Religion: No Good; Just Bad and Ugly: Part Two

Is our Christian religion really the right religion? Human societies have believed in hundreds of religions, some current, many extinct. Humans have worshiped literally thousands of deities over a hundred thousand or some odd years. All religions, and all deities, can’t all be true. Perhaps none are. Regardless, religion has a lot to answer for.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

As recent and even not so recent revelations have made clear, it has come to pass that not all members in the employment of the inner sanctums of the Church (pick a church, any church) are especially moral beings. If church Vickers, priests, parsons, rabbis, bishops, and associated clergy types are to be believed, as reported in the media and acknowledged by the Church, well let’s just say they don’t apparently always do the right thing by those in their care. 

Speaking of all things moral and ethical, the Church has blood on its collective hands, right up to its proverbial elbows. There’s the Inquisition, the Crusades, all manner of Holy Wars, etc. The Church is guilty of murder, legal death by execution (being burned at the stake, being stoned to death), torture, imprisonment, exile, ridicule, harassment, and all other manner of atrocities, etc. The Church is in no way in any position to cast the first stone, as it were. 

Further examples of religious atrocities now include religious terrorism. Once upon a time, I used to view terrorism as a political act, mainly for the purpose of overthrowing the government-of-the-day; the powers-that-be, by ‘well meaning’ revolutionaries. It wasn’t an attempt to slaughter the average man-in-the-street. The violent revolutions that led to Castro's Cuba or the overthrow of the pro-Western government of Iran are but a few examples of revolutionary terrorism, terrorism with the goal of a forced change of government. Those are but two of many that have taken place in Africa, South and Central America, etc.

Today however, terrorism appears to have a decidedly less political edge to it and way more of a religious context or motivation behind acts of terrorism. It’s also more ‘personal’ since there are millions around the world who wish you dead (and some who would be happy to be your executioner if they could) all because you don’t belong to their religious faith – you’re their infidel. The spate of suicide bombings, the events of 9/11, were (or are) examples of terrorism generally carried out in the name of religion.

While it might be true that some extremely militant fundamentalist Christians might like to eliminate moderate Christians, what I had in mind here is more one faith vs. another - Catholics vs. Protestants (say in Northern Ireland); Muslims vs. Christians, as say in the Bali bombings. Those terrorist bombers, in Bali, wanted Australians, Americans, anyone not of their faith, dead! I believe there is equally faith vs. faith terrorist acts on the Subcontinent, probably of the Hindu vs. Buddhism kind.

How many around the world, who do not share the faith of the average Australian (or other Western democracy), would be happy to see lots of Australians dead? Not the majority of course, but a sizable enough minority, and worldwide, that amounts to millions. That minority of course ultimately form the core of suicide bombers, or at least those who encourage, sanction, condone, support, etc. their actions.

That’s somehow even more disturbing than outright political terrorism. If this is the sort of trait that separates humans from animals, maybe it might have been better to have been born an animal – at least until such time as you’re slaughtered as a sacrifice to someone’s God! You can’t win.  

Then there are those religious vested interests. Let’s face it; organized religion is at least a multi-million dollar industry, if not a multi-billion dollar interest to all and sundry. Religious organizations employ lots of people. These people have a lot invested in the subject matter – money and time and probably training. There’s lots of money tied up in religious real estate and infrastructure.

If someone could conclusively prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no supernatural God, no supernatural JC, no dastardly Devil, no white-picket-fence heaven and no fire-and-brimstone hell, thousands would be out of work and lots of both big and small business (religious publishers and bookstores, religious institutions/schools for example) would go broke. Not to mention all those individuals, from the popes to your local clergy, having lots of collective egg on their faces. In fact, if God were shown not to exist, that religion was a fraud, it would have a major impact on the economy. 

So, it’s not surprising that religious personnel have to talk up the subject of God, etc. anywhere and anytime the opportunity arises – just in case.

One interesting thing is how religion and those who are religious, have seemingly put religion on an untouchably high pedestal that can not do any wrong. It’s nearly taboo to criticise religion without causing massive offence to those who follow whatever religion you’re having a go at. It’s quite alright to criticise the tax office, the opposite sex, a sporting team, a political party, weather forecasters, the banks and just about any and all other institutions – but not religion. That’s blasphemy. But, blasphemy is IMHO a victimless ‘crime’. God, if there is a God, doesn’t seem to take offence at all those highly profile members of the New Atheist movement. After all, none of them have been struck down by a bolt of lightning from the sky, have they?

Lastly, what is it about these religious nutters from religions far and wide that believe they have not only the right, but the duty to disturb you by doorknocking, phoning, dropping literature into and clogging up your private mail box, etc? They feel they can somehow justify shoving their philosophy down your throat.  If you, like me, are one of the normal members of the multitudes, we do not go around pestering others with our personal philosophy, and we all have one.

No doubt the religious nutters will claim their version of whatever holy book they cling to, tells them to do this. If that book told them to take a long walk off a short pier, or to jump off a high cliff, I wonder if they would feel quite the same sense of duty or compulsion to act. 

Religion: No Good; Just Bad and Ugly: Part One

Is our Christian religion really the right religion? Human societies have believed in hundreds of religions, some current, many extinct. Humans have worshiped literally thousands of deities over a hundred thousand or some odd years. All religions, and all deities, can’t all be true. Perhaps none are. Regardless, religion has a lot to answer for.

So what makes the Biblical religion or the Christian religion or the Old Testament religion the be all and end all of true religion and associated religious deities for the multitudes? I mean there is as much written and archaeological evidence for the existence of Thor, Zeus, Odin, Apollo, Ares, Athena, et al. as there is for God. No longer are people devoting believers in the religions and associated gods of ancient Rome, Greece, or the Norse countries – why? The arguments for those religions and their existence were so weak as to be unsustainable. So, why not go one religion and one God further?

There have probably been more wars, deaths, executions, murders, torture, crime and suffering in general, perpetrated in the name of religion (God and associates) over the millennium than over any other specific cause. Anything and everything can be justified as long as ‘God is on your side’ or the Bible says so, as per holy wars, crusades and inquisitions.  I like the point – not original to me by the way – that if there were no God, no religious moral teachings, no Biblical threats of punishment, or promises of rewards, then you’d have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. Add religion and associated baggage into the mix however and you now have some good people doing evil things – all in the name of their religion and their God. As the sayings go, and apologies to the originators whose names I’ve forgotten, ‘science flies men to the Moon; religion flies men into buildings’ (as per 9/11), and ‘atheists have never killed in defence of atheism, but, religious fundamentalists have certainly killed in the name of God’. That just about sums it all up. Has all the misery religion has caused, or has been caused in God’s name, been justified? I’ll state at the outset that, IMHO, the answer is an absolute NO, if for no other reason than it’s highly unlikely that God even exists! 

So what’s then the origin(s) of religion? If there is no God or gods, no supernatural beings or deities, how come we got religions (plural since there have been and are hundreds of them)? Easy!

Primitive, ancient, cave, etc. men (and women), call them what you will, had little understanding of how the natural world, their environment, worked, including those events that most directly impacted on their day-to-day existence and survival. They had no sophisticated understanding of physics and chemistry, geology, oceanography, meteorology and astronomy. But it was obvious to them that something had to be responsible for what happened to them; maybe even more obvious that the responsible agent was probably someone – maybe plural. Since they didn’t have that sort of level of power or control, that someone (one or more) had to be a really BIG SOMEONE, yet a BIG SOMEONE who stayed out of obvious sight. Since ancient man had no way of naturally explaining things, but the existence of a BIG SOMEONE did explain things, thus a supernatural being(s) was created or born.

It’s equally obvious that you’d want this BIG SOMEONE to maximize good things and minimize bad things, and so you tried to converse with the BIG SOMEONE. But since the BIG SOMEONE wasn’t visible, wasn’t in your face and in person, conversation had to be one-way – call it prayer! It doesn’t take long for patterns and rituals to become established, and the most successful prayer person becomes a leader, a respected member of the tribe, a priest in other words. A religion is born.

This evolution of a religion is reinforced because of the nature of death. Everyone takes note of the fact that something that was alive is now something not alive – maybe it’s just the animal you killed for food, but also maybe it’s your mate or your offspring, or a tribal elder you knew and respected, or a neighbour in the hut or cave next to yours. Someone dies of old age or for no apparent reason. What exactly happened? Why did it happen? Who is responsible? Why, the BIG SOMEONE of course.

Associated with death is obviously noting that whatever is dead doesn’t respond to the environment any more, can’t eat, can’t breathe, can’t enjoy sex, or company, and the overall caveman equivalent of the good life. Also, the dead in fact will eventually decay, rot away and smell. So, death is something to be avoided, and if it can’t be avoided, well maybe there’s a continuation of the good life afterwards in some mysterious way that only the BIG SOMEONE controls. The BIG SOMEONE provides a home we all go to after we die. Tossing up the option of an afterlife, or no afterlife, when there’s no obvious evidence either way, well, it’s a no-brainer. Our number one prayer person, our priest, will tell us what we want to hear! That’s politics.

So it’s relatively easy to explain the origin of a religion and how it can take on a life of its own with loads of trappings, with do and do-not aspects, etc.

But, religions have not also come, but gone. Maybe the great prayer person had a streak of bad luck and so the BIG SOMEONE was replaced – as was the priest. The upshot is that in this age of enlightenment, we have consigned most of our historical collection of BIG SOMEONES, our gods and supernatural beings and deities to the dust bin. The prayers have failed, the priests have failed, the gods have failed or went away, so ultimately it’s now easy to accept that maybe there was no evidence at all for them in the first place – they no longer explain anything. Now all that’s basically left is now just one more final body to get rid of. It’s time God too was consigned to the dust bin.

What about our Religious concepts central to morality, ethics, values, right & wrong, etc.? It is presumed by those in a Biblical frame of mind that our concept of morality (and related) comes from God and Biblical preachings and teachings. Oh dear! According to The Bible, God commits, or commands others to commit, or condones what any moral person living today would term atrocities and crimes against humanity worthy of Pol Pot, Stalin, Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. In fact Satan comes across as a far more moral character in the Biblical texts than God. After all, it’s God who condemns people to eternal torture or torment, not Satan. It’s God who inflicts plagues on the populace, not Satan. It’s God who condones rape, slavery and cannibalism; it’s God who demands sacrifices, executions and torture, not Satan. Satan actually comes across as a bit of a trickster perhaps, but not really evil incarnate. God is depicted in Biblical texts as the personification of pure evil. Who does the smiting – God or Satan?

Take the morality or ethics of what God dos to Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve understood that it is evil to disobey God and good to obey God, then Adam and Eve already possessed the knowledge of good and evil, and there was no need for God’s warning and they had no need to give in to temptation and eat that apple! God, being all-knowing, knew this. There would have been no moral reason to punish them. If Adam and Eve did not understand God, if they didn’t comprehend the difference between good and evil, then God punished them, and all their descendents through to and including you, quite unfairly.

I think it is safe to say that animals do not, and can not, read the Bible. Animals and humans are supposed to be separate creations, with mankind somehow something extra special – we’ve had morality bestowed upon us by God (a God who basically says do as I say, not as I do). There’s no mention of God bestowing morals (and related) onto animals. Yet, there are numerous first hand observations of animals exhibiting behaviour which we would describe as moral or ethical or showing distinction between right and wrong. Now either this behaviour in animals evolved naturally, and by implication our morals evolved naturally too, or else God breathed good behaviour into animals – again no mention of that in the Biblical literature. So, humans aren’t a special creation based on morality.

Rather than give second-hand examples of animal morality, here’s one of mine – first hand. My two companion cats hate each other and will engage in a cat fight at the drop of a proverbial hat. However, no attack will even occur when either cat is eating, sleeping, or using the litter box. Then it’s truce time. In human society it’s considered immoral and cowardly to attack someone when they are sleeping – ditto the cat community. In neither case has that come from God or Biblical teachings or passages. 

To be continued…

Reincarnation: Hatched Again or Forever Dead and Buried?

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes”, so the saying goes, and while much has been written about taxes, death is my topic under consideration here, well a variation on the theme anyway. Reincarnation doesn’t of course cheat death, but it certainly circumnavigates or negates the finality of it. However, reincarnation makes relatively little if any real sense.

If reincarnation is bestowed upon you as a reward or punishment for whatever you did (fill in the blank yourself) in a previous life, the lesson is lost if you have no memory of that past existence(s) or of whatever it was that you did (fill in the blank). Now here I discount the claims of some people that they have lived prior lives and have memories of same. No matter what the merits of reincarnation are (and there are none IMHO), it is impossible to recall past lives. The egg and the sperm from which you were conceived had no past memory of your alleged past lives since they came from individuals not so related to your past existences. So, you started out from the get-go with no memory. A newly conceived embryo (blastula) has no memories. Any and all memories you now have started from that day of conception onwards – full stop*. On top of that, there’s been no absolute hard and fast historical evidence to support any such claims – otherwise reincarnation would be scientific fact, not pseudoscience supposition. It’s rather suspicious that all too often a previous  life or lives includes, against all probability, well known historical figures, like Napoleon, Elvis or JC (Julius Caesar -  presumably, if you believe in the Biblical account, that other JC is alive and kicking in an somewhere elsewhere). The probability, based on sheer numbers, of a previous life or lives, actually favors said life (or lives) being that of a cockroach, or ant, or microbe by odds of billions to one in favor. 

Anyway, the reincarnation mechanism isn’t ever explained other than by resorting to supernatural powers – there’s no known physics or chemistry or biology that could explain reincarnation.

And exactly what is reincarnated?  It’s certainly not anything physical like body shape, sex, or eye color, and it can’t be anything to do with memory, since nearly all of us have no personal you-were-there recall of what happened in say 1812 (AD or BC for that matter).  Do you have the identical personality, emotions, I.Q., etc. as your previous lives did? It’s all too nebulous!

Another thing, if Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or Elvis, or even your not as well known great, great, great Aunt Gertrude were floating around in their afterlives, and you are now ‘they’ reincarnated, you’d think they would have a vested interest in you and might therefore appear to you, keeping you on the straight and narrow  to ensure that when you get reincarnated in turn, your whatever goes to a good family who are about to conceive a child instead of a puppy dog about to drop a litter off!

Of course if your previous lives still exist in an afterlife, then what part of them can actually be in you? Of course maybe there’s no afterlife and somehow Julius Caesars’ essence goes directly into someone else hence someone else, etc. hence Napoleon, hence more people of unknown race, creed, sex and nationality, until we come to Elvis, and you (assuming you were born post Elvis’s demise)!

What if someone is totally obsessed with a particular historical time, event, and/or character, might this be a sign that they, in a previous life, lived in that time period, or participated in that event, or was that character – even if they have no direct memory of same? Methinks not. For example, there are way more individuals, with a lot of time on their hands and with a less than healthy obsession over the RMS Titanic disaster, than there were individuals on the actual ship – obviously not all could be reincarnates of the actual crew and passengers. In fact, there’s more than one individual claiming to be the reincarnation of her captain – a mathematical impossibility.

Then too, some people are equally ultra-fanatical over fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond or Harry Potter. Clearly you can not be the reincarnation of a fictional being! And how many thousands of Star Trek fanatics are out there whose life seems to revolve around that universe?  If it’s impossible to be a reincarnate of a fictional character from the past, then its impossibility squared to be a reincarnate of some literary character depicted as existing in your future.

The upshot is that you can be a person totally immersed in, highly knowledgeable of, or even obsessed to the point of delusion, with something historical, without there being any actual causality connection between the then and the now that one could interpret as reincarnation. Some people just live in fantasy worlds of their own making.

Then there’s the interesting “On the Beach” scenario. The novel (plus film plus made-for-TV remake film) deals with nuclear war. Unfortunately, fallout radiation spreads across and around the entire globe. Everyone is doomed – the plot deals with the waning days of the last few survivors in Australia as the radioactive ‘cloud’ heads their way. The question is, if all of Earth’s billions of people (and other higher animals) all die off, what happens to all those essences in search of something to be reincarnated into? Oops!

To pile on the absurdities, why confine your reincarnation(s) to Planet Earth? Perhaps you’ll be reincarnated as an ET (extraterrestrial) – perhaps you were an ET in a previous life!

No, reincarnation doesn’t make any sense, IMHO.

*When I mentioned this observation to a friend, she immediately suggested that the memory of a past life or lives was due to the implantation of your soul. It’s your soul (assuming there is such a thing) that has the memory.

Actually I was under the impression that it was one soul per person, but maybe not. One soul might be passed down from one person to that person’s reincarnation to that person’s reincarnation for however long the process goes on for. Maybe it’s like in Doctor Who - you only get so many regenerations (or in this case reincarnations).

Anyway, I was also under the impression that the soul is intangible or nebulous – it has no actual substance. The soul isn’t a thing that can be examined in the laboratory and under a microscope. If it has no actual matter/energy substance to it, it can’t store any memories.

Memory has to be something part and parcel of the biochemical’s and biochemistry and associated energy flows that happens in your brain whenever you remember something. Memory is encoded in your brain’s biochemistry. Memory must have some physical substance – it takes mass and energy to store and process memories. Memory can be affected by chemicals and energy. A soul that doesn’t have mass or energy presumably can’t be altered by external influences. So, if your soul contains the memories of your past lives, then no amount of foreign drugs, disease, lack of sleep, the aging process or injury will make you forget past lives because the soul is indestructible. Sorry, but if you have a memory of a past life then I suggest that memory, even though it’s a false or delusional memory, can be affected by physical influences, like drugs, disease, lack of sleep, the aging process or injury.

Prophecy: From Science to Superstition and Beyond

Prophecy tends to be the art or science of predicting events in advance, hence knowing in advance what the future will be or is likely to be. However, the art and the science of prophecy can be drastically in opposition to each other in terms of credibility and success.

Prophecy isn’t all balderdash. I make this prophecy that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning in New York City! I also make this prophecy that New York City will experience at least one thunderstorm between May and September 2011. Further, I’ll make another prophecy that there will be at least one murder in New York City in the month of June, 2011. But, if I make a prediction that aliens will invade New York City in 2011; some New Yorkers will experience the Biblical Rapture in 2011; or that planetary alignments suggest that 90% of couples living in Manhattan will divorce in 2011, well you’d call that balderdash. So, what’s the dividing line between making balderdash prophecy and making sensible predictions?

Scientifically Near Certain: Nothing is absolutely certain except death and taxes, thus the use of the word ‘near’. However, in this case, scientifically ‘near’ certain means 99.99999% certain. Examples of this sort of prophecy are the times of the rising and setting of the Sun, the Moon, the planets and stars; the rise and fall of the tides (time of high and low tides); lunar and solar eclipses decades in advance; and other predictable events of this nature in an ordered and clockwork Universe. There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category. 

Scientifically Predictable (Statistically Probable): Not everything is predictable with near absolute certainty, even in science. Some patterns are a bit too chaotic to yield to absolutes. The classic case is the weather. I’ve known predictions of a 100% chance of rain when not a drop fell! However, that’s very rare. Still, it tends to be a chance of thunderstorms, or this or that. That applies to earthquake predictions and similar events. Science can predict with 100% certainty that you’re going to kick-the-bucket. However, the exact moment in nearly all cases is uncertain.  There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category either. 

Educated Guesswork (But Still Statistically Probable): The shift here tends to be from the physical sciences to the social sciences. I mean predicting the stock market and commodity futures is not an exact science but still something that more often than not you’d better get right if you want to keep your job as a financial advisor! That applies in general to forecasting trends be it forecasting trends for governments, the public sector, or the private sector. There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category either if you get it right, but expect a kick in the behind if you don’t. The general term here that applies is ‘futurology’. 

Prophecy in General: Let’s just say that if you throw enough darts at a dartboard, even blindfolded, sooner or later you’ll hit the bullseye. Now just publicise that, and pat yourself on the back for your skill, but conveniently don’t tell anyone about, and forget about, all the misses! That dartboard scenario, or analogy, just about sums up the bona fides of the soothsaying profession, IMHO.

Now don’t quote me Nostradamus as (an example) of a spot-on soothsayer. His verses are quite vague. Not once does he state explicitly that on such-and-such a date, at such-and-such a place, such-and-such an unexpected event will take place. Many historical events have been, sort of, linked to one or more of his various verses, but always after-the-fact, as in gee-whiz, this event might just about fit if you stretch the meaning of this bit and ignore that bit. Translated, nobody before-the-fact saw a clear cut prophecy of his of the rise of Nazi Germany and Hitler; the assassination of JFK; the Moon landings; the events of 9/11. Of course it all became crystal clear that he indeed foretold those events – it’s obvious to blind Freddy exactly what certain verses meant, but only as interpreted after the events happened. That’s a cheat! It’s a cheat given his after-the-fact track record according to his followers’ is100%; his before-the-fact track record from a more sceptical point of view is 0%.

Personal Prophecy: When it comes down to the nitty-gritty of prophecy, we’re not usually that concerned about predictions of a solar eclipse three decades off; or even the odds that a tornado will hit us next month, or will our portfolio double or half its value over the next week. Acts of God are acts of God and we’re pretty helpless in the face of Mother Nature; portfolios, if you take the long term view, usually deliver the goods. However, we are greatly concerned with the more immediate if mundane things in our day-to-day lives: today’s success, today’s money, today’s health, today’s power, today’s love, today’s whatever, etc.  That’s why you get daily horoscopes (though you can get weekly, monthly and yearly ones too, all equally as vague in that they seem to apply to nearly anyone, anytime).

And so in order to assist our expectations of obtaining the good things in our immediate ‘now’, well wouldn’t it be nice for some powers-that-be to tell us in advance what’s coming on down the track that’s liable to have a bearing on those personal good vs. bad facets? That is, if we knew in advance of the fact, some knowledge that we could use to our advantage to maximise the good and minimise the bad, well who wouldn’t? And so, there’s a flourishing industry in astrology/horoscopes; the reading of tea leaves & chicken entrails; caressing crystal balls; using ouija boards, and any other means to get the inside tract on making today a better day. And with such expectations, like with the dartboard, you’ll tend to remember the rare spot-on bullseye hits, precisely because they are so few and far between. All the misses you easily forget because they’re so common and so prevalent. 

Of course all this sort of personal prophecy is pure nonsense. It’s harmless fun unless you actually base your day-to-day life, behaviour, decision-making, etc. around them. I’m pretty sure that 99% of people, who consult the astrology column in their daily paper, know full well that what they read there is just vague and general so as to have no real practical and specific application to their personal calling-of-the-shots today. It’s a daily 10 second diversion that’s a bit of fun. Still, it’s a rather sad reflection on how nonsensical superstition, even in the enlightened 21^st Century, can still be viable enough for people who know better (but don’t care) to actual earn a living by pulling the wool over the eyes of the great unwashed. But that’s nothing compared to the wool pulling by religion.

End of the World Prophecy: 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. 

There’s one really main problem with end-of-the-world prophecy, and it doesn’t matter a hoot what you’re 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-neigh 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 (see below).

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.

Most end-of-the-world prophecies tend 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 will 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 will be very disappointed when he wakes 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 (i.e. – God or J.C.) 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! 

But say now, what if you absolutely and firmly believed that within three days the entire world was history. What sort of constraints, the kind normal society places on you, would now have an impact? Probably none. I mean if the end was neigh, what constraints would stop you from stealing, rioting, or murder? Well, let’s face facts, there wouldn’t be any. Now, what if a significant percentage of the population believed that? What might happen? Mob rule? Total anarchy? Rioting in the streets? The total breakdown of society and society’s rule of law and order? All that and more? What if you had an absolute dictatorial ruler who believed that? Why wouldn’t that leader, who say hated this other nation for whatever religious or ideological reason(s) decide that’s there’s nothing to lose now by pressing the nuclear button.

Let me repeat – 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 21^st of May 2011 aside, 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. 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.  

Now, to end on a downbeat note, let’s return to scientific prophecy. Our world will end! That’s 100% certain! At the very least it will end when the lifespan of our parent star, the Sun, ends. Just like your car has a limited supply of fuel in its gas tank, so too our Sun has a limited supply of fuel that keeps it burning forever. When the Sun exhausts its fuel, well you can kiss life on Planet Earth goodbye. However, least I scare you into losing a good night’s sleep, that’s still some roughly five billion years in the future, or so modern astronomical prophecy dictates. Even if that’s off by 10%, well that still gives you plenty of time to enjoy the good life, including a good night’s sleep. 

Further reading:

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:

Six More Impossible Biblical Things

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

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 isn’t stated. Instead here are a half-a-dozen more of mine that reside in the La-La, Never-Never Land of the Biblical.

1) One Bible or Multi-Bibles? How can the Bible (let’s say the King James Version) be considered a unified whole when not only are there two testaments that are radically different in tone, but all up it’s been cobbled together with various bits and pieces included and excluded in a totally ad hoc fashion. No two scholarly or Biblical experts will agree on exactly what texts should be THE Bible.

Then too there exists dozens of English language versions of the Bible, from the Good News Translation to the New Living Translation to the American Standard Version to the New American Standard Bible to the Common English Bible to the English Standard Version to the English Standard Version Anglicised, and that’s just for starters.  Then there’s the King James Version, the New King James Version, and the 21^st Century King James Version, not to mention all those other languages the Bible is published in with unavoidable losses and uncertainties that must arise in translations from one language to another. It’s like your favourite novel was amended or tweaked every couple of years. In conclusion, the Bible as one unified word-of-God text is an impossibility to accept.

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

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

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

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

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

3) The Quotable God and Jesus: The Old and New Testaments weren’t written by God and Jesus respectively. 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. Now both God and Jesus are quoted extensively in the Old and New Testaments respectively. Seeing as how nobody had access to tape or other sound recording devices back then, how can exact quotations from these Biblical deities be taken at face value? Perhaps the authors who penned the Biblical chapter and 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 and slander or being quoted out of context. Anyway, the next time your local clergy preaches that “God said” or “Jesus said”, just pipe up with a “hang on 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 JC, 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 impossible in terms of spot-on historical verbatim accuracy.

4) Did Jesus Actually Exist? Then there’s the 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 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. 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, there’s damn little documentation outside of religious texts to support his reality, and all of that was penned many decades after-the-fact.

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

If JC is indeed an historical figure, I suggest that he existed and was seen as a very charismatic character, but 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 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 those White Queen’s impossibilities.

5) Is the End of Days Prophecy Believable? Tea leaves and chicken entrails. He who knows the future controls the world, such is the common theme in sci-fi time travel to the past since once in the past you know the future and can make a killing on the stock market! However, when it comes to the Bible, for all the prophecies therein, and all the prophets that pontificated, there’s only one prophecy that ultimately matters – the end of days, the apocalypse, Armageddon, etc. There are only two points that need to be made here. The first is that 100% of scholars, even the great unwashed reading the Bible, who have predicted the end of the world have got it wrong! 100% is not a trivial percentage!

So, what are you to believe when the next soothsayer comes along and says on such-and-such a date Armageddon will be here? My response would be a swift kick in the privates! The second point, for those who take the Bible literally, is that Jesus told any and all who would listen that there would be those hearing his utterings about the end times that those times would happen within their lifetime. Alas, there is no one alive today who heard Jesus speak, so Christ’s own prophecy has to be graded as an “F”. In short, if you are eagerly awaiting the apocalypse, have a good supply of reading material and DVDs on hand, because it’s going to be a VERY LONG WAIT! It’s just plain impossible for any rational person, given the historical track record, to accept that the ‘end-of-days’ is not only near-and-dear but will happen at all.

6) God’s Policy on Population Growth: God’s not a Greenie or an environmentalist! We all know the passage from Genesis 1:28 (King James Version): It goes something like this: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Now that’s ultimately a Biblical impossibility because it is unsustainable, as should already be bleeding obvious. God may well want more and more and more humans to bow and scrape to Him but at what ultimate cost to the Earth He allegedly created; all those plants and animals He allegedly created; and His ultimate alleged creation, humanity?

Apart from mice and rats (which have a low ecological footprint), there’s probably no wild mammal species still in existence that outnumbers us anymore. There’s something seriously wrong when there’s threatened and endangered species, some species that only now total 500 to maybe (if lucky) 5000 individuals left when humans are seven billion strong and ever accelerating in numbers, especially in Africa. What hope is there for God’s animal creations? We’ve living in an era of mass extinction right now, and we’re the cause. What lifestyle for humans when there’s no more fit air to breathe; no fit water to drink; all natural resources depleted; disease and hunger rampant. God may enjoy all those billions of humans here and now with billions more to come worshiping and praying to Him, but those “fish of the sea” are a fraction of what once was; ditto the “fowl of the air” and ditto, ditto “every living thing” – well, maybe not cockroaches, not yet at least (until they become a food source of last resort and you’d eat them if it were down to a choice of that or starvation – besides they’re rich in protein). Revelation maybe impossible nonsense, though the end of days (for humans) might not be, thanks to Genesis 1:28.

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

Prayers & Miracles: Two Sides of a Nonexistent Coin

We all pray, and usually for miracles! That’s what prayer is ultimately all about. But, does prayer work and do miracles actually happen? The answer, IMHO, is a resounding ‘NO’ in both cases.

Does prayer work? Not a snowball’s chance in Heck – not that there really is a Heck of course. The proof of the pudding is of course, if prayer really worked, there would be a miracle in that we’d all be lotto winners or at least pretty rich and famous! We’d be total successes at our jobs, in our relationships, have perfect partners and perfect children. And our cars wouldn’t break down!  Further, the sun would shine down on us every day of our lives.

Even if we all just prayed for good things in general, not personal things in particular, and if our benevolent prayers really worked, then there would be no disease or suffering or crime or wars, etc. We’d all live in a utopian Camelot. But we don’t! I mean, come every Christmas and Easter, the Pope publicly prays for world peace among other good things. That’s noble of him. But, come next Christmas and Easter, he has to do it all over again! God ignores the Pope! Now if the Pope can’t get results, what hope for the great unwashed? It all seems to be an exercise in total futility to me.

Since a result, that is, world peace (as one of many possible examples), hasn’t happened; it’s obviously not the case, then either God doesn’t exist, or doesn’t answer prayers. If the latter, then God doesn’t give a tinkers damn about us, so why should we give a tinkers damn about Him (again, being traditional and assuming the masculine)? If we don’t give a damn, then God’s existence, or lack of existence, is basically irrelevant.

Think of all those trillions of man-hours (sorry, person-hours) wasted over the centuries by those in pursuit of an illusion – that praying brought results. Do you really think our world today is a better place for all that time, effort and energy? No? Then I say again – what a waste. Further, no scholarly studies ever done on the beneficial results of praying have ever shown that praying works.

If prayer does seem to work at times on a personal level, it’s probably more a case of mind-over-matter, the power of positive thinking, and akin to the placebo pill in medicine. Every now and again, the improbable happens. Just because you prayed for an improbable event doesn’t mean the prayer worked, and therefore that there’s a God who answered it.

Further, as in the case of supposed miracles, prayer validation is also a highly selective bookkeeping exercise in that a hit is documented and displayed for the entire world to see; a miss is never mentioned or discussed.

Quasi related are the buzz words ‘faith’ and ‘ritual’. As far as I can tell, all the faith in the world in a supernatural being isn’t going to heal up a broken leg any faster, or anything in a similar type of basket. You would be hard pressed to provide evidence that having faith yields extra positive results relative to those not having faith. In a similar vein, religions thrive on ritual. Do this at such-and-such a time; don’t do that on such-a-such day of the week; observe this; cross yourself thus, eat (or don’t eat) that at this time; adopt this posture in this situation, etc. Even the military isn’t quite as strict in its rules and regulations (rituals)! Anyway, observing all the rituals part and parcel of a particular religion, in terms of effectiveness, a pathway to the good life doesn’t really seem to get you any extra brownie points. It strikes me as another sociological example of ass-kissing because you are told to kiss ass by authority figures who, I gather, in this case derive said authority from a supernatural being for which there is no evidence. Sorry sheep; it’s all a case of the blind leading the blind.

Having dispatched the power of prayer, here’s my take on the related concept of miracles.

I’d better define exactly what I mean by a miracle, since it buzz word has been so overused, especially in marketing, that it has lost all real meaning. I mean there are miracle detergents, miracle drugs, miracle discoveries, miracle anything and everything. I’ve actually read scientists, who should know better, who use the word ‘miracle’ when they really mean unexpected or against all odds. If you get dealt a royal flush, you’d say it’s a miracle. But it isn’t. There are things that are plausible, possible, probable, and improbable. Then there are things that are downright impossible.  If something considered impossible happens, then it’s a bona fide miracle. A highly improbable event, like being dealt a royal flush, isn’t a miracle. A bona fide miracle would be for an amputated limb to regenerate. No doubt amputees have prayed for such a miracle – alas, it ain’t ever happened.

So my definition of a miracle is an occurrence that goes totally against the grain of any sort of possibility of such a happening, happening. A miracle is only a miracle if the event defies the impossible, not just improbable odds. So, winning the lottery isn’t a miracle because it’s a plausible event. However, there is no medical science that could explain the regeneration of an amputated limb. If such an event happened; absolutely documented, that would be a miracle and considerable evidence for the existence of a supernatural God. A miracle pizza (and I’ve seen them so advertised) isn’t, since it’s possible to create a great tasting pizza!

Take the sum total of all so-called miracles and subtract those events that are unlikely but possible, from those that are absolutely impossible according to modern science. What’s the bona fide residue – zero, zip, and zilch.

So, one of the alleged, albeit in a mysterious way, in which God works, is to answer prayers, and create or oversee miracles. Has there ever been any miracle, anywhere, undisputed and totally accepted by science as factual and unexplainable? If so, science would have bowed to the reality of God long ago. No, I suggest that miracles are either misinterpretations, fabrications, wishful thinking/delusions, sleight-of-hand (magic) or evidence of advanced technology! Dump someone living 4000 years ago into the 21^st Century and no doubt such a person would find most of our civilization a totally miraculous one. Dump us into the 31^st Century and we’d believe in miracles too!

There’s another issue in that if God were all powerful, He wouldn’t need to perform certain miracles. Some miracles seem to be a band-aid solution to a problem that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, if an all powerful, all knowing God had been on His toes as it were. For example, say you go to the doctor Monday morning, and he informs you that you have incurable cancer. Monday night you pray to God to rid you of the affliction. Tuesday morning you find that your cancer has gone! That’s a miracle – well not really since now and a rare again, cancer goes into remission. That aside, wouldn’t it have been easier if God had ensured that your incurable cancer had never have developed in the first place? As to loaves and fishes, it would have been simpler to have ensured an adequate supply of food in the first place! Miracles in such cases I suggest are God’s correction fluid or whiteout! An all knowing, all powerful God wouldn’t need correction or whiteout fluid!

How come you only get medical miracles that defy the improbable odds, instead of beating impossible odds? For example, have any of those unfortunate thalidomide victims ever all of a sudden, overnight say, awakened to find they now have fully functioning limbs instead of stumps? Surely such a miracle is within God’s power – but it ain’t ever happened.

Then there are the show-off (‘wow, look at me, ain’t I something!’) type of miracles that serve no real purpose or don’t imply any ‘oops, I goofed’ scenario – like walking on water. While some miracles totally shatter the laws of physics, like creating something out of nothing, parting bodies of water like the Red Sea, or just plain walking on water (and therefore are relegated to those impossible things one tends to accept before breakfast when you breakfast in fairy-dairy land), many so-called miracles are just improbable happenings that do happen now and again due to pure statistical probabilities. You’ll hear about the miracle where someone was cured of a supposedly incurable illness due to prayer, or someone was found alive in an earthquake induced collapsed building a fortnight after-the-fact or survived that horrific car crash. You don’t hear about the other 9,999 exactly similar cases where the person snuffed it in the natural, probable way of things. IMHO, miracles are an example of highly selective bookkeeping, like only counting the deposits and never the withdrawals, only in the case of miracles, you tick and publicize the hits and ignore and sweep under the carpet the misses.

In conclusion, prayer doesn’t work on any sort of statistically meaningful level; miracles haven’t been documented beyond reasonable doubt by science.

Polytheism Confirmed - By the Bible Itself: Part Two

There are way over 600 of God’s commandments regarding ‘thou shall’ and ‘thou shall not’ or ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ or just plain ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ in the Bible. The top ten are of course the Ten Commandments. And what’s numero uno – number one – “Thou shall have no other gods before me”. That’s God first and foremost concern – “other gods”. In fact to reinforce commandment number one, commandments number two and three are variations on the exact same theme! Wow! As Sherlock Holmes might say, “The game is afoot”.

For a large part of the civilized world, monotheism rules because the Bible says so. Fortunately there are still cultures around with more commonsense and polytheism still rules. I say “more sense” because far from refuting polytheism the Bible confirms it. It’s monotheism that’s a myth.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

NEW TESTAMENT

Though reference to the gods or their gods or other gods, etc. is primarily the providence of the Old Testament, the New Testament does also acknowledge the gods.

*Acts 14:11: And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.

Did we note the plural “gods” and how they have a humanoid appearance?

*Acts 19:35: And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?

Not only is the reality of the Roman goddess Diana (Artemis to the Greeks) noted, one of five such references, but she’s identified as a “great goddess” to boot. Jupiter of course is the Roman equivalent of Zeus, so in fact Zeus is named in a roundabout sort of way. 

*1 Corinthians 8:5: For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)

We note that “there be gods many” – spot on IMHO.

DISCUSSION

One of the other Biblical proofs of the polytheistic pudding is that in the KJV of the Bible, you get 201 times the phrase “God of Israel” that appears. Note that it’s not God of Planet Earth; not God of Egypt nor Africa, not God of Mesopotamia, not God of Europe, not God of the Americas, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth of Nations, or any other geographical region. God is just God of Israel - Full stop. God has His chosen people and they aren’t the Celtics, the Native Americans (Amerindians), the Native Australians (Aborigines), the Aztecs, the Maya, the Incas, the Egyptians, not even the Greeks and Romans. In that context it makes no sense why the descendents of any of these cultures should worship God, because God doesn’t give a damn about them. They ain’t His chosen people. Muslims, and Hindus and Buddhists ain’t His chosen people. Modern Americans are ecstatic in their love of God, but Americans aren’t His chosen people either. 

Now that “God of Israel” bit makes perfect sense in a polytheistic context, because all those other geographical regions have their own ‘God’ – well actually ‘gods’ though there is usually a Big Boss God; the Big Cheese heading the rest of the pantheon of regional deities. It doesn’t take too much knowledge of ancient mythology to note the geographical/regional divisions.

Also interesting is that some versions of the Bible, like the New King James Version (though not the original King James Version) mention Hades in addition to, but apart from Hell. For example:

*Matthew 16:18: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

*Revelation 6:8: “So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”

Now Hades was both a god and a place. Hades was the Greek god of the underworld; the name of that Greek underworld was Hades. And as we see, the New King James Version uses Hades in both contexts.

So monotheism doesn’t exist since God is just one among equals, one among many gods by His own admission. But they don’t sink or swim together for the gods have an independent existence outside Biblical texts whereas God doesn’t, so it’s far easier to dismiss God from the big picture of the collection of all things godly than the multitude of deities. Polytheism rules, O.K.?

But even if you still acknowledge monotheism, well it’s easy to argue that monotheism is also polytheism since there’s a Jewish God, and a Christian God, and a Mormon God, and an Islamic God, etc. Even within the broad Christian church you have many factions (Catholic, Protestant, etc.); therefore you have so many versions of God. In fact if you gather together all the versions of the monotheistic God, you’d have enough Gods for a baseball game with Godly relief pitchers in the bullpen to boot. [Now that would be an interesting confrontation – God of the Jews, no-hit pitching to the .400 cleanup batter, the God of the Muslims!] 

Now you’d think that if there were really just one God, you would firstly have just one Holy Book. There would be no need for the 30 English language versions or editions of the Bible alone, and that’s excluding the Koran. There would be no if, ands or buts about what was to be included or excluded, and no wriggle room for this interpretation vs. that interpretation. In short, one God, one ‘word of God’ one unified belief system – that’s it, no factions. Everything would be crystal clear because God would not want any honest misinterpretations when it came to the bowing and scraping and all those other ritualistic activities He demands.

Secondly, you’d think that if there were really just one, and only one God, well that obviously means there are no other gods, and therefore no need to give constant reference to them in your holy texts since they don’t exist. I mean there’s no Tooth Fairy, no Easter Bunny and no Santa Claus so there’s not any need for the Bible to mention them – and the Bible doesn’t mention them.

Now the documentation for polytheism might be even more impressive were it not for the fact that Christians are fanatics at destroying anything and everything when it comes to non-Christian (polytheistic) cultures. Hardly anything remains of ancient Inca and Aztec texts, including many artefacts, all destroyed, smashed and totally obliterated. And as for that cultural treasure, the Library at Alexandria, it was all torched by the Christian Roman Empire – burn, baby burn in 391 CE. If it’s not Christian in origin then it must be the work of the devil and all works of the devil (i.e. – all things pagan) must be destroyed and the hell with cultural diversity and preservation. You could imagine the outcry if a rampaging mob of atheists stormed the Vatican Library and burned it down, but it’s okay for Christians to do it, all in the name and for the glory of God.  

CONCLUSION: If you believe there is some form of God, be it supernatural (unlikely) or extraterrestrial (way more probable given His home address) and you put some stock in the Bible as highly embellished but still a partly true account of ancient history in a select geographical area, then you need to swallow equally as well, hook, line and sinker, the rest of the pantheons of other cultures from other geographical regions that came before and/or coexisted with what we call today monotheism. If God exists, then too the gods equally exist – the Bible says so.