Even atheism depends on God

God, Yin/yang, or What

***********************************************== =CATH-PROT- MONGRELIZATION=== EVEN ATHEISM DEPENDS ON GOD
=== KETCHUP ON HOMOGENIZED RELIGION
=== UNHOLY KNOWLEDGE
=== JEWISH/MUSLIM/CHRISTIAN SYNDROME
=== OH GOD
=== THE FROZEN ZERO
=== ALLAH IS GREAT
=== WHY DIDN'T JC WRITE
=== I DISTORT, THEREFORE I AM
=== OLYMPUS AND HEAVEN
=== MAN, JUSTICE AND GOD
=== SURRENDER TO DISGUISE

****************************************

CATH-PROT- MONGRELIZATION

***************************************************************** BASIC PREMISE:
Since reaoning amd rationzlization are
basic cooncepts in this context
it is necessary to specify their meanings.
REASONING uses unbiased reason or logic into investigate and/or debate a subject
to to find the truth;
RATIONALIZING seeks the best or most convincing reasoning to convince others of whatfver we (honestly or not) believe. To use extreme examples: scintists reason, shysters rationalize. Philosophy tends to reason, Theology must rationalize to justify what one blieves in advance.
************************************

I read it first in a Chicago Catholic church, in 1955, when I moved to America:: " Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men" in large beautiful letters above tne

Christmas Nativity scene.
I asked the ptiest why such a fundamental Protestant anti-Catholic description was promimemtly displayed in a Catholic church. The correct original (Roman Catholic) version "Peace on Earth to the Men of Good Will" (valid for some 2,000 years since the beginning of Chrietianity) was ordered to replace the Protestant version (composed less than 500 years ago).
The Protesant version ref lected the main theologic "schism" (split) Martin Luther (1483-1546) first pronounced in 1517 against the Catholics; that is: our faith in Jesus Christ alone (without the necessity of good deeds) is sufficient for us to be saved ("good will to men"), whereas the Roman Catholics believe that good deeds and sin confession are also required.
Martin Luther publihed his anti- pope protest in Germany (he did not intend to start Protestantism) in 1517.
In 1527 (ohly 10 years later) the monstrous SACK OF ROME by German marauders and mutinous hordes of emperor Charles V killed, raped, tortured to the point of cannibalism, plundered, burned alive, massacred the in whole city of Rome for many days (2-3 weeks?), with the excuse of punishing tne "Satanic Roman Catholic population"...|
They simply rationalized their own infamy as what the Catholic Italians deservrd for the mortal sins caused by sinning agansto God and pleasing Satan.
===================== Most revealing, historically and theologically was a famous historical innocent but later rationalzed by Protestants to justify antrhing:

‑ John Wesley (1703‑1791), founder of Methodism:
"We must exhort all Christians to gain all they can and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich".
Theologically, it might make a disputably
point, but: between the anti- Semitism of Luther and the often efferate hypocritical rationalization Protestants (and conveniently misinformed Catholics) can harvest from Wesley is ominous. Rationalization of his statement could be used not only to justufy ccrimes and massacres but as a hidden inspiration (subconscious or not) for evil directions for any person, family, commjnity, nation or an entie civilization.

Anthropologic, historical , psycoanalitical investigations could trace malefic factors that have persised until today for many thousands of years that are as recognizable in the past and now.
Many persons like me have tried to warn our contemporaries... with no resolts.
Clear? Emtiendes? Capisci? Verstanden? Compris?

================================================================ ==============

ATHEISM DEPENDS ON GOD

We call God a right/wrong absolute that we project in undisputable rules.
Christianity prescribes unconditional love.
Haters and rule breakers are sinners.

Ithas been said that sin, in religi on, is like the zero in mathematics : it makes its operations possible.
Sinner's fear of Hell and love of God outperform any human law.
We cannot define God, but we still need sacred Commandments to resolve irreconc ilable co nflicts. [yet we add howevers to each of them...

The French Revolution (1789-1799) replaced God with "Goddess Reason" (ca. 1793 a. d.), and fell apart.
God should be the unknowable perfect ruler.
Human dictator's whip enslaves.
Any other form of human rule faces discord and wars. De mocracy faces decay into ochlocracy (rule by mediocrity).
Under democracy based on reason alone (spiced with plutocratic money incentives), society succumbs to shysters and mob majority...

Platonic or Confucian societies directed by examined non- hereditary sages have not materialized yet.

Pythagoras (about 580-500 b. C.) tried to preserve sophisticated reason in mathematical secrets and myths, but the populace corrupted them into banalities below adolescent culture level.

Buddhism was the most promising existential convergence of life/death/cosmos, easy to understand, but very arduous to practice. so it was homogenized into a religion.

"Postmodern" (a term contrived for patched-up remedies, after the "modern" (hippie and post-hippie) systems proved to be dismal failures) reason transforms morality into the self-destructing bastardization of relativism and demagoguery .
We started with myths himting that truth harmonizes reason with inscrutable mysteries.

Myths are sturdier than truth.
Unlike truth, they cannot be twisted because their mysteries adapt to each believer's imagination.
Just listen and feel, then unleash our inborn imagination into myths, faith emerges, becomes truth and reality that skeptical probing can only desecrate ..

Pious barking and populism about the Christian God kills our perception of God and derails our mystical search for Him.
Every attempt to rationalizing the reality and our failures arouses pundits who contaminate everything they touch with their pompous prattle.
Political worshipers who unofficially disdain religion slip into "politically-corre ct" groveling.

Any mention of God has become a smug social, or ecclesiastic ritual, or therapeutic tool..., but He is uncomfortably distant. However, He is a frequent liturgical reference.
The pagan gods were almost always thought to be present (the Greek gods even raped Greek women...).

We instinctively aim to let myth and mysticism overcome our separation from God.

The mystic doesn't have the problem of affirming or denying God's existence, because he and God converge, whether physically or supernaturally , beyond our comprehension.

God is simply part of human conceptions, but no one can describe Him the way we describe a pituitary gland or relativity.

Atheists are nowhere in the equation, because the god they don't believe in, the god of the believers, and whatever god really is, are not the same.
"God" is much more than just a semantic and epistemic conundru m.

"Neurotheology", neurobiology of religious spirituality, claims to have located symbiosis between spirituality and some areas of the brains of worshiping Buddhist and Franciscan monks, where God, spirituality and nature seem to fuse.

The brain showed no He- God, no Goddess, nor the gay god depicted in Temple University, for they only exist on the lowly levels of sexism, hyper- feminism or homosexual militancy.

Whatever attempt (if any) was undertaken in that direction was obviously overlooked or discarded.

Both "post- modern" religionists and atheists are becoming dangerous for us.

Years ago, I drove the famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (a few months ago -in 2001- found mur dered and buried in a hidden grave) from the Chicago airport to th e Loop, where she announced to her public that I was her representative for Illinois.
I denied it, for no one can formulate a convincing description of God to give a realistic meaning to the word "atheist".
But I admired her courageous daring.
She misunderstood a speech I had given to a group of agnostics.

The more relativistic the "postmodern" religionists and clergy become, the more they deviate from theology itself.

My agnostic "atheism" conformed to the Greek "a theos" concept, which reflects being "away from god" rather than asserting that God doesn't exist.

This is a problem that He/She/It and I will handle some time in the future...
Divine patience is most generous, simply as a result of ourwishful thinking, if we are sincere.

Political correctness tends to transform religion into an opportunistic craft devoid of cultural content.
Too many ministers, priests and similar clergy do it.

"Pray to God and She will listen" is not less ridiculous than
"Pray to God and He will listen”, because the God we can describe does not need the gender man necessitates for reproduction.

A He-God is a god man has made in his own male image...
Therefore phfilosopher Nietzsche (1844-1900 a.d.) complained, "God is dead", while the Communist Karl Marx (1818-1883 a.d.) gloated over it.

Since many believers presume to interpret God without His direct guidance, we have theological blunders from the ambivalence toward love and intolerance to the loony statement that love between God and man are homosexual because their love is " between two males".
And democratized Cwistian are afraid to condrmn homosexuality for fear of losing shurch members (and their dollars) Inerestingly, Church democratization makes a congregation fire the inister who doesn't preach what pleases th em, or imposes previously outlawed rules because “times change”.
Thus, God's will, Bibles and c atechisms about eternal truths are changed by man when God is presumed to lose touch.
Great for hippies...

Postmodern theology might not disdain the opinion that God should worry more about His own reelection.. .
Would that give us reasons to become atheists?
In so doing, however, we would only deny a white-bearded man-like old god who throws thunderbolts and opens the Red Sea to let the Jews pass, or he knows not Captain Kirk's ommand "energize!" (beside the drowning of hapless Egyptian soldiers).

We need more than such a god, even if we don't deserve him/her/it.
Should we become agnostic [thatis: convinced that man cannot know whether what God exists, simply because we cannot define God, a culture, or whatever we describe without first knowing it?..

On the other hand, living without religion needs a virtue and knowledge that are self-sufficient.
We have neither.
We must still learn to investigate and use true knowledge. Yet, religion is a godsend to eliminate interminable discords about "virtue”, “sin”, duties and rights.
Whatever or whomever we call "God" must be somewhere, somehow, beyond our comprehension, approval or rejection.

That infuriates today's politically- correct relativists, who excommunicate everybody who disputes them.

Even in times in which religion had a reliable theological, social and cultural standing, there was reason to keep us alert against overall decay, including the weakening of religious coherence among the ordained ministers, priests and rabbis, or (un-)ordained Muslim mullahs and other clerics.

Rationalizing everything, including mysteries, is the present AIDS of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and any evealed kkk religion, for virtually all revealed religions are immutable.

As the above were not enough, I know at least one Catholic person who is misled ny her own misleating reasoning to s upport violence of a yong man against his in nocent father because she is falsely convinced of some evils the father commited. The Catholic Church has the best solution: the sacrament of Confession of one's own (in sworn invioable secrecy), follwed by appropriate penance (normally prayers) for the sin detected by the priest against the usual rationalizations of the self-deceiving believer.
Communion (ingesting a small thin breadlike disk ) which cleanses the past and confessed sins, as Jesus wa said to have declared in the Last Supper).

Without doctrinal absolutes, each of our religions seems unable to stop the Satanic anarchy within.

The more “progressive” or “with the times” a church becomes, the more clergy become like doctors who join the insanity of the asylum inmates.

To wit: gay ministers in gay-influenced communities.

God ha s been democratized and cut to size on common man's Procrustean bed, which cuts or stretches Him to the size that fits their requirements...
He'd better like it, or they'll elect another god, as they do with ministers who don't please the parishoners, as they have done. do and will do in hundreds of self proclaimed Christian and other sects that multiply and mushroom incessantly.

They sanctify whatever the marginal deviants want to hear.

Religionists want to keep their paying jobs. Well, heir souls too, if possible.

A prestigious physician, famous for her lectures on death, unexpectedly discontinued her famous lectures and joined a "mutual-masturbation church".
Its homosexual founders wanted a "respectable" front.

Probably we will see her preaching against mastur-phobia, a newfound "hatecrime".

Perspective? In t he 1618-1648 North-European “Thirty-Year War”, both politicized Catholics and Protestants committed wholesale rape, torture and even cannibalism against each other (probably , as bad as in the Sack of Rome); and massacred one third of Europe, in the name of God and Bible.
Embarrassing to remember.
Thus, history shows that true religion cannot accept politicized equality, rights without duties, relativism, and the consequent “everything goes”.

Add the anti-Western multiculturalism, and we have a recipe of Dr. Jekyll's potion.

Role models? “Mother Teresa is too remote" "said the lady on the radio- "I look up to princess Diana, with her defects and adulteries, she is like most of us…”.
Neurotic bimbos rather than heroes and saints?

200 years ago, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), fountainhead of modern philosophy, stated that there are 2 kinds of men: the free, willing to die for their beliefs, and the slaves, who compromise anything to survive.

It boils down to the rare virtuous ones versus the crowds o f evil and morally invertebrates among us.

How do we recognize the free m an?
But then, would mobs and sycophants elect him or another demagogue for any leadership, from political to religious?

KETCHUP ON HOMOGENIZED RELIGION

Two centuries ago (about 1796), when the French statesman C.M. Talleyrand‑Perigord returned to France from U.S.A., he comment ed on the U.S.A.:
"I found there a country with 32 religions and only one sauce".

The reverse was accepted in France, where the religion was not convention ally a matter to dispute and modify, whereas sauces could be changed and multiplied for any taste.

Probably, a typical American of that time (what about now?) would have looked down at a nation with only one religion, as a nation without the freedom to choose or modify religion to fit any taste.
From an other perspective, a one‑sauce nation would have no sophistication.

A traditional public service exhortation to the American public has been for a long time:

"This week‑end, go to the church or synagogue of your choice".
That is: who cares what your religion is and what it says.

Join the crowd with all religions emulsified in the mainstream of American values and the American Way of Life.
Oxymoronic and theologically incongruous, but politically correct.
Still now, when religion blinks from unfashionable to fashionable and vice versa.

The religion of America is Religion: we must believe in something.
What we believe in has no importance, as all beliefs are equally valid, or equally insignificant, no matter how they may contradict each other.

The posture of believing in a homogenized politically correct Whatchmacallit (it used to be "American way" and probably will be again) is what matters, not what we believe in, not even the belief itself.

Homogenized believers eschew the traps of reason and dispute.
Similarly, "freedom of religion" (sliding into "freedom from religion") has taken the place of religion.

"You are entitled to your opinion" (or "religion") sounds magnanimous, but it is the same as to say that your opinion or religion have the right to be considered valid because they are irrelevant.

Next: "pray to God and keep the powder dry" seems to have survived, but who knows for how long..

This is also a typically modern posture in culture: it is good to study other cultures, non Americ an‑Way‑of‑Life (AWOL) philosophies, but what they say is valid and irrelevant at the same time.
Valid as a flag, to fight for, on the stag e.
Or burn it: the Supreme Court allows it.

The problem of explaining the schizoid position of religion being important and irrelevant at the same time, of piously separating religion and state, c ulture and life, is not even perceived.

Just "keep the powder dry".

Like cu lture, religion becomes a political issue with the pop ular trappings of democracy.

The American Calvinist Protes tantism is ideally suited for AWOL democracy.

The AWOL is the catsup sauce for all beliefs, religions, laws and politics: no matte r how they differ, politics make them all taste the same.
They wouldn't dare not to. Just like "...to the men og glood will" and "Good will to men..

"Come home to the church I go to; it ain't my denomination, but it is closer to home.
Lots of nice people there.
Cool parking lot too."

Don't fool with the AWOL. You have more sensible things to do than getting in troub le with the AWOL.

If the AWOL changes from conservative to liberal, from puritanical to amoral, from mono gamous to prom iscuous, it is like a catsup sauce . Its flavor may change, but the flavor of the day is used for all contemporary dishes.

Why fuss about the taste of a sauce? We have more important things to do.

The present Inquisition posture against the AWOL is the new anti-AWOL AWOL.

What now?
It doesn't matte r: church or synagogue, or(also mosque, sort of) are all OK, as long as all salute (or step on, burn, as it is our right) the same flag, pay the same tax, spend the same money, believe the same proper sounding generalities an d obey the same rules, we learn from the media, Hollywood, their pundits and the "beautiful people" who keep interc oursing, marrying, intercoursing, divorcing, intercoursing...

Pray any way you want, but listen to the non-denominational and denominational high priests. Don't argue with them: it is anti-American.

In Talleyrand's France and almost ever ywhere else, religion, God and holy matters are better left alone, as we know from history.
Discussing them is futile and subtly dangerous.

Let's adopt one religion and its countless variations as a symbolic standard and go on to more practical matters, like sumo wrestling, or write to the pot-hole editor.

A sauce, in France and elsewhere, has sufficient reality for personal involvement.

UNHOLY KNOWLEDGE

Analyzing the Christian religion as a revealing myth, the apple Adam and Eve ate from the "Tree of Knowledge" epitomizes the raison d'être of fashionable religion.

Religion is expected to be the undisputable guidance for mankind.

When Adam and Eve ate the apple, they gained the knowledge of Right and Wrong.
That reope ned the Pandora Box of endlessly disputing interpretat ions of Right and Wrong.

But only man who obeys God blindly can live a righteous life.
Man who must find, understand and pursue the truth is lost in questions, doubts, guilt, fear and conflicts:
hell on earth.

Religion's revelations and precepts free man from doubt, fear and conflict.

There is (rather: there ought to be...) no "However" after a "Thou shalt not ......".

Moral precepts are to be set by God through revelation, not by man through polls and a knowledge he keeps debating.

JEWISH/MUSLIM/CHRISTIAN SYNDROME

1989 (also before and after). Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a 35 acre trapezoidal area, is virtually the most precarious piece of land on Earth.

It is Islam's holiest site after Mecca and Medina: the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, on the spot where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to the Seventh Heaven (why did he have to do it?).

It is also holy to the Christians, for Jesus walked on it.

For the Jews, it is the place where Herod's Temple, the Holy of the Holies, used to stand.
There the Jews will rebuild the Temple, no m atter what, according to th eir 3-5-times‑a‑ day prayer:

"May it be Thy will that the Temple be speedily rebuilt in our days..."

To the Jewish declared " irrevocable" decision to rebuild their Temple, the M uslims have declared that they "will defend the Islamic holy places to the last drop of their blood"...

The Jews prudently allow the Muslims to administer the site and permit no Jew or Christian to pray or perform other religious tasks on the disputed ground.
Those Jihads are ominous.

There are also other perspectives: the Israeli Chief Rabbis prohibit Jews to enter the place, to prevent that they may step on the holy ground of the old Temple, which was only entered by the highest priest once a year.

The medieval sage Rashi assured his followers that the Temple can only come directly from heaven, together with the Messiah.

In spite of the above, however, Israel's Ministry of Religious Affairs sponsored all kinds of activities to study, plan and prepare the reconstruction of the Temple, thus provoking the Muslim fury.

Literal‑minded Protestants proclaim that the reconstruction of the Temple is a precondition for Jesus' second coming...

200 Jewish students in Talmudic schools are now (1989) being taught complicated details of Temple service.
Others are determining which priests of which families will be allowed to conduct services in the Temple...

Over 100 ritual objects, including trumpets, lyres and lots, vestments "from flax spun by hand into six‑stranded threads" are being zealously prepared.

Priests will have to "purify their bodies with the cremated ashes of an unblemished heifer before they enter the Temple".

Members of the Temple Institute are therefore scouting Europe for "heifer embryos that will be shortly implanted into cows at an Israeli cattle ranch"...

Money for these projects will only come from Jews. Money from Muslims, Christians or others will be rejected...

For these Jewish initiatives, historian David Solomon states: "Every day's delay is a stain on the Nation".

Probably we should console perplexed Jews with the assurance that we were no better when we obeyed the Biblical command that no witch should be allowed to live...

ALLAH IS GREAT

Some politically correct (depending on the country) Muslims have a cunning procedure to go to heaven: die for Allah.

Or: kill, get killed and go to heaven (well, live people don't go to Heaven).
Rulers can employ it as a flawless method to expend surplus‑people to achieve goals, evade hero obligations and let Allah pay the bill.

It works like a charm:

(1) Set your goal,

(2) Declare it a holy war and dedicate it to Allah. Islam has no high priest that can stop or corr ect that posture.

(3) Everything will fall in place:

The holy war injects passion into the forlorn crowd of unemployable human outcasts (such even if they have a college degree).

It motivates derelicts, desperadoes, thugs, parasites, nitwits, illiterates, psychotics scholars, psychotics more than any law, incentive or ambition.
(Of course, some "pure and honest" facilitators, but very few, must be there in case the crowds ask for directions).

Their viciousness becomes virtue when aimed at enemies of those who manipulate the strings in the name of Allah.
Their resulting murders and suicides are depicted as heroism that leads directly to Heaven.
(Many do the same in politics).

Some even go to college, get degrees, but using them is much more complicated than having fun, even wine (or its Muslim equivalent), women and songs, ca vorting until completely saturated, then, find an excuse to die for Allah (all you have to do is kill one or more non-Muslims, whom you define as such) and go to Heaven.

Nothing beats the eternal bliss in Allah's heavenly gardens, with all those beautiful houries (heaven's virgin love‑girls, all erotically programmed, surrounding the tables where the heroic men dine) for the departed killers dear to Allah.

The Muslim heaven seems to have no heavenly studs for the deceised ladies.
[Frankly, someone should have a talk with those houries, get them unionized or something. Or inform the feminazis headquar ters.

What better chance, for a marginal man, than achieving it all with the simple act of dying for Allah?

Forget the original Islam and behold the incredible bargain: you can steal, kill, rape , set fires, plung e into orgies with copulation providers (=hookers), as many times as you can get away with...
Sooner or later, you decide it is enough and resolve to die for Allah.
It is simple and fast. You go to Heaven and enjoy the houries for ever and ever...

What if you may get hurt and suffer pain or any inconvenience? What if you don't die?
Simple: strap explosives to your body, or load them in a car, then go and blow yourself up.
The unbeatable bargain is that you also cause destruction and havoc, kill thousands of innocent children, women, men (even if some of them are Muslim themselves, for they would become martyrs) and get more credits (perhaps more houries and erotic bonuses) from Allah.

A second choice would be to shoot it out where they are sure to kill you... Just as safe.

The alternatives are uninspiring: work, honesty, responsibility, self-discipline, learning a trade, earning your keep, deserving your due, brushing your teeth, sweeping ass droppings and paying the camel parking fine.

Christians have nothing as easy as that to earn Heaven. Any kind of murder or suicide leads them to hell.

Well, we could have Catholics cleanse their souls with confession and communion.

Protestants declare themselves born‑again for Jesus, or babies would be baptized... then we would kill them all immediately thereafter, before they get a chance to commit any sin.
They would undoubtedly go to Heaven.

But then we, the saviors of mankind (personkind?), would go to hell for murder...

Eat your hearts out, Christians and Western leaders.

OH GOD

Ther is a real God who created everything.
Yet, the other God we have created is now stuck with attributes primitive man ascribed to Him (or Her, or It).

His-or-Her-or-Its alleged retribution of sin, for instance, would render God smaller and more cruel than any human being.
Which man would punish a sinner for the whole eternity?

Anyone could be more than sati sfied after torturing anyone for, say, five or even ten (fifty, to satisfy the most insatiable maniacs) years for the most and the worst sins.

No man/woman could be so bad as to deserve eternal punishment.
No man/woman could be so good as to deserve eternal reward.

I suspect that such a long rew ard for virtue would become unbearably boring, let alone inco nceivable.

Then, what god would send his own son to such a sacrifice as Jesus's?
Tha t sacrifice was not only gruesome, but incredibly inef ficient.

If any of us used all that gory mess, torture, barbaric public spec tacle, we wou ld cause the most violent reaction and condemnation; or at least lose our jobs and/or become unemployable.

The results obtained by Jesus are so poor that any mortal ‑let alone immortal‑ executive would be c onsidered a miserable failure on their account.
In fact, acco rding to the number of people who die properly enough to go to Heaven, no more than 1‑3% of man/woman-kin d would end up there.

No minor or upp er executive car eer could survive such a dismal failure.
We cannot even be consistent with the countless inc ngruous images we have created of our own God.

Christians, for instance, are at least inconsistent when they pray to God for health, success, happiness, power or prosperity during life on Earth.
It is not Christian to crave for such things of this world in this life.

Jesus died to show us that the real life is bey ond death... (then, what is death for?).
Suffering, sickness, injustice and worse during life should be welcomed as a way to deserve eternal salvation.

To bring it to some of its ultimate con sequences, we could kill little babies before they sin, to make sure that they go to heaven on account of their inn ocence.
The logic is just as AWOL as the logic of the do-goo ders who destroy the world in order to sav e it from evil.

Yet, it doesn't sound right.
At least, the babies should be consulted first.
Presumably, the ir answer would be the same as if we asked them whether they want to be aborted.

Second, the very possibility that we could make such drastic decisions ind icates that we should worship God in His (or Her, of Its) pre sently known rules and commandments, regardless of our opinions on wh ether He (or She, or It) exists.
Even if He/She/It did not exi st. Period.

That is what Protagoras (485-410 b.c.) told us over 24 centuries ago.

The Protestant approach is very convenient for those who invest in it.
Jesus, they say, did it all for us. Everything. All we h ave to do is to accept Jesus Christ.

We will be then forgiven everything and anyt hing. We will also go to Heaven for the whole eternity.

For this, it is an incredible bargain to give financial cont ributions (tax‑free) of any amount ‑ even our entire patrimony would be a bargain against eternal, inco rruptible bliss ‑ toward whatever eart hly needs the pastor or minister may have.

That is surely an exce llent package to attr act customers to the clergy trade.

What about God?
Well, God must fit the voted‑for pattern, or out He/She/It goes too, and Christians will unio nize.

You see, first the congregation must accept a minister or pastor.
Therefore, the clergyman (or cler gyperson) mus t say, preach, believe and do what pleases the congregation.

No Biblical indignation, fire and brimstone against sinners. Poll s show it is not popular.

Not even God can dare do othe rwise, if He/She/It wants to be reelected.
We can always put together a theology that redu ces God to what pleases us.
We do. We have don e it for centuries.
Especially after 1517 a.d.

It will be infallible, because we can say that it is the truth revealed to us by that very God we created in our theology.
If it has flaws or it doesn't make sense, we call it a Divine Mystery, and the faithful are eager to worship it.
Incomprehensible Mysteries attract much more worship than any clear facts.

Furthermore, we can write a Holy Book and put in it what we call the Word of God.
Then, no one can argue with it, because it is in the Book. The Book even becomes the justifier of God, like a super pass port or a cosmic identity card.

If the Bible gives us God's cred entials, the Bible has more credibility than God...
The believers say that the Bible has authority only because it comes from God...

Let me see: one writes a book that says that it is the word of God and that He, who said those words, is God.
Then, He, God, proclaims He is God because the book says so...

Cool.

A computer progra m that glitches into such a situation is said to get stuck in an endless loop... And the computer crashes...

The Muslims go further: the Koran coexisted with God.
That is, it is sacrilegious to assert that God or Mohammed wrote it.

The Catholic Church has had centuries to realize that the Bible/God/Bible could be manipulated to be a deadly trap.
Therefore it prudent ly pushed the Bible into the specialized backgro und, and trie d to inject a little of the Paga n sophistication into the dreary approac h that the Persians and other O rientals had already invented and then rej ected (at least according to Islam. And Zoroaster, if you will).
But then, there was another populist invasion with the "user‑friendly" Protestantism.
Where is the logic?

Logic is only real to our mind.
Feelings are real to our nature.
That can make myths and poetry more real than logic.

That may save uncontaminated religion.

THE FROZEN ZERO

Our Jewish‑Christian God knows everything present, past and future, about himself, us, the universe and everything conceivabl e. He has no questions because he has all the answers; he has and needs no answers, because he has no pending questions.

He was, is and will be simultaneously everywher e, every time , in any conceivable and inconceivable manner. (I suspect that we say that be cause we cannot imagine anything more simple and therefore more sophisticated than being totally in o ne spot and everywhere at the same time...)
Thus, he d oesn't need to go or be anywhere, since he already is, was and will be anywhere he may want to go to or from.

He also has no need for anything any time, because everything was, is, and will be with and about him...

He is infinite, eternal... infinitely anything conceivabl e and inconceivable for our brain..
In his infinity and infinite superiority, he has attribu tes and capabilities we cannot even begin to imagine: all of them, whatever they are...

The more simpleminded or sophisticated we are, the more power we ascribe to him, including all possible answers to the questions we are not yet able to formulate.
Nothing is left for him to do or to be or to desire...., to go or to become...

We cannot risk to believe otherwise: if there is an ything he cannot do, then, we have the embarrassing task to an swer and to act...

He is then like the absolute zero/infinity, frozen in his everything‑ infinity within and beyond time abd space, everything‑accomplished, everything‑every time‑ everywhere...
Nothing left to do, to see, to say, to begin or finish... for everything already was, is and will be done, seen etc.
He is everything and nothing, for nothing is left since all is perfected.

Such a god cannot exist but as a naive product of limited monotheistic imagination, losing itself into nothing in its self‑into‑nothing‑diluting attempt to define an unlimited god that is aborted by our failure to create beyond our possibilities, like a grain of sa nd trying to give birth to a mountain the size of an infinite number of universes...
[Wow. Did I say that?]

Now, this "absolute zero‑infinity" of a god bothers to cr eate man..., "in His own image"...
He starts with Adam. Then, as an afterthought, he creates Eve from Adam's rib (without the feminist approval).

He lets Adam and Eve be seduced by a sneaky snake into forsaking Paradise for a lousy apple, thereby proving that man, god's image, was born not only evil but also masochistically stupid.
That kind of god needs better references than that...

He knows that man is going to crucify His Son
(vy men he also created), becaus He created him as he is and as he acts.
He knows which man, whom He created, will go to Hell or to Heaven...

Then, He makes man responsible for the reward and punishment, after He Himself created sin and virtue, each sinner and saint as such, and their very actions and thoughts as such..

Then, He bothers to choose the Jews as his people, for inscrutable reasons.. .(well, really not so inscrutable).
The Bible says He was a god without people, for most people had other gods.
Therefore He had to choose them who had no god yet.

There goes the superior race. Then, he sends an angel

to Mary...

All according to the instructions and precepts of a Book written for specialists...

The case of Jesus follows...

Then, we are menaced eternal damnation or promised eternal reard for remarkable resons...

That is what happens when a god is "represented" by pious hustlers.
God will forgive them for they know not...

========================

FAILING CHRISTIANITY

"Christianity has not failed. It has simply never been tried" sounds clever and revealing.

The statement would be really like: "Perpetual motion has not failed. It has simply never been tried".

Like perpetual motion, Christianity (as well as Islam and other religions) has been tried in thousand s of the ways we understand it.
Those ways proved th at it doesn't function. It is true, it has over one billion "believer", but these believers are also its victims (as the Jews and Muslims are victims of their religions or religionis ts).

Eve's apple, just to start with one, was reduced to a carnal sin by the Christian sex obsessed (like everybod y else), in spite of the Bible description that tried to analogize it more with the sophisticated Pagan st ory of the Pandora box (or vase, to be historically or mythologically correct)).

The Exodus from Egypt was a typical story written by simple slaves against masters they did not understand.

Their god, then, was unable to convince the Pharaoh with the trick of the serpent‑turned-stick.
Therefore, he went to the overkill o f parting a sea to let the "chosen people" walk on its bottom.
He did not even know Captain Kirk's much better way: "energize disassembly‑transport‑ reassembly".

Then, after that theatrical gigantic boo‑boo (without counting all the innocent Egyptian pursuing soldiers drowned), the whole "chosen people" was left andering for 40 years in the deserts, aimlessly, by that same god who played that unnecessary trick to the hapless Egyptians.

Then, to compound it all, the Jewish still today celebrate the night in which the doors of the Jewish houses were marked with blood, so that their god would spare the Jewish children and slaughter only innocent Egyptian children.

It took an Egyptian diplomat in Rome (Italy) to bring my attention to it.

While the Jews keep celebrating Passover, they still wonder why they are so unpopular with the Egyptians.

After the "infamy" of the Crusades, persisted for 300 years, in which massacres were committed by Christians against Muslims (and vice versa) with the claim of "liberating" Jerusalem, the Christians wonder why the Muslims are so resentful.

The fact that the Muslims would massacre us for just being non-Muslims is still worse, for it is encouraged by the Koran to kill the "infidel".
Apparently, the claim that Islam is a religion of peace and love only refers to the Muslims-to Muslims within Islam.

This subject, the 1618‑1648 ("Thirty Year War") massacres in North ern Europe in the name of God, the similarly gruesome lunacy of the Muslims in the name of Allah, and other religious insanities are menti oned elsewhere in this book or web site.

Truly, Hitler and Stalin were not worse.
They only had more efficient technology and many more bamboozled followers.

Worse lunacy: we are discouraged from noticing it in the land of free speech and free thinking.

So, w e have come to a watershed in history: religions have now been seriously discredited or obsolesced.

But we are at the edge of an abyss:

we have nothing practical to fill the vacuum left by religion.

Reason? No way.
The French erected statues in churches to the goddess Reason in 1793, and gave up on that too...

Reason can be used the same as gunm en in the western movies: victory belongs to the better shoot er, not to justice or "logic".

Morality, honesty, order, love, common sense, laws?
None offered the quick improvements we all are impatient to achieve.

Moreover, none of them was trying to cross the abyss in less than... two or more jumps.

Education is the only hope we know of, but we are faced with two main problems:
A) It takes longer than we demand and our educators need to be educated first.
B) Most of them re liberal, and liberalism has worse prejudices and arrogant righteousness than the Christian, Jewish or Muslim religions.

WHY DIDN'T J.C. WRITE ?

People like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus decided not to leave anything written behind.

Did they leave nothing in writing because they were so great?
Or are they so great because they left nothing in writing, and so we attribute to them everything we wish (and keep correcting it)?

It is not unlikely that, had they left anything in writing, we would have dissected it into nothingness or insignificance. How could we do otherwise without the proper cultural literacy?

This would have probably obliterated even Jesus, Socrates, Buddha or Confucius (many are doing it now).

Most likely, a great number of people of the highest caliber decided not to write and to remain unknown.
Most of them remain forever unknown.

We know about many of the known ones because their followers wrote what they understood or wished about them.

Why didn't they write themselves?

- Because they didn't think we are important enough?
- Did they think we would be unable to understand?
- Did they think the truth should not be revealed to those who cannot understand it?
- Is the extreme conclusion that such communication is meaningless?
- Did they discover that the truth is to be achieved by oneself, not by revelation?
- Did they discover that we are only links of a reproductive chain?
- Is reality so far removed from our awareness that any attempt to reveal it to the uninitiated is futile, foolish or dangerous?

Human equal propensity to self sacrifice and atrocious crimes for the silliest beliefs is now indisputable.
Probably it is for the same reason that no one ever comes back (to what?) from death.
Once one is there ‑in the truth or after‑death‑, there is no reason, nor means to communicate with "the living", or with " 'me' who is no more".

The world, as we know it, exists only in my "while‑I‑am‑alive" perception, which becomes the "me‑who‑is‑no‑more" perception after my death.
The "me‑who‑is‑no‑more" world existed only while I was alive, and only in my alive‑perception.

So, how can the before‑death and the after‑life reach for each other?

Will the before‑birth (=before‑life) and after‑death (=after life) notice that they are the two parts of a continuum which has been interrupted for the infinitesimal fraction of an instant by life?

On the other side, truth and life (or our perspective of them) are probably either entirely different or parallel worlds that cannot communicate with each other.

Could we conclude that there is no God?
That would be an innocently pointless and ar rogant hubris.

Our presumptuous intelligence (much closer to that of mentally retarded cockroaches than to that of a Jesus Christ) could theorize three among reasons we don't understand:

1) God induced us to believe that man created God, so that we dismiss Him/Her/It and don't offend God with our infantile and presumptuous ways to worship Him/Her/It.

2) God may want us to create our own god to worship at our level, so that our circus-like or otherwise offending worship does not insult God.

3) God wants us to create our own god to worship at our level before we are evolved enough to worship Him/Her/It.

Ridiculous?
What do you expect from someone who tries to interpret God?

Imagine, we would even presume to write volumes on each one of the above three hypothesis. Then, more volumes to explain the previous volumes.

I DISTORT, THEREFORE I AM

As already remarked, the contention that “Christianity has failed because we have never tried it” is a delusion.

What we practice as Christianity IS Christianity as we understand it.
The "original", or "real", Christianity is not only wishful thinking, but only Jesus Christ would know of it.
I wouldn't be surprised if He would have to ask Paul of Tarsus (of our New Testament) about it.

We are told that politics is the art of the possible, with the ability to adapt and comprom ise in order to survive.
When religion tries to do the same, it is dishonest and suicidal, for religion is committe d to belief without compromises (as I understand).

In this light, today's Christianity owes its existence to its dishonest y in such a massive grade that it became what it practiced instead of practicing what it was.

Fiction from adaptation transformed true Christianity so radically into what it practiced that the fiction became reality and the original "reality" was lost in oblivion.

The instances of adaptations and mutations Christianity underwent to survive are so many that it would be not practical to mention them all here.
A few, however, are enough to prove the point.

(1) COUNCIL OF NICAEA, 325 AD, was organized by the Roman emperor Constantine who needed a new state religion to homogenize multicultural Rome.
He chose the

Christian against the Mythraic religion (a Zaratustran version popular among his soldiers), primarily because it had more followers.

He got the prevailing warring Christian sects to hold a contest in Nicaea, in "Asia Minor" (today's Turkey), so that he could support the winner, however it was going to be.

They debated the matters in Greek, a language he did not master or know (contrary to the present anti-Roman prejudices, Roman emperors tried to please the local populace, as hey did with the Jews, when Christ was cru cified).

Finalists: the Catholics and the Arians. The Catholics won, and the Arians were declared heretics.

In the following years, the Catholics selected what they approved, from all the circulating religious writings, and edited them in the 4 books of the New Testament: over 3 centuries after the fact (325 a. d.), without direct personal knowledge.

In other words, a non‑Christian Roman emperor (baptized only on his death bed at Pentecost 337, while unconscious, by an Arian "heretic" bishop) put Christianity on the map for political reasons, and consolidated it with the unchristian military power of the Roman empire.

It is interesting to know that the "Christian" Constantine had his wife Fausta and his first son Crispus murdered, because of alleged incest and other turpitudes.

Without Constantine, the crucifixion, Jesu's resurrection after 3 days (similar to the Egyptian Phoenix bird legend), and all Jesus' feats would have been for gotten in the bickerings that afflicted the countless Christian sects, like any other religion of that time and now.

The conspicuous anti‑Roman hostility in Christian folklore is like a decoy to conc eal an embarrass ing past.

The Protestants are especially galled by it, for Catholic Rome is still the major center of Christianity.

(2) CHRISTMAS = Revised Saturnalia plus Mythra's birthday.

The Saturnalia were a joyous Roman pagan festival with merrymaking, probably lots of sex, and gift exchanges celebrating the passage from the shortest day of the year (December 21 ) to the first growing day in December.

December 25 was the birthday of the Iranian Zoroastrian mystery god Mythra, very popular among the Roman soldiers.

It was known that Jesus was born sometime in spring, but the church decided to join rather than fight the invincible popularity of the Saturnalia and Mythra's birthday celebrations.

Hence: Mythra (born from a virgin and bathed in the blood of a sacrificed bull) was likened to Jesus and the Saturnalia festival became the Christma s celebration.

Christianity did not hesitate to adopt the pagan festival and change Jesus's birthday to December 25. Smart move.

(3) JESUS'S BLOOD AND FLESH given to us to drink and eat, and to wash our sins...

Was it n ecessary? And what for?
This bloody proposition tastes too much like an exotic spice from some obscure primitive cult.
Probably, it was started like a public‑ relation move toward the Mythraic believers, and then developed into the less esoteric distortion.

It is fitting to remark here that crucifixion was an eminently bloodless torture and execution.
The bloody references are typically of Mythraic origin, which mentioned a slain bull at Mytras' birth.

(4) The SYMBIOTIC CHRISTIAN/JEWISH PHENOMENON is hard to believe, but well documented: Christianity (like the Jews and the Muslims) needs enemies (eye for an eye etc.) to feel unified, persecute them and then feel guilty enough to enjoy self flagellation.

Jews are the i deal enemies: too uncomfortably close to the Christians (and to the Muslims, t o boot).
The Jews, then, draw from persecution to be inspired and to gain their revengeful survival strength.
"Scientifically", we should consider the persecutions against the Jews a gigantic blessing, if it is true that anti Semitic persecutions motivated the Jews to produce their enormous contributions to culture and mankind.

(5) CHRIST'S RESURRECTION, after 3 days, is theologically confusing.

Why 3 days? Some numerologic reason?
Why resurrection? The soul is what counts, and we are told that t he soul never dies.

When Jesus died on the cross, his soul went to heaven immediately.
What need was there to wait 3 days and then get his body up there where it was not needed for anything? Showmanship?

Then, why during the night, when everybody was asleep? Daylight would have been much better and theatrical public relation.

Over 2000 years before, the cult of the Egyptian sun‑god Ra included the legend of the gorgeous Phoenix male‑bird that immolated himself on a pyre of spice‑tree twigs, and was reborn from the ashes after 3 days.

(6) Christian MIRACLES have always been of the kind tha t could be faked or contrived with psychosomatic or magician's means.

We still have to witness a miracle in form of a missing head replaced, a dismembered body rea ssembled...

(7) THE CRUSADES were as unchristian as anything.

Whereas Jesus conquered with meekness, self‑sacrifice and offering the other cheek and love, the Crusaders waged barbaric wars of plu nders, massacres, destruction and the worst crimes. Like the original Arabian Muslims and the fundamentalist Muslims now, which are still worse.

Moreover, they achieved no Christian tri umph.

They ended up being civilized by the Muslims, who gave us: chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, even the res urrected Greek philosophy and romantic love...

(8) THE 1618‑1648 "THIRTY YEAR WAR" eliminated any doubt about the "unchristianity" of Catholics and Protestants: both committed continuous and unmitigated massacres, tortures, rapes, cannibalism and sadistic extermination against each other, both in the name of God and with the Bible in their hands...

(9) GOD SACRIFICED HIMSELF TO ATONE SINS COMMITTED BY MAN AGAINST GOD: like punishing a tortured victim to save the sad ist...
This alone would be a sufficient reason to choose another god in place of such a twisted deity who got it all wrong... But, again, did it?

(10) GOD'S DUBIOUS TASTE TO IMPREGNATE A MORTAL WOMAN TO GENERATE HIMSELF.
Was such a pompous hyperbole of a Bronze‑age myth still necessary where the Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures had already unfolded far beyond that level?

On the other hand, the well known Greek gods' passion to rape mortal women gave abundant examples of its popularity with the believers and invitations to the ambitious.

(11) SELLING INDULGENCES presumably caused the German Protestant rebellion.

Yet, indulgences were the adoption o f an old German custom to atone guilt with money .
Christianity adopted the German custom just as it adopted the Christmas Tree from Scandinavian Paganism.

Protestantism has the merit of having forced Christianity to persist in its rotting process, just when it was starting to be metamorphosed into Renaissance, as if the Satanic unprovoked carnage they perpetrated in the "Sack of Rome" (1527 a.d.) had not been far more than tbe worst.

==========================

OLYMPUS AND HEAVEN

The mythical dwelling of the Greek pagan gods on th e Olympus mountain was created by Greek poets.

Heaven, where our god is, sounds like a fuzzy description by slippery Christi-an lawyers.

In the pagan myth, theology and poetry cannot be separated.
Gods are as definable as the vision of their creators.

Furthermore, neither the Greeks nor the Romans ever claimed that their gods and mythologies were more than human creations.
This gave the pagan approach a cultural sophistication that was lost in genuine Christianity.

Take, for instance, the concept of origina l sin.

The Judeo‑Christians have a hapless simpleton, Adam, tricked by a conniving dim‑witted female who had been se duced by a unimaginative snake who couldn't have sold a f ur to a naked millionaire on an iceberg.

Adam and Eve ate an apple. That w as the original sin.
What is that makes that apple so portentous?

What is , precisely, the original sin?

The Judeo‑ Christian gives fuzzy explanations that render any interpretation as valid as anyone wishes in each of 32, 320, or 3200 Christian sects.

Then, we are not supposed to notice that mankind is the product of incest between brothers (and sisters? What sisters? ) generated by Adam and Eve.

Comparable subjects in the pagan mythology are in the ashes of the Titans, then in the epic of Prometheus and in Pandora's box.

In the Orphic tradition (also Greek-Roman), the Titans (Heavenly guants) were the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Ge (Earth), who dismembered and devoured Dionysus, son of Zeus (king of the Vtrrl gods, namrd Juppiter by he Romans).
reduced them to ashes with his punishing thunderbolt.

Men were born out of those ashes, thus inheriting some resonsibility for the crime of killing Dionysus (Greek for the Roman Bacchus).
This responsibility was an epic tragedy, not the self‑degrading guilt inherent in the Judeo‑Christian original sin.

The better known myth of Prometheus is heroic:
Prometheus was a Titan who brought fire and progress to man, against the will of Zeus (Roman: Jupiter), who hated men.

As a punishment, Zeus sent Pandora to man.
Pandora was the counterpart of the Jewish Eve: the first woman and the curse of mankind.

As instructed by Zeus, she opened the famous box (really, a vase) containing all the evils, ailments and whatever torments mankind.
All escaped from the box, except Hope.

Here, rather than a right/wrong oversimplification, we have a titanic dialog between a valiant mankind and an understandably hesitant god who can be swayed from hatred to fatherly concern.

Mythology was the essence of pagan religion.
But this was the strength and the weakness of paganism.
Whereas the worship required simple priests in the temples, its theology was weaved in its sophisticated myths created by bards who reflected the instincts, traditions and psychology of the believers.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had thus a magn
ificent reason to use it as a psychoanalytical gold mine.

As poets and artists can progress much faster than the leaders of their people, it was unavoidable that leaders would perceive that an organized religion simplified to one god and one tamed set of rules was less dangerous to the ruler than a sophisticated paganism...

"One god" eliminated all the cultural refinements required for an intelligent scenario of competent gods fit for the intricate human reality.
Coherence is extremely difficult in those cases.

Then, a devil was needed, as an administrative necessity.

The same had to be done as the Persian Zaratustra (6th or 7th century b, c,) did with Ahura Mazda (good god) and Ahriman (evil god), and all the human complexities were consolidated into a meek right/wrong pattern.

That was what Constantine did, almost, in 325 AD, and established the Christian religion without even knowing it as we do, and as it triumphed in the Dark Ages.

Liberation started to profile itself with the humanistic trends of the Italian Renaissance, but Martin Luther caused the present relapse with his quasi unintentional restoration of modified Christian apparent obtuseness (but really too sophisticated to be comprehended by today's religion professionals) in 1517 a. d.

It is extremely interesting that Martin Luther had no intention to create Protestantism, or any separation from the existing Church.

We have substituted the old religious dogmatism with the dogmatism of reason, which, like the old dogmatism, has become anti‑reason.

The old Christian religion owes its birth to the Roman religious freedom under which it thrived (the persecutions were caused by politicized Christian anti-Roman postures, otherwise Rome was open to all religions and cults).
The most famous Roman temple was the Pantheon, dedicated to "all gods".
It is still there, in today's Rome, virtually intact, as an architectural marvel.

Like "egalitarian" dogmatism, the new religion became dogmatically anti‑freedom and anti‑reason (or reason enslaved to faith, just as misgenetic as faith enslaved to reason), as soon as it seized power.

Likewise, the free‑reason became dogmatically egalitarian, anti‑ freedom (but pro freedom‑fetish), anti‑reason (in the name of reason).

Only in our society we have the incestuous mongrelization of egalitarian dogmatism and competition worshi p.
The equal right to compete is castrated with the enforced egalitar ianism of winners and losers.

We could say that reasonable men created religion and laws as tools of justice, but little men implemented them with dogmatism and rationalized fetishism reduced to their own mental level.

We are not allowed to think that both religion and law could be implemented best by the moral and intellectual aristoc racy that created them.
If such an aristocracy is suspect, so are religion and reason...

Jesus chose the simple fishermen to follow his teachings simply, not to interpret and debate them.

The Enlightenment created the University as the temple of reason to generate social justice, not the political‑justice prejudice to straitjacket reason.

==========================

MAN, JUSTICE AND GOD

Our juridical system declared that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
The ugly alternative that everyone is guilty until p roven innocent promoted injustices and the worst abuses b y those who can perpetrate them with the p precaution of removing the e

vidence.

Thus, "innocent until proven guilty" is merely a word ploy.
Its justification is that it is better to have a criminal free than a victim punished ruthlessly permits or causes the v victim of the unproven criminal to remain victimized, without any redress or compensation.

Conclusion: who is worse off, the uncompensated permanent victim or the unpunished wrongdoer?
Problem: unresolved responsibility and resulti ng injustice unleashed.

This justice system is the strength of the Mafia, drug criminals, civil-rights, racism and prejudice abuses, political corruption and deceptions, union and employer crimes.

In other words, "innocent until proven guilty" and " guilty until proven innocent" can neutralize each other.
That is the curse of democracy and seems to justify the systems of "auth oritarian democracy" in China, Singapore and similar nations.

That also seems to explain the freewheeling abuse s by civilrightniks on our side and by disciplinarians in the totalitarian "people democracies"

Which of the two syste ms is better (or less damaging) is a matter of opinions biased by national pride.

The only solution I know at present may be a maze of remedial laws restricting our freedoms.
This brings other questions:
Are we thus going to restrict our freedom in favor of justice or restrict justice in favor of freedom?
Should we unleash freedom at the expense of justice?
Can the question be posited in a manner that shows justice in a better light?

Justice is a philosophic and moral problem that should not fall in the hands of people with insufficient education and rubbery moral ity.

Here again comes the dilemma of education and moral ity: both need a certainty that only religion is able to provide nowadays.

Islam? Well, Islam is no longer what it promised to be centuries ago, because it now suffocates knowledge, justice, reason and progress under the oppression of ferocious dogmatism.
Even their Koran commands killing the "enemy" and the "infidels" who don't convert to Islam.
The same Koran also suggests that Muslims have no obligation to honor commitments made with "infidels".

Christianity used to be similarly -albeit not as harshly- oppressive in the Dark Ages.
Later, from the Renaissance (starting about 14th century a.d. until now, it learned to establish a symbiotic equilibrium of checks and balances between knowledge and faith, in which mutual tolerance and intense dialog is maintained alive "between Caesar and God", without either ever overriding the other on Earth.

If this equilibrium is broken, we may become like the terrorist Osama bin Laden and his worse-than-beasts terrorists (I apologize to the beasts for the comparison), or like Genghis Khan (1167-1227 a. d.).

============================

SURRENDER TO DISGUISE

The old trick of vice wearing the disguise of virtue is now being used by the religionists in reverse.

Since their theological a rgumentations have fallen into histrionics of fashionable psychobabble, ministers avoid theological preaching and fall into the "practical" re ligion of "how to succeed and make money with God on your side", "the psychological power of prayer for happiness and wealth", "positive thinking" with faith as a psychological component, and so on...
In all such cases, the preacher mentions of God not as a goal of worship but as a psychological talisman that produces results such as: getting a job, building self assurance derived from self-coaching...

The tactic is avoiding the mention of God and religion in a sense of worship or related with afterlife, Heaven and Hell ("discredited concepts that make one look weird and pr imitive").

Religionists have even lost the courage of their convictions if they feel in may discredit them with their parish and community.
Their parish and community scare them more than God.

No minister or other religionist dares to use the fire and brimstone menace: "nowadays it is ridiculous "...
We all remember how biblically indignant they were against se xual indulgence.
Now they smile with sympathy at lovers in heat.
They still have the problem of choosing between their duty and their job...

Adultery? Some Puritans used to brand the scarlet letter "A" on the woman's skin. Barbaric, unchristian, but effective...
Now ministers are very cautious about judging the m atter as a sin...

Homosexuality?
The worst and relentless fire and brimstone thundering used to be the ob ligated reaction to it...
Now the religionists are completely terrified by any even indirect disapproval by homosexual militants in spite of the historically anti-gay backlash that grows progressively w orse every time it reoccurs...

Religionists even chicken away from mentioning possible homosexual misconduct by priests and m inisters without adding the qualification "with minors", for they are constantly cowered into ab solutely avoiding statements that homosexual conduct among "consenting" (this word is a magical virtue-ac ceptance provider) adults may be in any way less than dignified and " normal"..
Yet the problem is a eminently adult-with-adult nightmare in churches and reli gious seminaries. The actual occ urrence of "sexual abuse of minors" is minimal, but it is made i nsistently much brasher to derail attention from the rampant epidemic of adult homosexual heterophobia...

On the other hand, the longer this cover-up p ersists, the worse will the backlash against politicized religion become.

The worst is that the backlash may remain against religion as such, because the religionists have lost their "fire and brimstone" courage.

The last glorious instance of a true "fire and brimstone" backlash by a defenseless heroic man who openly condemned with uncompromising vehemence his hostile and all-powerful judges was at the hearing of the senate judicial co mmittee (whatever it was called) to challenge the nomination of the honorable Clarence Thomas to the U. S. Supreme Court.
He won at the "OK Corral" against all guns, with only the righteousness gun in his hand...
I felt so proud of judge Thomas, as if he were a dear brother of mine.

(to be continued)

=================================================================

‑ After being changed so many times to fit religion, God will have to be eliminated to save the established religion.

‑ Lucretius (1st century b.c.): Thou canst do more than God can: thou canst die.

- "God don't let me die!" is counter‑producing. Why should we ask that of God? -
WE ARE TO DI E to be with God: it is the revealed purpose of our life and the ultimate conclusion.

"God don't let me die!" would mean, thus: “God, keep me away from you!”

- Christian church fathers wrote that celibacy is the ideal status.
Then, life's ideal is its own extinction, which may be coherent with the second principle of thermodynamics and entropy.

‑ Those who assert that nothing is believable want to be believed.

‑ Just as we believe least those we know most, we believe most those we know least.

‑ God and the world are hidden beyond our images of them.

- Our culture is pagan, insofar as it seeks success in this world (at the service of many different gods).

- Our religion is Christian, insofar it seeks success after death.

- It is the pagan culture that has saved the Christian world on Earth.

- The most vehement supporters of separation of church and state are religious sects who are minorities now and would institute a theocracy if they had the power.
More than freedom, they want protection against the stronger competition.

‑ Jesus Christ's death for us may just symbolize our death for our progeny, regardless of what he intended or how we interpret it.

Mankind equals progeny.
Jesus's sacrifice symbolizes also our destiny in life and reproduction.

My life is not limited to this world: it will live on in my child.
It should be the motto of every father and mother.
Even if they didn't intend it, all my antecedents died for me, just as I will die for my progeny.

- Popularized Christianity looks anti- evolutio nary.
It protects the weak and the losers. -
It punishes the strong and the winners.
It leads us to disdain earthly achievements.
We must have misunderstood, if we progressed with it...

Hypocritical priests and leaders may have ignored it for themselves, but it served their interest to promote true religion in the populace.
This is reputed to have thwarted the progress of Catholic nations.

The Protestants were saved through rationalizations.
Since only faith, not good d eeds, was necessary for salvation, they allowed themselves all selfish deeds of power, riches and earthly success, and rationalized them into virtues or anyway they pleased.
"Pray and keep the powder dry".

They half-consciously deceive themselves withthe nefarious lie that God would forgive them the sins committed for persoal advantage.
Therefore hey over-react with
hidded selfconsious desperation if someone tells them the truth.

Thus, they won progs and power by falsifying Christianity in their cynical interest.

For them, the pagan virtues of discipline, parsimony, hard work, diligence and intransigence for selfishness and greed became Christian attributes.

‑ "Love", "equality", "brotherhood", "freedom" are only intended to exploit those who build and produce.

- "God is dead" epitomizes the radical difference between Nietzsche and Marx.
The former said it in despair; the latter in glee.
- Later, it was falsely believed that both Nietzsche and Marx ‑and later Nietzsche and the Nazis‑ were united on the extreme left ‑or extreme right‑ in welcoming the end of Christianity.

Nietzsche merely decried the fact that God was being ‑or had been‑ killed by the debilitating beliefs of the prevailing religions.

‑ The anthropomorphism of the Christian and Islamic religions is absent from the Chinese Tao interpretation, which sees the world as incessant change, movement, undulation, a continuous becoming rather than being.
That needed no theology, as is the typical approach of Chinese quasi-existentialism.

‑ Religion begins as a myth and, if it succeeds in displacing the other religions, it strives to become a branch of the government, if not the government itself.

‑ John Wesley (1703‑1791), founder of Methodism:
"We must exhort all Christians to gain all they can and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich".

‑ Faith is for the masses; knowledge for a few initiated; truth for the enlightened.

- Faith is like a medicine for those who lack knowledge and self‑confidence.
Many, however, use faith like food rather than medicine; and medicine can be a fatal poison when used as food.

‑ Faith makes many believers think that they are saved and the others damned.
Thus, they become the dangerous "chosen people" others revolt against.

- Most of today's Bible preachers have both feet in their mouth when they proclaim as infallible their interpretations of right/wrong, God, Jesus and the Bible.
They wallow in panegyrics and commentaries that are ludicrous when compared with thousands of brilliant dissertations made on the same subjects in the past 40 centuries.
If they only bothered to read what was said by better minds, they would preach in the same fashion and avoid joining the lunatic fringe.

The incompetence of many of today's preachers stems from their cultural emptiness and is condoned by public indifference.
Would it be plagiarism? Not if it is prescribed, as in the memorized rituals.

The conviction that "All we need to know is the Holy Bible" does not mean that the mind that interprets the Bible may indulge in wishful misconceptions, but it elicits it.
They are accomplishing the euthanasia of Christianity by inanity.

‑ The devil is an indispensable tool to validate the idea of sin.
The tempting Satan is what makes the sin external and presumably extraneous to God‑given human nature.
Without the Devil, we would have to recognize that sin is within our very nature: therefore hard to ignore as an unnatural factor.

The matter becomes even more embarrassing when we realize that God created the Devil..., which differs radically from the Zoroastrian co nception of Ahura Mazda (good) and Ahriman (evil): two separate gods with independent existence (comparable to the contemporary Chinese Yin/Yang, which, h owever was not anthropomorphic)

‑ The awareness‑metamorphosis induced by drugs gives us a clue to the immensely greater alienation death sh ould cause to any ‑if indeed existing‑ surviving awareness.

A simple invisible liquid (like many drugs), in minute quantities, can cause the most radical transfiguration of our perceptions and behavior: ecstasy, nightmares, fury, murder, numbness, amnesia or death, with hardly any visible change in the brain cells or in the rest of the body.
With death, the transformation starts with complete destruction of our brain and the rest of the body.

With such an immensity of difference from the drug‑caused changes, it is easier to comprehend why, if any awareness remains after death, it might as well have metamorphosed into another dimension that would not even suspect the existence of ours (past or present).

‑ 1989. The evangelist Bakker was condemned for financial crimes against his followers and for tax evasion.

In a religious sense, and considering the many concessions generally made to religious matters, these crimes belong to the category of victimless transgressions, even if committed by pathetically twisted persons as the above evangelist and his wife are presumed to be.
The striking significance of this matter is the official blindness ‑or callous indifference‑ to the real harm Bakker and other evangelists are perpetrating to a willingly hapless public.

They are lowering the mental level of the American public to a wretched primitivism that even stone‑age people could find ludicrous.
Because of those evangelists, the American public is fed the images of:

A petty and thickskulled god who is certified by a book written by a Jewish tribe to whom he is partial.

Christian congregation deceived by a preacher who tells them what they want to hear, to keep his job, because they can arbitrarily hire, elect and fire him.

A god who created mankind according to the specifications of the congregation who wants to hear the story they like.

A god who sacrifices his only son in the most amazing overkill any one could conceive, to save those who have sinned against him. The absurdity of the matter is so incomprehensible that the only recourse is to make it "divine".

‑ The sacrifice of Jesus Christ seems to symbolize the Jewish requirement to seek reward and inspiration in being victimized (the "martyrdom" sought by the Muslims -mostly as Semitic as the Jews- is very similar).

First, there is no evidence that Jesus addressed anyone other than the Jews.
Only his followers (Paul of Tarsus, the greatest of them, in the first century A.D., and probably the real founder of Christianity as we know it) much later, declared that Jesu's died for the whole mankind, especially after it became evident that the official Jewish rejection of Jesus was irreversible.
But the advantage from being victimized remained, no matter what interpretations were contrived for it.

Second: where would the Jews be today if they could not claim to have been victimized, persecuted and massacred?
Where other peoples are, who were equally and more massacred but did not profit from it...

‑ We don't judge natural phenomena in the sense of goodness or justice.
We don't consider sulfuric acid evil because it burns our body.

Similarly, most of the ancients did not expect justice or goodness as rights from the gods, nor did they think about being entitled to justice.

They only hoped to obtain from the gods what they wished, not on the basis of rights, but after doing something for it like prayers, sacrifices, offerings or some form of worship.
They honestly traded worship for favors.

They tried to EARN what they wished.
How that EARNING mutated into a RIGHT should have many books dedicated to the process.

Believers are reluctant to be coherent with the fact that EARNING requires toil and skill, whereas RIGHT avoids the necessity of earning what we wish.

The idea that God is "just" and "loves" us is childish, narcissistic and worthy of spoiled brats.
Their "justice" is nothing but what arrogant brats wish.

They created a god as little as their vision, and they let that god create them in his image...

‑ The Jews came to Egypt about 1650 B. C., probably with the Hyksos, and emigrated about 1220 BC.

Manetho, an Egyptian historian of the 3rd century B. C., reports that the Exodus was the expulsion of the Je ws from Egypt on account of a plague that afflicted them.

‑ Exodus, as described in the Bible, is questionable.

God was unable to make the Jews, his "chosen people", succeed in Egypt... But he was able to perform a spectacular and useless Exodus miracle...
Then, why ask the Pharaoh to let the Jews go, if the Exodus proved He didn't need to?

Then, why must such a powerful god leave with his people and let them wander for 40 years and years like a crowd of wrangling lunatics?

‑ The "Gnostics" were convinced that the Old Testament was written by an evil spirit.

‑ The cosmic punishment God of the Jews is reputed to have inflicted to all of mankind, the Earth and the Universe, merely because of Adam's childish rule infraction, is the best proof that such an odd god could not have existed or would not require our worship.

‑ Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and many others left no writings probably because they understood its futility: we are links of a reproductive chain whose meaning, end and goals we don't know.
They didn't know either.

‑ Religion exists because our reason does not offer the easy solutions we like.
Believing is much easier than understanding and knowing.
Beliefs from numerology to astrology, from Satanism to Voodoo are much more easily embraced than the demanding disciplines knowledge requires.

‑ Most ancient religions ha