Government, Religion and War

by Bob Johnson

When we see all the wars going on today in the Middle East, we can’t help but wonder what the root cause is. It’s obvious that the United States government is responsible for a huge part of this deadly and horrific problem in the Middle East. After all, it was the US government that started the unnecessary war against Iraq, which was the first domino to fall in rearranging the Middle East to Israel’s liking.

Currently the US government is working on regime change in Syria and Iran. The recent chemical attack in Idlib Province in Syria is being pinned on the Syrian military by the US and its allies, as well as by the media in the US. Donald Trump, who even though he never spent one second in the military and was never in a war, said during the presidential campaign that he loves war, has attacked Syria based on the unsubstantiated claim that Syria is responsible for the chemical attack in Idlib Province.

As Yogi Berra would probably say, “This is déjà vu all over again.” This is because the US government and the warmongers tried to do the same thing back in 2013 when chemical weapons were used in the war in Syria. They immediately claimed the chemical weapons were used by the Syrian military. After investigations were conducted it was shown that the guilty party was not the Syrian military, it was the al Qaeda religious terrorist offshoot and US backed Al-Nusra Front.

Trump’s foolish attack on Syria has caused Russia to suspend an agreement with the US that coordinated Russian and US air operations over Syria. This can lead to accidental combat between Russian and American pilots, which in turn could escalate to a nuclear conflict. Both Russia and the US have enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on Earth. And even a regional limited nuclear exchange would destroy most life on Earth.

When we look at the motivation for US politicians from both parties to start wars in the Middle East, we see the root cause is their knowledge that pleasing the overly powerful Israel lobby and the Jewish state of Israel greatly benefits their political careers. This reality is well documented in the outstanding book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. This is also reflected in documents from Hillary Clinton that were leaked by Wikileaks which show how she was working for regime change in Syria and Iran for Israel’s benefit.

The basis for Israel being a state is the superstition found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament that God gave land in the Middle East to the ancient Jews for them and their offspring to have forever as a Jewish nation. This Jewish myth is embraced as reality by politicians like Israeli PM Netanyahu who claimed the city of Jerusalem has always been the capital “of the Jewish people alone, not of any other people” and that all of Jerusalem is “Israel’s eternal and indivisible” capital. Reality tells us that Jerusalem stopped being the capital of the Jewish people almost 2,000 years ago when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and removed Judaea from the map in 136 CE.

This Bible-based delusion of Netanyahu’s is also strongly embraced by many US politicians. A good example of this is a resolution of the legislature of South Carolina (many other US state legislatures have adopted similar resolutions) which states:

Whereas, Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament, a tome of scripture held sacred and reverenced by Jew and Christian, alike, as the acts and words of God; and

Whereas, as the Grantor of said lands, God stated to the Jewish people in the Old Testament; in Leviticus, Chapter 20, Verse 24: “Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey”; and

Whereas, God has never rescinded his grant of said lands …

Millions of Zionist Christians also believe in the Bible claim that God gave a gift of real estate to the ancient Jews. John Hagee, the founder of Christians United For Israel, wrote (PDF):

We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of men, but Israel was created by an act of God! The Royal Land Grant that was given to Abraham and his seed through Isaac and Jacob with an everlasting and unconditional covenant.

Of course believing in these religious claims regarding Israel as Netanyahu, the religious US politicians and John Hagee and his Zionist Christians do, is based on claims to divine revelation that were made by men. They believe what is in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament because they think it comes from God. This is because the ancient Jewish clergymen who wrote the Hebrew Bible, made the claim to having received divine revelation. When people say they believe in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the Christian New Testament and/or the Quran, they are not putting their trust in God, they are putting their trust in the clergymen who claimed God revealed to them certain things and that they in turn wrote it down in “holy” scriptures.

The American founder and Deist Thomas Paine did a great job of addressing the problem of revelation in The Age of Reason. Paine wrote:

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only.

When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

Getting people to believe they were receiving direct communications from God gave the clergymen enormous leverage over the people who believed them. The clergymen took full advantage of their leverage over their believers and benefited materially by doing so (and is still true today). One chapter in the Hebrew Bible makes this entire deadly scam evident and clear to see. Numbers 31 tells the story of God allegedly telling Moses to tell the Israelites to commit genocide against their neighbors, the Midianite people.

Verse 16 indirectly shows us the real reason for the extermination of the Midianites was fear of the Hebrew/Jewish clergy that Hebrews/Jews were leaving their religion for the religion of the Midianites. If this went unchecked it would cause the Hebrew/Jewish clergymen to lose support, income, prestige, power and influence.

The first two verses of this chapter claim the original order for the Hebrews/Jews to commit genocide against the Midianite people came from God. They claim, “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.”

With claims from the “holy” books that God directly ordered people to slaughter their neighbors, is it any wonder there is so much religious violence over the centuries and in the world today, particularly in the “holy” land?

Verses 3 through 13 tell of Moses relaying/revealing the alleged order from God to the twelve tribes of Israel to have 1,000 men from each Hebrew/Jewish tribe attack and destroy the Midianites. Verse seven reads, “And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.” (This is a great example of how dangerous it is to believe in “revelation,” as deceitful people with an agenda can claim God told them anything they want.) The Israelite army also burned all the cities of the Midianite people, took all the women and children as prisoners, and stole all of their cattle and other items of value.

The Israelite army brought all these spoils of war to Moses and Eleazar the priest. Verses 14-15 read, “And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved

all the women alive?” Why the Jewish “holy” man Moses would be upset with the Israelite army for not butchering the women is very revealing. After all, the Israelite army was not ordered to kill the women, they were only ordered to kill all the males, allegedly a command from God, which it appears they took to mean fighting age males.

Verse 16 has Moses saying to the Israelite army, “Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.” The phrase “trespass against the LORD” equates to turning away from Judaism and embracing the religion of the Midianites. This could put Moses and the Hebrew/Jewish priests and clergy out of business.

Verses 17-18 have Moses ordering the Israelite army to commit yet another war crime. They have Moses ordering, “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

The sick and twisted anti-Gentile and anti-children Biblical thinking that permits Moses to order the slaughter of little children is evident in too many other parts of this pretended Word of God such as at Psalm 137:9 which states, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

The number of virgin girls/”women children” the Hebrews/Jews kept alive for themselves was 32,000 according to verse 35. This repulsive Hebrew Bible/Old Testament story shows the truth to this observation of the French Deist Voltaire who wrote in Lettres de Memmius a Cicéron (1771), “All of the other people have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them.” (For a page on Jewish superiority, click here.)

God then allegedly told Moses how to split up the stolen property, livestock and the “women children” they were keeping alive for their own sexual gratification, starting with verse 25 and going through verse 30. These ungodly Bible verses read:

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation: And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation: And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD. And of the children of Israel’s half, thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites, which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD.

These above verses are very important because they show why Moses and the priest Eleazar and probably the other Jewish clergy such as the Levites lied to the people and told them God wanted them to commit genocide and other war crimes against their neighbors, the Midianites. The primary reason was the Midianite people were a threat to these Jewish/Hebrew elites/clergy because many of the Hebrew/Jewish people were leaving Judaism for the religion of the Midianites. If this was not stopped, Moses and his gang of clergy would soon stop receiving the riches like those mentioned in the above verses, not to mention the tithes and offerings from their faithful/gullible fellow Jews.

Today the American people are caught up in the hate filled religious nonsense of Judaism as much as the ancient Hebrews/Jews were. This is because US politicians from both parties, politicians who value their own political careers more than anyone or anything, serve their own political career interests by serving the Jewish state of Israel and its lobby. Israel wanted regime change in Iraq. The cowardly US politicians used American lives and limbs and American tax-dollars to satisfy Israel’s desire in Iraq. George W. Bush adviser Philip Zelikow made this evident when he said, “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 – it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” Why would it be a popular sell for Americans? What member of the US military would want to fight, kill or be maimed or killed for the Jewish state of Israel and career advancement for politicians? What American tax payer wants tens of BILLIONS of their dollars given to Israel?

Israel also wants regime change in Syria and Iran. It looks like US political whores in both parties are willing to use Americans to make Israel’s wishes for Syria and Iran come true, too. With Russia now in the picture, we are running the very real risk of a nuclear war.

We need to change our thinking if we are to survive in a nuclear age. Albert Einstein pointed this vitally important fact out when he wrote, “The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them . . . . We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.” (Einstein also warned the Jews about mistreating the Arabs and Palestinians when he wrote, “Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us.”)

This is in line with Thomas Paine’s call in The Age of Reason for a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism. Clergy-free, dogma free and ritual free Deism helps people to appreciate, value and use their reason in all aspects of their lives. Just as the nonsense claimed by the clergy cannot withstand the test of our innate God-given reason, neither can the nonsense claimed by the politicians. This is a primary reason so few people know what Deism is, as the powers that be know it is not in their best interests to promote Deism. Thomas Paine pointed this out in The Age of Reason when he wrote, “Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine, but by mixing it with

human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system.”

The government greatly values what the clergy have labeled as faith. This is made evident with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. They don’t want reason-based people, they want faith-based people. This is because reason-based people think, while faith-based people put more value on faith than on reason and are much more likely to accept blindly what the government and powers that be tell them, such as Iraq has nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction or that the Syrian military used chemical weapons against children and civilians.

In a letter to James Smith written in 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “…that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”

The more we can help people realize the truth to this Jeffersonian principle of reason over faith, the sooner we will be able to help people free themselves from the chains and shackles put on them by religion and government. What a beautiful world we will have then!

Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson is a freelance writer in the Tampa area of Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after a stint in Marine Corps infantry and reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason he became a Deist.

In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists, and in 1996 he launched the first website devoted to Deism. He is the author of God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion, Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You and An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He has also written the introduction to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition and Principles of Nature by Elihu Palmer.

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