It's Over, Part II
This report from Yahoo News is really the last nail in the Creationism/Intelligent Design coffin. This one's got to hurt, though. My post of a week or so ago details the discovery of the missing link in dinosaur evolution. This one confirms the missing link in humans and I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I've been hoping that something like this would come out since the last major news story of this kind. There's no way to make people believe if they don't want to but if some one is really sincere in finding out the truth, this ought to do it for them.
In other news, I am starting to get a bit more worried about Bush and his ilk. He has a lot of people around him who are "born agains" and it seems as though they are on a mission to bring about Armageddon. I think they really believe that it's their purpose in life. These people think that if they can stir up things in the Middle East enough, the Rapture will occur and they'll all get swept up into heaven as the select. I got news for you - it ain't going to happen. Armageddon and the Rapture and the Seven Seals are just scare tactics the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists use to keep their followers in line. My experience is that any organization that uses fear as motivation is usually hiding something or not telling the whole truth. Does it strike anyone as odd that the whole time Jesus was on earth, all he talked about was how loving God is and that we could all guarantee our place in heaven by sharing that love with our fellow man. Then the book of Revelations comes and turns everything on its head(or so it seems). When the founding fathers of the Catholic Church put together the Bible in 300 AD or so, they obviously had a reason for including this book. Everyone of that time and age knew what that book was about. It's not a book of prophecy, it's a history book. Apocalyptic writings have been a staple of Jewish literature since the Babylonian exile. It was used to communicate information amongst the faithful without their Babylonian captors knowing what they were talking about. In fact, the book of Daniel is exactly this and most theologians don't think there was a Daniel at all. The whole number of the beast thing in Revelations is not even about the devil although it is about an evil man. The Jews of that time were very involved in a sort of numerology. People's names where often translated into numbers by combining the numbers that corresponded to the letters in people's names. 666(or 616 as we recently found out) is the numerical equivalent of Nero, who was the emperor of Rome during the time the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. If you look at the conditions the Christians were living under at that time, it's no wonder they felt they had be surreptitious with their communications. They were being fed to lions, their homeland had been destroyed and most of their countrymen spread to the four corners of the earth. It's amazing what an intelligent reading of something will reveal.
In other news, I am starting to get a bit more worried about Bush and his ilk. He has a lot of people around him who are "born agains" and it seems as though they are on a mission to bring about Armageddon. I think they really believe that it's their purpose in life. These people think that if they can stir up things in the Middle East enough, the Rapture will occur and they'll all get swept up into heaven as the select. I got news for you - it ain't going to happen. Armageddon and the Rapture and the Seven Seals are just scare tactics the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists use to keep their followers in line. My experience is that any organization that uses fear as motivation is usually hiding something or not telling the whole truth. Does it strike anyone as odd that the whole time Jesus was on earth, all he talked about was how loving God is and that we could all guarantee our place in heaven by sharing that love with our fellow man. Then the book of Revelations comes and turns everything on its head(or so it seems). When the founding fathers of the Catholic Church put together the Bible in 300 AD or so, they obviously had a reason for including this book. Everyone of that time and age knew what that book was about. It's not a book of prophecy, it's a history book. Apocalyptic writings have been a staple of Jewish literature since the Babylonian exile. It was used to communicate information amongst the faithful without their Babylonian captors knowing what they were talking about. In fact, the book of Daniel is exactly this and most theologians don't think there was a Daniel at all. The whole number of the beast thing in Revelations is not even about the devil although it is about an evil man. The Jews of that time were very involved in a sort of numerology. People's names where often translated into numbers by combining the numbers that corresponded to the letters in people's names. 666(or 616 as we recently found out) is the numerical equivalent of Nero, who was the emperor of Rome during the time the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. If you look at the conditions the Christians were living under at that time, it's no wonder they felt they had be surreptitious with their communications. They were being fed to lions, their homeland had been destroyed and most of their countrymen spread to the four corners of the earth. It's amazing what an intelligent reading of something will reveal.
posted by Paul Thomas at 11:27 AM
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