Dealing with nonsense

A_Nony_Mouse
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Dealing with nonsense

For some years I have had an interest in determining if not who then when the OT was created. For many reasons, particularly the absence of any archaeological evidence of any culture in bibleland sufficiently advanced to have created it prior to the arrival of the Greeks and the fact the oldest known version of the stories is the Greek Septuagint that puts its earliest creation in the 2nd c. BC. There are many other facts which support this conclusions. Essentially Judaism is just another invented religion like Islam and Scientology.

Going after the OT in particular gets the most bang for the buck as it being true is the foundation of the two largest religions in the world in addition to the trivial Judaism. It is also the weakest link of the three.

In the process of discussing this over the years mainly in the soc.history.ancient and sci.archaeology newsgroups I came across a very surprising resistance. I did get the expected resistance from believers, no surprise there. The surprise was from atheists who were constantly trying to salvage some "ancient people" who created it despite the fact it is complete fiction and there is no physical evidence the people ever existed -- nor any of the "ites" including Canaanites ever existed.

One would think that atheists rejected the god stories they would not be trying to salvage a people who practiced ritual genital mutilation, sacrificed animals and who religion was no more than a primitive ritual/taboo lifestyle. They go through all the mental gymnastics of a believer to salvage a god to try to salvage a "people" who left no physical evidence of existing. One went so far as to say it was antisemitic to refuse to believe in these imaginary people.

Enough preamble. In the course of these years the question naturally arises where did it come from as it does not appear to be anything at all like the Greek and Egyptian gods. I have started putting all the similarities in one place. The following are some notes I began putting together a few months ago.

Comment? Critique? BS? Feel free.



The following names are applied to local variations of a single goddess, Ishtar, Isis, Ashara, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus. These are the same not just by name similarity but because the fundamental myths about them are variations upon the same story. The same applies to the male gods.

The following names are applied to local variations of a single god, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras and as we shall see, Jesus. Under the first five names legend attributes him great physical beauty and hunting skills. Jesus by tradition had perfect physical form and was a fisher of men.

In the Hebrew bible the first commandment reads "I Adoni am your god." Adoni is the word translated as lord in the Christian version. In Greek Adon is lord. The oldest known version of the Old Testament is the Greek Septuagint. When the Hebrew version was created it kept the Adoni as the name of the god for some of the books although it generally defaults to Yahweh Elohim. Yahweh is translated into lord in English and Elohim as the singular god although it clearly has the plural suffix, im.

Yahweh and Ashara are a pair of deities found in the records of Ugarit. An inscription referring to Yahweh and his Ashara has been found in bibleland.

Adonis is the husband of Venus. In this imagining Adonis is the son of King Cinyras and either the king's daughter, Myrrha, or Astarte herself. Astarte as Venus falls in love with Adonis. Mars becomes jealous of Adonis, turns into a boar and kills Adonis. Venus travels to Hades (he descended in to hell) to retrieve him. Pluto's wife is also in love with him and they agree each will have him half the year. Venus gets the summer so this is celebrated on the Vernal Equinox as is Easter, the name Easter coming from Ishtar.

It takes Astarte two days to broker this deal so he can be resurrected. This explains the reason Christians insist upon three days in the tomb -- from old testament prophecy -- while having only two calendar days between death and resurrection which is from existing religious custom.

The Egyptian imagining of this story has Amun, Isis, Osiris and Set as the main players. Amun is the chief god of Egypt who made the first men out of clay. He was portrayed with the head of a ram, thus the Shofar horn. He came before the other gods as does Adoni in the first commandment.

Plutarch, in his Lives ("Alcibiades," XVIII), speaking of the sailing of the Greek fleet for Syracuse in the year 415 B.C., says: "It was an evil omen that the festival of Adonis fell in those days. Numbers of women bore images, like dead bodies, and held mock funerals; and they mourned and chanted the solemn hymns."

Thus the festival of Adonis was well established at least four centuries before the earliest incarnation of the Jesus story. The story itself is much older. The egyptian imagining is found on much older wall inscriptions.

Most Christians accept the doctrine of the Trinity which holds Yahweh and Jesus are the exactly the same god for this reason. One wonders if Ishtar is the Holy Spirit which connects the two names -- an eternal love triangle so to speak. The Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove. Ashara's symbol was primarily the tree but also the dove.

The name Easter comes from the goddess Ishtar the wife of Adonis under the name of Attis. This is a vernal equinox celebration.

BYT YHWH and BYT STRT both refer to buildings in Jerusalem. They are translated as Temple of Yahweh, YaHWeH, and Temple of Astarte, aSTaRTe. Idols of Astarte and of the divine pair, Astarte and Yahweh, are found at all levels in Jerusalem and around Judea. They abruptly stop appearing in Jerusalem after Judeans (Iodiminae, commonly translated as Jews in English) are forbidden to enter Jerusalem by Hadrian. It is reported her temple there had eight sides suggesting the grand mosque on the so-called temple mount was built on the foundation of her temple. Or perhaps it was merely renovated.

The Christian story of Jesus is simply another imagining of the common tale. Consider it a puritanical version leaving out the explicit sex.


Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Spare the flail and spoil the child.
Thy flail and they staff do comfort me.

Image of King of Egypt with crossed arms and symbols.


Purim is a classic Cinderella tale which comes in many forms some of which are barely recognizable from the Disney version. Esther, a variation on Ishtar from which we get Easter, is set in the last of the known civilized world to the east where both the sun and Venus/Ishtar also rise.


Far from being devoid of Vernal Equinox celebrations, the prophet Mohamed was born close enough to it in some calendar that it does not matter. The odd thing is male rather than emale. Likely it replaced the birth of some female deity.


The story of Job is a dialog between Amun/Yahweh and Ra/Lucifer.


Angels, aka messengers, are depicted as having wings as the ancients gods used birds as messengers. The most commonly used bird was an owl, a bird that appears to be standing upright when it perches. This is why angels are depicted as having wings.


Powerful rulers claimed to be gods in those days which seems incongruous to us with our idea of God. But people did not expect much from any particular god in the old days.

The claim to being a god was most commonly base upon the power of life and death. The gods sent a angels, messengers, of death. Kings ordered their messengers to kill. Also gods did not bring the dead back to life so neither was that a requirement for kings. Similarly gods did not bring inanimate objects to life so that was no xpected of kings. Each god had different powers (like the X-Men) and most were simply influential without the power to force so a king did not have to do more than influence. =====


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Quote:One would think that

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One would think that atheists rejected the god stories they would not be trying to salvage a people who practiced ritual genital mutilation, sacrificed animals and who religion was no more than a primitive ritual/taboo lifestyle. They go through all the mental gymnastics of a believer to salvage a god to try to salvage a "people" who left no physical evidence of existing. One went so far as to say it was antisemitic to refuse to believe in these imaginary people.

I'm not a historian, so I'm not going to comment on your main points, but I will say this:  If you think it's hard trying to get people to accept the OT as recent fiction, you should try going to a party sometime and suggest that there's really not any credible evidence that Jesus ever existed.  Really gets the party going.

(For the record, my official stance on Jesus is that I don't give a shit.  I don't see any evidence, but I'm not well versed enough to claim as a historical fact that he didn't exist.)

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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A_Nony_Mouse
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Not history, archaeology

>I'm not a historian, so I'm not going to comment on your main points,

It does not make the least different what any historian thinks. If there is no physical evidence all the will to believe and argumentation is worthless. That is a hard one to get across also. Despite the tradition to the contrary a historian can only use what is in physical evidence. Judeans do not appear in history until after the Septuagint appears.


No matter how much a historian wants to believe, it is irresponsibly unprofessional to give the OT any more evidentiary weight than Plato's words on Atlantis.


>but I will say this: If you think it's hard trying to get people to accept the OT as recent fiction, you should try going to a party sometime and suggest that there's really not any credible evidence that Jesus ever existed. Really gets the party going.


I used to bother with that but why waste the time when shooting down Judaism brings down Christianity along with it.


>(For the record, my official stance on Jesus is that I don't give a shit. I don't see any evidence, but I'm not well versed enough to claim as a historical fact that he didn't exist.)


Whether he existed or not makes no difference as he is just a hood ornament for the religion. To Christian is required to believe many things, such as the laundry list in the various creeds, none of which Jesus said a word about. Conversely it is not an absolute requirement to do what is attributed to Jesus.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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I didn't write this...

Listen, I understand that for many of us, it's important to think that there's more to it all than what we know. That there is purpose to our existence that goes beyond our current understanding. This seems to be like a natural human endeavor. However, why do so many of you continue to adhere to ideas that are blatantly primitive and, when applied literally, incredibly harmful?

What I'm speaking about are these supposedly "holy" books, such as the Bible, Koran, Torah, that are anything but holy. There is not a single idea in any of these books that would suggest a supreme intelligence. In fact, there's not a single idea in any one of these books that could not have been conceived by someone living in the first century. These books make claims about science, mathematics, and even history that have been proven to be wrong. So why continue to hold these books in such high regard. Don't you realize that it's simply absurd to believe that anything written in these books comes from a supreme intelligence, much less the divine creator of the universe.

Sharing the sentiments of Sam Harris, I challenge you to seriously think about how good a book would be, if it were actually written or inspired by the supreme creator of the universe. Instead of having detailed instructions on how to properly sacrifice a goat, it would contain instructions on how to cure malevolent diseases like cancer, birth defects, parkinsons. In stead of making vague "predictions", a book like that would give us accurate information about things like when we can expect a near-earth asteriod to strike us and how to properly deal with such a threat. The bible contains nothing of the sort. Instead it contains specific instructions on how to deal with unimportant absurdities such as the punishment for making a graven image of God.

On the subject of God, does your common sense not make it painfully obvious that the god portrayed in these holy books is a petty, irrational maniac? As a father myself, I am disgusted by the doctrines set forth as law by someone who proclaims to be our divine father and that claims to be acting in our best interest. It is lunacy think that the creator of this complex, and magnificent universe really concerns himself so much with who is having premarital sex for example, when there are issues that are so much more pressing in the totality of existence. With that in mind, I can either come to the conclusion that god exists as is portrayed in these books, and that he's an asshole, or the more rational idea, is that these self proclaimed holy books were not written or inspired by a supreme being at all.

I could go on and on, but I just want to say that I don't have anything against believing that there is purpose to our existence, but it is time we take a large heaping spoonful of common sense to that belief and stop pretending that these "holy books" are anything more than what they are; books written by ordinary men for the purpose of controlling people, and teaching them to live according to their ideas of what is right and wrong. Nothing more.

 

But it is exactly how I think. He or she just said it so much better. It's off another forum.

 

 

 


I AM GOD AS YOU
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To add, the concepts of

To add, the concepts of infinity and eternal are our highest conscious achievement to date. All of our religious dogmatic ideas are a humbling embarrassing lesson to digest and expell.

Ancient writting interpretations: Each of us is the enemy to love, to understand to heal, to then see ourselves in all others. Some ancients wrote that a wise man did forty days alone confronting his inner devil. Folklore calls him Jesus. Buddha did the same , sitting under a tree, meditating to almost the point of starvation. Starving delerious Jesus eventually cursed a barren fig food tree.  Buddha, saved by adoring children, said , damn don't ever do that and starve, stay aware of the "middle" ..... 

 Point being, bring your common sense when you read any ancient folklore, and find some compassion and pride for yourself in our ancesters, and the writers of today, as we are ONE, as all the cosmos is connected. "Oneness". 

To live better, to stop unnecessary suffering we need to better understand our past misunderstandings as written in all history. 

If everyone read the bibles, while doing their own 40 days alone, dogma as preached, would be challanged and decrease dramaticly. That is why I think comparative religion and ethics, and all the other impotant stuff, should part of schooling our young.


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You are my hero

I AM GOD AS YOU wrote:

To add, the concepts of infinity and eternal are our highest conscious achievement to date. All of our religious dogmatic ideas are a humbling embarrassing lesson to digest. 

Each of us is the enemy to love, to understand to heal. Some wrote that a wise man did forty days alone confronting his devil. Folklore call him Jesus. Buddha did the same , sitting under a tree, meditating to almost the point of starvation. Starving delerious Jesus cursed the fig tree.  Buddha said , damn don't ever do that, stay aware of the "middle" ..... 

 Point being, bring your common sense when you read the ancient folklore, and find some compassion and pride for yourself in our ancesters, as we are ONE, as all the cosmos is connected.  

and I am glad. Don't let these nitpickers get you down, I know exactly where you are coming from.  


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Thanks Kaab. I AM lucky.

Thanks Kaab. I AM lucky. Thing is, the more awarness of love and caring, the more saddness too, for the suffering. But this is our evolution as we slowly gain more awareness, also called "higher" consciousness ....... Hey god , hurry up, damn it !   

  ((( My PC has gone bonkers, can hardly post, shit, windows reinstall, damn ..... should I switch to Mac ?  I'm sick of these failers and WAR ! And all dogma stupidity .....  


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By the way...

I AM GOD AS YOU wrote:

Thanks Kaab. I AM lucky. Thing is, the more awarness of love and caring, the more saddness too, for the suffering. But this is our evolution as we slowly gain more awareness, also called "higher" consciousness ....... Hey god , hurry up, damn it !   

  ((( My PC has gone bonkers, can hardly post, shit, windows reinstall, damn ..... should I switch to Mac ?  I'm sick of these failers and WAR ! And all dogma stupidity .....  

you wouldn't happen to be Stanley from Life, Sex, & Death? When I read your disconjointed posts, it reminds me of him.


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>However, why do so many of

>However, why do so many of you continue to adhere to ideas that are blatantly primitive and, when applied literally, incredibly harmful? What I'm speaking about are these supposedly "holy" books, such as the Bible, Koran, Torah, that are anything but holy.


While not specific I think it is obvious I find nothing "holy" in them. I was simply recounting a curious phenomenon in response to trying to identify when the OT was created. The were animal sacrificing, genital mutilating savages. In fact those two characteristics are the only ones that argue for an "old" religion. The problem is it makes it thousands of years too old.


Other than High Times I have never come across any holy books. However the majority is equally convinced there are books they call holy. When a book gets on its knees to pray perhaps I will consider the possibility. But as there are so many who cannot be dissuaded from the idea other approaches are needed. Those who insist upon believing it is holy dismiss all objections with variations upon 'appropriate for the times' and 'human additions.' This is an approach addressing those people.


From a historical perspective pinning down the time of creation of these stories can be useful. Putting is squarely in the 2nd c. BC and no earlier leaves believers having the religion created under Greek influence by people like the Maccabes -- they were real as the one sliver of corroboration from two generations later.


This also wipes away all the myths about an ancient people with ancient wisdom and allows me to address the Jews/Judeans as followers of an invented religion like the Muslims and Scientologists. In fact Scientology has been quite successful defending itself by legally showing whatever it is accused of doing is no worse than is done by accepted religions.


>On the subject of God, does your common sense not make it painfully obvious that the god portrayed in these holy books is a petty, irrational maniac?


Additionally making it unavoidably clear that the Judeans were polytheists into the 2nd c. AD eliminates any special interest in that god or the claims people 2200 years ago invented for that god.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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>To add, the concepts of

>To add, the concepts of infinity and eternal are our highest conscious achievement to date. All of our religious dogmatic ideas are a humbling embarrassing lesson to digest and expell.


Highest? Which order of infinity are you talking about? There are at least three you know. Some infinities are larger than others. The simplistic ideas of infinity are perhaps the least intelligent ideas we have as they are never defined.


>If everyone read the bibles, while doing their own 40 days alone, dogma as preached, would be challanged and decrease dramaticly. That is why I think comparative religion and ethics, and all the other impotant stuff, should part of schooling our young.


Pardon but it still reads like gibberish to me. The OT does not describe a religion but a ritual/taboo lifestyle. It does not pass the test of a religion at all these days. I don't see how 40 days of starving can make it look any better at least not after the delirium passes.


BTW: The enlightenment of the Buddha is nothing of interest. If one starts uncontrollably and hysterically laughing at one's search for it means one has achieved it, been there, done that. It doesn't put food on the table.


But it does give you some insight into the kinky lives of the Buddhist monks. What is the sound of one hand clapping? A spanking.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Linux over Windows

I AM GOD AS YOU>My PC has gone bonkers, can hardly post, shit, windows reinstall, damn ..... should I switch to Mac ? I'm sick of these failers and WAR ! And all dogma stupidity .....


Switch to linux the Redhat Fedora 9 distribution. If you have better than dialup you can easily download it. As it is free you can't beat the price. Back when I used windows I had to reinstall two to three times a year. In the eight years I have used linux I have NEVER had to reinstall.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


I AM GOD AS YOU
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A_Nony_Mouse; thanks for the

A_Nony_Mouse; thanks for the tip, I will definiately look into linux. People do really like it.  I've used and owned a PC for only 3 yrs. I love the thing. I've had to reinstall windows 3 times.

Windows users TIP: this fixed my very sick PC last night in 2 mins. Had a bad trojan in the start up menu. ( System restore wouldn't even work )  PC geek friend gave me the cure, for my Widows XP Home. I still had a sick PC after a complete hard drive erase and Windows reinstall. ??? He said I didn't even need to have done the reinstall.

In run, type, msconfig , in the box at top right open "start up", then disable ALL items. Restart PC. All fixed. Yippy ..... I recommend writing this TIP down in your PC notes. 

I guess these are items that are added to the stock start up, over time ( some viruses end up there)  You don't need any items in this start up list. Where the virus went , I don't know. If it returns maybe this start up display now empty, will be a clue. Electricity gone wild .....      

msconfig to the rescue !  

 

 


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I AM GOD AS YOU

I AM GOD AS YOU wrote:

Windows users TIP: this fixed my very sick PC last night in 2 mins. Had a bad trojan in the start up menu. ( System restore wouldn't even work )  PC geek friend gave me the cure, for my Widows XP Home. I still had a sick PC after a complete hard drive erase and Windows reinstall. ??? He said I didn't even need to have done the reinstall.

Then you obviously did not do a reformat and reinstall of Windows.  You must have done a repair/reinstall of Windows.  Honestly IAGAY.  If you did a reformat of your harddrive and the trojan still existed...well I would be completely amazed.

 

I AM GOD AS YOU wrote:

In run, type, msconfig , in the box at top right open "start up", then disable ALL items. Restart PC. All fixed. Yippy ..... I recommend writing this TIP down in your PC notes. 

"ALL items"?  Including your antivirus program?!?! 

*cringes*

"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci


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Quote:There are at least

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There are at least three you know. Some infinities are larger than others.

Slight nitpick. It is true that there are more than one order of infinity, ie, rational numbers cannot be paired with real numbers, to state "there are at least three" is only trivially true. There are actually an infinite number of aleph cardinalities. There is an aleph-cardinality for every ordinal number.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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Answering A Nony Mouse. I

Answering A Nony Mouse. I write alot of my muzing. My eastern philosophy attraction, is primarily inspired by westerner wild man Alan Watts, a Zen Buddha fan.  Yeah, lot's of nutty monks ! Folklore gone wild ..... as always ....

The atheistic message I poorly preach is all is ONE, all is connected. The awe. GAWED!

If everyone read all the bibles, it would diminish their "mystery" for the general non-readers and there would be more agnostic, pantheistic, atheistic people. The public "god" concept needs a serious update !  Go science. Go Alan Watts simple philosophy.

About Infinity ? Was just saying, there is more to measurement as we presently perceive and mathematically model the universe. What was man's ideas on this before we even began writing language?  We have surely progressed.  Wow infinity, eternal,  ONE !

 

 


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Watcher. "Then you obviously

Watcher. "Then you obviously did not do a reformat and reinstall of Windows." ////

  Yeah baffles me too.  I reinstalled from brand new Window CD's, using the destructive method, reformating erasing all files. I did it twice and still no fix. Has my PC been targeted and instantly re-infected ? I don't get it ??? I never did turn off the modem. Ummm   

   In that start menu you could re add your anti virus program or whatever, within its own program option  or just turn it on manually whenever. Or keep it in the start menu. It doesn't remove them from your PC. They just don't automatically start up when you boot  Thing is, I think some virus's attach to such programs ??? Me no pro ....      Yeah WTF ?

Anyway, that  msconfig thing did the fix, so far .....

   I think most anti spy ware stuff etc just acts like your friend. It's mostly a worthless waste of time, the many I've tried. I have no PC secrets. Spy on me ! Ad-ware me ! The browser pop up blockers work pretty good as is. I keep my stock firewall on.  I erase history and cookies occasionally. I had more problems using anti programs than without .....

  "cringes"    Maybe some god thingy no like me ! Yicks. Some preacher says the devil runs the internet !   A new religion a brewing ??? ..... of course ....

 

 


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deludedgod wrote:Quote:There

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

There are at least three you know. Some infinities are larger than others.

Slight nitpick.

I did not mean it literally. I was taking a swipe at the believers who freely use the word infinite and have no idea that the word has a meaning and they do not know the meaning.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml