The Bible's Big Lie: God's Creation Was Not Originally "Very Good"

By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

The world-renowned Christian theologian, Reverend Matthew Fox, recently presented the following statement on his "Daily Meditations" Facebook site: “Even the story in Genesis begins not with the human but with light; and then all the other beings; and lastly humans. And it was called as a whole, ‘very good’.” In a comment of mine to this statement of Matthew's, I first responded with this countering statement: "The Bible also says: 'the earth is firmly fixed on foundations and shall never be moved.' The earth is actually moving very fast around the sun."

The Old Testament God's statement found in Genesis 1:31 that claims the creation, at the time of its completed origins, was "very good" is a lie. It is a worse lie than the Bible's lie that claims "the earth is firmly fixed on foundations and shall never be moved."

It is a worse lie because the central dogma of the Roman Catholic and an essential doctrine of all Christian churches depends on it being true for their authenticity. This is not the way it was with the scientific discovery of a moving earth. The scientific discovery of evolution and its long brutal history proves that it is a lie: that God's creation was originally "very good".

As an essential doctrine the Christian churches believe and teach that there is (1.) a single God who is flawless, and that (2.) this one true God created the universe flawless... and that, therefore, (3.) God truthfully said in Genesis 1:31 that His creation was originally "very good."

The Christian's "Creator" Old Testament "God" is flawed, just as was the creation at the time of its origins. This is what the early century Gnostic "Christians" believed and it's also what the Eastern religions believe and teach: that the direct creator of the universe (the lesser of two creator Gods) is flawed, as is also the creation, and was so from its origins. Both Gnostics and Hindus believe that there is a flawless supreme God (for Gnostics, this is the New Testament God) who is the ultimate source of the creation and that there is, also, a direct creator of the universe (for Gnostics, this is the Old Testament God) who is flawed and should not be worshipped.

St. Symeon wrote: “Neither Eve nor Paradise were yet created, but the whole world had been brought into being by God as one thing, as a kind of paradise, at once incorruptible yet material and perceptible.”

St. John of Damascus wrote: “The creation of all things is due to God, but corruption came in afterwards due to our wickedness…For God did not make death, neither does He take delight in the destruction of living things” (Wisdom 1:13). But death [for animals and humans] is the work rather of man, that is, its origin is in Adam’s transgression.”

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote: “Plants were not subjected either to decay or to diseases; both decay and diseases and the weeds themselves, appeared after the alteration of the earth following the fall of man.”

St. Basil the Great wrote: “…it is customary for vultures to feed on corpses, but since there were not yet [before Adam’s sin] corpses [animals were bodily immortal], nor yet their stench, so there was not yet such food for vultures. But all [animals] followed the diet of swans and all grazed the meadows…[none of] the beasts were carnivores…such was the first creation, and such will be the restoration after this.”

Genesis 1:30 reads: “…and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food;” and it was so..." In the "first creation" all of the animals were vegetarian. Then, according to the Bible, the first human ("Adam") sinned causing the creation to fall into "the bondage of corruption," which caused many animals to become carnivorous. The Bible says this "bondage to corruption" negative situation will come to an end. Romans 8:21 says: “the creation itself,” will be “delivered from its bondage to corruption." Likewise, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church says: “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins” (CCC, n. 2336). Isaiah 65:25 says: The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox,..." So, according to the Bible: when the "restoration" occurs all the animals will be vegetarian again.

U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote: “The whole Bible is spanned by the narrative of the first creation (Gn 1:3) [which was “very good,” because all of the animals were bodily immortal and vegetarian, until Adam sinned] and the vision of a restored creation at the end of history” (RV. 21:1-4) [When all of the animals will be bodily immortal and vegetarian again.]

Every human being on earth today is a Homo sapiens. We are Homo sapiens who originated in Africa around 300,000 years ago. If there had actually been a “Garden of Eden” where a single couple (“Adam and Eve”) lived, it would had to have been divinely created on earth HUNDREDS Of THOUSANDS of years ago in Africa, and HUNDREDS Of MILLIONS of years of animal evolution would have already taken place.

Those hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution that occurred before we Homo sapiens came into existence were very corrupt. They were corrupted by a lot of animal deaths (making available many corpses for “vultures” to eat), sickening deadly diseases and devastating natural catastrophes. There were several mass extinctions of animals. Many vicious carnivorous animals existed. Every animal eventually died, often in a violent and cruel way. It was a brutal “survival of the fits” world then, as it still is today.

The creation was never “good” or “very good,” as falsely claimed in Genesis by the Old Testament “God” Yahweh, and, consequently, neither was the creation ever “pure,” as falsely claimed by the Roman Catholic Church. The creation cannot be "restored to the purity of its origins" because it was not pure at the time of its origins, and therefore neither can, nor will, there be a "new earth" and "new heaven," nor will the "just" be resurrected and live forever, "world without end" on the falsely prophesied future "new earth."

Gnosticism And The Creation

Early century Gnostic "Christians" believed that the story of creation found in the Bible was a lie told by the Old Testament God and that the supreme God, the New Testament God, was not actually the one responsible for the creation of our world, at least not directly. The early century Gnostics and all Gnostics throughout the history of Gnosticism have claimed the evidence of this comes from the imperfection, tragedy, and evil in our world. A good God could never have created it.

Some ancient forms of Gnosticism concluded that for God to be truly good, He had to be pure Spirit and could not have created a material universe. Therefore, a lesser god, an emanation from the true God, must have created it. The God of the Old Testament (Yahweh) was that emanation and was called the demiurge, a lesser god than the ultimate God.

Stephen A. Hoeller, a modern-day Gnostic Bishop wrote:

"All religious traditions acknowledge that the world is imperfect. Where they differ is in the explanations which they offer to account for this imperfection and in what they suggest might be done about it. Gnostics have their own -- perhaps quite startling -- view of these matters: they hold that the world is flawed because it was created in a flawed manner."

"Like Buddhism, Gnosticism begins with the fundamental recognition that earthly life is filled with suffering. In order to nourish themselves, all forms of life consume each other, thereby visiting pain, fear, and death upon one another (even herbivorous animals live by destroying the life of plants). In addition, so-called natural catastrophes -- earthquakes, floods, fires, drought, volcanic eruptions -- bring further suffering and death in their wake."

"Many religions advocate that humans are to be blamed for the imperfections of the world. Supporting this view, they interpret the Genesis myth as declaring that transgressions committed by the first human pair brought about a “fall” of creation resulting in the present corrupt state of the world. Gnostics respond that this interpretation of the myth is false. The blame for the world’s failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. Since -- especially in the monotheistic religions -- the creator is God, this Gnostic position appears blasphemous, and is often viewed with dismay even by non-believers."

"Ways of evading the recognition of the flawed creation and its flawed creator have been devised over and over, but none of these arguments have impressed Gnostics."

All human souls were created by the eternal infinite Spirit before the world was created. At the time, our souls were together as One Divine, subordinate-to-Spirit, God. We as this God committed the real "original sin," which caused this corrupt-from-its-origins material universe that we are living in to come into existence.

Hinduism And The Creation

Paramahansa Yogananda, revered by many as the Yogi of the West, wrote: The word 'God' means the manifested, transcendental Being beyond creation, but existing in relation to creation. Spirit existed before God [Brahma]. God is the Creator of the universe, but Spirit is the Creator of God."

There are two stories associated with why Brahma, the direct creator of the material universe, is not worshiped by Hindus. The stories are called "the curse of Shiva" and "the curse of Saraswati."

One curse states that Shiva (Spirit) cursed Brahma (the created God) when he found him lying to prove his greatness. Lord Shiva became furious at this lie. He then cursed Brahma that "he would never be worshipped."

The other curse states that Brahma created a goddess, Saraswati – the goddess of knowledge. He then sinned by lusting after her. Saraswati then told Brahma: “You [the flawed creator] have filled the world [this corrupt world] with longing/lust that is the seed of unhappiness. You have fettered the soul in the flesh. You are not worthy of reverence [meaning, not worthy of worship]."

The New Age religion is a blend of the Hindu and Gnostic religions. "One of the founding figures of the modern New Age Movement, David Spangler, wrote: The world soul is usually conceived as a "formative force," an active, intelligent, purposeful spiritual presence at work in the material world to guide and guard the course of planetary evolution. It is generally not accorded the status of being the ultimate source, or Creator [the eternal infinite Spirit], but might be looked upon as a great angelic or archangelic being [or Brahma, who sinned and became less-than divine] presiding over the well being of the world, or as the gestalt, the wholeness of all the lives and patterns that manifest upon, and as, the earth." Brahma, the flawed creator, created the flawed material universe by becoming the earth and the entire cosmos.

Modern-day scientific discoveries confirm that the Hindus, Buddhists, Gnostics, Theosophists and New Agers got their theology right on the "originally corrupt" vs. "originally pure" creation topic. The Christian churches are, therefore, believing in the flawed, less-than-divine, creator's, Bible scripture lie (the lie that says the creation was originally "very good"). The Old Testament god is not worthy of worship and the Christians who worship him are committing idolatry.

Christians believe that they will eventually be living in an everlasting material world -- the "new earth" and "new heaven" -- and that they will have resurrected glorified, flesh and blood bodies. Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, as well as some Protestants , believe the entire material universe that we are now living in will become the "new earth" and "new heaven" when the universe is "restored to the purity of their origins," or, when “the creation itself,” is “delivered from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21).

Hindus, Gnostics, Buddhists, Theosophists and New Agers seek to spiritually transcend this material world so that when they physically die they will go to a heavenly place where they will never have to be reincarnated into this world again. They believe that when all humans become enlightened this corrupt material world that we are living in will come to an end.

 

I've never seen any polling on this, but I really doubt that most Christians on the street are much concerned about inhabiting a "new earth" in the great bye n' bye. They expect to go to Heaven and be reunited with their loved ones and spend their infinite existence fishin', playin' golf,playin' their harps, and singin' in the heavenly choir. Only a bunch of fundamentalist theologians and Bible Thumpers are into the issue you're addressing. You're right that it's right there in the "inerrant" Bible, and Christians were really into it at one time--Jesus and His followers, in particular, at a time when the Holy Land seemed to be under the thumb of the fat cats and the Roman Empire. As Albert Schweitzer once remarked, the historical Jesus might have been "too historical". Few educated Christians now expect that to happen--at least in their lifetimes.

Gnosticism made its bid for a "bad earth', which was one of the features that put it at a disadvantage with Paulist Christianity back in the day. Unless their lives are really miserable, people like to look on the bright side and not dwell on the deficiencies of our present existence. I doubt that either Gnosticism nor Theosophy will make a comeback, although in this day and age, some people might go for it. I went out for a long nature walk yesterday, and said to myself "It;s a great, big wonderful world we live in". The sun was shining brightly, and it was up to 50 degrees F. Having survived a couple of weeks iced into my house in sub-zero weather, I felt my spirits lifted and the rotten weather we had last week gave me a new appreciation of what we have now. Actually, the world and the universe are what they are. We can curse them, love them, whatever, for being what they are, but I think the more sensible course is to accept them and make the best of them. The cold here in the southwest last week and the tragic situation in Texas had much to do with human misfeasance and malfeasance, including an unwillingness to deal with the reality of climate change. If we do it right, and respect the planet we have, many of us can have a reasonably happy life on this planet, which is probably the only existence we'll have. In the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, saying 113, Jesus tells us : "The kingdom of the Father is spread out everywhere upon the Earth. But people do not see it."
I'll leave with a hymn of thanks. for the beauty of the earth lyrics - Yahoo Video Search Results

 

I look at the Garden of Eden, and the story of Babel to an extent, as a very old metaphor for our indigenous ancestors. Adam and Eve could talk with the animals and talk directly with God, daily life was a life of ease in a garden, which would make sense in a warm, fertile, and therefore tropical, environment. But Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and got Adam to eat too, in other words, the Early Goddess cultures began planting and animal husbandry. Man fell from grace and could no longer live in the garden--in other words, as he learned how to actually generate food himself through planting and breeding, he moved from an individual-oriented hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of the group, with an understanding of the in-group out-group accompanied by a sense of ownership, and a need for more focus on objective reality rather than a purely subjective relationship with the world. Mankind then had to appease god, ask forgiveness for any sins, and demonstrate devotion so that the crops would grow and the animals would eat. He had to toil and work hard to provide, with his brothers and sisters, for a whole community, including in between harvest times.

If God gave mankind free will, it was inevitable, and even expected that man would eat of the tree of knowledge. Rather than original sin, an all-knowing god would have planned for that to happen.

Myths of the Golden Age, and a fall from grace based on man's arrogance are found all over the world, and I think that each case represents an interpretation of man's indigenous past. Sadly, discrimination and prejudice against indigenous peoples is worldwide, and in many places there is still tensions over land between farmers and indigenous tribes.

I got into a very interesting discussion a number of years ago with someone on HF, I think it was Thenmax, about the covenants. He explained that the covenant between man and god in the Garden of Eden defined an adult-to-adult relationship. Man was expected to be competely responsible for his actions, and the consequences were clear. When that covenant was broken, then the subsequent covenants represented a relationship between man and a teenager, then between man and a child. This made a lot of sense to me. For indigenous people, any agreement made with spirit is very real, and the consequences of not keeping the agreement is real. Contrast this with the promises made to god in a church or a synagogue, for example, that are quickly forgotten and without consequence.

 

I agree the Garden of Eden is a very old metaphor, but I doubt it has to do with our indigenous ancestors, since at the time it was written Jews had no experience with such peoples. They could only imagine. The writers of the story were Iron Age people, who may have had a sense of nostalgia for a simpler time when ignorance was bliss. I think it's important that the forbidden fruit was knowledge of good and evil--in other words, evaluative knowledge. I don't think the point was that we'd be better off not knowing right from wrong. I think the knowledge referred to is knowledge about human deficiencies and realization that they were naked gardeners working for the Man. The serpent was performing what today would be called "consciousness raising". I think the story gets to the essence of the human condition--two people in Paradise who can't get their minds off what they don't have. Sociologists call it relative deprivation; Buddhists would call it the beginnings of Upādāna.

As for Nimrod's Tower of Babel, the writers of Genesis seemed to hold a particular aversion to urban civilization, which they associated with Babylon. The description of the tower resembles a Babylonian ziggurat. Again, the story describes overreach of humans brimming with arrogance, intruding into sacred space. Both stories are also what is called etiological myths: why doesn't the snake have legs? Why do women experience labor pains? Why do humans fear and hate snakes? Why do farmers have to work so hard? Why are there so many languages?

While we might long for a simpler time in Eden, going back isn't an option. There is a cherubim and a twisting sword guarding the entrance. Besides, it never really existed, except as a metaphor. For better or for worse, we must make our way in civilization--in my opinion, not a bad deal! In a sense, longing for what we can't have is just another form of the discontent that got us into our predicament. With God all around us, what more do we need?

P.S.: the title of this thread warrants comment. It says the creation story in the Bible is a Big Lie. Actually, it's a big myth or metaphor. For a lengthy explanation of the difference between a lie and a myth, see Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth. Myths (me taphors, allegories) aren't factual, but often convey deeper truths. Such is the case with Genesis..Gnosticism, instead, gave us the myth that the material world is evil, created by an inferior demiurge variously named named Yaltabaoth, Sakias, Samael,or Error. Unlike lies, metaphors can't be proven wrong, just more or less useful. I think the notion that the material world is evil leads to a shitty outlook on life and risks missing our only chance to appreciate the world that we live in--which admittedly has its shitty side. Look on the Bright Side of Life! always look on the bright side of life - Yahoo Video Search Results

 

Good points.

All these factors, including the arrogance of man, and a fall from grace due to that arrogance are common to the origin myths and the golden age myths. I would add though that if the authors of Genesis actually had knowledge of or a recollection of only their own indigenous ancestors they may not have recognized the transition from a more animistic experience of the world with a multiplistic interpretation of it, to a dualistic and monotheistic experience and understanding of it. I suspect that both of these stories were very old, even then, as most origin myths are. I would expect that it could have been inspired or influenced by interacting with indigenous people at the time, as indigenous people are found all around the world, and even today you have struggles between farmers, miners, developers, and so forth, and indigenous people who live on the land. The transition that I referred to as expressed in Genesis certainly included a recognition of a Goddess phase, and we know that they were surrounded by goddess cultures and that there was what must have been evidence of a goddess past within their own culture. Recognizing their own connection to the goddess cultures around them probably enabled them to recognize their own cultural connection to the indigenous tribes of the region.

Yes the Tower of Babel is an interesting statement against the rise of civilization which Genesis itself actually documents their own evolution into civilization. I suspect that the Tower of Babel also drew off of older creation myths too, though.

I agree that the myth, all of the Golden Age myths, are not about returning to the Garden per se. Rather these myths state the deficiencies of human nature, particularly around arrogance and greed, and then place the Garden as the Ego-Ideal we must strive for. The idea being that this time we strive for it as an enlightened being that has resolved its deficiencies. The problem is the ego-ideal can never be achieved.

The interesting thing is how these stories and myths map the terrain of our own subconscious. I would argue that these ancient people, not just the authors of the Bible but people around the world were so in tune with our own selves that psychology did not return to that level of self-knowledge until Jung.

Unfortunately, religion, by establishing these ego-ideals has long inspired the worst of human deficiencies---Utopianism. This Utopianism is at the root of just about all the wars, state slavery, and oppression. So much pain has been created by this---the idea that a better future awaits that is so utopic and ideal that we must strive at all costs for it. This is what makes Nationalism so dangerous. Yes, lets turn our country great again, and that greatness is always the unachievable utopia that we never actually had, and to do so we have to weed out the rebels and the bad, and eliminate the scum. It is ok to put children in cages because it has to be done to achieve greatness. We have to put everybody back in their place--like they were before. The cops need to rule the streets, and if anyone opposes the conservative white masculine rule (which we must preserve and bring back to a dominant force), then cops can kill them. History tells us that it is inevitable that this thinking eventually leads to a terrible war because once subservience and control is achieved within the borders, the threat now lies outside the borders.

Is myth factual or not? I believe that most myth reflects a subjective interpretation of a reality--particularly a spiritual or nonphysical reality. On my first vision quest, I watched a portion of the Lakota creation myth play out in the night sky. It was not a hallucination of figures dancing around the sky or anything like that. Rather it was a rapid succession of shooting stars that played out a part of the story of Woh'pe (the h' is a hard h, like the Russian X (Kha)). Woh'pe literally means shooting star, but it is also the name of the Lakota version of the Sky Maiden or Star Maiden that came down from the sky and helped in the creation of the earth. She came down to get the 4 winds to go around and establish the directions, and fell in love with the south wind, while the north wind fell in love with her (part of the etiological aspect of the myth) and eventually her body became the land we live on (a common element of myth among the Native Americans). It was strange, because I did not see a single falling star until the third night, and then the only ones I saw was this quick succession at sometime around 3 or 4 in the morning. It began in the North, at a pine tree that was my own personal representation of the pine tree of Waziya (the being of the North who has a giant pine tree). I had noticed the coincidence of that particular pine, and that it was in my direct north, and somehow on the first evening I decided it must be my own version of Waziya's tree. The shooting stars shot to that tree and then there was a series of shooting stars, shooting to the north, but making a straight line to the south. There were other aspects of it, but it was all very coincidental, significant, and enchanting. Even the way I learned this myth in the months leading up to my Vision Quest, was coincidental and seemingly by chance.

Why would this ancient myth play out for me, some white guy sitting on a hill under the guidance of a small group of Native Americans? The lesson, which I quickly perceived, was that there was more to these myths than old stories created by some storyteller.

 

All these factors, including the arrogance of man, and a fall from grace due to that arrogance are common to the origin myths and the golden age myths. I would add though that if the authors of Genesis actually had knowledge of or a recollection of only their own indigenous ancestors they may not have recognized the transition from a more animistic experience of the world with a multiplistic interpretation of it, to a dualistic and monotheistic experience and understanding of it. I suspect that both of these stories were very old, even then, as most origin myths are. I would expect that it could have been inspired or influenced by interacting with indigenous people at the time, as indigenous people are found all around the world, and even today you have struggles between farmers, miners, developers, and so forth, and indigenous people who live on the land. The transition that I referred to as expressed in Genesis certainly included a recognition of a Goddess phase, and we know that they were surrounded by goddess cultures and that there was what must have been evidence of a goddess past within their own culture. Recognizing their own connection to the goddess cultures around them probably enabled them to recognize their own cultural connection to the indigenous tribes of the region.

Yes the Tower of Babel is an interesting statement against the rise of civilization which Genesis itself actually documents their own evolution into civilization. I suspect that the Tower of Babel also drew off of older creation myths too, though.[/QUOTE]Do you know specifically of any such myths? If so, I'd be interested in seeing what they were and how specifically they compare with the Hebrew version. As for indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples, I don't think there is evidence of any in the vicinity of the ancient Israelites or Mesopotamians, although again , I'd welcome any you might provide.

The creation myth of Genesis was admittedly influenced by Sumerian/Akkadian/ Babylonian material, but with a distinctive twist. Probably, the biblical accounts were written during or after the Babylonian captivity, and in most respects were designed to challenge or refute the Babylonian version. Unlike the Bablylonian creation story in the Enuma Elish, in which creation results from a cosmic battle with Marduk slaying the chaos goddess Tiamat and creating the world from her carcass, Elohim, on the other hand, creates the world in the Memphite Egyptian manner, by simply uttering commands. Tiamat, a formidable adversary for Marduk, becomes tehom, the watery deep. And all the heavenly bodies and natural wonders worshiped as deities by the Babylonians become mere objects created by Elohim.

Faced with the job of keeping up the place, the Sumerian high god directed his son, Enki (Ea) , the water god, and daughter Ninki to create people to serve the gods as slaves. They form the humans out of earth, but need the missing ingredient, god's blood, which they obtain by sacrificing one of Tiamat's allies. In contrast to the Genesis story, in which humans were the pinnacle of creation, the Mesopotamian myths portray us as natural slaves.

The new creatures were serviceable for awhile, but multiplid to the point that they were making noise and keeping one of the senior gods, Enlil, awake. So he decides to exterminate them with a great flood. Enki (Ea), their creator, though, was reluctant to see this happen, so he tipped off one of them, Utnapsihtim (Aka, Atrahasis, Ziusudra) and provided specifications for the Ark and directions to take two of each creature. After humans survived, Enlil was pissed, but the other gods are grateful to have their slaves back, and Enlil promises not to do it again. We can seem perhaps some improvement in divine motivation, with at least a semblance of moral justification being added in the Hebrew version.

The Garden of Eden myth seems to be a re-working of the Sumerian/Akkadian/ Babylonian story of Enki, Nimhurag and the garden of abundance. Nimhursag, the Mother Goddess, had a daughter by the water god Enki in the garden of the gods, Dilmun. They had a daughter, Ninsar, the goddess of vegetation. When Nimhursag returns to her duties on earth taking care of nature, Enki, deprived of his consort, seduces Ninsar, and has a granddaughter by her, whom he in turn seduces. Etc. To put a stop to this, Numhursag instructs her great granddaughter to wipe Enki's seed from her body and bury it. Eight plants grow from it. Enki is told not to eat the plants, but he does so anyhow and becomes pregnant with this own seed in eight different parts of his body, and since he does not have a female birth canal, writhes in agony. Finally, the gods persuade Nimursag to relent, and she draws each of the fetuses into her own body and gives birth to eight deities beneficial to humanity, the last one being Ninti, meaning "rib" which gives life. (Get it; Adam's rib giving Eve).

Then there is the story of the demigod Adapa, from the city of Eridu, servant of the god Enk (aka, Ea). Adapa cursed the south wind for overturning his boat and extinguished it for seven days. The head god Anu summoned Adapa for an accounting. Enki, fearing Anu would lure Adapa away from him with gifts, warned Adapa not to take any refreshments offered to him by Anu, lest they be poisoned. So Adapa refuses Anu's food, which Anu later informs him was the gift of immortality. (The tree of life?) Note: the Genesis story is less concerned with immortality than with forbidden knowledge.

On the subject of immortality, the great masterpiece of Mesopotamian literature on the subject was the Gilgamesh epic, which contains another version of the flood story, as well as one of the finest quest stories in history. Gilgamesh was the demigod ruler of the city of Uruk, and as a demigod was too much for his subjects. His super-sized libido and machismo made him overbearing, tyrannical, and impossible to live with. So the gods decided to make him a match to keep him occupied--a "nature boy" type named Enkidu. Except at first Enkidu is too wild and rough around the edges and spends his time hanging out with animals in an Eden-type setting. So the gods send in the head prostitute from the Temple of Ishtar, who teaches him sex and manners, after which the animals will have nothing to do with him. He meets up with Gilgamesh, and after a wrestling match, the two go on great adventures together, until they slay the Bull of Heaven and piss of Ishtar and the gods, who decide to kill off Enkidu as punishment. Grieving the loss of his friend, Gilgamesh also becomes aware of his mortality, and begins a desperate quest to do something about it. He looks up Utnapishtin , the survivor of the flood (and we get to hear a recap of the Babylonian version of the flood and the ark). Utnapishtin was granted immortality by the gods for his role, but could not pass it on. He does tell Gilgamesh about a plant that contained the secret of longevity--the next best thing. So Gilgamesh goes looking for that and finds it, but while he is resting a snake (note the species) steals it. He stops off at a local bar to lament his misfortune, and the barmaid consoles him with the advice that immortality was meant only for the gods, not for humans, and the best we can do is lead a life of hedonism, eating, drinking and being merry. He tries that, but still finds it dissatisfying. So he sits down on the plain outside Uruk to mope. Then he looks up at the city and it dawns on him: That's it! That is the meaning of life! He helped to build that great, wonderful city! Doing stuff like that, and serving humanity is as good as it gets--the meaning of life! Not exactly the sentiments of indigenous hunter-gatherers, but it worked for the Babylonians.

The Israelites took a dim view of urban values, preferring to think of themselves as nomadic pastoralists--although by the time they got to Babylon, that life was a distant memory. There is a Sumerian myth involving a King of Uruk named Enmerkar who endeavors to construct a giant ziggurat that brings him into a power contest with his neighbor, the Lord of Arata. The Etememananki ("temple of the foundation of heaven and earth"), a ziggurat built to the god Marduk in Bablyon, fits the pattern of such a monument to human hubris.

 

All of these stories are built on a precedent that hails back to indigenous ancestral roots.

There were various indigenous people in the region that the Jews may have come in contact with or had knowledge of. The same of Sumerians. There were, for example, Bedouin tribes that still had animistic beliefs. In fact they would erect stones and perform ceremony in a manner that wasn't too different from the ancient Lakota, and their ceremony surrounding stones, representing Tunka. In Southern Arabia, in particular, Gods were represented by animals. The Berbers were another culture that included such indigenous tribes. There are actually old stories that connect the Berber people to the Canaanites. Africa was home to many indigenous peoples some of whom travelled a fair amount around Africa.

Sumeria was surrounded by indigenous Ural-Altaic tribes, and also found themselves more or less at the heart of an indigenous spiritual complex that stretched from India clear across to Southern Europe that gave birth to the pre-Christian Indo-European belief systems.

 

the big lie is that humans and planet earth and its solar system are any more the reason for the rest of the universe then any other solar system or sapient species living in it.

as for god or gods, nothing to stop em, but nothing owed by them to anything humans, or anyone else, comes up with, to tell each other to pretend.
they're welcome to be happy and be strange, but anything that wants to be feared, is a weakness of character.

 

The "world renowned theologian Matthew Fox" is regarded as a New Age flake in more conventional Christian circles. Genesis is a myth composed by several authors with different agendas. The part you're talking about is generally attributed to P (the Priestly author or school) , who was inter alia concerned with refuting the Babylonian creation story in the Enuma Elish. I think Fox is making the metaphorical point that humans are not the center of the universe, which is valid. They were, however, the last of Creation mentioned in Genesis. One might say the pinnacle. To the best of our knowledge, neither light nor the other beings are capable of asking the kinds of questions we ponder on HF. Sobering as it might seem, we might be as intelligent as it gets. Your "countering statement" is a wooden literal reading of passages in the Psalms and Chronicles. The earth does seem to be fixed in its orbit around the sun. has it ever moved out of orbit? And relative to us, it seems pretty fixed and solid. Of course there are earthquakes from time to time, but for the most part I'd say it's pretty stable--something to count on. But again, I think the point is metaphorical, conveying the permanence of God's will and the relative permanence of His creation.

I suspect that the forces that created our universe are beyond human conceptions of good and evil. The universe is what it is. The labels "good" and "evil" are human value judgments, put into the mouth of God by humans. Ultimately, they may be divine, since among other things God may be the sum of human idealism. I think it's useful to think of god and reality as fundamentally good and beautiful--a life-affirming attitude that set the Jews apart from their Babylonian captors. Material reality has its unpleasant aspects, but also, to humans who open their eyes and minds to it, breathtaking beauty and majesty. "The Kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth and people do not see it." (Thomas 113)

The central dogma of the Roman Catholic church? Do you think the Church still teaches that the sun revolves around the earth? The Church, while reluctant to admit mistakes, lifted the ban on Galileo's Dialogue in 1822, and Vatican Councils in the 1960's and in 1979 implied that Galileo was forgiven. In 1992, the Vatican formally and publicly apologized and cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing. As for evolution, what "long and brutal history" are you talking about? The Catholic Church, perhaps smarting from the Galileo incident and having embraced Saint Augustine's view that creation of the species was potential and not immediate and literal, did not condemn the doctrine. Pope Pius XI, considered the doctrine of ‘evolutionism’ "a serious hypothesis. Pope John Paul II later added that it was more than that. Pope Francis explained:
“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.””Protestants split over the issue, Evangelicals to this day rejecting it and trying to keep the teaching of it out of the schools. Is that brutal?

Some Christians would say that's essential; others not so much. I think most of us would say that God is flawless by definition. That, by the way, would include the Gnostics of antiquity, who thought the true transcendent and ineffable God, was the essence of perfection. As for the universe being flawless, I doubt that many if any believe that. Being good isn't the same thing as being flawless.

By the "The Christian Creator Old Testament God" I'm assuming you're referring to the One who was depicted by the men who wrote the Old Testament. I think it would be more accurate to say their idea of God was flawed.

 

Since you've been bad mouthing the biblical view of God held by orthodox (traditional) Christians, we might pause to turn the spotlight on the religion you're pushing--Gnosticism. Gnosticism was quite the rage in the second and third centuries AD, but practically died out after that for various reasons including (yes) relentless persecution by orthodox Christians. It made something of a comeback with the Theospohical movement of the late nineteenth century and another comeback in the 1960s and 70s with hippies and the New Age. But the rival orthodox Christians are still predominant. What made those non-Gnostic Christians dominant? I submit that it was features of the Gnostic meme that put it at a disadvantage in competition with other going Christian memes. You mentioned that you're a fan of evolution. The primary mechanism of evolution identified by Darwin was natural selection, and a leading evolutionist (and militant atheist) Richard Dawkins argues that it works for cultural as well as biological evolution. Where the gene is the basic unit of biological evolution, the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution. As is true in biological evolution, the meme's basic goal is to survive and reproduce. The memes that are the most successful from and evolutionary standpoint aren't necessarily the most virtuous ones but rather the ones with the greatest competitive advantage. Unfortunately, in religion as in politics, nice guys often finish last, and we religious consumers have to choose among the memes that are currently available--which often means the lesser of evils.

Back in the second century, four principal memes or systems of memes competed for the allegiance of Christians: (1) Jewish Christians; (2) Paulists; (3) Marcionites; and (4) Gnostics; Jewish Christians, centered in the Jerusalem Church and led by James, the brother of Jesus, who saw themselves as a sect (the true one) of Judaism. Pauline Christians, who became largely Gentile, preached that Jewish law didn't apply to them and that all they had to do to be saved was to believe that Christ died for their sins and was resurrected. Marcionites rejected the Old Testament and its God entirely and sought to purge Christianity of its Jewish roots. Gnostics taught that Christ came to enlighten us as to our true natures as spirits who were trapped in the quagmire of a crappy material existence. The proto-orthodox (Catholic) meme stressed conformity to a monolithic hierarchy and dogma rooted in the Paulist tradition.

The Jewish Christian meme faced the competitive disadvantage of accepting the 613 mitzvahs of Mosaic law, including the dietary laws and circumcision. They were willing to let Gentiles in without circumcision under the looser Noahide laws, but had trouble associating with them. They were decimated and dispersed by the Romans in the siege of Jerusalem, had little appeal to non-Jews, and were rejected by mainstream Judaism. Paulists were followers of St. Paul, who attracted a large following among the Gentiles by telling them they didn't need to become Jews and undergo circumcision to be full-fledged Christians. He seemed to know or care little about Jesus' life and teachings and was mainly concerned with His death and resurrection. He was strongly opposed by what he called the "circumcision faction" of the Jerusalem Church, later known as Ebionites. Marcionites were followers of Marcion of Sinope, who had a popular following in Rome for awhile before the Church fathers ran him out. He was an admirer of Paul but rejected the Jewish God of the Old Testament and taught that there were indeed two gods, one the bad Old Testament god who created our bad world, the other the good god who sent His Son to die for our sins. (This may the original source of some of the ideas behind the OP). Marcion retained a following in Anatolia and Syria. Gnosticiam had in common with Marcion the belief that the God of the Old Testament created the world and was evil, but added elements that went well-beyond Marcionism: the cosmic dualism between spirit and matter, with the latter regarded as evil; the notion that the True God was unknowable but that there were a plethora of divine beings or emanations of God called aeons, which had their own emanations--30 to 365 of them--who populated the Pleroma or fullness of the divine; the idea that our world was created by an inferior or evil Demiurge (the God of the Old Testament), and that in a Cosmic disaster elements of the divine spirit became trapped here, in our bodies; the idea that Jesus came to earth, not do die for our sins but to enlighten us about our true natures; and the notion that by understanding our true spiritual natures through esoteric knowledge communicated by Gnostic gurus, our souls can be liberated from their material prison and return to their true destiny as Spirit. Actually, I find some parts of Gnosticism, especially the idea that Jesus came to Enlighten us, to be convincing. However, the complex metaphysic, a combination of Persain mysticism and Neo-platonism, is antique in the twenty-first century, and the extreme asceticism and hostility to the world that were characteristic of Gnostics were a turnoff for ordinary folks even back then. It was an elitist religion that thought only certain people were capable of being "in the know".

The contest was settled when a mutant form of Paulism, Proto-orthodoxy (Catholicism),which added an organizational framework emphasizing hierarchy and monopoly on truth to Paulist doctrine. As Christianity moved from what sociologists call sect to church, it developed a hierarchy that was unknown to the earliest Christians--no longer rooted in personalities, charisma, and personal acquaintance with Jesus but instead in a hierarchical structure based on Roman bureaucracy that vested authority in occupancy of offices. And some of the early bishops and deacons looked askance at the rival movements which were their main competitors. The great heresy hunters--Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, Bishop Epiphaneus of Salamis, Hippolytus of Rome, Tertulian, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria--launched crusades to expose and denounce these heterodox viewpoints which differed from their own. They appealed to practical men who thought that Christianity needed to keep the Old Testament and its One God--if anything for the prophecies on which Jesus' claims to divinity were based. And that there needed to be one official point of view which did not depend on the latest mystical revelation pronounced by some self-proclaimed charismatic prophet. One practical man, looking for a religion with potential to unify the Roman empire, Emperor Constantine, embraced Proto-orthodoxy. The rest is history.

 

You're over-generalizing. Certainly Confucianists wouldn't agree, nor would Shintos. As for Taoists, while they accept a dualistic view of reality, they see yin and yang as both good and essential for harmony in the universe.

What an amazing coincidence! Scholars still debate the origins of Gnosticism, but right there I think we have some indication of where the Gnostic Christian ideas might have come from.I think you're definitely onto something. Like the Hindus, Gnostics thought of Brahman as the highest universal principle, and ineffable, and his attributes or emanations were lesser deities. and each of them had emanations.This is also similar to Neo-Platonnic philosophy that was predominant in the Hellenistic world in the early Christian era. The Demiurge who creates the material world makes his debut in Plato's Timaeus, where he is described as unreservedly benevolent and therefor desiring as good a world as possible. The Gnostics perverted the concept to make it the source of a flawed product.

And reviled by many as a charlatan and womanizer.
Yogananda's Miami Scandal
Yogananda's Sexual Indiscretions
Lies in Autobiography of a Yogi

I don't think evolution helps you. Evolution is the quintessential materialist explanation from which it would be difficult to extract that spiritual spark or essence on which Gnostic theology depends.

You go on and on, but these are not logical arguments you're presenting. The premises are rooted in an obsolete metaphysics. One must ask what were they smoking or ingesting? Soma? It all seems to be grounded on somebody's pipe dream. No one has yet been able to prove the existence, actual or potential, of a more perfect world than the one we have. We can't escape from it by esoteric knowledge. Our spiritual and material selves seem to be inescapably intertwined and stuck with each other. Although it's not a perfect world, it is, if we look at it the right way "A great big wonderful world we live in". But we need to work to keep it that way.

 

well gods, beliefs and universes are mostly seperate things. christianity's bible is just a book written by humans, that has nothing to do with either gods or universes other then being human speculation on the subject. the diversity we can observe in existence, does not suggest the work of a single awareness. that it works as well as it does, might even suggest the work of multiple, entirely impersonal devices, that may or may not posses awareness of their own existence. i like gods, they're cool, hug them and squeeze them and call them george. but whether blaming or praising them, for "everything" is simply making an assumption on what is not known.