I don’t believe in the God in whose name women were persecuted and killed as witches in Salem.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name men and boys marched to war in the Crusades.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name Protestants and Catholics killed each other in Northern Ireland.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name Jews and Arabs kill, and maim and torture  each other in the Middle East.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name people harass young women and bomb buildings and send threatening mail and kill doctors who perform abortions.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name people fly airplanes into buildings killing people.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name hatred of people who are different than you or who believe differently is taught.

I don’t believe in the God in whose name children are taught to deny their God-given bodies which results in tortured twisted minds that commit rape, serial crimes and mass murders.

Many will say they agree with me because of the way I have stated the case. But if you feel you are in agreement, then are you ready to say that children should be taught to think rather than taught to follow blindly? Blind faith has been involved in all of the above–blind faith that was taught at an early age. Faith in a God that can say “an eye for an eye”. Faith in a God that can torture a good man to try his patience (Job). Faith in a God conceived by men more than two thousand years ago. Faith in a God who claims to be the only God and thus drives many of the faithful to believe that others are wrong where they are right.

Do I believe in God?

I believe in the God I see in the setting sun and the opening flower.

I believe in the God I see in your eyes.

I believe in the God that is accessible through my God-given senses.

I believe in the God that is equated with love.

I believe in love.

I believe love is the most powerful and most wonderful level we can attain in our lives. Love of all, love of ourselves, love of life.

Anyone who has felt this love finds the acts that have been committed in the name of God to be incomprehensible. Whether it be children killing fellow students or men flying into buildings it has never been done by someone who loved the God within them only by those whose love has been misguided to an ancient entity created as separate from all that we know in this life.

Thank you for your thoughts, begun 12 years ago, in agreement that Satan wrote the Bible. They are good thoughts though I may be prejudiced. I think all thoughts are good and especially those that question the status quo. I’m going to quote some of your letter and respond to it. Please send me a link to the place you posted the whole letter and I will post the link so readers can find all of your thoughts on the subject.

 I’m rarely ever surprised anymore about how strong people’s faith is in the truth of the Bible — at how clever they claim Satan to be, and yet they aren’t even able to consider the possibility that he might be clever enough to trick them all into thinking he’s God, by using the very collection of books they hold so dear!

You are rarely surprised because of how often you have heard Christians put down your thoughts but it shouldn’t be surprising when you consider that most people, including you and me, were indoctrinated at an early age—practically from birth—into the belief system of the Bible or some other religion. It is very difficult to shake that kind of indoctrination especially since it was administered by our parents and, if they appeared inadequate to the task, there were super people—rabies, imams, pastors, priests, etc.—to put a heavier hand on the training. We were also trained not to question, not to be a Doubting Thomas.

I don’t think the Bible is completely worthless.  There are nuggets of truth, such as the fact that we were created in God’s image. 

Are we created in God’s image? Might it not be the other way around? The thoughts in your paragraph that begins with these sentences are thoughts based on biblical teaching. Another way of saying that is that you are thinking from within the box created by the Bible. The thoughts in my essay Satan Wrote the Bible are also written from within that box. The notion that we homo sapiens may have created God in our image is a thought from outside the box. I am trying to put myself in the place of early people who had minds and were trying to figure out the mysteries of life. They thought up gods for the sun and moon, thunder and lightening, love and lust. It was much later and still from a much less enlightened place than we are today that they came up with the idea of just one God.

Am I really thinking outside the box, any box? I’m trying to think empathetically, to put myself in other’s shoes or in other times and places. The extent to which I can do this is wondrous but I delude myself if I think I can be truly objective.

The rest of your last paragraph follows. I applaud you exercising your God-given mind.

God is the Word.  Since God is the Word, and we are created in God’s image, we were, therefore, created in the image of The Word — the Word of God.  We do not NEED the Bible.  The Word of God is already inscribed in our hearts.  We have the ability to build a society based on what we feel in our hearts, and it would be a godly society.  But Satan’s rules and regulations, including the Ten Commandments, have made acting on Godly thoughts — thoughts that are derived from the true nature of what we were created to be — “wrong.”  The lives we were created to live have become so crippled and perverted under Satan’s rule-based plan that to suggest to members of our world that we could build a society completely free of any laws whatsoever gets you labeled a nutcase pretty quickly.  But people living out their image-of-godliness DO NOT NEED RULES!

When the son opened the gift he was overwhelmed. “Gee Dad,” he exclaimed, “This is super! Thank you!” Then he looked around and asked, “What else did you get me?”

The father turned his back on his son and walked away.

I have told this little story to some people who believe that God wrote the Bible and found that not everyone understands the point of the story so, for those who don’t do well with parables: Do you believe that God gave you life? Do you think that life is a wonderful gift? Put yourself in the Creator’s place. How would you feel if you gave someone a wonderful gift and they turned around and ask what else you had for them. When you say that there is someplace better, something better than this life, when you sacrifice some of the wonders that are available to you in this life for dictates in a book written by men over 2,000 years ago; you are turning your back on the Creator’s gift. You are saying, “Nice life you gave me, but I want something more. Life is nice but not nice enough. I want heaven.”

Give thanks for this life. Appreciate it. Use your Creator-given senses. Don’t look beyond this gift. If there is more, it will be revealed to you in due time.

There are those who say that all they have to do to be a Christian is to love Jesus. They don’t have to follow his teachings, just love him, call him their savior. So they can hate Hillary and love Jesus and they will get into heaven.

OK. That is your belief but take a moment to think about yourself. Yeah, YOU. How does hate make YOU feel? You are the most important person in the world. Check yourself out. Check your feelings. If you exercise, how do you feel afterward? If it was strenuous exercise, perhaps you feel tired, even sore but check out the inner you. Don’t you feel good inside for having worked your body in a way that you know is good for it. Or if the exercise was doing a job, don’t you feel good about the job you did?

Now think about hating Hillary (or anybody). Really do it, right now. Think about someone you hate. Why do you hate them? It doesn’t matter why. I just want you to get an image of them in your mind. You may not have a rational reason for hating. Not important. Is that hate boiling in your blood yet?

OK, now check in with your body. How does your neck feel? If you really got into your hate mode, your shoulders are up around your ears now. Check the inner you. Do you feel good? Do you feel as good as you did when you completed a job well done or exercised? If you enjoy the feeling in your body and your inner you when you are filled with hate, I guess you ought to pile on some more people and things to hate. Hey, do what is right for you.

If hate doesn’t make you feel good, think about it. Hillary has many good features as does everyone. Think about the person’s good features. Think about things about them that you could love and then really work on loving them. There are no bad people but even if there were, we shouldn’t let them make us feel bad. Why let anyone get under your skin? When we let someone bother us, and anytime we hate someone we have let them bother us, we are hurting ourselves. Isn’t that stupid? Aren’t we in control? Have we given up our minds and bodies to someone else? Has Satan taken control? Don’t do it! Chase the hate out of your mind and body. Work at it. Don’t give up. It won’t happen right away but if we keep working at it, if we check in with our mind and body whenever we realize we are under the influence of something other than love, we will make progress and every minute we feel love is a minute in heaven.

If we are wise, we will teach the Koran as well and Eastern religions. The underlying ethic for this teaching should be respect for all. People’s beliefs are often strongly held. Indeed they are central to some people’s lives and to disrespect them in any way is hurtful. But if we turn our backs on beliefs other than our own, we have little hope of living a life filled with love.

 The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859. Nearly 150 years later there are still those who prefer to believe that the story in Genesis is fact rather than myth. They even believe that all the species on earth as we know them today were piled into Noah’s ark.

The sad thing is that they so focus on these myths that they loose sight of any value these early stories might have on our current life. I think a good lesson from Genesis might be that we should rest every seven days and from the ark story we might learn that all of the creatures on earth are of value and should be protected from extinction.

 When Christians become obsessed with believing that Jesus was God and that believing in him for salvation is more important than following his teachings, they have missed the point of his teachings. It is the “preachers” who told stories of virgin birth and walking on water to convince people to follow them that cause people to miss the true value of the Jesus’ teaching.

 The Bible is full of excellent advice, excellent philosophy for living, the greatest of which may be “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Oh, and for those who believe JC walked on water, I suppose I should point out that when Jesus talked of thy neighbor he was not talking about just those who live next door. When he said we should love our enemies, he was not talking just about enemies but about everyone.

How could anyone say that after it has been called “The Good Book” for so many years? There is much to be said for it but there is also much to be said against it. It is certainly to be respected for the tremendous influence it has had on Western civilization directly and on all of our species in some way. While most would argue the influence has been positive, I, as a contrarian, must argue otherwise. The easy part of this argument is the wars, holy wars of the crusades and the holy wars going on today in the Middle East, the Balkans and the United States.

Holy war in the US? What else would you call the debate over abortion and other issues that fundamentalists champion with such hatred and the Catholics with slightly less hatred? Vitriolic hatred express by some to the extent that others, weaker minded, foot soldiers, have committed murder and other acts of violence. Those expressing the hatred are doing it in the name of their religious beliefs, they are quoting the Bible. That is an outcome of the Bible. To say that it is misguided men (mostly men) who are doing it and that it does not reflect on the Bible is nonsense. Misguided, of course, but none the less reflecting on the Bible.

Generally people think of the outcomes of the Bible and the religions it has spawned as doing good by creating sins and punishments for sin. Certainly burning in hell for eternity should be a deterrent to crime. I asked 50 people who had registered as “experts” in their faith on a web site if they thought people who believed in God were more or less likely to commit crime and more or less likely to commit crime if they had had a religious upbringing. Those of Jewish, Protestant, Islamic faiths were unanimous in their response that people who believed in God and people who had been raised in a religion were less likely to commit a crime. Of the Catholics responding they were unanimous in their opinion that religious upbringing would be a deterrent but a couple of them backed off on whether a belief in God was a deterrent to crime. Perhaps they were thinking of the Mafia who are always portrayed as being devout Catholics.

My research uncovered quite different facts. I was unable to find any studies that delve into the religious upbringing of criminals. However, I did uncover the information for a few notorious criminals. The father of John George Haigh (The Acid Bath Murderer) was described as “intensely religious”. The NY Mad Bomber and Hitler were Roman Catholic. Joseph Kallinger was adopted by sadistic Catholic parents. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer “came from a religious family.” I found none who came from an irreligious family or who were irreligious. Edward W. Mitchell in his paper The aetiology of serial murder: towards an integrated model writes, “An analysis of the role of religion in the life of the serial murderer and its relationship to internal justification of his crimes would be of considerable interest.” Wouldn’t you think that someone of religion who believed that religion was, at the very least, a deterrent to crime would have done the research by now? Perhaps they have and decided not to publish it.

Two studies of criminals done in the early 1900s found very few irreligious among them. One study of 28,351 prisoners found 57 who said they had no religion. When a sample of 12 of the 57 was interviewed more closely it turned out only 1/3 was truly irreligious. That comes to less than .03% or 99.97% were found to be religious. “Of 700 criminals examined by Ferri one alone was an atheist, one was indifferent, and seven were devout and even found religion an excuse for their crime.” “Among 200 Italian murderers Ferri did not find one who was irreligious.” The Criminal by Havelock Ellis (1910). My research is superficial, to be sure. One of the reasons research along this line has not been done is because most research into the criminal mind is to try to understand it so crime can be prevented. No one is likely to come along and try to make a case for overthrowing religion to eliminate crime, not even me. But to say that we live in a more civilized world because of religion cannot be supported. In other words, an outcome of the Bible is not less crime.

A book reviewer of the Bible would have to say that the language was stilted and obscure. The beatitudes are certainly an incredible bore. There are many, many inconsistencies. Amazing that so many base their lives on this book. Even more amazing since so few of them have even read it. Another interesting bit of research would be to find out how many devout followers understand the Bible very well, not from what they have been taught but from actually reading it.

So why is it so popular, the best selling book of all time? The answer is that there are some basic truths that we recognize as such and these truths are told in stories that are easily understood and memorable. Unfortunately these stories are taken by some to be historically accurate and absolute rather than parables, myths and teaching aids. The book has also been used to exploit those who “needed help interpreting it.” The exploiters have no intention letting go their hold on their flock. It is to their advantage to keep it obscure so they can maintain a position as God’s interpreter. If the myths were identified as myths (read Joseph Campbell) and the truths exposed in their simplest form, many in the flock could take up staffs, live with greater independence and be more helpful to others.

I will be posting an essay on my belief sometime in the future but there are many clues to my belief on the site already. Everything here is based on my belief; however, it is highly unlikely that any first assumption will be correct.

I will award a gold star to anyone who figures it out before I post it.

I, on the other hand, am just the administrator. I do not shy away from the fact that I help people with their free speech needs. I specialize in creating web sites that get good search engine rankings. For a site like this, search engine marketing provides a unique opportunity for the author to let his philosophy be known.

We hope that you can enjoy this theological theory for what it is, and that we all do that of which Jesus would approve: remain civil.