Jewish Pagan Revealed as Prophet of Goddess Athena

Here is a recent Gaian News Network interview with Lorna Salzman, who has just identified herself as the designated prophet of the goddess Athena. She joins Mohammed, Jesus Christ and Moses who also claim to be prophets of their respective gods. Here, Salzman, a pagan Jewish housewife from Brooklyn, makes the case for why these prophets promote false gods and why their messages run counter to the laws of Nature and human civilization.

GNN: You've just come out of the faith-based closet to challenge the veracity of all established religions. Why only now, and how do you back up your claim that Athena is the one true goddess?

LS: Well, as you know, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, which has allowed humanity to advance this far. Because of this wisdom bestowed on the human species, humans were able to develop agriculture, fossil-fuel energy, language, the arts, poker, soup kitchens, sous vide cuisine, Froot Loops, wine bars, deodorant, toothpaste, cookbooks, crossword puzzles, and PhD theses, and to understand how the planet Earth got here and how it works. But from what Athena told me, she is really angry over the misuse of the knowledge she gave humans and why so many humans deliberately choose to remain ignorant, illiterate and uneducated. She decided it was high time to remind them that their civilization, where it actually exists, still depends on the things she, with the help of the evolutionary process, gave them. By the way, she wanted me to convey her deep appreciation to magicians, who are among her most faithful acolytes and who have helped discredit the preachings of her rival prophets.

GNN: Athena was a Greek goddess, so what language did she speak to you?

LS: English of course. Being all-knowing and all-powerful, Athena speaks all languages...unlike most Americans who can barely speak their own language (which is a morph of English as is Spanglish, Strine, Scottish, Cockney, Pidgin and Franglais

GNN: What was Athena's biggest gripe?

LS: Actually, she has quite a few. First, the disappearance of newspapers and its replacement by electrons, whose discovery we can blame on over-educated physicists who should have known better. Second, the accompanying invention of television, which has largely replaced those supremely Athenian inventions, books and the free public library. When she talked about these things she got really agitated; she said: "Remember what happened in Alexandria?....that really pissed me off! ". But her biggest gripe was at the abuse of knowledge for things like messing with the human gene pool, creating deadly chemicals, killing whales and dolphins, allowing slavery and child marriage, Wall St. thievery, oppression of women and gays, interstate highways, cigarettes, stiletto heels, power boats, golf, fast food, feral cats, disposable razors, plastic, cell phones, Dan Brown, Ticketmaster and Deepak Chopra.

GNN: Why does Athena assert that the other prophets are wrong?

LS: Just look at those Guys.... they are GUYS, not GALS. That's bad enough. But actually there are lots of other reasons. Mohammed was a violent deceitful Arab pederast who plagiarized the Old Testament and then added his own ridiculous comments. Moses was long in the tooth and suffering from early on-set dementia; how could a geezer like him hold a heavy stone tablet? And since all his followers were illiterate, and the tablet had a foreign language on it, no one could challenge his authority. Jews still have this fixation on why their daughters must marry Jewish doctors or, g-d forbid, a Jewish lawyer, you know, this patriarchal thing, so they just listened up. Jesus Christ is a long story and the most successful one thanks to Constantine, who converted from paganism to Christianity (seeing an opportunity to broaden his imperial power). Jesus worked his ass off hitchhiking around the middle east and took advantage of the fact that far-flung Roman colonies were getting restless and complaining about high taxes and stuff. Problem was that his early followers weren't too well liked (they were very preachy), and in the end his fellow Jews rejected him. Being shlemiels, this got them in deep doo-doo off and on for centuries, much of which was Mohammed's fault. Mohammed was one big trouble maker and left his home town because he got fed up with the Jews calling him meshuggah. He told his followers to hate pigs and dogs, but to ride camels...guess he didn't know that pigs and camels have common ancestors...artiodactyls. Who knew?

GNN: But what else contributed to Christians' success?

LS: One of Athena's biggest gripes is how the Catholic Church ripped off pagan gods and goddesses. Before, there were minor goddesses and gods (Athena's loyal staff, all volunteers and hard workers) and these were immortalized in terrific art and sculpture early on and later in the Roman republic, especially in places like Pompeii. Roman frescoes were of course mainly secular (and pretty naughty) but partly religious/pagan, and the painters had great talent (these were the earliest X-rated art works). The frescoes were incredibly realistic. But when Christianity took over, art deteriorated into formal, stiff religious iconography, as you see in Byzantine art. It took centuries for art to recover from this primitive style. What the Catholic Church did was devilishly clever: they turned all the pagan deities into saints! So you had all these saints to whom people would go for dispensation, solace and protection. Saints for protection against deadly diseases, saints for (women's) chastity, saints for animals, saints for transportation, you name it. To cover up their misogyny they created a cult of the Madonna. (That's why Italians always exclaim "Mamma mia!"). Of course they all eventually got martyred: roasted, flayed, disassembled on large wheels, beheaded, used as archery practice, etc. Martyrn alle arten, or something like that. But not the pagan deities; they were friendly. Paganism was an expression of multiple deities and tolerated many varieties of worship. Actually modern Hinduism is pagan but they picked up some nasty habits from Muslims.

GNN: Wasn't there also some deviant art in the Baroque period, like Bernini's St. Teresa sculpture in Rome?

LS: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that. It partly exonerates some of the atrocities of the Catholic Church by acknowledging the female orgasm. And having it in front of spectators no less! It probably made lots of Roman women go home to their husbands and say: "I'll have what she's having".

Here are St. Teresa's words....may not be suitable for children:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.[4]

GNN: Did Athena provide you with any evidence that she is really a goddess and all-powerful, or proof that the other prophets are frauds?

LS: Proof, schmoof. Until these other Guys come up with their own proof, why should Athena have to prove anything? These guys never claimed that they gave wisdom to humanity anyway. They came with heavy baggage: inducing guilt, demanding better behavior and acts of charity, and just laying down secret doctrines which no one was able to challenge. Their gods hate and fear women and are pretty arrogant, nasty, intolerant, spiteful, cruel, and generally indifferent to human suffering. The prophets and high priests fight amongst themselves publicly but in private they conspire to squash unbelievers because they are losing followers thanks to people like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Penn and Teller, and Tim Minchin. Athena has some sympathy for the religious leaders but these Guys (they have lots of Gals at their side, including Rebecca Newburger Goldstein) are really Athena's favorites because they use their heads and the reason that Athena gave them. And they let humans make up their own doctrines. Pretty generous and libertarian, I'd say. Free expression. However, she couldn't save Giordano Bruno. She's a hands-off goddess.

GNN: What is the difference between Athenian wisdom and revelation? Why should anyone believe you and not the fundamentalists and creationists?

LS: Both reason and emotion are crucial to human survival. Emotions are what helped primitive humans survive early on and anything these humans didn't create for themselves they attributed to other forces, later deities, to help them understand the rest of the world. But as humans evolved and started figuring things out, it was important for them to pass on their knowledge and experience. So while the emotions remained to alert them to danger and analyze other peoples' motives and veracity, learning had to be preserved for future generations.

Religion took advantage of human ignorance and lack of understanding about the world and the universe, because so many dangers still lurked: disease, famine, war, natural disasters. It offered security...but above all it offered an EXPLANATION of how things worked: everything came from their god, handed down by prophets and priests. But while they controlled peoples' souls, they couldn't control their brain and their knowledge. Eventually some people spoke out, some started doing experiments, taking measurements, looking at how things might work. Then there appeared writing, printing, books, scholars, scientists. They had a hard time of course and some lost their lives in challenging religion's false explanations. But eventually the false explanatory function of religion disappeared because it was no longer needed. Science and reason now sufficed. No middlemen were needed. Today science and morality are available at retail.

What happened was this: religion and state (or monarchy) split, and society was able to move forward because it now had freedom of inquiry, thought and dissent. We call this the Enlightenment, of the 17th and 18th centuries. Athena was delighted because it acknowledged and celebrated HER. Today, the influence of these other false prophets is, quite understandably, waning fast, because these prophets and their fairy tales not only lack the truth about life and the universe but lack moral authority. People distrust them, with good reason ---crusades, Inquisition, jihads, groping priests, misogynists, all in the name of a god - and now realize that ethics, moral behavior, compassion, justice and nonviolence are products of the human brain and that humans can act morally without religion. This is the death blow to the preachings of these other prophets....Athenian wisdom and reason suffice. Athena lives! (figuratively). That image of Jesus on that cupcake's frosting we now know is just a bad design sense.

GNN: So what does Athena offer us today?

LS: She offers us possibilities and choices, earthly rewards only, kids and grandkids, maybe multiverses, curiosity, one way trips to Mars for Stewart Brand, Chris Hedges and Peter Kareiva, no nonsense about reincarnation or afterlife. Only gods inhabit Valhalla, or did until it burned down. Humans just get composted and used by future generations. That's important.

Providing people don't watch too much TV and spend more time reading.

Excuse me for a moment but someone's at the door. It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster! No, you aren't the One True God, Athena is. Stop griping or I'll drown you in marinara sauce. Can we just discuss this privately later? I'm busy.

We're in negotiations. He's well-meaning but misguided. We'll settle things peacefully. Athena can offer him a job as God of the Kitchen...that's a lot less work.

And: this just in from Athena: I'm fired!

And my replacement is Brian Keith Dalton (Mr. Deity). A wise choice, Athena.

Over to you, Brian.