Finding Peace of Mind and Keeping It: Essays and Writings

By James Emerson Hough

About the Book
In this collection of his essays and writings, James Emerson Hough reflects on the serenity of retirement living in the middle of his own private Certified Forest Preserve and Wildlife Habitat in Southeast Indiana, the inspiration it engenders to be creative, and the ability to focus his thinking. He finds it rewarding to share his perspective, but the selfish reason he writes is that it makes him a better person. When asked why he writes, Mr. Hough admits that writing helps keep his mind alert and head on straight. He’s inspired to read and unlock novel ideas in his mind, research them, and develop compelling techniques to put them together in writing. Writing is his habit. He knows that no one can write anything who does not think that what they write is for the time history, or do anything well who does not esteem their work to be of importance. Old age has yet to creep on the author’s mind, and wisdom will never let him stand with another on unfriendly footing. For him to write what will not become obsolete is to write sincerely to himself while attempting to satisfy his own curiosity. Where Mr. Hough found peace of mind, peace of mind was waiting there.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, the most patient of teachers, and the most accessible and wisest if counselors. Worthwhile books that get into the world are written by successful people who utter what tens of millions feel though they cannot say. Certain books are vital, not leaving readers what they were; they shut the book a richer person. Finding Peace of Mind and Keeping It is full of energy.

About the Author
James Emerson Hough was born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky; schooled in the public school system of that community; earned an AS degree studying mathematics, physics, chemistry, biological and zoological sciences at Paducah Junior College; and earned BS (Geology) and MS (Engineering Geology) degrees at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. He retired December 31, 1998, at age 68, ending more than thirty-five years in private practice of the applied earth sciences as licensed professional engineer and licensed professional geologist. Hough was awarded the DSc degree by the American Institute of Geosciences in 2020.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888128572

Book preview

Hough_Title_Page.eps

The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2023 by James Emerson Hough

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

Dorrance Publishing Co

585 Alpha Drive

Suite 103

Pittsburgh, PA 15238

Visit our website at www.dorrancebookstore.com

ISBN: 979-8-88812-357-7

eISBN: 979-8-88812-857-2

To say that I loved this book is a huge understatement. It challenged my perspective on different things! I have no doubt that the book will be famous and will set the bar for 2000s literature and contemporary pieces.

Doreen M. Sokolovich

This book is an amazing take on religion and the forces of nature. I suggest that you take your time with reading the book and really open your mind. I’m looking forward to rereading the book over and over again.

Joseph H. Niemeier

Keep an open mind when reading the book and you will understand the arguments that the author wishes to come across in every essay he writes. The book will be one of my favorite works; it will stick with me for years and years to come.

Gregory R. Leichman, Germany

I speak for a lot of people when I say the author speaks facts in his book. The book will need to be read by many who are still caught up in fantasies and still haven’t found peace within themselves and their spirituality.

Raymond K. Eldridge

This book offers good escapism and a fresh take towards modern problems that no one really addresses. The book will be a must-read for everyone. I will surely recommend it to everyone who wants their thoughts to be provoked.

M. W. Harlow

I never knew that informative and entertaining could go together until I read this book. James Emerson Hough is a brilliant author indeed. He speaks facts.

Karen B. Veltman

This book is thus far my favorite of all time and I’m glad I was privileged to read it. The book will be a must-read for the youth of today to ground them to reality.

Steven P. Middleton

I am looking forward to reading more works from the author as I have learned a lot from this book. Hopefully, he would write way more things and extend his writing to more global issues and contemporary ones! 10 out of 10, will be one of the greatest books there ever is!

Professor Giday Asafana, Ethiopia

I love how the author of this book gives justice to unpopular opinions and how he lays out the facts fearlessly in order to educate people about the truth however bitter and hard to accept it may be.

Amanda Gentry

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, the most patient of teachers, and the most accessible and wisest of counselors. Worthwhile books that get into the world are written by successful people who utter what tens of millions feel though they cannot say. Certain books ave vital, not leaving readers what they were; they shut the book a richer person.

      This 93-year old author reflects on the serenity of retirement living in his own private rural forest and wildlife preserve, the inspiration it engenders to be creative and focus his thinking, He is inspired to read and unlock novel ideas in his mind, research them, and develop compelling techniques to put them together in writing.

      Writing is the author's habit. It helps keep his mind alert and head on straight. He knows that no one can write anything well who does not think that what they write is for the time history, or do anything well who not esteem their work to be of importance.

      Old age has yet to creep on the author's mind, and wisdom will never let him stand with another on unfriendly footing. For him to write what will not become obsolete is to write sincerely to himself while attempting to satisfy his own curiosity. 

       Where the author found peace of mind, peace of mind was waiting there.

James Emerson Hough as born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky, and schooled in the public school system of that community. He earned an AS degree at Paducah Junior College, BS and MS degrees at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and retired from licensed professional practice, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, the last day of December 1998 at age 68.

PREFACE

---

There is no such thing as pure originality. A person’s knowledge is the amassed thoughts and experiences of innumerable other minds. We inherit language, science, mathematics, country, tradition, custom, law, ambition, religion and the idea of what is proper and equitable—all of these we find already made, but we practice them.

An expressed thought makes ridiculous the critic who informs another where a thought had been written or said before. The words of some people we remember so well, we often use them to express our thoughts. The highest praise attributable to any author is that they actually possessed the thoughts that inspire others.

This nonfiction book is a collection of thought-provoking literary works that stimulate deep introspective consideration of readers’ thoughts and emotions or augment their personal intellectual powers and spiritual resources.

The author’s conservative philosophy emphasizes traditional values and moral order manifest by transcendent truth and factual truth. The depth of this system of values has grown unchanged with time, and has placed his relevance to God and God’s universe into perspective.

In looking back at his life, it made no difference whether the author dined finely or dressed well, whether he was housed in the basement or the attic, whether he rode in a car or on a bicycle—these things were forgotten so quickly it left nothing of importance. But it counted much whether he had good companions in that time.  

Experiencing twenty-four years of retirement filled with reading, researching and writing in pursuit of wisdom, the author’s critical analysis is based on experience, logical reasoning, moral self-discipline, ethics, nature of reality, and nature of knowledge.

The author possesses a strong patriotic obligation to honor America with military service; is a service-connected disabled veteran honorably discharged from the U.S. Army; practiced more than forty-one years as a licensed professional engineer and licensed professional geologist in the applied earth sciences; and is Lecturer Emeritus, University of Cincinnati Evening College.  

images_187_Copy187.pngimages_188_Copy188.pngimages_189_Copy189.png

SPIRITUALITY

---

April 26, 2021

THE LAWS OF NATURE or TRANSCENDENT TRUTHS include the Ten Commandments. These laws are uniform, interdependent, eternally fixed, do not change, apply throughout the universe, and beyond the range of ordinary human perception. Nature is an endless repetition of a combination of laws, and our consideration of what takes place around us every day and night shows that a higher power outside the universe and real time regulates these events.

Laws of Morality, on which the qualities of good individual character and right ethical behavior depend, are corroborated by the Ten Commandments and by rational thinking. This law of personal and interpersonal behavior is self-enforcing and states that a person is required to think, say and do what is right to get what is right. Rational thinking exclusively from natural laws causes an awareness of a higher power that communicates through the principle of cause-and-effect to establish order in human lives, affairs and society. To obey the laws of morality is unconditional. Right human behavior is logical and moral and it succeeds; contradictory behavior is illogical and immoral and it fails.

Laws of Logic, on which all natural laws depend, allow rational thinking regarding the relationship between elements and between an element and the whole in a set of principles, events, objects or individuals. Rational humans instinctively know many of the guiding principles in the laws of logic. Logic can involve inductive reasoning (deriving general principles from particular facts or instances) or deductive reasoning (inference from a general principle).

Laws of Mathematics, unlike the Laws of Physics, are not attached to any part of the universe. Like the laws of physics, some laws and properties of mathematics can be derived from other mathematical principles.

LAWS OF SCIENCE or FACTUAL TRUTHS are real occurrences known to exist or demonstrated to exist, do not change, and to which all things in the universe adhere.

Laws of Biogenesis state simply that living organisms reproduce from other living organisms of like kind. Ontogeny (origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult) tends to recapitulate (repeat in concise form) phylogeny (evolutionary development of a living organism).

Laws of Chemistry give different properties to the various chemical elements, each composed of one particular type of atom, and to chemical compounds as well. All living organisms follow one specific law, which creates a nucleic acid that carries genetic information known as DNA. The elements are logically organized in a tabular arrangement (Periodic Table of Chemical Elements) according to their atomic numbers. Elements in the same vertical column have the same outer electron structure that determines the physical atomic characteristics. Atoms and molecules have various properties because of their outer electrons being bound by the laws of quantum physics.

Laws of Physics describe the behavior of the universe at its most fundamental level. There are many different laws of physics and they describe the way the universe operates. Some of these laws describe how light propagates, how energy is transported, how gravity operates, how mass moves through space and many other phenomena. These laws are characterized mathematically.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics affirms positively the irreversibility of natural processes, rejecting virgin birth, resurrection, interchange or transformation of male XY and female XX chromosomes; the impossibility for something to arise out of nothing; the impossibility that everything already existed in the universe; a power outside the universe and real time created the universe and everything in it. That creating power is God, the Eternal Being.

Laws of Planetary Motion are three in number. Planets orbit in ellipses with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse; thus planets are closer to the Sun than at other times. They speed up as they get closer to the Sun within their orbit. Those with orbits farther from the Sun take much longer to orbit than planets that are closer. These laws also apply to the moons of the planets.

MY THINKING  ON  SPIRITUALITY,

CHRISTIANITY, SCIENCE

---

September 6, 2007, last revised October 3, 2022

Born July 25, 1930, I began to thoroughly understand the all-inclusive significance of God, the Eternal Power, after four years studying mathematics and sciences; a near-death out-of-body experience due to injury during military service; two years graduate study of engineering and geology; six years professional applied earth science working experience; twenty-two of thirty-five years in private professional practice of the applied earth sciences, and independent study of metaphysics and epistemology. My age was fifty-six.  

The near-death phenomenon changed my life when I was a young adult. It taught me the truth.  I do not now fear death—my Soul is immortal.  

At age seventy-eight, I watched as my wife of fifty-two years quit breathing and shortly thereafter, the sudden change in her physical appearance as God took her immortal Soul. My life experiences all together at that time convinced me of the following eight major principles of Spirituality.

• God, with unlimited power, total knowledge and simultaneous presence everywhere, created the universe and everything in it.

• God is a power outside the universe and real time, infinite, eternal, neither matter nor energy, neither male nor female, and unchangeable.

• God’s perfection is represented by the perfect universal harmony of nature.

• God created of human substance Jesus, a carpenter for eighteen years and a prophet for three years.

• God creates the human body and mind and gives the mind freewill.

• God creates and gives the human an immortal Soul in God’s image.

• God takes the immortal Soul at near-death, death or very shortly thereafter.

• God creates on Earth all conditions and the domain of biblical Heaven and biblical Hell.

Spirituality is law-based and unchangeable. Transcendent Truths (Laws of Nature) are the Ten Commandments, Logic, Morality, and Mathematics. Factual Truths (Laws of Science) are Biogenesis, Chemistry, Physics, Thermodynamics, and Planetary Motion. Emphasis is on life, wisdom, and the immortal Soul.

The Christian religion is faith-based and changeable. It is founded by humans for humans on Jesus and a New Testament of contradictory content, and engages in proselytizing. Emphasis is on life, death, and fear (of a horrible afterlife).

The Second Law of Thermodynamics affirms positively the irreversibility of natural processes (rejects virgin birth, resurrection, interchange or transformation of male XY and female XX chromosomes); the impossibility for something to arise out of nothing; the impossibility that everything already existed; a power outside the universe and real time created the universe and everything in it. That creating power is God, the Eternal Power.

God does not interfere with natural processes because doing so would violate creation’s vast principle of cause-and-effect.

The human body and mind are created of finite substance. They are born and they die. The Soul is created immortal. It is not born and it does not die.

The New Testament identifies the Soul as both the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit. The Soul is indescribable and cannot be conceptualized or fully understood. It is known by direct human experience beyond sense perception. The Soul is strength of character with an eternal destiny. By listening to your Soul, you will be guided and without effort impelled by your conscience to truth and contentment.

Worshiping Jesus (a human) the same as God, while ignoring the power of the Soul as God’s image, overpowers the transcendent and the factual senses of modern-day Christians. It enables them to neither unite Jesus and authentic Jewish history nor find a satisfactory way of dealing with the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Science. Their unquestioning religious belief simplistically explains for them each and every contradictory New Testament word and phrase. Sophocles emphasized that most people lack wisdom, and said, What people believe prevails over the truth.

All creations, objects and conditions in God’s universe are in a constant state of change, which is the answer to the mystery of creation. New forms arise out of the old, and each new form is determined by that which preceded it. The process of change is not chaotic. It is regulated by nature’s universal law of cause-and-effect, which is unchanging, impersonal, and impartial.

Every constant and Law of Nature that sustains the Laws of Science hold true. They are the hidden architecture of the universe. Even though the sun rises every morning, there is no guarantee that it will rise tomorrow. The certainty that it will rise tomorrow, that there are dependable regularities in nature, is reality indispensable to the progress of Science. Recognizing the existence of this truth bridges any contrived divisiveness between Spirituality and Science.

Science and Spirituality sit in a similar intellectual framework. Just as reality is indispensable to Science, so is reason essential to Spirituality. To be Spiritual is to sense that underlying anything experienced there is a sublime force touching a person indirectly, something the mind cannot fully grasp. Science without Spirituality is weak and ineffectual. Spirituality without Science is sightless, without direction and based only on Transcendent Truth.

The realm of Science is to discover with certainty the truth. The domain of Spirituality includes the Soul’s influence on thoughts and actions about what is the truth. God’s unlimited power, total knowledge, and simultaneous presence everywhere are beyond human comprehension.

Every effort of Science to understand secrets of the universe reveals that behind the discernible and interrelated natural laws, there remains a subtle, intangible and explicable force demanding profound respect and reverence beyond anything the human mind can comprehend. This reverence can be likened to a young child entering a huge library filled with books written in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books, does not know how, and does not understand the languages in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is.

Nature is marvelously arranged and obeys Natural Laws, many of which are not fully understood. Every human action in nature has an equal and opposite reaction: failure to conform to Natural Laws imposes penalty. Right human behavior is logical and moral and it succeeds; contradictory behavior is illogical and immoral and it fails. Conformity to Natural Laws is mandatory; nonconformity accounts for the chaos and deadly affairs of individual humans and societies. All human values and efforts without the complete undergirding of a God of justice and compassion are doomed to failure.

The order of things in society is as good as the character of the population permits. People of virtue are the conscience of society. When the Soul breathes through intellect, it is character; when the Soul floods through feelings, it is love; when the Soul flows through freewill, it is virtue.

The most wonderful state of consciousness a human can experience is to understand the mysteries of the universe. It is the fundamental emotion present in Science. Those to whom this feeling is a stranger or those who do not stand rapt in awe are like snuffed-out candles.

Science is inspired with the aspiration for understanding and truth, seeking to uncover the unchangeable laws that govern reality. In so doing, Science rejects the Christian belief that God interferes with natural processes, a function that violates creation’s vast principle of cause-and-effect.

Scientists have detected gravitational waves from a collision in deep space 5.88 trillion miles away. This finding confirms Albert Einstein’s theory about the ripple effect of space-time, and has generated attributes to the achievements of human reason.

Astrophysicists know that the four fundamental forces (gravity, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) were unwavering less than one millionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang. Alter any one of these values about ten-septillionth (1 followed by 21 zeroes) of a second and the universe could not exist. The odds against the Big Bang, that it all just happened, defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads ten quintillion times in a row. England’s Steven Hawking, who coined the term Big Bang, said that his atheism was greatly shaken at these developments. Hawking later wrote, A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggest that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with the chemistry and biology…the numbers one calculates from the facts it seems to me to be so overwhelming as to put this conclusion beyond question.

Theoretical physicists say the appearance of intelligent design is overwhelming. Mathematicians say the more we get to know about the universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we humans are here. The universe is the miracle of all miracles, one that inevitably points with the combined brightness of every star beyond itself to an Eternal Being.

Genesis records that the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire out of the heavens. An ancient clay tablet unearthed in the 19th century contains records dating B.C. 700  of a Sumerian astronomer observing an asteroid that fell on two cities.

Science notes that the description in Exodus of the Red Sea waters parting three thousand years ago indeed does have a basis in physical laws. A 19th-century documented case of the Nile Delta exists where a powerful wind pushed away about five feet of water and exposed dry land. Computer simulations prove that a 63-mile-per-hour wind from the east lasting thirteen hours would have pushed back waters six feet deep, creating for at least four hours a dry land passage two miles long and three miles wide.

Science has established the Mt. Sinai that Moses trod was volcanically active. If an acacia bush happened to be above an open fissure, hot gasses would have burst out and the bush catch fire, turning it into charcoal. The flame could continue coming from the charcoal framework of the bush for a couple of hours before the bush would collapse. In fact, acacia bushes are common on Mt. Sinai today and are used by local residents for charcoal.      

The story of Noah’s flood has its origin in a cataclysmic event shown by Science to have been sixty thousand square miles of Old Testament lands that were flooded about B.C. 5600. This flooding resulted from sudden melting of polar glaciers, causing an onrush of ocean water into and from the Mediterranean Sea. The water cascaded through Turkey’s narrow Strait of Bosporus (dry land at the time) to the freshwater Black Sea, transforming it into a vast saltwater sea. As the water level rose by hundreds of feet during a period of not less than three hundred modern days, it triggered mass animal migration across Europe.

At least twenty-five cases of Lazarus Syndrome have been recorded by medical Science since 1983. In 2008, the heart of a West Virginia woman, Velma Thomas, age 59, stopped beating and she was clinically brain dead for seventeen hours. Her son had left the hospital to make funeral arrangements. Doctors were preparing to take her organs for donation when she awakened.

The base of human lineage is a hominid, named Lucy by Scientists, established by carbon dating to be 3.2 million modern years old. Modern humans (homo-sapiens) are currently known to be 195,000 modern years old.

Since 1799, Science has displayed without a shadow of doubt that there is much more to the Old Testament and the New Testament than can be learned from strict literal interpretation. Modern Science asks and answers the truly great questions—the fathomless wonderment about God, the universe, and humans—and sets the human mind free of ancient constraints inherent to Christianity’s changeable religious doctrine and canonical instruction.

——————-

In the ancient world, humans deified Julius Caesar in B.C. 42, Caesar Augustus and some (but not all) Roman Emperors of the of the 1st to 4th centuries, including Tiberius (14-37), Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54), Hadrian (117-138), Cammodus (177-192), Constantine I (306-312), and Julian the Apostate (361-363). In today’s world, each of these men would be recognized as politicians.  

What is striking and little known by modern-day Christians is that there were lots of men in the ancient world who were believed to be divine. Each of these men were thought to have been miraculously born, empowered from on high to do miracles, heal the sick, cast out demons, deliver life-transforming teachings, and transcend to heaven at the end of their life where they live forever. Jesus is the only miracle-working man that modern-day Christians know about, but Jesus was not the only miracle-working man known and talked about in his time.

The mother of Apollonius of Tyana, Greece, knew her son would not be a normal child. She claimed an angelic visitor came to her prior to her conception, explaining that the one who would be born of her would be divine. His birth was accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders. He became the famous Greek neo-Pythagorean philosopher of the first century A.D.

As a child, Apollonius (B.C. 3 – A.D. 97) was religiously mature beyond what the adult religious leaders that he met could have imagined possible. As an adult, he left home to engage in a mission of itinerate preaching in Greece, Turkey, and Syria. He went from village to town teaching his good news, that people did not need to be tied to the material things of this world but should live for what is Spiritual.

Apollonius gathered a number of disciples around him who became convinced that he was no mere mortal. He performed miracles to confirm them in their faith. He taught that the sacrifice of animals and prayer was useless and that the only way to converse with God was through the intellect—the ability to think logically and rationally. He raised the ire of many of those with political power, and was brought before the Roman authorities. After he left this world his followers continued to believe in him.

The story of Apollonius’ life is in question, as is the story of Jesus’ life. Some historians compare Apollonius to Jesus. Some say Apollonius was the inspiration for the story of Jesus. Others say Apollonius was dropped in favor of Jesus when early Christians chose who to believe was the Son of God.

Apollonius lived at the time of Jesus. The followers knew each other after the death of Jesus. The disciples of Jesus claimed Jesus was their miracle-working Son of God and Apollonius was a fraud. The followers of Apollonius claimed Jesus was a magician.

——————-

Jesus preached about the Son of Man, who was soon to come to Earth in judgment against all those aligned against God. Early Christians preached about Jesus who had died and been raised from the dead. Christianity as a religion began not with Jesus’ preaching or death, but with the unquestioned belief in Jesus’ resurrection.

Inspired, educated Greek-speaking early Christians anonymously wrote the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John during a period of thirty-three to sixty-six years following Jesus’ death. These writers deliberately used parables and allegory, not intending them to be taken literally or word for word. This over-simplification has led to a progressively increasing deification of Jesus over the hundreds of years of New Testament misinterpretations, misconceptions, exaggerations, and erroneous perceptions of reality for more than 1,925 years.

Very few people could read or write at the time Jesus lived and for many years thereafter. The four Gospels were written based on the oral, word-of-mouth grapevine tradition of passing on information during those ancient years. It stands to reason that the four Gospels were not written as dispassionate, unbiased, objective, and authentic history.  

 Mark, the earliest written Gospel, portrays Jesus as a human who is God’s son. In Luke, Jesus is portrayed as a divine human whose father is not a mortal but God. God created Jesus a human, yet Jesus is called Son of God in the New Testament. In the Hebrew Bible, an individual or a group of individuals called by God to do the will of God are called Son of God. Sometimes Israel itself is called Son of God.

The writer of the book of John used Mark or Luke as source of reference, and in the book of John, Jesus himself is equal to God, but not identical to God. It is absolutely clear that the biblical Son of God is an ancient phrase with many different meanings. Few, if any, of those meanings are identical to that one meaning modern Christianity interprets the phrase to mean.

Genesis states, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew word for the heavens and the earth (hashamayim we ha‘derets) refers to the universe. This means the whole universe—sun, moons, stars, earth, and other planets—were arranged from raw material created before the six biblical days of creation. The Old Testament phrase, therefore, should have been worded, In the beginning God had created the universe.

Genesis also reveals that God created the universe in an orderly and systematic manner and that it is ever kept under God’s sovereign control. Details of how long it took to do that work are not provided, only the revelation that the work was completed in six of seven biblical days. No measurement of a biblical day is given. Science establishes by carbon dating that Planet Earth is 454 billion modern years old. That number of years divided by seven biblical days discloses a biblical day to be 75.67 billion modern years.

Jesus of Nazareth (B.C. 4 – A.D. 29) was an Aramaic-speaking Galilean Jew who worked age twelve to age thirty as a carpenter. Jesus preached three years for social reform during a period of time when there was much political unrest and social upheaval due to the King of Macedon of northern Greece and the Romans encroaching on Israel’s land. Jesus is claimed in the New Testament to have been crucified by Jews at age thirty-three.

The New Testament in attesting Jesus’ deeds—his Baptism at age thirty by John the Baptist, selection of twelve much younger twelve-to-nineteen-year-old disciples, association with outcasts, sinners, women, and especially his concern with bringing his message to the people of Israel before the imminent arrival of God—show that Jesus was apocalyptic. The imminent arrival of God was preached by Jesus more than two thousand modern years ago. That exact same urgent phrase—the imminent arrival of God—is still widely preached today by Christian clergy.

Except Jude, who was an uneducated teenage Judean, each disciple was an uneducated Galilean Aramaic-speaking teenager when selected by Jesus. Peter was the oldest at age nineteen and was married. Matthew was the second oldest. John was the youngest at age twelve. There were three sets of brothers—one set of three and two sets of two—comprising seven of the twelve disciples. Fifty-eight percent of the twelve disciples were from only three families. Five of the twelve were fishermen. The apostle John died A.D. 112 at age ninety-eight on the Isle of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.  

Jesus as deity was the traditional way of explaining the ancient ideals of society and aspects of the natural world, which was known in those ancient days to be much smaller and far less complex than today’s known natural world and universe.

There are no archaeological records for virtually anyone who lived in Jesus' time and place. The lack of evidence does not mean that Jesus did not exist. It means that Jesus made no impact on the archaeological record. 

Jesus has been portrayed increasingly in overly exalted term regarding the widely held belief of virgin birth and resurrection, and that humans can approach God only through Jesus. That belief is untrue. As a human, I can commune with God anywhere, anytime.  

Some Christian doctrine is rooted in scripture and some doctrine is added by means of false traditions. Catholicism is the most egregious promoter of false traditions and objects of worship that are the epitome of anti-Christianity.

The Christian doctrine of Arius (A.D. 256 – A.D. 336), a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, held that Jesus was the highest of human beings, denying that Jesus’ body was of the same substance as God.

As a defense against what he called Arianism, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, in A.D. 325 called for the Council of Nicaea, which was held in present-day Iznik, Turkey. The Nicene Creed, which was written and adopted for Christianity, is the first time Jesus was formally and authoritatively deified, 296 years following his death. Humans deify humans. God does not deify humans.

Modern Christianity agrees with Arius in that Jesus’ body was human, not of the same substance as God, and also agrees with the Nicene Creed, which was written to contradict Arius. This is senseless corruption.

The Nicene Creed also introduced the doctrine of Trinity, even though the word trinity, or idea of Trinity, is nowhere found in the Bible. The false religious doctrine of a triune God is another instance of ecclesiastical corruption. The Christian notion that Jesus was fully divine and fully human at the same time is adversarial to Spirituality and to Science.

These false doctrines that represent a corrupted Christianity have been taught, preached and practiced for more than sixteen hundred years. It may not be many years for Christianity itself to awaken and discover that its belief is in apocalyptic prophecy, false traditions, false religious doctrine, and ecclesiastical corruption.

Christian seminaries are institutional environments where intensive and forceful, highly subjective, corrupted religious indoctrination or brainwashing takes place.

A person is what their mind thinks every day. People who are logical and rational know that statements of Spirituality make all skepticism absurd. In silence and certainty God reveals every secret told, punishes every crime, rewards every virtue, and maintains a balance of forces in the universe.

The Christian doctrine of Trinity equates God, Jesus and Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit. These entities indeed are clearly discrete and related, but neither equal nor identical. Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit both are confusing archaic terms.

Following is a line-by-line comparison diagram that helps clarify the Spirituality concept of Trinity, in which God is the Eternal Being and the Creator; Jesus is the Highest Human and a Prophet; and the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit is the Immortal Soul and God’s image.

rejpage_1681307448-3825_1.pdf

Wisdom grants me wellbeing. God’s Transcendent Truths and Factual Truths are kept in my heart, mind and Soul. They prolong my life many years and bring me peace and prosperity. Love and conscientiousness have never left me, are in my heart, mind and Soul, have won me favor in the sight of God, and a good name in the eyes of mankind. My trust in God is with my heart, mind and Soul, and I commune with God through intellect and nature. In all my actions and activities, submitting to the ruling will of God takes care of me. In my own eyes, I am obedient, revere God, reject evil, and God brings nourishment and health to my mind and body.    

This book is a reminder that America was founded on Christianity, the only religious faith that is committed to proselytizing. Other religions do not proselytize. They respect the sanctity of other religious faiths, but consider proselytizing troublesome. For more than two hundred years, America’s Christian missionaries have intruded on people of other countries worldwide, persuading them to abandon their own inherited religious faith and convert to the Christian faith, even though the Christian faith fits not them or their way of life in their physical environment. Such arrogant intrusion is indeed religious imposition, and only one of many significant reasons Christianity and America both are experiencing much internal and external mistrust today.

Some other way must be found ... to gain an eternal peace for this world, assuming it is possible.

HISTORY OF THE BIBLE

---

October 13, 2021

The Bible is a collection of sixty-six writings. The first five of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament were written by Moses between B.C. 1500 and B.C. 1300. The writing of the thirty-four other books span about nine hundred fifty years from Moses’ successor, Joshua, to the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, who wrote his book around B.C. 450.

Because the Hebrew word for the verb created—asah—refers to an action completed in the past, and the Hebrew phrase—hashamayim we ha’erets—means the whole universe (the stars, planets, moons, and sun), the first phrase in Genesis should read, In the beginning, God had created the universe.  

Then there was a roughly five-hundred-year period when no writings were contributed to the Bible. This was when Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, conquered Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia and Persia, and the Greek language was introduced to the Hebrews. The Hebrew language was