Rational Rejection of Organized Religion

Any research into religion requires a thorough research of source documents and their origins. In doing such research, nearly all religions fall apart because the inquiry reveals such great amounts of editorializing by authors over the centuries. Later authors, rather than writing contemporaneous works, frequently added additional, inauthentic material to older works. Most religious works are now defined as “revealed truth” as opposed to factual documents of historic accuracy.

I will take the Christian Bible to begin with. The Christian Bible is probably the most widely circulated piece of literature ever published. Even so, the Bible comes in many different forms with various contents, both in the wording and even selection of particular books. Practically every denomination has its own version of the Bible spinning the original documents to support particular idiosyncratic beliefs. Even the Jewish scholars of old were guilty of alteration and insertion.

The Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament, purportedly written by Moses, would have been written around 1400 BCE; most scholars agree it was more likely written closer to 1000 BCE. For many centuries, most of the miraculous events now depicted in the Pentateuch, were not present in the Torah. The talking serpent, Great Deluge, Tower of Babel, burning bush, and many others did not appear in the Pentateuch until they were inserted nearly eight hundred years after the fact. In the 6^th Century, BCE, certain Jewish aristocratic nobility were released from exile in Babylon. These descendants of former Jewish VIP’s had spent generations under the influence of Babylonian culture and education. All of these inserted parts of the Pentateuch can be found in Babylonian mythology. So, as the Jewish exiles returned to Israel, they brought the Babylonian influences, which still took another three centuries to be fully integrated into Torah.

Of course none this outshines the biggest miracle of the Pentateuch. Moses is supposed to have written the entirety, even though much of it takes place after his death. For more on various confusions and contradictions contained in the Old Testament, visit this page:

http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/otprob.shtml

In the New Testament, there are incredible problems with the authenticity of ascribed authorships. Of the Gospel writers, only Luke lived long enough to have written the Gospel attributed to him. The oldest known original works in the New Testament belong to Paul, whose conversion occurred around 64 CE. The original document gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John were all written around 100 CE many years, and even decades after their deaths. The argument runs that these are transcribed copies from older documents, but the Dead Sea scrolls prove that documents more contemporaneous to the lives of the Apostles did survive. So why are the originals that didn’t survive the ones included in the accepted New Testament? The answer lies in the conversion of Constantine. In calling the various bishops of Christianity to council, Constantine sought to formulate a Christianity acceptable to Roman ideas. So Christianity, in all of its current practices, and its primary text were established for political reasons with theological considerations secondary.

Most of the story of Jesus, much like most of the story of creation of the world and the nation of Israel, can be found paralleled in older myths. For Jesus the parallel myth of salvation that was popular in the 1^st Century Roman world. This is the myth of Mithras, a possibly Indo-Iranian sun god worshipped primarily within the Roman military. It is possible to argue that the story of Christ is a syncretism of Jewish mysticism and Roman Mithraism. Mithras was not alone in competing for the salvation of men’s souls during the 1^st Century CE, there were many others, and modern Christianity takes its various themes from most of them.

Finally, there is a quote, tenuously attributed to Pope Leo X, “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.”

The previous is but a short discussion on reasons to dispute the authenticity of the literary bases of three major religious bodies. In disputing the authenticity of the Old Testament/Torah scriptures, one has to dispute Judaism and all that evolved from it. Christianity and Islam find additional failings in the scriptures of the New Testament. These failings of authentic original texts, the same as those used by Christians to dispute so-called pagan religions can be found in virtually all religious movements and establishments across the globe.