A cross in a heart formed with candles. Photos taken in Camp Tejas, Giddings, Texas, USA. Wingchi Poon.

God Is Love

23 Jun 201912 Nov 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

Christians tell us that God is love. There is something about this love that the Church Fathers found so troubling that they didn’t want us to know. Jesus’ deeds might make more sense once you know what it is. Love is a central theme in Christianity. And so this religion is known as the Religion of Love. According to the Gospel, Jesus said we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30-31). Paul wrote the First Epistle to the Corinthians around 54 AD. It is one of the earliest written sources of Christianity. It contains a remarkable poem (1 Corinthians 13),

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.²

Paul wrote that love is more important than faith and good works. That is quite a statement. God is love (1 John 4:8,16). The Christian cover story became that God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The author of the Gospel of John shares his views on God’s love in the First Epistle of John (1 John 4:7-10),

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God loving us and sending His one and only son into the world to die as a sacrifice for our sins seems peculiar unless you are a Christian. Christians claim that Adam sinned, so we are all cursed, but then came Jesus, who saved us by his crucifixion. Jews and Muslims don’t believe that God has a son, nor do they think that Adam’s transgression justifies this sacrifice. When God ordered Abraham to offer his son, and Abraham was about to comply, God called it off. So why did Jesus do it? The odds are that it has to do with love. Ephesians gives a possible clue (Ephesians 5:25),

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Christians believe Jesus married the Church. Only the Church didn’t exist when Jesus lived. The verse suggests that Jesus died out of love, as in a marriage. It asks husbands to love their wives just like Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. That might be as close to the truth as the church fathers dared to go. Jesus was married, and he gave himself up for his Bride. And men should do the same for their wives. It sheds light on Jesus’ views on marriage. Jesus said marriage is a bond forged by God (Matthew 19:3-9),

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?‘

‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

‘Why then,’ they asked, ‘did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?’

Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’

Here, Jesus departed from Moses’ law, referring to the beginning, thus Eden. Jesus’ disciples argued it would be hard for men to love their wives this way. Jesus replied that not all men can do this. Concerning marriage, Jesus promoted a high standard that was untenable for many men. It would be better to live in celibacy than not to live up to it. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who prepares a wedding banquet for his son (Matthew 22:2-14). The wedding symbolises the kingdom of God. It may seem odd to compare the kingdom of God to a wedding, unless it is one.

Surviving records of Jesus’ words and teachings suggest Jesus believed women to be equal to men. The equality of the sexes is at odds with the patriarchal society of Jesus’ time. Paul probably also saw women as equals, but his views concerning marriage are remarkable. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says (1 Corinthians 7:1-2, 3-4, 10-11),

Now for the matters you wrote about: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.’ But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.

To the married, I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

To Paul, celibacy was preferable to marriage, but only for the strong, who can resist their urges. Marriage is to keep the weak, who can’t control their desires, on the right path, so that Satan will not tempt them (1 Corinthians 7:5). That is a rather peculiar interpretation of Jesus’ saying that only men who are capable of loving a woman should marry, and that if one cannot love a woman, it is better to remain unmarried (Matthew 19:3-11). However, after explaining that, Jesus went on to discuss eunuchs, noting that there are people who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). That inspired Paul’s views on celibacy. Paul believed that Jesus would return soon. Otherwise, he would have seen offspring as a way to secure Christianity’s future.

The Didache, an early Christian text dating back to the first century, implies the equality of the sexes. It helped to make Christianity monogamous, as opposed to Judaism at the time, and later Islam. As many of the early Christians were Jewish and had heard about Jesus and the miracles he did, but didn’t know about his marriage to God, and believed God was an invisible fellow in the sky, Paul had a theological problem at hand.

He resolved it by aligning Christianity with the Jewish scriptures. Paul wrote that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is man (1 Corinthians 11:3) and that a man is the image and glory of God, as man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man (1 Corinthians 11:7-9). Paul must have known better, but it was the biblical account from Genesis. As a religious Jew, he considered these scriptures infallible, even if they contradicted the facts, which may seem strange, but that’s how many religious people reason. Most early Christians were Jews who didn’t know the specifics about the relationship between God and Jesus, so they wouldn’t have believed the truth anyway. Worse still, it would be blasphemous to them.

Paul makes up for it by adding that the head of Christ is God. He goes on to say that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, and that woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman, and that woman came from man, but also man is born of woman (1 Corinthians 11:10-12). In his view, men and women were equal. It is also a lot of juggling with words, as if Paul is beating around the bush, which suggests there is something he can’t say.

Over time, Christianity became increasingly patriarchal. Scholarly analysis of the letters of the early church fathers underlines this. Scholars think 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is a later addition.¹ It claims that the man is the head of the family. The same applies to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. It orders women to be silent in the churches. A reason for suspecting that the latter passage is an addition is that several manuscripts have it at the end of the chapter instead of its usual location. Scholars view it as a sign that a scribe copied a note into the body of the text.² A previous scribe likely added that note.

If you ask yourself how scribes could justify falsifying their scriptures, here lies an answer. It happened in small steps that appeared reasonable. You might not consider adding a note a falsification. As Paul wrote, the head of the woman is the man. You can interpret this as the man being the head of the family, which is how traditional Jews viewed it. Once the comment is added, it becomes part of the text’s context as a clarification. Once it is part of the context and has become an instruction to read the passage that way, it might not seem falsifying to include it in the text. In this way, a few generations can make an astounding difference. And so, the First Epistle to Timothy reads (1 Timothy 2:11-15),

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Paul never wrote this letter, despite the letter claiming otherwise. An unidentified Christian scribe likely penned it down more than fifty years after Paul’s death. Scholars uncover falsifications by comparing the wording used in this epistle to Paul’s genuine letters. The passage above suggests women spoke publicly and felt they had authority over men. Otherwise, the author would not have written it. These modifications suggest an equality of the sexes, a prominent position for women in the early Christian movement, and the gradual re-establishment of male supremacy.

The consequences can be troubling. Did Jesus sacrifice himself for God’s love, and did God not care about Jesus? If so, why would God care about us? You can imagine that the Church Fathers found it disturbing. If someone else finds himself in the same position Jesus once was, he might not be instantly enthusiastic about the proposition. But no one can go against the will of God. And you can fall in love with someone who has taken you hostage. It is a natural reaction known as Stockholm Syndrome. Having no choice makes things easier. He can’t not try to save humankind if there is a slight chance he succeeds. He knows he has to play his role in the script, like Chief Inspector Clouseau, bumbling towards success by sheer accident. And to be taken in this manner is particularly unexpected, but if the absurd hunts you down, and you see no escape, you can better embrace it.

And is it so terrible to die for love? Everyone dies, usually for less agreeable reasons like a fatal encounter with a deadly disease, some random accident, old age or a war fought for the ego of a leader, or even worse, his stupidity. In hindsight, Jesus’ sacrifice was exceptionally functional. It created Christianity, a religion that claims we are unworthy of God’s grace and need to accept a saviour and follow him. It is an idea that can save us because we can’t fix our problems ourselves. We are religious creatures who need a fairy tale to believe in. And as Paul explained in his poem, you can speak every language, know all the secrets, and give your money to those in need, but it is pointless if you don’t have love. If it is a delusion, you can enjoy it for as long as it lasts. And if you must go down in infamy and die, you can better do it laughing. So, always look on the bright side of life,

Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughin’ as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you
And

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the right side of life

Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Latest revision: 20 September 2025

Featured image: A cross in a heart formed with candles. Photos taken in Camp Tejas, Giddings, Texas, USA. Wingchi Poon. CC BY 3.0. Wikimedia Commons.

1. Forgery and Counter forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Bart D. Ehrman (2013).
2. The Oxford Bible Commentary. John Barton; John Muddiman, eds. (2001). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1130. ISBN 978-0-19-875500-5.

Mother Goddess Eve

18 May 201830 Aug 2025 nivtric1 Comment

In archaeological excavations, female figurines have turned up. They could depict mother goddesses. The most famous example is the Venus of Willendorf, dating back to around 23,000 BC. In ancient cultures, mother goddesses represented fertility. The ability of women to produce offspring could have been the essence of Mother Goddess worship. Women give birth, and early humans may not have understood that men were the fathers. They may have thought men had no reproductive use and existed to please the women. Consequently, the Mother Goddess can give birth as a virgin, which is the miracle of the Mother Goddess. One of the best-known Mother Goddesses was Isis.

Women can be sure that their children are their own, but men can’t. When the fathers of children are unknown, families are often matrilineal, meaning that family lines run through mothers. The goddess worship may have disappeared because men desired to control women and their sexuality. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture may have played a crucial role in this development.

Hunter-gatherers were wanderers. They had fewer territorial conflicts. Population density was low, and they had no property, so it was easier to move on if a stronger group invaded a band’s territory.¹
That changed with the advent of agriculture. Farmers had to defend their property and families against thieves and invaders. It became a matter of life and death, so warfare became more common and deadly. Giving up territory would mean starvation. Men are willing to protect women and children they consider their own. And they can walk out when they doubt their fatherhood. That gave them a position of power, allowing patriarchy to emerge.

Male dominance is almost universal among humans, with only a few exceptions, so it is something more than merely a cultural phenomenon. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, live in groups led by males, while the bonobos live in groups dominated by females. And so, it may be a natural inclination of humans.¹ When women and men have an equal status, women may more often boss men, but there is something in human nature that favours men as clan leaders. As humans are programmable and have varying cultures, they can overcome their natural inclinations and choose female leaders, or make female leadership the standard in their societies, and invent myths to justify the arrangement, such as stories about the Mother Goddess creating the man as a companion for the woman.

As we have no written records, we know little about the lives of hunter-gatherers, their leaders and their family structures. Still, we do know that there must have been an enormous cultural diversity, as they lived in small groups that had little or no contact with each other. The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers was more favourable for female leadership and matrilineal families than farmer communities, so that female leadership and matrilineal families likely were more common before the Agricultural Revolution. Relatively peaceful conditions and a belief that men have no reproductive role, thus only exist to please women, could easily produce female-centred societies.

In her book, When God Was a Woman, historian Merlin Stone claims that goddess worship was the earliest religion in the Near and Middle East. The Creator was a woman before men rewrote history. Stone bases her claim on the discovery of female figurines in archaeological finds. In a 7,000-year-old settlement in Turkey, where archaeologists also found these figurines, families were matrilineal.²

The Garden of Eden features in an ancient Mesopotamian myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh. The garden was near the rivers Tigris and the Euphrates. The Jews lived in exile in Babylon when their priests compiled their holy scriptures. The first chapters of Genesis take place in Mesopotamia. Jewish scribes tailored Mesopotamian myths to their needs and incorporated them into the Jewish Bible.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods created a man from clay, much like in Genesis. In another creation myth, a goddess gave birth to humanity. There probably were other creation accounts as well. Eve was Adam’s mother in the original tale. It makes more sense than Eve coming from Adam’s rib. She is the Mother of All the Living (Genesis 3:20), and we are the woman’s offspring (seed) (Genesis 3:15). Elsewhere in the Bible, a child is the father’s offspring, which is a noteworthy difference. It implies that we come from women and that men have no reproductive role. That perspective sheds a new light on what Eve said about giving birth to Cain (Genesis 4:1),

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.’

It wasn’t making love to Adam that made Eve give birth, but the help of the Lord. That is noteworthy because we are the woman’s offspring (seed). Perhaps Eve didn’t need Adam to have a child. There is another explanation. Long before the Jews went into exile in Babylon and picked up the story about the Garden of Eden, Asherah was the wife of El. They together were the supreme gods of the Canaanite divine council.³ Perhaps they, together, not only brought forth lesser deities like Yahweh, but also humanity, starting with Cain and Abel, so that Asherah was the Mother of All the Living.⁴ Later on, the Jews grew particularly attached to Yahweh, so Yahweh became their supreme deity, replacing El.

Asherah then became Yahweh’s wife. When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, they drew on local myths to rewrite their creation account. They took a story in which the first woman gave birth to the first man, and may have turned the goddess Asherah into the woman Eve. And so, Adam came somewhat late for the first man. Asherah then went out of the window, as the Jews became monotheists. That is speculation in the realm of biblical scholars, and few have dared to delve into this particular matter, for there is too little information to draw such a conclusion. However, it is plausible and explains this peculiarity quite neatly, which is a quality that the truth also possesses.

In the original Mesopotamian tale, Eve gave birth to Adam without prior sexual intercourse. The miracle of the Mother Goddess is the virgin birth. Jesus supposedly was born of a virgin. As God supposedly was Jesus’ Father, he couldn’t have had a human father. That is the reason we know about. However, it was also an allusion to Adam’s birth. Jesus was God’s son because he was Adam reincarnate, the son of Eve, who was God. In scriptural religions, inventing a new story is preferable to contradicting an existing one, as that would imply that the scriptures are corrupt. And you can’t have that, most notably when Paul was around. The virgin birth was a necessity if God was to become Jesus’ father, but it also reflected God being Jesus’ mother, as God’s name was also Mary. It miraculously solved two problems, making early Christians agree on this compromise.

The Bible claims that God created a man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) to work in the garden (Genesis 2:15) and made a woman as a companion for the man (Genesis 2:18). This is a result of merging with another creation myth. Mesopotamia had several creation myths, including one where the gods fashioned a man from clay to do the work. Also, the Bible has two. In Genesis 1, God creates all that is, and then in Genesis 2, God repeats some of that work. There has been some patching around here and there to glue these two stories.

In the original story of Eve and Adam, the purpose of the man was to be a mate for the woman. A reason to think so is that Genesis mentions the woman’s desire for her husband rather than the man’s desire for his wife (Genesis 3:16). If you live in a modern society that has undergone several waves of feminism, you may not realise how odd noting a woman’s desire for a man truly is. The Bible is a product of a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, a woman is often a man’s possession, and her desires are of no consequence. The original tale thus had a woman’s perspective. Eve was the leading character. She discussed eating the fruit with the serpent and made Adam eat from it (Genesis 3:1-6). And it was Eve who commented on the birth of Cain, not Adam (Genesis 4:1).

Also noteworthy is that a man left his father and mother to be with his wife (Genesis 2:24). This was how life was in Eden. In patrilineal societies, family groups centre around fathers, while matrilineal societies centre around mothers. Women join their husbands’ families in patrilineal societies. The man leaving his father and mother thus suggests that family groups in Eden were matrilineal. Experts still debate whether hunter-gatherers lived in patrilineal or matrilineal groups. The limited interest of men in childcare suggests that matrilineal groups could have been the standard as long as there were no compelling reasons to do otherwise. These reasons emerged with the advent of agriculture. The title Mother of All the Living may also refer to the Mother Goddess.⁵ Ashera was the Mother Goddess in Canaan, and one of the deities of the Jews before they became monotheists. Eve also resembles Namma, the primordial mother in the story of Enki and Ninmah.

The Fall is about the curse of knowledge. More knowledge doesn’t make your life better. Knowledge of agriculture allowed the switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and condemned humankind to a life of toil. The life of hunter-gatherers was more agreeable than the plight of farmers who came later on. They had a more varied diet, worked fewer hours, and spent their time doing more exciting things. Additionally, they were less likely to face starvation, disease, and warfare. The Agricultural Revolution did increase the total amount of available food. However, all this extra food didn’t result in a better diet or life, but only in more people, including elites such as kings and priests, who ate the extra food. The peasants worked harder than the foragers before them and got a poorer life in return.¹

And so, there is a profound wisdom hidden in the Bible. The Garden of Eden provided for everything. It was the natural state of humans. Eve and Adam were nude (Genesis 2:25), like hunter-gatherers in the jungle today. Eve and Adam might have been vegetarians in Paradise, as God told Adam that he was free to eat from any tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It doesn’t mention hunting or eating animals, implying animals were not on their menu. That is noteworthy as hunter-gathering included hunting. After the Fall, working the land became a life of toil (Genesis 3:17-19), the curse of the Agricultural Revolution. The original tale was also about the downfall of women. Women had to obey their husbands from then on (Genesis 3:16).

In ancient cultures, people venerated snakes for their wisdom and knowledge, so consulting a snake for advice was not unusual. The tree of knowledge relates to the sacred tree, which may explain why it was forbidden to eat from it. Eve’s deed may reflect the role of women in starting the Agricultural Revolution. Farmers must protect their crops from thieves. Otherwise, they face starvation. That condemned men to a life of warfare. And so, Cain, a crop planter, murdered Abel, a cattle herder. Perhaps Cain had only meagre offerings to God because Abel’s animals ate from his crops.

The Abrahamic religions disagree with our Creator being a woman. The Jewish deity Yahweh and the Arabian deity Allah were male, even though many people now think God has no gender. Yahweh and Allah had wives and children before monotheism took over. Allah was at first the supreme deity of Mecca. Later, the owner of the universe appropriated this title. To address the confusion this act generated, the Quran stresses that God has no partner or children. Unlike Christians, Jews and Muslims don’t see God as a Father. But Christians are born of God, a most remarkable wording indeed.

The Quran extensively mentions the creation of Adam but says little about the origin of Eve. The Quran doesn’t claim that Eve came from Adam’s rib but that men and women come from one soul (Quran 4:1, 7:189). It relates to Genesis 1:27, in which God created males and females in His image, so that the soul could be God. The Quran further claims that God created Jesus like Adam from dust (Quran 3:59). The Quran also corroborates the virgin birth story of Jesus (Quran 3:47, 66:12). Christians understand the virgin birth story in the context of God being Jesus’ Father, so that he can’t have a human father. However, the Quran makes it clear that God is not Jesus’ Father. And so, being created from dust could refer to birth from a virgin, so Eve could have been Adam’s mother.

The account of the Fall in the Quran differs from the one in Genesis in some noteworthy aspects. The Quran features no serpent, and Eve didn’t make Adam eat from the tree. The Quran holds both Eve and Adam responsible for the Fall (Quran 7:19-23). Another fragment only blames Adam,

But Satan whispered to him, saying, ‘O Adam! Shall I show you the Tree of Immortality and a kingdom that does not fade away?’ So they both [Eve and Adam]] ate from the tree and then their nakedness was exposed to them, prompting them to cover themselves with leaves from Paradise. So Adam disobeyed his Lord, and so he lost his way.
(Quran 20:120-121)

The historical context of the original story, the curse of the Agricultural Revolution, and the role of women in it have been lost in the Quran. The first Christians believed that Eve was God, the Mother of all the Living, who gave birth to Adam, that Mary Magdalene was Eve, and Jesus was Adam. So Adam and, therefore, Jesus were the Son of God. Humanity descends from Eve, so we are God’s children (John 1:13), but also Jesus’ children.

Tribespeople feel a connection to each other because they believe they share common ancestors. The stories about these common ancestors are myths, such as the tale about Eve and Adam. Eve and Adam came alive again as Mary Magdalene and Jesus. The myth of Eve and Adam can turn humanity into a single tribe. It is the reason why Christians wait for Jesus’ return. And so, Paul may have realised that the good news of Jesus concerns humankind rather than just the Jews.

Latest revision: 28 August 2025

Featured image: Eve in the Garden of Eden. Henri Rousseau (1906-1910). Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

Other images: Venus of Willendorf. Don Hitchcock (2008). Wikimedia Commons.

1. A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
2. Ancient ‘female-centered’ society thrived 9,000 years ago in proto-city in Turkey. Kristina Killgrove (2025). Livescience.
3. Daniel O. McClellan, Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Perspectives (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2020) 327
4. Eve as a goddess/consort of Yahweh? r/AskBibleScholars (2024). [link]
5. Asherah – Wikipedia [link]: Some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as “the mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20 through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat. Asherah was also given the title Chawat, from which the name Hawwah in Aramaic and the biblical name Eve are derived.

The Identity of God

10 Apr 20188 Jan 2026 nivtric2 Comments

We live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced civilisation to entertain an individual we call God. Like it or not, it is why we exist. That civilisation probably is humanoid, which means that God is like us, with human imaginations and desires. What is also worth noting, and what can hurt your ego, is that all that happens goes according to a script, so that thinking of us as mere worms would be a delusion of grandeur. Think of it. Real worms decide for themselves how they grovel and when. And we don’t. Welcome to the Theatre of the Absurd. We are mere actors in a play, and no one thinks. We follow the script, and there is no exit, no life outside, like in the film The Matrix. The road to enlightenment starts with the acceptance of our complete insignificance.

So what about René Descartes, that world-famous fellow who once said, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ Was he wrong? As the reasoning above painfully lays out, he starts with a debatable assumption: ‘I think.’ He then arrives at a logical conclusion: ‘Therefore, I exist.’ That made him stamp a realness certificate on his person. But logic in fantasy land is just basing conclusions on imagined assumptions. At least the logic is infallible. So, did Descartes think? Not really. Even then, he might still have had an existence. That is also dubious, however, because God imagined us. You can ask yourself: Do Spike and Suzy exist? They are comic characters created by Willy Vandersteen, who no longer exists, if he had ever done so, because he has stopped breathing. If you go down that road, everything you imagine exists. I just imagined a unicorn. Do unicorns now exist?

That is the question of being. Philosophers discuss such questions. Scientists agree that merely thinking of a unicorn doesn’t make it real. Saying ‘be’ doesn’t generate a bee. You can give such a command to a computer, and you get a simulation of a bee. Now you get how God could have created this world in six days. It might as well have been six seconds. So, if God exists, we don’t, and we are imaginations like unicorns. Countless non-existent minds have wasted their time and energy on the question, ‘Does God exist?’ Indeed, the gods we imagine also don’t exist because we imagine them, and that includes the God of Abraham. There is only God who exists in reality.

If we exist to entertain an individual from an advanced civilisation, God must be a person who, unlike us, might be real. Yes, God might be yet another virtual reality character in a simulation layer above us, but that is beyond our possibilities to find out. And let’s not waste our time on questions we can’t answer. So, who is this person, God? That we cannot know. Still, we might uncover something, at least. If we are here to entertain God, what is the fun of standing on the sidelines? Why not take part yourself? If God plays roles and becomes one of us, we might identify some of those individuals. The starting point for the inquiry is Jesus. No one had ever felt a closer relationship with God than he, so there is a good chance he knew God as a person.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus called God ‘Father’. They suggest a close personal relationship, so Jesus thought of himself as the Son of God. There is something off about Jesus’ Father as He can give birth (John 1:12-13). All four official Gospels imply that Jesus was the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20, Matthew 9:15, Luke 5:34-35, John 3:27-30), but don’t mention the bride, which is also quite mysterious. The Church tells us that Jesus married the Church. Now, the Church didn’t exist when Jesus lived, so a historian would call it an anachronism. It is like saying that the Roman Emperor Caesar took an aeroplane to Egypt to spend his holidays with Cleopatra. That is impossible because there were no aeroplanes 2,000 years ago. The Gospels don’t say Jesus married the Church. The Church didn’t exist yet, and Jesus wasn’t planning to found it either. So, why would the Church lie about Jesus’ marriage? Are we not allowed to know the truth?

You can smell a rat here. And it is a huge and smelly one. Christians claim that God is love. Jews and Muslims don’t. Do they not worship the same deity? Is there something missing that Jesus’ inner circle knew about? And is it the identity of the Bride? That is indeed the case. The Bride of Christ was God in the person of Mary Magdalene. She was one of God’s avatars. She made Jesus believe he was Adam reincarnated and that She was Eve reincarnated, that Eve didn’t come from Adam’s rib but that Eve gave birth to Adam, and that they were an eternal couple living from the beginning of Creation until the End of Times. That is why Jesus believed he was the Son of God.

Simon Peter said to Jesus, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ (Matthew 16:16) This phrase appears in the Jewish Bible (Deuteronomy 5:26, Jeremiah 10:10, Psalm 42:2), but Simon Peter’s use of it is noteworthy. In Deuteronomy, the living God refers to God’s active presence on Earth, meaning that God is not some mythical figure, of which we only have tales, nor some lifeless statue, but someone present in our midst. In Moses’ time, it was a pillar of fire. With the Bride gone, these words have lost their meaning, which led some later Christians to believe that Jesus was God.

Jesus was God’s son because Adam was. Hence, Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38), Jesus is the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15), and Jesus gave us the right to become children of God who are born of God (John 1:12-13). As Adam, he was the father and God the Mother of humankind. The Jewish scriptures about the fantasy character, Yahweh, also known as the God of Abraham, don’t mention that. And so, Paul, who took these scriptures as seriously as a Pharisee, perhaps because he was a former Pharisee, made God male in his theology and persuaded the early Church to do the same. He succeeded because his work made it possible to unite the early Church. Muhammad also married God in the person of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. Unlike Jesus, he didn’t know.

Those who take offence at God in the person of Eve marrying Her son Adam, but accept that God allowed millions of people to be slaughtered in wars or die of terrible diseases, or even chose to do so, have a problem with their priorities. And by the way, you are not in a position to judge God. In any case, the story of Eve and Adam is a myth. Eve never took Her son as Her husband, as Eve and Adam never existed. It is only what Mary Magdalene made Jesus believe. So, you can rest assured that nothing of that kind ever happened, except for the millions of people that God let die due to wars and diseases. A possible excuse for doing so is that it makes the simulation more realistic. Apart from that, everything being peachy all the time doesn’t make for a good story.

Jesus and Muhammad have lived. The accounts of their lives may be inaccurate because they date from decades after they died, but the early history of the Israelites in the Jewish Bible – the Jews call it Tanakh – is a fantasy. Archaeological evidence doesn’t support it. Moses never brought the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land. The story still has a historical origin. Around the time Moses allegedly lived, the Egyptians who governed Canaan went home, thereby liberating Israel from Egyptian oppression. Later on, the account in the Bible often has a closer relationship to historical events.

That leaves us with a question: how did God meddle with the Jewish nation and their religion? Historians have discovered that the Canaanites gradually formed tribes and, later, petty kingdoms after the Egyptians had departed, in what the Jewish Bible refers to as the Era of the Judges. Local leaders organised warfare and settled disputes. They were the judges. The Jewish Bible says they had nationwide authority, but that is incorrect.

The oldest source of the entire Jewish Bible is the Song of Deborah. Historians believe the song dates back to shortly after the Egyptians left. It likely didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Deborah brought victory to a tribe that later became part of the Jewish nation. Deborah attributed that victory to Yahweh, who, as a son of the Canaanite supreme deity El, would otherwise have remained an obscure, inferior deity. In this way, Deborah initiated the Yahweh cult, which today has four billion followers. The historical genesis of the Bible is not Creation but Deborah. She is the Mother of Israel and likely the earliest historical figure in the Jewish Bible, the founder of the Jewish nation, and an avatar of God.

The God of Abraham, known as Yahweh, the Father, and Allah, thus is a veil behind which the owner of this universe has operated so far. She only revealed Herself to Jesus. It made Jesus a unique prophet who came to see himself as the eternally living Son of God. No evidence suggests that Jesus was Adam, but God made him think he was. God, as Mary Magdalene, convinced Jesus that someone had corrupted the story of Eve and Adam. She appealed to rational thinking, as Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib makes less sense than Adam having been Eve’s son. God could have pointed out traces of fraud, such as Eve being the Mother of All the Living. So, what about Adam, who called her like so? Apart from that, Mary Magdalene must have had a very persuasive personality because She made him die on the cross. Jesus thus placed evidence and logic over religious dogmas. He was a true religious revolutionary. Sadly, logical evidence-based religion was a tradition that soon died with him. He was 2,000 years ahead of his time.

That God is a Mother who can appear as an ordinary woman is not that far-fetched. The leader of the Church Ministry of Mother of All Creation cult claimed she was God and that God had had 534 lives, including Jesus, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Marilyn Monroe. The latter three guesses might be spot-on, but her claim of having been Jesus proves she made it all up. Mary Magdalene, however, may not only have claimed it, but also succeeded in convincing Jesus of it, and then let him start a world religion that now has over two billion followers. We have yet to see the leader of the Church Ministry of Mother of All Creation cult pull that off.

Jesus’ inner circle knew that God had wedded Jesus, but the Gospels don’t mention this crucial factoid that everyone would have wanted to know. Scholars didn’t ask themselves why there were no surviving eyewitness accounts. Isn’t that suspicious? Here is your answer. And why did the early leaders of the Church do it? To religious Jews, the idea of God being a woman who married Jesus was alien or even blasphemous. Most early Christians were Jewish followers who had heard of Jesus and his miracles but lacked detailed knowledge of his life and teachings.

Jewish prophets were human, and they expected a human messiah rather than a godlike being. In their view, Jesus was a mere human, so if you read Mark, Matthew or Luke, Jesus appears human, not godlike. And so, the Jews couldn’t handle that God is a woman who can take a human form and marry Jesus. Gentiles had no problem with it. They have tales about female deities and gods having sex with humans. That is why the Gospel of John is so different from the others. It was a controversy that tore the early Church apart.

A compromise, the Christian theology invented by Paul, resolved the conflict. Paul turned Jesus into a godlike Jewish messiah, the eternally living Son of God, the one promised by the Jewish scriptures. It required some imagination and twisting of the facts to reconcile these two irreconcilable viewpoints. Paul’s theology became the Christianity we know today. Try to understand it from God’s perspective. She lives eternally, or at least thousands of years, and uses us to pass Her time. Girls just want to have fun. That brings us to messages in pop music. The song ‘Gimme the Prize’ by Queen has the following lines,

Here I am, I’m the master of your destiny
I am the one, the only one, I am the God of kingdom come
…
Give me your kings, let me squeeze them in my hands
Your puny princes
Your so-called leaders of your land
I’ll eat them whole before I’m done
The battle’s fought, and the game is won

Queen, Gimme the Prize

Queen is the performing artist, so the hidden message is that the God of the coming kingdom is a Queen. The song features threats against the so-called leaders of the world. That looks like an end-of-time scenario. It is a queer pun, and Freddy Mercury was the performing artist. In the video clip of another Queen song, ‘I Want to Break Free,’ Mercury and the band members dressed in women’s clothing. In Western Europe, we found it funny. That was different elsewhere. The song had a lukewarm reception in the United States, a country that has culturally enriched us with websites like godhatesfags.com. Today, the hatred of LGBTQ people by conservative Christians is getting out of hand.

Christians might justify themselves with Bible verses. For instance, Romans 1:24-27 is particularly clear on the matter. However, these were not Jesus’ words but Paul’s. Quite possibly, Jesus wouldn’t have accepted homosexual acts either. Jesus and Paul lived in a tradition that condemned homosexual acts. There is, however, no objective moral reason to condemn homosexuals. And it is a great irony that it was Paul who performed a sex change on God in the scriptures, and turned God from a Mother into a Father. Paul made up quite a few other things as well. And they are now official Church doctrine.

Muslims take blasphemy very seriously. Hurt Muslim feelings have made the headlines. Making cartoons of Muhammad can be your death sentence. But why only Muhammad? He isn’t God. Is he of a higher stature than Moses or Jesus? God made those mockers do what they did. The reward for killing a comedian will not be 72 desperate virgins trying to abuse you. Abrahamic religions have restricted the freedom of women, but Islam more than the others. Like Jesus, Muhammad married God, but unlike Jesus, he didn’t know. He had a loving marriage after his wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, proposed to him. Islam may be a funny religion, but Christianity is even more comical.

Paul’s obfuscation of the relationship between God and Jesus gave Christianity its unique and baffling theology. Drinking Christ’s blood, eating his body, and the resurrection of the dead could be good ingredients for a motion picture called Zombie Apocalypse. Indeed, these rituals and beliefs are odd and could suit a cannibalistic sect. The outlandishness of Christianity begins with the idea that we are all cursed because Eve and Adam sinned. And then came Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our sins, so you can save yourself by following him. It seems outlandish, but Paul’s intervention is the most ingenious part of God’s plan. Humans are the most destructive species that have ever roamed this planet, and we are about to destroy ourselves. Only our ability to believe in fairy tales can unite us and make us perform extraordinary deeds. Thinking we are morally depraved, unworthy of God’s grace and in dire need of a saviour can save us from our collective stupidity.

Latest revision: 8 January 2026

Featured image: Lucretia Garfield

Who Was Mary Magdalene?

30 Mar 20186 Sep 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

Who was Mary Magdalene? That question has occupied curious minds throughout the ages. The Gospels allow for confusion. Was Mary Magdalene a repentant prostitute? Inquiring minds want to know. She became a cult figure after the recovery of lost Gospel fragments implying Mary Magdalene and Jesus had an intimate relationship and that She stood above the other Apostles. The official Gospels also contain phrases suggesting Mary Magdalene was the most significant person in Jesus’ life. That made Her an inspiring figure for feminists. She witnessed the crucifixion from the foot of the cross after the male disciples had fled and was the first to see the resurrected Jesus.

Luke wrote that Mary Magdalene was one of the women who travelled with Jesus and supported him financially, implying that Mary Magdalene was not only wealthy but also independent, and that no one else decided for Her. We also learn that Jesus had cured these women of illness and demonic possession and that seven demons had troubled Her (Luke 8:1-3). The later-added section at the end of Mark also mentions it, suggesting that it was a falsification of importance, possibly serving to downplay Mary Magdalene’s role. According to the Gospels, Mary Magdalene rose to prominence only after the crucifixion and became a central figure in the events that followed.

If Mary Magdalene was always with Jesus, and there is no mention of their interactions in the Gospels, they were likely either not worth noting or too controversial. According to the Gospels, She did or said nothing of consequence during Jesus’ life. However, once he was dead, Mary Magdalene suddenly played a central role. There has been speculation as to whether Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife. Jesus is the bridegroom in every Gospel (Mark 2:19-20, Matthew 9:15, Luke 5:34, John 3:29). Mary Magdalene went out to wash and anoint Jesus’ body after the crucifixion (Mark 16:1). This was the duty of the wife. Christians see Jesus as an eternally living godlike being. A marriage can make him appear human. However, their marriage was not an item of controversy at first, as all the Gospels mention Jesus as the bridegroom.

Recovered Gospel fragments cast a different light on Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of Philip names Her as Jesus’ companion² and mentions that Jesus loved Her more than the other disciples and kissed Her often.³ The Gospel of Mary notes that Jesus loved Her more than the other women.⁴ That is close to saying they were married. If these Gospels reveal things the Church didn’t want us to know, Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ must have been a wedded couple.

In the Jesus Movement, the sect led by Jesus during his lifetime, women were equal to men. This was still the case when Paul wrote his letters, in which he named women as full partners in the Christian movement and mentioned them by name. However, this gradually changed, and the Gospels came to emphasise the role of the male Apostles. The role of women in the Jesus Movement was more prominent than the official Gospels reveal.

One of the recovered Gospels, the Gospel of Mary, portrays Mary Magdalene as the leader of the early Church, surpassing the other Apostles, including Peter, who was often regarded as the leader of the Church. One fragment reads,

Peter said to Mary, ‘Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.’ Mary responded, ‘I will teach you about what is hidden from you.’ And she began to speak these words to them.

This Gospel dates from the second century AD and is not as old as the official Gospels. It is a Gnostic Gospel centred around supposed hidden truths and inner spiritual knowledge, but other Gnostic beliefs are absent. One Gnostic belief is that the Jewish God of the material world is evil, as opposed to the good Christian God of the spiritual world. The Platonic view that ideas create reality and that spirit is superior to matter, which you can also find in the Gospel of John, profoundly influenced Gnosticism.

And so, in another belief, Sophia, or wisdom, created all that is. Her fall led to the creation of the material world. She resides within all humans as the divine spark. Christ’s return to redeem humankind is about returning humanity to the spiritual world. If you read between the lines of this latter version, the fall of Eve the Creatrix led to the state of sin in which we live today. The Gnostic Gospels are controversial among scholars because they date from a later period than the official Gospels.

Gnosticism emerged around 100 AD and appears to be related to the enigmatic Gospel of John. The Gnostic movement likely originated from a Christian tradition that held on to the original beliefs and remained outside the mainstream of Pauline Christianity. Scholars now name this tradition the Johannine community. Only the Gospel of John mentions that Christians are born of God. His Gospel is mysterious and secretive about Jesus and his intensely close relationship with God, as are the Gnostics. The confusion and rumours surrounding that relationship fuelled speculation about secret knowledge.

The Gospel of John says that Jesus had an intimate and loving relationship with God. He seemed to have known God personally, believing he had eternal life and existed at the beginning of the world. Christians claim that God is love. So, did God and Jesus kiss and do other things lovers do? God can give birth, so God is not a Father after all.

Mary Magdalene convinced Jesus that She was the reincarnation of Eve and that he was the reincarnation of Adam. She made Jesus believe that Adam was the son of Eve, and that he was the Son of God because Adam was. Adam, being the son of Eve, makes more sense than the rib story. Thus, Mary Magdalene married Jesus after persuading him that he was Her eternal husband from Creation until the End of Times. It explains why Jesus thought he had eternal life, existed from the beginning, and would live until the end. It made Eve the Mother of humanity. Jesus called God Mother rather than Father, so he called his birth mother ‘woman’ rather than ‘mother’ (John 2:4, 19:26).

The Gnostic Gospels are most closely related to the Gospel of John. The Gnostics likely split off from the Johannine community after the scribes had turned God the Mother into God the Father. At that point, editors likely altered the role of Mary Magdalene from God and Jesus’ wife to the Beloved Disciple. The split occurred before the removal of the intimate relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus from the Gospel, so when people still knew that the Beloved Disciple, who later became anonymous, was Mary Magdalene. In that previous version of John, they weren’t married but soulmates nonetheless, and so intimate that it remained problematic in Pauline Christianity, leading to another redaction, and the version of John we have now. And so, the Gnostics reveal something that the official Gospels have omitted.

Mary Magdalene’s sudden appearance as a central figure only after the crucifixion is likely related to this. Removing details regarding the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, which has been the outcome of Paul’s efforts to bring Christianity more in line with the Jewish scriptures, alters the plot entirely. So, what remains are some sketchy details. And that is the primary explanation for the current deplorable state of the Gospels, not oral storytelling or embellishments.

There are a few loose ends to tie up. The rib story is a falsification, and Eve was Adam’s mother. That we can infer from the text we still have. But was Eve a goddess? That is not so obvious. According to the account in Genesis, God created Eve and Adam. It doesn’t corroborate what Mary Magdalene made Jesus believe. Eve is the Mother of all the Living, which suits a Mother Goddess. But you must leave the creation myth in Genesis behind and invent another one to make the idea work.

The first verses in the Gospel of John contain such a myth. After some mystical allusions such as ‘in the beginning,’ and ‘there was light,’ and an undercover operation of Jesus during which few recognised him, Christians are born of God. And Jesus gave us the right to become children of God. Eve was God and the Mother of humanity, and Adam, thus Jesus, fathered humanity, and in doing so, he gave us the right to become children of God.

Latest revision: 5 September 2025

Featured image: Christ with Mary Magdalene, West Nave, Kilmore Church, Isle of Mull, made by Stephen Adam. B. Galbraith. Victorian Web.

1. Who was Mary Magdalene? James Carrol (2006). Smithsonian. [link]
2. Gospel of Philip: There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, who was called his companion. His sister, his mother and his companion were each a Mary.
3. Gospel of Philip: And the companion of the saviour was Mary Magdalene. Christ loved Mary more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Saviour answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her?”
4. Gospel of Mary: Peter said to Mary, “Sister we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them”. Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you”. And she began to speak to them these words: “I”, she said, “I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to Him, Lord I saw you today in a vision”.