Science vs. the Religious Right: Part Two

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

IN ADDITION

The Earth is the centre of the Universe (or firmament) and the Sun goes around the Earth and that religious point of view got lots of people who suggested otherwise into lots of trouble.

Scientists can’t determine the age of the Earth, nor can they determine what the origin of life was, for the extremely simple reason that they weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot and therefore actually present at the exact time and place of the happening.

Homosexuality/lesbianism is a free-will choice and has nothing to do with genetics or biochemistry or neurochemistry. You aren’t born gay any more than you’re born an astronomer or a criminal. Homosexuality is encouraged by the powers-that-be as a ways and means of population control. Satan also inspires and encourages homosexuality to cause the participants to be in direct disobedience and in defiance to God and God’s laws. Further, there are clear connections between homosexuality and paedophilia and bestiality, etc.

Fossils are a deliberate deception by Satan; or a deliberate deception by God in order to test your faith; or proof of that universal flood – take your pick.

Non-avian dinosaurs and human beings coexisted, religious fundamentalists citing fossil dinosaur and human footprints check-by-jowl embedded into rocks (in Texas). Dinosaurs were therefore on Noah’s Ark (which means Noah’s Ark had to have been just a tad larger than the Bible says it was).

There was no evolution by natural selection, just intelligent design and creationism by a Creator God. God created all species as is. Humans did not evolve from apes. Teaching and accepting evolution is apparently an evil Jewish plot according to some! Further, evolutionists support abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

There are no ‘natural’ disasters only acts of God (as in displays of God’s wrath). It’s been claimed by those Right Wing religious fundamentalist types that whenever God is pissed off, He sends His wrath via a ‘natural’ disaster. So, any tornado or hurricane or blizzard or earthquake or wildfire, etc. isn’t really ‘natural’, rather its an Act of God’s punishment. However, it’s rather amazing that tornados tend to happen in roughly the same areas at roughly the same time of year; ditto hurricanes; ditto blizzards; ditto wildfires; ditto floods. You don’t tend to get massive earthquakes other than in well known fault zones and thus earthquake prone areas. You don’t get volcanoes erupting in areas not known to be tectonically active. Now if ‘natural’ disasters were really Acts of God, you might expect God to produce the occasional blizzard in Southern California in July; or how about 40 straight days and nights of rain in Death Valley; New York City becoming ground zero for a massive earthquake or volcanic eruption; a tornado outbreak in Alaska in January; or wildfires in areas of high rainfall and high humidity. If ‘natural’ disasters are Acts of God, why doesn’t God have an asteroid striking Chicago or a comet spanking Las Vegas or for that matter institute a massive solar flare or coronal mass ejection to blanket the entire US of A?  Even more central, why does God have to hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts in the first damn place? Why doesn’t God take a leaf out of His earlier wrath-filled up-yours and smite the first born?

Environmentalism (i.e. – the Green Dragon) is out to destroy Christianity, destroy America and replace it with fascist tyranny! In fact, the ultimate objective of environmentalists is to kill off 95% of humanity! After all, didn’t God say to humanity to “be fruitful and multiply” and subdue the earth and take dominion over the earth (and basically rape and pillage – Genesis 1:28) which has any greenie spitting chips!

Stem cell research is equivalent to Nazism.

We’re well aware that some fundamentalists reject vaccinations and blood transfusions and will allow their child to die rather than allow any medical procedures that they see as ungodly and against Biblical teachings. 

Anything fundamentalists don’t like, like say birth control, will be linked to anything and everything nasty, like AIDS, and by extension, all disease is caused by sinful activities. In a similar fashion, if you accept any ungodly tenants, like evolution, you are way more prone to be antisocial and of criminal intent. Mass murderers are all Darwinists.

In a variation of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, one finds fundamentalist Christians supporting Islamic fundamentalists (otherwise strange bedfellows) since the latter do not accept and undermine Darwinian evolution.

Any normal museum that exhibits anything on physical or cultural anthropology that doesn’t reflect and give credit to the Almighty and God’s holy word is just asking for trouble.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

There’s more that you probably didn’t know.

According to Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:

* The laws of thermodynamics are detailed in the Bible although Fischer tends to muddy the waters by mixing up the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

* Jesus is the entity that holds together the nucleus of an atom. [What held the nucleus together before the birth of Christ isn’t related by Fischer, assuming there even ever was a supernatural Christ of course.]

* Only God can alter the climate. Humans have nothing to do with any global warming. Global warming is pure junk science. Further, God created fossil fuels for the benefit of mankind and so to refuse to use them (in favour of renewable sources like wind or solar energy) is an insult to God. Trying to prevent climate change is anti-Christian.

If you have a spare couple of weeks, tune into the Right Wing Watch (RWW) website, or his videos on YouTube for tons more Fischer idiocy.

Bryan Fischer isn’t the only rather fishy fundamentalist going.

Just touching a very few of the highlights (via the RRW) from the patriarch of the extreme religious fundamentalists, Pat Robertson, and so-called self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs, is more than enough to make any scientist turn in their lab coat and head for the hills. Again, you can few more of them (if you must) on YouTube – far better on an empty stomach however  

PAT ROBERTSON

“[Robertson’s] 700 Club: Climate change helps environment and civilization, SUV owners treated like witches.”

“Robertson: Expect natural disasters and divine wrath over Middle East peace talks.”

“Robertson: Environmentalists may cause the deaths of ‘a couple billion people’.”

“Robertson lashes out at ‘doctrinaire’ environmentalist ‘fanatics’.”

“Robertson dismisses ‘nutty,’ ‘true believer’ climate scientists.”

“Pat Robertson blames drought on Americans who ‘ignore the laws of God with impunity’.”

“Robertson: Scientists ‘can’t speculate about the origins of life’.”

“Pat Robertson says Satan is behind homosexuality and abortion rights.”

“Pat Robertson says people could have stopped deadly tornadoes through prayer.”

“Robertson calls Oklahoma earthquake a sign of the end times”

“Robertson suggests crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God.”

“Robertson: Asteroid will destroy the Earth.”

CINDY JACOBS

“Cindy Jacobs heals broken cheek bones and her own tumours.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ prayers can cure insanity.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ five-year-old daughter can stop tornadoes.”

“God miraculously made a pair of Cindy Jacobs’ shoes last for years.”

“Jacobs warns Obama’s ‘anti-Biblical’ policies have led to ‘floods and fires and more’.”

“Cindy Jacobs: I have the power to revive dead children.”

“How Cindy Jacobs reversed a hysterectomy.”

“[Jacobs]: We are seeing natural disasters ‘because sin has reached Biblical proportions.”

“Jacobs: The DC earthquake is a sign from God to share the gospel.”

“Jacobs: God is using earthquake to break Japan’s pagan idolatry.” 

“Jacobs: Birds are dying because of DADT [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repeal.”

“Jacobs and Pierce issue warning that CA [California] will be destroyed by earthquake if Prop 8 is struck down.”

“When Cindy Jacobs caused Washington DC to flood.”

On that note, I might just head for the hills myself!



Science vs. the Religious Right: Part One

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

There are those religious fundamentalists who claim that all you need to know about science is contained within the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. Not only is the Bible a religious text, an historical document, but it’s a science textbook too chock full of astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, medicine, etc. And should there ever be a disagreement between nerdy white-coated scientists in jeans and God Almighty’s holy word, well it’s a no-brainer; no contest – God always wins – in God we trust not nerdy Einstein-types. Any science that undermines your faith in God, etc. is a false science. Real science proves the bona-fides of the Bible.

The fact that such Right Wing Christian fundamentalists say this with a straight face and sincerely (apparently) believe this claptrap is actually a tad frightening. In any other context they appear to be intelligent, articulate, sane and rational beings! But then again, how many people have been taken aback to find out that their wonderful and lovely next door neighbour was a serial killer, kidnapper, paedophile, or a closet white supremacist pseudo-Nazi.     

Fundamentalists though in general, when pressed, admit they aren’t scientists, but that doesn’t stop them from bucketing any science that rubs their personal worldview the wrong way. One common argument is that science is fundamentally limited since it can only explain the natural, whereby supernatural philosophy (i.e. – Right Wing Christianity) explains all. The natural in their opinion or belief is just a minor subset of all things supernatural.

SCIENCE vs. RELIGION

There has been quite a number of various religious vs. scientific issues hotly debated over time.

The Earth is (religion) or is not (science) the centre of the Universe. Science won that issue.

The age of the Earth is less than 10,000 years old (religion); way, way, way more than 10,000 years old (science). Science won that debate too though diehard religious fundamentalists haven’t conceded any ground.

Most recently, starting with Charles Darwin in 1859 (“The Origin of Species”) down to the Scope’s (Monkey) Trial in 1925 and ongoing today is that Homo sapiens were made in God’s image (religion) vs. Homo sapiens were the product of natural (Darwinian) selection and evolution from primate ancestors (science). Creationism is pure science; evolution is junk or false science according to the religious right. The names that fundamentalists call evolutionists would make many a blue-water sailor blush!

It’s that most recent issue, evolution (science) vs. creationism/intelligent design (religion) that mainly dominates the debate today. You could make a journalistic career just following, covering and reporting on the ever ongoing battles between creationists, educational institutions and authorities, politicians, and scientists over whether science curricula and textbooks should be giving equal space to God and intelligent design vis-à-vis Darwinian evolution.

But intelligent design is absolute nonsense upon reflection. God, the so-called intelligent designer, places the female sex organ sandwiched right between the two waste elimination orifices. That’s intelligent? And the male sex organ does double duty sharing a common tube as a liquid waste elimination apparatus. That’s intelligent? Speaking of tubes, how often has the food/drink you inputted ended up doing down the wrong tube – the windpipe instead of the oesophageus? Painful, isn’t it? It’s also potentially lethal – people have choked to death. So, is that intelligent designing in operation? 

And if humans are God’s personal favourite intelligently designed creatures, why create other creatures and natural scenarios than render that intelligently designed human into a prematurely dead intelligently designed human? I mean if the Godly created bacteria and viruses don’t get you, the puffer-fish, scorpion and snake venom might instead, assuming the sharks, lions and tigers don’t have you for a midmorning snack first. And if life doesn’t end your life, there are tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning bolts, tsunamis, and a whole host of other meteorological, geological and even astronomical phenomena just waiting to put you six feet under. Conclusion: so much for a loving God looking after His favourite intelligently designed flock.

BIBLICAL ‘SCIENCE’

But let’s go back to the Biblical truth about all things scientific. We all know the standards:

The Bible is literally true; scientifically accurate. Science according to the Bible requires that:

* Life, the universe and everything was created in just six days somewhere roughly around 4004 BCE and any evidence to the contrary of an earth billions of years old (i.e. – radioactive dating; geochronology) is the work of that great deceiver, Satan.

* Adam was created from the dry dust of the earth despite that fact that a human is roughly 70% water.

* Eve was created from Adam’s rib which means Eve should have been, genetically speaking, a male.

* There was a universal flood which requires the creation (and later destruction) of an additional and massive inventory of water out of nothing in defiance of conservation laws.

* Noah’s Ark carried two (or sometimes more) individuals (male and female) of every (presumably bisexual) species. Okay, that’s fine, but that must include the New Zealand flightless kiwi bird; every species of Antarctic penguin; the Australian koala; and the dodo bird of Madagascar. Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

* Some Biblical characters lived in excess of 900 years, but such longevity hasn’t been observed in recent post-Biblical times so don’t get your expectations up, no matter how religious and God-fearing you happen to be.

* A bush refused to be consumed by fire, an obvious case of the application of high-tech fire retardant in use thousands of years ago.

* The Red Sea parted over a rather lengthy time period in order to allow hundreds of thousands of pedestrians to ‘cross with the green’ and then un-parted so that another set of pedestrians got run down by trying to cross against the sudden red traffic light. Such a phenomenon has never been witnessed since so a one-off report doesn’t have much credibility.

* The sun and moon stood still in the sky and thus for the duration the Earth ceased rotating on its axis.

* Unicorns exist (and no doubt so do Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy).

* Life actually begins before conception according to Jeremiah 1:5!

* Jonah lived undigested for three days in the belly of a large fish. Jonah must have had on hand an extraordinary supply of antacids in order to prevent being dissolved and turned into or assimilated as fish food.

* Mary reproduced asexually – the virgin birth – which means Jesus should have been born a woman, again, genetically speaking.

* Jesus walked on water in defiance of gravity. Newton and Einstein are not amused at this parlour trick!

* Loaves and (dead) fishes multiplied – the creation of something from nothing yet again.

* Presumably the lion will lie down with the lamb (and also presumably if the lion isn’t hungry).

* There were resurrections (life after death). That’s no big deal any longer in this modern age of medical ‘miracles’.

To be continued…



Televangelist Pat Robertson

It takes way more than you fingers and toes to tick off the number of radical right wing religious fanatics, those Christian fundamentalists and evangelists who seemingly are anti anything and everything even slightly left of their worldview. They don’t tend to preach the positives, but concentrate on the negatives like God’s wrath, Satanism, hellfire and brimstone, demons and the end times. One of the better established examples is long term televangelist Pat Robertson, and his worldview is pretty typical of the type.

Pat Robertson is one of those popular televangelists, in this case chief cook and bottle-washer on the “700 Club” part of the Christian Broadcasting Network with roughly one million viewers. Robertson has seemingly been a televangelist ever since TV became mainstream entertainment. He just keeps on keeping on, and on, and on!  Now even I have to admit that Pat Robertson comes across as a mild-mannered soft-spoken kindly grandfatherly (b. 1930) character, nothing akin to a hellfire and brimstone Bible-thumping hell-raiser. Instead, he’s the sort of person you’d suspect who’d sit you on his knee and comfort and sooth your aches and pains and pray your troubles away.

Charismatic he’s not, but he’s in your comfort zone. Don’t let all that fool you, though he’s a middle-of-the-road extreme right wing fundamentalist (he doesn’t subscribe to the literal six 24-hour days of creation and likes to pick and choose what parts of the Bible suit his purposes rather than outright acceptance of Biblical infallibility), he’s still way, way, way right of centre when it comes to all things Biblical. In fact, author Robert Boston has termed Pat Robertson “The Most Dangerous Man in America” (1996).

Perhaps its just his advanced age, but he’s convinced God talks to him – that’s his story and he’s sticking to it – although he sometimes gets the message from on high befuddled. In fact his success rate in relating God’s predictions to the masses is, to put it mildly, embarrassing.

Robertson once sought the Republican Party’s nomination for the American Presidency (1988) – no dice. He also once made plans to televise live the Second Coming (which he’s convinced in just around the corner and has been for many decades) from Jerusalem, but to date Jesus hasn’t cooperated with the anointed one.

Here are a selected few Right Wing Watch headlines about our elderly Mr. Robertson. As you might expect, Pat is anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, and of course anti-President Obama, etc. If God is against it, you can bet the family farm Pat Robertson is against it too.

“Robertson lashes out at ‘doctrinaire’ environmentalist ‘fanatics’.”

“Robertson: Liberals use schools like gulags to ‘indoctrinate’ youth.”

“Pat Robertson’s prayers can make you a millionaire.”

“Robertson: worth praying over clothes to rebuke demons.”

“Robertson dismisses ‘nutty,’ ‘true believer’ climate scientists.”

“Robertson: ‘Demonic’ Islam isn’t a religion but an ‘economic and political system’.”

“Robertson: Obama is a secret socialist.”

“Robertson: Liberals ‘want death’ [regarding euthanasia and abortion rights].”

“Robertson admits he blew election prediction he received from God.”

“Robertson: ‘Miserable’ atheists trying to ‘steal’ Christmas.”

“Pat Robertson excuses [CIA Director David] Petraeus: ‘Here’s a good-looking lady throwing herself at him’.”

“Pat Robertson on Obama victory: ‘What is going on with the American people?’”

“Robertson: Gays and Liberals ‘don’t want freedom’ but ‘want a dictatorship’.”

“Robertson warns God is about to ‘take down the wall of protection around this nation’.”

“Pat Robertson: Since ‘we don’t condone wife-beating these days’ husband should ‘move to Saudi Arabia’ to beat her’.”

“Robertson: Democrats the ‘party of gays, godlessness and whatever else’.”

“Pat Robertson: ‘out of your mind’ to support same-sex marriage.”

“Pat Robertson blames drought on Americans who ‘ignore the laws of God with impunity’.”

“Robertson: Gay rights advocates should ‘shut their mouth’.”

“Pat Robertson blames Sikh Temple shooting on atheists.”

“Pat Robertson: Same-sex marriage is the ‘death knell’ of the Democratic Party

“Pat Robertson: Dump your Muslim girlfriend.”

“Pat Robertson: Ignore what the Bible says about slavery.”

“Robertson: Gay relationships lead to ‘disease and suffering’.”

“Pat Robertson prays to free people from the ‘so-called homosexual lifestyle’.”

“Pat Robertson describes how God built the Christian Broadcasting Network.”

“Robertson: Scientists ‘can’t speculate about the origins of life’.”

“Pat Robertson tells man to tithe against wife’s wishes because ‘you are the boss’.”

“Pat Robertson says Satan is behind homosexuality and abortion rights.”

“Pat Robertson says homosexuality is ‘related to demonic possession’.”

“Robertson calls non-Christians a ‘virus’.”

“Pat Robertson flip flops and denies climate change.”

“Pat Robertson implores woman not to attend sister’s same-sex marriage.”

“Pat Robertson says people could have stopped deadly tornadoes through prayer.”

“Robertson says Obama’s ‘role in life is to diminish the power of the United States’.”

“Robertson warns of looming ‘secular atheist dictatorship’.”

“Pat Robertson tells viewer it’s his own fault, not Robertson’s, that [faith] healing didn’t work.”

“Pat Robertson claims Obama is becoming a dictator.”

“Pat Robertson says you should be Christian first and American second, but attacks Muslims who put religion ahead of nationality.”

“Pat Robertson calls Obama ‘power hungry’ and a ‘dictator’.”

“God tells Robertson that ‘radical’ Obama will bring down America.”

“Robertson: ‘What is this ‘mac and cheese,’ is that a Black thing?’.”

“Robertson says Obama has a Muslim ‘inclination’.”

“Robertson calls Oklahoma earthquake a sign of the end times”

“Robertson: Christians should oppose Occupy Wall Street.”

“Bennett, Robertson blame feminism, gay culture for ruining men.”

“Robertson tells woman who can’t pay mortgage she must keep tithing in order to receive God’s blessings.”

“Robertson says Obama is ‘inciting people to revolt’.”

“Robertson blasts Occupy Wall Street ‘clowns’.”

“Robertson: Christians shouldn’t celebrate Halloween because ‘it’s the night for the devil’.”

“Robertson’s marital advice: divorce your wife with Alzheimers.” 

“Robertson: Jews must convert to Christianity to usher in end times.”

“Robertson suggests crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God.”

“Robertson: ‘The antichrist is Islam’.”

“Robertson: Media hate freedom, democracy and America.”

“Robertson: [Texas Governor Rick] Parry ‘founded his administration on the Bible’.”

“Robertson and Spencer agree: media love Islam ‘cult’ because they hate America.”

“Robertson: Jewish ‘self-hatred’ explains support for Obama, lack of support for Israel.” 

“Robertson: God will destroy America for marriage equality.”

“Robertson: The Tea Party is God’s answer.”

“Robertson: Fighting Muslims is just like fighting Nazis.”

“Robertson: Left backs abortion rights to make straight women more like lesbians.”

“Robertson on burqa ban: don’t like it? Go back to Africa.”

“Robertson: Asteroid will destroy the Earth.”

“Robertson: Nuclear power is, without question, the way to go.”

“God tells Robertson 2011 will be bad for the world, great for Robertson.”

Further Reading:

Boston, Robert; The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition; Prometheus Books; 1996.

Donovan, John B.; Pat Robertson: The Authorized Biography; Scribner; 1988.

Harrell, David Edwin; Pat Robertson: A Life and Legacy; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; 2010.

Harrell, David Edwin; Pat Robertson: A Personal, Religious, and Political Portrait;  Harpercollins; 1988.

Marley, David John; Pat Robertson: An American Life; Rowman & Littlefield; 2007.

Straub, Gerard Thomas; Salvation for Sale: An Insider’s View of Pat Robertson; Prometheus Books; 1988.

Zeus the Almighty!

Within all human cultures over all of recorded history, there have been literally multi-thousands and thousands of supernatural deities that have formed the heart and soul of the world’s religions. Today, most educated people can name say a dozen or so of the better known. First and foremost would be the monotheistic deity, God, Allah and related names. Within the remaining polytheistic deities, most would have heard of Thor, Apollo, Quetzalcoatl, Atlas, Gaia, Poseidon, and related. One such related is the Greek King of the [Olympian] Gods – Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans). The heavyweight champion believability fight – God vs. Zeus – is the match-up of the millennia.  

God vs. Zeus: Let’s start with a thought experiment or hypothetical question. What’s more believable, monotheism or polytheism? Well, ask yourself this, if you see a bird (singular) fly overhead, do you assume that’s a one-off mono-bird or a part of a poly-bird set? Even if you just see the one, you no doubt assume the latter. A bird does not exist in isolation. Why should deities be any different? You cannot have a species of one and only one individual. The species called ‘deity’, ditto. The species God cannot exist in isolation. Monotheism is nonsense. The species of Zeus is part of polytheism – there are many Zeus-like deities. Zeus does not exist in isolation.

God’s empire vs. the domain of Zeus is cheek-by-jowl, though the contrast couldn’t be more different. You must have some general idea what life must have been like under Zeus in the days of Homer, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle right through to Alexander the Great. Equally, you must have some notion of life under the rule of the God of Israel in Old Testament times, from Moses to Abraham to Joshua and Solomon (assuming these ‘historical’ figures were actually historical. So, given a choice, which society would you opt to live in – Ancient Greece or the lands of the Bible, the so-called Holy Lands. For me it is a no-brainer. Zeus could hurl around the lightning bolts with the best of the Sky Gods, but compared to God, God’s wrath and God’s laws, Zeus is my kind of deity – if deities there must be.

Both Zeus, king of the Greek pantheon, and God (of Israel) have human qualities, but of the two, Zeus is way more credible as something humans can identify with – if you’ve got to believe in any deity that is. God’s just plain nasty, wrathful, vain and jealous. Zeus at least has some other qualities that we can admire, like bedding down the ladies, goddesses, demigoddesses and mortals alike.

Put it this way, God is prohibition, the Salem Witch trials, the Inquisition, hellfire and brimstone and the Taliban rolled into one. God’s idea of a fun afternoon is having sinners stoned to death or burned at the stake. Zeus on the other hand is a Hugh Heffner type; Zeus is a party animal. Mount Olympus is the Playboy Mansion of Ancient Greece. Zeus too has a fun afternoon of, well, never mind. This is a family-friendly essay and displayed on a family-friendly website. 

Most people in most societies have to earn or work their way up to whatever level in whatever occupation they aspire to. And so it was with Zeus. No one handed him the Olympian throne on a silver platter. He fought like the dickens for that position. God, on the other hand, we assume always had that silver spoon in His mouth and occupied that top penthouse in Heaven from Day One.

Mount Olympus vs. Heaven (somewhere over the rainbow in Never-Never Land). Zeus and company chose to live in a readily identifiable geographic location – Mount Olympus. Any mortal tourist or worshiper could venture there and pay homage. God’s abode, on the other hand, isn’t on the map. In fact it’s totally invisible geography that’s never been verified.

We know what Zeus looked like. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was a super-statue of Zeus at Olympia inside a super-temple, by the Greek sculptor Phidias. Zeus, at 42 feet high, is depicted sitting on an elaborate cedar-wood throne ornamented with ebony, ivory, gold, and precious stones - and that’s just one of many statues that existed or still exist to this day. Although the Olympia super-statue is no more, we know what it, and Zeus, looked like – records survive. No Wonder of the Ancient World is dedicated to the God of Israel – nobody has the foggiest idea what God looks like even though images of God are modelled after Zeus by those who artists who have to work with something, anything. It’s not east imaging the invisible.

Zeus is clearly supernatural – he can and does shape-shift for example into both organic and inorganic forms, usually for randy purposes. But, as you’d expect, the species or clan to which Zeus belongs also are supernatural, or at least exhibit some supernatural abilities. For example, Prometheus created humans from the ground up (without need of any rib structures for the female of the species). Poseidon can ‘wave’ his magic trident and cause the seas to boil with tempest. Hermes had his magic helmet and winged sandals. And if the Gorgon Medusa could turn someone to stone just by looking at them (the evil eye?), well that’s got to be the equal of that Pillar of Salt episode. 

Poor God of Israel, He has no parents or grandparents; no brothers of sisters; He had no childhood, no playmates; He has no wife, no lovers or a mistress; He has no children. In fact, no other of His species exists. He can’t even celebrate His birthday since He has no actual birth (not having a Mum and all). How sad. I wonder what Sigmund Freud or Carl Gustav Jung would make of that? I’m no psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, but with an upbringing (or rather lack thereof), God’s got to be a few coins short of a dollar.

Zeus on the other hand had parents (Cronus and Rhea) and grandparents (Gaia and Uranus); lots of brothers (Hades and Poseidon) and sisters (Hestia, Demeter & Hera); Zeus had a childhood spend on Crete; Zeus has a sister-wife (Hera – the last of several) and many lovers/mistresses; Zeus begat lots of brats, both legit and illegit (Hercules and Helen of Troy and a whole lot more besides), and many other species of his kind – the Olympians – exist.

One quality often quoted about as a generality has something to do with absolute power and corruption. God wields absolute power, and not always for the betterment of the human race as the Old Testament verifies in graphic and gory detail. Zeus on the other hand, while king of the gods, didn’t hold absolute power. It was shared with the other Olympians. Zeus is also way more modest, making no grandiose claims about creating life, the universe and everything. Further, Zeus doesn’t refer to himself in capital letters, unlike the LORD God. It’s hard to read the Old Testament and not come to the conclusion that God is an egomaniac.

It’s rather unlikely that Zeus would have had any bone to pick with God’s realm to the east. God, on the other hand, if He be consistent, would have had two bones to chew over with His neighbour to the west. Firstly, there be gods over there, and that’s a Big No-No to the Lord God of Israel who refers to Himself as the One-and-only-God (reference the first of the Ten Commandments).  Secondly, the realm of Zeus condoned homosexuality. Zeus himself apparently had a close encounter of the gay kind with a strapping handsome young lad by the name of Ganymede. However, God apparently adopted a live-and-let-live policy. That’s just as well since, as the Titans and the Giants found out to their cost, you don’t mess with the Olympians.

Zeus and company, as well as God share one thing in common. None have been seen or heard from in thousands of years. They’ve all vanished into thin air, or maybe into the Bermuda Triangle – who knows. Perhaps that says a lot about their reality in the first place.

Armageddon

When it comes to the end of the world, at least in Biblical mythology, including prophecy, you get various buzz phrases like: Book of Revelation; the Apocalypse; Armageddon; the Second Coming; the End of Days, etc. There’s been more than just a minor industry spawned by this concept. So, we’ve had the hype, where’s the substance?

  

Biblical prophecy forecasts the end of the world, the end of days, doomsday, the apocalypse, Armageddon, call it what you will. Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. On the “yes” side of the fence are the true believers, the loony rightwing of the Christian faith.

It would seem that every time there is a natural disaster (even oil spills qualify), anywhere in the world, but especially in America, right-wing Christian fundamentalists and television evangelists jump for joy, do high fives and are more than happy to point out, even gleefully telling “I told you so”, and the more the destruction, the better the mayhem, the greater the death toll, the higher they jump, the happier they are and the more they rub their hands gleefully together. Why? It’s to them yet another sign that the end of days are near. Yet…

In mythology (or religious mythology) there really is no permanent end of the world. There’s always a rebirth, be it the Christian Armageddon or the Norse Ragnarok or within the Hindu mythology in India or even the various cyclic Mesoamerican cosmologies.

Take the Norse Ragnarok. The gods and the giants battle it out and the gods come out second best. But, there are survivors who start things up all over again. It’s reflected in the Richard Wagner conclusion to his epic four linked opera series “Der Ring Des Nibelungen”. The final opera, “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”) ends with the destruction of the gods, but a rebirth and a new beginning. The very characters who started off the whole Ring Cycle are the very same and only survivors at the end. Will history repeat itself?

Take the Christian version: Well there’s no disputing the Biblical (tall) tales that ‘document’ some sort of domestic disagreement between ‘God’ and some sort of entity we call today ‘Satan’. If you believe those Biblical tall tales, the end result of that domestic dispute, Armageddon, isn’t in fact in dispute. There’s a decided element here of “This ain’t over till it’s over; this ain’t finished yet; I’ll be back”! However, when all is said and done, there will emerge from the ashes a new earth and a new heaven. Now we have the first fly in the ointment.

If you believe the Bible and the Book of Revelation, then you realise that Armageddon should have taken place over 1900 plus years ago, at least according to Jesus Christ. He said that the final battle between good (‘God’) and evil (‘Satan’) – I bet he was biased in deciding who was what – would take place within a generation or two of his utterances. So, if it took place way back then it took place off planet and out of human sight – a real life ‘Star Wars’. But if it hasn’t happened yet, assuming ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ are really real extraterrestrials instead of mythological entities, then it probably isn’t ever likely to. I mean you can only hold off a grudge match so long. Maybe they’ve kissed and made up, or…   

If God or His scribes wished to make crystal clear the ideas and events and chronology central to ‘the end of the world’, the Book of Revelation, Armageddon, the rapture, the second coming, etc., He or they failed – miserably. Any dozen Biblical scholars will give a dozen different interpretations of the ‘end of days’, from the literal to the metamorphic. The Book of Revelation, apparently that is, was intended for those of that era; that it was intended for generations far removed from those times is apparently not the case according to Biblical scholars. If you’re not going to make your point clear, well, what’s the point? How many hundreds upon hundreds of times have Biblical scholars prophesied the end of the world, or the end of days, or Armageddon, or the second coming, or final judgment (take your pick of relevant phrases) based on the Biblical verse? Well, we’re still here! We are indeed still here, so, so much for the reliability of The Bible, or God’s word, and/or the competence of so called Biblical experts. So, the next time some Bible-thumping fundamentalist tells you that the ‘end is nigh’, take said message with a proverbial grain of salt and don’t lose any sleep over it!

It wasn’t quite the end of the world, but the Biblical tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of storytelling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any storyteller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to the end of the world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.
I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Now most of the end of the world prophecies tends to have religious overtones, as in Armageddon and the Biblical Book of Revelation. I’ve noted on the Internet one 54 year old Californian religious loony who is absolutely convinced he would be part of the rapture on the 21^st of May, 2011. That’s it – that’s the judgement day, the second coming of Christ, the end of the world as we know it. I predict that he was very disappointed when he woke up in his California abode on the 22^nd of May 2011 in a totally un-raptured state. I really shouldn’t single him out, it wasn’t he who came up with that date, yet still he got sucked into the frenzy. Over the millennium he’s but one of millions of loonies who got sucked into the end of the world frenzy!

It’s a pity that so many peoples’ lives are so miserable that they literally look forward to someone else (God or Jesus Christ) ending their mundane existence of everyday mortality and transporting them into another one of peaceful eternity, although who really knows, maybe it’s a case of going from the frying pan into the fire! 

However, there’s a dark side to the forces behind prophecy. The central focus, as always, is me, myself, and I. If you’re reading the astrology horoscope, what it predicts for your next door neighbour is probably of no consequence to you. However, if someone predicts that the world is about to go down the gurgler; that the end is neigh, well, you’re part of the world, so you’re heading down the gurgler too! Now that may, or may not, upset you. For religious reasons, many look forward to the world going down the gurgler, because that means that they, while going down the gurgler too, get deposited at the other end of the tube into an eternal paradise. Or so they believe. 

Unfortunately people who are suckered into believing that on such-and-such a date they, along with everybody else, are going to meet their maker, well that can have serious consequences. There are more than a handful of case studies which have shown that ordinary people, caught up in the end-of-the-world hype, lacking the qualities of logical and critical thinking, have sold off all their worldly goods, left their homes and families, to await the end – which never came. Some have banded together to form end-of-the-world doomsday cults which have required suicidal philosophies as the alleged end drew near. Human delusion can have tragic consequences.

There are several downsides to end of the world prophecy. It’s not the same sort of harmless fun as consulting your daily horoscope in the paper. Firstly, there’s the letdown, trauma, disappointment, humiliation, etc. suffered by the true believers when their idiocy is revealed for the entire world to see. There’s the often bizarre behaviour of true believers before-the-fact – the break-up of family units, giving away all worldly goods and possessions, joining doomsday cults, sometimes to the tune of ritual suicides.

Then there’s the lack of moral, ethical, law and order constraints – I mean if you really wanted for once in your life to live the good life, the best foods, the best wines, the most expensive resorts, the best women money can buy, all the fantasy dreams of the great unwashed, and you truly believed you only had a week to go before The End, well there’s this bank down the road just begging to be robbed and a certain snooty little teller who’s been asking for an extra hole in her head right between the eyes – how dare she turn you down for a date – well, why not? You’re dead in a week anyway, so nothing much to lose is there?

Now extrapolate that up to a true believer who does hold some high position of real power. What if you could manipulate foreign policy in such a way as to ensure or bring forward Armageddon? Or, if the world’s going to end tomorrow anyway and you believe that with all your heart and soul that’s going to be the case, well you may as well press the nuclear button now. The leader of your most hated foreign power is laughing at your stupidity, so you’re going to want to make sure it’s doomsday for them too! 

There have been thousands of end of the word prophecies from the religious Armageddon as given in the Biblical Book of Revelation to predictions of alien invasions to nuclear suicide as per the “On the Beach” scenario or maybe some ‘the-sky-is-falling’ alarmist who’s convinced there’s an undetected and undetectable asteroid that’s heading our way – ground zero; target Earth.  It ain’t happened – the asteroid anyway – to us, but T-Rex would tell a different tale methinks. T-Rex aside, anyone who places any sort of faith that the next prophetic quack has got it right is in serious delusion. The odds favour the exact opposite. Mother Earth will go on her merry way for a long time yet. If you’re anxiously awaiting the rapture – well, be prepared to wait a lot longer.

The next predicted doomsday biggie is the 21^st of December 2012 for a whole potful of various reasons that’s relatively easy to find out about given hundreds of books, articles, Internet sites and blogs, DVDs, etc. all devoted to the subject. So, hands up please for all of you who have total conviction that the next end of the world prediction will bear fruit, 21 December 2012. Thought so!  Well, I’ll go on the record now as prophesizing that it’s going to be quite safe for you to plan your 2012 Christmas and post-Christmas activities and holidays and welcome in 2013 with the usual New Year antics we’ve all come to love and participate in. How so?

There’s one really main problem with end of the world prophecy, and it doesn’t matter a hoot what your ultimate source is that you base, or believe, the prophecy on – to date, 100% of all end of the world predictions have failed (that’s bloody obvious isn’t it? I mean we’re still here; we’re still standing)! If I’d received a fiver for each failed doomsday prediction, I, my bank manager and the tax man would all be happy little campers. A 100% failure record - that’s a pretty piss-poor track record, 100% opposite to science predicting a solar eclipse three decades down the track. Now if there have been just a handful of these the-end-is-nigh predictions, and I mean down to the exact day of the year, well that could easily be dismissed. However, when the absolute number of them, over the millennia, have been such that if you’d collected a fiver for every one, and that collection of fivers would make you one of the wealthiest persons on the planet, well you’ve have to conclude that there’s an awful lot of deluded people. A 100% track record of failure inspires bugger-all confidence that the next quack or gaggle of quacks that comes along with an ‘end-is-neigh’ sign can be taken seriously, such as the 21^st of May 2011 or the 21^st of December 2012.

Further reading: The end of the world in prophecy.  

Guyatt, Nicholas; Have A Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World; Ebury Press, UK; 2007:

Kirsch, Jonathan; A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization; Harper-Collins, New York; 2006:

Price, Robert M.; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2007:

Willis, Barbara & Willis, Jim; Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z; Visible Ink Press, Detroit, Michigan; 2006:

Jesus of Nazareth: R.I.P.

Assuming that the Christian religious figurehead known as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, and that is not a given by any stretch of the imagination, then the odds are, IMHO, that he was just another mortal human and not an immortal supernatural deity, the alleged ‘Son of God’.

There's this concept or character of Jesus Christ (JC), or Jesus of Nazareth (depending on religious philosophy), the alleged Son of God. JC is probably the most famous or most well known character in all of recorded history, even if in his own time he was as unknown and unheard of as 99.9% of rock and film star wannabes are today. But did Jesus actually exist? It would really be a bummer if JC had all the reality of other famous and well known but fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Santa Claus. Yet for someone so famous after-the-fact, there's damn little documentation outside of religious texts to support his reality, and all of that 'reality' was penned many decades after-the-fact. Not only that, but the four main New Testament gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that detail the life and times of JC don’t always agree on various key points.

While there is relatively little doubt in my mind that there really was an historical figure that went by the name of Jesus, there are those scholars who would, and do, argue that Jesus was as totally a mythological figure as Zeus and Apollo, or for that matter Santa. That aside, I suggest that JC was a person who was very human, born in the normal way, died as any human eventually does, and has remained dead ever since.

If JC is indeed an historical figure, I suggest that while he existed he was seen as a very charismatic character, but one who alas, would most certainly have been mentally ill. Our mental institutions or asylums are full of people who sincerely believe that they are this person, or that person, or a reincarnation of this or that historical figure, but in reality, are totally delusional. I'm sure this syndrome is not unique to this era. I just mean that I'm sure mental illness existed some 2100 years ago - then as now - and it's possible that JC could have suffered from delusions of grandeur to some greater or lesser degree assuming he made some extraordinary claims about himself.

There have been lots of charismatic religious figures over the centuries, which, in another time and place, if claiming to be the Son of God, would have attracted a massive following, and a near mythological aura. Perhaps JC just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right personality to pull the charade off - in fact JC probably sincerely believed his own story. I'm no expert on what exactly JC said about himself, or has been alleged he said (if any of his quotations can be taken a face value). Perhaps he made relatively few claims at all and it was only others who embellished him as something he never really claimed to be. If that's the case, then of course maybe he wasn't mentally ill. Regardless, the bottom line is that JC, whatever he and/or others thought he was, was the son of a man and a woman, not the Son of God. To accept JC as a deity is to, IMHO, accept one of Alice’s White Queen's pre-breakfast impossibilities.

Bibles Galore

We have all heard of ‘The Bible’, but that’s really a misnomer. What you have heard about, or have in your home, is ‘a Bible’, not just one copy of many, but one copy of the many versions of the so-called ‘The Bible’. Now the questions to be asked are if there is but one God, therefore but one holy word of God, why are there dozens of different versions with differing texts? And if no one version is more correct than another, then perhaps no one version is correct. All Bibles in all languages are works of fiction!

In the La-La, Never-Never Land of all things Biblical, is there one Bible or are there multi-Bibles? How can the Bible (let's say the King James Version) be considered a unified whole when not only are there two Testaments that are radically different in tone, but all up the Bible has been cobbled together with various bits and pieces included and excluded in a totally ad hoc fashion. No two scholarly or Biblical experts will agree on exactly what texts should comprise THE Bible.

Let’s consider the excluded bits, the Apocrypha. There are over a dozen writings or ‘books’ whose status as bona-fide Old Testament Biblical canonical texts have been in and out of the ‘official’ Bible depending on who had the authority to decide these things. Since the 16^th Century the verdict has been ‘out at the plate’! Some of these excluded ‘books’ include Tobit, Judith, the two to four books of Maccabees (depending on who you talk to), and the two books of Esdras, etc. Further, there are additional but excluded chapters and verses to the established books of Esther, Daniel and Psalms.

There’s also a whole library of excluded New Testament Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypses. All up, it’s all like several chapters and paragraphs have been excluded from your favourite literary work, or even your common paperback novel.

Then you have the trilogy of books from Enoch, as well as Jubilees, which are even further outside of the fold. Depending on who you talk to, they form part of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. In fact the Pseudepigrapha all up is a collection of about 65 documents that have been excluded, though there is some overlap with the Apocrypha (like a few of those ‘books’ of Maccabees), again depending on who you talk to.    

Then too, some of the official canon was hotly disputed and only made it into the Bible by the proverbial skin of the teeth – like the Book of Revelation. 

Even taking just the ‘official’ Bible, depending on the version you consult, the ordering of the Books will be different. Try that with your paperback novel and see if it makes the same degree of sense!

Then too, there exists dozens of English language versions of the Bible, from the "Good News Translation" to the "New Living Translation" to the "American Standard Version" to the "New American Standard Bible" to the "Common English Bible" to the "English Standard Version" to the "English Standard Version Anglicised", and that's just for starters. Then there's the "King James Version", the "New King James Version", and the "21st Century King James Version", not to mention all those other languages the Bible is published in with those unavoidable mistakes, losses and uncertainties that must arise in translating from one language to another. It's like your favourite novel was amended or tweaked every couple of years. I’m sure if you read your favourite novel in English, then read it again but in a different language, say Italian or Japanese, there will be something lost, even strange to you in the translation.

I’m sure most viewers here read, write and speak modern English. Yet when it comes to the Bible, modern English is the foreign language. The pathway from the original cobbled together Biblical texts, to what you tend to find in your home, motel rooms, your church, local library and bookstore is so long and so tortuous it’s a wonder 100% of the Bible isn’t gibberish instead of just most of it.

In conclusion, the Bible as a one unified word-of-God text is an impossibility to accept at face value. It makes more logical sense to chuck it all out the window and accept that there just is no such animal in existence at all and never will be.

Biblical History: Fact or Fiction?

The Bible is apparently one of the best, if not the best selling books of all times. Why it isn’t for sale though in the mythology or fiction section of bookstores (or available in similar locations in libraries) is beyond me. Simply put, the Bible isn’t believable as non-fiction and as a historically accurate record of those ancient times.

Is Biblical history fact or fiction? Well, it's probably a mixture of both but the emphasis is weighted heavily on the fiction part - say by a ratio of 99% bovine fertilizer to 1% wheat among the chaff. I mean the Bible was written by a multitude of authors, with hidden agendas (who never had to take a polygraph test), over eons of time, and has suffered through dozens of versions and translations and mistranslations. I like an analogy of a row of twenty people - whisper a sentence into the ear of person number one and have that person whisper that sentence to person number two, hence person number three, and so on down the line. Have person number twenty then relate the sentence back to you. Odds are that there will be little similarity between what you originally whispered and what you ultimately heard after the twenty translations.

Since the texts of the Bible weren't written down until many decades after the 'fact', what does that tell you about the reliability of the texts being literally accurate? History is a very inexact science, written by the winners, patchy at best, and the farther one goes back in time, the patchier it gets. Historians often have a hard time documenting and agreeing on who, what, where, when and why of happenings 200 to 500 years ago. So how can we put faith in the literal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding events 2000 to 5000 years ago?

Anyone can make up or embellish stories and write them down and frequently do. Our bookshops and libraries are full of books labelled 'fiction'. Further, no one believes that all of those non-fiction books lining the shelves are without any shade of doubt always literally non-fiction from first page to last. One can easily find two non-fiction books on the exact same topic that are totally opposite in content and in context. Can anyone absolutely state that those who authored the various Testaments, those books, chapters and verses of the Bible weren't sort of making it up as they went along, or at least padding things a mite and slanting things according to their own worldview? In fact I've seen one book title that alleges that most of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are downright fraudulent*. Humans at best can make mistakes in copying or in making translations; they like to embellish stories and tell little white lies (even whoppers), and at worst invent pure fiction (in the guise of truth) for their own purpose(s).

As has been often pointed out, including by me immediately above, history is written by the winners. Perhaps it would be interesting to have had Adam and Eve's side of the story, or Satan's side of history instead of just God's version of events!

So is the Bible literal history? There's no other historical or archaeological evidence for most of the people, places and events in the Bible: people, places and events like Noah and the Ark, Jonah, Solomon, Samson, David, the Exodus, the Battle of Jericho, Sodom & Gomorrah, or the Garden of Eden. Why isn't the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments tablet(s) in a museum - if they really exist? Does any rational person really suggest that a virgin birth happened; that there were literally giants in the earth; that angels are historical (or should that be hysterical), that the Star of Bethlehem, whatever it was (if it was) guided wise men; that all of the above reflect really real reality? All those Biblical tales read like modern sci-fi stories. There are just no independent sources, outside of the Bible, that verify any of these, IMHO, rather tall tales. The historical bona-fides of the Bible are seemingly impossible to independently verify and thus believe in. That said, I've often maintained that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. Still, the Biblical mountain as being an historical mountain and not a mythology, regardless of the hidden molehill, is an impossibility to swallow hook, line and sinker.

For a specific example, I’ve read quite a few dozen books on or about ancient Egyptian history over the years, and I have to note that certain words tend to be conspicuous by their absence in both text and index. I mean words like Joseph, Moses, Israel, Israelites, and Hebrews. Also, I have noted a lack of references to anything akin to all those plagues of frogs, locusts, boils, etc.; references all those firstborn kicking-the-bucket simultaneously, or pharaoh losing a hell of a lot of his army, horses and chariots by drowning in the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds). The King James Version of the Bible states that Rameses was the kick-off point in the N.E. Nile Delta for the Hebrew Exodus, yet all the maps of ancient Egypt fail to show any such place. Even my ancient Egyptian dictionary fails to note Rameses as a place. There is noted on the map a Per-Ramesses in the Nile Delta in ancient Egyptian history, but that’s not what the Bible mentions. Per-Ramesses, a.k.a. Qantir, which is right adjacent to Avaris, but those place names don’t get a Biblical mention either. The next stop off location according to the Bible was Succoth but that’s not a location noted on the ancient Egyptian map. Then the next Exodus location, according to the Bible was Etham. Guess what? That’s not on the map either!  Doubt my word? Kindly consult your own choice of scholarly texts dealing with ancient Egyptian history. In short, the Exodus and all associated with it is fiction pure and simple and any belief in it as an historical event is a purely delusional one, along with all the associated baggage, like the Passover.

*Ehrman, Bart D.; Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are; HarperOne, New York; 2011.

Satan Is One of the Good Guys!

Satan (Lucifer, the Devil, Beelzebub, whatever) has gotten a lot of very bad PR. But if you stop and think about it, it’s hardly justified. One could argue that Satan, though hardly a poster boy for the Salvation Army, is angelic relative to his former boss, commonly called God or Jehovah. However, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter as both Satan and God/Jehovah are as fictional as Winston Smith (“1984”), Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter.  

If Satan popped into the United Nations today – a tourist obviously – and was recognised (those security cameras are everywhere) what would or could that international body actually accuse him of and charge him with? Could Satan be hauled off to the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice and tried for something – say crimes against humanity? Since he is the most evil being that ever was or ever will be, you’d think they’d not only throw the book at him but the whole contents of the New York City Public Library – and that’s a lot of thrown books!

Could Satan be accused of assault, being drunk and disorderly, book burning, bribery or blackmail, child abuse, counterfeiting, corruption, drug use and abuse, drug trafficking, eating meat on a Friday, illegal gambling, graffiti, infidelity, hijacking, being a homosexual, incest, jaywalking, littering, murder, being a paedophile, being a pervert, polygamy, practicing medicine without a licence, prostitution, rape, robbery, sex with a minor, spitting in public, tax evasion or avoidance, terrorism, witchcraft, even cheating at cards? No; none of the above.

Can Satan be accused of genocide? No, but God surely can be. The proof of that pudding is in the Old Testament itself - something to do with forty days and nights of rather inclement and stormy weather. Then there are these Godly bloodthirsty passages from Deuteronomy: 10-17:

¹⁰When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

 ¹¹And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

¹²And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

 ¹³And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

 ¹⁴But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

 ¹⁵Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

 ¹⁶But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

 ¹⁷But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

Satan isn’t as bloodthirsty as God, that’s for goddamn sure!

Now Satan did some rather nasty things to Job, but that was with God’s full authority and approval, so Satan escapes that rap.

I can’t recall anywhere where Satan has actually advocated anyone breaking terrestrial laws. Satan hasn’t issued his version of his Ten Commandments.

Can Satan be accused of mutiny or rebellion? You bet he can and a damn good thing too as he (and his followers – those fallen angels) mutinied against the worst tyrant civilization has ever recorded. The tyrant is God; the written record the Old Testament. Satan and his followers get thumbs up for his and their mutinous action. Now mutiny in the heavens is probably something outside terrestrial jurisdiction and is ultimately none of our damn business. Mutiny itself is not evil; it depends on the circumstances, and ousting a tyrant is a good a circumstance as you can think of. I’m sure we all cheered when Fletcher Christian gave the finger to Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty.

Can Satan be accused of being a smooth-talking, snake-oil salesman? Yes, but that’s hardly a crime as even back then its Caveat Emptor. He smooth-talked Eve into biting that apple; he tried to smooth-talk (tempt) Jesus too. In fact, this smooth-talking is the basis for all of  Satan’s bad PR. He smooth-talks those willing to listen and lead people away from the love of God, but nobody in their right mind who has read the Old Testament can believe for a moment in a loving God, so IMHO Satan is to be commended for trying to steer the great unwashed away from the tyrant we so loving refer to as God. Now of course history is written by the winners, and the Bible is God’s version of things, so its little wonder Satan gets a bad rap since Satan’s mutiny ultimately failed. I mean if the South had won the American Civil War, I very much doubt that Abe Lincoln would have quite the positive image he has today.

What about Satanism or Satanic rituals? We’ve all heard of that, but you won’t find any connection between those and the Satan of the Bible which after all is THE source. Just because some people worship Satan and engage in religious rituals in support of that worship doesn’t of necessity mean that Satan wrote that ‘how to worship me with satanic rituals’ textbook for them – unlike God’s Bible. God is very clear about how He is to be worshiped and adored.

Can Satan be accused of hellish torture? God, who allegedly created all things, has to take full responsibility for not only creating Satan but hell as well. You can’t blame Satan for hell and associated tortures – that’s your ever loving God’s doing. And Satan has nothing to do with satanic ritual abuses – that’s a human ‘invention’. “The Devil made me do it” is just an all too typical human trait that shifts the blame away from where it actually belongs – on the human’s head.

Satan certainly can not be accused of any and all traffic offences and violations. Those are all null and void – no road rage here. Ditto no computer hacking or any other nasties that require modern technology. 

Can Satan be accused of trespassing? Well no doubt God would argue that Satan was trespassing at the Garden of Eden when he shape-shifted into a serpent and chatted up Eve. So, okay, Satan can be charged with trespass. That’s not usually a hanging offence except at Area 51 and similar top secret military bases and locations, but the Garden of Eden hardly qualifies as an example. Besides, if God is so all-powerful, why didn’t He just smite Satan then and there and be done with His one time subordinate? I mean God is hardly squeamish when it comes to cold blooded murder. Of course that would make for a very boring story; the Bible would hardly be a best seller if Satan had been bumped off in Genesis! I mean we can’t have James Bond kill off the villain in chapter one and then have the rest of the chapters alternate between casino locations, bedroom scenes, and being chewed out by M. But on the grounds that God probably didn’t care about the Bible reading something akin to a 007 novel, God could have eliminated His opponent in the beginning but didn’t. Something’s fishy.

And that fishiness leads to wonder, what is the origin of God and of Satan and of monotheism itself?  Clearly in the historical record, there has to be a first accounting; a first mention. And there is! What’s ultimately filtered down to us as God and Satan is nothing more than the invention by Zoroaster (Persia), known also as Zarathustra, from roughly 600 BC. His invention was the start of the transition from mythological polytheism to real reality monotheism. He invented the first monotheistic religion (called Zoroastrianism obviously).

The rational was that it was way more convenient to take all of the thousands of good and bad polytheistic gods and roll them into just one dualism; one example from each of the two extremes, which were called Ahura Mazda (good deity) and Angra Mainyu, sometimes known as Ahriman (bad deity).  Polytheistic Jews held in Babylonian captivity around 600 BC, absorbed this new idea and when eventually repatriated to their homeland (present day Israel) adopted the new monotheistic dualism, and the rest, as they say, is history. Everything spiralled out of control like fast food chains from that original invention, Zoroastrianism branching off into variations on the new theme (maybe to avoid plagiarism). Then, as now, new bright ideas provide ample scope for spin-offs. New and improved imitations branched off; all the monotheistic variations starting with Judaism, hence the Islam, and Christian varieties we know today.

It was Zoroaster who first conceived of the ultimate final battle between good and evil – what we call today the (oft forecast, never arriving) apocalypse. He of course set himself up as chief prophet vowing his second coming (sound familiar?). His religion also promised a final judgement, a resurrection and an afterlife (also sound familiar?). However, Zoroaster never totally wiped out polytheism. Consider the following Biblical verse: Psalm 95:3 (King James Version) “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” That “gods” plural just won’t fade away, and that polytheistic reference is just one of many in the Bible. And since the Bible is the word of God, we note just from that one verse that He has a bit of an ego; He’s really more than just a little bit up Himself!

However, the credibility of Zoroaster and his invention of monotheism is a bit suss. The priests of Zoroastrianism were known as Magi, from which we get the word “magic”. They formally institutionalised the concept of what we call today astrology, charting the movements of the stars in the heavens to predict that ultimate apocalypse. Magic and astrology don’t normally sit well with rational people.

In conclusion, the great fallacy here, quite apart from the likelihood that both God and Satan are as fictional as “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, is the great unwashed swallowing hook, line and sinker what their religious superiors (priests, rabbis, clergy in any shape manner or form), via selective picking and choosing from Biblical texts, preach to them. The message universally is God is good; Satan is evil. Yet the unwashed sheep, those religious flocks, have never apparently bother to actually read the Old Testament evidence for the accuracy of that good/bad labelling themselves. 

Far closer to the facts of the matter is that God is the ultimate in incredible evilness; Satan has a few flaws, but at least his heart’s in the right place – he never tried to drown the whole lot of us! As far as God is concerned, He has His chosen people; the rest of humanity can take a long walk off a very short pier for all He cares! The various current monotheistic religions that evolved from the original monotheistic Zoroastrianism have preached everything half-ass backwards. IMHO, God wears the black hat; Satan the white hat. God is General Santa Anna (one who shows no quarter, shows no mercy, takes no prisoners – everyone is put to the sword); Satan is Davy Crockett (fighting the good fight against all the odds). God wins in the short term but eventually Texas exists!