A Human View of History, Time Based on the age of Earth. Welcoming In 2016

Corals and Sponges have been unvarying for 12% of Earth's existence. Beetles have been around for 6% percent of Earth’s history.

The oldest fossil, found to date, common to all apes is 47 million years old.  This time represents 1% of Earth's history.  Hominids and chimps have been on separate evolutionary paths for 0.4% of the time.  Hominids have harnessed fire for 0.02% of history, and Homo sapiens have inhabited North America for 0.0004% of Earth's Time (ET).   

Humans have been consuming wheat for 0.0002% ET, corn, wine, and beer for 0.0001%.   We have shown adoration for gods 0.0001% ET.

The famous battle of Thermopylae (300) has been part of history for 0.000054%.  Hawaii has been known to man for 0.000037% and Jesus has been worshiped for 0.000035% ET.

Gun powder has existed for 0.000025% ET.  The Crusades have been in history 0.0000202%/  Muslims have had Constantinople for 0.000012% of ET.

The Salem Witch Trials, the Bill of Rights, and the end of slavery in the US are separated by 0.0000071% and 0.0000049%, and 0.0000033%.

General Relativity has been published 0.0000022%, and we have been sending objects into space 0.0000012% of ET.

The ability to be outward Atheist: 0.000001%

Mobile phones: 0.0000009%

GPS: 0.0000008%

Human DNA Mapping: 0.0000002%

Dark matter has been known: 0.00000019%

Human machines on Mars: 0.000000066%

High Def pictures of Pluto 0.000000022%

When Christmas was Illegal in America – Rethinking the “War on Christmas” from a Historical Perspective.

The Pilgrims of Massachusetts celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621 starting a new American tradition; however, they did not celebrate Christmas.  The Puritans when so far as to outlaw celebrating Christmas in 1659 as a statement to newcomers attempting moved in and push Christmas on to New Englanders.  Christmas was either illegal or simply not observed for nearly the first 240 years of Boston’s founding.   The “Christmas Disavowed” period existed in history almost 100 years longer than Christmas has been a legal holiday in Mass.  Wow.

Why was Christmas off the books for so long in New England?  Puritan Christians viewed the Pagan traditions of Christmas as sacrilegious. Tree decoration, yule, holly, gift giving, mistletoe, and caroling were all Pagan traditions adopted by Christmas.  Puritan Christians wanted nothing to do with this.  Not to mention the gluttony at the dinner table combined with drinking, and worst of all game playing.  

From a polar perspective; people have asked me, “as an Atheist do you celebrate Christmas?”, “what do you say to people who tell you Merry Christmas?”  My response is Dec 25th has been known by many names and has been recognized as a celebration of humanity in the northern hemisphere long before Christianity – Yes I celebrate it, what a wonderful time a year!  Moreover, what do I say when people tell me Merry Christmas?  I say Merry Christmas!  The traditional winter holiday may have been called Yule in Germanic paganism or by other names in Roman paganism, but I live in 21^st century North America, and we call Dec 25^th Christmas.

The traditions of Christmas; taking time out of our busy schedules to spend with our families, to carol, spread the glow, giving gifts, helping others in need, and most of all being humble and thankful – these are all celebrations of humanity.  While the Puritans saw this day as irreverent, the rest of us Christian, Agnostic, and Atheist alike are all enjoying the chestnuts and the shine of lights glittering on the snow.

Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year.

Connecting Sacred Geography to the Human Psyche

We have no history of the first settlers in the hills and valleys around Jerusalem.  We do know people began to build tombs in the area at least 5200 years ago, and we also know this land was not part of Mesopotamia, which marked the beginning of Western civilization.  The entire area was a link between Egypt and Damascus 4000 years ago.  However, the site of ancient Jerusalem was a bit off this path.  Perhaps people settled in this area as it was off the main roads, most likely with little attention to the Egyptian overlords, but why is the city of Jerusalem thought of as sacred geography?

The first worship in the city, as most religions of the time, was cosmic.  A Syrian-influenced evening star god named Shalem was the chosen deity when the city was established.  These first western Semitic settlers believed some places were sacred, and thus, they made settlements in these sites.  The social theory of the time, in this area, was all city sites were sacred; this was the only reason to build a city.  Only sacred sites were fit for human settlement.

Did the Syrian God manifest himself to travelers in the hills of Jerusalem 4000 years ago, or was this place settled simply due to the availability of fresh water in what is a surrounding desert?  Gihon Spring is co-located at the foundation of the very first know city walls.  Occam’s razor?  Very little is known with regards to worship in Jerusalem from 4000 to 3500 years ago; we do not even know if the city was continuously occupied during this segment of time.  About 3600 years before present, evidence points to a new influence in the city from the Hurrian people.  At this time, the entire triangle from Gaza to Damascus and Beirut was referred to as Canaan.  These people were Egyptian and most of what is known about Jerusalem at this time comes from Egyptian archives – cuneiform tablets. During this era the god Baal, the son of El - who can be referenced in the Hebrew Bible - became the protector of the hills and valleys and the city of Jerusalem.  

Invasions from the Aegean and Anatolian people followed the Hurrian effect, and in this mixture, people north of Jerusalem began to refer to themselves as Hebrews.  The Bible tells the story that these people came out of Egypt; the extra-biblical evidence suggests these people were not foreigners; rather the Hebrews represented an evolutionary mix of many people who came to the region.  Archaeology suggests these people were native Canaanites, genetically linked with new foreigners; who developed a unique culture with a myth of foreign descent to keep them bound together - apart from other groups of Canaanites.  In the fundamental sense, they were the tribe who survived.  Moreover, it is here, in this tribe, the first stories of the Bible, and the God named Yahweh emerged in the human journey – as a common myth among one grouping of people.

Since that time many gods were developed and worshiped in Jerusalem.  The mixture of people was a time of polytheism in the city – A city of central location between what became the Israelite people in the north, and the people of Judea who lived south of the city.  This is until the city was flattened by the Babylonians 2600 years ago.  The people of Jerusalem, for the most part, took residency with their victors in Babylon.  The Canaanite people lost their home but kept their culture in developing the Jewish faith; based on the myths from the older Canaanite writings we refer to today as Genesis and Exodus.  Oppression and occupation are essential ingredients in the recipe of worship.  

When the Persians defeated Babylon the Hebrew people migrated back to the region and rebuilt Jerusalem as a Jewish city.  However, occupation was to return to this land, this time, powered by the Greek empire.  The Greek occupation is referred to as the Hellination of Jerusalem. Unrecognized by many Christians, the Greek occupation is the root cause of the messiah myths that were to follow, including Jesus.  The messiah myths began in the Jewish texts such as the book of Daniel – written as a “why & how” to keep the Jewish people together during Greek occupation; stories which grew out of someone simply telling someone else: “don’t be threatened, our god will protect us and send us a savior.”  It is human nature; religion is a product of the human condition. 

The Romans replaced the Greeks; the occupation continued.  Eventually, some of the Jewish people took to the words in Daniel and began to tell their occupiers that the Jewish Messiah is real.  ~1970 years ago a man known as Paul the Preacher, and many others said to the people, the Messiah is here.  Among these messiah stories, there was one which won over;  Jesus.  A new fledgling faith had begun.  Then the sludge hammer hit, Rome flattened Jerusalem once again – 1945 years before present day.  Within the next four decades, a group of Jewish people completed the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.  The Jesus Myth flourished 1900 years ago as a political revolt by a subjected people, in relative poverty, powerless, effectively dominated by an economic and military capacity so staggering it could not be overcome. They turned Paul’s visions of cosmic Jesus into a physical person.  We must remember the Gospel author predicted the second fall of Jerusalem after it had fallen.

The people of this new faith, for the first time, were teaching the connection to God does not require a connection to sacred geography; as they did not have a sacred place, Jerusalem was destroyed.  The Roman occupation scattered the people, thus, geography was no longer relevant – this is until Christianity became the religion of Rome.  Christians are inherently Jewish, and as any Jewish person would; now that the Christians had the power, they rebuilt the city, and found their sacred geography in Jerusalem.  The idea of God being in a particular physical space is deep-rooted in the human psyche; this is why humans build temples, houses of gods are all over the world.  When the Christians could not control the land, they scorned it.  Once they had power; they found value in the land once again.  The ‘new to power’ Christians went so far as to remove the Jewish people from the city as they did not choose to believe in their messiah.  When the Christians rebuilt Jerusalem, the Jews were once again exciled.  I admire the Jewish people for their tenacity.

Then came the fall of Rome.  Christians lost power in the region; the Islamic religion was created, and Muslims took over the “third Jerusalem” built by the Romans.  As the Christians nations began to recover from the fall of Rome, the Crusades were funded to take back the holy land.  The human tragedy of this story is astonishing.  It all started 4000 years ago due to a spring in the desert. 

We must ask ourselves, why is faith based in a physical space?  Why do we build temples to connect us with the gods?  The answer may be that faith is the expression of our needs, our desires, and most of all our security.  The mind has evolved to find security in physical spaces.

I’ll admit, even as an Atheist, I was excited to see the sacred geography of Jerusalem.  However I found a tourist trap, a Disneyland of an ancient faith.  Today the city is a bazaar – the commercialization of outdated ideas which requires a heavily armed police force to keep the peace.  I would encourage every American to visit Jerusalem, our Israeli friends are on guard, and safety is not the issue.  Rather the importance is, once visiting Jerusalem, upon returning to Tel Aviv; one can realize the preciosity of modern life; how lucky we are to live in 2015.  

The Abolition of the Caliphate 2016 - Introduction

We should all make an effort to recognize ideas and the cultures of our world.  In that spirit, how many know what the Caliphate is?  The caliph is the office at the top of the Islamic government, which as a whole is the Caliphate.  The caliph is the religious, political, and military leader; he is the successor to the Islamic Prophet.  His name is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and he ordered the attack in Paris (according to AP reports).  In medieval times, even Kings had to share power with the Popes and other religious leaders.  This man, however, is absolute.

We have known of the Caliphate for centuries, but we don’t talk about it.  “. .  . the Caliphate carries a message of salvation through an international Muslim solidarity.” to the Muslims in India, Russia, China, Africa, and the West who are “dispersed abroad: among the Gentiles”.  Taken from a 91-year-old publication - The abolition of the Caliphate, From The Economist March 8th, 1924.

If you are not a church-goer you may not know what defines a Gentile.  Many would say the Atheist population represents the Gentile.  By definition if you are not a Muslim, you are a Gentile according to the Caliphate, as all non-Muslims are unbelievers.  The Caliphate followers are dispersed among all of us, waiting for the message of salvation from the caliph.

How do we develop an understanding of the end-game directive contained in the caliph's salvation message? Reading about the belief system from the source is a best place to start.  In this series of writings, I'll read from the Quran with an attempt to extrapolate the directive, and post the product of under the subject "The Abolition of the Caliphate; 2016" - If you want to understand your adversary, it is a good idea to know the book they read, the book they read every day, over and over.

Recognizing an idea, is not accepting an idea.  But before one can rightly criticize an idea it must be both acknowledged and understood.  Please keep in mind attacking an idea, is not attacking a person.  I have, in the past, criticized OT, Christian, and Mormon Doctrine.  However, I am not attacking the people; I am assaulting the dogma, which, seeds the group behavior in the professed.

  

How Bacterium saved the Jalapeño and cost Big Pharma Millions

 If you recall, in the 1980’s it was common knowledge stress, and spicy foods were the cause of our painful ulcers.  The cure was also known, that being - lay off the Mexican food, relax and take a Zantac. 

It turns out our prevailing familiarity with the cause and the cure was based on a story that was simply told over and over again.   This story was told to us for maybe a hundred years, and Big Pharma built up a 8 billion dollar industry based on folklore.

In 1982, a young Australian scientist named Barry Marshall discovered ulcers were not caused by the capsaicin based chili, rather the true cause was the bacterium H. pylori.  Instead of surgery and a Zantac every day for the rest of one life, an ulcer can be cured by naturally replacing the bodies’ microbes.  This changed everything, right?  Wrong.  Common knowledge does not die overnight and typically the higher educated, such as the doctor prescribing the pill, will hold on to their concepts longer than their non-doctor citizens because they are confident, they are accustomed to being right.   The longer we have held an idea, and the more emotional it is, our level of confidence in that idea grows; with this so does the degree of difficulty in changing our thinking.  The evidence is not always the best tool to persuade someone’s mind, leading with evidence to a person who is emotionally committed to a story is equivalent of name calling.  One must lead with emotion, and close with evidence, even, and maybe especially, if the opponent has a Ph.D. in her title.

Marshall was ridiculed, mocked, and held in contempt of the medical community – however, he did not give up, and eventually he persuaded the medical community.  In 2005, 23 years later, he won a Nobel Prize for his research.

The unlikely benefactor of Marshall's work was Chihuahua Mexico and the Jalapeño.   Jalapeño exports the United States tripled overnight.   Moreover, Zantac sales fell by $24 million three years after he took home the Nobel Prize (even with the Noble Prize in hand there was a lag in giving up the medical ulcer religion – A.K.A folklore).

Lack of evidence for an idea does not constitute evidence against that idea. However, what level of probability would you assign an idea without any evidence?

To the position I hold, that is, there is a very slim chance Jesus was a historical figure, I'll list a few ideas on backing this position; I would define slim as 10s of thousands to one.  I am not listing formal citations as this is a response to a Facebook message, not a research paper and you can easily Google anything I write.

I'll start with the writings of the Emperors Vespasian and Titus who headed the Empire from 69 to 81 CE.  They were published and discussed in detail Jewish affairs including invasions and conquests of modern day Israel, with no mention of Christ or Christianity.

Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Younger wrote in the History of Rome and On Superstition covering every cult in the Roman Empire from the first century BCE to 62 CE; again no mention of Christ or Christianity.

Claudius Charax, Aulus wrote a (lost) universal history that was a long time reference for other Authors - no quotes on the Christian Faith.

The Greek Publius Herennius Dexippus along with Gaius Asinius Quadratus both wrote histories of Judean affairs; One would think Jesus would have been important enough to mention, however, his is absent from these histories.

Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Bryan Reardon - University of California Press, 1989), and Ancient Greek Novels (Stephens and Winkler Princeton University Press 1995), the Cambridge Companion the Greek and Roman Novel (Whitmarsh Cambridge University Press 2008); all contain countless 1st century Roman satire that mocks religion, and even crucifixion, with no mention of Christ or Christianity having existed.

As a history teacher you know I could list ten pages of 1st and 2nd-century authors here, in the spirit of brevity I'll only mention one more.  Before I do, I'll admit: Lack of evidence for an idea does not constitute evidence against that idea.  However, what level of probability would you assign an idea without any evidence? 

Now there is, of course, Josephus, who decided to dedicate one paragraph (more or less) to Jesus at the end of a scroll.  Josephus was very detailed in his descriptions; that is except for Jesus.  The economy he employed in his language on Jesus is more than suspicious.  Not to mention it went unreferenced until the 3rd, or 4th century.  This paragraph mysteriously appeared hundreds of years later in the text.  Which is why it is considered a forgery.

For a new religion to start, three conditions must be met:

1) A society fragmented both racially and culturally, under the reign of a foreign power. 

2) A feudal agrarian state in which the lower class is in opposition to the official regime. 

3) A situation in which, a military solution is obviously unable to succeed in changing the political structure of a society suppressed by war or other means.  This third condition can then produce an apocalyptic, non-militarized grassroots movement. 

Anyone familiar with Christianity can link the connection of the Messianic Jews who started the Christianity to these three elements.   However, some may not know Buddhism, Islam, and the Jewish religions also come from a subject people, in relative poverty, powerless, effectively dominated by a foreign people (either directly or through collisions with an unresponsive local elite) who are racially and culturally different from themselves, and whose economic and military capability is so staggering it cannot be overcome.

Now consider the life of a Messianic Jew at the end of the 1st century.  What religious information (which can be used as power to gather and pull together an opposition group) do you have?  First you have the ancient book of Danial which reads that the Messiah should have already lived, died, and risen.   Then you have the Ascension of Isaiah written by Messianic Jews, which fulfills the prophecy in Danial, but in the Ascension of Isaiah the Messiah lived, died and was resurrected in outer space.  Then you have Paul's writings, as you know Paul didn't suggest Jesus was a physical human living just twenty years before his writings.  So how do you get your team together?  You write the book of Mark, which, in the late 1st century is the first to make Jesus a real man.  This new religion needed a human on Earth, not an "outer space Jesus" to build momentum.  Which it did, then Mathew (or Mark revision 2) followed with more details.   And then the third book - the Gospel of Luke is where all the details came to us.  All the details of the birth, life, death, and ascension of Jesus - written 100 years after the events it speaks of without a single reference to any historical data.   This is the same as if I were to write a book today about someone before WWI, to which I provide no proof, no birth record, I simply say my character was born in the second year of Woodrow Wilson's presidency.  And people buy it, they buy it to the extent that a predominant world power decided to restart the epoch to year 0 on the based on the reference date I mentioned.

Why other Holidays couldn't exist without the Celebration of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a unique holiday, it is an innate holiday; the day is not based on political triumph, war, nationality, or supernatural beliefs.   Give this a moment of thought; all other contemporary holidays have either political or religious foundations.  Halloween’s Celtic foundation involved blood sacrifices to the gods.  Even New Years, January 1^st is a subjective date based on the first month of the Gregorian calendar (also known the Christian calendar), if we were to celebrate a natural new year’s; we would do so on one of the solstices or equinoxes.  

Thanksgiving is fundamentally a celebration of farming; the ability to plant seed and harvest food for sustaining life.  

The first modern Thanksgiving took place November 21^st, 1621 in Plymouth Massachusetts.  This “First Thanksgiving” was a product of many thousands of years in the making.  Twelve thousand years ago, or more, groups of people in the Fertile Crescent – also known as the Cradle of Civilization – discovered mutated wild grains which when ripe did not open its pods to allow the seed to fall to the ground and germinate.  Meaning this wild grain could be harvested. These people planted the mutated grain, creating a new domesticated version of the wild grains; the side effect was this group of people became stable, living in one place – waiting for their crops.  They began to build settlements and after some number of generations, the human art of farming was established.  Sometime later farming independently took root in China and Mesoamerica as well, farming may have been autonomously established only three times.

For the first time, humans were able to produce food, instead of traveling to gathering food or following migrating herds.  Once humans were able to produce more food than one family could consume, it allowed for the foundations of civil specialization; one person could now feed many.   The people not directly producing food began to manage the production of crops.  In order to do so, in all three cases each group of people invented written language to describe, trace, and distribute food.   Soon these people with more and more free time became goldsmiths, masonries, carpenters, musicians, vintners, brewers, gaffer, educators, soldiers, politicians, and priests.  These specializations in turn allowed humans to build humanity.  Agriculture allowed urbanization, trade, writing, science, and religion.  The Mesopotamian, Semitic, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim gods all evolved in this ancient near east society fueled by agriculture.  Humans did not have writing or big gods before we had the harvest.  The harvest made all other inventions possible.

Today many people consider Christmas as the most important holiday.  If Christmas is your favorite holiday consider; without agriculture, not only would the authors of the New Testament Gospels not have had the time to specialize as authors, humanity would not have been able to specialize and create written language to bring the story to you.  None of the political or religious holidays would exist without farming.

Thanksgiving is unique; it is a holiday inclusive of all humanity, regardless of religion or nationality.  It is a celebration of the human art of agriculture; the creative skill of cultivation, combining seed and soil, to store solar energy in the form of organic matter.  At Thanksgiving, we come together, as family and friends to celebrate humanity’s greatest invention; the harvest.  

30,000 to 1 - A Book Review

Of JFK, Napoleon, King Arthur, Jesus, Pythagoras, Thor, Betty Crocker, Hercules, Harry Potter and Socrates, which of these figures existed as a historical figure and which did not?  Two of them, Betty Crocker and Harry Potter we know are made up, that is to say, we are 99% certain they are made up.  Yet a national survey in 1945 found Betty Crocker was the second most admired woman in America [1].  King Arthur is a myth (we think).  Pythagoras is most likely a myth; let us give a figure of 80% confidence.  History left us a much better foundation for Socrates, Napoleon, and JFK - in that order.   Most of us would be 99% confident to express the notion JFK was a real person, outside a few conspiracy thinkers that is.  However, what did history leave us in defense of the three demigods in this list?  Jesus, Thor, and Hercules.

The two billion followers of the Christian religion alive, today, would tell us Jesus was a real person while Thor and Hercules are a myth.  Outside of faith, what did history give us to distinguish Jesus from Thor and Hercules?   History left us the Scandinavian religion in the Prose Edda as an account for Thor. The Greek religion accounts for Hercules in Apollodorus, Apollonius, Ovid and many other writings.  And the Christian religion historicized Jesus in the four canonical gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.  To restate the question, why do Christians view the books of their religion as history, but make clear the books of Greek and Scandinavian religion are myth?

“On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt” by Richard Carrier (2014),  is an eye-opening read for any history buff of first and second-century middle east religions and demigods.   Many modern Christians may find the historical content surrounding the creation of what is today's largest religion engaging.   Nearly 40% of Americans attend a church service weekly, and study the words of their gospels. However, a much smaller percentage understand the historicity of the gospels they study. If you consider yourself Christian, can you name what year the book of Mark was written?  Just as important, can you name the author(s) of the narratives that were attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John? 

It is commonly agreed by biblical scholars the Gospels of the New Testament were written in the late first century and early second century, by anonymous authors [2].  The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were attributed to the Apostles and the Evangelists named.  However, the authors did not identify themselves when the texts were written ~50+ years after the Apostle Paul wrote his accounts of Christianity.  When the New Testament was canonized, it was not ordered by the authored date; rather the books were placed in the order of the times each book spoke to.  Why is this important?  It is important because ~1/3 of the world's population follow the teachings in these books, but few followers understand the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses.  

It is worthy of thought to consider no books from the contemporary time of Jesus’s life survived which mention Jesus or Christianity.  None.  Since the beginning of the Christian faith, the lack of extrabiblical evidence for a historical Jesus has been reason for doubt in many followers, and used as criticism from non-believers.  However, for much of past two millennium the church has had the power to suppress this knowledge and the arguments surrounding it.  In the dark ages, most European literature was controlled and filtered by the church.  The surviving books from the first century we have, are what the Roman Catholic Church allowed to survive.  We only know what dark age priests wanted us to know with respect to first century Israel.  Moreover, even outside of Israel Christian missionaries, for example, destroyed most of the ancient Vedic texts in India [3].  With a highlighted example of Pope Theophilus burning the Library of Alexandria in 391CE; [4] Removing much of the knowledge and culture of the ancient world forever.  Why was so much history destroyed in the name of religion?  Unfortunately, we may never know, possibly 50% of the relevant first-century literature was destroyed by the church, and there was not much of a rebound in secular literature until 12th century Europe [5].  Table 1 [5].

In the past one hundred years, many books and articles have been written which discuss the missing history, from both Christian apologists and historians.  However, none of them explain the details as Richard Carrier (Ph.D. ancient history Columbia University) does in his 2014 writing of “On the Historicity of Jesus”. This book is small print of over 600 pages.  It is not a book to finish on an hour flight, but it is a publication that contains more research than any other book I have seen on the subject.  It is also the first peer-reviewed scholarly publication from a Ph.D. in ancient history on the topic.  Given ~30% of the world’s population is Christian, it is important to understand, as best we can, as to why there is no historical data for Jesus earlier than the Gospel stories themselves.  Consider the Jesus birth story, written in the 2nd century; if the authors were adult witnesses at the birth event, the authors would have had to keep the story to themselves and waited until they were ~120 years old to publish it.  The probability of the story must come into question, not only for the skeptical thinker, but for Christians too.  It is also noteworthy that Jesus never wrote anything himself.  If you turn on the news and watch long enough, chances are you will hear someone pronounce “Jesus said . . .”.  We must remember Jesus did not write a single word.  Instead history left us only the stories written a century later making claims of what Jesus said.   Dr. Carrier explores this time in history.

. . . . it will help to grasp the analogy of Socrates.  He is comparable to Jesus in being a famous sage whose influence was profound and everlasting (he is the father of what we now mean by Philosophy, in essentially the same way Jesus is of Christianity) without having written anything himself, his influence being entirely through his disciples, who each developed communities that then fragmented and modified his teachings into many competing sects.  . . . very much unlike Jesus, we know the names of over a dozen eyewitnesses who wrote books about Socrates

Remember the first accounts we have of Jesus are the Gospels ~ a century after his birth.  Paul claimed to know of Jesus in the spiritual realm, not as a physical person living ~20 years before his time.  Dr. Carrier continues:

. . . Even more unlike Jesus, we also have an eyewitness account of Socrates from a relatively unfriendly source as well:  The Clouds of Aristophanes is a comic play specifically written to poke fun of Socrates and his teachings and disciples, written by an eyewitness contemporary to both; . . . what we knew of Jesus would be vastly more credible and quantifiable if we had anything even remotely like this for him.    Yet we have none of the above; we have no eyewitness records at all, much less from neutral or hostile parties; we don’t even know of any written eyewitness accounts ever having existed (much less dozens upon dozens of them), and we certainly don’t have anything like identifiable quotations from them or their titles or authors. 

. . . it is not as if the first century was underrepresented by writers . .  

. . . There are really only two options available to the historicist that have any plausibility: (1) that Jesus was not at all famous but in fact so insignificant and uninfluential that he inspired almost no following whatever and was completely unnoticed by any literate person of the age (until- and except – Paul, though even he didn’t know Jesus, and showed next to no interest in his actual teachings and story); or (2) massive quantities of documents were deliberately destroyed or allowed to rot away. Unnoticed and unread (somehow no Christian of the second century having any access to them or showing any interest in them).  Neither is a particularly attractive hypothesis. . . . . a person of such actual insignificance as not to resemble in the least the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels.  An unsavory concluding indeed.  Yet, what else can we suppose?

It is also conspicuous to consider the further in time away from the Jesus' life, the more elaborate the stories grew.  Paul being the nearest to Jesus's time wrote few details of Jesus.  The Gospel of Mark, the first of the four Gospels was the main source for Matthew and Luke, and the basis of the historical Jesus.  From there the story became more decorated with each proceeding Gospel such as Luke during the second century; when no one from the time of the stories was alive to verify the historicity of any assertion made by the author(s).  On the other hand, we must remember the author(s) didn't cite any references or include a forward.  Thus, we cannot know if they meant for the stories to be taken as historical. All we can say for certain is the New Testament Gospels were written by late first-century and second-century Messianic Jews who were dominated by the Romans and the local elite orthodox Jews.  It is improbable the author(s) could have imagined the consequences their writings would have on generations to follow.  They certainly could not have predicted their future followers would destroy much of the recorded world history that existed in their time.  If Jesus was the miracle performer the Messianic Jews claimed him to be, if Jesus' resurrection was for all to see, why was this small group of second century Messianic Jews the only people who took notice?  Why didn't Jesus make the news in the early first century?

We would expect this lack of contemporary documentation if Jesus were thought of as Thor, or Hercules, or any other demigod of the time.  How do billions of people today reconcile known history (the history we have availability to) with their faith?  All history is known to us as some percentage of probability.  What is the historical probability that the Jesus written about in the Gospels was a historical figure?

Carrier, in “On the Historicity of Jesus”, details dozens of authors of the first century whose writings of from ~6CE to ~30CE were removed by the church.  What did these accounts contain which the church did not want us to know?  Carrier also lists scores of other first century authors, including Roman and Jewish government records.  None of them mention Christ or Christianity.   The fact that one or two of them have no mention of Christ or Christianity has some number in probability.  However, Carrier calculates the odds that none of them mentions Christ or Christianity is 30,000 to 1.  The odds of being struck by lightning in a lifetime are 12,000 to 1.

What did history give us in defense of the three demigods in this list?  Jesus, Thor, and Hercules.  Outside of a few books, nothing.   

[1] Susan Marks, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lay of Food (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).

[2] Duling, Dennis C. (2010). "The Gospel of Matthew." In Aune, David E. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-0825-6.

[3] Stephen Knapp.  (2009) “Crimes Against India: And the Need to Protect Its Ancient Vedic Tradition: 1000 Years of Attacks Against Hinduism and What to do About it”.

[4] Fred Lerner (2001), The Story of Libraries, Continuum, p. 30,ISBN 9780826411143, 0826411142

[5] Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten: "Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 69, No. 2 (2009), pp. 409–445 (416, table 1)

http://www.amazon.com/On-Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason/dp/1909697494

The Necessity of Disorder

Recently over a dinner conversation in Park City a friend asked me.  "How do you reconcile evolution with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?"  This made for interesting discourse around the table, and I was glad the question was asked.

There are many people, uncomfortable with the notion of evolution, who use the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as an argument against evolution. http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html states this position "Thus, in the long term, there is an overall downward trend throughout the universe. Ultimately, when all the energy of the cosmos has been degraded, all molecules will move randomly, and the entire universe will be cold and without order. To put it simply: In the real world, the long-term overall flow is downhill, not uphill. All experimental and physical observation appears to confirm that the Law is indeed universal, affecting all natural processes in the long run",  "Naturalistic Evolution requires that physical laws and atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial, ordered arrangements. Thus, over eons of time, billions of things are supposed to have developed upward, becoming moreorderly and complex." and ". . this basic law of science (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) reveals the exact opposite. In the long run, complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. There is an irreversible downward trend ultimately at work throughout the universe. Evolution, with its ever increasing order and complexity, appears impossible in the natural world."

To the Christian author's point, the physicists Lawrence M. Krauss has publicly voiced on many occasions that the quickening expansion of galaxies will cause them to "drop out of view"[1] and that in the distant future the universe will become cold and dark.  Creation theism and science both agree that one day the universe will be void.   However how does this relate to the 2nd law of Thermodynamics and evolution thus far?   According to science, the creationist's interpretation of the law is simply misguided.  "Creationists have created a 'voodoo' thermodynamics based solely on metaphors in order to convince those not familiar with real thermodynamics that their sectarian religious views have scientific validity." [2]  In other words, most scientists agree creationists are putting a square peg in a round hole.  The science community states there is no link between evolution and mathematical analysis of entropy.   Which interpretation is correct?   My inclination is to sit on the side of the scientists as they are the body that came up with the law.  But, there is a third interpretation that is less explored. 

Consider the wording in which creationists use for the anti-evolution argument and the law.  They will tell you, the law teaches us only disorder comes from order, that order cannot come from disorder; hence the conclusion is evolution is not possible - right?   I will not disagree with the creationist's wording, rather the conclusion.  However, I will also not discourage the relationship of the law with evolution as many in the science community do.  Instead, I will argue evolution requires disorder -  complex life forms cannot develop without disorder!  Thus, the argument is the law does apply, but it is a pro-evolution, not anti-evolution position.

Google defines disorder in the verb as “disrupting the neat arrangement of”.   Disrupting the neat arrangement of matter is a requirement for evolution. This disruption of particles is intrinsic to our basic understanding of evolution.  We can see this disruption every day, in countless forms:

When the ordered molecular arrangement in a unique snowflake melts as liquid water; the neat arrangement of particles in frozen water must be disrupted for life as we know it to exist. 

When a bee cross-pollinates flowers; over time, bees will disorder the particles of a few flowering plants into millions of distinct flowering plants.

There are over 800 breeds of cattle, which are all descended from the disruption of ~80 wild ox.  Cattle is interesting subject for all followers of the Abrahamic religions, as Genesis 1 states God created cattle before humans.  However,  cattle didn't evolve from natural selection at all, humans created cattle through domesticated breeding ~11 thousand years ago[3].  The author of Genesis had no way of knowing about DNA tracing when it was written at the collapse of the bronze age.

All domesticated canines' DNA – is the disordered DNA from a small number of wolves ~40,000  years ago.  Both examples, dogs and cows, are stories of extremely accelerated evolution with humans controlling the breeding process.

However, arguably the best example of disruption is us. 7.2 billion humans evolved a unique genome from the a single group of humans who lived 135,000 years ago.[4]  From the order of a few, comes the massive disorder of all humans on the globe.

Entropy:  the lack of order or predictability – evolution cannot exist without it. 

This rule applies beyond these examples of evolution on Earth, beyond Newtonian laws, even beyond Einstein's relativity.   Today we have a view into the beginning of time which neither Newton or Einstein had access to.  Human achievement has produced machines such as the microwave telescopes at the South Poll and the LHC @ CERN.  The scientific data collected by these modern day instruments tells us the expansion of ordered energy in empty space led to all the matter we can see today in the visible universe.  This energy was disordered into quarks, then into protons and neutrons.  From these simple ordered forms arose the first atoms in hydrogen and helium[5].  Since the beginning, gravity has acted as a disruptive force in the neat arrangement of these lite elements.  The cosmos has manufactured carbon, oxygen, iron and all the other heavy elements in star furnaces.  Everything we are made of, came from the chaotic disruption of the first lite elements.

Disorder is required for life as we know it.

[1] SPACE. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v298/n3/full/scientificamerican0308-46.html

[2] Thermodynamic, Evolution and Creationism. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo.html

[3] DNA traces cattle back to a small herd domesticated around 10,500 years ago (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/March2012/120327-cattle-traced-back-80-animals

[4] Genetic 'Adam' and 'Eve' Uncovered (n.d.) Retrieved from
 http://www.livescience.com/38613-genetic-adam-and-eve-uncovered.html

[5] The Early Universe (n.d.) Retrieved from
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/early-universe 

Whenever you hear someone say, the end is near; know it is quite the opposite. The beginning is near; humanity is merely commencing on a journey of consciousness.

A star (many stars) died so you could live.  There is one supernova every ~50 years in the Milky Way. With billions of galaxy in the observable universe, multiple supernovas are discharging every second.  Part of your body has elements from one star, and parts may be from a different star.   You and I could share elements of the same star.

While there isn’t an afterlife in the traditional sense, you can take comfort in knowing it doesn’t matter.   Immortality in the conventional sense is quite egotistical and self-loving; it is a creation of a self-centered human idea.   The real and meaningful afterlife is the life you leave behind to the generations to follow.

Our resolve is to make the Earth a little bit better than we found it.   And we all have the opportunity to be part of it.  One day humanity will capture consciousness, when this happens, the idea of gods and physical afterlives will be no more.   The concept of race, color, and creed will disappear.   We will be able to escape our Earthly beginnings and indeed be an interstellar keeper.  .  .  .  . And you were a part of that human journey.   Your child’s descent, in seven or eight generations, may be the key to unlocking consciousness.

Sometimes life has the appearance of a cynical view because humanity is barely out of the dark ages, humankind has just begun.  It wasn’t very long ago we killed women for witchcraft.  Physical knowledge of the universe has only been potentially available to the global population for 1 or 2 generations at the most.

Whenever you hear someone say, the end is near; know it is quite the opposite.  The beginning is near; humanity is merely commencing on a journey of consciousness.

What does a Silverback Gorilla and the Tower of Babel tell us about Biology, Capital Punishment, and Ecology?

Consider the axiom; a population exposed to violence is more likely to use violence as a means of conflict resolution.  This statement seems straightforward, and the data behind it (from many diverse population segments, social, economic statuses, and education levels) is overwhelming.  Two swift examples are:

·         Boys who witness domestic violence at home are twice as likely to abuse their partners and children [1]. 

·         Law enforcement officers abuse their partners at twice the rate of the average population [2].

These two examples are situations, we as a society, do not find acceptable.   We can understand the psychology behind both of these issues, namely exposure to an action; increases the likelihood one will employ the same action.  However, we do not accept these examples as tolerable, and we are attempting to remove them from our culture.   

There are other instances in our culture where we accept violence.  The death penalty is one illustration of culturally condoned violence.  There were some who thought a 2011 export ban by the European Union on lethal injection drugs could end the death penalty in the United States [3].  As the States struggled to deal with the drug shortage [4], Utah lawmakers faced this deficiency by bringing back Utah’s long history the use of firing squads [5][6][7] in February of 2015. Utah made international news when Governor Gary Herbert the signed the bill into law the following month [8].

The negative effect exposure to violence has on societies is well-established [9], but what affects does justified violence have on a population?  The definition of justified violence is sanctioned or authorized violence by the ruling person or government.  Justice as a legal term, is the proper administration of the law, without the assumed attachment of morals.   The reason we must detach morals from the definition of justice is that morals are subjective.  To allow an evidence-based discussion of the law, removal of emotional attachment to the law is a prerequisite.  Thus, to impartially explore the question; “how does justified violence, affect violence overall in a population?” one must remove subjectivity. Further, to narrow the scope the problem, let's focus specifically on the death penalty.

In answering the first inquiry, we ask; does the death penalty deter people from committing murder?  1) Compare the murder rates in the death penalty states to the states that do not justify state-sanctioned homicide. 2) How does the changing of capital punishment laws in any given state alter the murder rate of that state?

§  States with the death penalty, on average, year to year, have a 25% higher murder rate than states without state justified homicide [10].

§  Utah was the first state to resume executions after the 1967-1976 national moratorium on capital punishment [11].   The murder rate in Utah jumped 58% the following year [12].

§  New Mexico is the last state to outlaw the death penalty before 2015. The murder rate in New Mexico dropped 36% as soon as the state citizens were no longer exposed to justified homicide [11].

The numbers suggest violence in a population will mirror the governing bodies’ level of justified violence.  If the justice abolishes violence, the population tends to follow the trend.  However, if the justice system allows violence as a means of punishment, the populace will accept and employ violence at an individual level; trickle-down violence is the term used to describe this phenomenon.

Trickle-down violence is apparent in states that allow justified violence in many ways:

§  Police officer fatality rates are higher in death penalty states [13].

§  Death penalty states are the worst states for domestic violence against women, custody laws unfavorable to women, and reproductive choices [14].

§  Child fatalities due to child maltreatment are higher in states with justified homicide [15] 

The data suggests a populace will follow the ideals or the “religion of the state”.

Understandably, this essay is at best pseudo-Bayesian.  It would be very hard to assign a probability to trickle-down violence as it relates to state justified homicide in a short paper.  However, we can consign some frequency of the exposure to violence, as it will create additional disorder.  We can also articulate with an elevated level of certainty; government justified violence does not reduce violence among the population.

                                                                 

If the death penalty does not deter murders, but rather increases cruelty in a population, why are so many states scrambling to keep the death penalty?  We do know it is not for cost or tax reasons; capital punishment cases cost the taxpayers approximately four times more than a life sentence [16].

Could it be a reversal of the cause and effect?  Are the violent tendencies of the populace trickling up to the state from the people?  Could particular societies value atonement for some crimes more than the cost of implementing the punishment?

Exploring this the question requires examining other factors, starting with theology.  There is a greater correlation between violent crime and elevated religion then there is with violent crime and the death penalty.  The ten U.S. States with the preeminent religious concentrations have a 78% higher violent crime rate than the ten States with the principal atheist populations [17][18].   This is quite astonishing.  Globally the murder rate is 280% higher among the ten preeminent religious countries compared to the ten countries with the principal atheist populations [19][20].

All the religious states and countries used in the calculations, which are prone to a higher level of violent crimes vs. their more agnostic counterparts, are composed of Abrahamic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.   Why are heavy concentrations of people following the Abrahamic God prone to violence?  Are the followers of the God of the Old Testament (OT) the quintessential example of victims of Trickle-Down Violence?

Reading the OT from the beginning, within ten minutes, the reader will find this God has carried out the far most massive genocide in all of literature (Genesis 7:23).  This god’s name is Yahweh in Hebrew or Latinized as Jehovah [21].  Yahweh performed the justified killing of all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians; all the creatures of the sea (as that influx of fresh water would kill marine life), including coral, octopus, urchins, clams, and seahorses.  Yahweh justified the killing of all the sponges, flatworms; Centipedes, spiders, crabs, bees, clams, dragonflies, and butterflies.   This justice even took all plant life.  In all, the story tells us the judge killed all but a few replicating pairs of one hundred million species [22].  If a god was upset with the people s/he created, why not talk to the people?  An omniscient god can speak to the life s/he created.  The point of being omniscient is to know everything, including communication skills.  With these communication skills, it would be possible to talk to the created life forms.  As parents we do not kill our children when they defy us, we talk with them.  We tell our children why we do not approve of certain behaviors, using reason.  We are not omniscient parents, yet in our limited capacity, we still use logic.  Yahweh, while preeminent, fails to use logic and reason, choosing instead to invoke justified killings.  Consider for a moment the one hundred million species (less one) the OT God took justice on were not involved in the judgment.  Genesis 6 tells us God only judged “humankind”, yet he decided to drown all the other species as well.

By Genesis 9, we are taught the justice can declare slaves of other humans. In Genesis 12 Yahweh afflicted Pharaoh and his family with plagues because Pharaoh gave Abram’s wife, Sarai, a home.  One has to assume Yahweh was upset with Pharaoh for sleeping with Sarai, the story does not tell us.  However, the story does tell us Abram lied to Pharaoh stating Sarai was his sister.  Why would an all-knowing god send plagues to Egypt when Pharaoh was not the one deceiving?  Pharaoh was simply a gracious host, or maybe he was in love with Sarai.

Genesis 11 is the story of the Tower of Babel.  Many are taught as a child the people of Babel were arrogant, and God punished them for it.  Let us go back and read this chapter again.   Read the multiple translations, King James, New American, Basic English, Darby, World English, and others.  The story of the Tower of Babel is a story of people with a humanistic dream.  They are telling each other to build a tower so the people would not be divided; to allow all the people to work together to communicate and do good things.  Yahweh came down to see what they were doing, and he saw they were working together, he saw there was nothing the people could not accomplish by working as one.  The people were adopting humanist ideas and habits.   The people came together and realized they have the knowledge and resources to build one nation in peace.  Yahweh destroyed the dream. Unity, communication, and cooperation towards collective goals are not God’s design.   Why is the grouping of people of such high importance?  The Book of Daniel repeats the theme of teaming one group against another.  Daniel is inspired to create a grouping based on a moral order against dominating foreigners.   In Daniel the Jewish base the term messiah on the anointed, who will establish a paradise for one group while destroying one's enemies.

The story continues oddly in Genesis 19.  In this verse, Lot took in, housed, and fed two strangers for the night in Sodom.  The men of the city came to see who the strangers were; Lot offered the city men his two virgin daughters to do as they please if they would go away.   The city men turned down the offer but still wanted to meet the strangers.  The strangers, who in the story are angels, blinded the men so they would go away.  They then judged the city wicked and then destroyed the city, killing the inhabitants the next day.  The angels then turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for watching the city burn.  There was no discussing of what was wicked; there was no evidence provided, only justified killing of all in the town by the two angels who held power to carry out the killings.  The man who should have been punished was Lot, who offered up his daughters for public raping, not the city people curious about the visiting strangers.

In the first few pages of Genesis, the justified killings performed directly by Yahweh outnumber the murder in all human examples of genocide: the killings of Native Americans, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, and the Qing Dynasty. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Vlad Dracula combined and cubed come nowhere near to the killings of Yahweh.

Exodus 12 is the story of when the Abrahamic God was having a power struggle the Pharaoh.  Instead of talking and using logic with Pharaoh, Yahweh decided the best form of action was to kill all of the firstborn in Egypt – people and animals – unless one places the blood of a lamb on the top and sides of the door frame.  What did the children have to do with the Pharaoh?  How were they responsible for the disagreement with the Pharaoh?  There is a plausible answer for this story, and the previous stories outlined later in Exodus, which becomes clear in Exodus 32.

Exodus 20 is the story of Yahweh giving his laws, known as the Ten Commandments, to Moses. We learn from these verses Yahweh is a jealous god.  The first five rules are (taken directly from Exodus 20:3 to 20:8 of King James):

1. ·         Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. ·         Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is the Earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3. ·         Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.  For I Yahweh 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.
4. ·         Thou shalt not take the name Yahweh, thy God in vain; for I will not hold him guiltless that taketh my name in vain
5. ·         Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

These are the most relevant laws to the Abrahamic God.  Why is God jealous?  He does not need to be jealous; he is all knowing and does not require resources.  If there are no lack of resources, why the jealousy?  God requires nothing from humans.  These laws are self-loving, egotistic, and arguably narcissistic.  How did humanity come to worship a god with jealous rules when God has nothing to be jealous of?  Consider an alternative list of commandments:

1. ·         Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
2. ·         In all things, strive to cause no harm.
3. ·         Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness, and respect.
4. ·         Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoings freely admitted and honestly regretted.
5. ·         Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

This latter version seems more reasonable for humanity.  The first example appears to be suspect with respect of coming from an all-knowing god owning all the resources, due to lacking guidance in creating a moral human interaction with all possible surroundings.  The second example of a top 5 holds a higher humanistic version of morality.  

Yahweh laws continue in Exodus 21, 22, and 23:  Yahweh’s laws included rules on how to sell one's daughter as a slave (21:7).  A slave’s children are the property of the master (21:4).  Rules additional wives are to follow (21:10), and the death penalty (21:14-15).  These rules call for capital punishment for using profanity at one parent.  However, if a man beats a woman while she is pregnant, causing her to abort the child the punishment is to be determined.   Rules on killing witches (22:18), death penalty again (22:19), and giving to any other god will result in “utter destruction” of oneself (22:20).   Yahweh also demands the first ripe fruits, wines, and each firstborn son be given to him (22:29). There is an overall theme in Exodus 21, 22, and 23 of how to kill, when to kill, how worshiping Yahweh will result in the destruction of one enemy and adversaries.  These extended Commandments are a list of how not to behave in today’s civil society.  We certainly do not derive modern western morals from Yahweh’s laws.

One of the commandments Moses brought down from the mountain is “Thou shalt not kill.”  However, what was the first order of business Moses took care of when he reunited with his people?   He had three thousand men killed (Exodus 32:27-28).  It is quite clear this commandment is law one applies to the in-group.  People who do not follow the same rules as you (people who break the law) are not part of your group; the not-kill law is not applicable to outsiders.  This is why in Exodus 12, God could kill all the first born of Egypt while still following his commandments; The firstborn of Egypt were not in God’s group.    

From the review of Genesis and Exodus, should it come as a surprise higher concentrations of people, in a population, who worship Yahweh result in increased societal violence?  If a god, not only allows but also adopts a logos of committing justified violence; the people who pray to that god will be a product of trickle-down violence.  Some parts of the world still enforce the laws of Yahweh, the Islamic State for instance.  The 2015 flogging of Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia [36]; the morality in these societies has not evolved beyond OT morality.  In the U.S., elected officials such as Sam Rohrer had argued as late as 2014 “Capital punishment is as necessary today as it was when God himself instituted it more than 6,000 years ago. . . . God established his moral command in the OT . . . God’s moral law underpins all legitimate civil law.” [28]. Currently, Mr. Rohrer holds the position of the President of the American Pastors Network.

Sam Rohrer’s morals are in line with Yahweh, but for a growing number of people, OT morality is repugnant.  For the rest of us, we must ask; if our individual and collective morals are higher than that of the god we worship, why does such a god deserve worship?  Why do we teach our children to worship behaviors considered morally wrong in today’s post-supernatural world?  The answer to this question is quite likely the same as why many states continue capital punishment when it does not work. Is there a biological reason for why we choose this type of god and the laws that come with it?

Globally the religion-violence connection is particularly associated with developing countries lacking resources.  The link to violence may be due more to biology and competing for resources than to the level of religion.  However, one must still consider why there is a violent link to religion at all.  Most gods that have been followed at some point in human history; Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, and Yahweh are all extreme versions of alpha males.  They are self-described jealous gods, i.e., they have alpha egos.  They all have a very robust hand and promises resources and protection if followed (Genies and Exodus are both good examples of promises of protection).  These alpha beings do not seek approval from others because they do not need it.  Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi while egoless, are alpha characters too.  They do not seek approval of others either, but for different reasons.  They just do not crave the approval of others as most of us do.

Consider if one’s resources are limited.  What did one have to do throughout biological evolution to survive?  We attached to and followed an alpha male for protection and resources.  Which is why most gods people have developed in our history, or in polytheism the god which the lower gods follow, are alphas.   Primates are biologically attracted to alpha leaders.  People needing resources are more likely to shadow the alpha Yahweh due to biological evolution.  Those requiring means are more likely to commit violence; hence the link between religion and violence!

In the Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 BCE) the Eastern Mediterranean was a hub of commerce.  Mesopotamia, Greece, and Egypt were proud empires.  Commerce took place over land and sea.  The people had organized trade markets in tin and copper (used to make bronze, hence the label of the Bronze Age).  It was a time of Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian religions.  The Babylonians developed ethics, reasoning, and rationality.  Early Mesopotamia evolved a Constitution, which protected the poor, and orphans.  The Babylonian law protected property, leasing, labor, debt, trade, marriage and divorce, and even adoption [23].  Then the climate changed, introducing droughts and resource contention, alongside the Trojan Wars, and the fall of Babylon.  The Bronze Age collapse was sudden, literacy decreased, technology was lost, and it took centuries to recover.  The Eastern Mediterranean fell into a dark age.  “It was a cataclysm of immense proportions: Near the end of the 13th century BCE, the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Near East suddenly collapsed.” [24].   The OT writings in Genesis and Exodus are a product of this dark age following societal collapse.  People were fighting for survival; they lacked resources, safety, and security.  This insecure time in history is what brought on the development of the OT; the robust male figure Yahweh entirely replaced the old Mother Earth goddess types.  Similarly, Christianity’s spread throughout Europe coincided with the fall of Rome.  Islam’s growth was out of an eight-year Meccan tribe war.  Buddhism major growth occurred in the third century BCE in the Maurya Empire during a time of misery and death of the Kalinga War.  These male-led religions all grew out of human anguish and despair. Hinduism is the only, of the five major world religions, which is not known to have spread from a tormented period.  Hinduism is so old it does not have a known beginning.  Shakti, the supreme being of Hinduism, is a female who embodies feminine energy.  Shakti is a rare example of a surviving “Divine Mother” from the ancient religions; dating back to the times of the Bronze Age Mesopotamian gods.

Richard Carrier, a Columbia University Ph.D. in ancient history, notes in On the Historicity of Jesus (2015) pp 161:  For a cult (defined as any group of people outside the orthodox, following religious practices based on doctrine) to start three conditions must be met.  1) A society fragmented both racially and culturally, under the reign of a foreign power.  2) A feudal agrarian state in which the lower class is in opposition to the official regime.  3) A situation in which, a military solution is obviously unable to succeed in changing the political structure of a society suppressed by war or other means.  This third condition can then produce an “apocalyptic, non-militarized grassroots movement.”  Anyone familiar with Christianity can link the connection of the Messianic Jews who started the “cult” to these three elements.   However, some may not know Buddhism, Islam, and the Jewish religions also come from “a subjected people, in relative poverty, powerless, effectively dominated by a foreign people (either directly or through collisions with an unresponsive local elite) who are racially and culturally different from themselves, and whose economic and military capability is so staggering it cannot be overcome.”

Out the Bronze Age Cataclysm, the Jewish people chose Yahweh as God to protect in-time of need, to provide for family and community. Consider the cosmology in the Middle East, before the Common Era, divided the universe into layers with the foundation holding up the others.  The underworld (which no longer makes any sense now that the Earth is known to be a sphere) holds up the Earth. The area between the Earth and the Moon.  Followed by the area from the Moon to Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and the other planets, then finally the stars as a single layer on top of heaven [29].   These bands make up the seven layers of heaven.  1 Enoch and 2 Enoch (Ancient Jewish texts, ~300 BCE) discuss these seven layers of heaven.  In this Jewish, pre-Christian but mostly pagan world, philosophers, such as Philo of Alexandria (25 BCE – 50 CE), wrote that the middle layers are the place of intermediary beings and invisible creatures.  These ideas lasted well into, and past Paul the Apostle’s time (born ~5 CE).  Souls, demons, and angels acting as intermediates between gods and humans, as well as between advisories and humans, lived in these layers.  Plutarch (the Greek historian born at the end of Philo life, 45 CE), tells us some of these ‘great demons’ became neither gods nor men, but incarnated on Earth as a demigod or Son of God (or Son of Man).  Isis, Osiris, Hercules, Dionysus all descended from the ferment (layer of heaven), as a Son of God (albeit different gods), acquired a body and then were killed, resurrected and risen back to the ferment in an immortal divine body.  Presumably, it is more than a consequence that Paul’s description of Jesus resurrection (1 Cor. 15) was in a heavenly body as well.  The idea of a Rising and Dying Son of God was abundant in the Greek writings of the time.  All of which had the standard message; the element of death can be overcome thru the resurrection of these demigods.   Plutarch further explains that in the worldview these beings living in the layers are the ‘elements’, and these elements are the powers of the universe.  A soul, demon or angel in this time was the personification of what is known today as a force of nature.  Plutarch’s writings show us, what we now call the principles in the laws of physics, were then angels or demons - up to and well beyond the start of the Common Era.  For the people who wrote and followed the Enoch texts, Yahweh created a group for support that allowed protection from and passage to these elements in the layers of heaven.  Later this group thesis continued in the Messianic Jews, whom in following the anointed or the Messiah (Hebrew for a Christ) in Paul’s teaching fulfilled the predictions in Daniel.  We could infer that these groups (or enemies) in the OT and NT are derived from physical signals feeding the brain by our ears, eyes, or skin.  Alternatively, we could consider these enemies as invisible demons created in the mind.  It is not necessarily important either way; the important element is Yahweh gave people an in-group.  Yahweh then protects and provides for those in his group.   Humans anthropomorphized this God, who represents the alpha male, owning all the resources.   Gods such as Odin and Yahweh are the representation of what biological evolution tells us we should be when we are in need.  Yahweh is the definitive alpha silverback gorilla.

The conditions that brought about the start and spread of these religions lasted into the 20^th century in Europe; 18^th-century English occupation of Scotland is one example.  Occupations in the Greater Middle East and in Africa are continuing today with no 21^st-century resolution in site.  Invasions of Afghanistan have been a reoccurring theme in our age, the product of which is well known to all.  Occupations take away hope in reason and give to the thought process the “elements” are uncontrollable without the assistance of a supernatural power.   However, there are many regions today, which, have been free of conquest and war for long enough that the policymakers’ generation have never been exposed to these conditions.  Denmark is one such place.  Of all the countries in the world today, religion is least important in Denmark.  Almost 90% of the Danish people find religion unimportant [19].  Why is religion nearly non-existent in Denmark?   Denmark is free of the conditions which religion thrives.  Denmark has the world’s lowest level of income inequality and the world’s highest minimum wage [25].  Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, and Finland also top the world in the unimportance of religion.   These countries represent developed, advanced, high-income economies.  They rank very high on the Human Development Index; including civil liberties, press freedom, and education [26].  One may attribute the lack of religion in these countries to the lack of the natural need for a god. The citizens in these societies understand, natural events are governed by natural laws; a volcano eruption is not an act of an angel, demon, or a god, rather it is the result of plate tectonics or a hot spot in the crust.  Alpha gods are not required when the society is peaceful, equal and has an understanding of the physical world they live. 

Countries, which rate very low on the Human Development Index; Nigeria, Somalia, Morocco, and Egypt are among the most religious in the world.  Population suffering from lack of freedoms, secular education, income inequity, and social unrest, develop an organic need for the protection of an alpha god.  Religion thrives in disorder, confusion, inequity, and in a weak understanding of the physical world.  The Bronze Age collapse shaped the atmosphere in just such a way.  Allowing the creation of a new religion and a new god; a mighty god who will lead an army into battle (1 Samuel 15:3).  A god who will send angels and plagues to destroy cities (I Chronicles 21:15).  With a set of laws that not only allow but promote justified violence those outside of one's group. 

Looking towards the future, religious influence has been on the decline in the West since the Enlightenment. In the 16^th century, John Calvin stated, “the more prosperous and comfortable his Genevans became, the less dependent they were on the church.” [27].  A 2012 survey by WIN-Gallup International found that religiosity decreased by nine percentage points between 2005 and 2012 worldwide. Also, according to a new Pew Research Study, the largest religious affiliation in the world is now the “Nones,” with no religion at all.   In the U.S., one out of six are now Nones, by 2050, it is trending to one in four.  As this transition occurs, America will find itself at odds with the morality of the laws of the OT.  More and more Americans will see the death penalty as immoral and unacceptable.  The issue is not so much as to if a certain individual may or may not deserve demise.  Rather the allowing of capital punishment to be administered by the authority erodes at the humanity in the core of society.  Figuratively speaking; the man hits his boy, the boy kicks the dog, and the dog eats the cat.

The 21^st century may be the end of times for religious influence in the West. However, the Greater Middle East and Africa will take more time to stabilize, and thus it is expected religion will remain dominant on the African continent for the near future. What would cause a reversal back to religion in the West?  A climate disaster, wars fought over oil; failure of electronic communication and the collapse of the Internet.  In essence, a repeat of the Bronze Age catastrophe would provide the fear and misery in which religion would flourish.

Consider the political agenda of the evangelical right-wing.  The right-wing’s fight for the removal of environmental protection laws, keeping the minimum wage low, the fight against single-payer health care, distrust of public education and welfare programs – all play into the favor of promoting inequality, which in turn keeps religion attractive. The push against minimal national science education and support for private school vouchers leaves subjects such as evolutionary biology to the most potent political force in any given school district, in a strike against STEM; leaving a child in Jackson Mississippi at an extreme disadvantage to a child born in Palo Alto.  The battle against marriage equality by definition creates inequality.  Laws against legal abortion [robust empirical data supports the conclusion that legalized abortion results in lower crime and poverty rates] ensures the continuation of poverty.  Higher poverty = higher imbalances in a population = religious fervor.

The policies mentioned above are essential in maintaining a vigorous house of God.  Worthy of a new national discussion is, with growing right-wing strength will Amendment 1’s separation of church and state continue to dissolve?  Is the rise of Christian Nationalism an indicator that the U.S. will trade-in our secular foundation in favor of a theocracy like government?  A government that leans towards theocracy, away from science, and promotes religious strategies that encourage population growth and disregard environmental protection laws.  The combination of climate change and overpopulation will create resource contentions.  Is this a self-fulfilling Armageddon policy in front of us? Would any right-wing advocates candidly admit that yes, Armageddon is the end goal?  Anyone of these policies would be considered a mere coincidence on their own.  But all of them?  Did all of these policies come together under one machine merely by chance?

Reviewing what we know, at a high level, due to evolutionary biology humans are attracted to alpha gods when faced with adversity.  When societies cannot overcome adversity on their own because they are subject to a considerably superior and culturally dissimilar military force, grass root organizations promoting a savior alpha god can develop and flourish.  Lastly, conditions of economic, social, and educational inequality, allow for faith in a particular religious system to stay intact.  In this, we also know that alpha gods enable and perform killings outside the group and to those in the group who do not follow the rules.  Thus, a society, which follows an alpha god, would not be morally opposed to capital punishment.  However, if you look at some of the leaders in the U.S. who support justified homicide such as Sam Rohrer, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell; they are not undereducated or economically marginalized citizens.  Ted Cruz is a Princeton and Harvard Law School graduate, obtaining summa cum laude in the latter.  It is not plausible to argue they are unaware of the data, and known human physiology, which tells us keeping the death penalty legal increases violent crimes, and physical abuse at all levels of society.   One could assert they support it only to align with their constituency, but we must judge their ideas based on their words and their voting record.  As with the biological attraction to an alpha god, it is feasible to reason these titled individuals choose their position in contrast to the data due to a primary human behavior process.

To help frame a possible underlying process, in which, an educated follower of Yahweh would still support capital punishment, it is important to note there are three distinct humankind creation instances carried out by Yahweh in Genesis.  The first creation is described in Gen 1:27: God created both man and women in “our image.”  The second creation of earthly man, from dust, is in Gen 2:5.  Finally Gen 2:22 describes the creation of earthly woman from man’s rib.  Philo describes the three creations as the perfect celestial Adam & Eve, and the copy of them made of earth that parented humankind.  Recall the seven layers of heaven described in Jewish texts, according to the Revelation of Moses; paradise is located in the third heaven or above the Earth.  Adam and Eve are cast down from this paradise to live on the Earth in the second and third creation (or a copy of them).  Literally meaning the Tree of Life originated in outer space!  In 2 Cor. 12.2-4 Paul shared this view, [the original] Garden of Eden is located in this third heaven.  2 Enoch and Philo in On the Life of Moses are also clear there is a paradise that is better than this world.  A perfect version of animals, trees, and soil was created for this Eden in outer space.  The perfect creation was also described in Heb 12.21-22 to Moses when he ascended the mountain.   It is in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q400-407 and 11Q17).  Col 2.8-10 warns one not to focus on the earthly version of creation.  The elemental spirits (what we know today as the laws of physics) represent vile and corruption.  The famous equation E=mc2 is nefarious by this process, and in the same scene following empirical data over Yahweh’s laws is equal to sinfulness. Thus, explaining how Cruz and other intelligent leaders, despite the adverse effects of, still support capital punishment. There is an underlying message in all three Abrahamic religions, stemming from the OT to not focus on this earthly life.  True wisdom and happiness are to be found not on Earth, but somewhere else in another layer.

Heb 9.22-24 goes as far to read:

According to the law almost everything is cleansed by blood, and apart from the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.  So it is necessary that the copies of the things in the heaven should be cleansed with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ entered no into a holy place made with hands built to look like the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God on our behalf.

For Yahweh, blood is required for forgiveness in the other layers not built by human hands.  This answers the question.  The rationale of the educated and influential in the right-wing, to keep in place the support of capital punishment is based on the teaching of the Bible and thus moral (from their vantage point) despite empirical data suggesting it increases violence.  Punishment by blood is required, as Sam Rohrer wrote in his defense of the death penalty.  Capital punishment is a prerequisite for salvation in their version of reality.  Further, voluntary human sacrifice was viewed as valor in both the Jewish and pagans of the time.  Voluntarily exchanging death for salvation was common in the Greco-Roman culture [34].  These ideas can be mirrored in the Jesus crucifixion stories.  The idea that human sacrifice will allow for salvation does not make logical sense to the modern secular mind, but the Jewish use of human sacrifice as atonement magic appears server times in the OT [35].

This may be the real true horror of the Abrahamic religions; “paradise is somewhere else.”  The idea evokes a sense of superiority and entitlement for humans to view the Earth as a test-run for something that is eternal someplace else.  This approach impedes long-term investment in our planet.  This idea states humanity is in its last few generations on Earth and thus environmental conservation for the next thousand generations is non-consequential.  Again, this explains why the right-wing is uninterested in environmental protection programs.  This plan fails to understand the most significant afterlife, is the life we leave behind to the generations that will follow us.

What does a Silverback Gorilla and the Tower of Babel tell us about Biology, Capital Punishment, and Ecology?  Everything! 

As an afterword, consider what we can do accelerate the secular moment.  Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, tells us the Church of England is losing members at a rate, which will close the institution in one more generation (2015) [30].  This is the effect of a well to do population.  We can see these positive signs throughout Europe and America.  However, among the marginalized American and European young black communities, Islam is on the rise. [31].  Supporting national and community leaders who promote equality and educational investment is crucial.  Shielding our youth from the public promotion of superstitious beliefs is paramount.  For supernatural ideas to take hold in the human mind, these ideas must be promoted in early age.  There is a known “4 to 14 Window” in which religion targets children; this child evangelism program is not hidden by the right-wing.  “Research compiled by the Barna Group shows that children between the ages of 5 and 13 have a 32 percent probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. That likelihood drops to 4 percent for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18” [32].  The best way to protect our children from these groups is to educate them and ourselves on both the biology and historical creation of religion.

Religion evolved out of early ceremonial rites.  The evidence suggests Hominids (Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis) began these practices 300,000 years ago [33].  The oldest known animal worship is dated to the Aurignacian culture 40,000 years before the current time.  Animal worship sites began appearing in North Africa and Europe about the time Homo sapiens first migrated to Europe [34]. The Neolithic Revolution, approximately 12,000 years ago, marked the human transition from hunter-gathers to farming societies.  The stability of having a set home allowed for fewer people to produce more food.  This revolution allowed humans, for the first time, to specialize, to have distinct jobs and roles in society; blacksmiths, builders, civil posts, and priests.  Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn more about how and where this transition took place.  Worship sites such as Stonehenge and Hinduism begin in these times.  Five thousand years later in 3100 BCE, Stonehenge was completed.  This deserves a second look; the U.S is just over two hundred years old, Stonehenge took 5000 years to build!  Religion primarily evolved from animal worship to celestial worship; the Sun, Jupiter, and Mars.  The Egyptian Pyramids are constructed and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, whom many believe were the precursor to numerous OT stories, was written.  An imperative change happened in religion during this time; humanity created moralizing high gods.  The personification of gods, where each society created gods out of their image.  Vedic gods were Indian, Greek gods were Greek, Celtic gods were Celtic, North gods were Northman, Egyptian gods were Egyptian, and so forth. It should come as no surprise thousands of years later the Jewish god’s prophets of Abraham, Isaac, Noah, Moses, and eventually, Jesus are all Jewish.  The Jewish demigods certainly could not have been Egyptian or Roman.  Each god was the protector of his or her own people.  This was the first time in human history in which societies were complex enough to create high gods.  There is a detailed 2015 publication by the Royal Society; Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia, which concluded: “high gods” cannot exist without a complex society.  This conclusion is in-line with Jared Diamond’s writing.  Oddly, the human invention of farming 12,000 years ago, paved the way for the creation of large high god religions.  The celestial and high god religious environment remained in divided along cultural and national lines.  Until the cultural collapse at the end of the Bronze Age, changed the environment in such a way allowing the hard wiring in the human brain, to create an alpha god.  Marking a relatively new change in the direction of religion.  There is no single event, which represents the beginning of humanity; it is a subjective idea.  However, if we agree to age humanity by the first evidence for rituals, then the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic movement have only been part of humankind for 1% of our species existence.  It took the transition from hunter-gathers, to farmers, to complex societies, to create high gods.  Then it took the collapse of this complex society for the creation of the alpha god Yahweh.  Dr. Hector A. Garcia, a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has published research on the how human evolution produced the physiology in the human brain to create the alpha god Yahweh in book Alpha God (Prometheus Books, 2015).  The first step in ending religion is identifying why it exists, through the understanding of history and human biology.  The next step will naturally follow.

[1] Domestic Violence: Fast Facts on Domestic Violence. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/facts.htm

[2] Police domestic violence nearly twice average rate ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Police-domestic-violence-nearly-twice-average-rate-2536928.php

[3] Can Europe End the Death Penalty in America? — The Atlantic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/02/can-europe-end-the-death-penalty-in-america/283790/

[4] Death penalty states scramble for lethal injection drugs ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://kfor.com/2013/11/16/death-penalty-states-scramble-for-lethal-injection-dr

[5] Utah House lawmakers vote in support of firing squad proposal ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

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[6] Firing Squad Executes Killer ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/27/us/firing-squad-executes-killer.html

[7] Utah Looks to Old Execution Method: Death by Firing Squad ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://time.com/3597888/utah-execution-method-firing-squad/

[8] Utah governor signs law allowing firing squads for death penalty executions ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3008467/Governor-signs-law-making-Utah-state-firing-squad.html

[9] The effect of exposure to violence on young children. Osofsky, Joy D.

American Psychologist, Vol 50(9), Sep 1995, 782-788

[10] Murder Rates Nationally and By State ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

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[11] GREGGv. GEORGIA, 428 U.S. 153 (1976) ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=428&invol=153

[12] Utah Crime Rates 1960 - 2013

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/utcrime.htm

[13] Police Office Fatality Rates by State ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/law-enforcement-fatality-rates-by-state.html

[14] Crisis In the Family Courts ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://abatteredmother.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/10-worst-states-to-be-a-woman/

[15] Child Welfare Outcomes 2008-2011 Report to Congress ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cwo08_11.pdf

[16] Considering The Death Penalty: Your Tax Dollars At Work ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/01/considering-the-death-penalty-your-tax-dollars-at-work/

[17] Frequent Church Attendance Highest in Utah, Lowest in Vermont ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.gallup.com/poll/181601/frequent-church-attendance-highest-utah-lowest-vermont.aspx

[18] Violent Crimes per Population ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html

[19] Importance of religion by country. Global Study on Homicide... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.gallup.com/products/170987/gallup-analytics.aspx

[20] Intentional homicide count and rate ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html

[21] Is God’s name Yahweh or Jehovah? ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/is-gods-name-yahweh-or-jehovah

[22] How Many Species on Earth ... (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/how-many-species-on-earth

[23] Baikey, Nels (1967) The AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Volume LXXII, Number 4.  Early Mesopotamian Constitutional Development

[24] Stiebing, William H. Jr.  (2001) Death of the Bronze Age.  Archaeology Odyssey BAS Library.

[25] Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 .. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm

[26] Human Development Reports . . (n.d.). Retrieved From

http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-2014

[27] Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak . . (n.d.). Retrieved From

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-future-of-religion-is-bleak-1430104785

[28] Capital punishment for murderers is just. . (n.d.) Retrieved From

http://readingeagle.com/news/article/sam-rohrer-capital-punishment-for-murderers-is-just

[29] Cleomedes. On the Heavens 1.7; 2.1 and 2.3.

[30] Church of England ‘will be extinct in one generation’ warns ex-archbiship . (n.d.) Retrieved From

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10457520/Church-of-England-will-be-extinct-in-one-generation-warns-ex-archbishop.html

[31] Emergence of Islam in the African-American Community.  (n.d.) Retrieved From

http://www.answering-islam.org/ReachOut/emergence.html

[32] The 4-14 Window . (n.d.) Retrieved From

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/july/37.53.html

[33] Python Cave" Reveals Oldest Human Ritual, Scientists Suggest". National Geographic.

[34] Several examples are documented in Doran, “Narratives of Noble Death”, pp. 385-99 387-88 on Decius.  And Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, CA; University of California Press, 1979).

[35] 2 Sam. 21.1-14, Deut. 16.9-10, Lev. 23.11, Num 25.1-8, Num 25.13.

[36] Sadi Arabia, Free Raif Badawi (n.d) Retrieved From

 https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/saudi-arabia-free-raif-badawi-flogged-blogger