Saturday, 04 September 2010

• WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?...JESUS WOULD LOVE THIS BOOK!!!

  I love, praise, and pray to God daily. My God is a universal and genderless spirit of love, inspiration, peace, wonder, and magic… I worship the very same God that trees do.

  I am not an atheist. But, I have absolutely no use for any religion. Human men create all religions. Most religions are comprised of sexist, racist, xenophobic, and elitist myths.

  For decades, I have written and spoken about my deep hot hatred for religious bigots. Most "Christians" are the global epitome of hypocrisies and hatreds that curse my life and torment my spirit. I despise evil sinful “holy” people who live inside churches as if they were bath houses. They are sinners who engage in so much trifling and deceit daily that they must run to churches every time the doors open.

  I am a noble loner who lives a purpose driven life. I have dedicated my life to educating poor adults and children. I live every day doing good deeds. I live and love and let others do the same. I do not have to run to church to be cleansed because I do not live immersed in the toxic sludge of policing and judging the bodies, spirits, and souls of others.

  I adore books. I am a voracious reader. I have read at least five books a week since I was six years old. At 45, libraries and books house the very same magic that they did when I was a child.

  I am an eternal learner who prefers to study non-fiction. Scholarship is my greatest intellectual obsession. Biblical scholarship is my primary passion of choice.

  I study the bible incessantly as a uniquely complex and infinitely interesting book of contradictory and elaborate myths and historical fables. No more. No less. Ever. The bible is merely a book. It is a great and timelessly entertaining book penned by human men who injected their own human suspicions, superstitions, bigotries, and beliefs into its voluminous pages.

  Ironically, those who loudly quote the bible most frequently have never even read it. They are lobotomized sheeple who chant erroneous mantras mangled by pastors who are even more illiterate and ignorant than they are. They religiously regurgitate the biblical myths and lies that they have been told. Most hypochristians use their bible exclusively as a primer for hatreds. It is used expressly to condone their abuse of women or homosexuals.

  Any functionally literate person who actually reads the bible can never believe that it is the word of God! The bible has countless translations, editions, and copyright dates. As religious beliefs changed, the authors of the bible edited its contents accordingly. Yet, religions have constantly caused more evil and murder on earth than any other ingredient in human life.

  For centuries, hundreds of biblical scholars have proven that the bible is simply a book that has very little to do with Jesus or God. All biblical scholars know that the bible is simply one of many religious books. My favorite religious scholar is Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.

  Ehrman is that very rare blend of academic genius that makes complex scholarship magnificently plain. He is deeply learned and eloquent. He has a gift for explanation that transcends lofty theology. His intensely cerebral books are sheer casual pleasures to read.

  He has published many masterful books. All of them are academic and profound. But, his newest book surpasses his typical perfection. It is his most necessary and outstanding work to date.

  All who care to know the truth about the bible must read: JESUS INTERRUPTED – REVEALING THE HIDDEN CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BIBLE (AND WHY WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THEM) by Bart D. Ehrman.

  Ehrman’s classic new book is a meticulous collection of detailed proofs of religious mythology and literary conspiracy. Like no other work I have ever read, this book succinctly documents specific contradictions and flaws that prove that the bible is literally the greatest story ever told.

  All who care to know who Jesus really was will read this book. All who desire to be wiser than bigoted religious fools will read this superbly researched book immediately! God creates our brains so that we may use them to think for ourselves.

  The bible is an ancient storybook that has only a nominal affiliation with the reality of Jesus and God. After reading this book, I am more convinced than ever before that Jesus was a human man. He was no more or less divine than Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King Jr….

  I love that Jesus was a rebel and a prophet. Jesus never called anyone a “Christian”. Gaybashing, racist, elitist, and sexist "Christians" disgrace the biblical Jesus more each day!

  I love how Jesus called out hypocrites and profiteers in churches. I love how he walked among the outcasts of society. Today, Jesus would not befriend mega rich TV pastors or hang out at their fashion shows inside gilded temples. He would walk within ghettos and trailer parks and befriend heartbroken homosexuals and haggard homeless people in storefront churches and public parks.

  Intelligent pastors encourage believers to become biblical scholars. Ignorant cowardly pastors encourage illiteracy so that they can control the limited minds of their moronic flocks. Do what Jesus would and read: JESUS INTERRUPTED – REVEALING THE HIDDEN CONTRADICTIONS IN THE BIBLE (AND WHY WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THEM) by Bart D. Ehrman.

  Here are a few quotes from this classic book:

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  "For me, its just one of the great mysteries of the universe: how so many people can revere the Bible and think that it is God’s inspired revelation to his people, and yet know so little about it.

  …just as I came to see the Bible as a very human book, I came to see Christianity as a very human religion. It did not descend from on high. It was created, down here on earth, among the followers of Jesus in the decades and centuries after his death.

  In the South, it is true, more people revere the Bible than read it…For most Christians [in other parts of the world], Christian faith is about believing in Christ and worshipping God through him. It is not about belief in the Bible.

  Paul’s injunction to women to be “silent” in the churches and “subordinate” to their husbands was not originally part of 1 Corinthians 14 (vv. 34-35) but was added by later scribes intent on keeping women in their place.

  …the only place in the entire New Testament where the doctrine of the Trinity is explicitly taught is in a passage that made it into the King James translation (I John 5:7-8) but is not found in the vast majority of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

  One of the best attested sayings of Jesus found in a number of independent sources is a prediction that at the end of the age, the Temple itself would be destroyed (Mark 13:2, 14:58, 15:29)…

  What does one do about the fact that we don’t have the original Hebrew and Greek texts of any of the books of the Bible, but only later copies of those texts, all of which have mistakes? We don’t know how many mistakes there are among surviving copies [of the Bible] but they appear to number in the hundreds of thousands…there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

  The problem is in part that the Gospels are full of discrepancies and were written decades after Jesus’ ministry and death by authors who had not themselves witnessed any of the events of Jesus’ life.

  Our very first reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written forty years later by someone living in a different country who had heard that it was empty.

  Our first records of any of Jesus’ public miracles were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after the fact, by people who had not seen any of these things happen, who were basing their stories on oral traditions that had been passed down for decades among people trying to convince others to believe in Jesus.

  …many of the books of the New Testament were not written by the people to whom they are attributed (Matthew and John) or by the people who claimed to be writing them (2 Peter, 1 Timothy). Most of these books appeared to have been written after the apostles themselves were dead; only eight of the twenty-seven books are almost certain to have been written by the people traditionally thought to be the authors.

  Who were Jesus’ disciples? Lower-class, illiterate, Aramic-speaking peasants from Galilee… These [biblical] authors were not [illiterate]...Whoever these authors were, they were unusually gifted Christians of a later generation…A large number of books in the early church were written by authors who falsely claimed to be apostles in order to deceive their readers into accepting their books and the views they represented.

  The biblical scholars were all living in a different world from ours and reflected the assumption and beliefs of people in their world…homosexuality didn’t exist in their world. Why? Not because men didn’t have sex with men (they did) or women with women (they did) but because there was no sense of sexual orientation in that world, or any world, until the notion of sexual orientation developed among Western thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries…This is true for everything found in the Bible. It was written in a different world, a different context.

  …the Bible, after all, condemns tattoos. In the same book, Leviticus, the Bible also condemns wearing clothing made of two different kinds of fabric and eating pork. And, it indicates that children who disobey their parents are to be stoned to death…In my opinion, people need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible.

  The profoundly Jewish religion of Jesus and his followers became the viciously anti-Jewish religion of later times, leading to the horrific persecutions of the Middle Ages, and the pogroms and attempted genocides that have plagued the world down to recent times."

   

  Study your bible! Do not buy bull! Read these other superb books about the bible and the timeless evil that humans sinfully do in the name of Jesus and God:

   

  MISQUOTING JESUS: THE STORY BEHIND WHO CHANGED THE BIBLE AND WHY 
  - by Bart D. Ehrman

   

  GOOD BOOK: THE BIZARRE, HILARIOUS, DISTURBING, MARVELOUS, AND INSPIRING THINGS I LEARNED WHEN I READ EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THE BIBLE 
  - by David Plotz

   

  LOST SCRIPTURES: BOOKS THAT DID NOT MAKE IT INTO THE NEW TESTAMENT 
  - by Bart D. Ehrman

   

  GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING 
  - by Christopher Hitchens

   

  THE GOD DELUSION 
  - by Richard Dawkins

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  “IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO”

  --ARETHA FRANKLIN

  It ain't necessarily so
  It ain't necessarily so
  The things that you’re liable
  To read in the Bible,
  It ain't necessarily so.

  Now Little David was small, but oh my!
  Yes David was small, but oh my!
  He fought Big Goliath
  Who lay, lay down and dieth!
  Yes David was small, but oh oh oh oh my!

  You ever heard about Jonah? He lived in a whale.
  You ever heard about Jonah? He lived in a whale.
  And, he made his home in
  That fish's abdomen.
  Yes Jonah, he lived in a whale.

  To get into Heaven
  Don't snap for a seven!
  Live clean ! And don’t have no fault!
  Now take me,
  I takes that gospel
  Whenever it's possible.
  But, with a little grain of salt.

  Methuselah lived nine hundred years,
  Methuselah lived nine, nine hundred years,
  But tell me who calls that livin'?
  When no gal is givin'
  To no man what's nine hundred years?

  That’s why I say that it ain’t
  It ain't necessarily
  It ain't NO necessarily 
  It ain't
  It ain’t necessarily so 
  Ain’t necessarily so
  Ain’t necessarily so

   

  

  

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