Christians should all give thanks to Theodosius I


With many competing religions, in 394 BC he finally outlawed them all but Christianity, otherwise all today's Christians would likely be worshipping Mithras. The worship of Mithras was widespread among Roman soldiers, as proven by the large number of areas of worship uncovered where they were stationed throughout the Roman empire. The cults of Mithras and Christ may have shared stories, as both were supposedly born on Dec 25 as sons of God.

Christians are remarkably ignorant of the truth about Christianity, since they get their input from books that were written almost exclusively after 70 AD, so obviously they were either hearsay or outright fabrication. Fabrication (lying) seems likely. For instance, Paul actually lived at the same time as Jesus and wrote some 80000 words himself, but never said anything about Jesus being born of a virgin. Now why would that be? He didn't find that remarkable? Could it be because those who wrote the bible needed to spice it up by including features of other religions? Like of Mithras?

Jesus, as depicted in the bible, never repudiated the old testament, in spite of the many evil exhortations of the OT. Of course not, since that would not have sat too well with the Jews he was trying to convert. He never suggested that it was NOT correct to kill homosexuals, adulterers, rebellious sons, wives who turned out not to be virgins, people who tried to change your religion, as the OT directs. I conclude that he seems to have been somewhat devoid of moral insight.

Nowhere in the NT is there any suggestion that the Ten Commandments, the direct word of God, is perhaps a really sloppy guide to moral behavior. Where does it say women deserve equal rights, that slavery is bad, that people should have freedom of speech and religion, that animals have an intrinsic right to be treated with kindness? A 5 year old could come up with a better set of moral rules. Does a prohibition on graven images or working on the Sabbath really qualify as a moral rule?

Many people claim that you cannot prove that there is no God. That is not true. There is a simple and conclusive proof of the non-existence of the standard concept of God (omnipotent, omniscient, and good). No good creature would stand by and let the most hideous crimes imaginable happen to the most innocent creatures. Such things happen, therefore God does not exist. This is irrefutable, unless you have lost all moral compass. I would hold God to at least the same moral standards as humans and apes, and He fails all tests.

It has been pointed out that if you follow moral rules just because someone is holding a gun to your head, then that is a pretty contemptible thing. And God threatens you either with certain death or eternal torment, so the gun is at your head. The old carrot and stick, Heaven and Hell. But even chimpanzees will die trying to save another chimp from drowning, and the alpha male will ensure that delicacies are shared fairly among the community, and guess what? They didn't need the bible to tell them what was right. I have more respect for them than any Christian who follows rules out of craven fear.

To the extent that any Christian is worthy of life, he is a humanist. He selectively disregards all the evil crap in the bible because it conflicts with his inner sense of what is really right. He construes the evil words to make them fit his innate human sense of right. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?" Well, then "witch" must refer to murderers, or so they say. It is through the highly developed feats of ratiocination that humans possess that they are able to interpret the bible in a way that mitigates its evil. But for those fundamentalists who take the bible literally, watch out. Given the opportunity, and if they could get away with it, they'd kill every non-believer out there to precipitate the second coming.

I leave you with an excerpt from an episode of the Naked Archaeologist, speaking of the supposed reference to Jesus by Josephus. Note that Josephus was a contemporaneous Jewish historian, and is our ONLY confirmation that there even WAS a Jesus of Nazareth outside of the bible:

==============================

This excerpt is from The Naked Archaeologist episode "The Last Man Standing".

As we look at the history of the first century, we find no surviving records, whether Roman or Jewish, that support the accounts of the Christian Bible or the existence of Jesus, except for one: The writings of Josephus. In two passages, Josephus seems to be referring to Jesus of Nazareth. I met with professor Steve Mason to find what exactly Josephus had to say about Jesus.

NA: "Does he mention Jesus? There's a lot of controversy."

SM: "He mentions some 21 guys named Jesus, and one of those he mentions is Jesus of Nazareth. He talks about Jesus in 2 places. The most certain one is not when he's talking about Jesus actually. He's talking about his brother James and he says that he was executed as a lawbreaker and troublemaker. And he says he was the brother of the so-called Christos, the so-called Christ, Jesus."

But if Josephus calls Jesus a so-called Messiah in one instance, in the second instance he seems to have no doubts: "About this time there lived Jesus ... A wise man, if one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people who accepted the truth gladly. He won over many Jews, and many Greeks. He was the Messiah." But as Steve Mason tells me, this passage is controversial.

SM: He almost certainly didn't write that passage. Why? Because he wrote 30 volumes, and he's always talking about how great Judaism is. He never elsewhere mentions a Messiah. He never mentions the _need_ for a Messiah. He doesn't _like_ messianic figures. He does mention a number of people who were kind of quasi-messiahs who attracted large followings. He really, really doesn't like these people. He sees them as troublemakers and kind of demagogues, people who could persuade a large mass of ignorant people to follow them. So he just doesn't like that kind of person. So for him to say of this man, out of the blue, "Oh, by the way, he was the Messiah" -- it makes absolutely no sense.

NA (ruminating): I'm confused. If Josephus didn't write it, who did? Annette Yoshiko Reed (Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton) says its the work of Christian scribes added years later.

AYR: That seems to be a later addition. It's actually pretty clear that it's a later addition. That's important in a different way. It's important because if it weren't for that aspect, we probably wouldn't have the works of Josephus today, because that was one of the things that spurred the Christian transmission of these works over the centuries.

NA: Meaning the scribe who added that line in probably saved Josephus because he made him more important to Christian theology?

AYR: Yes. Yes, I think so.

NA (ruminating): So here's the irony. The fact that Josephus mentioned Jesus caused his words to be preserved by the Church. Had they not altered his writings, Josephus's works would probably have been lost.

NA: So let me get this straight. Josephus is a scoundrel, but we should be happy that he was a scoundrel, because he probably saved all this history for us. And whoever tinkered with Josephus was a faker but we should be happy with him because he probably saved Josephus for us?

AYR: Yeah, in one sense, yeah.

And while the description of Jesus as "The Messiah", attributed to Josephus, seems to be a forgery, the fact is that his writings, and his writings alone, are still the only validation of Jesus as a historical figure.

================== AND SOME PRESIDENTIAL QUOTES ================

"Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian God is a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes; fools and hypocrites. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

"If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear." -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religions." -- George Washington

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession." -- Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis in "Lincoln the Freethinker"

"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them." Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." -- James Madison

"I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe." -- William Howard Taft

"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George Bush #1 (Apparently Mr. Bush does not believe that Jefferson and Lincoln were citizens or patriots.)

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity." -- John Q. Adams

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Treaty of Tripoly, article 11 -- John Q. Adams

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it." -- John Q. Adams

"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed." -- John Q. Adams

"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because of suspected heresy? Remember the Index Expurgato-rius, the Inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter, and the guillotine; and, oh! horrible, the rack! This is as bad, if not worse, than a slow fire. Nor should the Lion's Mouth be forgotten. Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years." -- John Q. Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814, quoted in In God We Trust and 2000 Years of Disbelief

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles." -- John Q. Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?" -- John Q. Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" -- John Q. Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world." -- John Q. Adams, "this awful blashpemy" that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D. Cardi

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it." -- John Q. Adams, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Di

============ AND SOME MARK TWAIN ===========

"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."

"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of."

"There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad." Mark Twain in Eruption

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast" Reflections on Religion, 1906

"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..." "The War Prayer"

"[The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." Mark Twain and the Bible

=============== AND EINSTEIN ============

"As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve." -- Einstein, Autobiographical Notes

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.

"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." -- [Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.]

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." -- [Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997]

"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously." [Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946]

"The idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible." -- [Albert Einstein]

============= AND THE IMMUTABLE OLD TESTAMENT =============

Deuteronomy 22:22: "If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel."

Deuteronomy 21:20-21: "And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

Leviticus 20:13: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

Deuteronomy 13:7-11: "If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying. "Let us go and serve other gods," ... you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God."

=============
.

Quantcast