Jesus was always flapping his gums about the poor, But not once did he aver call for a tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Romans.
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Biblical Baloney
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Steven Colbert Reminds Christians About Their Savior
Saturday, December 18th, 2010The Silliest Story Ever Told
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
by PZ Myers
It’s Easter. Once again, the masses will gawp in awe at a bizarre and unbelievable story…because it is such a good example of how religion will piggy-back on our cognitive biases.
You all know the Easter story: a god turns into a man, gets tortured and killed, rises from the dead, and somehow this act makes us all better. It’s a tale best left unexamined, because it makes no sense. We are supposed to wallow in an emotional thrill that taps deep into our social consciousness, not think about what the story actually says.
The part of the story that works for us is the idea of self-sacrifice. That’s potent; we are social animals, and an individual sacrificing him or her self for the greater good has a lot of impact, materially and symbolically, and also stirs up powerful and conflicting emotions. Think about a real example, a soldier throwing himself on a hand grenade to protect his compatriots; it’s a noble sacrifice, it means that one dies so that others may live, it makes us wonder whether we would be brave enough (or crazy enough, or despairing enough) to do the same. We look at someone who does that as a genuine hero, someone who cared so much for his fellow human beings that he would make the supreme sacrifice to spare them.
So that’s the aspect of the Easter story that the Christian faith milks for everything it’s worth. The suffering of Jesus is amplified: look at the weird obsession Catholics show for graphic portrayals of the bloody, twisted, tormented Christ on a stick; look at Gibson’s horrible torture porn movie, The Passion, that lingers sickly over every lash of the whip, every beating, the long slow bleeding death. This isn’t just a quick self-sacrifice, Jesus suffered a long lingering death, just for you. He must have cared about you so much!
Uh, except for one thing. Where’s the grenade? What is he saving us from?
This is where the myth falls apart. Don’t look! Be distracted by the crown of thorns and the spear and the nails, and by the magic trick on the third day! Whatever you do, don’t question the sacrifice!
Because, unfortunately, Jesus isn’t saving us from anything real, and he made no change in the world with his death. Ask a Christian, and they’ll tell us he’s saving us from Original Sin, our flawed, weak, inherently wicked natures. But what that sin is is an act committed by a pair of mythological ancestors (they didn’t even actually exist), and the sin was being willful, curious and disobedient to an imaginary man in the sky — it was a non-existent crime. I don’t believe in being held accountable for my ancestor’s weaknesses (as Patti Smith sang, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”), and in this case I don’t even consider what they did to be wrong. So Jesus suffered for an act that I would consider a virtue, committed by myths against a myth? That’s no hand grenade, that’s a fairy tale. Nobody needs to die to protect me from a fairy tale.
Next problem: what Jesus did didn’t even protect me from that fairy tale! Imagine that in some metaphorical sense it was true that there was some heritable taint infecting the entire human race, passed from generation to generation and making us more prone to do wickedness. Instead of a hand grenade, we’ve been fed a poison that’s going to hurt us slowly and horribly.
How does having the sick butcher the doctor make us better?
I can guess how it will be rationalized: that having the doctor make such a sacrifice will make us believe more sincerely in his prescription. But again, that’s religion leeching off a cognitive shortcut our brains take, that we’ll assume it must have been a very, very important message if the messenger was willing to die for it. That’s invalid — people die stupidly for bad reasons all the time. The only test that matters is whether the doctor actually helps people with his actions.
Another problem: Jesus cheats. We’re supposed to believe that he’s saving us from an imaginary ancestral sin, and that he’s doing so by dying…but he doesn’t! He comes back three days (OK, actually a day and a half) later, perfectly healthy except for a few holes which don’t seem to perturb him much, and he gets to magically zoom up into the sky and live forever in his dad’s palace. This is no sacrifice at all.
Now, if our hypothetical soldier who threw himself on a grenade turned out to survive the experience hale and healthy because, for instance, the bomb was dud, he’d still be a hero — he didn’t know it would fizzle, and the intent was there. This doesn’t help Jesus, though. He’s omnipotent and omniscient and knew his own nature, and knew that you don’t kill a god by hanging him from a tree and poking him with sticks. Jesus faked his heroism. He’s no hero at all.
Finally, there’s a layer of the story that doesn’t resonate with modern audiences much at all, the idea of the propitiatory sacrifice, which is where the appeal of these spring sacrifices arose. Got a problem that you think is caused by a god? Take your strong king or your beautiful virgin and kill them, giving them to the god, so he’ll reward you with a good harvest or fortune in war or the return of tasty game animals. Most of us know this doesn’t work. Even Christianity tends to steer clear of this claim any more, even though it is sprinkled throughout the Old Testament. But on another level, the Easter story is the tale of God giving his only begotten son in a blood sacrifice to propitiate himself and grant us forgiveness for having crossed him once in 4004BC.
It doesn’t work logically or emotionally. It’s the action of a psychopath with a grudge over a petty slight; it’s what a demented monster would do. We don’t regard as heroic the soldier who throws the fellow next to him on top of the grenade, and we especially condemn the soldier who first pulled the pin on the grenade, then smothered the explosion with his bunkmates body.
This is how you should think about the holiday today. Selfless sacrifice for the greater good is a social virtue, and it’s nice that Christianity has imbedded the idea in its heart. But what’s revolting is that they’ve taken this simple idea and spindled it up into a sick, twisted, confusing botch of a story that guts it of its power if you use your brain and think about it. Easter is a holiday for the mindless, with a grim horror at its center.
Source: Pharyngula
Scientists Say: The Plagues Of Egypt Reeally Happened
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.
But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away.
They have compiled compelling evidence that offers new explanations for the Biblical plagues, which will be outlined in a new series to be broadcast on the National Geographical Channel on Easter Sunday.
Archaeologists now widely believe the plagues occurred at an ancient city of Pi-Rameses on the Nile Delta, which was the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses the Second, who ruled between 1279BC and 1213BC.
The city appears to have been abandoned around 3,000 years ago and scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.
Climatologists studying the ancient climate at the time have discovered a dramatic shift in the climate in the area occurred towards the end of Rameses the Second’s reign.
By studying stalagmites in Egyptian caves they have been able to rebuild a record of the weather patterns using traces of radioactive elements contained within the rock.
They found that Rameses reign coincided with a warm, wet climate, but then the climate switched to a dry period.
Professor Augusto Magini, a paleoclimatologist at Heidelberg University’s institute for environmental physics, said: “Pharaoh Rameses II reigned during a very favourable climatic period.
“There was plenty of rain and his country flourished. However, this wet period only lasted a few decades. After Rameses’ reign, the climate curve goes sharply downwards.
“There is a dry period which would certainly have had serious consequences.”
The scientists believe this switch in the climate was the trigger for the first of the plagues.
The rising temperatures could have caused the river Nile to dry up, turning the fast flowing river that was Egypt’s lifeline into a slow moving and muddy watercourse.
These conditions would have been perfect for the arrival of the first plague, which in the Bible is described as the Nile turning to blood.
Dr Stephan Pflugmacher, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Water Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, believes this description could have been the result of a toxic fresh water algae.
He said the bacterium, known as Burgundy Blood algae or Oscillatoria rubescens, is known to have existed 3,000 years ago and still causes similar effects today.
He said: “It multiplies massively in slow-moving warm waters with high levels of nutrition. And as it dies, it stains the water red.”
The scientists also claim the arrival of this algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and forth plagues – frogs, lice and flies.
Frogs development from tadpoles into fully formed adults is governed by hormones that can speed up their development in times of stress.
The arrival of the toxic algae would have triggered such a transformation and forced the frogs to leave the water where they lived.
But as the frogs died, it would have meant that mosquitoes, flies and other insects would have flourished without the predators to keep their numbers under control.
This, according to the scientists, could have led in turn to the fifth and sixth plagues – diseased livestock and boils
Professor Werner Kloas, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute, said: “We know insects often carry diseases like malaria, so the next step in the chain reaction is the outbreak of epidemics, causing the human population to fall ill.”
Another major natural disaster more than 400 miles away is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt.
One of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history occurred when Thera, a volcano that was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, exploded around 3,500 year ago, spewing billions of tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.
Nadine von Blohm, from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Germany, has been conducting experiments on how hailstorms form and believes that the volcanic ash could have clashed with thunderstorms above Egypt to produce dramatic hail storms.
Dr Siro Trevisanato, a Canadian biologist who has written a book about the plagues, said the locusts could also be explained by the volcanic fall out from the ash.
He said: “The ash fall out caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity. And that’s exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts.”
The volcanic ash could also have blocked out the sunlight causing the stories of a plague of darkness.
Scientists have found pumice, stone made from cooled volcanic lava, during excavations of Egyptian ruins despite there not being any volcanoes in Egypt.
Analysis of the rock shows that it came from the Santorini volcano, providing physical evidence that the ash fallout from the eruption at Santorini reached Egyptian shores.
The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim.
But Dr Robert Miller, associate professor of the Old Testament, from the Catholic University of America, said: “I’m reluctant to come up with natural causes for all of the plagues.
The problem with the naturalistic explanations, is that they lose the whole point.
“And the whole point was that you didn’t come out of Egypt by natural causes, you came out by the hand of God.”
Source: Telegraph UK
See also: Plagues of Egypt -What They Don’t Tell You in Sunday School
They are Looking for the Wrong AntiChrist
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
The Book of the Revelation of John, usually referred to simply as Revelation, is the last book of the New Testament. The Book of Revelation was supposedly writen by St. John the Divine, the author of The Gospel of John.
Revelation is considered by some to be one of the most controversial and difficult books of the Bible. Supposedly God revealed the final days to John in the form of a vision. John sees oceans boil, four horsemen and of course Armageddon.
The most familiar thing out of Revelation is bound to be “The Number of the Beast”, 666.
Revelation 13:18 (King James version)
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
It is thought the we can ferret out the Antichrist by decoding his name. All we have to do is translate 666 into letters and go looking.
The only problem with that is that the oldest written version of Revelation, discovered during the 50s but not deciphered and published until 1995, puts the “Number of the Beast” at 616.
That’s right!
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IS 616!
The source document is called Papyrus 115.
Papyrus 115 at POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online
Papyrus 115 at Wikipedia
Pat Robertson Blames Quake on Haiti’s Deal With the Devil
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010Pat Robertson, never one to miss an opportunity to spew his venom, blamed the 7.0 earthquake that destroyed Port Au Prince on Haiti’s deal with the Devil.
