Sorry Sherlock, Moses Wasn't High On Drugs

'According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.......the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared....."As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either. Or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics."

I'm not going to defend Moses on this one or ancient Jews in Israel. I'm sure there have always been plants and concoctions throughout time that have had mind altering affects.

There is evidence that the acacia tree was around in Israel 3300 hundred years ago. But there is no evidence Moses existed, and even "negative evidence" that the Exodus occurred.

The story of Moses and the Exodus was most certainly a work of fiction that most likely got orally transmitted around 650-800 AD, until it was finally written down by Ezra and company around 450 BC.

Again I will link this fascinating video "The Bible Unearthed." Seriously, watch the series if you are at all interested in this topic (the history of Judaism) whatsoever. It is a real eye opener.

I look at history this way. If something deemed historical "factually" describes a supernatural event, then it is not historical non fiction; it is historical fiction.
I've lived on this planet for 47 years, and I've yet to witness a supernatural event. Even in an age with all sorts of cameras, I've seen nothing recorded that is supernatural. I've yet to see anyone fly, or an amputee magically grow back a limb.
I've never heard God's voice or has anyone ever recorded God's voice. Invisible people don't go to my house and move furniture. When I see a tooth brush in the kitchen, I know my cat brought it down the stairs.

My point is, that in order for history to be put together, all sources that claim the supernatural need to be ignored as fantasy. Dated real letters, archaeological artifacts, secular historian writings, etc. is what needs to be looked at to figure out what really happened.

There should be lots of evidence that Jesus existed found dated between 1-40 AD for example. None is found. Doesn't mean he didn't exist, but it does mean that it is highly unlikely. We do know someone started Christianity, and it was probably Paul or someone exactly like Paul. But as Rook Hawkins from Rational Response Squad points out, Paul never talked about Jesus as a historical person.
So it is possible that Paul was smoking or snorting too much acacia.

The same is true with the Exodus, but if you watch the video, the case for the Exodus is even less probable than a historical Jesus. Canaan was already full of Egyptians at the time the Exodus was to have occurred, and monotheism didn't appear until between 650-450 BC. If oral history had any legs, there should be immediate evidence that Jews worshiped one God from the Exodus on. The evidence points that Jews were most likely an ethnicity first, and then the ethnicity started a religion followed by the masses in a localized area by 450 BC.

No doubt, the original writers of these stories had very good imaginations, and it is highly possible they were doing mind altering substances when they made the stuff up.

Sherlock Holmes' author Sir Conan Doyle had a heroin/coke habit. Great imagination. He even gave Holmes a heroin/morphine habit which apparently helped give Sherlock that extra edge to be the greatest detective ever.

The "Burning Bush" could easily of been an acacia tree on fire. And the affects on anyone breathing in the fumes would have made them awfully creative.

The original dude who made up the Exodus/Moses story probably sounded a lot like Cheech and Chong with a middle eastern accent. No doubt he thought he was talking to that bush and the bush was talking back, giving him "the history" of Jewish people.

Tagged: Six Unimportant Things About Me

I've been tagged by fellow Canadian atheist and Zionist extraordinaire Robert Jago from A Dime A Dozen blog.

Meme: Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

There are so many "unimportant" things about me, that choosing 6 is a bit of a task. I'll give it a shot any hoot:

1. I have a hard time throwing things out. Like record albums I will most probably never play again, and even tapes as well.

2. When I start thinking about mortality, I have learned to quickly find something entertaining to do.

3. I've always been attracted to older women, well until recently when I hit 45. I'm still not into 20 year olds though. Important thing note: My wife never reads my blog:)

4. When I dream I almost always have a full head of hair.

5. I've been a pacer all my life (I just caught myself pacing while thinking about what to write here). I sometimes worry about stupid stuff too. I'll check to see if my dog, Daisy is breathing alright if I wake in the middle of the night (she has slept on our bed since she was a puppy). I never check to see if my wife is breathing though:)

6. I cognizantly avoid manual labour whenever possible.

I will now tag The Temple Whore, Basiorana, Rondi, Lex, and Gert.

Before I click Publish Post, I want to let my readers know of a few blog sites I've been hanging around of late:
God Is For Suckers has always been a fave of mine. Atheist Media keeps finding great stuff and updates quite a few times a day. The new kid in town, The Atheist Blogger, has been able to attract a few off the wall Fundy commenters which leads to some entertaining discussions. And finally, speaking of off the wall Fundies, check out Christian Cross Talk. The guy is nuts. So far gone, that many people think he is a sarcastic atheist. Not me though, he seems to be just an extreme assmonkey Fundy. One thing I admire about him though, he is still allowing us lowly atheists to comment to our hearts content, something almost unheard of when it comes to Fundy bloggers.

Americans Just Can't Decide Which God Is Right

Wow. 44% of Americans have changed religion from the one they were raised in to the one (or none) that they are in now. That is amazing. You'd figure that today's religions have figured out how to make their Good Books solid by now:)
Which religion is attracting the highest amount of recruits? Those who affiliate themselves with NO religion. I realize this includes many who believe in God, but just don't buy into the crap that religion has to offer, but it includes many who have morphed into atheist or agnostic, like me.
No surprise, the Protestants (the Fundy ones) are losing the highest percentage of their flock. The Fundy lies that are taught, like the Great Flood, a young earth, and their anti-evolution bs, has no doubt turned many faithful into doubters. Once they figure out about the lies, and yes, Young Earth Creationism is a proven lie, impressionable intelligent most likely question everything to do with their forced upon religion and then the existence of Jesus, Moses and God himself/herself/itself.

The survey didn't give reasons for change in religions. I'm sure marriage is a big one. The stringent rules that Catholicism offers probably turns a few off especially when it comes to the simplicity that goes with being a Baptist.
Baptists can go to strip joints as observers and even attempt to save the odd stripper, where Catholics have to repent for even thinking about going into such an establishment.
I have to think that the big reason for switch is what I mentioned earlier. We are in the information age, and the internet, schools, and nature/science TV shows have to have a major influence on making quite a few people just shake their heads when it comes to religion.
Note to Fundies: Start accepting evolution, or your flock will disappear slowly but surely. All that will be left will be a bunch of low IQ Yokels. Look up theistic evolution and bend your Holy Book a tad so that you can accept science instead of deny science.

Recent Science News As Viewed By A Creationist

I invited guest blogger Joe Yokel (a Young Earth Creationist) to share his views on a recent scientific discovery. Take it away Joe:

Huge Frog Was Eating Machine

With an armored head and a mammoth 16-inch body, it wasn't quite the frog prince. Scientists have discovered the remains of what might have been the largest and fattest frog ever to have lived on Earth.

A team of researchers unearthed the fossilized frog in Madagascar. Dating from about 65 million to 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, the frog is 3.5 inches longer than the largest living frog, the goliath frog of West Africa.

The idea of animals being bigger a long time ago is nothing new. Back during the time of the Ark, reptiles were much larger, evolutionists call them dinosaurs. Noah most probably transported either very young dinosaurs or more likely dinosaur eggs when God made him take two of each kind with him on his voyage.

Of course, the Liberal media has fallen for the so called dating lie. Scientists add quite a few zeros to the age of their findings in order to make their religion of evolution possible. Here for instance, they added 4 zeros (I did the math) to the actual date of the fossils.

In another article on the same find, they refer to the frog as a Devil Toad. This is another bash against Christianity by calling it a Devil. But more importantly, it shows that scientists can't even tell the difference between a toad and a frog, yet they want us to buy into the rest of their crap. If the fossil gave the scientist a wart, it was a toad, if it didn't, it was a frog, pretty simple. But they still don't know much.

It also says that this frog or toad ate baby dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs. Aha!, now we know a reason why there are no more big dinosaurs anymore. I may have to rethink the idea that dinosaurs were today's reptiles, with this new revelation, it could easily be deducted that both small and large reptiles could have gone on the Ark.

Of course, when these large frogs ate the last dinosaur eggs, they had to settle for smaller meals and eventually over 5000 or so years evolved to get smaller.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Another Embarrassment

Christopher Hitchens isn't the most likable guy in the world. He is sort of like the Simon Cowell of the secular world. But aside from that, he was given the very easy task of "debating" Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. The topic was "Does God Exist?"


I don't want to get too repetitive here, lots of comments can be found on other blogs and the Youtube video comment section. The main blog post can be found here at 92Y.

What really pissed me off about Shmuley (I really like that name) was his ignorance. Typical of creationists. He doesn't even know what he believes when it comes to evolution. On one hand he says Stephen Gould wasn't an evolutionist because he believed in punctuated equilibrium, which of course does not mean he wasn't an evolutionist, yet on the other hand he says that he himself believes in evolution...guided by God...which the majority of Christians and Jews believe. However, he also asked where are the transitional fossils (there should be lots more if evolution is a reality according to the rabbi).
In other words, he is full of crap.

He also went on about the evolution of the eye. He is either stupid or lying when it comes to evidence regarding the topic.
He tried to debate God existed by attacking evolutionists and evolution. As soon as someone does that, the debate becomes pointless. Evolution is fact, and evolution does not mean God exists one way or the other. Of course, it rules out quite a few Gods (especially the ones who poofed man into existence).

Hitchens must have felt like he was shooting fish in a barrel. It is embarrassing to watch anyone try to prove God by dissing evolution.

Note: If you watched the entire video, an argument was left unanswered regarding whether a rabbinical court in Israel declared that it was right to deny a non Jew in distress help during the Sabbath. It seems the answer is still up for debate, though on the surface it looks like Hitchens wasn't wrong citing the example.

Also upon reading the comments, it seems that Shmuley never debated Dawkins nor was he the chief rabbi at Dawkins. This comes as no surprise. Shmuley is just a very bad liar.

Great point made a few times by Hitchens: Just because you don't like the facts and implications of what science has proven regarding evolution and the fate of the universe, doesn't mean that one should seek an alternative baseless story to feel better.