I Have Slipped The Surly Bonds

The one myth that has most bedeviled me for most of my cognitive life is the story of the Tower of Babel.  I use the biblical name for it, but the same or similar story exists in dozens of different forms in dozens of different cultures.  However, the gist of the story is the same in every case.

There is a group of elites, also known as the gods, and there is the rest of humanity.  The gods are in a position of superior technology and able to control and enslave the rest of humanity, and they like it that way.

Humanity, though, has a different view of things.  Through some medium, whether its architecture, economics, science, or whatever, humans were able to come together and challenge the position of the elites.  The Bible puts it this way: humans will be able to do whatever they imagine through the use of the "tower".  Whatever the tower is, it represents mankind's ability to become gods through unified effort.

So what happens?  The gods embark on a decidedly non-religious campaign to scramble and divide humans to prevent them from achieving elite status.  Depending on the version you are reading, the elite split the science, the system of weights and measures, or the languages, thus dividing mankind into warring and irreconcilable factions.

In other words, this is a classic example of 'divide and conquer'.  It is also the playbook by which the contemporary elite continue to keep humanity from uniting in common cause and challenging their exclusive positions as rulers of all.

This is a fascinating phenomenon, because the very tactics and reasoning of the elite has been literally shoved in front of our faces for thousands of years, yet no one seems to get it.  In its simplest form, the Tower of Babel is a story of powerful elites creating conflict among humans in order to prevent them from challenging the status quo.  It is the prototype for the Middle East medling by the West.  It is the foundation of mutually combative religions.  It is the earliest known example of social engineering and psychological warfare.

We see this same tactic restated in Sun Tsu, or Machiavelli, or any of several dozen other thinkers on the topic of social control and manipulation of mass humans.  What's more, this singular event establishes a moral dichotomy between the elites and the rest of us.

By virtue of superior technology, the elite have pounded into our collective mind that they have a separate and superior moral code.  Since they are more advanced, they must also have a higher view of basic moral behavior.  Therefore, humans must adhere to one set of moral standards, while the elites/gods follow another...and theirs is unquestionable because of their superior technology.

At this point, we seem to hit upon the very heart of the problem in the world today.  For us mere mortals, murder is wrong and punishable by draconian methods.  But if you are a member of the elite, then you can slaughter on the most horrendous scales, and it is justifiable because of your higher moral stance.  If you are a mere human, it is wrong and punishable to steal.  Yet, if you are part of the elite, you are justified in helping yourself to the productivity and possessions of whomever you please without recompense. 

The list goes on, but the dichotomy is apparent in every case.  You can't dodge taxes, but the elite can.  You can't get out of speeding tickets, but the elite can.  You can't get a decent education for your kids, but the elite can.  You can't pass on you life's savings to your family, but the elite can.  In every case, might makes right, and we mere mortals are not allowed to question it because the elites live by a different and superior moral code.

Meanwhile, humanity is constantly manipulated to become more and more factionalized.  Whether its religion, economics, rivalries, or wars, we are endlessly steered towards smaller and smaller groups that are mutually exclusive with greater numbers of other groups.

Some examples?  The Batman shooting has set gun-grabbers against gun-owners.  The Chick-fil-A bullshit has set fundmentalist Christians against gay rights groups.  In the Middle East, it's Sunni against Shi'ite, fundamentalists against secularists, democracy against monarchy, male against female.

Support the troops, no matter how egregious their moral transgressions.  The Olympics is nothing but setting nation against nation, with endless accusations or not following the rules in the name of national glory.

All of this strife and division is tailored to any given region.  It is unimportant what the division is.  It is the division itself which serves the elites' purposes.  Whether it's political parties, or who you sleep with, or what name you call your god, the whole purpose is to keep us masses from finding our commonalities and, in doing so, challenging the privileged position of the elite/gods.

Whatever the real story of the Tower of Babel, it is the first recorded use of division and the superior morality argument to subjugate humanity to some self-appointed elite group.  For our part, we play right into it despite having the motive and technique embedded in our favorite holy books.

We are horrified by some drugged-up patsy shooting up a theater full of people, but put him in a uniform and point him at whatever target is dictated to us by the elite and we celebrate the slaughter.

We are angered and indignant when some strung-out junkie breaks into our house and steals some knick-knacks to buy his next fix.  But give that junkie an ID card, some nifty forms and call him an IRS agent, and we'll fork over our hard-earned wealth to him with nary a whimper.

So we've replaced, in our oh-so-advanced society, the gods with the State, but the same playbook is in use.  The State still possesses higher technology and bigger fire-power, so by virtue of that, it must have a superior moral code that we mere mortals cannot question in our miserable and degraded state of being.  So we prance merrily along at the heels of our new gods, doing whatever they bid us while never raising even the most basic moral questions about the acts and motives of our gods.

Might makes right, so we cower behind the State and take pot shots at whatever target it dictates.  We spout off mindless jingoisms like, "My country, love it or leave it."  We "support our troops" and "our athletes", never once asking what part of all that is "ours".  We hate these groups and support those because we are told we must identify with one or another.

The lesson planted in the books in front of our very eyes is that if we put away these rivalries and hold the elite to the same moral code we all believe in, then we could do anything we imagine for ourselves.  We would, in fact, become the elite...the gods.  We would rise above all this bickering crap and turn our attention to far more noble and lofty goals.  Humanity would rise up out of its enshackled squalor and enter a truly Golden Age.

All we have to do is reverse the Tower of Babel.  To do that, we must first understand its true meaning, and how it is burdening our species even now.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred thing
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

== John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Dark Matter, Zombies and Crucifixions

Anyone who quotes the Bible as fact has obviously never read it.

Let's take a look at it scientifically.  If I can prove ANY part of it wrong, then the whole thing is trash.  Works just like a theory in science.  In order to prove the Big Bang true, theoreticians tortured the theory until they finally came to Black Matter.  They needed Dark Matter to prove the gravitational theory of Life, the Universe and Everything.  Needed it.  If gravity couldn't make all that we see, then the whole damn thing was cow patties.  In other words, the whole theory of cosmology, as beat into our brains in the government propaganda factories (schools), absolutely depended on gravity to make it work.

When they couldn't find enough visible matter to make the gravity thing work, then they mathematically created Dark Matter to putty in the gaps.  Without Dark Matter, there was no possible way to make the theory of the Big Bang work.

They went so far as to calculate the shape and distribution of Dark Matter in the area of the Sun.  They came up with theories on how to detect it.  They spent billions of dollars to launch spacecraft to measure the theoretical effects.  They found...nothing.

What they found, based on the motions of all the stars in our area of the galaxy, was that they moved exactly as predicted if they were influenced by the matter we see.  There was no room in the results for Dark Matter.  It didn't exist.  They couldn't tease it out of the data, no matter what they did.

The Big Bang is dead, because in science, if one small part of the theory is wrong, it is all wrong.  In fact, the Big Bang theory has never been proved right in any form of observation anywhere at any time.

Using the same technique, let's look at the Bible...Christian version with New Testament.  In fact, let's use the Aramaic Version in Plain English, Matthew 27:45 on...

45But from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 46And toward the ninth hour Yeshua cried with a loud voice and he said, “Oh God, oh God! Why have you forsaken me?” 47Those people who were standing there, when they had heard, they were saying, “This one has called Elijah.” 48At that moment one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and placed it on a reed and gave a drink to him. 49But the rest were saying, “Let him alone; we shall see if Elijah comes to save him.” 50But Yeshua cried again with a loud voice, and his Spirit departed. 51And at once the curtain entrance of The Temple was ripped in two from top to bottom. The earth was shaken and the rocks were split. 52Tombs were opened, and many bodies of the Saints who were sleeping arose. 53And they came out, and after his resurrection, they entered the Holy City, and they appeared to many. 54And the Centurion and those who were guarding Yeshua, when they saw the quake and those things that happened, they were very afraid, and they said, “Truly, this was The Son of God.”

Now, before I tear this thing apart, let's keep in mind that the era that all this supposedly happened is considered one of the best documented periods in history.  What we know about this time comes from multiple first-hand accounts from multiple sources.  Pontius Pilat was an excellent documentarian, keeping meticulous records of his governership.  The Romans noted everything.  The Jews were absolutely anal about the temple and would have noted the slightest irregularity, including some guy coming in an turning the banksters' tables over.

With that in mind, we read that Yeshua cried out, "O God, o God..."  The next line says that those nearby remarked that he called out to Elijah.  So...which is it?   Did he call God or Elijah?  Does anyone want to argue that God (presumably Yahweh) is the same as Elijah?  Anyone?

At any rate, there would appear to be a solar eclipse or major storm going on, though there's no mention of rain in the narrative.  Then, at 3pm (ninth hour), Yeshua died and at that moment, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two.  Now, the Jews are absolutely nuts about the Temple.  The curtain in discussion separated the forecourt from the Holy of Holies.  It was never to be opened and only crossed by the priests.  Had that curtain, of its own volition, been torn in two, you can be absolutely sure that we'd have multiple records of that incident.

Then, there's this matter of a quake where the rocks split in two.  Not only is there no record of a quake in this era, one that could have split rocks would certainly have made it into the records of multiple sources.  Pilat surely would have made note:

Crucified the King of the Jews today.  Soon as he died, there was an eclipse and earthquake that split all the rocks.  Also, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two and the Jews are hopping mad.  Needless to say, the centurions are scared shitless.  This may have been a bad idea.

This might be enough, but no...it goes on.  The graves opened and the 'saints' rose up.  Not just for a minute or two, which might be explained by the earthquake, but they hung around for three days and then entered the city with the risen Christ.

Now I don't know about you, but if someone died, and at the same time, there was an eclipse, earthquake and dead people came out of their graves and walked around for days, that would be news.  Try this:

Ted Bundy was put to death at 3pm today.  Curiosly, the minute he was declared dead, there was a total eclipse over Florida that hadn't been predicted, a major earthquake that split stones for miles around, the local synagogue reported the curtain being torn in two by itself, and bodies came out of their graves and are still walking around.  Police are investigating.

Scholars and researchers have looked high and low and have yet to uncover a single record along these lines.  So, we can only assume that the whole thing is false.  Furthermore, there is no record of cleaning up the zombies, so we are left to assume that they are all still walking around this very minute.  Seen one lately?

Now, if one little part of the "Infalable Word of God" can be proved false, where does that leave us?  If this is all myth and allegory, I can handle that.  But, it's sold as Gospel Truth.  In fact, we swear to tell the truth on top of that very same Bible.  But if I can take one small part of it and show that it is provably false, then what does that say about the rest?

Even Paul, whose letters are considered the oldest of the New Testament writings, says that the resurrection was spiritual, not literal.  And none of the contemporary Roman, Palestinian or Jewish records document anything that remotely like this particular passage.

There is nothing equivocal about the words.  They state events as fact and don't give any sort of indication that these might be symbolic events.  Furthermore, none of the other three gospels record things quite this dramatic.

In other words, the theory is false.  Sorry.  And let's not get into the fact that the name Yahwah far outdates the oldest claimed date for the Old Testament.  Yet, that name was supposedly revealed to Moses from the Burning Bush.  So either the story is far older than anyone imagines, or it's false.

Then there's Gobekli Tepi in Turkey.  It was discovered in the mid-90s and has been positively dated to 12,000 years ago (10,000BC).  It has carvings that depict an event much like the Great Flood, which would push that event far into the distant past, well beyond the dates of the best Biblical study.

The thinking person is left with two options: throw the whole thing out as complete fantasy, or accept that the events noted are far older than anything we've accepted so far.

In the case of the New Testament, I think we can pretty much assume that it is a mish-mash of myths and legends.  Not that it invalidates the whole thing, but it certainly calls into question the literal veracity of all of it.

The second conclusion is that the Old Testament is far older and much more complex that anything we are taugh in Sunday school.    In any case, it's safe to say that the god of the Old Testament is an immoral and finite being and not worthy of our worship.

Now, having mauled both scientific dogma and religious dogma, where does that leave us?

Easy...free thinking individuals able to see through the piles of bullsh*t that we call culture.  Even more, we are free of the influence of the Powers That Was.  All that remains is to create a new world, based on honesty and truth.

Or we just give up and let the bastards control us.

Tought choice.

Love Thy Neighbor To Death

This week has been particularly difficult.  Not really sure why.

My normal day begins at 3am.  I start with a shot of Goji berry juice and a cup of ginseng coffee.  I read the news in four different languages (English, Spanish, German, Indonesian), write a column, then eat breakfast and off to the office.

For some reason, I've been going to bed at the normal time (8 or 9 pm), but waking up around 5:30a.  Granted, it's been a rather hectic week at the office.  I've edited an average of five large reports and publications a day, compared to the normal three.  But that doesn't explain it.  It's not physically exhausting work.  Just mental gymnastics.  I taught three classes, but those are more fun than work, even though I hate preparing the materials (I may produce my first textbook soon with all the stuff I've created over the past four years).

There was Valentine's Day.  Bought my wife some roses and took her to a nice steak dinner, where I enjoyed a fine wagyu sirloin that melted in my mouth, medium rare sans the usual Indonesian habit of saucing everything.  That also happened to be the fourth anniversary of my arrival in Indonesia.  We enjoyed a couple of delicious and rare gin  and tonics back at the house.  That could only explain one day, though.  And that day, I woke up at my usual 3am.

So what was it that was dragging me down?  Sleeping 10 hours a day is just not my thing, and hasn't been since my wild and wooly late teens/early tweens.

Turns out, after a major round of self-diagnostics, that I was suffering from depression.  But where was it coming from?  I haven't had any major traumas this year (yet).  I've been reasonably productive of late.  I've got my home garden going and repaired some things around the house, got a few chores knocked out, came out of a 28-article writing spree, got a large number of projects completed at the office, and got some social time in.  I even hooked the HDMI output of the computer to the LCD big screen, bought a wireless mouse and keyboard, and started kicking back on the couch to do my research.  It also allowed me to pump my Tcaichovski 1812 Overture through the surround-sound system, which is waaaaay cool!

Maybe it was burn out.  Most writers go through down time.  There comes a point where you just run out of ideas and sit in front of a blank screen.  Other times, you become physically repulsed by the idea of sitting alone in your home office for hours on end cranking out words.  I'm very familiar with this syndrome and I've developed work-arounds over the years.

But this was different.  I had hit a wall where I didn't lack the ideas, just the motivation to do...anything.

Then it struck me.  For the last couple of weeks, I've been researching apocalyptic literature and culture, studying the origin and development of end-times thinking.  The topic had depressed me and taken the wind out of my sails.  Turns out, it is the Yahwist religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) that had T-boned my intellect and left me completely uninterested in my usual quest to change the world.

Studying that stuff is rather interesting, if not eye-opening.  But getting anywhere near it will cause a spell of hopelessness and inaction to fall over you.  It's very dangerous.  I can agree with Marx on at least his point that religion is an opiate of the masses.

When you study scriptures from a dispassionate point of view, as opposed the evangelical numb-nut view, you start to figure out that the Bible was sewn together from several ancient sources.  By the Bible, I include both Old and New Testaments.  If there ever was a real people called Hebrews, they certainly aren't the Jews of today, and most definitely aren't the Zionists.

The Old Testament is a hodge-podge of Egyptian, Babylonian and Mesopotamian mythologies cherry-picked to roughly create a story of these Hebrew folks.  Nearly every word can be traced to far more ancient sources, with a few modifications and additions to hold the teetering mass together.

The New Testament is a stew of Buddhist, Persian and Egyptian stories with some vivid imagination lumped on top.  The parables, miracles, names, symbols, and events all come from older sources.  Buddha, Mithras and Osiris are all strung together to create a character called Jesus, and the name is a combination of Julius (Caesar) and Zeus...Juli-Zeus...Jesus.

The truly evil part of this effort, though, is the Revelation of John the Divine, commonly called Revelations.  This is the key to the spell that has captured billions of people over the last thousand years or so (the early Christians didn't really talk about it, so it must be fairly new).

It wasn't until the last two hundred years or so that all the clap-trap about rapture and physical manifestations of God and complete and utter destruction of Earth came about.  Most of it is attributable to one man, Cyrus Scoffield.

Scoffield was a flim-flam man and convicted felon living in Kansas a while back.  At the behest and funding of a secretive group of Zionist lawyers, he wrote down a bunch of internal references in the Bible to vary events outlined in Revelations, including creating things like the rapture out of whole cloth.  You know his work is all rubbish, because the Oxford Press would never have published his mental masturbations without some high-powered backing.  He was a criminal and ne'er-do-well.  Why on Earth would Oxford give serious consideration to that rubbish without someone(s) in the backgroud green-lighting everything?

Since that point, global events have been carefully choreographed to follow the Scoffield script.  The destruction of the royal houses in WWI, the so-called Holocaust in WWII, the creation of Israel in 1948.  The introduction of bio-metrics and the police state in the latter 20th century through the use of false-flag terrorism.

The whole scenario was created and used by a group of elites to paralyze an entire chunk of the world's population while they installed their happy little global empire.

Here's how it works:

• Get everyone to believe in a Second Coming/End of the World
• Publish and indoctrinate a set of 'signs' that the End Times are coming
• Manipulate world events to make the 'signs' appear
• Make everyone believe that if they are saved, they have a free ride out
• Watch as billions of people sit back and let them do their thing while they wait for the free ride and the appearance of 'god'

It's really diabolical, when you start thinking about it.  But that's not all!

The three Yahwist religions are people much identical.  Judaism, Chistianity and Islam follow more or less the same plot, though the names and events vary slightly.  The really crafty part is that the three are masterful creations for instilling hatred, division and separatism among a bunch of people that or more or less the same.

All three start off with one man wandering into the wilderness alone.  There he communes with some sort of Great Spirit who gives him, and only him, a Great Message for the Masses.  Furthermore, only he and his hand-picked successors have the power and ability to interpret this 'message' for mass consumption.

Now you have a tailor-made means of controlling large numbers of people.  You, the elite, need only brainwash a handful of gullible and greedy idiots, and they in turn will go out and do the dirty work, believing the whole time that they have been chosen by God's messenger to bring the One True Interpretation of some dusty of stories to the world.

The best part is that all three groups have a god that will torture and kill anyone who doesn't follow the inspired interpretation.  This god commands people to slaughter entire civilizations, wipe out cultures and baptize/convert anyone left standing.

All three stories begin with a gory murder and revolting violence.  The Jews watch as all the children in Egypt are killed and Pharoh's army drowned.  The Christians see their god brutally tortured and hung on a tree.  The Muslims follow their prophet into horrific battles to wipe out the infidels.

All three stories tell their followers that no one will believe them and everyone will hate them for their beliefs.  All three are told that once the 'signs' are fulfilled, their god will return in glory and justify everything by showing that they were right the whole time.

The scheme has been so successful, that all three groups have been at each other's throats for centuries, and when they aren't fighting each other, they are on pogroms to wipe out the heretics and blasphemers among their own ranks.  In fact, the whole thing is so devisive that the Jews, Christians and Muslims have all split themselves up into multiple sects believing that only they have the True Interpretation of the stories, and only they have direct lineage to the first man who secretly and solitarily got the first message.

It's all quite clever and humorous, as long as you don't think about all the death and destruction that has been caused by these three stories.

What you end up with are about half the world's population, who all hate each other and are suspicious of anyone not in their little sect.  All of them whole-heartedly believe that they will be proved right after the entire Earth is destroyed and their god comes back to say, "See, I told you so!"  And all three will do absolutely nothing to stop the elite from pulling off their evil plan, because the 'signs' are being fulfilled!

Oh, yeah...when atheism started taking hold back at the turn of the 20th century?  Well, those crafty elites came up with a secular version of the exact same stories, called the UFO Phenomenon.  Basically, aliens created humans and will return to destroy all the wicked ones and take the True Believers off to paradise.  In the meantime, they are kidnapping folks and giving them secret and solitary messages and empowering those folks to go out and spread it to the masses, along with their special interpretation.

Same damn story, same plot, same everything.  Only this time, we don't have something called 'god.'  Now we just have vastly superior lifeforms from 'out there.'

Once I saw through all this crap, I was fresh again.  Today, I vacuumed the window sills and cleaned the windows, re-arranged my office, wrote a column, and got some useful repairs and chores done around the house.  Amazing what can be done when you break this evil and cynical spell that's been cast over the world for so long.  I no longer feel depressed and gloomy!

For those who are still True Believers and refuse to See the Light, then try this mental exercise:  If God appeared to you right now and commanded you to go across the street and murder your neighbor, would you do it?  If the answer is an honest "no", then you are well on your way to a full and complete recovery.

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'.