The atheist declares that God the creator is a myth because of all the known scientific knowledge of the universe and evolution of life on Earth. The Godiac declares that as described in the Bible God is the creator of all there is.

Copyright © 2009 by R. Blade All Rights Reserved
rblade@sbcglobal.net
 

Contents

Acknowledgement

Constantine the Great (rbladebooks.com)
Great Books of the Western World, Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1
Harper’s Bible Commentary, Harper and Row
Latin-English Booklet Missal, Coalition in Support of Ecclesia
    Dei, 1992, Glenview, Illinois
New Testament, Contemporary English Version (CEV)
New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
The Bible, King James Version 3.x (Internet)
The New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition
The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren

In writing this book I hereby acknowledge my reliance on and appreciation of the above named books and named source information.

R. Blade

Fictional Confrontation

The fictional confrontation in this book was developed from generally known arguments of atheists and believers in God. In this book the confrontation is between an atheist and a Godiac (one having blind faith in God). The atheist declares that God is only an idea because of known scientific knowledge of the formation of the universe and evolution of life on Earth. The Godiac declares that God is the creator of all there is. The atheist uses every occasion to disavow God while the Godiac responds with enthusiasm for supporting his blind faith in God. Their strongly divergent beliefs provide the subject matter of their confrontation. In the confrontation Christianism is the religion debated, although some subject matter might apply to other religions.

There are references to the Bible but a detailed examination of the Bible is beyond the scope of this book. Biblical quotes are approximate except when identified by chapter and verse. This book is not a comparative writing of different Gods or religions or an exegesis of a particular religious subject. Furthermore this book makes no attempt at Biblical or theological scholarship.

Early Christianism

Christianism began in the Eastern Roman Empire (Middle East) and expanded to the Western Roman Empire (North Africa and Europe). Early Christians were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Because of the lack of scientific knowledge, early Christians believed God was the Supreme Being who created all there is. God was the answer to the world’s mysteries and comforter of the peoples’ miseries. Disciples of Jesus cobbled Christianism from his birth, life, death, and perceived resurrection.

Early Church

The early church was the nascent Christian church established in Rome. The early church had problems trying to explain the contentious differences about the nature of Jesus. How was the divine Son of God incarnated in the human Virgin Mary? Was he divine in heaven and human on earth or was he divine and human at the same time? Who if anyone witnessed Jesus’ resurrection? These and other unanswered questions presented the early church with the problem of how to convert the human Jesus to the divine resurrected Son of God. To remedy this and other problems the papacy in Rome established the precepts of the early church. However not all early Christians accepted the papacy’s precepts. Absent an acceptable unified Christian theology, early Christians separated into many different sects.

Constantine the Great (280-337 AD)

While the early church struggled for an acceptable unified Christian theology, Constantine the Great was the pagan Emperor of the combined Roman Empire (Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire). During his rule (324-337 AD) he attempted to unify the different and disputatious Christian sects, more to maintain peace in the provinces of the Roman Empire than for a unified Christian theology. Commanding his powerful army Constantine had the habit of invading Roman provinces and looting their treasuries. Returning to Rome he gave most of the loot to popes for establishing and expanding Christianism throughout the Roman Empire. He gave them money, palaces to live in, and built their churches. (The massive serpentine solid gold columns of Saint Peter’s altar were probably cast by the gold looted by Constantine). He was banker and friend of early popes. At that time, without his help, there might not have developed an established papacy and Christian religion in Rome.

If it weren’t for the pagan Emperor Constantine, Christianism might not have become one of the world’s most popular religions. Constantine did more to establish Christianism than did any of Jesus’ apostles and disciples. At the end of his life Constantine was in ill health in the Turkey and decided to become a Christian before he died. He was baptized a Christian by the schismatic Bishop Eusebius, an Arian Christian. Arian bishops were not under the authority of the Church of Rome because Arians were Christians who did not believe Jesus was the Son of God. Because of this the ungrateful domineering Pope Julius 1 denied Constantine’s baptism. After all of Constantine’s help in establishing and funding the papacy and Christianism, the conclusive evidence is that Pope Julius 1 deliberately denied Constantine’s baptism because he was baptized by an Arian Christian bishop. Except for the absolute magisterial powers of a pope, and corruption of the early papacy, Constantine should have been appointed the 13^th apostle or canonized a saint. (Visit my web site rbladebooks.com for a great conversation with the reconstituted Emperor Constantine the Great).

Bible Overview

The Bible consists of the Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible is a collection of many ancient scriptural writings compiled for the Old Testament (Judaism) and the New Testament (Christianism). In each testament the writings are mostly allegories embellished with symbolic right and wrong, reward and punishment, homilies and maxims. Because of the Bible’s original translation from Greek to Latin to English, and other languages, there are many different versions of it. The Old Testament is much larger (about 1100 pages) than the New Testament (about 300 pages). In researching scripture you must have the exact words for the particular version of the Bible you’re searching.

Old Testament. The Old Testament describes the history of Hebrews, later called Jews, and their relationship to God; it’s the origin of Judaism. In the Old Testament Hebrews were the ascendants of Abraham and Isaac. Jews were the ascendants of Jacob who wrestled with an angel. The wrestling represented the Jews struggle with God. At the end of the wrestling struggle the angel told Jacob he would henceforth be spoken of as Israel (Genesis 32:29). Jews were the people of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Today Jews are people who practice Judaism.

The Old Testament generally consist of 46 books commonly grouped as follows:

Pentateuch (the Torah, the first 5 books)
Historical Books, 16
Wisdom Books, 7
Prophetic Books, 18

The Pentateuch (Torah) consists of the 5 books of Moses.
But a Catholic version, The New American Bible (Saint Joseph Edition) includes 3 extra books (6-8) in the Pentateuch.

1.The Book of Genesis
2.The Book of Exodus
3.The Book of Leviticus
4.The Book of Numbers
5.The Book of Deuteronomy
6.The Book of Joshua
7.The Book of Judges
8.The Book of Ruth

In 6. The Book of Joshua God orders Joshua to continue Moses’ exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to God’s Promised Land called Canaan. The continuation of the exodus provides some justification for this book to be included in The Pentateuch. If true it should be the third book, not the sixth.

In 7. The Book of Judges the Israelites continue Joshua’s battles for supremacy of Canaan. Military leaders called Judges are successful in the establishment of the monarchy of Israel. There’s no reason for this book to be in The Pentateuch.

In 8. The Book of Ruth the Moabite woman Ruth marries Boaz of Bethlehem. God favors her high morals and self-piety and she becomes an ancestor of David. Recall that after the birth of Jesus his mother Mary was married to Joseph an ascendant of David. There’s no reason for this book to be in The Pentateuch.

The above referenced eight books should have been renamed the Octateuch. This example shows one of the many different versions of the Old Testament and that man created the Bible and all its versions. The word Christian is not in the Old Testament.

New Testament. The New Testament describes the life and teachings of Jesus; it’s the origin of Christianism. The word Christian is only in the New Testament; its contents are grouped as follows:

Four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)
Acts of the Apostles, 28 acts
Epistles of Disciples, 21 epistles
Book of Revelation (Apocalypse)

Glossary

Adonai    Name of the God of Jews (replaced Yahweh).
AIDS      Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome caused by HIV
            (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
being     Material existence of life.
Bible      The Old Testament and the New Testament in one book.
Canaan   Land along the Mediterranean Sea, Northeast of Egypt,
              south of Phoenicia.
Christ     English translation of the Greek Christos.
Christians      Believers in the life and teachings of Jesus.
Christianism   The Christian religion, interchangeable with Christianity.
Christ Jesus    Interchangeable with Jesus Christ.
Christos     Translation of the Greek word for anointed one (Messiah and/or
                 savior). After Jesus died Greeks gave him the surname Christos.
church        Christian place of worship.
church fathers     High clergy of the early church.
Christus       Latin for Christ.
divine revelation      Revelation from man attributed to God.
early church      Early Christian Church in Rome ruled by a pope before it
        became the Roman Catholic Church.
early Christians      Followers of Jesus Christ during several centuries after
         Jesus died.
Elohim      Name of the God of Jews (replaced Yahweh).
godiacs     Believe God is the creator of all there is including the universe and life. They are aware of scientific evidence but have unshakable blind faith in God and reject any evidence contrary to God’s putative supernatural and spiritual powers.
godists      Believe God is the creator but are willing to accept certain scientific evidence, such as how our universe was formed and that male sperms and female eggs generate babies.
goditis      Emotional debility of believers, mostly godiacs, to accept scientific evidence. Goditis deprives them of reason due to their blind faith in God’s supernatural powers.
faith      Belief in God.
ignorance      People who lack modern scientific knowledge (see stupidity).
Immaculate Conception      The Virgin Mary’s conception of Jesus when the Holy Spirit came upon her to remove her Original Sin and impregnate her.
Israelite      A Jew who struggles with God (eg Jacob).
Jesus Christ      Interchangeable with Christ Jesus.
Jesus       Jewish rabbi and itinerant preacher who lived an exemplary life. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate (Roman Procurator of Judea). Jesus was putatively resurrected and ascended to heaven. He was presumed to be the Son of God.
Jew      Believers in the God of Hebrews. People of the ancient Kingdom of
            Judah, one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
limbo    Contrived resting place for babies who die before being baptized.
            The word limbo is not in the Bible.
man      Generic for human being(s).
Mysterium Fidei      Mystery of faith.
omni powers      God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.
physicals      Material things whose existences are provable whether visible
       or invisible (eg dark matter).
redemption     Souls are spiritually redeemed from the bondage of sin.
purgatory        If Catholics die having venial sins without the forgiveness of confession by a priest, they go to purgatory to suffer for expiating their sins before being cleansed for admittance to heaven. The word purgatory is not in the Bible.
salvation      Souls are spiritually saved from the eternal punishment in hell.
science      Knowledge of material things visible or invisible (eg dark matter) obtained by experiments and tests yielding the same results.
scripture      Writings by man inspired by the belief in God (eg Bible).
soul     Concept of a spiritual entity bestowed by God upon man.
stupidity     People having modern scientific knowledge and rejecting it (see
             ignorance).
substance      Any measurable and testable material thing.
Ten Commandments      In the Old Testament – Exodus Chapter 20 and The
          Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 5 Decalogue.
Trinity      Christian belief in a God consisting of three divine persons – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Christian theologians later renamed the Holy Ghost the less macabre Holy Spirit. The word Trinity is not in the Old Testament or New Testament.
Yahweh     God of Hebrews and later Jews who, fearing his punishment, were forbidden to pronounce his name.
 

HOST     I was raised Catholic. I’m now an atheist because God doesn’t exist except in the minds of believers. Man made everything about God including religious precepts whether classified dogma, doctrine, or other. You should know that I question your belief in God, not your decision to do so.

GODIAC     I was raised Protestant and am still Protestant. My belief in God comes from the Bible. God is the creator of all there was, is, and will be. My church governs itself and each member may approach God without third party intervention. You should know that I have acquaintances who are atheists and am familiar with their godless beliefs.

The atheistic HOST has a clipboard of notes in order to manage the confrontation with the GODIAC. The HOST and GODIAC have better than average knowledge of the Bible but neither is a Christian scholar or theologian.
 

Identifying God

HOST     I’d like to begin by declaring that God is only a concept, an idea subject to one’s personal belief in a Supreme Being. God’s identity is personal.

GODIAC     God is the one and only Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of all there is.

HOST     If true, why are there so many different Gods?

In Hinduism there’s one Supreme God attended by multiple lesser gods supported by mythical stories such as in the Vedas and Upanishads.

In Judaism there’s another different God supported by the mythical scripture in the Bible’s Old Testament.

In Christianism there’s another different God supported by the mythical scripture in the Bible’s New Testament.

In Islam there’s another different God supported by the mythical scripture in the Quran.

Identifying God is like trying to determine the shape of a low passing cloud, a glob of moisture, that keeps changing shape.

GODIAC     Not true, all Jews and Christians know God exists as described in the Bible.

HOST     All doubts about God can be eliminated if your God would present himself and answer a few questions.

GODIAC     That’s impossible; God is not human; he doesn’t hold news conferences.

HOST     You said that God isn’t human but you just identified God as a he, as if God were a man.

GODIAC     The Old Testament refers to God as he, his, him. All Jews and Christians understand those simple words for God. How are we to communicate if not by using common language.   

God as Spirit

HOST     If God isn’t human what is he? Christian theologians declare God is a kind of super spirit. Do you believe that?

GODIAC     God is a spiritual entity.

HOST     That phrase spiritual entity is contradictory. God cannot be an entity because an entity consists of physicals.

GODIAC     I believe in God’s eternal and infinitely powerful spirit.

HOST     Consisting of what?

GODIAC     God is purely spiritual; he’s a divine essence beyond our comprehension.

HOST     If God is a spiritual divine essence, God lacks the physicals required for examination and proof of existence. How can one examine a spiritual divine essence?

GODIAC     There’s spiritual existence as well as physical existence. It’s generally agreed that God is a purely spiritual being with superhuman powers.

HOST     Existence, being, and power each requires physicals. God can’t be a he and can’t possibly be a divine person.

GODIAC     I disagree. We are spiritual as well as physical. When God blew the breath of life into man he gave him physicals and a soul.

HOST     Genesis does not specify that God gave man a soul. Besides breath is physical, soul is not.

GODIAC     Man has a dual nature; he’s physical as well as spiritual.

HOST     The phrase ‘spiritual being’ is an oxymoron because a being requires physicals. No one has ever detected a soul, isolated it, seen it, measured or weighed it. There’s no soul and no spirit, only the physicals of our world and universe. When a person dies his assumed soul dies. No pope, archbishop, mullah, or other agent of God can materialize God. They don’t know any more about God than atheists do. What they know are the observances and rituals created by man for the reverence of an assumed God described in the Bible and other religious writings.

GODIAC     That’s the obvious answer of an atheist. All believers know there’s only one God, the creator, a spiritual divine entity of superhuman intelligence and power.

HOST     That’s impossible. One cannot be a spirit, a nonentity, and at the same time have the superhuman intelligence and power of a physical being.

GODIAC     God might be invisible to you but his exalted and powerful spirit is made visible to believers.

HOST     Believers can’t manifest God. When you think of God do you see anyone or anything?

GODIAC     I envision God, a purely spiritual being.

HOST     A being has physical parts. A pure spirit cannot have physical parts, so God can’t be a being. Besides how can you envision a spirit?

GODIAC     It’s a personal and highly spiritual experience. Man can’t know God through sensual perception, his five senses. God is knowable only through the intellect that God bestowed upon man over lower animals.

HOST     That’s precisely why man’s concept of God is a fantasy. God is a phantom lurking in the brain of believers, never to be materialized in the real world outside his head. Thomas Aquinas declared God was pure simplicity without constituent parts. Do you agree with Aquinas?

GODIAC     I’ve heard the name Aquinas but don’t know anything about him.

HOST     Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Catholic priest and probably the greatest of Roman Catholic theologians. In the many volumes of his greatest work, the Summa Theologica, he set out on the impossible task of proving God’s existence.

GODIAC     Did Aquinas succeed in proving God’s existence?

HOST     Unfortunately no, his five treatises on proofs of God’s existence turned out to be merely treatises consisting of philosophical and metaphysical gobbledygook called scholarship. It’s what happens when a writer uses literary devices in an attempt to convert a phantom to reality. But some of his writings became Catholic doctrine. Near the end of his life he confessed to attendant witnesses "I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and I now await the end of my life." (Great Books of the Western World, Thomas Aquinas,
Volume 1, Preface p vi).

GODIAC     God is beyond human description. If there isn’t a God, what is there? Who or what created all there is?

HOST     The creator is obviously evolution in space and on Earth. Let’s get back to God as concept. You avow God is a pure spirit of divine essence. What’s divine essence?

GODIAC     I believe God consists of the essential consciousness of his supernatural intelligence and power.

HOST     The words ‘consists of’ and ‘consciousness’ denote physical parts. Moreover consciousness means God has a brain and a brain consists of physical neuronal networks.

GODIAC     Your talking about human parts. You can’t compare God to humans. God is supernatural; he’s divine, beyond description. There aren’t words to describe God’s precise nature.

HOST     Are you saying your God is ineffable, another indescribable Yahweh?

GODIAC     We can describe God as a personal God who loves us. We should love and worship him.

HOST     The word personal can’t be used to describe God’s fictional divine essence. Your God is an imaginary corpus. The fact is that God exists only in the brain as a concept that can’t be materialized. Anatomical studies prove that some people are right-brained and others left-brained.

GODIAC     Why are you now splitting the brain? Is it to support your own argument?

HOST     Godiacs are probably right-brained, emotional, and impractical. Atheists are left-brained practical and thoughtful. Perhaps my brain doesn’t have God receptors.

GODIAC     God cannot be separated into brain parts or receptors.

HOST     Aquinas concluded the same long ago, that God doesn’t consist of constituent parts. Whatever receptors I have, I don’t appreciate God or even acknowledge his existence.

GODIAC     God he is that he is. The one and only God, the creator of all there is.

HOST     If that’s true, why does each religion have its own scripture and its own different God? If there’s one Supreme Being, why do different religions have different Gods?

GODIAC     God is called different names because different cultures have different languages. Each language refers to and acknowledges the one Supreme Being whether it be Adonai, God the Father, or Allah. In the Bible our Judeo-Christian scriptures have different names for God, the one Supreme Being.

HOST     The founders of the Judeo-Christian tradition include Hebrews, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israelites, Jews, Jesus renamed Jesus Christ, and Christians. In Jewish scripture God was first called Yahweh, then Elohim, and later Adonai. In Christian scripture God is divided into three persons of Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To further confuse the nature of God, Trinity is also called the Godhead.

GODIAC     By lineage Jesus is an ascendant of David, sometimes referred to as a son of David as well as Son of God

HOST     The gospels tell us Jesus was the Son of God made human by the intervention of the Holy Spirit upon the Virgin Mary. His birth wasn’t the result of a sexual act; he cannot be the son of anyone.

GODIAC     The simple fact is that I believe in God and you don’t.

HOST     True. Perhaps questioning the use of certain language gets us into an esoteric philosophy beyond the scope of our confrontation.

GODIAC     We’re agreed on that.

HOST         The fact is that you can’t prove there’s a God and I don’t need to. Religion is a concept that can be materialized by its physicals such as buildings, literature, and rituals. God and spirit are concepts that can’t be materialized. Scripture attempts to convert fiction to religious truth, which is oxymoronic because God resides only in one’s cerebral cortex. God is a resident concept and persistent fantasy lurking in your brain.

GODIAC     God is part of me; he’s always in my mind.

HOST T    rue and that’s where God belongs, in your mind not in public. Even though you admit God is purely spiritual, you keep referring to God as a person. God cannot be a person. No person no matter how powerful could have created all there is.

GODIAC     Believers use words humans understand.

HOST     That’s the problem isn’t it? Early man thought God was built like a human and therefore referred to the creator as another man, perhaps a giant Supreme Being somewhere far away in the sky.

GODIAC     The sky is home to the Sun and stars far beyond the reach of man. It was natural for early man to look for God in the sky.

HOST     Why doesn’t God have a female partner?

GODIAC     You’re again thinking in human terms. God is not human; he’s the creator of all things and represents all things living or not. It’s obvious to me that believers have faith in God.

HOST     What’s obvious is that our positions cannot be reconciled. Based on today’s science God might be an exotic electromagnetic super energy. Perhaps if God were like invisible dark matter we could at least detect and measure his affect upon Earth.

GODIAC     Believers know that loving God affects their daily lives.

Mind and Matter

HOST     I have a note about mind and matter. The mind God is real only in the mind of a believer. There’s a mind God but not a matter God. The God in a believer’s mind can’t be transformed or materialized to matter. In the substantive world the mind God is supported by rituals, vestments, and props in order to convince believers God exists.

GODIAC     You’re referring only to physical reality. There’s also spiritual reality and that’s where God exists.

HOST    There’s no such thing as spiritual reality; it’s contradictory.

GODIAC     It existed for thousands of years and among believers it continues to exist today.

HOST     Spirituality is an unproven theory and so is your God.

GODIAC     God isn’t a theory; he’s the creator of all there is. He created us so that our physical nature is temporal and our spiritual nature is eternal.

HOST     God separated from mind is impossible. A believer has only his individual concept of God, a concept that can’t be made real. God is in a believer’s mind but not outside his mind in the real world. The problem is that no one knows anything about God.

GODIAC     Not true. The Bible is the source of knowledge about God.

Knowledge

HOST    Let’s talk about knowledge because defining God is like trying to describe a conceptual maze without logical entrance or exit. The problem is that God doesn’t lend himself to knowledge. No one has ever had any direct knowledge of God.

GODIAC     Not true. Knowledge of God comes from the Bible and spiritual reality.

HOST     Spiritual reality is an oxymoron. Spirits like your God are concepts; they’re real only in a believer’s mind. If there were some direct knowledge of God we wouldn’t be having this debate. Perhaps we should talk about knowledge.

GODIAC     The Bible provides that knowledge. If you don’t believe in the Bible it brings us back to square one. Besides what do you consider to be knowledge?

HOST     We probably have different interpretations of knowledge. The Bible doesn’t satisfy the demands of ‘prove it’ or ‘show me’. Today’s high school students know more about our universe than did the writers of the Bible. I believe knowledge is the examination of a subject ending in factual results satisfying the demands of ‘prove it’ or ‘show me’. Knowledge of God doesn’t exist because his existence has never been proved.

GODIAC     You talk about God as a scientific experiment with demonstrable proofs at each test. There’s also spiritual knowledge, such as the knowledge of God. Christians have faith in God and in his New Kingdom.

HOST     But having faith in God is precisely the problem. Your faith sells futures in the Kingdom of God. Having faith is like buying futures in the commodity or stock markets. Faith is a mental image not substantiated in the material world.

GODIAC     There’s scriptural knowledge of God as well as doctrinal knowledge.

HOST     You’re talking about assumptions of God proposed by ignorant writers who knew nothing of science. The fact is that you and all believers cannot specify or define the makeup of God.

GODIAC     The fact is that God is described in detail throughout the Bible.

HOST     I think there are three words that describe believers in God - godist, godiac, and goditis.

GODIAC     I have an idea of what those words mean but they are of your own making to suit your own purposes.

HOST     Godists are people who believe in God but might accept evidence contrary to God’s putative omni powers – omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.

GODIAC     In that case godists lack committed faith in God. They probably believe in God only because their parents do so.

HOST     Godiacs are people who believe in God with unshakable blind faith and reject any evidence contrary to
God’s omni powers.

GODIAC     You’re alluding to persons like me. I have a committed belief in God the creator and his omni powers as you’ve described them.

HOST     We know also the two stories of creation described in the Old Testament in Genesis. It’s incredible to me that in 2009 there are people who still believe God created the universe. Why do you continue to ignore scientific proofs?

GODIAC     Your so-called scientific proofs are made by man and it was God who made man.

HOST     That’s what I call goditis, the unshakable belief in God by those who are emotionally disadvantaged for accepting scientific evidence.

GODIAC     Emotionally disadvantaged, what do yo mean?

HOST     Godiacs use God to satisfy their personal needs even when scientific proofs are contrary to God’s putative omni powers.

GODIAC     God has given us free will. I choose to believe in God. He’s in my daily life and I live to worship and love him. If that’s goditis, so be it.

HOST     You’re living and devoting your life to a phantom called God.

GODIAC     Not a phantom but the creator of all there is.

Manifesting God

HOST     On another matter have you ever viewed your God.

GODIAC     God is in my daily life. I acknowledge and worship him every day. I cannot conceive of living a single day without God.

HOST     Did God ever manifest himself to you, person to person? Did you ever witness God’s physical presence?

GODIAC     Not that I’m aware of.

HOST     How could you be not aware of God’s radiant physical presence? If there’s a God why doesn’t he show himself?

GODIAC     God works in mysterious ways far above human experience or understanding. Recall that when God delivered his Ten Commandments, he manifested himself to Moses.

HOST     In that event God’s manifestation was not in person; it was in the form of thunder, lightning, smoke, and trumpet blasts on Mount Sinai.

GODIAC     All that because of God’s supernatural radiance; otherwise his radiance would have consumed Moses.

HOST     I think God is in your serotonin high.

GODIAC     What?

HOST     Have you ever had a vision of God?

GODIAC     I think of God as a superhuman power to be worshipped and loved.

HOST     The only way to see your God is to have your brain waves detected, measured, and displayed on a medical monitor.

GODIAC     What? What are you talking about?

HOST     Electrodes are attached to your skull where your God resides. You’ll be able to see your brain waves representing your God displayed on a monitor. Your God is physical not spiritual.

GODIAC     I’ve never heard of such a preposterous proposition. God’s supernatural spirit and powers cannot be measured or seen.

HOST     Humans are elctro-physical beings. Our body parts evolved from molecules that evolved from elements having electrical charges. The brain’s neural network releases neurotransmitters that find their companion receptors for specific results. Chemistry and drugs work in our bodies because we’re bioelectric.

GODIAC     I don’t know anything about that.

HOST     You do know that electricity can kill us as in the great voltages in power cables and lightning.

GODIAC     I recall reading that God sent lightning to Earth to punish evil.

HOST     Because of the electrical charges in our brain, its activity can be displayed on a medical monitor. You might not recognize your God but a medical technician will identify God to you.

GODIAC     Electrical waves on a monitor are not God; they’re merely representations of brain activity.

HOST     But that’s where your God is, in your brain.

GODIAC     God is omnipresent; he’s everywhere.

HOST     If God is omnipresent why hasn’t anyone detected his presence?

GODIAC     Believers feel God’s presence in their lives and in their prayers.

HOST     If you had an idea for a product you could design it. We could then discuss its functions and details. If you could manifest your God we could see him, talk to him, and ask him questions. We can’t do that with your God because he’s a figment of your imagination.

GODIAC     There’s more written about God than any other subject. It’s all there in the Bible. What more do you need?

HOST     Consistent test results of concepts and theories proved.

Evidence vs Faith

HOST     That brings us to evidence versus faith. Atheists don’t have faith in God because they have astrophysical evidence of how the universe was formed and biological evidence of how life on Earth evolved. They know also that God and religion are man made. What do you think early man thought of when he saw clouds passing by in the sky?

GODIAC     Probably thought clouds were another of God’s creations.

HOST     Today we know that’s not true. Low cumulus clouds contain water droplets and the subzero temperature of high cirrus clouds contain ice crystals. Clouds are moved by atmospheric pressure, not God.

GODIAC     God the creator made the atmosphere and the clouds.

HOST     When I ponder upon faith and evidence I’m reminded of the words ignorance and stupidity:

Ignorance lacks scientific knowledge.
Stupidity lacks use of that knowledge.

GODIAC     Those definitions make me ignorant and stupid. Godiacs can apply the same demeaning definitions to atheists by simply replacing scientific knowledge with spiritual knowledge of God.

HOST     Atheists believe in scientific evidence. Godiacs have faith there’s an immeasurable, unfound, unproven, and unseen God. When you speak of faith you speak of missability, of not hitting upon reality.

GODIAC     Not true, the fact is that God is all-powerful, present everywhere at the same time, and all-knowing with infinite superhuman knowledge.

HOST     You just described God’s three omni’s powers of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If I believed in divine essence I’d probably conclude that God consists of electricity, gravity, and magnetism.

GODIAC     Those are physical; God is purely spiritual.

HOST     His omni powers must be physical to be creative and productive.

GODIAC     God’s powers derive from his spirituality, his divine essence, that’s why he’s God and not physical like man.

HOST     Each of his omni powers is physical, meaning God does not consist of a spiritual divine essence. Perhaps this is a good time to review God’s putative omni powers. Let’s begin with the omnipotence of your all-powerful God.

GODIAC     God created all there is, visible and invisible.

HOST     His omnipotence created also killer bacteria and viruses, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters killing millions. Physicals have energy, the power to do work. How can spirit possess omnipotence of any kind?

GODIAC You’re asking me to speak for God. No one can do that. You blame God for all our afflictions and suffering but perhaps it’s Satan’s anger for being expelled from heaven.

HOST     What about God’s omnipresence?

GODIAC     God is present everywhere at the same time.

HOST     God is an unknown; no one has ever detected traces of him anywhere.

GODIAC     Believers know God is everywhere.

HOST     That implies God is in the air, in the Earth, in the universe. The atmosphere is composed mostly of gases such as nitrogen, some oxygen, a bit of carbon dioxide, dust, and many other trace constituents. Scientists have never detected anything called God.

GODIAC     Of course not. God is spiritual, beyond human detection.

HOST     What about your omniscient God, the God who knows all?

GODIAC     I must again remind you God is purely spiritual; he’s not a gas or anything physical.

HOST     I decline to pursue the gas part but God’s omniscience was flawed because he created good and evil. Didn’t God know a priori that evil would cause problems, suffering in man, and natural disasters upon Earth?

GODIAC     God gave man intelligence to obey his commandments but evil man sinned against him. When evil man disobeyed God he determined to wipe evil man off the face of the Earth by creating a flood. However he found favor in Noah and saved him and his animals.

HOST     So you’re saying God knew beforehand that he would punish evil man but save the righteous man Noah?

GODIAC     There’s indisputable evidence of God’s divine reality and omniscience.

HOST     What? Divine reality is another oxymoron. There’s no such thing; it’s antilogous because a thing cannot be divine and real at the same time.

GODIAC     Divine reality is our understanding of God’s infinte goodness, love, and power.

HOST     You describe God as a purely spiritual being. He’s your escape from reality; he’s your Santa Claus. He resides in your temporal lobes.

GODIAC     Look around you. There must be a God with supreme intelligence to create all you see.

HOST     Why do you think that?

GODIAC     Where did the universe and life come from?

HOST     Astrophysics provides ample evidence of the creation and our universe and biological evolution gives us the answers to life on Earth.

God as Process

HOST     Have you ever considered your God might be an evolving process in the making, from Biblical God to the
God of energy.

GODIAC     What do you mean?

HOST God as a process changing with the times. What would you say if I told you that we exist because of electricity, that we are bioelectrical beings whose lives are reckoned by charges of + and – . If God created man, God is the greatest of all electrical generators.

GODIAC     That’s preposterous! You’re really reaching for something I know not what. I thought this was to be a serious debate?

HOST     If God created the first man and woman he’s the generator of humankind. All life operates on the electrical charges in our neural network.

GODIAC     Are you mocking my belief in God the creator?

HOST     My argument is simply that your God as creator of life created it with electrical charges and waves for life’s maintenance.

GODIAC     Power companies use generators to distribute electricity. God is not a power company.

HOST     As the creator your God might be considered the original electric generator that powered life. It’s unfortunate your God can’t use his omnipotence to restore power when we have an outage.

GODIAC     God isn’t a dynamo and neither are we. God is the creator of life not its maintainer. We’re spiritual beings created by God, who breathed life into man and gave him a spirit, a soul.

HOST     What you call spirit or soul is really electrical charges distributed throughout the neural network of our body. That’s an indisputable biochemical measurable fact. In that sense isn’t God the first electrical generator?

GODIAC     Are you mocking my belief in God? God is a spiritual being of divine essence; he’s not a machine of any kind.

HOST     Unlike the myth of spirit or soul, electricity is measurable and displayable. Our brains generate the electrical charges that power our bodies. In our brains and bodies we can see electricity at work on medical monitors such as in brain scans, cardiograms, and MRI’s. When our brains stop generating electricity we die and death is shown as a flat line on a monitor.

GODIAC     God created us and when God calls us to himself we die.

HOST     Your Biblical God is only an idea of early man’s attempt to explain all there is. Early man had fire but knew nothing of electricity.

GODIAC     How could early man know anything about electricity when it hadn’t been discovered.

HOST     That’s precisely my point. Without benefit of science early man did the best he could and substituted fact with the fiction of God.

GODIAC     I don’t know anything about that. But I tell you that God does not change; he is that he is.

HOST     In the future physicists might find that God is really an exotic plasmonic energy that created all there is. If such an energy were discovered we could end the exploitation of Earth’s resources such as coal and oil. It would also end the argument over man-made global warming because the Sun controls the Earth’s weather. Perhaps other heavenly bodies also influence our weather.

GODIAC     That’s pure speculation. You demand proof of God’s existence but you have no proof of any of that.

HOST    I’m proposing that if such an energy were discovered we could reverse all of God’s mistakes using the same energy in different applications. On an entirely different matter, didn’t your God progress from one to three?

GODIAC     You’re referring to the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     We’ll get to that later. Trinity is too important to cover in passing remarks. Whether ineffable, supreme, or common God is fungible, applicable to whatever one believes about him.

GODIAC     Again I say God does not change; he is that he is.

HOST     Our debate reminds me of the irreconcilable differences of divorce proceedings.
 

Bible

HOST     Let’s move on to the Bible.

GODIAC     The Bible is proof of the reality of God.

HOST     It’s the reservoir of fictional stories about God.

GODIAC     God moved the hands of the scribes who wrote the Bible.

HOST     The Bible is a book of fiction occasionally infused with historic facts to render it acceptable to believers. It’s the reason there are many books on how to read and interpret the Bible. It’s such a departure from reality there are many commentary books explaining how to read the Bible.

GODIAC     Commentary books give readers a better understanding of the allegories and writing style in the Bible.

HOST     How does a reader better understand God when God is a fantasy in one’s imagination? One believes or not. No writing can definitively explain what doesn’t exist. In the future, because of overwhelming scientific evidence, the Bible will replace Bulfinch’s Mythology.

GODIAC     You’re ignoring thousands of years of Biblical scholarship by men of God.

HOST     Provable evidence and facts would help to dispel my opinion.

GODIAC     Archeological digs occasionally provide new evidence of God.

HOST     Those digs substantiate some of the stories in the Bible and assumptions about God, not the existence of God. Ignorant writers lacked scientific knowledge and converted their superstitions from concept of God to the Bible. The fact is that out of his burning curiosity to know, man created God and then explained God in fictional scriptures in the Bible.

GODIAC     No, the Bible reflects the inspired words of God. It can’t be read like a book of scientific findings.

HOST     The Bible provides assumptions about God, not knowledge. Several historical events are scattered throughout the Bible to give it credibility. Much has been written in the Bible about God but none of it is knowledge. Scientific findings provide knowledge of our universe because they satisfy the demands of ‘prove it’ or ‘show me’.

GODIAC     The Bible documents the works of God and his relationships to Jews and Christians.

HOST     The Bible fills the emotional needs of ignorant believers with the promise of heaven for those who live by God’s commandments and hell for those who don’t. If it contained explanatory drawings embellished with colorful cartoons it would be a comic book.

GODIAC     That’s the most profane statement of the Bible I’ve ever heard.

HOST     The clergy use the Bible as their brochure for marketing campaigns selling God to believers. In their lives believers need the emotion and entitlements of God even though that emotion contradicts scientific proofs.

GODIAC     Our emotions are dependent upon many things such as wives, children, jobs. As described in the Bible, God is the loving creator who gives us a purpose for living.

HOST     But that proves my point. You’re emotionally dependent upon a God who exists only in the mind and didn’t create anything. The Bible is constantly being updated to keep it current with societal attitudes for the support of churches.

GODIAC     One cannot update the Bible but they can make it easier to read.

HOST     The Bible, Quran, and other books of scripture were written before available scientific evidence of the universe and evolution of life on earth. The Bible and Quran are necessarily fictional accounts of the creation of the universe and how man should conduct his life on earth.

GODIAC     My belief in God comes from the Bible.

Genesis

HOST     I’m not a Biblical scholar and have no intention of debating any of the books the Bible but we need to talk about the creation stories in Genesis. Have you any idea why God created the universe?

GODIAC     No one knows the mind of God but if he didn’t create all there is, the world and we wouldn’t be here. The Bible contains the words of God. Indirectly God is the author of the Bible.

HOST     God never wrote anything; pure spirit can’t write, neither can divine essence as you call it. I think you’ll agree with the following historic facts:

The Old Testament was compiled long after Moses died; Moses never wrote anything.

The New Testament was compiled long after Jesus died; Jesus never wrote anything.

The Quran was compiled long after Muhammad died; Muhammad never wrote anything.

GODIAC     God put Moses and Jesus on earth to promulgate his works, not to author books. The stories in the Bible were written as allegories that ancients knew how to interpret. The Bible can’t be read as a novel or book of history or of human factual experiences. Today’s readers of the Bible are not familiar with allegorical stories and need help in interpreting what they mean. That’s why there are commentary books helping readers to better understand the Bible

HOST     Ignorant scribes motivated by illusory thoughts of God described his mythical works in the Bible.

GODIAC     Not ignorant scribes having illusory thoughts but writers inspired by God.

HOST     By ignorant I mean ignorant of science. Why do you live your life based on what those scribes wrote in the first century? This is 2009 and every well-informed person knows more than they did.

GODIAC     Time does not change the truth about God. God is the one Supreme Being, the creator. As described in Genesis, everyone knows that God’s works describe his creation of the universe and all there is.

HOST     The ignorant writers of Genesis wrote their visionary contrived opinions about God’s creations.

GODIAC     Writers of the Bible believed that God created the heavens and all there is. Those scribes included the early history of Hebrews and Jews who constantly struggled to obey God’s commandments.

HOST     There’s no provable information about God in the Bible. You’re probably aware that the words ‘God the creator’ are not in Genesis. In fact the words create, creating, creation, and creator are not mentioned in Genesis.

GODIAC     In reading Genesis everyone knows that God is the creator of all there is.

HOST     In the New Testament only the gospel of Luke and several epistles by disciples mention God as creator.

GODIAC     You’re confusing Genesis and the New Testament. Genesis describes God’s creation of the universe and early history of Hebrews and Jews. The New Testament describes the life of Jesus. The two are related but separate; it’s the reason we have the Judeo-Christian tradition.

HOST     In Genesis God the creator was supposedly Yahweh. Hebrews considered him too sacred to pronounce his name or describe him because they feared he would punish them if they did.

GODIAC     Yahweh the creator, the Supreme Being, was considered indescribable or ineffable by Hebrews and later by Jews.

HOST     That means early Hebrews never assembled to discuss Yahweh and certainly never wrote anything about him.

GODIAC     You don’t know that.

HOST     Where did scribes get their information about Yahweh?

GODIAC     Probably from courageous Hebrew scribes.

HOST     Scribes probably punished by Yahweh.

GODIAC     You’re guessing.

HOST     Just as Bible scribes did. In later writings Yahweh is described as Elohim or Adonai to avoid punishment.

GODIAC     The Bible is important because it describes God’s creations of all there is.

Creation of the Universe

HOST When I consider God’s putative creations I think of the the following triplet:

It was man who created God.

GODIAC     No, God is the creator of the heavens, Earth, and man. In fact the worship of the Sun and stars by your early man is explained in Deuteronomy (4:19),

‘And when you look up to the heavens and behold the sun or the moon or any star among the heavenly hosts, do not be led astray into adoring them and serving them.’

That’s what scientists did and are still doing; they’re serving heavenly bodies instead of God.

HOST     Scientists are identifying heavenly bodies, cataloging their positions, analyzing their makeup, tracking their movements, and determining their affect on other heavenly bodies and Earth.

GODIAC     But as explained in Deuteronomy, scientists are being led astray by adoring and serving heavenly bodies.

HOST     Early man created God to worship someone or something greater than himself such as the Supreme Being. Early man then created religion to worship their God. In modern societies God and religion eventually merged and are now inseparable.

GODIAC     God’s supernatural intelligence and his divine essence created all there is including your early man.

HOST     Writers of the Bible knew nothing of the origin and gravitational pull of matter that structured the universe. The Bible speaks of one universe. In fact we know there are multiple universes.

GODIAC     I don’t know how many universes there are. God created whatever scientists find. In Genesis God created the heavens in which might be more than one universe. Besides the Bible is known for its moral teachings not for its cosmology.

HOST     Bible writers knew nothing of the evolution of life on earth ascending from bacteria to man. Why didn’t God didn’t inspire them to write about science?

GODIAC     You don’t know what God knows. Keep in mind that God has superhuman intelligence and that his creation of man makes science possible.

HOST     In considering the process of creation, what created God?

GODIAC     God was never created. God is without beginning or end. He’s everlasting and immutable.

HOST     Are you saying there was never a beginning?

GODIAC     I’m saying that God is that he is.

HOST     So what existed before all the creation in Genesis, before God created the heavens and earth?

GODIAC     There was God. I believe your scientists wisely stayed away from the beginning.

HOST     Scientists only speculate about a beginning.  One theory of the creation of the universe is the big bang. It implies there must have been a beginning to create the nascent matter for creating the universe.

GODIAC     If you believe in God the creator you don’t need theories. I don’t accept the big bang. If there was one, God made it possible because there had to be something to create the big bang.

HOST     No one knows the true beginning but most scientists claim it was from a supernova explosion of an extremely bright blue-hot star. A star whose luminosity and temperature were so great it exploded creating the big bang. Perhaps the star had an exotic energy under such enormous pressure that it created the big bang.

GODIAC     You’re guessing. Where did the supernova come from?

HOST     Where did God come from? What beginning created God?

GODIAC     God is that he is. I am that I am.

HOST     If God created the Earth he did so with its poles flattened towards the equator. Why didn’t your perfect God make planet Earth a perfectly round globe like the ones in schools?

GODIAC     You’re being facetious.

HOST     God made Earth susceptible to natural disasters. He’s powerless in avoiding or controlling disasters such as impacts by comets, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

GODIAC     They’re Earth problems.

HOST     You’re implying that God created all there is but doesn’t take responsibility for any of it. When planet Earth was created why didn’t your omniscient God know he was creating Earth problems?

GODIAC     Are you asking me to answer for God? No one can do that. We’re mere humans created by God’s power and supernatural intelligence. God created a pacific and disease-free Earth.

HOST     You don’t know that. Planet Earth isn’t pacific. Natural disasters and diseases and pandemics continue to kill millions.

GODIAC     What you’re saying are the result of living on Earth.

HOST     If your God created all there is he created the origins of man’s evil, the Earth’s evolved disasters, and life’s diseases. As creator God didn’t know what he was doing. He was inadequate and incompetent, a delinquent creator. He made animal and plant life susceptible to deformities, debilities, and diseases. As if that weren’t fateful enough he made microorganisms such as bacteria, parasites, and viruses that kill life.

GODIAC     God created life and it was evolution’s trials and errors that created all the suffering and miseries you speak of.

HOST     Perhaps there was an exotic energy that transmogrified to atoms, molecules, gas, then to the matter of animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms.

GODIAC     And of course before all that there was God’s Kingdom of Heaven.

HOST     Genesis doesn’t mention the age of the universe because the early writers knew nothing about the universe. Today we know that the age of the universe is about 14-15 billion years old. The universe was created by the gravitational accretion of dust and gases that formed the planets and stars.

GODIAC     If there was gas and dust God created them.

HOST     Your God is without the physicals of measurement, mass, and density. How can God be creator of anything physical when he’s a pure spirit?

GODIAC     Again you’re comparing God to human experience. God is far above humans. God is the Supreme Being whose superhuman power created all there is.

HOST     We know how the universe was created and it wasn’t by your God.

GODIAC     You keep saying your God.

HOST     That’s because God is in your brain. When you die the God in your brain also dies.

GODIAC     There’s only one God, the creator of all there is.

HOST     If God created the universe he created the nuclear fusion in the Sun, magnetism in the Earth, and the ubiquitous electromagnetic spectrum of the universe. If God did all that he’s more scientist than deity. In the distant future perhaps God will be an unknown exotic plasmomic energy.

GODIAC     God is the God of the Bible, not unknown, and not an unknown energy.

HOST     The center of the Sun is so hot, hundreds of billions of degrees, its nuclear fusion converts hydrogen to helium. Scientists predict the Sun will burn for about 10 billion more years. About that time it will become a red giant vaporizing the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, its moon, and maybe more.

GODIAC     Scientists can’t possible know what’s going to happen to the Sun 10 billion years from now. They’re guessing, only God knows.

HOST     I believe the end is more important than the beginning because people will be living somewhere in the universe. What does the Bible say about the end of the Sun?

GODIAC     I don’t know and I’m not going to guess, only God the creator knows.

HOST     Christians were told by the clergy that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Early astronomers proved them wrong.

GODIAC     Genesis doesn’t say that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

HOST     If you believe God created all there is, why did God create Earth susceptible to disasters such as comets, earthquakes, and tsunamis that destroy Earth and kill God’s images?

GODIAC     You keep asking me to tell you about the mind of God. His supernatural intelligence is far above our human understanding.

HOST Why would a supernatural intelligence such as your God bother to create things like T-cells, Purkinje cells, beta blockers, and other complicated exotic structures? Why did he create man for budget-busting healthcare?

GODIAC My answers to questions like that are always the same. God’s supernatural intelligence is far above our human understanding.

HOST     You don’t have any rational answers to the questions about why God did this or that. I believe in fact not faith. All the good is attributed to God and the evil blamed on Satan.

GODIAC     I can only repeat what I know. No one knows the mind of God or can understand God’s supernatural powers. How can there be a rational God for you when you don’t believe that God exists?

Adam and Eve

HOST     Let’s talk about the two stories of God’s putative creations of man in Genesis.

GODIAC     The true stories of God’s creations.

HOST     The two creation stories of man can’t be true; they contradict each other. In the first story God created male and female in his divine image. If God is purely spiritual he has no image of any kind.

GODIAC     God is omnipotent.

HOST     There’s no information about the human body created by God.

GODIAC     Why are you so concerned about that?

HOST     I ask myself why God made the right brain control the left side of the body and vice versa? The creation stories don’t explain that or anything about the human body created by God.

GODIAC     In vain you’re again probing into the mind of God. The Bible is not a book on anatomy. You complained that ignorant scribes wrote the Bible. Are you now using modern scientific anatomy to support your argument?

HOST     You’d think the creator of humans would provide some description of his ultimate effort.

GODIAC     He did; he made man in his image.

HOST     You declared that God isn’t human.

GODIAC     Made in his image is a figure of speech, a metaphor.

HOST     In the second story God created man out of the clay of the ground. He took one of the man’s ribs and created a woman for him. Don’t you understand how preposterous that is?

GODIAC     In that story God did describe man’s body. He used one of Adam’s ribs to create Eve. Also when God created Adam and Eve he gave them a body and soul.

HOST     Those qualities were borrowed from the ancient Persian religious theme of body and soul. Body being the darkness of evil and soul the light of goodness. Man’s body is a product of evolution. The soul is fictional. Except in theory, no one can prove right or wrong that which doesn’t exist.

GODIAC     Man has a soul; it’s his spiritual inheritance from God. Soul is man’s spirit, separate from the body.

HOST     Nothing in man’s body can be separate from it. If soul is separate from the body, where is it?

GODIAC     It’s in the body but is spiritually separate from the physical part.

HOST     If soul is in the body, it’s physical. Everything in our bodies is physical. Perhaps soul is the electrical charges of the body’s atoms.

GODIAC     You’re again moving away from a God-given soul to science.

HOST     What we have in our bodies is physical, nothing is spiritual. Physicals can be measured and displayed, spirituals can’t. Except for Adam’s rib the two creation stories don’t describe the physicals of the first man and woman.

GODIAC     In Genesis there’s no need for physical descriptions. The pertinent fact is that God created the first man and woman.

HOST     Archeologists proved it took hundreds of millions of years for primates to evolve to the first biped hominids to walk upright and then to modern man and woman. Today we can still see humans with the broad flat noses, large mouths, and the protruding chins of our hominid ancestors. Genesis doesn’t describe the physical appearances of Adam and Eve.

GODIAC     The important thing is that they were created by God. It’s only after their creations that the man was called Adam and the woman called Eve.

HOST     That comes after the cartoon character of the animated talking serpent tricked Eve. She succumbed to the serpent’s guile because she had Adam’s rib in her and the serpent’s erect posture reminded her of Adam’s penis.

GODIAC     That’s obscene! Eve wanted to please Adam by offering him the tasty fruit of the forbidden tree.

HOST     The fruit of which God had forbidden them to eat because the fruit contained knowledge. God purposely wanted to keep them ignorant of knowledge to have power over them.

GODIAC     Not true. God made Adam and Eve innocent of the world’s evil but the serpent tricked Eve.

HOST     If God created all there is, he created evil in the serpent.

GODIAC     Evil evolved from Adam and Eve’s sin against God; it was the fall of man.

HOST     On another subject, why didn’t God create Adam without a prepuce, a foreskin, to eliminate the Hebrew’s barbarous practice of circumcision?

GODIAC     You’re again asking me to answer for God. No one can do that.

HOST     99% of the Old Testament is about Hebrews and Jews. Didn’t God know that Adam’s male progeny would also be circumcised?

GODIAC     You keep asking me the same questions for which I nor anyone else has the answer. Circumcision is not good or evil. It’s a practice especially among people in Africa and the Middle East including Muslims.

HOST     You declared that God is purely spiritual, an unknown undefined divine essence. If that’s true, how is it possible for nothing to create something?

GODIAC     No one can explain God’s supernatural power. What we know are its results, his works, the creator of all there is.

HOST     Are you declaring that God created all there is from nothing? Do you believe that out of nothing (ex nihilo) God created all there is? Something cannot be created from nothing. Long ago before the one God became popular Aristotle declared "From nothing comes nothing".

GODIAC     No one not even Aristotle can possibly know of God’s divine essence and supernatural power.

HOST     Your God didn’t create anything. The combined forces of electrical charges, gravity, magnetism, and other unknown physical forces, created the universe. God is a fantasy residing in the imaginations of believers who ignore physics.

Good and Evil

HOST     Very well, let’s expand our discussion to good and evil. I put evil first because it preceded good.

GODIAC     Not true; all that God created was pure and good. Belief in God makes us pure and whole. It’s the world that turns some to do evil.

HOST     It’s said that good and evil are interwoven like cloth. Woof is the good and evil the warp of warped minds.

GODIAC     Recall that the evil archangel tried to steal some of God’s powers. God punished him by banishing him from heaven to the nether world of hell and called him Satan, the devil.

HOST     But God created the evil archangel and hell.

GODIAC     God didn’t create evil archangels. That particular archangel sinned against the glory and power of God, his creator, and was punished for his sin. God made all archangels to be good such as the archangel Gabriel.

HOST     It was Gabriel who announced to the Virgin Mary ‘Blessed are you among women’. About 600 years later he recited the Quran to Muhammad. But there are people who worship evil and Satan rather than God and good.

GODIAC     Satan considered himself equal in power to God. Later Satan doubted that Jesus was the Son of God. In the gospel of Luke (4:7-8) Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms and powers of the world if he would prostrate himself before Satan. But Jesus informs Satan,

"Scripture has it, ‘You shall do homage to the Lord your God; him alone shall you adore.’ "

HOST     In that instance I’m amazed that Jesus, the Son of God, had to resort to man-written scripture rather than his own power to repudiate Satan. Why didn’t Luke do that?

GODIAC     I can’t answer for Luke.

HOST     I have a note about the evil in natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis?

GODIAC     The evil in natural disasters is the work of Satan. Evil in man comes from Satan’s influence on man and the world, not from God.

HOST     Man might allow his mind to be affected by Satan but Satan cannot affect planet Earth, our physical world.

GODIAC     You don’t know that.

HOST     In your opinion, is good the opposite of evil?

GODIAC     Man’s greatest good is to worship and love God. What do you consider good?

HOST     What’s good is what helps us without hurting others. There’s another good and that’s the recognition and understanding of what we are and how we got here.

GODIAC     What do you mean?

HOST     Understanding our true nature and how we got here without interjection the fantasy of God. People need to know how the universe was formed and how life on earth evolved and it wasn’t because of God.

GODIAC     Most people don’t believe in your theory; they believe in God.

HOST     Perhaps but they should know that gas and dust aggregated through gravity to form the universe and that evolution of life on Earth ascending from bacteria to man.

GODIAC     Out of the ultimate goodness of God was created the universe and life on earth.

HOST     That goodness also created the phantom called God.

GODIAC     God is not a phantom; he’s the creator; he’s real. We should worship and love him.

HOST     By your own admission God created all there is, and that includes evil. You say that no one can possibly knows the mind of God. The fact is that God is a bipolar creator who made good and evil.

GODIAC     You’re again thinking in human terms. God is purely spiritual and can’t be bipolar.

HOST     In the apocalypse of good and evil, which will win?

GODIAC     The ultimate goodness of God will always prevail over evil.

HOST     Your God must be impotent or delinquent or both because the world has always known evil and still persists today.

GODIAC     It’s the work of Satan.

HOST     That means Satan is more powerful than God.

GODIAC     Impossible, nothing is more powerful than God.

God as Egoist

HOST     On a different subject, have you ever considered that your God is an egoist? In the Ten Commandments God ordered believers to love him, obey his laws, and worship only him.

GODIAC     Because of the sins of Hebrews God delivered his Ten Commandments directly to Moses.

HOST     But God never manifested himself to Moses.

GODIAC     God spoke to Moses from the mountain top because he didn’t want to consume Moses by his supernatural radiance.

HOST     If God is omnipotent why didn’t he make himself visible to Moses without consuming him?

GODIAC     In that event God was very practical and spoke directly to Moses. He told Moses that his divine presence would consume him, so God talked to Moses from the burning top of Mount Sinai. Obviously God’s presence burned the mountain top.

HOST     If God’s radiance was so powerful it should have vaporized the entire mountain. Can you imagine anything more cowardly and improper than God hiding himself in a bush like a fugitive criminal? Was God afraid Moses would see him and reject what he saw?

GODIAC     Of course not. This is a typical example that readers of the Bible need commentary help in interpreting the Bible.

HOST     At the beginning of the Decalogue God proved himself to be an egoist,

‘You shall not have other Gods besides me’.

and also jealous and fearful,

‘You shall not carve idols for yourselves; you shall not bow down before them or worship them’.

In the gospel of Luke (4:7-8) Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms and powers of the world if he would prostrate himself before Satan. Scripture has it that Jesus informs Satan,

‘You shall do homage to the Lord your God; him alone shall you adore".

GODIAC     Those ethical commandments were necessary because his people sinned against him by worshipping the idol of a Golden Calf.

HOST     Sometimes God was described as being angry, cruel, and jealous:

God warned Moses that his people must not come up to the mountain or he, God, would punish them.

Joshua
24:19 ‘…he is a jealous God who will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.’

Isaiah
13:9 ‘Lo, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and burning anger…’

GODIAC     God gave us rules to live a religious life, to love and worship him for passage to heaven.

HOST     If there were the God of creation he certainly wouldn’t need to intimidate believers to love and worship him.

GODIAC     God gave those commandments to man to teach him how to live a holy and peaceful life.

HOST     Yes and he also punished those who didn’t do as he commanded. Don’t you call that a case of egoism?

GODIAC     You’re again confusing human traits with the divine essence of God.

Intelligence

HOST     We know something about man’s intelligence but nothing about divine essence.

GODIAC     God gave man intelligence to elevate him above lower animals so that man can understand God’s divine essence.

HOST     I’m one of those who doesn’t understand divine essence. About animals higher or lower they care for their young. Why did God abandon man to the vicissitudes and difficulties of life on earth. I think a creator should actively help in maintaining his creations.

GODIAC     God is the creator not the maintainer. He gave man examples and commandments for living an exemplary life.

HOST     Did you ever consider some lower animals have the power to kill man.

GODIAC     But God gave man the intelligence to avoid being killed.

HOST     If a bite from a rabid bat is not quickly treated by a series of virucides the victim is subjected to unspeakable and incurable suffering including hydrophobia relieved only by death. If a victim is bitten by a highly poisonous snake and not treated by an antivenom the victim dies. If God made all there is, he made the rabid bat virus and poisonous snake venom.

GODIAC     In Genesis God made all kinds of wild animals and all kinds of creeping things on earth. It doesn’t say God made the rabid bat and venomous snake.

HOST     If God didn’t make them, how were the rabies virus and snake venom created? How were killer bacteria and killer viruses created?

GODIAC     They must have been developed on earth. Killers of many kinds must have appeared on earth after God created it.

HOST     Are you now agreeing that life was developed through earth’s evolutionary processes? That is by evolution of species?

GODIAC     God has unlimited love for all his creations. Perhaps killer bacteria and viruses came about through the evil of Satan.

HOST     God loves killer bacteria and viruses?

GODIAC     God created animals and vegetation to be a boon to man to help him survive, not to kill him.

HOST     Killer animals do not help man survive, they end man’s life. Why did God make anything that afflicts or kills man?

GODIAC     God gave man intelligence to avoid being killed by animals or bacteria or viruses.

HOST     Speaking of man’s intelligence keep in mind that Charles Darwin proved adaptability to the environment is needed for reproductive success. Herbert Spencer declared that survival of the fittest is required for developing human societies.

GODIAC     Darwin and Spencer prove God gave man superior intelligence over animals. God gave man also a soul to represent his spiritual nature elevating him over animals.

HOST     I have no soul, neither do you. Soul is another concept that can’t be manifested.

GODIAC     You keep returning to the physical. Try spiritually lifting your soul to God and you’ll experience good results. I have a suggestion for you. Our Lord Jesus Christ is a merciful God. Try lifting your soul to him and he will relieve you of your atheism and other troubles.

HOST     You probably know that with all our modern scientific equipment the soul has never been detected or displayed on a medical monitor. The soul is nonexistent, another phantom of the mind.

GODIAC     Worldwide millions of Christians believe they have a soul far above anything displayable by a medical monitor.

HOST     Most of those believers are superstitious and poor and lack scientific knowledge. They believe in God to escape their ignorance and poverty. They find solace in the promise of eternal bliss and in the entitlement and equality of heaven.

GODIAC     Their committed belief in God makes their lives tolerable. God gave humans great intelligence and free will enabling them to conceive of, worship, and love him.

HOST     If your God is truly the God of all creation, why didn’t he make himself known to lower animals with some intelligence such as apes.

GODIAC     You’re asking me again to answer for God. No one can answer for God because no one knows the mind of God.

HOST     Lower animals do not worship God because they lack the brain power, the imagination, to do so. That’s precisely why it was man who created God.

GODIAC     Lower animals can’t conceive of God because they have no soul.

HOST     I’m not going to disparage your belief but no one ever saw God, or talked to God, or manifested God.

GODIAC     Normally God interacted with his people through prophets.

HOST     God never held a conversation with his prophets not even with Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah. In fact not even Jesus talked to God.

GODIAC     At some time in his life Jesus, the Son of God, must have talked to God his Father.

HOST     If he did it’s not in the New Testament. I recall that Dying on the cross Jesus exhorted his Father,

"My god, My God, why have you forsaken me"? (Mathew 28:46).

GODIAC     That’s precisely what I mean. Jesus’ exhortation sounds like he must have had a previous conversation with God his Father begging him not to abandon Jesus in his time of need.

HOST     You don’t know that. God never talked to anyone, preached to anyone, or wrote anything. God is a concept deliberately contrived to answer the miseries of the poor and mysteries of life. Moreover emotionally deprived persons who can’t cope with the realities of life need God as their temporary escape.

GODIAC     Are you saying believers like me are emotionally deprived? To the contrary we are emotionally uplifted and blessed with our belief in God.

HOST     When it comes to God you reject the obvious and reasonable evidence of how the universe and life on earth were created. Your sincere emotion for God deprives you from accepting scientific evidence.

GODIAC     The thought of replacing God with scientific evidence is anathema to me. I still believe God created all there is. If science has proofs, it’s God who makes possible the proofs. Little by little God reveals his secrets to man his favorite creation.

Creationism

HOST     Speaking of creation it spawned a cult called Creationism, the Intelligent Design that tried to save God from irrelevance. In the guise of academic freedom it was taught in some public schools. Challenged in courts it was judged to offend our Constitution’s First Amendment, the separation of religion and state.

GODIAC     God is beyond the limits of our Constitution.

HOST     Creationism tried to make science conform to Christianism. Intelligent designers might even find an opportunity for declaring that God is a process progressing from the electrical charges of subatomic particles to atoms to all there is.

GODIAC     Nonsense! God remains the one and only creator. He makes science possible.

HOST     Given all our deformities, diseases, and natural disasters God is a bungling incompetent creator. Any good manager would fire God. Today biotechnology is trying to remedy God’s mistakes by engineering DNA and RNA structures for developing a new human model free of birth defects and diseases.

GODIAC     If biotechnology is successful it’s because God gave man intelligence. Evolution had to have a creator, a beginning, and that was God.

HOST     If God created man, you need to realize God was a much flawed creator because he made man to suffer with cumulative afflictions and multiple illnesses and diseases.

GODIAC     No, God is flawless; he’s perfect.

HOST     How do you explain birth defects?

GODIAC We don’t know or understand God’s mind or the reasons for doing what he does.

HOST Why would a superintelligence such as your God bother to create things like T-cells, Purkinje cells, beta blockers, and other complicated exotic structures? We’re complicated in order to survive. Why did your God create man for budget-busting healthcare?

GODIAC     I’m not God. I’m only a humble mortal created by God and would never attempt to answer for him. We don’t know or understand God’s mind or the reasons for doing what he does.

HOST     God should be fired because he’s an incompetent and flawed creator. Whatever was in God’s mind, today’s expensive healthcare crisis is due to his incompetence in creating man.

GODIAC     Historically healthcare is a recent societal program.

HOST     Jesus began healthcare by ministering to the sick as reward for their belief in his New Kingdom of God.

GODIAC     God has nothing to do with our healthcare crisis; it’s of our own making.

HOST     If God made us free of illnesses and diseases there wouldn’t be a healthcare crisis. God needs to be replaced with evolution from which we inherited earth products and animal genes, the real reasons we require healthcare.

GODIAC     Are you finally admitting that evolution is the problem and not God?

HOST     Evolution is the reason why science is able to remedy man’s illnesses and diseases. If God were the creator, we wouldn’t be able to change anything because of his superhuman intelligence and omni powers.

GODIAC     Keep in mind that God who makes evolution possible.

HOST     In the future molecular biology and genetic engineering will remedy man’s afflictions.

Evolution of Life

HOST     Whatever created the beginning of life was not a mythical supreme being you call God. What was at the beginning, if there was one, had to be a kind of energy. Perhaps a simple energy evolved to a kind of super energy, certainly not a mythical personal God.

GODIAC     God the creator is the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega.

HOST     The proposition that God made man or anything else is unsupportable. The fact is that we can make a human in a petri dish using the acids DNA and RNA. More than 99% of DNA is the same in all people. Less than 1% makes each of us different.

GODIAC     I don’t believe that but if true it was God who made possible DNA and that other one.

HOST     At a gross or general level the beginning of life’s process may be summarizes as follows: DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is in the nucleus of each of our cells. DNA codes life’s hereditary structure and is transcribed to RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA exits the cell’s nucleus to provide its coded message to the cell’s ribosome. A ribosomes create the amino acids for producing proteins differentiated to life’s physiology. That’s very basic because life’s chemical processes are so complicated scientists using new medical electronics are still trying to understand it.

GODIAC     Of course, scientists are trying to understand the mind of God, which is all the more reason God created DNA and all the other things you speak of.

HOST     You actually believe God created all there is using his pure spirit of divine essence?

GODIAC     You’re thinking of man in purely physical and scientific terms. Think of your body as a sacred body created by God’s divine essence.

HOST     I don’t think of my body as sacred or devoted to God. There are parts of the human body that couldn’t possibly be made from divine essence. Remember that evolution is a physical process totally divorced from spirit or what you call divine essence. It’s believed that only about 1% of DNA is required for generating one’s personality; the remaining 99% is supportive and some of it is chemical waste.

GODIAC     That’s proof that perfect God wouldn’t waste his time on irrelevant chemical processes.

HOST     It’s estimated we have a neuronal network of 100 million neurons and 100 trillion synapses or gaps for transmitting electrical charges throughout the brain and body.

GODIAC     Those estimates are likely to change as scientists learn more about God.

HOST     If you believe God created life why did your omnipotent God waste most of his time failing to create 100% effective DNA? Also why would an omniscient God create such a complicated chemical process? Moreover the Bible, and Genesis in particular, don’t mention DNA, RNA, or any other chemical process because Bible scribes knew nothing of science in the real world. They knew nothing of our bioelectric bodies.

GODIAC     But some scientists say DNA is so complicated it must have been designed by God’s superior intelligence. I believe in God’s superintelligent design. The more we know about science the more we know about God.

HOST     Your God’s intelligence or any of his omni powers can’t be proved.

GODIACS     Many things are unknown and can’t be proved. We must have faith. It’s simply a matter that I have faith and you don’t.

HOST     True but even the results of the universe’s unseen dark matter can be measured. God remains a concept; it doesn’t have mass or density and cannot be measured.

GODIAC     How can we mortals possibly measure God? I repeat, we can’t know the mind of God’s superhuman intelligence.

HOST     Human cells and their concomitant chemical activity are so complex no intelligence no matter how superior or godlike could have designed them. They are necessarily the result of evolution, of trial and error, of serendipity, of chemical happenings adapted to different environments.

GODIAC     I don’t believe in evolution’s trial and error. God doesn’t need trial and error to be the creator and he doesn’t make mistakes. The scientific genius Einstein declared ‘God does not play dice’.

HOST     God doesn’t play anything. Galileo proved wrong God’s creation of the universe. Biology and paleontology proved wrong God’s creation of man.

GODIAC     Believers still declare that God created man and that evolution cannot account for the missing link between apes and man.

HOST     Let’s get back to fact versus fiction. Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden in the area of the Euphrates valley. In Ethiopia anthropologists found the oldest human skeletal remains thought to be about 4½ million years old. They proposed the remains were of a common ancestor of apes and humans who evolved separately. How do you explain that?

GODIAC     Archeologists found scrolls and all sorts of human artifacts in the Euphrates valley and elsewhere in the Middle East. Perhaps they’ll find the remains of Adam and Eve.

HOST     God expelled Adam and Eve to an area east of the Garden of Eden. You know the rest of the story. When Cain murdered his brother Abel, God expelled Cain to the land of Nod, also east of Eden. There he had relations with his wife. Where did his wife come from?

GODIAC     The Bible isn’t clear on that subject. You can’t expect the ancient history to follow a precise Hebrew timeline.

HOST     Incestuous relationships helped establish the genealogy of the Hebrews.

GODIAC     What do you mean incestuous?

HOST     God created only one man Adam and one woman Eve. Where did all the others come from?

GODIAC     Adam and Eve multiplied as commanded by God.

HOST     That means Adam and Eve’s offspring intermarried; they had incestuous relationships.

GODIAC     The Lord God was very clear on that subject. In Leviticus Chapter 18 the Lord God tells Moses of the sanctity of sex and warns him of the sinful sexual relations practiced by the Israelites. I recall the following examples:

A son must not have relations with his mother, aunt, sister, or female close relative. A man must not lie with another man and it’s understood that a woman must not lie with another woman.

God warns Moses that man shall not defile himself with any of these sinful customs or he the Lord God will punish the sinners.

HOST     The Lord God made those warnings many years later, after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus). When underpopulated areas need more bodies, intermarrige of like blood is accepted and sometimes required for survival. When overpopulated areas have too many bodies intermarriage of like blood is called incest and is punished.

GODIAC     Adam and Eve had another son called Seth and he also married.

HOST     That proves my point. Where did his wife come from? Genesis then presents a long genealogical history from Seth to Noah. All those men and women must have ascended through incest. In the beginning why didn’t God create many men and women to avoid incest?

GODIAC     God commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and they did.

HOST     Didn’t your omniscient God know that men and women would have sex and multiply on their own?

GODIAC     You keep asking me to explain the mind of God. No one can do that. Don’t you understand that God has superhuman intelligence.

HOST     It’s obvious to me that God approved of incest to populate the wold. You God had no idea of its genetic problems. Because of incest’s many defective births, society made it taboo. When man had God create Adam and Eve, man had no knowledge of genetic problems caused by incest. Right there in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, we realize the incongruities of its fictional stories.

Reproduction

HOST     Let’s talk about reproduction and biology. Biologists know that asexual reproduction in plants produces the same kind of offspring without diversity. Later in the evolutionary process sexual reproduction produced a great diversity of offspring. When your omniscient God created all there is why didn’t he know that? Why didn’t your God begin with sexual reproduction in plants?

GODIAC     Plants are not human. No one knows what God had in mind when he created plants except to provide food for man. When God created man and woman he knew all about sexual reproduction and diversity, which is why he commanded them to multiply.

HOST     You have no evidence that God knew or created anything. Conversely biologists have molecular proof of evolution. They know that changes in DNA generate variations in amino acids and those variations called mutations produce diversity in plants and animals.

GODIAC     It’s God who enables human reproduction and mutations.

HOST     Life in a human cell is so phenomenal and its DNA chemistry so complicated that geneticists are daily making new discoveries.

GODIAC     They’re trying to understand the mind of God.

HOST     In the gene responsible for conception, geneticists have identified three alleles or characteristics tagged as black, red, and white. The applications of alleles to persons generally are as follows:

Black allele - persons are conceptually deliberate.
Red allele - persons are conceptually speculative.
White allele - persons are conceptually fanciful.

Geneticists propose that a person might have more than one allele but only one is predominate. Based on their findings I believe my predominate allele is black and yours is white.

GODIAC     I don’t know anything about alleles. Why do you presume I have the white allele?

HOST     A conceptually fanciful person is more likely to believe in fairy tales, fiction, and God. The Virgin Mary probably had also the white allele.

GODIAC     That’s what I call science fiction. Whatever we are, God made us that way.

HOST     Speaking of human reproduction, when do you think life begins?

GODIAC     Obviously at the moment of conception.

HOST     Actually life began about 5 billion years ago in blue-green algae. That life was transferred to fish, reptiles, birds, dinosaurs, mammals, and about 65 million years ago life was transferred to primates. Today life is transferred in humans from man and woman to a fertilized egg called a zygote, the first stage of human development. God is not involved in any way in the transfer of life; it’s purely physicochemical.

GODIAC     God plans all human conceptions. He first put the idea in the minds of Adam and Eve. Since then he’s been putting the idea in the minds of men and women so they can multiply.

HOST     What? We were born because of the biological urges of men and women to have sexual intercourse. We know how babies are created and it’s not by God. Why do you ignore the biology from sperm and egg to zygote to embryo to fetus, and finally to birth.

GODIAC     God planned it first and we recently discovered how he did it.

HOST     We improved on God’s creation; he created only one man and one woman. Moreover your God allows some women to have many babies while others can’t have any. Pregnancy and birth are unrelated to your God’s reputed omni’s. Today using artificial insemination a woman of child-bearing age can have one baby or many babies during a single parturition.

GODIAC     God watches over all life in women’s wombs.

HOST     Do you mean God is responsible for brown eyes or blue eyes, short or tall human, or other traits?

GODIAC     It’s God’s power that does all that. While in our mother’s wombs we should appreciate whatever God gives bestows in us.

HOST     What are you saying? If God watches over life in women’s wombs he enabled the births of monstrous evil doers such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. They were serial mass killers of tens of millions of people. When in their mothers’ wombs why didn’t your omni-powered God know they were evil? God allowed them to be born. Evil doers allow also abandoned newborns and starvelings to die as if they were road kill.

GODIAC     God made each of us for a purpose.

HOST     Which is what?

GODIAC     To worship love and him.

HOST     That’s only for people who believe in God. Dead babies can’t grow up to worship and love anything. Why does God enable raped women to give birth rather than nullify the life in their wombs?

GODIAC     He commanded us to multiply. We should be satisfied with what God infuses in us while in our mothers’ wombs.

HOST     If God is the creator, what was his purpose in creating birth defects such as blindness or deafness? Some defects are grotesque malformations such as eyes in the forehead, missing limbs, two fetuses sharing the same organs as in Siamese twins. There are newborns who can’t absorb certain proteins; they become wards of our expensive and inadequate healthcare system. Your God is an incompetent creator of humans.

GODIAC     God is perfect; he doesn’t make mistakes. God’s children are good and true without fault or evil.

HOST     If your God creates life in women’s wombs, why does he allow the growth of diseases such as pediatric cancer or protein intolerance and many others afflictions?

GODIAC     God has reasons that we’re not aware of. It’s written that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. All you mentioned might have been caused by the sins of parents.

HOST     Birth defects are due to errors in the physiochemical process in a mother’s womb. Speaking of mothers and parents, let’s talk about marriage and sex. The Bible doesn’t mention human sexuality.

GODIAC     The Bible frequently alludes to sexual relations in marriage between a man and woman to fulfill God’s commandment to multiply. In Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians he writes:

7:9 ‘It is better to marry than to be on fire’.
7:36 ‘He commits no sin if there is marriage’.

HOST     Do you have an opinion on homosexuality?

GODIAC     Homosexuals have disavowed God by giving in to sin and Satan. They can’t multiply as commanded by God so he should be punished them with AIDS.

HOST     The God of the Old Testament would have punished homosexuals with or without AIDS. The God of the New Testament is a loving God and would not have punished them. If what you say is true it means God deliberately made sexually perverted humans and sexually transmitted diseases. Besides the origin of AIDS has been traced to monkeys. It’s another reason for believing in evolution. Furthermore AIDS hasn’t eliminated homosexuality among men or women because sex is more powerful than God.

GODIAC     They can change their unfortunate lifestyles by worshiping and loving of God.

HOST     Some homosexual clergy are pedophiles, especially Catholic priests. According to your definition, the homosexual clergy have given in to sin and Satan, making each more powerful than God.

GODIAC     No, nothing is more powerful than God.

HOST     Pedophilic priests hide behind God in order to prey upon innocent young boys, sexually abusing and raping them. Those pedophiles chose God as their profession to have at their disposal a new group of virginal young boys. Those priests are protected by the delinquent Catholic hierarchy that transfers them from parish to parish.

GODIAC     That couldn’t happen in my church. We’re independent and don’t have any church hierarchy.

HOST     Worldwide pedophilic priests sexually abused thousands of innocent young boys. Those boys, now male adults, are suing the abusive priests and the Catholic Church. In recent years the abusive priests have been arrested and the courts have ordered their dioceses to pay the abused complainants compensation. Because of the prevalence of pederasty some diocese have declared bankruptcy in order to settle lawsuits against those priests.

GODIAC     God is punishing those priests and their churches.

HOST     Catholic bioethicist priests apologize for pedophilic priests by explaining they’re only occasional pedophiles.

GODIAC     What does that mean?

HOST     I’m guessing it means priests succumb to pedophilia only when they are near young boys. It’s typical of the Catholic scholarship covering facts with gobbledygook.

GODIAC     You’re changing our religious debate to pedophilia.

HOST     Bioethicists say there might be up to 40 different sexual characteristics generated during the 12-second human differentiation of male-female sexual types: bisexual, hermaphrodite, heterosexual, homosexual, feminine men, masculine women, etc.

GODIAC     What has any of that to do with our debate?

HOST     I’m reminded the word semen is the source for forming the words seminal and seminary.

GODIAC     That’s an unfair indictment of our religious academies.

HOST     Well, let’s continue with God. You stated that God watches over all life in women’s wombs. Why did he enable pedophiles to be born in the first place?

GODIAC     God gave us free will and he will punish them for their evil acts. They will join Satan in hell.

HOST     Why didn’t God intervene to protect young boys from evil priests?

GODIAC     I can’t answer for God, no one can.

HOST     For pedophilic priests sex is more powerful than God.

GODIAC     Nothing is more powerful than God.

HOST     All priests take solemn vows to minister in God’s service. But their sexual urgings overwhelm their vows and service to God.

GODIAC     God will punish them in their afterlife.

HOST     Sinful priests probably don’t believe in an afterlife. They became priests to have sex with young boys, as did priests in the early church. Besides God’s only a phantom and phantoms do not prosecute or punish anyone.

GODIAC     How did we get into this disgusting subject in the middle of debating holy matrimony?

HOST     Right, let’s get back to marriage. Today marriage applies also to the same sex, homosexual men (andrians) and homosexual women (lesbians).

GODIAC     A normal man and woman are required to multiply as God commanded; homosexuals can’t multiply.

HOST     Not true. Today we have in vitro fertilization. A lesbian woman can be inseminated with an embryo and produce a child. This is further proof that evolution created humans, not God. A lesbian can have an embryo implanted in her and birth a child. An andrian can have his sperm fertilize a woman’s egg for implantation in a woman’s womb.

GODIAC     Women of child-bearing age who do that or lust after other women should be condemned to hell.

HOST     Don’t you realize that when it’s about sex God is powerless? For heteros no lust means no babies. For homos no lust means no sex. Evolution created a few imbeciles, mostly normal humans, and a few geniuses. Moreover the words bisexual, hermaphrodite, homosexual, heterosexual, sex, and sexuality are not in the Bible.

GODIAC     The Bible is for normal men and women who multiply as God commanded.

HOST     But you declared that God influences the unborn in the womb? While in their mother’s wombs, why didn’t he make normal the sexually perverted?

GODIAC     Humans have free will and make their own sexual choices.

HOST     A human cannot decide to be an imbecile or genius. Those traits are inborn; they’re networked in the brain. Also inborn are evolution’s inherited characteristics to survive.

GODIAC     Obviously all life tries to survive.

HOST     Evolution developed survival traits to sustain life, such as the dark circled aureola that surrounds a female’s nipple. A newborn’s eyes looks for that aureola to find and feed on its mother’s nipple.

GODIAC     Not true, a newborn cannot focus its eyes to properly see. It’s the mother who offers her nipple to her newborn.

HOST     Yes at first but later the baby automatically looks for the aureola. Also hatchlings in a bird nest open their mouths wide at the approach of their hen. Those survival traits were learned through evolution.

GODIAC     Those developments don’t hold true for the first newborn or hatchling. How did they survive? God created all life for survival.

HOST     That means God created some men impotent and some women infertile.

GODIAC     Recall that Abraham was 100 years old and his infertile wife Sarah was also old when God blessed them with their son Isaac.

HOST     Today working fathers and mothers have less time to spend with their children. Do you have an opinion on that?

GODIAC     Parents spend more time at work than with God or their children. After school many children are left alone and unsupervised. Today’s society is becoming more secular. Some parents consider children a mere biological event.

HOST     Are you implying atheistic parents are irresponsible because they’re merely biologic tools for birthing?

GODIAC     Secular parents and their children don’t have any knowledge of the love of God. In times of stress or personal tragedy they have no God to appeal to or pray to. Blessings in life come from the realization that we’re all children of God.

HOST     Secular and atheistic parents don’t need to depend on what doesn’t exist.

GODIAC     But that’s the problem, they cannot participate in the joyful worship and love of God.>>
 

New Testament

HOST     In ancient Israel the word Jesus meant ‘God saves’. Jews expected a Messiah to save them from persecution and slavery by delivering them from their enemies such as Babylonians and Romans. In the first century AD the life of Jesus was written in Greek. Some Jews and some Christians not only read the Greek version but they simultaneously practiced Judaism and Christianism. Using the Greek version Jewish-Christian writers and Christian writers compiled the New Testament. The Greek word for Jesus the ‘anointed one’ was translated to Christos and to the Latin Christus and to the English Christ.

GODIAC     The word Christian begins with Christ and the New Testament is the source of Christianism. All we know of the life of Jesus originates in the New Testament, in the four gospels and in the many epistles of Jesus’ disciples. The writings are based on the oral history of Jesus.

HOST     Mostly fictitious writings compiled decades after Jesus died in order to describe him as the heroic and miraculous Son of God.

GODIAC     No, there’s the historical Jesus who was the Jewish teacher and preacher called rabbi. The stories tell of his teachings, arrest, and crucifixion. After his resurrection…

HOST     You mean his assumed resurrection.

GODIAC     After his resurrection his followers called him the Messiah (anointed one).

HOST     The New Testament assumes that Jesus was resurrected. When you consider the women who kept watch at his tomb no one witnessed the act of his resurrection.

GODIAC     In Galilee his resurrection was witnessed by his followers.

HOST     The writers of the gospels declare he must have been resurrected because he was crucified and then seen by the two Marys and several of his disciples but no one witnessed his resurrection.

GODIAC     He had to be resurrected in order for his followers to see him in Galilee. The apostle ‘doubting Thomas’ even stuck his finger in Jesus’ side wound to verify he was the crucified and risen one.

HOST     That event was deliberately written to support Jesus’ resurrection as the Son of God. It satisfies the requirement for being a Son of God and makes for a nice story.

GODIAC     When God the Father raised his son Jesus from death, he gave us hope that we too will be raised.

HOST     But for us it’s a false hope. No one has ever returned from the dead.

GODIAC     Christians believe they’ll be resurrected as was Jesus.

HOST     After the death of Jesus most of his early Christian followers were in the Roman provinces of the Middle East, Greece, and North Africa. The early Christians looked forward to Jesus saving them from their misery and suffering.

GODIAC     All Christians know and believe in the New Testament, especially the gospels, which tell the true life of Jesus. Jesus promised his followers redemption, salvation, refuge from eternal damnation, and bliss in the heaven of the New Kingdom of God. At that time Jews who believed the expected Messiah was Jesus abandoned Judaism for Christiansim.

HOST     Those Jews were propagandists selling Jesus futures for the promised heavenly bliss in the New Kingdom of God.

GODIAC     The early writers believed in Jesus’ new kingdom.

HOST     The New Testament writings are based on hearsay about the life of Jesus. The life of Jesus, religion, and the Bible are without real foundation, ‘cut out of whole cloth’ as the saying goes.

GODIAC     Not true. The life of Jesus is truly told in the gospels and other writings in the New Testament. You’re ignoring the historical Jesus whose life was officially recorded by Romans.

HOST     Those writings remind me of today’s telemarketers who talk naïve people into buying a mutual fund paying a 25% yearly dividend without sales, hidden, or redemption fees. The amazing fact is that there are some people who believe whatever they’re told.

GODIAC     In the afterlife Jesus promised eternal glory and bliss in the peace of heaven.

HOST     Afterlife is pure nonsense whether spent in heaven or hell.

GODIAC     Eternal bliss in heaven is the promise of Jesus the Son of God and savior of man.

HOST     In order to establish a following, Jesus had to offer people the rewards of refuge and bliss in his New Kingdom of God. After Jesus’ death, as you know, his preaching led to the conversion of Jews to Christianism.

GODIAC     God in heaven awaits those persons who love and worship him irrespective of their previous religious beliefs.

HOST     God exists only in the minds of persons who need a link to something or someone greater than they. Believers in God are like servants who need a master to control them by promising rewards. In religion the rewards are the promises of providence and heaven. If there’s a God why doesn’t he show himself?

GODIAC     God always accompanies and walks with true believers. He’s always in their prayers.

Gospels

HOST     In the beginning of the Bible’s New Testament are four gospels written after Jesus died, about 70-100 AD.

GODIAC     I can assure you those gospels are not fiction. They’re historical records providing the good news about the life of Jesus and the New Kingdom of God through Christ Jesus the ‘savior of mankind’.

HOST     Some articles I’ve read state Jesus was born in Bethlehem, others say he was born in Galilee.

GODIAC     Jesus was born in Bethlehem and raised in Galilee. He became a rabbi who criticized certain aspects of Judaism and the Pharisees didn’t like it. But Jesus is best known for his preaching of the New Kingdom of God. God the Father speaks to us through the exemplary life of his son Jesus Christ.

HOST     In that sense the gospels might be considered catechistic writing. Except for Mathew and John, none of the writers was a contemporary of Jesus and Jesus never wrote anything. There’s no agreement among Gospel scholars about who wrote which gospels and when.

GODIAC     You probably know that some Biblical scholars declare the apostle Matthew wrote the first gospel. Other scholars insist Mark wrote the first gospel, which was used by Mathew and Luke.

HOST     Absent written records and copyright laws each gospel might have been the unified work of several writers, some of whom are unknown. Because of the original writers were unknown, scholars agreed on modifying the titles of gospels by including the qualifying words ‘According to’:

Only two of the gospels, Mathew (2:18-23) and Luke (2:6-8) describe the birth of Jesus.

Healing and Miracles

GODIAC     The gospels describe many of Jesus’ miracles − he calms a storm, walks on water, spiritually heals skin disease, restores sight to the blind, and raises the dead.

HOST     Speaking of miracles why doesn’t Jesus intervene in the natural disasters of planet Earth or the diseases that kill man, animals, and vegetation?

GODIAC     We are mere mortals and don’t know God’s divine purpose.

HOST     It’s obvious that planet Earth survives without God.

GODIAC     I still believe in Jesus’ healing power.

HOST     Are you a Christian Scientist?

GODIAC     No but I believe in the power of spiritual healing through prayer.

HOST     That’s a precept of Christian Science founded by Mary Baker Eddy. Aquinas and Eddy made the same mistakes. They failed in their attempts to convert fiction to truth.

GODIAC     But praying does invokes Jesus’ healing power.

HOST     The brain controls the body and praying is a brain activity. In rare situations it might be possible for prayer to affect brain chemistry for spiritual healing but it can’t set a broken leg.

GODIAC     Are you agreeing with me?

HOST     The practice of spiritual healing is ineffective and the courts outlaw it in favor of medical help. Partnering the words Christian and science is totally illogical. Christians rely on faith. Science requires provable facts. Moreover the phrase Christian Science is an oxymoron. Praying for spiritual healing and the art of medical practice are opposites.

GODIAC     But the man Jesus was renown for his spiritual healing.

HOST     Yes, as described in the gospels, so why doesn’t Jesus do spiritual healing today? Why doesn’t Jesus show himself and save us trillions of tax-payer dollars for healthcare now in crisis. Under government healthcare debilitated seniors who still believe in God might be eligible for goditis treatment. It might be the only coverage seniors would get.

GODIAC    Jesus the man had divine powers given to him by God the Father.

HOST     So why doesn’t God the Father give us some of his divine power? Some parents grant custody of their sick children to Jesus hoping that through prayer they’ll be healed? In similar situations courts order parents, under threat of jail and/or fines, to get medical help before their sick children die and many do.

GODIAC     Many are healed through divine law but if children die it means God has called them to himself.

HOST     Divine law? There’s no such thing as jus divinum (divine law) because there’s no such thing as God or divinity. Your divine law cannot reattach a severed finger or set a broken leg. If God or Christ Jesus had the power to heal the sick or perform miracles over the centuries, why haven’t they done it? We need doctors and healthcare.

GODIAC     There’s always the power of prayer.

HOST     The facts are that prayer and spiritual healing don’t work for obvious reasons; they’re only in a believer’s mind. Praying cannot resist by H1N1 flu infection.

GODIAC     The power of prayer heals us. How do you account for the medical miracles that doctors can’t explain?

HOST     Miracles are myths. Whatever miracle you’re citing, that person’s brain activity, biology, and chemistry made it happen.

GODIAC     The gospels of Matthew and Luke cite many of Jesus’ miracles.

HOST    Jesus’ miracles are theologically acceptable because they exalt Jesus’ power as Son of God over his genealogy as ascendant of David. How was the human Jesus able to perform superhuman acts like miracles?

GODIAC     Keep in mind that Jesus the Son of God was human and divine.

HOST     So on earth the man called Jesus used his divine powers to perform miracles?

GODIAC     God the Father gave Jesus superhuman power to perform miracles.

HOST     Gospel writers had to elevate Jesus above humans to prove he was the Son of God. They did this by having him perform miracles. Jealous of his miraculous power Pharisees had the putative Son of God arrested by the Romans. You know the rest of the story. Several centuries later Jesus was exalted to Son of God and later to one of the three divine persons of the Godhead. Those were miracles performed not by Jesus but by the Roman Catholic Church.

GODIAC     You’re referring to the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST If performing miracles are a requirement for worship, what about the frog that changes color while one looks at it? Should lookers worship it?

GODIAC     That’s absurd. Now you’re being facetious. In case you haven’t noticed, God has given me the patience to continue our debate.

HOST     Please, a little levity.

GODIAC     Some doctors admit that patients who should have died were miraculously healed and survived. Jesus is still performing miracles and awaits the recovered in heaven.

HOST     You’ve just reinserted the occult and realms of fiction into Christianism. Getting back to the Bible, the obvious fiction is the Book of Revelation, also called Apocalypse in some Bibles.

GODIAC     It’s object is to convince believers of the divine future of afterlife, the freedom from the bondage of sin and oppression. That’s why there are all those deliberate weird icons and descriptions of Satan in the guise of animals.

HOST     What? It’s none of that. It’s a book of horrors without expository dialog abetted by colorful comic cartoons.
Speaking of horrors, a word about popes is in order.

Popes

HOST     In matters of Catholic theology, popes are considered infallible. Do you believe that?

GODIAC     All humans are fallible. Besides I’m not a Catholic or student of Catholicism and popes do not rule over my church.

HOST     Catholics believe that in certain situations popes have the power to appeal directly to God for help, especially after receiving large donations. I call it succoring Catholics.

GODIAC     In my church an individual may appeal directly to God. We don’t believe in religious hierarchy or third party intervention whether priest or minister. We’re responsible to ourselves and to God.

HOST     The pope claims Catholic hierarchy is patterned after God’s celestial hierarchy. Do you believe that?

GODIAC     How does a pope or anyone know if there is a celestial hierarchy?

HOST     The great Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas knew because he detailed the celestial hierarchy in his Summa Theologica, his theological masterpiece.

GODIAC     If there’s a celestial hierarchy, I maintain it’s impossible for anyone to detail it.

HOST     Now I agree with you. Thomas Aquinas was named a doctor of the Catholic church and later made a saint. The papacy included some of his writings in the canon law of Catholicism.

GODIAC     Our church laws are derived from the Bible.

HOST     A candidate for sainthood must have performed at least two miracles while alive. If a candidate performed only one or no miracles, a pope might attribute miracles to that dead candidate in order to facilitate sainthood. Only the grotesquerie of papal authority could make a dead person perform miracles.
 

Trinity

Early Christian Problems

HOST     Even though Christianism was becoming popular in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe most bishops argued that it had several doctrinal problems namely:

. Jews had a God but Christians did not.
. Christians had only Jesus the Son of God but no God.
. Jesus’ mother was the Virgin Mary. A son requires a
    father. Who was Jesus’ father?

GODIAC     The gospels of Mathew and Luke explain that.

HOST     Those gospels were written from hearsay many decades after Jesus died. In the process of Christianism becoming a new religion, church fathers had to do the following to remedy their doctrinal problems:

Give Christians a God.
Give Jesus a father.

There was the additional problem of humanity. In other religions Gods were not human. Early church fathers solved this vexing problem by contriving the following solution:

Make Jesus’ father God, God the Father (not human).

Retain Jesus’ mother as the human Virgin Mary. She must not be any virgin but a teenager cleansed of Original Sin. Also the Son of God cannot be born resulting from the common human act of sexual intercourse.

To substitute for sexual intercourse, church fathers contrived the Holy Ghost (not human) who would come down upon the Virgin Mary to cleanse her of Original Sin and impregnate her for the Immaculate Conception of Jesus.

Immaculate Conception

GODIAC     God the Father’s son born of the Virgin Mary would be the human Jesus with divine power from God the Father.

HOST     According to my notes Immaculate Conception needs explanation. I have several thoughts about the sexless conception that birthed Jesus. The Holy Ghost would be the intercessor between God the Father and the Virgin Mary.

GODIAC     We call it the Holy Spirit.

HOST     Holy Spirit is the later and more acceptable version of the original Holy Ghost. Christians complained that Holy Ghost was too macabre so it was changed to Holy Spirit. Here’s what I think happened:

 The Holy Spirit would come down upon the virgin, remove her Original Sin, and then impregnate her in the act of her Immaculate Conception of Jesus. Also she would remain forever a virgin even after Jesus’ birth.

GODIAC     All Christians know the young Virgin Mary never had sexual intercourse before she married Joseph. The Immaculate Conception was not a physical act but an intense spiritual experience between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.

HOST     Jesus’ birth is mentioned only in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. If God the Father predestined Jesus’ birth why wasn’t it mentioned in the gospels of Mark and John?

GODIAC     You can’t expect me or anyone living to answer that. I’d like to paraphrase Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the birth of Jesus.

Mathew: Jesus’ mother Mary was engaged to Joseph but before they married the Immaculate Conception happened and she got pregnant. An angel appeared to Joseph her future husband and said "Don’t fear marrying Mary; she was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. She will birth a son you will name Jesus (God saves) because he will save his people from their sins". Joseph did as the angel instructed and avoided sexual relations with Mary until after Jesus was born.

Luke: In the sixth month (Adar) God sent the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary betrothed to Joseph. Gabriel announced "Rejoice highly favored daughter! The Lord is with you. blessed are you among women. You shall conceive a son and call him Jesus. He’ll be the Son of the Most High. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Your son will be called the Son of God. Mary responded "I’m the Lord’s servant; let it be done".

HOST     Recall that during this sexless process the Most High overshadowed Mary. How can any spirit cast a shadow whether it is that of God the Father or the Holy Spirit?

GODIAC     It’s a figure of speech. In the context of the Immaculate Conception it means that God covered or dominated the act. You can’t take literally every word in gospels because writers used allegory and figures of speech to tell their stories.

HOST     That’s why there are all those commentary books on how to read and interpret the Bible.

GODIAC     Today’s readers of the Bible need that commentary help.

HOST     Mathew and Luke intentionally used the name Jesus (God saves) in their gospels because he was rumored to be the expected Messiah, the savior of Jews.

GODIAC     Jesus saves sinners to redeem their souls.

HOST     The Holy Spirit ostensibly saved Mary’s virginity even after birthing Jesus. For the Immaculate Conception, Luke wrote that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was blessed among women. His announcement was used to create the Ave Maria (Hail Mary) prayer beginning,

‘Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb Jesus…’

GODIAC     We don’t recite that prayer in our church.

HOST     Do you ever make the sign of the cross?

GODIAC     We don’t do any of that overt ritualizing.

HOST     It symbolizes Jesus' crucifixion by tracing the shape of the cross on one's body.  The signing represents the five wounds of Jesus' crucified body.

GODIAC    We acknowledge Jesus' crucifixion but don't ritualize it by bodily gestures.

HOST    There’s also the emotional hymn Ave Maria by Franz Schubert.

GODIAC     We don’t pray or play or sing the Ave Maria.

HOST     Luke writes that Mary got pregnant in the sixth month (Adar). She gave birth in the twelfth month (Elul), about the time of the winter solstice (22 December), If true, Jesus was a seven-month premature baby.

GODIAC     An interesting note changing nothing. Where are you going with this?

HOST     In his gospel Luke alludes to Jesus as being a preemie. Neither Matthew nor Luke mentions a Caesarian birth, so how can Mary remain ever virgin?

GODIAC     The phrase ‘ever virgin’ is another figure of speech showing holiness and honor for the mother of Jesus.

HOST     That’s preposterous! What’s so honorable or reverential about a virgin?

GODIAC     The fact is that she birthed Jesus the Son of God and remained a virgin.

HOST     None of the gospels mentions that she was examined after Jesus’ birth. Catholics revere and ritualize the mother of Jesus as Mary Ever Virgin. Actually Mary Ever Virgin is another oxymoron because she birthed many other children with her husband Joseph.

GODIAC     We recognize the Virgin Mary as Jesus’ mother but don’t ritualize her in our church services.

HOST     Christian preachers warn that sex outside of marriage is sinful. Yet they revere and ritualize the Immaculate Conception, an example of sex outside of marriage.

GODIAC     Not true, you just recounted the story that the Immaculate Conception was sexless. You’re reaching for something I know not what.

HOST     Unlike the spiritual experiences of saints, Mary’s intense experience was without spiritual stigma.

GODIAC     For Mary the birth of Jesus was a physical as well as a spiritual experience. Jesus’ birth was normal.

HOST     I’m surprised Creationists didn’t take advantage of modern science by clarifying the mystery of the Immaculate Conception as follows:

From the highly charged Holy Spirit an electric spark fertilized one of Mary’s eggs transferring life to her zygote, the first stage of Jesus’ life in her womb.

GODIAC     I’m ignoring that.

Trinity

HOST     But you can’t ignore Trinity, the most controversial doctrine of Christianism. Trinity was contrived by early church fathers to maintain the viability of the early Christian Church of Rome. By the way the word Trinity is not in the Bible, not the Old Testament or New Testament.

GODIAC    Trinity was alluded to in Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians and in Mathew’s gospel.

Paul wrote (13.13) ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all!’

Mathew wrote (28.19) ‘Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’

HOST     Paul alluded to the triune human qualities grace, love, and fellowship. Mathew alluded to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the three constituents of Trinity. Trinity solved some doctrinal problems but created other problems. Christian bishops who didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God were breaking away from the Church of Rome and establishing their own schismatic sects. Church fathers decided to use what had been successful for pagan Rome, namely multiple Gods.

GODIAC     The early Christian church never believed in multiple Gods and certainly not in pagan gods. The followers of Christ separated themselves from the pagan gods of Roman mythology. That’s why Romans persecuted early Christians. The Roman god Jove ruled over the world and frequently had sexual intercourse with human maidens. God the Father never had sex with maidens or anyone.

HOST     You can’t possibly know that.

GODIAC     It’s not anywhere in the New Testament.

HOST     True but Christianism was a new religion and needed new precepts, so they contrived the three Gods of Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

GODIAC     The Most Holy Trinity is not separable into three Gods. Trinity consists of the three perfectly divine persons in one immortal Godhead of undivided unity.

HOST     Church fathers agreed that Jesus would be the replacement for Isaac. The executioner would not be Abraham but Romans. Jesus’ crucifixion would be used to save Jews from their sins past, present, and future. His crucifixion would be used to entice more Jews to become Christians.

GODIAC     In accordance with the gospels Jesus was crucified to redeem Christians and save them from their sins.
On the third day after his death Jesus was resurrected, then ascended to heaven, and was seated at the right hand of God the Father.

HOST     Yes and Christians now had in heaven Trinity’s triune God in their one Godhead – God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit. The three Gods of Trinity.

GODIAC     Not three Gods but three divine persons in one one Godhead.

Trinitarian Problems

HOST     How can your purely spiritual God of divine essence have a physical son?

GODIAC     God is omnipotent. We glorify the Most Holy Trinity and its undivided unity in one Godhead.

HOST     How can three be undivided to one? It’s Christianism’s biggest theological mistake.

GODIAC     Your words are irreverent, obviously those of an atheist. Trinity is the Godhead separable into three divine persons of one God. You’re thinking numbers. You need to think spiritually, not as a mathematician.

HOST        Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are persons not spirits. In Christianism there’s putatively only one God not three, that’s paganism. With all its contradictions, Trinity saved early Christianism from splitting off into different sects and possibly different religions. Trinity is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated by early church fathers upon superstitious and ignorant Christians.

GODIAC     Not true, Christians are not superstitious or ignorant simply because they believe in Trinity.

HOST     I was alluding to early Christians. When one God becomes three Gods it’s paganism not Trinity.

GODIAC     I repeat not three Gods but three divine persons in one Godhead.

HOST     When the Son of God departed heaven and descended to Earth, didn’t the Trinity of the one Godhead become duality?

GODIAC     No, Jesus’ divinity remained in the Godhead while his human form descended to Earth.

HOST     You don’t know that. The one-to-three conversion of Trinity exacerbated the problem of one Christian God contrasted to three gods as in paganism. Trinity was promulgated by bishops and accepted by ignorant and superstitious early Christians. Trinity also assured that the Christian clergy would keep their jobs.

GODIAC     You speak coldly of Trinity. I lovingly refer to it as the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     There’s nothing holy about Trinity. It was a practical compromise correcting the doctrinal problems of the early church. I agree that most early Christians accepted Trinity but it continued to irk some priests and bishops because they continued to argue that Jesus was in fact not the Son of God but merely a human holy person.

GODIAC     Jesus’ life was spectacular, full of spiritual healing and miracles, many human experiences including sacrifice, crucifixion, and resurrection.

HOST     I think of Trinity as follows:

The Father is paterfamilias, the first and most powerful divine person called God.

The Son is the second divine person. He was issued from the Father’s omni powers . The son is necessarily subordinate to the Father but as in paterfamilias he inherits the Father’s power and is also called God. On Earth the son converted to human. By the way, when did the son become human, when he departed the Godhead or when conceived by the Virgin Mary?

GODIAC     You’re grasping at straws. In his epistle to the Colossians Paul wrote,

‘Christ is the image of the invisible God’ (2:15)

which means that Jesus Christ was consubstantial with God the Father and made of the same substance.

HOST     After his crucifixion, putative resurrection, and ascension to heaven the son returned to his divine self through his Father’s omni powers.

The Holy Spirit, the third divine person, was issued from the Father and Son. The Holy sprit is necessarily subordinate to the Father and Son but is also called God. The Holy Spirit was deliberately contrived to come upon the Virgin Mary for her Immaculate Conception of Jesus. His tertiary rank makes him subservient to the Father and Son but he’s still called God because Trinity has to have three individual Gods.

GODIAC     Not true, the obvious analysis of an atheist. Not three separate Gods but the three divine persons in one Godhead. The three divine persons of the Most Holy Trinity are of the same substance and are equal. There’s God the Father of all Christians, his son Jesus who died for our sins, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

HOST     It would have been more in keeping with mythology if God opened the heavens and his Son Jesus descended to earth in a clap of thunder and flash of lightning. The importance of the birth of Jesus is that he’s presumed to be the Son of God, the phantom son of the phantom God of one’s imagination.

GODIAC     You’re mocking the belief of billions of Christians.

HOST     Is there anything more absurd than God the Father having a son he predestines to suffer and be crucified for man’s sins only to resurrect and redeem him? Anyone who believes that suffers from goditis. It’s so bizarre it’s more mythical than classic Greek and Roman mythology.

GODIAC     Christians believe in the Most Holy Trinity and don’t suffer from goditis or any other –itis.

HOST     In the ancient world of ignorance and superstition most early Christians accepted Trinity but some priests and bishops did not. In fact in order to convince doubters to accept Trinity, church fathers created another contrivance called ‘Mysterium Fidei' the ‘mystery of faith’. I consider that and Trinity to be desperate attempts to keep early Christians from splitting off into separate sects, thereby reducing the authority and power of the papacy and early church in Rome.

GODIAC     I never believed in the papacy but modern Christians still believe in the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     Today Trinity would be the outline for a farcical docudrama and its writers ridiculed to humiliation. In Trinity the three divine persons cannot be equal because the Son issued from the Father and the Holy spirit issued from the Father and Son. Trinity slouches towards the multiple gods of pagans and Hindus. The inherent problems of Trinity led to the Council of Nicaea.

GODIAC     The council that proved Jesus was the Son of God.

Council of Nicaea (325 AD)

HOST     Many Christian priests and bishops opposed Trinity because they declared Jesus was not the Son of God and was human not divine. Their leader was Arius a Greek priest from Alexandria, Egypt. The minority of bishops believed Arius were called Arian bishops. The majority of bishops believed in Trinity were called Trinitarian bishops.

GODIAC     You’re referring to the Arian Heresy. Arian bishops believed Jesus was human and not made of the same substance as the Father. They believed Jesus was made of like substance. Trinitarian bishops believed Jesus to be the Son of God made of the same substance as the Father, not made of like substance.

HOST     The words ‘same and like’ used by bishops are typical contrivances meant to fool ignorant and superstitious Christians. To settle the Arian Heresy, and thereby avoid possible civilian disruption in Italy and in the Roman provinces, the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great was also the general of Rome’s mighty army. He ordered that all bishops assemble for the first Christian ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea, Turkey. At the council Trinitarian and Arian bishops argued heatedly and vociferously. Bishops continued their antagonizing disputations arguing day and night over whether Jesus was the divine Son of God or merely human. Their disputes occasionally led to physical attacks upon each other. After months of arguing with no apparent solution Constantine, the emperor and general, issued a decree making Jesus the Son of God.

GODIAC     His decree satisfied the Trinitarian bishops who believed that Jesus was truly the Son of God.

HOST     His decree temporarily resolved the Trinitarian problem. Nicaea converted Godhead to the irrational 3-in-1 deity, thereby reverting to paganism.

GODIAC     No, not paganism but one God of three divine persons in one Godhead. That’s the whole point of Trinity.

HOST     You probably know that the belief in Trinity eventually led to Trinitarianism. During the Middle Ages (about 1200 AD) stalwart believers in Trinity established the Catholic religious order of Trinitarians.

GODIAC     I’m aware of that and it substantiates my belief in the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     Back in Rome and throughout its provinces, Trinitarian priests and bishops dressed in their reverential ritual vestments explained Constantine’s decree to their ignorant and superstitious parishioners. However some Arian bishops still disavowed Jesus’ divinity. They rejected Constantine’s decree and departed the Church of Rome to establish their own schizmatic Christian sects. To prevent Christianism from fragmenting into more schizmatic sects, Trinitarian bishops contrived and explained ‘Mysterium Fidei' the ‘mystery of faith’. With avuncular care Trinitarian bishops told their parishioners they had to have faith in Trinity’s ‘Mysterium Fidei'. After its limited acceptance the papacy necessarily contrived another phrase ‘sacred mysteries’ because they knew Christians wouldn’t question a phrase beginning the word sacred. Thereafter the papacy found it necessary to support Trinity with its Nicene Creed, Christianism’s most solemn prayer of faith (for a copy of the Nicene Creed, see Postlog).

GODIAC     I don’t understand why you are reviewing all of this ancient history. At that time most bishops agreed that Jesus was divine and human in one nature.

Council of Ephesus (431 AD)

HOST     I’m reviewing the past to emphasize that God, Son of God, Holy Spirit, and Trinity were all made by man. Despite Constantine’s efforts, the Council of Nicaea didn’t settle the inherent problems of Jesus’ nature. In 431 the Council of Ephesus, Turkey was convened to settle once and for all time the problem of Jesus’ nature.

GODIAC     Most early Christians accepted the fact that Jesus was the Son of God.

HOST     To continue my argument, priests and bishops argued whether Jesus had one nature ‘divine and human at the same time’ or two different natures ‘divine and human at different times’. The council concluded that Jesus simultaneously had one nature consisting of the divine and human – divine in heaven, human on Earth. Keep in mind that at this time Jesus was not called God but the Son of God. The council reverted to multiple Gods by declaring that Jesus was also God. Thereafter the papacy called Mary Ever Virgin the Mother of God.

GODIAC     Christians still believe in the Virgin Mary and in the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     Of course, they’re suffering from the emotional debility of goditis.

GODIAC     You’re making up words merely to defend your unproved theory that God doesn’t exist.

HOST        The exegetic problems of Nicaea and Ephesus, and many other Catholic councils, still exist today because God is a phantom and whatever emanates from God cannot be real. Keep in mind the decisions at Nicaea, Ephesus, and other councils were made by men not God. Nicaea made Jesus the Son of God and Ephesus made Jesus a God. Whenever necessary Christian theologians may declare anything as doctrine. Examples are Trinity, the Council of Nicaea, and the Council of Ephesus.

GODIAC     With all my heart I believe in the Most Holy Trinity.

HOST     God the Father destined his son Jesus for crucifixion to redeem the sins of man past, present, future, and to save man’s soul from eternal damnation; that’s impossible.

GODIAC     Anything is possible for God. Jesus’ crucifixion and his subsequent resurrection represent victory over death. All Christians believe that, otherwise there wouldn’t be any heaven to look forward to.

HOST     Whatever you have here on Earth is what there is; there’s nothing more. We’ll discuss the mistaken belief in afterlife next.
 

Need for God

HOST     Your God and other different Gods create many societal problems such as celebrating God in schools and in public celebrations.

GODIAC     Problems created by atheists and other people intolerant of religion.

HOST     Are you hinting there should be public demonstrations for the God of each religion?

GODIAC     Each person has a right to believe in God and worship him.

HOST     Yes in private. There are hundreds of Gods. We already have problems in schools with the Pledge of Allegiance under God. There are problems with holidays such as Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and the separation of church and state. Hundreds of public religious observances would create not only the modern Tower of Babel but daily religious holidays would interfere with our daily commerce and production of goods and services.

GODIAC     There’s more to life than commercial services and goods.

HOST     Many people now think that God is publicly irrelevant and should be restricted to private worship.

GODIAC     This nation was founded on the belief in God.

HOST     In the one deity, not in hundreds of Gods. Our open door tidal immigration brings with it many new Gods each claiming religious freedom. The whole creates the mental affliction goditis soon to be covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and HMO’s as a mental health problem.

GODIAC     Instead of separating church and state, you’re combining religion with government healthcare. That’s not separating church and state.

HOST     Let’s talk about the need for God. Worldwide I believe there’s more despair and sorrow than joy. That’s why people need something like God to alleviate their suffering. I believe God fills an emotional need for persons looking for a link to the world of God not connected to the world’s realities.

GODIAC     God reassures believers of heavenly bliss in the afterlife.

HOST     Yes but what good does that do to those currently living in misery?

GODIAC     On earth believers find solace in God. In death they are promised a blissful afterlife in heaven.

HOST     We’ll get into the afterlife later. Many believers, including those having scientific knowledge, still have a need for God. I believe their dependence on God originates with their emotional need for an escape to a retreat of brain for contemplation of something outside themselves and putatively greater than they are. But how can anything in one’s brain, such as a phantom, be greater than the mind itself?

GODIAC     God is the creator. Without God nothing would exist. God is in my life every minute of every day.

HOST     Why?

GODIAC     I couldn’t live without worshipping and loving God. My vision is of Christ Jesus who promised his followers refuge and bliss in heaven. True Christians believe they’ll be resurrected and ascend to the eternal bliss of heaven.

HOST     God exists only in the minds of persons who need a link to something beyond this world. Believers in God are like servants who need a master to control them under the promises of providence and heaven.

GODIAC     Haven’t you ever felt the love and presence of God?

HOST     No. I refuse to pledge or devote my life to a phantom.

GODIAC     The first time I felt God’s power was when I was young and having doubts about him. I remember taking a shower when all my doubts about him were washed away. In the shower I actually felt his love and presence. I was cleansed of all my doubts. It was then that I knew how the disciple Thomas must have felt when he probed the wound in Jesus’ side and realized the reality of the resurrected Christ Jesus.

HOST     The clergy, the duly anointed vicars of God, can update the New Testament or change religious doctrine any time. For example there are now Protestant gay bishops and women bishops, and Catholic priests are thinking of marriage.

GODIAC     God is inclusive not exclusive and you know what Paul said ‘It is better to marry than to be on fire’.

Purpose of Life

HOST     Does your belief in God give your life a special purpose?

GODIAC     The purpose of my life is to worship and love God. That’s why he created us. He smiles when we worship him because it pleases him.

HOST     God the pure spirit smiles? I would like to see that.

GODIAC     You’re an atheist and can’t possibly understand the fulfillment in worshipping and loving God. Does your life have any purpose at all?

HOST     The purpose of my life is to stay alive and help others do the same. You can’t do anything if you’re dead. My life doesn’t depend on a phantom called God.

GODIAC     We must love and worship God. We must offer ourselves to God and surrender to him.

HOST     That’s what Muslims do, surrender their lives to Allah. To please Allah some Muslim zealots go around killing people including other Muslims exuberantly shouting Allahu Akbar! (God is greatest.)

Love of God

GODIAC     When God created man he gifted him with intelligence and a soul so man would know God and worship and love him.

HOST    Love of God is love of self because God is only in a believer's brain. The fusion of ignorance and superstition created the worship of God. If God is supernatural, the possessor of omni powers, why does he need man’s love and worship?

GODIAC     We are all children of God. The more you know about God, the more you worship and love him.

HOST     If I were your psychiatrist I’d continue your therapy.

GODIAC     I’m ignoring that. Knowledge of God creates a profound reverence and respect for him. To love and worship God is a thing of beauty.

HOST     You’re talking about beauty that can’t be seen. The blind cannot see beauty; they only imagine beauty in the same fantastic manner that believers imagine God.

GODIAC     You’re again stuck on physicals. Love of God is not like human love. I’m referring to spiritual love. We all have the spirit of the soul that helps us understand and love God.

HOST     Beauty such as art and music require physicals. Your God requires brain activity such as imagination.

GODIAC     I find it a beautiful experience to love and worship God. The more you love God the more he loves you. Everything from God is benevolent, good, and loving.That love reverses the devil’s contagion of hate and sin.

HOST     The more you love a phantom the more that phantom loves you?

GODIAC     You don’t understand the spiritual beauty of religious experience.

HOST     If God is love, religious experience is love of self.

GODIAC     The brain can project to something greater than self such as God.

HOST     Have you ever considered that loving God is a condition of egoism?

GODIAC     I find that thought repugnant. No one has ever rebuked me for finding beauty in God and loving him.

HOST     I don’t understand how one can live in today’s society by the example set by someone who lived two thousand years ago in a society without benefit of scientific knowledge.

GODIAC     We’re talking about different things. Your talking about society’s material things. I’m talking about a spiritual experience.

HOST     Let’s get back to something I do understand. If God created all life, why don’t intelligent lower animals with some brainpower, such as apes and dolphins, recognize and worship God?

GODIAC     God made man with more intelligence precisely to know, worship, and love him.

HOST     The great apes communicate by grunting and monkeys screech. Do you believe they’re worshipping God their creator?

GODIAC     This debate is getting absurd. God has a purpose for all his creations. The purpose of apes is to live in the jungle and grunt and that of dolphins is to swim in the sea and squeal.

HOST     Man’s greater intelligence was inherited through evolution. It’s precisely the reason man conceived of God and lower animals do not.

GODIAC     You’ve just proved my argument. God created man with superior intelligence.

HOST     Only man’s superior intelligence has the brain’s neural network to conceive of a fantasy such as God. God has never been manifested outside the believer’s brain, in the real world.

Christ Jesus

GODIAC     Our greatest accomplishment is living for God and his only son Christ Jesus.

HOST     You just said Christ Jesus, using his first name as his last name. Surnames normally identify ancestral bloodlines. Greeks gave Jesus the surname Christos, the anointed one for Messiah or savior. The Romans called him Christus. Subsequently Jesus’ followers called themselves Christians.

GODIAC     After he was resurrected Jesus’ followers called him ‘Jesus the Savior’ who died for our sins. More important than his ancestry, early Christians emphasized the aspect of Jesus as ‘Christ the Savior’ so he was called Christ Jesus.

HOST     We now have Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus as the Son of God.

GODIAC     Your argument is equivocal and petty because Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus are one and the same, human on earth and divine in heaven.

HOST     You’re living in the past, in the time of Jesus without benefit of modern thought and society.

GODIAC     I live with the benefits of modern society while following the exemplary life of Jesus who was the perfect example of God’s love. Discord and hate cannot come from Jesus.

HOST     Wasn’t Jesus hateful when in God’s temple he overturned the tables of moneychangers?

GODIAC     He was justified because merchants were selling and buying in God’s temple instead of worshipping God.

HOST     That’s what Muslim terrorists believe to justify their abusive actions. By the way, have you ever heard of the words dulia, hyperdulia, and latria?

GODIAC     No, never heard of them.

HOST     They’re words created by catholic theologians to impress Catholics with their contrived knowledge.

GODIAC I’ve talked to many Catholics and even priests but none has ever mentioned those words. Do you know what they mean?

HOST     Dulia is the veneration of saints, hyperdulia is the veneration of the Virgin Mary, and latria is the veneration of God and by implication Jesus. Speaking of veneration, do you believe in saints?

GOIAC     Of course, especially those holy persons who were martyred for their professed believe in Christ Jesus.

HOST     In Catholicism martyrs automatically achieve sainthood and are given immediate entry to heaven. For most holy persons who’ve performed at least two miracles sainthood is bestowed after death. Proof of the first miracle proceeds to beatification. Proof of the second miracle proceeds to canonization or sainthood.

GODIAC     I’m not familiar with that process. Are the venerations you spoke of parts of the Catholic Mass?

HOST     I don’t think so. But I can tell you this, anyone who prays the words of the Mass will soon realize it was created it for the benefit of the Catholic clergy and for eliciting donations. In a certain part of the Mass the priest refers to the Old Testament. He asks God to accept the offerings of Abel, Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac, and the bread and water offered by the priest Melchisedech. Do you think any of those Old Testament references should be in the Mass?

GODIAC     Is that a trick question? Are you asking me to approve of the contents of the Catholic Mass? Only an atheist would ask such a question. Our church services are based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Why does an atheist like you have any interest in such matters as the Mass?

HOST     I grew up forced to attend Mass every Sunday and deposit a donation envelope in a collection basket. Such matters influenced me to become an atheist. Idle priests who do no work spend their lives thinking about the words of the Mass. They’re called scholars. Some of them are monks who segregate themselves in monasteries thinking about how to further complicate the lives of Catholics.

GODIAC     My church doesn’t have monasteries or monks.

HOST     It’s interesting to note that in the Gospels Jesus is mentioned more than Christ. But in The Acts of the Apostles and in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) Christ (savior) is mentioned more than Jesus. I believe it’s because the Acts were written after the gospels to spread the teachings of Christ and therefore to spread Christianism.

GDIAC     I’m amazed that an atheist would spend any time on such theological matters.

Eucharist

HOST     There’s also the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.

GODIAC     It’s really the sacramental ritual of Holy Communion.

HOST     Whether sacrament or ritual it was devised by man.

GODIAC     Holy Communion is the sacramental ritual of Jesus’ Last Supper in which he shared bread and red wine with his disciples. It reenacts the Last Supper.

HOST     As a youngster I received Holy Communion. I never understood it and did it only because I was warned I would go to hell if I didn’t receive the wafer. I was told the physical body of Jesus was in a wheat wafer. I never believe it.

GODIAC     Jesus is symbolically represented in the wafer.

HOST     The wafer is consecrated to be Jesus’ body and the wine to Jesus’ blood.

GODIAC     It’s only symbolic of the Last Supper. When Jesus’ side was impaled with a spear a mixture of wine and water flowed from his wound to signify the dual nature of his humanity and divinity. Jesus said ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life’.

HOST     That transmogrify is sheer nonsense. How can any adult believe in Eucharistic cannibalism?

GODIAC     It’s symbolic, not cannibalism as you put it. As I said the Eucharist represents the Last Supper the first Christian service performed by Christ Jesus.

HOST     So the first becomes the last. The omega becomes the alpha. Catholics are again required to believe in ‘Mysterium Fidei’ the mystery of faith. The obeisant participant receives a wheat wafer and in certain celebrations a sip of red wine. It’s a repulsive ritual, eating and masticating the symbolic body of Jesus and drinking his blood mixed with water.

GODIAC     That’s because you’re an atheist. God created us to be like Christ Jesus, to suffer and die.

HOST     Several Biblical writers believe that Jesus was amenable to humiliation and pain, a masochist, because he was a frustrated virgin and prone to self-hatred.

GODIAC     What are you saying? I’ve never heard of any such thing.

HOST     The gospels describe that Jesus was jeered, spat upon, stoned, whipped, crowned with thorns, and finally crucified. He stoically suffered all that without putting up any resistance. That’s the reason for his masochism.

GODIAC     Can’t you not understand that Jesus suffered to redeem us from our sins? He is the one who saves us from eternal damnation in hell.

HOST     Perhaps he suffered for others’ sins not mine.

GODIAC     Suffering brings one closer to God. You must read the gospels to understand Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion. He died for us in order to redeem our sins, to prepare us for entry to heaven.

HOST     Jesus was crucified about 33 AD. How can his death redeem sins committed before and after that? When we die all else dies including our imagined sins and souls.

GODIAC     His death is symbolic of his sacrifice for us. Suffering brings us closer to him, so we must sacrifice for him.

HOST     How?

GODIAC     We must love, honor, and worship God by supporting his house, his church. Being the member of a church is more important than being a member of a family. Spiritual love is greater than physical love.

HOST     That’s antilogous; the two are totally different.

GODIAC     The more you support your church, the more you glorify and love God. The more you love god, the more he’ll love you and the more you’ll be successful in entering heaven. If you devote your life to loving and serving God, he will never abandon you.

HOST     Where’s God when diseases and natural disasters kill millions?

GODIAC     In a dark foreboding world, God gives us the light of hope through his love. We must go to his altar and worship him and love him. The more we love God the more he gives us the strength to enjoy life. God blesses those who love him. If we love and worship God he will reward us in heaven.

HOST     You’re absolving God of all the evil he created and his duty to remedy that evil. Your God is irresponsible; he conveniently escapes the present by convincing believers to buy futures in heaven by worshipping and loving him.

GODIAC     Speaking of futures, even early man in recognizing the Sun and stars worshipped the Supreme Being who created them. Don’t you think early man looked forward to meeting the Supreme Being?

Praying

HOST     Another of my notes refers to praying which is one part of the brain communicating with another part.

GODIAC     Praying is communicating with God. All believers pray.

HOST     Praying is corollary to the unproven theory of God. Praying is merely a mental exercise.

GODIAC     When people are troubled they can turn to Jesus to shepherd them as they walk through the world of evil or trouble or valley of darkness.

HOST     If I stumble into a dark valley I don’t fear evil; I fear ignorance. About praying, why is the word God in most Christian prayers and not Jesus, Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus?

GODIAC     There are many ways to refer to God such as Our Lord Jesus Christ, Christ our Lord, God the Father, and just plain God. I’m afraid I have nothing more to say on the matter. You’re obviously trying to apply a dictionary definition of God to Jesus. I read the Bible and pray every day.

HOST     Why?

GODIAC     I pray for God’s guidance.

HOST     Such as?

GODIAC     Christ Jesus is my exemplar. I try to live by his teachings and examples.

HOST     You just switched from God to Christ Jesus.

GODIAC     I thought we settled that. God and Christ Jesus are two divine persons in the same Godhead of the Most Holy Trinity. When I pray to God I also pray to Christ Jesus.

HOST     When you pray to Christ Jesus you’re really praying to the ‘phantom of resurrection’.

GODIAC     I pray to the risen Christ Jesus who was seen by his followers.

HOST     The gospels allege he was seen. No one actually witnessed his resurrection in the tomb.

GODIAC     Praying brings me closer to God. When I pray for his guidance I feel his presence and love. He’s always in my prayers.

HOST     When praying for God’s guidance, do you do whatever he wills?

GODIAC     God always points me in the right direction. He never abandons me.

HOST     Prayers cannot protect you against human tragedies and natural disasters. I know people who’ve prayed for a message of hope but only got succored from above. Their prayers were never answered. Do you ever pray for something you want?

GODIAC     That’s because you don’t understand the act of praying. It’s not quid pro quo or tit for tat. Praying brings one closer to God. I’m steadfast in my belief in Christ Jesus the savior of mankind. He died for man’s sins and salvation.

HOST     I witnessed a mother on her knees praying, begging God for an answer "Why did you take my child away from me"? She never got an answer.

GODIAC     When personal tragedy strikes we all search for answers and strive for understanding. There are proofs of prayer healing migraine headaches and other afflictions. There are thousands of examples.

HOST     Such as?

GODIAC     A friend of mine’s son had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and was failing in school. His doctor prescribed a certain drug. The mother refused to give her son the drug and instead the family prayed for God’s help. In the next semester the boy’s grades improved and he was promoted along with his classmates.

HOST     Are you trying to tell me that God did that?

GODIAC     My neighbor believed God’s love had a hand in it. God’s love also affects lower animals. My neighbor had a new puppy she was punishing because he was wetting all over her carpet. I told her the puppy was like a baby and to show it more love, which she did. Several weeks later she told me she prayed for God’s help and the puppy stopped his bad habit.

HOST     The fact is that God doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t answer prayers or provide understanding because he’s a phantom.

GODIAC     God always provides peace for true believers.

HOST     Provides what?

GODIAC     God provides peace and comfort and the promise of remission of sins.

HOST     What good is that to those who need organ transplants?

GODIAC     God will take care of them.

HOST     You can’t be serious. God can’t give them a new heart, only doctors specializing in heart transplants can do that.

GODIAC     God will answer their prayers.

HOST     By his silence? Why didn’t God make good hearts in the beginning?

GODIAC     No one knows God’s divine purpose. True believers in Christ Jesus know the power of prayer.

HOST     You changed again from God to Christ Jesus.

GODIAC     I already explained that. Besides I know friends who prayed themselves out of credit card debt.

HOST     What? You declare that praying is spiritual. Debt is money owed it’s physical. How can the spiritual affect the physical?

GODIAC     For two years they tried to sell their house to pay their credit card debts. I suggested they pray for help. They did and God answered their prayers.

HOST     Your God responded with a real estate transaction?

GODIAC     It was a sign of God’ love through prayer. Praying can become an asset.

HOST     What about the thousands who prayed and lost their homes through foreclosure?

GODIAC     I cannot answer for God.

HOST     Growing up I learned to pray and soon realized no one was listening. I was praying to myself.

GODIAC     When I pray I feel God’s spirit and presence. In his gospel John writes,

‘God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’ (4:24).

HOST     If your God is purely spiritual, to what or to whom are you praying? Do you have a vision of God while you’re praying?

GODIAC     I pray directly to God.

HOST     But do you envision a body or face or merely a cloud?

GODIAC     I pray directly to God, to Christ Jesus the head of our church.

HOST     Recall it was at the Council of Ephesus that bishops agreed that Jesus should be called God.

GODIAC     By any name God or Christ Jesus he’s in my life every day. He’s always with me.

HOST     He’s always in your mind but you can’t physically see or talk to him.

GODIAC     Not true, when I pray I communicate directly with God.

HOST When you pray do you close your eyes and lower your head or look up towards the sky?

GODIAC     I pray frequently anywhere and any time to worship God, to show him my love.

HOST     Do you ask for something in return?

GODIAC     I pray for God to give me strength to love and worship him. If one is tempted by the devil, praying will drive him out.

HOST     Your prayers are directed at a concept. The words of prayers are directed inward towards you. Except for praying in congregation there’s no one listening.

GODIAC     I’m not a computer geek but I liken prayer to software. It works on the right computer.

HOST     Which one of the triune Gods is your God?

GODIAC     I already answered that in sufficient detail for any curious person to understand. When I pray to God I’m addressing the Godhead, unless I pray specifically to one of the three personal Gods such as Christ Jesus, who’s also called God.

HOST     Why do you need God?

GODIAC     God is part of my daily life. I cannot envision my life without God. Why don’t you believe in God?

HOST     My doubts about God began when I was in elementary school. For two days a week after school I attended Catholic Catechism class. One day my entire class was held after school for about 15 minutes. When released from school, I ran as fast as I could to catechism class about 10 minutes away. When I arrived fearful and out of breath, I explained to the nun that my class was held after school. She had me stand in front of the class. She was a small thin middle-aged, flat-chested, and shriveled-up woman. She retrieved her clicker from her desk drawer.

GODIAC     What’s a clicker?

HOST     It’s an instrument that looked like a large heavy mallet. It was made of solid rock maple wood with a strip of wood or metal sticking out of its body. When she pressed on that strip it would click.

GODIAC     What did the clicker have to do with catechism?

HOST     It was used to indoctrinate catechists to obey the nun and her click. Click stand up; click sit down; click stand up; click sit down. She ordered me to hold out my hands palm up. She beat my palms with her clicker and then ordered me to turn over my hands. She beat my knuckles until they bled. She then ordered me to a back corner of the classroom where there was a stool and scowled at me to sit down like a dunce. Looking at the paintings and statuary in that classroom I hoped for some consolation from God. Later I found out the paintings and statuary were of Jesus not God. At the close of catechism class, the nun handed out boxes of 52 Donation Envelopes. Fearful of getting another beating, I accepted my box with some reluctance. Each Sunday while attending Mass I dropped the weekly envelope in a collection basket. In each envelope was normally a nickel or dime or several pennies. It was during the Great Depression.

GODIAC     When did you begin to have doubts about God?

HOST     That day was the beginning of my atheism. I thought what kind of God would allow with impunity that kind of punishment to an innocent child? Where was God when she was beating my hands to a red goo? If God was as powerful as claimed, why didn’t he stop that frustrated mean nun from beating me? If God is all-knowing he knew my entire class was held after school hours.

GODIAC     God gave us intelligence to choose behavior; he can’t be responsible for the acts of humans.

HOST     Growing up I was interested in Greek and Roman mythology. Sometimes I’d take long walks to a wooded area away from the inner city. I hoped for a woodland nymph, perhaps Flora or Pomona, to step out from behind a tree and favor me with her presence. It never happened. My family always talked of God but no one ever saw or talked to God. I thought that perhaps God was also a myth like woodland nymphs.

GODIAC     Surely you can’t compare belief in God the creator to Greek or Roman myths.

HOST     As a teenager my doubts continued. My atheism was confirmed during World War 2 because of the absolute insanity of the atrocities, killings, and holocaust. If there were a God, where was the do-nothing hiding? The world he supposedly created was destroying itself and he was nowhere to be found. Your putative laissez-faire God, delinquent and irresponsible, must have been hiding safely ensconced in his remote heaven perhaps behind a distant quasar somewhere in outer space.

GODIAC     God gave man free will to decide his own behavior. God also gave him intelligence and the Ten Commandments to manage his life.

HOST     But then God abandoned man. Your God turned out to be a fantasy whose omni’s were never to be materialized.

GODIAC     You need to learn more about God.

HOST     No thanks, I don’t need that kind of help.

GODIAC     Read the Bible; learn to worship and love God.

HOST     I’ve read more than the Bible. Besides how does one communicate with a spiritual essence?

GODIAC     God is love and you must pray for God’s guidance to help you.

HOST     God is self-delusion. If you could manifest God I’d be able to talk to him so he could speak for himself.

GODIAC     You’re mocking me.

HOST     Sorry, your God is only a concept never materialized.

GODIAC     If you give God a chance, he will monitor your troubled thoughts and Christ Jesus will give you dominion over your troubled life.

Portraiture and Statuary

HOST     Thanks but I’m just fine the way I am. Have you ever prayed to a statue or painting of God?

GODIAC     No. I’ve prayed while beholding a statue or painting but my prayers are always directed to God.

HOST     Catholic churches have many representations of Jesus in portraiture and statuary because he’s the only one of Trinity’s three made human.

GODIAC     My church doesn’t have any paintings or statuary. We do not worship idols.

HOST     I believe there aren’t any representations of God the Father because he’s a phantom as is the Holy Spirit. Of the three divine persons in Trinity, only the Son of God was made human and that’s why all representations of God are of Jesus. Michelangelo’s stern and foreboding portrait of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the only painting of God I’ve seen. The concepts of God and Holy Spirit cannot be painted or carved except as imagined by artists.

GODIAC     In that case an artist could paint the Godhead of God the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in heaven.

Godiac Talk Radio

HOST     I’d like to end this segment with my comment about godiac talk radio that dominates Sunday morning programs. I’m not emotionally deprived of God so I find the programs absolutely ludicrous. They address God as if he were real rather than as a concept.

GODIAC     That’s because you’re an atheist.

HOST     I realize it’s difficult to explain how a phantom never manifested might be explained in the real world of physicals, in this case radio.

GODIAC     I’ve participated in Sunday morning talk radio programs and find them inspiring.

HOST     Explanations of godiacs’ blind faith in and unalterable belief in God sound like out-of-body experiences. The delusional language is appreciated only by other godiacs and most of it is philosophic and theologic gobbledygook. In fact some of the godiac’s explanations of God slouch off into the incoherent babble of schizophrenia.

GODIAC     Because you don’t believe in God.

HOST     I don’t demean anyone who believes in God, any God. Believers have to live with their own absurdities, fantasies, and misinformation. In one of these programs for example, I heard a professor pontificate about God’s truth for about half an hour. His idea of truth was to repeatedly quote from John’s gospel.

GODIAC     That’s because John’s gospel on truth is quoted more than other gospels.

HOST J    ohn was a visionary with a wild imagination. John knew nothing of science and the real world. In John’s gospel what does the word truth mean?

GODIAC     John said it best "you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (8:32).

HOST     What truth? Free from what? What does that quote mean?

GODIAC     If you believe in Christ Jesus, you will know the truth.

HOST     That doesn’t explain what truth means. Truth is reality, fact. Truth replaces fallacy.

GODIAC     In quoting Jesus John said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6). The truth is belief in Christ Jesus the Son of God.

HOST     John’s quote does not represent truth. Truth is the same as knowledge; show me or prove it.

GODIAC     You can’t describe God’s truth as the result of a scientific experiment. Remember belief in God deals in spiritual knowledge. Happiness on earth is spiritual, not material. That spiritual happiness continues in the afterlife when we enter heaven.

HOST     Spiritual happiness is in the mind and can’t possibly continue when the mind dies. When we die the mind dies and ao does thoughts of afterlife.

GODIAC     God’s truth and his promised afterlife is beyond experiments and dictionary definitions. Christians believe God is the creator of all there is and afterlife following death. That’s the simple truth that can’ be denied.

HOST     You’re confusing faith with fact.

GODIAC     Faith is a fact in itself.

HOST     Faith is the belief that God exists. Your faith is real but God the object of your faith is imaginary.

GODIAC     Every Christian believes that God exists; that’s a fact.

HOST     God is fiction except in the mind of believers.
 

Telomeres

HOST     Well, finally there’s death. We die when our telomeres get used up to end cell division.

GODIAC     Telomeres, what are telomeres?

HOST     Today we know the ends of our DNA chromosomes end in telomeres that destine our life spans.  Why didn’t God know that and create DNA so that telomeres are immortal? Why did God create humans mortal at birth and immortal in death?

GODIAC     You’re again asking me to answer for God. No one can do that. If what you say about telomeres is true, recall that God gave Adam and others many potent telomeres for long life spans.

HOST     Longevity depends on on’e telomeres, genes, and lifestyle. Those are products of evolution not divinity.

GODIAC     Belief in God might give one the peace of mind that extends life. People who go to church live longer and are happier than those who don’t.

Death

HOST     Death is when the brain dies.

GODIAC     Death is when God calls one to himself.

HOST     I’m talking about fact and you’re responding with fiction.

GODIAC     Death is when breath leaves the body. When God blew breath into man God gave him life. Jesus raised Lazarus from death by breathing into his mouth.

HOST     When your God created man it’s evident your God purposefully created man to die. Why did your eternal God give us temporal lives?

GODIAC     Do you expect me to answer for God? No one knows the mind of God or why he created man to die. You don’t believe in God or in eternal life in heaven, so what do you think happens to you after death?

HOST     Obviously no one living can answer that. No one ever returned from death to answer that, not even Lazarus.

GODIAC     Temporal love has its limits and dies when a loved one dies. Spiritual love on earth or in heaven is eternal.

HOST     Can you define God’s love?

GODIAC     There you go again searching for dictionary definitions. God is beyond such definitions. God’s love is spiritual; one feels his love by his presence.

HOST     For me God’s love isn’t perceptible. It doesn’t exist because God doesn’t exist. He’s only an idea in the mind of a believer.

GODIAC     People who believe in God know temporal love dies but spiritual love lives forever on earth or in heaven.

HOST     I knew atheists who were married to wives who believed un God. Those atheists outlived their wives. I knew agnostic men skeptical about God’s existence who never prayed or went to church. They died in their 90’s. Their wives believed in God, prayed, and went to church. They died in their 60’s.

GODIAC     The difference is that God rewarded those wives with eternal bliss in heaven.

HOST     You have no evidence of that. God and heaven are in the mind of a believer.

GODIAC     So what’s the purpose of life, of living?

HOST     I repeat, the purpose life is to stay alive and help others do the same. You can’t do anything if you’re dead.

GODIAC     Our destiny is in God’s hands. Death is the time God calls us back to him. When God calls me I’ll be ready to depart this world for my eternal home in heaven. I’m anxious to behold God’s Beatific Vision.

HOST     Dead men cannot see.

GODIAC     I believe the gospel of John who wrote ‘I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die’. God created us to survive death through resurrection.

HOST     So God creates life, kills it, and then resurrects it? What’s the point of that absurd cycle?

GODIAC     You’re again asking me to answer for God.

HOST     My answer is that a corpse is proof of death as in ‘memento mori’. Compared to stars and galaxies our lives are ephemeral. We are the Mayflies of the universe.

GODIAC     But in heaven God created his servants for immortality.

HOST     Servants?

GODIAC     Those who serve him with worship and love.

HOST     Your God is a supreme egoist wanting to be worshipped and loved.

GODIAC     What are you talking about? God is humble and sent his only son to die on the cross for us.

HOST     Your God ordered that his believers worship only him because he’s a jealous God. He punished those who used his name in a vain manner.

GODIAC     He was preaching to those Jews who, like pagans, worshipped the Golden Calf.

HOST     At death we all know corpses are disposed of according to civil laws and religious customs. As for the soul it dies when the body dies. A dead person’s corpse or ashes remains on earth, not in heaven.

GODIAC     Soul is separate from the body. After death soul is reunited with the body and they both ascend to heaven or descend to hell.

HOST     Or purgatory according to Catholics.

GODIAC     Christians who lived a religious life, poor or rich, will find the door of heaven open to them.

Saint Auctor Occultus

HOST     At death Catholics believe they’ll be committed to heaven or purgatory or hell depending on God’s judgement of lives lived.

GODIAC     That might be true for Catholics but I believe only in heaven or hell.

HOST     In the fourth century the Catholic Saint Auctor Occultus had a dream in which was revealed to him the postmortem sequence of the Trinitarian intervention of redemption, salvation, and resurrection of the dead.

GODIAC     Never heard of him or of any Trinitarian intervention for the dead.

HOST     I read about him in a book of visionary saints. Looking at my notes, Saint Auctor revealed the postmortem sequence to be as follows:

On the first day the Holy Spirit takes possession of the deceased’s temporal body, redeems the soul, and passes the redeemed soul to Jesus Christ.

On the second day Jesus Christ saves the soul from eternal damnation and passes the saved soul to God the Father.

On the third day God the Father recombines the saved soul with its temporal body thereby resurrecting the dead.

Is that what you believe happens in afterlife?

GODIAC     I never heard of Saint Auctor and can’t possibly establish any such postmortem sequence. I know that when Christ Jesus was resurrected he showed himself to his followers and then ascended to heaven.

HOST     You mean Jesus, the one who was crucified. Christ was never crucified or resurrected. We both know that Christ is the surname given to Jesus after he died. Are you saying that Jesus’ human corpse was transmogrified to Christ’s mystical body? That’s impossible.

GODIAC     Anything is possible with God.

HOST     In Saint Auctor’s postmortem sequence sin is considered, so let’s talk about sin. You do admit that there’s sin.

GODIAC     Of course.

HOST     Catholics recognize two levels of sin, venial and mortal. Venial sin is a minor sin and the lesser of the two. Venial sin is capable of being forgiven and through penance the resurrected can achieve divine grace. Mortal sin is a major sin, a transgression against God’s laws and subject to eternal punishment denying the resurrected of divine grace.

GODIAC     I don’t believe in separating sin into levels or categories. Everybody knows that a little white lie is different from murder. One can forgive a lie but murder must be severely punished.

HOST     There’s more. God the Father considers the sins of the resurrected in order to make a preliminary judgement.

GODIAC     What do you mean preliminary judgement?

HOST     Before his final judgement on the day of Last Judgement. Preliminary judgements are as follows:

Merited Catholics are sent to the first level of heaven, the entrance level.

Demerited Catholics having died with venial sins on their souls are sent to the first level of purgatory, the entrance level. There they’re purified by the remission of sin through penance.

Demerited Catholics having died with mortal sins on their souls are sent to the first level of hell, the entrance level.

GODIAC     I don’t believe any of that. None of that is in the New Testament. In the Old Testament a young lamb was used to atone for sins. In the New Testament Christ Jesus is the heavenly lamb who takes away our sins.

HOST     Catholic scholars support Saint Auctor’s revelation describing different levels of heaven, purgatory, and hell. This means the resurrected dead are enabled to proceed to a higher level of heaven or a lower and more punishing level of purgatory or hell.

GODIAC     Depending on what? Those levels require explanations no one can possibly know.

HOST     But isn’t that religion’s raison d’être, to explain the unknowable? Saint Auctor continues by saying that unbaptized babies of Christian parents are sent to limbo, especially true of stillbirths and newborns. By the way the word limbo is not in the Bible; Catholic theologians contrived it.

GODIAC     I still don’t believe any of that.

HOST     Finally Saint Auctor admits that the end of his dream was clouded with uncertainty. Nevertheless he concludes by declaring that unbaptized cross-dressers would probably be sent to purgatory and homosexuals sent to hell. Today as for the transgendered, they’d probably be sent also to hell.

GODIAC     That’s the only part of the dream I agree with. The sexually perverted should be sent to hell or at least to Catholic purgatory to rid themselves of their sins.

HOST     About homosexuality, it occurs among lower animals and we inherited some of their genes through evolution. There’s nothing sacred about sex whether it’s hetero or homo. It’s physiology and chemistry in action.

GODIAC     Homosexuality counters God’s commandment to multiply.

HOST     You must know that Christians have lost the battles of sex and of marriage between one man and one woman. Christians are either ignorant of the facts of life and evolution or simply don’t care. Today we can start babies in test tubes and even order designer babies. You must know by now that God doesn’t make babies.

GODIAC     God created man and whatever we do is through God’s supernatural powers.

HOST     Not true, we exchanged views on that when we previously debated marriage. Continuing in afterlife,  you must know that I don’t believe in heaven, hell, purgatory, or limbo.

GODIAC     Of course not, you’re an atheist.

Heaven

HOST     I know you’ve never visited heaven but what are your thoughts about God and heaven?

GODIAC     Heaven is the eternal abode of the Lord Christ Jesus in all his glory, grace, and power. He extends his love to all Christians and will have mercy on them by taking away their sins and granting them peace and eternal rest.

HOST     Poor people are given charity by the rich. In like manner the poor believe in Jesus because they expect him to give them the entitlement of heaven.

GODIAC     Heaven is where all Christians want to go. Heaven is where they’ll live in eternal bliss and be reunited with loved ones.

HOST     After death there’s no afterlife or heaven or anything else. Heaven was contrived by early church fathers to promote the promise of Jesus’ teachings inherent in the New Kingdom of God.

GODIAC     Persons who’ve miraculously overcome life- shattering health or personal problems renew their belief in Christ Jesus and heaven.

HOST     What? There’s no way for you or anyone to know that.

GODIAC     When doctors admit there’s no hope for a dying patient, what makes them suddenly recover? I believe it’s the miraculous intervention of Christ Jesus.

HOST     Jesus was divine in heaven but human on earth and no human has miraculous power. The so-called religious miracles have been debunked by scientific investigations. The fact is that death ends everything including afterlife, God, and Jesus.

GODIAC     After his resurrection Jesus appeared to several of his followers. He even allowed ‘doubting Thomas’ to examine the wound in his side. When Thomas witnessed the risen Jesus he asked "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way"? Jesus told him "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me" (John 14: 5-6).

HOST     That sounds impressive but it just isn’t true. John was a dreamer and visionary. You’re Protestant but during the Catholic Mass the Nicene Creed is prayed. The creed was devised to correct errors of the early church. The Mass itself admits doubt about Jesus’ resurrection. The following words are taken directly from the Nicene Creed:

‘And on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures’.

The words ‘according to the Scriptures’ render the creed suspect because it does not state that Jesus rose again according to eyewitnesses. Recall that writers of scripture wrote hearsay about Jesus. I’m amazed that Jesus ‘the miracle man’ didn’t tell his disciples to stick around on the third day after his death to watch him rise again. I’d rather believe facts, not scripture.

GODIAC     Resurrection was made possible through the intercession of God the Father. As for facts, doubting Thomas examined Jesus’ hands for nail holes and his side for the spear wound and admitted "You are my Lord and my God". Jesus reminded Thomas "Those who have not seen me and have faith in me are blessed".

HOST     Those words were deliberately written to support Jesus’ putative resurrection.

GODIAC     Recall that on a previous occasion Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain and was transfigured before their eyes through the intercession of God the Father.

HOST     Yes, and out of a bright cloud came the voice ‘This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests’. Do you really believe that happened?

GODIAC     It’s in the Bible; I believe it’s in Mathew. Christ Jesus promised his followers eternal bliss in heaven for true Christians. Those who live by God’s laws will find heaven open to them.

HOST     God’s laws are not universal. Different societies have different Gods and make different laws. By the way, do you know where heaven is?

GODIAC     No one knows that. Heaven is probably a spiritual place far beyond the vault of the sky.

HOST     If it’s spiritual, it can’t be a place. Places are physical and require map coordinates. The New General Catalog of heavenly bodies doesn’t have an entry for a heaven of any kind.

GODIAC     Of course not, heaven is far beyond our knowledge.

HOST     But in the Bible it’s talked and written about as if it were a physical place.

GODIAC     In heaven the resurrected are the children of God and live like angels; they don’t continue their earthly life. Paul said that heaven is a place of spiritual ecstasy.

HOST     Paul? What did Paul know about anything?  He wrote hearsay in his epistles many decades after Jesus died. Faith and heaven are concepts that can’t be materialized. Heaven is like the American Indian’s ‘white buffalo spirit in the sky’. Heaven and the white buffalo spirit are imaginary. In fact a white cloud shaped like a buffalo is more believable than God or heaven. Do you have any idea what resurrected souls do in heaven? Do they sprout wings or what?

GODIAC     Now you’re being sarcastic.

HOST     By promising eternal bliss in heaven or threatening eternal suffering in hell, preachers exact money from gullible followers for supporting themselves and their churches.

GODIAC     That’s a despicable conclusion, perhaps common among your kind.

HOST     You know as well as I that some charismatic religious entrepreneurs, such as TV evangelists and church pastors, use God to enrich themselves. They are actors in the center of a coliseum performing an act designed to solicit donations.

GODIAC     You’ve unfairly demeaned the entire ministry of God. They are ordained ministers delivering sermons on the scripture of God.

HOST     In Catholicism popes wear ostentatious vestments and in place of the shepherd’s simple wooden staff carry a solid gold staff. They ceremoniously use God to enrich the Vatican and Catholic Church.

GODIAC     Protestant ministers and pastors I know are plainly dressed and don’t carry solid gold staffs.

HOST     That’s true but Anglicans and Presbyterians are almost as showy as Catholics.

GODIAC     My church concentrates on scripture not on showy rituals. Christ Jesus promised eternal bliss in heaven for those who believe in the glory of God.

HOST     Two fantasies don’t make one reality. God and heaven are fantasies; they’re not real.

GODIAC     Christ Jesus is symbolic of redemption and salvation.

HOST     I have trouble understanding exactly what those words mean.

GODIAC     Redemption is prerequisite to salvation.

HOST     What ‘s being redeemed?

GODIAC     Christ Jesus redeems the souls of sinners from eternal punishment and saves sinners from damnation for eternal life in heaven.

HOST     I still don’t get it. If you’re Hitler, Jesus redeems you from punishment and then saves you for acceptance in heaven? What’s the point of being good?

GODIAC     Christ Jesus redeems your soul and saves you from eternal punishment by remanding you to God the Father in heaven.

HOST     How can you believe such nonsense? Today the words redemption and salvation are irrelevant. For me redemption is trading in green stamps for a gift and salvation is being saved from federal and state tax collectors or from watching inane TV programs.

GODIAC     That’s because you’re an avowed atheist.

HOST     Speaking of heaven, Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas found it necessary to surround and protect God with celestial levels consisting of three orders of three grades each:

Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones
Dominations, Virtues, Powers
Principalities, Archangels, Angels

If God is omnipotent why does he need any protection by the likes of Seraphim and Cherubim or any other order?  Why does God need any hierarchical levels in heaven?

GODIAC     I’ve talked to many Catholics and none of them ever mentioned any levels in heaven.

HOST     That’s because they weren’t theologians.

GODIAC     As I’ve said I’m not Catholic and not familiar with Thomas Aquinas but it’s natural for any sovereign to have attendants, even God.

HOST     The Seraphim escort souls in heaven to view the Beatific Vision of God. Considering the Catholic version of heaven’s stratified hierarchy, it must have been the model for our bloated governmental bureaucracies. On another matter, all angels mentioned in the Bible are male. Have you any idea why God made only male angels?

GODIAC     You’re again asking me to know the mind of God. No one knows that. God’s mind is above mere human understanding.

HOST     Today women demand equality with men and demand that God display his love for them by creating female angels.

GODIAC     I believe there are female angels. Recall that God created woman and they’re perfectly capable of being messengers of God.

HOST     Why doesn’t God simply communicate using his omni powers?

GODIAC     To do that God created angels, his servants.

HOST     Did you ever consider that only loved holy persons on earth become angels? Mean despicable persons cannot become angles.

GODIAC     You have no way of knowing that. Only God in his divine judgement creates angels.

HOST     Your God in heaven also created administrative categories more applicable to Washington’s expanding government than to heaven.

GODIAC     Nobody knows the mind of God but he has a reason for everything he does.

HOST     That’s the problem. God knows but no one else knows.

Movements of Angels

HOST     About angels, have you ever considered how angels move from heaven to Earth?

GODIAC     I believe in angels but I’ve never thought about how they move. Atheists don’t even believe in God so why would you think about such things?

HOST     I find it interesting that in special relativity the actions of local particles, near or next to each other, affect remote particles. Think of dominoes arranged in a tight pattern. If you disturb a domino in a local position it transfers that disturbance to dominoes in remote positions.

GODIAC     I’m beginning to think your question a ruse.

HOST     I’m updating our debate to 2009. Quantum mechanics describe the related actions of particles in separate remote locations. If you disturb a particle in a local position its disturbance, without passing through intervening positions as did dominoes, synchronously affects a particle at a remote position.

GODIAC     What has any of this got to do with angels?

HOST     Thomas Aquinas believed that movements of angels consist of a series of local intermediate steps from heaven to Earth to the receiver of God’s message. Aquinas called their movements a series of sequential steps he called ‘now steps’ concatenated from heaven to Earth.

GODIAC     Are you again back to Aquinas? I told you I don’t know anything about Aquinas except that he was Catholic.

HOST     In order to relate Christianity to science, I heard a Creationist professor state that angels might traverse distances in the manner described for quantum mechanics. That is, as an angel moves in heaven its movement is concurrently remotely repeated on Earth without traversing through the intervening distance of space from heaven to Earth. Do you believe that?

GODIAC     I don’t know anything about Aquinas or quantum mechanics or what Creationist professors are saying. Are those the things atheists talk about?

Purgatory

HOST     Let’s move from heaven to purgatory. By the way the word purgatory is not in the Bible; Catholic theologians contrived it.

GODIAC     I don’t believe in purgatory.

HOST     I understand some Protestants believe in a period of probation after death, which is similar to purgatory.

GODIAC     I believe in heaven and hell, heaven for Christians who’ve led a good life and hell for those who didn’t.

HOST     Whether in Catholic purgatory or Protestant probation sinners are purged of their sins before being eligible for admittance to heaven.

GODIAC     What happens if sinner are not purified? Do they remain there until the Last Judgement, some call it the Judgement Day.

HOST     I believe purgatory is a only temporary place of punishment. It’s the place Catholics contrived to save sinners from eternal damnation of hell. No one knows; it’s all speculation. However for a considerable donation, a pope might absolve the sins of one in purgatory making that sinner eligible for admission to heaven.

Hell

HOST     What’s your understanding of hell?

GODIAC     Hell is the opposite of heaven. Condemned sinners suffer extreme pain of fire and inhale fumes of burning flesh and noxious gases, and suffer excruciating pain as worms consume their bodies.

HOST     Where did you get that description?

GODIAC     I’m not sure.

HOST     Did you ever read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri?

GODIAC     I was compelled to read it in college but I don’t remember any of its details.

HOST     The Divine Comedy describes different levels of punishment in hell. Do you agree that hell has different levels of punishment?

GODIAC     I don’t know anything about levels in hell.

HOST     Do you know where hell is?

GODIAC     It’s the abode of Satan and sinners who’ve disavowed God and brazenly broken his laws.

HOST     Yes but where is it?

GODIAC     I assume the opposite of heaven, deep within the bowels of the earth.

HOST     Studies of the earth found it has a crust, sliding plates, molten magma, and a solid core mostly of iron. A place called hell was never found.

GODIAC     I’m not surprised. Hell is a nether region where those who broke God’s laws or disavowed God are punished.

HOST     Aren’t heaven and hell only in the mind?

GODIAC     They’re certain the mind and only God knows where they are.

HOST     But where are they?

GODIAC     Only God knows.

HOST     What do you know of Jesus’ descent into hell?

GODIAC     Your alluding to a story in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. It’s not in the Protestant version of the New Testament because of its doubtful validity.

HOST     The entire Bible is of doubtful validity but I do believe in hell on earth. For example, God’s vicars called popes condemned Catholic heretics to be roasted alive until dead and well done. Moreover abusing their self-appointed theological power, popes might vicariously apply or remove grace or sin.

GODIAC     I’m not aware of that. I’m not Catholic. Christ Jesus is the head of my church, not a pope.

HOST     For considerable donations to the church, popes might reduce mortal sin to venial sin. If a donation is large enough, mortal sinners suffering in hell are transferred to purgatory.

GODIAC     I don’t believe any of that. Only God judges who’s admitted to heaven or hell.

HOST     On the subject of afterlife, freeze-dried humans in space capsules orbit planet Earth waiting for revivification. They’re in space to maintain their frozen states of suspended animation at near absolute zero -460°F. In space they wait to be revivified by a futuristic Lazarus-type injection.

GODIAC     I’ve never heard of any of that and never given any thought to the freeze-dried death of humans flying aroind in space. Death is when God calls us to himself and nothing can intervene or thwart the call from God.

HOST     Do you have an opinion of the scientific finding of
absolute zero. Physicists calculate it to be -273°C or -460°F. Can you imagine anything that cold?

GODIAC     Obviously another aspect of God that physicists recently discovered. Perhaps physicists will discover warmth in the hearts of atheists.

HOST     At absolute zero matter is completely devoid of heat, molecular motion ceases, and most astonishingly the polarity of matter is reversed making it superconductive. Absolute zero is the opposite of hell’s fire.

GODIAC     Why does anyone need to know that? Why do you keep delving into science when you know that I know nothing about it?

HOST     Magnetism doesn’t work at absolute zero, a temperature at which motion and time slow down. Matter previously attracted by magnetism is now repelled by it. That’s why the metal disk you see on TV turns and floats above other metal. Don’t you find that amazing? If applicable to man these attributes could prolong life.

GODIAC     God already did that. He permitted Adam, Seth, and Methuselah and others to live hundreds of years. Science will always be trying to catch up to God’s supernatural powers.

HOST     Today astrophysicists know more about the universe than the God of your Bible. Your Biblical God knows nothing about our weird universe such as black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, quasars, etc. Every day millions of massless neutrinos pass unnoticed through man, earth, and everything in it. The Bible doesn’t mention any of that.

GODIAC     Because you’re talking about recent scientific discoveries made possible by God. Perhaps science is learning more about God.

HOST     Scientists declare that the cosmos is inflating at a rapid rate, getting bigger and bigger, expanding into space. Galaxies are flying apart at such incredible speeds their escape velocities will someday surpass the speed of light. The Bible doesn’t mention any of this.

GODIAC     I just gave you the reason why. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

HOST     The cosmos is creating its own space as it expands into the distant unknown void.

GODIAC     If true, it’s the void God encountered before he created the heavens and earth. Perhaps science is learning all about what God encountered.

HOST     Why did your God create the void in the first place?

GODIAC     No one knows the mind of God. If what you say is true, science is discovering other aspects of God’s powers. God created the heavens and earth and everything therein.

HOST     It seems to me that believers substitute God for science. Although we know how the universe was created, we don’t know about its pre-existence or end.

GODIAC     Believers do know; it’s all in the Bible.

HOST     A book written and edited by many different men ignorant of science. It’s man who created God, Satan, religion, sin, and the Bible.

GODIAC     No, not true. There’s only one God; he is that he is; he’s eternal, the creator of all there was, is, and ever will be.

Last Judgement

HOST     A Christian has to have real faith in God to believe in all the nonsense about afterlife. Don’t you understand the irrational mess Christian theologians got themselves into trying to explain afterlife?

GODIAC     I believe with all my heart that Christ Jesus will welcome in heaven all the departed faithful. For the Last Judgement God will certainly punish all evil doers.

HOST     That will be too late. What’s God going to do, revive their remains and send them to hell? Heaven, hell, and the Last Judgement are man made; they’re inapplicable because they don’t exist. The Last Judgement is already considered fictional because of peoples’ common sense.

GODIAC     Hell and the Last Judgement were intended to have people live in peace and keep them from persecuting and killing each other.

HOST     Astronomers tells us that billions of years from now our Sun will become a giant red star. At that time it will vaporize planets Mercury, Venus, and Earth. When the sun vaporizes planet Earth, do you think that’s the time when God will exercise his Last Judgement of humankind?

GODIAC     You must know no one can answer that.

HOST     There might not be a Last Judgement because God in his omnipotence can stop the Sun from vaporizing planet Earth. Subsequently there won’t be a Last Judgment Day and evil again will triumph over good.

GODIAC     Evil will never triumph over God’s good. The Bible declares there will be a Last Judgement. God will judge all humans to eternal life in heaven or hell.

HOST     When is the Last Judgement, when one dies or at the end of the world?

GODIAC     Obviously at the end of the world because last means final.

HOST     If you believe that God is the creator of all there is, God might also prevent the end of the world and there’ll never be a Last Judgement.

GODIAC     No one can predict what God might or might not do.

HOST     In that case believers would be suspended in a sort of timeless limbo waiting for God to make up his mind?

GODIAC     You’re deliberately presenting me with a speculative question that neither I nor anyone can possibly answer.

HOST     In the beginning early man probably thought there’s a Supreme Being living somewhere far beyond the clouds. Later all the unknowns of early man transited to the Bible where God’s creations are described. But God also created good and evil, the maker of man’s afflictions, diseases, and Earth’s natural disasters. Perhaps God is a process that began with early man, transited from ignorance to the Bible, progressed through scientific experiments to the electromagnetic spectrum, and in the future the original and greatest electric generator called God will proceed to an unknown exotic plasmonic energy. There among multiple universes the energy once called God will shepherd flocks of black holes and quasars. However man would still retain and appreciate the ancient artistic works devoted to the Bible and its abandoned God.
 

HOST     God and science are man made. I believe in scientific results. I don’t believe in God, the Bible, or religion. Considering your obstinate belief in God’s omni powers, I haven’t heard you make or propose a single argument that changes my mind. Our confrontation convinces me that my atheism is more acceptable than the deistic phantom imagined by believers in a Supreme Being called God. In 2009 anyone who still believes in God is detached from reality.

GODIAC     Obviously I deny that. I believe in God the creator of all there is, was, and will be. God inspired the writing of the Bible and the thousands of years of Biblical scholarship. Furthermore I believe that God gave some of his intelligence to man which makes science possible. Our confrontation convinces me that my religious experience is stronger than ever because of my worship and love of God.  I urge you to reconsider your position to enjoy the grace and love of God your creator. Finally, I have a future to look forward to and unfortunately you don’t.
 

Jesus Christ

To alleviate the miserable living conditions of disease, hunger, and oppression by their enemies, Jews were promised a Messiah who would save them from their earthly problems. The man Jesus lived about 33 years (circa 2 BC – 33 AD) and Jews thought he was the promised Messiah. After he died Greeks gave him the surname meaning Messiah/savior translated as Christos (Christ). The followers of Jesus Christ subsequently created the new religion called Christianism in honor of the lessons, preaching, and exemplary life of Jesus. Christianism promised redemption from the bondage of sin, salvation from immortal punishment in hell, and eternal bliss in heaven.

Early Christians

Early Christians believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. That belief evolved from the delusion that God exists. Whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God was debated for centuries and finally resolved at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) and the Council of Ephesus (431AD). At Nicaea Christian bishops debated Jesus’ nature for months without agreement. To end the indecision the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great issued the edict that Jesus was the Son of God. At Ephesus Christian bishops concluded that Jesus Christ had one nature simultaneously consisting of divine and human – divine in heaven, human on Earth. The council reverted to the multiple Gods of Trinity by calling Jesus also God. Thereafter Catholics called Mary Ever Virgin the Mother of God.

Nicene Creed

One of the results of the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) was the eventual creation of the Nicene Creed, which supports New Testament Gospels. The papacy contrived and promulgated the Nicene Creed to settle the disputed nature of Jesus Christ, whether he was divine or merely human (Arian heresy). The below Nicene Creed was excerpted from the Latin-English Booklet Missal, Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, 1992, Glenview, Illinois.

Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God. Born of the Father before all ages. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God. Begotten, not made: consubstantial with the Father; by whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven.

(Here all kneel)

AND WAS INCARNATE BY THE HOLY GHOST OF THE VIRGIN MARY: AND WAS MADE MAN. (rise)

He was crucified also for us, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures*. And He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead: of Whose Kingdom there shall be no end.

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life: Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son. Who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified: Who spoke through the Prophets. And in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life^ of the world to come. Amen.

Commentary:

The Nicene Creed is part of the Catholic Mass.

Note that the Son of God was ‘begotten’ by the Father and that the Holy Spirit ‘proceedeth’ from the Father and Son. Bishops at the Council of Nicaea argued for months over the meanings of these two words.

Words in parentheses are instructions to the congregation attending the Mass. The actions of (Here all kneel) and (rise) indoctrinate Catholics in the ritual of the Mass.

* According to the gospels of Mathew 28:9. Mark 16:5-6, Luke 24:6-7, and John 20:14-17.

^The priest makes the sign of the cross.

Over the years many councils were convened to settle Christian disputes. God never settled anything, proving that God and religion are man made. If you have any doubt that man created God, religion, New Testament, and Nicene Creed, you’re a godiac suffering from goditis.

About Popes

The word pope comes from the Latin papa (father). Popes are elected by the College of Cardinals and are the politico-religious rulers (fathers) of Catholicism. Some popes had their own armies and navies in order to retain church power and territory. Several times popes battled against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire of Austria. In 1571 a papal navy defeated the navy of the Ottoman Empire to end the Muslim incursion into Europe. Some popes have been holy, some brutal, others corrupt, and all fallible.

Early popes told Christians that God made planet Earth the center of the universe and that the Sun orbited Earth. However scientific visionaries such as astronomers Copernicus and Galileo Galilei proved that the Earth orbits the Sun. Popes denounced them as heretics because their astronomical discoveries lessened the powers of the papacy. Unless heretics recanted before a tribunal supervised by a pope they paid with their lives. For example, the Dominican priest Giordano Bruno professed that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Because of Bruno’s heretical scientific belief, Pope Clement 8 found Bruno guilty of heresy and ordered him burned alive to death in holocaust. Today we know that the early popes were wrong and that heretical astronomers and Bruno were right.

Remember God is the creator who commanded Adam and Eve to multiply. Today popes denounce birth control, stem cell research, and same sex marriage because each diminishes the powers of God, Catholicism, and consequently of popes. For the same reasons popes are against homosexuals and the transgendered. As scientific evidence becomes more available and acceptable it’s going tp slowly but surely diminish the power of God and consequently the powers of Catholicism and popes.

About God

Early man conceived of a Supreme Being eventually called God and then created exhibitory rituals called religion for worshipping God. For any religion to succeed, it must convince prospective worshippers and potential converts of the supernatural powers of its God. In Christiansim Jesus Christ is that God, for example − he was born of a virgin who remained a virgin after giving birth, he had charisma and a following, he performed miracles including reviving a human from death. Up to the present time Christianism succeeded in meeting all the requirements of its God. In the future the overwhelming proofs of science will contradict Jesus’ superpower and obsolete belief in God.

Theologians declare that belief in God is an intellectual pursuit. Belief in God is more an emotional fulfillment than intellectual pursuit. There’s no proof that God exists but because of our curiosity to know there’s more information about God than any other topic. God is an inexhaustible topic because God is a concept, an idea. No one has ever proved the material existence of God because God is putatively a divine spiritual essence. The concept of God exists but its materialization does not. God as brain output might be real but its conversion to the material world is delusion. God is not a being, entity, or thing that can be physically examined or tested. God is a phantom. Prior to scientific proofs God was the answer to the mysteries of the universe and life in it. Today we know that God didn’t create anything and that God is not the answer to the mysteries of the universe or to natural disasters or to human suffering. Emotional habits are hard to relinquish even when scientific proofs contradict the fictional creations of God. But believers in God resolutely adhere to their faith that he exists and in his omni powers. Man made everything attributed to or inspired by God.

Belief in God is emotion substituting for intellect. God, religion, Bible, Quran, etc. are man made. When man imposes his will over that of God, man proves to be more powerful than God. For example the satanic urgings of some perfidious clergy for pedophilia or theft of church funds proved to be more powerful than their sworn vows and avowed love for their all-powerful God. The making of God is man’s biggest mistake.

Marketing God

Theologians have spent centuries dotting each i and crossing each t to convince people of the reality of God and the legitimacy of their particular religion. The persistent efforts of theologians assure them of food and wine, a place to live, and money provided by dependable believers. To convince believers of its reality, most religions are supported in a spectacular building having stained glass windows, idols, pompous displays of rituals abetted by colorful vestments, and large paschal pole candles in the odorous environment of incense.

Any one not afflicted with goditis should realize that church services were and continue to be created by a clergy that believes in the phantom of God. Only the physical church and congregation in it are real. Catholics are encouraged to pray during the Mass and to pray the words of the Mass itself. Any analytic Catholic who prays the words of the Mass quickly realizes that the clergy created the Mass, not God. In the most sacred part of the Mass, the consecration of the host and wine for Holy Communion, the celebrating priest depends upon New Testament scripture and not the presumed words of God or Jesus. The consecrating words implore the Catholic to rely on ‘Mysterium Fidei’ the Mystery of Faith.

Killing for God

Man had God issue commandments for ethical living to prevent humans from killing each other in their searches for food, shelter, and a mate. Different societies create different religions. A theological assault by a religion upon another demeans the intelligence and precepts of the assaulting religion. An armed assault of a religion upon another always includes the killing of the practitioners of each religion. For example:

In the many campaigns of the Crusades, Christians and Muslims killed each other.

In Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants killed each other including innocent children and infants.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina Christians and Muslims killed each other.

In Asia and Indonesia Muslims kill Christians.

In China the government kills Christians and Muslims.

In India Hindus and Sikhs kill each other.

In the Middle East Jews and Muslims are still killing each other

In Afghanistan and Pakistan Muslims kill Christians including young Christian girls going to school.

On 5Nov09 in Fort Hood Texas, Major Nidal Hassan, an army psychiatrist, massacred 13 soldiers and wounded 29 soldiers and civilians. Shouting Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) the Muslim major outed his anger over the fact that American soldiers were killing his fellow Muslims in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Impossible God

We live in a physical universe. Everything in it is physical, nothing in it is spiritual.

God is an idea supported by religion.

God doesn’t exist outside a believer’s mind because God is a concept that can’t be materialized.

There’s no evidence that God exists because faith can’t manifest God for ‘prove it’ or ‘show me’ demonstration.

Believers have only faith that God exists.

We know how the universe was created and how life evolved on Earth. We know also God didn’t create either the universe or life on Earth.

If God created all there is he abandoned man on Earth leaving him to his own devices to stay alive while enduring the suffering of human afflictions and natural disasters.

If God created all there is he created good and evil in the universe and in man.

The Bible is mostly fiction with a few scattered geographic and historic facts to give it a bit of credibility.

The Bible is the source of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Bible demonstrates that man created all there is to know about God.

Christianism’s biggest mistake is Trinity with its consequent dependence on ‘Mysterium Fidei’ (Mystery of Faith) and the ecumenical councils required to support it.

The subsequent dispositions of afterlife do not happen namely: resurrection, heaven, purgatory, hell. limbo, or Last Judgement.

Public Divorce from God

God must be divorced from public demonstrations of any kind including but not limited to public buildings, public documents, intrastate and interstate commerce, money of any kind, public schools, names of public avenues and streets, sports events, etc. Because of the great number of religious organizations in America, public religious displays and celebrations need to be prohibited. Religion must not interfere with the Constitution or our ability to produce goods and services or maintain commerce. For people who still believe in God, churches and other religious institutions may be retained for private use without discrimination against believers.

Future of God

Throughout the world the combination of scientific evidence, natural disasters, and human suffering will convince believers that God’s proclaimed beneficial intervention doesn’t exist. Because God resides in believers’ brains, atheists cannot delete God from their brains. Eventually believers will be persuaded to disavow God’s putative existence. In the future believers’ will probably do that for themselves. Furthermore religious scholasticism is deliberately complicated with philosophic and metaphysical gobbledygook to discourage ordinary believers from further investigation into the nonexistence of God. Without God religion will transit to social ethical conduct. Today new scientific discoveries support consistent proofs of how the universe was created and how life on Earth evolved. Little by little dependency on God the creator is being learned away and God is becoming irrelevant.

Dominus Requiescat in Pace.

End of Book