Ending 2000 Years of Religious Fail

I’d like to share some information I believe is to the benefit of all.  As long as it’s fully understood, it won’t matter what brand of faith one adheres to or even that one has no faith at all, the lesson is for everyone. To be understood no sort of belief in the supernatural or fairy tales is required.  Only the knowledge the Christian bible in its present form is about 1700 years old and for much of that time followers have been taught it is the infallible word of God.

The facts;

The Christian bible is made up of two parts; the old and new testaments  

The foundation of Christianity is based entirely on the new testament  

The new testament is made up of twenty seven so-called books

Of the twenty seven books, at least thirteen are identified as being authored by one man, the ‘Apostle’ Paul. (those thirteen books come under the heading of ‘epistles’ or letters as opposed to the gospels, acts or revelations)

Just lately many people including myself have come to the conclusion this same prolific Bible author Paul is the false prophet readers are warned about in various places throughout  the old and new testaments. Though by no means a new idea it is possibly the first time this view of
Paul’s role has begun to steadily gain acceptance.

I’d genuinely love to see this message presented in the form of an episode of South Park. In the decade or so since I’ve been aware of this Bible plot twist I’ve come to view it as ultimately a sort of grand cosmic joke. The episode might start out something like this…  


FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BI-MILLENNIUM…

MORE POWERFUL THAN A STEAMING LOAD OF DA VINCI CODE!

ABEL TO LEAP INSURMOUNTABLY TALL SACRED COWS IN A SINGLE BOUND!!

The intro delivered  with Cartman striding through history as robed preacher, priest, pope, crusader, conquistador, Henry the VIII, Hitler, a blubbering Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Priest again with nude child on leash ending with the head of bin Laden pasted on top of Eric’s donut shaped body. Eh… never mind the Fantastic Easter Special from South Park season 11 handles the topic well enough.

I’m willing to hash out the facts leading to this perception with any believer troubled by the concept. For the time being ask yourself on what basis can we assume Paul’s writings and behavior are included as examples to be taught and followed? Would it be sacrilegious to consider viewing the Bible as a Work from God rather than His literal words? Please consider Paul’s villain-hood a given in order to examine the resulting fallout for treating a man’s word as holy or inerrant for 2000 years and the overall message almost every anti-Paul advocate still seems to be missing.

What Paul’s bogusly divine mentality has accomplished by being adopted and mimicked for two millennium is to empower the faithful with a sense of self-righteousness. In some to the degree where their faith makes it not only their right and duty to pass judgment but carries with it a deep sense of obligation to convert others and feel justified in using any means to do so. Extortion, torture and death resulted in the name of saving our fellow man. In direct opposition to the simple basic message delivered by the preceding four Gospels, work on fixing yourself not each other.  

We now have 2000 years of proof by way of those that have suffered under the will of men
who perceive the words of a single man as if they were iron clad instructions from God. This should be recognized by now as an obvious recipe for a world of hurt. What seems to get lost in the recent shouts of ‘Look!! Here is the Devil!’ is that all share the guilt. Tagging another as devil carries the threat of being one. Scurrying back to even more ancient script  to see to it those texts get re-enforced is not the message for the third millennium. Engrossed at every point in Paul’s conflicts with accepted scripture its easy to overlook how far reaching and widespread this infectious attitude really is. Blindness to hypocrisy can work its corruption regardless of knowledge or faith. The overall message almost every anti-Paul advocate still seems to be missing is:

Don’t behave like self-righteous know-it-all pricks.

He’s a devil, I’m a devil, she’s a devil, we’re The Devil, wouldn’t you like to stop the devil too? At this point it’s only natural to assume there must be a being infinitely wiser than us just based on the depth of man’s collective stupidity. We read warnings to watch out for the beast yet his very presence and nature is under our noses the whole time. Instead of steering clear of him, he is idolized as a lofty spiritual example. A forgiven murdering liar, by his own words, makes claims to visions, secret knowledge and Apostleship. Meanwhile the appointed apostles accounts are all but ignored under the smothering layers of this single early A.D. convert. After all how could such a leading biblical figure so obviously willing and destined to serve God ever lead us astray?
 
The allegory for all mankind, which this Bible interpretation would beg, has been a long hard lesson. Given equal status the side by side accounts of The Prophet and the False Prophet has made it nearly impossible to identify a bad guy. On the other hand trying to seriously reconcile their words into complete harmony is a test of sanity for an otherwise rational mind. In the early battle between stone cold truth and warm fuzzy ideals we can safely guess which wins. Insanity soon reigned and the dark ages began. Now stripped of their equal status we might perceive the story of several first hand witnesses accountings of a true prophet demonstrating how to live a harmonious life vs. that of an after death follower showing a strong desire to serve his Master,  fueled by a mixture of truth, miracles, and a heap of conjecture, as if from on-high inspires fellow believers through letters with far-reaching doublespeak conveying how and why to behave likewise. Ending with Revelations or the symbolic time tapestry of horrific future events, the result of believing false prophets. The vast majority of which can be reasonably argued to have already happened. IMO all that’s left to go through is a thousand years of peace  before final shit hits the fan.

That’s the gist of it. Christendom has begun to reclaim a decent foothold on sanity with the advent of the printing press, widespread literacy and freedom of thought. It is my belief understanding of this proposed  beast’s identity and nature is the key to ending the reign of hypocritical religious oppression in all faiths not just Christian.

I hope posting this will not inhibit what little activity remains in this forum. Quite the opposite really. I may not post much here or anywhere else for that matter but this forum has always remained one of the few places I still lurk on a regular basis because well… I find you all just that darned  loveable. I don’t honestly know what to do with this Holy bombshell other than to pass it along to people I care about that I think have the wherewithal to wrap their minds around the idea while I  have the opportunity.  Last July came reminders this door might not always be open. Yeah, took me long enough. Let me tell you, spitting this out was not easy. At all.

Any questions or requests for further explanations or clarification I’ll do my best to respond. Can’t guarantee any lightening fast replies though.  Feel free to PM me if that seems the more comfortable route. Meanwhile I’ll keep tabs on this thread as long as need be. While I’ve seen fearful reactions to this idea from some Christians in essence I really see no call.  For most I see it coming down to a tweak in thought process rather than anything earth shattering.

que? Did someone hack your account or something?

I probably shouldn\'t even bother with this but....I thought it was fairly common knowledge that most of what was supposedly written by Paul was either heavily edited by others or completely written by other people.

[GmanJoe]

Blah blah blah! Thank goodness for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you Gman, I thank goodness for this time off year as well. Chewing on that heap o blah blah should change nothing here imo other than maybe making religion a little more tolerable to swallow. Hopefully

And Phil, as long as this has been bumped I’ll bother to point out what you say is at least partly true. According to Wiki three of Paul’s book are generally considered forgeries. Seven of them though are undisputedly considered his and the original text. They easily make the case on their own. The other three both sides are evenly divided between those books being either monkeyed  with somewhat or untouched, me shrugs. More gas on the fire is all I can see.

[GmanJoe]

Being Catholic, I think the old Church did a lot of editing to empower the men in the cloth and take away women\'s role which Jesus clearly saw as equal to men. And also, made Jesus as God, and not the Son of God. Quite confusing.

It\'s kinda wierd but I know more about the Bishop of Myra than all the other saints. He is, after all, the man noted to be the real Santa Claus.