Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.
Matthew 4
The devil could promise Jesus all the kingdoms of the world because they were his property.
A painting consists of a large number of molecules. But you can not send it to a chemical laboratory and expect to get it fully analyzed. The chemists will miss important aspects of it. It is the same thing with you; you are something different from the chemicals you are made of.
You are also an animal, subject to biological laws. But you are not just a kind of crazy ape and you are not controlled solely by your genes and your upbringing. The discoveries by Darwin and later biologists can only partially explain what makes you tick.
Concepts such as spirituality, conscience, and evil are irrelevant in particle physics in the same way that quarks and electrons have nothing much to do with you.
Biologists look at the world through a biological filter and everything they see gets biological explanations. Physicists have physical filters and psychologists have their psychological middle-class filters. They are all like religious fundamentalists, they see only what they want to see.
Well, we are all, more or less, like religious fundamentalists, aren't we? We see what we want to see, and hear want we want to hear.
If you have a degree in biology, you can explain how biological evolution works, but you have
no idea of how it got started. How did life begin here on earth? Religious people can not present any evidence for their grand fantasies, but
neither can you.
The eyes are just small action cameras, nerves are just electric cords, the brain is just a computer and the heart is just a regular pump. The universe is just a universe. Modern
science has taught us the art of turning gold into lead.
During the Enlightenment, slavery and the slave trade began to be questioned. Many Christians were also influenced by the new ideas. A new Christian ethic slowly emerged. What is right and wrong is not carved in stone.
But it takes time to change established beliefs. In 1833, when the London Parliament voted to abolish slavery in the British colonies, the Bench of Bishops voted against the proposal.
In 2006, the Church of England apologized for the fact that their priests had been owners of slave plantations in the Caribbean.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/feb/09/religion.world
http://www.badnewsaboutchristianity.com/gaa_slavery.htm
From what I understand was Jesus not just a creation of the authors of the New Testament. There was also a man of flesh and blood who was the origin of the legends. He was a Jewish preacher who was convinced that God would crush the evil forces and that the cosmic fight had already begun.
But the forces of darkness became annoyed at him and sentenced him to death. Not only that, then they appropriated Christianity, changed it to suit their purposes, and made it their religion. Ever since then have war-mad emperors, kings and presidents called themselves Christians. The dark forces are extremely cunning.
No sensible folks can call themselves communists today, after all the horrors that have taken place in the name of communism, but how come Christians still can call themselves Christians without being ashamed? Christianity has also a terrible history: the Crusades, the Inquisition Courts, the Witch hunts, the support to the worldly powers and their endless wars, the oppression of women and children... Every Sunday the slave drivers in the American South went to church and sang hymns: "Si-i-lent night, Ho-o-ly night."
You do not have to read much history to understand where we are coming from, thousands of years of horrific wars, slavery, exploitation, and delusions. We have stuck the eyes out of each other, cut off the tongues from each other, cut each other open. The seas and the lakes are poisoned. We are warned not to eat fish from lakes. The air is polluted, the fruits contain pesticides.
What makes you think that we can stop the emissions of carbon dioxide? What makes you think that we will change our ways? What makes you think that we will wake up from our ideological and religious fantasy worlds?
