Most people only know Joan of Arc as the girl that was burned at the stake. Little is known about her life, by the average person, other than that solitary fact. Some believe that she was the girl that pretended to be a boy in order to fight in the Hundred Years War for France, though Joan was much more than that. Long before Joan was burned at the stake for heresy, which has been widely disputed as being an unnecessary action of the English at the time, she was a young girl who believed she was a messenger for God.

Joan was born in 1412 in Domremy, a small farming village in France. Her father was a tenant farmer in the village, which rests on the borders of Bar and Lorraine. When Joan was three, the war began though she would not become involved until much later. The village that Joan lived in, Domremy was in the middle of an extremely unstable environment, especially in the early 1420s. On one side of the village was the Dauphin of France and the other side was home to the Anglo-Burgundians. As if the environment was not dangerous enough, Joan began hearing voices around this time. The voices she claimed to hear were that of Christian saints. Joan said she heard the voices of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine.

Around the time that Joan was 16, the voices became more persistent, telling her that she needed to help the Dauphin capture Reims, which would gain back the French throne.

In 1428 Joan traveled to Vaucouleurs, to tell the captain there, of her visions. The captain did not believe the girl and told her to go home, but she would come back a few months later, in January, when the voices became stronger. When she returned the captain agreed to let her speak with the Dauphin.

Joan arrived dressed in men’s clothing with a group of six soldiers. Despite not knowing anyone in Chinon when she was forced to pick out Charles from a group of people (he was hiding in the crowd), she did so successfully. After Charles had Joan interrogated for weeks it was time to let Joan have what she wanted. She would be given an Army to fight for France.

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As archaeologists are proving Moses did not write the parts of the Bible that are attributed to him (early papers with the text were not written in his era due to time dating on the paper). This includes the part of the Bible concerning the Ten Commandments. More evidence comes out every day to suggest that the Christian Bible is nothing more than a large fictitious book filled with hate propaganda and other fallacies, I feel that we need to consider the source of the “manual of God”.

I know and am friends with many Christian people. However, that being said, I do not believe in the Christian God. I am a reasonable person though and tend to believe that all religions offer some important life lessons. As I am not Christian, I am going to assume some of the most important life lessons (or rules, in this case) to a Christian would exist in the Ten Commandments. The following article looks at the Ten Commandments, what they mean, and if they are even necessary at all.

First we need to consider the fact that there were two original sets of these commandments. One set was smashed and one was kept whole. Further, there are at least three versions that range in rules and wording. The Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew versions are all different. However, in the effort of time saving and relative ease we will use the Protestant (King James) version of the Commandments. In all cases, the punishment of breaking a commandment is either death or damnation, so keep in mind that according to the Bible these are some pretty strict rules.

Commandment 1: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

As I am not a Christian and instead am a polytheist this one confuses me somewhat. Having not read the Bible may be impeding my understanding of God and the works, but I was to understand that God was it. If he was fully aware of this (as he should be, since he is God) then why is this rule necessary at all?

Was it just that the writer of the Commandments was insecure and wanted to emphasize the importance of God or was it something else? Naturally, if you believe in History you know that other people did believe in other Gods before the Christian one, so is this the reason for the hatred against other possible Gods?

Furthermore, if God forgives you and allows you into heaven if you repent couldn’t you just worship who you want, find out your wrong, and repent to get into heaven when the time came? This commandment just seems like God was an attention slut. The first rule has to be about him being the most important and only valid God…or else. Really, I thought he would be more mature than that.

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As a child growing up in the 80’s, I cannot recall hearing any type of discussion concerning religion. Maybe it was the innocence of my youth or just plain luck, but I don’t remember one instance when it was ever brought up. In school, kids did not mention if they were Catholic, Baptist, or anything else for that matter. They were just kids and the world was just here. It was not decided how it got here, except in science where a few different theories were proposed. However, to the world back then, what we learned was never an issue.

I went to Sunday school with my friend and considered going to church camp because those things were fun. It never was about God. It was about entertainment. Unfortunately, as time moves on and the political climate has changed so has the ability to see things through the eyes of an adult without the comfortable ignorance of a child.

Religion has become a business almost as powerful as oil, and it is ruining every facet of our general and social lives. Once upon a time, religion was something thought about on Sundays and when you prayed because something was going wrong in your life. Today, God is a vengeful God you simply cannot escape. He is everywhere you turn.

God is brought up as being the reason for movies, media, and natural disasters. Just look at the fundamentalists, they will tell you all about how God is pissed. For example, Fred Phelps has websites all over the internet concerning how natural disasters occur and how God made them happen because we allow homosexuals (not what he calls them mind you) to run rampant and free without tying their genitals in a bow and shipping them off to a warmongering nation.

I have to believe that the issue here is with Fundamentalists. It’s an issue of brainwashing apparently, because what once was a quiet religious nation is now a raging river of “My God is right and your God needs to get out of my country and take you with him”. Today, there are people that truly believe that the nation should be and IS a Christian one.

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It’s Christmastime again. The tree is up and the lights are lit. The house is filled with decorations that sparkle and shine. The presents are wrapped (for the most part) and the celebration is ready to begin. The celebration, for many these days, is now something that is entirely commercial in nature. I, like many, have never viewed the Christmas holiday as something that was supposed to be about Jesus or any of the stories behind the Christian faith.

While there are stories of the birth of Jesus and the relation to Christmas trees because of Saint Boniface, I realized that even if these myths were true (they aren’t by the way)the spirit of Christmas really has little to do with these ideas. Christmas trees are decoration and presents are material goods that do not make a person’s life better or worse.

As a believer in Hellenic faith, I am not one to consider Christmas my celebration. It’s mainstream. I tend to celebrate Winter Solstice instead because that makes more sense to me. The Christmas tree and decorations may be considered a Christian concept, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, much like Jesus’ December birthday, it’s a fallacy.

Some believe that Jesus really was born on December 25 and others have looked to January 6. Others tend to look towards the spring and feel that those dates are more relevant. The Bible does not offer an actual date. However, I find December 25 and January 6 interesting for a number of reasons.

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