The Tooth Fairy Has Greater Believability Than God

There’s a hundred times over more evidence for the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny than there is for an almighty deity, oft called God. It’s rather disquieting that there’s massive amounts of evidence for what we don’t believe in, what we know is make-believe, yet no evidence at all for the reality of what multi-millions of individuals accept without question. Something is screwy somewhere.

What’s the reality of God vs. the reality of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny? Its child’s’ play really!

GOD

When it comes to deities, God (and Son) are pretty much the new kids on the block, which is really odd if you think about it if God is the one true god and has been here since, well, “In the beginning”. Polytheism has a far longer history and timeline than monotheism and even the first (and rather short lived) go at quasi-monotheism in Ancient Egypt had the Sun playing the role of Mister Big (the Aten). Religious scholars can trace the evolution of belief in deities from place to place and culture to culture and time to time. I like to think that God was created in the image of Zeus* who in turn was created in the image of even earlier deities that were worshiped by those earlier societies and so on back through the centuries, so far back in fact that one can trace unnamed fertility goddesses back into prehistoric time via artifacts that clearly had the same sort of meaning as today’s Christ-on-the-dashboard.     

SANTA CLAUS

What more can one say about Santa (or Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas or Kris Kringle) that hasn’t been stated hundreds of times before. Come Xmas time, indeed even months before Xmas, Santa and Santa’s image is everywhere. You’d have to be a hermit living in a cave somewhere out back of beyond, in Whoop-Whoop or some such place in order to escape Santa’s hype, or the hype about Santa. 

This character of originally and essentially European folklore can be traced back to the fourth century CE and can just about give God a run for the money in the longevity stakes

We all know what the modern Santa does and what products Santa is associated with and how Santa helps the shops bring in an extra buck or two or twenty. But at least Santa is an in-your-face sort of guy, not afraid to mix it with the kiddies (and should get a Victoria Cross, Medal of Honor, or similar medals for bravery above and beyond the call of duty).

On the other hand, kids don’t get to sit in God’s lap while at the shopping mall or department store. There’s no images of God on Xmas cards (or any other Xmas merchandise for that matter) so God’s pretty shy. Kiddies get no presents under the tree from God. God doesn’t stand on street corners ringing bells and collecting for charities.

THE EASTER BUNNY

The Easter Bunny (or Rabbit or Hare) that brings Easter Eggs to good little boys and girls is an ancient German tradition that predates the late 1600’s. So the Easter Bunny is certainly not a modern invention by the manufactures of chocolate in order to up the obesity rate.

The Easter Bunny is a tad more elusive than Santa though there have been occasional sightings around the Easter period of giant bipedal rabbits. Authority figures assure skeptical kiddies that the Easter Bunny is really real. Proof of that fact resides in all those Easter Bunny statues carved in and out of various kinds and brands of chocolate. Some Christians might call that idolatry; most call it tasteful, even yummy.  Then there are all those stuffed and cuddly Easter Bunny toys (more idolatry) and EB images appear on all sorts of Easter-related merchandise and goodies. So there’s lots of evidence that the Easter Bunny (or Bunnies) exist.   

On the other side of the Easter coin, God doesn’t provide yummy Easter treats; there are no cuddly stuffed God toys for young girls (and boys) to hug and snuggle up to in bed at night. God doesn’t sanction His image to be used at anytime in anyplace, far less the marketplace. IMHO I think God is ashamed of how He looks. God probably looks very old; very wrinkled; very gray and probably very naked.

THE TOOTH FAIRY

The Tooth Fairy is rooted in folklore that goes back to ancient Europe and Northern Europe (the Norse countries), spreading throughout at least primarily English speaking nations, so like Santa and the Easter Bunny, is hardly a new concept.

The Tooth Fairy is also a bit more elusive than Santa, but we have her (?) existence on record as testified by authority figures (i.e. – mom and dad) and the kids see the proof of the pudding next morning as in whatever the local exchange rate is between tooth enamel and the coinage of the realm.

God doesn’t give a royal stuff about your kid’s loose tooth and certainly isn’t going to give the kid so much as a red cent or even a wooden nickel for it.

In short, God can’t apparently be bothered to show His face and interact with humanity, especially the little children – although in retrospect, He’s perhaps showing good sense. Who really would want to interact and associate with all those hoards of noisy, screaming, drooling, smelly, foulmouthed, brats!!!

CONCLUSION

There’s no evidence for the existence of God, yet there is massive amounts of evidence for the reality of the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and especially Santa Claus. But we know that the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and especially Santa Claus are fictitious or mythological and have no basis in reality. So, from all of that, what can one conclude about the existence of God? What odds there really is a bona-fide supernatural deity who can’t be bothered to show up at the shopping mall and let little I’ve-peed-in-my-pants kiddies sit is His lap? What odds there really is a bona-fide supernatural deity who can’t be bothered to show up at Easter and give those little I’ve-crapped-in-my-pants brats a colored hardboiled egg or two? What odds there really is a bona-fide supernatural deity who doesn’t seem to give a damn about all those baby teeth from those little I’ve-spewed-all-over-my-pants babes-in-the-woods; He who can’t spare a bit of Holy Change?

* However, it is far more likely that the God of the Old Testament morphed out of the various Mesopotamia gods and was in transition from the ones to the other via that first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism. 



The Bible: Something’s Screwy Somewhere: Part Two

Multi-millions around the world accept the Bible as the literal word of God, and as such it cannot be in error. However, an examination of Biblical texts strongly suggests, to those with open minds, that error, or as I like to phrase things “something’s screwy somewhere”, abounds.

I know I probably shouldn’t pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it’s so damn easy it’s like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven’t been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won’t be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called “Word of God”.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Biblical Sightseeing

WTF? It takes forty years for the Chosen People to get from N.E. Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel) – it only took the American pioneers six months to get to their Promised Land across the Great Plains and mountain ranges and deserts by covered wagon - something’s screwy somewhere unless the Israelites just stopped to smell the roses and take in the local sights and scenery. Then you figure the distances travelled by Captain Cook and crew, Magellan, Columbus, and all those other seafarers in the golden age of sail. They travelled vastly greater distances in vastly shorter time frames. The more you compare the Exodus trek with other treks, the more anomalous it appears.

Biblical Generation Gaps:

One of the most idiotic themes in the Bible is that the innocent suffer because their ancestors were guilty of some sin or other in the eyes of God, whether it’s on the grand scale of humanity condemned to hardship and suffering because of Adam and Eve’s giving in to temptation (Genesis 3), or the examples of the sons and daughters unto the third, fourth even tenth generation being persona non grata to the Almighty because of an iniquity preformed by dear old great, great, great grandpa or grandma (Exodus 20: 5; Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14: 18; Deuteronomy 5: 9; Deuteronomy 23: 2-3). That our loving, forgiving, merciful, compassionate Almighty would act in such a manner is anomalous.

Biblical Aliens: The Extraterrestrial Jesus

Several times Jesus admits he is “not of this world”. Check out John 8:23 and 18:36.

Biblical End Times

According to Matthew 24:3-14 and Mark 13:4-13 the signs of the end times are to be along the lines of wars; rumours of war; conflicts between nations and kingdoms; famines; pestilences; earthquakes, false prophets; deadly family feuds; worldwide distribution of the gospels;

So what’s changed in over 2000 years? Why would this be interpreted on being now, not then? That interpretation is highly anomalous, yet it’s what a lot of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe.

Biblical Geography

Though Biblical geography is good in general – no glaring oops like describing massive ice caps and glaciers, that’s no big plus seeing as how the various Biblical authors lived in the areas described by the Bible. I could write a totally unbelievable tale of BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters of the extraterrestrial kind) on the Moon and yet get the lunar geography spot-on. Not that Biblical geography doesn’t have it’s oops moments, like why no physical evidence or remains of Sodom and Gomorrah; where’s Noah’s Ark to be found that hasn’t already been explored high and low?  And if the weather be part of geography, then having a global spell of very persistent wet weather for forty days and nights (960 hours) is highly anomalous, so much so as to be impossible. It’s called Planet Earth, not Planet Ocean, because there’s not enough of the wet stuff to make it so. Parts of Biblical geography are anomalous.

Biblical Hot Air

The Bible is chock-a-block full of prophets and prophecies, right up through and including the end of the world as we know it (Armageddon). Amazingly, all this soothsaying failed to note and log anything about global warming, climate change, etc., rather major issues in our times. The Bible is big on prophecy; the proof of the prophecy pudding is lacking. That’s an anomaly.

Biblical Characters

There are no independent, verifiable documents, statues, pictograms, stele, inscriptions, grave sites, or any other historical or archaeological evidence that yields any additional credibility to the actual existence of various famous Biblical characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses & Aaron, Noah, Solomon, David & Goliath, Jonah, Methuselah, Joshua, and a host of others. You just gotta take the Bible’s word for the reality of these individuals. It’s like the only reference to Homer & Plato, Aristotle & Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid & Archimedes, was in an ancient Greek school primer for a beginners’ reader and that’s it. Would the very real existence of these half dozen ancients be given any real credibility given just a reference in a lone text? What makes the Bible a special case then? If Biblical characters are as really real and as really the VIPs they are made out to be, then it’s highly anomalous that there just is no other independent confirmation of that status.

A Biblical Piece of the Action

Both the Bible and the Koran are as two peas in the same monotheistic pod. They collectively have influenced billions upon billions of people – whole societies in fact. These texts therefore somewhat remind me of the “Star Trek: The Original Series” TV episode ‘A Piece of the Action’ (aired January 12 1968) where an entire alien society was in the manner of the Bible/Koran subservient to a ‘religious’ text – in this case a book about Chicago gangsters in the roaring 1920’s. That’s what the aliens patterned their culture after. I’m sure that episode was a deliberate dig at the influence our religious texts have on us. But I consider it anomalous that much of the world’s culture is centred on minor variations on and of a single religious text.

The Biblical Face of God

We’ve all seen images of God, from stained glass windows to Michelangelo to Hollywood. The anomaly is that it’s all make-believe. Unless I’ve missed something somewhere along the line, no where in the Bible is God’s physique noted; no physical description exists. He’s not described as white, somewhere between middle and old age, with a very long flowing grey-white beard and long flowing grey-white hair who looks entirely human. The popular image is that the image of God was created in Zeus’s image. Zeus was the model as Zeus’s image was widely known from statues, pottery, etc. For all you know, God could look extremely alien, or for that matter pass you on the street without you blinking an eye.

You Can’t Trust the Bible

We’re used to current events being set down in the here and now. Journalists, camera crews, microphones, tape recorders, etc. will give you today’s events on today’s evening TV news broadcasts. Reviews of recent events will be covered in your weekly magazines. But if I were to write a new biography of say Alexander the Great, you’d know that it could not be 100% spot-on since there’s no way to interview old Alex or those who knew him. Many a document, monument, inscription, etc. from that era would now be lost or destroyed. But when you read your Bible, do you think of the text as you would the evening news bulletin or weekly magazine news roundup, or, as you would my biography of Alex, someone who died way over 2000 years ago?  If the former, you’re sadly mistaken, for those who penned Biblical texts describing Biblical events can no more be trusted for 100% accuracy than my new biography of Alex, and for a similar reason. Words were put to paper long after the facts of the matter transpired. And as for Biblical quotations, well, no tape recorders existed back then, so take any pithy sayings with a very large grain of sodium chloride. Trusting in the Bible is an example of rather strange and anomalous human behaviour.

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Twiddling His Thumbs

 Presumably, at the close of the Old Testament, God has retired to His throne room and penthouse in Heaven, and that’s where He’s been couped up for way over 2000 years now. The question is, what does God do with His time up there in La-La-Land? Even if He eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and taken daily heavenly showers and trims His beard weekly, that still leaves a lot of hours for – well what’s the answer? Perhaps He stands at the Pearly Gates greeting new arrivals, or conducting Heavenly orientation sessions for new arrivals. Maybe He plays chess with Jesus or the archangels. Perhaps He conducts graduate classes in advanced Christian theology. Perhaps He ghost-writes articles for religious-themed magazines; watches those hellfire and brimstone televangelists on YouTube, or maybe once a year takes on the role of playing Santa Claus – no mortal could fill those shoes. Like Santa, God needs to keep a list and check it twice to find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice to ensure that only those with the Right Religious Stuff enters through those Pearly Gates! It remains however that what God does with His spare time is an anomaly that has never been adequately explained.

Conclusions

This little exercise is barely scratching the surface that exposes that God’s infallible word, as recorded in the Bible, is anything but. It is riddled with fallacies, errors, enigmas, anomalies, and a potful of similar synonyms.

The Bible: Something’s Screwy Somewhere: Part One

Multi-millions around the world accept the Bible as the literal word of God, and as such it cannot be in error. However, an examination of Biblical texts strongly suggests, to those with open minds, that error, or as I like to phrase things “something’s screwy somewhere”, abounds.

I know I probably shouldn’t pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it’s so damn easy it’s like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven’t been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won’t be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called “Word of God”.

Biblical Close Encounters

Way more people have had a close encounter with the Loch Ness Monster than all the various Biblical characters put together have had with respect to an up-close-and-personal chinwag with the Almighty. If you put faith in ancient Greece mythology, way more mortals had a close encounter – a very close encounter – with Zeus, than ever conversed with God.

In The Biblical Beginning: Genesis

Genesis 1:24-25 tells us God created the terrestrial animals (cattle, beasts, creeping things). Man was then created in Genesis 1:26-27. In Genesis 2:7, God created man (as in the first male), and then the beasts, etc. in Genesis 2:18-19. So which came first the human or the animal?

God says (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3) that if you eat of the forbidden fruit that contained the knowledge of good-and-evil (the Bible never mentions it being an apple by the way) you will kick the bucket, immediately if not sooner. Adam and Eve however had a taste of that good-and-evil brand of snack food (Genesis 3:6), and guess what, like the serpent said (Genesis 3:4); thou both survived and didn’t kick the bucket. So, God was telling fibs! In fact, Adam lived to a ripe old age of 930 years (Genesis 5:5), doing his fruitful and multiplying bit long after tasting the forbidden fruit. So God indeed cried ‘wolf’. In God we trust? I think not.

And does that serpent who lurked in the Garden of Eden know something we don’t, that in fact there is not a god, but gods (plural). Check out the wisdom of the serpent in Genesis 3:5. Polytheism rules, OK? In fact, later on down the track in Exodus, and in other Biblical books, God says the same thing – there are indeed other gods.

Sarah’s age according to Genesis 17:17 was 90 years old when she gives birth to Isaac; Genesis 23:1 records her age as 127 years old at time of death. That should be in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as well as “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”. 

You all know the story of Noah’s Ark and the Biblical Flood and how the animals (every living thing of all flesh) went in two by two, male and female (Genesis 6:19-20; Genesis 7:8-9 and 7:14-15) But in Genesis 7:2-3, clean animals go in sevens, male and female, ditto the fowls of the air, but unclean beasts only go in pairs, male and female. Something’s screwy somewhere when the Bible can’t get the story straight and consistent in one lone chapter.

What age do you expect to live to? If you believe in Genesis 6:3, you’ll live until you’re 120 years old! And here I thought threescore and ten years was the Biblical norm – well I was wrong. I still have another fifty-five years of paying taxes to go, not five. That’s not 120 maximum by the way, but 120 years minimum (since a lot of Biblical characters, like Adam, lived way beyond that). Anyway, 120 years it is. That’s God’s promise. But in reality, sigh, that’s just another of God’s fibs. So if you don’t, live to be 120, you know who to bellyache too!

Genesis 4:17 makes mention of Cain’s wife. Where did she come from?

Then you have that Towel of Babel tale. But it wasn’t just God who went down to confound the language of the builders so that no one would understand anyone else. There is a mysterious, and anomalous other(s), noted in Genesis 11:7 as “let us go down” and do the dirty deed. Who is that “us”? Who knows?

In fact, to be perfectly honest, the entirety of Genesis is one big anomaly from start to finish.

Other Biblical Contradictions

Now where exactly did Aaron, kid brother of Moses, kick the bucket? If you believe Numbers 33:39, Aaron died, at 123 years of age, at Mount Hor. On the other hand, if you believe Deuteronomy 10:6, Aaron died and was buried at Mosera. They certainly didn’t employ fact-checkers back in those days.

Who provoked David to number Israel? Well, according to 1 Chronicles 21:1, it was Satan. But, let’s not give the devil his due quite so fast, because in 2 Samuel 24:1, it was the LORD Himself who did the deed! There’s never a good editor around when you need one.

How many brat kids did Michal, the daughter of Saul have? Well, 2 Samuel 6:23 said she was barren until the day she died. No descendents did she have. But, do not despair for her, because in 2 Samuel 21:8 she gave birth to a total of five strapping boys. Someone (Samuel?) didn’t study enough maths to distinguish zero units from five units.

God says that Jesus preaches peace unto the children of Israel in Acts 10:36. But, Jesus counters that in Matthew 10:34 with his sword overriding any purpose he might have regarding peace on earth. Jesus makes crystal clear that “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth”.

But the biggest contradiction of all is God’s commandment “Thou shall not kill” when not only does God kill again, and again, and again, and again (the Biblical Flood; Sodom & Gomorrah; the Tenth Plague; the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, etc.), but instructs others to kill on His behalf, like in Exodus 32:27 (kill them all) or Deuteronomy 20:17 (destroy them: kill, kill, kill).

So much for the infallible so-called “Word of God”, but then I’m sure that if God decreed that three plus seven equalled a bakers dozen, that His good flock would accept that too without question.

The Source of All Evil

Who is responsible for evil? Is it because Adam and Eve did a naughty and got the heave-ho from paradise for their troubles? Is it because of Satan? Are the fallen angels responsible? No. Who is responsible for evil? God is responsible for creating evil and He admits it. Just check out Isaiah 45:7. So, if there is evil in this world, don’t blame anyone other than the Almighty. Whodunit - The Lord, that’s whodunit!

Biblical Unicorns

The Bible lends credibility to the existence of unicorns, mentioning them nine times over in the KJV.

The Angle on Angels

These are multi-thousands of images from stained glass church windows, to artworks and sculptures, to Christmas cards that show Biblical angels with two wings. I’m damned if I can find any reference in the Bible (KJV at least) that describe angels with two wings - something’s screwy somewhere.

The Bible’s Sir Joseph

Joseph was ‘knighted’ for services rendered unto ancient Egypt, well unto the pharaoh for Joseph had a talent interpreting dreams, especially the pharaoh’s dreams. This really impressed the pharaoh.

Genesis 41: 39-46 notes that Joseph, at age 30, was anointed by the pharaoh at be basically his second in command and ruler over all the land of Egypt

Genesis 45:26: Joseph is governor over all the land of Egypt.

Now Joseph dies at 110 years of age (nice going, though a decade less than expected!) at Genesis 50:26, and is embalmed and buried in Egypt. So Joseph was a very important person in ancient Egypt for about 80 years.

But when we come to Exodus 1:8, we have a new king (pharaoh) of Egypt “which knew not Joseph”. WTF? Obviously the new pharaoh could not have known Joseph personally, since Joseph was dead, but to not even know the name, the famous Joseph, who must have had all manner of texts written about him and monuments and a grave site and so on and so forth. That’s an anomaly. It’s like a new President of the United States (POTUS) who never heard of the existence of a previous POTUS, any previous POTUS.

The latter pharaoh (whoever he was) can probably be excused however for his faulty memory seeing as how to this very day no ancient records, documents, hieroglyphs, stele, far less a tomb has ever verified there being a Biblical Joseph in Egypt full stop.

By the Rivers of Babylon

If God smote Sodom and Gomorrah for being wicked and sinful (Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18:20), why did He not smite Babylon? Despite a lot of godly huffing and puffing in Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isaiah 13:19 and Jeremiah 25:12 & Jeremiah Chapters 50 & 51) that seems to suggest Babylon will cop what Sodom and Gomorrah copped, it was left to the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the desert to take care of and bury wicked Babylon (which virtually became synonymous with all things evil in the Bible). Maybe that was God’s master plan all along, but it sure was the longwinded way of doing things. If God had been consistent, He would have given Babylon the Sodom and Gomorrah treatment directly. Of course if God were really a fag-hater, He would have smote ancient Greece too and dealt with those upstart Greek deities to boot who weren’t exactly Mr. & Mrs. Purity.

To be continued…

God Has Passed His ‘Use By’ Date: Part One

What does the phrase “past its use by date” mean? It means the product is no longer relevant or serves the purpose for which it was once intended; it’s superseded; irrelevant; it’s outdated; if organic it stinks, leaves a bad taste in your mouth, can be harmful to your health and wellbeing, and all-round is a product better discarded into the rubbish bin, buried, incinerated and forgotten about. That seems to sum up the product we call God of the Old Testament.

Most western civilized people would probably agree that promotion of concepts like one person being the be-all-and-end-all trinity of judge, jury and executioner; genocide; mass murder; slavery; animal abuse; discrimination; physical and/or mental torture; dictatorship; massive displays of ego and demands to be worshiped, are all well and truly past their use by date. Most western civilized people apparently believe in the existence of God. God on the other hand is one who promotes, condones, and even actively participates in the above concepts. If logic has any meaning, that suggests that God is well past His use by date.

God’s Old Testament philosophy (worship me and me alone or else), public policy (favouritism to the Hebrews) and personal actions (mass murder of the Egyptian firstborn for example) were already out of touch even before BCE turned into the CE, far less having any relevance in the modern 21^st Century. It’s time to kiss God’s insanity a not-quite-so-fond farewell – and good riddance to bad rubbish. God is not a role model anyone should wish to follow, unless of course you’re a fan of Hitler, or as one with the Taliban.

If you want a modern parallel to God of the Old Testament – well the Taliban come damn close. God could be their role model, though not even the Taliban are quite up to God’s standard of atrocities. I’m sure most Americans would suggest the Taliban are well past their use by date, in fact should never have been harvested at all. Ditto that sentiment for the Almighty. 

For example, one cannot be both pro-God and pro-life (or anti-abortion) since God of the Old Testament can hardly be described as adopting a pro-life philosophy, despite His do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do “Thou shall not kill”. God is the world’s most accomplished practitioner of genocide (as in the Biblical flood). God does not hold life sacred. Sodom and Gomorrah and the invasion of the Land of Canaan are proof of that.

That was then; now is now. There have been two especially topical issues near and dear to the hearts of fundamentalists who bow down to the Almighty – abortion and close encounters between members of the same sex.

That other very topical no-no issue other than a woman’s rights over her own body including abortion are lesbian and homosexual rights, especially same sex marriage. Now the Bible (KJV) doesn’t even mention the word ‘homosexual’ or ‘lesbian’ or the phrase ‘same sex’ or for that matter even the word ‘sex’ or ‘sexual’ or ‘unnatural’. Any references to same sex sexual relationships are obscured in very vague phrases like ‘that we may know them’. That phrase ‘know them’ apparently is Biblical doublespeak for things unnatural and naughty. Now the overriding point here is that what any two (or more) consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of anybody else’s business, especially as any such activity has absolutely no impact on your lifestyle, freedoms, etc. And that doesn’t change just because they have a piece of paper that says ‘married’. Just as you value your privacy and don’t want others prying into your affairs, well, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. We note that there is no commandment (amongst the Big Ten) against same sex marriage or same sex anything for that matter. God provides no justification for you to cast the first stone.

Between way back then, and the here and now, both God and Biblical texts support and endorse the concept of slavery, which nearly all of the rest of modern civilized nations now reject. If there is no justification for slavery, yet God justifies it, then God has certainly reached his ‘use by’ date on that issue.

Hitler and associates have been condemned by the civilized world for their policy of genocide against the Jewish population, and no doubt Hitler would have stood trial and been ultimately executed for that policy had he not committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in May of 1945. So how come God hasn’t been equally condemned for his near extermination of the entire human race vis-à-vis that forty day and night rain event? Hitler and company reached their use by date well and truly, and that applies equally to God the exterminator.

It’s one thing to ‘invade’ another’s territory with ‘honourable’ intentions like the Coalition of the Willing did in Iraq and NATO has done in Afghanistan, or the Allies did when they had to invade Nazi Germany and would have done to Japan had it not been for a A-Bomb. In hindsight, the invasions of Central and South America by the Spanish (for gold, glory and God) or of North America by various European nations (citizens often escaping religious persecution) and of Australia by the British (as a dumping ground for undesirable elements) are today considered not quite as justifiable than it was at that time with all the gung-ho nationalism that was exulted and the norm during the golden age of exploration and colonization.  In hindsight, the native inhabitants of those lands have some just grievances.

However, it’s not normally the socially acceptable thing for one advanced country (or peoples) to invade another country (or peoples) equally as civilized with the intention of forever occupying that country, though history is full of examples. But there is a massive difference when such a policy is instigated by humans relative to when that policy is instigated by God. If Fascist Italy & Nazi Germany (especially) can be bucketed for invading Europe and Russia, or Japan for invading Asia and the Pacific, why then is it okay for God to have had His Chosen People invade the Land of Canaan or in alternative terminology, the Promised Land, with God’s view or intention towards permanent occupancy? Whether it was the Axis of WWII or the Chosen Peoples of Old Testament times, there was violence, blood was spilled, and death and destruction resulted. So, today Japan, Italy and Germany get the thumbs down for precipitating WWII; God still gets thumbs up. If invasion is unacceptable for colonization purposes, then sorry, all (including God) are past their ‘use by’ date.  

God’s perverse nature doesn’t even have to be a major happening or Biblical event for it to be evident. God’s everyday-in-everyway inhumane treatment of individuals is rife in the Old Testament, from exiling Adam and Eve, to giving old Abraham a near heart attack, to Job’s torments, to imprisoning Jonah for three days in the stomach acid of a large marine animal, to having His Chosen People wander about the wilderness for 40 years. And poor old Moses, forced at 80 years of age to carry two heavy slabs of rock down a mountain. You’d of thought the Almighty could have penned His Commandments on papyrus. God’s idea of fun-and-games would, in the modern United States (and other civilized countries), be considered within the category of cruel and unusual punishments – banned by the American Constitution.

Now consider the first three of God’s Ten Commandments. Substitute the President of the United States (POTUS) for God. Can you imagine a POTUS thundering out phrases along the lines of “thou shall have no other presidents before me”; “you shall not have images or statues or busts of other presidents”; “thou shall not bow down and honour them with public holidays (no Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthday holidays) or read their biographies or encyclopaedia entries for I am a jealous POTUS”, and “thou shall not curse me or write negative editorials about me or fail to vote for me, because I AM THE GREATEST!” Any such POTUS would be railroaded out of office so fast their head would spin – if they even kept their head attached to their tarred-and-feathered body that is. Any such POTUS would have reached his (or her) used by for absolute certain. If it’s not okay for the most powerful of all world leaders, or at least of all western heads of state, to put himself on a pedestal, why is it okay for God?

Speaking of ego, I’m appalled by the number of recording artists who give thanks to God in the liner notes (of their CDs or LPs), or actresses/actors ditto, for their alleged God-given talent which gave rise to their superstar status. Please, do you really think that God gives a right royal stuff about little old you to the point of singling you out as an emerging super-talent? Give credit where credit is really due. It’s the luck of the draw. It’s your ability, your talent, your hard work, your parents who contributed the right genetic stuff, and/or just being in the right place at the right time. Some people can sing, some people can act, some people can preform brain surgery, some people can sell real estate and used cars and some people get elected to public office. God had nothing to do with your, or their, wheel of fortune, so give God no credit, just the boot.

To be continued…

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:

Reasons to Question an Alleged Supreme Being’s Bona-Fides

There are lots of names applied to our monotheistic deity. There's God, the Almighty, the Supreme Being, the Lord, and so on. But no matter the name, no matter which way you slice and dice the concept, it retains such philosophical baggage that any rational being has just got to question the bona-fides of such a deity.

There’s something odd about God’s origin and nature. It’s downright illogical at best; in fact it’s really quite impossible! The concept of God has the same degree of believability as the concept of Santa Claus.

If a Supreme Being created the Universe, then what, or who, created that Being? Who are the Almighty's parents in other words? Causality applies to Supreme Beings as well as anything else. And if something or someone created the Supreme Being, what then created that something or someone and so on and so on down the line? It's an infinite regression. It's far easier to believe the cosmos has always existed though that doesn't mean our Universe didn't have a point-in-time origin or beginning since a previous universe can give rise to another universe (like ours) in sequence.

Actually, I strongly suspect the answer to 'who created the Almighty?' is fairly easy, probably downright obvious in an intuitive sort of way. Humans created the Almighty in mans' image (and probably all other supreme deities as well), rather than the reverse - The Almighty didn't create humans in His own image.

However, as an afterthought, perhaps man was created in the image of the Almighty. Based on the texts of the Biblical Old Testament, our Supreme Being has to be described as a dictator what with all those "thou shall not..." commandments. The Almighty is also a hypocrite as in 'do as I say, not as I do', for example "Thou shall not kill". Further, the Almighty is someone who's vain and petty always demanding all and sundry to bow and scrape to Him. He's also someone who sanctions any number of atrocities in His name, such as the Battle of Jericho, which if committed today would results in charges of war crimes. All up, the Almighty is just someone who's cruel, jealous, nasty, raciest, and sexist; someone who's totally up Himself, highly demanding and basically an all around Son of a Bitch. Remind you of anyone you know, or know of, like your average run-of-the-mill Homo sapiens?

If cats have a deity, I'm sure their supreme deity would have whiskers and claws and purr (or more likely go 'meow-meow'). I suspect that humans have a quasi hard-wired need to believe in a something(s) that one can always fall back on to explain and answer those unanswerable questions, as well as provide comfort for that ultimate question - the nature of death and what follows on from that.

Anyway, if the Almighty has always existed, then He is infinitely old, beating Methuselah's longevity by a mile. In that case, an infinite amount of time had to pass before His (I'll keep with tradition and assume the masculine) creation of our Universe - which is an absurdity. How is it that you exist for an infinite amount of time and the get then all of a sudden get this bright idea or urge to create a Universe? What was our Supreme Being doing the 'day' before He created our Universe? Perhaps one answer is that He has always created universes, one after another after another - creating universes, that's the Almighty's thing! And if the Almighty is infinitely old, then there must have been, or are, an infinite number of universes created and in existence. Well, some cosmologists do postulate that our Universe is one of many - the concept of the Multiverse.

Speaking of creation, but assuming just one Universe, that's an awful lot of Universe created just for little old us! Seriously, and for example, if Mr. Supreme Deity created everything, then He created the planetoid Pluto (and associated moons). My question is what was the point of expending the resources to do that? We can't see Pluto with the naked eye. Even with a telescope Pluto is just a tiny dot. If Pluto didn't exist would anything on Earth be different? Pluto adds nothing to our quality of life (or lack of it) and presumably ditto applies to any extraterrestrials in our solar system (assuming that Pluto and moon are uninhabited that is, and that's a fairly safe bet). Of course you may argue that perhaps Pluto was impacted by a killer asteroid that otherwise would have hit us and therefore has affected our quality of life. Then wouldn't it have been easier on Mr. Supreme Deity not to have created Pluto and not created that asteroid as well? This creation of things with no relevance to the apparent pinnacle of creation (the be-all-and-end-all of the Almighty's efforts), that is to say, us, makes no sense. It's sort of like buying a china teapot or a baseball bat, for your pet canary. What would be the point? Further a field, we couldn't see 99.99% of the observable universe, and 99.99% of the observable universe has no bearing on our day-to-day existence. What's the point then of creating all that extra 99.99%?

If the Almighty exists, why doesn't He show His warts-and-all face today? I mean, He wasn't all that shy about getting in humanity's face way back in the days of the Old Testament, so what is He so wary of today? Maybe He's afraid of our nukes! But that's silly seeing as how He's all-powerful. That aside, it wouldn't be all the difficult for a Supreme Being to make a showing today akin to some of the stunts He pulled way back when!

If the Almighty so wants humans to believe in Him, then it would have been so ultra easy to have just one sentence somewhere in the Bible that would be understandable to later generations, even if that Biblical sentence were baffling to contemporaries. The sentence would have been a sentence attributed to an Almighty that something only an Almighty (or an extraterrestrial) could have known at the time. For example, if kiwi birds had been mentioned, or icebergs, or that bright light in the sky that moves slowly through the heavens had rings around it, or that sugar was a mixture of several things, or what about another commandment akin to "Thou shall not travel faster than the speed of light". Just one simple little sentence - that's all it would have taken - something, anything one-off that illustrated a knowledge of biology, geography, astronomy, chemistry or physics that the natives of the time wouldn't have known about. Alas, it was not to be. Methinks the Almighty missed a golden opportunity to reveal His actual existence beyond reasonable question. Or, updating to the present, our Supreme Being could fuse the Ten Commandments onto the surface of the Moon, easily visible through modest telescopes, or do a repeat of one of those Biblical happenings like making the Red Sea split asunder for a spell!

If a Supreme Being exists, yet we can explain life, the Universe, and simply everything without requiring an Almighty hypothesis, then the Almighty has gone to extraordinary lengths to make Himself a total irrelevance!

In conclusion, the Almighty, the supernatural deity, doesn't exist. That’s the most obvious logical option when looking at the Almighty’s bona-fides. One line of evidence in support of that is that our alleged Supreme Being hasn't struck me down dead by lightning by writing and posting this! So you see, blasphemy is a victimless 'crime'. And no, I don't hate the Almighty. You can't hate something that doesn't exist.

The Quotable Bible: Fact or Fiction?

Our culture is awash with Biblical quotations uttered by Biblical personalities. You can quote God, or Moses, or Jesus, or Noah, or any of the dozens of others from the various chapters and verses in the Bible. The question is how much faith can you muster and attribute to the bona-fide accuracy of those you quote? If you’re really honest with yourself, the answer is bugger-all!

Odds are, if you go to church on Sunday, or tune in to a televangelist, or even hold a conversation with colleague, friend or neighbour on the topic of religion, you will hear whoever is speaking quote God and/or Jesus and/or some other Biblical figure about this, that or the next thing. The one and only source for these quotations is of course the Bible. But who was actually there at the appropriate time and place to act as scribe, secretary or minutes taker? The answer is often nobody!

Let’s take one set of particulars. In the first couple of chapters of Genesis, you get conversations between God and Adam, between Adam and Eve, between Eve and the Serpent, between God and the Serpent; between God and Eve; between God and Cain. Who wrote all those conversations down? Did pen and paper even exist in the Garden of Eden and surrounding territory?

Even more puzzling, in the very first chapter of Genesis, God said “let there be light”; “let there be a firmament”; “let the waters under heaven be gather together”; “let the earth bring forth grass”; “let there be lights in the firmament”; “let the waters bring forth”; “let the earth bring forth” and “let us make man in our image”. Who, what mortal might I ask, was there with pen and paper in hand writing all of this down? This was an era way before there was any Pulitzer Prize winning human journalists around looking for a scoop!

Assuming there was no journalist on the spot taking down God’s immortal words “let there be light” for example, then who was God speaking to? Was God talking to himself here? Maybe not because of that “us” reference in “let us make man in our image”, whoever “us” refers to. Maybe “us” refers to the Titan god Prometheus, since that Greek deity is credited with creating humans from clay. That’s only one of many possibilities since one could name hundreds of deities from cultures around the world credited with creating mankind. 

Now I don’t believe Noah is accredited with writing Biblical chapter and verses, yet the Bible quotes God talking to Noah, as in “God said unto Noah”. Who wrote that conversation down? Abraham likewise isn’t credited with Biblical penmanship, yet we have “God said unto Abraham”. Then there’s “God said unto Jacob” and “God said unto Moses” (also “Moses said unto God”) and “God said unto Balaam” and “God said to Solomon” and “God said to Jonah” (and vice versa), and so it goes. How remarkable that each and every time “God said” that a scribe just happened to be Johnny-on-the-spot to write God’s sayings down for posterity, not to mention the replies of us mere mortals that He was addressing! 

Anytime anyone says anything that’s quoted on down the track, in the days before Dictaphone machines and tape recorders, etc. there had to of been someone there taking down the words verbatim for posterity. If they weren’t written down until well after the fact – well you know how reliable human memory is! What if they got it slightly wrong? What if they got it mainly wrong? What in fact if they made it all up?

Then the Bible (New Testament) says “Jesus said” a total of 65 times. No doubt Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all took secretarial, shorthand, stenography courses in order to accurately take minutes and record the wit and wisdom of Jesus. Except of course there were times when Jesus wasn’t in the presence of any scribes, like when Jesus and Satan had a bit of a private chinwag in the wilderness, yet Jesus is still quoted as if he was carrying around a portable tape recorder to record for posterity the exchange.

Jesus reminds me that there’s another slight problem with Biblical quotations. The Bible sometimes records conversations of a rather highly private and delicate nature where there was no one else was present to take down notes. In fact some of those conversations happened in dreams and thus couldn’t have been transcribed there and then by any scribe. Let’s take the delicate nature of Mary and Joseph’s relationship which was thrown into turmoil by Mary becoming in a family way without input from Joseph. 

If one consults Luke, chapter 1, verses 26 through roughly 35, there is a private conversation between the angel Gabriel and Mary in which the later is informed by the former that she will become pregnant without benefit of any intimate relationship of a sexual kind. 

Just to make sure that Mary’s husband-to-be doesn’t get all hot and bothered by this, we note the following quotation.

Matthew 1:20: But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Now clearly all of this is of a highly personal nature and interviews on the subject are rather unlikely to have been granted. Not by Gabriel or Joseph’s angel of the Lord, and probably not by Joseph or Mary. Would you blab to the press about this if you were in their shoes (or sandals)? So how come all of this highly personal and intimate stuff gets into a public document for all to see and quote?

Here are two more examples within the nature of ‘God said’ via a dream. So who told tales out of school, God or the dreamer? And who did the interviewing and the recording?

Genesis 20:3: But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife.

1 Kings 3:5: In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee.

Finally, the Biblical Book of Revelation has dozens of quotations of various entities spouting off about this, that and the ‘End of Days’ in general. The issue I have with that is that the events in Revelation haven’t yet happened. How can you quote a saying related to a future event, an event and saying that hasn’t yet transpired? Here’s one famous example: 

Revelation 1:8: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

That quotation doesn’t appear previously – it’s an original to Revelation.

And here’s one more for the road to illustrate the point.

Revelation 8: 13: And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

Now both God and Jesus are quoted extensively in the Old and New Testaments respectively. Seeing as how nobody had access to tape recorders or other sound recording devices back then, probably not even pen and paper, how can exact quotations from these Biblical deities be taken at face value? Perhaps the authors who penned the Biblical verses just made it up as they went along! It wouldn't be the first time that someone has put words in someone else's mouth! Sometimes making things up results in legal action; perhaps God and Jesus should sue for libel, slander or being quoted out of context.

IMHO the quotable God and quotable Jesus is pure myth. The Old and New Testaments weren't written by God and Jesus respectively. The Old and New Testaments weren’t even written down in real time. In fact the texts of the Bible were written down many decades to centuries after the fact. For example, in the case of the New Testament, the Gospels weren't penned until four to ten decades after Jesus left this mortal plane.

Anyway, the next time your local clergy preaches that "God said" or "Jesus said", just pipe up with a "hang on there a minute. How do you really know what God or Jesus said? You weren't there and neither were those Biblical scribes." In fact the next time anyone, anywhere, anyplace, anytime quotes you God or J.C., or anyone else from the Bible for that matter, demand to know how they know that, and if they say "well, the Bible says so", read them the riot act about Biblical accuracy. In other words, quoting God, Jesus or any other Biblical character is just plain impossible in terms of that quote being a really spot-on historically verbatim and accurate account of that they said, if they said anything at all since the Bible might have the same degree of historical bona-fides as “Alice in Wonderland".

Six Impossible Godly Concepts: Part Two

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. That’s why the popularity of the Guinness Book of Records. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated; perhaps they fell in the lap, not of the gods, but of God.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Impossibility Three: Is God All–Knowing?  Hardly! If God is all knowing, what’s the point in the whole creation business? There’s no fun or satisfaction to a creation if you know to the tiniest detail, exactly what will happen at each and every moment to everything, everyone, and everywhere. Would your life be worth living if at say age 10, you had absolute knowledge of the future and knew exactly what each and every future second would be like for you in advance? So God created Adam and Eve, but since God is alleged to be an all-knowing God, then He knew even then what would happen in the Garden of Eden, so why bother instructing Adam and Eve not to eat forbidden fruit? What would be the point? That’s why people don’t usually want to be told the resolution to a film they haven’t yet seen. If you’re told before-the-fact whodunit, why see the film or read the novel?

That applies equally to that final Biblical Book of Revelation. The Bible is God’s Holy Word. Revelation is therefore God’s Holy Word. Everything that is to come is spelt out in detail. The ending is not in doubt. How the ending is achieved is not in doubt. God knows all of this in advance. Satan, being a literate sort of entity, knows all of this as well. Therefore, what’s the point in enacting out the scenario? If everyone has to go through the fixed Revelation scenario, then that confirms everything is predestined and that there is no such thing as Free Will despite God’s utterances to the contrary. Just like in a novel or a film, the plot plays out the exact same each and every time. The characters have no choice but to follow the plot line – they have no Free Will.

Impossibility Four: Is God All-Powerful? Hardly! If God can not prevent evil, then God is not all powerful. If God can prevent evil, but chooses not to, then God is hardly benevolent (see Impossibility Two above). If God allows evil to exist in humans, and God created humans, then God must share some responsibility for that evil. It’s akin to parents having to shoulder responsibility if their child or children runs amuck.

God is not all-powerful since not even God can get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that it is impossible to know simultaneously any particle’s precise position and trajectory.

Presumably, God, like gravity, and anything comprised of mass and/or energy can’t operate at faster than light speed. If God wants to smite you down, and God is ten light-years away, then you’re safe for a decade before His bolt of lightning hits you.

If God exists in a physical location within the Universe, then God can’t know about an event until the light (or other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; or gravity) from that event reaches God. Since light has a finite speed, God is in the ‘dark’ as it were until the light and information it contains reaches God. For example, if God is residing on Planet Earth, and for some reason our Sun goes supernova, God (as well as the rest of humanity) won’t know about it for other eight-plus minutes – the time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun.

Not even God can change the past. I mean, there are any number of instances where to correct some mistake; it would have been easier to backtrack in time and undo something, like going back in time and posting a “No Trespassing: Keep Out: Serpents Will Be Shot On Sight: This Means You” sign at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Not even God can accomplish something that is self-contradictory, like creating a spherical cube or a cubical sphere! Not even God can draw more than one straight line between two points on a flat piece of paper.

If God is all-powerful, why did God need to rest on the 7^th day?

Impossibility Five: Is God A God for All People? If you believe the Bible, God has His Chosen People – the Hebrews. God has His Promised Land for His Chosen People. That Promised Land isn’t America (far less California) or Australia/New Zealand or Europe (with or without Great Britain) or Antarctica or Asia or Africa or Russia, etc. Those Chosen Peoples aren’t the Italians, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Aboriginals, the Amerindians, the Polynesians or the Turks, and especially not the Egyptians! The Promised Land is the Land of Canaan, now called Israel; The Chosen People are, obviously, the Israelites. In fact the Bible (King James Version) makes crystal clear, not once, but 201 times that God is the “God of Israel”. So, if you ain’t associated with God’s Chosen People and God’s Promised Land, it’s impossible to believe that you are one of those in God’s holy grace! In short, it’s safe to give God your Big Middle Finger, even both of them! 

Impossibility Six: God versus Intelligent Design? Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems?  Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? God, that’s who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say “God”? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say “God” again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don’t think so! Did God fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

God does in fact have one ‘All’ quality. He’s an all-nothing. God, the supernatural deity, doesn’t exist. One line of evidence in support of that is that God hasn’t struck me down dead by lightning by writing and posting this! So you see, blasphemy is a victimless ‘crime’. And no, I don’t hate God. You can’t hate something that doesn’t exist.