Religion: A Separate Reality

 

GOD

       According to the words in the Christian Bible, “God” is an invisible force - an all-powerful, creator and ruler of the universe. He is composed of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit melded into a single male deity that is everywhere, knows everything and cannot make a mistake. This deity cares about us and how we conduct ourselves but He has also given us free will to ignore His commands and to separate ourselves from Him. God lives outside the Universe in a distant kingdom called Heaven where angels and humans who have obeyed His commands live only to serve Him in a state of eternal bliss .

     God made Himself invisible to us, meaning that He gave us eyes that could not see Him, and because we cannot see our Creator, we must rely on “holy” men and women to transmit His instructions to us. These instruction can be found in the Holy Bible, ancient Jewish and Greek documents recovered from archaeological sites on the Sinai Peninsula .

 

The Sad Truth about God

 

    Since God truly cares about us and loves us as the Holy Bible says why He does He not spare us the torments of our human existence? Why arrange for us to be born into sin and suffering rather than make us healthy and happy? Since God is all powerful and able to end our suffering anytime He chooses He has shown by His actions that He cannot help us or does not care to. This became quite clear when European Jews, (His chosen people), were forced from their homes and fed to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

    Anyone who reads the daily news can see what little hope there is for peace among the deeply religious. Instead of a universal God we can all agree upon, each individual manufactures a personal god and defends it against the multitude of other rival gods. If there truly was a universal God none of this rivalry would be possible.

    Belief in creator gods and supernatural realms arises out of two impulses - a desire for happiness while alive and hope for an eternal reward after death. Religion promises what it cannot deliver in exchange for the surrender of your mental faculties. If you refuse to surrender a terrible punishment awaits you in hell.

    The story of Adam and Eve is an introduction to a state of mind George Orwell called doublethink. Doublethink is the ability to accept ideas as true that are not compatible. According to the story, God the Father wants Adam and Eve to obey Him even though He created them and had complete control over them at all times. He even tells them they have free will to make choices, but when they exercise this free will in a way He doesn’t like, He unleashes His omnipotent anger against them.

    According to the holy scriptures, after God cursed A&E and all their unborn for their Original Sin of disobedience, only a privileged few were able to communicate with Him. One of the first was the Prophet Abraham who heard God’s voice inside his head ordering him to lay hands upon his son, tie him down to a woodpile and gut him with a sharp knife. At the last minute God changed His mind and sent an angel to stop him, saying “I was only testing your willingness to obey me. We’ll talk more, later.”

    Why Abraham assumed the voice inside his head was the Creator of the universe and not a sign of a synaptic malfunction is a mystery. People say that God works in mysterious ways and perhaps visual and auditory hallucinations is one of them. But the most important question is why God would choose a desert tribe schizophrenic for a test when He already knows what He is trying to find out?

   Later, one of God’s chosen, called Moses, received two carved stone tablets from a burning bush on a mountain side. The tablets contained The Ten Commandments beginning with the command “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me.”

    Stop for a moment and wonder what God the Father meant by “strange”. Does this mean that  gods unknown to Him can arise that were not part of His plan? Does this also mean that Almighty God, who lives and reigns from His heavenly Kingdom of perfect happiness surrounded by worshiping angels and saints is needy and jealous? Could this God have made Himself the center of attention and become upset and angry when He doesn’t get it?

Another need that God has is money. Religious radicals, in service to Allah use faith based charities as cover to purchase weapons to kill the infidels. If Allah is all powerful why doesn’t He kill infidels Himself without asking for money and hiring people to get the job done?

        In the Catholic tradition, theologians are referred to as “defenders of the faith.” We need experts in defending belief in God because without belief people could easily forget God is in charge. So this is what I think happened. The ancient documents found in caves and tombs in the Holy Land contain the beliefs of people that lived long ago within their tribal cultures. They had no antibiotics, no refrigeration, no wifi, no electricity, no science, no rapid transit and no pictures of the universe from the Hubble telescope. What they had was their tribal traditions and ancient, sacred texts (Jewish and Greek) preserved from earlier times.

   Journalists and scribes who lived in this Holy Land of long ago recorded on parchment a record of their daily lives. They kept scrolls on property titles, taxes, rules of government, religious dogma, local news, and literature. Scrolls that were not lost to tribal warfare and grave robbing passed into the hands of their descendants who determined which were important and which should be discarded.

  As time passed, the scrolls that contained the earliest attempts to explain the mysteries of the universe must have been greeted with excitement by each new generations of seekers. Since they did not know the answers to the truly important mysteries, they believed these ancient writings must contain the answers. After all they were written in an ancient script with such wisdom and elegance that it seemed unlikely that ordinary men had written them. They decided that a supremely wise and powerful entity they named “Yahweh” had channeled the details of His Divine work through these holy men.

    Then, one day something incredible happened. A carpenter from Galilee appeared with the radical message “love your enemies” and before long rumors of a virgin birth, the transformation of water into wine, walking on water, bringing the dead back to life, and finally crucifixion, resurrection and ascension into heaven, spread across the land. The story bore remarkably similarities to the ancient stories of earlier times. In fact, supporters began to search through ancient records for clues that would tie the new messiah to earlier prophets and prophecies.

     The centuries long research project produced enough material to create an anthology they could have titled “The Dead Sea Scrolls". Instead they named it “The HolyBible” and eventually declared it to be the sacred word of God, the Creator of the Universe.

      Every Christmas, Santa Clause (a popular mythical character) leaves the north pole in a red suit, drives a sleigh of eight flying reindeer and slides down chimneys delivering presents to obedient children. Proof thatSanta exists can be found everywhere in books, Christmas cards, shopping centers,  newspapers, and even on the evening news. Through the same process, proof thatGod exists can be found in mainstream media, on the Internet and on countless signs along rural highways in the bible belt. We know God is real because people living in the desert said so, and we repeat it over and over to ourselves and to our children until it becomes ... true.

    Two thousand years have passed since Jesus promised to return in glory to gather up the faithful, instead, he floated up into the sky and we haven’t seen him since.

    Despite preachments, miracles, and numerous references to his Father in heaven, nothing much changed after the son of man return to his magic Kingdom in the sky. The poor to whom Jesus offered his love and blessing continued to suffer, the early Christians that believed in the preachments and the reward awaiting them hid from the Romans, until all of the apostles but one were killed for preaching heresy. In the meantime Saul of Tarsus, a known epileptic, was on his way to Damascus to collect a fresh load of captured Christians when he suffered a possible stroke or seizure that knocked him off his horse and a blinding light dazzled him along with a voice that said “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

    Christians believe this “road to Damascus” event is proof of Divine Intervention. Some reports say that those accompanying him also heard the voice but saw no blinding light which casts doubt on the possibility that Saul was having an epileptic seizure. Even so, this event only reveals the absence of serious intent on Gods part to end human suffering. Instead it only saved the new religion from imminent collapse since Saul, or Saint Paul as we know him went on to promote his own version of Christianity.

    Here’s an interesting idea. Did Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and the second person of the Holy Trinity orchestrate His own arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection? He could have. Did Jesus order Judas, his closest friend to betray him? He could have. Did Judas commit suicide because he was forced to obey his beloved master’s instruction? It’s possible.

    Which version of the Passion do you prefer? Should it be poor, helpless Jesus forced to endure agonizing pain and death in submission to his Father’s Will because of our sins (as in Mel Gibson’s torture movie) or, an alternative version, that says “I and my Father are one”, and “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. These are extremely provocative statements made by Jesus to his followers that nearly got him stoned for committing blasphemy. If what he said is true then Jesus had full knowledge of what he was doing right up to the end and he did it deliberately.

   This is why the “Gospel of Judas” was rejected by church authorities from inclusion in the bible. It gives Jesus too much credit.

    Most bible scholars today agree that the story of Jesus began through word of mouth. Later these oral accounts were written down and organized into proto-gospels. In the final stage of writing they became completed Gospels in many versions. In c.185  Irenaeus, the Catholic Bishop of Lyon in France, denounced the numerous Gnostic Gospels in circulation and insisted on only four. These four gospels were written by more than one person but Irenaeus chose to name them “Mathew”, “Mark”, “Luke” and “John” a choice that reflected his love for the number four as in “the four pillars of the church”. The gospel he named “Mark” was written first and the others, Mathew, Luke, and John were derived from Mark and written later.

How Bronze Age Beliefs Became the “Word of God”

 

900 BCE - The first written documents began to appear containing the early attempts by Greek and Hebrew thinkers to explain the mystery of human existence.

First Century AD -A convention of rabbis held at Jamnia (Yavne) in Palestine organized a collection of these Hebrew and Greek documents and agreed to title themHoly Scriptures.

Fourth Century AD - Members of the Catholic Council assembled in Carthage to decide which documents to keep and which to drop. The losers included the popular “Gospel of St. Thomas”.

Sixteenth Century AD  The final version of the Holy Scriptures came into print under Robert Barker, the King's Printer, entitled The King James Bible - an elegant, yet often inaccurate translation of the Catholic Council’s official offering to the world.

Nineteenth Century - Christian zealots were so impressed by the KJB they decide to elevate the collection from holy scripture (man made) to “The Word of God” (God made) referring  specifically to the Christian God - the Creator of the Universe.

     Despite the best efforts of Christian zealots to convert the ignorant, the Bible today remains an ordinary book written and published like any other book on the market. Anyone who applies simple observation and common sense can see this it true, and still faith-based groups who use it to boost their authority do not agree. They believe there is only one God (theirs) and He channeled His Divine Thoughts through carefully chosen prophets and scribes. It is inconceivable to them that the human brain could have produced the words found in this book.

 

Why The Story of Genesis Cannot Be True

 

    As a little boy I attended a Catholic Parochial school and memorized Catholic doctrine from a bible-based booklet called “The Baltimore Catechism” which opened with the story of Genesis, which, in Greek meant, “origin” - the origin of man.

   The story of Genesis written by the Prophet Moses explains how our species first appeared through the magic power of an invisible “God”. The Catechism explained that God was a “king” who reigned over the earth from his heavenly kingdom in the sky. Later, when I became more interested I discovered that God bore a curious resemblance to the Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods that mysteriously faded away when the empires that supported them declined. Some experts believe that Genesis was written as an early attempt to explain how the universe came into existence, but others who have  greater faith insist that dust can become a human being, a man’s rib can become a woman and a fallen angel disguised as a talking snake can persuade a female primate to bite into a poison apple.

   Even after years of  indoctrination, it is still possible for some of us to notice that God often behaves in ways that that are stupid and cruel. First He creates Adam and Eve (the first humans) who live in a world of total beauty and perfection. Then He introduces free will, which ruins everything and gets them thrown out. Why would He do this?

Faith says. “God wanted to test them.”

Reason says: “If He created them and knows everything about them why does He need to test them?”

Faith: “He has reasons for doing what He does that are beyond our comprehension. We shouldn’t pretend to understand the mind of God.”

Reason: “The mind of God is a matter of public record. God’s Plan for the World is broadcast every day in the daily news and through historical documents and geological evidence dating back to the beginning of time.” Further, if this evidence is not God’s Plan then whose plan is it?

    The Catechism reads that God created Heaven and Earth, then filled Heaven with winged primates called angels to worship and serve Him for eternity. These angels hadfree will which allowed them to examine their situation, and find reasons to complain. A struggle for power ensued which resulted in defeat and banishment for the rebellious angels into a fiery pit called Hell. But if truth be told, God wasn’t threatened at all by the rebellion because He allowed His fallen angels (which He transformed into devils and demons) to leave the fiery pit and wander upon the earth looking for new recruits.

      This bit of folklore should have remained in the fairy tale section of the children’s library  unfortunately, the people who translated and published it as absolute truth for children to learn were either crazy, fraudulent ... or just plain stupid.

     The inconsistencies alone in the narrative are a dead giveaway that the story of Genesis is fiction. A superior intellect of infinite intelligence, love and compassion would play the mean trick on His children that is described in Genesis.

      The contradictions in the storyline also prove that this Hebrew God Yahweh, (a) never intended to create a perfect world or (b) that the God described in this book is a fake.

 

The Legend of Jesus

 

    The Catechism reads that Jesus is on a mission to free us from a curse his Father in Heaven placed on our species for exercising free will. This happened with a little help from God’s favorite fallen angel now called Satan (whom He also created with free will.)

    The Catechism explains that Jesus is actually God the Father in human form who takes orders from Himself in Heaven. His mission is to baptize his creations by submerging them in water and declaring them free of the curse He placed upon them a long time ago for something they didn’t do. Jesus’ job is made easier if his creations believe the curse is real and that he has the power to remove it.

     A wise person might wonder why God the Father would go through all this trouble when He can easily make the necessary changes to His creation whenever He wishes. If God is so bound by His own actions that He must embark on a suicide mission to undo what He did, what does this say about God?

    The forced memorization of the Catechism by children before they reach the age of reason forces tribal beliefs deep into the brain which can later result in a conflict between direct experience and faith. If faith becomes more important than direct experience it could lead to a neurological breakdown in which intelligent, well educated, and highly motivated adults can resort to violence, and make theend times described inRevelationsinto an actual event. The zealous commitment to the Rapture, could lead to a mass suicide driven by nothing more than wishful thinking. To prevent this from happening and permit the practical business of daily life to continue, most people keep a portion of the brain running on common sense and a separate compartment for religious dogma.

 

The Future of Religion

 

    Throughout history, belief in a god or gods has always been a popular activity that defies reason. No evidence is necessary to make the belief true - only a need to escape from the pain and fear of an unhappy and meaningless existence. Can you blame people for pursuing the supernatural?

  I think religion is built into our genetic code. From the moment we are born we need parents to guide us and love us. We want someone to be in charge of us - to tell us what to do and punish us when we disobey. Religion promises this but to do so it must first take away your independence. If you want the Boss to offer His protection you must do what the Boss says.

  The Boss that we call God The Father is a mighty king who reigns over us from his throne in Heaven. If we can agree on that then we can move on to the things we want from God and the things that God wants from us.

1.God wants us to love and worship Him alone and no others, even if He isn’t there.

2.God needs money from us to build churches, mosques and temples so we can worship Him.

3. God commands us to love and not murder other human beings except for people He wants persecuted and killed such as Jews, women, gays, infidels and atheists.

4. God cares about us but sends disease, starvation, war and natural disasters (acts of God) to test our faith. Hellfire and damnation await those who fail.

    The idea that an infinitely powerful, omniscient deity that can form gravity fields and star systems needs love from microscopic primates living on a speck of dust in a far away galaxy is hard to believe. Even so, most people who are deeply religious are convinced they have a personal relationship with such a deity.

   The trouble began long ago when people of faith decided to replace the word “Nature”, a unified (female) process, with the word God a separated (male) process. The idea of separation whether real or imaginary broke the connection we had with Nature and forced us to connect with an imaginary god we invented.

     Some people simply enjoy the social contact that congregations offers without getting mixed up with the dogma that evangelicals and fundamentalists favor .  These preachments differ in their content yet all claim to be the Boss’s words. It would make more sense to me if The Boss delivered His own message in person, instead of delivering it to an isolated tribe living in Bronze Age Palestine.

      I think it is a lack of  faith that sends people into the streets with signs defending God. Since when does God need defenders? He’s omnipotent, remember? Doesn’t this prove that people are defending their own egocentric version of an imaginary god and not the real thing?

      After God gifted Adam and Eve with Free Will, bad things began to happen, so bad in fact, that God had to insert Himself into the womb of a virgin named Mary and emerge as His own Son, Jesus of Nazareth to begin His Fathers business. Unfortunately after only two years of telling people how to live their lives, He made beloved enemies of the authorities for stirring up the people and was arrested, tortured and murdered. But after that He miraculously rose from the dead and later floated up into the sky to rejoin Himself in His magic kingdom (which He claims is “within you”). However, before He left He promised to return in glory (when everyone was ready to receive Him) even though, in His own words “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

     Meanwhile, the fallen angel, Lucifer, whom the Hebrews renamed Satan (the adversary), had also received a fatal dose of Free Will which led to his downfall and banishment into the fiery pit of Hell. For reasons which only God could explain, Satan and his fellow conspirators did not remain there for long, indeed, they roamed freely among human beings tempting them to disobey God so He could throw them into the fiery pit also. Is it possible that Satan was both God’s perfect angel and loyal opposition and had to do whatever God said? After all, God is omnipotent and cannot make a mistake because if He does make a mistake He can’t be God.

    If I constantly fill my head with Old Testament scripture that promotes slavery, genocide, and female oppression how can I also support a constitutional democracy? Its obvious that God does not want me to be happy. If He wanted me to be happy He would include jokes and funny tricks in the Bible to make me laugh? Does He do this? No.

      Regardless of what people say, the Holy Bible is not the best or the only source of truth. No matter what the smiley, friendly folks say, holy scripture is not compatible with happiness, scientific evidence, reason, or personal freedom. It is written by men that lived in bronze age tribal societies with no access to the knowledge we now have. These prophets and scribe did their best to explain the mysteries of the universe using their imaginations and keeping records of their beliefs. They constructed an imaginary superman, a Supreme Monarch, a “King of Kings” that lives in a distant kingdom from which He rules over humanity and appoints “prophets” to transmit His instruction to His people. - It was merely a “supernatural” extension of the governing program they already lived under.

Because their eyes could not see God directly, the authors of sacred scripture in The Old Testament made up stories to lend support to their beliefs. These mythical stories are fun to read but not compatible with the world that we live in.

      If you consider the giant spinning magnets at Niagara Falls designed by Nikola Tesla in 1895 that supplies thousands of homes with hydroelectric power by grabbing invisible particles from the air and forcing them down a wire, then you can be pretty certain such particles exist.

      The Hebrew scribes could not see their god Yahweh but they could see natural forces so they decided with no evidence to back it up that Yahweh must be controlling natural forces. It was important for Yahweh to be above Nature because they could not control nature and Yahweh could. However, they could not see Yahweh becoming living structures like clouds, plants, cells and nerve fibers or understand that nerve fibers produce the sensory experience we call reality.  Unlike energy, Yahweh remained separate from his creations.

Lightning bolts and wireless communication prove that we live in an electrical energy field that powers our household appliances and allows us to transmit and receive information through space. This same energy also creates us and sustains us as living bodies. Cut off this energy from the body and we die.

 

Summary

 

1.  The Bible is tribal thinking in print. It is not rational, logical or consistent in its teachings but we know the Bible is true because it says so.

2.  Since God is all powerful He can create a perfect world at any time - but he chooses not to.

3.  Since God is all knowing He has no need to test His creations, but He tests them anyway.

4.  If God is everywhere He knows exactly where evil exists at all times but does almost nothing to stop it.

5.  If God is good then He would not place the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden and He would not allow His fallen angel from hell to enter the garden to tempt Eve to take a bite of its forbidden fruit.

6.  The Christian Bible is a human document written by men, not God.

7.  The Bible is like any other book. It is a mixture of fact and fiction. Some of it is true and some of it is fiction.

8.  Human morality is built into us and not derived from God. The God in the Bible does not support the American way of life or its legal system. There is no mention of constitutional democracy or personal freedom in holy scripture - only ancient tribal law.

9.  The main reason to doubt the existence of the Christian God, or any god, is the absence of evidence. The historical record reveals only a graveyard of dead civilizations and their dead gods. Each new god that appeared followed the same pattern of failure, neglect, and cruel indifference.

9.   Jesus is imaginary. He exists only in pictures, statues, and holy scripture. He is not a real person and he is not coming back. Leave Jesus alone

10.  You cannot defend God. If God is all powerful He does not need you to defend Him.If you try to defend God you are saying you do not believe in God. So leave God alone.

11.  Why did I give up on religion? Because its nonsense.

12. What happens if you stop believing in God? Nothing happens.

 

 

James Wiley

3/8/22

San Anselmo CA