The Einhorn (Unicorn) Press

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.”

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.”

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.

“‘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.”

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.’”

Edison is right about religion, and Becky Story, on this Web site's Blog page, asked some thoughtful questions about the religion propagated by various sects, on the religion we are taught in our tender years, and on the religion that might still be enslaving our minds.  With great insight and truth, she asked:

“Has a Jehovah's Witness, Hare Krishna, Mormon or other member of a religion come to your door to try to convert you to their way of believing?  Have you ever had a discussion with them and come to the conclusion that no matter what you said—no matter how good was your reasoning and logic—there was no way that you were ever going to have a meeting of the minds with these people.  Why can’t they understand the religion you were born into is the correct one?  Why don’t they understand your parents were right and would never teach you the wrong things?  Why can’t they see that out of the thousands of religious doctrines of the world, yours is the one true religion and how lucky your were to be born into it?  This is why, and it is so simple.

“They are wondering the very same things about you!  Why can’t you understand the religion they were ‘born’ into is the correct one?   Why can’t you understand their parents would never teach them the wrong things?  All the world over and in every religious denomination, this is the way it is—period.

“While each of us was still lying in the nursery in the hospitals where we were born, our religions were already laid out for us.

“Think about it for once!

“We had no knowledge of this world, our parents, god or even ourselves.  Yet, some things had already been decided on our behalf.  Personally, I believe it should be against the law of the land everywhere to teach a child any religion!  They should be given the opportunity to be a child until they reach an age where they can investigate all religions, and if they decide they need religion in their life, then that choice should be up to them.  What choice do people have when they have been indoctrinated with the beliefs of family or culture and taught it is wrong to even question or investigate those beliefs—often with the threat of damnation if they do?

“That is child abuse, plain and simple!

“All religious systems enslave the mind.  Certain things are demanded, certain things must be believed, certain things must be done, and anyone who becomes the subject or servant of this superstition must give up all idea of individuality or hope of intellectual growth and progress. We must all become sheep in one flock.  Do you understand sheep are the stupidest animals alive and will follow their leader to their own death?”

Beside Becky's points and Edison's remarks, the Bible's divine authority was seriously questioned by Thomas Paine (1737—1809), one of America's founding fathers, whose highly influential forty-seven-page pamphlet, titled “Common Sense,”  published on January 10, 1776, inspired religious as well as secular citizens to vigorously back the Declaration of Independence, which provoked the Revolutionary War.

His acute 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.  In his Age of Reason, he summed up his feelings by relating that

“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.”

Paine's “one God” was not Yahweh or Jehovah, the principal 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.

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 a mighty big problem among Jewish and Christian believers as well as the so-called Holy Scriptures themselves.

This involves the common depiction of the graven images of angelic-like idols or cherubim atop top of the chest above.  These icons in Reverend John Brown's 1873 version of the Holy Bible are certainly not accurate depictions.  Why?  The answer lies in the second of Moses' Ten Commandments, which has been edited and abbreviated on popular plaques like the one I have on hand below.

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.”

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.”

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—were allowed to exterminate 6,000,000 of God's chosen people?

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.

What is obvious, though, is that a contest between two highly nationalistic and alleged superior races took place in Europe during the early 1940’s, and one tribe of Hebrews suffered severely.   Where was the Jewish God then?  The souls of millions of gassed 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 whom 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 the “GOD” of the Bible.

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?

Nevertheless, the coin above as well as the archaeological archaeological discoveries at Ras Shamra verify the existence of Yahweh, Baal, and other Hebrew gods—and they attribute quite human qualities to all of these deities.

Kenneth Humphreys describes Yahweh as "A God in Man's Image" on his superb Web page with the following words:

All cultures have anthropomorphized their gods into humanoid (if sometimes grotesque) form.  Were the Jews the exception?  Hardly.  We know precisely what the Hebrew god looked like. We are, after all, fashioned in his own likeness.  He was a man, no doubt looking remarkably like the bearded sage asking us to worship him.  He has body parts: eyes and a face (‘they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes’ – Jeremiah 16.17); nose and a mouth (Psalms 18.8); lips, tongue and breath (Isaiah 30.27,33); loins (Ezekiel 1.27); even ‘back parts’ (Exodus 33.23).  He also has several ‘human’ emotions, manly appetites, and a worrying disposition towards pathological violence.

Yahweh feels regret for his own evil (‘And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.’ - Jonah 3.10); and grief (at the wickedness of men) (‘and it grieved him at his heart’ - (Genesis 6.6). He actually gets down and wrestles with Jacob, dislocating his thigh (Genesis 32.24).  He forgets (he goes on calling Jacob ‘Jacob’ even after re-naming him ‘Israel’ - Genesis 35.10, 46.2).  He practises favouritism (choosing the Israelites ‘above all people’ - Exodus 19.5; but he just does not like Cain or Esau!).  He holds grudges (‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation’ – Exodus 20.5).

For an omniscient god he is surprisingly unknowing (‘They have set up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, and I knew it not.’ – Hosea 8.4).  And for an omnipotent god he has his limitations (‘The Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron.’ - Judges 1.19).

And after his creation of the world, he even has to rest from his labour (‘And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work’ - Genesis 2.2) – to the endless bemusement of pagan critics, whose own gods didn’t need to rest!

One artifact that serves as a good piece of hard evidence for the human qualities of the Hebrew gods like Yahweh is illustrated above in the animation of the Hebrew god Baal, the son of El, another Hebrew god vigorously worshiped in antiquity, according to the Bible.  Among the older gods, or Elohim, El, is described throughout the Book of Genesis; and El 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 above, is addressed as the god “Almighty.”  He is shown on this artifact as a feeble old man.   The King of Ugarit is serving lunch to him.  God "Almighty" is clapping while seated in a chair.  This artifact and others were discovered among many religious texts on cuneiform tablets during Claude Schaeffer's famous Ras Shamra archaeological expeditions.

Schaeffer was the Director of the French Archaeological Expedition to Ras Shamra-Ugarit during nine successive seasons from 1929 through 1937.

It is appropriate to point out here that the Judeo-Christian Bible is a very misleading authority in regards to the existence of the “gods” of the Hebrews—which is clearly exposed in my insert on the Amended King James Version of the Bible below.

In fact, the Hebrew gods (elohim) are mentioned about 2,000 times in the Bible, but nearly all translators and biblical commentators—from about the time of Christ—have mistakenly, or intentionally, chosen, in almost every instance, to follow the lead of other bibles and convert them into a singular “God” or combination of so-called “divine names” that implies that one Hebrew god rules our infinite universe.  You can verify the plurality of the Hebrew god by checking such authorities as Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments—where Oxford professor of Assyriology A. H. Sayce also verifies their plurality.

In his learned and courageous declaration, he openly maintains:

“Elohim is a plural noun, and its employment in the Old Testament as a singular has given rise to a large amount of learned discussion, and, it must also be added, of a learned want of common sense.  Grammarians have been in the habit of evading the difficulty by describing it as a ‘pluralis majestatis,’ ‘a plural of majesty,’ or something similar, as if a term in common use which was grammatically a plural could ever have come to be treated as a singular, unless this singular had once been a plural.  We can construe the word ‘means’ with a singular verb, but nevertheless there was once a time when ‘means’ was a plural noun.

“We may take it for granted, therefore, that if the Hebrew word Elohim had not once signified the plural ‘gods,’ it would never have been given a plural form, and the best proof of this is the fact that in several passages of the Old Testament the word is still used in a plural sense.  Indeed there are one or two passages, as for example Gen. i. 26, where the word, although referring to the God of Israel, is yet employed with a plural verb, much to the bewilderment of the Jewish rabbis and the Christian commentators who followed them.  It is strange how preconceived theories will cause the best scholars to close their eyes to obvious facts.

“The Israelites were a Semitic people, and their history down to the age of the Exile is the history of a perpetual tendency toward polytheism.  Priest and prophet might exhort and denounce, and kings might attempt to reform, but the mass of the people remained wedded to a belief in many gods.  Even the most devoted adherents of the supreme God of Israel sometimes admitted that he was but supreme among other gods, and David himself, the friend of seers and prophets, complains that he had been driven out of ‘the inheritance of Yahveh’ and told to go and ‘serve other gods’ (1 Sam. xxvi. 19).  What can be plainer than the existence of a persistent polytheism among the bulk of the people, and the inevitable traces of polytheism that were left upon the language and possibly the thoughts of the enlightened few?”

In The Religious Teachings of the Old Testament, Albert C. Knudson, a professor in the Boston University School of Theology, also pointed out:

“The sole godhead of Yahweh was a truth that was only gradually attained.  The different steps in this development may be distinguished with a fair degree of clearness.  We begin with the Mosaic age.  It was to Moses, as we have seen, that the establishment of Yahweh-worship was due. Previous to his time the Israelites seem to have been polytheists.  On one of the cuneiform tablets discovered by Winckler at Boghazköj and belonging to the pre-Mosaic age we read of ‘the gods’ of the Habiri or Hebrews, and in Josh. 24.2, 14f. and Ezek. 20.7f., 24 we are told that both in Mesopotamia and Egypt the Israelites worshipped other gods.  The very name ‘Yahweh’ also points in the same direction.  The manifest purpose of such a name was to distinguish the god of Israel from other gods.  If the Hebrews had not believed in the existence of other deities, there would have been no need of giving a personal name to the Divine Being through whom they were delivered from Egypt.  He would have been to them simply God.

“Then, too, it is a significant fact that the common Hebrew word for ‘God,’ Elohim, is plural in form.  This plural, it is often said, was not numerical, but simply enhancive of the idea of might, a plural majesty.  And this was no doubt to a large extent true of later usage.  But originally the plural form must have had a polytheistic background.  People could have begun to use the plural ‘gods’ to express the idea of divinity only at a time when they believed in the existence of a plurality of divine beings.  This is illustrated by the Greek use of theoi and the Latin use of dei.  The plural, Elohim, points, then, back to an earlier polytheistic stage of belief.  And this stage we naturally locate in the pre-Mosaic period.  What Moses did was to put monolatry in place of the earlier polytheism.  He did not deny the existence of other gods, but proclaimed Yahweh as the sole god of Israel.  He did not say that there was but one God, but insisted that it was Israel’s duty to have but one God.  But while he thus did not teach monotheism, the monolatry he established was an important step in that direction.”

Yahweh, or however you wish to spell his name, was the singular god that Hebrews eventually settled on when they decided to propagate monolatry to the rest of the Near Eastern world, after Moses came along.  However, Thomas Paine hardly had any respect for this Hebrew god, nor for Moses for that matter. 

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, but “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 this great American founding father found Moses, 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. 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!”

This is only an excerpt from Paine's work, all of which is posted on the Internet for all to read.  Yet, we find Judeo-Christian worshipers in this country dismiss his writings and still revere the Bible, and even wave it high as they dance around inside and outside of 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.

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 enthusiastically supported.  However, their members still staunchly upheld the holy book.  Holy Smoke!  The poor fools unwittingly were relinquishing their jobs because of Moses' mandates in 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 when:  “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.

“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 (even mulatto President Obama), 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 that upholds God's smoking and tobacco-picking slavery!

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 friends who praised Common Sense had all fled when he dared to expose an unpopular truth about an unholy Bible in The Age of Reason.

Web Site Designer Larry Brian Radka

I expect less gratitude at my funeral—but hope before that occurs that many genuine truth-seekers (people who know they don't know) will get some comfort from my efforts on these Web pages on bibles, gods, and ridiculous religions.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

This page was last modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010