A Mass Delusion
Beginning in Sunday school or in the religious instruction classroom, worthy Christians embellish arguable stories about Jesus as if they were true. No teacher of infants and juniors stops to consider what truth there is in what they themselves know about the founder of their religion and they then compound the felony by painting astonishing fairy tales based on their own conceptions and not on any evidence. None of it matters to Christian teachers who know they are doing God’s work. Psychologically they are telling lies believing it to be God’s truth put into their hearts. Jesus himself justified it when he instructed his disciples in Matthew 10:19:
Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.
It differs from having God’s conviction that heretics should burn at the stake only in degree. A mass religious delusion has been created and given social approval. If some pious lie fits the delusion then it is all right by God and society.
There are Christian books purporting to tell the childhood of Jesus, but no one can truthfully say anything positive about Jesus’s childhood. These books seem like novels but their writers, if they claim anything, say they are writing inspired or spiritual history. Novels can be quite instructive and they are intended to be entertaining. A novel can indeed be inspiring but, however inspiring it is, it is not history. Do we “believe in” novels? Christians certainly believe in the inspiration of the spirit or the Holy Ghost. But even the inspired gospels contradict each other interminably. The Christian will consider such pious works of imagination as “God’s Truth”, if it does not contradict the mass delusion of our age. If it does, it will be ignored or decried, according to its importance.
Biblical scholars equally build themselves reputations by writing fantasies called doctoral dissertations about a few sentences of some ancient epistle, the significance of the prophet Elijah at the Transfiguration or whether Jesus ascended to heaven after a few days or forty days. Such contributions to knowledge are no different from discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a needle, the example always quoted of how enlightened we now are compared with the middle ages.
All of it is dryly accepted nowadays by Christian and secularist alike. The pious dishonesty underlying Christian belief pervades society to the extent that editors, historians, scientists and literary reviewers accept it and excuse it as tradition, if they find an excuse necessary. Practising Christians in the UK now comprise about a twentieth of the population, but every newspaper will have a “Faith” column devoted to Christian speculations. New Agers, Pagans, Witches, Druids and even Moslems and Hindus do not get this coverage yet together there are more of them than there are Christians. Most people believe in no religion, though many have the habit of answering the question, “What religion are you?” by saying, “Christian”. They run their lives with no recourse to Christianity at all. This is pious dishonesty writ small. It is a legacy of the time when any answer to this question other than “Christian” would have meant a roasting over burning faggots. Or perhaps, like the Romans, people are chary about offending a god.
Religious people will counter me by saying I am being deliberately iconoclastic. I hope I am. I find it hard to believe that, in the modern world, people still believe fairy tales, but the fact that I do not believe them makes me a less biased observer than the experts. Christians have over the years been doing what the modern apologists still do, although with rather greater vigour. Much of the evidence they did not like, they destroyed and the rest of it they altered or obfuscated. That makes it hard, today to get at the truth, and the loss of positive evidence makes speculation essential.
Christians! Consult Bishop Ecclesiasticus!
DOWNLOADS!Including PC e-books!
Check it out!
About
Short Presentation
For > 1024x768
Goddess Pages Adelphiasophism•
offsite •
local
New and
Updated
Subscribe to RSS 
![[Valid RSS]](valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
AskWhy! Books | RSS Feed
AskWhy! Books | RSS Feed
AskWhy! Books website on Christian and Jewish origins, history, faults, fallacies, and alternatives.
History and Meaning of Salvation
For the Jew, obeying the law, being righteous, saved them. A young man asked how to inherit eternal life. Jesus said without obeying the law, and being poor, he could not be saved. Christ's own life showed salvation depended on doing something, loving others and not accumulating wealth. Paul thought the law was too hard. He dropped it, making it easier to get converts, and for Christianity to spread. Paul made salvation into the mystery of God being magically obliged to save the faithful just for professing their faith in Christ!
Social Psychology of Christianity
People are not necessarily or even mainly rational in their choices. They adopt ideological belief systems, such as conservatism, that satisfy their psychology. Political choice is not merely a personal choice but is also a group choice, and group or social threats can also alter political choice. Those in such privileged positions have a motive not to want change. Why though are poor whites, poor blacks and poor hispanics conservative? The answer is fear.
E-pistles: From Paul
NEW Another correspondence with a born again Christians who again is uniquely in touch with God.
Stalin the Priest
UPDATE The Social Psychology of Christianity II on Christianity and mental illness is updated with a paragraph about Stalin's religious upbringing, and training as a priest.
AskWhy! Gadgets
NEW Some Google gadgets from the AW! website.
Messianic Hymns
NEW The messianic hymns date to the end of the reign of Herod, when the Christian messiah was born. These hymns suggest that the Qumran community had identified the Jewish messiah with God and with the suffering servant before the Christian churches had done. The church simply used already existing Essene theology.
Menehem and the Son of God
NEW The second beast of Revelation persuaded the whole world to worship the Roman empire. The Oracle of Hystaspes was being used as a vehicle to parody Augustus and the Roman empire as dragons opposed to the Son of God of the Christians. Essenes hated the Romans, yet the Essene leader, Menehem, was a "friend" of Herod. Odd? Not really because the Essenes were a secret organization. Menehem was a mole. Did the Essenes know about Roman propaganda? Menehem must have known of the poems eulogizing Augustus as a god and saviour, and been outraged by it.
Philosophy in an Evolutionary Light
Kant uses "pure practical reason" to present us with a pure philosophy of morality, but, like everyone else, uses metaphors derived from material experience to do it. Without realizing it, he ends up with the puritanical Christian assumptions he bagan with, but secularized. Cognitive studies contradict Kant's conclusions. Not only are they not universal, they are no more true than the initial Christian assumptions of a God-based morality. They are not true at all! Above all, Kant ignores all human feeling.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
The Christian and Jewish liars never cease lying. A film has been made with the title, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", by a man called Ben Stein. His film tries to make out there is an atheist conspiracy in the US against Christians. In the USA, faced with overbearing Christian intolerance, only a small percentage have the courage to say they are atheists. Yet this tiny minority of atheists, according to the film, is victimizing the 90-odd percent Judaeo-Christian majority! It is a case of the Nazi big lie method. It is Christians who are the oppressors, and this film shows it.
Dinesh D'Souza, His Critics and Admirers
Dinesh D'Souza is the latest Christian superstar apologist, and has been described as a scholar. D'Souza finds feeble arguments in favour of supernatural belief and even feebler ones against science, regurgitating the same oft-refuted lies as if they were new. Anyone with any moral principles would use their supposed scholarship to help the poor not to rob them. The rich perpetuate ignorance to keep their own advantages. Religion is the perfect scam for this. People pay to be kept poor, and voluntarily go around converting others into the sheep pen.
Askwhy Gadgets
Google gadgets available from this website. Just click the Google link at the bottom of each gadget, and collect it, if you want, from Google. You can rescale them to a size suitable for your own page, usually between about 300px and about 600px wide is right, and give them a suitable border on the Google site. Then you collect a line of javascript code to put where you want the gadget to display. Lo! Content with little effort. Google has a few myriad of these little novelties.
AskWhy! Website Popular Keywords
Click picture for a slideshow of examples…
How good a Christian are you?
True Christian History. True Jewish History.
Herein is the truth about Jewish and Christian origins based, not merely on wishful thinking (faith!), but on scientific and historical evidence, over 1000 pages of it! The clergy are lying. Some of them might once have believed their own lies, but now they have no excuse!
- Christianity Revealed!—Massive book explaining the historical origins of Christianity in the New Testament free of pious lying. Incorporates much of the Mystery of Barabbas and the Hidden Jesus and more besides. Jesus was an Essene revolutionary who captured Jerusalem 40 years before the Jewish War!
- The Truth about the Jewish Scriptures—Full explanation of how the Jewish scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, were founded by the Persian kings in the fifth century as a political weapon of mass control and its subsequent evolution and elaboration under the Greeks and Maccabees. Nothing supernatural here either!
- God’s Truth or Pious Lies?—Science and Truth or Christianity? Addresses the way that Christians believe lying is acceptable as long as it is to the glory of God and His religion, Christianity.
- Heresy, Inquisition and Witchcraft—The heyday of Christian love.
- Questioning Belief—Questions most Christians never wonder about.
- Answering the evangelist Ernest Phibber on God’s Truth.
- Discussion and Letters from Christians, mainly critical.
- OFFSITE—Goddess Pages—Magaziney series of articles on aspects of the Goddess as Nature personified and the need for matriarchy.
- OFFSITE—God or Goddess?—Essays higlighting the horror of the patriarchal god, to urge a return to the Goddess, Nature.
- OFFSITE—36 Plots—Get some ideas for creative writing from an old source updated.
- Frederick Ignatious Baines Archive Download zipped Java application (22KB).
- Frome: Home of AskWhy! Publications—Learn about this relatively unspoiled Wessex town, the cider capital of the world!
- Online Book—Dinosaurs, Extinction and Ecology—Death planet or planet of death? What caused the end of the dinosaurs? Perhaps the coup de grace was an impact but why had they been failing for centuries? Did they poison their own environment—like mankind?
Who Lies Sleeping? The Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man ISBN 0-9521913-0-X £7.99. Buy the printed version from Amazon.
- Christian History Books. Printed Book—The Hidden Jesus in Mark’s Gospel—A commentary on Mark’s gospel that relates the Jesus of the gospel to the practices of the Essenes.
The life of Jesus can be convincingly explained without recourse to supernatural inventions. The Hidden Jesus. The Secret Testament Revealed ISBN 0-9521913-2-6 £12.99. Buy the printed version from Amazon
- Printed Book—Mystery of Barabbas—Why does Barabbas suddenly appear in the gospels as the hero of the Jews when Jesus had been hitherto?
He was called Jesus. Coincidence? His surname, Barabbas, means "son of my Father"—Coincidence?
The Mystery of Barabbas. The Origins of a Pagan Religion ISBN 0-9521913-1-8 £9.99. Buy the printed version from Amazon
- BOOKORDERS—AskWhy! Book Orders—Order AW! books: The Hidden Jesus, The Mystery of Barabbas and Who Lies Sleeping? US customers, order our books from Borders.
- Analogies and Conjectures—Speculation at the fringes of history and science. Is it unlikely but, on the evidence, not impossible? Or quite likely but lacking sound evidence? Or even likely but ignored because of prejudice.
- Science—tips and papers.
- Self publishers page Aspire for you to advertise your SP book.
- Discover what happened Last year in Marienbad.
- UK Lottery picker.
US customers, order our books from Borders
These pages are for use!
This material may be freely used except to make a profit by it! Unattributed articles on this website are published and © Mike Magee and AskWhy! Publications. All rights reserved. Copyright can be transferred only in writing—
Library of Congress: Copyright Basics.
Conditions
Permission to copy for personal use is granted. Teachers and small group facilitators may also make copies for their students and group members, providing that attribution is properly given. When quoting, suggested attribution format:
Author, AskWhy! Publications Website, “Page Title”, Updated: day, month, year,
www.askwhy.co.uk/subdomains/page.php
Adding the date accessed also will help future searches when the website no longer exists and has to be accessed from archives… for example…
Dr M D Magee, AskWhy! Publications Website, “Sun Gods as Atoning Saviours” Updated: Monday, May 07, 2001,
www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0310sungod.php
(accessed 5 August, 2007)
Electronic websites please link to us at
http://www.askwhy.co.uk or to major contents pages, if preferred, but we might remove or rename individual pages. Pages may be redisplayed on the web as long as the original source is clear. For commercial permissions apply to AskWhy! Publications.
All rights reserved.
Buy From Amazon or Direct
Click the appropriate amazon.co.uk picture on the left below to link to Amazon.co.uk, or click the orderform to print and send it to AskWhy! Publications. The title link leads to the book details.
Who Lies Sleeping? The Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man
ISBN 0-9521913-0-X £7.99 (US$20&–save on currency cost by ordering more than one book. ASKWHY! ORDER FORM)
The Mystery of Barabbas. Exploring the Origins of a Pagan Religion
ISBN 0-9521913-1-8 £9.99 (US$20&–save on currency cost by ordering more than one book. ASKWHY! ORDER FORM)
The Hidden Jesus. The Secret Testament Revealed
ISBN 0-9521913-2-6 £12.99 (US$30&–save on currency cost by ordering more than one book. ASKWHY! ORDER FORM)
We are old-fashioned! We don’t want your creditcard. Send the orderform with a check or cash.
We’ve had no complaints but, if you are worried about sending money by mail, you can insure or register your letter.
Your money can’t be safer!
Blog
You can leave public comments
here on the Blog or you can e-mail from every page. The e-mail automatically gives the page being commented upon, but the Blog does not. You will have to say what it was.
News
The Grim Reaper keeps scything closer!
Download the whole site to preserve it, just in case!
Teleport is free to try.
Link Directory
Translate
Views since Sunday, 15 October 2006:
Careware
This site was designed using Arachnophilia by Paul Lutus, available for download free from
http://www.arachnoid.com
and with NoteTab Lite also free from Fookes software at
http://www.notetab.com, or a better version can be bought for a modest sum.
