An introduction to the biblical book of Jonah

An introduction to the biblical book of Jonah.

God punishes Jonah with a storm and has a monstrous fish eat him, until he relents and preaches to the city of Nineveh that it will be destroyed. He didn't want to, because he didn't think it would be destroyed, and he didn't want to be a false prophet. After being bullied into it, God changes his mind, and doesn't destroy Nineveh.

The teachings in the Book of Jonah are that God punishes those who are disobedient and rewards those who are obedient, and if you murder someone at sea then all is well as long as you fear God. Also, if you are in an unequal relationship, it is best to simply do as you are told, else, things will only end up harder for you. It's not the Bible's finest moment.

Historically, the book lacks legitimacy. Nineveh was the capital of the great Assyrian empire and at no point did the events of Jonah 3:5-10 actually occur - not a single trader, traveller, statesman or historian note that the entire population suddenly gave up its old ways and embraced a new religion.

http://www.humanreligions.info/jonah.html.

The Food Chain and God: The Natural Evil of the World

A new page! "The Food Chain and God".

A good god could, if it wanted to, have designed all life so that it is directly sustained by manna from heaven, with no need for consumption of biological matter. But almost every form of life must by its very nature capture, kill and eat other living beings in order to survive. Without this murderous torment, life is impossible. If not by direct consumption, then, organisms must still acquire biological matter at the expense of others: the competition for food is also a case of living beings being required to outdo each other merely to survive. There is no way to live life along a principal of do no harm.

If life was created, and not simply the result of undirected unconscious evolution, this is surely the worst possible way to have created life. A god could not have created a more vicious cycle if it tried: tying the very existence of life with the necessary killing of other life is the work of an evil genius, not of an all-powerful and all-loving god. Either no god ever instigated life or guided it, or, such a god is monstrously evil.

The contents menu is:

1. The Arms Race: Poisons and Resistance
2. The Despair of Darwin
3. Non-Biological Energy and Balance

What is Fundamentalism?

Fundamentalism is the approach to religion that sees believers embrace an early form of their religion, to consider it beyond criticism and worthy enough to be enforced without having to accommodate modern evidence or logical arguments against it. Fundamentalists of text-based traditions treat a core holy text as infallible and inerrant. Because beliefs are given absolute importance, fundamentalism is often sectarian and intolerant: every doctrinal interpretation results in schism and division.

http://www.humanreligions.info/what_is_fundamentalism.html.

www.humantruth.info/the_values_of_liberalism.html divides liberal values into three categories (social, political & economic), which together stem from the 17th century Enlightenment. But note that someone who holds liberal ideas in one domain doesn't have to be liberal in another - an individual may be socially liberal but not economically; others may be liberal overall, but not when it comes to politics.

Five updates on pages on Christianity

1. Iyyobh, in the Jewish Book of Truth - Known to Christians as the Book of Job: I've added a paragraph to the introduction on this page on the theological problems in the story of Job, and 2 sections to this page: (1) God Testing People in The Bible, and (2) God as the Author of Evil: Are Satan and God Interchangeable?

2. Jesus Did Not Exist: I have added a long introductory paragraph, and added multiple quotes from Bart Ehrman and a bit from Karen Armstrong. This page needs a lot of work - there are several important books and authors on this topic that I ought to be mentioning (for example the dry Richard Carrier and the impassioned Acharya S). The parts on the birth of Jesus and on his death will be revamped too at some point.

3. The Book of Revelation: Some notes on authorship and symbolism.

4. The Birth of Jesus and the Christmas Story: Pagan and Unhistorical: I have revamped this page... given it an introduction before the menu, added notes from Prof. Bart Ehrman on historical proofs, and added a few other bits throughout the page.

5. Incest in the Bible: Adam and Eve and Their Children, and Noah and His Family: I've added a note on Warren Steed Jeffs, the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a spin-off from the Mormons).He got himself on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" on account of the scale of his sex crimes within his congregation, including sex with minors and incest. And I've added some paragraphs on the Parsis (Zoroastrians) in Hong Kong, where religious inhibitions against marrying outside causes severe problems with the 100-strong community. Zoroastrianism and its dogmas influenced Judaism, Chritsianity and Islam.

Current stuff

In order of priority, I am:

* Looking after my little boy while I'm not at work. Finishes in about 16 years.

* Doing final course essay for Religious Education module going towards degree. Finish in early October.

* Penultimate RE essay (1000 words, easy). Finish in a week.

* Studying/revising for Com Sys Eng degree; including Microsoft and Cisco CCNA exams - during the week. Finishing them all in December.

And stuff I sqeeze it when taking a break:

* Programming Moggy, my music playing software.

* Light maintenance / editting of web domains and occasional programming/improving of Ziggy, my content-management software.

And stuff which has been completely abandoned for a number of years, mostly because although they were fun, they just take too long:

* Baphomet Method (music project)

* SquaddieWars (Facebook game, asp.net platform)

The Gospels and the Crucifixion - Differences in style

I have updated "The Crucifixion Facade" by Vexen Crabtree (2002) with a few biggish quotes from Bart Ehrman on the gospels' accounts of the crucifixion. Whilst there are well-known contradictions between thses accounts (who'd have thought that various people could have thought Jesus' last words were so different?!!), Ehrman's quotes summarize the totality of the style of these differences, and is the best summary on this topic. Find the quotes in section 3 of that page.

Anti-Jewish Violence by Muslims, in Europe

I've added a new section to "Anti-Semitism: 2000 Years of Christian Love" by Vexen Crabtree (2004):

10. The Growing Violence of Muslim Antisemitism in Europe


The European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia's report on the subject of growing and violent anti-Jew crimes in the EU found that that largest group of perpetrators were young Muslim males. Because of this, the EUMC withheld publication (until it was leaked). The report summarized country-by-country events, including large rallies against Jews by hundreds of Muslims chanting "kill the Jews", and no end of other incidents. Throughout the West, violent anti-semitism is correlated with Muslim immigration.

“Since 2000, anti-Semitism in France has been epidemic. Synagogues have been burned down, schools vandalized, shops attacked, rabbis beaten, children assaulted, school buses shot at, [...]. At Muslim demonstrations shouts of "Death to the Jews" have become common. [For example in 2004] an assailant shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great") stabbed another seventeen-year-old Jewish boy in the chest in another suburb of Paris [as he left a Jewish school].”
--Bruce Bawer (2006)

How to fix newspapers

I have added a section to my critical page on the Mass Media, with regards to newspapers and cheap sensationalist journalism, and their negative effects on individuals and society. Here is a bit of the next text, view the rest by clicking on the title, above!

• Stronger international laws against the public spreading of disinformation. Broadcasters should be placed under extra legal obligation to check facts. Many journalists avoid legal trouble by claiming that they don't know what stories are true or not. So, if it is scandalous and it will sell, then, they publish it without checking (or admitting) their sources. There needs to be an international body that specifically deals with mass-media outlets, proscribing to them a greater responsibility to check their facts, with the ability to suspend printing or publication once a certain amount of abuse has built up.
  
  
• Journalists should be required to be a member of a journalist association, which they get kicked out of if they produce very low quality information. Many developed countries already have such associations. It should especially be the case in wire agencies, from which most other news outlets get their news.

Some methods of curbing the press's abuses are good-hearted, but occasionally dysfunctional:

• "In 2008 the Slovak parliament introduced one to guarantee the subject of a story the right to reply, of the same length and prominence as the original" - this sounds good, because the idea is that the press will have to print criticisms of itself in its own papers with such frequency that they will be compelled only to publish accurate information. There is however a very unfortunate second part to that law - the right to reply stands even if the facts were correct. This would seem to me to lead to a barrage of responses from politicians and lawyers that abuse the right-to-reply principal, in effect, ending the ability of the press to be critical. In a healthy democracy, the press must free to be critical of governments and institutions.
  
  
• In Poland, an old law gives sources the authority to withdraw or edit quotations right up until the point of publication41. So when a paper tries to quote someone out of context, as they are often eager to do, the subject can withdraw their quote. Unfortunately, it seems like it can again be abused by officials to ruin newspaper stories in order to hide truth.
  

In short, it appears to be very difficult to concoct laws that allow individuals to protect themselves against ridiculous press stories, but where instititons and democracies are still subject to critical journalism without fear of recriminations. What would be an ideal is a world where consumers, as pointed out above, avoid the more outlandish papers, and where editors and journalists only try to produce responsible pieces. Unfortunately, neither is likely to happen.

United Kingdom: National Successes and Social Failures

I have redesigned my website on the UK; it still has the same-old pages on British trash culture; religion, secularisation and religious minorities; UK immigration, and summaries of why others in the world might dislike us British, and what the UK gets right as a country (our down to Earth nature lets us avoid extreme politics and fundamentalism, for example).

The Fear of Death is a Cause of Irrational Beliefs

“It is not rational arguments, but emotions, that cause belief in a future life. The most important of these emotions is fear of death.”
"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell, p74

Child psychologists say that 'there is no death' in the world of most childen. Others in history, such as Freud, have explained that "dealing" with the learned idea of death is one of the greatest challenges of adulthood. Many, of course, "deal" with it by imagining that death is not real. That, in fact, we somehow survive death, despite that the self is the brain, and the brain dies.

The fear of death has got to be one of the biggest causes, in history, of religious beliefs. The difficulty in imagining the discontinuance of thought and the loss of all motivations, memories, life, to some seeming void, has lent itself in history to the idea that somehow we don't actually die. These "spiritual pipe dreams" (in the words of Anton LaVey) fuel irrational religious beliefs.

I've added the quote by Bertrand Russell to my page, "The Causes of Religion" by Vexen Crabtree (2007).

Vexen Crabtree's New Pages in 2005

2005 Dec 28	"Christian Prayer" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Dec 24	"Satanism: The Natural Religion (Forget the New Age!)" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Dec 18	"Blasphemy Laws in the UK" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Dec 11	"Christmas: The Multicultural Celebration" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Aug 29	"The Goodguy Badge": Vexen's page on LaVey's term describing the shallow things people do to look and feel 'good'
2005 Aug 16	The International Date Format (ISO-8601): Vexen's appraisal of the YYYY MMM DD date format
2005 Aug 15	Doubled size of ""If there is a God, it Must be an Evil God" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Aug 14	"Satanism as the Worship of Truth and Reality", according to Vexen
2005 Aug 13	How does Acupuncture Work? Scientific studies included. Summary by Vexen
2005 Aug 07	"Military Drill: Its Theory & Purpose" by Vexen Crabtree Vexen Sociology: The Importance of Current Events is Amplified by our Egos
2005 Jul 20	Pornography: Vexen on the porn industry
2005 Jul 20	Hellraiser films; Reviews and Commentary on Hellraiser, the Cenobites, Pinhead. By Vexen Crabtree
2005 Jun 04	If Vexen Crabtree was God, what would he do? And why doesn't God do these things?
2005 May 28	"Cultural Religion and Scholarly Religion" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 May 03	Vexen shows that Biblical Christianity Completely And Specifically Denies All Free Will
2005 May 01	"Satanism is a Different Religion to Christianity!" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Apr 24	New website on politics and countries, including new essay "Which Country Sets the Best Examples in the World?" by Vexen
2005 Apr 10	God never needs to "test" us, it already knows what we'll do
2005 Mar 22	"Prayer is useless and satanic, not godly" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Mar 20	New dream pages: Dream Interpretation, The Biology of Dreams and Nightmares and Night Terrors
2005 Mar 19	New page on "Homosexuality" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Jan 31	"Fascism and Satanism" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Jan 27	"Equality, Egalitarianism and Social Stratification in Satanism" by Vexen Crabtree
2005 Jan 25	Friedrich Nietzsche on Vexen's A to Z of Satanism page
2005 Jan 06	List of pages on Buddhism by Vexen

Archive of Vexen Crabtree's Live Journal entries in 2005