On the authority of Moses

“We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer
than six thousand years the world did not exist.”
[Martin Luther (1483-1546) "Lectures on Genesis"]

The above quote is interesting for what it says about Moses, Martin Luther, the Bible, Christianity and religion in general.
The supposedly great Martin Luther is here making what he thinks is an indisputable claim that the earth is not older than six thousand years.

If I had not included the names, almost any person today, Christian or not would conclude that the author was obviously a fool, because mankind even has written history older than that.
Martin Luther in one line, has exposed the whole truth.

How could these men, whose education was not much above that of a modern five year old be looked upon as great? Neither men, both of whom claimed to communicate with god were capable of making an educated guess as to the age of the planet they live on. I would be surprised if they even knew they lived on a planet.

We can plainly see that common sense was severely lacking in these men, let alone any useful knowledge.  Yet it is often claimed that the bible contains many examples of scientific knowledge.
It is just too bad that such “revelations” were not of the practical and immediately useful kind that might have been so helpful to our primitive ancestors. After all, it took us two thousand years to understand these “revelations”, and by then mathematicians, scholars, researchers and scientists had already figured everything out the hard way.

Russian Cult Holed up in cave.

I often hear the argument that the large number of highly educated people calling themselves “believers” somehow gives credibility to their shared superstition. I disagree entirely, and here is just one example why.

Pyotr Kuznetsov, a certified (and certifiable) Russian engineer with two degrees is from a deeply religious family. He quit his job several years ago to became a traveling monk, under his new title “Brother Maxim” or “Father Pyotr Kuznetsov” depending on which one of his 29, mostly female followers you ask . He wrote a book in which he prophesies the world will end in May, and so his followers have been inspired to go underground and wait, while threatening to turn their cave into a  furnace if anyone tried to enter.

On Saturday Al Jezeera reported that “Seven women walked out of the cave on Friday after Pyotr Kuznetsov, the group’s leader and a self-declared prophet, was brought from a psychiatric hospital to talk to them.”
MOSCOW (AP) — Fourteen followers of a self-declared prophet emerged Tuesday from a dank, muddy cave in Russia after melting snow damaged the hillside shelter where they had been waiting for the world to end, officials said. After numerous cave ins the group decided that god was giving them a sign to leave their muddy, disgusting hideout leaving 14 holdouts of the original 35.

Well its a good thing Pyotr didn’t try this in Texas or they would all be spicy crispy by now. And where was he while all this was unfolding? Seeking psychiatric help of course. Wont those “believers” feel foolish when they get reunited and he says “Seriously dude, I was out of my mind when I wrote that.” At least they knew when to cut the crap, which is more than most cults can say.

The membership of all of these doomsday cults are not insane. They are ordinary everyday “believers” who follow their religion to the only possible outcome. Which is why freedom of religion must allow for freedom from religion, because I’d prefer if they burned in their hell fires all by themselves.

Rise of The Black Cube or, Resistance is futile :l

When I was a christian we were encouraged to ignore other cults as much as possible. Islam is one of the cults I ended up knowing very little about. In fact I didn’t really know it was called islam until some years ago.

I thought it reasonable to conclude though that if Christianity is a fraud, and islam is based on christianity, then islam must also be a fraud. Not to mention the historical fact that islam was at one time the dominant religion on the planet. But then it failed.

The true religion can’t possibly fail, can it?

To their credit though, while part of the world was trying out a new thing called “christianity” and its by-products “the dark ages” and burning libraries full of priceless literature, the Islamic world was actually saving books and studying them.

If islam had survived it most likely would be very different from what we have today.

This is because whenever they conquered a new land they did not, as the Christians did erase all trace of the previous culture. They preserved the work of all the great minds of the lands, and shared their knowledge with the captured territories. Even freedom of religion was allowed, and they may be single handedly responsible (in my opinion) for bringing the christian world out of the dark ages, and in to the so called age of reason.

 

Modern religions however seem to have shifted the burden of driving human advancement to the sciences. This is an unfair burden for such a small group whose work gets very little recognition from the religions, even thought they gladly reap the benefits.

It sickens me to think how far we could have advanced if science was not retarded by the christians’ “dark ages” and the real-life hell they visited on mankind.

Because the maturation of islam was cut short by its own monumental failure, it has reverted to its primitive state and is now no better than christianity. Its adherents like christians continue to follow the most insane teachings. Consider the following passage:

The only reward of those who make war against Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be murdered or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom; 005.033 [AL-MAEDA (THE TABLE) HOLY QURAN]

 

It even appears that the prophet Muhammad had a child for a wife.

[Scriptural Evidence] Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64: Sahih Bukhari [the most venerated and authentic Islamic source]
Narrated ‘Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

What could he possibly want with a six year old wife?

Aisha became Muhammad’s favourite wife, and the sexuality in the relationship was predominant [ SAHIH BUKHARI .1.270, 3:36, 7:6, 3:148, 3:149, 3:150, 7:142, IbnSa'd 1pg165 ].

How merciful. It make you wonder how closely his fundamentalist followers emulate him today, eh?

Religion’s love affair with modern science.

Many discoveries in science are claimed by religious people to be revealed in their holy scriptures. A thing cannot be truthfully called revealed if no one knows about it. Therefore if the bibles, korans etc. do reveal any advanced science then religious devotees should be the educators of us all. Yet the religious now as in the past are clearly at least as ignorant as the rest of humanity.

What the situation does reveal is that the religious are incapable of interpreting their own texts, because they do not notice these so called revelations until modern science reveals them independently.

When scientists do research it is intended to provide useful knowledge that can be practicably applied to the world and the improvement of humanity.

The religious seem to think they are in a boasting contest. They claim to be first.

But everyone must agree that modern science always has a clearer and more detailed explanation than any obscure passage in an ancient text, and only the scientific method provides us with practical knowledge of the detailed workings of the universe which is necessary to solve everyday problems.

At one time they say man’s mental capacity is a gift from their gods. At another they say we should not interfere with their gods’ creations.

Has anyone ever seen a dog house made of paper? No. That would be foolish. A paper house cannot hold the smallest of dogs. Yet we are expected to believe that an infinitely wise god built an overly elaborate home for us humans which we would not only out-grow but be able to completely pick apart within only a few hundred years.