On May 23, 1885, a reporter for the Iowa State Register asked Civil War Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll: "What, in your judgment is the source of the greatest trouble among men?"
He replied: "Superstition. That has caused more agony, more tears, persecution and real misery than all other causes combined. The other name for superstition is ignorance. When men learn that all sin is a mistake, that all dishonesty is a blunder, that even intelligent selfishness will protect the rights of others, there will be vastly more happiness in this world. Shakespeare says that 'There is no darkness but ignorance.' Sometime man will learn that when he steals from another, he robs himself—that the way to be happy is to make others so, and that it is far better to assist his fellow man than to fast, say prayers, count beads or build temples to the Unknown. Some people tell us that selfishness is the only sin, but selfishness grows in the soil of ignorance. After all, education is the great lever, and the only one capable of raising mankind. People ignorant of their own rights are ignorant of the rights of others. Every tyrant is the slave of ignorance."
Don't be a slave of ignorance—a child of the Dark Ages. Select a topic from the column on the left and remember the experience.
NEVER FORGET 9/11!
ILLUSTRATED NOTES
Colonel Ingersoll was not alone in his attitude toward the ignorance and hocus pocus of the useless practices conjured up by the imaginative minds behind manmade religions—supported by the supposed divine inspiration of so-called “holy” books like the Koran and Bible. Furthermore, this son of a Presbyterian preacher shows in the following account that questioning the divine inspiration of the Scriptures in Scotland—not so long ago—could be a tragic and deadly affair. He wrote:
“About the beginning of the nineteenth century, a boy by the name of Thomas Aikenhead, was indicted and tried at Edinburgh for having denied the inspiration of the Scriptures, and for having, on several occasions, when cold, wished himself in hell that he might get warm. Notwithstanding the poor boy recanted and begged for mercy, he was found guilty and hanged. His body was thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold and covered with stones.”
Scriptures generated some of the most diabolical and despicable atrocities believers could imagine
Beside this deep, dark act of religious cruelty lies the ironic fact that the Bible’s authors, for the most part, do not claim any “inspiration of the Scriptures.” In one of a series of articles in some 1901 issues of The Truth Seeker, John E. Remsburg, who avowed “to combat the dogmas of the divine origin and infallibility of the Christian Bible,” addressed this issue by emphasizing that
“Had the writers of the Bible been inspired they would have known it and would have proclaimed it. Had they claimed to be inspired it would not prove the Bible to be divine, for like Mohammed, they might have been deluded, or, like a more recent finder of a holy book, imposters. But they do not even claim that their books contain what purport to be divine revelations. Some of these books contain what purport to be divine revelations, but the books themselves do not pretend to be divine. The only exception is the book of Revelation, admittedly the most doubtful book of the Bible.
Before the Dark Ages, the Church was claiming the Scriptures were the divinely-inspired Word of God (Yahweh).
“‘All scripture is given by inspiration.’ Waiving the questions of authenticity and correct translation, who wrote this? Paul. What was the scripture when he wrote? The Old Testament, the Old Testament alone. The writers of the Old Testament do not claim to be divinely inspired. This is a claim made by the later Jews and by the early Christians. Paul and the other writers of the New Testament do not claim that their writings are divine. This, too, is a claim made by others long after they were written.
“The fact that the writers of the Bible do not believe and do not assert that their books are of divine origin, that this claim was made many years after they were composed, by those who knew nothing of their origin, is of itself, in the absence of all other evidence, sufficient to demonstrate their human origin.”
“So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake. Religion is all bunk...All bibles are man-made.”
The great American electric-light scientist Thomas Edison, half-smiling in the photograph above, espoused a similar opinion about the human origin of the Bible and summed it up with a few frank words. Comments by such an intelligent and successful role model hardly went unnoticed. They drew the attention of Eric Richter, who, in “The 125th Anniversary Issue” of the Truth Seeker Journal, tells us:
“In 1910, Edison stirred the wrath of the public when he declared that God meant ‘not a damn thing’ to him. In an interview, he stated: ‘So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake. Religion is all bunk...All bibles are man-made.’”
The “man-made” Word of God or Bible was also seriously questioned by Thomas Paine (1737—1809), one of America's founding fathers, even though his highly influential forty-seven-page pamphlet, titled "Common Sense," published on January 10, 1776, inspired religious leaders to back the Declaration of Independence that provoked the Revolutionary War. His widely published reasoning had rekindled democracy and created a new nation—the United States of America. To Thomas Paine and his freethinking contributions, all democratic people still owe a great debt of gratitude.
"I believe in one God, and no more;
and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man,
and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice,
loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy."
—Thomas Paine
Age of Reason
Paine's "one God" was not Yahweh or Jehovah, the pincipal actor in the Bible—rendered as "Lord" or "God" by the deceiving translators of the Hebrew Old Testament—who have for thousands of years now conned this world's foolish masses into believing that he is the Creator of our infinite universe.
Drawing of an ancient coin found depicting the God Jews & Christians worship today
In fact, the Old Testament reports on many gods worshiped by the Hebrews; but El, Baal, and Yahweh (Jehovah, etc.) stand out as the most prominent Canaanite deities standing above the altar to direct the course of events in Jewish antiquity. The coin above is stamped with the picture of Yahweh, the God of the Bible whom Jews and Christians still sing, pray, and bow down to reverently today. This ancient graven image was minted in Yehud/Judea during the period of ancient Persian rule, but it, like the Ark (Arc) of the Covenant, generates some mighty big problems with the so-called Holy Scriptures.
The Arc of the Covenant is illustrated above and the Ark of the Covenant below.
A depiction of the Ark of the Covenant from Reverend John Brown's 1873 Holy Bible
However, the angelic images or cherubim on top of the chest above are not accurate depictions. Why? The answer lies in the second of Moses's Ten Commandments, which has been edited and abbreviated on popular plaques like the one I have on hand below.
An abbreviated and edited version of the holy Bible's Ten Commandments
Although the Hebrew god is said to have forbade the worshiping of graven images by uttering to Moses: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,” this is not all of the Second Commandment. Those revered words, dispensing ruthless injustice on innocent progeny, are immediately preceded by those of Exodus 20:4, which command: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water below"—a holy Commandment modern Israel continues to violate as its mints millions of coins today and we never could figure why Yahweh was “a jealous God.”
Furthermore, Deuteronomy 27: 15 threatens: “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image.” One Internet Web page informally comments on these words by exclaiming: “That’s right kids don’t EVER draw, sculpt or paint or else god will curse you. Wanna be an artist, a photographer, take a picture of yourself or family? TOO BAD, God says no! You better drop out of art class before he smites you with boils.”
MOSES HITLER
Deuteronomy 7:6 & 14:2, a biblical book claimed to be written by Moses, also teaches that the Jews are “above all people that are upon the face of the earth” and “above all the nations that are upon the earth” which the Jews never forgot. But also, their holy book, the Old Testament, warns, “Pride goeth before destruction.”
Here the finger of blame at the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Florida points to Moses
Was the bequeathed haughtiness of the Jews one of the outstanding reasons why Hitler and his so-called “superior race”—claiming also to be “above all” in the German national anthem and elsewhere—allowed to exterminate 6,000,000 of God's chosen people?
“I swear by God this sacred oath . . . ”
After all, the Germans did swear their allegiance to Hitler "by God." Did the Jews carelessly ignore their own holy warning about pride and set themselves up for the fall? These are questions about the cause of the holocaust that still beg for honest answers.
Ono of the locations where those "ABOVE ALL" were stripped naked, gassed, and burned up by those "ABOVE ALL"
What is obvious, though, is that a contest between two highly nationalistic and alleged superior races took place in Europe in the early 1940’s, and one tribe of Hebrews suffered severely. Where was the Jewish God then? The souls of millions of gasssed and cremated Jews are eternally pointing to Moses and crying out for truth and justice. After thousands of years, the lies that he put in Yahweh's mouth finally caught up with a lot of naïve believers. The consequences for the Old Testament's chosen ones, as was so plainly witnessed by the world's people that the Jews set themselves “above,” were quite devastating. The clash of German and Jewish nationalism may have never occurred had Moses not put the words “above all” in the mouth of “GOD”* of the Bible.
Jews are “above all people that are upon the face of the earth” and “above all the nations that are upon the earth”??
The two words “above all” destroyed a great multitude of this world's people down through the ages. This is, however, just one of the reasons why so many people—especially those of different nationalities, religions, and races—do not want to see any text from the so-called “holy Bible”—not even the Ten Commandments—taught in our public schools. Can you blame them?
Images of ancient Bayblonian gods sculptured on mounumental artifacts stored in the British Museum and elsewhere
Nevertheless, the coin above as well as the archaeological record from Ras Shamra verify the existence of Yahweh, Baal, and other Hebrew gods—and both attribute quite human qualities to all of these deities.
A Ras Shamra Artifact
The evidence for the fact is cited in the religious text of the cuneiform tablets and artifacts found by Claude Schaeffer, who was the Director of the French Archaeological Expedition to Ras Shamra-Ugarit during nine successive seasons from 1929 through 1937. 
Sketch maps of of Ras Shamra (Ugarit) and the French-Syrian archaeological sites The human-like Hebrew god El, the chief of the Elohim (gods), is one of the most important gods mentioned by name in the beginning books of the Bible. He also takes on a significant role in the archaeological records uncovered in the high priests’ libraries at ancient Ras Shamra. In Genesis, he is described as “the most high God” and in Exodus as “God Almighty.” Likewise, in the Ras Shamra texts, El, whose human-like body is portrayed below, is addressed as the god “Almighty”—a feeble old man who could hardly be Thomas Paine's "one God."
The King of Ugarit serving lunch to the clapping "Almighty" El, an Old Testament Hebrew god
Although, by the closing years of the eighteenth century, Thomas Paine had left a long trail of notices supporting the individual rights of humanity over the rule of kings., “Thomas Paine had not finished his career,” wrote Civil War Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, who went on to point out that
“He had spent his life thus far in destroying the power of kings, and now he turned his attention to priests. He knew that every abuse had been embalmed in Scripture—that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text. He knew that the throne skulked behind the altar, and both behind a pretended revelation from God. By this time, he had found that it was of little use to free the body and leave the mind in chains. He had explored the foundation of despotism, and had found them infinitely rotten. He had dug under the throne, and it occurred to him that he would take a look behind the altar.”
There he found Moses hiding, and exposed the culprit in The Age of Reason, Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology. In Part II of that wonderful work, under Chapter I, titled "The Old Testament," he pointed out:
“The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation.** Of which I will state only one instance:
“When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): ‘And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, ‘Have ye saved all the women alive?’ behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, ‘kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.’
“Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.
“Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.
“After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, ‘And the Lord’s tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord’s tribute was thirty and two.’ In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand. “People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority.
His Age of Reason clearly demonstrates what he discovered, and much of it deals with manmade religions and the validity of the so-called Word of God—which advocates slavery, among many other atrocities in the Bible that Edison attributed to mankind's inventiveness.
Good heavens! It is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty!”
An image of auctioning off Uncle Tom A picture of Uncle Tom reading the Bible
This is only an excerpt from Paine's work, all of which is posted on the Internet for all to read. Yet, we find that most people in this country dismiss his writings and still revere the Bible, and even wave it high as they dance around in their churches today. This is especially true in regards to blacks—following the lead of their old white masters— despite the fact that the so-called "Word of God" sanctions their own ancestors’ enslavement! Wow! How this can persist in our computer-packed Information Age is beyond belief.
Religious revellers will dance to any tune to grab the most in this world and the best in the next!
Nevertheless, the blacks' cherishing of the Bible that sanctioned their own enslavement is not the only ironic aspect of its hold on the minds of naïve people—both black and white. The Bible contradicted the very creeds that nineteenth-century labor unions supported. However, their members still wholeheartedly upheld the holy book. Holy Smoke! They spoke out of both sides of their mouths at the same time—unwittingly putting themselves out of work to satisfy Yahweh's words in the Bible.
This may be nearly as true today as it was over a hundred years ago—during and in the aftermath of the American Civil War. “Here, in our own country, millions of men were enslaved, and hundreds and thousands of ministers stood up in their pulpits, with their Bibles in front of them, and proceeded to show that slavery was about the only institution that they were absolutely certain was divine,” declared Colonel Ingersoll.
In case you don't know, this is the famous "Fire and Brimstone" preacher Billy Sunday.
“And they proved it by reading passages from this very Bible that the Knights of Labor in Indiana are anxious to have read in their meetings.”
“For their benefit,” added this famous orator, in an August 25, 1888 issue of Secular Thought, “let me call their attention to a few passages, and suggest that, hereafter, they read those passages at every meeting, for the purpose of convincing all the Knights that the Lord is on the side of those who work for a living:
‘Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
‘Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you of them shall ye buy, and of their families which are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
‘And ye shall take them as an inheritance, for your children after you to inherit them for a possession. They shall be your bondmen forever.’”
These despicable words of God? (Yahweh) are set down in the Old Testament’s book of Leviticus (25:44-46). Yet, the naïve masses of blacks, union laborers, government officials, and a multitude of others in the United States of America ignore the wise words of Edison, Remsburg, Ingersoll as well as Thomas Paine—and continue to swear upon an unholy Bible!
A U. S. Government official swearing on the so-called holy Bible—“the blind leading the blind”
For his great efforts in exposing an unholy fraud—thousands of years old—our great American patriot Thomas Paine was sadly and somewhat ironically rewarded with the attendance of a lone black woman in his funeral procession. His prominent white friends had all fled when he dared to expose an unpopular truth about the unholy Bible.
I expect less gratitude—but will continue to smile as genuine truth-seekers continue to find some enlightenment in the variety and historical accuracy in these Web pages after I too pass on.
Sincerely,
Larry Brian Radka
The Holy Bible: Amended King James Version— by Philadelphia Publishing Association
* A NOTE ON “GOD”
The Holy Bible: Amended King James Version, published by the Philadelphia Publishing Association, one of many versions of the bible that I have on hand, points to one of the problems with the translation of the Hebrew gods in the our Bibles. In its introduction, speaking of the Hebrew god “Yahweh,” this version points out:
This name is erroneously rendered Jehovah in Ps. 83:18 and elsewhere in the King James Version, which also inconsistently substitutes the titles “GOD” and “LORD” in its place nearly 7000 times. The only indication given the reader that these words refer to Yahweh, is that the first letter of each word is printed with a large capital, while the last letters are printed with small capitals—a distinction many do not notice. In this amended version of the King James Bible, the titles of GOD and LORD are translated, but the name is transliterated. Accordingly, Yahweh, the Hebrew pronunciation of the divine name, is carried over into the English vocabulary, but the Hebrew titles elohim, el, adonai, and adon, are translated into their English equivalents: gods, god, lords, and lord, respectively.
Even though The Holy Bible: Amended King James Version is not forthright in addressing the problem with the so-called “Hebrew titles” of the other gods in the Bible, this is a step forward. The King James translators, along with all the others down through history, did a fantastic job of covering up the divinities of the Bible with simply the word “GOD.”
They say, “The first priest was a wise man who met a fool.” Let’s not play the role of the fool any longer. In this great age of Internet enlightenment, shame on us if we do!
