(May 3, 2009 at 11:37 am)Dotard Wrote: It's just a label, man. Some letters arranged in a way to identify someone who lacks a belief in whatever.Not so for all atheists!
If you decide to answer the question “Why do people believe in gods?” by trying to find out what was originally told about gods, you’ll find yourself looking into humanity’s prehistory.
An atheist gets rid of preconceptions and so he is free to ask questions and find answers for himself.
As an example: What actually is Original sin?
The concept is neither Christian nor Jewish because it is very old. A believer does not only believe in gods, he also believes in a series of irrational dogmas.
The following verse is found in a Sumerian myth:
Never has a sinless child been born to its mother(“Man and his god”, verse 102)
According to the Egyptian tradition, a “sinful” man is one who possesses certain defects or faults on his body.
Our illustrious experts on hieroglyphic texts tell us that the funerary texts are “sheets of papyrus covered with magical texts (Faulkner) or magic incantations of the most phrenetic sort (Lichtheim). Is it so?
The man who faces his Judging gods assures them the following:
![[Image: asfeteng.png]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img18.imageshack.us%2Fimg18%2F6406%2Fasfeteng.png)
The unmolested words asfet and Maat allow the text to transmit a reasonable meaning. The man pleads “not guilty” on the basis of the absence of asfet in his body or the presence of Maat on it. That means that the gods hate asfet and welcome Maat.
Asfet is the original sin!
The concept of the original sin seems irrational, but since its wake can be traced into the texts, we are obliged to consider it as the faded out memory of some experience of the past. Memories of the past are not concepts of the imagination or the meditation and therefore susceptible to investigation.
“Atheist” is not just a label, but you can very well be a god. We are all children of the gods, remember?
