The following is a, often disjoined and rambling, short essay on the creation of the christian society, where it came from and where it is going.
It is inspired by the current rash of solely christian beliefs that individuals and groups are trying to enforce upon the populace. It is also inspired by a recently defeated motion by Congress to appoint a spiritual leader for the nation and prescribe a mandatory day of meditation and fasting.
Some may be offended by the content, even though history and the future will prove these words true. This is not meant as a challenge to the christian church. It is merely the explanation that the author has found to be true.
People should be free to believe what they chose to believe, and not have those beliefs forced upon them by governments, schools, churches, or other individuals.
We see the evidence of evolution every where we look. From the cockroach to the shark. From pigmentless crustaceans in caves to brilliantly colored and poisonous tree frogs.
No god created the earth six thousand years ago as the bible says. Evidence abounds that humanity itself has been around for tens of thousands of years. Let alone evidence that the earth itself is more than five billion years old.
Six thousand years ago, our ancestors worshipped spirits, which eventually evolved into gods. These ranged from the beautiful Greek goddess Aphrodite to the cruel Norse trixter Loki.
The question is not weather there is a god, but where exactly did these legends and myths come from?
The answer is rather simple. Six thousand years ago, humans did not understand the nature of the universe. They did not under stand that lightning was created by electrical charges building up in the clouds. Nature didn’t create things so terrible. No, an intelligent being had to create things. Thus a god of thunder (Thor, Zeus) was born.
Gods and goddess where an explanation for phenomena that was not understood.
Why do people fall in love? Aphrodite.
Why do we war with one another? Mars.
Why are some people born deformed? Pan.
These where much simpler explanations than “love is experienced through a chemical created in the brain which causes us to feel great pleasure. This is chemically no different than eating chocolate.”
So it should be said that “In the beginning, man created god”, for that is exactly what happened.
Nearly every thing humans experienced was attributed to a god.
As an example of just how ignorant our ancestors where, until the mid seventeenth century, man believed that rats and mice where born spontaneously from hay stacks. This isn’t because they where stupid, but because the concept of a plague carrying animal, seen as the embodiment of evil by some, could not be a naturally occurring phenomena. It had to be the work of a god.
In short, gods are no more than an explanation for the layman.
In time, the concept of many gods became too hard to follow. Most civilizations had their own multitude of gods. It was hard to keep track of them. What did this god do. Who was that gods father?
Thus, Monotheism was born. Judaism was but the most prominent of these “cults”. It was easier for the priests to understand the history of just one god than to remember the chronicles of fifty.
And in their time, the Jews suffered persecution much as today’s wicans do.
But, the jewish god Jehovah was a cruel god. He punished those who did wrong. He was petty and mean. His servants where murders and thieves. He was a god who no one could live up to.
As an example, the sin of vanity. There is not a human alive who is not guilty, and thus condemned to hell.
You go to work every day. Do you just put on any old dirty shirt? No, you find a clean one. The best one you have clean usually. Why? To look good. Vanity.
That is a very strict interpretation of the sin, but how else would the god Jehovah interpret it?
So, along comes a man claiming to be the son of Jehovah. “No everything is different,” he tells us. “now you can sin, but be cleansed of those sins through me.”
He offered an easier way out, and thus christianity was born.
Today, we base a society, our very lives on the myths of people who lived thousands of years before us. People who simply did not understand nature.
Same say that in the very near future, the earth is supposed to go through a war, or other cataclysm, that will wipe out most of the living things on the planet. The bible puts this date at approximately two thousand years after the death of christ. That would be around the year 2030. So why are there so many saying it will be tomorrow? Or next month?
According to the catholic church, we are living in the end times, but if we follow those teaching we have been living the last generation since the beginning of history in the bible.
We dismiss the story of Hercules easily enough. But we except the story of Jesus?
Historians today study the myths and legends of Hercules and King Arthur. In a thousand years historians will be reading our book of myths and legends, and wonder how we could have followed a man who claimed to be the son of a god.
