Sin or No Sin

Do you think about sin?  Probably not – I think very few people do.  In fact many people might be hard pressed to even define sin even in a biblical context.  Essentially within the Judeo-Christian context sin is simply the act of violating God’s will or anything that violates the relationship between an individual and God.  But what is God’s will and what – precisely is the relationship between a person and God?  These are rather vague terms when you examine them, yet the Bible is very specific in what constitutes a sin. 613 commandments.  But all of these sins are in reference to God and those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God.  What about Atheists and those who don’t believe in God – can they sin?  What about the Seven Deadly Sins?  Are they sins of the soul or of the body?  What about the Ten Commandments, these were given to Moses directly from God and are honored by the world’s three great religions do these apply to atheists?  Is the denial of God a sin in itself?

The first commandment “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me” seems clear enough but does that apply to humankind or just to Jews, Christians, and Muslims?  A great many people in the world don’t fall into those categories and do not recognize this as God’s commandment.  Are they all sinners and condemned by a God they do not recognize?  This first of God’s commandments seems to assume that everyone believes in some god, but that they must honor the God described in the Bible and Koran first and above all other gods.  So perhaps it can be concluded that atheism is itself a sin and a violation of God’s commandment.  So the answer must be yes – Atheists can sin.

The second commandment is more interesting because it is rarely expressed in its entirety.  According the King James Bible the second amendment states”
 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  Thos shalt not  bow down thyself to them, nor serve them for I the Lord they God am  jealous God, visiting the inequity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments

 
Normally what you see is just the first phrase and not the entire commandment.  Both Islam and Judaism follow this commandment scrupulously but do Christians?  Is the ubiquitous Cross a graven image?  What of the icons, statues, and various images that abound in Christian Churches?  What about the Catholic Saints – are they gods and graven images?  Of course the claim is that these are not graven images or gods to be prayed to but simply symbols celebrating God and their faith in God – a fine line. But these commandments are from God and violating them would be a sin – if you believe in God and His commandments.  But what if you don’t?  What about the Seven Deadly Sins?
 
These may have their roots in the Bible and have evolved from that but they were first articulated in the fourth century by John Cassian.( http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03404a.htm).  How these are defined has evolved over the years so they may be rooted in religion but today they are more sins of the body than sins against God.   But the question remains – what is sin and can sin be defined outside of a religious reference?  Can a person sin if he does not believe in the existence of God?
 
Of course there is probably no real answer to any of these questions, but it is my opinion that all sins are sins against God’s mandate and those who do not believe in God can not only sin but their disbelief is their first sin and that sin is pride. 

Why Are Cavemen White ?

Science is convinced that man evolved from an ancestor shared with modern apes. This is based on a number of bone fragments found in Africa and a DNA analysis that shows chimpanzees and man have approximately 98% common DNA. Of course this is tantamount to saying that the only difference between Helium ( a gas) and Lithium ( a metal) is one electron. Everything in the universe is composed of protons, electrons, and neutrons that are precisely alike but quite obviously how these things are combined makes a great deal of difference, therefore, to conclude man and chimpanzee have a common ancestor on this evidence is really not convincing.

The Bible – given some latitude for poetic license – describes the Big Bang and subsequent development of life on Earth fairly accurately, but it is much less clear when describing the emergence of man. Adam was the first man and Eve the first woman but then there was Lilith who seems to have preceded Eve. Then there was Cain and Abel who somehow acquired wives and the source of these wives is a little mysterious but at the least indicate that there were humans in existence BEFORE Adam and Eve. So how could they be the FIRST humans? The scientific community doesn’t find this to be a problem because they don’t believe anything in the Bible anyway. To them it is just a story and even if it isn’t humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes and there were various branches of humans that simply died out with Homo sapiens being the only survivor. But neither view actually addresses why cavemen are always shown as being white when our alleged nearest relatives apes and chimpanzees are clearly black. While evolution might explain why there are different races, their origin and rationale remains a mystery, but is it?

According to the psychic Edgar Cayce the Earth – as stated in Genesis – was created in phases over billions of years and was filled with animals in various forms. The soul companions of God, given free will – began to visit the Earth and inhabit these animal forms where they could experience the physical aspects of the Earth, including sex. Although initially they could enter and leave these animal forms gradually they became entangled in the physical and this gave rise to the first human form. While this could be viewed as the first human or human-like race, they had no genetic boundaries and their intermixing with the animal kingdom gave rise to the monsters that fill our myths and legends – Satyrs, Centaurs, Nymphs, and the various mixed forms seen in Egyptian Art. So there were some human forms (hominids?) prior to the creation of the first perfect human, which answers the question of where the wives came from as well as where all of these mythical creatures came from. But these were the creatures destroyed by God when the perfect human forms – who had genetic barriers for mixing species – emerged.

Now let us consider the five races of man. Science tells us they evolved from a common ancestor and perhaps they did, but their origins were scattered across the globe according to the metaphysical sources. The White Race originated (evolved?) in what is now Turkey and Iran and spread to the Caucasus and portions of India. The Yellow Race emerged in what is now called the Gobi Desert and Indo-China but the Gobi Desert wasn’t a desert at the time and part to the original land mass where they emerged is now sunken beneath the sea. The Brown Race emerged in what is now known as the Andes region but the larger portion of their source lands is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean. The Black Race is erroneously believed to be the first race even though only the hominids are shown as black while Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon are shown as white. However, the Black Race did emerge in what is now known as the Sudan and Upper Egypt (which is a geographic joke because Upper Egypt is actually Southern Egypt). This leaves the Red Race which has always been an anomaly for science. They are a separate and distinct race who are clearly not related to the Aleuts who are oriental in origin or the Brown Race who occupy South America and Mexico. According to the metaphysical sources the Red Race – the Amerindians – had their origins in Atlantis and migrated to North America where they completed their evolution. It must be remembered that these races did not just appear out of nowhere but evolved over a period of time, but they were always separate and distinct races with a common genetic base. The point here is that Evolution as described by Darwin is essentially correct but not totally. The Five Races of Man are in fact products of Evolution in the sense of adaptation to existing conditions. The contentious point is the creation of Man himself did we evolve from a common root with apes or are apes simply members of the animal kingdom and man was the divine creation?

The Bible says that God created Man in his image and this statement has led to centuries of confusion because man looks into the mirror, sees his reflection, and concludes that God looks like him. Of course this is an erroneous conclusion because God is not in a human form but is a spiritual or possibly even an energy form, not flesh and blood. So God created our spirits, our souls, or the indwelling spirit that fills our bodies. So the manlike form that we see is the product of creation, possibly the result of Evolution and certainly the product of adaptation, but our spirits are without doubt divinely created. The primitive men we see in illustrations are really just speculations and may or may not be true. The reality – according to the metaphysical sources – is that early man was Red, not white or black and the races sprang from the Red race.

God And Atheism

Perhaps the greatest irony with regard to Atheism is that the practitioners display as much faith in their Bible (The Origin of Species) and their god (Darwin) as the typical religious zealot does in theirs. The reality seems to be that the flaws in Darwin’s theory are overlooked and ignored because at its core, Darwinism is really atheism masquerading as science. In fact the way Evolution is taught in the schools and colleges it is in reality a social agenda that is anti-religious and indirectly amoral. But this focus on Darwin simply ignores the glaring flaws and inconsistencies in the theory. The Darwinist – when confronted with these – will admit they exist but expresses complete faith that science will eventually be able to explain them and they in no way justify God or intelligent design. Thus “faith” in “science” is not seen as equivalent to faith in God, so we are left to believe that God believes in Darwin but Darwin does not believe in God.

Of course the first problem with the Darwinists bible – The Origin of Species – is that it really does not address how species originate, it merely addresses how the various species adapt to their environment – changing over time but remaining within the boundaries of their species. This hole in the theory is simply glossed over by the Darwinists who maintain that the demonstrated facts of adaptation lead to the logical conclusion that if changes of the magnitude wrought by adaptation are demonstrated then it is not much of a stretch to believe that one species can be transformed into another. For example they claim that it isn’t difficult to believe that a Lion and a Tiger had a common ancestor, but what they choose to ignore is that Tigers and Lions have been known to interbreed yielding the “Liger” so they are the same species and this argument at least is simply sound and fury signifying nothing. The reality is that despite a long history of experimentation breeders (biologists) have not been successful in breeding across species lines and creating a new species. Nevertheless, the Darwinists and Atheists (if these are not one and the same) would have everyone believe that this has in fact occurred through some random, accidental process that they cannot explain or duplicate but believe happened. These same people deny that there “belief” is not the same as the “faith” expressed by the deists.

The fact is that evolution cannot explain the origin of life and makes no effort to do so. Darwin’s a priori position was that there was initial life – that there was some initial living organism from which all life sprang. The idea that life sprang from lightening striking the primordial ocean made up of hydrogen, methane, water, and ammonia and creating an amino (organic) acid has turned out to be a false alarm because this does not reflect conditions on Earth when life came into being. The origin of life remains “an unsolved mystery of science” yet the Darwinists insist that life evolved from a single cell even though they cannot explain how that single cell came into being. Now Richard Dawkins the high priest of Darwinism cites the genetic code as an algorithm for transcription and reproduction, because it is essentially a binary code similar to what is found in computers. How this single cell came into being complete with the complex DNA and RNA sequences necessary for life and reproduction is attributed to some sort of random event. Dawkins cannot explain this but simply states that “it must have happened this way because we are here.” The idiocy of this statement is lost on the Darwinists but the fact is to believe that some random combination of chemicals could have produced life any different that assuming that some random combination of atoms could have assembled themselves into a submarine or birthday cake? The similarity of Dawkins faith in science to the faith of the intelligent design proponents is lost on his closed mind, but to any rational mind intelligent design seems more logical than some random event that has never been duplicated since the first event.

The fact is that the Universe cannot have evolved through natural selection because the universe makes up the totality of nature – which brings us back to the great singularity known as the Big Bang. Prior to the postulation of the Big Bang the prevalent idea was that the universe was constant, was always there, and would always be there. This was known as the “steady state theory” but once it was discovered that the universe was not only expanding but the expansion was actually accelerating the steady state theory was doomed. Unfortunately the Big Bang led to the only logical conclusion and that was the universe not only had a beginning but it had an end and that it started from some common point. In effect the universe was formed out of nothing because there was no space or time prior to the creation of all energy and mass and space and time. Interestingly the Bible states that the universe came into being at a particular instant as an act of creation by an already existing cosmic force which – for lack of a better term – we call God. Although when Moses asked God who he was or what he should be called he said :I am that I am” Not very explanatory but the Jewish Kabbalah states that when God became aware of himself he became conscious and created all of us as companions. So when the Bible states that God created man in his image it isn’t referring to our human form but our eternal souls.

Naturally this entire description is viewed as laughable by the Darwinists because they are convinced that at some point science will discover “the truth” and will be able to explain how life came to be, how the Earth came to be, and how any belief in a divine being or force is ludicrous. However, these same fun loving Darwinists should go back and read Genesis because it is a relatively accurate description of the Big Bang. Not only is it a good description of the Big Bang it was described and documented by a bunch of nomadic goat herders thousands of years ago.

None of this should be viewed as a refutation of Evolution because much of this theory is accurate – once God got everything started.

Life and Death

It is worth noting that reincarnation is a common concept and is found in many religions, with the exception of modern Christianity. But modern Christianity is founded on the Bible which was canonized at the Synod of Nicaea in the 4th Century and reincarnation per se was officially stricken at the Synod of Nice in the 6th Century, where the teachings of Bishop Origen were declared heretical. Origen was one of the early powers of the Christian Church who believed in reincarnation and rationalized it on the basis that if we are created at conception and upon dying we become an eternal spirit then that implies that we existed prior to birth, live, die, and live after death and thus logically are reborn, otherwise the entire process seems pointless. Bishop Origen was defeated in a power struggle with the Church Hierarchy as were the Gnostics who didn’t believe in a priesthood. The decision to outlaw reincarnation was driven by the desire of the early priesthood to secure their power because if our souls have an unlimited opportunity to live and evolve spiritually, the priests could no longer threaten us with damnation and hellfire if we do not do as they dictate.

Prior to this purging of the Bible it was still part of the Christian faith and remained part of the Gnostic beliefs and is found in the Druze Christians today. However, remnants of this philosophy remain in the Bible:

And the disciples asked him, saying, "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?"
But he answered them and said, "Elijah indeed is to come and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also shall the Son of Man suffer at their hand."
Then the disciples understood that he had spoken of John the Baptist." (Matt. 17:10-13)

Then there is this passage:

This is the one ... there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist ... And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He, who has ears, let him hear. (Matt. 11:11-15)

But the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts are being translated and with these translations some of these purged teachings and beliefs are coming to light once again. Recent translations from ancient scrolls contain text that points to reincarnation, for example:

"Jesus said, 'If they say to you, From where have you originated? say to them, 'We have come from the Light, where the Light has originated through itself.'" The Book of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Texts.

This passage has some interesting points in that it tells us that we come to the Earth from the Light but more interesting yet is the implication that Light is God and that God was self-created. This is addressed in early Jewish texts collected in the Kabbalah and paralleled in the Nag Hammadi texts under “The Origin of the World”. This is a very lengthy text but begins by noting that everybody both gods of the world and mankind say that nothing existed prior to “chaos” or the beginning,and that they are wrong. That chaos was derived from “darkness” which existed always and before the creation of chaos. That all of the immortal beings (souls) had been created out of the infinite and that it was “Wisdom” that divided mankind from the things above.

This concept of an eternal all knowing and always existing God is at the root of most religions, but beyond that lays several other equally interesting concepts. First that the Heavens and Earth were created for man and that all of our reality is essentially a thought projection, that all of the souls in the existence were created at the same time and are eternal, that our physical bodies are actually prisons for out energetic spirits, and that we come to Earth repeatedly to learn and expand out spirituality. However, we are given free will and this means that whatever we do individually and collectively is our responsibility and not driven or willed by God. Our individual conditions are self-determined and the result of decisions made in this lifetime as well as others.

Science and scientists are busy attempting to demonstrate that science has all of the answers and that God doesn’t exist. Unfortunately the evidence for Karma and reincarnation as well as the evidence for God continues to grow as science moves inexorably to the only logical conclusion that science cannot disprove God and that God may be the only answer. It seems logical that reincarnation exists and that we come to Earth repeatedly.