The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

While there may be genetic programming for a propensity toward religion it is not a genetic programming toward a specific religion. Some of the specific genes involved in tendency to believe in mythology have been identified. The DRD4 and the VMAT2 gene are associated with a propensity to believe in religion. These genes are associated with the release of dopamine, a chemical compound associated with pleasure in the brain. Dopamine is a motivating force in the pleasure brain. Organized religion has a lot in common with an opium den. While the opium users are using an artificial drug to trigger the dopamine receptors, which imitate the bodies own pleasure drugs, those involved in organized religion are using those genes to stimulating the production of their own dopamine. This explains why some people are as addicted to religion as a drug addict is addicted to their drug of choice. Imagine how big a hit religious extremists get when they kill people for their God? One of the most puzzling aspects of terrorism is how you get a human being to willing kill himself for the glory of God. We know that drug addicts will keep using drugs until they are dead. People using the zombie drug will continue using it even after the flesh is gone and their bones are showing. For some the high provided by religion may be so high that they would do literally anything for the next bigger and better high. The high on religion may explain why some people involved in religions exhibit the classic symptoms of addiction.
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“A scale consistent with being spiritual but not religious was associated with positive personalities traits. A scale consistent with being spiritual and religious was only associated with personality traits suggesting a conservative and more rigid approach to life. High scores on both traits were protective against substance abuse.”

“The results suggest that being spiritual but not religious is associated with better mental health than being spiritual and religious.”

From the book: “Did Man Create God?” by David E Cummings, M. D.
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Does it surprise you that someone who is spiritual but not religious has better mental health? The religious are always looking over their shoulder for the all knowing and seeing God who is just waiting for them to screw up so he can burn them in hell for eternity. The religious are under perpetual stress trying to live up to someone else’s standards. Their lives must be lived up to the tenants of a particular cult.

Much of man’s genetic programming has to do with survival but at an early age man becomes aware that he too will die. You have a body that is geared to survive but at the same time you have the knowledge that you too will die. How can one resolve the strong will to survive with the knowledge of your ultimate death? Most of us would cheat death if we got the chance. You know that your body will not survive death as you get older you have watched as many of your relatives died. At this point you create a belief in dualism where you are able to separate ego from body. It is the old question where does the light go when it is turned off? If the switch is turned off children believe that the light must have gone somewhere else the way later in life they will believe the light of life emitted from body must have went somewhere else at point of death. For an organism that is programmed to live death is the ultimate defeat.

Man had to find a way to live with the knowledge he would one day die. This is the point where magical thinking enters the picture. A belief that your life’s essence can be somehow separated from your body at the point of death and go to a magical place like the happy hunting grounds, Gan Eden, Valhalla, Tir Na Nog (The Land of the Young) and heaven. There is a long list of magical places where essence of people went to dwell in the sweet bye and bye. Tir Na Nog was Irish mythological place, it was island said to be far out in the Atlantic. You had to be invited to Tir Na Nog by the fairies that lived there or undergo a great ordeal. A belief in life after death and the existence of a magical place served to reduce stress in the living. If the living were preoccupied with their death it would cause all kinds of anxiety and stress.

The genes that have been handed down from ancestors are handed down because they have a survival value. The DRD4 and VAMT2 gene have survival ramifications. These genes and others grant the power for people to believe in magical places and life after death but myths were created by men an as such can be corrupted by men. The ego of religions knows no bounds and world conquest and control of others lives is their ultimate goal.

Religion in America changes to justify economic conditions. People think that religion is a rock unchanging over time but religion adapts to justify economic condition. The old south’s economic model depended on slavery. The churches in the south were the biggest defenders of slavery pointing out that no less an authority than God himself had endorsed slavery in the bible. How could any man deny that slavery was just if it was common practice in biblical times? While churches in north had no economic dogs in the fight and were far more likely to recuse God in this matter and instead be guided my man’s law that said all men were created equal.

No self-respecting church would advocate slavery today and it is a shame that more churches today don’t have the courage the Quakers had during slavery and stand up for what is right in spite of what the bible says. The champions of slavery the Southern Baptists have spread across the country. The North won the war but the Southern Baptist won the war for members and are now one of the biggest voices for Christianity in America. The Quakers once one of the major voices for Christianity during the pre Civil War period are all but extinct. The Quakers move away from the literal interpretation of the bible cost them future members. If you don’t believe in slavery you can’t be a true Christian

The religious bigotry laws like slavery are being championed by the Southern Baptist. Now North Carolina passed what is by far the most draconian law on discrimination in the last hundred years. It is a Trojan horse law referred to as the “bathroom law” it was passed in response to a Charlotte law that would allow people to use the bathroom of the sex they identified with instead of their birth sex. But the North Carolina law goes much further then the typical religious bigot law, which allows anybody involved in religion to discriminate against members of the LGBT community. This law legalized every know form of discrimination, race, color creed, age, national origin, disability and sex. No longer can anyone in North Carolina sue an employer for discrimination except for possibly religious discrimination. If the right to sue is removed by law discrimination will be rampant.

Everything changes overtime and unisex bathrooms are the future. Some small businesses already have unisex bathrooms. I am a long distance runner and it is common occurrence for a woman to walk into the man bathroom when there are long lines at the women’s bathroom the stalls provides plenty of privacy and I have yet to see a man object. The North Carolina say they don’t want biological men in the rest room with small girls but as more women work and more men become primary care givers of small girls they cannot take them into the women restroom and must take them into the men’s. Here we have and will continue to have men in the restroom with small girls. Household bathrooms are all unisex and eventually that will be the direction that we go in. There are now more than a 150 schools across the America with gender-neutral bathrooms, mostly college campuses. The religious in country like the religious in the middle east will always want to take us kicking and screaming back 2,000 years ago into the hey day of their God.

We often hear about the red states and the blue states but in North Carolina it is the large progressive urban areas versus the backward rural areas. The trouble is even though North Carolina has a few large cities the state is mostly rural and the state legislature reflects that. The most recent elections carried the lunatic fringe elements of the Republican Party into power. It suddenly like 50 Jed Clamptts were elected to the state legislatures. West Virginia has a similar make up and the rural legislators have kept the cities from getting an income tax even though the cities in surrounding states depend on it.

It is important to note that the North Carolina discrimination law was backlash to a local anti discrimination law passed in Charlotte. The Charlotte law barred discrimination and created transgender accommodation for bathroom use. This is no longer the Victorian age and we can no longer pretend that sexual variation is limited to simply male and female. While the general public is blissfully unaware of how many babies are born with both sets of sexual organs those that work there are far less likely to be bigoted against those in the LBGT community. Parents of children born with both sets of sex organs do not tell others and many put off surgery until after the child identifies with one sex or the other. “God does not make any mistakes.” This is the mantra of a religious bigot. Each one of these bigots should be sentenced to work in a hospital nursery for six months and see how many babies are born with birth defects. Sexual variations are no more mistakes than the color yellow in a color spectrum they are just different variations.

If child were born without legs and had to use a wheel chair would we remodel bathrooms across the country the country? We can and we did make bathrooms accessible to wheelchairs. When it came to making bathrooms and apartments handicap accessible we had no problem. Why the hang up with sexual identification? Sex identification and sexual conduct are an area that religions have long strived to control even though religion is bound to knowledge base 2,000 years old. They blunder onward, blinded and ignorant but they claim the mantle of authority on a subject they know little about. The Jebs of North Carolina will continue to hear the doorbell but they will never understand why someone is at the door. Even when they find they have an LBGT child they will never understand.

The North Carolina Christian right rushes forth armed only with 2,000-year-old ignorance to solve the world’s problems. A CNN article pointed out what many people didn’t realize that this was going on all along. Transgender people have been using the bathroom of the sex they identified with all along. Charlie Comero a woman that sexually identifies as a man and very much looks the part with a close cut hair and tattoos is now forced to use the women restroom where she is confronted by other women who believe she is a male. When confronted she gives them a card that states, “I am following the law that was passed on March 23. I am a transgender man who would rather be using the men’s room right now. This is likely uncomfortable for both of us. Please contact your legislature and tell them you oppose HB2.

We have all seen the shows on television where they show a number of people and you try to guess their sex and most people are unable to correctly guess. There are some men dressed up as women who are very obviously men but there are others that it would be difficult if not impossible to tell. Some women with close cut hair that can pass for a man. Even now women who identify as women see nothing wrong with using the men’s facilities if time is short and lines are long at the women’s facilities. At a run at a local park I passed a group of women lined up at the women bathroom and over heard one say she was going to use the men’s bathroom and I thought not if I get their first.

This is something that has been going on all along and the Charlotte law just legalized the status quo. The backlash state law is an effort to legislate something that cannot be controlled. It is one thing for a masculine looking female to be confronted in the female restroom but the confrontation in a male restroom with a male in full makeup and dress may turn violent especially if it is with a red neck right Christian. I had a friend whose cousin was confronted in a Washington DC bathroom and he beat the man to death. If that man had used the female bathroom he would be alive today and my friend’s cousin would not have went prison.

Religious ignorance knows no bounds. If you saw a child struggling in a pool and about to drown and you went to save it only to be stopped by the child’s parents who said we believe in the power of prayer. It is God who will decide whether that child lies or dies. You would be appalled and you would do everything in your power to save the child. They say our faith is strong and our prayers will surely be answered. When the child drowns they will say it was God’s will. Should the parents be prosecuted? They claim religion freedom as a defense. After all they believe in the power of God. In this case the parents would probably be convicted because they did nothing more than pray and intervened to stop you from saving the child but everyday in America children die because of lack of medical care because of religious belief.

On NBC this morning there was case in Idaho where a child was denied what was a simple medical fix when she was a child but now as an adult she needs a heart and lung transplant to solve the problem. It was very obvious she had a serious medical problem when she was a child and her parent’s answer was to get her siblings to pray for her. The young woman is trying to get a law passed that would require proper medical care instead of prayer. You can bet the Idaho legislature just wants to bury this. Good God fearing Christians that they are they would rather hundreds of children die each year than take on the ignorance of the religious right.

The NBC story showed the graveyard of one of the right wing religions sects in Idaho. It was not full of the graves of the elderly but the graves of children who died without medical care. One Idaho legislature had visited the religious sect assured the NBC interviewer that the people were “real nice people.” John Wayne Gacy was really nice also he went to hospitals dressed as a clown to entertain the young children but he was a serial killer. Gacy killed 33 but you can bet the grave yard in Idaho has more victims. Gacy’s victims and God’s victims share the most import thing they are both dead. Gacy was executed but you could tell the Idaho legislature was not going to lift one single finger to help all those children who will die in Idaho.

My mom was a nurse and taking care of a woman from a strict religious family who believed in the power of prayer. The woman had a serious medical problem but one that could be solved with a transfusion. The husband decided that God would take care of the problem and talked his wife into refusing treatment. She had three small children. The husband prayed and prayed but the young woman died. Was it God’s will? Or was it just ignorance? In this day and age children are dying all over America because their parents won’t let them get medical care and we turn a blind eye and say that is religious freedom. If a house is filthy the state will take the children out of that environment but let others die because of religious ignorance. I guess since we stopped the religious burning witches had to let them kill others with their religious ignorance. Normally mainstream religion would take up the cause of protecting children but not in this case they would have to look into their own reflection and confront their own ignorance and realize no amount of prayer can replace good medical care.

The Catholic Church likes to put thousands of crosses on the front lawn of their churches to denote the victims of abortion. I would like to propose they put thousands of little crosses on the other side of their lawn to denote the children who are victims of religion. There are thousands of children who die each year because medical care is withheld from a child who is seriously ill in favor of curing them by the religious superstition of praying but none of antiabortionists will lift a finger to save the children that are victims of religious superstition. Why? Because if the antiabortionists take the position that prayer is nothing more than religious nonsense it would have die consequences for the rest of organized religion.

When child welfare goes into a home and a child is obvious sick and in need of medical care they will remove the child from the home and get the child proper medical care. In addition the child parents will be charged with neglect as well they should be. If child welfare is receive a report of a seriously ill child in the home of parents who believe that prayer is the answer to all medical problems the child will be left to die because of the religious freedom of the parents. These children are actual children and not fetuses but the antiabortionists are exercising their religious freedom by trying to gain control over the bodies of all women. The parents of the children who are dying because of lack of medical care are also exercising their religious freedom and religious freedom is far more important than life itself.

Before the religious decide to dictate to the rest of us they need to clean their own house. It is appalling that children are allowed to die because of their parent’s superstitions. Studies of prayer in a hospital setting showed that prayer made the subject sicker than no prayer at all. The “prayer effect” was explained by the fact that prayer put the subject under additional stress to demonstrate the value of prayer and the additional stress made them even sicker.

Mainstream religion will never make a move to take on these more conservative religious sects because they would have to admit that prayer is just another superstition like a child avoids stepping on a crack to keep from breaking their mother’s back. The death of thousands of children is an acceptable price to maintain their illusions.

How can society just sit idly by and watch as the religious crazies let their children die from lack of adequate medical care? In America we have freedom of speech but there are common sense limits placed on that freedom of speech. One cannot yell fire in a crowed theater and claim freedom of speech. You cannot tell malicious lies about another and claim freedom of speech as a defense. But limits are seldom placed on religious freedom because religious freedom encases a wide range of fictional beliefs with new beliefs showing up each day. Religions are completely devoid of facts and can be made up whole cloth on the spot. If society will
Stop an idiot from yelling fire in a crowded theater should we not extend that same protection to sick children who are victims of their parent’s religious beliefs? The parent’s religion is the proximate cause of the death of the child. Children at one time under the law were considered property of their parents but now children have rights and that includes the right to life. There has to be a common sense limit to even the freedom of religion.

Religious freedom in America was intended only to grant the freedom to worship the God of your choice but it often ended up giving religious exemptions from the laws everyone else had to follow. A 95 year old man with his hand up the skirt of a 14 year old girl would be severely punished in most of the country but not so in Mormon country. In Utah and Colorado when a man takes several 14-year-old wives he is considered a pillar of the community and this is the pathway to heaven. These religious icons have in effect kidnapped these girls and raped them under the eyes of the law. They are “spiritual wives,” a Mormon only legally marries the first wife. His 30 or 40 other wives with their children are put on welfare where the “Great Satan” (US government) will support them for rest of their lives. What I have never understood is why every child molester in America doesn’t convert to Mormonism and move to Colorado or Utah where they can openly molest children without being prosecuted.

Religious groups were also granted conscientious objector status from military on bases of their religious beliefs. Again we see religious groups granted special exemptions from the law based on belief.

Want to see God? No problem just take psychedelic drugs. We have know for a long time that drugs often trigger visions of God what we didn’t know was that at least three of the world’s major religions were founded by drug cults. Psychedelic drugs interact with the region of the brain that generate gods. We think of psychedelic as designer drugs that were developed recently but in reality psychedelic drugs are as old as time itself. Mushrooms are still used today in religious services in parts of the world. The shaman eats the mushrooms and his followers drink his urine they then have a much better high without the side effects. The mushrooms provided such an excellent high that even the urine of the followers could provide a drug high. An anthropologist that has eaten the mushrooms with a native shaman and then drank his own urine noted an excellent drug with religious overtones. We now know that the particular type of mushrooms were widespread in the Middle East at the time when the major religions were launched.

Abraham’s custom of mutilation of the penis during circumcision has puzzled people for years but now some anthropologist realize that circumcision makes the penis resemble their favorite mushroom and may have been the mark that showed you belonged to that particular mushroom cult. Many of the biblical passages that make no apparent sense but they would seem reasonable if seen in the light of someone experiencing a drug high. Current drug users would find this amusing that all these people who condemn them for using drugs spend each Sunday worshiping a drug cults vision of God. The druggies would say just cut the middleman out and experience your own vision of God. Just don’t eat the poison mushrooms.

Each day man’s field of knowledge expands, we not only learn more about the world we live in but we know uncover more about our past and the more we know about the past we realize that Bible is not a historical text it is simply a cult document meant to further cult objectives. The joke may have been on us if most American males had their penis mutilated to show they were members of a drug cult.

The fact that the major world religions were based on someone’s drug trips should surprise no one. The same mushrooms that existed in biblical times exist today. If someone eats the mushrooms today it will activate the same region of the brain and Gods come bubbling up. The amount of time wasted throughout history worshiping someone’s drug trip is staggering.
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Within minutes after drinking something amazing started to happen. My body began to feel light, as though I weighted almost nothing. It felt as if the molecules that composed my body were separating and allowing air to pass between them, or that I could feel the space between the atoms. I became aware of a tremendous energy at my feet that rose up through my body in wave after wave. “Feeling good” was rapidly changing into the most blissful feeling I had ever experienced. My mind and entire body were in the throes of a kind of meta-orgasm that wouldn’t stop---not that I wanted it to.

From the book “Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy” by Clark Heinrich
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To achieve the above high Heinrich had to drink his own urine. Heinrich specializes in comparative religion and ethno-botany.
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“Another parable put forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took, and sewed in the field.”

Mathew 13:31

“This appears to be based on the Semite kbardela for mustard ardila for “mushroom” such that the whole discussion stems from a play on the word for secret mushroom.”

From the book “Did Man Create God?”

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There are a number ways to meet God, from mental illness (Most mental facilities have a number of Jesus Christs) to epileptic seizures, to magic mushrooms. The most popular though is just good old fashion imagination. Most people will not drink their own or someone else’s urine to meet Jesus.

This morning before the Today Show came on I caught the last part of the Jack Van Impe show. His wife Rexella was trying to scare up some donations. Rexella claimed that North Korea had threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on New York City. Rexella noted that a 140,000 people were killed in Japan when we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end WWII. But Rexella never mentions that 140,000 are just a drop in the bucket to the number of people killed by Christianity.

People think of the Inquisition as a single event but there were several different Inquisitions that spanned hundreds of years. The first Inquisition was called the “Medieval, or Episcopal Inquisition established in1184 to deal with the heretical Gnostic Cathars in Europe.” The Papal Inquisition was next in 1230. The Spanish Inquisition 1478 focused on riding Spain of Jews and Muslims. The Portuguese, Peruvian and Mexican Inquisitions are among the lesser-known Inquisitions. The Roman Inquisition in 1542 bought Galileo to trial for claiming the sun did not orbit the earth but the earth orbited the sun. The Inquisitions were used to seize the property and wealth of those accused and divide it up among the church, local authorities and accusers. The Inquisitions served as well organized theft rings.

The Pope Urban II launched the Crusades to rob the holy lands. As the inquisitions were built on lies so were the Crusades. Urban claimed that Jerusalem had been overrun by foreign invaders while at the time the Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem lived in peace. Once the Crusaders took the city they slaughter Christian and Muslims alike. The Crusades were about taking treasure not about saving Christians. Eyewitness accounts give a picture of pure mayhem, a slaughter with ankle deep blood.
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“...they were stabbing women who had fled into the palaces and dwellings seizing infants by the soles of their feet from their mothers laps or their cradles and dashing them against the walls and breaking their necks they were slaughtering some with weapons, or striking them down with stones: they were sparing absolutely no gentle of any place or kind.”

The Bishop of Orange
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The Muslims never forgot the Crusades Osma bin Laden sighted them as one of the reasons for his murderous revenge. The Christians tried to blame 9/11 on the homosexuals when in fact it was the Christians who caused it.

“Jesus Christ --- who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into heaven --- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a loan subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad? Rather is there and doubt he would be mad? The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reaps the fruit of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way all others must, civilization is still besieged by armies of the preposterous. We are even now killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?

Sam Harris
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When the religious beliefs are divorced from the settings and rituals that surround them they sound absurd and they not only sound absurd they are absurd. Eating the body of another would be considered cannibalism. Why exactly would we even want to eat the body of another anyway? Cannibals believe that by eating their enemies that they consumed their spirit and their courage. Communion no doubt pays tribute to the ancient practice of cannibalism. When one eats the symbolic body and blood of Christ one hopes to consume his spirit in the same way that cannibals believe they can today. With the possible exception of future Jeffery Dahmers most of us would be abhorred if we knew we were eating the body and blood of another.

Religious rituals that would seem absurd in other setting become plausible when carried in large stone buildings surround by other believers. For years churches were for the most part large stone buildings reaching skyward with towers but more recently industrial buildings are being used without the pretense. A long time Baptist church downsized from their classic church into a failed ice skating building. Another in the west end moved into a closed cookie factory. For years the church building was of prime importance now churches depend on cult forces to bring in new members to practice symbolic cannibalism. I don’t know whether you feel closer to God in a church or the old Keebler Cookie factory but the cult aspects are no doubt stronger in old factories.

Is it better to live all one’s life in a fiction than face reality? Studies indicate that there may indeed be some benefit to believing in fiction but there are many factors that enter into the picture. One study showed that people who participated in cult activities lived longer. But remember that studies also show people with pets live longer so it is possible that a study might show that people who belong to the country club live longer. Those who are looking for justifications are likely to find them. There are likely many factors that influence longevity and isolating any one factor may be difficult, exercising, a healthy diet and not being a risk taker also factoring into longer life spans. Socializing of any kind may provide the same benefit.

Other studies show people who attend church regularly smoke and drink less but is this the determining factor? People who attend church are for the most part are conformists they are looking for someone to tell them how to live their lives. They want to abdicate their independence to the cult. They are looking for a life where others are responsible for the direction of their lives. Those that drink alcohol are usually out in the bars late Saturday night and get up hangovers making it less likely that they attend church. Cult members have a need to conform with the group. Personality test would no doubt show that cult members have high levels of a need to conform and when conformity to religious dogma is suicide bombing they will be more than willing to participate. Tell a religious conformist he should not drink or smoke and compliance will be his goal. Tell him it’s God’s will to take down the World Trade Center and he will be happy to comply.

The manufacture of conformists ready to do God’s will at the bidding of any nut case that comes along may in fact be the worst side effect of religion. When studies that show lower rates of smoking, drinking and drug use are applauded they forget there is a dark side to conformity. Religion is malleable loose cannon based on violent ancient writings, add life long conformists to the mix and it is not a question of whether it will explode but when. Blasting caps are used to set off dynamite and when the right religious blasting cap shows up the dynamite is already in place.

Since studies that indicate that people who attend church regularly live longer are repeatable. Have they discovered that belonging to organized religion will save your life or at least make you live longer? One study by William Strawbridge conducted between 1965 –1994 showed that people who attended church regularly lived an average 81.9 years versus 75.3 for those who attended church less than once a week. We already know that people who attend church regularly have distinctive genetic make up. They have a genetic make up of being a follower. They are not very discriminating about what they believe and will believe the wildest most outrageous tales with absolutely no proof. What should be the control group that they are measured against? Should we measure the longevity of people who attend church regularly against people who have pets, against people who have pets and don’t attend church regularly? As people get older their health fails they stop attending church regularly. The only ones who are likely to attend church regularly at the time of their death are those who die suddenly with heat attacks or cerebral events. In fact it is the oldest people with the best health who are likely to be able to attend church regularly.

Dose the study specify a specific time period when they attend church regularly? In other words would attending church regularly during a persons 20s, 30s and 40s qualify them as regular church goers even if they stop attending church regularly in their 50s? Another flaw in the studies is that it excludes the vast majority of Christians as most do not attend church at least once a week. Only 17% of Americans attend church on a regular bases. Cult followers are less likely to use drugs an alcohol than the general population. Since drug abusers and alcoholics have a very good chance to die early in life averaging in those that die in their teens and twenties because of drugs and drunk driving would pull down the longevity number quickly in the general population and have the opposite effect in the regular church goers.

Lying is also a significant factor in self-reporting. In these types of studies depend on self-reporting without using hard evidence of actual church attendance. “Figures don’t lie but liars do figure.” Most studies on Christianity set out with a goal to prove the lie and while proving a lie is impossible, manipulation of data to prove the lie is as temping as the devil in the desert.

If you went to a doctor for a headache and he prescribed a medicine that had absolutely no effect on your headache would you continue to take the medication? Most people would not continue to use an ineffective medication but come Sunday morning you would find the same people in church praying for world peace or other such nonsense. On September 4, 2014 the Mayor of the city of Huntington went on U-Tube to call for a “prayout.” The word went out to Christian congregations across America to pray out the drugs in Huntington and at the appointed time they did. The mayor who meets regularly with a group of local preachers would dress up, as a witch doctor and dance in the street if he thought it would get him a vote. Who knew that the solution to the drug problem was as simple as praying them away? Once the praying stopped they waited breathlessly for the drugs to be led out of Huntington like the Pied Piper leading the rats out of the city but talking to local businessman yesterday he tells me that the drugs are much worse in Huntington.

The Internet has several sites promoting the prayout but not one site that list the results of the prayout. Wouldn’t you think all the local preachers would get together and at least lie about the results? Was God too busy that day or was he just vindictive? Maybe God believes drug use builds character and people just have to work through it. These are just a few of the many standard excuses as to why God does not answer prayers. There is even a country song called “Some of God’s Greatest Gifts Are Unanswered Prayers.” The songwriter encountered the girl of his dreams when he was a teenager. The woman he prayed for was now twenty years older and time had not been kind to her and boy was he glad God didn’t answer that prayer.

There are two types of prayer, petitionary prayer and intercessory prayer. Petitionary pray is direct prayer for the benefit of the individual while intercessory prayer would be for God to intercede in matters such as the drug problem in Huntington. Petitionary pray does not lend itself to study by the scientific method but intercessory prayer can be studied in double blind studies. Intercessory prayers like long live the King should give kings longer life spans but when studied kings had the shortest life spans of those that had the advantage of affluent. Clergy are one of the most prayed for groups but when compared with others in a similar class like doctors and lawyers clergy had the shortest life spans. It seems like the experts in prayer could manage to get a few extra years.

Did God write the bible? The argument has raged for years. The fundamentalists both Christian and Muslim insist that their holy book was written by God, obviously there is only one way to resolve this argument and that is a fight to the death. Monotheism created this problem because under monotheism there can only be one God and the very existence of another God is an affront to all the followers of the one true God. Polytheism, the belief that many Gods can and do exist allows for tolerance of other beliefs, monotheism does not. There is no question that the bible had many authors not only when it was first written but when it was rewritten.

God is suppose to see all and know all but yet in Exodus he asks the Jews to mark their houses with blood so he will know which houses to pass over. In Hebrews 4:13 “And there is no creature hidden from his sight” So which is it is God all seeing and knowing or must he look for blood on the doors to know who lives there? In Genesis 4:9 God must ask Cain where his brother Abel is? An all-seeing God would not have to ask.
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“According to passages in Exodus 20:5, Numbers 4:18, and Isaiah 12:21-22 children are to bare the sins of their parents, while according to Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20 they are not.”

From the book “Did Man Create God”
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How do Fundamentalists handle the inconsistencies? Ignore them and focus on the parts of the bible they want to believe. Here is an all-seeing God that can’t locate even one man and has to ask his brother where Abel is. Maybe God had lost his superpowers that day.

Has Hell frozen over? The answer to question seems to be yes as religion struggles to stay relevant in a changing world. Fire and brimstone are just not packing the pews any longer. Religious leaders have decided to do a make over on God. The image of God as being the biggest sadist in the world is no longer winning converts. God has long been portrayed by religious leaders as a watch dog in the sky who just can’t wait for you to break one of his rules, like eating meat on Friday (ops that changed also) so he could burn you for an eternity. The devil now even has his own TV show and turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. In recent survey only 60% of Catholics believe in hell and only 56% of Protestants but 82% of evangelical Protestants still believe in the man in the red suit and pitchfork.

Can we really throw the devil out with the bath water? Will church services really be the same if the preacher cannot psychologically torture young children with images of eternal torture? How will we keep them on the straight and narrow? Spare Hell and spoil the child. Father Robert Baron, Director of the Woods on Fire Ministries, explains that Catholic teaching confirms the existence of hell, but doesn’t tell us if anyone has ever been sent there. What? All these colorful sermons and you don’t know if anyone was ever sent there? Not even serial killers and child molesters? Baron says to “Think of God’s life as a party to which everyone is invited,” and think of hell as a sullen corner into which someone who resolutely refuses to join the fun has sadly slunk.” The serial killers and the child molesters standing in the corner, where is justice? Could we burn just a few? A party in the sky? That’s a concept that will really bring them in everybody wants to party with God.

If religion was grounded in facts it would be as unchanging as rock but our generation has witnessed a huge shift in one of the major pillars of religion.

Bobby Knight and Donald Trump make quite a pair. Bobby Knight, the basketball legend is now campaigning for Trump and extolling the virtues of nuclear war and pointing out that Trump would be only presidential candidate willing to start a nuclear war. Knight stated that the nuclear weapons used in Japan were credited with shorting WWII the killing of a 140,000 civilians was said to have saved lives. But there was another important difference when we used the atom bomb; we were the only one that had a nuclear weapon. If we end up electing a president that thinks the way to solve a military conflict is to start a nuclear war we are in trouble.

Trump himself has stated that he would not take the nuclear option off the table in any military conflict. We no longer are the only one to posse nuclear weapons and if a nuclear madman like Trump is elected I would think that other countries with nuclear weapons would have to start looking at a first strike options. Now Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel all have nuclear weapons. When nuclear weapons are exploded it does not stay confined to the battlefield clouds of radiation float into other countries threatening their populations as well.

Trump thinks by rattling the nuclear saber it will make him look like a hero but it only makes him look like an idiot. Bobby Knight may think that the way to sole military conflicts is with nuclear weapons when the buzzer sounds the basketball game is over but you play again next week. Nuclear weapons are real time sudden death you don’t get a chance to correct your mistakes next week.

It has been nearly 71 years since America dropped nuclear bombs on Japan and even then the Quebec Agreement required the consent of the United Kingdom to drop the bombs. I wonder if that or a similar agreement is still in effect today and that Trump would be required to gain permission from the United Kingdom or others? The radical right has been pushing the country further and further to the right and the Christian Right can’t wait for the apocalypse to begin to fulfill their prophesy and be raptured off to make believe heaven to join members of the Heaven’s Gate cult cursed forever to ride the Hale-Bop Comet, in their imagination.

Religious cults pop up like weeds on a spring lawn. Most come and go in the lifetime of their founders but every so often a religious cult coalesces into a major religious movement and takes on a life of its own. We all remember Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple and David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. Since Jim Jones and his followers committed suicide that religious cult effectively died.

Jim Jones blended his ideas of racial equality with Christianity just as Martin Luther King did. David Koresh became God in his own mind and the mind of his followers. The link between religion and mental illness is unmistakable. To most people it was obvious that both Jones and Koresh were mentally ill but it was not to their followers. Koresh had instituted a rule that only he could sleep with the female members of the Branch Davidians their husbands were out of luck. Jim Jones was noted for a having voracious sexual appetite for both men and women. He claimed to abhor homosexuality but to be doing the men for their own good and to connect them to symbolically to him.

You can clearly see the blending of three elements, religion, sex, and mental illness. In one interview Jones described himself alternately as atheist and agnostic. Jones was quoted as saying, “What you need to believe in is what you see…if you see me as a friend, I’ll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I’ll be you father, for those of you who don’t have a father…if you see me as your savior, I’ll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I’ll be your God. That statement is telling in that Jones realizes his followers are looking for something and he is attempting to be that something. The needs of the follower dovetail with the needs of the leader until the leader become abusive and by then the follower and leader are in a committed relationship and the followers will tolerate increasing amounts of abuse to maintain the relationship. As the leader spirals downward into mental illness the followers will ignore the obvious signs of mental illness because they have become addicted and dependent to the leader like a drug addiction.

The major contributor to the evil of religion is the literal belief that their particular religious book is divinely inspired. Man has created a 100,000 Gods and he will create another 100,000 more before he is done. There are two types of knowledge logos, which is based in facts and mythos, which is based on myth. Myth has always provided an explanation when there was no factual explanation available. As more factual explanations became available the Gods of men had no choice but to change and morph into other Gods. When we look at the sun we no longer get the urge to sacrifice the girl up the street by cutting her heart out on an alter to the sun but generations of human beings believed it was necessary to please their God. The Jews were the last group to practice human sacrifice in the Middle East. You can bet Abraham did sacrifice his son and the story was later adapted to changing times. The sacrifice of one’s son would have been considered the ultimate in love for God and in a community that already practiced human sacrifice this would have been considered normal. Most of the references to human sacrifice have been purged from today’s bible.

At one time sacrificing one’s son to God would have received high praise but now it would be seen as barbaric and ignorant. But sacrificing people to an imagined God is every bit as common today as it was thousands of years ago gone are the alters to the sun but thousands died in buildings higher than the alters and in the Middle East those deaths were seen as sacrifices to their God, a burnt offering.

As logos expands mythos must shrink. The Sun God was not complex, he was also not invisible, all could look into the sky and be comforted by his great and terrible appearance but once logos explained what the sun actually was the mystery was gone and that God died. With each incarnation Gods become more complex. The God’s of Mt Olympus had many of the same attributes of man even having children with mortals. God was not the first god to sire children with mere mortals. Logos continues to expand at an exponential rate and as it expands mythos will have to shrink. We are fast reaching the time when God will have to morph into another God. A new religion will be created so that the conflicts between logos and mythos can be reduced.