In Good Conscience

My wife is always pressuring me to go to church.  I reply that if she can find one that actually teaches the truth, I'll tag along, but I can't abide the pure rubbish that constitutes 'christianity', any more than I can stand knee-deep in raw sewage.

Churches are little more than psycho-therapy centers for the terminally brain-washed.  They tell you to 'rejoice' and 'prepare' and listen to the 'good news', but fail miserably at any of it, save for a lot of happy music and show biz.

Admittedly, some of the worst offenders are Texas boys.  Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn and John Hagee all call Texas home.  These filthy rich individuals take tax-free donations and buy massive mansions and private jets with money taken from people who can ill-afford such things.  But that's aside from the real issues.

The first BIG issue is this character called "YHWH", or Yahwah in the Roman alphabet.  If we read the Bible and take it on its face value, Yahweh revealed himself to Moses through the auspices of a burning bush.  The story tells us that before this moment, humans did not know the name of Yahweh.  The revelation to Moses was the first such mention of that name.  Yet, Mesopotamian clay tablets were found in the early 1900s that clearly mention the name of a diety called Yahweh, and the tablets pre-date even the oldest origins of the Old Testment by better than a thousand years.  Obviously, Moses (if he ever existed) was not the first to get this information.

Then, we are asked to believe that Yahweh/God is a loving and generous guy who commands people to kill thousands of other people, tells Abraham to slaughter his first born son, and absolutely loves the smell of burning flesh.  In fact, he likes it so much that it drives Cain to murder Abel because Cain's fruits and vegetables just don't cut it when it comes to pleasing sacrifices.

The book of Exodus is chock-full of rules and regulations on what to kill, how to kill it, how to burn it, and what to do with the leftovers, all in the name of pleasing Yahweh.  We are told explicitly that if Yahweh ain't happy, heads will roll...literally.  There's a whole list of how much of what blood it takes to atone for any given sin.  Oh, and if you should die without atoning for your sins, this loving and caring god will bar-b-que your immortal hide for all eternity for sleeping with your neighbor's wife.

Skipping ahead of the whole 'Moses' argument and the fact that there is no record anywhere on Earth of a people called 'Hebrews', other than the already questionable Bible, we come to Solomon's Temple.

This is a rich one, since that temple plays a big part in the history of the past 2,000 years, and in supposed things to come.  First, the name 'Solomon', or more correctly, sol-amun -- sun-sun god.  Sol, the Latin word for 'sun', and Amun Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun, combined to make a name we know as Solomon.  He commnds the temple to be build a theoretical first time.  It gets torn down.  So, folks rebuild it a few hundred years later.  The Roman tear it down in A.D. 70.  Now the whole world waits breathlessly for a bunch of murdering psychopaths to build it a third time, which will signal the end of the world.

Considering the third-most important mosque in the world sits on the rumored site of the temple, rebuilding it would most probably set off a world war, as muslims everywhere get rightfully pissed off.  That would be akin to tearing down Notre Dame in Paris to build a synagogue.  Not likely to be a peaceful gesture.

And about those Hebrews?  Well, not a single, independent text in all of history records their existence.  Supposedly, they were slaves in Egypt for centuries, yet no Egyptian texts found to date, especially from the period of the imaginary captivity, reveal a slave class of semitic people, especially going by that name or anything like it.

Heck, you'd think that after wandering around the Sanai for forty years, there would be some graffiti or rock scratchings somewhere to the effect of, "Hebrews were here, 800 B.C."  Nope.  And down the slope from Mount Sinai, there are no cracks in the Earth with a golden calf surrounded by thousands of human bones.  And in all that time, no one saw them and wrote their uncle about a large group of people carrying an ark with Chuck Heston leading them.  And no records by the Canaanites bemoaning the full onslaught of a bunch of crazed Hebrews from the desert.

Then there's this character David.  He's the imaginary son of Sol-Amun, and great-granddaddy of Jesus.  Not one single word in all of Western history that mentions this guy, other than the Bible.  Even the Philistines don't record anyone names Goliath, much less the snotty kid with a sling-shot who killed him.  In fact, the name Goliath means 'exile', which doesn't particularly sound like a fearsome giant, but more like a concept type of thing.

These are just some of the long list of things that don't pass the sniff test in the Old Testament, but how about the New?  After all, it has real-life characters that most certainly did exist, even if there is not a single shred of historical evidence for Jesus.

Watch two movies, "Zelig" with Woody Allen, and "Forest Gump," with Tom Hanks.  Now, do you have any reason to believe Zelig and Gump really existed?  There's footage in both films with the fictional characters interacting with historical characters.  So are they true?

Just because the gospels mention Pontius Pilatus and King Herod doesn't make the stories any more true than those two movies.  Herod's records don't mention, even in passing, giving an order to lop off John the Baptist's head or kill all the first-born male babies.  You'd think those events would rate a side-bar in his ciary, right?  "Today, I gave the order to kill all the male babies in town.  Hope I got that King of the Jews."

The records of Herod Agrippa don't mention Jesus, either.  Something to the effect of, "Today, that annoying little man Pontius sent me some trap called Jesus of Nazarieth.  I couldn't be bothered, so sent him back."  Not a word.

Pontius Pilatus, governor of Palestine at the time these events were to have taken place, never once mentions Jesus of Nazareth, despite keeping meticulous records of events in the area.  You'd think he would at least note that the Jews demanded he crucify some guy, even though this guy did not violate Roman law.  "Sent him to Herod, who sent him back PDQ.  Had a long interview with him, which will probably make for a great scene in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in a couple thousand years."

Now, Jesus told a lot of parables as teaching tools.  Well, a good number of them come directly from Buddha.  Pretty much word-for-word.  Makes sense.  Buddha was around a couple of centuries before Jesus, and his life is well-documented by a number of sources.

So, how about that virgin birth-three years teaching-death-resurrection thing?  Taken directly from the life of Vishnu in India, a story close to a thousand years older than the New Testament.  Not to mention Vishnu Krishna sounds an awful lot like Iesu Chistus.  It's also the same initials as Iulius Caesar, another man-god who performed miracles, like healing the blind, etc.  Look it up.

By the way, Caesar in Latin is pronounced "kai-sar," which is the origin of the title Kaisar in German, and Czar in Russian.

If we disassemble the New Testament, what we find is a mish-mash of Buddhism, Vishnu worship, Roman mythology and god-king worship, and Egptian mystery schools, all sprinkled liberally with Jewish practices.  If we wanted to set up a state religion that would encompass all the most popular faiths of the day, this is pretty much what we'd do, too.  Just as modern-day televangelism is nothing more than pop psychology wrapped in religious clap-trap and rock concerts, so we don't outright appear to be worshipping our personal insecurities.

The list could go on endlessly.  There are over 300,000 recognized mis-translations from the Greek to Latin to English.  The oldest versions of the gospels don't really line up with current versions.  The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi scrolls and the Jordanian Codices are all carefully hidden from public view to prevent folks from learning just how far off current practices are from the original texts.

Does this mean there is nothing of value in the books?  Not at all.  Hidden deep within them is a treasure trove of occult information.  Most students of the Bible learn pretty quickly that the real meat is not on the surface, but in the images and allusions that are used.  Thomas Jefferson created the Jefferson Bible, in which he cut up the King James version, threw out the obvious later additions, then rearranged the remainder into something more closely resembling the hidden truths within.  Well worth the read.

If you study the precession of the equinoxes, for example, you'll find that in the past 6,000 years, the sun has passed through Taurus, Aries and Pisces, with Aquarius looming on the horizon.

The Hindus revere cows and the "Hebrews" built a golden calf (Taurus).  Jesus was the Lamb of God and Yahweh loved the smell of burnt goat/lamb (Aries).  The pope wears a fish-hat and the apostles were designated 'fishers of men' (Pisces).  Before the final supper, Jesus told his followers to look for a servant carrying a jar of water (Aquarius).  And what was before Taurus?  Leo...sphinx, lamassu, gryphon.

In fact, the Bible is a store of a large amount of occult information regarding science and mathematics.  However, it is written in coded language for two reasons: first, to prevent the wrong people from gaining the knowledge, and two, to preserve it over vast amounts of time in a form that would be least likely to scrambled.  I mean, if you knew something that took 24,000 years to figure out, you'd want to preserve it and pass it on, right?  Especially if it was handed down by 'gods' from an ealier, more advanced civilization.

If you have the key to deciphering the texts, then there's a rich body of knowledge and ancient learning to be found.  The problem is that it's been buried under thousands of years of theology and dogma and embellishments.  With a little study, though, one can achieve 'gnosis'.