Old testament v. new testament

[Captain Scarlet]

Such an active chap he was, god. In "biblical" times. Where is he now? Showing his face in slices of bread and cloud formations. Boggle boggle boggle goes my mind trying to understand how anybody can kid themselves so bloody much. You is all too afraid to face the fact that there's nothing but us and when you die thats the end of it!!!!

I have a lot of sympathy with the thrust of what you are saying. But even if true ( which I believe it is) this says nothing for theistic truth claims of gods existence or of an afterlife. This is because it commits the genetic fallacy of showing something up by it's origins rather than it's own merit. However Too little regard is taken by theists for examining the historical context in which these documents were first written. From what we know of first century Palestine it was an occupied land with hostility between occupiers and occupied, barbarism, torture, sacrifice, stupified and illiterate peasants who saw superstition and magic as a way of life & apocolytic thinking, where the only education the masses had was theocratic. No surprise then in the time before Newton, Darwin and Einstein that they followed all manner of cults and sects. One started by john the baptist was particularly apocolyptic and orthodox like many are today saying that people should follow the real message of the OT for the end is nigh. When he was behedded a charismatic right hand man called Jesus took over who thought of himself as being able to deliver the Jews from the Romans, as per the lunatic mystical writings of the OT. The Romans took care of him for sedition then c. 60 years later the NT was written as a means of taking this very Jewish cult, that survived the death if it's leader through family members, international as a means of bringing everyone into line and to do that incorporated pagan myths such as Mithras etc.