Wattree 07/26/2015 dagblog
A friend of mine, who's a Christian and a
very insightful writer, recently wrote an article that started me thinking
about both Christianity and organized religion in general. In his article
he asked a pivotal question that I believe goes right to the core of
Christianity - "What if Jesus was merely the teacher of a social gospel
and moral philosophy . . .?"
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In my opinion, that question captured the essence of what Jesus was all
about. Jesus wasn't a superhuman; he was simply a very intelligent and
insightful human being, a philosopher. But after he espoused his philosophy,
ignorant, self-serving, and superstitious people - people who believed in
talking snakes - took his words out of context and turned him into some kind of
superhuman being, and gave him powers that contradicted the laws of nature, the
universe, common sense, and God.
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If we hadn't been conditioned all our lives to believe in this counterintuitive
nonsense it would be clear to us that the Christian belief system holds just
about as much validity as voodoo: Dead men don't walk. No man can walk on
the water. No man can tell the Red Sea to scoot over. And if Adam and Eve were
the first people on Earth, where did the people come from that Cain went to
live with after he slew Abel?
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Take a moment to consider the following. All of your religious beliefs
are merely an accident of birth? If you'd been born in Israel, chances
are you'd be a Jew; if you'd been born in Iran you'd be a Muslim, or China, a
Buddhist. So your religion isn't so much God-inspired as it is a result
of the environment that you were raised in. You were SOCIALIZED into believing
what you believe. Thus, if you truly believe that a person born in Israel,
Iran, or China, is going to Hell because they don't believe what you believe,
you're stupid.
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This is a serious problem, because people are doing more "believing"
than thinking. Hoards of people are taking MAN'S word for the fact that the
Bible is "the word of God." So they're placing all of their
"faith" in MAN, not God - and a very evil man, at that. On the other
hand, we KNOW that God gave us our minds (By God, I mean whatever force is
responsible for the existence of the universe and what we consider reality). So
we need to start using it.
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Take Black people for example. Black people are some of the most devout
Christians in the world, even though they were taught Christianity while they
were tied up next to the mules - and every rule, law, and tenet of Christianity
was being brutally violated while they were being indoctrinated - yet, they
still believe it, that a blond haired, blue eyed Scandinavian was born in the
desert with supernatural powers.
No wonder so many Black people are finding it so hard to get their act together;
they're walking around in a state of somnambulism, and it seems that the worse
they're treated, the more they cling to that ridiculous myth -
"Lord, please forgive the White boy who walked in our church and
blew nine of our member's brains out." The reason for that is simple.
They've been conditioned to believe that no matter how bad they're treated,
they shouldn't worry about it, because God is going to take care of them when
they die. OH, REALLY!!!? Then why is everybody else killing one
another trying to get theirs now - including their preachers? It's the
perfect hustle - it keeps Black people docile, it keeps them thinking that the
worse their treated the more God is going to love them, and the powers that be
don't have to worry about anybody ever coming back and telling the people that
it's a lie.
Here's another thing that should be
considered. If God had decided to put religion on Earth to guide man, don't you
think he'd have had sense enough to create just ONE religion so religious dogma
wouldn't be the most hate-inspiring, murderous, and destructive forces on
Earth? Look around you - here in America, in the Middle East, and literally all
over the world - organized religion is THE primary source of most of the
agony, pain, and misery on the planet. Thus, organized religion isn't a
blessing, it's a curse. Would a loving God place a curse like that on
mankind? I don't think so. God gave us spirituality, which is found
within. It's a state if existence that's only between you, God, and the
universe. Man has absolutely nothing to do with it, because everything man
touches, he corrupts. God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to THINK,
not to follow a users guide written by other men.
Man is much too ignorant, self-serving, and greedy to write anything sacred. Yes, man says the Bible was "inspired" by God, but he also said that God told him in the Manifest Destiny to slaughter the Native Americans and take their land, and Zionists are saying the very same thing with regard to the Palestinians today. Do you actually believe that God is telling them to kill children? And what about Boko Haram, do you really believe God is telling them to kidnap young women and sell them into sexual slavery because he doesn't want women to get an education? That's not God saying that; that's self-serving men placing their words and beliefs in God's mouth, and the exact same thing is happening here in this country. Organized religion is man-made nonsense designed to manipulate the ignorance of the masses and promote the prejudice and greed of the elite. You can trace virtually any form of bigotry in a straight line right back to some form of religious dogma. So again, organized religion is a curse on man, that's been created by man, and it's ultimately going to lead to our destruction - even global warming is being defended in the name of God.
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About the Bible
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The Bible that Christians Worship today was compiled and “bless” by the
Catholic Church, not God. Any book that disagreed with the Catholic Church was
banned. What Christians call "The Holy Bible," and what these
preachers run around thumping, wasn’t even put together until almost 400 years
after the death of Jesus. So everything in it is hearsay. In terms of years, at
the time the Bible was complied, they were twice as far away from the life and
times of Jesus Christ as we are away from George Washington today. So in
reality, they didn’t know fact from fiction, any more than we know whether or
not George Washington really chopped down a cherry tree:
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"For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it
today. Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of
other books from which to choose. The Catholic Church realized early on that it
had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren't. The
debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers for several
centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren't. In the
meantime, several Church Councils or Synods, were convened to deal with the
matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419. The
debates sometimes became bitter on both sides. One of the most famous was
between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St.
Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably
mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St.
Augustine. I must point out here that Church Father's writings are not
infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own
private opinions. When some say St. Jerome was against the inclusion of the
seven books, they are merely showing his personal opinion of them. Everyone is
entitled to his own opinion. However, A PERSONS PRIVATE OPINION DOES NOT CHANGE
THE TRUTH AT ALL. There are always three sides to every story, this side, that
side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome's position, or Augustine's position
was the correct position, had to be settled by a third party, and that third
party was the Catholic Church.
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"Now the story had a dramatic change, as the Pope stepped in to settle the
matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by
the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a
decree appropriately called, "The Decree of Damasus", in which he
listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked
St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which
included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a
New Testament of 27 books" (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928064041AATOZUD).
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SO THE POPE HAD SPOKEN, AND THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED. THUS, WHAT CHRISTIANS REFER
TO AS "THE HOLY BIBLE" IS NOT THE WORD OF GOD, IT'S THE WORD OF POPE
DAMASUS I.
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