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Life Is Not What We've Been Led to 
Believe It Is by Those Who Claim to Know!

Setting the Stage:     

Life is filled with unprovable stories/beliefs about all kinds of things.    Many of these stories are very old.   They've been  handed down to us, generation after generation for hundreds, or even thousands of years.   People  commonly accept beliefs as true because that's what their parents taught them and because most of their family and friends  also believe them.   Relatively few people  have test their beliefs  against the presently available evidence.   

As a result, many of the fundamental underpinnings of life are actually quite different from what we believe them to be.   The most significant of these beliefs are related to religion, theology, and the Source of All  that we call God.   Some of the most widely believed stories will be examined on our web pages.   

All religions have similar stories, however, these pages will focus primarily of Christian beliefs for two reasons:  first,  the majority of people in the USA believe some portions  of Christian theology and second,  Christianity is the religion with which this author is most familiar.   

The goal is to demonstrate that our beliefs, although lovingly intended,  are incomplete° and that the incompleteness of our knowledge, all too often,  leads us to conclusions which bring us grief and misery instead of peace and joy.   Our goal is also to offer additional perspectives for your consideration.   

That's not to say any beliefs are right and other are wrong.   EVERYBODY is right, but everybody is also incomplete.    When you have a strong negative reaction to anything on our websites, please check the Pushed Buttons° page before you decide to leave.   If you leave simply because you beliefs are being examined, you'll miss a grand opportunity.  

Allowing Others to Believe, to Be, and to Do As They will:     Allowing others the freedoms that we demand for ourselves  is one of the major pieces missing from most human belief systems.   It's also the main cause of most of the wars, strife and conflict on Earth.   Readers are strongly encourages to examine The Universal Law of Allowing.°    

Welcome to the Cosmic Titanic:   The typical response to anything new°  is to  ignore it,  ridicule it,  reject it,  and/or fight it.  This is the common response to anything that humans can't see or don't understand.   The above responses are particularly strong with regard to anything that challenges the believability of one's cherished, religious illusions.   The most common human reaction to any challenge to their belief system is to do ignore it,  ridicule it,  reject it,  and/or fight it until disaster strikes or until the evidence overwhelms them, and when the truth finally emerges victorious, they say, "We knew that all along."   

Here are a few points of evidence:   Humans have turned that Earth into a cosmic version of the Titanic.    Global-level disaster is just around the corner.   Your doing nothing could result in the death of billion, including you and your family and grief and misery for those who survive.   The Rapture is NOT going to save your butt.   The Rapture '  is an unprovable fairytale.   You are at Choice Right Here, Right Now.°   

The Origin of Christianity:   At the time Christian theology was canonized, reality was perceived  almost exclusively in physical terms --  in terms of what could be perceived with the physical senses without the aid of instruments.   There was no scientific basis to draw upon.   For insights into the origins of present-day, Christian beliefs, see the section titled:  The origin of Christianity°  and the section title:  Could the Christian Bible Have Been Distorted.°   Also see the section  titled:   The Ultimate Sacrifice.°

Answering Unanswerable Questions:  Even though there were no researchers or instruments to offer possibilities and theories,  the people still demanded answers to life's toughest  questions  --  questions such as:   How does the universe function?   Where did I come from?    Why am I here?  What causes Earthquakes, floods and the like.   What happens when I die?  

Carved is Stone:  Religious leaders gave answers to these and many other questions based upon incomplete or inadequate information and/or based upon their unverifiable best guesses.   As time passed, those answers became accepted as reality; they became fixed and immutable.  Symbolically speaking, they became carved in stone, and  like many other religions, Christianity developed an aggressive, either-or mentality --  "Our theology is right, therefore everyone else's approach to God is wrong."   "God is on our side."   The Church leaders declared war on infidels with an intensity and ferocity that matches today's Muslim extremists.   (i.e.   The Crusades,  The Spanish Inquisition, burning witches, destroying the Library of Alexandria,°  etc.)

Any deviation from the canonized theology was declared to be "of the Devil."   To compromise on any religious  issue was considered to be making a pact with the Satan.   Errors shifted from the status of "a way to learn"  to  something to be punished and the ultimate punishment was to be abandoned by God and left for the Devil.   

And then the Earth Became Round:  The evidence proved that some of the original  answers were obviously wrong, such as the Earth was flat.   Many more ancient beliefs required re-evaluation, but the carved in stone mentality, the I'm-right-your-wrong attitude  prevented adjustments as new information became available.   Some influential people, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, took odds with the official views, and as a result of differing opinions,  over the years, Christianity has split in thousands of variations on the original theme.   Today, these variations range from  liberal,  open minded, all-inclusive views  to the strict, closed, carved-in-tone attitudes of the ultra-conservatives.   

One-Way  My-Way:  Today the leaders of the ultra-conservative end of Christianity have become very vocal and have declared their views to be the only correct views of, not only Christianity, but on anything relating to the Infinite, Ultimate Source we call "God."   Their antiquated  theology has been declared by them  to be the ultimate authority about all kinds of things even though many of  their answers are unprovable and many of them simply don't make sense.   (See the examples listed below.)

When their theology was confined to believers, society managed to survive.   However, today,  circumstances are vastly different.   The human knowledge base had been greatly expanded.  We are in the middle of major, global-level, social, political, economic, religious, and environmental changes.    In this context, the ultra-conservative Christian extremists are, among other things, attempting to take over the Republican party and dominate all of American society.°    Under  these circumstances, remaining silent and allowing them to push their theology into secular government laws is equally as dysfunctional as is their original, untested theology.

The Truth Shall Set You Free:  In that light and for the purpose of basing life on more enlightened vision of reality, some of the fundamentalist Christian belief are listed below along with alternative perspectives.   No  claims are being made as to what is right or wrong.   Instead, the most likely theories, the most probable possibilities, are listed.   Your job is to decide which theories most likely represent reality and what beliefs will  most likely to bring you  the experiences you say you want.  

Examples      Examples      ...

Life Is Not  What We've Been 
Led to Believe It Is by Those Who Claim to Know!

Please remember that pointing out the ancient follies in Christian theology is designed to modernize and rescue Christianity from the fate of the Zoroastrian religion.  Please also remember that there is a vast difference between the teachings of Jesus and the Christian hierarchy (the social structure) that attempts to tell you what his ministry means.   

We encourage you to support our work° and participate with us°  in bringing Christianity into the twenty-first century.   Thank you.

   Ultra-conservative, Christian theology teaches people that man was made in the image of God.

   Christian theology looks at this concept in physical terms only, as though God had a body similar to a human body.    The evidence leads to the conclusion that god is NOT physical --  that God is NOT a super human being living above the clouds --  that God is consciousness -- that God Consciousness is so vast and so complex that it transcends human understanding, (see Ecclesiastes 11:5)°  --   that humans are also consciousness --   that God consciousness and human consciousness are intimately interrelated.   Several biblical passages, such as John 14:12,°   and The Universal Law of Thought° indicate that it's far  more likely that God created man with the capacity to be God-like in behavior and in ability and not God-like  in physical form.  

   Ultra-conservative, Christian leaders claim that a human being is his or her physical body.  

   There is no evidence to support such a claim and considerable evidence to refute it.   It's far more likely that humans are not physical bodies -- that humans are eternal, non-physical, divine beings who temporarily inhabit physical bodies.    The scientific evidence indicates that physical matter only a very small part of reality -- that physical matter is not actually physical -- that what we perceive of as physical is made up of energy.   

One of the main reasons why the right-wing Christian extremists insist that a human being is his/her physical body is because if a human being IS NOT his/her physical body, then  their entire forced motherhood campaign fall flat on its face -- the greatest money making ploy of all times would simply dry up and blow away.    See to section titled:  Controversy Sells - And Its a Multi-billion-dollar Business°   and the section titled:   The Body Proclamation.°    

A much more likely view is that humans are part of and co-creators with 'God.'    Within the context of life on Earth, we are the creators of our personal experiences."  See the section titled:    Universal Spirituality.°    

   Luke17:21  says  “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you."      What is the kingdom of God?  Traditional Christian theology teaches its followers that God's kingdom is in heaven, and that heaven is a place above the clouds where all good Christians (and only good Christians)  go after death to be with God and Jesus.   

The evidence points to a more logical  conclusion that heaven is not a physical place  (as strongly implied but never clearly stated by traditional Christian theology.°)   Could heaven be a state of being?   Could heaven be a function of consciousness?   Could there be other levels of reality about which, we still know nothing?  (Readers are encourages to examine the latest findings in subatomic physics. -- http://www.whatthebleep.com/community/ ' )

When a person makes a reference to  heaven he/she commonly points up (away from the center of the Earth) as if pointing to heaven.   But, since the Earth is round, up is, in reality,  an infinite number of directions.   And how far above the clouds is heaven?  What is the nature of heaven?  Is heaven a physical place as tradition Christianity strongly implied but never clearly stated?  

 The evidence also tells us that physical matter is not physical at all, that it is made up of energy.   So, what is heaven and where is it?   Perhaps Luke17:21 in the Christian Bible is correct:    “Behold, the kingdom of God (heaven) is within you."     Perhaps Christian theology is off the mark.    Take a moment, sit quietly, and think about the implications of this possibility -- God and heaven are both within you.   What does that mean?  Who or what is the "You" that God is in?

   Ultra-conservative, Christian Theology teaches that humans are separate from God and  separate from nature.

   The Bible tells a very different story.  

   John 14:12    "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater [works] than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."

   Psalms 82:6  "I have said, Ye [are] gods; and all of you [are] children of the most High."

   Luke 17:21   “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you." 

   Ecclesiastes 3:19   "For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all [is] vanity."

Ecclesiastes 3:19 is the Biblical equivalent of 
the quote from Chief Seattle.°   

Inherently Evil       Inherently Evil       ...

   The inherently evil story just doesn't match common human behavior.   Of course, there are ignorant, mentally dysfunctional  and/or desperate people who do evil things, but what about the average person?  How many times have you heard about people risking their lives to save someone else's life?   How many times have you herd people say something like,  "I want to make the world a better place."  "How can I help?"  "I want to make a contribution to society."?  

   God can be bribed or bought off    by worship, by suffering and/or by killing and burning animals.

   We don't here much about burning animals anymore, but worship and  suffering are still in vogue.    

Regarding Worship,  there is absolutely no evidence what-so-ever to support the belief that the source of the universe either wants or needs to be worshipped by human beings.°   The evidence seems to indicate that honor, respect, humility, and gratitude are a much more practical ways to relate to Source.   The evidence also indicates that humans  are part of,  intimately related with, and co-creators with that Source we call "God."   One might also consider prayers of gratitude and stewardship of the Earth  (caring for the home that has been provided for us)  to be a much more practical and valid approach to Source.    

Regarding Suffering,  Again, there is absolutely no evidence what-so-ever to support the belief that God wants, needs, requires or desires you or anybody else to suffer.   One might consider the fact that we can't know and choose that which we desire if we don't know it's opposite.   We can't know hot without also knowing cold.   We can't know pleasure without knowing pain.   But most of us can understand the pain of a particular experience by going through it only once.   

There is absolutely no evidence to support the belief that intentionally  creating a situation that produces pain, grief, or misery is a ticket to heaven.    Neither is there any evidence to support the belief that intentionally inflicting one's body with pain (such as lashing one's self with a whip as Christian devotees used to do)  pleases God.   

We also wonder why the vast majority of those who preach the virtues of suffering and sacrifice, don't do the suffering or the sacrificing themselves.  

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   Christian have exclusive access to God.   Christian have exclusive access to heaven.   All other religions are simply fairytales.

   This story originated in the dark ages and was the creation men who believed the Earth was flat.   There is absolutely no evidence to support it .   Martin Luther blew this story apart in 1517.°   It's even contradicted in the Christian Bible by the words of Jesus himself,  (Matthew 6:5-6)°   

The concept called "God" has been a part of every human society for thousands of years.    Billions of people presently believe in and practice non-Christian religions.   Believing that "The Source of All Creation" has made him/her/itself available exclusively for the believers  in one ancient, Earth-bound religion and that  all others are denied access to God is on par with believing in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy.   

   Earth Life Is Either a Ticket to Heaven or a Slippery Slope to Hell.   According to Christian theology, Earth life is a one-chance-only, testing ground to see who's good enough to get into Christian heaven (that place above the clouds where the superhuman being called God lines).    Those who do not pass God's test are abandoned and/or turned over to Satan to spend eternity experiencing pain and suffering in hell.    

   Wouldn't you think that if God wanted a bunch of 'good folks to fill up heaven, that he'd just make a bunch of them and chuck them directly into heaven.   Can you think of any purpose served for punishing people for eternity based upon a single error during a single life on Earth?

   According Christian theology, the story about the crucifixion of Jesus is filled with important meanings  and implications.  

   But, where did those meanings and implications come from?   Church leaders went to great lengths to tell the public what that story meant, but were they accurate and does their interpretation of this story represent reality as we know it today?   

Did church leaders have a vested interest in telling the public what that story meant?   We also wonder why the pre-reformation church leaders leaders were so adamantly opposed to the public being able to read the Bible and the crucifixion  story for themselves.   See the fate of William Tyndale,° the man who first translated the Christian Bible into English.

   The crucifixion story is at the core of Christian theology and brings up some important questions such as:  What does the story mean?  Is it literal or symbolic?   What actually happened on that day and on the days following?   Whose interpretation of this story is correct one, and most importantly:  What was the context within which this story was played out?

The Context of a Story:

Readers need to understand the principle:  "Context Controls Content."   In essence, this principle means that in any story about an experience, the circumstances and conditions within which the event occurs  set the tone of  and dominate the meaning of the story.   In other words, the context° within which an experience occurs influences, dominates, and controls its meaning.    

Also, the underlying belief system of the listener  (his/her ground of being --  his/her perspective on life)   strongly influence  how the listener interprets the story.   (See the section titled:  The Listener's Mindset.°  

The Context of the Crucifixion:

The context° in which  the crucifixion story occurred  sets a particular  tone for it and gives it some meanings that are not obvious to the casual reader.  This, in turn, gives the story some rather strange possibilities about what it does or does not mean.   So an important question to ask and answer  is,  What information can be deduced about this story and from the context within which it occurred that is not stated directly in the words themselves?

According to Christian theology, God created the universe about seven thousand years ago.   Thus,  the time of the Crucifixion, God had been intentionally creating all humans  inherently evil for somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand of years.   There is no indication that God created Eve and Adam  inherently evil, so God must have "altered the original blueprints" for making human beings.  This intentional change by God into making all humans  evil was the result of a convoluted story about Eve, Adam, a snake,  and an apple. **1`  

From the day God  kicked Eve and Adam out of paradise  until the day Jesus was murdered,  God had been making all humans, who, by the way, had absolutely nothing to do with the forbidden fruit business,  inherently evil and then abandoning them to a unspecified fate.**2`  

The  Crucifixion Story:

One day, God decided do something about the evil nature of humans and to convert a few inherently evil humans into "good folks" to fill up his apparently-empty-except-for-Jesus-and-the-angels  heaven.   

BUT...   He didn't simply stop making humans evil.   He didn't acknowledge His own responsibility for making humans inherently evil and simply change His ways.    He didn't "look at the blueprints for making human beings" and "shift a line or two" and, thus, end this whole, dumb "inherently evil" fiasco.   Instead, he sent his kid to Earth to get murdered by Roman soldiers, and that murder was intended to show humans how much He (God)  loves humans.   (If a human being committed a premeditated act of murder and then billed it as an expression of love, he or she would get a one-way, no-return ticket to the loony bin.)   

According to the story, God setting his kid up to be murdered  was supposed to solve the "inherently evil" problem.   But it didn't solve the problem.   It didn't even come close to ending the problem.   It actually compounded it and made it many times more confusing.   According to Christian theology, the murder resulted is  some humans having the opportunity to follow the orders of church leaders and thereby get God to forgive them for something they didn't do and then, after death, be invited into Christian heaven above the clouds.   It left everybody else exactly where they were before the murder, still inherently evil and either condemned to hell or abandoned to an unspecified fate.**2`   And it left everybody completely dependent upon "God's one and only real Church" for salvation.   It did absolutely noting for billions of humans who were not beholding and subservient to the Roman Catholic Church.

To make a long story short,  here's the super being of all beings;  here's the creator of all creation;  here's the all knowing, all powerful, all present God,   and the best He can come up with to fix His previous screw up is to set up His own child to be murdered.   

And when it comes to the crucifixion story, itself, all we have is hearsay accounts of what actually happened from people who were not present at the event they  described.   According to this author's understanding, the story was not translated into written form until at least one-hundred years after the event.

And so:  1) given the context° in which this story was played out, 2)  the fact that we have only heresy evidence about the event itself, and 3) the fact that the story comes to us from people whose basic belief system was  vastly different from what we know today,  and 4)  Given fact that the story was handed down by word of mouth only for at least four generations,  5) given the historically documented despicable behavior of the people in charge° of putting that story in the Bible and then determining what that story meant,  what is the probability the present-day, conservative Christians have the complete story and have meaning exactly right?  Perhaps it's time to examine the carved-in-stone theology based up on this story and look for some other possibilities.

Possibilities:

Is it possible that humans are inherently good and not Inherently Evil?`  Is it possible that Jesus was simply demonstrating that the death of the physical body is no big deal?°  Is it possible that the event, as it actually occurred, is significantly different from the account of that incident as written in the Christian Bible?   Is it possible that the meanings given to this story by Christian theology may be more than slightly off the mark?   Is it possible that the people who put this story into the Bible and then declared  what it mans were less than objective reporters and had a vested interest in franchising their religion?

Is it possible that the nature of God as described and believed by the Ultra-conservative, Fundamentalist Christian leaders°  (an angry, vindictive, fickle, needy, brooding, mass-murder-minded, super-human-being living above the clouds)  is not accurate description of "The Unknown and Unknowable Source of All Creation?"   

Dumping the Middlemen:

When Jesus said,  "I am the way, the truth,  and the life," (John 14:6).    Is it possible that he was NOT referring to himself as a personality, but rather, He was saying: "what I teach you is your pathway to God/heaven."   

Jesus also said:  "I and my father are one." (John 10:30)   Thus one could read John 14:6 as "God is the way, the truth,  and the life"  And because Luke 17:21 tells us: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you," one could read John 14:6 as   "The God within you is the way, the truth,  and the life."   Also,   Matthew 6:5-6  tells us to go into our closets and privately pray and God will answer our prayers publicly.   Thus, the Bible, itself, tells us that, although churches may be excellent for creating mutual support communities,° they are unnecessary when it comes to connecting to God.    

You might also note the passage:   "Know the truth and the truth will set you free."  (John8:32)    Perhaps it's time to stop destroying our children's self image by telling them they are inherently evil, and thereby,  creating adults who are mindless regarding religion and totally  dependent upon an religious structure that still insists upon teaching archaic, dysfunctional, unprovable beliefs about what God is and isn't.    (See the page titled: Universal spirituality.°  the page titled:  The Quintessential Jesus°  and the page titled:  Religion versus Spirituality.)°  

What if we interpreted some of the other Biblical passages with the same zeal and  intensity that the fundamentalists use to interpret the fundamentalist Christian version of the  crucifixion story?  --  Scriptures such as:

John 14:12   (paraphrased)    

"Anything I can do, you can do and more."  

Luke 17:21                                                                        Luke 17:21             ...

“Behold, the kingdom of God is within you." 

John 10:34, 35   

Isaiah 41:23 

"Shew [show] the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye [are] gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold [it] together."

Genesis 2:7   

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

(Did you get the meaning of Genesis 2:7.   Perhaps you might want to read it again.  "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;° and man became a living soul."   )

Ecclesiastes 11:5   

"As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of the woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” 

and

Matthew 6:5-6

Matthew 7:15-16

Ecclesiastes 3:19  

John 1:1

John 7:7

Matthew 17:20

Mark 9:42

Revelation 22:18-19

For insights into the origins of present-day, Christian beliefs, see the section titled:  The origin of Christianity  and the section title:  Could the Christian Bible Have Been Distorted.°)   Also see the section  titled:   The Ultimate Sacrifice.°

    The World Is About to End:   Many conservative, right-wing religious leaders are peddling the story that the world is about to end and that all good Christians (and only good Christians) will be magically lifted off the Earth and deposited directly into heaven to be with God and Jesus forever.   This leads followers to believe that they can ignore even the most critical social, political, and environmental problems.   Some of them even encourage the problems because, in their belief, they are hastening their arrival into heaven.

   The Rapture°  

This page exposes this unprovable fairytale for what it is. 

   God's Conception Magic act has been declared to be reality by the ultra-conservative fundamentalist Christians.

   God's Conception Magic Act.° 

Examining the evidence, or more accurately the lack of evidence,  give us a very different story.    

   When Does Life Begin?°  

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that life begins at conception.   Even the United States Supreme Court (Roe v. Wade) could not find any research data or any scientific evidence to indicate when an individual human life begins.     

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   Publicly, the Roman Catholic Church declares the life begins an conception, BUT. . .    

The Bible (Genesis 2:7) and their own official Roman Catholic Encyclopedia both give us a very different story.    There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this belief.   God's Conception Magic Act '        When Does Life Begin? '    

   Ultra-conservative Christian leaders claim that forced motherhood (anti-abortion) is a medical issue and not a religious issue.

   The Evidence tells us a very different story   

   The Truth About Abortion°

This page explains why a woman's right to choose to create or to not create another human body in her womb is a religious freedom issue.

   Abortion and the Three Religious Assumptions°

When we examine forced motherhood (anti- abortion) in detail and within the contexts of each of the three, basic, religious assumptions (Christian one-life-ism, atheism, and reincarnation) we find three very different conclusions regarding its significance, its meaning, and its consequences.

    If you are like most people, you've been given a very limited amount of information about forced motherhood, about what it is, about what it means, and how it relates to you.  

   The Previously Ignored Perspective on Abortion°  

If you have listened to or read major media presentations on the forced motherhood (an