AskWhy! Website: Presentation
AskWhy! Website: An Overview
- AskWhy Publications has been on the internet now for over ten years and has been at its present address for nearly ten. Before, we were at ukonline, which is still online. Before that at globalscape. AskWhy! is quite a big website, so here is a quick presentation to let you orient yourself.
AskWhy Publications - Adelphiasophism has been online a little shorter than AW! but has been rather in abeyance for awhile because of Saviour Shirlie’s spinal illness. Some of its pages are copied on the AW! site too, but the AS website will be freshened up soon.
Adelphiasophism
Dr M D Magee
What’s its Purpose?
- It aims to examine western religion scientifically
- It gives the history of Christianity and Judaism without superfluous supernatural assumptions
- It questions belief
- It offers truthful alternatives to religious lies
- Incidentally it offers:
- history and science
- views of Frome
- discussion—you can have your say
- art and DHTML art
- free ebooks and novelties, and hard copy books to buy.
Christianity
- The main directory contains a detailed book on the history of Christianity in 15 sections with around 150 essays on aspects of Christianity from its origins to modern times. It…
- refutes the facile Christian dismissal of the origin of Christianity in the Essenes. Few historical conclusions based on events 2000 years ago look more certain.
- tracks the growth of Christianity and the influences on it.
- highlights the Christian destruction of classical civilization in the 1000 years of dark age, and covers the church’s reaction to the growing enlightenment in the terrorism of inquisition, genocide and witch hunts in which uncountable numbers were burnt and tortured.
- brings the story into the twentieth century, showing how Hitler was a conviction Christian, and was supported by Catholics and Protestants alike, including the pope. Stalin trained as a priest.
Judaism
- Christianity is built on the sacred history of Judaism, but much of this sacred history is moonshine, and the propagators of it know it is.
- The Jewish scriptures seem to have started to be recorded when God made the universe, tracked forward through Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses and Joshua to David and Solomon. All of it is myth.
- The first king of Israel recorded in real history is Omri, a man dismissed in six biblical verses.
- Israelites were Canaanites and worshipped Canaanite gods in the Canaanite fashion until the Persians planted colonists in Yehud in the fifth century BC. That is when the bible began to be compiled.
- The Greek Ptolemies added to it, and so did the Jewish rebel kings, the Hasmonaeans. The Jewish scriptures were still being written at the time of Christ by the Essenes!
Truth
- The Truth section explains why belief in gods is unnecessary, why it persists, and how science replaces it.
- Religions began as a people’s culture—their world view—of which their belief in a particular god and way of worship was just a part. The local chief or king handed down myths and laws that he said were given to him by the god as his regent on earth. The myths and laws gave the people their sense of identity, their culture, their world view.
- Today, the human world view can only be scientific. Science is our way of finding out about Nature, and we know what is true because we only accept what works when we test it.
- It also shows how other aspects of our lives can be explained scientifically, like truth and morals, and how beliefs of all kinds without foundation are simply scams.
- Some of the false claims of Christianity are also discussed.
Adelphiasophism
- People like to have a world view, and those without one have actually found their own from their intellectual and living experience. For those who think religion has to be about gods, Adelphiasophism is one that is based on Nature, science and society:
- Nature is the Goddess because Nature gives birth to things, she does not make them like the potter of the Patriarchal religions
- The goddess is discoverable—science is the method that allows us to learn about her
- Humans are social animals not solitary ones, and we have to live in society to be human. Laws and morals are rules for social living, rules that are pointless for people living isolated lives.
- The point of Adelphiasophism is to be saviours, not to be saved. Our bible is simply not to offend the earth directly or indirectly.
Questioning Belief
- In the Questioning Belief section, particular questions are addressed in brief. Among them are:
- The answers are short and succinct.
- The aim here was to have a long list of simple answers to questions Christians think are thorny.
Analogies and Conjectures
- The Analogies and Conjectures section is a slight digression into some New Agey types of beliefs, and some plausible but controversial ones.
- Among the topics are:
- Spontaneous Human Combustion
- the Canaanites in America
- Kaspar Hauser
- the Thera Eruption
- the Black Death
- modern secret history
- the Gunpowder plot.
Novelties and Diversions
- Other sections are really diversions, but try to retain some of the themes of the whole website. Check out:
- Downloads , mainly e-books of parts of the website
- DHTML art , making use mainly of the skill of ge1doot to put over simple messages concerning the website’s themes.
- Chomskybots play with the superficial sense it is possible to get from random sentence programs, bibble and Bishop Ecclesiasticus giving you a sermon showing how simple people can be impressed by what they cannot understand, but which is meaningless in fact.
- You can take the Christian suitability test.
Epistles
- This website invites discussion, and in the Epistles section some of the more interesting e-mail exchanges are published.
- There are about a hundred entries.
- The next page of this presentation explains several ways of commenting on the pages.
- Though Christians must find these pages controversial, they rarely comment here—probably because mainly they refuse to read them!
Feedback
- Several methods of feedback are offered, though Christians do not often use them:
- Every article has at the bottom of the page a javascript e-mail link which brings up your e-mailer, if your system is properly configured, with the relevant page already identified so that the comments are in their proper context. Mike will answer most e-mails and might published them online if they are interesting and relevant.
- The Home Page has a link to Mike Magee’s WordPress blog where comments can be placed publicly.
- Bravenet provides a discussion Forum, hardly used at all by readers of these pages.
- More used but still not much is the Bravenet Guestbook, not for long contributions, for which the other methods are more suitable.
Hard Copy Books
- Three hard copy books, from which some of the content of these pages has been taken, are available for purchase from AW! Publications.
- We need to have payment by check or bankers order first, but dispatch the books by airmail immediately the checks are cleared, so they should be delivered almost anywhere in the world within about two weeks.
 Support independent publishers and writers snubbed by big retailers. Ask your public library to order these books. Available through all good bookshops. Click LOGO for orderform. Click LINK to view description. | ||
 Who Lies Sleeping? The Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man ISBN 0-9521913-0-X £7.99 |  The Mystery of Barabbas. Exploring the Origins of a Pagan Religion ISBN 0-9521913-1-8 £9.99 |  The Hidden Jesus. The Secret Testament Revealed ISBN 0-9521913-2-6 £12.99 |
| © All rights reserved | ||
Frome
- AW! Publications books are despatched from Frome, heart of the ancient Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and here is a page devoted to Frome and its surroundings with articles and pictures.
In Summary
- These pages show that a modern world view is much superior to the ancient savagery of Judaism and the slightly less ancient hypocrisy of Christianity
- The ancient beliefs are shown to be frauds, or at the very best, badly misunderstood, but both are now increasingly clearly seen in the light of history and science.
- No good reason exists for anyone to believe what is untrue and always has been, and that cannot be made true by 2000 years of lying.
- Instead we can see why we have morals and laws, that the planet is not inexhaustible, and, if we care for our children and theirs, that we must work properly and consciously to save the world and our own society.
- Askwhy! Pages are archived at Wayback Machine