In the late 80’s I decided to start traveling to different countries to explore the religious traditions and modes of worship of other cultures. I felt that this would enhance my views and strengthen my belief in God and Jesus Christ. I visited Churches and museums in over 25 countries and Islands from which this experience I still treasure to this very day. But it was these places that caused my eyes to open. The places I visited helped me to understand the true history of the world but showed me things that I found to be a contradiction of what I read in the Holy Bible. I saw many ancient relics, artifacts, walls of hieroglyphics, mummies from Egypt, cuneiform tablets, steles, papyrus, and documents that indicated without anyone saying a word that something was terribly wrong with what I had been taught as a Christian.
As I began to study and investigate what I had seen I continued to run across links and books that only substantiated my new knowledge. My new conclusion was that very little of the material in the bible was true. I was convinced that the Torah wasn’t written by Moses as I had been taught but was written by unknown authors who had an agenda and not by any type of inspiration from the sky god. I was convinced that the Gospels in the New Testament were written by unknown author(s) and that Paul, who was an individual that didn’t know anything about Yeshua, only wrote 6-7 of the letters attributed to him. You see Jesus/Yeshua’ and his disciples spoke Aramaic, however, the New Testament was written in Greek and couldn’t have been written by any of them. I also learned from my research that there are many parallels between Jesus and at least 16 previous Savior-gods who were born of a Virgin, turned water into wine, fed multitudes of individuals, healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on water, had 12 close followers, had a sacred meal or last supper, was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven.
When I was on the Isle of Patmos located in the Mediterranean I visited a Greek Monastery that housed a fourth century copy of the Gospel of Mark. This Gospel ended at the 16th chapter and the 8th verse. All modern day Gospels of Mark end at the 16th chapter and the 20th verse indicating that someone had added 12 verses. That led me to do a study on interpolations and forgeries in the bible. I was shocked when I discovered that the scribes that copied the bible by hand made changes, adding and taking away from the texts as they saw fit. I also performed a laborious study on the contradictions and errors in the bible and found that there were many.
Throughout this period in my life I stood in disbelief not knowing what to really believe. The greatest shock was when I became aware of the fact that there is no evidence what so ever outside of the four gospels that an individual known as Yeshua/Jesus Christ ever walked this earth. I also discovered that most of the words that the Gospel writers inserted into the mouth of Jesus could be found in most of the scared writings of the Jews and the Torah. There was absolutely nothing original that was said by him.
At this point I truly found the thought of no longer believing to be devastating.
So you see it was the desire to strengthen and enhance my belief in the Christian religion that opened my eyes and changed my way of thinking. I have no need to adhere to any new religion or doctrine because I realize that that are all manmade. I realize that I’m responsible for my own destiny, outside of tragedy, and whatever direction I travel without an input from mythological character up in the sky.
Ancient man had questions concern things that they didn’t know and understand so they just made-up stories that seemed logical during that period and time in their lives. What they couldn’t explain they just attributed it to an invisible God sitting somewhere above the firmament. However, it was science that came along in the latter part of the 17th century to this day and gave us explanations to the age-old question that ancient man couldn’t answer. I’m therefore thankful to scientist that helped me to eliminate my fear of legends and the myth of burning in HELL eternally for simply thinking.
My wife is still a fundamental Christian that’s sitting on the border and most of my closest friends are die-hard Christians and Ministers. I’m also involved in the Churches in my community assisting whenever and however I can. But I view what I do as helping my fellowmen and not worshipping the unknown ghost that are consider holy.
What am I?
I consider myself to be a very happy Agnostic with no intentions of reverting to my old fundament ways of believing.
The following is the 1st verses of the song IMAGINE by John Lennon.
Imagine
there's no heaven
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us
Above us only sky..
Imagine all the people
Living for today.
You may say Im a Dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the earth shall be as one