spinbadz own

I think this is a very important point.

Now that there is finger-pointing reverberating about contradictions and hypocrisy in religious dogma, let us not forget that Islam and Christianity are both chronological offshoots of the Jewish faith.

That is, all these holy / blessed / unimpeachable ... and often contradictory ... biblical phrases harnessing for murderous purpose, from time to time throughout history, the anger and energy of the testosterone-laden were compiled and prescribed thousands of years ago.

It seems to me that the Jewish religion - whatever truths and/or contortions and/or distortions subsequently modified the perception thereof over the centuries and depending, of course, on which collared and/or bearded elderly fellow happens to be indoctrinating you - lays germane to the credibility of all.

So if we honestly analyse the key story of Moses - objectively, without fire and brimstone, on the one hand, or Dan Brown on the other - what do we come up with?

Perhaps: that we can reasonably assume - on the basis of available evidence - that there may well have been a character like Moses, or somebody like him - that is, a person (or persons) either educated in the ways of or connected to Egyptian royalty who succeeded in leading the Jewish members of the Egyptian slave class out of captivity and into a northern adjacent land.

As to other elements of the story:

- Does anyone seriously believe that there cannot be elements of profound embellishment in this biblical account of plagues, sea-partings, electrified shrubs and ozone-originating meals?

- Is it not tremendously suspicious that contemporaneous ideas, on the one hand, and philosophical ideas that had been leveraged, pondered and roundly explored by Egpytian elite up to the time of Moses, on the other hand, seem to be reflected in the Ten Commandments? To wit:

(1) the use of unimpeachable heavenly authority to achieve legitimacy;
(2) the concept of a single Creator

(This idea had already been explored and preached in Egypt, partly as a sensible antidote to inanity of the established Egyptian pantheon of idols, partly in response to the conquering armies that for centuries had always forced their own Heavenly Ruler pantheon upon the subject peoples of the continental cross-roads )

(3) the general, logical rules enabling any conglomeration of humans to function effectively together over time and survive - re reproductive units, respect for body and property et al;

(4) - and this is the most obvious sign of a human hand - the consecration of one-day-off-work-per-week (the Sabbath day) as a Ten Commandment-level religious rule - doesn't this seem suspiciously like the kind of things that a group of angry escaping slaves would just lap up?


The Ten Commandments have survived as moral bedrock over the years partly because it is a brilliant compilation of ideas.

But the biblical story behind it deserves to be taken with a few grains of Red Sea salt. So it follows that everything biblically following deserves to be taken the same way.

Have we sufficiently evolved in collective intelligence that we can begin to appreciate the brilliance of the Ten Commandments without the legitimacy trick that Moses may well have pulled to quell the queries of the plebs at the foot of the mountain?

That's the real question, in my mind.


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I thought this piece of dialogue from Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was very interesting:


"(E)verything you need to know about the Bible can be summed up by the great canon doctor Martyn Percy:

'The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.'"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Bible is a product of Man my dear. Not of the Creator. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

"Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen. As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus toppled kings, inspired millions and founded new philosophies. As a descendant of the lines of King Solomon and King David, Jesus possessed a rightful claim to the King of the Jews. Understandably his life was recorded by thousands of followers. More than 80 gospels were considered for the New Testament and only a few chosen."

"Chosen by whom?"

"The pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great."

"I thought Constantine was a Christian."

"Hardly. He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed. In Constantine's day, Rome's official religion was sun worship - Sol Invictus - and Constantine it's head priest. Unfortunately for him, a growing religious turmoil was gripping Rome. Three centuries after Christ His followers had multiplied exponentially, and their conflict with pagans threatened to rend Rome in two.

"Constantine decided something had to be done. In 325 AD he decided to unify Rome under 1 religion. Christianity.

"He could see that Christianity was on the rise, and simply backed the winning horse. By fusing pagan symbols into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties.

"Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis carrying her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for images of the Virgin and Baby Jesus. Catholic ritual elements like the mitre, the altar, the doxology and communion were taken directly from paganism.

"December 25 is the birthdate of the pre-Christian Mithras, called the 'Son of the Lord and Light of the World'.

"Originally, Christianity honoured the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan veneration day of the sun - Sunday.

"Until the ecumenical gathering Constantine arranged to strengthen Christianity, the Council of Nicaea, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet.....a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. Jesus' establishment as 'Son of the Lord’ was voted on by this Council. By turning Jesus into a deity, whose power was unchallengeable by pagans and others, followers of Christ could only redeem themselves through the only sacred channel – the Roman Catholic Church.

“The twist is this. Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status centuries after His death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. He needed a bold stroke, and from this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history.

“Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him gdlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned.

“The Latin word haereticus means ‘choice’. Hose who ‘chose’ the original history of Christ were the world’s first heretics.”


“(E)very faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes the Creator through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to literally to believe our own metaphors.

“The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief (and others), should we do that?

“Religious allegory has become part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people.”