The Devil's Gateway Ch. 02

"I almost hate to put this on you, but if we can somehow do what little we can, perhaps we can forestall the coming of this madness, this fiasco of stupidity and ignorance, then maybe, just maybe, we might be able to even start something that will eventually keep it from happening period. At the very least we can help the few that we come in contact with, and maybe one that is a sister who has been severely emotionally and mentally mistreated as some of you have been.

"Think about it, ladies. Think about it," she said, then looked around again, but with such a sorrowful, pitiful pleading in her eyes.

"And questions?" she finally asked.

It was a minute before any were asked, but then it was like a dam bursting. Liv made sense, and like her, I felt the heavy weight of her words in my mind. I knew right off that she was right. None of us had looked at it before, never thought of the possibility, but there it was.

"Ladies, if you come back next week, I'll give you some words that others think are facts, or opinions worth looking at—a sort of wrap up if you will.

Chapter 15

As Liv said, there's a price for truth, and we were now paying for it. Caryn put it best when she spoke about it.

"Penny, I felt such a pull to what I'd been taught in church like I haven't felt in a long time. Liv was right. I know she was, and a part of me hates it, but I have to look at it. If Jesus was a Jew, and raised as a Jew, believed as a Jew, and was a Jew to the end, and all of what is Jewish religion is false, then Jesus has to also be false—at least as they portray him in the bible."

"Yeah, I kinda felt similar. That Zeitgeist thing does make for some problems, huh?" I said, admitting I felt some of the same as Caryn did, at least for the moment. "Still, you're right, Liv has put it all in a way that we're seeing it so different from what they've always told us it was. Well, hell, what else could we expect? This shit has been going on for thousands of years now, and all of it built from stuff we have no idea of. How in the hell can anyone expect us to believe it if we see it as Liv has shown us, and as we've been reading. I have to say she's read some real good books, and they read as if they're without any B.S. in them, tell us things that we can check the bible on just like with Liv."

* * * *

We simply worked through it, and I mean we worked, that is, we read, and we checked things out. Liv was pretty much telling it as it was, as the preachers didn't tell it, at least according to Caryn.

We worked through the week anxious once more to find out what Liv had in store for us. In the meantime, there was our Friday night outing at the club.

"That's some scary shit Liv put on us," Mary voiced it as we had initially felt it.

"Did you check some more of it out?" Sally asked.

"You betcha, girl, and she's not led us astray either. I think what scares me the most is what she said about us most likely being among the first to feel their crap if they keep on going as they are," Mary worried some more.

Others got into the conversation with us. We all kicked it around for a while, some of us making some others gloomy.

"Have you invited her to come over and spend some time with us?" Jabs asked.

"No, but I've thought of it," Ariel said, "especially for Paula, she's so sweet."

"She is," Caryn had to agree openly, almost gushing.

"They sound interesting. It's the last class, huh?" Jabs asked.

"Yep, last one, or so she said," I told her.

"No sense in going to the last class; maybe you can talk her into coming here. I think I'd like to meet this girl."

"She's taken, Jabs," Mary said with a grin.

"Yeah, but I bet her girl wouldn't mind sharing her mind with us a bit," Jabs grinned back. Typical Jabs.

I never asked if Jabs had a girl though I'd heard she might have had a thing going with Jade some time back. They were good friends as far as I knew, but other than us girls being as we always are, there was nothing there other than the usual hugs and cheek kisses. In any case, I had a sneaking suspicion that Ariel and Caryn were going to work on Liv through Paula for they both really loved that girl.

* * * *

"I saw a '60 Minutes' show a few months ago," Liv began. "It was really interesting. They were at the Denver Museum of Natural History, I think, or whatever museum it is where they have dinosaurs exhibited. The news narrator, I forget which one it was, was talking to one of the museum people, and was being told that they gave time to groups to come for a special private tour. Frankly, I was stunned.

"Not that they allowed private tours—it was this man, he looked he might be in his early forties, or maybe younger. He had a group of children that looked to be about six to eight years old, or so, maybe some younger. Anyway, he was standing in front of a massive T-Rex, and he was expertly" she emphasized expertly, "telling the kids that humans walked among them—among the dinosaurs like T-Rex, that is. To me, it was unbelievable.

"He wasn't talking about humans from a million or two years back, I didn't think, but honestly, I can't say that. What I had was the distinct impression that he was talking about modern humans, or humans that have been around for ten or twelve thousand years, if that long. Yeah, he was one of those kinds. As he talked, I kept seeing those little heads bobbing up and down in agreement as he led them to do.

"Okay, I'm prejudiced here, but I can't say that I was there ten or twelve thousand years ago, or even a couple of millions of years ago if that's what he meant, but I have to tell you that in my mind, I was wondering what planet that idiot was from. As I said, I wasn't around back then to disprove him, but it does seem rather ludicrous. With science being as it is now, and proving through their testing how old some of these creatures were, that's the only conclusion I could come to. How can someone think as this man was teaching, was what I wondered?

"I've mentioned 'elephants' in a way that was metaphorical before. There's an interesting book, 'The Elephant In The Room,' by Eviatar Zerubavel, a professor of sociobiology at Rutgers. Among the many things of interest in the book, I found one thing I wanted to quote here: '...separating the relevant from the irrelevant is a sociomental act performed by members of particular social communities who are socialized to focus only on certain parts or aspects of situations while systematically ignoring others.'

"Particular social communities focusing only on certain parts or aspects while systematically ignoring others," she repeated in that attention getting quiet voice of hers. "Now doesn't that sound like he's talking about a Zeitgeist in a community? Aside from the fact that I, and maybe you, disagree with that man telling those children as he was about humans walking among dinosaurs, he was inculcating his beliefs on them, and ignoring all other evidence to the contrary.

"When I first mentioned this, I saw the disbelief in your eyes too. Ladies, this man was a fundamentalist who most likely believed the earth was only about ten or twelve thousand years old, or maybe less as some do. Not all fundamentalists believe as this man does—god, I hope not anyway," she said making a face of disbelief while her hand went up to it emphasizing it. "But they all do have a good belief in the bible being god's inerrant word, including the Old Testament, though they push it selectively. As I said, you don't see any of them having any of their continually misbehaving children stoned, do you? Nor to do they stone adulterers, but if they could a woman, they would, unless they were the one enjoying adultery with her," she said with a knowing smile. "By the way, what I said about them stoning a woman if they could, please take the time to notice that in the New Testament, in the gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 3 through 11, it tells of a woman taken in adultery, and put her before Jesus. Are you all familiar with it?"

Looking around, seeing us all nodding our heads, she went on.

"Annie, Rachel, look it up, and tell me if you see where they also took the man caught in adultery with her. There has to be a man for her to have been caught in adultery. Okay, maybe another woman," she grinned. "If any of you have checked, or want to check, I think you'll find it is prohibited to both men as well as women, and the punishment is equal to both according to the Law of the Old Testament. Girls, you find it okay?"

"Yes, I did," Annie said, "and there's no man mentioned there."

Rachel nodded."Same here," she said.

"Hmm, I wonder why. To tell you the truth, this is a passage some think was added to the gospel at a later date. No matter, it still reflects how they thought of women verses how they looked at men," Liv said.

"Look at Iran. They recently condemned a woman to be stoned while she was in a pit with only her head showing. They tell me that when it's a man, they don't bury him so deep. Their rule is that if the accused can get out of that pit and run, he or she is free. You can see how this favors a man since he's not buried so deep and has the possible strength to get out, whereas a woman most likely can't even wiggle. To set your minds at ease, if you don't know about it, in this particular case they decided that they wouldn't do that to her—too much bad world publicity, so they decided to be generous. Bastards!" she couldn't help but sneer.

"Sorry, but that gripes me no end. But can you make the connections? Islamic law as some interpret it, and I understand that this is written in their Quran, and what our Old Testament says? Connect this, and then connect the fundamentalists here and the Old Testament. Remember that last time I mentioned that billionaire who believed in that one fundamentalist preacher, Rushdoony, who wanted to make our nation to be a nation that follows Old Testament Jewish Law? This is what we have trying to exert their will on us.

"Okay, I said we'd go over a bit of this and that that I hadn't been able to talk about before—couldn't fit it all in. Here's a few things from various sources, actually, from the books I listed for you as good reading.

"This one is my own, and I said I'd talk more about this later, so here it is. Noah was said to have two of each animal in his ark, which, by the way, was written about in old Babylonia before Noah's time. If you think about the size of his ark," she said, grinning, "it was quoted as being 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Those cubits translate to 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high; that's at eighteen inches per cubit, or a foot and a half.

"Now forgive me for having some fun here, but just to show you how ridiculous that guy at the museum was about those dinosaurs. Not long after god made everything, it all got out of hand, and Genesis, chapter 6 tells us about saving Noah and two of every kind of animal. Now, did man then walk with dinosaurs?" she asked grinning. "If that guy is right, then Noah had to put a couple of each in the ark. I'll let you think about it if you wish, but going on with my line, how big is a T-Rex? Or maybe a Brontosaurus, which was said to be a lot bigger than a T-Rex, and with a long tail? Now can you imagine two of the T-Rex's and two of the Brontosaurus's, plus two of Stegosaurs, and two of all the rest including giant lizards?" Liv was laughing; she couldn't help herself, and neither could we.

"Okay, let's get a bit more serious and forget about dinosaurs. Now think about putting two elephants, two hairy mastodons—those wollies Cro-Magnons were said to have slaughtered—two crocodiles, two hippos, two jaguars, two tigers, throw in two sabre-toothed tigers too, two lions, two giraffes, two hyenas, two camels, two wildebeests, two boas, two anacondas, two Burmese pythons, plus all the smaller animals like chimps, monkeys, baboons, bonobos, horses, cattle of all sorts, donkeys, gazelles of all kinds, mountain goats, and insects, including roaches and mosquitos—gah! Why couldn't they have left those behind?—etc., etc., etc,. Oh, and crocs and hippos are mortal enemies. And also remember that there was no evolution for god made them all, period, so every variety of any animal was there back then, right? Now they were in the ark a week before anything was supposed to happen, then it rained those 40 days and nights, then it took months for the waters to recede. Goodness, it must have really stunk in there after a day of nothing but rain and humidity. I mean real rank, and bacteria like crazy.

"And here's some more on Noah and his pets. Chapter 6, near the end, says to take two of each animal. Then in chapter 7 near the start of it, it says to take 7 pairs of clean animals, and one pair of the unclean. Uh, I think something's wrong here. As some say, it looks as if two different people wrote this part, as well as other parts. This has to be proof, and something no fundie can defend. Uh, never mind, they find a way to defend everything."

She stood there trying not to grin, and failing in that, for when we thought about it like that, it was ludicrous beyond redemption.

"Mercy, I can't help it, they were wall to wall so that the crocs and hippos couldn't even get at each other—or was it all the crocs and all of the hippos?" she cracked up. "And where did they put all the food for them, the various kinds, or was this when god invented manna? The bible just says food for all the animals, and nothing about manna. Maybe the other guy who felt he had to correct Noah's story felt there should be seven pairs because some animals only ate other animals."

Liv's face starting to break into a huge grin before she got close to finishing, then erupted into gales of laughter, but it wasn't just Liv, it was all of us.

"What I'm getting at is that it must have been men who wrote all of this. And these fundies can't have it all their way, mix and match, and leave out—or most likely forget parts of it—as they wished to make it all come out as they want it to. The Jews were exceptionally smart as many of them still are: physicists like Einstein, Gell-Mann, Feynman, musicians like Stern, and much of what is Hollywood, but with all of that, they didn't know everything, and they had no idea that people would someday be able to read and write, or have books, or the Internet. But the fundies, the Catholic and Protestant churches, they'd like to keep it all as it has been, and as Martin Luther said, have you believe only and never to use your reason.

"Okay, so what else have I got to pass on to you, but in much shorter versions?" she grinned again. "Let's see, John the Baptist is revered by Mandaeans instead of Jesus whom, I believe, they consider a false messiah. Some of the Mandaeans are still around in places in Iraq, and now in Iran too, but not many are left. There's a shrine to John the Baptist in Iraq from before Islam.

"Tertullian, who'd been one of the leading heretic hunters and the leading theologians, according to Nicolas Wade in his book, The Faith Instinct, became a Montanist. Wade also says that Montanists used to dance a lot in ecstatic worship. They believed in direct access to god, which Tertullian liked. Wade says that the crusades were instigated by the pope's desire to control people from their religious frenzies such as from dancing. He wanted them to go through his priests so he could control them. Whether that has any truth in it, I don't know, but frankly, it sounds as if it might be reasonable, considering how rapacious the Catholic church was back then—not that much has changed," she said with a wry grin.

"Church's fears of this ecstatic dancing is evidenced by the invention of the pew, Wade says. That, too, makes sense. That way they had to listen to the preacher.

"Let's see, uh, yeah, here's something else from Wade: 'Canaanite texts of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. from Ugarit in Syria describe the Canaanite religion in some detail, including its gods, El and Ba'al and the tradition of animal sacrifice.' He also quotes others as saying that '...true monotheism emerged only in the period of the exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C., as the canon of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, was taking shape.' This he quotes from William Dever, a biblical archeologist.

"In 622 A.D., a battle between the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and the Sassanid army of general Shahrvanaz of Iran, who earlier had conquered and sacked Jerusalem was won by Heraclius, but he never took control of the territory in which they fought. The Arab people there were left to be free for the first time, and their first ruler was a Christian as his people were. That ruler was Mu'awiyah. He had his capital in Damascus and proclaimed himself as protector of the shrine of John the Baptist. Hmm, that's very interesting. Check history books for that date," she said with a sly look on her face. "You'll find that very interesting.

"Another good book is 'Evolving God', by Barbara J. King. Right off the bat she got me with '...the most profound, indeed the most stirring transformation in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens involve what does not fossilize and what is only sometimes made tangible: belongingness. Belongingness is mattering to someone who matters to you.' That, to me, is very true. That's just my personal opinion. And I ask you, might that be a good reason for joining a church?" her grin came back. "Maybe, huh? Don't we all just hate to be left out?

"Ms. King calls precursors to religion: empathy, meaning-making, rule-following, and imagination. That sounded good to me, though I can't say that I either agree or disagree with her; I'd have to think more on that, but it's very interesting.

"She tells about Brutus, the head chimp, who when Tina, one of his close chimps died, he wouldn't let anyone near to her body save Tarzan, Tina's little brother who was very close to her. She says that shows empathy in chimps. That sounds about right. What she's leading to is her logic for how religion started. The book is interesting, but not biblically oriented as are most others.

"Do remember that she's talking about 'evolving' in her book, so in it, she mentions the oldest human found yet, and she's right, very few people know about it. In Chad, they've found a hominid that is estimated to be six or seven million years old. Now remember me saying you needed to make connections? Here's one I made: if they can find a six to seven million year old hominid—just one—in the desert, why can't they find anyone in the wilderness of Paran, or Barnea-kadesh where over a million people perished, along with all of the animals, because god wouldn't let them in the promised land?

" 'Wait', some of you may say, 'that was 600,000 plus men.' Yes, and they were all probably married, so that makes over 1,200,000 people, and they still can't find a single bone. One has to wonder why not.

"And right along with these long-ago people, there was an island that Ms. King leads one to believe that is where there was a different type of human, but she doesn't identify it, but they had the audacity to build a temple that dates back 11,000 years at a place called Catalhoyuk near Turkey, where they also say farming began. That most likely had to be Cro-Magnons, but that's just me interjecting my opinion.

"And before Catalhoyuk, the Neanderthals built altars in a deep cave, and as in Catalhoyuk, the stones were huge. Ms. King says that '...our ancient primate legacy is to be transformed moment by moment through the process of being social and emotional with others.' I'm not sure what all anyone else's take on that is, but in going with what we've been talking about here, it seems to me that the present religions are trying to keep us rooted in their past, not wanting us to progress. Ms. King notes that one of their greatest enemies is science with it's knowledge, what Martin Luther considered the bane of belief, of faith, therefore of religion.