Think about this.
Go way back...far far back in history.
Go back before the Internet. Go back farther.
Go back before newspapers, TV and radio.
Go waaaaay back before there was public education.
Return to a time when there were no Universities or libraries.
Go even farther back in time and return to when it was thousands of years before any Modern era.
People got their ideas from their families and neighbors and their own imaginings!
Everything was rumor. Everything was imagination, guesswork and superstitious reasoning.
How far back are you now?
You are back to a point when you cannot PROVE anything.
GASP!!
The person with the outrageous story, fable, idea or concept is the STORYTELLER...the better the story....the more listeners there are!
Exciting stories.
Amazingly mysterious stories.
Who is to say they aren't....somehow...TRUE?
Your local shaman, priest, rabbi, prophet, sage or witch doctor is your ONE SOURCE of "information" about the UNseen world.
There, my friends, IS WHERE YOU'LL FIND GOD! Yep, old Jehovah. He popped up one night around the campfire!
Amazing stories with Jehovah! Mysterious, miraculous and frightening stories with Jehovah!
Untestable. Unprovable...but exciting! And.....they EXPLAIN SO MUCH!!
Jehovah was better than Batman or Superman or Ironman. He was invisible and Almighty! (And scary.....and-----unprovable.)
Years pass. Centuries.
People are more and more sophisticated. They grow curious and test ideas for factual content. Hmmmm.....
God began to grow smaller and smaller.
As mankind invented logic, reasoning and science Jehovah God shrank and grew fainter..... and..... smaller.
By the time Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great and Greece conquered the known world it was only
THE GREEK PASSION FOR KNOWLEDGE that stood against the backward religious myths of indigenous peoples.
Suddenly, the God bubble popped very loudly! POP!
By the end of the Book of Malachi there is a deafening silence from "God". Shhhhhhhhh hhhhh......
By the time stories of Jesus circulated (by word of mouth) we have a wandering Rabbi filling the shoes of a latter day SOCRATES.
Jesus was sort of a thinly disguised Socrates in his manner of teaching. Answering a question with a question. A gadfly. Put to death....
Pagan ideas, Platonic patterns and Gnostic speculations flavored the soup of Messianic passions.
But, GOD HAD VANISHED.
POP!
God has gone where the unicorns have gone and the fairies and minotaurs and demigods of old.
GOD was the best idea men could come up with before they really KNEW anything real.
God is invisible today and silent. Only hand puppets speak for him.
Believe at your own risk. The hand inside the puppet is reaching for your mind and your servitude.
Beware!!