The Creationist’s Bible, Literally: Part Two

It’s one thing to hold extremely religious right-wing fundamentalist views, but quite another to bring them to the fore in a personal manner when holding not only an elected position as a Congressman but also holding a position on a Committee that by its very nature must be the antithesis of that worldview. Such has been the sad case that recently surfaced in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-off, and the implications are considerable.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

I do agree with Congressman Broun in that we, humanity, if it needs anything at all it needs a saviour because collectively the human race has within, if you believe the Bible, just a few thousand years, screwed up Planet Earth, from top to bottom, so badly as to endanger God’s supreme creation, mankind’s very existence. Of course I pin the blame for that on God as related in Genesis 1: 28. You should look it up and check it out.

Another basic philosophy here is that if whatever the Bible says is true, and is OK or sanction or performed by God, then you can vote for the following as public policy and for the good of society as a whole with a totally clear conscience.

* Slavery is OK.

* Beating children, even killing them is OK.

* Genocide is OK.

* Mass murder is OK.

* Invading other countries and making warfare is OK. 

* Rape is OK.

* Women’s rights are not OK.

* Animal welfare is not OK.

* Equal rights for same-sex couples are not OK.

* Any ethnic group not of the Chosen People variety are second class citizens.

Belief in a literal Bible, the literal absolute word of God, requires not just faith in a deity, but presumably you have to put your faith in the humans who penned the Bible to have gotten it right, and that’s a whole lot of absolute faith to trust in the human species right there.

Belief in a literal Bible suggests that all those bits and pieces that were arbitrarily excluded from the Bible, then included, and then excluded again, the missing books, the Apocrypha, are irrelevant, which then invites the question, why do they exist at all.

That the Bible alone is the “manufacturer’s handbook” is bound to spark some opposition from Muslims, Hindus, supporters of Buddha, and all others who have their own versions of, and beliefs in, a ‘manufacturer’s handbook’.

Belief in a literal Bible, the literal absolute word of God means that you believe that every other religion and religious text must be false, including presumably all but one version of the Bible (since there are many differing versions) and that one true version would not be in English as the Bible wasn’t originally conceived and written in English.

In any event, there’s not the slightest shred of hardcore evidence that God, or Allah or any deity for that matter exists outside of whatever religious text supports that existence, but then again anyone can write words and make a book. There’s a book that supports the existence of Moby Dick, and numerous texts that verify the existence of Tarzan and Harry Potter. Shall we have faith therefore in the existence of and worship Moby Dick, Tarzan and Harry Potter too?

There’s a more fundamental question here. What if every elected member of any congress or any parliament or any assembly or whatever elected body you might call it voted according to their religious beliefs? That’s not why they were elected. They were elected to represent their constituents, to carry forth their political party’s platform (which presumably they agree in general or in overall terms with) but not themselves. Repeat, they are not elected to represent their personal worldview, religious or otherwise.

Further, it is incomprehensible that anyone who proposes an anti-science, pro creationism, worldview, like Congressman Broun (but there are numerous others as well), could or should hold a position of responsibility on a Congressional committee that should advocate or promote a pro-science point-of-view for the advancement or betterment of the nation. 

It would appear that the Dark Ages are encroaching back upon us. Congressman Broun joins the ranks of all things whacko when it comes to having unquestioned and blind belief in God and Company. It’s bad enough that 1.5 billion whacko Islamic fanatics in the world are seeking the ultimate goal of a single global Fundamentalist Islamic state where the Koran is absolute law, without people like radical Christian creationists also muddying the waters, fanatics who no doubt would like to see a unified and fundamentalist Christian global state where the Bible is absolute law. Is history doomed to repeat itself – The Crusades Mark II but this time with 21^st Century weaponry?

The Creationist’s Bible, Literally: Part One

It’s one thing to hold extremely religious right-wing fundamentalist views, but quite another to bring them to the fore in a personal manner when holding not only an elected position as a Congressman but also holding a position on a Committee that by its very nature must be the antithesis of that worldview. Such has been the sad case that recently surfaced in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-off, and the implications are considerable.

On 27 September 2012, and widely reported in the media around 6-7 October 2012, an American congressman, Paul Broun (R-Georgia), caused a bit of a stir when advocating that the Holy Bible was not only to be taken literally, but that it was the pinnacle authority on how he has and would vote in Congress. He said that he believed that God’s creation took place in just six literal days and that the Earth was only literally 9000 years old. The controversy stemmed from the fact that he holds qualifications in chemistry and is a MD and that he holds a senior position on the Congressional H of R Science, Space and Technology Committee. He’s also courted controversy previously by introducing a bill that would have made 2010 the “Year of the Bible” (in which case I suggest 2011 should then have been the year of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins just to even the score and balance the ‘books’ as it were). Fortunately, not all of Broun’s colleagues are as wacky-doodle religious nutters or as ignorant a twit (both an appropriate synonym for Chris Rodda’s phrase “Bible-believing-batshitterist”) as he is, and the “Year of the Bible” bid failed to pass muster. 

Here are his September 2012 remarks:

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.”

But once you stick your neck in the literal Biblical noose, you have got to accept that a literal Bible, a literal word of God (as related in whatever particular Biblical version Congressman Broun has tucked away)…

* Means all of creation (life the universe and everything) took place in literally six (24 hour) days.

* Means that Heaven and Hell both must exist, though nobody has ever pinpointed the celestial coordinates where Heaven resides up there, neither has anyone stumbled across the geographical location of Hell somewhere down here.

* Means the Planet Earth is literally less than 10,000 years old, perhaps even a lot less like roughly 6000 years old if you accept that the Genesis Creation was fixed during the year 4004 BCE.

* Means that all fossils must be fakes, the work of the devil, scientific hoaxes and that palaeontology is a fraud. Sorry kids, no dinosaurs and therefore no possibility of there ever being a “Jurassic Park” reality.

* Means that Adam was literally created from dust.

* Means that Eve was created literally from a rib.

* Means that the two originally created humans, Adam and Eve, bore but three male children, Cain, Abel, and Seth, which would, if logic has any significance, suggest that the human race should not exist, and that means Congressman Broun and all fellow Creationists should not exist.. What do we want – women; when do we want them – now. But where did they come from? The Bible is mute on the issue, so something’s screwy somewhere.

* Means that Satan (or the Devil) exists and is really evil, though you never get the chance to hear (or read) his side of the story.

* Means that God is in charge of a group of sex maniacs, the Sons of God, who lusted after and bred with the Daughters of Men.

* Means that a pair of flightless kiwi birds of New Zealand and a pair of kangaroos from Australia (among thousands of possible examples) somehow swam the oceans and made it all the way to Noah’s Ark in time to avoid being drowned.

* Means that Methuselah really lived for well over 900 years, and had some stiff competition to boot in the longevity stakes from numerous others.

* Means that Sodom and Gomorrah were really destroyed, yet no trace whatever can be found of the ruins.

* Means that Lot’s wife really turned into a pillar of salt. Neat trick that one! I bet Congressman Broun (the chemist) has this bit of alchemy all figured out and should be able to explain this with ease.

* Means that a bush really burned without being consumed. That’s another really neat trick!

* Means that the Hebrew’s (i.e. – the Chosen People) were really slaves in Ancient Egypt, though there seems to be no historical record of this ‘fact’ recorded in Egypt.

* Means that God murdered thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands and more of Egyptian firstborns, (another historical event unrecorded in Ancient Egyptian texts), but then again what else would you expect from an all-loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, deity.

* Means that pharaoh’s army really got done in via the parting and un-parting of the Red Sea even though there are no records to that effect in Ancient Egypt either.

* Means that the Chosen People headed towards the Promised Land to their northeast by heading south, but then maybe that was before the compass had been invented.

* Means that it took the Chosen People really took forty years of wandering around in the wilderness before stumbling onto the Promised Land – oops, I forgot, that’s an era that’s not only pre-compass, but pre-Boy Scouts. They weren’t prepared.

* Means the walls of Jericho tumbled down long after Jericho was, according to archaeologists, already in ruins.

* Means that Planet Earth instantaneously stopped its axis rotation to allow the Moon and the Sun to stand still in the sky, and then just as instantaneously started rotating again, in total violation of known physics, the same physics that Creationists like Congressman Broun take as gospel whenever they board an aircraft, drive a car or play a round of golf. 

* Means that a human being (Jonah) was able to survive inside a fish (or whale) for three days, none the worse for wear. Of course there are fishy tales and then there are fishy tall tales.

* Means those loaves and fishes multiplied, a housewife’s dream and a supermarket’s nightmare.

* Means that water turned into wine, though wowsers and Prohibitionists would have wanted that the other way around.

* Means Jesus really had the ability to walk on water, though that might be understandable if the water was really icy cold and he didn’t want to get his privates wet.

* Means that all those medical anomalies like a virgin birth and resurrections from the dead and elderly women over-the-hill-and-off-the-pill were able to conceive and give birth, among a host of others, really came to pass. Again, no doubt Congressman Broun (the MD) can lay his hands on medical texts that explain all. I hope he does.

* Means that Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, the End of Days, whatever you wish to call it, as forecast in the Book of Revelation, should have happened by about 100 CE. Oops, someone forgot to set the alarm clock!

In other words, literal belief in the Bible means you have got to literally believe in way more than just six impossible things before breakfast, and I kid you not, the above list could be extended by dozens more impossible things all contained in the Congressman’s Creationist Bible.

To be continued…

The Ancient Alien’s Bible: Part Two

Since the idea of supernatural deities is nonsense IMHO, perhaps there’s another explanation behind the more likely as not reality molehill hidden inside the traditional religious mythological mountain. That explanation could revolve around an extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood alternative.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

WHERE’S WHERE

Heaven: The name of God’s spaceship, or starship if you prefer.

Hell: The brig, located off-ship, probably on Earth, where one could be exiled to if need be.

Eastern Mediterranean (Israel; Land of Canaan; the Levant; Near East; Palestine): That part of terrestrial geography assigned to the officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven as their area of responsibility. Contrast that with Zeus and company assigned the Middle Mediterranean; Odin and company responsible for the Norse lands; and the Great Spirit who looks after the North Amerindians; and so on.

Garden of Eden: Paradise was actually a terrestrial R&R spot for officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven. God first had to expel human trespassers after they learned or overheard too much extraterrestrial knowledge forbidden to terrestrial ears. Later on however God gave Adam an interstellar ride in his Spaceship Heaven.

Towel of Babel: To disperse in quick-smart fashion the local population to the four corners of the globe, or even within the region, would have required considerable transport infrastructure.

Sodom & Gomorrah: The twin cities were destroyed via fire and brimstone from above, leaving no trace whatever after-the-fact. The obviously high tech weaponry might have been incendiary bombs or even nuclear weapons, but it certainly wasn’t any sort of destructive weapons technology common to that era.

WHAT’S WHAT

Miracles: High technology in action. As the late Arthur C. Clarke tended to put it, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, at least to those not technologically savvy. Among the high tech examples are the medical ones – healing the seriously sick and handicapped; resurrecting the very recently deceased; enabling very elderly women – over the hill and off the pill – to become fertile and bear offspring.

Food: Speaking of high tech miracles, what does one make of manna from heaven; loaves and fishes that multiply; wine from water? This almost makes you think of the food replication device used in Star Trek.

Noah’s Flood: A whole textbook could be written about the impossibilities of the Biblical tale of the flood and Noah’s Ark. The amount of water required can’t be produced. The boat isn’t near large enough to house and feed every species that would need to be given shelter. The crew isn’t sufficient to look after their charges. But, with just a bit of high tech tweaking, what if the Ark wasn’t for an actual universal disaster but a potential one, a real possibility given those high tech star wars, or wars between the various factions of deities (think of the ten year battle between the Titans and the Olympians; or what must have raged between God and Satan or will rage as per the forecast of Revelation; or the battle between the Frost Giants and the Norse deities; or all those aerial wars depicted in those ancient Hindu texts). Now instead of having entire forest worth of plants and all those animals requiring food and waste disposal, on board, substitute a botanical seed bank and a zoological equivalent, a repository of frozen eggs and sperm or embryos or genetic materials, etc. No need for food; no waste products; not much maintenance (crew time) required, and easily room for everything in the space allowed for the Ark in the Book of Genesis. The issue of course is that all of this is high tech way beyond the capabilities of the great unwashed of that era, the locals or natives. 

Burning Bush: This is an example of extraterrestrial hologram technology in action, employed to awe the local primitives, in this case Moses.

The Ark of the Covenant: Apparently a high and rather dangerous technological device, purpose not really well explained, but obviously more than just a storage box for a couple of stone tablets.

Clouds; Pillars of Fire; Flying Rolls; Star of Bethlehem; Aerial Chariots; Whirlwinds; Ezekiel’s Wheel, etc.: A UFO by any other name is still a UFO, and in most of these depictions, the object, say a ‘cloud’, is an actual vehicle that carries a passenger, more likely as not a Spaceship Heaven shuttlecraft. 

Germ Warfare & Biological Weapons: There are numerous examples in Biblical texts where high tech biological weapons were used against populations (i.e. – the Egyptians, even God’s Chosen People) and individuals like Job.

Transfiguration: Jesus led three of his followers up a mountain, and behold his face had a rather disquieting and unnatural glow about it (much like Moses after his CE3K). In fact Jesus, and/or his clothing, shone with some sort of bioluminescence. To add to this anomaly, Jesus had with him both Moses (long since considered the late Moses who had once been abducted) and Elias (otherwise known as Elijah, the abducted). Further a ‘cloud’ that hovered over this gathering ‘spoke’ to them, one and all, with words that implied that this was God himself doing the speaking. Then the ‘cloud’ vanished like a bat out of hell. Wow! There is surely something strange afoot going on here. By the way, in common with a lot of other Biblical tales, this is repeated several times, in the Books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In fact, I’d suggest that if you eliminated all of the duplications, the Bible would be 10% thinner!

The Ascension: Jesus departs Planet Earth to take up his new job as First Officer on the Spaceship Heaven, sitting at the right hand of her captain.

Hologram Technology: A very useful ways and means of inspiring awe in the great unwashed. Examples that spring to mind include the ‘burning bush’ and Jesus ‘walking on the water’ and appearing in the ‘flesh’ post execution.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

There have been no verified and documented sightings of the main Biblical players (God, Satan, Jesus, angels, etc.) in way over 2000 years. Where are they? I suspect they have gone away. I further suspect God and crew were recalled to home base to stand trial for crimes against humanity, though many, like Jesus, were exonerated, having played no part or role at Sodom & Gomorrah or in the use of biological weapons and waging germ warfare. Satan and his fallen angels were recalled too, probably picked up from exile, to give account for their original mutiny. Perhaps as we read this Captain Jesus of the Spaceship Heaven (or some other interstellar vessel) is boldly going and finding new Garden of Eden locales to R&R in throughout the cosmos.  

CONCLUSION

It is clear that not everything in the Bible can be easily interpreted in an extraterrestrial context, probably because much of the text’s content tends to be rather mundane soap opera of a humans-only nature. That aside, after you take into consideration all the versions, all the translations and associated issues with that, translation and copying errors (deliberate and accidental), embellishments, artistic license, human imagination needed to fill in the gaps, plus the multiple authorship of all the Biblical texts itself, not to forget that the texts weren’t written down till decades, even many generations after-the-fact (it’s like nobody recorded and wrote down today’s news until the year 2112 – many an error would be made), I conclude that the Bible can largely be interpreted not in a supernatural way but rather an extraterrestrial one.

Unfortunately, if I am right, then all your theological baggage of an eternal life everlasting goes right down the drain – maybe not a bad thing if you thought you were Hell-bound, or even if Heaven-bound as the concept of eternal life is actually hellish as you would rather quickly be bored out of your afterlife skull, and you still have infinity yet to come.

The Ancient Alien’s Bible: Part One

Erich Von Daniken asked the question “was God as astronaut?” Traditional Christians, Muslims, and those of the Jewish faiths of course answer “No”, God was (and is) a supernatural deity. Those more inclined to be free thinkers pondering realities outside of the religious box, answer anywhere from “Maybe” to “Yes”. If the latter, how might Biblical characters, places and events be interpreted in an ‘ancient astronaut’ context. Who’s who, Where’s where and what’s what?

All interpretations are based on the text of the King James Version of all things Biblical.

WHO’S WHO

God: OIC and captain of the Spaceship Heaven. His real alien name is of course Yahweh, or in the vowelless version YHWH, but I’ll just shorten that to God, a name that all and sundry recognise.

Satan: God’s original First Officer and second in command of the Spaceship Heaven, later exiled to Hell, or at least to Earth, for mutiny. 

Fallen Angels: Fallen Angels are those officers and crew who were in cahoots with Satan in the unsuccessful mutiny against Captain God and who were court-martialed and stripped of their status and rank and exiled to Hell on Earth. 

The Seraphim: Because the Seraphim have six wings, they are probably a separate extraterrestrial race aligned with the alien race of beings to which God and company belong. [Well Star Trek exhibited a multi-species crew from the start.] One such alien was apparently someone called Metatron, an angel who acted as the ‘voice of God’, a scribe, and is the tallest and greatest of the lot. ‘He’s’ sort of the chief cook and bottle washer on the Spaceship Heaven.

The Cherubim (singular is cherub): The extraterrestrial Cherubim might be related to the Seraphim in that they are enormous four-winged beings. The definitive book in the Bible on cherubim is the Book of Ezekiel, mainly the first and tenth chapter.

Governor or Watcher Angels: These are your typically obedient angels who just sort of watch over humanity in general, a sort of extraterrestrial Peeping Tom some of who had an eye for the Daughters of Men.   

Archangels: Senior officers of Spaceship Heaven. Those messenger and battle ready angels. The best known of the lot were the archangels who are very high-ranking angels indeed, starting with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, but followed by Uriel, Simiel, Orifiel and Zachariel.

Angels: Ordinary crewmembers of the Spaceship Heaven, forever running errands for the senior officers.

Sons of God: Apparently hand chosen senior crew members, perhaps literally biological offspring of Captain God. The Sons of God were apparently some or all of the Governor or Watcher Angels.

Daughters of Men: Human females.

Nephilim: The offspring of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men. They were apparently the ‘giants’ referred to ‘in the Earth’, though exactly how giant was giant isn’t spelled out.

Jesus: Another offspring of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men, albeit much farther on down the historical track, or perhaps the offspring between God himself and the Daughters of Men (well one anyway). Jesus would later rise (from the ‘dead’) to become First Officer on board Spaceship Heaven. That Jesus is an extraterrestrial is admitted by himself in John 8:23. Of note here is that Jesus probably used holographic technology to give an appearance of walking on water and/or appearing alive and in the ‘flesh’ post execution – which he survived, another sign of high technology in operation. 

Baal: God’s prime extraterrestrial rival for power and authority in the region, though there’s never any direct and open physical conflict twixt the two.

Moses: Just one of several abductees noted and logged in Biblical texts. He was abducted by a ‘cloud’ and carried on up the mountain for a close encounter with a supreme alien lawmaker. Upon his return his face had an unnatural glow about it which caused those waiting his return to be afraid of him.

Jacob: Witnessed (or dreamed about) angels ascending and descending to and from Spaceship Heaven.

Ezekiel: A human who had a close encounter of the third kind (those Cherubim) plus an associated abduction event.

Jonah: Spent three days and nights in isolation inside a technological craft.

Joshua: 1) Was in possession of high technology sonic weaponry at Jericho. 2) He later witnessed several UFOs that stood still in the sky providing illumination for his army.

Enoch and Elijah: These two human males are the only two whose ultimate fate (death) we don’t know anything about. Both humans apparently joined the Spaceship Heaven at the behest of her captain never to be seen again, albeit Elijah was spotted with Jesus by three of his disciples (see Transfiguration).

Old Age Pensioners: Methuselah, Noah, Adam as well as others, apparently lived to really, really ripe old ages, way, way, way beyond the standard three score and ten. The explanation: these were humans invited by the officers and crew of Spaceship Heaven to take a relativistic interstellar journey at velocities at a considerable fraction of the speed of light. They aged normally on board, but because of the time dilation effect, time passed more rapidly back on Earth, or more slowly on the spaceship (same difference), such that they returned home hundreds of terrestrial year’s later – Earth time - thus the false appearance that they were hundreds of years old at journey’s end but didn’t look a day over thirty because they really weren’t a day over thirty! It’s referred to as the Twin Paradox of Special Relativity, though it’s not really a paradox at all, just the logical conclusion of the equations of Special Relativity which have been verified by observation and experiment, at least on the micro scale.

Matthew, Mark, Luke & John: A quartet of roving reporters who independently investigated what was to them relatively recent history – just several generations had passed – each in his own way. The topic of their investigation was an alleged historical figure, a figure that seemed to have gained some degree of uniqueness, notoriety and prominence as a possible deity and the quartet wrote up their short biographies accordingly. 

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:

The All-God: All This, All That, All the Next Thing

God is certainly considered by the faithful to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and of course omni-warm and omni-fuzzy. He’s also as omni-conceited as they come. But all that’s irrelevant since the All-God has the all-quality of non-existence.

If you tend to accept much of the theology surrounding the concept of a monotheistic God, then you accept that that God is infinite in terms of various attributes like being in all places at all times; possessing all knowledge (past, present and future); having infinitely more powers than Superman with no worries about heavenly or hellishly kryptonite, and having an infinite amount of compassion for those great unwashed moulded in His image, etc. Not only is that theology total nonsense, there are various other attributes of a near infinite nature that God possesses, like a massive ego except that theology too is flawed since you can’t have an ego if you don’t exist.

Is the All-God All-Present, All-Anywhere, All-Everywhere?

Since the Almighty is a physical being, after all He utters sounds and physically causes physical things to happen, as such He cannot be in all places at all times. A physical object, even a deity, cannot be in two places at the same time. That’s just total nonsense. Scratch omnipresent.

Is the All-God All-Loving, All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, and All-Forgiving?

“Yes” you say?  You have got to be joking! Have those spouting off such nonsense actually read the Old Testament? From the universal flood, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the tenth plague, to the invasion of the Land of Canaan, to countless other large-scale right down to the small-scale, even individual (Abraham and Job) atrocities committed, God is the driving force. Hitler in his wildest dreams couldn’t conceive of such death and destruction as God inflicted on not only His enemies, but also on His own Chosen People. Would a compassionate God create hell, fire and brimstone to hold over the heads of His subjects as a means of potential eternal punishment like a sword of Damocles? If ‘military intelligence’ is a contradiction in terms, even more so is the phrase ‘loving God’. I’d sooner take my chances with ‘a loving person-eating shark’!  Please scratch omni-warm and omni-fuzzy from your theology.

Is the All-God All–Knowing?

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 your future and knew exactly what each and every future second would be like for you in advance and that nothing could be altered? Nothing unexpected; no surprises would ever happen. 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. Scratch omniscient.

Is the All-God All-Powerful?

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 (i.e. – not omni-warm and omni-fuzzy). 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. God is powerless to act until that eight-plus minutes have elapsed.

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? Scratch omnipotent.

Is the All-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!

On the other hand, some will quote Romans 3: 29 which indeed suggest that the All-God is for all-people, Jews and Gentiles alike. But then too that’s part of the warmer and fuzzier New Testament. The God of the Old Testament showed a lot more bias towards just one tiny segment of society. The proof of that pudding, neatly summed up, can be found in Deuteronomy 7:6 “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” The LORD thy God wasn’t referring to Americans despite some Americans referring to the United States as ‘God’s own country’ and California as ‘the promised land’.  

Is the All-God All-Up Himself?

Well let’s just say the phrase used by God in reference to Himself, “I am” is very, very frequently used. “I am the LORD” can be found 161 times in the King James Version of the Bible. This is clarified 33 times – “I am the LORD your God” and clarified an additional 7 times as in “I am the LORD thy God”.  What do you make of the phrase “I am the Almighty God” or “I am Alpha and Omega”? What about “I am a great king, saith the LORD”. Not even former baseball star Reggie (“This team, it all flows from me. I’m the straw that stirs the drink”) Jackson, or boxer Cassius (“I am the greatest”) Clay (otherwise better known by his alter ego pseudonym of Muhammad Ali), just to single out two individuals from tens of thousands of similar mindsets from all walks of life from around the world, had as big an ego as the Almighty!

Finally, the All-God’s All Non-Existence

God does in fact have one ‘All’ quality. He’s an all-nothing. God, the supernatural deity, doesn’t exist. He’s been a no-show for thousands of years. If God, assuming a God, really did exist; it would be simplicity itself to prove His existence to the faithful believers and atheist alike. No Old Testament person who has claimed an up close and personal contact with God can in turn be historically verified from any non-Biblical source(s). There’s absolutely nothing within the sum total of life, the Universe and everything that can be attributed to a deity and only to a deity. Those who choose to put faith in non-verifiable supernatural happenings that orbit around a Supreme Being are of course entitled to do so. They are equally as entitled to believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. At least that holy trinity has bona-fide evidence to support their existence, as any child will testify to!

Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part Two

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

*Ten Disasters Rolled Into One: The Ten Plagues of Egypt (Exodus)

Despite there being no confirmation in ancient Egyptian historical records for these Biblical plagues, any of the first nine could have a natural explanation. I mean pestilences happen; ditto droughts/famine; locust swarms are hardly a novelty; even the Nile turning to blood can be seen to be just an ordinary toxic algae bloom – the ‘red tide’ common in other warm waters around the world, like the Gulf of Mexico.

The Tenth Plague however can not be attributed to a natural cause – death to all the Egyptian firstborn was literally a Deliberate Act of God; a deliberately calculated act of cold-blooded murder. Now, and most likely the case, it never happened and that’s supported by the fact that no such event is recorded in ancient Egyptian texts and it’s an event that can hardly have been unnoticed and been glossed over. If that’s so, then the related Passover celebration is a total fraud/fabrication. If on the other hand it happened as the Bible said it did, then God should be tried for crimes against humanity (specifically in this case crimes against the ancient Egyptian peoples), imprisoned for life with no hope of parole, since I assume He cannot be executed, though it would be justified, methinks.

*More Death by Drowning (Exodus)

To add insult to injury, I suppose one could also include the drowning of pharaoh’s army (Exodus) as a ‘natural’ disaster. There’s never an Ark around when you really need one! But gee whiz, gosh golly, guess what? Historians, and bookkeepers and accountants back in ancient Egypt somehow forgot to include the loss of all those chariots, horses and soldiers in their official inventories and recordkeeping. When you have that sort of appalling loss, scapegoats are found; heads roll. Alas, there’s also no record of any scapegoat or rolling heads over this unrecorded calamity. At least ancient Rome acknowledged that it lost their entire Ninth Legion, so something is screwy about Egyptian bookkeeping – or about the accounting in the Book of Exodus! 

*Your Numbers Are Up (Numbers)

If earthquakes and plagues (as in disease) are disasters, then the Book of Numbers is the place to find them (after Genesis and Exodus of course). There is dissention in the ranks of the Chosen People out there in the Sinai Wilderness and so there’s mutiny afoot and the Biblical equivalent of Captain Bligh (i.e. – God) will not be denied His wrath. The major mutiny ends with a bang and not a whimper. It ends when God kills thousands (14,700 – Numbers 16:49) of His Chosen People with a plague (love those germs) and a fiery earthquake (God’s hot to trot His shake, rattle and roll which kills another 250 - Numbers 16:32; 16:35 and 26:10) as punishment for rumblings in the ranks. Further on down the Wilderness track we have the episode of the ‘golden calf’ mark II (i.e. more idols; more idle worship). So God, knowing that His Chosen People didn’t build up sufficient immunity from His last bout of germ warfare, sends another – the local undertaker gets to bury another 24,000 Israelites (Numbers 25:9).

Turning now to the New Testament...

*The Ultimate Mother of All Disasters: Armageddon or the Apocalypse of Revelation

Here we are presented with destruction on a massive scale; the end of days; the end of the world; more hell, fire and brimstone (cubed) all around. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest (or Pestilence depending on interpretation), War, Famine and Death. This of course hasn’t happened yet (though it should have by roughly 100 CE according to Jesus), so it’s still in the ‘what if’ category, though actually I think that should read ‘iffy’ category. 

There are certainly potential natural scenarios that could easily mimic the Book of Revelation’s scenario, at least in terms of total firepower (or should that be Four Horsepower). Since this is near global destruction, we need something slightly bigger than a hurricane or an earthquake. All out nuclear or biological warfare might be a parallel, but then I’ve ruled out wars (and rumours of war) from the legit disaster category, though that might be little consolation if your city is nuked or if you’re infected deliberately with the bubonic plague. I’m thinking more along the lines here of an asteroid impact, as in the films “Armageddon” or “Deep Impact” (and a good dozen clones of these), though a good old nearby supernovae blast or gamma-ray burst would do the job nicely. Maybe there’s a Black Hole nearby which our solar system might be drifting towards. Gulp! In any event there’s a happy ending since out of the ashes the Phoenix (a new heaven and a new earth) will rise again.  

In conclusion, then as now, natural disasters inspire the creation of newer, better, bigger disasters: ten-fold the death count; twenty-fold the destruction. Of course this additional creation resides either in the land of pure fiction (browse your local DVD store and bookshop for examples), or at least as vastly embellished natural ones that actually happened, tales told well away from where they happened so no one’s the wiser. That F2 twister that passed several miles away from you now turns into an F5 that passed right overhead after several retellings!  

Since there is no supporting evidence for any of the Biblical disasters, I think it’s prudent to assign them to the category of, if not 100% fiction, then to the realm of greatly exaggerated campfire tall tales. As for Revelation, let’s just say that if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.

Is our Supreme Being A Deity For All the People?

If you believe the Bible, the Almighty has His Chosen People - the Hebrews. The Almighty 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 the Almighty is the "God of Israel". So, if you ain't associated with the Almighty's Chosen People and His Promised Land, it's impossible to believe that you are one of those in His holy grace! In short, it's safe to give your alleged Supreme Being your Big Middle Finger, even both of them!

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.

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".