Just watched "The Last Days of Jesus" on PBS, a piece of tabloid propaganda by radical Jewish biblical conspiracy theorist Simcha Jacobovici, who sets out in every single thing he creates to "prove" that literally everything about Judaism is true and literally everything about Christianity is fake. He is willing to spin total yarns to "prove" even the most outlandish things to say some Jewish story absolutely happened exactly as it is written, and will go to the same lengths in the opposite direction to paint Jesus as a scheming political opportunist who had children, founded a dynasty in France, died, and rotted in a tomb. It is co-produced by biblical conspiracy theorist James Tabor, who has worked with Jacobovici and naytheist James Cameron before in the past on fantastical tales of biblical revisionism.
The story, like most of the yarns he spins, appears convincing if you don't think about it, but when you apply even the slightest bit of scrutiny it falls apart.
Just one example dismantles the entire central thesis of the program - that Jesus was colluding with Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate, and Praetoria Prefect Sejanus, in an attempted coup against Tiberius to put Sejanus on the throne of Rome and Herod on the throne of Judea, and to remove Caiaphas from the position as head priest with Jesus taking his place (I kid ye not, that conspiracy theory the central thesis of the program). Allegedly it makes no sense for Jesus to be arrested, tried, and executed in a couple days. That never, ever happened, we are told. It had to take place over six months, because news has to travel across the Mediterranean that Sejaus was executed for treason, which caused Pilate and Antipas to waiver in their scheme. Ten minutes later we are told that Sejanus is arrested, tried for treason, and executed in a single day, as if they hadn't just went to great lengths to explain that these single day show trials never happened and could never happen and that the Gospel accounts had to be wrong.
It also says that the Gospel writers never mentioned Sejanus because "it was extremely dangerous at the time to do so", despite the fact that we know Sejanus existed because at least six contemporaries of the Gospel writers wrote about him. The more likely explanation as to why the Gospel writers don't mention him is because they had no idea who he was because why would they?
The film also includes bull face lies that Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist (he was not), that he took over John the Baptist's movement when John was executed (clearly he did not), that Jesus had no reason to dislike the Pharisees because they all believed in the same things (which they did not), that John the Baptist sprinkled water on people's heads instead of immersing them in water, that first century Jews believed there would be two messiahs* - one a political ruler and one the chief priest.
The film also lies about the Last Supper and even the purpose behind Christianity. They say Jesus wanted us to remember his death, and that this was the foundation of Christianity, when, in truth, it is his resurrection and conquest of death that is the central point of the religion. If Jesus died and rotted in a tomb Christianity would be meaningless and Jesus, who said he would rise again and rise us to eternal life as well, would be a liar. The resurrection IS Christianity. It is the singular event that proves Jesus is who he says he is and that he can free us from sin and death.
*I should point out that the word “messiah” has two different meanings within Judaism, and the producers of this film are suggesting otherwise. The “normal” messiah was any high priest or king who was anointed with holy oil, and even included the gentile Cyrus the Great, who ordered the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Messiah as we know it today, who will appear at the End of Days, descend from the line of David, free the Jews, and preside over the millennial reign was one man who would quite literally appear a the End of Days. There were not going to be two men ruling at the same time, one a priest and one a king, there was just one final liberator of the Jewish people. The confusion arises among people who don't know that the one word can be used in two different ways in two different contexts. The producers of this program are deliberately misleading the public (James Tabor has even written a book offering a different misrepresentation, where Jesus is the king and John the Baptist is the priest!).
Showing posts with label Jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jews. Show all posts
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Monday, October 23, 2017
The Sign and the Shroud: Part One: The Hypothesis
I'm reading the book "The Sign" by Thomas de Wesselow, and man this guy is a teenage edgelord douchebag, isn't he? He has to attack Christians and Christianity on every single page. I dare him to make a book mocking Islam.
I have a tendency to skip ahead, to read the author's conclusion first so I know what I'm getting into. Just like I don't like to pay to see a movie until after it's released and people on the Internet reveal the ending, because I'm not going to pay to see a movie with an ending I hate.
This guy writes a near 500 page book about the Shroud of Turin and the resurrection, so naturally I figure about 200 of those pages are filler and another 200 are details, so if I skim just 100 pages I'll get all the relevant details. It saves a lot of time reading multiple books. Here's his conclusions, that could have been shortened to a 20 page paper, not a 500 page book:
*The Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus. We can accurately trace its provenance back to AD 600, well before anyone had the technology or the know-how to make a forgery, so that means it's highly probable that the shroud is authentic.
*The Shroud was created by a Maillard reaction (the way bread browns when you bake it) caused by the unusually rapid decomposition of Jesus' body. We know this because the only other possible explanation is a miracle, and fuck off miracles, we're all atheists now.
*The image on the Shroud is the resurrection, even though you can't see it in normal light, and you don't notice that there's a face unless you're standing at least ten feet away from it, and the huge smoking gun of the still rotting body inside the tomb! All the "appearances" of Jesus after the "resurrection" were public displays of the Shroud.
*First century Jews had a different understanding of life after death and resurrection than we do today. They didn't believe in such childish notions, they were atheists too. They knew dead is dead, but seeing that image gave them courage to go to spread the Gospel and to face without fear the most horrific deaths anyone has had to suffer in human history.
That's his hypothesis. And except for the first part, the part actually based on history, it's total horseshit.
And if we remove the childish invective and the second half of the book that's a retelling of the New Testament with the Shroud inserted into the place of Jesus, we can trim this down to a nice scientific paper and submit it for peer review. But it's not. He has to go on and on and on for 470 more pages (the pictures are all beautiful, but as the citation page in the front of the book attests, none of them are the author's own work).
I tried to read the first page and it took about 30 minutes because every other sentence I had to stop to write a refutation, not of the author's opinions on religion, he can believe what he wants, but the blatant historical lies he tells. On the very first page, in one sentence, he tells two blatant lies about early Christianity:
*The author states that Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome in 325. That's false. Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of Rome in 380, 43 years after Constantine had died. Theodosius also never made it state policy to destroy pagan temples, although he didn't stop anyone who did destroy them.
*The author states that a Christian mob burnt down the Library of Alexandria because it was pagan, condemning the West to centuries of ignorance. That's not even false, that's a lie. The Library of Alexandria burnt down centuries before the reign of Theodosius (or Constantine, who the author conflates with Theodosius), possibly by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Under the reign of Theodosius the Serapeum of Alexandria, a temple that had a collection of books, as temples often do, was burnt down by a political mob, that just so happened to be composed mostly of Christians, for political reasons. Alexandria was a hotbed of mob violence. Two political factions were going at it, the losing side sought refuge in the Serapeum, and the winning side burnt it down because it was a convenient way to eliminate their rivals.
This man has a PhD in art history, mind you. One would think (hope) that such a degree would require passing at least one actual history course. Anyone who has taken an introductory course in the late Roman Empire or early modern Europe knows these statements are false, so the only way a PhD history scholar could get these facts wrong is by deliberately telling lies.
Two pages later the author has to take yet another shot at Christianity and all other forms of belief other than atheistic materialism:
Here's an accurate artistic depiction of the author:
The author, a couple paragraphs later, talks about how the works of Celsus and Porphyry were destroyed in great book burnings by evil Christians who did things for the evulz.
No. Pretend to be the historian your degree says you are. Books are made of paper, papyrus, parchment, and other perishable materials. 99% of everything that has ever been written has rotted away to dust and is lost. Some roving mob of evil Christians didn't have to go around burning books, those books are lost all on their own because of the ravages of time. We don't have any first hand accounts of the life of Alexander the Great, only third hand commentaries by people living 400 years later, not because someone was trying to erase him from history, but because books rot. If you want a book to survive it has to consistently be a best seller (or its pre-modern equivalent) for millennia. The only way books survive is because enough people thought they were interesting or significant enough to make copies, and then generations later people made copies of the copies, and that's why we have the works of Aristotle and Homer and the Gospels, because enough people thought they were interesting or important enough to preserve. Most books were not copied down because most books are crap to begin with. If, in 1,000 years, Thomas de Edgelord's masterpiece has been lost to history it's not because evil Christians burnt all his books, it's because his books are just crap and no one saw it necessary to print new copies. It's as simple as that. There's no need to resort to malice as an explanation when laziness will suffice.
De Wesslow's treatment of the Shroud from an artistic point of view is tremendous. He points out why the image on the Shroud is inartistic. No artist would have made an image like the image on the Shroud, putting the blood on the cloth first and then putting the image on top, using multiple different perspectives on the front and the back, depicting anatomy the way it would have been totally unknown by medieval and Renaissance artists, creating an image so faint that no one can see it up close in normal lighting and that only takes on its true greatness in photographic negative. The Shroud betrays itself as anything other than an artistic work. Pointing out why the Shroud cannot be a forgery de Wesslow's work is very good. The problem comes when he tries to mischaracterise Christianity. It's just like Richard Dawkins. Dawkins might be a brilliant biologist, but he's a piss-poor philosopher who does nothing but rehash arguments that have been refuted millennia ago.
I've written about this before when talking about the religious views of ancient people. Ancient people were not stupid. Ancient people were not stupid. Did the Greeks really believe the gods were people who sat on Mount Olympos doing all the crazy stuff in the myths? Probably very few did, but most were smart enough to see the truth of the stories. They were written as a way to get a point across about very complicated subjects in way that was easy to assimilate and remember. The gods are so obviously anthropomorphized versions of abstract qualities. Aries is unchecked rage and Athena is the rational mind that takes over in warfare, the two primary ways in which people fight. These are psychological qualities that are represented as people as a form of shorthand.
Ancient people knew a dead body is dead. They knew that better than we do, isolated as we are from the reality of death. First century Jews would not see a stain on a cloth and believe that the rotting dead body right next to that stain had miraculously risen and was immortal, and believe it so strongly that they were willing to be crucified, beheaded, tortured, burnt alive. No one is so stupid to believe in a risen Christ when they can see the rotting corpse just because they found a stain on a cloth.
And the author arrives at this conclusion by cherry picking the Gospels, which he will decry as unhistorical in one breath and then a sentence later quote mine for his retelling of history. Which is it? Are the Gospels unreliable or are they the very corner stone of his thesis? Both can't be true. De Wesslow spends two thirds of the book rewriting the Gospels in contortionist fashion to insert the Shroud in the place of the risen Christ, because we're all atheists now, we know miracles are fake.
Coming soon: Part Two: The Science
I have a tendency to skip ahead, to read the author's conclusion first so I know what I'm getting into. Just like I don't like to pay to see a movie until after it's released and people on the Internet reveal the ending, because I'm not going to pay to see a movie with an ending I hate.
This guy writes a near 500 page book about the Shroud of Turin and the resurrection, so naturally I figure about 200 of those pages are filler and another 200 are details, so if I skim just 100 pages I'll get all the relevant details. It saves a lot of time reading multiple books. Here's his conclusions, that could have been shortened to a 20 page paper, not a 500 page book:
*The Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus. We can accurately trace its provenance back to AD 600, well before anyone had the technology or the know-how to make a forgery, so that means it's highly probable that the shroud is authentic.
*The Shroud was created by a Maillard reaction (the way bread browns when you bake it) caused by the unusually rapid decomposition of Jesus' body. We know this because the only other possible explanation is a miracle, and fuck off miracles, we're all atheists now.
*The image on the Shroud is the resurrection, even though you can't see it in normal light, and you don't notice that there's a face unless you're standing at least ten feet away from it, and the huge smoking gun of the still rotting body inside the tomb! All the "appearances" of Jesus after the "resurrection" were public displays of the Shroud.
*First century Jews had a different understanding of life after death and resurrection than we do today. They didn't believe in such childish notions, they were atheists too. They knew dead is dead, but seeing that image gave them courage to go to spread the Gospel and to face without fear the most horrific deaths anyone has had to suffer in human history.
That's his hypothesis. And except for the first part, the part actually based on history, it's total horseshit.
And if we remove the childish invective and the second half of the book that's a retelling of the New Testament with the Shroud inserted into the place of Jesus, we can trim this down to a nice scientific paper and submit it for peer review. But it's not. He has to go on and on and on for 470 more pages (the pictures are all beautiful, but as the citation page in the front of the book attests, none of them are the author's own work).
I tried to read the first page and it took about 30 minutes because every other sentence I had to stop to write a refutation, not of the author's opinions on religion, he can believe what he wants, but the blatant historical lies he tells. On the very first page, in one sentence, he tells two blatant lies about early Christianity:
*The author states that Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome in 325. That's false. Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of Rome in 380, 43 years after Constantine had died. Theodosius also never made it state policy to destroy pagan temples, although he didn't stop anyone who did destroy them.
*The author states that a Christian mob burnt down the Library of Alexandria because it was pagan, condemning the West to centuries of ignorance. That's not even false, that's a lie. The Library of Alexandria burnt down centuries before the reign of Theodosius (or Constantine, who the author conflates with Theodosius), possibly by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Under the reign of Theodosius the Serapeum of Alexandria, a temple that had a collection of books, as temples often do, was burnt down by a political mob, that just so happened to be composed mostly of Christians, for political reasons. Alexandria was a hotbed of mob violence. Two political factions were going at it, the losing side sought refuge in the Serapeum, and the winning side burnt it down because it was a convenient way to eliminate their rivals.
This man has a PhD in art history, mind you. One would think (hope) that such a degree would require passing at least one actual history course. Anyone who has taken an introductory course in the late Roman Empire or early modern Europe knows these statements are false, so the only way a PhD history scholar could get these facts wrong is by deliberately telling lies.
Two pages later the author has to take yet another shot at Christianity and all other forms of belief other than atheistic materialism:
"The traditional notion of a flesh-and-blood resurrection remained unquestioned in Christendom for more than a millennium and a half. In retrospect, it is rather astonishing that such an improbable dogma could have dominated the minds of so many for such a long time. It stands as testimony to the imperialistic power of the Church and its sustained stranglehold on intellectual endeavor, a grip that only began to loosen during the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Even then, it was another 200 years before religious skeptics began to challenge the very basis of Christian faith, reviving voices that had been silenced since antiquity." (pages 5-6)
Here's an accurate artistic depiction of the author:
The author, a couple paragraphs later, talks about how the works of Celsus and Porphyry were destroyed in great book burnings by evil Christians who did things for the evulz.
No. Pretend to be the historian your degree says you are. Books are made of paper, papyrus, parchment, and other perishable materials. 99% of everything that has ever been written has rotted away to dust and is lost. Some roving mob of evil Christians didn't have to go around burning books, those books are lost all on their own because of the ravages of time. We don't have any first hand accounts of the life of Alexander the Great, only third hand commentaries by people living 400 years later, not because someone was trying to erase him from history, but because books rot. If you want a book to survive it has to consistently be a best seller (or its pre-modern equivalent) for millennia. The only way books survive is because enough people thought they were interesting or significant enough to make copies, and then generations later people made copies of the copies, and that's why we have the works of Aristotle and Homer and the Gospels, because enough people thought they were interesting or important enough to preserve. Most books were not copied down because most books are crap to begin with. If, in 1,000 years, Thomas de Edgelord's masterpiece has been lost to history it's not because evil Christians burnt all his books, it's because his books are just crap and no one saw it necessary to print new copies. It's as simple as that. There's no need to resort to malice as an explanation when laziness will suffice.
De Wesslow's treatment of the Shroud from an artistic point of view is tremendous. He points out why the image on the Shroud is inartistic. No artist would have made an image like the image on the Shroud, putting the blood on the cloth first and then putting the image on top, using multiple different perspectives on the front and the back, depicting anatomy the way it would have been totally unknown by medieval and Renaissance artists, creating an image so faint that no one can see it up close in normal lighting and that only takes on its true greatness in photographic negative. The Shroud betrays itself as anything other than an artistic work. Pointing out why the Shroud cannot be a forgery de Wesslow's work is very good. The problem comes when he tries to mischaracterise Christianity. It's just like Richard Dawkins. Dawkins might be a brilliant biologist, but he's a piss-poor philosopher who does nothing but rehash arguments that have been refuted millennia ago.
I've written about this before when talking about the religious views of ancient people. Ancient people were not stupid. Ancient people were not stupid. Did the Greeks really believe the gods were people who sat on Mount Olympos doing all the crazy stuff in the myths? Probably very few did, but most were smart enough to see the truth of the stories. They were written as a way to get a point across about very complicated subjects in way that was easy to assimilate and remember. The gods are so obviously anthropomorphized versions of abstract qualities. Aries is unchecked rage and Athena is the rational mind that takes over in warfare, the two primary ways in which people fight. These are psychological qualities that are represented as people as a form of shorthand.
Ancient people knew a dead body is dead. They knew that better than we do, isolated as we are from the reality of death. First century Jews would not see a stain on a cloth and believe that the rotting dead body right next to that stain had miraculously risen and was immortal, and believe it so strongly that they were willing to be crucified, beheaded, tortured, burnt alive. No one is so stupid to believe in a risen Christ when they can see the rotting corpse just because they found a stain on a cloth.
And the author arrives at this conclusion by cherry picking the Gospels, which he will decry as unhistorical in one breath and then a sentence later quote mine for his retelling of history. Which is it? Are the Gospels unreliable or are they the very corner stone of his thesis? Both can't be true. De Wesslow spends two thirds of the book rewriting the Gospels in contortionist fashion to insert the Shroud in the place of the risen Christ, because we're all atheists now, we know miracles are fake.
Coming soon: Part Two: The Science
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
The Life of Jesus: The Three Kings
Ye may remember from The Life of Jesus how astronomer Michael Molnar was able to determine that Jesus was born on 17 April 6 BC using ancient Roman coins depicting the star pattern at the time. A conjunction of all the planets, especially Jupiter and the Sun in the constellation Aries, prompted the wise men from the Bible to go looking for the infant Jesus. Molnar, along with Egyptologist Bob Brier, reason that the wise men, or magi, were Parthian astrologers, and their skulls may have been discovered by Constantine's mother Helena and they may be kept in the Cologne Cathedral.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
The Crossing of the Red Sea
Hurricane Irma's incredible power drew all the water from this beach at Long Island in the Bahamas, leaving behind only dry land.
In the story of the Exodus, Moses raises his staff and the Red Sea (Yam Suph, sometimes translated as the Sea of Reeds) empties of its water. God caused the sea to recede with a powerful east wind (Ex. 14:21). The water was piled up in a great wall to the side of the dry land, and this phenomenon lasted long enough for allegedly 600,000 Israelites to cross. When the Egyptians followed in their chariots the wind stopped and the sea returned, drowning them.
This is exactly what was seen at the Bahamas, minus the drowning Egyptians. Hurricane Irma's powerful winds and low pressure caused a huge bulge of water in the center of the storm, draining the beach, and the beach was dry for many hours, apparently. When the hurricane hit land the huge storm surge caused tremendous waves to crash on shore and caused massive flooding.
The mechanism exists for a powerful wind (hurricane or other storm) to drain a shallow body of water long enough for people to cross, and for huge waves to arrive to drown masses of people. The narrative account exists that says that just such an event happened somewhere in Egypt over 3,000 years ago during the Exodus. You could argue that such an occurrence was purely natural, and that it was one hell of a coincidence, or maybe it really was a miracle, but the crossing of the sea is definitely plausible. We can't prove that it happened, but it definitely could have happened, and this is what it would have looked like.
In the story of the Exodus, Moses raises his staff and the Red Sea (Yam Suph, sometimes translated as the Sea of Reeds) empties of its water. God caused the sea to recede with a powerful east wind (Ex. 14:21). The water was piled up in a great wall to the side of the dry land, and this phenomenon lasted long enough for allegedly 600,000 Israelites to cross. When the Egyptians followed in their chariots the wind stopped and the sea returned, drowning them.
This is exactly what was seen at the Bahamas, minus the drowning Egyptians. Hurricane Irma's powerful winds and low pressure caused a huge bulge of water in the center of the storm, draining the beach, and the beach was dry for many hours, apparently. When the hurricane hit land the huge storm surge caused tremendous waves to crash on shore and caused massive flooding.
The mechanism exists for a powerful wind (hurricane or other storm) to drain a shallow body of water long enough for people to cross, and for huge waves to arrive to drown masses of people. The narrative account exists that says that just such an event happened somewhere in Egypt over 3,000 years ago during the Exodus. You could argue that such an occurrence was purely natural, and that it was one hell of a coincidence, or maybe it really was a miracle, but the crossing of the sea is definitely plausible. We can't prove that it happened, but it definitely could have happened, and this is what it would have looked like.
Monday, September 5, 2016
The Mystery Of The Shemitah
Jonathan Cahn explains what he calls "The Mystery Of The Shemitah" for 77 minutes. Basically, there's this Biblical injunction that every 7th year the Jews were supposed to stop working and erase all debts (I'm still wondering what they were supposed to eat), but the Jews always defy God's comands, so they ignored this injunction for 490 years. As a result the Babylonians came in and destroyed Jerusalem and sent the Jews into exile for 70 years - one year for every sabbath year ("shemitah") they had ignored. At the end of 70 years the Persians come in and wipe out the Babylonians and the Persian king Cyrus rebuilds Jerusalem and puts the Jews back in their homeland.
Rabbi Cahn says the same rule applies to the United States, because the US was unique in that it was the only modern state that was founded on the principles of God's word, in effect setting up a new covenant like the one the Jews had thousands of years ago.
1870 - shemitah year - the US surpasses Britain as the largest economy on the planet
1917 - shemitah year - the US becomes a superpower
1945 - shemitah year - a new financial world order is established based on the US dollar
As long as the US (this rule only applies to the US and Israel) stays right with God then every seventh year will be a blessing, but if the US defies God then every seventh year will be a curse.
1973 - shemitah year - the US legalises abortion, defying God
2001 - shemitah year - 9/11, the symbol of America's economic might - the World Trade Center, which was built in 1973 - is destroyed, followed by a huge financial collapse of the stock market
2008 - shemitah year - the Great Recession starts, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (which also started on a shemitah year)
What happens next? I don't know. The last shemitah year was September 2014 to September 2015, which passed, and while there weren't any further economic disasters or terror attacks, the Supreme Court did deem itself infinite power over all aspects of everyone's lives allegedly to protect the "rights" of maybe one tenth of seven tenths of one percent of the population, but really it was a naked power grab that followed 30 years of public indoctrination to move the overton window.
Is there anything to this? I don't know. This might all just be coincidence. It is an interesting hypothesis, and it is an interesting lecture.
Rabbi Cahn says the same rule applies to the United States, because the US was unique in that it was the only modern state that was founded on the principles of God's word, in effect setting up a new covenant like the one the Jews had thousands of years ago.
1870 - shemitah year - the US surpasses Britain as the largest economy on the planet
1917 - shemitah year - the US becomes a superpower
1945 - shemitah year - a new financial world order is established based on the US dollar
As long as the US (this rule only applies to the US and Israel) stays right with God then every seventh year will be a blessing, but if the US defies God then every seventh year will be a curse.
1973 - shemitah year - the US legalises abortion, defying God
2001 - shemitah year - 9/11, the symbol of America's economic might - the World Trade Center, which was built in 1973 - is destroyed, followed by a huge financial collapse of the stock market
2008 - shemitah year - the Great Recession starts, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (which also started on a shemitah year)
What happens next? I don't know. The last shemitah year was September 2014 to September 2015, which passed, and while there weren't any further economic disasters or terror attacks, the Supreme Court did deem itself infinite power over all aspects of everyone's lives allegedly to protect the "rights" of maybe one tenth of seven tenths of one percent of the population, but really it was a naked power grab that followed 30 years of public indoctrination to move the overton window.
Is there anything to this? I don't know. This might all just be coincidence. It is an interesting hypothesis, and it is an interesting lecture.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Reincarnation Questions and Hypotheses
There are a few reasons I suspect reincarnation is both possible and exists:
1. As a child I had past life memories (I don't remember anything now). I stopped talking about it when no one believed me.
2. It is the best explanation for other children who have veridical past life memories.
3. It explains certain things about human development that we don't understand.
4. It makes sense mechanically, working as a sort of metaphysical version of gravity.
5. It's fair.
6. Pretty much everyone believed in reincarnation in some form until the 14th century. (Reincarnation, of at least certain individuals who suffer traumatic deaths, is still a part of orthodox Judaism today.)
The main questions that exist surrounding the idea of reincarnation are as follows:
1. Which of the two suggested mechanisms for reincarnation is accurate, the individual soul coming back life after life as all the world's religions suggest, or the new age model where different souls incarnate that are connected through an "over-soul"?
2. How long is the typical duration between successive incarnations on Earth?
There seems to be a great deal of leeway with this, depending on the belief of the person. Some people who believe in instantaneous reincarnation may indeed instantaneously reincarnate. In the Tibetan model rebirth takes place after 45 days, ideally, though with reincarnated lamas it looks like it usually takes 2 or 3 years. With a lot of people from the Second World War and the Holocaust they seem to have started coming back after 50 or 60 years. Yogananda suggests 200 years is a normal time. I suspect that people wait to reincarnate until after the whole family has died, so they can all meet up again before departing once more for Earth, although with sudden horrific deaths the wait time seems to be a lot shorter.
An enlightened being can reincarnate at will, but with the average person I suspect something akin to the Hindu system is in place where a person spends time in one of the astral heavens until the merit they accrued in the previous lifetime has expired (which may take hundreds or even thousands of years) before having to come back. This makes sense, metaphysically.
3. How many souls are there that are incarnating? Let's for the moment just talk about humans. (I suspect more advanced animals like apes and dolphins also reincarnate like humans, but we can't ask them so it's impossible to know. Also animals who have spent a great deal of time with humans, like pets, also may have individual rebirths. Generally it is said that wild animals, and I suspect plants too since recent studies with tomatoes and trees reveal that at least certain plants are conscious too, tend not to have individual souls, but I have no idea.) There are at least 8 billion human souls, and since the maximum number of humans possible on the Earth is assumed to be about 12 billion let's say that's the minimum number of individual souls. That would mean that the time between incarnations would necessarily be very short. If, on the other hand, there were 100 billion souls then the time between incarnations would be very long, since there have only been 108 billion people who have ever lived, so only a handful would have ever reincarnated. If there are 1 trillion souls then no one will ever need to reincarnate because it will take millions of years to run out and hopefully humanity will all reach enlightenment before then and we can be done with the Earth permanently.
4. Why are all, or most, of the faculties lost in the interim between incarnations? Babies, even of enlightened beings, still have to learn to walk and talk all over again, and very few people come here knowing calculus (reincarnation is, I think, the only explanation for genius as seen in people like Freeman Dyson who knew more about mathematics as a very young child than most people ever learn in a lifetime). You would think someone like the Dalai Lama who has come back 14 times now would be born knowing how to walk and talk, because he has that much more experience than an ordinary mortal.
It does seem that some memories sneak through, at least at the beginning. Young children exhibit xenoglossy, speaking languages they never learned, but they knew from a previous life. This universally disappears after 4 or 5 years. And with genius and rapid development of certain faculties there seems to be some degree of anemnesis at play. If you learned something ten times already then relearning it in your next life will be very easy.
These lists are in no way exhaustive. Rather, they serve as a useful summary of the situation.
1. As a child I had past life memories (I don't remember anything now). I stopped talking about it when no one believed me.
2. It is the best explanation for other children who have veridical past life memories.
3. It explains certain things about human development that we don't understand.
4. It makes sense mechanically, working as a sort of metaphysical version of gravity.
5. It's fair.
6. Pretty much everyone believed in reincarnation in some form until the 14th century. (Reincarnation, of at least certain individuals who suffer traumatic deaths, is still a part of orthodox Judaism today.)
The main questions that exist surrounding the idea of reincarnation are as follows:
1. Which of the two suggested mechanisms for reincarnation is accurate, the individual soul coming back life after life as all the world's religions suggest, or the new age model where different souls incarnate that are connected through an "over-soul"?
2. How long is the typical duration between successive incarnations on Earth?
There seems to be a great deal of leeway with this, depending on the belief of the person. Some people who believe in instantaneous reincarnation may indeed instantaneously reincarnate. In the Tibetan model rebirth takes place after 45 days, ideally, though with reincarnated lamas it looks like it usually takes 2 or 3 years. With a lot of people from the Second World War and the Holocaust they seem to have started coming back after 50 or 60 years. Yogananda suggests 200 years is a normal time. I suspect that people wait to reincarnate until after the whole family has died, so they can all meet up again before departing once more for Earth, although with sudden horrific deaths the wait time seems to be a lot shorter.
An enlightened being can reincarnate at will, but with the average person I suspect something akin to the Hindu system is in place where a person spends time in one of the astral heavens until the merit they accrued in the previous lifetime has expired (which may take hundreds or even thousands of years) before having to come back. This makes sense, metaphysically.
3. How many souls are there that are incarnating? Let's for the moment just talk about humans. (I suspect more advanced animals like apes and dolphins also reincarnate like humans, but we can't ask them so it's impossible to know. Also animals who have spent a great deal of time with humans, like pets, also may have individual rebirths. Generally it is said that wild animals, and I suspect plants too since recent studies with tomatoes and trees reveal that at least certain plants are conscious too, tend not to have individual souls, but I have no idea.) There are at least 8 billion human souls, and since the maximum number of humans possible on the Earth is assumed to be about 12 billion let's say that's the minimum number of individual souls. That would mean that the time between incarnations would necessarily be very short. If, on the other hand, there were 100 billion souls then the time between incarnations would be very long, since there have only been 108 billion people who have ever lived, so only a handful would have ever reincarnated. If there are 1 trillion souls then no one will ever need to reincarnate because it will take millions of years to run out and hopefully humanity will all reach enlightenment before then and we can be done with the Earth permanently.
4. Why are all, or most, of the faculties lost in the interim between incarnations? Babies, even of enlightened beings, still have to learn to walk and talk all over again, and very few people come here knowing calculus (reincarnation is, I think, the only explanation for genius as seen in people like Freeman Dyson who knew more about mathematics as a very young child than most people ever learn in a lifetime). You would think someone like the Dalai Lama who has come back 14 times now would be born knowing how to walk and talk, because he has that much more experience than an ordinary mortal.
It does seem that some memories sneak through, at least at the beginning. Young children exhibit xenoglossy, speaking languages they never learned, but they knew from a previous life. This universally disappears after 4 or 5 years. And with genius and rapid development of certain faculties there seems to be some degree of anemnesis at play. If you learned something ten times already then relearning it in your next life will be very easy.
These lists are in no way exhaustive. Rather, they serve as a useful summary of the situation.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Nuclear News You DIDN'T Hear
Have you heard the one about the deal between
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan regarding nuclear weapons? No? Maybe the news
was too busy focusing on what inanimate object Miley Cyrus was having
sex with this week.
Stolen Cobalt-60
A truck delivering 40 grams of cobalt-60 pellets, material used in radiotherapy, was hijacked last week in central Mexico. The truck and the cargo was recovered near Hueypoxtla, and the hijackers are believed to have received a fatal dose of radiation.
This was another narrow miss. There is an increasing number of nuclear incidents in the world today. Cobalt-60 is particularly deadly and persistent isotope that was proposed in use for area denial weapons. An area exposed to the fallout of a cobalt bomb would be uninhabitable for 100 years due to lethal levels of radiation. Had this stolen material been placed in a truck bomb like the kind that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it could contaminate an area of four square miles[1]. If set off at Wall Street the plume of radioactive debris would probably reach the Empire State Building.
Iranian Nukes
"Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were
not won over by President Barack Obama's pledges in personal phone calls
to the two Middle East leaders last week not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Their skepticism only grew."
He probably said something along the lines of "if you like your nuclear program, you can keep it*"
*"Program" does not include "programs Oblahblah does not like," or "programs that do not include abortion on demand until three years after birth." "Like" is a subjective term, subject to verification by Oblahblah and his bureaucrats.
This is exactly what the mullahs wanted. Oblahblah is eating out of their hands. After stalling for time "negotiating," they managed to get Oblahblah to back down and give them everything they wanted and more. Experts estimate that Iran has enough material to make four nukes already.
Leaders in Saudi Arabia have made clear that if Iran gets a nuke then they will be forced to get one as well, since they may well be the primary target of attack, before Israel even, due to the fierce hatred between rival Muslim factions. Saudi Arabia funded Pakistan's nuclear program, and if push comes to shove they claim to have an agreement whereby Pakistan will deliver weapons to them as compensation.
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are ticking time bombs in the region. Both are ruled by horrible, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, prehistoric, amoral, psychopathic monsters. The war in Syria is, in part, a proxy war between these two repressive regimes that threatens to suck the entire world in with it. If either one gets their hands on a nuke it would be a disaster for every freedom loving, moral human being on the planet.
Iran will not negotiate at all with Israel, and probably won't negotiate with Saudi Arabia either. In the world of inter-tribal warfare the aim is always extermination, and both proto-nuclear nations most definitely are run by tribal strongmen.
Notes
1. "Here the lethal combination of glass and a bomb projected shards at high
speed causing 5 per cent of the deaths and 69 per cent of the injuries
outside the buildings for a radius of over 10 blocks from the blast
centre."
10 blocks, as seen on a map, is about one mile. A circle with a radius of 1 mile has an area of exactly pi square miles. I rounded up to 4 to be safe.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan regarding nuclear weapons? No? Maybe the news
was too busy focusing on what inanimate object Miley Cyrus was having
sex with this week.
Stolen Cobalt-60
A truck delivering 40 grams of cobalt-60 pellets, material used in radiotherapy, was hijacked last week in central Mexico. The truck and the cargo was recovered near Hueypoxtla, and the hijackers are believed to have received a fatal dose of radiation.
This was another narrow miss. There is an increasing number of nuclear incidents in the world today. Cobalt-60 is particularly deadly and persistent isotope that was proposed in use for area denial weapons. An area exposed to the fallout of a cobalt bomb would be uninhabitable for 100 years due to lethal levels of radiation. Had this stolen material been placed in a truck bomb like the kind that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it could contaminate an area of four square miles[1]. If set off at Wall Street the plume of radioactive debris would probably reach the Empire State Building.
Iranian Nukes
"Saudi King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were
not won over by President Barack Obama's pledges in personal phone calls
to the two Middle East leaders last week not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Their skepticism only grew."
He probably said something along the lines of "if you like your nuclear program, you can keep it*"
*"Program" does not include "programs Oblahblah does not like," or "programs that do not include abortion on demand until three years after birth." "Like" is a subjective term, subject to verification by Oblahblah and his bureaucrats.
This is exactly what the mullahs wanted. Oblahblah is eating out of their hands. After stalling for time "negotiating," they managed to get Oblahblah to back down and give them everything they wanted and more. Experts estimate that Iran has enough material to make four nukes already.
Leaders in Saudi Arabia have made clear that if Iran gets a nuke then they will be forced to get one as well, since they may well be the primary target of attack, before Israel even, due to the fierce hatred between rival Muslim factions. Saudi Arabia funded Pakistan's nuclear program, and if push comes to shove they claim to have an agreement whereby Pakistan will deliver weapons to them as compensation.
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are ticking time bombs in the region. Both are ruled by horrible, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, prehistoric, amoral, psychopathic monsters. The war in Syria is, in part, a proxy war between these two repressive regimes that threatens to suck the entire world in with it. If either one gets their hands on a nuke it would be a disaster for every freedom loving, moral human being on the planet.
Iran will not negotiate at all with Israel, and probably won't negotiate with Saudi Arabia either. In the world of inter-tribal warfare the aim is always extermination, and both proto-nuclear nations most definitely are run by tribal strongmen.
Notes
1. "Here the lethal combination of glass and a bomb projected shards at high
speed causing 5 per cent of the deaths and 69 per cent of the injuries
outside the buildings for a radius of over 10 blocks from the blast
centre."
10 blocks, as seen on a map, is about one mile. A circle with a radius of 1 mile has an area of exactly pi square miles. I rounded up to 4 to be safe.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Dating Creation
Taking the geneologies found in the Masoritic Text and fitting them together with an estimate of when the Exodus occured, we might be able to figure out when the Bible places the creation of the world. From Adam to Moses, we can construct the following chart:
Patriarch Born Died
Adam 1* 931
Seth 131 1043
Enosh 236 1141
Kenan 326 1236
Mahalalel 396 1291
Jared 461 1423
Enoch 623 988 ("Walked with God")
Methuselah 688 1657 (Died seven days before the flood)
Lamech 875 1652
Noah 1057 2007 1657 = The Flood
Shem 1557 2157
Arphaxad 1657 2095
Shelah 1692 2125
Eber 1722 2195
Peleg 1756 1995
Reu 1786 2025
Sherug 1818 2048
Nahor 1848 1996
Terah 1877 2152
Abraham 1947 2222
Isaac 2047 2267
Jacob 2107 2254
Some interesting things appear when we view this data in chart form. Lamech was the last patriarch to see Adam alive (he died 126 years before Noah was born). Noah not only outlived his great-great-great grandson, he also outlived his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Nahor, who died quite young (relatively speaking). Abraham also had 215 years to get to know Noah, and so he had a direct testimony of the flood. Key events from creation to when the Israelites enter Egypt are not more than two people removed.
Moses was 80 years old when the Exodus happened, which took place exactly 430 years after the Israelites (Jacob's family) entered Egypt, when Jacob was age 130. Meaning:
2237 = Israelites enter Egypt
2667 = Exodus
Time spent in Egypt = 430 Years (to the day)
Moses died at age 120. From this we can calculate the dates of Moses' life:
Moses 2587 2707
I've estimated before that the Exodus** happened around 1550 BC. 1550 BC now becomes 2667 after the beginning of the sixth day (yom).This would mean Adam was created in the year 4217 BC. The world, according to this calculation, would be 6,230 years and 5 unspecified yom old.
Solomon's temple was supposedly built exactly 480 years after the Exodus, or year 3147 AA (After Adam), or 1070 BC according to my estimate. This was the fourth year of Solomon's reign, so he became king in 3143 AA, or 1074 BC. His father, David, reigned for 40 years with Solomon being his immediate successor. David became king at age 30, so he lived a total of 70 years. This places his life at 3073 - 3143 (he had Solomon the year of his death, apparently) or 1144 - 1074 BC. This is about a hundred years before he is traditionally placed.
Of course, all this rests on the accuracy of one date: the date of the Exodus. That said, I think it is fairly accurate. I don't know if there was an Adam who lived 6,000 years ago (pretty close to the start of the Egyptian calendar), or what event from 2560 BC would count as the flood (around the time when the Great Pyramid was supposed to have been built). I have no idea what any of this is actually calculating. Sure, there was an Abraham, and the Israelites did settle in Egypt, but what happened before is anyone's guess. It does, however, make for an interesting day's work.
*For some reason many people seems to start counting with a year zero. I have no idea how to count zero years. The current Jewish calendar starts counting with year one (the first five days of creation) and says Adam was created on the first day of year two. Since there is no way to know how long, exactly, those first five days were, I'm going to put Adam's creation at the start of year one.
**Going by the Hebrew calendar, which currently places us in year 5773, Exodus happened 1126 BC,
Patriarch Born Died
Adam 1* 931
Seth 131 1043
Enosh 236 1141
Kenan 326 1236
Mahalalel 396 1291
Jared 461 1423
Enoch 623 988 ("Walked with God")
Methuselah 688 1657 (Died seven days before the flood)
Lamech 875 1652
Noah 1057 2007 1657 = The Flood
Shem 1557 2157
Arphaxad 1657 2095
Shelah 1692 2125
Eber 1722 2195
Peleg 1756 1995
Reu 1786 2025
Sherug 1818 2048
Nahor 1848 1996
Terah 1877 2152
Abraham 1947 2222
Isaac 2047 2267
Jacob 2107 2254
Some interesting things appear when we view this data in chart form. Lamech was the last patriarch to see Adam alive (he died 126 years before Noah was born). Noah not only outlived his great-great-great grandson, he also outlived his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Nahor, who died quite young (relatively speaking). Abraham also had 215 years to get to know Noah, and so he had a direct testimony of the flood. Key events from creation to when the Israelites enter Egypt are not more than two people removed.
Moses was 80 years old when the Exodus happened, which took place exactly 430 years after the Israelites (Jacob's family) entered Egypt, when Jacob was age 130. Meaning:
2237 = Israelites enter Egypt
2667 = Exodus
Time spent in Egypt = 430 Years (to the day)
Moses died at age 120. From this we can calculate the dates of Moses' life:
Moses 2587 2707
I've estimated before that the Exodus** happened around 1550 BC. 1550 BC now becomes 2667 after the beginning of the sixth day (yom).This would mean Adam was created in the year 4217 BC. The world, according to this calculation, would be 6,230 years and 5 unspecified yom old.
Solomon's temple was supposedly built exactly 480 years after the Exodus, or year 3147 AA (After Adam), or 1070 BC according to my estimate. This was the fourth year of Solomon's reign, so he became king in 3143 AA, or 1074 BC. His father, David, reigned for 40 years with Solomon being his immediate successor. David became king at age 30, so he lived a total of 70 years. This places his life at 3073 - 3143 (he had Solomon the year of his death, apparently) or 1144 - 1074 BC. This is about a hundred years before he is traditionally placed.
Of course, all this rests on the accuracy of one date: the date of the Exodus. That said, I think it is fairly accurate. I don't know if there was an Adam who lived 6,000 years ago (pretty close to the start of the Egyptian calendar), or what event from 2560 BC would count as the flood (around the time when the Great Pyramid was supposed to have been built). I have no idea what any of this is actually calculating. Sure, there was an Abraham, and the Israelites did settle in Egypt, but what happened before is anyone's guess. It does, however, make for an interesting day's work.
*For some reason many people seems to start counting with a year zero. I have no idea how to count zero years. The current Jewish calendar starts counting with year one (the first five days of creation) and says Adam was created on the first day of year two. Since there is no way to know how long, exactly, those first five days were, I'm going to put Adam's creation at the start of year one.
**Going by the Hebrew calendar, which currently places us in year 5773, Exodus happened 1126 BC,
Thursday, December 6, 2012
The Bible Code II
Michael Drosnin wrote two sequels to his book The Bible Code, one of which I have read, one of which I will never read. You might remember Mr. Drosnin from other posts.
If you have read the first Bible Code book but have not read the second, please do not. The two are worlds apart. Here is a brief synopsis:
Michael Drosnin, a hard-nosed journalist and ardent atheist, having proven the existence of a code in the Bible, he now has morphed into a combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. Drosnin writes powerful men (Clinton, Bush, Arafat, Sharon, etc.) letters about the code and the end of the world, but he always leaves out the key details, because "no one would believe them," until his books are published. He wrote to Ehud Barak that the code said he would be the next Prime Minister of Israel in an early election in 1999, but he did not think Barak would believe him if he included the date, so he conveniently left that detail out of his letter but included it in the book. Drosnin conveniently leaves us no records for which to prove any of his stories. Two pictures of code tables appear on each page, taking up about 100 pages total.
Yasser Arafat is a very pious, kind-hearted man and all Israelis are war mongerers. And God does not exist, and here is an irrelevant code table.
Oh, and Michael Drosnin doesn't believe in God.
1998, Drosnin puts forward his ET "theory".
He finds references to DNA being "brought in a vehicle" and immediately jumps to the conclusion "when I found that encoded in the Bible, I couldn't believe it... DNA, the molecule of life, sent to Earth in a spaceship." (p. 144) It didn't say that. Just as every time he reads the word "computer" in the code when the actual Hebrew word says "thought", Drosnin reads "vehicle" as "spaceship" when it does not say that. A virus could be a vehicle to introduce a new gene into a cell, why should we believe that the word "vehicle" means "spaceship" when nothing indicates that it does? And what is the code for DNA itself? DNA is just letters, unlike the words and names used in other codes, so it might mean something completely different. It might just be nonsense. Just in case, here are four more code tables with useless words that can't be checked to mean anything.
Drosnin then says he had to call many nameless scientists to find out what they thought and just so happens to call Francis Crick, who wrote about the same idea decades before, and surprise, Crick agrees! Who would have guessed? Until you check out the back of the book, where Drosnin says he interviewed Crick years before about panspermia and he just crafted the story of trying to find reputable scientists who agree with his ET "theory" to make the book more interesting. Yes, someone who time and time again talks about being a "just the facts" hard-nosed journalist lied to make his story more interesting.
Michael Drosnin, by the way, does not believe in God. And Yasser Arafat was the nicest man he ever met, and he really, really wants peace, but religious people will kill him if he makes peace with the war mongering Israelis.
2001, Drosnin is in Israel trying to reach the Israeli PM because he has vitally important information from the Bible code about nuclear war in 2006. When an advisor asks what that information is, Drosnin says "I need to meet with the PM, because the code says if peace is not reached there will be nuclear war." The advisor replies, "tell me something I don't know," to which Drosnin drones on and on "You don't understand, I have to tell the PM face to face that the world will end if peace is not made!" "Okay, we all know that, what else?" "Damn you by the God you believe in, the world will end if you don't make peace and I must see the PM to tell him this!" Lather, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum.
1998 Drosnin must look for an "obilisk" and a "steel ark" in the area near the Dead Sea called Lisan, because it contains the key to understanding the Bible code, which was created by aliens who seeded the Earth 4 billion years ago, because Michael Drosnin does not believe God exists. He tries to get the Jordanians to let him dig, but they refuse.
2001, Drosnin confronts Colin Powell. He asks to see President Bush because the world will end if peace is not made and he must tell the President. See above. Drosnin must save the world from religion and nuclear war, because he does not believe in God, but the code is real, and created by ET, and warns of nuclear war in 2006.
1998, I think, who knows, the book keeps skipping around for no reason. Drosnin is back playing Indy again, talking about how it is vital to find this ark, or maybe it is a tomb of the original alien who brought DNA to earth, who the hell knows. Whatever it means, here are six more code tables, many are repeats from other pages. In case you were wondering, ET made the code, because Drosnin doesn't believe in God.
2001? Drosnin tells people in Israel and the US where bin Laden is hiding. He leaves that out of the book in case bin Laden buys a copy and then runs away. He hints pretty hard that it may be in Libya. Anyway, nuclear war will happen in 2006, and we have to find that thing that is still hiding in Lisan, maybe.
There is a nice appendix that describes the original rabbi experiment and its paper in Statistical Science, a refutation that was published without anyone reading it, a rebuttal of the refutation that was refused publication because codes a priori cannot exist, and there can be no evidence for something that cannot exist, and the opinions of some credible scientists who tried to debunk the code but ended up proving it exists who think refusing to publish any response is anti-science.
If you have read the first Bible Code book but have not read the second, please do not. The two are worlds apart. Here is a brief synopsis:
Michael Drosnin, a hard-nosed journalist and ardent atheist, having proven the existence of a code in the Bible, he now has morphed into a combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. Drosnin writes powerful men (Clinton, Bush, Arafat, Sharon, etc.) letters about the code and the end of the world, but he always leaves out the key details, because "no one would believe them," until his books are published. He wrote to Ehud Barak that the code said he would be the next Prime Minister of Israel in an early election in 1999, but he did not think Barak would believe him if he included the date, so he conveniently left that detail out of his letter but included it in the book. Drosnin conveniently leaves us no records for which to prove any of his stories. Two pictures of code tables appear on each page, taking up about 100 pages total.
Yasser Arafat is a very pious, kind-hearted man and all Israelis are war mongerers. And God does not exist, and here is an irrelevant code table.
Oh, and Michael Drosnin doesn't believe in God.
1998, Drosnin puts forward his ET "theory".
He finds references to DNA being "brought in a vehicle" and immediately jumps to the conclusion "when I found that encoded in the Bible, I couldn't believe it... DNA, the molecule of life, sent to Earth in a spaceship." (p. 144) It didn't say that. Just as every time he reads the word "computer" in the code when the actual Hebrew word says "thought", Drosnin reads "vehicle" as "spaceship" when it does not say that. A virus could be a vehicle to introduce a new gene into a cell, why should we believe that the word "vehicle" means "spaceship" when nothing indicates that it does? And what is the code for DNA itself? DNA is just letters, unlike the words and names used in other codes, so it might mean something completely different. It might just be nonsense. Just in case, here are four more code tables with useless words that can't be checked to mean anything.
Drosnin then says he had to call many nameless scientists to find out what they thought and just so happens to call Francis Crick, who wrote about the same idea decades before, and surprise, Crick agrees! Who would have guessed? Until you check out the back of the book, where Drosnin says he interviewed Crick years before about panspermia and he just crafted the story of trying to find reputable scientists who agree with his ET "theory" to make the book more interesting. Yes, someone who time and time again talks about being a "just the facts" hard-nosed journalist lied to make his story more interesting.
Michael Drosnin, by the way, does not believe in God. And Yasser Arafat was the nicest man he ever met, and he really, really wants peace, but religious people will kill him if he makes peace with the war mongering Israelis.
2001, Drosnin is in Israel trying to reach the Israeli PM because he has vitally important information from the Bible code about nuclear war in 2006. When an advisor asks what that information is, Drosnin says "I need to meet with the PM, because the code says if peace is not reached there will be nuclear war." The advisor replies, "tell me something I don't know," to which Drosnin drones on and on "You don't understand, I have to tell the PM face to face that the world will end if peace is not made!" "Okay, we all know that, what else?" "Damn you by the God you believe in, the world will end if you don't make peace and I must see the PM to tell him this!" Lather, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum.
1998 Drosnin must look for an "obilisk" and a "steel ark" in the area near the Dead Sea called Lisan, because it contains the key to understanding the Bible code, which was created by aliens who seeded the Earth 4 billion years ago, because Michael Drosnin does not believe God exists. He tries to get the Jordanians to let him dig, but they refuse.
2001, Drosnin confronts Colin Powell. He asks to see President Bush because the world will end if peace is not made and he must tell the President. See above. Drosnin must save the world from religion and nuclear war, because he does not believe in God, but the code is real, and created by ET, and warns of nuclear war in 2006.
1998, I think, who knows, the book keeps skipping around for no reason. Drosnin is back playing Indy again, talking about how it is vital to find this ark, or maybe it is a tomb of the original alien who brought DNA to earth, who the hell knows. Whatever it means, here are six more code tables, many are repeats from other pages. In case you were wondering, ET made the code, because Drosnin doesn't believe in God.
2001? Drosnin tells people in Israel and the US where bin Laden is hiding. He leaves that out of the book in case bin Laden buys a copy and then runs away. He hints pretty hard that it may be in Libya. Anyway, nuclear war will happen in 2006, and we have to find that thing that is still hiding in Lisan, maybe.
There is a nice appendix that describes the original rabbi experiment and its paper in Statistical Science, a refutation that was published without anyone reading it, a rebuttal of the refutation that was refused publication because codes a priori cannot exist, and there can be no evidence for something that cannot exist, and the opinions of some credible scientists who tried to debunk the code but ended up proving it exists who think refusing to publish any response is anti-science.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
God, Evil, and the Childish Fantasy
In Isaiah chapter 45, God is speaking to Cyrus, the king of kings, ruler of the Persian empire. God tells Cyrus that He will prepare the way for Cyrus to conquer the world, remove all obstacles from his path, and provide him with opportunities he could not dream of. In so doing, God is doing what is necessary to create the conditions of a future where everyone will know of God. Then comes the real heart of the message, "I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things."
Eli Rips, the scientist who discovered the Bible code, brings up this verse to Michael Drosnin, self-aggrandising journalist from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. This encounter covers roughly one whole page of the first Bible code book:
Even within a world created by an
all-powerful and benevolent God, there can be a struggle between good
and evil, whose outcome is uncertain," says Eli Rips.
The Bible code may be a set of
probabilities. The sealed book might hold all our possible futures.
Each predicted event appears to be encoded with at least two possible
outcomes.
Rips agrees that the Bible code might
have a positive and a negative strand, two opposing statements of
reality intertwined: "As in court, an Advocate, and an Accuser."
"Possibly there are two opposing
statements always encoded to preserve our free will, and it may be
that the Bible code is written as a debate," says Rips.
"According to the Midrash, the world was created twice – it
was first conceived from the point of view of absolute judgment,
right and wrong. Then God saw that the world could not exist this
way, that there was no room for human imperfection, and he added
mercy.
"But it's not like mixing hot and
cold water and getting luke-warm, it's like mixing fire and snow and
each preserves its separate existence. That may be the two strands in
the Bible code."
Rips, however, does not believe that
there are two encoders. "The Bible must have been encoded all at
once by one mind," he insisted. "But it may encode two
different points of view."
He opened the Bible to Isaiah 45:7,
and read it to me: "I am the Lord and there is none else, I form
the light, and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil; I,
the Lord, do all these things."
For Rips, as a mathematician and as a
devout Jew, there is no need to ask the question, Who is the encoder?
The answer is obvious. The encoder,
the Advocate and the Accuser are all one. It is God.
For me, it was not that simple. I had
proof there was a code, but not proof there was a God. If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.
The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves.
The Book of Revelation states that the
Final Battle will come by surprise, like a thief in the night. In
fact, the words that come right before Armageddon are, "Behold,
I come as a thief."
The Bible is a warning of sudden and
inevitable doom.
But the real message of the Bible code
is just the opposite. A warning is encoded in the Bible so that we
can prevent the threatened Apocalypse.
The truth is hidden in the last
chapter of Daniel, the verses that describe the "sealed book."
They reveal that the secret book was
designed to be found now. This year, 1997, in the ancient Hebrew
calender 5757, is encoded with the words, "He sealed the book
until the time of the End." Right above that the hidden text
states, "for you, the hidden secrets." And crossing "5757,"
again those same words, which also mean "for you, it was
encoded."
But who was the encoder?
[86-7]
Again and again Drosnin returns to his mantra "the code is just probabilities," so he can write off bad predictions and sell more books, or maybe there's something more to it. Absent God (he advocates a computer writing the code in book one and aliens writing the code in book two), Drosnin must find some way to fudge the existence of the code and its foreknowledge. If it is aliens then that explains perfectly why there are missed predictions, because while these aliens may be hyper intelligent they certainly are not omniscient, so they can get stuff wrong occasionally. Of course, he never addresses the question (raised in the documentary I posted here) why would aliens use their ability to see the future to record highly specific events about human history and put these predictions in the holy book of a small nomadic tribe 3000 years ago encoded in such a way that no one would know about it until 3000 years later? If God created the code, then it makes perfect sense why the code would exist in the Bible, but if aliens did it, why should they care? It would be like me seeing the future of an ant colony and giving encoded messages to the ants in a form they couldn't understand. Why should I care what ants do anymore than aliens should care what I do?
The Hebrew word being translated as "computer" in the book (the original encoder, before the alien theory in the sequel) is the word "thought." When the code says "made by computer" it really says "made by thought," which makes perfect sense if God created the code, but that doesn't work if you have to fudge the existence of the code into an atheistic framework, so you need alternate translations.
All this is very interesting, but the heart of the matter is found in the second section: "If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.
"The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves."
That's a pretty powerful theological assumption underpinning Drosnin's desire to write God out of the picture. As I said in a video I made in 2007, the standard argument is something along the lines of "If God exists why doesn't he turn my hangnail into an orgasm? Since my hangnail isn't an orgasm, therefore God doesn't exist." At the time I called it "the non-problem of evil."
Since this is an election year that is a referendum of the welfare state I could just as easily call it "the problem of laziness." "If God exists then He could do things for me, so why should I have to? Since I have to do these things, therefore God doesn't exist." Michael Drosnin basically says the exact same thing "If the Bible code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the future. He could change it himself." You can almost hear the author whining "But I don't wanna change the future, why can't God do it for me? Because he's stinky, that's why! I have to change the future myself, so God doesn't exist, aliens did it!"
So, who is the encoder? You might as well ask, "If the teacher already knows the answer why do I have to answer it? It must be because the teacher doesn't exist." Why do we have to do things instead of having God do everything for us? Why do we have to do things instead of having allmighty government do everything for us? For our own protection why don't we let the robots sequester us away where nothing bad can ever happen to us? Who is Keyser Soze?
Michael Drosnin is not the only one with trouble accepting the answer. From the back of the book:
The quote Rips read to me from Isaiah
45:7, in which God Himself clearly states He is both good and evil,
caused a nation-wide furor when it was quoted by a rabbi in Bill
Moyers' 1996 PBS series, "Genesis." It was striking that
the statement was such a surprise, and so controversial, because it
was not hidden, but openly stated in a 2500-year-old book of the
Bible, both in the original Hebrew, and in all standard English
translations including the King James Version. If after several
millennia most people still did not know, and could not accept, what
was plainly stated in the Bible as the words of God, how could they
accept a hidden code in the Bible?
[172-3]
If Michael Drosnin cannot get around his childish fantasy of God doing everything, thus freeing Michael Drosnin of all thought and responsibility, what hope does he have of accepting God as the author of the code? What hope do millions of people have if they cannot themselves accept God's message to king Cyrus in Isaiah?
Maybe we should look to Job before we can ask why evil exists. Where we there when God created the world? Can we comprehend things from God's perspective from our vantage point here on Earth in these finite bodies?
Who are we to demand answers from God?
Just as a parent wants their child to grow up one day, God wants us to grow up too. A parent lets go of a child's hands so the child can walk on their own. Sure, the child will fall, several times, before learning to walk, but the child will never learn to walk if the parent never lets go. Just like a teacher asking a question to a student, God asks us to do things He could easily do for us so that we can learn on our own. It is the most rewarding thing in the world to watch your child grow to become an adult, an experience made all the better because of the hardships faced along the way. If we are made in God's image why should it be any different for Him? The most rewarding thing for God would then be watching us overcome the problems we must face and grow into our full potential. Sure, God could do everything for us, but then what would be the point in creating us?
Eli Rips, the scientist who discovered the Bible code, brings up this verse to Michael Drosnin, self-aggrandising journalist from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. This encounter covers roughly one whole page of the first Bible code book:
Even within a world created by an
all-powerful and benevolent God, there can be a struggle between good
and evil, whose outcome is uncertain," says Eli Rips.
The Bible code may be a set of
probabilities. The sealed book might hold all our possible futures.
Each predicted event appears to be encoded with at least two possible
outcomes.
Rips agrees that the Bible code might
have a positive and a negative strand, two opposing statements of
reality intertwined: "As in court, an Advocate, and an Accuser."
"Possibly there are two opposing
statements always encoded to preserve our free will, and it may be
that the Bible code is written as a debate," says Rips.
"According to the Midrash, the world was created twice – it
was first conceived from the point of view of absolute judgment,
right and wrong. Then God saw that the world could not exist this
way, that there was no room for human imperfection, and he added
mercy.
"But it's not like mixing hot and
cold water and getting luke-warm, it's like mixing fire and snow and
each preserves its separate existence. That may be the two strands in
the Bible code."
Rips, however, does not believe that
there are two encoders. "The Bible must have been encoded all at
once by one mind," he insisted. "But it may encode two
different points of view."
He opened the Bible to Isaiah 45:7,
and read it to me: "I am the Lord and there is none else, I form
the light, and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil; I,
the Lord, do all these things."
For Rips, as a mathematician and as a
devout Jew, there is no need to ask the question, Who is the encoder?
The answer is obvious. The encoder,
the Advocate and the Accuser are all one. It is God.
For me, it was not that simple. I had
proof there was a code, but not proof there was a God. If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.
The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves.
The Book of Revelation states that the
Final Battle will come by surprise, like a thief in the night. In
fact, the words that come right before Armageddon are, "Behold,
I come as a thief."
The Bible is a warning of sudden and
inevitable doom.
But the real message of the Bible code
is just the opposite. A warning is encoded in the Bible so that we
can prevent the threatened Apocalypse.
The truth is hidden in the last
chapter of Daniel, the verses that describe the "sealed book."
They reveal that the secret book was
designed to be found now. This year, 1997, in the ancient Hebrew
calender 5757, is encoded with the words, "He sealed the book
until the time of the End." Right above that the hidden text
states, "for you, the hidden secrets." And crossing "5757,"
again those same words, which also mean "for you, it was
encoded."
But who was the encoder?
[86-7]
Again and again Drosnin returns to his mantra "the code is just probabilities," so he can write off bad predictions and sell more books, or maybe there's something more to it. Absent God (he advocates a computer writing the code in book one and aliens writing the code in book two), Drosnin must find some way to fudge the existence of the code and its foreknowledge. If it is aliens then that explains perfectly why there are missed predictions, because while these aliens may be hyper intelligent they certainly are not omniscient, so they can get stuff wrong occasionally. Of course, he never addresses the question (raised in the documentary I posted here) why would aliens use their ability to see the future to record highly specific events about human history and put these predictions in the holy book of a small nomadic tribe 3000 years ago encoded in such a way that no one would know about it until 3000 years later? If God created the code, then it makes perfect sense why the code would exist in the Bible, but if aliens did it, why should they care? It would be like me seeing the future of an ant colony and giving encoded messages to the ants in a form they couldn't understand. Why should I care what ants do anymore than aliens should care what I do?
The Hebrew word being translated as "computer" in the book (the original encoder, before the alien theory in the sequel) is the word "thought." When the code says "made by computer" it really says "made by thought," which makes perfect sense if God created the code, but that doesn't work if you have to fudge the existence of the code into an atheistic framework, so you need alternate translations.
All this is very interesting, but the heart of the matter is found in the second section: "If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.
"The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves."
That's a pretty powerful theological assumption underpinning Drosnin's desire to write God out of the picture. As I said in a video I made in 2007, the standard argument is something along the lines of "If God exists why doesn't he turn my hangnail into an orgasm? Since my hangnail isn't an orgasm, therefore God doesn't exist." At the time I called it "the non-problem of evil."
Since this is an election year that is a referendum of the welfare state I could just as easily call it "the problem of laziness." "If God exists then He could do things for me, so why should I have to? Since I have to do these things, therefore God doesn't exist." Michael Drosnin basically says the exact same thing "If the Bible code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the future. He could change it himself." You can almost hear the author whining "But I don't wanna change the future, why can't God do it for me? Because he's stinky, that's why! I have to change the future myself, so God doesn't exist, aliens did it!"
So, who is the encoder? You might as well ask, "If the teacher already knows the answer why do I have to answer it? It must be because the teacher doesn't exist." Why do we have to do things instead of having God do everything for us? Why do we have to do things instead of having allmighty government do everything for us? For our own protection why don't we let the robots sequester us away where nothing bad can ever happen to us? Who is Keyser Soze?
Michael Drosnin is not the only one with trouble accepting the answer. From the back of the book:
The quote Rips read to me from Isaiah
45:7, in which God Himself clearly states He is both good and evil,
caused a nation-wide furor when it was quoted by a rabbi in Bill
Moyers' 1996 PBS series, "Genesis." It was striking that
the statement was such a surprise, and so controversial, because it
was not hidden, but openly stated in a 2500-year-old book of the
Bible, both in the original Hebrew, and in all standard English
translations including the King James Version. If after several
millennia most people still did not know, and could not accept, what
was plainly stated in the Bible as the words of God, how could they
accept a hidden code in the Bible?
[172-3]
If Michael Drosnin cannot get around his childish fantasy of God doing everything, thus freeing Michael Drosnin of all thought and responsibility, what hope does he have of accepting God as the author of the code? What hope do millions of people have if they cannot themselves accept God's message to king Cyrus in Isaiah?
Maybe we should look to Job before we can ask why evil exists. Where we there when God created the world? Can we comprehend things from God's perspective from our vantage point here on Earth in these finite bodies?
Who are we to demand answers from God?
Just as a parent wants their child to grow up one day, God wants us to grow up too. A parent lets go of a child's hands so the child can walk on their own. Sure, the child will fall, several times, before learning to walk, but the child will never learn to walk if the parent never lets go. Just like a teacher asking a question to a student, God asks us to do things He could easily do for us so that we can learn on our own. It is the most rewarding thing in the world to watch your child grow to become an adult, an experience made all the better because of the hardships faced along the way. If we are made in God's image why should it be any different for Him? The most rewarding thing for God would then be watching us overcome the problems we must face and grow into our full potential. Sure, God could do everything for us, but then what would be the point in creating us?
Sunday, August 19, 2012
The Truth About The Crusades with Robert Spencer
Dispells the myths that the Islamic empire was tolerant and multicultural and that the crusaders were proto-imperialistic evil bloodthirsty monsters who descended like a plague on the peace-loving Muslims (like some Monty Python documentaries on the subject will tell you).
Roughly 48 minutes.
Roughly 48 minutes.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
The Bible Code
Looking through a box of books I discovered Michael Drosnin's original The Bible Code. This got me thinking about a documentary film on the Bible code I had seen a few years ago. Here it is below:
It runs 45 minutes.
The above film includes interviews with charlatan Brendan McKay (who admits his stunt with Moby Dick was a stunt and that he didn't bother with the scrambling method that produces the real statistically significant results in the actual code, and despite this he is still touted as an expert all over the Internet) and Barry Simon (who believes that God would not create the code because then it would prove God's existance and then everyone would be forced to believe against their free will), both of whom reject a priori the possibility of the code and are therefore not scientists.
It also includes interviews with Eliyahu Rips, who discovered the code using computer technology.
Here is a brief (7 minutes) detailed explanation of the original experiment, it's supposed refutation, and the second study that the skep-dicks have ignored and remains unrefuted, presented by Moshe Zeldman.
It runs 45 minutes.
The above film includes interviews with charlatan Brendan McKay (who admits his stunt with Moby Dick was a stunt and that he didn't bother with the scrambling method that produces the real statistically significant results in the actual code, and despite this he is still touted as an expert all over the Internet) and Barry Simon (who believes that God would not create the code because then it would prove God's existance and then everyone would be forced to believe against their free will), both of whom reject a priori the possibility of the code and are therefore not scientists.
It also includes interviews with Eliyahu Rips, who discovered the code using computer technology.
Here is a brief (7 minutes) detailed explanation of the original experiment, it's supposed refutation, and the second study that the skep-dicks have ignored and remains unrefuted, presented by Moshe Zeldman.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
The End of Dhimmitude
A piece in The American Thinker called "Requiem for a Righteous Muslim" on the death of Tashbih Sayyed, written in 2007. The opening paragraph is simple and forceful:
Tashbih Sayyed called himself a Muslim Zionist. He fearlessly directed his great intellect and powerful voice to combat Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism, often at great personal cost. In befriending the Jews, he enraged his own community. Nevertheless, he never allowed an anti-Semitic comment to pass unanswered in his presence. Furthermore, he wanted Jews to educate themselves about the depth and breadth of anti-Semitism imbedded in his own culture and religion. He also wanted us to understand how the Muslim world regards non-Muslims and that the common perception of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance is a lie.
(emphasis added)
Some other choice quotes:
"The religion of Islam denies equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. In lands subject to Islamic law, the dhimmi lives by the grace of the Muslim who is obliged to humiliate him in return for sparing his life. The non-Muslim must literally choose between dhimmitude and death."
"Christian Europe itself has been terrorized by 14 centuries of jihad from her Muslim neighbors including the jihad that is being played out in real time today. Jihad against Europe never stopped, even if you include the 200 years of the Crusades."
"...recall the chorus of Western apologies that ensued after the publication of the Danish cartoons. Global Muslim rioting, mayhem and murder served as an effective rejoinder to the exercise of free speech.
"Somehow, we all understand that dhimmis must know their place. In lands governed under Islamic law, Christian and Jewish dhimmis must display their humility at all times or risk forfeiting their lives. The scandal is that dhimmitude is making its inroads in the West.
"When the Jewish people created the State of Israel, they committed an unpardonable crime against the Muslim world: the crime of self-respect."
Israel, Europe, the United States, indeed, all of Western civilization, chooses to capitulate, to accept submission. Hamas was allowed to hold elections. There is talk of giving up the Golan and Judea and Samaria. Apologies were made for drawings of Muhammad and massive crackdown in Afghanistan was not called for when a couple of Qurans that captured militants defaced were burned in the trash. Whatever are we to do? Will we accept submission or will we cast off our dhimmi status and proclaim our equality and Israel's right to exist?
Tashbih Sayyed called himself a Muslim Zionist. He fearlessly directed his great intellect and powerful voice to combat Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism, often at great personal cost. In befriending the Jews, he enraged his own community. Nevertheless, he never allowed an anti-Semitic comment to pass unanswered in his presence. Furthermore, he wanted Jews to educate themselves about the depth and breadth of anti-Semitism imbedded in his own culture and religion. He also wanted us to understand how the Muslim world regards non-Muslims and that the common perception of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance is a lie.
(emphasis added)
Some other choice quotes:
"The religion of Islam denies equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. In lands subject to Islamic law, the dhimmi lives by the grace of the Muslim who is obliged to humiliate him in return for sparing his life. The non-Muslim must literally choose between dhimmitude and death."
"Christian Europe itself has been terrorized by 14 centuries of jihad from her Muslim neighbors including the jihad that is being played out in real time today. Jihad against Europe never stopped, even if you include the 200 years of the Crusades."
"...recall the chorus of Western apologies that ensued after the publication of the Danish cartoons. Global Muslim rioting, mayhem and murder served as an effective rejoinder to the exercise of free speech.
"Somehow, we all understand that dhimmis must know their place. In lands governed under Islamic law, Christian and Jewish dhimmis must display their humility at all times or risk forfeiting their lives. The scandal is that dhimmitude is making its inroads in the West.
"When the Jewish people created the State of Israel, they committed an unpardonable crime against the Muslim world: the crime of self-respect."
Israel, Europe, the United States, indeed, all of Western civilization, chooses to capitulate, to accept submission. Hamas was allowed to hold elections. There is talk of giving up the Golan and Judea and Samaria. Apologies were made for drawings of Muhammad and massive crackdown in Afghanistan was not called for when a couple of Qurans that captured militants defaced were burned in the trash. Whatever are we to do? Will we accept submission or will we cast off our dhimmi status and proclaim our equality and Israel's right to exist?
Friday, April 6, 2012
The Conspiracy to Kill Jesus
Friday, 3 April AD 33. Jesus is tried by the Sanhedrin and sent to Pontius Pilate who asks him some questions and has Jesus beaten. The Sanhedrin does not relent. They demand Pilate execute Jesus. Pilate points to the Passover tradition of pardoning a criminal and lets the mob decide Jesus' fate and they choose to let Barabbas go free instead. Pilate washes his hands of the decision and the mob cries out that Jesus' blood will be on their hands and the hands of their descendants.
That's the story from the Gospels, but is it true? Is there really a conspiracy to kill Jesus and blame it on the Jews? The Gospel story has been used to justify antisemitism for over a thousand years, but is there a problem with the story?
To be sure the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead. Jesus is challenging their claim to authority. The Sanhedrin wants people to believe that they are the only source of God's authority, the only mouthpiece for the Lord. They also want the vast sums of money worshipers spend at the Temple performing sacrifices and they like the cushy life they have in Rome's favour. However, as previously stated, just because the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead does not mean the Jews want him dead. The people who benefited most from Jesus were the Jews, who had their hopes pinned to the coming Messiah. The Jews didn't like the status quo with Rome and the Sanhedrin, Rome's lapdog, keeping them under thumb.
What of Pilate? He cannot find fault in Jesus, right? Well, Pilate was a ruthless man who would find an excuse to kill Jesus if he wanted to. Pilate had no compunction killing Jews and Jesus was a Jew among many for Pilate. Worse still Jesus was a religious agitator. It didn't matter to Pilate if he was Messiah or not, as long as people believed he was that could lead to a rebellion and a rebellion would give Pilate a hard time. Pilate worked really hard rising the ranks to become prefect and he did everything he could to keep his job. Is it any wonder so many Messiah claimants ended up dead?
Didn't Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' death? Actually, no. That was a Jewish practice, not a pagan Roman practice. Pilate would not have washed his hands just like he would not have been circumcised just like he would not abstain from eating oysters (which Romans loved).
And the Passover pardon? Actually, there is no history of such a tradition outside the Gospels. Yes, a prefect did have the authority to pardon prisoners and there are sporadic examples of prefects who had pardoned prisoners, during Passover and other times throughout the year, but we have no evidence of a Passover tradition of pardoning someone. It appears nowhere in the Old Testament (so it wasn't a Jewish tradition), and it appears nowhere in Roman records, so it wasn't a Roman tradition. It's not in Josephus, or the Talmud, or in Philo. The idea of the pardon appears first in the Gospels associated with Pilate, and if we take into consideration Pilate's character we can doubt that a bloodthirsty man such as him would even consider pardoning a Jew at Passover. Remember, Pilate's job as prefect was to keep order, and part of keeping order is not to give in to the will of the mob. When there's a mob the prefect puts it down, he does not aquiesce to their demands. Pilate was recalled to Rome because of his brutality, not because he caved to the will of his subjects too often.
So Pontius Pilate does not free Barabbas and he does not wash his hands of the blood guilt, and it's not the Jews who hate Jesus but just the Sanhedrin. What in the world is going on?
We have to take two things into account, namely the time the Gospels were being written and the mindset of the Gospel writers. Mark, the first written canonical Gospel, was written in around AD 70, around the time of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple. Up until that time there was little difference between Jewish Christians and Christian Jews. The Gospel writers wanted to distance themselves from the Jews because the Jews were being systematically destroyed by the Romans at the time. There were far more Jews than Christians, so, as a matter of survival, the Gospel writers had to make the Jews look like the enemy and the good Roman Pontius Pilate look like he was reluctant to kill the Messiah. Jewish guilt was not created out of malice, but fear. Jesus' disciples hid and Peter in particular denied him three times out of fear of the Romans, and it was only witnessing the Resurrection that made them become fearless evangelists. The Gospel writers, living more than a generation after the Resurrection, had no such miracles to boost their confidence. Out of sheer pragmatism they tweeked the story of the trial of Jesus to try to keep Rome from lumping them in with the Jews.
Saying Pontius Pilate had much more to do with the death of Jesus and exhonorating the Jews does not mean what many people think it might mean. Saying the Gospel writers altered the true events of Jesus' life go without saying. Gospel means "good news" not "raw fact". There's no way the Gospel writers could have known what was said between Jesus and Pilate, the Sermon on the Mount is way too densely packed to have been delivered as a single sermon, and John even says at the end that he had to condense the material because Jesus did so much he couldn't fit it all. Saying that the Gospel writers were human and acted out of human motivation does not mean Jesus was fake and the Resurrection never happened - there is enough to say that the Gospels do point toward the truth, but a finger pointing toward the moon is not the moon. It also does not mean that the Gospel writers were acting sinisterly. They were making the story of the life of Jesus more accessible to a wider audience, and part of that includes maintaining the survival of the nascent movement that was Christianity in the First Century.
It is a double-edged sword. We can use the Gospels as a launching pad to grow in a relationship with Christ or we can use them to justify antisemitism. The choice, ultimately is up to us, and with the knowledge of history there is hope we can unravel the story of Jewish blood guilt and fix a wound that has festered for close to two thousand years. Then, at last, we can put this conspiracy to kill Jesus to rest.
That's the story from the Gospels, but is it true? Is there really a conspiracy to kill Jesus and blame it on the Jews? The Gospel story has been used to justify antisemitism for over a thousand years, but is there a problem with the story?
To be sure the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead. Jesus is challenging their claim to authority. The Sanhedrin wants people to believe that they are the only source of God's authority, the only mouthpiece for the Lord. They also want the vast sums of money worshipers spend at the Temple performing sacrifices and they like the cushy life they have in Rome's favour. However, as previously stated, just because the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead does not mean the Jews want him dead. The people who benefited most from Jesus were the Jews, who had their hopes pinned to the coming Messiah. The Jews didn't like the status quo with Rome and the Sanhedrin, Rome's lapdog, keeping them under thumb.
What of Pilate? He cannot find fault in Jesus, right? Well, Pilate was a ruthless man who would find an excuse to kill Jesus if he wanted to. Pilate had no compunction killing Jews and Jesus was a Jew among many for Pilate. Worse still Jesus was a religious agitator. It didn't matter to Pilate if he was Messiah or not, as long as people believed he was that could lead to a rebellion and a rebellion would give Pilate a hard time. Pilate worked really hard rising the ranks to become prefect and he did everything he could to keep his job. Is it any wonder so many Messiah claimants ended up dead?
Didn't Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' death? Actually, no. That was a Jewish practice, not a pagan Roman practice. Pilate would not have washed his hands just like he would not have been circumcised just like he would not abstain from eating oysters (which Romans loved).
And the Passover pardon? Actually, there is no history of such a tradition outside the Gospels. Yes, a prefect did have the authority to pardon prisoners and there are sporadic examples of prefects who had pardoned prisoners, during Passover and other times throughout the year, but we have no evidence of a Passover tradition of pardoning someone. It appears nowhere in the Old Testament (so it wasn't a Jewish tradition), and it appears nowhere in Roman records, so it wasn't a Roman tradition. It's not in Josephus, or the Talmud, or in Philo. The idea of the pardon appears first in the Gospels associated with Pilate, and if we take into consideration Pilate's character we can doubt that a bloodthirsty man such as him would even consider pardoning a Jew at Passover. Remember, Pilate's job as prefect was to keep order, and part of keeping order is not to give in to the will of the mob. When there's a mob the prefect puts it down, he does not aquiesce to their demands. Pilate was recalled to Rome because of his brutality, not because he caved to the will of his subjects too often.
So Pontius Pilate does not free Barabbas and he does not wash his hands of the blood guilt, and it's not the Jews who hate Jesus but just the Sanhedrin. What in the world is going on?
We have to take two things into account, namely the time the Gospels were being written and the mindset of the Gospel writers. Mark, the first written canonical Gospel, was written in around AD 70, around the time of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple. Up until that time there was little difference between Jewish Christians and Christian Jews. The Gospel writers wanted to distance themselves from the Jews because the Jews were being systematically destroyed by the Romans at the time. There were far more Jews than Christians, so, as a matter of survival, the Gospel writers had to make the Jews look like the enemy and the good Roman Pontius Pilate look like he was reluctant to kill the Messiah. Jewish guilt was not created out of malice, but fear. Jesus' disciples hid and Peter in particular denied him three times out of fear of the Romans, and it was only witnessing the Resurrection that made them become fearless evangelists. The Gospel writers, living more than a generation after the Resurrection, had no such miracles to boost their confidence. Out of sheer pragmatism they tweeked the story of the trial of Jesus to try to keep Rome from lumping them in with the Jews.
Saying Pontius Pilate had much more to do with the death of Jesus and exhonorating the Jews does not mean what many people think it might mean. Saying the Gospel writers altered the true events of Jesus' life go without saying. Gospel means "good news" not "raw fact". There's no way the Gospel writers could have known what was said between Jesus and Pilate, the Sermon on the Mount is way too densely packed to have been delivered as a single sermon, and John even says at the end that he had to condense the material because Jesus did so much he couldn't fit it all. Saying that the Gospel writers were human and acted out of human motivation does not mean Jesus was fake and the Resurrection never happened - there is enough to say that the Gospels do point toward the truth, but a finger pointing toward the moon is not the moon. It also does not mean that the Gospel writers were acting sinisterly. They were making the story of the life of Jesus more accessible to a wider audience, and part of that includes maintaining the survival of the nascent movement that was Christianity in the First Century.
It is a double-edged sword. We can use the Gospels as a launching pad to grow in a relationship with Christ or we can use them to justify antisemitism. The choice, ultimately is up to us, and with the knowledge of history there is hope we can unravel the story of Jewish blood guilt and fix a wound that has festered for close to two thousand years. Then, at last, we can put this conspiracy to kill Jesus to rest.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A Timeline for Jesus
Using paleoastronomy, historical documentation, and the Gospel accounts here is my best guess at a reasonable chronology of the life of Jesus. People have been debating this for over a thousand years so I can't say this is complete with any finality, but it works for me so maybe it will work for you too. Jesus' own words are rendered here in red, as is tradition.
17 April 6 BC - Birth
Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great ("Great" for all the stuff he built; he was actually a lousy man), which was from roughly 37 to 4 BC, so Jesus could not have been born in 1 BC as was traditionally thought when the new Gregorian calender was constructed. Herod's reign falls within the Roman Warm Period. During this time global temperatures (not just European temperatures, we have climate records from China and Siberia too) show the Earth was 1-2 degrees warmer than it is today. Many people say that it would be too cold during Winter for shepherds to be grazing their flocks at night, as the Gospels say, but a much warmer climate might have allowed for that. What seems to seal the deal for me is the double occultation of Jupiter (the "star" of kings) by the Moon in the constellation Aires (sign of the Jews) in 6 BC. The Magi were astrologers and would be looking for stuff like this. Astronomer Michael Molnar explains this event in much more detail. Yes, he addresses the objection raised by the other wiki about the occultation happening near the sun.
The Bethlehem Jesus was born at was probably the one near Nazareth rather than the one near Jerusalem, which was much farther away.
Before December 6 BC - Flight to Egypt
Herod learns of the prophecy of the Magi and decides to kill any potential infant rival. He initiates the Massacre of the Innocents, killing all the male children in Bethlehem under age two (fewer than 100 in all). Receiving a warning from an angel Jesus' parents take him to Egypt. In Egypt they visited many holy sites marked by the Coptic Church, possibly including the then abandoned Jewish Temple at Elephantine Island near the border with Nubia (this temple is where the Ark was held after it was taken away from Jerusalem during the Babylonian invasion).
4 BC - Return to Nazareth
After Herod dies Jesus, now near age two (Herod is believed to have died between March and April), and his family return to Nazareth from Egypt. Not much is said about Jesus' childhood other than he lived in Nazareth and had many brothers and sisters (both from Joseph's previous marriage and his current marriage with Mary - I'm not convinced they never consummated their marriage and Mary was a virgin her whole life).
7 AD - Jesus at the Temple
The holy family visits Jerusalem for Passover and Jesus, age 12, wanders off. His parents find him after some time on the steps of the Temple discussing the Law with learned men, and impressing them with his own knowledge. This is the last event recorded in the Gospels before his Baptism as an adult.
8 AD - 25 AD - The Lost Years
Nobody knows what happened! Some people say he worked as a carpenter with his dad building ploughs and tables and other stuff. I can't see Jesus having a holy childhood and a holy ministry later in his life and yet spend 18 whole years as a normal person. He's always causing trouble for the establishment, no way he just layed low for close to two decades. I'm convinced that Jesus went to India.
26 AD - Jesus Returns!
Jesus, now age 31, returns to the Holy Land from whereever he was. He's spent his time finding himself and now he's grown the beard (figuratively and literally*) and he's back to stir things up with the Romans and the Jewish elite. When he comes back Jesus hears about John the Baptist, goes to meet him at the Jordan River, and is baptised there. The sky opens up and the Lord proclaims Jesus is His Son and he is very pleased. It was after late March, right after Pontius Pilate became Prefect of Judaea and when John began his ministry. Shortly thereafter Jesus meets two of John's disciples who will later become two of his own, Andrew and another man who is not identified.
Jesus then goes into the desert for 40 days and does battle with Satan. Just what the point of all this was we will never know. Satan knows how the story will end - with his own defeat - so he had to know he couldn't get Jesus to sin. What then was the point of the temptation in the desert? Maybe he was actually doing Jesus a favor by helping Jesus come to a better understanding of what his role would be in the coming years. It could have been a test, where if Jesus could sharpen his skills with the ultimate adversary before going head to head with the establishment. Satan demands Jesus prove he is the Son of God by turning stones into bread to relieve the hunger of his fast, to which Jesus replies that no one can live by bread alone, they need every word that God has spoken. Satan then takes Jesus to the highest spot on the Temple in Jerusalem and tells him to jump because scripture says angels will catch him and take him safely to the ground, to which Jesus replies that scripture also admonishes one not to test the Lord. Lastly Satan takes Jesus to a very high place (often a mountain) and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. Satan says that he will give Jesus dominion over all the world if Jesus will but kneel before him and worship him (a similar scene from the 2007 film 300 where a 9-foot-tall Xerxes says almost the same thing to Leonidas). Jesus demanded Satan leave him be and quoted scripture saying that God alone is to be worshiped and served.
27 AD - The Ministry Begins
Sometime in late 26, early 27, Jesus begins his own ministry. The Synoptic Gospels mention only one Passover (the Last Supper) but John mentions three, so Jesus' ministry lasted at least three years. In my chronology it lasts a total of six years. Jesus collects the twelve Apostles, feeds a lot of people, and gives the Sermon on the Mount, which was probably a Reader's Digest compilation of sayings from many sermons Jesus gave throughout his ministry (imagining anyone, let alone a huge group of people would sit through a very quick paced delivery of a whole lot of really heady stuff with no further explanation is unbelievable to me. Each of the beatitudes could be the topic of a discourse in itself. No one would have been able to understand it all at once.).
33 AD - Bringing It All Together
The last year of Jesus' time on Earth, now age 39, contains most of the important events in his life, beginning with the Transfiguration. Jesus and three apostles go to a mountain where Jesus rises up into the air. He glows brilliantly and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. Jesus is once again proclaimed to be Son of God (like the baptism) and the apostles are told to listen to him.
2 April 33 AD - The Last Supper
Thursday. Jesus and the apostles are gathered together to celebrate the Passover meal. It is here that he announces that one of them will betray him and that Peter will disown him three times that night. He begins the practice of the Eucharist. Jesus blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his apostles telling them eat, this is my body. Then he blessed the wine and gave it to them saying drink, this is my blood of the new covenant. Here he is reversing the traditional Passover order where whine is blessed before bread and he is instituting a new covenant, to replace the one with Abraham and Moses (which is why Gentiles can now become followers of Christ and not just Jews).
3 April 33 AD - The Crucifixion
Friday. Jesus is betrayed by Judas. He asks the Lord in a moment of weakness if it is not possible that he does not have to go through witht he crucifixion but then accepts his fate, saying Thy will be done, not my will be done. The Sanhedrin sets up a mock trial and convicts him. Pontius Pilate sends him to King Herod, son of the dead king also named Herod, who mocks Jesus and sends him back. Pilate has a tough time finding reason to condemn Jesus to death, giving him a savage beating at first, but gives in to the Sanhedrin's demands**. During this time we get the wonderful Latin anagram of Pilate's question "Quid est veritas?" (what is truth?), which becomes "Est vir qui adest" (it is the man who is here). Jesus and Pilate probably spoke Greek at the trial, not Latin.
Jesus is brought up to Golgotha in the morning after being beaten, where he is crucified. Above his head is a placard depicted with the inscription INRI, an acronym for the Latin "Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum," meaning "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" - his charge in the trial. He is being executed with two criminals. On the cross Jesus cries out Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, expressing his forgiveness of the people who crucified him. One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other one pleads with him "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," to which Jesus replies truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. By Noon Jesus is exhausted. He asks aloud My God, why have you forsaken me? Three hours later, Feeling a great pain in his chest he groans, it is finished. Jesus cries out one last time before the crowd Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, and dies. A Roman soldier pierces his side with a spear. Blood and clear fluid, identified as water at the time, come out (the pericardium - the sac containing the heart - is filled with light-coloured fluid to cushion the heart. Great physical trauma can cause too much fluid to fill the pericardium and crush the heart. When this happens you know it, and you know you're moments away from death.) and drip into the soldier's eyes, curing his poor vision. The body is taken down, anointed and dressed quickly before the sabbath, and left in the unused tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
5 April 33 AD - The Resurrection
Sunday. Jesus conquers death. The guards at the tomb entrance are gone, the stone is rolled back, and the tomb is empty. The two Marys (Mary Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene) go to do a proper job preparing Jesus' body and they're shocked to find it's gone! They then meet a man whom they do not recognise at first (it's Jesus) who tells them about the resurrection. They go back and tell the grieving apostles. This is important! The testimony of a woman was worthless in first century Judaea. To have the first witnesses to the resurrection be women is evidence for the event's historicity. If the resurrection were made up the Gospel writers would have put a man as the first witness, not two women. In time Jesus would appear before his apostles several times over the next 40 days, including before very large groups of people.
15 May 33 AD - The Ascension
Jesus rises up into Heaven before his apostles after telling them to go out and spread the Gospel. Jesus promises to return one day.
*"...the male beard communicates an heroic image of the independent, sturdy, and resourceful pioneer, ready, willing and able to do manly things."
You can buy a Jesus: Beard of Beards t-shirt for around $30 if you are an enthusiast of both Jesus and beards.
**Pilate had no compunction in killing Jews and was very successful in putting down revolts, so it doesn't matter how many Jews demanded Jesus be killed - if they started a riot Pilate would just slaughter them. Anyway, it was not the Jews who wanted Jesus killed, because Jesus was a Jew, his followers were Jews, and most of the people who benefited from his miracles were Jews. The Sanhedrin wanted Jesus killed probably for political reasons and used the religious crime of blasphemy as a cover, but saying the acts of the Sanhedrin condemns the Jews for Jesus' death is like saying the acts of Congress condemns all Americans for invading Iraq or Libya or insert negative event here. Why Pilate consented to the execution we will probably never know, but he may have had political reasons as well.
17 April 6 BC - Birth
Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great ("Great" for all the stuff he built; he was actually a lousy man), which was from roughly 37 to 4 BC, so Jesus could not have been born in 1 BC as was traditionally thought when the new Gregorian calender was constructed. Herod's reign falls within the Roman Warm Period. During this time global temperatures (not just European temperatures, we have climate records from China and Siberia too) show the Earth was 1-2 degrees warmer than it is today. Many people say that it would be too cold during Winter for shepherds to be grazing their flocks at night, as the Gospels say, but a much warmer climate might have allowed for that. What seems to seal the deal for me is the double occultation of Jupiter (the "star" of kings) by the Moon in the constellation Aires (sign of the Jews) in 6 BC. The Magi were astrologers and would be looking for stuff like this. Astronomer Michael Molnar explains this event in much more detail. Yes, he addresses the objection raised by the other wiki about the occultation happening near the sun.
The Bethlehem Jesus was born at was probably the one near Nazareth rather than the one near Jerusalem, which was much farther away.
Before December 6 BC - Flight to Egypt
Herod learns of the prophecy of the Magi and decides to kill any potential infant rival. He initiates the Massacre of the Innocents, killing all the male children in Bethlehem under age two (fewer than 100 in all). Receiving a warning from an angel Jesus' parents take him to Egypt. In Egypt they visited many holy sites marked by the Coptic Church, possibly including the then abandoned Jewish Temple at Elephantine Island near the border with Nubia (this temple is where the Ark was held after it was taken away from Jerusalem during the Babylonian invasion).
4 BC - Return to Nazareth
After Herod dies Jesus, now near age two (Herod is believed to have died between March and April), and his family return to Nazareth from Egypt. Not much is said about Jesus' childhood other than he lived in Nazareth and had many brothers and sisters (both from Joseph's previous marriage and his current marriage with Mary - I'm not convinced they never consummated their marriage and Mary was a virgin her whole life).
7 AD - Jesus at the Temple
The holy family visits Jerusalem for Passover and Jesus, age 12, wanders off. His parents find him after some time on the steps of the Temple discussing the Law with learned men, and impressing them with his own knowledge. This is the last event recorded in the Gospels before his Baptism as an adult.
8 AD - 25 AD - The Lost Years
Nobody knows what happened! Some people say he worked as a carpenter with his dad building ploughs and tables and other stuff. I can't see Jesus having a holy childhood and a holy ministry later in his life and yet spend 18 whole years as a normal person. He's always causing trouble for the establishment, no way he just layed low for close to two decades. I'm convinced that Jesus went to India.
26 AD - Jesus Returns!
Jesus, now age 31, returns to the Holy Land from whereever he was. He's spent his time finding himself and now he's grown the beard (figuratively and literally*) and he's back to stir things up with the Romans and the Jewish elite. When he comes back Jesus hears about John the Baptist, goes to meet him at the Jordan River, and is baptised there. The sky opens up and the Lord proclaims Jesus is His Son and he is very pleased. It was after late March, right after Pontius Pilate became Prefect of Judaea and when John began his ministry. Shortly thereafter Jesus meets two of John's disciples who will later become two of his own, Andrew and another man who is not identified.
Jesus then goes into the desert for 40 days and does battle with Satan. Just what the point of all this was we will never know. Satan knows how the story will end - with his own defeat - so he had to know he couldn't get Jesus to sin. What then was the point of the temptation in the desert? Maybe he was actually doing Jesus a favor by helping Jesus come to a better understanding of what his role would be in the coming years. It could have been a test, where if Jesus could sharpen his skills with the ultimate adversary before going head to head with the establishment. Satan demands Jesus prove he is the Son of God by turning stones into bread to relieve the hunger of his fast, to which Jesus replies that no one can live by bread alone, they need every word that God has spoken. Satan then takes Jesus to the highest spot on the Temple in Jerusalem and tells him to jump because scripture says angels will catch him and take him safely to the ground, to which Jesus replies that scripture also admonishes one not to test the Lord. Lastly Satan takes Jesus to a very high place (often a mountain) and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. Satan says that he will give Jesus dominion over all the world if Jesus will but kneel before him and worship him (a similar scene from the 2007 film 300 where a 9-foot-tall Xerxes says almost the same thing to Leonidas). Jesus demanded Satan leave him be and quoted scripture saying that God alone is to be worshiped and served.
27 AD - The Ministry Begins
Sometime in late 26, early 27, Jesus begins his own ministry. The Synoptic Gospels mention only one Passover (the Last Supper) but John mentions three, so Jesus' ministry lasted at least three years. In my chronology it lasts a total of six years. Jesus collects the twelve Apostles, feeds a lot of people, and gives the Sermon on the Mount, which was probably a Reader's Digest compilation of sayings from many sermons Jesus gave throughout his ministry (imagining anyone, let alone a huge group of people would sit through a very quick paced delivery of a whole lot of really heady stuff with no further explanation is unbelievable to me. Each of the beatitudes could be the topic of a discourse in itself. No one would have been able to understand it all at once.).
33 AD - Bringing It All Together
The last year of Jesus' time on Earth, now age 39, contains most of the important events in his life, beginning with the Transfiguration. Jesus and three apostles go to a mountain where Jesus rises up into the air. He glows brilliantly and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. Jesus is once again proclaimed to be Son of God (like the baptism) and the apostles are told to listen to him.
2 April 33 AD - The Last Supper
Thursday. Jesus and the apostles are gathered together to celebrate the Passover meal. It is here that he announces that one of them will betray him and that Peter will disown him three times that night. He begins the practice of the Eucharist. Jesus blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his apostles telling them eat, this is my body. Then he blessed the wine and gave it to them saying drink, this is my blood of the new covenant. Here he is reversing the traditional Passover order where whine is blessed before bread and he is instituting a new covenant, to replace the one with Abraham and Moses (which is why Gentiles can now become followers of Christ and not just Jews).
3 April 33 AD - The Crucifixion
Friday. Jesus is betrayed by Judas. He asks the Lord in a moment of weakness if it is not possible that he does not have to go through witht he crucifixion but then accepts his fate, saying Thy will be done, not my will be done. The Sanhedrin sets up a mock trial and convicts him. Pontius Pilate sends him to King Herod, son of the dead king also named Herod, who mocks Jesus and sends him back. Pilate has a tough time finding reason to condemn Jesus to death, giving him a savage beating at first, but gives in to the Sanhedrin's demands**. During this time we get the wonderful Latin anagram of Pilate's question "Quid est veritas?" (what is truth?), which becomes "Est vir qui adest" (it is the man who is here). Jesus and Pilate probably spoke Greek at the trial, not Latin.
Jesus is brought up to Golgotha in the morning after being beaten, where he is crucified. Above his head is a placard depicted with the inscription INRI, an acronym for the Latin "Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum," meaning "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" - his charge in the trial. He is being executed with two criminals. On the cross Jesus cries out Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, expressing his forgiveness of the people who crucified him. One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other one pleads with him "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," to which Jesus replies truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. By Noon Jesus is exhausted. He asks aloud My God, why have you forsaken me? Three hours later, Feeling a great pain in his chest he groans, it is finished. Jesus cries out one last time before the crowd Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, and dies. A Roman soldier pierces his side with a spear. Blood and clear fluid, identified as water at the time, come out (the pericardium - the sac containing the heart - is filled with light-coloured fluid to cushion the heart. Great physical trauma can cause too much fluid to fill the pericardium and crush the heart. When this happens you know it, and you know you're moments away from death.) and drip into the soldier's eyes, curing his poor vision. The body is taken down, anointed and dressed quickly before the sabbath, and left in the unused tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
5 April 33 AD - The Resurrection
Sunday. Jesus conquers death. The guards at the tomb entrance are gone, the stone is rolled back, and the tomb is empty. The two Marys (Mary Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene) go to do a proper job preparing Jesus' body and they're shocked to find it's gone! They then meet a man whom they do not recognise at first (it's Jesus) who tells them about the resurrection. They go back and tell the grieving apostles. This is important! The testimony of a woman was worthless in first century Judaea. To have the first witnesses to the resurrection be women is evidence for the event's historicity. If the resurrection were made up the Gospel writers would have put a man as the first witness, not two women. In time Jesus would appear before his apostles several times over the next 40 days, including before very large groups of people.
15 May 33 AD - The Ascension
Jesus rises up into Heaven before his apostles after telling them to go out and spread the Gospel. Jesus promises to return one day.
*"...the male beard communicates an heroic image of the independent, sturdy, and resourceful pioneer, ready, willing and able to do manly things."
You can buy a Jesus: Beard of Beards t-shirt for around $30 if you are an enthusiast of both Jesus and beards.
**Pilate had no compunction in killing Jews and was very successful in putting down revolts, so it doesn't matter how many Jews demanded Jesus be killed - if they started a riot Pilate would just slaughter them. Anyway, it was not the Jews who wanted Jesus killed, because Jesus was a Jew, his followers were Jews, and most of the people who benefited from his miracles were Jews. The Sanhedrin wanted Jesus killed probably for political reasons and used the religious crime of blasphemy as a cover, but saying the acts of the Sanhedrin condemns the Jews for Jesus' death is like saying the acts of Congress condemns all Americans for invading Iraq or Libya or insert negative event here. Why Pilate consented to the execution we will probably never know, but he may have had political reasons as well.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
The Hawkeye Cauci and The Most Dangerous Man in the World
After Mitt Romney spent more money than humanly possible to completely destroy Newt Gingrich he removed from the race in Iowa everyone else except the most dangerous man in the world: Ron Paul. First some history.
Iowa is a little state, kind of like a little country really. It is really, really empty. Iowa's biggest "city" is Des Moines, which is actually pronounced "Day Moyn" but you would never guess it, is pretty much the only place where people actually live with vast, empty land stretching out for hundreds of miles in every direction. Their crown jewel is a place called Hawkeye Point, a 40 foot hill which is the flattest "highest" elevation on any part of the planet. The site is marked by a grain silo. Nobody knows what happens here, what they produce, or what their culture is. The biggest thing to happen in Iowa is the famous Hawkeye Cauci, that happens every four years. People from all over the country descend upon tiny tiny Iowa to watch presidential hopefuls duke it out then leave the state to its own devices for another four years. Since nobody ever gives Iowa anything they were allowed to have their presidential caucuses before every other state, all the way in January, dragging the presidential campaigns out to ten damn months.
Since 1979 the winner of the Hawkeye Cauci has gone on to win the party nomination roughly 50% of the time, meaning that for all the hype the Hawkeye Cauci is no better than a coin toss at predicting anything.
ADDENDUM
From the AP: With 100% of precincts reporting, relative unknown Rick Santorum has taken first place in the Hawkeye Cauci with 29,908 votes, or 24.6%. Mitt Romney is in very close second with 29,874 votes, or 24.5%. Ron Paul came in third with 26,097 votes, or 21.4%, and Newt Gingrich, the defeated, got 16,161 votes, or 13.3%. It is now safe to say that Rick Santorum, whoever he is, now has a 50-50 chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination for 2012.
ADDENDUM 2
The AP's report as of 2 am was inaccurate. Romney won with 30,015 votes and Santorum came in second with 30,007.
Enough of that, now on to why Ron Paul is the most dangerous man in the world. For the sake of the world it may be better to let Obama have a second term to put Ron Paul into office, should he become the Republican nominee. Let's look at some facts.
Ron Paul had no idea what the content of his own newsletter was.
Now being a doctor is hard work, and Mr. Paul has had a long career in doctoring and bringing babies into the world, so he knows a thing or two about accountability. Unfortunately he let "ghostwriters" insert loads of racist crap into his newsletters under his nose for years with his only defense being "I didn't know it was there and I don't endorse it." I didn't know employees were running an illegal international organ trafficking ring in my shipping company, and I don't endorse it, so I shouldn't be held responsible for being an accessory to their crimes.* No one is questioning Paul's sincerity in stating his ignorance and rejection of the racist crap people were doing under his name, but the United States is a much larger enterprise than a tiny newsletter. If Ron Paul doesn't know and doesn't endorse what's going on behind his back in his own publication how can he be expected to handle the most powerful office in the world?
Ron Paul is dangerously isolationist.
Many a Ron Paul robot has attacked me for saying the simple truth that their candidate is an isolationist. There is no shame in isolationism. There is no need to hide behind fictional categorisations of being "non-interventionist" when the truth is, Ron Paul was against the US action in Afghanistan following the attacks of 9/11. The very same attacks that provoked near unanimous approval in both houses of Congress to authorise reprisal** against al Qaeda and the Taliban (among other entities) [only California Representative Barbara Lee (D.) voted against the resolution in 2001]. Ron Paul insiders reveal that the only reason Paul voted in favour of the resolution is because his entire staff threatened to resign and he knew he could never win re-election anywhere ever if he did.
Ron Paul believes that the United States should not have gotten involved in fighting Germany in the Second World War, even though they declaired war on the US after Pearl Harbor. He firmly believes that it was not the job of the US to save the Jews from Hitler's death camps and that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attacks before they happened and used them as a pretext for war. If saving millions of people from Hitler isn't worth fighting for nothing is.
As bad as Obama's foreign policy is it absolutely pales in comparison to Ron Paul's psychopathic complacency toward genocide.
Ron Paul certainly would let North Korea invade South Korea, starting the Third World War and killing tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people and perhaps permanantly destroying the global economy.
Ron Paul certainly would let Persia get nuclear weapons, and let them disseminate those weapons to every terror group and rogue state on the planet, and use those nuclear weapons to attack Israel. In so doing Ron Paul is perfectly unmoved by the thought that anyone should have the capability to kill everyone by initiating an all out nuclear war.
Ron Paul is a 9/11 "truther".
As you know, 9/11 "truth" is the biggest load of bullshit ever. Former Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondaro states: "He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for ‘invading’ Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11."
Ron Paul is anti-Israel
Ron Paul sides with a completely fictional group of people who have no history and were invented for political reasons in the early 20th century, wants to abolish the state of Israel, which was created by the British as a result of a legitimate peace treaty that gave them legitimate power to do so after defeating the Ottomans in a legitimate war, and give everything to the Arabs "from the river to the sea." As if being perfectly content with Hitler murdering millions of Jews he now wants to kick them out of their country that has been their legitimate home for the past 3200 years.
Does this not disgust you? If the imminent threat of hundreds of millions of people being killed in nuclear war or complacency with genocide is what you want then you can vote for Ron Paul and then go straight to Hell.
*Neither Ron Paul or myself has taken part in illegal organ trafficking. This is merely a rhetorical device.
**Reprisal is a limited military action, in violation of international law, taken against another sovereign entity that has already broken international law in attacking another sovereign entity. It is not the same thing as a war. The Afghan people live in a culture that accepts revenge and they were in full acceptance of limited actions against al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom they hated greatly. Nobody knew those limited actions would last a decade and cost half a trillion dollars, even if bin Laden was killed and the Taliban decapitated.
Iowa is a little state, kind of like a little country really. It is really, really empty. Iowa's biggest "city" is Des Moines, which is actually pronounced "Day Moyn" but you would never guess it, is pretty much the only place where people actually live with vast, empty land stretching out for hundreds of miles in every direction. Their crown jewel is a place called Hawkeye Point, a 40 foot hill which is the flattest "highest" elevation on any part of the planet. The site is marked by a grain silo. Nobody knows what happens here, what they produce, or what their culture is. The biggest thing to happen in Iowa is the famous Hawkeye Cauci, that happens every four years. People from all over the country descend upon tiny tiny Iowa to watch presidential hopefuls duke it out then leave the state to its own devices for another four years. Since nobody ever gives Iowa anything they were allowed to have their presidential caucuses before every other state, all the way in January, dragging the presidential campaigns out to ten damn months.
Since 1979 the winner of the Hawkeye Cauci has gone on to win the party nomination roughly 50% of the time, meaning that for all the hype the Hawkeye Cauci is no better than a coin toss at predicting anything.
ADDENDUM
From the AP: With 100% of precincts reporting, relative unknown Rick Santorum has taken first place in the Hawkeye Cauci with 29,908 votes, or 24.6%. Mitt Romney is in very close second with 29,874 votes, or 24.5%. Ron Paul came in third with 26,097 votes, or 21.4%, and Newt Gingrich, the defeated, got 16,161 votes, or 13.3%. It is now safe to say that Rick Santorum, whoever he is, now has a 50-50 chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination for 2012.
ADDENDUM 2
The AP's report as of 2 am was inaccurate. Romney won with 30,015 votes and Santorum came in second with 30,007.
Enough of that, now on to why Ron Paul is the most dangerous man in the world. For the sake of the world it may be better to let Obama have a second term to put Ron Paul into office, should he become the Republican nominee. Let's look at some facts.
Ron Paul had no idea what the content of his own newsletter was.
Now being a doctor is hard work, and Mr. Paul has had a long career in doctoring and bringing babies into the world, so he knows a thing or two about accountability. Unfortunately he let "ghostwriters" insert loads of racist crap into his newsletters under his nose for years with his only defense being "I didn't know it was there and I don't endorse it." I didn't know employees were running an illegal international organ trafficking ring in my shipping company, and I don't endorse it, so I shouldn't be held responsible for being an accessory to their crimes.* No one is questioning Paul's sincerity in stating his ignorance and rejection of the racist crap people were doing under his name, but the United States is a much larger enterprise than a tiny newsletter. If Ron Paul doesn't know and doesn't endorse what's going on behind his back in his own publication how can he be expected to handle the most powerful office in the world?
Ron Paul is dangerously isolationist.
Many a Ron Paul robot has attacked me for saying the simple truth that their candidate is an isolationist. There is no shame in isolationism. There is no need to hide behind fictional categorisations of being "non-interventionist" when the truth is, Ron Paul was against the US action in Afghanistan following the attacks of 9/11. The very same attacks that provoked near unanimous approval in both houses of Congress to authorise reprisal** against al Qaeda and the Taliban (among other entities) [only California Representative Barbara Lee (D.) voted against the resolution in 2001]. Ron Paul insiders reveal that the only reason Paul voted in favour of the resolution is because his entire staff threatened to resign and he knew he could never win re-election anywhere ever if he did.
Ron Paul believes that the United States should not have gotten involved in fighting Germany in the Second World War, even though they declaired war on the US after Pearl Harbor. He firmly believes that it was not the job of the US to save the Jews from Hitler's death camps and that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attacks before they happened and used them as a pretext for war. If saving millions of people from Hitler isn't worth fighting for nothing is.
As bad as Obama's foreign policy is it absolutely pales in comparison to Ron Paul's psychopathic complacency toward genocide.
Ron Paul certainly would let North Korea invade South Korea, starting the Third World War and killing tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people and perhaps permanantly destroying the global economy.
Ron Paul certainly would let Persia get nuclear weapons, and let them disseminate those weapons to every terror group and rogue state on the planet, and use those nuclear weapons to attack Israel. In so doing Ron Paul is perfectly unmoved by the thought that anyone should have the capability to kill everyone by initiating an all out nuclear war.
Ron Paul is a 9/11 "truther".
As you know, 9/11 "truth" is the biggest load of bullshit ever. Former Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondaro states: "He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for ‘invading’ Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11."
Ron Paul is anti-Israel
Ron Paul sides with a completely fictional group of people who have no history and were invented for political reasons in the early 20th century, wants to abolish the state of Israel, which was created by the British as a result of a legitimate peace treaty that gave them legitimate power to do so after defeating the Ottomans in a legitimate war, and give everything to the Arabs "from the river to the sea." As if being perfectly content with Hitler murdering millions of Jews he now wants to kick them out of their country that has been their legitimate home for the past 3200 years.
Does this not disgust you? If the imminent threat of hundreds of millions of people being killed in nuclear war or complacency with genocide is what you want then you can vote for Ron Paul and then go straight to Hell.
*Neither Ron Paul or myself has taken part in illegal organ trafficking. This is merely a rhetorical device.
**Reprisal is a limited military action, in violation of international law, taken against another sovereign entity that has already broken international law in attacking another sovereign entity. It is not the same thing as a war. The Afghan people live in a culture that accepts revenge and they were in full acceptance of limited actions against al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom they hated greatly. Nobody knew those limited actions would last a decade and cost half a trillion dollars, even if bin Laden was killed and the Taliban decapitated.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Rumors of War II
The Sequel. An hour long documentary. Between radical Islam, the Chicoms, and global economic collapse, the end of our way of life is near.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The World Gone Mad
In December I began writing a thriller about the New World Order titled 7 Days. I have read well over 2,000 pages researching this book. Most of the book is well planned out, so you would think this would be an easy writing experience. Unfortunately, the events in the world have escalated much faster than I expected, so I'm finding I have to update the book frequently, and often wonder whether it will be too late by the time I have finished to make any difference.
The beginning of the book begins with a character, a rather cynical fellow trapped in a cabin with other refugees, talking about the "madness" that has consumed the world. Quoting from Steven Pressfield's novel Gates of Fire, he says "madness is contagious." This character, Scott, mentions the riots that began in Greece in late 2010 and how political unrest spread throughout Europe before coming to America.
As soon as I completed a good deal of research for the book I took a short break to write my 16 page dissertation on Bob Couttie's book Forbidden Knowledge (You can get the free PDF here), and when I got back to writing 7 Days the entire Near East explodes! The Muslim Brotherhood has overthrown the government in Egypt, people are being killed by government crackdowns in Libya, and a whole list of other problems arise all within days of each other. Here is a list (serious threats to global and/or US security listed in red):
Afghanistan: Ongoing US war
India: Ongoing Maoist insurgency
Pakistan: Ongoing serious unrest; Benazir Bhutto assassinated; Pervez Musharraf stepped down; Afghan rebels endemic
Mexico: Drug war; cartels effectively control entire country
North & South Korea: Korean War heats up, most likely future North Korean dictator trying to look macho
Greece: Socialist uprising/riots
France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain: Economic protests/unrest; economic collapse immanent
Sudan: Country poised to split; ongoing genocide in Darfur
Russia: Moscow, Chechen terror attack
Tunesia: Government overthrown
Egypt: Government overthrown
Libya: Government killing protesters
Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen: Severe political unrest/rioting
Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia: Moderate political unrest; could turn serious any minute
Iraq: Moderate political unrest, Al Qaeda insurgency under control at the moment
Somalia: Moderate political unrest; ongoing pirate problem
Thailand & Cambodia: Border struggle
Persia/Iran: Government crackdown on protesters, US government turns blind eye on democratic uprising for the third time (2009, 2010, and 2011) but welcomes Islamist uprising in Egypt; Iranian warships en route through Suez Canal to Syria
Is it just me or are you really frightened as well? Nuclear Pakistan is falling apart, the Mullas of Iran are trying to get Syria and Egypt on their side so they can surround US controlled Iraq and Israel and begin the Third World War (which I predicted in 2006 would begin in January 2011, and we may be seeing the Franz Ferdinand moment in Egypt), the Ayatollah is claiming to be in communication with the Mahdi, who has returned after 1100 years (where did he go and what was he doing that whole time?) and is telling everyone to drench the world in the blood of the heathens (non-Muslims), Muslims who won't kill heathens, and especially the Jews. Israel has warned the world that they won't sit back much longer while the Mullas make annihilation threats. Hell, Iran is sending warships to secure for themselves the Suez Canal and to aid Syria, probably in a blockade of Israel. I think there is a strong possibility (70+%) of a nuclear exchange before the end of the year, and if that happens it really is the end of the world.
There is a near certainty that the US will send troops into Mexico because the drug cartells have basically annexed most of the border states.
I have created the following map, which is by no means extensive, to get a general overview of the situation.
But I keep forgetting, Israel and capitalism are evil, the United States needs to be taught a lesson for its imperialism, the Mullas of Iran are good people, and so are the Egyptian protesters who just want democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood is really very secular, not Islamist at all, and that the New World Order does not exist and you should just keep taking your Xanax and watch idiots from New Jersey cuss and do jackass things.
200 of the good people of Egypt gang raped CBS reporter Lara Logan, but as NYU former professor Nir Rosen said, it's funny because she deserved it. There was a huge backlash and he resigned, but don't forget he's a good person, and so are the people of Egypt. If I was there when he said that I would have knocked his fucking teeth out, but that's just me. Oh, and the Egyptian people "democratically" want Sharia law. Here are two videos detailing what that means.
Let us not forget, Adolf Hitler was "democratically" elected, but the motherfucker who hosts the Muslim Brotherhood world radio show says Hitler was a good person for putting the Jews in their place.
It appears as if madness is indeed contagious, and it has spread far faster than I could have imagined. Let us pray cooler heads prevail. Let us pray the US wakes up before world war starts and the Jews are eliminated.
-Dee
The beginning of the book begins with a character, a rather cynical fellow trapped in a cabin with other refugees, talking about the "madness" that has consumed the world. Quoting from Steven Pressfield's novel Gates of Fire, he says "madness is contagious." This character, Scott, mentions the riots that began in Greece in late 2010 and how political unrest spread throughout Europe before coming to America.
As soon as I completed a good deal of research for the book I took a short break to write my 16 page dissertation on Bob Couttie's book Forbidden Knowledge (You can get the free PDF here), and when I got back to writing 7 Days the entire Near East explodes! The Muslim Brotherhood has overthrown the government in Egypt, people are being killed by government crackdowns in Libya, and a whole list of other problems arise all within days of each other. Here is a list (serious threats to global and/or US security listed in red):
Afghanistan: Ongoing US war
India: Ongoing Maoist insurgency
Pakistan: Ongoing serious unrest; Benazir Bhutto assassinated; Pervez Musharraf stepped down; Afghan rebels endemic
Mexico: Drug war; cartels effectively control entire country
North & South Korea: Korean War heats up, most likely future North Korean dictator trying to look macho
Greece: Socialist uprising/riots
France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain: Economic protests/unrest; economic collapse immanent
Sudan: Country poised to split; ongoing genocide in Darfur
Russia: Moscow, Chechen terror attack
Tunesia: Government overthrown
Egypt: Government overthrown
Libya: Government killing protesters
Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen: Severe political unrest/rioting
Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia: Moderate political unrest; could turn serious any minute
Iraq: Moderate political unrest, Al Qaeda insurgency under control at the moment
Somalia: Moderate political unrest; ongoing pirate problem
Thailand & Cambodia: Border struggle
Persia/Iran: Government crackdown on protesters, US government turns blind eye on democratic uprising for the third time (2009, 2010, and 2011) but welcomes Islamist uprising in Egypt; Iranian warships en route through Suez Canal to Syria
Is it just me or are you really frightened as well? Nuclear Pakistan is falling apart, the Mullas of Iran are trying to get Syria and Egypt on their side so they can surround US controlled Iraq and Israel and begin the Third World War (which I predicted in 2006 would begin in January 2011, and we may be seeing the Franz Ferdinand moment in Egypt), the Ayatollah is claiming to be in communication with the Mahdi, who has returned after 1100 years (where did he go and what was he doing that whole time?) and is telling everyone to drench the world in the blood of the heathens (non-Muslims), Muslims who won't kill heathens, and especially the Jews. Israel has warned the world that they won't sit back much longer while the Mullas make annihilation threats. Hell, Iran is sending warships to secure for themselves the Suez Canal and to aid Syria, probably in a blockade of Israel. I think there is a strong possibility (70+%) of a nuclear exchange before the end of the year, and if that happens it really is the end of the world.
There is a near certainty that the US will send troops into Mexico because the drug cartells have basically annexed most of the border states.
I have created the following map, which is by no means extensive, to get a general overview of the situation.
But I keep forgetting, Israel and capitalism are evil, the United States needs to be taught a lesson for its imperialism, the Mullas of Iran are good people, and so are the Egyptian protesters who just want democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood is really very secular, not Islamist at all, and that the New World Order does not exist and you should just keep taking your Xanax and watch idiots from New Jersey cuss and do jackass things.
200 of the good people of Egypt gang raped CBS reporter Lara Logan, but as NYU former professor Nir Rosen said, it's funny because she deserved it. There was a huge backlash and he resigned, but don't forget he's a good person, and so are the people of Egypt. If I was there when he said that I would have knocked his fucking teeth out, but that's just me. Oh, and the Egyptian people "democratically" want Sharia law. Here are two videos detailing what that means.
Let us not forget, Adolf Hitler was "democratically" elected, but the motherfucker who hosts the Muslim Brotherhood world radio show says Hitler was a good person for putting the Jews in their place.
It appears as if madness is indeed contagious, and it has spread far faster than I could have imagined. Let us pray cooler heads prevail. Let us pray the US wakes up before world war starts and the Jews are eliminated.
-Dee
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