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.