The story of Jesus is the largest myth ever perpetrated on humanity.  Imagine, some 2,000 years ago 30 or so people (no one knows who they were or how many there were) told stories by word of mouth of a man who came back from the dead.  The stories were generally accepted by the superstitious populace who added to the Jesus stories other long believed supernatural sagas such as a virgin giving birth, miracle healings and the resurrection of the dead.

A couple of years after the stories of the Dead Man coming back to life swept through the Jewish territories,  a young Jewish Rabbi who made his living killing those who tried to spread the Jesus stories among the Jews surfaced in Israel.  Heading to Damascus, a center of belief in the Jesus stories, this Rabi claims to have had a mystical conversion.  He would no longer kill the followers of the Dead Man, he would join them and take the stories of Jesus to the far corners of the Roman Empire and eventually to Rome itself.  The young Rabbi wrote letters to far off churches in an attempt to standardize the way the formerly pagan people accepted the Dead Man.  Thousands of new believers, risking their lives at the hands of Jews and Romans alike, followed the sign of the Fish and converted to the new belief found in the Jesus Stories.

Some fifty to ninety years later, a handful of zealous believers (again – history does not know who they were) started writing these stories down for people to read.  Although there were many many stories written, including the letters of the young Jewish Rabbi, no one can name the actual authors nor have any of the original manuscripts survived.  Only fragments of copies of copies of copies exist.  But that matters little.

By the second century so many of these stories existed in so many different forms, a group of people decided to gather all the stories together.  They eliminated some of the Jesus stories because they were so preposterous that persons living during their century with their limited IQs and education could not accept them as real.  They changed other stories so they more or less agreed with the version of the Jesus stories which this group believed. Then, whenever and wherever possible, they killed the people who wrote or believed in the abolished stories.

Then in 311 CE another mysterious conversion occurred.   The emperor of Rome supposedly saw a cross in the sky just before a major battle which he won and then he took the followers of the Dead Man under his wing.  In 313 CE, the converted (he was never baptized until he lay on his death-bed) ruler realized the value of the political power held by the Dead Man’s people and stopped Rome’s barbaric harassment of them and ordered the pagan religions of the Empire be dropped and replaced by belief in the stories of Jesus.  The sign of the fish was replaced by the sign of the cross as the symbol of the new religion.  The small street synagogs of the Jesus followers soon turned into massive and opulent churches similar to where the pagans had worshiped their Gods.  The leaders of the Jesus movement took to wearing the expensive robes, jewels and finery of their pagan counterparts.  And most important of all, the former pagan Roman holidays were converted into holidays celebrating the Dead Man.

In 325 CE this same Roman Emperor called together another group of individuals who by his direction eliminated even more of the Jesus stories that had been collected.  They then rehashed, edited, and revamped those stories that remained and put them together in a book which they claimed held the only true stories about the Dead Man who supposedly came back from the grave.  The Emperor ordered all dissenters killed and many kept their mouths shut for fear of their lives.

Over the past 1500 years, people began to differ in the way they believed the Jesus stories. The first was a priest in Germany who disliked the fact that his brothers in the Faith were selling get out of Purgatory free cards to the populace.  He felt this demeaned the Jesus stories but he maintained the demonic status of the Jews and continued to persecute and kill them wherever his could.  In fact, his published articles concerning the Jews were taken up word-for-word by the Nazi Party when they started to kill Jews.  After a time, these dissimilar groups took to killing one another whenever they perceived a different group did not accept their own particular interpretation of what was referred to as the approved accounts.  So much blood has been spilled by the warring factions of these followers in the name of the Dead Man that it could fill the oceans of the world.  The killing rampage continues on into the present time. 

Now there are well over 2 billion people who believe the stories of the dead man.  They belong to over 3,000 different religious denominations spread across the entire earth.  Each claims to have the ONLY “Truth” concerning the Jesus stories;  each claims that their adherents are the ONLY ones who will go to a place to be with the Dead Man forever; and each claims that ALL other people in the world will spend an eternity in suffering and burning torment.  And this originated from spoken stories that have never been substantiated in any way and were handed down to us by a group of 30 or so unknown first century uneducated, superstitious, magic believing decedents of a savage tent-dwelling people’s aboriginal God. 

An incredible story to be sure.  The question is, why do educated people of the 21st century still believe these obvious myths of uncertain origin?  They have no more factual backing than Joseph Smith’s collection of golden plates do.  They have caused the deaths of more people, started more wars, destroyed more marriages, collected more money, devastated more families and made more people rich than any other group of myths ever foisted on a needy and naive people.

-Y

Want to bring down the National Dept level quickly without sacrificing Medicare, Social Security, Education or Healthcare?  What to fix the money crunch that forces States and Local Communities to fire policemen, firemen, teachers, and other essential individuals?  Simple.  Remove the special tax-exempt consideration for churches and other religious organizations.

Kimberly Winston reports in a Washington Post article of 14 June 2012 that Ryan Cragun, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, says we lose as much as $71 billion a year to religious tax-exemptions.  States lose an estimated $26.2 billion per year by not requiring religious institutions to pay property taxes.  Capital gains tax-exemptions for religious organizations may be as much as $41 million a year.  And U.S. clergy may claim as much as $1.2 billion in tax exemptions annually via the parsonage allowance.  All that dough would relieve a lot of money problems in our country.  Maybe we could stop borrowing funds from China.

Cragun, who specializes in the sociological study of religion, states he wouldn’t completely revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profit religious or secular organizations whose services the government would have to supply if those institutions disappeared.  As he states, “It makes little sense for a group like the Red Cross to pay taxes because what they are doing is truly a benefit to all society.  But if we took away tax-exemptions from religious organizations , would the government say ‘We really need religious-based charity, so we are going to step in?  I don’t think they would.’”

We can understand that religious institutions, like any American tax payers, want to send the government as little as they can.  But nothing?  Tom Flynn in an article in Free Inquiry magazine states, “The issue of religious tax preferment is especially relevant now because the number of Americans living outside any religious tradition continues to grow.  That underscores the unfairness of taxing all Americans to subsidize religious institutions that only some Americans utilize.”

Another related problem is brought up by Dave Bohon in his article “Atheist Group sues to Stop Special Tax-Exempt Consideration for Churches” written in The New American magazine of 3 January 2013.  Bohon says that while the IRS requires non-church and certain other affiliated organizations to file “detailed, intrusive, and expensive annual reports to maintain tax-exempt status” churches and other religious institutions are exempt from submitting such reports.  In a lawsuit filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor asks, “Why should churches be exempt from basic financial reporting requirements?  Equally important, why would churches not wish to be accountable?”  Gaylor goes on to state that being granted a tax-exempt status from the IRS “is a great privilege and in exchange for that privilege, all other groups must file a detailed report annually to the IRS and the public on how they spend donations.”  Shouldn’t churches enthusiastically do the same?

Also according to Bohon, churches continually flaunt IRS rules which prohibits churches, Christian groups and other tax-exempt organizations from imposing their presence into the election process.  When pastors or clergy support a candidate openly from the pulpit,  the IRS is supposed to yank their tax-exempt status.  This almost never occurs.

We at Table 54 feel it’s time our government suspends these special tax-exempt privileges for churches and related religious groups and uses the money collected through the IRS to help bring down the National Dept.  This is long overdue.

-Y

One of the questions frequently asked of us is what’s a typical day like in our retirement community?  Well, we’ll try and answer that for you.

People wake up at all different hours.  They go through the same morning routines that they’ve practiced all their lives – not that much different from yourself, I would imagine.  They shower, shave, dress, fix their hair, take out the dogs, watch a little TV, dose their insulin plus their other meds and then, around 7:50, they head down the hall to the dining room for breakfast.

A lot of the residents use walkers so these have to be positioned in the dining room so as not to interfere with the servers carts.  As I mentioned before, people are creatures of habit so they sit at they same table, with the same people, where they usually sit for breakfast.  I sit at Table 4 with J.  Table 54 is not set up for breakfast as not as many people show up for the morning meal.  At 8:00 on the dot, the dishwasher (usually A during the week or CJ on weekends) brings out her hot cereal cart.  From this you get a choice of oatmeal or cream-of-wheat, both served with hot milk, brown sugar and raisins if you like.  The two managers on duty walk around and serve coffee or tea.

Then the servers enter, wheeling around their carts and provide you with your choice of cold cereal or fruit (mandarin oranges, fruit cup, peaches, pears or prunes) plus liquid refreshment (orange juice, prune juice, cranberry juice or milk).   They follow this up by coming to each table and taking the breakfast order.  Today, apple pancakes, small sausages, eggs to order and toast or an English muffin could be had.  By 9:00 the servers begin clearing the tables and setting up for lunch as the herd heads back to their apartments to relax and do whatever it is they desire.

On schedule today was coffee & chat at 10:00 in the activity room.  Residents come and go as they please and partake in whatever discussion comes up.  Those who skipped breakfast stop in for the coffee.  Then at 11:00 the activity room turns into a craft room and anyone interested in crafting of any sort shows up and does their thing under the expert tutelage of A.

At noon, the Indoor Walking Group meets in the third floor atrium for a brisk walk through the corridors ending up at the elevator which they board to take them to the dinning room for lunch.

J usually comes down early for lunch and today he solved a mystery that has perplexed the members of Table 54 for quite some time. It seems that at lunch we have been missing the menu card on our table.  Someone has been absconding with them for some unknown reason.  Today, J saw lady M grab our card, put it in her pocket and walk toward the fruit and snack bar.  J intercepted her and demanded our menu back which she immediately gave to him.  After a stern warning by J not to repeat such behavior, M told J to mind his own business and shuffled off to her own table and probably forgot the whole incident.  You have to forgive M for such actions.  She’s a bit mentally unstable.

Lunch brought the guys back to Table 54 for our daily session of solving the world’s problems.  When Manager J stopped by to coffee us, we suggested that the space in front of the fireplace was better served with the comfortable stuffed couches and chairs that used to be there for residents to use.  Manager J questioned if that were done, where would residents park their walkers?  Walkers must be parked along the walls, against the posts or anywhere else where they won’t interfere with serving meals.  J grumbled something about offering valet service for the walkers and J said he didn’t have it in his budget.

Lunch consisted of roast beef, carrots, peas, small potatoes, roll, salad and lemon cheese cake for desert.  The entertainment today was A trying to stuff his dew rag cap on top of BBS’s head.  BBS retaliated by showing A more of his inane “artwork.”  He also showed it to Manager M, which led us to ponder whether or not BBS’s artwork might end up printed on place-mats at our table like management does with artwork from local grade school children.

After lunch at 3:00 you could enjoy shooting pool in the billiards room and at 4:00 residents could play euchre (a card game) in the activity room.  That brings us once again back to the dinning room for supper at 5:30, which is scheduled to be senate bean soup, a Westchester roast beef sandwich and macaroni salad.  Ice cream and various cakes will be served on the dessert cart afterwards.

At Table 54 we’re wondering if N (at the next table) is still concerned that a terrorist might one day break in and shoot the place up. She overheard our lunch discussion about students at UT carrying concealed weapons a couple of weeks ago and thought it a good idea that residents should also pack heat in case of attack.  This raised a few eyebrows at our table.

Tonight at 6:45 you can enjoy a Movie (The Littlest Rebel) in the television room if you so desire or you can partake in card playing (rummikub, or other games of choice) in the activity room.  After that it’s back to your own apartment for a snack, watching TV or writing a blog on the computer.

That about wraps it up for today.  Other events include bus trips to the local Casino or your doctors office or a local grocery store so you can pick up goodies.  Entertainment might include bingo, a visit by the local clogging club, afternoon trivia sessions, monthly story time, a visit by the wild animal guy, and many many more activities which are scheduled during the week to keep residents happy, healthy and wise.  

Good night, all.  Hope you enjoyed your visit.

-Y

The main objection to legalized abortion seems to be the Christian belief that God condemns the killing of children (if, indeed, you believe that a fetus is somehow a living child – an argument for another time and place).

This is nothing less than an outright LIE.  God not only hasn’t condemned infanticide, in the past he has actually ordered it to take place:

Deuteronomy 7

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— ² and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. ³ Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. ⁵ This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. ⁶ For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

Deuteronomy 20

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

 And did God’s chosen people carry out these outrageous genocidal and infanticidal commands?  You bet your bippy they did.  

Joshua 6

¹⁷ The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord.  Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared.

 
 ²¹ They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Don’t think that God’s attitude concerning the killing of children only extended to those outside the Jewish faith.  Not so.  Consider the Law Covenant that God contracted with the people of Israel:

     Exodus 21

¹⁵ Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death. 

¹⁷ “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.

Leviticus 20

⁹ “‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.

Deuteronomy 21

¹⁸ If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, ¹⁹ his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. ²⁰ They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” ²¹ Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

Geeze, we don’t hear you singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World.“

So how do Bible commentators, ministers, priests, teachers, etc. justify these verses in light of an “all loving God?”  Does this sound like a God of justice, long-suffering and compassion?  They tell us:

1. We can’t question the wisdom of God.  If he condemns people, they are evil, and deserve it.  (‘Nuff said.)
2. They say there is nothing in recorded history to support such events.  (It’s in the Bible, stupid.)
3. This was the ancient world.  Life was brutal anyway.  (So it was normal and moral to kill children.)
4. This was done to show everyone God was serious.  (Kill kids to prove a point?  You have to be kidding.)
5. I’ve heard that God has the right to take anyone’s life as he sees fit.  (Consider Newtown, Connecticut.)
6. God is concerned with Canaanite contamination of Israel.   (By innocent children?)
7. God was preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity.  (By killing children?)
8. God hasn’t harmed the children – they will receive eternal life.  (Oh, God killed them so they’re saved.)
9. So if the God of Islam orders them to kill Christian men, women and children that’s OK?  (No wait – wrong God.)  

My favorite is #8 – that God saved the children from growing up in the depraved lifestyle of their parents giving them eternal life.  If you apply that same logic to abortionists, their salvation rate is 100%, all the souls go to heaven – so abortion can’t be a bad thing. The children get eternal life and don’t have to grow up in this nutty, murderous world.  It’s either that or the fetus isn’t a child at all. Can we apply some reason here?

Now don’t get us wrong.  We don’t believe that abortion should be thought of as birth control.  It has its medical and psychological consequences.  In fact, we at Table 54 are neither for or against abortion on demand.  We do concur that the decision belongs to the woman involved, not some third party (be it a counselor, a minister, an estranged father, or a bad law instituted by local, state or national government).  However, we would still emphatically emphasize that if your views on abortion are based on belief in a child loving God who legislates right to life, you really should rethink your position.

 -Y

Here at Table 54 we know that many people hold the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, authored by Him through others, controlled by Him and given to his people without corruption.  This is a statement made about no other written work in the history of the world.  Is there evidence to back up such a claim?  If not, what does that say about the underlying source of Christian beliefs?  I’d like to take a look at the historical authorship of the four Gospels and Paul’s letters to see if history supports this claim.  Since the Gospel of Mark is attested by Church history to be the oldest of the four Gospels, it seems a good place to start.

Simply put, we have no written proof as to the authorship of the gospel of Mark.  The author is not identified in the work, nor is the author identified in any history outside that of the early Christian church.  And Church history ascribes Mark’s authorship as “traditionally believed to be a man named John Mark.”  Mr. Mark is said to have written the work in Rome sometime between 65CE to 80CE depending on the source of your information. 

This is not to say that we have an original manuscript of the Gospel of Mark.  We don’t.  Fact is, we don’t even have a copy of a copy of a copy of that original manuscript.  Only fragments of copies of the Gospel of Mark have been found before 300CE.  The oldest of these fragments is known as Papyrus 45 and was dated sometime between 200CE and 250CE.  Another fragment has been discovered that dates between 100CE and 150CE, but that dating is still under scrutiny. Are we to believe that in 300 years not a single change, addition or correction was made to the story?  Later facts make that hard to accept.

As far as complete manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel are concerned, you have to move up to the Vaticanus manuscript (325-350CE), the Sinaiticus manuscript (340-350CE), and the Alexandrinus manuscript (450CE)  If you’re keeping score, the earliest is dated around 300 years AFTER the death of Jesus.  Are you asking me to believe that no changes to the Gospel took place during those 300 years? 

None of these manuscript fragments help us to identify the actual author of Mark’s Gospel.  In fact, if you believe that the traditional author, John Mark, wrote this Gospel from his own experiences, guess again.  Many Bible reference books (Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, p499) claim Mark wrote the Gospel “setting down Jesus’ story as he heard it direct from the Apostle Peter.”  Of course there is no evidence of this what-so-ever.

Was the Gospel of Mark handed down without corruption?  Well, consider this:  The Gospel of Mark contains one of the greatest discrepancies of all the Gospels, its ending.  Most of the oldest complete copies of Mark stop at verse 16:8.  Later manuscripts contain three new and different endings to it.  These new endings were added to Mark at a later Time.  Scholars feel the original ending was accidentally lost or was intentionally removed by cutting the manuscript or the original author was interrupted or died before he could finish the Gospel.  Outside of that, perhaps the original author simply intended to end the story at verse 16:8.  There is no evidence, of course, to support any of these possible theories.

The ending chosen for most modern Bibles is known as the “Longer Ending” or “Apocrypha Addition.”  Twelve verses that won’t be found in older manuscripts and are written in a different style have been added.  Most Christians don’t care about this and believe them to be as reliable as the rest of Mark’s Gospel. 

Oddly enough, one of these additional verses has Jesus saying that his believers, “will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all.”  Most reliable students of the bible believe Jesus never said this.  But that hasn’t stopped a few congregations from handling poisonous snakes in their church services.  One church in particular had its minister and later his son die from the bites of poisonous snakes.

In conclusion, there is no evidence that would induce us to believe that Mark’s Gospel is the inerrant Word of God.  You may, of course, come to your own conclusion. 

-Y

One of the most bloodthirsty of Gods known to mankind issued a decree for Moses to pass on to his chosen people saying, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”  This commandment is located at Exodus 22:18 in the King James Bible.  What has been the consequences of this edict?

The accusation of being a witch comes at the end of a long hideous trail of judgment upon women starting with the pronouncements against them by the Apostle Paul and carried out first by the Catholic church and then, not to be outdone, by various Protestant denominations.  Consider the following quotes:

“Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman.“- St. Clement of Alexandria, 2nd Century CE

“And do you not know that you are an Eve?  The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too.  You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert that is, death even the Son of God had to die.”  Tertullian 160-225 CE

“Woman is a temple built upon a sewer.”  Boethius, a Catholic martyr, 6th Century CE

“To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure.”  Odo, Abbott of Cluny, 878-942 CE

 ”Nothing deficient or defective should have been produced in the first establishment of things; so woman ought not to have been produced then.”  St. Thomas Aquinas. 1225-1274 CE

Lutherans at Wittenberg debated whether women were really human beings at all.

“Of woman came the beginning of sin
And thanks to her, we all must die”  - The Bible, Apocrypha

“Because the female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men; because being formed from a man’s rib, they are only ‘imperfect animals’ and ‘crooked’ whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.”  Malleus Maleficarum, (Hammer of the Witches) by Heinrich Kramer, 1487 CE

This perception of women in the early church led to a three century witch hunt, from 1450 CE to 1750 CE, called “The Burning Years.”  One finds it odd that the trials of witches in Europe began at the time inquisition trials for other heresies ended.  Helen Ellerbe writes in “The Dark Side of Christian History:“

The process of formally persecuting witches followed the harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross- examination, the victim’s body was examined for the witch’s mark. The historian Walter Nigg described the process:

…she was stripped naked and the executioner shaved off all her body hair in order to seek in the hidden places of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his cohorts. Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of amorous relations with Satan.

Should a woman show no sign of a witch’s mark, guilt could still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the accused’s eyes. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if the inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the process.
Confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition. “Loathe they are to confess without torture,” wrote King James I in his Daemonologie. A physician serving in witch prisons spoke of women driven half mad:

…by frequent torture… kept in prolonged squalor and darkness of their dungeons… and constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious torment until they would gladly exchange at any moment this most bitter existence for death, are willing to confess whatever crimes are suggested to them rather than to be thrust back into their hideous dungeon amid ever recurring torture.

Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the stake. Since many of the burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented the victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting their tongue out. Unlike a heretic or a Jew who would usually be burnt alive only after they had relapsed into their heresy or Judaism, a witch would be burnt upon the first conviction.

How many women accused of being a witch were tried and burned at the stake during The Burning Years.  No one knows for sure.  Estimates from a low of 60,000 to a high of over nine million have been claimed.  The unknown count most likely falls somewhere in between.

“But this is the year 2013,” you say, “Surely nothing like this takes place in our modern world.”  Oh if that were only true.  The Huffington Post placed an article on their website labeled “Accused ‘Witch’ Kepari Leniata Burned Alive By Mob In Papua New Guinea.“

Now the article doesn’t say that Christians were at the center of this act of violence, but it does say that religion had it’s bloody hand in it.  The articles say the women was accused of alleged sorcery.  She was stripped naked, tortured, placed on a garbage pile, doused with gasoline and ignited.  Two graphic pictures are included in the story.

Perhaps when religion is exposed as being the root of second class citizenship for women and is finally done away with, then women will gain the equality with men that they so rightly deserve. Otherwise, it would seem the stupidity will continue for many more years.  All religions should hang their heads in collective shame for the way women have been treated throughout history.  Especially the Christian Church.

-Y

This post is in answer to questions and statements  asked/made by Chris (Townsend2.Xanga.Com) both on this blog and on his own.  His questions deserved thoughtful answers and I’ve tried to be as honest and forthright in replying to them as I could.

1.  You are arguing against something that you have no knowledge about.  Christians know something that you don’t, but instead of investigating it, you’ve made up your mind(s) that it’s false without evidence to the contrary.

Chris, unless you know me, how can you make a statement like this?  I was a born-again fundamentalist for years, a member of a Wesleyan street church dealing with dope addicts, prostitutes, cat burglars, and people released into our program from prison.  I was a house parent for men in the group and I taught our adult Sunday School program.  I have a huge library of Christian reference books and literature, all well worn from research.

2. God exists whether you want to believe it or not.

Well my friend, the idea makes sense but in execution it’s a bit lacking.  If God did exist, He wouldn’t need my belief in him in order to do so.  He would not be like Tinker Bell or Santa Claus in that respect.  However, the opposite is also true.  If God did not exist, it wouldn’t matter if you or millions of other Christians believed in him or not.  Belief does not establish the fact of existence or nonexistence.  I could list here thousands of gods who had millions of believers in their existence, but they did not exist then and no one believes they exist now.  If we take history as our guide, it would not be wrong to posit that Christianity will eventually disappear and people will replace it with a belief in some other nonexistent deity.

3. Mormons are absolutely wrong.

You speak as if you know, Chris, but you know not.  There are well over 3,000 sects of the Christian religion; each claiming to be the sole owners of “the Truth.”  Historically they have killed, maimed, and tortured each other in an effort to exterminate those believers, men, women and children, they felt were absolutely wrong.  This started during Paul’s travels and continues right up to today.  Perhaps you would like to take up the sword of Christ and exterminate these Mormon heretics?  Or perhaps they might start their own inquisition.  Can you imagine yourself in a chair facing and angry inquisitor more than willing to torture your beliefs out of you?  Historically, that is not as farfetched as it seems.

4.  Why do you spend so much time trying to disprove the Bible?

I don’t have to disprove the Bible.  It does an excellent job of disproving itself.  I have always believed that if the Bible was the Word of God than it MUST be 100% true.  If it isn’t 100% true than the whole book isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.  I simply point out things in the Bible I’ve found to be less than 100% true.

5.  Have you gained anything since you’ve started on this journey?

Freedom in my own humanity and in the humanity of others. 

6.  Since you became an atheist have you felt any better about life?

Yes, considerably.  I’m no longer living in a world where morality is set by what’s printed in a comic book.  I find it much easier to look at my fellow humans and see them for who they are rather than judge them for their actions or beliefs.  That, my friend, is such a breath of fresh air.  I could care less if someone is a Christian or a Jew, black or white, gay or straight, male or female.  I believe everyone has a right to express their opinions on any subject, just as I do AND I try to help them to do just that.  Because of the sharing of opinions with so many different people, my life has broadened by leaps and bounds.  I would never go back to the narrow views I held about other people again.

7.  Why don’t you disprove Allah or Zoroastrianism?

I don’t live in a country where Islam is the predominate religion and I personally know no followers of Mohammad.  Nor have I ever run into a follower of the prophet Zoroaster.  We at Table 54 are not trying to get people to give up their religion.  I write about topics that the three of us discuss at lunch.  We’re all over 65 years old.  There’s been a lot of water that has traveled beneath our bridges.  J was brought up Jewish.  E has been an agnostic for a long time.  We read extensively, we listen to what those around us are talking about, and we converse with people on all kinds of topics.  In our retirement home we have a minister, a college professor who taught logic both overseas and here in Toledo.  We have church members and people who wouldn’t be caught dead in a church.  We have people who are highly intelligent and people who’s minds are beginning to slip away.  Between the people who live here, the newspaper, TV, music, and movies, we have a lot to talk about.  If the subject of Islam or Zoroastrianism ever comes up, I’m sure you’ll read about it.

8.  Have you found it more interesting in the Christian religion?

Not sure what you mean by this, Chris.  I grew up in the Christian religion.  It’s the only religion of which I have been a member.  I grew up Catholic.  Then I was a Jehovah’s Witness for a while.  While in England I was introduced to Mormonism.  I was a Baptist, Lutheran, a Presbyterian, and finally a Wesleyan.  I have met and spoke with many priests, pastors, ministers, teachers, lay workers, and hundreds of people sitting in the pews of various churches.  My father was a Reformed Mennonite.  I went to Mennonite Bible School as a child for about three years.  The best church I ever attended was a small Mennonite chapel tucked in the backwoods between Perkasie and Quakertown Pennsylvania.  I went there  with my Grandmother.  The minister was a plump little guy and he had a congregation of about 20 – 30 people.  I’ve always had a lot of respect for him.  My Grandmother told me that during the depression, when so many people had no work, this man paid the mortgages of a number of people in his chapel who would have otherwise lost their homes, my Grandparents included.  That left an impression on me.

9.  How did birds develop the ability to fly through natural selection?

Well, neither J, E, or myself are naturalists or paleontologists, Chris, so anything I say here is simply stuff I heard along the way.  I’ve never doubted evolution, even when I was in the church.  I’ve read two or three books about the subject, much of which went way over my head.  Here’s what I can tell you.  If you take the position that birds evolved from small dinosaurs, you begin to see the way natural selection works here.  A typical farmyard chicken has basically the same bone structure, right down to the claws, of a velociraptor.  Feathers, it seems came about as a better way to nest their young.  Archaeopteryx followed with feathers covering the entire body which still retained its teeth and claws.  Over the years shoulders grew bigger and stronger and more able to provide the upward thrust needed to lift their bodies off the ground. Their bones began to hollow and their weight lowered.  Some became smaller in size.  All this to allow them to get into the air without divine intervention.  Why did natural selection tend towards flying?  In birds it was probably for the same reasons that led insects to fly.  Being small, the air gave them safety from larger ground animals.  It was easier to locate the food they ate, much easier than for animals on the ground.  They could find a mate more easily, especially one from a different gene pool.  The advantages of flight are many and it is easy to see why natural selection moved birds ever onward toward lives in the sky.

10.  Why have people died for this (Christian) idea?

I’m supposing you are speaking of men and women who chose to die for their faith rather than convert or give up their beliefs.  I would imagine that they did so for the same reasons men of science and medicine died for their ideas at the hands of Christian inquisitors.   As far as religion is concerned I couldn’t name one on the face of the planet that hasn’t had a martyr for the cause.  This includes many sects of Christianity itself.  Christians killing Christians who won’t change from one sect to another could be named in the millions.  The things we do in the name of God and Christ.

11.  Why am I so adamantly defending my position?

Like anyone else, I defend my positions adamantly when I’m questioned adamantly.  Usually I’m just writing about conversations that three old men are having at their lunch table.  In that respect I’m not defending anything – I’m reporting what we think and say  Sometimes I read blogs where information is stated as truth and I question it.  That is much the same as yourself I suspect. 

In conclusion, Chris, if people want to believe the earth is only 6,000 years old or they want to believe in talking snakes or donkeys, or if they want to believe some will experience bliss after death in a heaven or eternal pain and torture in a hell even if there is no way to ascertain who (men, women, children) is going where, I have no concern with that.  There are many unusual beliefs out there held by people just as sincere as yourself.  In the meantime I’ll continue to report what we at Table 54 have to say about the world we live in.  Whether that concerns a cat that found its way home from 2000 miles away or college kids who want to pack heat in school or stuff that comes up about the Bible or Christians.

Thanks for your questions, Chris.  I hope I was able to help you to understand our positions.

 -Y

J brought us a New York Times press clipping today about Holly, a four year old housecat who was lost in Daytona Beach in early November.  She turned up a mile from her owners home on December 31.  Happy New Year.

Holly traveled over 2000 miles in about a month and a half and would probably have made it home to her house if she hadn’t have been found first.  Science has no explanation for the feat.  The cat was emaciated, weak and showed signs of bloody foot pads.  There was no doubt as to Holly being the lost cat.  A chip implant in her that proved her identity beyond suspicion.

How did Holly do it?  Did she have excessive street smarts?  Could she read animal clues?  Or cars?  Or was she perhaps just a good hunter?  Science has little data on cat navigation.  Perhaps someone will get a government grant to do a study on the subject.  As far as we’re concerned here at Table 54, this is old news.  There was a popular folk song back in the sixties sang by the New Christy Minstrels called:

THE CAT CAME BACK

Meow, meow, meow

Now, just like everybody, you’ve got troubles of your own
But let me tell you, mister, of the sorrow I have known.
I had an old, gray cat that I couldn’t bear to keep.
He spent the nights a-howlin’ and he wouldn’t let me sleep.

So I put him in a box and I tied it up quite well.
I had some fellas help me and I paid them not to tell.
They put it in a boxcar, on the westbound 710.
The train pulled away and was never seen again.

But the cat came back the very next day,
Yes, the cat came back and he wouldn’t stay away.
Meow, kitty.  Meow, so pretty.
Meow, such a pity, but the cat came back.

We took him to the harbor and we put him on a ship.
We bid him, “Bon voyage,” for that oceanic trip.
The captain was obliging and glad to help us out.
They tied him to the anchor so that there could be no doubt.

Well, we heard the sad report of that mighty storm at sea.
And, though it may sound heartless, I was happy as can be.
The paper said the ship went down beneath a heavy gale
And not a single soul was left to tell the awful tale.

But the cat came back the very next day,
Yes, the cat came back and he wouldn’t stay away.
Meow, kitty.  Meow, so pretty.
Meow, such a pity, but the cat came back.

Then we gave him to a scientist destined for the moon.
The cat was used for ballast in an outer space balloon.
I guess you know what happened, that balloon is up there still.
And early that next morning, guess what came across the hill.

Meow, that’s right.

Now, everyone in town was sworn to shoot that cat on sight.
With that crazy cat around, you couldn’t sleep at night.
We even formed a posse just to hunt that critter down.
You could hear the guns a-blazin’ as we ran him out of town.

But the cat came back the very next day,
Yes, the cat came back and he wouldn’t stay away.
Meow, kitty.  Meow, so pretty.
Meow, such a pity, but the cat came back.

Here’s the moral to our story: When looking for a friend,
If you get an old, gray cat, he’s yours until the end.
You’ll never drag him off, no matter what you do.
Bear in mind this dreadful tale that we have told to you.

But the cat came back the very next day,
Yes, the cat came back and he wouldn’t stay away.
Meow, kitty.  Meow, so pretty.
Meow, such a pity, but the cat came back.

The Cat Came Back is a comic song written by Harry S. Miller in 1893 with slightly different lyrics than those sang by the New Christy Minstrels.  It has since entered the folk tradition and different variations of the title have also appeared as children’s songs.

The first commercial recording of The Cat Came Back was by Fiddlin’ John Carson in April 1924.  Other early recordings include one by Doc Philipine and “Fiddlin’ Doc” Roberts,  on November 13, 1925.

- Y

Are the New Testament and Book of Mormon really that much different?  Not if you’re comparing the eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ resurrection and the eyewitness testimony to the gold plates Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon.

According to the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus was witnessed by the following people:

1. Several women including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, Joanna and Salome
2. The 12 Disciples including Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Nathanael.
3. After being with the 12, he appeared to a crowd of some 500 witnesses many of whom were still alive in 55 C.E. when the 1st letter to the Corinthians was supposedly written.
4. Finally there is the Apostle Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus.

Points 1 and 2:  The four Gospels are attested to be written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  However there is no documented proof of this as no originals of the Gospels exist and there is no historically documented evidence that these four men were actually the authors.  Nor is there any outside historical evidence that any of these men saw what is claimed that they saw.

Point 3:  There are no names given of any of these supposed eye-witnesses in the scriptures.  Nor are any of the locations given.  This is totally unreliable hear-say evidence written by Paul who was not even an eye-witness to the events he wrote about.  

Point 4: Again, there is no historical evidence that this event occurred.  We have to take the writer of Acts’ word for it, along with Paul’s word – a man who never met Jesus, nor did he ever speak with him and, in fact, did not even know what he looked like.

Now let’s look at the witnesses concerning the translation of the Book of Mormon:

First you have the testimony of the three, Oliver Crowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris.  They claim to have ”seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man.  And we declare with words of soberness, that an angle of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true.”

Next, the testimony of eight witness, Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Joseph Smith Sr., Hyrum Smith, and Samuel H. Smith.  They claim to have seen “the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship.”

The point I would make is that we have no more historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than we do that the golden plates of Joseph Smith actually existed.  You have the testimony of those who traveled with Jesus just as you have the testimony of Smith and the people that were his friends and relatives.  If we are to believe Paul and the Gospel writers, why not believe Joseph Smith and his people?  There is no evidence or proof that either are any more reliable than the other.

However, the Book of Mormon has one thing going for it that the Bible does not.  According to the Book, the resurrected Jesus appeared to multiple Native Americans here in America, which means he appeared to people outside Israel, something he did not do according to the Bible (other than to Paul).  I’d say those people Jesus appeared to in America were not Jewish, but the Book of Mormon claims them as a Lost Tribe of Israel which I suppose makes them uncircumcised Jews.  

At any rate, I think it would be difficult to accept the eye-witness reports of the Bible while at the same time rejecting the eye-witness reports concerning the Book of Mormon.  As for those of us at Table 54, we simply reject them both.  When the shoe fits, you have to wear it.

-Y

John W. Loftus published a set of articles by various authors under the title of The Christian Delusion.  One of these articles was authored by Valerie Tarcia, PhD called Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science.  In case you’re wondering, Wikipedia describes cognitive science as, “the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes.”  Under the heading, “So You Think You’re Rational,” Valerie asks the question:

“How can tourists who’ve escaped a hurricane or plane crash believe that a god intervened while letting others drown or burn?”

Valerie’s question reminds me of the tragic event that happened in Newtown, Connecticut.  A quote from one of the articles written at the time said, “It was a very emotional scene, as parents wrapped their arms around their children, thanking God that their little one’s had survived this awful tragedy.”  Upon reading that I remember thinking, “What a horrible thing to do.  What about the children who didn’t survive?  Did God just randomly pick and choose the fortunate few or were those who survived somehow more worthy of God’s intervention than those who perished that day?”  It amazes me the way people think.

To continue to quote Valerie Tarcia’s article:

“As we learn more about the human mind, even the outrages of religious beliefs become more understandable.  We humans are only partly rational.  Bias is our default setting, and most of the distortions happen below the level of conscious awareness.  Understanding this may let us be a little more sympathetic toward otherwise smart, decent people that hold beliefs that make us cringe. 

“Christianity is a religion of beliefs.  There is no one Christian religion.  In fact there are over 38,000 sects and denominations that call themselves Christian.  Moreover each calls the way they believe, “The Truth.”  They agree that there is only one Truth, but they are quick to follow that the way they believe is the correct Truth.

“This is not something new.  Christianity started as a small Jewish sect, competing for members with orthodox Jews and other sects such as the Essene and Zealot factions.  As Paul spread Christianity to non-Jews, the message got garbled and in 1054 saw the Eastern Orthodox church split from the Latin church in Rome.  By the late 14th, early 15th century, the Roman church actually had three different popes, all claiming to be the correct form of Christianity.  The church continued to spit out schisms, including the Albigernism/Cathar, Huguenot, and Hussite movements, the response to which was the establishment of an Inquisition to root out and destroy these heretics.  

“Christianity underwent another irreparable rupture with Martin Luther’s Protestantism, which spawned countless imitators and competitors, such as Calvinists, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and so on.  Christianity, if it ever was united (and it wasn’t), became forever divided.  The immediate result of these divisions was fratricidal war between the sects which has continued into our own time.”

I could go on and on about this but it would do no good.  These are educated people that hold these beliefs. Many are college educated, lawyers, doctors, engineers and so forth.  All of them have good intentions.  But all of them will hold steadfast to their beliefs no matter who they offend or how wrong they may prove to be. And they all look to the same Bible to prove their beliefs.

– Y