BELIEVING IN A GOD
By Peter Fredson
The question is: "Do You Believe in God?" As everyone knows, but the far right will not acknowledge, there are many beliefs about A God, A Goddess, Some Gods, Some Goddesses.
Christianity is a relative "Johnny-come-lately" in pro-fessional God Belief circles. The origin of religious beliefs is lost in antiquity, although archaeologists point to the Neanderthalers and their penchant for burying their dead, in formal graves, with offerings of food, clothing, and stone implements. Evidently an early baffling puzzle to humans was: How can someone be alive one moment and then utterly dead the next, never to revive? It is suggested they thought that death was temporary, and that the person would spring back up again, hence the need for clothing, food and tools. Others suggest this is the beginning of belief in another life or dimension, parallel to this one, in which the dead person had similar needs. At any rate, we would not use the word "worship", nor indicate belief in any particular beings, or forces to the Neanderthalers.
We know that people of the Mesolithic period erected large circles of stones, caches, cairns, dolmens, etc. which indicate accretions of beliefs, although not the specific beliefs themselves. The Neolithic period, with its classic cities, vast monuments and art works, also brought a plethora of buildings that were certainly intended for religious purposes, including the ziggurats and pyramids. We have writings from Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Assyria showing great sophistication and elaboration of beliefs. Whatever simpler entities or forces early peoples may have thought ruled good crops, health, fortune, etc., the more abstract deities of the Neolithic numbered in the hundreds, being praised by thousands of parasitic priests, and supported by governments that were often theocratic, dictatorial, imperial and oppressive.
We see a spread of Classic cultures in most parts of the world, with vast religious organizations and beliefs in Asia, the Near East, Europe, Africa, and in the Americas. We know that although Christians may despise the word "evolution", religions have evolved and are still doing so.
Estimates of the number of deities worshipped in the world, at any one time, number from hundreds to thousands. Much belief was state supported, and heresy was strongly discouraged, or simply exterminated. Belief became a social obligation. If you didn't believe, you could not hold office, give public speeches, or own land, and frequently you were forced to declare belief, regardless of sincerity, for religio-political correctness. And, as stated previously, often the penalty for disbelief was death.
But yet each society worshipped other gods than its neighbors, so belief was a matter of neighborhoods. And if you switched neighborhood, you were forced to switch beliefs, or pretend that you had. And the penalty for playing pretend was often death.
Often when an emperor took office, he switched beliefs, and the entire populace of the kingdom was then expected to switch beliefs too. And the penalty for not doing so could be death.
In fact, death was often the penalty for any offense to religious sensibilities.
People were all too aware of this circumstance. Let me give you an example from Latin American Political History, without being specific about exact places and people. During their continual revolutions, citizens had to be aware of who was in the neighborhood, and whom to pay allegiance. At one time two combatants met in a forest and one shouted "Halt. Who are you for?" And the second shouted, "You say first."
Religious sensitivity is like that. The slightest offense to a particular deity, or belief, of the thousands possible, could mean death, destruction, confiscation, imprisonment, torture and all the other refinements of cruelty that organized religion has practiced.
So, when I ask "Do you Believe in God?" I should really ask, "Which God, of all the thousands that have been worshipped on this earth, for which absolute belief was required, under penalty of death, do YOU believe in? Which version of the thousands of beliefs that have been believed, do you believe?"
And, if you are aware of the modern penalties, which are frighteningly similar to those in Ancient Cultures, you will say, "You First."
A ploy of many Christians, especially the professional kind, is to claim they are being "repressed", "bashed", or otherwise prevented from fulfilling whatever they decide is their destiny. This may simply be a strategy for conquest, a rallying call to arms, or a claim to greater privileges, but is widespread and deliberately undertaken. Certainly today Christians have full access to privileges, power, the Presidency, the Congress, without any hindrance other than the Constitution, and they will soon reword even that to give them whatever they claim is due their God.
But now that the question has been asked, "Do you Believe in God?" and has been answered by millions of Christians, the question then becomes: "Which God?" This question will probably stupefy most Christians, for to them there is only one God...that mentioned in the Old and/or New Testament of the Bible. They do not believe in any other God, or Goddess, or entity not mentioned in their Bible. Christians are atheists in regard to all gods but their own. They are positive no other gods or goddesses exist, or ever existed, and they certainly claim to fight to the death to prevent having to worship Vishnu, Allah, or any other of the several thousand deities still worshipped on this planet today. And yet they will not use the same arguments against worshipping their own barbarous, vicious and whimsical entity.
Do you believe in Quetzalcoatl, a benign deity of the Aztecs and Toltecs, the White God, bringer of corn and civilization? He was much less sadistic and vengeful than the Old Testament God, very tolerant of beliefs.
Do you believe in the National God of the Assyrians, Assur, of the great city of Assur? Do you believe in Merodach, the great god of Babylon? He was worshipped by an entire nation for generations. Do you believe in Ea, the god of the deep, and Anu, the god of the heavens of the Sumerians? Do you believe in the deification of the Babylonian Noah, Ut-napistim, who, as the legend of the Flood relates, was made one of the gods by Aa or Ea, for his faithfulness after the great flood, or in the cultural hero Gilgames?
Surely you must believe in Neptune because Homer said that many people did. And surely you must believe in Thor, the mighty god with the hammer. Many people still seem to believe in Aphrodite, Venus, and Cupid with the arrows of love. Of course many Americans do not believe in any of the Gods of the Far East, of China, India and Japan because they are foreigners and every American knows that Jesus spoke only archaic English (Thees and Thous,) nor in any of the deities of Africans before the Europeans slaughtered the tribespeople because every white person knows that God isn't black. "God just cain't be a furriner!"
Do you believe in any of the Gods of the Ancient Britons: Taramis (the father of the gods and master of thunder), Teutates (patron of commerce and inventor of letters), Esus (god of war), Belinus (Apollo), Ardena (goddess of forests), or Belisarna (the queen of heaven and the moon? Why don't you believe in them? Many people did.
Do you believe in the seven gods of the Chaldeans. They were called in the Latin language Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo [i.e. the Sun], Mercury, Venus, and Diana [i.e. the Moon] and you can see them any time in the heavens. Do you not believe they exist?
Do you believe in any of the Egyptian gods? The two chief deities were Osiris and Isis (supposed to be sun and moon), and for several thousand years they, with dozen of other deities were worshipped by one of the most colorful civilizations on earth at that time? The kings were convinced of the reality of their next world and had pyramid tombs built by many thousands of workers. Do you think they would have done that if they were not convinced of the reality of their deities?
At a time when Egypt was in full splendor the God of the Jews was despised by their neighbors. Barbarous Neolithic cultures surrounding or incorporated by larger neighbors were struggling to stay alive. The Gods of the Greeks lived on Mount Olympus and the Greeks celebrated their existence with hundreds of temples, priests and ceremonies. So did the Romans. Their Gods were very much alive to them. They were adored, worshipped, and great temples were made for them. Do you not believe in any of them? Why?
Later when Constantine became Emperor he decreed that everyone would become Christian. Just like that! Imagine a million people shifting their beliefs, at least outwardly. And then the rise of the monolithic theocracies with the vampire-like Catholic church at the center, with their autocratic, tyrannical hold on every human in their space. It was DEATH to be a heretic. Whatever the King believed, you believed.
Today the Christian Extremists have taken hold of government and its power. If history does repeat, then you can be sure that it will gradually become death to be a heretic. For Christianity, like Islam and many other religions, will brook no opposition, and will stop at nothing to prevail. Religionists are absolutists. They are absolutely sure they are right, and therefore everyone who does not hold their beliefs, they will either prevent them from speaking or will simply exterminate them. The Nazis, remember, were Christians, and this did not stop the prison camps, torture, poison gas, brutal beatings, starvation, and DEATH.
George II is a Christian but this did not stop him from lying about weapons of mass destruction, sending troops to invade a foreign country and sow death and destruction, to seize the oil reserves of a nation for his friend's corporations or from using fear as a weapon to gain reelection. We know he and his neocon friends want to invade Syria, Iran and other countries and are simply waiting to find a pretext for "preemptive action."
Nor will being a Christian stop him from his neocon quest for absolute dominion of the world, nor will it stop him from pushing buttons on his nuclear launching pad if ever he appears to be in any personal danger. We know he is incapable of regret, expressing guilt, admitting error, or simply saying he is sorry, because he is a master of denial that lives in a fantasy world where he can strut, lie, and smirk endlessly while basking in his own glory. We know he has the compassion of a crocodile, (or of a Texan rattlesnake.) We know he is an absolute failure at running a country so he resorts to prayer and puts the blame on his God