Deconversion in a nutshell | Douglas Wilhelm Hard

When indoctrinated with ideas like Heaven and Hell and eternal reward or eternal punishment, with claims that eternal rewards equates to eternal happiness, and eternal punishment equating to being burned alive for all time (or some variation thereunto), finally realizing that all of these stories are, like the Roman and Greek gods, nothing more than embellished myths, never-the-less still leaves individuals questioning whether or not this claim or that claim is true. The easiest approach is to understand that the Judean scriptures (the "Old Testament") is not a historical account, but rather a political, cultural and legal document. This is no different from any Greek narrative, which may contain both elements of reality and stories of fantasy.

To summarize the narrative, first civilization begins to expand from Adam and Eve (ignoring issues of inbreeding), but civilization is too evil, and so Yahweh kills everyone except for the family of Noah, as Noah "was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God." It seems that of all the descendants of Adam, there was one and only one that was sufficiently good in the eyes of this Yahweh. After the flood, which kills almost all men, women, children and unborn children in existence at the time, it seems that Noah and his family who lived through this flood were never-the-less unable to impress upon their descendants (again, ignoring the issues of inbreeding) to continue in their worship of Yahweh, and after only eleven generations, Yahweh decided again to choose one and only one individual by the name of Abram who lived in the city of Ur, a Mesopotamian city state then near the mouth of the Euphrates River. From this fertile and civilized region, Abram travels over one thousand kilometers to the Plateau of Benjamin, at a place called Bethel. Following this, he travels south to the Negev Desert, and then travels to Egypt and then returns to the Negev where he and his uncle Lot part ways. After this, Lot's two daughters get their father drunk and each has a child with him, and these would be the ancestors of the Ammonites and the Moabites, respectively. Abram, however, travels north to Hebron. At this point, Yahweh chooses Abram (just like he chose Noah): “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” Abram however, decides that his wife is too old so has a child Ishmael with his servant, and Ishmael becomes the ancestors of the Arabs. Fortunately, however, Abram has a child with his wife, and this child is Isaac. Abram, however, awkwardly enough, ended up living in the lands of the Philistines (awkward, as this is no later than 1900 BCE). Isaac then has two children, Esau and Jacob, and Esau does not receive his birthright and thus becomes the ancestor of the Edomites who lived in the south on the edge of the Negev (King Herod was from this tribe). Jacob, however, had twelve sons, one of whom is Judah, and they all went to Egypt, with Joseph living in the century between 1700 BCE and 1600 BCE, where for the next few centuries, the descendants of Jacob grew into a community of millions, but were reduced to slavery until Moses who lived somewhere between 1400 BCE to 1300 BCE (so three hundred years later) led them back to Canaan. The total number of men of twenty years old or older included 46500 + 59300 + 45650 + 74600 + 54400 + 57400 + 40500 + 32200 + 35400 + 62700 + 41500 + 53400 = 603 550, or over half-a-million adult men. This did not count Levites, adult women, or any children under the age of twenty. Not bad: going from twenty-four to likely over two million in less than four hundred years while being enslaved. After leaving Egypt, these two million people wandered in the desert for forty years before finally entering Canaan, which is odd given that the distance is less than 500 km. There, they lived as separate tribes until Saul and David who lived around 1000 BCE.

Thus, in a nutshell, we will contrast this narrative with the archeological evidence and observe that the Judean scriptures should not be read as a history, but as a political, cultural and legal document. During the Late Bronze Age, the largest empires in the Middle East were the Egyptians, the Hittites (in modern-day western Turkey and western Syria) and the Assyrians (in southern Mesopotamia) and the Mitanni (north of Assyria and modern-day eastern Turkey extending control towards the Syrian coast). Canaan was a land extending from the Jordan Rift Valley west to the Mediterranean Sea. The land was never the center of any significant empire, and instead was a hinterland that was was contested by the surrounding empires not only for its resources, but control of the overland trade routes between the Egyptian and Mesopotamia passed through these lands. The denizens of this land profited from the trade between the empires. Those living in this region where mostly Semitic Canaanites who populated the coastal regions and the areas around the Jordan River with lower population densities in the "central highlands". The intervening central highlands of Samaria and the mountains of Judea were less densely inhabited, with a large area within the Judean Mountains forming an even less populated Judean Desert. Many Canaanites lived in cities and settlements such as Jericho in the Jordan Rift Valley (supplied with a fresh-water spring producing 1000 gallons each minute), and there they grew crops, raised animals (including pigs), and caught fish and harvested other aquatic animals. Some nomadic pastoral Canaanites, however, chose to herd animals such as goats and sheep, and they would trade with the city and settlement dwellers for grains and other produce. It seems that even at this time, there were protectionist attitudes among these nomadic tribes: they banned the consumption of meat from animals that they could not raise themselves, including pigs and shellfish, and discouraged the purchasing of material for clothing other than wool, which they themselves already had plenty. For a nomadic people, such restrictions prevented the exodus of wealth to pay for such relative luxuries.

The Middle Kingdom of Egypt

As previously mentioned, Canaan was contested by the surrounding empires; however for context, we will start much earlier than the time of, for example, David, to the 2nd millennium BCE when individuals such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, Joshua and other charismatic non-hereditary military leaders are recorded to have lived. The Middle Kingdom was a reunification of Lower and Upper Egypt around 2030 BCE by Pharaoh Mentuhotep II. His 11th Dynasty (a sequence of pharaohs from the same family line) had controlled Upper Egypt since 2150 BCE and Mentuhotep II finally reconquered Lower Egypt in the 14th year of his reign. The 11th Dynasty, however, only lasted another forty years after which the 12th Dynasty ruled a united Egypt for almost two hundred years from 1991 BCE until 1802 BCE. The 13th Dynasty ruled a united Egypt until 1649 BCE, however, their control waned throughout that period.

The reunification of Egypt in 2030 BCE led to greater trade with other empires, which led to a return to the development of cities and city-states in Canaan, polities dependent on this trade. The second pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty, Senusret I, established a diplomatic presence in Canaan and Syria in the middle-1900s BCE. Approximately one hundred years later, Senusret III (also of the 12th Dynasty) launched military operations against the coastal regions of Canaan as well as against the city of Shechem, events described on the Sebek-khu Stele.

The Second Intermediate Periods

As time passed and political control was gradually lost during the 13th Dynasty, a Nubian seems to have established a separate 14th Dynasty in Lower Egypt, while the 13th Dynasty maintained control of Upper Egypt. This ended the unified period of the Middle Kingdom and led to the second intermediate period. In 1650 BCE, the 14th Dynasty was overthrown by a Canaanite ruler who established the 15th Dynasty, a dynasty that lasted approximately a century. In the middle of the captivity, dynasties are being overthrown, Lower and Upper Egypt are separated into separate petty kingdoms, and the pharaohs in Lower Egypt are, for one hundred years, Canaanites.

The New Kingdom

Pharaoh Ahmose I ruled Upper Egypt around 1550 BCE and attacked both Lower Egypt and Nubia, reunifying the country under one crown and establishing what is now described as the New Kingdom. Ahmose I sent forces into Canaan destroying cities likely with the intention of eliminating any threat from that region.

Comment

Note that the civil war in Egypt which led to the Second Intermediate Period occurred at approximately the same time as Jacob and his family migrating to Egypt, and thus, one may argue that it was the Canaanite pharaohs who placed the yoke of slavery on Jacob's descendants. The New Kingdom would have been established for two centuries before the events described in the Exodus.

The New Kingdom continued...

The New Kingdom contained a number of dynasties, but at all times, Lower and Upper Egypt were united under a single pharaoh. The New Kingdom existed from approximately 1550 BCE to 1069 BCE, and in this time, Egypt reached the apex of its political and territorial power. There are a number of interesting features of this era that should be of note. For example, Pharaoh Akhenaten (1353/1 to 1336/4 BCE) introduced monotheism with the worship of Aten, the sun god and analogous to Ra. With his passing, however, one of his successors, Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun (1332 – 1323 BCE) bringing a return to the older polytheistic worship, including that of Amun-Ra. Soon after this most famous pharaoh came Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE), one of much greater significance, for it is in his reign that an Egyptian army moved into Canaan and fought with the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh, a city 10 km south-west of modern day Homs in the direction of northern Lebanon. This battle resulted in the Eternal Treaty between the Egyptians and Hittites, and is the oldest recorded treaty known to date. This treaty put Canaan entirely within the control of Egypt.

With the Bronze Age Collapse, the empires in the Middle East began to decay or collapse entirely: In 1070 BCE, the New Kingdom in Egypt disintegrated and the area entered the Third Intermediate Period. The Hittite empire disappeared entirely. The Mitanni empire, too, was absorbed by the Assyrian empire. The Assyrian empire faired better, but also went into a period of decline. It is at this time that imperial control over Canaan and the surrounding lands ended, and so smaller independent kingdoms began to emerge. With the collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean, Greek-speaking migrants also headed east, unsuccessfully attacking Egypt, being defeated by Ramesses III (the last significant pharaoh of the New Kingdom), but managing to conquer Cyprus, the coastal areas northeast of the Sinai desert as well as other lands. Those Greeks living west of the Judean Mountains would become known as the Philistines. and between the Judean Mountains and Philistia was the contested foothills of the Shephelah (a name actually meaning lowlands, when considered relative to the Judean Mountains).

With the decline of imperial powers, so too declined the trade between those powers. Cities in Canaan lost their income and trade and thus, too, began to wane in their power. The nomadic herders lost their sources of trade and grain and thus, like they did in previous economic depressions (see Israel Finkelstein), began to migrate into the sparsely occupied Samarian Highlands and Judean Mountains between the Jordan River and the coastal plains. There, they began to grow crops of grain, grapes and olives, as well as continuing to maintain their flocks of goats and sheep.

It is out of these settled nomadic herders that larger tribes formed, with the wealthiest being in the Samarian Highlands where life was significantly easier than in the Judean Mountains. The tribe of Benjamin emerged at the meeting point of these two regions with the Judeans living in the more mountainous south. These people worshiped the supreme god 'El and his consort Asherah, the storm god Ba'al and his sister the goddess of hunting Anat, and the war god Yahweh. For the Judeans, perhaps the difficulty of living within the Judean Mountains and the Judean Desert, together with the constant conflicts with the Philistines with whom they fought over the more fertile foothills to the west of the Judean Mountains, the Shephelah, likely caused them to focus on the worship of their god of war, Yahweh (the Lord of Hosts).

The earliest narratives that were told by the people as they settled explained their origins and their relationship with the people around them. It was easiest to explain different tribes and kingdoms as being descendants of a single person. It is ironic that the people with whom they were most closely related genetically, the Canaanites living in the cities, also became their most immediate competition, and thus the historic narratives separated the nomadic herders from those living in the valleys going all the way back to being descendants of different sons of Noah. One son, Shem, became the ancestor of most Semitic tribes and any other tribe viewed favorably by the settled nomads; another son, Ham, was cursed (together with all his descendants for the horrible wrong of seeing his father, Noah-the-drunk, naked) and became the ancestor those with antagonistic relationships with the settled nomadic herders, and everyone else was a descendant of the third son, Japheth. The Greeks are recorded as descendants of Japheth, but the Philistines (also Greek) are now descendant's of Ham. The Egyptians are also designated as descendants of Ham and the Phoenicians (e.g., Jezebel) were also a Canaanite tribe, although one that would more quickly gain power due the proximity of its cities on the Mediterranean coast, establishing a kingdom that would last for a thousand years spreading many dozen colonies including Carthage throughout the Mediterranean. Humorously, some of the descendants of Shem were nevertheless insulted in these tales by having their names sake act in some ignoble manner: the Edomites were descendants of Esau (who lost his birthright to his scheming brother Jacob, so one may wonder why Yahweh would support someone who explicitly deceives his own father, Isaac, or perhaps deceiving your father actually does honor to him), while the Moabites and the Ammonites are the descendants of an incestuous relationship between Lot (a nephew of Abraham) and his two daughters. Abraham himself was said not to be originally from Canaan, but rather from Ur in Mesopotamia, and he migrated to Canaan, specifically to Hebron within the Judean Desert. Such tales of migration no doubt emphasized the difference between "us" and "them" (the other Canaanites).

Another purpose of narratives is to have the population support the existing ruling class, which includes the Judean aristocracy and Judean priests. While David may have been a chieftain of some significance in Judea at the time of his life, the cities of Judea where quite insignificant. It was in the northern Samarian Highlands that larger kingdoms emerged out of the tribes. One such king was Omri who managed to establish a significant kingdom and dynasty throughout Canaan. It was necessary, however, the emphasize the significance of the line of David, and the narratives supported the legitimacy of his rule, and not that of the Samarian kings. On numerous occasions, the narratives state that the line of David will rule "forever." The narratives also emphasized that obeying Yahweh was absolutely necessary for earthly prosperity, and the theme of riches and rewards and happiness being coupled with obedience occurs over and over throughout the narratives, and disobedience results in tragedy and punishment. The rules to be followed were said to form a covenant with the people of Judea.

As an aside, there is a humorous anachronism in the story of David and Goliath. The latter is described as wearing the armor of a Greek Hoplite; however, such tactics in warfare only emerged centuries after the events allegedly occurred. This does not suggest such events did not occur, it simply demonstrates that the author was writing many years after the events taking place.

The growth of Judea as a significant kingdom did not begin until the conquest of Samaria by the reestablished neo-Assyrian Empire, which was exercising dominance over Canaan again. Successive Assyrian Kings not only conquered Damascus and the Samarian Highlands, but also deported a significant portion of its population to other regions in the Assyrian Empire. This conquest of Samaria led to a significant migration south and it is estimated that the population of Jerusalem at this time grew by a factor of ten in less than fifty years. Now the narratives and tales had to somehow integrate these two people into one. The King of Judea at this time was Ahaz (732–716 BCE), and Judea became a client kingdom of the Assyrian Empire, thus ending a few hundred years of an independent political entity throughout the Judean Mountains. It would six hundred years before the Judeans reestablished their independence a second time with the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty in 140 BCE, an even shorter-lived independence of just over one century before Rome conquered the region in 37 BCE.

In order to integrate the Samarian refugees (who likely had more wealth and numbers) into the Judean society, the Samarian supreme god 'El became equated to Yahweh. Stories from both cultures were collected, harmonized, and combined. Even today, it is possible to see those passages in Genesis that originated from the Judeans and those that originated from the Samarians (those that refer to 'El likely originated from Samaria, while those describing Yahweh came from Judean narratives, and in some cases, both versions are told). The greatness of the Samarian King Omri was transferred to that of Solomon, a son of David, so the Kingdom of Omri becomes the Kingdom of Solomon; yet Solomon is a name that has never been seen outside of the Judean scriptures. Both David and Omri have had their names appear in the steles of other nations. Architecture originally attributed to Solomon has since been attributed to Omri.

Solomon, however, was a narrative tool used to emphasize that adherence to the worship of Yahweh led to wealth while deviation towards other gods led to punishment. The wealth of Solomon is fantastic, with Solomon allegedly receiving 22¾ metric tons of gold each year in tribute, and Solomon "made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone, and he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamores of the Shephelah". That gold and other wealth is lost when the kingdom of Solomon is split into two (displeasing Yahweh) and Jerusalem is allegedly attacked and plundered by the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I a few years after Solomon's alleged death. The only problem being that with such incredible wealth being lost to the Egyptians, one must wonder why Jerusalem is not even mentioned in Shoshenq's list of victories on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak. The knowledge of the Egyptian invasion gave the author of these narratives the ability to evaporate the previous great wealth of Solomon. Subsequent kings of both Samaria and Judea are simply judged based on their adherence to or deviation from the worship of Yahweh, with emphasis that those kings who worshiped Yahweh were successful and prosperous, while those who worshiped other gods suffered.

Another example of narratives being created to the benefit of the Judean aristocracy and priesthood was during the reign of King Josiah (640–609 BCE). Introduced during his reign was the second law or Deuteronomy, an allegedly lost book supposedly authored by Moses. This was used to centralize the worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem, thus financially benefiting both the aristocracy and the priesthood there. At this time, there was the slow disintegration of the neo-Assyrian Empire, and the emergence of a neo-Babylonian Empire. During the death of one of the pharaohs, this gave a few years window where Judea was essentially independent, and when Egypt went to attack the neo-Babylonians, Josiah decided to attack the Egyptians at Megiddo, a battle which the Judeans lost and Josiah was killed. The Egyptians, however, were not able to hinder the neo-Babylonian empire which would continue to grow.

The line of David, however, did continue, and the kings in Judea now found themselves again between empires trying to regain control of Canaan. The power vacuum that had had allowed the mountain kingdom to grow was gone, and now the rulers had to negotiate and choose sides. Ultimately, two of the kings (Jeconiah and then his uncle Zedekiah) chose poorly, and the more powerful neo-Babylonian Empire finally conquered the Judean Mountains in 588-586 BCE, and many of the aristocracy and priesthood were deported to Babylon.

Interestingly enough, however, this exile provided the opportunity for further incubation of religious ideas, as the exiles no longer had to deal with politics: they could focus on restructuring their narratives. Yahweh no longer was the god that Judeans were supposed to worship, but was now the only god. The first commandment, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me," should have been amended to indicate that there are no other gods, but the wording of that first commandment seems to have been too ingrained into their culture. This is also when Hebrew abandoned its more primitive alphabet most appropriate for engraving in stone and seeing it replaced by the imperial Aramaic alphabet.

It wasn't Yahweh who was protecting the nomadic Canaanite herders, but rather events that created a power vacuum that allowed numerous small kingdoms to emerge, and it was the reemergence of subsequent empires that once again reabsorbed these small kingdoms. Judea just happened to be at the meeting point of many of these Empires and it was partially geography that gave the kingdom some protection from the reemerging empires, but like many of the other kingdoms in Canaan (the Semitic civilization of Phoenicia being an exception), they were reabsorbed as the power vacuum evaporated.

What is most fascinating is that the narratives do not mention a Heaven or Hell to scare the Judeans into obedience. Instead, obedience to Yahweh (and his appointed rulers and priests) resulted in worldly gains, and disobedience resulted in worldly punishment or death. The concept of an afterlife is not mentioned in the narratives, for the priesthood and the aristocracy were only interested in loyalty and obedience throughout the lives of those they ruled. When Alexander the Great conquered Canaan and those lands were incorporated into one or another of the subsequent Greek empires that emerged following his death, those Judeans who were obedient to the covenant were punished or killed, and those who adopted the lifestyle and philosophies of the Greeks were rewarded. It was in this setting that some other form of reward for obedience was now necessary, and as the narratives were no longer controlled by an aristocracy or priesthood that had political power, the rewards no longer needed to be worldly. Instead, stories of an afterlife began to emerge, and one narrative was that at some point Yahweh would come to the earth he created, reestablish his kingdom, and all those who obeyed his word would be resurrected and once again live in bliss forever.

In another power vacuum following the weakening of the Greek Empires, the Judean kingdom was again able to exert its independence one more time, but it was not the Line of David that ruled this kingdom, but rather the Hasmonean Dynasty. After this, the kingdom was conquered by the Romans, and made a client kingdom of Rome under King Herod (who was an Edomite, or descendant of Esau, not Jacob), and then client states under his sons, until Samaria, Judea, and Edom were finally absorbed as a Roman province in 7 CE, setting up the groundwork for a subsequent religion to emerge, but that is discussed elsewhere.

You will note that there is no mention of a flood, or of the Tower of Babel, or of an exodus from Egypt, or other fantastic events. Even the original Temple was likely not built by Solomon but by a Samarian king, and the Temple was by no means unique: other and older temples in the Levant had the same design.

Much of this is supported by the archeological studies of Israel Finkelstein, whose books you should read, but as a start to ending one's indoctrination by those who would benefit from your weekly tithing, understanding that the Judean scriptures are a political document and understanding the actual history and context of Judea as a kingdom certainly helps. There are certainly true and interesting facts recorded in the Judean scriptures, but much is embellished for the benefit of the Judean aristocracy and priesthood. In reading the narratives of other peoples, one would immediately observe the ornamentations added, for example, with kings claiming being the offspring of gods or in other cases being gods themselves; however, when one is brought up from an early age being told that this particular set of narratives is actually true and having this belief reinforced week after week without ever being told the actual context, it certainly makes it more difficult to end ones beliefs; however it is possible. This author had fears of Heaven and Hell's existence for years, and others who have left such indoctrination have also experienced such fears, and it is these fears that have allowed such religions to keep its followers for thousands of years. However, finally understanding the actual context and actual events, as opposed to those narratives that were recorded, makes it much more obvious that such narratives existed for the benefit of the Judean aristocracy and priesthood, and subsequently these narratives were usurped by and used for the benefit of other ruling classes and priesthoods. The narrative of obedience is definitely one that benefits a ruling class.

Christian apologists make many claims about their scriptures that are supposed to support the supernatural character of Jesus. Let's look at a few:

The scriptures contain verifiable names, places and events, and therefore the entire scripture must be correct. This is absurd as saying that because the Iliad and the Odyssey contain verifiable names, places and events, therefore everything in those must also be true, including cyclopes.
There is so much evidence in the Christian scriptures that even today, if this were presented in a court of law today, it would be upheld. This is as as there is even more, and clearer, evidence in each and every Sherlock Holmes story, that if that information was presented in a court of law today, it would be upheld.
Science today cannot explain the start of the universe, the start of life, and the start of consciousness, therefore there must have been a supernatural entity behind this. Observe that four thousand years ago, and in some cases, hundreds of years ago, there were many phenomena not understood by humans and attributed to a god or the gods. As time and science progressed, everything else became known, and these three are the remaining unknowns. First, ask the believer who claims these are the reasons that there must be a god if they will renounce their god if science discovers, for example, the likely mechanism for life, or the likely transition from animal consciousness to human consciousness. Then consider how many phenomena used to be attributed to a god, the gods, witches, devils, spirits, etc., and then 1) ask yourself how likely is it that once all these were explained through natural mechanisms, 2) ask yourself why, when oddities in the universe were discovered, did no scientists propose the hand of god, but rather, proposed dark energy and dark matter, and 3) then then ask yourself that these three holdouts really truly are the last three bastions requiring supernatural intervention:
1. The change of seasons was unknown;
  today, and a thousands of years ago, it was recognized that a year was approximately 365 days, and then 365.25 days.
2. The movement of the Sun and the Moon could only be explained by supernatural means, sometimes requiring daily human sacrifices to ensure the Sun would "rise";
  today, the heliocentric (1543) model of the Solar System and gravity (1666) explain this.
3. The seasons were unexplained;
  today, we know that it is due to the tilt of the Earth.
4. Tides were caused by water gods;
  today, we know they are due to gravity and the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, and to a lesser extent, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
5. The Sun was often thought of as an embodiment of a god, as was the Moon;
  two hundred years ago, we thought heat of the Sun was from combustion (like fire);
  today, we know that the heat and light of the Sun come from nuclear fusion.
6. The structure of the Earth was unknown, and created, possibly land between the waters above and the waters below, or the back of a turtle;
  today, we know there is a molten core, and a solid crust.
7. Volcanoes were unknown curses by the gods, often being used by shamen and priests to intimidate society;
  today, we know that they are ruptures in the crust where molten rock and superheated gases escape.
8. The cause of rain was unknown, although the correlation with clouds was likely known;
  today, we know about the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, and precipitation together with the adiabatic lapse rate.
9. Thunder and lightning were punishments from god, a god (Thor) or the gods;
  today, we understand the electromagnetic force.
10. The cause of illnesses were unknown, and often curses from god or the gods, or witches, or demons;
  today, we know that the primary causes of illness are viruses, bacteria, or genetic abnormalities (cancer).
11. Earthquakes, like volcanos, were also punishment from god or the gods;
  today, we know that they are the result of plate tectonics and movements of these plates.
12. The cause of fire was unknown, although humans learned, over time, how to create and sustain it;
  today, we know it is due to heat causing combustion: a chemical reaction where oxygen combines with carbohydrates creating the lower state carbon dioxide and water, the original building blocks of life.
13. The diversity of life was explained by each species being created;
  today, we know that all species evolved from single-celled organisms, and all vertebrates evolved from a single species containing a proto-vertebrae.
14. Venomous snakes and other animals were seen as creatures of punishment by god or the gods or embodiments of evil spirits;
  today, we know that venom is an adaptation to survive due to natural selection.
15. Men were seen as different and superior to women;
  today, we know the evolutionary pressures for more testosterones in men than in women, and we know the benefits of sexual reproduction.
16. Procreation was hardly understood, in plants or in humans, and often attributed to divine intervention, and infertility being seen as curses or punishments by god, the gods, or witches;
  today, we understand how sexual reproduction works.
17. Metallurgy was not well understood, and it was believed that there were means of turning common materials into rare ones, such as gold;
  today, we have the atomic theory of matter and understand that converting iron into gold is impossible without incredible amounts of energy.
18. Cures often involved placebos and claims of magic and divine intervention and more recently pseudoscience;
  today, we understand chemistry and human physiology, and while medicine is not perfect, it is much better than it used to be.
The disciples died horrible deaths: why would anyone "die for a lie"? The issue here is that many Jews at that time believed in some sort of afterlife, even if this is not supported by the Torah or any of the other Judean scriptures without interesting interpretations. If you believe that doing something will grant you greater rewards in the life hereafter, then you would potentially die for what you believe. The problem is, while church history records what happened to the disciples, the life of most disciples after Jesus's execution is not mentioned anywhere in the Christian scriptures. While Simon Peter is mentioned most often, not only by the author of Luke and Acts, but also by Paul, let us look at the other disciples:
1. Andrew is only referenced once in the first chapter of the book of Acts, and that is at a gathering of the disciples following the execution. Nothing he did is mentioned thereafter, and Paul never refers to him, neither does James, the brother of Jesus. The "Acts of Andrew" is a third-century forgery that purports to describe the miracles of Andrew; however, the claim of authenticity of this book has been rejected. The author of this book on Andrew, written hundreds of years after his life, appears to not have heard that Andrew was crucified upside-down on an X-shaped cross, as it has Andrew being tied to a cross similar in style to that Jesus was nailed to. This absence of any reference to Andrew is peculiar, as Andrew the first person to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, the day after his baptism.
2. James, the brother of John and the son of Zebedee, is mentioned exactly once, and this is only with respect to his death. In Acts 12, it says "About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword." Paul does not mention James.
3. John, the brother of James and son of Zebedee, is mentioned more often: In Acts 3, he together with Simon Peter cures a man who was lame from birth. In Acts 4, John appears together with Simon Peter in front of what is likely the Sanhedrin. Finally, in Acts 8, it mentions a journey of Simon Peter and John to Samaria, just north of Judea. Recall that the Samaritans (a significant proportion of the population of Samaria) are a sect of Judaism that believe that holiest site is Mount Gerizim in Samaria, and not the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As John was, with reasonable certainty, the disciple who Jesus loved, it does not seem unreasonable that John actually continued to continue preaching the message of Jesus, yet his death is not mentioned.
4. Like Andrew, Philip, despite being disciples of Jesus since the second day after his baptism, is not mentioned after the gathering of disciples after the execution of Jesus. Another Philip is mentioned, but this second Philip is one associated with Stephen. As with Andrew, there are forgeries, such as "Letter of Peter to Philip" and the "Acts of Philip."
5. Bartholomew (likely Nathanael in the gospel of John) is also not mentioned anywhere after the gathering of disciples after the execution of Jesus. Centuries after his life, there were claims that he had traveled to India, to Armenia, to Ethiopia, etc., and yet there is no mention of him in Acts or by Paul. There are three different and conflicting stories about how this disciple died.
6. Thomas, ...
7. Matthew, ...
8. James, ... etc.
As for the claim that why would someone die for a belief, numerous individuals have done so, and their deaths are not counted towards the veracity of these beliefs.
1. The easiest are the martyrs for Islam, including the dozens who flew themselves into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
2. Thirty nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult died believing their death would transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial being and that they would enter heaven.
3. Many members of the Order of the Solar Temple committed suicide.
4. Kamikaze pilots killed themselves believing this to be for the benefit of the divine Imperial Emperor.
5. Millions fought for National Socialism in the Second World War, and thousands committed suicide in the final month of the war.
6. The defenders of Masada killed themselves rather than submit to the Romans. These were Sicarii, those wielding daggers, who were an offshoot of Jewish Zealotry.
7. The Order of Assassins, part of Ismaili Shia Islam, were individuals who would over years or even decades integrate themselves into their enemies' camps in order to assassinate a single person.
Claims of "but our scriptures predicted this or that scientific discovery" are common in Christianity and Islam. Vague passages that could possibly be interpreted in such a way to describe known scientific facts are touted as being evidence that the scriptures are correct. The reality is that such apologists completely ignore those verses or pericopes that contradict science (such as showing a striped stick to mating goats causes those goats to produce offspring with stripes, or an olive tree being able to survive a forty days underwater with currents so strong that they would have almost certainly have ripped such trees out by the roots long before the water got up to the top of Mount Everest) and focus on obscure readings. What would be useful is if the scriptures actually predicted something and followers went out and made a new discovery. It is always easy to look at scriptures after a scientific fact is known and try to find a single verse out of over 30,000 or 6000 (depending on your text) that possibly, under correct interpretation, parallels that scientific discover. Has any verse from Judean, Christian or Islamic scriptures ever spurred one of its followers to actually discover something that was previously entirely unknown? I know of no such cases.

Here is a nice series of questions:

Suppose there were one hundred people trapped in a burning building, but the entrance is blocked. You're outside that building and you have the option of watching the fire continue to burn, or you can remove (or at least try to remove) whatever is blocking the entrance. Would you do what you could to remove whatever is blocking the entrance? If you knew someone else in a similar situation could have removed whatever was blocking the entrance, and that person chose not to, would you consider that person to be moral?
Suppose you had the same situation in Point 1, but you were watching another person remove whatever was blocking the entrance, but that person then decides to only allow those people out who are his friend. That person deliberately pushes back anyone else who is not his friend and leaves those people to die in the flames. Would you consider such a person moral?
Now, what is the criteria for going to hell?
1. According to some doctrines, you are conceived in sin. Consequently, the soul of a spontaneously aborted fetus is immediately sent to hell. This is not an abortion, but rather, a natural consequence of fertilization: up to 50% of fertilized eggs are spontaneously aborted, meaning that for every human alive, there is another soul that is burning in hell because it did not get the opportunity to become the "friend" of Yahweh.
2. Suppose that this is too distasteful and too immoral, that a soul, on par with you and me, which for whatever reason, did not even get the chance to make it out of the womb, should be sent to hell to be burned for eternity. In that case, you may say that such souls go to heaven because they did not have the opportunity to become a "friend" of Yahweh. The next option is to push the border to birth. Infants were baptized soon after they were born, and if that infant was stillborn, or very sick, even those delivering the child were authorized to perform a baptism, which would allow the child to go to heaven. Without baptism, it was believed the infant would go to hell, so even stillborn infants were baptized, as if an action after the death and passing of the soul could somehow mitigate the sin that that infant contained. This, too, was too distasteful, so the concept of "limbo" was introduced, but then it was later rejected. There is no uniform doctrine as to what happens to infants who have not yet sinned.
3. Suppose the very idea that an infant might not make it into heaven as being too distasteful and too immoral; however, if you are Catholic, you are stuck with "original sin," so return to the previous point. Thus, it is only after one has actually committed a "sin" that the child is doomed to hell without redemption. Clearly, the easiest sin that a child may commit would be the last of the first ten: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Today, over 100 people die every minute, and so, conservatively, one five-year old dies every two minutes. Thus, suppose that there one day during which a child is completely innocent and "sin-free" until that child finally commits his or her first "real" sin; perhaps the child sees a toy their friend is playing with and covets it: the horrible sin of thought crime. Consequently, twice a day, a child has died on the very same day that child first committed a sin. Even better, once a decade, statistically speaking, a child dies within a minute of having committed that first sin. Had the child died sixty seconds before that lustful look after her neighbor's doll, that child would be going to heaven, but now that child is going straight to hell: Yahweh cannot tolerate sin in his presence, and thought-crime is a sin.
4. Note that doing something immoral is not a crime: there is no commandment forbidding one from punching one's neighbor hard enough to hurt, but not that hard that your neighbor dies; but coveting your neighbor's new four-wheel drive truck is certainly a sin. Lying is not a sin, either. Causing an abortion is a sin, but the penalty is just a monetary payment to the father. Wearing clothing of mixed fabrics is definitely a sin, but wearing a $10,000 designer wig is certainly not. Coveting that wig, however, is most certainly a sin.
With the thought crime of coveting, it is quite certain that children fall into sin at a very early age, and from the above calculation, there are a lot of children in hell right now who have only committed a single sin in their entire lives. If you accept that all unbaptized infants that die go to hell, there are many, many more.
Thus, Yahweh is standing in front of the gates of hell, and it would be easier for him to release all the souls burning in hell. Although, what would they feel, as pain from being burned is a consequence of physical nerves--do souls have nerves, too? This is not some trivial short-lived falling-off-a-bicycle pain, this is being burned for eternity, at least according to the claim. I challenge any follower of Jesus to hold a candle under their arm for one minute, and then ask what would they do if they saw another person experiencing ten times that suffering in a house fire, assuming there was a chance you could do something to help that person. Yahweh could do the same, but apparently, he refuses.
The regular claim is that Yahweh set down the rules, or it requires the "blood" of Jesus or some sacrificial lamb to purify oneself to be allowed into the presence of Yahweh. This used to make sense to me when I was a Baptist, but right now it seems absolutely absurd. If Yahweh is all-powerful, he does not need the blood of his own body to "wash away" the sins of one billion people, but to then condemn another twenty billion to everlasting torment.
Indeed, Yahweh does tolerate evil in his presence, for we know that in the book of Job, Yahweh was speaking with Satan. If Yahweh can tolerate the presence of Satan, and have a dialog with that fallen angel, should he not be able to bear the presence of a child that has sinned but once? Here is the story in Job, and oddly enough, it is a rather dark conversation:

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before Yahweh, and the Satan also came among them.

Yahweh said to the Satan, “Where have you come from?”

The Satan answered Yahweh, “From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.”

Yahweh said to the accuser, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.”

Then the Satan answered Yahweh, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.”

Yahweh said to the Satan, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!”

So the Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

If Yahweh can have casual conversations with Satan, why is he so worried about a child that has sinned once, or perhaps twice, or even coveted ten different toys from nine different friends? (Incidentally, the book of Job anachronistically refers to Chaldeans and Sabaeans, kingdoms that did not exist until after the Bronze Age Collapse, centuries after the setting in which this book allegedly occurs.)

Note, the smaller the number of people in a religion or a sect, the more power Satan must have, at least within the beliefs of that religion or sect. If your religion has only 100,000 members (think Old Order Mennonites, some of whom believe most others are going to Hell), then all those others eight billion who are not following Yahweh's instructions are all under Satan's influence: Satan is able to corrupt 80,000 people for every one follower of the true faith. If a cult has only a hundred followers, they must believe Satan must be even more powerful: 80 million people are being corrupted by Satan for each member of this small handful of believers who have had the "truth" revealed to them; they are truly special and chosen, like Noah and his family.

I was speaking to someone from my old church, and he asked me whether or not I wanted to have a "personal relationship" with Yahweh. I have personal relationships, and I have some very good friends, and I don't need a friend who will get out a flamethrower if I decide I no longer want to be his friend.