[continued from previous message]   
      
   Eventually, everyone started to laugh, and the laughter was contagious. All of   
   the people realized that on that day only one young child had possessed the   
   honesty, the simplicity and the spiritedness to speak the plain truth.   
      
   Knowledge   
   There are three valid sources of knowledge – inference, perception and   
   authority. .Most people are not prepared to exercise their faculties of   
   contemplation and recollection; and, in consequence, the value of inference is   
   largely ignored, while even the    
   power of perception takes a backseat to the prestigious position of authority.   
   However, all three sources have their merits; and, similarly, all three have   
   their demerits. In this world of relativity where everything changes, human   
   beings must always be    
   wary of accepting any doctrine as an eternal revelation, or as the   
   unalterable, unquestionable truth. While it is necessary to give respect to   
   authority, we must, nevertheless, remember that even a greatly respected   
   personality may be, or may have been    
   ignorant about certain subjects, and that the situation may have changed over   
   time, or it may differ from place to place or from person to person. Moreover,   
   it is sad but true that even those persons accepted as authorities may be, or   
   may have been    
   motivated by certain animalistic, or subhuman propensities. Keeping all this   
   in mind, human beings would be wise to increase their rationalistic mentality,   
   so as to make full utilization of all three accepted sources of knowledge. In   
   fact, this task is    
   absolutely critical if humanity is to avoid the pitfalls which have plagued   
   our history with countless wars and fruitless bloodshed up to and even in the   
   present day.   
      
   Christians have always been told that God is, in fact, a Trinity – Father, Son   
   and Holy Ghost. [326] But as yet, no scholar and no theologian has been able   
   to give a rational explanation of this concept, though nearly everyone claims   
   to understand the    
   subject. What happened to the Mother and Daughter? Is the Ghost that of the   
   Father, of the Son, or of the angel Gabriel? Was God a Trinity before Jesus   
   was born, or before the time of the creation? Now that Mary has become so   
   important to the Church –    
   often given equal or even greater religious importance than Jesus – is it not   
   possible that this Trinity should be, or effectively has been changed into a   
   Quadrinity? [327] If, indeed, this Trinity is now a Quadrinity, why did it   
   take two thousand years    
   for this to become apparent? These are all quite simple questions which make a   
   thinking person wonder whether religion really comes from God or, rather,   
   evolves out of popular sentiment and superstition. Is religion a science or a   
   pseudo-science,    
   spirituality or pseudo-spirituality? By now the answer to this question should   
   be obvious, but certainly there is no harm in bringing more clearly in focus   
   the obvious lack of rationality in much religious dogma, considering the great   
   damage done by    
   dogma to the cause of human progress.   
      
   The Roots of Judaism   
   Contrary to popular Jewish belief, history does not always match up exactly   
   with the Old Testament story, or with the modern interpretations of that   
   story. For example, it now seems certain from archaeological evidence that the   
   first Jewish occupation of    
   Israel was a long, slow process – not the quick and easy slaughter reported in   
   the Book of Joshua. The Jews were the invading force and they, no doubt, were   
   ferocious; but their conquest would appear to have taken something like two   
   hundred years, over    
   which time the Jews were mostly settled in the hills, while the Canaanites   
   largely dominated the plains. Furthermore, the early Jews who settled in   
   Canaan were not really monotheists, but rather henotheists. That is to say,   
   they did not believe in only    
   one God, but rather they accepted the existence of many gods, with one   
   particular god, Jehovah – Yud Heh Vav Heh – also known as Adonai, the Lord of   
   Hosts or God of War, [328] toward Whom the Jews felt a special relationship.   
   Those early Jews may have    
   paid extra reverence to Jehovah, but they also were enthusiastic participants   
   in rituals connected with the worship of other gods, including the very   
   popular sexual orgies in the groves of Ashtoreth, the Semitic version of   
   Aphrodite or Venus. [329] Not    
   until the seventh century B.C. did monolatry really give way to monotheism,   
   and even that monotheism, as has already been discussed, hardly merited or   
   merits the distinctive title of monotheism. [330]   
      
   One point worth remembering here is the chronological relationship between   
   Moses and the Pharaoh, Ikhneton. According to the Old Testament, Moses lived   
   around the 15th Century B.C., [331] but most modern scholars agree that he was   
   probably born in the    
   late 14th or early 13th Century B.C., soon after the reign of Ikhneton. If   
   that be the case, then Moses, an Egyptian prince living in the royal palace,   
   would have been well-acquainted with the monotheistic beliefs of Ikhneton,   
   whose revolutionary    
   religious reforms were undoubtedly still a matter of great controversy during   
   the childhood days of Moses. In fact, there are many similarities between   
   Ikhneton's worship of Aton – the sun god and, eventually, the sole God – and   
   Moses' worship of Jehovah,   
    the god who spoke to Moses out a burning bush on the “mountain of God”. [332]   
   Both the god of Ikhneton and the god of Moses were contacted and worshipped in   
   the open air, and both had some relationship with the sun or fire. [333]   
   Neither god was given    
   any image, or anthropomorphic representation, and both tended to speak only   
   through one religio-political leader. On the other hand, Moses did inject a   
   good many do's and don'ts into his religion, whereas Ikhneton's religion was   
   generally devoid of any    
   ethical content. This difference may largely be in consequence of the   
   differing conditions under which Ikhneton and Moses established their   
   religions. [334] In any event, the similarities between Ikhneton's religion   
   and the religion of Moses are far too    
   numerous and too significant to ignore. In fact, Ikhneton once composed a hymn   
   to his god, praising Aton for his bounties; and Biblical scholars have   
   frequently observed that this hymn of Ikhneton bears a remarkable resemblance   
   to Psalm 104 in the Bible.    
   [335]   
      
   One final similarity must be noted between the religion of Ikhneton and that   
   of Moses, and that is, that both preceptors made a formidable effort to   
   demean, and even to expunge all worship of other gods. Ikhneton often had the   
   names of other gods,    
   particularly Amon, hacked out of any earlier stone inscriptions and,   
   occasionally, even eliminated the Egyptian word denoting “all gods”. In like   
   fashion, Moses became furious at the sight of the Hebrews worshipping the   
   golden calf, and he inserted the    
   very significant words, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, at the end   
   of the first of the Ten Commandments. [336]   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)