Ricky D. Gervais (/jər-VAYZ/) was born June 25, 1961, and is an English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and starred in the British TV sitcoms The Office (2001–2003), Extras (2005–2007), and Life's Too Short (2011–2013) with Stephen Merchant.
He also created, wrote, and starred in Derek (2012–2014) and After Life (2019–2022).[1] Gervais was also executive producer of and had cameos in the American rendition of The Office (2005–2013). Gervais has received various accolades including seven British Academy Television Awards, five National Comedy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Satellite Award, and the Rose d'Or twice (2006 and 2019). In 2003, The Observer named Gervais one of the 50 funniest performers in British comedy [2].
In 2007, he was placed at No. 11 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups [3] and at No. 3 in their 2010 list [4]. In 2010, he was included in the Time 100 list of World's Most Influential People [5]. More
Christianity (particularly the most popular form of it, i.e., Roman Catholicism) unravels; thank Goodness for Barry Spinoza.
What you need me to be, I'll be.
(Spinoza Forever) Amsterdam, 1677: Scholar and investigative researcher Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch Spinoza) discovered multiple lines of compelling evidence for Jesus Christ's paternity and found out who his real biological father was -- not Joseph, not a deified virgin birth.
It was all documented then covered up. The Jews knew who he was and who his father and family were. Jews condemned Spinoza, and the Christian Church denounced and excommunicated Spinoza for spilling the beans of a covered-up truth.
Jewish texts because people knew him at the time before Caesar's Messiah became a Roman psyops to control the population of a growing empire, one acceptable to Gentiles as well as Jews.
A Roman record of Jesus's execution still exists — and it challenges three Gospel details: The earliest non-Christian historical sources include Tacitus, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and there's archeological evidence. The Roman historical record can be compared with the Gospel narratives surrounding Jesus's torture crucifixion. There are three major details where these accounts diverge, including the historical portrayal of Pontius Pilate, the political nature of crucifixion torture under Roman law, and the absence of extraordinary events in Roman records. Let's examine multiple historical sources side by side and consider how different authors, cultures, and purposes shaped the stories that have come down to us. Inspired by Spinoza's method of reading scripture through historical inquiry, this episode encourages open-minded investigation, critical thinking, and respectful discussion.
Construction of myth of Jesus, who was born in occupied Palestine
Yeshu Ben Pantera (named in the Babylonian Talmud). Biological father: Roman Centurion Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, Roman soldier of the first Cohort of Arches, station between Years 6-9 CE. Mother: Young (15?) Jewish girl with an awkward imperial pregnancy on her hands. St. Paul never mentions any virgin birth. The great shame was that Mary was assaulted, violated by a soldier.
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I need Jesus to be the forgiver of sin
"Jesus Christ" was a human creation for power and imperial control. That is why the largest religion in the world is Universalism (spelled Roman Catholicism).
Jesus was transformed from a wise Jewish (likely JuBu) philosopher to a "God" in the Greco-Roman sense of "god" that people were accustomed to.
This necessitated an astrotheological "virgin birth" or something extraordinary to distinguish Jesus (a "son of god" or devaputra, lit. "offspring of heavenly devas") from mere humans ("sons of men").
Need confirmation by a contemporary biblical scholar?
Jesus was the invention of a Roman emperor named Julius Caesar. Atwill breaks ground to reveal "Caesar’s Messiah," making him out to be the savior of the world commanded from on high so that everyone would accept imperial rule.
This is the key to a revolutionary understanding of the origin of Christianity, explaining what the New Testament is, who the real Jesus is, and how Christ's "second coming" already occurred.
The clues leading to these startling conclusions are found in the writings of the first-century Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, whose Wars of the Jews is one of the only historical chronicles of this period.
Closely comparing the work of Josephus with the New Testament Gospels, Caesar’s Messiah demonstrates that the imperial Romans directed the writing of both.
Their purpose: to offer a vision of a “peaceful Messiah” [Maitreya come again] who would serve as an alternative to the revolutionary leaders who were rocking first-century Israel and threatening Rome.
Similarly, Caesar’s Messiah rocks readers' understanding of Christian history when it reveals that Jesus was a fictional character portrayed in four Gospels written by Romans not Christians.
The Flavian Signature edition adds Atwill’s latest discoveries of numerous parallel events in sequence, which ultimately reveal the identity of the true authors of the Christian Gospels.
Spinoza's ancestors, who were crypto-Jews, faced persecution during the Portuguese Inquisition, including torture and public displays of humiliation.
In 1597, his paternal grandfather's family left Vidigueira for Nantes and lived outwardly as New Christians [27], which in Spain might be referred to as conversos, eventually transferring to Holland [28]. His maternal ancestors...and his maternal grandfather was a merchant who drifted between Judaism and Christianity [30].
Baruch Spinoza was a Jew, not any kind of atheist.
In 1675, a Jewish friend and possibly a former pupil of Spinoza named Albert Burgh wrote to Spinoza, repudiating his teachings and announcing his own conversion to the Catholic Church.
Burgh attacked Spinoza's findings and views as expressed in the Theological-Political Treatise and tried to persuade him to embrace Roman Catholicism.
In response, Spinoza...wrote an angry letter mocking the Catholic Church and condemning all religious superstition [117]. More
Anyone not convinced should read Forged about the writing of what Christians today call "the Bible" by Prof. Bart D. Ehrman. Yeah, but who is Ehrman?
Dr. Bart Ehrman, Ph.D., is an American biblical scholar whose research focuses on the historical Jesus, the textual criticism of the New Testament of the Bible, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He is a distinguished professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author or editor of more than 30 books, including six NY Times bestsellers, and the creator of nine lecture series with The Great Courses.
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
I bow to thine empty Roman torture device and think what I get out of it. Thanks, God!
He reveals which books in the Bible’s New Testament were not passed down by Jesus Christ’s disciples but were instead FORGED by other hands—and he explains why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit.
A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Princeton Prof. Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Prof. Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial—yet least discussed—problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship.
In this provocative work of biblical criticism, Prof. Ehrman separates history from tradition to reveal:
Ancient Forgery: Which New Testament books were written by anonymous authors who lied about their identity? Why does this scandal matter for modern faith?
Historical Methods: Techniques biblical scholars use to detect pseudepigraphyis how we can know who really wrote the books of the Bible.
Early Christian Conflicts: How internal debates and struggles with outsiders led different groups to create documents in the names of apostles like Peter and Paul (a Jew named Saul) to authorize their own views.
Lost Scriptures: An eye-opening look at non-canonical texts like the Gospel of Peter and 3 Corinthians, and what they tell us about the world of biblical forgery. More
In Paul of Tarsus, Joseph Holzner weaves together the New Testament Bible's often sketchy information about the life and mission of Saul of Tarsus, now called St. Paul by Pauline Christians, into a unified and inspiring hagiography.
With a novelist's ability to take readers into a scene and a historian's rigorous concern for accuracy, Holzner traces this Jewish Apostle's life from his early years as a disciple of the celebrated Rabbi Gamaliel through his overly zealous persecution of the Christian Assembly or "church" as a member of the competing Jewish school called the Pharisees, through his "miraculous" origin story conversion on the road to Damascus, his seemingly tireless efforts to spread the Gospel [of the newly minted Ceasar's Messiah, formerly Jesus the Nazarene not from any place called "Nazareth"], and his Christian martyr's death at the hands of his former bosses in imperial Rome.
Along the way, Holzner provides instructive background information about the religious and social situation of Saul's times and the circumstances of his New Testament letters (epistles). Here, then, is a complete and enlightening introduction to the Apostle to the Gentiles aka "the Converter of the Non-Jews" to this new much less Jewish Roman Empire-approved Universalist religion, the new opium of the masses]. More
Burn heretics for saying what we don't like!
John the Apostle with Marcion
Marcion preached that the benevolent God [the "One," the Monad] of the Gospel who sent Jesus (Yeshua) into this world as a "savior" was the true [omniscient, omnipotent] Supreme Being.
That unknowable, unfathomable, impersonal [Brahman-type GOD] is different and opposed to the malevolent Christian creator deity, the Demiurge [the "Craftsman" called Yaldabaoth], identified as Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH in the Hebrew Bible [3, 4, 6].
He allegedly considered himself a follower of Saul of Tarsus or Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus [3, 4], Ceasar's Messiah.
Thank you, Marcion, for creating the 1st Bible
Marcion's canon, the FIRST Christian Bible (biblical canon of which books to include) ever compiled. It consisted of 11 books: the Gospel of Marcion, which was a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke, and ten Pauline epistles [3, 4, 7].
Marcion's canon rejected the entire Old Testament, the crazed Jewish compilation (Sumerian appropriation) of a genocidal henotheistic "God" called Jehovah and his jealous and unhinged exploits, along with all other epistles and gospels of what would become the 27-book canon of the New Testament, which during his life had yet to be compiled [3, 4, 8, 9].
Let's find this heretic and crucify him.
"Marcion-ism" was denounced by its opponents as heresy and written against by the Church Fathers – notably by Tertullian in his five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion) in about the Year 208 [3, 4].
Marcion's writings are lost [banned, buried, burned, destroyed], even though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed at one time [3, 4].
Even so, many scholars say it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning him [3, 4, 10].
I'm your creator! Worship me...or else!
The movement was widespread, which forced rival sects to begin throwing up defenses. Marcionites founded churches across the Roman Empire. Their eventual decline is attributed to state intervention by later imperial edicts banning all groups deemed heretical from assembling [11].
Marcion of Sinope (Ancient Greek Μαρκίων [2, Note 1] Σινώπης (c. 85–c. 160 [3]) was a theologian [4] in early Christianity [4, 5].
Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was distinct from the vengeful God (Demiurge, the misbegotten son of Sophia Yaldabaoth, Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH) who had created this physical world [4, 5, 6] or simulated reality. More
Will the world end? How will the world end? When will the world end? Why will the world end? Questions, questions. Of course, the world will end. Not any time soon, but never mind about that. It's always ending, constantly hurtling towards destruction. "Change is the only constant," some wise person once said. That person was talking about what the Buddha called anicca. We translate this as "impermanence," but that's very limited and misleading. We prefer flux, dissolution, or radical impermanence, though "change" also works.
The idea is that, that something will change is no kind of message to the world. Of course, things are impermanent. We all know that. Only a child would think things are going to stay the same. (Guilty! And we're old enough to know better). It might be better to investigate how things are going to change because that sort of explains the why. The when is easy! Right now. Now. The eternal now. When is a mountainside not crumbling? Even as geological forces send it up, it is already disintegrating. When aren't human cells dying? They are always dispatching and falling off. That's what it means to have a body, though we don't much notice, know, or want to know.
How are things changing? Little by little until they give way to a noticeable amount. The more closely we investigate and notice, the more and more we become aware of when and how this is happening. It can become so upsetting that we stop clinging. Why, being ourselves impermanent, would we chase and cling to impermanent things?
Once upon a time, the Buddha was walking along the river and he came upon 1,000 fire worshippers with their matted locks or jatas, wandering ascetics in search of truth. They saw him and were moved by his gravitas, charisma, and appearance. He himself was a wandering ascetic but a Scythian (Shakyian) from the West, serene, and delightful to look upon. What could he possibly have to say about ultimate truth? See "The Fire Sermon."
The Roman Empire REMOVED the "True" Jesus to control Christians
(Prof Jiang Explains) June 25, 2026: Mainstream Christianity doesn't want us to know the real Jesus (Y'shua, Kristos, the Anointed One, Saint Issa, Isa).
Discovered in 1945, the [Lost] Gospel of Thomas reveals a radically different Jesus whose teachings were suppressed by the Roman-backed Catholic ["Universalist"] Church.
This ancient text exposes a profound truth: the divine spark resides within each of us, making us all "sons of the living [sky] father," directly challenging hierarchical church control.
Prof. Jiang Xuehin delves into these revolutionary teachings, drawing parallels to Plato's Allegory of the Cave and other ancient wisdom [and ancient Gnostic] traditions.
Jesus' true message wasn't about blind faith or external salvation. It was about inner knowledge, self-mastery, and the rejection of material intoxication.
He saw organized religion and the pursuit of worldly power as distractions, keeping humanity from recognizing its own inherent divinity and interconnectedness.
Uncover the shocking truth behind the "official" narrative. Learn why Jesus opposed the religious authorities of his time and taught that seeking knowledge, even if it means questioning established "gods," is the path to true fulfillment and spiritual awakening.
This clip will change everything viewers thought they knew about the foundations of Christianity and our place in the universe.
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