When there is peace among religions

I believe that “Faith”, not fact is the basis of all religions and that religion is the product of the human mind trying to explain our existence.

There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament, and many other books that were rejected from each for one reason or another, yet not one was attributed to the hand of God, such as were the 10 commandments said to have been.

Considering how many different religions and bases for those religions there are it is someone of a singular mind that believes there can be but one true creation theory.

Closing one’s mind to other possibilities means that a religious person has decided that they, and they alone, has the knowledge of existence, of the universe, and of man. Such a person would therefore be smarter than any other being on earth as we as a species cannot fathom the knowledge of creation. It is still beyond us, yet religious people have decided that they have found the knowledge to determine from whence all things came.

It means they have studied all other possibilities, that they have studied all creation theories and religions, delved into the mechanics of all sciences and without doubt has found the one true answer, forsaking all others.

It is the inflexibility of those who have religious faith that has caused more strife in this world than those whose mind is open to not just one possibility, but all possibilities. I say all possibilities as we do not possess the mental capacity to see the one true creation based on analysis of all things, from all time and space.

Religious beliefs are man’s creation, our way to put into a comprehensible form, something which we will perhaps never be able to understand. Religious concepts of a God creator are part of the religious mechanisms we humans use to define ourselves in context with the universe and existence.

Just as the Prophet Muhammad founded the religion of, Islam many others have founded religions based on their personal concepts of creation. Sikhism for example, was founded by Guru Nanak in India in the 15th Century CE. It did not exist before Nanak chose it to be.

It is for that reason, that religion defining creation is suspect. It is man’s creation and its Gods are creations of man.

Now, having said that, never lose your faith, but always question it because once you have found your god, you cease to grow.

I leave you with this one thought from the Dalai Lama:

“When there is peace among religions, there will be peace in the world.”

Phonemes in languages around the world (3)

PART - 3

According to Genesis, Eden was placed between 4 great rivers which scholars deem to be in the Middle East, Iraq and Syria to be more precise. (Somewhere near or at the Zagros Mountain range in Iran)

Looking at the Linear A / B languages, the distribution pattern of phonemes and the DNA diversification patterns of humans, it seems contradictory that all of these point to an African genesis, rather than an Eden genesis some 3000 km away

Although pre-Christian Jews did not consider the Garden of Eden to be a physical place, Augustine of Hippo was the first notable Christian scholar to advance the view that Eden had an actual geographical location.

If the Genesis version of man is to be believed, that line of humanity must have travelled some 3000km to Africa, amassed a huge population and developed a base language from whose roots all others emerged, then spread throughoput the globe. A plausible scenario provided Christianity accepts a creation timeline greater than 4,000 years.

The migration from Eden to Africa would have taken approximately 100,000 – 200,000 years. (scientifically speaking)

In 1987, A worldwide survey of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was published by Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson in Nature magazine. Its main point was that "all mitochondrial DNAs stem from one woman" and that she probably lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa.

The Biblical timeline of man sets creation beyond 4000BC but never says how far beyond. Is this again a case of the timeline of the creation being put at a time distance well beyond any period for that culture to comprehend thus making the “creation event” a “believe” only event, not a proven one?

The 4th millennium BC spans the years 4000 through 3000 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history.

The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia. World population in the course of the millennium doubled, approximately from 7 to 14 million people.

Human beings have been living on earth for over a million years, but for a long time there were not very many of them. The world’s population was never higher than 10 million. People died quickly because they didn’t have enough food to eat.

When Jesus Christ was born about 2,000 years ago about 300 million people inhabited the earth.

If creation was about 4000BC and the great flood was about 2350BC (1650 years after Adam, and the tower of babel was set in 2250BC , 600 years after the flood, millions of people must have been born in an extremely short period of time to account for the diversity of languages and mitochondrial DNA patterns which science attributes to 100,000 + years of evolution and population growth.

Phonemes in languages around the world (2)

PART - 2

Phonemes are the distinct sounds used in 504 languages from around the world. The number of sounds varies hugely from language to language.

The number of distinct sounds in a language tends to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study.

Piraha: 11 (Brazil)
Hawaiian: 13
Roro: 14 (Papua new Guinea)
Bandjalang: 16 (Australia)
Japanese: 20
Bodo: 21 (Tibet)
Warao: 21 (Venezuela)
Inuit: 22 (Greenland)
Tagalog: 23 (Philippines)
Farsi: 30 (Iran)
Korean: 32
Mandarin: 32 (China)
French: 37
Russian: 38
German: 41
Bengali: 43
English: 46
Kurdish: 47 (Iraq)
Igbo: 59 (Nigeria)
Dahalo: 59 (Kenya)
Hadza: 62 (Tanzania)
Irish: 69
Archi: 91 (Dagestan, Russia)
Xu: 141 (South Africa)

Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University, said the same effect could be seen in DNA.

Modern-day Africans have a much greater genetic diversity than white Europeans who are descended from a relatively small splinter group that left 70,000 years ago.

'The further you get away from Africa, the fewer sounds you get,' he said.

'People have suspected for a long time that language arose with the origin of our species in Africa and this is consistent with that view.'

Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at Oxford University, said the origin of language could now be pushed back to between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.

'The study shows that ancestral language came from somewhere in Africa,' he said.

Consider for a moment what has been said here. Linear A may have beginnings in the much older languages and some of the more modern languages have their roots in Linear A and B.

DNA has its roots in Africa and the further from Africa people and their languages go, the less developed and diverse they became.

Phonemes in languages around the world

PART - 1

An article published in “The Daily Mail” in England (April 17, 2011), states that every human language evolved from 'a single prehistoric African mother tongue'. The basis for this theory is that as languages developed further and further around the globe from that central point, the fewer distinct sounds there were in each new language.

 After studying 500 languages, they could be traced back to a Stone Age dialect. The further away from Africa a language is spoken, the fewer distinct sounds it has. The study also found that speech evolved 'at least 100,000 years ago'.

The article states that “Every language in the world - from English to Mandarin - evolved from a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.”

After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.

The findings don't just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa - they also show that speech evolved at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.”

There is now compelling evidence that the first modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 to 150,000 years ago.

Around 70,000 years ago, these early humans began to migrate from the continent, eventually spreading around the rest of the world.

Although most scientists agree with this 'Out of Africa' theory, they are less sure when our ancestors began to talk.

Some have argued that language evolved independently in different parts of the world, while others say it evolved just once, and that all languages are descended from a single ancestral mother tongue.

Dr Atkinson, of Auckland University, has now come up with fascinating evidence for a single African origin of language.

In a paper published April 17, 2011 in Science, he counted the number of distinct sounds, or phonemes, used in 504 languages from around the world and charted them on a map.

The number of sounds varies hugely from language to language. English, for instance has around 46 sounds, some languages in South America have fewer than 15, while the San bushmen of South Africa use a staggering 200.

Dr Atkinson found that the number of distinct sounds in a language tends to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa.

He argues that these differences reflect the patterns of migration of our ancestors when they left Africa 70,000 years ago. (Cro-Magnon man, our most recent ancestor, appeared about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago)

Languages change as they are handed down from generation to generation.

In a large population, languages are likely to be relatively stable - simply because there are more people to remember what previous generations did, he says.

But in a smaller population - such as a splinter group that sets off to find a new home elsewhere - there are more chances that languages will change quickly and that sounds will be lost from generation to generation.

Linear A and B

Linear A and the derivative Linear B are two very old languages.  (2500–1200 B.C.E).

Linear A is one of two currently un-deciphered ancient writing systems and is believed to have been used in palaces and religious settings while Linear B had a more common usage and seems to have been used as a language of trade. Deciphered examples appear to be lists of items for barter, numbers and even fractions.

Inscriptions in Linear A have been found carved on offering tables found in the many peak sanctuaries on the mountains of Crete and there has been an acceptance of a clear relationship between Linear A and Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. There is also a connection to Hittite and Armenian.

This relationship allows us to place the Minoan language among the so-called Indo-European languages, a vast family that includes Modern Greek and the Latin of Ancient Rome. The Minoan and Greek languages are considered to be different branches of Indo-European. The Minoans probably moved from Anatolia to the island of Crete about 10,000 years ago. There were similar population movements to Greece. The relative isolation of the population which settled in Crete resulted in the development of its own language, Minoan, which is considered different to Mycenaean.

In the Minoan language (Linear A), there are no purely Greek words, as is the case in Mycenaean Linear B; it contains only words also found in Greek, Sanskrit and Latin, i.e. sharing the same Indo-European origin."

I include this here as Linear A and B have been found mostly in Crete, Linear A has been unearthed chiefly on Crete, but also at other sites in Greece, as well as Turkey and Israel (specifically Tel Haror and Tel Lachish).

Tel Haror has been identified as the biblical city of Gerar at the site of Tell Abu Hureira (Tel Haror). Of the cities in ancient Judah, Tel Lachish was second in importance only to Jerusalem.

Let’s suppose for a minute that such old languages were all a derivative of an even earlier language.

The Tower of Babel (where the bible says all mankind was “confused” with different languages) has been associated with known structures according to some modern scholars, notably the Etemenanki, (Sumerian "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk (Anunnaki) by Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia (c. 610 BCE)

NOTE: Ziggurats in ancient Mesopotamia were a rectangular stepped tower, sometimes surmounted by a temple. Ziggurats are first attested in the late 3rd millennium BC and probably inspired the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9).)

The Jewish Encyclopedia says the haggadic assumption that there are seventy nations and languages in the world is based upon the ethnological table given in Genesis 10., where seventy grandsons of Noah are enumerated, each of whom became the ancestor of a nation. The earlier Christian writers also took this table as determining the number of existing nations and languages.

NOTE: Haggadic midrash is an ancient Hebraic method of uncovering a depth of meaning from the Hebrew Scriptures, Every parable uses haggadic midrash to draw from the Old Testament in order to retell the story in a creative and artistic way.

Perhaps that is how one of the the Ziggurats became the Tower of Babel? A retelling of a supposed event in a manner which the culture could understand.

Religions -4

 

Another creation presentation is “The Sumerian King List” which allegedly recorded all the rulers of Earth over 400,000 years who were said to be gods, demigods, or immortals ... or one soul playing all the roles.

In Sumerian Mythology the Anunnaki (notice the similarity to the Abanaki) were a pantheon of good and evil gods and goddesses (duality) who came to Earth to create the human race. According to some resources, these gods came from Nibiru - 'Planet of the Crossing.' The Assyrians and Babylonians called it 'Marduk', after their chief god. (More on MARDUK later).

Sumerians said one year on planet Nibiru, a sar, was equivalent in time to 3,600 Earth years. Anunnaki lifespans were 120 sars which is 120 x 3,600 or 432,000 years. According to the King List - 120 sars had passed from the time the Anunnaki arrived on Earth to the time of the Great Flood.

The list also contains the length of time that each king ruled and as the period of reign came closer and closer to 00BC/AD the kings stewardship became shorter and shorter. Eventually the timelines better fitted a normal human life span.

Genesis Chapters 10 and 11 constitute what is known as "The Table of Nations" in the Bible and lists the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood

These are the descendants of Shem. When Shem was a hundred years old, he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; and Shem lived after the birth of Arpachshad five hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. When Arpachshad had lived thirty-five years, he became the father of Shelah; and Arpachshad lived after the birth of Shelah four hundred and three years, and had other sons and daughters.

 

When Shelah had lived thirty years, he became the father of Eber; and Shelah lived after the birth of Eber four hundred and three years, and had other sons and daughters. When Eber had lived thirty-four years, he became the father of Peleg; and Eber lived after the birth of Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and had other sons and daughters. When Peleg had lived thirty years, he became the father of Reu; and Peleg lived after the birth of Reu two hundred and nine years, and had other sons and daughters.

 

When Reu had lived thirty-two years, he became the father of Serug; and Reu lived after the birth of Serug two hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived thirty years, he became the father of Nahor; and Serug lived after the birth of Nahor two hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. When Nahor had lived twenty-nine years, he became the father of Terah; and Nahor lived after the birth of Terah a hundred and nineteen years, and had other sons and daughters.

Isn’t it odd that both the Bible and the Sumerians list of kings all attribute great longevity to the peoples who were kings and leaders, and the closer these people came to recordable history, the shorter their life spans became?

Each religion is valid within the context of the culture that produced it. In each case the timeline of the creation was usually put at a time distance well beyond any period for that culture to comprehend. This added mystic and grandness to the “creation event” with no way to actually decipher the event in the cultures history. It was therefore something you had to “believe”.

Religions - 3

 

Religions tended to put the idea of creation into a context that could be understood by the masses. A Hindu creation myth believes that the tortoise supports elephants that hold up the world, and everything is encircled by the world serpent. Elephants are common in India. The Creation Legend of the Abanaki (They are one of the Algonquian-speaking peoples of northeastern North America) closely resembles the book of genesis, but uses the Great Spirit rather than a God figure. The Abanaki were forest dwellers so forest animals became their spirit guides, their connection to the great unknown.

There were at least three separate cosmogonies in Egyptian mythology, corresponding to at least two separate groups of worshippers.  The Ennead, in which Atum arose from the primordial waters, (The Nile perhaps) and the Ogdoad, in which Ra arose, either in an egg, or a blue lotus, as a result of the creative interaction between the primordial forces of water and air. Again, water (the Nile) and Air, something all creatures require. These both later combined into a third where for a time, the creators of each were identified as being one and the same

Along the Nile river there were many nesting birds and beautiful flowers so it is easy to see how these may play a role in a religious creation..

NOTE: (The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model of the early development of the universe. The most commonly held view is that the universe was once a gravitational singularity, which expanded extremely rapidly from its hot and dense state. However, while this expansion is well-modeled by the Big Bang theory, the origins of the singularity remain as one of the unsolved problems in physics. Perhaps the collider black hole theory would explain this?)

Religions - 2

Let’s look at some of the major religions around today.

·       Atheism - Atheists are people who believe that god or gods are man-made constructs.

·       Baha'i - One of the youngest of the world's major religions.

·       Buddhism - A way of living based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.

·       Candomblé  - A religion based on African beliefs, originating in Brazil.

·       Christianity - The world's biggest faith, based on the teaching of Jesus Christ.

·       Hinduism - A group of faiths rooted in the religious ideas of India.

·       Islam - Revealed in its final form by the Prophet Muhammad.

·       Jainism - An ancient philosophy and ethical teaching that originated in India.

·       Jehovah's Witnesses - A Christian-based evangelistic religious movement.

·       Judaism - Based around the Jewish people's covenant relationship with God.

·       Mormonism - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

·       Paganism - Contemporary religions usually based on reverence for nature.

·       Rastafari - A young religion founded in Jamaica in the 1930s.

·       Santeria - Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion originating in Cuba.

·       Shinto - Japanese folk tradition and ritual with no founder or single sacred scripture.

·       Sikhism - The religion founded by Guru Nanak in India in the 15th Century CE.

·       Spiritualism - Spiritualists believe in communication with the spirits of people who have died.

·       Taoism - An ancient tradition of philosophy and belief rooted in Chinese worldview.

·       Unitarianism - An open-minded and individualistic approach to religion.

·       Zoroastrianism - One of the oldest monotheistic faiths, founded by the Prophet Zoroaster.

With so many religions (Just the major ones were listed here) it is conceivable, yet incomprehensible why one religion would claim to be the one true religion, with the one true God. All of those listed above have plausibility and are often an extension of the culture in which they were born. Buddism as a way of life, Spiritualism as a belief in life hereafter, and Shintoism as a continuation of tradition, all are valid in their own right and context.

Religions

Religion can be explained as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Religion is a huge subject to cover in one post so let’s first look at some of the major religions around today.

Islam is / is not a religion of peace

It was on June 7, 632, that the Prophet Muhammad died of a stroke at Medina.

Muhammad (or Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah) was born on a date uncertain in 570 in Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia, orphaned, brought up by an uncle, and became a camel driver and shepherd as a boy. When he was about 25 he married a rich widow and became a merchant. Muhammad thought it tragic that his Arab race was idolaters and polytheistic, so in 610 (he was about 40) he started having visions from the Angel Gabriel and began a life as a prophet and teacher.

The religion he founded, Islam, means “submission,” as in submission to the one God. Islam was resisted at first because of its novelty against the ancient tribal customs.

Muhammad’s wife died in 620 and he acquired several more over the years. In 622 Muhammad was forced to flee from Mecca to Yathrib, which is now called Medina, and found his religion welcomed there. The date of that flight is called the Hegira and that event marks the beginning of the Muhammadan era. His followers helped him punish the ungrateful Meccans, and after victory there extended his triumphs throughout Arabia.

The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an (or al-qur’an), means “the recitation” or “the lesson” – of God (Allah). It was jotted down, on bits of skin and palm-leaves, during the last twenty-two years of the Prophet’s life. The fragments were collected in the year after the Prophet’s death, and an authorized version circulated in 650. It was Muhammad’s successor, a convert named Omar, and a genuine fanatic, who reunited the apostates after Muhammad’s death by declaring war on rich Persia. As one historian (W. Muir) put it, it was “the scent of war that turned the sullen temper of the Arabs into eager loyalty.” Or perhaps it was the scent of loot. As another historian (Becker) wrote, “hunger and avarice, not religion, were the impelling forces” of the Arab expansion, and that “it was not the religion of Islam that was disseminated by the sword, but political sovereignty.”

Inasmuch as the Koran reflects the ideas of Muhammad, a few points need to be made. First, neither in Islamic history nor in the Koran is Islam a peaceful religion. It was not moral suasion that made Muslims of millions from Spain to India, including non-Arab Zoroastrians like the Persians. Second, it is not true that Islam is a tolerant religion. If we discount the early suras in the Koran, which were revealed when Muhammad was struggling for acceptance, and concentrate on the later ones, revealed when Muhammad was master of Arabia, you will understand the context of holy words.

22.9: As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron- rods.

(and)

47.4: When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives.

There is much uncertainty about the events of Muhammad’s life because, as with the life of Jesus, no one thought to write down a history until many years after his death – in the case of Muhammad, until 100 years after his death. Furthermore, because Muhammad was illiterate, he memorized his visions and dictated them afterwards, sometimes long enough afterwards to have forgotten contradictory earlier visions.

If this account is to be believed, the Prophet Mohammed started out by trying to convert people to his beliefs or claims of religious divinity with peace as the message, then when that was achieved to some degree, chose to revert to 'the sword" as the means in an attempt to total conversion to none other than "himself’ the Prophet Mohammed, as the center piece in creation, standing as the doorway between heaven and hell.

When you consider the two ‘versions” of Islam described above it is easy to see how an individual can persuade hundreds of thousands of people to come to believe either in himself, or in what he chooses to say. This is no less true of dictators and extremists and cult leaders. One person choosing to persuade all others that they are all important and a new religion is born.