Some of us might be going to hell after all...

[beavis]

The bible is not a valid reason to believe hell exists because hell was added hundreds of years after it was written. And I dont believe in the bible.

[Nay]

I think we make our own Hell... If you believe that you are going to burn in the eternal fires of hell...well, you will.
Not me..nooo way..it's gonna be beautiful!

Nay. []

[Frère]

Tyler, you draw me in some bath of sadness for yourself, you really seem to have lost any kind of mark. Let me try to sooth you a little. I have been thru darkness, and I can assure you God is there for those who ask him. Those who deny god have surely a seat reserved in all you describe, and if ever you realise what kind of Joy lies in lightness, then you'll be able to know that your soul is safe. If bible presents sacrifices, it is to show you what price lightness is worth, not for pleasure of pain. It is also to remind you that when you find God, all pain is soothed, and you may so dive in the lion den without fear, even there, will be no trouble, and only good can happen to you... hell will only be the fate of the ones who wanted to destroy you, and of course could not.

[WalkerInTheWoods]

Does it really bother you that there might not be a place such that you describe? Would you really wish anyone to spend an eternity in such a place? Would it bother you if I do not go to this hell of yours if I do not worship a god or Jesus?

[Frère]

FallnAngel
I guess you are not talking to me but you did not mention, so I reply: Do as you please, you might find your own way.
[}:)]But if you really identify to a fallen angel... there might be a risk!

[Frère]

Chill
you seem to have good litterature reference. But when it comes to the real thing you'll see everything is simpler.
If you think you're a GOD you might have surprise when you discover that you're a mere god
On top of that, if human beings were GODS, don't you think the astral would be a little more unlimited to them? Really, when you will need something really bigger than you to help you, you'll be happy that you're not a GOD[^]

[no_leaf_clover]

tyler, you seem to be a very pessimistic person.

"What about all those hellish dimensions? Where all the negs dwelve? How do you know you wont be dragged in there the very moment you die? Then what can you say about so called "9 levels of hell"? They weren't invented out of thin air were they?"

all of this and more is covered under the theory you're trying to debunk. if anyone thinks they're going to be dragged to hell with a bunch of little firey demons with pitchforks and a big red satan guy watching them and laughing at them, well, i'm sorry for that person. negs can be kept away simply with a positive thinking.

how the astral dimension works is described in much detail in 'astral dynamics', and the whole theory of creating hell for yourself fits flawlessly into how the astral works. the christian beliefs do not. so first, you might want to tell us that everything we think we know about the astral is complete bs, and argue against robert bruce's work as well as what millions of people have experienced themselves, then you can start trying to feed us more of your warnings about firey pits where you suffer forever and ever and ever, like something out of a fairy tale.

[beavis]

^ Tyler just got bitched down

[WalkerInTheWoods]

Why can't people pick and choose from different religions and ideas to find what suites them best and helps them to grow? Why does someone have to take a religion as a whole or nothing at all? You do realize that this is what was done to give the Christains the Bible they have today. It was not just written in one sitting by one person or a group. It did not just fall out of the sky from some great being. It is a collection of writings that were written over a coarse of centuries. There were many more than what is in the Bible of today, so some people had to decide what goes and what stays, or in other words picking and choosing what suited them best.

[Frère]

Chill
I might have missred you but mabe this correction is usefull for other lurckers that might think when they do OBE they become GODS.. yes I think the size of font is important, basing myself on the bible (vaguely translated from french):"he created man as his image". I have the impression you read french? go read my story on my homepage mentioned above, and tell me what you think.

About the religion "à la carte" as you say I globally agry, expect (maybe?) I don't care if buddhists think Jesus christ is a manifestation of Vishnu (or Brahma or anything)

I tend to think that faith doesn't tell you about the bottom line. I have faith but I am completely unable to say if jesus christ is or is not an alien (besides I have big doubt my own guide would confirm that he would) On that perticular question my life makes me say that Jesus is a message that humans need to believe belonging to human kind, so not to any kind of alien... but errors are possible when you enter the details!

[beavis]

Chill, some methods of obtaining weird information are more reliable than others, and some people are better at using certain sources than others. Just because its paranormal doesnt mean we should have to use "BELIEVE" instead of "KNOW".

[MosesB]

Just as good and evil coexist,heaven and hell do the same so if you believe in heaven that there no doubt is a hell.

[Sinestro]

Here is some Info that I found about Beliefs, and I Quote.

The problems with beliefs

Introduction

"People have slaughtered each other in wars, inquisitions, and political actions for centuries and still kill each other over beliefs in religions, political ideologies, and philosophies. These belief-systems, when stated as propositions, may appear mystical, and genuine to the naive, but when confronted with a testable bases from reason and experiment, they fail miserably. I maintain that beliefs create more social problems than they solve and that beliefs, and especially those elevated to faith, produce the most destructive potential to the future of humankind.

Throughout history humankind has paid reverence to beliefs and mystical thinking. Organized religion has played the most significant role in the support and propagation of beliefs and faith. This has resulted in an acceptance of beliefs in general. Regardless of how one may reject religion as their belief, religious support of supernatural events gives credence to others in their support of mysticism, occultism and superstitions. Most scientists, politicians, philosophers, and even atheists support the notion that some forms of belief provide a valuable means to establish "truth" as long as it contains the backing of data and facts. Belief has long become a socially acceptable form of thinking in science as well as religion. Indeed, once a proposition turns to belief, it automatically undermines opposition to itself. Dostoyevsky warned us that those who reject religion "will end by drenching the earth in blood." But this represents a belief in-itself. Our history has shown that the blood letting has occurred mostly as a result of religions or other belief-systems, not from the people who reject them.

However, does rational thinking require the adherence to beliefs at all? Does productive science, ethics, or a satisfied life require any attachment to a belief of any kind? Can we predict future events, act on data, theories, and facts without resorting to belief? This paper attempts to show that, indeed, one need not own beliefs of any kind or express them in human language to establish scientific facts, predict future events, observe and enjoy nature, or live a productive, moral, and useful life.

Relative to the history of life, human languages have existed on the earth for only a few thousand years, a flash of an instant compared to the millions of years of evolution. It should come to no surprise that language takes time to develop into a useful means of communication. As in all information systems, errors can easily creep into the system, especially at the beginning of its development. It should not come to any wonder that our language and thought processes may contain errors, delusions and beliefs. It would behoove us to find and attempt to deal with these errors and become aware of their dangers.

The ability to predict the future successfully provides humans with the means to survive. No other animal species has a capacity to think, remember, imagine, and forecast to the degree of Homo sapiens. To replace our thoughts with intransigent beliefs belies the very nature of the very creative thinking process which keeps us alive.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Origins of belief

"The closest relative of the chimp is the human. Not orangs, but people. Us. Chimps and humans are nearer kin than are chimps and gorillas or any other kinds of apes not of the same species."
-Carl Sagan
Very little evidence has yet appeared about how belief arose in humans. As social animals, we probably have always held beliefs to some degree. Studies of our closest DNA relatives, the apes, have suggested that primate social animals require both followers and leaders. The followers must assume the codes of conduct of their leaders if they wish to live without social conflict. Since there always occurs more followers than leaders, the property of accepting the leaders without challenge and the introduction of language may have led primates towards the expression of beliefs.

Some animals have in their DNA a predisposition for imprinted programming. [1] One extreme example of maturation imprinting occurs with newborn greylag geese where they regard the first suitable animal that it sees as its parent and follows it around. In nature geese usually see their natural mother when born, but if humankind interrupts the natural process and a newborn goose first sees a human, then it comes to regard itself, in some sense, as a human, thus compromising its natural life as a goose. Some young animals have what scientists call "eidetic" memory; they will believe whatever gets taught to them. Apparently this kind of imprinting occurs with humans at an early age. Many people also accept, without question, the religion of their youth. The degree that humans have eidetic memory or the ability to control their beliefs, or reduce them remains open for further investigation. Learning about the mechanism of beliefs at this early stage may help us understand the consequences of imprinting and may lead us to modify the strategy of early learning.

The earliest evidence of human culture (or more accurately, a lack of evidence), has revealed that during the early Neolithic period, human culture showed few signs of dangerous war-inflicting belief-systems. Their concerns seemed aimed towards nature and female fertility worship. Notably, the first known examples of art contain no images of armed might, cruelty and violence based power. No images of battles or slavery [2]. There existed at that time no fortifications built for defense, or offensive weapons designed for war. Violent belief-systems did not seem to come into existence until humans invented language and male dominated religions. According to Riane Eisler, "one of the best-kept historical secrets is that practically all the material and social technologies fundamental to civilization were developed before the imposition of a dominator society." With the introduction of war-god beliefs, killing other humans became honorable and acceptable and to this day, people continue to revel in it.

Many early societies believed in spirits and animism, the belief that animals and inanimate objects possess a spirit. Indeed, the Latin word, anima, means soul. The word "spirit" also derives from the Latin word for breath. No doubt ignorance about the nature of wind, breath and movement of animals led them to construct an "explanation" about things in their world. How could they possibly know the difference between beliefs, facts, and evidence?

With language came the contemplation and study of thoughtful systems. Socrates and Plato introduced beliefs of "forms" of things existing independently of their physical examples. The measurements in the world represented superficial representations of an underlying and absolute "reality." Aristotle carried the concept further but placed these forms to physical objects as "essences." He posited the existence of a soul and introduced the concept of an immovable mover (God) to justify matter which moves through the "heavens." These ghostly concepts live today, not only in religion, but in our language. Many times we express essence ideas without thinking about them because they exist in the very structure of common communication derived from ancient philosophers. Since no one can see or measure these essences, the only way to comprehend them comes in the form of belief. Sadly, people still accept these essences as "real" based on nothing but faith without ever investigating whether they exist or not.

Orthodox religionists hinged their "sacred" philosophies upon the shoulders of ancient philosophers. Plotinus reorganized Plato's work as the bases for Platonism which lasted for many centuries. Thomas Aquinas became the foremost disseminator of Aristotle's thought. Aristotelianism and its limited logic still holds the minds of many believers. Today people still believe in inanimate objects, spirits, gods, angels, ghosts, alien UFOs, without ever questioning the reliability of their sources. Belief and faith can overpower the mind of a person to such an extent that even in the teeth of contrary evidence, he will continue to believe in it for no other reason than others around him believe in it or that people have believed in it for centuries.

"Religion. n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
-A. Bierce


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The meaning of belief

To establish a common ground for the general concept of belief, I hold to the common usage of the term from the American Heritage dictionary:

Belief: 1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in a person or thing; faith. 2. Mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of something. 3. Something believed or accepted as true; especially, a particular tenet, or a body of tenets, accepted by a group of persons.

Believe: 1 To accept as true or real. 2. To credit with veracity; have confidence in; trust.

In its simplest form, belief occurs as a mental act, a thinking process in the brain. To "believe" requires a thought accepted as having some "truth" value. To communicate this thought requires spoken or written language.

In the mildest form of belief, that of acceptance without absoluteness, I intend simply to provide a semantic replacement for the words "belief" and "believe." In the case of its extreme form, belief without evidence, and faith, I intend to eliminate its use entirely.

Note that in most instances, one can replace the word "believe" with the word "think". For example:

"I believe it will rain tonight."

can transpose into:

"I think it will rain tonight."

Most simple beliefs come from the expression of the experience of external events. From past experience, for example, people believe that dark clouds can produce rain, therefore, we attempt to predict the weather by forecasting from past events. Indeed, the intent of most beliefs aim at predicting the future in some form or another. However, to believe that an event will occur can produce disappointment if the prediction never happens. To make a prediction based on past events alone does not require believing in the future event, but rather, a good guess as to what may or may not happen. We can eliminate many of these simple beliefs by replacing the word "believe" with the word "think." The word "think" describes the mental process of predicting instead of relying on the abstraction of belief which reflects a hope which may not happen. And if we replaced Aristotelian either-or beliefs with statistical thinking we would reflect probable events instead of believed events.

Belief represents a type of mental thought, a subclass of many kinds of mental activity. Thinking may or may not include beliefs or faiths. Therefore, when I use the word "think" I mean it to represent thought absent of belief.

Many kinds of concepts occur without the need for belief. People can invent rules, maps, games, social laws, and models without requiring a habit or absolute trust in them. For example, a map may prove useful to get from point A to point B, but to believe that the map equals the territory would produce a falsehood. Humans invented the game of baseball, but it requires no need to believe in the game, or to attach some kind of "truth" to it. People can enjoy baseball, simply for the game itself. Technological societies invent "rules of the road" and construct traffic lights, signs and warnings. We do not take these rules as absolute but realize that they form a system of conduct that allow mass transit to exist. If any confidence results from the use of models and rules, it should come from experience of past events predicted by the models rather than from the thoughts themselves. Thoughts serve best as expressions of nature and feelings, not for the sake of beliefs.

Examples of non-beliefs

Many people misunderstand what constitutes belief and what does not. For many, belief has so infiltrated their minds, that everything perceived or thought incorporates a belief for them, including all of their knowledge and experience. However, beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements; although one can believe in knowledge, one can know without beliefs, although one certainly accepts their own beliefs, not all things accepted require beliefs.

Consider that if one defined belief to incorporate all forms of thought, then the word belief would become tautological and meaningless, not to mention that knowledge and experience would fall as a subset of belief. Need I remind that words differ not only in their spelling, but in their meanings? The following gives examples of non-beliefs:

Acceptance: Although belief requires some form of acceptance, not all things accepted require belief (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: I can accept the premise of a fictional story, but I do not for one moment believe in it. I can accept a scientific hypothesis without believing in it. Computers accept data and produce solutions, but computers have no consciousness, let alone beliefs. Many arguments can take the form of Devil's Advocate to oppose an argument with which the arguer may not necessarily disagree.

Action: Although many people believe in the actions they perform, one can act without beliefs (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Actions can occur out of a desire, a submission to an authority, or by unplanned events or even by mechanical means completely absent of humans. Examples: I can act a part without believing in it. I can act from a set of rules, but I do not need to believe the rules. I might act from an order from the police or government. I may act out of a desire to achieve something. There occurs no action which requires belief.

Agreement: Although belief requires some form of agreement, not all agreements represent beliefs (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). However, for some people (myself included), agreement requires no belief at all. Examples: I might agree that Captain Kirk served aboard the Starship Enterprise, but I hold no beliefs in Star-Trek fiction. I may agree with the rules of baseball, but I do not need to believe in baseball in order to understand it; I may not even like the game! I may agree with any premise, without believing in it.

Knowledge: Knowledge comes from awareness of the world, or understanding gained through experience. Although people may believe in what they know, knowledge has no requirement for belief (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: I may have knowledge of a story, poem or song, but I have no need to believe it. I know the rules of many games, but I do not believe in games. I know the mathematics of calculus, but I do not believe in calculus. I have knowledge of information, but I do not believe in information. I have direct knowledge of my existence through sensations, thought, and awareness, but I do not believe I exist: I know I exist.

Information: Although many people believe the information they receive, information received does not require belief in it (again, beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: the information from books, stories, science, theories, fiction, religion, etc., all represent communicated ideas, but one does not need to believe in it in order to utilize it.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Differences between thinking with beliefs and thinking without beliefs


The two charts above represent a visual abstract concept of the differences between the paths of belief and the path to knowledge. Both paths represent a form of thinking or mental activity. Note that the chart on the left shows a conversion point at the bottom where simple beliefs and thoughts coexist. At this level, they appear virtually the same with the only difference amounting to its semantic designation ("believe" can substitute for "think" and vise versa). However as each path progresses, they diverge; the path of belief progresses towards intransigence and the path of knowledge leads to factual knowledge. Each progresses as a matter of degree and each forms an independent path. For example, beliefs requires no external evidence whatsoever (examples: belief in ghosts, gods, astrology, etc.) The path of knowledge requires no reliance on beliefs (examples: the observation that the earth obits the sun and airplanes fly, etc. appears regardless of whether you believe in them or not.) However, the path towards knowledge requires external verification (observation and testing) whereas the path of belief does not. The path towards workable knowledge (facts) must agree with nature if we wish to utilize it. The path of belief requires no agreement with nature at all (although it might coincide with it).

Unfortunately, the usual practice of thinking involves the combination of beliefs with theory and factual knowledge (see the right chart). Most people tend to believe in what they think of as facts and knowledge, including perhaps the most rational people of all-- scientists and philosophers. And although scientists rarely approach intransigence (although some do) , they usually believe in their data and theories and most philosophers believe in their philosophies. However, consider that every scientific fact can stand on the evidence alone. Nature occurs without human beliefs and so does reliable evidence. There simply exists no apparent necessity for attaching beliefs to knowledge.

Consider the following: regardless of how strongly one has attached beliefs to scientific facts, no matter how religious the disposition of a scientist, there has never appeared a single workable theory or scientific fact that required the concept of a god or superstitious idea. Not a single workable mathematical equation contains a symbol for a "creator." There occurs not the slightest evidence for ghosts in our machines or in our bodies. Even the most ardent non-believers can live their lives in complete accord with nature and live as long as the most fanatical believer. In spite of the temporary mental comfort that belief might bring, (as do drugs) then what purpose can belief serve in the establishment of useful knowledge about the world?

I find it interesting to observe the state of belief in people

. They most always see the problems of belief above them on the chart, such as fanatical believers, but they never accept the disbelief of those below them. Believers always retain just the right amount of belief, it seems, and they unconsciously put themselves in a kind of self-centered, subjective dogma. I contend that most of us do not own beliefs of every kind and, indeed, we disbelieve more than we believe. Just as some believers have less beliefs than others, non-believers simply sit at the bottom of the scale. If you can, temporarily, put yourself outside of your own beliefs, you can question why you dismiss the beliefs of others, while perhaps understanding why non-believers dismiss yours.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Problems that derive from belief

Although one can argue that beliefs supported by scientific evidence represent a benign form of beliefs, they also act as barriers towards further understanding. Even the most productive scientists and philosophers through the ages have held beliefs which prevented them from seeing beyond their discoveries and inventions.

For example, Aristotle believed in a prime mover, a "god" that moves the sun and moon and objects through space. With a belief such as this, one cannot possibly understand the laws of gravitation or inertia. Issac Newton saw through that and established predictions of gravitational events and developed a workable gravitational theory. Amazingly, Newton began to think about relativity theory long before Albert Einstein. However, his belief in absolute time prevented him from formulating a workable theory. Einstein, however, saw through that and thought in terms of relative time and formulated his famous theory of General relativity. However even Einstein had beliefs which barred him from understanding the consequences of quantum mechanics. He could not accept pure randomness in subatomic physics, thus he bore his famous belief: "God does not play dice." Regarless, physicists now realize that for quantum mechanics to work, nature not only plays with dice, but randomness serves as a requirement if one wishes to predict with any statistical accuracy. And on it goes.

Although thinking without beliefs does not, by any means, guarantee that people will make scientific breakthroughs, it can, at the very least, remove unnecessary mental obstructions. Beliefs, even at its lowest form of influence can create problematic and unnecessary barriers.

As belief progresses towards faith and dogma, the problems escalate and become more obvious. We see this in religions and political ideologies, especially those that contain scripts (bibles, manifestos) which honor war, intolerance, slavery and superstitions. We see this in the religious inquisitions, "holy" wars, and slavery. During the period of the black plague, millions of humans died out of ignorance of the disease with beliefs that Satan caused it. Meanwhile their religious leaders discouraged experimental scientific investigation. In the 30s and 40s the world saw the fanatical idealism of communists as they destroyed millions of lives, and the holocaust by the Nazis. To this day, one can observe religious and ethnic beliefs creating war and intolerance in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Israel, Africa, Russia and many other countries.

Children get taught at a very young age to belief in abstract concepts such as Santa Claus, the toothfairy, and eventually, religious concepts. There simply exists no control or understanding of the dangers. Thus we prepare our society to not only accept beliefs, but to honor and fight for them. This commonly results in conflicts between free expression and censorship. For a believer, expression of ideas in-and-of-themselves represent beliefs. Thus violent television, movies and fictions present opportunities for the unaware to believe in them.

If, instead, we taught our children about beliefs and how they infect the mind and the dangers they can produce, society would have little need for censoring ideas. For without believers, there would live no one to believe them and the violence and fantasy portrayed by their fictions could only represent just that-- fictions.

"Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities.
The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and
the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High
Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you
stop thinking about it."
--Robert A. Wilson


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Everyone believes in something?

Many a believer, religious and atheist alike, will become astonished at any statement against belief, if for no other reason because they believe and the people around them have beliefs. They tend to form a belief-of-its-own that projects beliefs onto others. However, simply because most others believe does not necessarily follow that all people require the concept of belief. To claim the knowledge that everyone on earth believes in something portends an astonishing proclamation. It would require an omniscient ability to see into the minds of every human on earth. Moreover, many people fail to understand that belief requires conscious acceptance. People who own beliefs (unless they lie) do not deny them. Quite the contrary, people who believe, admit their beliefs quite readily. Furthermore, few people stop to ask what we mean by beliefs or understand that one can replace belief with other forms of "thinking."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I don't believe the sun will rise tomorrow, but I predict it will

Disbelieving does not mean thinking something may not happen. The absence of belief does not prevent one from predicting the event. It may seem fatuous not to believe the sun will not appear the next day. However, as a limited human being, I maintain no absolute certainty that a sunrise will occur. At best. I can only make a prediction based on past experience. Since I have experienced daylight every day of my life, and know of no human who hasn't, I have little evidence that a sunrise will not occur tomorrow. Therefore I can make a prediction based on past experience that the sun will appear extremely likely the next day. Note that I do not require belief to do this, only observation, experience, and good guessing. Prediction based on experience, in this case, replaces belief. But note that my prediction may prove wrong, regardless of how remote the chances. We have evidence that supernovas exist in the universe that can create destroy local solar systems. If, indeed, such an event occurred in our part of the galaxy, our sun could possibly get absorbed, along with the earth and all humans on it. So although there exists a very remote possibility that the sun will not appear, I can at least predict with great although imperfect accuracy that I will see sunlight the next day.

By replacing belief with predictive thought, one can eliminate the need for belief, yet still maintain an outlook on life and make useful predictions.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Don't you believe you exist?

To the believer who poses this question, I can only respond with "I know I exist, but apparently you only believe you exist."

Questions about belief of our own existence aim to put a philosophical end to the discussion by proposing an impossible (to believers) proposition that no one could possibly deny. However, eliminating belief does not deny the evidence of existence. This appears so obvious and apparent that it only shows the power of belief to blind people from the world around them.

Any fair observer will note that no animal, including humans, require a need to believe in their existence. Humans, however, have the power of knowledge and the ability to express themselves. I know I exist because I get knowledge of my existence every second of my conscious life directly from my feelings, perceptions, or thoughts; no belief required. Belief only introduces an unnecessary proposition. I can simply say "I exist," instead of "I believe I exist." My knowledge of existence comes from experience, not belief. The elimination of beliefs, makes our statements more concise, accurate and meaningful.

However, when one only believes in their existence, they automatically reduce their entire life to an abstraction: a belief. In effect, they have put an unnecessary barrier between their minds and the world around them.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The mechanism of thought

Because thought and belief requires a mental process involving neural activity, this allows scientific investigation into its mechanism. Although the abstractions of belief sits at a hierarchical level above the neuron level, there obviously occurs a connection between neuron activity to mental thought and vise versa. Unfortunately we still have only minute knowledge about the working of the brain, let alone the complex process that produces thought. However, studies have shown that some forms of delusional thought involve problems with the neocortex. Indeed, one of the characteristics of schizophrenic delusion involves grandiose and religious thinking [3] Some have even suggested that schizophrenia involves beliefs and attitudes taught to them while young [4]

Also, in epilepsy, neurological storms can trigger feelings and thoughts divorced from external events. Although the neocortex and its sensory equipment gets its information from the external world, the limbic system takes its cues from within. The neuroscientist, Paul MacLean became fascinated with the "limbic storms" suffered by patients with temporal-lobe epilepsy. [5] MacLean reported:

"During seizures, they'd have this Eureka feeling all out of context-- feelings of revelation, that this is the truth, the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth."

"You know what bugs me most about the brain? It's that the limbic system, this primitive brain that can neither read nor write, provides us with the feeling of what is real, true, and important."

The worst forms of schizophrenia almost always involve extreme forms of delusional beliefs. They hear voices, act on impulse, think they hear the voice of God, Satan, or act out whatever belief myth they grew up with. Interestingly, it appears that only thinking animals develop schizophrenia. We have no other animal model for this disease for holding false beliefs and the perception of unreal things. [6] Schizophrenia appears to exist only in humans.

According to V.S. Ramachandran, patients with temporal lobe epilepsy may experience a variety of symptoms that include an obsessive preoccupation with religion and the intensified and narrowed emotional responses that appear characteristic of mystical experience.

I present epileptic storms and schizophrenia here because they represent examples of mental disorder that can result in beliefs pegged to their extreme limit. I trust that most people will recognize these as dangerous forms of mental thinking. If the extreme beliefs held by schizophrenics represents a danger and an undesirable trait, then at what point below this do we consider beliefs desirable?

Many believers seem to think that all humans believe and that belief represents a requirement for human life. We can show the falsity of this assumption by simply eliminating thought entirely. Not everyone can do this, especially schizophrenics, but for those that wish to, there exists methods for doing so.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, some people can completely stop their thoughts. And when someone can stop their thought process, beliefs cease to exist, at least temporarily. Ancient meditation or modern biofeedback practices show how to reduce or stop the semantic noise within our heads. During this practice, concentrating on a single idea or word (mantra) can reduce the thought level to a minimum. The final aim at eliminating this single thought results in a state of no-thought. While in such a state, all thoughts, ideas, and beliefs cease. Brain scans reveal that, indeed, the neocortex brain waves associated with thought stop at this extreme form of meditation.

I bring up meditation and delusion to show that there occurs some range of degree of intensity of belief between the two extremes.


DEGREES OF BELIEFS
The curve above represents a population of beliefs from zero (no beliefs) to one (extreme limit of beliefs), charted with only two data points (x). The degree of belief determines dispositions to hold an idea as absolute or true.The dotted line represents a guess since I have no data to support it. From my personal observations, most people do not fall at either end of the spectrum and I guess that most would fall somewhere between the two extremes. Perhaps it would appear as some kind of Bell curve as shown above.

Although schizophrenia describes an obvious dysfunctional disease that causes harm to themselves and possibly to others, many schizophrenic properties can coexist in the "normal" human thinking process without causing notice to people observing them. Delusional thinking usually accompanies schizophrenia. But note that delusions represent false beliefs, virtually the same as the conditions for faith. Faith has become acceptable mainly because powerful social institutions support it.

Symptoms of mental disease, of course, do not appear identical for everyone. Some people may have only one episode of schizophrenia in their lifetime. Others may have recurring episodes but lead relatively normal lives in between. Others may have severe symptoms for a lifetime. Indeed, many who we consider sane commit the most atrocious criminal acts without a diagnoses of insanity. Even legal acts such as war, inquisitions, and pogroms can cause harm to its believers as well as to others. Yet we do not diagnose these acts of belief as a mental disease because the very engine of belief puts them in the context of acceptability. Most societies do not abhor war; instead, they honor it because their belief-systems support the notion of solving problems through mass killing called war. If, instead, we approached belief supported violence the way we attempt to solve mental diseases, perhaps we might produce solutions to some of our cultural problems.

A question arises out of these extreme forms of thinking: If extreme beliefs represent a symptom or cause of mental disorder, then can a lack of belief produce a better, healthier, [or whatever desirable characteristic word you may want to use] way of socially interacting with people? At the other extreme end, that of meditation, one not only stops belief, but all forms of thought. This of course would result in a dangerous living condition if continued indefinitely , but only at the expense of the meditator. At worst the meditator might die for lack of food, but he could hardly harm anyone else. But what if one could learn how to think without beliefs? Might it not serve and advantage to make our thoughts more efficient?

Of course accidents will happen and tragedies will occur. Errors in our models of perception will no doubt always happen. But if we can reduce or eliminate the thoughts that constitute belief, would we not have fewer reasons to harm others through prejudice or violence? Without beliefs, our thoughts would follow the prevailing evidence instead of blocking them with unnecessary convictions.

Even if we cannot solve all mental diseases or prevent dangerous beliefs from forming, we might at least become aware of the mental processes that create beliefs and why they sometimes lead to intransigence. Although no one yet has a clear understanding of how schizophrenia originates, it appears that it may have some connection with genetics, brain damage, chemical imbalances or social upbringing. Fortunately treatments have become available for many mental diseases. For those who have mild cases of mental problems, education alone may redirect the neural path towards productive thinking. For others, drugs and therapy can help alleviate mental problems. Likewise, early education in critical thinking, identification of logical fallacies, and the mechanism of belief may alleviate many of our dangerous beliefs.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All in the head?

If, indeed, beliefs resulting from religious experiences come from interactions of brain processes such as in temporal lobe seizures, endorphins and other hormones that induce feelings, then it should serve as a candidate for a field of scientific study. Since the living brain exists as physical system of matter and energy, then scientists could, in principle at least, simulate some of faith's experiences by inducing them in a controlled experimental setting. Scientists claim that they have already done this and say they can now induce religious experiences in almost any human brain at the flick of a switch.

The following information comes from an HBO America Undercover documentary titled "A Question of Miracles" which examines the beliefs and claimed miracles by faith healers such as Benny Hinn and Reinhard Bonnke and the work of professor Michael Persinger.

Why do so many people believe in God, and miracles? According to the neuroscientist professor Michael A. Persinger, "In a laboratory we have reproduced every aspect of the God experience, every essence, every component of it, from the rising sensation, to the feelings of ecstasy, to the feelings of a sensed presence, to the feeling that you're one with the universe. We can do that experimentally."

These feelings get induced by stimulating the temporal lobe in the limbic system of the brain with complex magnetic fields that set up electrical charges in the brain. In a darkened chamber test subjects sit in a chair while wearing a helmet with temporal lobe electrodes and eye blockers. In another room, a scientist operates the switches that control the magnetic impulses.

The report claims that no two people respond exactly the same way, but all of them come out of this chamber with a profound sense that something significant has taken place. People who undergo this laboratory procedure experience feelings that range from near death experiences, seeing ghostly faces, hearing voices or feeling a sensed presence.

One test subject reported that he had a near death experience and experienced "a sudden wave of darkness" and visualized, "a distant point of light."

Another man reported "I started hearing voices; I started seeing things."

A woman recounted her experience as, "It started with faces, there was a lot of faces, disturbed faces... like seeing something through heat... It was like dreaming, but I was awake."

Another man said, "I saw bright lights and I heard voices . Was that God speaking or just Professor Persinger just flipping a few switches?"

Persinger concluded that, "What we have found is that individuals who show a temporal lobe sensitivity or creativity and who are very religious, in that setting, they will have a religious experience. We can generate the sensed presence which is defined as God."

All of these experiences came by simply stimulating the brain with magnetic fields. If indeed these tests gets confirmed and refined by other scientists then we may very well see in the future, consumer products that produce religious experiences.

Of course the extrasensory feelings themselves do not account for the beliefs and faiths that result, but in interpreting the feelings, it should come to no surprise that many people do attribute supernatural causes to non-ordinary feelings.

Do all supernatural beliefs in people come about by misinterpreting the feelings derived from the insides of our heads?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inside our head vs Outside our head

Many people have a difficult time telling the difference between what happens inside their heads as opposed to what happens outside their heads. And I don't mean just schizophrenics or psychopaths, but also some sane people. Most of us have had confusions about "reality" at some times in our lives. Since all sensations and information comes filtered through the brain, we experience all our perceptions in our head. To establish the difference between outside verses inside events, we usually derive, through intuition, some sort of comparative test. Most of our sensations instinctively tell us what occurs outside. As infants, we quickly learn that the sounds we hear in our heads actually emanate from the outside. We learn to manipulate objects through touch, observe movement through sight, etc. As we grow, we begin to form abstract thought and we attach these abstractions to our perceptions. Observation, reasoning, and experimentation gives us the means to define the difference between outside and inside.

Errors can creep into our thinking process. And from there it can invade our language system. This happens, virtually in any information system. If we do not correct these linguistic and logic errors, we may go for years propagating ancient errors without thinking about them. It seems obvious that this has already occurred to many cultures that have promoted dangerous belief sets. Although most will agree that dangerous beliefs present a threat and that we should do something about them, many beliefs that seem inconsequential receive no concern at all. These, seemingly, innocent beliefs act through our language system and can give us a false sense of "knowing."

To give an example, we usually think of color as "out there." We observe green foliage, blue skies, red apples, etc. Yet color, demonstrably, does not occur "out there," but rather, totally inside our heads. Matter contains no color. Color has no bases from the physics of light. Color, rather, describes a sensation. [10] However, matter does "reflect" or produce light (photons). Our eyes absorb this energy and our brains interpret this information by tagging a "feeling" of color to it. Many times we express this perception through an error of language that projects color as "out there." We use ancient "essence" words like "is" and "be" that put mystical properties to events which occur only in our heads. For example, "the grass IS green" seems to project the property of "greenness" to an external plant form. Regardless of how much chlorophyll a plant may contain, it contains no "green." The color green occurs in our brains as a "tag" to an indirect reflective property of light. Yet our "essence" words and ideas continually fool us into thinking that things exist outside our heads, without the slightest evidence to support it. To help eliminate these "essence" verbs, we can simply replace them with descriptive verbs. Instead of saying "The grass is green," I might say, "The grass appears green (to me)." The descriptive verb "appears" connects a personal perception of green to the observer instead of an external event. Many sentences which use "to be" verbs produce false statements. [9]



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From belief to faith

Many rational people, including most scientists still insist on utilizing beliefs with the rationale that beliefs must accompany evidence to support them. Of course it proves more prudent to attach evidence to one's beliefs than to own beliefs without evidence, but why should anyone feel compelled to attach beliefs to evidence at all? Why not stand on the evidence without beliefs? Consider a measurement, for example the velocity of light. I can simply state the calculated or measured velocity as a numerical figure or I can say "I believe that the speed of light equals 299,790 KPS. But the velocity represents a measurement of an external event based on a theory of light, not a belief. The belief of the velocity of light adds nothing to the information about the velocity of light. The belief only reflects an intransigent property of the believer, regardless of how mild the intransigence, and provides no value to scientific knowledge. On the contrary, the belief may grow to such extent that it overshadows the evidential data. As a theory only, however, the possibility of future evidence may reveal that the velocity reflects an entirely different concept than originally thought.

I have met such believers before and when shown evidence of the differing velocity of light in crystals, their belief of an absolute value of light rose to the occasion to combat this new (to them) information. Note that when I say that belief appears unnecessary to evidence, I do not mean that ideas and thoughts should not accompany them. On the contrary, instead of beliefs, we can establish theories and models about the evidence, a predictive and productive way of understanding the consequences of the evidence. (I'll add more about this later.)

Although the reasons why people tend towards certain belief-systems remains unclear, Frank Sulloway, a research scholar, has proposed that family dynamics and birth order influences social survival strategies [8]. In general terms, firstborns tend to think conservatively and laterborns tend to think as liberals. In the extremes of both liberals and conservatives, the beliefs can take on a fantastical form of thinking. In its most dangerous form, belief can take its most intransigent property as faith, the reliance on hope and ignorance. Indeed, many psychopaths and schizophrenics provide extreme examples of faith as the beliefs inside their heads take over the evidence from outside their heads. Some researchers have noted the higher prevalence of schizophrenia in certain religions [11].



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hypothesis, theories and models

It comes mostly from religious people who challenge the scientists in an attempt to make their scientific theories equivalent to faith. I suspect this gives the faithful comfort, as reducing theory to the level of faith puts both on an equal plain. However, useful theories do not rely on faith and do not even require belief. Scientific theories must agree with nature to some degree, faith does not. If a theory's prediction fails to produce results, then the theory itself cannot provide usefulness and the scientists must throw it out. A hypothesis represents nothing more than a good guess subject to further verification and usually precedes a theory. A workable theory, however, represents a good guess based on evidence and makes useful predictions.

"It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is-- if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it."
-Richard Feynman
Newton's theory of gravity, for example, represents a useful set of guesses that make predictions about matter traveling through space. Newton's mechanics, however, does not give us absolute or exact predictions. It only allows predictions about matter within acceptable tolerances. Einstein's theory of gravity carries Newton's theories to ever more exact figures and we can make even better guesses. But note that the theories of gravity must rely on outside evidence, and the guess must agree with experiment. A theory, therefore, without supporting evidence has no meaning. The following provides some examples of theories:

The kinetic theory of matter depends on the measurable properties between the forces between particles of matter.

The theories of gravitation depend on the facts of the measurable results of matter in the field of gravity.

The theory of natural selection depends on the facts of evolution as confirmed by observation, evidence and experiment.

Note that understanding any aspect about the physical world requires some form of theoretical thought.

Models differ from theories, in that they usually represent an abstract copy of the event or thing that we wish to understand. They may provide us with predictions, but they can never fully represent the subject in all its nature. A model represents an incomplete abstraction of a thing outside our heads. Maps, scale models, computer simulations, etc. all provide us with methods to predict the future of an event or thing. For an example of scientific modeling, look at the history of the investigation of atoms. As the evidence accumulated, the physicists made better and more accurate (although incomplete) models of the structure of matter.

A hypothesis may lead to experiment and both may lead to a theory. If the theory of the evidence provides accurate predictions every time, sometimes we call these "laws" or "knowledge." Note, however, that "knowledge" does not mean that it comes absolute. A fact or theory may change in the future and we may have to modify our knowledge to accommodate the changing evidence.

By utilizing hypothesis, theory and models, we can express thoughts about the world without resorting to beliefs and faith.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Logic, mathematics, and reason

Unfortunately, many people misuse the concept of logic and believe that it provides a method of arriving at "truth" about the world; that if they propose a logical argument it, somehow, has validity to external events. However, logic, by itself, says little about the world and does not guarantee "truth." Logic provides a language of self-consistent reasoning that pertains only to the construction of itself. A logical conclusion based on sound reasoning, in fact, might disagree with the external event we wish to understand. For example, in the following logical construction:

All judges are lawyers

No bishops are lawyers

Therefore: No bishops are judges

The above syllogism consists of valid logic. However, each of its propositions must agree with observation before its conclusion can provide any usefulness. Does every judge actually serve as a lawyer? Have no bishops ever served as lawyers? Reason and logic without evidential support cannot determine much about the world until the evidence supports the propositions.

All ghosts are spirits

No cartoons are spirits

Therefore: No cartoons are ghosts

The logic above appears sound, but what in the world does it mean and how does it relate to the world? In what context does it refer? What about Casper the ghost?

Interestingly, one of the signs of mental illness, especially schizophrenia, involves their irrational thinking and the errors they make in syllogistic reasoning [12].

Note also that many different "Logics" occur for many different fields. Traditional logic, for example, simply does not work in the world of quantum physics. The math, the reasoning, and the logic of the quantum world differs widely from the macro-world. Unfortunately, today most people rely on only one kind of logic, usually some from of Aristotelian logic. We tend to think in terms of black/white, true/false, good/evil, guilty/not-guilty, up/down, inside/outside, etc. Although many things, indeed, follow this simple kind of logic, a plethora of things operate through a continuum. Although Aristotelian logic may work great for digital circuits, or simple syllogisms, it fails miserably when trying to understand the human condition or things that work through calculus.

Mathematics, represents a symbolic language of logic and provides us with a tool for reasoning. But mathematics and logic must accommodate the external events if it wishes to explain them. Of course people may have beliefs about one mathematical system over another, but any philosophical belief always fails in light of nature. Only the results of the accuracy of the predictions matter in the mathematical world; beliefs have no requirement in the outcome, regardless of how good it may make its believers feel. In fact, it has appeared commonplace in physics, especially quantum mechanics, where two entirely different mathematical approaches derived from different starting points turn out to give identical quantitative answers [13].

Although logic and mathematics may provide a useful tool for reason, scientists may encounter information about the world that matches no logic whatsoever. Unknowns and incomplete information occurs many times, but that does not necessarily prevent establishing useful results. Doctors knew that aspirin, for example, worked as a pain blocker, but for many years they had no workable explanation of how it worked. Even gravity, to this day, with all the mathematics predicting its effect on matter, has stumped physicists as to the nature of its mechanism. Many times the physicists do not even understand why their system works. They only know that it works. The prime requirement of making useful predictions must come from nature herself, from things outside our heads. All the beliefs, theories, logics and models, regardless of how well they got constructed, cannot do us any good unless they have some support from evidence. Many times events outside our heads provide us with life sustaining support without our thinking about them at all!

Instead of relying on one logical system, as most people do, we might instead incorporate a language that incorporates a system of logics and we might choose the system that best fits the object of investigation. Sadly our English language contains severe limitations and cannot possibly express many of the extraordinary discoveries of the new physics. Mathematics allows a language of continuum, multiple dimensions, and infinities and all without the need for introducing ghostly beliefs.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Preconceived beliefs

I once heard an amusing story about the artist, Picasso. I don't know if this actually happened but it makes a point about how people construct beliefs of reality from abstractions:

A stranger recognizing Picasso asked him why he didn't paint pictures of people "the way they really are." Picasso asked the man what he meant by "the way they really are," and the man pulled out of his wallet a snapshot of his wife as an example. Picasso responded: "Isn't she rather small and flat?

To believe that an abstract representation shows the actual thing leads to an unnecessary biased form of perception. Belief of any kind puts a kind of shield on the thinker and puts in its place a form of thought which in effect says: "This is real." Preconceived beliefs coupled with the lack of information can lead to false conclusions.

To take another example, I might say to a group of people, "I love fish." Everyone may hear me correctly, but because of their preconceived beliefs and a lack of context, some may interpret my meaning as a statement about dining and others may believe I have a love for aquarium fish. Virtually all expressions of thought contain some limitations and to add preconceived ideas without evidentiary support can produce false statements and beliefs.

Without resorting to belief, I can look at a photograph and see that it only resembles some aspect of a particular thing or person, and that it represents an indirect abstraction. Without belief, I can question a proposition before arriving at a conclusion.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Limitations of knowledge

"It used to be thought that physics describes the universe. Now we know that physics only describes what we can say about the universe."
-Niels Bohr
 
"It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."
-Thomas Jefferson
Our thoughts and expressions through language represent abstractions about the world, metaphors and models about things and not the things themselves. Language and thought cannot describe the totality of a thing anymore than a painting or picture can. A picture does not equal its subject, and a map does not equal its territory. But our myths, maps, models, and abstract thoughts do provide a limited means to understand the world and to make predictions about external events. They provide a way to quantify and simplify our communication systems so that we can perform desirable and useful actions in the world. But if we allow unnecessary thoughts and beliefs to reside with our abstractions, we develop semantic noise which can lead to incorrect information.

As limited humans, we do not possess absolute knowledge. Our perceptions and information comes to us incomplete. When we look, touch and measure at an object, for example, we only observe part of its totality. Belief, on the other hand, can produce the illusion that we understand without limitations. Eliminating concepts of beliefs, at least puts us closer to the range of our perceptions. We inherit mortal limitations, we cannot know with absolute certainly about the external world; we cannot completely remove doubt about our conclusions. Many philosophers and scientists have come to this same observation [14]. Doubt leaves the door open for further investigation. Intransigent belief puts a mental barrier to further knowledge.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bias (point of view)

Because our models and theories represent limited knowledge about the world, this forces us to examine the universe within boundaries. This produces a point of view. Bias represents a focus, direction, or preference towards a point of view. One cannot avoid it. Regardless of how one might try to prevent bias, there will most always occur something left out of the description. Similar to Heisenburg' Uncertainty Principle, as a focus becomes narrow, the more outside its focus gets left out. And vice versa, the more general a view becomes, the more the details get left out. If one tries to include the details with the general, a view can bog down with an overblown aggregation of information, turning a direction of thought into a cloud of complexity; and even still, the entire system would reside within a framework of limitations. Regardless of how one may reject beliefs, a bias occurs if only because we represent a unique and limited spatial entity within the universe.

The negative aspect we usually associate with bias does not from bias itself but rather the belief that comes attached to it. Belief produces a set of brackets around a point of view that says in effect "The answer lies here." Once you believe you have found the answer, your point of view becomes intransigent and prejudiced and prevents you from looking at other possible alternatives. Again, beliefs act as a barrier to further understanding. If a person develops a faith in a point of view, then it becomes overwhelming to the point that nothing, even in the light of convincing evidence, will the faithful yield to better information. A biased belief can convince its believers that they hold the key to all understanding and "truth" without providing any evidence to support it.

A biased view, however, does not demand a predisposition to belief; it can simply represent a direction of thought. Ideas, by their very nature, represent limitations of thought. As long as a point of view produces a reasonable explanation, uses only pertinent information necessary to make predictions and leaves open the possibility of change in favor of better evidence, then it serves as a useful and productive tool. As we learn and understand our limitations, that a point of view represents an understood bias, we have the possibility to transcend it into an even more productive point of view.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Fantasy, imagination, and wonder

As humans, we have the inalienable and remarkable ability to make things up and to pretend. Fantasy provides us with one of the most pleasurable ways to experience thoughts and gives us one of the fundamental requirements for the ability to create. Our imagination provides us with the mental capacity to express models in our heads and to act out scenarios of love, conquest, gamesmanship and adventure. I can't imagine any new invention, art, or literature deriving without its author engaging in the pleasure of a fantasy. The feeling of wonder about things in the world and the mysteries of the universe fills us with imagination and speculation.

Fantasies and imaginations, of course require no belief in them. They provide us a way to model and hypothesis non-actual events. Fantasy coupled with ideas about actual events can lead to great insights about future events. Many a science fiction story, for example, has inspired scientists to construct hypothesis that lead to verifiable experiment and the invention of useful machines. Even fantasy by itself, provides an enjoyable way of expressing thoughts. But if an individual begins to believe in his own fantasy, or worse, has faith in it, then usually only disappointment or tragedies result.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Natural desire

"We always move on two feet-- the two poles of knowledge and desire."
-Elie Faure
Desire comes to us as a natural inalienable feeling. As biological animals, we cannot avoid desires We desire food, shelter, freedom of expression, etc. As exploratory animals, we humans use our minds as a tool to help satisfy the desires within us. With reflection and thought, we learn the limits to our desires. Eating too much, for example, can lead to limited heath and the prevention of satisfying other desires. By understanding the consequences of desire, we can avoid the excesses and blockages of desire. To express and satisfy our desires (sex, feelings, hunger, etc.) provides a human need. And if we do not satisfy our natural needs, then severe consequences can result.

Sadly, many of our belief-systems put a stranglehold on our natural instinctive desires. If a belief-system teaches that "sex is evil," "only godly belief will help you," or suppresses expression and communication, we may turn depraved, depressed, or violent.

Believers many times express desire indirectly in terms of hope, a form of wishful thinking. Indeed faith hinges on the requirement of hope and ignorance. Hope without an adequate method of achieving our desires can lead to debilitating disappointment and sorrow. I can only imagine the number tragedies that have occurred from failures due to hope and prayer. Instead of relying on faith and hope, we might analyze our desires and use our knowledge and creative minds to find a way of satisfying them.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


No, I don't believe my own words

This text presents points of views based from experience, observation, and research about the thought process. I do not present them as beliefs but rather as an investigation into the mechanism of belief. If any of my statements prove false, then they will show simply that, and subject to further revision. Disowning beliefs does not guar

[Nerezza]

I see your Jim Walker and raise you C.S. Lewis:

http://www.mit.edu/~mcguyton/ABSK/MereChristianity/merepref.htm

[Frère]

Sinestro, according to the energy you invite to fight what you call "the belief", I assume you are one of the ill majority who think they have to analyse something before they can say they know it. Let me tell you something very simple that you might miss:

I KNOW that god has helped me.

I don't even have to believe it.

[Sinestro]

Here is some Info that I found about God and the Bible, and I Quote.

SHOULD WE ADMIRE JESUS?

Introduction
"Christians have held the main character of the New Testament, Jesus "the Christ," in high esteem for centuries. Even many who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus think that he gave an admirable example of moral living. Although we have no evidence that the Biblical Jesus ever existed, we can still examine the words of the Bible to extract the wisdom and morality of this character, regardless of whether he actually lived or not.
Does the Biblical Jesus merit the honor bestowed upon him? Unfortunately, preachers, ministers, and clergymen have given us biased, one-sided stories, emphasizing and inflating what they see as positive while subverting or ignoring the negative. Biblical scholarship of the last hundred years has not reached the common man. Instead, we see political ministers and televangelists making absurd biblical claims without anyone calling them accountable. Although over 90 percent of households in America own a Bible, it usually goes unread, or at best sanitized or bowdlerized to what people want it to say.
Unbeknownst to many Christians, many times the Gospels of the New Testament portray Jesus as vengeful, demeaning, intolerant, and hypocritical. In one section Jesus calls for love of enemies, yet in another to slay them. He tells others to not use hurtful names, yet he called others fools, dogs, and vipers. He calls for honoring parents, yet demands hate of family members. Some of Jesus' words towards others depict what some would call anti-Semitism. Indeed, the words of the New Testament have fueled the flames of anti-Jewishness for centuries.
The following gives a brief look at the Biblical evidence about the claims of Jesus with quotes from King James Version bible (the most used bible in the world). If the reader practices self-honesty, the realization will come that the deeds of this Biblical character does not match the admiration that so many have bestowed upon him.

Family values?
In the last few years, Christians have pushed a political agenda for the concept of "family values." Nowhere does the Biblical Jesus ever mention the phrase "family values" nor does he even mention the word "family." On the contrary, it appears that the life style of Jesus contradicts the concept of modern Christian "family values." According to the Bible as well as Christian apologists, Jesus never raised a family, and never married or fathered children. Clearly, Jesus had no personal experience of a family. Furthermore, the words of Jesus expressed variance against family members:
For I am come to SET A MAN AT VARIANCE AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND THE DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND THE DAUGHTER IN LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER IN LAW. And a MAN'S FOES SHALL BE THEY OF HIS OWN HOUSEHOLD.
-Matthew 10:35-36 (KJV)
Not only does the Bible claim that Jesus came to set man at variance against members of the family, but he demanded that anyone wishing to become a disciple must hate them:
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
-Luke 14:26 (KJV)
[A few desperate apologists attempt to dismiss this verse claiming that the word 'hate' here really doesn't mean what it says. The problem with this approach boarders on complete deception and the ironic dismissal of the Bible and Biblical scholarship. The word 'hate' here comes from the ancient Greek word 'miseo' which means hate (from the primary 'misos' [hatred]). If any synonym could substitute for this word, it would come from a word like 'detest,' 'loath,' or 'despise.' Moreover, virtually all Bibles translate the term as hate. To deny this intent means to deny the Bible and the alleged word of Jesus.]
Whoever calls Jesus "Prince of Peace" obviously never read the Gospels, for he never claims to have come for peace sake, but rather to divide the family:
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
-Luke 22:51-53
And Jesus reveals the bribe and reward for forsaking your family:
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
-Matthew 19:29 (KJV) [also see Luke 18:29-30]
Extolling the virtues of hate and division for family members can hardly serve as an example for admiration and one must dismiss Jesus as a teacher for family morals.
And what does Jesus say about marriage? If you desire not to die and to obtain worthiness in the otherworld, you'd better not marry anyone:
The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.
-Luke 20:34-36 (bold characters, mine)


What would you think of a boss who rebuked a worker for wishing to bury his recently deceased father and instead, insisted that the worker follow him? According to the Bible, Jesus responded to a request from a disciple who wished to attend to his father's funeral:
But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead.
-Matthew 8:22 (KJV)
When a man decided to follow Jesus, he wanted to say goodbye to his family (Luke 9:61). But this is what Jesus replied to him:
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
-Luke 9:62
Jesus appears rude to his mother when he says:
Woman, what have I do to with thee?
-John 2:4 (KJV)
You won't see anti-abortionists citing this verse. It applies to Judas; note how the last part plays right into abortion:
The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
-Matthew 26:24 [bold characters, mine]
Considering that many atheist parents would teach their future children to betray a belief in Christ, abortion would certainly satisfy Jesus' words here.
The so-called morality of Jesus teaches hate, and abstinence against members of the family and advises against marriage. Indeed, if everyone on earth followed the virgin Jesus' life to a tee, not only would we have no families, but the entire human species would become extinct within a generation. Anyone who wishes to hold the concept of a family as a moral imperative must abandon Jesus' example.

Peace on earth?
Many Christians and non-believers alike extol the virtues of living peacefully, yet the Biblical Jesus makes it abundantly clear that he did not hold to this concept:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword.
-Matthew 10:34 (KJV)

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
-Luke 22:36 (KJV)
Although an all-powerful God could stop violence of man against man, Jesus accepted the concept of war with these admissions:
And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
-Matthew. 24:6-7. (KJV) [also see Mark 13:7-8]
Jesus explained to Pilate that if he were from this world, his servants (followers) would fight to prevent him from being delivered to the Jews:
If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.
-John 18:36
Jesus offers no advice for disarmament or how to achieve peaceful coexistence. Instead, throughout history one can find a plethora of examples of the Church using Biblical verses to justify wars, inquisitions, and violence against man. Anyone who comes with the intent of a "sword" instead of peace can hardly give an example of living peacefully on Earth. Jesus tells us not to feel troubled and that war must occur. Belief in these words virtually allow wars to occur. Although many extremists, racist groups, and terrorists may admire Jesus for his call for armament, the majority of people do not realize the influence that Jesus' words have on believers who accept violence after having studied the Bible. Jesus does not deserve the title of "Prince of Peace" or our admiration for his war-like views.

Thou shalt not kill?
Many Christians believe that Jesus represents God, or God sent to earth in human form, or as a component of the Trinity. If people belief this, how many of them realize that the Old Testament gives many examples of God ordering or personally murdering innocent men, women, and children, along with the destruction of cities, buildings, and other religions? The following gives just a few examples:
...the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt...
-Exodus 12:29 (KJV)

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
-God in Deuteronomy 12:2-3

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and butt.
-God in I Samuel 15:3 (KJV)
Therefore, if you believe that Jesus equals God in the flesh, then Christ must hold responsibility for the death, destruction, and intolerance practiced throughout the Old Testament.
However, some Christians do not believe in the Trinity or that Jesus equals God but rather that he lived as a flesh & blood man created and sent from God. Unfortunately, this does not dismiss Jesus from his admission towards killing. According to the New Testament, Jesus upholds all the laws of the Old Testament:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
-Matthew: 5:17-18
To fulfill all the laws of the prophets means that Jesus must have approved of all the "lawful" atrocities, including Deuteronomy 12:2-3 or the killing of all unbelievers (Deuteronomy 13-5-9), and all the other intolerant laws of the prophets.
Killing appears quite acceptable to Jesus, not only for himself, but as ordered by him (as the nobleman) in this parable:
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
-Luke 19:27 (KJV)
The red letter edition of the King James Bible has Jesus making a remarkable statement towards the killing of children:
And I will kill her children with death...
-Revelation 2:23 (KJV)
Not only does the Biblical Jesus make the claim to kill children but supposedly it serves to punish the mother (the prophetess as the metaphorical Jezebel) for committing adultery. Few people hold to the concept of punishing innocent children for the wrongful acts of their parents. This sickening performance by Jesus hardly gives us a reason for admiration. On the contrary, it appears loathsome and thoughtless.
Note: Some interpret Rev. 2:23 as a metaphor for the "children" (people) who followed the "heathen" religion (especially in Asia Minor). However, this would imply an even worse and deplorable atrocity. This would involve Jesus in the murder of hundreds, if not millions, of deaths of people who followed non-Christian beliefs, and of course would include children as well as adults.

Social equality?
As different societies learn to live with one another, they adopt the concept of tolerance towards each other. However, Jesus of the Bible never condones the tolerance for people of other religions or faiths; he wants them to blindly believe and follow only him and his god. This intolerance virtually guarantees prejudice and conflict.
Jesus never offers solutions for slavery, poverty, or women's equality. As for slavery, it appears he encouraged the beating of slaves:
And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
-Luke 12:47 (KJV)
Note, the word "servant" here means slave. The Biblical Jesus lived in a time when slavery flourished, yet He never spoke or fought against it.

Medical treatment
Many Christians admire Jesus for his healing powers yet few would go to a medical doctor today who used the diagnoses and treatment that he used.
Jesus believed that demon or Satan possession caused deaf-and-dumbness (see Matthew 9:32-33; 12:22 Mark 9:17-29, Luke 11:14).
A spirit of infirmity, according to Jesus, resulted from a bind from Satan.
He supposedly restored sight by spitting on the eyes of a blind man (Mark 8:23) or anointing them with clay made with spittle (John 9:6) or by telling them to have faith.
Note that Jesus failed to impart the scientific knowledge of germs or establish methods of preventing disease.
Although some Christian Scientists practice the methods of Jesus, the results have proved abysmal. If Jesus could cure disease and blindness, he failed to instruct men how to avoid these diseases.
Some Christians, in trying to extricate themselves from this difficult problem, claim that Jesus did not give us the medical knowledge because man needs illness and the chastisement of pain and grief. If this theory held, then disease and pain must come from God and permitted by Jesus. Either way, the failure of lack of information on Jesus' part or the allowance of suffering hardly imparts a feeling of admiration for this character.

Planning your life
The Biblical Jesus taught to seek the kingdom of God and to ignore future plans (Matthew 6:33-34). You don't need to work for food (John 6:27) or save your money (Matthew 6:19). Encourage people to persecute you (Matthew 5:11). Give away anything you own to every man who asks, and if he steals it, don't try to get it back (Luke 6:30). Sell everything you have and give it to the poor (Mark 10:21). If someone hits you, invite them to hit you again (Matthew 5:39). Don't ever marry a divorced woman because you'll commit adultery (Matthew 5:32). Don't even look at a women in a sexual way because that also constitutes adultery (Matthew 5:28). And don't think about your life, what to eat, the health of your body or about the clothes you wear (Luke 12:22).
If people took the advice of Jesus, it would guarantee a miserable life of uneducation, poverty, persecution and poor heath. Would anyone dare teach their children such conduct?

Charity
The alleged Jesus taught to give away anything that anyone asks and to sell everything and give it away. Although charity constitutes a great service to society, to give away all would put the giver into poverty himself, thus preventing any future charitable acts.
Naturally any beggar would value such advice because he would receive the benefits of the charitable acts. And since Jesus did not work for a living, it gives reason why he might reap the rewards himself (Jesus and the apostles had to live off something). The churches throughout history have received the scrappings of donations from the poor and have grown wealthy as a result. Receiving advice about charity who stand to gain from it, beggars, professional or otherwise, does not inspire one to admire them.

Life experience
Although many think of Jesus as a teacher, the Biblical Jesus never had any experience with the main difficulties in life-- earning a living, sex, marriage, and sickness. To take the word from such a man for advice on marriage, health or career would guarantee misleading answers. The Biblical Jesus lived for only about 33 years and his life ended in a horrible death. Who would want to emulate such a tragic and barren life? Imagine taking the advice of a virgin about sex, or a beggar for job advice. Emulating the immature life of Jesus hardly gives us solid foundation to live a prosperous and happy life.

Celibacy and chastity
Priests (and nuns) throughout the world take oaths for the renunciation of marriage and to uphold vows of chastity. Where did the Christian priests get this dangerous idea to sacrifice their sexual life? They got it straight from the words of the alleged Jesus (and St. Paul) from the New Testament (see the Catholic Encyclopedia):
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
-Mathew 19:12
Consider that if a Jesus did exist, he would have had to live as a virgin, either as a born eunuch, a forced castrated eunuch, a self-castrated eunuch, or from self imposed celibacy. Many health workers have observed that suppression of the sex drive goes against human nature and eventually produces an unnatural outlet at some point in their life. This appears most clearly in the thousands of child molestation cases that occurs within the Christian hierarchy.
Who knows how many children throughout history have lived damaged lives or died as a result of this insane practice? As an example, many ancient Christian European cathedrals contain dark secrets within their foundation which consist of the concealment of buried infant bones born from nuns impregnated by the clergy. Many cathedrals, to this day, offer a view of the burial sites to the curious tourist. And who knows the extent of the damage that has occurred because millions of the faithful in the past and present believe that sex represents a sin?
In what manner should we admire the unnatural notion of sexual sacrifice when it does absolutely nothing for the clergy or their congregations? Considering the harm it has created from thousands of years of raping male and female children (and adults), in what admirable light should we view Jesus' chastity? Does this resulting sexual damage resemble the will of a divine being of good or does it better match the actions of an evil agent, or more likely, the wrongful ideas born from faith and ignorance? You decide.

Forgiveness?
Most Christians see Jesus as an example of supreme kindness and forgiveness, but many instances the Bible has him lacking in leniency nor did he advocate forgiveness for certain offenses.
Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness.
-Mark 3:29 (KJV)
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.
-Matthew 12:31 (KJV)
What an extraordinary declaration. All manner of sin would include lying, murder, rape, wars, and holocausts. These would be forgiven, but if you speak against or curse the Holy Ghost, you will not be forgiven. In other words, a philanthropist who does great service to humankind but curses the Holy Ghost will not be forgiven, but you can live like Hitler and slaughter millions, as long as you don't blaspheme the Holy Ghost, and you'll be forgiven. Anyone see an imbalance here?
But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
-Matthew 12:36
For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
-Matthew 12:37
In other words, Jesus does not condone freedom of speech. And for those of you who suffer from Tourette Syndrome, prepare for an afterlife in hell.
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee... tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican.
-Matthew 18:15-17 (KJV)
In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham was represented as Justified in not forgiving the rich man tortured in hell, or even in saving the rich man's brothers as requested by the victim of Jesus' policy of punishment. As Jesus said:
Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father. . .
-Matthew 10:33 (KJV)
All the deniers and blasphemers get condemned by Jesus to eternal punishment with no chance of forgiveness. So much for Jesus' idea of forgiveness.

Hell raising
The character Jesus had such selfishness and intolerance that he demanded belief from others or else he threatened them with eternal damnation:
Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.
-Mark 3:29 (KJV)

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
-Matthew 13:41-42

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
-Matthew 25:46 (KJV)

...except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.
-Luke 13:3 (KJV)

Ye serpents, ye generations of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
-Matthew 23:33 (KJV)
Anyone who uses threats in this manner gives no indication of tolerance, humility or forgiveness, and thus, deserves no admiration.

Name calling
Many think of Jesus in a gentle and loving sense. Yet he gives vehement examples of name calling:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
-Matthew 23:14 (KJV)

Ye fools and blind:...
-Matthew 23:17 (KJV)

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
-John 8:44 (KJV)

O generation of vipers! how can ye, being evil, speak good things?
-Matthew 12:34 (KJV)

. . .If I should say I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you. . .
-John 8:55 (KJV)

Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward parts is full of ravening and wickedness.
-Luke 11:39 (KJV)
The Pharisees, representing the Jewish leaders in Luke, get treated as enemies of Jesus.
Note, the Klu-Klux-Klan and other right-wing groups have used these verses to justify their hatred for Jews. Martin Luther (the Protestant reformer) used many of Jesus' words to justify his anti-Semitism in his book "The Jews and their lies."
If Jesus had "all knowledge" he should have expressed his ideas in a more logical, tempered and clear manner to avoid the hated beliefs of so many Christian zealots. Nothing in Jesus' name calling gives us a reason for respect, nor should we admire his viperine statements.

Get thee behind me, Satan
Many believers think that when Jesus said "Get thee behind me," he had spoken this only to Satan (as in Luke 4:. Not so.
Many Catholics feel honored to belong to the original church established by Jesus (or so they believe). To this day, Catholics acknowledge Peter as the first Pope. From the Bible we have:
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church...
-Matthew 16:18 (KJV)
But in just five verses later, amazingly, we have Jesus calling Peter, Satan:
But he turned, and said unto Peter. Get thee behind me Satan: thou art an offence unto me. for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of man.
-Matthew 16:23 (KJV)
Did Satan really pose as the first Pope or did Jesus simply vilify again? Can you imagine a business owner promoting a man to a job, and then just after the promotion, arguing about his job qualifications? Jesus seems to have a poor sense of delegating duty to the right person here. Furthermore soon before Jesus died, Peter denied knowing Jesus (note, according to Mark 14:66-68, the cock crowed on the first denial, not after the third as Jesus wrongfully soothsayed in John 13:38). If the faithful should believe the Church's beginning came from someone who offended and denied Jesus, then perhaps it should also give them reason why the Catholic church seemed to act so demoniacally in their instigation of holy wars, inquisitions and anti-Semitism throughout history. In any case, we have no reason to admire Jesus' choice for the "rock."

Wise saying?
The Gospel of Matthew has Jesus saying:
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
-Matthew 10:16 (KJV)
This verse instructs the apostles to act "wise as serpents." Since Christians hold that the serpent represents Satan, one might wonder about this. In Genesis 3:1 it describes the serpent as "more subtil than any beast..."
It seems odd that Jesus would use the term "sheep" instead of sheep-dogs, or some other noble animal. Note that men raise sheep to either fleece them or to kill and eat them. To send them as prey in the mist of marauders hardly seems advisable.
Note that doves actually behave like anything but "harmless." Doves sometimes viciously attack other birds.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
-Matthew 5:39 (KJV)
This nonviolent principle does not originate with Jesus. Lao-tse and the Buddha taught this five or six hundred years before Jesus. Regardless, few Christians hold to this principle. On the contrary, Christians throughout the centuries have violently attacked anyone who dared threaten them. Although one should not overly react for a smack on a cheek, it might prove prudent to defend yourself or at least leave the scene of trouble to avoid conflict.

Pray in the closet
Many religious extremists wish to turn public prayer into law. How many Christians realize that the Biblical Jesus strongly opposed public prayer?
The wall of separation between Church and State, actually protects the religious liberties for all of us in the United States and here we have Biblical justification for keeping prayer private:
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hyprocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
-Matthew 6:5-6 (KJV)
Praying in private may constitute the most admirable statement Jesus ever made. Unfortunately, few Christians pay heed to this command.

Promises, promises
Most Christians do not realize that Jesus' promise of his second coming did not apply to our generation or to a future generation, but only to the generation of his time. As the alleged Jesus said to his disciples:
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
-Matthew 16:28 (KJV)
Unfortunately, every disciple died without seeing the "coming."
Behold I come quickly...
-Revelation 3:11 (KJV) (see also Rev. 22:20, the last words of Jesus in the Bible)
Those poor people of early Christianity! They thought the texts got written for them, yet Jesus never fulfilled his promise.
Over 2,000 years have rolled by and yet many "true" believers still await his "quick" return. As any school child knows, anyone who does not keep promises does not deserve our trust, much less our admiration.
Furthermore, to believe in a second coming and the end of the world gives no reason to feel concerned about the long-term future of Earth. Why should we care about the environment, wars, or suffering if we believe that the world will come to an end soon and that everything will get taken care of in heaven?

Golden rule
From Luke 6:31, we have the Jesus formulation: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This gives an example of perhaps the most admired and quoted saying by Jesus, not only from Christians, but from unbelievers alike.
Most people do not realize that Jesus did not originate this saying. K'ung-Tzu (also known as Confucius) also expressed a similar idea, ironically called the Silver Rule. However, does this seemingly worthy Golden Rule live up to its billing?
At first glance, the rule appears justified. Who wouldn't want to receive treatment the way we wish? And who wouldn't want to give the same treatment to others? However, upon further consideration we quickly come upon problems. Who says that the receiving person wishes to always get treated the way "we" wish? Would most people like to get treated like a masochist from a masochist ? Would an atheist like to get treated like a Christian? Would a Christian like to get treated as an atheist? Clearly, the Golden rule can cause severe incompatibilities with the other person involved. The Golden Rule only seems commendable because we impart our own individual concepts without realizing that "doing unto others" has various meanings to other people. The Golden Rule reflects upon selfish motives instead of incorporating a system that can work for a diverse society. Therefore, when Jesus uses this incomplete and illusory command, he deceives the believer into a false sense of morality.
Note: many studies of rule based systems (including ethics, game theory, and computer simulations) reveal two rules that always lose: the Golden Rule and the Iron Rule. The systems that work best involve Tit-For-Tat strategies that include many situational rules.
[For more information on game theories, refer to the works of Robert Axelrod (for example: 'The Evolution of Cooperation,' and 'The evolution of strategies in the iterated prisoner's dilemma') and Douglas R. Hofstadter (for example: Metamagical Themas)]

Blessed peacemakers
A beatitude such as "Blessed are the peacemakers" appears honorable until one realizes that it comes with certain conditions. Creating peace by blessing does not rely on caring about peace for others but because the do-gooder thinks he'll receive a future reward (going to Heaven, for example). One should do peacemaking acts or charitable works, not because of the candy one will receive but because it serves as the proper and decent thing to do. A peacemaker has my admiration for creating peace, not for the blessing bestowed upon him. Ironically, Jesus did not give an example of a peacemaker (Think not that I am come to send peace on earth... Matt 10:34) Rather, his words give frightful justification for war and division. To take the words of peace from a divider, hardly bears the ring of integrity.

Love God, neighbor, and enemies
Curiously, Jesus does not give a command to love all people, only neighbor's and enemies. And although it might sound admirable to command one to love, the problems here stem from the fact that humans simply cannot turn on the emotion of love at will from a command. Love does not work like a light switch where one can simply turn it on at will. Love describes a complex emotion, a feeling, not a correct method of morality. Love can generate jealousy and greed just as easily as it can selfless acts. If, instead, the Biblical Jesus had requested us to respect, this would have stated something that might work. Respect does not require unreliable emotions but yet allows tolerance to flourish. Many times respecting others will in time lead to affection or even love. The character Jesus never even used the word respect and abstained from the concept of tolerance. His lack of knowledge about human emotions deserves no reverence.

What did Jesus sacrifice on the cross?
Many Christians believe that Jesus "the Christ" came to redeem man to God by His death on the cross and to forgive man's sins. In some instances we have the death of Jesus, yet at other times you see the same Christians making the claim that Jesus "lives." Did he actually die or does he live? It cannot work both ways. Even if the death means a temporary death, it gives little value for an eternal sacrifice. But regardless of which way one believes, the morality of such an act deserves questioning.
If Jesus equals a god, then he could not have sacrificed his life, simply because an infinite god cannot die. If Jesus died as just a man, then he committed what we would today call, suicide:
Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.
-Matthew 26:2 (KJV)
If anyone believes his prediction, then Jesus must have known of his upcoming crucifixion. Jesus fulfilling his own prophecy says nothing about miraculous predictions for such self-fulfilling prophecies tend to carry themselves out. But if he lived as an all powerful being, he would have the power to avert his death. But he chose not to. Instead he consciously committed himself to allow his own death. In another word-- suicide. This act of self destruction, especially in light of a horrible disfigured and bleeding torso nailed to a cross hardly gives an exemplary act of the expression of life. On the contrary, such a scene equals that of horror movies designed to scare people out of their wits. Who knows how many children have experienced psychological problems after witnessing an image of a tortured man nailed to a cross at Sunday school. (By the way, any graven image of Christ violates the second commandment [Exodus 20:4-6]).
As to the sacrifice, just what did Jesus sacrifice? According to the Bible, he certainly did not sacrifice his life. Jesus went to Heaven, (the right hand side of God) supposedly a place of peace, calm and everlasting joy. But as a man on earth, Jesus received death threats, attempts at stoning, and condemnation by his enemies. Exiting the problems on earth for the joys of heaven hardly gives an example of noble sacrifice. On the contrary, it appears that Jesus escaped his problems, leaving his disciples on their own for a life in perfect heaven. Should we teach our children to emulate such a selfish act?
Did Jesus redeem man from his sacrifice? History shows that violence of man against man has increased since the "sacrifice." Wars, terrorist acts, murders, and suicides have occurred because of beliefs in Jesus. It appears that the sacrifice resembles the curse of a demon rather than that of a savior. Furthermore, believing that his death forgives sins only provides reason for committing them in the first place. Why should anyone feel so disagreeable about committing sins when they feel that Jesus has already forgiven them? No wonder jails contain so many Christian zealots. Regardless of how "Caesar's" laws treat them, they think of themselves as specially forgiven.

Christ with horns
And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
-Revelation 5:6 (KJV)
Biblical scholars agree that "a Lamb" refers metaphorically to the crucified Christ in heaven. Strangely, and regardless of how symbolic one tries to make it, Jesus here appears to resemble a devil with horns and multiple eyes. How can this description of heaven inspire an image of a peaceful afterlife with all these ghastly beasts and spirits running about? (See also Rev. 4)
It should come to no surprise where some early Gnostic cults got the idea that, not only the Church, but Jesus represented Satan and the embodiment of Evil (read below).

Jesus, Satan, or both?
The following will no doubt upset many naive Christians, but if anyone wishes to indulge in Christian lore, the image of Jesus and God has an amazing twist that few Christians realize or want to think about. It begins from two incredible verses from the Old Testament :
AND Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
-I Chronicles 21:1 (KJV)

AND again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.
-II Samuel 24:1 (KJV)
Either the above examples give evidence for a grand error or fiction in the Bible or else we have Satan and the Lord as the same entity! Also from the Old Testament we have the revelation of the creator of evil:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
-God in Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
How many Christians realize God as the creator of evil? And if you believe that Jesus equals God in the flesh, then Jesus must also hold responsibility for the creation of evil. (See also evil and good from God: Lamentations 3:38-39)
Now here comes an even more shocking Bible realization: the name "Lucifer" (another name for Satan) means light bearer, or morning star.
On the very last page of the Bible Jesus reveals himself and provides the amazing kicker ending of the entire "Holy" Bible:
I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
-Revelation 22:16 (KJV)
Perhaps the reader will now understand why some Satanist cults use the same Bible as the Christians.
Note:
The idea of the name Lucifer as synonymous with Satan goes back for centuries. In Isaiah 14:12, St. Jerome, translated the Hebrew word for "morning star" into the Latin term "Lucifer" (light bearer), a name commonly ascribed to Satan by Christians, and represents the fallen star, an ancient symbol for the fallen or evil one. In the NRSV Bible version, Isaiah 14:12 describes the fallen as "O Day Star, son of Dawn!" The Day Star, or morning star actually refers to the planet Venus, although, of course, the ancients did not know they were looking at a planet. The morning star (Venus) represents a fallen evil being. Although the Isaiah verse describes the fallen king of Babylon (considered an evil being), Christians have, for centuries, ascribed Satan as taking many forms (for example the serpent). Thus, a conclusion, based on Christian beliefs of Satan, and the belief in the "inerrancy" of the Bible, one must conclude that Jesus has revealed himself as Satan!

Conclusion
Although a believer might find comfort in some of Jesus' words, it should serve as a reminder that just because a man appears righteous does not necessarily mean he always practices it. Imagine observing a man who tells the truth most of the time but occasionally tells a hurtful lie. Should we not feel wary of such a person? Or if someone breaks his promise, should we not feel cheated? Especially if that person calls himself the Son of Man, we should expect him to act perfectly all the time, not just some of the time. His saying should reflect consistency, giving no hint of hypocrisy. However, the main character of the gospels, Jesus "Christ," gave no hint of consistency. The performances of Jesus describe the actions of a con-artist, gives obvious self-truths and then promises them salvation for their sacrifice. Moreover, the Biblical Jesus gives wrongful information, breaks promises, lies, calls people unsavory names, orders killings, and threatens to kill children. He gave questionable advice about income, marriage, and future plans and he ended his short life in tragic suicidal death.
Many Christians object to any criticism of their religion where they see only the bad without the good. But imagine that I saw a friend about to drink a poisoned glass of milk, even if the poison represented only a small percentage of the whole. Should I include the nutritious aspects of the milk in my warning? Of course not. And although I might replace my friend's poisoned milk with a glass of pure milk, this cannot be done with the Bible without acting dishonestly or ignorantly to the alleged infallibility of its words. And mind you, the problems do not come from a small percentage of the whole, but the majority. One obvious solution exists, as difficult as it may seem, but that means a rejection of the Bible as an honest attempt to get at the truth. It must come with an honest and brave look at the flaws of its central protagonists: Yahweh and Jesus.
Jesus claimed to have performed miraculous cures, turned water into wine, raising Lazarus to life, etc., but even a mediocre magician could perform the same "miracles." The education and world knowledge of Jesus does not remotely compare with that of an average high-school graduate of today. Although the peasant Jesus supposedly read and spoke Aramaic as well as Hebrew and possibly Greek, no writings from the alleged Jesus exist. He originated no new information, no new morality or solutions to the world. His most original aspect, perhaps, went towards expanding the horrific idea of the damnation of Hell, a dubious honor to behold. He had only rudimentary knowledge of his world and certainly no scientific sophistication. In short, nothing about Jesus appears extraordinary and the words of the Bible give no reason for any special esteem.
Belief and faith can have such a powerful hold on many Christians that it sometimes resembles an addiction to a powerful drug. In such cases, nothing can shake the addiction to their belief in Jesus, regardless of the teeth of Biblical evidence against him. But remember that just a few decades ago, a man named Hitler also held a fascination by faithful followers. Although, Hitler fought against Jews and created war, many followers dismissed these things for what they saw in him as "good." Hitler himself said "I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." (Mein Kampf). He held a love for the German people and brought them out of poverty, acted kindly towards pet dogs, and ate as a vegetarian. Should we ignore the atrocities from Hitler and honor him? Of course not. And neither should we do the same from a character from any book, including Bibles.
The problems of belief do not come from Bibles, Jesus, Satan but rather from human gullibility. We have a tendency to believe that ideas and words equal great truths. But words cannot convey ultimate truths anymore than a map can serve as the territory. Our beliefs play out a dangerous aspect of humanity and the responsibility for them must lie with ourselves. Megalomaniacs like Hitler could not have gotten into power without the faith of millions of people. So also, the beliefs in the Biblical Jesus can influence the trigger of the greatest destruction of all: the self-fulfilling prophesy of the end of the world. Let us hope that we gain the ability to use our reasoning ability instead of naive unexamined belief for such a flawed character in a book.

Note: (KJV)= King James Version

The Dark Bible
God, Satan, Jesus, Heaven

The Back Parts of God
"And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend..." (Exodus 33:11)
"And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen." (Exodus 33:20-23)
Comment
In verse 11 we read that God spoke to Moses, face-to-face. Yet in seeming contradiction, we have later God telling Moses that he cannot see His face. Instead, God decides to show Moses his back parts! "Back parts" of course serves as a euphemism for "butt". In other words, God here says to Moses "thou shalt see my butt."
I'll leave it to the readers to ponder the possible sexual orientation of God as he shows Moses his bare bottom.

Beasts In Heaven
"And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, WHICH WAS, AND IS , AND IS TO COME." (Revelation 4:6-8)
Comment
Here we have a rare description of heaven where it appears frightening with strange beasts. One cannot help to think that it seems more a description of Hell than a heaven.
(See also Rev. 5)

The Brethren Of Jesus
"After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days." (John 2:12)
Comment
This verse describes Jesus and his brethren. Jesus Christ's blood-related siblings directly contradicts the Catholic concept of the life-long virginity of the mother Mary. Some Christians have attempted to defend this contradiction by pointing out that brethren has two meanings: it could mean brothers, from the same parents, or it could mean colleagues or friends. Note, however, that the use of the word "disciples" suggests that brothers and disciples constitute two separate groups. Therefore, brethren must mean brothers in this context.
Note also that Mark 6:3 mentions brothers and sisters that can only mean blood siblings.
Also, nowhere in the Gospel of John or Mark does it mention Jesus' birth or Mary as a virgin. Considering that a virgin birth of the Son of God would seem of utmost importance, it appears rather odd that these Gospels do not mention it.

Christ With Horns
"And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." (Revelations 5:6)
Comment
Biblical scholars agree that "a Lamb" refers to the crucified Christ. Strangely, Jesus here appears to look devilish with horns and multiple eyes.
How can this description of heaven inspire an image of a peaceful afterlife with all these ghastly beasts and spirits about? (See also Rev. 4)
It should come to no surprise where some early Gnostic cults got the idea that, not only the Church, but Jesus represented Satan and the embodiment of Evil.
And who do the literalists claim as the "seven Spirits of God"?

Christ's Temper
"And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, 'Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise.'" (John 2:14-16)
Comment
Here we have Jesus' temper and violence showing. It must have taken considerable fortitude to drive all the moneychangers out and then have the nerve to pour their money out and turn over their tables. Consider what would happen today if a man entered a Church bake sale and threw everyone out and violently turned over the tables. No doubt the police would come and throw him in the slammer.
Jesus served as Hitler's role model. Here Hitler referred to the verse in one of his speeches:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited. "
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of humankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
--John Adams

Curse The Earth
"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." (Malachi 4:1)
"And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts." (Malachi 4:3)
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:5-6)
Comment
This last chapter of Malachi ends the book of the Old Testament.
One would think it might end with a flourish of enlightenment. Instead we get fear of burning to death and can only look forward to the dreadful day of the Lord. With all the horrors recorded in the Bible, perhaps it should not surprise anyone to see the Old Testament end with the word "curse."

Evil From God
"Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?" (Lamentations 3: 38-39)
Comment
Here we have the little known verse that plainly asserts that evil as well as good comes from the mouth of God. At the same time, men who possess God given evil must endure punishment for God's cruel gift.
(see also II Samuel 12:11 and I Kings 14:10 "I will bring evil upon...")

The Evil Spirit Of The Lord, 1
"And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." (I Samuel 16:23)
Comment
Here it specifically describes an evil spirit from God!
What religious killer could not also view this passage as justification for his evil nature?
Note that many murderers and serial killers have attributed the Biblical God to the reason for their slaughters. If the Religious Right feels so adamant about eliminating violence and pornography from secular literature, then why have they not seen that the Bible has influenced more deaths and atrocities than any other literature in the history of mankind?
(See also I Samuel 19:9)

The Evil Spirit Of The Lord, 2
"And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand: and David played with his hand." (I Samuel 19:9)
Comment
Consider that many modern Judeo-Christians consider God the opposite of evil, yet here we have, again, the clear Biblical wording of evil coming from the LORD.
In early Christian history, several Gnostic cults believed that the orthodox Church as well as the Old Testament, came from Satan. The Church, of course, labeled these Gnostics as heretics and burned their books as well as the heretics themselves.
Reading the Old Testament appears to affirm the observation that God and Satan, if not one in the same, at least work as a team.
(See also I Samuel 16:23)

Get Thee Behind Me Satan
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build my church..." (Matthew 16:18)
But he turned, and said unto Peter. Get thee behind me Satan:
thou art an offence unto me. for thou savourest not the things
that be of God, but those that be of man. (Matthew 16:23)
Comment
Many believers think that when Jesus said "Get thee behind me," he had spoken this only to Satan (as in Luke 4:. Not so.
Many Catholics feel honored to belong to the original church established by Jesus. To this day, Catholics acknowledge Peter as the first Pope, the "rock" that Jesus built his church upon. But in just five verses later, amazingly, we have Jesus calling Peter, Satan. Did Satan really pose as the first Pope or did Jesus simply vilify again? Can you imagine a business owner promoting a man to a job, and then just after the promotion, arguing about his job qualifications? Jesus seems to have a poor sense of delegating duty to the right person here. Furthermore soon before Jesus died, Peter denied knowing Jesus (note, the cock crowed on the first denial, according to Mark 14:66-72 not after the third as the alleged Jesus soothsayed in John 13:38). If the faithful should believe the Church's beginning came from someone who offended and denied Jesus, then perhaps it should also give them reason why the Catholic church seemed to act so demoniacally in their instigation of holy wars, inquisitions and anti-Semitism throughout history. In any case, we should question Jesus' choice for the "rock."

God Creates Evil And Peace
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)
Comment
Here it explicitly states that God creates evil as well as makes peace. Considering that since the invention of man-made religions there has always existed war, it appears that God likes war more than peace.
(see also Lam. 3:38, II Samuel 12:11 & I Kings 14:10 "I will bring evil upon...")


The Final Lie
"Surely, I come quickly." (Revelation 22:20)
Comment
The last words of Jesus in the Bible.
It has been two thousand years, and Jesus has not come back, hence he did not come quickly. Therefore, this represents either proof of the falsehood of the Bible or that Jesus lied. And who represents the Great Liar in Christian thought? See "Jesus reveals himself."

Fire From The Lord
"AND Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD." (Leviticus 10:1-2)
Comment
In Sunday school, many children learn that Satan lives within and uses fire, yet here we have fire coming out of God to devour two young men to death. Their only crime came from offering before God a "strange fire." Although no one knows what the term "strange fire" means, it seems improbable that it could deserve a cruel death.

Fire Of God
"Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." (I Kings 18:38)
Comment
We get told that Satan involves himself with the eternal consuming fire, yet the Bible makes it abundantly clear that hell fire comes directly from God.
Note that fire does not consume stones, otherwise ovens and kilns could not work.

God Casts Stones
"And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." (Joshua 10:11)
Comment
Another typical slaughter described in the Bible. Here we have God, personally throwing great stones on the people for the sole purpose of killing them.
"The Christian religion has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world."
--Bertrand Russell

God rejoices your death
"And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it." (Deuteronomy 28:63)
Comment
If the religious mind believes that God represents a loving God, then one must wonder about God, as described in the Bible, who would rejoice to destroy some of his creations.
Should we hold honor to an insane God? The Bible assures us that God possess an evil spirit with hate, and full of wrath, and here he rejoices in destruction! God appears completely devoid of any wit or humor; a mental state that psychologists have observed in many schizophrenics.

God 'The Jealous'
"For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters so a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods." (Exodus 34:14-16)
Comment
Verse 14 (among other verses of the Bible) makes it abundantly clear that this God not only feels jealous but the Bible names him Jealous.
Why an all powerful God should feel jealous of his creations simply because they believed in other gods remains unclear. Could it mean that other gods exist as well as the Hebrew god or that the other gods do a better job?
It appears that many Christians fail to heed this explicit command in verse 16 to not make molten gods. Many Christians use plastic Jesus' or molten statuettes of Christ tortured and nailed to a Cross (Jesus, supposedly God in human form).

God's Fiery Serpents
"And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died." (Numbers 21:5-6)
Comment
The Israelites began to complain against God about their miserable condition in the wilderness. So what did their loving God do? Their Jealous god sent fiery serpents to cause even more misery and death!
Serpents, usually regarded as the Devil, appears to have come from the direct will of God here. Do God and Satan work together as a team? Let us hope not!
Actually, in ancient cultures the snake represented a symbol of the Goddess. Many times a priestess of a Goddess temple would use snakes in their rituals. Sometimes a snake bite could cause hallucinations, or by their beliefs-- 'prophetic visions.'
Much of the Old Testament describes the Israelites overtaking the goddess cultures and destroying their cities. They thoroughly eliminated the goddess religions and replaced them with their male god religion; they even turned the Scripture words of the goddess into masculine terms. Nowhere does the word 'goddess' appear in the Old Testament, yet many times, when you see the word 'gods,' it actually refers to goddesses.
Sending fear into the hearts of the Israelites concerning the goddess, gave power to their own male god. Thus, Numbers 21:8-9 describes Moses control of the goddess symbol by making a fiery serpent; anyone who gets bitten when he sees it, lives. The deaths due to the fiery serpents and then Moses' command from the Lord to save their lives when bitten, must have given their male god a powerful image.

God-- Man Of War
"The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name." (Exodus 15:3)
Comment
Note that many fundamentalists who consider every word of the Bible as fact must also concede that God, not only consists of a man, but also a man of war; a killer man of men.
With such a belief, how could a Christian people ever divorce war from their lives?
The Midrash Rabbah gives an explanation of The Man God: "His lower half was 'man', but his upper half was as God. [Only the lower half of his body, the seat of the sexual and secretory organs, belonged to the earthly within him, but his head and heart, given over entirely to holiness, were as divine.]"

God & Satan The Same?
"AND Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." (I Chronicles 21:1)
"AND again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." (II Samuel 24:1)
Comment
Here we have either a contradiction, a grave Biblical error, God and Satan working together, or the unmistakable interpretation that God and Satan "are" one and the same! Given that fundamentalists believe the Bible contains no errors or contradictions, then that leaves only the last two possibilities.
Note that the capitalized word "AND" appears at the beginning of each verse and the message appears at the beginni

[Frère]

I wont read that, it's all useless.
you want to prove something, and it just proves that you're unsure.
you won't make it.
GOD is not a phenomena of society. GOD is not in your writings, if you want to find GOD, throw away all these books of yours, and just go sleeping, and ask him for a DREAM. he might respond to you if your demand is not mere vaccuum like your postings.

to let the lightness enter your soul, you'll have to shed all these belief that fill hundred of pages on this topic. lightness enters only when all is far behind, and nothing has come yet. forget about past and future. Lightness is now.

Reading what you post is diving me in stomach ache: it's obvious that you are trying to deny everything, denying everything takes the energy that should help you live in peace for that's what you seem to want... peace will come only when you stop hating what you cannot seize.

bless you.

[Sinestro]

More Info about God and the Bible, and I Quote.

Did a historical Jesus exist?

Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.

All claims of Jesus derive from hearsay accounts
No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.
Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.
Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.
If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.
Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.
Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.

The Bible Gospels
The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]
Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]
Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.
The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]
The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.
Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.
The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666 verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]
The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.
The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [ Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.
John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]
Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.

Other New Testament writings
Doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude and Revelation, got raised even in antiquity by Origen and Eusebius. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).
Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination. Hearsay.
Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim it as the disciple James from the Gospels, but there occurs several James mentioned in the gospels. There also exists the possibility that it comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1]
Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelations appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2]
Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.
Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.
As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have got written more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

Lying for the Church
The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.
Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg]. The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32).
The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the four gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] The early Church burned many heretics, along with their sacred texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know.
In attempting to salvage the Bible the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses: Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgement; Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger]
With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, as reliable evidence?

Gnostic Gospels
In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]
Since these texts could only have its authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.

Non-Christian sources
Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.
Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus got born in 37 C.E., after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, and wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E. after the first gospels got written. Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay.
Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, got born in 62 C.E. His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birthday puts him out of the range of eyewitness accounts.
Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which got written around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although there occur many disputes as to the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happend after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, it can only provide us with hearsay accounts.
Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. who mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ." But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius birth occurred after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay.
Talmud: Amazingly some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish civil a religious law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that Yeshu (a common name in Jewish literature) in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus, according to Gerald Massey actually depicts a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. [Massey] Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud got written between the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud between the 3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion! At best it can only serve as controversial Christian and pagan legend; it cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus.
As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons why the non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply looking at the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay. All of the post writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves.

What about writings during the life of Jesus?
What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what got later written about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him!
If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people... trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear..." The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).
So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?
Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world. Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened.
Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it?
Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus.
Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus who's birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.).
If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these men?
Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists who dare mention this embarrassing fact.
To illustrate this extraordinary absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through nineteenth century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single mention of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced Christian apologists and historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but hearsay written well after his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence. You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark up some good solid evidence.

Historical scholars
There occurs many problems with the reliability of the accounts from ancient historians such as Josephus, Tacitus, etc. Most of them did not provide sources for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, or supporting claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many times would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern scholar seriously who used the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves as the only kind of source that Christology comes from. Couple this with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves, sometimes members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting a "real" Jesus.
In modern scholarship, even the best historians and Christian apologists play the historian game. They can only use what documents they have available to them. And if they only have hearsay accounts then they get forced to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians feel compelled to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this very dubious information sometimes ends up in encyclopedias and history books as fact.
In other words, Biblical scholarship gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they examine. This got illustrated clearly in an interview by the renowned Biblical scholar, David Noel Freeman (Freeman, the General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works). An interviewer asked him about Biblical interpretation. Freeman replied:
"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything."
-David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34)
The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he must accept it based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of information built of cards.

Citing geography, and known historical figures as "evidence"
Although the New Testament mentions various cities, geological sites, kings and people that existed or lived during the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable locations, and make mention of actual people.
Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek islands. The epic describes, in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we take Odysseus, the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact simply because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course not. Mythical stories, fictions, and narratives almost always use familiar landmarks as placements for their stories. The authors of the Greek tragedies not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in the real world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures of mortal human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman, and Star Trek include recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their protagonists and antagonists miming human emotions.
Likewise, just because the Gospels mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical people, with Jesus behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural curses, miracles, etc.) but this says nothing about the actuality of the characters portrayed in the stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors, we may question the authority of the claims.
For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here.
John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided west of the river.
John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no such place as Aenon exists near Salim.
There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time of the alleged Jesus. [Leedom; Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a detailed list the cities of Galilee). Oddly, none of the New Testament epistle writers ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though most of the epistles got written before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until the Gospels, where the first one got written at least 40 years after the hypothetical death of Jesus. Apologists attempt to dismiss this by claiming that Nazareth existed as an insignificant and easily missed village (how would they know?), thus no one recorded it. However, whenever the Gospels speak of Nazareth, they always refer to it as a city, never a village, and a historian of that period would surely have noticed a city. (Note the New Testament uses the terms village, town, and city.) Nor can apologists fall on archeological evidence of preexisting artifacts for the simple reason that many cities get built on ancient sites. If a city named Nazareth existed during the1st century, then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name, otherwise we cannot refer to it as historical.
Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New Testament. And although one cannot use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question the reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur any in area.
If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should also have some historical reference of a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case. The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story. Pontius Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher, prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever records such a human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in the known historical record speaks for itself.

Comparing Jesus to other historical figures
Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence, claim that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish a historical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Socrates, etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have nothing.
Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Socrates, we have the eyewitness writings of Plato that depicts his philosophy and life. Napoleon left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establish some historicity to these people because we have evidence that occurred during their life times. Yet even with the contemporary artifacts, historians have become wary of stories of many of these historical people. For example, some of the stories of Alexander or Nero starting the fire in Rome always get questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies or come from authors who wrote years after the alleged facts. In qualifying the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes, "Although more than twenty of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns, none of these texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander are ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political motives. The little solid documentation we possess from Alexander's own time is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions from the Greek cities of Europe and Asia." [Briant]
Inventing histories out of whole cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical event appears common throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue. We know at least a bit of mundane information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does not from part of any legend cycle." [Price, p. 260-261]
Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of what they looked like. Plato described what Socrates looked like, we have busts of Greek and Roman aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair length & color, age and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we have nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can we rely on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked like? How odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like, yet believers attribute them to know exactly what he said. Indeed, this gives us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and indirect and through myth. Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed various images of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image.
Historial people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we wanted to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another example of equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus with the mythical figure of Hercules.

If Jesus, then why not Hercules?
If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?
To take one example, examine the evidence for the Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels the historicity of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus.
Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. Hercules got born as a human from the union of God (Zeus) and the mortal and chaste Alcmene, his mother. Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Like Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.
Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mentions Hercules. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have mention of Jesus in Joesphus' Antiquities, so also does Joesphus mention Hercules in Antiquities (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.
Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because there never existed any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents who's beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by their constituents.
People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so go their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence.

Then why the myth of Jesus?
Some people actually believe that just because so much voice and ink has spread the word of a character named Jesus, throughout history, that this must mean that he actually lived. This argument simply does not hold. The number of people who believe or write about something or the professional degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact. Facts derive out of evidence, not from hearsay, not from hubris scholars, and certainly not from faithful believers. Regardless of the position or admiration held by a scholar, or believer if he or she cannot support their hypothesis with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis.
While the possibility exists that an actual Jesus lived, the possibility also occurs that a mythology could have arrived totally out of earlier mythologies. Although we have no evidence for a historical Jesus, we certainly have many accounts for the mythologies of the Middle East and Egypt during the first century and before that appear similar to the Christ saviour story.
If you know your ancient history, remember that just before and during the first century, the Jews had prophesied about an upcoming Messiah based on Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced many of their followers. We know that powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling prophesies, and surely this proved just as true in ancient times. It served as a popular dream expressed in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-time" with a savior to lead them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show executions of several would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions a Jesus). Many ancients believed that there could come a final war against the "Sons of Darkness"-- the Romans.
This then could very well have served as the ignition and flame for the future growth of Christianity. This coupled with the pagan myths of the time give sufficient information about how such a religion could have formed. Many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the alleged Jesus that to ignore its similarities means to ignore the mythological beliefs of history.
There have served dozens of similar savior stories that propagated the minds of humans long before the alleged life of Jesus. Virtually nothing about Jesus "the Christ" came to the Christians as original or new.
For example, the religion of Zoroaster, founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in ancient Persia which roused mankind in the need for hating a devil, the belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection of the dead. Mithraism, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced early Christianity. The Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian priests. Note the word "paradise" came from the Persian pairidaeza.
The Egyptian mythical Horus, god of light and goodness has many parallels to Jesus. [Leedom, Massey] For some examples:
Horus and the Father as one
Horus, the Father seen in the Son
Horus, light of the world, represented by the symbolical eye, the sign of salvation.
Horus served the way, the truth, the life by name and in person
Horus baptized with water by Anup (Jesus baptized with water by John)
Horus the Good Shepherd
Horus as the Lamb (Jesus as the Lamb)
Horus as the Lion (Jesus as the Lion)
Horus identified with the Tat Cross (Jesus with the cross)
The trinity of Atum the Father, Horus the Son, Ra the Holy Spirit
Horus the avenger (Jesus who brings the sword)
Horus the afflicted one
Horus as life eternal
Twelve followers of Hours as Har-Khutti (Jesus' 12 disciples)
 
According to Massey, "The mythical Messiah is Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters."
Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the Christian myth. According to Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all served as pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around December 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]
The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the Most High, fought against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan Mithraism mysteries had the burial in a rock tomb, resurrection, sacrament of bread & water (Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a mystic mark, the symbol of the Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before the advent of Christianity.
Even Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote: "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi]
Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to past pagan mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the Jewish scriptures that we now call the Old Testament. The accounts of these myths say nothing about historical reality, but they do say a lot about believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs spread.
In the book The Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents not only a challenge to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals that early pre-Gospel Christian documents show that the concept of Jesus sprang from non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from Jewish scripture and Hellenized myths of savior gods. Nowhere do any of the New Testament epistle writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of the epistles mention a Jesus from Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a human miracle worker. Nowhere do we find these writers quoting Jesus. Nowhere do we find them describing any details of Jesus' life on earth or his followers. Nowhere do we find the epistle writers even using the word "disciple" (they of course use the term "apostle" but the word simply means messenger, as Paul saw himself). Except for two well known interpolations, Jesus always gets presented as a spiritual being that existed before all time with God, and that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a revelation from the word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents outside the Gospels, even at the end of the first century and beyond, show no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus were in circulation."
These early historical documents can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but they do show an evolution of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts of Christianity, starting from a purely spiritual form of Christ to a human figure who embodied that spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels. The New Testament stories appears as an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized and pagan stories compiled by pietistic believers to appeal to an audience for their particular religious times.

A note about dating:
The A.D. (Anno Domini, or "year of our Lord") dating method got invented by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth-century. Oddly, some people seem to think this has relevance to a historical Jesus. But of course it has nothing at all to do with it. In the time before the 6th century, people used various other dating methods. The Romans used A.U.C. (ab urbe condita, or "from the foundation of the city," that being Rome). The Jews had their own dating system. Dionysisus simply decided to reset time on January 1, 754 A.U.C. to January 1, of year one A.D., to fit his beliefs about the birth of Jesus. He conjectured his information from the Bible (which he got wrong). [Gould, 1995]
Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) as often used in scholarly literature. They correspond to the same dates as B.C. & A.D., but without alluding to the birth or death of an alleged Christ.

Quotes from a few scholars:
Although apologist scholars believe that an actual Jesus lived on earh, the reasons for this appear obvious considering their Christian beliefs. Although some secular freethinkers and atheists accept a historical Jesus (minus the miracles), they, like most Chrisitans, simply accept the traditional view without question. As time goes on, more and more scholars have begun to open the way to a more honest look at the evidence, or should I say, the lack of evidence. So for those who wish to rely on scholarly opinion, I will give a few quotes from Biblical scholars, past and present:

When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged or dressed them up.
-Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

It is only in comparatively modern times that the possibility was considered that Jesus does not belong to history at all.
-J.M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)

Whether considered as the God made human, or as man made divine, this character never existed as a person.
-Gerald Massey, Egyptologist and historical scholar (Gerald Massey's Lectures: Gnostic and Historic Christianity, 1900)

Many people-- then and now-- have assumed that these letters [of Paul] are genuine, and five of them were in fact incorporated into the New Testament as "letters of Paul." Even today, scholars dispute which are authentic and which are not. Most scholars, however, agree that Paul actually wrote only eight of the thirteen "Pauline" letters now included in the New Testament. collection: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Virtually all scholars agree that Paul himself did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus-- letters written in a style different from Paul's and reflecting situations and viewpoints in a style different from those in Paul's own letters. About the authorship of Ephesias, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, debate continues; but the majority of scholars include these, too, among the "deutero-Pauline"-- literally, secondarily Pauline-- letters."
-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (Adam, Eve, and the Serpent)

We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (The Gnostic Gospels)

Some hoped to penetrate the various accounts and to discover the "historical Jesus". . . and that sorting out "authentic" material in the gospels was virtually impossible in the absence of independent evidence."
-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

We can recreate dimensions of the world in which he lived, but outside of the Christian scriptures, we cannot locate him historically within that world.
-Gerald A. Larue (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong.
-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Far from being an intimate of an intimate of Jesus, Mark wrote at the forth remove from Jesus.
-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Mark himself clearly did not know any eyewitnesses of Jesus.
-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical reason to accept these attributions.
-Steve Mason, professor of classics, history and religious studies at York University in Toronto (Bible Review, Feb. 2000, p. 36)

The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.
-Bishop John Shelby Spong

Many modern Biblical archaeologists now believe that the village of Nazareth did not exist at the time of the birth and early life of Jesus. There is simply no evidence for it.
-Alan Albert Snow (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

But even if it could be proved that John's Gospel had been the first of the four to be written down, there would still be considerable confusion as to who "John" was. For the various styles of the New Testament texts ascribed to John- The Gospel, the letters, and the Book of Revelations-- are each so different in their style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been written by one person.
-John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

It was not until the third century that Jesus' cross of execution became a common symbol of the Christian faith.
-John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

What one believes and what one can demonstrate historically are usually two different things.
-Robert J. Miller, Bible scholar, (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p. 9)

When it comes to the historical question about the Gospels, I adopt a mediating position-- that is, these are religious records, close to the sources, but they are not in accordance with modern historiographic requirements or professional standards.
-David Noel Freedman, Bible scholar and general editor of the Anchor Bible series (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p.34)

It is said that the last recourse of the Bible apologist is to fall back upon allegory. After all, when confronted with the many hundreds of biblical problems, allegory permits one to interpret anything however one might please.
-Gene Kasmar, Minnesota Atheists

Paul did not write the letters to Timothy to Titus or several others published under his name; and it is unlikely that the apostles Matthew, James, Jude, Peter and John had anything to do with the canonical books ascribed to them.
-Michael D. Coogan, Professor of religious studies at Stonehill College (Bible Review, June 1994)

A generation after Jesus' death, when the Gospels were written, the Romans had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple (in 70 C.E.); the most influential centers of Christianity were cities of the Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus and Rome. Although large number of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews came to predominate in the early Church. They controlled how the Gospels were written after 70 C.E.
-Bruce Chilton, Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College (Bible Review, Dec. 1994, p. 37)

James Dunn says that the Sermon on the Mount, mentioned only by Matthew, "is in fact not historical."
How historical can the Gospels be? Are Murphy-O-Conner's speculations concerning Jesus' baptism by John simply wrong-headed? How can we really know if the baptism, or any other event written about in the Gospels, is historical?
-Daniel P. Sullivan (Bible Review, June 1996, Vol. XII, Number 3, p. 5)

David Friedrich Strauss (The Life of Jesus, 1836), had argued that the Gospels could not be read as straightforward accounts of what Jesus actually did and said; rather, the evangelists and later redactors and commentators, influenced by their religious beliefs, had made use of myths and legends that rendered the gospel narratives, and traditional accounts of Jesus' life, unreliable as sources of historical information.
-Bible Review, October 1996, Vol. XII, Number 5, p. 39

The Gospel authors were Jews writing within the midrashic tradition and intended their stories to be read as interpretive narratives, not historical accounts.
-Bishop Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels

Other scholars have concluded that the Bible is the product of a purely human endeavor, that the identity of the authors is forever lost and that their work has been largely obliterated by centuries of translation and editing.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "Who Wrote the Bible," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Yet today, there are few Biblical scholars-- from liberal skeptics to conservative evangelicals- who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the Gospels. Nowhere do the writers of the texts identify themselves by name or claim unambiguously to have known or traveled with Jesus.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Once written, many experts believe, the Gospels were redacted, or edited, repeatedly as they were copied and circulated among church elders during the last first and early second centuries.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The tradition attributing the fourth Gospel to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, is first noted by Irenaeus in A.D. 180. It is a tradition based largely on what some view as the writer's reference to himself as "the beloved disciple" and "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Current objection to John's authorship are based largely on modern textural analyses that strongly suggest the fourth Gospel was the work of several hands, probably followers of an elderly teacher in Asia Minor named John who claimed as a young man to have been a disciple of Jesus.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Some scholars say so many revisions occurred in the 100 years following Jesus' death that no one can be absolutely sure of the accuracy or authenticity of the Gospels, especially of the words the authors attributed to Jesus himself.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Three letters that Paul allegedly wrote to his friends and former co-workers Timothy and Titus are now widely disputed as having come from Paul's hand.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The Epistle of James is a practical book, light on theology and full of advice on ethical behavior. Even so, its place in the Bible has been challenged repeatedly over the years. It is generally believed to have been written near the end of the first century to Jewish Christians. . . but scholars are unable conclusively to identify the writer.
Five men named James appear in the New Testament: the brother of Jesus, the son of Zebedee, the son of Alphaeus, "James the younger" and the father of the Apostle Jude.
Little is known of the last three, and since the son of Zebedee was martyred in A.D. 44, tradition has leaned toward the brother of Jesus. However, the writer never claims to be Jesus' brother. And scholars find the language too erudite for a simple Palestinian. This letter is also disputed on theological grounds. Martin Luther called it "an epistle of straw" that did not belong in the Bible because it seemed to contradict Paul's teachings that salvation comes by faith as a "gift of God"-- not by good works.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The origins of the three letters of John are also far from certain.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Christian tradition has held that the Apostle Peter wrote the first [letter], probably in Rome shortly before his martyrdom about A.D. 65. However, some modern scholars cite the epistle's cultivated language and its references to persecutions that did not occur until the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) as evidence that it was actually written by Peter's disciples sometime later.
Second Peter has suffered even harsher scrutiny. Many scholars consider it the latest of all New Testament books, written around A.D. 125. The letter was never mentioned in second-century writings and was excluded from some church canons into the fifth century. "This letter cannot have been written by Peter," wrote Werner Kummel, a Heidelberg University scholar, in his highly regarded Introduction to the New Testament.
-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The letter of Jude also is considered too late to have been written by the attested author-- "the bro

[Frère]

you don't quote, you copy-paste
moderator should tie your limbs until the outburst ends
then we can mabe talk, if you wish.

[Sinestro]

Your god is but one of many of gods described in ancient texts. You say forget the past, well without the past you would not be here today. You see I have done much research on this topic and it comes to me in conclusion that God/Jesus are just mythical figures written about in the book that is called the Bible. It is a book that is meant to try to help people have a better life by showing a story. You people who take this matter to seriously and think that it actually happened. Yes there are many contradictions in the Bible. The evidence for the Bible being true is none. There is no evidence that has yet shown that the Bible is true.

[Frère]

Sinestro, I apreciate you write a little by yourself, it's a good start. Now you're talking to me about the bible, you're saying people who invoque Jesus have found him in this book. And I tell you this is not right: the Jesus they invoque is sometging they found inside themselves, being guided by the book... The error is possible, and they might find in Jesus some kind of Devil like you seem to have... people have the right to do errors, and you should not blame them for that. Anyway, the bible is here, if you can't find something in it to call the peace you desire upon you, just throw it away, dot.

[Sinestro]

Hey Frère, I said "and I Quote" for a reason. There is a word called "plagiarism" DUH!

[Frère]

yes you quote.
But you'd better not quote the whole book, and should also say who wrote it.
When I know what YOU actually think about all that, then I can reply to you the right thing.

[Nerezza]

The Almighty says this must be a fashionable fight. It's drawn the finest people.

[Frère]

yes Nerezza, you're right, mabe we should all leave this subject now.