Absolute nonsense! All this is just to find an explanation for the 'inexplicable' invention.

'START YOUR SEARCH FROM YOURSELF'

Look what Hippolytus (Heresies) had to say on the matter of where to look for God: "Give up the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. In seeking God start from yourself. Learn who is that within you that makes everything his own and says, My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body. Get to know the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Get to know how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself." This is another approach, according to which some divine sparks had also fallen from the Pleroma during the Primal fall of either Sophia or the Demiourgos, and was trapped in matter. Man is a 'matter.' Therefore a Gnostic could find a divine spark in his own soul. If he becomes aware of this it would help him to find his way back home. Where do you think this home is? 'Up there' of course, where the divine entities, supreme beings live.

Plotinus believed that to find the underlying truth of reality, the soul must re-fashion itself, undergo a period of purificaton (katharsis) and engage in contemplation (theoria) as Plato had advised. One must look beyond the cosmos, beyond the sensible world, and even beyond the limitations of the intellect to see into the heart of reality. This was not going to be a climb to a reality outside ourselves, but a dive into the mind. Plotinus called the ultimate reality, the 'One', which was the primal unity. This was the overwhelming reality to which all things owed their existence. The One was the simple simplicity so there was nothing to say about it. It had no qualities distinct from its essence. Therefore ordinary description was impossible. It just was. The One is nameless. There would be more truth in silence. It cannot even be said to exist. The Being itself, it is not a thing. It is distinct from all things. It is everything and nothing. It cannot be one of the existing things. But it is all. It has no physical being. It has no gender. It is not interested in us. Here the discerning intellect will detect all the basics of the present day perception of God.

JESUE CHRIST : A GOD OR A HUMAN BEING?

One day Arius of Alexandria asked a crucial question: "How could Jesus Christ have been God in the same way as God the Father?" Arius accepted Jesus as God. But it was a blasphemy to think that Jesus was divine by nature. It was immediately realized that Arius was asking vital questions about the nature of God. Arius, Alexandros and Athanasius started believing in a doctrine enough to shock all the Platonists. They believed that God had created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing). They had taken the scriptures as their base. There was nothing written to this effect in Genesis. This was a completely new proposition. This new doctrine emphasised the Gnostic view shared by the Christians that cosmos was intrinsically frail and totally dependent on God for being and life. God summoned everything in creation from nothingness. Therefore God and mankind were no longer akin. God had his sustaining hand behind it all. There was no longer an eternal chain of emanations from God. There was no longer an intermediate world of spiritual beings who transmitted the world divine mana which was the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person. Mankind could no longer climb up the chain of being to God by his own efforts. Only God could assure their eternal salvation. Arius' God was 'the only unbegotten, the only eternal, the only one without beginning, the only true, the only one who has immortality, the only good, the only potentate.'

There was a gulf between God and mankind. If Christ crossed this gulf, how had he done it? On which side of this divide was he? Either Christ the Word belonged to the divine realm (it was now the realm of God alone), or he belonged to the 'lowly' created order 'down here.' Athanasius placed Jesus in the divine world, and Arius in the created order. Arius claimed that Christ the Word could only be a creature like ourselves.

Ex nihilo creation was made an official Christian doctrine for the first time at the Nicaea Council at 325 AD. Who did this? The bishops attending the Council. Mankind! Who wrote the story of Genesis? Mankind! Who were the first ones to think of a supreme being? According to the tablets found, the Sumerians. Mankind! Who were the first ones to invent the story of man made of mud? Sumerians. Mankind! Who were the first ones to invent the story of woman created from the rib of man? The Sumerians. Mankind!

In the beginning gods lived side by side with mankind, rode an ass, walked, talked, slept, loved, fought, died, fell ill etc. like man. But later on, they began to move away as the fact started to dawn that this idea of anthropomorphic gods had very serious shortcomings. Gods started receding. Where to? To the sky of course. That was the only place befitting the supreme beings. One of them, YHWH, resumed contacts with mankind which meant that a God revealed himself to a human - Moses - again. Then came a God in flesh, the Son of God, the Messiah, the anointed one - Jesus Christ. A God in the shape of man.

WOMEN ARE EVIL (!)

Now, back to our subject; if the Council of Nicaea, a congregation of human beings, has decided that the creation was ex nihilo, then someone must explain the story in Genesis? The Old Testament is said to be the 'Word of God.' Either the story in Genesis is the invention of mankind or the Council of Nicaea is against the concept of creation by the supreme being. Let us go back to Jesus Christ. He gave his life as an atonement for the 'original sin'. What was this original sin? It is the first sexual union between a female and a male, Eve and Adam. If God had created two sexes, and if the sexual union was not intended, what was the reason behind the creation of the two sexes? Does anyone have a sensible answer? Apparently God was disturbed by this sexual union. Why should he be? Because as the two sexes indulged in this new found and extremely pleasing pastime they forgot everything related to God. What was the central idea of the Sumerian story about the creation of man? It was the need felt by the Gods for servants. So, the sexes losing themselves in this 'lowly' act, meant that they have forgotten about their 'creator,' and his need for servants, which was a serious sin. They acted against the needs and wishes of the creator. Alright! Who invented this story? Mankind! So, this was the sin that Jesus had to give his life to redress. But the Christian Church needed something much more crucial than that. It was Resurrection of course. Apostle Paul told this story in writing for the first time, accompanied with the confession that resurrection was the central doctrine of the Christianity, without which neither the religion nor the Church would exist. So according to Apostle Paul, who is the real founder of the Christianity and the Christian Church, Jesus Christ rose from dead. Who invented this story? Apostle Paul. Mankind! But where did Jesus go following the resurrection? Up to the sky, where his Father dwelt? Or did he stay on earth? Did he go to Kashmir?

THE MISSING 'I'

Debate was going on among the Christians: The creator and the redeemer was one. Was Jesus from the essence (ousion) of his Father or was he made from 'the same stuff' (homoousion) as his Father's? Athanasius' creed begged many important questions: Jesus was divine but this creed did not explain how the logos could be 'of the same stuff' as the Father without being a second God. Athanasius' friend, Marcellus the Bishop of Ancyra (modern day Ankara, capital city of Turkey) found a compromise: He found the missing(!) 'i' and inserted it into the word homoousion (the same stuff) making it homoiousion (of like or similar nature). Problem was solved at least for a period. Divinity of Christ was essential. No one cared about the difficulty to formulate it as a concept. Who invented this problem? Apostle Paul. Mankind! Who made it more complex? The overseers of the belief system and the believers. Mankind! Who found the solution with an 'i'? A bishop. Mankind! Spenta Mainyu has asked many questions and gave one answer to all of them: Mankind! It is only natural. Mankind created it and now mankind is making every effort to solve the problem. There is nothing divine. Everything is here on this earth!

JESUS DIVINE?

WHAT IS TRINITY?

Men have experienced God;

1. as transcendent: The Father, hidden in inaccessible light;

2. as creative: The Logos;

3. as immanent: The Holy Spirit.

Divine nature is far beyond such imagery and conceptualisation. Christians tried to make God rational and comprehensible, because the Age of Reason had caught up with them. With the debate related to the Trinity the Christians realized that the reality called 'God' could not be understood by the human intellect. The incomprehensibility of the Trinity doctrine made us come face to face with the absolute mystery of God, according to Gregory of Nazianzus.

ADAM NEEDED A MALE COMPANION TO TALK TO (!)

WHEN A SUPREME OVERSEER LOSES ITS FUNCTON IT IS REPLACED

The people living in the Roman Empire of late antiquity worshipped their gods to ask for help in times of crisis, to obtain a divine blessing, and to establish a continuity with the past. In those days religion was cult and rituals rather than ideas. Religion was not an ideology or a consciously accepted theory, but something based on emotions. Rituals were establishing a link with the tradition and providing a sense of security. In late antiquity majority of the pagans were getting pleasure out of worshipping the gods of their forefathers. These ancient rituals were giving a sense of identity, upholding the local traditions, and forming a kind of security that everything would go on as usual.

Those persons or groups rising against the established gods were branded as 'atheists.' First the Jews, then Christians, and lastly the Moslems were all 'atheists' according to the Pagans. Why? Because the established order of those days was not founded by the mankind but by the beings living 'up there.' Mankind had nothing to do but to accept it. Those who did not, were atheists, even if they had their own personal God. The most striking example is Akh-en-aten, who despite the fact that he introduced monotheism in Egypt, was branded as an atheist by his son-in-law who replaced him.

It is extremely important for a God to 'serve' the believers. Because a God which has no use at all, or does not provide anything, or not beneficial has no use vis a vis the mankind. How is one God adopted? Well, firstly with an attractive and acceptable promise (like immortality in return for obedience in this world), or a possible introduction of a solution to a long-waiting problem. In short the relationship between the God and the believer must be a two-way relationship based on interest. It is this give-and-take that keeps the relationship going. As soon as it becomes only give and no take, the relationship becomes the subject of debate, and that debate usually results in a search for different solutions. The people who have experienced this problem is Israel, according to the Book. They had a 'life-long' contract (covenant) with their God. But following the defeat they suffered at the hands of the Assyrians the 12 tribes of Israel disappeared; then they lost their Temple in Jerusalem; then they were exiled to Babylon. These developments obliged them to think that the idea of 'our God' may not be valid any more, so they substituted that idea with the belief that God belonged to other nations as well, but this God still considered them as the 'closest people to God.' In the past even the orthodox monotheists did not feel uneasy about changing a God when its job was finished, and his advantage was no more, because they knew that their concept of God was not sacrosanct, but only provisional. But these ideas were definitely separate than the reality which they claim as 'undefinable.'

All the major religions are in agreement that transcendence is impossible to define with ordinary language. The monotheists named this transcendence as 'God.' They set some conditions as well: Jews banned the free usage of the sacred name of God. Moslems never attempt to draw the image of the sacred being (they haven't seen it, have they?). The most important reason behind these measures must be to keep this 'sacred' invention of the human mind away from profanity. The idea behind keeping 'sacred' is to remind everybody that it is necessary not to get involved too much with this subject, not to dig it up, and to keep the unattainability of the reality called 'God,' which is beyond the human experience and perception. There are striking similarities between the understandings of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But Jews and Moslems consider the Trinity and Resurrection doctrines of Christianity as blasphemy.

Sky gods were remote. Baal, Marduk and Mother Goddesses came close to mankind, but YHWH withdrew to its place 'up there' again. He put a gulf between Himself and the mankind. When Israelites came to the 'mountain' Moses warned them to purify their garments and keep their distance. Those who touched the mountain would be put to death. Ten Commandments is another clue that God has withdrawn to its 'sacred domain,' the sky. The law was coming down from 'up there' again. In contrast to that let us remember what the pagans had visualised: Everything was here, on this earth. Order, harmony and justice were in the very nature of things. That was that!

SOPHIA (WISDOM)

'INVENTION' CHANGES HANDS, UNTIL ISLAM

According to the Christians Jesus was the first and last Word of God to the human race who rendered future revelation unnecessary. In other words they believed that Jesus was the last 'messenger.' But in the 7th. century a new Prophet appeared in Arabia, claiming that he had received a direct revelation from God (of Judaism and Christianity). He introduced a new scripture to his people. This shocked both the Jews and the Christians. This God - now also, the God of Islam - had a plan in the beginning for the whole of his creation (remember the story of Noah, the Flood, and the Ark). Then He chose Abram, made a contract with him (remember the stories about the Patriarchs, circumcision etc.). The next time, he appeared as the God of Moses, taking his people out of Egypt, choosing Israel as his people, leading them to Canaan, the 'Promised Land.' In short, this God started as a God for the mankind; changed into a personal God (God of Abram); changed again into a tribal God by choosing Israel; following the Babylonian exile of Israel, changed again into a God of not only Israel but others' as well. Israel later on made this God the 'sole' God who created everything (deutero-Isaiah). So this God became the only God, creator of the Universe, and the God of mankind. But by the advent of the Arab Prophet this God became a tribal God again with the revelation to the tribe of Quraysh in Arabia. As we shall see later on, as the Arabs conquered peoples and lands beyond the boundaries of the Arabian peninsula this God was raised to the level of universality again by the conquerors.