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| Fiction: Memoirs of divinity: Chapter 6 |
Posted by
feralucce on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 05:09 PM PST
So now the Jews are free from Egypt. They are wandering in the wilderness. They love Moses and, supposedly, the divine that set them free. Most of the people do not have any clue what really happened. Not only did Moses lie to Pharaoh, but to his own people. Though, honestly, most of them would be unable to actually handle what happened, their fragile little minds would break. Thus began a long standing tradition of governments not being honest with their people.
As they wandered in the wilderness, the people's supplies of food quickly ran out, and they became hungry. While we were not happy with the actions of Moses and his lackeys, we were extremely pleased that the Jews were finally free. It was not fitting that the children of our dear boy were slaves. We had compassion for the people, and were moved by that compassion to provide for them.
We came to Moses then and said, “Tell your people that we will care for them.”
“Thank you! I...”
“Make no mistake, Moses, we are not happy with you. We admit that what you did was probably the only thing that could have freed your people, but what you did is disgusting and immoral. You can't lie to your people like that, and the murders were unforgivable.
“My Lord, don't you think that these relatively few lives were adequate payment for hundreds of years of slavery under the Egyptians' rule?”
“We wanted you free, plain and simple. I will not justify the trade of lives as if they were cattle. Every morning, with the sunrise, they will find mana upon the ground. Tell your people to take only what they need for the day. We will provide.”
Every morning, we provided sustenance for them, mana, upon the ground. Even with this, a simple miracle, the humans were not satisfied. We showed our compassion by feeding them, and some, being greedy, horded the mana. They took much more than they needed and hid it in their packs. Why they did this is still a mystery to us. I understand, it was greed, but we had not designed man to have this trait. Perhaps the corrupting influence of the tree was warping the minds as well as the bodies of man. Those that horded it found it rotten in their bags by nightfall. It was not punishment, but a statement that we would provide as we promised, and no other way. Now days they call it tough love, but we decided that we needed to be firm, as our current policy of overly giving was not effective in the slightest.
When you read the books, they all talk about how we provided quail for them as well. This is simply not true. They happened upon a spawning ground with bevy after bevy of quail. It was just dumb luck. Moses, as with many other politicians throughout the years, was an excellent spin doctor. He told the Israelites that this was another sign of the blessings of the divine. Honestly, in the most rudimentary sense, it was provided by the divine. We made the planet, and the quail, so we had provided them. Yet, we did not move to place the quail there for the Israelites. It may seem like we are nit-picking, but the truth needs to be known.
They wandered for about three months before they came to Mount Sinai. We called to Moses, and had him come up the mountain to us. He climbed the western side of the mountain, the side facing the east, and spoke with us at first light. We spoke for a long time. We had to make our feelings on his behavior clear. Once we had succeeded, we then explained what we wanted of the children of Adam and Eve. It was supposed to be simple. It all boiled down to “Do what you want, just don't hurt anyone.” Man being man, we had to lay down specific rules. You call them the ten commandments, we just call them common decency.
By the time we had made ourselves clear to Moses, the Israelites had began to experiment with other religions, similar to those of the Egyptians. It hurt a little that they had no faith in us, but the other aspects of divinity were not wrong, just different. The most remembered of these incidents was with the golden calf. Moses was enraged by this, but then, it seems he was often enraged.
Many debates have been waged over the statement, “Do not have any other gods before me.” Let me settle a few things. We, the divine, are similar to a finely cut crystal, with too many facets for humans, or even ourselves to consider. Every god that you have heard of exists. Set, Apophis, Odin, Frigga, Shiva, Allah, Yahweh, Jupiter, Hermes, Hades - these are all aspects of us, the One, the True Divine. Honestly, this statement does acknowledge the other aspects of ourself. Simply put, this aspect of ourselves chose this one people to devote our attention to. It is not excluding the other facets of divinity, nor is it saying the other peoples of this small chunk of rock are forsaken. It is saying that you, Israel, have our attention. Why is it that genuine love and caring can spawn violence and hatred in another?
So, Moses comes down the mountain and sees the people of Israel worshiping in ways akin to the Egyptians and gets royally pissed off. He tells them they may not make any graven images. For those of you who are not up on your Olde English, that means, “Don't make any statues.” They worshiped a statue, not a god, and Moses tells them not to make any statues. That seems pretty dumb to us. Wouldn't it be more efficient to achieve your goals by addressing the issue? I mean, instead of no statues, why not tell them, “I have met the divine, and they express a deep and abiding compassion for us as a people, let's show them thanks?”
Anyway, Moses abolishes the golden calf and comes to the people with the ten commandments. He shares with Israel most of what we discussed. People being people, our discussion of science, biology and food-borne illness turned into more laws. I guess it doesn't matter as long as they end up safe, right? He spends weeks educating the people, which was good. Then he goes on to describe the making of the tabernacle.
The tabernacle served only one purpose, really. It served to set aside a special class of people. These people, supposedly, were the only ones who could approach us. I have never agreed with this. We chose to speak to Moses, not because we wanted to elevate him, but because he had shown compassion in defending the slave, and because he was in a unique position to speak with Pharaoh. Being viewed as his grandson for all his life gave Moses leeway that no one else could claim. Had anyone else said what Moses had, Pharaoh would have had him killed out of hand. That would have achieved nothing.
Further, he went on to make magic anathema, saying “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Later, once the tabernacle was completed, Moses went on to create the qabalah, the Jewish book of mysticism. He restricted the knowledge of the arcane to the ruling class, the Scribes and Pharisees. There is a certain amount of logic here. I mean, power should be granted with knowledge. Knowledge is necessary to facilitate wisdom and understanding of what you are truly doing. On the other hand, denying a majority of the people the power seems to be self-defeating, or worse yet, a power trip of epic proportions.
Still, even with the traditions of the qabalah in place, there were wild talents: people in tune with the symphony that could perform the feats of mystic power that Moses sought to restrict. We spoke with Moses, but his heart was hard. He chose to keep the knowledge of power to himself and his chosen few. We started studying the DNA of all of those that we knew bore the gift of hearing and looked to see if we could intentionally create these wild talents. It was not hard to do, and as such, we kept the gift alive outside of the ruling class. Honestly, this was to prevent a program of eugenics to produce more powerful talents, and to prevent a complete restriction of such power.
In summary: There are other gods, their presence is just an aspect of our own existence. There is magic, and it is not evil, it is a gift from us. There should be no ruling class, but mankind cannot seem to understand this. Knowledge should be free and the Ten Commandments are simply a codification of “be good to one another.”
Moses went on to divide the Israelites into the twelve tribes and call for an army to be built. The army numbered 603,550. As they set up permanent digs, Moses began to dictate more laws in our name, laws that, in many cases, made no sense in the cosmic scheme. He demanded the death penalty for evangelists from other faiths, for practicing other faiths, and for males who disobey their parents. He banned the planting of trees, dedicated to Asherah, next to altars dedicated to Yahweh, and the erection of sacred stones. Asherah is a feminine aspect of ourselves, and it seems Moses wanted to banish the feminine influences from his religion. He banned divination, sorcery, witchcraft, spell casting, and necromancy in an effort to restrict the knowledge of the arcane to his ruling class. He protected perpetrators of manslaughter by mandating the existence of three cities of refuge, thereby justifying his own actions. He demanded that an enemy be offered peace terms before battle - the terms being that they enter into slavery. He mandated a program of genocide against the Canaanites, furthering the hate. He prohibited the mixing of fabrics, the mixing of crops, and the mixing of beasts of burden under the same yoke. These were punishable by death. He prohibited transvestitism. Who bans Monty Python? And he prohibited wives from making a groin attack on their husband's adversary. We threw this one in, not because it didn't make sense, but because it's context was flawed. A wife is prohibited from a groin punch. Why not any one else? That is severely twisted.
There are people that follow all of these silly laws to the letter. Actually, they claim to, but are only paying lip service to a tradition of misogyny, without even realizing that is what they are doing. If there is one group of people that we have a real problem with, it's fundamentalists. We have no problem with the faithful. We encourage faith. We love faith. We revel in it. Faith, by definition, is confidence or trust in a person or thing. With faith, there needs to be a little bit of proof. Blind faith, on the other hand, is illogical and fanatical. A fanatic, for the record, is a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal. Faith, good: Fanaticism, Bad.
We told man to approach everything as a child. What is the main thing that children do? They ask questions in an attempt to understand the universe. The scientific method is a good example of living by the spirit of this command. Let's take a look at it. Observe some aspect of the universe. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed. Use the hypothesis to make predictions. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results. Isn't that what children do instinctively? They look around them. Then, they come up with a reason for what they see. Then, they experiment with what they see.
The fanatic's scientific method is a tad different. Take as a given fact all those parts of the Bible we tell you to. Formulate no hypothesis; make no attempt to disprove any creationist hypothesis; report no negative findings. Quote any fellow fanatic's writings, regardless of qualification or later proof, contrary to all other published information. Misquote, or quote out of context, famous "evolutionists" so that they appear to admit evolution isn't real. Don't waste your time with actual laboratory or field experiments. All the answers are in the Bible. Tell me, what child ever accepted a book at face value? They even question Curious George. Which is the way it should be.
The book was written by a man after we gave him the information that we felt was important. Unfortunately, the fanatics, in spite of specific evidence, say that the entire book is literal. Moses took some creative liberties, and imparted the information we gave him in an artistic manner. And in spite of the fact that many of the things in the book could not be literal, they insist that they are. One such example is the windows in the sky that we opened to let the rain through when we started the flood. If the book is literal, that requires that the sky be an actual solid object, a real firmament, in which to mount the windows for the rain.
Even so, we told Moses everything we knew, and he could not digest most of it on a mental level. Had he written what we told him, the book would have been scientifically accurate. Unfortunately, since he couldn't grasp it all, or perhaps he wished to keep the knowledge and therefore the power to himself, he only revealed facts about nature that were known at the time. We had revealed the atomic nature of matter, the actual number of pi (out to 50,000 decimals), the nature of bacteria and the heliocentric solar system. Yet all of these things were left out of the book.
What's worse, these fanatics haven't even read the book. Ask them and you will see. Ask them if they have read it and ninety seven percent of them will answer, “No.” They are absolutely certain that every single word is literal and true, but they don't know what the words actually are. These people deny, out of hand, anything that is not specifically outlined in the book. Yet, they still use cars, airplanes, telephones and computers. The cheese sandwich is not outlined in the bible, mainly because we hadn't tried one till 1954. It was a fantastic concoction of Gruyere, Guda, and Swiss with mayonnaise. My point is that these fanatics will probably eat a grilled cheese sandwich with no compunction, even though it is not in the bible. Though, had we known about it, we would have made them holy. So, not being in the book doesn't necessarily make it bad.
Evolution, for instance. Insects reproduce so rapidly that their evolution can actually be seen. Boll weevils and roaches develop immunities to pesticides. The peppered moth adjusted to the pollutants in the air with coloration. The fanatics argue that this is “natural selection.” They are right, it is natural selection, but natural selection is the very basis for evolution. They argue that there is no evolution, even though it is simply a natural response and adaptation to one's environment that can be passed down to further generations. So, since monkeys are not dropping human babies, evolution cannot possibly exist.
What about the craters on the planet earth? The crater in Arizona and the Ring Lakes in Canada are prime examples of world changing events that were not even mentioned in the book. Let's take a look at the Tunguska blast in Russia. An object fell from the sky and exploded. The effects of this blast were felt all over the USSR, and trees were flattened for hundreds of miles. This didn't even leave a crater. So if the fanatics are right, these events happened within the last six thousand years, while man has been around, recording history.
Mount Saint Helens was a volcanic event that had global consequences. The ash and dust spread to cover the earth, causing unseasonable weather, and made it twilight in many areas. It was felt and recorded. It was also terribly minor compared to the energy of an impact that would cause the crater in Arizona or the Ring Lakes. So, let's ask ourselves this simple question. Where are the records of these world changing events? Why didn't anyone mention the months of odd weather and darkness due to the dust in the air? I have an answer to that, but the fanatics would not like it. Perhaps, there is no record of these events because they predate man. They predate man by a good, long while.
Let's talk about dendrochronology. Simply put, that is the science, some would say art, of counting tree rings. By matching patterns in the growth rings, dendrochronologists can establish sequences and histories in living, dead, and long-dead trees across the world. These techniques can be very useful and reliable for dating all kinds of wood. For example, you could use these techniques to date a beam used in an ancient shelter. So, the fanatics dismiss this simple scientific tool because some of the trees date back beyond the date of the flood that they hold dear. As I said before, the flood was the known world, not all of it. Honestly, to drown the world in 9000 feet of water (the height of Mount Ararat) in 40 days would require an insane amount of rain. I am not even sure that we could produce a storm of that magnitude. Let me ask you a child-like question. Why would we create a planet, complete with evidence of a past that never happened. I mean, why would we bother with tree rings, other annual layering phenomena, fossils in the ground created, and light from distant stars almost all the way to the planet – light that reveals cosmic events and structures that never really happened? Think about this: we would have had to build physical laws to make the stars and planets around the universe, then broken those laws and sped up the light so you could see it. Why would we make a Solar system with Earth at the center, then later, between the time of creation and the time you were smart enough to do the calculations to notice the retrograde motion of planets, rearrange the solar system into a heliocentric model?
So, these fanatics claim that everything in the book is accurate, and should be taken literally. So tell me something: why don't you fools keep kosher? These people go to church on Sunday, but the Sabbath is Saturday. They ignore many of the laws set forth in the book. Mixing fabric types was a sin punishable by death, as laid forth by Moses, but most socks are a cotton-poly blend. Last time I checked, most fundamentalist fanatics are not hippies, so they wear socks. Many of these people are farmers and grow more than one crop in a field, another sin punishable by death. They pick and choose the laws they want to follow. So, which is it? Is the whole book literal truth or are parts of it not to be followed? It has often been said, “You can't have your cake and eat it too.” Yet the fanatics want exactly that.
Pope John Paul II even made a comment on it. He acknowledged, on October 7th of 1996, that evolution was, indeed, a scientific fact. Further, he stated that there is no conflict between creation and evolution. He said, “Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The science of observation describes with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life…while theology extracts the final meaning according to the Creator’s designs." The man who, honestly, has the most room to be a fanatic seems to be one of the most reasonable men in existence.
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