481 A correspondent wrote to me:

A correspondent wrote to me:

 >> I stopped believing in the Devil

 > What was the trigger of that radical change in your life?. A
professor influence in the Seminar? Another seminar classmate? A love
affair? The reading of some special author? A personal rebellion
vis-à-vis the established? … …..? I noticed you still use Devil, an not
just devil….

 >>Although my possibly-Jewish surname could suggest a Jewish ancestor -
not in recent generations - I have never had a Jewish consciousness.

 > I assume that Gerard is your mother surname. Was she of Jewish
ancestors? According to the Jewish Law, Myers father surname is not
enough to consider you a Jew by blood.

My grandparents on my mother's side were Monaghan and Clements.

On my father's side, Myers and O'Brien.

Two Irish, one English, but the Myers is of uncertain provenance. None
of the four were Jewish. But there could have been a Jewish ancestor
somewhere in the past. Ten generations back, each of has 1024 ancestors,
but we males get our surname from only one of them. Why single just that
one out? It's a bit silly. Conversely, a person might have several
Jewish ancestors but not a Jewish-sounding surname, because (say 5
generations back) the last Jewish female ancestor married a non-Jewish male.

One woman asked for my photo. Here it is: http://mailstar.net/Peter-2011.jpg

I asked for hers too, but she did not send it.

The reason people ask about Jewish ancestry is that Jews have a history
of separatism and a habit of becoming a hostile elite which manipulates
the majority covertly. Jews were originally a religion, but their
separatism made them into an ethnic group - not a race, but a group with
a distinct civilization. There have always been factions, and some of
the factions have become atheistic while still adhering to the Jewish
religion (in a wider sense; Ben Gurion is an example). But even
"non-Jewish Jews" have a Jewish identity, ie think of themselves as
Jewish or congregate with other "non-Jewish Jews". They can leave the
Jewish fold entirely and join the Goys, and many do. But, even though
"Jews by birth" might not be subversive - might change sides - it's
still best for them to openly declare their past. Such openness is the
reason I mention that I COULD have a Jewish ancestor some generations in
the past. It's not terribly dignified to search one's ancestry to find
out; I've never bothered, nor do I care much about this matter.

The idea of the Devil comes from the Zoroastrian religion. There were
three versions.

The Zoroastrian religion has two versions:

- that both God and the Devil existed eternally; this orthodox
Zoroastrianism is a Cosmic Dualism. God is called Mazda (ie light as in
Mazda lightglobes): Ahuramazda means "god Mazda". The Devil is called
Ahriman, Angra Mainyu, or The Lie.

- that a single, primordial God of Time (Chronos, Zurvan) is the parent
of the two opposites - the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil Angra
Mainyu. This kind of Zoroastrianism is called Zurvanism.

The dualistic theology sees two contrary forces as original; Zurvanism
sees a monism - Zurvan (Kronos or Time) - as giving birth to the two
contrary forces.

The Jewish/Christian version is a variant on Zurvanism:

- that the Devil was created by God as an angel, but rebelled and became
the Devil, after which there was a cosmic struggle between the two. This
is Cosmic Monotheism with a Dualist flavour.

I no longer believe in the Devil for this reason:

- if the Devil was created by God (as an angel who rebelled), he would
not be the equal or near-equal of God, being a created being. Further,
God would have known that he would rebel (become the Devil), and the
trouble he'd cause, leading everyone astray and immersing even God
himself in a cosmic struggle. Therefore, it would have been stupid to
create him.

- if the Devil and God were both eternal, then evil is inbuilt into the
cosmic structure, and will always be so because the Devil is eternal as
God is. I don't accept that.

Peter