From Son of a Preacher man to Freethinker

How did I get to my views? I grew-up in a Pentecostal holiness church, my father (deceased) and mother were ministers (my mother still is). As most religious ideology begins, mine begin as a child. I attended church every Sunday, Wednesday, and whenever there was a revival or other function going on in the denomination I was in church. I accepted the bible as the "word of God", inerrant, infallible and literally true. I accepted the story of Adam and Eve, the fall of man, the flood and everything from Genesis to Revelation as absolute truth. I grew up with the idea of the imminent return of Jesus and so I felt there was no reason to plan for the future or be concern with educational goals, marriage, or planning for adulthood.
My transition started about 12 years ago. I was faithfully paying my tithes but was falling behind in my bills and so I ask the question, why does an invisible deity need 10% of my income? For those of you who don't know what tithes are it the belief that 10% of your income belongs to God, it was establish by the priest (Levites) in old testament times as their inheritance when the 12 tribes of Israel divide the conquered land of the Canaanites, the Levites did not get an inheritance of the land therefore the 11 other tribes were require to give them 10% of whatever their land produced(see Deuteronomy 26:12-15). This simple question started me on my metamorphosis from a bible carrying, speaking in tongues believer to a freethinker. With this question on my mind one day I was searching the internet and I came across an essay by Thomas Paine called the Age of Reason and this was the first time I saw someone critical of the bible and especially Christianity. I had read the bible through and through and I never thought about the atrocities that Jehovah, Moses, Abraham, David, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Sampson and others did in the Old Testament. I accepted it as the will of God. Then I thought about the Original Sin story of Adam and Eve and how ridiculous it appeared, that all of humanity was doom because two people were deceived by a talking snake.
Therefore if the doctrine of original sin is foolish so is the idea of atonement. Why do I feel the original sin and atonement is illogical? If I commit a crime, I don't expect my kids or grand kids to do my time of incarceration or to die in my place if the death sentence is required. I don't take the bible literally anymore it is just a compiled book with ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, Babylonians, and other near east mythologies. I do not consider myself an atheist nor am I theist, I am just a skeptical freethinker. If I am an atheist it would be in the sense that I don't see any evidence for a personal god or deity, but if there is an ultimate cause that is impersonal then this seems to be at the present something that is unknowable, how would I know if this isn't either a super-alien or a supernatural god, I don't know neither the hypothesis to test this nor even the question to ask to get to a hypothesis.
I would say as Socrates, I know that I don't know and this made him the wisest of men. My present belief can be summed up by Dr. W.E.B Du Bois reply to a priest: In 1948, a priest wrote to Dr. Du Bois asking him whether or not he believed in God. Dr. Du Bois replied: "Answering your letter of October 3, may I say: If by `a believer in God', you mean a belief in a person of vast power who consciously rules the universe for the good of mankind, I answer No; I cannot disprove this assumption, but I certainly see no proof to sustain such a belief, neither in History not in my personal experience. If on the other hand you mean by 'God' a vague Force which, in some incomprehensible [sic] way, dominates all life and change, then I answer, Yes; I recognize such Force, and if you wish to call it God, I do not object.

Review of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

I have just finished reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman, PhD. It is 218 pages long and has an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. Dr. Ehrman describes how he became a Christian as a teenager and how he went to Moody Bible Institute, the Wheaton College, and finally to Princeton. These universities are all Christian-founded universities. Chapter 1 discusses how Christianity was a literary religion (written not oral) like its ancestor Judaism even though the majority of its believers could not read or write (only 5 to 10 percent of 1 century people could read or write). Chapter 2. The Copyist of the Early Christian Writings: the claim by Dr. Ehrman in chapter two is that the oldest and existing manuscripts we have today are copies of a copies, which are copies of copies that were changed accidentally and sometimes intentionally in 1st and 2nd century during the time when there weren't any professional scribes, and it is difficult to know what the original author actually stated, and some scholars have concluded that we never know, however Dr. Ehrman feels we may not know in an absolute sense but we can have a reasonable idea of what is original by studying the words, styles of writing to figure out reasonably what text were additions examples are John 7:52-8:11 and Mark 16:9-16 are examples of known additions, the words used and the writing style give clues to these being additions. Some additions were used by Heretics and Orthodoxy to influence the message toward doctrines each were trying to push. Dr. Ehrman is an expert textual critic in New Testament. Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concern with the identification of and removal of transcriptional errors in the text of manuscripts. (Wikipedia.) Info backing the claim is John and Marks additions. We need to remember also that the first copyist (1st through the 4th century C.E.) were not professional scribes but amateurs who were wealthy Christian leaders or literate slaves who worked for wealthy Christians so it is probable that errors were made when copying the original authors. Chapter 3. Text of the New Testament: Rome, Palestine, and Alexandria (center of the early Christian movement) each had different documents that did not influence each other. Most scholars believe the Alexandrian manuscripts, Alexandria was a major intellectual center in the ancient world, were more of a reliable source and was more scrupulous, in other words a very pure form of early Christian writings was preserved decade after decade. Professional scribes did not exist until near the beginning of the fourth century, because Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianityin 312 C.E. . In 331 C.E. Constantine commissioned 50 copies of the Bible by Eusebius to be produced for major cities were he was having churches built. Where did the professional scribes (including Eusebius) get the texts they were going to copy (this was before the printing press)? They got them from the earliest amateurs copies, full of copyist errors. There were different regions where the copies were created Greek=Eastern, Latin=Western, Coptic=Egypt, and Syriac= Syria, each copy used local languages. Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to produce an "official" Latin translation, called the Vulgate (Common). This lead to twice as many Latin manuscripts/text than Greek text also called Byzantine Text. The printing press revolutionized creating copies of text, the 1st book printed on the printing press was the Latin Vulgate Bible, it took six years. Erasmus produced the 1st printed (1516) text of the Greek manuscript, which was rifted with errors, this happen 1400 years after the originals. King James is based on Erasmus error ridden Greek Text, not the oldest and best manuscripts, for example in 1John 5:7-8, what is called the Johannine Comma, was not in the oldest and best Greek Manuscripts. The Textus Receptus or T. R. , a term used by textual critics to refer to that form of Greek text that is based on not, the oldest and best manuscripts, but on the form of text originally published by Erasmus, including the King James version who used this T. R. in its editions. Textual Criticism did not occur seriously until 1707, it was an edition of the Greek New Testament by John Mill, a fellow of Queens College, Oxford, were he found 30,000 variations or differences between the manuscripts he was using, and this was not exhaustive, but it opened the door to dispute what had been complacently accepted until that point, today there are more variations or differences in the know manuscripts than there are words in the New Testatment. His Greek New Testament alarmed Protestants that the Catholics would say that this is proof that Christians cannot be saved by faith alone (a key argument of Protestantism) but by Church Authority (a key argument of Catholicism) because these variations you need Apostolic authority to gain salvation. This book say something that is true( and I really never thought about it until he brought it out), that when we read something we automatically change it, so that we can understand what is being written in our own words, or in a way that includes our point of view (our past experiences, influences that affect our thoughts, etc.) He concluded that the bible is a human book written by humans and not inspired by God. As he concluded “For the only reason ( I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that he didn’t preserve the words; the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them." The writers of the gospels had different messages, and different ways that they saw Jesus. Luke, who borrowed from Mark, changed how he saw Jesus crucifixion, he could have copied marks description but he saw Jesus death differently from Mark. He also discusses textual criticism, its history, and the people who influenced textual criticism. As Ehrman brings out so to the scribes who was copying the copies of copies accidentally and intentionally made changes based on their interpretation of the situation. We also need to remember we did not have a printing press until the fifteen century, therefore for 1500 centuries it was copied by hand. People made errors in copying, also for the first three hundred centuries before the Roman Catholic Church became the state religion and had professional scribes, the original copies was copied by those who happened to literate enough to copy and they made errors in copying, so when you change the original you change the intent, and often times they were sloppy, lazy, inept and made mistakes. During the 1400 years scribes added, deleted, misspelled, and changed text to emphasize a point, to dispel a dispute internally and externally (Jews, Pagans, etc.) or role of women, etc. The scribes were human and so when they were reading a text would like any other human change the text so they could put it into words which made senses to them, just like when we read the text of something written, we read from our human needs, beliefs, worldview, opinions, love, longings, likes, dislikes and so forth, all these things influence our perception of what is in the text and so the text changes whether we want it to or not. However, the scribes went further than just merely reading it; they physically changed it and so changed the original meaning, because it was not copied word for word. Some words were misspelled, or changed accidentally or intentionally and so even if we read the bible is not the original and if we read the original we would still change it in our mind to “other words” or contexts in which we could understand it and so change the originally meaning. And as Dr. Ehrman concluded " the bible was written by humans trying to make sense of their own lives and situations." I would recommend this book to anyone who is sincere in seeking the truth of how the New Testament as we have it, is totally different from what was originally written. It is not the word of God, but simply words of Humans.

Journey of my ancestors

My journey to know about my ancestry began with the desire to research who my ancestor were, where they came from and how they contribute to me being me. Due to the history of the slave system of the United States of America and other European colonies, as well as the subsequent treatment of my Africans ancestors; their names, religions, histories, languages, and cultures were all but erased from their descendants memories. As a result, the enslaver who brought our ancestors here gave us names, their languages, their religions, and we created a new culture that is an amalgamation of the unknown cultures that our forbearers brought with them over the middle passage with new the identity the enslaver gave them. Thanks to science and technology, I had my Y-DNA tested by the Genographic Project, upgraded with Family Tree DNA. My Y-DNA test results identify me as a member of haplogroup E1b1a (E-M2 in shorthand). The genetic markers that define my ancestral history reach back roughly 70,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow my lineage to present day, ending with M2, the defining marker of haplogroup E1b1a. If I look at the genetics highlighting my ancestors' route in and out of Africa, I see that members of my haplogroup E1b1a carry the following Y-chromosome markers: Haplogroup CT or M168 >> Haplogroup DE or YAP +>> Haplogroup E or M96 >> Haplogroup E1 or P147 >> E1b or P177 >> Haplogroup E1b1 or P2 >> Haplogroup E1b1a or M2. I am descended from an ancient African lineage.
What I Know Now:

My paternal ancestry begin with an individual carrying the genetic marker M168 in my lineage who probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when he lived at around 70,000 years ago. His descendants, which I am too, became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. But why would man have first ventured out of the familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for my ancestors' exodus out of Africa. The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by my ancestors expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. My nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the animals they hunted, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined. In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern humans' intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and replace other hominids. As time moves on he have descendants, one his descendants had another mutation. Sub-Saharan populations living today are characterized by one of three distinct Y-chromosome branches on the human tree.
My paternal lineage E1b1a falls under one of these ancient branches and is referred to by geneticists as YAP+ or Haplogroup DE.The individual carrying the YAP was born around northeast Africa and is the most common of the three ancient genetic branches found in sub-Saharan Africa. He had a mutational event known as an Alu insertion or YAP, which is a 300-nucleotide fragment of DNA which, on rare occasion, gets inserted into different parts of the human genome during cell replication. Living around 65,500 years ago, my distant ancestor, acquired this fragment on his Y-chromosome and passed it on to his descendants. Over time his lineage split into two distinct groups. One is found primarily in Africa and the Mediterranean, is defined by marker M96 and is called haplogroup E. The other group, haplogroup D is found in Asia and defined by the M174 mutation. Y-DNA haplogroup E would appear to have arisen in Northeast Africa based on the concentration and variety of E subclades in that area today. But the fact that Haplogroup E is closely linked with Haplogroup D, which is not found in Africa, leaves open the possibility that E first arose in the Near or Middle East and was subsequently carried into Africa by a back migration.E1b1 is by far the lineage of greatest geographical distribution. It has two important sub-lineages, E1b1a and E1b1b. My genetic lineage lies within the group that remained close to home, and was carried by men who likely played an integral role in recent cultural and migratory events within Africa.
Moving Out of Africa:
As explain above, my ancestor have descendants they move out of east Africa into “North Africa/Middle East/Near East” corridor possibly present day region from Egypt to possibly present day Iran/Iraq. As the population grows from the abundant food and livestock in the region, these resources become strained. Therefore some of Haplogroup DE (YAP+) descendants migrate to Far East Asia, while some remain close to Africa via the Middle East/Near East corridor, one such descendant had another mutation which created a new Haplogroup called E. This Branch of the tree and ancestral lineage was born around 52,500 years ago in northeast Africa and had a new mutation that gave rise to marker M96. The origins of M96 are unclear; hopefully as DNA research is refined and updated more light will be shed on his origins.
What is known is that there were two great waves of migration out of Africa. The first small groups of people left around 60,000 years ago and followed a coastal route that eventually reached Australia. The second exodus occurred beginning around 50,000 years ago, heading north. The bulk of these travelers were descendants of a man born with marker M89, a group we'll call the Middle Eastern Clan. Some 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans today are descendants of the Middle Eastern Clan. I am descended from an ancient African lineage that chose to move north into North Africa and Middle/Near East regions. My kinsmen may have accompanied the Middle Eastern Clan as they followed the great herds of large mammals north through the grassy plains and savannas of the Sahara gateway. Alternatively, a group of my ancestors may have undertaken their own migration at a later date, following the same route previously traveled by the Middle Eastern Clan peoples.Nevertheless, beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert; for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, my ancestors had two options: remain in North Africa, or move on. Retreat back to the home continent was not an option. Like his father he too had descendants, some stayed in the North Africa/Middle East/Near East regions and others longed to return to home (Africa). Like his ancestors there was another mutation on my ancestors Y-DNA which gave rise to a new branch now called E1b1a with the defining mutation or marker called M2.
The Rise of E1b1a (E-M2):

The haplogroup E1b1a (E-M2) may have originated about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago in the pockets of habitable land along the Sahara/Sahel/Sudanese Belt that runs from the Red Sea to Senegal/Mauritania in Western Africa, when much of the continent was extremely dry due to Ice Age climate conditions (i.e. the Last Glacial Maximum). E1b1a is often associated with Agricultural Expansion in Western, Central,Eastern and Southern Africa, one well studied expansion was the migration of Bantu-speaking agriculturalist throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon to South Africa). One migration path crossed the central African rain forests into eastern Africa, and then turned southward about 1,500 years ago to extend from Tanzania into southeastern Africa. A second route began in the Congo basin and moved southward along the Atlantic coast into Angola, Namibia and Botswana. E1b1a reaches levels of 50% and higher among Bantu-speaking populations on the paths of these two broad migrations, such as the Hutu, Sukuma, Herero and !Xhosa. However, the Bantu expansion does not explain the high frequencies of the haplogroup in non-Bantu Niger-Kordofanian speakers in the western regions of Africa from Senegal to Nigeria. Moreover the high frequency in non-Bantu speaking regions, in some published studies it reaches levels of up to 90% among the Mandinka and Yoruba of western Africa, has lead to other hypothesis’s of E1b1a expansion into the Sudanese belt (a region south of the Sahara extending from western to central Africa) is more complex and perhaps involved a separate expansion or was existing in Western non-Bantu speakers before the Bantu expansion 5,000 years ago. For instance E1b1a* also called E-M2, and its derivative, haplogroup E1b1a7 also called E-M191, harbor opposite clinal distributions in the Sudanese Belt region, a finding that is at odds with the hypothesis of a Bantu expansion of these two lineages in the area. Haplogroup E1b1a7 has a frequency of 23% in Cameroon (where it represents 42% of haplotypes carrying the DYS271 mutation or E-M2), 13% in Burkina Faso (16% of haplotypes carrying the DYS271 mutation or (M2)) and only 1% in Senegal (Semino et al. 2002), whereas '''Haplogroup E1b1a* or E-M2''' reaches its highest frequency (81%) in Senegal (Semino et al. 2002). In other words, as you move to West Africa from west Central Africa the less subclade M-191 is found and the more M-2 is found, this lead Cruciani to concluded "A possible explanation might be that haplogroup E1b1a or E-M2 were already present across the Sudanese belt when the M191 mutation, which defines haplogroup E1b1a7, arose in central western Africa." Therefore this give credence to E1b1a (E-M2) originating in pockets of habitable land along the Sudanese belt 20,000 years ago, with each area developing their own language , cultures, agricultural centers and technology, each with a separate expansion. E1b1a is also the most common haplogroup among African-American male individuals. About 60% of African-American men have E1b1a Y-chromosomes, primarily because the Atlantic slave trade drew most of its individuals from western Africa and Mozambique, where E1b1a occurs in high frequencies. Thanks to science, it is reassuring to know that my ancestors did not begin in the chains of slavery in the United States of America but 70,000 years ago on the continent of Africa.

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