All Religious Books Are Man-Made Nonsense

One must consider the fact that, even now, there are religious zealots and ordinary people still entrenched in a control belief system that is so far removed from reality that it borders on madness. There is no rational or scientific way that organised religions can have a modicum of truth or factual reality because of the very reason that these books are entombed in the time that they were written. These books should therefore simply be viewed as limited parables and historical fiction, as well as a lesson in how millions of people can be so easily controlled."
 
The research paper also came to the conclusion that reward/punishment religions, as control systems, were losing their grip on most of the population of the world and only a few die-hard fanatics and delusional maniacs were carrying on with the flame of idiocy.

"The game is up for all religions, how long can this sham carry on, with their ridiculous outdated ceremonies? The priests are deceivers, and they need to come up with some pretty radical solutions to their thousand year old magic trick. People aren't as dumb or easily swayed as they used to be thousands of years ago, they actually have reasoning powers and can see through the utter nonsense of organised control systems like religion."

(From "Scientists Prove That All Religious Books Are Man-Made Nonsense" by B. Delaire)

I think with the continual progress in scientific discoveries, technological advancement, literacy developments and expanding consciousness of humanity, it is inevitable that more and more people begin to realise that organised religions are fundamentally man-made, and their concept of God had been religionised and institutionalised. The perception of God itself had been evolving over thousands of years, varying among different cultures. It reminds me of some thoughts I shared some time ago, in one of our email discussions, and I have blogged about it here.

In my blog, I wrote:

Come to think of it, those people in the olden days thousands of years didn’t have modern day conveniences such as computers and cars, so life was very slow-paced. No wonder they had a lot of time sitting around and telling stories, and comparing their own culture’s stories with other cultures’ stories as they travelled and interacted and traded with one another, and they inevitably added and modified some elements from one another’s stories, and formed new stories. I suppose that’s how we have many religions today containing a mixture of elements, since they all borrowed some plots and characters from one another, and created their own characters’ names and backgrounds.

(From "The mythological nature of the Christian Bible")

At the most, I see that myths and stories serve a purpose in conveying deep truths, even though they are not the truths themselves. They are only a finger pointing to the moon. At the core of every religion, the commonality shared among them is love and compassion, which is known intuitively by every person, regardless of their belief system. Any other element added to their religion, such as conditions for reward and punishment, is only a man-made device designed to control others, as noted by the article.

Do Myths Have Their Place In Modern Society?

I think myths and story telling have their place in conveying deep truths about the universe, our existence and so on. These literary devices have been employed by various societies and cultures since ancient times. I see myths as a finger pointing to the moon, proverbially speaking, especially when they carry certain universal truths, such as hope, courage, unconditional love and friendship.

I also have come to see the bible as a collection of myths. It is perhaps no secret now that modern Christianity has mainly taken these myths as literal events, and propagates the idea of a literal hell, literal devil and literal second coming of a literal Christ. Whether it is out of ignorance, or misplaced faith, or unquestioning attitude, or intellectual dishonesty, or misguided good intentions, or simply religious agenda to control people or build an empire (or a combination of two or more of these factors, given the multidimensional aspects of humanity), one thing we can be sure of is that such literalisation and institutionalisation of myths has resulted in many followers living in unspoken fear and superstition, being afraid of a mythical deity who is schizophrenic. A sense of uncertainty often resides beneath their veneer of certainty - on one hand, the adherents appear to be certain about going to a certain heaven in the afterlife, yet on the other hand, they are uncertain about how their god would treat other people who don't hold a similar set of beliefs as them, and they simply attempt some vague explanations such as the so-called "age of accountability", which varies depending on one's opinions.

One man's orthodoxy is another man's heresy, as the saying goes, and similarly, I would venture to say that one man's mythology is another man's idiocy. If people are willing to see myths as nothing more than myths, I think the world would be a more peaceful and united place where people learn from universal truths and see one another as equal, as brothers and sisters of the same family of the Universe.

Waking up from the mythological world of the Bible

I was reflecting that the more I come to see the bible as a collection of myths, fables and legends borrowed from different cultures and belief systems such as paganism, Egyptian folklore and so on, I began to see a parallel between my journey in understanding the bible and the story in the movie "Inception".

In that movie story, the people entered into a dream world, and then in that dream, they entered into another dream world, and again in that second dream, they entered yet into another dream world. After some time, it can be hard to tell what is reality and what is imagination. So similarly, in the bible, we see one fictional character (eg Moses) being mentioned by another person (eg Jesus), who turns out to be a fictional character who was mentioned by another person (eg Paul), who himself turns out to be fictional too. So I can see how this realisation can create a mini spiritual crisis for people (including myself) who have all along been taught that these characters are real, even as they came to grasp that these characters are merely archetypes borrowed from some other religions, fables and myths.

I was thinking that those people in the olden days thousands of years didn't have modern day conveniences such as computers and cars, so life was very slow-paced. No wonder they had a lot of time sitting around and telling stories, and comparing one's culture's stories with another culture's stories as they traveled and interacted and traded with one another, and they inevitably added and modified some elements from one another's stories, and formed new stories. I suppose that's how we have many religions containing a mixture of elements today, since they all borrowed some plots and characters from one another, and created their own characters' names and backgrounds.

The bible is a collection of myths after all

When I was reading the book of Romans, I was pondering over the possibility that the story of Pharoah in the old testament was not a true story and only an allegory.

That thought led me to question whether Moses existed in real life, because since most, if not all, of the Bible is a collection of allegories and myths, then Moses could well be an allegorical character to symbolise an archetype of the law mindset (based on illusion of ego and separation). So, I decided to google "Did Moses exist?", and I came across several interesting websites.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_Moses_exist#ixzz22x2PE1GU
"There is no physical evidence of the existence of Moses (eg mention of him on pttery shards, as is common for other significant figures). Textual analysis shows that the books of the pentateuch, attributed to Moses, were not written by a single author. Some scholars believe that these books were a much later confection of stories centred around a figure with no historical basis."

This discussion forum shares similar views on the mythical nature and non-historicity of Moses.

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4182&start=0
"Although many scholars of the past century to today are clear on the mythical nature of the Exodus tale and the probable (to them) non-historicity of the Moses character, there are a number of historical or quasi-historical individuals and events that have gathered attention as the possible "real Moses" and "real Exodus"."

The person called Acharya who wrote the above has an interesting blog that has some links on how the christian religion came about. http://freethoughtworld.wordpress.com/


The following websites also have something to say about how the myth of Jesus came about.

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=26401

"The question “Did the Biblical Jesus really live?” has been debated by scholars for centuries. While literalist Christian scholars prefer to seek evidence that supports their belief in a historical Jesus, impartial historians, including some Christian ones, have shown that there is in fact no evidence to support a historical Jesus."

http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html

"The theme of a divine or semi-divine child who is feared by an evil king is very common in pagan mythology. ... Examples of myths which follow this plot are the birth stories of Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Krishna, Zeus, and Oedipus. Although Torah literalists will not like to admit it, the story of Moses's birth also resembles these myths (some of which claim that the mother put the child in a basket and placed him in a river).
..
"However, the story of the twelve apostles lost its original allegorical interpretation and the Christians began to think that the "twelve apostles" were twelve real people who followed Jesus. The Christians attempted to find names for these twelve apostles."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120222023136AAvYsuW

"The biblical Jesus was a composit, fictional character created by the writers from the stories of several real historical persons being put together to create the composit biblical Jesus. The legendary King Arthur and Robin Hood characters were created the same way. The first century Jewish historians Josephus and Philo of Alexandria traveled throughout Palestine in the first century and wrote about many false messiahs and miracle workers including John the Baptist and James the Just, but NEVER wrote about the biblical Jesus. "

Last but not least, I discovered that even the apostle Paul may not have existed in real life, according to some views, such as the one below.

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=1571
"here's what I think.

Paul is not a real person at all.

Certainly Paul draws from Apollonius of Tyana and the works of Josephus. He appears to be a conglomerate of wise characters, that the early church wanted to assimilate under one to give credibility to their movement. Its easier to twist a history to make it fall inline, than it is to outright declare war on it. Especially when Apollonius was well respected amongst his contempories.
...
It also occured to me that there is also the possibility that Paul is meant to be the forerunner character of Jesus - but 'gnostically', he represents the struggle of a man, who has received enlightenment, but not yet reached the 'Christ' status the gnostic interpretation aims for. Clearly this would mean him entirely spiritual and not real, as in the gnostic interpretation of Jesus."

I am still chewing on these findings and I will take some time to digest the information myself.