A Rant on Religions, Mythology, Christianity, & God

By Alan D Griffin

​Organized religion is the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the ideas of intelligent men, women and Ideas of happiness and peace in life. Most religions consist of the same basic idea of morals and values that mankind believes they should live by. Notice I use the word idea and not belief because ideas are the thing all religions have in common and beliefs are the details and fables that separate people from each other and the basic idea that could help us live in peace .I believe that most religions started from the same source, which was a goddess culture. This goddess came into mythological existence about 10,000 B.C. in a village called Catal Huyuk in Anatolia ,Turkey. There is evidence of this goddess in southwest Asia, Asia Minor, and southwest Europe, middle America, Mexico, and Peru.

The cultural evidence of this goddess also spans thru time from as early as 10,000 B.C. to about 100 A.D. The goddess culture started to change into a god culture slowly after Semites from Syro-arabian and the Indo-Europeans began to conquer this region of Turkey and had a different set of values and believed that women were somewhat subservient to man. The goddess became the god and the myth began to change to their intent and beliefs. Some of these common beliefs reveal some version of thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, do unto others as you would have them do to you, honor thy mother and father, and these are just a few. The reason you see these same type of moral rules is that these are the type of behavior that is detrimental to a cohesive society. It is impossible to hold a society together if the people can freely steal from each other or kill each other without consequences. This is not evidence for a common morality but common sense. The problem is people have fought wars and killed each other to defend the idea that you shall not kill. People judge each other to defend the idea that we should not judge. We build temples to worship the beliefs that tell us that the temple is not made of brick and wood but lies within ourselves. Religious men especially in Christianity ask us for donations and then tell us it is better to give than to receive. I think we have lost the ideas in worrying about the belief. Therefore we become an abomination to the very ideas we believe in.

I think religion is outdated. It did serve a purpose in its own time to teach people the differences between right and wrong and for governments to use as scare tactics to make people obey the laws of the land. We have evolved and our societies have evolved to a point that we should not need to believe in a religion but in yourself to make the decision to choose what is right in your own life.

God is just a word to describe things that science and philosophy has yet to give us the answers to or things that escape our language. God is also there to scare us into doing what our ancestors believed were the right kind of behavior needed for survival of our species or specific cultural groups. So should we follow these beliefs even if it feels wrong at our deepest instincts? I believe that what is right is what feels right in our gut. We should not deny our instincts. There is a feeling that comes over you when you know that you are doing something wrong or right based on our own subjective morality. This should be the basis for our decision making not stories that have survived throughout the centuries. We should do what we know we should do to be happy. If we do not act on this knowledge for fear that an imaginary father figure, mother figure, or other personified deity will punish us and put us on an eternal "time out" will only lead you to heartache and regret.

​According to Abrahamic religions God gave us free will, which I don't believe an all- powerful, all-knowing God would have given us if he did not intend for us to use this tremendous gift to stand up for the ideas that make us who we are.

By the way God cannot be all-powerful. God may have power beyond our imagination, but everything has limits even God. God did not give us free will, it is the birthright of every living thing and
no outside force can control it not even God. The next question I will ask is considered an ad hoc fallacy But I believe that the fact I am using this argument in terms of an all -powerful all -knowing deity I believe the term fallacy does not apply in this instance. If you believe the fallacy does apply then the point I am trying to make is also proven. The question I pose is a commonly known question and is as follows: Can God create a rock he cannot move? If you say yes than God cannot move the rock, therefore he is not all-powerful. If you say no than he cannot create a rock he cannot move, therefore he is not all-powerful. Therefore nothing is all-powerful, everything has limits, but
where those limits lie is up to us and yet to be seen. The key to peace on earth is not to make everyone think the same or believe the same way, but to respect the ideas that make them who they are. I think this is the same idea as the biblical saying " judge not and ye shall not judged" another basic cultural moral we chose not to live by.

​I believe the reason the bible is a constant best seller and so widely read is that for every moral sticking point there is a moral counter point written in the same book. So if in your reading of the bible you find something disagreeable read on and you will find the ideals you are looking for. So in this way everyone will find something they agree with and something they disagree with. This would account for the many religious groups who worship parts of the bible. Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Mormons, Catholics, Church of Christ, Jews, Muslims and many other religious groups who all believe certain parts of the same book. If it is not contradictory, why is there such a division in these biblical scholars?

​I think the bible is more a work of literary social commentary from many different writers from many different times than the undisputed word of God. Most if not all of the stories and fables in the bible were taken from older stories and religions. The story of the first important Semitic emperor Sargon which was born of a humble mother in upper reaches of the Tigris. " She put him in a basket of rushes, which had been made watertight by pitch, and confided him to the waters of the river. He floated down the river and was pulled out of the river by a gardener of the royal estate. The goddess loved him and so he advanced in rank and presently became ruler himself." (Campbell 65-66) This is the same way the story of Moses begins yet this story is almost 2,000 years older than the story of Moses. Next there is the story of Hammurabi of Babylon. "Hammurabi received the laws from the god Shamash, the sun god. As Moses received the laws from Yahweh, so
Hammurabi received the laws from Shamash. Urnamu, the lord of the city of Ur, from which Abraham is supposed to have departed, also received the laws from the sun god. And when law comes from that kind of backing, it can't be fooled around with. The law was, of course, invented by Hammurabi but attributed to God. And we can say the same for Moses." (Campbell 69-71) The epic of Gilgamesh is almost word for word the story of Noah yet it predates the story of Noah. The idea of the half man/ half God savior is an ancient and widespread hero myth. The Greek and Roman mythologies are full of stories of children with extraordinary abilities that are born from a mortal woman and one of their gods. These stories are the basis of the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. Who I believe actually lived but was mythologized by adding attributes from ancient hero myths, other Jews around the first century that made messianic claims, and details added by the apostles and there direct disciples. I believe the story of Samson is an adaptation of the stories of Hercules which in turn is an adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Almost every fable in the bible can be traced back to predate itself in this way.

You should have faith in your own experiences not what is taught to
you. Evolution reflects my experiences more than creationism. In evolution everything was developed over a slow tedious process that took billions of years. In creationism God said it and then it was, this took seven days. Everything I have experienced reflects a slow process of hard work that will pay off over time and nothing that I have just wished for has just revealed itself to
me. Which one reflects your experiences? If it is the latter, please tell me your secrets.

The Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit are the biblical labels for the trinity which is the thought that there is one God embodied in three distinct personas. I believe this is a parable to describe the belief that our being is divided into compartments of mind, body, and soul. The Father represents the mind which is the part of us which makes decisions based on long and short term consequences and rewards. The son represents the body which is how we bring our decisions to reality by our physical actions. The Holy Spirit represents our soul or as I like to look at it our personality or who we actually are.
What I mean is the way other people perceive you and the way you perceive yourself. Your personality is just the culmination of all your life’s decisions and experiences which leaves you at your current perception of the world then, you portray those perceptions to others and they make a decision about you based on your perceptions of the world. In Conclusion, the mind AKA “The Father” makes the rules and determines rewards and consequences. The body AKA “The Son” puts the rewards and consequences into action. The personality AKA “ The Holy Spirit” is the way we perceive the mind and the body. Christians divided the god which they created which is the personification of ourselves into three distinct personas to better understand who we are and how to better these three compartments of being.

I believe the Idea of God comes from our subconscious mind and what lies between the subconscious and the conscious mind. The concept of God or gods act as a place holder, just as
the letter X does in algebra. Just like in algebra the X only remains an X until a more suitable answer can be found and the same can be said about the term God. God as X is the part of the brain we have not yet learned to use. In the beginning there was only the mind. God was only created by our own belief in him. God is not an overseer; he is combined into everything existing in the
universe. God changes as we change. God does not judge people we are left to judge ourselves at the end of our own lives. There is no sin if you do something totally because of your own beliefs and not from outside influences. God is only as cruel or kind as each individual thinks him to be. God is the complete balance of good and evil that each of us struggles with every day. God is every thought in every head of every creature spoken and not spoken written and not written seen and unseen since the beginning of our existence. We are all God and he is the personification of ourselves, we created him in our own image, not the other way around. Believe in yourself and the power of thought and emotion and everything else will believe in you to. God is quantum
theory, the observer. God is the possibility of limitless possibilities. Your thoughts should influence reality more than reality should not influence your thoughts.