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The Sacred Textimus is a divinely inspired group of manuscripts that was found and written by men of holy spark.

Genocidius

Chapter 1: Of the Beginning of Time and Spark

1. Before the longness of time there was a beginning which was only created with simple ease.
2. At first I created the book, for without it you would not have known. Then time was, for with it you could live. So I created Men.
3. But Men was without form and bone, so I created land so they could crawl on the land. I created the beast also.
4. The birds I also created without form and bone, so I then created air so the birds can fly in the air.
5. The fish I also created without form and bone, so I then created water so the fish can swim in the water.
6. The creatures needed to eat so I created bushes, trees, and the sea bush, so that the beast and bird and fish could eat. I created nuts also.
7. I created small creatures, some for food for the other creatures, some to eat your plants. So you would not become over fattened with vegetable.
8. While Men slept, I created the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the constellations. I threw them in the sky so they flew around each other. To each star I created movement.
9. I then looked and the universe looked milky. It was nice.
10. I placed bones made of nuts and ivory and placed them in Man and beast. I formed Men to look like the great Apes of Africana. I shaved Men of their hair except at the top of the head, the pits of the arm, and the testicle.
11. I then made a spark to live in Men and beast and they then breathed and moved. It was nice.
12. It was then I called the first Man, Adam, for he is the first.
13. And the other Man I called, Steve, for he is the other.

Chapter 2: Of the Vision of the Man and the Cow

1. I am of one kind to make greet to you. You are very nice indeed. In this I beheld and lo a Man and a Cow. The Man was ten feet tall and the Cow was three feet tall and seventy furlongs wide. It had enough to carry every breathing thing that crawled on its back. The Man ate the Cow also.
2. But when the Man saw that the Cow was wide enough to carry every breathing thing that crawls He said, “Cow, will you not only carry that which crawleth and breaths, but not things which do fly and breathe?”. And thus it was that the Cow grew and behold it was wide enough to carry not only those who crawleth and breathes, but also those who fly and breathes.
3. But when the Man saw that the Cow was wide enough to carry every breathing thing that crawls and those who fly and breathes, He said, “Cow, will you not only carry that which crawleth and breaths, and those who fly and breathes, but not things which do swim and breathe?”. And thus it was that the Cow grew and behold it was wide enough to carry not only those who crawleth and breathes, and those who fly and breathes, but also those who swimeth and breathes.
4. And thus it was that the Cow was three feet tall but the width of it increased to one hundred and eighty two furlongs.
   

   

5. And so the Cow was eaten by all the creatures of the land.

Chapter 3: Of Woman and the Domesticated Partnership with Man

1. I saw Steve as he held his bag of seed to make the earth grow. But before long, he began to wander and take his seed to the Apes of Africana and looked even at the vegetable of the forest and began to lust. I was angry at him.
2. In my fury I took Steve and cut his testicles and shaft, and placed melons upon his chest, for Steve lusted after the melon, and henceforth created I a new man. “Woe”, said I. And thus I called him, Woeman, or as in the present tongue, Woman.
3. Wherefore Steve was embarrassed without testicles and he called himself, Eve.
4. Of this time I made the spark of Adam to climb mountain and cross seas to find Eve and to create new men and women. In this he did so and grew muscular but his brain did faint a little.
5. It was this day I approved of the unification and declared them domesticated partners. From this day, man and woman should live together for as long as possible until spark no longer had its heat.
6. When the spark no longer found its heat, then shall the man separate from the woman and the woman from the man and find another, and they shall die a sorrowful death when the heart faileth.

Chapter 4: Of Names

Religious Influence on Myself and the World

By Theodor Kim.
There is no doubt in my mind that religion has had a huge impact on all of our lives in one form or another. Boundaries, political and social, have been pushed and pulled by religious movements. Families quarrel and unite over doctrines. It sure had an effect on mine. I was raised with deep Christian values for the majority of my life. My parents, while they were raised in religious families, did not practice until I was born. My experiences were very unorthodox. We were Christian, yet we searched for a church with a doctrine my parents could agree with. We tried different denominations and churches. At the core, we were non-denominational Christians, but we eventually turned away from traditional churches all-together. We finally settled for a congregation who was led by a man who was led to believe that the world was coming to an end as Christ’s second coming was near. We put a halt to much of our daily lives to commit to this. I realized later on that this was a cult, led by one man, as virtually every member would move on to extreme advancements on his teachings and most without question or criticism. Using various forms of word-play and numerology, he came up with a “rapture date” (a date for the return of Jesus) along with a date for the end of the world’s existence. He taught us everything including the whole complex method of coming up with the dates. We were well versed in the King James version of the Bible. So, time went by and nothing happened on those dates. The congregation broke up and different fragments of the group still continued to look for the end time dates. I moved on and continued school.

Needless to say, there were many people affected by this cult. People sold their cars, homes, and valuables and used the money to invest in spreading an idea that they believed in with all certainty. What was their personal gain if their hope of the return of Jesus turned out to be true? To be raptured. To live in a new world with Jesus in heaven was important to them, and to some, more important than their personal life here on Earth. But alas that was not so and now they work to recuperate their losses and move on with their lives, or for some, continue to search for the end date. Fortunately, I left and went to college and took science classes which sparked my already great interest in biology. As Christians, we were taught the creation story of God creating the universe in 6 days. We believed the universe was roughly 10,000 years old. When we went out on field trips or read science articles, we were told to ignore any geologist claiming that the Earth is billions of years old, or any biologist claiming that we evolved from a common ancestor as the rest of the animals. My science classes at first made me angry and uncomfortable listening to contradictory ideas to my beliefs, but soon I felt like I had no choice but to accept the overwhelming facts as stated by the scientific consensus. It only took a few years before I realized that the entire foundation of my fundamentalist Christian faith was completely shattered and I declared myself an atheist, and I learned to be skeptical to all doctrines.

I don’t think religion is as significant today as it was in the past. Sure, there is still outrage from the religious community when progressive political topics like gay marriage or abortion gets brought up, but as a whole, the world is learning to put aside religious rules for the sake of focusing on social issues like equal rights. I do think globalization has a lot to do with it. Before, people used religious rituals in hope of better crop or the ridding of disease, today we live in more populated cities where we need not focus about food and disease and instead we focus on living in harmony with our fellow man. In this aspect, religious rituals may get in the way, and having rules to judge a person by may get tiring. Europe and the United States is seeing a huge increase in non-religious people. Religion just means a lot less today than what it did in the past.

Our textbook speaks of three perspectives of religion: Materialist, functional, and faith. Materialist is the idea that religion was invented by man. And as an atheist, I obviously would greatly agree with this perspective. I believe religion today is just an evolution of ancient superstition, used to control the social ladder of the time, and explain things that were unknown. Where in the past they worshipped rocks sculptures and wooden structures, today the religious worship carved ideas. I believe religion is an ever-evolving artificial set of rules to press a certain agenda and press people to control the majority and it is often oppressive to certain minorities.

The functional perspective is the idea where religion is useful and can serve as a tool for social structure. Although I think religion is losing its usefulness, I do believe this perspective had an important effect throughout history. Religion had a huge role to play in the social stability of nations and empires in the past. Religion had an explanation for how things worked in nature. It served as a rule guideline to keep the masses in check. Nations kept their populace satisfied because of religion. When people had a sense of purpose, practicing their rituals in a place of worship and got “enlightened” with explanations of fearful mysteries, then relative peace can be kept. As for today, especially with religious apologetics and “liberal” religions, religion is a useful tool to keeping the peace and creating morals.

The perspective I have always had an issue since my Christian upbringing was that of faith. The faith perspective claims that there is a higher place or alternate reality where we can tap into and find truth, enlightenment, or the spiritual realm. As someone who was raised very logically, I did not understand my peers when they claimed they “felt” God or “knew” God saved their soul. Did they really “feel” anything? If they did, did not that mean it had to have had a physical explanation to that feeling? Did God’s children have a sixth sense or a receptor that I did not have? I never understood this as a Christian and never had this specific perspective. I held the possibility of the spiritual being on another dimension level, but if we could not perceive it on this world, then we cannot claim it exists. I was doomed to atheism!

I believe studying religion can help one understand the mindset of the people within that social group. I believe it is important to understand mindsets of people in different social groups so productive interactions can exist between different groups. In a world with so many diverse peoples it is important we get to know and understand each other. Religion is an inescapable factor of our world’s history that must be faced and understood.