The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

The Pope has publicly stated that he would physically attack a close friend for making a disparaging remark about his mother. The remark was intended to warn others that making a disparaging remark about someone’s religions was similar to making a disparaging remark about someone’s mother. The message to faithful was loud and clear physical attacks are justified when someone makes a disparaging remark about your imaginary religion. The message to the secular world was do not criticize or make a disparaging remark about our religion. The Pope may have publicly condemned the killings in Paris on the surface but his underlying message to the religious world is loud and clear the Muslim gunmen were the true victims just as the Pope would view himself the true victim of the disparaging remark.

This is the first time in recent history that a pope has advocated physical violence in response to mere words. Most of us realize that remarks made by someone else do not make us mad they are mere words. We listen to those words and make a conscious decision as to how we will react to those words. Sure we can chose to get mad or we can chose to ignore whatever insult is made but we must never give up the power to make that decision to others as in “he makes me mad.” We must realize it is our responsibility to make rational decisions that keep our emotional mind in check. Our emotional mind is the product of an earlier age and is quite capable of reflex action of violence to even small insults. The rational part of our mind is the last product of evolution but the emotional mind is still the watchdog. The three parts of our mind have a great deal of independence. The reptilian part of the brain handles the automatic nervous system, digestion, blood pressure, and thousands of other chemical reaction that the conscious mind doesn’t have to deal with. The limbic brain or the emotional brain, handles the fight or flight response. It can process information much faster than the rational brain but in its speed it misses important information and decides on a physical response based on past threats. The rational mind contemplates all the available information and makes a decision on that information. If our ancestors were in the jungle and heard a breaking stick that indicates the approach of a large animal, fight or flight response would kick in and they would flee the perceived danger. The rational mind might take time to consider that it might not be a lion or tiger and if it was it might not be hungry and they might be right or more likely they might be lunch.

The trouble with the emotional mind is we no longer live in a jungle and tigers are confined to zoos but emotional mind still perceives attacks. The Pope’s emotional mind still perceives an attack on his mother’s character as an attack by a wild animal on his physical self and he feels full justified in a physical attack on his close friend. In trying to assemble groups of people I found out that in trying to change someone’s opinion was often perceived as a physical attack. Their opinions were like arms or legs and any attempt to change them was a perceived as physical attack. Thus the Muslims perceive any cartoon of their religion as a physical attack just as a tiger had jumped them in the jungle. They believe even the most violent response is justified. In the emotional mind of the terrorists the tiger is killing them.

The fact that the Pope chose to justify the terrorist’s anger if not their actions is sad but you have to remember that same tiger is attacking the Pope’s belief system and he too feels the ultimate answer may lie in violence. After all burning at the stake worked so well nonbelievers seldom spoke out. Give me that old time religion; give me that old time religion where all nonbelievers are burnt at the stake.

The Pope even included a physical demonstration of using his fist to fend off insults. If we follow the Pope advice and punch everyone in nose who insults our mother, our religion, or us we can expect retaliation from those we physically attack. When you punch someone in the nose because they hold a different opinion they will automatically kick into fight or flight mode and the fight will escalate from there ending only when ones party is injured or killed. Words have always been used to manipulate others into a fight. The bully in a bar would pick someone who was a good deal smaller or weaker and then goad the part into a fight by insulting their mother, wife, father etc. The bar patrons would goad the victim further by telling him are you going to let him talk to you that way.

Forty years ago fighting on weekends was a form of entertainment. Going to the bars getting drunk and fighting was an enjoyable weekend for some. The bar bully would goad someone smaller into a fight and then beat the daylights out of him to the delight of the others in the bar. Until the smaller man pulls a knife and the bar bully spend his time holding his own intestines in. I worked with a foreman who actually cut a bar bully. Escalations in physical altercations are to be expected. The next guy brings a gun and now a physical fight is no longer necessary a bullet to the head handles all insults.

When physical violence is justified it is a slippery slope and it is just going to go down hill.

The Muslim terrorists who killed the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo thought they had struck a mighty blow for the Muslim religion, as did many in Muslim world. They thought this would serve as an example and intimidate other cartoonists and journalists around the world. After all America media outlets are completely intimidated. Fox the network that never found a war their Chicken Hawks would not start would not let “Family Guy” show image of Mohamed in an episode. Those that are all for war never want to be on the front line themselves. It seems when the going gets tough the tough start looking for a place to hide. When the circulation of the magazine soared the Muslims were speechless now that the offensive cartoons of their super hero were more widely circulated than ever.

Throughout history religious orders have always found that murder has always been a tried true method of reaching the faithful and recruiting new members. Burning people at the stake was responsible for the spread of Christianity across the western world. There were many demonstrations throughout the Muslim world to protest the increased circulation of Charlie Hebdo. The Muslims could not understand why mass murder did not frighten and intimidate the French as it does the Americans. Have you seen any cartoon s of Mohammed in America? Nor will you ever if the cowards at Fox have anything to do with it. Why? Religion must be respected, no matter how murderous, no matter how crazy. Religion deserves our respect. The Pope if he is honest would admit that the Muslim religion is just more self serving BS and that his religion is the one true religion but he dare not show any disrespect for any religion as to do so would show disrespect for all religions. The Pope cannot disrespect the church of the flying Spaghetti monster without discrediting other religions as well.

The Pope has no trouble justifying violence for insults but if he truly believes in his religion than the very existence of another competing religion is in essence and insult to his religion. If violence is acceptable for insulting one’s religion then we would live in a perpetual state of violence which much describes much of man’s history of religious wars or religiously inspired wars. If the Pope truly believed in his religion he would have no trouble justifying the cartoons but to the Pope an attack on one religion is an attack on all religions. I suspect the Pope does not truly believe in his religion he has access to way to much information about angels who whisk people through the roof or converted pagans who part the water and executioner’s eyes that pop out and roll on the ground only to stare at the heads they just severed.

The Pope I suspect believes in the organization; god not as a real entity but as abstract concept that is responsible for morality in men. The Pope truly believes that he is doing good by engendering a belief in his fellow men when in reality he is harming them. The Christian belief that all men are bad and have to be “saved” is preposterous. There are in fact bad men but they are a small percentage and they are not evil but have actual brain deficits that can be shown on an fMRI. Religions project those deficits on to all of mankind and treat a problem that does not exist in the majority with religion a solution that won’t work on a physical deficit.

I really don’t believe the Pope or many of the other religious leaders actually believe in the chosen religion. They are not true believers; the true believers are the rank and file. The Pope and other religious leaders believe in their organization and that the organization can indeed “save” people. The Pope and other religious leaders see themselves much like comic book heroes see themselves, they are superheroes fighting evil. They are out to cure mankind’s problem and their super power is fantasy. This is why it is so easy for the Pope to identify with the Muslim religion being the victim of an evil Charlie Hebdo. It is easy to attack fantasy and all religions are based on a fantasy.

The majority of mankind is not bad or evil. Psychopaths make up only one percent of population of the US but 30 percent of the prison population. Religion is much like giving a 100 people rabies shots when only one person actually has rabies. As science advances and we unlock the mysteries of the brain the concept of good and evil may disappear and the world will never again be the comic book vision of good or evil. The concept that morality was born of religion has already been proven as false as the sun revolves around the earth. What seems obvious at first glance is not obvious. Religions treats a problem it does not understand with fantasy and the real results are often far more evil than the evil they claim to control.

Religions reflect the state of mankind’s knowledge at the time of their inception. Mankind knowledge of himself and the world around him has rapidly increased in the last century. Mankind’s knowledge has been increasing exponentially. Up until 1900 mankind’s knowledge doubled every 100 years, by 1945 mankind’s knowledge doubled every 25 years, today mankind’s knowledge is doubling every 13 months and soon it will double every 12 hours. This is a problem for organized religion, the further back in time their inception was the bigger the knowledge gap they have to bridge. Since the founding of Christianity mankind’s knowledge as doubled over 200 times and this is an exponential increase. Traditionally religions cover the knowledge gap by claiming superhero status. They claim their knowledge comes from a supernatural superhero who is infallible and that might cover some of the ingrained ignorance but since the beginning of time eventually the knowledge gap overcomes the religions.

What we know about life for sure is that everything that lives dies. This applies to organizations as well as to people and animals. Religions are no more than organization based on belief in the supernatural. Thousands have lived, flourished, aged and died since the beginning of time. Religions age much more rapidly with the exponential increase in knowledge. The world’s major religions are rapidly reaching the age of senility which is not surprising in itself but what is surprising is that no new major religions are evolving today to take their place. A new religion today would be used to cover the areas that cannot be explained by science today and reflect the state of mankind’s knowledge today. There simply are no new superheroes walking the face of the earth today performing miracles to found the next great religion. Why? When early man could not come up with a rational explanation phenomenon a story teller would come up with a supernatural explanation, a god, a demon or some other supernatural creature was surly responsible. It is impossible to prove the supernatural doesn’t exist because it doesn’t obey any laws of the physical universe but because you can’t prove it doesn’t exist doesn’t prove it does. But as mankind’s knowledge expanded the ground seeded to the supernatural rapidly shrank. There is not enough supernatural ground left to create the next major religion and the only alternative is to try and keep the current major senile religions in operation and just like the senile driver who steps on the gas thinking he has stepped on the brake, and when the car doesn’t stop he mashes the gas harder, religions are accelerating out of control even the Pope is advocating violence. Just turn that other cheek so I have a better shot at your jaw.

Most fields of knowledge are putting the exponential increase of knowledge to work. They can easily incorporate the new knowledge and eject concepts that they now know are wrong. However religion is frozen in time it cannot dissociate itself from any of it primary beliefs anymore than you could take a knife and cut your arm off. When you claim that knowledge in your religion is based on is direct from a superhero who knows all and is absolute infallible you can’t say sorry he was wrong and correct his mistake. So what is a good religion to do when the inevitable mistakes in their sacred text come to light? Start killing people or burning them at the stake. The sacred text can’t be changed so reality must be changed to alter the scared text. No religion can reflect more than the state of man’s knowledge at the time of its creation. There are no supernatural shortcuts to knowledge.

At one time mankind believed that earth was center of the universe and that the sun orbited the earth when an astronomer could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the earth that orbited the sun the religious world was in turmoil a mere man had demonstrated that the knowledge from their God was not only flawed but down out right wrong. The Christian church quickly realized the loose of infallibility on one topic could by association invalidate or be called into question much of the rest of their scared text. When Galileo pointed out that the earth orbited the sun he was tried for supposition of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition and convicted. For the bible says.
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“He sat the world on its foundations so that it should never be moved.”

Psalms 104:5

“The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hastens to the place it rises.”

Ecclesiastes 1:5
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There are a number bible references to an unmovable earth and this was the state of knowledge at the time the bible was written but a superhero whose superpower including knowing everything would have known the that and no such mistake would have appeared in any book inspired by him. Why is it that preachers do not have sermons today on how the earth is unmovable? Have they decided that Galileo was right and their infallible document wrong? Or have they seen pictures from spacecrafts in orbit that shows there are no foundations on the earth.

A recent survey showed that 25% of Americans believe the sun orbits the earth. The Christian right in America has mounted massive offensive against education to make sure that all kinds of biblically founded ignorance are taught instead of scientifically based knowledge. Maybe the Christian right can get 75% of American children to believe that the sun orbits the earth. We have only to look at the Muslim world to see how one of the most advanced civilizations on the face of earth can become one of the most backward on the face of the earth. The American Taliban is alive and well in America and most likely serving on the local Board of Education.

There were many religions founded in the 20th century and a few garnered a following for a short period of but most were not a serious threat to the prevailing religions. Space aliens play a prominent role in the mythology of Scientology. It seems space aliens were placed by volcanoes on earth and thermo nuclear devices were detonated in the volcanoes in an effort to destroy the aliens but alas it failed and the aliens soul survived all 1.5 ounces of them. According L Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology these surviving aliens souls are at fault for people’s trouble on earth.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta are prominent Scientologists and really believe this. Well at least the space aliens didn’t claim to walk on water or raise the dead. L Ron Hubbard admitted he wrote this stuff while drinking and taking pills so it has got to be true. The Pope meantime would not want us to criticize this “religion” because it might be the “universal truth.” So much for truth it is no more than what some people imagine it to be.

If the French magazine Charlie Hebdo had been publishing cartoons about Scientology with little space aliens running around would the Pope have believed that Scientology had been insulted and that physical was justifiable response? Scientology is a religion founded by a science fiction writer so the fact that there are aliens at the root of it should surprise anyone. Space aliens became acceptable mythological characters as man ventured into space. If we could travel into outer space than surely others could do the same. A new mythological character was born and as mythological character it was inevitable that they would be found at the center of an organized religion.

L Ron Hubbard’s aliens were called thetas they lived on a hundred different planets orbiting a dozen different stars. The Evil Emperor Xenu noted unrest among the planets and decided over population was the cause, it just so happens that was also a major concern on earth at the time Hubbard fashioned his religion. You will always see man’s current problems reflected in his various religions as well as the state of man’s knowledge at the time the religion was conceived. Xenu than lured some thetas to the tax office (Hubbard himself was avoiding the tax office by living on a 300 foot boat) where they were paralyzed by drugs and sent to earth and the rest is history of sorts.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta believe this tale every bit as much as others believe in Jesus Christ. Notice the black and white in religions the evil verses good theme permeates all of mythology.

Man has shown that he will worship almost anything as Gods from the sun, moon, space aliens, or anything that catches their fancy. Historically people will worship literally anything golden calves come to mind or the belief that thunder was Thor’s hammer. You would think that just looking at the historical record would shake most people’s faith but it doesn’t what ever they believe is the one true religious philosophy. If you could remove the influence of the mentally ill (those who hear God’s voice like Baby Bush or see angels or demons) and the conmen who are always Johnny on the spot to take every advantage of the situation very little of religion would be left.

I don’t know about you but I would be very uncomfortable with a President who wore “magic underwear.” Imagine if he forgot to wear it the whole fate of the nation might be at stake. It was bad enough that we had a president that believed that he was not elected by the American people but appointed by God himself. He was at least right on one point he wasn’t elected by the American people but it was the Supreme Court who appointed him not God. When we blend politics with liberal amounts ignorance and superstition it endangers not only our future but also our children and grandchildren’s future. Organized religion is pulling America back to a time when ignorance and superstition ruled the known world. It is easy to seek council and direction from supernatural superheroes but when you leave yourself open to the imagination of others you leave yourself open to manipulation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses preached the world would end in 1914 when it didn’t they preached it would end in 1918. Of course the world did not end in 1918 either so they preached it would end 1920 and all those that were hoping to see the world end were disappointed again. Next they preached the end of the world would come in 1925 when it didn’t happen they decided it would end in 1941 for sure. Next they predicted 1975 and still the world didn’t come to an end. At this point after missing such and important date six times the solved the problem by simply saying the world would end soon. Even the best of conmen would lose their credibility after six wrong predictions but not so with religious conmen their credibility seems to have eternal life. There is a complete and total suspension of disbelief when it comes to religious matters. It is understandable when people suspend disbelief to watch a sci-fi move but when the movie ends the rational mind kicks back in but when people leave religious services the rational mind is still blocked and they want to build gas chambers or strap on bombs to kill people that don’t believe what they believe.

Jehovah’s Witness cult should have been named the Church of Armageddon as they used the threat of the end of the world as a recruiting tool. Religion is never targeted at the rational mind it is always targeted toward the emotional mind. When our ancestors were in the jungle and heard breaking sticks in bush they reacted as if it might be a tiger even though 99 times out of 100 times a tiger did not cause the noise. When religious cults predict the end of the world as the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and now they just say it will end soon. You would think once obvious lies were told by the cult membership would go down drastically but instead with each failure of their prediction cult membership dramatically increased. The emotional mind is designed not to neglect the possibility of a physical threat no matter how remote. Church membership is driven by a physical threat to cult member lives; they must be “saved” from death and the end of the world. No matter how remote the chance is of that happening.

As the dog walked across the bridge he glanced his reflection in the water. The reflection had a bone in its mouth as big as the bone the dog had in his mouth. He jumped in to take the bone from the dog in the water and traded an illusion for the bone he once had. Religious cult members make a similar decision with their lives. They exchange their life and treasure for an illusion that is no more real than the dog’s reflection.

Both man and animal have an inborn drive to survive. It is one of the strongest drives if we don’t survive nothing else matters end of gave. The emotional mind or limbic mind is designed with speed in mind it process information much faster than the rational mind and often has colored incoming information before the rational brain has accessed it. While lions and tigers are confined to zoos these days we may be cut off in traffic and killed in a traffic accident. If one is cut off in traffic and not wrecked the emotional mind kicks in and we call it road rage. The emotional minds wants to retaliate and make sure the offending drivers knows not to repeat the maneuver but the emotional mind has a very narrow focus on the danger and often doesn’t see the big picture or other cars. The drive experiencing road rage attention is concentrated on the offending driver and the consequences can be tragic. When you see road rage you are seeing the emotional mind in full control the rational mind has been moved to the back of the bus. When the other driver narrowly misses your front bumper he has trespassed into your safety zone the emotional mind sees this as a mortal threat (we have all see countless fatal auto accidents) and kicks into fight or flight. This is why you never want to confront a driver in full road rage and simply get away from them as quickly as possible.

It will be obvious to most of us when we encounter the emotional mind of others on the highway or in bar fights but while road rage or a bar fight is an extreme case of emotion mind in control the emotional mind and its primitive decision making process is always present influencing our life decisions. The modern neuroscientists model of our brains as three distinct and independent brains has not been around long enough to be integrated into other fields or our philosophy. Neuroscientists can use the fMRI to see how the brain mechanics work but it will be a long time before the facts can be accounted for in our philosophy. We do know the three brains can act independently but we also know they can influence and be influenced by the others brains. We each see ourselves as the rational brain but behind the wheel of the car in road rage the driver is no longer his rational self.

Certain information is more likely to be processed by the emotional mind and threats to well-being or death are much more likely to generate a response from the emotional mind. Religion uses the threat of death and torture as a recruiting tool and offers immortal life as a reward for joining the cult. These are all things that will appeal to and would be processed by the emotional mind. Our emotional mind has another ability; the rational mind would simply see things as black and white but it is the emotional mind that supplies the color. Much like Fox News spins every story to achieve their political philosophy, the emotional mind often spins income information to achieve its goals. The rational mind can be used only to generate endless rationalizations for the irrational ideas of the emotional mind. Those in the clutches of a religious cult may not be frothing at the mouth and pounding the steering wheel but they are every bit as out of control and just as dangerous to others. The deaths caused by religious cults far out number those caused by road rage incidents but the source is the same. The emotional mind wants what the emotional mind wants and that is eternal life. It is the emotional mind’s responsibility to prevent death at all cost. Immortal life is fool’s gold but the emotional mind is incapable of understanding that.

The prevailing wisdom in popular philosophy is that we have one brain that process all incoming information but neuroscientists tell us to think of our brain as more of an orchestra not a instrumental solo. One need not have to be reminded of the old saying, “garbage in garbage out.” In the past century we have journeyed into outer space without first understanding inner space. Mankind cannot only build a sophisticated guidance system for a billion dollar spacecraft he can repair it in flight. But the same scientists do not understand why they kick into road rage on the way home from work. Recently in California two women were killed in separate road rage incidents. They were both passenger not the offending driver. In once incident the woman was shot in the other the woman was hit with a travel mug when she rolled down the window to try and calm the situation she was on blood thinner and died before she got to hospital. In California road rage incidents gun use is common. The rational mind could never deliberately kill someone because they were going to slow on the highway, as was what happened in the first instance. If the rational mind was in control they would call the highway patrol and ask that the old couple be ticketed for driving to slow. When the road rage driver had to swerve to miss a slow moving car in front of him killing the passenger seemed reasonable to the emotional mind. Like a Greek tragedy one person is dead and the other will go to jail if caught.

The emotional mind is complex and it is the root cause of our morality but when engaged without first being filtered through the rational mind it can lead to disaster. The emotional mind is designed to identify danger in a fraction of a second and respond with lethal force. This part of our mind was necessary for our ancestors who lived in much more dangerous world and there are still a few instances of deadly danger today but vast majority of us will never need the fight or flight response in today’s world.

An organization can take advantage of the fight or flight response of its members and the organization often seems to demonstrate an emotional mind of its own. What one finds in the micro can usually be found in macro. During the Spanish Inquisition the Christian cult perceived a threat, like the car moving to slow on the freeway, those that didn’t believe or believed in a competing religion were a threat. Like the driver who took his gun out and killed the passenger, the Christian Religious cult started killing people they perceived as threats. Could it happen again? In fact it is happening as we speak the blood is running wide and deep in the Middle East as one religious cult is trying to wipe out other competing religious cults convert or die is the message.

When the organizational emotional mind takes over we see a Spanish Inquisition, ISIS, or Nazi Germany. We have to understand how our emotional mind works to understand how the organizational mind works.

Many people who attend church regularly will openly admit that they really don’t believe the preacher’s con but even if there is the most remote possibility that it is true they are willing to take that chance and invest their lives and the lives of their family in the cult. That calculation should sound familiar it is the emotional mind hearing a stick break in the jungle though the chances are remote that the cause of the sticking breaking was a predator our ancestor fled the area or got ready to fight. The threat of death has always been used by religious cults to spread the word of God and recruit followers. Sometimes it was just a threat and sometimes it was very real as it is now in Iraq. While the chance of our ancestors being killed by tiger might be remote the chances of being killed during the Spanish Inquisition for not joining the Christian cult were very substantial. Today in occupied Iraq your chances of being killed for not joining their religious cult are nearly 100%. When the emotional mind makes a calculation based on the threat of death it will likely resolve it by joining the religious cult.

History has taught us for all of religion’s promises of peace and love that given a chance to implement them they will use torture and murder. All religious cults go through dormant stages when they are not aggressively killing and torturing others but even in America today the specter of death is raised. When abortion doctors violate a doctrine of Christianity they are gunned down in the streets and their clinics blown up it doesn’t matter what the law of the land is only cult doctrine matters. Religious cults always imagine that they answer to a higher power and they have a right to make everyone else adhere to their imagination. The imaginations of cults founders are unbounded by any semblance of reality space aliens and all knowing and seeing superheroes abound in the imagination.

Some of the most popular Christian cult stories of past generation have been moved to the back of the bus in recent generations. To be sure the stories had been altered to take out some less believable parts. Take the story of Jonah a man awash in a world of ignorance. A storm blows up while Jonah is taking a trip at sea. The sailors decide that Jonah caused the violent storm and throw him overboard at which time a whale devours him but it wasn’t just any whale this whale had a studio apartment inside complete with a desk, chair and a glowing pearl that provided light. Jonah constructed a latter of driftwood so he could climb up and look out the creature eye, which had the transparence of glass. The bible was written by a primitive people who believed that men caused storms.

Most people have absolute no problem pointing out how absolutely ridiculous religions is as long as it is somebody else’s religion but when it comes to their own religion they are completely blind to the same level happenings. The majority of people in the world would find the story of Jonah ridiculous, a subject matter for children’s cartoons. But the Christians would claim every word to be the gospel truth. The Hindu believe the transmigration of soul in their culture the cow is sacred and they believe the cow might be one of their ancestor meanwhile the Christians can’t slaughter and eat enough cows. The religious know no boundaries when it comes to the suspension of disbelief about religious doctrine. If their religion tells them space aliens founded the earth they believe it totally and completely. If the preachers tells them God has decreed that they can no longer sleep with their wives and only the preacher shall perform that duty in future they will not only accept it but fight to the death to make sure the preacher has this privilege.

Religion is byproduct of the emotional mind a ghost in machine that exists not because of rational mind but despite it. Religion is the only philosophy designed to be worshipped by followers and be respected by all others and respected means that it should never be challenged by the rational mind or disrespected in anyway. If a philosophies can never be questioned than all sorts of weird ideas will prevail as the unquestionable truth. Man will be ruled forever by the emotional mind not the rational mind.

People’s rational mind works when it is evaluating some other religion other than their own. Most Americans would quickly deny that they were cows in a past life or that space aliens control the earth but if you ask the same people whether Jonah lived in the belly of whale they would swear that the story is true. Why? They apply their rational mind to foreign religions but refuse to use it on their own religious beliefs. One reason is that they were brainwashed, as children another is that as they look around them and most people they know also believe the wild tale. But people have learned to use offsite storage of knowledge like a computer. A computer can store information on disk and not use vital memory to store that information when it needs that information the disk can be inserted and removed when the information is not needed. People do the same thing in a family as new features were added to the home phones I never learned to use them. My wife uses the phone more and when I need a phone number I will ask her to find it. I never learned that phone system I know how to use the feature on my cell phones but not the home phone system. My wife never learned how to use the record feature on a VCR but she can use the DVR features better than I can.

We all use off site storage in a society and when it comes religion we don’t use our rational mind we defer to expert on religion where all things religious are stored on the preacher’s brain. When decide not to use our rational brain and depend on the knowledge of others to tell us what is rational and what is not we do a disservice to all of mankind. If it is not rational it is irrational and it is like an out of control train come down a mountain sooner or later it is going to derail.

Any one man can only expect to become proficient in only a tiny portion of the vast amount of knowledge mankind has amassed. This why there are well-delineated division of labor and knowledge in modern society. If you have a medical problem you go see a doctor and take his advice. If you have a legal problem you go see a Lawyer. Preachers in our society are often granted the same expert status as doctors and Lawyers. Experts on what? The make believe and the imagined. If witch doctors were listed in the yellow pages along side doctors when your child got seriously you would not call the witch doctor. In fact the government would likely step in and charge the witch doctor with practicing medicine without a license. Preachers have far more in common with witch doctors than doctors and lawyers yet they are never charged with practicing philosophy without a license.

By granting the same expert status to preachers that we grant to doctors and lawyers it provides a gateway around our rational mind. We are equipped with a rational mind for a reason it was designed to filter out the BS and avoid the garbage in garbage out syndrome. The best way to prevent garbage out is to prevent garbage from going in the first place. If the preachers have the status of experts in our society most people will no longer think for themselves they will simply believe whatever they are told by the “expert.” If a doctor prescribes a certain antibiotic for the flu I would not question the decision but likewise when the preacher says you need to burn people at the stake to make it right with God they many will burn those people at the stake, they in fact did and they will again, the burning of the pilot of Jordan is just God getting what he wants.
The masters of make believe are just that and nothing more they are no more deserving of society respect than the witch doctor.

Doctors have MD degree (Doctor of Medicine) it seems someone must have been dyslexic. Aspiring lawyers must earn a JD degree (Juris Doctor). I would propose that preachers must earn a MM degree (Master of Mythology) or a MMB degree (Master of Make Believe degree. As long as society continues to attribute the same level of expertise as a doctor or lawyer to preachers who hear God’s voice or believe that they know the imaginary will of a supernatural superhero mankind is in danger. Like a performer whose act includes wild animals they may have been docile for years but one day they go wild an attack. The imagination of men is just as wild and uncontrollable and though it may remain docile for years inevitable the will of God is Armageddon and the way to Armageddon is through God.

There are many people in this world today who would gladly die for their imaginary vision of God and that includes many people in America who stand just off stage ready to rush onto the stage and into the mainstream. The fact that they are willing to die for their vision of God may not be a bad thing except for them but they are more than willing to kill others to preserve their imaginary vision of God. We have only to look at the Middle East, as a religiously inspired blood bath takes place to establish a country were a religious organizations governs. This is the penultimate dream of all religious organizations to have complete and total control of the population. The American Taliban would love nothing more to establish an American Christian Caliphate in America.

The biggest threat to any religion is doubt that it is true and all of the world’s religions are vulnerable to that threat. Since doubts are not mortal they can never be slain they will persist even in the minds of the devout. The very best the religious organizations can hope for is to silence those who express the doubts that they don’t like to acknowledge in themselves. When ISIS kills others they are killing their own doubts but no matter how many they kill they can never kill enough to silence their own doubts. No matter how many millions are sacrificed as offerings to their God it will never make him real or remove even their own doubts.

Of all the different types of philosophies in the world it is mainly followers of religious philosophies that believe they have the moral right to kill others to protect their religious turf. Religion allows mankind to override his own aversion of killing others as a way of serving a supernatural superhero. This blood bath is just the modern day version of sacrificing the maiden to the sun god. Of course the Sun God was no more real than a modern day reproductions but death was real it reminded all present that someday they to would also die and this spectacle engaged the full force of their emotional minds. Not only was the threat of death real but also the possibility of losing an everlasting life was real. If you can slay the concept of an everlasting life you are also in effect taking from them their eternal life they believe they are entitled to effectively killing them. If you believe that someone is going to kill you than by law you can kill them first this has justified religiously motivated killings since the beginning of time.