Archive for May, 2010

The Backside of God

Posted in Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, history, humanity, life, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on May 28, 2010 by chouck017894

In the magic show atmosphere that prevails in most biblical accounts, that which is imaginatively disguised is often some creative principle of life manifestation.  In the book of Exodus, for example, there is presented a curious conversation between Moses and God in which God tells Moses, “…Thou canst not see my face…” but “…thou shalt see my back parts…”  (Exodus 33:20-23).  We may, perhaps, safely assume that God did not moon Moses, but that the priest-authors of this myth used sacred language to relay ancient scientific knowledge that was not comprehensible to the ordinary masses.  The mythical Moses could never witness God’s front parts for the simple reason that Moses is a personification of primal energy development up to the pass over point where energy activates as matter manifestation.  Moses represents primal energy movement after its inaugurate phase.  It then passes through the first  four developmental stages (disguised as 40 years), which sacred language always refers to as the “wilderness.”  In more ancient teachings this pre-matter energy activity was referred to as involution—where primal energies involve.  The face or front parts of God alluded to in the tale are the energy developments after primal energies have involved sufficiently to initiate manifestation (or pass over) as a dense matter event.  This resultant evolutionary side (or front side) of God (the Life Principle) is not observable in the process of involution.  The secret in this presentation is that Moses himself represent the backside of God!

What this peculiar Exodus scene attests to is that advanced knowledge had once been taught in distant antiquity in regard to how primal energies interact in the Creation process and how energy becomes matter.  But due to worldwide catastrophic events, that knowledge had survived among only a few.  Attempts to provide insight into the process of matter manifestation was a serious commitment for early teachers, but over time that knowledge became submerged in myths in an anxious attempt to make it at least somewhat comprehensible to the unschooled.  Unfortunately, the greater scientific  implications became lost even to those who would follow and teach from the adaptation.  And the biblical version of “history” evolved from that means of interpretation.

The story elements of Exodus, however, show that the character of Moses was intended to represent symbolically (personify) the energy-action of what may be termed the Life Principle within the dimensions of involution up to the transformation of pre-physical energies into structures of physical matter.  This is also the reason why Moses had to die just when he reached the point where he was in sight of the “Promised Land.”  Being representative of the elemental energy conditions in the Creation process, Moses could not proceed further than the edge of the energy plane where primal energies coalesce and become dense matter forms.

Another clue  to the hidden meaning in the Moses myth is in regard to the Mount upon which Moses  is alleged to have played out his final scene.  The name of the Mount is taken directly from the Babylonian god Nebo who was revered as the god who “announces the fate of humankind,” and “the upholder of the world,” and “the opener of the ears of understanding.”  As the prophet-god of the Babylonians, Nebo was presented as beholder of that which was destined to be, which is imitated with Moses beholding the Promised Land.

One more curiosity:  The name Moses carries the numerical value of 345, and the numerical value of Jehovah is 543.  This slyly confirms, as noted here earlier, that Moses himself represents the backside of God.

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The Theory of God

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, culture, faith, freethought, humanity, life, logic, random, religion, secularism, thoughts with tags , , , on May 25, 2010 by chouck017894

For many millennia apprehensive seekers have theorized the existence of God as an intellectual being and credited him with the creation of everything.  From the most primitive of times it has been routine for the god-theorists to exploit that hypothesis as the certification of their executive status.  In that capacity the self-blessed executives exercised religious/political authority over the docile, less imaginative multitude.  However, as humankind has evolved through the last couple of centuries with the technological ability to uncover the basic principles at work as Creation, there still has been no confirmation of an omniscient being having initiated it all.  It should not be considered disrespectful for humankind to use its evolved intellect to seek a definitive testimonial as to the theorized existence of a Supreme Being who is claimed to play the central role in the creation and operation of the universe, and in the continuance of human lives.  A theory, no matter how ego-gratifying, is something that lacks verification. 

Consider: a theory is the systematic organization of things observed and which seem applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances; especially a system of assumptions regarding principles and rules of procedure that have been devised to analyze, predict or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a given set of phenomenon.  A hypothesis is an assertion that is subject to verification or proof; a proposition accepted as a basis of reasoning; a premise from which a conclusion is drawn; a conjecture that accounts for a set of beliefs that are yet to be undisputedly proven.

Through many millennia the more reality-based seekers have studied the heavens (astronomy), the physical attributes of animate creatures (biology), the soil levels of Earth (geology), and even the interaction between energy and matter (physics) seeking evidence, regardless how meager, that a Creator-being exists.  Not only have these labors failed to find clues that might support such a theory, but their attention to details has openly confirmed that the energy manifestation which is spoken of as Creation was not a process that occurred by some predetermined design.  Indeed, their research demonstrates that the universe and everything in it trundles along as a self-amassed energy involvement. 

Genuine wisdom suggests that humanity would be much more morally advanced by embracing rationality rather than ego-gratifying pretense of exclusiveness with some unproven supernatural being that is at the heart of religious posturing.  Near-divine potential could be accomplished throughout the human adventure by simply recognizing that tolerance extended to the extensive diversity of energy manifestations would diminish the bulk of mankind’s painful conflicts.  The secret for experiencing such a secular heavenly state is to simply abandon the religion-taught habit of searching for personal meaning an a faraway external supernatural entity and direct attention properly to finding your internal connection with the universe.

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Fundamentalism, An Ungodly Fixation

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, history, humanity, life, Middle Ages,, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , on May 16, 2010 by chouck017894

Back in the Middle Ages the Crusades became the big religious pastime in European circles.  Christians were called by Catholic fundamentalists to mount an offensive drive against the evil “Moors,” and the unquestioning believers dutifully sallied forth to slay hundreds of thousands of “heretics” for the glory of god.  In the 1800s the popular sport of the British Protestant fundamentalists was to indulge themselves in terrorism against the Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland.  More recently, when Iran was taken over by Muslim fundamentalists in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, thousands of unbelievers were heartlessly killed.  In India on October 31,1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot to death by a Sikh fundamentalist.  The Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot to death in 1995 by a Jewish fundamentalist.  And in our present-day epidemic of that mental affliction, one brand of Muslim fundamentalism indulges itself in the hit-or-miss slaughtering anywhere of anyone whom they regard as an infidel.

In the United States today the fever of Christian fundamentalism has managed to infect and pervert the workings of democracy.  As usual with any fundamentalists, the delusions of righteousness and holy exclusiveness that they suffer is detectable by their addiction to unclean hatreds.  In the affliction of fundamentalism it is not really their specific faith that is at fault; it is the delusion that they and they alone know what is true and right in the sight of god.  In their fever they fail to recognize that the “truths” they credit to god are actually ego judgments fashioned by man’s fear of the unknown.  Ego does not like any contrariness, and once ego fashions an emotional fortress (faith) around itself, it will rarely respond to rational examination. 

Karl Marx made the insightful observation that religion is the opiate of the masses.  As with drug addiction, the quest of the religious fundies is the feel-good high they get from their indulgence.  And they will defend without scruples that indulgence of “faith” against any rational examination.  The lust for god’s imagined favoritism commonly drives them into unholy behavior such as name-calling, half-truths, outright lying, and even killing anyone considered a threat to their imagined spiritual status.  So contaminated are they that they cannot see their spiritual insincerity when they judge other people to be “lost,” “devil’s advocate,” or “demon possessed” and unconcernedly go about disrupting every facet of social structure for the majority.  They never explain why god, if he is omniscient, has to rely on them to clean up the spiritual confusion in regard to himself. 

Fundamental Christians hold that the Bible is man’s sole authority.  This is despite the many contradictions that the narrative collection holds.  There is a fact that would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic, but the average fundamentalists have not and do not actually read the Bible themselves—it is so much easier to listen to some overzealous interpreter who cherry picks verses from the “good book” to inflame others with their unfounded concepts.  The common response to weaving out-of-context verses into emotional rhetoric is to focus on some  imagined revulsion that god finds within the intentional diversity of life that he is said to have created.  Hatred for the differences that make up life is so easy to arouse, and accusation of others indulging in sin are so easy to assert—especially if any of those “sins” are not one of their own favorites.  Such pretense of uptight “faith” may give each other a sense of exclusivity, but it does not fool the power that creates.  And that attitude certainly was not a message in anything that Jesus is portrayed as having taught.  Indeed, Jesus was depicted as actually standing up to the fundamentalists of his day.  He was radical in that he praised compassion, forgiveness, and being non-judgmental.  In the book of Matthew, for example, Jesus even commented on fundamentalists.  It might be wise if the fundamentalists of today would abandon their self-centeredness and actually read the book they claim to live by.  Of the fundamentalists Jesus is quoted as referring to them as “…whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”

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Choosing What Was to be Believed

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, history, Inspiration, random, religion, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 11, 2010 by chouck017894

For those who choose to believe that every word in the Bible is inviolable, the only thing that they prove by that stance is that they ignore how it was compiled by a cut-and-paste method.  Most of the writings that are known as the New Testament were established by canon sometime after 200 CE.  In this process the “fathers” of Christianity were highly selective in the choices of their scriptural literature, often rejecting some parts within a literary work of even rejecting complete works of the same general tone.  This gathering of materials took place to set up the politics to be structured into their faith system and it required careful pruning and rejection of many literary works that were in use among the outlying cults of the movement that were springing up throughout the Roman Empire.  The “fathers,” in their zeal to impose a management system upon as many seekers as possible, indulged themselves in a pick-and-choose orgy of various literary works that often proved to be overly contradictory.

With politics of the struggling faith system always in the back of their minds the “fathers” therefore found the Gospel of John to be tolerable but cast aside similar works such as The Dialogue of Thomas.  They favored the Gospel of John because it happened to be written in such a manner that it could be utilized (read altered) to promote certain policies for an authoritarian structure that the “fathers” favored.  Gnostic-like works such as the Dialogue of Thomas and similar works encompassed a much broader or freer acceptance of religious practice than the power-seeking “fathers” preferred.  The “fathers” wanted the people to become totally reliant upon the dictates of the church representatives.  If seekers believed that one could approach the power that was personified as God only through his son-agent, and the church was the son’s representative, then the church had to be obeyed. 

Thus the literary works that were not rejected survived the selection process simply because the chosen works served the political need of the newly emerging authority-seeking priest class.  The shapers of the rudimentary Christian cult followed the example of the priest authors that had been devoted to Yahweh in the 7th century BCE in Jerusalem and who understood that the basic institutional structure of their religion had to have the apparent support of “authorized” scriptures. 

The political platform upon which episcopal authroity (church government) campaigned and overran the more natural and honest relgions at that time was the insistence that each person had to have a means beyond their own personal power to approach the creative primacy that was/is personified as “God.”  In this way the concept of personal integrity being the means of achieving “salvation” shifted into a totally churchy matter and no longer a personal affair between a seeker and their Creator.  This irrational intrusion of having the church thrust between a seeker and the Absolute had to carry the appearance of being divinely ordained if it was to become an influencing factor over the masses.   And this is what accounts for the selection of Gospels that have been held out to Christians for nearly 2000 years as being God’s singularly approved pathway to heaven.  It was not simply coincidence that those painstakingly selected literary works allowed for the souls of the seekers to held hostage as a means of financial resources and political muscle for the church wheeler-dealers.

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Summer Solstice and Religious Myths

Posted in agnoticism, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, humanity, life, prehistory, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2010 by chouck017894

At noon each year on or about June 21-22 the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere, and this recurring event is known as the Summer Solstice.  When this occurrence takes place the Sun is in its zenith at the Tropic of Cancer, and from the most ancient times the constellation of Cancer has always been known as “The Northern Gate,” or as “The Gate of Men.”

For three days during the solstice period there seems to be no movement of the Sun in relation to Earth, and then the minutes of daylight slowly begin to shorten—an initial decrease of light.  It is not coincidence that one of the two Johns in Christian legends is honored at this time.  Thus in Christian gospel John the Baptist is portrayed as having said, “He must increase and I must decrease.”  We should remember here that the other John, “Saint John”, is feasted on December 27th, right after the winter solstice, and represents the cycle of increasing light in the Northern Hemisphere.  It was an open secret among the Pagans that the name John when used in gospel accounts always personified some aspect of  light.  Indeed the Pagans through the Dark Ages guardedly spoke of the year as being divided between the two Johns rather than openly acknowledge the periodic occurrence of the solstices.  The reason for this was that the church considered such wisdom of nature to be “blasphemous” and would retaliated with brutal severity.

John, as the baptizer, is subtly associated with water which is the traditional symbol of life’s flow in nearly all cultures.  In prehistory times and prominent in Pagan background, the understanding of baptize was to be dipped under the waters of the world: meaning a commitment by each self-aware consciousness to take up its experience in physical-matter life.  By the gospel account of John baptizing Jesus it is obvious that baptismal rites were very ancient and had long been practiced in Pagan tradition.  From deliberate misinterpretation of the Pagan understanding that each self emerges out of the creative process as honored with the Pagan rite of baptism there arose the Christian practice where the recipient is alleged to be cleansed of original sin, given a name, and admitted into a specific system of belief.

As constellation Cancer assumes it periodic dominance in the skies, there always arises with it the constellation of considerable length known as Hydra, which Pagan cultures regarded as symbolizing desire and greed that accompanies life forms.  Baptismal rites in Pagan cultures therefore sought to cleanse, or at least dilute, these negative traits from contaminating one’s matter-borne spirit.  The gods of ancient Egypt, Greece, India, etc. were all portrayed as being baptized: indeed, John’s role as baptizer is a reflection of Egyptian myth in which the god Anap was the baptizer of the gods.  In all the Pagan myths the baptismal episode was always ornamented with supernatural phenomena.  So it is recorded in Luke 3:21 that “…Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, (22) And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”  The same type of ornamentation is even found in the account of the call to duty of Mohammed in which it is declared, “Celestial regions were shaken by the tumult in the prophet’s soul.”  Then it is claimed that stars fell from heaven and frightened jinn fled in terror.  After this the angel Gabriel allegedly brought Allah’s direct command to Mohammed.

John the Baptist is honored during the dominance of the sign of Cancer.  He is presented in gospel as being somewhat older than Jesus, and the honor of John taking place in June thus established that he would be six months older.  The story incident of John leaping in Elisabeth’s womb when she and pregnant Mary met in quiet jubilation is an allusion to the time of the Autumnal Equinox, the halfway or adjustment period which heralds the Winter Solstice. 

John is said to have preached “in the wilderness” (Matthew 3:1), and in sacred language code “wilderness” always refers to pre-physical conditions that are active in the early involvement of Creation energies.  Also, John is portrayed as a “wild man” who was not especially capable of much love or patience for the primal conditions around him.  Because John the Baptist personifies first light emanation that accompanies creation, Jesus is depicted as saying that no one born of woman is higher than John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11).

The NT account of Jesus’ baptism by John is a most picturesque and dramatic presentation of transformation, and it is identical in meaning as OT stories where transformation of character is portrayed: i.e. Abram becoming Abraham, and Jacob becoming Israel.  The hidden meaning in these tales is the physical life that is taken up and made manifest is where qualification of primal energies embodied in each matter-form are to be utilized for advanced manifestation.

And the reason for the alleged beheading of John is identical in meaning as the “first-born” being slain in the myths of Exodus. Sacred language is used in both story renditions to disguise a scientific principle active in the Creation process.  That principle involves the heaviest elements in the atomic table. The heaviest elements are the first to be affected with dissolution and radiation.  It is the process of disintegration and radiation that creative elements are made free to create biologic forms, and atomic energy is converted into biotic energy.  Thus is all matter-life baptized in the waters of Creation.

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God Didn’t Mention Chromosomes

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, gay culture, humanity, life, random, religion, science, sex, sex taboos, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on May 3, 2010 by chouck017894

Love is the alleged message of Christian  faith—but the “holy” twist that pulpit charlatans put upon that message is only if that love is breeder-friendly.  The bewilderment of why god would discriminate against any commitment of love was brought back into question by an elderly Asian man who was soliciting signatures and donations at a market entrance for the drive to reestablish California state’s earlier approval of gay marriages. 1   As a father of a son and daughter, both hetero, his prime concern was over the calloused inequality practiced in the name of spiritual truth—a sense of inequality that had been imposed upon California voters by the Utah-based Mormon church’s intrusion into other peoples’ affairs through a devious $42 million ad campaign.  Interest in other people’s sexual attraction—which is nothing more than voyeurism and autoeroticism—should not be mistaken as a launch pad into God’s good graces. 

Previous posts here, such as Sex in Sacred Disguise (March 2009), pondered over how sexual allusions are intertwined throughout the whole framework of Judeo-Christian religious literature.  Words such as sacrament, testament, and seminary, we have seen, are directly traceable to sexual implication. 2  But despite such sexual allusions, the old priests and “prophets” who fathered these cults knew precious little regarding the holy secrets that set life in motion—those active principles which approve and insure the great diversity in life expressions.  That non-revealed process of life’s means composition proved blissful for the cult founders, for it allowed them the freedom to practice all forms of sexual intolerance.

Those much revered priest-mythmakers, for example, had not been informed by God about  how chromosomes and the chemistry of the brain determine the development of a person’s physical and sexual makeup. Unfortunately, even today the blindly faithful choose to accept principles set down long ago by those unenlightened men and completely ignore what science research has revealed concerning human development.  For example, the effects of sex chromosomes and the chemical sex hormones do NOT have an undeviating  manner of lining up according to one’s general anatomical features as religious prejudices have taught us to believe. 

Furthermore, anatomists know that there are considerable variations in the human brain—its shape, thalamus, structure of the cerebrum, etc.—that are extremely variable and are as individual as one’s fingerprints.  This means that mental and/or sensory properties connected within the brain structure may align within vastly diverse ranges, and no two persons will ever be exactly the same.  Obviously individuals are not meant to be identical in their life expressions.  So, as far as religious approval of human sexual expression goes, one size does not fit all.

Within these God-allowable differences there is left open the allowance for every diverse expression of life and love.  The chromosomes are what chemically controls the total development of the body, brain and intelligence.  These do so in a vast range of ways throughout each person’s lifetime.  Therefore, for political or religious faction to pretend that the “Creator” expects only one narrow expression of life or love to be striven for by all individuals is to be appallingly self-indulgent.  Even worse, such an unyielding attitude amounts to sacrilege. 

Hard-line, ego-driven religionists refuse to even consider the holy code used in production of all  life forms—the code of chromosomal and chemical “design” that decrees that there must be great diversity in human physical, mental and emotional expression.  Only in great diversity of life can the omniscient creative power be fully served.  This seems to be problematic only for those who choose to work themselves into histrionics over the fact that all life expressions mirror the power that gives forth all life.

Perhaps the great body of self-indulgence that is religion would do well to remember what science has also shown: The brain needs considerable amount of body to function in muscular circumstances, but very little brain is necessary for the body to corrode into corruption.

  • 1  Related post: Victimizing Gays is to Mock Jesus, October 2009
  • 2  Related post: Dressed for Sex, September 2009

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What Marked Jerusalem as Holy

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, faith, history, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2010 by chouck017894

What was it about the location that became Jerusalem that inflamed Yahweh priests with the obsession that a temple must be built upon one certain mount in Judaea?  Even before the priests of Yahweh arrived at the mount, the site had been regarded as sacred by inhabitants of the region.  The earliest known name for the site was Ur-Shalem (or Yeru-Shalem), and from as far back as can be traced the hub area of Ur-Shalem encompassed three particular mounts.  The most ancient names of the mounts seem to point to some singular association that is yet to be discovered.  The southernmost mount had the name of “Mount of the Signal” in antiquity; the northernmost peak is said to have been known as “Mount of the Observers.”  The central mount, however, seems to have been central in more ways than one, for it bore the name “Mount of Directing.”  This is the mount which is claimed to have been seen by Abraham from a distance; he is alleged to have  witnessed a heavy cloud over this mount in which the glory of god was seen.  The word Ur translates roughly as fire or light, but the word Shalem is remarkably similar to the Hebrew shalom, the greeting or farewell meaning peace.  Jerusalem has thus been said, rather ironically considering its history of discord, to mean light and peace.  Another speculation is that shalem means something like the perfect place.

Curiously the barren mountain site that would become Jerusalem lacked the basic needs for a center of religious or political pursuits.  There was neither water nor food sources near the site, nor even any trade or military routes anywhere near.  One might be inclined to call it a god-forsaken place!  Around c. 2000-1800 BCE there was little in the region but small sparsely inhabited highland areas.  When the Yahweh priests arrived they were already determined that one particular spot there was marked out as a center that god favored.  What was the supposed special indicator that the place was blessed by heaven?  It was a massive artificially cut rock.  The priests were divinely certain that despite the stone’s antiquity it had all been fashioned just for them.

The sacred rock was  known in Hebrew as Eben Sheti-yah, and translates as the “Stone from which the world was woven.”  This reference seems to hold an intricate relationship to the more ancient names for the three mounts mentioned earlier upon which Jerusalem evolved.  The sacred rock can be deduced as once having served as a kind of platform that was put in place atop artificially cut massive stone blocks—in pre-diluvial times.  The sacred rock at the Jerusalem location has a startling similarity in age and structure to the more massive stone platform located at Baalbeck, in today’s Lebanon.  This sacred rock, therefore, existed for millennia before c 1000 BCE—which is the timeframe when David is alleged to have captured the sparse area (today’s Mount Zion) from the Jebusites (an early tribal league).

Tradition says that the sacred rock was cube-like, with its corners precisely facing the four directions of the compass.  In addition, it is said that two tube-like funnels had been bored out of the rock, and these connected to a subterranean tunnel.  How these feats could have been accomplished in prehistory times, or the purpose they served is unknown.  Tradition has it also that the construction plans for the temple that was erected later had been provided directly by an unnamed source which holy myth, of course, credits to “the Lord.”

We should also note that ancient names of the valleys in the area carried special implication as well.  For example, Isaiah spoke of one of them as the Valley of Hizzayon, which loosely translates as Valley of Vision.  Ugaritic texts tell of divine healers in a valley they called Valley of Repha’im (the healers).  Legends from prehistory times also tell of a subterranean region in “the Valley of Hinnom,” where the entrance could be discerned by a column of smoke that rose between two palm trees. 

Archeological research has shown that the biblical accounts of Canaan-Israel-Judah history are far from reliable.  A brief example: the character of Saul (c. 1025-1005 BCE), the alleged first king of Israel, was supposedly installed by the eleventh century BCE judge and “prophet” Samuel.  This places it in the Iron Age I period.  Nothing has ever been unearthed in archeological digs that even suggests that a prosperous united monarchy existed then.  And no archeological evidence has ever been found of David’s alleged kingdom, and no indication of the conquests attributed to David have been unearthed either.  In fact, evidence reveals that settlements in the Jerusalem region in this Iron Age I timeframe experienced no interruption of Canaanite culture.  Likewise, in regard to David’s alleged son Solomon (time setting c. 970-931 BCE), nothing has ever been brought to light of any monumental architecture in Jerusalem, Megiddo or Hazor in this timeframe as has been attributed to Solomon. 

The holy truth is that precious little reliable priestly accounting of Israel or Judah surfaces until around 800 BCE.  Even then much of the priest-written “history” has been freely embroidered upon.  It is wise to remember that Jews are never mentioned until the Maccabees (Hasmonaeans), a Jewish dynasty of “patriots,” high priests and kings of the 2nd and 1st century BCE who sought to rouse the Jews against their Seleucid ruler.

  •  See related posts, The David Saga, parts 1 and 2; and  Solomon’s Majesty, August 2009.

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