By A Mortal Man
Note: Part 1 was very important and you are strongly invited to read it as this article builds on some unique insights to be found there. Copy and paste either of the following links to obtain it:
https://stateofthenation.co/?p=196227
OR
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/11/22/when-a-high-god-demands-genocide/
In Part 1 we explored important ideas such as how widely inundated modern societies are showered with deceit, especially from the mainstream media, politicians, and governments especially the United States and Israel.
We also closely examined the semantics and mythology of various terms associated with devils. ‘Satan’ according the ancient biblical texts is the accuser, the prosecutor, and frequently enough works secretly with the powers-that-be. Whereas ‘Lucifer’ denotes and connotes brilliance, oppositional rebellion, and leadership for civil war, etc.
It was argued that of all the so-called ‘demonic’ activities labeled Satanic as engaged, none seems to be more precocious and preponderant than that of lies and deceit; and, we can therefore conclude the politics of today’s world very much reinforces more of this drama of deceit and inhumanity (so readily ‘projected’ onto religious notions of ethereal and supernatural entities such as Angels and Demons).
Most sane readers, regardless of their particular religious belief systems, would agree that ‘evil’ does in fact exist, and ‘evil’ are very much part of human history and human endeavor regardless as to whether one believes whether evil ultimately resides in supernatural forces and spirits.
The killing of innocent people is pretty much universally considered evil by people of almost all societies.
Deceit and lies especially have deleterious consequences equally are considered evil.
If the entire world was atheist, it would still be full of lawyers, legal codes, court of law and prison systems (with various forms of punishment and exoneration). Evil is a human reality regardless as to whether religions dominate connotations and denotations on the particulars.
Moreover, plenty of humanistic and consummate minds have pointed to various passages in certain religious books considered authoritative and claimed them as evil. Even many religious leaders have also claimed certain ideas in the bibles’ religious testaments as evil and unjust.
Take for example, writer and bishop John Shelby Spongs’ books like:
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile … and
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture
John Shelby claims to have read some version of the entire Christian Bible many times and he has thought deeply about the messages therein.
Of course, he is not alone. Thousands of scholars throughout history have done the same (not always reading it entirely or as often). Books written on religious matters can fill massive libraries and do.
Religion and mythology have always been controversial and debated; and these debates are just as prolific and adamant today as they have been throughout history. Controversy in religion itself can fill huge libraries.
Honest intellectuals cannot separate religious belief from human politics, history, cultures or ethics, because too much of what comprises religion is the history and politics between various peoples, not to mention a history between humans and what religions argue to be supernatural beings and gods.
And not so ironically, the majority of people believe in the religions that happen to dominate in the various countries and cultures, where they are born into, and often they have inculcated their religious beliefs during childhood, that is before they have psychologically established critical thinking skills.
A vast number of religions are strewn withing a wide array of cultures throughout history, and are scattered over hundreds of different anthropological realities of the planet. How was it so many and diverse religious systems evolved throughout time?
Who could possibly speak for so much diversity and heterogeneity?
Moreover, why has the idea of ‘orthodoxy’ been so immensely important in some religions with continuous conflict between various religions and cults?
More perplexing still, is why do people take their religious beliefs so seriously and sometimes so fanatically? What truly motivates various religious beliefs? Are all religious beliefs rationally based or are some based on irrational beliefs and fears both consciously and unconsciously?
Highly relevant, to this very day, and in historical time, is why was so much violence committed historically in the name of religion? See Karen Armstrong’s book: Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Any scholar worthy of any salt would find these kinds of questions significant regardless of personal belief.
Regardless of whether any particular individual believes in any system called religion the fact remains that religious belief in general continues to have an enormous influence in todays and tomorrow’s flow of events.
Dozens of secular fields of academic discipline have evolved over the last centuries that are not based on religion, still they have not brushed aside long-standing religions as mere superstition and unimportant. Billions of people take their faiths seriously.
Over and above belief, it seems only a minority of people who can and will discuss conflicting religious beliefs rationally, open-mindedly, and skeptically. Billions of religious arguments have gone nowhere constructively.
It is considered in bad taste for many people to even discuss religious matters with others one is not that familiar for fear of alienating others. This is equally true for discussions on politics and sex. These topics are considered private and political minefields by the more circumspect and timorous. Still, they are the matters that most matter.
Many, it seems, have an agenda and a bias that they want to fob off on others. Why argue? People often disagree on such matters regardless of the arguments and considerations presented.
We believe people are supposed to figure out such important matters on their own and within their own family or with close friends (even as the left, especially, denigrates family values).
What is a mere mortal mind supposed to do to be enlightened?
Well, you can read a lot, but what if important ideas that challenge the status quo are censored and you therefore are not privy to those important ideas and considerations? Who or what is going to challenge your assumptions?
How are we to determine if ‘any’ of the religious scriptures are true even if millions and millions of people believe them to be?
Look at how many “political ideas” are considered taboo and censored today. How do we know so-called “fact-checkers” are legitimate and are not part of elaborate deceit practices—that is themselves conspiratorial in nature?
People argue for “authoritative” sources; but even the semantics of ‘authority’ comes to us through the word ‘author’ meaning there are many conflicting authors? Authority by way of time and repute is recognized by some as having consensus, such as books on law are considered authority, as are some religious books. But who is ultimately the arbiter that decides?
Those who argue to identify authority are ALL mere mortals. They all were once born naïve, and have spent a few decades living in one of a few cultures, and within their own enculturation processes. Some depending on their personalities and traits claim to have more expertise, wisdom and knowledge than do others, but still they are all ultimately mere humans who die back to existential nirvana or naivete—even all the Saints and those written to have been Prophets.
There is no angelic language: only human languages. There is no supernatural deity interacting directly with the masses: only prophets who claim to speak for a supernatural being.
All religion, even those considered the most sacred, are always about ‘he’ (human male pronoun) or ‘she’ (less common human female pronoun). Always it ends up mere mortals are thought to speak for the Almighty based on their claims and reputations (or the religious writers who claim to write for them)—but ‘always’ via ‘human’ persuasion—including ALL religious texts (all books of the Bible and Talmud) and regardless of how many times translated and transcribed over hundreds and thousands of years. All religious ideas are ultimately HUMAN belief systems.
And what’s important here, regardless of how religious beliefs evolve, they often address moral and ethical considerations, and such considerations are always important in the context of society and the world of nation states.
They deal with grave matters and human values such as right and wrong. And this consideration, is, frankly, as important as any other of aspect of religious belief.
Few practical people believe in anarchy and the idea that anything goes (regardless of how some intellectuals mince, dice and splice such words of ‘anarchy’ and its meanings).
No practical person truly believes that every human being should reason out every impulse and action without any guiding principles except as self-directed. Only a highly intelligent moron could assume such sophistry because it is completely impractical in the day to day living of life for most people.
Most of us need to assume people and societies need to agree on some things, such as whether rules of the road while driving a vehicle, and such assumptions are valuable and productive. Or should everyone, willy nilly, decide for self which rules and norms can apply, and when, against all other drivers equally on such a collision course? The world can tolerate a few headstrong deviants but when everyone plays the game of being arbitrary—good luck. Who and what are you going to trust?
It does not matter whether most politicians who rise to the top are eventually corrupted, because such tendencies equally happen in religions as well, and the more proscriptive the more likely. There is a reason Thomas Jefferson said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Preachers and prophets have claimed certain ideas are sacred and justifiable when if fact the are arguably the exact opposite.
Therefore, we human beings still need to think and feel for ourselves—regardless of all the layers of preacher and authoritative verbiage we face.
And yet what society can exist that does not assume some values, rules and procedures?
Even our most corrupt United States House of Representatives and the Senate has rules of procedure. Even secret societies and various mafiosi’s have codes or honor systems.
Furthermore, there has always been sanctions and punishments for so-called bad behavior, at least for the hoi polloi.
The real and eternal question is when are such sanctions and punishments (or rewards) fair and reasonable? Who should decide and under what circumstances? Or are external judgments just supposed to be imposed on others who have no say or power to act on their own behalf?
These obviously are old age ideas of cultural values and standards evolved historically throughout human society regardless of geographical location, language and culture.
Nevertheless, many intelligent and judicious writers have declared the Old Testament of the Bible to be anything but fair and ethical. By some the God of the Old Testament, especially, is considered a tyrant and homicidal killer demanding the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Canaanite men women and children—supposedly for the sake of one tribe of stiff-necked and cantankerous peoples.
Some critics go so far as to say the Old Testament does not exemplify morality or ethics in the least—that is it the ‘opposite’ of such notions.
Michael Manchester says that God is a terrorist in his e-book:
“When God Became the Terrorist: Traces Of The Authoritarian Nature of the Three Abrahamic Religions” at this link:
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/07/511565.html
Do human souls have a right to judge God like we assume the right to judge judges, leaders, kings, and prime ministers?
How are we to determine of the “so-called” word-of-God is really not the word of a benign and fair leader, but rather that of a tyrant and a sociopath (even if printed in sacred text)?
Are we supposed to assume everything written in a modern Bible is true and beyond question even if every word was composed, translated and copied by humans over hundreds and thousands of years (and human motive did not taint any of the texts in any way)?
There are thousands of skeptical questions that could be asked, and have been asked, along these lines.
The world today is on the brink of a World War because the Israeli government is bombing the hell (literally) out of Gaza and killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
This ethnic cleansing is being done under the justification that the God of the Old Testament supposedly gave Eretz Israel solely to Jews for a nationalist racist state claimed as Yahweh’s special favor. God is a real estate dealer for one mere sliver of mortality.
Moreover, some Jews believe they were meant to rule over the entire world and all of humanity. This idea alone is worthy of a book.
Why should non-Jewish gentiles believe this that comes across as totalitarian conspiracy? Why should goyim accept any of this chosen people racist mythology destined over all mankind and other races as supposedly how diverse and precious?
One problem in today’s modernity is that many Christians do not understand the divergence between what Zionists believe and what Christians believe about what is referred to as “End Times” (assuming of course that there really is something called an apocalypticism coming)?
How do we know this is not really all one big brain wash?
Why would a just god create such an insane series of end-of-the-world scenarios?
A more plausible explanation for the Book of Revelations is that it was written by a mad man in a mental institution with too much time on his hands (or a monastery).
Some say the bigger the lie the more people believe it.
And since we now are realizing that so much of what News Speak and Political Speak is lies then why is it so hard to believe as well, that too much of what we were taught as history and biblical history are equally based on tales, exaggerations and misrepresentations?
It should not be that hard to fathom—that everything is up for question in this age when even science has become corrupted not to mention law and the courts?
Ryan Cristian at his website TheLastAmericanVagabond.Com is constantly exposing the many, many lies and acts of cruelty and murder being committed by the IDF in Israel against the innocent Palestinians, and other Israelis, and he does it better than most alternative websites (sometimes getting a bit wordy). His podcasts are a must study for anyone truly wanting to understand the gist of the horrific events happening there. [And it is worth one’s time to listen to previously recorded podcasts to see in real time “documentation” and real investigative journalism reasoning as to what is really going on.]
Also, podcast articles along with recorded audios by Ron Unz at Unz.com are also a must devour series of articles for people trying to get to the truth between what some Zionist have declared as history versus what is likely real history, documenting courageous researchers who have come to reveal as very different. For example, hot off the press:
American Pravda: The Nakba and the Holocaust: Eliminating the Entire Palestinian People Dec. 11, 2023 at link:
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-nakba-and-the-holocaust/
Note: ALL HIS STUFF is well researched, highly important, documented and courageously presented against the tons of propaganda we normally receive as brainwash! Do appreciate.
Yes, conspiracies and deceit are the rule of the day and our age.
And on another tract of events, there has been an ongoing cultural war against the common man’s sense of normalcy, decency, cultural ancestry, religion, and anything once considered a way of life and values.
Much important is being tossed upside down. Forget common courtesy, literacy, honesty, fair-play, respect, etc. when it is warranted. Norms and social expectations are being discombobulated and chaos strikes again and again, such as allowing real criminals to go free, and encouragement for selfish people to easily shoplift wares from retail outlets and department stores.
It is one constant assault after another taking any normal and rational person to a head spin (and this is just the softening up stage).
Note: You may rightly argue this essay strongly questions traditional Judeo-Christian doctrines and values, and you would not be wrong. However, there is a difference in trying to explore real truth for the sake of dignity of humanity versus trying to destroy a culture for the sake of destroying a culture.
Christianity is known for many positive values and achievements, including providing group adhesiveness and shared sense of identity. One does not necessarily have to throw out the baby with the bathwater even if it may be hard to tell the difference at times.
Oxford University Press explains their published book Why We Need Religion by Stephen T. Asma in the following way:
*Examines how and why religion is meaningful, rather than whether it is true
*Explains how emotion provides a source for religion, and how religion helps humans survive and flourish
*Brings together research from evolution of culture, enactive psychology, philosophy of biology, and more…
Why We Need Religion is an important, very interesting and insightful book. It is a mistake for naïve atheists to think getting rid of anything considered religion and interlocked tradition is a good thing for humanity.
Where are we getting all the schizophrenic ideas like transhumanism, genetic gene splicing for zoological monstrosities as Frankenstein Ph.Ds. engage in classified research, gender fluidity based on whim, artificial intelligence controlling the herd masses, surveillance states and mind control, or just good old-fashioned Communism? Well from the so-called leftist elite dominating colleges across the Western world.
Why would almost every culture throughout history have some sort of religious doctrine if religion was not important to humanity? Why do people assume nothing should be considered sacred, which is not to argue that it is unfair and unwise for humanity to examine all ideas?
There is a pdf e-book called “Religion” by Stephen D. Glazier and Carol R. Ember on the Internet stating in a brief abstract:
“Although all known societies have religious beliefs and practices, religions vary greatly from society to society. This module summarizes what cross-cultural research tells us about predictors and possible explanations of religious variation.”
Think about it: All! cultures known have had some form of religion. The Internet states, in question answer format: “Religion is a social institution because it includes beliefs and practices that serve the needs of society. Religion is also an example of a cultural universal because it is found in all societies in one form or another.”
So, the real question for mere humanity is this: Does humanity have a right and a duty to examine religious beliefs from various perspectives, such as analyses that compare and contrast ‘political’ and ‘psychological’ interpretations of religion?
Michael Manchester, in the link listed above, argues that theological seminaries examine religions in various ways but seldom are they primarily from a point of view of classifying religions along the lines of political and psychological propensities, despite the fact that Gods normally have an immense amount of power and they engage in power plays throughout scriptural literature.
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/07/511565.html
Doesn’t this seem strange and highly lacking?
Old Testament prophets claiming their God Yahweh demands the slaughter of the Canaanites and there is little incentive historically to examine these claimed events through the prism of Psychology and Political Science?
Modern day Rabbis can argue for the killing of Palestinian children and few people dare analyze these pronouncements from modern day sensibilities? And of course, such videos are very much censored on major Internet search engines as another form of deceit by omission.
https://odysee.com/@salutcousin:c41f/RABBIS-WANT-PALESTINIAN-BLOOD-NO-MERCY-EVEN-CHILDREN:0
Granted, many of us humans routinely spray insecticide on all fleeing insects in places we want them eliminated, but we do not so easily and readily argue for the murder of innocent civilians, women and children.
How should human societies rationalize and square the logic on such matters when these arguments are considered war crimes by the masses?
Mostly we do not readily empathize with insects so readily (unless some type of Buddhist or adherent to Jainism). Most of us are silent about the mass killing of cattle and pigs for food who get more precise death. Are our lines of moral sensibility open for re-interpretation depending on our assumed goals?
According to Israel Shahak, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion The Weight of Three Thousand Years chapter 4 Weight of History “… rabbis were the most loyal, not to say zealous, supporters of the powers that be; and the more reactionary the regime, the more rabbinical support it had” pages 66-67.
This sentence above is obviously out of context but upon reading his books it is fair to argue some rabbis, among Jewish believers, seem often enough to be some of the most fundamentalist, repressive and totalitarian of all of them.
Should we gentiles assume they represent Yahweh or it is more likely they project their own political and psychological propensities onto a supernatural being, so as to claim more authority than they could earn from the respect of unprejudiced beings?
https://odysee.com/@salutcousin:c41f/Israeli-propaganda—Hamas-killing-babies:2
Why are so many naïve Zionist-Christians going along with all this mass murder of Palestinians?
Is it in fact not time to finally put Judeo-Christianity on the psychiatric couch for some in-depth examination?
Why do so many leaders of so-called Atheist and Humanist societies sit on the fence or act as limited hangouts when the real analyses of the negative sides of religious authoritarianism is ignored? And are they too managed, like so many nonprofit organizations, by people of Jewish decent, so they are hesitant to do some real analyses of how the psychology and politics of their religion is affecting history and nation state cultures around the world?
“When God Became The Terrorist” as title is shockingly relevant and deserves a great deal of thought. Why? Because messages in the Bible are full of terrorizing realities as Michael Manchester argues.
Fear of a supernatural demon called Satan who supposedly is so much more cunning and aware than us mere mortals.
Fear of going to an eternal prison of torture commonly called hell.
Fear of not being with God.
Fear of the Book of Revelations, etc.
Is there any wonder why, for example, during the Middle Ages, European inquisitions were torturing, killing and burning witches which were supposedly in cahoots with the devil?
People were scared out of their wits, and anything that did not conform to orthodoxy in urban cities were highly suspicious and daemonic. Now it is patriotic terrorists.
Why are Middle Eastern religions, namely the Abrahamic religions, so full of fear-mongering and authoritarian judgmentalism and violence and hate? How about hate speech in the Scripture?
Why did not this Middle Eastern, supposedly all-powerful, God take responsibility for his own creation, rather than all his bickering about how his people have failed him and sinned against his arbitrary demands?
How do we not know whether the history of Judeo-Christianity is not one long episode of Stockholm Syndrome, in which adherents are so fanatically religious because they are so unrecognizably afraid of what their own religion portrays and demands?
Why are so many fundamentalist preachers so focused on sin, sin, and more sin and the need for forgiveness, salvation and prostration? Does any and every God deserve to be worshipped?
If this God is so angry about his creation playing out Hollywood drama, and wants to punish those he himself supposedly created, that is, those who are so far less powerful and knowing than he, then why does he not punish himself for creating less than perfect creatures forced to live in less-than-ideal circumstances?
Meanwhile, now the entire world stands back to watch the complete annihilation of 2.3 million Gazans as real genocide even as Jews, a thousand times more than any other people scream about NEVER AGAIN? Hypocrisy here is a blatant understatement. Get that ambassadors of the demons and compromised cowards?
Caucasian Zionists currently taking over the Levant are not even the genetic heirs of old Judaism. They are latter converts far after Rome’s wars with Judea. Furthermore, many are themselves atheists.
Guess Who Doesn’t Believe In God? Ten percent of Protestants, 21 percent of Roman Catholics, and 52 percent of Jews do NOT believe in God. See:
https://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewsdontbelieve/
This is what many do not realize: there are wide differences between people who call themselves Jews in relationship to Zionism, Israel, and their religion in its various flavors.
The glue that holds them together and Israel together is their claim of genocide against their people and the persecutions they have suffered throughout history (plenty exaggerated).
The bottom line is the world can no longer tolerate arguments that it is OK to dispossess people and kill people based on religious claims. No just and universal God would ever advocate for such a notion.
Amen