Was Jesus an Atheist?

I had a dream the other day.  I half imagined that in all the misquotes, reconstructions of the Jesus story to fit the new Constantine retrofit to his imperial fascist purposes, that Jesus’ real crime, if he really existed, was not that he claimed to be the messiah and or the son of man/god.

Jesus, if he was a true revolutionary, was ready to overthrow the state.  His real crime was atheism.  Or, at least the atheism as defined in Roman terms.  They are the ones that had to sign off on any execution.

The big deal with the Romans/Italians is the opera.  While on the surface Rome was tolerant to everybody’s petty gods, the real god was the state and the real power of god was the emperor, head of the army.  Not to believe in the emperor or pay tribute or give sacrifice or worship or respect was in fact to establish your non-verbal assertion that you did not give a damn about the state.

Taxes are one thing.  An empire starts to die when people start to dodge their public responsibility.  Gold is one thing, the other thing is respect or at least the tacit consent of the governed to the government set up.  Respect meant not only paying taxes but engaging in the secular religion of patriotism, of group identity and tribal solidarity.

One of the main criticisms we see in the few unfiltered, uncensored historic documents about the way the Romans had to first deal with the Jews and after them the early Christians was their sense of the abstract.

The fact that the Jews did not have an idol in their main temple must have been an odd sense of reality and or religion in the traditional set up of such things in those days.

In a sense, the Jews in Palestine were one issue to the Romans.  The other no doubt had to do with every local Jewish town within every large Roman city, and in particular Rome.

So in a sense, the Jews, like everybody else in Rome, had to come out in the open at least once a year to give tribute and sacrifice to the Emperor and symbol of the state.  After the emperors started calling themselves gods and building temples and idols of themselves in their temples, they put people like the Jews on the spot.  Tribute to the head of state was in a technical sense worship of a false non-Jewish god.

Tensions in the Jewish town in Rome had the emperor Claudius throw them outside of the city walls where they built another ethnic enclave. It was the fact that this Jewish town did not burn down in 64 C.E. that got the rumor mills going about the Jews starting the fire and the subsequent revenge against them.

 

Further rewrites in decades and centuries to come will have the fire blamed only on the Christians, a few, if any that existed, and that which probably lived on the edge of the Jewish town.

It is the later Christian propaganda about 64 C.E. that clouds, eliminates historic focus on the Roman pogrom against the Jews of Rome. This event I think was a remote spark of the rebellion in Palestine that traveled back there and started officially two years later as a continuation of Nero’s improvised urban renewal project and real estate fire sale within Rome.

The Jews themselves in Palestine had their own problems with the Romans wanting statues of their emperor/gods put inside the Jewish Temple.

 

No doubt there were negotiations, bribes, riots but in the end Rome ruled in Palestine and puppets rulers both secular and religious were put in place to act in the name of Rome.

So, the truth about Jesus might well be that on a macro level, he had no respect for the state.  No respect for the Temple priests and he wanted a revolution to replace them in a revolution, no doubt more violent than peaceful.  I cannot imagine a Mahatma Gandhi succeeding in civil disobedience against the state back then.  That what crucifixion was for.

So, Jesus, perhaps betrayed by some of his own followers, more likely betrayed by spies in his ranks, put him first in front of the Temple priests, no doubt because he was or posed in some capacity in the role of a rabbi in his day to day existence among the masses.

When Constantine hijacked the Jesus movement, no doubt it was easier to write the final scenes of the gospels as Jesus committing blasphemy in the eyes of the defunct and despised Jewish state and religion.  More retro PC anti-Semitic material for the Constantine crowd to make and frame the virtues of a new Jesus god who was anti-Jewish, anti-old religion and pro-Rome.

No doubt the temple police picked the trouble maker of Jesus up and delivered him to some sort of formal religious hearing.  No doubt the puppet Jewish priests handed Jesus over to the Romans and no doubt he was labeled as somebody who did not respect or support the priests and or the ruling religion of the state.

In other words, he was an atheist of sorts.  Of course, I believe he had his own private personal perception and beliefs regarding the God thing, mixed with his public beliefs, political and or religious. His popular front with the poor people was probably the real reason for his elimination by the state and its cronies.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” could not have been possibly been said by Jesus.  It was no doubt another standard Eusebius of Caesarea fraudulent type insertion into Constantine’s approved gospels three hundred years later.

Was Jesus an atheist?  I think yes. 

I think yes in a public timeline sense in that he did not believe in the belief systems already in place at the time.  He was against the theism of common popularity that supported oppression in his homeland.  

His own personal beliefs and or his search for a new understanding and definition of the Deity were no doubt quite a different matter entirely.

The State of Texas is not Christian

Why is the state of Texas not Christian?


It Kills.


"Thou shall not kill."

The State of Georgia is not Christian

Why is the state of Georgia not Christian?


It Kills.


"Thou shall not kill."

Search and Success with your Second Half

-
An interesting article. 


Priest pens spiritual survival guide for recession

“…Maybe you’ve been laid off from a job you held for years. Perhaps you’ve experienced a nasty divorce. Or maybe the crisis is more subtle: You suddenly realized that you’ll never have the life you dreamed of living.

Any life-changing moment can knock a person down. But it can also open doors if, as Rohr puts it, a person learns how to “fall upward.”

Rohr, a 68-year-old Roman Catholic author and internationally known speaker, says older Americans face a problem: Religious leaders aren’t paying much attention to them.

Much of contemporary religion is geared toward teaching people how to navigate the first half of their lives, when they’re building careers and families. Rohr calls it a “goal-oriented” spirituality.

Yet there’s less help for people dealing with the challenges of aging: the loss of health, the death of friends, and coming to terms with mistakes that cannot be undone, he says.

Rohr’s new book, “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,” is his attempt to fill that void. It also functions as a spiritual survival guide for hard times as millions of Americans young and old struggle to cope with “falling”: losing their homes, careers and status….”

-

Take Wall Street Back from the Crooks

(Wall Street Protest April 2009)

There was a peaceful protest in downtown Manhattan yesterday with the intent to occupy Wall Street which the police did not allow them anywhere near Thieves Alley.


Estimate of the crowd in the foreign press - 20,000.


?


Main Street Media pretty much ignored, blacked out the event.  


Lame Stream Media is talking about Sarah Palin's horny habits with many men of different colors and her cocaine problem.  


Michele Bachmann continues to stumble with her indirect criticism of the Pharmas and their experimentation on us Lab Rats.  


And all the other male Republican candidates still come across as a bunch of dancing fairies to me.  Ballet?


Unconfirmed reports of Obama still hiding under his desk at the WH afraid to make any decisions. ?


What are we afraid of ?  A bunch of coke head CEOs running the Wall Street Casino - running America into the ground for fun and profit???


Etc.


Whatever.

Pope’s Pending Criminal Indictment at the Hague?

Why the Pope must face justice at The Hague

"When it comes to holding the Catholic Church accountable for sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy, all roads lead to Rome. That is what my organisation, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap), concluded after years of seeking justice in other venues and being turned away.

On 13 September, we travelled to the Hague to file an 84-page complaint and over 20,000 pages of supporting materials with the International Criminal Court, documenting our charge that the Pope and Vatican officials have tolerated and enabled the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world.

Holding childhood photographs that tell a wrenching story of innocence and faith betrayed, and joined by our attorneys from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, we stood up and demanded the justice that has so long been denied. The New York Times called the filing "the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and the Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests".

No doubt, many people of faith are shocked that we would accuse a world church leader of crimes against humanity – a man considered by many to be infallible. But the man who is infallible must also be accountable.

…While many pedophile priests have been suspended in recent years, few have been criminally charged and even fewer defrocked. Worse, no one who ignored, concealed or enabled these predators has suffered any consequences. At the head of this hierarchy of denial and secrecy is the Pope, who has served as an enabler of these men. We believe the Vatican must face investigation to determine whether these incidences have been knowingly concealed and clergymen deliberately protected when their crimes have come to light.

I know this story well, because I was sexually abused by a parish priest, from my time in junior high school until graduation…”

Kentucky Amish Fight for First Amendment Rights

Amish jailed by Kentucky judge

“Members of the sect can affix reflective tape to their vehicles but refuse the orange triangle – a legal requirement on slow-moving vehicles.

After their arrest, the group subsequently refused to pay any fines as that would, in turn, mean recognising the law they refuse to obey.

Judge Deborah Hawkins of Graves County district sentenced eight of the men to between three and 10 days in jail for their refusal to pay up….”

Stealing the Goddess – Temple of Venus Jerusalem

Discounting all the retro fitted stories of Saint Helena in her eighties digging up the true cross, intact, with accessories, nails, unrusted, three hundred years after Jesus supposedly used them, what you have left is an architectural monstrosity, exterior at least, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

This church covers the area both not only of the most sacred site in Christendom, the empty tomb of Jesus, but also the site of the crucifixion, and throw in a real tourist bonus, the actual tomb of Adam, the first man.

There have been spotty repairs over the centuries after the earthquakes, fires, crusaders, etc. 

But the truth of the matter is that this holy place/tourist trap is so busy 24/7, nobody wants to close it down for even a day for a good washing let alone some serious repairs and restoration.

It is shared on the clock with three Christian sects, the Latin, the Orthodox and the Armenian Churches.  Fist fights break out regularly if the collection boxes are not turned over in time on a daily basis to the next time share owner.  Sweet Jesus Marie.

Can’t shut the cash cow down long enough to keep it from falling down on tourists one day when the centuries of spotty repairs will finally give way in some future earthquake.

The story is that Helena, sparing no expense, tore down Hadrian’s temple of Venus to build a new shrine to her newly discovered Christian relics and burial spot on the very site of this former temple of Venus. 

And why is that? Because Hadrian, the god of gods of the Roman Empire was so jealous of the strength of the new Jewish Jesus god, he buried the site of his crucifixion and resurrection under dirt and built his temple of Venus over it to hide the Christian truth.  Yeah right.

Truth be told, Helena's son Constantine was broke or close to it.  Spending his money on arms and being in constant warfare to keep his throne, what you have really IMHO is a recycled Temple of Venus, the round part of it at least, and with and by coincidence the tomb of Jesus in the exact center of Venus’s old ongoing never torn down temple.

And of course, Hadrian's Temple of Venus in Jerusalem was no doubt round, exotic and beautiful like Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome and Hadrian’s, slightly smaller, Temple of Venus in Baalbek Lebanon. Hadrian it would seem liked to build, copy, rebuild and improve on designs he admired most in his personal obsession, megalomania, concerned with places of worship.

The rest of the present church is more or less a lean to hodge podge of styles hanging onto the old Temple of Venus, with a slapped together handyman process by crusaders and others, pasting back the pieces of the place after the latest earthquake or burned down by the local Muslim in charge to rid himself of an annoying tourist trap, eyesore, in the middle of his tranquil domain.  (Daily fist fitting among the monks over the collection boxes etc. –  Muslim tolerance can only go so far.)

There is an incident recorded in the early nineteenth century of four hundred pilgrims getting killing in one of these daily monk fests for Christ in Jerusalem.

Going back to budgets.  There is all this crap about digging out what Hadrian supposedly had hidden and replacing it with the basic part of the present structure.  But as I said earlier, I do not think that the money was there.  I also do not think that the creative spark and energy of the Roman Empire of two hundred years previously, under Hadrian, was still there.

(above) So called original plans of Saint Helena’s church or merely modified plans, add ons – basilica, courtyard - right, for a recycled Temple of Venus – left?

History, propaganda, has Constantine as some great force in the West.  I can see where his splitting his empire in two in terms of administration might have made sense.  But he was totally writing the west off. 

Only brute force, such as his army, was the only glue keeping the old empire together.  That and his, designer, centralized, under the command of the army, new religion. 

His building a new capital city in the east was merely building a lifeboat for those who could afford a first class ticket on the Titanic.

Anyway, getting back to the surviving to this day, but occupied by a zombie worship cult, Temple of Venus in Jerusalem.

The present so called Sepulchre of Jesus, covered by a falling down garage like looking structure (can't shut the tourist cash cow down long enough to repair it), is probably, merely, the carved out stone pedestal of the old, long gone statue of the goddess Venus that once stood where Jesus never lay.

The Orthodox Church celebrates the Dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on September 26 (Gregorian), the same date as the ancient Roman festival of Venus.  Some coincidence.  Right?

-

Where is Constantine the Great’s Tomb?

Fragment of Constantine's Tomb - Istanbul

This is something that is I think is still a political hot potato after eight hundred years regarding what really happened to Constantine the Great’s final resting place.

He died in 337 C.E. in Constantinople.  Was laid to rest in the only finished church in his new designer city which was the Church of the Twelve Apostles.

From what I have read here and there, the church was built with the intention of having all the bodies of the twelve apostles buried there in a circle around the central sarcophagus of Constantine, the founding force of this new Roman/Christian religion, in a standing structure, a mausoleum adjacent to the church building proper.

There are historical references to Justinian rebuilding the church.  It was no doubt affected by earthquakes over time.  The royals too apparently had their tombs there as well. It was kind of like an Orthodox version of Westminster Abbey.

Then the Roman catholic crusaders, the fourth crusade,  got diverted on their way to Jerusalem, and under orders of the bankers in Venice, attacked and captured the city in 1204.  There are reports that Justinian’s tomb got looted for its gold contents along with the pillage of the rest of the city.

I have to believe that Constantine’s tomb got looted at the same time.  I also have to think that in terms of  suppressed church truth, it may have some bone fragments of Constantine in some secret vault in the grottoes below the Vatican.  But for diplomatic and propaganda reasons, they cannot admit to benefiting directly from the immoral seizure and rape of the Christian city of Constantinople.

The Muslims of course come along to this devastated city two centuries later in 1453 and conquered the decaying burned out city that had never fully recovered from the crusader plunder of it.

St. Mark’s Church in Venice is resplendent to this day with the gold, jewels, icons of that crusader sack of Constantinople.

The Church of the Twelve Apostles survived a decade or two more after the Turkish conquest, and was in such a state of disrepair, the Turks tore it down to make way for their own Faith Mosque.

There are fragments of empty unidentified sarcophaguses still sitting around the yard adjacent to this mosque and no doubt have been there from both the crusader sack of the city and the Turkish conquest.

All that is left of Constantine’s tomb, the founder of Christianity as it is structured today, is the above fragment of royal purple colored stone, labeled as such in the local archeological museum in Istanbul. 

9/12 - Interdependence Day

World Peace Fountains 4-4-73 = 9-11-11

I had what I think was a prophetic dream in the seventies. Although I never quite understood all the images and voices in that singular vision, I wrote about them and put them away for decades.  I begin to understand some of them now, after parts of the dream seem to unfold before all the rest of us.

While I can’t date that vision, I now date it 4-4-73, April 4, 1973, which is the official dedication date of the old World Trade Center.

I ran into the sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick some few weeks ago for the first time through his fascination and biblical like vision(s) related to all things labeled 3-4-74 which in his case relates to March through April 1974. 

In any case I somehow feel that if the whole world kept meticulous diaries in the past maybe we could see a similar vein of prophecy all over the planet on similar dates everywhere.

Which makes me think that the Internet may in fact be a critical stepping stone in our species' progress into the future, when in a scientific format, we will be able to document John of Patmos type visions and have a wider range of interpretations everywhere in every culture and all belief systems. 

On that day perhaps we will perhaps begin a dialogue with the creator on this plane of existence with the first few true universal words through a man-made universal translator.

In my own case, the vision of a great destruction was right in front of me but did not recognize it until it happened.  Which leads me to repeat my distrust of all things in the Book of Revelation. One interpretation for seven billions of people's perceptions is wholly inadequate if in fact it was a true vision.

We won’t see any of it coming until it hits us four-square between the eyes in our third eye/chakra. Period.

The above image of a father Robert Peraza paying loving homage to his dead son sparks into focus some of the last lines of my small personal vision of the future.

When “the beginning and the end are equal…”, “when the more is the less.”, when “the water of life flows to all nations from one source…”...

Albeit to say that the black stone surrounding the present Memorial Fountains at the WTC represents markers and gravestone remembrances of those who died there, and have no other official grave sites.

With that said and without revealing all of my own treasured wordings or images of my particular vision of the World Trade Center 4-4-73, I can say this.

While you can say that these two fountains represent a perception of a deceased north tower and deceased south tower, if you look on the map, you can see and perceive the present a little bit differently – you might see two fountains – one orientated east and one orientated west with a common north south axis.

Perhaps the Memorial Fountains will in time be renamed in another age, the future, and be called the World Peace Fountains.

“…Here marks the beginning of a new human race which God did see fit to begin here in this place.”

Father Mychal Judge O.F.M. – Patron Saint of 911

(September 11th Memorial window – St Francis of Assisi Church NYC - -Father Judge depicted, lower right quadrant – click on above image to enlarge)

Memories Of Sept. 11's First Recorded Casualty Endure

“…Another retired fireman, Jimmy Boyle, agrees that Father Mychal was one of the boys — but not when he was performing religious ceremonies.

"He could go into the firehouse, have a cup of coffee, have a meal, listen to all the talk, watch the ballgame, hear your problems, talk about anything you want," Boyle says. "But when he said Mass in the firehouse, I always felt when he got to the Eucharist, he just transformed himself. He became like Christ. He was just so pious."

Boyle says in any kind of emergency, Mychal Judge was a first responder. He rushed to the crash site of TWA Flight 800; to countless buildings on fire; and to hospital burn units — which is where Vina Drennan met him, in March 1994.

Drennan's husband had been severely burned the night before. Judge sat with her virtually every day, sometimes for hours, while her husband lingered.

"In 40 days he was always there," she recalls. "And when he prayed over John's burned body, you felt you had a chance that God would listen, anyway. You felt that the words were just flying right up."

For years after her husband died, Judge called just about every day. Drennan wasn't alone. Each night, the priest would have maybe 30 messages on his phone, which he'd return before going to sleep.

"Everybody called him!" Drennan says, laughing. "You know, 'Can you baptize my baby, can you do this,' and I'd say to him, 'Mychal, Jesus didn't have an answering machine! Just disconnect it!'"…--“

(Father Mychal Judge, front, FDNY Chaplain, 1933-2001, killed in the line of duty to his fellow man.)

“--"His mother always reminded him, 'You can't go wrong with a song. When you don't know what to do, sing,'" Fay says.

Judge was famous for his rendition of the murder ballad, "Frankie and Johnny," which he sang at birthday parties. He once sang "God Bless America" at the funeral of a gay man in the middle of the AIDS epidemic.--“

To Mars – God of War – A Prayer

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

“…"Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. …”

What if – Vatican – Pius XII - Auschwitz

( Cardinal's tribute/statue Pius XII St. Peter's Basilica Rome)

What if … if history could be changed … if the Vatican in World War II cared more about people than stone worshipping, dry humping, soulless christian institutionalism?

Amen

“The film Amen. examines the links between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. The central character is Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur), a Waffen-SS officer employed in the SS Hygiene Institute, designing programs for the purification of water and the destruction of vermin. He is shocked to learn that the process he has developed to eradicate typhus, by using a hydrogen cyanide mixture called Zyklon B, is now being used for killing Jews in extermination camps. Gerstein attempts to notify Pope Pius XII (Marcel Iureş) about the gassings, but is appalled by the lack of response he gets from the Catholic hierarchy. The only person moved is Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), a young Jesuit priest.

While the character of Kurt Gerstein is historical, the character of the young priest is fictional, and the plot is fictional. (Wiikipedia)”

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

I have been aware of this temporary Hippie like tent city celebration in the Nevada desert for maybe a decade or more. 

At first, it looks exotic, almost Road Warrior exotic as in the movie, as in post-apocalyptic culture.  You may see the avant-garde art, smell cannabis, the reverence for all things green and or ecological and I see a party in the desert for 50,000 people where you hang out, drink and kill a few days in the heat.

Supposed to be a "spiritual" experience for some.  (If there is no cell phone connection to the rest of the planet as stated, that is perhaps a good start.)

Been in the desert. Done that.  Camping in the desert in the summer is for fools, crazy tourists, old hippies and kids hanging out on mom and dad’s dime.

 Whatever.

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

They build some pagan like wooden man and temple and burn them down at the end of each festival which is the week before and including Labor Day in the U.S. each year.  But it’s not pagan.  It is art.  Or the usual BS on such plane of things pseudo-intellectual and ar-tis-tic.

Burning Man, Black Rock Playa

Navigate the many photos in the above link/blog to touch some the magic of an old fashioned happening American, Planet Earth style.

The festival started in the late eighties in San Francisco, where else, and migrated to the desert shortly thereafter.  I believe this is the twenty-fifth year of the festival.

(view from the air)