Big G

At a RAFT meeting recently I brought up Psalm 82, where “big G” god calls a meeting of all the gods and takes all the “little g” gods to task for not helping humans the way they should. He then demotes all the “little g” gods and condemns them to death “like Adam.” Upon reflection of this passage, you have to wonder how much power “big g” actually has/had?
I have been reading a book by Thor Heyerdahl. Many of you probably know Heyerdahl as the anthropologist that sailed a balsa and reed raft from South America to Polynesia to prove that, the Polynesian Islands were settled by people from South America not from Asia as many anthropologists thought. The book I am reading is called Fatu-Hiva and it chronicles his wife's and his adventures in the 1930's on a small island in the Marquesas Island. The island being Fatu-Hiva. Heyerdahl originally went to the islands as a zoologist but quickly became interested in the culture of the island peoples, especially pre-Columbian culture. He began to collect cultural artifacts and noted cultural similarities between the Incas of Peru and the Polynesians. The native islanders told Heyerdahl stories about when the first people arrived. The people came from the east, from South America. The migrating people brought their gods with them, many continue to have similar names to the Inca gods from Peru.
Anyway, the point being, later the Spaniards and the English arrived bringing Christianity. If you read Psalms 82, you would think that the Polynesians, not to mention Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas, etc., etc., etc., would not have needed to be “converted”. They would already, at least have been Jewish or Hebrew, because “big g” would have been in control. And it would have been really easy to “perfect” them into Christians. But, alas for “big g”, that was not the case. Polynesian, Inca, Aztec, Native American, Japanese, etc., gods were still in existence and going strong. Apparently, big g didn't have a good press office or some sort of rotweiller to ferret out all the other gods. What a shock it must have been to the true believers and literalists when they got outside the borders of Israel and discovered that big g was not in charge. How could that be? Big g demoted all the pagan gods and sentenced them to death in Psalm 82, yet here they are.
In the book, the natives tell Heyerdahl about their skepticism of the early Spaniards and the missionaries that followed. The missionaries taught the natives, “Thou shalt not kill.” Yet the Spaniards put to death natives that refused to be “perfected.” The missionaries tried to convince the natives to do away with cannibalism, yet the priests practiced ritual and symbolic cannibalism. What a bunch of hypocrites! Hypocrisy continues to this day of course. You only have to open the paper and read it.
All big g would have needed to do, would have been to appear to all these other peoples around the world and put their gods to death. I guess, if you believe the Mormons, Jesus did appear to the Native Americans in North America. Of course, Joe Smith is the only person to record this event. Jesus did appear in Israel and tried to “perfect” his Jewish brethren but only after he was sacrificed for our sins did his followers try to spread the good news. But outside those two instances, there is no evidence that big g killed off any other gods. The Greeks eventually stopped believing in Zeus et al, the Romans gave up Jupiter et al, the Germanic peoples gave up Thor et al, and the Anglo-Saxon's gave up their gods, not to mention the myriad of Native American gods no longer in service but that was several hundred or several thousand years after the big sit down in Psalms 82. A true believer might then say, Christianity has spread around the globe and become a dominant religion, so Psalms 82 is true. Many gods have been destroyed by the spread of Christianity. But are these gods truly dead and gone? Or do we still acknowledge little g gods to this day?
Just look at any calendar and the answer is there in black and white. Our days of the week are named after gods that should have died 3500 years ago but didn't. Monday – Moon day (the moon was thought to be a god), Tuesday – Germanic god Tiw (related to Mars), Wednesday – Wodin's day (Germanic god Odin), Thursday – Thor's day (named for the Norse god Thor, the god of thunder), Friday – named after the Germanic goddess Frigga, Saturday – Saturn's day (named after the god Saturn), and Sunday – day of the sun god. Now for the months. January - named after the Roman god of beginnings and endings Janus (the month Januarius).
February - the name comes either from the old-Italian god Februus or else from februa, signifying the festivals of purification celebrated in Rome during this month.
March - it is named after the Roman god of war, Mars.
May - the name probably comes from Maiesta, the Roman goddess of honor and reverence.
June – this month was named in honor of Juno, Jupiter's wife.
Almost all of the celestial bodies you see when you look up at the night sky are named for little g gods. Why would big g give a place of honor to all these demoted gods? Is it because big g didn't have the power to put the gods to death or is it because the bible is a work of fiction created by talented writers?
Was Jesus real? Most people say yes. I believe there was an historical person on which the story of Jesus was founded. The early gospel writers superimposed the Jesus story onto existing myths to make it appear Jesus was more than he was. They did this to make Jesus appeal to as large a population as possible. The virgin birth story did not enter the Christian story until the 9th decade. There were however lots of virgin birth stories in the pagan religions of the Empire. The cannibalistic ideas associated with the Christian Eucharist in which the flesh and blood of the savior figure are eaten and drunk clearly have pagan origins. The account of a hero figure dying and returning from death is also present in many ancient pagan sources. Easter was a pagan word for spring and the return of the earth to life after the winter. That is why the crucifixion of Jesus was moved to the season of the Passover so that his victory over death could be celebrated at the same time the forms of life showed victory over the death of winter by coming to life again.
It would seem that big g did a poor job of killing off his rivals and their traditions.
Psalms was written maybe 3000 – 3500 years ago, so why did it take until the 16th century CE before Christians started to “perfect” other people? One would have thought the “perfection” process would have begun immediately. Why did it take until the invention of suitable sailing vessels for the good news about the death of other gods to begin to spread? Couldn't big g have worked a little faster? Or did humans need to “evolve” a bit more before we could invent big sailing ships?

Or maybe, the Bible is work of fiction and there is very little truth in it.