FLAT EARTHERS!

Right wing fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 7000 years ago and that there is no such thing as evolution. I lot of the really "die hard" (sorry Bruce!) adherents even still believe that the world is FLAT!!!

Are they idiots? To put it very bluntly and crudely......... Yes they are!

BUT! They aren't the only ones kids, NOOOOOOO SIR!

The Koran can fuck-you-up just as bad as the Bible any day of the week!

Here is a Muslim religious guy and a Muslim scientist with an opinion on how the world works............ and there ain't no difference between them and what we get here in the the Christian world. Nope!



Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

The Plain Truth About Jesus.

I first started researching Biblical lore in the late 1990's and published my book "The Plain Truth About God"@ in 2002.



The Bible, Jesus and Religion in general have been in the public eye for a few years now, helped along by such works as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and it's rip-off "The Da Vinci Code."

Here in Canada, Macleans Magazine is comming out with an article on Jesus this week and it is interesting enough that I am going to reproduce it here for anyone in Europe or elsewhere who might not get the story!

Guest Post by Brian Bethune; (I wonder if he is related to Dr. Norman Bethune?)

The article is rather long but will be well worth the read!

"Whom do men say that I am?" Jesus's own query to his disciples, asked in the oldest Gospel (Mark 8:27), has always been the ultimate question of the faith founded in his name.

The answer has determined everything from core doctrine to the authority of the clergy.

Even during his lifetime, Jesus's followers had differing answers: he was a rabbi with a new approach to Jewish law; he was the rightful claimant to the throne of David.

After his death, it took more than three centuries of often violent contention, suppression, and historical contingency before answers emerged that still define mainline Christianity: Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God and the Virgin Mary, both fully divine and fully human; crucified for our sins, he rose from the dead and will come again to judge humanity.

Orthodoxy's victory has never been final, or else there would never have been an Inquisition.

Still, reinforced by church and state, and by belief in the New Testament as an exact account of events (the "Gospel truth"), the concept of the divine Christ, our Lord and saviour, became embedded in Western civilization.

That legacy still dominates Western responses to Jesus today, affecting not just what the faithful proclaim, but the attitudes of Jesus's secular admirers.

But over the past century, historians, archaeologists, textual and linguistic scholars in a steadily more secular West, unable to accept the miracle-working Christ of tradition, have uncovered the all-too-human way in which early Christians hammered out their dogma and holy scripture, recovered startlingly unfamiliar texts — such as the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, in 2006 — held dear by the losers in the long-ago orthodoxy wars, and arrived at new interpretations of Jesus based on the context of his life, his essential Jewishness and the socio-political unrest of first-century Palestine.

For large swaths of the devout, little has changed.

Fundamentalist Protestant churches — so-called because of their fundamental principles, one of which is insistence that the whole of the Bible is the literal word of God — looked hard at what was happening in the modern world and refused to yield an inch to modern science or Biblical scholarship.

Other churches, like the Orthodox or Roman Catholic, who possess a body of tradition to buttress their scriptures, are open to viewing, and reviewing, parts of the Bible — particularly in the Old Testament — while holding fast to the divine Christ of the New Testament.

Their Christ too remains an exalted figure; as does, ironically, the Jesus envisaged by so many scholars: Biblical experts have tended to feel (as much as think) that Jesus must have been a great moral teacher — and even a pioneering feminist — so incandescently holy that some of his disciples turned him into a god.

In Vancouver writer (and Greenpeace International co-founder) Rex Weyler's new survey of the latest research, The Jesus Sayings: The Quest for His Authentic Message (Anansi), for instance, (See also "The Jesus Tapes, in my book The Plain Truth About God")) Christ emerges as a revolutionary sage, a man for the ages whose "words and deeds are sublime."

Even in "How Jesus Became a Christian" (Random House), by Barrie Wilson, a religious studies professor at Toronto's York University — which is primarily concerned with arguing that St. Paul and later "Christifiers" hijacked Jesus the Jewish rabbi through a campaign of anti-Semitism — Jesus still emerges as "a teacher of great insight."

But despite the common celebration of Jesus Christ, a chasm exists between the devout followers of the divine Christ and the seekers of the Jesus of history.

Into that chasm falls the liberal church, according to Gretta Vosper, author of With or Without God (HarperCollins), a passionately argued case for a post-Christian church.

Vosper is pastor of West Hill United Church in suburban Toronto and a leading Canadian voice in progressive Christianity, on the radical edge of what is already the most liberal denomination in Canada.

The liberal Christian church, Vosper writes, is the original wellspring of the recent tradition-destroying Biblical scholarship, and it's liberal churches that have wrestled most painfully and — in a very real sense — least successfully with the implications of its discoveries.

Committed to the ideals of Biblical study and scholarly truth, but devoted to their own religious traditions, the liberal churches were unable to either turn their backs on modernity or to embrace it fully.

So liberals tried hard to turn the now shaky parts of the Gospels (the miracles, for instance) into metaphors, Vosper writes, in order to keep time-honoured creeds and ritual superï¬cially intact.

A conspiracy of silence about beliefs also played, and still plays, its part, she adds in an interview: "The liberal clergy have an unspoken covenant with congregants — you say nothing and we'll say nothing.

If the clergy do speak about their disbelief in basic doctrine, the result is often a lot of pain, up to job loss and even breakdown. There is no place of safety for them."

The result has been a mess of compromised integrity — "if 'Jesus is Lord' really means 'love is supreme,' why not say that?"

"We have all watched the gaping wound on the right grow as those who want the 'truth' laid out for them more clearly have left for more conservative denominations happy to give it to them," she notes. "But the wound on the left has gone unnoticed and has hemorrhaged into nothingness as religious quests have become spiritual quests unconnected with church."

It's beyond time for liberal Christianity, whose heritage and responsibility this all is, to act, writes Vosper. "Those who recognize the Bible's claim to be the word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby," are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater.

And that means, besides other painful changes, a real, radical look at the words and deeds of the faith's central figure.

Half a century ago in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, speaking from the perspective of traditional Christianity, warned those who were busy stripping Christ of his divinity (while attempting to keep his moral authority) that the task couldn't be done.

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher [but] a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg," he wrote. "He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Traditional Christians would agree; substitute, in the last sentence, the words "the authors of the Gospels" for "he," and so would almost everyone else. For the ruthlessly edited New Testament is forthright about its agenda: detailing the transformation of Jesus of Nazareth into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

What you take from Scripture depends on how you read it.

For Lewis, who accepted the historical accuracy of the Gospels, if not the whole of Biblical inerrancy (such as the six-day creation in Genesis), Christ is not just the prophet of the Sermon on the Mount, and the healer of the sick.

He is also the figure who utters the New Testament's truly terrifying statements about eternal life and death.

It was Jesus who promised to separate humanity into sheep and goats, shepherding the former to heaven and casting the latter "into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25: 41).

It was Jesus again who said that on Judgment Day, even some who preached in his name would hear the words, "I never knew you, depart from me." (Matthew 7: 23)

Such a figure, in Lewis's opinion, were he only a mortal man, could rightfully be judged mad.

But modern historians sweep all that away, along with the miraculous elements, including the whole of Jesus's childhood.

No virgin birth: it's found only in two Gospels, they point out, and it's clear that St. Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament, had no time for the idea.

No wise men, no heavenly choir of angels at the stable manger, no debating the elders at age 12 — all of it retroactively applied by his followers.

More crucial losses are words claimed as Christ's own.

A decade ago, the Jesus Seminar, the most famous (and notorious) group active in Biblical criticism, using comparative history and textual analysis, ended up being sure Christ said less than a fifth of what was attributed to him.

Members rejected verses where Jesus referred to himself, particularly in an exalted way, such as, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), and verses reflective less of his teachings and more of struggles to control the nascent church after his death: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:17).

And since the seminar was convinced Jesus did not preach an imminent, apocalyptic end to the world, but instead a message about how to establish the kingdom of God on earth, the rejected 80 per cent of his sayings also included all the judgmental declarations.

Not all scholars are in full agreement with the seminar (some fundamentalist organizations, unsurprisingly, have referred to it as "a tool of Satan"), but the broad outlines are widely accepted in the field.

Weyler's reconstruction of the authentic Jesus essentially follows those lines. His primary sources are what some scholars define as the oldest versions of three "collections": the Gospels of Mark and Thomas, and the Q sayings.

(The Thomas text, the jewel of the treasure trove of Gnostic Christian writings, found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, was rejected by the orthodox 1,600 years ago, but the 114 pithy and often cryptic statements in it, attributed to Jesus, have made it a favourite among historians. Q is a hypothetical document, a lost collection of sayings assumed to explain the material common to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew that did not come from Mark's Gospel, their other main source.)

The "radical, Aramaic-speaking, Jewish Jesus" who emerges in Weyler's book makes no divine claims, requires no supernatural beliefs on the part of his hearers, and demands action now.

The poor, Christ would tell his audience of peasants and day labourers, were fortunate to be suffering, for that brought them closer to the kingdom of God.

The rich, especially the temple elite obsessed with rote purity, are far from God.

Seek his kingdom within yourself, don't worry about food or clothing, accept your daily bread and share it, love your enemies, forgive others as you wish to be forgiven: God's kingdom is here, now, for those who have eyes to see.

Although many historians would not find Jesus's message as radical a break from the past as Weyler does, in his intense Jewishness, Weyler's Jesus fits comfortably with the historical figure now envisaged by almost all scholars.

What kind of Jew is an entirely different matter.

More than a decade ago, John Dominic Crossan, one of the most prominent Roman Catholic experts, noted no fewer than seven distinct types of Jewish Jesus, ranging from political revolutionary to charismatic seer.

More, including Weyler's Galilean peasant preacher at odds with the Judaism of Jerusalem's Temple elite, have emerged since.

Many of them are much more worldly than Weyler's, and just as novel.

Consider the head of the "family firm" who emerges in James Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty. (2006)

Traditional Christianity has always had trouble with Christ's "brethren" — James, Joses, Simon, Judas and unnamed sisters.

Orthodox Christianity accepts the brethren as step-siblings, the children of Joseph's first marriage; Protestants take them as half-siblings, the children of Mary and Joseph born after Jesus, the son of Mary and God; Roman Catholics, who proclaim the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity, have to view them as cousins.

Every time they appear in scripture identified as family, the Gospel writers stress they are not among his followers.

That means they have to gloss over the fact that St. Paul writes that the risen Christ appeared to James, and that James — Jesus's oldest male relative in a family-dominated society — took precedence over all other followers and became leader of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem.

In Tabor's family saga, Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist considered themselves to be the two messiahs: John as a descendent of Moses's brother Aaron, was to be the new high priest; Jesus, the descendent of King David, the new king of the Jews.

His brother James was more than Jesus's heir, he was the "beloved disciple" of the Gospel of John, commonly reckoned to be John himself by most Christians. (although Mary Magdalene is the favourite as the "beloved" of Da Vinci Code fans and many feminist theologians)

And Jesus's other brothers, far from rejecting his mission, are actually hiding in plain sight among the lists of apostles.

Jesus's Jerusalem followers were the original "Christians," although Barrie Wilson would argue they would neither recognize nor accept the name.

Now commonly called Ebionite Christians, from a Hebrew word meaning "poor ones," they were Torah-observant Jews as well as followers of Jesus, who regarded him as a human messianic prophet but not as divine.

Their concern, embodied by James — known as "the Just" to Jews as well as Christians — was to live rigorously ethical lives. And, under the rule of the "royal" family, they were the dominant strand among the Jesus movement, even while Paul tirelessly travelled the Mediterranean converting Gentiles.

Most scholars argue it's impossible to know what path Christianity might have taken if the Jerusalem church had not become caught up in the greatest cataclysm ever visited on the religious traditions of ancient Israel.

When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 CE, the Gentile church began its ascendency. By the second century, the forces of orthodoxy began to turn on the Ebionites, and by the fourth century they disappeared from history.

In current scholarly trends, Jesus emerges as ever more Jewish and ever more human — a teacher, a rabbi, a claimant to Israel's ancient throne — who was transformed by Paul, a preacher of genius, in cultures far from his Jewish roots, into the divine saviour of mankind.

But crucial as these claims are for orthodox Christians and for the scholars and writers involved, they are increasingly irrelevant for progressive Christians.

They long ago lost their stake in the divine Christ, and their interest in which of the evolving paradigms best captures the historical Jesus is fading.

When Gretta Vosper looks at the emerging historical Jesus she sees no rock on which to erect a church. "In trying to capture exactly what he said, we have found, quite by accident, that what he said has little power."

But when she weighs up the Jesus legacy in terms of its validity and usefulness for the church today, she considers the entire Gospel tradition — not just the Jesus meek and mild of the scholars and spiritual seekers, but the divine Christ too.

It's all part of the Christian heritage in her view.

If the liberal church is going to refuse to face the implications of its own beliefs, then what matters is what is in the Bible, what has been proclaimed truth for centuries: "If we say we follow Jesus without clariï¬cation, we allow the assumption that we agree with all of his ideas, including the bad ones."

Looking over the New Testament, Vosper notes numerous bad ideas, some of them deep within Jesus's core message.

His teaching about love and forgiveness long predate him, within his own Jewish tradition and without.

And those are the helpful parts of his beliefs, which, Vosper argues, mix freely with parts liberal Christians no longer accept: no divorce, hell, eternal punishment.

He taught acquiescence in oppression, "a stance not at all helpful in ending slavery, racism, patriarchal hierarchy, and so on."

There is disdain and derision for those who don't agree with him, "but I suggest that we now hold dialogue, diversity and community as higher values."

Living without care for the future, keeping all assets in common, giving all we have to the poor, are other key parts of the authentic teaching as identified by Weyler and others.

That utopian idealism was perfectly natural to the hopes of an oppressed peasant society, Vosper writes, but humans have never managed to put it into practice, and surely never will.

To try to act that way only serves "to abdicate the responsibilities we have to one another — conscientious, ethical oversight of our resources is a more prudent and potentially beneficial response."

In short, "Jesus's moral teaching is not outstanding," and it's impossible to craft a moral high ground from his life, works and sayings: "His words are dead to many people. The world has changed. The words don't make sense any more."

And they aren't necessary. "Why do we need a 'revolutionary' voice from two millennia ago to guide us? We have fabulous ideas of our own, that are constantly weakened by having to tie them back to Jesus and Scripture.

What if he was recorded destroying his environment, would that mean we'd no longer need to be environmentally sensitive, or have to ignore the environment?"

Vosper isn't so much prepared for the obvious questions she faces as inured to them.

She's often asked, with various degrees of incredulity and indignation how, in the name of God or Love (if she prefers), she can call herself a Christian.

Because, she replies, her Christianity, like that of the Ebionites, is more a way of acting than a way of belief. "Being a Christian is about taking out of my faith tradition those things that are of value in my effort to live right with myself, with my relationships and with my planet," Vosper says. "And removing those things that are toxic."

Nor is the name essential, at least to Vosper personally, except that maintaining the word Christian is encouraging for other non-theistic churchgoers. "People are hurt by being told they're not Christian: our 'beliefs' are so fundamental, even when we don't really, literally believe them, that we don't want to be told that we don't belong."

Vosper doesn't "want to tear anyone's faith out of their hearts," and doesn't want to see that happen to progressives either.

Three years ago, after her views became known to the wider United Church, a motion was introduced at a meeting of the church's governing body to subject her to what she only half-jokingly calls a "heresy" trial.

She escaped a trial only by a vote of 14 to 11.

She wouldn't be surprised to undergo an actual trial this time around, after "With or Without God" arrives in bookstores this week.

In the very broad United Church, clergy are expected to be in "essential" agreement with the articles of faith, "and this book," she says gingerly, "will establish just how elastic that agreement is."

Vosper doesn't seem unduly concerned with the prospect of trial or with the possibility of losing, except for what it would convey to others she cares about: "Saying that I don't belong is saying that my supportive congregation doesn't belong, and that would be tragic."

Her reaction to the possibility of effective excommunication is bound up with her answer to the other question frequently hurled at her: why bother? If there's no divine Christ, no miracles, no salvation, no life after death, no God — what is the point of church at all?

Part of the answer is practical. "Because we are killing each other and the world," she says matter-of-factly.

"Because we have the means to do something about it — churches have so many outlets, no other single organization can disseminate important messages like the church can." Or provide, in Western culture, the sense of community that churches can offer.

And because she does not want to abandon the field to fundamentalism.

Not many Christians will be able to follow Vosper down her path, even if they are conscious of the problem she's attempting to solve: reconciling a religion of revealed truth and sacred scripture grounded in 2,000-year-old experiences, with all humanity has learned since, not just about the natural world, but about the human roots of that faith.

Most will not even accept Vosper as a fellow Christian. But there is no denying the problem she identifies is real for many.

Millions of Christians are satisfied with the balance of faith and reason in their religion, or unconcerned with it, but millions of others remain in church only by wilfully severing head and heart.

Those who cannot do that, or cannot any longer, will continue to seek a way out.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

To sin..... or not!

O.K. kids, gather round! Today's lesson is on how to read the bullshit detector properly!



We are going to give you some statemnets from this web-site and all you have to do is determine whether it is the "God's honest truth!" or a bunch of crap. Ready? Go!

- Peter Atkins, professor of chemistry at Oxford and an atheist, said that man is ‘just a bit of slime on the planet’. He believes it’s scientific fact that we evolved from pond scum. That’s hardly the stuff to inspire us with purpose and sacrifice......... ‘Now I realize why I’ve been depressed for so long’, a man with dishevelled hair, baggy clothes and unkempt beard told me one evening. He said he had always accepted evolution was a fact. That night he realized that this evolutionary belief was the reason for his dark despair and feeling of emptiness. All this illustrates why creation is not an academic issue. Your understanding of where you have come from impacts the way you live now, and that affects your destiny. The truth is that evolution is not scientific fact. In Creation magazine we show how the scientific evidence supports creation.

- The more that science discovers about the living cell, the more the evidence supports creation by an intelligent designer. In fact, more levels of complexity in the design of DNA have now been identified, further supporting an intelligent designer. It’s so amazing that it is breathtaking. Design in the world, of course, has always pointed to the reality of God. Romans 1:20 says: ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen.’ Examples of design are too many to count: the mantis shrimp the monarch butterfly, marsupial pouches, and the amazing abilities of squirrels. All these testify to the hand of the supreme intelligent designer. But who is the designer? Science cannot answer these questions, but the Creator has spoken to us through his prophets and given us the answers in the Bible.

- Believing the Bible is not a matter of blind faith. There’s lots of evidence for its reliability. Archaeological discoveries confirm the Bible’s historical accuracy. Gold discoveries support the biblical timescale. Dinosaur fossils support the account of the global Flood in the Bible.

- One lady I know of, Brooke, really struggled in her first year as a Christian. ‘I would be a passionate Christian on Sundays, but when I started thinking about creation against evolution I would find it hard to believe in God during the week. It was like a yo-yo between believing and not believing.’ Things changed when she learned about the scientific evidence for creation and realized she could trust the Bible. Brooke said that it helped her find her feet—and her wings. That’s the sort of stuff that Creation magazine deals with.

- The reason men rape is because of Original Sin. This very easily explains rape, but because you're an unbeliever, you have no real answer as to why rape is wrong. In your free will, everybody-decide-for-himself-what's-right-or-wrong view, by definition, means that there is no transcendent, absolute argument against rape or anything else.

- But, I'm not talking about just 'religion.' I'm not a religionist. I don't believe 'religion' saves anybody. 'Religion' is something people babble about and praise when they don't know what they are talking about.' Religion' isn't, necessarily, good or bad. It depends on whether you're talking about a true or false religion. Again, please, forget 'religion'. I'm not a religionist. I'm defending Christianity.

- The Bible makes it clear that death is the penalty for our sin. In other words, it is really our fault that the world is the way it is.

- We all inherit this propensity to evil because of our descent from Adam.

Now bunky, comes the results; If you marked all these as being bullshit, go to the head of the class! If not........... back to the confessional!

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

The BOOK!

I ran across this article on the weekend and it deserves reading for some of the statistics they have compiled on religion. (I am one of the 72% who believe in God but don't like church!)

Tuscaloosa News, Guest Post by Sarah Bruyn Jones'

A majority of adults who don’t attend church say they believe in God, but they have other feelings about the institution of church.

A recent U.S. survey of adults who don’t attend church, not even on holidays, found that 72 percent thought the church ‘is full of hypocrites,’ but that 78 percent would ‘be willing to listen’ to someone who wanted to share their beliefs about Christianity. At the same time, 72 percent of respondents also said they believe God exists.

The survey results were published last week by Life Way Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. The organization surveyed 1,402 ‘unchurched’ adults last spring and summer. The margin of error is 2.5 percentage points.

The survey defines unchurched as those who had not attended a religious service in a church, synagogue or mosque at any time in the past six months.

More than 1 in 5 Americans say they never go to church, the General Social Survey found in 2006. The survey is conducted every two years by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Other researchers have found similar negative opinions about church.

Researchers at Barna Group, a Christian survey organization, have found that young adults in particular are rejecting the institution — and Christianity in general — because it is perceived to be anti-gay, too political and hypocritical.

The implications, the researchers from both studies said, are seen when churches try to evangelize to and reach the unchurched. But the research also speaks to the way churches have communicated their messages, said Jerry Wilkins, director of the Tuscaloosa Baptist Association, the local Southern Baptist organization.

‘We’re just still struggling,’ Wilkins said. ‘I think the answer for this dilemma is for the church to better communicate that we are a hospital for sick people. We need to be helping [non Christians] understand what the church is. My feeling is we’ve done a poor job communicating that church is not for people who have arrived, but for people who are on a journey.’

The Barna findings were the basis for the book ‘unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why it Matters,’ released in October 2007.

‘There are a lot of different factors for it,’ said David Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group and one of the authors of ‘unChristian.’

‘The reasons people come to negative conclusions about Christianity, churches or Christians is as diverse as the people you ask. But I think the media-saturated, fault-finding, skeptical society we live in is part of it. You see the mistakes of prominent [Christian] leaders broadcast and printed on pages, and that solidifies people’s perspectives about Christians as hypocrites or living hypocritical lifestyles.’

The recent headline-making stories of disgraced church leaders accused of lying, cheating and philandering have had their impact, but Kinnaman said people’s personal relationships also influence their perception of church, such as the neighbor who is heavily involved in his church, but also heavily involved with a mistress.

Some high-profile Christian leaders have also come under fire for alleged misdeeds, with their stories played out prominently in the media. Richard Roberts, son of evangelist Oral Roberts, resigned last week as president of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa amid allegations he misspent school money to support a lavish lifestyle. And six popular televangelists are under federal investigation for financial misdeeds.

In November U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the committee on finance, requested financial information from the six ministries: Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Creflo and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International, Benny Hinn of Benny Hinn Ministries, Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Joyce and David Meyer of Joyce Meyer Ministries, and Randy and Paula White of the multiracial Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries.

Evangelical leaders have also come under fire for other personal sins that are contrary to the Christian message.

Ted Haggard, the former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned his post as pastor of the church he founded after allegations surfaced of a homosexual affair and methamphetamine use. And just this week, Georgia megachurch leader Archbishop Earl Paulk pleaded guilty to lying under oath about several sexual affairs and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Scandal isn’t the only problem. Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, said in comments released with the survey that many unchurched don’t have a biblical understanding of God and Jesus. The survey found that slightly less than half, 48 percent, agree that God is the God described in the Bible, while 61 percent said they believe ‘the God of the Bible is no different from the gods of spiritual beings depicted by world religions.’

At the same time, LifeWay found that 78 percent of those surveyed were open to talking about spiritual matters with a friend. That number was even higher among young adults, aged 18-29, of them 89 percent said they were willing to listen to a Christian sharing his or her beliefs.

That openness should be used as a platform for holding conversations, said Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research, in the news release.

‘Although we may not have the home field advantage we once did, people are open to spiritual conversations, open to hearing about a genuine faith, and God is still at work, using people and churches to share the Good News in an increasingly confused world,’ McConnell said. ‘That should propel us to action and help us move beyond fear to share our faith.’

Still, the perception that Christians are hypocritical is one that faith leaders say needs to be addressed.

Kinnaman said part of the problem comes from a misunderstanding that Christians believe they are perfect.

‘There is not a particular strategy or approach where a church can say we are no longer going to be hypocritical,’ Kinnaman said. ‘We are trying to become much more of a movement to restore, except, love and bless the community around us. That’s important when the only thing that a non-Christian sees from a church community is discussion of becoming a saved Christian and Christian morals and ethics or how we define family.

Those discussions have missed some of the larger needs that the community is looking for and shows how out of tune Christians can be with the real world.’

Now, after all this has been said, I would like to give a short rebuttal to the statement; ‘The reasons people come to negative conclusions about Christianity, churches or Christians, is as diverse as the people you ask. But I think the media-saturated, fault-finding, skeptical society we live in is part of it. You see the mistakes of prominent [Christian] leaders broadcast and printed on pages, and that solidifies people’s perspectives about Christians as hypocrites or living hypocritical lifestyles.’

No my friends, that is a cop-out and just plain bullshit!

The reason church leaders make "mistakes" and "errors in judgement" are the same reasons we can't trust anything written in the Bible to begin with.

People wrote the Bible. God didn't write the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, (Pentateuch) God only inspired them.

People, on the other hand, wrote what was relevant to them, at that time, and in those circumstances. Then it was further clouded by the writers own prejudices, inclinations, personal beliefs, hang-ups and morals.

In other words, anything in "The Book" had the taint of the authors personal agenda on everything they did. Some of it done consciously, and some unconsciously.

So, we are not practising the "Word of God" when we go to church, or the Mosque, or the Synagogue, but rather the Gospel of "The Word of Sam," or "The Word of Ishmael," or better yet, "The Word of Job's Mother!"

And that's why I don't go to church!

If I have something to say to God, I say it myself.

(This, by the way, is what the Gnostic's were all about and what Jesus might well have been!)

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

ZEITGEIST (The Spirit of the Times)

I ran across this Internet movie today and was amazed. Lots of the same things as in my book plus stuff on 9/11 and other things that make this film a "Must See!"

Trust me , it will be well worth it! (when it starts go about ten minutes into it since the first few minutes are long and drawn out without too much content. After that, WATCH OUT!)

Here is the web page; http://zeitgeistmovie.com/ or go H E R E.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Teach the Bible in Schools…Please!

Since this issue hasn’t gone away yet, I just wanted to register my opinion that the Bible should be taught in public schools.

I’d love that.

In fact, just to help facilitate this, I thought I’d do a favor to any local school board weighing the issue and come up with a course curriculum for them.

The History of the Bible - Course Curriculum:

First quarter: Students will study the historic context of the old testament, including slavery, the inferiority of women, etc., and develop an understanding of how these social attitudes are mirrored by the main character, God, in his rules regarding exactly how slaves should be treated and how best to own your women. Exercises will include female students shutting up and baking pies for the male students, while male students create a deity and decide whether or not that deity approves of the pre-established pie-baking and shutting-up system.

Second quarter: Students will study the historic context of the new testament, including reviewing the history of the gospels; namely the men who wrote them and how they could have done so having never knew Jesus. Discussion will include an exercise known as the “telephone game”.

Third quarter: Students will study the creation of the modern-day bible by the Roman Empire. Topics will include the merging of Christian holidays with Pagan traditions and other marketing techniques employed in the selling of Christianity to the empire’s subjects, as well as a lesson on the books that the Romans omitted from the bible because they didn’t fit with the rest. Discussion will include students presenting ideas on how the Romans might have decided for God which books were His word and which were fiction, as well as ideas on what the Roman’s previous god Saturn might have thought about this process.

Fourth quarter: Students will study the various translations of the bible and learn to draw relationships between the results of translation and the goals of the translators. Discussion will include a review of substantial differences in various translations and students will compare key passages and how they appear in the Hebrew, King James, Good News, Esperanto and Klingon versions of the bible.

Goal: Students will come away from this class with the understanding that the Bible was never handed down to man from the ether, but rather a collection of books written by men, edited by other men, translated by more men and interpreted by even more men, with vastly divergent results and agenda's.

For their final exam they will be asked to write three page essay on why a flawless and perfect being might choose such a retarded method for communicating such important ideas when such direct methods as sky-writing and speaking through flaming shrubbery would be readily available.

(Of course we can also extend the same religious instructions to the followers of the Koran, and especially to the Madrasa of Pakistan and other parts of the Middle-East!

Madrasas provide free religious education, boarding and lodging and are essentially schools for the poor. Over one and a half million children attend madrasas.

These seminaries run on public philanthropy and produce indoctrinated clergymen of various Muslim sects. Some sections of the more orthodox Muslim sects have been radicalised by state sponsored exposure to jihad, first in Afghanistan, then in Kashmir.

However, the Madrasa problem goes beyond militancy. Students at more than 10,000 seminaries are being trained in theory, for service in the religious sector. But their constrained worldview, lack of modern civic education and poverty make them a destabilising factor in Pakistani society.

For all these reasons, they are also susceptible to romantic notions of sectarian and international jihads, which promise instant salvation.)

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Saturday Morning Confusion! Or, Digg THIS!

Now kids, this week I'm REALLY confused!

Your humble author has written pieces that are rather UNCOMPLIMENTARY about:

Islamic terrorists, Christian Fundamentalists, the A.C.L.U., Arab Chauvinism, Politicians, Barney, Jews, Hindu's, Barbie and Ken, Peoples Fundamental Beliefs, American Society, Canadian Society etc., George W Bush and his Administration, Beauty pageants, mental illness, missionaries, child porn, Chipmunks, those fucking Indians, alien abductions and the people who believe in them, religious values, atheists, Christmas, Church, Creationists, drunks, ethnic distinction, farting, the Flying Nun, foreigners, immigration, insurance companies, Jehovah's Witnesses, lesbians, masturbation, Michael Jackson, The Military, minorities, Muslim Culture and Multi-Culturalism, misogynists, the Post Office, Blacks, Chinese, Polaks, Waps, Krauts, Chinks and white trash, lots of stuff about Kim Jong-ill and North Korea, O.J. Simpson, Palestinians, Southern States, The Bible, cops, Women's rights, self-abuse and male pattern baldness.

In other words there is not too much that hasn't been tackled on these pages whenever something outrages my sensibilities. After all this is a crazy world we live in and somebody has to challenge the nuts once in a while.

The purpose behind this is that out of all the people and groups that have been "dissed" in the last year on these pages, not one of them has ever seriously complained except for one!!!!

I wrote a piece on gays and pedophiles a few days ago (click here) and submitted it to a few other publications including DIGG.COM.

Now in all fairness I must admit that the title was a bit HARSH, (Hang the Bastards) but I have since changed this and a few comments in the article itself.

But, the point is, that out of all the stories I have written in the last year this is the only one that has caused outrage amongst a group or organization.

There have been no threats from terrorists, no nasty letters from Fundamentalist, (except of course a few hints that I'm going to HELL) no disclaimers or denials from politicians or The Military Industrial Complex and no arguments from Aliens trying to explain why they abduct people.

No, none of this happened boys and girls. The only group that raised a stink is either the gay community or the pedophiles I wrote about.

For my pains in mentioning that gays have a disproportionate influence on the media and the fashion industry and that pedophiles are complaining about being unfairly victimized, (as opposed to their victims) there was a torrent of backlash to DIGG.VOM about my article..... to the point where I have been temporarily banned from submitting anything else.

That the "Politically Correct" and special interest groups can have this much influence in a society that espouses free speech is a crime and that DIGG.COM caved in to them is even worse.

Remember Bunky, this is not a University classroom or left leaning debate group.

This is the real world and if you don't like something........ TOUGH! After all, the motto here isn't "We piss off everybody at one time or another" for nothing!

Your "Pissed" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

P.S. Write to Digg and complain.... remember, just because FREE SPEECH is free, doesn't mean it's easy!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com

You can run, but you can't hide!

There is a site called " Religious Tolerance " that gives a fair and unbiased view of all the major World Religions and I find them quite refreshing to read since they offer many different theological points of view.

I have on occasion written a few essays and pieces for them over the past year and apparently this put me on the radar for a dedicated group of missionaries that now seem determined to bring me around to their way of thinking.

The best I can figure is that since I am a self professed Agnostic and not an outright Atheist they feel that a barrage of biblical quotes and twisted logic will bring me around to their point of view.

(The woman I talked about a few days ago is one of them!)

They didn't complain when I talked about the Muslims or the Hindu's or whatever, but as soon as I questioned their core beliefs (The Divinity of Jesus, etc.) they were on me like a pack of hounds.

(It's the old story that you can run down somebody else's faith but don't dare question mine!)

There are now three, and sometimes four of them writing me in rotation and it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Hope I can put a stop to it all without getting too obnoxious but you never know!

Will keep you informed.

Your "Friend in Jesus" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 at www.God-101.com

In the Name of the Lord!

Got some mail today of the type that I usually ignore, (Especially if there are any biblical quotations involved!) but what the Hell, I haven't replied to one of these in a long time so here goes.

This was actually addressed to the book God-101 website.

Honey, you need to read your Bible. Jesus not only said He was the Son of God, but He said, at the Last Supper: 'for this is My blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured out in behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.' Matthew 26:28. Also 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me.' John 14:6. In fact, this is one of the reasons why He was crucified. He was killed because He claimed to be One with God. Be very careful what you claim. Jesus also said 'On the other hand, it would be better for anyone who leads astray one of these little ones who believe in Me, to be drowned by a millstone around his neck in the depths of the sea.' Matthew 18:6. Take care that you don't confuse fact with your own opinion.

To this I gave my usual reply which was; "Why can't I give my opinion when all you are doing is giving yours! To tell me that the Biblical quotes you gave are literal truth and then to stand by them is not only the height of arrogance, but ignorance as well! (But then again I keep forgetting that you have God on your side. Sorry.)."

By the way, that threat at the end was a nice touch! Always leave 'em wondering. And don't call me "Honey!"

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 )at www.God-101.com

Penn and Teller; The Bible is Bullshit.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com

Words to live by!

Excerpts from the book "The Plain Truth About God-101"
(what the church doesn't want you to know!)

I've found Jesus!
He was hiding behind the sofa the whole time!

I believe in God!
I just don't trust anyone that works for him!

“I look after the big picture, son.” Said God!
“Life is a crap-shoot. You take your chances like everyone else!”
-George Burns as God-

”Life is what it is!” –Anonymous

God inspired the bible, he didn't write it. People base their lives around the manic scribbling of a bunch of desert baked primitives who ate bugs and honey! Of course they saw God! -Anonymous

Muslims have their holy day on Friday, Jews on Saturday and Christians on Sunday. Since we are all "Theists" and "people of the book" it would be nice to find a way to harmonize all three beliefs. Aside from the obvious results of an end to religious strife, one of the most immediate benefits would be a three-day weekend!
-A.W.J.

The bible states clearly that nobody can earn his salvation through morality and good deeds (Gnosticism) since we are all sinful by nature. We have the perfect catch 22 situation were only in the blind acceptance of Christ atoning for our deeds can we be saved. In other words, we are in a no-win situation against the so-called logic of the shaman; if we do not take his word for it then all is lost! –A.W.J.

When I look at the arrogance of Islam with the way they treat women and the brutality they exhibit towards others under the direction of their Imam’s, it seems very disturbing that a major world religion can exhibit such barbaric acts.
That is until we realize that Christianity is guilty of just as many, if not more infractions against humanity through its history. Islam is one of the youngest of the major religions and still rooted in its origins. Let’s face it, almost everyone in the six and seventh centuries held comparable views to what Islam does today, including the Christians. -A.W.J.

“Consciousness is the physical manifestation of God within us!” -A.W.J.

"Conscience is God's presence in man.” -Emanuel Seidenberg

If faith were the result of logical reasoning, we could expect that most intelligent people would by now be converted to one ideology or the other! –A.W.J.

A Hinduism and Zen truism: “A person is like a drop of water separated from the sea. To fall as rain, it considers itself distinct from the world soul. Then, through hill and dale, its destiny is to return to the sea!”

"I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” --Lao-Tzu

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."-Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some respects, both.
I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me. --Abraham Lincoln

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure. That is all that agnosticism means.” - Clarence Darrow.

There seems to be an abundance of GOD'S on this planet. There is the God of Abraham, the God of Muhammad, and the GOD of Jesus. Then there is the loving GOD, the all-powerful GOD, the vengeful GOD, the GOD of grace, the GOD of peace and the GOD'S of war. There is also the “Holy Trinity,” which is actually “three for the price of one,” and even a "dead" GOD. -A.W.J.

”What can you say about a society that thinks God is dead and Elvis
is alive!” -- Irv Kupcinet

“If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators
would be dead!” --Johnny Carson

Sacred cows make the best hamburger. -- Mark Twain

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” -Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"One of my objections to religion is that it prevents the search for
God.” --Arthur C. Clarke

AND FINALLY:

Perhaps the greatest sin of the Western churches (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) has been the particular brand of narcissism that impels so many to feel they have God all sewn up and put in their back pocket. People who think that they not only have a ticket to heaven, but anyone who disagrees with them is going straight to hell! They believe in God, but do not believe that God is bigger than their own theology. In their arrogance they do not realized that God is not theirs to possess! -Paraphrased from M. Scott Peck.

Your "That's all Folks!" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

This is Sunday, Go to Church - NOW!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

The Plain Truth, so help me Howard!

"The Plain Truth About God-101"
(What the church doesn't want you to know!)
As told by Penn and Teller!!!

(Just in case your getting tired of ME going on about it!)
Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

It IS what it IS! Isn't it?

Reading on the subject of Holy Scripture, whether in the Bible or Koran, I ran across dozens of essays and articles giving different opinions on what exactly is written in the Holy Books.

To make a long story short and "get things into perspective here,"
I noticed that time and again, without fail, passages from both books were explained and brought in line with doctrine by apologists who stated that they were mis-interpreted!

This is the common denominator I found in everything I read:

"No, it doesn't say that, it was mis-interpreted."
"It should be looked at in it's proper context!"
"MY interpretation!"

Then, "voila," a spin was put on it and the offending piece was brought into line with the proper dogma and doctorine.

Everything was subject to the correct "Interpretation,"

It wasn't the "Word of God" or anything irrefutable.
It was dependent on what people "interpreted" it to mean.

Nothing Divine there, just human wants, needs and hidden agenda's!

** God inspired the bible, he didn't write it.
People base their lives around the manic scribbling
of a bunch of desert baked primitives who ate bugs and honey! Of course they saw God!

In other words-you can make it mean whatever you want-
then just go nuts from there!

Your Scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Oh, my aching head!

I have been visiting a Yahoo site ( http://answers.yahoo.com/ ) that was started on the premise that answers to complicated or deep questions can best be answered when they are thrown open to the general public.

This has worked marvelously well in scientific circles but unfortunately the Yahoo site has been hijacked by teenagers and people in their early twenties. (Probably because older people are more mature and have better things to do with their time!)

If the quality of answers on this site are any indication of our future with the up and coming generation then God help us.

Some of the scientific and technical sites are not too bad but anything in the general knowledge, social, entertainment, relationships, health, politics, parenting and especialy reiligion categories are all answered by a legion of retards.

One refreshing exception I have found was this answer by a guy named Juan to the question; "If Christians are supposed to be so good why do they keep telling you that you're going to HELL if you don't belive what they do."

"The thing most religions fear is that their followers become open minded and try to look at both sides of issues and then make intelligent decisions based on facts. This would be the death of most religions. It is necessary that their followers have tunnel vision and follow the program blindly."

"The whole reward system of heaven and the punishment of hell were made up to keep people in line. The ones that preach and try to impose their beliefs on others (Priests, Rabbis and Imams) are really the pillars holding up these religions."

I will add a few thoughts of my own from the book "The Plain Truth About God-101" (what the church doesn't want you to know!)

**God inspired the bible, he didn't write it. People base their lives around the manic scribbling of a bunch of desert baked primitives who ate bugs and honey! Of course they saw God! -Anonymous

**The bible states clearly that nobody can earn his salvation through morality and good deeds (Gnosticism) since we are all sinful by nature. We have the perfect catch 22 situation were only in the blind acceptance of Christ atoning for our deeds can we be saved. In other words, we are in a no-win situation against the so-called logic of the shaman. If we do not take his word for it then all is lost! –A.W.J.

**Many theologians think of Christianity as two different religions-one conservative and one liberal. They share the bible and the name, but not much more. Much the same can be said for the followers of Islam! A.W.J.

**If faith were the result of reasoning we could expect that most intelligent people would by now be converted to one ideology or the other! –A.W.J.

** "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.” -Clarence Darrow, Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925.

** If you need further proof that human religion is the devils work read on: “The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.”
“Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.” “Since the earliest days, the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man.”
“It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments-bad laws-bad social theories and bad institutions.”
"It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery as it was the apologist for the Divine right of kings.” --H. L. Mencken

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST;

**I was all screwed up on drugs until I found Jesus-
NOW I'M ALL SCREWED UP ON HIM! -Cheech and Chong

Your Faithfull Scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Funny, you don't look Jewish!

I was watching a documentary on Jerusalem today and they were discussing how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all prevalent in the city and what sort of effect this has on the three belief systems.

An Israeli being interviewed made a comment that I have heard a thousand times before, but for some reason I suddenly looked at it in an entirely new way.

Before I tell you what the comment was, let me set the stage for what I am about to suggest.

There is a term in psychology (which I can't remember) that says that no matter how beautiful the logic of an argument is, if it is based on a false premise to begin with then it negates the whole argument.

In other words, if I start out with 1. A lie or 2. A misinformed or distorted viewpoint then it doesn't matter how precise and accurate any argument is from then on - it doesn't matter! (I am sure someone will write and tell me what the term is!)

Now, let's get back to what the comment was! The Jew said, "Since we are the chosen people................" and that's when I had an epiphany and said to myself”; Wait a minute! We have gone under the assumption for thousands of years that the Jews are the "Chosen People" but who told us that? Why, the Jews of course!"

I know it say so in the Bible, but who wrote the Old Testament? The Jews!

Now I am not saying that this was a deliberate deception on the part of the Israelis those many thousands of years ago, but rather that they came to believe it over a period of time since they were amongst the first tribes with the cohesiveness of a religious doctrine.

It could have slowly developed from a bit of wistful thinking into something more concrete and finally into a full-blown conviction that was eventually written down as "Gospel!"

This concept of being special or "Chosen" was both a blessing and a curse to the Jews. It is the glue that has held them together for all these thousands of years where many other cultures have disappeared into the mists of time, but it also set them apart from the societies in which they lived and caused them untold grief over being "different" and "outcasts."

A grief that went so deep as to even end in the Holocaust.

The very thing that made these people overcome untold hardships over the millennia is also the very thing that set them apart and ostracized them.

Let me quote from my book "The Plain Truth About God-101" (what the church doesn't want you to know!)

** "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- - Voltaire (1694-1778)
Or this;
** "The more you complain the longer God lets you live.”
--Anonymous

Your Pondering Pal - Al

What we have here is failure to communicate!

It may not be an original quote, but as far as the Evolution / Creation debate goes, perhaps a very appropriate one!

The constant war of words between Darwinists and Creationists has been ongoing for many years and has not been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Perhaps we should go right back to the very basics and start to build from there; just to see what happens!

First of all we have to take a position that there is either a God, or there is not!

If there is no God then the Darwinists are absolutely right and everything was created by dumb luck and there is no purpose to anything!

I can see why evolutionists have been so adamant that natural selection and the progression of lower life forms into higher ones, without outside help, seem to be the natural order of things. They have a compelling argument and the term; “Just the facts, Ma’am” bear them out.

However, the supposition that life, and by correlation intelligence, is the result of blind chance with no interference from a God, is the same as saying that by default there is no God!

In other words, to accept evolution from a scientific point of view without taking into account the theological implications of the Atheists being right, does a great disservice to anyone who has any feelings at all of a religious/spiritual nature.

I personally cannot imagine a world where there is no God at all. That this whole kit-and-caboodle we call the Universe is just a random organization of the basic elements with no ultimate purpose! This extremist’s view is no better than those of religious fanatics who try and tell me that the world is no more than seven thousand years old. Both are the result of people polarized in their own views and beliefs.

After all, a belief that there is no God is in no way any different than the view that there is a God; both depend on a personal belief system, since neither can be scientifically proven!

This is not to say that we should teach the biblical version of the creation of the universe as literal truth since any rational, semi-educated person realizes that Holy Scripture is a compilation of parables, prophesy, folk-lore, metaphor’s and common sense in a first century context!

Nor should we refer to the bible as a historical work since it is more concerned with the mind-set and morality of people than an account of their achievements!

If we can learn to distinguish between the metaphorical and the historical aspects of the scriptures then it makes it all the easier to differentiate between the divergent aims of scientific and theological schools of thought.

Just as the far right claims biblical truth and rejects scientific evidence, the Darwinists are at a loss to explain how the Universe (The Big Bang) came into being from absolutely nothing.

It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Both are different and have a different purpose. To attempt a comparison is the same as looking for common ground when talking about two totally different things.

With this in mind there is no real conflict between religion and science. God is by God’s very nature unknowable. What I object to is the human trait of forming special interest groups whose sole job is giving only their explanation of God and even making proclamations and laws in God's name. This to me is the height of human arrogance and self-deception.

We do not know how God interacts with our universe and should not use one philosophy (religion or science) to try and explain the other. “Render therefore to Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and to God the things which are God's.” In other words, I am all for teaching Creationism in school; as soon as they start teaching evolution in church!

I have a theory, and it’s called Evolution!
I have a belief, and it’s called Intelligent Design!

Your scribe
Allan W Janssen

Let's get things back into perspective here!

The fact that we can examine ourselves thinking, (Like mentally looking in a mirror) is one of the great mysteries. This, along with the existence of God, the process of evolution, and much more in the metaphysical sphere are questions that do not easily lend themselves to interpretation.

Not to take anything away from the Eastern Philosophies, (Since they probably have a better handle on things than most Western Religions) but these are answers we mistakenly try and understand from a here and now point of view. As long as we look at these questions from a materialistic, egocentric point of view I dont't think we will find an answer.

Perhaps the question "Is there a God" or better yet, "What is God?" are areas that we are not meant to address in this life. They could, by their very nature, be unanswerable.

(Here we go, now everyone is going to tell me THEY have the answer. Save your breath, unless you have a REALLY bad Messianic Complex!)

The point is, perhaps we should be more concerned with attaining a "State of Grace" in this life, and then sitting back to see where it leads us in the next! Remember..(from my book God-101) When all else fails, the simple solution is usually the correct one! OR If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras!

Why can't some of you people LISTEN instead of grabbing anything at all as an excuse to once again spout your bullshit nonsense. Listen to me please, I don't need doubletalking, assinine, convoluted, self absorbed, deluded rants to make me see the light!

The truth is not in the Bible or the Koran. (Or the Bhagavad-Gita for that matter!) They should all be thrown in the garbage because they were written by sun-baked, wandering nomads who mostly ate bugs and honey..... of course they saw God!!!!

God is not in a book because that is other people trying to tell you what is right and what is wrong. You are not going to find paradise by listening to 2000 year old, hallucinating, camel jockeys.

KEEP IT SIMPLE! Don't jump through hoops trying to explain the infinite. Don't manufacture all these grand theories on the nature of God. Centainly don't sit there and try and second guess what God wants, and CERTAINLY don't tell me that you know what God wants ME to do!

I don't think it's our job to probe these questions yet. When we are ready they will be revealed. But they will be revealed to EVERYONE.

I think God is big enough that he doesn't need translaters. Remember-the simple solution is usually the correct one! God is love!!!!

In other words, God is within you and no one should ever come between. If we must refer to religious texts I would like to quote from the Book "God-101" once more.

One of the core sayings of Jesus was "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say 'Lo, here it is!' or 'There!' For behold, that kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Jesus tells us quite clearly that the "Kingdom of God" is not a coming kingdom, or a future kingdom, but rather something already in amongst his disciples.

It is not a place, but rather a state of mind! Or, to quote James Breech once more: "Your concept of the kingdom of God, whether it belongs to the future mythological conceived, in either eschatological or apocalyptic terms, misses the reality of the kingdom. The symbolism really refers to a power that is a basic factor in human experience!"

** The foundation of Christian ideology revolves around "Love" for one and another. To understand this we need to define exactly how the term or meaning of "Love" is used!

In the first instance, there is the true Christian "Love" which means it is rooted in the power of the kingdom of God. This is the "Love" that the historical Jesus preached to his followers.

The second type of Christian "love" (small L) is defined solely as an ethical idea that was propagated by the spreading Christian faith in trying to define the words of Christ.

Nietzsche probably best defined this form of Christian 'love' as a masked feeling of pity or charity. In other words, we feel sorry for others and from this superior moral ground to lend a helping hand.

Nietzsche claims that Christian 'pity' (love) is a device used by those who are not themselves truly vital and alive to obtain a perverse elevation of their own position by undermining others. In other words, "I can make myself feel better by thinking you or someone else is worse-off and deserving of "love.” We often confuse the feeling of Christian "love" for someone with:

1. Pity for them.
2. Humanitarianism-or a love of Mankind.
3. Altruism, or self denial, and
4. Sentimentalism, or wanting to be with others.

These concepts of “love" have been re-enforced over and over again in the Bible through one story or another.

What Jesus actually said was something much more basic and infinitely harder to achieve. The historical Jesus did not urge us to love Mankind or to feel pity for someone else.

He did not tell us to deny ourselves for someone else's sake, or flagellate ourselves, or even to enjoy another’s company!

What He did say was pure and simple and straight to the point, "Love one another.” This sort of Love is not the altruistic love of Mankind, nor the possessive love for our mate, but rather, something that requires hard work, tenacity, and sacrifice.

It is easy to love your wife or husband, child or parent, but to Love your neighbor (or stranger) is a task that is never ending and always requires effort.

It is a Love that seems to have no immediate benefit and is therefore not practiced by many people. However, in the long run, this is what will make Humanity rise up to it is potential and approach what Jesus referred to as the "Kingdom of God (Father).”

This is not something that is to be expected in the near, or far, future. Rather, it was a state of being that is present at this time, and only has to be observed and followed in order to achieve a state of Grace.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book "The Plain Truth About God-101' (what the church doesn't want you to know!)

Talk about shooting your mouth off!

You're humble servant has been surfing the net to see just how ridiculous people can get.

The latest site I came across had sixteen pages on "How the bible says it's O.K. to have a gun and use it when necessary" (which by the way, is a lot of times!)

No it wasn't written by Charlton Heston but might as well have been.

I did not know they had guns back in the time of Jesus, although I must say it would be hard to find anyone else of his calibre! ;-)

You're Faithful Scribe - Allan