Azrael Ondi-Ahman: Boise, Idaho's self-proclaimed prophet...with a twist

http://www.truegnosticchurch.org/index.html

Did you know that Boise, Idaho has its own self-proclaimed prophet? Azrael Ondi-Ahman (aka Archie Dean Wood) was apparently commissioned (yes, commissioned) as a result of a direct conversation with "God" to write what appears to be a new 842 page religious scripture entitled "The Song of God," not to be confused with "The Bhagavad Gita: The Divine Song of God." You can read the story for yourself at his website:

"On June 19, 1979, deep in the Uinta Wilderness Area of Utah, Azrael was confronted by the real-life, physical appearance of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. It was a physical event governed by physical law; had you been there, you would have seen what Azrael saw."

"While Azrael first saw God in June, 1979, the official commission to write the Song of God wasn’t given until seven years later, on June 19, 1986. Shortly after, Azrael began writing what would become the first book in the Song of God: the book of Beginnings. Twenty-one years later, on November 14, 2007, Azrael completed the last chapter of scripture contained in the Song of God (see Wisdom 29)."

"With the publishing of the Song of God, Azrael has restored, for the first time in 2,000 years, the True Gnostic Church - originally created by the Galilean known as Yeshua Ben Yosephy."

Skeptics may dismiss Azrael as yet another self-delusional lunatic in the string of all others in religious history, who have invented their own religions and dogma as the requisite "middle men" between the Supreme Being and the flock. Mainstream Christians, Muslims, and Jews may write him off as yet another egomanical and self-righteous Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russell type character who was disgruntled with cookie-cutter Christianity and so deemed it necessary to create a new and improved religion. And many others, including those previously mentioned, may suspect that Azrael took a bit too much LSD or "magic mushrooms", or fasted to the point of hallucinating, before venturing into the Uinta Wilderness Area of Utah.  However, there is something interesting lurking beneath the absurdity of Azrael's self-appointed prophesy and all the talk about the "True Gnostic Church" and the "Heavenly Father and Mother."  

First of all, if we review Azrael's "Basic Beliefs" or "Credo of the True Gnostic Church" what we discover is something far removed from the three mainstream monotheisms: 

• Humanity is the center of religion (belief #1)
• God is a human being (belief #2)
• It is morally wrong to kill in the name of religion (belief #3)
• Evolution and natural selection are valid principles from which God arises (beliefs #4 and #5)
• The material world is not evil (belief #6)
• Jesus Christ is a theoretical construct, not who he is claimed to be by Christians (belief #15)
• Scientific inquiry is a worthy goal, provided it is guided by morality (belief #18)
• Sexual expression is not a sin (belief #21)
• There will be no Armageddon or Apocalypse (belief #22)

If we strip away all the lingo about God, faith, worship, and holiness, there are some core ideas in Azrael's Credo that resonate with the principles of secular humanism. In this sense, crackpot or not, he appears to be onto something more sophisticated than our archaic Yahweh based monotheisms.

But it gets better. If we turn to the Study Guide of his "Song of God" we find another set of fascinating principles. First, in Section I we find definitions, and presumably prescriptions for the religion, of a scientific hypothesis, law, and theory. Ockham’s Razor is even called out, which we would be hard pressed to see in other religious systems.  On top of this, in Section II we find the same treatment of a set of logical rules, such as the laws of identity, non-contradiction, and exclude the middle, and then a completely surprising application of these principles to the Judeo-Christian Bible, demonstrating what secular humanists have been saying and demonstrating all along, namely that the Bible is crammed full of contradictions. In section III, the Study Guide gets even more philosophical with a basic description of four common theories of knowledge: correspondence, coherence, pragmaticism, and aesthetic.  In Section IV, Azrael explains faith as rooted in reason, and basically depicts his quote on the top of the web page, "Reason without faith is blind, and faith without reason is dangerous."  Finally, in Section V, we see a dictate that religion must encourage scientific inquiry with the ultimate goal of reducing human suffering from "natural evil" (natural disasters, disease, etc).  This is truly fascinating, and if we dig deeper, we find that The Song of God preaches against the enslavement and degrading of women (as has been done by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), and is in fact very anti-Christian in all the right ways.

However, all these surprises aside, Azrael's new religion oversteps itself , like most all religions, and contradicts what secular humanists argue and validate, namely that belief in god(s) and religion are entirely unnecessary for human beings to be rational, reasonable, and moral beings. Despite the encouraging principles underling The Song of God, we do not need religion, gods, and especially an 800 page Bible to evolve and improve as a species. Azrael accurately depicts the outdatedness of the three main monotheisms, but instead of admitting the obvious, he constructs yet another religion based on god(s), and violates the very principle he preaches, which is Ockham’s Razor. Of course, whether we are speaking of Azrael, Joseph Smith, Moses, Mohammad, or any of the Old Testament prophets, since when have the self-delusional and egocentric inventors of religion been able to truly adhere to Ockham’s Razor? The question is, does Azrael truly belief that he spoke to God? If he does not, then he is a spiritual charlatan. If he did, then this would explain his passion and dedication toward his new religion - although it does not remove him from the eye of skeptical scrutiny, given that we've heard his "story" many times before from a different time and place.

Moreover, at least Azrael makes one step in the right direction, which is that he has embraced science and logic (in principle, but not entirely in practice), the absurdities of our three main monotheisms, and has ousted God and Jesus Christ from their metaphysical/spiritual pedestals, positioning God as a human and  product of natural evolution. In this case, we can at least charge Azrael for having confused the figments of his imagination with a empirically verifiable deity. 

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