F Rosa Rubicondior: Mythology
Showing posts with label Mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mythology. Show all posts

Friday 15 March 2024

Creationism in Crisis - From Where Did The Bible's Authors Get The Idea That Humans Are Materially Different To Other Animals? And Why Were They Wrong?


Greek vase decoration - Dionysus and three figures.(Gods created in human image)
Friday essay: from political bees to talking pigs – how ancient thinkers saw the human-animal divide

It's a fundamental part of the Abrahamic religions and other religions that there is something materially different to humans, above and beyond the sort of difference that distinguishes one species from another. Biologically, of course, this is nonsense as any study of comparative anatomy and physiology will show. Humans are just another mammal, albeit with some highly evolved abilities that other species lack such as language, the ability to invent narrative, etc. The differences, as with the differences between any pair of related taxons is quantitative, not qualitative.

So, from where did religions and, especially the Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - get the idea of human exceptionalism from and why did they need to invent narratives to explain it, usually in terms of a special creation or a special closeness to gods - even a familial relationship or at least created in their image like children to their parents? In fact, as we will see, it’s much more likely that gods were created by humans in their image.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation, Professor Julia Kindt, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney, SNW, Australia, explains the ideas origins in Ancient Greece and why it is wrong. Her article has been reformatted for stylistic purposes:

Monday 19 February 2024

Old Dead Gods - With Long Forgotten Religions - And No Way To Recover Them


Joint interment of a dog and a human perinate.

Photo by S.R.Thompson, courtesy of SABAP-VR Soprintendenza archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per le province di Verona, Rovigo e Vicenza.

Laffranchi Z, Zingale S, Tecchiati U, Amato A, Coia V, Paladin A, et al. (2024)
Some Pre-Roman humans were buried with dogs, horses and other animals | ScienceDaily

I've made the point several time before, but another paper published recently, reinforces it again, that when old gods are forgotten and old religions die, there is nothing on which they can be reconstructed because religions are never founded in verifiable evidence.

Unlike religion, science, which is a description of reality, could be rediscovered if it, or a major branch of it, was somehow wiped from our collective memories and all text books on the subject were wiped clean. And the rediscovered science would be the same as it is today. Atoms would have the same structure and properties, chemistry would do what we know it does today; physics would have the same explanations for the different colours of light, for the way energy is conserved; entropy and the laws of thermodynamics would be the same; and the description of the universe, together with the Big Bang, how suns form and how planets form around them, would be the same.

In fact, we can be as sure as eggs is eggs, that if ever we contact intelligent life from another planet, their science will be the same as ours, although they'll use different words to describe it and their numbering system may well have a different base.

But, expunge every trace of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindi, Shintoism, etc., and erase everyone’s memory of them, and we would never again know what the followers believed or what they believe their god(s) did or didn't do. We would know no more about the major religions of today than we know about the ancient religions before writing was invented. We have not the slightest idea what inspired the builders of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill in Wiltshire; we don't have a clue what the people who built the oldest existing roofed building in Europe, in Menorca in the Balearic Islands believed or what the Minoans of Crete believed, or even the names of their gods, and, unless someone decodes the language the Minoans wrote, we never will. We only know anything about the Egyptian and Sumerian pantheons because someone learned to read their writing.

And we know nothing about the gods and religion of the people who buried horses and dogs with their dead in Late Iron Age, Northern Italy - the subject of a recent paper in PLOS ONE.

In information from PLoS, cited in Science Daily, the authors explain their findings:

Thursday 12 October 2023

Creationism in Crisis - How We Can Tell The Bible Is Not The Work Of The God Described in It


A creator god would not have got so much wrong when it tried to describe the world it had created and described is as though it knew no more than a parochial Bronze Age pastoralist who knew almost nothing and had to rely on guess-work and folkloric superstitions from the fearful infancy of our species.

A picture is worth a thousand words:
The universe from descriptions of it in the Bible.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1: 6-10.

How the Universe really is, as revealed by science:

Saturday 7 October 2023

Creationism in Crisis - Humans Were Walking About in North America 10-13,000 Years Before Creationists Think Humans Were Created


Study confirms age of oldest fossil human footprints in the Americas | Bournemouth University

10,000 years ago, according to the Bronze Age Canaanite creation myths in the Bible, a magic man in the sky created humans without ancestors, and either before or afterwards, according to the two different versions, he created all the animals too. And animals and humans went forth and multiplied to populate Earth.
White Sands footprints

A few thousand years later, in a fit of pique, because his 'perfect' design hadn't turned out the way he intended, he murdered almost everything in a genocidal flood and Earth had to be repopulated from just eight humans and either two or six of the other animal species (again depending on the version) after the humans had sacrificed one of every species as a thank you for the genocide, Earth was again repopulated from these impossibly narrow genetic bottlenecks.

Creationists also insist that all sedimentary rocks were deposited in their mythical genocidal flood.

Some people still believe that myth to be accurate history, despite all the evidence against it and the fact that there is no evidence for it, save only for the origin myths in a book which, as science discovers more, is becoming increasingly 'allegorical/metaphorical' in order to avoid admitting it's just plain wrong.

One piece of evidence was revealed in 2021, by researchers from Bournemouth University, UK, the US National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Cornell University, USA and the University of Arizona, USA., which showed that humans were leaving footprints in mud at the edge of a lake in what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico, North America, 10-13,000 years before Earth was created according to the ancient origin myths.

Saturday 19 August 2023

Creationism in Crisis - Fijian Folk Tale Has Nothing About a Global Flood or The God Who Allegedly Caused It!


Nabukelevu, Kadav, Fiji.
Eruption remembered in riddles and fantastical oral traditions.
A dramatic volcano eruption changed lives in Fiji 2,500 years ago. 100 generations have kept the story alive

2,500 years ago, just 1,500 years after creationists believe the human population of the world had been reduced to just 8 people in a genocidal flood, there was a volcanic eruption on one end of the island of Kadavu in the south of the group of Pacific islands now known as the Fijian Islands.

The people who were already living there, having presumably migrated there from the Middle East in just 1,500 years, remembered the details of the eruption and passed them on, complete with the local gods to whom they attributed the events, not in writing, but encoded in riddles and a symbolic oral tradition which "included fantastic beings flying through the sky, fighting each another furiously and noisily, drinking the ocean dry, and throwing giant spears with force enough to leave massive holes in rocky headlands", according to research by a group of scientists including Professor Patrick Nunn of the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia.

Curiously, if the Bible tales of a global flood had been true, people to whom a local volcanic eruption was such an important event in their history that they remembered it in such an elaborate way, regarded a genocidal global flood as not worth a mention, and the god who allegedly caused it as unworthy of inclusion in their pantheon.

This is the ludicrously unlikely scenario that creationists have to try to rationalise in order to avoid considering that their favourite Bronze Age fairy tales are anything other than literal truths.

The research which has decoded the Fijian oral traditions is the subject of an article by Professor Nunn in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Monday 26 June 2023

Creationism in Crisis - A Continuous Culture in Central America for 11,000 Years. No Evidence of a Genocidal Flood


Macrobotanical remains from El Gigante.

Photo Credit: Thomas Harper
Lessons in sustainability, evolution and human adaptation — courtesy of the Holocene | The Current

The thing about creationists claims of a global genocidal flood with just eight survivors, is that there is no evidence that such a flood ever occurred and what evidence there is all points to it never having happened.

If creationism were based on evidence, those two demonstrable facts should at least cause them to do the unthinkable and consider being wrong. However, considering being wrong is such an existential threat to creationists that it is something that must never even be contemplated.

So, what are these demonstrable facts?
  • The evidence that should be there is of course the global layer of silt containing a jumble of fossils from disconnected land masses than would be the inevitable result of such a flood with no land barriers to how far debris could float. Creationists also claim that extinct orders such as dinosaurs were living at the time of the flood, so the predicted jumble of fossils should contain extinct and extant species in haphazard order.

    But that's not what we see.
  • The evidence that should not be there is of course archaeological evidence of continuous cultures which pre-dated the supposed flood 4,000 years ago and continues in an unbroken sequence through the time of the alleged flood and up to modern times. The culture should have been destroyed along with the evidence for it in a catastrophic global flood, of course.

    But that's what we see.
Normally, having inevitable predictions from a hypothesis refuted is a reason to abandon the hypothesis, but creationists are not normal people, at least in their use of logical deduction. To a creationist, the conclusion is sacred, so facts must be ignored.
Evidence of the latter fact, which shouldn't be there but is, was the subject of a recent paper on PLOS ONE a couple of days ago. It concerns the stratified layers of the remains of food plants in a the 'El Gigante' rock shelter in Honduras, Central America, going back to 11,000 years. The site was recently nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Not only does this show a pattern of continuous occupation but it also records the dynamic nature of hunter-gatherer societies and the adaptations to climate and environmental change.

Of course, the scientists were interested in what this tells us about how the local culture evolved from hunter-gatherers to farmers and what lessons can be learned of relevance to today's society. The refutation of the creationist flood myth was purely incidental, like the other frequent scientific refutations of creationism, where the revealed facts speak for themselves.

The international research team included scientists from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).

A UCSB news release explains the discovery and its significance:

Sunday 9 April 2023

Crucifiction News - What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?

Crucifiction News

What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?
The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna, painted between 457 and 1459
The central panel of an altarpiece for church of San Zeno, Verona, Italy

The Louvre, Paris

The Crucifixion by Giotto
The Crucifixion by Giotto di Bondone (c 1303-1305)
Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy
The crucifixion gap: why it took hundreds of years for art to depict Jesus dying on the cross

As it is Easter, when Christians traditionally celebrate the repugnant notion of vicarious redemption through the blood sacrifice of a supposedly innocent person, I thought it would be good to examine the whole notion of the crucifixion of the legendary founder of the Christian religion, Jesus.

What I'm not going to do is point out the glaring and irreconcilable inconsistences in the accounts of the crucifixion and the alleged resurrection, which betray the fact that any pretense to be eye-witness accounts are just that - pretense.

If you want more information on that you're more than welcome to try the Easter Challenge to see if you can resolve the accounts into a coherent narrative incorporating all the alleged events.
The origins of Easter have nothing to do with the alleged crucifixion of course, being based, at least in part on the Roman festival of Hilaria:
For example, the timing of Easter is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which was also an important time in the Roman calendar. The Roman festival of Hilaria, which was held in honor of the goddess Cybele, was celebrated around the same time as the vernal equinox and involved parades, feasting, and gift-giving.

Reference:
  • "The Origins of Easter" by Mark Cartwright, Ancient History Encyclopedia: https://www.ancient.eu/article/1294/the-origins-of-easter/
  • "Easter" by Christine M. Tomassini, Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
  • "The Pagan Roots of Easter" by Jennifer Billock, History: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-easter-origins-of-easter-traditions
ChatGPT. (2023, April 9). What are the Roman origins of Easter?
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat
The name 'Easter' comes from the Old English 'Ēastre', the name of an Anglo-Saxon festival celebrating the spring equinox which was used by the Christian Church as the arbitrary date of the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, which has as much basis in fact as the supposed date of his birth, i.e., none at all.

Perhaps the first thing to point out about the story is its unlikelihood.

Saturday 18 March 2023

Old Dead Gods - No-One Mourns for the Old Dead Gods of Arabia

Old Dead Gods

No-One Mourns for the Old Dead Gods of Arabia

Mustatil ('rectangles") in the heart of Al-Nafūd Desert, Northern Saudi Arabia, are the remains of religious buildings from 7,000 years ago

Enigmatic ruins across Arabia hosted ancient ritual sacrifices

Long before a clan of camel herders and traders along the western edge of Arabia were forced by tribal loyalty to follow a new, charismatic 'Prophet of Allah", and long before a tribe of Canaanite hill farmers in the hill of southern Syria adopted the god Yahweh from the local pantheon as their own, and created a mythical history to give them a unique identity and justify their land-theft, genocide and territorial expansion, scattered bands of early pastoralists had banded together to build hundreds of massive monuments for religious rituals in the Al-Nafūd Desert in the north of Arabia, close to the Western end of the 'fertile crescent'.
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Detail of north-west (preserved) interlocking cells of associated feature IDIHA-F-0011149.
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The four I-type platforms located west of IDIHA-F-0011081, photo orientated west.
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The main (central) chamber of mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 with three up-right stones (A-C). Flat stones in centre of image acted as support for primary up-right stone in the rear. The blocked doorway is visible in the left of the photo.
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Transverse grooved hammer stone found upside down and in situ in Phase 1.
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Bos sp. horn (#0032) recovered from Phase 4A, note the positioning in relation to up-right stone A.
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Horns found on a collapsed “bench” in Phase 4B. Left to right, large cattle horns/sheaths (#0043) and (#0033), goat horn sheath (#0047), goat (#0041), and cattle horn (#0040).
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Spatial relationships between the main and secondary chamber.

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Riverstone surface associated with courtyard, further pebbles were set within the doorway.
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Two mustatil at site IDIHA-0030862 in Khaybar County orientated (base) towards a body of standing water, photo orientated west.

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Three mustatil at site IDIHA-0030914, orientated (base) towards a small seasonal wadi in Khaybar County, photo orientated south-west.

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Mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 orientated (head) towards a playa located to the east, photo orientated east.
These structures were only discovered in 2016 by satellite imagery. Now known by the local people as Mustatil ('rectangles")., they were constructed some 7000 years ago, before the Pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge in southern England and are probably the oldest man-made stone structures on Earth. The organisation and manpower required to build these structures suggests some unifying idea across a large area to give a commonality of purpose to scattered tribes, pointing to a single religion with maybe an accepted central religious authority associated with the site in northern Arabia where these structures were created.

They are also associated with elaborate rock-carvings of strange geometric shapes and patters, which were probably originally painted.

As with the Pyramids and the Bronze Age structures of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, UK, they suggest an organised state with an economy strong enough to provide a surplus wealth and food production sufficient to finance these constructions and feed the workers.

And yet, because they left no records, like the religion that inspired the building of Knossos in Minoan Create, we have no idea what that religion was or why it was able to inspire the creation of these structures for the rituals that were performed there, and why the people living there considered it necessary and worth all the effort!

Clearly, the god(s) (and it was probably a pantheon of gods, like the neighbouring Mesopotamians had later) had massive imaginary powers, giving the priesthood enormous powers of command and control, and elaborate rituals were considered necessary to appease or thank them. Yet we have no idea what those imaginary powers were, and whatever they were believed to have done, or not done in response to the rituals continued to be done or not done when the rituals ceased, their last believer died, and the monuments crumbled.

Rosa's Laws of Religion:

The First Law of Theodynamics:
Gods can be created out of nothing and will disappear without trace.
This is a phenomenon that has been repeated time and again throughout human history as religions have come and gone together with their imaginary gods. No one now mourns at the graveside of these old dead gods.

No-one believes in Mars, Ra, Wodan, Thor or Saturn, and no-one says the rituals that were once essential to keep the seasons coming and going, the crops growing or the Nile flooding, and yet the seasons continue to come and go, the crops grow and the Nile still floods at the right time.

The prayers and rituals that once influenced these old gods are no longer needed, and the natural occurrences that were once 'obviously' caused or created by them are now just as 'obviously' caused or created by different gods in response to different prayers and rituals. And they will still occur when the current batch of gods have been consigned to the graveyard of the gods along with all the others.

What started me thinking in that line, was a recent article concerning the Arabian monuments in The Conversation by Melissa Kennedy, and Hugh Thomas, Lecturers in Archaeology at the University of Sydney. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here



Enigmatic ruins across Arabia hosted ancient ritual sacrifices

A group of three mustatil and later Bronze Age funerary pendants on a rocky outcrop, southeast of AlUla County.

Source: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

Melissa Kennedy, University of Sydney and Hugh Thomas, University of Sydney

Over the past five years, archaeologists have identified more than 1,600 monumental stone structures dotted across a swathe of Saudi Arabia larger than Italy. The purpose of these ancient stone buildings, dating back more than 7,000 years, has been a puzzle for researchers.

Our excavations and surveys reveal these were ritual structures, constructed by ancient herders and hunters who gathered to sacrifice animals to an unknown deity – perhaps in response to ancient climate change. The study is published in PLOS ONE today.

Desert discoveries

In the 1970s, the first archaeological surveys of northwest Saudi Arabia identified an ancient and mysterious rectangular structure. The sandstone walls of the structure were 95m long, and although it was determined to be unique, no further study of this unusual site was undertaken.

Over the following decades, airline passengers would see similar large “rectangles” dotted across the country. However, it was not until 2018 that one was excavated.

The main architectural features of a mustatil.

Credit: AAKSA /
The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided
These structures are now known as mustatils (Arabic for rectangle). We have been studying them for the past five years as part of a larger archaeological study sponsored by the Saudi Royal Commission for AlUla.

The smallest mustatils are around 20m long, while the largest are over 600m. Previous work by our team determined that all mustatils follow a similar architectural plan. Two thick ends were connected by between two to five long walls, creating up to four courtyards.

Access to the mustatil was through a narrow entrance in the base. There would then have been a long walk, perhaps in the form of a procession, to the “head”, where the main ritual activity took place.

Previous studies determined that the mustatils are at least 7,000 years old, dating to the end of the Neolithic period.

Cattle remains

In 2019–2020, we undertook excavations at a mustatil site called IDIHA-0008222. The structure, made from unworked sandstone, measures 140m in length and 20m in width.

Excavations in the head of the mustatil revealed a semi-subterranean chamber. Within this chamber were three large, vertical stones. We have interpreted these as “betyls”, or sacred standing stones which represented unknown ancient deities.
The excavated mustatil at IDIHA-0008222.
Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided

Surrounding these stones were well-preserved cattle, goat, and gazelle horns. The horns are so well preserved that much of what we find is the horn sheath, made of keratin – the same substance as hair and nails. We found only the upper cranial elements of these animals: the teeth, skulls, and horns. This suggests a clear and specific choice of offerings.

Further analysis suggests the bulk of these remains belonged to male animals and the cattle were aged between 2 and 12 years. Their slaughter would have formed a significant proportion of a community’s wealth, indicating these were high-value offerings.

Human remains

Current evidence suggests that the mustatils were in use between 5300 and 4900 BCE, a time when Arabia was green and humid. However, within a few generations, the ancient inhabitants of Saudi Arabia began to reuse these structures, this time to bury human body parts.

At IDIHA-0008222, a small structure had been built next to the mustatil. Inside were a partial foot, five vertebrae and several long bones.

Their placement suggests soft tissue was still present when they were buried. Forensic anthropologists were able to determine that the remains likely belonged to an individual aged between 30 and 40 years.

Our work at other mustatils has revealed similar deposits of human remains. Were these remains buried in attempt to claim ownership of the structure or some form of later ritual? These questions remain to be answered.

Pointing to water

The mustatils are changing how we view the Neolithic period not just in Arabia but across the Middle East. The sheer size of these structures and the amount of work involved in their construction suggests that multiple communities came together to create them, most probably as a form of group bonding.

Moreover, their widespread distribution across Saudi Arabia suggests the existence of a shared religious belief, one held over a vast and un-paralleled geographic distance. Currently, fewer than ten mustatils have been excavated, so our understanding of these structures is still in its infancy.
Map of Saudi Arabia showing the locations of the known mustatils.
Mustatil locations in Saudi Arabia, with the location of site IDIHA-0008222 marked in red.

Credit: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, the GIS User Community, USGS, NOAA /
AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided
The key question to be answered is “why were they built?” A survey trip by our team may have, in part, solved this mystery.

While recording these structures after rain, we noted that almost all mustatils pointed towards areas that held water. Perhaps the mustatils were constructed and the animals offered to the god or gods to ensure the continuation of the rains and the fertility of the land.

The possibility remains that the mustatils were built in response to a changing climate, as the region became increasingly arid like it is today.
Two mustatil in Khaybar County pointing to standing water after rain.
Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla,
Author provided
Our study of the mustatils is ongoing. Our new project at the University of Sydney is focused on understanding why these monumental structures and others were built and what brought about their end.

We hope future excavations and analyses will reveal further insights into the life and death of the mustatils and the people who built them. The Conversation
Melissa Kennedy, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney and Hugh Thomas, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
The paper referred to in the article is published, open access in the online journal PLOS ONE:
Abstract

Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia’s work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.

In the words of H.L.Mechen:
Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is no more than five hundred years ago—fifty thousand youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with ten thousand gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Alien G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler, and Tom Sharkey…

But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from paying them the slightest and politest homage.

H.L. Menchen "Memorial Service".

Thank you for sharing!






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Sunday 30 October 2022

Creationism in Crisis - UK's Earliest Modern Humans Came From Two Different Places and Cultures

UK’s oldest human DNA obtained, revealing two distinct Palaeolithic populations | UCL News - UCL – University College London.
Human skull and jaw fragments
Credit: Trustees of the Natural History Museum
Last glaciation in Europe, ~70,000-20,000 year BP

Credit: Wikimedia Commons user Ulamm
It's hard to find a scientific paper these days that doesn't utterly refute the basic dogmas of Creationism. Take for example this paper which deal with the origins of the population of the British Isles at the end of the last Ice Age. There is no intention on the part of the authors to refute the Bible narrative Creationists adhere to, yet they do, simply by revealing the facts.

At the end of the last ice age, what is now the Island of Great Britain was still joined to continental Europe by an area of land, 'Dogger Land', now submerged beneath the North Sea, which stretched across from East Anglia to Holland.

During the glacial maximum, the northern two-thirds of the island and most of Northern Europe was glaciated and so it was repopulated when the ice retreated.

Traditionally, the first anatomically modern humans in Britain were assumed to be hunter-gatherer migrants from Northern Europe who became isolated when sea-level changes inundated Dogger Land and broke through the chalk downs at Dover creating the island of Great Britain, from which Ireland had been separated for hundreds of years. Humans along with the flora and fauna of the island reflects this repopulation over a land bridge from newly-repopulated North-Western Europe, in the immediate post-glacial period when sea-levels were still low enough to allow Dogger Land to be populated.

Fig. 1: Location, genetic ancestry and AMS date of individuals discussed within the text.
Surprisingly though, new research by researchers from University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology, the Natural History Museum and the Francis Crick Institute has shown that at least two distinct human populations, with different origins and cultures existed in Britain in the immediate post-glacial period. This conclusion came from an analysis of thee DNA from some of the oldest human remains so far discovered - the remains of an individual found in Gough's Cave, Somerset, England and an individual from Kendrick’s Cave, North Wales, both of whom lived more than 13,500 years ago.

As the UCL news release explains:

Saturday 10 September 2022

The Biblical Myth of the Destruction of the Cities of the Plain Could Be Based on a Real Event

BIBLICAL BURNING - Ancient city could have been destroyed by cosmic airburst | News Services | ECU

Professor Mitra examining sample
Professor Mitra's analysis of soot samples from Tall el-Hammam supports the research team’s theory that the city was destroyed by a high-temperature fire that the civilization at the time did not have the capability to generate.
It is common for ancient myths and legends to be based on a real event, embroidered over time and give a mystical spin, especially in oral traditions, to play to the beliefs and prejudices of the time. However, when that real events is discovered, just like the filling of all the other gaps in knowledge on which religions depend, the cause is invariably something natural and not requiring magic or supernatural entities in the explanation.
Map showing location of Tall el-Hammam
Location of Tall el-Hammam. (a) Photo of the southern Levant, looking north, showing the Dead Sea, the site location (TeH), and nearby countries. The Dead Sea Rift, the fault line marking a major tectonic plate boundary, runs through the area. Source of base image: NASA, Space Shuttle. “The Sinai Peninsula and the Dead Sea Rift”. Photo: sts109-708-024, taken 12/16/2009. From the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/astronauts_eyes/sts109-708-024.html). Modified by the authors using Adobe Photoshop CC2014 (adobe.com/products/photoshop.html). (b) West-southwest-facing view of the upper tall showing locations of the palace and temple behind the curve of the upper tall. The Dead Sea is in the background to the left.

This could well be the case with the tales of the destruction of the 'Cities of the Plain', Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, which may have been flattened, not by a god raining down fire and brimstone, but by a natural, though thankfully uncommon, cosmological event - a meteorite strike.

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Lessons From Catalonia - Miraculous Lies

The Virgin of Montserrat (Mare de Déu de Montserrat)
The Virgin of Montserrat (Catalan: Mare de Déu de Montserrat), or the Black Madonna of Montserrat, is co-patron saint of Catalonia with St. George.

She is also an example of how legends are created out of whole cloth and then transmuted into sacred truths by the church and fed to the people to keep them in awe and in thrall to the church, its wondrous powers and its oneness with God.

Having just spent a few days in the beautiful city of Barcelona, in my humble opinion, one of the loveliest places in Europe, we decided to spend €35 each on a train ride to the sacred mountain of Montserrat for the pleasure of the ride up a steep mountain railway, the spectacle of the views and the interest of the geology - of which more later in another post. What we were least interested in was the monastery itself, which was fortunate because we arrived hungry and thirsty at about 3.45 pm with everything closing at 4 o'clock, with barely time for a snack and a drink at the cafe.

The story of how carved effigy came to be in the monastery atop Montserrat, north-west of Barcelona is interesting. According to legend, she was carved in Jerusalem by St Luke, who gave it to St. Peter to bring to Catalonia. In 718 she was moved to the site of an old Roman temple to Venus on Montserrat to be hidden from the invading 'Saracens' who were moving north from their stronghold in Andalucia up into south-west France.

Wednesday 29 November 2017

Still Not Yeti

Abominable Snowman? Nope. Study ties DNA samples from purported Yetis to Asian bears

Just like their religious myths, the myth of the Yeti is a central part of the folklore of Tibet and Nepal. In that respect if differs not at all from other mythologies, religious or otherwise from other parts of the world. Lots of anecdotes and stories of people who knew of someone who's acquaintance once met someone who saw a Yeti or accounts of people seeing a shadow in a blizzard.

In the case of the Yeti, however, there was maybe something a bit more substantial - a tuft of hair, some faeces, skin, teeth, even a bone or two.

The problem is, the people who purportedly found these bits of evidence and sold them to collectors and Yeti hunters never counted on modern forensics and especially nor on modern DNA recovery and analysis.

Thursday 13 October 2016

Lessons From Cyprus - Aphrodite, A Goddess For All Men

Birth of Venus (Aphrodite). Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
When you're the goddess of love, everyone, and especially men, are bound to sit up and take note, especially if your beauty is legendary.

Cyprus, that beautiful, arid island in the eastern Mediterranean and possession of every Mediterranean power from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Ottoman Turkey, and latterly Britain, is the place of legend. It is remote enough to be mysterious and culturally distinct, yet close enough to the major centres of regional power to be familiar. Not surprisingly, Cyprus had its own gods and its own legends about gods but, unlike those of Minoan Crete, we know quite a lot more about these gods if for no other reason than that, again unlike Minoan Create, the culture which worshipped the Cypriot gods didn't get wiped out in a sudden catastrophic natural disaster.

Sunday 7 August 2016

The Great Flood Happened - In China

Evidence of the exceptional outburst flood in the upper valley of the Yellow River.
(A) Distributions of OFS, DLS, and landslide dam. Light purple and dark green shaded areas indicate purple-brown mudrock and greenschist, respectively. Line AB across the Lajia site shows the location of the reconstructed cross section in fig. S6C.
(B) The vertical distribution of the OFS, landslide dam, DLS, Lajia site and reconstructed lake levels relative to the longitudinal profile of the present Yellow River.
DLS are classified into lacustrine sediments (LS) and fan delta deposits (FD).
Outburst flood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China’s Great Flood and the Xia dynasty - Science

One of the many problems faced by Bible literalists is the singular lack of evidence for any of it, especially the much-cherished early creation myths found in Genesis. This means that those who try to cling at all costs to this primitive superstition have to perform all manner of frankly idiotic mental gymnastics to either explain away the lack of evidence or try to force-fit other geological evidence into their mythology.

One traditional attempt is to claim that many/most/all other cultures have a flood myth in their history. No matter how little these, where there are in fact any, match the biblical flood myth, they will always be waved around as proof of the historical accuracy of the Bible, as though not actually equating to the biblical myth in time, location, scope or detail actually mattered. There is the story of a flood at some point, therefore this is the biblical flood - case closed!

Thursday 21 May 2015

If The Bible Is True, Why So Many Religions?

Let's assume for the moment that the Bible is true in its substantive claim that there was once a single couple from whom we are all descended and that, some time later, the population of the Earth was reduced again to a single family. This family all believed in and worshipped the 'one true god' and had even spoken to this god and witnessed his powers first hand in ways in which few people could have any doubts.

This all happened just a few thousand years ago. Although there is no common agreement about

Thursday 2 April 2015

Origin of the Adam & Eve Myth

A pair of Old Testament scholars at Holland's Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam & Groningen believe they have found the origins of the Adam & Eve myth in the Hebrew Bible. It is a version of an old Canaanite myth based on the original Canaanite pantheon.

Dr Marjo Korpel and Professor Emeritus J.C. de Moor claim to have found the evidence on Ugaritic clay tablets of a 13th-century BCE story about the gods who lived on the slopes of Mount Ararat, in modern-day Turkey, in the 'vineyard of the great gods', identified with the Garden of Eden.

The top god was El the creator god and amongst the lesser gods in the pantheon or Elohim (children of El) were Adam and his wife. El is, of course, the Hebrew, Christian and Muslim god whom Arabic speakers still call Allah.

Saturday 14 June 2014

Silly Bible - The Fishy Tale Of Jonah

It's sometimes fun to read through the Bible and work out which of the tales in it is the least plausible, the most pointless, the least well thought out, etc.

A strong contender for all three of these is the story of Jonah. It must rate alongside the Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel stories as the silliest and, given that the Tower of Babel tale actually tries to explain why different people speak different languages so has some point to it, like Noah's Ark, the tale of Jonah doesn't actually offer anything by way explanation for anything we can observe.

Nor is it any more plausible because the scientific evidence shows that it couldn't have happened, although, to be fair to whomsoever made up the Jonah myth, at

Saturday 13 April 2013

Why Believe The Holy Books?

Is it the act of a rational person to believe the stories in the Bible or the Qur'an, or any other holy book? All you have is someone else's word for it that the events described actually happened yet you are expected to believe without question. Why is that rational just because these events were alleged to have happened a long time ago and a lot of people have believed them without question in the meantime?

Their belief didn't make the accounts come true, and they certainly didn't witness them. In effect, you are believing something highly unlikely simply because someone else did.

Why don't you do that with things you hear about today?

Try this little exercise for yourself:

Take any story you like from your holy book - stories about what the prophets did or said, or about what different tribes of people are said to have done, or stories about what a god allegedly said to someone - preferably stories which form the foundation of your faith but not necessarily so.

Now, imagine someone passing along your street told you that this event was happening right now, or had just happened, a mile down the road. Would it make any difference if this person wrote it down? Would you believe them or would you think they were deluded, mistaken or lying to you for some reason and probably selling you something?

I suggest that only the most gullible and credulous of people or the insane would believe these stories without at least asking to see the evidence, if they were reported as happening today.

Yet the people who wrote those stories down in the Bible or the Qur'an or other holy books either believed people who told them they had happened or expected other people to believe them without any available evidence. And that's exactly what you've done, if you believe those stories are actually true.

How is that different to believing the person walking along your street? More to the point, where does it leave your faith if you have no rational basis for believing the stories in your holy book?

Try the little exercise above and let me know which stories you would believe and what would convince you to take the word of a complete stranger that these extraordinary events were taking place just down the road today, without needing any evidence.





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Thursday 14 February 2013

Saint Valentine

St Valentine Kneeling In Supplication, David Teniers III (1638-1685)
Saint Valentine is one of many similar legendary saints of the Christian Church who appear to have been invented or is at best based on highly embroidered and increasingly elaborated accounts of one or more ancient people.

He first makes an appearance as a saint in 496 when Pope Gelasius I designated February 14 as his feast day, saying of him, apparently without the slightest hint of irony, that he is amongst those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." In other words, they're great men who undoubtedly should be revered - but we just don't know what they actually did.

'Knowledge' without any evidence was just as common amongst religious people, especially clerics, in those days as it is today it seems.

There are various accounts associating Valentine or Valentinus with being executed by the Emperor Claudius II in around about 270. In fact there appear to be at least three claimants to the title.
  • A Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni)
  • A Roman priest
  • Someone called Valentinus who was killed along with several companions in the Roman province of Africa.

All these are reputed to have been martyred on February 14 but, as is often the case with church 'history', when a saint is designated as having died on a given date that becomes the date on which they died, so it's hardly surprising that all three contenders for the title 'Saint Valentine' are now said to have dutifully been martyred on the official date. How dare it have been otherwise? The first two are also claimed to have been executed by Claudius II outside the Flaminium Gate but, again, how much of that is official church 'truth' and how much is real truth is probably impossible to say.

It has been suggested by the eighteenth century English antiquarians Alban Butler and Francis Douce that the Feast of St Valentine may have been an attempt to supplant the mid-February pagan feast of Lupercalia with a Christian one.

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.

Plutarch - Life of Caesar

So the connection with love and fertility may come from an ancient, even pre-Roman, pagan festival which subsumed the even earlier Februa from which we get 'February'.

Most of the traditions now associated with Saint Valentine's Day in the English-speaking world are believed to have come from Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Foules which is set in the context of a fictional tradition. There does not appear to be any basis for associating Valentine with lovers and a fourteenth century French Vies des Saintes has Valentine overseeing the building of his basilica at Terni but makes no mention of him being a patron of lovers. Of course, a great deal also owes it's origins to the commercial interests of the greetings card and chocolate industries.

Like so many early Christian martyr and saints, Valentine seems to have contrived to die in a way which provided the hundreds of relics which are now scattered throughout the Christian world. Valentine's various body parts can be found in Prague in the Czech Republic, Rome in Italy, Dublin in Ireland, Glasgow in Scotland, Birmingham in England, Roquemaure in France, Vienna in Austria, and Balzan in Malta, where they continue to attract visitors with gifts of money to show their devotion and to buy the cheaply-made tacky and mawkishly sentimental souvenirs.

As with so much else about the Catholic Church in particular, and Christianity in general, the distinction between legend, myth, invention and fact is obscure, irrelevant and merely incidental. The important thing is to keep the people ignorant, credulous, superstitious, fearful and in awe of the priesthood as the only means by which they can hope for jam tomorrow whilst accepting the hopelessness of today, and allowing the priesthood to get away with it.





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Friday 1 February 2013

God Hates Figs!

The Accursed Fig Tree, James Tissot (1836-1902)
Here's a strange tale from the Bible in which Jesus shows himself to not only not be an all-knowing god but to be a petty, vindictive tyrant and a braggart too. Perhaps Christians can explain it and discern a moral in the story.
And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest. And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.

And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
So, having been greeted by a multitude on his 'triumphal entry' into Jerusalem, Jesus can't find anyone to stump up a decent meal and has to go out hunter-gathering. But, even though he is allegedly the earthly form of an omniscient creator god he has to walk over to a fig tree to see if it has any figs.

On finding both the fig tree and his journey fruitless, and even though he has a reputation for being able to conjure up food for five thousand men plus their attendant women and children, and had, as God, at one time allegedly magicked up enough food and water to sustain three million Israelites for forty years in a desert, he can neither conjure up food for himself, nor make a fig tree bear fruit, so in a fit of peak he curses the fig tree and kills it, like a spoiled child having a tantrum.

Then, presumably still hungry and tetchy he goes back into Jerusalem and starts a riot in the temple for reasons which are not at all clear unless it was to make some obscure political point about socio-economic systems, ownership of capital or simply about trade and traders in general of which his adopted father was one. (See Was Jesus Against Capitalism?)

But it gets worse:
And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
Then they go back to Jerusalem to see the aftermath of the riots from the day before.

So, having gone without food the previous day and caused a riot in Jerusalem, Jesus and his gang spend the following morning walking back to Bethany, apparently just to see if the curse has worked on the fig tree.

When it clearly has, Jesus starts bragging about how he can do these things because he believes he can and how he could even throw a mountain into the sea if he wanted to. Apparently, you can have anything you want if you just have enough faith in God and believe your wishes come true.

So there you are: when God doesn't answer your prayers by doing whatever you want, it is your fault for not being faithful enough. Must pray harder and give more money to the priests...

Curiously though, none of his gang think to ask Jesus why, if he can kill a fig tree with words, and throw mountains about, he can't make a tree bear fruit or think up a loaf of bread.

Then, having had to listen to Jesus bragging about his magic powers and what he could do if he wanted to, they all trot off back to Jerusalem to face the music for the previous day's behaviour. We are never told whether Jesus and his hapless band ever managed to find any food.

Matthew tells a different version of this same tale. For Matthew the entire thing happened much more economically. None of that walking out the day before to find food and cursing the fig tree, then having to go back the next morning to see if the curse has worked. This all takes place the day after that spot of bother in Jerusalem and the beating up of the traders. Presumably, this Jesus and his gang had been suitably fed and watered that night by the jubilant multitude.
Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.

And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
In this version, the most impressive thing from the gang members' point of view is the speed at which the tree was killed. For those in Mark's version, taking a day to work was taken for granted; what mattered was that Jesus had such marvellous powers - as though they were still not fully convinced by the other demonstrations of power.

Strange how two different 'eye-witness' accounts can differ so greatly in detail where they can't agree even on when in the day it happened and how many times they went to the fig tree. But there is that same assurance that you can have and do anything you want if you just pray hard enough and believe what the priests say, and if if doesn't work, you only have yourself to blame.

But then, if you believe any of that, I have this bridge for sale...

(Credit for the inspired title goes to @skeppy4eyes)


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