them, in village shrines. So probably almost everybody had one of these figurines, and they surely have something to do with fertility. They were no doubt used to pray for conceiving a child and bearing the child safely and nursing it. It’s interesting to me that the Israelite and Judean ones are rather more modest than the Canaanite ones, which are right in your face. The Israelite and Judean ones mostly show a nursing mother.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Q: This has been something of a lightning rod, has it not?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Dever: This is awkward for some people, the notion that Israelite religion was not exclusively monotheistic. But we know now that it wasn’t. Monotheism was a late development . Not until the Babylonian Exile and beyond does Israelite and Judean religion – Judaism – become monotheistic.</span><br /></blockquote>All of which brings to mind another of Bill Watterson’s creations:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAaE5YVJ8nE8X1sjvNH926oKZLShbsaRjSDth3Xr2Ce-AzzRsr3BYszioZ-cXXXJB8X-qcpOlEenqcvKrUZnaZmlAqzJ91HMoI8Q2mrfdBwhIskIlZVBpz_IxVjZz8msTCNbhGZ4rJZo/s1600-h/b+-+Susie.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAaE5YVJ8nE8X1sjvNH926oKZLShbsaRjSDth3Xr2Ce-AzzRsr3BYszioZ-cXXXJB8X-qcpOlEenqcvKrUZnaZmlAqzJ91HMoI8Q2mrfdBwhIskIlZVBpz_IxVjZz8msTCNbhGZ4rJZo/s400/b+-+Susie.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315706985517518322" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Hi Susie! Would you sign this legal document? Susie (S): What is it? 2) C: In essence, it annuls our knowledge of each other’s existence and it prohibits any future social interaction. 3) C: Specifically, it states that I’ll never ask you out on a date, and it imposes severe penalties on any party that attempts to engage the other in conversa… 4) C: It’s almost insulting how fast she signed that.]</span><br /></div><br />And actually, the more Calvin & Hobbs strips I review, the more they seem to illustrate the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span>! To see what I mean, consider this. Apparently the Hebrews exiled in Babylon found themselves living in a culture inundated by contracts (as illustrated earlier in this post). As a result, Ezra & C-C apparently became so enamored by contracts that they decided to concoct a “holy book” (the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pentateuch</span>) that spelled out contracts (or “covenants”) between them and their god! To see links with Calvin & Hobbs cartoons, consider the following illustrations.<br /><br />1. In the Adam & Eve story of <span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 2 & 3</span>, the authors have the tyrant-teacher (Yahweh) order the kids (Adam & Eve) not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – thereby preventing them from learning that it was “good” to obey his orders! Subsequently, a more honest teacher (a talking snake) told the kids the truth, that Yahweh had lied when he said (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 2,</span> 16): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> “You may eat from every tree in the garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for on the day that you eat from it, you will certainly die.”</span> The following Calvin & Hobbs version is somewhat restricted – but then, in contrast to the creators of the Bible, it was a part of Watterson’s brilliance to keep his cartoons realistic, not resorting to silly stunts such as talking snakes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJj5sGuIEQ1D0ORqfIl871Q04Q2dpdcuRf9qVU0KoHp7HLN6mVQ4E_p9ngKMl4l0cyMT2gwTBAj7_x-Lpw_YJj2gOU2vLXrPBdCFiX8escOSk3jhxwdliwn4mUmiox1-jIv8Zj0zvt2E/s1600-h/c+-+Mrs+Wormwood.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 125px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJj5sGuIEQ1D0ORqfIl871Q04Q2dpdcuRf9qVU0KoHp7HLN6mVQ4E_p9ngKMl4l0cyMT2gwTBAj7_x-Lpw_YJj2gOU2vLXrPBdCFiX8escOSk3jhxwdliwn4mUmiox1-jIv8Zj0zvt2E/s400/c+-+Mrs+Wormwood.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315706985714763570" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Miss Wormwood (MW). I’d like you to sign this contract. 2) C: It’s an agreement that you’ll compensate me for any loss of job income I may suffer as an adult because of a poor first-grade education. 3) MW: If you get a poor first-grade education, it will be from <span style="font-weight: bold;">your</span> lack of effort, not mine. Get back</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;"> to your desk. 4) C: By golly, <span style="font-weight: bold;">somebody</span> ought to pay me if I don’t learn anything.]</span><br /></div><br />2. In the Bible’s version of the flood story (plagiarized from earlier Mesopotamian myths), the bully Yahweh hideously kills essentially everyone. Upon realizing that he had made major mistakes (i.e., that he had “sinned”, big time), Yahweh then enters into a contract with the patriarch survivor (Noah, or in earlier versions of the myth, Ubar-Tutu, Ziusudra, Curuppag, Atrahasis, or Utanapishtam). Specifically, Yahweh promises (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 9</span>):<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> “never again will all living things be wiped out by the waters of a flood”</span> – provided 1) that people <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“not eat meat with its life</span> (that is, meat with blood in it)” [but, but… all meat has blood in it!] and 2) that people not <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“shed human blood”</span> [apparently, then, people who participate in wars are risking the destruction of us all!]. To remind himself that he entered into this contract (or “covenant”), the bully Yahweh (who apparently has a failing memory) stated (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 9, </span>14): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, then I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures of all kinds.”</span> I think Watterson captured the essence of this biblical nonsense with the following:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQmVR4N70nId6q2m7tSef0soOMtvz2VdTs3q6TMrM7kmwOt48iW034KPkxvoyKqbBmzWNoBSrOvgFcSXePrzZKFL5zsC-seI5Of_-xirBzVeEfuW1KcP1AyOMk7tEQmuP3y5Eyk0kenc/s1600-h/d+-+locker+Moe.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 127px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQmVR4N70nId6q2m7tSef0soOMtvz2VdTs3q6TMrM7kmwOt48iW034KPkxvoyKqbBmzWNoBSrOvgFcSXePrzZKFL5zsC-seI5Of_-xirBzVeEfuW1KcP1AyOMk7tEQmuP3y5Eyk0kenc/s400/d+-+locker+Moe.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315706987808377938" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:85%;">[<span style="font-size:78%;">1) C: Hold it, Moe (M)! Before you wallop me, I’m afraid you’ll have to sign this form. 2) M: What’s this? C: It’s a statement acknowledging responsibility for your behavior. 3) C: You agree that hitting me entitles me to unlimited compensation for medical treatment as well as reasonable damages for pain and suffering. You affirm that you’re insured for these costs and… 4) C: Nobody takes responsibility for his actions anymore.]</span></span><br /></div><br />3. Then, there’s Ezra & C-C’s concocted “covenant” (a fancy synonym for ‘contract’) between Abraham and the giant father-in-the-sky, Yahweh, namely (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 17,</span> 4): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“You [Abraham] will be the father of a multitude of nations.”</span> To seal this contract, the giant father-in-the sky added (<span style="font-style: italic;">Genesis 17,</span> 10): <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: every male among you must be circumcised.”</span> In my view, Watterson summarized such stupidity beautifully:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjltFdZuS6RLdEn7_nDAaQACxUoY_DekgHaiDA1tEIW1erHEKbJTaFcyg6behgf6xeZnkDENHXwQZAXni06Vaj5QQ5rVd0MQX6kDOQ2lXCz0aofbTrF1CF07RHsN7qGQvNagXHUO1l3DM/s1600-h/e+-+father.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 127px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjltFdZuS6RLdEn7_nDAaQACxUoY_DekgHaiDA1tEIW1erHEKbJTaFcyg6behgf6xeZnkDENHXwQZAXni06Vaj5QQ5rVd0MQX6kDOQ2lXCz0aofbTrF1CF07RHsN7qGQvNagXHUO1l3DM/s400/e+-+father.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315706987468283282" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Here, Dad (D) I’d like you to sign this form and have it notarized. 2) D (reading): “I, the undersigned Dad, attest that I have never parented before, and insofar as I have no experience in the job… 3) D (continuing to read): I am liable for my mistakes and I agree to pay for any counseling, in perpetuity, Calvin may require as a result of my parental ineptitude.” 4) C: I don’t see how you’re allowed to have a kid without signing one of those.]</span><br /></div><br />4. And to top it off, there’s Ezra & C-C’s fictitious contract between the tyrant Yahweh and the fictitious group of 600,000 Hebrews (males, alone) who allegedly were led out from Egypt by the fictional character Moses. Specifically, at <span style="font-style: italic;">Exodus 15, </span>26, Yahweh allegedly states:<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> “If only you will obey the Lord your God, if you will do what is right in his eyes, if you will listen to his commands and keep all his statutes, then I will never bring upon you any of the sufferings which I brought on the Egyptians…”</span> But (so the clerical story goes) the Israelites didn’t keep their part of the bargain (witness the golden calf episode) – which I think Watterson illustrated clearly:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSmXIGAtZiqH1zlehkG48c8HOa18IkBRtSf8NCiE4I158TTIqRQVYM9C3aKwmfhOcZkCXj74oDqyXKoeolb48P4hRj5YDE103JUygmMYWKuuBD4SKB6nLtMPTddRhaPUl-Mk4sGjb_E0E/s1600-h/f+-+swing+Moe.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 127px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSmXIGAtZiqH1zlehkG48c8HOa18IkBRtSf8NCiE4I158TTIqRQVYM9C3aKwmfhOcZkCXj74oDqyXKoeolb48P4hRj5YDE103JUygmMYWKuuBD4SKB6nLtMPTddRhaPUl-Mk4sGjb_E0E/s400/f+-+swing+Moe.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315706986751100642" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) Moe: Get off the swing, Twinky. C: Forget it, Moe, wait your turn. 2) <span style="font-weight: bold;">PUNCH!</span> 3) C: It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.]</span><br /></div><br />Of course, though, it wasn’t just Jewish clerics who concocted such silly contracts with some giant Jabberwock in the sky. For example, when considering the following Watterson creation, think of the con game run by Christian clerics:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrZrspib6WG-m58FFDIGoz3HWshTHyzI8MLwLwTZazKoG9v2pfWy6lnUMAe3HPa1IWmjfK1d44DgBAIMpeQFx9zYQCtj6piHfnncXx0Kj_G9-m-HALx0Z9IdETR6dJtPDdxaIup7wYMc/s1600-h/g+-+penient+sinner.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrZrspib6WG-m58FFDIGoz3HWshTHyzI8MLwLwTZazKoG9v2pfWy6lnUMAe3HPa1IWmjfK1d44DgBAIMpeQFx9zYQCtj6piHfnncXx0Kj_G9-m-HALx0Z9IdETR6dJtPDdxaIup7wYMc/s400/g+-+penient+sinner.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707476033882306" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Whee hee hee 2) <span style="font-weight: bold;">SPLOOSHH</span> 3) C: Oh, what an awful thing I did! How I regret it now! I hereby resolve to change my evil ways! Oh remorse, remorse! 4) C: My penitent sinner shtick needs work.]</span><br /></div><br />Eventually, the Arabs caught on, and Muslim clerics got their con game up and running, too:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9IV_B29gEeMlHyx3dVKNGYHYhrubEm2UtF91jYFnAycDzMu30TMVvzD2GFcOIghTmolgrmeOHi_lJE80ucaecSs_XpkBumzBfHVlGUTXNUyrIeVy-xg-KYtBKWhuF39QnrjEtic5bu4/s1600-h/h+-+mother.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9IV_B29gEeMlHyx3dVKNGYHYhrubEm2UtF91jYFnAycDzMu30TMVvzD2GFcOIghTmolgrmeOHi_lJE80ucaecSs_XpkBumzBfHVlGUTXNUyrIeVy-xg-KYtBKWhuF39QnrjEtic5bu4/s400/h+-+mother.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707479875277058" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: <span style="font-weight: bold;">I</span> want the last piece of pie! Don’t divide it up! Give it to <span style="font-weight: bold;">me</span>! Calvin’s Mom: Don’t be selfish Calvin. 2) C: So, the real message here is “Be dishonest”? 3) (Big-grin Calvin wins again!)]</span><br /></div><br />It’s enough to make a person question the existence of any god – especially since any god idea just doesn’t make sense:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKdNSE-jrqFCpoHyoxzaKj8F5Amdcuf5kwEjz1ZEajmtDAvrhlW-vDZiXlvX84me4WbcwXF9H5Oxc9-lvY3yWztM7dv6C5UVfrZyyu-ILVZMpSC3EMM8kWQwmeHSZf4gwoxhEtO7K_CP4/s1600-h/i+-+Santa+nonsense.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKdNSE-jrqFCpoHyoxzaKj8F5Amdcuf5kwEjz1ZEajmtDAvrhlW-vDZiXlvX84me4WbcwXF9H5Oxc9-lvY3yWztM7dv6C5UVfrZyyu-ILVZMpSC3EMM8kWQwmeHSZf4gwoxhEtO7K_CP4/s400/i+-+Santa+nonsense.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707481316380050" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn’t make sense. 2) C: Why all the secrecy? What all the mystery? If the guy exists, why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it? 3) C: And if he <span style="font-weight: bold;">doesn’t</span> exist, what’s the meaning of all this? 4) H: I dunno… isn’t this a religious holiday? C: Yeah, but actually, I’ve got the same questions about God.]</span><br /></div><br />But then, an amazing number of people can apparently rationalize their way to accept almost any wild idea – if they’re given sufficient incentive:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgie2bn2HMwy7exNhAOPfjXaHwkE5Gs7j-cl-QVfQkTrkAiaCUkP2kIU0YlfIm9RqmOgDgEx4gN-lk8PQ4vJ1aMmPau3Wf_0Lhm5xsYxEk-7MQ5WgZDwBZtiikF_dy0_7crAd8l-WrWn2c/s1600-h/j+-+lots+of+presents.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 135px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgie2bn2HMwy7exNhAOPfjXaHwkE5Gs7j-cl-QVfQkTrkAiaCUkP2kIU0YlfIm9RqmOgDgEx4gN-lk8PQ4vJ1aMmPau3Wf_0Lhm5xsYxEk-7MQ5WgZDwBZtiikF_dy0_7crAd8l-WrWn2c/s400/j+-+lots+of+presents.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707484407047170" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">[1) C: Well, I’ve decided I <span style="font-weight: bold;">do</span> believe in Santa Claus, no matter how preposterous he sounds. 2) H: What convinced you? C: A simple risk analysis. 3) I want presents, <span style="font-weight: bold;">lots</span> of presents. Why risk not getting them over a matter of belief? Heck, I’ll believe anything they want. 4) H: How cynically enterprising of you. C: It’s the spirit of Christmas.] </span></span><br /></div><br />A slight problem can arise, however: even if you’re willing to ignore the lack of evidence, ignore reason, and worship some god, then still, which one to choose?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj151ledOfRmzuLjl8CXWR0QRnle5Oq5KfLrkf5GXaUot2TxGIyh7X5TuvyfSmtSpCbSMqKGG5H2RWNdiyFheoziKLikSTB25bnE9uByV3KpO8M5JQcnpYT7w6w_nNm1_M6qAQvNbjT0HU/s1600-h/k+-+burning+leaves.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 127px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj151ledOfRmzuLjl8CXWR0QRnle5Oq5KfLrkf5GXaUot2TxGIyh7X5TuvyfSmtSpCbSMqKGG5H2RWNdiyFheoziKLikSTB25bnE9uByV3KpO8M5JQcnpYT7w6w_nNm1_M6qAQvNbjT0HU/s400/k+-+burning+leaves.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707487924860802" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Can we burn these leaves? C’s father (F): No, that pollutes. 2) C: But how can we appease the mighty snow demons if we don’t sacrifice any leaves?! We’ll have a warm winter! 3) C’s F: I don’t know whether your grasp of theology or meteorology is the more appalling. C: I guess I’ll go light some candles around the toboggan and beg for mercy.]</span><br /></div><br />I mean, think about it:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-l7k8eGhjociNb-UNopjmTc6yZ9CRdxYlbN8BsfdNaHw335FXL4npiDiasdGoxjEX07M3UpYDJBhTPyL6PWnjqATK0SBUnEJdZmpPqZk3D76Gs4FVYafBWbmvtkTVMkS6jNHNuizPZLE/s1600-h/l+-+chicken.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 127px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-l7k8eGhjociNb-UNopjmTc6yZ9CRdxYlbN8BsfdNaHw335FXL4npiDiasdGoxjEX07M3UpYDJBhTPyL6PWnjqATK0SBUnEJdZmpPqZk3D76Gs4FVYafBWbmvtkTVMkS6jNHNuizPZLE/s400/l+-+chicken.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707838193255586" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: What if we die and it turns out God is a big <span style="font-weight: bold;">chicken</span>?? What then?! 2) C’s Mom: Just eat your dinner, OK? C: <span style="font-weight: bold;"> Eternal consequences, that’s what</span>!]</span><br /></div><br />But let’s face it: some people apparently prefer to live by rules and contracts set by others – although, Calvin apparently wasn’t one of them:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4114_8IKCWA2zoX2aOvGX9kcuumUawkC-udbMkj29Xnp_SXHtsLXOcepENOKk34ueYy2Rd4Kr-Nbj3aZOUlmkQptm5EA9zOxhz9wCADMxmxZIGrClhUqq_dHirOiPZ9q1cPqkBHekbFw/s1600-h/m+-+rules.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 125px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4114_8IKCWA2zoX2aOvGX9kcuumUawkC-udbMkj29Xnp_SXHtsLXOcepENOKk34ueYy2Rd4Kr-Nbj3aZOUlmkQptm5EA9zOxhz9wCADMxmxZIGrClhUqq_dHirOiPZ9q1cPqkBHekbFw/s400/m+-+rules.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707842082393746" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: What a ripp-off! They say if you connect these dots, you get a picture. But look! I did it and it’s just a big mess! 2) H: I think you’re supposed to connect them in the order that they’re numbered. 3) C: Oh. 4) C: Everything’s gotta have rules, rules, rules!] </span><br /></div><br />But meanwhile, it’s not as if we didn’t have enough to worry about, without attempting to live according to rules and regulations concocted by clerical con artists and without worrying about the existence of silly, clerically-concocted contracts with their fictitious gods:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv7X5M85qpH7wGdWCnXWJfya35-qQJc2QXe9qNq8iuWqNqeeKJWBrf67vgshhKAIExRuEqQDAVufS4lcReubHIyNiUBo6z6mNTeQIRMz0I1jpw0RLT3mbh3jt49svdRHpwnoS9V0Mg98/s1600-h/n-+trick+or+treat.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv7X5M85qpH7wGdWCnXWJfya35-qQJc2QXe9qNq8iuWqNqeeKJWBrf67vgshhKAIExRuEqQDAVufS4lcReubHIyNiUBo6z6mNTeQIRMz0I1jpw0RLT3mbh3jt49svdRHpwnoS9V0Mg98/s400/n-+trick+or+treat.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315707842628307042" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:78%;">[1) C: Trick or treat! Homeowner: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be? 2) C: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak! 3) C: Am I scary or what?] </span><br /></div><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974969370846574917.post-72768254587479817742009-03-09T04:19:00.000-07:002009-03-20T04:30:24.241-07:00The Law Lie - 3 - Customs<div><br /></div>In the previous two posts in this series I tried to show some history of two parts of what I call “the Law Lie” (itself a part of what I call “the God Lie”), namely, 1) <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that morality is defined by the gods</span> and 2) <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that justice is the jurisdiction of the gods.</span> In this post I want to show a little history of a third part of the Law Lie: 3)<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">the lie that customs were created by the gods.</span></span> We can be extremely confident that the above (and the many other parts of the God Lie) aren’t valid descriptions of reality, simply because (as I’ve argued <a href="http://zenofzero.net/Part_3x.html">elsewhere</a>) the firmest knowledge that we have – even firmer than the knowledge that we exist! – is that no god exists or has ever existed.<br /><br />I admit, however, that there’s only circumstantial evidence that such “untruths” are also lies (rather than mistakes). This “circumstantial evidence” includes the existence of a huge number of clerical parasites who profit from promoting such silliness, even though ample evidence is readily available to demonstrate that the concepts are wrong. Nonetheless, most clerics may be fools rather than liars; that is, the liars may be only those few clerics who aren’t fools.<br /><br />In any event, it’s easy to imagine how primitive people reached the mistaken conclusion that, for example, customs were created by the gods. Having convinced themselves that the gods were “the cause” of everything unknown (from the cause of the wind to the reason for the lights in the sky), then upon finding their societies in possession of a host of cultural peculiarities (from sharing food with others to prohibitions against eating certain foods, and from the existence of the concept of marriage to prohibitions against specific sexual activities), it was then logical to deduce (based on the faulty premiss that gods exist) that the gods created their society’s customs.<br /><br />Now, to investigate the real origins of all customs of any particular society would be an absolutely humongous task; therefore, I plan to severely restrict this post. My goal is to provide some evidence for the origins of only a few of the customs that the authors and “redactors” of the Old Testament (OT) claimed were given to them by their god. The few customs on which I plan to focus are, however, arguably the most important, namely, the customs revealed in “the wisdom literature” of the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span>.<br /><br />By restricting the scope of this post to customs depicted in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span> I’m not suggesting my disinterest in origins of other facets of Ancient Hebrew culture. <a href="http://zenofzero.net/">Elsewhere</a>, I’ve already commented (at least a little) on their male chauvinism, which (by the way) is still practiced by most <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/X23_EXpanding_Women's_Liberation.pdf">Muslims</a> and which seems to have been derived as a part of the cultural <a href="http://zenofzero.net/docs/Ix09ChangingGods.pdf">transition</a> from rural to urban life, with associated shift in emphasis from fertility (and female fertility goddesses) to trade and intercity warfare (and associated male gods). Also, in a later post, I plan at least to glance at how the Hebrews apparently combined Egyptian, Persian, and Greek ideas about the gods to (erroneously) conclude that there was only a single god.<br /><br />Readers interested in other peculiarities of Hebrew culture, such as their aversion to pork and their brutal practice of male circumcision, might want to start by reading <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The History</span></a> by Herodotus (who reports in Paragraphs 2.36, 2.37, and 2.47 that both customs were earlier practiced in Ancient Egypt) and then explore further on the internet to find, for example, that the first historical <a href="http://www.noharmm.org/money.htm">record</a> of male circumcision is associated with the Egyptian physician Ankhmahor (c. 2300 BCE). Originally, the practice of male circumcision seems to have been a part of any boy’s “coming of age” <a href="http://www.male-initiation.net/anthropology/bryk/bryk_eng3.html">initiation rite</a>, starting in Africa tens of thousands of years ago and spreading worldwide with the aborigines of Australia and South America.<br /><br />In defense of my plan to focus on Hebrew customs revealed in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span>, I would not only point to the need to restrict the length of the post but also claim that a substantial portion of the customs of any culture is revealed by its “wisdom literature.” For what follows, my plan is first to display the wisdom literature of earlier, Sumerian and Egyptian cultures, then display some of the Hebrew wisdom literature as given in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span>, and then, finally, ask the reader to consider clerical claims that the wisdom of the Hebrews was derived not from the people’s experiences but from the first symmetry-breaking fluctuation in the total void that led to the Big Bang (i.e., from “God”).<br /><br />The first clear record of existing customs appeared when writing was invented, about 5,000 years ago in Sumer, in what’s now called southern Iraq (“Sumer” means “from the south”). Examples of Sumerian customs are contained in their many proverbs available at the <a href="http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/">Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature</a>. In that source, I found particularly informative the following proverbs, which I’ve grouped under the indicated headings. Question marks (?) indicate translation uncertainties and (. . .) indicates missing text. Although it’s unknown when these proverbs were developed, they’re obviously from a time period at least twice as long ago as the time period when the OT was put together.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">General Sumerian Customs</span><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A good word is a friend to numerous men.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">You speak to me – and I will speak to you!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">He who insults is insulted. He who sneers is sneered at.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Putting unwashed hands to one’s mouth is disgusting.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">One city does not greet another, but one person greets another person.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A hand will stretch out towards an outstretched hand. A hand will open for an opened hand.</span><br /></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sumerian Family Life</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“I’m going home” is what he prefers.<br /><br />Marry a wife according to your choice. Have children to your heart’s content.<br /><br />He who does not support a wife, he who does not support a child, has no cause for celebration.<br /><br />Children and wives and trading agents! How they use up silver! And how they use up barley!<br /><br />To be sick is acceptable; to be pregnant is painful; but to be pregnant and sick is just too much.<br /><br />Hand added to hand, and a man’s house is built up. Stomach (?) added to stomach (?), and a man’s house is destroyed.<br /><br />A malicious wife living in a house is the worst of all afflictions.<br /><br />When I married a malicious husband, when I bore a malicious son, an unhappy heart was assigned to me.<br /><br />I will feed you even though you are an outcast (?). I will give you drink even though you are an outcast (?). You are still my son, even if your god has turned against you.<br /><br />A brewing (?) trough not previously tried is put to the test by means of salt. A mixing jar (?) not previously tried is put to the test by means of water. A son-in-law whose behavior (?) is unknown is put to the test by means of quarrels.<br /><br />A man’s waterskin is his life. A man’s sandals are his eyes. A man’s wife is his supervisor (?). A man’s son is his protective shade. A man’s daughter is his eager servant (?). A man’s daughter-in-law is his policeman.<br /><br />The joy of a daughter-in-law is anger.<br /><br />As for the fiancé, what has he brought? And as for the father-in-law, what has he sorted out?<br /><br />For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced.<br /><br />The married man, having divorced his wife, examined her: “At least I am taking away my dignity!”<br /><br />An unfaithful penis matches (?) an unfaithful vagina.<br /><br />No one walks together with him or directs their steps towards him. Life {passes him by like water} {(<span style="font-style: italic;">1 ms. has instead:</span>) eludes him just as he avoids others}. He is dear to no just man, {plague prevails over him} {(<span style="font-style: italic;">1 ms. has instead:</span>) life is not given to him}. Like a worthless penny, {......; no one ......} {(<span style="font-style: italic;">1 ms. has instead:</span>) he is thrown away; no one cares about him}. He is clothed with a garment as if a heavy punishment were assigned to him. {Who is he? His name? A man sleeping with someone’s wife.} {(<span style="font-style: italic;">1 ms. has instead:</span>) Who is he? He is a man who slept with someone’s wife.}</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sumerian Work & Professional Life</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">While you still have light, grind the flour.<br /><br />The warrior is unique; he alone is the equal of many.<br /><br />The axe belongs to the carpenter, the stone belongs to the smith, the good ...... belongs to the brewer.<br /><br />He who has silver is happy. He who has grain feels comfortable. But he who has livestock cannot sleep.<br /><br />He who has silver, he who has lapis lazuli, he who has oxen, and he who has sheep wait at the gate of the man who has barley.<br /><br />He who shaves his head gets more hair. And he who gathers the barley gains more and more grain.<br /><br />It is on account of being the boss that you bully me.<br /><br />If the foreman does not know how to assign the work, his workers will not stop shaking their heads.<br /><br />How will a scribe who does not know Sumerian produce a translation?<br /><br />The idleness of a low-life causes losses; his shying away (?) from work is perpetual.<br /><br />Although you poured out water from a river of mighty waters, it did not cool my temper. It did not put an end (?) to the sorcery affecting me.<br /><br />When battle approaches, when war arises, the plans of the gods, beloved by the gods, are destroyed. You cause fire to devour the Land. May my god know that my hand is suited to the stylus.<br /><br />A disgraced scribe becomes an incantation priest. A disgraced singer becomes a flute-player. A disgraced lamentation priest becomes a piper. A disgraced merchant becomes a con-man. A disgraced carpenter becomes a man of the spindle. A disgraced smith becomes a man of the sickle. A disgraced mason becomes a hod-carrier.<br /><br />“You should serve me” is typical of purification priests. Bowing over your hips is typical of leather-workers. To be stationed in all corners is typical of lukur women <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">[“sacred prostitutes”]</span>. “I will be there with you” is typical of gardeners. “I swear by Enki that your garments will take no time in this establishment” is typical of fullers.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">General Sumerian Wisdom</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The fool is garrulous.<br /><br />Flies enter an open mouth.<br /><br />He turns things upside down.<br /><br />Your role in life is unknown.<br /><br />Not to know beer is not normal.<br /><br />The time passed, and what did you gain?<br /><br />The stupidest of all shameless men.<br /><br />In the city with no dogs, the fox is boss.<br /><br />In the city of the lame, the cripple is a courier.<br /><br />The mighty man is master of the earth.<br /><br />A palace will fall of its own accord.<br /><br />Strength cannot keep pace with intelligence.<br /><br />Who could compete with righteousness?<br /><br />Good is in the hands. Evil is also in the hands.<br /><br />A millstone will float in the river for a righteous man.<br /><br />When righteousness is cut off, injustice is increased.<br /><br />The expenses (?) of those who neglect justice are numerous.<br /><br />Let just men be born in good health, and let their lives last long.<br /><br />The just man’s life lasts long. Life is the gift awarded for it.<br /><br />What comes out of one’s mouth is not in one’s hand.<br /><br />Tell a lie and then tell the truth: it will be considered a lie.<br /><br />As long as you live you should not increase evil by telling lies; for if you do, to succumb will be your lot.<br /><br />Talking endlessly is what humankind has most on its mind.<br /><br />Whatever the man in authority said, it was not pleasant.<br /><br />The poor man inflicts all kinds of illnesses on the rich man.<br /><br />That which the thief has taken was made by an honest man.<br /><br />The beloved true commander distributes the leadership (?).<br /><br />Let great men stir up the conflict for lesser men to fight out.<br /><br />Is my ox to provide milk for you?<br /><br />Moving about defeats poverty.<br /><br />A stranger is leader in a foreign city.<br /><br />Like an ox, you do not know how to turn back.<br /><br />He who keeps fleeing, flees from his own past.<br /><br />Because he always went, because he always ran, “He carried away. He carried away!” is the name assigned to him. A fool.<br /><br />A fettered dog is quarrelsome.<br /><br />When a dog snarls, throw a morsel into his mouth.<br /><br />Don’t start a fight with a dog. Will that dog not bite you?<br /><br />“Like the wild bull, you only do what pleases you.”<br /><br />He who says “I will live for today” is bound like a bull on a nose-rope.<br /><br />A fox urinated into the Tigris. “I am causing the spring flood to rise,” he said.<br /><br />Brotherhood is founded on the words of a quarrel. At the witness box, friendship becomes known.<br /><br />Although I spoke, what did I gain? Although I spoke, what did it add? I covered up for myself, but what success did it bring me?<br /><br />What is in mankind’s mouth is as difficult to hide as a wall. The boy who grew up in your town ...... on you – don’t let your mouth accuse him; don’t slander him; don’t encourage violent retaliation against yourself.<br /><br />One should pay attention to an old man’s words and one should reap the benefits.<br /><br />By following craftiness, one learns how to be crafty. By following wisdom, one learns how to be wise.<br /><br />A child should behave with modesty toward his mother. He should take the older generation into consideration.<br /><br />A younger brother should honor an older brother. He should treat him with human dignity.<br /><br />Should not intelligence, wisdom and understanding become perfect ...... to the mouth ...... mankind.<br /><br />Let the favor be repaid to him who repays a favor.<br /><br />He who can say “Let him hurry, let him run, let him be strong, and he will carry it!” is a lucky man.<br /><br />When present, it was considered a loincloth; when lost, it is considered fine clothing.<br /><br />To eat modestly doesn’t kill a man, but to covet will murder you. To eat a little is to live splendidly. When you walk about, keep your feet on the ground!<br /><br />The ditches of the garden should not flow with water, or there will be vermin.<br /><br />Don’t cause the oven in a man’s house to smoke. The smoke will ruin (?) the bread.<br /><br />Because of his arrogance, may his head be bowed to his neck like a damp reed.<br /><br />He who possesses many things is constantly on his guard.<br /><br />A wealthy man had accumulated a fortune. “I am spending it for him.” That said, it was dispersed. Afterwards he could not work out what went wrong. Things change. No one knows what will happen.<br /><br />My fingernail that hurts is clutched in my embrace. My foot that hurts is in my sandal. But who will find my aching heart?<br /><br />Let me tell you about my fate: it is a disgrace. Let me tell you of my condition: it makes a man’s mouth taste bitter.<br /><br />A child without sin was never born by his mother. The idea was never conceived that there was anyone who was not a sinner. Such a situation never existed.<br /><br />Although the number of unhappy days is endless (?), yet life is better than death.<br /><br />Pleasure is created. Sins are absolved. Life is rejuvenated.</blockquote>Notice that none of the above Sumerian proverbs emphasized the gods; in contrast, those listed below emphasize the gods indicated by the headings. For further information on the Sumerian gods see <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">General God</span>s<br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… the gods are three. So it is said, so let it be.<br /><br />A man without a god – for a strong man it is no loss.<br /><br />To appreciate the earth is for the gods; I am merely covered in dust.<br /><br />What has been destroyed belongs to a god. No one is able to take it away.<br /><br />To be wealthy and demand more is an abomination to a god.<br /><br />Accept your lot and make your mother happy! Run fast and make your god happy!<br /><br />Should someone clever not act cleverly, then I ......; man’s intelligence comes from god.<br /><br />Thanks to the word of his personal god, the fate of the man who speaks just words is favorable, and he is with him throughout the day.<br /><br />A man without a personal god does not procure much food, does not procure even a little food. Going down to the river, he does not catch any fish. Going down to a field, he does not catch any gazelle. In important matters he is unsuccessful. When running, he does not reach his goal. Yet were his god favorable toward him, anything he might name would be provided for him.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">The god Utu (Shamash in Akkadian), the Sun god and god of justice</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">If wickedness exerts itself, how will Utu succeed?<br /><br />Whenever wickedness may cause trouble, Utu will not be idle!<br /><br />Uncleared debts ...... are something which makes debts to Utu.<br /><br />When a trustworthy boat is sailing, Utu seeks out a trustworthy harbor for it.<br /><br />Adding an inheritance share to an inheritance share is an abomination to Utu.<br /><br />The palace is an ox; you should catch it by the tail. Utu is lord; you should fix your gaze on him.<br /><br />He who despises a just decision, who loves wicked decisions, is an abomination to Utu.<br /><br />Utu, the lord who loves justice, extirpates wickedness and prolongs righteousness.<br /><br />Utu’s glance is prayerful. Utu’s heart is compassionate. A devotee of Utu is among the holy. Allotted by Utu to be fortunate, a ...... ship reaches the quay.<br /><br />When a man comes forward as a witness, saying: “Let me tell you what I know,” but does not know the relevant information, it is an abomination to Utu.<br /><br />A judge who despises justice, cursing with the right hand, and the chasing away of a younger son from the house of his father are abominations to Utu.<br /><br />Oh Utu, you are my judge: pronounce my judgment! You are my decision-maker, decide my case! The dream that I have seen – turn it into a favorable one!<br /><br />To spit without covering it up with dust and to use the tongue at midday without protection are abominations to Utu.<br /><br />To serve beer with unwashed hands, to spit without trampling upon it, to sneeze without covering it with dust, to kiss with the tongue at midday without providing shade are abominations to Utu.<br /><br />The wolf wept before Utu: “The animals frisk around together, but I am all alone.”<br /><br />Imagine a wolf is eating. Utu looks down on it and says: “Provided you praise me you will grow fat” would be the reply.<br /><br />While the wolf sat stuck in a trap, he said to Utu: “When I come out, let me henceforth eat no more sheep. When I am hungry, the sheep I’ve taken, whatever you mention – what will they mean to me? I shall be bound by a righteous oath. – Now, what can I eat?”</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Enlil, the god of the Earth, wind, and storms (one of the three great gods, the others two being the sky god Anu and the water god Enki or Ea)</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The fox lies (?) even to Enlil.<br /><br />Enlil’s greatest punishment is hunger.<br /><br />… you shouldn’t give a lame man a staff. Enlil is his helper.<br /><br />Don’t give the halt man a club for his arm. Enlil shall be the one to help him!<br /><br />A fox demanded of Enlil the horns of a wild bull. While it was wearing the wild bull’s horns, it started to rain. But the horns rose high above him, so he could not enter his burrow. Until midnight the wind kept blowing, and the clouds brought rain. Afterwards, when it had stopped raining on him, and he had dried off, he said: “I shall return this feature to its rightful owner!”</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Suen, the Moon god and god of wisdom (called Nanna or Sin in Akkadian)</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">… if the hand touches a woman’s genitals over her clothes – it is an abomination to Suen.<br /><br />When a man sailing downstream encounters a man whose boat is traveling upstream, an inspection is an abomination to Suen.<br /><br />When a man comes forward as a witness, saying: “Let me tell you what I know about him”, but does not know the relevant information, it is an abomination to Suen.<br /><br />The north wind is a satisfying wind; the south wind is harmful (?) to man. The east wind is a rain-bearing wind; the west wind is greater than those who live there. The east wind is a wind of prosperity, the friend of Naram-Suen.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inana (Akkadian, Ishtar), goddess of fertility, represented by Venus</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">May Inana pour oil on my heart that aches.<br /><br />For him who is rejected by Inana, his dream is to forget.<br /><br />Carrying bread to the oven whilst singing is an abomination to Inana.<br /><br />May Inana make a hot-limbed wife lie with you! May she bestow upon you broad-shouldered sons! May she find for you a place of happiness!</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ninurta, healing god and god of the South Wind</span><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">To take revenge is the prerogative of Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">To take revenge is an abomination to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Refusing to talk is an abomination to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">To remove something from its proper place is an abomination to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">They treated an immigrant badly. [1 line fragmentary] It is an abomination to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Coveting and {reaching out for things} {(</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">1 ms. has instead:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">) spying} are abominations to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The chasing away of a younger son from the house of his father is an abomination to Ninurta.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A judge who despises justice, cursing with the right hand, and the chasing away of a younger son from the house of his father are abominations to Ninurta.</span><br /></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other Gods</span><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I part the waters (?) like Nirah</span> [a snake deity]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">You should not say to Ninjizzida</span> [god of nature]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">: “Let me live!”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">When the authorities are wise, and the poor are loyal, it is the effect of the blessing of Aratta </span>[the land]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">He who slanders… for the liar – Ninegala</span> [Ningal (?), the Moon goddess?] <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">will crush his head…</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">A plant as sweet as a husband, a plant as sweet as a mother; may Ezina-Kusu (the grain goddess) dwell in your home.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The god of the river ordeal will admire the hearts of those who bear words of truth.</span></blockquote>Similar sayings were undoubtedly available in Ancient Egypt (and other regions), but most Egyptian writings were recorded on papyrus, which (of course) was much more perishable than clay tablets. Some Egyptian sayings were also carved in stone (e.g., on tombs and in pyramids), but of course, such carvings emphasized the “afterlife” of the dead person. Some of the tomb inscriptions, however, provide at least a glimpse of early Egyptian customs – at least, those customs followed (or claimed to be followed!) by the aristocrats buried in the tombs. An <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft_djvu.txt">example</a> of a tomb inscription that does convey some ideas about Ancient Egyptian culture is the following.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inscriptions of Harkhuf, The Explorer (~2525 BCE)</span></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I came today from my city, I descended from my nome, I built a house, I set up the doors. I dug a lake, and I planted trees. The King praised me. My father made a will for me, for I was excellent . . . one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, whom all his brothers loved. I gave bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, I ferried him who had no boat.<br /><br />I was one saying good things and repeating what was loved. Never did I say aught evil, to a powerful one against any people, for I desired that it might be well with me in the great god’s presence. Never did I judge two brothers in such a way that a son was deprived of his paternal possession.</blockquote>A much more significant indication of Ancient Egyptian culture is available on “the world’s most precious and oldest papyrus known”, namely, the Prisse Papyrus (named after the Frenchmen who purchased it). It contains <span style="font-style: italic;">The Precepts</span> [or <span style="font-style: italic;">The Maxims of Good Discourse] of Ptah-Hotep.</span><br /><br />Actually, the identity of the author isn’t known. There was a vizier under King Isesi called Ptah-Hotep (or Ptahhotep, which seems to mean Ptah is “at peace” or “is satisfied”, where Ptah was claimed by the clerics of Memphis to be the creator god). If this Ptah-Hotep was the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Precepts</span>, then they are from 2450–2300 BCE. On the other hand, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Precepts</span> may be a “<a href="http://www.sofiatopia.org/maat/ptahhotep.htm#intro">literary construct</a>”, as apparently were other Instructions of fathers to their sons; if so, then <span style="font-style: italic;">The Precepts</span> may be from ~2300–2150 BCE and by an unknown author. In any case, the author probably relied on available Egyptian proverbs, possibly including those from the time of the first recognized genius in history, the “first engineer, architect, and physician”, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep">Imhotep</a>, c. 2600 BCE.<br /><br />The full text of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Precepts</span> is available at many places on the web, including <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft/sacredbooksearly02hornuoft_djvu.txt">here</a>, <a href="http://www.sofiatopia.org/maat/ptahhotep_maxims.htm">here</a>, and at <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook.html">The Internet Ancient History Source Book</a>. What follows is an abbreviated form of the text copied from <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/ptahhotep.html">here</a>. I’ve taken the liberty to italicize portions of the text that I found to be particularly perceptive.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Precepts of the Prefect, the lord Ptah-hotep, under the Majesty of the King of the South and North, Assa, living eternally forever.</span><br /><br />Beginning of the arrangement of the good sayings, spoken by the noble lord, the divine father, beloved of Ptah, the son of the king, the first-born of his race, the prefect and feudal lord Ptah-hotep, so as to instruct the ignorant in the knowledge of the arguments of the good sayings. It is profitable for him who hears them; it is a loss to him who shall transgress them. He says to his son:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Be not arrogant because of that which you know;</span> deal with the ignorant as with the learned; for the barriers of art are not closed, no artist being in possession of the perfection to which he should aspire. <span style="font-style: italic;"> But good words are more difficult to find than the emerald, for it is by slaves that that is discovered among the rocks of pegmatite…</span><br /><br />If you find a disputant while he is hot, do not despise him because you are not of the same opinion. <span style="font-style: italic;"> Be not angry against him when he is wrong; away with such a thing.</span> He fights against himself; require him not further to flatter your feelings. Do not amuse yourself with the spectacle which you have before you; it is odious, it is mean, it is the part of a despicable soul so to do. As soon as you let yourself be moved by your feelings, combat this desire as a thing that is reproved by the great…<br /><br />If you have, as leader, to decide on the conduct of a great number of men, seek the most perfect manner of doing so that your own conduct may be without reproach. <span style="font-style: italic;">Justice is great, invariable, and assured; it has not been disturbed since the age of Ptah. To throw obstacles in the way of the laws is to open the way before violence…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Inspire not men with fear, </span>else Ptah will fight against you in the same manner. If any one asserts that he lives by such means, Ptah will take away the bread from his mouth; if any one asserts that he enriches himself thereby, Ptah says: I may take those riches to myself. If any one asserts that he beats others, Ptah will end by reducing him to impotence. <span style="font-style: italic;">Let no one inspire men with fear;</span> this is the will of Ptah. Let one provide sustenance for them in the lap of peace; it will then be that they will freely give what has been torn from them by terror…<br /><br />If you are a farmer, gather the crops in the field which the great Ptah has given you, <span style="font-style: italic;">do not boast in the house of your neighbors;</span> it is better to make oneself dreaded by one’s deeds. As for him who, master of his own way of acting, being all-powerful, seizes the goods of others like a crocodile in the midst even of watchment, his children are an object of malediction, of scorn, and of hatred on account of it, while his father is grievously distressed, and as for the mother who has borne him, happy is another rather than herself. But a man becomes a god when he is chief of a tribe which has confidence in following him…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Be active during the time of your existence;</span> do no more than is commanded. Do not spoil the time of your activity; he is a blameworthy person who makes a bad use of his moments. Do not lose the daily opportunity of increasing that which your house possesses. Activity produces riches, and riches do not endure when it slackens…<br /><br />He is a god who penetrates into a place where no relaxation of the rules is made for the privileged…<br /><br />If you are a leader, setting forward your plans according to that which you decide, perform perfect actions which posterity may remember, without letting the words prevail with you which multiply flattery, which excite pride and produce vanity.<br /><br />If you are a leader of peace, listen to the discourse of the petitioner. Be not abrupt with him; that would trouble him. Say not to him: “You have already recounted this.” Indulgence will encourage him to accomplish the object of his coming. As for being abrupt with the complainant because he described what passed when the injury was done, instead of complaining of the injury itself let it not be! <span style="font-style: italic;">The way to obtain a clear explanation is to listen with kindness.</span><br /><br />If you desire to excite respect within the house you enter, for example the house of a superior, a friend, or any person of consideration, in short everywhere where you enter, keep yourself from making advances to a woman, for there is nothing good in so doing…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If you desire that your conduct should be good and preserved from all evil, keep yourself from every attack of bad humor. </span> It is a fatal malady which leads to discord, and there is no longer any existence for him who gives way to it. For it introduces discord between fathers and mothers, as well as between brothers and sisters; it causes the wife and the husband to hate each other; it contains all kinds of wickedness, it embodies all kinds of wrong. When a man has established his just equilibrium and walks in this path, there where he makes his dwelling, there is no room for bad humor.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Be not of an irritable temper as regards that which happens at your side; grumble not over your own affairs.</span> Be not of an irritable temper in regard to your neighbors; better is a compliment to that which displeases than rudeness. It is wrong to get into a passion with one’s neighbors, to be no longer master of one’s words. When there is only a little irritation, one creates for oneself an affliction for the time when one will again be cool.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If you are wise, look after your house; love your wife without alloy.</span> Fill her stomach, clothe her back; these are the cares to be bestowed on her person. Caress her, fulfill her desires during the time of her existence; it is a kindness which does honor to its possessor. Be not brutal; tact will influence her better than violence; her . . . behold to what she aspires, at what she aims, what she regards. It is that which fixes her in your house; if you repel her, it is an abyss. Open your arms for her, respond to her arms; call her, display to her your love.<br /><br />Treat your dependents well, in so far as it belongs to you to do so; and it belongs to those whom Ptah has favored…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Do not repeat any extravagance of language; do not listen to it; it is a thing which has escaped from a hasty mouth.</span> If it is repeated, look, without hearing it, toward the earth; say nothing in regard to it. Cause him who speaks to you to know what is just, even him who provokes to injustice; cause that which is just to be done, cause it to triumph. As for that which is hateful according to the law, condemn it by unveiling it.<br /><br />If you are a wise man, sitting in the council of your lord, direct your thought toward that which is wise. Be silent rather than scatter your words…<br /><br />If you are powerful, respect knowledge and calmness of language. Command only to direct; <span style="font-style: italic;">to be absolute is to run into evil.</span> Let not your heart be haughty, neither let it be mean. Do not let your orders remain unsaid and cause your answers to penetrate; but speak without heat, assume a serious countenance. As for the vivacity of an ardent heart, temper it; the gentle man penetrates all obstacles. He who agitates himself all the day long has not a good moment; and he who amuses himself all the day long keeps not his fortune…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Disturb not a great man; weaken not the attention of him who is occupied.</span> His care is to embrace his task, and he strips his person through the love which he puts into it. That transports men to Ptah, even the love for the work which they accomplish. Compose then your face even in trouble, that peace may be with you, when agitation is with . . .These are the people who succeed in what they desire.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Let your love pass into the heart of those who love you;</span> cause those about you to be loving and obedient…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If you are annoyed at a thing, if you are tormented by someone who is acting within his right, get out of his sight, and remember him no more when he has ceased to address you.</span><br /><br />If you have become great after having been little, if you have become rich after having been poor, when you are at the head of the city, know how not to take advantage of the fact that you have reached the first rank, harden not your heart because of your elevation; you are become only the administrator, the prefect, of the provisions which belong to Ptah. <span style="font-style: italic;">Put not behind you the neighbor who is like you; be unto him as a companion…</span><br /><br />Do not plunder the house of your neighbors; seize not by force the goods which are beside you…<br /><br />If you aim at polished manners, call not him whom you accost. Converse with him especially in such a way as not to annoy him. Enter on a discussion with him only after having left him time to saturate his mind with the subject of the conversation. <span style="font-style: italic;">If he lets his ignorance display itself, and if he gives you all opportunity to disgrace him, treat him with courtesy rather; proceed not to drive him into a corner; </span>do not . . . the word to him; answer not in a crushing manner; crush him not; worry him not; in order that in his turn he may not return to the subject, but depart to the profit of your conversation.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Let your countenance be cheerful during the time of your existence…</span><br /><br />Know those who are faithful to you when you are in low estate…<br /><br />If you take a wife, do not . . . Let her be more contented than any of her fellow-citizens. She will be attached to you doubly, if her chain is pleasant. Do not repel her; grant that which pleases her; it is to her contentment that she appreciates your work…<br /><br />When a son receives the instruction of his father there is no error in all his plans. Train your son to be a teachable man whose wisdom is agreeable to the great. Let him direct his mouth according to that which has been said to him; in the docility of a son is discovered his wisdom. His conduct is perfect while error carries away the unteachable. Tomorrow knowledge will support him, while the ignorant will be destroyed.<br /><br />As for the man without experience who listens not, he effects nothing whatsoever. He sees knowledge in ignorance, profit in loss; he commits all kinds of error, always accordingly choosing the contrary of what is praiseworthy. He lives on that which is mortal, in this fashion. His food is evil words, whereat he is filled with astonishment. That which the great know to be mortal he lives upon every day, flying from that which would be profitable to him, because of the multitude of errors which present themselves before him every day.<br /><br />A son who attends is like a follower of Horus; he is happy after having attended. He becomes great, he arrives at dignity, he gives the same lesson to his children…<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Let your thoughts be abundant, but let your mouth be under restraint…</span></blockquote>Another important, surviving Egyptian papyrus contains <span style="font-style: italic;">The Instructions of Amenemope.</span> It was written in the eleventh century BCE, mostly in the standard “negative declarations” of the time. The text states that it was “Written by the superintendent of the land, experienced in his office; the offspring of a scribe of the Beloved Land, the superintendent of produce, who fixes the grain measure, who sets the grain tax amount for his lord… Amenemope, the son of Danakht… for his son… [who is also] the son of the… chief singer of Horus, the Lady Tawosret.” Some of the <a href="http://www.touregypt.net/instructionofamenemope.htm">text</a> follows; again I’ve added the italics to emphasize ideas that impressed me.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 1: </span>Give your years and hear what is said, give your mind over to their interpretation… If you spend a lifetime with these things in your heart, you will find it good fortune; you will discover my words to be a treasure house of life, and your body will flourish upon earth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 2:</span> Beware of stealing from a miserable man and of raging against the cripple… Don’t let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business, nor desire the carrying out of it… Something else of value in the heart of God is to <span style="font-style: italic;">stop and think before speaking.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 3: </span> Do not get into a quarrel with the argumentative man nor incite him with words; proceed cautiously before an opponent, and give way to an adversary; <span style="font-style: italic;">sleep on it before speaking,</span> for a storm come forth like fire in hay is the hot-headed man in his appointed time. May you be restrained before him; leave him to himself, and God will know how to answer him.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 4: </span> The truly temperate man sets himself apart…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 5:</span> Do not take by violence the shares of the temple, do not be grasping, and you will find overabundance…
Do not say today is the same as tomorrow, or how will matters come to pass? When tomorrow comes, today is past… Fill yourself with silence, you will find life, and your body shall flourish upon earth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 6:</span> Do not displace the surveyor’s marker on the boundaries of the arable land, nor alter the position of the measuring line; do not be greedy for a plot of land, nor overturn the boundaries of a widow… As for the road in the field worn down by time, he who takes it violently for fields, if he traps by deceptive attestations, will be lassoed by the might of the moon… Take care not to topple over the boundary marks of the arable land, not fearing that you will be brought to court; man propitiates God by the might of the Lord when he sets straight the boundaries of the arable land… Desire, then, to make yourself prosper, and take care for the Lord of all; do not trample on the furrow of someone else; their good order will be profitable for you… So plough the fields, and you will find whatever you need, and receive the bread from your own threshing floor: better is the bushel which God gives you than five thousand deceitfully gotten, they do not spend a day in the storehouse or warehouse, they are no use for dough for beer, their stay in the granary is short-lived, when morning comes they will be swept away. Better, then, is poverty in the hand of God than riches in the storehouse; better is bread when the mind is at ease than riches with anxiety.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 7:</span> Do not set your heart upon seeking riches, for there is no one who can ignore Destiny and Fortune. Do not set your thoughts on external matters:
for every man there is his appointed time… Do not exert yourself to seek out excess and your wealth will prosper for you; if riches come to you by theft, they will not spend the night with you; as soon as day breaks they will not be in your household… Do not be pleased with yourself (because of) riches acquired through robbery, neither complain about poverty…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 8:</span> Set your good deeds throughout the world that you may greet everyone… Keep your tongue safe from words of detraction, and you will be the loved one of the people… set a good report on your tongue, while the bad thing is covered up inside you.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 9:</span> Do not fraternize with the hot-tempered man, nor approach him to converse… take care of speaking thoughtlessly; <span style="font-style: italic;">when a man’s heart is upset, words travel faster than wind and rain.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 10:</span> Do not address your intemperate friend in your unrighteousness, nor destroy your own mind; do not say to him, “May you be praised,” not meaning it, when there is fear within you.
Do not converse falsely with a man, for it is the abomination of God. <span style="font-style: italic;">Do not separate your mind from your tongue;</span> all your plans will succeed. You will be important before others, while you will be secure in the hand of God. God hates one who falsified words, his great abomination is duplicity.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 11:</span> Do not covet the property of the dependent nor hunger for his bread…
<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 12:</span> Do not covet the property of an official, and do not fill (your) mouth with too much food extravagantly… Do not deal with the intemperate man, nor associate yourself to a disloyal party.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 13:</span> Do not lead a man astray <with> reed pen or papyrus document: it is the abomination of God. Do not witness a false statement… Better it is to be praised as one loved by men than wealth in the storehouse; better is bread when the mind is at ease than riches with troubles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 14:</span> Do not pay attention to a person, nor exert yourself to seek out his hand, if he says to you, “take a bribe”… another time he will be brought (to judgment).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 15:</span> Do well, and you will attain influence…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 16:</span> Do not unbalance the scale nor make the weights false, nor diminish the fractions of the grain measure… Do not get for yourself short weights… If you see someone cheating, at a distance you must pass him by. Do not be avaricious for copper, and abjure fine clothes. What good is one cloaked in fine linen woven as med, when he cheats before God?…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 17:</span> Beware of robbing the grain measure to falsify its fractions; do not act wrongfully through force…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 18:</span> Do not go to bed fearing tomorrow, for when day breaks what is tomorrow? <span style="font-style: italic;">Man knows not what tomorrow is! </span> God is success; Man is failure… Do not say, “I am without fault,” nor try to seek out trouble… Be strong in your heart, make your mind firm…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 19:</span> Do not enter the council chamber in the presence of a magistrate and then falsify your speech… Tell the truth before the magistrate, lest he gain power over your body…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 20:</span> Do not corrupt the people of the law court, nor put aside the just man; do not agree because of garments of white, nor accept one in rags. Take not the gift of the strong man, nor repress the weak for him. Justice is a wonderful gift of God, and He will render it to whomever he wishes… Do not falsify the oracles on a papyrus and (thereby) alter the designs of God. Do not arrogate to yourself the might of God as if Destiny and Fortune did not exist… Hand property over to its (rightful) owners, and seek out life for yourself…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 21:</span> Do not say, I have found a strong protector and now I can challenge a man in my town. Do not say, I have found an active intercessor, and now I can challenge him whom I hate. Indeed, you cannot know the plans of God; you cannot perceive tomorrow… Empty not your soul to everybody, and do not diminish thereby your importance; do not circulate your words to others, nor fraternize with one who is too candid. Better is a man whose knowledge is inside him than one who talks to disadvantage…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 22:</span> Do not castigate your companion in a dispute, and do not <let> him say his innermost thoughts… May you first comprehend his accusation and cool down your opponent…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 23:</span> Do not eat a meal in the presence of a magistrate, nor set to speaking first.
If you are satisfied with false words, enjoy yourself with your spittle. Look at the cup in front of you, and let it suffice your need…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 24:</span> Do not listen to the accusation of an official indoors, and then repeat it to another outside.
Do not allow your discussions to be brought outside, so that your heart will not be grieved…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 25:</span> Do not jeer at a blind man nor tease a dwarf, neither interfere with the condition of a cripple…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 26:</span> Do not stay in the tavern and join someone greater than you, whether he be high or low in his station, an old man or a youth; but <span style="font-style: italic;">take as a friend for yourself someone compatible…</span> When you see someone greater than you outside, and attendants following him, respect (him).
And give a hand to an old man filled with beer: respect him as his children would. The strong arm is not weakened when it is uncovered, the back is not broken when one bends it; better is the poor man who speaks sweet words than the rich man who speaks harshly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 27:</span> Do not reproach someone older than you, for he has seen the Sun before you; do not let yourself be reported to the Aten when he rises, with the words, “Another young man has reproached an elder”…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 28:</span> Do not expose a widow if you have caught her in the fields, nor fail to give way if she is accused.
Do not turn a stranger away <from> your oil jar that it may be made double for your family.
God loves him who cares for the poor, more than him who respects the wealthy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 29:</span> Do not turn people away from crossing the river when you have room in your ferryboat…<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 30:</span> Mark for your self these thirty chapters: they please, they instruct, they are the foremost of all books; they teach the ignorant.
If they are read to an ignorant man, he will be purified through them…</from></let></with></blockquote>Now, consider the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span>. Below, I’ve arranged a number of them in three groups, in an attempt to illustrate that: 1) Similar to the claims made one to two thousand years earlier by the Sumerians and Egyptians, the Jewish clerics claimed that their customs came from their god, 2) Some of the proverbs certainly contain wisdom (reflecting the best customs of the Jews), and 3) Some of the proverbs are quite unwise. I’ve copied these proverbs from the digitized NET version of the Bible and added a few notes in brackets (especially to explain my reasons for claiming that some of the proverbs are unwise).<br /><br />I. The claim in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span> that God is the source:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">2.6 For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">6:16 There are six things that the Lord hates, even seven things that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to run to evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who spreads discord among family members.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">8:22 The Lord created me</span> [Wisdom] <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">as the beginning of his works, before his deeds of long ago. From eternity I was appointed, from the beginning, from before the world existed.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">11:1 The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but an accurate weight is his delight.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">12:2 A good person obtains favor from the Lord, but the Lord condemns a person with wicked schemes.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">14:31 The one who oppresses the poor insults his Creator, but whoever shows favor to the needy honors him. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">15:9 The Lord abhors the way of the wicked, but he loves those who pursue righteousness.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">16:33 The dice are thrown into the lap, but their every decision is from the Lord.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">17:15 The one who acquits the guilty and the one who condemns the innocent – both of them are an abomination to the Lord.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">18:22 The one who finds a wife finds what is enjoyable, and receives a pleasurable gift from the Lord.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">19:14 A house and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">20:12 The ear that hears and the eye that sees – the Lord has made them both.</span><br /></blockquote>II. Some wise sayings in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">1:10 My child, if sinners try to entice you, do not consent!<br /><br />1:32 For the waywardness of the simpletons will kill them, and the careless ease of fools will destroy them.<br /><br />3:27 Do not withhold good from those who need it, when you have the ability to help. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go! Return tomorrow and I will give it,” when you have it with you at the time. Do not plot evil against your neighbor… Do not accuse anyone without legitimate cause, if he has not treated you wrongly. Do not envy a violent man, and do not choose to imitate any of his ways…<br /><br />3:13 Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who obtains understanding.<br /><br />4:24 Remove perverse speech from your mouth; keep devious talk far from your lips.<br /><br />9:7 Whoever corrects a mocker is asking for insult; whoever reproves a wicked person receives abuse. Do not reprove a mocker or he will hate you; reprove a wise person and he will love you.<br /><br />10:12 Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all transgressions.<br /><br />10:19 When words abound, transgression is inevitable, but the one who restrains his words is wise.<br /><br />11:2 When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.<br /><br />12:11 The one who works his field will have plenty of food, but whoever chases daydreams lacks wisdom.<br /><br />12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own opinion, but the one who listens to advice is wise.<br /><br />12:16 A fool’s annoyance is known at once, but the prudent overlooks an insult.<br /><br />13:11 Wealth gained quickly will dwindle away, but the one who gathers it little by little will become rich.<br /><br />13:20 The one who associates with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.<br /><br />14:15 A naive person believes everything, but the shrewd person discerns his steps.<br /><br />14:23 In all hard work there is profit, but merely talking about it only brings poverty.<br /><br />14:29 The one who is slow to anger has great understanding, but the one who has a quick temper exalts folly<br /><br />14:30 A tranquil spirit revives the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.<br /><br />15:1 A gentle response turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath<br /><br />15:23 A person has joy in giving an appropriate answer, and a word at the right time – how good it is!<br /><br />16:8 Better to have a little with righteousness than to have abundant income without justice.<br /><br />16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.<br /><br />17:1 Better is a dry crust of bread where there is quietness than a house full of feasting with strife.<br /><br />17:28 Even a fool who remains silent is considered wise, and the one who holds his tongue is deemed discerning.<br /><br />17:25 A foolish child is a grief to his father, and bitterness to the mother who bore him.<br /><br />18:2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in disclosing what is on his mind.<br /><br />18:9 The one who is slack in his work is a brother to one who destroys.<br /><br />19:2 It is dangerous to have zeal without knowledge, and the one who acts hastily makes poor choices.<br /><br />19:11 A person’s wisdom makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.<br /><br />20:1 Wine is a mocker and strong drink is a brawler; whoever goes astray by them is not wise.<br /><br />21:9 It is better to live on a corner of the housetop than in a house in company with a quarrelsome wife.<br /><br />21:19 It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and easily-provoked woman.</blockquote>III. Some unwise sayings in the OT’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span>:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">1:7 Fearing the Lord is the beginning of moral knowledge. </span> [No! Fear of death and desire to live are the beginning of moral knowledge! Recall from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Precepts of Ptah-hotep:</span> “Let no one inspire men with fear; this is the will of Ptah.”]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">2:1 My child, if you receive my words, and store up my commands within you… then you will understand how to fear the Lord, and you will discover knowledge about God.</span> [Instead of trying to understand how “to fear the Lord”, try to understand by applying the scientific method!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.</span> [It’s terrible to advise people not to rely on their own understanding (and to increase their understanding) and to “trust the Lord” rather than trust themselves!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">3:9 Honor the Lord from your wealth…</span> [a ploy by clerics to increase their revenue stream!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">3:19 By wisdom the Lord laid the foundation of the earth; he established the heavens by understanding. By his knowledge the primordial sea was broken open, and the clouds drip down dew. </span> [Riiiiight. And where did you say the data supporting that speculation were hidden?]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">9:10 The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord, and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding.</span> [Terrible, again!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">10.1 A wise child makes a father rejoice, but a foolish child is a grief to his mother. </span> [That’s just male chauvinism.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">10:4 The one who is lazy becomes poor, but the one who works diligently becomes wealthy.</span> [Would that it were so!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">13:24 The one who spares his rod hates his child… </span>[That’s horrible!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">15:20 A wise child brings joy to his father, but a foolish person despises his mother. </span> [More male chauvinism!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">16:12 Doing wickedness is an abomination to kings, because a throne is established in righteousness.</span> [Riiiight. It’s another part of the Law Lie.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">16:15 In the light of the king’s face there is life, and his favor is like the clouds of the spring rain. </span> [More of the same – an indication of “slave mentality”.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">16:31 Gray hair is like a crown of glory; it is attained in the path of righteousness.</span> [Would that it were so!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">17:8 A bribe works like a charm for the one who offers it; in whatever he does he succeeds.</span> [Maybe that’s a misprint!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">20:24 The steps of a person are ordained by the Lord – so how can anyone understand his own way?</span> [What stupidity!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">20:30 Beatings and wounds cleanse away evil, and floggings cleanse the innermost being.</span> [What evil!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">21:14 A gift given in secret subdues anger, and a bribe given secretly subdues strong wrath.</span> [So, it wasn’t a misprint – it’s corruption!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">21:31 A horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory is from the Lord.</span> [Another part of the God Lie.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">22:4 The reward for humility and fearing the Lord is riches and honor and life.</span> [Show me the data!]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">22:6 Train a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. </span> [Part is correct (the part about the persistence of childhood indoctrination), but the premiss should be investigated. Does the author know how to “train a child in the way that he should go”? As Schopenhauer suggested, probably the best procedure is to train children not to be “trained” (!) and, instead, to encourage them to learn by themselves via experience.]<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">22:15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.</span> [More hideousness!]</blockquote>And so on it goes (through <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs 31</span>), as readers can attest. If readers do so, I hope they’ll notice that the “Thirty Sayings” [<span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs 22</span>:17 – <span style="font-style: italic;">24</span>:22] are similar (and in some cases almost identical) to the Egyptian <span style="font-style: italic;">Instructions of Amenemope.</span> In addition, there are many repetitions through the rest of <span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs</span> (repetitions that become quite boring), although the final set (<span style="font-style: italic;">Proverbs 31</span>:10 – <span style="font-style: italic;">31</span>:31) is a refreshing change: they describe a “Wife of Noble Character”.<br /><br />Finally, I'd ask readers to compare the above illustrations from “the wisdom literature” of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, and Hebrews, and then, chose the one of the following two options that, in your opinion based on the evidence presented, seems most likely to have occurred:<br /><blockquote>1) That God (i.e., the first symmetry-breaking quantum fluctuation in the total void that led to the Big Bang) dropped in (about 14 billion years later) to provide advice to the authors of the Bible about Jewish cultural norms, or<br /><br />2) That after living in groups for tens of thousands of years, people slowly developed knowledge about how to live together productively, passed their wisdom along to their offspring, recorded their thoughts when writing finally became available, and unsure about the origin of their customs, mistakenly concluded that their customs must have been decreed by their gods.</blockquote>For readers who chose the first option, I hope that they’ll reread, especially, the quoted Sumerian proverbs – and I hope that all readers will join me in thanking the many scholars who worked so diligently and competently to decipher the ancient literature.<br /><br /><a href="http://zenofzero.net/">www.zenofzero.net</a><div><br /></div>A. Zoroasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07473665017762017780noreply@blogger.com0