God, Seriously?

God, Seriously?

written by: Michael Shea

@calmsbehaviour

 

Me myself and I
There is a part in most books where I get to read about the author, it usually goes something like Michael Shea was born May 1965 in New Hampshire in the UK, in a residence referred to as a hunters lodge. Born to a, you know what, I am not doing that. I know people are either going to look or couldn’t give a crap, those that do are either really interested or haters.
My dad was in the employ of Her Majesty’s Ministry of Defence and as such we moved about some. I neither begrudge this nor recommend it as with anything there is a yin yang to all life choices, I suppose I could explain that term in case there are people out there who didn’t understand yin yang but then that would in part at this stage defeat the purpose of the book.
Sigh!
I lived a sheltered youth protected in a decent family with two sisters that are truly ladies, my parents ensured I had everything I needed. Actually no that’s not true but we can leave all that shit to another day and another book. I have lived in a few different countries and thanks to my parents and other circumstances I got to travel extensively. I now live in Queensland Australia, although when I first got here I was in Perth Western Australia. I have also Lived in Sydney, and Melbourne. So you can see this travel thing hasn’t deserted me. I’m actually writing this book whilst on an island off the East coast of Queensland!
I have done heaps of stuff during my life, not all of it rewarding, nice or even legal. Suffice to say I have lived and on the whole done so well. I have a wife who loves me and does her best to tolerate the parts of me that are hard to love. I have two children that are the greatest investments I shall ever make, and I love all three of them.
I customarily insert this word at the end of any statement I make that infers gooey, lovey stuff so in keeping with tradition I say, Blargh! Wouldn’t want to destroy that street cred of not being nice and all.
Regrets, there have been a few but then again…

Introduction, preface, whatever.
I am relatively certain that had I been born much earlier I would have been a philosopher. I suppose to some degree I am one but I also feel a philosopher in this era is akin to having a sheepdog herd cats.
I have literally spent 38 years of my life sifting through bits of information here and there, accruing bits and pieces of data that insinuate there is another story than the one we are told. Now I could pretend I’m some guru and sit somewhere telling folk that I have an idea about life, the universe and everything but I’d get a sore throat so I wrote it down. The thing is that as the quote infers, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a colossal one so people will doubt you made it up because it’s just too huge. I’ve told a few in my life but I’m sick of the lie we all struggle to overcome and the damage it has caused our existence.
This lie wouldn’t bother me if it just minded its own business and went about its day without affecting mine. It doesn’t though and it pervades into our daily lives like an insidious disease that defies treatment. This lie affects us from birth and harries us all the way to the grave snipping at our heels, and causing us to fear and doubt our every action and transgression. Maybe not on a loud hailer national broadcast level, but subliminally and subconsciously.
The lie I speak of is the existence of a god, not ‘the god’ as there are far too many available for anyone to seriously contemplate their discovery of a deity is a mutually exclusive achievement, there’s hundreds of them. They have dogged our existence on this mortal coil since man first had to find a reason to justify an occurrence he either didn’t understand or didn’t want to be answerable for himself. Our jaded and eclectic histories are full of gods a plenty for everything imaginable and it really has to stop. It cannot stop by reducing the many down to the one because this does no more than focus the hysterical intensity of those folks who are apt to need a god.
I do not wish anyone to conclude that I detest god or that I am angry at it as this is far from the case. I grew up enjoying the magic and the mystery of Christmas morning and Easter egg hunts and watching Ben Hur and a myriad of other tribal rites of passage but I did eventually grow up. I did eventually commence seeking deeper meaning in things and thankfully my parents were not draconian oligarchs who force fed me doctrine so in that, I had free will. I think my father may have believed in god but he never spoke about it, and that as far as I’m concerned is exactly how it fucking should be.
I have come to the opinion that the idea we all have a god hole in us is probably as accurate a description for the human condition as we are likely to get. Whilst I appreciate and respect the ecclesiastic teachings I cannot agree that only ‘a’ god can fill this internal yearning we all eventually feel. I say all liberally but I am certain there are some who never do or hide it well. The thing is it seems fairly definite based on anthropological evidence that were we to raise a society in complete isolation of any form of spiritual teachings or reference to any formal religion, essentially zero indoctrination (the bane of my existence) we would still encounter this issue. Does that mean there truly is a god? No of course not, it means that we are all feeling a connection to or a need to connect to something more than this he says waving his hand around vaguely. Individuals would still find themselves sitting under a tree or staring at the stars wondering if there is something, somewhere, somehow bigger than just themselves. There is though isn’t there? I am as certain of that as I am that the concept of a god is a case of faulty thinking.
Why is it that all animals and probably plants have what is referred to as ‘racial memory’ and yet it appears we don’t? Why does a salmon know where it was born and return to that very spot to die or the birds fly to the very nest they came from among millions, the list of these seemingly unlikely inbuilt functions is staggering. These creatures great and small still have all the behaviours even when held in isolation of their ilk, but not us. We are so far removed from the symbiosis of nature it is as though we were at some stage removed from it intentionally. Certainly there are certain tribes who in isolation of the madding crowd have retained this connection with the land such as the Aboriginals of Australia or Bushmen of Africa, but these too are dwindling as this earth shrinks.
A skilled survivalist would still likely perish if left to fend for themselves in an unfamiliar environment. But can we refer to this concept of a god hole as some form of racial memory? Whilst I don’t wish to dwell too much at this stage on that idea I just wanted to plonk it in front of you with this, when we contemplate the thought, ‘is this all there is?’, when we assume there is a something bigger than us. Then where pray tell do we look for answers? If you said the bible I would laugh and say “Up”.
We, and by ‘we’ I refer to my genus of we as in the western civilisation human of the mere male variety, may observe tribal customs with a sense of wonder and maybe a little bemusement. Like observing an Indigenous Australian Aboriginal dance group perform the Kangaroo or Emu dance and thinking awesome but a little primitive and quaint.
Now think to yourself about these lyrics.

‘Ring a ring a roses
A pocket full of posies
Ah tissue! Ah tissue! There’s a second verse where this line reads ‘Ashes! Ashes!’
We all fall down.’
There is a verse that bridges the two verses that goes
‘Hush! Hush Hush! We all tumble down.’

Every single western born human probably knows this, but what does it mean and how was it performed. You probably did this as a child. Holding hands and walking in a circular motion laughing and singing like an idiot. What are you doing though? Previously we discussed the Aboriginals conducting a dance about kangaroos or emus and we don’t necessarily connect any true meaning to it but what are they doing? They are teaching the next generation and those who listen that this is me, the kangaroo, this is what I eat, how I move and what I do. The entire story of life, the universe and everything for Indigenous cultures can be learned from their dances, songs and art telling of the dreamtime or origin.
With that in mind consider this. Ring of roses was the blemishes that people got, the first symptoms really, pockets filled with posies were herbal concoctions that were thought to ward off the fleas and rats said to spread disease. Ahhchoo! Ah tissue, this is the flu like symptoms that indicated you were in the final stages of the disease and we all fall down really doesn’t need much explaining does it? “Bring out yer dead” said the man wheeling the wagon down the street. The line ashes tells us that burning the bodies was common and tumble down refers to the large burial pits. The Black Death destroyed civilisation to some degree and left a dark smear on the consciousness of humanity that gave the dark ages a deeper meaning than we think. The song ‘ring o ring a rosies’ was a funeral dirge sung slowly and morbidly but we have over time altered it to be faster and lighter and even a celebratory song of merriment. Why?
This is proof that we too once sang songs and performed dances like the tribal cultures we observe with a sense of bewildered superiority. Whilst we may think it primitive we are the ones who are the poorer for not retaining this behaviour. My evidence for this is that the plague happened in 1346-53 and killed an estimated 200 million humans. The first time we know for certain that this song appeared in print was 1818 in of all places America! You do the math folks, how long did this piece of history last in the human consciousness intact before its meaning slipped away but not its existence? You can’t burn that book now can you? My point? Ask a kid, any kid aged between 10 and 18 about this song and chances are they still know it, still! Now ask them about the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the ‘we shall never surrender’ moments, nadda, bupkiss, nothing right?
Yes we have all of this knowledge written down, it is in movies and it is available to research but you have to go find it and learn it. The song and the dance crept in there and stayed didn’t it, and when you are aware of the meaning imagine what a difference that would make were you to perform it again? Do it, I challenge you to do it with a group of adults and remember 200 million fucking humans died to give you this knowledge. When you get the boils you are isolated, keep your environment clean to avoid contamination, isolate the final stage victims and burn and bury the remains to reduce further exposure. Medical sound advice for treating an epidemic in something we managed to call a nursery rhyme! Stunning isn’t it?
Now moving with that in mind, Baa, Baa Black Sheep. 1275, first written down 1744. Tells of the history of the British wool industry. Black pertains to the final stages of cleansing, shrinking and dyeing the product, and not as some politically correct, change the words of the rhyme and loose the meaning wankers who think it’s offensive to niggers. I’m black, get over it.
This one will blow your mind,

‘Hickory, dickory, dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock.’

This is about counting sheep! ‘Hickere, Dickere, Dock.’ Is a sort of Celtic dialect for eight, nine, ten. The mouse is the hand of the shepherd moving up notches in his crook (shepherds staff for clocking the sheep) and when he got to the top his hand went down. It’s really, really old but around 11-1200 maybe, and not written down till mid 1700’s.
I will repeat this message but you are the ones I want to instil this meaning to, the meaning is this. ‘Where there is smoke, there is fire.’ There is always a seed, an origin to a thing and that is the thing we must strive to discover, that is the true meaning and not the lost in time watered down fade to beige nothingness we experience today. This god concept is no exception. Burnt deep into our very being is the feeling of inclusion with something beyond our normal consciousness. What that thing is, ah no; not yet. Maybe later in another book.
I recall what happened to Erich von Däniken, probably because I’m old enough and his work kindled a little flame within me. That what if factor was fanned into asking questions that quickly had me removed from religious studies. The teacher got a little frustrated with being unable to field gems like “Why does the story of the deluge appear in the distant history of so many other cultures Miss?” This in turn led to queries about the epic of Gilgamesh and unlikely incestuous references to Noah and his kin, not to mention questionable destinations for his departing sons, the Tower of Babel and Latin origins of many languages, etc.  I can see why she found me vexatious; I would have hated me too.  I digressed didn’t I? I do that, get over it. Von Däniken put lots of photographs and quotes in his book for all the assholes to go ooh look bad referencing or research. I don’t, so suck it. I found it and there is enough of a hook in what I say for you to go find it and that’s the point, that’s what I want you to do. I just had a thought, hands up all you lot who have no idea who the Von Trapp Dunkin doughnuts fellow is? Okay, let us begin at the beginning, at first there was darkness and then I turned on the light…

How to read my book.
Look I’m the first person to admit to being acerbic, cynical and as satirical as hell; did I mention sarcastic? I get distracted easily and I digress frequently to the point I often forget where I was. Anyway what were we talking about?
Sorry couldn’t resist it, look the book is not meant to be the font of knowledge that in any way attempts to answer any big questions. On the contrary it is designed to create more questions. The old adage of ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for the day but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’ rings true here. I don’t profess to provide the answers to anything, I do however want to stimulate you into asking the questions. Questions you may not have thought were even there to ask, and not just ones you ask others but of yourselves. Why bother you may say, and my response is because the questions I want you to ask pertain to some of the biggest concepts we are forced to endure; as if we are asleep and under some form of trance. We readily swallow some aspects of our existence as givens, gospel that avoids scrutiny. It would be quite easy to go through your entire life without ever having to ponder these things but that would be an error because these things are important, and the more of us who strive to seek the more likely it is that knowledge is uncovered. Knowledge which I assure you is likely hidden, covered up and or completely misinterpreted. Ooh conspiracy theorist you say and I say go look at how many conspiracy theories have been proven as true. You will be surprised. No there is no link and that’s again part of how to read the book, I say go look for the information yourself and don’t be a lazy arsehole. If you find it by searching yourself you will find it along with other things related and hopefully you will be inspired by what you find. Essentially, I am saying wake the fuck up! Oh I also swear, get over it.
Also because I’m black I might make some potentially racist comments. I’m not sure but I think this is ok because I’m black. I mean I personally think Political correctness should have its knickers dropped and take one for the team, right where the sun don’t shine. Honestly the English have taken the piss out of the Irish in jokes using their accents for decades, and the Scottish, French, German, Italians etc and no-one complains or claims racism but as soon as you put on an oriental accent or an African one everyone says you’re being racist. Fuck off! I know political correctness is there to protect us in cases of the extreme but it has gotten out of hand and has become as offensive as some of the more odious examples that required it to be introduced. Like wearing a T-Shirt that suggests ‘Man hating feminists, please die before breeding’. I see that it’s mean but then why should we allow man hating feminists to have a child, what if it’s a boy? Why can’t we say stuff like this without some wanker saying, “You’re being offensive” and then have them running off to tell someone else like telling  the teacher. The enraged jock in me wants to grab an Uzi9mm and start mowing folk down but then I roll my eyes and retreat back into my cave.
The church and organised religion is ripe for being taken down a peg or two. I readily accept the good in much they do but attribute this primarily to the individuals and not the system. This is reasonably true of many other facets of existence isn’t it? Go to an agency that offers a service and the company might be shit but one of the people there goes the extra mile for people and gets stuff done, etc. Get put in a Catholic school and most teachers want to teach you math but one or two want to show you a classic Greek play by Fellatio, which I’ve heard really sucks by the way. This is where if you don’t get it you are supposed to look shit up, stop being such a listless piece of driftwood and stick an oar in the water. I said something which has a meaning, to read it and not understand it is wrong and that is something we all do too much. Stop it!
I digressed again didn’t I? The book is not about my opinion, I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say either. Yes I actually said that. The quintessential point of this book is to treat it like an idiot’s guide to what’s out there, good and bad. If you ever wanted to say something when two people were going at it about religion but were too afraid because you know jack shit about it, this book will help. I may even drop a hint or two about politics just to round it out.
Ever since I read ‘Chariots of the God’s’ by Erich von Däniken (ta dah! Von Trapp doughnuts for everyone!) I understood more about the questions that were bothering me, I first read it in the early 70’s because a friend of my father left a copy which I hungrily devoured. I also eventually devoured ‘Signs of the gods’, ‘The eyes of the Sphinx’ and ‘Remnants of the gods’. I already knew the Easter bunny was bogus and that Santa was a bust, I was about 10 or 11. The book lit a fire of inquiry within me that has only festered into a raging inferno of dissatisfaction, where the hell is all the information I seek? It’s out there but no one is looking at it seriously it seems, predominantly because it’s filed (was written as filled please ensure was corrected) under hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo. Granted some of it is complete bullshit including some of Von Däniken’s, however not all of it. The saying goes that if only one of these things are true then it means everything is up for question right? Well the thing is that there are millions of these ‘things’.
For instance why do we celebrate Easter? That’s right the resurrection thing where the son of the spaghetti sky monster was buried and then arose after three days. Now what’s with the rabbit and the egg? This is where ignorance and disinformation becomes rife with opinion otherwise known as the asshole check-line where everyone phones in and shoves their ideas down your throat. The egg and rabbit do indeed symbolise fertility and this classic piece of literature is informative but not entirely all you need to know.

This is not entirely all of the story because there are numerous demi deities and semi god like thingamajigs with all sorts of differing dates and symbolisms connected to this subject. What you need to know is this, Jesus and Easter have nothing to do with each other. This is simply a clever marketing tool of blending one culture’s existing concept with another to make it a more palatable idea for an old culture to accept your new bullshit. A bit like the church building their complex on top of the ruins of your old church that they destroyed so you still feel at home, works for me.
Now I know this book has the potential to make me as popular as Salman Rushdie, no I didn’t say I was a great literary writer etc, so calm down, I mean as it pertains to being hated by devout religious folk because I question the traditionally held ideologies. Having said that this information is already out there, I neither invent it nor cause it to be so and as such act only as a signpost pointing to it and suggesting you go look. That by the way folks was what is known as a disclaimer. If only there was a puppet on my hand I could make it say anything and get away with it right?
The point is the internet is rife with this stuff but then it’s also rife with my mother had sex with an alien pretending to be her dead father and now she is pregnant. There are plenty of books on the subject but there is also the actual living in rock evidence and archaeological finds that scream bullshit! What fascinates me is far too many people say “Oh I don’t really care about that sort of stuff”. AAhhrgh! Just die already. Seriously if you don’t care you have no right to claim to be a believer or even an atheist or agnostic or anything until you have formulated an opinion based upon your own discoveries. If you are an indoctrinated robot who only parrots the crap you were fed by your upbringing then snap out of it and wake up. Who knows your faith may get stronger and you may even justify your beliefs if you go looking.
So to summarise my point because I need to as I just read what I wrote and it gets wonky here and there, our lives are affected by these dogmatic doctrines regardless of our beliefs. So many of us live our lives indoctrinated into some form of belief structure that we accept because our parents or the society in which we exist told us it was so and we don’t  know any better. Don’t you think you should know more?

Chapter 1.  What is a Cherry picker?
All ye country bumpkins stand down, no I do not refer to machinery. A cherry picker is what atheists call religious folk who willingly accept there are parts of the bible that are to say the least a bit dodgy. What bits I hear you say, seriously? Go look. Use the wonderful www thingy and type in something like ‘what parts of the bible make no sense,’ be creative (no pun intended, actually maybe). I guess it all starts with the Old Testament with, drumroll… ‘In the beginning.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Will this occur in the book???)
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. ‘
There is so much of this that speaks of nothing more than a total ignorant knowledge of how the universe works and what is and is not possible. What is water? H2o is one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. So if the spirit of anything was moving over water where did this water come from? In order to have water a sun needs to go ‘boom’ essentially in order to fuse atoms and create H2o, so the passage places the cart before the horse and the whole meaning collapses into silly supernatural rubbish. According to the bible he created the sun on day 4 and yet we already have this division of night and day which truly is a miracle. I try not to forget that numerous translations may have butchered the continuity of this book but this one seems consistent. I recall reading how Cain went away from the presence of god so that he could not see him, and yet we are to believe that Mr. Omnipotence is all seeing all present and hiding behind a bush won’t cut it. The harder you look the more information there is out there that rips the Old Testament to shreds for being wildly unfathomable and basically a bit silly. At the time society as a whole knew little or nothing it is presumed about how the universe worked and as such were willingly accepting of these great and powerful ideas.
The issue is that the Old Testament is the founding cornerstone of the entire religion, it is by definition the literal ‘word of god’. So we are to presume that a disembodied entity that has the capacity to create everything from nothing in no time at all told someone to write this down. Like some form of secretary, with punctuation and everything. These are areas where the title of this book come into play. God, seriously?
What questions should you be asking here? If you were this god character, capable of rendering the entire cosmos out of nothing in an instant why not write it down yourself on something indelibly permanent that irrefutably demonstrates something other than humans wrote it. Why would a creator not know the minuscule details of the workings of the cosmos, after all you made it right? I think I might be getting a little petty here but the issue still remains that there are holes in the plot. If a scientific theory doesn’t hold up to peer review what happens? If a movie or book has too many plot holes it gets hammered by the critics right? Phrenology was a real concept for much of the 19th century, the idea that characteristics of a person could be determined by the lumps and bumps found on the skull. With the advent of neuroscience and greater understanding of the finer details of neurobiology we have thankfully outgrown the idea of phrenology. Why? Because we know it’s a load of horse shit. We once believed that if we travelled above a certain speed we would asphyxiate, a Dr. Dionysius Lardner a professor at University College London almost had the population convinced to avoid getting on a train lest we suffocate. Then there is always that gem that the earth was thought to be flat. Each formerly held belief system is overwhelmingly overturned by one thing, knowledge of the actual truth that holds to scrutiny and is backed up by evidence and proof.
I love listening to the faithful explain Noah’s ark. I’m sorry but if you actually think that a boat in a reasonably central area of the Middle East managed to get caught in a phenomenal flood that covered the earth and lasted for weeks, and yet it managed to come to rest on a mountain not far enough away from where it was likely built you’ve got some serious problems. I swear there should have been some more punctuation in that last sentence pant, pant. Don’t get me started on fitting two animals of every kind when the current fauna knowledge was so restricted and finally the white elephant in the room that no-one ever discusses. If you flood an area and keep it submerged for long enough what happens to all the plant life folks? A little thing called symbiosis switches off and nothing lives no matter how many animals you saved so just stop even trying to believe that this story is anything other than a myth shared by every culture worldwide. Oh shit, what did I just say? That’s right though, there appears to be a reasonable global consensus that most cultures have some form of flood legend. I heard this guy on TV get interviewed and he was asked if he believed. He responded that he believed in the bible in a warm and fuzzy way but that the devil was in the details. Love it. When we cross-reference the stories held as myth, legend, history or belief system in other parts of the world it becomes clear that a flood of some form happened, it was widespread and it caused discomfort to many. How or why isn’t something primitive savages can help us with. Yes by those I include the people of the Middle East during the time period of the bible, primitive and uneducated on the whole. The devilish problem though is when? The time discrepancies are vast to say the least, although it has never been all that clear to me how some of those dudes told time anyway. There were it seems multiple floods at various different times, wow! Shocking really eh?
If you were willing to look at it there is plenty of evidence to explain what actually happened in the Euphrates about 3000 years before you know who was born, there was a flood. It was local. It was an unusually big one compared to the one they usually got and someone got a boat and saved a bunch of shit. The rest is what happens when you speak quietly in Mandarin. That’s Chinese whi..  oh never mind!
So cherry picking is essentially sifting through a religious ideology and ignoring all the bits that make it seem an unlikely concept, and holding on tightly to the bits you like. Here are some for the cherry pickers out there:
Exodus 21.V.7 . It is ok for a man to sell his daughter into slavery. Good luck with that one folks.
Exodus 35.V2. Anyone working on the Sabbath should be put to death. Bummer for consumerism.
Corinthians 11.V14. Having long hair is a shame unto himself. (Find a picture of you know who quickly).
Corinthians 19.V24. A man must avoid a woman on her period. I actually like that one my wife can be such a bitch at this, um. Hi honey!
BULLSHIT! But those who believe this is the word of god or words inspired by god CANNOT get to pick and choose it’s just wrong, and you get to go to the really hot club med.
Here are some other things we believe that have no foundation of proof or evidence. Karma, horoscopes, fate. These things are tolerated by society and are well entrenched into the consciousness of almost every person on earth and yet they are completely without merit. I will occasionally read my horoscope, say things like oh you’re a typical Taurus, think to myself you’ll get yours and what goes around comes around. It’s unavoidable really.  I’ve even prayed to god, granted it was because I had obviously eaten something sharp and was sitting on the toilet praying to whatever deity would make this sharp thing exit my anus. I left some scratch marks on the toilet walls that day I can tell you.
Image withheld 🙂

Chapter 2.  Jesus!
This one is relatively short and simple and hopefully nobody gets too upset but really you should all bloody well know better. The date of December 25th has nothing to do with a particular person’s birth but is in fact nothing more than an astrological observation of the star Sirius (known as the star of the East) and its alignment with Orion’s belt on the 24th of December. These three stars in Orion’s belt are known as the Three Kings. The Virgin Mary is Virgo which is the observable constellation. The resurrection relates to the passage of the sun leading up to the 22nd of December appearing to stop moving in a southerly direction across the sky in that hemisphere and remain setting at this point for three days until it again commences south.
And now…
Attis of Greece 1200 BC, born of a virgin, born December 25th, crucified and rose after three days.
Krishna, born of a virgin and was foretold by a star in the East, travelled with his disciples performing miracles, was resurrected after death. India 900 BC.
Dionysus was also a virgin birth, born yep you guessed it, performed miracles and was known as the king of kings and son of god in Greece 500 BC.
Horus was the Egyptian god of the sky, interestingly he was born on the 25th of December beneath the sign of the virgin Isis, his birth was announced by a star in the East and at his birth he was adorned by three kings. He was a considered a prodigal child teacher by age 12 and eventually baptised at age 30. Too much? Let us continue, after baptism he gained 12 followers known as his disciples and as a group they travelled performing miracles. It is too much isn’t it we can stop now point made. Egypt 3000 BC. Now all say after and unto me “Praise Jesus recycling!”
Jesus Christ, are we done here folks?

Chapter 3.  What the Hell is Satan anyway?
As stated the entire concept of this work is to put forward information and ideas you may not be aware of that essentially allow you to make a more informed decision.  An example of this is the concept of Satan which like the one about Jesus should be quick and simple as it’s just a load of crap.
Many cultures have many names and trace legends as to who or what this entity is such as: The Morning Star, once an angel and one of the favourites of god now fallen, and most predominantly he is seen as the accuser and adversary. Now this aspect of the story of Satan is what should trigger interest for you because it infers Satan was one who put forward an alternate view or one who disagreed with the current ideology; LOL I’m Satan. Seriously though the idea of Satan was never initially intended to mean any one singularity of any type but to generically refer to any form of detractor to the status quo. Here is one story you may not know, and by this I mean one you should know because it’s awfully interesting.
Helios was a greek god associated with the sun who eventually became known as or even replaced by Apollo. He had a son called PHAETON with a PH not an S so potentially someone had a lisp somewhere in the history of this. He stole and then lost control of his father’s chariot inadvertently setting fire to earth. HELIOS, IOS meaning corrupted or poison even rust and decay. HEL is essentially on or of earth. Lucifer lashes earth with his tail and we are condemned to suffer hellfire and brimstone or HELL on earth. What we are describing here is of course a massive solar flare complete with polar shift that would have left a mark in the human consciousness no pre-soak laundry powder could ever remove. Remember this has happened before, it will happen again no doubt. What evidence of this can we see? Tonnes of it, literally.
This repeated idea that Satan is seen as the person who whispers in the ears of those that are apt to listen, and in turn sway their allegiance is fascinating if one simply looks at it as nothing more than propaganda. Consider if you will that there is a leader that has put forward edicts and ideologies that must be followed. Consider that this leader is a bit of a dick who dislikes it when you don’t do what they want and can be temperamental bordering on hysterical when vexed. Now consider that one of this leader’s generals as such begins to question the motives and practices. In doing so he begins to sow the seeds of discontent among the other followers. Encouraging unrest this general becomes bold and challenges the leader. What do you think happens next? I mean I could be wrong but it seems to me the early beginnings of organised religious teachings seemed rather militant, and unable to suffer detractors. Thankfully they have improved somewhat, especially the Muslims, they love a bit of open discussion.
Oh, I know a lot of Americans make noise on the web about this ‘Allahu Akbar’, especially as it pertains to when you watch footage of something bad happening in the Middle East and it is repeated frequently. Well to you I say watch a similar piece of footage about something bad happening on the American media and guess what? Americans saying ‘Oh my gawd’ or Oh sweet Jesus’ etc. etc. Get over it. It just means god is great and comes out of their mouth with as much thought as the words ‘Oh god’ come out of ours if we drop a cup or something.

Chapter 4.  Duck and cover
In the Yucatan peninsula are underwater caves once the dwelling place of the Mayans, where they did sacrificial burials and ceremonies but also gained access to water. All over the world in caves there is evidence that we as a species were sent scurrying like roaches to hide deep underground after the time that we had already emerged to live in cities. We did this because of a number of reasons and I believe a number of times. Ice age and solar flare and possibly other calamities that we have as a species endured over the eons.
There are the sky caves of Nepal, caves so high up on a sheer cliff face that even professional climbers struggle to reach them and yet there are dwellings there. In India the Ellora caves. In Turkey in a place called Derinkuyu there are literally miles of underground dwellings that could house a multitude. Complex caves carved out of rock with air ventilation, drainage and obvious signs of long term habitation. Not cavemen but modern man seeking refuge from what? This region contains many more underground cities that are designed to house up to 20,000 people long term with things such as stables and wine cellars. I’d love to tell you when it was made and by whom but the jury is out on this one. Certainly prior to the 1500 BC but the rest is conjecture at best.

The caves of Derinkuyu, Turkey.
(this is messy aargh!)

Caves have great meaning to us as a species, according to legend and here say Leonardo da Vinci only began his epic spurt of creativity after an experience at the entrance to a cave. It states that he was filled with a great sense of foreboding and wonder. Obviously when we were cave men as such we lived in the damn things because they were there already. We created our first artworks on the walls although we may well have done so outside but time has erased much of this, unless you count all the cool stuff we made with big rocks like henges and the like, but I digress.
Apparently Jesus and a few other people claiming to be the son of gods were brought back to life in caves, the Dead Sea scrolls were found in caves. A favourite cave of mine is the one in Mexico in the Naica mines some 300 meters below the ground. It’s called the Chrystal caves. It’s awesome!

I remember watching an episode of Ancient Aliens where author David Childress compares it to the fortress of solitude in the Superman movies, like it’s a real thing and I’m wondering ‘I hear you but what’s your point.’ Not sure if I have one either so sorry David.
It has been mentioned that Constantine built his churches over the sites of caves that hold significance in ancient history. If you don’t know who he was please do yourself a favour and pause, go look. It’s not hard and you really should know who Constantine is, no not Keanu Reeves.
Every continent, every country without exception has immense cave systems that show evidence of human habitation, not Neanderthals but  modern man, some cave systems are more spectacular than others but I imagine when you are running for your lives any port will do. What cataclysms may have befallen us is another chapter but it seems sensible enough to presume they have occurred and in all likelihood shall do so again. One decent solar flare could render us without technology and we would resort back to the stone aged 1950’s. No internet or cable TV, millions would die and there would be mass lootings at Walmart’s. I wish that was funnier.
If something of this nature was to occur now we could potentially kiss civilisation goodbye. Certainly there would be enclaves of humanity and depositories of knowledge that would prevail however the bulk would, I fear, deteriorate quite dramatically. In the movie ‘2012’ John Cusack’ character Jackson Curtis is beset with adversity whilst keeping his family alive during what is essentially the end of the world as we know it. His character had written a book called ‘Farewell Atlantis’ in which humans don’t exactly fare well but on the whole behave in a collectivist and noble manner towards one another when the chips are down. The message in the movie was about how would we behave towards one another if survival was the prime mover for our choices? I am not so sure we would be so nice to one another but then who am I?
Just think about this, if we were reduced to say 10% of our current population by some cataclysm who do you think would rule the earth? Would it be Stephen Hawking or Biff and his gang? The collective consciousness of earth would gradually decline and likely stay this way for generations whilst Biff and his ilk asserted their authoritaugh. Yes, I know it’s not a word that’s for the South Park fans, you who don’t know look it up or deal with it.  Then one day when we have allowed our history to recede far enough into myths and legends smarter folk will begin to ingratiate themselves into positions of influence with the ruling class. I give you an amusing example I made up one day whilst on the toilet where much of my greatness occurs…oh shit!
Imagine if you will a king who has an army and is quite powerful but not all that interested in anything apart from his belly full and his dick being catered for, we can call him Biff because I don’t actually know anyone called that, and if there are people out there called Biff I’m sorry but smack your parents don’t give me shit about it, sorry where were we? Oh yes anyway Biff is peeved because a nearby tribe, kingdom whatever is giving him grief about let us say gaining access to water or something for his herds of whatever he has herds of. One of his subjects we may refer to as a nerd whispers in his ear “Sire, I have a cunning plan my lord”. He tells his king that he has a way to gain compliance and possibly even total allegiance from these asshats if the king will only follow his plan, and in turn should it succeed he wants only some reasonable concessions. Exciting isn’t it? So the dude, we can call him ‘Priest’ if you like, tells the king that he should make his demands known to this tribe at a very specific time in the near future and give them a short time to respond or he, the king; will remove the sun from the sky. Stupid right? But Priest knows when this will happen next, to the minute almost and he can help the king use this to create panic amongst the others. In turn they will likely agree to the king’s demands right, I mean wouldn’t you? So the king does his demand thing and the tribe tell him to stick it because no man can have control over this kind of thing and lo and behold we bring you a solar eclipse on cue. Natives with faces in the dirt on their knees begging for a little sunshine and telling Biff he can have what he wants. Priest gets a bigger serve for dinner that night and is allowed to bring his nerds into the palace and train others to know what he knows. I give you the birth of an organised religion.

Chapter 5.  OOPARTS,  WTF?
Okay so here is a subject I can be certain many of you know absolutely nothing about. Those of you who do know of this may have differing perceptions of what this much maligned category of archaeology means. Out Of Place Artefacts (OOPARTS), or as I like to call it shit that don’t fit with the paint by numbers picture you are being fed. This is going to be a big chapter but not as big as it should or could be. In fact I am certain I could fill my own small library with books on the subject which lets you know how much of it there is.
Imagine those romanticised characters pushing aside cobwebs and dodging ancient defence mechanisms a la Indiana Jones to find secrets of the past lost in time only to find something no museum would display? Pisser right? Hang on you say what could you possibly find that’s ancient that a museum would not display? How about items that question the concepts of the timeframe by which we live? This starts to impact on the cherry picking behaviour of religion as it pertains to the Old Testament but I digress or ramble on, you choose. Essentially if you have something which does not fit with or questions a specific part of a theory or idea that cannot be suitably answered with current knowledge, what does this say about the theory? In science the theory has a fat hole in it and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, in court we have reasonable doubt, in religion we have the magical band aid known as ‘faith’.

(?)

What are you on about you say? This picture depicts a rock, actually a fossil, actually it’s a fossilised finger. It was found in cretaceous limestone as many human artefacts are. The problem is the well-respected opinion of the age of this period. 140 million years old. Yes it has been studied and had CT scans performed on it and yes it is really a finger, honest. Whoever owned it probably got buried really quickly in a, oh I don’t know flood or something.
This next picture is found on the walls of a Cambodian Temple built by the Khmer civilisation around 800 years ago. Stunning building and a remarkable achievement. Unfortunately there is no way they could know what the thing is they have depicted right. I mean we only know what this looks like because some smarty pants reconstructed it from bones and said I think it looks…like this?
(?)

Okay we think we know how old coal is for instance because of all the science stuff about Lignite and plant decay of eons under pressure solidifying peat into carbon during the carboniferous period. Yep, you knew that right? Boring as bat shit but what’s important to us enlightened folk who generally perceive the earth as being a little older than 6000-7000 years is that we hold to the concept that this was a while ago, like millions of Christmas puddings back. Fair enough?

(?)
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These things were found ‘IN’ coal previously accepted to be 300 million years old. What’s more the little pot was used for smelting, that’s the process of melting and blending metals. Just let that concept settle for a second.
These fascinating little things were found in South Africa and are known as the ‘The Klerksdorp Spheres’. They were dug from a silver mine and are just an absolute pain in the backside when it comes to explaining because they are just fabulously wrong. I mean they literally blow my mind. Over 200 have been found, they are just perfectly round, they have this perfect groove and some are filled with a white spongy substance that disintegrates when exposed. But the kicker here is that they are buried in Precambrian mineral deposits. 4500 million years old, that’s billions folks…

This innocent looking black rock was found in China near the Marzong Mountain range and is in fact a meteorite. So not only is the metal rod inside this rock potentially millions of years old, it’s not ours. That’s right, it’s a meteorite that originated from another planet. It is from China though so it could be a fake, who knows? Refer to disclaimer, I’m black so deal with it.

You can find stuff like this in all sorts of places and discover where they were found and by whom etc but instead of supplying you with links go look for yourself. Things like an image of a piece of petrified wood from the Arizona petrified forest that clearly has axe marks on it, clay figurines from Acambaro Mexico that are obviously dinosaurs and at least 1000 years old, in Baigong China there are metal pipes in the ground extending to the nearby lake that are centuries old. Just use OOPARTS as your guide and sift through all the crazy to find what fits your mind.

Just like in the movie ‘Life of Pi’ when the star asked the reporter which story he preferred the reporter chose the one with the tiger. His response was “And so it is with god”. Essentially no matter what you are told you will decide to believe as you choose depending upon what you feel comfortable with. This is both free will and really fucking annoying.
Instead of answering any questions these OOPARTS totally queer the pitch creating a miasma of conundrums for various factions of serious researchers. It is certain that archaeologists have reservations as to their validity but also where to place them in the scheme of things, after all how do you display a pick axe fully encased in Cretaceous limestone rock supposed to be 140 million years old?

How do you reconcile this image of a human footprint next to a dinosaurs in Mesozoic rock knowing that it is considered to be 3.7 million years old? In fact there are numerous oddball footprints and critter prints found in rock of varying ages that seriously question long held theories that no professional seems keen to validate. It’s as if someone might get in trouble to say something like “There is evidence there were birds when there was supposed to be no birds”.

Chapter 6.  The madness.
Superstitious madness has caused cultures from many eras to seek to lay blame upon innocent victims, thankfully the bible with its age of enlightenment sought to end this by calming folk down and ordering them to kill witches at will. Thankfully because humans have evolved and outgrown silly superstition we no longer persecute witches and in 1735 even passed a law condemning such a thing so the last witches to be burnt to death was, last week I think. Africa, Papua New Guinea and many more exciting destinations where you can find truly enlightened souls able to explain their actions with reason and sense, not.
What is a witch? Most people conjure up all manner of thing really, no not you new age oddballs who think of white witches and all that crystal waving mung bean eating mumbo jumbo. I’m talking about a witch witch, you know the ones being thrown in water with rocks tied to them and being told if you float you’re a witch and we will burn you. Obviously if you sank and drowned you were what? We think of silly pointed hats and broom sticks and familiars like cats and bats and old hags bent over cauldrons in the dark woods cooking up trouble right?
Wrong.
Imagine if you will Sir Cedric of some notoriety who holds tidings over a substantial parcel of land, locals rely upon him for much of their business and he employs a large amount of them to work his property. He gets really sick and is bedridden and the weasels at the nearby church get wind of it. They visit his sickbed and begin to ply him with all manner of boogyman stories about being ripped apart for an eternity in the pits of hell lest he seek absolution and ask for forgiveness etc blah blah. Oh and of course as a sign of his dedication to faith if he could tide over some of his holdings to the church by way of donation that would absolutely guarantee his entry to the kingdom of god.
Naturally because like all of us Sir Cedric is filled with all manner of squirly fears about mortality so he acquiesces to their demands and is given a clean slate, last rights are administered and he is left truly in peace to die. Slightly poorer but blessed in the knowledge he goes to a better place. Not a bad thing overall really.
Mavis is the house midwife who visits from time to time as she is well known and loved by all, she is warm and worldly and probably quite partial to Cook’s muffins. Imagine a fat female version of Dumbledore, if you don’t know who that is shame on you! Where was I, anyway she turns up and asks what is wrong with Cedric? After being told what the priests said she reacts exactly the same way experienced nurses can often react to the behaviours of young doctors. You who know what I am saying will chuckle at that but often nurses are the only thing standing between you and a doctor who accidentally kills you. After rolling her eyes she pops up to see Cedric, she pulls his lower eyelids down, she looks at his tongue, smells his breath, she probes his glandular regions all to the amazement of those watching and asks both him and others a myriad of questions in a quick and businesslike manner. It is determined that Cedric feels nauseated, has pain in his entire chest, feels dizzy and short of breath, is sweating profusely and feeling extremely anxious. He states that these symptoms are coming in waves and getting worse and he will surely be dead soon.
Then Mavis goes into action. She calls upon his daughter Jinny to go down to the meadow where the horses are and near the bottom fence get some of the small black berries from the Billbury bushes. She tells Sam the kitchen lad to get some of the seed pods from the yellow flowered bushes near the kilns and asks him to tell the cook on his way to make up some broth full of oily salmon. She crushes and extracts the oil from the Primrose seeds and massages it into Cedrics gums whilst a tincture of the Billberry fruit is made and staff are advised to apply one or two drops every hour to his tongue. The broth is all he is allowed to eat but he can have as much as he wants until he feels better. Until he feels better?
When the church gets wind of this, and they do because it is of course initially hailed as a miracle . This is because Cedric is not only better having recovered from his nasty bout of angina, but he has dropped 30 pounds and looks 10 years younger’, boy oh boy they are not happy.
One, Cedric is not dead so they don’t have his wealth, two god isn’t supposed to be wrong about anything so last rights read and all he should bloody well die like he was supposed to. Solution?
Witch! We lost thousands of years of naturalist knowledge because of this idiocy. Witches covens in the woods cackling evilly? The poor bastards were hiding in the forests desperately attempting to share their knowledge with each other before it became extinct. Disgraceful waste of life and knowledge and for what?
Not only did the madness rob us of this earthly nature it no doubt raped and pillaged its way through works of art and literature that can never be replaced because of what exactly? In the Vatican are various beautiful works of art that depict a lot of, well willies really. Now over the centuries various Popes have taken umbrage with the sight of the wee wee and have attempted to cover them with plaster and metal fig leaves of course. Pope Pius IX went the hole hog and hacked them off. No doubt it was not so much the offence to the eyes but the temptation faced by a bunch of soft young men to start wondering what kind of willy deacon Norris had under his cassock, and what it would feel like to touch it. Even worse, would he like to touch theirs? Bucket list to include porn in my book, tick.
Here is a joke for you, the friar is running madly through the abbey yelling for the abbott who he finally finds and yells at him “We forgot the ‘R’ abbott”, the abbott asks him what he means to which the friar responds “It’s celeb’r’ate abbott”.
Very early in the piece when the council responsible for deciding how the mish mash of eclectic stories that attempt to go together in the bible were being formed, book burning was their version of ‘control, alt, delete’ really. You can’t talk about it if you have issued an edict demanding everyone hand over copies lest you be burnt as a heretic. Simples.
I for one believe that religion in all it’s fervour needs to be classified as some form of undeclared mental illness. One which can be treated so that religious nutters can be deemed normal and once again fit for society. Rather like being  gay, right?  I mean if you can cure homosexuality and lesbianism with things like shock treatment and aversion therapy surely the same could be said for being religious. I’m happy to try it at least, just to see.
To some degree we are dealing with basic human nature and hysterical mass panic, a little bit of Monty Python like crowd behaviours. You know that bit where Brian (the not the Jesus fellow) tells everyone that they don’t need to follow him and that they are all individuals. A million voices ring out “Yes we are all individuals oh Lord” and one voice goes “Um, I’m not”.
There was, still is actually, a politician called Pauline Hanson who leads a party in Australia called the ‘One Nation Party’. Yes it does have a sort of click your heals together when you say it feel to it doesn’t it? She was being interviewed by a reporter who asked her if she was xenophobic, to which she famously responded “Please explain?” Now this is another example of human behaviourism because millions of Australians guffawed loudly and furtively reached for their thesaurus. The question was an obvious attempt to make her look stupid because the media had it in for her. The media of course is an impartial and objective renderer of the news and has no political motivations. Of course her inventing some new political party really pleased all the old aristocratic parties who love a bit of competition. I mentioned my sarcasm issues didn’t I? We behave like this as a part of human nature. Who among you can honestly deny that whilst someone was getting bullied you did nothing, even laughed to be accepted by the crowd lest you appear the odd one out? I simply assume some of you already looked up the crazy starting with an X word which means, no off you go and look.

Chapter 7.  Exercise your faith.
Here is a little exercise for you to complete, of course you don’t have to use the two blank pages, nor do you have to complete the exercise. At least consider it. Also as an added bonus my book has four extra pages I can brag about that I didn’t have to write.
Okay, please imagine or consider that god is real. Write down what that means to you.
INSERT 2 Blank pages
Okay, now consider god is not real and what that means to you.
INSERT 2 Blank pages
What changed?
Think about it will you, all the things you would have to do in order to satisfy this megalomaniacal entity who has mood swings like a premenstrual female living in a hot climate who can’t get to the shop for some chocolate. Seriously if god is real I say we should hunt it down and kill it before it gets grumpy again.
I don’t think there would be too many folk in this heaven place, the bouncer sounds like a right pious and misogynistic dick who has women issues and frankly likes a drink.
One of the things which has always cracked me up briefly and then made me grouchy is that if you were all honest, you would say you don’t really like a lot of the policies and practices that emanate from the Middle East, and that probably includes a few natives living there. I mean I’m not being offensive here but as a member of western society the general behaviour of some of these countries scares me and yet, a thousand years ago when the Catholic Church was going around burning things that were annoying their continuity plot, it was the Muslims who were trying to spread tolerance and reason. Thanks to the Muslim faith and their defiance of this behaviour many great treasures of antiquity survived this lunatic purge, and those that the church were thwarted on possibly ended up in that library in the Vatican that everyone probably doesn’t know exists. Actually it should probably be called a vault because library suggests a place where we are free to go and view things, this is not the way I would describe the Catholic army I mean church sorry. I mean how many other church organisations end up with splinter groups behaving like Robin Hood seeking to protect themselves and the public against the arrogance of those who seek to abuse their power. I often wonder how far back we could accurately look to gain a clearer picture of all the vile things that have been done in the name of a god by man and this thing called organised religion. I am certain it would make most of us ill.

Chapter 8.  The end is nigh.
We are very lucky to be floating around in the tidal pull of our sun with the planets that we do have in our solar system. Because without them we would get the shit kicked out of us far more than we have done. There is so much stuff floating around out there in places like the Kuiper Belt that it’s any wonder we don’t get smacked more than we do. Meteors can do a lot of damage and they don’t even have to actually hit us, in fact exploding in the atmosphere above us can often be just as devastating. We’ve all heard of the theory that a meteorite strike probably ended the realm of the dinosaurs but that is by no means definitive. We have already seen evidence that dinosaurs and the timeframes they existed in may not be as confirmed as we would like to think, nor for that matter how long humans have existed on earth. But one thing is for certain, we have been hit and hard.

So what happens to earth if we get hit by one of these things? Naturally it depends on how big it is and what it is made of. A solid one with a high content of iron and nickel is going to pound out a lot of molten rock, dirt and dust into the atmosphere and even space. The dust can cause all manner of issues including nuclear winter and dramatic die offs of plant and animal life. The primary cause of most of the accelerated changes in plant and animal life on this planet over the billions of years has most likely been attributed to climate and nothing more. But climate doesn’t usually make itself. It requires a catalyst. There are plenty of those on earth itself and a flood is only a symptom of their behaviour. I say symptom because as you should know seismic activity in the ocean can cause waves that cause floods and if a meteorite hits earth which has more ocean than land statistically, well you do the Archimedes principle thing, sigh go look…

The issue in this is that we know this now and back in the days of the biblical beginnings they didn’t know this. They were also geographically isolated from many of the natural icons that are contributively causing this behaviour.
One of the primary catalysts for climactic change and geographical turmoil is a volcano. Are there any in the picture? Not really, along the southern edge of the Makran Mountain Range is the Kuh-e-Sultan in Western Pakistan near the Afghanistan border and a couple in Eastern Iran, near the southeastern edge of the Lut block which is a fault line. There was one in Tiberias north of Israel, not far from the Sea of Galilee. Were it to become active it would cause some issues because like most volcanoes it has left behind alluvial flood plains of arable lands which in turn attract people. There is limited information about the dates of the last time this one went ‘boom’ but it seems to be beyond recording by humans. But that’s the thing with volcanoes, they’re sneaky.
So what can a volcano do?

Worst case scenario, they can probably destroy the planet, a super eruption would end life on earth no question. However normally they just make the air pretty unbreathable for a decent radius around the eruption, spew lava which is not good for anything for quite a while until it breaks down. The initial explosion creates a thing called a pyroclastic cloud which seems pretty bloody nasty and is impossible to outrun in a 4×4 thank you Hollywood. If they jettison a big chunk of rock into the ocean as they have a habit of being near water they can cause tsunamis and they also can spit out huge rocks that don’t make it into space and as such come back down. That too can ruin your day. There is also the tectonic after shock connectivity with earthquakes.

So earthquakes, any major faults in the region? Actually the whole region has quite a few fault lines around the Arabian tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate interface. The Zagros Mountains in Iran are actually being pushed up by activity between these two bodies so this and other fault lines towards India, the dead sea, the red sea and more all have the ability to create things which could affect people and be misunderstood. They can also open up and swallow entire sections of land or cause dramatic quakes that could level cities. How bad can tectonic activity get? Seriously the earth’s crust is floating on a molten lake which is in constant motion as is the land upon it. It could get really bad. Thankfully the crust has been reasonable stable for millions of years and just the occasional pressure fissure letting go or a bit of a bump in the night. But we know earthquakes are devastating and the regions around these faults have experienced plenty of activity.
What else could annihilate us? Germs and diseases. In 1917 three Portuguese kids saw an apparition they thought to be the Virgin Mary in Fatima, they were given three great secrets and unfortunately not a word of it can really be believed but about a year after this warning of sorts was given a deadly illness befell the world. The Spanish Influenza killed 50 million people. Just imagine that, 50 million. This linking of visions or happenings of great portent to the outbreaks of disease is an interesting subject I would love to follow up in a later book. Yes more conspiracies.

Seriously folk’s Influenza, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, Lissa Virus, Hendra Virus. One day something will crop up that could put a dent in the population of the planet before we get a hold on it, which I am sure we will. How will we get a hold on it? By praying? Good luck with that. If all the scientists just sat back and did nothing whilst you pray to your gods millions will die. If that is his wish because he sent the disease according to you then anything you do to stop it is defying his will be done, right. Savages, seriously!
How many times I have been subjected to someone in hospital at the mercy of some hideous injury undergoing 18 hours of surgery and all people can say is thank god. What about the skills of the surgeon and you say his hands and actions are guided by god. So who caused the fucking accident that injured them? Cherry picking 101. If a god did that he is a sadistic bastard with too much time on his hands that likes to watch folk suffer.
Global warming. Ok this one is full of contentious crap. Everybody listen up, the academic argument about global warming is NOT about whether it is happening or not. The argument is about did we contribute towards the acceleration of it and can we delay or halt its progress, got it? It IS happening, of that there is NO argument. The next level of argument is about is this a normal process and naturally a part of the cycle of the planets weather systems or is this a new phase?

Now what do you think happens in the situation of global warming? It gets warmer right? Initially yes but then it melts too much polar ice and this in turn will shut down the Trans-Atlantic drift which is an ocean current that circulates warm waters to parts of the world. This in turn creates a colder climate which leads to our favourite time of the year known as the ice age. I could have filled two or three pages with technical blah about this but in a nutshell that’s the bones of it. We will of course survive as I have no doubt we have survived other ice ages but will it be fun, no.

Chapter 9.  The cutting room floor.
I have read the bible a number of times old and new and the Quran, and as much Sanskrit as I could get my hands on regards the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao and I Ch’ing, and one of the most fascinating reads I have had would be the book of Enoch. Oddly enough this series of tomes was not just excluded but banned from the Christian bible rather vehemently. No one seems completely certain why but I can guess.

Much of the reasons for banning it may have to do with the idea that angels wanted to come down to earth and shag mortal women. The book puts it nicer than that but I’m not nice, so sod it. It also said that the angels knocked human women up and they gave birth to giants which probably hurt some, and they were called the Nephilim. It tells of a warning that god was a touch testy about all of this and was going to destroy earth with his favourite bath toy known as the flood. God also stated he was going to bind Azazel the leader of these fallen and NOT Satan and cast him into a pit. Kind of what you may wish to do with nuclear waste, you know dig a big hole and bury it deep. I am not certain what Enoch did to get himself removed from the bible but his 360 odd years on earth left its legacy with things that pervade both the bible and the Quran. Two books which are essentially an epic game of my dad’s car is bigger than your dad’s.

In the Bible Paul states that women should cover their hair so as not to tempt the angels, here we are hearing an echo of Enoch, ooh I like that Enochian echoes. Try saying that quickly three times. You done mucking around this is serious stuff here! These things are all evidence of a little thing I call where there’s smoke there’s fire. Actually I may not have been the first person to say that so don’t, you know; quote me or anything. The thing is that the book of Enoch was purged and the church does this with fire but copies were later found in Ethiopia and Qumran so thankfully unlike a shitload of other stuff the stupid church burnt we didn’t lose it forever. Don’t you just love the way these folk are always depicted riding around on clouds? More on that stuff later.
There are many books that were once part of the entire biblical tale that ended up on the cutting room floor, judiciously excised from the bible because of a number of reasons. It probably started with this character called Marcion about 150 odd years AD. He was a bit of a fanatic who decided he didn’t much care for the Old Testament because it was a bit scary so he rewrote the damn thing keeping almost none of it bar gospels by Luke. Stunning behaviour but there you go. Now before I go all rampant about what a complete load of crap the concept of a spaghetti sky monster god is I am going to put a link to something which will cheer up the Christians and confuse the atheists. I do this because I believe the bible was a pretty accurate record of certain occurrences but that it got hijacked by ulterior political motives of the time, or times as the thing has been hacked up and reconstructed so many times it’s a veritable Frankenstein. Here I include as the one time only freebie that really will make religious folk all excited. It seems legit and may even prove that part of the bible is true. Yes I accept that about 50-60% of the geographical day to day humdrum happenings in the bible are true just plagiarised to the shit-house. Just to balance things out, watch this footage on youtube. If you see this and it makes you truly believe in god then I am happy for you, but remember you can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead. There seems evidence that something happened during this period or maybe earlier that we have managed to splice into a newer story.
This pie chart is a representation of how much of history we know for sure, the lighter area is what we know.

My 14 year old daughter was in a history lesson and the task was to discuss and compile an essay based upon the conquistadors and their initial foray into the Americas. After two days of lessons on this subject she asked for my opinion. I listened to her question about the essay she was required to write based on choosing an excerpt from five on offer and her dilemma with what her teacher had written regards her first draft. I asked her a few questions about Peru before Pissarro to which she responded she had no knowledge of what I was talking about, so I knew the teachers comment was going to be fun. History isn’t what it used to be these days.
She had chosen an excerpt by a nineteen year old sailor who had written home to his parents about life and general society in the natives he had thus encountered, generally espousing his opinion about what it all meant and so on. My daughter had written something to the effect that it was presumed based on this person’s observations that this or that ‘may’ possibly have been what was happening. Her teacher had written in red ink, ‘no’ that this was fact and as such could be taken as an actual account of what the social context in the native Indian village was like. I asked my daughter if she (the teacher) was a religious person to which my daughter said she most certainly was.
I had a little chat with the principle and the matter was resolved. It went a little like this. If a nineteen year old spotty faced git from the British army on his first tour of the Falkland Islands in 1982 wanted to write home to Mummy and Daddy and tell them all about the structure of the island inhabitants society, how much academic credibility would you grant it? “Not much I suppose” was the response to which I added that this individual would probably know an entire shitload more than the nineteen year old conscript in the Spanish kings employ in 1500 don’t you think? “Yes” was the response to which I further added that would it not be fair then to say that what this person said was whilst useful not potentially an epic tome of virtuous facts based on experience and knowledge and could be presumed just that, opinion. Mischief managed really.
It is in my opinion a common misconception of people who have been raised in the environment of indoctrinated religion is to place far too much ‘faith’ in written work. Thus they are far less objective than they would, could or should be. This can lead to issues that are quite pervasive.
History is not something we can determine to be written in stone, ironically enough not even when it is written in stone. Any Egyptologist can tell you this because graffiti artists back then were quite eloquent.

Carbon dating is reasonably accurate but not something we can use for rocks unfortunately, for that we need geologists and archaeology. However whilst on the subject of carbon dating, Christians do like to bend the truth a little to suit their purposes, granted so too do some scientists so fair’s fair eh? Carbon-14 is a substance manufactured in the upper atmosphere by the action of cosmic rays. It is found in the cells of all living things and once formed there begins to decay at a reasonably set rate which can be measured. Ergo C-14 levels in materials analysed can be dated. Now creationists, etc will tell you that it is inaccurate and you know what, they are right. The date of a dinosaur bone that has been carbon dated might fluctuate from say 55-60 million years old circa sort of roundabout. It is not however from last Tuesday or a thousand years ago. Another thing creationists will say is how can science be so sure that the rate of decay has not been affected by changes in the climate with things like the industrial revolution, volcanic eruptions? It has and good science has attempted to factor that in with evidence extracted from various sources to give a balanced perspective, hence the circa shit. So hopefully that clarifies that. There is of course the added fact that much of the stuff requiring carbon dated had to be dug up. The depth of the find does tend to assist somewhat in the determination of the age of it, unless you thing geology and the other sciences of this ilk are bullshit. That would be another form of cherry picking altogether though wouldn’t it Mr Ken Ham? Don’t know who he is, you should he’s a riot and you know the drill by now yes?
For instance if I was to ask any of you reading this how much you think you know about what happened on 9/11? How much can you be certain is actual fact and what conspiracy theories you may have heard? Such as the event was nothing more than a revenue raiser by the bureau, especially as they were at that very moment being drawn over the coals for a number of inappropriate behaviours?  The new powers the NSA were granted post 9/11 were in effect their wet dream come true. Documents not still considered secret are full of black marked out areas and everyone knows they are very good at telling lies. For instance Saddam Hussein was angry at the Americans because they did somewhat betray him. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan doing a very good job of harassing the Russians out of the country, can’t imagine the Americans didn’t have a sticky finger or two in that now. We don’t know for sure but my point is this is. If we can’t be 100% certain of all the facts devoid of political subterfuge and propaganda from all sides, how on earth do you expect to derive valid history from 2-3 thousand years ago?
Remember this, history belongs to those who won the rights to pen it. One might imagine the history books of the countries involved in the first and second world wars had some politically and socially motivated variations yes?
The moral of the story here is kids that there is stuff you are actively choosing not to look at or question. That choosing to do so is essentially relinquishing some of your right to informed consent. I was always told two things you don’t discuss are religion and politics, doh!
So here is a little gem I have discovered over the years that may help some of you with politics. A political party is like a huge slow moving tanker on a rough sea. As an election is held the party running the ship changes guard and the ship slowly loses impetus and starts to turn in the direction the new crew selects for it. As it does so the sea becomes rougher and the boat rocks about a bit and then it begins to pick up the pace. As the pace increases the ride smooths out some but the ride is disturbed for the passengers with smells of new paint and frequent gremlins in the engine room. However the ship is gaining more impetus and things are improving. Then a new election occurs.
All you lot remember is the rough seas and problems generally referred to as teething issues as the ship slowed after the last party (whom you are likely to re-elect). You don’t relax and allow the new policies to take effect properly, nor do you allow that party to make the necessary amendments that further improve their policies as issues are discovered and promises are broken. Are you stupid? Do you not see that your behaviour is doing nothing but destabilising your own environment?
Let any party remain long enough and you have the power to force them into pretty good shape over time. If you think government serves your needs you’re kidding yourself. In Australia in late 2014 the treasurer Joe Hockey was pushing an increased fuel tax, he stated that poor people either don’t have cars or don’t drive very far so it shouldn’t really concern them.
Just think how out of touch a man earning hundreds of thousands of dollars with a company car, fuel card and he probably gets driven around by a chauffeur, has to be to make that statement. We the people obviously know you don’t have to be poor to struggle to keep a fully maintained car safely on the road and full of fuel right? Maybe you have two. Why in god’s name would you let this person run things for you. Yes, that comment was my last and final barb.
Personally I agree with Russell Brand when he states that the system doesn’t work anymore. We have evolved beyond needing this Romanised concept of senators and the like. A new system is needed, buggered if I know exactly what that system would be but I’d like to be involved in discovering it, wouldn’t you?
We should also evolve beyond the need for superstitious mumbo jumbo like religion. It is clear there is more to it than that and I don’t discount the ideologies of a spiritual connection to the universe, but is that what religion is? I think not.
That’s all folks, I’m done and I hope you liked it or at least found it stimulating. Until the next time where I shall ponder this UFO bullshit, or is it?