"Hoodwinked, Bamboozled, Led Astray"

Even as a kid, things had to make sense to me, things had to be somewhat logical. You couldn't just tell me anything and I'd believe it, no matter what it was. Therefore, my quest for the truth regarding religion began at a fairly early age. My parents were devout Christians and literally force-fed the religion to me and my brother. From day one we had no say in the matter, as is true for most children.If I told my mom that I didn't understand why we would burn eternally if we didn't follow the strict guidelines of the Christian faith (when hardly any of the adults in the church seem to follow them), or that it just doesn't make sense, I would have gotten a good ol' fashion butt whoopin, just like most of the people reading this now.

Parents pass on their religious beliefs to their children. Muslim parents tend to have Muslim children, Christian parents tend to have Christian children, Hindu parents tend to have Hindu children. What amounts to brainwashing, is actually done under the guise of "saving your soul." For me, it was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Think about it; your parents did little to no research, they usually went by what the minister, bishop, or cardinal told them to do. Most people have never read the Bible all the way through, and if you have you can't understand it. The Bible was written for the masses of illiterate people during and before biblical times. That is primarily why it's filled with myriad metaphors, anthropomorphisms, and parables, and it was not written to be taken literally. When your great great grandmother told your great grandmother about "salvation" she did no research. When your great grandmother told your grandmother about "Jesus," she did no research, 99% of her information came from, more often than not, a philandering, greedy, child molesting minister. Your grandmother then passed her counterfactual information on to your mom, and here you are today.

This Hub brings together some of the thoughts and ideas of taskeinc, and those of many others, about religion, spirituality, and the pervading attitude regarding religion. It also touches on the tragic and macabre history of Christianity.

The emphasis in this hub is primarily on Christianity because I grew up in that particular faith, but most of what is stated is applicable to Buddhism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, Scientology, Taoism, and the myriad other religions prevalent in our society.

There is one major exception: most other religions were not involved in torture, mutilation, mass murder and the destruction of human life, in the name of God, as the two religions with the most followers were, and still are to a great extent, Christianity and Islam.

Some of the articles, debates, and words included in this Hub are mine (taskeinc), and other articles are from various authors, scholars, and religious dissenters. Their excerpts are included because I happen to agree with their opinion. I'm not saying I agree with everything the quoted author has written but I'm in agreement with the passages that are included in this hub.

It's OK to shoot the messenger, I'm fine with it, because I knew the backlash and harsh words would come. I suppose most people can have an open mind regarding anything except religion. Why? Because the Bible and the Koran (Qur'an) suggest that you would be a heretic and guilty of blasphemy if you thought any other way. Here are a few examples from the Bible and the Koran:

Bible

Matthew 12: 31

• Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

Leviticus 24:16

• And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.

• All the congregation shall certainly stone him" and "when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.

Koran

Chapter 9, verse 5

• Fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.

_________________

Quite harsh to say the least. Because I don't believe what you believe, or what you perceive to be "God's Word," I should be STONED to death? If I'm deemed a "pagan" I should be seized and slain? Wow! Of course the "true" Christian will say, "that's not OUR God" and the contemporary Muslim will say, "that's not the true nature of Allah."

The present-day Christian response about religion, and a way to distance Christianity from other faiths' is a rather humorous one, "Christianity is not a religion." OK, please tell me exactly what it is if it's not a religion? That's not a rhetorical question, literally, I'd like to know, what is it? Place your answer in the comments.

A loving Divine Presence did not create such gibberish, Man did! EVERYTHING that emanates from our Creator is LOVING and DIVINE. PERIOD. Anything else, specifically WAR, is created by MAN. Everything Man tampers with takes own his destructive nature. Everything God touches is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and incredibly joyous.

Observe and feel the serenity and beauty of nature; quiet the mind, and you'll sense the true essence of God. It's not belligerent; it's not greedy; it's not jealous, punishing, or vindictive, but simply a compassionate and loving force.

Once religion was created and the masses bought into it, we lost our spiritual connection. Think about it, how can you spend a lifetime as one gender, one race, one paradigm or mindset, one culture, and actually believe that you will spend eternity in a state of nirvana, eternal bliss, euphoria, singing songs, sitting next to God?

The Soul experiences growth, reflection, and karmic lessons over many lifetimes from a plethora of diverse physical incarnations. Otherwise there would be little to no spiritual growth, the Soul would not expand, and the ability to learn and experience would be stagnant, one-sided, and horrendously flawed.

Religion was set up for control, to financially manipulate the masses, and to instill fear. Most people have such an overwhelming trepidation of death that they latch on to a particular religion almost as a crutch; as a way to somehow insulate themselves from the harsh reality that you will die one day. We have long forgotten the source from which we came.

We all come from the same source. Unfortunately, most parents placed their children in a “religious box” at birth. When the child or adolescent began to proselytize about being “saved,” “God’s Wrath,” “Jesus,” "the mark of the Beast," "Allah," Buddha,” "Muhammad," and so forth, this signified that the lid to the box had been closed, not to be opened again until the Spirit is set free at death. Possibly a "Near Death Experience" will awaken you, or some other life-altering event that forces you to think outside the box.

At the point of death, you'll realize it was all a horrendous scam, perpetrated by evil, greedy, ruthless men, motivated by power and control.

"Da Vinci Code" was a fictional account but I'll use a few quotes from the book, that are of course, susceptible to debate, to further demonstrate my point of how cunning Man has been throughout the ages.

1. "So dark the con of man."
2. "Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude."
3. "The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great." (He was baptized on his deathbed; before his demise, Emperor Constantine, like many during that time, worshiped the 'Sun' not "The Son").
   
4. "The Bible is a product of man. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book."
5. "Religious allegory has become a part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people." "But it appears their reality is false."

From DictionaryReference.com:

Immortality: immortal condition or quality; unending life.

Eternity: infinite time; duration without beginning or end.

For the sake of argument we are eternal beings one way or the other. We will live eternally, some say in 'Heaven' or 'Hell' either way, it's eternal life. Lets take eternity a step further by referring to Heaven as Nirvana and a blissful reunion with God, and we'll call Hell a 'dark void' and a permanent separation from God (can't go with the incessant burning, fire and brimstone, because it is a bit too far fetched and makes God out to be extremely cruel to come up with such a devastating eternal punishment for simply not believing in this, that, or the other).

We are eternal beings, made of energy; energy that was never created and can never be destroyed. We're immortal, so do you suppose your immortality started on the day you were born? If that were the case, you would not be immortal.

Time is only a factor in the physical, earthly realm, it plays no role on the immortal, eternal, spiritual plane. "The Soul is Timeless." Heaven or Nirvana, our spiritual home, has no starting date, has no ending date; it is eternal. Therefore, you have no starting date, no ending date, and no spiritual expiration date.

We don't recall what occurred in our lives prior to the age of 5 or 6 years. Regression therapy can take us back to early childhood memories and sometimes beyond our actual birth or incarnation into this life. So your birth date, or date of incarnation may be January 1, 1970 but being an immortal spirit, made in the SPIRITUAL IMAGE OF GOD, you have no starting date, and you have no ending date. Understanding this concept makes you wonder why we argue, fuss, and fight so vehemently over something so inconsequential as religion.

taskeinc

If you ask a quantum physicist, “What created the World?”, he or she is likely to tell you “Energy”. If you ask the quantum physicist, “Describe energy,” he or she might tell you this:

• Energy can never be created or destroyed.
• Energy always was and always has been.
• Energy is always moving into form, through form and out of form.

Now, if you ask a theologian, “What created the Universe?”, he or she is likely to tell you “God”. If you ask that theologian, “Describe God,” he or she might tell you:

• God can never be created or destroyed.
• God always was and always has been.
• God is always moving into form, through form and out of form.

In the quantum realm, energy is spiritual by nature. Spirituality is energetic by nature. They are one and the same. Quantum physics is confirming everything that we once considered exclusively religious or spiritual.

"The Secret" and "The Evolution of Consciousness"

What the living and the dead have in common is that they're both made up of energy. In fact, everything in the Universe is made up of energy. Energy that never dies, but simply changes form.

Let me put it in relative terms: Think about water for a minute. In a cold, thunderous storm, water often forms into hail; while in a blizzard, water becomes wondrous snowflakes that flutter to the ground.

In both instances, water has solidified into an icy or nearly solid form, but once it hits the ground and begins to warm up, it turns back into water. Water eventually evaporates into moisture in the air and travels back up into the atmosphere and repeats the cycle again .. and again.

So, water changes form, but its essence, or spirit, remains the same. Likewise, our energy changes form when we leave the physical world, but our spirit remains the same. In other words, we never disappear. We continue to exist.

What This Means for You

Your physical body dies, but your spirit lives on. For some of you, the notion that our spirit is eternal may be a little too fantastic to accept. For others, it comes as no big surprise because you believed this all along. Either way, it's not my intention to challenge or validate your belief system, but only to share the messages that Spirit has passed on to me: that our time on Earth is a temporary gift, but our spirit has a permanent residence back "home."

Let's try another analogy. Imagine the ocean as the place our spirit comes from. Some call this Heaven, Source, Divinity, the Universe. Now imagine a teacup filled with some of that ocean water. That cup represents your physical body and the water inside it represents your spirit. When the cup cracks, or when the body dies, your spirit spills out and returns home.

A Word About Religion

"I leave religion out of my readings and my work because you can tune into your intuitive power and connect with Spirit whatever your personal beliefs are. I've found that bringing religion into the conversation has the potential to separate and alienate people. After countless readings with Spirit, I'm convinced that, in the end, we're all one. We all came from the same place and we'll return to the same place despite our personal beliefs or affiliations in life."

"Spirited" by Rebecca Rosen
__________

The soul of man is like to water;
From Heaven it cometh
To Heaven it riseth
And then returneth to earth,
Forever alternating.

Goethe

Imagine some people living in an underground cave (all their lives). They sit with their backs to the mouth of the cave with their hands and feet bound in such a way that they can only look at the back wall of the cave. Behind them is a high wall, and behind that wall pass human-like creatures, holding up various figures above the top of the wall. Because there is a fire behind these figures, they cast flickering shadows on the back wall of the cave. So the only thing the cave dwellers can see is the shadow play. They have been sitting in this position since they were born, so they think theses shadows are all there are.

Imagine now that one of the cave dwellers manages to free himself from his bonds. The first thing he asks himself is where all these shadows on the cave wall come from. What do you think happens when he turns around and sees the figures being held up above the wall? To begin with he is dazzled by the sharp sunlight. He is also dazzled by the clarity of the figures because until now he has only seen their shadow. If he manages to climb over the wall and get past the fire into the world outside, he will be even more dazzled. But after rubbing his eyes he will be struck by the beauty of everything. For the first time he will see colors and clear shapes. He will see the real animals and flowers that the cave shadows were only poor reflections of. But even now he will ask himself where all the animals and flowers come from. Then he will see the sun in the sky, and realize that this is what gives life to these flowers and animals, just as the fire made the shadows visible.

The joyful cave dweller could now go skipping away into the countryside, delighting in his new-found freedom. But instead he thinks of all the others who are still down in the cave. He goes back. Once there, he tries to convince the cave dwellers that the shadows on the cave wall are but flickering reflections of the "real" things. But they don't believe him. They point to the cave wall and say that what they see is all there is. Finally they kill him.

Plato's thought experiment clearly illustrates the limitations in comprehending and appreciating things that lie outside the confines of our body. Since the other members of the cave had never experienced any form of reality other than what they could see, they didn't even consider that it could exist.

If limitation is inherent because of the body's physical structure or the minds ingrained way of thinking, how can we get around it? It's very difficult to convince people to think about reality in a different way if they're unable to perceive it or they have a fixed opinion. How does one explain color to someone who has been blind from birth, or music to someone who has been deaf from birth, or taste to someone who has never tasted anything? If we explain the concept of light and sound as wavelength, or the taste of an apple as sweet and sour, this may allow an intellectual understanding to be reached, but this can never compare with the level of comprehension that comes with hearing beautiful music or tasting an apple.

These examples highlight some of the limitations that we have in perceiving "true" reality based upon our three-dimensional brain and senses, so even if we were to see what it was really like to exist on a fourth dimension, explaining it to others would only be possible through our three-dimensional brain and hence a fourth or fifth or other dimension would only be expressible in our three-dimensional world in terms of common 3-D shapes and objects.

Excerpts from What Happens When We Die written by Sam Parnia, M.D., PH.D.

• Buddhism - Tripitaka. Its written in an acient Indian language called Pali which is very close to the language spoke by Buddha himself. Buddhism is more of a Philosophy than a religion.
• Christianity - Bible - New Testament - The second portion of the Christian Bible, which contains 27 books that form the basis of Christian belief. These books include the sayings of Jesus, the story of his life and work, the death and resurrection of Jesus now celebrated as Easter, the teachings and writings of the apostles, and instruction for converting nonbelievers and for performing baptisms, blessings, and other rituals. The New Testament is believed to have been written c. A.D. 100, some 70 to 90 years after the death of Jesus. Old Testament - The Christian name for the Hebrew Bible. It is the sacred scripture of Judaism and the first portion of the Christian Bible. Scholars generally agree that the Old Testament was compiled from c. 1000 B.C. to c. 100 B.C.
• Confucianism - The Analects. A collection of Confucius' teachings thought to have been recorded by his students. They are considered the only sayings that can safely be attributed to him.
• Hinduism - Veda; Four Vedas make up the Samhita , a collection of prayers and hymns that are considered to be revelations of eternal truth written by seer-poets inspired by the gods. The 112 Upanishads describe the relationship of the Brahman , or universal soul, to the atman , or individual soul; they also provide information about Vedic sacrifice and yoga. The original texts of the Upanishads come from various sources and were written beginning c. 900 B.C.
• Islam - Koran - (Arabic, al-Qur'an) The primary holy book of Islam. It is made up of 114 suras, or chapters, which contain impassioned appeals for belief in God, encouragement to lead a moral life, portrayals of damnation and beatitude, stories of Islamic prophets, and rules governing the social and religious life of Muslims. Believers maintain that the Koran contains the verbatim word of God, revealed to the prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. Some of the suras were written during Muhammad's lifetime, but an authoritative text was not produced until c. A.D. 650.
• Judaism - Talmud - A compilation of Jewish oral law and rabbinical teachings that is separate from the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. It is made up of two parts: the Mishna , which is the oral law itself, and the Gemara , a commentary on the Mishna . The Talmud contains both a legal section (the Halakah ) and a portion devoted to legends and stories (the Aggada ). The authoritative Babylonian Talmud was compiled in the sixth century.
• Scientology - The Factors - A Gift To Humankind by L. Ron Hubbard, April 1953. Unlike religions with Judeo-Christian origins, the Church of Scientology has no set dogma concerning God that it imposes on its members. As with all its tenets, Scientology does not ask individuals to accept anything on faith alone.
• Taoism - Tao-te-ching (The Way and Its Power) The basic text of the Chinese philosophy and religion known as Taoism. It is made up of 81 short chapters or poems that describe a way of life marked by quiet effortlessness and freedom from desire. This is thought to be achieved by following the creative, spontaneous life force of the universe, called the Tao. The book is attributed to Lao-tzu, but it was probably a compilation by a number of writers over a long period of time.

If philosophers, theologians, and scientist have struggled with the concept of existence for millennia without arriving at a definite solution, our naive assessment from childhood that a divine entity simply wished it were so certainly requires a reevaluation.

Why do a majority of Americans believe in the ability to predict specific details in the distant future, the existence of winged messengers living in the sky, the worldwide Flood as told in Genesis, and the resurrection of a man who was dead for three days? How can these people believe they are enlightened enough to insist upon the veracity of these outlandish beliefs when studies show they know so little about them? They believe simply because they want to believe, they believe because they have always believed, and they believe because others around them believe. The vast majority of those who believe such things will stick to those beliefs throughout life despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

While ideas from other religions might seem ridiculous to Christians, most of them believe in an omnipotent deity that will torture his underlings forever if we do not worship him. While God could choose any method of interaction he wanted, people rarely stop to consider if God would manifest himself in that way.

The reasons given for belief are driven not by rational thought and reasoned argumentation, but by psychological factors that maintain what society has given the religious believer through indoctrination.

Some Muslims taught themselves it's normal to believe that Allah would provide a paradise for suicide bombers, and they are constantly able to recruit them. The Mormons taught themselves it's normal to believe in a prehistoric Jewish kingdom in America, and they are constantly able to find scholars who will attest to its existence. Christians taught themselves it's normal to pray to an earthly savior who miraculously rose from the dead, and they are constantly able to find "evidence" of his benevolence. Members of each group have their faiths because they are lifelong members of a society that has continually reinforced the "special" nature of their beliefs. What one society perceives as normal, another perceives as a collective delusion.

Explaining the various thought processes that place people in a certain religion is not intended to serve as proof that the belief system is wrong, but rather to demonstrate that devout observation of the system is typically void of rational and independent thought. In other words, the religion was offered, accepted, practiced, justified, and passed on; but it was not seriously questioned. This is hardly a coincidence.

It should not be a shocking discovery that parents pass on their religious beliefs through their children. Muslim parents tend to have Muslim children, Christian parents tend to have Christian children, Hindu parents tend to have Hindu children. Such consistent tradition simply cannot be maintained by chance alone. A child's environment must affect his religious affiliation to an extensive degree. In fact, all children are born without specific religious ideas and remain in a state of impressionability until influenced by the religious convictions of their parents or other similarly motivated individuals. Likewise, the parents are probably members of their religion because their parents were also members. How far back does this blind tradition continue? How do we know that the first person converted for an intellectually justifiable reason? Instead of initiating an honest and impartial analysis of the new evidence that science and enlightened thinking have provided, people simply bury their heads in the sand and continue to believe whatever religion their ancestors thought they needed, or were perhaps conquered with, centuries ago. They were instilled with the beliefs as children, and they will maintain them as adults.

Psychologist Richard Petty and John Cacioppo have explained how high-fear messages, such as the indoctrinated idea of a god who is always watching everyone's actions so as to later separate the righteous from the wicked, can be so upsetting that the audience engages in defensive avoidance and refuses to think critically about them. The effectiveness of the message depends on three factors:

1. The unfavorableness of the consequences that will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted, which is 'absolute' because hell is complete (and often asserted to be eternal) agony.
   
2. The likelihood that unfavorable consequences will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted, which is 'absolute' because the perfect Bible says so.
3. The likelihood that unfavorable consequences will not occur if the recommended actions are adopted, which is 'absolute' because, again, the perfect Bible says so.

Hardly any conceivable message could be more motivating than the threat of hell, and we have good reason to conclude that such a message can be upsetting enough to deter critical thinking, especially when the message often begins at an age when the audience is too young to have developed a discipline that can challenge the validity of such assertions. Just the opposite, children habitually give benefit of the doubt to their parents and other role models. Religious indoctrination is firmly in place well before the child's ability to be persuaded begins to decline at the age of eight, making any subsequent attempts to remove the indoctrination extremely difficult. Since parents tend to be correct on just about every other testable matter of importance, extending this pattern into the realm of the unfalsifiable seems unfortunately reasonable to a young child. And we must not forget about the ultimate reward for accepting Christianity: an eternal stay in heaven with infinite happiness. How can the young and impressionable refuse?

Read, read, read is what I preach (pardon the pun) to my children. Almost daily they hear this chorus about the necessity of reading. Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Our society’s lack of reading clearly explains why people are so spiritually gullible and unaware. As a whole, we refuse to read. When and if we do read it's limited to the bible, a love story, or some other work of fiction.

Let's look at death; most people fear the "grim reaper." Why? Fear and ignorance are the culprits. We fear an eternal damnation. The prophecies in the book of Revelation tend to scare the hell out of people (once again, pardon the pun). You would be surprised the burden that's lifted when/if you ever realize that hell is just a story created by man. A story created in order to intimidate you into giving a good portion of your income to the church. It was true thousands of years ago, and it is true today. Don't believe me? You think I'm a "blasphemer?"

Let's break the "tithes" or "tithing" down and analyze this religious phenomenon. The median household income in the United States is about $50,000 annually. That averages out to $4166 per month, multiplied by 10% for tithing, equals $416 per month. This is the amount that should go to the church. That's a car note. Most middle income couples make at least 20k to 30k more than the medium income. If you give less than your allotted 10% are you're going to hell? Does God give you a pass? Or can you make it up in other ways?

I was in the Dollar Store one day and this particular store always plays gospel music. That's fine; I have no problem with gospel music. This particular day, however, something came over me when I heard what sounded like an "Old Negro Spiritual." It sounded like one of those very soulful, religious, Mahalia Jackson songs from decades ago. By the way, I have the utmost respect for the late Ms. Jackson. Anyway, as I listened it dawned on me that, these are the type songs that were sang in, and originated from the cotton fields, from the slave quarters centuries ago. Look back on the history of Black People in America and you'll realize that the majority of Black America today are the descendants of slaves brought to America on slave ships. You know the story. Once on American soil, those slaves were forbidden to read. Their masters clearly enforced the law, "You cannot read. It is illegal for you to read." The slave master did all the reading, mostly from the bible, and it was solely up to him to interpret what was read. It was the slave masters responsibility to interpret the "good book" for your ancestors. And remember, 100% of the slave masters interpretation of the Bible, JUSTIFIED slavery during that epoch in American History. This is the same religion that has been passed down to the African American today. This applies to the European American as well; your ancestors passed your religion down to you as well. The difference is, those unwilling pioneers from Africa (our ancestors) did not practice the Christian religion that was forced upon them. If you are ok with this concept, then you have to be ok with the belief that the genocidal atrocity that was slavery, was necessary to save the souls of black people.

I look back on my Christian/Baptist upbringing and take myself back to Sunday morning worship service. I think about Ms. Daniels, a lifetime member of Greater Bethlehem Baptist Church. She would sit in the same seat and instead of saying "Amen" from time to time, her words of approval were, "Sho-nough, Sho-nough." I'll translate that for the ebonically challenged, she was saying, "Sure enough, sure enough." What I see clearly now is that Ms. Daniels and the majority of the older members of the church could not read. Thus, their interpretation of the bible, religion, and spirituality came almost entirely from the philandering, pedophiliac, minister (not all the ministers of G.B.B.C. were pedophiles but that's another subject). Well, guess what, Ms. Daniels, and many other elders of churches across America, passed their religious interpretation on to their offspring, from the time they entered the world. Sho-nough, sho-nough!

Remember in church when the "Spirit" would move people to "shout." Remember the "shouting" in church? This is when an individual (usually female) would be "touched by the Holy Spirit" in a way that would make them scream uncontrollably and they would have to be restrained by members of the "Deacon Board", or be ushered out into the hall. Where is that "shouting" today? You don't see that in churches today. The shouting has been replaced by "speaking in tongues" (ecstatic speech or prayer using an unintelligible language that is considered a gift of the Holy Spirit). Back-in-the-day, shouting, or being "happy" in church, was also considered a "gift of the Holy Spirit." Did God or the Holy Spirit alter his gift-giving or did Man alter it?

B.E.S. aka taskeinc

"The more you begin to investigate, what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we're doing, the more you begin to see we've been lied to. We've been lied to by every institution, what makes you think for one minute that the Religious Institution is the only one that's never been touched? The Religious Institution's of this world are at the bottom of the dirt. The Religious Institutions in this world are put there by the same people who gave you your government, your corrupt education, who set up your International Banking Cartels..."

Zeitgeist
____________________

As stated in the book NDE (Near Death Experiences) by Kevin R. Williams

Some people erroneously believe one must have a certain religious affiliation or believe in God to have a pleasant afterlife experience. However, even in this physical world, one does not have to be religious to experience love and happiness. In the same vein, to have a pleasant afterlife experience, one does not have to be religious . Experiencers say it is not the religion one professes which matters. It is the spiritual condition of their inner nature that matters. People primarily motivated by fear, anger, hatred and evil, will generally find themselves together with like-minded people after their death. Kevin R. Williams

Simple logic suggest that a loving, merciful, caring God would not demand of its' progeny, "Give me - the church, your pastor, Jesus, whomever - 10 % of your earnings, off the top, before taxes, before anything you do, or plan on doing with your hard-earned income, to prove your love and obedience to me. If you do not do this, I still love you, but the consequences of not doing so are eternal damnation in a place of unremitting pain and suffering until the end of time and beyond."

A loving Creator would not offer such a scenario because the origins of the aforementioned quagmire are rooted in greed and evil. Greed and Evil are characteristics of Man, not God. To adhere to a doctrine of forcible love and obedience would be perpetual blackmail at the highest degree.

B.E.S. aka taskeinc

"You refer to 'Spirit' - do you believe in God? Do you have a religion?" "You don't have to believe in the sun to delight in the warmth of the morning light. It is simply obvious. That is how I know God. And as to my religion, I've sat in the shining temples of the Israelites and under the glorious spires of the mosques of Islam; I've knelt in the great cathedrals and bathed in the light of Christendom; I've sat in the sweat lodges and passed the pipe, lived as a shaman on the African plains, meditated in Buddhist temples, and inhaled the sweet aroma of incense on the banks of the Ganges. And everywhere, I've found the same Spirit in all religions - a Divine Will that transcends time, belief, and culture - revealing the universal laws that are the treasure of God.

Excerpt from "The Laws of Spirit" by Dan Millman

from truthbeknown.com

Introduction

Around the world over the centuries, much has been written about religion, its meaning, its relevance and contribution to humanity. In the West particularly, sizable tomes have been composed speculating upon the nature and historical background of one of the main characters of Western religions, Jesus Christ.

Many have tried to dig into the precious few clues as to Jesus's identity and come up with a biographical sketch that either bolsters faith or reveals a more human side of this godman to which we can all relate. Obviously, considering the time and energy spent on them, the subjects of Christianity and its legendary founder are very important to the Western mind and culture, and increasingly to the rest of the world as well.

The Controversy

Despite all of this literature continuously being cranked out and the significance of the issue, in the public at large there remains a serious lack of formal and broad education regarding religion and mythology, and most individuals are highly uninformed in this area. Concerning the issue of Christianity, for example, the majority of people are taught in most schools and churches that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure and that the only controversy regarding him is that some people accept him as the Son of God and the Messiah, while others do not. However, whereas this is the raging debate most evident in this field today, it is not the most important. Shocking as it may seem to the general populace, the most enduring and profound controversy in this subject is whether or not a person named Jesus Christ ever really existed.

Although this debate may not be evident from publications readily found in popular bookstores, when one examines this issue closely, one will find a tremendous volume of literature that demonstrates, logically and intelligently, time and again that Jesus Christ is a mythological character along the same lines as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian or other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths rather than historical figures. Delving deeply into this large body of work, one uncovers evidence that the Jesus character is based upon much older myths and heroes from around the globe. One discovers that this story is not, therefore, a historical representation of a Jewish rebel carpenter who had physical incarnation in the Levant 2,000 years ago. In other words, it has been demonstrated continually for centuries that this character, Jesus Christ, was invented and did not depict a real person who was either the "son of God" or was "evemeristically" made into a superhuman by enthusiastic followers.

This controversy has existed from the very beginning, and the writings of the Church fathers themselves reveal that they were constantly forced by the Pagan intelligentsia to defend what the non-Christians and other Christians ("heretics") alike saw as a preposterous and fabricated yarn with absolutely no evidence of it ever having taken place in history.

As Rev. Dr. Robert Taylor says, "And from the apostolic age downwards, in a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man most strenuously denied." According to these learned dissenters, the New Testament could rightly be called, "Gospel Fictions."

from truthbeknown.com

By order of Caesar Augustus, a census was taken of the entire Roman world. A man named Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the town of Bethlehem (which is known as the town of David) because Joseph belonged to the blood line of David. While they were there, Mary gave birth to a baby boy who she placed in a manger because of a lack of room at the inn. (Luke 2:1-7) The baby, Jesus, had been born to a virgin and was to be the fulfillment of a prophecy that called for a messiah to come and be the king of the Jews who would reign forever. (Luke 1:29-37)

Very little is recorded about Jesus' upbringing except that he was wise enough to amaze the temple teachers when he was twelve (Luke 2:42-47). It was not until much later, fifteen years into the reign of Emperor Tiberius (Luke 3:1) that Jesus began his ministry. After being baptized by his cousin John (Luke 3:21) who had preached his coming (Luke 3:4), Jesus fasted for forty days in preparation for his ministry, in which he was tempted by Satan (Luke 4:1-13).

Though Jesus was not accepted as a prophet in his hometown, as many prophets are not (Luke 4:14-30), he gained fame as he healed many people and casts out demons from others (Luke 4:31-41). Jesus' preachings coincided with his miracles, and he taught the importance of the human heart rather than strict adherence to law, which he demonstrated in doing work on the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-11). He chose many disciples and specifically 12 apostles to help him in his ministry (Luke 6:12-16).

Throughout his life Jesus performed many miracles and taught many lessons. Many people feared Jesus for his teachings or felt that he was blaspheming and wished to kill him (Luke 4:28-30; 6:11; 22:4-6). Jesus knew that his ministry would end in his death as that was according to the prophecy that he was fulfilling (Luke 18:31-33) . During the week of Passover, the chief priests had him crucified under the order of Pontius Pilate (Luke 22:47-23:46). According to scripture, three days after his death, Jesus rose from the dead (Luke 24:6). He then proceeded to oversee the birth of his new religion while preparing the apostles to take over for him (Luke 24:36-49) . He then is said to have ascended to heaven (Luke 24:51).

By H. P. Loveboat

The only areas that are recorded regarding the "life" of Jesus Christ is the "miracle birth", what happened when he was 12, and then the story picks up again with Jesus being baptized at 30 years of age (Matthew 3:13-17). What's odd is that no one has ever offered any substantial explanation of the years that are unaccounted for. Take a look at the article and video below and compare it with Jesus' biography. ~ taskeinc

Hard evidence about the "historical Jesus" is scanty. The Bible's gospel accounts of Jesus's life and words - the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - were written sometime between 65 and 100 CE, thirty-five to seventy years after his death. By that time, their raw material, stories then circulating about Jesus in oral or written form, had no doubt been shaped by the psychologival and rhetorical needs of his followers. (The letters of Paul - New Testament books such as Philippians and Romans - were written earlier, beginning around twenty years after Jesus's death. Unfortunately, they say almost nothing about Jesus's life and very little about his words.)

The book of Mark is generally considered the most factually reliable of the four gospels. It was written around 70 CE, roughly four decades after the Crucifixion. That's a long lag, but it offers less time for the accrual of dubious information than the roughly five decades available for Matthew and Luke or the six or seven decades for John. What's more, during Mark's composition there would have been people sixty or seventy years old who as young adults had personally witnessed the doings and sayings of Jesus and knew his biographical details - and whose recollections may have constrained the author's inventiveness. This population would shrink during the decade of more before other gospels took shape, expanding creative freedom.

Certainly as we move through the gospels in the order of their composition, we can see the accumulation of more and more dubious information. Mark doesn't give us anything like "the plain unvarnished truth," but his story is plainly less varnished than are later accounts.

Consider the problem of Jesus being from a humble village, Nazareth. The Hebrew Bible has said that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David and, like David, would be born in Bethlehem. Mark never addresses the question of how "Jesus of Nazareth" could have been born in Bethlehem. But by the time Matthew and Luke were written, an answer had emerged - two answers, even. Luke says Jesus's parent went to Bethlehem for a census and returned to Nazareth after his birth. In Matthew's version, Jesus's parents just seem to live in Bethlehem. how then would Jesus wind up in Nazareth? Through an elaborate side story that has the family fleeing to Egypt under duress and then, upon leaving Egypt, deeming a return to Bethlehem dangerous, and settling in "a town called Nazareth." This contradiction between Luke and Matthew suggests that in this case, Mark, the earliest gospel, is the place to find the awkward truth: Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus of Nazareth.

So too with the question of Jesus's attitude toward his own death. if Jesus was the son of God, sent here to die, you would think he might accept his death with grace - not happily, perhaps, but at least with a certain dignified resignation. After all, he's known about the plan all along, and he knows, too, that he'll be resurrected in the end anyway. Yet in Mark his last words are "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - as if the Crucifixion was a terrible surprise and the last act. In Luke, written a decade or two later, there is no such puzzlement, and Jesus's last words are instead the more equanimous "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." In John his last words are simply "It is finished," and , again, there are no signs of doubt or surprise. (And as for the most magnanimous of Jesus's sayings on the cross - "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" - this, uttered early in Luke's Crucifixion scene, seems to have been added after Luke was written.) Once again, Mark, the earliest account, has an inconvenient feature of the Jesus story that later gospels obscure.

As the decades go by - 70 CE, 80 CE, 90 CE - the Jesus story gets less constrained by historical memory and more impressive.

Excerpt from "The Evolution of God" by Robert Wright

excerpt from taskeinc3281 blog

When we realize that the ancient, pre-Christian world was filled with stories about superhuman gods, goddesses and heroes of all cultures whose purported lives on Earth were replete with miracles of all manner, we must recognize that it is only by extraordinary human perseverance that one particular set of fabulous tales from one particular culture has become accepted as "true," while all the rest are deemed "myths." In actuality, the acceptance as "history" of such patent fairy tales as the son of God born of a virgin who miraculously heals the sick, raises the dead, walks on water, transfigures on a mount, resurrects from death and ascends into heaven ranks as cultural bias and extreme prejudice, not reality. It is high time that this fallacious development and lopsided injustice be exposed and the whole of the human cultural record be embraced.

Let's focus a moment on the "son of God born of a virgin who miraculously heals the sick, raises the dead." Here are other mythological figures in ancient antiquity that existed before the Jesus figure with identical characteristics and pretty much the same story.

There were myriad mythological Solar Messiah's whose exact same story was told long before the birth of the last "Messiah." Those mythological figures were:

• Horus - 3000 BC
  Born of a Virgin
  Born on Dec 25th
  Dead for 3 Days - Resurrected

• Attis - Greece - 1200 BC
  Born of a Virgin
  Born on Dec 25th
  Dead for 3 Days - Resurrected

• Mithra of Persia - 1200 BC
  Born of a Virgin
  Born on Dec 25th
  12 Disciples
  Performed Miracles
  Dead for 3 Days - Resurrected
  Aka: the "Truth," the "Light"

• Krishna - India - 900 BC
  Born of the Virgin Davakie
  Star in the East
  Performed Miracles
  Dead for 3 days - Resurrected

• Dionysus of Greece - 500 BC
  Traveling Teacher
  Performed miracles
  Turned water into wine
  Aka: "King of Kings," "God's only begotten Son", "Alpha and Omega"
  Dead for 3 days - Resurrected

• Jesus Christ
  Born of a Virgin
  Born on Dec 25th
  Dead for 3 Days - Resurrected
  Aka: the "Truth," the "Light," "King of Kings"

There were many other deities that were ascribed the very same characteristics and all came before Jesus Christ.

Why is this the case? Here's the answer. The birth sequence, Dec. 25th, is completely astrological. The Star in the East is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which on Dec 24th aligns with the 3 brightest stars in Orions Belt. These 3 bright stars in Orions belt are called today what they were called in Ancient times, the "Three Kings." The Three Kings and the Brightest Star Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on Dec. 25th. This is why the 3 Kings "follow" the star in the east in order to locate the "sunrise" or "the birth of the sun."

And why was Jesus historized instead of the others? A multinational cabal largely composed of Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians created the Jesus character and later the Christian tradition, in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion. The legend of Jesus Christ as a historical figure was further solidified at the Council of Nacea in 325AD.

It can be concluded that the mythical figure of "Jesus Christ" was largely contrived in order to raise the Jewish religion and scriptures to the forefront of religious ideologies, to fulfill the biblical "prophecy" that the Jews are the "chosen people," that their nation is the "Holy Land" and that their tribal writings represent "God's Word."

As stated in the Old Testament:

"For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth."

taskeinc3281 Blog

Ever hear of Apollonius of Tyana? Like Jesus, he lived in first century CE. According to stories later told by his devotees, he traveled with his disciples from town to town doing miracles: curing the lame and the blind, casting out demons., These powers emanated from his special access to the divine - he was the son of God, some said - as did his gift of prophecy. He preached that people should worry less about material comforts and more about the fates of their souls, and he espoused an ethic of sharing. He was persecuted by the Romans, and upon death he ascended to heaven. This imparted a nice symmetry to his life, since his birth had been miraculous in the first place; before he was born, his divinity had been proclaimed to his mother by a heavenly figure.

Sound familiar?

But, you might protest, Apollonius of Tyana didn't posit a doctrine of interethnic love! Well, Jesus probably didn't either. The doctrine was developed by Paul, a religious entrepreneur who used it as the cement in his enterprise.

excerpt from "The Evolution of God"

Apollonius of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus

Around 220 AD Flavius Philostratus was commissioned to write the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by the Empress Julia Domna. Apollonius was born in Tyana (Born in modern Turkey) in BC 4, and although no one can agree on the date of his death, Apollonius is believed to have lived for around a century.

Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana should be of special interest to students of the origins of Christianity. This is because, although you may think that Christianity has a solid history going back into the first century and before, if we follow a historical and archaeological investigation, the first Bible would appear to be that of Marcion of Sinope AD 140. This is consistent with the fact that archeological records started appearing dated 180-210 AD.

The book Apollonius of Tyana disappeared from the Roman Empire into the Arab world from which it resurfaced in the 1500's. It was an immediate controversy in the Christian world because of the parallels with the Bible. For example Apollonius was educated in Tarsus and had a connection with Ephesus. Apollonius cast out demons and raised people from the dead. Yet Apollonius lived a long time, long enough to cover the lives of Jesus, Paul and all the Apostles.

Why is it then that Apollonius of Tyana never mentions biblical events, and the Bible never mention Apollonius? Well it was always possible that Apollonius was Paul, or that Paul was 'plagiarized' from Apollonius by Marcion, who wished to continue his spiritual tradition. After all, the names are more similar linguistically than is apparent to us.

from chrestos.com

Throughout history, humankind has been resistant to change and to the acceptance of new ideas. Historical lore is replete with examples. When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the astronomers of that time refused to accept or even to look at these satellites because the existence of these moons conflicted with their accepted beliefs. So it is now with psychiatrists and other therapists, who refuse to examine and evaluate the considerable evidence being gathered about survival after bodily death and about past-life memories. Their eyes stay tightly shut."

• Her religion was simple and unquestioned. She was raised to believe in traditional Catholic ideology and practices, and she had never really doubted the truthfulness and validity of her faith. She believed that if you were a good Catholic and lived properly by observing the faith and its rituals, you would be rewarded by going to heaven; if not, you would experience purgatory or hell. A patriarchal God and his Son made these final decisions. [She] did not believe in reincarnation; in fact, she knew very little about the concept, although she had read sparingly about the Hindus. Reincarnation was an idea contrary to her upbringing and understanding. She has never read any metaphysical literature, having no interest in it. She was secure in her beliefs.

The preceding excerpt from "Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, M.D." has a familiar ring to it and can be applied to the Christian faith, Muslim, Jehovah's Witness, and various other religions.

Excerpts from Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.

• There were references to reincarnation contained in the Old and the New Testaments. In A.D. 325 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great , along with his mother, Helena, had deleted references to reincarnation contained in the New Testament. The Second Council of Constantinople, meeting in A.D. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church by giving humans too much time to seek their salvation. Yet the original references had been there; the early Church fathers had accepted the concept of reincarnation. The early Gnostics - Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Jerome, and many others - believed that they had lived before and would again.

• There was much practical advice along the way: the value of patience and of waiting; the wisdom in the balance of nature; the eradication of fears, especially the fear of death; the need for learning not to judge others, or to halt anyone's life; the accumulation and use of intuitive powers; and, perhaps most of all, the unshakable knowledge that we are immortal. We are beyond life and death, beyond space and beyond time. We are the gods, and they are us.

• Balance and harmony are neglected today, yet they are the foundations of wisdom. Everything is done to excess. People are overweight because they eat excessively. Joggers neglect aspects of themselves and others because they run excessively. People seem excessively mean. They drink too much, smoke too much, carouse too much (or too little), talk too much without content, worry too much. There is too much black-or-white thinking. All or none. This is not the way of nature.

• In nature there is balance. Beasts destroy in small amounts. Ecological systems are not eliminated en masse. Plants are consumed and then grown. The sources of sustenance are dipped into and then replenished. The flower is enjoyed, the fruit eaten, the root preserved.

• Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will.

• Metaphor for perfecting the soul: It is as if a large diamond were to be found inside each person. Picture a diamond a foot long. The diamond has a thousand facets, but the facets are covered with dirt and tar. It is the job of the soul to clean each facet until the surface is brilliant and can reflect a rainbow of colors. Now, some have cleaned many facets and gleam brightly. Others have only managed to clean a few; they do not sparkle so. Yet, underneath the dirt, each person possesses within his or her breast a brilliant diamond with a thousand gleaming facets. The diamond is perfect, not one flaw. The only differences among people are the number of facets cleaned. But each diamond is the same, and each is perfect. When all the facets are cleaned and shining forth in a spectrum of lights, the diamond returns to the pure energy that it was originally.. The pure energy exists in the rainbow of lights, and the lights possess consciousness and knowledge."

excerpt from Mystical Traveler by Sylvia Brown

Propaganda can be a very powerful tool. Entire governments in Russia and Nazi Germany once used it very effectively, and it's still being utilized in China and North Korea. In the United States, we see how advertising agencies and the media employ it every day. As for so-called journalists, they seem to always follow the old axiom of "bad news makes headlines," so a tragic story is like money in the bank.

Propaganda works so well because it basically programs the human mind, so you always need to be aware of what types of messages you're receiving - especially when it comes to religion and society. When you're subjected to continual negative programming, it has such an effect on your soul that it can hamper its spiritual growth.

If you go to a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque, really listen and find out whether your religious leader tends to stress the negative or the positive. If it's the latter, you can take joy in your faith and truly worship God in the way you want. But if it's the former, watch out. Be aware that you're being programmed with negativity such as bigotry (sermons should never put down other beliefs or certain practices); the fear of God (remember that our Creators are only loving and merciful); guilt (be wary if everyone is called a "sinner" or "unworthy," if you're told that your soul will not be saved unless you do such and such, or if you're asked for money over and over again); and hypocrisy (no one dogma or creed is the only way to salvation).

"We live in a country in which a person cannot get elected president if he openly doubts the existence of heaven and hell. This is truly remarkable, given that there is no other body of 'knowledge' that we require our political leaders to master. Even a hairstylist must pass a licensing exam before plying his trade in the United States, and yet those given the power to make war and national policy--those whose decisions will inevitable affect human life for generations are not expected to know anything in particular before setting to work. They do not have to be political scientists, economists, or even lawyers; they need not have studied international relations, military history, resource management, civil engineering, or any other field of knowledge that might be brought to bear in the governance of a modern superpower; they need only be expert fund-raisers, comport themselves well on television, and be indulgent of certain myths.

In our next presidential election, an actor who reads his Bible would almost certainly defeat a rocket scientist who didn't. Could there be any clearer indication that we are allowing unreasoning and other-worldliness to govern our affairs?"

Here's what Presidential Candidate for 2012, Donald Trump has to say about religion:

"I believe in God. I am Christian. I think the Bible is certainly, it is 'the' book," real estate mogul Donald Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week after catapulting to second place in a poll of unofficial GOP presidential contenders.

Now you tell me, is Trump making this statement to possibly capture a portion of the Christian vote? Keep in mind, he was addressing the Christian Broadcasting Network, so what else could he say?

Ever wonder why some "Christian" women have such a problem with interracial dating and marriages? Those that say they don't have a problem will quickly come back with, "I don't have a problem with it but I wouldn't do it." Are you not exhibiting some form of prejudice when you would not even consider dating outside your race? The retort to this is, "just not my preference." Some Caucasian Christian women simply won't date outside of their race and refuse to offer, nor do they feel it necessary to explain their actions. And of course, that's certainly their prerogative. Whatever the case and race may be, do you think you would actually reside in heaven for an eternity with such an attitude toward people? Do you think our Creator would simply ignore this fact about your personality, about your character, about your spirit?

If an interracial couple were to walk into some predominantly white or predominantly black churches in America they would not be welcomed. They may not be asked to leave, but the tension and stares would be so unsettling it would certainly make the pair very uncomfortable. Is this the type of love God wants us to have toward one another? Or is this the "conditional" love that emanates from your religion? Most churches/religions inadvertently and in covert and subtle ways, actually promote separatism. "I'm saved, I'm a Christian, so I'm going to Heaven." "You're a Muslim/Buddhist, but I'm not one to judge, God will be your judge." Translation: "I'm a Christian, I'm saved, you're going to Hell." Too bad Hell doesn't exist. If there were a Hell, it would be right here on Earth.

taskeinc

By Craig M. Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div. Bet Emet Ministries

If one does the necessary study and reads the right sources then beyond any doubt he sees that much of the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology.

Answer for yourself: Why has this not been public knowledge and is only now begun to be taught and revealed to interested readers and students of Biblical history? Well the main reason is that it has only been in the last two hundred years that we have been able to rediscover how to read the Egyptian hieroglyphics which was prompted by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

The answer is not too difficult to comprehend. The facts concerning the "Jesus Story" being patterned after the Horus of Egypt like other foundations, have been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a hieroglyphical language, that was never really read by Greeks or Romans, and could not be read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other day! Champollion was a French Egyptologist, who is acknowledged as the father of modern Egyptology. He achieved many things during his short career, but he is best known for his work on the Rosetta Stone. It was his deciphering of the hieroglyphics contained on the Stone that laid the foundations for Egyptian archaeology. Hidden for a thousand years in the lost language of Egypt and their hieroglyphics is to be found the exact replica of the later Roman "Jesus Story". This is almost too incredible to believe until you examine the results for yourself and if you do then you see that the "logia" or the "sayings of the Christ" can be found in the rituals contained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as uttered by Horus as well as others. This information has laid beyond the knowledge of moderns until the efforts of Champollion and his work on the Rosetta Stone in the latter 1820s. Provided for the interested reader is the necessary link to examine the history for himself to see how the earlier "Horus/Jesus Stories" were lost to the world for thousands of years but now resurrected with the restoration of Egyptian hieroglyphics through the efforts of Champollion.

This loss of ability to decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphics is the reason why the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology remained as hidden as they have; that is until the century in which we live. The mystical matter enshrouded in this language was sacredly entrusted to the keeping of the buried dead, who have faithfully preserved it as their Book of Life, which was placed beneath their pillows, or clasped to their bosoms, in their coffins and their tombs.

As Christians we all fell into the same pit of ignorance. We all were taught to accept the Canonical Gospels as containing an assumed undoubted human history, and we assumed, as others taught us to do, that the assumed history on the pages of our New Testament proved itself. Everything goes well with such an approach until one decides to study the origin of the Christian Faith and do so in a scholarly fashion.

The first thing we encounter in such study is the fact that a Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, was an historical character, known to the Talmud. The only problem with this is that this historical character, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira is found in history 100 years too early for the assumed New Testament Jesus. Without such study we all make the same mistake; namely, approaching the New Testament supposing that this New Testament and its record of a Jesus, the events surrounding his life and his sayings proved the personal existence of this Jesus as found portrayed in the Canonical Gospels.

The hardest thing in my life as an Ordained Pastor was to study to the point where I found that this depiction of Jesus in the New Testament was a fraud. After dedicated and sustained serious study of the origins of Christianity one is hard pressed to believe this account of an assumed historical when confronted with the records of Egyptian history and religion as you are about to see for yourself.

Continued - Craig M. Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div. Bet Emet Ministries

The majority of primitive humans were illiterate, so most knowledge was passed through stories and parables in order to make them understand.

The Old Testament portrays God as wrathful, vengeful, and constantly at odds with humankind, either disappointed in us or punishing us. It never ceases to amaze me how some people believe every word of the Bible and how something written primarily in a metaphorical sense is taken literally. The "good book" contradicts itself myriad times and because of this is totally illogical. You can clearly see the implausibility of the Bible in many of its passages. Here are some examples:

• God is betrayed as all-perfect and knowledgeable but doesn't know where Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Or He didn't know they has eaten the "forbidden fruit," nor the circumstances that led to their eating from the "Tree of Life." An all-knowing God does not ask question because that signifies a lack of knowledge. An omnipotent, all-knowing God doesn't ask questions He answers them. This precisely shows that various individuals have written their own words into the Bible especially when they ascribe human traits to God. There is certainly some truth in the Bible however, a plethora of people have mixed a lot of their own beliefs and words for their won purposes of religious expediency.

• After the great flood in Genesis, supposedly no one was left on Earth except for Noah, his three sons, and their families. And then, within a comparatively short period of time, there were thousands upon thousands of people inhabiting the planet again, founding large nations and scattering all over the globe.

The Bible is nothing if not illogical at times. It simply doesn't make sense that so many people would inhabit so much area again in such a short period of time. Just as the sons of Adam and Eve found wives (where did they come from?) in another land, so it is with the re-population of Earth after the great flood. We have to look at the Bible as a collection of stories that could explain to a basically uneducated populace how things progressed in creation, and the Book of Genesis aptly puts that forth.

• Consider the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a tale that outlines the difference between evolved and unevolved souls. It's interesting that Abraham negotiates with God in trying to save the two cities from being destroyed because there might be people living there, namely Lot and his family. As you probably know, they escape the cities as they're being destroyed by God, and Lot's wife looks back - even though she was told not to by God's angels - and turned into a pillar of salt.

The tragedy here is that God is again portrayed as vengeful, wrathful, and destructive. Why does humankind attribute their faults to God? The Bible is inundated with countless instances of this.

The Old Testament does not refer to Heaven or "The Other Side" except as God's kingdom. This portion of the Bible is Judaic in nature, which is why references to paradise are practically nonexistent. Individuals were more concerned with continuing their lineage of dynasties through their descendants until the "day of judgment."

Five Bible Verses that Depict God as Evil

The majority of primitive humans were illiterate, so most knowledge was passed through stories and parables in order to make them understand.

The Old Testament portrays God as wrathful, vengeful, and constantly at odds with humankind, either disappointed in us or punishing us. It never ceases to amaze me how some people believe every word of the Bible and how something written primarily in a metaphorical sense is taken literally. The "good book" contradicts itself myriad times and because of this is totally illogical. You can clearly see the implausibility of the Bible in many of its passages. Here are some examples:

• God is betrayed as all-perfect and knowledgeable but doesn't know where Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Or He didn't know they has eaten the "forbidden fruit," nor the circumstances that led to their eating from the "Tree of Life." An all-knowing God does not ask question because that signifies a lack of knowledge. An omnipotent, all-knowing God doesn't ask questions He answers them. This precisely shows that various individuals have written their own words into the Bible especially when they ascribe human traits to God. There is certainly some truth in the Bible however, a plethora of people have mixed a lot of their own beliefs and words for their won purposes of religious expediency.

• After the great flood in Genesis, supposedly no one was left on Earth except for Noah, his three sons, and their families. And then, within a comparatively short period of time, there were thousands upon thousands of people inhabiting the planet again, founding large nations and scattering all over the globe.

The Bible is nothing if not illogical at times. It simply doesn't make sense that so many people would inhabit so much area again in such a short period of time. Just as the sons of Adam and Eve found wives (where did they come from?) in another land, so it is with the re-population of Earth after the great flood. We have to look at the Bible as a collection of stories that could explain to a basically uneducated populace how things progressed in creation, and the Book of Genesis aptly puts that forth.

• Consider the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a tale that outlines the difference between evolved and unevolved souls. It's interesting that Abraham negotiates with God in trying to save the two cities from being destroyed because there might be people living there, namely Lot and his family. As you probably know, they escape the cities as they're being destroyed by God, and Lot's wife looks back - even though she was told not to by God's angels - and turned into a pillar of salt.

The tragedy here is that God is again portrayed as vengeful, wrathful, and destructive. Why does humankind attribute their faults to God? The Bible is inundated with countless instances of this.

The Old Testament does not refer to Heaven or "The Other Side" except as God's kingdom. This portion of the Bible is Judaic in nature, which is why references to paradise are practically nonexistent. Individuals were more concerned with continuing their lineage of dynasties through their descendants until the "day of judgment."

Five Bible Verses that Depict God as Evil

I received an email from a friend and it's one of those emails that is sent to dozens, even hundreds of people. Supposedly there is a t-shirt for sale that reads, "Pray for Obama; Psalms 109:8". The email further states .. if you look in your Bible it reads: "Let his days be few and let another take his office." And the verse immediately following (Psalm 109:9) reads: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

The t-shirt of course is a ruse, trying to make a sale and play on the uninformed people who are Obama supporters and pseudo-Bible readers. Making a play on those who would not actually take the time to read the verse, but allow me to take it much further by asking this question:

Could a passionate, loving Creator that symbolizes all that is beautiful and good in our universe have inspired this particular passage in the bible?" Many believe God or the Holy Spirit inspired men to write the Bible.

Here's more of Psalms 109:

1. God of my praise, Do not be silent!
2. For they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me; They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3. They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, And fought against me without cause.
4. In return for my love they act as my accusers; But I am in prayer.
5. Thus they have repaid me evil for good And hatred for my love.
6. Appoint a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7. When he is judged, let him come forth guilty, And let his prayer become sin.
8. Let his days be few; Let another take his office.
9. Let his children be fatherless And his wife a widow.
10. Let his children wander about and beg; And let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.
11. Let the creditor seize all that he has, And let strangers plunder the product of his labor.
12. Let there be none to extend loving kindness to him, Nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.
13. Let his posterity be cut off; In a following generation let their name be blotted out.
14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, And do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.

So you're telling me the aforementioned verses were inspired by a loving God?

The Bible - without question the most influential book ever produced - was written by men with secrets to conceal both from the Roman and Jewish authorities and from other competing sects.

Until archeological advances beginning in the nineteenth century, virtually everything humans knew about their origins came from the Bible filtered through the Church priesthood. Individuals were both canonized and executed, cultures built and destroyed, and wars fought - all based on this one book.

Today it is clear that the Bible - inspired as it may be, is a hodgepodge of myths, legends and parables from various cultures cobbled together with bits of history and philosophy.

Many passages were originally written using code words whose meanings were lost over time, causing misinterpretations. In other instances there was just plain tampering to advance some then current dogma or political agenda.

Bible scholar and former intelligence analyst Pat Eddy wrote, "One of the most important purposes of this tampering was to support the aims of those who sought to make Christianity more attractive to potential Jewish converts by proving that the events of Jesus' life fulfill prophecy from the Old Testament ... Christians have all been told, from their earliest trips to Sunday School, that the birth, death, and important events in the life of Jesus were all foretold in the Old Testament. Few have ever questioned this assertion."

What Bible scholars euphemistically term "redactions" are nothing less than editing. Such editing of the Bible has contributed to misunderstandings and erroneous translations, keeping many of its messages a secret from the uninitiated. Often such secrets were suppressed by the Roman church because they contradicted its dogma.

Official history has been changed to hide the fact that the world has been controlled by the same interbreeding tribe for thousands of years. This is never more so than with the major religions. They all have inner and outer levels of knowledge. The inner level carries the secrets going back to the ancient Mystery schools of places like Sumer, Babylon and Egypt. These include the secrets of the bloodline and only the chosen few are initiated into this awareness. The outer level is where the secrets are hidden in code and allegory and sold, with a deity, to the masses as the "truth". The New Testament Gospel stories are based on the initiation ceremonies and esoteric secrets - including astrology and Sun worship - that were performed and communicated in the Mystery schools. But they are presented as a literal story to fool the people.

The religions, not least Christianity, Judaism and Islam (all spawned from the same source) are carriers of the secrets (inner) and controllers of the people by hiding the secrets with allegedly "literal" stories (outer). The same basic "Jesus" tale of the Son of God who died for humanity was told around the world thousands of years before Christianity. This is related to the winter solstice or midwinter festival when the Sun is at the least powerful point in its cycle in the northern hemisphere. They said that on the solstice, our December 21/22nd, the Sun had "died". Three days later - the 25th - they said the Sun was born or born again. Thus we have a long line of Sun gods given the "birthday" of December 25th. The Jesus of the Gospels is a symbol of the Sun and the stories include a host of other Mystery school knowledge and esoteric concepts.

excerpt of Tales for the Time Loop by David Icke

Exposingchristianity.com

"The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly, has made the world evil and ugly."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The Christian church murdered, tortured, mutilated and destroyed millions and millions of lives both directly through the Inquisition and indirectly through all of the wars they incited. The damage and destruction this foul religion has perpetrated against humanity is almost beyond comprehension. Most people aren't even aware of the facts. Between the years of 1450-1600, the Christian church was responsible for the torture, and burning of some 30,000 alleged "witches."

The Inquisition was a campaign of torture, mutilation, mass murder and destruction of human life perpetrated by Christians. The church increased in power until it had total control over human life, both secular and religious. The Vatican wasn't satisfied with the progress made by regional leaders in rooting out heresy. Pope Innocent III commissioned his own inquisitors who answered directly to him. Their authority was made official in the papal bull of March 25th, 1199. Innocent declared "anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of god which conflicted with the church dogma must be burned without pity."

In 1254, to ease the job of the inquisitors, Pope Innocent IV decreed that accusers could remain anonymous, preventing the victims from confronting them and defending themselves. Many churches had a chest where informants could slip written accusations against their neighbors. Three years later, he authorized and officially condoned torture as a method of extracting confessions of heresy. Victims were tortured in one room, then, if they confessed, they were led away from the chamber into another room to confess to the inquisitors.

This way it could be claimed the confessions were given without the use of force. The Inquisitional law replaced common law. Instead of innocent until proven guilty, it was guilty until proven innocent.

Inquisitors grew very rich, accepting bribes and fines from the wealthy who paid to avoid being prosecuted. The wealthy were prime targets for the church who confiscated their property, land and everything they had for generations. The Inquisition took over all of the victims' possessions upon accusation. There was very little if any chance of proving one's self innocent, so this is one way the catholic church grew very wealthy. Pope Innocent stated that since "god" punished children for the sins of their parents, they had no right to be legal heirs to the property of their parents. Unless children came forth freely to denounce their parents, they were left penniless. Inquisitors even accused the dead of heresy, in some cases, as much as seventy years after their death. They exhumed and burned the accused's bones and confiscated all property from their heirs, leaving them with nothing.

The Witch hunts, 1450-1750 were what R H Robbins (The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology) called "the shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western civilization." In this 300 year period, the church stepped up the mass murder and systematic torture of innocent human beings. Torturers were allowed as much time as they needed to torture their victims. Most courts demanded that prior to the torture, the victim be thoroughly shaved, claiming that any Demon left undetected in the victim's body hair might intervene to deaden the pain that the torturers inflicted or answer for the victim.

Doctors would be in attendance if it seemed the victim might die from the torture. The victim would then be allowed to recover a little before more torture was applied. If the victim died during the torture, inquisitors claimed the Devil intervened with the purpose of sparing the victim further pain or preventing them from revealing his secrets. Those who fainted had vinegar poured into their nostrils to revive them. The victim's families were required under law to reimburse the courts for the costs of torture. Entire estates were seized by the church. Priests blessed the torture instruments prior to their being used. Certain devices were employed to inflict the maximum pain; indisputable evidence of the sick Christian mind.

Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian astronomer and physicist was one of the most noted victims of the inquisition. A letter in which he attempted to demonstrate the Copernican theory, that the Earth is not the center of the universe, was forwarded by some of his enemies (Christians) to the inquisitors in Rome. He was tried in 1633 and found guilty of heresy. He was forced to recant (publicly withdraw his statement) and was sentenced to life imprisonment under house arrest.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II declared that the Roman Catholic Church "may have been mistaken in condemning him," and he established a commission to study the case. In 1993, the Catholic Church "officially" pardoned Galileo. In other words, they forgave him for teaching that the planets revolve around the Sun, not the Earth.

Cassel Dictionary of Witchcraft by David Pickering

I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters the future to set the record straight. He does a few super-deeds and vindicates himself, then comes home. So Superboy winds up having the last laugh --or does he?

Of course, it is only fiction! The people in the future were quite right! Superboy is just as mythical as Santa Claus and Peter Pan.

This seems to me a close parallel to the efforts of Christian apologists to vindicate as sober history the story of a supernatural savior who was born of a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, changed water into wine, walked on water, rose from the grave and ascended bodily into the sky.

I used to think, when I myself was a Christian apologist, a defender of the evangelical faith, that I had done a pretty respectable job of vindicating that story as history. I brought to bear a variety of arguments I now recognize to be fallacious, such as the supposed closeness of the gospels to the events they record, their ostensibly use of eyewitness testimony, etc. Now, in retrospect, I judge that my efforts were about as effective in the end as Superboy's! When all is said and done, he remains a fiction.

One caveat: I intend to set forth, briefly, some reasons for the views I now hold. I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin [?] must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith. In both cases, what matters is the reasons for the change of mind, not merely the fact of it.

Having got that straight, let me say that I think there are four senses in which Jesus Christ may be said to be a "fiction."

First (and, I warn you, this one takes by far the most explaining): It is quite likely, though certainly by no means definitively provable, that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological "Christ of faith" a synthetic construct of theologians, a symbolic "Uncle Sam" figure. But if you could travel through time, like Superboy, and you went back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there. Why conclude this? There are three reasons, which I must oversimplify for time's sake.

1. In broad outline and in detail, the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels corresponds to the worldwide Mythic Hero Archetype in which a divine hero's birth is supernaturally predicted and conceived, the infant hero escapes attempts to kill him, demonstrates his precocious wisdom already as a child, receives a divine commission, defeats demons, wins acclaim, is hailed as king, then betrayed, losing popular favor, executed, often on a hilltop, and is vindicated and taken up to heaven.
   
   

   These features are found world wide in heroic myths and epics. The more closely a supposed biography, say that of Hercules, Apollonius of Tyana, Padma Sambhava, of Gautama Buddha, corresponds to this plot formula, the more likely the historian is to conclude that a historical figure has been transfigured by myth.

   And in the case of Jesus Christ, where virtually every detail of the story fits the mythic hero archetype, with nothing left over, no "secular," biographical data, so to speak, it becomes arbitrary to assert that there must have been a historical figure lying back of the myth. There may have been, but it can no longer be considered particularly probable, and that's all the historian can deal with: probabilities.

   There may have been an original King Arthur, but there is no particular reason to think so. There may have been a historical Jesus of Nazareth, too, but, unlike most of my colleagues in the Jesus Seminar, I don't think we can simply assume there was.

2. Specifically, the passion stories of the gospels strike me as altogether too close to contemporary myths of dying and rising savior gods including Osiris, Tammuz, Baal, Attis, Adonis, Hercules, and Asclepius. Like Jesus, these figures were believed to have once lived a life upon the earth, been killed, and risen shortly thereafter. Their deaths and resurrections were in most cases ritually celebrated each spring to herald the return of the life to vegetation. In many myths, the savior's body is anointed for burial, searched out by holy women and then reappear alive a few days later.
3. Similarly, the details of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection accounts are astonishingly similar to the events of several surviving popular novels from the same period in which two lovers are separated when one seems to have died and is unwittingly entombed alive. Grave robbers discover her reviving and kidnap her. Her lover finds the tomb empty, graveclothes still in place, and first concludes she has been raised up from death and taken to heaven. Then, realizing what must have happened, he goes in search of her. During his adventures, he is sooner or later condemned to the cross or actually crucified, but manages to escape. When at length the couple is reunited, neither, having long imagined the other dead, can quite believe the lover is alive and not a ghost come to say farewell.

Robert M. Price - Christ a Fiction - continued

Before his arrest and imprisonment in France, knowing that he would probably be arrested and executed, Paine, following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism (a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for either faith or organized religion), wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of deism, calling for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion.  ~ Wikipedia

Thomas Paine Quotes:

• All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
• Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.
• It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
  
• Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
• Human nature is not of itself vicious.
• The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
• My mind is my own church.
• Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
• Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
• Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
• That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
  
• But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

Religion is an individual choice. We don't have to belong to a certain religion in order to find enlightenment. The God Force lives within each one of us and doesn't damn us for [religious rituals] flying on Friday or for going hat-less in church.

The soul incarnates into a specific religion for karmic reasons in order to help fulfill its destiny. We've no right to impose our own beliefs on others. Formal religious training isn't a requirement for redemption. It's a grand goal to live a good, useful life of service - a goal that can be achieved within or outside of structured religion.

In spirit there's no such thing as religious prejudice or persecution. This type of behavior is limited to the physical world. The greatest form of worship is found in respecting all life and living with integrity. In this way we pay homage to the God that lives within everyone.

We damn ourselves into troubled situations by our own behavior. Fearful living is a form of hell we create for ourselves on the earth plane. Love and understanding will free us from the bondage of this state of mind.

Freed from the fear of eternal damnation and similar abstract threats, we're able to discover what our true beliefs are rather than blindly adhering to doctrine we don't fully understand. We can then discover our own absolute goodness and live richer, more fulfilled lives.

• "For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and believe in your heart that GOD has raised Him from the dead, You shall be saved." Romans 10:9
• "For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Romans 10:13
• "Judge not that ye be not judged." Matthew 7:1

From time to time we've all heard the question, "are you saved?" A slight hesitation in your answer makes the inquisitor look at you in a different light. As if they are somehow "better" than you because they have declared themselves "saved" and you have not. As subtle as it may appear, this is certainly a form of judging someone.

Are you ready for eternity? At "such-and-such" church, we provide you the opportunity to be saved, and know for sure you will go to heaven. Join our church, pay your tithes, declare the "Lord Jesus" as your Savior, and you will be SAVED! Oh, but don't stop paying your tithes because you might not be "saved" anymore. That's a rather gray area, so we don't know if you will go to hell if you don't pay your 10 percent "to the Lord."

taskeinc

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. People have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, or the infinite vastness behind the word God. They use it however, as if they know exactly what they are talking about but actually have no clue.

This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as"My/Our God is the only true God, and your God is false." The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is spoken, a mental image is created, no longer of an old man with a white beard but a mental image is engendered nonetheless. A mental representation of someone or something outside of you, and almost always a male image.

"The Power of Now" Eckhart Tolle

Hell is identification with the outer self. Hell is not a place; hell is not somewhere that we go when we are dead; hell is not punishment handed out to us by something or someone else - it is rather our contracting, sinning, separating activity of choosing the wrong self to identify with. We identify with that which we are not, we identify merely and only with the empirical ego, the self lacerating identity is nothing other than hell. Hell is a horrendous case of mistaken identity. We have forgotten who and what we are, a transcendental self plugged straight into spirit, speaking with the word of God and shining with the radiance of the Goddess. But we identify only with the finite self, the objective self, the self that can be seen, and not the self that is the seer, divine, infinite and eternal.

Ken Wilber, Forward from Entering the Castle by Carolyn Myss

Souls who need lots of healing and recovery which would include the mentally ill, those who have taken their own lives, and those who committed evil acts or caused harm to others, are taken to a place where they are cocooned in intense healing energy to restore their depleted spirit. The rest of us who are not in such dire need of healing gravitate to the spiritual level that corresponds with our energy, or vibration. The level we ascend to depends on our thoughts, words, and deeds while on Earth. Our addictions, unhealthy behavior, and negative thoughts follow us into the spiritual realm and when we review our lives, it becomes strikingly clear why we should have let those habits go - they block our spiritual growth.

Think of spiritual growth and evolution from a scale of one to ten. The lowest level (#1) is what many of you call "Hell," which isn't really a place, but a state of mind where we're disconnected from ourselves and separated from Source. Hell is the absence of light and love, and it's created by negative thoughts and behavior. Anyone filled with hate and darkness resides here and will stay in this self-created dark hole until the soul chooses otherwise. The sooner the soul can let go of the fear-driven ego, the faster it can lighten, brighten, and grow.

Excerpts from "Spirited" by Rebecca Rosen