Wednesday, November 01, 2006

THE RESULT OF THE DUALITY OF “GOOD VS. BAD”: Inventing Gods in the Image of Man, Part Two

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From a site visitor: [Received 22 October ‘06] "You quoted Maharaj today. If he really said what you said he said, he basically said that god is just an illusion made up by man. He’s wrong if you believe him you’re wrong.”

F.: The consideration offered yesterday was this:

If you are going to defend your concepts about god, have you taken the time to study the history of religion and understand the genealogy of your current “god”?

YOUR GOD’S GENEALOGY
How is it that I can recount your god’s genealogy for you? How can I provide accurately the details of the events surrounding the invention of the first gods, and how can I report the details of the chronology that explains how your current god evolved from those early gods? It's simple: I was there before all the gods were. I was there before the inventing occurred and as the inventing occurred. I was present to witness every step of the evolutionary process from the first god being dreamed up by humans to the currently-popular invention of the god of Abraham. I AM the witness to it all.

Here is what I witnessed: the earliest gods that were invented by humankind were female, an outgrowth of a child’s natural tendency to worship one’s mother. That mother-child link connecting “creation” and “worship” and “dependence on the creator” and "being sustained by that creator" was the basis from which the first god-theories sprang forth. In ancient Egypt, the gods they invented had human bodies with animal heads to distinguish gods from men. Their worship was of a “mother god-creator-sustainer” triad. From those roots of the “good gods” (which they claimed create and sustain “good people”) also evolved the duality of “bad gods” (that is, gods that are in charge of the evil in the world). The invention of that set of bad gods followed the dreaming up of the duality of “good vs. bad” and followed belief in the concept of “bad people” who are driven by the “bad gods” and who need to be punished by the “good gods.” As a result, for thousands of years, people were taught to believe in multiple gods, including a God of Creation, a God of Sustenance who cares for the “good people,” and a God of Destruction that destroys and punishes those who are “bad.” Here are some sample myths dealing with those three:

CREATION GODS
Creation myths were dreamed up by men and the tales were spread as people began migrating across the planet. One of the earliest creation myths (which was told thousands of years before Moses was even born) taught this:

In the beginning there was an empty darkness. The only thing in this void was a bird that laid a golden egg and from it rose Eros, the god of love. One half of the shell rose into the air and became the sky and the other became the Earth. That god gave a name to all the things in the universe and then made a man and a woman fall in love. They had children and eventually rivalries sprang up in their family. Later, one ruler was killing all the children, but his wife hid their youngest child and saved him by wrapping a rock “in swaddling cloths” to make the father think that was the child.

All of the writings of Moses and all of the tales of Abraham—which gave impetus to the development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam—can be seen to have been plagiarized from the earlier pagan tales. Moses included the original myth’s storyline about a ruler killing children and inserted himself into the action, explaining how he was wrapped in cloths and hidden and thus saved from the slaughter of the children. Other parts were plagiarized from earlier pagan myths: the tale of a god who had a magic staff (and who led his imprisoned people through the desert and to a land of freedom) was being told by pagan priests 500 years before Moses was born. When Moses began his writings, he merely inserted himself into the god role of that old tale and then he was the one with the magic staff leading Jews out of captivity…a captivity that is not mentioned even once in any historical records of that day.

Also, Moses repeated in his writings the elements of the ancient creation myth referenced above, a myth that had been circulated for thousands of years before he was born: he spoke of “in the beginning” and “the darkness” and “the void”; he incorporated that first god who named all the things in the universe; he integrated into his writings the storyline from the ancient myth about the first man and woman and the rivalry that developed in their family. The early myths were dreamed up lies and no one today believes in those earliest versions of tales told within the earliest pagan religions; yet billions across the globe now believe in the versions of those same myths that were simply retold in writings that are now taken to be “holy.” To the person who wrote the e-mail being responded to in these postings, it is those plagiarized versions of ancient myths that you now take to be “the gospel truth.” You have been fooled.

SUSTENANCE GODS
Demeter was the great Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain, and bread, the prime sustenance of mankind. She also presided over the foremost of the Mystery Cults which promised its initiates the path to a blessed afterlife. All notions of gods, or a god, that sustains his “children”—the people on the planet—are outgrowths of that first concept of a sustenance god who can sustain you now and can also save you for an eternal afterlife.

DESTRUCTION AND PUNISHMENT GODS
Nemesis was an early goddess of punishment or revenge. Similarly, HAIDES, a.k.a., Aides, Aidoneus, or Hades, was the King of the Underworld, the god of evil and death and the dead. In Hebrew, the word “satan” meant “the enemy of man,” typically used to refer to ego until the Council of Nicea met. There, “satan” became translated as “Satan,” was described as a most evil being, and was given the attributes of a set of horns and a tail...attributes borrowed from ancient mythological gods. From that, the Judaeo-Christian gods of duality were invented with one “god of good” and one “god of bad.” (That left the term Hades free to be used to name a geographic place dreamed up by men, just as all the early pagan gods were dreamed up. Few Christians are aware that Christ referred not to “Hell” but to “Gehanna,” the fire pit where all refuge in ancient Jerusalem was disposed of in the “eternal flames” that guards kept burning, 24/7. They also ignore that fact that he said that “no one shall every see a kingdom of heaven—that heaven is within.”) With the stories about those three gods having circulated for thousands of years, the stage was set for Moses and Abraham and the New Testament writers to invent a new god that would be a combination of those three types of mythological gods all combined into one.

EVERYONE IS AN ATHEIST
As Richard Dawkins points out, everyone today is an atheist: no one any longer believes in Eros, Zeus, Demeter, or Haides. In years past, anyone not believing in Zeus, for example, would have been persecuted, rejected, scorned, tortured or killed by the religious faithful for denying the existence of that god. Today those who do not believe in those gods are labeled intelligent and informed, aware that the concept of a god is an invention, just as Maharaj said. Yet the masses, including the site visitor who disagrees with Maharaj's pointer, are being fooled. Most who do not believe in the pagan gods do believe in the newer version of the ancient mythological gods. Today, most believe in the god that is nothing more than an invention...a combination of three pagan, fictional gods that have now been rolled into one. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]

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