hobbit-humanist
Humanism, atheism, some politics and lots of common sense.
Archive for the category “Locations”
Tôi Kratistôi
The thing I notice when I debate with Evangelicals or Jehovah’s Witnesses is their lack of historical knowledge or rather their ignorance of it. Outside of the Bible nothing is really relevant, even when the facts presented are insurmountable. On the other hand of course if there is the vaguest of references to something historical within the Bible then it must be fact because…. you guessed it, the Bible said so!
Take for instance Alexander the Great, undoubtedly one of the greatest figures in antiquity who was widely wrote about and documented. There’s just no denying Alexander, in fact he founded some twenty cities that bore his name. I could of course go on extolling his virtues and story but I’d encourage you to go and read about him instead.
Alexander is alleged in some sources entered Jerusalem on his way down to conquer Egypt its said the locals opened the gates and presented him with the book of Daniel’s Prophecy which allegedly said a mighty Greek king would come and conquer the Persian empire.
There’s also again alleged mention of him in various other religious sources such as this one here quoting Zechariah and Josephus’s writings. Also of not are mention in the apocryphal book of Maccabees excluded from the Bible.
So lets examine some evidence and try and make some assumptions, bearing in mind this is still research in progress and I welcome input.
Firstly we have to bear in mind Alexander was on his way to conquer Egypt taking a coastal route, ports being of vital importance for his campaign. Tyre and Gaza fell to sieges of varying length before he entered Egypt in 332 BC and was proclaimed liberator and Pharaoh without any serious trouble. He stayed in Egypt a while before again crossing swords with his sworn foe Darius in modern day northern Iraq.
Jerusalem in the Persian Achaemenid (or second temple period) was merely a provincial town on no great importance, an estimated population of 1,500 some putting it as low as 500. So compared to some of the coastal cities Alexander was capturing Jerusalem was just a mere dot on the map. Whilst locals may have worshipped local gods I’m guessing there would be external influences too, from Egypt and Persia who had their own deities and controlled the area before Alexander. From a military aspect Jerusalem would logistically have no interest, god wise there was nothing there of note, especially compared to Egypt next door and the fact Alexander wanted to visit the oracle of the Siwa oasis.
Moving to religious evidence. Zechariah contains no names and is cryptic, Daniel is pure prophecy nonsense with no facts, I wouldn’t even call it ambiguous. Maccabees as mentioned is apocryphal and not in the Bible and Josephus the pro Roman historian mentions him allegedly. Lets forgive him a little and put this down to his writing style, even then its vague, after all this was hundreds of years after the alleged event, Alexander’s story was still popular but much would have been lost or embellished, we know Ptolomy I wrote about his adventures with Alexander and possibly there were other books in the great library at Alexandria but this was now destroyed possibly 48 BC according to some historians. Josephus would have been writing about Alexander some hundred or so years after this. I guess concluding we have to look at the fact Josephus was pro Roman having fully defected after his rebel days, Romans liked the myth of Alexander, several prominent Romans such as Pompey, Caesar and Augustus having visited his tomb in Alexandria. So in my view, it would make sense for Josephus to mention him and intertwine him with local folklore in order to increase its importance or was he even added to Josephus’s writings later? If we look at the period, though the Hellenistic period was long gone its history and tales were more recent and available, and very popular among the Romans.
If we look more into Daniel book 11 then nothing really is gained, vague references at best, kings of the north and south in conflict, visions and prophecy. Evangelical interpretations of events in Daniel 11 are bizarre to say the least. In any case the historical predications and historicity of Daniel are wrong.
What I find ironic about the Bible is that usually it seems very keen to name people through its pages yet when it could verify itself more by historical events it falls down badly. Christians will often argue that Josephus and Tacitus mention Jesus but references are vague. Josephus chronicles many uprisings in the area during the time before and after Jesus in detail yet not much is said of Jesus at all, if he has been so great then the pages he wrote would have been surely overflowing with his deeds? As for Tacitus, we have the briefest of mentions of Jesus and not by name, again this is much after and we have to take into account Tacitus wrote more about things such the invasion of Britain than a mere speck of information he offers about an alleged Christ. Other historians of the day give Jesus no mention.
Back to the main thread, did Alexander enter Jerusalem? Though I cannot write it off completely I would say there’s very little evidence for it, there’s plenty of evidence for Alexander being in other places but not there. Logistically it was of no importance, there was nothing of great value there and in the big picture of deities at the time it was of no interest. If he had have gone there and it was an interesting episode then I’m sure it would have been mentioned more especially how important he was. What we have is desperate references from Christian scholars trying to validate their faith. As the Bible was written over hundreds of years there would have been chances aplenty to mention Alexander, and not just him but other events, instead we get very little of historical veracity and when we do stumble across something vague we get a solid Christian backing of a crumb of something that can be potentially used. I’ve combed my own books on Alexander, the local library and the internet yet there’s little tangible evidence at all Alexander entered Jerusalem.
You can argue all day though with hardcore Christians, Evangelicals and JW’s and they will have their own take on history, which is just the Bible or their version of it, however I’d like to point out that the Bible isn’t found in any History section in a library, ever wondered why?
Alexander was an historical behemoth, covered by Biographer Plutarch, tutored by Aristotle, an unparalleled personality and General and conqueror of much of the then known world, why doesn’t the Bible reference him clearly?
On his deathbed Alexander was asked whom his kingdom should pass? He replied rather laconically “Tôi kratistôi” which means “To the strongest” before passing away yet the successors who carved his empire up with war were never able to rival Alexander for he remains one of the strongest historical figures ever.
Religious Round Up News #1
Just found this really good YouTube video documenting religious related news stories in a bi-monthly format. It’s very well edited and may well save me a little typing in the long run! As they appear I think I shall post them on here.
For those hardcore and religious fundamental types who often bang the drum the atheists are the problems then I ask why does it always seem to be religious types making this kind of news?
Spiritual China
I keep reading articles about how the Chinese are embracing religion now the country is becoming more open and dare I say it… westernised. Being an anti-theist I read such things with concern but having been to China myself part of me isn’t worried either. Some years ago I spent time in Hong Kong, Macau and visited some of the more southern cities in the new territories around Hong Kong, I’ve also visited Thailand several times. Orientals are if nothing a pragmatic people.
It’s fair to say China has changed a great deal over the last decade, my friend Gary has been living there a good few years and often tells me of new changes and trends, a Chinese friend I have has also embraced Christianity. When you look at the big picture of course religion has been largely closed off especially in the past and the Mao and cultural revolution era (though it wasn’t very cultural at all!). Mao of course went one further than Karl Marx’s ‘Opium of the people’ comment and referred to religion as poison, so he had some redeeming things about him then!
Even in more recent times the Chinese government have been known to crack down on religion for instance the spiritual sect of Falun Gong saying they were opposed to communism and science. Now we are seeing a more tolerant China and some religions of course don’t need inviting before they shove their proverbial foot in the door, especially Christian Evangelists.
The Christians doing missionary work in China will be pretty much use the same tactics as they do elsewhere. Tell the people they are sinners, they need to be born again to achieve salvation, submit and then follow a book that has no relevance to the Chinese people culturally and then of course lets see the colour of your money.
They will sell things like the ‘golden rule’ as a nugget of Christian wisdom to win hearts and minds, the irony being Confucius had thought of this a few hundred years before, so had Buddha, so had the Greeks and many other cultures around the world from antiquity. Christianity would have it as their own though because other faith’s simply don’t count because when it comes to other religions Christian fundamentalists and Evangelicals are somewhat atheist about other gods.
Hopefully Christianity is just another new thing to be experienced by the Chinese as western trends and influences become increasingly accessible. The Chinese aren’t stupid though, they’ll look at their history and see that they were far superior culturally and technologically around the time of the alleged Christ and they had Confucius’s wisdom way before. China doesn’t need Christian meddling but I suspect in the coming years it will get it regardless, so to end with and twist a little phrase of mine ‘I hope they wake up and smell the Chinese tea!’.
The End, My Only Friend
As the Doors song goes ‘The end, my only friend’ only today wasn’t the end when it came to the Mayan calendar and so we got a reprieve from any apocalypse. Not to worry as old JC is going to see to that in the Rapture….. when he gets around to it of course, he and his dad have been very idle for some time though.
We’ve had a lot of predictions for the end of the world and I suspect there’ll be more to come, all from religious sources of course, though scientists do say the Milky way and Andromeda galaxies will collide in 4 billion years, so we have a bit of breathing space yet. Incidentally the Andromeda galaxy contains around 1 trillion stars and the Milky way contains three hundred billion stars, god has been a busy dude it would seem, I wonder if he needed to rest on the seventh day after creating every star? I don’t want to do the maths but that’s a lot of days!
Anyway just as The Mayan culture was gaining ground in the 3rd century Christianity was beginning to raise its ugly head over the other side of the world, god being the fantastic fella he is had neglected to introduce himself to the Mayans though.
By 250 A.D the Roman empire was in something of a decline though they initially had the good sense to blame the Christians for it. A wave of executions took place, initiated by Emperor Decius, with the bishop in North Africa, Cyprian, describing the persecutions of Christians as God’s punishment for their not doing His will. “We,” he writes,” are receiving the thrashing we deserve.”
By 258 A.D more executions are taking place, the Roman economy is up the spout and the empire is falling apart, with emperors dropping like flies and many areas of the empire in anarchy the stage is set for those pesky Christians to impress and there’s no surprise they do really as people are getting sick of the killing. Evidently new gods are needed and this is a time of gods, the old Roman gods seem to have forsaken them so maybe new gods can sway things for the better. The Romans of course haven’t really got their heads totally into Christianity yet, the seeds are set however. Romans started to fabricate Christianity later with embellishments and forgeries. Christians will often argue Romans such as Tacitus mentioned him, he makes a brief reference to someone being a rebel of the time but he’s not called Jesus and no real detail is given. Tacitus does however write much more about everything else, such as the Roman invasion of Britain in great detail, you have to ask yourself if old JC had been performing miracles and causing a commotion he would have got more coverage.
By 312 A.D order is restored in the western empire as Constantine wins the power struggle for supremacy the only problem here was his mum, yep she was a Christian and as we know mums can be very influencing. The year after Christianity becomes legal (Edict of Milan) and things are looking up and by 324 A.D Constantine is the main man, the eastern empire conquered and it has more of a Christian flavour whilst the west hangs on to paganism though thats going to change and in a painful way!
In A.D 333 we’ve got state funded Christianity and churches aplenty its at this time Constantine turns his attention to the Jews (They always seem to get it!) and decrees Christians of Jewish heritage will either break all ties with Judaism or be executed. The killing in the name of god really gets into gear now, and you thought the old testament killed a few!
So onto the recent past Jews of course get their very own holocaust and many do personally see the end of the world from the late 1930s onwards when a certain dictator with a small moustache and a catholic background comes to power.
So to conclude, if galaxies colliding don’t end then world mankind probably will do through religion or stupidity. You can be certain though it won’t be gods ending it.
A Few Facts
I was involved in some recent debate regarding if crime is more prevalent in religious society or secular society. I guess you only need look as far as the current news to work that one out. Take for instance an ugly video doing the rounds at present in which Syrian Islamic rebel militants urge a child to behead a captured prisoner and then hold the prisoners head aloft shouting;
“Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.”
The video has now been taken down by YouTube but you can still read the full story and see the shocking imagery from the link above but it’s been widely broadcast too.
Muslims use god to vindicate pretty much most things they do in war or terror instances, oh and lets not forget their laws either. They are doing gods work, he supports it wholeheartedly and if they die in the process? Well martyrdom awaits of course. I’ve no doubt if America by some strange twist of fate turned into a right wing Christian theocracy we’d also see some downright ugly things in the name of god. It does seem that god gives his consent and approval to many things and seemingly does nothing to stop it if it’s being misused. The religious human mind after buying into such nonsense has to go on acting in an illogical way to keep the charade up and of course it doesn’t pay to think about actions or consequence because the whole point of religion is that you don’t question things. ‘God told me to do it!’ has been repeated throughout the ages by murderers, leaders, fanatics and torturers and people are still using it.
If you mention the wrong of the past religious people will be dismissive, it is the past after all yet across the world the past is still influencing what we do today. Religion is responsible for what is happening in the Middle East and many parts of Africa, closer to home there is still unrest in Ireland. You simply cannot dismiss history because it shapes who we are today and lets examine one crucial point here, up until the recent past the whole of the civilized world was religious because atheism wasn’t tolerated, if you didn’t believe then you were in for a hard time, as we all know burnings, inquisition, torture and intolerance were common place not too long ago….. in the name of god.
So moving on slightly I want to mention this interesting piece of research. It’s basically an article on religion and ethics on a psychology website, so nice and neutral. The author of the research, Phil Zuckerman makes a detailed study of crime in faith and secular cities of the world and finds for instance that;
“Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is widespread.” He also states: “Of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries.”
Citing census data, he writes (you know, actual factual inforrmation!);
“And within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be the highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be the among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon.”
On marriage and family he used data to discover atheists in America have lower divorce rates than Christians.
When it comes to happiness Zuckerman adds;
The most secular nations in the world report the highest levels of happiness among their population.
On Altruism;
Secular nations such as those in Scandinavia donate the most money and supportive aid, per capita, to poorer nations. Zuckerman also reports that two studies show that, during the Holocaust, “the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.”
Outlooks and values;
Numerous studies, shows that atheists and agnostics, when compared to religious people, are actually less likely to be nationalistic, racist, anti-Semitic, dogmatic, ethnocentric, and authoritarian.
So there you go, some results from actual research taken from real data. Until the next time, take care!
Christianity Uncut
Browsing the news yesterday I noticed a protest at St Paul’s in London by an offshoot activist group of the Occupy movement called ‘Christianity Uncut’. Apparently they secured themselves to the balustrade near the pulpit and begun to protest and pray regarding the lack of action taken by the church regarding cuts and capitalism etc.
Being a secular humanist this just strikes me as being absurd. Church and state should be kept separate and whilst I’m all for protest against cuts and the greed of capitalism I’m not sure how being Christian makes any difference. I’m all for anybody and everyone protesting regardless but when groups get splintered or contain radical elements then you know common sense and original purpose has become distorted. When the Occupy movement staged its original protests I was supportive of them but bringing religion into the mix openly is just folly.
I left a comment on their website, which looks uncannily similar to my own but it was deleted when I checked today, even when they state on it;
“We did not take this action lightly. Christianity Uncut is committed to active nonviolence, love for opponents and a rejection of verbal abuse”.
Clearly no love for this opponent, anyone with an opposing perspective is edited off their website/blog and for the record my message was ‘Why all this drama for a fictional character?’.
My perspective is really simple, religion has no relevance when it comes to issues we face today, the church thankfully has less power than it once had so its impact as an organisation is now minimal. Church and state should always be separate. Praying doesn’t solve anything. Jesus was a fictional construct.
Girls, protesting whilst dressed in ridiculous outfits and then cutting yourself free before the police arrested you only showed lack of conviction and made you look silly. Wake up and smell the coffee, protest by all means but don’t try and foist your blinkered religious views on us whilst doing so.
Invariably
This weekend here in England it is a bank holiday, a long weekend of taking it easy, relaxing, taking a short break somewhere, drinking and generally doing what we want to with the extra time given. Bank holiday Monday began for me with a phone call from my dad who said he’d possibly broken his wrist or arm in a fall. I went around to his place and noticed the swelling and then took him to the local hospital casualty and he’d broken his wrist as suspected.
After spending a good deal of time at the hospital I got him home and settled and then thought to myself ‘the day can only get better’. A cup of vanilla earl grey in hand I sat down to relax and read the news online. One thing is for certain these days is that invariably religion or religious related news makes a regular, if not daily appearance and invariably its not good news.
The first story I came across was a report of people being beheaded in Afghanistan by the Taliban for apparently socialising together. The Taliban it would seem do not like men and women mixing socially. Why? Religious perspective of course.
The second story regarded the ongoing saga involving Scottish plans to introduce gay marriage. Pardon the pun here but it seems the catholic church aren’t taking this laying down. The catholic church sees marriage as a lifelong union of a man and a woman. Can I just take this opportunity to tell people of the christian faith that people were getting married before christianity came along, in ancient Rome and Greece same sex relationships weren’t a big deal, and why should they be? We don’t live according to biblical/Islamic law and we are better for it. Cardinal O’Brien, the head figure in the Scottish catholic church said back in March that same sex marriages are;
“A grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”
This coming from a man who represents a church that has a proven track record of its priests fucking little boys, is that less grotesque than consenting adults fucking each other?
To Be In England, In Summertime.
Last week I went into the Derbyshire Peak District, a lovely part of England, quaint villages, dramatic hills and caves that are aged around 50,000 years old (Evangelists take note!).
In The News
There’s been some interesting and sad articles in the news of late. Firstly there’s the tragic news of the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Some details are emerging and it is suspected that it may have been a hate crime going by certain tattoo’s on the killers body.
“This is something we have been fearing since 9/11, that this kind of incident will take place,” said Rajwant Singh, chairman of the Washington-based Sikh Council on Religion and Education. “It was a matter of time because there’s so much ignorance and people confuse us [as] being members of Taliban or belonging to [Osama] bin Laden,” he told Associated Press.”
