The Bible is Fiction: A Collection of Evidence

The Gutenberg Bible displayed by the United States Library of Congress, demonstrating printed pages as a storage medium. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Daniel Miessler

The similarities between the stories and characters in the Bible and those from previous mythologies are both undeniable and well-documented. It is only due to extreme the extreme religious bias that pervades our world today that people rarely get exposed to this information.
In this short piece I’ll attempt to show blatant similarities with regard to two of the most important Biblical narratives: the Genesis story and the character of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Genesis’s Flood Story Mirrors The Epic Of Gilgamesh From Hundreds Of Years Earlier

Here are a number of elements that both Gilgamesh and the flood story in Genesis share:

1. God decided to send a worldwide flood. This would drown men, women, children, babies and infants, as well as eliminate all of the land animals and birds.
2. God knew of one righteous man, Ut-Napishtim or Noah.
3. God ordered the hero to build a multi-story wooden ark (called a chest or box in the original Hebrew), and the hero initially complained about the assignment to build the boat.
4. The arc would have many compartments, a single door, be sealed with pitch and would house one of every animal species.
5. A great rain covered the land with water.
6. The arc landed on a mountain in the Middle East.
7. The first two birds returned to the ark. The third bird apparently found dry land because it did not return.
8. The hero and his family left the ark, ritually killed an animal, offered it as a sacrifice.
9. The Babylonian gods seemed genuinely sorry for the genocide that they had created. The God of Noah appears to have regretted his actions as well, because he promised never to do it again.

Keep in mind the level of detail in these similarities. It’s not a matter of just a flood, but specific details: three birds sent out, resisting the call to build the arc, and a single man being chosen by God to build the arc. Then consider that the first story (Gilgamesh) came from Babylon — hundreds of years before the Bible was even written.

Do you honestly think, based on the similarities above, that those who wrote the Genesis story had not heard the Gilgamesh story? And if they had heard it, and they were simply rehashing an old, very popular tale, what does that say about the Bible?

Read the rest here:
The Bible is Fiction: A Collection of Evidence

The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers

Obama Believes He Alone Is The Law In America

 Rule Of Law: First, the president issues unlawful executive orders giving illegal immigrants
amnesty. Then, he dares an equal branch of government to vote on his orders' legality so he can veto it. Is he establishing a monarchy?

While speaking at a town hall meeting Wednesday night at Florida International University, President Obama clearly indicated that he believes he is the final authority on law in this country. He will not tolerate dissent.

"If Mr. McConnell, the leader of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, want to have a vote on whether what I'm doing is legal or not, they can have that vote. I will veto that vote, because I'm absolutely confident that what we're doing is the right thing to do," he told a group organized by Democratic Rep. Jose Diaz-Balart.

In November, Obama announced a set of unilateral actions to change the immigration system. Government agencies were ordered not to enforce the law against up to 5 million illegal immigrants in the country. He also declared that they would not be subject to deportation and were to be handed green cards.

There was no vote in Congress. No consultation with the House and Senate. No law cited that gave him the authority. Just his word.

A month ago, we wondered if Obama was "so hellbent on amnesty for illegals he'll resort to nullifying and even breaking the law." Today, we know that he is.

Not even a federal judge's ruling has stopped him from making and unmaking law as he sees fit. On Feb. 16, Southern Texas District Judge Andrew Hanen issued a temporary injunction against the administration's executive lawmaking. "No, Mr. President," said the George W. Bush appointee, "you and your party's long-term political agenda are not above the law."

The administration wants Hanen's order lifted, but one should assume that even if the courts don't rule Obama's way, the White House will eventually do as it wishes and challenge the courts to stop it, just as it has taunted Congress.

Several times during Obama's six years in office he has insisted he's not a king able to act alone. He said it right up until he began to overtly behave as one.

House Speaker John Boehner's office counted 22 times that Obama said "he couldn't ignore or create his own immigration law."

Yet at a time of his choosing, the president decided he could indeed create his own immigration law, just as he made changes to the Affordable Care Act as if it were his own set of commandments handed down from on high.

Read the rest here:
Obama Believes He Alone Is The Law In America - Investors.com

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Friday Funnies

If You Love The Internet, Set It Free

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To understand net neutrality we have to go back a bit.

In the late 2000’s, two entrepreneurs in Paris asked a question: what if there was a better way to navigate “the horrible taxi problem in San Francisco?” What if we could order a shared private driver – through a mobile app – to chauffeur us across San Francisco on demand? Everyone could relate to the problems of cabs — late, dirty, and technologically obsolete. Something needed to be done to fix the cab industry.

In a year and a half, the company launched services, and six months later they were employing 1000 drivers in San Francisco. Through the next 4 years, they expanded their driver pool to over 160,000 drivers in over 100 cities across the U.S., all the while thumbing their noses at regulators and governments they felt were slow, protectionist and anti-consumer. One of the most highly regulated industries was turned on its head.

Wise taxi commissions and local governments are rushing to loosen regulations on the regulated taxi companies and cabbies, enabling them to compete with ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft. The result has been a boon for the consumer.

Which brings us to the issue at hand.

From the day I arrived in Congress, I’ve heard from constituents concerning another industry at risk from anti-consumer behavior and stifling government regulations: High speed Internet. Despite the emotions surrounding the term “net neutrality,” I think there’s widespread agreement on several principles. On the corporate side, everyone can agree that lawful data on the Internet should not be blocked or throttled by Internet providers or governments. On the regulatory side, governments should not delay critical infrastructure upgrades, or stand in the way of new high-speed Internet providers.

Congress is providing leadership here. Draft legislation was introduced last month that would prohibit blocking and throttling of lawful content over the web. If adopted, this would be a good step towards protecting consumers and promoting a vibrant and free future on the Web.

Next, we should look for opportunities to roll back outdated government regulations that prevent network upgrades and new entrants to the industry. Half the cost of laying or replacing state-of-the-art communications lines comes from crushing regulations. And the regulatory approval process can take years. It’s no wonder that more competitors — including well-endowed companies like Google — don’t jump into the fray. The regulatory hurdles are enormous.

In an opinion piece on Wired last month, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that his agency will seek to regulate the net like a utility to replace their repeated failed attempts to enforce net neutrality. Europe tried this approach and the result has been chilling. Applying century old regulations written for monopoly era phone companies to the web is destined for a lawsuit and consumers will suffer in its wake.

If this administration is serious about protecting the Internet and promoting competition among providers, the Title II proposal must be abandoned. There is no better way to ensure a monopoly or enable anti-consumer behavior, than to regulate the industry as though a monopoly is the only option.
Former FCC Chairman William Kennard said it well — “It just doesn’t make sense to apply hundred-year-old regulations meant for copper wires and giant switching stations to the networks of today… We now know that decisions once made by governments can be made better and faster by consumers, and we know that markets can move faster than laws.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The unimagined future of the Internet will be realized once governments and bureaucrats recognize the limits of their knowledge and allow consumers to chart their own course.

Source:
If You Love The Internet, Set It Free | The Daily Caller

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Hump Day Hunnies

Why ISIS Just Beheaded History - The Daily Beast

Destruction of Bamyan Buddha statues by the Taliban (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ISIS isn’t original in smashing the past to prop up the present. It’s been the practice of totalitarians throughout the ages.

 

A video released by ISIS on Thursday shows members of the terrorist organization and self-proclaimed state destroying important artifacts at Mosul’s museum in Iraq and Assyrian statues at the nearby archeological site of Nineveh. The footage shows men using drills and sledgehammers to destroy first the artifacts in the museum and then three large Assyrian 7^th-century BCE statues of bearded winged figures. These statues adorned the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh, mentioned in the Bible in conjunction with the prophet Jonah.


A spokesperson for ISIS says at the beginning of the video that “the prophet Mohammed commanded us to shatter and destroy these statues.” According to the MEMRI translation, he added, “This is what his companions did later on when they conquered lands. Since Allah commanded us to shatter and destroy these statues, idols, and remains, it is easy for us to obey and we do not care [what people think], even if this costs billions of dollars.”

It is difficult not to be reminded of the early days of the Taliban, when they very publicly blew up the two great 6th-century CE statues of Buddha carved into the cliffs of the Bamyan valley in Afghanistan in 2001.

Just as the world was aware years in advance that the Buddhas were in danger from the Taliban, artifacts in the Mosul museum have been on international conservation watch lists for months, since ISIS had threatened to destroy the collection after occupying Mosul last summer. It is possible that, as with the destruction of the Buddhas, ISIS deliberately targeted these artifacts not merely because they were pre-Islamic and therefore “idols,” but especially because they were so highly esteemed by those abroad. The videos of book burning and exploding pilgrimage centers are further evidence that the members of ISIS are cultural trolls.

It is important to recognize that while the two most recent examples emerge from a common background, the public and highly publicized destruction of long-standing symbols of earlier cultural symbols is not at all unique to modern militant Islam. When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire after the conversion of the emperor Constantine, pagan temples began to be looted and destroyed. Roman emperors after him instituted strict anti-pagan laws.

Read more:
Why ISIS Just Beheaded History - The Daily Beast

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