By Lawsinium --
Most biblical scholars believe in creation accounted in the Book of Genesis. The King James Version of the bible, which is an ancient collection of writings translated from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, English and into over 500 languages, suggested that an omnipotent and omnipresent Divine Being exercises authority over everything including his gods or saints that serve as guardians of the natural world. With supernatural powers, he even created the universe in just seven days and the story of creation went like this:
In every quest for a clearer understanding of our existence, we are always thirsty to speculate and make interpretations to what we believe. Sometimes, we do not question our beliefs because of faith. Others are even afraid to challenge their gods because of the fear of retaliation or consequences god may do to their lives. Whatever reasons they might have, my intention here is merely to present different sides of opinions in order for the reader to balance new concepts from old ideologies. Furthermore, please do not lock yourself to what you believe. Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone to welcome new evidence, whether intuitively rational or scientifically proven that might shed new light on what we believe. Just like those yesteryears, when people believed for centuries that the earth was flat. Not until men learned to sail was this concept put to rest. However, if you go outside and look around, the Earth still looks flat, and to this day there are still some people who refuse to believe that Earth is spherical. No amount of information, not even firsthand photographs of Earth captured by the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope or unmanned space probes, will change their thinking. All this evidence is worthless because they are already restrained by their beliefs. As the saying goes, you cannot teach an old dog new trick.
To those who have an open mind, here are some reasons to reconsider before we pass judgment to prior religious beliefs. If you closely read the first sentence of the divine story, God, in the very beginning, created only two objects: heaven and earth. He did not mention any other nearby planets like Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, planet X or any galaxy at all. Since these planets were only discovered lately when the telescope was invented in 1608 (only 400+ years ago), obviously biblical writers had no idea that earth was not the only planet that exists. And because of their limited knowledge and technology, the biblical story will definitely revolve only among four main characters: God, heaven, earth and man. That’s why Genesis was written with the first passage: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Take note that writers at that time were confined only by what they see. The division of the above and below caught their imagination in developing the idea of heaven and earth. They perceived that earth was a single dimension; and the sky, which they thought was heaven, was another dimension. They presumed that since men live on earth, a human-like life form also lives in heaven. These observations of heaven were even depicted on old paintings where angels are playing harps over bluish-white clouds. This scenario definitely explains that even other people like artists and poets at that time believed that heaven was located above the clouds and the sky. Even to these days, some parents tell bedtime stories to their children about heaven found behind high clouds. But we know better now that clouds are temporary structure formed by condensation. Ancient writers even misrepresented the “stars” they saw at night as five-pointed twinkling figures. Astronomers found out that they are simply ordinary chunks of rocks orbiting or floating all over outer space. Stars even twinkle because of atmospheric disturbances and vast distances from us and not because God sprinkled sparkling dusts on them.
The biblical passages, starting from the second day to the sixth day, speak only about earth's make over – water, vegetation and creatures were created but interestingly not on nearby planets. Was god overseeing the whole universe when he did the make over or he was simply standing on earth that he did not see the other planets? And analyzing each verse, every line merely portrays early men’s day-to-day routinary life. As they wake up in the morning, they always see the sky above and the vast land of earth. A fixed scenario. As hours pass by, the greater light (sun) rules the day and the lesser light (moon) rules the night. A temporary scenario. These two scenarios are simple evidence why "Let there be light" was mentioned second while “God created heaven and earth” was mentioned first. Ancient people thought, just like we perceive them today, that heaven and earth are fixed structures that will always be there when we wake up every morning. Light, on the other hand, is temporal. It comes and goes. Writers at that time failed to recognize that scientifically light should come first. We see objects because light reflects on objects. If God will shape heaven and earth, do you think he will work totally in darkness? Or maybe not! Since he has supernatural powers or maybe x-ray vision, he does not need light at all. But why did he create light in the first place? And by the way, we see the moon because it gets its light from the sun and reflects this light to us.
The Old Testament of the Bible was written between 1400 to 400 B.C. or approximately 3500 years ago only. The age of the Earth according to the genealogical interpretation of the bible is 6,000 years old. This means that the Creator created heaven and earth approximately 6000 years ago only. Interestingly according to scientific research, it is 4.5 billion years old already. The difference between 4,500,000,000 and 6,000 calculates a huge chronological discrepancy. It seems "god" is not good enough in counting birthdays and remembering calendar days. Or maybe it was the writers who lost count or forgot that modern men can use the age of any personalities in the bible as basis in tracing back the age of the earth. On the other hand, the Old Testament contains 39 books and the New Testament contains 27 books written approximately 40 to 90 AD. All in all, the bible is made up of 66 individual books collected and compiled as a single book. And since the bible, mainly in Hebrew and Greek, was written by various ancient authors, which some of them were not even inspired or called by god, obviously the divine story and its writings will more likely be a man-made opinion or impression rather than a godly declaration. That is why the bible has a lot of loopholes, including lost chapters of the lives of Christ, because man created it and not by any super intelligent being.
Why did God choose Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha or Khrisna, and not the first Cro-Magnon or the very first primitive man to spread his gospel? The bible said man was created to God’s image and likeness. Was the very first human not identical to God? Was God waiting for the evolution of man to kick in? Who came first, dinosaurs or men? Why are dinosaurs, not dragons or sea serpents, not mentioned ever in the bible? How long is a day to god—a billion years, a trillion atomic years or a microyoctosecond? Are we wired to believe in god or are we indoctrinated to believe god? Since there are different religions all over the world and there are different gods likewise, who do you think now is the authentic “GOD” — is it your god (if you have one) or it is their god? And by the way, which culture do you think are foolish; those people who adore sacred monkeys, those who adore golden elephants, those who adore symbols like crucifixes or those who adore other forms of gods? Can you ask yourself why without prejudice or discrimination?
Moreover, do you know that when an organization, a denomination or a church of people is actively engage in a system of religious worship or ritual, the group is called as a cult. This means that any believer in any god is simply a member of the cult. Aside from the definition extracted from Encyclopedia Britannica, other accompanying traits of a religious cult include the formal veneration to god or saint by its member, the mandate to voluntarily support financially or otherwise their church or doctrines, and the manipulative tactics of its leaders to capture more followers by way of the scripture. On the other side, followers of Christ define religious cults in different way. When a religious group contradicts or misrepresents the fundamental teachings of the bible founded by Jesus, that organization is without any doubt considered a cult. This means that all religious groups who do not subscribe to the teachings prescribed by the first original church, the Roman Catholic Church, are considered cult. The Greek Orthodox and the Protestant Reformation, which are considered the oldest religious groups after the Catholic Church, and eventually all other religious sects emerging even to this day, are definitely regarded as religious cult. Is your religion a cult? Does your church preach the same original teachings prescribed by the Catholic Church or just like the others, you simply accept beliefs without questions?
Most biblical scholars believe in creation accounted in the Book of Genesis. The King James Version of the bible, which is an ancient collection of writings translated from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, English and into over 500 languages, suggested that an omnipotent and omnipresent Divine Being exercises authority over everything including his gods or saints that serve as guardians of the natural world. With supernatural powers, he even created the universe in just seven days and the story of creation went like this:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 5 And God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And the evening and the morning were—the first day.6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide the waters from the water." —the second day.11 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yields seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth:" And it was so. —the third day.14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs seasons and for days and years.” 16 He made the star also. —the fourth day.20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."—the fifth day.26 And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping their that creepeth upon the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them—the sixth day.33 And on seventh day God ended his work, which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he had rested from all his work which god created and made.
In every quest for a clearer understanding of our existence, we are always thirsty to speculate and make interpretations to what we believe. Sometimes, we do not question our beliefs because of faith. Others are even afraid to challenge their gods because of the fear of retaliation or consequences god may do to their lives. Whatever reasons they might have, my intention here is merely to present different sides of opinions in order for the reader to balance new concepts from old ideologies. Furthermore, please do not lock yourself to what you believe. Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone to welcome new evidence, whether intuitively rational or scientifically proven that might shed new light on what we believe. Just like those yesteryears, when people believed for centuries that the earth was flat. Not until men learned to sail was this concept put to rest. However, if you go outside and look around, the Earth still looks flat, and to this day there are still some people who refuse to believe that Earth is spherical. No amount of information, not even firsthand photographs of Earth captured by the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope or unmanned space probes, will change their thinking. All this evidence is worthless because they are already restrained by their beliefs. As the saying goes, you cannot teach an old dog new trick.
To those who have an open mind, here are some reasons to reconsider before we pass judgment to prior religious beliefs. If you closely read the first sentence of the divine story, God, in the very beginning, created only two objects: heaven and earth. He did not mention any other nearby planets like Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, planet X or any galaxy at all. Since these planets were only discovered lately when the telescope was invented in 1608 (only 400+ years ago), obviously biblical writers had no idea that earth was not the only planet that exists. And because of their limited knowledge and technology, the biblical story will definitely revolve only among four main characters: God, heaven, earth and man. That’s why Genesis was written with the first passage: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Take note that writers at that time were confined only by what they see. The division of the above and below caught their imagination in developing the idea of heaven and earth. They perceived that earth was a single dimension; and the sky, which they thought was heaven, was another dimension. They presumed that since men live on earth, a human-like life form also lives in heaven. These observations of heaven were even depicted on old paintings where angels are playing harps over bluish-white clouds. This scenario definitely explains that even other people like artists and poets at that time believed that heaven was located above the clouds and the sky. Even to these days, some parents tell bedtime stories to their children about heaven found behind high clouds. But we know better now that clouds are temporary structure formed by condensation. Ancient writers even misrepresented the “stars” they saw at night as five-pointed twinkling figures. Astronomers found out that they are simply ordinary chunks of rocks orbiting or floating all over outer space. Stars even twinkle because of atmospheric disturbances and vast distances from us and not because God sprinkled sparkling dusts on them.
The biblical passages, starting from the second day to the sixth day, speak only about earth's make over – water, vegetation and creatures were created but interestingly not on nearby planets. Was god overseeing the whole universe when he did the make over or he was simply standing on earth that he did not see the other planets? And analyzing each verse, every line merely portrays early men’s day-to-day routinary life. As they wake up in the morning, they always see the sky above and the vast land of earth. A fixed scenario. As hours pass by, the greater light (sun) rules the day and the lesser light (moon) rules the night. A temporary scenario. These two scenarios are simple evidence why "Let there be light" was mentioned second while “God created heaven and earth” was mentioned first. Ancient people thought, just like we perceive them today, that heaven and earth are fixed structures that will always be there when we wake up every morning. Light, on the other hand, is temporal. It comes and goes. Writers at that time failed to recognize that scientifically light should come first. We see objects because light reflects on objects. If God will shape heaven and earth, do you think he will work totally in darkness? Or maybe not! Since he has supernatural powers or maybe x-ray vision, he does not need light at all. But why did he create light in the first place? And by the way, we see the moon because it gets its light from the sun and reflects this light to us.
The Old Testament of the Bible was written between 1400 to 400 B.C. or approximately 3500 years ago only. The age of the Earth according to the genealogical interpretation of the bible is 6,000 years old. This means that the Creator created heaven and earth approximately 6000 years ago only. Interestingly according to scientific research, it is 4.5 billion years old already. The difference between 4,500,000,000 and 6,000 calculates a huge chronological discrepancy. It seems "god" is not good enough in counting birthdays and remembering calendar days. Or maybe it was the writers who lost count or forgot that modern men can use the age of any personalities in the bible as basis in tracing back the age of the earth. On the other hand, the Old Testament contains 39 books and the New Testament contains 27 books written approximately 40 to 90 AD. All in all, the bible is made up of 66 individual books collected and compiled as a single book. And since the bible, mainly in Hebrew and Greek, was written by various ancient authors, which some of them were not even inspired or called by god, obviously the divine story and its writings will more likely be a man-made opinion or impression rather than a godly declaration. That is why the bible has a lot of loopholes, including lost chapters of the lives of Christ, because man created it and not by any super intelligent being.
Why did God choose Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha or Khrisna, and not the first Cro-Magnon or the very first primitive man to spread his gospel? The bible said man was created to God’s image and likeness. Was the very first human not identical to God? Was God waiting for the evolution of man to kick in? Who came first, dinosaurs or men? Why are dinosaurs, not dragons or sea serpents, not mentioned ever in the bible? How long is a day to god—a billion years, a trillion atomic years or a microyoctosecond? Are we wired to believe in god or are we indoctrinated to believe god? Since there are different religions all over the world and there are different gods likewise, who do you think now is the authentic “GOD” — is it your god (if you have one) or it is their god? And by the way, which culture do you think are foolish; those people who adore sacred monkeys, those who adore golden elephants, those who adore symbols like crucifixes or those who adore other forms of gods? Can you ask yourself why without prejudice or discrimination?
Moreover, do you know that when an organization, a denomination or a church of people is actively engage in a system of religious worship or ritual, the group is called as a cult. This means that any believer in any god is simply a member of the cult. Aside from the definition extracted from Encyclopedia Britannica, other accompanying traits of a religious cult include the formal veneration to god or saint by its member, the mandate to voluntarily support financially or otherwise their church or doctrines, and the manipulative tactics of its leaders to capture more followers by way of the scripture. On the other side, followers of Christ define religious cults in different way. When a religious group contradicts or misrepresents the fundamental teachings of the bible founded by Jesus, that organization is without any doubt considered a cult. This means that all religious groups who do not subscribe to the teachings prescribed by the first original church, the Roman Catholic Church, are considered cult. The Greek Orthodox and the Protestant Reformation, which are considered the oldest religious groups after the Catholic Church, and eventually all other religious sects emerging even to this day, are definitely regarded as religious cult. Is your religion a cult? Does your church preach the same original teachings prescribed by the Catholic Church or just like the others, you simply accept beliefs without questions?
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