Question:|Religious Fanatics: Christianism; Muslimism; Jewishism; an' Other fun-duh-"mental-isms"|Forum|Forum: Apocalypse & Armageddon

QUESTION:

I've got a Christian friend asking me to research mirror neurons because he's afraid of what pornography is doing to our society, which I think is funny since porn is a byproduct of our society. Anyway, between that and this one conspiracy theory chick who is constantly sending me weird links (sometimes up to ten per day for over six months now), I am pretty over the weirdo anti-porn whatnot. "Christian" wants me to read a tome on mirror neurons and I just don't have time. What are your scholarly thoughts on the Christian anti-porn ideas. This person wouldn't call himself anti-gay, per se, but through medicine he states that the mortality rate for homosexuals is far less than heterosexuals. And to that I say, "Quality over quantity. Everything balances out." The judgmental crap is getting on my nerves.

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You do realize I can be a not so nice person when it comes to knowing that Religion is the number one enemy of a Free People. The Bible literally causes people to think delusionary.

Can your "Christian" friend answer me why both Matthew and Luke are lying about Jesus' Family tree, beginning on page 1 of the New Testament? In other words the authors (plural) of the New Testament are making shit up from the very first page. And obviously for Political purposes.

And you cannot hope to run a modern society on shit that was made up 2 millenniums ago.

If he answers one genealogy of Matthew is for the Virgin Mary and the one in Luke is for step-daddy Joseph (their standard excuse; and also an outright lie), it shows right there he hasn't really read it. He is just repeating what preachers have told him. And Preachers are Professional Liars, because if they weren't they couldn't be a preacher.

Play dumb when you ask questions and let him give you their standard pack of lies. They hate evolution but they sure play the tune of monkey hear, monkey say.

You can't teach "spirituality" with lies.

And neither genealogy in Matthew or Luke even match the family trees as given in the Old Testament.

It only takes 15 minutes to write Matthew and Luke out side-by-side. But nobody ever does this. It is just too much trouble. It's also frightening to them to prove to theirselves that their sacred book was a scam from page one.

So in 15 minutes by writing the genealogies out in parallel columns you can prove that the Bible is not the "Infallible" "Word of God" and is in fact, from the very beginning, the first page of the New Testament, a collection of Political writings trying to replace Judaism, which the Romans had run out of Jerusalem as a bunch of funking religious fanatics. It's where today we get the word "Zealot" from.

And what's with the deal in the New Testament of grown men actually arguing over whether or not God wants only guys with circumcised penises in Heaven? That should be a Red Flag enough for anybody with a little common sense. "Nope, your penis looks ugly in God's eyes so you have to go straight to hell."

Any good Psychiatry college textbook will tell you the Number One Reason for guilt and sexual neuroses is religion.

Religion wants to control sex because it only wants children born into its own religion so it can take over the world on sheer reproductive numbers. This is what the abortion issue is really all about.

The Catholic church is full of child molesters telling people they should throw their youth away raising unwanted children. Preaching is the number one Confidence-artist game in the world. And if we did not have laws in place to prevent it they would be burning people at the stake again still today. If they could get in control here it would be just as bad as it is in the Middle East bloodbath going on today. Can we say "Catholic & Protestant civil war in Ireland--and the fuckers are both "Christians." I compared 8 different churches' Bible versions, and there isn't enough of a difference in them, at all, for all their petty pointing fingers at each other to accuse each other of having the wrong Dogma in God's eyes. The wrongness is in the Priest's and Preacher's eyes.

You can only have healthy sex after you are married in a God approved religion, and then you can only have sex for the procreation of children. Sex just for fun or recreation is a "Sin." They don't even know where the word "Sin" comes from.

When Terah, Abraham's father, is taking his tribe of semites out of the land of their birth in Ur of Chaldea (Sumeria), they are leaving the land of "Sin" who was the Moon God (or the Moon personified as the god "Sin"). And all the Chaldeans who worshiped the Moon god Sin were called "Sinners."

So all the Chaldeans who worshiped different than the migratory (bedouin-esque) semite Shemites (from Shem, the son of Noah of the flood story whom Terah and Abraham are descended from) are all "Sinners."

So as the semite Shemites migrate to different regions of Mesopotamia, anyone they run into who worship differently (Moon gods, Sun gods, Sea gods etc..) become known as "sinners" as a term also. And "Sin" is just anybody not following semite Shemite social rules, which is pretty much everybody else in the known world. "Everybody but us is sinners," and does that still sound familiar thousands of year later?

If you want to see "Original Sin" then just step right outside on a clear night and look up into the sky at the Man on the Moon.

It is Abraham the semite Shemite who is first mentioned as being a "Hebrew."

There are no "Jews" in the Bible yet, they aren't mentioned until the the book of Esther. "Jew" is basically a word that came into usage between the writing of (most of) the Old Testament books and the New Testament books. What scholars refer to as the Intertestamental period between the Old Testament Babylonian Empire through the Persian Empire and the inter-testamental Greeks to the coming of the New Testament Romans. It is by the usage of terms like "Jews" that we can date when certain books were actually written compared to when their author claims they were written. And king Ahasuerus, by-the-way, who Esther married, you know better by his Persian name of Xerxes whose Persian forces fought "The 300" Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae.

There were no Israelites yet during the time of the semite Shemites Hebrews of Abraham. The Israelite term would come later with the sons of Jacob leaving the land of the Canaanites (a.k.a. the Phoenicians, who gave us the Phoenician alphabet and books from Byblos from where we get the term "Bible," the papyrus book) and migrating to Egypt. In actual Egyptian writings they refer to Jacob's progeny as only Canaanites.

The real usage of the term Israelite isn't used until the Egyptians (their version) run (A)Moses and his Canaanites out of Egypt after the volcano Thera (Santorini) caused one of the largest eruptions in recorded history which caused a Tsunami that wiped out the Minoan culture and caused an ecological disaster in Egypt known as the 10 Plagues of the book of Exodus.

And when the Egyptians ran the semites off, they were known then as the Hyksos Dynasty who then settled a city in Philistia (a.k.a. Palestine) called Jebus, which later would be called Salem, which later would be renamed Jeru-Salem. That is another way we can tell what time period a Biblical book was actually written in by how it names places when the author wrote it.

And, by-the-way, at the beginning of the book of Joshua where God promises to give Joshua the entire Holy Land and no one will ever be able to stand against him; God lied. God didn't help Joshua overthrow Jeru-salem, which was then called Jebus (Joshua 15:63), "At Jerusalem, the men of Judah were unable to drive out the Jebusites who live there, and so to this day Jebusites and men of Judah live together in Jerusalem." Somehow they left that part out back when I used to go to church. Church left out a lot of stuff they don't like to talk about.

Thus, the Palestinians are the Philistines who had settled in Canaan (Southern Phoenicia) well before the coming of the Jews (so whose land historically is it really) into the Kingdom of their God, which at the height of its combined powers of the Northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria, and Armageddon--the valley of Megiddo--by the way) and the Southern Kingdom of Judah (Jerusalem), was never much bigger than the State of New Jersey, for all of about 2 generations (David & Solomon) before they split it up again. Some Big Ol' Kingdom of God, ay! Funny how everybody everywhere thinks their city, state or nation is the "chosen one" in their god's eyes. You'd think human beings were just naturally territorial animals wouldn't you.

"And then the Israelites did" what they always do in the Old Testament, "something wrong in God's eyes," and he kicks them in the nuts and gives their land over to foreign kings. You'd think they'd learn after the first dozen times or so of fucking up in God's eyes in the 4 books of Kings & Chronicles. But the Israelites never seem to learn their lesson of doing those wrong things that they keep doing wrong in God's eyes. There it is right in the Bible, over and over and over again, just a traditional bunch of in God's eyes Wrongdoers.

Of course, one of the wrongest things the Israelites did was give the Jewish spin-off Cult of Christianity their "Old Testament" scriptures--out of chronological order--so that the Christians couldn't make heads or tails out of whether the Old Testament books were actually prophecy or historical fiction. So thanks guys for spinning-off a Cult of two-thousand years of Bible verse cherry picking religious fanatics. Goddamn blood appears to be on everybody's hands!

You know, as a literary work the Bible has some profound philosophy running through it. But the religious fanatic only gloms onto those supernatural stories he can use to justify trying to take over society in his god's (sic) name. Turn the other cheek, but burn the heretic at the stake.

And what I hate worst of all is how they are sneaky little bastards always trying to take over your Public School Boards or slip through legislation favoring the merging of Church & State while everybody else is just trying to get on with their lives. God must love a Sneak!

But first some background on why the people are manipulated to vote against their own best and self-interest. Amendment I of the Constitution first guarantees Freedom from Religious inspired Laws before the subordinate clause of freedom of religion.

Any Religious Organization that attempts to coerce secular legislation to force the rest of society to conform to their mores and morals has self-admitted that their brand of spirituality is not powerful or authentic enough to convert others by its own merits. Especially Religious Organizations calculating on tax exempt deduction donations funded by… the Company Store.

These Preachers are in Bed with the Company Stores.

And when "Globalist" Foreign Bankers, Manufacturers & Importers who disguise themselves as American companies by having office space here or listing themselves on "our" (e.g. filthy rich man's casino) stock exchange, and then make huge campaign contributions (i.e. bribes) to their oligarchical front men politicians whom dupe The People by soliciting Votes on Religious "Values" that belong in Church among their Congregations, but not in promoting alleged moral Amendments to the Constitution, such as the forced peer pressure conformity of school prayer (which runs counter to Jesus' own words in Matthew 6:1 through {especially 6:5} 6:7), and then get in office and create de-regulation of The Sherman Anti-trust Act and trade tariffs and tax breaks to move blue collar manufacturing (to Nation-, Red, -state Communist China), and even move Internet-computer-terminal white collar office space jobs (to India) out of the US to create an economic downturn Depression, third-world labor market, Here, so as to not have to pay working adults more than 50 cents per hour over minimum wage, hired through pseudo Temporary Agencies, with no health care or retirement benefits, while trying to Privatize public services by selling them off to their Campaign Contributors.

And the Delusional Religious Voting Bloc keeps buying into this bullshit over and over and over again hook, line and stinker.

NOTE: If you run into problems clicking on links simply highlight the link and use Ctrl C and then open a new tab and enter that link Ctrl V on your Address bar and search it.

Well, here is the quick link for reading about "Mirror Neurons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....or_neurons

Some mirror neurons basically fire in the brain when you watch porn the same as specific regular (normal) neurons fire in the brain while you are actually having sex.

So what!

Mirror neurons also fire in the brain while you are watching basketball; watching dancing with stars; watching home improvement DIY​ and cooking TV​ shows; or watching monkeys figure out how to stack boxes to figure out how to reach a banana on a shelf.

Mirror neurons are the learning neurons for "Monkey See, Monkey Do." Mirror neurons allow you to read a book and then change the spark plugs in your car. Or read a Harlequin Romance novel while masturbating. Monkey want to fuck his wife more skillfully, monkey should probably watch porn (NOTE: some porn positions are informative in nature and you might not want to try them at home as porn stars are trained professionals).

As usual, self-proclaimed "Christians" are fucked (pun intended) in the head about sex. It's called brain-washing.

This nonsense about "their fear" of what pornography is doing to "their society" is supposed to mean that by simply watching porn your brain's mirror neurons are vicariously making you commit Sin and your Soul is now doomed to Hell and being forced to eat okra and watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show for all eternity.

Any sex that is not for producing baby Christians is a Sin and will cause you to go straight to Hell, do not pass GO! do not collect $200, unless you can find a Preacher to bribe Jesus--with that $200--for you. Jesus makes a pretty good living and sure has a lot of his franchise buildings, churches, collecting nasty-dirty guilty-feelings bribes from the bipedal hominids.

Porn has done more to make people's attitudes about sex become more healthy--since the end of World War II with the advent of home movie projectors--away from religion's neurotic brain-washing, than any high school health class.

Here's a challenge for Doctor​ C. : Find me any good college text book on Psychiatry that does not say the number one reason for guilt and sex neuroses is religious strictures and tenets.

It's brain-washing, and they try to start it with children as young as they can. Don't you want to be good just like baby Jesus?​ Baby Jesus never cried at all for no reason! Baby Jesus never even shit his diapers because supernatural ​fictional characters don't poop!

Why should grown adults be regulated by secular laws about sex designed by people whose whole paradigm about reality is religiously delusional? That sounds like someone attempting to make a law respecting an establishment of religiously approved sex to me. Isn't there a 1st Amendment about that? "Christians" just seem God-awful obsessed with sex don't "They?"

If they don't want members of their own congregations having sex except in the "missionary" position, and only for the purpose of making more Mirror Neuron ​Moron little baby Christians, that's okay for them. But it is none of their fucking (pun intended) business what anybody else who does not belong to their church is doing.

They are knee-jerk reactionary Jerks (pun again intended) who think prayer to Jesus will solve dishonest CEOs from embezzling their company's bank account; all the while Preachers are raking in dough and picking their pockets off the very guilt feelings the Preachers themselves planted in their own congregations heads. It is the slickest Confidence Game in the World.

If a Con-artist swindles you on the street we can arrest him and put him in prison. If a Con-artist Preacher is running a scam on his congregation in church we pretty much have to let the suckers take it. Religious Fanatics get the phony spirituality (religion) they deserve.
​
Everybody, down on your knees to the Preachers ("And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the temples and at the street corners, that they may be seen by other men. Truly, I say to you, that is their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."--Jesus, Matthew 6:5). No Temples? No Preachers? No prayer in Schools? Who do we give the money to? Lady Madonna? Who finds the money when you pay the rent? Did you think that money was Heaven sent?

The economy is a wreck with our US manufacturing base having been moved off-shore by Politicians elected who ran on pro-school prayer and anti-abortion "Moralist" platforms, supported by the Preachers they give tax deductible religious contributions to, and then sold U.S. out. Those Politicians and Preachers are the two sides of the same unholy coin. They are in bed together protecting each other from common sense discovery.

​
​https://www.apocalypseandarmageddon.org/forum/?page_id=4/why-so-many-preachers-politicians-lie-to-their-congregations-constituents/psychopaths-in-priests-preachers-politicians-clothing​

We are throwing good money after bad with the Ghost of Richard Nixon's whole War on Drugs, which is just "Prohibition Jr.," because of Religious idiots wanting to use your taxes to put every pot head in prison for smoking the Devil's weed. And taking the Devil's weed to the extreme that we are losing a whole new Tax Base for Farmers to grow non-dope Devil's Hemp. That's called being High and to the Right! Because it sure ain't on the Center of the (Smarts) Target.

And even the funking Liberal politicians (many just pseudo-con lite) are afraid to do too much about Hemp Farming too soon (enough) because of the delusional/religious voting bloc having these religious conceptions that are INSIDIOUS in the back of people's minds. "But what if they are right and what I'm doing is a 'Sin' and my Soul might be ca$t in Hell if I don't repent in Je$us' name." And even the Liberals $till have to get elected. It is an election $ystem that has been encroached by the delusional/religious voting bloc, and the Pseudo-Con Politicians are laughing all the way to their Wall $treet Bankers.

This is why Minister Shelley can suck in ex-porn stars and parade them in front of her congregation, which only enriches herself, because the religious brain-washing is still so insidious in the back of people's minds. "Maybe my Sin of being in porn caused God to give me Aids and the only way I can save my Soul now is to repent. Momma told me when I was little, it was a Sin and God would 'get me' for doing it."

Is this the same God who could not design a perfect world and so in a temper tantrum decided to drown and murder everybody in it except for Noah's family, thereby causing them to commit incest in order to repopulate His same hasty creation? Maybe God should have taken nine or ten days to create the whole Universe instead of just six days, before taking His nap. That does seem a touched quick.​ And why did God have to Murder all the animals in the Flood too. That Jewish Old Testament God, plagiarised from the Sumerians' Flood Story, sure is a Prick.​

When religion learned that the main instinctual survival drive in humans is the sex drive, it strive​d​ to control people by claiming any non-religion approved sex is a Sin. So if you want to have non-Sin God-approved Sex, you must join the religion and pay your $unday due$.

There can be no fucking except the fucking the church and God, and his self-appointed Preachers, approve of. Got It!

​ And, then, amazing how many reports about Preachers getting caught committing acts of Adultery with members of their congregation or molesting their children. Wake the Fuck up People!​

Seems to me it is Organized Religion that is fucking the whole World. Organized Religion is The Curse of Mankind.

No telling where humanity might be investigating in the solar system today, and what riches of discovery we would know of the Real Creation of the Cosmos and of Supreme Being​, if it hadn't been for the oppression of religious mind control and the Politicians who abuse and take advantage of​ it for Graft. We quit going to the Moon because it wasn't exciting enough to help win any elections. What wins elections is calling yourself the "Moral Choice" candidate. Then you can help the other politicians embezzle the Treasury for their campaign contributors.

{NOTE: in case there is anybody still out there that doesn't know it, F.U.C.K. is a legal term acronym that means: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. So anybody who is having legal consensual sex cannot possibly be "F.U.C.K.ing" in any way, shape or form but metaphorically. In Fear & Loathing parlance the acronym F.U.C.K. is: Facts Utilized for the Conveyance of fucking Knowledge. It is religious moralists who try to force everybody else to think certain "words" are "dirty," since the rest of us couldn't give a rat's ass or ​damn about such waste of time nonsense. It is always about their trying to enforce their thought "Control" beyond their own churches.}

A lot of people simply go to church to find a spouse (can we say ChristianMingle.com for those poor souls church doesn't even help) just so they can get laid legally; because Jesus is like the ultimate peeping-tom motherfucker (God got his mother pregnant, and Jesus is Gawd, so another motherfucking pun intended) keeping his eye on everybody for potential Living in Sin. Busy little peeping-tom ​prick isn't he.

Oh...,
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Jesus Christ is Rapturing soon

He sees who you are sleeping with
He sees you masturbate
He knows if you've been bad or good
So confess your sins to date

Oh...,
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Jesus Christ will get you in The End

Anybody got a list of Preachers chased off for committing adultery with members of their congregations. Happened in my Mother-in-law's church. Happens all the time. Jim Bakker? Jimmy Swaggart? Where are they now? Prayer sure kept them safe from Sin, didn't it. How about those Preachers who ran off with the church's money or tried to hire a hit man to have his wife murdered? I'm sure Jesus will forgive them if they only ask, since He's so good about that kind of stuff. ​ Like Jesus forgiving Homo-bully Pastor Ted Haggard for getting caught with his pants down around his ankles and snorting crystal meth and sucking dick himself.​ Still see ol' Ted show up as a religious expert on FOX News Network; imagine that.

Prayer, as performed in Church (or school) is not about Spirituality. It is a forced act of Group Conformity, and an act of Compunction. It is peer pressure to conform to the Group ethos. It becomes a lynch mob looking to hang (bully) the non-conformist. There's a lesson to make sure they teach to your kids.

What they are doing when they come up with these "Mirror Neuron" type of theories is the same thing they always do, grasping at any straw to prove their arguments about the superiority of their brain-washing over everything else. They claim science is un-Godly and just another theory, but use science to transmit electromagnetism signals on TV asking for money. They don't just cherry-pick the Bible, they cherry-pick "science" too.

And if you show them their theory is bullshit, then they will apologize and then just start looking for another theory. Their whole "deal" is to keep you baffled with their bullshit while they attempt to usurp your Constitutional Rights and take over your Country​ (period).

It's always really about Control and Power and the love of Money wearing the Masque of spirituality.

And whenever you don't call them on their "Bullshit!" they will run over you.

Human beings are predatory animals. Some even have weak egos and can't control their ids to the point of being sociopaths or psychopaths and are going to be criminals, murderers, back-stabbers, tyrants, con-artists, religious fanatics, etc... and no amount of prayer by other con-artist Preachers and their congregations is going to change that. Most Preachers are preying on their own congregations. And we have prisons full of plenty of people who used to go to church.

It is "Self-fulfilling prophecy." "If all other people aren't converted and don't go to our church--and only our church--God is such a prick he will keep the world a troubling, worrisome and dangerous place." And since there is no way they can convert 7.243​ Billion people in the Real World, they always keep their Preacher in a job. Remember, it was the Preacher's black slave that started the whole Salem witch-hunt, which was really started over a land dispute.

God is such a prick, He sent Satan to fuck over Job's entire life just to win what amounted to a bar bet. "Watch this everybody, Job will never say anything bad about Me no matter what I allow to happen to him." Maybe Job forgot to pay His Protection Money. Is God in the Extortion Racket? Then God let Job win the Bible version of the lottery and all was forgiven. What a book!

"What we need is to get tough on crime, improve our schools, and pray more, and God will make the whole world be like the old TV show Father Knows Best forever and ever." Again, most Preachers and Politicians are opposite sides of the same Coin. One religious law, the other economic law. You are their Ca$h Cow caught in between them!

Unfortunately, Stupid Dancing Naked Apes do not really change things until there is some absolute crisis that demands they change things. Usually takes something like an act of god (you know, earthquake, tsunami, drought, volcano, hurricane, nuclear power generator melt down). So I don't see any cure for religious toxic mental poisoning any time soon.

It's a slow God Damned (pun intended--God, Big "G" Supreme Being, Condemn them) process, while we watch the Mirror Neuron ​Morons pollute the Planet and shit in their own nest and not care about their great-grandchildren's environment or quality of life as beasts of burden, because, hey now, there is a Better Life/Party in the Afterlife, after death, Kissing God's Ass 24/7 for ALL ETERNITY:

"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to Our Gawd (sic) who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!' And all the angels stood round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped Gawd, saying, 'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our Gawd FOR EVER AND EVER! Amen.' " --The Apocalypse of St. John (a.k.a. Revelation 7:9); and this from a Bible book author who couldn't even name the 12 tribes of Israel correctly.

Sounds like a deal to me, where do I fucking sign up?

Oh Yeah, and... :

...and you might enjoy:
http://www.writing.com/main/vi.....f-Eternity

And in case you wonder, I'm a Pantheist myself, just hanging out in the evolved Supreme Being (Utter Existence) of the Creation of the Cosmos:
http://www.writing.com/main/vi.....-Emanation
( just read/substitute the "Big Bang" for the Kabbalah term "Emanation" )

And here is a Historical Jesus the New Testament story character Jesus was probably based upon:
http://www.apocalypseandarmage.....ical-jesus

"Reader's Digest (sort'a) Condensed" Biblical research:

The other day when I was working on a piece about The Two Old Testament Kingdoms & The Two New Testament Churches, I literally had 7 books spread over the desk, printer and floor--either open or bookmarked--and was bouncing back and forth between them looking things up. I pretty much know where to flip to pretty quick because I've read (and highlighted & underlined and scribbled in the margins) these reference books (and both versions of the Bible I had out) and can flip to the pages I need fairly quickly.

But how about for other people who better want to understand the Bible without all the baggage of some particular Religious perspective getting in the way of understanding the Bible as a library of ancient BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) books that were collected over about a 1000 year period and have a somewhat Israel, Judah, Babylonia, Assyria (Nineveh), Egypt, Persian, and Greek & Rome slant to them.

I compared many (let's call it 8 or more) versions of the Bible and have done extensive comparisons of mistranslations from English back to Hebrew & Greek meanings and found The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, c. 1972 CE, New York, Oxford University Press, is one of the most readable Bibles, as literature, which I often compare verses with Oxford's, King James Version (because so many people rely [are hung-up] on the KJV word-for-word) The New Scofield Reference Bible.

You could do it the long way by comparing these two​, New English & Scofield,​ Bible versions paragraph by paragraph with the 12 Volume The Interpreters Bible which ​itself ​ uses a parallel column per page verse by verse readings of both the King James Version & The Revised Standard Version. But even with the wealth of information given between chapters of the various books of these two Bibles, there is still a
​ slight​ "Christian" slant to the wealth of its scholarship notes, and with Volume 1 alone being some 1100 pages and only covering a discussion of the Bible's first two​ books of Genesis & Exodus. And there are 11 more Volumes after that to work your way through The Old and New Testaments for about 12,000 plus pages.

Not many people are going to do that. So I often get asked by people if they'd like a reasonably good understanding of the Bible without having to do much more reading effort than as if​ just sitting down to read The Hobbit & The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, how can they do it.

Again, I suggest if you are going to have a Bible as literature to read, The New English Bible with the Apocrypha is very readable. The main reason to keep a KJV (King James Version) around is mainly for
​ verse​ comparison because some people will only make their arguments by quoting verses directly from the KJV, as if they think God Himself only wrote the Bible in the British King's English. The very "fact" that it is any "King​'s version" should tell you that Bible had Politics behind the translation.

By the way, the books of The Apocrypha are some of those Jewish Books found with The Dead Sea Scrolls that were composed between the completions of the writing of the books of the Old Testament & the beginning of the writing of the Letters [Epistles], books and Gospels of the New Testament, and originally were included in the KJV but were later dropped out (Oops! So I guess that original KJV collection wasn't really all that infallible after all, was it).

I think having The Apocrypha books included is important for Biblical study as: (1) they are included in many other than American Southern Bible-belt versions of the Bible; and (2) they fill in the blanks of some important information about what was happening in the Ancient World at the time of their writing, and illuminate what is going on in other Old Testament books.

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One of my quick background references is How Came The Bible, 1940 CE, by Edgar J. Goodspeed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_J._Goodspeed ) who taught at the University of Chicago. It is only about 135 pages and​ takes you through, simply, how the various books of the Bible were collected by the Jews and Christians over 10 Centuries by Priests, and their redactors & scribes, various translations and versions "published" right up to modern times when some early English translators & publishers were put to Death like criminals by kings & their churches simply for trying to translate & publish the Bible in English so everybody else could read it for themselves.

But after 36 years of Comparative Religion & Bible research, I've found the best​, most convenient,​ "Reader's Digest Condensed" Bible reference books to be​ (originally in 2 volumes, but lately published together in 1 book) is Asimov's Guide To The Bible, The Old Testament & The New Testament (and includes The Apocrypha)​ 1969 CE, by Isaac Asimov ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov ). Asimov's Guide is written so a layman can understand the secular rest of what was going on in the larger Ancient World right along side all the Bible's​ drama & pageantry​​ of the relatively insignificant and small kingdoms of Israel & Judah located in the middle of the Superpowers' of the Day, Trade Routes.​

Keep in mind most Bible verses Asimov uses are from the KJV or The Revised Standard Version. So there could be minor differences in how the translator of your Bible version worded a particular verse. Realistically, of the 8 plus Bible versions I've compared there is not enough difference between what is being told in the Bible stories to make all the fuss people make over their version being superior to others, except for readability. ​Does it really matter if you read something like "And so the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered mighty Babylon" or a different version might write the same sentence "All of mighty Babylon was conquered by Persian king Cyrus the Great." ​ ​People forget that translating from one language into another language is often not a simple word-for-word substitution process. ​
​And, ​​every one of those 8-plus Bible versions have specific mistranslations to advance one Church's doctrine over others. Every one of the "Christian" Bible versions, for instance, mistranslates the Hebrew word for "Messiah" in the Old Testament as an "Anointed" One in order to confuse their congregations into thinking that there were not hundreds of Jewish Kings & High Priests who carried the title of office "Messiah" so that their Bible version readers think New Testament Jesus was the only "Messiah" in the Bible, and that the word means some kind of God's only Superhero. It doesn't, as that would be Jewish blasphemy. But every one of the English "Christian" versions of the Bible hide this fact from you for Political reasons. And that's lying by omission and ain't Spiritual!

You can take all 12 volumes and 12,000 plus pages of The Interpreters Bible and pretty much get out of Asimov's Guide To The Bible all the essential information. And sitting down and reading each Biblical chapter section of Asimov's Guide To The Bible along side each chapter/book of The New English Bible with the Apocrypha shouldn't take you any longer than reading The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings trilogy (come on, we know you read faster now than you did back in high school). Asimov's Guide is like Cliff's Notes, but with all the important background scholarly detail.

Then when you are finished you'll have a working knowledge of the Bible that most SOB Televangelists, Priests, Preachers and that Religious Fanatic at work always pestering you, can't come close to. You'll soon discover that most Preachers & Religious Fanatics are bullshitting everybody about what is really in the Bible and are cherry picking Bible passages to try to win secular Political arguments for their agenda, which is nothing less than trying to take over your Country & the World if you let them. Their agenda has always been Political and not Spiritual. And their Political Advantage has always been (and continues to be) Nobody actually reads the Bible and knows they are Lying.

Other than these short pieces that I write once in awhile for the Apocalypse & Armageddon web site (which most people can't remember two weeks from now or tie into the Bigger Picture), that's about as Easy as I can suggest as a Biblical Self-help course. God is Love; Turn the other cheek; and Burn The Heretics at the Stake! What, Me Worry?

NOTE: Asimov also wrote a pretty good 3 Volume set of books on Physics that has been used for Freshman University classes as Isaac Asimov was also a Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University besides being a prolific writer of fiction. One of my favorites is his book on The Neutrino.

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