Cui bono?

 

Cui bono? (i.e. ‘Who benefits?’)

 

What would they have to gain by spreading tales of a persecuted man who came back from the dead, walked on water, turned water to wine, cured the lame, the sick, the lepers, fed the multitudes, while promising eternal life in paradise? I should hope that the reader would have leapt to several conclusions already.

 

How then could anyone take the stories of the Galilean as truth and the basis for religious faith? Walking on water and coming back from the dead are fantastical nonsense which should be thought of simply as preposterous myth and legend.  Who would accept such assertions without evidence? Just about anyone, actually. 

 

Returning to the question, ‘Cui bono?’, we refer back to considering the hypothetical conspiracy theorist of the first century; ignorant, uneducated, uninformed and subject to a strict social order that disallowed or prevented social advancement even if education, wealth, freedom or property were gained.  How would he have benefitted spreading the growing tale of the Man from Galilee? From a distance of 2000 yeas, it is perplexing to attempt to peer into the mind of our hypothetical gossip-monger. However, one can imagine the story-teller gaining by myriad ways; elevated social status, free comestibles, discounted items of necessity, etc. Additionally, spreading the ‘good news’ would have had little detrimental effect on the story-teller. 

 

If there hadn’t been other folks of G-zus ilk at the time, it might seem preposterous that anyone would fashion such a person as the Man from Galilee from whole cloth. However, there were other such people (i.e. miracle workers, healers, philosophers etc.) around at the turn of the millennium. Apollonius of Tyana, for one. Simon Magus for another and the enigmatic, ‘Egyptian’, for three. 

There were 15 according to David Fitzgerald! (Nailed, Jesus; Mything in Action)

 

Apollonius has been compared to G-zus many times particularly because his life may or may not have over-lapped with the Nazarene’s fabled life. The Christian historian, Eusebius, anathemized and discredited Apollonius’ miracles by claiming that Apollonius was only able to do his magic with the aid of demons! Demons! So there.

Nuff Said!

 

Biblical scholar, Bart D. Ehrman, says this about Apollonius of Tyana:

 

‘Even before he (Apollonius) was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A supernatural being - of some sort - informed his mother that the child she was to conceive would not be a mere mortal but would be divine. He was born miraculously, and he became an unusually precocious young man. As an adult, he left home and went on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners to live, not for the material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him, who became convinced that his teachings were divinely inspired, in no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. But at the end of his life, he roused opposition, and his enemies delivered him over to the Roman authorities for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. Later some of his followers wrote books about him.’

 

Stop me if this sounds at all familiar… 

 

Not only were there a small host of messianic miracle workers to choose from, there were also a goodly number of virgin births of heroes as well, from which to glean material for gossip; Alexander the Great, Plato, Asclepius, Perseus, and so on. Mix and match the various heroes/messiahs/miracle-workers and the gossip-monger could have contrived a tale that could grow and grow to woo and entertain a growing audience.

 

The world of first century Judea was inundated with messianic figures who seemed poised to lead the Hebrews out of the subjugation of Rome. John the Baptist was one of these messianic preachers. The story of Jesus grew by purloining the tall tales of all of these players and incorporating them in the tale of the Nazarene. Some of the other tall tales going ‘round at the time were of Seven-headed beasts. Voices from the clouds, from burning shrubbery…

Schizotypal personalities might explain some of it. 

Magic mushrooms and spoiled rye ergot may rationalize another portion of it; the gullibility of people.

 

Another attenuating fact is that many, many people of the era accepted and insisted that the end-times were upon them. It was a basic trope and paradigm of the period. It was a basic teaching of G-zus and it is blathered about in the Bobble and in other holy tomes. 

 

Getting the ‘eternal life’ card from the zombie guy from Galilee would have seemed like a smart play back then to someone looking for a hedge against the end-times, a dead-end social situation, endless, un-abating poverty, early death and other social, emotional and existential realities of the era.

 

In that era, it seems that messianic apocryphal characters were as thick as midges in Scotland (to be hyperbolic). They all were reportedly persecuted, killed by authorities, and then ascended to heaven in a resurrection. ‘That’s the pattern; not the exception’, according to Dr. James Tabor (Biblical scholar and Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte). Those who were expecting a messiah (an anointed one) were expecting a martial figure – a conquering king – to defeat the Roman occupiers. They were not, however, expecting the messiah to die. Even the Galilean purported pronounced that he had come with a sword; ‘“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34-36)

Super-secret stuff that you should know

 

‘Conspiracy theories increase in prevalence in periods of widespread anxiety, uncertainty, or hardship, as during wars and economic depressions and in the aftermath of natural disasters…’ 

Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2023

 

What follows is based on the very simple tenet that Christianity (and most other belief systems) is a scam, a hoax, a con promoting a product which does not exists to people who can only procure the product after death. The second basis for what follows is again, simple; the Gospel stories are, for the most part, wrong.

 

I feel compelled to walk along the dark path of speculation on a topic. (This will leave in tatters any frail attempt at scholarship.) Nevertheless, the speculation to be engaged deals with the oral tradition of the new sect of Judaism which will later be known as Christianity. 

 

A question niggles regarding past scholarship; did they all (or most) miss or disregard something so rudimentary as the honesty of humans telling stories? Did nearly two millennia of scholars over-look the self-serving nature of humans relaying a life-changing outlook? In a phrase, I think they did.  They attributed undeserved honor and deference to those, who for more than a generation, spread the word of the new Jewish sect of the Nazarene during the early and middle years of the first century CE.

 

One aspect, too, that has always troubled me about the spread of Christianity is how it spread. Books on the subject always seemed to miss some fundamental aspect of its proliferation in the ancient world. Sure, Saul/Paul proselytized it. Marcion of Sinope attempted to make a canon of ‘belief’. That helped galvanize a proto-orthodoxy and the emergence of ‘church’ leadership. Constantine certainly legitimized it by his proclamation and his conversion. Emperor Theodosius banned pagan sacrifice and pagan worship furthering the ‘church’ in a big way.  But all that was later; as late as in the late 4^th Century. What had transpired in the years before the first ‘Gospels’ were written (in educated, Koine Greek, by the way)? Examination of the social ills and political strife of the day lend an understanding but always leaves out some vital, vague, yet important aspect. 

 

I may have stumbled upon that crucial, fundamental, under-lying cause for the proliferation of the story of the Man from Galilee. Here it is: Conspiracy theorists of the First Century C.E. may well have spread the ‘good news’ in the form of gossip and tall-tales. (The books of Charles Mackay, ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ perhaps cued up the idea. Principally, Mackay’s books verify that the ‘conspiracy theorist’ and the madness generated by such gossip-mongers is not limited to our modern era of social media.)

 

What I have stumbled upon might be called the ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know delusion’; a delusion that offers something life-changing. That feeling of being privy to a forbidden secret is the motivation for many conspiracy-theorists. They consider themselves ‘special’ people because they claim to know something that most people don’t know. 

 

‘9-11 was an inside job!’

 

‘The moon landings were faked!’

 

‘JFK is still alive!’

 

‘Elvis is still alive!’

 

‘The earth is flat!’ 

 

On and on go the litany of nonsense fueled by an ego-driven desire to be ‘special’ and to claim to know something that is life-changing and world-altering. The conspiracy theorist is essentially a gossip-monger whose bit of false news is both shocking and life-altering if accepted as fact. 

 

Now, imagine that some of those same conspiracy mongers lived in the middle of the first century C.E.  Imagine that they have no education, are illiterate and unschooled in critical thinking. 

 

(It’s easy to imagine, right?) 

 

If one were to put in mind the average person from any era, one would have to include that those who are not inclined to pursue truth are much in-line with those who are inclined to advance their personal status. A conspiracy theorist (or gossip-monger) fits the profile of one who seeks attention by which one’s personal status is augmented by the expression of special or extraordinary information.

 

Now, imagine that the conspiracy theorist and his audience are dirt-poor; without prospects or hope of social advancement. Perhaps they’re slaves. Perhaps, they’re women. Perhaps, they’re carpenters. Perhaps, they’re ex-fishermen. Perhaps, they’re simply in a society in which there is little to no upward mobility. Such was the Roman society and the society of Judah and Israel. 

 

One could not rise to a higher social level. Period. The social classes were determined by birth; a plebe could not become a patrician. No amount of education or good fortune could make a slave a senator.

 

One may be unschooled, ignorant and without prospects in their life but if one was to know something their neighbors don’t know - that some guy (a local guy, for example) did miracles, died and came back from the dead. What if that same resurrected local guy preached that everybody had a live-forever card that he was sharing with everybody. It didn’t matter if you were a slave or a woman or an ex-fisherman, everybody who worshipped him would be awarded get-out-of-jail-free card. 

 

It’s not believable, you might say – and rightly so.  Well, a counter to that is this: when is a conspiracy theory believable? A movie crew faked the moon landing? 

Flat-earth is provable? 

Crystals control ‘life-energy’? 

A pyramid sharpens razors? 

But, no one comes back from the dead, you may well say. Ah, but the story being promulgated by our hypothetical gossip-monger is that the dead guy is the son of god – you know like Hercules or Romulus or Horus or Asclepius or somebody like that. Born of a virgin, too! Miracle-worker. Miracle-healer! And this dead guy (a son of god, remember!) came back to life in order to give everybody a free pass to heaven and ever-lasting life! 

 

And the hook’s set.

Stories of fantastical whimsy gain further fantastic elements as they are told and re-told. One only think of the proverbial ‘fish tale’ or the tall tales of Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Pecos Bill, Herakles, Aesop, or any number of fantasy characters at the center of tales meant to convey insight into the human character. One can look at the Iliad and the Odyssey for further, more classical examples. Would anyone truly contend that the greatest hero of ancient Greece, Achilles, the son of god, was slain by an arrow piercing his heel? Would anyone truly take the tales of Ulysses/Odysseus and the Cyclops, Polyphemus (also a son of god) as fact?

 

It seems that over a generation, the tales of the Christ were related orally without reference to written narratives about the Man from Galilee. From the time of G-zus’s purported ministry and his execution by crucifixion, about 30 years passed – a generation – before anything was written down by Saul/Paul of Tarsus. Most scholars contend that the Gospel attributed to Mark was written first, (c. 66–70 C.E.)  while that of ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ were written after. (c. 85–90 C.E.) What tales were told of G-zus in the intervening decades?

 

When such blather is repeated enough times, retold by enough people in the market, in the taverns, in the shops, in the homes, etc. the gossip and conspiracy talk is reduced to sound bites and becomes a ‘creed’; a tenet of ‘belief’, something to attach your ‘faith’ to.  This is referred to as a ‘creed’ – a bit which is set to a rhyme or a meter so that it might be remembered and regurgitated. ‘He is risen!’ becomes a call sign. ‘Christ’, (χριστός (chrīstós), which means ‘anointed one’) becomes a surname as in ‘Jesus Christ’. Then there may be the phrases; ‘Lamb of god’, ‘Lord and Savior’, ‘He sits on the right-and of god!’, etc. as further examples of what might be called ‘bumper-sticker’ items of faith (i.e. ‘creeds) for those in the first years after the tale of G-zus had been spread in the ale houses by our hypothetical gossip-monger. A nascent ‘creed’ has been given voice.

Virgin birth, son of god, miracle-worker, and – wait for it! – a free pass to eternal paradise just for a profession of faith and accepting the Nazarene as your Lord and Savior.  Now there’s a deal you can’t refuse, that’s for sure.  All that’s missing is the set of matched, bone-handed steak knives. 

 

Act Now! and get a free pass to eternal paradise. (Better than steak knives!)

 

A free pass to eternal paradise set amid a conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. The Mother of conspiracy theories. (At the end of world, the Romans couldn’t kill him!) Change your life and accept this story as real and true. Remember, that’s all a conspiracy theorist wants; to be believed and taken seriously as someone ‘special’ who shares in life-changing, world-altering secret.

 

You know; like a preacher!

Romanticizing Humans (or I'm no animal!)

  

It seems that many ‘Believers’ are loath to discard even the shoddiest of gods in order to cling to the notion that humans are the very reason for ‘Creation’.  It appears that gene theory and the change of allele frequency over time have escaped their notice and understanding. It also seems that such notions of human supremacy have taken over whatever appreciation they should have that there are other sentient species on this little planet.

 

Apologists such as Irish mathematician, John Lennox, romanticize the human capacity for rational thinking by limiting rational thought to our own species.  While the concepts of sentience and consciousness are hotly discussed and considered, the answer to this thorny set of issues must, most certainly, not be relegated to an answer in broad strokes which portray a deity at the core. Such thinking is deleterious to true understanding. Evidence of that can be found in the litter of history from Copernicus to Darwin. 

 

Mr Lennox states that “Humans alone are created as rational beings in the image of God, capable of a relationship with God and given by him the capacity to understand the universe in which they live.” Of course, this presupposes the existence of ‘god’ as creator and first mover and offers nothing to substantiate those claims. It’s a single, simple quote but it does reveal a vast error in the judgment of the Humboldt Prize winner, apart from the unsubstantiated presupposition that god exists. 

 

Lennox also asserted, “Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.” Obviously, this is an argument from ignorance or personal incredulity. The underlying contention is that humanity above and beyond nature. The prideful declaration also exhibits that ego-centric notion that humankind somehow must only be considered as a special case; apart from matter, nature and natural forces. 

That error in thinking derives from romanticizing the mental abilities of Homo Sapiens and ignoring the development of the species and ignoring evolutionary processes all together. Thinking like Lennox’s infers that rationality and sentience are restricted by deific fiat to one sole species; ours. Lennox has divorced his own impressive mental abilities from the facts of evolution. He off-handedly dismisses the bit–by-bit development of the primate brain. He disregards the radical growth of the neo-cortex in our species. He disregards the voluminous evidence that the human brain is a product of millions of years of minute genetic change. He, instead, leap-frogs to the warm, fuzzy thinking that humans are the ‘crown of creation’; made in the image of the ‘Creator’. 

 

Ain’t that sweet?

 

Not at all; it is woefully pathetic. It is pathetic that an otherwise erudite scholar would short-circuit his own brain so as to comfort himself in a false understanding of the human species and its position in the evolutionary scheme of things. Lennox has debated Dawkins and so it should be clear that Lennox’s mind is shut tight to the idea that evolution isn’t a ladder with higher and higher rungs indicating higher and higher levels of development. Lennox is enamored with cozy, self-assuring thought that humans are center-piece of the universe and are the ‘Crown of Creation’. 

 

This wayward notion lies at the heart of the bogus ‘Fine Tuning’ argument so cherished by apologists. That fallacious argument asserts that the universe was made precisely for humankind. (Review Douglas Adams’ charming and apt ‘sentient puddle’ analogy.) Homo Sapiens has not and will never achieve ‘supremacy’ in an imaginary race to an imaginary end. Evolution has intended no special place for our species in this bio-sphere. However, for apologists such as Lennox, the notion that humans are not the collective ‘golden child’ of a fanciful creation myth is not willfully discarded. 

 

How unfortunate.

 

Lennox’s is a childish stance. His is a pre-adolescent ego trip. His world-view is one that is ego-centric. The vast, hostile nature of the universe means nothing to the child. As long as he suckles contentedly at the teat of his god-delusion which feeds his own ego as his god’s ‘Golden Child’, he’s comforted. The comfort afforded the willfully ignorant should be abhorrent to all thinking, rational people. 

 

As Bill Moyers stated, “We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.”

Evo-lution!

 Evolution

If there was no 'Garden of Eden', no Adam, no Eve, no talking snake and no Original Sin, there would be no reason for 'redemption', no reason for the crucifixion and the whole Christian story crumbles into dust.

 

News Flash! 

Evolution is difficult. Evolutionary science is incredibly complicated. Learning even the very basics of the mechanics of evolution theory requires real effort. 

It’s little wonder that most (including yours truly…) would prefer to leave the heavy-lifting to the professional scientists, teachers and professors. It’s a small wonder that many would rather just claim ‘god made it all!’ than to actually study and grasp the intricate implications of evolutionary theory.

 

(Here, there must be a side-bar that addresses the definition of the word ‘theory’. A theory is not just a wild-hair, off-the-cuff notion that is declared without reflection or substantiation. A ‘theory’ in the parlance of science is nothing of the sort. (e.g. Your uncle at Thanksgiving may propose his theory that all ‘millennials are spoiled’ and cite his own nephew who refuses to come to the family table or purposes that the media is controlled by a certain Semitic community. (ahem) That is NOT a theory; your uncle is simply a blatherskite; he’s blowing it out his arse.)

 

Gravity, for example, is a theory. That diseases are caused by pathogens is the ‘Germ Theory of Disease’. Both ‘theories’ are the best explanation of the phenomena of gravity and disease which have been tried and tested and accepted as fact by the scientific community.

 

One is tempted to include a link to a video of Hemant Mehta listing the Top Ten list of asinine attempts to rebut evolution theory. Forrest Valkai (the Renegade Science Teacher of Tik-Tok fame) would be another video link that entices this writer. The dear reader might avail themselves of those video counter-arguments as they wish.

 

Caveat: Be prepared to think and to do further cursory research. As was stated at the beginning; ‘Evolutionary science is incredibly complicated.’ However, as a scientific theory, it is the best explanation available for the diversity of life on our planet.

 

It is no wonder that some would choose, in their utter and willful ignorance, to blurt out ‘god did it!’ 

 

Human bifurcation

Human physiognomy is bifurcated. All mammals share the same or similar traits. 

 We humans (as a species of ape), have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 hands, 2 feet, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 lungs, 2 testes, 2 ovaries, 2 fallopian tubes, 2 kidneys and our heart has 2 chambers called ventricles and 2 chambers called atrium which are, in turn, bifurcated. We have other physical traits which are singularities; 1 stomach, 1 liver, 1 anus, 1 penis, 1 nose (with 2 nostrils) and 1 brain with 2 lobes. 

 

All mammals, with small exceptions, have the same or similar traits: 2 arms (or fore-limbs), 2 legs (or hind-limbs), 2 hands (or front paws) 2 feet (or back paws), 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 lungs, 2 testes, 2 ovaries, 2 fallopian tubes, 2 kidneys. Each mammal has a heart which has 2 ventricles and 2 atriums. 

 

Sorry to seem repetitious but the point is that the traits of nearly all mammals (such as homo sapiens are) are the same when examined. (Note: hind paws may be called feet or something else but that is a matter of lexicon rather than function.) This simple, observable fact should go a long way to recognizing that all mammals are similar and share a common ancestor. 

 

 

The Fossil Record

This idea stymies lots of creationists who try to discredit the fossil record. The common apologist will claim that Satan (or God) placed the fossils in the geologic column to ‘test our Faith’ and assert that the earth is actually not more than a few thousand years old. (Spoiler alert; the earth is estimated as being 4.5 BILLION years old.

 

Similarly, common apologists will claim that all of the mystery cults so popular in the eastern Roman Empire (e.g. Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, etc.) were placed in the historic record by Satan a thousand years before the many sects of the Christian mystery cults were active so as to throw us off the scent just as Satan (or God) did with the geologic column. 

 

What utter rubbish!

 

As I am not a biologist and this is not a paper on evolutionary biology, please take the time to investigate this further for yourself. Take a class. Read a book. Talk to a biologist. 

 

One an old saw goes: 

What would it take to disprove evolution to you?
Answer (according to Richard Dawkins or Stephen Gould): Finding a modern rabbit in the pre-Cambrian geologic stratum would disprove evolution. None have ever been found. Of course.

If one ever is, then it’s back to the drawing board.

 

“Science is just a bunch of wild guesses.”

That was what one responder claimed. He reiterated that claim several times. “A bunch of wild guessing assholes…”

It’s more than evident that this dude had no idea about scientific method, the process of peer review and specifically what the word ‘theory’ means.

In science, theory is a technical term. In normal informal language ‘theory’ might be a wild guess. (e.g. My theory is that he wasn’t hugged enough as a child.) However, in science, the word ‘theory’ is reserved for a working hypothesis which serves as the best answer to a phenomenon. 

More precisely: “A theory is a carefully thought-out explanation for observations of the natural world that has been constructed using the scientific method, and which brings together many facts and hypotheses.”

 

We’re not talking wild guesses here. There’s a lot of problems with the lexicon of science which derails appreciation. Other examples are the words ‘fact’ and ‘law’. Look them up as they are used in discussion of science by scientists. 

Back to theories; Evolution is a theory. Yes!

So is gravity a theory.

So are cells.

So are germs.

So is the heliocentric model.

Plate tectonics is a theory.

The Big Bang is a theory.

A theory is the highest level that an idea can attain in science.

 

That said, another word that serves as a stumbling block for many is the word ‘believe’. (Cue the eye-rolls. Here we go again.)

Like many words in English, there is more than one meaning for this word. That plurality of meaning stems from context. If the word is used in an informal conversation, the word belief might only mean ‘notion’ or ‘speculation’. (e.g. I believe it’s going to rain.) There is no proclamation of a deeply held tenet. It’s just an opinion based on a commonplace observation regarding an ordinary meteorological event. (Bring an umbrella.) 

However, in a discussion about religion, the word’s connotation changes with the more formal context; ‘I believe in the Bible’ indicates that that book is a basis for a deeply held religious tenet. In matters of ‘faith’, the word becomes a mighty touchstone. It takes on a technical definition specific to matter of faith much as the word ‘theory’ is a technical term in the fields of science.

 

The confusion arises when a person of faith asks ‘Do you believe in science (or evolution of the Big Bang Theory). Scientific theories do not require faith; they do not require ‘belief’ in the more technical sense of the person of faith. 

 

Whether or not you ‘believe’ in gravity, you’ll fall down.

Poof!: The Creation, Creationism & Fine-Tuning...

 

Creation

‘Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.’ Billy Preston

 

By way of foreword: I have taken the tact that the Biblical creation myth is such a hot mess of balderdash, that I have comingled editorial comments within the unspooling of the myth. This is done in the manner of ‘hot corrects’ to avoid a bundling of remarks at the end of the section. The Biblical creation myths are so familiar that presenting them in a dis-jointed fashion should not be confusing to most readers.

Now, on with the show.  

 

We start with an exchange between a Believer and a sceptic.

 

How did something come from nothing?

 

Who said it did? But if one asserts that nothing can’t come from nothing, then where did your ‘god’ come from? 

Of course, recent scientific findings have exploded the notion that nothing can come from nothing. 

The god of the gaps gasps as the gap gets smaller.

 

God is eternal. He always was and always will be. He’s outside of time and space.

 

Well, if he/it is outside of time and space then how could he/it have always been? Being requires time. Creation requires time. Creation requires space. Creation requires ‘something’.

 

God is all-powerful. He can do anything.

 

Well, isn’t that convenient. So, as long as you can tweak the definition of ‘god’, that is what he/it is?

 

Exactly. God is unknowable.

 

         So, how do you know this?

 

Game, set, match.

To initiate everything, everywhere, Creationists all contest that the almighty, all-knowing magic genie uttered magic words. 

 

Snap! Poof! Presto-change-o: a universe! Made to order.

Bob’s your uncle and there we are - all in one go. 

Seven days and dusted. 

 

Next up: creatures and plants and minerals and stuff to put on a specific, tiny blue marble, way off of galactic center of a ho-hum spiral galaxy of billions of planets for whatever reason and no reason whatsoever. 

(‘god’ works in mysterious ways, right?) 

 

Booga-booga.

 

Adam, the first man fashioned by ‘god’ from mud and brought to life with a golem spell by breathing ‘Life’ into its muddy nostrils followed by Eve, the first woman, being jury-rigged from one of Adam’s ribs right into existence in a lovely garden where everything is perfect and the lion lays with the lamb and everything is sustained by the grace and will of the magic genie who is now called ‘Father’. 

 

(The historic vernacular of ‘god’-talk is always gender specific; masculine. We’re dealing with the prevailing patriarchy of the particular tribes who told these stories, after all.)

 

The creator/father/god then tells Adam and Eve to ‘go forth and multiply’ giving them dominion over all the earth, as this blue marble is now called.

 

(Why this ‘god’ couldn’t have snapped his cosmic fingers again to populate this tiny iron-cored rock is inconsequential to the absurdity of this story, as is the presumed physical, bodily presence of the creator-god that breathes and speaks and walks around and such other distinctly human stuff.)

 

Anyway…

 

Adam says, ‘Cool!’

 

(Eve already knows her place, it seems.)

 

“Hold on!” the Father-god says; “The catch is that you can’t eat the fruit off those two trees; one tree yields the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the other tree bears the fruit of Eternal Life. Clear?”

 

Well, a challenge made is a challenge met, so a talking snake (!)

(Yes, a talking snake – mysterious ways, again…) 
persuades the woman… 
(women… am I right or am I right!?) 

…to eat the fruit from the first tree cited by ‘Father’.

 

Oddly enough, the snake convinces the woman (!) to eat the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than the fruit of the one which would have magically endowed them with Eternal Life. Again, no reason is given. 

 

Well, Eve, the frail woman, seduced by the conniving serpent, eats the fruit of the tree of Knowledge and inveigle Adam to do the same.

 

(A wimp; p-whipped already! Am I right? And, so, begins man’s downfall). 

 

‘All-Father’ kicks them out of the ‘Garden’ to live lives of hardship and death on this little ball of rock that the ‘Father-god’ made just for them. 

 

(or something…) 

 

Of course, no one ever seems to mention that Adam and Eve – the epitome of naiveté – haven’t got a clue about what god is talking about with Good and Evil or Eternal Life. After all, their fresh out of the box, as it were, and the concepts of good, evil, knowledge, death, eternal or life hold any meaning for them. Death doesn’t even exist in this magic paradise, nor does good or evil, presumably. Additionally, eating the fruit of Eternal Life would’ve given them the power to live long enough to eat the other fruit, but one is well-advised to leave all logic at the door when dealing with this creation mishegas. 

 

…er… the all-knowing all-father-god knew all of this, right? 

 

Then again that talking snake had the gift of gab…

 

Anyway, after eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they hide in their shame – evidently a side-effect of this new knowledge - and they hide their ‘naughty bits’.  The all-knowing, all-seeing god goes looking for them in the Garden. (Huh?) and finding them in their shame, boots the first couple out of the Garden for defying his/its edit about eating. (The first dietary law?) He/it not only evicts the pair but sentences them to all the strife and trouble which all humans must undergo. 

 

Another ‘Just-so’ story; but one we’re actually to take as ‘gospel’. 

LOL!

 

Later, Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve show up. Somehow. Cain kills Abel out of rivalry over sacrificial offerings to the ‘Father/god’. So already, these two are squabbling over which one ‘Father’ likes best. 

(Sound like a TV sit-com, yet?)

 

Altogether, from the start things have not gone swimmingly. 

 

(another little detail that the ‘all-knowing Father-god might have fore-seen… ahem)

 

Eventually, Adam and Eve and Cain populate the earth. Or at least this one dusty corner of the middle-east. 

(Various reasons are presented by apologists explaining how such a trio might have loads of off-spring in a rather short period of time, but incest is never mentioned. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink… )

 

The talking snake, (the baddie in this little screwy tale) gets off scot-free to continue doing mischief at other times. Father-god does curse all snakes to crawl on the bellies as a punishment.

 

 huh? Not only does a snake have no legs and cannot move except by slithering, but the tale reminds one of the goofy ‘Just-so Tales’ of Kipling; ‘How the elephant got its trunk, how the bear lost its tail’. Codswallop!  BTW, this herpetological baddie is actually ‘Lucifer’, a fallen angel, now known as Satan. Much more on him later.

 

Then, ‘he/god/Father’ kicks back and, strangely enough, is heard of no more until a certain, minutely small group of humans living together in tribes on the dusty plains of Palestine – the ones who told this psychotic tale - herding goats and killing neighboring tribes, apparently forgotting that they were all related. (or something…)

 

This one group, the Chosen People, the Israelites, started getting messages again from the ‘father/god’, now known as Yahweh – a name they were forbidden to utter - along with visions and signs that ‘he’ was back in the game, as it were, and who was not at all pleased with the way things were going.

 

(Seems this might have been another thing the all-knowing god’ might have foreseen.)

 

This wacked out nonsense goes on and on with loads of magic and wrath and blood and slavery and bloody sacrifice. (This part would not be in the sit-com). One ‘message’ the Hebrews got was to slaughter first this group and then that group (like the Midianites, the Amalekites, the Canaanites, etc) man, woman, child and live-stock(!) 

 

(Again it slipped the all-knowing god’s mind that they were all kin, or something.) 

 

So, to kind of rectify a problem that he/it should have foreseen, god decides to kill off everything in a world-wide flood; a catastrophe which no other culture even noticed enough to mention. 

 

Anyone else find it a little odd that the all-powerful (blah-blah-blah) god has so little imagination? His/its go-to solution is to kill off everyone and everything? 

 

That, in a mish-mash synopsis, is the ‘creation’ myth of those poor saps who accept this garbage as ‘god-given fact’.

 

“It’s in the Bible and the Bible is the word of god cuz the Bible says so…”

 

And in this corner: Science.

 

Unfortunately, scientific method requires that phenomena are investigated bit by bit. Thus, the whole magic show of ‘poofing’ the universe into existence must become separate from the magic show of ‘poofing’ all life and stuff on the blue marble before science can take a look under the hood. (A very science-y thing to do.)

 

It’s unfortunate for theists because these two stories (the poofing of the universe and the poofing of all life) – preposterous and disjointed as they are – are interwoven in their minds.

 

The check list of poofery is:

Day, night, light, water, stars, plants, people;
depending on the various versions of this mind-boggling tale.

 

Science, on the other hand, separates all this into two basic realms; cosmology and evolution. For centuries, this imbecilic ‘poofing’ myth predominated thought in a tiny section of civilization on the blue marble, actually. 

 

As ludicrous as the story was, it gained more than a fair bit of prominence – in part because the Yahweh/Father bloke was a bit war-like and loved a good dust-up when entire populations were slaughtered. Nothing like a good genocide.

 

So, dominant was the actually belief in this story that any science or philosophical thought that predated this dominance was destroyed as ‘evil’. All that did not adhere closely to this ludicrous tale was termed ‘pagan’. The findings of Pagans were deemed ‘heresy’ and an affront against the genocidal Father god and his son (?), Jesus. 

 

(It’s complicated. More mystery, you see.) 

 

So, pagan, heretical books were burnt. The Great Library at Alexandria, in Egypt had an estimated 400,000 scrolls (about 100,000 worth of modern books). 

Scholars (philosophers, mathematicians and scientists) were murdered for purporting that maybe this goofy story of a magic genie poofing it all into being was a bit daft. 

They purported that the earth was a globe, not a disc under a glass dome. 

The circumference was estimated. 

A heliocentric model of the solar system was proposed along with a nascent theory of atomic structure. 

 

Want more detail? Ask Galileo or Copernicus. 

 

I know they’re dead, but so is Hypatia and Eratosthenes. (Google it)

 

The scientific side of things was stifled, to put it mildly, until the Enlightenment caused a renewal in the interest in the ancient ‘pagan’ texts. This period is also known as the Renaissance.

 

Nevertheless, this absurd myth prevailed and dominated the culture of Europe on the Blue Marble. It wasn’t until 2000 years after this Jesus popped up in the story that an all-encompassing scientific theory was thought up; the Big Bang Cosmology. Lots of smart people worked for years, dedicating their lives and brains to supporting this theory. Cutting to the chase, it doesn’t involve a magic genie called Father or Yahweh poofing things into existence. 

Uh-oh…

 

On the ‘life’ side, the theory of evolution has dominated the science side. Darwin and Wallace came up with this idea that all life on earth evolved by a very complicated method of survival of the fittest. The theory was elaborated on and is the foundation of all of the science of biology – the study of life on this blue marble. Once more, no poofing by the Father god, Yahweh, no Garden, no Adam, no Eve, Cain, no Able and no fricking talking snake. 

 Uh-oh, for sure!

 

Those who hold to the Magic Genie paradigm are genuinely upset. 1000 years ago these ‘heretics’ would have been murdered with impunity.  Bluster, bluster, kvetch, cavil. 

The good ol’ days…

 

Not today, though. Such is the power of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present (yadda-yadda) Father/god, the Magic Genie, Yahweh and his son.

 

'They were forming with created…uh. Uh. Uh with mol’..…uh…  dif’rent, uh, …kinds, uh…  gasses and uh, different amoebas or whatever…'

 

Creationists uh, uh, uh

 

Miller-Urey experiment

The Miller–Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present on the early, prebiotic Earth and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. Chemicals common and plentiful on earth at the time before there was any life on earth; indeed before there was any organic life at all were combined and subjected to the electric charge to simulate lightening – which would have been happening in the atmosphere of that time. 

They combined warm water with water vapour, methane, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen and then zapped the atmosphere with electricity.

In the 1950's, biochemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted an experiment which demonstrated that several organic compounds could be formed spontaneously.

Since then, abiogenesis has been considered to be a viable and likely possible beginning of life. In fact, organic molecules have been discovered on asteroids. Life from non-life has yet to be proven but it appears more than likely to account for a ‘kick-starting' of life on this planet.

Abiogenesis; the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and through a gradual process became increasingly complex.

 

SYNTHETIC cells made by combining components of Mycoplasma bacteria with a chemically synthesized genome can grow and divide into cells of uniform shape and size, just like most natural bacterial cells.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2272899-artificial-life-made-in-lab-can-grow-and-divide-like-natural-bacteria/

 

Fine Tuning 

Creationism v2.0

 

As Creationism has lost steam and whatever shreds of credibility it once thought itself to have, the notion of ‘Fine Tuning’ has filled the gap in the apologist’s quiver of arguments.

 

‘Fine Tuning’ is akin to looking at the world through the wrong end of the Teleological telescope. The argument for god and Fine Tuning is essentially if any particular constant or force (such as gravity) were changed by even a slight degree, then all of life and the universe would be changed and we would not be able to exist. Thus, ‘god’ has fine-tuned the universe for us, his ‘children’, to exist within. 

Q.E.D.

 

Perhaps the first thing to come to mind is the Douglas Adams’ parable about the puddle of water. Perhaps, the initial reaction to ‘Fine Tuning’ is to roll your eyes and squint through your skeptic’s goggles.

 

From that primary point, the ‘Fine Tuning’ argument devolves into palaver about ‘random chance’ and referencing Einstein’s ‘god/dice’ quote or Hawking’s statement about the fragility of the universe – all out of context, of course, and seeking to ascribe the authority of those renown physicists to the ‘god’ problem.

Anyone who understands Adam’s parable or accepts a bit of scientific cosmology would see through the sheer veil of twaddle that is the foundation for ‘Fine Tuning’.

 

Spoiler alert, many can’t.

 

The fact is that the constants of the universe are exactly that; ‘constant’. (duh) As such, the universe and all its machinations are based on those constants. As a result of those constants, the universe sprouted galaxies, black holes, planets, and the bio-sphere that produced our species. The randomness that is railed against by Believers as anathema to their Creator god is a bugbear. It is rendered specious by their reliance on ‘constants’ to support the vacuous claim; the post hoc notion of ‘Fine Tuning’.

 

It’s the old ‘which came first the chicken or the egg’ with god taking the place of the chicken and the universe taking the place of the egg. (Or is it the other way ‘round?)

Also at play is the notion of ‘intention’; did the universe or god intend the human species and earth to be here? Believers assert that we are here by god’s intention; his Great Plan. The evidence is to the contrary; we are here as a result of the constants of the universe and not by intention or fore-thought.

 

This idea flies in the Believer’s face of being a special ‘child of god’. That narcissism, that egotism lies at the heart of belief in god, I feel.